Can any global warming skeptics provide some sort of evidence?

Question

It seems like every global warming skeptic around here makes completely bizarre and incorrect claims with absolutely nothing to support them. We've got people slandering James Hansen with no evidence, we've got people claiming that climate scientists can't agree on the causes of global warming, others who claim they agree it's due to the Sun, etc. etc.

We've got people claiming then Sun is responsible for global warming and then citing papers that say it's responsible for a maximum of 30% of the recent warming. At least that's some scientific evidence, but it doesn't support their arguments.

We've got people claiming that the stratosphere is warming when it's in the middle of an obvious long-term cooling trend. Again, at least it's using scientific data, but that's the closest we get to an argument with valid evidence to support it.

Can any global warming skeptics please make an argument and support it with valid scientific data? I want to argue science, not opinion.

Answer 1

I see that Amancalledchuda is attempting to claim that the stratosphere hasn't cooled and that it has warmed by linking to a website showing that the stratosphere has actually cooled.



Chuda provides us with this link:



http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#figures



And claims that "1) The stratosphere is above where CO2 ‘lives’ in the atmosphere. If increasing levels of CO2 are absorbing more and more reflected infra red radiation (i.e. heat) then this infra red radiation is not reaching (and warming) the stratosphere. If less and less heat (infra red radiation) reaches the stratosphere, then the stratosphere should get colder.



For the last decade or more, CO2 has continued to rise, but the stratosphere has not cooled. (See the final graph on this page… .......Thus, the stratosphere is behaving as if CO2 were not causing any warming."



You should pay attention to which RSS product you are talking about. TLS is RSS's code for the stratospheric retrieval, and if you look at figure 6, on the website you've shown us, you can see that figure 6 shows resounding cooling. This is exactly in line with predictions. You ought to make a correction on this point.



For more information regarding the equatorial troposphere discrepancy you should look at the report which investigates this:



http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf



Based on that report, from scientists (and not Monckton), I'm not sure it's OK to make the claim that "the atmosphere is behaving as if greenhouse gasses were not causing warming."



Thank you for now realising that the MSU isn't much use for comparisons to Hansen's model. However, you've linked to Monckton's critique of Hansen's model which seems pretty bizarre to me i.e. he presents a graph that appears to show matching model and observational trends when discussing scenarios B and C. He's also used NCDC, which seems to be fairly selective given that there are other datasets out there. Curious too that he completely neglects to either consider the trends (remember my points regarding this in theother threads) or what the real forcings were. For an honest and comprehensive comparison between data and models you should look at the real climate comparison here:



http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/



Take a look, you should see that if you consider both the error estimates upon the observational trends and upon the model error estimates then they do match up, even if you use the surface+ocean and met stations data (the former is similar to NCDC). You can also see that the real forcings lie somewhere between B and C, which is something Monckton fails to even consider.



Chuda then claims that there has been no trend in temperature in the last 5 years. This is yet another bizarre claim with no basis in fact. If you want to convince me, or others, it would help if you actually linked to the data you're talking about. Try this:



http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig_E.lrg.gif



or this:



http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif



or this:



http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/lsst.jpg



you can see that your claim has no basis in fact. If you draw a trend line through the data then you get a clear warming trend continuing through the most recent 5 years. The only way you can arrive at your claim is to play "disingenous baseline games", or, in other words to cherry pick a start point such as 1998 or 2005 (i.e. warm years) and then look it's cooler now. I made it explicitly clear in other threads that it's not scientifically sound to do this, and you agreed, and yet you still make this unsupportable claim.



CO2 isn't rising that much quicker now than it has done in at least the last 20 years. This may change, but it hasn't yet:



http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/



To answer Dana's question, yes, they can provide evidence of a sort but it tends not to be scientific evidence and more likely sourced from some think tank or right wing policy group e.g. CEI, SPPI etc. See the examples in Chuda's post above, 3 links, two of which are to SPPI, and the remaining one is to a genuine scientific source, but it was apparently accidentally mispresented because it wasn't thoroughly investigated.

Answer 2

Not a chance!

When you mention "science" you mean, like Physics or Chemistry with equations and a history of growth and solving problems, the kind of stuff "skeptics", as you kindly put it, know nothing about.

You see, it is all personal. It is as if someone told you something bad about a dear and close relative, of course you would not believe whatever is said, neither would I.

During WWII, many saldiers bet their lives that their sacrifice would turn the war around and their side would win. That was true for soldiers of BOTH sides. Such stubborn conviction helps win wars. Remember, Global Warming implies our grandchildren will be in an Earth hotter than the ovens in Auschwitz! Nobody would want to believe that horrible idea, not willfully and they are supposed to learn science to come to believe that? Who is crazy, anyway?



We all are reluctant to accept change or accept there is something we do not know. For over a century, people said they believe Columbus sailed across the Atlantic to PROVE the Earth was round. In fact, in his library he had a book based on translations of an Egyptian book with the radius, in cubits, of the Earth's circumference.

Ops, I almost forgot, Egyptian Geodesy, Science of Earth dimensions, was more accurate than anyone had even as late as 1950 -believe it or not, has to do with satellites. Of course, our Geodesy is now superior to that of Ancient Egyptians.

Yet, all people I have met tell me that they learnt in high school that people thought the earth flat and that is why Columbus sailed "the ocean blue". They will not accept this is false. A sense of superiority? I don't know.

But, it is clearly a question for psychologists. Do they want to prove they are important because they know something is true that great scientists consider false? I don't know.



Suppose they went along with scientists, would they have something to say? Would anybody pay attention to what they would say? I don't know and I also don't know what would they say in positive terms. What do they believe is True?

Which is, I take it, your question. If they were to say something they believe is a true fact proves there is NO Global Warming, the explanation could start, but first we must have a common truth and we don't.



A second requirement is "reasonableness". They could say "I don't know" over and over and over, regardless what they hear. Yes, I am convinced it is a question for psychologists, not for Earth Scientists. But, it is being addressed. The pseudo-explanations I mentioned here, I read them somewhere else. Where? I don't remember.

Answer 3

Bob said:

"How do we know it's not a Milankovic cycle now? Simple. They occur regularly every 100,000 years or so, and the last one ended the last serious Ice Age 20,000 years ago. We're not due for another 80,000 years."



I just couldn't let this go unanswered. This is utter nonsense. We have been coming out of a glacial period for somewhere around 10,000 years. It has been warming since then. We are nearing the time when we will slowly proceed into another glacial period unless we are saved by our CO2 emissions (just kidding). Seriously, we are nearing that period. I am a geological engineer so reading graphs is pretty simple to me. In the bottom graph on the attached link, remember that now is to the left and past is to the right. In addition, 1000 K is a million. It clearly shows that we are in a trend of warming and are nearing the top of the peak. We will then begin a much slower trend of cooling according to the pattern.

Answer 4

The most simple, the most obvious, and the most convincing arguement against the co2 forcing theory is that scientists cannot predict the weather for tomorrow.



This proves that their weather prediction models do not account for all factors.



It proves that their models will only work when they know the outcome. For example, I can develop a computer program that will predict the numbers up until the last draw, but I can't predict what the new numbers will be.

Answer 5

"Be glad to. As soon as you explain to me how the last Ice Age ended."



OK. The last Ice Age ended when cycles of increased solar radiation (Milankovich cycles) caused warming on Earth.



Milutin Milankovic, "Canon of Insolation and the Ice Age Problem" is the recognized work.



How do we know it's not a Milankovic cycle now? Simple. They occur regularly every 100,000 years or so, and the last one ended the last serious Ice Age 20,000 years ago. We're not due for another 80,000 years.



Even more simple. The cycles do not cause warming mysteriously. They increase solar radiation in an easily measurable way. That's not happening:



"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880



http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf



News article at:



http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0711-sun.html



Your turn.



EDIT - jim z. Look at your own graph, ALL of it. It proves the opposite. We've passed the peak and should be headed down. 2 of 3 Milankovic factors are headed down. The key line is "solar forcing". And it's headed down. As this paper shows:



"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880



http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf



News article at:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm

Answer 6

No need for it, skeptics follow the evidence and the evidence is that global warming is happening and that we are causing it through release of CO2.



Anyone who doesn't accept that evidence is not a skeptic and should not ever be called one.

Answer 7

Watching tv is simpler but I enjoy reading literature more

Answer 8

while reading a written book, you're stimulating your brain. You increase your reading and literacy skills and you in the process, become more literate. Despite having today's modern tools, you need to be in a position to read still.

While watching t.v. can be good fun, it isn't doing anything to your brain.

Answer 9

Only an opinion here. Sorry! Yeah, I have concern. So I just want to say GREED on the part of giants (oil or whatever) is the problem and we know they're rich enough to buy the best lawyers and PR people to make "us" think all is well. The media will report anything. The green-peace movement, for example, has received detrimental coverage on their activities while the sly ones keep doing what they do - getting richer by the minute.

Answer 10

ONCE AGAIN, YOU DID NOT READ THE BOOKS, YOU READ REVIEWS ON THEM BY ALARMISTS LIKE YOU!



THERE IS NO END TO YOUR PATRONAZING AND CONDESCENDING ATTITUDE. MORONS LIKE YOU ONLY DESERVE TO BE IGNORED!



As soon as you finish reading the following 4 books, which provide ample evidence against the man-made global warming fanaticism and hysteria. I have provided plenty of evidence and information, but you only care to listen to yourself.



Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years by Dennis T. Avery and S. Fred Singer (Paperback - Feb 1, 2007)



Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media by Patrick J. Michaels



Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death, Ronald Bailey (Hardcover)



The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg



I suggest people stop wasting their time answering your pointless, arrogant and idiotic questions to feed your overinflated ego, and find Yahoo users who are honestly trying to find out the truth about man-made global warming and climate change, which you could never provide. Your pointless and argumentative questions are a waste of time to everyone involved.

Answer 11

One bit is models never show the geothermal energy flux. It must change position during a cycle of some kind and this would have a vital influence which most people choose not to consider for some reason or another.

Answer 12

Be glad to. As soon as you explain to me how the last Ice Age ended. Or why 30 years ago the environmentalists were screaming that we were going to be in the middle of a new one(ice age) by the year 2000. Sorry, man, not a lot of hard science on either side. Global warming is a theory. No hard proof of cause shown. A theory is only a theory until it's proven.

Answer 13

The proof is in the glacier meltdowns and the shrinking of the polar ice caps. Satellite pictures show proof positive of that.

Answer 14

Want proof?



Take a canoe trip through the Canadian Arctic.



Or, ask all those sailors on the American and Russian submarines sleuthing around the Canadian Arctic.

Answer 15

since they don't have any hard science to back up their claims, they make their entire argument based on small uncertanties from thousands of different studies. When thousands of studies indicate one thing with high certainty and few opposing studies can do no better than 50% certainty? i know were im putting my money.

Answer 16

All the believers have are scientific evidence and pictures. Everyone knows that can be faked...just like the moon landing.

Sheesh.

Answer 17

Go to www.co2science.org, or the many many other sites quoted many many times by many many skeptics.



The co2science site actually uses emperical temperature data taken from our official data collection sites. Has some very good questions.

Answer 18

http://www.lyricsdomain.com/2/bruce_springsteen/reason_to_believe.html



Don't beat your head flat on this topic. :-) The people who need to understand it are starting to figure it out.

Answer 19

1) The stratosphere is above where CO2 ‘lives’ in the atmosphere. If increasing levels of CO2 are absorbing more and more reflected infra red radiation (i.e. heat) then this infra red radiation is not reaching (and warming) the stratosphere. If less and less heat (infra red radiation) reaches the stratosphere, then the stratosphere should get colder.



For the last decade or more, CO2 has continued to rise, but the stratosphere has not cooled. (See the final graph on this page… http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#figures )



Thus, the stratosphere is behaving as if CO2 were not causing any warming.





2) The computer models predict that warming from greenhouse gasses should cause a ‘hot spot’ of temperature rise, generally over the equator, at an altitude of about 8 – 12 km. However, there has been a total lack of evidence of such a ‘hot spot’ in the observed data. (See… http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/whatgreenhouse/moncktongreenhousewarming.pdf )



Thus, the atmosphere is behaving as if greenhouse gasses were not causing warming.





3) In 1988 James Hansen made predictions of future climate change based on three scenarios. Observed global temperature since then shows warming that seems to be following his ‘Scenario C’. But ‘Scenario C’ predicted that the rise in CO2 would decline after 1989 and would stop completely in 2000. (See graphic on page 14 of this… http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf )



Thus, observed warming is behaving as a top climate scientist predicted it would if the rise in CO2 stopped in 2000 - which it hasn’t, of course.



(As an aside, you’ll notice that I am no longer comparing Hansen’s predictions with observed MSU satellite data, since Paul H correctly pointed out that this was an ‘apples to oranges’ comparison. Thus I can admit when I’m wrong – something that you, as a zealot, can never do, dana.)



4) Most global temperature data sets show that there has been no warming for the last five years.



Thus, at a time when we are being lead to believe that CO2 levels are rising faster than ever – China, for example, is opening a new coal fired power station every week - warming has currently stopped.







So, what does all this prove? Well, actually nothing *conclusively*, but it certainly makes you think, doesn’t it?



Given that experts are predicting that the Sun is entering a ‘quiet’ period that may cause its output to decline over the next decade or so, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.



Remember that the alarmists - such as you, dana - will have us believe that 80 – 90% of the warming is caused by mankind and that the Sun’s effect is irrelevant compared to that. If we *do* see cooling over the next decade, it sort of blows that out of the water, doesn’t it?



I’m sure you’ll come up with a cunning plan to explain it though.



As ever with global warming - don't believe the hype.



:::EDIT:::



In response to Paul H…



Stratospheric cooling. Figure 7, which I referred to, also shows a cooling trend over the entire length of the data, and I don’t dispute that, but you’ve completely ignored the point that I was making: I was clearly referring to the last 12 years of data that show no trend whatsoever. Thus you are using a strawman argument. You ought to make a correction on this point.



As another aside, I note with interest that the *only* cooling on the TLS graph seems to be as a result of volcanic activity. The period between the start of the graph and the first volcanic incident is too short to establish any trend. Then we have the El Chichon eruption and when ‘normal service is resumed’ after this event temperatures have dropped significantly. We then have a period of no trend from approx ’84 to ’91 before we arrive at the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. We emerge from that event in around ’94 with again, a temperature drop, but since then we have again had no trend. Now, I’m no expert, but this seems to suggest that the apparent cooling trend of the lower stratosphere seems to be something to do with those volcanic eruptions, because there is no trend at all outside of those events. It’s just a personal observation and I’m sure it’s been discussed somewhere. Do you have a link by any chance?



“Based on that report, from scientists (and not Monckton)…” don’t go there Paul. By that logic, I should ignore the report you quote *because* it was quoted by you. Don’t criticise Monckton because he’s not a scientist, he’s not doing the research, he is simply quoting it, as you are. Attacking the messenger, not the message, is a typical GWA tactic, so, as I said, don’t go there.



WRT to report you referenced, it says…



“Many new model simulations of the climate of the 20th century have been carried out using improved climate models and better estimates of past forcing changes, and numerous new and updated comparisons between model and observed data have been performed.”



When I read this I was reminded of the old point that, if you have enough monkeys and enough time, they will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Using more and more “new and improved” computer models does not make for good science.



The report goes on to state…



“The majority of these data sets show warming at the surface that is greater than in the troposphere. Some of these data sets, however, show the opposite - tropospheric warming that is greater than that at the surface. Thus, due to the considerable disagreements between tropospheric data sets, it is not clear whether the troposphere has warmed more than or less than the surface.”



And…



“The most recent climate model simulations give a range of results for changes in global-average temperature. Some models show more warming in the troposphere than at the surface, while a slightly smaller number of simulations show the opposite behavior.”



*Conclusive* stuff indeed! Amazingly they then claim that…



“There is no fundamental inconsistency among these model results and observations at the global scale.”



So, the models all say different things, but they are *consistent*? I must be getting old, because I don’t understand that at all.



You say that you’re not sure it’s OK to make my claim, but you’d have to agree that there is uncertainty, wouldn’t you? Thus, the debate is *not* over, as the GWAs, such as the asker of this question, would have us believe.



Hansen’s predictions. I linked to Monckton’s paper, because I had the link at hand. Here is a link to a GWA site that shows exactly the same result (http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/08/climate_fraudit.php ) Typically (being GWAs) they claim that “Hansen’s scenarios B and C have turned out to be very good predictions of what actually happened.” Er? Are they blind? As far as I can see, the observed temperature line on their graph is clearly following Hansen’s scenario C – which, to remind you, assumed that the rise is CO2 would stop 7 years ago. Am I misreading the graph, or something? It seems very clear to me.



Monckton is actually being very generous to Hansen by using the NCDC data since both GHCN and HadCRUT3 show even *less* recent warming than NCDC. (Neither of them show 2005 as warmer than 1998, for example).



I’m afraid I am dubious of all references to realclimate.org, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this question, and I am not surprised that they ‘miraculously’ show Hansen’s predictions to be accurate, but then, as the author readily admits, Hansen is his boss, so do you really think that realclimate.org is a reliable witness on this subject? If you do, then you are a more trusting (or should that be gullible?) person than I.



Thus, I stand by my statement that observed temperature is doing what Hansen predicted it would do, if the rise in CO2 stopped in 2000 – which it hasn’t.





Recent temperature: Both of your first two links are to the GISS data set, which is of course Hansen’s data, and is, in my view, therefore suspect. Your third link is… well, I don’t actually know what that is.



I prefer to use HadCRUT3 (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/temperatures/hadley.jsp ) because it’s British :) or indeed the MSU Satellite data (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/temperatures/msu.jsp ) both of which show no trend since 2002. Does four years of trendless data prove anything? No, of course not, as I clearly stated above, but the point is: all the above shows that there is *uncertainty* - something that the GWAs refuse to accept exists.



If you were a betting man, how much money would you put on the prediction that we’re facing a catastrophe as a result of global warming? And if you’re not prepared to put your money where your mouth is, it demonstrates that you’re not *sure*. And if we’re not sure, then the GW hypothesis is not proved.



In 30 years, I suspect that it’ll be people like myself and Monckton who are closer to the truth than the likes of Dana and Hansen.



And when people like me are saying that the latest ‘big problem’ facing the world of the 2030s is “just like that rubbish they were going on about years ago regarding GW”, the danas of that time will say “Oh, nobody really believed GW was a problem. It was just a few vocal scientists saying that. Most scientists agreed it was going to be a problem” – just as dana *is* saying about the global cooling scare of the 1970s.



Time will tell, my friend, time will tell.

Answer 20

Yes ,

http://newsbusters.org/node/10604......



http://sermons.trbc.org/20070225_11am.ht...



http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/mar...



http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.ph...



http://allthingsconservative.t...



http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story...



http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/...



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht...



http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...