The elephant in the room

Carbon dioxide does not precede warming temperatures, it lags behind.
This is the whole point of this debate.
Gore says the opposite, that carbon causes warming.
Without this being settled, the rest of the argument is mute.
How do the navel gazing masses not see that the Emperor has no clothes?
How many climate changes occurred before mankind even existed?
Many!
The ice in Antarctica is increasing.
The ice in the Arctic is increasing.
Polar bears are not endangered, in fact they need culling.
Science cannot be settled, or it wouldn't be science.
This subject is so stupid, it's a joke.
Did you know, that the Warmists refuse to debate anyone on this.
Many have tried to arrange a debate, but the Church of Gore won't allow dissent ion.
This is organized crime.
Want to buy some carbon credits from me?
I would be happy to take your money.

Did you read the article Ron?

I suggest you try to actually wade through it. Pay particular attention to this:

Taking "an extreme example," the judge said that students learning about the moon need not spend a great deal of time on the theory that it is made of green cheese.

"The balanced approach," he said, "does not involve equality."

You would appear to be someone who is fond of green cheese; which is fine of course - but don't expect to find it at the top of every menu.

Keep studying, I know it's tough but maybe you'll eventually catch on.

Does the theory of Information Cascade and Herding Apply?

This is from a cached page on Google as the original seems to be down at the moment. Read the "A Quick Introduction to Informational Cascades
".

The original was available at http://www.info-cascades.info and was cited in a side bar on an article Diet and Fat in the New York Times.

The world does not need a bunch of Henny Pennys any more than it needs deniers.

Mount Shasta

Doug; I went to your link to your blog.
Thanks for thinking about this.
This Judge in the UK, is only a symptom of the doubt that many logical people have believing that suddenly mankind is responsible for climatic occurrences that happened before we were ever here.
Navel gazing affluent persons, who believe that they are the center of the universe, have become characters out of a James Bond movie, and are actually able to change the weather.
Carbon doesn't occur before earth warming, but it lags warming by hundreds of years.
This is the key error that warmers believe.
The difficulty is, that many people are cashing in on this delicious world of using the usually dull subject of weather, to bail out a generation of useless journalists and academics, from using any kind of intelligence that they don't even have, to jump on a bandwagon where they can think they are doing something useful when in fact without this non issue for them to crow about, they would be totally lost.
Of course I am only talking about mainstream media.
There is another side.

Yeah Ron

There is the truth.

Not that it matters much to some...they prefer cashing no matter what the actual costs to their children: people like Ann Coulter who's now telling the Jews they need to be 'perfected'.

'Nice' folks you identify with.

And that's the truth.

And that line: "Carbon doesn't occur befor earth warming..." What are you talking about?

Follow the leader

I am happy that I can give meaning to Ms. West's life.
I make my comments regardless of the fact that I know that each and EVERY comment I make, will be followed by a gushing Ms. West, who indeed flatters me and validates my views.

Yep Ron

Facts and logic never get in the way of your postings, that's for sure. Doesn't mean you haven't learned how to be offensive without really trying though. I used to enjoy the coloured comics that came with the Saturday paper too.

Arctic Warming Every 70 years

http://www.russia-ic.com/education_science/science/breakthrough/597/

Russian scientist claims global warming can be just a temporary inconvenience, since climatic changes show their natural fluctuating patterns and depend on our Sun’s activity level. Research fellow of the Arctic and Antarctic research and science centre suggests the phenomenon, widely known as global warming, is not more than a natural variation.

Recent 40 or 50 years showed that Arctic climate was getting warmer and now temperatures continue rising. Majority of scientists explains such behaviour with growing concentration of main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and is sure that temperatures would definitely grow till the end of 21st century. If the tendency and growing speed remain the same, the Arctic would enter the year 2100 with air temperature 4-7 degrees higher than it has now, and with ice areas twice as little as the current ice cover of the North. However, another point of view exists, suggesting long-term temperature rising to be just an episode of global history, a consequence of natural fluctuations, which depend on changes in solar activity and surface air pressure.

The scientist has analyzed data of monthly average values of surface air pressure between November and April 1923-2005 in cellular mesh points, located northwards from 40th parallel of the northern hemisphere. Mesh step is 10 degrees in latitude and 30 degrees in longitude. Then the geographer compared air pressure fluctuations with changes of solar activity in the same time period. 1927 was the year, when 16th solar cycle ended, and now we live in the 23rd cycle, which is far from its end. Every 11-year preiod contains three years of high solar activity and eight years, during whuich our Sun is not quite active.

Intensification of solar activity in every cycle is accompanied with abnormal changes of surface air pressure in high and moderate latitudes. There exist two regions, in which mentioned abnormalities are detected most often. First one is located in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean and Near-Atlantic Arctic, including waters around Greenland and Iceland, the North Sea, the Greenland Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea and Canadian Arctic Islands. The second region includes the northern part of the Pacific Ocean and Near-Pacific Arctic together with waters around the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Sea and the Chukchee Sea, as well as north-eastern coast of Asia. Pressure changes in these two regions always happen in antiphase. In case when solar activity rises and pressure increases in the Atlantic region, then in the Pacific one the pressure drops and vice versa. These pressure fluctuations are like scale balance with centre located in the Arctic. Pressure discrepancy in these centres changes from 4.5 to 7 millibar.

Russian scientist cont'd

Changes in surface air pressure can cause long-term natural anomalies, for instance, if presuure over Atlantic keeps growing, then warm waters from moderate latitudes travel to the Arctic through the strait between the Greenland and Europe slower. Such situation was detected during 21st and 22nd solar cycles in the sixties and eighties of the previous century and coincided with cooling in the Arctic. If pressure over Atlantic drops, then speed of warm water transfer grows, like in 1920-1940s, when warming was detected in the Arctic.

During the 22nd solar cycle, which started in 1986, the pressure over vast territories of the northern hemisphere, including Canada, Greenland, the Arctic Ocean, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Western Siberia, dropped significantly. This stage of natural fluctuations concurs with current climate state, which is usually called the global warming. However, in the next solar cycle the pressure over the Northern Atlantic may change, causing the end of global warming.

Source:
Russian Science News

Ed Deak, maybe give your head a shake.

You say: "Anyone who doubts global warming is either nuts or paid off."

The truth is that anyone who thinks a few degrees increase in temperature over a hundred years is an unprecedented event in human history, and that it will have unpreventable catastrophic effects, is just being silly.

One little detail: Lots of human activity is a bit more pleasant in warmer weather.

Think of all the fuel hydrocarbons we use just trying to stay warm in the Northern Hemisphere, for example, eh.

This is SO dumb, you guys.

By the way, the big corporate money is pushing the global warming hype, not refuting it.

Oh, and the polar bear population is increasing, not decreasing.

And Booker, (G.West, that is--same guy). I came on here just to see you use the word, "denialist" again, so you could apply your disinformationalist technique to the discussion.

climate change

Where are all the "conservatives" in these discussions, whining about the cost of environmental survival?

First warming,then CO2 rises

http://www.dailytech.com/Report+CO2+Not+Responsible+for+Past+Warming/article9313.htm

Major new study disputes primary link to greenhouse gas warming

Its the strongest evidence for the Greenhouse Gas theory of global warming -- that warm periods in the earth's past were typically accompanied by rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide. But that evidence is under serious attack, from new research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The research team, led by Paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott, demonstrated CO2 levels after the last Ice Age started to rise some 1,300 years after the warming began. According to Stott, earlier researchers had cause and effect reversed -- CO2 increases were the result of warming, and not the original cause. Stott's paper is not the first to show CO2 rises followed warming trends, but it is one of the most detailed and thorough rebuttals of the linkage.

The work comes hot on the heels of other research downgrading CO2's importance in climate change. Earlier this year, the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute issued a study saying CO2 effects had been "grossly overstated." Dr. Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs concluded that CO2-based warming had been overstated by some 400%, and a pair of Chinese researchers used mathematical modeling to demonstrate the majority of current warming was natural in origin.

Stott's findings are important for two reasons. First, they directly challenge the correlation between CO2 and warming. As Stott himself points out, CO2 is still likely a contributor to climate change, but its role needs to be reevaluated.

The results also weaken the belief that present-day atmospheric CO2 increases must be anthromorphic -- human-induced. Stott's model showed how the warming generated changed ocean conditions, which then generated massive releases of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere. As natural CO2 sources still constitutes more than 97% of all emissions, this may not come as much of a surprise.

But if CO2 didn't cause the warming, what did? Stott's model links the forcing to periodic changes in the Earth's orbit which increase solar radiation over Antarctica. This eventually causes ice sheet retreat, which lowers ocean albedo, reflectivity. Additional warming is generated, a feedback effect which over 1,000 or more years, transports heat via deep-sea currents to the Northern Hemisphere. The model also explains why surface measurements of solar insolation fail to correlate with warming ... the heat transport process is very slow, and thus surface warming lags centuries behind changes in solar output.

Stott is a professor at the University of Southern California, and a reviewer for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

One more little problem with the global

(s)warming hype: Since l998, it just ain't been happening. (The warming, that is, not the hype). Google this: "There is a problem with global warming...it stopped in l998."

Wherein professor Bob Carter walks you through the nonsense surrounding this political silliness.

Prof. Bob Carter article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
• Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research

There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998

By Bob Carter
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/04/2006

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?
Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.
The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike.

Carter continues

Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.

Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.

There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.

On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.
continue at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

is the Judge a scientist ??

Uh, what makes the judge qualified to rule on the scientific integrity of the movie ?

Even if he had a PhD in climatology, which he doesn't, he still wouldn't be qualified to render summary judgment. No single person can do that - there is a reason there was a large panel of scientists in the IPCC.

it is absolutely ludicrous that this man's scientific opinion is given any credence at all. Boy, our society's tendency to take judges' words as gospel really makes me shake my head sometime.

Catastrophists are in Denial

The judge only ruled on 9 errors. There were actually 35. He asked both sides to come up with their best evidence on these 9 points only. That's what judges do all the time. They base their rulings on evidence they have weighed.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Once you get over your shock you might want to take a look at the evidence at the above link. It also shows how the Gorists are trying to spin the judgement.

Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.” He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors” which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion.

Legitimate criticism, or 'legal' hairsplitting?

We in Canada know how impartial and objective the judicial system is because we have two airplane bombers walking the streets of Vancouver, even though Justice Gustavson said they were "probably guilty".

We also have a couple of people walking free who sank a $50 million ship last year, killing two passengers. So it makes perfect sense for a judge to pass a verdict on something is he totally unqualified to talk about.

When judges decide that climate change is real, it will because their law courts are under water. Until then, they should stick to ruling on speeding tickets.

King Canute, the story goes, tried and failed to turn back the tide. Justice Burton is welcome to try, as long as he is handcuffed to a heavy weight at low-low tide.

Legitimate criticism, or 'legal' hairsplitting?

We in Canada know how impartial and objective the judicial system is because we have two airplane bombers walking the streets of Vancouver, even though Justice Gustavson said they were "probably guilty".

We also have a couple of people walking free who sank a $50 million ship last year, killing two passengers. So it makes perfect sense for a judge to pass a verdict on something is he totally unqualified to talk about.

When judges decide that climate change is real, it will because their law courts are under water. Until then, they should stick to ruling on speeding tickets.

King Canute, the story goes, tried and failed to turn back the tide. Justice Burton is welcome to try, as long as he is handcuffed to a heavy weight at low-low tide.

"The ways of the Lord are often dark, but never pleasant."

- Robert Parker, Spenser Detective Series
http://bullets-and-beer.com/Unknown.html

What does studying minutia, as most of the posts on this thread are presenting, really have anything to do with the weather change phenomena that IS happening?

If we don't want to stop using the air-sea-land for our dumping grounds in order to stop even a hypothetical warming, then why don't we stop the dumping of heavy metals, and chloro-fluoro compounds that we KNOW is screwing up our DNA and general health?

Wrong planning

Unfortunately, we're probably too late to do anything about global climate change. It's here, and the powers that profit from the current situation are too entrenched and too powerful to be swept aside in time, even through immediate violent revolution.

So the planning should not be answering "how do we prevent global climate change?" but "how do we survive it?".

How do we adapt to a world that in the next few decades will see intensifying storms whose severity will need new points on the scale. Water levels are going to rise - what are we going to do in order to save the millions of people who are going to be affected by this? Drought and/or floods will become much more common - what are we going to do in order to ensure people have enough but not too much water? Which crops are going to survive, and where? Are we finally going to start building floating communities to live on the 70+% of the planet that is covered in water?

That's the planning we should do. The battle about whether or not global climate change is man-made is over. It doesn't matter anymore. The changes are happening now. Let's try solving the problems we can solve. Then we can turn around and put those who deserve it up against the wall for the callous disregard of humanity and this planet.

Driftwolf, that's all Gorebull

The reaons why it is bs are all to be found here.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/monckton-response-to-gore-errors.pdf

Quite simply, there is no crisis. We've been cooling off since 1998 inspite of a rise in CO2 and the media are now trying to spin the rise as the failure of the natural carbon sinks in order to gloss over the fact we haven't had a temperature rise when according to "consensus" science, we should be on our way to "burning" up.

Help, help. Don't you feel empowered now. The Earth is failing! You don't have time to think of anything else. The end is nigh unless we change our sinful ways!

The sea rise is just what we should expect at 7 inches per 100 years and the alarmist IPCC estimate of 23 inches in 100 years is not the 20 ft Gore scared everybody to death with.

Just because they stole the election from him doesn't make Gore a hero. He took a dive. He is also already making a pretty penny from carbon trading and his advocacy of cap and trade will only increase his profits.