You're being snide, but you're actually correct. Governments have spent billions upon billions to rationalize this political movement. Energy companies are not the only ones under attack, but they are some of the few with enough money to actually do research. Of course most of their money goes into exploration... but they have done science on this topic.
Have you noticed how, when they do so, AGW proponents reject the results out of hand? It is as if you believe politicians would never lie or cheat in order to gain power.
The projections are based completely on the temperature record, and changing the temperature record would produce different projections. The projections are essentially fudged to get the result that is desired for political reasons.
I'm guessing you haven't been exposed to many arguments against AGW, or maybe not many good ones. But since you have an open mind, I'd suggest you look into the absorbtion of IR By CO2, the actual proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, the lack of tropophere warming (where it should show up) and the historical correlation of CO2 and temperasture-- CO2 has been a lagging indicator and has, in the past, been much higher than it is now from natural events without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. These are basic facts that don't take much analysis and greatly undermine the AGW theory. Also, the planet is getting colder in recent years (past decade) while CO2 has been rising.
Radiation transfer is what I do my research on (though not in the atmosphere), and it's something we know how to do. I really doubt the scientific field has screwed that up. Certainly all arguments I've seen regarding that have had crackpot quality. (I have some hope of getting around to actually running that problem myself, but "real" work always seems to get in the way.)
The projections were not based entirely on the Mann temperature record. There are satellite data, other analyses, etc., and I haven't seen to what extent changing one of those data sets impacts the projections.
Zeolots spamming random paper citations that they've never read to people whose arguments they've never read is not supporting science. It is actually, attempting to stifle science by stifling critical thinking in favor of rote repetition of The Global Warming Faith.
Since you used the word "Denialists" I already know you deny the scientific method and actually know nothing about the science of this issue. You're just repeating the Global Warming Faith (one of whose tenants is that anything that disagrees with the faith is not science) and attempting to shout down someone accurately pointing out the spam your ideology is resulting in.
Did I ever once say that I supported the chatbot? No.
However, I did refer to AGW followers as denialists. Not because I follow the "Global Warming Faith" [1], but because AGW followers' tactics of argumentation (or lack thereof) typically follow the Denialist Deck of Cards: http://www.denialism.com/Deckofcards/deck.html
The vast majority of arguments I've heard from AGW proponents can be categorized into one of the following:
* No Problem
* No Harm
* Wait and See (we don't have enough proof, so let's wait and see if something changes - this argument is made quite often by AGW proponents, and is even referenced in the deck of cards)
* Stifles Innovation (pushing money into clean energy stifles non-clean energy innovation - this claim was made with regards to California Proposition 23)
* Already Highly Regulated (made by auto companies and oil companies)
* Jobs (hello prop 23 proponents again)
* Red Herring (claims of Neptune's warming is a red herring)
* Federal Issue (AGW-funding companies claim that California's tougher emission standards are illegal)
* Duh! (AGW proponents saying that they understand the science better than the scientists who are writing the papers, even claiming that the few papers that they have read make them better experts than people who have been studying the issues for decades)
* Nit Pick (this is what you are doing, right now)
* Muddy the Waters (and again with prop 23)
* Poison the Well (this is also what you are doing, right now)
* Exploit Others' Ignorance (hello prop 23 again)
* Temper Tantrum (this is what targets of the bot do when chatted into a corner)
* You're a Ninny (you are doing this)
* Big Government (any regulation is big government)
* We'll Lose Money (hey, back to prop 23 again)
[1] Actually having examined the evidence at Nasa, from climate scientists, etc., to the best of my ability (I'm not a climate scientist, I am a applied theoretical computer scientist with experience in distributed systems, search, and simulation), the evidence supporting global warming is orders of magnitude more compelling to me than the lack of evidence offered by AGW proponents. Others with differing experience and expertise are welcome to disagree with my judgement of who to believe, as you have. And a healthy dose of skepticism is great for science. But the behavior of AGW proponents is not skepticism, it's denialism.
AGW stands for 'Anthropogenic Global Warming' and 'AGW proponents' are those people who actually support the thesis that industrial CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic warming. It looks like you would have a very confused bot on your case if you went on twitter with comments like the above.
By AGW, I mean Anti-Global Warming, in the context that they claim that Global Warming, even if it does happen (which they claim it doesn't), is not human caused.
You are being anti-science because you don't know or understand the science, you're just giving them citations that are completely irrelevant to the question at hand. This has been my experience with global warming advocates- they believe what they believe and they have links to papers that they have never read to justify their faith.
Linking to a blog written by scientifically ignorant proponetns of a religion who make inaccurate in dishonest links to random scientific papers is not making an argument.
Just like you are unwilling or unable to engage in debate here.
Er, the guy running it is a scientist. If you disagree, or want to engage in debate, by all means start doing so and stop blindly downvoting everything that you disagree with.
You are expressing your bigotry towards me. When I disagree, I actually disagree, and it is this disagreement that you are responding to. You can't downvote a response you disagree to (or at least hacker news doesn't let me) and I don't downvote anyway.
If I disagree, I disagree by writing a counter argument. You may not like it, it may not be persuasive, but I write it.
As to whether this guy is a "scientist" or not, I don't think it is relevant as your movement commonly mischaracterizes people according to their ideological purity.
EDIT: Now I understand why you accused me of blindly downvoting. Projection.
Don't let the term "fossil fuel" confuse you. In the early days of drilling they found fossils in the oil that came up, and this led to the common hypothesis. But people don't really know the mechanism by which oil is created (possibly this is true for coal as well.) The russians have an alternative hypothesis and have some experimental results where wells that were previously depleted were refilled. So called "Fossil fuels" may be a byproduct of processes in the earths crust and may not be finite (though we could still exceed the rate at which they are produced).
The commonly accepted theory is really a hypothesis with not that much science supporting it. The alternative theory may not have any more science supporting it, either. But notice how the name and the fact that the commonly accepted theory has been commonly accepted so long that it becomes "Fact" biases people's perception of the situation.
I hear people talking about CO2 as if your "carbon footprint" is a relavent issue all the time-- it has become commonly accepted even though, in that case, the hypothesis has been disproven. (CO2's absorbtion of IR is low, and its proportion is low, and thus water vapor is the driver of greenhouse effect. Further, in the past, CO2 has been vastly higher without a runaway greenhouse effect.)
It is a myth. It is an ideology that rejects science. And the proof that hacker news is full of ignorant college students who choose ideology over science (and capitalism, for that matter) is the fact that any failure to blindly advocate the socialist position is automatically downvoted.
EDIT: I take the downvotes this post is getting as proof that my hypothesis is correct. If my hypothesis were wrong, I would get actual responses or counter arguments attempting to illuminate me. Downvotes are cowardly.
I think this comment is heavily downvoted because it's all self-righteousness and ad hominem ("ignorant college students") without real discussion.
You're probably getting downvoted elsewhere for claiming global warming is a myth, but you're making actual arguments, so those comments aren't in the karma hole. Your comment here is just bile without useful content.
Actually all of them are because it is just linking to random papers without any understanding of context-- it can't have understanding because it is a bot.
This is actually a very accurate simulation of attempting to debate with a global warming zealot.
The brilliant thing about the global warming debate for proponents is that because they are not even aware of the science inovlved, but firmly convinced that they are on the side of "science" they can say whatever they want.
You think some of it hasn't been falsified? Provide a citation please!
See what I did there? Also brilliant about their position is that it is completely unfalsifiable (if I'm understanding it correctly, it is impossible to disprove, even though the planet is getting colder, because it is based on fantasy models-- you can't disprove a model because it is just a model. And these models having never worked with previous data sets is well known but advocates don't care.)
You don't understand it correctly. Models are supposed to fit the evidence, otherwise they're incorrect. That's how science works. Say you've gathered evidence of the big bang. You create a model for it. Then, suddenly, for some reason observations and measurements of background radiation doesn't fit your model. If that is so, you'll have to either adjust your model as to fit the data, or throw it away and build a new model that fits the data.
Yes, when you model the past, that makes sense. What AGW proponents use are models to project the future. But they are inconsistent with the data of the past. They don't fit it.
They are simply fantasies to try and lend "scientific" justification to a political movement.
You lost the argument at "notorious denier hack", which is ironic given that you're just re-asserting the same assertions, sans evidence, that every religious adherent to global warming always asserts. By the way, props for having the balls to cite an uninformed blog that, is using exposed-to-be-fraudulent-by-the-climategate-emails data to make your "Argument".
This is why actual debate is impossible-- you're not even aware of the terms of the science that are relevant to debate.
The absorbtion of CO2 and proportion in the atmosphere. The fact that the planet is getting colder, and that we're overdue for an ice age, and even the historical temperature cycles of the planet seem to be beyond your ken.
But you're great at calling people names and pretedning like you've got science on your side, while rejecting the scientific method itself.
Sans evidence? So, satellite data, weather station data, ice core data, coral reef data, tree ring data, ad infinitum - all independent measurements, all agreeing with each other, is not enough?
Let me put it another way - what evidence would make you change your mind and accept that global warming is happening?
If the planet were actually getting warmer, as CO2 goes up, over the last decade, that would go a long way towards making your theory worth listening to.
You did not provide any evidence at all. You just linked to propaganda from an advocate of your position who made assertions, sans evidence. Yet you linking to propaganda, as far as you're concerned, allows you to claim that you provided a laundry list of evidence-- yet you never even saw the evidence you claim you presented.
This is how your position is fundamentally anti-science. You don't understand the science, you haven't seen any evidence. But a link to a propagandist, proves, in your mind, that you're on the side of "Science".
By the way, the fact is, if you actually studied that data, it doesn't actually agree. Only be selectively choosing samples can you get tree ring data, ice core data, etc to agree, and only by distorting with arbitrary factors (also known as fraud) can you get weather station data and satellite data to agree.
In fact, the claim that all this data agrees with each other is itself a bit of scientific nonsense because it presumes this data were actually measuring the same thing in the same method and were actually independant.
Ok, I give up. If you want to "engage in meaningful debate", you need to read the blog post, click through to the data and scientific papers where you disagree with what's said, and argue the details of what you disagree with.
Notice how you're completely avoiding the two questions that I've put to you. If you want me to continue to respond, or stop calling you a denier, or whatever, address either of those two questions. Here they are again:
How do you explain the correlation between surface temperature records and satellite temperature records, both of which show an increase?
or
What evidence would make you change your mind and accept that global warming is happening?
You're saying that the only way to debate you is to go to some blog, do a bunch of research, construct arguments against that blog post, and then post them here?
Must be nice to not have to do any thinking at all- you just link to some propagandist and have your opponents (anyone foolish enough anyway) debate them.
I fell for that once, and the person's response? "Well, I never said that!"
Meanwhile, you completely ignore the arguments that I have put forth, ignore the science and facts I have referenced, and continue to demand that I answer questions that presuppose facts you have not presented.
Maybe you're just incapable of debate. Or you don't care- because this is a religion and the science really means nothing to you.
The ball is in your court. You can respond, or you can continue to equivocate. I really don't care.
Look, I'm not the guy you're arguing with, and I'll be honest and admit that I haven't looked at the data on either side enough to form a solid, evidence based opinion on AGW either way. I am not arguing for either side here. But what you're saying is ridiculous.
>You're saying that the only way to debate you is to go to some blog, do a bunch of research, construct arguments against that blog post, and then post them here?
He's asking you to look at scientific papers, the actual data on what's being argued here. This is completely reasonable when you're discussing a scientific matter. Looking at the evidence is how science is conducted.
> that presuppose facts you have not presented.
This would be the papers he linked.
> because this is a religion and the science really means nothing to you.
Look back up to your first sentence. Look back down here. Look up at that first sentence again. Do you see the inconsistency? He linked to the science. You refused to look at it.
Once again, I cannot honestly say that I know enough to make an informed opinion about this, but your arguing in this topic was horrible. You continually failed to address his links in every single post, and then complained he wasn't looking at the data.
"If the planet were actually getting warmer, as CO2 goes up, over the last decade, that would go a long way towards making your theory worth listening to."
Um....you do realize that's exactly what has happened, right?
Have you noticed how, when they do so, AGW proponents reject the results out of hand? It is as if you believe politicians would never lie or cheat in order to gain power.