[General Battuta]

The more I read of this the more I get the feeling that we're being told things by people who have TheBigHead and who believe that they can't possibly be wrong.

The scientific community has been wrong on many points in the past, and individual scientists do indeed grow overly attached to pet theories (what is sometimes called the 'affective death spiral'.)

Nonetheless, you've hardly shown yourself willing to admit your own misinformation in the past. The best thing to do at the moment is to wait for more information to come to light without leaping to conclusions.

This whole Hadley Centre deal is not really all that relevant to the overall issue of manmade global warming; it's more of a sideshow.

[Janos]

The more I read of this the more I get the feeling that we're being told things by people who have TheBigHead and who believe that they can't possibly be wrong.

Hello Liberator,

This is where you last left the thread, ignoring my questions to your previous statement. This is called ****-and-run: paste controversial stuff and flee. It is not a good tactic. Before you post another similarly vague post, I'd like to know your definitions to your previous post.

So, since you did not answer my question - perhaps you didn't read them? - I will now quote myself from page 3. Because surprisingly, this latest post yours wasn't the first of your posts with similar content in this thread - you accuse specialists and professionals about arrogance when all you can do is to post ridiculous statements like this and then escape.

What are "their" beliefs, then? Why do They (who are they) advocate policy and a vision of future that is unpleasant for everyone? To discuss this, we have to decide
A) who "They" in this statement are
B) what are their motives in here
Define them, please.

If you seriously believe you have as good of a grasp of a highly technical field of science as people who are fully educated on said field, you can go ahead and start to test their hypothesises. It's not like it's a secret, you can start here: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/CODES_MBH.html

Unless it's, of course, some kind of elitist conspiracy.

Answer the questions. You haven't shown anything that would in any way validate anything you've said in this thread. All you have a nebulous accusations and this ridiculous idea that professionals couldn't possible know more then layman about their respective fields of study. With data I presented earlier in the post you decided to ignore I even linked you to some of the material and methods, I mean, if you know this stuff it should be cakewalk for you to crunch some numbers and see if these scientists' ideas are completely wrong.

This line of thinking you represent is anti-intellectual - it is arrogant, it is stupid, and I am not afraid to say so.

[Blue Lion]

It's the DailyKos, so take it for what it's worth but....

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/22/806704/-Trickn

To sum it up, it's a wording issue. The data never changed.

[Inquisitor]

Duh. But that would require that people actually wanted to understand things, rather than more screaming at the dark.

[General Battuta]

Hurm. So, I've been over the emails and the discussion surrounding the topic, and I must say:

Although I was fairly neutral on global warming up until this point, I am now leaning towards the conclusion that global warming is indeed manmade.

I wasn't aware of a lot of this data, and it is quite compelling.

[Turambar]

well when you go and alter the composition of the atmosphere as much as we have, what's to be expected?

Sure, volcanoes and such can put out massive amounts of gasses as well, and have climate-changing results, but we are releasing a ton of locked-up co2 (and other chemicals) -in addition to- the naturally emitted ones.

If we want to live comfortably on this planet for a long period of time, with its ice ages and hot phases, we need to work on controlling the climate deliberately on a large scale.  It is within our power to do this, the technology just isn't there yet.

[Janos]

well when you go and alter the composition of the atmosphere as much as we have, what's to be expected?

Sure, volcanoes and such can put out massive amounts of gasses as well, and have climate-changing results, but we are releasing a ton of locked-up co2 (and other chemicals) -in addition to- the naturally emitted ones.

If we want to live comfortably on this planet for a long period of time, with its ice ages and hot phases, we need to work on controlling the climate deliberately on a large scale.  It is within our power to do this, the technology just isn't there yet.

Not even technology, but one of the emails the skeptics used as "evidence" for climate fraud was about a paper that outright stated that we don't have a good enough model of planetwide energy balances (what goes where, albedo, feedbacks and god knows what) yet AGW is happening, which essentially means geoengineering is, even on purely theoretical basis, out of order.

[Mongoose]

If we want to live comfortably on this planet for a long period of time, with its ice ages and hot phases, we need to work on controlling the climate deliberately on a large scale.  It is within our power to do this, the technology just isn't there yet.

I think there are certain aspects that we already can control to some extent, to be honest.  A good example is the loss of Arctic sea ice.  As temperatures warm, more of the ice is obviously able to melt each summer, but the real killer is that this is a positive feedback loop: as more ice melts, there's a much smaller white surface area to reflect back most of the Sun's heat.  As a result, the ocean warms up more, even more ice melts, and the process keeps accelerating.  I've thought that a decent means of mitigating this problem would be simply deploying white/reflective floating materials on a grand scale across the Arctic Ocean.  Think something like ping-pong balls, only biodegradable.  Get enough of them out there, and you'd eventually be able to help mitigate the cycle and keep ocean temperatures under control.  Of course, the cost would be pretty huge, and you'd need to worry about controlling where the little buggers go and trying to keep them from harming sea life to a great extent, but let's face it: if the cycle continues, there might not be all that much still alive on the Arctic surface to begin with.

[Scotty]

And stuff like that has happened, and most likely still will happen regardless of any efforts on our part.  There was a site I found a year or so ago while researching debate (I'll try to find it again, it's a long shot) that actually came out and said "In a hundred years, people may well be surfing off the north Alaskan coast, and it will be perfectly natural."  This wasn't just some blogger, so please don't just dismiss it out of hand.

However, global warming doesn't really seem to happen in Kansas very much; we had one of the coolest summers on record this year.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, the question is whether it's man-made or not.

I'm having trouble sorting the political chaff from the actual scientific data here. What a frustrating field to explore.

[Scotty]

Well, if that's the question, why would it necessarily be a bad thing?

Can we at least establish WHY it would be bad first?

[Turambar]

Well, if that's the question, why would it necessarily be a bad thing?

Can we at least establish WHY it would be bad first?

polar and glacial melt causing a rise in sea levels.  a huge amount of the world's population lives close enough to the water for that to be a serious disaster, should it occur.

rapid acidification of ocean water causing a pH decrease.  if it throws things off enough, fish won't be able to adapt fast enough and could die in massive amounts.

changes in wind currents, leading to changes in moisture levels and thus fertility for lots of areas.  it's not a matter of there being more or less fertile land, but its distribution would be changed, which could cause some real problems.


it's not that it would be good or bad specifically, it's that the change itself would **** over a ton of people.

[carbine7]

  I can't believe I missed this when it was first posted! Epic Fail. All I can say to those scientists involved, if this is true, is see ya 

[iamzack]

:<

You didn't read a single post, did you. You suck.

Edit: more pouty faces

:< :< :< :<

[carbine7]

Nope, not one. Except the last few. You can get the gist of the thread from the last few posts. Besides, I can read a post in five seconds anyway, even the long ones.

[iamzack]

I would have thought you read the first post and went off that, since the last few posts didnt have anything to do with the thread title. :< :< :< :< :< :<

dont mine me, im hungry. in fact, blame turambar.

[carbine7]

Well, I did read through the emails. But I don't care about the other guys' personal feuds.

[karajorma]

Yeah, the question is whether it's man-made or not.

The question now is whether or not it is man-made. Twenty years ago quite a few of the people arguing against man-made global warming were vehemently arguing that the Earth wasn't getting warmer at all, pointing at their dodgy data and claiming it was proof that the Earth wasn't getting warmer and if anything was actually getting slightly colder.

[mxlm]

Nope, not one. Except the last few. You can get the gist of the thread from the last few posts. Besides, I can read a post in five seconds anyway, even the long ones.

So, wait, you're saying you didn't read the thread because reading the thread wouldn't take any time?

I'm having trouble sorting the political chaff from the actual scientific data here. What a frustrating field to explore.

Have fun

[Blue Lion]

Nope, not one. Except the last few. You can get the gist of the thread from the last few posts. Besides, I can read a post in five seconds anyway, even the long ones.

So, wait, you're saying you didn't read the thread because reading the thread wouldn't take any time?

"I already made up my mind before clicking this thread"