Hey, alarmists...

[RW]

Over to you...

[RW]

Oh and for the record, I'm not an alarmist.

[reel]

He is relatively typical in his response.  Most people deniers or alarmists alike, don't really understand this issue because they don't understand the basic thermodynamics of the planet and worse, they don't understand the difference between heat and temperature.  IF you don't know the difference between those two, you really shouldn't be presenting papers on climate change.



Thoughts:



He has no idea what effect a rise in average temperature means.  He admits that he thinks it "probably" means nothing.  Not terribly scientific.  How much of an increase in heat energy does it take to change the temperature, bud?  How about you address that, because that is what matters.



He presents in Kelvins to distort the percentage change.



He presents the temperature change in a year in a particular location (several times).  Totally irrelevant.  



He talks about the increase in ice in the south pole, but clearly has no idea why the sea ice is increasing (the land ice is not).



He talks about temperature a lot, but says nothing about heat.  Temperature is not a measure of heat or of energy.  He makes no attempt to address the actual issue, which is energy gain, not temperature rise.



He tries to describe including ocean data as "fiddling with the data", when in fact, the ocean temperature is likely the most important measurement of heat gain available (though very difficult to accurately determine).  Again no mention of heat gain.  Then he uses a lack of increase in atmospheric temperature as evidence that CO2 is having an influence on temperature (when he's just shown that it absolutely does - if you include the ocean, which is of course extremely relevant given that it's the world's largest heat sink).



We KNOW that CO2 acts as an insulator.  He delivers a spurious argument that because a subset of the temperature data doesn't show an increase, CO2 does not act as an insulator.  In short, his evaluation is totally ridiculous.  Why not show an experiment that demonstrates that CO2 magically does not act as an insulator if that is his claim?  Because he can't.  It does.  He's using a partial, inaccurate subset of temperature data to conclude that HEAT is not retained, when obviously it must be, simply based on the physics.  It's laughable and embarrassing.



Corn - Just don't talk about it old fellow.  You have absolutely no clue.  The corn used in ethanol production is a byproduct of producing industrial livestock feed.  It is not food and has no impact on food production.  We produce way more food corn than we could ever hope to eat; thus the reason it is in absolutely everything to the point that it's a massive health issue.  Total red herring to his argument.



Plants starving - "I just showed that there is a massive increase in CO2 in the air, but now I'm going to claim there isn't enough and the plants are starving.  Just ignore the man behind the curtain."  Seriously.  WTF?  Please just stop!  Atmospheric CO2 being "good for agriculture" is not evidence that global warming is not occurring.



He repeats again that temperature has NOT changed, when he already clearly showed that it had and didn't argue that fact, other than to say it was "fiddling" to show a more complete data set.



He claims that climate change "can't always be to the worse. Some places it will be better." again demonstrating that he has no concept of the influence of energy gain on the climate.  Increasing energy means more violent climatic shifts.  That is not better.  He carries on demonstrating his complete ignorance of this subject for several minutes.



I thought maybe he was going somewhere with the match / Co2 thing and was finally going to make a relevant argument addressing the impact of Co2 levels, but it just ended up being spurious and irrelevant again.  It doesn't address the impact of the increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere in any way at all.



Anyway, overall, completely missed the important aspects of the argument.  Not surprising given that if you understand them, there really isn't an argument...

[RW]

I did notice a lot of those things reel like the Kelvin distortion.  I noticed comments about South Pole ice but no explaination as to why.  I noticed points made to El Niño which is an anomaly.  I noticed him say things like, "I haven't heard anyone complain about the size of herring".  Who cares what he's heard?  The question is has he read the scientific data provided?  In terms of Greenland, who cares what the temperature was.  What is the temperature of the ocean that is supposedly melting this ice that isn't on land?



There were definitely holes in his talk.

[Romero]

Climate change proponents still can't make their minds up on what's happening, if anything. They've oscillated between ice ages and catastrophic warming over the last 45-50 years. When global warming predictions don't eventuate in their 15 year study durations, it becomes climate change while still being referred to as global warming and the statistics are omitted from official statements, even as evidence mounts that polar ice is actually growing over some of our more recent years and that tree rings and soil striations indicate a relatively smooth cycling through the centuries and millenniums.



It's become the Church of Latter Day Chicken Little's.

Climate change proponents and the scientific consensus have always said the globe is warming. It's the deniers who still can't make up their minds. "It's warming, it's cooling, the Sun is hotter, it snowed somewhere, I hate Al Gore"...



The terms "global warming" and "climate change" have both been used for decades. Because global warming = climate change. Cause and effect. It's what they've been explaining all along.



"They said it was cloudy, but now they say it's raining. That makes no sense! How can it be cloudy and raining at the same time?"



And now an update from real experts:

The first half of 2015 was the warmest first six months on record for the globe, according to a pair independent analyses from government scientists released Monday.



Global temperatures from January through June 2015 exceeded 2010 as the warmest first half of any year, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.



This follows a record warm 2014 for the planet. The NOAA analysis found that Earth set a record warm June for the second year in a row.



A third, separate analysis from the Japanese Meteorological Agency also found June 2015 to be the globe's hottest June, topping June 2014 in records dating to 1891.



Nine of the 10 warmest years in NASA's 134-year database have occurred this century, with the exception of 1998, which featured the tail end of one of the strongest El Ninos on record.



The last year in NASA's dataset globally cooler than average was 1976.



The last cooler-than-average month in NASA's dataset was September 1992, more than 22 years ago. In the 462 months from January 1977 through June 2015, only seven months have been cooler than average, according to NASA.



http://www.weather.com/news/climate/news/earth-record-warmest-january-june-2015">//http://www.weather.com/news/climate/news/earth-record-warmest-january-june-2015

[reel]

Here's what I have yet to see a denier address, despite it being the core of the problem:



The sun shines on the earth, delivering radiative heat energy to the surface.  

Some is reflected away by the atmosphere, some radiates back off the surface.

CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the amount of heat radiating back off the surface, thus increasing the amount of retained heat on the planet.  The more CO2, the more is retained.

The added retained heat energy is dumped into the climatic system and disperses.



How that energy manifests itself is not really what's important.  Obviously it will manifest itself in some way given that it can't be created or destroyed and has no other way off the planet than radiating back into space, which it can't do due to the CO2.  So it stays.  It does stuff because energy by nature does stuff.



To deny global warming / climate change, you would have to prove one of two things:  Either that CO2 does not cause heat to be retained - hint: you can't prove this because the opposite is abundantly clear, proven and demonstrable.  Or that the amount of heat retained will not have a significant impact.  This is simply a matter of timing.  Eventually it will.  I've never seen a denier attempt to quantify and then desubstantiate the level of retained energy (mostly because none seem to even understand the importance).



I welcome you to try.

[reel]

Climate change proponents still can't make their minds up on what's happening, if anything. They've oscillated between ice ages and catastrophic warming over the last 45-50 years. When global warming predictions don't eventuate in their 15 year study durations, it becomes climate change while still being referred to as global warming and the statistics are omitted from official statements, even as evidence mounts that polar ice is actually growing over some of our more recent years and that tree rings and soil striations indicate a relatively smooth cycling through the centuries and millenniums.



It's become the Church of Latter Day Chicken Little's.

Climate change proponents and the scientific consensus have always said the globe is warming. It's the deniers who still can't make up their minds. "It's warming, it's cooling, the Sun is hotter, it snowed somewhere, I hate Al Gore"...



The terms "global warming" and "climate change" have both been used for decades. Because global warming = climate change. Cause and effect. It's what they've been explaining all along.



"They said it was cloudy, but now they say it's raining. That makes no sense! How can it be cloudy and raining at the same time?"

A lot of the issue comes from people not understanding the term "global warming".  This does not mean that the temperature on a Tuesday in Albany is slightly higher.  It doesn't even mean that the average temperature is higher.  It means that more heat is being retained.  Retained heat may manifest as an increase in temperature, or it may manifest as a decrease in pack ice, an increase in wind speed, more cloud formation, higher humidity etc.  It doesn't really matter.  What does matter is that it means more energy in the system and that is not good for us who rely on stable predictable weather patterns for agriculture and various other economic activities.  



Warming means that there is more heat energy and that heat energy will do something.

[Anonymous]

Some facts about the widely inaccurate climate change consensus myth that some say 97% of scientists agree upon:

There is no consensus among climate scientists that anthropological climate change represents an imminent, existential threat to humanity, contrary to the beliefs of the famous non-scientist, U.S. President Barack Obama.



Nowhere do 97% of climate scientists agree global warming is "dangerous."



Nor is there any scientific consensus on what the rate of warming will be over the next century.



Climate models in fact predict a wide range of possible scenarios, although media typically report on only the most extreme, worse-case scenarios.



Nor is there any consensus among climate scientists on whether, or when, the world should abandon fossil fuel use.



Nor on how fast anthropological climate change is occurring and what its precise effects will be regionally and globally.



Or on whether carbon pricing schemes such as cap-and-trade and carbon taxes will slow the growth of industrial greenhouse gas emissions.



Finally, regardless of any consensus among climate scientists, it is not for them to decide how we should live our lives or how governments should tax us.



Indeed, if they want to do that, and some clearly do, then they should get out of their labs and off their speaking tours, and run for political office.



I believe man is likely contributing to climatic changes, but that does not mean I believe it has never happened before or represents an existential threat to humanity.

[reel]

It's important to make the distinction between consensus on whether it is happening and what is happening.



There is consensus that it is happening.  There is not consensus on what precisely is happening.  A lot of people are taking advantage of the latter to obfuscate the fact that it is happening and cherry pick arguments that have nothing to do with whether or not it is happening.



Anthropogenic global warming can't really be denied because the physics are pretty simple and they can be modeled, demonstrated in a lab, etc.  For me that is enough to think we should change.  The precise effects it will have on the planet is much more difficult to determine.  Those can't realistically be modeled and they are difficult to measure.  Did the heat go to melting ice?  Heating the atmosphere?  Heating the ocean?  Shifting a current?  Higher wind speeds?  Higher humidity?  Larger storms?  All of the above in minor amounts?  Who knows?  It's a dynamic system. But why does it matter?  The fact that it is happening should be worrying enough.  Perhaps us not knowing should cause us even more consternation?



Is it an existential threat to humanity?  Probably not.  But it might be.  Will it have wide reaching economic impacts?  Possibly.  Will it do something that impacts humanity?  Almost certainly.

[Anonymous]

Here's what I have yet to see a denier address, despite it being the core of the problem:



The sun shines on the earth, delivering radiative heat energy to the surface.  

Some is reflected away by the atmosphere, some radiates back off the surface.

CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the amount of heat radiating back off the surface, thus increasing the amount of retained heat on the planet.  The more CO2, the more is retained.

The added retained heat energy is dumped into the climatic system and disperses.



How that energy manifests itself is not really what's important.  Obviously it will manifest itself in some way given that it can't be created or destroyed and has no other way off the planet than radiating back into space, which it can't do due to the CO2.  So it stays.  It does stuff because energy by nature does stuff.



To deny global warming / climate change, you would have to prove one of two things:  Either that CO2 does not cause heat to be retained - hint: you can't prove this because the opposite is abundantly clear, proven and demonstrable.  Or that the amount of heat retained will not have a significant impact.  This is simply a matter of timing.  Eventually it will.  I've never seen a denier attempt to quantify and then desubstantiate the level of retained energy (mostly because none seem to even understand the importance).



I welcome you to try.

Denier and alarmist are loaded words. The burning of fossil fuels is just one part of what's known as the earth's carbon cycle, in which processes like photosynthesis, decomposition, and many more determine where the stores of the planet's carbon lie, and how they shift around. If there are more plants performing photosynthesis, then more carbon will be pulled out of the atmosphere. So it follows that if humans tear down trees, they are worsening climate change, just as they are when they burn fossil fuels.



The disappearing Amazon and Indonesian rain forests are the second largest sources of man's contribution to climate change surpassed only by the burning of coal in power plants.

[Anonymous]

It's important to make the distinction between consensus on whether it is happening and what is happening.



There is consensus that it is happening.  There is not consensus on what precisely is happening.  A lot of people are taking advantage of the latter to obfuscate the fact that it is happening and cherry pick arguments that have nothing to do with whether or not it is happening.



Anthropogenic global warming can't really be denied because the physics are pretty simple and they can be modeled, demonstrated in a lab, etc.  For me that is enough to think we should change.  The precise effects it will have on the planet is much more difficult to determine.  Those can't realistically be modeled and they are difficult to measure.  Did the heat go to melting ice?  Heating the atmosphere?  Heating the ocean?  Shifting a current?  Higher wind speeds?  Higher humidity?  Larger storms?  All of the above in minor amounts?  Who knows?  It's a dynamic system. But why does it matter?  The fact that it is happening should be worrying enough.  Perhaps us not knowing should cause us even more consternation?



Is it an existential threat to humanity?  Probably not.  But it might be.  Will it have wide reaching economic impacts?  Possibly.  Will it do something that impacts humanity?  Almost certainly.

There also appears to be a consensus that global warming has entered a pause stage. Depends on who you ask?

[RW]

Is it the biggest issue humanity is facing?



Should we throw buckets of money at it?



I thought those were valid questions.

[RW]

It's important to make the distinction between consensus on whether it is happening and what is happening.



There is consensus that it is happening.  There is not consensus on what precisely is happening.  A lot of people are taking advantage of the latter to obfuscate the fact that it is happening and cherry pick arguments that have nothing to do with whether or not it is happening.



Anthropogenic global warming can't really be denied because the physics are pretty simple and they can be modeled, demonstrated in a lab, etc.  For me that is enough to think we should change.  The precise effects it will have on the planet is much more difficult to determine.  Those can't realistically be modeled and they are difficult to measure.  Did the heat go to melting ice?  Heating the atmosphere?  Heating the ocean?  Shifting a current?  Higher wind speeds?  Higher humidity?  Larger storms?  All of the above in minor amounts?  Who knows?  It's a dynamic system. But why does it matter?  The fact that it is happening should be worrying enough.  Perhaps us not knowing should cause us even more consternation?



Is it an existential threat to humanity?  Probably not.  But it might be.  Will it have wide reaching economic impacts?  Possibly.  Will it do something that impacts humanity?  Almost certainly.

There also appears to be a consensus that global warming has entered a pause stage. Depends on who you ask?

I think it depends where you get your information from.

[Anonymous]

Is it the biggest issue humanity is facing?



Should we throw buckets of money at it?



I thought those were valid questions.

An equivocal no to spending more trillions on "fighting" global warming.

[RW]

That I agree with.