How many of these denialist statements can you debunk?

1) I think this comment you need to put in context. This argument is used to suggest that the current warming is similarly caused by such natural variability. The “counter” is that the reasons for these past warm and cold periods can be explained (the why is known, and the natural variable identified). However, the current warming trend can not be explained by any of these known natural reasons. Does not mean the current trend isn’t “natural” there just is no science or evidence to support that argument.

2) Would depend on your definition of “lies”. Different people interpret this in different manners, in the end though the scientific evidence (data) doesn’t lie, no matter the personal attacks made. Scientific debate is healthy for any science (some may argue that the lack of scientific debate nowadays could be harmful or that the science is accepted? Really depends on your point of view).

3) The court did actually rule a disclaimer be shown at the start, however this was due to potential political nature of the film (including the presence of Al Gore) more so than the scientific errors. The errors were removed from the film, however the court ruled that the film is largely based on scientific facts (interestingly the “expert” material used for the court case was the IPCC Report, and errors were identified that didn’t agree with the IPCC report).

4) The ClimateGate identified some issues with the transparency of scientific journals and organisations (perhaps due to the unusual public interest in climate change and not really having had such public interest since the theory of evolution was suggested). Bit of a storm in a teacup, but the transparency should have been there in the first place … as with all science though you must learn from your mistakes. Had no bearing on the scientific evidence however.

5) Not according to thousands of scientific journals and articles. The likely impacts from the change are far from “negligible” either … so really a moot argument.

6) Not according to most scientific reports I have found. Believe Mars climate is due to huge dust storms that cover the whole planet for weeks. Skeptical science delves into this with more detail and astronomical details are beyond me. The radiation from the sun is measurable also (and has been via satelittes since the 70’s). The recorded radiance has decreased of late … so unless it is some sort of solar radiation that is beyond our measure, it isn’t the sun.

7) His comment was in reference to the last decade (or less). Remember this is statistically significance … he doesn’t state it hasn’t warmed. Also natural variabilities can explain the flat line trend, however still with natural forcings alone the trend should have decreased not be static. Therefore suggesting that natural variability has masked the anthropogenic warming.

8) Moot point. Neither are respected scientists (not even scientists) in the field of climatology. Their points are based on others. The only place a scientific debate should be held is in scientific journals … and evidence that supports AGW “destroys” the papers against it.

9) Most the evidence I have found suggests otherwise. Also remember CO2 is but one greenhouse gas.

--------------------

I think some of the questions were originally genuine, however the repitition of the same lines gets a bit monotous. Blogs are presented as "evidence" against numerous scientific papers on the same subject ...

Also politics is brought too often into the argument. If you can't argue the science with science post your questions in the politics section of Yahoo Answers (or at least don't argue the science with politics).

Skeptiscism is fine and required ... it could be some unknown natural variable!

As has already been pointed out, all of these arguments have been debunked by skeptical science. But I will give my own response to each.

1. Yes, natural climate change does happen. That does not mean that humans do not also influence climate or that climate change is never bad. The plague and World War II did not wipe out all life on Earth, either.

2. My response to denialists is, "examples with links, please."

3. Al Gore's movie has errors. To claim that they are lies, without evidence of intent to mislead on Mr. Gore's part are slanderous. Besides, realists seldom us Al Gore's materials as a source.

4. How do the emails change our understanding of the science of global warming? What do the emails say about

1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas? http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.h...

2. The laws of thermodynamics? http://physics.about.com/od/thermodynamics/a/lawth...

3. Atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing? http://co2now.org/

http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/2008032...

4. This CO2 is due to the combustion of fossil fuels? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/09111...

5. The Earth's temperature is increasing? http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

6. Natural factors which influence climate would be cooling the Earth if not for anthropogenic CO2? http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-nat...

5. Earth is still warming. The ten warmest years in the instrumental record are 2010, 2005, 2009, 2007, 2002, 1998, 2006, 2003, 2004 and 2011.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

6. The outer planets have a very long year and some are warming due to seasonal changes on these planets. Mercury, the Moon, the asteroids, and most important of all, the Sun, are cooling.

7. Phil Jones said that there was no statistically significant warming between 1995 and 2009, because that is too short of time period to come to a conclusion about the data.

8. Why do denialists want to debate Al Gore, who is not an expert? Is it because they would lose if they debated a scientist?

9. Earth's temperature is a function of several variables, none of which can explain both current warming and historic temperatures on its own. Carbon dioxide does not explain the entire history or even the last few years of temperature on their own, but no combination of factors which exclude carbon dioxide can explain current warming.

Ian

<@jyushchy..."As has already been pointed out, all of these arguments have been debunked by skeptical science. But I will give my own response to each.

<1. Yes..." (Uh...you know what debunked means right?>

OK! Natural climate change has not been debunked! The implied conclusion to the effect that humans have no effect has been debunked.

<2. I gave 3.>

"Polar bears are drowning" link.

Dr. Charles Monnett is being investigated. He has not been convicted of anything. It also says that many people believe that Dr. Monnett is being persecuted.

"Himalayan melting by 2035" link.

LOL. The last time I checked my calendar, it was 2012, not 2035.

"Peter Gleik lied to steal documents."

Yeah, I'm sure that he regurgitated denialist propaganda to get into the Heartland Instiute. Someone who personally believes in global warming is indeed lying when quoting denialist propaganda as fact, since, in this case he is a he, does not believe it.

<3. Ah, so stating errors as facts is not lying. Gotcha.>

So this site

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

isn't just listing 173 errors; it is listing 173 lies. That is your reasoning.

<7. So you agree he did say it. So again, not really debunked then right?>

See my response to your response to #1.

<8. You didn't answer the question, and yes skeptics have debated scientists.

You want an answer. Who gives plant food whether non-scientist Al Gore wants to debate anyone.

You made an error, oops, sorry, I mean that you made a lie, in your narative at the end of your answer. I will correct it

<"Warmer": "The sky is blue."

Denier: "If I put on these red goggles I can see clearly that the sky is indeed red and not blue. I just debunked another warmer myth. I am soooooo smart."

1) Yes it has been both warmer and cooler in the past. Climate is, again, always changing. However coming to the conclusion from that to "Man can not possibly alter the climate" is a huge step with many steps in between that are missing. There is climate change due to natural cycles. If someone is claiming that the current warming trend is due to natural cycles then they are going to have to explain it and make sure their explanation meets all the available data including the related frequencies.

2) There are global warming people that have lied, yes, but stating that they are caught in one lie after another is again massively stretching the truth. This is why people should pay attention to reliable peer reviewed publications. Not blogs. not fake journals. Not news stories. Not their personal friends or the forums they recently had a debate on. Not Al Gore. They fail to do this save for posting a link to "1000 peer reviewed publication"' from fake journals such as Energy & Environment or where the conclusions have been misused and misquoted.

3) There were some untruths in Al gore's film. However this is not peer reviewed literature. If you want to see the height of untruths or stretching reality you need look no further than The Great Global Warming Swindle. Ice caps are melting, oceans are rising. Personally I would like to see The Great Global Warming Swindle put through the same things Al Gore's movie went through and we'll see which one is more truthful.

4) climategate was, to use a denial word, a scam as was climategate 2. They both have just prior to major environmental meetings. This has been talked about repeatedly in here yet denialist continue to speak about it as if the Hide the decline" using "Mike's nature trick" was actually what was said in the emails which it was not.

5) This is a bold lie by denialists. They misunderstand what the word 'trend' means and they have no idea what ENSO is or the effects it has on a trend in temperatures. even after explaining to them in almost every post it still doesn't sink in.

6) Warming has been seen to occur in planets such as Mars, possible Pluto and a moon of Jupiter. Uranus is thought to currently be cooling. All have various reasons for warming. Mars is due to albedo changes, Pluto is due to changing seasons, and so on. And even after explaining to them and showing them they continue stating exactly the same things.

7) Yes he did but this is just a misunderstanding of the term 'statistical significance". It does not have to do with the amount of warming but rather if that warming is due to noise or is a part of the trend. He even states in the same response that statistical significance is more probably for longer time periods and less probable for shorter time periods. He went on to show, a year later, that there was statistical significance at the 95% level from the base of the time period where the question was asked up to that present time.

8) Another lie. Lord Monckton is a sham that has been exposed time and time again. If you want to see him for what he is watch him turn his tail and run from Potholer54.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-res...

http://www.leagueofreason.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=16...

http://www.leagueofreason.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=51...

Still waiting for your reply Monckton...

9) All factors need to be taken into account. not just Co2, not just solar input, not just albedo, and so on. People who state this fail to realize it. The truth is that without all these factors taken into account you will never get the correct temperature for any time in the Earth's past if you are only looking at forcings.

Edit: Notice how Maxx uses HadCRUT3 data which doesn't fully cover the globe. Why doesn't he use HadCRUT4 data? Also notice how he only posts blogs. FOX new articles, creation.com articles, and so on. Ian lies about #4 on his list because he does not understand what it means. And in number six he is again arguing against climate not being able to change without the help of man. And again, he misunderstand the relationship between natural CO2 oceanic outgassing during warming periods and the current increase in partial pressure due to humans.

To Maxx:

<<1) The Earth has been both much warmer and much colder in the distant past,....>>

Could you please explain to me Maxx how on earth (pun intended) you can claim the above while you religiously believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, give or take a few thousand years?

It is not that I do not believe that the earth was warmer or colder 'in the distant past' (which in fact it was, several times). It is just that I cannot comprehend how you can keep a straight face argueing a paleoclimatic record (which goes back hundreds of thousands of years) when you do not believe in a paleoclimatic record at all to begin with.

1) Obviously true.

2) Your terms "lies" and "huge scandals" are exaggerations. I would say there have been several significant scientific mistakes instead of "lies" and there have been examples of band wagon circling or tribalism instead of "huge scandals".

3) "full of bald faced lies" is again an exaggeration. Gore's movie had several clear errors in the science and several instances of clear exaggeration and alarmism like his graphic of Florida being underwater. It simply not fully objective.

4) Essentially true although I don't usually use as strong a wording as you did.

5) That's debatable and can be shown to go either way with careful cherry picking.

6) I don't think you can compare what is happening on other planets to help explain the Earth's climate.

7) I don't put much stock into Jones' statement on that.

8) It is true that Gore and other "celebrities" like James Cameron avoid public debate. And so they should they are not climate scientists. Climate scientists also avoid public debate and claim the debate takes place in peer reviewed literature. Part time scientists like Monckton have debated publicly and as far as I know, the audience position has changed towards the skeptic side in each case. None of this matters anyhow.

9) Correlation is a statistical function and I believe that at least for most of the past century temperature and CO2 are correlated although to what significance I am unsure. Over the past 15 years, this correlation has become weaker. This however has nothing to do with causation which is not a statistical function.

Once again I am in agreement with you but I believe any question posted by a warmest generates a forum for the denier-holes and I believe this is counterproductive. There are fading away because they have no ammunition. Please don't give them an opportunity to vent just for the sake of asking a question.

Can't deal with so many, but #1 is easy. It is certainly true, but if advanced as an argument against the existence and seriously negative likely effects of AGW would be like "arguing" that arson is not a problem because "the earth has suffered periods of severe and minimal lightning-caused forest fires for eons, long before humans began playing with fire. These are obviously natural cycles that man does not and cannot control."

Sorry, but they are all absolutely true.

1) The Earth has been both much warmer and much colder in the distant past, long before the industrial age. Climate is indeed changing, but it has always changed and probably always will. These are obviously natural cycles that man does not and cannot control.

(common knowledge that the Earth has been warmer and colder)

2) Global Warming alarmist have been caught in one lie after another. Huge scandals have been continuously revealed since the early 1980’s when the campaign began.

ClimateGate

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/...

Peter Gleick Theft of data from Heartland Institute

http://ncse.com/news/2012/02/source-heartland-leak...

There are many, many more. But I'll move on.

3) Al Gore’s movie "An Inconvenient Truth" was full of bald faced lies. Like the Polar Bears were drowning, or the Ice Caps were melting, or the oceans were rising --- all lies. In fact a court of England ruled the movie was so flawed that it could not be shown to school children without a disclaimer.

35 major errors in Al Gore’s movie

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerr...

Court rules Al Gore’s movie unfit without disclaimer (11 major errors reviewed)

http://creation.com/al-gores-inconvenient-errors

4) The ClimateGate affair exposed the utter corruption of the Warmist community with their exposed emails speaking of how they intended to “hide the decline” and how to manipulate data and the peer-review process in their favor.

Already covered but here is much more

http://climatedepot.com/a/13847/Climate-Depots-Exc...

5) Then there is the fact that the globe isn’t even warming anymore and the small amount of warming experienced from the 1900’s to 2012 timeframe was negligible and well within the envelope of normal.

This should be common knowledge by now, but here's the data

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:...

6) During this same period of marginal warming, scientists also noticed that other planets in our solar system were warming. What do these planets have in common ? --- the Sun.

Warming on Mars -- and Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6544

7) Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit, the Guru and High Priest of Global Warming himself admitted there has been no statistically significant warming. If anyone on the planet would have been aware of statistically significant warming it would have been Phil Jones and he admitted there has been none. (Game Over)

Phil Jones admits NO statistically significant warming

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/15/global-w...

ROFL...you can nullify 7 of the 9 statements.

1) Okay, this one is obviously true unless you believe climate was smooth and steady since the dawn of time (like Michael Mann does).

2) The polar bears are drowning. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-201...

Himalayan melting by 2035 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8387737.stm

Peter Gleik lied to steal documents. http://fakegate.org/

3) Inconvenient Truth contained at least 9 lies and a court did say that the skeptic side had to be presented if classrooms did show it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7037671.stm

4) "Hiding the decline" using "Mike's nature trick" means that you can swap out data that doesn't agree with your theory and swap in data that does.

5) Depends if you believe that climatologists like James Hansen can accurately estimate temperatures in the 1900's to within 0.01C with a very sparse amount of temperature stations and also believe that the majority of adjustments that cool the past and warm the present are completely justifiable. I don't. You do. People still believe in Santa Claus.

6) Other planets in the solar system are warming. I don't think anyone can say for certain what the cause is. I suppose it could be the sun or the planets climate. Both seem to prove that climate does change without the help of man, but alarmists are too dense to realize that.

7) Jones did admit he said there was no statistical warming. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm

8) I haven't seen Al Gore engage in any debate with a skeptic, have you?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/05/al-gore-t...

9) Well, ice cores definitely show temps rising BEFORE C02. There is a correlation, just not the way alarmists want it to go.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-cor...

I guess your nullifying consists of "Well, the model says it's going to get worse." or "The science is settled. I can't heeeeeeaaaarrrrrr you. Denier!"

It's okay. I know you're going to "nullify" these arguments using semantics. "Al Gore said the oceans are rising...and they are." while ignoring his alarmist statement like the rate at which the sea level MAY rise.

I know the tricks you guys use. "The Arctic MAY be ice free by 2000. All studies show it MAY cause flooding and MAY increase sea levels by UP TO 200,000 feet. This MAY lead to widespread drowning and MAY result in the complete annihilation of the planet. Scientists are very troubled by this study and suggest spending trillions on further study."

2000 comes and goes and alarmist say "Well, no one said the Arctic WOULD be ice free by 2000."

You just highly intimated it would.

EDIT: Ouch...even Jeff M seems to agree that 4 or 5 of them are correct and then doesn't even answer #8. GBF I would love to see your "nullification" by using semantics.

Give me a sec to make some popcorn, this should provide a few belly laughs :-D

@jyushchy..."As has already been pointed out, all of these arguments have been debunked by skeptical science. But I will give my own response to each.

1. Yes..." (Uh...you know what debunked means right?

2. I gave 3.

3. Ah, so stating errors as facts is not lying. Gotcha.

7. So you agree he did say it. So again, not really debunked then right?

8. You didn't answer the question, and yes skeptics have debated scientists.

http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2009/...

I guess the words "debunked" and "nullified" depend on your interpretation of them.

Denier: "The sky is blue."

Alarmist: "If I put on these red goggles I can see clearly that the sky is indeed red and not blue. I just debunked another denier myth. I am soooooo smart."

ROFL...So your "nulification" of actual events is to just cite them as fallacious arguments. So basically you're saying "Who cares if the climate changes naturally?", "Who cares if Al Gore lied?", "Who cares if Jones said there was no significant warming?", "Who cares if Al Gore never debates anyone?".

Wow. I'm going to thoroughly debunk that the sky is blue. "Who cares if the sky is blue?"

Me thinks Gas by Fannylight is just that GAS.

My grandchildren can argue with more logic than that.

Starting from #1. Hansen has already proven corrupt and has even admitted that the data in which he and etal derived their decisions was based on 'incomplete' data due to data not being collected from certain remote areas because of convenient malfunctions.

That probably was your best rebuttal. everything went downhill from there.