Leaked documents from the free-market conservative organization The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change

...In the area of climate change, the leaked documents revealed that the group funds vocal climate skeptics, including Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change founder Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), and New Zealand geologist Robert Carter ($1,667 per month). They've also pledged $90,000 to skeptical meteorologist Anthony Watts, who blogs at WattsUpWithThat.com...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=leaked-conservative-group

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=leaked-conservative-group

Yay FIRST AMENDMENT! (That was your point, right? It's hard to say since you only poses a quote and a link.)

It could be a good thing. Scientists either have done a piss poor job at explaining climate change, or there must actually be room to debate the issue. As a non-expert myself, I have a suspicion about which is true, but lack the expertise to determine if my suspicion is true.

So long as there is what appears to be passable science on both sides, we can't really object to a plan to teach their side's science. Now if they make a specific proposal and it includes provably incorrect information, that would be a time to condemn that specific misinformation (though not that they made an effort, as they are well within their rights to spread their message).

The climate always changes. We call it weather. The argument is to what degree is changes.

Which schools are they planning to stick this in? Public? I have no problem with textbooks saying that there's still disagreement on how much the climate is shifting and how it will affect us. I do have a problem with the schools being used as a tool to try and push an agenda. Practice good science, don't try and manipulate kids into thinking your way because you had more money to insert your hypothesis into a book.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but this sounds an awful lot like the intelligent design plot to get into science rooms. Public schools are for validated science...universities are for debating theories. Take it there.

There is no debate. Climate change is occurring, and no one who says it isn't can provide a shred of scientific evidence to support their claim. Of course, there are disagreements over details within the scientific community, but those disagreements are reflected in any and all literature on the subject.

As Rhaedas said, this is quite like Intelligent Design kooks getting their materials in public schools. In this case, their motivation is not religious, but likely financial; the industries contributing the greatest to global climate change (read: the ones with the most to lose in this whole Green initiative) are likely pouring money into these efforts. But in the form of bribes, not research grants.

Yay FIRST AMENDMENT! (That was your point, right? It's hard to say since you only poses a quote and a link.)

I didn't realize that posting a link means that I have a point.


It could be a good thing. Scientists either have done a piss poor job at explaining climate change, or there must actually be room to debate the issue. As a non-expert myself, I have a suspicion about which is true, but lack the expertise to determine if my suspicion is true.

As a non-expert, your opinion doesn't matter. You can choose to vote as if it does but, as a objective voter, why would you care what you think? You're not qualified to have an opinion.


So long as there is what appears to be passable science on both sides, we can't really object to a plan to teach their side's science. Now if they make a specific proposal and it includes provably incorrect information, that would be a time to condemn that specific misinformation (though not that they made an effort, as they are well within their rights to spread their message).

What the lead statement says is: "The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change"

Perhaps we should let Fox News dictate what children are taught in science books? Or we could just have all non-experts vote on global warming to determine truth or not. That would really be free speech - science by democratic delusion.

I didn't realize that posting a link means that I have a point.

The forums would be very cluttered indeed if everyone posted everything they DON'T have an opinion on. You clearly selected this because you do have some opinion, but you wanted to play it cute and not spring the opinion on us until after a few other people had chimed in.


As a non-expert, your opinion doesn't matter. You can choose to vote as if it does but, as a objective voter, why would you care what you think? You're not qualified to have an opinion.

In a sense I agree, My opinion on the particular scientific topic of whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring shouldn't be given weight. Neither should yours unless you are an expert and are willing to give us a run down of your credentials (in a verifiable way) and the work you have have reviewed (or, better, conducted yourself) in establishing your own position.

That's why I hate these threads though, is that 99.999% of the people who chime in (both those saying the science is bunk and those saying there is no scientific debate over the reality of AGW) are not experts and their opinions are merely noise that distort the debate without adding anything of value.

Yet you posted the link and started the thread, so either you are an expert with secret credentials (in which case your opinion can be disregarded because your expertise is unconfirmed) or you are a non-expert who posted the link in a way likely to add more useless noise to the debate.


What the lead statement says is: "The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change"

Perhaps we should let Fox News dictate what children are taught in science books? Or we could just have all non-experts vote on global warming to determine truth or not. That would really be free speech - science by democratic delusion.

The Heartland Institute is not "Fox News", but no we don't let them decide what is science...we don't let any one source decide that (not even the authors the article itself, which is clearly not "neutral" on the subject they are reporting.

You seem to be confused into thinging that all the experts back AGW, they don't. It may be that the dissenting experts are all wrong, but then again it's possible that all the pro-AGW experts are wrong. It's possible. So what we have here is a plan (as in "something they are considering doing in the future) for one set of citizens to have a point of view taught that you disagree with, and you are outraged because it's not "science." Fair enough, but the debate to have is not to mock them for being non-experts (unlike you with your years of study and, no doubt, many post graduate degrees in climatology that you'll demonstrate when you post your CV for people here to peruse). Rather, the way to attack their exercise of their well understood right to free speech and to petition the government (public schools being a governmental body), is to wait and see their specific proposals and explain why those are not scientific fact. And if you can't demonstrate that, too bad.

Then there's the harder rub, suppose it can be shown that AGW is a hard scientific fact, as I strongly suspect it is. That does not mean that the government or anyone else should change anything about the way we live. You see that is a separate debate where the climatologists stop being experts, because they are not experts in matters of what are acceptable (let alone optimal) tradeoffs between current practices and future hardship.

What are we going to do about that? Let "non-experts" vote on what the tradeoffs should be and what remedial action to save the environment is worth it? Yes. You see not one on Earth will be a expert on all aspects of that question, so the best we can do in a democracy is try to educate people as best we can, and then let all those idiot non-expert voters whom you so disdain vote on their own interests.

This is where the climatologists will really need to improve their game. Right now they can't even make a convincing case that the scientific consensus is that AGW is real. I am not sure what advice to give them to help them out, but if they can't even convince people that the threat is real, good luck convincing them to make major changes to the economies of the world needed to resolve it.

If what the Heartland Institute is doing bothers anyone, we're free to come up with plans to improve the scientific education on the subject. I guarantee you that that is what the Heartland Institute thinks it is doing, and the reason why you'd never convince them otherwise is that there too many "non-experts" on the left and right who treat science like it's another game in the series of political entertainments we've become accustomed to, where our teams (err I mean political parties) are cheered and supported not because they are right, but because they are "our team."

The really sad thing is that people don't see it that way. We see plenty of bias on the other side, but you almost never see our own. That's human, we're awful at seeing our own bias, but I am telling you now: this thread adds as much to the AGW debate as Sean Hannity's typical rants do.

All these things do is lead people to the conclusion that science can be debated by non-experts on both sides. The best we circumspect non-experts can do is to signal our potential lack of understanding (so that our opinions are considered in the appropriate context), and try to tell the other non-experts (and here I mean you), to pipe down because collectively we add more heat than light to problem.

The forums would be very cluttered indeed if everyone posted everything they DON'T have an opinion on. You clearly selected this because you do have some opinion, but you wanted to play it cute and not spring the opinion on us until after a few other people had chimed in.



In a sense I agree, My opinion on the particular scientific topic of whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring shouldn't be given weight. Neither should yours unless you are an expert and are willing to give us a run down of your credentials (in a verifiable way) and the work you have have reviewed (or, better, conducted yourself) in establishing your own position.

That's why I hate these threads though, is that 99.999% of the people who chime in (both those saying the science is bunk and those saying there is no scientific debate over the reality of AGW) are not experts and their opinions are merely noise that distort the debate without adding anything of value.

Yet you posted the link and started the thread, so either you are an expert with secret credentials (in which case your opinion can be disregarded because your expertise is unconfirmed) or you are a non-expert who posted the link in a way likely to add more useless noise to the debate.



The Heartland Institute is not "Fox News", but no we don't let them decide what is science...we don't let any one source decide that (not even the authors the article itself, which is clearly not "neutral" on the subject they are reporting.

You seem to be confused into thinging that all the experts back AGW, they don't. It may be that the dissenting experts are all wrong, but then again it's possible that all the pro-AGW experts are wrong. It's possible. So what we have here is a plan (as in "something they are considering doing in the future) for one set of citizens to have a point of view taught that you disagree with, and you are outraged because it's not "science." Fair enough, but the debate to have is not to mock them for being non-experts (unlike you with your years of study and, no doubt, many post graduate degrees in climatology that you'll demonstrate when you post your CV for people here to peruse). Rather, the way to attack their exercise of their well understood right to free speech and to petition the government (public schools being a governmental body), is to wait and see their specific proposals and explain why those are not scientific fact. And if you can't demonstrate that, too bad.

Then there's the harder rub, suppose it can be shown that AGW is a hard scientific fact, as I strongly suspect it is. That does not mean that the government or anyone else should change anything about the way we live. You see that is a separate debate where the climatologists stop being experts, because they are not experts in matters of what are acceptable (let alone optimal) tradeoffs between current practices and future hardship.

What are we going to do about that? Let "non-experts" vote on what the tradeoffs should be and what remedial action to save the environment is worth it? Yes. You see not one on Earth will be a expert on all aspects of that question, so the best we can do in a democracy is try to educate people as best we can, and then let all those idiot non-expert voters whom you so disdain vote on their own interests.

This is where the climatologists will really need to improve their game. Right now they can't even make a convincing case that the scientific consensus is that AGW is real. I am not sure what advice to give them to help them out, but if they can't even convince people that the threat is real, good luck convincing them to make major changes to the economies of the world needed to resolve it.

If what the Heartland Institute is doing bothers anyone, we're free to come up with plans to improve the scientific education on the subject. I guarantee you that that is what the Heartland Institute thinks it is doing, and the reason why you'd never convince them otherwise is that there too many "non-experts" on the left and right who treat science like it's another game in the series of political entertainments we've become accustomed to, where our teams (err I mean political parties) are cheered and supported not because they are right, but because they are "our team."

The really sad thing is that people don't see it that way. We see plenty of bias on the other side, but you almost never see our own. That's human, we're awful at seeing our own bias, but I am telling you now: this thread adds as much to the AGW debate as Sean Hannity's typical rants do.

All these things do is lead people to the conclusion that science can be debated by non-experts on both sides. The best we circumspect non-experts can do is to signal our potential lack of understanding (so that our opinions are considered in the appropriate context), and try to tell the other non-experts (and here I mean you), to pipe down because collectively we add more heat than light to problem.

What a load of soft-headed nonsense. The information is readily available to anyone who wishes to view it. People who oppose global climate change do so for political reasons, not scientific reasons. Don't come in here acting like they should be given any credence, or that "perhaps the other side is wrong," because you're asking us to dignify the wrong side of an argument that does not even exist in the scientific community.

Do you not see the irony in complaining about a thread in which you are so far the chief contributor? And how about telling another poster to "pipe down" because he's a "non-expert" because they "add more heat than light to the problem" when you're the one adding the most amount of heat and the least amount of light?

Calling the Heartland Institute - a part of the propaganda operations of the fascist political movement in the US - "conservative", is a capitulation to that propaganda.

What a load of soft-headed nonsense. The information is readily available to anyone who wishes to view it. People who oppose global climate change do so for political reasons, not scientific reasons.

And many people who are passionate about AGW being real do so for political reasons with no expertise in the science.

More to the point, I did NOT say their views were correct and should be given credence. What I do submit, however, is that the arguments:

(A) I have legitimate and logically valid reasons to oppose what the Heartland Institute has planned; and

(B) I read online that others have legitimate and logically valid reasons to oppose what the Heartland Institute has planned,

are not equivalent in the case where the person adopting B lacks the expertise to evaluate (or for that matter actual knowledge of the details of) the criticisms of those others. All it does in this case is add to the echochamber effect of millions of non-experts with Strong Opinions™ but utterly no knowledge that backs up their positions.

I can see that you passionately oppose the AGW-deniers, but passion is not a virtue in a scientific debate. It simply makes one likely to chime in even when one lacks a proper basis for one's opinion. Passion makes you biased, and bias is simply not a good thing.

It may be (and I rather assume it is the case) that the Heartland Institute put together its plan based a similar passion but also without a proper basis in the science. In that case, I'm happy to say the same thing of their efforts, and that they should pipe down and let the true experts has out the issue. Al Gore too. It's also perfectly fine for experts to discuss where their effort deviates from the known science, but that may not lead to our condemnation of the whole package, as there are also non-scientific questions that make up part of the debate.

Simply asserting, "There is no debate" is childish and absurd when people are in fact debating the issue. For most people by the way the issue is not "is the climate changing" but a combination of "are the actions of mankind the principle cause of that change" and "what will the effect of the changes be in the future." Neither is a question where an argument from passionate is welcome , on EITHER side, since they are both going to be fact intensive.

Simply asserting, "There is no debate" is childish and absurd when people are in fact debating the issue. For most people by the way the issue is not "is the climate changing" but a combination of "are the actions of mankind the principle cause of that change" and "what will the effect of the changes be in the future." Neither is a question where an argument from passionate is welcome , on EITHER side, since they are both going to be fact intensive.

Missing from this analysis of the rationale is that the Creation Science aka Intelligent Design community aka Right Wing Fundamentalists feel their religious world view is on the line, since, in the Bible, God allegedly gives us dominion over the world. It was to be our playground, until Eve dragged us into the muck.

The avoidance of this fact (not just by you, which may not have been deliberate) is the a lie, the kind we call misrepresentation by omission of a material fact.

It is true that industry fears government regulations, especially those that reach across the oceans and involve puppet states that multi-nationals are able to exploit wherever workers can be shot for striking, or children are forced to work for their food, or there are no product safety laws. And let us not forget the ubiquitous foreign policy of greasing palms. ie bribery laws are avoidable in some countries. The multi-nationalization of any kind of industrialization practices that are currently unregulated poses as severe a threat to big game capitalists, as much as Science poses to Preacher Merle, and his dwindling congregation that are beginning to have the scales fall from their eyes.

The glaciers are melting. Period. The CO2 levels are monotonically rising. Period. The data is everywhere. Period.

Take religion out of the debate. Take multinationals out of the debate . You'll still have capitalists left in every industrial country who will be worried, but about what? Their own money.

What other motivation does anyone have for arguing against Climate Science?

Show me how we validate any opponent of Climate Science. (not just you, anyone).

I feel like I should acknowledge Pandaemoni's reply, since I won't be answering it. It's not that I don't want to, but Aqueous answered it better than I ever could have.

Will "ditto" suffice?

I feel like I should acknowledge Pandaemoni's reply, since I won't be answering it. It's not that I don't want to, but Aqueous answered it better than I ever could have.

Will "ditto" suffice?

I did? Only after I usurped your points about the state of science and abundance of evidence which collapse this down quite nicely, thank you.

The last time I got involved in a thread like this I finally decided to figure out what all the whining is about the data. So I went to Mauna Loa and immediately got buried in the size and complexity of their online data, which is kind of cool, I was imagining I was reading though old handwritten notes. Of course they have a bulletproof open record online. Their data goes back as far as any, enough to get the idea that this trend in CO2 is not going away.

So why are the fundies bitching about the data one might ask. Well I found out exactly why. Because you have to do work to load it into spreadsheets, calculate statistics, wrestle with units, understand all the sensors and filters they used and why, and their proprietary lingo, etc... So guess what? You basically have to be a scientist already. Or at least a bean counter, with ambition to learn the rest.

They're big fat liars, to quote Al Frankin.:cool:

HERE ARE THE DATA FILES NO ONE SEEMS TO FIND (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/data/index.php?site=mlo)

Thank you for the compliment on the other thread. I only recently noticed your posts, but never felt the urge to comment since I find your remarks reasoned, to the point, accurate and concise. So back to you!:p

Missing from this analysis of the rationale is that the Creation Science aka Intelligent Design community aka Right Wing Fundamentalists feel their religious world view is on the line, since, in the Bible, God allegedly gives us dominion over the world. It was to be our playground, until Eve dragged us into the muck.

The avoidance of this fact (not just by you, which may not have been deliberate) is the a lie, the kind we call misrepresentation by omission of a material fact.

Jdawg wasted a ditto on this? Sigh.

If they raise a religious reason to oppose AGW as a theory, that's a different matter...in fact, I myself have only heard that is a very few fringe cases, never in anything approaching a mainstream debate. Even Fox news doesn't seem to trot out that line of argument that I've ever seen, and they loves them some spurious arguments.

That a few conservatives somewhere may on rare occasion raise a religious justification doesn't mean that that is the "secret" reason so many conservatives oppose AGW. Even if it were, so long as their actual voiced arguments remain secular, you can't ban them from the educational sphere.

Actually you and JDawg should be thrilled if they raise a religious explanation for opposing AGW. Here's why: As long as they are arguing the science, the courts can't stop them from raising the debate in science class. Even if you happen to think—Hell, even if you could conclusively demonstrate—their science is wrong, the court can't stop them. The only check on their getting their message into the class room are the control of the local levers of power (and passionate conservatives seem to be pretty good at getting their hands on those).

Once they make an overtly religious argument though, that can be blocked. A clever lawyer might even try to get their whole curriculum tossed on the grounds that it's all tied to the impermissible religious message.


It is true that industry fears government regulations, especially those that reach across the oceans and involve puppet states that multi-nationals are able to exploit wherever workers can be shot for striking, or children are forced to work for their food, or there are no product safety laws.

How did we get from, basically, everyone who lacks expertise should be cautious about spreading their opinion as if it were irrefutable truth to this topic?

Non sequitur much?


And let us not forget the ubiquitous foreign policy of greasing palms. ie bribery laws are avoidable in some countries.

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it a crime for any U.S. person (including a U.S.-based multinational) to pay bribes in foreign countries, even where it is legal in those foreign countries, even where it's customary to pay them, and even where your company will lose to a non-U.S. rival because it can legally pay bribes. It's a law people really do take very seriously.


The multi-nationalization of any kind of industrialization practices that are currently unregulated poses as severe a threat to big game capitalists, as much as Science poses to Preacher Merle, and his dwindling congregation that are beginning to have the scales fall from their eyes.

Multinationalization (whatever that is, see below) is bad for capitalism, and somehow that relates to science being bad for some religious people how?

Again, non-sequitur much?

Since "multinational" usually related to a company with a significant presence in more than one country, hence the name, I assume "multinationalization" is the process by which things spread to multiple countries? If it's bad for capitalists, then good news (for the capitalists), it only spreads when capitalists *choose* to move into a new country (aka make a "foreign direct investment")...so they can avoid it by imply choosing never to do it. As a result, I think you simply chose the wrong word. You might have meant "globalization", but that is not bad for capitalists either.

On the link between that and science, most religions have little direct conflict with science, even the various Christian denominations generally don't.

I suspect you think the connection between AGW-deniers and religion is stronger than it is. There is doubtlessly a correlation between religiosity and AGW-denialism, but to assert that the former directly causes the latter is simply post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. In other words it confuses correlation and causation. You wish the connection existed, I suppose, as that makes their arguments easier to deal with, as you can dismiss them all as unscientific, but that is to ignore their actual arguments and merely attack the straw man you hope if at their core. Truth is, though, if a denialist offers up a facially valid argument, and your only comeback is "The only reason you say that is your religion", that's a logically fallacious counter-argument, and you lose the debate at that point. Your argument is fallacious even if it is *true* that your opponents faith underpins his position, because the "underpinning" of his belief system (or any implied reasons for his position he does not voice) is irrelevant so long as his express arguments are valid.


The glaciers are melting. Period. The CO2 levels are monotonically rising. Period. The data is everywhere. Period.


Most AGW-denialists do not dispute that. The ones that do are wrong, but again I am no expert. (As an aside, it seems to be a slight abuse of the word "monotonically" though, as depending on the time scale and the source there month to moth drops in measured levels of atmospheric CO2. Take, for example the monthly readings by [url="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/]"NOAA in Hawaii[/quote]. The annual changes appear to be monotonic, at least as far back as the NOAA has been measuring.)

That said, those facts do not establish in any way that mankind has anything to do with climate change (though you and I both suspect the changes to be anthropogenic). The glaciers have been, in the past, even smaller than they are now and no one thinks humans had anything to do with it. CO2 levels have varied over the 500 million years of multicellular life, most of the variation happening well before man evolved. During the Medieval Warm Period (many conservatives are happy to assert) temperatures went up worldwide, yet there is no evidence that human activity had anything to do with it. That seems to be true, much as your facts are.

That's not to say the denialists are correct, just to show that these facts don't actually touch on the real issues: what's causing climate change (or at least that's one of the real issues that gets debated). That climate change is happening in certain ways is usually conceded. What's debated are these key questions:

1. What's causing it (natural cycles vs manmade)?
2. Are the observed changes really significant? (Occasionally this argument comes up.)
3. Is it worth worrying about it?
4. Related to 3, what can we do/what feasible fixes are there? and
5. Also related to 3, is it worth the costs to us of taking those feasible actions?

If you only address the question "are any changes occurring" then you address a question they have long since abandoned, and using that as a straw man argument to attack. Again, passion is not your friend in a rational discourse.

Further even if AGW is proven correct (as I believe it will be, eventually, based on my limited understanding), those facts say nothing about whether we should change the way we live our lives to mitigate the effects. Conservatives will also point out that Medieval Warm Period was a boon for most of the world. Liberals will then make gloomy predictions of millions of deaths, but those threats seem not very credible in part because there are so many non-expert voices shouting at their opponents that the voices the voices of the actual experts are lost to mere noise.

I am not at all opposed to opposing bad science. But you guys are not the ones to do it. It takes experts armed with copious facts and detailed analysis (and addressing the other side's actual arguments) to "make the scales fall from their eyes", not the internet equivalent of villagers armed with pitchforks and a scant few regurgitated facts they think they learned from an expert (but may well have learned from someone who learned from another guy who had a friend whose third cousin studied climatology for a year).


Take religion out of the debate. Take multinationals out of the debate . You'll still have capitalists left in every industrial country who will be worried, but about what? Their own money.

Back to this, are we? You know that if the worst predictions of those like Al Gore were true, those capitalists would lose money when the world economy collapses due to environmental devastation, right? So, if they were concerned about their money, and if they believed in AGW and those dire predictions, they'd likely side with you. Your argument must be that they are overly focused on short-tern returns and ignoring the long term...but it seems like the more likely explanation is that the average AGW-denialist capitalists haven't been convinced that the answers to the key questions above militate in favor of addressing the problem. You seem to think they are greedy to the point of ignoring their own imminent ruin. In fact I can plausibly think of a scenario where capitalists would drive AGW hysteria, because there is money to be made, and lots of it, in allaying people's fears.


What other motivation does anyone have for arguing against Climate Science?

I am not the best person to answer that, as I tend to accept that it is real, but the answer is not "greed and religion" it is people who answer one or more of the key questions differently than you do.


Show me how we validate any opponent of Climate Science. (not just you, anyone).

Since some of their arguments are "It is not worth changing our society to prevent climate change, even if we could" you can't validate or invalidate that. Yet it is a rational position to take assuming they have an accurate sense of the costs (monetary and non-monetary) of the various alternatives, including doing nothing. (That's hard to do in part because non-experts like Al Gore prefer to fear monger the issue and tell tall tales of 6 meter rises in sea level over the next century, whereas even the IPCC—not free from criticism itself—suggests 6 cm is more likely.)

The way to address them, as I said earlier on , is to listen to their specific proposals ad arguments and refute them on their merits case by case. Where you can't refute them (as in the "what should we do about it" case) you offer your alternate preference and your best case for why that is a superior reaction.

Sometimes it no doubt comes down to refuting specific facts, which should be easy. Sometimes you need to engage in more complex arguments (like the fight over the so-called "hockey stick graphs") to show that the purported facts on your side that are alleged to be untrue (or purposefully manipulated) are in fact accurate.

The problem is we can't have the debate, because where fundamentally you'd want experts on both sides involved, not the hordes from the internet or talk radio. The latter is so much louder than the former, that it's good luck to anyone who wants to find a reasoned and unbiased analysis.

Look no further than this thread. I agree with you in principle, and people attempt to scold me for not wanting others shouted down before they present their arguments. You even seem to suggest that they can't possibly make a good argument. That's just good Science™! (At least as practiced by non-scientists.)

Jdawg wasted a ditto on this? Sigh.


You are advocating in defense of the Religious Right, namely that they are not to blame for the controversy that broke out after Al Gore brought Global Warming to focus in the national and international discourse.

I find this ludicrous. Here are a few reasons why:


...nowadays, religious leaders and their political supporters are increasingly, and more stridently, trying to define the real world on their own terms. In the process, they are undermining scientific consensus on issues of great consequence to humans everywhere, such as overpopulation and planetary climate change. Scientists and those who believe in reason and empirical evidence have to stop sitting back and letting ideology rather than data control public policy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-folly-of-faith_b_863179.html


Evidence exists that many who deny the dangers of global warming do so out of religious conviction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/global-warming-and-religi_b_864014.html



The unaffiliated (58%) are the most likely among the religious groups studied to say there is solid evidence the earth is warming because of human activity. White evangelical Protestants are the most likely to say there is no solid evidence the earth is warming (31%), and the least likely to believe that humans have contributed to heating up the planet (34%).
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1194/global-warming-belief-by-religion



John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, is a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He has argued that climate change is a myth because God told Noah he would never again destroy Earth by flood (Gen 8:21-22). He is seen on a video as saying,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/global-warming-and-religi_b_864014.html


“Never again will I curse the ground because of man,” God says in [the Bible], “even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood, and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x180621374/Bernard-Schoenburg-Shimkus-food-for-thought-at-hearing-prompts-snickers#video2

Simply asserting, "There is no debate" is childish and absurd when people are in fact debating the issue. I haven't seen any actual debate. Link?


For most people by the way the issue is not "is the climate changing" but a combination of "are the actions of mankind the principle cause of that change" and "what will the effect of the changes be in the future." Only because of the mockery "most people" earned by insisting for years that the climate wasn't changing - remember all those propaganda campaigns centered around supposed heat island effects on instrumentation? The repeated and regurgitated claims that the satellite data, or the ice core data, or the ecological data, or the oceanographic reports, or something, contradicted whatever the other ten categories of data indicated and should be considered more reliable? The repeated attempts to trash the Hockey Stick and - failing that - the personal reputations of its authors?

Prediction: Give "most people" a couple of months, and they will be back with denials of climate change itself again. The ocean isn't expanding from the temps, say, while pointing to some recent data on Pacific Oscillation effects, showing that things aren't really getting warmer as "global warming says".

I did? Only after I usurped your points about the state of science and abundance of evidence which collapse this down quite nicely, thank you.

The last time I got involved in a thread like this I finally decided to figure out what all the whining is about the data. So I went to Mauna Loa and immediately got buried in the size and complexity of their online data, which is kind of cool, I was imagining I was reading though old handwritten notes. Of course they have a bulletproof open record online. Their data goes back as far as any, enough to get the idea that this trend in CO2 is not going away.

So why are the fundies bitching about the data one might ask. Well I found out exactly why. Because you have to do work to load it into spreadsheets, calculate statistics, wrestle with units, understand all the sensors and filters they used and why, and their proprietary lingo, etc... So guess what? You basically have to be a scientist already. Or at least a bean counter, with ambition to learn the rest.

They're big fat liars, to quote Al Frankin.:cool:

HERE ARE THE DATA FILES NO ONE SEEMS TO FIND (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/data/index.php?site=mlo)

Thank you for the compliment on the other thread. I only recently noticed your posts, but never felt the urge to comment since I find your remarks reasoned, to the point, accurate and concise. So back to you!:p

Well, thank you, kind sir!

Very nicely done on the latest response, I might add.

(and by the way, Franken is an old favorite of mine, all the way back to his SNL days--via Comedy Central reruns when I was a kid--and I even read his [i]Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" a few years back. Great stuff.)

You are advocating in defense of the Religious Right, namely that they are not to blame for the controversy that broke out after Al Gore brought Global Warming to focus in the national and international discourse.

I find this ludicrous. Here are a few reasons why:


Of course conservatives (though not exclusively the religious right) are to blame for enflaming the controversy. I never said otherwise...although they certainly had help from scientists like Marcel Leroux who believed climate change was a purely atural non-man-made phenomenon and Richard Lindzen who said we have no idea how to forecast what the climate will be in the future. And of course any right wing movement is very likely to disproportionately include members of the "religious right" proper.

That is irrelevant though, it's just a variation of the guilt by association logical fallacy. Even if the original opponents of global warming were all certified religious twits, it doesn't matter. If that were true it would not, in and of itself, address the issues. You would still have to address their arguments at face value (if you were going to defeat them logically, at least).

To suggest a concrete example of why...your argument would be akin to condemning rocketry because so much of what we know of rocketry was first developed by the Nazis. It turns out, however, that the fact that Nazis held other odious opinions on certain matters is not logically related in any way to the validity of the arguments they made in the context of the rocketry issue specifically. Simply saying, "the members of the group X are bad, and bad people are wrong," is not a valid refutation.

So, even if the religious right was heavily involved early on in denying AGW's reality, that does not answer any of the key questions, nor does it suggest that others (including those in the religious right) who have different answers to those questions are wrong, nor does it lend credence to your apparently belief that non-experts are qualified to add to the debate in a material and beneficial way.

Again, my point is and has been that non-experts are not very helpful in these debates, so should be more guarded in their participation. You appear to be trying to change the subject to something else. Unfortunately your something else seems to be a logically questionable belief that if the Religious Right ever had a hand in AGW denialism, then that proves AGW true, and allows one to ignore AGW's opponents...even those who are not members of the religious right. Not all of them are...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scienti fic_assessment_of_global_warming

To suggest a concrete example of why...your argument would be akin to condemning rocketry because so much of what we know of rocketry was first developed by the Nazis. It turns out, however, that the fact that Nazis held other odious opinions on certain matters is not logically related in any way to the validity of the arguments they made in the context of the rocketry issue specifically. Simply saying, "the members of the group X are bad, and bad people are wrong," is not a valid refutation.


But that's a straw man. No one is discrediting any and all arguments against climate change simply because the Christian Right is associated with it; we know the science is good, and people who oppose it have been debunked. There is no argument about its existence within the scientific community. Sure, there are scientists who oppose it, but you'll notice that 1) they are often outside of their field, 2) they never publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, and 3) to a startling degree, they are either being paid by or in charge of some fringe Christian institution.

I will agree with you that "non-experts" do make this topic difficult to discuss. Your posts on this subject happen to stand as perhaps the best example of how someone who hasn't the first clue what they're talking about can cloud a very simple issue. But even then, I think if you were less interested in your own opinion being correct, and more interested in having an actual exchange of ideas, then your "non-expert" status would only mean that you learned something today.

"You seem to be confused into thinging that all the experts back AGW, they don't."

Maybe 2% don't. That doesn't warrant equal consideration.

And of course any right wing movement is very likely to disproportionately include members of the "religious right" proper. The fact that you, as well as everyone else, clearly recognize that denial of the effects of anthropogenic CO2 accumulation is a "right wing movement", should immediately settle the thread issue.

We don't want people teaching rightwing movement agitprop in science class, do we?


Again, my point is and has been that non-experts are not very helpful in these debates, so should be more guarded in their participation. Experts in what? Expertise in identifying authoritarian rightwing propaganda operations comes in handy much more often than expertise in atmospheric physics, for example. Experts in remembering that some goofy line of argument is coming around for the fourth time in ten years, from the same people, should be allowed an unguarded comment or two, one would think.

My opinion on the particular scientific topic of whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring shouldn't be given weight.

I must profess a certain curiosity as to your opinion.


Most AGW-denialists do not dispute that. The ones that do are wrong, but again I am no expert. (As an aside, it seems to be a slight abuse of the word "monotonically" though, as depending on the time scale and the source there month to moth drops in measured levels of atmospheric CO2. Take, for example the monthly readings by [url="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/]"NOAA in Hawaii. The annual changes appear to be monotonic, at least as far back as the NOAA has been measuring.)
There's an annual variation in the cycle that centers around spring and summer in the northern hemisphere, because that's where the major landmass, and therefore biomass is. It's low at that time of year because increased growth -> increased CO2 uptake.


During the Medieval Warm Period (many conservatives are happy to assert) temperatures went up worldwide, yet there is no evidence that human activity had anything to do with it. That seems to be true, much as your facts are.
Certainly there was profound warming in some parts of the world, but, for example, the Bransfield Basin sediment core implies a period of profound cooling between AD 1000 and 1100 which coincides with some of the warmest periods in parts of the northern hemisphere (eg the Viking colonization of Vinland/Newfoundland.

I've always been of the opinion that most of the regional patterns ave some interesting analogs in the ENSO cycle, especially when considered in conjunction with some of the evidence of 'super el nino' events in (for example) South America, and evidence of a persistent la nina pattern.

Incidentaly, a number of authors have recently put forward evidence that suggests that the 'Little Ice Age' may have been triggered by the sudden depopulation and subsequent reforestation that occured as a result of the 'Black Death'. The basic idea being that with less people, reforestation occured and there were fewer paddies being tended consequently emissions fell sharply, and uptake rose triggering a drop in temperature (or something close to that anyway).


That climate change is happening in certain ways is usually conceded.
Usually, but not always. I only recently had a debate with an individual that was of the opinion that the idea that greenhouse gasses caused warming violates the second law of thermodynamics - this while at the same time implicitly maintaining that a massive object could accelerate and deccelerate instaneously.


Liberals will then make gloomy predictions of millions of deaths, but those threats seem not very credible in part because there are so many non-expert voices shouting at their opponents that the voices the voices of the actual experts are lost to mere noise.
I recently had cause to perform some risk analyses along these lines using data generated by computer models on the level of inundation generated by various events ranging from a 1 in 600 year Tsunami to a 1 in 20 year storm surge. My task was to convert these numbers into "The percentage risk of (location) being inundated to X meters over Y years" based on both current MSL and a 0.5m rise in MSL, where Y was 50 years and 100 years.

Part of the source for these sorts of concern (as I understand it anyway) comes from the fact that even where I live there are areas that currently have a 0% chance of being inundated to some arbitrary level (over say a 100 year period) that with a 0.5m rise in sea will have a 90% chance of inundation to the same level, purely as a function of topography and proximity to the coast.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=leaked-conservative-group

Well there is no indication that there was any plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change.

Those modules were to be written/produced by David Wojick, who has the credentials to create educational materials on Climate Change suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn't alarmist or overtly political.

Having debated with David for years about climate change I would put his knowledge of the subject above anyone here, and certainly well versed for this task.

More to the point, his specialty is in how to communicate these complex issues in a manner that is understandable.

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/author/dwojick/
http://www.stemed.info/davidwojickbio.html

Well there is no indication that there was any plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change. Sure there is - its funding source. Those guys are propaganda generators in the service of corporate powers - that's their job. They aren't going to lay out money for an educational program that doesn't further their cause and benefit their support, which in this case means contradicting established science on all kinds of things including climate change.

And David Wojick is a perfect and predictable hire for that goal - he's not a scientist, so there's no awkward issues of scientific reputation or integrity to interfere with his work, and his long and close relationship with Heartland's major funders (Exxon, Western Coal, etc) ensure approval from that all-important corner.

I don't agree.

First of all David is a Scientist.

And the people they are supporting are doing a good job of keeping the alarmists from being the only voices heard and there are many of us who don't disagree with the established science but still would like to see the reporting and explanations to be fair and balanced and not filled with hype and alarmist BS, like I routinely deal with on this forum.

The Himalayas are NOT going to melt away in 30 years.
The amount of CH4 in the Arctic is NOT increasing at all, let alone at huge rates.
The oceans are NOT going to rise 1 meter by 1950.
The Gulf Stream is not slowing down.
Half the Species are NOT going to go extinct this century.
The Earth is NOT going to become like Venus.

etc etc etc

The facts are that according to the Hadley Climate Center the 2011 Global Temperature was 1/3 of a degree warmer than the 61-90 average.

Their data also shows that from 1895 till now we have been on a long slow warming trend, with the temperatures rising at a rate of .7 degrees per Century. (within that long slow warming trend there have been distinctive periods of warming and of cooling)

From 1895 until the mid 1930s, prior to any significant buildup of CO2, the temperature rose at over twice the rate of the last 115 years, at a rate of 1.5 degrees per Century.

From the mid 1930s to 1980 the global temperatures cooled at a rate of 1.2 degrees per Century, such that 1979 was colder than any temperature that we had seen in over half a century.

And then it switched and started to warm again.

And that's why the IPCC has to start in the middle of this cooling period to make it's claim of a Anthropogenic temperature increase:


Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (IPCC AR4 - SPM )


So to restate the IPCC declaration: some amount of the globe's .34 degrees of warming (as little as .17 degrees) over the last 60 years, is very likely due to an increase in GHGs.

Why did the IPCC not state that warming before the middle of the 20th Century was caused by humans?

Simply because just moving the starting point back to 1930 and the rate of temperature rise DROPS to but .6 degrees per Century, slightly less than the long term trend (an indication that the warming is not accelerating).

Or consider that the global temperature trend, since 1996, has been slightly negative (-.13 degrees COOLING per Century), which of course doesn't mean that AGW has stopped (since that's not that long of a period), but the reality is that the actual long term temperature trends are below the lowest of the IPCC forecasts and not at all like the hot forcasts.

And that kind of information is what hopefully we will start to see.
Dealing with the actual issues and actual data more and spending less time on wild predictions from the most outspoken alarmists relying on the very hottest models using implausible scenarios of rapid and sustained global economic growth.

I don't agree.

First of all David is a Scientist. In what field? Not in any way connected with climate, weather, history, physics, etc etc etc. His credentials are in civil engineering and mathematical logic. He has done no research in any area of the physical sciences, published nothing relevant, made no discoveries.


Their data also shows that from 1895 till now we have been on a long slow warming trend, with the temperatures rising at a rate of .7 degrees per Century. Dude, that's not slow. That's explosive. That's the fastest rate of warming ever seen on the planet, so far as anyone has determined.

And it's not the standard, consensus figure, which is about 1 degree per century - faster yet.

Is that the kind of "educational" material we can expect from Exxon's think tank employees?

In what field? Not in any way connected with climate, weather, history, physics, etc etc etc. His credentials are in civil engineering and mathematical logic. He has done no research in any area of the physical sciences, published nothing relevant, made no discoveries.

He is big in eductation.
The level of material being presented to K-12, does not require being a Climate Scientist, but clearly he has been extensively involved in this subject for decades because I was debating him on it at least a decade ago on the forum he hosts, ClimateChangeDebate.org.



Dude, that's not slow. That's explosive. That's the fastest rate of warming ever seen on the planet, so far as anyone has determined.

No it's not.
Not even close
The period from 1895 to ~1940 was at a rate of 1.5 degrees per Century
The reason the longer period has less of a slope is because after the rapid warming at the start of the century the globe then COOLED from the mid thirties to the80s, at a rate of ~1.2 degrees per century (which is why some scientists were talking about the coming Ice age in the 70s) and then because the trend has been slightly negative for the last 16 years.


And it's not the standard, consensus figure, which is about 1 degree per century - faster yet.

The figures I'm quoting are derived from the CRU - Hadley Climate Center HadCrut3V data set which has the variance adjusted global climate data going back to 1895.

Feel free to check the actual data and trends.

This is the Data set that Phil Jones is responsible for (Yes, that Phil Jones from the Climategate Emails)

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

Note, the CRU data set is in broad agreement with the Satellite record that is available from 1979, though the RSS data set is now running just a bit cooler.


Is that the kind of "educational" material we can expect from Exxon's think tank employees?

Well they have nothing to do with Exxon, but yeah, real data compiled by actual Climate Scientists is exactly what I'd expect to see from David, presented in a very understandable manner.

He is big in eductation.
The level of material being presented to K-12, does not require being a Climate Scientist, The guy is not a scientist. Claims that he is a scientist are in error.

My point is not that one must be a working scientist to write elementary school textbooks, merely that he has no scientific reputation or standing to lose. He's a shill for the Heritage Foundation, which is part of the intellectual wing of Big Oil's propaganda generators.


Dude, that's not slow. That's explosive. That's the fastest rate of warming ever seen on the planet, so far as anyone has determined.
”
No it's not.
Not even close
The period from 1895 to ~1940 was at a rate of 1.5 degrees per Century But that isn't a century, see - it's less than fifty years. And .7 C measured over an actual century is not slow. If it continues - and the evidence is more toward acceleration than dissipation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming - It will be the fastest global warming ever established in even geological history.

Is that the kind of "educational" material we can expect from Exxon's think tank employees?
”
Well they have nothing to do with Exxon, but yeah, real data compiled by actual Climate Scientists is exactly what I'd expect to see from David, Exxon and Chevron give lots of money to the Heritage Foundation, both directly and through individuals, other foundations, etc. Granted they are not as obvious or immediately appear as large as the Korean CIA and Moonies or people like Coors and Scaife and the Koch brothers, but they count.

But the Heritage, though prospering, seemed to have been losing a bit of its edge lately, so the recent infusion of big money and a new direction from the Bradley Foundation must have been a welcome jolt. The new direction would be education - Bradley focus - and we look forward to seeing intellectual product of Bradley's standard, such as the output of Charles Murray (best known for "The Bell Curve"), in the field of "education" but bent to the purposes of the Heritage Foundation (rightwing authoritarian propaganda).

The guy is not a scientist. Claims that he is a scientist are in error.

Clearly our definitions don't mesh:

David Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. He has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab.


My point is not that one must be a working scientist to write elementary school textbooks, merely that he has no scientific reputation or standing to lose.

Well no school district has to buy the material he produces do they?
So yes he has something to lose.


But that isn't a century, see - it's less than fifty years. And .7 C measured over an actual century is not slow. If it continues - and the evidence is more toward acceleration than dissipation

What part of RATE do you not understand?

I said the RATE of warming was 1.5 degrees per century. That's equal to a sustained increase over many decades at a trend of +.015 per year, which is twice the rate of the entire record (117 years).

The current evidence does not support acceleration as the trend for the last 16 years has been negative. You might wait until the trend again turns positive for a long enough period of time to be over 1.5 degrees per century to make that claim again.


It will be the fastest global warming ever established in even geological history.

We don't know that.
Our proxy records don't have that kind of temporal resolution to make that kind of comparison with the modern instrumental records.

http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/wp-content/files/2007/06/last_400000_years.png

But the fact is the warming at the start of the last Century was reasonably the same magnitude and duration as the warming at the end of Century.

The guy is not a scientist. Claims that he is a scientist are in error.
”
Clearly our definitions don't mesh:

David Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. He has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab. If you are unfamiliar with the difference between philosophy and science, Google can be your friend. If you are unable to distinguish political agendas and propaganda from education, Google may not be of any use.

Well no school district has to buy the material he produces do they?

So yes he has something to lose. Like what? He's getting paid up front, apparently. The marketing of the "educational materials" he has been hired to produce is somebody else's job and expense - the Bradley Foundation, Heritage's apparent partner in this, has been throwing a lot of money that way in recent years.


What part of RATE do you not understand?

I said the RATE of warming was 1.5 degrees per century. And you attempted to measure the rate over too short a span of time for the phenomenon, a variety of what is known as "cherrypicking". Move your window a few years back or forward within the relevant time span, your number changes drastically.

I'll bet I could pick a one month span, maybe in 1998, that would give me a rate of 40 C @ millenium. So?


It will be the fastest global warming ever established in even geological history.
”
We don't know that. Yes we do.

Our proxy records don't have that kind of temporal resolution to make that kind of comparison with the modern instrumental records. Hence the word "established".

The point was that your characterization of .7C per century as "slow" was ridiculous. The planet's entire atmosphere has seldom, if ever, warmed that fast. As far as we know, it's the all time record over 3 billion years.

If you are unfamiliar with the difference between philosophy and science, Google can be your friend. If you are unable to distinguish political agendas and propaganda from education, Google may not be of any use.

If all his credentials were in Philosophy you would have a point.
But his other credentials, such as a BS in civil engineering and his work experience over a lifetime show that isn't the case.


Like what? He's getting paid up front, apparently. The marketing of the "educational materials" he has been hired to produce is somebody else's job and expense - the Bradley Foundation, Heritage's apparent partner in this, has been throwing a lot of money that way in recent years.

Well anytime you do a job for someone it affects your reputation.
The output of this surely will as it will be CAREFULLY examined by people who are hostile to start with.


And you attempted to measure the rate over too short a span of time for the phenomenon, a variety of what is known as "cherrypicking". Move your window a few years back or forward within the relevant time span, your number changes drastically.
I'll bet I could pick a one month span, maybe in 1998, that would give me a rate of 40 C @ millenium. So?

And I picked no one month periods did I?
The early part of the last century spanned ~45 years, certainly long enough to matter, as the middle of the last century was a 3 decade cooling trend that didn't turn around until the early 80s, so the current warming trend that you are discussing is SHORTER than the one at the start of the Century.

The shortest period I dicussed was the most current period of 16 years, which I already admitted is too short to claim that AGW has stopped, but it IS part of the long term trend and the lenth of this slightly negative period DOES refute your argument that the trend is acclerating.


Yes we do.

No we don't.
The NAS in it's review of the science explicitly makes that point. Our proxies of temperature before the instrumental record don't have that level of temporal and global temperature resolution.


The point was that your characterization of .7C per century as "slow" was ridiculous. The planet's entire atmosphere has seldom, if ever, warmed that fast. As far as we know, it's the all time record over 3 billion years.

No it's not.
We know that we don't know what the actual global record is over the last 3 billion years, but we do know there were other very rapid warming periods.


Changes recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10°C within a timescale of a few years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change

If all his credentials were in Philosophy you would have a point.

But his other credentials, such as a BS in civil engineering and his work experience over a lifetime show that isn't the case. Even working civil engineers are not often scientists, much less people who merely got BS degrees in the subject before continuing their schooling in philosophy.

He has no work experience as a scientist. He has no credentials as a scientist. He has no publications as a scientist. He's never been a scientist, and he isn't one now.

He's a propaganda campaign designer and "policy" consultant, employed by the Heritage Foundation to generate "educational" materials designed to advance the agenda of Exxon, Coors, Chevron, the Bradley Foundation, the Koch brothers, Richard Scaife, and the other major funders.


Well anytime you do a job for someone it affects your reputation. His reputation is well established - that's how he got the job. He is almost certain to please his employers, and if he cared about anything else he wouldn't be in that field.

We know that we don't know what the actual global record is over the last 3 billion years, but we do know there were other very rapid warming periods.

“
Changes recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10°C within a timescale of a few years. That's Greenland, not global. Too small an area for any such conclusion.

The early part of the last century spanned ~45 years, certainly long enough to matter, No, that's not long enough to matter. It's too short a time for any such conclusion. Even a full century is a shaky basis for a rate figured by century.

Too small, too short -> invalid.

.7C @ century is "slow" -> ridiculous.

But his other credentials, such as a BS in civil engineering and his work experience over a lifetime show that isn't the case.

I have a BS in physics and took my minor in hydraulic theory through the civil engineering department. Civil engineering is great if you are building roads, bridges, dams, designing municipal services, or planning cities, but science it is not; not even close! It isn't even in the same league as other engineering disciplines, like electrical or nuclear engineer, which are also not science.

He has no work experience as a scientist. He has no credentials as a scientist. He has no publications as a scientist. He's never been a scientist, and he isn't one now.

His work experience is in fact oriented around scholarlay publications so with his deep knowledge of the issues surrounding AGW and developing Curriculums for K-12, he is an excellent candidate to head up this assignment.
More to the point, if he doesn't produce something that school districts think is valuable then no one will use it.

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/11/10/education-regulation-new-challenges-and-new-opportunities/


That's Greenland, not global. Too small an area for any such conclusion.

That was my point, our proxies don't tell us it didn't warm that much because we don't have enough of them on a global basis (very few from the SH for instance, which is why Mann's "hockey stick" is just a NH temp reconstruction), but still warming of 10 degrees in the climate of such a northern locations of Greenland in such a short time is compelling evidence for rapid climate change on a far more widespread basis.



No, that's not long enough to matter. It's too short a time for any such conclusion. Even a full century is a shaky basis for a rate figured by century.

Well that's pretty funny because this is the latest statement from the IPCC AR4 on the issue:


Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (IPCC AR4 - SPM )

So, if the warming period at the start of the century is "Too small, too short -> invalid.", certainly the period at the end of the century, of reasonably the same duration and magnitude is also "Too small, too short -> invalid."


.7C @ century is "slow" -> ridiculous.

Compared to evidence of the climate changing so much that Greenland's temerature soared 10 C in a matter of a few years? Yes it is slow.

Or compare that rate to the rapid warming coming out of the LIA. It was higher than 1C per century. (see Fig 3)

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/02/0902522107.full.pdf

His work experience is in fact oriented around scholarlay publications so with his deep knowledge of the issues surrounding AGW and developing Curriculums for K-12, he is an excellent candidate to head up this assignment. As long as you understand that the assignment is to produce propaganda and deception for the Heritage Foundation's funders, yes - he is an excellent choice.

His depth of "knowledge", whatever it may be (hard to tell, without relevant credentials or publications), will be employed to that purpose.

Compared to evidence of the climate changing so much that Greenland's temerature soared 10 C in a matter of a few years? Yes it is slow. What exactly about the word "global" do you find confusing?

but still warming of 10 degrees in the climate of such a northern locations of Greenland in such a short time is compelling evidence for rapid climate change on a far more widespread basis. Not global. We have very good reason to think the local climate of Greenland fluctuates far more rapidly, in different directions, and over a far larger range than the average climate of the entire planet.

A large, fast warming in Greenland is easily associated with global cooling, even - not warming at all.

So, if the warming period at the start of the century is "Too small, too short -> invalid.", certainly the period at the end of the century, of reasonably the same duration and magnitude is also "Too small, too short -> invalid." Invalid for what? The people evaluating mechanisms according to evidence are not attempting to draw your type of bogus conclusions from obviously inadequate and misrepresented evidence, as you are.

A large, fast warming in Greenland is easily associated with global cooling, even - not warming at all.

I believe that's just some BS you made up.
But go ahead, prove me wrong, post a link to a reputable study that shows that dramatic 10 degree warming of Greenland has ever been related to a period of Global Cooling.

But there is plenty of evidence for rapid global warming:


Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years.

And

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc.html

See fig 2, and note the rapid warming from 1830 to 1930 of approx .7 C.



Invalid for what? The people evaluating mechanisms according to evidence are not attempting to draw your type of bogus conclusions from obviously inadequate and misrepresented evidence, as you are.

That's pretty funny again.

You say 50 years is too short, indeed an INVALID period to draw climate conclusions from and then I post the quote from the latest IPCC report that specifically refers to a period of 50 years to draw it's conclusions.


Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (IPCC AR4 - SPM )

Clearly NOT a misrepresentation of the time period in question.

You say 50 years is too short, indeed an INVALID period to draw climate conclusions from and then I post the quote from the latest IPCC report that specifically refers to a period of 50 years to draw it's conclusions. I said no such thing.

I said a cherrypicked 50 year interval is too short for you to draw the conclusions you drew from it. Intelligent and informed people using solid reasoning and evidence can draw all kinds of "climate conclusions" from any length of interval.


A large, fast warming in Greenland is easily associated with global cooling, even - not warming at all.
”
I believe that's just some BS you made up. So check it.

Among the better known possibilities: a huge ice dam blocking cool fresh water from its former path of influx from the North American continent can dramatically boost temps in Greenland for a while, while the rest of the planet is in a cooling cycle of sunspot variation, ENSOs, volcanic effluents, and glacial meltwater effects.

All kinds of things can happen in Greenland, Antarctica, the Himalayan Plateau, and such places, while the global average temperature undertakes a quite different trend for a while. That's why we talk about "global" averages as different from local ones.

That's why, for obvious example, people have put so much effort into finding out what was going on all over the planet during the Little Ice Age in the north Atlantic regions. The pros did not simply assume that things got colder everywhere because that region - much bigger than Greenland - was suffering extreme cold - they had to check. There were other possibilities, including major warming and heat waves in other places and even globally on average.

All kinds of things can happen in Greenland, Antarctica, the Himalayan Plateau, and such places, while the global average temperature undertakes a quite different trend for a while. That's why we talk about "global" averages as different from local ones.
Two articles I have come across recently, both dealing with the Himalayan Plateu.

The first of which seems to suggest that the reaon for the initially wrong estimates regarding Himalayan glacial melting is because people were observing the low, easily accessable glaciers, and extrapolating their behavior to the higher glaciers. It wasn't until the GRACE mission that we have been able to directly measure the mass of the ice in this area, and that has confirmed that it's not melting as fast as expected. This theory as to why this should be the case, as I understand it, is that the higher altitude glaciers have been subjected to less warming than the lower altitude glaciers, and so are melting slower.

Meanwhile, experienced mountaineers seem to be saying that many of the glacial lakes are filling to dangerous levels because of the glacial retreat, and many of these are held back by ice dams, which are in danger of being refloated, and releasing large quantities of water rather suddenly.


That's why, for obvious example, people have put so much effort into finding out what was going on all over the planet during the Little Ice Age in the north Atlantic regions. The pros did not simply assume that things got colder everywhere because that region - much bigger than Greenland - was suffering extreme cold - they had to check. There were other possibilities, including major warming and heat waves in other places and even globally on average.
Hence my mentioning the Bransfield Basin sediment core in my post to Pandemoni, while there may have been abrupt cooling in Europe at that time, there is evidence of warming in Antarctica (or parts of it at least) something that I have been accutely aware of for a while now. The Little Ice Age was not consistent spatially or temporally, and in many respects (to me at least) most strongly resembles an unusual phase of ENSO. IMO there are a number of lines of evidence that seem to point in that direction.

I said no such thing.

I said a cherrypicked 50 year interval is too short for you to draw the conclusions you drew from it. Intelligent and informed people using solid reasoning and evidence can draw all kinds of "climate conclusions" from any length of interval.

No Cherrypicking involved.
I start from the beginning of the Instrumental record and go till the cooling period in the middle of the century to get the warming trend.

But we also know, that the previous hundred years was even colder, so the warming trend was even far longer, just not backed by good instrumentation.

The IPCC simply uses the most recent 50 year period, and if there is any cherry picking going on, they are doing it, because just moving the start date back two decades lowers the warming trend to less than the long term trend.

Which is why the IPCC only uses that period:

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica) (IPCC AR4 - SPM )

OOPS

So check it.


Among the better known possibilities: a huge ice dam blocking cool fresh water from its former path of influx from the North American continent can dramatically boost temps in Greenland for a while, while the rest of the planet is in a cooling cycle of sunspot variation, ENSOs, volcanic effluents, and glacial meltwater effects.

I knew you couldn't come up with anything to back up your claim.

So once again, POST A LINK to a scientific journal aticle that supports your assertion that a 10 degree WARMING trend in Greenland is possible in a world that is having an overall global COOLING trend.

No Cherrypicking involved.
I start from the beginning of the Instrumental record and go till the cooling period in the middle of the century to get the warming trend. So you had no mechanism, no theory, no argument, nothing to single out that time interval as being the significant one that could be extrapolated to the planet and global trends with confidence.

That's called cherrypicking. That's not what the IPCC did.

So once again, POST A LINK to a scientific journal aticle that supports your assertion that a 10 degree WARMING trend in Greenland is possible in a world that is having an overall global COOLING trend.

There was no ten degree warming "trend" in Greenland. There was an event, in Greenland. The relevant trend in Greenland was and is different from such events.

But humoring you, here's about fifty links, almost any of which can be used to support such a claim of possibility:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change
http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_lia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Epica-vostok-grip-40kyr.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Cold_Reversal

Or you could just ask yourself - the example you used, the end of the Younger Dryas, was a short and clearly defined event: what was the global temperature trend before, during, and after that event? How do you know?

So you had no mechanism, no theory, no argument, nothing to single out that region and that time interval as being the significant one that could be extrapolated to the planet and global trends with confidence.

That's called cherrypicking. That's not what the IPCC did.



No that's not not cherrypicking.
There was no region involved as the HadCrut3 data set is of the Global Temperature.
And I took the first 50 years, a time frame that the IPCC claims is worth considering.




Here's about fifty links, any of which can be used to support such a claim of possibility:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change
http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_lia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Epica-vostok-grip-40kyr.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Cold_Reversal

And yet none of them do support that Greenland could warm by 10 degrees while the globe cooled.


Or you could just ask yourself - the example you used, the end of the Younger Dryas, was a short and clearly defined event: what was the global temperature trend before, during, and after that event? How do you know?

We "know" by use of temperature proxies.