j_b

yeah, we know everything is relative and subjective when it suits your purpose. If the claim that Iraq is an imminent danger that has to be addressed by waging war is a subjective one and not objectively based on facts, I am not sure what leg, you and your man in the white house are standing on. Although there are examples of dishonest science, the science going into the IPCC process is not one of them. All of it was peer reviewed. The bottom line is still the same: human activities have resulted in a 30% increase in athmospheric CO2 over the last 100years and these greenhouse gases are responsible for accelerated warming. There is little serious questions about that despite what you might say. The rest is just obfuscation on your part and other apologists for the oil/car industry.

SAR is good because without SAR we'd have nothing. Anyone thinks professional rescue personel would be a good thing?

get a grip, will ya? someone with a 30 year career and a publication list as long as your arm, who is not obviously affiliated with any political organization, would be a machiavelian mole for the greens? however if you are saying that those who care for the environment actually care for it, I can see your point. It would explain why environmental scientists often have different opinions from the oil and logging industry, hog farmers, cattle ranchers, etc ...

I am not claiming they are free from scientific bias. I am claiming they are free from obvious political bias .... while people promoting their ideas through oil industry fronts obviously are not free from political bias. Are we clear on this?

I am not going to reply the rest in details for reasons that are obvious to most of us (I am curious: are you paid for this?). these are the same unfounded attempts at discredeting the IPCC process. The IPCC process is the most comprehensive summary of knowledge in a particular branch of science ever performed. Your witness(es) quibbles and claims discrepancy where there is none. I could not have said it better myself. it is funny how all of this quibbling and smear about procedure and such, finally ends where we started: greenhouse gases accumulated since the beginning of the industrial revolution are responsable for accelerated warming .... thank you.

no it just means that no significant impact has been found despite uncertainties in measurement. Ergo no effect even if we improve our methods. it is quantified and just not important. I was only pointing out that you fully endorse conceptual world models without validation, and are criticized by a majority of world political scientists and casual observers. Yet, you fully reject physically based models (i.e. with constraints and validations) that are assessed as valuable tools in our assessment of climate change by the majority of the climate science community. The process of validation and constraints is the same for all sciences, hard or 'soft'. There are probably more variables and feedback in a political model of waging war for peace than in a climate model. So be consistent, that's all. I have not claimed anything except that climate models are very good and useful to make some types of predictions yet not completely representative of the athmosphere/ocean/earth system. You should not use scientific caution to promote unwarranted distrust, but it has not stopped you before.

no I mean folks who link up with a conservative think tank funded by the oil industry and the coors foundation and pretend to make their point of view pass as science. Note this think tank could not get more ~30 names, some of which have clearly nothing to with climate science and/or research, others are the usual individuals (and the associations mentioned in my previous post on this) promoting the same tangential ideas that are dismissed by the mainstream of the community, and others appear to be ok, regular scientists (as far as my 10minutes of perusal let's me know). That's what I mean. Now if you want to portray expressing a scientific point of view while funded by NOAA as similar to expressing it on an oil industry mouthpiece considering the obvious conflict of interest it represents, be my guest.

and Can the observed changes be explained by natural variability, including changes in solar output? "the contribution of direct solar irradiance forcing is small compared to the greenhouse gas component." "While Milankovitch cycles have tremendous value as a theory to explain ice-ages and long-term changes in the climate, they are unlikely to have very much impact on the decade-century timescale. Over several centuries, it may be possible to observe the effect of these orbital parameters, however for the prediction of climate change in the 21st century, these changes will be far less important than radiative forcing from greenhouse gases" http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#Q10 Are greenhouse gases increasing? "Human activity has been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mostly carbon dioxide from combustion of coal, oil, and gas; plus a few other trace gases). There is no scientific debate on this point. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are about 370 ppmv. The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today, has not been exceeded in the last 420,000 years, and likely not in the last 20 million years. According to the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), by the end of the 21st century, we could expect to see carbon dioxide concentrations of anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm (75-350% above the pre-industrial concentration)" http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#Q2 what would we do without NOAA? yeah right, a top-notch physical process model of climate would be further from reality than a certain political model which claims to "recreates an entire planet with millions of variable" and concludes we should be waging war for peace? Your concept of proofs is apparently subjective as well.

it has nothing to do with values: if you mess up *our* environment, you should pay, because it is costing everyone of us money, lifespan, etc .. so don't reduce it to subjective concepts again. For someone so concerned about freedom of the individual you for sure don't seem too concerned about other people's freedom like that of not having to live on your spew.

you are being too generous. The site linked to is a front for the conservative think tank "national center for policy research"; you bet that if they only could find 30 odd names to put on the list it's because there are not too many more of them. The majority appears to have the necessary research credentials (like being part of an active and closely related to climate research program) and others are the usual mouth pieces for the energy industry: greening earth society, marshall institute, oregon insitute of science and medecine, science and environmental policy project, etc ... the usual culprits in the climate science conservative media blitzkrieg.

but when one makes a claim of this magnitude, it is usually supported by references if not original work. So .... why don't you give us at least, say, 20 examples of climate scientists who don't believe that climate warming is accelerated by human greenhouse gas emisssions.

look who is talking ... that's ok GW, you can let it go. The cold-war is long gone and you should to come up with new skeletons to rattle if you want to be effective. This said, I would only provide environmental education to the public and adequate guidelines to manufacturers. It should be enough. that Bush is in their pocket? (at least figuratively speaking) and how would you feel having an investigator going to see your boss to assess what is exactly your role in designing those rockets? (let's say his concern is what you say in this forum). If you can't see how this would be damaging to your future in said company I don't know what to tell you. And similar examples abound. so perhaps in the future you should avoid redefining words to fit your purpose.

so how can you pretend to be knowledgeable enough on this topic to declare that the climate science community is wrong? or for Bush to ignore the conclusions of this country's academy of science?

I am not defining anything, society is. If your vehicle is bad for our environment (not yours) and you don't have a specific need for such vehicle that offsets the societal cost of your owning it, you don't need it. As simple as that. wrong assumptions they are not regulating themselves for the better. CO2 emissions are increasing every year, as we know, we should thus spew as little as possible, not spew as much as is allowable to maximize profit. Oh I see, personal freedom is only relevant as it relates to property or going to jail. You do need that dictionary we were talking about.

Funny, I did not hear you cry about our governement profiling its citizen. Yet I heard you say that Sean Penn was "fraternizing with the enemy" as if his going to Bagdad should have consequences. almost nobody 'needs' a v8. well, our governement new fuel efficiency rules are below what the manufacturers intend(ed) to implement. How do you explain that one?

good job for sticking with your goal. You know you can also downclimb (scamble) the north ridge. next time do it in mtn boots.

a large fraction of scientists who believe that climate warming is enhanced by human activities, also study long term climate change.

studying is more than a full time job so I just don't see how you can do both well.

working hard at a full time job and actually studying: it's called delusion. My guess he is not clear about the meaning of one or the other.

CO2 concentration forces climate, water vapor is a feedback that is extremely sensitive to small changes in CO2 conc. Ergo you increase CO2 conc. by half (what we see since the beginning of the industrial era) and you potentially get a huge feedback due to water vapor. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/DelGenioPerspective.pdf ha! but you see in the world of science, relevant opinions are brought forth by clear logic. So it's not a question of likes or dislikes, but whether or not you are making any sense.

brilliant logic! it's like saying that since species extinction happened in the past, we are not responsible for today's accelerated rate of species extinction. In short, naturally occurring climate mayhem in the past is not sufficient evidence to discount all of the other evidence which indicate teh role of human greenhouse gas emissions in climate warming. what do you mean? we can perfectly well compute how much CO2 we spew relative to natural emissions.

Scientists: '02 Second Hottest as Warming Speeds Tue December 17, 2002 12:25 PM ET By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - This year has been the second warmest since 1860, extending a quarter-century pattern of accelerated global warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions, United Nations scientists said Tuesday. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency, said that 1998 remained the hottest year on record, with 2002 surpassing last year as the next warmest. The 10 warmest years had all occurred since 1987, nine since 1990. "Clearly for the past 25 or 26 years, the warming is accelerating ... The rate of increase is unprecedented in the last 1,000 years," Kenneth Davidson, director of WMO's world climate program told a news briefing. A moderate El Nino system warming the tropical Pacific since mid-year was expected to last through April, according to WMO. While El Nino is smaller in magnitude than the 1997-98 event, which caused $34 billion in damage, it has coincided with "climate anomalies" including droughts in Australia and southern Africa, as well as warmer conditions across Asia, it added. WMO scientists were presenting a report on the status of the global climate in 2002, based on observations through November from a network of land-based weather stations, ships and buoys. Global surface temperatures have risen six-tenths of a degree Celsius since 1900, according to the Geneva-based body. Scientists say the world needs to slash emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases which trap heat in the atmosphere if it is to avoid disastrous floods, droughts and a rise in sea levels in coming decades. Davidson called greenhouses gases "the major influence affecting the climate." Hong Yan, WMO assistant secretary-general, went further: "If no very effective measures are taken for preventing further release of greenhouse gases, then the trend will continue." The United States, the largest producer of greenhouse gases, has rejected the Kyoto treaty which aims to cut emissions from developed countries by 2012 to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. The El Nino phenomenon, from the Spanish term for a boy child, is the warming of the central and eastern tropical Pacific, the world's largest ocean basin, every few years. It can wreak havoc on weather patterns, but no two El Nino events are identical, scientists say. "The drought in Southern Africa appears very strongly linked to El Nino. The drought in Ethiopia appears not to be," said Paul Llanso, head of WMO's climate data and monitoring division. U.S. forecasters said last week that El Nino would bring a milder winter to the northern half of the United States while pounding parts of the south and east with more storms. http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=1922017

can't you see though that it's better to have war, economic recession, environmental destruction, individual rights trampled ... than a libertine doing his help on the job

yikes! this must have an enjoyment factor of -9999

Main Entry: frat·er·nize Pronunciation: 'fra-t&r-"nIz Function: intransitive verb Inflected Form(s): -nized; -niz·ing Date: 1611 1 : to associate or mingle as brothers or on fraternal terms 2 a : to associate on close terms with members of a hostile group especially when contrary to military orders b : to be friendly or amiable I hope you get a dictionary for Christmas and the gumption to use it.