Thread: Ways to Tell Global Warming Is A Hoax

Originally Posted by Kijana

It would be nice if someone who believes anthropogenic warming is not occurring could present research that backs their case. Just a single peer reviewed article.

It must be a conspiracy (of epic proportions).

You're pretty unlikely to find such a paper and it's almost certainly not going to appear in any reputable peer-reviewed journal.

How exactly would one go about writing a paper that proves a negative and then convince one's peers to review it?

You'd prolly get laughed at.

You could look for some real science though (which is not to say that pro-AGW research isn't science, just that the paper you're asking for specifically isn't).

Ordinarially you'd assume the null and then formulate alternative hypotheses in hopes of disproving the assumption.

In order to "prove" the null you'd have to eliminate all other hypotheses.

It's pretty clear that in respect to AGW theory there are still plenty of other hypotheses circulating that still recieve a lot of consideration from many highly regarded scientists.

If you've got the time and access to a few scholarly databases you shouldn't have any trouble finding more than your fill of peer reviewed papers that "prove" something other than A is causing GW or which "prove" that existing theories explaining AGW are insufficent.

The best you can say at this point is that AGW has neither been proven nor disproven and I think that's where I come down on the issue (though I'll admit that I'd agree that humans have to have something to do with it, though certainly not everything).

Originally Posted by soot

You're pretty unlikely to find such a paper and it's almost certainly not going to appear in any reputable peer-reviewed journal.

How exactly would one go about writing a paper that proves a negative and then convince one's peers to review it?

You'd prolly get laughed at.

You could look for some real science though (which is not to say that pro-AGW research isn't science, just that the paper you're asking for specifically isn't).

Ordinarially you'd assume the null and then formulate alternative hypotheses in hopes of disproving the assumption.

In order to "prove" the null you'd have to eliminate all other hypotheses.

It's pretty clear that in respect to AGW theory there are still plenty of other hypotheses circulating that still recieve a lot of consideration from many highly regarded scientists.

If you've got the time and access to a few scholarly databases you shouldn't have any trouble finding more than your fill of peer reviewed papers that "prove" something other than A is causing GW or which "prove" that existing theories explaining AGW are insufficent.

The best you can say at this point is that AGW has neither been proven nor disproven and I think that's where I come down on the issue (though I'll admit that I'd agree that humans have to have something to do with it, though certainly not everything).

You are telling me that you cannot find evidence that shows that man is not responsible for warming? How exactly is that proving a negative? There is evidence one way or the other. I don't exactly understand how this is so mystifying.

As for the peer review process, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I have been both an author and a reviewer for journals. You are not told by the editor who your reviewers are. In fact, you have to answer questions posed by your reviewers through the editor. When you are publishing in a seldom studied area, it is possible to figure out who your reviewers are. But, these are papers on climate change which has lots of scientists looking at it, good luck finding out who your reviewers are. And as a reviewer, you want editors to send you manuscripts. So if you a crappy job at trying to poke holes in other people's research, you're not going get the job very often. The editor wants to put out good material so that the journal is well respected, bad or lazy reviewers are the bane of their existence.

And what people fail to realize is that you would be famous if you showed that the science behind global warming was misled. You would win the fucking Nobel prize for that work. That's what happens when a scientist(s) comes along and brings along a new paradigm shift in our understanding. Yet, we are supposed to believe that scientists are keeping all hush hush for research money that is table scraps compared to what you can get from industry. It's friggin ludicrous. You are fooling no one but yourself with that line of shit.

Furthermore, almost all of this data is PUBLIC RECORD. That's right, since much of the data was generated under NSF grants or by governmental agencies, it's public domain. You don't need access to secret databases. You need an internet connection, and since you are on a message board, I'm pretty sure you have one. If you want to look at journals, you have the extra step in some cases of going to a library, preferably one in a university. Since there are well over 100,000 libraries in this country, I'm pretty sure you can find one. You won't have to pay a dime. But Google Scholar can usually find a lot of them for free without you even having to do that.

I understand that there is more to learn about climatology. I am not stating that we know everything by a long shot. But a lot of people on this board are either saying we know nothing (which isn't true) or that it's still nebulous if we have an effect on anything. I'm sorry, there is plenty of research out there that shows this is false. In fact, there is a lot of data out there that shows that we are affecting things. I don't see how one can just gloss over that. It is a fact that there is a wealth of information that points to man playing a pretty key role in the warming that has occurred globally. If it's all a hoax, please explain it to me (without resorting to the illuminati of climatologists, if you can) how these data sets are wrong. That's how our understanding progresses.

I'm sorry for the outburst, but I'm sick to death of conspiracy theories having to be taken seriously. Back up your shit with data, otherwise you are no different that the folks claiming UFOs and Bigfoot exist "because the data is being suppressed". I don't know if its ignorance or arrogance, but it's amazing that people who deny AGW cannot talk about it with data. It's a fact that nearly all of the supposed death knells of AGW presented on this board over the past few years either have nothing to do with research data or are based or arguments that were explained YEARS ago (some decades ago, no joke).

So again, please show me research that claims that man is not to blame for AGW. If it's so obvious, this shouldn't be impossible to do.

Originally Posted by Dick Martin

It has been proved that AGW is happening. Convincing you and other deniers that it is happening is the impossible issue.

Ignorance is easy, but ya can't fix stupid.

I don't think one can accurately call Global Warming a "hoax".

There is clear evidence of climate change, and some reasonable inference that it is at least in part man-made.

However, the problem is that the climate movement, as it were, is being subverted by folks with a political agenda. This is analogous to what happened with Greenpeace a couple decades ago.

Originally Posted by Dick Martin

It has been proved that AGW is happening.

There is no proof the deleterous AWG is happening because of CO2 emmissions. On the contrary, it has been proven that increased CO2 levels are a boon to the biosphere.

Originally Posted by Pikkumyy

Originally Posted by Bottlecap

~snip~ We have normal winters and cold winters, warm summers and hot summers.
If it were as they claim, you would see without them pointing to where you must look.

Yes it is true that there have been warmer and colder eras. It is also debatable what is causing current warming trend. Increasing CO2 levels in atmosphere can be scientifically proved.

Anything can be proven as a matter of opinion (Which is what it amounts to.). Here is where you must look, nothing apparent has ever existed on these global cooling, global warming, nuclear winter, global cooling, ozone depletion, global warming, and climate change movements, everything they tried to prove is under scrutiny and disagreement. One shouldn’t have to prove to the fire department in debate that his house is on fire when the fire dept finds none, labeling them with adverse titles because you have some allegiance to your house being on fire is also nonsensical.

There may also be other factors, like increasing sun activity. Would you like to state what you think is causing the current global scale warming, and also back your hypothesis with links or references to scientific studies?

One or the other, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Not sure where liberals got the idea that in “Oxford style debating” the audience would sit and twiddle there thumbs while one opponent went to the library. If something isn’t true, it will not stand on its own merit under debate, that’s why it’s called a debate and not a “link-a-thon”.
Your world could show me a link that proves “President Bush” was responsible for a heat wave in Europe, please don’t ask me to believe in your world.

In a common sense argument, an understanding would already be needed.
Your never studying this field will leave you dependent on links that you could never connect with your experience to stand up and say, “hey, that’s not right! You simply look for another link that fits your argument better.

If you think there is no global scale warming, you surely can link to some global scale study or database that backs your claims?

Umm I believe if you check, that’s been done 127 times per side in this thread. Lose the link mindset. Geeze, if you don’t know anything about this stuff just keep an open book in front of you or something.

Of course you understand that looking out your window and seeing snow, or watching your favourite news channel talking about winter here and there, does not mean squat on global level, do you not? To observe and understand global scale changes you need global scale studies and data.

Being blinded by “science of direction” forgoing your common sense is not logical, you can not count on science that has an ideology, political or organized allegiance either.
As I stated; a single happening can not be responsible for both cooling and warming except axis alignment with specific geographic test locations. Atmospheric conditions or sunspots can only effect in one phenomenon or another, not both.

Originally Posted by Kijana

You are telling me that you cannot find evidence that shows that man is not responsible for warming? How exactly is that proving a negative? There is evidence one way or the other. I don't exactly understand how this is so mystifying.

Then explain to me how it's done.

How do you prove a negative?

And what people fail to realize is that you would be famous if you showed that the science behind global warming was misled.

Plenty of such pappers exist.

But they don't aim to disprove a negative, they aim, as science should, to disprove an establishhed hypothesis or theory or some segment thereof.

If you want to look at journals, you have the extra step in some cases of going to a library, preferably one in a university. Since there are well over 100,000 libraries in this country, I'm pretty sure you can find one. You won't have to pay a dime. But Google Scholar can usually find a lot of them for free without you even having to do that.

I'm a librarian.

I'm sittting in a library right now.

Thanks for the tip though.



(Note: I LOVE Google Scholar but recognize that it has serious, serious limitations and requires a LOT more work to get something relevant and useful out of than a pproper scholarly database. It's better than nothing, but online access to your local, consortial, or State library's database collection is the better bet and just as accessible as Google given a little preperation which you can do from home.)

I understand that there is more to learn about climatology. I am not stating that we know everything by a long shot. But a lot of people on this board are either saying we know nothing (which isn't true) or that it's still nebulous if we have an effect on anything. I'm sorry, there is plenty of research out there that shows this is false. In fact, there is a lot of data out there that shows that we are affecting things. I don't see how one can just gloss over that. It is a fact that there is a wealth of information that points to man playing a pretty key role in the warming that has occurred globally. If it's all a hoax, please explain it to me (without resorting to the illuminati of climatologists, if you can) how these data sets are wrong. That's how our understanding progresses.

As I said:

The best you can say at this point is that AGW has neither been proven nor disproven and I think that's where I come down on the issue (though I'll admit that I'd agree that humans have to have something to do with it, though certainly not everything).

I'll add to it:

Even if we assume with 100% certainty that humans have contributed something to global warming (and I think we can and should) there is still no clear and incontrivertible proof that humans are totally responsible, that humans contribute the lion's share from among a range of factors, that GW can be reversed by amending human behavior, or that doing so will lead to the end of global warming for good and all.

I'm sorry for the outburst, but I'm sick to death of conspiracy theories having to be taken seriously.

No worries, I've got thick skin.

So again, please show me research that claims that man is not to blame for AGW. If it's so obvious, this shouldn't be impossible to do.

Again, I don't think that's possible scientifically.

All the opposition to AGW theory can do is continue to investigate and offer alternative explanations for some of the conditions that AGW seems to leave lying neatly at the feet of humanity.

And you also need to consider that AGW isn't a single theory but a combination of theories.

You won't find research that disproves all facets of the grand unifed AGW theory any more than you'd find a single paper researching every facet of AGW.

Pick a particular claim that AGW theoroists make and you can probably find one to the contrary.

Originally Posted by Pikkumyy

There may also be other factors, like increasing sun activity. Would you like to state what you think is causing the current global scale warming, and also back your hypothesis with links or references to scientific studies?

Originally Posted by Bottlecap

One or the other, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Not sure where liberals got the idea that in “Oxford style debating” the audience would sit and twiddle there thumbs while one opponent went to the library. If something isn’t true, it will not stand on its own merit under debate, that’s why it’s called a debate and not a “link-a-thon”.
Your world could show me a link that proves “President Bush” was responsible for a heat wave in Europe, please don’t ask me to believe in your world.

In a common sense argument, an understanding would already be needed.
Your never studying this field will leave you dependent on links that you could never connect with your experience to stand up and say, “hey, that’s not right! You simply look for another link that fits your argument better.

Lot of words you have there, nothing about the issue.

Discussion about this kind of phenomenon needs to be based on data, in this case temperature data, otherwise discussion is pointless. Data happens to clearly show that there is a warming trend. If you disagree, point the data that proves your claim.

I know that Sun activity is very low at the moment, but still temperatures are going up. If you disagree with me with these claims, then we need to refer to data and studies to check what is right and what is wrong. Otherwise discussion is just yes-no level bullcrap. That is why I was asking you to enlighten me about what you think is driving cause to this warming, and back your claims with some evidence. That is how science works as you know, if you have ever read one paper of natural sciences in your life. But I guess you have nothing of substance because you had a lengthy talk of nothing. Surely you understand that your words carry as much weight as butterflies fart in Sahara if you can’t back them with anything else than “your common sense says so”.

Originally Posted by Pikkumyy

If you think there is no global scale warming, you surely can link to some global scale study or database that backs your claims?

Originally Posted by Bottlecap

Umm I believe if you check, that’s been done 127 times per side in this thread. Lose the link mindset. Geeze, if you don’t know anything about this stuff just keep an open book in front of you or something.

Lol. There are several links to data sets of global temperatures on this thread. They all show positive trend, I myself have provided some. In case I’ve missed some data showing otherwise, could you please kindly show where this data is so that we all know your are not talking out of your ***. It should be easy for you to provide that data.

Hmm, perhaps it is you who might want to open a book and look at the numbers? Actually I would encourage you to look at least at the chartograms about average temperatures plotted on them with red and blue colours, it is fast and gives a good overall view of temperatures. There are links to them on this very thread.

You know, in science where large amount of statistical data is used and needed to study changes and verify observations, you have to base your claims on this extensive and covering data. Otherwise I could just claim that changes in earth’s climate are caused by candies raining in Venus. You know, I would just use “common sense”. I hope I made my point clear now.

Originally Posted by Bottlecap

As I stated; a single happening can not be responsible for both cooling and warming except axis alignment with specific geographic test locations. Atmospheric conditions or sunspots can only effect in one phenomenon or another, not both.

Climate change is far from a single happening. I don’t know where you got that in your mind. Climate system of the earth is a very complex system where everything affects everything. If you understood even the very basics of how climate works (wind systems like easterlies, westerlies, trade winds etc), you would not claim that rubbish you just did. May I recommend you to go to library and borrow a high school level book and read about these things, just to get somekind of grip of things. Let’s continue this discussion after that. I have no desire to discuss science, when counter arguments are Forrest Gump level musings.

Originally Posted by soot

Then explain to me how it's done.

How about showing data that it is A) entirely natural or B) the bulk of the warming is due to some other factor other than man. Is that proving a negative?

Originally Posted by soot

Plenty of such pappers exist.

I've never read them. And I've read quite a bit about this. Educate me.

Originally Posted by soot

(Note: I LOVE Google Scholar but recognize that it has serious, serious limitations and requires a LOT more work to get something relevant and useful out of than a pproper scholarly database. It's better than nothing, but online access to your local, consortial, or State library's database collection is the better bet and just as accessible as Google given a little preperation which you can do from home.)

You can find just about all of the big papers on the subject on Google Scholar. I just did a search to see if it could be done. True, getting on library databases is better, no doubt. That requires a car drive and/or a library card. And there are over 3,000 academic libraries in the country, so it's not hard to do. My point is that the data is accessible to everyone with little effort involved.

Originally Posted by soot

Even if we assume with 100% certainty that humans have contributed something to global warming (and I think we can and should) there is still no clear and incontrivertible proof that humans are totally responsible, that humans contribute the lion's share from among a range of factors, that GW can be reversed by amending human behavior, or that doing so will lead to the end of global warming for good and all.

There is definitely data showing that humans are responsible for the lionshare of the warming in the past few decades. The rate of warming that is occurring now has never been seen in the historical record. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and positively influences other powerful greenhouse gases like water vapor. We know that CO2 is most likely responsible for pulling the earth out of past glacial periods. We know that CO2 has never increased as fast in as a short of period of time than the past few decades. Additionally, we know incontrovertibly that we are responsible for the increases in CO2 over the past few decades. And we know all of this through several lines of evidence. I would say that points to a pretty strong case that we are by and large responsible for the warming that is occurring.

As to what to do about (or how much we could reasonably do about it), that is really where I would like to see the debate. That's where the research and conversation needs to be. But we are locked going over crap we already know because a segment of our society either doesn't understand the science, doesn't want to understand the science because it's uncomfortable, believes in conspiracy theories, or some combination of two or three. It's wasting time which I believe is going to cost us all more money in the long run. At least admit waiting for incontrovertible proof about a long term phenomenon is a gamble.

Originally Posted by soot

No worries, I've got thick skin.

Good, I don't want to be a dick. I try not to be.

Originally Posted by soot

All the opposition to AGW theory can do is continue to investigate and offer alternative explanations for some of the conditions that AGW seems to leave lying neatly at the feet of humanity.

And you also need to consider that AGW isn't a single theory but a combination of theories.

You won't find research that disproves all facets of the grand unifed AGW theory any more than you'd find a single paper researching every facet of AGW.

Pick a particular claim that AGW theoroists make and you can probably find one to the contrary.

Finding contrary hypotheses or theories is easy. That's really not very useful. Finding contrary hypotheses or theories that have evidence to back them up, that would be much more useful and interesting to the discussion. But, I'm not seeing any out there that explain all that we know better than the theory (or theories, if you like). I've seen some that tweak upon what we already know, but none that come out and claim that it isn't happening or, to use as an example, something like the sun is responsible for the rapid increase in warming. If a hypothesis been explained, debunked, disproven, it should be discarded. Because not all explanations are created equal. We're looking for truth here, not seeking a way to give each explanation equal time.

I more often see this argued in three ways by the denier crowd (not trying to be pejorative here, just trying to save time). One, where someone tries to point out a supposed flaw in one line of evidence and states that this is why AGW is entirely false. Even if this flaw is true, the problem is that we have multiple lines of evidence we are dealing with here. To truly debunk the whole explanation, you have to do a lot more than that. Two, it's argued like a defense attorney. A cornucopia of explanations are thrown around, some of them which disagree with one another, to try and put inspire some reasonable doubt into the argument. The problem with arguing this way is that it is inherently biased. You already have an explanation in mind and you are looking for a way to get it accepted. In science, we look for the best possible explanation using everything that we know in a particular field. That way the data is leading us to the answer instead of the explanation looking for data to make it acceptable. And third, my most favorite, conspiracy theories. What so hypocritical about the conspiracies, is that they never rationally look at what it would take to make their particular conspiracy possible. Keeping a secret among thousands of people, coordinating everyone so that evidence is forged, and with plenty of financial benefits and professional accolades to be gained by blowing wide open said secret is so preposterous I cannot believe we even have to take the time to show how stupid it is. And furthermore, it is really a lazy argument where one needs to be very vigorous to take out the evidence backing AGW. Occam's razor should definitely be applied here. These types of arguments do not explain what we are seeing with the data. That should not be ignored, period.

Originally Posted by Pikkumyy

Here we were having a discussion about reliability and accuracy of global temperature data.

What do you think about this report????

After reading that report, are you so sure that the temperature data is reliable to within 10ths of a degree?

Why or why not?

More than 1,000 dissenting scientists (updates previous 700 scientist report) from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 2010 321-page Climate Depot Special Report -- updated from the 2007 groundbreaking U.S. Senate Report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming ―consensus‖ -- features the skeptical voices of over 1,000 international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated 2010 report includes a dramatic increase of over 300 additional (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the last update in March 2009. This report's release coincides with the 2010 UN global warming summit in being held in Cancun.

http://cds054.dc1.hwcdn.net:80/g9z6c...cec8c834d8bc9d

My favorite excerpt:

“Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself -- Climate is beyond our power to control...Earth doesn't care about governments or their legislation. You can't find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself" -- Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, and was formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Originally Posted by CharlesDavenport

http://cds054.dc1.hwcdn.net:80/g9z6c...cec8c834d8bc9d

My favorite excerpt:

The issue has never been about whether or not Earth would survive; the Earth will survive.

The issue is about whether human civilization will survive.

Originally Posted by Dick Martin

The issue has never been about whether or not Earth would survive; the Earth will survive.

The issue is about whether human civilization will survive.

Or, as George Carlin once quipped, "Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic…asshole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that’s begun. Don’t you think that’s already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can."