When people make the argument that global warming can't be true because the climate is cyclical, are they ...?

Question

implying that they believe any degree of warming or cooling would be ok?

When they say that man made global warming can't be true because the sun is the major force behind climate, are they implying that they believe there are no other variables that influence climate?

When they each support their statements with the same links to op-eds and youtube videos or websites like drroyspencer and almost never any actual science, are they admitting they can't find any hard science to support their crusade?

When they attack al gore and use other ad hominems as their rhetoric instead of scientific data, are they sidestepping the issue because (again) they have no actual scientific data to begin with?

Lastly, why do cons say it's arrogant for man to assume that humans can play any major role in climate (despite well-documented phenomenon like acid rain and eutrophication), yet don't find it arrogant to assume that an uneducated (in climatology) laymen like themselves could be correct and EVERY major scientific organization be wrong?

Answer 1

Some educational reading for you



http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

Report to the American Physical Society (real science)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements

Hard science data from satellites



And sorry but the data offer in Al Gore's propaganda film is flawed, very flawed, it has been shown that they disregarded data which did not support the conclusions they had already come to.



Are you aware that the temperature of the earth is currently dropping, The ice pack in the Antartica is growing? And that Carbon in the atmosphere goes up after a rise in temperature not before. Oh yeah and even those Who believe in global warming their own data proves that the ground temperature has not changed since 1989?



Read the science, there is no consenous. unless you want to count those scientist who are receiving government research monies and have been told to get on board the global warming bandwagon if they want o keep that funding. IS this science, I think not.

Answer 2

"Why do climate change deniers base trends off comparisons to arbitrary years? Doesn't a trend by definition look at the big picture? According to their logic, if we compare current data to the arbitrary year 1998, the data yields a cooling "trend." If we compare it to 1999, it yields a warming "trend." You don't base trends off comparisons between two years. Clearly you don't understand science very well..."



Using an anomalous super el Nino (1998) as a starting point is something a crooked lawyer or political spinmaster would do. This goes to show you that so-called "climate skeptics" make better lawyers and politicians than scientists.



All good questions here. I also think it's incredibly arrogant to believe that humans can spew millions of years of carbon into the atmosphere in such a relatively short period of time and have nothing happen. That's also the height of ignorance.



KMcG,



Your article is not representative of the APS. Note the disclaimer:



"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review, since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: "Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."



The author is a journalist, not a scientist. He's never published any scientific study on the topic.

Answer 3

Here's why global warming could not be caused strictly by humans. Most of the planets in our solar system experienced the same warming trends as we are seeing on Earth. So how can SUV's and CO2 be causing global warming on Mars? The only culprit is the sun. It says man made a small contribution to the greenhouse gases, but since when does carbon dioxide a bad thing when all the plants in the world need it to survive? Isn't the carbon released from oil the same carbon from fossilized plants from millions of years ago? So aren't we essentially just continuing a vast recycling of the same carbon?



The data that is referred to by Al Gore and other GW alarmist comes from most of the ground based weather stations that are skewed by the building activity around them. A weather station gets placed in a meadow in the 1960's to record air temperatures is now surrounded by an airport and tarmac.



Check out the links and continue to refuse to accept the truth and even if your nose is rubbed into hard facts, resort to name calling. By the way, what ever happened to the coming ice age of the 1970's? The Ozone hole in the 1980's? Greenhouse gases? El Nino? Acid rain? Y2K? All the same "experts" that warned us about those are the same ones warning us about global warming.



Don't just look at the last 10 or 20 or 100 hundred years, look at the last several thousands of years.

Answer 4

I think people in Global Warming section are way fanatic and cynical that they just don't believe that our Earth could face some major climate change, they won't give you straight answer, they will twist each and every words. I suggest you to look another forum for discussing.. But one thing i can't understand about the answerer here, if they are too cynical about GB, then why hang out in the GB section, right? :)

Answer 5

As a skeptic, I argue that global warming and climate chage are cyclical simply because THEY ARE!



Somehow, "scientists" who are opining on the cyclicity or lack thereof, want to look at a 150 year period as being apart from, a larger cycle. Those 150 years are like a snapshot or flash compared to the movie camera that is the geological record! These cycles, even the very small subcycles are about 70,000 years and are suprimposed on bigger cycles of anwhere between 5,000,00 years and 30 million years. In sedimentology, they are referred to as 1st, 2nd , 3rd and 4th Order Sequence Boundaries. They repoeat over and over for 500 million years and beyond. These "warming scientists" want to look at 150-1000 years??



Dana: Nobody who argues cyclicity, except maybe your 5 year old daughter, argues that AGW is not possible based on the argument of historical cyclicity. They argue that probability is simply isn't reflectd by the historical record. The sea mostly rises through time, the sedimentological record (or more precisely the diastem or lack of preserved record) shows that sea level dropping or glaciation phases (by proxy) are of much shorter duration. We had a very major 85-145 meter (278-500 foot) drop just 11,000 years ago. What do you think is going to happen over the next 60,000 years (on average)? The simple fact is that at any given point in time, sea level will be rising at a level higher than today, with a 90%+ probability. Nothing at all to do with AGW! How can scientist now then say that they are 95% certain that AGW is the dominant mechanism?

Answer 6

"When they say that man made global warming can't be true because the sun is the major force behind climate, are they implying that they believe there are no other variables that influence climate?"



The term for this kind of fallacy is "false dichotomy". The way it is applied in the climate change debate is often, roughly: "either CO2 is driving climate, or it's the Sun", the false implication being that it can not be both.

Answer 7

That's an 'Emperors New Clothes' type proof in that a lot of people say it's true, so that proves it's true. In fact a lot of scientific organisations don't say global warming is real, they just say that the IPCC says human made global warming is probably significant.



Significant human made global warming goes against anything that can be proven with basic physics and instead relies on all kinds of abitrary factors and feedback effects.



Proofs tend to go along the lines of 'we don't know what causes climate change, so it's probably CO2' or The climate models have an 0.2 degree discrepancy for the last century so we estimate that humans have changed the climate by 0.2 degrees. These are not convincing arguments for anyone that is not already convinced.

Answer 8

The worst part about this argument is that it's just so obviously logically flawed. The argument is nothing more than "x caused y in the past, therefore only x can cause y." My favorite analogy is okay then since forest fires were always caused by natural factors in the past, I guess you're arguing that humans can't cause forest fires? I mean really, a 5-year-old should be able to see the logical flaw in this argument. And that's entirely what it's based on. It's not based on any modern data - it's solely a historical argument.



They don't cite scientific sources because they don't have any to cite. There are virtually no peer-reviewed papers which support their positions.

http://norvig.com/oreskes.html



That's the same reason they resort to ad hominem attacks. It's a classic debate tactic when you're being out-argued and the facts aren't on your side, you attack the person making the argument.



The argument that it's arrogant to think that people can influence the global climate is just a small-minded and self-centered argument. They think "I'm too small to influence the climate, therefore all people must be too small."



Thinking that ignorant laymen know more than the scientific experts is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Answer 9

Climate change deniers are just bible college graduates. That's where their so called "scientists" come from too. They get their information from the creationists discovery institute. Oh yes, Rush Limbaugh too.

Answer 10

The leftists are claiming that that climate was stable until humans happened along. One of their main arguments is that idiotic hockey stick graph that tried to revise the climate record and say it was static until humans came along. Now that it stopped warming, they claim it is just natural variation. They want it both ways. The fact is that it is variable and nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Significant human caused warming is a fairytale from a doomsday cult with the scientific credibility of late night psychics. No offense to late night psychics intended.

Answer 11

"When they each support their statements with the same links to op-eds and youtube videos or websites like drroyspencer and almost never any actual science, are they admitting they can't find any hard science to support their crusade?"



Hmmmm....exactly WHO is it that has no hard science to support their crusade??

Answer 12

Just what measured the temp. Do U think they were calibrated? The small themp change could just be errors.

Then the earths average temp.How do U balance your averages .There are probably more temp sample points in the warm area than in the cold.This would make it look like the temp was hotter.

Answer 13

Thank you for posting your question, V for Venn Diagram. I would think that global warming is primarily because the Earth is moving closer to the sun everyday. Since gravity and inertia are both forces, they are making the Earth revolve around the Sun, but gravity is pulling the Earth toward the Sun.