Record cold in Mexico near site of global warming conference

You all seem to believe that the earth is some stable glass ball and that it's climate isn't constantly changing and hasn't been for billions of years.

Excluding nuclear war, will some of you people who believe man can affect the climate, please explain how, and I will be glad to refute your idiotic carbon emission HYPOTHESES. With facts. And actual climatology/meteorology experience. Not skewed IPCC data and political bullshit. Go.

What is the bigger problem? Global Warming is real and doing nothing because we think it's not. Or, Global Warming is fake and taking actions that it is real, thereby screwing up different stuff?

Lord Muckin' admits that the planet is warming and humans cause global warming, just not that much:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8194951/Cancun-climate-change-summit-Viscount-Monckton-admits-that-global-warming-is-happening.html

Ned? wrote:

You all seem to believe that the earth is some stable glass ball and that it's climate isn't constantly changing and hasn't been for billions of years.

Wow, thanks for that. Maybe you should go and inform physicists about "gravity". Ohhhh, I should inform my doctor that my cold my be caused by these "germ" thingies I've been hearing about. Perhaps he should go read up on those.

There is not a climatologist alive who believes that the climate isn't changing regularly. Not a single one. They know this. The Milankovich Cycles are not exactly secrets and I'm pretty sure that about 100% of them have heard of the ice ages.

The point, if you are interested, is that the Earth's climate is currently changing very rapidly and there is considerable evidence that human activity plays a major role in these changes. That's the deal. Your implication is that scientists don't have even the most basic knowledge about their own fields. Not only is that nonsense, it's *insulting* nonsense.

Ned? wrote:

You do realize we've had global cooling since 1998?

Your "gotcha" comeback for the statistically illiterate is dated since 2005 is now the warmest year on record. Had you said "You do realize we've had global cooling since 2005" then you might have stumped a third grader.

Fishing Instructor wrote:

I'm not following your reasoning. You question how one can have confidence in the data and link to the workproduct of an effort to determine the confidence interval for a bunch of measurement sites.

This is how the scientific method is supposed to work. Somebody proposes a theory that explains the observations and then you do your damnedest to find the flaws in that theory.

IllinoisMaster wasn't talking about the theory, he was pointing out how bad the data is. The error for the surface temperature record is larger than the measured change. And that's for the US data, international data is even worse. In other words, there is a chance the temperature rise the IPCC likes to show in their graphs hasn't actually occurred.

There's also a problem with the spatial coverage of the surface temperature record. Good coverage only exists for North America and Europe. For most of the time from 1880 until now coverage for Asia, Australia, Antarctica, South America, and Africa has been very thin or nonexistent. Coverage for the oceans, 70% of the earth's surface, is a joke. Only satellite data, which goes back 30 years, actually provides global coverage.

What evidence?

Finally! Now that the world is in perfect order (no global warming) I can start dumping my used oil in the backyard instead of recycling it.

Exactly. The anti-intellectual current in the US today is very frightening. It's all about reality avoidance, and an all-enveloping kind of "magical thinking." The great weight of the scientific evidence--and scientific opinion--says that climate change is very real, and that human activity very likely is playing a significant role. It's that simple, and all the "denial" in the world isn't going to change the facts. Denial will, however, make the human toll of climate change that much worse in the coming generations.

The anti-intellectuals are not so fond of people who ignore the evidence (stilted statistics) and want more time to ponder what the numbers just haven't yet shown. Intellectuals pursue theories in spite of evidence falsely believing "just a little more" will prove their point. Then, when that doesn't work, just a little different. Each time failing to recognize that their idealism is just unrealistic. We are seeing precisely this in the political and economic arenas today. Just a little more change, and, it will all work out.

Again, what evidence?

pointer out of the obvious wrote:

The anti-intellectuals are not so fond of people who ignore the evidence (stilted statistics) and want more time to ponder what the numbers just haven't yet shown. Intellectuals pursue theories in spite of evidence falsely believing "just a little more" will prove their point. Then, when that doesn't work, just a little different. Each time failing to recognize that their idealism is just unrealistic. We are seeing precisely this in the political and economic arenas today. Just a little more change, and, it will all work out.

Not really. Scientists and reality-based people are, essentially, pragmatic and empirical--they value facts over (pure) theory, and results over ideology. All sorts of folks today are driven largely by pure ideology: climate deniers, tax-cut zealots, etc.

There's no question that ideologies come in all political flavors, from far left to far right. In the last few decades, the ideologies of the political right have had a far great impact--and negative impact--in US life than anything from the left.

So, what is it that drives climate scientists to alter the facts, fake numbers and publish untrue research? Couldn't be ideology could it? Cause, according to what you wrote, it certainly couldn't be science.

LEARN TO SWIM wrote:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YOU STILL DON'T GET IT. GLOBAL WARMING = EXTREME HIGHS AND EXTREME LOWS, WITH THE HIGHS BEING SLIGHTLY MORE INTENSE. NOW F.UCK OFF

Haha, and as usual the stupid global warming proponents don't have a sense of sarcasm and take it seriously. You'd think by now people would get it, but apparently people who believe in global warming are really, really stupid.

you have proven all the science that supports climate change is wrong. Thank you.

pointer out of the obvious wrote:

So, what is it that drives climate scientists to alter the facts, fake numbers and publish untrue research? Couldn't be ideology could it? Cause, according to what you wrote, it certainly couldn't be science.

If you're referring to the so-called "Climategate" kerfluffle, that "scandal" was exposed as nothing much at all some time ago.

I cannot and will not defend EVERY single bit of data published by scientists. However, the vast, vast majority of it is completely legit--and to pretend otherwise is just foolishness.

Until it was exposed as being nothing but fudge, that data was thought to be unquestionable. Data is not some sacrosanct form of truth. Stop pretending it wasn't gathered by people with motives.

Lets try to put this in formulaic terms: everyone on here agrees that average global climate temperatures (y) are affected by many different factors (x1, x2, x3,...,xn), and each factor affects average global temperatures by different amounts. Thus y=b0+b1x1+b2x2+b3x3+...+e. Every little thing in the world has an impact on the atmosphere, whether it be a volcano eruption, or a solar flare, or a cow fart. Sometimes it has a major impact, sometimes the impact is so small that its impossible to measure. The IPCC has created this model using computers and thrown every piece of data they can imagine that could possibly affect y and have determined which xs are statistically significant. If you've ever done regression analysis, then you know how this works (although I probably not explaining very well) and you can get some very accurate results (better than just going by your gut of what you think is going on). Anyway, the IPCC have used their vast resources to build a very robust model which has shown with over 90% certainty that human output of greenhouse gases have dangerously increased atmospheric temperatures around the world.

It is not a very robust model. It does not hold up to any amount of back-testing at all.