david b

...how can there be so much uncertainty in the public's perception?

http://richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2012/11/25...

""24 out of 13,950 peer reviewed climate articles reject global warming""

Please do not try the peer review is biased line because there are a few articles that skeptics use to try to prove their point. Here's an example of Ottawa Mike using peer review to attempt to deny the link between drought and global warming.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjXUb...

Haley Barber, Karl Rove and other Republicans are blaming Hurricane Sandy for Romney's loss claiming the super storm caused the presidential candidate to "lose momentum."

Now, I'm not saying that Hurricane Sandy is a direct result of human contributions to atmospheric greenhouse gasses, but many signs point to the severity and trajectory of the storm strongly being influenced by AGW.

Is this the "breaking point" that will cause the right to accept AGW so they don't have to accept responsibility for poor campaigning and a lack of understanding for what the country actually cares about?

Michael Mann and James Hansen?

I'm just curious?

It seems so many people have an opinion on it yet, I'd like to know how many of those who have opinions have formed said opinions through direct involvement in the system instead of reading the opinions of others (who probably also haven't participated in the system)?

It certainly doesn't seem they said global warming stopped.

Here it is right from the horses mouth.

http:// met officenews.wordpress.com/

(remove two spaces)

Why does the misleading article originally published in the Daily Mail seem to fail the "skeptic" test?

Shouldn't "skeptics" try to vet a claim before believing it?

...that they're supposed to flourish in warmer temperatures and elevated CO2?

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantg...

So what's with all of this widespread mortality from drought and heat?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/12091...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/12090...

Are trees just commies willing to sacrifice themselves in order to establish the IPCC/UN one world government?

Should the "Arbor Comrades" be exposed for what they are? Liars and data manipulators?

Cold bad, warmth good. No Exceptions.

Does Burt the Aerospace engineer have a solution?

I was really surprise by a couple of the answers in my previous question.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AlgVH...

Several argue that private industry would take over for government funded research if funding ended, but I disagree.

Here's a personal example.

I work with one of the US's largest growers of ornamental trees. We have spent the last two years collecting physiological and physical measurements at this nursery to parameterize, calibrate and validate a model that predicts water use and carbon gain when input with real-time meteorological data. We've been successful enough to where this year the grower has put our model in charge of controlling irrigation in sections of his nursery where before they were basically guessing water needs (with a heavy emphasis towards over- rather than under-watering).

The model that we use has been in continuous development for over 30 years and serves as a mathematical framework for multiple biophysical and physiological sub-models, all of which were developed independently from one another. All of the research that has gone into this model has been funded by government grants. Further 1/2 of our research is funded by the USDA with matching funds from industry partners.

While the end product is of great use to industry the individual components that the model is comprised of had very little, if any at all, industrial application at the time of conception.

So the question is, do you really think that for-profit run businesses have the acuity and foresight to invest shareholder money into research that does not yield immediate profits?

Would multiple independent companies pursuing similar goals not continuously "reinvent the wheel" without public domain publication and peer-reviewed sharing of research?

Should not the government assume this responsibility of completing such research for the "good of the country."

Or is the government only capable of oppression and regulation as many in the other question responded?

For this question let's work with two assumptions:

1. Government funded research provides a public good creating venues for creation and expansion of private industry (i.e. GPS, Internet, Nuclear fission, basic genetics etc.)

2. Global warming research is no longer needed (period).

Where should federal tax dollars for research be aimed in the current status of the country? Should the US remain in status and all federal tax dollars removed from research?

Would the private sector take over and accomplish the basic research that is foundational to cutting edge technological advances?

Should we anticipate potential changes in our world and understand those or address them as they arise?

That are not 100% answered by this graphic from the AGU*.

http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2012/09/12/the-...

???

Conspiracy theories welcomed :)

So they can blame it on "the gays"?

It would be in line with Virginia state delegate Bob Marshall who claims that disabled children are god's way of punishing women for having abortions.

Marshall's statement just barely outshines Todd Akin's statement where he claimed the female body had "mechanisms" to stop impregnation in the case of a "legitimate rape."

The worst part is that Akin is on the house Committee on Science!

Should people who don't know fundamental biology be in positions to have an influence on policy?

You put a pot of water to boil on the stove.

Let's use the heating element on the stove as an analog for the sun. The temperature of the water will respond to changes in heat output from the element (sun) right?

What does putting a lid on the pot of water do to the temperature of the water and the rate of change?

...and what does the lid provide an ample analogy for?

So is the stove element (the sun) 100% driving temperature changes and the rate of change?

That the cold north was starved for warmth resulting in poor plant growth...

So then, why do Ottawa Mike and Peter J have to spend so much time trimming back the shrubberies to keep them at bay? Isn't the Pacific Northwest and Ottawa the cold, warmth starved north?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ap88X...

I've noticed that Sagebrush and Maxx have been absent today.

I've also noticed that none of the "skeptics" answers have been TD's as much.

Am I crazy in thinking that he/she/they might be behind the whole TD thing in some effort to make skeptics look oppressed?

Or am I crazy for trying to attribute any level of cleverness to them?

Also, what exactly is incorrect, shoddy, scandalous about the Mann et al reconstruction?

A common thought regarding the influence of extended growing season is that warmer later season temperatures will mean more growth in late season.

However, a recent report shows that Rubisco and electron transport limitations to photosynthesis are controlled by day length and not temperature.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/09/11191...

Meanwhile mitochondrial respiration is directly affected by temperature, roughly doubling every 10 C.

What implications do you think this will have on global carbon budgets as extended growing seasons turn forests into carbon sources instead of carbon sinks?

What implications does this have on crop productivity?

http://www.theonion.com/video/new-prius-helps-envi...

Interesting article in Wired:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/opinion-...

In it, it is explained how when children are asked to draw what they think scientists look like, the first is the typical white lab coat with test tube and microscope. However, the second images invoke the mad scientist stereotype hell bent on global domination and/or destruction of the human species.

Does this collective stereotype, present in young children and even adults, lend any insight into the general mistrust towards climate scientists?

Or is it just politics?

This question is directed mostly at the "humans cannot influence the climate" group.

It's irrefutable that humans can alter the local surroundings, this has been documented through the urban heat island effect, poor forest management etc..

It's irrefutable that regional vegetation can influence climate via transpired water loss and albedo changes. Humans have altered vegetation patterns in great swaths for the production of food resulting in changes in energy and mass balance.

Beyond the regional scale, things require more esoteric methods to quantify the impacts of interactions between humans and their environment.

So, the question is. At which scale exactly (local, regional, continental or global) does the influence of humans on their surroundings diminish to a degree too small to measure?

And at the scale you feel the human influence ceases, is there a point at which an accumulation of influence at that level spills over into the next?

I guess this isn't too far off of a statement as models are *abstractions* of reality.

However, it seems like you mention the word "model" to a "skeptic" and it doesn't matter what follows, but it will be immediately ignored.

So, since models are supposedly unreliable, what other methods of quantifying the climate should we use? Is there a better way the current hierarchy of a nested mathematical framework?

Should we continue to refine models with further experimentation at the cost of (gasp!) taxpayer funded research money?

What if those future experiments resulting in decreases in the confidence for catastrophic projections?

Or should we just give up on understanding them completely because our models aren't perfect?

The first person to mention UN, socialism, communism or Al Gore will have a curse put upon them by my gypsy grandmother.

This article was published recently in Popular Science

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/batt...

A few snippets:

""Milloy and other aggressive deniers practice a form of asymmetric warfare that is decentralized and largely immune to reasoned response. They launch what Aaron Huertas, a press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls “information missiles,” anti-climate-change memes that get passed around on listservs, amplified in the blogosphere, and picked up by radio talk-show hosts or politicians. “Even if they don’t have much money, they are operating in a structure that allows them to punch above their weight,” Huertas says.""

""“When I get an e-mail that mentions my child and a guillotine,” Hayhoe says, “I sometimes want to pull a blanket over my head. The intent of all this is to discourage scientists. As a woman and a mother, I have to say that sometimes it does achieve its goal. There are many times when I wonder if it’s worth it.”""

""Muller’s conclusion was most likely not what the Koch brothers had in mind. Last October, his team announced that the global mean temperature on land had increased by 1.6 degrees since 1950, a result that matched the numbers accepted by the mainstream climate-science community. “The skeptics raised valid points, and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller told me. “Now we have confidence that the temperature rises previously reported had been done without bias. Global warming is real.”""

So, there is a concerted commercial effort to marginalize the science which has led to the threat of physical harm against climate scientists and their families. Further, despite them playing all of their cards, legitimate skeptical arguments have failed to coalesce into a defensible argument.

I will admit, upfront, that this article is particularly biased towards the AGW proponents side but it is an excellent argument for sanity in an otherwise dogmatic and politically driven debate unrelated to the science.

What are your thoughts?