It appears there is "no ACTUAL consensus" on MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING?

Question

http://www.populartechnology.net/2007/10/no-consensus-on-global-warming.html

Answer 1

WOW thanks for enlightening me. I will disregard the numerous interviews i've heard with actual scientists and climatologists and instead listen to some guy on Y.A. who gave me a link to some crapola paid for by exxon!  

Answer 2

I would actually say there is a concensus is that global warming is a predominantly natural phenomenon, I suspect few scientists actually agree with the IPCC's statement that most of the warming during the last centuary was caused by man. But many scientists will agree the theory that increased co2 could cause warming is feasible and may effect the climate on a very small scale.

There are many scientists who openly disagree with AGW and many who stay quiet out of fear of retrubution.

See the Manhatten Declaration for example, or the climate realist list or the NIPCC, or the ICCS etc...

Unfortunetly people like Al Gore have made un-substantiated claims the science is settled and the media lapped it up. The IPCC have also made similar statements when many disagreed with the reports SPM

http://mclean.ch/climate/What_consensus_...

http://web.archive.org/web/2006052912273...

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F...

Note: Ice cores are not considered valid for co2 reconstruction by many as co2 is abosrbed by water within the ice. http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm for example. Stomatal data shows higher co2 in the past and further backs up the scientists concerns that ice cores are not valid.

Bob: the question is how many scientists agree with the AGW theory, not climate change, everyone accepts the climate changes so there will definetly be a concensus there as that is based on fact not theory. AGW is an unproven theory so there will not be a concensus as most skeptical scientists will require evidence before accepting such a theory.

Answer 3

I agree with you in that there is no consensus in the scientific community on the veracity of claims that human activity contributes significantly to global warming.

I also agree with you that virtually all reliable scientific evidence points to a naturally occurring warming caused not by human activity but rather by normal fluctuations in sun output and quirks of the earth's elliptical orbit.  What scientists who claim that they can prove that humans are causing global warming base their evidence on is, almost universally, studies showing CO2 levels and surface temperature readings going back, at best, only a few hundred years.  The earth is over 4 billion years old.  A few hundred years of data does not a statistically significant sample make!!!

Also, Greenland and Antarctic ice cores going back hundreds of thousands of years have shown that:

1)  There have been significant warming periods many millenia in the past BEFORE human civilization existed

2)  There have been significant increases and decreases of CO2 in the atmosphere BEFORE human civilization existed

and

3)  The increases/decreases in CO2 levels did not necessarily correspond to increases/decreases in temperature.

Remember, "Global Warming" is a popular catch phrase.  Governments hear this phrase and pay attention because voters and lobbyists pay attention.  Climate researchers are human and subject to the same temptations as everyone else.  If someone sees some evidence (however tenuous) that might seem to hint that human-caused global warming is real, there's a powerful temptation to spin the results in order to ensure further fat grants from the government.  If, however, a researcher finds evidence that human-caused global warming isn't real, then he or she has to fight much harder for grants only to find his or her research poo-pooed by powerful special interests.

PS  Personally, I believe that all the steps being taken to "curb" global warming:  alternative energies, ending use of fossil fuels, reversing the depletion of tropical rainforests, etc are FULLY justified whether or not humans actually have a hand in global warming.  It's not the end with which I take issue, it's the means.

Answer 4

Not true.

This (which is simply a message on an online forum like this) is all nonsense.  The "31,000 scientists" petition was a fraud.  It was designed to look like a communication from the National Academy of Sciences, which has protested.  It's just a list of names mailed in, some obvious fakes, with no credentials or affiliations attached.  The other things on the website above are similarly meaningless.  This is the truth:

"The fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists. I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist."

NASA's Gavin Schmidt

A survey of scientific papers showed that, of the 900 papers which listed "climate change" in the abstract, NONE denied global warming.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that global warming is real, and mostly caused by us.

You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist.

Answer 5

Causation remains unproven but is becoming a moot point as the summer that never really happened draws to a close.

Answer 6

I absolutely agree.

And even if there was a consensus, it only means an opinion from the community of scientists, but consensus is not recognized as a scientific method or technique to prove anything and it could be wrong.

For example: before Copernicus the Earth was the center of the universe, it was a scientific consensus, and it was wrong.

..EDIT..

The danger of using scientific consensus in policy making is when we realized they were based on theories which later turned out to be false (but the damage was already done, in this case it would be economical damage to us all)

Answer 7

http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabas...

I could print off loads of those petitions, hand them out to all my friends and get them to send them in as: Britney Spears (BS Geoscience), Santa Clause (PhD Paleoclimatology), Homer Simpson (M.S nuclear physics) etc.

I think that accounts for most of those signatures.

Re. The 3 links you posted,

The first one refers to the article in the third one:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/sto...

That guy has a PhD in electrical engineering (I've come across this article before), sure that's impressive, but it isn't an earth science... I think the hot spot he is referring to is stratospheric cooling. I frequently come across people pushing stratospheric cooling actually as disproof of a CO2 induced warming trend, but actually you would expect the stratosphere to cool, not warm, if the warming trend is cause by CO2, because: with a strengthening greenhouse effect, the absorption of infra red radiation in the lower atmosphere increases, allowing less radiation to higher atmospheric layers where the rate at which CO2 emits radiations back into space will become greater then the rate at which infra red radiation is absorbed

Ice cores show CO2 increase only after the warming trend began

Yes of course, that is because CO2 did not cause past warming, it was a 'positive feedback' response to other factors (such as changes in the earths movement and increasing solar irradiance) that intensified warming effects.

The 2nd article is pure junk science designed to deceive

This guys argument include ‘Natural effects have been and continue to be important contributors to variations in the earth's climate, especially solar variability and decadal and multidecadal ocean cycles.’

Basically, the sun is still shining (and a solar intensity cycle still exists) and la Nina and el Ninõ still exist.

Answer 8

Ther eis absolutely NO consensus. The AGW proponents use this tactic as a means of stifling debate. It seems every time there has been a debate they lose. So, as to not have to enter into debates, the yclaim a scientific consensus.

Answer 9

The reason there is no consesus is because there is no such thing as global warming. OwlGore is a scam artist along with the rest of them.

Answer 10

I am an actual scientist (PhD in chemical physics). Do you want to know my opinion or are you only interested in the opinion of scientists that agree with you?

Sorry but science is not debated on webpages, blogs and editorial sections of newspapers.  It is debated in peer reviewed journals.  Most articles in peer reviewed journals on AGW suggest that man is having an influence on the environment.