Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

[thaibeachlovers]

Hot and cold, wet and dry, snow and no snow, increasing polar ice and decreasing polar ice; it's all global warming, of course.

The most recent National Geographic has a feature about global warming. There's a wealth of scientific data attesting to it happening - too much to copy and paste here.

If a person wants to gauge what's happening, look at the trends, the data from scientific studies. One could also tune in to what scientists are saying - their summaries on their and others' data.

To be a GW denier, in lieu of the mountains of evidence backing the concept, is to be a person who is strongly fixated on not wanting to believe it.

Whether one believes in man made global warming or if it is a naturally occuring fact of nature, does any sane person actually belive that without the total cessation of all carbon use a few wind turbines and electric cars are going to make an iota of difference. There are 7 billion people on planet earth ( and rising rapidly ), and they all want to live a western life style. Do that without burning carbon if you can, but you can't, can you!

Humpty is broken, and all the GW conferences in the world won't put him back together again.

[wilcopops]

Despite everything it isn't increasing, what if the only think between us and an ice age is man made CO2?

There are an increasing number of scientists around the globe who are looking at the unusually passive behaviour of the Sun in Solar Cycle 24, and concluding that the world is in for a sharp cooling over the next 20-30 years.

You won't read much about them in the press, as it doesn't fit the anti-CO2 Green narrative, but they include a number of well-credentialed scientists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov of the Russian Academy of Science, Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University, Professor Cliff Ollier of UWA (Western Australia ), Nir Shaviv, Henrik Svensmark, Nicola Scafetta.

A former German regional environment minister, Fritz Vahrenholt, recently co-authored a book called The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Crisis Isn't Happening, which skeptics might be interested in.

appear to be shopping around for some evidence to back up a preconceived theory - the usual method is to develop a theory from the evidence - but then your initial premise has been shot down in flames, hasn't it?

[RickBradford]

Humpty is broken, and all the GW conferences in the world won't put him back together again

Indeed. And there's a simple reason for that -- they're deliberately focusing on the wrong thing.

The anti-CO2 brigade regards cutting CO2 emissions radically as the 'solution'. You'd think that the 'solution' would be limiting temperature rises. After all, it's 'global warming' we're supposed to be worrying about -- and some German scientivists came up (completely from thin air) with a maximum safe limit of 2 degrees Centigrade rise. What a convenient number.

And the inconvenient truth is that reducing global CO2 emissions (even if such a thing were politically possible) does almost nothing to curb temperature rises.

It has been calculated that California's restrictive ARB legislation, carried through to 2050, would hold down global temperature rise by 0.00476°C, that is, about 5 thousandth of a degree.

Or take the Australian 'carbon tax'. A 5% cut in Australian CO2 emissions this decade would abating 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. The miniscule drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration would curb temperature rise by 0.00006 Cº. The estimated cost to industry and taxpayers of this move is $130 billion. Abating the 0.15 Cº warming once predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP.

Some of the more intelligent Greens know these figures, but they don't care.

Because the War on CO2 has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with politics.

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been removed. Please stay on topic.

[RickBradford]

Was the 2-degree 'safe' limit really pulled out of thin air?, was somebody's question.

Indeed it was.

From Der Spiegel:

"Two degrees is not a magical limit -- it's clearly a political goal," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Is Schnellnhuber qualified to call the 2C limit "clearly a political goal"?

Yes. Because he's the one who invented it.

From Der Spiegel (same article):

"Yes, I plead guilty," he says, smiling. The idea didn't hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany's most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief scientific adviser -- a position any researcher would envy.

That's climate 'science' for you.

[Mrjlh]

Just curious, has anyone seen the movie "Chasing Ice"? After you see it then talk about global warming not being real. Nothing staged. Nothing hidden. Just fantastic video taken of melting glaciers all over the world. Pictures are worth more than the anti global warming group pretends to think. Disbelieve all you want but something is happening. Is it CO2 or just nature doing what it has been doing all these years. You decide.

[boomerangutang]

Just curious, has anyone seen the movie "Chasing Ice"? After you see it then talk about global warming not being real. Nothing staged. Nothing hidden. Just fantastic video taken of melting glaciers all over the world. Pictures are worth more than the anti global warming group pretends to think. Disbelieve all you want but something is happening. Is it CO2 or just nature doing what it has been doing all these years. You decide.

It's a combination, plus many other factors. Thanks for the reminder about the 'Chasing Ice' movie. It won't affect the deniers' view, because they're fixated on denying there's a climate problem looming, no matter what the scientific data indicates.

Chasing Ice documentary video

Edited November 22, 2013 by boomerangutang

[FiftyTwo]

Just curious, has anyone seen the movie "Chasing Ice"? After you see it then talk about global warming not being real. Nothing staged. Nothing hidden. Just fantastic video taken of melting glaciers all over the world. Pictures are worth more than the anti global warming group pretends to think. Disbelieve all you want but something is happening. Is it CO2 or just nature doing what it has been doing all these years. You decide.

It's a combination, plus many other factors. Thanks for the reminder about the 'Chasing Ice' movie. It won't affect the deniers' view, because they're fixated on denying there's a climate problem looming, no matter what the scientific data indicates.

Chasing Ice documentary video

The 'deniers' do not deny any such thing.

As a 'denier' I claim, climate change by people is unproven, and therefore a waste of time to pursue any attempt of correction at this point in time.

As an 'alarmist' you want to make it look like you are the only ones that care but in effect.

1. You have no idea if man made CO2 affects anything at all.

2. You have no idea if the climate is warming or cooling, but have to include both, just in case.

3. None of you have any legitimate scientific knowledge or backgrounds.

4. As long as the gravy train keeps rolling.

[wilcopops]

Was the 2-degree 'safe' limit really pulled out of thin air?, was somebody's question.

Indeed it was.

From Der Spiegel:

"Two degrees is not a magical limit -- it's clearly a political goal," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Is Schnellnhuber qualified to call the 2C limit "clearly a political goal"?

Yes. Because he's the one who invented it.

From Der Spiegel (same article):

"Yes, I plead guilty," he says, smiling. The idea didn't hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany's most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief scientific adviser -- a position any researcher would envy.

That's climate 'science' for you.

Absolute rubbish - one person's quote or misquote - you are clutching at straws again.

[boomerangutang]

It's a combination, plus many other factors. Thanks for the reminder about the 'Chasing Ice' movie. It won't affect the deniers' view, because they're fixated on denying there's a climate problem looming, no matter what the scientific data indicates.

Chasing Ice documentary video

The 'deniers' do not deny any such thing.

As a 'denier' I claim, climate change by people is unproven, and therefore a waste of time to pursue any attempt of correction at this point in time.

As an 'alarmist' you want to make it look like you are the only ones that care but in effect.

1. You have no idea if man made CO2 affects anything at all.

2. You have no idea if the climate is warming or cooling, but have to include both, just in case.

3. None of you have any legitimate scientific knowledge or backgrounds.

4. As long as the gravy train keeps rolling.

1. You have no idea if man made CO2 affects anything at all. There are direct correlations between CO2 increases and temperature increases. Some very compelling data can be found in ice cores, going back millenia.

2. You have no idea if the climate is warming or cooling, but have to include both, just in case. It is warming - and at a faster rate than warming trends in Earth's past history. Perhaps scientists can't agree precisely to what extent. Part of the reason is, when we talk about warming, there's the factor of different layers: of sea and of atmosphere. Example: the upper levels of sea are warming significantly. The upper levels of atmosphere appear to be cooling slightly.

3. None of you have any legitimate scientific knowledge or backgrounds.

That's why I look to bona fide scientists for guidance. The vast majority of real scientists agree that GW is happening, and that it's exacerbated by human activities. Imagine: I go to a doctor and get diagnosed as positive for cancer. When I then tell my friend I have cancer, the friend (if he thinks like a GW denier) would say, "How can you say you have cancer, YOU'RE NOT A DOCTOR!"

4. As long as the gravy train keeps rolling. I don't even eat gravy, do you?

[RickBradford]

I get rather tired of this constant 'science by celebrity'.

If you have 99% of doctors who tell you 'you are sick' and 1% that says 'you're fine', you probably want to hang out with, check it up with the 99. You know what I mean? - noted climate expert George Clooney, talking about Typhoon Haiyan

Do you really think that oncology is similar to climate 'science'?

Medical science has a long history of advance through experimentaton, trial, and error. Medicine is a remarkably reliable field because, while they don't know everything, they can repeat a desired result over and over with each patient treated. There are concrete, testable practices in oncology. If a treatment fails, it is evident in a short period of time.

Climate 'scientists' simply play with computer programs and then announce dramatic results to an ever-willing press corps, touting the dangers (always) of the demon gas CO2.

The general point: 'As laypersons, we don't know enough about the science, so we should defer to experts' is fine, as long as you trust the experts in question, whether they be doctors, bankers, insurance salesman, or politicians.

When I see a field like climate science, rife with malpractice, incompetence, lying, deception, hypocrisy, secretiveness, vindictiveness, data fudging, agit-prop, corruption and plain bad science, I choose to be very cautious about what claims of theirs I will blindly accept.

[thaibeachlovers]

It's a combination, plus many other factors. Thanks for the reminder about the 'Chasing Ice' movie. It won't affect the deniers' view, because they're fixated on denying there's a climate problem looming, no matter what the scientific data indicates.

Chasing Ice documentary video

The 'deniers' do not deny any such thing.

As a 'denier' I claim, climate change by people is unproven, and therefore a waste of time to pursue any attempt of correction at this point in time.

As an 'alarmist' you want to make it look like you are the only ones that care but in effect.

1. You have no idea if man made CO2 affects anything at all.

2. You have no idea if the climate is warming or cooling, but have to include both, just in case.

3. None of you have any legitimate scientific knowledge or backgrounds.

4. As long as the gravy train keeps rolling.

1. You have no idea if man made CO2 affects anything at all. There are direct correlations between CO2 increases and temperature increases. Some very compelling data can be found in ice cores, going back millenia.

2. You have no idea if the climate is warming or cooling, but have to include both, just in case. It is warming - and at a faster rate than warming trends in Earth's past history. Perhaps scientists can't agree precisely to what extent. Part of the reason is, when we talk about warming, there's the factor of different layers: of sea and of atmosphere. Example: the upper levels of sea are warming significantly. The upper levels of atmosphere appear to be cooling slightly.

3. None of you have any legitimate scientific knowledge or backgrounds.

That's why I look to bona fide scientists for guidance. The vast majority of real scientists agree that GW is happening, and that it's exacerbated by human activities. Imagine: I go to a doctor and get diagnosed as positive for cancer. When I then tell my friend I have cancer, the friend (if he thinks like a GW denier) would say, "How can you say you have cancer, YOU'RE NOT A DOCTOR!"

4. As long as the gravy train keeps rolling. I don't even eat gravy, do you?

<There are direct correlations between CO2 increases and temperature increases>

Yes there are, and no sensible person doubts that, however, the dispute is about whether CO2 increase is caused BY temperature rise, or causes temperature rise. The jury is out on that at the moment, regardless of what Al Gore believes.

[Crushdepth]

You're wasting your time trying to educate the wilfully ignorant.

They could review the facts themselves, but they won't.

[FiftyTwo]

<There are direct correlations between CO2 increases and temperature increases>

Yes there are, and no sensible person doubts that, however, the dispute is about whether CO2 increase is caused BY temperature rise, or causes temperature rise. The jury is out on that at the moment, regardless of what Al Gore believes.

These guys think differently .......

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/

"In general, does CO2 correlate with temperature in climate history?

The answer is often yes on medium timescales, but no on short timescales and also no on the very longest timescales of all. If one looks at all three timescales, overall observations are consistent with temperature rise causing the oceans to release part of their dissolved CO2 after substantial lag time, yet not consistent with CO2 being the primary driver of climate."

"With that said, there is significant correlation between sunspot number trends and temperature in many time periods, provided that an appropriate temperature indicator is utilized."

So lets see the IPCC try to control sun activity ...... a new tax on sunshine?

...... Oh god, now they say it's down to cosmic rays ...... how we gonna tax them?

Edited November 24, 2013 by FiftyTwo

[boomerangutang]

<There are direct correlations between CO2 increases and temperature increases> Yes there are, and no sensible person doubts that, however, the dispute is about whether CO2 increase is caused BY temperature rise, or causes temperature rise. The jury is out on that at the moment, regardless of what Al Gore believes.

methinks the deniers are going out further on limbs, including trying to re-orient the debate in odd directions which are hard to correlate with the issues at hand.

It's like a canard piggy backing on a red herring.

Let's take a good look at what's happening with large bodies of ice. The largest depositries of ice on Earth are {A}Antarctica {B} Greenland {C} Other glaciers and {D}Arctic. Nearly every glacier ww is receding dramatically. They're receding in length and in width and height. That ice is melting in to the oceans, and not being replaced significantly. If there were no other proofs of serious GW, that (to me) would suffice to indicate it's happening.

Just for fun, let's take the perspective of the deniers. They seem to be saying; there's no cause for serious concern, and we should continue pumping out millions of tons per hour of CO2. If they're wrong, and GW is real, then it doesn't much matter to the deniers, because if they're currently middle aged, they'll be under a gravestone by the time half the coastal cities in the world become swamped. So (apparently, they're saying;) 'who cares what happens after we're gone?'

[Thaddeus]

<There are direct correlations between CO2 increases and temperature increases> Yes there are, and no sensible person doubts that, however, the dispute is about whether CO2 increase is caused BY temperature rise, or causes temperature rise. The jury is out on that at the moment, regardless of what Al Gore believes.

methinks the deniers are going out further on limbs, including trying to re-orient the debate in odd directions which are hard to correlate with the issues at hand.

Not really, unless you consider the entire life-span of our this planet so far an odd direction to go in.

When judging this situation, viewing the whole picture is the right direction, taking a myopic view of small segments is the wrong one.

[FiftyTwo]

Just for fun, let's take the perspective of the deniers. They seem to be saying; there's no cause for serious concern, and we should continue pumping out millions of tons per hour of CO2. If they're wrong, and GW is real, then it doesn't much matter to the deniers, because if they're currently middle aged, they'll be under a gravestone by the time half the coastal cities in the world become swamped. So (apparently, they're saying;) 'who cares what happens after we're gone?'

Why not tell the truth ...... oh sorry, forgot, alarmists don't do that.

Deniers state, man made co2 production is trivial, with no definitive evidence that any co2 level is relevant to the situation.

[wilcopops]

Just for fun, let's take the perspective of the deniers. They seem to be saying; there's no cause for serious concern, and we should continue pumping out millions of tons per hour of CO2. If they're wrong, and GW is real, then it doesn't much matter to the deniers, because if they're currently middle aged, they'll be under a gravestone by the time half the coastal cities in the world become swamped. So (apparently, they're saying;) 'who cares what happens after we're gone?'

Why not tell the truth ...... oh sorry, forgot, alarmists don't do that.

Deniers state, man made co2 production is trivial, with no definitive evidence that any co2 level is relevant to the situation.

[Scott]

I don't know if the earth is cooling down or not, but I strongly suggest that some posters cool their remarks.

Stay on topic and be civil toward one another.

[boomerangutang]

Just for fun, let's take the perspective of the deniers. They seem to be saying; there's no cause for serious concern, and we should continue pumping out millions of tons per hour of CO2. If they're wrong, and GW is real, then it doesn't much matter to the deniers, because if they're currently middle aged, they'll be under a gravestone by the time half the coastal cities in the world become swamped. So (apparently, they're saying;) 'who cares what happens after we're gone?'

Why not tell the truth ...... oh sorry, forgot, alarmists don't do that.

Deniers state, man made co2 production is trivial, with no definitive evidence that any co2 level is relevant to the situation.

Ice cores, going back millenia, indicate that increases in atmospheric CO2 correspond with increases of temperatures. Do deniers choose to deny that also?

If deniers are wrong, and the consensus of most climate scientists are right, then at what point would deniers admit they're wrong? When Bangladesh, Shanghai, Miami and Bangkok are covered in year 'round standing water? More importantly, how much can deniers dampen others' concerns for the well-being of the planet - followed up, one hopes, by tangible action to try to lessen damage.

It's easy to cop a cynical attitude like; "On a global level, even if shit happens, what can any group of people do about it?"

Deniers, by definition, will continue to deny. It's a big topic (world's weather patterns/trends), so it's not difficult to keep crafting arguments against GW. Even if two dozen large coastal cities get swamped, deniers can find ways to deny it had anything to do with changing weather patterns. Or, heaven forbid, the affects of millions of tons per hour, 24/7, of CO2 releases by human machines.

[RickBradford]

I don't know if the earth is cooling down or not

It is, in the recent periods, say, out to 10 or 12 years ago. Out to somewhere between 15 and 20 years, the trend is flat. Beyond those short periods, the picture tips towards an overall warming, all the way back to 1850 and to the Little Ice Age.

That's the data.

The hilarious climate science predicted otherwise, of course.

The UK Met Office, pitching for a new supercomputer, told us in 2007 all about its computer model DePreSys:

"Having established the predictive skill of DePreSys..."

1) There would be 0.3°C warming over the decade 2004-2014

2) At least half of the years after 2009 would be warmer than the record year of 1998.

"These are very strong statements about what will happen over the next 10 years", the Met Office assured the assembled nimrods of the pliant press corps, who obligingly set to the task of scaring their readers.

Score:

1) Fail (total) -- it cooled by 0.03°C

2) Fail (almost total) -- all the subsequent years (with the arguable exception of 2010) have been considerably colder. This year is no exception.

With these facts to hand, EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard now clambers out of the rubble of the UN's COP19 climate conference to reaffirm that she will waste €30 billion per year on EU 'climate activities' between 2014 and 2020, of which a total of €15 billion will be taken from the EU's overseas development budget.

Connie is very even-handed -- she hates poor people in the Third World just as much as she hates EU taxpayers.

[canuckamuck]

Just for fun, let's take the perspective of the deniers. They seem to be saying; there's no cause for serious concern, and we should continue pumping out millions of tons per hour of CO2. If they're wrong, and GW is real, then it doesn't much matter to the deniers, because if they're currently middle aged, they'll be under a gravestone by the time half the coastal cities in the world become swamped. So (apparently, they're saying;) 'who cares what happens after we're gone?'

Why not tell the truth ...... oh sorry, forgot, alarmists don't do that.

Deniers state, man made co2 production is trivial, with no definitive evidence that any co2 level is relevant to the situation.

Ice cores, going back millenia, indicate that increases in atmospheric CO2 correspond with increases of temperatures. Do deniers choose to deny that also?

Yes there is a correlation. The increase in CO2 follows the rise in temperature but there is a lag of many years. Which demonstrates that warming eventually causes a rise in CO2. You can see it the other way if you wish; but who is in denial now?

[RickBradford]

The increase in CO2 follows the rise in temperature but there is a lag of many years

The Vostok ice cores going back 400,000 years show the lag quite clearly -- various scientists have analysed it slightly differently.

Petit et al 1999 — as the world cools into an ice age, the delay is several thousand years.

Fischer et al 1999 — lag of 600 ±400 years as the world warms.

Monnin et al 2001— delay on warming from the recent ice age 800 ± 600 years

Mudelsee 2001— over the full 420,000 year Vostok history, Co2 lags by 1,300 ± 1000 years.

Caillon et al 2003 — lag of 800 ± 200 years.

The standard alarmist response is "Well, maybe CO2 didn't start it, but it amplifies it dangerously."

If that were the case, then the earth would have had runaway heating in the past, leading to James Hansen's "boiling oceans", the fabled climate "tipping points" and all the other tripe. In truth, the earth clearly runs a negative feedback system.

If the global warming scare were about science, it would have been dead and buried long ago.

As a political tool, and a vehicle for the personal vanity projects of activists worldwide, it continues a zombie existence which damages the lives of many millions of ordinary people, especially in the poorest countries.

[canman]

Some quotes from various sources to put things in perspective:

"...the Earth was evidently coming out of a relatively cold period in the 1800s so that warming in the past century may be part of this natural recovery."

Dr. John R. Christy
(leading climate and atmospheric science expert- U. of Alabama in Huntsville) (5)

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

"In the United States...we have to first convince the American People and the Congress that the climate problem is real."

former President Bill Clinton in a 1997 address to the United Nations

Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are...

former Vice President Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--
a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An Inconvenient Truth)

"In the long run, the replacement of the precise and disciplined language of science by the misleading language of litigation and advocacy may be one of the more important sources of damage to society incurred in the current debate over global warming."

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
(leading climate and atmospheric science expert- MIT) (3)

"Researchers pound the global-warming drum because they know there is politics and, therefore, money behind it. . . I've been critical of global warming and am persona non grata."

Dr. William Gray
(Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado and leading expert of hurricane prediction )
(in an interview for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, November 28, 1999)

"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."

Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland's glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)

"Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing -- in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Tim Wirth , while U.S. Senator, Colorado.
After a short stint as United Nations Under-Secretary for Global Affairs (4)
he now serves as President, U.N. Foundation, created by Ted Turner and his $1 billion "gift"

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada
quote from the Calgary Herald, 1999

[boomerangutang]

Hot and cold, wet and dry, snow and no snow, increasing polar ice and decreasing polar ice; it's all global warming, of course.

The most recent National Geographic has a feature about global warming. There's a wealth of scientific data attesting to it happening - too much to copy and paste here.

If a person wants to gauge what's happening, look at the trends, the data from scientific studies. One could also tune in to what scientists are saying - their summaries on their and others' data.

To be a GW denier, in lieu of the mountains of evidence backing the concept, is to be a person who is strongly fixated on not wanting to believe it.

Whether one believes in man made global warming or if it is a naturally occuring fact of nature, does any sane person actually belive that without the total cessation of all carbon use a few wind turbines and electric cars are going to make an iota of difference. There are 7 billion people on planet earth ( and rising rapidly ), and they all want to live a western life style. Do that without burning carbon if you can, but you can't, can you! Humpty is broken, and all the GW conferences in the world won't put him back together again.

That's like saying: perhaps eating lots of sugar is bad for people, but we as a species, already eat hundreds of tons of the stuff every day, so what's the use of trying to lessen the amount ingested?

Re; carbon emissions: It's not a black and white scenario. Nobody is saying humans can or will or need to quit using internal combustion machines or coal-fired utilities tomorrow. It's a matter of degrees. Like the sugar analogy, if people lessened their use of fossil fuels (or sugar) by an average of 5% each year for the next decades, then improvements would be had.

BTW, the 2 degree thing is a guidepost. Seas have already risen 7 inches in the past 100 years. The guideline could be 1 degree or 2.5 degrees, or whatever. The 2 degree mark is what's on the table now. It appears to be a reasonable goal. If anyone has been in business, they know that goals are part of what motivates positive results.

When I see a field like climate science, rife with malpractice, incompetence, lying, deception, hypocrisy, secretiveness, vindictiveness, data fudging, agit-prop, corruption and plain bad science, I choose to be very cautious about what claims of theirs I will blindly accept.

First off, that's denigrating to a lot of scientists who are working on this issue. You're like someone who gets an unfavorable message, and rebukes the messenger, or a soccer player who is losing a game, so he' denigrates all the refs as being &lt;deleted&gt;.

You're not being cautious. From all your posts, you've been very fixated on one side of the issue.

[meand]

This whole thing is almost a carbon copy of the OJ Simpson trial in my book. Get enough malleable people in one place (jurors), and you can convince them of just about anything. I suppose you could say the same thing being on either side, yet I just don't see how you can reject the scientific consensus. People's motives on this topic are dubious at best. It is like asking a billionaire if he wants a democrat or republican in the oval office: the answer has nothing to do with what he truly believes, and everything to do with his own personal biases.

[RickBradford]

BTW, the 2 degree thing is a guidepost. Seas have already risen 7 inches in the past 100 years. The guideline could be 1 degree or 2.5 degrees, or whatever. The 2 degree mark is what's on the table now.

Well, it may have started that way, made up by Schnellnhuber as something to frame the debate in Germany, but in the hands of the inept or unscrupulous, it is now viewed as if it were somehow "true" and important.

"We must limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees. We are far from there, and even that is enough to cause dire consequences." - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - Remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations (February 2013)

If even the planet's most senior bureaucrat is happy to parrot this manufactured nonsense, then it is hardly surprising that the world's press follows suit, going so far to call 2 degrees "a dangerous tipping point" without a skerrick of scientific justification.

Fortunately, most sensible people switched off years ago. They're tired of being lectured to by guilt-ridden middle-class do-gooders. Ban Ki-moon is whistling, but the dog's out of range.

[boomerangutang]

So what is the problem with the 2 degree goal?

Is it the number 2 that irks? Would you rather have 1 degree, or no goal at all?

Do you think, because 2 is a small number, that it's silly and inconsequential in relation to weather and sea levels?

Would deniers rather have no goals? Would deniers rather just watch temperatures rise willy nilly, with no precautionary measures by us inconsequential humans?

I think the main reason the 2 degree thing irks some people, is they don't want to acknowledge there's a looming problem and/or they don't like climate scientists presuming humans have any affect on climate. Or, if they acknowledge things might get dire for coastal cities in the near future, they scoff at the concept that there's anything humans can do about it.

[wilcopops]

The initial topic is INCORRECT - it is not true, so what on earth are you still going on about - it's over - those denying MMCC are basically into flagellation, necrophilia and bestiality......... if you get my drift.

RB you are not scientific, you are classic obsessive to the point of concern. Mark Twain is said to have noted - "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get" - you seem to be unable to differentiate - Take a break and give yourself a rest. - It'll all seem better next year.......(which will be warmer BTW)

Edited November 27, 2013 by wilcopops

[RickBradford]

So what is the problem with the 2 degree goal?

The fact that it was pulled out of thin air (as its inventor admitted) and has now acquired a false "truth" which is used to drive an absurd political agenda which damages the lives of all except the well-recompensed political elites.

Edited November 27, 2013 by RickBradford