You might have seen these remarks from Weather Channel founder John Coleman about climate change:

It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline.  All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth.  What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

They’re making the rounds, and a friend recently sent them my way. But even ignorami such as your humble servant can see Coleman makes several claims that are not only dubious, but flat-out wrong. Here are two examples:

(1) He claims to have “dug through thousands of pages of research papers” and insists that “the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels.  They don’t have any other issue.  Carbon Dioxide, that’s it. . . . “.

Nope. Methane and other compounds also contribute to climate change. See here and here, for instance.

Then there’s the contribution to climate change from the deforestation of carbon sinks in, e.g., the Amazon—which has led to the promising notion of carbon ranching:

One hectare (about 2.5 acres) of forest cleared and converted to ranchland or crops produces a piece of land worth, on average, $200 to $500. But that’s nothing compared to the value of preserving the rainforest as a sponge for carbon dioxide.

On European markets, the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide trades today at more than $20. With each hectare of intact rainforest storing around 500 tons of carbon dioxide, that means that each hectare has a value of $10,000 as carbon dioxide storage, far more than the value of even the most productive tea or soy plantation.

(2) Coleman also says “Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares.  That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline.  Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years.“

But again, this is easily checkable and refutable. See here (“The eight warmest years on record (since 1850) have all occurred since 1998, with the warmest year being 2005”) and see this chart (reproduced in smaller format above).

When are climate-change skeptics going to bring their A game?

Do they have an A game?

Greta,

Paragraphs!!! Your messing up my eyeballs.

Ed,

As someone who actually worked in precision measurement in the USAF, I know that theres no F888ing way that a measurement taken in 1850 is relevant to a measurement taken in 1860….much less 2008. We calibrated constantly because instruments are notoriously inprecise. We did so because peoples lives were at stake…not because wax people needed a cause to make them feel important.

Also, in case you missed my point…again…I’m not interested in another crap slinging “argument”. Did ya get the bluegill analogy? You can line up a thousand “scientists” to ape the bureacrats claims….I don’t give a &$@$# what they say. And not all scientists agree. That you claim they do only highlights the desperation of the ecofraud idiology. No time to think…just do as we say….

And here’s the kicker. You’re a willing eco groupie. That alone tells me it’s all BS.

What I can’t fathom is how Bart, someone I might even respect, can’t grasp the potential danger of surrendering to this mob.

Bart, allow me to give you a professional tip: Just because you read something in a scientific publication doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be bowled-over by it (e.g., Hey—Look at THIS! Really? Wow!).

I work in science (in 3 locations actually) and have submitted my first paper for publication. But anyways, scientific publications—including those written by environmentalists, climatologists, etc.—are supposed to read with a very critical, cynical eye. That’s their purpose.

The idea is not to agree wholeheartedly with what you read, by rather try to DISPROVE with further work of you own! That’s what’s keeps scientific research going.

Scientific publications are NOT written for the average consumer, so that they can be ‘educated’ or ‘sold’.

Just thought I’d help you out a little bit there. John Coleman knows what he’s talking about.

Mr. Weigard and I have had several run ins in our local paper on this very subject. He castigated me for not knowing or “liking” the science. I explained that my husband and I had been in the scientific community from the early 60s. We were involved in water pollution on the Hudson River long before it became a fashionable cause du jour. We spent many nights in dinky hotel rooms with makeshift labs gurgling all night long. Jumping up to take readings and jot down numbers. Early morning runs on an ice cold river where you were likely to rot before you would drown. Suffice to say I am not exactly an amateur who has simply taken a side for any partisan reason. When the global warming murmurings first began my husband told me “they have got the basic science all ass backwards.“ He, said and I never forgot “the atmospheric warming comes first and then the CO2 emissions.“
He was the first to put data from the James on computers and said there was no computer in existence that could calculate all the climate variables (the ones that they had RELIABLE data for) that would have to be entered. That was in 1995 and that fact has not changed. Computers are just tools that produce data that is subject to interpretation by humans. Scientists are no different from the rest of us they can act like prima donnas if their sacred answers are questioned. And contrary to what was stated here they would take money from the devil himself in order to get grant money for their project. My husband was an expert witness many times and could have chosen a client on either side of an issue because the statistics and the science would support either case depending on how they were interpretated by the court. The science for global warming and climate change as promoted now is junk science. “Greenhouse gasses” to most of the world’s population means only one thing CO2. How many people know that water vapor constitutes 99.9% of greenhouse gasses by volume, and that said gasses are normal and desirable? I have reams of information, lots of numbers and stats but any interested person can look that up for themselves. The science is fascinating and complicated. Show me a graph with global warming all lit up like a Christmas Tree and I will show you another one just as scientifically sound that shows the exact opposite effect. I will say that the IPCC is a political body not a scientific one. And Mr. Al Gore with his Generation Investment Management Corp. in London ready to cash in on the cap-and-trade scheme is very suspect in my eyes. He and his ex Goldman Sachs honchos stockpiling “carbon offsets” and trading stocks in every conceivable new energy technology there is to be had. No conspiracy theory just an opportunist who saw his chance and doesn’t mind fleecing the sheep that he had a hand in herding. The EU on the other hand who would like to create a global welfare system and guilt the USA into footing the bill is another matter all together. And Bravo for Ireland for vetoing that odious treaty and doing what all the citizenry of the Continent would have done if they had the chance to vote for themselves. The European blogs were exhulting over the weekend. A big change for Ireland I can tell you. The EU subsidies surely gave the Irish a kick in the butt but they ran the ball in by themselves. I know Mr. Biscuit I fell into a mini rant again but I am Irish after all.

Nice arguments but not sure they hold up to scrutiny.

For starters, the thermometer existed back in 1850, and it was a fairly reliable instrument back then.  You hang it on the side of an object, and then you stare at the tiny mercury thread and then write the result in a notebook. A pencil to record the result existed back then too. Sure, readings did vary according to site, but only slightly.

Even if the readings were entirely bogus we do have today’s readings refuting the charge that solar flares have abated and thus cooling is happening.

“Trust the scientists, trust the media or rely on our own instincts.“

1)Agree the media is corrupted.
2)Agree politicians like Gore are full of it.
3)Your gut is full of it too. In fact, they say you release about 2 liters of it into the air every day. Cows big polluters too.
4)Disagree that scientists are not to be trusted.

Maybe any one single scientist, but not the weight and gravitas of them all, all over the globe, from all different institutions and areas of expertise.

I have heard the argument that science has been corrupted because scientists are all lemmings who just jump blindly on the current bandwagon in order to get research money from the government. I think I even heard that argument from Thomas Sowell, a national syndicated columnist, which caused me heartburn caused it ain’t true. It’s a lie.

That runs so far counter to my own experience it isn’t funny. Scientists get reknown and money as much for being deniers as they do for positive findings. A famous global warming denier is an instant celebrity, and if you can bolster that claim with scientific findings, it can seal your fame for posterity.

Even if that were possible, not so possible to fake facts the way they did with cold fusion. If you fake a fact someone will find out. One good reason the media is so corrupted. The media is not required to argue with verifiable data the way scientists are.

Is it possible that scientists jumped to an unnatural premature conclusion with regard to global warming, having not studied it well enough, and someday soon they will eat their words ? Yeah that is possible, but it does not rule out the pragmatic fact that we have to go to war with the science we have, not the science we want to have. We have been studying global warming for years now, and the results so far mostly buttress the warming camp.

Is it possible scientists have been corrupted by money and power ?  Funny you should say that. The only institutions hiring scientists to obtain predetermined conclusions are the corporate types from your side of the fence, the deniers. The U.S. government has no special interest in whether it is hot or cold outside, and if anything, is hellbent on finding global warming does not exist.

The notion there is some kind of worldwide conspiracy to promote a greenie eco-freakish luddism, is one of the most diabolically ignorant conspiracy theories I have ever heard and contrary to my own experience.

Bart,

Even an undereducated hick like me knows that temp readings taken in 1850 can’t be considered reliable unless the same exact device was used to take temperatures under the same exact conditions today! Especially when we’re talking about variations of a single degree.

And I also find it amazing that, while plucky lil’ Ireland is applauded for shying away from the EU uber state…it’s not so plucky to shy away from the UN IPCC meglomaniacal power grabbers.

You can put up all the science you want. Stupid people like me don’t even pretend to understand it and a lot of us realize that, when we buy into something we don’t completely understand, we end up getting screwed. Since we don’t have the time or money to get science degrees we have 3 options.

Trust the scientists, trust the media or rely on our own instincts.

Since the scientists and the media have allowed themselves to be corrupted by money and ideology, that leaves the gut. After observing the fanatical stridency and political leanings of those pushing the catastophic doomsday scenerio, my gut tells me they’re full of the stuff that produces methane.

When I was a little kid, our family doctor had a wildlife print in his waiting room. There were 3 bluegills nosing up to a worm on a hook. There was one bluegill lying back with a “not me” look on his face.

I’m all for Mr. Weigards frugality and conservation but I have no desire to end up on some bureaucrats stringer.

Although my skepticism is waning now that Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson are on board the globalclimate bandwagon.

Their noble intetions are irrefutable.

The disconnect comes from thinking this is all about science when in fact it may be all about public relations and policy instead.

If the rest of the industrialized world is talking Kyoto but behaving irresponsibly, and if our economy is fragile, and if Gore has support, then what.

Connect up the dots and you see a very worried group of paranoid powerful men afraid the eco-enthusiasts will create a firestorm of hysteria that will engulf our economy in extreme attempts to fix something not entirely broken (yet).

Some, like Krugman I believe, have been saying the oil companies have been openly financing skepticism. Your own paper printed a g.w. denier ad some time back.  Why would they do that ? They are afraid of the Gorelocks. Fear and loathing.

That of course is a conspiracy theory. Speculative and unsubstantiated, at least by me.

Lindzen is A team, but he is only one man, and his main beef is the unreliability of computer models. We know there is a problem but we don’t know exactly how it will play out. Computer simulations have limitations.

Even if we had the ability to state beyond all doubt whatsoever we must cut way back right this minute do you think China would agree ? They have been flexing their muscle lately, chiding us on our weak economy rather than us berating them. They aren’t answering the phone when we call.

Warner is giving a speech today at the Science Museum touting his energy policy, and the radio read off Gilmore’s ideas (one sentence). Interesting neither of them even mentioned anything the slightest bit threatening to Big Oil. Let’s not get those powerful men nervous or excited.

Even Obama’s threatened windfall profits tax - is that a plan or just bravado ? Akin to George Bush telling Vicente Fox he will fix immigration. Bravado and bluster.

We should be promoting the heck out of gas taxes, energy conservation, solar, wind, nuclear, new drilling and refineries, but that isn’t happening.

The energy companies know full well if the American people wait until they get desperate for change Big Uncle will kick in to “solve” the problem and pay the bill for all those items that should be happening right this minute but are not.  Why build a refinery now when there is no business incentive for it ?

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