I've been watching this discussion...

[Chuck Vaughn]

As the title says, I've been watching this discussion.... and trying to stay out because it is completely OT. But at some point the misinformation is too overwhelming. If nothing else, this thread proves you can be an expert in one area of science and mostly ignorant in another. 

First off, AGW is Anthropogenic Global Warming, not Anthropomorphic Global Warming. How anyone in this group could get that wrong is beyond me.

There are many real environmental problems such as habitat loss, but environmental organizations seem to have little interest in pursuing those. Instead they want to go after boogeymen like CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) that has vey little reproducible science to support the hypothesis. It's pretty hard to come to any conclusion other than making alarmist claims backed by almost no science at all is the only way they can squeeze money out of the gullible public to sustain themselves. I've watched the alarmist message escalate year after year as public interest wanes on the subject.

Paleoclimate science is in disarray. The Hockey Stick has been debunked, shown to be an artifact of poor statistical methods. Tree rings are not proxies for temperature, especially obvious in the late 20th century when ring widths have diverged from temperature records casting much doubt on tree ring temperature reconstructions. Authors of papers supporting the CAGW hypothesis use every conceivable method to resist sharing their data and methods so others can't reproduce their results. These people don't seem to understand that it's the job of other scientists to do everything they can to tear down their work. Only when your work cannot be falsified does it become accepted science. Many seem to think that simply publishing a paper makes their work accepted science and therefore it is fine to base far reaching public policy on it.

Peer review in paleoclimate science has been shown to be an incestuous relationship as the supporters of the CAGW hypothesis review each other's papers.

Climate models have been falsified because not a one of them has been able to predict the future. The lower troposphere has not warmed as predicted by the models which is something very basic to the validity of the models.

The surface temperature record is mess. The temperature recording network was never designed to monitor long term temperature change. Land use changes around most of the stations have rendered them useless as long term records despite the claims by some that they can be "adjusted" by comparing them to rural stations not affected by land use changes. Stations have abruptly changed locations so there is no way to know how the new location compares to the old one. Again, magical adjustments are applied. Data is not always continuous over time. Station maintenance is spotty. Calibration is not performed. It's a metrology nightmare.

Islands are not losing land area due to sea level rise. Such claims by the island nation of Tuvalu are actually due to over extraction of ground water because of over population. The same claims made by the Maldives are completely false and just a scheme to try to get governments to send them money. Sea levels have been rising at a fairly steady rate for a long time and if anything, show some decline in the rate of rise in recent times.

Ocean acidification is looking to be more like another alarmist myth all time. For a detailed discussion of the issue see this:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/ocean-acidification-chicken-of-the-sea-little-strikes-again/

It seems to me that the big environmental organizations have lost their way being more in the money raising business than in the good science business.

Lastly, I would caution anyone about using the term "climate denier." Unfortunately there have a number of notorious articles where people labeled Climate Deniers have been equated to Holocaust Deniers. This is disgusting indeed. Although there may be a few people out there with no credibility who believe there has been no global warming period, all reputable skeptics agree there has been a degree or so of warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. Climate skeptics question the validity of the CAGW hypothesis and don't see any reason based on current science that supports a catastrophe in the making.

I advocate that we throw out the garbage science surrounding CAGW and get back to researching all aspects of the climate so that maybe one day we'll have a better idea of how it actually works. In the meantime humanity can adapt to climate change just as we always have.

Chuck

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> Climate change do not mean that it will be warmer somewhere and colder
> somewhere else... When the atmosphere temperature (energy) increase, the
> consequence is much more instable weather. Cold and warm temperature records
> will be broken more often at a given place... precipitations will be more
> inconsistent, etc...
> 
> Climate change is not a problem. The problem is the rate of the change that
> is too high. Animals and plants can't adapt to the rapid changes.
> 
> This happened many times during the earth history (for different reasons,
> more often because of volcanos, etc..) causing numbers of extinctions of
> animals and plants species.
> 
> Right now, human are burning tons and tons of oil and gaz and release
> trapped carbon in the atmosphere at an accelerating rate... THAT NEVER
> HAPENED BEFORE. This contribute to climate change. We are also destroying
> all the forests of the planet and the oceans increased acidity make them
> less able to absorb the great part of the carbon we release...
> 
> 
> Paul, will you suggest to do nothing ?
> 



 
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