REALITY: “I hate to tell you this but the sun does move. It orbits the center of the galaxy which is also moving through the universe.” – - – I hate to tell you this, but that petty point has absolutely NOTHING to do with the context of the article or the point it was trying to make. The sun’s own rotation and revolving around the galaxy has absolutely ZERO impact upon its apparent relative motion regarding sunrise and sunset from our perspective on the surface of the Earth. The kind of pickyness you showed seems rather petty. That kind of pettyness can easily cause people to totally discount any valid points you might have made after that.

Arno, you can go to all that trouble to try to convince people that global warming isn’t happening and CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas, but why? If it was in a spirit of scientific inquiry then you should have learned by now how the scientists have answered most of your questions. But if you aren’t interested in answers, then maybe you have a vested interest in the denial?

Jock59801, if you aren’t interested in a scientific debate on an issue, then maybe you have a vested interest in the myth? And as Arno said in his comment, scientists can come out with the same answers all the time, but if their data is false then their conclusions will be false. And the data has been falsified by research centers like the one that was in the news awhile ago with the hacked emails that showed they cut out parts that didn’t fit their climate model. And anyone that dared to question global warming was ridiculed by media and the global warming alarmists.

Bob201: So, the fact the five separate investigative panels found that there was no truth whatsoever to the claims you make means nothing? The fact that those panels’ reports have been available to you for over two years means nothing? You still continue to make the same outlandish and disproven accusations, even though you should know that they are false? And Justabout: The fact that noted climate change skeptic Dr. Richard Muller recently completed a $600,000 study, largely funded by the Koch brothers, examining 1,6 billion data points and found that “Global Warming is real” (HIS conclusion), and that the claim by deniers that urban heat islands are to blame for the bad data is baseless, and that the claim that the earth is actually cooling is a joke – again with no basis in fact, and that climate scientists have been right for DECADES.. all those facts are just a conspiracy of “countless mistakes”? And the fact that every scientific society in the United Sates and every national science academy in the industrialized world has stated that Global Warming is real, man-made, and a threat to our continued existence – all of them wrong? The claims by you deniers become more ridiculous every day.

Now ARNO ARRAK, as for the rest of the cherry picked data you falsely present out of context and misrepresent, it is also quite evident that YOU are the one who is conveniently ignoring data. For example, around 1820 CO2 levels matched the highest levels ever seen naturally in the previous 650,000 years – AND THEY HAVE BEEN STEADILY RISING EVER SINCE WITHOUT ANY PEAKS OR TROUGHS. Currently CO2 levels are about 28% higher than they ever got naturally in the previous 650,000 years. I suppose is merely a coincidence that has happened since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Furthermore, average global temperatures have been trending up since 1880, AND for the last 30 years all of the warmest years have been warmer than temperatures ever got naturally in the previous 650,000 years. I suppose is only another amazing coincidence how that has happened since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Glacial melt studies, ocean rise studies, ice cap shrinkage studies, weather records, coral growth studies, tree ring studies, lake sediment studies, ocean sediment studies, ice core sample studies, and other geological studies ALL INDICATE THE SAME TRENDS AND THE SAME UNPRECIDENTED CO2 LEVELS AND TEMPERATURES. They ALL support the same conclusion. Is it really only a coincidence that we have seen verifiable and unprecedented CO2 and temp trends and peaks that NEVER HAPPENED NATURALLY in the previous 650,000 years only since the undustrial revolution? My, we are just lucky lucky people.

ARNO ARRAK: “Forgetting theory for a moment, it is elementary that warming means increase in global temperature. In 1988 James Hansen observed that global temperature had increased for ten years straight and told us that this global warming was caused by carbon dioxide we were putting into the air. His testimony to the Senate about it was the kickoff of the present day global warming scare and helped to establish IPCC. And IPCC reports today are the bible of the global warming movement. According to them, global warming today is still driven by the increasing amount of carbon dioxide we people are still putting into the air. But here is the problem: the globe is not warming any more.” – - – WRONG! That is NOT a problem. Talk about cherry picking data. The ONLY problem there is how that comment is PATENTLY FALSE, and thus it is a DISHONEST PRESUMPTION!!! The warming part of global warming is supposed to occur as a LONG-TERM warming TREND. Find a dictionary and look up trend. NOTHING in global warming theory holds that warming is supposed to be continuous in the sense it is supposed to get warmer every year. That condition is a FALSE condition that deniers fabricate to reinforce their belief. That condition is essentially a pathetic effort to fabricate a straw man AND engage in circular reasoning by fabricating a false assumption. Loop up the word graph, and then find graphs of average global temperatures and five year average global temperatures to see examples of temperature TRENDS. Ditto for CO2. A peak in the warming trend around 98/99 and a minor short-term cooling trend since then is MEANINGLESS relative the TREND since 1880 because EXACTLY the same thing happened 11 or 12 times before. The average temperature varies for relatively short time frames. It trends up for a few years (i.e. warms) and then it trends down a few years (i.e. cools). But the OVERALL TREND since 1880 has been consistent long-term warming.

IVAN: “You fail to mention the hockey stick that the global arming “experts” put together. The “hockey stick” is that point on the graph when the average temperature of the earth rises at a very FAST pace to the high 70s melting the North Pole and putting just about every nation underwater. This is an apocalypse that was supposed to start years ago. Since global warming scientists can never be wrong it has to happen right? We’re still waiting” – - – You are clueless. I did not fail to mention that graph. In fact I described it. Just because I did not mention by the same name you used it does not mean I did not mention it. The fact that you were not able to recognize that graphs from my description indicates how clueless you are about this topic. Oh, BTW, that graph DOES NOT say what you claim it says. Some people might use it to support that conclusion, but the graph itself says no such thing. Again, another indication you are clueless about this topic.

I’m not a climate scientist but if the majority of those specialized scientists see man-made global climate change as real, that is good enough for me.
As for those few flunkies that are being paid by those who are profiting by our current energy usage, or who directly profit by selling a book on the subject, who claim global climate change is not man-made or isn’t happening at all, I believe them as much as those ‘scientists’ who swore that smoking tobacco wasn’t a health risk decades ago.

Posted by: Lydia
_______________________
You’re not in the majority Lydia. The latest Rasmussen poll shows 69% of the public believe the “scientists” manipulated the data.

About 20 years ago, roughly 51% of the scientists believed man-made global warming was real. When Al Gore came along and it became a movement, particularly when all the grant money became available, all of a sudden nearly ALL the scientists agreed. That in and of itself seems rather fishy.

There have been scientists who have defected, though. The latest two consist of the head of NOAA and the latest was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and he explains how the science has now become a cult.

The “climatologists” have produced a multitude of models, and only a very few are chosen as “correct”, after the fact (commonly called “cooking the books”). It is therefore nonsense to say that any floods or droughts today were predicted by “climatologists” in the past, they predicted anything and everything. When there is drought, they wail “climate change will produce drought!”. In a year of flooding, they exclaim “climate change will produce floods”. And so the they also said of unusual snowstorms. Of course they can dig through their piles of failed models and come up with a particular one to fit a current weather situation. A “climatologist” (not a degree found in a college) is an agenda-driven paid shill who produces mostly meaningless models, of which a few can be cherry-picked at a future date. There are plenty of competent scientists in the real fields of meteorology and geophysics who point out the problems with the mainstream AGW theories. The fact is the Earth has been much colder, and much warmer, in the past than now. Sometimes it was colder with higher CO2 levels, and usually CO2 levels would rise in response to elevated temperatures, not before. But these facts are lost on the agenda-driven “climatologists”.

Ivan: The “hockey stick graph” says absolutely nothing about the future. It is a plot of past mean global temperatures. Period. Yes, the deniers like to claim that it predicts “high 70s melting the North Pole and putting just about every nation underwater.” that is, to put it politely, garbage. The inflection in the global mean temperature occurred in the late 19th century at a temperature of around 57ºF. We will all be long gone before the Earth’s average temperature would reach 70! And the notion that just about every nation will be underwater is pure poppycock, raised by deniers in a futile attempt to make climatologists, who of course predict no such thing, look bad. By the way, several universities offer degree programs in Climatology, including the Ohio State University, the University of Nebraska, the University of North Carolina, Ball State University, and Marshall University to name a few. As for the public believing that scientists have manipulated the data, why do you suppose that might be? There have been five separate inquisitions into the most famous incident and every one of those inquiries found that the data was accurate, the analyses performed on it valid, and the conclusions correct. The reports from those five bodies have each been available for over two years. So why do people still ‘believe’ that the data was manipulated? Because deniers such as yourself continue to make fraudulent charges that you KNOW to be false. B-K Knightrider was correct, you don’t have a clue.

RALPH SIEGLER: “The fact is the Earth has been much colder, and much warmer, in the past than now. Sometimes it was colder with higher CO2 levels,..” – - – WRONG. NEVER HAPPENED. At least not in the last 65,000,000 years. Yes, that is 65 MILLION years. During the entire age of dinosaurs there were NO ICE ages. BOTH CO2 and temperature were much higher back then. Ice Ages did not even begin until after the Pangea supercontinent broke up and CO2 levels got down to a certain point. So, BOTH CO2 and average temperature were higher then (i.e. before the first ice age) than they are now. And again, that only happened before the FIRST ice age. In the last 650,000 to 800,000 years CO2 levels NEVER got above 300 ppm naturally. But RISING CO2 levels passed that around 1820 and they have been steadily rising ever since. Currently CO2 levels are about 28% higher than they ever got naturally in the last 650,000 years before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Also, in the last 650,000 years the temperatures NEVER got higher than they got about 30 years ago. So, in the last 30 years the pattern of record setting high temperatures (the pattern that is part of the TREND that began around 1880) were HIGHER than the two hottest periods that occurred naturally in the last 650,000 years. I guess that is all just coincidence. Now, if you still want to claim there has ever been a time in the last 650,000 years that was both colder than now and had higher CO2 levels then please cite the time-frame and the graph you are using as your source.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple’s substitute for intelligence. Russell Lynes

DOUBLE B: “Do I believe my eyes??? Did an alarmist just write that they knew this planet didn’t have any ice when the dinosaurs roamed? Wow. Yet, that wasn’t “normal” for this planet to them.” – - – What on earth are you babbling about? Who ever said anything about the climate during the age of the dinosaurs, or 50M years ago, or 10M years ago, or 1M years ago, or 100K years ago, or 10K years ago, or 1K years ago was not “normal” according to the conditions and circumstances of THAT TIME? The climate that was normal THEN would in fact NOT be normal for the current conditions. And the climate we have now would in fact NOT be normal for those past times. The past pattern – and presumably still the current pattern – of ice ages did NOT happen until AFTER the deep ocean currents had enough time to do their thing (made possible by Pangaea breaking up due to continental drift) AND both CO2 and temperatures getting low enough to allow the ice caps to form and ice ages to begin. I have NEVER said past climate was not normal for the conditions of the past, and I have NEVER seen any climatologist make that claim. That is only something you dreamed up.

DOUBLE D: “But I’d like to hear their answers to man fixing this planet. What would YOU do?” – - – I would join together with the other major powers to do a joint Manhattan/Apollo project to perfect fusion technology as soon as possible. Developing commercially viable fusion power would benefit EVERYONE, so we need to get there ASAP. In the meantime I would also join with them to subsidize R & D of ALL possible viable green energy technologies and cleaner coal tech and build more nuke plants. I believe current estimates are that fusion power is still 50-75 years away. A large enough joint project might cut that time in half.

Ivan: “It would not be called the “hockey stick” graph, if the line of he graph didn’t shoot almost straight up, which means the temperature will rise FAST. A graph that says the temperature rises SLOW is graph that is far more slanted.” – - – Good grief, you really are clueless and thus WRONG about this. It is called the hockey stick graph because the graph of PAST average world temperatures ALREADY looks like a hockey stick. What does a graph of average temperatures over the last 1,000 years look like? A friggin hockey stick. What does a graph of average temperatures over the 2,000 years look like? A friggin longer hockey stick. Go back thousands of years to the end of the last ice age and what does it look like? Yep, an even longer friggin hockey stick. Yeah, the handle is crooked in some places. But the END of the curve since 1880 shoots up relatively steep like one end of a friggin hockey stick. Extend the handle out to 650,000 years in the past and what do we see? Past temperatures NEVER got as high naturally as they have been in the record years of the last 30 years. The hockey stick graph is a graph of PAST temperatures, not projected temperatures. Now, is it reasonable for a rational person to project what it MIGHT look like on the basis of the trend over the last 100 years plus? Well sure, some people have done that. Some models have done that. Now want to take a guess at what a graph of Past CO2 levels looks like? Yep, a friggin hockey stick! And CO2 levels during the 650,000 years BEFORE about 1820 NEVER got higher than that naturally. CO2 levels have been steadily rising since 1820 and they are now about 28% higher than then. Which necessarily also means they are about 28% higher than it ever got naturally in the previous 650,000 years. So, for about 190 years now, CO2 levels have been HIGHER than the two highest levels ever seen naturally in the previous 650,000 years – and it is STILL rising steadily. And we are supposed to conclude that it is simply a coincidence that CO2 and temperature have done unprecedented things in 650,000 years ONLY since the Industrial Revolution? Yeah, right.

IVAN: “The guiding principle of the entire global warming argument is that 1) there WILL be an apocalypse. 2) It will happen FAST, and MOST important #) WE are to blame.” – - – As far as I know the FAST part of the theoretical projections is on the geological time scale, as in it will take hundreds of years for the worst of it too happen IF there is no natural feedback system capable of counteracting the impact of human activity. The biggest concern is that the tipping point – if there is one – might occur much sooner relative to how long it would take the ice caps to melt significantly. If there is a tipping point and if we do reach it then nothing we do would stop a runaway greenhouse effect even if we stopped ALL emissions of greenhouse gasses. Consequently, the real concern is NOT that we will cause the worst effects any time soon. The real concern is that we might reach a tipping point relatively soon (i.e. 75-150 years for example to hit a tipping point verses hundreds of years for significant melting/flooding). Here are some irrefutable facts for you to chew on above and beyond the others from my previous posts. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and ALL greenhouse gasses cause a greenhouse gas effect on a planetary scale. Human activity is adding hundreds of millions of tons of EXTRA greenhouse gasses that would not NORMALLY/NATURALLY be in the atmosphere. Therefore, the EXTRA greenhouse gasses we add to the atmosphere MUST have some impact greater than zero. Consequently, the only rational, intellectually honest debate to have is over how much human activity impacts climate and what if anything should we do to mitigate the impact we cause ABOVE AND BEYOND what would happen normally/naturally.

BK

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” – Obama

Feel free to google it BK. Obama said it. Only thing is, you’re the first person I’ve ever heard not knowing this.

The world should be very grateful to Richard Muller and The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Group (and by extension to America), as their independent review has finally closed the climate change ‘debate’.

Richard Muller’s investigation and the six or so independent inquiries that have been held into allegations against The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) have cleared the climate scientists involved and by imputation the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Now the public can see that the climate scientists were correct in their analysis that the world is indeed warming. There was no “fudging” of the data by CRU. As climate scientists were correct here, we can be confident that their analysis about the reasons and the results of global warming are accurate also, and start the much deferred action necessary to limit the damage of man-made climate change for our children and grandchildren.

There are increasing allegations that the major oil companies paid for the illegal hacking of the so-called “Climategate” emails and that they have been paying for others to spread misinformation and disinformation through the media – including professional reporters – and people posting in Forums such as these. The tobacco industry and asbestos companies used similar tactics to try and cover up the dangers of their product and slow down action against them. Powerful legal precedents have been set in the litigation against tobacco and asbestos companies. Billions of dollars in damages were awarded against them.

The actions of climate change sceptics (whoever funded them) – causing delays in action on climate change – has resulted in increasing property damage, loss of value in investment portfolios, increased pay outs by insurance companies, and most importantly, loss of life. Cases against climate change sceptics for libel, slander, defamation, scientific fraud and damages are already being discussed and should now begin.

Obviously this is not aimed at those who are genuinely sceptical – but rather those who deliberately seek to obfuscate for financial, religious or ideological reasons – knowing full well that people or property will suffer as a result. Future cases such as this – which show a clear public risk for delay – must not again allow vested interests to cause delays that will knowingly result in loss of property; investments and/or life. The recent cases against the tobacco and asbestos companies have provided a powerful precedent that will enable individuals, companies and even countries to be held to account in a court of law. If a link to the major oil companies can be established here the penalties will run into trillions of dollars. I fully expect countries that have delayed to be sued eventually as well. These cases move slowly but eventually catch up with the perpetrators.