I am getting away from the computer for maybe half a week so I am out. If this is your area of interest I really suggest you read all the research on this issue not just the contrarian stuff.
I also highly recommend watching the video link I posted. If you are going to be a skeptic on this you need to be arguing against what the mainstream scientific community approaches the problem and not the straw-men you have been bringing up (not on every point and probably not intentionally). Take care 
It doesn’t say Climatology specifically but he is schooled in the relevant disciplines. He holds a position in Atmospheric Science. His publications are on the bottom. Be skeptical about him if you want. but don’t pretend that you know the science yourself.
The predictions predict what number the ball lands on… in degrees. That’s my point.
I could make a prediction of an upshot in Moore’s Law between now to 2020. When 2020 comes around, I could cherry pick a small interval in the graph that corresponds with my prediction and viola I have a positive hit. This is what the “hockey stick” is. It’s political nonsense. It’s telling the public that crystal balls exist and trying to pretend it’s science. That is Al Gore’s (you know, the guy who lied about inventing the internet when he couldn’t even tell you how the TCPIP protocol works) talking point, not scientific data.
Climate change is of course happening. It’s always happening. In the past century or so, we’ve been influencing it substantially. This means measurably to the point that we can be certain enough that it isn’t noise. Hindsight isn’t exactly 20/20. Foresight on the other hand is anyone’s guess and a political (not scientific) ploy.
The most realistic way to address climate change is to accept the well supported data and realize that homeostasis is something “that we ought to do anyway” ~Dr. David Brin
One thing I will bring up is that a lot of sites making the argument that climate change is man-made too often spins it in a way that belittles skeptics and gives them derogatory labels like ‘denialist’. Even the evening news on public TV will stoop to this level when doing climate-related stories.
Now the skeptics used to have the high ground here, but unfortunately they too dove right into the mud in the name of “giving a taste of one’s own medicine”. As I said, a lot of climate science has devolved into a quagmire of politics and ‘tit-for-tat’ character attacks and level-headed sites are not in plentiful supply on either side.
Isn’t Climate Change a hoax?
I just read this article and I wonder
Well It’s difficult to predict. It being a chaotic system makes applying patterns kinda sketchy. There is confidence in a human influenced warming trend but it’s pretty vague. It’s just complicated and difficult to be specific about.
“A hoax” is probably a harsh term for some other agenda.
The adamant long term predictions are probably just bureaucratic, political punditry though.
It is estimated that by 2030 northern China will run out of predictable drinkable water, they are facing a two edged sword between heavy industrialisation and rising temperatures.
All any of us can do is look at the actual evidence of what’s happening now.
Burning fossil fuels is the dirtiest way of releasing the sun’s stored energy but sadly it’s the cheapest.
Notice I have been very carefully using the term contrarian. I agree that the term Denialist is derogatory and counter productive I also don’t like the term Skeptic because it can imply the use of methodological skepticism which I don’t see much evidence of contrarians doing. Other groups identifying as skeptics are big proponents of methodological skepticism of which I personally Identify with and I find the label with regards to climate change at best confusing at worst disingenuous.
I think this very much depends on where you look. I have seen pretty toxic behavior Contrarian set well before terms like denialist were in common use.
What is really important to realise is that this is the public debate and not the scientific debate and that the two don’t resemble each other much at all.
Not really. The
Which is precisely not what climate scientists are doing. Nobody is saying that on the first Tuesday in may in the year 2115 in Florida, Miami, USA that the temperature is going to be X degrees. That would be absurd.
What scientist are saying is that the 25 year running mean for global temperatures will fall within a range with a probability curve attached. This will depend on exact climate sensitivity which we don’t know but have a range of plausible values and exactly how much more CO2 humans end up putting into the atmosphere.
The chaos in the climate system tends to be short term and localised which are things we are filtering from the data when looking at long term global trends.
Lets put it another way; I might not be able to tell you the rainfall in Brazil for this month in three years time but I can be pretty confident that it will be higher than an area in sub-Saharan Africa in the same time period. The chaos of the climate system doesn’t prevent me making that prediction with a high likelyhood of being correct.
Not even close. The bounds of the paper by Mann Et al (which I assume is the one you are referencing) chose the time period they did because that was the longest period they could statistically verify their results on. Since then more proxy data has been collected and other teams have have done similar analyses over longer period and gotten similar results. There was a paper that tried to prove that Mann et als results were a statistical artifact but they got to their conclusions by mixing data calibrated to different baselines without doing any corrections (and not surprisingly got erroneous results).
If you think that science is predicting the long term future, you are getting erroneous results.
Well i do an analogy for every skeptic…
Run a car engine in a garage till it runs out of fuel. Enter & tell me, do you feel OK? Multiply by billions, atmosphere is our garage. Of course even cattle farms are adding up, doesn’t our farts too? Multiply farts by billions & enjoy. It’s the point that such a system is not in balance anymore & we are not helping to resolve the issue but adding to the fall. It’s simple chemistry & physic. Why wait to be sure? Is anyone out there poisoned waiting to die or going to a hospital to be healthy again?
So simple any child can answer.
Politics do it just for money & control (since the “Iron lady” times).
“So simple a child could answer”? You are the one not taking it seriously.
Well, when you look at the sheer number of climate studies and how a lot of later studies contradict earlier ones, people start to find trouble as to who to believe and what to believe.
There’s been a history, where if something was occurring in a way opposite of model predictions, they would tweak the theory and say that it’s still climate change. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where, if you combined every study ever written about the possible negative effects of carbon, then every possible bad thing that you could think of (even outlandish ones like alien invasions) can indeed happen because of our CO2 emissions (so apparently CO2 is the incarnation of none other than the devil himself, forget about the countless benefits it gives plants).
Now there is another site that gives exhaustive information on how rising CO2 can provide an incredible benefit to Earth’s biosphere, even in the face of warming temperatures and increasing drought.
In my mind, carbon ‘pollution’ is not near as concerning as the other stuff that comes out of car tailpipes and fossil-fuel burning (those other substances really can be nasty).
There is also the question of the legacy we leave our children and our children’s children.
Every single life on this planet can make a difference, and remember it’s not just our planet, we share it with thousands of other species who don’t have a voice.
It’s been interesting to read peoples responses in this thread, i think it’s more healthy to drink from a clear pool than a muddy pond, so my convictions haven’t been swayed at all. Humanity is faced with a decision, either we act or we don’t.
The Future hinges on the now.
In the scientific literature this really isn’t the case. The contrarians like to concentrate on the handful of studies that say something different and ignore the many hundreds that all show a consistent big picture. This is very similar to the tactics that the tobacco lobby used with regards to the link between cancer and smoking which isn’t that surprising since a lot of the same people are involved. I generally find that the contrarians arguments sound really plausible and logical when taken in isolation but when I compare this to what a practicing climate scientist has to say I find that important details have been omitted which when included paint a very different picture.
I find this is usually because contrarians haven’t bothered to learn what the climate scientists are actually predicting before making these claims (remember what I said about methodological skepticism). The contrarians say you predicted this and then this happened therefore you are wrong, the climate scientists say that’s not what I predicted, what I predicted was this. The contrarian’s then say the scientist changed their minds they can’t be trusted.
In part this is because the version of the scientists predictions that makes it into the mass media is a very simplified version of the actual predictions. Part of it is because some people in the contrarian camp are payed PR people with a deliberate agenda of discrediting climate scientists and climate science. (of course you could argue that environmental groups fill a similar role on the other side but you shouldn’t really be listening to them either unless you want to know what the worst case senario would look like).
This is the type of thing I am talking about, it provides a lot of solid information that is in line with our scientific best understanding but it takes these things out of their larger context and as such paints a picture that is somewhat misleading. Of course you can’t really know that unless you have looked at information from other sources.
So what group of climate scientists should we trust mainly, the ones that are employed by the federal government (the same entity which is known to create misleading statistics to make a position, theory, or ideology look more truthful and scientifically sound than it actually is)?
So none of the more independent scientists are to be trusted then? History has shown that it is possible for the majority to be wrong on something.
Climate science is a global en-devour so you have to really imagine most of the worlds governments are in cahoots on this. It’s also a view endorsed by just about every scientific institution in the world so you have to believe that all of these groups are in on the conspiracy. (also the majority of groups that identify as skeptic in the technical sense).
Your other option is to go with Linzden, Spencer and the handful of others some of which are also employed by the government some of which are funded (sometimes indirectly via entities like the Heartland Institute) by fossil fuel companies who quite understandably don’t want to be in a situation where they can’t use assets that they have aquired.
If that doesn’t sound fair to you then good. You shouldn’t be choosing sides based on who is doing the funding. The very least you should do is listen to both sides present their case in their own words and cross compare what is being said. If you want to go beyond that you will need to familiarize yourself with current scientific best practices (preferably from somebody who doesn’t have an ideological axe to grind) and then the area of science being studied.
It’s usually not the case but this is absolutely true. You shouldn’t ignore the independent scientists without hearing them give their own account of their position. It’s just that you shouldn’t ignore the scientists producing the other 98% of the research.
Yeah, right.
Am not forcing anyone, just explaining and showing an example to dumb as you might be, by living, recycling, not buying extra stuff within extra packaging, not buying devices whenever updates happen, not buying nor using poisons against nature, knowing herbs, fauna & flora, not bloating children’s mind with plastic toys, using public transport, sharing, walking, cycling, having fun… compared to those who bloat and doubt that poison might not be poison at all, keep fighting and forcing others into their way of life? Maybe i don’t show to you as serious & truly i doubt you are able to see. Your eyes might work but you have no understanding of vision.
Are you the arrogantly lazy, ignorantly comfy one who goes with a car into mu-drive to enjoy a happy meal… then using intelligence to justify irresponsible acts and pain caused to other.