Latest global-warming denier talking points - hoo boy.

[backscatter712]

I just had an acquaintance bring them up - apparently, those eeeeeeeevil scientists who claim global warming have been selectively taking temperature sensors offline over the years when temperatures were not rising. Also, scientists who've not been touting the party line on global warming have been getting threats.

I didn't have my own research done when I had this conversation, but I had an idea where those points came from, as he's a libertarian. Yep, sure enough, there were a couple articles on Prison Planet talking about how when the data's massaged their way, global warming doesn't exist. (No, I'm not going to actually link there, but those articles are easy enough to find on your own...)

Somebody debunk this horseshit, please!

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. It's up to them to show some evidence

If I were you, I'd ask them for the evidence; unless they can show it, then say it's a lie and they need to drop the 'friend' who is lying to them. Point out they're being gullible.

[timeforpeace]

13. To prove a negative? Wrong, it's the claims for warming that need to be proven. Discredited they are

says Yoda.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Global warming has huge amounts of peer-reviewed evidence behind it

That libertarian is saying there was a conspiracy to remove measuring sites. They are making a specific claim, and it's up to them to show evidence for it, rather than just claiming it and waiting for our fellow DUer to disprove an accusation he hasn't been shown evidence for yet. If it happens to be the claims refered to in reply #9 below, then they been disproved already. It was another flailing attempt at misdirection from the climate change deniers.

[Viking12]

17. It's not proving a negative. No wonder you're so easily fooled.

You can't even understand the basics of logic.

[Toots]

19. Just curious, if we are cooling why are all the glaciers disappearing

I live in glacier country and I know from reality by seeing with my own eyes over sixty some years and glaciers are melting more each and every year. It is undeniable. All the glaciers of the world are melting and even the great ice caps are beginning to show signs of melting, both Greenland and Antartica are losing ice, and have been doing so for at least a decade worth of data. One can argue with the cause but you can not argue it isn't happening. People seem to think they are not a part of nature and thus have no bearing on nature and could not possibly effect it. I think that is a ridiculous assumption.

[wtmusic]

2. Tired of playing denier whack-a-mole

Whack one lie, up pops another

[tabatha]

3. Here is the blog from a skeptic

who does his own measurements:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/january-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-72-deg-c/

[On the Road]

8. Now *That* is the Kind of Skepticism That Should be Welcome

The more interesting feature, though, is the inability of the models to mimic the rapid warming before 1940, and the lack of warming from the 1940s to the 1970s. These two periods of inconvenient temperature variability are well known: (1) the pre-1940 warming was before atmospheric CO2 had increased very much; and (2) the lack of warming from the 1940s to the 1970s was during a time of rapid growth in CO₂. In other words, the stronger warming period should have been after 1940, not before, based upon the CO₂ warming effect alone.

---snip



Interpretation
What I believe this demonstrates is that after known, natural modes of climate variability are taken into account, the primary period of supposed CO₂-induced warming during the 20th Century – that from about 1970 onward – does not need as strong a CO₂-warming effect as is programmed into the average IPCC climate model. This is because the natural variability seen BEFORE 1970 suggests that part of the warming AFTER 1970 is natural! Note that I have deduced this from the IPCC’s inherent admission that they can not explain all of the temperature variability seen during the 20th Century.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/01/evidence-for-natural-climate-cycles-in-the-ipcc-climate-models-20th-century-temperature-reconstructions/

The guy is dealing with the data rather than making idiotic comments about the weather. He doesn't dispute things that are undeniable from the data, but is questioning the role of CO₂ based on per-1940. I don't have an opinion on it, other than that it would be surprising if human causes had nothing to do with rising temperatures.

This kind of debate is what moves scientific controversies forward.

[tabatha]

10. He may not believe that humans have anything to do with it

--- I do --- but at least he, a skeptic, is looking at the data, and it matches that from NASA - and it was measured differently.

[On the Road]

11. He Actually Seems to Believe

that human CO₂ does have something to do with global warming. What he's contesting is whether the coefficient is 20% or 60% (or something like that). He says if you assume that CO₂ has a somewhat smaller effect than the most aggressive climate change models, it fits the overall data better.


I don't know if it's true or not, but it's fine with me for him to say that. It's a specific, testable proposition. In a lot of ways, it reinforces the concept of global warming in that the argument only is over the relative size of the human contribution.

Which to me is much better than the generalizations that are always thrown around and make it impossible for discussion to get anywhere.

[onehandle]

4. The high today in Atlanta was 31. Now I'm scared of 'Global Cooling.'

Kidding, but damn I cannot wait until Spring.

[renegade000]

5. here are two good posts

from former scientist and sci-fi writer David Brin:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/02/real-struggle-behind-climate-change-war.html
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/02/distinguishing-climate-deniers-from.html

Brin is himself a self-proclaimed libertarian, but I find his brand of libertarianism quite agreeable as he actually believes in democracy and democratic forms of government, as opposed to the anarcho-capitalist non-sense that many libertarians believe in.

[aquart]

6. Ross Ice Shelf. 6 million years ice. Now, not ice.

Refute that.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

16. you might want to review your statement

the Ross Ice Shelf is still there ...

http://nsidc.org/agdc/acap/

sP

[aquart]

21. That site crashes on me.

But I will be fine if you can say "the Ross Ice Shelf is still there ...
" to me every day for the rest of my life.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

22. i hope to be able to...

it is a cool site showing all sorts of neat info. The Antarctic Cryosphere Access Portal is it's designation and you can show everything from current ice position to sea ice month by month and even the speed/movement of the ice shelf. good stuff...

sP

[damntexdem]

7. They ask whether there has been a significant trend over the last few years --

which is too short a period to establish a trend. Then they claim that measurements have not been made recently -- whereas measurements have likely been taken more extensively and intensively in recent years.

Ask them for proof of their assertions.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. By chance I've just found a blog which may be just what you're looking for

because it's a comprehensive demolition of what sounds very like the claim your libertarian friend was making.

There are too many misstatements in this work to deal with all of them in a single lifetime, but we can at least expose some of the most egregious. Let’s start with this, which is highlighted in extra-large font on page 6, and is one of their primary thesis points:

Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.

...
First of all, they’re referring to the reduction in reporting stations included in the GHCN (global historical climate network) data on which some global temperature estimates are partly based. But they just made up the claim that “NOAA began weeding out … systematically and purposefully …” The fact is that NOAA — a U.S. government agency — has no control whatever over which station data various nations contribute to the GHCN. If they have a complaint about a reduction in stations from, say, Canada, it’s blatantly dishonest to blame it on NOAA, they should take it up with Canada.
...
This belies the claim that favoring hot stations over cold ones will inflate the global average temperature anomaly to create false warming. There’s absolutely no reason that using cold or hot stations would bias the trend, unless one or the other tends to have a greater or lesser trend. And the available evidence is that it’s the cold stations which will show more warming — so biasing the sample in favor of hot rather than cold stations will, if anything, tend to underestimate the global warming trend.

D’Aleo and Watts are dead wrong about NOAA undertaking any effort to control which stations are included in the GHCN and which are not. They’re dead wrong about NOAA even being able to do so. They’re dead wrong about “The number of stations that dropped out tended to be disproportionally rural.” And they are dead wrong about the idea that favoring hot rather than cold stations will introduce a warm bias into the global temperature anomaly record.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/dropouts/

[timeforpeace]

12. Their numbers are growing exponentially. They are legion.

[On the Road]

14. The Underlying Message

of most of these climate deniers seems to be:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

18. I heard Rush Limbaugh passionately declaring that global warming was a hoax

He seems quite careful to use the term global warming as opposed to climate change. He went on and on about it.

So then I wondered, why does he even care so much about debunking it as he does? As much as we have been told and as much as the evidence is right in front of us - rising sea levels, etc., no one has really altered their behavior, whether you are talking individuals or countries on any large or appreciative scale. So, why does he care so much? Why does the right NOT WANT climate change to exist?

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Some on the right stand to make more money if fossil fuel use continues to be high

Some of the right are standing in solidarity with them; some people, on both the right and the left, are anti-intellectuals who glory in casting doubt on things shown by science (or shown by intellectuals who aren't scientists, for that matter).

Limbaugh probably fits a bit in each category, but mainly the third - though he, of course, makes money by pandering to the know-nothing morons who listen to him.