Can "skeptics", unlike Republican Congressmen, at least admit that the planet is warming?

So the answer is: No, skeptics deny the planet is warming. The secondary question should be "Why do skeptics object to being called denialists?"

I am so depressed by the repeated - "it's just a scam" - posts. They always jump in first - it's like they were being paid! Yes The issue is politcal - geo and corporate and democratically significant. Yo to the mr geologist I ain't no Gaia nutter but if you look up from your rock (some of which were once living creatures - oil!) you will see that the earth is alive - unless we are all robots - you don't have to pray to something to respect it. Or do you Sh1t in your kitchen because it ain't alive and so don't matter. To the people that say you first - W all need to do something - but if the 5% of the world's population producing 25% of the worlds CO2 say "well no point in us reducing until the other 95% of the world starts to do it" then nothing will happen. May as well dump nuclear waste in drinking water because other people do that - How frickin childish. Of course the republicans sit not only in denial but actively commission reports 1st decrying GW as happening and 2nd now saying that it was GW that caused the CO2 rise. The scientists that produce these reports just happen to work for Exxon et al. You know the pattern - smoking is good for you research via tobaco sponsored programmes and you couldn't get a grant to do open research if you begged the government. Always always read the manufacture's label and ask who paid for the research.

I realise that nuclear is off topic, but I'd just like to point out that the Brave New Climate post that Expeller links to is (a) on a site dedicated to taking the threat and reality of anthropogenic global warming with deadly seriousness and (b) was posted on 13th March and so is now significantly out of date, given developments in the last few days. One example: the diagram says that the primary containment "remains intact and safe", a claim that if it were true on the 13th (which is likely), may well not be any longer (with regards to reactors ##2 and 3). Radioactivity at the site has spiked a number of times, leading even the final 50-70 engineers being pulled out for a while recently. The site is not "safe". It is not Chernobyl. But it is not safe.

I would have to say that a skeptic pretty much has to admit that the planet has been warming during the last thirty years. Unless some one is prepared to call scientists liars, which only a denialist would claim without evidence, what else can a reasonable person say?

"The main problem with nuclear power remains its cost, because engineers have to try and account for every possible disaster, because any disaster which we didn't prepare for could kill thousands of people."

Coal plants are being built, not just because nuclear power is expensive, but so are wind power and natural gas. If you want cheap, you are stuck with coal.

"Plus taxpayers are on the hook for all the damages from a nuclear incident, since insurers won't insure nuclear plants."

The only taxpayers in the world who have had to pay such a bill are in the Ukraine. The worst that can happen from the nuclear power plant in Japan would be to delay reconstruction of areas which have been devastated by the tsunami.

"And if a power company defults on a nuclear construction loan, the taxpayers are again on the hook."

Do you have an example of such a default occurring.

"I just don't get this obsession with risky and expensive nuclear power. There are better alternatives, even from a purely economic perspective."

To run everything on renewables, you have to store the power. What about such cars as the Chevy Volt. Biofuels have their own problems. Even thought claims that biofuels deprive people of food is exaggerated, especially when we are talking about next generation biofuel technology, they will not be widely accepted. Besides, shouldn't the market sort out whether there are more economical alternatives than nuclear power. And opposition to nuclear power leads people to question our sincerity in reducing CO2 emissions.

Richard

"NOW that the books should be opened and yet they still have shown their work, and in the very few cases where we have seen the work they've done there have been major errors in it."

The raw data is available online from national weather services and if you want to verify their work, do so independently by writing your own code. And regarding supposed major errors, I am confident that M & M have thoroughly gone over the GISS, NOAA and HadCRUT records had have only found 2 minor errors in the GISS record. The only major error was in the UAH data set, maintained by climate skeptic Roy Spencer, where uncorrected data indicated a cooling trend and the corrected data indicates a warming trend.

edit

Expellers link is to a "warmist" site. It includes a page with links to rebutals of skeptic arguments, similar to the one in SkepticalScience. Good link Expeller.

""Can "skeptics", unlike Republican Congressmen, at least admit that the planet is warming?""

Not really. As evidenced in another question it's incredibly difficult for them to understand single sentences, such as "hide the decline" in their proper context much less accept the concept of average global temperature, and their increase.

As far as the republican congressmen, they're marching in lock step to the anthem of the right. Anti-science, anti-intellectualism, false economic collapse alarmism and a clingyness to the idea that we, as Americans, are endowed with the right to do what ever the hell we want and to hell with the rest of the world.

In another question, the ironically named Orwell said the planet is here only to provide for humans.

This is the mindset you're arguing against...

Good freaking luck.

The problem is that most people lack a basic background in science. If you're not a scientist -- and most politicians aren't -- "uncertainty" means "unreliable data" or "nobody knows for sure." Since every single piece of evidence for (and against) global warming relies on measurements, and all measurements have uncertainty, to a non-scientist, no global warming evidence (for or against) will ever be reliable, and nobody will ever know for sure.

Take www.surfacestations.org, for instance. If you don't have a background in science, this website would probably convince you that surface stations are incorrectly reporting warming when the climate is actually cooling. The website claims that most of the surface stations have a significant degree of uncertainty, and that one surface station in a rural area is showing cooling while other surface stations in urban areas are showing warming. The "good" station is reporting cooling, the "bad" stations are reporting warming, Q.E.D.

It takes a solid background in science, and likely a college degree, to know how uncertainty works -- specifically, 1) what happens to uncertainty when you combine many independent measurements, and 2) uncertainty goes both ways, both up and down.

1) combining independent measurements

If a coach uses a stopwatch to time a professional football player's 100 yard dash at 10.39, that's an outstanding time. Still, there is some uncertainty in the measurement: maybe the player had a tailwind, maybe the coach hit the button too fast.

If different coaches use different stopwatches on different days to time the same player's dash, and they all get times close to 10.39, even though the individual measurements still have the same amount of uncertainty, when the measurements are all taken together, there is rapidly increasing certainty that the player is, in fact, an excellent runner.

In summary, the combination of many independent measurements, such as from 1221 different climate stations, has much lower uncertainty than any one individual measurement.

2) uncertainty goes both ways

The writer of the website reports one station with (presumably) less uncertainty reading cooling, and a number of stations with (presumably) more uncertainty reading warming. This is what we call cherry-picking, and it is used when a writer wants to make random errors look like systematic errors.

Probabilistically speaking, cherry-picking is like if I flipped a coin 1221 times, and a website claimed I'm cheating, showing 610 pictures of me flipping heads as proof.

In fact, the uncertainty ratings in the surface station measurements include both warming influences and cooling influences, which you can confirm by reading the website's sources. Stations with higher uncertainties are equally likely to measure too cold as too hot. That's why we take many stations and average them together.

When you say..."admit that the planet is warming" you need to specify a time frame. Otherwise, any answer would be meaningless.

And while I'm not up on American politics, I get the feeling that the Republicans don't like the idea of an unelected body having such power to effectively tax citizens without representation. It seems that's the job of Congress, not Lisa Jackson.

The Democrat charges of rejecting that it's warming or rejecting the current "consensus" of climate science, or even more ridiculously, claiming Republicans are "anti-science" seems just like a lot of whining and crying.

And really, what sort of bill amendment is this? "agree that climate change is occurring." You guys in the US need legislation to state that the climate changes?

It was warming it was cooling it was warming. Then it was the other way and back again except for before it wasn't but now it is. What don't you get about that? Confused and unsure who or what to believe? Good. Your conservative congressmen likes you that way.

Relative to what and why would it need to be in the bill? It makes absolutely no sense to put a "scientific fact" in a bill, when it is not even a scientific fact without a reference point. Clearly the Earth is much cooler than when it was a big molten ball. "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" is simply not true without a reference point. If you wanted to say that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and thus the addition of CO2 into the climate will increase the temperature of the atmosphere, then I personally would not be against this type of statement. But I also have no idea why you would place it into a bill, why not place E=MC^2 while you are at it?

It doesn't much matter though. Your warmer friends are currently trying to bankrupt the entire nation and possibly the world. They don't really care about reducing CO2, but about creating problems and trying to defeat capitalism.

Whay would I say that? Simple. It is the greener organizations that are currently spreading fear about nuclear power through scare-mongering and ignorance. They do not look to educate the populous, but frighten them over nothing. The Japanese nuclear power plant survived a 8.9 earthquake as well as a tsunami wihtout even melting down. Even if it were to melt down, it has another safe guard because the entire meltdown would be contained in iron and concrete. This non-problem has blown up to a scare-mongering campaign, with your fellow greeners leading torch and pitchfork wielding witch-hunt parties.

They want to reduce coal use, yet go out of your way to destroy one of the best options? Why? Clearly because they like expensive measures that will drive the US deeper into a recession. You think the skeptics are your enemies? Take another look. Your enemies are the people who make such scare-mongering predictions of 20-foot sea rises and the earth being uninhabitable, that anybody with half a brain has to either disregard the whole thing or seriously study the literature. Your enemies are the people who would suggest intricate tax schemes that have more loopholes than spounges have hole and would likely never be well-received by the US public. Your enemies are the ones that would scare everyone into believing that the one best viable option to CO2 production is too dangerous to consider, all the while not even acknowledging that the number of death caused by nuclear power are so far less than by every other viable form of energy. LOOK AROUND!!! You are sleeping with the enemy!!! Has it really been the skeptic groups that have protested windfarms, because they are ugly or cause bird deaths? You are sleeping with the enemy!!!

So Dana once again shows that he is too biased to actually read for comprehension anyone who disagrees with his "enlightened" viewpoint. Lovely

And for the real record, http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-si...

Editted to shorten.

Dana,

What I am saying is let it play out before cursing nuclear power. This plant has sustained the 5th strongest earthquake on record followed by a large tsunami, and still no loss of life. You look like a freakin idiot when you claim to want cleaner power, but only wind and solar. Yet pretend like this non-answer is going to be the same cost. Ridiculous. You look like a freakin idiot, when you claim efficiencies in some solar solution that may or may not occur in the future, but you calculate nuclear power costs using the same one plant at a time method. Even your reference to default loans, sound pretty stupid if you know that the circumstance of those defaulted loans were caused by the govt not keeping its words to the investors in the plant. You further look like an idiot, when you need "'warming of the climate system is unequivocal" placed into a bill. Do you know what the purpose of a bill is? You look like a freakin idiot when you suggest that EPA's ability to fine companies does not fall under the definition of taxation. Have you read the definition of taxation, fines derived from the government fall snugly under that definition?

Perhaps you think your half-truthes are being well-received by the masses, and perhaps your are right. As with all thing though, the truth will out. When people start to see the truth and the many lies and exagerrations told, How likely are they to accept that change is really necessary? It is necessary, but people are not to keen on being fooled twice.

It is a fact the the planet it warming.

Discussion should be focused on the impacts and solutions.