GOP Not Listening to Its Own Scientists on Climate Change

Anonymous - 6:00am.  Can you provide any data sets that show temperatures have increased in the last 10 years?  Where's the missing heat? 

http://www.ipcc-data.org/obs/ar4_obs.html

However, you have to look at the trend over the last 150 years (i.e., since the beginning of industrialization). Please note that it is CLIMATE change; not weather change. Just because it's warm one year and colder the next doesn't mean that a change in climate is not occurring. Moreover, effects on the climate are not instantaneous--the biosphere is a complex system, with numerous elements being sequestered and released through various natural systems. Thus, the changes that we induce on the atmosphere may take more than ten years to show their effects; simply because YOU haven't noticed anything taking place doesn't mean there isn't. It's basic statistics.

In any case, let's say for a moment that it's all a hoax and scientists and the UN and hundreds of thousands of activists around the world are trying to ruin the economy (and it's not that oil companies are perpetuating the lie that climate change is false and unscientific to continue unethical yet profitable business practices). Even if climate change is not anthropogenic, what could possibly be so harmful about discovering clean energy?

Innovation spurs economic growth and thereby increases the availability of jobs--why would anyone want to halt scientific discovery by keeping us in the past? The real job killer is not the EPA or climate change scientists: it's stagnation.

We've seen how you propeller heads and Chicken Littles have cooked you data and schemed to suppress publications from anyone who questions your research methods.  Get over yourselves and put a sock in it.

thanes - I accept your challenge:

Why was upside down Tiljander sediment data used in temperature proxies when the original author specifically stated not to?  Do I win a prize?

This sort of "hand-waving", "excuse making" exercise is not "debunking" at all.

There are countless examples where legitimate questions have been raised, only to have superficial hand-waving like this done that doesn't even address the concern.  Then all the true believers say "it was debunked" and go on their merry way.

Studies have shown that people that buy into climate change are actually less scientifically literate than those who don't.  A shocking percentage of Warmists think it has something to do with the Ozone hole.

Instead of belittling criticisms, scientists like this should take on the challenge.  Pick up the gauntlet thrown down by the critics.  Step outside their comfort zone to address the gaping holes that are still out there.  But they won't do this, because they know there are gaping holes, and they know they are making assumptions.  So we end up with people talking past each other, attacking each other, and trying to label each other as "deniers" or whatever other hurtful label they think will marginalize them.

One clear fact about this issue is that it will take a LONG time to resolve, either way, because the changes are modest and the time scales are long.  It will take decades and decades to get a handle on what's actually going on.  The Warmists use this reality to argue for MORE research and MORE money, when I think it plainly argues for LESS.  Let's wait and see.  We already have all the instruments we need, we just need TIME.  So while we're waiting, let's put those resources into something more useful.

Do these scientist vote republican? What other issues are the republican candidates not paying attention to reality on?

Ignorance is blill

Look at The latest HadCRUT data, with land & ocean global temperatures. It's sure not going up, but CO2 is.

http://www.4shared.com/photo/GZ2f6K-9/HadCRUT3gl-2011-20yr.html?refurl=d...

The Debunkers were busted and debunked

The scientific finding that settles the climate-change debate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-scientific-finding-that-settl...
“The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, rigorously explored the specific objections raised by skeptics — and found them groundless.”

Industries Buried Internal Findings: Climate Wording Cut from Public Report
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR200904...
“A group funded by fossil-fuel-dependent companies that argued for years that human-generated greenhouse gases were not driving global warming was advised by its own scientists that this was the case, according to documents submitted as part of an ongoing lawsuit between auto manufacturers and states seeking to regulate vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions.

Term limits seem like a great solution until you realize that they would want to have good lobbying jobs once leaving Congress and in their lame duck terms not jeopoardize that gravy train.

Unfortunately for you, the opposite is clearly true.  When the Warmists propose a model that ends up getting falsified, they never say "we were wrong".  They always wiggle around and do rhetorical acrobatics so that everything is still "true", but just not fully understood.

One classic example of this would be James Hansen's 1988 temperature predictions.  He proposed 3 models, one of which included a "decoupling of temperature and CO2".  In other words, the null hypothesis.  And now it is clear that temperatures over the last 24 years have most closely approximated his null hypothesis.

Has he come out to say he was wrong, and that his hypothesis was falsified?  Of course not, he's a climate change rock star, raking in millions of dollars of money and other benefits from the environmentalists, and turning NASA into a climate change unit.

If the hypothesis of climate change is not falsifiable, it's not scientific.  That's the reality, and based on the exterme machinations that are used to try to ignore contrary evidence, I would say it is much closer to a new age religion than science at this point.

James Hansen's 1988 did not "propose three models", whatever that would mean.  He used a single computer model to make three different projections for the next ten years, based on three different guesses as to the rate at which atmospheric CO2 would build up in the atmosphere during that at that time.

One estimate assumed a rapid build up of CO2; another, a moderate business-as-usual build up; and the third, a slow build up.  Of course, each set of data produced a different projection of the subsequent increase in global temperature.

The data sets that Hansen used as input to his model were necessarily guesses.  The rate at which CO2 would build up during the coming ten years would depend on factors outside the realm of science, such as whether the nations of the world would take measures to curb CO2 emissions, whether cleaner technologies would be adopted, how many more cars would be on the roads, how many more buildings would be built, and so on.  Hansen said he thought that the middle, moderate build up scenario was the most likely to happen, but that he couldn't say for sure.

The middle scenario for the rate of increase of CO2 was very close to what in fact occurred over the next ten years. and Hansen's computer model came very close to predictiing the rise in global temperature that resulted from that actual increase.

Why do so many people think that Hansen got it wrong, when in fact he very nearly hit the bull's-eye?

In subsequent testimony before Congress, a global warming sceptic named Patrick J. Michael claimed that Hansen's projection had greatly exaggerated the rise in global temperature that would occur over the next ten years.  Michaels supported this claim by showing members of Congress a graph that included only Hansen's projection based on a rapid build-up of atmospheric CO2 -- naturally, the projection based on a far more rapid rate of build up than actually occurred predicted more a rapid global warming than actually occurred.  Michaels did not mention the other two scenarios that Hansen proposed; in fact, he showed Congress a version of Hansen's graph from which those two scenarios had been erased.

Michael's mispresentation of Hansen's testimony and methods was quickly exposed, but Michaels has never lacked for followers, who connive at his intellectual dishonesty and embrace his assertions.

And all of this has been unfortunate for all of us.

You keep using that word, "skepticism." I do not think it means what you think it means. "Skeptical" is the logical position that one does not accept a particular claim without supporting evidence. "Denial" would be more appropriate; deniers are philosophically opposed to a particular viewpoint and will argue against that viewpoint in spite of any evidence to the contrary. Global climate change is real. The numbers are real. Only a denier would argue against the data.

Here's the operant question for the deniers of ahthropogenic global climate change: What would make you change your mind? What data trend is necessary for you to accept the proposition that the Earth's overall temperature is warming up?

Here, btw, is a link to a graph taken direclty from NASA data, showing the global temperature chane over the last 130 years. The trend is clear. How would a denialist explain it?

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_tem...