'Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong'

[midcan5]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

 

[CrusaderFrank]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment that demonstrates how a even an instantaneous .01% change, much less one that happens over 150 years as you allege produces ANY of the results you allege?

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment, or even a coherent explanation, that demonstrates how CO2 is simultaneously leaving the ocean in a "Feedback loop" and increasing in the ocean turning them "Acidic" because the two concepts are mutually exclusive

 

[PredFan]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

An economist says so. What a dumbass!

 

[Old Rocks]

No, the physicists state that AGW is real, and show how it works.

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect

The economists are pointing out that the costs of not addressing this issue will far exceed the costs of addressing it. But we will not address it until the consequences reach the level of horror.

 

[Old Rocks]

[ARCHIVED CONTENT] Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change - HM Treasury

 

[Skull Pilot]

And if the earth is a little warmer it will not herald the end of days.

 

[Old Rocks]

And nobody has said that it would. What has been pointed out is that in a world with 7 billion people and undependable weather, agriculture will be affected in an undesirable manner. And there will be starvation. In the last two years we have seen major damage to crops in various nations due to extreme weather events. By the figures of the world's two biggest re-insurance companies, Swiss Re, and Munich Re, the costs of extreme weather events has increased by a factor of five from 1970 to today.

 

[Skull Pilot]

And nobody has said that it would. What has been pointed out is that in a world with 7 billion people and undependable weather, agriculture will be affected in an undesirable manner. And there will be starvation. In the last two years we have seen major damage to crops in various nations due to extreme weather events. By the figures of the world's two biggest re-insurance companies, Swiss Re, and Munich Re, the costs of extreme weather events has increased by a factor of five from 1970 to today.

Really?

Nobody is predicting mass famine, floods and death on a biblical scale?

Rapid global warming will create famine and drought, Lovelock warns - Climate Change - Environment - The Independent

env056 Global warming to produce famine and poverty in Africa

Michael Mann's counterstrike in the climate wars - latimes.com

Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, says Kofi Annan thinktank | Environment | guardian.co.uk

And is that increase in insurance claims merely a result of more people buying insurance?

I'm sure that a significantly higher number of people are buying insurance today than in 1970

You're one of the biggest alarmists on this board and yet you say no one is predicting epic disaster.

Here's a little news flash.

If the earth is a couple degrees warmer nothing will happen.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

No, the physicists state that AGW is real, and show how it works.

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect

The economists are pointing out that the costs of not addressing this issue will far exceed the costs of addressing it. But we will not address it until the consequences reach the level of horror.

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment that demonstrates how a even an instantaneous .01% change, much less one that happens over 150 years as you allege produces ANY of the results you allege?

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment, or even a coherent explanation, that demonstrates how CO2 is simultaneously leaving the ocean in a "Feedback loop" and increasing in the ocean turning them "Acidic" because the two concepts are mutually exclusive

 

[CrusaderFrank]

[ARCHIVED CONTENT] Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change - HM Treasury

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment that demonstrates how a even an instantaneous .01% change, much less one that happens over 150 years as you allege produces ANY of the results you allege?

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment, or even a coherent explanation, that demonstrates how CO2 is simultaneously leaving the ocean in a "Feedback loop" and increasing in the ocean turning them "Acidic" because the two concepts are mutually exclusive

 

[CrusaderFrank]

And nobody has said that it would. What has been pointed out is that in a world with 7 billion people and undependable weather, agriculture will be affected in an undesirable manner. And there will be starvation. In the last two years we have seen major damage to crops in various nations due to extreme weather events. By the figures of the world's two biggest re-insurance companies, Swiss Re, and Munich Re, the costs of extreme weather events has increased by a factor of five from 1970 to today.

undependable weather?

Do you read the stuff you post because you sound like a fucking moron

 

[Quantum Windbag]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

The fact that you site an economist in defense of a scientific theory says more about your side of the debate than it says about the skeptics.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

And nobody has said that it would. What has been pointed out is that in a world with 7 billion people and undependable weather, agriculture will be affected in an undesirable manner. And there will be starvation. In the last two years we have seen major damage to crops in various nations due to extreme weather events. By the figures of the world's two biggest re-insurance companies, Swiss Re, and Munich Re, the costs of extreme weather events has increased by a factor of five from 1970 to today.

Undependable weather? When was weather ever dependable?

 

[IanC]

I have no problem with an economist weighing in with an opinion on global warming. unfortunately he first makes a precis of 'the sixteen's op-ed', then proceed to turn it into a strawman.

• Is the planet in fact warming?
• Are human influences an important contributor to warming?
• Is carbon dioxide a pollutant?
• Are we seeing a regime of fear for skeptical climate scientists?
• Are the views of mainstream climate scientists driven primarily by the desire for financial gain?
• Is it true that more carbon dioxide and additional warming will be beneficial?

he produces a graph and states-

The first claim is that the planet is not warming. More precisely, “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.”

It is easy to get lost in the tiniest details here. Most people will benefit from stepping back and looking at the record of actual temperature measurements. The figure below shows data from 1880 to 2011 on global mean temperature averaged from three different sources.2 We do not need any complicated statistical analysis to see that temperatures are rising, and furthermore that they are higher in the last decade than they were in earlier decades.

but no one is denying that we have not warmed up somewhat from 1880! the skeptics are saying that temperatures are inconsistent with predictions, and almost certainly refute the crazy positive feedbacks that the models spit out.

this is what the sixteen say-

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

or

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

further along in his essay the economist hand waves away the idea that skeptical science papers and authors are being harrassed for their politically inccorrect ideas-

The idea that skeptical climate scientists are being treated like Soviet geneticists in the Stalinist period has no basis in fact. There are no political or scientific dictators in the US. No climate scientist has been expelled from the US National Academy of Sciences. No skeptics have been arrested or banished to gulags or the modern equivalents of Siberia. Indeed, the dissenting authors are at the world’s greatest universities, including Princeton, MIT, Rockefeller, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Paris.

sure, some tenured scientists can express contrarian views but what is going on in the background? the Soon & Balunas case showed that great pressure was applied to repress a non controversial (at least in the past) idea that the Medieval Warm Period was global and supported by many papers and historical written records. the editor who accepted the paper was ousted from that position and there was an effort to get him removed from his University. this is all documented by the climategate I&II emails in the climate scientists' own words.


I can understand why the economist wrote the essay that he did. it is part of a book that he has a few years invested in. and not unreasonably, he has accepted the credible distortions that have come out of climate science for the past few decades. but countervailing evidence and explanations have been rising for the last few years and there is a need for debating the issues not just talking past the skeptics' complaints.

 

[newpolitics]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment that demonstrates how a even an instantaneous .01% change, much less one that happens over 150 years as you allege produces ANY of the results you allege?

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment, or even a coherent explanation, that demonstrates how CO2 is simultaneously leaving the ocean in a "Feedback loop" and increasing in the ocean turning them "Acidic" because the two concepts are mutually exclusive

these are almost irrelevant and highly stupid fucking questions that don't deserve answer, because the presumption here is that if an answer can't be produced, or a lab result shown, then AGW is false... well, that isn't true. A lab result has no absolute bearing on a reality that is so much bigger, and can not be produced in a small lab. We are talking about an organism as incredibly complex as Earth, and its weather system, which is too complex to model in a lab, yet dumbass are asserting that because it is still cold in certain places, AGW must be false... that is just base level idiocy. Either we are, or are not producing this global warming. We don't get to choose, and just because there is the possibility that some are making money off the possibility of this happening, or that some are using fear to get people concerned, doesn't change the objective reality. Godamn it you AGW deniers piss me off. You are as bad as creationists. AGW is real, and our children are going to pay for your fucking arrogance.

 

[Douger]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

An economist says so. What a dumbass!

Oh yeah. We know how good thede US "economists" are.
Zillow - Real Estate, Homes for Sale, Recent Sales, Apartment Rentals

 

[IanC]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment that demonstrates how a even an instantaneous .01% change, much less one that happens over 150 years as you allege produces ANY of the results you allege?

Can you produce a single laboratory experiment, or even a coherent explanation, that demonstrates how CO2 is simultaneously leaving the ocean in a "Feedback loop" and increasing in the ocean turning them "Acidic" because the two concepts are mutually exclusive

these are almost irrelevant and highly stupid fucking questions that don't deserve answer, because the presumption here is that if an answer can't be produced, or a lab result shown, then AGW is false... well, that isn't true. A lab result has no absolute bearing on a reality that is so much bigger, and can not be produced in a small lab. We are talking about an organism as incredibly complex as Earth, and its weather system, which is too complex to model in a lab, yet dumbass are asserting that because it is still cold in certain places, AGW must be false... that is just base level idiocy. Either we are, or are not producing this global warming. We don't get to choose, and just because there is the possibility that some are making money off the possibility of this happening, or that some are using fear to get people concerned, doesn't change the objective reality. Godamn it you AGW deniers piss me off. You are as bad as creationists. AGW is real, and our children are going to pay for your fucking arrogance.

I consider myself a 'lukewarmer'. I find it very telling that you state that the mechanisms controlling the weather and climate are too complex to model in a lab and yet you are willing to believe that lab models purporting to predict the future weather and climate decades into the future are accurate. even after they have proved to be unreliable year after year. how many times, by how much, and for how many years must they be wrong before you start to question the functionality of CO2 as the thermostat of the planet?

do you think paying out huge sums of money for immature technology in renewable areas is a good idea? it is not feasible right now but it may be in the future. do you really want to buy stuff that doesnt work? or wait until we find products that do?


physics tells me that doubling CO2 warms the planet (unevenly) about 1 degree celsius, before feedbacks. personally I am willing to risk that. civilization has flourished during warm periods.

the IPCC predictions of positive feedbacks tripling that 1C are obviously incorrect. positive feedbacks are as rare as hen's teeth in nature and negative feedbacks are as common as pebbles on a beach. using IPCC feedbacks and the logarithmic function of CO2 temperature increase, that means we should have seen roughly 1.5C warming already, over and above the warming trend coming out of the Little Ice Age. instead we have had about half that, 0.75C. if you trust the temperature data sets that have been 'corrected' over and over and over again.

I understand your concern about trying to do the 'right' thing. but the whole economic scenario reminds me of the 2000's when conventional wisdom was telling us that low downpayment home ownership was the method to make everyone rich and to raise up minorities. the adults in the room who predicted lowering standards would fail, and pointed to the housing bubble as a looming disaster were not just ignored but called vicious names just like the 'deniers' are today when they point out the fallacies of the CAGW hypothesis. how many times do we have to learn the hard way that emotion is not science?

 

[Si modo]

While some people cling to partisan or ideology driven beliefs, others consider the consequences of sailing to ends of the earth and finding it round and not flat. Discovery opens up a new chapter in human existence.

William D. Nordhaus

"Yale economist rebuts sceptics' arguments, point by point. The earth is getting warmer. Due to carbon dioxide pollution. Humans are responsible. The science is legitimate. It's a bad situation. It's worth taking action."

Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books

And others look at the science when discussing science, you hack.

You are an enemy of science, hack. Science is not determined by economists, hack.

Stop soiling science by politicizing it.

 

[midcan5]

As a long time cyclist, there is no need for someone to tell me the climate is changing. I know that.

If a scientist says so, then it is true, so according to some of the replies. They do.

If you wanted to prove the earth was round to a primitive would you two walk around the earth. Would that prove it.

If someone wants to believe or deny something, no argument, no matter how complete will convince them. Consider conspiracy thinkers.

As far as a demonstration that is below.


"We challenged two leading British scientists to try to prove the science of global warming to a group of people whose views very loosely reflect national opinions.

And, as if that wasn't tough enough we asked them to do it in my kitchen.

Can they do it? Well, you can see for yourself."

BBC - Ethical Man blog: In praise of scepticism

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

 

[Si modo]

As a long time cyclist, there is no need for someone to tell me the climate is changing. I know that.

If a scientist says so, then it is true, so according to some of the replies. They do.

....

You cycling anecdote aside (so scientific, ), and plenty of scientists say there is no evidence that any global warming is due to man's influence.

Stalemate.

.... If you wanted to prove the earth was round to a primitive would you two walk around the earth. Would that prove it.

....

Interesting you say that. Because of the flaw of conclusions based on consensus, many did believe that the Earth was flat. Thus, any conclusion based on some sort of imagined consensus is a flaw - nothing but a belief. Conclusions based on data and observations is how science is done, among other things that you clearly haven't grasped.

....If someone wants to believe or deny something, no argument, no matter how complete will convince them. Consider conspiracy thinkers.

As far as a demonstration that is below.


"We challenged two leading British scientists to try to prove the science of global warming to a group of people whose views very loosely reflect national opinions.

And, as if that wasn't tough enough we asked them to do it in my kitchen.

Can they do it? Well, you can see for yourself."

BBC - Ethical Man blog: In praise of scepticism

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The IPCC is a policy group. Policy and science are not the same thing, nor are activism and science. Now you know.