What are the “Deniers” denying?

By Dr. Stephen Murgatroyd

There is a growing anxiety amongst the supporters of a climate change
treaty that the “deniers” are exerting an undue influence over the
Copenhagen negotiations and are sowing the seeds of confusion and
doubt in the minds of the general public.

But what are the deniers denying? Basically, the deniers are denying
four things:

1. They are denying that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change.
They do not doubt that climate change is occurring, it always has and
always will and it is nature’s response to a complex array of
conditions. While emitting CO2 in ever-growing volumes is not a
desirable thing, reducing these emissions, even dramatically, will not
unduly influence climate.

2. The deniers deny that there is a consensus within climate science
that man is the primary cause of global warming. There are many areas
of dispute amongst the scientific community with respect to climate,
including explanations for changes in Arctic and Antarctic ice, the
role of the sun in determining climate and the validity and robustness
of computer models of climate change. As Einstein noted, it takes a
single set of observations linked to an alternative theory to trigger
a shift in thinking in science. The theory that humans are the primary
cause of climate change is not, like Newtonian laws of mechanics, a
closed theory – it is still open to question.

3. The deniers deny that many of the events attributed to climate
change – the melting of the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro, hurricanes, the
spread of malaria in Africa and so on – are connected to climate
change. For each of these events there are other, more plausible
explanations. For example, the melting of the ice cap on Kilimanjaro
is strongly linked to deforestation of the area in close proximity to
the mountain, which results in a lowering of moisture levels which
impact ice formation.

4. Finally, the deniers deny that taxing carbon and developing carbon
markets will have an impact on the climate. Indeed, the economists who
are deniers are skeptical about the economics of many green
“solutions” – wind farms, solar farms, cap and trade, carbon taxes and
emissions control. They do not deny that reducing CO2 emissions may be
desirable for other reasons – air quality being the most important.
But they are not convinced that all of these investments will produce
the return expected – a cooler planet.

To support their denials, deniers use peer reviewed scientific papers
which call into question the currently dominant scientific view and
comprehensive economic analysis. There are many such papers by experts
in climatology, including some who are or have been part of the
scientific team used by the UN to create the technical documents which
are said to inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reports. They also make extensive use of observational data and
measurements of temperature, ocean level, emissions and so on. They do
not put their faith in computer models, which in any case produce
contradictory findings: rather they rely heavily on direct measures.

Because the deniers have been very vociferous, they have also come
under attack. The attacks take three basic forms. The first is to
question the scientific credentials of those why deny the man-made
global warming thesis. The same standards are not applied to the IPCC
itself or to many “warmists” – the head of the IPCC (a former railway
engineer), David Suzuki and Al Gore, for example, have no
qualifications in climatology. Second, there is the standard
accusation that deniers are funded by big oil or the coal industry.
This ignores the funding granted to the “warmists”, which runs into
billions, by interest groups and governments which should not be
regarded as neutral sources of funds. The final accusation is that
they ignore the human suffering their denials may cause. This is not
at all the case – the primary action plan suggested by the deniers is
that we should focus our actions on adaptation and technologies to
combat warming, cooling and the other effects of the natural cycle of
climate change.

Skepticism is healthy and necessary condition of science. It is also a
necessary condition of public policy development. Trying to weigh
evidence and make decisions is tough, but the warmists refuse to
debate with the deniers and the policy makers have their minds set on
a course of action, despite growing evidence that it will make little
difference to the climate over time.

As we get near to the December meeting of world governments in
Copenhagen, now less than four weeks away, frantic attempts are being
made to salvage something from the meeting. What now looks likely is a
high-level political agreement to be followed by more talks. The
deniers will be blamed for derailing what could have been a powerful
moment in Copenhagen, leading to the creation of a powerful global
governance organization for climate change strategy management. The
deniers certainly influenced public opinion, but the failure of
Copenhagen to produce a binding agreement is as much a failure of the
intellectual quality of the argument for such an agreement as it is
about the politics surrounding it.

This is an EXCELLENT summary of the situation in AGW.  It clearly
outlines the positions of both sides without a lot of name calling or
references to "tinfoil helmets" as is usually the case.

And left unsaid in this piece is the DAMAGE the Holowarmers can do to
the planet, by diverting funds and efforts desperately needed to deal
with peak oil, clean coal, nuclear waste disposal and pollution
reductions (for nasty chemicals that REALLY endanger the planet) to a
huge "basket ball bouncing for global climate change" non-productive
sideshow.

Indeed the very NAME "deniers" is a blatant attempt to place some of
the negative connotations from Nazi history revisionists who "deny"
that death camps and killings ever took place in WWII Germany, upon
those who do not blindly accept the notion that CO2 "causes" global
warming. In fact the term "antropogenic global warming" AGW is in
itself a semantic word game designed to introduce terminology that
automatically accepts your premise without any proof. "anthropogenic"
means "man-caused".  So just by getting everyone to use THIER
terminology they have you admitting that their premise is the correct
one.

CO2 is a gas and trillions of Watts of energy reach the Earth from the Sun.
The Earth warms an average of 1 degree per day and looses 1 degree per
night. There is NOTHING that can interfere with that.
Most of the green house gas is water vapour. It is the only thing
that has any heat capacity to carry heat around the globe.
Where there is no cloud cover like in deserts, the surface drops to
thirty degrees below zero overnight. All the CO2 thats in the
atmosphere has NO effect there!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahaa!!!!
I wonder why?!

Thats one reason why the holowarmers are dangerous fscktards.

But don't let that stop you.

Go draw those diagrams with heating bouncing in the atmosphere
and fool the gullible politicians.
Yes the angle of internal reflection is around 89 degrees
from the Normal. On a sphere, its a bloody miracle to get such an angle.
Miracles aside, that means less than a fraction of 0.1% can ever
get reflected back within a sold angle. But with CO2 less than 0.05% of the
atmosphere, you will of course prove there is reflection at all by putting
air in a jar, add 0.05% CO2 and measure it.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy

or by popularity:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=percentage

Really everything deniers say has been thoroughly debunked, there is no
inch of information in their scribbles.

In reality, the deniers are not interested in science, their motives are
fear for an excessive climate bill.

And as we all know, fear is the worst adviser.

AGW deniers are just a bunch of sissies.

Q

Negative feedback:
1) Sun heats ocean.
2) Ocean evaporates and forms clouds.
3) Clouds reflect sunlight into space, reduce evaporation.
If you doubt it, feel the sunlight on your skin when a cloud
obscures the sun.
4) Less cloud forms, more heat is absorbed, more cloud forms,
less heat is absorbed; Earth's temperature remains constant.
If it gets warmer, it will cool. If it gets cooler, it will warm.

Positive feedback:
5) Snow falls on land and polar ice fields.
6) Snow/ice reflects sunlight into space, reduces heat absorption.
Water absorbs sunlight, increases energy intake. Ice reflects
sunlight, reduces energy intake. If you doubt it, take a swim
in the Gulf of Mexico and another in the Arctic Ocean.
7) Earth cools as it radiates heat to space, more snow falls,
more sunlight is reflected, result is an Ice Age. The colder
it is, the colder it will get. The warmer it is, the warmer
it will get.

Changing the balance:
8) Earth's orbit is elliptical.
9) Sunlight obeys the inverse square law.
10) Earth is tilted.
11) More sunlight reaches Earth at perihelion than at aphelion.
12) Earth's Great White Spot, Antarctica, reflects sunlight at
aphelion (Southern summer). Result, positive feedback
predominates, Ice Age.
13) Earth precesses. Earth's Great White Spot reflects sunlight
at perihelion (Northern summer). But Earth's Great White Spot
has no sunlight to reflect and the Northern Wet Spot (the Arctic
Ocean) has even more sunlight to melt its ice cap than it had
when it faced the Sun at aphelion. Water absorbs far more heat
than ice.  Result: more sunlight absorbed, positive feedback,
global warming.

14) But it is offset by more cloud, see negative feedback above.
Overall result - a small change in temperature as a function of
precession.

15) CO2 levels rise as a consequence of a warmer planet, not
as the cause. Far more strange gases are vented to atmosphere by
volcanoes than by man.

•• Andy seems to think that climate is akin to
    rolling the roof on and off the metrodome

    The world's oceans are being heated by
     underwater tectonic activity - underwater
     volcanic eruptions and blisteringly hot magma
     seeping up from cracks in the sea floor, as well
     as by solar radiation

     The heated ocean water creates high levels of
     CO2 that it sends aloft along with huge amounts
     of moisture. That moisture becomes precipitation
     — rain in the spring, summer, and fall, and snow
     in the winter. Increased amounts of moisture in
     the upper atmosphere equals increased amounts
     of precipitation.

     The hotter the oceans, the more water vapor sent
     heavenward and the heavier the precipitation. This
     explains the large number of record-breaking
     rainfalls we've been seeing in the past couple of
     years — with as noted above, areas of the United
     States getting 20 inches of rain in a day or so.

     As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2,
     atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400
     parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that
     paleological records show that every time CO2
     levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been
     an ice age. Every time — without exception.

     The same records show that there have been a
     series of ice ages over the past 5 million years,
     naturally occurring every 100,000 years, with
     about 90,000 years of glaciation followed by
     about 12,000 years of interglacial climate.

     The last ice age ended about 12,000 years
     ago. Clearly we are in line for the next period of
     glaciation.

And since changing concentrations of CO2 would amplify temperature
variations, the locking up of CO2 as fossil fuel should have reduced
maximum possible temperatures as well.

But the following new report suggests that burning too much fossil
fuel could undo all that.

Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago,
Scientists Report
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 9, 2009) — You would have to go back at least 15
million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they
are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online
edition of the journal Science.

"The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they
are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures
were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea
level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no
permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica
and Greenland," said the paper's lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA
assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and
the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

"Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological
observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend
strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent
for driving climate change throughout Earth's history," she said.

By analyzing the chemistry of bubbles of ancient air trapped in
Antarctic ice, scientists have been able to determine the composition
of Earth's atmosphere going back as far as 800,000 years, and they
have developed a good understanding of how carbon dioxide levels have
varied in the atmosphere since that time. But there has been little
agreement before this study on how to reconstruct carbon dioxide
levels prior to 800,000 years ago.

Tripati, before joining UCLA's faculty, was part of a research team at
England’s University of Cambridge that developed a new technique to
assess carbon dioxide levels in the much more distant past — by
studying the ratio of the chemical element boron to calcium in the
shells of ancient single-celled marine algae. Tripati has now used
this method to determine the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's
atmosphere as far back as 20 million years ago.

"We are able, for the first time, to accurately reproduce the ice-core
record for the last 800,000 years — the record of atmospheric C02
based on measurements of carbon dioxide in gas bubbles in ice,"
Tripati said. "This suggests that the technique we are using is valid.

"We then applied this technique to study the history of carbon dioxide
from 800,000 years ago to 20 million years ago," she said. "We report
evidence for a very close coupling between carbon dioxide levels and
climate. When there is evidence for the growth of a large ice sheet on
Antarctica or on Greenland or the growth of sea ice in the Arctic
Ocean, we see evidence for a dramatic change in carbon dioxide levels
over the last 20 million years.

"A slightly shocking finding," Tripati said, "is that the only time in
the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide
levels similar to the modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to
20 million years ago, when the planet was dramatically different."

Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts
per million over the last 800,000 years — until recent decades, said
Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and
Planetary Physics. It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon
dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding
that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years
is new.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, the carbon dioxide level was about 280 parts per million,
Tripati said. That figure had changed very little over the previous
1,000 years. But since the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide
level has been rising and is likely to soar unless action is taken to
reverse the trend, Tripati said.

"During the Middle Miocene (the time period approximately 14 to 20
million years ago), carbon dioxide levels were sustained at about 400
parts per million, which is about where we are today," Tripati said.
"Globally, temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, a huge
amount."

Tripati's new chemical technique has an average uncertainty rate of
only 14 parts per million.

"We can now have confidence in making statements about how carbon
dioxide has varied throughout history," Tripati said.

In the last 20 million years, key features of the climate record
include the sudden appearance of ice on Antarctica about 14 million
years ago and a rise in sea level of approximately 75 to 120 feet.

"We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with
an increase in carbon dioxide levels of about 100 parts per million, a
huge change," Tripati said. "This record is the first evidence that
carbon dioxide may be linked with environmental changes, such as
changes in the terrestrial ecosystem, distribution of ice, sea level
and monsoon intensity."

Today, the Arctic Ocean is covered with frozen ice all year long, an
ice cap that has been there for about 14 million years.

"Prior to that, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic,"
Tripati said.

Some projections show carbon dioxide levels rising as high as 600 or
even 900 parts per million in the next century if no action is taken
to reduce carbon dioxide, Tripati said. Such levels may have been
reached on Earth 50 million years ago or earlier, said Tripati, who is
working to push her data back much farther than 20 million years and
to study the last 20 million years in detail.

More than 50 million years ago, there were no ice sheets on Earth, and
there were expanded deserts in the subtropics, Tripati noted. The
planet was radically different.

Co-authors on the Science paper are Christopher Roberts, a Ph.D.
student in the department of Earth sciences at the University of
Cambridge, and Robert Eagle, a postdoctoral scholar in the division of
geological and planetary sciences at the California Institute of
Technology.

The research was funded by UCLA's Division of Physical Sciences and
the United Kingdom's National Environmental Research Council.

Tripati's research focuses on the development and application of
chemical tools to study climate change throughout history. She studies
the evolution of climate and seawater chemistry through time.

•• Just rehashing Androcles stupid crap