You might want to reconsider that claim.

Link.

A couple of tidbits:

Furthermore, there are other relevant scientific disciplines which bear upon climatology - 'climate science' doesn't exist in a vacuum, any more than any other branch of science exists in isolation.  The 'ordained priests only' argument is a non-starter.

That certainly is interesting. Perhaps when similar studies are conducted for another 20 years which repeatedly support those results, we can have a chat about it. Indeed, I welcome any peer-reviewed publications that prove that everyone has gotten it wrong thus far. It’d be great if AGW didn’t exist.

Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. When I said ‘climate science’ I merely referred to sciences that are relevant to the study of climate.

The reason that word is used is because most “sceptics” aren’t sceptical at all, and certainly lack the necessary experience or knowledge in order to evaluate the evidence anyway. Sceptics can be convinced with a suitable amount of supporting evidence. Well, we have that. those best equipped to produce or research such evidence are telling us one thing. Armchair experts with no formal training are telling us another.

Forgive me for siding with those that study such phenomena for a living.

Ever hear of climate cycles?  Hurricane activity is known to have been higher than current.  The claim that nights are getting warmer is based on both flawed and expanded data.  Cities are warmer at night, fact.  You can't heat a million homes and not have an impact on the local monitoring stations, they have been proven to be inaccurately adjusted.  Fifty years ago, there weren't even a tenth of the monitoring stations we have now.  There were almost no measurements being taken over water, and there sure as hell weren't any satellites checking the atmosphere.  The increase in droughts ignore little things like the dust bowl era, when entire states dried up and packed up.  By the way, that was two cycles back, at the height of the warming trend, which is, coincidentally, where we are now.  We now go into a cooling cycle, something science knew we were at the end of back when idiots were screaming about the ice age in the seventies.

Sixty years isn't even a blip, and that's with the assumption we have accurate data and not someone's wishful thinking.  Justification by elimination is the only way you can claim to prove AGW.

@-RAISTLIN-

I think you've been posting directly from Word which tends to screw up the thread. The thread is OK for me as long as I use IE7 but if I use FF the thread breaks right after your reply #679 and there is no reply box if I'm on that page.

The thread will fix itself once we get to another page or perhaps Kryo might come along and fix it for us but in the future try to avoid posting HTML directly from Word.

What I tend to do is to compose in Word to get spell checking and then copy and paste to notepad and from there copy and paste into the reply box. This is the most reliable way to get consistent fonts and backgrounds. One of the risks of using font's and colors is that these threads are viewed on many different sites with different default fonts, backgrounds and link colors. When you change these it might look great on the site that you are on but be totally unreadable on another site with a different layout.

Opponents of global warming's greatest weapon is doubt. If they can place a single ounce of doubt into the public's mind about whether or not global warming exists, then they will forever be able to argue against it irregardless of facts.

It is just like what the tobacco companies did. They placed doubt about whether or not smoking was harmful in the public's mind. They had doctors come out and say that it was healthy. Regardless of how much the medical science community would say it is harmful, if the public heard even the slightest bit of controversy as to whether or not it is true, they'll hold off judgement.

The scientific community is huge. Among the scientific community, there is extremely little doubt as to the idea that global warming exists. There will always be coverups, scams, and forged studies on both sides. But, you have to look at the overwhelming majority of scientists that have come to the conclusion that not only is global warming an grave danger, but that humans are a big cause of it.

Both sides will obviously lay out either misinformation or exaggeration for their cause. But at the end of the day you have to look at the cold hard facts and realize that you can't ignore the fact that humans are causing changes to the atmosphere in drastic ways and that just maybe it might not be in a good way. Never in the last 400,000 years has the CO2 levels been about 300ppm and since the turn of the century it has been rising steadily way above that mark. There is all kinds of overwhelming evidence just like that if you seek it out for yourself from independent sources. Combine that with the all the evidence of events around the world and you can piece it together yourself.

Someone on here just said that the southern ice cap is growing. That just shows you the kind of miss information that is spewed out by skeptics. Sure, the southern ice cap IS growing while the northern one is shrinking. But that happens every year! That is because the south has their winters while the north has their summers. The southern ice cap grows when the northern one shrinks. But, you have to look at how much it grows versus how much it shrinks every year. Each polar ice cap has been shrinking MUCH more than it has been growing every year. This is resulting in the reduced ice cover we are seeing each year. If you looked at the satellite photos of the ice caps, you'd see it yourself. There are numerous ice shelfs in the Antarctic that have completely collapsed because of the warming.

Even one of the biggest opponents of global warming Senator Inhofe who claimed that global warming was the "biggest hoax" ever put on the American people has retracted his statements that it doesn't exist and now says it does exist, but that man is not the cause. I wonder how long it will be before he changes that view point...seeing as how he receives a lot of money from the oil industry, it probably won't be any time soon.

The time for ignoring it is over and people just need to wake up. Unfortunately it usually takes things getting worse before people say "you know, maybe this is a problem". Wouldn't you rather error on the side of good and look back in hindsight saying that your intentions were good versus looking back in hindsight and say to yourself "why didn't we do anything?"

Frogboy, your statement goes both ways and your example does nothing to prove anything. It could now be said that the consensus is that bacteria causes ulcers. So what exactly is the point to your statements?

Why is it that we "know" that ulcers are caused by bacteria? Because of science correct? The reason why we even have consensus with a lot of the things people believe is true is because of science. Science creates consensus. Does science get things wrong sometimes? Yes. But does that mean we should ignore science? No.

It is also said that global warming has long been considered myth. Just look at how the idea of global warming was treated through the 60-80s decades. Yet lately because of science, the idea that it exist is becoming more and more true. So science is changing it. Just like it did with ulcers. Why? Because new data is being discovered that helps backup that idea. What if in 10 years science finds out that ulcers aren't caused by stress. That doesn't mean that we should never trust the scientific consensus. The scientific community does get things wrong once in awhile. But, when the scientific community is moving is such a one-way direction (just like it did with ulcers) where new data everyday suggests strong correlations between things, then you really need to take a good hard look at it. Especially considering the potential problems not doing something could cause.

What I don't understand is all the people willing to simply "wait and see" when a lot of the scientific community says that there is no time to "wait and see". Those same people who want to "wait and see" are people who thing global warming prevention advocates are trying to ruin the economy and are just in it to make themselves rich, yada yada.

Unfortunately business is ahead of science in this topic. This makes people want to believe that business is driving the science in order to make a profit. Business is ready to make a profit off of global warming with "green" methods. While that is good in some ways, it also leads people to believe that there is a vested monetary reason for the scientific findings. People need to realize that a vast majority of scientists are not making a profit by spewing out findings that global warming exists. There are some scientists on both sides that are giving their information in order to receive money. But the majority aren't. The majority are good people reporting their findings and are seriously concerned with the way the world is headed.

Humans are capable of changing the atmosphere just like how we broke down the Ozone layer. We can change and fix this though, just like we helped the Ozone layer.

You are right in the sense that Earth's climate model is so complex that no one really knows how it works to its fullest extend. What we have right now though are correlations. They do have very accurate temperature models going back over 400,000 years. Those are very accurate and aren't disputed by scientists around the globe. Nor are they manipulated in anyway. They've been obtained by numerous groups via ice core drilling and the results are the same. The correlations they've found are between CO2 and temperatures.

I'm sure the ulcer studies started the same way. Scientists found a correlation between bacteria found in the stomach and when someone has an ulcer. You then extend that study further to make conclusions. Correlations are what lead to discovery.

Yes, the climate model is so complex that you could never predict a hurricane or a tornado and how a certain element would effect the earth. But, what they do know is that when CO2 is high, so is the temperature. Sure, there could be a ton of things at play that result in that correlation. There are so many factors that could result in higher temperatures and higher CO2 levels at the same time. But, what we do know is that humans are a big cause of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere. So if there is any chance that CO2 is what is causing the increase in global temperatures, then we should really start looking into ways to reduce our CO2 output over the next several decades.

Renewable resources are a good thing. Why people are set in their ways to live forever on fossil fuels is beyond me. It isn't sustainable and with increasing evidence that it is harmful on the earth to burn, then we really need to look into ways to reduce their usage. Whether that be wind, water, nucleur, solar, whatever. We are way to dependant on oil and you can't deny that.

lol, yeah sorry. i do most of my posting from work, which is a no-no so i try not to have webpages open for typing. i post from outlook, but will use notepad in the future! cheers.

Ok it was a mistake. Alright then. But I can't edit my previous post....

Not to mention that the leaders of the world came in thousands of limos, burning more gas in a few days then a city does in a month, and of course, climate BELIEVERS (Which to me, seem alot like christian believers) want to make excuses for that...

lol, yeah. AGW deniers are just like columbus. oh, and galileo. i spose creationists fit the bill too? lol.

i don't "believe" in anything. My position is simply that we should listen to those in the best position with which to study climate phenomena, and since virtually all relevant scientific institutions support the AGW hypothesis, i find it remarkably arrogant that armchair quarterbacks feel that they know better, despite never having published anything on the topic. FYI- the world of science isn't built and shaped by posting on stardock's forums. Those that deny the consensus should publish and have their views given the same degree of scrutiny the thousands of peer-reviewed articles supporting AGW have received- or shut the hell up. Why people feel they are qualified to casually dismiss all that research is perplexing.

You're talking to someone whose new house should be 0-emissions in the summer thanks to spending a lot of money on green tech.

But I did that voluntarily because I believe in decreasing the impact I have on the environment.  Making people do that at the point of the gun is a different story.