There is absolutely no credible scientific consensus that human activities, including fossil burning, are having a dangerous (or even measurable) influence on climate change…either for warming or cooling.
For the past 10000 yrs (existence of human life), the earth has been warmer than it is now for almost all of that time period (keep in mind that fossil fuel emissions were non-existent before around 150 yrs ago). The earth fluctuates in temp. with no relationship to co2 levels. We came out of the little ice age after the medieval warm period and started to climb in temperature. Despite a steady increase in atmospheric co2 levels, temperature rise has not been linear. Earths temperature has been rising and falling for 30-40 year cycles in the past 100 yrs. The net increase is about .8 degrees celsius. We have been cooling for the the past ten or so yrs. and probably will for another 20, according to the cycle.
The science behind it sounds simple, but there should not be consensus without correlation. Moreover, co2 obviously helps keeps the earth warm, but temp. and co2 recordings are still well within past values. Global warming is not a myth but agw is exaggerated and gc is inevitable
Bernie Sanders last night admitted that the 78 Scientist was the Consensus ,And He wants a Carbon tax . That will make people even poorer . The year with Summer was 200 years
ago caused a Volcano . Its a power grab .
Most people don't know science very well at all--especially physics and mathematics. Those that don't know the science will follow their accepted authority figures, or go just with whatever is personally advantageous. Many people are under the belief that acting on global warming will cost them money, and ignoring it will save money. Others are worried that accepting global warming will hurt the value of fossil fuel companies. Neither of these beliefs is particularly well-founded in facts. Because of these beliefs, many people reject global warming for political and economic reasons. That's the reason that most conservatives reject it. They will find bits and pieces of scientific information (ignoring the big picture) to support their beliefs
There are almost certainly liberals that accept it for political and economic reasons also. But if you're not trained in science, it's a simple matter to just assume that the great majority of scientists know what they're talking about, and believe the science of global warming.
Other people--even those trained in statistics or geology, for example--believe that they have expertise that those int he field do not have. This ignores that there are many statisticians and geologists that work on climate science and ARE trained in the subject.
Take for example one of the other answers that is talking about "exponential increases" in temperature. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the Earth's climate system is stable to small perturbations about its equilibrium. That means that with a small perturbation to one of the variables (e.g. an increase IR absorption due to increased CO2), we can expect a response that is, to a first approximation, linear. This is true no matter what the exact functional form is (linear, quadratic, exponential, whatever), -it is simply a consequence of the system being near equilibrium. It's true that large excursions of the variables may drive the system into some other regime, but not necessarily.
Also, the idea that the climate is "chaotic" and can't be modeled is foolish. While it's true that no one can make a weather forecast valid 50 years in the future (or even a few months), that is NOT what scientists that create climate models are doing. They certainly don't care about figuring out which day of the week it will rain 50 years from now, but they would like to answer questions about whether there will be more or less rain than there is now, or whether the temperature will be higher or lower. These are questions that can be answered. Something that every statistician presumably knows is that while you can't predict what the next roll of a pair of dice will be (if the dice are not loaded), you can in the long run predict accurately how often a particular number will come up. While climate is a much more complicated problem, the principles are the same: we know the physical laws that govern climate, and if we run detailed simulations enough times we will nail down what future climate will be like.
A couple other points. Scientists are not making "billions" off of climate change. Funding is large for climate study because it is so important to the economy and livelihood of the country. It takes a lot of money because when you're studying global climate you need to investigate the GLOBE, and it's very big. A single satellite may cost over a hundred million dollars. An oceanographic research ship may cost tens of thousands of dollars per week to operate. Hundreds of thousands of temperature measurements are taken across the Earth every day. These things cost money, and this NOT money going to make scientists rich.
And there is a mistaken belief on both sides that "free marketeers" deny global warming. While some may, those are usually either the ones that are poor in science or unethical. There is no reason that someone has to be scientifically ignorant because they support free markets. I should point out that the Libertarian candidate for President during the last election BELIEVED in global warming, as did the more intelligent Republican candidates.
Treat it like you would your temperature. If you are healthy at 98.6 and one day you check you temperature and it's 98.8 are you sick or running a fever or is it just "one of those things". The alarmists say that a few tenths of a degree rise in the earths' atmospheric temperature is global warming. In contrast, in many areas of the world right now we are experiencing the fiercest Winter that we have had in a decade. Is this global warming or not? If it's not then all you need are 5,000 people screaming that it is and everyone else will believe it. If it is, and it may take 200 years for it to show as a really really negative effect then how will that bother you in 200 years. Just a few things to think on.
For the past 10000 yrs (existence of human life), the earth has been warmer than it is now for almost all of that time period (keep in mind that fossil fuel emissions were non-existent before around 150 yrs ago). The earth fluctuates in temp. with no relationship to co2 levels. We came out of the little ice age after the medieval warm period and started to climb in temperature. Despite a steady increase in atmospheric co2 levels, temperature rise has not been linear. Earths temperature has been rising and falling for 30-40 year cycles in the past 100 yrs. The net increase is about .8 degrees celsius. We have been cooling for the the past ten or so yrs. and probably will for another 20, according to the cycle.
The science behind it sounds simple, but there should not be consensus without correlation. Moreover, co2 obviously helps keeps the earth warm, but temp. and co2 recordings are still well within past values. Global warming is not a myth but agw is exaggerated and gc is inevitable
Well scientists and other activists like to hype global warming beyond all reason, claiming it will flood the Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers, that we will get superhurricanes and heatwaves, 'children won't know what snow is', etc. Makes the scientists less credible.
Global warming itself is happening, but how much is a big question. Basic physics suggests not much, but activists claim much more.
Raisin Cane: You are here stating the ice should stop talking about statistics if, according to you, he does not know much. But you are continuing to debate atmospheric physics as if you do know more than what your average atmospheric scientist/climatologist says and you write it off as a money grab and a conspiracy. Do you see any problem at all here?
BB shows you the denier in full flight he lists 3 things that are not scandals at all but denier inventions.
climategate came to nothing, the hockey-stick scandal is a complete myth, same for the tree ring scandal, deniers may believe their own blogs but it's not really hard to see they have no actual evidence to support these claims. Try asking BB for his evidence of these claims and see what you get.
Because I hate the idea of parking my SUV.
Because my oil company stocks will drop.
Because I would have to stop fearmongering about the supposed dangers of nuclear power.
Because solar panels on my roof would be an eye sore.
These are the sort of reasons why people think that global warming is a myth. Not because they have scientific evidence, but because combating global warming requires making changes which they do not find convenient.
Global warming is happening
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010...
And we are causing it
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-c...
The ten warmest years in the instrumental record are 2010, 2005, 2009, 2007, 2002, 1998, 2006, 2003, 2013 and 2012.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
I don't think "myth" is the accurate word but in answer to your question just read some of these answers.
If you truly have an open mind, try to interpret the attitudes within the views presented. Without even looking at any facts, I'm always skeptical when someone presents their point of view as being impossible to be incorrect.
I'm very curious because a guy in my class today said he didn't believe in it but I don't get why, and I never got the chance to ask him. Maybe someone can help me figure this out and understand their point of view. And I'm going to try and keep an open mind here, so please be respectful
The world average temperature is NOT easy to measure. So it is not clear the world is really getting warmer just from that. And the deniers usually point to smaller scale things, like the cold winter this year in the northern hemisphere, instead of looking at the 10 year, 50 year, or better yet 100 year average for the whole world.
Lack of scientific understanding
Lack of comprehension of what they read
Refusal to accept reality (which is the basic definition of a denier)
Conspiracy theorists
Stubbornness
Easily led around by the nose
Taking denier blogs at face value without taking time to examine the science
Reading articles by writers with little or no credentials
Trying to nail down any denier is difficult they change their story on an almost daily basis, lurching form the old tried and failed like "it's the Sun" to "It's volcanoes" to "It's clouds" to the string of conspiracies that have tried blaming everyone from Al Gore to governments to various billionaires to communists to greens and now scientists.
This is a list of some 170 all of which denier have used and many they still try to use
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argumen...
They have claimed scientific consensus means nothing yet oddly they to create their own with a fake petition claiming 31,000 scientists, yet these scientists, who it is claimed feel strongly about this, have not in almost a decade appeared anywhere to make this point. They tried to create smaller petitions and send them to people like the president but this just highlighted how few real scientists they had to call on, that even in the top ten of a list of just 100 they could not get more than a couple of people with actual climate qualifications, instead have people who where electrical engineers or who specialised in wild dogs of Africa.
On the other side you have real science supported by real scientists that is quite easy to show they are real people as they in groups supply their names to groups like the UN IPCC with affiliations and it is quite easy to find their work history (something the OISM petition has never been willing to do)
Then you have the Annual meeting of a number of key scientific organisations like AGU that attract ~15-18 thousand scientists, yet not a peep out of all these scientists denier claim they have.
Then there is the peer reviewed journals (which denier have also tried to attack) again no real denial to be found here, denier crow if they get one or two papers published that a vastly watered down on the claims they make on their blogs, yet these same denier try to ignore the thousands of papers by many thousands of scientists that all show warming.
Denial is a joke, one that is certainly not fooling scientists
http://climate.nasa.gov/
edit: look at the nonsense deniers post on this issue
"There has been no statistical global warming for the past 17 years"
So it seems deniers can't even do basic math, 17 years ago would be 1997, yet in the list of ten warmest years 1997 fell off this list about 5 years ago, 1998, is 16 years ago, just and is in fact 3rd warmest with 2005 & 2010 tied as the warmest that is not 17 or 16 years ago but 9 & 4 year respectively, with the warmest decade in the modern record falling completely within this claimed period of no warming, so as I said denial is a joke.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201...
The theory of CO2 causing warming was made in the late 1800's but ignored by most scientist's then because they also discovered that the warming effect of CO2 logarithmically declines with concentration (law of diminishing returns) however politicians had a need for a new crisis, so they funded research into global warming, which came up with positive feedbacks whereby a small warming from CO2 would cause an increase in water vapor (clausius clapeyron effect) and water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas, so there would be runaway warming.
Ridiculous as any small warming would have the same effect, not just CO2 and it would have happened long before.
The facts are CO2 does cause very small warming, a doubling of CO2 will cause an increase of 3.7watts per sq meter which equates to 1C (nothing much to worry about) there are just as many if not more negative feedbacks to water vapor than positive ones.
CO2 is escalating but global temperatures are not.
If your still in school that means there has been no significant rise in global temperatures in your lifetime.
FSM answered your question very well. He demonstrated that AGW alarmists are all about leftist ideology. For them, they are just realists and everyone else is an extreme Free Marketeer. Since I believe in freedom, and free markets, somehow that makes me extreme in their minds. That demonstrates who they are.
Scientists don't believe in things. You might say, based on the evidence, I believe that humans have probably caused warming. If you go beyond that, you are moving into a cult like belief system common with alarmists.
You are wise to keep an open mind. Don't just follow the crowd like a sheep. Learn the underlying science before you "believe". Try to look at the evidence and evaluate what is most likely true. That is what a scientist would do.
Reasons:
ClimateGate Email Scandal
Hockeystick Scandal
Tree-Ring Scandal
Climate change deniers are either extreme free marketeers or conspiracy theorists.
"Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a vocal platform for climate denial, and bloggers have taken a prominent and influential role in questioning climate science. We report a survey (N > 1100) of climate blog users to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r .80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets. This provides empirical confirmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists"
I would say that a myth would be a strong term. Exaggerated is a better phrase.
We know that the temps have increased by about 0.8 degrees over the past 100 years. There is reason to doubt that all of this has actually occurred. I can link you to a NASA article which shows that the US temp had not increased in 1999. Then after 1999, the temperature "corrections" made a warming trend suddenly appear in the US. Now clearly the US is not the entire world and the overall corrections if taken out would still show at least a world-wide increase in temps of 0.5 degree celsius over the past 100 years.
Here is the problem. The people screaming about climate change are not worried about a 0.5 degree increase over the next 100, or a 0.8 increase or even a 1.5 degree increase. They are talking about an exponential increase. A linear increase would be about 1 degree rise, in temps but they are talking about a 5 degree rise.
They produce these climate model where they are trying to figure out what the earth's climate is going to do over the next 100 years. Some of these climate models are 20 years old, so we can see how they do in predicting the last 20 years. The answer??? They fail. So we know the models do not work. The "scientists" however, instead of acknowledging the failure of the models, look for the "missing heat" and declare their models working. That is not science.
Now how do they get that the models are exponential??? They assume positive feedbacks are strong than negative feedbacks. CO2 itself can only increase the temp of the Earth by 1 degree celsius for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. The scientists know this, so they have to assume that other things are going to occur that increases the Earth's temperature more. The inherent problem with this logic is that the Earth is a stable system. It has to be in order for evolution to have taken places over hundred of millions of years. The models with all of these feedbacks are unstable.
Modeling out 100 years on a know system is EXTREMELY difficult. I know because I have a PhD in statistics and create models. Modeling out 100 years on something as chaotic as the Earth, impossible. Modeling a stable system with and unstable system... Just plain wrong.
So why do this??? Because right now hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on "climate change". The goal of many politicians is to increase this to trillions of dollars. The scientists getting billions of dollars of grant money, receive that money because of fear of climate change. No climate change and funding dries up. Now this may not make them lie, but it will certainly bias their results. Imagine a pharmaceutical company that did not have the FDA review their findings. How much do you trust the "science" of people whose funding is dependent upon their findings?
In the end CO2 is a greenhouse gas and can cause problems. We should look for ways to reduce our impact. Some ways include nuclear and solar power. BUT, climate change is not some big monster of a threat. It is not going to wipe out humanity. Further, we have reason to reduce our use of fossil fuels for the fact that they are non-renewable. What we do not need is to panic.
What does panic look like? A carbon tax scheme, where we will reduce CO2 output by an unknown quantity over an unknown amount of time, costing an unknown amount of money. Or my personal favorite. Climate change groups actually tried to stop an african nation from opening a coal power plant. These are people's lives. They need power and clean water to live.
Now people here may claim I am lying. But if you want credible sources for anything I have said, I will provide them. Just ask.
Also you may want to ask them this one question. If they think that warming is exponential, then why do they show past warming with only linear regression. They do not even believe in their exponential models enough to use exponentials in explaining past warming.
CR,
I have no oil stocks a fuel-efficient car am for nuclear power and have looked at placing solar panels on my roof, they are too expensive. What else have you got?
LOL Pegminer, you crack me up. So you know the difficulty of modeling chaotic for 50 years, much less 100 years. YOU JUST SAID WHAT I SAID AS IF YOU DISAGREE!!! Further, you admit stability, yet have very unstable models. You seem to believe models with exponential increases and large positive feedbacks are not unstable. All you have done is agreed with me in a negative manner as if my claims are silly, when you agree with them.
Ice,
Do you really not know the difference between linear regression and your nonparametric claim??? Maybe you should stop talking about statistics, if you don't.
None
AGW Theory is all about politics and religion and nothing about science. Follow the money for the truth behind this scam.
