Scientist: Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age

[Al_Masetti]

Wojick is actually one of the IPCC expert reviewers

Not to be cast as merely “a blogger”.

epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

Excerpt from the above link:

USA: Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University: “In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth’s surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this.” Wojick added: “The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.”

Interested folks should do a Google search for “Wojick IPCC”.

google.com/search?hl=en&q=wojick+ipcc&btnG=Google+Search

 

[The_Barbarian]

Actually, Pluto is getting warmer. So is Mars.

seoblackhat.com/2007/03/04/global-warming-on-mars-pluto-triton-and-jupiter/

**New findings by astronomers from Lowell Observatory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) indicate that Pluto’s atmosphere is undergoing a cooling trend and other global changes.

Using data from the most recent Pluto occultation, Dr. Marc Buie of Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, Ariz.) and Dr. James Elliot of MIT (Cambridge, Mass.) discovered that Pluto’s atmosphere has changed drastically since the last time Pluto occulted a star 14 years ago. Buie observed the occultation and Elliot compared Buie’s findings with data from the 1988 Pluto occultation.**
sun.com/storagetek/archive/index.jsp?cid=924095

How can this be? For the same reason that the hottest hours of a summer day are at 2 to 3 PM, not at local noon. The atmosphere, having a lower specific heat than the body of the planet, cooled more rapidly.

Scientists also hope that the storm can shed light on Saturn’s past—specifically, how Saturn has been cooling since it contracted into a planet from gas and dust billions of years ago.
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080327-saturn-storm_2.html

So, it’s kind of a mixed bag for planets, as far as cooling and warming go. Each has their own local effects.

 

[Al_Masetti]

On www.booktv.org there is an outstanding author presentation from last week.

Visit www.booktv.org and on the upper right are programs from last week.

Scroll down to Lawrence Solomon’s discussion of his book, “The Deniers”

It is an outstanding presentation.

It will be there for a bit before it gets rotated out.

Check the schedule for repeat performances.

I’m going to check Solomon’s Web site to see if a transcript is available.

It is an important asset in the ongoing discussion of man-made global warming.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

More evidence uncovered that the “global warming” perpetrators are cooking (literally) the figures:

Does ‘climate change’ mean ‘changing data’?
NASA temperature figures show agency reworking recent numbers upwards, older numbers downwards

Methodology used by NASA to estimate rates of climate change are resulting in dramatic shifts in previously published historical temperature data, causing figures for estimated global surface temperature prior to 1970 to now be lower and figures since 1970 to now be higher – and appearing to provide evidence for those who say the Earth is warming.

Full Story

Here is an associated link:

Rewriting History, Time and Time Again

If this is not fraud on the part of the “global warming” crowd, I do not know what is.

IMO, the “global warming” crowd has absolutely no credibility.

 

[Al_Masetti]

I wrote an email to Mr. Solomon and he gave me permission to post here at CAF and at the www.climatechangedebate.org the text / manuscript / transcript of his BookTV talk.

So I copied and pasted it, but it is longer than the allowable limit, so I had to extend it over three “frames”.

Apologies for the length.

This is an original document by the original writer. Since this document (as of today, at least) does not exist anywhere else on the internet except for climatechangedebate.org (which requires registration to access), this post is actually a truly unique experience.

Please enjoy Mr. Solomon’s remarks.

---

He gave permission to post it here and also requested that I include
the URL/link to the bookseller for his book, which I am happy to do.

search.barnesandnoble.com/Deniers/Lawrence-Solomon/e/
9780980076318/?itm=1

In addition, here is the link to Mr. Solomon’s Web site with his
columns:

urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/index.cfm?DSP=larry&SubID=163
urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/index.cfm?
DSP=subcontent&AreaID=25

Herewith is Mr. Solomon’s talk:

• Al

---

Dear Albert,

Thank you for your kind comments about my BookTV presentation, which I
have attached and pasted below. You are welcome to post it on the two
websites you refer to, but I ask that you provide a link to my book on
the Barnes and Noble site, found here:
search.barnesandnoble.com/Deniers/Lawrence-Solomon/e/
9780980076318/?itm=1

Capitol Hill Book Forum
With Lawrence Solomon
Friday, April 18th
12:30-1:30 PM
Senate Dirksen Office Building
Hosted by Cooler Heads Coalition

Check against delivery

Thank you, Richard (Vigilante) and Myron (Ebell), for those
introductions and thank you all for coming to this book forum. I am
especially grateful to CEI and the Cooler Heads Coalition, to Myron,
and to Fred Smith, for the integrity and tenacity that he and they have
shown during this entire global warming debate.

Fred isn’t here, so I can tell some tales out of school. I first met
Fred 25 years ago, not far from here at a conference sponsored by the
American Rivers Association. We, the conference participants, were
meeting to save the world’s river valleys from developments sponsored
by international development agencies such as the World Bank. The
conference had the usual suspects. Sierra Club, NRDC, Friends of the
Earth, Cultural Survival, Survival International among others including
my organization from Toronto, Probe International. The conference also
had one very unusual suspect.

That would be Fred Smith, who shared with us all concern about the harm
that the World Bank was causing around the world. Fred was a force at
that conference, and very much in tune with us, although I don’t recall
if he marched on World Bank headquarters with us at the conference’s
end.

I suspect that the people who have come to this book forum represent an
atypical audience, in that much of what I describe in my book will not
surprise you. Those of you who know the Cooler Heads Coalition already
know that there are many credible scientists who dispute the
conventional wisdom of Al Gore and the UN on climate change.

But some things that I found in writing The Deniers might surprise you.
In interviewing scientists, I often asked them how many of their
scientific peers, in their same discipline, subscribed to the views of
Al Gore and the UN. Some said they didn’t know and some said most of
their peers endorsed the UN’s view. But more often they answered that
most scientists in their field rejected the UN’s position on climate
change. In some cases the answer was, effectively, that “all scientist”
in their field rejected the UN’s position.

It dawned on me that in some disciplines at least – solar scientists,
for example – the consensus was in the other direction, that the
majority, perhaps the great majority, dismissed out of hand the notion
that man is responsible for global warming. It also dawned on me that
among top scientists, the majority view rejected the consensus that Al
Gore and the UN claims exists.

Yet the press states over and over again that there is a consensus.
They have evidence, too, of this consensus – the 2000 to 2500
scientists associated with the UN reports that get issued every 6 years
or so with great fanfare. This figure – 2000 or 2500 scientists – is
the foundation on which are based the great preponderance of press
claims. 2500 scientists can’t be wrong.

I wondered who, exactly, these 2500 UN scientists were. To find out, I
contacted the Secretariat of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, and asked for their names and contact information.
The answer that came back was negative. I learned that the names were
not public, so I couldn’t have them. And I learned that they were
reviewers, not endorsers.

Those scientists hadn’t endorsed anything. They were merely people who
had reviewed one or more of the literally hundreds of background
studies, some important and some not, that were part of this immense
United Nations bureaucratic process. They virtually all would have
reviewed some small part of the (name removed by moderator)uts that went into the bureaucratic
maw. They did not review the final report or endorse it.

Their reviews weren’t even all favorable. I know that from many
sources, including from among some of the scientists that I profiled,
who consider the UN’s work a travesty.

So there is no endorsement by 2500 top UN scientists. The press has
been taken. It’s been taken in by a Big Lie.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Mr. Solomon’s text continued]

This Big Lie has been told to us for 15 years now. In the early 1990s,
Al Gore was saying that the science was settled on climate change, at
the same time that a Greenpeace poll showed that the majority of
scientists disagreed with Gore. He has been saying it ever since. And,
through a coincidence of many factors, the Big Lie took hold.
Temperatures did indeed climb. Dramatic weather did occur. In the
background, the public’s general concern for the environment became
widespread. Also in the background, Gore worked the United Nations
system. It paid off big.

In the late 1980s, Gore encouraged the United Nations to hold what
would become the world’s biggest conference on the environment, the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, and then he
encouraged the US to get behind this conference, which enabled the UN’s
General Assembly to endorse it in 1989. Then Gore shaped the agenda for
the conference and publicized it, and even convinced a very reluctant
President Bush to attend, to be there with the other world leaders to
make it a success. This was 1992, the date of the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Rio
Conference which spawned the Kyoto Protocol a few years later. Gore
worked the system hard and it paid off big.

He got everyone to sing from the same hymn book. An unprecedented
number of environmental groups attended Rio – my organization included
– giving the conference moral authority and creating a sense of
inevitability. An unprecedented number of world leaders attended Rio,
giving the conference an official stamp and also putting the world’s
governments on record. And an unprecedented number of media outlets
attended, to report on this juggernaut.

Picture yourself as Al Gore in the middle of all this. He believed
since his university days that man-made global warming was threatening
the planet and now here was vindication, in the form of the world’s
environmental groups, the world’s political leaders, all under the
United Nations’ auspices, endorsing his view. Might you not feel
vindicated, might you not believe that you were right all along, maybe
even that you had a mission to fulfill, a mission that was greater than
yourself. In that setting at Rio, the science truly was settled.

It’s easy to see how Gore’s mind would become formed in the belief that
there must be no backsliding. No one must question that the science was
settled. The science was so clear that man is responsible for climate
change that nothing else could be contemplated. Not even by the UN’s
own agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The mandate
of this agency is to investigate man-made climate change. Other causes
of climate change – the Sun, cosmic forces, or other natural phenomena
– were thus ruled out. No need to look at anything except manmade
causes. And with only manmade causes looked at, is it any surprise that
only manmade causes were found?

This UN-environmental-bubble explains in part, I believe, how Gore can
maintain that credible scientists don’t exist in any number. It
explains in part why earlier this month on 60 Minutes, when asked by
Leslie Stahl about those who deny global warming, he answered that
“It’s a tiny, tiny minority.” It explains how he could have compared
those who hold this view to people who believe the earth is flat, and
to people who believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie set
in Nevada.

It may also explain how he could miss the irony of likening deniers to
those who don’t believe in space travel. One of those deniers is
Michael Griffin, the head of NASA. Another is Habibullo Abdussamatov.
He heads research on the Russian half of the International Space
Station. A third is Eigil Friis-Christensen, the head of the Danish
National Space Agency. A fourth is Freeman Dyson, one of the best known
scientists on earth today. To further space flight, he developed
nuclear pulse propulsion for the Orion project.

This bubble, I believe, also explains the fervor of belief by Al Gore
and others, and their ability to act with impunity. To attack anyone,
regardless of his credentials. Last year, Michael Griffin, the head of
NASA, told NPR that he believes that global warming isn’t a problem
worth wrestling with.

Was Griffin entitled to express his viewpoint? He holds a PhD in
aerospace engineering. He holds five masters degrees. He is a member of
the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of
Astronautics. He was unanimously confirmed to head NASA by the United
States Senate.
He oversees the world’s single biggest climate change research budget -
$1.1 billion per year.

Yet no sooner did he express his opinion than he was called an “idiot”
and said to be “in denial.” He was called a “fool” and “surprisingly
naive.” He was called either “totally clueless” or “a deep anti-global
warming ideologue.” Those who berated him included his own employees.

After two days of this, Griffin then apologized and the public hasn’t
heard from again on the subject. The public also hasn’t heard from
hundreds of others who don’t want to subject themselves to the type of
abuse that Griffin faced.

 

[Al_Masetti]

[Conclusion of Mr. Solomon’s text]

I was at a literary function in Toronto last year and happened to sit
next to a denier, one of Canada’s most prominent climate scientists. I
asked him over dinner why he had decided to speak up. He paused for a
moment and said, “I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.” He decided
he didn’t want to die a coward, and so went public. He described the
pressures that confront an academic when they do go public. He became a
pariah. His colleagues stopped talking when he entered a room. Not only
was he faced with the loss of funding for his projects, so was his
entire department, which meant he was threatening the careers of his
colleagues.

He’s now cured of cancer and he says he now has regrets that he has
gone public. But I think he is also proud that he has. And he is
increasingly getting company.

My sense is that scientists are increasingly speaking up. They are also
becoming firmer in their views. Some, like Claude Allegre, perhaps
France’s best known scientist reversed themselves. At the time of Rio,
he was an ardent believer that CO2 represented a mortal danger. After
seeing decades of the science that come out of the UN, he has become
convinced that there is no credible scientific case for global warming.

The list of so-called deniers now includes the President of the World
Federation of Science, who is also Italy’s best known scientist. It
includes one of Britain’s best-known scientists and one of Germany’s
best known scientists. It includes scientists from the world’s top
research bodies, bodies such as the Pasteur Institute and the European
Space Agency and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research,
a 50-year-old institution that has 20 country members and services half
of the world’s particle physicists. It includes the top climate
scientists, legends in the field such as William Gray, who is
considered by many the world’s foremost authority on the prediction of
hurricanes, and Reid Bryson, who has been called the father of
scientific climatology and who is the world’s most cited climatologist.

At some point, possibly quite soon if climate science doesn’t
demonstrate a breakthrough capable of impressing scientists, this whole
Big Lie may come crashing down.

Thank you.

########

End of Mr. Solomon’s talk.

 

[The_Barbarian]

My sense is that scientists are increasingly speaking up.

They are:

**Two private advocacy groups told a congressional hearing Tuesday that climate scientists at seven government agencies say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming.

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to “global warming” or “climate change” from a report.

The questionnaire was sent by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private advocacy group. The report also was based on “firsthand experiences” described in interviews with the Government Accountability Project, which helps government whistleblowers, lawmakers were told.

The Democratic chairman of the House panel examining the government’s response to climate change said Tuesday there is evidence that senior Bush administration officials sought repeatedly “to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming.”

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he and the top Republican on his oversight committee, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, have sought documents from the administration on climate policy, but repeatedly been rebuffed.**
cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/30/politics/main2413400.shtml

Even better, here’s one where they fought back and won:

**George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

Mr. Deutsch’s resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.**
nytimes.com/2006/02/08/politics/08nasa.html

A lot of deniers are now ex-deniers.

**OTTAWA – Prime Minister Stephen Harper retreated Friday from his previous skepticism about climate change as his government called the “unequivocal” warning, delivered in a major international study released in Paris, a turning point in the battle against global warming.

The findings were published by hundreds of climate scientists who spent months reviewing the latest research from the past five years of more than 2,000 researchers, including skeptics. Their summary report, part of the first volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment of the science since the 1990s, sent political shock waves around the world because of its definitive warning that global warming is happening, and will likely continue for centuries to come.**
canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=217e79d7-a134-4e51-9fdd-9711332a83d0&k=46532

**After the White House admitted badly handling its abrogation of the global warming treaty, President Bush yesterday conceded as he left for his first diplomatic trip to Europe that the United States is a major player in heating up the Earth.

Calling for more scientific research into how carbon dioxide emissions damage worldwide climate patterns, the president said: “Our country, the United States, is the world’s largest emitter of man-made greenhouse gases; we account for almost 20 percent of the world’s man-made greenhouse emissions. We also account for about one-quarter of the world’s economic output. We recognize the responsibility to reduce our emissions.”**
post-gazette.com/headlines/20010612climate0612netp2.asp

At some point, possibly quite soon if climate science doesn’t demonstrate a breakthrough capable of impressing s
scientists, this whole
Big Lie may come crashing down.

If you think so, here’s a great opportunity. Take my global warming challenge. I predict that the next five years will be warmer than the last five years. (2002-2007) Here’s my bet:
If it isn’t, I’ll admit to you that we can’t use the past to predict that warming will occur. If it is, you admit that we are in a warming trend that was predictable from previous warming.

How confident are you in your beliefs?

 

[tmts]

I would like to add to the discussion on global warming. I believe it is
an absolute hoax, and has caused honest clear thinking people to accept it as gospel, mainly because credible scientist who do not agree with Al Gore have been silenced and dismissed as idiots. You hear the sarcasim whenever
Al Gore and his followers speak or write an editorial.

I invite anyone interested in this matter to read about what men who possess
profound and extensive scientific backgrounds, and who have studied the subject of global warming, have to say.

Timothy Ball, Canadian Ph.D in Climatology, University of London, England-
climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg- wrote Global Warming:
The Cold, Hard Facts-CANADA FREE PRESS: HOME PAGE

S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences, University of Virginia- Ph.D in Physics, Princeton University, founding dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami, founding director of U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, vice chairman of the U. S. National Weather Satellite Service, vice chariman of the National Advisory Committee on Ocerans and Atmosphere. ( Dr. Singer has written over a dozen books, including "Unstoppable Global Warming:Every 1,500 Years.)

The following is a partial list of prominent scientists who have reversed their belief in “Man-made Global Warming”

Geophysicist, Dr. Claude Allegre, member of French and U.S. Academy of Scientists.

Geologist, Bruno Wiskel , University of Alberta

Astrophysicist, Dr. Nir Shaviv, Israel

Mathematician & engineer, Dr. David Evans, carbon accounting for the Australian Government

Climate researcher, Dr.Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for the Fisheries and Oceans in Canada.

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas, University of Auckland, N.Z.

Paleoclimatologist, Tim Patterson, Carlton University, Ottawa

Physicist, Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa

Again, this is a partial listing. Anyone ever ask the question- how did Mr.
Gore become an expert on climate change, and what credentials does he
possess? As for myself, I am just an ordinary citizen, deeply troubled with the idea that those who disagree with Mr.Gore have been silenced.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Excellent post, tmts.

Al Gore really has no credentials. He doesn’t “do data”. He uses selective anecdotes and doctors those to make his points the largest populations of polar bears in history has been converted by Mr. Gore to an endangered species, for example] … and then slams the door on discussion by saying “the science is settled”.

Science is never settled.

Science is all about collecting and publishing data and letting everyone have a free hand examining it. Visit www.surfacestations.org for example.

I was just posting on www.climatechangedebate.org and while checking the credentials of Fred Seitz, at www.oism.org

I cam across this essay that just happens to discuss some of these very issues.

sitewave.net/news/MaryEllenGilder.htm

 

[Al_Masetti]

If you think so, here’s a great opportunity. Take my global warming challenge. I predict that the next five years will be warmer than the last five years. (2002-2007) Here’s my bet:
If it isn’t, I’ll admit to you that we can’t use the past to predict that warming will occur. If it is, you admit that we are in a warming trend that was predictable from previous warming.

How confident are you in your beliefs?

Your assistance is needed, Barbarian.

At www.climatechangedebate.org there are two public advocates of the AGW hypothesis.

Bob and Walt.

They have apparently decided to resign from the discussion.

So, my challenge to you, Barbarian, is would you consider joining www.climatechangedebate.org for the purpose of post on and representing the AGW side of the debate?

Your services would be appreciated.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian offers a challenge:
Take my global warming challenge. I predict that the next five years will be warmer than the last five years. (2002-2007) Here’s my bet:
If it isn’t, I’ll admit to you that we can’t use the past to predict that warming will occur. If it is, you admit that we are in a warming trend that was predictable from previous warming.

How confident are you in your beliefs?

So, my challenge to you, Barbarian,…

Not very confident, it seems. So far, exactly zero deniers have had the confidence to bet against my prediction, based on past data. I think I know why.

is would you consider joining www.climatechangedebate.org for the purpose of post on and representing the AGW side of the debate?

Sorry. Maybe when the school term ends. Ask me again in mid-June, and I might be better disposed to do it. I should tell you that I represent only my side, and disagree with almost everybody on something or other. So, I’d probably not be a very good advocate for whatever it is you want me to represent.

 

[The_Barbarian]

I would like to add to the discussion on global warming. I believe it is an absolute hoax,

If so, you’ve been badly hoaxed yourself. Even most of the deniers have now retreated to “yes, it’s warming, but we aren’t to blame.”

and has caused honest clear thinking people to accept it as gospel, mainly because credible scientist who do not agree with Al Gore have been silenced and dismissed as idiots.

Actually, the opposite has happened. Numerous government scientists have come forward and admitted that they were strongly pressured by politicians to downplay or deny evidence for warming. It’s in Congressional testimony by many of them.

I invite anyone interested in this matter to read about what men who possess profound and extensive scientific backgrounds, and who have studied the subject of global warming, have to say.

But the consensus of such men and women is that warming is proceeding. It seems a foolish thing to point to a very few deniers, and ignore the vast majority who acknowledge what is going on.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

I think we will see more of these spurious charges that the government is trying to stifle the “global warming” debate as more and more evidence come out that the left has been manipulating the numbers in fraudulent ways.

In my previous post (#44), I gave evidence that NASA, where the so-called “whistle blowers” came from, has been cooking the numbers for years just to get the “global warming” evidence.

The left is the one who is stifling debate by their tactics. This is fraud and they are now in “attack dog” mode.

 

[The_Barbarian]

I think we will see more of these spurious charges that the government is trying to stifle the “global warming” debate

It’s a documented fact, in some cases, they have the emails to show it, and “all those people are just lying” isn’t a very plausible story.

as more and more evidence come out that the left has been manipulating the numbers in fraudulent ways.

If you see this as a political problem, you’ll be forever lost.

In my previous post (#44), I gave evidence that NASA, where the so-called “whistle blowers” came from, has been cooking the numbers for years just to get the “global warming” evidence.

That would be odd, since proof has surfaced that NASA was trying to suppress such evidence. The scientists there finally blew the whistle and someone ended up fired for it.

The left is the one who is stifling debate by their tactics.

If by “left” you mean “government bureaucrats who tried suppress evidence for warming”, that’s true.

 

[Ender]

Take my global warming challenge. I predict that the next five years will be warmer than the last five years. (2002-2007) Here’s my bet:
If it isn’t, I’ll admit to you that we can’t use the past to predict that warming will occur. If it is, you admit that we are in a warming trend that was predictable from previous warming.

How confident are you in your beliefs?

OK, I’ll take the bet - since this seems to be what some climate scientists are predicting. {“This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon”}

This puts us in a somewhat awkward situation: my bet rests on the predictions of climate scientists, so if I lose it will show that they can’t predict climate behavior with any kind of accuracy … which is my position. If you lose, however, it will be because they can predict climate changes … which is your position.

Either that or what happens happens and someone will take credit for predicting it.

bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aU.evtnk6DPo&refer=worldwide

Ender

 

[manualman]

Another data point and the one most influential to me to date:

Dr. Derek Winstanley, Chief of Illinois State Water Survey.
Phd in Climatology from Oxford. Yes, THE Oxford.

In a 2007 Hydrology conference I attended, he summarized the IPCC projections of future temperature and precipitation as “interested, but useless.” He backed that up by graphing the projections of each of the IPCC models over time and then superimposing the margin of error just from the methods. The margin DWARFED the predictions. Funny, but Al never puts up the methodological margin of error on HIS graphs.

I asked him afterwards his position on the matter and he basically said the data is far too immature and unreliable to make a conclusion either way on the subject of CO2 caused warming at this time. I asked him if he ever experienced pressure from peers on the matter. He laughed and said HE didn’t because he now has a full time policy advisory job and doesn’t need to go begging for research grants anymore. He said that among those dependent on grants for research (nearly everyone in science), a public position against CO2 caused warming is a Scarlet Letter (my paraphrase) in grant funding.

Barbarian, I’ll take your challenge with a twist: I betcha the average temp in the next 5 years won’t exceed the best estimates of the peak 5 year average during the Medieval Warming Period, a time LONG before humans made any significant CO2 emission levels. If it doesn’t, then we’ll have PROVEN that natural climate trends can result in warming WITHOUT human involvement. Up for it?

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian, I’ll take your challenge with a twist: I betcha the average temp in the next 5 years won’t exceed the best estimates of the peak 5 year average during the Medieval Warming Period, a time LONG before humans made any significant CO2 emission levels. If it doesn’t, then we’ll have PROVEN that natural climate trends can result in warming WITHOUT human involvement. Up for it?

No point in that. Natural climate changes can occur. My prediction is based on the increase in CO2. I’m wagering that this permits me to accurately predict an increase in average global temperature over the next five years.

Our disagreement is on whether anthropogenic CO2 can warm things up. Do you have more confidence in your beliefs than the others? If Dr. Derek is right, it’s a sure thing for you, isn’t it?

 

[Al_Masetti]

Barbarian offers a challenge:
Take my global warming challenge. I predict that the next five years will be warmer than the last five years. (2002-2007) Here’s my bet:
If it isn’t, I’ll admit to you that we can’t use the past to predict that warming will occur. If it is, you admit that we are in a warming trend that was predictable from previous warming.

How confident are you in your beliefs?

Not very confident, it seems. So far, exactly zero deniers have had the confidence to bet against my prediction, based on past data. I think I know why.

Sorry. Maybe when the school term ends. Ask me again in mid-June, and I might be better disposed to do it. I should tell you that I represent only my side, and disagree with almost everybody on something or other. So, I’d probably not be a very good advocate for whatever it is you want me to represent.

One easy way is to take the climate five years ago and guess at today’s climate. Probably colder, not warmer.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian continues to have no takers for his challenge:

Barbarian offers a challenge:
Take my global warming challenge. I predict that the next five years will be warmer than the last five years. (2002-2007) Here’s my bet:
If it isn’t, I’ll admit to you that we can’t use the past to predict that warming will occur. If it is, you admit that we are in a warming trend that was predictable from previous warming.

How confident are you in your beliefs?

Not very confident, it seems. So far, exactly zero deniers have had the confidence to bet against my prediction, based on past data. I think I know why.

One easy way is to take the climate five years ago and guess at today’s climate. Probably colder, not warmer.

We already know that it’s warmer. But if you’re right and the scientists are wrong, that would be an easy win for you, um? So you’re on board with my challenge? If the next five years is, on the average, colder than the last five years, I’ll publicly admit that historic levels of CO2 are not a good way to predict temperatures. If not, you admit that it’s a fact.

If your beliefs are correct, you have nothing to lose, um?