McIntyre has been debunked since that article you link to. Here is an article from realclimate.org that addresses the McIntyre & McKitrick claims. Here is an earlier article from the same site called Myth vs. Fact Regarding the “Hockey Stick”. Here’s an interesting take on McKitrick’s work. Remember, you’re relying on research from an economist and a mining executive that has been shown to have major errors in it, including failing to convert from degrees to radians in calculations. When this was pointed out to them they re-ran the calculations and claimed that the difference was minor. Given the difference in value between the two how that is possible is questionable.

McIntyre has been debunked since that article you link to. Here is an article from realclimate.org that addresses the McIntyre & McKitrick claims. Here is an earlier article from the same site called Myth vs. Fact Regarding the “Hockey Stick”. Here’s an interesting take on McKitrick’s work. Remember, you’re relying on research from an economist and a mining executive that has been shown to have major errors in it, including failing to convert from degrees to radians in calculations. When this was pointed out to them they re-ran the calculations and claimed that the difference was minor. Given the difference in value between the two how that is possible is questionable.

As far as the claims concerning the Medieval Warm Period, read the Wikipedia article and then follow the links. There are more than enough articles that disprove the claims about the Medieval Warm Period. It really doesn’t take that much research.

In any event, McIntyre’s website is under a DDOS attack for having the temerity to point errors in a key piece of research – tactics that are par-for-the-course for what should be a science on the merits.

Par for the course unfortunately. These are the same folks who tried to destroy Bjorn Lomborg’s career for having the gall to think the Kyoto approach unlikely to work….and he is an AGW believer!

Last time anyone checked he was right about Kyoto.

The scientific criteria for “proof” is rather high. Even if an “overwhelming majority” of climatologists believe it is true, that is not the same thing as proving it is true. Just google yourself “steady state theory” for only one example.

The simple fact is that because of limited data sets, most of the “proof” for climate change are the result of advanced mathematical modeling. McIntyre found an error in a model among some other errors that pretty severely undercuts perhaps the most important piece of GW evidence. The article linked to in this post really misses the point. While it’s true that McIntyre’s conclusions do not eliminate the upward trend in temperatures over the last 100 years, what they do show is that temperatures were EVEN HIGHER from about 1000 – 1400 AD which is when a cooling period started commonly known as the “little ice age.”

In any event, McIntyre’s website is under a DDOS attack for having the temerity to point errors in a key piece of research – tactics that are par-for-the-course for what should be a science on the merits.

IM believes in the big conspiracy and claims that he really believes in science when the overwhelming majority of working scientists disagree with him.

If you think keeping data from other scientists so that they are unable to verify your findings is how the majority of other scientists in every other scientific field work you are nuts.

Publishing full accounts of your methodology is NOT optional. To suggest otherwise is not worth arguing.

As for out and out fraud it happens, as it seems it has in the IPCC endores work of Wei-Chyung Wang, who sought to “refute” urban heat island effects through outright fabrication, and tried to hide the fact by using data no one could check. (It took a freedom of information act request to even get the list of weather stations that supposedly provided the data.) All of this is BS, well known BS, and not addressed by any of Jim S’s ad hominems.

Jason,

Your paragraph read

Those skeptical about whether global warming is man-made can usually accept the idea that EVEN IF it is partially or even primarily natural, that it is worthwhile to try to find ways to cut back on CO2 emissions anyway. I don’t think there is any serious group that advocates unlimited CO2 emissions as a good thing.

From the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, you can find out that Carbon Dioxide is Good for the Environment. No qualifiers there. From the CEI we get television ads explaining that they call carbon dioxide life. Then there are the folks at CO2 Science and there was The Greening Earth Society. Then there’s the good folks at FreeRepublic. No serious group claims CO2 is a good thing? At least the CEI has more than a little influence in Republican circles. FreeRepublic is pretty darn popular in the conservative blogosphere.

You state

In scientific research it is incumbent upon the theorist to prove the theory, not the other way around. IOW, the onus is on the proponents that human-caused CO2 is the primary driver of GW, and not the skeptics.

The way this goes is like this. Things are getting warmer at an anomalous rate when natural causes are examined. The energy output from the sun hasn’t changed enough to explain it. We are not at a point in our orbital relationship with the sun to explain it. The Earth’s current axial tilt cannot explain it. Carbon dioxide output from volcanic activity cannot explain it. But man-made changes seem to fit the bill. Increased CO2 levels. Increased methane levels. Deforestation. Asphalt and other construction materials covering miles and miles of terrain. Add them all up and how can someone not think that the human contribution is at a minimum significant if not dominant?

Do you really think that climatologists are idiots? Do you think they don’t see the same things that laymen like you see and then proceed to account for it? You say that those with a theory must prove it, not the critics. Well, they have proven it to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community. Does it even occur to you that the contrarians aren’t being rejected because of some sense of politics? That it’s because the claims they make don’t stand up to scientific peer review? Can you show where this is not the case?

And to prevent (the usual) misrepresentations, I should point out that I am not saying that ALL skeptics are automatically right or even credible, I’m merely saying that SOME of them are and that group is not deserving of the treatment they are traditionally given by, to be blunt, people such as YOU, Jim.

If, however, your intent is serious and issue-oriented, then please clarify.

Would you care to do a little bit of research and rethink the accuracy of that second paragraph in comment 5? Because it is absolutely incorrect.

Those skeptical about whether global warming is man-made can usually accept the idea that EVEN IF it is partially or even primarily natural, that it is worthwhile to try to find ways to cut back on CO2 emissions anyway. I don’t think there is any serious group that advocates unlimited CO2 emissions as a good thing.

So maybe if the global warming activists would stop demanding absolute, lock-step purism on acceptance with their claims, they would be able to find some common ground to talk about ways to reduce it while SIMULTANEOUSLY research could continue into identifying specific causes and effects.

Of course, such an approach wouldn’t give them the sweeping increase of power to completely transform society that some of them are seeking, but it would probably be more successful than continuing to butt their heads up against a political brick wall by demanding too much too quickly. It’s the same thing that more moderate animal rights activists found when they stopped demanding McDonald’s be shut down (which was never going to happen) and decided to work with McDonald’s to identify more incremental changes in how McDonald’s processes its food.

The earth has been warming long before humans put out a significant amount of CO2, although there are spikes up and down – spikes that can last mere years or many decades. Overall, however, it appears from the evidence this layman has seen is that despite the frequent spikes the overall trend in global temperatures over several thousand years is upward. Personally I do believe that human activity contributes to GW and may even be a primary factor, but I will still challenge the science and conventional wisdom.

In scientific research it is incumbent upon the theorist to prove the theory, not the other way around. IOW, the onus is on the proponents that human-caused CO2 is the primary driver of GW, and not the skeptics. Good science results from challenging assumptions and questioning the research, theories, data and arguments of those putting forth theories. However, in todays’ political climate, challenging the popular view of GW is met with political hostility, particularly if one questions the doomsday scenarios running around now and spurious claims like GW “caused” discrete events like Katrina.

IM believes in the big conspiracy and claims that he really believes in science when the overwhelming majority of working scientists disagree with him. Entropy brings in the “unknown natural causes” argument, quoting Dave Schuler. I went and read Dave’s post and the couple of comments that have been made about it so far. Here’s what I posted there in response and it applies here as well.

Dave,

If you’re going to post statements like this

The questions are whether human activity is overwhelmed by other causes in producing climate change, whether it’s cost effective to oppose climate change, and whether the measures on the table will actually produce the results their proponents claim.

shouldn’t you at least posit which natural causes you think the experts are missing? The reasons for climate variations in the past are well known (axial tilt, orbital variation, solar output, volcanic activity, etc.) and none of them are at a point now where they could be contributing more than mankind’s contribution according to the experts in the field. So I would seriously like to ask for less vague “It might be natural.” statements and some serious facts that have stood up to examination to support that statement.

Combine this with the ever growing questions about data collection techniques and a questioning preson can only shake their head in disbelief. Science only happens when there is an open, free and honest inquiry, which is exactly what we are not getting.

And it still doesn’t address the causes of warming, which are still in dispute. Common sense would tell us that human activity has at least contributed somewhat, but by how much is unknown because the scientific conclusions vary so widely.

I think Dave Schuler has it about right:

The question is not whether human activity causes heat or produces heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. Those are both, clearly, facts. The questions are whether human activity is overwhelmed by other causes in producing climate change, whether it’s cost effective to oppose climate change, and whether the measures on the table will actually produce the results their proponents claim.