From a journalist’s point of view, it may not matter whether the person who said that someone else said something is right, because you can always print a correction later, but from an engineer’s point of view, it is mandatory to find out; trusting what someone else says that someone else says can cause catastrophic failure of your product or project, and can even get people killed. Boy! Am I glad you don’t design the airplanes that *I* fly on.

In picking an argument with an engineer, you failed to realize that hearsay is not evidence, assumptions are not facts, and corrected data can invalidate previous conclusions. Unless the corrected data is fudged, in which case something nefarious is going on.

We engineers must do as much verification and testing as possible or practical to make sure the widget works in the real world. If it does not work, what was the point?

This is where several satellite projects get bogged down, such as the James Webb Space Telescope — its cooler didn’t work as designed. We cannot assume that what a vendor says is correct, otherwise the vendor’s strut may fail and destroy the Falcon 9 that is taking supplies to the ISS.

So when someone says that someone else wrote something, we want to see the documentation that the source person has in order to verify what he wrote.

It is even more important to be right for the global warming debate, as the consequences of being wrong can be expensive in terms of resources, prosperity, and habitability of the planet.

In the case of global warming, the consequences of being wrong is not just the cost of unnecessary mitigation, nor is it the lost opportunity costs of what we could have accomplished if we hadn’t squandered resources on the wrong actions, it is the negative consequences that can happen by not taking action to mitigate the actual problem.

If the problem turns out to be global warming, but it is not as bad as the person who told the person who told you said it is, then we squandered resources that could have provided more prosperity throughout the world. Perhaps it turns out to be OK for African nations to burn fossil fuels so that their citizens live better lives.

If the problem turns out to be a coming ice age, then it may be mandatory for African nations to burn fossil fuels and for their citizens to live better lives in order to keep the planet warmer, keep the ice from coming as far south as Minneapolis, and keep the oceans from receding a few hundred feet.

“He said that he said” is how the 97% consensus spread and became believed. No one checked what the original paper said.

You seem to be telling us something similar to “Gore said that the IPCC said that someone else said that something bad was going to happen.” It is hard for us to know the original statement after all that interpretation and filtering.

It seems that a request for actual science has you stymied. Is this because you have come to realize that the original science is as unreliable as I suspect it is?

What you have provided, so far, is not science but writings of people telling us that other people say that global warming is happening and what the negative consequences are. This is, at best, second hand information. When you say it, it becomes third hand, like a game of telephone, and the truth of the science may become just as misleading, misunderstood, and misused as has been the Cook, et al paper that I linked to on 30 April.

If Gore were relying on second hand or third hand information, that would explain why his Oscar-winning movie turned out to be so inaccurate.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3310137/Al-Gores-nine-Inconvenient-Untruths.html
“Al Gore’s environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth contains nine key scientific errors, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.”

Your lack of ability or willingness to find original science suggests to me that the second hand information may be more than second hand, and we may be getting much worse than a very poor understanding of the actual research. This is why I want to see the original science, not what someone says someone else says it says.

I also would like to see how the updated temperature data — that you favored in your last comment on 6 May — affects this original research.

The sun clearly has some way of using energy to pump the heat from its surface into the corona. Somehow, I doubt that we will find a practical use on Earth for whatever method it turns out to be, but at least we have a few useful methods of our own for pumping heat from cooler areas to warmer areas.

I think that it is important that we understand the workings and the cycles of the sun, especially in relation to the temperature of the Earth. Our current interglacial period has remained warmer for longer than many of the ones that came before. I believe that this fortuitous occurrence has allowed us to gain the civilization that allowed us to develop the skills in performing scientific research and exploration in time to figure out a global solution to the coming glacial period, due any millennium.

It is important that we pursue the correct avenue(s) of science to figure out when and how fast the next glacial period will come upon us and ways to counteract it or to otherwise feed several billion people. If we miss it because some politically greedy policymakers pursued the wrong cause of global temperature changes, we could end up far worse off than had we opened our minds to the possibility that the climate scientists have followed the wrong influences of global temperature.

The sun is only one possible influence. The Earth’s axis wobbles, meaning that the star Polaris is not always above the North Pole. This wobble may also have a significant influence, similar to the influence that the tilt in the Earth’s axis has on the seasons.

We may have to find a way to terraform our own planet before the effects of the next glacial period give us terrible negative consequences to cope with.

Does the Sun have an Ammonia and Hydrogen cycle moving heat around? (or something similar?)

Here’s a link explaining how they work:
http://home.howstuffworks.com/refrigerator5.htm

“…Gas and Propane Refrigerators
If you own an RV, chances are you have a gas- or propane-powered refrigerator. These refrigerators are interesting because they have no moving parts and use gas or propane as their primary energy source. Also, they use heat to produce the cold inside the refrigerator.

A gas refrigerator uses ammonia as the coolant, and water, ammonia and hydrogen gas to create a continuous cycle for the ammonia. …”

Correct. That is where the compressor comes in; it adds the necessary energy to the system so that heat is moved from the cooler interior of the refrigerator to the warmer exterior. Something happens at the sun to cause the corona to be hotter than the sun’s surface, and this is what I meant by the “compressor equivalent;” it moves heat or energy from the surface of the sun into the warmer corona.

My suspicion is that the surface of the sun is relatively cool because the heat energy is transported into the corona by way of the “compressor equivalent.”

Max wrote: “[Methane] oxidizes on contact with oxygen creating carbon dioxide and water vapor.”

Many people forget that chemical reactions occur naturally in the atmosphere. Although we can use methane as a fuel for fire, it need not be fire-hot in order to react with oxygen, but it will react at a slower rate at lower temperatures. My search of the internet finds that the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is seven or eight years, which makes sense to me.

Once again, methane is another chemical that absorbs energy from light. I suspect that some people claim it is so many multiples worse than CO2, because they are trying to frighten us into complying with their demands.

Dick Eagleson,
Thank you for pointing to Doug Messier’s site.

Doug Messier,
I see from your own website, Parabolic Arc (looks nice, BTW), that you are still healthy and posting, but I am becoming concerned for your search for scientific papers supporting your point of view about negative consequences from global warming. It has been a week, and I thought you would be able to find something days ago.

Is there anything I can do to help you in your search? Perhaps others can help, too.

Carbon dioxide and water vapor… The earth is estimated to have a covering of water vapor of 30% average. That’s 300,000 ppm. (not to be confused with the ice caps, or the hydrosphere which covers 78% of the earth ) and yet, as you pointed out, it’s a large driver in our heat retention. As well as reflecting a large amount of the light, heat back in to space. As for CO2, it is less than 400 ppm, a rare gas and there is not enough to affect much change or retain any heat. ( blow up a plastic bag, your breath has near 5%, 50,000 ppm, carbon dioxide. See how long it takes before becomes room temperature.)
It’s true that carbon dioxide likes water vapor, but it likes ice more. The warmer the water becomes the more carbon dioxide is pushed out of the molecule. As rain falls, it heats up due to air pressure and releases the carbon dioxide. ( here is an experiment, pour pop into a glass with ice and one without and watch which one fizzes the most. If you take that ice and melt it in your mouth, you can actually feel the carbon dioxide fizzing as it escapes)
Also the spectrum of heat that react strictly with carbon dioxide is at 700 nm and above. Wavelengths longer than 700 nm move around carbon dioxide missing it entirely. Wavelengths shorter than 700 nm have a larger chance of hitting oxygen and nitrogen which makes up 99.96% of the atmosphere. To sum this up, a small fraction of the suns energy at 700 nm has a one in 2,500 chance to interact with carbon dioxide which makes up less than one half of 1/10 of 1% of the atmosphere. That heat retention, by the way, is Less than a second before it resumes average air temperature.
If carbon dioxide has no cause-and-effect relationship to the weather then the carbon the politicians talk about that we must reduce to save the planet, must be the carbon consumers…
“if we just pay enough taxes, politicians can change the weather”.

One final thing, methane gas. I’m glad we no longer hear about the cows producing methane. Someone must’ve pointed out to them that if the cows don’t eat the hay and grass that when it dies in the winter it would just rot on the ground and turn into methane anyway.
Where did they get the numbers that tell them that methane is more harmful than carbon dioxide? They say 4 times worse, or 40 times worse even 14,000 times worse then carbon dioxide. I suppose they can make up any number they want because 14,000×0 is still zero. Methane is so rare that you need to be near a methane source to measure it. It oxidizes on contact with oxygen creating carbon dioxide and water vapor. Even the gas company says just open a window, the gas will be gone in a few minutes. (Standard procedure is to give it a few hours). Just the same, after 3 billion years Of stuff rotting you would think there’d be a lot of methane around somewhere….

Be careful, though, because I *do* identify as a major deity, thus it seems that you think that I need no morality. Come to think of it, I really don’t *need* morality, but I find having morals to be very useful, otherwise I would use my powers selfishly for evil instead of selflessly for good (be more devil than benevolent god). (BTW: worship and tithes are always appreciated.)

As for the sun, as I posted earlier today on another thread, I once worked with solar astrophysicists who were working on the cool-surface/hot-corona problem, among other mysteries. It is clear that there is some form of “heat pump” acting at the sun that transfers heat energy into the corona, otherwise the laws of thermodynamics would be violated.

You can’t get ahead (conservation of energy), you can’t break even (your gizmo will always lose energy to the surrounding environment), and you can’t get out of the game (you will always lose energy until you reach a minimum energy state).

People who think that the laws of thermodynamics do not allow for heat to move from a cool object to a warm object do not understand their own refrigerators. The laws require that energy be applied to the system in order to move heat from cooler to warmer objects, and that is what your refrigerator’s compressor does. We are still looking for the sun’s compressor equivalent.

The effect that CO2, water vapor, and other greenhouse gasses have in our atmosphere are a bit different than the compression/friction that you express, however. Different chemicals absorb different light frequencies, and this absorption results in the heating of the chemicals. CO2 has its own absorption profile, but it overlaps with much of water vapor’s absorption profile. If there were no water in our atmosphere, CO2 would be a more important greenhouse gas than it is.

One of the arguments for the importance of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is that the amount that it warms our air also affects the amount of water vapor in our atmosphere, which further adds warmth to the air. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and will evaporate more, too. Thus there is a “positive feedback” that means that incremental increases in CO2 affects temperature more than the increase in CO2 alone would account for. The argument is over how much more this amount is. There is no science that definitively finds this amount, but many climate scientists have assumed the amount is 3 times as much. Models that use this number have failed to predict the actual temperature of today’s Earth and instead overestimated 2016 temperatures, thus 3 may be too high.

As for fooling the world with a lie, the reason to do so seems to be for greed. Either political greed, as in creating laws and policies that tell others what to do and not do (the politician feels god-like by saying, “do as I say, not as I fly” — which would explain why they seem to have no morals), or financial greed, as in selling carbon credits and getting tens of millions of dollars richer.

Climate scientists, however, mostly just pay the mortgage and grocery bill with the money they get from their grants, but they would not find government funding if they gave the politically incorrect answers in their papers. This is why those who are skeptical are assumed to be financed by the oil companies — because it is obvious that the government is not providing them with grants. So how are they paying their mortgages and grocery bills? Some people believe that it could only be the oil companies paying their salaries. And the Oil companies are always bad and the government is always good (despite taking our political power from us).

Finally, you meant “fusion” rather than “fission” in how the sun works. It is an easy error to make, as they sound alike and look similar from afar. Both are nuclear in nature and release large amounts of energy by converting mass into energy.

Fusion is when two atoms, such as hydrogen atoms, combine and release energy, and is most common with lighter elements. The sun is full of these light elements. Fission is when an atom splits apart and make two objects, perhaps two atoms or it remains the same element and loses a neutron. Either way, fusion or fission, energy is released.

This may sound strange, because how can energy be released no matter which direction the reaction goes? It turns out that elements lighter than iron tend to release energy when they combine, and elements heavier than iron tend to release energy when they split, so the universe seems to be destined to turn itself into a whole lot of iron, when it finally reaches its minimum energy state. (Heavier elements are mostly formed inside exploding stars, where there is plenty of extra energy available to fuse atoms into the heavy elements.)

Stare straight ahead, be amazed. Don’t look behind the curtain, all you’ll get there is frustration and disappointment. I think of myself as Dorothy’s Toto. Small and insignificant, but was instrumental in exposing the truth for all to see.
Wayne teases that the Congress may repeal the second law thermodynamics…
This may be necessary so that scientists don’t have to explain why the sun violates the laws of thermodynamics. The surface of the sun, photosphere, is measured at 9500°. The core of the sun is estimated to be 50,000,000°. The coronasphere is near 20,000,000°. This is like putting an ice cube in the oven with top and bottom elements going and the cube never melts. (violation of the zero law)
The sun is said to be a fusion reactor, and yet there is very little evidence to substain this claim. Helium is four times heavier than hydrogen and would snuff out the sun with its own byproduct.
Where is all the radiation? The neutrino problem is a discussion that’s brought up often, no satisfactory answer has ever been given. The energy produced should have a “factor of three” more neutrinos then we are experiencing. Enough to irradiate the earth lifeless with every rotation.
It is said that in the beginning, the sun was pressing down on itself was so much force that the friction it generated had enough heat to begin the fission process. Yes, the heat pre-dated fission. without the evidence of fission byproducts and radiation, perhaps it never started. Every planet in our solar system undergoes the same process generating its own heat by the weight of its atmosphere in combination with the gravity. That is what causes global warming. Venus for example, has 90 earth atmosphere’s. The average temperature is 860° The upper atmosphere has been measured at 200° below zero because of carbon dioxide ice? This indicates that the suns radiation does not penetrate very deeply and it’s not the cause of its heat.
Compare to Mercury’s sun side is 60°, colder than Venus mean temperature. The average temperature of Mercury is 200° because it has no atmosphere, the Darkside drops to 300° below zero.
Does carbon dioxide have a role in the heat produced in our atmosphere? It does. Because it has mass, it adds to the friction like all the other air molecules in in our atmosphere in relation to its amount. Approximately one half of 1/10 of 1% of the heat.
If carbon has really nothing to do with global warming, and the answer is so simple as stated above, why all the controversy? Why fool the world with a lie?
For the power to fundamentally change everything!

You posted a comment on another thread, but I would like to reply on this thread. Here is the reference:
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/judge-rules-white-house-showed-bad-faith-in-global-warming-case/#comment-885722

Max wrote: “why does the phrase “consensus of scientists” keep reappearing?”

This is the power of the big lie. Just as many people believe in global warming due to its constant reinforcement in all aspects of society (even sports is supposedly disrupted by the supposed global warming), many people believe the 97% consensus lie, even skeptics. This is exactly why we need to verify the actual science that is being perpetrated upon us.

The Cook, et al. paper that I linked to is an excellent example of why we cannot take the statements of global warming advocates at face value. Few of them actually understand the science, and apparently even fewer of them bother to look at the science.

The CRU emails are yet another example of untrustworthiness. They admit in their notes to each other that they have hidden the truth, because it would expose the flawed data — which has been conveniently lost in the way that was promised in one note.

NOAA, AVISO and others have modified data without notice or explanation, destroying the trustworthiness of these organizations, as well. It is not scientific to use fudged data, and it only leads to the question, why could the point not be made without fudging the data?

If they were proud of their work, they would display it for all others to see. Hiding it smacks of deceit and fraud.

If the science is so settled, why does the data have to be continually modified? If the conclusion is based upon so much science, why is it taking so long for D. Messier to find the science? If the climate scientists are so sure of their data and conclusions, then why are skeptics being kept from publishing their own papers in the JGR and other publications? If the conclusion of global warming is so scientific, why do 66.4% of climate scientists have no opinion, and why do the global warming advocates have to lie about the consensus?
Or hide the decline?
Or silence skeptics?
Or can’t correctly predict the negative consequences?

Should not the papers that conclude that there is global warming be revisited when the data is changed? Since the data that these papers were based upon is now suspect by the climate science community or is considered obsolete, so are the conclusions derived from that data.

Max wrote: “We need to establish the verified facts before we can consider the fantasies and the projections of computers.”

This is so very true. The models are supposed to predict the future, but if they fail to predict the reality, then they are not useful for making policy. For instance, Germany’s policymakers may have squandered tens of billions of Euros unnecessarily on programs intended to reduce CO2 emissions.

Garbage may be going into the computers, the algorithms may be garbage, and garbage may be coming out of them, but it is treated as gospel despite not agreeing with the climate reality. “Garbage in, gospel out” would be a more appropriate phrase.

Max wrote: “It is easier to drink the punch, then to admit that your Life long convictions and beliefs are wrong.”

You know, the first time I heard the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid,” I thought it terribly insensitive. It had been less than a quarter century since the Reverend Jim Jones did that to his followers in Jonestown Guyana, and thousands or tens of thousands of family and friends would still be alive to hear the phrase. However, I have decided that it fits many situations in which it is applied. This time, however, it is Al Gore playing the Reverence Jones, and we are the ones who are likely squandering scarce resources and leading to a worsened future by following what may very well be the wrong path.

Gore, Mann, and D. Messier have not yet provided the science that demonstrates that they are correct. For now, they are relying upon what looks like fudged data.

D. Messier,
Are you still doing the research? If you are having trouble, the kinds of papers that you are looking for would be referenced similar to those in the “Science Papers” section of Robert’s new menu item: “Climate and Sun science bibliography”. In fact, you might want to start there; not only would you see what the science papers you seek would look like, some of the ones Robert lists could be useful to you. They may make your point, or their own reference sections may point to papers that do.

Let me reiterate:
“I am looking for the science that these opinions are based upon. The IPCC reports should point you in that direction. Be careful, the IPCC reports themselves are opinion pieces based upon some science and a lot of opinion. As Robert points out, many of the references are not peer reviewed papers.

“Look for documents with an Abstract at the beginning and a Conclusion at or near the end, prior to the references section. Look for negative consequences that you can document have come true, and work backward to the science that predicted it.”

I honestly am hoping that you find good science, so that I can have regain some or a lot of lost respect for the climate science field. Even though I had doubts about their conclusions, I had respect for the scientists until climategate showed that some of the most respected scientists were not confident in their findings.

It has been a few days, and I have not seen you post anything at all on BtB. Is it too early to worry about your health again?

The one thing I’m positive of, as far as “heat,” 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is in effect. (unless Congress passes Legislation and refutes it thus…)
“High-quality” energy from the Sun enters the Earth system through a variety of mechanisms & is converted to “lower-quality” heat energy and radiated away.

Paraphrasing F.A. Hayek…
“The curious task of Science is to demonstrate to Climate modeler’s, how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

I see the article above has retracted that nitrogen is a global warming gas. That is sad, because they were on the right track. After all, nitrogen and oxygen make up 99.96% of the atmosphere! All other gases combine make up the .04% which they claim causes all of our heat retention. 10+ years of environmental satellite data has proven that the energy escapes with the same ease that it enters our atmosphere… Yes, the mythical greenhouse that we all know is there but cannot see, or touch has evaded detection. This is so frustrating for them, but heaven forbid that they re-examine their models for a better explanation that fits the data. If they just throw a few more billion dollars at it, maybe they can get that square peg in that round hole.
If I was a betting man, I would wager their satellites show that the earth emits more heat than they can account for… Just like five of the eight planets in our solar system. Jupiter emits 2 1/2 times more heat than it receives from the sun. Under its atmosphere, it is five times hotter than the photosphere of the sun!
The earth emits heat all night long, but the temperatures drop 30°, More or less depending on where you live. The weatherman gives the highs and lows every day, subtract the low from the high and that’s the total amount of heat that the sun warmed you on that given day.
Has anyone proven where heat comes from? The engineers know that all heat is friction (or resistance) it’s presence can be easily measured, and the lack of heat tells you where it is not. The sun is the source of all light, photosynthesis and life cannot exist without it. It is the source of much heat as well but when we climb a mountain or go up in a plane, it gets colder the closer you get to the sun. The laws of thermal dynamics say that the closer you get to a heat source the warmer it will become.
If you could make the sun hold still for a week or a month, how hot would it be? 40° below zero… At least that’s the average temperature at the South Pole during three months of continuous sunlight.( 70° below zero average during the winter)
It’s much warmer at the north pole, but it is at sea level. (another clue)
One more piece of evidence. The moon. On its Sun side the temperatures reach 250°, enough to boil water. On its shade side, it is 300° below zero putting the mean temperature at a -50°. The earths mean temperature is near 50°, 100° warmer than the moon in the same orbit… Without an atmosphere to filter out more than 50% of the heat, In the green zone!
This is enough, some of you have heard it before. Others have new evidence seen in a different light to chew on. What heats the Chinook winds becomes self evident now. (look it up). There are a lot of good mysteries out there to be solved.

Isn’t it interesting that the AGW crowd insists that all data and papers presented by their opponents be peer-reviewed, published, critiqued, and then, when all those barriers are cleared, dismissed nonetheless on flimsy excuses (usually like Doug’s claim above of political impurity…), but they will defend without a trace of irony a poor piece of work like this because it says what they want it to say….

They can’t even agree on a definition of what a “Climate Scientist” is, never mind collect any usable data from such a flawed survey and sample group.

This is why I posted the link to the consensus research paper, way far above:

It states clearly in the abstract that 66.4% of the climate scientists they studied had stated no opinion on global warming, which tells us that the conclusion of the study that the AGW ideologues use is bogus.

BTW: both Robert and I would be counted as part of the consensus, because we admit either that warming has occurred (the data says so) or that some portion of the warming could be due to CO2 emissions from human activity (even if that is a very, very tiny portion, it makes sense to me, despite a continuing lack of evidence confirming it — hopefully D. Messier can help out with this), or both.

Steve Earle also wrote: “There are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance the loudest.”

In college, I lived for a year with students who were just like this. They declared themselves intolerant only of intolerance, but they would not tolerate anyone who disagreed with them on most topics, calling them either racist, whenever possible, or fascist, when racist did not fit. This tended to shut up their victim, as intended. No one wants to be an “ist.” They seemed to be much more intolerant than those they shut up.

Seriously though, thank you for trying to keep the conversation going here. I have several “highly educated” friends who sound JUST like Doug.

They can get very emotional when challenged on their orthodoxy, and when that happens they tend to fall back on condescension and ad hominem attacks rather than address the actual question.

It’s interesting how political this discussion gets when it should be strictly about the science. The fact that it becomes political and/or emotional at all should be a red flag to any educated person and yet…..

Just like the SJW’s out there, the AGW ideologues are the first to shout: CONSENSUS! Now SHUT UP!

There are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance the loudest.

And to continue my “AGW Epiphany” from above, when I started to question the “Hockey Stick” several years ago my search led me to Anthony Watts work on Ground Based Weather Stations and their crazy siting issues.

That work alone should have opened the eyes of any thinking person to question the data. Sadly, it did not. When even pictures of ground temp stations sitting next to building HVAC vents fail to reopen a rational discussion you know you are now dealing with an political ideology and not science…..

Doug,

Since you might not have seen the post I put up earlier today about a review of Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, you might not have seen this link to a February 2016 paper, published in the science journal Nature, which reviewed the data and found the pause does exist. From their abstract:

It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims.

I included a graph from that paper in the post, showing the presence of the pause in the modern data, through this year.

As I have noted repeatedly, my point here isn’t to prove the pause is happening, which I really can’t do, but to note that the field of climate science has enormous uncertainties. They can’t even agree on what their own datasets have been telling them for the past fifteen years! And yet, somehow, you are sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the theory of global warming is correct and happening.

You are going to have a lot of trouble convincing people of your position under these circumstances.

It is unfortunate that you have referenced NOAA’s modified dataset. And it is also unfortunate that the study, linked in the article, that confirms NOAA’s modified dataset is based upon NOAA’s modified dataset. This begs the question. It fails to justify or explain the modification of the dataset.

There is a terrible problem with NOAA, and as you noted, scientists the world over are appalled that they have fudged their temperature datasets. They have made changes without explaining their rationale or even without announcing the changes. This is the very definition of fudging data. Robert’s data is not “out of date,” the “updated” version is unreliable until NOAA explains itself. Your link failed to provide this explanation.

I wrote a little note on why this is a problem, in this case it was AVISO, a foreign climate organization, modifying TOPEX and Jason-1 satellite data:
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-closer-look-at-the-fake-sea-level-data/

As with you, respectable scientists used fudged satellite data to draw unreliable conclusions.

If your point cannot be made without fudged data, then the point is questionable. Without explanation, we could easily conclude that the data was fudged so that people such as you could make your point. Indeed, you even called it yourself: “the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) published a 2015 study that removed the pause in global warming from temperature records.” This raises suspicions of the motives for fudging the data.

After all these months, we are still eagerly awaiting explanations as to why satellite data from NOAA and AVISO (and others) have been modified. Until such explanations come forth, we have to suspect their veracity.

Ah, I do not deny Mears adjustments exist, but they do not yet convince me, especially because of the amount of other questionable data adjustments done at NASA and NOAA, with no explanation, that always warm the present and cool the past. My skeptical mind begins to rebel when the only fixes they ever do to the data always works to the theorists advantage. Normal science simply never works that way.

You should read this very interesting post from climate scientist Judith Curry, who generally believes in global warming but is also very open-minded about the uncertainties. She looks at the original Mears paper, reviews the questions that other scientists in the same field have with it (including the infamous Roy Spencer), and then comes to her own conclusions:

Roy Spencer’s comments substantially reduce the credibility of the new data set. Their dismissal of the calibration problems with the NOAA-14 MSU is just astonishing. Presumably Christy’s review of the original submission to JGR included this critique, so they are unlikely to be unaware of this issue. The AMS journals have one the best review processes out there; I am not sure why Christy/Spencer weren’t asked to review. I have in the past successfully argued at AMS not to have as reviewers individuals that have made negative public statements about me (not sure if this is the case with Mears/Wentz vs Spencer/Christy).

There is a legitimate debate on how to correct for the diurnal cycle, but based on my assessment, the UAH empirically based approach seems better.

With regards to the ‘pause.’ The ‘pause’ in warming has generally been assessed using the lower tropospheric temperatures, which aren’t yet available from the new dataset. So it is not yet clear what impact the new data set will have on our interpretation of the pause.

…And what of the years following 2016? Will we see cooling and then a continuation of flat temperatures? Or continued warming? I suspect that there will be some cooling and continued flatness. I’ve stated before that it will be another 5 years before we have the appropriate prospective on the current temperature fluctuations and whether or not the early 21st century pause is over.

The science remains uncertain. I don’t claim to know. Neither does Curry. Why are you so sure?

I have explained in very careful terms what you can do here. Please do it.

I have also explained that I did not want to discuss the “pause,” as the very people that you reference as credible (e.g. Micheal Mann, as I linked, far above) agree with me that it exists and that it is caused by factors that the models did not consider. This means that you cannot win this argument. Your support for your point of view is removed by the same scientists that you consider credible.

We have already discovered that CO2 is a minor factor, and that its effects have been overestimated and over hyped. This is the point of the skeptics, and it is also becoming the opinion of a growing number of climate scientists and other environmentalists. People such as Clause Allegre changed from alarmist to skeptic. So did Dr. Judith Curry, Caleb Rossiter (fired for diverging on climate), and James Lovelock.

Instead, you have denied even what the climate scientists admit is true. Apparently, you are not reading the links that I provide, or — as Robert points out — that you provide.

As Steve Earle points out, there are several other possible factors that can affect global temperatures and climates even more than the CO2 that humans emit. We need to understand them, and we need to be able to predict when the next ice age or little ice age is coming, otherwise we may discover with suddenness that we failed to find ways to grow enough food for the whole world. This could lead to the very wars that the Norwegian Nobel Committee conferred upon Al Gore for preventing.

There can be negative consequences to being wrong and chasing the fox up the wrong tree. If the fox gets away, he raids the hen house. If we are unprepared for the next climate, we may starve, or we may drown or have terrible refugee problems due to rising seas and storm surges. We need to be sure we are barking up the right tree, because while we are over here, the hen house is unguarded.

The four sources you point to are from 2013. Three stories from September of that year, the fourth from February. So, the information is now between 2 years 8 months and 3 years 3 months old.

As you know, scientists continue to study these matters, gather more data, and analyze them. And the data have indicated there has not been a hiatus after all.

http://www.hngn.com/articles/185545/20160306/global-warming-hiatus-isnt-real-new-data-suggests.htm

Is global warming on hiatus? After the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) published a 2015 study that removed the pause in global warming from temperature records, scientists have been unable to agree on the integrity of this move. Now, a new data set shows that this removal may have been justified and points to the perceived pause in global warming as a result of errors in the data set.

Carl Mears, the scientist who runs the Remote Sensing System temperature data tracking and released the finding, applied a fix to a discrepancy in the data gathered from 15 satellites and claims that his conflict is what led to the initial reports of a global warming hiatus.

“There are people that like to claim there was no warming; they really can’t claim that anymore,” Mears said.

Sorry, Bob. Your data are out date. So are your conclusions.

Farms. In Greenland. Where even now with the ground exposed it is impossible to grow any real crops.

The archaeologists agreed that the Vikings were driven out of Greenland by cooling temps.

That tells me (and them) that it has been both warmer and colder than now WITHIN RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY.

I don’t think the Vikings changed the climate with the fires in their Longhouses…..

After that, I learned about the Medieval Warming Period, The Little Ice Age, and all the other oscillations in climate that have happened in just the last few thousand years. That, plus learning of the Climategate emails, the false “Consensus” and the fake “Hockey Stick” was all I needed to become what Bob called a “Wild-eyed Skeptic” :-)

Modern Man may indeed be contributing some small amount of delta-vee to the process, but that amount, if it exists at all, is lost in the far, far larger signals of solar, oceanic, and volcanic effects.

As I said, you continue to refuse to read any of the scientific papers or links we provide you. You are embarrassing yourself. And I read your one link. It doesn’t prove anything, only offers an opinion that the pause didn’t happen. However, the IPCC (a link you yourself offered) has admitted that the pause is happening, as I pointed at with these links:

From the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, and the LA Times, among others, about the effort by the IPCC to deal with the pause in warming, which contradicts all its models:
Warming Up for Another Climate-Change Report
Warming Plateau? Climatologists Face Inconvenient Truth
Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot
Oh My: UN Climate Change Chief Admits No Global Warming Over Last 17 Years…

Note the last especially. The head of the IPCC himself admitted the pause was happening. In addition, these sources, the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegal, the Los Angeles Times, are not wild-eyed skeptics who hate science. They are respected news media, of which you would be glad to work. If you are now going to claim that they are all under the thumb of big oil, you will make yourself look really ridiculous. You instead need to read these stories, and come to grip with the fact that there is serious data that says the pause does exist. At a minimum, there is uncertainty here, a great deal of uncertainty.

But I really do think you are right, however. There isn’t much you can do here, since you refuse to engage.

“Sums it up pretty well.”

Except that I am not looking for a summary of opinions, I am looking for science, especially source papers. There are supposed to be mountains of these. Opinion is not evidence, otherwise you would not be rejecting the statements that we have been making here, you would be considering them as evidence.

D. Messier wrote: “I’m not going to spend months going through scientific papers one by one with you.”

Well, let’s just do one, then. It’s your argument, you choose one. If the case is clear, it should not take months and months. It should be quick.

As I recommended, please choose your own case to discuss. Choose one for which you can make a convincing argument. If I choose, then we will be discussing the “pause,” and I don’t think you can be convincing with that one, as it overwhelmingly demonstrates the failure of climate scientists to predict future climates.

If we cannot be certain of future climates, then how can we worry about their negative consequences? If we work to mitigate one climate but another happens, then we get blindsided and are harmed by the lack of preparation as well as the misspent resources.

These are the concerns of the skeptics. Not a denial that climates never change, but that we are squandering scarce and precious resources on the wrong “battles.”

If we spend decades preparing for and preventing global warming, then what happens if we are about to enter another little ice age or even a deep ice age?

The “pause” has shown us that we know far less about climate and what effects it that skeptic thought even as recently as when Gore’s Oscar winning movie came out. That we are worrying only of CO2 when another factor(s) clearly dominates it should concern you.

Of course, now that you have shown that the mountains of evidence that you cite are merely opinion pieces and not actual science, it becomes clearer to me why you are so emotionally bound to your opinion. You do not recognize an opinion when you see it and you believe it to be source science.

I am looking for the science that these opinions are based upon. The IPCC reports should point you in that direction. Be careful, the IPCC reports themselves are opinion pieces based upon some science and a lot of opinion. As Robert points out, many of the references are not peer reviewed papers.

Look for documents with an Abstract at the beginning and a Conclusion at or near the end, prior to the references section. Look for negative consequences that you can document have come true, and work backward to the science that predicted it. This is why I recommended choosing a negative consequence, before.

I need the science that predicted it, because a con artist will send out a lot of mail with various predictions of the future, then try to con those marks in which he sent the correct predictions. “The market will go up.” “The market will go down.” “See, I told you the market would go down. Send me your money and I will make you a fortune.”

Of course, the “we’ll see sea level rises” prediction has little merit, as the levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age. A correctly predicted increase in the rate of rise is much more convincing than a generality that is expected anyway.

We have always had storm surges, did someone predict more or fewer, by how many and how was the number determined? Is it a local prediction (e.g. Eastern Seaboard) or a global prediction? Pulling a number out of his butt is what embarrassed Prince Charles into modifying the number of months left to us before it is too late. I don’t want to see storm surge predictions pulled out of someone’s butt; I want to see careful research that shows how much and why we should see that change. That is much more convincing than the Prince Charles method of prediction. It is even more convincing if it has come to pass.

Doug,

I hate to shock you, but I have actually read many of these already, including many Natioal Academiies reports as well as all of the IPCC reports, as I have already noted. I wonder, have you actually read them? I doubt it. If you had, you would have noticed that they became increasingly agenda driven and political over the years. While the first report, in 1990, was a very good summation of the science, later reports put the science aside to push the global warming agenda, to the point that the reports became unreliable. I read them myself, so I saw this first hand. However, here are a few links:

From the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, and the LA Times, among others, about the effort by the IPCC to deal with the pause in warming, which contradicts all its models:
Warming Up for Another Climate-Change Report
Warming Plateau? Climatologists Face Inconvenient Truth
Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot
Oh My: UN Climate Change Chief Admits No Global Warming Over Last 17 Years…

Problems with the past reports:
IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Junk

The IPPC scandal from 2011, when it was discovered that sections of the IPCC report were written by Greenpeace activists, not scientists:
Climate change panel in hot water again over ‘biased’ energy report

More on these scandals about the IPCC reports:
Climate Panel Faces Heat

This link describes how much of the information in the IPCC reports use press releases from environmental activist organizations, not peer reviewed literature:
IPCC Gives Up On Science, Makes Grey Literature Official

By the way, this post by me points to two studies, one in Nature, that point to some beneficial effects of global warming:
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/global-warming-is-good-for-you/

I could go on. As I said, I have read the IPCC reports. A lot of information, much of it worthwhile. It helped teach me about the real science and debates that scientists are presently having about climate change. It also made me aware of the uncertainties (very clearly laid out in the first IPCC report) which have not been reduced in any significant way in the subsequent 25 years.

You might find it helpful to read the citations you cite, y’know? :)

By the way, many of the citations you list are actually quite credible. I don’t want you to think that I dismiss all of the science relating to global warming. I do not. I never have. All I want you to be aware of is that the science is far more uncertain that you think it is, and that you need to educate yourself a bit more about this fact.

You want links to reports showing evidence and negative consequences.

Links to 40 reports about global warming and its negative impacts:

http://www.ucsusa.org/search/reports?f%5B0%5D=im_field_channel%3A187#.VyrG5b6E0Xc

Here’s a series of reports from the National Academies of Sciences. There appear to be 29 reports in this collection:

http://www.nap.edu/collection/34/climate-change?gclid=CjwKEAjwu6a5BRC53sW0w9677RcSJABoFn4sHMdmYStaj-VBeJNtG9tKPJVZZnJyEBOZEGU7bKAysxoCVRLw_wcB

They’re all downloadable for free, so happy reading.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://www.ipcc.ch/

All sorts of reports there.

National Climate Assessment
http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/

Rather than go through all these reports one by one, why don’t you take some months and read through them? Then we’ll talk.

You also say you trust the scientists who are telling us there is a serious problem, but I am willing to bet that you never read any of the climategate emails, and are ready to dismiss them as well as irrelevant. Had you, you would have found that these scientists are not as trustworthy as you think.

> What do you know about what I’ve read?

But then, that would require an open mind. No chance of that.

> Right back at ya there,

> For you to convince me, you need to start showing me actual evidence — not just say that there is evidence — of each of these factors. I have been asking you to start with the third. Let’s get this to stop being one sided and get your evidence on the record.

Since you didn’t like my last source, here’s another website that deals with why climate change skeptics are wrong:

http://skepticalscience.com/docs/Fact_Myth_Fallacy.pdf

Sums it up pretty well.

As for negative consequences, we’ll see sea level rises, storm surges, ocean acidification, lost coastlines, severe droughts, more severe weather. Lots of negative consequences.

The larger site also addresses the flaws in the climate change skepticism arguments:

http://skepticalscience.com/

I’m not going to spend months going through scientific papers one by one with you.

The need “to address it yesterday” stuff is not supported by the failed predictions, and this is the type of thing that a con artist would say to sell carbon credits to his marks. Don’t let the mark think about it, make him act right now, otherwise he may figure out the jig, which is what the skeptics have done.

Indeed, we have heard the urgency argument for so long, and so many deadlines and timelines have passed without the promised negative consequences that it now comes off as crying wolf.

Last year, we were told that we only have 50 days before we reach the tipping point and it will be too late. Well, according to that, it is now too late. Same goes for Al Gore’s warning in his Oscar winning movie. And how much time does Prince Charles say we have before we reach the tipping point?

Oh, thank God. He noticed that the end of the world was not coming fast enough to con anyone, so he gave us a reprieve:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/07/28/prince-charles-gives-world-reprieve-on-global-warming-extends-100-month-tipping-point-to-35-more-years/

It is not only the passing of all these deadlines that discredits the tipping-point argument, it is the wild disagreements on when the end will come. Because there is no supporting science to back up these claims, it seems that they are chosen arbitrarily, perhaps by the needs of the prognosticator to sell his carbon credits, or whatever.

As for the evidence from the skeptics:

1) I don’t expect to change your mind, as I said, you are too emotional for me to succeed;

2) As you have stated on multiple occasions, you wouldn’t believe the skeptics anyway; and

3) The onus is on the person with the hypothesis to demonstrate that it is true. So far, you have failed to present any evidence at all that the AGW negative consequences hypothesis (whatever those consequences may be) is true.

There is no hypothesis that human activity has no effect on global temperatures, even the skeptics accept that there could be none at all, a little bit, a middling amount, or even a lot, they just want to see some evidence before deciding which; but there is a hypothesis that AGW occurs and has some sort of negative consequences.

Meanwhile, I think that evidence of AGW and its negative consequences does not exist, which is why you can’t find it.

I have given you a few suggestions for the negative consequences you may have meant when you first mentioned it, five days ago: more snow, less snow, droughts, and floods. But here is a better list from which to choose a negative consequence. Please note that each has a link to help you get started:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html

In my opinion, this list actually makes the claims of negative consequences seem rather silly. This is not the fault of the person who compiled the list, it is the fault of so many people making so many claims. It does not help that some of them seem silly. If only they stuck to a couple, such as less snow and more floods, then it would not seem so unreasonable. As it is, it just looks like a way to con people, through fear and urgency, into buying carbon credits.

D. Messier wrote: “The preponderance of evidence shows that it is a man-made problem, it’s getting worse, and we needed to address it yesterday. I don’t believe skeptics have put forth convincing evidence that the consensus is wrong.”

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no evidence showing that increased CO2 is driving global temperatures, which is why you have yet to present any of this supposed preponderance of evidence. The “pause” belies this portion of your claim that CO2 is a problem.

Second, There are a tremendous number of major sources of CO2, and human activity is a mere 2% of the contribution, which seems to be sequestered by the increased plant growth that started this whole thread.

For AGW to be a problem, both factors must be true. Man must be adding to the CO2 levels, AND CO2 must be driving global temperatures. Added to that, there has to be a problem with higher global temperatures.

For you to convince me, you need to start showing me actual evidence — not just say that there is evidence — of each of these factors. I have been asking you to start with the third. Let’s get this to stop being one sided and get your evidence on the record.

You may think that this is a herculean task, but just as with eating an elephant, you work it one bite at a time. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. We both have months available to go through this, so let’s take that first step.

We can start with a short list of problems, or even a single problem. Later you can find the data that supports that global warming or increased CO2 levels create or contribute to the problem.

D. Messier wrote: “but I do trust the scientists who tell us this is a serous problem.”

As I said, your emotional bias allows you to only see one side of the argument and disregard and discredit any contradictory information, such as the “pause” and its significance.

Choose a scientist you trust, tell us the serious problem he studied, and present us with links to one of his papers.

Your article about knowing about climate change four decades ago is no evidence at all. Everyone knew about climate change, back then. We all knew that climates change naturally, that there were once lakes where deserts are now (e.g. Edward’s AFB). By 1977, even *I* knew about climate change.

Just as you reject any information that suggests that AGW is not a problem, the linked article also is based upon the same premise. Any evidence that Exxon or ExxonMobile could present is declared tainted and is summarily rejected. It is an unfair position, but I have to live with you taking it. You are too emotionally invested in it to change your mind.

Indeed, since science is my emotional investment, all you need to do to change my mind is to show the science that supports your claims of AGW and the negative consequences it leads to. Let’s stick to this issue, because the issue of who can and cannot be trusted will not be resolved. Since there are mountains of evidence and a preponderance of evidence, this cannot be as hard as you are making it look.

I do not argue that petroleum industry followed the practices used by climate scientists and the tobacco industry. I argued that by discrediting them, you also discredit the practices used by the very climate scientists that you are willing to pay attention to.

You still have yet to produce even a partial a list of negative consequences, which means that your concern that the possible effects humans may have on global temperatures is moot. No negative consequences, no need for concern. Positive consequences, such as greater crop yields, mean that higher temperatures are desirable.

As I see it, climate science has its own major problem. Because climate scientists have only concentrated on one thing, CO2, they have neglected the other factors that affect global warming, so they were unprepared to predict or even to explain the “pause.”

Further, they hypothesized that CO2 has a positive feedback, and made assumptions that the increased evaporated water in the atmosphere also contributes to global warming at a rate higher than the reality shows to be true. Rather than argue that Exxon should not be allowed to do its own research on the issue, you may want to argue that the climate scientists update their models to a more realistic feedback factor.

So far, everyone is concentrating so much on the CO2-H2O hypothesis that they are missing other important factors — factors that caused the “pause.” But this is a discussion for another thread.