Why can't the AGW alarmist make a scientific argument?

Question

They use Wikipedia as a source and somtimes even politicians. I could not think of anything less reliable.

Answer 1

Does the ipcc count? or NASA?

Answer 2

Rock on good question

Answer 3

Yeah, and wikipedia is so unreliable it's no longer allowed to be used by students in school.

And that silly quote from bumpers doesn't say anything either.

Give it a minute and the AGW clones will step in with links to a bunch of bogus sites "proving beyond any doubt" that just breathing out will cause the planet to catch fire.

I wish we had that power sometimes, but the truth is we don't.

The reason they don't want to debate this issue is because the evidence is against them.  So instead they want to shut down all dissent and proclaim it a "consensus."

Answer 4

And what do the deniers use as sources?  Tabloids, their gut feeling, and conservative web rags?  

Environmentalists use more than just wikipedia and politicians... there's plenty of data out there.

OK, so you cherry pick your examples and can only come up with 2 things (wikipedia and politicians) which are only wrong sometimes... but completely ignore the fact that the denier sources are far, far, far worse.

This isn't a question... it's bait.

Answer 5

Scientific arguments are based on reproducible  experimentation.  global warming is speculation at best.

Answer 6

A spokesman for the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific academy, said: "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.

"We have reached a point where a failure to take action to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions would be irresponsible and dangerous."

Answer 7

Richard cites a group such as NASA with the asinine assertion that everyone in NASA believes that humans cause harmful warming.  The consensus clearly exists only in the minds of the alarmists as well as certain politicians and in the political appointees assigned to the head different "scientific" groups such as the the ones he listed.

Answer 8

What an ironic and hypocritical question.

There are many basic scientific facts which can only be explained if the current global warming is being caused by an increased greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels.

For example, the planet is warming as much or more during the night than day.  If the warming were due to the Sun, the planet should warm a lot more during the day when the Sun has influence.  Greenhouse gases trap heat all the time, so they warm the planet regardless of time of day.  Another example is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because the greenhouse gases trap the heat in the lower atmosphere.  If warming were due to the Sun, it would be warming all layers of the atmosphere.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

We know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

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

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming.  What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming.  This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming.  They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

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

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles.  They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man....

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes.  Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions.  We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/g...

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels.  We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%).

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Your turn.  Where's your scientific argument?   Hmm nowhere to be found.

Answer 9

Hey, this isn't Wikipedia. Where is your argument?

NASA, the National Academy of Sciences support AGW theory. These are just 2 of the most trusted scientific organizations in the world. Below are more...

Scientific organizations statement (Joint science academies’ statement 2005) from the G8 nations.

"It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001)2. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate."

Furthermore...

"The scientific understanding of climate change is now

sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It

is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they

can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term

reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."

Signatories shown below...

Academia Brasiliera de Ciências, Brazil

Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Royal Society of Canada, Canada

Académie des Sciences, France

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Leopoldina, Germany

Indian National Science Academy, India

Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei,Italy

Science Council of Japan, Japan

Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

National Academy of Sciences, United States of America

Royal Society, United Kingdom

Other organizations...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007

U.S. National Research Council, 2001

American Meteorological Society

American Geophysical Union

American Institute of Physics

American Astronomical Society

Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London

Geological Society of America

American Chemical Society

Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)

The Joint science academies’ statement 2007 is also linked below.

EDIT - Jim Z will spout his propaganda without providing 1 piece of evidence to prove his assertions. That is asinine.

Answer 10

AGW alarmist can make a scientific argument.  They are pretty good at it.  The problem with AGW is sort of like a big run away boulder rolling down a mountain.  Scientists run with it rather then get crushed by the political and popular weight of it.  You see most scientists require funding from different sources in order to continue their work and make a living.  The grants are supplied by special interest groups from all sides of the issue.  Even Nasa has a general policy direction that requires supporting statistics from it scientists.  

AGW is the 800 pound Gorilla in the room at this point.  If you stand against it, even if your information is accurate, you will get beat down.  

The AGW alarmists can pull out their computer models and predictions of doom all they wish, time will tell a different story.  As a matter of fact it already is, can anyone please tell me why it hasn't gotten any warmer since 1998?  For ten years now the CO2 is supposed to have been rising yet it's not getting any hotter?  

AGW fans your time is running out, your computer models don't seem to be correlating with reality.

Answer 11

Wow, are you ever misinformed.  Look at Dana's answer, I have nothing else to add other than to say there's your best answer.

Answer 12

Lol! And what do you use, conservapedia? Isn't global warming right next to the entry on how Noah fit all the animals on the ark?