Do these opposing questions illustrate the main difference between global warming 'skeptics' and proponents?

Question

The proponent question is "Why do you think data and analysis corrections always seem to support anthropogenic global warming?"

In the details, 3 such examples are provided. One is well-known, and two are supported with a discussion including peer-reviewed studies.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApVbhQd.nj4PFFkPgrhC9x_sy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080625123244AAvPV9Z

The 'skeptic' question is the exact opposite. No examples are provided, and the only supporting evidence is a link to a paper written by a marine geologist who can't even perform a simple statistical analysis, and which is not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but instead by a right-wing think tank. The paper itself spends most of the time railing about the IPCC and has almost no scientific content.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080625172811AAsmAPh&r=w#RsR4WTC1UGLXAOZlOfd26Pr22G__DAD6hVJeJW5TpX.ayPFJ4ZHX

Do these opposing questions illustrate the difference between 'skeptics' and proponents?

Answer 1

No, I don't think the opposing questions illustrate the difference between skeptics and proponents, I think they illustrate the maturity level of a few individuals who simply reverse the question(s) asked as if they are making some significant point by doing so.  A pop psychologist or two has doubtless written about the phenomenon of lowering oneself to the level of grade school playground tactics in adulthood due to low self-esteem and a sense of impotence.

Ergo, you are rubber, they are glue...(I can't believe I didn't get all thumbs ups for that one, some people just have NO sense of humor)

Answer 2

Nobody takes any blog serious Dana, you don't suppose the guys over at real climate really have any interest in applying corrections to the cooling in the early to mid nineties caused by Mt. Pinatubo, or the cooling in the Eighties caused by the El-Chichon eruption?

Or do you suppose they might want to subtract the warming in 1998 caused by the Super El-Nino, or the other numerous El-Nino events over the last 30 years that have clearly NOTHING to do with AGW.

No I don't think they have any interest whatsoever, because it would downplay the warming trend significantly. So there are numerous corrections that still need be applied to every single climate metric used, so spare me with your high horse proponent/skeptic superiority complex.

EDIT: GCN

There is nothing easy about it, nor is the matter closed, as you frequently like to point out how simplistic the physics of Earths atmosphere are, others will argue that radiative transfer is dominated by water vapor and clouds, and CO2 is insignificant, you cannot prove otherwise.

EDIT GCN:

My doubts are based on pure and simple lack of evidence, the tropical mid troposphere receives vastly more re-radiated energy than any other latitude on the planet, there is no heating in the atmosphere that explains the surface. As far your figure about cloud's they are wrong, clouds react with both incoming solar energy at visible wavelengths as well as outgoing infrared, a small (2%) INDECTABLE change in global cloud cover can easily overwhelm any forcing as a result of the 100 ppm increase of CO2. As far as stratospheric cooling, NOAA officially states that it is primarily from ozone depletion and secondarily because of AGW, since there has been no stratospheric cooling in the last 14 years, this does not support AGW, in my opinion, as well as others. AGW could well be the reason for some dectable warming, but there is no evidence to support it, except a lack of any other explanation, that's not acceptable!

EDIT GCN:

As a matter of fact I have made some rudimentary adjustments for volcanic forcing, but have have not rmoved the effects of El-Nino.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog/popup_sli...

AND GCN:

An as far Earths energy balance  the clouds reflect about 24% of incoming solar radiation, thats roughly 322 Watts Square Meter. A 2% decrease in cloud cover allows an additional 6+ watts/M^2 to enter the lower atmosphere. I dont understand your confusion with this fact, perhaps you need a refresher course.

http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-res...

.

Answer 3

TC:  Have you done that, factor out the volcanic cooling ENSO effects from the global mean temperature record to show the increase is less over the last 30 years, or do you know of someone who has tried and published the results?  I am truly curious since I've never seen that done and if it is so easy to do, and results in what you say, I am amazed McKittrick and company haven't done it.  

As to the question, the skeptic question wasn't serious.  More and more, skeptics seem to divide into two camps, the libertarian types who are scared of losing their freedom (although they seem to be equating freedom with consumerism, which I suppose is as good as it gets for a lot of people) and argue from emotion rather than intellect, and people who seem not to have any intellectual investment at all and seem to be in it simply to be contrary.  The skeptic question came from the latter camp.

TC:  If it isn't trivial to show that there would be less of a trend in global mean temperature if you took out aperiodic signals from the time series, how can you be so sure that the trend in global mean temperature is insignificant (or at least would be less)?  Furthermore, the effect of clouds is estimated to be about half of the radiative forcing from CO2 (Table 2.21, AR4) and the radiative forcing from CO2 is very well known, so why are you so willing to believe that an increase in the radiative forcing from CO2 is insignificant?  I realize you don't accept the IPCC, but then it appears to me you can't assimilate any data, no matter how reliable, that contradict what you want to believe (i.e., your rejection of the Fu et al. paper is a great example of this).  Therefore, it is likely that no matter how strongly the case is made that anthropogenic CO2 is radiatively forcing the planet and changing climate, you will find some reason to disbelieve.

TC:  You need to cite a source for your 2% figure.  Unless you have some credible study that shows that level of sensitivity, it's hard to believe your claim since the natural variability in cloud cover is huge compared to 2%.  If your only reason to reject a theory is that there could be something else that would explain things (but you have no idea what that other explanation might be), then you are not being skeptical, you are in denial.  

This goes back to something I said a while back, you trust Lindzen, who hasn't been right about anything related to climate and feel Hansen, who has been right about pretty much everything, is lying to you.  Why is that?

Answer 4

Name me one scientific study that shows that urban heat Island effects produce can produce a cooling effect.  But yet your politically motivated buddy at NASA has made adjustments that says that cities produce a cooling effect.

An audit by researcher Steve McIntyre reveals that NASA has made urban adjustments of temperature data in its GISS temperature record in the wrong direction. The temperatures in urban areas are generally warmer than in rural areas. McIntyre classified the 7364 weather stations in the GISS world-wide network into various categories depending on the direction of the urban adjustment. NASA has applied a "negative urban adjustment" to 45% of the urban station measurements (where adjustments are made), meaning that the adjustments makes the warming trends steeper.

As for the studies coming out of blogs, this is where they were published:

“Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on

gridded global climate data”, by R. McKitrick and P. Michaels, December 2007, Journal

of Geophysical Research, Volume 112.

“Further evidence for influence of surface processes on lower tropospheric and surface

temperature trends”, by Laat de, A.T.J., Maurellis, A.N., International J. of Climatology,

26, p. 897-913, 2006. http://www.knmi.nl/~laatdej/2006joc1292....

Answer 5

No.

Answer 6

Ahh...you forgot to mention that the selected peers for these 'peer reviewed' studies are hand picked alarmists.

They'd never allow the real scientific community to study them!!!

Answer 7

This is unwinnable, Dana.

"At present there is a small minority which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day."

The Royal Society (the UK's "leading scientific academy", according to the Guardian).

The skeptics have their religion, and all the proponents have are hard facts...

EDIT

Amy - super link!

I agree with Dr. Blob's quote but also liked "Despite the international scientific community’s consensus on climate change, a very small band of critics continues to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it." and "the skeptics have received significant funding from coal and oil companies..."

My other favourite quote this week is from the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid: "The math is simple: America has just 3% of the world's oil reserves, but Americans use a quarter of its oil".

Answer 8

Perhaps so, but there are other kinds of skeptics.

There are skeptics who know that human activity has seriously contributed to global warming, but who do not accept that removing the human contribution will stop global warming.

This might seem intuitively obvious, but it is not.

A large part of the urgency of dealing with global warming is derived from the fact that warming itself contributes to global warming.

Once we set GW in motion, it is self sustaining.

We have to do something more than merely stopping emissions, we have to set in place some process that will undo previous emissions.

Even that might take a long time to succeed, or might not succeed. stopping GW is likely much more complex than merely ending emissions, unless by chance we have a major series of volcanic eruptions cooling earth.

Answer 9

So you are using a random link provided by an asker whose credentials you don't even know to support AGW...

this seems like an awfully cheap way to get support for your position.

The answer to your question is obvious. There is obviously a difference between the two because they are both proposing different scientific theories.

Answer 10

"So you are using a random link provided by an asker whose credentials you don't even know to support AGW...

this seems like an awfully cheap way to get support for your position."

Actually, it's not.  In general, the scientific quality of the skeptics arguments here is not good.  Often they simply post wild assertions, with absolutely no support, other than their words.

"You should watch the Great Global Warming swindel. If you weren't a complete imbecile. You might learn somthing."

Excellent example of the scientific quality of the "skeptics".  The movie is nonsense.  PROOF:

"A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environmen...

"Pure Propaganda"

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313p...

Explanations of why the science is wrong.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

History of the director.

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

Gore's movie may be a little over dramatic, but it has the basic science right.  This movie does not.

Channel 4 itself undercuts the movie in a funny way.  If you go to their website on the movie you find links to real global warming information.  They also have a way to "Ask the Expert" about global warming.  The questions go to a respected mainstream scientist who supports (mostly) human responsibility for global warming.

So, why did Channel 4 broadcast it?

"The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy."  

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climat...

"you don't suppose the guys over at real climate really have any interest in applying corrections to the cooling in the early to mid nineties caused by Mt. Pinatubo, or the cooling in the Eighties caused by the El-Chichon eruption?

Or do you suppose they might want to subtract the warming in 1998 caused by the Super El-Nino, or the other numerous El-Nino events over the last 30 years that have clearly NOTHING to do with AGW."

Easy enough to do.  Taking the 5 year rolling average (the red line in the graph below) pretty much averages out these weather events, leaving the true trend in climate.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2...

Answer 11

This link from the David Suzuki Foundation discusses the skeptics tirades and sums it up rather nicely.

Answer 12

No, and who do you work for. You seem to always post something which is completely biased. Where did you dig that paper out from because there are so many better exmaples. You should watch the Great Global Warming swindel. If you weren't a complete imbecile. You might learn somthing.

Answer 13

Wow, thanks Amy.  And thanks Dana for all you do.

This is the key statement:

"...these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists directly – for example, by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals or participating in international conferences on climate science. Instead, they focus their attention on the media, the general public, and policy makers with the goal of delaying action on climate change."

So what do we do about it?

Answer 14

The skeptic generally has no way of knowing the difference between credible science with good analysis and some hack who is paid to make a case. This is why they are so strongly convinced that there are good reasons to be skeptical.