There is still no Global Warming science.

James___ wrote:

gfm7175 wrote:

tmiddles wrote:

gfm7175 wrote:
...it is YOU who regularly and purposefully misquotes people by removing the most important parts of what people say (or removing the critical surrounding context from what people said).

Try actually pointing that out. You seem fond of saying I've done that but don't include what I left out that so distorted things.

Take this (which is actually on topic here), from link:

tmiddles wrote:...

IBdaMann wrote:1) photons of the lower temperature object are not absorbed by the higher temperature object.

...

Have I distorted or left anything important out of that claim IBD made?

Violation of tmiddles ordinance. Summarily dismissed.

Continued evasion of questions asked of you to answer.

I was just outside. Seemed pretty d@mned hot. Yep, it's getting warmer.

tmiddles wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:
...questions posed to him ...

Response is here: link

IBdaMann wrote:

DRKTS wrote: "all solids will have a melting point temperature" is not falsifiable

It is a falsifiable statement and is false.

Why do you say that? When/how was it falsified?

tmiddles wrote:
DRKTS wouldn't you say a cause and effect theory like AGW:
that increasing CO2 increases ground level temperatures,
Is as simple and falsifiable as it gets?

tmiddles wrote:
It doesn't even require a specific value to be achieved as "warming" is a "greater than" distinction.

tmiddles wrote:
To use your "No black swans exist" example, AGW as a theory is more like "Darker swans don't exist".

All you have to do is show that CO2 increases and temperatures don't in any experiment/research and you've falsified it.

tmiddles wrote:
If the 2 liter soda bottle HS science demos didn't work it would falsify it.
...deleted redundant Holy Link...
But of course they do work as it's a very solid theory.

duncan61 wrote:
Black Swans predominantly occur in the southeast and southwest of Australia, live throughout southern Australia, extending south to Tasmania and north to Townsville in Queensland and Port Headland in Western Australia1. They have been introduced to New Zealand. Black Swans frequent lakes, rivers, estuaries and swamps.

tmiddles wrote:...deleted IAW tmiddles ordinance #1...Mantras 21d...38a...16b...15a...15b...29...

Into the Night wrote:

duncan61 wrote:
Black Swans predominantly occur in the southeast and southwest of Australia, live throughout southern Australia, extending south to Tasmania and north to Townsville in Queensland and Port Headland in Western Australia1. They have been introduced to New Zealand. Black Swans frequent lakes, rivers, estuaries and swamps.

We get white ones here. They must be racist.

IBdaMann wrote:

tmiddles wrote:Why do you say that? ["all solids will have a melting point temperature" is ... false.]

The moment one single counterexample to the null hypothesis is identified, ...

Into the Night wrote:
At one atmosphere, solid CO2 does not melt. It vaporizes.

IBdaMann wrote:

tmiddles wrote: All you have to do is show that CO2 increases and temperatures don't in any experiment/research and you've falsified it. ["it" being AGW, the thoery that increasing CO2 increases ground level temps]

...Only the falsifiable model gets to say what shows it to be false...

Into the Night wrote:
Answer the questions put to you:...

tmiddles wrote: Yeah so identify it. What it your counterexample that causes you to make that claim?

tmiddles wrote: Uh huh, and the model is that more CO2 results in a higher temperature.

tmiddles wrote: Stop abusing the board in violation of it's guidelines.

IBdaMann wrote:
Pick your favorite type of wood that melts.

IBdaMann wrote:

tmiddles wrote: Uh huh, and the model is that more CO2 results in a higher temperature.

The burden rests with you to demonstrate that creation of energy out of nothing is even possible, ...

IBdaMann wrote:answer the questions....

tmiddles wrote: You are confining it to ...

tmiddles wrote: I've debunked it here

IBdaMann wrote:Wood does not melt.

IBdaMann wrote:You have debunked nothing.

tmiddles wrote: Wood can melt at 3,550 °C

tmiddles wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:
Pick your favorite type of wood that melts.

You are confining it to our human experience, camping, woodshop, ect. Wood heats to become charcoal which is carbon and carbon has a melting point of 3,550 °C. So "all solids will have a melting point temperature" is not falsified by wood. That extreme temperature is simply not something we have much experience with.
...deleted remaining IAW tmiddles ordinance #1...

tmiddles wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:Wood does not melt.

Wood can melt at 3,550 °C, at some pressures of course. You ignored my rebuttal again.
...deleted remaining IAW tmiddles ordinance #1...

IBdaMann wrote:

tmiddles wrote: Wood can melt at 3,550 °C

Nope. Wood cannot melt. If it decomposes and the components melt then it is no longer wood....

tmiddles wrote: Hmmm, if an ice cube decomposes ...

tmiddles wrote: ... and melts it is no longer an ice cube.

tmiddles wrote: what happens when wood is heated to 5000 C ? I think it will melt by then.

tmiddles wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

tmiddles wrote: Wood can melt at 3,550 °C

Nope. Wood cannot melt. If it decomposes and the components melt then it is no longer wood....

Hmmm, if an ice cube decomposes and melts it is no longer an ice cube. Of course if the pressure is very low ice will vaporize without melting. But we can agree ice has a melting point and certainly does not falsify: "all solids will have a melting point temperature"

So if there is no oxygen available, so it cannot burn, and it is under so much pressure that it cannot vaporize, what happens when wood is heated to 5000 C ? I think it will melt by then. But what do you think? Can you know it doesn't and falsify the theory?

duncan61 wrote:Never heard of water decomposing or vapourising...

IBdaMann wrote:
Decomposing wood into different materials that might melt is not melting the wood ... it is destroying the wood and melting some other material(s). Wood ... does not melt.

tmiddles wrote:...deleted IAW tmiddles ordinance #1...Mantras 20r3...20r2...20r9...20r12...20r11...1...15c...16b...20r12...39d...

branner wrote:
[quote]IBdaMann wrote:
you moron
...
you are a religious WACK-JOB
...
ignore any of your crap
...
you are a fraud
...

sealover wrote:More different members posted on just this one thread eight years ago than on all the threads combined this week

branner wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:
you moron
...
you are a religious WACK-JOB
...
ignore any of your crap
...
you are a fraud
...

Forum admin here. Please use a civilized language on Climate-Debate.com.

It would be great to attract more active users with interesting points to discuss and share, so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language.

Ok?

sealover wrote:

branner wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:
you moron
...
you are a religious WACK-JOB
...
ignore any of your crap
...
you are a fraud
...

Forum admin here. Please use a civilized language on Climate-Debate.com.

It would be great to attract more active users with interesting points to discuss and share, so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language.

Ok?

This was September, 2015

The administrator actually cared enough to read what was happening in the discussion.

Perhaps he could see where it was heading.

"It would be great to attract more active users... so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language."

The website changed in the past eight years.

Rather than attract more active users, their number diminished drastically.

New users, at least in the past year, are systematically driven away.

"Rude language" is only part of the problem.

Branner pretty much abandoned this website.

But there was a time when he cared enough to point out how inappropriate it is to post "You are a moron"

Now, you can use the website's own keyword search for "You are a moron"

That line gets used a LOT. Like, a WHOLE lot.

Almost exclusively by the dominant troll and his second rate sidekick.

Who wants to participate in a discussion where scientifically illiterate trolls repeatedly tell new members, "You are a moron"?

That rhetorical question might be answered by the objective evidence of member activity - the number of members who still participate.

sealover wrote:Now, you can use the website's own keyword search for "You are a moron". That line gets used a LOT. Like, a WHOLE lot.

sealover wrote:Almost exclusively by the dominant troll and his second rate sidekick.

sealover wrote:Who wants to participate in a discussion where scientifically illiterate trolls repeatedly tell new members, "You are a moron"?

IBdaMann wrote:
It would seem that there is still no Global Warming science.

I wonder if this thread will have to morph into "There is no BLM science."

sealover wrote:

branner wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:
you moron
...
you are a religious WACK-JOB
...
ignore any of your crap
...
you are a fraud
...

Forum admin here. Please use a civilized language on Climate-Debate.com.

It would be great to attract more active users with interesting points to discuss and share, so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language.

Ok?

This was September, 2015

The administrator actually cared enough to read what was happening in the discussion.

Perhaps he could see where it was heading.

"It would be great to attract more active users... so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language."

The website changed in the past eight years.

Rather than attract more active users, their number diminished drastically.

New users, at least in the past year, are systematically driven away.

"Rude language" is only part of the problem.

Branner pretty much abandoned this website.

But there was a time when he cared enough to point out how inappropriate it is to post "You are a moron"

Now, you can use the website's own keyword search for "You are a moron"

That line gets used a LOT. Like, a WHOLE lot.

Almost exclusively by the dominant troll and his second rate sidekick.

Who wants to participate in a discussion where scientifically illiterate trolls repeatedly tell new members, "You are a moron"?

That rhetorical question might be answered by the objective evidence of member activity - the number of members who still participate.

IBdaMann wrote:

sealover wrote:Now, you can use the website's own keyword search for "You are a moron". That line gets used a LOT. Like, a WHOLE lot.

Do you have any idea how many morons we get here? We get a LOT. Like, a WHOLE lot.

sealover wrote:Almost exclusively by the dominant troll and his second rate sidekick.

By the way, I appreciate your recognition that I am the dominant bad guy on this site and not some other pretender. If you don't mind, I'm going to call on you as a characer witness if my title is ever in contention.

sealover wrote:Who wants to participate in a discussion where scientifically illiterate trolls repeatedly tell new members, "You are a moron"?

There's no way to tell. You have never told any new members "You are a moron" as far as I know.

HarveyH55 wrote:

sealover wrote:

branner wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:
you moron
...
you are a religious WACK-JOB
...
ignore any of your crap
...
you are a fraud
...

Forum admin here. Please use a civilized language on Climate-Debate.com.

It would be great to attract more active users with interesting points to discuss and share, so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language.

Ok?

This was September, 2015

The administrator actually cared enough to read what was happening in the discussion.

Perhaps he could see where it was heading.

"It would be great to attract more active users... so please don't scare them away from participating with rude language."

The website changed in the past eight years.

Rather than attract more active users, their number diminished drastically.

New users, at least in the past year, are systematically driven away.

"Rude language" is only part of the problem.

Branner pretty much abandoned this website.

But there was a time when he cared enough to point out how inappropriate it is to post "You are a moron"

Now, you can use the website's own keyword search for "You are a moron"

That line gets used a LOT. Like, a WHOLE lot.

Almost exclusively by the dominant troll and his second rate sidekick.

Who wants to participate in a discussion where scientifically illiterate trolls repeatedly tell new members, "You are a moron"?

That rhetorical question might be answered by the objective evidence of member activity - the number of members who still participate.

The title of this forum is 'Climate-Debate', not discussion... You throw fish into a shark tank, how many survive? The sharks don't wait for a diner invitation, or introductions. They jump right in, and feed all they can, before the other sharks eat everything. The meals are few, and far-between. The plan of attack well refined. Most don't stick around long enough to learn discussion is a sideshow here. You can discuss tomatoes, creepy-clowns, politics... But anything climate-change, is food for the sharks. It's about domination, 'ownership', and defending the tank.

climate scientist wrote:
mywifesatan wrote:
In all fairness you don't know the elite scientific community..there are not that many true
"climate scientists" there is not really a qaulifying criteria for that anyway...very few scientists study this...you never gave me proof of a consensus..saying something vague like 97% of scientists..what does that mean?.every scientist in the world was polled? There are so many ways to run this scam. there never was any poll ever to support your claim..you have no source..you just believe what is being reported by liberal news outlets...that would be every news station besides fox news on tv..I know..how dare fox news exist! If this is what you base your assertion on that agw is a fact and we all are doomed.....and you might want to rethink your standpoint

Hi everyone.

I am a climate scientist. I work in a department with at least 50 other people that would identify themselves as climate scientists. There are at least 10 other such departments in the country I live in alone. I would estimate that there are thousands of people world-wide who identify themselves as climate scientists and who publish research on climate science in peer reviewed journals.

The Cook et al. (2013) paper referring to 97% of agreement between climate scientists about AGW examined abstracts from peer reviewed climate research papers, and found that out of those that stated a view on climate change, 97.1% endorsed AGW.

If you were serious in finding 'the truth' about climate change, I would recommend that instead of debating your opinion on this forum and reading about the 'climate change conspiracy' on the internet, that you should arrange a meeting with some real climate scientists at a university or institution close to where you live, and ask if you can meet with them to discuss your concerns about the link between atmospheric CO2 and AGW and see what they have to say and show you.

This would be a more evidence based way of finding out more about climate change, rather than relying on non-expert opinions on the internet, and I am sure that most climate scientists would be happy to talk to you about their research and work.

climate scientist wrote:
Dear arthur18

I'm not sure what you are referring to, when you say that all climate scientists have refused a public debate on the issue.

There are many examples of individual climate scientists engaging with the public and the media about their research, as well as whole organisations that promote the current knowledge about climate change (e.g. WMO GHG bulletin, released annually, http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/gaw/ghg/documents/GHG_Bulletin_10_Nov2014_EN.pdf). This document is now provided in six different languages.

I'm also not sure about the debate that you are referring to. The science evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change is un-disputed in the scientific community, and has been for several decades now. There are now formal declarations confirming human induced global warming from over 30 national science academies, three regional academies, and both the international InterAcademy Council and International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences.

The only debate that remains is purely of a political nature.

climate scientist wrote:
Hi arthur18

First: Hans von Storch is not 'at the IPCC', he is currently the director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht and a professor at Hamburg University.

Second: you are basing your whole argument on a single news paper article? If I believed everything that I read in the media I would think that eating chocolate is good for me. If you have a published statement from a science academy or institution, or a peer reviewed article published in a reputable scientific journal that supports your views about the IPCC, then I would be very interested in reading such material, but please don't send me any more newspaper articles, or blog entries.

Third: almost all climate scientists agree that there has been a pause in the global surface temperature warming over the past decade or so, and there have been many papers published and a lot of research funded trying to figure out why. At the moment, our best understanding seems to indicate that the oceans have taken up additional heat in some regions, but this work is still very much on going.

Fourth: nowhere in the article does Storch say that recent climate change is not caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing.

Fifth: the link at the bottom of the article 'no more warming for four more years' leads to the UK Met Office website. I have no idea why Andrew Bolt has decided to call them 'Britain's warmist met' since the Met Office is the national government funded weather and climate prediction centre. No where on the Met Office webpage does it say that there will be no more warming for four years, and the quotation from the Met Office webpage has been cited incorrectly. It actually reads: "Averaged over the five-year period 2015-2019, global average temperature is expected to remain high and is likely to be between 0.18°C and 0.46°C above the long-term (1981-2010) average of 14.3°C. This compares with an anomaly of +0.26°C observed in 2010 and 2014, currently the warmest years on record." There is nothing in this quotation that actually supports Andrew Bolt's argument, the Met Office is simply stating that global surface temperatures are likely to remain very high over the next five years, and that the global mean surface temperatures recorded in 2010 and 2014 are the warmest on record.

Six: global surface temperature is only one metric of climate change. This is why we refer to climate change as climate change, and not global warming. There has been no slow down or pause in the global surface ocean temperature increase. Equally, there is no observed slow down or pause in the decline of ice sheet melting, or in the increase in ocean acidification or ocean deoxygenation.

Seven: IPCC reports are based on published peer reviewed literature, from scientists all over the world. The reports are a huge under-taking to produce and most of the work is done by volunteers. Of course there will be a few errors or mistakes and typos, as with any large document, but over all the science of the IPCC is robust, and reflects the views of the scientific community. Do you really think that the IPCC 2007 lead authors would have beeen awarded a Nobel Peace Prize if the IPCC process was not robust? It is not possible to include everyone's work in the reports, as they are already large enough, but I know of several PhD students that have their work included in the IPCC.

Like I have said before on this forum, if you are serious about understanding whether climate change is 'real' or not, you need to stop basing all of your arguments on newpaper articles blogs, and other unreliable sources of information, and find out more about the science that is being done all over the world. There are lots of sources of reliable information, such as national meteorological institution websites, science academy documentation such as the Royal Society, information available from the UN/WMO, journals such as Nature and Science, Climate Science departments in Universities, National Administrations such as NOAA in the US, and the IPCC reports.

climate scientist wrote:
I would appreciate it if you would not insult my colleagues at the University of East Anglia, who have been exonerated of any legal or scientific wrong-doing. Even if you don't believe the court rulings, you surely must admit that they must have done a pretty bad job at manipulating their data, seeing as both NOAA and NASA, who use different methods from CRU, have found almost identical trends in mean global surface temperature changes (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/monitoring/climate/surface-temperature).

Professor Storch has contributed to the writing and editing of IPCC reports as a lead author, but to my knowledge, has never been employed by the IPCC.

You seem to have made your mind up, and are now cherry picking any source of information from the internet that seems to support your opinion on climate change, rather than looking for robust sources of evidence on all aspects of climate change, and then making an informed decision based on evidence and fact.

If you have a genuine question about a specific aspect of climate change that you do not understand, or would like clarification on, then I am happy to discuss this with you. Likewise, if you have a reliable source of evidence that seems to dispute an aspect of climate change science, I am happy to discuss this with you.

However, if you only wish to post entries of ramblings about your opinions on climate change, which can only be backed up by newspaper articles and links to climate change denialist websites, then I'm afraid I have better things to do with my time, and I won't bother to reply to you.

I seriously doubt that you have even attempted to read any of the IPCC reports, or any of the links that I have posted to you.

climate scientist wrote:
Let's get a few things straight here:

Your posts so far have largely been ramblings *not* because you do not believe in climate change, but because you do not seem to base your opinions on any credible evidence.

I am not an alarmist troll. I certainty don't think that climate change is the end of the planet, or even the end of the human race, but I am concerned that a lot of people, particularly those in developing countries, will face serious consequences as a result of climate change, not to mention the impacts that other species will face/are already facing.

I have not been 'schooled' to put anyone down. I'm not even sure what you mean by this. I am trying to encourage you to ask reasonable questions about specific aspects of climate change that you do not understand/disagree with, rather than a mass onslaught of your opinions that I have no idea where to even begin addressing. I am also trying to encourage you to be more open minded, and consider all the options, before making up your mind.

For me, climate change is not a question of belief - it is happening, and it is caused largely by anthropogenic influences. I know this because of the scientific evidence from many measurements of many different variables - including but by no means limited to surface temperature - which indicates that the climate is warming and humans are the main contributing factor. Do you believe in gravity? Of course not - you simply know that it exists. What we do not know, is exactly how the climate will change in the future - this is what a lot of scientists in a lot of different institutions all over the world are working on, from a broad range of disciplines.

Now to address your questions:

There have been many reviews into the original Mann hockey stick graph, including one by Hans Von Storch (in 2004 I think). These reviews in general have found that the statistical methods used by Mann et al have a tendancy to underestimate variability, by up to a factor of 2.

There have, however, been numerous subsequent studies using a wide variety of methods, based on a wide range of data (tree rings from many species, and also other data, such as glacial deposits, lake bed deposits, etc.) Here is a graph showing all of these other studies, including the Mann et al study, published in the 4th IPCC report: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html. This page provides very detailed information about how this graph was constructed. The following text from the IPCC report summarises the graph:

"The instrumental temperature data that exist before 1850, although increasingly biased towards Europe in earlier periods, show that the warming observed after 1980 is unprecedented compared to the levels measured in the previous 280 years, even allowing for the greater variance expected in an average of so few early data compared to the much greater number in the 20th century. Recent analyses of instrumental, documentary and proxy climate records, focussing on European temperatures, have also pointed to the unprecedented warmth of the 20th century and shown that the extreme summer of 2003 was very likely warmer than any that has occurred in at least 500 years (Luterbacher et al., 2004; Guiot et al., 2005; see Box 3.6)."

Therefore, with respect to your question - statistical issues have been found with the method used by Mann et al, however, their conclusions still stand, as they have been independently replicated by many other studies. As you can see, there is quite a large error associated with the proxies used to create the IPCC graph, however, the recent temperature trend stands out above this error. I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to 'measurements within one hundredth of a degree Celcius'. The proxy data do not have to be this accurate, because the recent temperature trend is so large. An example: if you measure the height of a sunflower one day, and it is 15 cm tall, and one week later it is 20 cm tall then you know that it has grown by about 5 cm. You didn't need to measure to 0.1 cm accuracy to be able to come up with this conclusion. In fact, if you were simply trying to determine whether it had grown at all within the week, then you would only need to measure to an accuracy of about +/- 2 cm, and you would still have very high confidence that the sunflower had grown, and not stayed the same height.

Another point that I would like to make is that the hockey stick graph is only a single line of evidence out of hundreds of lines of evidence that show that the climate is changing, and I'm not sure it is wise to be so fixated on this one piece of evidence. Climate science is not based on the hockey stick graph. There are hundreds of measurements of other variables from all over the world, such as surface ocean temperature, ocean alkalinity, ocean oxygen content, sea ice extent, glacier extent, ice sheet extent, greenhouse gas measurements in the troposphere and stratosphere, outgoing radiation measurements made in space, polewards migration of species, mass extinctions, coral reef bleaching, isotopic measurements of CO2, measurements of solar activity, measurements of volcanic activity, etc.

As for your second question:

I'm not sure if I can really answer this without having more information. Which climate models are you referring to? There are many different types of climate models - do you mean the global climate models presented in the IPCC reports?

If you tell me which models you would like to know about then I can be more specific, but in general, global climate models are run using current and predicted greenhouse gas emissions from national inventories, which are reported annually. They also account for solar forcing, volcanic forcing, climate feedbacks, such as those associated with the ice caps melting, carbon sinks, such as the ocean and land biosphere, land use change, human population change, and so on. They are pretty comprehensive. Sometimes they are run in specific ways to investigate specific things. For example, you can run a global climate model with no greenhouse gas forcing, and only solar and volcanic forcing, plus the natural carbon sinks, from 1750 to present day to see if the model can reproduce the observed temperature changes over the past 250 years. What happens is that the models can't produce the observed temperature changes unless you put the greenhouse gas forcing back in. They don't even get close to reproducing the observed temperature record, in fact, which gives us quite high confidence that the observed warming is due to greenhouse gas forcing. But yet again, there are numerous other data sets that confirm this conclusion (e.g. outgoing radiation changes and isotope measurements) - we do not rely on the models alone.

Another point I would like to make about climate models is that our understanding of climate change is based on measurements and data, not climate models. Climate models are a useful tool, for helping us to try and understand something that we cannot measure. This is why we use climate models to try and determine future climate change. But we certainly do not rely on the models, and we know that they can be wrong. If 10 different global climate models are run for the period 2000 - 2100, and all 10 models produce results that indicate that the climate will continue to warm, then we think that it is probably likely that this is what will happen, but we do not know for sure.

I hope I have answered your questions - please let me know if there is anything else you would like to discuss.

climate scientist wrote:
Hi arthur18

The IPCC has no political agenda. It's sources of funding are from the WMO, the UNEP and from national governments. Because the IPCC is so intergovernmental in nature, it is policy neutral and not policy-prescriptive. It's agenda is simply to report on the scientific consensus about climate change, and to do so in a more user-friendly, accessible, and read-able way than one typically finds in scientific journals. This is why each report has a document called 'summary for policy makers'. This document contains the same scientific content as the main report, but it is written in as user friendly format as possible, without too much scientific 'jargon'. The IPCC itself does not carry out any research or measure any climate data. It simply reviews the literature from the scientific community. This task is done by IPCC lead and contributing authors who are from the scientific community.

The IPCC process is by no means perfect, and it doesn't always get things right. In fact, the IPCC process has been criticised and reviewed numerous times now. There are many climate scientists who think that the process needs to be changed, and this is being looked into for the next report. Sometimes the IPCC has been accused of over-estimating the impacts of climate change, and more recently, the IPCC has been accused of under-estimating the impacts. But time after time, review after review, the overall science of climate change reported by the IPCC has been found to be robust.

What you have to remember is that the IPCC reports are largely written by volunteers from the scientific community. About 800 of them, with additional people contributing their research and ideas. This is a huge undertaking, when you think about it. It is not surprising really that sometimes the reports contain mistakes, like the Himalayan glacier mistake of the 4th IPCC report. It is also not surprising that sometimes not everyone gets along perfectly.

With regards to Christopher Landsea, I actually think he actually had a reasonable point. Obviously we don't really know the whole story as to why he decided to withdraw, and it may be that he had a personal disagreement with one of the chapter editors, or something. Landsea is a hurricane specialist, and he disagrees that it is currently possible to determine whether climate change is causing an increase in hurricanes/hurricane damage. He absolutely believes in anthropogenic climate change, which is clear from his article here, from 2011: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/. It would also appear that the IPCC have now taken on board his point. In the most recent IPCC report (5th report), this is what is stated about climate change and hurricanes:

"AR4 concluded that it was likely that an increasing trend had occurred in intense tropical cyclone activity since 1970 in some regions but that there was no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones. Subsequent assessments, including SREX and more recent literature indicate that it is difficult to draw firm conclusions with respect to the confidence levels associated with observed trends prior to the satellite era and in ocean basins outside of the North Atlantic."

"No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin."

In this section of the 5th report, published in 2013, Landsea's work is cited, so he has by no means been excluded from the IPCC process, and is a contributing scientist to the IPCC 5th report.

And with regards to the other people that have voiced concerns, or withdrawn from the IPCC process, the webpage link that you gave showed the names of about 7 people. If we assume that the real number is three times this, because the webpage might not be entirely up to date, this comes to 21 people. In the total history of the IPCC, the number of scientists that have contributed to the reports is maybe about 5000 people (this is quite a ball-park figure, since I haven't actually counted them all, and some people contribute to more than one report), which means that only ~0.5% of these scientists have seriously complained or withdrawn from the IPCC process. This is a tiny percentage, and is actually very positive. I think that most medium and large companies would have a higher percentage of resigned and disgruntled employees than 0.5%. And people will always be people. You are never going to be able to get everyone to agree when so many people are coming together to create one report. There are bound to be disagreements and arguments.

Another thing to consider is that the IPCC faces more scrutiny than probably anyone else. The IPCC scientists know that the reports are going to be picked apart, word by word, and they try their best to make sure that the science is clear and not ambiguous. There have been so many independent reviews and investigations into the IPCC process over the years, and none have found any issues with the overall underlying science, even though there have been issues found with the IPCC process and some mistakes on specific things. Nobel Peace prizes can be revoked, and if the IPCC had been found to be distorting the science, then I'm sure that they would never have received a Nobel Peace prize, let alone still have one.

climate scientist wrote:
Hi arthur18

No, I do not think the the Global Warming Petition Project is genuine. And here are my reasons why:

The petition is based around a single publication from 2007, in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. This in itself raises alarm bells with me. Why is the publication 8 years old, and why it is not published in a climate science journal? I looked into the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons into a bit more detail and this is what I found. It is the journal published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which is a politically motivated organisation with the brief of "fighting government take-over of medicine". The association is extremist conservative, and promotes ideas such as HIV does not cause AIDS, that being gay reduces life expectancy, that there are links between abortion and breast cancer. The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is not listed in any academic database, such as Web of Science, and has been criticised by numerous medical professionals and institutions. The authors have published the article in the style of a PNAS article, to try and make it look more official, which prompted the National Academy of Sciences to make a statement saying that it had never been submitted to PNAS and that they did not agree with the way the science had been presented.

If the science underpinning the petition was credible, then they would have had no problems publishing it in a credible climate science journal that is also used by the academic community. On the website, it states that the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons was chosen because the Journal agreed to waive copyright. This is a pretty poor excuse and in this day and age, with the amount of open access climate journals around, really shouldn't be the deciding factor in where you choose to publish.

In addition, the way in which the authors have mis-cited published scientific work throughout the paper is quite shocking. If you were to go through all of the publications that they have cited, I am sure that almost all of them state that climate change is happening and that humans are the main contributor. The authors have picked specific sentences from each publication to cite, and re-written the science into a work of fiction. They have made all of the figures themselves, rather than using figures that already exist in the papers that they have cited - this strikes me as odd, as it is not uncommon to use figures from other publications with permission, rather than to replicate them just for the sake of it. The authors are not climate scientists - Arthur Robinson is a biochemist and also happens to have a political career as a Republican. Willie Soon is a physicist who is known to have received a lot of money from the oil industry. I believe that he had to have a paper retracted from the journal Climate Research after it caused an outrage, and it was found that the peer-review process had been compromised.

The second thing that is extremely suspicious is that fact that the qualifications of the 'scientific experts' who have signed the petition are not given. All that is given is a list of how many have PhDs, BScs, etc, and what fields they are experts in. It doesn't say what universities or affiliations each person is associated with, so we don't even know if they are still working in science. My brother has a masters in science - he is an electronics engineer, he works for a company making audio equipment and he doesn't know much about climate change. But by the petition's standards, he would qualify as one of the 'scientists' who have signed the petition. There are 320 million people in the US. If only 0.5% of them have either PhDs or undergraduate degrees in a science field, that makes 1.6 million people. The petition has about 31000 signatures, which is about 2% of the total number of people in the US who have a science qualification. If you add up the number of people listed in each specialised field on the webpage, you can only account for about half of the 31000 signatories. This is because half either left this part of the form blank, or filled in a specialisation that was not science related. Most of the 'experts' listed are not climate scientists, but are physicists. Only 0.5% of the signatories have expertise in climatology and atmospheric science.

As for your other question about CO2 emissions and warming - I can definitely answer this, but I will wait until tomorrow if that's okay.

climate scientist wrote:
Hi arthur18

Here is a response to your second question:

I found this paper in the journal Nature Geoscience on this topic, which is quite interesting (see: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n1/full/nclimate2060.html). Essentially, the paper mentions that there have been numerous previous studies (it cites about 9 other papers) that have looked into what would happen to global temperature if CO2 emissions suddenly stopped, and these studies have found that global mean temperatures would remain at a roughly constant level for several centuries (i.e. no warming or cooling). The Frolicher et al (2013) paper, however, finds that there might in fact be a small decrease in global mean temperature of ~0.5 deg C until about 2100, followed by a prolonged increase in global mean temperature for several centuries, but only an increase of about 0.3-0.5 deg C above 2000 levels (see figure 1b, if you have access).

Frolicher et al (2013) state that the reasons for these long-term changes in global mean temp:

The initial decrease is likely due to a decrease in atmospheric radiative forcing, since CO2 emissions have stopped, as well as heat uptake by the ocean. In the long-term, the effect of reduced atmospheric radiative forcing is overcompensated by reduced heat uptake by the ocean, plus feedback effects associated with where the ocean heat uptake occurs (most ocean heat uptake occurs at high latitude). So essentially, although there is less radiative forcing from CO2, and therefore less heating of the atmosphere, this is counteracted by the ocean, which takes up less heat from the atmosphere. I.e., the heat going into the ocean is less than the reduction in heat caused by reduced radiative forcing, hence causing a net warming of the atmosphere.

It is worth bearing in mind that these results come from model simulations (since it is not possible to measure the future), and that not all the model runs in Frolicher et al (2013) show this decrease followed by a prolonged increase. So, based on our current understanding and modelling capability, it is reasonably likely that there would be no great change in global mean surface temperature for the next few hundred years if all CO2 emissions stopped today, although a small amount of cooling or heating on the order of ~0.5 deg is certainly possible.

I hope this answers your question.

climate scientist wrote:
Damn, IBdaMann - I think you've sussed me out! My cover is blown!

You're right, although my job description includes the words 'research scientist' and I work in the Environmental Science department at a well respected University, it is in fact all a complete farce.

And there I was saying that I make high precision greenhouse gas measurements in the atmosphere, but you know what, in actual fact, I just go to work and pray to the Climate God, who tells me what the CO2 mole fraction in the atmosphere is today. It's as easy as that! Now I am wondering why I spent 4 years doing a PhD - silly me!

And it's not just me you know - all ~70 researchers who work in my department are doing the same thing. The funny thing is that we are pretty much all funded by the government. They must be such fools to fund us to support our made up religion!

But then again, we've been doing pretty well at pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. I mean, our religion actually started in the 1960s, and its still going stronger than ever today. In fact, I would say that it is the most successful scam in all history - wouldn't you? Almost too successful to be true, some people would say. We've managed to dupe almost every government and scientific institute in the world into believing and funding our religion - that's pretty good going for a conspiracy if you ask me!

And I think we must all be telepathic as well, you know. Because it's not as though we have departmental meetings to discuss how we are going to fool people next. No way - that might give us away!! But somehow, all the climate science researchers in the world seem to know what needs to be done next, and how we should go about it. I'm telling you - it's got to be telepathy - there's no other explanation!!

I wonder how much money over the last forty years has been wasted on funding our climate science religion globally? It must be billions. I mean, we've persuaded governments to fund climate science research bases in Antarctica for several decades, which are not cheap by the way, not to mention all those satellites that we've fooled NASA into building and launching – and they are still planning more – haha, such idiots! All that money spent just to fund our religion, and we make up the numbers of our 'science' anyway! We have managed to verify plate tectonic theory, prevent an ozone disaster, discover hydrothermal vents, and figure out how ocean circulation works along the way, but those are not really worth shouting about. Besides, we probably made those up too!

Anyway, I'm impressed that you've figured it all out - you must be like, Einstein, or something!