yer i saw it, at first i was very skeptical since i'm currently doing an atmospheric physics module at uni which indicates global warming is anthropogenic, so i was torn. If the "facts" they presented were true then it does bring about some good controversy. Also the people being interviewed were doctors at Cambridge, MIT, Harvard... so i'm guessin they had a clue

It's important to bear in mind that the only evidence for the existance of Satan is the media.  Seriously, although Channel 4 are probably the best channel on terrestrial T.V. and all the different offshoots tend to provide the best entertainment, controversial subjects garner the most attention, meaning more viewers, meaning they then have more reason to churn up advertising prices and money money money.

While I'm back to fence sitting on the matter, I am aware that even if other planetary objects are warming(which I've seen absolutely nothing to suggest is remotely accurate), it is a logical fallacy to assume climate on Earth and Pluto are the slightest bit related.

In the show the "rebel" scientists were talking about how noone really will speak out against global warming without getting slammed by the rest of the scientific community, does this not indicate a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with. The beauty of science is its independance from politics or other influences, is this being lost?

This is my problem with global warming and public policy. It seems like politics has gotten its teeth into it and that always throws up red flags for me.  A good case in point is compact fluorescent lights. They use A LOT less energy so now there is legislation in progress that would mandate their use. Cool, except for the problem that these bulbs contain mercury and wholesale adoption of them would create serious problems with mercury pollution. But it is a real easy feel good measure that politicians can wear proudly - as long as the mercury thing does not become widely known.

The mercury emissions from coal plants are much higher than the mercury content in the bulbs.  A regular light bulb uses about three times as much mercury over it's lifespan (10mg) compared to an average CFL which uses about 2.4mg (and the CFL lasts much longer).  The technology for the mercury in the bulbs can change and the bulbs can be disposed of so as not to contaminate groundwater.  There is no control for mercury emissions from power plants as indicated by higher levels of mercury in the food stream.

LED light bulbs contain no mercury and are more energy efficient than CFLs.  Currently the price for those bulbs are quite high but, like the CFLs, are expected to go down. 

I havent seen this video and im not sure what their view is on this subject but no matter what the view the facts remain unchanged.

global warming is not due to humans. It has happend several times in the last 4.5 billion years. There is money in causeing panic  for us in global warming. The global temprature has risein 1-3 degrees F in the last hundred years, it has risein 5 the hundred yrs before that proveing these people are full of shit. This trend of warming will result in an ice age. There is no shortage of oil, trees, waste dumps or fresh water. We cant change it, stoping anything we have done the entire existance of our human race wont save the planet, the planet is fine, if we dont change our hippy bullshit ways we wont be fine thats all there is to it. THE END

sometimes in the universe NEW things happen. that is my problem with the evidence they put forward on the show, it was entirely based on the past.

It is true that the disolution of CO2 into water is exothermic and so heating the oceans has a reversing effect releasing some of it. This is some of the cause of climate change in the past, as you say CO2 lags solar energy variations. However what can be seen from the data is once that oceanic CO2 is released, if there is enough released into the atmosphere the earth is pushed out of its stable equillibrium and pushed into a new equillibrium, most of the time an ice age.

 The thing about anthropogenic CO2 is that it's simulating the oceanic CO2 release which can cause the runaway effect. In the past few decades CO2 count in the atmosphere has risen by almost 40%, most of which CAN be accounted for by our emissions and deforestation etc. Obviously CO2 isnt the only greenhouse gas, we produce methane aswell (cows etc) and also the warming and cooling towers can produce more steam which is also a greenhouse gas.

 Anyway i'm just rambling but my point is there is a point where runaway occurs as the imbalance causes more imbalance.... We are producing that imbalance in a NEW but very REAL way so talking about ice records is useless as this is a very different issue.

"Wait what are you talking about? Studies on what? Global warming? Global warming due to us? The study how hippys saved the world? The scientific community has given us a straight answer on all of this. Global warming is true, we cant stop it, we didn't cause it, the only thing we can do is survive it, which can be found in many of discovery channel programming. The people you may be talking about contradicting the words i have said above are the same people controlling your religion and media, its a scare tactic to get small minded people to worry, and spend money and then they will tell us they have beaten global warming making them god in your eyes. Being a hippy will get you no were but dead, its survival of the fittest and that includes whose toughest against the weather."

From what I read at Wiki the mercury is needed to control the gas pressure.  Newer designs are lowering the amount of mercury used and Wal-mart is pressuring it's suppliers to reach a lower content so we should expect in the near future to have less mercury content than we have now. 

I'm very interested in this because I am an electronics tech involved exclusively in entertainment technology so I work with a lot of Intelligent lighting and Audio equipment. A major change recently has been the RoHS restrictions which is an international initiative to reduce the amount of hazardous chemicals in our landfill. The three major concerns are lead, mercury and cadmium. I won't go into the frustration of the reliablility of leadfree solder (leadfree solder is mostly tin and tin grows whiskers over time and causes failures as well as having a smaller useable temperature range... a massive drama to manufacturing)

The RoHS compliance definition states "Any RoHS compliant component must have 100 ppm or less of mercury and the mercury must not have been intentionally added to the component."

I was never under the assumption incandescent lamps contained any mercury and I found on this Wiki page... "Disposal and recycling | The disposal of phosphor and particularly the mercury in the (flourescent)tubes is an environmental issue. (Incandescent lamps do not contain mercury.)"

I agree with your conclusion that due to the emmissions of mercury from power stations a CFL is more friendly but I find it weird our governments while enforcing RoHS seem to overlook the violation to RoHS compliance with respect to intentionaly added mercury in CFLs.

G

I've seen both the Great Global Warming Swindel and another BBC doc called Global Warming:  Doomsday Called Off.

 The predominant theory in both is a combination of man-made Co2, Solor Magnetic activity, cosmic rays and Global Dimming.

The concept is very simple and a wrote about it a long time ago on my old blog.  It's long winded and I don't want to write it all out again, so I'll just quote from my writtings there:

Targeting The Global Warming Bandwagon!

My faithful readers will remember that some time back I posted the FACTS about how the scientific community and the media has been attempting  to skew findings when it comes to the warming of the planet earth.  Any information that seems to dispute the coming "Global Warming/Global Climate Change" disaster tends to get poo-pooed and ignored in the media. 

I also laid out this remarkable little gem of evidence that I stumbled upon at the Junk Science website which shows just how ALARMIST and GOOFY the Enviro-Fascists have gotten when it comes to Global Warming.  The fact that the supposedly alarming increase in global temperatures of 0.6 degrees Celsius is within the margin of error ( +/- 0.7 degrees Celsius) for all of the data recorded since 1951, and the fact that some areas of the earth are not warming  or are actually cooling tends to shed some light on the issue at hand.

So what do we know?  Well, we know that the warming isn't GLOBAL, that the average change in the climate is well withing the margin of error for the data collected, and that climate change is nothing new for the planet Earth.

But wait, you exclaim!  Don't we have evidence that SUVs and fossile fuels are destroying the environment?  Don't we know that man is responcible for all this drastic global warming?

Nope, and anyone who tells you that they DO know that we're causing Global Warming is lying because we now have VERY CONVINCING EVIDENCE that concept of Global Warming is a thing of the past and that we may well have found the REAL culprit behind the 0.6 degree change in the average global temperature of the planet Earth, and here's a hint:  There is nothing we can do to stop it because WE DIDN'T CREATE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

I've said it before and I'll say it again;  We simply DO NOT KNOW enough about the climate of our planet to be able to make any kind of decisive statement about what is causing what we KNOW to be a moderate warming trend on the planet earth.  Despite this FACT, the Enviro-fascists are hard at work producing propaganda and misinformation designed to stop or eliminate our way of life.

Make no mistake, the Enviro-fascists have rapidly descended from their perches high up in the redwood trees that they love to hug, with the spotted owls they love to snuggle.  No, the Tree-hugging, spotted owl tongue kissing, environmental alarmists are less and less concerned with protecting the environment and more and more concerned with the destruction of capitalism and the American way of life.

Global Warming has become their favorite weapon with which to bash capitalism and the American economy.  We all have heard the hysterical comments about "Big Oil," "Halliburton," and "SUVs."  We've heard about how America is the biggest pollution producer in the world and that we all need to be driving hybrid vehicles and dismantling the industrial complex.  We've been beaten over the head with the Kyoto treaty and how George W. Bush was an idiot for not signing onto a treaty that required America to clean up it's already "cleaner than most" industrial complex while exempting China and other BIG polluters from ANY enforced changes.

Well, it's all a big steaming pile of class-one, grade-A, USDA Certified Bullshit.

First and foremost, the so-called Third World and Industrial "new comers" in South America and China are responsible for MORE pollution and MORE environmental damage than the United States of America.  American Industry is, more often than not, cleaner than her counterparts in China or anywhere else for that matter.  The reason is that we have regulations in place and the companies often make enough money that they can invest in equipment that reduces or eliminates harmful pollutants.  While we do drive a LOT of cars and trucks and SUVs, Americans drive more modern vehicles that produce less pollution.  Look at the third world and what do you see? 

The TRUTH is that our rivers, lakes, streams, air, and soil are CLEANER than most any other nation because for the most part we DO CARE about the environment.  And that's why the enviro-fascists are so effective in their attacks on our way of life.  Why, if we all care about the environment, all they have to do is tell us how someone doesn't care to rally support.  And they've tried to rally that support to a treaty that would have CRIPPLED the American Economy and done NOTHING to reel in polluters in other nations.

The Kyoto Treaty would have let countries like China go on exempt from the treaty while the American Economy would be forced to absorb a lot of the costs.  So far, the Kyoto Treaty has cost the nations that signed onto it almost $99 Billion to enforce and has produced a "POTENTIAL" temperature savings of  0.001024986 °C.  Yep, $99 Billion for 1/1000th of a degree in temperature savings.

But nowhere have the enviro-fascists been more effective than in their "Global Warming" Jihad.

The lie has been shouted from the roof-tops for so long and so loud that it's taken root and people actually believe that man has been able to do more damage to the Earth and her delicate atmosphere than has ever been done before.  People readily accept that we have caused the climate to change and the planet to warm.

But if that is the case, then what about Mars?

Scientists have recently announced the discovery that the Southern Polar Ice-cap on the planet Mars is retreating at an alarming rate.  After an unprecedented recent couple of years actually observing Martian climate and geology, we've found that not only is Mars warming up, it's also losing it's southern Ice Cap and is going through a warming trend of it's own.

Let's break this down.  What is it that both planets have in common that COULD be the reason that Mars is experiencing the same warming trend that Earth is?

Well, it's not animal or plant life.  There is pretty much a universal acceptance that there is no life left on Mars, though there may have been some at some distant past.  We've not sent any astronauts to Mars for the purpose of exploration, so we know that there are no humans on Mars. Last time I checked, the Mars Rovers are solar powered and are not producing any toxic, environment-killing green house gases.  Last I checked, NASA has been the only entity to receive a no-bid contract to explore Mars, and Halliburton is nowhere near that planet.  So what could possibly contribute to the warming of the planets Earth and Mars at the exact same time?

There is only one thing that both of these planets have in common, and it's something that EVERY planet in the solar system has in common with each other.

It's the sun.

 It turns out that according to scientific records and data, the sun is shining brighter than it has in the last 8000 years.  In fact, recent scientific work has revealed that everything we know about the connections between the cycles of the sun and the cycles of the climate of the planet Earth are directly related.

In 2003, the same team of scientists announced the correlation of the brightness and the number and severity of sun spots with the warming and cooling trends going back 1000 years.

To make a long story full of scientific terms a little shorter and easier to understand, scientists have been able to work out that the sun is producing more sunspots, and shining brighter than it has done in the last 8000 years.  Outside the known 11 year cycle of solar activity, there exists at least one magnetic cycle that produces more sun spots, but increases the brightness of the sun.  Further, Scientists in Ireland have found a direct correlation between solar activity and warming and cooling trends.

"We can see global warming taking place over the past two centuries that suggests that changes in the Sun are at least partially responsible."

"It's quite apparent from our data that global warming, of about a degree C, has been taking place for at least a hundred years."

"We have found that it gets cooler when the Sun's cycle is longer and that Armagh is warmer when the cycle is shorter."

The key is cosmic rays. Cosmic rays interact with the atmosphere, creating isotopes like C-14 and Be-10 which in turn interact with water vapor in the atmosphere, turning that vapor into clouds and then as those clouds grow, those molecules act as condensation nuclei which in turn becomes the rain.

It's by this process that the C-14 is absorbed into plants and is how scientists can look at the rings of a tree and discover the level of cosmic radiation that made it's way to Earth in the years when those rings were formed.  The same goes for the Be-10 which is found in the Polar Ice caps in Ice Cores.

In sort, as more cosmic rays reach the Earth, levels of lower atmosphere cloud cover increases, causing more of the solar radiation to be reflected back into space.  This causes a general cooling trend and may have been more that partially responsible for the last ice age.

In the opposite case, when cosmic ray levels drop, so does the lower level cloud cover.  This leaves the higher elevation cloud cover which acts more like a mirror pointed at the Earth, reflecting the infra-red radiation of the earth back toward the ground.  Thus more radiation is absorbed by atmosphere, and less escapes from it which in turn leads to warming trends.

Whoa!  Wait a minute!  Didn't you just say that the Sun is shining brighter than in the last 8000 years?  If that is the case, shouldn't there be more cosmic rays?

Well, yes.  One would think that way, but the problem is that the brightness of the sun is directly related to the number of sun-spots on it's surface.  Sun spots are caused by magnetic activity within the sun.  These magnetic lines prevent cosmic rays from escaping the sun.  They are grabbed, along with the plasma storms that make up the surface of the sun and pulled back down to the surface.

In this way, when the sun is at it's brightest and most active, LESS cosmic radiation can make it's way through space to the planet Earth.

The sun that we all depend on for life and warmth may well be the cause for EVERY warming and cooling trend that the planet earth has ever seen.  Remember that the last time the Earth experienced solar levels like this was at the time that the last Ice Age was ending rapidly.

Remember the story about Global Dimming?  Here is is, slightly edited for format and because I don't need to make this story any longer than it already is.

Two recent studies have revealed that the Air is cleaner today than it has been in years, and the Enviro-pseudo-Scientists are up in arms!

First we were told that the all the pollutants and gasses in the atmosphere will lead to global warming and that we're all going to die. Now comes word that the air has less dirt and particulate material in it and that it is going to lead to even more global warming and we're all going to die.

Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week.

   Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent.

That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will also have knock-on effects on cloud cover, winds, rainfall and air temperature that are difficult to predict.

The results suggest that a downward trend in the amount of sunlight reaching the surface, which has been observed since measurements began in the late 1950s, is now over.

The researchers argue that this trend, commonly called 'global dimming', reversed more than a decade ago, probably following the collapse of communist economies and the consequent decrease in industrial pollutants.

So let me get this straight, it wasn't the American economy that was driving the mass pollution of the Atmosphere? It was Communist economies like that in the former Soviet Union? I thought that America was the big trouble-maker.

Let's tie these stories together, shall we?

Global Dimming, due to all the particulate matter in the atmosphere has been decreasing and more solar energy has been reaching the surface, with less material in the lower atmosphere to reflect solar radiation back into space, the surface temperature has begun to rise.

So aside from the fact that this story is telling us that air pollution was actually helping to keep the atmosphere cool (tell that to an enviro-fascist and watch their heads explode), but that the trend began in the 1950's and is reversing as of about a decade ago.

So we have a combination of pollution being slowed down and solar activity preventing solar radiation from reaching the planet that has led to an increase in temperatures over the last 100 years, but more drastically in the last 50 to 60 years.

Wild and his team looked at data on surface sunshine levels from hundreds of devices around the planet. They found that since the 1980s there has been a transition from decreasing to increasing solar radiation nearly everywhere, except in heavily polluted areas such as India and at scattered sites in Australia, Africa, and South America

Surprisingly, Wild's study shows a brightening trend in China, despite the fact that there is a booming, fossil-fuel-intensive industry in that country.  Wild says he can only speculate that the use of clean-air technologies in China might be more widespread and efficient than has been thought.

In contrast, India's vast brown clouds of smog, which result from wildfires and the use of fossil fuels, have reduced the sunlight reaching the ground.

India?  India? We're behind India? Sweet Smoggy Savior! We're not even in the Top Five? We're falling behind. Obviously we don't have enough SUVs and coal burning power plants. Let alone open pit arsenic incinerators...

It's time to face the facts here. We're all going to die, regardless of the level of particulate matter in the air. If the air is clean, then global warming is going to kill us. If the air is dirty, then global warming is going to kill us. We should just give up. I mean seriously, we're looking at global death no matter the quality of the air we breath.

I had to leave that last part in there just because it still makes me laugh...

But on a serious note, the data all fits together.  We're BEGINNING to see that while there is still global warming to worry about, it's not all our fault.  Hell, our attempts to clean the air are leading to higher temperatures!  So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

Do you realize that there is an idea floating around that the best way to stand off global warming is the wide spread pollution of the atmosphere in order to create more low level clouding?  Yes, enviro-fascists are beginning to advocate the intentional pollution of the atmosphere...

 So does this mean that we're off the hook?  No.  There is evidence that increased levels of co2 can lead to the dreaded green-house effect.  Does that mean that we're the cause of all that co2?  Nope.

Case in fact.  One single and significant volcanic eruption such as the ones at Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, Mount Saint Helens, or Mount Pinatubo cause more damage than the entire history of human civilization.

In fact, the act of igniting oil wells in the first Gulf War did less environmental damage than a single, small-scale eruption of ANY volcano.

So what can we gleam from all this information?  Well, we can clearly see that while we can have an effect on the level of green house gasses we produce and use, we have NO CONTROL over the influence of solar radiation on low level clouds which has been shown to be a driving force in the warming and cooling trends in the past.

So the next time someone tries to bring you down by telling you that your SUV is destroying the environment, or that Halliburton is the cause of Global Warming or that if we all just embraced socialism and abandoned capitalism we would all live in a better world, remind them that since we've began cutting back and restricting the use of green house gasses and cleaning up the air, Global Warming has continued and gotten worse.  Top that off with the fact that the same damned thing is happening on Mars and you can pretty much take the Religious Fanaticism of Environmentalism and place it in the ash heap of history.

Stick a fork in it, because it's done.

sorry i didnt read that huge post, got exams soon so have to save brain space.

 There is a major issue being missed out here, you guys who want global warming not to exist seem to be foccussing too much on the past. The theory of global warming is that CO2 absorbs infrared (the peak wavelength of the earth's black body emmission spectrum) which is A SCENTIFIC FACT (well as factual as u can get), about half the absorbed energy is then reemitted back down to earth (the other half into space, good thing). However CO2 doesnt absorb visible light (the peak wavelength of the sun's light) which is also A SCIENTIFIC FACT. Which obviously means more energy is going in than to the system than is coming out. The greenhouse effect is a fact, despite what discovery channel says. And so if you increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, you increase the green house effect

The reason i'm explaining this is because i havent seen any understanding of the greenhouse effect in this discussion so far (unless there was some in that long post!) .

 YES other things affect the climate like the milankovich cycles, ocean salinity or other catastophes like volcanic eruptions and YES these were probably the cause of every other climate change in history before. But thats because the industrial revolution hasnt happend to earth before!!!! YOU CANT USE THE PAST AS EVIDENCE ANYMORE BECAUSE THIS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATION!!!!!!

 Anyone who's convincing themselves this isnt an issue is doing so to rid themselves of guilt cos they cant be bothered to sacrifice any luxuries.

And just for a side note, i'm studying this as part of my physics degree so my opinion is entirely based on the physics, not the politics.

 Look at the polot ice caps then.  The ice sheet is THICKENING.  http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05140/507684.stm  http://www.cfact.org/site/view_article.asp?idCategory=4&idarticle=244

Next. 

HAHA, thats funny that you consider those websites reliable, and i'm only laughing because you were so cocky while being wrong. In truth the Polar ice caps are DEFINITELY getting SMALLER (not thinner, they may have thinkened by a millimetre or two but if you're losing such a great area of land that is pretty minimal) illustrated well by the fact that polar bears are dying out with less hunting ground each year. which is why America are looking like they might accept global warming soon and get their act together, maybe you should think about doing it aswell.

DID YOU EVEN READ MY POST!?!?! I'll say it again just to emphasise it for you: YOU CANT USE THE PAST AS EVIDENCE ANYMORE BECAUSE THIS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATION!!!!!! I'll turn it into some flow diagrams for you:

IN THE PAST:

solar radiation changes -> earth heats up -> lag in CO2 increase because the ocean has 1000x the heat capacity of the atmosphere so it takes a long time to heat up ->natural greenhouse effect

NOW:

forced imbalance of CO2 levels -> greenhouse effect -> earth heats up -> polar ice caps melt decreaseing albedo of earth (hence less solar radiation is reflected this more heating) -> lagged CO2 release (as before) even more heating -> runaway situation.

If anyone tries to use evidence from the past again i'll probly shoot myself.

I really hate to break this to you but the industrial revolution happened in the mid 1700s and really boomed in the early 1800s which, if you look at the temperature trends, fits quite nicely.

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/17.htm

again this is evidence based on the past and so doesnt apply in this new system.

Martian ice caps melt and refreeze quite a lot ever year. And mars is approaching a near point to the sun in its orbital milankovitch cycle whereas ours is quite circular (conveniently for life to survive)

I apologise i only read one since i was sure the other three were american and then maybe had bias due to the larger controversy over there at the moment and the other one was just a forum like this one where anyone can say anything. And so i read the newton and that actually contradicted you.

And yet they clearly havent made it sound bad enough for america or china to get there act together. 

I wont shoot myself since you posted this just after i posted mine so you probly didnt read it (or you want me to shoot myself). The main problem with the ice caps melting is the increase in sea level which would sink major cities and population centres

I wont answer the last bit as it refers to the past again. 

I somehow fail to make up my mind in this matter.

I am not very keen on climate change and I do not want to be influenced by my personal wishes and beliefes. But I find the evidence that is available very inconclusive and confusing. On one side you have the IPCC which claim to have superior scientific evidence in the area. Of course that is very convincing, but then again there is the factor that we want to believe that. I mean to be perfectly honest most people supporting them probably know nothing about the actual evidence. You could tell them anything, say you’re a doctor and they’d buy it. Ah I will probably have to spend a countless amount of hour’s reading into the evidence. But so far I have about 50 arguments for and against human caused climate change, So I am guessing the truth will be somewhere inbetween.

Your are basing your belief on the IPCC's reports!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Granted it's been two years since you posted but isn't it great what the future can tell you.

The British Climate Institue had its systems hacked. They admit that, they also admit that emails were taken along with other sensitive information.

The emails quite cleary show that the computer model simulations that the IPCC use to bolster their arguments was fiddled with to give the pro climate scientist ammunition to attack so called "deniers and skeptics" (what!! i question you and straight away i'm a skeptic, well i can same the same to those who call me that, especailly when the "skeptics" are basing their arguments on millions of years of data rather than a computer simulation).

The opposite effect happened compared to the computer model.

We are cooling not warming, hence why they have all of a sudden changed the name from AGW to this new Carbon relases blah balh balh....

All they are doing is trying sleight of hand to deviate from the results.

Evidence was also in the emails to suggest that CO2 is actually needed to stop the earth over-heating.....

Their is no peer review, so what we have in effect is the IPCC saying accept are argument and you can't question it.

Science does not work this way to be effective.

Plianian events - major eruptions - over history have pumped much more co2 into the atmosphere than we ever have.

Nature pumps more c02 combined into the air than humans do.

The facts are their, people are being denied those facts though because the pro climate change people are making squillions out of it and need to justrify their funding as well as appeasing political masters.

An email quite clearly points out that a scientist by the name of Wei who provides info to the IPCC fudged the data so as to get more fundidng (apparently funding is linked to proving climate change not looking or thinking about it rationally and looking at all avenues).

I suppose what alarms me the most is that even though 30,000 scientists question climate change, not one media outlet is giving them any time, instead they give pro climate change scientist full run to make claims that have no factual basis.

People say that volcanic eruptions don't release that much c02 into the air.

I ask this question, HOW did they come to that conclusion when ground sampling from various soil depths show extremely large amounts of CO2 deposits during these eruptions.

Yep, we are all being hoodwinked by the greedy and those with agendas.

zzREXzz,

I have not been on this website much lately, hence the reason I did not respond to your argument earlier. I hope you are still around to read this response. It is a long read, but sometimes a lot needs to be said.

I reached my conclusions about anthropogenic climate change independently of the IPCC assessment reports. Even if I had based my conclusions on them, that would not have been a grievous mistake because the IPCC assessment reports are mere summaries of the findings of the pertinent peer-reviewed literature. When a layman does not have the needed learning or time to follow the science closely, there is nothing wrong in turning to the assessment reports. It would be better for someone to do that than to have the aggressive gullibility of most of the deniers of anthropogenic climate change. Such people spout whatever uninformed drivel that happens to float to the surface of the denialosphere. For example:

I have read the e-mails that were put forward as being the most damning. In addition, I have read the arguments presented by both sides about the proper interpretation of them. I have reached the conclusion that the e-mails do not show anything mischievous and deniers are putting a huge spin on the facts.

Let me give an example of what I mean. The e-mail with the most notoriety among deniers was written by the climatologist Philip D. Jones. It says, "I've just completed Mike's [Michael E. Mann's] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i. e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's [Keith Briffa's] to hide the decline." The deniers have pointed to the expressions "trick" and "hide the decline" and suggest the data was fudged. I will now talk about both phrases and demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the deniers have put a spin on it.

The first thing to notice is that the trick was published in the journal Nature — hence, "Nature trick". That journal has a great reputation for extremely high quality standards. If the procedure was valid enough to pass the scrutiny of Nature's expert peer reviewers, then we can know with virtual certainty that the procedure has at least one legitimate use. Dr. Jones says in the e-mail that he did the same thing to Mann's data set that Mann himself had done. As such, Dr. Jones was conducting that part of his analysis legitimately. Hence, the "Nature trick" is a trick of the trade, not a trick of the devil, so to speak. Notice that the deniers have completely ignored the capitalized "Nature" in the e-mail to give "trick" enough spin to make it sound like a trick of the devil.

The second thing to notice is that the Dr. Jones also used that trick of the trade on the data set supplied by Briffa. This is significant because Briffa is not in a line of work that deals with temperature measurements. The closest that Briffa had come to that line of work is to work with a temperature proxy. In other words, he has worked with a data set that was put together by measurements of something other than temperature that nonetheless does correlate with the temperature well enough to tell you something about it. Because Briffa works mostly with tree rings, you can guess (correctly) that the proxy in question concerned tree rings.

To appreciate this point, you need to understand something about tree rings. As you know, you can learn the age of a tree by counting its rings, which are the bands of light- and dark-colored wood in the trunk. The light-colored bands are grown during the warmer half of the year and the dark-colored bands are grown during the colder half. The light bands tend to be thicker than the dark bands because the trees grow faster the warmer it is. Do you now see the correlation with temperature? The temperature plays a large role in determining how thick those light- and dark-colored bands are. When you observe the changes in thickness from one light band to another and from one dark band to another, you are observing the changes of temperature from one summer to another and from one winter to another. When you put this data together, you can make a rough reconstruction of the temperature data for the summers and winters of every year in which the tree was growing. This can be done with more than one tree too. Suppose you have one tree that grew from 1890-1967 and another tree that grew from 1940-2000. You can line up core samples of these trees for the years 1940-1967. Once you have done this, you can treat them together almost as though they were a single tree and reconstruct the temperature record for 1890-2000. If you have core samples of even older trees that overlap with those, then you can line up the bands again, treat them as though they were a separate tree, and make a temperature reconstruction for an even longer timespan.

In this way, Briffa had made a 1,000 year temperature reconstruction. In the process, he learned that it was not as straight-forward as my explanation of the science made it appear. Something about the northern hemisphere had changed from the 1960s onward that affected the growth of Siberian trees, which affected the thickness of the bands for the years 1961 onwards, which affected the temperature reconstruction for 1961 onwards. (I think the damage to the ozone layer was responsible for it, but that is a mere guess on my part.) The temperature reconstruction was showing a decline that did not match the actual temperatures. In other words, the trees were saying that 1961 and onward were cooler than they really were. This decline is known as the divergence problem. Now why have I bothered to spell all of this out? Because the divergence problem is the decline that Dr. Jones was talking about.

So the trees were not telling the truth about the temperature for 1961 onward and they were getting farther and farther away from the truth as the years went by — hence the decline in the temperature reconstructions. The temperature reconstruction would be a useless dataset unless that problem were fixed. The only way to fix it would be to substitute the lies with the truth — to substitute the inaccurate temperature reconstruction for 1961 onward with the actual temperature measurements. That is what Dr. Jones did. As he said, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real [truthful] temps ... from 1961 for Keith's [temperature reconstruction] to hide the decline [caused by the untruthful Siberian trees]."

The deniers had not only ignored the capitalized "Nature" to make it seem like Dr. Jones was using a trick of the devil instead of a trick of the trade, and then they ignored the fact that Briffa's work was about temperature reconstructions and not actual temperature measurements to make it seem like Dr. Jones was covering up some decline in the actual temperature measurements. They spun the facts by ignoring two key pieces of evidence in that e-mail. What has been the result? Aside from the landslide of public stupidity that followed it, they argued that the actual temperature was declining such that we are experiencing, not global warming, but global cooling! There is no evidence for such a thing and all the evidence — such as the migration and growth patterns of innumerable species — contradicts it.

Nothing in that e-mail demonstrates an improper handling of data. It shows only that Dr. Jones was doing his job and doing it well. In the process, it shows that a good scientist doing good science was relying on Mann and Briffa, which shows that they are good scientists too — after all, good scientists don't depend on the data given to them by cranks. Nothing in any of the other e-mails seems to show any negligence or malpractice either.

Does this example not show the lengths to which the deniers will go to advance their agenda? When they see a good scientist doing good science, they demonize him and distort the science, and when they see data, they spin it, and when there is no data, they make it up. In the process of doing this, they have the audacity to hold up their fairytale to you and shout, "Smoking gun!" There is a smoking gun here but it is not the one they are making up. The smoking gun is their words, which are hollow and full of hot air.

(For those who take an interest in the subject of tree-ring temperature reconstruction, please note that my explanation was greatly over-simplified. Anything that can affect the growth of a tree, such as the acidity of the soil, can affect the temperature reconstruction if it is not properly accounted for. To reconstruct the temperature, you would need to do a lot of things that I did not explain here. If you want a more accurate and precise explanation, find a good book on "dendrology", which is just the fancy word for the science of trees.)

Do not pretend to respond to arguments that have not been made. In my mind, a skeptic is someone who has the intellectual virtue that compels them to dig for the truth. You have not demonstrated such a fine quality here. You have demonstrated the opposite. I would only consider calling you a skeptic should my life depend on it. Skepticism is a badge of honor that you have not earned and do not merit. This is the reason I call your positio, not the skeptical position, but the denier position.

We are warming, not cooling. You can determine this for yourself by watching the time-lapse satellite photography of the Earth. The ice we have had since the last ice age — that we have had for 10,000 years — is thinning and receding. That is the exact opposite of what you would see if they Earth were cooling. A more complicated but more precise way to determine just how much the Earth is warming can be done by collating the data from the temperature monitoring stations around the world. Such collation has already been done for us. The graphs that plot that data are plastered all across the Internet for anyone to access in less than thirty seconds.

There is no worldwide conspiracy to conceal the facts about the Earth's temperature. Such a conspiracy could be exposed by any pothead with a thermometer. There is not one person in this world who has at least two firing neurons in their brain that would attempt to conspire in such an obviously discoverable way. The intelligence needed to orchestrate a conspiracy involving thousands of temperature monitoring stations would be too much intelligence to go through it and the lack of intelligence needed to go through with it would not be enough to orchestrate it — hence, any argument that there is such a conspiracy must contradict itself.

You do not know what you are talking about. The peer review process for the IPCC Third Assessment Report was more extensive and meticulous than anything found in any science journal in the world. It had 122 lead authors who are experts in their fields. It had 515 contributing authors who are also experts in their fields. The draft report was circulated for review by other experts, with over 420 submitting valuable suggestions for improvement, and that is not counting the experts who thought the draft was fine. That was followed by review by governments, which arranged their own peer review team however they pleased, and that resulted in several hundred more experts who participated in the peer review process. That peer review process is without rival. You would know this if you had paid attention to what climatologists and other scientists were doing during the long production of the Third Assessment Report, or if you had read the first volume's PREFACE. You cannot pretend to be qualified to judge the quality of a report if you had not even read the first section of text in it!

That is false. On average, humans release 130+ times as much CO2 as all of the active volcanoes in the world combined, including the subaerial and the submarine. (source) Our contributions to the CO2 trend are so great that even the ultra-Plinian eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991 is almost imperceptible in the data:

That is false, but for the sake of argument, let us suppose it is true. The conclusion you seem to draw from it — that our contribution is insignificant — does not follow. A strong wind can push you many times harder than my pinky finger can, but that does not mean that my pinky finger is unable to push you over during a strong wind. There are many things in life that seem insignificant in themselves but that become significant when put in a particular physical context. 

If the facts are out there, then nobody's being denied the facts.

Present it.

You are referring to the Oregon Petition. It should not be taken seriously. Even the lowest-status doctor could put their name on the list if they disagreed even the slightest amount with the Kyoto Protocol's explicit or implicit statements about human well-being or had even the smallest inkling that the passage of the Kyoto Protocol could affect well-being. That has nothing to do with questioning climate change, but it gives people an opportunity to trumpet them up as competent professionals in the field of climatology, as you have just done. That is misleading and possibly deceptive.

Answer these questions, if you can. What procedures were followed to verify that signatories have the degrees they claim to have? How many signatories published in the peer-reviewed climatology literature? How many of them are working climatologists instead of being stay-at-home parents or something else that could result in forgetting their training? What expertise do the nuclear engineers, mechanical engineers, medical doctors, and dietitians have that qualifies them to address climatology competently? And how would one find the answers to these questions without blindly accepting the mere say-so of the politically motivated people who put the petition together?

None of those questions can be answered. That is why the Oregon Petition is argumentatively worthless. It proves nothing. 

You have been hoodwinked by the greedy ideologues of the coal and oil industries. You have made this obvious by spending so much of your time spewing their talking points and so little of your time researching them.

Michael,

It seems that you have not looked into the matter very deeply. I say this because you want over the "changed terms" talking point that gets peddled by the shills of the oil and coal industries. Anyone who knows the meaning of the terms 'climate change' and 'global warming' knows how wrong that talking point is. The term 'global warming' is about the rise of the average global surface temperature, and nothing else. The term 'climate change' is about the changes that global warming will bring about. For example, the rise of the average global surface temperature will result in greater evaporation. In turn, that will result in greater precipitation in the form of rainfall and snowfall. In addition, higher temperatures entail a more energetic atmosphere which will result in more chaotic weather, such as strong gusts of wind to push the precipitating clouds across larger and larger areas. Now keep in mind that the surface of our planet is mostly water and that small bodies of water are more responsive to heat than large bodies (which you can verify for yourself with a two pans of water on a running stove). The result of the strong gusts of wind pushing the precipitating rain clouds will be less and less inland water bodies and soil moisture because it will more often evaporation and get whisked away to be dropped into the oceans. The term 'climate change' covers all of this while 'global warming' does not. Scientists have not abandoned either term. Instead, they have started to use one more frequently than the other because they want to stress that global warming will bring about more than just warmer seasons, which some people wrongly think is a reason to celebrate.

The claim that scientists were predicting global cooling in the 1970s is yet another talking point of industry shills. The rate at which humans were releasing aerosols into the atmosphere caused global dimming, which had the consequence of ozone depletion and global cooling. The industry shills and their followers never put this fact into its larger scientific context because that would ruin the persuasiveness of the talking point. Contrary to what you might have heard, only a very few scientists thought the cooling trend would continue. That position was as unpopular among scientists then as your position is today. Even in the 1950s, scientists generally agreed that global dimming was masking the warming effect of carbon dioxide and that our ever-growing rate of carbon dioxide emissions would ensure that the warming effect would no longer be masked, meaning that once our carbon dioxide emissions overtook our aerosol emissions, the average global surface temperature would rise, rise, and rise some more. When ozone depletion was discovered, the major governments of the world curbed aerosol production. When this happened, our carbon dioxide emissions took precedence much sooner than expected and the average global surface temperature went skyrocketing.

Concerning the last eight years, you need to put them into a larger context because of normal weather variability. If you use a timespan that begins with such a variance, then you could say the following years show a cooling trend or a warming trend depending on whether the variance was an abnormally high temperature, such as that which is caused by El Nino, or an abnormally low temperature, such as that which was caused by the ultra-plinian Mt. Pinatubo eruption. To avoid the problem of weather variability, you need to use large timespans to get meaningful climate trend lines. The minimum timespan would need to be about 30 years, with longer timespans being preferable. Here is the most recent 30-year timespan that I could find with just a few minutes of searching (for more information, click on the picture and read the provided summary):

The following shows the trend line from 1880 to 2007 (again, click through for more information):

As you can see, there is a clear warming trend in both of them.

And lastly, the industry shills like to send people to ask others how to falsify anthropogenic climate change, just as Young Earth Creationists send kids out to bug the unsuspecting teachers. When people do not have enough time to think through a response, it can mislead people into believing the objection has merit. That is well enough in a formal debate, when the goal is to persuade an audience, but it is a vapid rhetoric and utter sophistry when the goal is to discover the truth. There are many ways that anthropogenic climate change could be disproved. Let me name a few of them here. First, one could point to a sustained decrease in average global surface temperature, which would indicate global cooling, which is an obvious contradiction. Second, one could show that there are greater heat gains for the daytime than the nighttime, which would show that the Earth is getting warmer because it receiving more energy instead of holding in more of the energy it does receive. Third, one could show that there is greater warming at the equator than at the poles, which would be more consistent with a change caused by the sun than the atmosphere. Fourth, one could show that there is increasing rainfall in the continental interiors, which should make sense in light of the first paragraph of this response. Fifth, one could show the weather pattern along the coastlines getting milder, which should also make sense in light of the first paragraph of this response. Sixth, one could show that forests and jungles are receding from the poles, which would indicate that areas further from the equator are becoming less and less hospitable to trees, which is the opposite of what global warming would cause. Seventh, one could show that the ice volume of glaciers is increasing, and note that I said volume instead of extent or thickness. Eighth, one could show that, globally, flowers are blossoming at the same time or at later times year after year, which would show that the temperature is stable or lowering. Many more ways to disprove anthropogeic climate change could be mentioned, but I think I have made my point. The problem for your position is that the scientists have already looked into these things and have not been able to falsify it. Indeed, the greater increase in temperature for nighttime than daytime shows that global warming is happening and that it is caused by something local to the planet. The results of their research have only strengthened their confidence that anthropogenic climate change is correct.

Slide: http://www.dimagb.de/info/umwelt/pics/heiss/heiss32.jpg

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png  Note that the time is not linear.  The last 150 years is plotted to be the same width as the last 2,000 years.

Michael A. Thompson:

You present the most bizarre example of "projection" I have seen here for quite a while.

You respond to a detailed and calm explanation from Visual_Paradox of the facts of Climate Change with a hysterical post full of "smilies" and illogical statements and accuse him of fanaticism??

What are you smoking?

The multi-biilion year history of the Earth is not fucking relevant to trends occurring over decades or centuries! Except for where it shows that when CO2 levels have been this high in the past they have been associated with far greater sea-level rise than we have seen so far, partly because our contribution has caused the levels to rise faster than it has in the past, apart from a few times where massive volcanic eruptions hit large coal deposits.

Tell your crap to to the Polar Bears with little or no sea ice to hunt on for the first time in thousands of years, way ahead of IPCC predictions.

Sea levels have been rising for over a century, mainly so far due to temperature rise, but increasingly due to melting of ice on land.

These are the sorts of things which are indicators of long-term trends.

Yes there are inaccuracies in the IPCC predictions, but recent data, such as the Arctic Ice business, suggests they are mostly too conservative.

http://halgeranon.blogspot.com/2009/04/of-upward-slopes-and-isotopes-2.html

I am not going to argue the merits of this information with anyone.  I am NOT a chemist, let alone an expert atmospheric chemist. 

However, even if people are not the primary cause of oceanic warming and global climate changes, they appear to be a significant factor.  And I don't see how changing our dependence on fossil fuel for more sustainable fuels is a bad thing.  According to the Scientific American, there are a number of available technologies that are sustainable and will meet all current demands and a generous proportion of future demands. 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hot-rocks-tapping-an-unde

Hot rock geothermal is my fave.  Though wind, solar, tidal, nuclear all have their positives as well.  I don't understand the reluctance to tap these other sources of energy.  Yeah, it will cost lots in capital investments.  And what is the point of that argument?  Fossil fuels cost a LOT in capital investments - think about it.  It took over 100 years to develop the infrastructure supporting fossil fuels in the US.  We didn't have the interstate highway system two years after the internal combustion engine was invented.  Why does anyone expect the shift to new energy sources to take overnight?  And how much did it cost to build roads, bridges, wells, refineries, oil tanker trucks, service stations, automobile factories, high speed highways, and commuter lanes?  Not insignificant. 

We can move to alternative fuels.  It may not be as quick as some would like, but it is possible.  And think of this - if all that development is costing someone money, someone else is making money.  You have choices about which side of the equation you are on.  Me, when I get a job and catch up and save up a little, I intend to get an electric car and some solar panels.  Gasoline will go up past $4 a gallon in the US again, and each time it goes up, it never comes back down as far as it began.  I haven't seen 25 cents for a gallon of gas since I was in high school.

I knew I wasn't a shill - at least not in that sense.  Riddle me this:

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

Yes, there is a slight decrease in the last couple of years in the overall heat content of the oceans.  But seriously, the decrease brings us no where near the total heat content as measured in the 1980s.  And I would find it difficult to claim the trend is up or down from that graph.  And I believe, from what I have heard, no one else is claiming to know where the trend is going from here.  The slope on that downward trend is -to my mind anyway- distressingly close to level.  And it is certainly NOT a reverse of the trend as seen between 1985 and 2005. 

Leveling out would be at least not worse.  But in some ways it is worse in that our biggest problems are going to come from that 12 (?) joules increase.  We need the total heat content to drastically reduce to near 1950-1980 levels.  This heat content is what is increasing glacial melt in Greenland and Antarctica.  That is why sea levels will rise.  A leveling off will not stop the processes already started.  Also, the increase may also change the thermohaline circulation - which means no cold water for fisheries along the western North American Continent, no warm water for the eastern North American continent or the British Isles. 

Personally, I would feel a lot more comfortable about the fate of some of the coastline if the chart showed a stronger downward trend, regardless of the reason for the trend.  Here in Portland, OR, it looks bad for next summer.  We don't have a drought, but almost all of our precipitation has been as rain this winter, even in the Cascades.  (See the Winter Olympics just north of here for some of the unseasonal warmth.)  That snow provides city water, irrigation water, and power generation through the summer.  Not looking good for my lawn.  Is this a trend?  Probably not.  The western half of North America is in many places semi-arid.  That means rainfall is unpredictable.  And most native plants are adapted to too much rain followed by too little.    So I'm hoping the trend will move back to colder weather if not next winter, then soon.  Glacier National Park in Montana has lost almost all the glaciers.

Predictions are a funny thing.  Having worked in engineering and manufacturing firms, I have seen how non-engineers want to have a number.  They don't want to hear about the error bars.  If the engineer says "42  +/- 6", the other person will hear "42".  I don't know, but I will lay odds something similar happened with the climate predictions.  "It looks to me as if the trend is upward, so I will make my educated guess of ***."  Which was reported as "He said it would be ***." 

Alternatively, it depends on the model used to make the predictions.  For example, if they were using Markov chains, the prediction is "more of the same" since that is the nature of the model.  Weather forecasters used to use this model extensively.  "It didn't rain today, so it is unlikely to rain tomorrow."  They have moved on to better models and so have better weather predictions.  But predicting weather months into the future - hurricanes are weather, not climate - is still far from precise.  If I remember, at the time there were those who disagreed with the increase in hurricanes - not their fault the media largely ignored them.

The Day After Tomorrow was a damn silly movie.  But they did do a reasonable description of the thermohaline circulation.  I don't believe we will have drastic changes (2012 was even worse than TDAT), and neither do most scientists. (The producers asked a bunch of climate scientists to screen TDAT and I heard they all were rolling in the aisle.)  Gradual changes we can all live with most likely although moving entire coastal cities is going to be very expensive even if we need to do it over decades and not in the next few years. 

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/currents/welcome.html

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/howlikely.pdf

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/isamount.pdf

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/literacy/climate_literacy.pdf

I picked NOAA because they are pretty middle of the road as far as opinions go.  If they can't swing it to look good for the oil shills, then no one can.