http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/events/a-discussion-on-climate-chang...

Another link: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-...

ghenghisclown wrote on 01/13/14 at 19:57:37:

Of course a substantial portion is man-made, which decent scientist will deny this? Take for example the link I gave some posts ago to http://sciencebits.com/AR5-FirstImpressions, he clearly states that CO2 has an effect on temperature (DUH!), he's just saying that these official IPCC models suck.
Now you give me your reasons why a very modest global warming is a problem.

Bibs wrote on 01/13/14 at 11:54:43:


I was a campaign manager, an outreach specialist, and a political consultant.

alright, let's see how I personally agree or disagree with the 'misleading arguments' from Alias's paper:

"Misleading argument 1:
The Earth’s climate is always changing and this is nothing to do with humans."
I clearly disagree with this, human industry emits a lot of gases and some of them have warming effects. But how big are those effects? Is that a preposterous question to ask? And the answer may be: not as big as previously (or generally) thought, and hey, the IPCC is starting (only starting) to agree with this, see my previous post http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1258870175/156#156

"Misleading argument 2:
Carbon dioxide only makes up a small part of the atmosphere and so cannot be responsible for global warming."
This is completely bullshit. I think you can safely neglect people who claim this.

"Misleading argument 3:
Rises in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the result of increased temperatures, not the other way round."
When applied to the present, this is also bullshit, although to be entirely correct I have to say that it is possible that a (likely minuscule) extra amount of CO2 has been released from the oceans by the warming, but as the deeper layers of the oceans are very slow to react to surface temperatures this is negligible. But at least I'm glad to see that this pdf acknowledges that during the ice ages the CO2 levels followed temperature, which is contrary to what Al Gore would have wanted us to believe (Bibs was asking about credentials, well, said person has none in the field and even gets prizes for that).

"Misleading argument 4:
Observations of temperatures taken by weather balloons and satellites do not support the theory of global warming."
This is again a baseless argument (and I don't have the impression anyone is using it nowadays). What is relevant is the last paragraph, which talks about something I have been talking repeatedly but ghenghisclown chose to simply ignore this, together with a lot of other remarks I made and which I think are still relevant, if I'm wrong on all these points (do I really have to repeat them all?) you might as well let this know. So, the last paragraph:
Quote:

Firstly, it acknowledges the problem of a missing tropical hot spot I have been talking about, secondly, it says the observations are within statistical error bounds, but although it might be true (and even that is not clearly the case) that the data are not disconfirming the models, they certainly do not confirm it. You can read a discussion of this at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/16/about-that-missing-hot-spot which gives references to both view points.

"Misleading argument 5:
Computer models which predict the future climate are unreliable and based on a series of assumptions."
I agree that the models used by IPCC are unreliable, which they themselves are starting to admit! Things like "Modern climate models have become increasingly accurate in
reproducing how the real climate works" are bullshit, they didn't predict the current halt in global warming at all.

"Misleading argument 6:
It’s all to do with the Sun – for example, there is a strong link between increased temperatures on Earth and the number of sunspots on the Sun."
It certainly has not all to do with the Sun. Stating that there's a strong link betwees sunspots and temperatures is debatable, there certainly isn't a direct link (except a minuscule change in solar luminosity). The discussion in this part about aerosols causing some cooling about 1970 doesn't seem impossible to me but that still doesn't mean the Sun can't have had some impact too.

"Misleading argument 7:
The climate is actually affected by cosmic rays."
I think this is indeed perfectly possible and the article actually says that an effect on climate by cosmic rays is possible, and likely to be small. But even if it is small, climate is still affected by it, so this so-called misleading argument might be simply true, according to this very article. More research on cloud formation is needed here.

"Misleading argument 8:
The scale of the negative effects of climate change is often overstated and there is no need for urgent action."
I certainly tend to agree with this, at least when it comes to urgent action because of climate change.

So several of these misleading arguments are indeed misleading.

You lost me with the LOL there. Critically. Being critical. Skeptical. Socrates ("Look it up under so-crates"). James Randi. That kind of thing.

I guess you are using 'you' to mean 'people' rather than me. I do not know the field, thus I have nothing to say of worth. I could pretend to, and I might get away with it. 
But there would be no point. Time wasted. 

The bulk of research appears to indicate that global warming is occurring, and in this I somewhat place trust.
I was just curious about those who comment. It has always seemed a bit bizarre to me to argue about such things on a chess theory forum. So I queried.

When I choose to read academically, I know there is a fairly robust process via double blind peer review with the better journals. Some slip through, notably in liberal arts (see e.g. Sokal) but most trash does not see the light of day anywhere respectable. A degree of self-policing, which does not work perfectly, but it works fairly well. I am on both sides as writer and reviewer, and if anyone is in Hawaii mid-Feb, you can see me co-present on this.

Hence my query. If I knew who any of these people are, I could try to make sense of it. 
Otherwise, to me, it is just internet dogs. In the wrong place. Barking past each other.

Out of interest, may I ask what your involvement in politics was? Elected representative? Just curious. 

Yours critically,
B

Idly, just wondering how much here is empty 'everyone on the internet is a dog' type blather. 
Would be useful for people to write of their credentials. 
Doctoral qualifications, published papers, presentations etc. Are any of you writing here actually active in this field? 
Just out of interest.

Yours critically,
B

ghenghisclown wrote on 01/12/14 at 23:30:56:

I was using sunspots as an indicator of solar magnetic activity, nothing more, there are other indicators (that may be more accurate, but not much) but they don't have such a long track record
and of course I wasn't talking about the effect of sunspots on brightness, that would be included in your irradiance graph (and of course it's not the sunspots themselves but the brighter surroundings that cause a tiny increase in brightness)
and yes, I think a theory of cosmic rays affecting cloud cover is perfectly possible, the exact mechanism isn't discovered yet, but a big issue here is that cloud formation hasn't been studied intensively at all, global warming alarmists don't seem to be interested in this (as in: not interested in studying real world climate), likely because it might shed some doubt on some of their theories
why that would be "STILL insufficient" (your caps) is not clear to me