A Gore confession

You may not like or agree with Gore politically but his message and slides are a result of studies from the world's best scientists. And you, mocking their research and studies, I ask, what are you're credentials? Do you have a strong education and proven experience with years of research in the field of climatology/meteorology, oceanography, geo/biochemistry? I can tell by what you say that you don't which leaves me to believe that you're just another idiot pundit discrediting the scientific community.

Derek, Al Gores raw data may have come from the worlds best scientists but he has misrepresented them, several climate scientists, themselves believers in man made global warming, have expressed discomfort with the way he has dissembled and misrepresented the information.

Al Gore has done this in a deniable fashion that is illustrated (albeit in a sardonic way) by this article.

Al Gore is the one most likely to discredit the scientific community

Yes, what are your credentials to comment on global warming? You're certainly no Nobel Peace Prize committee. Just a guy ranting on the internet...

"You may not like or agree with Gore politically but his message and slides are a result of studies from the world's best scientists:"

WORLD'S BEST SCIENTISTS!!!!!!!!! snort!

name'em

First, the guy who invented the lobotomy got a Nobel Prize. Second, Gore's prize was not in science. Third, none of this is about 'good or bad' scientists, but about the quality of the science. There's a big difference between that quality and the value the general public (or Hollywood elites) bestows on certain people doing the work. BTW, no reputable scientist EVER seeks to "end the debate" or to banish fellow scientists (a-la Heidi Cullen) who disagree with them. They also NEVER object to any colleague critiquing their work. This entire subject departed some time ago from the scientific universe into the political one.
I think the point the author is making here is that Gore has no qualms about exaggerating facts (and has admitted this) in order to mobilize people. This is another thing that should never happen in a scientific debate.

As a scientist myself, I noted in the early 1980's that the First Law of Grantsmanship (the art of attracting funding for scientific research) had coalesced into "The louder the alarm a researcher can raise, the more Federal grant money comes in." The unfortunate consequence if this is that many less-than-scrupulous scientists are willing to sacrifice the objectivity of the scientific method to pay their bills. Suivez l'argent.

Reading the arguments (if that is an accurate depiction of what they are)of the proponents of AGW in support of their theory usually more resembles a case study in Philosophy or Logic 101 detailing the logical fallacies people fall prey to.

The arguments are like a warped record - never, ever, any actual science (empirically observed and validated) but plenty of name calling, appeals to and against authority, and a great deal of self-righteous indignation of their moral superiority condescendingly thrown down from high-up upon their soap box.

>his message and slides are a result of studies from the world's best scientists

Are you referring to the IPCC? A UN-funded political bureaucracy whose stated mission, effectively, is to show that man is responsible for global warming (they make no attempt to find a natural cause for the modest warming that has occurred since the little ice age)? Their entire work is to seek out research that supports their premise, and deliver it with spin for "policy makers". A fraction of the number they quote as supporting scientists are actually in the proper fields and having to do anything with the working group responsible for determining man as the cause (the other two groups are focused on subsequent effects and what to do about them).

But if this was about science, why would they have bureaucrats editing the reports? Why would the summary for policy makers precede the scientific report by several month to allow the scientific report to be edited to agree with the summary? Why would they be more interested in having representatives of the 130+ member nations (have many of these nations have advanced climate research anyway?) instead of the "world's best scientists"? Why do they need to mislead you about this, so that you think the "world's best scientists" are in agreement with these unlikely scenarios?

Of course global warming is just a made up cause for politicians to rally behind and to cripple industry. No scientific proof exists to support the claims.

And smoking is healthy for you, there's no scientific proof to say otherwise.

And the universe was created by a giant spagetti monster... disprove that if you can.

I think any rational thinking human being can recognize that if you add more bowls to collect rainwater, you'll catch more rain... why is heat absorption by GHGs in the atmosphere so difficult for the nay-sayers to comprehend. We have proof of this, just not the overall effect... is it worth the risk just so you can drive 10 mins to the store or watch TV 3 hours a day? I refuse to believe you are just stupid... what's the separate agenda? Avoiding the recognition of your personal responsibility to change lifestyle habits? Welcome to earth; we'll all live or die together... too bad we have so many suicidal members of society.

>why is heat absorption by GHGs in the atmosphere so difficult for the nay-sayers to comprehend.

Educate yourself. CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is small (currently around 380 part per MILLION by volume), of which man's contribution is small. It's a tiny bit of the GHG picture. The hoax is perpetrated by hypothesizing that a tipping point will be reached at which point it will behave completely differently than it known to behave. Already, we should be a lot hotter than it is, if the current CO2 forcing figures calculated by the IPCC and other alarmists were anywhere near correct. Read the IPCC summary--they say so! Of course they make excuses as to why this *might* be. But of course, they don't use there vast "scientific" resources to even attempt to determine if these excuses have any relationship to reality. Why? Because their mission is to prove a link to man--any other cause is simply not what they are looking for.

Meanwhile, they can fool folks like you who, if it sounds like it has a chance of being possible, will jump on board.

So, as far as your question, I can comprehend it. I can also comprehend that the effect they are stating is far beyond reality. Why hasn't it gotten hotter in the last ten years, with co2 increasing every year? Why has the US only gotten back to the hottest years of the 1930's at the peak in 1998, and gotten cooler the past decade?

Alright, so what your saying is that the IPCC, along with their hundreds of qualified, independent reviewers and all the other scientists publishing research which warns about GHG emissions are false, and that whatever 2 articles you have read on something like a magnetic pole shift are right on the money... have any leads on the JFK hit or Roswell crash to go along with that conspiracy theory?

Do my research? Who the hell are you to act as if you are qualified and have evaluated the literature? There are a vast amount of published papers supporting GHGs and global warming compared to a handful stipulating otherwise. Go "do the research" yourself.

Also saying CO2 levels are "small" because they are measured in ppm is incredibly ignorant, anyone with formal education in science or engineering will know that its the effect that is important, not the direct quantity... and any ecologist or biologist will tell you that they spend a huge amount of time assessing dangers in the ppm range. Also, 385 ppm on an atmospheric scale is HUGE. And again, feel free to take your own advice and go read the literature... CO2 levels have raised to the 385 ppm mark from only 280 ppm in the 1800s and all the published sources I have read contribute most of this to anthropogenic sources... so clearly you pulled that small fraction bit out of your a**, which makes me doubt you've done any literature review at all, besides maybe 3 articles in a newspaper with flashy controversial headlines. Or maybe even something as useless as Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World", which is the most skewed and unprofessional use of "statistics" I've ever had to waste my time on.

Even if you have something against the dangers of CO2 emissions, are you going to lump the other GHGs in with it as harmless as well? I bet the huge increase in CH3 emissions from agriculture are of no concern to you either.

As for the global warming trends, stating peak temperatures for comparisons is about as "foolish" as you can get (have you ever even taken a stats course?). And looking at a timescale of 10 years for indications is just retarded. How about looking at glacier retreat over the last 100 years? That clearly shows overall temperature increases. You referencing US temperatures rather than global averages just makes me laugh.

I'd say you have to do some research yourself before you start acting like an expert. Sure we don't know the magnitude of the effect that GHG emissions will cause, but why the hell would we take the risk when simple mass balances and thermo tell us they'll have SOME effect, and models predict a wide range of possibilities. We certainly wouldn't be able to correct some drastic scenario like a change in the earth's rotational axis, but we CAN stop our pollution which definitely has some effect in the long term.

Luckily there are enough people who trust those qualified to do good research, take their results and err on the side of caution to get these green movements going. It is very unfortunate that arrogant individuals like your self read a few questionably credible sources that support your gluttonous lifestyle, and start spouting it off as the gospel truth.

An "I told you so" from my side of this debate 200 yrs into the future will be much less disastrous than one from your side.

I liked the smoking example used above, though I don't like the language being used in the last 2 posts. Let's keep it civil everyone!

Smoking is a good analogy, as we don't know the true effects caused by cigarette smoke, but we can see tar accumulation in smoker's lungs, and there is a correlation with the development of cancer. We have no "proof" that smoking causes cancer, because for proof of a cause an effect relationship we need to be able to repeatedly demonstrate that when conditions A exist, outcome B occurs. This is not possible due to the complexity of the human body and the timescale of such an experiment, combined with many confounding variables.

Similarly, the complexity of the world's ecosystem and weather system are too complex for us to accurately model or "experiment" with - the number of confounding variables is staggering. Therefore even though we see accumulation of green house gases (of which methane is likely more significant in scale and effect than CO2), we cannot say that these are "causing" the rises in average global temperature.

This doesn't mean we should carelessly emit substances which may or may not be dangerous however. As in the case of smoking, where human health and that of the environment is concerned, taking a potentially overzealous approach is warranted.

I'll take your advice from paragraph 1!! However, I don't think smoking is a particularly good analogy here. For one thing, people who do not smoke are something of control group for those who do. Given this, the difference in lung cancer rates between those who smoke and those who don't are statistically significant in the extreme. If you're talking of a lack of proof for a particular compound in the smoke, I would agree.
The potential downside of a "potentially overzealous approach" can't be overstated. Are you seriously going to risk collapsing economies to reverse a trend in greenhouse gases that you admit may or may not have a significant effect on warming? Did it ever occur to anyone here that every drop of fossil fuel that we in the West do NOT use, will be used by China and Russia and India?
As someone who deals with scientific systems every day, I can tell you that "overeacting" to a small variable and making wholesale changes, can and does screw up the entire system. That's why it is important to react in a proportional fashion.
What the "anonymous" fellow above you doesn't seem to understand is that there ARE more than a handful of very qualified scientists publishing on this and (surprise, surprise!) the complexity of the subject and the constant stream of data indicate to me that the debate MUST remain open.

Happy Weekend!
Loren