Wow - if only Plimer was a climatatolgist - then his opinion might matter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian Plimer is Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne where he was Professor and Head (1991-2005). He was previously Professor and Head of Geology at The University of Newcastle (1985-1991). His previous book, A Short History of Planet Earth, won the Eureka Prize.

I'm going out for lunch soon. I'll ask the waitress what she thinks so you can quote her too.

Hats on asses are not a good thing when it comes to serious subjects like Global Warming.

Of course, not being a high and mighty "climatologist", maybe he doesn't fudge data and then throw away the originals to make his points.

Wow - if only Al Gore was a climatatolgist - then his opinion might matter.

Wow - if only Henry Waxman was a climatatolgist - then his opinion might matter
since he's the major sponsor of Cap $ Trade.

Wow - if only Obama was a climatatolgist - then his opinion might matter.
"President Barack Obama will commit the United States to substantial cuts in greenhouse gas pollution over the next decade -- despite resistance in Congress over higher costs -- when he travels to a major climate conference in Copenhagen next month."

And even if we get some fraudulent Cap n Trade scheme passed in the US, others will be busily scamming the system. The US would play by the rules, China, India and others would be exempt, and many of the rest would cheat.

From the Copenhagen Post online:
"Denmark is the centre of a comprehensive tax scam involving CO2 quotas, in which the cheats exploit a so-called 'VAT carrousel', reports Ekstra Bladet newspaper.

Police and authorities in several European countries are investigating scams worth billions of kroner, which all originate in the Danish quota register. The CO2 quotas are traded in other EU countries. "
-
from the comments on the story:

"Not surprising news....
Carbon trading is such an artificial unworkable solution anyway
(whatever one's feelings about the efficacy of CO2 reduction in the first place)

... when evasive
action for example involves paying off third world emitters (who
according to a recent Economist article can simply be set up to rake
in cash ie would not be emitting otherwise), or tree planting
exercises of dubious effect, which may in any case be fast growing
non-native trees which changes local ecosystems.
An artificial market will always be an artificial market. "

Stevie is a believer in the Greater Global Warming Church of the Revered Al Gore.

Hey Stevie, where's that "separation of church and state you're always harping on?"

Heh. Stevie Green's got nothing, and he knows it.

I can smell the flop sweat from here.

"a belief in man-made climate change...is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose" of laws covering discrimination in employment.

Of course, a disbelief, if genuinely held, must also be considered in the UK as being a philosophical belief for the purpose of laws covering discrimination in employment. So when someone at work calls you a denier you now have legal recourse if you live in the UK. Sounds like another jobs program for lawyers.

Steve Green,

gee I wonder if climatology is an Earth Science ?

What is Mann's field of expertise ? or the guy who is head of the UN Climate org ?

The UN guy is a railroad engineer ... a railroad engineer for cripes sake ...

Steve Green: "Wow - if only Plimer was a climatatolgist - then his opinion might matter."

The big weakness with most global warming "research" isn't climatology - it's statistics. Most of the people doing the best critiquing of Global Warmology are doing that from a statistics standpoint - and the "experts" in climatology are doing a piss-poor job of countering it, because they know they've been out on a very thin limb for a very long time, and they know it's about to break under the weight of decades of half-assed work.

You might also get around to noticing that quite a few of the leading lights in the field of Global Warming have no degrees (or, for that matter, real training) in climatology - and even less in statistics.

Steve Green,

Wow - if only Plimer was a climatatolgist - then his opinion might matter.

AGW depends on the what's call CO2 forcing or the so called greenhouse effect. The problems is that physicists Gerlich and Tscheuschner show in there peer reviewed and now published paper (pdf) that the greenhouse effect violates basic laws of physics. Thus, there is no longer a scientific basis for a link between climate and CO2.

If only climatatolgist had consulted with physicists before making hats on asses of themselves. Now you see why climatatolgist are so desperate to hid the decline and cover up their complicity in stacking the deck in their favor.

It's real simple, political support for Cap and Trade has collapsed and nothing will be done until the IPCC launches a full and transparent review of their fourth assessment such that all data and metadata is made public for every study, graph, chart or temperature reconstruction used in the assessment. If researchers can't produce the data and metadata then their research has no standing and will be excluded.

Steve, according to your logic people with the following expertise can't be allowed to comment on climate research:

biology
microbiology
zoology
geology
thermal science (Physics)
geography
astrophysics
organic chemistry
botany
inorganic chemistry
mathematics
statistics
meteorology
analytical chemistry
computer scientists

Never mind that research of any consequence and scope is performed by interdisciplinary teams.

These disciplines (and probably more) would be intimately involved in climate research of any scale.

Unfortunately neither railroad engineers nor political "scientists" are needed.

"Steve, according to your logic people with the following expertise can't be allowed to comment on climate research"

Anyone can comment. Some asshat in Australia commented and it got him quoted in a blog. See - anyone can do it.

What I'm saying is that we should listen to the experts -- and that's what Gore and Waxman have been doing.

Btw - the waitress said she thinks global warming is real - so I'm waiting for Rick to publish 400 words on what she thinks... it has just as much weight as this asshat geologist down under.

Seriously - there are lots of opinions, and its the opinions of experts that matter.

OK - going back to sweating my flop now. Have a nice day all...

Seriously - there are lots of opinions, and its the opinions of experts that matter.

But what if the experts are wrong or are lying? Both have been known to occur throughout recorded history.

Steve, what you are advocating is called blind faith.

When the 'experts' are self-anointed, it's wise to confirm what they're telling you.

In this case, the 'experts' threw away original data, didn't keep records of their 'adjustments', rigged their programs to produce desired outputs... which don't seem to actually be matching reality in the first place, but are seen as somehow more 'real' than the actual temperature changes.

And we're supposed to just TRUST they're not bending us all over a barrel?

"But what if the experts are wrong or are lying? Both have been known to occur throughout recorded history.

Steve, what you are advocating is called blind faith. "

We know global warming is real. You may disagree as to the cause - but we know it's real.

So siding with safety makes perfect logical sense - we know it's real - let's reduce man's impact on the environment to mitigate the effects.

It is just plain common-sense.

And one group of data "adjusters" is not enough to throw the body of research out.

And people who don't know that simple fact should be set adrift in the arctic on a raft.

Yes, that's right - the ice is melting - and you/we all know it.

The fact that Stevie doesn't see the direct correlation between geology and climate studies, while funny, is typical of those within the global warming (or is it climate change now that we're cooling?) hysteria crowd. The simple facts are these: there is not a consensus on this subject, and legitimate scientific (NOT political) debate has been aggressively discouraged by those who stand to profit from the new "green" movement. But... the damn is starting to break and too much that doesn't add up is becoming public knowledge (such as the Gerlich paper Stevie conveniently ignored). This needs to be taken OUT of the political arena and given the proper scientific review it deserves.

Steve Green:

We know global warming is real. You may disagree as to the cause - but we know it's real.

As you say Steve you listen to the experts. What about this one?

Kevin Trenberth - Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't"

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't"

Is that an indication the global warming isn't real? Are the right wing neanderthals headed in that direction now?

Of course you aren't You know it's real.

"This needs to be taken OUT of the political arena and given the proper scientific review it deserves."

Code for "let's pretend we're studying the matter further"

The right has lost all credibility on the subject. The right swore up and down that global warming was a hoax for years - then when faced with the evidence that they are wrong they decided it is real but not man-made.

There's enough evidence that global warming is real that you can stop pretending it isn't - and if you want to believe the waitresses and busboys in the world who tell you it's a hoax go ahead.

Steve, you clearly don't understand how modern research is conducted. Each of the disciplines I've listed IS the expertise used. There is no such thing as an "expert" wrt the entire topic of AGW or any other major scientific endeavor. What you describe is a person who knows all the intricate details of all the topic and supporting subtopics. It's not humanly possible.

An effective research team usually has a leader and possibly a spokesman who lead and speak for the group and the project. They only become "experts" when laymen and the media dub them as such.

Of course there's also the concept of scientists and engineers who daily work in the scientific community viewing the work being done by the AGW with raised eyebrows. There are many of us who view the ongoing discussion (or actually lack of it), listen and read the claims of such, compare these to many of the fundamentals of science, and are rightfully skeptical. Especially so when the group of people most likely to gain by AGW tell us the discussion is over and the science is settled. For their, and your benefit "science" is never settled; it just hasn't yet been disproved.

Mr. Green,

I agree that there is global warming. There is also "global cooling." The earth has done both for as long as it has been in existence. Are you old enough to remember that during the 1970's we were on the verge of the next ice age? John Holdren, President Obama's "science czar" was promoting that crisis before he promoted the "global warming" crisis. If we are in the middle of global warming, why did the so-called scientists at CRU need to "hide the decline?"

Sure there is global warming. Just like there is global cooling. And it's caused by the sun and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it.

Mann-made global warming is Mann-made up global warming.

Steve Green is not a climatologist.

So how does he know WHICH climatologists can be trusted?

Steve, please tell us what criteria you use to determine which "climatologists" can be used as trusted sources.

Further, please stipulate the criteria you use to disregard scientists in related or interdisciplinary fields as opposed to "climatology" specifically.

Please note that these are not trick questions.

Hey Steve!!

Climatologists agree.

Human-induced global warming is real, according to a recent U.S. survey based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists. However there remains divisions between climatologists and scientists from other areas of earth sciences as to the extent of human responsibility.

A survey of more than 3,000 scientists found that the vast majority believe humans cause global warming.

Against a backdrop of harsh winter weather across much of North America and Europe, the concept of rising global temperatures might seem incongruous.

However the results of the investigation conducted at the end of 2008 reveal that vast majority of the Earth scientists surveyed agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.

The study released today was conducted by academics from the University of Illinois, who used an online questionnaire of nine questions. The scientists approached were listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute's Directory of Geoscience Departments.

Two questions were key: Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?

About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.

Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement.

97 percent of climatologists who are actively researching the global climate change that you all agree is real agree that that it's at least in part due to man-made causes.

97 percent!!!

The guy quoted in this article is not a climatologist.

"Steve Green is not a climatologist. So how does he know WHICH climatologists can be trusted?"

I'll go with the 97 percent consensus.

source for the quote in my last comment above

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/

Steve Green,

Also from your source:

However, Doran was not surprised by the near-unanimous agreement by climatologists. "They're the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you're likely to believe in global warming and humankind's contribution to it."

Another explanation is that in order to be a working climatologist and get your work published you have to be singing the same tune as the CRU team. We see in the leaked emails how the CRU team tries to silence those who are critical of AGW either directly or by withholding data. Also, if AGW is not real then many of these climatologist will be out of work. These effects combine into making climatologists self-selected believers. Who would go into a field they thought was a scam?

So siding with safety makes perfect logical sense - we know it's real - let's reduce man's impact on the environment to mitigate the effects.

Climate change is real, but the link to human produced CO2 is tenuous at best. Expending vast resources to reduce human produced CO2 is stupid if that effort cannot succeed. The goals Obama has announced of reducing CO2 combined with the expected increase in the U.S. population by 2050 means that on a per capita basis American have to reduce their carbon footprint to that of people living in 1875. Fat chance of that happening. Better to expend those resources preparing for a warmer climate.

And what makes these guys official Climate Scientists?
From Penn State?

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University

Phil Jones?
He has a BA in Environmental Science, and his Masters and Doctorate are in Civil Engineering

Tom Wigley?
Doctorate in mathematical physics

Dr. Mick Kelly?
He has a BS in Physics and Meteorology, but his doctorate is an interdis. But at least he may fit the bill. Or could at least be a TV newscaster if he had people skills.

Oh... because they say they are.

From Ross McKitrick:
"The expert reports upheld all of our criticisms of the Mann Hockey Stick, both of the mathematics and of its reliance on flawed bristlecone pine data. One of the panels, however, argued that while the Mann Hockey Stick itself was flawed, a series of other studies published since 1998 had similar shapes, thus providing support for the view that the late 20th century is unusually warm. The IPCC also made this argument in its 2007 report. But the second expert panel, led by statistician Edward Wegman, pointed out that the other studies are not independent. They are written by the same small circle of authors, only the names are in different orders, and they reuse the same few data climate proxy series over and over." (my emphasis)

Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2056988#ixzz0YZYgs1S3

One should note that the tree proxy series used by Jones of the CRU relied only upon 10-12 trees and if one were to remove the data obtained from ONE of the trees the "hockey stick" for all practical purposes disappears. Another study performed at a similar series of sites in Russia using 2-3 times the number of trees showed no warming trend.

Surface stations surveys have shown that the "best" network of temperature recordings being used to study climate change contains over 2/3 of its stations with a possible upward bias of 2 degrees (I think it was F not C). Up trends in temperature are more likely measurements of creeping Urban Heat Island than climate trends.

As it stands right now I see no way to reliably determine whether the earth is any hotter now than in the past. By the way, I would be what is considered a "lukewarmer" in that I think adding CO2 to the atmosphere can raise the mean lower troposphere temperature, but I have never seen any evidence beyond scientific speculation that CO2 in the air can cause a catastrophic warming. As far as I know, adding an inch of insulation to your attic has never caused your house to catch fire.

The last big global consensus was that Saddam had all those WMDs.

Also from the article linked by Green

"The debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes," said Doran

Whatever Jones and company did or didn't do does not take away from the vast majority (I'd call 97% a vast majority) of informed researchers who feel the man-made effects of climate change are real.

Conservatives have been hung out to dry on this subject for years. Feeble attempts to discredit the entire body of research done over decades by drawing into question and taking out of context stolen emails only make the oil company shills and their willing supporters look more and more stupid.

And when they are obviously stupid and obviously acting against the best interests of the planet their sway drops even further.

Sadly, they are taking their cues from the oil company-sponsored deniers simply because they hate Al Gore so much they can't see straight.

Vic

The science showing that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing a dangerous warming of the world's climate is sound, President Barack Obama's top scientists said on Wednesday, despite controversial e-mails stolen from climate researchers.

E-mails from Britain's University of East Anglia, made public last month after being obtained by hackers, show climate researchers deriding global warming skeptics, who argue that the messages show that the researchers manipulated data to make climate change appear more definitive.

In the messages, researchers also asked other scientists to delete e-mails, apparently to avoid having them become public.

"There will remain after the dust settles in this controversy a very strong scientific consensus on key characteristics of the problem: global climate is changing in highly unusual ways compared to long experienced and expected natural variations," John Holdren, Obama's science advisor, told a congressional hearing.

Rush Limbaugh wants you to repeat the lie that this is all just a vast left-wing conspiracy.

Wake up and smell the melting ice caps, morons.

Vic

32
There was more arctic ice at its minimum this year than last year, and last year's ice was more than the year before.

And Holdren was one of the "scientists" in the email cabal trying to squash a (well done) skeptic paper.

"Wake up and smell the melting ice caps, morons.

Vic"

Stick Your bullshit where the sun dont shine.

East Antarctic ice began to melt faster in 2006-study

East Antarctica's ice started to melt faster from 2006, which could cause sea levels to rise sooner than anticipated, according to a study by scientists at the University of Texas.

In the study published in Nature's Geoscience journal, scientists estimated that East Antarctica has been losing ice mass at an average rate of 5 to 109 gigatonnes per year from April 2002 to January 2009, but the rate speeded up from 2006.

The melt rate after 2006 could be even higher, the scientists said.

Arctic ice melt could raise sea levels faster than predicted-article

By the end of the century water flowing into the oceans from Antarctica, Greenland and land glaciers such as the Himalayas will cause a sea-level rise of more than 1.4 metres. This is well above the most widely accepted estimate of 59 centimetres.

If temperatures continue to increase in the next 200 to 500 years, sea levels could rise by as much as six metres as more of Antarctica melts, the study indicated.

In Britain, the low-lying east coast, from Lincolnshire to the Thames estuary, will be affected and "storm surges," which cause flooding around the coast and large rivers, will have a much greater impact.

Dr. Colin Summerhayes, from the committee, said cities such as London, San Francisco and New York could be affected, although they should be able to build defences. He said developing countries, where millions of people live in low-lying areas, were more likely to suffer.

"Anybody living in coastal cities needs to be slightly worried by projections of one metre or more," he said.

Vic

OK, sure I admit there was fraud committed at the CRU. And I admit that the so called scientific consensus was based at least partly on that fraud and is now falling apart. I will even admit there's no remaining scientific basis to believe in global warming. But so what? You can't prove there's no global warming. We still have the MSM and all of the elected Democrats. Every union is still with us. We still have rent seeking businesses willing to sell their souls for some obscene green profits. So we will crush you neocon filth under our mighty smelly feet!

You are all filth!

Peace.

The First Church of Global Warming has zealots that Bin Laden can only dream about!

Vic, Steve Green and the lot must whack off each night to "An Inconvenient Crock of Shit", by their high priestess, alGore.

Look Vic, Steve Green and the rest of you ignorant Leftists...whether or not there IS anything to the so-called "Global Warming" isn't even the issue right now.

The ISSUE is that the so-called "scientists" who told you about it LIED!!! Doesn't that bother you just a teensy bit???

Vic,

You're seriously delusional... Good God... it's embarrassingly obvious... you're a kool-aid drinking, make that swigging, GW glassy eyed follower of fools...

35.
From Wikipedia (I know, I know, Wikipedia!?)
"According to researchers at the University of Michigan, satellite radar altimeter data indicate that the EAIS interior area is actually gaining mass at a rate of 45 billion tonnes per year." (EAIS is the East Antarctica Ice Sheet)

It's odd that they point to a WARMING trend in Antarctica since 1957, because the if one takes the trend from anywhere in the 1970's it has cooled.

Vic,

Whatever Jones and company did or didn't do does not take away from the vast majority (I'd call 97% a vast majority) of informed researchers who feel the man-made effects of climate change are real

It's not a mystery that climatologists believe in their own research. How many of them know that the fundamental data and the seminal studies underpinning their own research are the result of scientific fraud? For example, in one of the leaked emails a skeptical scientist is asking how the analysis software produces a hockey stick graph when it is given white noise as the input? It doesn't take an advanced degree to know that if there's no pattern in the input data any pattern in the output is the result of the bias built into the analysis software. This simple test destroys the validity of the resulting hockey stick graph and demonstrates why the CRU team doesn't want to make their publicly funded research public.

Conservatives have been hung out to dry on this subject for years. Feeble attempts to discredit the entire body of research done over decades by drawing into question and taking out of context stolen emails only make the oil company shills and their willing supporters look more and more stupid.

And yet in the few cases where that research is made public it's found to be incorrect such that Mann, Hansen, and Briffia have all had to change their methods.

Now that the foundations of AGW are tainted by scientific fraud and the criminal deleting of data subject to FOI requests, the political reality is that no cap and trade legislation nor treaty is going to get through the Senate. The only way to restore credibility is a full and transparent review of all the research that went into the IPCC forth assessment such that all data and metadata are made public.

Liberals are now in the unfavorable position of arguing against transparency in government or forcing the climatologists they blindly believe in to cough up their data and metadata.

Arctic ice melt could raise sea levels faster than predicted-article

You mean Antarctic ice melt. The ice in the Arctic is floating and melting floating ice has no effect on sea levels.

Even if the current cooling trend ends the link between climate and CO2 is undermined by the now peer reviewed and published study I linked to in post #10.

Perhaps VIC and Stevie can explain why their vaunted AGW "computer models" don't correlate with currently observed temperature data. Is it a "bug" or a "feature". We can't even predict the weather with acceptable accuracy 10 days from now, but the AGW people and their "computer model" can predict weather 100 years from now?

Don't worry VIC and Stevie. DENIAL is just the first stage to recovery.

GarandFan: "Don't worry VIC and Stevie. DENIAL is just the first stage to recovery."

uh, I beg to differ with ya, GarandFan

THIS type of DENIAL is the stage right before you wind up eating a cheeseburger off the bathroom floor that is coated with your own vomit, ala David Hasselhoff!

Bon Appétit, Vic & Stevie!

- NASA's Latest Discovery: SUN HEATS THE EARTH (American Thincker, June 05, 2009) - Robert Calahan at NASA's Goddard Space Center could be in big trouble -- for telling the truth. Here is a headline for an article in the Daily Tech: "NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming"... World's Largest Science Group Rejecting Man-Made Climate Fears...
- PENTAGON: GLOBAL WARMING might suddenly trigger a massive GLOBAL COOLING... THE PENTAGON WARNS CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BRING GLOBAL CATASTROPHE... Now the PENTAGON TELLS BUSH (Guardian.co.uk., 22 February 2004): climate change will destroy us... BRITAIN WILL BE 'SIBERIAN' in less than 20 years:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/11/al-gore-sued-by-over-30000-scientists.html

The trouble with blind faith.

A typically scary story by the Global Warming hucksters.

The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

There is a little problem. The original study that this warning is based on predicted the glaciers would recede not by 2035, but by 2350.

The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates--its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km² by the year 2350.

There is a huge difference between 2035 and 2350. The economic cost is a lot different if you are talking about remediating a problem in 341 years instead of 26.

But 341 years isn't very attention grabbing. Saying the glaciers disappear in 26 years grabs people's attention.

Again why should we take anything these people say as accurate? This kind of mistake could cost trillions of dollars.

This little spot of earth that I call home has been, on multiple occasions, covered by ice sheets up to a mile thick. That was real global cooling! Then, each and every time, massive global warming caused all that ice to melt and flow away. This cycle has been repeated probably a dozen times in the last million years or so, but now money-hungry 'climatologists' and power-hungry politicians want to convince us that it's a 'man-made' phenomenon - for the express purpose of extorting yet more of our hard-earned money.

"Is that an indication the global warming isn't real? Are the right wing neanderthals headed in that direction now?

Of course you aren't You know it's real.

"This needs to be taken OUT of the political arena and given the proper scientific review it deserves."

Code for "let's pretend we're studying the matter further"

It doesnt take a genius to tell Me its warmer when the sun is beating on Me and cooler when it is not... But apparently Steve "grapenuts", Green has his head lodged so far up Albert T "ripoffs" poopshoot, He cannot see the forest thru the sleaze!

Hey, if you want to worry about something we can't do anything about, worry about global COOLING. Hard to make a living when much of the land is buried under miles of ice. When the next Ice Age arrives, billions will die.
Forget this Mann-made global warming scam, humans can adapt to the (mythical)warming and it just means longer growing seasons in many areas.

Al Gore caniling his trip to COPENHEGAN becuase he is upset that someone has thwarted his sinister plot