What the hell is going on with science literacy in this country??

Many “college educated” Republicans were fratboys who majored in whatever required the least amount of effort to stay off academic probation.

That pretty much rules out any science courses…

[JR: Rest of comment deleted for gross inappropriateness. I did not use Hitler to criticize someone else. I actually used a term that was first used to describe the actions of a different group. Anyway, there is no such “law,” and if there were, it wouldn’t apply to now widely-used term “big lie.” Assuming that the deniers and delayers continue to win the fight — that is, we continue to take no action or inadequate action — “big lie” will be among the mildest of terms future generations will be using to describe the deniers and those who were suckered by them.]

Meaning what, exactly, in terms of actions?

I’d like to see more discussion of what actions we can take to change this public confusion, and how we can mobilize more people to take them.
(and then some action, on what comes out of the discussion!)

It has been a bad couple of years for those making the catastrophe case. The lesson of the boy who called wolf is that exaggerating the threat makes folks stop worrying about the threat. Meaningful or not, there is no way around the 21st century temperature stabilization which we are now told could well continue until 2015 or 2020. The hurricane bandwagon has left the parade, the upper tropical troposphere is not cooperating, ocean temperatures are cooling. Then there is the ice. Global sea ice at record (since 1979) levels. Arctic ice at recorded minimum but no less an authority than NASA issues a study that the main driver is decadal ocean oscillations and another that attributes unusual wind patterns.

How we describe others is often a window into our own self image.

we shouldn’t wait until it is too late

Joe (and others), is this sort of discussion occurring online and in public anywhere, and if not, _why_ not? To me it seems like a no-brainer that we _have_ to do this, but if nobody else seems to think it’s called for, I’m likely missing something.
What?

Meaning what, exactly, in terms of actions?

I’d like to see more discussion of what actions we can take to change this public confusion, and how we can mobilize more people to take them.

When PR campaigns are undertaken, such as Gore’s ‘we’ campaign, it is called propaganda. When blogs by actual scientists studying the science are created, such RealClimate, they are dismissed as biased.

These people (Republican deniers of science) have incorporated disbelief in anthropogenic warming into their ideology via Limbaugh, Junk Science, Newsbusters, etc. Even George W. Bush no longer denies anthropogenic warming. That doesn’t matter.

When ideology is in conflict with reality, ideology almost always wins. Not to get too far off topic, but this explains why people that would be otherwise incredulous about claims of wizardry will accept the existence of ‘miracles’ in their own religion.

Once the lawsuits come against the oil companies and right wing think tanks, and their internal memos come out, I think we will see a beginning of the end of denial. This will allow the science rejectors to blame their prior position on manipulation rather than their own willful disregard for science.

The People are not as dumb, stupid and ignorant as you folks of the Eastern Liberal Establishment make them out to be, and they are not easily fooled beause they remember the late President Eisenhower warning:

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

If he were alive today, he would warn the People of the danger of NGO’s who have hidden agendas, and to be very wary of them.

Jon, I think the point is that when the Republican position becomes untenable, the Republicans will have the choice of changing or dying off.

The anti-regulation propaganda is never meant to be permanent, it’s just meant to bide time. Limbaugh and others did the same thing for CFCs and Big Tobacco.

They don’t die off, they just apply their formulas to newer issues after the industries they provide cover for are finally subject to regulation.

As long as there are corporations that profit by avoiding regulation, there will be people willing to shill publicly for them.

[As an aside, have you seen the Prometheus post on the RealClimate bet?]

1. AGW is widely accepted by the public right across the globe. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 1/ shared/ bsp/ hi/ pdfs/ 25_09_07climatepoll.pdf

“Seventy percent of urban Chinese respondents believe major steps are needed quickly to address climate change.”

It is clear that believing in the problem is not enough, because the same 70% of urban Chinese that want ot fix climate change are falling over themselves to buy all the latest electrical gadgets, air-con, cars, flights and the rest.

2. I have often wondered whether non-fossil fuel energy sources are really viable in the absence of the all-pervasive fossil fuel subsidy. This piece on the BBC news today reinforces the point. About 2.05 minutes in the presenter says that the cost of wind turbines is doubling every 2 or 3 years. Is this because the price of oil is doing the same thing? Without cheap oil does the energy cost of manufacturing, deploying and maintaining offshore wind turbines yields a lifetime negative energy return?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7390996.stm

Please produce a single reference to any study that has detected the human signature in climate during the past 50 years.

Please do not provide guesswork based on fatally flawed projections from inadequate and improper use of GCMs … that is simply conjecture based on faith.

It makes as much sense to regulate CO2 emissions to try to change climate as it would for the state of Florida to require every citizen to buy a snowblower to prevent hurricanes. The two are not related.

CO2 has never been detected to be a significant climate change force. It is merely assumed to be one by the IPCC.

The “greenhouse” effect in Earth’s atmosphere is NOT analogous to a real greenhouse. A real greenhouse warms because it is a closed system that traps heat. The Earth’s atmosphere is an open system and the massive weather dynamic acts to regulate heat unless overwhelmed by orbital, solar, or geologic changes that do affect climate. CO2 makes a paltry contribution to Earth’s atmospheric heat retention and its effects are overwhelmed by those of water vapor and clouds. Furthermore, CO2 and water vapor overlap in the IR frequencies they are effective. The only real portion of the IR that CO2 can have some impact over is that portion where water vapor is not effective … and in that case, CO2’s effects diminish logarithmically as more is added to the atmosphere. This, when added to the weather stabilization effect, is what neuters CO2 as a significant climate change force.

Yet the IPCC simply assumes the contrary and denies the physics. Where would they be if they didn’t?

Are you all really wiling to cost our economy trillions of dollars to achieve CO2 reductions whose result will be completely undetectable in future climate?

Whatever happened to cost-benefit thinking? If you spend trillions to accomplish nothing (but a delusional “feel good” for the moment), how does that benefit civilization?

Better to spend the money wisely … or leave it with the people to make those choices for themselves (e.g., buying better health care, better education, etc.).

I would welcome serious discussion.

[JR: This is the last time I am going to answer such nonsense. A single study? There are hundreds, as I blogged at length here.

AchutaRao, K.M., et al., 2006: Variability of ocean heat uptake: Reconciling
observations and models. J. Geophys. Res., 111, C05019.
Ackerman, A.S., et al., 2000: Reduction of tropical cloudiness by soot.
Science, 288, 1042–1047.
Adams, J.B., M.E. Mann, and C.M. Ammann, 2003: Proxy evidence for
an El Nino-like response to volcanic forcing. Nature, 426(6964), 274–
278.
Alexander, L.V., et al., 2006: Global observed changes in daily climate
extremes of temperature and precipitation. J. Geophys. Res., 111,
D05109, doi:10.1029/2005JD006290.
Allan, R.J., and T.J. Ansell, 2006: A new globally-complete monthly
historical gridded mean sea level pressure data set (HadSLP2): 1850-
2004. J. Clim., 19, 5816–5842.
Allen, M.R., 2003: Liability for climate change. Nature, 421, 891–892.
Allen, M.R., and S.F.B. Tett, 1999: Checking for model consistency in
optimal fi ngerprinting. Clim. Dyn., 15, 419–434.
Allen, M.R., and W.J. Ingram, 2002: Constraints on future changes in
climate and the hydrologic cycle. Nature, 419, 224–232.
Allen, M.R., and D.A. Stainforth, 2002: Towards objective probabilistic
climate forecasting. Nature, 419, 228–228.
Allen, M.R., and P.A. Stott, 2003: Estimating signal amplitudes in optimal
fi ngerprinting, Part I: Theory. Clim. Dyn., 21, 477–491.
Allen, M.R., J.A. Kettleborough, and D.A. Stainforth, 2002: Model error
in weather and climate forecasting. In: ECMWF Predictability of
Weather and Climate Seminar [Palmer, T.N. (ed.)]. European Centre for
Medium Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK, http://www.ecmwf.
int/publications/library/do/references/list/209.
Allen, M.R., et al., 2000: Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of
anthropogenic climate change. Nature, 407, 617–620.
Ammann, C.M., G.A. Meehl, W.M. Washington, and C. Zender, 2003: A
monthly and latitudinally varying volcanic forcing dataset in simulations
of 20th century climate. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(12), 1657.
Anderson, T.L., et al., 2003: Climate forcing by aerosols: A hazy picture.
Science, 300, 1103–1104.
Andronova, N.G., and M.E. Schlesinger, 2000: Causes of global
temperature changes during the 19th and 20th centuries. Geophys. Res.
Lett., 27(14), 2137–2140.
Andronova, N.G., and M.E. Schlesinger, 2001: Objective estimation of the
probability density function for climate sensitivity. J. Geophys. Res.,
106(D19), 22605–22611.
Andronova, N.G., M.E. Schlesinger, and M.E. Mann, 2004: Are
reconstructed pre-instrumental hemispheric temperatures consistent
with instrumental hemispheric temperatures? Geophys. Res. Lett., 31,
L12202, doi:10.1029/2004GL019658.
Andronova, N.G., et al., 1999: Radiative forcing by volcanic aerosols from
1850 to 1994. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 16807–16826.
Andronova, N.G., et al., 2007: The concept of climate sensitivity:
History and development. In: Human-Induced Climate Change: An
Interdisciplinary Assessment [Schlesinger, M., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK, in press.
Annan, J.D., and J.C. Hargreaves, 2006: Using multiple observationallybased
constraints to estimate climate sensitivity. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33,
L06704, doi:10.1029/2005GL025259.
Annan, J.D., et al., 2005: Effi ciently constraining climate sensitivity with
paleoclimate simulations. Scientifi c Online Letters on the Atmosphere,
1, 181–184.
Arblaster, J.M., and G.A. Meehl, 2006: Contributions of external forcing
to Southern Annular Mode trends. J. Clim., 19, 2896–2905.
Bader, J., and M. Latif, 2003: The impact of decadal-scale Indian Ocean
sea surface temperature anomalies on Sahelian rainfall and the North
Atlantic Oscillation. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(22), 2169.
Banks, H.T., et al., 2000: Are observed decadal changes in intermediate
water masses a signature of anthropogenic climate change? Geophys.
Res. Lett., 27, 2961–2964.
Barnett, T.P., D.W. Pierce, and R. Schnur, 2001: Detection of anthropogenic
climate change in the world’s oceans. Science, 292, 270–274.
Barnett, T.P., et al., 1999: Detection and attribution of recent climate
change. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 80, 2631–2659.
Barnett, T.P., et al., 2005: Penetration of a warming signal in the world’s
oceans: human impacts. Science, 309, 284–287.
Bauer, E., M. Claussen, V. Brovkin, and A. Huenerbein, 2003: Assessing
climate forcings of the Earth system for the past millennium. Geophys.
Res. Lett., 30(6), 1276.
Beltrami, H., J.E. Smerdon, H.N. Pollack, and S. Huang, 2002: Continental
heat gain in the global climate system. Geophys. Res. Lett., 29, 1167.
Bengtsson, L., K.I. Hodges, and E. Roechner, 2006: Storm tracks and
climate change. J. Clim., 19, 3518–3543.
Berger, A., 1978: Long-term variations of caloric solar radiation resulting
from the earth’s orbital elements. Quat. Res., 9, 139–167.
Berger, A., 1988: Milankovitch theory and climate. Rev. Geophys., 26,
624–657.
Berliner, L.M., R.A. Levine, and D.J. Shea, 2000: Bayesian climate change
assessment. J. Clim., 13, 3805–3820.
Bertrand, C., M.F. Loutre, M. Crucifi x, and A. Berger, 2002: Climate of the
last millennium: a sensitivity study. Tellus, 54A(3), 221–244.
Betts, R.A., 2001: Biogeophysical impacts of land use on present-day
climate: near surface temperature and radiative forcing. Atmos. Sci.
Lett., 2, 39–51.
Bigelow, N.H., et al., 2003: Climate change and Arctic ecosystems: 1.
Vegetation changes north of 55 degrees N between the last glacial
maximum, mid-Holocene, and present. J. Geophys. Res., 108(D19),
8170, doi:10.1029/2002JD002558.
Bindoff, N.L., and T.J. McDougall, 2000: Decadal changes along an Indian
Ocean section at 32S and their interpretation. J. Phys. Oceanogr., 30(6),
1207–1222.
Bjerknes, J., 1969: Atmospheric teleconnections from the equatorial
Pacifi c. Mon. Weather Rev., 97, 163–172.
Boer, G.J., and B. Yu, 2003: Climate sensitivity and climate state. Clim.
Dyn., 21, 167–176.
Boucher, O., and J. Haywood, 2001: On summing the components of
radiative forcing of climate change. Clim. Dyn., 18, 297–302.
Boyer, T.P., et al., 2005: Linear trends in salinity for the World Ocean,
1955-1998. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L01604.
Braconnot, P., S. Joussaume, O. Marti, and N. de Noblet, 1999: Synergistic
feedbacks from ocean and vegetation on the African monsoon response
to mid-Holocene insolation. Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 2481–2484.
Braconnot, P., O. Marti, S. Joussaume, and Y. Leclainche, 2000: Ocean
feedback in response to 6 kyr BP insolation. J. Clim., 13(9), 1537–
1553.
Braconnot, P., et al., 2004: Evaluation of PMIP coupled ocean-atmosphere
simulations of the Mid-Holocene. In: Past Climate Variability through
Europe and Africa [Battarbee, R.W., F. Gasse, and C.E. Stickley (eds.)].
Springer, London, UK, pp. 515-533.
Braganza, K., et al., 2003: Simple indices of global climate variability and
change: Part I - Variability and correlation structure. Clim. Dyn., 20,
491–502.
Braganza, K., et al., 2004: Simple indices of global climate variability and
change: Part II - Attribution of climate change during the 20th century.
Clim. Dyn., 22, 823–838.
Briffa, K.R., et al., 2001: Low-frequency temperature variations from a
northern tree ring density network. J. Geophys. Res., 106(D3), 2929–
2941.
Broccoli, A.J., et al., 2003: Twentieth-century temperature and
precipitation trends in ensemble climate simulations including natural
and anthropogenic forcing. J. Geophys. Res., 108(D24), 4798.
Brohan, P., et al., 2006: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global
observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. Geophys.
Res., 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548.
Bryden, H.L., E. McDonagh, and B.A. King, 2003: Changes in ocean water
mass properties: oscillations of trends? Science, 300, 2086–2088
Bryden, H.L., H.R. Longworth, and S.A. Cunningham, 2005: Slowing of
the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25° N. Nature, 438,
655–657.
Burke, E.J., S.J. Brown, and N. Christidis, 2006: Modelling the recent
evolution of global drought and projections for the 21st century with the
Hadley Centre climate model. J. Hydrometeorol., 7, 1113–1125.
Caesar, J., L. Alexander, and R. Vose, 2006: Large-scale changes in
observed daily maximum and minimum temperatures, 1946-2000. J.
Geophys. Res., 111, D05101, doi:10.1029/2005JD006280.
Cai, W., P.H. Whetton, and D.J. Karoly, 2003: The response of the Antarctic
Oscillation to increasing and stabilized atmospheric CO2. J. Clim., 16,
1525–1538.
Cane, M., et al., 2006: Progress in paleoclimate modeling. J. Clim., 19,
5031–5057.
Carril, A.F., C.G. Menéndez, and A. Navarra, 2005: Climate response
associated with the Southern Annular Mode in the surroundings of
Antarctic Peninsula: A multimodel ensemble analysis. Geophys. Res.
Lett., 32, L16713, doi:10.1029/2005GL023581.
Chan, J.C.L., 2006: Comment on “Changes in tropical cyclone number,
duration, and intensity in a warming environment”. Science, 311, 1713.
Chan, J.C.L., and K.S. Liu, 2004: Global warming and western North
Pacifi c typhoon activity from an observational perspective. J. Clim., 17,
4590–4602.
Chase, T.N., J.A. Knaff, R.A. Pielke, and E. Kalnay, 2003: Changes in
global monsoon circulations since 1950. Natural Hazards, 29, 229–
254.
Chen, J., B.E. Carlson, and A.D. Del Genio, 2002: Evidence for
strengthening of the tropical general circulation in the 1990s. Science,
295, 838–841.
Christidis, N., et al., 2005: Detection of changes in temperature extremes
during the second half of the 20th century. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32,
L20716, doi:10.1029/2005GL023885.
Christy, J.R., R.W. Spencer, and W.D. Braswell, 2000: MSU tropospheric
temperatures: Dataset construction and radiosonde comparison. J.
Atmos. Ocean. Technol., 17, 1153–1170.
Chuang, C.C., et al., 2002: Cloud susceptibility and the fi rst aerosol
indirect forcing: Sensitivity to black carbon and aerosol concentrations.
J. Geophys. Res., 107(D21), 4564, doi:10.1029/2000JD000215.
Church, J.A., N.J. White, and J.M. Arblaster, 2005: Volcanic eruptions:
their impact on sea level and oceanic heat content. Nature, 438, 74–77.
Clement, A.C., R. Seager, and M.A. Cane, 2000: Suppression of El
Nino during the mid-Holocene by changes in the Earth’s orbit.
Paleoceanography, 15(6), 731–737.
Clement, A.C., A. Hall, and A.J. Broccoli, 2004: The importance of
precessional signals in the tropical climate. Clim. Dyn., 22, 327–341.
CLIMAP (Climate: Long-range Investigation, Mapping and Prediction),
1981: Seasonal Reconstructions of the Earth’s Surface at the Last
Glacial Maximum. Map Series Technical Report MC-36, Geological
Society of America, Boulder, CO.
Cobb, K.M., C.D. Charles, H. Cheng, and R.L. Edwards, 2003: El
Nino/Southern Oscillation and tropical Pacifi c climate during the last
millennium. Nature, 424(6946), 271–276.
Collins, M., 2000a: The El-Nino Southern Oscillation in the second Hadley
Centre coupled model and its response to greenhouse warming. J. Clim.,
13, 1299–1312.
Collins, M., 2000b: Understanding uncertainties in the response of ENSO
to greenhouse warming. Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 3509–3513.
Cook, E.R., et al., 2004: Long-term aridity changes in the western United
States. Science, 306(5698), 1015–1018.
Coughlin, K., and K.K. Tung, 2004: Eleven-year solar cycle signal
throughout the lower atmosphere. J. Geophys. Res., 109, D21105,
doi:10.1029/2004JD004873.
Crooks, S., 2004: Solar Infl uence On Climate. PhD Thesis, University of
Oxford.
Crooks, S.A., and L.J. Gray, 2005: Characterization of the 11-year solar
signal using a multiple regression analysis of the ERA-40 dataset. J.
Clim., 18(7), 996–1015.
Crowley, T.J., 2000: Causes of climate change over the past 1000 years.
Science, 289(5477), 270–277.
Crowley, T.J., et al., 2003: Modeling ocean heat content changes during the
last millennium. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(18), 1932.
Cubasch, U., et al., 1997: Simulation of the infl uence of solar radiation
variations on the global climate with an ocean-atmosphere general
circulation model. Clim. Dyn., 13(11), 757–767.
Cubasch, U., et al., 2001: Projections of future climate change. In: Climate
Change 2001: The Scientifi c Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to
the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change [Houghton, J.T., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 99–181.
Curry, R., B. Dickson, and I. Yashayaev, 2003: A change in the freshwater
balance of the Atlantic Ocean over the past four decades. Nature, 426,
826–829.
Dai, A., K.E. Trenberth, and T.R. Karl, 1999: Effects of clouds, soil,
moisture, precipitation and water vapour on diurnal temperature range.
J. Clim., 12, 2451–2473.
Dai, A., et al., 2004: The recent Sahel drought is real. Int. J. Climatol., 24,
1323–1331.
D’Arrigo, R., et al., 2005: On the variability of ENSO over the past
six centuries. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32(3), L03711, doi:10.1029/
2004GL022055.
Delworth, T.L., and T.R. Knutson, 2000: Simulation of early 20th century
global warming. Science, 287, 2246–2250.
Delworth, T.L., and M.E. Mann, 2000: Observed and simulated multidecadal
variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Clim. Dyn., 16(9), 661–676.
Delworth, T.L., V. Ramaswamy, and G.L. Stenchikov, 2005: The impact
of aerosols on simulated ocean temperature and heat content in the 20th
century. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L24709, doi:10.1029/2005GL024457.
Delworth, T., et al., 2002: Review of simulations of climate variability
and change with the GFDL R30 coupled climate model. Clim. Dyn.,
19, 555–574.
Dickson, R.R., et al., 2002: Rapid freshening of the deep North Atlantic
Ocean over the past four decades. Nature, 416, 832–837.
Douglass, D.H., and B.D. Clader, 2002: Climate sensitivity of the Earth to
solar irradiance. Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(16), 1786.
Douglass, D.H., and R.S. Knox, 2005: Climate forcing by volcanic eruption
of Mount Pinatubo. Geophys. Res. Let]

I think scientist have to step it up… there has to be not just words but action (They need to start to put their career on the line). - at and beyond the level of James Hansen, otherwise the public just wont get it (in time).

http://www.realclimate.org/ index.php/ archives/ 2007/ 05/ start-here/

Ray Pierrehumbert:

http://geosci.uchicago.edu/ ~rtp1/ ClimateBook/ ClimateBook.html

Start learning some actual science, not just looking at wacko blogs.

I’ve observed the unfortunate wonky tendency in myself over the years, and I sure as hell have observed it in nearly all the climate scientists and policy wonks — they’re so busy chasing idiots like the one above that they don’t have time to reach the persuadables.

Joe’s resolution not to further engage these people and give them a platform for their nonsense was great while it lasted.

Not everyone who’s Republican doesn’t believe in global warming. Some of them (like McCain) actually want to do something about it.

Listen to JMG here–he’s on the right track.

Nor did I ever resolve not to debunk the disinformation campaign or point out its effect. Anyone who came away with that impression has misread what I have written.

What I didn’t vow to do is to more consistently believed disinformation or, more charitably, misinformation in the comments that has been long been debunked on this site and elsewhere.

Personally, I wish the poll had been conservatives and non-conservatives, since that is where the divide really is. Lots of moderate Republicans believe in science and are taking leadership positions. exceedingly few conservatives are — the McCain is the only example I can think of, and even he has become weak-kneed on the issue.

Sadly, JMG, the deniers get all the media coverage they need whether or not anybody challenges them. I actually spent most of my career ignoring them, but he didn’t do any good.

All progressives must know how to rebut their disinformation, since it inevitably comes up in any review, and lecture, and even in conversations with regular people in everyday settings.

And it is crucial that people understand the deniers are winning.

If this were not an existential threat to the health and well-being of the planet, it might not matter so much. But it is, and it does.

Of course, Schwarzengger is a Republican as well.
So is PG&E CEO Peter Darbee, a very sharp guy indeed.

Of course, conservatives would likely castigate all these as RINOs, and it its usual way, WSJ OpED yesterday offered “In Defense of RINo Hunting”, i.e., why liberal Republicans should be defeated.

On a more positive note, The Economist today had an article The elusive negawatt. if their search is right, that’s the first time “negawatt” has appeared in The Economist… encourage them to consider them more often - from my experience, they actually read letters and comments, unlike some other publications.

For example the Rueters came out with a story today that stated,

“UN experts say human activity, including the emission of greenhouse gases, threatens to cause the worst spate of extinctions on earth since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.”

That’s all well and good to say, but it’s equally fair to call it a guess by financially invested parties. Most readers would rightly discount this as opinion.

Then the article continues on,

“Some experts say three species disappear every hour.”

Wait a minute. Three species every hour? Show me the bodies. Hell you don’t even have to show me bodies, just name three species out of the thousands that, “three species disappear every hour” implies!

Just one dollop of the steady stream of horseshit we information consumers are expected to swallow on a daily basis.

When you lie to people, (and not even very good lies) over and over again, when you don’t even show the most modest trust in the intelligence of your readership, as illustrated above by the deleted comment discribed as “misinformation” (as if we can’t make that determination on our own), you better expect that people are going to take what you say with a heavy dose of salt.

Frankly, it shocks me that so many Democrats and Independants believe the Earth is warming. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that Pew is padding the totals, or putting it’s thumb on the scale.

Regards, Jim

P.S. When you post a truck load of links to “subscription only” papers, it only reinforces the basic perception that your motive isn’t to explain or illuminate, but rather to confuse and befuddle readers.

Without a political earthquake over the next six months, the Republicans, already the minority party and shrinking fast, are going to be demolished in the general election.

The presidential campaign will focus on how to stop global warming most effectively and cheaply, not whether global warming exists or is caused by humans. That debate is over and Bush finished it.

The “believer” community needs to get over this penchant for stacking papers (particularly ones published in “Science” or “Nature” or “Scientific American” (all of whom have lost credibility, thanks to their obvious bias and inability to intelligently address all the contrary EVIDENCE to the AGW theory) and claiming “consensus” when any objective view of the positions of actual atmospheric scientists (as if polling were important to truth) fails to support the AGW theory espoused by the IPCC and Gore.

Following false prophets will be costly … except to the prophets, who will profit enormously. Let’s just call them the “profit prophets” … because that is their motivation.

A list of references is no substitute for a simple understanding of how you rebut the observational and scientific facts that blow the AGW theory out of the water.

It would seem a simple matter to understand that, if your theory claims that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause catastrophic (or even significant) climate change, that you’d be able to provide SOME … heck, ANY … evidence to that effect in the record.

Yet you cannot … and neither can any of those scientists you’ve listed.

Try this on for size. Let’s say it’s 1934 and we’re observing that CO2 has been steadily rising in the atmosphere and now we’ve just experienced the hottest year since the Medieval Warm Period (you know, that inconvenient warming that the IPCC tried to hide until the nonsensical “Hockey Stick:” curve put together by those “scientists” was shown to be based on elementary misunderstanding of statistical techniques). To what would you attribute the temperature rise observed in the 1930s? That same period of warming presented some “unprecedented” droughts (recall the “dust bowl” stories) and “unprecedented” hurricanes (one destroyed the Flagler railroad to Key West, the other rampaged New England, and we have no idea how many went unreported because they never made landfall or spent their greatest fury in the shipping lanes). You’d have the same evidence then that you have today (but of course without the 3-4 decades of cooling that followed), less the unreliable GCMs tossing fearful projections about.

Well, its been roughly 70 years since the 1930s. And can anyone explain why CO2 was rising since as far back as we’ve taken direct measurements? Can anyone explain why temperatures dropped to produce the Little Ice Age? Can anyone explain the Medieval Warm Period? The Roman Warm Period? The cooling in between those two? The warming since the end of the Medieval Warm Period? Do you understand where this is going?

Until these “scientists” can explain what causes the multi-century climate variations with any degree of certainty, it seems a bit silly to go off and spend trillions to curb CO2 emissions when there is so much evidence to inform us that CO2 is NOT a significant contributor to climate variability (but it does make a significant RESPONSE to the same).

If you look closely, you will note that studies tend to assume things not known and treat the climate as a closed system. Until a comprehensive knowledge about climate change (not THEORY, but KNOWLEDGE) is revealed, all this chatter and listing of papers is so much noise.

Address what is actually known about how things work by starting with an explanation of what we actually know from observation and the geologic record. There is no evidence to support the AGW theory in any of it.

I ask these questions, and they go unanswered. No, a list of “studies” that do not address these questions are dodging the issue.

Until AGW believers can provide a lucid response to questions people have that explains the disparity between the AGW theory and the known behavior of the atmosphere, they will find that increasing numbers of people do not agree with their devotion to the theory. And it IS a devotion … with a religious zeal … if it is based on faith, and not observational reality.

Convince me with real responses to the specifics of the questions I’ve posed before and here … and not some library list of references (which I could also provide but which would be just as futile).

http://icecap.us/ images/ uploads/ Tempssince2002.jpg

Note that it isn’t rising … in fact, my goodness! … it’s been falling!

Just how does the AGW theory predict that?

Bob Webster is absolutely correct, and you are just flat-out wrong. The list papers you produced is a registery of white-coated welfare queens (WCWC’s) in the academic and governmental research ghettos for whom “… a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

Todate the IPCC and its affilliated WCWQ’s have produced only computational speculation and conjecture, aka phony baloney. The AGW bubble is about to burst, big time. A year or so from now nobody is going to be taking about AGW. I Gar-Un-Tee it!

Europeans are much more familiar with the history behind this book and the devestating effects of the Second World War in Europe. You should not be surprised if the educated European would have a completely (180 degree) view on your comparison/assertion.

Maybe this need congressional investigation. Call people before the House Un-Environmental Activities Commission and find out why they think man-made global warming is fake, and who else they know that also denies it.

This could be especially effective if you throw AGW deniers in jail, as David Suzuki suggests.

“there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been”. Instead, there are only “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios.”

“None of the models used by IPCC is initialised to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate.”

“GCMs “assume linearity” which “works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle … the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate”.

Absolutely. We need to resurrect The Inquisition for AGW deniers. Al Gore can be Grand Inquisitor. He needs some type of job anyway…doing something useful.

Send the hard-core deniers to Guantanamo…..do some water-boarding on them.

To start with even with a 1-dimensional model of the atmosphere, you have to model how temperature, humidity and density of the atmosphere change with height. You have to model how CO2 and H2O concentrations change with height. Then you have to model how the absorption lines of CO2 and H2O change in the upper atmosphere. Then you need not only a radiative model of equilibrium states, but a radiative-convective model. Then you need to perturb that and show how changes in CO2 feed back into changes in H2O saturation and how the system dynamically evolves to a new stable equilibrium.

I’ve played around with radiative models of the sun’s interior before, and everything I just mentioned I’d consider difficult. You can’t easily sit down and come to a proof that CO2 is definitely a greenhouse gas in a way that anyone with even a bit of algebra or calculus can understand.

If its that hard to get to the point where CO2 can just be argued to be a greenhouse gas, its going to be very hard to prove that the deniers are wrong. Most people just don’t have the background to understand the arguments.

And its laughable that deniers post that they’ve “researched for 2 years” and come to the conclusion that global warming is all a myth. I spent 7 years studying physics and really understanding the science behind global warming completely is fairly tough. It winds up being an argument where the deniers make their claims and the rebuttal is a huge list of citations which the deniers use various tactics to avoid having to slog through the actual science and understand it. The science is there, but drowning them in references doesn’t really accomplish anything.

The science is not settled and there is no consensus.
On the former, take a look at
http://www.nzclimatescience.org/
Vincent Gray has been part of the IPCC since it’s inception.

On the latter get a copy of this
http://www.amazon.com/ Deniers-Renowned-Scientists-Political-Persecution/ dp/ 0980076315/ ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210409498&sr=1-1

You’re not a regular here so you don’t know that I agree with you that there is no “consensus.” Consensus means consensus of opinion, wears we are dealing with actual scientific evidence and a strong scientific rubberstamp.

The only unknown now is whether climate change will have very serious consequences, or catastrophic ones. We don’t know yet. But the reason we don’t know is NOT uncertainty about the science — it is uncertainty about whether humans will act in the next decade to stop concentrations from going to 700+ ppm this century.

The science is quite settled that 700+ ppm is an unmitigated catastrophe beyond human imagining.

If you don’t believe that the climate is warming and that humans are the dominant cause, then you simply don’t believe in science. You have been taken in by the Big Lie. Nothing I can say and no amount of data that will change your mind.

The people who actually collect the climate data — NASA and Hadley — have repeatedly stated that their data shows the planet continues to warm! If you choose to believe the disinformation of others over the genuine information from the actual scientists involved, then what else cannot be called but the Big Lie?

You are certainly welcome to comment here — as long as you don’t spread long debunked pieces of disinformation.

But the best I can do for you is ask you to tell your children or children in your extended family that you are one of those who don’t think global warming is a big deal so they’ll know who to blame.