Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

[Rajiv]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

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[Guest]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Starving Steve - You might want to re-read my posts specifically regarding CO2 historic data. You must have skimmed though them while engrossed in your own skeptical point of view, as you've apparently missed the main point clearly written there three, four, five and six times over.

NOWHERE does it say the "atmosphere has been constant at 350 PPM for 400,000 years".

You go on to note: "the job of a scientist is to check his findings". Are you replying to me? If so, check the charts I posted, and the comments I posted regarding that chart data! We are not even having a balanced conversation among amateurs here, as you are ascribing to me a patently absurd statement, that CO2 has remained "unchanged" for a half million years. How could it possibly remain unchanged for that long?

There are some charts posted, with a high and low demarcation, (with very wide fluctuation) spanning 400,000 years. Surely you've examined such charts before as you have such clear cut views of your own that extraordnarily high CO2 levels today are meaningless? You must have carefully examined similar charts before on your own account, no (or have you)?

What the charts point out, is that the fluctuation is indeed very wide, gathered into some deep glacials and very high interglacials, and the present CO2 soars a full standard deviation further out from the very topmost peaks of all of those interglacials. As you indeed note: "the job of a scientist is to check his findings". We are not scientists, at least I'm not, but I thought I reiterated that observation several times over. Maybe you missed it? You further note: " Which is fishy. Very fishy!" Maybe a simple re-read will eliminate some of the "fishyness".

When you post that the CO2 content of the atmosphere has been constant at 350 PPM for 400,000 or 500,000 years, you are tacitly saying that the occurrences of volcanic eruptions and burning of forests have been constant--- which is fishy. Very fishy!

The job of a scientist is to check his findings and theories against all questions raised and not to ridicule the questioners. ...

"I'm from Missouri. Show me." Show me why the CO2 content of the atmosphere has been constant for some half-a-million years until the late 20th C. --- when Greenpeace and the Sierra Club got organized.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Starving Steve - You might want to re-read my posts specifically regarding CO2 historic data. You must have skimmed though them while engrossed in your own skeptical point of view, as you've apparently missed the main point clearly written there three, four, five and six times over.

NOWHERE does it say the "atmosphere has been constant at 350 PPM for 400,000 years".

You go on to note: "the job of a scientist is to check his findings". Are you replying to me? If so, check the charts I posted, and the comments I posted regarding that chart data! We are not even having a balanced conversation among amateurs here, as you are ascribing to me a patently absurd statement, that CO2 has remained "unchanged" for a half million years. How could it possibly remain unchanged for that long?

There are some charts posted, with a high and low demarcation, (with very wide fluctuation) spanning 400,000 years. Surely you've examined such charts before as you have such clear cut views of your own that extraordnarily high CO2 levels today are meaningless? You must have carefully examined similar charts before on your own account, no (or have you)?

What the charts point out, is that the fluctuation is indeed very wide, gathered into some deep glacials and very high interglacials, and the present CO2 soars a full standard deviation further out from the very topmost peaks of all of those interglacials. As you indeed note: "the job of a scientist is to check his findings". We are not scientists, at least I'm not, but I thought I reiterated that observation several times over. Maybe you missed it? You further note: " Which is fishy. Very fishy!" Maybe a simple re-read will eliminate some of the "fishyness".

Starving Steve back again:

I apologize that I confused your data with the data on CO2 from the Mona Kea Observatory in Hawaii, the latter which shows something like 550PPM current CO2 in the atmosphere and something like 350PPM when they began their observations a few decades ago. This data is quite famous and has led to this entire debate about global warming.

Be that as it may, if I use your data on the graph of 400,000 years of CO2 and temperature (source not given, by the way:rolleyes, then the lower value (or floor value) for CO2 is around 200PPM and the upper value or ceiling value for CO2 is around 275PPM. Maybe the odd squiggle goes to 190PPM and the odd needle shoots to 350PPM, but for most all of the entire span until the year 0 (when Greenpeace and the Sierra Club arrive on the scene:rolleyes the range of CO2 is 75PPM in the atmosphere. So, that looks very constant to me.

The temperature trace is almost coincident with the CO2 trace, so the temperature of the Earth was relatively constant. And then at the year 0, the temperature skyrockets exactly when the entire 400,000 year pattern in CO2 is broken, at the year 0. Again, I roll my eyes: :rolleyes:.

Show me the source of this data. Discuss the methodology of the data; i.e, was it gathered by ice core samples, by whom, and where? Then show me why CO2 was so constant ( within a 75PPM range ) despite the comings and goings of Ice Ages?

"I'm from Missouri; show me." :rolleyes: And I have other questions too, like why isn't the sea level rising now because we are experiencing dramatic and unprecedented global warming according to your graph?

I have lots of questions. I am just chomping-at-the-bit.

[c1ue]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

If you see that consensus steadily growing, then perhaps it's opportune to concentrate less on your own narrow technical points of objection (what you view as their flawed methodologies) and simply look more and more closely into the affirmative arguments this growing community of scientists will be making in a process of innocent minded curiosity.

Lukester,

Not to be rude, but I spit on consensus.

If you believe in consensus, I'm puzzled as to why you're reading iTulip?

The consensus is that we don't have a recession, that the subprime/Alt-A/MBS/CDO problem is short and low profile, and that the Fed has got your back.

As for affirmative arguments, my point all along is that this is NOT a debate society. A rational fact discovery attempts to fit known information with models. Most of what I see with the IPCC is trying to fit information into a climate warming theory.

The theory may be correct, but the ability to find the truth is destroyed by an incorrect process.

I increasingly am viewing global warming as a nation-level equivalent of organic produce: a great way to single out and extract money from the richer people/nations.

[Guest]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

C1ue -

<< I increasingly am viewing global warming as a nation-level equivalent of organic produce: a great way to single out and extract money from the richer people/nations. >>

Interesting viewpoint. Please note, tucked away in there is a considerable intellectual conceit, although I'm not sure you'll acknowledge it.

Not only a widening army of scientists from the most disparate nations in the world (you presumably believe scientists in China are more infatuated with a Nobel than they are apprehensive of delivering specious findings to their government), but also some very tight pursed finance ministries of nations spanning the globe are all going to be dupes, having failed to muster sufficient intelligence or astuteness to see through bogus popular science, while you have a handle on the bottom line which they all dutifully miss due to their "massively coordinated stupidity"?

Speaking for myself, such considerations have always given me enough pause to declare myself an agnostic which you may note above and elsewhere I've gone to great pains to clarify was my moderate position. Unlike you and Starving Steve over there who have such firmed up views on the matter (global warming to you is clearly bunk), unless and until I became a practicing climatologist, I can only discern where the CO2 data seems to be a large enough anomaly, that modest people of sufficient agnosticism would be carefully open to the idea, rather than dismissive, because being merely dfismissive would imply an extraordinarily authoritative knowledge of the matter, no?.

Intellectual humility, when confronted by entire governments moving towards spending big chunks of their treasure to back a finding, is a valuable trait to conserve, rather than instead declaring that one "spits on consensus" with defiant panache.

Maybe you feel offended I should point it out in such terms, i.e. moderating one's consignment of a good portion of the world's nation's respectively delegated scientists to the category of fools, who are miraculously all acting in exquisitely coordinated collective foolery? You are positing half the governments and science academies of the world are all wet, and you are smarter? I approve of your independence of mind, but question whether it should be applicable in perpetuity on this topic.

And my last question: I seemed to remember you getting interested to buy land in central or eastern Russia, at a fairly northern latitude presumably - on the premise of what?

[Starving Steve]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

C1ue -

<< I increasingly am viewing global warming as a nation-level equivalent of organic produce: a great way to single out and extract money from the richer people/nations. >>

Interesting viewpoint. Please note, tucked away in there is a considerable intellectual conceit, although I'm not sure you'll acknowledge it.

Not only a widening army of scientists from the most disparate nations in the world (you presumably believe scientists in China are more infatuated with a Nobel than they are apprehensive of delivering specious findings to their government), but also some very tight pursed finance ministries of nations spanning the globe are all going to be dupes, having failed to muster sufficient intelligence or astuteness to see through bogus popular science, while you have a handle on the bottom line which they all dutifully miss due to their "massively coordinated stupidity"?

Speaking for myself, such considerations have always given me enough pause to declare myself an agnostic which you may note above and elsewhere I've gone to great pains to clarify was my moderate position. Unlike you and Starving Steve over there who have such firmed up views on the matter (global warming to you is clearly bunk), unless and until I became a practicing climatologist, I can only discern where the CO2 data seems to be a large enough anomaly, that modest people of sufficient agnosticism would be carefully open to the idea, rather than dismissive, because being merely dfismissive would imply an extraordinarily authoritative knowledge of the matter, no?.

Intellectual humility, when confronted by entire governments moving towards spending big chunks of their treasure to back a finding, is a valuable trait to conserve, rather than instead declaring that one "spits on consensus" with defiant panache.

Maybe you feel offended I should point it out in such terms, i.e. moderating one's consignment of a good portion of the world's nation's respectively delegated scientists to the category of fools, who are miraculously all acting in exquisitely coordinated collective foolery? You are positing half the governments and science academies of the world are all wet, and you are smarter? I approve of your independence of mind, but question whether it should be applicable in perpetuity on this topic.

And my last question: I seemed to remember you getting interested to buy land in central or eastern Russia, at a fairly northern latitude presumably - on the premise of what?

Starving Steve again:

I am very OPEN to the idea of global warming, but I think the thesis has to be PROVED. The thesis ( any thesis ) has to be proved as much as is humanly possible, then checked, and re-checked. And with the thesis of global warming, we have only just begun this debate; the matter is hardly settled.

The data from Mona Kea ( or is it Mona Loa?) Observatory in Hawaii kicked-off this debate on global warming. That data shows a near doubling of the CO2 content of the atmosphere over a span of a few decades, for the period that they have kept CO2 measurements there.

As a climatologist and a citizen of Earth, I am worried about what the implications of letting the CO2 content of the atmosphere double every few decades might mean for mankind. So I welcome research on the subject, and I welcome debate on the findings of such reasearch.

But for Al Gore to say that the matter is settled because of a consensus of activists from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, then I become dismayed. This matter is anything but settled.

And when I think of the eco-nuts in Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, et. al, these are the groups that had shut-down the nuclear power industry in the 1970s and 1980s. These groups are the last ones who should be pointing fingers at anyone because these eco-frauds are the ones who have forced the world to continue to burn fossil fuels.

Update from Starving Steve: I searched CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory at
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ .
I found that their latest figures show 314PPM CO2 in 1958 rising to 384PPM CO2 in 2007, so the problem is not a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, but a steady rise of about 22% for a span of 49 years. But, anyway, the steady rise in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is still troubling.

[c1ue]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Interesting viewpoint. Please note, tucked away in there is a considerable intellectual conceit, although I'm not sure you'll acknowledge it.

Not only a widening army of scientists from the most disparate nations in the world (you presumably believe scientists in China are more infatuated with a Nobel than they are apprehensive of delivering specious findings to their government), but also some very tight pursed finance ministries of nations spanning the globe are all going to be dupes, having failed to muster sufficient intelligence or astuteness to see through bogus popular science, while you have a handle on the bottom line which they all dutifully miss due to their "massively coordinated stupidity"?

Lukester,

Have you ever been in any type of large corporation or organization?

I ask because it is not necessary for each individual contributor to have a selfish agenda in order for the overall result to be skewed.

Some examples:

Top management has an agenda to promote 'X'. This desire is communicated down the management ranks.

Those workers/wonks which promote 'X' are given more exposure and tacit support.

As the 'X'-men rise, they naturally aggregate supporters with similar viewpoints.

Soon 'X'-men are everywhere. They have become the status quo. Those who disagree with 'X' are ignored or attacked.

Voila! 'X' occurs.

As for tight purses in government ministries - you actually promote my viewpoint. Is it easier to get a grant to study 'X' or to study "not-'X'"? Especially when 'X' is "known" to be a big problem?

I actually don't believe there is a big conspiracy, but I do believe based on what I observe and correlate vs first hand experience of what looks like a very nicely conducted marketing and promotion plan.

And again you miss my point - I've never said global warming is false.

What I've said over and over again is that I see zero conclusive proof that
1) there is global warming
2) CO2 is the primary culprit