tell me it isn't so......the sun??

[herbivor]

what i find interesting is just your point
herb will matter of factly dismiss any dissent on AGW on the grounds its already proven, which it most certainly is not "settled" science.
there are plenty of smarter than me or herb scientists that do not support or believe the AGW opinion, but somehow they don't count.
Somehow private industry funded research is less than government funded research. one is biased and the other cannot be.

no wonder its called a new religion.

I would love the dissenters to be correct. I don't think anyone wants GW to be a potential problem. It's just that the dissenters do not have credible data to back up their claims. I've asked multiple time to give me at least one credible, peer reviewed article that would suggest GW is not anthropogenic. All I get in return are opinion articles from people that work for "dissent" groups that get funded by oil companies or politicial groups. I just look at the reseaerch and evidence that is presented. So far, I don't see anyt trend in the evidence and research that suggests that GW is not anthropogenic. I challenge anyone here to find me a real peer reviewed scientific article that challenges the anthropogenic theory with credible research and data. You can't find it. All you can find are the dissenters with their untested theories and conspiracies. I'll choose the science over that any day.

To the other posts, I'm a structural engineer with niche in green buiding technology consulting and building energy analysis. We can design building systems to be energy efficient and save more money when including the life cycle assessment cost. We can do this successfully with unsubsidized prices and current utility rates. We don't need subsidies to be energy efficient or save money or have a successful consulting business. What we need is enforcement of current energy Codes. But there is no incentive for the building department to make builders prove they are meeting the energy Code, because energy is something that can be wasted without effecting the safety of the occupants. There is no incentive to builders to spend money on a properly designed system, because they don't have to stay in the building and pay the utilities. There is also little incentive to the building owner, because the technology is over their head and they only look at the up front costs of construction. If they are leasing the building, the tennants will pay the utiliities so they don't care anyway. The only people I can sell to are those educated in energy effeciency and know the cost benefits in the long term. I could sell to a lot more people if only there was more incentive to be more energy efficient. Currently there isn't. By the way, what I do will have no impact on preventing the effects of AGW, so you can't say I have some financial gain in the scientists being correct. I will gain financially if their is an incentive for people to want to save energy.

[mrsleeve]

2. It is creating alot of jobs. Which is what we need in todays economic climate.

So I do not see why there is such a huge fucking debat about something that is good for everyone no matter how you look at it.
.

Going to help Manic out a little bit on this one

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Solyndra-Shutting-Down-128802718.html

Yup the huge purveyor of solar panels going bankrupt and laying off over a 1000 people world wide and more to follow more than likely. With a more than 500m in govt "green loans" and speech at the plant from the 0, they still went tits up. Wonder whos going to have to foot the bill for that 500+ Million in tax payer backed loans

Yup solar and green energy is where its at huh, even with govt money subsidizing it still cant make it.

[Massimo]

I would love the dissenters to be correct. I don't think anyone wants GW to be a potential problem. It's just that the dissenters do not have credible data to back up their claims. I've asked multiple time to give me at least one credible, peer reviewed article that would suggest GW is not anthropogenic. All I get in return are opinion articles from people that work for "dissent" groups that get funded by oil companies or politicial groups. I just look at the reseaerch and evidence that is presented. So far, I don't see anyt trend in the evidence and research that suggests that GW is not anthropogenic. I challenge anyone here to find me a real peer reviewed scientific article that challenges the anthropogenic theory with credible research and data. You can't find it. All you can find are the dissenters with their untested theories and conspiracies. I'll choose the science over that any day.

To the other posts, I'm a structural engineer with niche in green buiding technology consulting and building energy analysis. We can design building systems to be energy efficient and save more money when including the life cycle assessment cost. We can do this successfully with unsubsidized prices and current utility rates. We don't need subsidies to be energy efficient or save money or have a successful consulting business. What we need is enforcement of current energy Codes. But there is no incentive for the building department to make builders prove they are meeting the energy Code, because energy is something that can be wasted without effecting the safety of the occupants. There is no incentive to builders to spend money on a properly designed system, because they don't have to stay in the building and pay the utilities. There is also little incentive to the building owner, because the technology is over their head and they only look at the up front costs of construction. If they are leasing the building, the tennants will pay the utiliities so they don't care anyway. The only people I can sell to are those educated in energy effeciency and know the cost benefits in the long term. I could sell to a lot more people if only there was more incentive to be more energy efficient. Currently there isn't. By the way, what I do will have no impact on preventing the effects of AGW, so you can't say I have some financial gain in the scientists being correct. I will gain financially if their is an incentive for people to want to save energy.

Structural. I am a Civil Designer, and I am surprised there is no incentive to build "green" buildings. Here in Aus they have a system that gives you a 5 or 7 star rating (I can't remember I am not structural) base on how environmentally friendly your building is. There are allot of criteria to meet e.g. building materials, energy efficient cooling, and natural light and so on.

It seems to work very well as the building that have these high ratings charge allot more for rent but they are always full. Most business want to be seen as helping the environment so it is big business over here.

On the Civil side, there is a requirement to have more landscaping, carbon foot print off setting, sedimentation ponds with filters, A basic requirement now is that all water runoff from roads must be treated before going to the ocean. So most jobs these days require sedimentation ponds.

I suppose this is where my view on government spending in relation to jobs is different then the US. Here there is a requirement for any state government job that we hire a percentage of unemployed people. That percentage is determined in the Project Scope and Tender Requirements usually about 10-15%. There is also a push that all our materials come from local or national distributors. They really do not like anything overseas, unless there is a specialty requirement.

I must say that I am somewhat disillusioned by the Australian system and how well it works. I do somewhat feel for you guys as these basic and important requirements seem as though they would be employed everywhere, when they are not.

[Massimo]

Going to help Manic out a little bit on this one

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Solyndra-Shutting-Down-128802718.html

Yup the huge purveyor of solar panels going bankrupt and laying off over a 1000 people world wide and more to follow more than likely. With a more than 500m in govt "green loans" and speech at the plant from the 0, they still went tits up. Wonder whos going to have to foot the bill for that 500+ Million in tax payer backed loans

Yup solar and green energy is where its at huh, even with govt money subsidizing it still cant make it.

Wow seems that is a big cock up. I agree, that allots is being spent and not a great out come. Allot of these seems to come from high R&D cost's green energy is still in its infiniteness, and like all things lots needs to be spent before the true benefits can be harvest. Seems as though they just are not spending their money wisely, which I suppose is part of your debate. Makes sense.

[gwb72tii]

wow herb
you make my case for me
pls tell me which government funded group is going to peer review any data not supporting their position and give it unbiased scrutiny. tell me which govt funded scientist is willing to cut off his/her government funding?

there is no proven causal relationship that C02 drives GW. anecdotal evidence that C02 rises with GW, but nothing that proves it is the driver of GW.

it is a minute part of the atmosphere.

and i'll repeat and you haven't answered this. and this is where your logic eludes me. reducing anthro C02 20% is a net 8/10ths of 1% reduction in annual C02. somehow, no matter what "data" you provide, EVEN IF C02 did drive GW, reducing annual C02 by that percentage will not reduce GW.


i'm an engineer too (was hydraulic/mechanical)!

[herbivor]

wow herb
you make my case for me
pls tell me which government funded group is going to peer review any data not supporting their position and give it unbiased scrutiny. tell me which govt funded scientist is willing to cut off his/her government funding?

there is no proven causal relationship that C02 drives GW. anecdotal evidence that C02 rises with GW, but nothing that proves it is the driver of GW.

it is a minute part of the atmosphere.

and i'll repeat and you haven't answered this. and this is where your logic eludes me. reducing anthro C02 20% is a net 8/10ths of 1% reduction in annual C02. somehow, no matter what "data" you provide, EVEN IF C02 did drive GW, reducing annual C02 by that percentage will not reduce GW.


i'm an engineer too (was hydraulic/mechanical)!

I've answered your question twice on our previous debate. Either you don't read or you have a short memory. Either way I'm not wasting my time again. Anyone else who appreciates science, feel free to go to the following non-political unbiased website regarding the latest science research. Learn the truth for yourself. If you feel all of the world scientists are tainted by money and have some grand world conspiracy, no amount of education or scientific research will convince you otherwise. I don't have the expertise to deprogram victims of brainwashing. Good luck with that.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

[Ghosty]

Good find.

[gwb72tii]

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/10/does-co2-drive-the-earths-climate-system-comments-on-the-latest-nasa-giss-paper/

quotes

Taken together, the series of computations and claims made by Lacis et al. might lead the casual reader to think, “Wow, carbon dioxide really does have a strong effect on the Earth’s climate system!” And, in my view, it does.

Of course, the chance of editors at Science allowing such a response paper to get published is virtually zero. The editors at Science choose which scientists will be asked to provide peer review, and they already know who they can count on to reject a skeptic’s paper.


oops spencer is a skeptic so disregard the above


so lets look at numbers

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

quote
Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!


opps, singer is a skeptic so disregard the above


and uno mas

http://www.cfact.org/a/1526/Global-warming-baitandswitch

quote
Growing numbers of scientists say the climate change debate is far from over, and global warming was never a crisis. Over 650 certified meteorologists and climate scientists are on a US Senate compilation of climate cataclysm skeptics and 32,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition, saying they dispute claims that humans are causing climate change, and the changes will be disastrous.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have "soared" from 280 ppm to 385 ppm over the last century. But this represents an almost trivial rise from 0.03% of the atmosphere to 0.04% -- the equivalent of an increase from 3 cents to 4 out of $100, or from 1.08 inches to 1.44 inches on a football field. The dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor, which nature controls via evaporation and precipitation.

Not surprisingly, the more people understand these facts, the worse the hysteria gets. Al Gore: Soaring global temperatures will bring human civilization to a screeching halt. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu: We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. NOAA scientist Susan Solomon: In ten years the oceans will be toxic, and all life in them will die. NASA astronomer James Hansen: Death trains are carrying poisonous fuel to coal-fired factories of death.

Hollywood horror movie writers couldn't possibly top this stuff.


oops monckton is a skeptic so disregard the above

obviously it is settled science, at least by those who ignore other opinions

i'm also left wondering just who the hell paid off the 650 and 32,000 skeptics?

[klavender1]

I guess that's why (IMHO), anyone that screams "The science is settled!" is full of it. Science is never settled. We are always learning new things. We all must keep our minds open to the fact that what we know could be wrong.

[NKRoberts]

I've answered your question twice on our previous debate. Either you don't read or you have a short memory. Either way I'm not wasting my time again. Anyone else who appreciates science, feel free to go to the following non-political unbiased website regarding the latest science research. Learn the truth for yourself. If you feel all of the world scientists are tainted by money and have some grand world conspiracy, no amount of education or scientific research will convince you otherwise. I don't have the expertise to deprogram victims of brainwashing. Good luck with that.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

I love how on any topic you debate you are superior and anyone else is brainwashed/unintelligent/ignorant. You might need a long look in the mirror.

[iidesu]

Oh chit no wai

wut da fuuk is goin' on?

[gwb72tii]

this just in
letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal today

Anne Jolis's "The Other Climate Theory" (op-ed, Sept. 7) is a welcome message of realism on climate. Painful changes in the U.S. economy are being justified by the mantra that the earth's climate is dictated by CO2 in the atmosphere; elaborate computer models assert that doubling CO2 concentrations will warm the earth by an intolerable three or four degrees Celsius, or even more. This is contrary to straightforward theoretical estimates and empirical observations, indicating that the direct warming potential of CO2 is only about one degree Celsius, which would most likely be a benefit to world. The recent European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) experiments, discussed by Ms. Jolis, support extensive observational evidence that cosmic rays reaching the earth's surface have a large influence on climate.

Additional important climate drivers include complicated fluctuations of major oceanic currents and volcanic eruptions. Even if we could hold CO2 levels fixed, the climate would continue to change because of other influences. In a time of serious world problems, wasteful expenditures justified by nonproblems like CO2 make no sense.

William Happer

Professor of Physics

Princeton University

Princeton, N.J.


Ms. Jolis's stated objective is to examine the causes associated with climate change. As such, the issue that should be addressed relates to changes in cosmic-ray intensity: i.e., assuming cosmic rays do influence clouds, have cosmic-ray intensities changed during the time when global atmospheric temperatures have changed?

Numerous measurements show that global atmospheric temperatures have been increasing since 1980 and continue to increase to this day. Cosmic-ray data over a range of years containing this period is shown at http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/clmx/main.htm.

There has been no significant change in cosmic-ray intensity over the same period in which we have seen the increase in global temperatures.

The issue for climate change is not whether cosmic rays influence clouds, the issue is whether cosmic-ray intensities have changed during the years when global atmospheric temperatures have changed. They have not.

Raymond L. Orbach

Director, Energy Institute

The University of Texas

at Austin

Austin, Texas

Mr. Orbach was director of the Department of Energy's Office of Science 2002-09, and undersecretary for science 2006-09 at the waffleswaffleswaffles.


It is important for readers to understand that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as many other organizations invested in the idea that humans are the major cause of late 20th-century climate change, have never been seriously interested in pursuing natural causes of climate change. Since inception, the IPCC has been nearly totally preoccupied with trying to make the case for strong anthropogenic global warming (AGW), primarily via CO2 emissions. This has led to biases and distortions of the scientific process, and the "tribal behavior" by climate scientists that we have seen in a variety of contexts, e.g., the Climategate emails and IPCC report "errors."

The real scientific climate debate has been taken up by the so-called skeptics as they have searched to understand the underlying causes of climate change, including both natural and anthropogenic sources. In fact, there are not one but two roughly defined schools of thought. All agree that AGW is far smaller than the IPCC claims, and there exists a substantial body of empirical evidence to support this. However, one school holds that the predominate influences arise from astronomical sources, such as the cosmic-ray mechanism. The other school believes that the earth is quite capable of changing its climate quickly and significantly via its own unforced chaotic variations.

This debate among skeptics has proceeded under the media's radar screen.

Roger W. Cohen, Ph.D.

La Jolla, Calif.


Climate science has not yet established how much clouds impact climate—there is even debate about whether clouds warm or cool the earth—or to what extent clouds have fluctuated over the last, you pick it, 20, 50, 100, 1,000 years, or the specific ways in which clouds interact with solar input (i.e., how much they reflect back into space).

It is all but acknowledged (climate scientists on the global-warming government-funding bandwagon have a hard time acknowledging anything that could undermine their beliefs) that because of these uncertainties about clouds, all climate models do a terrible job modeling how clouds impact climate. Change the assumptions about the amount of clouds or how they impact global temperatures by more than 1% and you can completely explain all global warming (and cooling).

Politicians who believe that the more government can control what we do in our daily lives, the better those daily lives will be, see man-made global warming as the ultimate tool for such control. Thus, they are more than happy to fund scientists who support that viewpoint. Let's see how robust the funding for the CERN CLOUD experiment is going forward.

John P. Miller, Ph.D.

Portola Valley, Calif.


The cosmic-ray theory is also discussed in the landmark book "Heaven and Earth—Global Warming, the Missing Science" (2009) by Prof. Ian Plimer of the University of Adelaide, Australia. Prof. Plimer's work was so profound as to become the primary enabler for the recent defeat of a climate-change bill in the Australian legislature.

It is long past time for the EPA's management to follow the strong recommendation of its own National Center for Environmental Economics scientists who, in a very comprehensive internal report to management (March 2009), were highly critical of claims regarding the worth of the IPCC climate models. Their urgent, but ignored, plea was for the EPA to undertake its own independent assessment of whether or not human activity influences climate.

Chuck Wilkerson

El Segundo, Calif.

[Kershaw]

tl;dr

[gwb72tii]

more consensus on settled science

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/14/nobel-prize-winning-physicist-resigns-from-top-physics-group-over-global/?test=latestnews

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming


The global warming theory left him out in the cold.

Dr. Ivar Giaever, a former professor with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the 1973 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday, Sept. 13, from the premier physics society in disgust over its officially stated policy that "global warming is occurring."

The official position of the American Physical Society (APS) supports the theory that man's actions have inexorably led to the warming of the planet, through increased emissions of carbon dioxide.

Giaever does not agree -- and put it bluntly and succinctly in the subject line of his email, reprinted at Climate Depot, a website devoted to debunking the theory of man-made climate change.

"I resign from APS," Giaever wrote.

Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that "the evidence is incontrovertible."

"In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" he wrote in an email to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the physics society.

"The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period," his email message said.

A spokesman for the APS confirmed to FoxNews.com that the Nobel Laureate had declined to pay his annual dues in the society and had resigned. He also noted that the society had no plans to revise its statement.

The use of the word "incontrovertible" had already caused debate within the group, so much so that an addendum was added to the statement discussing its use in April, 2010.

"The word 'incontrovertible' ... is rarely used in science because by its very nature, science questions prevailing ideas. The observational data indicate a global surface warming of 0.74 °C (+/- 0.18 °C) since the late 19th century."

Giaever earned his Nobel for his experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in superconductors. He has since become a vocal dissenter from the alleged “consensus” regarding man-made climate fears, Climate Depot reported, noting that he was one of more than 100 co-signers of a 2009 letter to President Obama critical of his position on climate change.

Public perception of climate change has steadily fallen since late 2009. A Rasmussen Reports public opinion poll from August noted that 57 percent of adults believe there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming, up five points from late 2009.

The same study showed that 69 percent of those polled believe it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs. Just 6 percent felt confident enough to report that such falsification was "not at all likely."

[cale]

I'm glad the public isn't blindly eating up whatever is fed to them in regards to GW anymore, claiming any sort of science to be settled though is ridiculously ignorant. Gravity isn't even a completely settled science, there is still debate as to how it occurs!