World's climate warming faster than feared, scientists say

[lynnvinc]

I’m not allowed to have an opinion based upon common sense and basic math?
People cannot apply their own knowledge? You believe people have to be told something to have an understanding of it?
I don’t know if I should be insulted or dismayed at the apparent disregard for human intelligence.

Would you like me to provide a list of elementary school teachers that taught me how to read a graph?
Perhaps my science and arithmetic teachers for teaching me that an average cannot be more accurate then the numbers it is derived from? Or that a graph with no labels is meaningless.
My history teachers and science teachers for teaching me how weather events were measured in the past.
I also have been around a while. I have been witness first hand to the lack of warming.
I do not need some third party to tell me it is not getting hotter year after year.

Perhaps if the global warming science was based on something more substantive I would need something more then basic logic and common sense to see the problems with the theory.

It’s possible you live in an area that has seen no increasing warming. That’s why it is important to look at the bigger picture. Even in my area (which is already pretty hot), it is very hard to tell if it has warmed. However, one of my students got the weather data for 2000 to 2010 and did an analysis and found it had warmed over 1C. I would not have known just by my own sense of things. However, I do not see either an increase or decrease in temps in my locality, esp for only 10 years, as proof for or against AGW.

Here’s a chart that may help: ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/ytd/6/1880-2014 . There are a lot of ups and downs (and not just in the past 15 years but over the whole 1880-2014 dataset), but the general trend is up, enough so that even if there are errors here and there, they would not be able to explain this definite trend up. You’d have to say that everyone who has taken temps around the world over the past 145 years is an egregious liar or totally incompetent, and making all errors in a biased direction so as to prove GW.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

I’m not allowed to have an opinion based upon common sense and basic math?
People cannot apply their own knowledge? You believe people have to be told something to have an understanding of it?
I don’t know if I should be insulted or dismayed at the apparent disregard for human intelligence.

Would you like me to provide a list of elementary school teachers that taught me how to read a graph?
Perhaps my science and arithmetic teachers for teaching me that an average cannot be more accurate then the numbers it is derived from?

If you were taught that the average of many samples cannot be more accurate than the numbers that make up the samples, then you were taught wrong. It is a basic mathematical principle that averaging a large number of samples that contain additive noise will give you a result that has less noise, and is therefore more accurate. This is done all the time in engineering. Although it probably was not covered in elementary school.

Anyway, if that is the kind of mathematical understanding on which you base your disbelief in AGW, your arguments will never be very convincing to someone who does understand mathematics.

As for coming to your opinion based only on personal knowledge, it is impossible for you to have personally set up enough of your own monitoring stations around the world and gathered data for enough years, and confirmed those measurements with things like ice core samples, geological evidence, and tree ring analysis. And I don’t suppose you have your own personal isotope analysis equipment with which you can measure the atomic weight of the carbon atoms in CO2 do you? No? Then you are relying on others to make those measurements for you. How cold or warm it seems in your backyard has almost no bearing on whether the sea level will rise 2 feet in the next century.

So either you are going to claim you have personal access to all these extensive original research capabilities, or you have to admit that your opinion on AGW is based on information provided to you by others. I am not too proud to admit that my opinion is based on such information. Why can’t you do the same?

 

[Ridgerunner]

That’s pretty much what I was told when we moved down here. We are south of Corpus and somewhat warmer, and much warmer than Houston, where my niece lives…and dryer. Not sure it would have gotten down to 10F right where I live, but maybe 40 miles to our west or north it may have (I’ll ask our elderly neighbor who has lived here since birth).

It did snow here a few years ago (the temps were in the 20s), the first snow the weatherman said since the late 1800s. The kids were all excited, going out and making snowmen and having snowball fights, which they usually only read about in the north. We adults were fretting over our tropical plants, covering them up.

I feel sorry for all the weather problems people are having around the US and world, and the wildfires in the West. So far so good with us, just very hot now during the cunicula. We did have a super hurricane cat 5 come here in 1967 right up the Rio Grande River – Hurricane Beulah. I pray we get spared.

I appreciate your sympathy, but I rather like the seasonal changes we have. But I do think the locals oversold you just a bit. People do that even here. I almost never wear a winter coat in the winter, but I have also heard people (often transplants from the north) who claim to others that “there’s really no winter here”. Compared to Minnesota, perhaps that’s sort of true. But it really is an overselling to say things like that.

 

[Erich]

“there’s really no winter here”

There is a winter here… usually it’s the second weekend in January.

 

[lynnvinc]

I appreciate your sympathy, but I rather like the seasonal changes we have…

I’m from S. Calif, where there were even less seasonal changes than here, and people from “back east” used to say what you’re saying, that they liked the seasons.

As a kid I did feel cheated out of building snowmen, making snow angels, having snowball fights, and snow sledding. By the time we did move to Wisconsin, then Illinois I was an adult. It was exciting for a few years, but my husband (from S. India with even less variation) couldn’t hack the winters. When we moved to the RGV of Texas, it was like coming home for both of us (after 30 yrs up north) – palm trees, bougainvillea, other tropical plants. We’d be driving around, saying, “Oh look, palm trees!”

Now he’s complaining about the heat (it does get hotter here than in India) and I tell him we’re in AC home & office & shops nearly all day, and I enjoy the heat a bit. We just have to make it from the car to the office or shops, and the nights are about body temp, which makes me feel like floating in silk. We can’t tolerate too much AC cold and keep ours set at 80F.

 

[USMC_Convert]

FUNNY!!!
I worked intelligence in the Marine Corps for 14 years, I actually have had to do multiple global warming studies and impacts papers written for everyone up to the Secretary of Defense and a specific Senator (I forgot his name).

Anyway, we my team and I always found it to be totally bogus. Then throw in the fact that my meteorological buddies always got pissed and started talking about how governments were removing gauging stations in the very North, which threw off the calculations.

I don’t know, I remain very unconvinced so far…

As the planet marked its fourth hottest year on record, a study published in the journal *Nature *found increasing levels of carbon dioxide will lead to thinner ocean clouds and reduce their cooling impact, causing temperature rises of at least 5.6F (3C) over the course of the century.

The team of scientists said the findings show some climate models have been too “optimistic” and previous estimates of a minimum temperature rise of only 2.7F (1.5C) could now be discounted. The optimistic models did not properly assess the impact of water evaporation, which sometimes rises only a short distance into the atmosphere and causes updraughts that reduce cloud cover, the study found.

”These models have been predicting a lower climate sensitivity but we believe they’re incorrect,” Professor Steven Sherwood, from the University of New South Wales, told The Sydney Morning Herald.

telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10546128/Worlds-climate-warming-faster-than-feared-scientists-say.html

 

[lynnvinc]

FUNNY!!!
I worked intelligence in the Marine Corps for 14 years, I actually have had to do multiple global warming studies and impacts papers written for everyone up to the Secretary of Defense and a specific Senator (I forgot his name).

Anyway, we my team and I always found it to be totally bogus. Then throw in the fact that my meteorological buddies always got pissed and started talking about how governments were removing gauging stations in the very North, which threw off the calculations.

I don’t know, I remain very unconvinced so far…

Luckily we have scientists who do more thorough and systematic study of things beyond a person’s impressionistic ideas.

I’d think by removing gauging stations (I assume you mean weather stations) in the North, that would actually lower the global average temps, since there is a lot more warming in the North in the arctic than at mid-latitudes and at least the Hadley Center just simply omits data there if there is no weather buoy, etc. for an area. (GISS takes the closest temps and averages it for those areas without weather stations.)

 

[USMC_Convert]

Ahh yes, I forgot, it takes scientists to look at data do research and write, thank the heavens we have them. A bunch of dumb Marines trained by the U.S. Government to do that kinda stuff couldn’t possibly come up with the right answer.

Furthermore, so let me get this straight, you think by taking the colder numbers out, the Global numbers would go down. So in the middle of the earth, where it’s hot, those numbers would drive the global temperature down?

But if we had the really cold numbers from say Siberia (one of the places that no longer has “weather stations”) then global warming would look worse?

Forgive me, I’m not a scientist ya know, just someone with impressionistic ideas that have helped shape where U.S. Strategic military bases could possibly go and warned of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, a situation so serious, the U.S. And Afghan governments spends millions of dollars fixing the situation. (All via Gods grace, great team work and hardly any (name removed by moderator)ut by me other than throwing things and yelling at Marines, and I did a little typing).

Yes I’m just wondering what it is that your trying to say, please enlighten me. I don’t understand how keeping the cold numbers out the global temperatures would go down…

Luckily we have scientists who do more thorough and systematic study of things beyond a person’s impressionistic ideas.

I’d think by removing gauging stations (I assume you mean weather stations) in the North, that would actually lower the global average temps, since there is a lot more warming in the North in the arctic than at mid-latitudes and at least the Hadley Center just simply omits data there if there is no weather buoy, etc. for an area. (GISS takes the closest temps and averages it for those areas without weather stations.)

 

[SuperLuigi]

Luckily we have scientists who do more thorough and systematic study of things beyond a person’s impressionistic ideas.

I’d think by removing gauging stations (I assume you mean weather stations) in the North, that would actually lower the global average temps, since there is a lot more warming in the North in the arctic than at mid-latitudes and at least the Hadley Center just simply omits data there if there is no weather buoy, etc. for an area. (GISS takes the closest temps and averages it for those areas without weather stations.)

As fancy as all that sounds, such studies are greatly limited and may be based fundamentally on faulty data.

Some of that is because of special political interests, namely loyalty by academia to left-wing causes that trumps actual science.

 

[SuperLuigi]

z71;12235668]I’m not allowed to have an opinion based upon common sense and basic math?
People cannot apply their own knowledge? You believe people have to be told something to have an understanding of it?
I don’t know if I should be insulted or dismayed at the apparent disregard for human intelligence.

Would you like me to provide a list of elementary school teachers that taught me how to read a graph?
Perhaps my science and arithmetic teachers for teaching me that an average cannot be more accurate then the numbers it is derived from? Or that a graph with no labels is meaningless.
My history teachers and science teachers for teaching me how weather events were measured in the past.

This post has the following fallacies:

1. Reducing the issue to a personal level
2. Avoiding commenting on substance
3. Attempting to divert debate

I also have been around a while. I have been witness first hand to the lack of warming.
I do not need some third party to tell me it is not getting hotter year after year.

Anecdotal evidence.

Perhaps if the global warming science was based on something more substantive I would need something more then basic logic and common sense to see the problems with the theory.

The Climate-Gate scandal and refutation of Micheal Mann’s fundamental research is very substantive.

If this happened to a right-wing cause, it would’ve been front page news for weeks.

 

[lynnvinc]

Ahh yes, I forgot, it takes scientists to look at data do research and write, thank the heavens we have them. A bunch of dumb Marines trained by the U.S. Government to do that kinda stuff couldn’t possibly come up with the right answer.

Furthermore, so let me get this straight, you think by taking the colder numbers out, the Global numbers would go down. So in the middle of the earth, where it’s hot, those numbers would drive the global temperature down?

But if we had the really cold numbers from say Siberia (one of the places that no longer has “weather stations”) then global warming would look worse?

Forgive me, I’m not a scientist ya know, just someone with impressionistic ideas that have helped shape where U.S. Strategic military bases could possibly go and warned of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, a situation so serious, the U.S. And Afghan governments spends millions of dollars fixing the situation. (All via Gods grace, great team work and hardly any (name removed by moderator)ut by me other than throwing things and yelling at Marines, and I did a little typing).

Yes I’m just wondering what it is that your trying to say, please enlighten me. I don’t understand how keeping the cold numbers out the global temperatures would go down…

As mentioned GISS averages the nearest weather stations to fill in for areas that have no weather stations (usually areas in the arctic), while Hadley just leaves them omitted. However, the end result it there is no statistically significant difference betwee GISS and Hadley.

Here’s their different plots using somewhat different methods:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I don’t mean to insult anyone, but I do give a lot more credence to what the climate scientists come up with as it relates to climate science. Plus I know several and trust them a lot more than I trust bloggers. AND I’m much more focused on striving to avoid the false negative of failing to address a true problem than on avoiding the false positive of making an untrue claim. Prudence and the Catholic Church require that re climate change. So you might say I am on the other side of climate science from the well-funded climate change denialist industry and its blogger fan club who will never accept climate change is happen no matter what evidence comes in.

If at all I were to doubt climate scientists and their claims it would be for underestimating the problem.

 

[USMC_Convert]

You got me wrong brother, like I said the first time, I remain unconvinced. Is something happening, yes, no, who cares, is it man made oh now that I have a hard time believing…

Would I be in my glory if climate change actually started to rapidly occur, oh yeah!!! The difference between me not believing fully and all those other people, you, al gore, Mr. Bush, conservative, hippies, bloggers, whatever, is that I welcome it.

I’ve seen, lived through, and excelled in some of the most hostile man made and natural environments there are, I say rip down the fake plastic dream and let reality set in. The reality of life… Climate change, financial collapse, terrorists (ahhhhah ha ha ha ha ahhh ha ha) Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, all the above combined, let it fall where it may.

I’ve been there done the research, used more highly sophisticated equipment and talked to more better trained people than you can imagine. Now I may not be smarter than the tail on a horse fly, but I do know what all the boys at the Pentagon and in the Senate are reading, and what they are most likely thinking about this subject (as of a year ago or a little less, I’ve been medically retired and put out to pasture for wounds sustained in combat).

Other than that, you can wave your magic wand all day long brother man, post as many graphs and pictures as you like, I’m sure we aren’t going to change each others minds…

Peace…

As mentioned GISS averages the nearest weather stations to fill in for areas that have no weather stations (usually areas in the arctic), while Hadley just leaves them omitted. However, the end result it there is no statistically significant difference betwee GISS and Hadley.

Here’s their different plots using somewhat different methods:

http://www.icsusa.org/media/pictures/articles/2011-2-1p.png

I don’t mean to insult anyone, but I do give a lot more credence to what the climate scientists come up with as it relates to climate science. Plus I know several and trust them a lot more than I trust bloggers. AND I’m much more focused on striving to avoid the false negative of failing to address a true problem than on avoiding the false positive of making an untrue claim. Prudence and the Catholic Church require that re climate change. So you might say I am on the other side of climate science from the well-funded climate change denialist industry and its blogger fan club who will never accept climate change is happen no matter what evidence comes in.

If at all I were to doubt climate scientists and their claims it would be for underestimating the problem.

 

[lynnvinc]

“Too late for course correction on global warming: IPCC” at thehindubusinessline.com/news/too-late-for-course-correction-on-global-warming-ipcc/article6283696.ece

The latest fifth assessment report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a bleak future for the world, and especially South Asia.

Hinting that it may already be too late for significant course correction on global warming, the report cautions, “Regardless of action taken now to reduce emissions, the climate will change until around the middle of this century.”

Urgent damage control and risk mitigation are the need of the hour, the report notes. …

With all these scenarios, the danger of increasing poverty, decreased food production, destruction of infrastructure, rise in vector-borne diseases and heat-related deaths are going to increase.

The situation for India could be especially precarious, the report notes. “In the Indo-Gangetic plains which produce 90 million tonnes of wheat a year (about 14-15 per cent of global production), projections indicate a substantial fall in yields unless there is a shift to different crop varieties and management practices,” it says.
…
“The Asia region, as a whole, experienced the most weather and climate-related disasters in the world between 2000 and 2008, and suffered the second-highest proportion (almost 30 per cent) of total global economic losses,” the IPCC report says.

 

[USMC_Convert]

First off its laughable that you trust an organization like the IPCC. Second they are absolutely right! Lowering emissions won’t help because it’s not the main problem…

“Too late for course correction on global warming: IPCC” at thehindubusinessline.com/news/too-late-for-course-correction-on-global-warming-ipcc/article6283696.ece

The latest fifth assessment report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a bleak future for the world, and especially South Asia.

Hinting that it may already be too late for significant course correction on global warming, the report cautions, “Regardless of action taken now to reduce emissions, the climate will change until around the middle of this century.”

Urgent damage control and risk mitigation are the need of the hour, the report notes. …

With all these scenarios, the danger of increasing poverty, decreased food production, destruction of infrastructure, rise in vector-borne diseases and heat-related deaths are going to increase.

The situation for India could be especially precarious, the report notes. “In the Indo-Gangetic plains which produce 90 million tonnes of wheat a year (about 14-15 per cent of global production), projections indicate a substantial fall in yields unless there is a shift to different crop varieties and management practices,” it says.
…
“The Asia region, as a whole, experienced the most weather and climate-related disasters in the world between 2000 and 2008, and suffered the second-highest proportion (almost 30 per cent) of total global economic losses,” the IPCC report says.

 

[lynnvinc]

First off its laughable that you trust an organization like the IPCC. Second they are absolutely right! Lowering emissions won’t help because it’s not the main problem…

I trust them to underestimate the problem of AGW. Afterall, they are written by 100s of scientists, who are by profession quite conservative and reticent in their claims. So the IPCC reports are like reticence squared.

From what I know and have read and looking at the bigger picture, including info from paleoclimatology, the situation is much much more bleak than what the IPCC is saying.

Did they even mention poisonous hydrogen sulfide emissions from super-anoxic oceans due to extreme warming, as during the end-Permian extinction event, during which 90%+ of life on earth died? No, of course not. The IPCC reports are much much too conservative to even suggest some of the worst case scenarios that could happen after some 6C warming (which could be reached within 100 or 200 years).

See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event#Hydrogen_sulfide_emissions

And: “Massive release of hydrogen sulfide to the surface ocean and atmosphere during intervals of oceanic anoxia” at geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/5/397.full.pdf+html
Simple calculations show that if deep-water H2S concentrations increased beyond a critical threshold during oceanic anoxic intervals of Earth history, the chemocline separating sulfidic deep waters from oxygenated surface waters could have risen abruptly to the ocean surface (a chemocline upward excursion). Atmospheric photochemical modeling indicates that resulting fluxes of H2S to the atmosphere (>2000 times the small modern flux from volcanoes) would likely have led to toxic levels of H2S in the atmosphere. Moreover, the ozone shield would have been destroyed, and methane levels would have risen to >100 ppm. We thus propose (1) chemocline upward excursion as a kill mechanism during the end-Permian, Late Devonian, and Cenomanian–Turonian extinctions, and (2) persistently high atmospheric H2S levels as a factor that impeded evolution of eukaryotic life on land during the Proterozoic.

I consider the IPCC reports to be pablum for babies who can’t take the real truth. Afterall, they have to be approved by countries addicted to oil and coal.

Nevertheless, they are still a good source of much info about AGW. But one should read more deeply the individual studies and articles.

And be not afraid to face the truth, and the truth shall set us free to begin mitigating in earnest.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

First off its laughable that you trust an organization like the IPCC…

Which source of information on this issue would you not find laughable? Maybe I will find your sources even more laughable.

 

[estesbob]

Updated list of 29 – Actually 30 – excuses for the 18 year ‘pause’ in global warming – ‘If you can’t explain the ‘pause’, you can’t explain the cause…’

climatedepot.com/2014/07/28/updated-list-of-29-excuses-for-the-18-year-pause-in-global-warming-if-you-cant-explain-the-pause-you-cant-explain-the-cause/

 

[lynnvinc]

Updated list of 29 – Actually 30 – excuses for the 18 year ‘pause’ in global warming – ‘If you can’t explain the ‘pause’, you can’t explain the cause…’

climatedepot.com/2014/07/28/updated-list-of-29-excuses-for-the-18-year-pause-in-global-warming-if-you-cant-explain-the-pause-you-cant-explain-the-cause/

But no one should excuse Marc Moreno for his lack of scientific expertise and egregious truth twisting so as to deceive …

Marc Morano from desmogblog.com/marc-morano
Credentials

• B.A., Political Science, George Mason University. [hint: he’s not a climate scientist]
• According to Google Scholar, Marc Morano has never published research in a peer-reviewed journal on any subject. His only education appears to be in political science.

Background
Marc Morano is the executive director and chief correspondent of ClimateDepot.com, a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Morano is also the Communications Director at CFACT, a conservative think-tank in Washington D.C. that has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations associated with Richard Mellon Scaife. According to 2011 IRS Forms, Morano was the highest paid staff member with a salary of $150,000 per year. Morano’s blog Climate Depot regularly publishes articles questioning man-made global warming.

Although he has no scientific expertise in the area, Morano has become a prominent climate change dr. He has been called "the Matt Drudge of climate dl", the “King of the skeptics,” and a “central cell of the climate-d****l machine.” He was also listed as one of 17 top “climate killers” by Rolling Stone Magazine. He has accused climate scientists of “fear mongering,” and has claimed that proponents of man-made global warming are “unded to the tune of $50 billion.”

From 2006 to 2009, Morano was the communications director for Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the minority chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Prior to the last election, Inhofe was the majority chair of the EPW committee. In the 2002 election cycle, Senator Inhofe received more in donations from the oil and gas sector than any other Senator. Sen. Inhofe is known for his infamous quote that the threat of catastrophic global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and as his communications director, Mornano has spent his recent years propagating this message.

According to Marc Morano’s profile at the Heartland Institute, “Morano joined the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as the majority Communications Director in June 2006 after a decade and a half as a working journalist, documentary maker, radio talk show host, and national television correspondent.” Apart from being a regular speaker at the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, Morano is also listed on their website as a “global warming expert.”

With reference to scientists involved in the “climategate” controversy (all of which were since publicly exonerated), Morano has said: “I seriously believe we should kick them while they’re down. They deserve to be publicly flogged.”

May 13, 2014: Morano debates with China Central Television (CCTV) anchor Anand Naidoo, a week following the release of the US government’s National Climate Assessment. When Morano was asked about his qualifications for speaking about an issue such as climate science, he responded by saying, “I have a background in political science, which is the perfect qualification to examine global warming.”

December 27, 2012: Marc Marano was named “2012 Climate Change Misinformer of the Year” by the conservative watchdog group Media Matters for America. According to Media Matters, he has earned this title due to his “history of smears and lies” including his work running ClimateDepot.com, a group funded by the Heartland Institute.

Morano appeared on the Fox News program Your World with Neil Cavuto and claimed that the goal of UN climate negotiations is “global governance” and the redistribution of wealth. “It’s very Orwellian,” he said. “This is stuff Orwell couldn’t conceive of, your home energy use, your travel, your train travel, airline travel all monitored by international agencies. It’s not the stuff of science fiction.” **

May 21 - 23, 2012: Marc Morano was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). In his speech, Morano raised “concerns” over the fact that some of Mitt Romney’s advisors accepted the mainstream science of climate change. He added that “It’s very frustrating for global warming skeptics when you realize who is the Republican standard bearer right now and how far we’ve come …] We need a president who actually can stand up to this whole global warming brigade.”

DeSmogBlog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland’s ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations.

May 15, 2012: Marc Morano defended the Heartland Institute’s unsuccessful billboard campaign that compared those who believe in man-made climate change to individuals associated with mass murder and terrorism. The billboards featured pictures of Ted Kaczynski, Charles Manson and Fidel Castro next to the text “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” The Heartland Institute was forced to take down the controversial billboards shortly after they were unveiled.

 

[Ender]

But no one should excuse Marc Moreno for his lack of scientific expertise and egregious truth twisting so as to deceive …

Marc Morano from desmogblog.com/marc-morano
Credentials

• B.A., Political Science, George Mason University. [hint: he’s not a climate scientist]
• According to Google Scholar, Marc Morano has never published research in a peer-reviewed journal on any subject. His only education appears to be in political science.

Background…

This is an altogether typical response. When assertions are made with which one disagrees - but apparently cannot refute - it is not the arguments that are challenged, it is the integrity and abilities of the person who made them that are attacked. This is the same approach taken to dismiss the observations of Christopher Monckton, the Homeland Institute, Anthony Watts, Fox News, and pretty much every other source of resistance to AGW.

Here’s the problem: given that Morano is not a climate scientist and who’s “only education appears to be in political science” it should be a simply matter to refute his assertions. After all, he’s not a scientist so how much could he know? On the other hand, if the assertions of non-scientists cannot be refuted then how valid can the theory be?

A statement is either correct or incorrect, and that determination has nothing whatever to do with the personal characteristics of the individual who makes it. If the assertions of scientists cannot withstand even the challenges of non-scientists then the weakness lies with those making the claims, not those who challenge them.

Ender

 

[LeafByNiggle]

This is an altogether typical response. When assertions are made with which one disagrees - but apparently cannot refute - it is not the arguments that are challenged, it is the integrity and abilities of the person who made them that are attacked. This is the same approach taken to dismiss the observations of Christopher Monckton, the Homeland Institute, Anthony Watts, Fox News, and pretty much every other source of resistance to AGW.

Here’s the problem: given that Morano is not a climate scientist and who’s “only education appears to be in political science” it should be a simply matter to refute his assertions. After all, he’s not a scientist so how much could he know? On the other hand, if the assertions of non-scientists cannot be refuted then how valid can the theory be?

A statement is either correct or incorrect, and that determination has nothing whatever to do with the personal characteristics of the individual who makes it. If the assertions of scientists cannot withstand even the challenges of non-scientists then the weakness lies with those making the claims, not those who challenge them.

Ender

Yes, since Morano is not a climate scientist, then his arguments would be easy to refute - if one happens to be a working climate scientist in possession of all the facts that working scientists have. But when the rest of us are presented with a claim that we have no way of directly verifying from our own personal or professional knowledge, we must necessarily look to arguments from evaluation of authority. I know that I have long argued for people looking into things themselves and not trusting any authority. But my appeals have fallen on deaf ears. Or maybe I am just wrong and arguments from authority are the only option for us regular folks. But at some point one gets tired of researching errors in every non-expert claim and it is understandable to look first to the qualifications and motivations of the claimant before treating a claim as a true scientific claim. Morano fails on both counts (qualifications and motivations).