Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptic’s Position

[her209]

Are you a chemist?

Are you retarded?

 

[Throckmorton]

He's right that the only effect of increasing CO2 is warming. The "climate change" rebranding is well intentioned but draws attention away from the basic cause-effect physics. But he seems to be implying that the only effect you'd ever see from global warming is local warming, which isn't true.

 

[PJABBER]

Are you retarded?

Hey, YOU are the one who made the comment that skeptics do not understand basic chemistry.

This seems to imply that you, yourself, have such knowledge.

It is not helpful to simply imply. Thus my question - are you yourself a chemist? Perhaps you hold a degree in chemical engineering? Are you yourself educated sufficiently to render an expert comment or are you just building up your post count?

:hmm:

 

[Throckmorton]

Hey, YOU are the one who made the comment that skeptics do not understand basic chemistry.

This seems to imply that you, yourself, have such knowledge.

It is not helpful to simply imply. Thus my question - are you yourself a chemist? Perhaps you hold a degree in chemical engineering? Are you yourself educated sufficiently to render an expert comment or are you just building up your post count?

:hmm:

Whether he is a chemist is irrelevant. It's a basic fact that the reason CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased is because we're releasing carbon from fossil fuels, and that breathing only releases carbon that recently came out of the atmosphere.

 

[PJABBER]

Whether he is a chemist is irrelevant.

What we lack in this forum are subject specialists in the science under discussion. I was hoping he would be one, so that we could get an expert comment of some sort.

I studied chemistry and physics in college, which helps me distinguish a few of the false arguments found in the AGW camp. However, I am far from expert and make no claim to be.

The point of the OP is to present in broad strokes the scientific argument against the claims and proofs of the AGW crowd but also to point out that the claims of skeptics are not based in superstition but in a demand for more exact science.

 

[Throckmorton]

What we lack in this forum are subject specialists in the science under discussion. I was hoping he would be one, so that we could get an expert comment of some sort.

I studied chemistry and physics in college, which helps me distinguish a few of the false arguments found in the AGW camp. However, I am far from expert and make no claim to be.

The point of the OP is to present in broad strokes the scientific argument against the claims and proofs of the AGW crowd but also to point out that the claims of skeptics are not based in superstition but in a demand for more exact science.

I'm a professional geographer. I have a degree in geography with a minor in geology. I have actual education on the carbon cycle and a lot of ecology and earth science. I'm not lying when I say that CO2 concentration has increased because of burning fossil fuels. The guy in the video says that too, so I guess you didn't watch it?

 

[her209]

Hey, YOU are the one who made the comment that skeptics do not understand basic chemistry.

This seems to imply that you, yourself, have such knowledge.

It is not helpful to simply imply. Thus my question - are you yourself a chemist? Perhaps you hold a degree in chemical engineering? Are you yourself educated sufficiently to render an expert comment or are you just building up your post count?

:hmm:

Do you know what 1+1 equals?
Do you hold a math degree?

 

[PJABBER]

I'm a professional geographer. I have a degree in geography with a minor in geology. I have actual education on the carbon cycle and a lot of ecology and earth science. I'm not lying when I say that CO2 concentration has increased because of burning fossil fuels. The guy in the video says that too, so I guess you didn't watch it?

And who is denying it?

 

[Throckmorton]

And who is denying it?

Apparently you, because you were implying that breathing is equivalent to burning fossil fuel.

 

[Throckmorton]

There's something big that he gets wrong... The heat island effect.

Urban temperature gauges are deliberately left out in temperature calculations.

 

[PJABBER]

Do you know what 1+1 equals?
Do you hold a math degree?

Yes. No.

I have degrees in computational finance (which is not pure mathematics but something like the lousy lying bastard son of it,) financial economics (requires the study of a wide compendium of lying liars and the lies they tell while endlessly claiming the truth is there if only others would see it as clearly as they do) and international business administration (yeah, just like an MBA, but it gives us a license to tell lies in multiple languages and offend people all over the world) and my practical experience is in corporate management (large scale terrorizing) and both domestic and international economic development (mindboggling scale of terrorizing.) I still anal-ize investment opportunities in a wide range of industries and over the years have often spent time in IT, bio-pharmaceuticals, banking, manufacturing and energy. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

But, I'd rather pontificate about things I know just enough about that it drives the ladies here crazy.

 

[PJABBER]

Apparently you, because you were implying that breathing is equivalent to burning fossil fuel.

Does a joke have to be so blatant that it walks up to you and slaps you in the face?

 

[NeoV]

for more on this Meyer hack, see this:

http://goldwaterstate.blogspot.com/2009/11/few-words-about-warren-meyers-bona.html

 

[PJABBER]

for more on this Meyer hack, see this:

http://goldwaterstate.blogspot.com/2009/11/few-words-about-warren-meyers-bona.html

This is not much of a criticism. Meyer identifies his academic qualifications and limitations right from the start.

He is offering a broad review of the arguments and an introduction to the scientific backing for those arguments. His presentation is neither complete nor as documented as it might be, but it still serves to introduce the casual reader to information that would lead the more interested reader to dive deeper.

You must be looking for something authoritative.

 

[Throckmorton]

Does a joke have to be so blatant that it walks up to you and slaps you in the face?

The joke makes no sense unless you believe breathing contributes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration increase.

 

[PJABBER]

The joke makes no sense unless you believe breathing contributes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration increase.

I give up. I'm going for a bike ride.

:awe:

 

[Throckmorton]

I give up. I'm going for a bike ride.

:awe:

Did I misinterpret your attempt at sarcasm or something??

 

[DominionSeraph]

His rapid fire delivery

This is rapid fire to you?
That explains a lot, actually.

brings up the various claims made by the "Believers"

20:25
"I think a lot of skeptics waste their time arguing about stuff that there's no point in arguing about."

Anyway...

Thoughts on the first 20 minutes: Pretty good. To criticize a few points in what is otherwise a good stream so far: It looks like he hedged his bets by playing to fear with the commentary on the IPCC at 10:00, because he then went on to use their initial conclusion (the small rise due to CO2) with confidence. His little song and dance was out of place and not in line with the solidity in which he's treating that data. If the IPCC's methodology was corrupt you wouldn't be using their estimate of 1.0 to 1.3C.

Also, the aside as to the small level of CO2 as a percentage of the total atmosphere. Again, it's out of place. It's like he knows the majority of the deniers are stupid idiots and is trying to throw them an argument they can use:
"Hey Sally! Come 'ere 'n look at dis! This 'ere guy says we're still on the runway! Ha! Look at dat -- not even off the runway. Der's none of dis 'cardoniokside.' Ha! I done told you! I done tol' you dey was fixin' to fool us! But I wasn't fallin' for none a dat mumbo-jumbo, no siree! Ha! Dinna tell you?!? Dinna tell you??!??"

Sally: <sigh> "Yes, dear. You, 'done told me.'"

Mr. Meyer isn't denying the effect of the CO2 concentration as it is, nor is he denying the projected increase attributed solely to CO2 as the atmospheric concentration increases due to the release of sequestered carbon. So why bring up the level?

Also, the aside that humans release carbon dioxide looks to be there to just obfuscate the issue. We do release CO2, but we're powered by biofuels.

And his little spiel on carbon dioxide as a pollutant was a bit all over the place. He doesn't seem to realize that it is the carbon dioxide released by the combustion of previously sequestered hydrocarbons that is the pollutant, not |carbon dioxide as a product of combustion|. So that isn't completely honest.

21:12 "Go on to Google and do a search for, 'global warming accelerating and you'll get over a million articles on how global warming is accelerating."
Someone doesn't know how search engines work.
My guess here is that Mr. Meyer has probably been colored somewhat by the idea of a huge global warming conspiracy and fell for Confirmation Bias. 1.3 million hits agreed with his worldview that it was the #1 topic in the universe and so he didn't bother to question that.
"Global warming accelerating" gives me 588k hits. #8 is a joke site.

"The earth currently has an average temperature of 59°F. Scientists predict that we should see an increase between 2.5° and 10.4°F by 2100. We feel this is too little too late! 59° is awfully cold - I mean thats longsleeve shirt weather for crying out loud. We're setting our sights high, hoping to raise the temperature a whopping 10° by 2015 - to a nice comfortable average of 69°. That's a number I think we can all live with!"

29:00 he references a study (and that there are dozens more) on the heat island effect which shows an increase in both city AND rural temperatures and then asks if all we're measuring is the bias of the heat island effect. Errr... if rural temps have increased then how does that work? And with that data you can factor out the bias of the heat island effect: 0.34 is attributable to global warming and 0.65 is attributable to the increasing effect of the heat island.

49:40, he claims it is improper to add in manmade effects to get a climate model to match reality. Uhhh... when there ARE manmade effects, it's perfectly acceptable to add them in. We've released sequestered carbon. When they factor that in, their models account for the temperatures we're seeing. When they don't factor it in, they show temperature too low.

51:00 he goes full retard. "Not attributable to natural causes" has nothing to do with the shape being outside what nature can achieve. Take a supervolcano eruption and a subsequent dip in temperatures. This is attributable to a natural cause. Now assume the same dip but without a volcanic eruption. But instead an all-out nuclear exchange happened. By his reasoning, this dip is not attributable to man because nature can also do dips.
Like I said, full retard.

1:00:00 full retard again. Of course things will balance. Look at Venus as an example: Nicely balanced at around 740 Kelvin. But eventually balancing does not mean that you will be within the same cycle instead of at a "new normal." That is the issue. If man-made CO2 emissions provide the impetus for larger changes which increase the temperature and, say, melt the Greenland and polar caps; now the world has changed and the question is whether with the man-made baseline in play can it ever go back or does it keep bouncing off that difference? If it can't go back then you've cut off that half of the cycle -- the oceanic currents, the air currents, etc. of that part are no more, so they no longer serve to balance the warmer half. So if the Earth tries to cool but can't get back into that zone where we have polar caps, with the oceanic and air currents and rainfall patterns that are because of that, what does its new cycle look like?
It is a journey that we don't want to take if we can avoid it, because things are pretty darned good now and the transition will be destructive (thus "catestrophic."). With polar ice caps, we have lots of land. The breadbasket of the world is right across the United States. Hurricanes are seasonal and strong hurricanes aren't common.
Perhaps the world will end up as a tropical paradise, but that doesn't change that cities and even entire nations will go under water -- the populations having to be moved and everything rebuilt.

Deniers are always going on about how we can't "afford" change. If we can't afford change while at peak oil and with a stable food and manufacturing infrastructure, when can we afford it? When crude is at $1000/bbl and when New York City and Washington DC and all of Florida are underwater, and maybe the Midwest is a desert? If we can't afford change now how can we afford to cope with change when it is forced upon us?

1:02:40 "If certain sensitivity and feedback exists going forward, it has to exist backwards."
Well here's someone who would fail amplifier theory. That you have a linear range does not mean you can output infinite power, and the presence of a nonlinear range does not mean that you have a point with infinite sensitivity and infinite gain.
Methane released by thawing tundra is not released unless it thaws. Any effect that does not bring the temperature up to the point where it thaws does not receive the amplification. Same goes with the polar caps. If the temperature's not to the point where you're losing white you're not amplifying.

Gonna go play games now. And the fact remains, he's not a climatologist.

 

[sandorski]

This is rapid fire to you?
That explains a lot, actually.



20:25
"I think a lot of skeptics waste their time arguing about stuff that there's no point in arguing about."

Anyway...

Thoughts on the first 20 minutes: Pretty good. To criticize a few points in what is otherwise a good stream so far: It looks like he hedged his bets by playing to fear with the commentary on the IPCC at 10:00, because he then went on to use their initial conclusion (the small rise due to CO2) with confidence. His little song and dance was out of place and not in line with the solidity in which he's treating that data. If the IPCC's methodology was corrupt you wouldn't be using their estimate of 1.0 to 1.3C.

Also, the aside as to the small level of CO2 as a percentage of the total atmosphere. Again, it's out of place. It's like he knows the majority of the deniers are stupid idiots and is trying to throw them an argument they can use:
"Hey Sally! Come 'ere 'n look at dis! This 'ere guy says we're still on the runway! Ha! Look at dat -- not even off the runway. Der's none of dis 'cardoniokside.' Ha! I done told you! I done tol' you dey was fixin' to fool us! But I wasn't fallin' for none a dat mumbo-jumbo, no siree! Ha! Dinna tell you?!? Dinna tell you??!??"

Sally: <sigh> "Yes, dear. You, 'done told me.'"

Mr. Meyer isn't denying the effect of the CO2 concentration as it is, nor is he denying the projected increase attributed solely to CO2 as the atmospheric concentration increases due to the release of sequestered carbon. So why bring up the level?

Also, the aside that humans release carbon dioxide looks to be there to just obfuscate the issue. We do release CO2, but we're powered by biofuels.

And his little spiel on carbon dioxide as a pollutant was a bit all over the place. He doesn't seem to realize that it is the carbon dioxide released by the combustion of previously sequestered hydrocarbons that is the pollutant, not |carbon dioxide as a product of combustion|. So that isn't completely honest.

21:12 "Go on to Google and do a search for, 'global warming accelerating and you'll get over a million articles on how global warming is accelerating."
Someone doesn't know how search engines work.
My guess here is that Mr. Meyer has probably been colored somewhat by the idea of a huge global warming conspiracy and fell for Confirmation Bias. 1.3 million hits agreed with his worldview that it was the #1 topic in the universe and so he didn't bother to question that.
"Global warming accelerating" gives me 588k hits. #8 is a joke site.

29:00 he references a study (and that there are dozens more) on the heat island effect which shows an increase in both city AND rural temperatures and then asks if all we're measuring is the bias of the heat island effect. Errr... if rural temps have increased then how does that work? And with that data you can factor out the bias of the heat island effect: 0.34 is attributable to global warming and 0.65 is attributable to the increasing effect of the heat island.

49:40, he claims it is improper to add in manmade effects to get a climate model to match reality. Uhhh... when there ARE manmade effects, it's perfectly acceptable to add them in. We've released sequestered carbon. When they factor that in, their models account for the temperatures we're seeing. When they don't factor it in, they show temperature too low.

51:00 he goes full retard. "Not attributable to natural causes" has nothing to do with the shape being outside what nature can achieve. Take a supervolcano eruption and a subsequent dip in temperatures. This is attributable to a natural cause. Now assume the same dip but without a volcanic eruption. But instead an all-out nuclear exchange happened. By his reasoning, this dip is not attributable to man because nature can also do dips.
Like I said, full retard.

1:00:00 full retard again. Of course things will balance. Look at Venus as an example: Nicely balanced at around 740 Kelvin. But eventually balancing does not mean that you will be within the same cycle instead of at a "new normal." That is the issue. If man-made CO2 emissions provide the impetus for larger changes which increase the temperature and, say, melt the Greenland and polar caps; now the world has changed and the question is whether with the man-made baseline in play can it ever go back or does it keep bouncing off that difference? If it can't go back then you've cut off that half of the cycle -- the oceanic currents, the air currents, etc. of that part are no more, so they no longer serve to balance the warmer half. So if the Earth tries to cool but can't get back into that zone where we have polar caps, with the oceanic and air currents and rainfall patterns that are because of that, what does its new cycle look like?
It is a journey that we don't want to take if we can avoid it, because things are pretty darned good now and the transition will be destructive (thus "catestrophic."). With polar ice caps, we have lots of land. The breadbasket of the world is right across the United States. Hurricanes are seasonal and strong hurricanes aren't common.
Perhaps the world will end up as a tropical paradise, but that doesn't change that cities and even entire nations will go under water -- the populations having to be moved and everything rebuilt.

Deniers are always going on about how we can't "afford" change. If we can't afford change while at peak oil and with a stable food and manufacturing infrastructure, when can we afford it? When crude is at $1000/bbl and when New York City and Washington DC and all of Florida are underwater, and maybe the Midwest is a desert? If we can't afford change now how can we afford to cope with change when it is forced upon us?

1:02:40 "If certain sensitivity and feedback exists going forward, it has to exist backwards."
Well here's someone who would fail amplifier theory. That you have a linear range does not mean you can output infinite power, and the presence of a nonlinear range does not mean that you have a point with infinite sensitivity and infinite gain.
Methane released by thawing tundra is not released unless it thaws. Any effect that does not bring the temperature up to the point where it thaws does not receive the amplification. Same goes with the polar caps. If the temperature's not to the point where you're losing white you're not amplifying.

Gonna go play games now. And the fact remains, he's not a climatologist.

:thumbsup:

Unfortunately you just wasted your Time.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I love these threads.

They should have a religion tag

 

[umbrella39]

Finally! Someone with a bigger hard on for GW than HelloKeith.

 

[Nemesis 1]

I am not a climate scientist, nor do I play one on TV or on ATP&N.

While a number of posters here claim to have scientific or engineering backgrounds, no one has yet claimed to be a climatologist.

This has not stopped anyone and everyone from claiming their opinion is better, more accurate or less biased than everyone else's.

As a result, most "global warming" discussions here devolve into ad hominem attacks and/or rather poor attempts at describing the "science."

As one may expect, these self-important "scientific" lessons are delivered with a haughty and imperious air, which may otherwise be described as whole lot of "hot."

One outrageous claim made by the "True Believers In Anthropogenic Climate Change," also known as the "Warmers," or just "Believers," is that the skeptics, or "Doubters," do not have science on their side.

It turns out that is not the case, but how can such bias be addressed? Who has time to slog through the thousands of pages required to understand just how wrong the "Believers" are?

I suggest taking a bit of time and viewing the following presentation by Warren Meyer.

The online Vimeo version is here.

His rapid fire delivery brings up the various claims made by the "Believers" and then provides the scientific basis for rejecting their flawed methodology and conclusions.

I suggest "Believers," especially those pretentious buffoons who haven't bothered with doing more than mimicking the pronouncements of their preferred tenured, pig at the trough funded wannabe climate boffs, spend the short amount of time it takes to review the material summarized by Warren Meyer.

Go on, it won't hurt you.

OK, it might bruise that inflated ego you have, but I am sure it will inflate right back up again.

It always does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtix0QVyUqA&feature=related

 

[Cogman]

The reason CO2 concentration is increasing is because we're releasing carbon that was stored in fossil fuels for millions of years. That's the whole point.

We aren't talking about the fact that the atmospheric CO2 concentration significantly increases because we burn fossil fuel (That is the point of GW, but not what we were talking about.) We are talking about humans being CO2 Neutral. They are not. You exhale CO2, The fact that it was create from plants today doesn't matter, you create a net increase in CO2 just by being alive. Every animal (that I know of) does. For something to be CO2 neutral, it would have to have a stable level of CO2 production and consumption. Humans don't do this. No living organism (that I know of) does this.

You said biking was "CO2 Neutral" it isn't. When you bike, you produce more CO2 than you consume. You may not produce more CO2 than can be absorbed by global flora. But if that is your definition of neutrality, then a single car doesn't produce more CO2 than surrounding flora can absorb, thus it would also be "CO2 Neutral". Do you see the point I'm making? No matter how you slice the term "CO2 Neutral" it doesn't apply to biking.

I am making no argument for or against global climate change.

 

[DominionSeraph]

We are talking about humans being CO2 Neutral. They are not.

Also, the aside that humans release carbon dioxide looks to be there to just obfuscate the issue. We do release CO2, but we're powered by biofuels.

Carbon neutral means not adding additional carbon to the biosphere. Now, the human biological food cycle isn't quite carbon neutral because in the initial phase we clear land and the agricultural growth doesn't replace what was there before, but after that agricultural products do take in what we put out.
What there isn't a cycle for is fossil fuels, such as what we use in the transport and storage of such food. That's outside of the biological cycle. What we that dumps in adds to the overall carbon load and it is NOT adjusted for by having additional plants take up the additional carbon. This is why the carbon in the atmosphere increases.

For something to be CO2 neutral, it would have to have a stable level of CO2 production and consumption.

Definition fail.

 

[Hacp]

The earth's CO2 concentration has been changing for a long time. It has bounced up and down like a sine wave and so far, we haven't seen any of the dire predictions come true(like the earth would turn to venus). People like to play scare tactics with the melting of ice, but heck we melted a lot of ice after the ice age so that couldn't have been it. Until scientists can prove global warming by experiment(I.E. test it using the scientific method), we shouldn't put too much weight into their computer models. Otherwise, their predictions are about as accurate as those of other "scientists" that rely solely on models, I.E. economists.