The American Spectator

moron| 10.24.08 @ 8:31AM

Goodbye grants. Adios agency positions. How could you forget adios Nobel winner Fat Al for narrating a "documentary?"

garry greenwood| 10.24.08 @ 9:16AM

Gee, aren't these global-warming extremists the same ones who made millions hyping Y2K??

Just wondering...

Michael J. Casey| 10.24.08 @ 9:33AM

Absolutely 100% correct! If one peruses the IPCC report, you will find article after article expounding on what will happen IF temperatures are increasing. These are effects of putative warming and not CAUSES -- commiting the fallicy of false cause! Furthermore the backgrounds of the contributors are suspect also as there is an overdose of biologists who are not exactly trained in things climatic.

There is not one statement in the entire report that addresses anything that actually effect climate such as 1} solar activity, 2) Earths' periodic orbital oscillations, 3)vulcanism and 4)plate techtonics.

Jason Gillman| 10.24.08 @ 9:58AM

"environoia" Awesome.. Now to add it to my spell check dictionary.

Peter E Balsam, MD| 10.24.08 @ 11:26AM

I was taught that one only had to tell a lie three times to make it true. It seems now that it has to be told again and again and.......

pete kantor| 10.24.08 @ 11:32AM

In accordance with conservative traditions, the next to last paragraph includes no supportive documentation. Any person with the brains that God gave geese would recognize the environmental impact of human activity, in particular the oxidation of fossil fuels.

Two questions:

1. What is it that conservatives are conserving? Is it anything tangible?

2. When will conservatives abandon the practice of removing from context, distorting, deceiving, and outright lying?

STOP BUYING THE BS!!!| 10.24.08 @ 11:35AM

It's very encouraging to see people actually able to think for themselves and see behind all the BS dumped on the public via the media and government agencies. If you learn one thing from this financial meltdown we are in right now, I hope you realize that on the whole these government agencies don't care about doing what's right - they just care about doing what's profitable to them.

There have been several reputable reports released indicating that there was no increase of temperature since 1995, and in fact the global temperature saw it's largest drop during 2007. The drop of temperature in 2007 actually totally negated the 0.7 degree Celsius increase of the past century. Ocean currents are running colder. Austraila saw it's coldest August in over 60 years. Iraq and other locations saw snow for the first time in many decades during 2007. And recently the sun has had it's lowest amount of surface activity in the past 100 years. But we don't find any of this on the mainstream media because it would kill potential profits and proposed legislation to further usurp our liberty.

And not once has any major news source mentioned that water vapor composes the lion's share of "greenhouse gases". And what do all the proposed hydrogen cell cars produce - water vapor!

Charles Perry| 10.24.08 @ 11:40AM

I never hear about the oceans' thirst for CO2. There is 50 times much oceanic CO2 as atmospheric, and that's the equilibrium point. If we were even able to remove significant amounts of CO2 from the air, the oceans would release some to restore equilibrium.

Dr Gregory Young| 10.24.08 @ 12:35PM

As just one of the 31,072+ legitimate and viable Scientists who signed the Petition Project declaring the Global Warming Hypothesis bogus, of whom 9,021 were Ph.D.s, let me assure you that we're not in good humor, nor take it kindly to be slurred and ridiculed by taking the other side in this debate. And our numbers are still growing. Here's the Petition Statement we support:

"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

According to the process of including signatories, as revealed at http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Qualifications_Of_Signers.html, "Signatories are approved for inclusion in the Petition Project list if they have obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields. The petition has been circulated ONLY in the United States. The current list of 31,072 petition signers includes 9,021 PhD; 6,961 MS; 2,240 MD and DVM; and 12,850 BS or equivalent academic degrees. Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science. All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy."

Regarding the incessant drum-beating to rally support for Global Warming, we're stand amazed because it makes reason stare. Indeed, we're angry that the vast majority of American Scientists will not be heard by the media. We're dismayed over the fact that Global Warming fiasco has become politcally popular and expedient to those left-wing politicians and power-brokers whose aim is to literally tax everything with a carbon footprint. For those who may not understand, all life is made from carbon... Thus, their liberal "idea" is to blantantly control and tax all life, which is to globally include "breathing;" for in doing so we expell CO2 gas, which they have wrongly redefined as a Global Warming Gas, a pollutant which must be regulated and stamped out. Poppycock!

Instead of a true and open discourse, we see the daily dribble from the MSM and various liberally usurped Science Journels, falsely alleging a "consenus" when there is not! Arrayed against this petition statement of 31,000+ is the United Nations IPCC with its core group of 600 scientists, Al Gore, and a relatively small number of mediocre "scientists" here and there across the American landscape, who have suddenly found notoriety or grant money in the global warming cause. And please note, of the 600 UN scientists, none are ever permitted to approve the Unitied Nations Global Warming edicts issued in their name. In fact, some are now suing the UN over this disparity itself.

Again, to make it clear, these 600 authors are not – as is ordinarily the custom in science – permitted the power of approval regarding the published UN review of which they are putative authors. They are permitted to comment on the draft text only, but the final text has been found to neither conforms to nor includes many of their own critical comments. Instead, the final text conforms wholly to the United Nations objective of building support for world taxation and rationing of industrially-useful energy. Anything that would offend the UN doctrine is trashed, pure and simple.

Dr. Gregory Young
Neuroscientist and Physicist

Marc Jeric, MS, PhD| 10.24.08 @ 12:57PM

Along with Dr. Young, I am also a signatory of the cited petition. Another document signed by holders of various scientific doctorates is titled "Manhattan Resolution" (see Internet); it also declares the anthropogenic global warming a hoax. The main guru of globaloney warming is Dr. Hansen, who in his youth in 1974 proclaimed the globaloney cooling, with the enormous new glaciers soon crushing the New York skyscrapers to dust.

megapotamus| 10.24.08 @ 1:30PM

In accordance with conservative traditions, the next to last paragraph includes no supportive documentation.

Pete, you may be new to AlGorz intertubes but you will notice some of the wordsy parts in that paragraph have little lines under them. If you put the pointing gadget of your computational engine on those you will see what we call "links"... can you say that? Links? Check that out. The most important thing though is that there has been NO warming for quite some time. According to NASA (not Jim Hanson but NASA) there has been cooling for a decade and last winter was so cold if entered into the average it wipes out all warming since the '70s. It is a simple fact that there is NO global warming but significant global cooling that we can do nothing about but turn up the heat. Will the Democrats actually be able to keep heating oil from the grannies and still posture as the helper-monkeys of American politics? Sorry. Physics are not ammenable to mau-mauing.

David Smith| 10.24.08 @ 3:12PM

Pete Kantor: conservatives are tired of the left's name-calling. Your 'idiots' claptrap is an example.

Anyway, I was a biology major as an undergrad ('76) and knew even then the left-leanings of my professors on all environmental issues. I liked biology as a discipline, but am now (thank the Lord) a nuclear professional in the upper reaches of Westchester County, NY (hint). If Mr Kantor believes in carbon as an issue, he'd applaud my employment at Indian Point where, as a health physicist, I look out for the safety of workers and the public.

I doubt he'll reply - such is the dead-ended environmental left: bereft of big answers, deficient in logic and methods, and stubborn to a fault.

Robbins Mitchell| 10.24.08 @ 4:23PM

Once 'global warming is finally and definitively determined to be a hoax,will it be possible to bring criminal charges against anAL GOREtentive for fraud,theft or other financial misconduct?...I ask because of the 'carbon credit' market meltdown that is sure to occur as more and more true scientific data emerges to discredit him and his Greek chorus of climat Cassandras (how's that for alliteration?)...I'm thinking seriously about filing a class action civil suit against him in federal court to compel him to testify under oath and to force discovery of all his financial records related to the 'carbon credit' market

Marc Boyd| 10.24.08 @ 6:22PM

I am an Engineer by training and practice, and a science enthusiast by nature.

Let's consider global climate change. It is common sense that you would try to determine the largest energy inputs to our planet first and then see where they are going. Guess what, the largest energy input is from the sun. That input has decreased over the past few years (few sunspots) and we are cooling as would be logical. The decrease is verified by the NASA Solar monitoring sat. Global cooling has also been seen on other planets. I think one has a predominately CO2 atmosphere. (Heh)

The belief that mankind can make the climate change is ridiculous. The mass of the crust and oceans act as a large energy sink. You can look up the actual numbers, but the liberals have no concept of all of those zeros after all of those other numbers.

This huge mass moderates our temperature changes to remain, on average, in a range that we can survive. Also, Earth's orbit is in the "sweet spot" that has enabled life to flourish. CO2 is in such a low percentage of our atmosphere that any increases have very minor effects.

I went through the global cooling hysteria and had the same arguments back then. No icebergs in the Gulf, thank you.

Russell Seitz| 10.24.08 @ 11:34PM

It would enormously reinforce Dr. Young's case if he were to quantify the significance of that decade old petition .

It's a bibliometric commonplace that bona fide scientists tend to produce roughly a peer reviewed publication a year, so one would expect 32,000 to have ground out upwards of a quarter of a million papers since 1997. As the entire authorship of upwards of 7,500 scientific journals is tracked monthly by Science Citation Indices , instead of providing the latest link to what's hot in oceanography in the landlocked physics departments od Algerian camel colleges , why doesn't Young reveal the Top Ten climate science papers , by SCI citation impact , out of the reams and reams this army of erstwhile contrarians would by now have produced if it existed as advertise ?

We wait with bated breath -- for it grows tedious to see the same dozen( or less) familiar names and claims repeated here and in the columns of Planet Gore while the hypothetical publications of so many thousands of contrarians languish in undeserved obscurity.

Mr. Chesser ought to look into it before the next Heartland revival meeting, as, its press releases notwithstanding , the last one was upwards of 32,000 warm scientific bodies short of Dr. Young's great expectations .

D. Johnson| 10.25.08 @ 6:19AM

Mr. Seitz, while it is clear that you have extensive skill using a thesaurus it is equally clear that you lack any skill in logic or debate, as your entire post, as verbose and superficially eloquent as it may appear, was nothing but a rather long example of an "ad hominem" fallacy.

Or to be more blunt, its obvious that you adhere to the "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh*t" credo, and quite frankly, you simply are not dazzling anyone.

Kendall Svengalis| 10.25.08 @ 9:33AM

The scientific body of literature which contradicts the global warming hoax is a substantial and inconvenient truth to Mr. Seitz. Even so, many journals are now controlled by global warming gatekeepers whose job it is to protect the grant-funding machine. Nowhere in his sophomoric diatribe does he deal with the issue of causation. Distinguishing between natural and anthropogenic causes is far too complex to make with anything approaching the certitude that grant-chasing scientists pretend to understand. In many cases it comes down to ideology, gut feeling, and the desire to keep the federal research money spigot flowing. But the uncertainties are just too monumental and the actual temperature record uncooperative.

Climate does change. What else is new? But given that the temperatures in the mid-19th century were the lowest of the past 3,000 years, a 1 degree Celsius temperature rise is totally unremarkable. The global alarmists display an amazing lack of historical perspective, and are so caught up in the climatic moment that they cannot see how foolish they are. This hype is almost totally based on the wildly inaccurate climate models which cannot begin to account for such significant factors as cloud cover and the role of the oceans, not to mention the sun. And so we get endless “studies” attempting to prove that the recent decline in the population of spotted tree lizards in Nicaragua between 1987 and 2004 portends dire consequences for the human race.

In this complex world of climate science, journalists are like so many children peddling scary scenarios to a gullible public, 99.9% of whom don’t even know what the current temperature is. Try asking a journalist, politician, or a member of an environmental organization what the current average world temperature is to within, say, two degrees. All you'll get will be blank stares. These folks are awash in a sea of ignorance, and soft targets for fundraisng letters from the Natural Resources Defense Council and that noted climate scientist and performing arts high school graduate, Leonardo DiCaprio.

RationalGeezer| 10.25.08 @ 12:17PM

Gary Greenwood wrote: "Gee, aren't these global-warming extremists the same ones who made millions hyping Y2K??"

There's nothing that the global warming hoax has in common with the Y2K phenomenon.

First, Y2K was entirely a man-made problem caused by computer programs and firmware embedded in hardware chips. Climate change has nothing to do with anything that man can influence and everything to do with astronautical phenomenae over which we have NO control.

Second, because of the massive effort to mitigate the Y2K problem, it was largely solved by the time Y2K actually arrived. It was NOT a myth, but a problem that was solved. Man-made Climate Change IS a myth and a hoax.

Diane Smith| 10.25.08 @ 2:24PM

I was practically in a swoon by the time I read through all the PhD's, engineers, oceanographers and common sense laymen's opinions on global warming.

Allow me to add that of a high school freshman of my close acquaintance who was brave enough to say in his Year Book "Global warming is a crock.' That statement will follow him through his senior year. I asked him how he came to that conclusion. He said his whole freshman geography was concentrated on global warming. And he recognized a kook zealot when he heard one. That is public education on the left coast!

Rubicon| 10.25.08 @ 4:17PM

The supposedly decades old petition, has in fact grown to the numbers it now represents, only recently. I doubt the petition is actually decades
old.
Most importantly, is that this many "qualified" scientists have joined in petition to question the entire man-made Global Warming theory.
Now that facts are beginning to easily discredit the assertions of the alarmist crowd, we must expect the level of vitriol to grow exponentially as the alarmists realize their money making, political power grabbing hoax, has been revealed for what it is!
BUNK!

talgus| 10.25.08 @ 6:16PM

One point not mentioned is the CO2 warming fingerprint (mid atmosphere above the equator) of hotspot air that has been searched for years and thousands of dollars. Still have not found it. Could it be that CO2 is completely insignificant as a GW contributor? Hide the information, must keep the grants coming.

Jim B| 10.25.08 @ 10:28PM

I (BSChE) have the capacity to understand data and manipulations thereof. But it is almost impossible to get to the raw data on which the global warming reports are based, or the manner in which the data are collected, or the assumptions made in creating the computer programs that massage the data and make predictions of future events. So I just wonder....

ward a| 10.26.08 @ 12:15AM

I'm a historian, not a scientist but it is my contention that the global warming craze is an attempt by the governing class to end up in control of energy supplies (rationing anyone?). If temperatures had been declining for the last 20 years the cry would be for controls to protect the population from freezing (again rationing). The control of temperature is not the goal, power is!

Russell Seitz | 10.26.08 @ 1:38AM

Mr. Johnson's fear of engagement on the atmospheric science front seems to match his own bibliography. Readers wishing to form a judgement ad rem can run his name through the formidable search engines provided by Scirus or Science Citations Index to see what they don't get.

Mr Svengalis will find that I have dealt with distinguishing between natural and anthropogenic climate forcing in Nature and elasewhere and the importance of informing that distinction to policy in The Wall Street Journal , The National Interest, and Foreign Affairs. Given that the content of the science journals ( remember that there are literally thousands on research library shelves ) he dismisses as ideologically supine or suborned sustains a remarkably hot debate on climate change in their pages , one wonders why he doesn't at least try to get a handle on scientific reality the old fashioned way . By reading the literature.

That goes double for JimB BsChE, who should he ought to know that the entire 4000+ pages of the IPCC report, plus the underlying data bases have been available for the downloading since March. I hope Mr Chesser has a a good read.

The Hairy beast| 10.26.08 @ 12:24PM

New Zealand dairy farmers recently managed to defeat a tax on bovine methane emissions (cow farts). As funny as this may sound, the actual amount of money that would have been extracted from the industry and sent to the government was significant and not funny in the least. At at time when food supplies are falling globally, does it really make sense to cripple an entire food producing industry? Even the BBC was skeptical.

A few other observations:

1. How do taxes stop Global Warming, anyway? I never made the connection between fatter government coffers and much of anything good happening as a result.

2. How much of this was influenced by rich yuppies purchasing McMansions out in the countryside, then whining about the awful smells coming from the farm next door?

3. For decades we used to joke that the government would tax air if they could. Well, now they can.

Bloefeld| 10.26.08 @ 3:05PM

Actually the global warming alarmists are literally the same guys who predicted drastic population decreases in the 70's. John P. Holdren and Paul Ralph Ehrlich. These guys seem bent on killing half the people on the planet for the 'planet's own good.

If the only conscious form of life on the planet are human beings, then the only 'purpose' of the planet is to provide a home for as many of them as it can.

Without us, Earth is just another rock in the Universe.

Cheers,

Bloefeld

wingsnlinks| 10.26.08 @ 3:16PM

feel free to use my term for all the b.s. enviromania being spread: gaiarrhea.

Bloefeld| 10.26.08 @ 3:27PM

Scientists signing petitions one way or another on the topic of climate change are not relevant.

What is relevant is whether or not there is a causal relationship between increased CO2 emissions and any change in the climate.

At this point the answer is no. The reason is that there is no data to compare the level of CO2 in the atmosphere with the actual available data on the temperature of the earth's surface.

The attempt to compare current CO2 levels with ancient ice records and from that try to determine the temperature of the atmosphere in those ancient times is a pretty big stretch.

Even as a layman, with a fair understanding of statistical analysis and the scientific method. It seems that the only driver of this debate is a transparent socialist attempt to take money from people who earn it and give it to people who don't.

People think that communism was defeated when the Berlin Wall fell.

America is on the brink of electing a man to the Presidency who is transparently a Marxists. Yet most American's are too ignorant to be able to 'think' about the consequences of that. Just as they are too ignorant to think about the consequences of believing in global warming and taking action based on their beliefs about it rather than any fact about it.

Cheers,

Bloefeld

Russell Seitz| 10.26.08 @ 5:26PM

Describing himself as " a layman, with a fair understanding of statistical analysis and the scientific method " Bloefeld informs us that

"... most American's are too ignorant to be able to 'think' ... too ignorant to think about the consequences of believing in global warming and taking action based on their beliefs about it rather than any fact about it."

He then adduces that "there is no data to compare the level of CO2 in the atmosphere with the actual available data on the temperature of the earth's surface..."

How dare the editors of the Journal of Geophysical Research [Atmospheres} fill hundreds of thousands of its pages with what purport to be minutely detailed accounts of CO2 levels and temperature purportedly connected by so-called 'laws of physics '

Don't they realize that so-called infrared spectrophotometers bolometers and thermometers are just figments of the elitist imagination of the Main Stream Scientific Media and that all purported launches of weather satellites are as bogus as the Apollo Moon Landing ? Next thing they'll be claiming the earth is over 6,000 years old , or that The Discovery Institute co-sponsored Mr. Chesser's last conference . The very idea!

D Pete| 10.26.08 @ 11:01PM

Seitz is a typical arrogant left wing know-it-all. He doesn't really argue the facts, just the people involved, all the while letting everyone know how stupid they are for disagreeing with him.

Just another sarcastic twit who lashes out in desperation as he sees the walls crumbling around him.

Mike B| 10.27.08 @ 12:48AM

The anthropowhateveritscalled global warming is the necessary crisis which allows the left to magnanimously represent another of it's seemingly endless parade of voiceless constituencies, in this case 'the environment', to the end of exercising control over the way the rest of us, the less enlightened, live.

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Richard S Courtney| 10.27.08 @ 7:08AM

Mr Seitz claims that climate change is dominated by changes to atmospheric CO2 concentration that results from human activity. And he attempts to justify his claim by ad hominem attacks on those who disagree, sarcasm and a statement saying:

“How dare the editors of the Journal of Geophysical Research [Atmospheres} fill hundreds of thousands of its pages with what purport to be minutely detailed accounts of CO2 levels and temperature purportedly connected by so-called 'laws of physics ' “

His argument is flawed on three counts.

Firstly, published “accounts of CO2 levels and temperature purportedly connected by so-called 'laws of physics ' ” tell nothing about the causes of climate change.

Secondly, those published accounts tell nothing about what dominates climate change. Nobody disputes that atmospheric CO2 affects climate, but there is much dispute concerning what effect a change to atmospheric CO2 concentration could have on climate. Other effects clearly overwhelm the effect of CO2 changes; e.g. atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by more than 4% since 1995 but there has not been accompanied by any significant change to mean global temperature.

Thirdly, he makes the unjustifiable assertion that recent rise to atmospheric CO2 concentration is a result of human activity. This may be so but it is very unlikely. I refer to our paper
Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, 'The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle' E&E;v16no2 (2005).

It considers mechanisms in the carbon cycle and uses model studies of to determine if natural (i.e. non-anthropogenic) factors may be significant contributors to the observed rise to the atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1958 when measurements began at Mauna Loa. These considerations indicate that any one of three natural mechanisms in the carbon cycle alone could be used to account for the observed rise. The study provides six such models with three of them assuming a significant anthropogenic contribution to the cause and the other three assuming no significant anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) contribution to the cause. Each of the models matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.

So, if one of our six models is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible.

And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.

This indicates that the observed rise to the atmospheric CO2 concentration may be entirely natural; indeed, it suggests that the observed recent rise to the atmospheric CO2 concentration most probably is natural. Hence ‘projections’ of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration and resulting climate changes have high uncertainty if they are based on the assumption of an anthropogenic cause.

But that is science and who cares what science says?

Richard S Courtney

John| 10.27.08 @ 11:28AM

Therre is no such thing as "climate change." There is, however, climate variation. To learn about what's going on now, check out:
Watts Up With That?

Bloefeld| 10.27.08 @ 12:16PM

Russell Seitz

I guess I wasn't clear enough. My paragraph was obviously incomplete.

I'm sorry if I confused you with my comment.

However you perhaps inadvertently proved my other point about the ability of the public to 'think.'

It seems that your tirade demonstrates your lack of "knowledge" which is the cornerstone of 'thinking.' You seem to betray that 'knowledge' means something; so let me define it for you. 'Knowledge' is justifiable, true, belief.

You may believe that global warming, sorry 'er global climate change is caused by an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere by human activity is the truth but you cannot make the claim from knowledge at this point in time.

You have no justification in making this claim from a position of knowledge, because there is no proved and true link between changes in the level of CO2 emitted by human activity and any change in the climate.

As I pointed out earlier, the assumption is flawed because causality has not been established.

My incomplete paragraph; "The reason is that there is no data to compare the level of CO2 in the atmosphere with the actual available data on the temperature of the earth's surface. " is easily remedied by inserting a final sentence. "Contemporaneous with the entire time frame and locations from which the only hard data on the temperature of the Earth's surface was measured.

Your ad homonym attack is unfortunately typical and indicative to which the level of the debate has sunk.

Perhaps next time, you could simply say something along the line that I seemed to be denying the existence of very good evidence of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Then I could have responded by correcting my poorly thought out paragraph and something useful could have resulted.

I recommend you look up a chart of common fallacies and compare your responses to the chart prior to committing your response to the public.

If all of us could be relied upon to attack the idea and not the person, the polarizing effect of injecting 'hate' into every aspect of public discourse could be reduced and people perhaps would be more inclined to listen and learn instead of yell and close their minds.

Cheers,

Bloefeld

Russell Seitz| 10.28.08 @ 1:30AM

The inconvenient truth, ad rem, is that 387 ppm of atmospheric CO2 equals ~ 3,7 W/M2 of positive radiative forcing and, about 3/8 of that CO2 is there in consequence of human activity since the industrial revolution tbegan .

The negative climate forcing due to cloud cover averages ~ 13 W/M2. If you have quantitative difficulty in figuring out how several whole watts/m2 can horse climate around by a Kelvin or two, then you are Mr. Chesser's lawful prey.

If Courtney wants to credibly lament the politicization of science journals , he'll have to do better than invoking his own authority in one that exemplifies the problem . I wish it were otherwise , but EE is the mirror image of some the most opinionated journals catering to Apocalyptic Greens.

This is not a matter of tu quoque, Courtney- that genre dates back to the K-Street publication of " Nuclear Winter News" by the advocates of that seminal example of the polemic abuse of climate models , and creating a contrarian scientific forum of last resort for screeds that can't make the grade even in journals as broadly accommodating to both sides as Geophysics Research Letters - witness Roy Spencer's recent appearance in its pages . Dodging disinterested peer review by creating what amout to trade journals to lower the scientific bar merely provides climate polemicists on the left- ( there are plenty) with an excuse to selectively cite the most egregious works of their own cohort .
.
As to learning more , about the debate , and how republicans came to be so badly seconded , try

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/climate_of_here

Richard S Courtney| 10.28.08 @ 6:51AM

Seitz:

Insult does not equal evidence.

If you have any critique of any kind of our work on atmospheric carbon dioxide then please provide it. We would greatly appreciate being told of any flaw in our work because then we could remedy it.

An insult to the journal in which the cited paper was published is not a flaw in the work. Indeed, work of our kind has great difficulty getting published in so-called "leading " journals because they have 'gatekeepers' to keep it out.

This 'gatekeeper' propblem is not new. The Wright brothers published their seminal work on aeronautics in a journal on bee-keeping because so-called "leading" journals would not publish it. But the value of their work is demonstrated by the existence of the aviation industry, and not by where their work was published.

When I provided scientific information I asked, "who cares about science?". Seitz, your response clearly states that your answer is that you don't.

Richard

Bloefeld| 10.28.08 @ 12:26PM

Russell Seitz

You do not seem capable of putting together a logical argument to defend what you claim to be true.

Here is a handy list of fallacies that I have found a useful guide over the years :

Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man)
Affirming The Consequent
Amazing Familiarity
Ambiguous Assertion
Appeal To Anonymous Authority
Appeal To Authority
Appeal To Coincidence
Appeal To Complexity
Appeal To False Authority
Appeal To Force
Appeal To Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument)
Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal To Common Practise)
Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People)
Argument By Fast Talking
Argument By Generalization
Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement)
Argument By Half Truth (Suppressed Evidence)
Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion)
Argument By Personal Charm
Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness)
Argument By Poetic Language
Argument By Prestigious Jargon
Argument By Question
Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam)
Argument by Rhetorical Question
Argument By Scenario
Argument By Selective Observation
Argument By Selective Reading
Argument By Slogan
Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics)
Argument From Age (Wisdom of the Ancients)
Argument From Authority
Argument From False Authority
Argument From Small Numbers
Argument From Spurious Similarity
Argument Of The Beard
Argument To The Future
Bad Analogy
Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology)
Burden Of Proof
Causal Reductionism (Complex Cause)
Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis)
Cliché Thinking
Common Sense
Complex Question (Tying)
Confusing Correlation And Causation
Disproof By Fallacy
Equivocation
Error Of Fact
Euphemism
Exception That Proves The Rule
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation)
Extended Analogy
Failure To State
Fallacy Of Composition
Fallacy Of Division
Fallacy Of The General Rule
Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment
False Cause
False Compromise
Genetic Fallacy (Fallacy of Origins, Fallacy of Virtue)
Having Your Cake (Failure To Assert, or Diminished Claim)
Hypothesis Contrary To Fact
Inconsistency
Inflation Of Conflict
Internal Contradiction
Least Plausible Hypothesis
Lies
Meaningless Questions
Misunderstanding The Nature Of Statistics
Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection)
Needling
Non Sequitur
Not Invented Here
Outdated Information
Pious Fraud
Poisoning The Wells
Psycho-genetic Fallacy
Reductio Ad Absurdum
Reductive Fallacy (Oversimplification)
Reifying
Short Term Versus Long Term
Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel's Nose)
Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck)
Statement Of Conversion
Stolen Concept
Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension)
Two Wrongs Make A Right (Tu Quoque, You Too)
Weasel Wording
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

Don Lindsay has put them up in this easy to use web-site with some other hand links.

I'm sure you will find it useful and fun to edit your comments by first running through this list and find in advance where you are going to be proved a moron by someone on this forum. I use the term 'moron' not in it's literal meaning and not as an ad hom. While I have insufficient evidence as to what your true intellectual capacity may be; I have sufficient evidence to conclude that in your lack of ability to engage in intellectual discourse without the reliance of dozens of logical fallacies that you have a defect in intelligence of at least some magnitude that puts you below the mean on the bell curve.

I have found from experience that the type of discussion you prefer is better suited for more left-wing web-sites. My personal experience is that most of the posters on those sites are "bullet-proof" to reason and therefore find anyone who thinks in lock-step with them comforting.

On the other-hand, those of us who approach science in the mode of its true philosophy of sceptical enquiry tend to find it offensive when the best argument an opponent can propose is based on his dislike of us.

Cheers,

Bloefeld

Russell Seitz| 10.28.08 @ 1:00PM

Courtney, though you have just scored an Own Goal on the gatekeeper issue by failing to disclose you're a member of the editorial board of the journal in which your paper appeared, and might better have recused yourself, the views you expressed in the Energy & the Environment article deserve rejection on more substantive grounds .

The paper's conclusions do not reflect the geophysical record , as laid out reproducibly in past and present 14C accelerator mass spectroscopy of samples spanning centuries. As you ought to know , - and readers should look to recent confirm, the ever greater resolution of AMS now allows nearly real-time distinction between upwind sources burning fossil and recent fuels .

Science is a quantitative business, and though ranking the credibility of journals and papers by their currency in citation may seem cruel as rating bonds from AAA through Junk , recent events have proved the necessity of constant vigilance.

Your paper goes uncited by the disinterested not because they consider stacking editorial advisory boards an insult to the honor of the scientific profession, but because in the light of 14 C AMS , and other isotopic systemics.

The fact is that it invites a few minutes head scratching at the sheer impudence of its selective citation before it finally registers as an insult to the readers' physical intuition.

it is a cautionary example of why scientists who direct their own peer review are no better are no better off than physicians who treat themselves.
In order to care about science you have to distinguish the good from the bad.

Richard S Courtney| 10.28.08 @ 3:09PM

Seitz:

I scored no "own goal".

The paper was peer reviewed prior to publication and my position as a Member of the Editorial Board had no part in that.

I ponder your response had I boasted my having been appointed to the position on the Editorial Board of a technical journal. And it would have been a boast because it is not relevant information (sadly, your failing to understand it is not relevant again demonstrates your lack of logic that Bloefeld deplores).

And, again, you seem to think insults are adequate substitute for argument or evidence. As I said, if you know of any flaw in our published work then I would be grateful to be told of it. You have not attempted to show any flaw of any kind but - instead - you throw insults and try to change the subject to carbon isotope data.

You are confused about the carbon isotopes. The C14 is useful in that it tells of carbon sequestration rates following atomic bomb tests in the 1940s and 1950s. The bombs released C14.

The ratio of C12:C13 is used to assess anthropogenic carbon dioxide concentration. However, the carbon isotope ratios indicate that at least two thirds of the increase to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is natural. When at least two thirds of the change is known to be caused by an unnkown natural cause then it is possible that all the change is a result of that cause ( I recognise that since this is a matter of logic it may need explanation for you).

However, I agree with you about scientists who conduct their own peer review. This, of course, is why the infamous 'hockey stick' of Mann, Bradley and Hughes came to be published in an IPCC Report: Mann was a Lead Author of the chapter that included it. And it had not been published before that. Several other examples of such unacceptable behaviour by IPCC Lead Authors exist, and I am pleased that you agree with me that the practice is deplorable.

Richard

Russell Seitz| 10.28.08 @ 8:55PM

Courtney, my scientific acquaintance with 12 and 13C antedates the 1991 discussion of it in _Science _ .

It is far less interesting than your recent salient-
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/02/on-astounding-diplphil-courtney.html

By the way, you need AMS of all three isotopes to discriminate between the marine carbonate, fossil fuel and recent biomass components of the biogeochemical cycle .

As to deploring DIY peer review, could you please tell us to which of the ~7,500 science journals other than the one you edit it was submitted ? many thanks ,
Russell

Richard S Courtney| 10.29.08 @ 4:47AM

Seitz:

I have repeatedly asked you to point to any flaw in our work (that you reject). Your only responses are insults, obfuscation and irrelevance.

And I object to your citation of the blog of an anonymous internet blogger that only exists to tell lies about climate realists.

Importantly, if the lies about me were true then that would not affect the veracity of our work in any way. (Truth can be stated by a nazi child molester, and a saint can state an error).

Your behaviour clearly demonstrates that you know there is no flaw in our work because you are trying to 'shoot the messenger'.

In this circumstance I can see no point in further replies to your postings because the merits of your and my arguments are plain for all to see.

Richard

June Cheatwood| 12.2.08 @ 8:33PM

Great discussion! Richard, Charles Perry, Dr. Young, Ward A., Bloefield, Marc, so many others, delighting the ole brain of me! Though at points there I wanted to say, "Children. Children. Look it up! Stick to the facts and stop calling names!" One of those inconvenient little facts not known to the general public is that the, ahem, Great Leader Al Gore is not a scientist as people assume but a journalist and politician; and good for him! Fine professions, both! As for the personal attacks here, how quickly would Warmist zeal be replaced by embarrassment and boredom if, instead of fame, they suspected history just may have in store for them ridicule. I hope for their sakes, dear souls, they do sometimes think of that likely outcome as temps cool and cool even more--I mean, in this particular cycle.

But if and when the Warmists are confident they do have solid science on their side, we'll see their excited advocacy fade away, they will drop the religious-fanatic doomsday-style pronouncements and ad hominem attacks, they will present logical, objective scientific and historical data leaving personalities out of it--and above all, actually invite presentation of opposing theories once confident of their own. For that's not only what scientists do, it's what adults happen to do, Russell. Not that you seem like a fanatic, but one wonders since you do seem to align with zealots like Sharon Begley of Newsweek and others who slant and fake the story. Anyway, wanted to say how much light y'all shed for at least this fascinated reader, hear? You too, wingslinks--invent some more fun words!

Bob R| 12.12.08 @ 11:29PM

Thank you June for resolving a conflict that was becoming tedious and trivial.

Hugo F. Franzen| 12.23.08 @ 4:59PM

I am a retired professor of Physical Chemistry with no vested interest in the global climate controversy save for the the future and what we might or might not need to do to prepare for it. I have spent the last several months strengthening my understanding of the underlying science relevant to the global climate. On the basis of over 50 years of research and teaching pnysical chemstry I have an understanding of the nature of the assymmetric stretching frequency and the accompanying rotational states of carbon dioxide, of the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the Planck law, the laws of thermodynamics and the solution of elementary differential equations. Putting these together with input only from the Keeling curve and econmic data I am able to calculate, using no approximations or modeling - just the basic science and the current rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that the average temperature of the earth will increase, as the result of carbon dioxide increases in our atmosphere caused by the combustion of fossil fuels, by about 0.4 celsius degrees in the next ten years. Please everyone note, I am not making any use of ice cores, tree rings, or other data concerning the past - the calculation is made using only thoroughly established science and data concerning carbon dioxide production and increases in the atmosphere that are relevant to the present. I suggest that those who wish to dispute the conclusion that we are the principal source of the increases of both carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the average temperature of the earth stop arguing economics and politics and take the time to understand the basic science and, if they can find an error there, let us all know. Until they do so I will remain totally convinced, based upon facts and scientific argumentation, that what the climatologists are telling us is about to happen is very close to what we can expect.

Ron House| 1.23.09 @ 12:47AM

Well, Hugo F. Franzen, Please, do tell. We can't find an error in your argument if you don't tell us what it is.