Bleacher Bums Forum

Having the East Anglia University investigate the Global Warming Emails is rather like having Hillary and Bill Clinton investigate the Clinton Foundation bribes and kickbacks.

Robb

Citing an 7 year old story from the conservative noise machine that was debunked is not adding anything to the debate. Nor changing the scientific consensus on Global Warming.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/


Can you provide any actual information?

What does the age of the story have to do with anything?  If these guys were fudging results 7 years ago does that mean it is impossible it could still be going on today?  And please don't pretend factcheck.org is anything but another liberal wing of the media. 

Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.

People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged “consensus” have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

Try this article to start.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html

"Climategate" investigated 8 times and all investigations concluded that generally, there was no wrongdoing.  Some of them seemed to have minor issues with scientists' willingness to share computer files a specific graph within their report.  But overall there was nothing wrong with their conclusions, and data was not inappropriately manipulated.  Here's the Wikipedia list of all the investigations; you can follow the links there for more information.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy#Inquiries_and_reports

Scientists in the 70's were sure a new ice age was coming.  It was settled and of course it was all man's fault.  What happened to that?

That was never scientific consensus.  That was a  minority position that got a lot of attention in a couple magazine articles, but research still supported warming over cooling. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/#113b1444171b

Just in case you didn't click the article here is the opening: "Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem."

I haven't seen that quoted before, but here's my initial take after a few minutes of Googling and skimming some of the journal article:

 - The sample may be problematic.  Geoscientists and engineers may be scientists, but they're not climate scientists there is no reason to consider them to be authorities on climate change.  It's the same thing as surveying chemists about evolution, and then using it as evidence that biologists are wrong.

 - Additionally, the sample was made up of members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGA), whose members often work in the petroleum industry.  There's an obvious conflict of interest here--if you  survey tobacco CEOs they're going to tell you smoking doesn't cause cancer.  And if you survey people deep enough in the petroleum industry that they join a professional association of petroleum workers, they're going to tell you their products aren't warming the earth.

 - The journal is called "Organizational Studies."  That journal is dedicated to studying how organizations work.  It focuses on social science, not climate science.  Without reading the full article, I'm not even sure that it was intended to take a position on climate change--it fits the journal better if it's an attempt to document how APEGA members understand climate change.

 - The Forbes article you linked and quoted was an opinion piece in a publication that focuses primarily on business news.  I don't think that author's interpretation has much relevance to the climate change debate.

Climate change is real.  Man is certainly a major cause.  The left ignoring nuclear power, a cheap non-carbon emitting power source, in favor of solar and wind power is agenda driven and stupid.  If the left was really serious about we would be building nuclear power plants like the France and switching the trucking industry to natural gas.  These would decrease carbon emissions quickly in the US and wouldn't increase costs.  Instead we waste large amounts of money on wind and solar and get no where.  Both parties are part of the problem.

Why are you so sure more carbon is bad?  There is a saturation point where carbon essentially has no effect at all on surface temperatures.  Implementing all of the climate change proposals would at most lower average temperatures by a degree and even that is iffy.  And judging by history man thrives in warmer temperatures and struggles during colder cycles.  No matter the opinions of the "Experts" here, the science is anything but settled.  Considering the fact that temperatures are impossible to accurately determine even a hundred years ago let alone thousands, we don't know how many times the earth has cycled through warmer and cooler periods.  Around 1,000 AD many scientists believe the Earth was at least as warm as it is now if not warmer.  What was the cause then?  Camel farts? 

The point of the climategate article was not to discredit the global warming believers as a whole, it was to point out that bias does exist and dissenters are shut down.  What other area of science ridicules anyone who dare question the consensus?  What are they so afraid of? 

Why are you so sure more carbon is bad?  There is a saturation point where carbon essentially has no effect at all on surface temperatures.

Yes, and when that happens you get Venus.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/my-global-warming-skepticism-for-dummies/  Roy Spencer is a climatologist who doesn't believe in man-made global warming.  Does that make him a tool of the right?  Uneducated?  An idiot?

I don't know what his motivations are, but Googling "Roy Spencer" or "Roy Spencer is wrong" brings up plenty of detailed rebuttals to his claims.  Here's one: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Roy_Spencer_quote.htm

He's also an intelligent design proponent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)#Intelligent_design), so his disbelief of the scientific consensus isn't limited to just one field.