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Climate Change: Summary of Current Science
Cap and Trade, Global Warming, and Climate Change all have significant implications for we humans. The following analysis was done by Cato scholar, Andrei Illarionov, formerly Vladimir Putin's chief economic advisor. As an economist he studied the available literature and synthesized the current state of the scientific evidence on climate change and global warming. It is significant in that the "solutions" coming out of Copenhagen are really political in nature and not necessarily based on the best science or the best economics.
For the record, I believe in climate change and global warming, as the science suggests. The issue is the extent and impact of human behavior ("anthropogenic factors"). I think the scientific evidence presented by Illarionov and Cato, as well as the Competitive Enterprise Institute is pretty good.
I will also refer you to RealClimate.org which is run by four climatologists, and who have excellent resource materials. I will not comment on their objectivity or accuracy because I am not a climatologist. So, you can compare some of their data to those that Illarionov and Cato present. I checked a few and there is some agreement on the data, but perhaps not the overall view of things.
I will say that much of what is written about global warming and climate change is bunk. I think that it is the latest movement around which people who hate capitalism and free markets gravitate toward. And I am skeptical about the political solutions offered, especially those coming out of Copenhagen. My guess about Copenhagen: nothing major will happen.
A Few Notes On Climate Change
By Andrei Illarionov
December 11, 2009 at 5:33 pm
As the Copenhagen Climate Conference is taking place, it is appropriate to clarify once again what is more or less accurately known about the climate of our planet and about climate change.
Obviously, a brief post can not substitute for detailed studies of professionals in a variety of scientific disciplines – climatology, atmospheric physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and economics. However, a short post can summarize basic theses on the main trends in climate evolution, on its forecasts, and on its actual and projected effects.
1. The Earth’s climate is constantly changing. The climate was changing in the past, is changing now and, obviously, will be changing in the future – as long as our planet exists.
2. Climatic changes are largely cyclical in nature. There are various time horizons of climatic cycles – from the annual cycle known to everyone to cycles of 65-70 years, of 1,300 years, or of 100,000 years (the so called Milankovitch cycles).
3. There is no fundamental disagreement among scientists, public figures and governments about the fact that the climate is changing. There is a broad consensus that climate changes occur constantly. The myth, created by climate alarmists, that their opponents deny climate change is sheer propaganda.
4. Current debate among climatologists, economists and public figures is not about the fact of climate change, but about other issues. In particular, disagreements exist on:
- Comparative levels of modern day temperatures (relative to the historically observed),
- The direction of climate change depending on the length of record,
- The extent of climate change,
- The rate of climate change,
- Causes of climate change,
- Forecasts of climate change,
- Consequences of climate change,
- The optimal strategy for human beings to respond to climate change.
5. Unbiased answers to many of these issues are critically dependent on a chosen time horizon – whether it is 10 years, or 30 years, or 70 years, or 1000 years, or 10,000 years, or hundreds of thousands or millions of years.Depending on the time horizon, the answers to many of these questions may be different, even opposite.
6. The current level of global temperature in historical perspective is not unique. The average temperature of the Earth is now estimated at about 14.5 degrees Celsius. In our planet’s history there have been few periods when the Earth’s temperature was lower than the current – in the early Permian period, in the Oligocene, and during periodic glaciations in the Pleistocene. For most of the time during the last half billion years, the air temperature at the Earth’s surface greatly exceeded the current one, and for about half of this period it was approximately 25°C, or 10°C higher than the current temperature. Regular glaciations of cold periods during the Pleistocene era lasted for approximately 90,000 years, with a low temperature of approximately 5°C below that of the present, alternated by warm interglacial periods (for 4,000-6,000 years) with temperatures of 1-3°C higher than at present. Approximately 11,000 years ago the last significant increase in temperature began (of approximately 5°C), during which time a huge glacier, that covered a considerable part of Eurasia and America, had melted. Climate warming has played a key role in humanity’s acquisition of the secrets of agriculture and in its transition to civilization. Over the past 11,000 years there were at least five distinct warm periods, the so-called “climatic optima” when the temperature of the planet was at 1-3°C higher than at present.
7. The focus of climate change depends critically on the choice of time horizon. In the past 11 years (1998-2009 years) global temperature was flat. Before that, in the preceding 20 years (1979-1998 years) it increased by about 0.3°C. Before that, during the preceding 36 years (1940-1976 years) the temperature fell by about 0.1°C. Before that, for the preceding two centuries (1740 – 1940 years), the overall trend in global temperature was mainly neutral – with periodic warming, followed by cooling, and then again warming. Over the past three centuries (from the turn of 18th century), the temperature in the northern hemisphere has increased by approximately 1.3°C, from the trough of the so-called “Little Ice Age” (LIA) during the years 1500-1740 years, followed by the contemporary climatic optimum (CCO), which started around 1980. During the three centuries preceding the LIA, the temperature in the northern hemisphere was falling compared to the level it was during the medieval climatic optimum (MCO) in the 8th – 13th centuries. Depending on the chosen time frame the long-term temperature trend has a different trajectory. For periods of the last 2,000 years, the last 4,000 years, and the last 8,000 years, the trend was negative. For periods of the past 1,300 years, the last 5,000 years, and the last 9,000 years it was positive.
8. The rate of contemporary climate change is much more modest in comparison with the rate of climatic changes observed earlier in the history of the planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes the increase in the global temperature by 0.76°C over the last century (1906-2005 years) as extraordinary. There is reason to suspect this temperature value is somewhat overstated. However, the main point is that previous rises in temperature were greater than those in the modern era. Comparable data demonstrate that the increase in temperature, for example, in Central England in the 18th century (by 0.97°C) was more significant than in the 20th (by 0.90°C). The climatic changes in Central Greenland over the past 50,000 years show that there were at least a dozen periods during which the regional temperature increased by 10-13°C. Given the correlation between changes in temperature at high latitudes and globally, those shifts in temperature regime in Greenland meant a rise in global temperature by 4-6°C. Such a rate was approximately 5-7 times faster than the actual (and, perhaps, slightly exaggerated) temperature increase in the 20th century.
9. The rate of current climate change (the speed of modern warming) by historical standards is not unique.According to IPCC data, the rate of temperature increase over the past 50 years was 0.13°C per decade. According to comparable data, obtained through instrumental measurements, a higher rate of temperature increase was observed at least three times: in the late 17th century – early 18th century; in the second half of the 18th century; and in the late 19th century – early 20th century. The centennial rate of warming in the 20th century is slower than the warming in the 18th century that was instrumentally recorded and slower than the warming in at least 13 cases over the past 50,000 years that were measured by palaeoclimatic methods.
10. Among the causes of climate change in the pre-industrial era there were hardly any anthropogenic factors – due to modest population size and mankind’s limited economic activities. But the range of climatic fluctuations and their rate and peak values in the pre-industrial era exceeded the parameters of climate change recorded in the industrial period.
11. During the industrial age (since the beginning of the 19th century) climate change is believed to be under the impact of both groups of factors – of natural and of anthropogenic character. Since the rate of climate change in the industrial age is so far noticeably smaller than at some time in the pre-industrial age, there is no basis for the assertion that anthropogenic factors had already become as significant as natural factors, even less for the assertion that they overwhelm natural factors.
12. Factors of anthropogenic climate change are rather diverse and can not be confined to carbon dioxide only.Mankind impacts local, regional and global climate by constructing buildings and structures, heating houses, industrial and public premises, by logging and planting forests, plowing arable land, damming rivers, draining and irrigating lands, leveling and paving territories, conducting industry, issuing aerosols, etc.
13. There is no consensus in the scientific community on the role of carbon dioxide in climate change. Some scientists believe that it is crucial, others believe that it is secondary to other factors. There are also serious disagreements on the nature and direction of possible causality between concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature: some researchers believe the former causes temperature to rise, others argue the opposite – that fluctuations in temperature cause changes in carbon dioxide concentration.
14. Unlike carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2) is harmless to humans; in contrast to aerosol, a harmful and dangerous substance, carbon dioxide does not pollute the environment. It has neither a color, nor a taste, nor a smell. Therefore, popularly used photos and videos showing factory chimney stacks emitting smoke and cars emitting exhaust to illustrate carbon dioxide are just misleading – CO2 is invisible; what is visible in those images are pollutants. It should also be noted that the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the air has a positive impact on the productivity of plants, including agricultural crops.
15. The relationship of the concentration of carbon dioxide to climate change remains a subject of intense scientific debate. True, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past two centuries increased from 280 parts per million of air particles in the early 19th century to 388 particles in 2009. It is also true that the global temperature in that period rose by about 0.8°C. But whether these two factors are connected is unclear. The dynamics of CO2 concentration did not correlate well with the expected changes in temperature. The significant and rapid increases in global temperature during the interglacial periods of the Pleistocene, during the Medieval Climatic Optima, in the 18th century, were not preceded by an increase in carbon dioxide concentration. In the industrial age, an increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was not always accompanied by a rise in global temperature. In 1944-1976 CO2 concentration increased by 24 units – from 308 to 332 particles, but the global temperature fell 0.1°C. In 1998-2009 CO2 concentration increased by 21 units – from 367 to 388 particles, but the global temperature trend remained flat. In the first half of the 1940’s the decline in the concentration of carbon dioxide by 3 units (as a result of the massive destruction caused by World War II) did not prevent the global temperature to rise by 0.1°C.
16. So far global climate models demonstrate their limited effectiveness. The complex nature of the climate system is not reflected adequately enough in the global climate models whose use has recently spread around the world. The projections developed on their basis in the late 1990s through the early 2000s predicted the global temperature to rise by 1.4-5.8°C till the end of the 21st century with a 0.2-0.4°C increase already in the first decade. In reality during 1998-2009 the temperature was flat at best.
17. Forecasts of global climate change made at the beginning of this decade by Russian scientists (from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, the Voejkov Main Geophysical Observatory) predicted a fall in the global temperature by 0.6°C by 2025-2030 in comparison with a temperature peak reached at the end of the 20thcentury. So far the actual temperature for the last decade has not risen.
18. Implications of climate change for human beings differ greatly depending on their direction, size and rate. An increase in temperature leads as a rule to a softer and moister climate, while a decline in temperature leads to a harder and drier climate. It was a climatic optimum in the Holocene period with temperatures 1-3°C higher than today that greatly contributed to the birth of civilization. Conditions for people’s life and economic activities in warmer climates are usually more favorable than in colder environments. In warmer climates there is usually more precipitation than in drier areas, the cost of heating and volume of food required to sustain human life is lower, while vegetation and navigation periods are longer, and crops’ yields are higher.
19. Methods “to combat global warming” by reducing carbon dioxide emissions suggested by climate alarmists are not only scientifically unfounded in the absence of extraordinary or unusual changes in climate during the modern era. Such measures, if adopted, are especially dangerous for mid- and lower income countries. Those measures would effectively cut those countries off the path to prosperity and hinder their ability to close the gap with more developed nations.
20. The impact of all anthropogenic factors (not only CO2) on climate is unclear when compared with factors of nature. Therefore, the most effective strategy for humanity in responding to different types of climate change is adaptation. That approach is exactly the way that humans have reacted to the larger-scale climatic changes in the past, even though they were less prepared then for such changes. Now mankind has greater resources to adapt to lesser climate fluctuations and it is better equipped for them scientifically, technically and psychologically. The adaptation of humanity to climate changes is incomparably less costly than other options being proposed and imposed by climate alarmists. Human society has already adopted to climate change and will continue to do so as long as economy and society are vibrant and free.
Andrei Illarionov is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. From 2000 to December 2005 he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Illarionov also served as the president's personal representative (sherpa) in the G-8. He is one of Russia's most forceful and articulate advocates of an open society and democratic capitalism, and has been a long-time friend of the Cato Institute. Illarionov received his Ph.D. from St. Petersburg University in 1987. From 1993 to 1994 Illarionov served as chief economic adviser to the prime minister of the Russian Federation, Viktor Chernomyrdin. He resigned in February 1994 to protest changes in the government's economic policy. In July 1994 Illarionov founded the Institute of Economic Analysis and became its director. Illarionov has coauthored several economic programs for Russian governments and has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies.
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The only traffic through the northwest passage has to follow Us Or Russian ice breakers same as always. If you would do some research and stop talking book for Algore. You might not look as foolish as you do right now.
Wrong... the passage was also open in the 1940's and sailed through with an RCMP wooden hulled schooner called the St. Roch.
Google it and weep guys...
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NWpassageAndStRoch.jpg
Took just over 30 days on one crossing...
why do you want to insult how turtles look
what did we ever do to you
btw regardless of cause, are you denying that the ice in and around the arctic circle has not melting away over the last century?
not so the decade from 1990 to 2000 is the warmest on record
the current decade represents a down turn
climate data is erratic thats why long term trends are important
the science is not perfect and no one can be 100% certain, but the evidence is convincing and the cost of doing nothing if indeed we are warming the planet will be catastrophic
Your records, does CRU ring a bell, are as phoney as the BLS data. But you are correct in the long term trend is what matters.
The trend has been warmer for several hundred years. Ever since we left the last Ice age. Glad you bought it up. The other proven trend which the scammers deny is that CO2 rises in concentration several hundred years after the warming commences. Like 100 years ago. DUH!!!
regards
read the AP story...5 reporters read all one million words of email
decision...the science was good not faked
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_sc/climate_e_mails
as for the up trend... yeah long term theres been warming...short term there has been even more warming...there is subtlety in the data look closely the stakes are high...much higher than our fear of or hatred for taxes or regulations
defending global warming by siting AP reporters??? Where's YOUR integrity??
ah but yet you accept AP reports when they announced the bogus data and conspiratorial emails
The lead AP reporter who wrote the article was also one of the guys who was caught in the ClimateGate leaked emails... you can read his "unbiased" emails they are now on-line... quite a personal friend of CRU Jones et al BTW... refers to these guys by first names even... hmmmmmm.
Would you at least admit before hand that if this was true that a conflict exists? Just askin' MockMann...
FAIL!
One article, from an unreliable source that more than likely has an agenda, is FAIL. Loaded with fail. Massive tons of fail.
Read the emails yourself, as I have. Journalists who have no backing in science wouldn't realize this. THEY'RE REPORTERS!!!!!!!! They had C averages in college, couldn't do anything rigorous, so they BECAME REPORTERS!!!
Not to mention, as studies from Pew have shown, 85% of all reporters are of a leftist sympathy....which naturally means what?
AGW sympathy. Stupidity. Ignorance.
You need to vet your sources.
I want it warmer...I only WISH man could turn the stat up. Will someone please tell me why an ice sheet over North America is good for me?
climate change will rock your world
pestulance and desease migration, species extinction, desertification in places that were agricultural centers etc will cuase huge shifts in immigrant populations across boarders in periods of time so short that civil authorities will be unable to manage and compesate
enjoy the malestrom
So you are saying that the Hispanics are migrating for climatological reasons? Not economic?
all that stuff already happens, albeit on a much grander scale than your alarmist mind can grasp
I hope the data on which you are predicting our demise is more reliable than your spelling. I believe you set a new ZH---and perhaps Internet Blog---record for the most spelling errors in a short post. Twelve and a half percent error rate. pestulance, desease, cuase, boarders, compesate, malestrom ( I prefer petulant femalestroms myself)
I’ll take a stab and guess your real name is Mark Tuttle but it just gets lost in translation.
em serry fur mi mess splellungs
i gets exsighted sumtize and hit save b 4 chekking
an i dont tipe so gud
90% of the time over the last 700,000 years... the place where I sit right now is covered with a continental ice sheet that is between one (1) to two (2) miles thick... while ocean levels are 120 meters lower than today.
Detriot... Chicago... Boston... same.
Martha's Vineyard is a terminal (glacial) morraine if memory serves...
People just have no clue sometimes... (all the time)
The following is the most profound issue IMO
The billions that are being spent on Cap n Trade and related C02 BS are billions that could be spent towards fasciltating adaptation to what ever climate change will bring hot or cold, wet or dry.
Somone mentioned Goldman above - they and JPM are playing this for all it is worth - if Carbon tax goes ahead it could be a trillion dollar market, and that is why it will go forward.
we could spend some of that money, extinguishing the many global underground coal seam fires. spewing toxic gasses, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, for decades. our cars are not a very big part of the problem
Moron's Choice
So your friend gives you a 5 gal drum of gasoline.
Where to store it, where to store it?!
Basement of your house? The house where you keep irreplaceable things like, you know, children - pets - spouses - family heirlooms?
Maybe the garage is a better choice, keeps the replaceable stuff like the car and camping equipment? Hmmm.
Well, gasoline is a known flammable liquid, but it's never proven to burn down your house, because you know, it hasn't done it yet. Heard some crazy story about it happening to someone else, but never to someone you know or to you directly so it's purely hypothetical.
Hmmm.
BS analogy.
There is tons of evidence of the danger which you discuss and anyone who ignores it is an idiot.
On the other hand, where is the tons of evidence proving AGW? OK, I know you'll link to the IPCC and one or two other sites, but the fact is each of those has a skeptic to refute it. So where is the PURE, UNADULTERATED ABSOLUTELY UNDENIABLE evidence?
It doesn't exist.
Unfortunately, gas being flammable - show me a scientist who would be skeptical about that. Oh yeah, they don't exist. Like the AGW evidence.
FAIL!
You said Morons choice... and here I am...
Awful analogy BTW.
Let's spend $30 billion dollars to research this "problem" so we can impose a trillion dollar tax on the citizens of the world to finance the building of a secure underground storage facility in the backyard.
Or you can do what a farmer does and just pour it into the gas tank.
Just Sayin'
yucca flats, turned out to be such an effective, government sponsored environmental solution, and only over budget, by how many billions? for a big man made cave, that is not gonna be used now, because the science involved in it's design, was faulty. but this time will be different, we can trust them, now, cause they've learned from their mistakes NOT
Kinda like BO getting bitch slapped in Copenhagen for the Olympics. If it happened once..........
One certainty about the additional atmospheric CO2 load being created by human activity is the acidification of the oceans. Read up about it: its ramifications are not pretty, and as such, I really don't care what excuses are used to reduce CO2 emissions - they must be reduced.
RE: "senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. From 2000 to December 2005 he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin."
What's next... a white paper from Sarah Palin reviewing the scientific literature behind evolutionary theory... from the Heritage Foundation?
Another myth I'm afraid...
Yup I just did read up about it... read this article and tell me where you have issues with it. You can help straighten me out if I am wrong. My first degree was in Geology so heres your chance to prove a "geologist" wrong.
Remember the largest coral populations ever occured during a geologic period when co2 concentrations were 5,000 PPM not the present 387.
Just sayin'
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/31/ocean-acidification-and-corals/
"Peter Sinclair producer of the well-known "Climate Crock of the Week" video series, posted a video debunking weatherman Anthony Watts who runs a Climate Denier Den also known as his Watt's Up With That blog.
The video was auto-scrubbed by YouTube after Watts claimed the video broke YouTube's copyright rules. The video has since been reviewed by a number of US copyright experts and (big surprise) there appears to be nothing that could be construed as anything but fair use.
This whole situation has raised the ire of even some of the more ardent commenters on DeSmogBlog who normally disagree with pretty much everything we say on this site. One such commenter, Rick James wrote:
"I have to admit it doesn't look good for the skeptic side when something gets scrubbed like this. Watts loses some stature here unless he can post something convincing about why he did it on his blog. Silence won't get it done."
One could speculate that Watts had a problem with the clips Sinclair used of Watts being interviewed by Glenn Beck on Fox News (Watts formerly worked as a weatherman for a Fox News affiliate), but that would be pretty weak given that Watts has no problem excerpting large swaths of print articles like this one posted tonight from the BBC on his own website."
From a "Denier" to a "Gasser"...
Just read or watch the opposing viewpoint and research it to find out the holes... I read all the AGW stuff BTW. Bring the evidentiary "holes" to us and we will be happy to examine what you have found.
I love your posts... they make me laugh sometimes...
DJ Locker-
This is the best piece I have ever seen on AGW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stij8sUybx0
This is Lord Mockton discussing the data, he won the Nobel prize when it was still legitimate. He also challenged Al Gore to a debate on AGW but Gore refused.
I highly recommend it, and would welcome an attempt by debunkers.
what's Watts smokin? and who's he smokin it with?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk&feature=player_embedded#
Davey Davey Davey... I'm trying to help you out here...
This ClimateGate turd will not flush... keep taking the blue pills for as long as you need my friend :)
Oh, come on...sheesh...you give me a link to another "Hey! Look Ma. I made a web site!" as a reference? Are you a geologist, or a past geology major?
Just so others don't waste their time, the graphic in your link is *made up*, with no reference, and is linked to the far, far right "Hey! Look Ma. I made a web site!" "Frontiers of Freedom". If you want to exchange peer-reviewed references to argue a point, that's fine. But please don't waste my fucking time with such worthless links.
Read the information... check it out from reputable scientific information sources on the net and then approach me with evidence not vitriole... thanks :)
ah so since the planet had high concentrations of CO2 before, you are thinking that transitioning back to the conditions prevalent hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago is no big deal
super volcanoes have erupted from time to time and thrown the planets climate into the icebox for a decade or more....a natural event...doesnt mean setting fire to the worlds forests or nuclear winter is an acceptable or desirable outcome
Have you seen John Stossel's new program of Fox Business? It is on every Thursday. His first program dealt with climate change. His guest was Jerry Taylor of Cato. They discussed this issue. I also suggest that you read this: Cato Policy Handbook, Chapter 45. Before you dismiss it, I am reprinting the resume of Pat Michaels of Cato who wrote it.
Stossel is a worthless hack, why the hell would I take anything he says at face value?
As for The Cato Institute, are you guys kidding me?
You complain about climate scientists having an agenda and then cite a "think tank" (oxymoron if I've ever heard one) that is corporate sponsored and has a history of reliably producing junk science to back it's sponsors views.
It boggles the mind!
How obtuse do you have to be to even think they are a credible voice in this debate?
Darn straight - everyone knows Brookings is MiniTruth. Obama spoke there!
Who cares where the hell Obama spoke, and what exactly does it have to do with Cato churning out pseudo science tailored to it's paymsters requirements?
Econophile- This is the best piece I have ever seen on AGW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stij8sUybx0
This is Lord Mockton discussing the data, he won the Nobel prize when it was still legitimate. He also challenged Al Gore to a debate on AGW but Gore refused.
I highly recommend it, and would welcome an attempt by debunkers.
Apocalypse Now,
This Global Warming is the biggest HEADFAKE of all time, thanks for the link.
Are we forgetting that several members of the IPCC are AGW skeptics, and have written articles which not only firmly showed the flaws in the IPCC data sets, but mentioned that their voices were stifled as the IPCC sought to pursue an agenda?
Sure, some warming has occurred. But climate change has occurred for millenia. Where's the PROOF that man has played a role? I want incontrovertible evidence. There is none.
I have a hard time reading anything that uses IPCC information to make a point about temps. We know that those graphs were "tricked" and so what is the point. It is bs.
NONE of the temperature variability is due to humans.
you say none of the temperature variability is due to humans?
no one disputes that C)2 is a significant greenhouse gas
we pump 30 billion metric tons of it into the atmosphere each year
no effect? at all??
i admire your confidence
personally is suspect that global warming is both man made and natural...the two ganging up
thats was so worrisome
Exactly that no PROVEN effect.
CO2 is NOT linkable to any increase in temperature, go back and reread the principal article...slowly.
Poppycock...pure grade A Bullshit.
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/vostok.png
Here is a record of temps for the last 400,000 years and it exposes this nonsense for the bullshit that it is. This is simply the play by a bunch of green motherfuckers who want to control us. Please wake up and stop them...you can better than I since I cannot stand to be in the same room.
"you say none of the temperature variability is due to humans?"
With no positive feedback loops in the climate (such as is posited by the AGW model), CO2 is a mild greenhouse gas. The increase that would be caused by anincrease in CO2 that is not amplified by positive feedback is so small that you wouldn't even see it in the noise. I don't believe this is in dispute by either side.
The AGW folks posit a theory in which positive-feedback causes small increases in CO2 to have a much larger than linear effect on temperature. I did another long post on this thead that goes into a lot more detail on the subject. The AGW models do not do a very good job when you take their predicitons and run them against the real world record.
I started out thinking there could be something to the AGW theory some years ago. But long before climate gate, I had concluded that there was something very fishy in the science being presented. You know that Mann, Jones, Hansen et al have refused to release their date or code despite repeated requests for at least 5 years. Climate gate released some of it; but we still don't have their raw data because it was "lost or destroyed" (which is, of course, exactly what Mann and Jones discussed doing (climate gate emails again) if it looked like they were going to have to release the raw data.
That is outrageous behavior for scientists with respect to published journal articles. The whole idea is to have others be able to replicate their results. The only ones replicating their results are them and their posse.
When you see this type of thing consistently (and we have), you think South Korean cloning or Cold Fusion.
LMAO...
Common guys, once again you're under estimating the amount of money involved in the status quo versus a real change to renewable forms of energy. Which choice would be better for humanity in the long run?
Even if man made climate change were a hoax we still win as a species by changing our habits in the long run...
yes, and many of us believe that the only way to 'win' as a species to change our habits in allowing a very small minority of humans to maintain power to control the rest through fear & manipulation.
this to me is the central point in this argument. everything else is a ruse to keep people divided by using deep emotional triggers on the primal level so that they are forced to choose one side or the other and bicker with each other over unresolvable issues.
if you wish to change your habits, change them. encourage others to do so & offer them methods on how to do it. habits are not broken through negative reinforcement, ask any smoker.
Here come the Climategate deniers!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_sc/climate_e_mails
AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not prettyLONDON – E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.
snip
The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them — about 1 million words in total.
snip
The e-mails also show how professional attacks turned very personal. When former London financial trader Douglas J. Keenan combed through the data used in a 1990 research paper Jones had co-authored, Keenan claimed to have found evidence of fakery by Jones' co-author. Keenan threatened to have the FBI arrest University at Albany scientist Wei-Chyung Wang for fraud. (A university investigation later cleared him of any wrongdoing.)
snip
The e-mails also showed a stunning disdain for global warming skeptics.
One scientist practically celebrates the news of the death of one critic, saying, "In an odd way this is cheering news!" Another bemoans that the only way to deal with skeptics is "continuing to publish quality work in quality journals (or calling in a Mafia hit.)"
snip
One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Jones. He says: "I've just completed Mike's (Mann) trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren't as warm as scientists had determined.
The "trick" that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.
read the entire article...very thorough and well done