Global ocean changes...

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Now you are claiming the right to rule on what is rational and what is not, so I don't know why you object when I say that something is irrational.

Anything I say about climate science is in doubt, because I am not a climate scientist. What the climate scientists believe is certainly not in doubt. Well, if you want to know what the climate scientists believe you should go to them, not to what uninformed folks like Carl say they believe.

Well, when it comes to believing the local deniers, or actual scientists, I know who I pick. So take a read of the Royal Society web site and see if that will convince you that actual scientists do have a consensus opinion on the matter or not. This is the same Royal Society that included Sir Isaac Newton as one of it's earliest fellows, and Stephen Hawking as one of it's current ones.

Now when the Royal Society says "Climate scientists from the UK and across the world are in overwhelming agreement about the evidence of climate change, driven by the human input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. " is that or is that not evidence that there is a scientific consensus on the matter?

Wishing everyone a happy Yule, now that the north pole has once again begun to swing back toward the sun.

No, I'm not claiming the right to rule on anything. All I'm asking for is a process, equivalent to the process of a criminal trial, to consider the evidence from both sides in a non-partial manner and make a binding decision. Would you agree to such a process? (Carl Bilodeau to his credit has already agreed to it, Vlad Drkulec has not commented on it).

I would like things to be simple enough that I could just take the Royal Society's prognosis at face value. But to once again use a criminal trial as an analogy, let's assume the Royal Society is the FBI and they are saying it's decided. Well, as far as I know the FBI (like climate scientists) doesn't have the authority to unilaterally declare guilt or innocence. They prosecute cases in Federal courts, and defence lawyers may provide countervailing evidence. The FBI can and does lose some cases. They are experts at what they do, but they are not infallible.

(BTW, you used Stephen Hawking as an example of a member of the Royal Society. Well, just last night by coincidence, I was in a Borders bookstore and looked at a book, I can't remember the exact title, but it had "Black Hole" in it's title. I looked at the back, and it described the author as proving Stephen Hawking wrong on one of his principal tenets, something about Black Holes. Well, I can't say for sure Hawking was indeed proven wrong, but I would think if it's claimed on the jacket of a publicly available book, it must be pretty certain. So Stephen Hawking's name doesn't guarantee anything, it seems).

Ed, you are supremely confident of the evidence on your side of the argument. What can you thus have against the idea of a trial to decide the issue once and for all?

P.S. Not to be too nitpicky, but I don't think the North Pole actually swings towards the Sun. Well, actually, maybe that IS being too nitpicky!

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Global ocean changes...

I had a much better opinion of you a month or two ago, but then I saw how you treated both J. Ken MacDonald (or McDonald?) and Gary Ruben even though they both claimed not to be totally on one side or the other of this debate. Gary has since shown to be definitely on Vlad and Carl's side, but perhaps he really wasn't before you mistreated him.

I don't know if I'm really on anyones side. More a case of this being a contentious topic where we're seeing there was likely use of selective data. Much more work has to be done. Certainly when the U.S. and China make an agreement like we saw, it indicates they don't think disaster is imminent.

Both sides present their side with almost as an ultimatum. That being you're either with them or against them. Probably in the coarse of things reality might well be in the middle.

If people want to build windmill farms for electricity that's great. If they want to tax industry out of existence and put people out of work, that I oppose.

People talk about the amount of pollution from autos. They want to make electric cars. I heard someone on TV the other day promoting future use of natural gas cars. I drove one of those for several years. They aren't bad. The problem is the few filling stations there were at the time. You need a compressor to compress the gas into a high pressure before it's put in the tank, either in the trunk or under the vehicle. They are expensive for the gas stations to buy and many won't.

The vehicle I had left indentations on the ashphalt where I used to park it, from the weight. Those autos are dual fuel. You flip a switch when you feel the natural gas run out and it switches you to gasoline. Even if you use it mostly around the city you still have to burn a tank of gasoline every so often (or you did have to). Otherwise, the gasoline goes bad if it sits too long.

The fuel to run an auot is one part of the problem. The other part is the amount of energy used to manufacture the auto. It's substantial. Once a vehicle is built it should be kept on the road as many years as possible.

Autos aren't what they used to be when it comes to polluting. My Cougar used to get 9 miles to the gallon. That's when it was tuned up. Near the end I added a quart of oil between gas fill ups.

When furnaces have to be replaced it's with high efficiency ones. I think they are stopping selling the medium efficiency ones this year or next, in this area. The stopped selling the low efficiency furnaces years ago. I can remember when the coal man used to deliver to homes and put it in the coal bin in the basement. I can recall when they made gas from coal.

It looks to me like we have a pardise of cleanthliness these days compared to years ago.

It will take a lot of convincing for me to suddenly think the last few years have been so much worse than the past in this nation.

I wonder how much pollution was caused by all the construction for that circus they are having in B.C. next year. The winter Olympics. It's nice they can afford it.

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Global ocean changes...

No, I'm not claiming the right to rule on anything. All I'm asking for is a process, equivalent to the process of a criminal trial, to consider the evidence from both sides in a non-partial manner and make a binding decision.

The courts are not competent to rule on science. That's why in their deliberations they call expert witnesses.

But the equivalent of this has already been done. The most important court of all has already ruled, namely the scientific community. Who can you suggest that could overrule the Royal Society?

Also, such a procedure would require scientists to prove again what they have already proven. It would falsely put people like Carl on an equal level, but they aren't on an equal level. Let them do research, gather evidence, and get their research published through the peer review process.

I would like things to be simple enough that I could just take the Royal Society's prognosis at face value. But to once again use a criminal trial as an analogy, let's assume the Royal Society is the FBI and they are saying it's decided.

False analogy, so your conclusions don't follow. The Royal Society is not a law enforcement agency.

(BTW, you used Stephen Hawking as an example of a member of the Royal Society. Well, just last night by coincidence, I was in a Borders bookstore and looked at a book, I can't remember the exact title, but it had "Black Hole" in it's title. I looked at the back, and it described the author as proving Stephen Hawking wrong on one of his principal tenets, something about Black Holes.

"Hawking concedes black hole bet."

Ed, you are supremely confident of the evidence on your side of the argument. What can you thus have against the idea of a trial to decide the issue once and for all?

It has already been decided by a competent "court" and doing it again would merely be a waste of time, and the deniers would not accept the verdict. They know perfectly well how they could disprove global warming if they really meant to, but the won't try, because the evidence is just too strong.

P.S. Not to be too nitpicky, but I don't think the North Pole actually swings towards the Sun. Well, actually, maybe that IS being too nitpicky!

And "what you think" is also wrong.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Global ocean changes...

No, I'm not claiming the right to rule on anything. All I'm asking for is a process, equivalent to the process of a criminal trial, to consider the evidence from both sides in a non-partial manner and make a binding decision. Would you agree to such a process? (Carl Bilodeau to his credit has already agreed to it, Vlad Drkulec has not commented on it).

If we could find an impartial intelligent jury that would be great but I don't think that we can.

I think that it will soon be painfully obvious that it was a hoax as we keep getting reports of data fudging everywhere that the original data can be checked (Russia, New Zealand and Antarctica spring to mind.).

My brother phoned today from Dallas and they had snow there on Christmas for the first time in most peoples' living memory. This is going to keep happening notwithstanding Ed Seedhouse's ludicrous pronouncements on the subject.

I will always be skeptical where it seems that the scientists demanding drastic measures refuse to release the original unadjusted data. Climategate was only a confirmation of what I already knew to be true from reading the accounts of the climate skeptics who had been trying to get the original data to do their own analysis.

We have a mystery here where everyone seems intent on framing the suspect CO2 for everything from global warming to ocean acidification and nonexistent rising sea levels (where Ed's religious devotion and belief seems incongruous since the sea level scientists don't agree with Ed's climate science high priests). The evidence just doesn't fit, so we must acquit.

Vlad Drkulec

[Lawrence Day]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Surely the Royal Society provided with real data can overrule the Royal Society that based its consensus on bogus data. One ought not invoke "science" to justify fraud.

As for peer review, the leaked emails depict examples of tricks used to suppress dissident articles, the very research that contradicted the supposed consensus which the CRU aimed to establish. Since the CRU numbers were fake, all conclusions based on those numbers need to be reconsidered.


Even if, as seems likely, there is then still a consensus on human activities heating the planet, then there remains a weak link as to why carbon-dioxide is more important than other dioxides or pollutants, etc.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Global ocean changes...

I don't know if I'm really on anyones side. More a case of this being a contentious topic where we're seeing there was likely use of selective data. Much more work has to be done. Certainly when the U.S. and China make an agreement like we saw, it indicates they don't think disaster is imminent.

Both sides present their side with almost as an ultimatum. That being you're either with them or against them. Probably in the coarse of things reality might well be in the middle.

I am not on any side either except being interested in the truth. The problem with the environmental movement is that they have shown that the truth is not something that they are very concerned with. They have shown this with their statements where they explicitly state that the truth is not as important as their message and also in the way that they are trying to dismiss the faking of data as if it is nothing to be concerned with. It wouldn`t be of concern except for the demands for trillion dollar bets based on the fudged science.

Vlad Drkulec

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Global ocean changes...

I am not on any side either except being interested in the truth. The problem with the environmental movement is that they have shown that the truth is not something that they are very concerned with. They have shown this with their statements where they explicitly state that the truth is not as important as their message and also in the way that they are trying to dismiss the faking of data as if it is nothing to be concerned with. It wouldn`t be of concern except for the demands for trillion dollar bets based on the fudged science.

Vlad Drkulec

I'm surprised they aren't complaining about the recent Tritium spill at Darlington.

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/...tium-into-lake

I wonder if some of the global warming theorist will stand by their conviction and move to an igloo at the North Pole. While their teeth are chattering from the cold they can look over and see Santy Claus tossing another log on his fire.

Next time they look out the window and think how terrible it is pollution comes from the autos passing by, I wonder if they will give any thought to the amount of energy which went into making the glass in the windows they have. Glass companies are a big user of energy. Another big user of energy is sugar. Sugar is what I call a real sweet industry. :)

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Australian weather bureau: “Central Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are now at their warmest level since the El Niño of 1997-98″

Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Even if, as seems likely, there is then still a consensus on human activities heating the planet, then there remains a weak link as to why carbon-dioxide is more important than other dioxides or pollutants, etc.

http://www.logicalscience.com/skepti...not-leads.html

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Australian weather bureau: “Central Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are now at their warmest level since the El Niño of 1997-98″

Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?

They didn't take into consideration underwater volcanoes, but do harp on el nino and la nina over which there is no control. They use the weasel word "likely" to predict the future. When I had to check equipment and had no way of taking it apart and checking exact condition of the equpment, I used to write "appears to be".

http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...plu-2009-03-19

Concensus is an absolute joke. It's the Herd mentality. A con mans delight.

What EXACTLY do YOU intend to do to fight this ocean warming in Australia?

I'm not gonna do anything.

A couple of day ago a guy in Australia wrote me it was a nice 23 C where he is. I had told him our temperature here was a balmy -7 C with a nice warm breeze coming off the lake.

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Australian weather bureau: “Central Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are now at their warmest level since the El Niño of 1997-98″

Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?

Ed,

Your page on the "Consensus" shows studys, comments and video of the WORST SCANDALOUS CLIMATE scientist: Naomie Oreskes. This has been known for years now. Since the Naomie scandal came out, many well known scientists came out and admitted that there was no consensus based on the peer review that led to this huge scandal.

Before the climategate scandal, Naomie Oreskes was the source of the worst climate scandal and had to retract (but for sure kept the money she made).

Let me recall the facts:

1 - She published a stydy showing Consensus on "climate change". She said she had found 1247 studies in scientific databases and none of the authors of these articles that referred to the words "climate change" were denying the global warming in their articles. She published her results in the more important science magasines. THIS WAS THE FIRST PROOF OF CONSENSUS.

2 - All around the world, and for many years newpapers referred to her study to talk about the "Consensus". It is her book that brought the idea of a "consensus" and everybody listened to her.

3 - Then someone did a peer review of her work. He used the same databases, and the same words to find the articles she said she was referring to. Instead of 1247 articles, he found 12,000 articles. She then recognised that she did not use the words "climate change", but instead the words "global climate change". Then started the scandal since she falsely claimed previously that scientist that talked about climate changes were convinced of "GLOBAL WARMING ON EARTH". This was no more true. It appears that if she had used the expression "climate change" there would have been no consensus at all like a study has shown afterward.

4 - By using the words she had used, there was not 1247 articles in the database but 928. She had added the extra 319 articles base on some other criterias out the 12000 articles that were talking about "Climate change". This is a complete fraud since it means that she rejected more than 10000 articles to pick those 319 "good" articles. DO YOU CALL IT "CONSENSUS" AND "SCIENCE"?

5 - Furthermore, the 1247 articles she used, did not show any consensus at all.

6 - Everywhere in the world newspapers still use the result of her study as the main proof of scientific consensus even if the scandal is now 5 years old. Even Al Gore still talk of this study and he did in his movie that gave him a "Nobel prize".

Here is the extract of an article (click here to see orginal):
From: Prof. Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University
On December 3rd, only days before the start of the 10th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-10), Science Magazine published the results of a study by Naomi Oreskes (1): For the first time, empirical evidence was presented that appeared to show an unanimous, scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of recent global warming.

Oreskes claims to have analysed 928 abstracts she found listed on the ISI database using the keywords "climate change". However, a search on the ISI database using the keywords "climate change" for the years 1993 - 2003 reveals that almost 12,000 papers were published during the decade in question (2). What happened to the countless research papers that show that global temperatures were similar or even higher during the Holocene Climate Optimum and the Medieval Warm Period when atmospheric CO2 levels were much lower than today; that solar variability is a key driver of recent climate change, and that climate modeling is highly uncertain?

These objections were put to Oreskes by science writer David Appell. On 15 December 2004, she admitted that there was indeed a serious mistake in her Science essay. According to Oreskes, her study was not based on the keywords "climate change," but on "global climate change" (3).

Her use of three keywords instead of two reduced the list of peer reviewed publications by one order of magnitude (on the UK's ISI databank the keyword search "global climate change" comes up with 1247 documents). Since the results looked questionable, I decided to replicate the Oreskes study.

Comment: 1247 is higher than 928 because Prof Peiser has included some documents in his ensemble that Prof Oreskes didn't consider to be "articles". This is a minor difference that didn't cause any serious disagreement and both scholars know how to work in both ways. But there are significant problems of other kinds, as shown later.

METHOD

I analysed all abstracts listed on the ISI databank for 1993 to 2003 using the same keywords ("global climate change") as the Oreskes study. Of the 1247 documents listed, only 1117 included abstracts (130 listed only titles, author(s)' details and keywords). The 1117 abstracts analysed were divided into the same six categories used by Oreskes (#1-6), plus two categories which I added (# 7, 8):

explicit endorsement of the consensus position
evaluation of impacts
mitigation proposals
methods
paleoclimate analysis
rejection of the consensus position.
natural factors of global climate change
unrelated to the question of recent global climate change
RESULTS

The results of my analysis contradict Oreskes' findings and essentially falsify her study:

Of all 1117 abstracts, only 13 (or 0.1%) explicitly endorse the 'consensus view'.
322 abstracts (or 29%) implicitly accept the 'consensus view' but mainly focus on impact assessments of envisaged global climate change.
Less than 10% of the abstracts (89) focus on "mitigation".
67 abstracts mainly focus on methodological questions.
87 abstracts deal exclusively with paleo-climatological research unrelated to recent climate change.
34 abstracts reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the "the observed warming over the last 50 years".
UPDATE: among the 34 abstracts, a few of them were found that shouldn't have been included in the group. For one example, see Prometheus (search for Oreskes); the reader is recommended to look at the 34 abstracts whether this error of Peiser's analysis changes the qualitative conclusions
44 abstracts focus on natural factors of global climate change.
470 (or 42%) abstracts include the keywords "global climate change" but do not include any direct or indirect link or reference to human activities, CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions, let alone anthropogenic forcing of recent climate change.
DISCUSSION:

According to Oreskes, 75% of the 928 abstracts she analysed (i.e. 695) fell into these first three categories, "either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view". This claim is incorrect on two counts: My analysis shows that only 424 abstracts (or less than a third of the full data set) fall into these three categories.

It also shows that many abstracts on "evaluation of impact" and "mitigation" do not discuss which drivers are key to global climate change, instead often focusing exclusively on the possible effects of elevated CO2 levels on plant growth and vegetation. Many do not include any implicit endorsement of the 'consensus view' but simply use certain assumptions as a basis for often hypothetical impact assessments or mitigation strategies.

Quite a number of papers emphasise that natural factors play a major if not the key role in recent climate change (4). My analysis also shows that there are almost three times as many abstracts that are sceptical of the notion of anthropogenic climate change than those that explicitly endorse it (5, 6, 7).

In fact, the explicit and implicit rejection of the 'consensus view' is not restricted to individual scientists. It also includes distinguished scientific organisations such as the American Association of Petroleum Geologists:

"The earth's climate is constantly changing owing to natural variability in earth processes. Natural climate variability over recent geological time is greater than reasonable estimates of potential human-induced greenhouse gas changes. Because no tool is available to test the supposition of human-induced climate change and the range of natural variability is so great, there is no discernible human influence on global climate at this time." (8)
This is not to deny that there is a majority of publications that, although they do not empirically test or confirm the view of anthropogenic climate change, go along with it by applying models based on its basic assumptions. Yet, it is beyond doubt that a sound and unbiased analysis of the full ISI databank will find hundreds of papers (many of which written by the world's leading experts in the field) that have raised serious reservations and outright rejection of the concept of a "scientific consensus on climate change". The truth is, that there is no such thing!

In light of the data presented above (evidence that can be easily verified), Science should withdraw Oreskes' study and its results in order to prevent any further damage to the integrity of science.

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: Global ocean changes...

...
Also, such a procedure would require scientists to prove again what they have already proven. It would falsely put people like Carl on an equal level, but they aren't on an equal level. Let them do research, gather evidence, and get their research published through the peer review process.
...

Ed,

In fact such a court will never happen. Do you really think that the scientists that lied would admit their wrong doing and the use of tricks and disinformations? There would be a boycott.

But anyway, the court could use general scientists to review the methods. Neutral scientists that are not in any side.

What happened to the climate scientists is exatly the same that occured for any religion. If it touch directly to the faith of humans then it turns in a religion.

Lets take an example. If we wanted a court to evaluate the rationals in the catholicism, do you think the priests would agree to come in court and be "evaluated"? Anyway why should we have priests in the court? Why not take neutral scientists? We would have only scientists conclusions and nothing irrationnal. The neutral scientists could review the whole bible and would produce scientific comments that would be shown in any bible printed. Any bible without the sign "scientifical consensus" would have no credibility. In such a bible readers could see clearly:

- His mother was not a virgin since she would not have a child. The only possibilty for virginity would be that she took some cemens from a kleenex somewhere.
...
- The young man Jesus was probably not dead after beeing exposed only a few hours on a cross but for sure deshydrated (he walked in the city with a cross on his shoulders and his friends probably knew a trick to help him out of trouble) and he was probably unconscious when they took him out.
- His friends probably paid the romans to have the body and never brought him in a funeral chamber. Who would let a body decompose for three days???
- Jesus has been seen by some people three days after his cross exposure meaning that he escaped the romans like Ben Laden did for the americans and spend probably the rest of his life in another country to build furnitures, chairs, and tables.

So you see, a court has to be full neutral. Only the facts should be review and with rationnal thinking. No priest, no climate scientist required, since we study their work. They produced documents so that we can review them, so lets do it rationnaly.

Carl

[Benoit St-Pierre]

Naomie Oreskes

Your page on the "Consensus" shows studys, comments and video of the WORST SCANDALOUS CLIMATE scientist: Naomie Oreskes.

Oreskes is an historian of science:

http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/profile.html

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: Global ocean changes...

Australian weather bureau: “Central Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are now at their warmest level since the El Niño of 1997-98″

...

This is disinformation. Do you mean that any "local climate changes" is a proof of "Global climate changes".

If you show a place where it is warmer, don't you think you could show a place where it is cooler or do you expect me to believe that everywhere it is getting warmer? Is this the kind of "math" you were talking about?

As long as the center of the earth will be "moving hot liquids" you should expect such behevior on the weather.

In fact satellites show that last year we got to the same average temperature on earth as we had in 1979.

This is why the eco-extremists now have a new non-scientific trick that they will use for the next five years: They now compare the last decade to the decate 1979 to 1989 to hide rapid comeback of temperatures. So even if in the last two years came back to previous level of pre-ElNino, they can say for the next five years that the temperatures are lower. But when we had a peak high in 2007, they predicted 10 years of melting and catastrophic events.

Look at the satellite temperatures for this year if you want to talk "global", and compare by yourself instead of reading eco-extremist reports.

Carl

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: Naomie Oreskes

Oreskes is an historian of science:

http://historyweb.ucsd.edu/oreskes/pages/profile.html

When she published her study in the very serious prestigious magazine "SCIENCE", did you see any eco-extremists say "She is not a scientist, do not listen to her"? No they took her story everywhere they could and I saw a reference to it on the cereals box of my kids last year. On the cereal box it never said: "Their is a scientific consensus on global warming base on the stuy of Noemie but kids be careful she is not a scientist herself".

So the climate community listen to people like her that are not "scientists" but they say about scientists like me that went at the same universitys as they did, that I am an "uneducated". Difficult to understand the logic here. I call it a religion. A religion is against science.

Carl