The reason Christy, Lindzen and the cohort that attended the International Conference on Climate Change are not included in the formal accepted science precess is that they are wrong. Science works on the basis of check and review. There work to broaden issues, isrepresent unceretainties and assert controversies is off base - they have just ended up cosy self-beliefs as a podgy largely male elite operating way out of specification, over pay grade and in outlier land beyond their limited specialisms.

Is that clear? And when idealogically motivated by Lomborgs and assorted twits and twats from the libertarian right, you get to their results, motivated by incapacity and fear of change. They are truly magnificently unadapted creatures displaying their pathology and ineptitude broadcast as their great gift to the world.

Gettouta all our faces and let’s solve the real problems.

a lot of people determined to ignore it.

In the UK we don’t seem to have this puzzelling skepticism about climate change or gloabl warming.

2009 is proving to be a year that we see a big shift in attitude.

There is an opportunity to get involved and add their voice to the current Oxfam campaign to help reduce global warming by adding support to Oxfam’s climate change campaign.

Jim, move to Beijing. They don’t have those pesky environmental rules that you deeply detest. They just have the lovely blend of totalitarianism mixed with unfettered capitalism… just like you like it. PRC, PRC, PRC!

do you honestly think that pumping gazillions of tons of carbon (that has spent millions of years trapped underground) into our atmosphere won’t have some adverse effect on our climate? Perhaps more importantly, do you apply similar reasoning and reject the notion that the earth is billions of years old because there is “a lot of scientific debate” among scientists and theologians?

Jim, you’re a grad student in biology and yet you have no idea how science works?

Here’s a little refresher: when you promote lies as “science,” you get ridiculed. That’s why everyone who reads your column wonders how a clown like you ever got admitted to a fine institution of higher learning such as the University of Wisconsin when it’s clear you would have difficulty gaining admission to a paper bag.

Doesn’t it bother anyone that there is not one iota of proof, that CO2 is driving the climate? There are theories, models, correlations, consensus, and, of course, name calling of skeptics. However, inconveniently, none of that is proof of causation.

Global warming might be a problem - it might even be influenced by human activity.

OTOH, global cooling would definitely result in the end of civilization - it may even be that the extra CO2 is the only thing holding back the next ice age, which is overdue BTW.

So I agree with your sentiment that we should be discussing the underlying causes of climate change even when adaptation is the topic (and I’m very surprised to hear that several WICCI lecturers said that it does not matter). I also agree that the uncertainty associated with our climate change estimates needs to be openly and honestly discussed whenever the topics of mitigation and adaptation come up.

However, I strongly disagree with your sentiment that there is a roiling controversy in the climate science community about attribution. Yes, you have the standard skeptics shouting loudly in a magnificent echo chamber but, as a recent peer-reviewed article (Doran and Zimmerman, 2009, EOS) pointed out, 97% of active climate change scientists said “YES” to the statement “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” This is not to say that consensus is always right…but to say that there is a heated debate within the climate science community is completely distorted.

The reason that the climate science community (including all the major scientific organizations of the world) do not lend much credence to the skeptic scientists that you quote is because they have not presented any reasonable and viable alternative explanation as to why we have seen warming over the last century. All they do is provide negative arguments and sometimes shoddy data analyses that rightly do not make it through peer review. Bottom line: The heat-trapping ability and persistence of human-emitted CO2 provides a physical mechanism and CO2 has increased substantially over that same time period. Unless some other explanation comes up, this is by far the most likely cause. That is a perfectly reasonable scientific position to have especially when the science directly impacts policy decisions.

Finally, the recent cooling “trend” is a result of several factors: 1998 being a record warm year (associated with a strong El Nino), recent solar irradiance being low, and La Nina being strong. These are cyclic factors that can have a large impact on climate in the short term. But it is critical to understand that they are working on top of the greenhouse gas signal. Once we get back into an El Nino, it is likely to get much warmer. For more discussion on this, check out NASA’s take: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/

“The truth is there’s a lot of scientific debate and a lot of people determined to ignore it.” Oh shut up already. I challenge you to find one established AOS professor on this campus who agrees there is no debate about climate change. Again, if you actually knew anything beyond what the general public knows (which you don’t), you’d realize that yes, there are a lot more factors playing into atmospheric change than CO2 (Such as Volcanic Eruptions, La Nina and El Nino, the Earth’s tilt angle, etc), but the vast majority, and I mean vast as in 90%, firmly believe that climate change is real, and adding Co2 only makes things worse. Please stop writing OpEds, you’re embarrassing yourself and the Biological Sciences field.On the other hand, I enjoy your naivete, and ignorance.

The link below leads you to a .pdf file that every American needs to read and use as a starting point to understanding “Global Warming”. Read, Print, Forward, and be prepared to Debate the proponents of “Man Made Global Warming”.

The Man Made Global Warming (MMGW) Skeptics HandBook http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skepticshandbook2-0.pdf

An important point to remember in any discussion about “Global Warming” is that the planet has been naturally warming for the last 10,000 years, when the last glacial period came to an end. Global warming is a natural phenomena…. That is, until the planet naturally starts cooling again and enters the next glacial period. That happens on average just about every 10,000 years. Yes, that’s right. We could enter into the next glacial epic anytime in the next 1000 years or so.

With that in mind, what are the 4 key points that Man Made Global Warming advocates must prove to validate their hypothesis?

1. MMGW Argument: The concensus of all of the climate models and the United Nations - InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC) report is that man made global warming will cause the troposphere to get warmer. The additions of ‘man made” CO2 to the atmosphere will “trap heat” causing the troposphere (about 6 miles up) to get warmer. This is purported to be the inescapable ‘signature’ of man made global warming.

Prove It! Show me the data!

The troposphere hasn’t and isn’t getting warmer. Direct measurement using weather balloons and indirect measurements using satellites show consistently that it isn’t. The ‘signature’ is missing. The “Global Warming Climate Modelers” have no explanation to this lack of ‘heating’. They call it the “missing heat”, rather than admitting that their climate models are invalid.

1. MMGW Argument: Man Made CO2 is an ever increasing “green house gas” that causes global warming. Prove It! To prove ‘causation’, CO2 concentrations must historically ‘lead’ or increase before atmospheric heating.

Ice core data from Greenland and Antartica consistently show that throughout glacial epic after glacial epic, CO2 levels began to rise about 800 years after global temperatures started to rise. The CO2 didn’t “cause” global warming. It is exactly the opposite. Warming caused atmospheric CO2 gas to increase! (note: This is because cold water can absorb much more CO2 than warm water. As the seas got warmer, the dissolved CO2 was emitted as CO2 gas into the atmosphere and eventually trapped in the snow/ice layers of the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers.) If CO2 really was a significant “green house gas”, global warming would have caused a ‘runaway’ warming of the atmosphere after the 1st glacial epic ended. We would never have had repeated glacial epics. Something other than CO2 caused the planet to warm up, again, and again, and again, and again,……naturally after each glacial cycle.

1. MMGW Argument: The global temperature has increased since 1979, in direct correspondence with increasing CO2 levels. Prove It!

Satellites have circled the earth for the last 30 years, measuring land and sea surface temperatures with great precision, reliability, and repeatability. They show no increase in “global temperature” since 1999. In fact, a small cooling trend is becoming apparent as each year passes since 2002. At the same time, man has continued to add CO2 gas steadily to the atmosphere. If CO2 really is a significant “green house gas”, the planet should have continued to get warmer. It proves that increasing CO2 does not cause the planet to get warmer. The “Global Warming Climate Modelers” have no explanation for this reversal of trend. Something other than CO2 is causing our planet to warm… and cool, naturally.

1. MMGW Argument: CO2 gas is a known absorber of thermal radiation. It absorbs long wave radiation and causes the atmosphere to get warmer. Prove That It Really Causes The Atmosphere To Get Warmer!

Yes, CO2 is a known absorber of thermal radiation, but it absorbs in a relatively narrow band of the spectrum. The amount of CO2 that is now in the atmosphere (0.035% or about 350 parts CO2 per million parts of the other atmosphere gases like O2, N2, H20, etc.) is very close to the absorption ‘saturation point’. This means that adding more CO2 molecules doesn’t cause more ‘heat absorption’. The added molecules of CO2 absorb nothing because all of the radiation in that narrow part of the spectrum has already been absorbed. This narrow band of the spectrum that CO2 absorbs in is also part of a much wider spectrum band that water vapor absorbs thermal radiation in. Since water vapor is present in much higher concentrations than CO2 and absorbs thermal radiation from the narrow CO2 absorption band as well as a much wider portion of the spectrum, it is water vapor that is the really significant “green house gas”, naturally!

Any one of these 4 proven facts is sufficient to refute the hypothesis of Man Made Global Warming. Combined, they completely demolish it.

Use this information wisely, Grass Hoppers! And disseminate it widely!

Our President and Congress are going to commit our nation to a hugely expensive “cap and trade” effort to “control CO2 emmisions”. They are doing this based on a false premise, at best. At worst, it is a deliberate lie used cynicly to pursue a socialist political agenda. As this administration likes to say “Don’t Waste A Good Crises - Even If You Have To Make One Up!” Every Trillion dollar$ of our national treasure that is spent on this is completely wasted. It is truly an Obamanation!

The warming over the last century was one degree. Exactly the same as the warming over the previous two centuries.

The correlation between warming and C02 is diverging. The CO2 trend continues to climb without a corresponding trend in warming? Why? This basic question remains unanswered. Assuming man is the cause is simply not supported by observation or experimentation.

If warming is a natural trend, then, of course, the most recent years would be expected to be the hottest. No man made global warming need apply. So much for that argument.

Ice continue to rebound in the Arctic from it’s low in 2007 It remains near all time highs in the Antarctic as it has for several years.

In fact, in all these discussions, made made global warming is ASSUMED and then the speakers go from there. That isn’t science. Neither is a poll of scientists.

I thought that Madison valued dissent. Once it did.

10:35 wrote: “I’m very surprised to hear that several WICCI lecturers said that it does not matter”

Yes. And one lecturer said that disagreements over the cause of global warming originate in the media and that those who dispute the current view are either afraid of uncertainty or simply refuse to accept the facts. Scientists, he said, are not skeptical.

This is just the opposite of the truth. The major disagreements are coming from scientists, not the media, and their issue is not with uncertainty or facts - it’s with the scientific methods (or lack of them) being employed.

10:35 wrote: “but to say that there is a heated debate within the climate science community is completely distorted.”

But there IS a heated debate in the science community. I named three scientists and my original text, before edits, contained still more:

David Bromwich, professor of atmospheric sciences and graduate of the University of Wisconsin; Marcel Leroux, climatologist; Fred Singer, atmospheric scientist; Vincent Gray, IPCC reviewer and chemist; John Theon, atmospheric scientist; Nir Sharviv, Syun Akasofu, Anthony Watts.

And there are many more. These are scientists who are debating the popular view. This makes it a debate within the climate science community whether anyone is willing to accept that fact or not.

10:35 wrote: “they have not presented any reasonable and viable alternative explanation as to why we have seen warming over the last century.”

This is not true. They have offered many alternative explanations and have argued that the CO2 explanation is one of the LEAST plausible. Read their arguments.

10:35 wrote: “The heat-trapping ability and persistence of human-emitted CO2 provides a physical mechanism and CO2 has increased substantially over that same time period.”

Many climate scientists disagree with this statement. They say CO2 could not possibly explain the current temperature changes and they give numerous reasons. Read their arguments.

If some scientists think they are wrong than they need to address their arguments. Just saying “their wrong” or pretending they don’t exist is not science.

Man, I love the fact that right above this box that allows anonymous people to write opinions, it says, “…please keep your feedback thoughtful, on-topic and respectful. Offensive language, personal attacks, or irrelevant comments may be deleted.” So much for anything of the sort. nearly all of the comments that aren’t neutral on the point are intentionally mudslinging, personal, vicious, offensive attacks on the author. Thank you Badger herald for allowing such filth to be printed, it really shows the quality of your editing. Of course this does not excuse the people who were accepted to this, “fine institution of higher learning such as the University of Wisconsin” from dissolving into such barbaric attacks. What truly intolerant, hateful community.

You end this opinion with “…one has to think perhaps global warming is not about science.” What the hell is about then? non-profits, environmentalists, scientists, concerned/educated citizens—maybe they are all trying to profit from this crazy climate change theory. Just think about the situation logically, if there were any scientifically sound arguments that opposed the idea that CO2 emissions are causing global climate change then you can bet your ass the oil companies would be all over that information. you have to remember the wealthiest corporations in this world stand to lose a lot of money due to climate change; if there is any real data refuting our current stance on climate change im sure Exxon will see to it that everyone knows.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13834

Iraqis See First Snow in 100 Years As Sign of Peace

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/11/iraq

@12:21: The difference between an ice age and weather as humans have known it (pre-1970, say) is about 5 degrees. You’ve just said we knocked off two. We’re 40% there.

Unfettered by the Gore-Tex straitjacket of global warming dogma, one might ask some obvious questions. Why, in 2008, did Toronto, the Midwest United States, India, China, the United Kingdom and several areas of Europe all break summer rainfall records? Why was South Africa converted into a ‘winter wonderland’ this past September? Why did Alaska record its coldest summer this year — cold enough for ice packs and glaciers to grow for the first time in measured history? Why has sea ice achieved record levels in recent months? Lastly, why did a rare October snow fall on London, on the 29th, as British Parliament debated — appropriately enough — a climate bill? If you don’t believe that 2008 has been particularly wet and cold, you’ve most likely contracted typhoid or you haven’t been paying attention.

Despite dramatic movies and massive propaganda to alarm people (and intense political pressure to silence skeptics), what you are being told about Dangerous Anthropogenic Global Warming (DAGW) simply isn’t true. It’s a scam.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q1/mail563.html#Tuesday

Earlier this month, the Heartland Institute sponsored the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York. The Conference differed from most such events in that it was devoted to science, not politics or propaganda. Heartland has now made the materials presented at the conference available online, here. You can review the agenda, watch videos of the keynote presentations, read transcripts of some of the speeches, and see the Power Points that were presented by the speakers.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/03/023144.php

Any time people supress the other side of the debate, that is proof enough for me that they can not support their side of the arguement. I don’t know why these people are trying to do this but I hope they can be stopped before they do any more damage and cost us more.

Soon every right-thinking person will be burning a bushel of coal in their backyard every afternoon to help stave off the ice age!

When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!

Obama, his accomplices, and his brainwashed lemmings seem determined to force us to swallow their global warming hoax. We need to defend our country from this hoax, which threatens our future and the future of our children.

More and more scientists and thinking people all over the world are realizing that man-made global warming is a hoax that threatens our future and the future of our children. More than 700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims. They are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3562/218/

Additionally, 32,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…” http://www.petitionproject.org/index.html

“Progressive” (communist) politicians like Obama seem determined to force us to swallow the man-made global warming scam. We need to defend ourselves from the UN and these politicians, who threaten our future and the future of our children. Based on a lie, they have already wasted billions and plan to increase taxes, limit development, and enslave us.

If not stopped, the global warming scam will enrich the scammers (Gore and Obama’s Wall Street friends), increase the power of the U.N. and communists like Obama, and multiply poverty and servitude for the rest of us.

BH: Please stop giving this guy space in your newspaper. His columns are very dry and boring and while they talk about important topics he beats them so much that you don’t want to read.

Jim, I’m calling BS on your claim of David Bromwich as someone against the scientific consensus. He’s been studying Antarctica for many years and while he has pointed out discrepancies between global climate model predictions and Antarctic observations, he is most definitely in agreement that CO2 is the primary cause of 20th century global warming. Nice try. You now have zero credibility on this issue as far as I’m concerned.

I encourage anyone to read these two articles and see if you come up with the same ridiculous conclusion that Jim has about David Bromwich being a global warming skeptic.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd021207.php http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n11/full/ngeo346.html

1. AUGH WHY DOES NOBODY UNDERSTAND THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS MORE THAN WARMING?! 2:09, the anomalies you mention only prove the point that our climate is changing catastrophically.

2. Jim Allard is an embarrassment to the biological sciences.

3. IPCC is the foremost research body on climate change. More than 4,000 leading scientists have contributed to its reports. And you cite three people who disagree? Frankly, I’m unimpressed.

Carbon taxes will just be another hidden tax that the lumpen don’t realize that they are paying, just like the corporate income tax and employer portion of FICA/MC.

Dear Jim, Sound objective thinking. Refreshing - and appreciated. May we post your article on http://www.GoodNeighborLaw.Blogspot.com and http://www.UniversalWeather.Blogspot.com Thank you, Roni Bell http://www.RoniBell.Blogspot.com

What’s a climate chang electure?

Does ANYBODY proofread at the BH?

Anonymous @ 12:08, I was with you a hundred percent until your last paragraph. Ad hominem attacks, conspiracy theory, and political diatribe are not the stuff of science. You ruined a good argument by stooping to the tactics of the alarmists. Everyone - if the truth is to be know, a dispassionate debate of the state of the science and the interpretation of the facts is what’s required. We can all question each other’s motives, but it won’t lead us to the truth.

Clear thinking people sat idle and let this CO2 vilifying crazy train gather steam. We thought that this absurdity would fade. Holy crap, it is hard to stop a train.

…and even if the CO2 warming hypothesis were true, it shouldn’t be that merely by “democratic” vote the government can decide to tax everything that moves or lives, ever cow, every farm animal, every bit of food you eat and “burn” via digestion. There have got to be limits to a Democracy, otherwise 51% can totally destroy the other 49% of the population, and this is what the carbon tax debate is all about.