Then, as stated, I shall not bother with them.

For balance, TS, please post links to peer-reviewed - not news - articles that support your claim that there is a consensus that the most significant cause of climate change is man-made [edit] and that this question is a closed/dead one [/edit].

We'll leave any hyperbole, alarmism, news media, politics, and perceptions of one's dignity out of the discussion and strictly go with the science.

Excellent.

This is only a first step and by no means a complete analysis, but it suggests what I'm talking about. I went to Nature online and did a search using the words "climate change" and the included search engine and got this result:

Search results : climate change : Nature

I browsed the summaries and abstracts of the first 100 articles, and divided them into articles that explicitly or implicitly support AGW, those that call it into question, and those that are dealing with unrelated (or marginally related) questions such as geologically ancient climate change. If an article was dealing with the probably or possible consequences of global warming but did not approach the causes of the phenomenon itself, I put it in the unrelated column, since the reality of global warming is agreed to at this point by just about everyone and the only political dispute remaining is over the cause. If it was dealing with political action needed to solve the problem, I put it in the favoring column.

I found 47 articles that explicitly or implicitly supported AGW, and 53 that were neutral. I found none at all which called the hypothesis into question.

I've performed similar searches in other journals with approximately the same result: many articles affirming AGW, somewhat more that are studies of geologically ancient climate change or otherwise have nothing to do with AGW, and none opposing.

Please feel free to examine the articles yourself and check me out here, or, as you said, to present abstracts of other articles that you are familiar with which do call the hypothesis into question. You also said you will not be able to do that until Monday, so I won't expect it until then.

Great. I did say Monday, and it will be then, unless something comes up at work. Regardless, I am sure it will happen before the end of the week.

I will browse your Nature searches, however, it would be helpful if your alalysis only dealt with articles from Nature that you you have pared to a subset of those that support your claim that there is a consensus and the question is a dead one; ie. it is no longer a valid scientific question as to the most significant cause of climate change. Only the articles in this journal are peer-reviewed.

My ultimate point is to demonstrate that stifling open scientific discussion, via marginalization, hyperbole, alarmism, politics, etc. leads to the ultimate morphing of a field into something that no longer resembles science. I want my agenda to be perfectly transparent.

as an answer to the topic question- here ya go, we are to busy attempting to bury ourselves in uber micro mgt...this gives me the shivers....talk about big brother..whst next? How often I can fill my pool, or a gov. regulated thermostat ( which is on the boks in cali. in 2012)....


The Lawnmower Men
July 19, 2008; Page A8
Al Gore blew into Washington on Thursday, warning that "our very way of life" is imperiled if the U.S. doesn't end "the carbon age" within 10 years. No one seriously believes such a goal is even remotely plausible. But if you want to know what he and his acolytes think this means in practice, the Environmental Protection Agency has just published the instruction manual. Get ready for the lawnmower inspector near you.

In a huge document released last Friday, the EPA lays out the thousands of carbon controls with which they'd like to shackle the whole economy. Central planning is too artful a term for the EPA's nanomanagement. Thankfully none of it has the force of law -- yet. However, the Bush Administration has done a public service by opening this window on new-wave green thinking like Mr. Gore's, and previewing what Democrats have in mind for next year.

The mess began in 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Mass. v. EPA that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants" under current environmental laws, despite the fact that the laws were written decades before the climate-change panic. The EPA was ordered to regulate if it decides that carbon emissions are a danger to the public. The 588-page "advance notice of proposed rulemaking" lays out how the EPA would like it to work in practice.

Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his dissent that under the Court's "pollutant" standard "everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies," which the EPA appears to have taken literally. It is alarmed by "enteric fermentation in domestic livestock" -- that is, er, their "emissions." A farm with over 25 cows would exceed the EPA's proposed carbon limits. So would 500 acres of crops, due to harvesting and processing machinery.

But never fear. The EPA would regulate "farm tractors" too, plus "lawn and garden equipment." For example, it "could require a different unit of measure [for carbon emissions] tied to the machine's mission or output -- such as grams per kilogram of cuttings from a 'standard' lawn for lawnmowers."

In fact, the EPA has new mandates for everything with an engine. There's a slew of auto regulations, especially jacking up fuel-efficiency standards well beyond their current levels, and even controlling the weight and performance of cars and trucks. Carbon rules are offered for "dirt bikes and snowmobiles." Next up: Nascar.

The EPA didn't neglect planes and trains either, down to rules for how aircraft can taxi on the runway. Guidelines are proposed for boat design such as hulls and propellers. "Innovative strategies for reducing hull friction include coatings with textures similar to marine animals," the authors chirp. They also suggest "crew education campaigns" on energy use at sea. Fishermen will love their eco-sensitivity training.

New or modified buildings that went over the emissions limits would have to obtain EPA permits. This would cover power plants, manufacturers, etc. But it would also include "large office and residential buildings, hotels, large retail establishments and similar facilities" -- like schools and hospitals. The limits are so low that they would apply to "hundreds of thousands" of sources, as the EPA itself notes. "We expect that the entire country would be in nonattainment."

If this power grab wasn't enough, "EPA also believes that . . . it might be possible for the Agency to consider deeper reductions through a cap-and-trade program." The EPA thinks it can levy a carbon tax too, as long as it's called a "fee." In other words, the EPA wants to impose via regulatory ukase what Congress hasn't been able to enact via democratic debate.

That's why the global warmists have so much invested in the EPA's final ruling, which will come in the next Administration. Any climate tax involves arguments about costs and benefits; voting to raise energy prices is not conducive to re-election. But if liberals can outsource their policies to the EPA, they can take credit while avoiding any accountability for the huge economic costs they impose.

Meanwhile, the EPA's career staff is unsupervised. In December, they went ahead and made their so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon, deputizing themselves as the rulers of the global-warming bureaucracy. The adults in the White House were aghast when they saw the draft. EPA lifers retaliated by leaking the disputes of the standard interagency review process to Democrats like Henry Waxman and sympathetic reporters. Thus the stations-of-the-cross media narrative about "political interference," as if the EPA's careerists don't have their own agenda. So the Administration performed triage by making everything transparent.

At least getting the EPA on the record will help clarify the costs of carbon restrictions. Democrats complaining about "censorship" at the EPA are welcome to defend fiats about lawnmowers and flatulent cows.

The Lawnmower Men - WSJ.com

__________________

"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Excuse me, but I seem not to have made myself clear. In no way was I suggesting that this is not an appropriate question for science. To my view, any question that can be expressed in operational terms and answered with falsifiable hypotheses is a valid question for science. If someone finds evidence tomorrow that -- for example -- the biosphere includes a rapid correcting mechanism capable of absorbing all the greenhouse gases we can put into the atmosphere before any climatic effects can occur, and that consequently all of the measured effects are due to other causes, then that should obviously not be silenced.

I completely agree with your second paragraph. However, I would also say that the greater distorting effect has come from those who are opposed to AGW, not from those in favor.

All I was saying was that there seems to be a general agreement among scientists in the field and that it is no longer being actively questioned. As a matter of principle, I feel very strongly that science should not be censored. On this, I'm sure we agree.

OK. I obviously misunderstood your comment that the question is a dead one.

There is hyperbole on both sides. Who has had the greater effect is pretty irrelevant as the damage is already done. The best I hope for is to keep the discussion open, civil, and accurate. I am glad we agree on these things.

An appetizer: These guys don't think the "consensus" is a slam-dunk:

SpringerLink - Journal Article
SpringerLink - Journal Article
ScienceDirect - Earth and Planetary Science Letters : Reconstruction of temperature in the Central Alps during the past 2000 yr from a δ18O stalagmite record
SpringerLink - Journal Article
More to come this week.

Those are interesting, Si modo, but none of them actually challenge the ideas of AGW. The first one seems to be talking about interacting temperature cycles and predicting the possibility of a short-term cooling trend over the next 20 years in spite of AGW, but it accepts AGW as the "trend" referenced. The second seems to be talking about effects of temperature increase on the release of CO2, which effect is real but it's hard to see the relevance. The third is a study of historic climate change irrelevant to the current situation. The fourth involves calibration of predictions of global warming based on the greenhouse effect and a challenge to certain predictions that have been made, without actually calling AGW itself into question.

Another one demonstrating that the models are not close to supporting the alarmism:
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

[edit] Link to article on the journal's site: Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system [/edit]

That claim of a "consesus", with no significant dissent, is looking rock-solid right now.

Do focus. Your claim that AGW is a "dead question" is what is being challenged along with any claim of a consensus. I do dislike repeating myself.

As I said before, "If you refuse to read it you will be no better than the Church Fathers who refused to even look through Galileo's telescope. If you lack the courage to defend your position, its pretty obvious why."

If you watched Al Gore's fauxumentary A Convenient Lie and believed in his "hockey stick graph" then you believe in discredited and flawed research. That graph is by Michael Mann and based on his research. Gore used it in his film to prove the rise of global temperature, and it was also featured in the UN Third Assessment Report in 2001. Crichton explains the story of how the truth came out and how flawed Mann's research and graph were. Crichton goes on to explain how poorly the methodology of climate science is carried out today. Now, I can only assume you have no problem relying on faulty research. Those who refuse to stand up to defend their beliefs either have none or are a coward.

tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

You're using a book of fiction to discount scientific research? And you have a problem with using a documentary in an argument?


Puleeze........

__________________
He who learns but does not think is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger. --Confucius

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
--African proverb

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
--Albert Einstein

Ah Puleeze pay attention.

These are not fiction or from a book of fiction:
MichaelCrichton.com | The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming
Is the text of a speech Crichton gave at the National Press Club in Washington DC, on January 25, 2005.

MichaelCrichton.com | Environmentalism as Religion
Is the text of a speech he gave at the Commonwealth Club, in San Francisco, CA, on September 15, 2003

MichaelCrichton.com | Complexity Theory and Environmental Management
Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy, in Washington DC, on
November 6, 2005

MichaelCrichton.com | Testimony before the United States Senate
US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, in Washington, DC, on September 28, 200

MichaelCrichton.com | Science Policy in the 21st Century
Joint Session AEI-Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, January 25, 2005

Not one of these are a work of fiction. Puleeze refrain from claiming Crichton is "just a novelist." Saying that Michael Crichton is just a fiction writer is like claiming that Arthur C. Clark is just a science fiction writer.

Michael "attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude in 1964.[3] Crichton was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970." Michael Crichton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

Clark and Crichton are both just fiction writers. Although Clark had some integrity.

Andrew

__________________
“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen