I, Global Warming Skeptic

Skeptoid ^ | June 15, 2011 | Craig Good

[LiberConservative]

I am a global warming skeptic. Politically, I land somewhere in the libertarian/conservative camp. If liberal still meant what it did sixty years ago I’d probably be one of those. Whatever my label, I am not a progressive/socialist kind of guy. I wrote on my own blog a long time ago that I needed to be convinced that warming was happening at all, then that people were causing it, and then that it was actually a bad thing...

[LiberConservative]

As skeptical as I am I had to say "hmmm" to this. Please discuss.

[GOPJ]

I’m old enough to remember “Global Cooling”, the population bomb, the hole in the ozone, and any number of other tidings of doom.

The Club of Rome, Alar, AIDS will kill us all etc. etc.

Liberals incite their base - the mob - with fear and manipulation and promises of grants and power for the vain and stupid.

It's how liberals rule...

[glasseye]

Had to knock down a few ‘straw-men’ to get through that.

Should have started with “as you know...”

Given the choice I much prefer warming to cooling....like we have a choice.

[BigBobber]

As the author states in the opening, there are three test questions for AGW. Others have said the same. To paraphrase:

1) Is warming real?
2) Is it a bad thing?
3) Are people causing it?

I will add a fourth:

4) Can we do anything about it?

I used to think question 1 had be answered “yes”. Since Climategate, and after doing some follow-up research of my own, I’m pretty sure not even question 1 has been answered. The “experts” agree. They are in the process of redoing the entire historical temperature database. They know it’s been screwed up beyond repair by “scientists” with political agendas and is indefensible in its current state.

Don’t believe the experts when they tell us only “climate scientists” can interpret the data. The temperature record is not science, it’s bookkeeping. Anyone with a high school statistics class can understand what they’ve done is bogus. The Climategate releases proved it beyond a doubt.

Until we get past question 1, why even bother with questions 2-4? They are merely speculation about things that could be happening.

[glasseye]

Upon investigation the site ‘skepticalscience.com’ seems little more than bald face ecofascist malarkey.

They have simply branded themselves ‘skeptical’ while swallowing whole the big lie. Check out some of the articles...hardly skeptical.

They are on the ropes, and desperate.

[Vision]

Oh, and by the way, the United States Navy is counting on it.

Today's Navy is run by liberals. USS Cesar Chavez anyone? The recent history of the Navy promotional piece which excludes white males. It's a sad state.

[WellyP]

If you have the time look at the videos made by Lord Christopher Monckton. He has answers to just about AGW question I can think of and proves all the AGW hype is bunk.

Besides having all the facts and figures he can be very funny, as only a dry Brit can be.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lord+christopher+monckton&aq=0&oq=Lord+Ch

[Lucky Dog]

Here are some suggestions:

Use your search engine of choice to look up the “Vostok ice core.” You will note in the analysis, the proxy indicators used for climate measures in this ice core, that interglacial periods occur, roughly, about every 100,000 years with other changes on other periodic bases of about every 26,000 years, etc.

Next use your search engine to look up Milankovitch cycles. These astronomical phenomena that have roughly corresponding time cycles noted to occur in the Vostok ice core.

Next use your search engine to look up the thermometer. Your will note that accurate instruments (and that is a generous assessment) have only existed for a few hundred years. (Some could argue that accurate instruments have existed for less than a century on wide-spread basis.) Barometers, another staple of weather instruments, have a similar time of existence. Anemometers, rain gauges, etc. all follow a similar path as far length of existence is concerned.

Additionally, you will note that nothing approaching comprehensive, systematically catalogued, “global” climate/weather measures existed prior to the “age of aviation.” Furthermore, you will, also, note that, as a generality, only where there were aviation (or occasionally, nautical) requirements were these measures captured.

Next consult any basic statistics book on sampling methodology. You will find that samples that can accurately, mathematically characterize a phenomenon must be randomly distributed throughout the time frame of the phenomenon of interest. Additionally, you will note the minimum number of samples required must increase considerably as the fidelity required to construct a reasonably predictive model of the phenomenon increases.

Aviation, on a global basis, is not yet a century old. Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation is less than 5 centuries old. Even assuming that comprehensive and accurate global climate measures were captured from that time to this (obviously they weren’t), the question becomes from a sampling methodology perspective, is that enough to be able to characterize a climate cycle of 100,000 years?

Is “real,” long-term, global warming occurring or are random fluctuations within the normal range of variation being observed?

The proof is left to the reader.

[oneamericanvoice]

I remember those various pronouncements of doom. Al Gore was telling us back in the 1970s that we were all going to die in the Global Ice Age. Freezing or burning up, which is it Al? Most of us would remember the cycles of sun activity. Most of us, except for Gore’s acolytes.

The best evidence that the climate changes are cyclical was a documentary on either National Geographic Channel or Discovery Channel about the ancient civilization in the coastal area of what is now Peru, called the Moche. They went through decades of super El Ninos and super La Ninas, in other words, decades of flooding and decades of drought. The scientists in the Andes did ice core samples on camera and explained that when the Andes experienced long periods of either snow or drought, that it was the opposite on where the Moche lived. Archaeologists found Moche burials in layers of mud which backs up the Andean research.

There have been other historic changes. Parts of Arizona once were verdant as proved by an area best known as the Petrified Desert. In Los Angeles, there are beds of clams in some areas on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills. The list goes on.

There was a little tid bit that came out recently that the sun is going into one of it’s cooling cycles. Watch what Gore does next. In the meantime, does anyone have their down jacket from way back when it was Global Cooling.

[Wuli]

We also must question a lot of the data going into the “book-keeping” job of accounting for the actual temperature record, particularly the modern ground temperature record; where the following problems have already been recognized:

(a)where were/are temperature recording instruments cited

(b) and in conjunction with (a), the growing urbanization and the urban-heat-island affects at some extremes of urbanization,

as well as

(c)the subjective and selective “scientific” substitution of “data” for missed readings from the official temperature reading cites;

to cite just a few problems with the modern “data”, and they are note mere book-keeping errors.

[chrisser]

Excellent summary.

A couple things I would add...

Look up the measurement uncertainty for thermometers in common use up until recently.

Look up the measurement uncertainty for “modern” electronic thermometers when they are not routinely calibrated (which they almost never are).

Look up the variability in environmental measurement due to such things as proximity to buildings, roads, shadows, sunlight, water sources, etc.

Now take those uncertainty ranges and compare them to the predicted temperature changes. You find that the uncertainties of any of the above dwarf the predictions - meaning the predictions are essentially bunk.

Even if we had 500 years of ultra careful measurements by trained professionals, made under the most exacting circumstances and controlled conditions to mitigate local variability and using the best thermometers of the day (and we don’t have anything close to that), the error inherent in mercury thermometers as were used alone is enough completely decimate AGW theory.

And that’s not even considering that everything previous to a couple of centuries ago is a guess, with a far wider uncertainty range.

[Reily]

In the 1970s Al Gore was NOT saying anything about a coming Ice Age. That was primarily Stanford's Steve Schneider (Who died recently!) Al Gore in the 1970s (House service 1976–1984!) was giving a reasonable impression of a conservative southern democrat. Dumb as a post conservative southern democrat but a a conservative southern democrat none the less! When he got bitten by the presidential bug he found the “conservative southern democrat schtick” we no longer necessary and his stupidity got even more creative, e.g. I invented the Internet.

And never forget he was the first one to bring up Willie Horton not Bush I. Also his ads showed Horton's ugly mug (which revealed he was black!), Bush's aids just showed lines of faceless, raceless, sexless people going through a revolving door.

[esoxmagnum]

You are absolutely correct. Al Gore was the typical televangalist type conservative democrat. His father was a known tobacco man, and Al and tipper went even so far as to try and ban rock music (remember that?).

If you tell liberals stuff like that, they will think you are nuts.

He delivered Clinton the Evangelical / Christian vote, which is why he was put on the ticket. The Tammy Faye Baker/Jimmy Swaggart crowd loved Al Gore, wherein they weren’t too keen on Slick Willy, but he still delivered. Tipper was known as a being quite the fund-raiser in the south, and I remember once Gore was announced as part of Clintons ticket, she was able to instantly tap into that old Dixiecrat crowd and push the campaign contributions to (a then) all time high.

I also find it amusing, that when talking with libs, they associate the Tammy Faye/Swaggert crowd to Republicans. Nothing could be further from the truth in most cases. Incidentally, that group used to be called the “Dixiecrat Southern Vote” by strategists, and they have all sorts of names for different identity groups. A friend of mine, who follows such things from an amateur interest stand point, told me a few years ago, they now call that same group the “Home Shopping Network” demographic, because it was less offensive to other identity groups who were identified with Obama. (That last bit was a “Cliffy” that I found interesting).

[StACase]

Your biggest error was to refer to "Global Warming" as a problem. It is not a problem. Warmer weather, less ice and snow, more rain, longer growing seasons, plus the benefits of additional CO2 in the atmosphere all fall on the plus side of the ledger.

Sea level is not rising as fast as claimed, the polar bears are not disappearing, glaciers are not a source of water, rain and snow are, and the acidification of the oceans is just plain bunk.