JohnB

Nope. He missed that the Apollo missions were hoaxes. He's got everything else though.

I was just eyeballing the Vostok core graph. http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/climate/page/3057.aspx Sorry, I should have made that clear. There would of course be high latitude amplification involved so I would expect the lower lats to warm by only 1/3 to 1/2 that amount. Even so, I doubt that anybody is going to push the idea that if we stabilised CO2 at current levels we could still expect another 2-4 degrees of warming anyway. Your comments on speed and decoupling are also interesting and must be considered. What I do find interesting is that this cycle is different from the previous ones. CO2 rose as expected but for some reason the temps stopped short of previous maximums and just sort of levelled off. I've come across some papers that imply that the Milancovitch cycles are "incomplete" in their forcing attribution. There appears to be some reasonably large problems with the 100K period. The forcings don't match the change apparently. It's something I'm reading up on as I find the papers.

Or better yet, just do a search and see that we've shown such rubbish to be wrong in the past.

I'd have to agree with you there, with the caveat that certainly for the last 8 or 9 years any temp change has to be described as "statistically insignificant". It's not going anywhere much, trendwise. Actually, the natural emissions are far greater than the human ones. The difference is that for the past 10,000 years or so the natural emissions have been pretty much balanced by natural sequestration. A Few Things Ill Considered says; Skeptical Science says; So natural emissions are circa 770 Gt/year compared to human 26.4 Gt/year. Human emissions are far less than the natural ones. Hence for somebody to say that human emissions are dwarfed by the natural ones is factually true, it is not disinformation. However, it is only part of the story. This is an area I have problems with. Firstly, it is undeniable;) that ice cores show that the temps do indeed rise before the CO2 does. It also continues to rise after the temps start going down. These are the observed facts. The logical conclusion from these facts is that CO2 concentrations less than 280 ppm cannot start or maintain warming cycles. Would you agree? I believe I've said this before, but to put things in words rather than links. As I understand the idea an interglacial has three parts. Firstly the warming is started by Milancovich forcings leading to a rise in CO2. Secondly, at some point in the temp rise CO2 becomes the primary forcing agent driving temps higher. The third stage is when some (currently unknown) negative forcing opposes and overwhelms the CO2 causing the temps to drop. Of course as the temps drop the CO2 is reabsorbed into the oceans. Would that be about right? This sequence does fit the facts and is a reasonable hypothesis. Where I have problems with it is that in previous interglacials the CO2 concentration rose from 180 to circa 280 ppm while temps changed by nearly 100 C for the warming period. Consequently, since we have had a 100 ppm increase in CO2 in the last 150 years and if CO2 was a major forcing in previous interglacials, shouldn't we have had far more warming than has occurred? Alternatively, what if the CO2 rise in previous interglacials never became the major forcing? In that scenario we still have three stages. Firstly the initial forcing starts the warming and releases the CO2 explaining the observed lag. Secondly the initial forcing continues with CO2 providing some amplification. Lastly the initial forcing collapses(?) or reverses(?) and the temps drop. By having a different forcing causing the majority of the temp rise we remove the problem of temps dropping while CO2 rises. I suggest that this scenario is also consistent with the observed facts and in addition removes the problem of the recent 100 ppm increase not causing the same magnitude of warming as previous such rises. Thoughts?

And if they were Atheists? That's what I'm getting at, we know so little about the line makers that any meaning we ascribe ATM is nothing more than guessing.

Pangloss, I think the difference between health insurers and Boeing or GM is product. Boeing and GM produce a tangible product that if it is safe, then people buy it and the company makes a profit. Insurance is an intangible product and valid comparisons cannot be made between the two. (Ask any salesman you want, they'll tell you the two are vastly different.) The simple economic fact is that the best business outcome for an insurer is to maximise premiums (income) while minimising payouts (expenditure). Carried to it's logical conclusion, the perfect outcome for the insurer is to collect premiums and never payout a cent. This is obviously impossible to achieve, so minimising payouts is the next best thing. Just a thought. One way to improve things might be to have a government backed insurer. This insurer would be required to make a profit in a reasonable manner and amount, something comparable to what industry in general makes. This would force the private insurers to compete or lose customers. Note that they would still be making profits comarable to general industries, but much of the obcenity would be taken out.

That's the point though. From their POV they were quite sane and reasonable. From the effort expended, I would say that they had what they thought of as very good reasons. Just because we can't work out why they did it doesn't make their reason invalid.

Tom, aside from connections which are similar, there are other problems. The US uses the NTSC system where the UK uses PAL. NTSC format DVDs will not play on a PAL player. Also, America is region 1 where the UK is region 2. If you are intending to buy a DVD player I would suggest finding one that has NTSC/PAL playback.

He needs all the help he can get. I had a look at his website forum. 0 Threads. 0 Posts. 1 member.:D

I think this is part of the problem. What "facts" are deniers denying? That the world has warmed? Nope. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Nope. That the temps in the late 20th C were "unprecedented"? Lack of evidence to support that claim. It is up to those making the claim to openly provide proof, otherwise it can't be denial to disagree. That the temp rise is at an "unprecedented" rate? Again inconclusive. Reconstructions done without tree rings seem to show that some previous natural rises were of a similar magnitude. That all internal and external forcings have been sufficiently accounted for and that CO2 is therefore the major forcing of the climate system? There you might be on firmer ground, however it has yet to be demonstrated that the forcings have been sufficiently accounted for. I would point out that a paper published a couple of years ago attempting to explain the plateau of recent years tried to establish that aerosols were 3 times as great a negative forcing than previously thought. Of course, if this were the case, then the forcings used in climate models would be wrong and they could no longer be viewed as reliable because they would be unable to correctly predict the past in hindcasting. So what exactly are the deniers supposed to be denying?

I think you've got him wrong. His point, as I got it from the column is that pure market forces are incompatable with health care. This is manifestly true. The bottom line for a company is to make a profit and give a return to it's shareholders. The best way to do this is to maximise income and minimise expenditure. Actually paying out classifies as "expenditure". Likewise, insuring "bad risks" would be viewed as bad business practice. This is basic economics. A purely for profit health insurer does not have the health or well being of it's customers as a primary concern. Making money is.

Mate, that's unreal. To quote myself from the UHC thread.

agentchange, are you going for the "Lazarus Thread Award"? Damn thing's 3 years old. Anyhoo, you probably won't find a "reasonable" explanation for the Nazca lines. The problem is that the society that made them has gone and left basically nothing behind. (Except the lines.) Because of this lack of information, we don't know how they thought. In a similar vein, we know the early Mayans bound their heads with boards to give that distinctive sloping forehead. We know they did it, but due to lack of other information, we have no idea why. Because of this, it's almost as valid to say that the Nazca lines were offerings to the Gods as to say that the local king had them done as an "art" project for unemployed artists. Without some supplementary information, we are trying to use 21st century thinking to understand the reasons for doing something 1,000 + years ago. Very difficult and prone to problems.

For a GP? You're kidding aren't you? Appointments are usually for the next day here, or if you think it's serious, just walk in. (I have a local private practice clinic.) And that's for the run of the mill without private health insurance service.

Sorry. I reread my post and realised I wasn't clear. "Bulk Billing" only applies for general GP consults, it doesn't apply for anything past that. Further treatments or major things are handled differently.

Yes I would. Would you agree that it occurs on both sides of the argument? But, but, the Glaciers are melting and our children will drown! And disease is going to spread! And, and, what about the Polar Bears???? And what about the hordes of refugees displaced by rising water??? And there will be a Katrina every week!!! And wars over water!!! swansont, these didn't come from my side. Has it occurred to you that there might be a reason that some AGW proponents are called "alarmist"? I'll add that "alarmist" is probably the most insulting term used by the "anti" side, would you like a more complete list of epithets used by the AGW side, or will reading this thread suffice? It's nice to know that we are viewed as so mentally deficient as to be incapable of evidence-based thinking. (bascule, I know the comment wasn't aimed at me and I too no offense. I also share your frustration with people like that idiot in the youtube vid. I'm just trying to illustrate a point.) Then I was wrong as to the exclusivity of the use of the term. I just googled "denier" and except for a rather interesting article on ladies hosiery:D I only found references to GW or holocaust deniers. bascule. Firstly, how did you do that link on the graph? That's a handy thing to see. This is a perfect example of what I consider to be misleading graphs. It's often put forward as "independent" proof of the correctness of the original Mann article. As I said in a previous post, it's only "independent" if you rewrite the dictionary. Anyhoo, Mann and Jones agrees with Jones and Mann? Who agree with Mann, Briffa and Hughes, who agree with Jones, Briffa and Barnett? Who agree with Briffa, Osbourne and Sweingruber? This was in part what Wegman spoke of in his report. Another point is that as you said, many shared data with the original Mann study. Specifically the Bristlecone Pines and Briffas Polar Ural series. It was recommended that BCP not be used because they aren't valid temp proxies due to sensitivity to CO2 fertilization, (Amoung other things) so why keep using them? Further, since the original MBH98 has been repudiated in peer reviewed literature and it's statistical methodology found incorrect by two separate panels convened to look at the issue would you describe the RC support for the paper as flying in the face of the presented evidence? Who is "denying" in this case? Except that if you look at Jones and Mann 2004 on page 16 we see their 2,000 year reconstruction where both the MWP and LIA disappear. On the general topic of reconstructions I point you to Burger et al 2005 in GRL. I also quote from the Wegman Report. Would it not be reasonable that given the highly statistical nature of paleoclimate reconstructions that persons with statistical training actually be involved? Would it also not be reasonable that "new" or "novel" statistical relationships be published and peer reviewed in statistical literature rather than climate? Is a climatologist qualified to review "new" statistical relationships? Given it's prominence in the TAR and the fact of it's continued use to promote the idea of unusual temp change during the 20th C, of course there's controversy. The more temps changed in previous centuries, there less reason to say that current changes are "unprecedented". Nor do I find the result of (for example) Esper, Cook and Schweingruber (light green) with it's variations of .40 in 50 years to be "similar" to Manns maybe .2 degrees over hundreds of years. Don't you perhaps find it odd though to go to one that has a history of anti-science scare campaigns? Environmental Media Services. Addendum: Concerning graphs. I really wish that there was some sort of "standard" for scale. By expanding either the X or Y scale virtually anything can be shown to be either significant or normal depending on intention.

Since H. Sapiens have been around for 100,000 years +, why didn't we develop writing sooner? Things happen when they happen. (Speculatively speaking. )

Generally I agree with the points re evolutionary benefit. There is a caveat however. On what basis do we assume that the "mutation" might not be recent? If it occurred in the western nations during the last 2,000 odd years it is quite possible that those who could not hide it would have come to a very nasty end.

An interesting idea, however I can see a very big possible flaw. From what I read on the link it's a move toward a system similar to ours. However generally in ours we have around a 20% "copay". (I hope the word means what I think it means.) I pay the Dr $60 and get $40 odd back from Medicare. HR 676 appears to be very like our "bulk billing" where the Dr bills the gov insurer directly. The downside of this type of system is that if there is no cost to the patient, people go to the Drs for every tiny little thing. Once you hit cold and flu season, the Drs simply can't keep up with all the mothers taking little Johnny in because he has the sniffles. Did you follow the Universal Healthcare thread?

GutZ, no problem, I got what you meant. bascule, that's what I meant about the site. While writing my post yesterday I was "detoured" for about 3 hours reading articles there. I do like that the authors political leanings are openly stated. Then take up the challenge and find another debate where it's thrown around. No, you're just joining the chorus, rather disappointing really. Believe me, as a reader of history, I've seen it before, many times. I will add that the concept of "denial" in general is, I believe, often used in a non scientific manner. It's an out used to dismiss contrary ideas. By classifying the person as "in denial" you automatically suggest the person is mentally deficient and their thoughts therefore valueless. I suppose it's easier than actually looking at things. The use of the term also precludes the possibility that the person using the term is wrong. It "denies" falsifiability. The person using the term is right because; a) The second person agrees with them. or b) The second person disagrees, but is in "denial". We saw this in Oz with the now discredited "Repressed Memory Syndrome". DR: "You're suffering from RMS" Patient: "No, I'm not." Dr: "Ah. You're suffering from RMS and Denial." Or on point. Pro AGW: "I'm right." Skeptic: "I'm not so sure about that." Pro AGW: "I'm right and you're in denial." Not falsifiable = not science in my book. Circular logic like this is the food of religion, not science.

:embarass: Aw, shucks. Thanks guys.:embarass: bascule, that's an interesting site you linked to. Did you happen to notice the link to the other article comparing consensus on Keynesian economics to AGW consensus? An interesting comparison, I don't know if it's valid but it is interesting. I do view myself as a skeptic because I'm willing to be proven wrong. (But it's an uphill fight, more on that later.) I find the term "denier" to be highly objectionable and insulting. It was introduced into the debate in an attempt to link AGW "denial" with holocaust "denial". As such it is offensive and a poor effort to "poison the well". There are those who still cling to the old "Steady State" theory for the Universe. Are they called "deniers"? Nope. "Denier" in current debates is used in two areas, the Holocaust and AGW. An attempt to connect the two to score some sort of debating point is, in my view, disgusting and morally repugnant. I also note that holocaust allusions are not limited just to the use of the word "denier". As I said, I'm willing to be proved wrong, so if anybody can find any other topic of public or scientific debate where the term "denier" is thrown around as much I'll recant. I've looked, you won't. I have no degree but am an avid reader. My main area of interest is history from 6,000 BP - 2,000 BP. However I have still read a lot about the last 2,000 years or so. For preference I enjoy reading the original documents (tranlations) as well as books and papers. History is not an absolute like physics, but some very meaningful things can be drawn from it. Quite often the reasons for the decline of towns and cities as well as the reasons for settling areas can be found. Towns may decline because the rivers they used for trade started to ice up during winter, preventing trade boats. Trade routes through mountains can be re-established because passes were no longer impassable during winter. These things can indicate warm/cool/warm changes. This is where my skepticism started. I didn't really pay too much attention to the AGW debate until I really looked at the "Hockey Stick". Flat out, it was wrong. For it to be correct, then there was no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age. Climatologists might accept it, but it was a direct contravention of all known historical records. Because it was in direct contravention of established records it had to be viewed very skeptically. So rather than some form of intellectual dishonesty, it's the fact that the claims contradicted everything I had ever read. And it was wrong, wasn't it? Both Wegman and North found it to be so. They also found the choice of Bristle Cone Pines as proxies to be untenable due to CO2 fertilization and precipitation effects. Yet they keep being used. Why? For the simple reason that without them the hockey stick and all it's variants disappear. And it is vital to one side of the debate. Without it or it's children climate becomes a dynamic process rather than a steady one. With a MWP, the statement "The 20th C is the warmest in 400 years", while true becomes meaningless. Of course it's the warmest, we went into, had, and exited from, a bloody mini Ice Age. What a stupid statement. It's as sensible as waiting for Summer and saying "This month is the warmest in 9 months". Of course it is, the others were Autumn, Winter and Spring, by definition cooler in general than Summer. On a related point. I admit to discounting the argument that skeptics are in the pay of "Big Oil" or whoever. I've been in and around various ecological debates for more than 30 years and the simple fact is that this is the first response by any "green" group. Their opposition is always in the pay of big oil, big mining, big pharma or someone. What makes it particularly dishonest in this debate is that the first port of call for the AGW supporters is a website owned and operated by an advertising company. I can only presume that advertising companies in the US differ from those in other nations, spending time and money on philanthropic pursuits for the betterment of mankind rather than simply trying to make money for their clients. (And it's not like General Electric don't stand to make billions as the major supplier of wind turbines.) It leads to an interesting question. If Mann et al wanted to set up a website, why go to a major advertising company? Is there no-one with the required ability at NASA or Penn State University? Or did Fenner Advertising go to him? So swansont, where is the "dishonesty" really? Is it at Science Daily? "Sea Ice At Lowest Level In 800 Years Near Greenland" Everything in that article is strictly and factually true. But, and it's a big but, do the cores go back past 1200 AD? As a matter of fact the Lomonosovfonna cores do. So how "honest" is the statement "Sea Ice At Lowest Level In 800 Years Near Greenland"? It's true, but is it honest? How honest is it for the same people to use the same wrong data and call their reconstructions "independent"? Sorry, but I call rewriting the dictionary to suit yourself "dishonest". Would you care to read Bishop Hills comment on the process of WAhl and Ammanns refutation of Mc Intyre and Mc Kittrick? Would you describe the evolutions of those papers as "honest"? If the above is not "honest", why would I trust what realclimate has to say? Right. So we get called names and equated with holocaust deniers. There have been calls for trials for "Crimes Against Humanity", even as recently as last month the question was asked 'At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers' -- 'Shouldn't we start punishing them now?' Many on the pro side stand beside "the facts" in the same way (and if they got the chance, by using the same methods) as the Inquisition stood beside their "facts". /rant:D On a slightly different theme, I have wondered if there isn't perhaps a psychological aspect to the GW debate. From my readings over the years concerning possible cataclsymic events at the end of the last Ice Age, I found, and it was never denied in the literature, that from early times climatology was divided into two camps, "Gradualists" and "Cataclymacists".(sp?) The gradualists basically held the influential positions and believed that Earth was huge and the climate could only shift slowly. (.2 degrees per century was considered extreme) Arguments were quite vocal from some accounts. Anyway, by the 1970s it was apparent that climate was changing faster then the gradualists believed was possible and the science (if I read things correctly) was heading for a major shift, something similar to what happened with Continental Drift or Big Bang theory. Either the gradualists were wrong and climate could change rapidly (remember that this is before too many ice core studies had been done) or there was something else going on. AGW would have been a Godsend to the gradualists. They could keep their previous notions and had a reason for the sudden warming. I do wonder if AGW would have been a topic if the ice cores showing rapid climate shift had been available earlier and the paradigm shift had occurred in the 1970s.

Kyrisch and Sisyphus. I take your points and agree with them. I was pointing out the difference between someone who is "widely believed to have abilities" and someone who is "proven to have abilities". No criminal is going to be afraid of any psychic, no matter how popular because they are well aware that it wouldn't get past the judge. Someone who is proven to have abilities would be a threat though. Maybe such people exist, maybe they don't. If they do, then perhaps they would only come into the open if there was some way they could be protected from exploitation and assassination. The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father.

I was thinking that myself. It does seem odd that NASA wouldn't have their own sats for the GISS. I suspect that GISS get a complete data file from NOAA that contains the sat/sea interpolation as well as the GHCN data. Works been hectic so I haven't had a chance to check out the actual process yet. WRT "remote sensing" sats, maybe the NASA ones you knew had a different sensor? Radar altimetre as opposed to temps? Just a thought.

*Blink* Well isn't that interesting. One page says they do and one page says they don't. Fascinating.

Actually, the YD event is very interesting in it's own right. Each of the competing theories fit some but not all of the observed facts. I'm sure we'll puzzle out the cause one day, but what that cause will be, I think your guess is as good as mine.