A Meeting of Skeptical Minds

I wonder. Could one have gotten a larger discount before Christmas? I got 75 percent off of a sweater.

I once tried to verify some of the names on that Oregon list.
At least half of the names seemed to be completely fictitious, since there were zero Google entries for them.
The ones that seemed to be actual people were all non-scientists, retired scientists, or dead scientists.
Is there even one active scientist on that list?

Nathan – so you are saying hi levels of CO2 were present during several previous periods of mass extinctions. Since mankind was not there for those historic events and therefore could not have contributed to the problem, how does one conclude that it is “man’s” contribution now that IS the problem? The earth seems quite capable of causing this al by itself, and by the way, did you know that one relatively modern day major volcanic eruption put more CO2 and other air born contaminants into the atmosphere than all of man’s byproducts combined? Good to really know your science before drawing conclusions to theories.

California girl. You are correct. But I think Nathan missed the logic, even if he may have had some factual/ scientific backing.
CO2, long before Climate Change was an idea, was understood to be a “greenhouse” gas. Traps heat. And its effect is quite well understood.
So in the end, if the CO2 (and other man made greenhouse gases) is added to the mix by man, or if Earth occasionally contributes en-mass, the result will be the same. We can’t do anything about Earth’s contribution, but we certainly should keep on assessing our part in the contribution, and how our part will impact our lives, and that of our descendants.

califonria girl: All the volcanos on Earth emit about 200 million tons of CO2 per year. Human burning of fossil fuels emits about 26,800 million tons of CO2 per year. So volcanos are responsible for less than 1% of what humans are doing.
Is this the science you speak of?

california girl go look up the term super volcano and go look up the Siberian Basalt Flats, those natural phenomenon that are thousands of times more deadly than any natural disaster we have seen in the last 100,000 years. Our very own Yellowstone National Park is a super volcano the last time it erupted it was at least 1,000 times stronger than mount Saint Helens, it poured millions tons of CO2 into the atmosphere within the first day. The Siberian Basalt Flats was even worse, it poured toxic gas and CO2 for a million years and spewed enough magma to cover the lower continental United State of America in several miles worth of magma. Now what several other people have said is true the earth only contributes a tiny bit of the CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are in the atmosphere, thus you cannot blame global warming on the earth unless something major happens such as the Siberian Basalt flats open again or a super volcano goes off.So with all due respect you need to go do your research on natural emissions before you speak up because your data is flawed.

correction: fases s/b gasses

California girl:
You are on the right track. Look into what causes volcanos for the answer.

NBP, the figures cited for volcanic emissions include the eruptions of Krakatoa, Pinatuba, Mt. St. Helens, etc., etc. — they include ALL emissions, including eruptions of undersea volcanos you’ve never heard of.
You need to go back (hundreds of?) thousands of years (maybe millions) to get volcanic eruptions that come anywhere close to the current level of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. And we do this EVERY YEAR, not just once every 100,000 years.
Also note that the net effect of volcanos is primarily to COOL the planet due to increased aerosols.
California Girl was wrong, and you were wrong. Facts are a stubborn thing, and you’ll only make a fool of yourself by trying to evade them or invent your own data.

Nathan
Lag time. The sun heats the oceans (most of the earths surface) and releases that heat to atmosphere slowly.
The lag is roughly 10 years.

James & Jock
You both confuse the current dissent with the oregon list. Not the same. Some of the dissent were actually with the IPCC recently.
The two “dead dissenters” on the Oregon list both wrote their dissent prior to their deaths and not only were they Ph.D. scientists, they were both LEADING CLIMATALOGISTS. Dr. Rhodes Fairbridge was one of the two. These people were not ignorant dissenters but actually quite experienced in the field, most of their work prior to peer-review (oldtimers).

As for volcanoes, what they emit is mostly irrelevant to the AGW question. The atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere geosphere are exchanging MASSIVE quantities of CO2 every day; certainly more than any human emissions.
But that’s not the point. The Earth will do what it does. What we are debating is the effect of human CO2 sources in ADDITION to everything else going on.

With the amount of fraud discovered in the list of names in the petition over the past decade, it’s astonishing that it’s still going. Does honesty mean anything? I, like many others, have reviewed names in the list and found it absurdly lacking in integrity. Many organizations have reviewed random samples of names on the list and found similar results. Scientific American did a random sample of the names a while back and found that most of the supposed signees with a phd either a) apparently didn’t exist b) were shocked to find their name on the list because they didn’t agree with it and don’t remember signing it or c) had signed it, but no longer agree with it.
The OISM would also pull stunts like sending out letters to scientists asking to sign a petition regarding global warming that looks identical to letters from the NAS, and thus some would sign it without looking closely thinking it was a petition saying that global warming was real. The NAS even had to send out a letter alerting the scientific community about that.
Just today a story appeared on cnn: “the results of the investigation conducted at the end of 2008 reveal that vast majority of the Earth scientists surveyed agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.” 90% of scientists in the survey agreed that the earth in warming, and 82% agreed that humans were a cause. And among “climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.” By far the biggest doubters of global warming – petroleum geologists.

Boy, is this the way a scientific establishment would try to contradict the global warming side? By offering a discount for goods in exchange for signing a petition that you do not believe in global warming? That sure will make the public at large believe in them. (roll eyes)
A true petition would have people signing it because they actually *believe* in what the petiion states. Thus any true scientist would sign it if they truly do not believe in global warming base on scientific evidence. By offering a discount for goods, it throws in doubt whether the people signing it are serious in the ideals of the petition and not just to get that discount.

another nixonian sort of think tank, heavy on the “tank”, blabbers forth. these are the same idiots who tell you cannabis has no medicinal value.
these wonderful citizens live for today and to hell with our kids. yech-o!
so! how well is I.T.E.R. doing?
why not find out by running that one into your search engines? we are about to re-invent fire!
oh, and do you find it a coincident the money market people moved the money around and then handed the presidency off to a sucker?

Woody: One becomes a climatologist often by, well, getting a degree in climatology, offered at many universities. Not sure what your point is by pointing out that climatologists often have degrees in related fields – many fields of science work that way, and climatology is a separate specialized field of study in many schools. So having a degree in geology doesn’t mean that they can be a climatologist or have studied climatology.
“Only 97% of “climatologists”? Why not 100%?” – I dunno, again, what’s your point? Why don’t a 100% of astronomers agree with heliocentrism? (Look up Dr. Gerardus Bouw) I did mess up by saying that petroleum geologists were the most likely to doubt global warming (I transposed a couple numbers, oops).
And actually, if a climatologist wants to make a name for himself and make some fast cash – just claim AGW is false. He’ll be lauded across the internet, get guest spots on tv and radio shows, probably get offered a sweet paying job by an oil company, and maybe even a book deal.

goodusername: My point is that climatology is NOT offered as a degree program in the great preponderance of accredited universities and colleges around the world. Climatology is in its infancy. Its an amalgam of geology, physics, oceanography and astrophysics. Today’s leading voices in the field (Hansen, Mann, Spencer, Christie) do not have degrees in climatology. So I have to wonder who these “climatologists” are that were surveyed since as you so aptly pointed out, they can run the gammut in qualifications. Just check out the 4000 consensus scientists that the IPCC clings to.
Your explanation of “transposing numbers” falls flat. You listed the wrong group, period.
I’m sure you’re aware that any scientist who offers alternative theories to catastrophic, unprecedented AGW theory is villified and shunned by academia, the main conduit for global warming research funding. Remember when the Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen called for the decertification of all AMS weathermen who expressed skepticism over catastrophic man-made global warming? How is that profitable? Voicing a dissenting opinion about AGW is hardly a good career move. And enough already with the “oil company” canard. US taxpayers forked over $5 billion last year to fund climate research which dwarfs anything you can dig up from the private funding sector. There is no cash cow like the US taxpayer.

What a choice: $144.00 to say man made climate change is false or $100,000 a year to say it is true. There is no real free thinking in science when money is involved.

Re: “evil oil companies give to GW debunkers”
This is a lie used by alarmists to debunk scientific dissent.

Jock
Again, I understand that. But you missed the point. They paid these people to do research in an area that they are familiar with. Geologists are indeed the best people to ask about our planet and what it is capable of. They did not lie about their results. And they were/are not alone in their results. In science you examine the evidence and make a hypothesis. If you don’t agree you find fault with the hypothesis, not the scientists. And more importantly, you argue with the hypothesis in a logical manner, ie. attempt to disprove it, not ridicule the scientists that proposed the hypothesis. Hansen is not acting like a scientist but like a zealot. There is a very large difference.