Is Global Warming exaggerated?

[bobthebandit]

We keep hearing about Global Warming being a threat to the Planet because the ice packs are melting.
However glaciers and ice packs have constantly been receding since the last Ice Age. It is only in recent years that scientists have been measuring the receding ice, and have drawn the wrong conclusions.

[jake-the-peg]

Climate change is happening nobody sensibly disputes this because there's too much visible evidence.

You can't just go and look at evidence to see man's involvement - you have to do slow research and lots of maths.

I haven't done the maths nor I'm pretty certain has anybody on here - that's why we ask the scientists who have.

They use terms such as "almost certainly" and "Very likely" human caused

I don't think you'll find a single serious scientific institution that doubts this - every time you find a skeptic it's some individual voicing his own pet theories that some journalist picks up on.

But dont take my word for it

Ask NASA
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Ask the American meteorological society
http://www.ametsoc.or...007climatechange.html

Ask the American Acadamy of Science
http://www.nasonline....es_STS_Forum_Oct_2009

Ask the Plank institute, the Royal Society etc etc etc

Just ask yourself

"Am I getting my information from a scientist or a journalist?"

[rov1200]

If millions of people in Bangladesh, on partially submerged islands and also drought stricken areas have nowhere to live what will happen to them? It doesn't take much working out that populations will head north to the countries who they blame for causing the crisis in the first place. How could we refuse them entry?

[BillyBB]

This is NASA whose own Michael Mann (panic about ice age in 70s) has been so discredited /hockey stick/fiddling figures/forcing out opponents etc They whose gistemp records have been central to the alarmists and are now under extreme scrutiny for consistently 'adjusting' temperatures upwards and using thermometers in cities for cells covering mountians.

The American National Science Academy who has thousands of members write to complain that it's alarmist statements should not be done in their name and they were dubious of the actual statistics.

The Royal Society list that I once used to argue with non believers until it was pointed out that many authors were actually benefitting from massive grants, the text was draughted by some of the dodgy folks at CRU, other members have privately said that they dare not object for fear that their own projects would lose funding.

[BillyBB]

Here's a scientist
Dr Keith Lloyd - former lead author at the IPCC -
". . . when I entered the IPCC world, the reviewers were there at the worktable, criticising our drafts, and finally meeting with all us c o-ordinators and many of the IPCC functionaries in a draftfest.
The product was not reviewed in the accepted sense of the word — there was no independence of review, and the reviewers were anything but anonymous. The result is not scientific.
The second problem is that the technical publication is not completed by the time the IPCC reports. Instead, it produces a Summary for Policy Makers. Writing the summary involves the co-ordinators, the reviewers and the IPCC functionaries as before, and also various chairmen.
The summary goes out in a blaze of publicity, but there is no means of checking whether it represents what the scientists actually said, because the scientific report isn’t published for another four months or more.
In the Fourth Assessment, the summary was quietly replaced several months after it was first published because some scientists who were involved complained of misrepresentation. . . ."

Dr Lindzen - an atmostpheric physicist and Professor of Metrology at MIT - no slouch then and he's done the maths. http://scienceandpubl..._fluid_envelope_.html one of several papers where he rips the models and guesses apart.

There are many, many scientists writing serious studies which disagree with the IPCC models but they are not considered newsworthy, 'Help, we're not all going to die' just doesn't cut it as a headline.

[LazyGun]

@BillyB - Your posts contained some inaccuracies Billy.
National Academy of Sciences - You assert that "thousands" of its members do not endorse the NAS position statement on AGW, but you dont offer a source. The only person I have found who has ever made that particular claim is one republican Senator Inhofe, who, as anyone who follows the whole climate change debate will know, is an implacable enemy of the idea of Global Warming.Fact is, the NAS endorse the IPCC view of climate change, and you have no evidence to show that a substantial proportion of its membership thinks otherwise.
Royal Society - Again you make claims that the membership is at odds with the RS position statement on climate change, you smear climate change workers from the CRU and allege scientific impropriety for grant money - but these are all unsustantiated unverifiable claims, and therefore have about as much weight as an opinion on climate change from the man on the bus.
You quote from a Dr. Keith Lloyd - but I think you actually mean Dr. Phillip Lloyd, who indeed does claim to have been a lead IPCC writer - but he isn't a climate scientist, rather a nuclear physicist and chemical engineer. It is possible that there are bureaucratic issues in the reports, but one persons statement is only anecdotal.
Prof Lindzen is, as you say, a heavyweight climate scientist.From my limited chasing of references and quotes though, I cannot tell for sure whether he is against AGW or just against components of the overall theory - and as far as I am aware, he is a signatory to the latest IPCC position statement on global warming. One other point - he does a lot of work as a paid consultant for the coal and oil industry, so when making statements on global warming his words need to be weighed against a possible conflict of interest.

[jake-the-peg]

So you were'nt able to find a professional body of scientists to support you then?

Just a few individuals

You will always get individuals that go against the consensus

Hoyle was still arguing against the Big Bang even after the discovery of the predicted background radiation

Einstein wasted the last part of his life in a futile attempt to show quantum mechanics wrong.


And saying that a piece of evidence you find inconvenient is "discredited" doesn't make it so. It was critisized by an investigation instigated by the US senate but the report was not peer reviewed and was consequently twisted by the politicans that were on the comittee. This is what happens when politicians pass judgement on science

in 2008 the American Statistical Association aggreed with Manns data for at least the last 1300 years

and Michael Mann I think was with NOAA not NASA ( here's his CV http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/cv/cv.html ) so I dispute your rather dody claim of their bias based on that!

[netibiza]

I am convinced that it is all natural and we will adapt to it, as we have done so many times in the past.

I am almost a memner of the flat-earth society!!!

[xud]

Climate change wasn't brought in to raise taxes. It's being used as an excuse to raise taxes.
If global warming was such a big issue then Joe Public wouldn't even have a say in the matter. They would stop importing oil, ground aeroplanes, stop making cars etc.

Anyone can see that it's just an excuse to chisel more money out of Joe Taxpayer.

Then you have the scientists coming up with 'evidence' of global warming that keeps the Government happy. In return they receive extra funding from the Government to continue their work - very cosy!

[LazyGun]

Birdie - Are you sure you are addressing the right person? As far as I can recall, I cannot remember seeing any such questions directed at me. If you did address them at me, I simply missed them.

I think you are probably thinking of someone else, but - If you want my responses to your questions, FWIW -
1. No. I completely disagree with your assertion. 168Mb of emails, and all we hear about is the same mantra repeated incessantly - mikes trick and hide the decline - And, with respect, I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.
2. Political organisation - well, possibly.The suggestion that they are falsifying evidence, or distorting evidence simply to hold onto research grants just sounds too far fetched and unlikely to me.

All that I have read about the science suggests AGW is a very real threat, and I am saddened at the numbers of people trying to argue otherwise, many from a position, it seems of selfishness ( no one is forcing me to pay more taxes, or amend my lifestyle), contrariness ( Well its snowing in the UK so global warming is rubbish - anyway Global Warming is good for us), or, it would seem from comments of some of the academics most closely associated with pushing the non AGW agenda, downright wilful misrepresentation.

One final word - Regardless of the GW phenomenon, we have a global population of 6.5 billion and counting. We have many large, developing countries all trying to match the standard of living found in the western world. The majority of global energy generation is based on fossil fuels, which are finite. It surely makes sense to move to a low carbon, sustainable energy systems, the sooner the better.

[LazyGun]

Birdie - yes, i have looked in some detail at the reports of the emails released. I stand by my initial comment.Having read some of the sites purporting to publicize the conspiracy, I conclude there is no significzant evidence of any conspiracy, except for 2 phrases repeated like a mantra, and even those don't mean what they are alleged to mean.

Consensus is as relevant to science as it is to anything else,and it certainly isn't a concept solely reserved for politics.Of course consensus does not mean the science is automatically correct, but it is a very strong argument in support of any concept around which there is a consensus.

Your arguments on this issue increasingly remind me of those young earth creationists who stubbornly reject any and all science that flatly debunks their position on the grounds that "consensus doesn't mean its true" .

Your argument, it seems, is that ANY scientific argument against the consensus is NECESSARILY of equal or GREATER worth than the consensus view. This is untrue - not every maverick, not every contrary view is a Galileo, or an Einstein.None of the few credible relevant scientific champions of the "AGW is a myth" school strike me as being anything like that calibre.! I repeat - show me a national scientific academy or any credible quality scientific organisation that seriously disputes the process of AGW and presents peer - reviewed evidence supporting their position, and then it may be worth revisitiing as a topic.

You still haven't answered the last point I made - Regardless of GW, when does it make sense to iinvest the money globally to move away from an energy economy reliant almost entirely upon finite reserves of fossil fuels?