The Debunking Thread

[Recusant]

OK, Elsewhere on this forum i was debating (arguing really) about unrelated stuff and somehow the environment came up.

I really hope he visits here because i left the 'debate' because neither of us could convince the other of anything (or so it seemed).

Anyway, i thought this was a better place to drag Finny in here for a lesson on Climate Change.

He linked to this report:
http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers...ld%20Media.pdf

It's funny really because it only took me a couple of minutes to find this:
Inhofes 400 Global Warming Deniers Debunked - 400 Scientists Doubt Climate Change - thedailygreen.com

Inhofe's list includes 413 people. (Score one Inhofe; the math holds up.)

84 have either taken money from, or are connected to, fossil fuel industries, or think tanks started by those industries.

49 are retired

44 are television weathermen

20 are economists

70 have no apparent expertise in climate science

Several supposed skeptics have publicly stated that they are very concerned about global warming, and support efforts to address it. One claims he was duped into signing the list and regrets it.

That's a quality panel there.

..anyway, panelists aside the report throws out the usual stories that still make the rounds despite being roundly and soundly debunked (some a few years ago).

such as "The Hockey Stick".
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

Arctic is getting colder, ice sheet growing.
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

..and of course the Al Gore bashing.

There's just too much to go into. Here's a good place to visit to combat many of those people who keep using old arguments that have been debunked over and over yet keep returning to prominence thanks to the efforts of a few well heeled deniers.

http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

I chose to believe the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is real, and is 90% likely to be man made.

Wiki

In IPCC statements "most" means greater than 50%, "likely" means at least a 66% likelihood, and "very likely" means at least a 90% likelihood.

* Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
* Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.

A few scientists here and there may disagree, and good luck to them. But until they're in the majority (as they were however many decades ago) then they won't have much credance. Espeically when so much money in the deniers camp comes from those with a vested interest in denying the problem and doing nothing about it.

Note that the IPCC is a UN thing. Governments would rather not have to deal with this problem. They have been dragged kicking and screaming into it. So the argument that the IPCC reports are in the vested interests of the governments who will have to spend billions to fix the problems is just pathetic.

Lastly, if global warming doesn't exist - but in 50 years we have an infinately cleaner planet then i say great. I don't care that it'll cost me a few quid a week.

[Zephyr]

People are really astonishingly stupid, aren't they? New rule: if you don't believe in science, leave the "environmental issues" forum.

[Recusant]

Seems that the skeptics are in retreat around here.

[Michael]

It is the only planet we have. This is the intermediate position people need to come to terms with. We don't know for 100% sure if we are seeing Global Warming caused by human energy sources and activity, but it is best to proceed with extreme caution.

[Finny]

Originally Posted by Recusant

Seems that the skeptics are in retreat around here.

I never retreat. Just didn't see this until today..Which is prefect.. for what is about to be posted...

Global warming profiteers are wrong
Christopher Monckton
April 3, 2008

Climate alarmists are alarmed, scaremongers scared, for their predictions of catastrophe are not coming true. "Global warming" has stopped. For 10 years, average temperatures on earth have not risen. For seven years, the trend has been downward. The fall between January 2007 and January 2008 was the biggest since records began in 1880.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's climate panel, says it had better find out where it got its sums wrong. Lord Lawson, a former UK Treasury Secretary, says the panel should be scrapped.

Polls reveal that voters worldwide, bored with wolf-crying scientists, see "global warming" as just another pretext for more tax, regulation and empire-building. So the tiny clique of politicized scientists driving the scare are desperate to revive fear of doom. Otherwise, the multibillion-dollar climate-change industry is headed straight down the pan.

A favorite tactic is to blame any passing extreme-weather event on "global warming." This just in: "A 5,282-square-mile ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula. The Wilkins is one of a string of ice shelves that have collapsed in the past 30 years. Larsen B disappeared in one month in 2002. Six similar collapses underscore the region's unprecedented warming."

Blood-curdling, but false. The Wilkins Ice Shelf, like its vanished neighbors, was not there in the medieval warm period, or in the 2,000-year-long Holocene Climate Optimum, when global temperatures were above today's.

Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who first spotted the disintegration in March, says the Wilkins has been in place for a few centuries. So it was not there before.

The Antarctic Peninsula represents just 2 percent of the continent, and still less of its ice mass. The vanished ice shelves covered a combined area just 1/55 the size of Texas. Massive chunks break away from Antarctica all the time, to re-grow in colder times. Whalers' logs going back centuries report sightings of vast icebergs hundreds of miles long.

Since regular temperature records were first kept 50 years ago, most of the continent has been cooling. The Antarctic peninsula is an exception. Local undersea volcanic activity may be partly to blame.

Another factor is the warming effect of the recently ended 70-year Solar Grand Maximum, when the sun was more active, and for longer, than at almost any similar period in the past 11,400 years. Long-term ocean changes have also contributed.

In the Arctic, the media reported less summer sea ice than at any time since records began. Most did not report that records began only 30 years ago; that at both Poles there is more sea ice now than ever since records began; that there are five times more polar bears today than 50 years ago; that the Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than today; or that the average thickness of the vast Greenland ice sheet grew by 2 inches yearly from 1993-2003.

Even the UN's climate panel says melting ice will not raise sea level by Al Gore's imagined 20 feet for several millennia, largely through natural causes.

Back in the Antarctic, winter has come, so ice-shelf disintegration has stopped. Even if Wilkins collapses altogether, melting ice shelves add not a millimeter to sea level: the ice is already floating. Niklas Moerner, who has spent his entire 30-year career studying sea level, says sea level will rise this century by little more than the 8 inches observed in the 20th century. Just 3 inches of that rise will come from ice-melt. "Global warming" profiteers had better start looking for another job -- or another scare.

Sucks when you believe in lies

The flaws with the IPCC's reports..

[Finny]

Originally Posted by Recusant

Lastly, if global warming doesn't exist - but in 50 years we have an infinately cleaner planet then i say great. I don't care that it'll cost me a few quid a week.

And that's the point.. You have to "pay" a few quid over a hypothesis. It's a scam my friend. Nobody can predict the future. If we could, we'd see how to correct the mistakes before they happen.

When using the Scientific Method,(def. principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses) you have to do it correctly. Using a Computer for models on 8 year old data does to provide accurate information to form a answer.

The NASA launched Aqua a few years ago. Read up on it here.. Photo is CO2 in the Earth's Atmosphere..

[Recusant]

Originally Posted by Finny

[color="Green"]
Global warming profiteers are wrong
Christopher Monckton
April 3, 2008

Climate alarmists are alarmed, scaremongers scared, for their predictions of catastrophe are not coming true. "Global warming" has stopped. For 10 years, average temperatures on earth have not risen. For seven years, the trend has been downward. The fall between January 2007 and January 2008 was the biggest since records began in 1880.

Yawn.

It hasn't warmed since when?
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

I'm sorry, it's warmer now than in the medievil period?
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

Solar activity? Nope... (well, 0.18 degrees)
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

Greenland has more Ice? Not really...
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2...php&frame=true

As for water level rises, the amount of Ice is only partly issue, it's what happens to water when it warms up - it expands (you probably know that, but the article doesn't mention it).

2 studies in 2007 estimated up to ~1m rise (though as little as 9cm for the IPCC minimum rise). Enough to displace 22,000 square miles of US land and displace a million people worldwide.
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Pu...ience_2007.pdf

I would suggest that Christopher Monckton is a bit behind the times. Once again re-hashing old since debunked myths about why it's nothing to be worried about or why we're not to blame.

Your other source, the Republican Party has considerable vested interests in trying to protect its own reputation for having been criminaly neglegent of their country's environment (leave aside global warming). Of course, they're the paid representatives of the corporate elite (even more so than the also paid-off Democrats).

Furthermore, the report is over 3 years old. The irony in the constant assertation that the data is manipulated to suit political ends is also hilarious.

As i wrote earlier, the governments who commission the IPCC through the UN do NOT want to address this issue. These IPCC reports are precicely the OPPOSITE of what the world leaders want to hear. Why would they ask that the data present political challenges that will lead to increased costs and lower standards of living at home?

And that's the point.. You have to "pay" a few quid over a hypothesis. It's a scam my friend. Nobody can predict the future. If we could, we'd see how to correct the mistakes before they happen.

I can predict (comfortably, it's simple observational science) that the world will be dirtier, more polluted and less healthy with less biodiversity. Unless we blast it all into space or switch to far less polluting technology. What have you against that?

I would pay to protect it (do actually), just as i would protect my own farm from foxes and rabbits.

[The Black Ghost]

I beleive in global warming...as a simple comparison of changes in ozone scans and ice meltings over the past forty years can show in a heartbeat. But even if you were to not beleive in it, cant it be agreed on that there is still a pollution/deforestation oroblem in general that needs to be solved? Damn strait there is.

[Recusant]

Of course that is a problem, but not one worth paying for according to the deniers.

There seems to be 3 approaches by the deniers.

Step 1: Deny global warming is happening (rare these days).
Step 2: Acknowledge it, but claim it is part of the cycle "we're not to blame" (still pretty popular, despite the considerable evidence).
Step 3: Claim the potential benefits of it (why nothing should change).

They rarely come around. It's not easy to admit you were wrong, especially if you were such a vocal denier.

I mostly sat on the fence until i read about it and i agree with the vast majority of experts. I just wish i was one of them, so i could sit the deniers down and explain on all the points they're just wrong about.

This thread is my way of doing that. Just point anyone here and take them on.

[Recusant]

Nice to see there hasn't been any fresh challenges for a while.