MWP is based on a number of false premises

Having looked into that before, I’m still not aware of what these “false premises” are, nor why you would call it a “zombie argument”. Something a little more substantive than a hand-wave?

Just reading the wikipedia article you linked, there are still several points of interest that will require more digging:
-urban heat island: the primary claim of the urban hear island problem is that, as urban areas expand, measurement stations are affected, not the whole globe. Their treatment of the point does not acknowledge that at all.

-”About 1/3 of temperature sites around the world reported global cooling over the past 70 years (including much of the United States and northern Europe).” Seriously, 1/3 of the (measured) world is cooling more than warming, and that’s “global warming”? Just that one point alone (I really do appreciate the honesty from them!!) is quite serious and puts a HUGE doubt (in my opinion) on the mechanisms claimed. If there was absolutely no global trend, we’d expect to see a 50/50 split, and all they’re getting is a 66/33? That’s not a strong trend, especially considering that the US and Europe have been the primary CO2 emitters over the past 70 years!!!

-”The group uses an algorithm that attaches an automatic weighting to every data point, according to its consistency with comparable readings.” This is a HUGE red flag. Certainly, there may be honest and reasonable ways to do this, but the long history of climate science is not the reasonable or honest way. I’m long past the point of taking their word for it.

In short, yes, that looks like a good start (especially if they actually follow through on putting everything out publicly), and I will be following it closely to see if there’s actually good follow through, or if it falls back into the usual pattern of not liking what they find and massaging it to what they want.

This looks like an actual attempt to convince people instead of just brow-beating them into submission. Wow, science! Nifty.

Your correct, but science only says what we need to do in order to reduce further climate change. It does not say what we should do. That is why science and libertarianism are not necessarily compatible.

Reduction of CO2 does not necessarily mean a reduction in a standard of living.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

@awp Medieval Warming Period and Maunder Minimum are zombie arguments. MWP is based on a number of false premises and the discussion of sunspot activity is summed up best by the last paragraph of in one of the above links.

“Regardless of any discussion about solar irradiance in past centuries, the sunspot record and neutron monitor data (which can be compared with radionuclide records) show that solar activity has not increased since the 1950s and is therefore unlikely to be able to explain the recent warming.”

@Deoxy You are apparently unfamiliar with B.E.S.T.’s work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth_Surface_Temperature

Global cooling/global warming/global dimming/etc: there are countries in the world RIGHT NOW (Russia, for one) worried about global cooling more than global warming.

Global temperature data: it depends on who you listen to and how much “fudging” they’ve done to their data. Basically, throw the NASA data in the trash – it’s been trashed by ideology, and the proof is publicly available*.

I’m not contending that CO2 does NOTHING – I’m pointing out that the claims about it ending the silly world are bunk. I’m pointing out that even if you take ACC/AGW pushers at their world and use their own data, you still don’t get a very big change in global temperature (not nearly as big as they keep saying). Also, CO2′s heat-related functions share wavelengths with water vapor; there’s a maximum upper bound before it’s all done, and water vapour already does most of that.

I’m well aware of the “chemistry that’s been around for 150 years now”; what I’m pointing out is that the claims made by the ACC folks far exceed what that requires or even suggests.

The historical record doesn’t support their claims, either – if you look at CO2 concentrations in the long term of earth history, it’s a lagging indicator of rise in temperature. If you look at the modern history of CO2 concentration versus when the temperature actually rose (and how much) in the 19th and 20th centuries, it doesn’t match well AT ALL – CO2 rates climb all through the 20th century, but temperature risesw more in the first half than the second.

All of this without mentioning the huge frauds that have already been proven (hockey stick being only the most well-known) – what else HASN’T been proven?

I’ve no trust left for proven shysters.

*publicly published data from before Hansen headed the NASSA weather stuff shows a certain set of data. A few years later, they published it again, and the data had essentially been rotated several degrees around 1973 or so – a noticeable slope change. “Corrections” before that year were almost uniformly down, “corrections” after that year were almost uniformly up. That’s not “correction” that’s fabrication. The actual data measurements didn’t change – the data was simply changed without explanation. Other sources still show more reasonable data.

Wondering how we got a marked worldwide warming period followed by a remarkable worldwide cooling period long before the onset of industrialization is a “zombie argument”, now? Common sense isn’t allowed to be a part of this question?

Yeah, no advocacy *there*, Bubba. Your attitude would sorely disappoint – but probably not surprise – Feynman and the pompous dead guy.

two possibilities in the context of this conversation

1)my “should” is implicitly within your “need”
2) “should” we is the the important question

Assume: Science has correctly come to the conclusion that the current and projected levels of production of CO2 is going to cause Anthropomorphic Climate Change(ACC).
Therefore: If we are going to prevent ACC we NEED to reduce current and projected levels of production of CO2

If that is how you mean NEED I propose that that is the wrong question.

Unfortunately, while reduction of CO2 will have the benefit of reducing ACC it will also have costs in the lowering of the quality of life of everyone. Because, the use of energy is beneficial to everyone and fossil fuels are the cheapest way that we currently know how to produce energy.

Therefore: The proper question is SHOULD we reduce the production of energy given all of the costs(lower QOL, growth, development, etc.) and benefits(cleaner air, less ACC, etc.) associated with it. Science will help us determine the existence and levels of the costs and benefits but will never be able to determine how you and I value those costs and benefits.

…we go to the special character meals featuring the princesses. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at them…the same way again.

I was thinking my next meal with the Disney princesses just got a whole lot better.

That’s a nice quote from the pompous dead guy…

Classy.

That is why ‘should’ is not present in what I wrote. The science might be that we need to do something that is completely at odds with what we should do (or want to do).

@el coronado

Medieval Warming Period and Maunder Minimum are zombie arguments.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/werent-temperatures-warmer-during-the-medieval-warm-period-than-they-are-today/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/did-the-sun-hit-record-highs-over-the-last-few-decades/

Have you truly, thoroughly unpacked all the assumptions that comprise the assertion you’re making there?

I’m trying, man, I really am. I read and read and read, and the more I read, the more I realize that the people who devote their entire life to the scientific method are coming to the same conclusions.

Science is a reach for the truth that encourages argument and dissent, but it also demands a high level of intelectual honesty. It’s systematic and designed to root out its own bias. That people don’t always achieve this ideal, doesn’t mean the method is invalid. Scientists has been wrong about a lot of things in the past, and they are wrong about things now. But those wrongs have only been corrected by other scientists who spent more time studying the issues.

As soon as I try to read anything that’s not talking down to me as a layman, I am lost. I have tried to read academic papers on developmental biology and climate models, and sadly, I don’t have the training and deep background to fully understand them. I would need to devote my life to their study for several years to be capable of making meaningful statements.

I don’t understand why this is a controversial opinion. It’s not hero worship, it’s not blind faith. We can only know what we take the time to learn. If we have opinions on other science issues, we have to skeptically trust those who are “experts”.

It kinda stinks to high hell, especially the part about shouting down dissenters or calling them “deniers”. Also the part where they tend to rush past the 400-year-long Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent 17th century Maunder Minimum: no cars or factories back then, so WTF?

It *REALLY* stinks when you compare that attitude to Feynman’s – who I’m pretty sure was smarter than any climatologist currently living – to Feynman’s notion of What Is Good Science: “There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.”

I’m just a guy who’s inclined to doubt the Chicken Littles. Not because of any scientific background, just ’cause of cynicism. Daddy always said beware of advocates posing as scientists, (Margie Mead and Al Kinsey come immediately to mind)(for that matter, so do Mengele and the good “doctors” of Japan’s oddly-unknown Unit 731), and now look.

“If there was ANYTHING to the whole CO2 thing…”
“The whole CO2 thing,” ehh? If you’re questioning the ability of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to absorb infrared radiation, you’re fighting an uphill battle. That stuff is basic physical chemistry that’s been around for more than 150 years now.

“they were freaking out about global COOLING”
This is silly. Global DIMMING was a theory more or less unrelated to the current theory of global warming, based upon the observation that solid particulate matter (aerosols) added to through atmosphere through pollution reflects sunlight back into space, thus cooling Earth’s climate. There were plenty of scientists advocating global warming; the real controversy at this time was whether greenhouse gas emissions would outpace aerosols or vice versa.

Did anyone notice how Russia is kinda dark blue on all maps? I guess Russians have “friends” in all those countries.

I’m neither of these professionals, but I do read books written by people in those fields and they keep shooting these ideas down as the ideological falsehoods they are. They tell me there is a fairly solid consensus on these issues, and I believe them.

This kind of thing is stunning to me.

To be completely forthright here, I have no idea where I stand on abortion. What I do know is that “developmental biologists” don’t get to win the argument just because you say so. Are you even listening to yourself, man? Have you truly, thoroughly unpacked all the assumptions that comprise the assertion you’re making there?

Exactly right. It’s the same instinct that moves people to declare their ideology is non-ideological.

It’s sort of like those people who tell me I’m not fit to judge God (as presented in the Bible or whatever). The proper answer is the same; if I’m not fit to dissent, I’m not fit to assent either, and so the Authority in question is irrelevant to what I should think or do about anything.

Not too long ago, Men of Science would have had us stabbing homosexuals and through the brain with ice picks. Science is as ideological as libertarianism, or anything else.

No, it doesn’t. Or at least, it doesn’t rely on them being ‘rational agents’ in the sense you mean.

That said, any person who postures themselves or some idea or philosophy as non-ideological is full of shit (this goes for scientists, too).

Lots of people want to put science in the corner of their political/social beliefs, for much the same reason other people want to put God there–that way, they can appeal to some authority to win arguments or silence critics.