Comments on: Global Warming … Accelerating?

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:30:43 +0000

"the evidence was overwhelming. Those who remain unconvinced are neither intelligent nor genuinely sceptical. They are just cranks."

So you are basically asserting that anyone on this forum who may have doubts is a crank? Why are you writing trying to convince cranks then? What hope would you have of convincing such people? Because sceptical people are dangerous? Because an unpolluted mind might stumble across this website and be corrupted?

Even the IPCC is only 90% certain. What is your definition of "overwhelmingly certain" ? It sounds like 99.9% or 100%? You have no doubts about any of the ideas in the theory whatsoever? You are even more certain than the scientists?

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:08:22 +0000

"Those who remain unconvinced are neither intelligent nor genuinely sceptical. They are just cranks."

Yes Jeff that's an accurate description of yourself.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:11:26 +0000

By making wild accusations about 'propaganda', in fact, you leave no doubt that you are at the lunatic end of an already lunatic fringe.

intelligent sceptical people...These people are prepared to decide the issue fairly and go either way - these people have already decided the issue fairly. All reasonably intelligent people realised a long time ago that the evidence was overwhelming. Those who remain unconvinced are neither intelligent nor genuinely sceptical. They are just cranks.

By: Maurizio Morabito

Maurizio Morabito — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:44:03 +0000

Shameless plug to say that I went through the whole WWF report, and I have posted a point-by-point rebuttal in my blog entry “WWF’s Weak Warming Foundations“.

Still, I got sort of “reprimanded” for being too lenient with them

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:40:40 +0000

Jeff, the point you missed is that if you point your links to propaganda websites, you’ve labelled yourself as one of the lunatic fringe. You’re no different from the ‘sceptics’ who claim it’s all due to cosmic rays (and probably wear tin foil hats to protect themselves from the radiation to boot). You’re just on the other side of the fence. If you quote credible sources, i.e, say, a National Academy of Sciences review, in preference to, say, a RealClimate or a Mann ‘study’, then you’ve got intelligent sceptical people’s attention and they’ll be inclined to listen to what you’ve got to say. These people are prepared to decide the issue fairly and go either way. You don’t need to preach to the alarmist lunatic fringe as they’re absorbing RealClimate propaganda already. And you’re not going to convince hardcore ‘denyers’ no matter what you write. In fact you tend to have the opposite effect.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:57:15 +0000

An Inquirer - if you want to make accusations of sockpuppetry, then back them with evidence. As for RealClimate, your objections are totally non-specific and therefore meaningless. In any case, I quoted data that happened to be displayed on RealClimate, and not anything that was actually said on that website.

perfectly legitimate questions were being danced around and evaded - such as?

communicating the plausibly - ha ha!

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:30:31 +0000

I had no reason to be sceptical of AGW theory as I had no particular interest in the topic. When I did want to find information, I found it strangely evasive and often logically incoherent. I can’t say that I always find the sceptical websites logically coherent either, but when it became obvious to me that perfectly legitimate questions were being danced around and evaded, it was certainly a cause for suspicion. Granting every courtesy I can to AGW proponents, all I can really say is that they have possibly done the worst job in the history of science of successfully communicating the plausibly of their ideas.

By: An Inquirer

An Inquirer — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:37:43 +0000

Warren Meyer,
I know that this is a repetitive comment, but it probably bears mentioning given your repetitive reference to Hansen's Scenario A. According to data I have seen, you are correct that that the actual CO2 inputs have been "worse" than Hansen's assumed inputs for Scenario A. However, other GHGs also play a role as inputs for Scenario A. Therefore, it can be legitimately argued that actual total inputs have been less than Hansen's assumed inputs for Scenario A. One side note that may be worth mentioning: The Kyoto Accord actually implied incentives for increased emission of a Ozone-depleting chemical, the Green House Gas effect of that chemical has increased. But overall, other GHGs have gone down via the Montreal Protocol. References for what I mention can again be dug up if any one is interested.

On the other hand, Jeff/Steve/Scientist/GW, there is much to take issue on your postings, but for the sake of time, I'm going to only comment on your reference to RealClimate. I will grant you that the casual reader could be impressed with RealClimate, but your reference actual was a key to my becoming disillusioned with the AGW movement. Though RealClimate had been my main source of information on the AGW question, I began to realize how bias, how unscientific, how selective, and how issue-avoidance it really was. Wondering why it handle issues so unprofessionally caused me to expand my reading, and now when a person uses RealClimate as their authority, they are poisoning their own well in my view.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:03:09 +0000

cdfman – you can’t spell. Can you add? From the data I quoted, please tell me the cumulative emissions between 1751 and 1910. And then, please tell me where it all went.

By: Will Nitschke

Will Nitschke — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:04:03 +0000

I think given some of the silly links that 'Jeff' has posted, he can be dismissed as a religious zealot and can safely be ignored.

I would however like to raise a serious question and possible criticism of your analysis.

Is it reasonable to expect that sea ice melt is responding immediately to recent temperature or is it not unreasonable to assume that there could be a lag period and the effects are cycling through? I thought global climate modelling needed to consider time lags, feedbacks, etc.? If this is plausible, of what relevance would recent temperatures have? I.e., the north pole had significantly more sea ice in 1998 than it did in 2007. In which case what does you argument prove by comparing relatively recent temperatures to sea ice coverage when the effects are claimed to be over long time periods?