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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (18690)	12/19/2007 8:46:28 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

The broad science behind AGW is not rock solid. Edit - If by "broad science behind AGW", you mean the scientific conclusion that the earth is warming, primarily because of human emissions of CO2, and that the temperature rises will continue. You can chant that all you want but you offer no evidence that this is so. The IPCC2007 is excellent evidence that you are clueless. Don't quote Energy & Environment or McIntrye, or Lindzen, et al. If your playing devil's advocate about evolution fine. That would mean your expecting counter arguments about evolution, and if they can overcome your objections the idea will be shown to be more valid. But playing devils advocate about evolution doesn't make sense as part of an argument for severe and continuing human caused global warming I am indeed asking you to provide a counter argument in favor of evolution that would illustrate you understand the issues well enough to support your acceptance of evolution. Several of your comments, most notably your ignorance of the micro/macro centering of the debate tells me that you accept evolution because you realize that creationism is nonsense, but you really don't know the first thing about the science. Further, I'd guess you have no religious opposition to evolution. On climate science, it is equally clear that you have very little knowledge of the actual science, but a pretty good link to ideological opposition to the consequences of AGW, hence this is the root of your opposition to the science. Wishes are not horses. Once again, I'm trying to educate you on the difference between science and bashing. If someone lies to me 10 times, I don't sit and say Gee, logically, this is #11, and he might be telling the truth this time, I should evaluate it on the merits of this case. I dismiss him as a liar. I apply the same logic to how people or groups of people approach science, and when I've seen some telltale crap, I know who I'm dealing with. One of the crap filters is any of a long list of nonsense objections (the CO2 temp lag being an example). When I see those raised as supposedly profound arguments I know that the person raising them is either ignorant or intentionally dishonest. I don't have much use for either. BTW, at least some creationist groups have actually put up sites telling Christians which arguments NOT to use because they make a laughingstock of creationists. The AGW bashers are sorely in need of the same. Perhaps you could start working on such a site? I provide you with this insightful content, LOL! Please note the bolded paragraph and spread the word to the AGW bashers, they would help themselves greatly if they took note. Arguments we think creationists should NOT use The authority for Answers in Genesis is the infallible Word of God, the Bible (see Q&A: Bible). All theories of science are fallible, and new data often overturn previously held theories. Just as evolutionists continually revise their theories because of new data, it should not be surprising or distressing that some creationist scientific theories need to be revised at times, too. The first article on this page sums up what creationists’ attitude should be about various ideas and theories. The other articles provide examples of arguments that should no longer be used; some arguments are definitely fallacious, while others are merely doubtful or unsubstantiated. We provide brief explanations why, and/or hyperlinks to other articles on this website with more detailed explanations. We don’t claim that this list is exhaustive—it will be updated with additions and maybe deletions as new evidence is discovered. Many of these arguments have never been promoted by AiG, and some have not been promoted by any major creationist organization (so they were not directed at anyone in particular), but are instead straw men set up by anti-creationists. Persistently using discredited arguments is both ineffectual and, more importantly, immoral—it’s the truth that sets us free (John 8:32), not error, and Christ is “the truth” (John 14:6)! Since there is so much good evidence for creation, there is no need to use any of the “doubtful” arguments. This page also shows why it is important for people to stay up-to-date with sound creationist literature, such as Answers magazine. To read about what is important for creationists to defend, and what should be held more “loosely”, see ‘Hanging Loose’: What should we defend? From here: answersingenesis.org

To: TimF who wrote (18690)	12/19/2007 9:14:57 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Take this as a test of your ability to evaluate the science of climate change. I found this guy with a google search for "Arguments climate skeptics should not use" on the odd change that some bright climate skeptic was trying to clean up the crap floating around. Instead, this guy is claiming to give his best shot at advancing the climate skeptics cause in 60 seconds. See if you can spot the glaring defects in his analysis. If you can't, God help you. See this link: coyoteblog.com The 60-Second Climate Skeptic I was trying to think about what I wanted to do for my last post in my recent orgy of global warming writing. My original attempt to outline the state of the climate skeptic's case ballooned into 80+ pages, so there may be many people who rationally just have no desire to tackle that much material. So I decided for this last post to try to select the one argument I would use if I had only 60 seconds to make the climate skeptic's case. But how do you boil down 80 pages to a few simple statements? I'm not that interested in the Sun or cosmic rays -- they are interesting topics, but its dumb to try to argue we overestimate our understanding of man's impact on climate only to counter with topics we understand even less. One of the reasons I wrote the paper in the first place was because I thought recent skeptical documentaries spent too much time on this subject. And I would not get into tree rings or ice cores or other historic proxy data, though there is a lot happening in these areas. I wouldn't even delve into the hysterical treatment of skeptics by man-made climate advocates -- these are ad hominem issues that are useful to understand in a more comprehensive view but don't make for strong stand-alone arguments. Anyway, here goes, in a logic chain of 8 steps. 1. CO2 does indeed absorb reflected sunlight returning to space from earth, having a warming effect. However, this effect is a diminishing return -- each successive increment of CO2 concentrations will have a much smaller effect on temperatures than the previous increment. Eventually, CO2 becomes nearly saturated in its ability to absorb radiation. The effect is much like painting a red room with white paint. The first coat covers a lot of red but some still shows through. Each additional coat will make the room progressively whiter, but each successive coat will have a less noticeable effects than the previous coat, until the room is just white and can't get any whiter. 2. In the 20th century, the UN IPCC claims Earth's surface temperatures have increased by about a 0.6 degree Celsius (though there are some good reasons to think that biases in the installation of temperature instruments have exaggerated this apparent increase). To be simple (and generous), let's assume all this 0.6C increase is due to man-made greenhouse gasses. Some may in fact have been due to natural effects, but some may also have been masked by man-made sulfate aerosols, so lets just call man-made warming to be 0.6C. 3. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, it is thought that man has increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 0.028% of the atmosphere to 0.038% of the atmosphere. Since scientists often talk about the effect of a doubling of CO2, this historic rise in CO2 is 36% of a doubling. 4. Using simple math, we see that if temperatures have risen 0.6C due to 36% of a doubling, we might expect them to rise by 1.67C for a full doubling to 0.056% of the atmosphere. But this assumes that the rise is linear -- and we already said (and no one denies) that it is in fact a diminishing return relationship. Using a truer form of the curve, a 0.6C historic rise for 36% of a doubling implies a full doubling would raise temperatures by about 1.2C, or about 0.6C more than we have seen to date (see chart below). This means that the magnitude of global warming in the next century might be about what we have seen (and apparently survived) since 1900. 5. Obviously, there is some kind of disconnect here. The IPCC predicts temperature increases in the next century of 4-8 degrees C. Big difference. In fact, the IPCC predicts we will get a 0.5C rise in just 20 years, not 70-100. Whereas we derived a climate sensitivity of 1.2 from empirical data, they arrive at numbers between 3 and 4 or even higher for sensitivity. The chart below shows that to believe sensitivity is 3, we would have to have seen temperature rises due to man historically of 1.5C, which nobody believes. So how do they get accelerating temperatures from what they admit to be a diminishing return relation between CO2 concentration and temperature? And for which there is no empirical evidence? Answer: Positive feedback. 6. Almost every process you can think of in nature operates by negative feedback. Roll a ball, and eventually friction and wind resistance bring it to a stop. Negative feedback is a ball in the bottom of a bowl; positive feedback is a ball perched precariously at the time of a mountain. Positive feedback breeds instability, and processes that operate by positive feedback are dangerous, and usually end up in extreme states -- these processes tend to "run away" like the ball rolling down the hill. Nuclear fission, for example, is a positive feedback process. We should be happy there are not more positive feedback processes on our planet. Current man-made global warming theory, however, asserts that our climate is dominated by positive feedback. The IPCC posits that a small increase in temperature from CO2 is multiplied 2,3,4 times or more by positive feedbacks like humidity and ice albedo. 7. There are three problems with these assumptions about positive feedback. One, there is no empirical evidence at all that positive feedbacks in climate dominate negative feedbacks. The 20th century temperature numbers we discussed above show no evidence of these feedbacks. Two, the long-term temperature record demonstrates that positive feedbacks can't dominate, because past increases in temperature and CO2 have not run away. And three, characterizations of stable natural processes as being dominated by positive feedback should offend the intuition and common sense of any scientist. 8. An expected 21st century increase of 0.5 or even 1 degree C does not justify the massive imposed government interventions that will be costly both in dollars and lost freedoms. In particular, the developing world will be far better off hotter by a degree and richer than it would be cooler and poorer. This is particularly true since sources like an Inconvenient Truth wildly exaggerate the negative effects of global warming. There is no evidence tornadoes or hurricanes or disease or extinction are increasing as the world warms, and man-made warming advocates generally ignore any potential positive effects of warming. As to rising sea levels, the IPCC predicts only a foot and a half of sea level rise even with 4 or more degrees of warming. Sea level rise from a half to one degree of warming would be measured at most in inches. OK, so that was more than 60 seconds. But it is a lot less than 80 pages. There is a lot of complexity behind every one of these statements. If you are intrigued, or at least before you accuse me of missing something critical, see my longer paper on global warming skepticism first, where all these issues and much more (yes, including tree rings and cosmic rays) are discussed in more depth.