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The warmest year
British meteorologists are predicting that 2007 will likely be “the warmest year on record,” according to the BBC. The two leading causes? El Niño in the Pacific and — you guessed it — more general global warming as a result of “greenhouse gas emissions from human activity”.
A warmer planet? How inconvenient. I’m sure it’s all just part of the great big hoax.
20 Responses to “The warmest year”
Michael, you’re being delusional. God will help us! Global warming is a hoax! I’ll prove it! It’s in the Bible in the Book of Revelation. LMAO sorry but I had to put the typical refuting response in right off the bat.
Sounds like another conspiracy theory from Big Science.
Here goes the Liberal Media again, spinning their “Science” at us…
I thought the blizzards in the midwest over Christmas disproved the myth of global warming.:)
Many British scientists don’t believe in the whole “global warming” theory. Most if not all scientists will agree that the earth has warmed to an extent over the past 30 years or so. So if you consider that “global warming” than yes we are experiencing global warming.
But where the scientists differ is the opinion “if” the recent warming is just a natural weather trend, or if it is from mans use of fossil fuels? The American Academy of Science was quite concerned back in the 70′s because we had thirty some years of a cooling trend. There was quite a panic caused that we were entering an ice age and crop production was down due to the colder temps and the earths food supplies could be doomed. I have also read quite abit of evidence of scientists skewing their data in an effort to make global warming seem worse than it is. I will show you an example in a link at the bottom of the page.
btw: I notice most of the global warming sites are now backing off their previous claims that global warming was causing hurricanes. Why is that? Did one year (06′) with less than avg. hurricanes throw their entire scientific premise off???
Interesting debate between a British scientist and Al Gore, in the Brish press:
http://www.cei.org/pdf/5632.pdf
None of the serious sites claimed that warming causes hurricanes. There is evidence that it strengthens them but it’s not conclusive yet and good sites like realclimate.org say precisely that. Given that warm water is the fuel that maintains hurricanes and global warming warms the oceans it sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? Yet more study is necessary. And so far as I know most British climatologists agree with their American counterparts. As far as your citation is concerned I couldn’t care less what the CEI has to say. Their conclusions are predetermined on everything. They are incapable of doing any real research. The whole thing about a belief in cooling is an overblown myth put forth by so-called skeptics. There was some worry about it but nothing approaching the kind of consensus among climatologists that exists today. For a reasonable take on the issue from one of the same sources that the “skeptics” love to quote see this article from October 2006 in Newsweek.
Jim,
The problem is that scientists who aren’t tainted by political agendas WOULD care less what critics have to say. They would welcome criticism to examine whether or not the evidence fully supports their hypothesis. So why are the current leading climatolagists so quick to ridicule and ignore any who aren’t part of their “consensus”?
Just like those mean Evolutionary scientists? Is that what you’re saying CStanley? Because, you know, they don’t want to give tho imaginative promoters of Intelligent Design their due credit either.
SteveK,
No, those situations aren’t comparable at all. On the one hand you have Creationists who want to challenge scientific theory with a viewpoint based solely on faith. On the other hand you have a minority group of scientists who are attempting to challenge climate hypotheses on a scientific basis but they are being blackballed. The game is that they are scoffed at and told that they don’t have evidence to back their challenges, but when they attempt to get funding for studies that don’t tow the line they are turned down. That’s rather a Catch-22 which has led to the current “consensus” because dissenting voices simply aren’t allowed to have a voice. Ironically, to some degree I see parallels with the Bush administration’s unwillingness to hear challenging evidence from its predetermined viewpoints.
SteveK,
I should add, I’m not really one who disagrees with the threat of global warming (although I think that the imminence of it is being exaggerated by some). I simply think that the scientists have insufficient evidence of the greenhouse effect to reach the degree of consensus that they claim. I feel that adherence to the scientific method would dictate that they allow both pro and con hypotheses to be investigated.
Here we go again. Why is it so important for some to deny the very strong evidence and common logic of this theory? It’s not a complicated theory.
No, they are not being blackballed. This is a absurd lie they perpetuate to cover their incompetence and/or their shilling for the energy industry. Criticism is not adequate. You must postulate an opposing view that has hard evidence to back it up. You cannot simply claim that it might be due to natural factors that everyone is missing. So far the “skeptics” have failed that test miserably. Their science is not ignored, it is discredited by analysis. They are not the same thing.
BTW, one of the favorites cited by “skeptics” is Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama. Dr. Spencer is a creationist though he currently calls it ID. He became the heir to the UofA’s anti-AGW crown when his colleague, Dr. John Christy finally caved into the mounting evidence and admitted that there not only is global warming but that it is foolish to deny that the activities of over 5 billion intelligent beings busy doing all sorts of things to the environment wouldn’t have an effect.
And C Stanley, in case you don’t realize it, your last two posts contradict one another. You can’t say that you don’t disagree with the reality of global warming even as you buy into every paranoid claim of the politically right wing “skeptics”.
BTW, as far as claims of not getting funding are concerned do you really think that the energy companies wouldn’t fund them to the tune of many millions of dollars if they actually had any ideas that might stand up to the light of day and the process of peer review? Please.
So, Jim, I’m not allowed to believe that people should have the ability to investigate theories that I don’t think will prove true? Or that people shouldn’t be allowed to voice opinions that I disagree with? That’s a rather odd interpretation of the right to free speech and the concept of scientific inquiry, IMO.
And in regard to the energy companies funding research: do you actually believe that the journals would publish research with this degree of conflict of interest? And don’t you recall the letter recently sent by several Senators which basically threatened energy companies to stop funding such research?
Not getting blackballed, my a$$.
CS,
Once again your blind political loyalties show themselves. It wasn’t real research that they were being “threatened” about, but the purely propagandistic misrepresentation of other people’s research, which is all that the current organizations that they fund do. Yes, there is a conflict of interest involved but if this issue really means something to them there should be a way for it to be worked out. In fact if they are completely aboveboard about it and produce good, valid science that proves their claims they will win out. They might have to push hard and be very public about it but they will. The system works better than you conspiracy theorists give it credit for.
Jim,
Asking for scientists to avoid political biases isn’t blind political loyalty. You are quick to see bias from the companies that would profit from research showing a lesser effect from human activities, but you refuse to admit that the scientific community might have any bias of its own. The fact that the scientists who form the consensus have to resort to ridiculing anyone who questions their theories, in my mind triggers immediate suspicion of such bias. Sorry, we will have to agree to disagree on this (and again, my belief is that if more research by dissenters was allowed to proceed and was taken seriously, the outcome would probably STILL show a cause and effect between greenhouse gases and warming, but I think we should actually allow that theory to be questioned without saying that there is no rational way to question it unless one relies on junk science.)
CS says “The fact that the scientists who form the consensus have to resort to ridiculing anyone who questions their theories, in my mind triggers immediate suspicion of such bias.”.
Over and over again you make this claim without backing it up. Show me where the scientists involved have ridiculed the dissenters. Calling them on bad science is not ridiculing them. Show me where it’s happened. Ridiculing them, mind you, not pointing out where they are wrong or just not doing science properly. I’m tired of these games you play and if you can’t show me specific instances where the scientists who do climate research are ridiculing the so-called skeptics I’ll call you on it and point out that someone who pretends to be reasonable so often is lying to make her point. One doesn’t count. Bloggers or the media don’t count. Because that is precisely what you are claiming here.
Jim,
All I’m trying to assert is that scientists ought to encourage dissent, and claims of vast consensus appear suspect to me because by definition, consensus implies that dissenters’ opinions are not being respected. Is the politicization of the issue occurring mainly due to media hype and the political nature of the blogosphere? Sure, probably. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to give you the “proof” you ask for that the scientists themselves are politicizing it because I don’t happen to have personal access to any climatologists on either side of the issue, so any opinions reported are necessarily filtered through the media. I guess as possible representations of the type of controversy I’m alleging I’d offer that on both sides, scientists are arguing over whether peer review process is being adhered to (attempting to discredit journals that publish, particularly the dissenting view), and making accusations that they haven’t been given adequate chance to defend their viewpoints. Your view of that situation, I’m sure, is that the dissenters’ research is junk science and that the complaints against some journals’ review boards are accurate, but I’m not so sure about that. It seems odd to me that there would be such uniform correctness in the research that supports a particular theory in a scientific field that is subject to a lot of vaguery (relying on climate data that is based on secondary phenomena for the distant past data, for example). I am just highly skeptical that the leading researchers like Mann have it so close to perfection that all who dissent are continually criticized as using incorrect data or interpreting incorrectly.
CS,
“All I’m trying to assert is that scientists ought to encourage dissent..”
No, you claimed that the dissenters were being ridiculed. That is most definitely not the same thing as what you’re claiming to have asserted.
“…by definition, consensus implies that dissenters’ opinions are not being respected.”
Do you know anything about scientific research and/or the English language? Your statement bears no resemblance to reality. Consensus means that the overwhelming majority of climatologists agree that there is such a thing as AGW. They have weighed the evidence and find it compelling. The dissenter’s claims have not been found to be as compelling. What about that do you not understand? That is how research science of all kinds works. These climatologists recognize that there is uncertainty in the models, variations in the range of warming that will occur. There is not uniform correctness. This is not in itself a weakness in the theory, but healthy debate. But the dissenters claim that humans can pump billions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the air, pave over ground with nice dark asphalt, build buildings with nice dark roofs, cut down forests and have none of it influence climate. They claim that all observed warming is part of a natural cycle. But we know about natural cycles that influence climate and none of them are currently at a point to produce what is being seen. So they claim there’s something else. Tell me what’s wrong with them being told to prove it. That demand is not a lack of respect but just the way things work in the scientific community. You can tap dance around it all you want but that is what it comes down to.
Jim,
You called me on the “ridicule” comment and my response basically was that everything I read is of course filtered through the media, so I’m acknowledging that it’s at that level where I interpret ridicule and not necessarily from the scientists themselves. But when I do think about things I’ve actually read as quotes from scientists, I do see a lot of accusations that journals have published work that isn’t up to standards of review boards, even though the journal editors dispute that. That seems like a lot of attacking of the messenger going on, rather than sticking to the actual debate about the research itself. My perception is that this is an indication that the political debate has influenced the scientific one, and I don’t feel that that is a healthy situation. You still may disagree with me that this is happening, but I hope that explaining it in this way helps you to see more precisely what my concern is. I do see some scientists who focus on the data and making statements to support their conclusions, but more often I see arguments over whether this work or that should have passed peer review, and on whether this author or that had his work questioned without having an adequate chance for rebuttal. It just appears to me that these discussions, while they have their place, have now dominated the debate instead of being ancillary issues.