Climategate, what it really means.

Earlier this month, someone, appearantly from Russia, hacked into the e-mail server of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and stole hundreds, perhaps thousands of e-mails dating back as far as 1996, and made a file out of them on his own server in Russia. The hacker then passed those emails to global warming denialists, who then made them public. Hacking into private computer files and stealing the items within them is a crime, and thus the e-mails obtained would not be admissible in any American court of law, for that would be rewarding illegal behavior (Not even the police or the FBI could legally do such a thing without a warrant or a subpoena, let alone any private citizens.). Then denialists picked through the e-mails and cherry-picked a few out of context passages to try to “prove” that the entire man-made global warming hypothesis (MMGWH) was a fraud.

Thus we have now seen the depths the denialists will go to attack their targets; most of them are willing to commit crimes and/or condone those crimes committed by others to advance their cause. Yet they have the gall to demand that, on the basis of the stolen e-mails, the writers of the e-mails should by charged with fraud and imprisoned. That is sheer hypocrisy. Read my last blog entry about the character flaws and other questionable issues of Isaac Newton, including his bitter battle with his rival, Gottfried Leibniz, over who had invented calculus first. The backstabbing and intrigue involved was indeed disgraceful on Newton’s part, but that would not discredit his other scientific work, let alone any work by others relating to the same subjects Newton worked on.

Here are other commentaries made about this event on other websites:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/22/806704/-Trickn

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/11/23/why-climategate-aint-nothing/

http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2009/11/leaked_climate_change_document.php

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/the_hacked_climate_science_ema.php

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/hacked_emails_tree-ring_proxie.php

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/11/climate_gate_the_latest_scanda.php

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/11/those_cru_emails_in_full.php

http://scienceavenger.blogspot.com/2009/11/analysis-of-hacked-global-warming-e.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-do-the-hacked-CRU-emails-tell-us.html

At most, the scientists whose e-mails were stolen were guilty of “groupthink”, willing to engage in underhanded tactics to defeat their opponents for the sake of a good cause. But then again, so are promoters of most political parties. Scientists are people too, and are thus as flawed in their characters as any other. Such behavior should be condemned, but that does not automatically debunk the findings of the scientists responsible for the behavior, let alone the work of others not even associated with the CRU. It takes the actual application of the scientific method to do that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Let’s look at what the e-mails highlighted so far by global warming denialists do NOT refer to:

1. No direct communications from  Al Gore.
2. No communications with other leaders of the Democratic Party in the United States.
3. No references to the chemical properties or increasing amounts of greenhouses gases.
4. No marching orders from agencies of the United Nations, not even the IPCC.
5. No plots to actually murder or injure denialists.
6. No references to direct measuments of temperatures.
7. No explicit admission by anyone that the man-made global warming hypothesis is a hoax.

What we do find are:

1. Attempts to account for uncertainties in the gathered data of temperture proxies.
2. Awareness that such uncertainties generate doubt, so they discuss smoothing them over in public presentations.
3. Bitter attacks on and attempts to discredit denialists
4. A threat to delete raw data rather than allow a  certain denialist access to it.

The sort of things that result from scientists (or anyone else, for that matter) under constant scutiny and attack from opponents they deeply distrust.

Let’s assume that the research of this one institution was found to be not reliable. Well, since most of the questionable e-mails were about temperature proxies (tree rings, ice cores) referring to periods of time long ago, we could simply replicate the studies with new proxies. Denialists that hounded the climatologists for the “raw data” to support their claims could have gone into the field and gathered and analyzed their own sets of raw data instead. They never do! And I would recommend that just such a thing be done again. There are plenty of tree rings and ice cores that could be taken in the future to confirm or debunk the claims made by the climatologists of the CRU.

And the other findings, such as the known chemical properties of greenhouse gases, the fact that they are increasing in the atmosphere, the fact that deforestation and burning fossil fuels lead to such an increase, the increase in global average temperatures,  and the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, all support the MMGWH and can only be explained by it. Denialists can attempt to explain all that away, but only in defiance of the known laws of chemistry and physics. Of course, if you want to beleive that nearly ALL the scientists in the world for hundreds of years have been part of a conspiracy to promote a scam, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to take you seriously!

Damning evidence of fraud by Nils Axel-Morner

Nils Axel-Morner is a global warming denialist who has claimed that sea-level rises predicted by supporters of global warming are not happening and even that sea levels were higher in the historical past.

First, check out this blog entry from Tim Lambert:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/the_australians_war_on_science_42.php

{{{Category: The War on Science
Posted on: November 8, 2009 1:23 PM, by Tim Lambert

Despite her training in law, Janet Albrechtsen was not able to figure out that the Copenhagen treaty wasn’t going to impose a COMMUNIST WORLD GOVERNMENT, so you just know that she has no chance in hell of understanding a scientific question. Albrechtsen claims that it is a “fact” that “Sea levels have remained constant for the past 30 years”. Study the graph below from the CSIRO to see that measurements from tide gauges and satellites contradict this claim.

So how did Albrechtsen get it so completely wrong? Well, her authority, Nils Axel-Morner, completely ignored all direct measurements of sea-level from tide gauges and satellites. Simply really. Details in a previous post.

Graeme Readfearn (who, like Albrechtsen, works for News Limited) observes

wasn’t inquisitive enough to find out that Morner is treated like something of a joke among most oceanographers and quaternary scientists.

Albrechtsen tries to invest Morner with some authority because of his association with INQUA, but Readfearn gets a statement from the president of INQUA:

Dr Morner was, quite some time ago, president of one of INQUA’s commissions, indeed, the commission on sea-level changes. That commission no longer exists, as such, but is now part of our Commission on Coastal and Marine Processes. Dr Morner’s views concerning sea-level change are his own and are not endorsed by the current Executive Committee of INQUA, nor have previous INQUA Executive Committees endorsed Dr Morner’s views. On several occasions INQUA has requested of Dr Morner that he not inadvertently represent his views on sea-level change as if they have some connection with INQUA.}}}

OUCH! How embarrassing! Oh, wait….denialists have no sense of embarrassment. Nowhere does this become more obvious than in the testimony that Nils Axel-Morner gave to the British House of Lords on March 30, 2005.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm

With the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite mission in 1992, we now have new means of recording actual sea level changes. The record from 1992 to early 2000 (Fig 4) lacks any sign of a sea level rise; it records variability around zero plus a major ENSO even in year 1997.

  When we three years later have the same record extended into year 2003 on the Webb, a tilt has been introduced. This tilt does not originate from the satellite altimetry readings, however, but represents an inferred factor from tide-gauge interpretations. In order to get back to true satellite data, we have to tilt the whole record back to its original data of Fig 4. When this is done, there is no sea level rise to be seen—only a variability around zero plus a number of high-amplitude ENSO oscillations (Fig 5). This is why I in Fig 3 conclude that the sea level remained stationary at around zero for the last 10-15 years (as further discussed in Mörner, 2004a and 2005).

  The tide-gauge introduced into the satellite data on the Webb seems to violate observational facts at sites spread all over the globe; not least our NW European data covering both uplifted areas (Fennoscandia, Scotland) as subsiding areas (the North Sea).

From 2000 to the present, we have run a special international sea level project in the Maldives including six field sessions and numerous radiocarbon dates. Our record for the last 1,200 years is given in Fig 6. There are no signs of any on-going sea level rise. It seems all to be a myth.

 How the hell is it that denialists are willing to accuse the makers of the “hockey stick” graphs of faking data, yet they never noticed anything from their own people like THAT?! Morner did not provide any proof that the land in question was sinking! He merely ASSUMED it!

Tide gauges are indeed based on sea levels relative to land, so if the land is rising or sinking, it will indeed affect their measurments of sea levels. It reminds me of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Even with tide gauges, you can get a more accurate reading of sea levels by taking readings from dozens of places around the world, taking into account that it is unlikely that all those locations are rising or sinking at the same rate.

Satillite readings of sea levels may seem more accurate than tide gauges, but even satillites can be affected by variations in their orbits. It’s the same issue as satillites taking temperature readings vs temperature readings based on the ground. There is no ABSOLUTE accuracy in any measurement.

In 2007, other scientists took Mörner’s claims and cut them to pieces.

http://www.imedea.uib.es/goifis/OTROS/VANIMEDAT/documentos/intranet/Bibliography/Nerem_et_al_Global_Planet_Change_2007.pdf

We feel compelled to respond to the recent article by Mörner (2004) because he makes several major errors in his analysis, and as a result completely misinterprets the record of sea level change from the TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) satellite altimeter mission. One major criticism we have with the paper is that Mörner does not include a single reference to any altimeter study, all of which refute his claim that there is no apparent change in global mean sea level (GMSL) [see Cazenave and Nerem, (2004) for a summary]. The consensus of all other researchers looking at the T/P and Jason data is that GMSL has been rising at a rate of 3.0 mm/year (Fig. 1) over the last 13 years (3.3 mm/year when corrected for the effects of glacial isostatic adjustment (Tamisiea et al., 2005)).

Mörner gives no details for the source of the data or processing strategy he used to produce Fig. 2, other than to say it is based on “raw data”. Because the details of the analysis are not presented in his paper, we are left to speculate on how this result could have been obtained, based on our years of experience as members of the T/P and Jason-1 Science Working Team. Mörner was apparently oblivious to the corrections that must be made to the “raw” altimeter data in order to make correct use of the data.

As with any satellite data set, calibration and validation of the data must be performed after launch to determine if there are any instrumental errors, find the source of those errors, and evaluate their behavior over time. Satellite altimetry is somewhat unique in that many adjustments must be made to the raw range measurements to account for atmospheric delays (ionosphere, troposphere), ocean tides, variations in wave height (which can bias how the altimeter measures sea level), and a variety of other effects. In addition, the sea level measurements can be affected by the method used to process the altimeter waveforms, and by the techniques and data used to compute the orbit of the satellite. Early releases of the satellite Geophysical Data Records (GDRs) often contain errors in the raw measurements, the measurement corrections, and the orbit estimates that are later corrected through an on-going calibration/validation process defined by the T/P and Jason Science Working Team.

The original release of the T/P GDRs (as well as some subsequent re-releases) contained several errors that directly affect GMSL change. Based on our experience with these issues, and the shape of Fig. 2 in Mörner3s paper, we believe that he used the original release of the T/P GDRs with no attempt to correct for two significant errors. One of the errors is caused by a drift in the TOPEX Microwave Radiometer (TMR). It was first observed in sea level via a comparison to tide gauges (Chambers et al., 1998; Mitchum, 1998), and was verified to be caused by the TMR via comparisons to other orbiting microwave radiometers and radiosondes (Keihm et al., 2000). It caused a drift of nearly −1.2 mm/year in measured GMSL until early 1998, and then a bias of −5 mm. A second major error was introduced when the redundant TOPEX altimeter was turned on in early 1999 due to degradation in the original instrument (Chambers et al., 2003). Since the electronics of the redundant altimeter were different, it caused an apparent bias in the GMSL measurement related to the Sea State Bias (SSB). The sense of the bias was such to cause an incorrect sudden drop in GMSL from the end of 1998 to the beginning of 1999 of nearly 10 mm. This drop is apparent in Fig. 2 of Mörner’s paper (and in comparison to tide gauge data (Mitchum, 2000)). This error is removed when an updated SSB model is applied (Chambers et al., 2003). Data with these corrections applied are available from both the U.S. and French processing centers, as well as products to correct the original GDRs.

When care is taken to make these corrections, the rate of sea level change over the entire T/P mission is 3.0± 0.4 mm/year (http://sealevel.colorado.edu), 3.3 mm/year when corrected for the change in ocean volume due to glacial isostatic adjustment (Tamisiea et al., 2005). In light of this, the statement by Mörner that “This means that this data set does not record any general trend (rising or falling) in sea level, just variability around zero plus the temporary ENSO perturbations” is completely false and is based on his erroneous data processing. Mörner’s paper completely misrepresents the results from the T/P mission, and does discredit to the tremendous amount of work that has been expended by the Science Working Team to create a precise, validated, and calibrated sea level data set suitable for studies of climate variations. Finally, Mörner ignores substantial other oceanographic (e.g. Levitus et al., 2001; Antonov et al., 2002; Munk, 2003; Willis et al., 2004) and cryospheric (e.g. Dyurgerov and Meier, 2000; Rignot et al., 2003; Krabill et al., 2004; Thomas et al., 2004) evidence of sea level rise which corroborate the altimeter observations.

Yikes! When someone in science gets smacked down like that, his career is effectively OVER!

And yet that loon just wrote the following open letter to the President of the Maldives attacking him for making efforts to raise public awareness about climate change. The Maldives, being low islands, would be among the first areas of Earth to be affected by rising sea levels caused be global warming. Since Morner lives in Sweden, not the Maldives, his arrogance is amazing!

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/OpenLetter.doc.pdf

Mr. President,

 

You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgements, Accordingly it is incorrect.

Therefore, I am most surprised at your action and must protest to its intended message.

In 2001, when our research group found overwhelming evidence that sea level was by no means in a rising mode in the Maldives, but had remained quite stable for the last 30 years, I thought it would not be respectful to the fine people of the Maldives if I were to return home and present our results in international fora. Therefore, I announced this happy news during an interview for your local TV station. However, your predecessor as president censored and stopped the broadcast.

(Dale Husband: Actually, this is exactly how con artists faking science operate; they avoid the process of peer review through publishing in science journals and go directly to the public with their claims, which they present as fact to decieve the scientifically illiterate. I’m amazed he would admit to this publicly!)

Let me summarize a few facts (see Fig. 1, and evidence presented in Mörner, 2007):

(1) In the last 2000 years, sea level has oscillated with 5 peaks reaching 0.6 to 1.2 m above the present sea level.

(2) From 1790 to 1970 sea level was about 20 cm higher than today.

(3) In the 1970s, sea level fell by about 20 cm to its present level.

(4) Sea level has remained stable for the last 30 years, implying that there are no traces of any alarming on-going sea level rise.

(5) Therefore, we are able to free the Maldives (and the rest of low-lying coasts and island around the globe) from the condemnation of becoming flooded in the near future.

Of course, if he HAD submitted his findings to peer review, that submission would have had to include details of how he got his measurements, so that others could reproduce them. Until that is done, he has no right to call what he claimed “facts”. I am especially curious as to how he could have measured sea levels at the Maldives over the past 1,2oo years without tide gauges or satillite data.

Even more damning, Mörner promotes the pseudoscience known as water dowsing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils-Axel_M%C3%B6rner

Mörner has written a number of works claiming to provide theoretical support for dowsing. [2] He was elected “Deceiver of the year” by Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning in 1995 for “organizing university courses about dowsing…”^[2]. In 1997 James Randi asked him to claim The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, making a controlled experiment to prove that dowsing works.^[12] Mörner declined the offer.^[13]

This man is not a true scientist, if he ever was. He is a fraud!

Accusing Al Gore of hypocrisy

Take a look at this paper:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/OCregGoreHypocrisy051609.pdf

May 16, 2009 

 

 

 

 

Al Gore’s Hypocrisy Astounding 

 

By Jay Ambrose  

 

 

 

Here’s the first thing you shouldn’t do in front of Al Gore: Be skeptical about catastrophic, human-caused global warming. He will rip your reputation apart, just as he once did to reputable, honorable scientists in congressional hearings. (1)

 

Here’s the second thing you shouldn’t do in front of Al Gore: Ask him whether he himself might have the kind of conflict of interest that he takes for granted in others. For heaven’s sake, do not get into the question of whether he might make a lot of money with the passage of a global warming cap-and-trade tax that he has been fighting for. (2)

 

Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee thought it might be interesting to find out. (3) After all, Gore is associated with a venture capital company that has invested about $1 billion in companies that just might make a bundle should cap-and-trade become law. So she asked if he would benefit.

Emitting a sigh made infamous in a debate way back when, Gore first replied that “a green economy . . . is good for all of us.” He then said yes, he was a partner in the venture capital company, adding quickly and emphatically that “every penny” he made from environmental investments went to the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection. (4)

With a smirk on his face, he huffed that no one who knew him would ever think he had been working on the global warming issue for 30 years for “greed.” (5) When Blackburn said she wasn’t making accusations, he said, “I understand exactly what you’re doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does.”

Blackburn called it quits at about that point, although she could have noted that Gore was founder and chairman of the non-profit group he mentioned. She could have explored whether some of the money he gives to the group redounds to him in other ways, such as expense-paid trips. She could also have gotten into reports that his net worth is now $100 million, when it was put at $2 million when he left politics. (6) She could have pursued the tax advantages of his charitable donations.

But she didn’t, and I think it is just as well she didn’t. The money Gore’s made since he was vice president seems to come mostly from Internet ventures and speeches given at $175,000 a whack, and I doubt seriously that his campaign on global warming has anything much to do with money. The man is a true believer, or so I believe.

And yet, his hypocrisy is astounding. While he cannot believe anyone could ever conceivably have reason to question his motives, he has never hesitated to question the motives of those who differed with him. In that case, you were bought out by ExxonMobil (7) or are an equivalent of Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi-scheme swindler.

Congressional hearings he conducted in 1992 have been described as inquisitorial show trials. One victim, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, has written about scientists being “in the crosshairs” of Gore, who “tried to bully” them into changing “their views and supporting his climate alarmism.” (8) Lindzen also refers to a failed Gore effort to “enlist Ted Koppel (then a TV host) in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists.”

Lindzen is viewed by some as one of the nation’s foremost climatologist. Unlike Gore – whose movie and slide show have been rife with error (9) - he knows what he is talking about, probably a major reason Gore won’t debate him. Lindzen years ago did about $10,000 worth of work as a witness for fossil-fuel companies. There was nothing wrong with that, and he clearly was not corrupted by it. (10)

Whatever Gore believes, the global warming debate is not over, (11) but what should be over is waging it as an ad hominem contest in which science itself is hurt along with scientists whose arguments should be weighed on their merits.

(The numbers in parentheses are not in the original paper, but are added by me to direct the readers to my responses.)

 

1. Assumption. What if Gore’s opponents were not so honorable?
2. If it is a tax, then it will be going to the government, not Al Gore. Oops!
3. Here’s the classic Republican vs Democrat dichotomy.
4. Which Gore founded. Of course, if that bothers the skeptics, would it have been better for Gore to wait for someone else to have founded it? Even so, he most likely would have been given a leadership position within it.
5. Based on the fact that Gore gave up running for President or any other public office after 2000.
6. Here we find a double standard: Environmentalists are not expected to make money from their work. Why don’t critics of Gore also go after ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company and therefore one of the world’s worst pollutors? It made BILLIONS in 2008!  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/30/exxon-mobil-reports-recor_n_162468.html
7. See this: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/exxon-secrets
8. Gee, what did Gore do, threaten to have Lindzen dragged into a back alley and beaten?  If not, this sort of hyperbole is just silly.
9. Alleged errors by denialist sources. Slight inaccuracies can be improved, but most of Gore’s statements were as accurate as one could have reasonably expected, given the uncertainties that climate science by nature must allow for.
10. Assumption.
11. No, it will never be over as long as there are denialists out there, just as the Creationism-evolution controversy will last as long as there are Creationists.

Comparing apples with oranges in climate denialism

World Climate Report is one of those blogs that is dedicated to global warming denialism. Here is a recent entry there:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/20/baffling-island/

There is a bit of press covering a just-published paper that concludes that the current climate and ecological conditions in a remote lake along the north shore of Canada’s Baffin Island are unique within the past 200,000 years—and anthropogenic global warming is the root cause. Which of course, spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Somehow, that temperatures there were several degrees higher than present for a good third of the past 10,000 years and that there has been virtually no temperature trend in the area during past 50 years—the time usually associated with the greatest amount of human-caused “global warming”—was conveniently downplayed or ignored.

Go figure.

Some denialists have suggested that the loss of insect life in the lake referred to was caused by DDT. This is extemely unlikely for three reasons:

1. There are hardly any farmlands on Baffin Island, so there would be little reason to spray DDT there to kill insect pests.
2. DDT has been largely banned since the 1970s.
3. Insects exposed to low levels of pesticide tend to evolve resistance to it over time.

In their zeal to discredit the research at the Baffin Island lake, the writers of World Climate Report appear to commit fraud.

Figure 1 shows the summer (June, July August) average temperature from the weather station located at Clyde, Northwest Territory, which is located on Baffin Island very near the site of the lake. There is no trend here from 1943 to 2008, the period of available data. The most remarkable events are a couple of very cold summers and one very warm summer—all in the 1970s. Summers in the most recent decade are little different than summers in the 1950s—hardly a sign that human-caused “global warming” has made environmental conditions there particularly unique.

Figure 1. Summer (JJA) average temperature from Clyde, N.W.T. from 1953-2008 (data source: NASA GISS)

But when you actually go to the original source, you find:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=403710900006&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1

Surface Temperature Analysis – Station Data

THAT’S NOT EVEN REMOTELY THE SAME CHART!

Even more rediculous is comparing the temperatures of a TOWN (air that moves freely) with those of a LAKE (water in a confined location). That’s truly like comparing apples with oranges. The physics involved would be very different. with heat accumulating in the lake but not the town.

Why did the climate of Baffin Island appear to change so little, despite global warming?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baffin_Island#Climate

Baffin Island lies in the path of a generally northerly airflow all year round, so like much of eastern Canada, has an unusually cold climate. This brings very long, cold winters and foggy, cloudy summers, which have helped to add to the remoteness of the island. Spring thaw arrives much later than normal for a position straddling the Arctic Circle; around early June at Iqaluit in the south-east to early/mid July on the north coast where glaciers run right down to sea level. Snow, even heavy snow occurs at any time of the year, although is least likely in July and early August. Average annual temperatures at Iqaluit are around −8.5 °C (17 °F), compared with Reykjavík,^{[maps 10]} around 5 °C (41 °F), which is at a similar latitude.^[7]

Sea ice surrounds the island for most of the year, and until recently, only disappeared completely from the north coast for short unpredictable periods in August, if at all. At present, the sea is only clear of ice off Iqaluit from mid to late June until the end of September.

Most of Baffin Island lies above the Arctic Circle and all the communities from Pangnirtung northwards are subject to Polar night and the midnight sun. For example, the eastern community of Clyde River experiences continuous sunlight from May 14 to July 28, a period of 2½ months. In addition the long period from April 26 until May 13 and from July 29 until August 16 when twilight is the darkest part of the day means the community has just over 3½ months of light. In the winter the sun sets November 22 and does not rise again until January 19 of the next year. However, unlike places such as Alert, twilight occurs for at least 4 hours a day.

So World Climate Report has disgraced itself beyond any credibility!

A flawed and misleading video about global warming

This is a video made by the Cassiopeia Project, an web based institution made to teach science to the masses via creative videos. This particular one tackles the global warming issue:

There are many flaws with that video, revealing a profound bias:

1. Regardless of the oceanic temperatures of the past 3000 years, our civilization is so highly adapted to the specific climate of the late 20th Century that any significant change, of either warming or cooling, would have disasterous economic and social consequences for us.
2. The video repeats the denialists’ assumption that the Medival Warm Period was warmer than present global temperature averages, by using a cherry picked sample of the ocean (the Sargasso Sea) rather than all of global temperatures. I addressed this unconfirmed claim directly in http://circleh.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/debunking-the-mwp-myth/ and in http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/hockey-stick-graphs-again/.
3. A slight increase in global temperatures would indeed itself not be noticable, but the consequences, including melting the ice caps, altering weather patterns and the rise in sea levels, would certainly be noticable after a century or so.
4. U.S surface temperature records, which are about 2% of the Earth’s surface and mostly land, are misleading. Earth’s entire surface is mostly ocean. We are talking about GLOBAL warming, not just U S land warming.
5. The short term ice cap growth since 2006, as well as the drop in temperatures in 2007-2008, is due to the Sun going quiet since 2005. That does not negate the previous warming and ice cap shrinkage of the past several decades. The Sun could start roaring again at any time.
6. The increase in Antarctic ice was explained here:  http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/those-terrible-twins-of-climate-change-co2-and-h2o/  “In the southern hemisphere, global warming has had less of an effect, and this can be explained by geography. There is far more land up north than down south. Land radiates heat, while oceans absorb it. Also, the Arctic Ocean is water surrounded by warmer land, while Antarctica is frigid land surrounded by cold oceans that insulate it from warmer regions. So it stands to reason that the Arctic Ocean will melt long before the Antarctic does, and that there may even be some increase in Antarctic ice for the reasons I explained above.”
7. Extremely cold weather reports of the past few years are actually explained by the odd combination of  CO2 and H2O interactions. http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/those-terrible-twins-of-climate-change-co2-and-h2o/  “The process begins with the slight increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere known to be caused by human emissions. Because CO2 traps slightly more heat, it also causes more water to evaporate. Water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, so that causes a feedback loop, in which the temperature increases further, causing more water to evaporate. In the summer months, the result is much hotter weather than you might expect from CO2 alone.  But H2O has an opposite effect in winter. As temperature drops, the increased amounts of H2O forms clouds, which block sunlight and thus cool the earth further. Winters will be even colder than one would expect, plus there would be increased precipitation, including snow……..The solar activity has dropped, while the CO2 levels have remained high AND the H2O levels are also high. The end result: Warm summers and VERY COLD WINTERS!“
8. The video claims that water vapor is a far more important greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But that is not true, because water vapor forms clouds in certain concentrations and temperatures that actually block sunlight and thus act to cool the Earth, providing a counter to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. By contrast, CO2 never forms clouds and thus can ONLY be a greenhouse gas. See here: http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/icecap-a-group-of-fake-climate-experts/ ”Suppose you have a planet with an atmosphere composed exactly like Earth’s, with water oceans and a yellow dwarf sun as well. Thus, its atmosphere would indeed have both CO2 and H2O, complete with clouds and typical weather patterns. Suddenly, all the CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect it provides, the temperature drops quickly. The relative humidity skyrockets. In some areas, it exceeds 100%, and when that happens, clouds form, increasing the planet’s cloud cover. The clouds block and reflect the sunlight, further cooling the air below them as well as the surface. Precipitation results and the atmosphere loses most of its H2O as well. So the atmosphere becomes colder and drier, until finally the planet is locked in an ice age, which it can never recover from unless CO2 is added. Even the oceans will be frozen up. Now, we add the CO2 back. With CO2 trapping heat once more, ice begins to melt. Then water begins to evaporate. As water evaporates, the H2O kicks in with its own greenhouse effect, resulting in more ice melting. Eventually, the oceans are restored, and the atmosphere returns to what it was. H2O alone on Earth cannot keep the planet warm enough to sustain life, because at certain temperatures and concentrations in the atmosphere it forms clouds which act as cooling agents, and on land below a certain temperature it forms ice, which also reflects light. CO2 must be the trigger for the greenhouse effect of both substances to operate properly on Earth.”
9. ANY CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans would be an amount that nature would not be adding. The idea that only a small precentage increase in CO2 is nothing to worry about is illogical once the concept of balance of nature is understood.
10. The greenhouse effect of CO2 and H2O is explained further here: http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/carbon-dioxide-and-its-greenhouse-effect/  ”Another thing to consider is how serious the greenhouse effect of Earth’s atmosphere really is. Without it, Earth’s average temperature would be about -18 degrees C, which is about 32 degrees C different from Earth’s actual average temperature (14 degrees C). Again, people who are not scientifically trained have difficulty grasping this, since they think of temperatures below “room temperture” (18 to 24 degrees C) as being cold. But in fact, it is quite warm compared to most of the universe. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, a leftover remnant of the Big Bang, is about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero, which is itself about −273 degrees C. Thus an object recieving radiation from no other source would still have a temperature of -270.45 degrees C. The Earth recieves radiation from the Sun that by itself adds about 252 degrees C to its temperature. That’s a LOT of heat! The greenhouse effect adds only about 1/8th more heat to Earth. But that is still enough to make the difference between a frigid, lifeless planet and one with oceans filled with life.”
11. Since growing human populations around the world have destroyed vast areas of forest around the world to build cities and roads and establish farms and ranches, there is less plant mass to absorb the extra CO2 we have generated. The video shows a misleading chart indicating that U.S. forests have increased. Again, THE U.S. IS NOT THE WORLD!
12. Isn’t it obvious that if animal life increased in proportion to plant life, since animals breath out CO2, the CO2 levels would also remain high? Also, did the makers of that video not consider that human population are still growing, putting more and more pressure on land use? Farm plants that  absorb CO2 will be eaten by humans, who breath out CO2.
13. The last assertion, denying that there is any evidence that CO2 was, is, or will be a cause of global warming, is a flat out lie! http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/challenge-to-global-warming-denialists/ ”You want evidence for global warming?  How about these:  First, there is the known heat retaining properties of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. This results from the gases being transparent to visible light but opaque to infrared radiation (a.k.a. heat). If you think that is a falsehood, do your own experiments with samples of CO2 to prove it does not retain heat. The scientists who established the greenhouse effect and later connected it to the concept of global warming were Joseph Fourier in 1824, John Tyndall in 1858, and Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Now, if you think you can debunk all the work those three did so long ago, knock yourself out.  Second, there is the confirmation of the greenhouse effect going to extremes on a planetary scale, with the Soviet Venera probes sent to the planet Venus in the 1960s. If you think all that data the probes sent us was faked, prove it! Then there is the recorded increase in CO2 levels since the 1950s. Can you prove that such an increase never happened?”

We need to appeal to a less biased court! Especially after seeing the sources the videos makers relied upon:

Most of those are denialist propaganda sources, not peer-reviewed science journals! And those science sources that are reliable have been cherry-picked. What a disgrace!

The Two Central Dogmas of the Climate Change Debate

The two sides of the climate change or global warming debate are:

1. Man-made Global warming theory (MMGWT) Proponents (MPs)
2. MMGWT Denialists (MDs)

Each side is backed up by a “central dogma”. The central dogma is a claim that if debunked discredits the entire movement.

The central dogma of MPs is “that there are greenhouse gases that act to retain heat, which in turn can change climate over time”.

The central dogma of MDs is “that man cannot change climate, no matter what he does”.

Ironically, the MPs’ “central dogma” is NOT a dogma at all, since it can be tested via experiment on actual samples of gases said to be “greenhouse”, which can be peer reviewed and is reproducible by others.

By contrast, the MDs’ central dogma really is a dogma, since there is no way to debunk it. No matter what records you present to show an increase of greenhouse gases like CO2 since the 1950s, no matter what temperature records over the past century or so you present, no matter what records of solar activity you present, MDs will always come up with excuses for rejecting the case of the MPs, including arguing that the records must have been faked. So the position of the MDs is unscientific because it is non-falsifiable.

Well, you cannot fake experimental data. If the “central dogma” of the MPs were indeed false, it would have been debunked many decades ago. Instead, it is so well supported that this “central dogma” is considered as much a fact as anything else in science could be.

So MDs avoid the MPs’ “central dogma” and instead constantly argue around it. They confuse uncertainty about global warming models and projections with reasons to deny them completely. They also note the many natural causes of climate change as if that alone supports their central dogma. Both of these are logical fallacies called  non-sequiturs. They harp about the few remaining scientists who are MDs as if their credentials alone make them credible. But they don’t, because even scientists with PhDs and tenures at universities can be profoundly wrong, especially if they have ideological or financial reasons to corrupt their science.

MPs do not have to attack the central dogma of MDs because, as I showed above, it is unscientific. They just have to point out that it really is a dogma, nothing more.

Challenge to Global Warming Denialists

You want evidence for global warming?  How about these:

First, there is the known heat retaining properties of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. This results from the gases being transparent to visible light but opaque to infrared radiation (a.k.a. heat). If you think that is a falsehood, do your own experiments with samples of CO2 to prove it does not retain heat. The scientists who established the greenhouse effect and later connected it to the concept of global warming were Joseph Fourier in 1824, John Tyndall in 1858, and Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Now, if you think you can debunk all the work those three did so long ago, knock yourself out.

Second, there is the confirmation of the greenhouse effect going to extremes on a planetary scale, with the Soviet Venera probes sent to the planet Venus in the 1960s. If you think all that data the probes sent us was faked, prove it!

Then there is the recorded increase in CO2 levels since the 1950s. Can you prove that such an increase never happened?

Then there is the solar output over that same period.

Then there are the temperature measurments around the globe over the same period. They fit the increasing CO2 levels better than they fit the solar output levels.

Or maybe you think that burning fossil fuels somehow does not produce CO2. OK, take samples of coal, oil, gasoline, and natural gas and burn them and see how much, if any, CO2 they produce.

Or maybe you think that the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century and/or the population growth of the past few centuries never happened and that we humans were somehow created thousands of years ago (or maybe even less than a century ago) at our present level of six billion and with all our fossil fuel burning industrial, transportative, and energy generative processes all intact and running. My G_d, even the Young Earth Creationists, wedded to Biblical dogmas, are not that insane! BTW, charts depicting the world’s population growth resemble…….A HOCKEY STICK!!!!

The Industrial Revolution, the growth of the world’s population, AND the known properties of CO2 AND the known effects of burning fossil fuels in turn support the hockey stick graphs of global temperatures you so revile as fraudulant, just because Stephen McIntyre says so and dozens of his allies in the media repeat his claims all over the place.  What, is he some prophet or even a demigod whose sacred word may not be questioned lest ye be charged with blasphemy?

So, yes, there is clear and overwhelming evidence for the man-made global warming hypothesis!

Hockey stick graphs, again!

Global warming denialists assert that the hockey stick graphs made in reference to global temperatures are highly questionable, if not faked outright. But I wonder if such claims could be justified about world population, which is certainly a factor in global warming. Check these out:

 

 

Compare those with the hockey stick graphs made in reference to past global temperatures:

 One must wonder, if denialists are so eagar to prove the hockey stick graphs of global average temperatures wrong, why they do not also attack population graphs in the same way.

EVERYONE should be vaccinated!

Many people are opposed to vaccinating children, fearing that they might be prone to autism as a result. But there is no clear scientific evidence that autism is a cause of vaccinations. People merely ASSUME that because their children’s autism starts soon after their vaccines are administered, but most children who are vaccinated do NOT get autism. If vaccinations caused autism, then nearly all children vaccinated would be autistic, and we would probably have discovered the agent in vaccinations that cause autism by now. Coincidences often happen, but unless the scientific method confirms the existence of an actual cause for something like autism, a coincidence is all it is. Assuming that a coincidence and the hypothesis resulting from it must be the same as a FACT without confirmation is actually magical thinking that is anti-scientific.

While the cause of autism may be questionable, the danger of viral diseases spreading because of children being left unvaccinated is not. Viruses can only reproduce when they have hosts that they can attack. And every time viruses reproduce, they have a chance of mutation. And when they mutate, they are likely to become more deadly, eventually making the vaccinations obsolete. That will never happen if all children are vaccinated, but it might happen eventually if only some are. Of course, once vaccinations become ineffective because of viral mutations, anti-vaccination nuts will claim they were proven right. Thus, their insane claims are irrefutable.

Even if vaccinations DID cause autism in a few cases, it is better for a child to be autistic than to be DEAD! If people like Jenny McCarthy think otherwise, then as far as I am concerned they can rot in hell!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_McCarthy#Activism_and_autism_controversy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy

Carbon dioxide and its greenhouse effect

Global warming denialists claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) is nothing more than a beneficial trace gas that plants need to make food, and thus the increase in it over the past few decades is nothing to worry about. Let’s look at all the relevant facts:

1. CO2 makes up about 380 ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere.
2. CO2 is essential for plants to do photosynthesis.
3. CO2 is opaque to infrared radiation, thus making it a greenhouse gas.
4. CO2 makes up most of the atmosphere of Venus, which has the worst greenhouse effect.
5. CO2 is 1.5 times heavier than air in general, thus it would tend to be lower in the atmosphere than the nitrogen and oxygen that makes up most of it.
6. In one cubic meter of Earth’s atmosphere at ground level the number of molecules is about ten to the 23rd power. (That’s 1 followed by 23 zero’s !!!)

Let’s do some basic math. Ten to the 23rd power divided by a million (ten to the 6th power) is ten to the 17th power. So if CO2 is indeed 380 ppm, that means there are 38 times ten to the 18th power molecules of CO2 in one cubic meter of air, or 38,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere where most of its weather occures, has an average depth of about 17 km (10 miles) in the middle latitudes. A kilometer is 1000 meters. So when we multiply (38 times ten to the 18th power) by (17 times ten to the 3rd power), we get about 65 times ten to the 22nd power. Obviously, the actual amount of CO2 in a column of air 17 km tall, one meter wide and one meter long would be less, due to CO2 concentrating more in the lower levels as noted before, but this is enough to show that CO2’s designation as a “trace gas” means in no way that it cannot have a profound influence on climate. It can because the actual number of CO2 molecules is so great. Only the inability of some people to grasp huge numbers makes them think that any gas that has less than 1% of the atmosphere is therefore insignificant.  So it stands to reason that ANY increase in CO2 also leads to an increase in atmospheric temperatures.

Another thing to consider is how serious the greenhouse effect of Earth’s atmosphere really is. Without it, Earth’s average temperature would be about -18 degrees C, which is about 32 degrees C different from Earth’s actual average temperature (14 degrees C). Again, people who are not scientifically trained have difficulty grasping this, since they think of temperatures below “room temperture” (18 to 24 degrees C) as being cold. But in fact, it is quite warm compared to most of the universe. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, a leftover remnant of the Big Bang, is about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero, which is itself about −273 degrees C. Thus an object recieving radiation from no other source would still have a temperature of -270.45 degrees C. The Earth recieves radiation from the Sun that by itself adds about 252 degrees C to its temperature. That’s a LOT of heat! The greenhouse effect adds only about 1/8th more heat to Earth. But that is still enough to make the difference between a frigid, lifeless planet and one with oceans filled with life.

Still another thing to consider is that it can take only one degree difference in average temperature over several decades to turn a glacier into iceless land or open water. When water ice reaches its melting point, it ALL turns into liquid, thus the loss of a glacier at a certain location would mean a profound difference there. Imagine what the melting and disappearance of an entire polar ice cap would be! It might take decades or even centuries for the polar ice caps to melt as a result of global warming, but unless it is reversed, the melting is inevitable!