Climate: Why I Believe, What It Would Take To Change My Mind

Yep. NASA and GISS said last year was the warmest on record. They put out a press release all about it. They said that there was a 0.02 (f) warming (that's 0.04 (c)). The press ran with it.

What they failed to include in the press release was there was a 0.01 chance of error. And they also forgot to include that they are only 38 percent sure that their surface temperature reading are accurate.

Absolutely a PR stunt. Not science. You don't release something with half the information missing. And this seems like a new tactic, measuring in the hundredths. When did they start that?

Yes. Climate changes. There is no denying that. The ice ages, the warming periods, the next ice age, they all show that. It's been happening long before we came along.

And SC. Speaking of not addressing something. I still haven't heard a reply from you about the East Anglica 300 page document from the programmer that said their data, their programs and their methodology was flawed.

I will be glad to forward you the document if you would like to read it. I don't think you have actually read it but update me if I'm wrong about that.

WUWT guest essayist Bob Tisdale says:

The overselling of calamities in environmental sciences has reached unseemly proportions…so much so in one field that in 2014 a team of marine researchers exposed the problems in a journal article. The paper is Duarte et al. (2014) Reconsidering Ocean Calamities. The abstract reads (my boldface):

The proliferation of a number of pressures affecting the ocean is leading to a growing concern that the state of the ocean is compromised, which is driving society into pessimism. Ocean calamities are disruptive changes to ocean ecosystems that have profound impacts and that are widespread or global in scope. However, scrutiny of ocean calamities to ensure that they can be confidently attributed to human drivers, operate at widespread or global scales, and cause severe disruptions of marine social-ecosystems shows that some of the problems fail to meet these requirements or that the evidence is equivocal. A number of biases internal and external to the scientific community contribute to perpetuating the perception of ocean calamities in the absence of robust evidence. An organized auditing of ocean calamities may deliver a more precise diagnosis of the status of the oceans, which may help to identify the most pressing problems that need be addressed to conserve a healthy ocean.

As Mr. Tisdale notes: These problems run rampant in climate science.

Then he has a screen capped New York Times headline and image. Since the image has a Getty imprint, I’ll let you look at the thing on Watt’s Up for yourself.

The post ends with this (I haven’t included his embedded links):

NYTimes Headline

A brand new example of attempted overselling of calamities is the article in The New York Times Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says. The article is based on the McCauley et al (2015) paper Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean.

How can you resist a horror headline which includes a new term? New to me, anyway: marine defaunation. Is she any kin to Marine LePen? [Sorry…couldn’t resist. Now you know where I hang out, eh?]

The mindset for oversold calamities is what I’ve long termed “Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling” journalism. You don’t often get to see an epiphany for a tried-and-true Leftist but I had that pleasure once.

The problem with all this is captured in the thread title. Is it belief or is it science?

1. Is the earth warming ... absolutely. We are still warming from the Quaternary ice ages. The earth has been much warmer than today over the geologic time scale. It is reasonable to assume Earth will continue to warm based on geologic temperature studies that show a much higher average global temperature.

2. Does atmospheric CO2 correlate with earth's temperature over the geologic time scale ... not too well. Reasonably close correlation has been demonstrated for an infinitesimal period of geologic time using models and most of those models haven't been forecasting very well for the last decade when compared to actual temperature measurements.

3. Land air temperatures derived from surface measurements do not seem to correlate closely with temperatures derived from satellite and balloon radiosonde measurements. Which data set to trust ...

4. Most of the debate revolves around land air temperatures. The earth temperatures we need to be more concerned about in the long run are ocean temperatures. The specific heat of water is about 4 times that of air. 4000 Argo bouys do not come close to providing sufficient data to ascertain the temperature of 320 million cubic miles of ocean water and determine reliable oceanic temperature trends. We don't really know the earth's temperature until we have a good handle on the ocean's temperature.

5. The debate is absolutely politicized. There are huge amounts of money involved. Objective science always suffers as a result. Trust, truth, and objectivity are the first victims of politics and money. Once any scientist becomes an activist, they have traded their objectivity for belief.

6. Can we trust the news media for an objective presentation of the issues ... I don't think so.

7. Can we trust the objectivity of scientific presentations in a highly politicized environment that will involve the expenditure of a large percentage of global GDP and redistribution of global wealth ... maybe, but how do we determine if the presentations are politicized or objective assessments?

8. Most of the debate revolves around models and their forecasts, the quote from George Box applies ... "all models are wrong, but some are useful". How can any of the models be independently verified or validated?

9. How much of the warming that we are seeing was caused by man ... Should mankind spend a very large percentage of global GDP to mitigate atmospheric CO2 because we think that controlling CO2 will address global warming ... Do we really understand earth's complex chaotic climate system? At what level is a chaotic system predictable enough to justify a global program ... We are claiming we can forecast the trend of a chaotic system.

10. All I know at the moment is that the earth is actually getting warmer and that it will probably get warmer. What I believe is that the "we can fix it" part of the warming debate seems to include far too much politics and belief to be considered objective science.

Nice post, FNP, but you're wasting your time with SC. Regardless of the massive carbon trading profits, unknown climate variables, contradictory evidence, political motivations, and a litany of failed predictions many people have joined the AGW movement with the furor of religious zealots.

It is unfortunate that so much effort is being made to control CO2 emissions in countries like the U.S. while this is happening--->

news.yahoo.com/se-asia-fires-produce-mor...as-us-053642591.html

It is a shame that we aren't allocating more resources to real, solvable, measureable environmental issues. But, the AGW religion is so entrenched in politics and creating huge profits that it isn't going away anytime soon.

Just for you, SC

I hope you will refrain from engaging in any Halloween traditions this year, because you of all people, should not be contributing to the destruction of our planet.

With the passing of Halloween, millions of pounds of pumpkins have turned from seasonal decorations to trash destined for landfills, adding to more than 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) produced in the United States every year.

At landfills, MSW decomposes and eventually turns into methane—a harmful greenhouse gas that plays a part in climate change, with more than 20 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide (CO2).

energy.gov/articles/turn-your-halloween-pumpkins-power

Ah yes, but composting still creates methane and C02 depending on how much oxygen it gets. So you really cant get away from killing the planet.

Plus it draws the bears. Sorry off topic.