Some global warming (GW) activists, such as Quiggin & Gore, like to claim that there is no ongoing controversy regarding global warming and no serious debate between the mainstream and the skeptics. This has sparked a debate about whether there is a debate.
One part of the debate (used by Gore in his movie) comes from the study by Naomi Oreskes that claimed 0/928 abstracts for academic papers on global warming doubted the mainstream position and that 75% back the consensus view. Benny Peiser tried the same trick and found different results with less than 2% explicitly backing the consensus*, some showing skepticism and most giving no opinion (and 24 not even offering abstracts). Both papers have been criticised and both authors have admitted mistakes. Peiser continues to insist that Oreskes is wrong to claim unanimous support of the consensus view and cites numerous examples to the contrary.
Pieser freely admits that the skeptical view is a small minority, but he continues to insist that “despite all claims to the contrary, there is a small community of sceptical researchers that remain extremely active. Hardly a week goes by without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory” and he cites a recent example.
In addition, many skeptics accept elements of the consensus position but are skeptical of catastrophy or the need for action.
Another part of this debate is the skeptical Oregon petition, signed by 19,500 people, including 17,100 scientists (2/3rds with advanced degrees) and 2,660 of those trained in physics, geophysics, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, or environmental science.
The petition has been criticised for lack of transparency and lack of independent verification, though the organisers claim that 17,800 (and 95% of PhD holders) have been independently checked. Another criticism is that the document attached to the petition uses data that is now out of date.
In 2005, Scientific America checked with 21 PhD signaturies** and found that 11 still agreed, 6 had changed their mind, 1 had died and 3 couldn’t remember the petition. They estimated that only about 200 PhD educated climate researchers would still support the petition.
Others have criticised the petition for including fake names. Petition organisers have removed some prank names (Gerry Halliwell) but retain some apparently prank names (Perry Mason) as they have been identified as real and qualified scientists (Perry Mason has a chemistry PhD).
Some inappropriate names may well still exist among the un-checked names. Some people may well have since died or changed their minds. However, even the Scientific America estimate (with only climate scientists) still shows a small but significant skeptical group.
Peiser’s work and the Oregon petition are imperfect, but that doesn’t mean they are worthless. Despite their problems they do indicate that the GW consensus isn’t absolute, skeptics are alive and well, and the debate goes on.
UPDATE 6/12/06: I also noticed there is another survey done in 2003 by Prof Dennis Bray among about 500 climate researchers showing that 55% agreed the global warming is mostly man-made, 14% were unsure and 29% had doubts. This showed a small shift towards the consensus view since the previous survey done in 1996. There are questions about how the survey was conducted (possible self-selection bias) but it is difficult to believe that every non-consensus answer is a fraud.
UPDATE 7/12/06: Another interesting read by Michael Duffy which discusses the very real existence of skeptics.
* Note that one reason for the difference is that Peiser only reports abstracts that explicitly support the consensus position.
** Scientific America actually searched for 30 people, but could not find 4 and 5 didn’t respond to their inquiries, leaving a sample size of 21.
Australian Libertarian Society (old site) 
Let it now be said that the debate about the debate is officially over !
Wikipedia’s “Global warming controversy” entry makes a very important point – this is a public and political debate. Yet it is also an interpretation of a scientific controversy based on conflicting data, analysed by super computers using models that are known to be flawed.
Science has had plenty of controversies previously when hasty action based on gloomy predictions was or would have been the wrong thing to do. Think saccharine and cancer, Vitamin C and colds, stress and ulcers, crop circles and acid rain. The link between the ozone layer and CFCs might be an example too.
Scientists have also always fought like alley cats and numerous scientific consensuses have been proved wrong. Marsh and Warren were ridiculed for suggesting bacteria caused ulcers. Semmelweis was ostracised for suggesting childbirth fever was due to infection. Galileo was tortured until he retracted his view that the earth moved around the sun.
Were it not for the catastrophic predictions arising from global warming, few people would consider doing anything except wait until the scientists sorted out the truth. Those predictions made the debate public and political, but did not make the science any more definitive.
Dave — I agree that scientific consensus can be wrong, but I thought the link between the ozone layer and CFCs is accepted by everybody.
The consensus is considerably stronger than with global warming but it’s not unanimous and some are beginning to question it a bit more. See: http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/controversy.html
I also found a source among the global warming links but I’ve lost it again.
I was aware of that debate, but I note that it doesn’t question the CFC-ozone science. Instead, the issue is the political question of whether the likely damange justifies any government action.
Oops, sorry. Wrong link. That means I’ve lost two. I’ll have to find them again and let you know.
“I agree that scientific consensus can be wrong, but I thought the link between the ozone layer and CFCs is accepted by everybody.”
Not by Singer, who organized the Oregon petition. And most of the GW sceptics (Baliunas, Michaels, Milloy and so on) were previously ozone/CFC sceptics, and have never publicly admitted error on this.
As regards Peiser, Tim Lambert took his effort to pieces – read his blog.
Wrong & wrong JQ.
JQ: “Not by Singer, who organized the Oregon petition.”
Actually, it was Frederick Seitz who organised the petition. Past President of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Though he too was a CFC skeptic. I’m not surprised that the same people are often skeptical, and that doesn’t prove anything. You and I are both skeptical of many wars. If one war turned out to be appropriate that doesn’t mean all of our skepticism was misguided. It’s good to be skeptical about large government programs.
JQ: “As regards Peiser, Tim Lambert took his effort to pieces – read his blog.”
I do — have you read Peiser’s subsequent comments? What I wrote in this post was adjusted for Lambert’s criticism. Peiser has accepted some of those criticisms and admitted mistakes.
But (as I said in the post) making some mistakes doesn’t make all his points worthless. If it does, then I note that Oreskes has also admitted making mistakes, so I presume you will also dismiss her findings (which means Peiser’s work in showing her wrong isn’t necessary).
The irony about the GW debate is that this geologic time period, the Holocene, is one of remarkable climatic stability. For the last million years ice ages have been interspersed with warm periods, circa 100,000 years of ice age, 10,000 years of warmth. During the last warm period, the Eemian, the climate was much more volatile than during this period. So we live in a period of unusual climatic stability and would be foolish to expect it to continue.
It actually may be the case that GW is not so bad because it might forestall the next ice age; though we should not ignore the possibility that the warming that we now witness is a prelude to a full blown ice age. GW will be far less severe than an ice age, which would typically wipe out everything north of New York, Paris, and Beijing. The Southern Hemisphere will get off rather lightly.
As to people who wish to constantly challenge the findings, I suggest you need to learn something about the epistemological problems inherent in complex systems analysis. There is a certain hubris in amateurs trying to understand such complexities. The professionals can make good educated guesses, much like we do in medicine, that is about as good as it gets. We can never know with complete certainty, as so often happens in medince and science in general. But as the history of medicine indicates, these educated guesses inch us slowly towards the truth.
In any event it is a logical error to assert that because science has gotten it so wrong in the past therefore it is wrong on GW. You can’t apply a general argument to refute a specific one, or if you do you need to be very careful.
The fact that the debate goes on is irrelevant, the debate goes on even in the most established of scientific theories.
I accept we are contributing to GW, I do not accept that preventing GW is a must because it is probably too late, hardly anyone considers the potential benefits of GW, and it’s a damn sight better than an ice age coming down on us. Would be great for Australia but only if we could keep out the millions of refugees.
Oreskes said that 0 of 928 rejected the consensus, Peiser said that 35 did. Who was right? Answer: Oreskes. Somehow this fact did not make it into your post. Instead you tried to create a false equivalence between Oreskes and Peiser by saying that they both made mistakes. But Oreskes’ mistakes were trivial things like leaving out a word when she reported the search terms she used, while Peiser’s managed a 97% error rate when classifying abstracts. It is not reasonable to trust Peiser’s judgment on classifying abstracts.
Oreskes said that 0/928 abstracts rejected the consensus. There were only 913 abstracts. She said that 75% supported the consensus, which was an exageration. She said there was universal support of the consensus and this was wrong. Somehow all of this did not make it into your many posts or into your comment.
Peiser has retracted his claim that 35 abstracts are skeptical. But he does not (and should not) retract his claim that Oreskes was wrong and that skeptics do publish, and that the debate continues.
Just because a skeptic has made (and admitted and retracted) a mistake doesn’t mean you get to entirely ignore everything he says. You did a similar thing with Monckton & McKitrick. If you can show one part of an argument wrong you dismiss everything they have to say and pretend they have been rebutted. That is intellectually dishonest. The words “baby” and “bathwater” come to mind.
John Quiggin has tried to deny overwhelming evidence that labor market deregulation would broaden the demand for labor. John quiggin has denied 200 years of scholarly work done on the subject of labor markets. John Quiggin, by inference, has denied the existence of marginal productivity theory, which to all intents and purposes has become an economic law.
Does denial of some of the most important tenets in the science of economics make John Quiggin a denialist? A denialist of even lesser regard than those people he character assassinates from denying AGW?
AGW is a very strongly supported theory. The law of marginal productivity is even more strongly supported theory. Which denialist is the bigger quack?
I think this insight is essentially correct. The difference being that medicine has been messing around with human specimens for a long time and they have a huge population sample to work with. Climatologists on the other hand essentially have a population of one to play with, no ability to do autopsies, little ability to do controlled studies and a much shorter track record. So any excessive faith in the professions accuracy is somewhat unfounded.
John: “There were only 913 abstracts”
Nope. Peiser got that wrong as well.
“She said that 75% supported the consensus, which was an exageration.”
Only according to Peiser. I haven’t checked this one myself, but Oreskes has the better track record on classifying abstracts. And this is the point you keep evading.
“She said there was universal support of the consensus and this was wrong. ”
She said that none of the papers rejected the consensus and she was right. And on this point Peiser was wrong and it took him a year to admit it.
“If you can show one part of an argument wrong you dismiss everything they have to say and pretend they have been rebutted.”
Another one of your fabrications.
Everything you wrote in that comment is misleading, irrelevant or unsubstantiated.
You dismissed Peiser, McKitrick, Monckton (and probably others) because they made some (often minor) mistakes and then you deny that you dismiss people because they make (often minor) mistakes. More on your questionable arguing tactics later, but for now back to the main game…
You accuse me of avoiding a comparison between Oreskes & Peiser’s academic records. But that’s simply not the issue. The issue is whether there is an ongoing debate between the mainstream and skeptics. Oreskes claims there isn’t (and was famously cited by Gore). Peiser has helped to show the truth — that debate still exists. Once again you want to quibble over something tangental to the main point.
On what basis do you claim Peiser was wrong when he writes: “while the ISI database includes a total of 929 documents for the period in question, it lists only 905 abstracts”. Note that this was written after he adjusted his search to correctly match Oreskes.
You dodge the issue of Oreskes wrongly claiming a universal consensus. She may have been right about none of her papers explicitly rejecting the consensus, but even this is misleading because the vaste majority don’t give a position on GW at all. But the central point (which you dodged) was her claims that the debate is over. Regarding the idea of there being a real debate in the scientific community she says “this is simply not the case”, and she claims that “scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC” and regarding the impression of disagreement, “that impression is incorrect”.
Oreskes & Peiser both made mistakes. But the central issue is whether there remains a debate about AGW and on that issue Peiser is correct. None of your distractions can hide that fact.
John, whether or not there is some level of skepticism is a bit beside the point. With something as nebulous as climate change there’s always going to be significant doubt about the specifics. This “teach the debate” line is exactly what the creationists trot out, with cranks like Behe supposedly proving there is “debate” about the theory of evolution.
That Peiser was deliberately misleading in his original study can hardly be doubted if you read the “anti-consensus” abstracts (e.g., try #4 and #20 on for size. You’ll also note that several of them are in social journals, not science journals). I generally give short shrift to arguments from people I know to be misleading. I don’t think this is ad hominem; just as it is not Argument From Authority to cite an expert in a field in support of an argument, so I think it’s perfectly rational to not listen to people who deliberately advance cherry-picked, tendentious arguments. John Lott is a good example, he is so studiedly dishonest that I have no interest in anything he says.
My position on climate change is fairly simple. I would like a sceptic to explain this graph to me. I know a correlation when I see one and so far I haven’t heard any other good arguments why there should be a correlation.
I’m not sure this is much of an example of scientific consensus being wrong. The people crushing Galileo’s dissent were not exactly the scientific establishment of the day. (Note also that Galileo was never tortured, though no doubt he would have been had he not withdrawn his claims).
Chris: “John, whether or not there is some level of skepticism is a bit beside the point.”
Unless of course the topic of my post was about whether there is some level of skepticism. In which case, it seems kind of relelvant. You’ll note that it is the mainstream that started declaring the debate over, and they did it for the rhetorical value. Naughty.
If Peiser was deliberately misleading why did he send the abstracts to Lambert? More likely he was just sloppy and biased. He made mistakes, but that doesn’t change the fact that Oreskes was wrong. Oreskes made a claim (debate over), Gore repeated it, and Oreskes was wrong. Fact. That is the main point Peiser was making and yet you seem to want to concentrate on the mistakes (admitted and retracted) made by Peiser. I don’t care if Peiser runs naked backwards down Kings Cross covered in custard screaming “spank my monkey”. Ultimately, the point he was making (Oreskes was wrong) is true.
Regarding the chart you linked to, the temperature changes preceeded the co2 changes by about 800 years. Of course, that doesn’t disprove anything, but surely it raises more questions than it answers. Further, skeptics don’t deny that co2 can lead to temperature changes — but how much? What else causes temp changes? What are the consequences for humans? Are the suggested policy options any good?
If I told you there was a chance of some big scary thing in the future (say, Iraq giving WMDs to AQ) and I told you that the consequences were horrible and you should be scared… but then I said “no fear, the government will save you” with a policy that costs many trillions of dollars and might not even work — what would you say? Perhaps you would re-discover your sense of skepticism?
It seems that up is down and black is white in your world. Gore cited Oreskes that 0 of 928 disputed the consensus. Peiser claimed that she was wrong and it was 34 and not 0. Peiser eventiually admitted that he was wrong and Oreskes was right on this point. Despite this you insist that she is wrong. Your trick seems to involve rewrtitng what she wrote and pretending that she said that there were no contrary papers at all. But what she wrote was that there were none in her sample and she was right. That implies that such papers are very very rare. And no, pointing to one such paper does not prove that there is an ongoing debate on the basics. Creationists have occasionaly slipped a paper through the peer review process. That does not prove that there is scientific debate on creationism.
Can I suggest “Libertarians hate science” as a future post title?
More irrelevant, misleading or incorrect statements. Time for a fisking…
TL: “It seems that up is down and black is white in your world.”
No
TL: “Gore cited Oreskes that 0 of 928 disputed the consensus. Peiser claimed that she was wrong and it was 34 and not 0. Peiser eventiually admitted that he was wrong and Oreskes was right on this point.”
So? I’ve never denied this. But the issue at hand is whether there is an ongoing debate. Check the title of the post.
TL: “Despite this you insist that she is wrong.”
That’s because she was wrong.
TL: “Your trick seems to involve rewrtitng what she wrote and pretending that she said that there were no contrary papers at all.”
There was no trick Tim. I quoted her exactly and provided you a link to her article. She said there is no real debate or disagreement and that scientists publishing in peer-reviewed literature agree with the consensus. Not true.
TL: ” But what she wrote was that there were none in her sample and she was right.”
Yes, she wrote that too. She wrote many things. Some were right, some misleading and some wrong. Saying there were no skeptical papers in her sample was misleading as the vaste majority of papers in her sample gave no opinion on the matter and the vaste majority of opinionated papers (both mainstream and skeptical) weren’t in her sample.
TL: “And no, pointing to one such paper does not prove that there is an ongoing debate on the basics.”
This is doubly misleading because: (1) there are lots more than one skeptical paper; and (2) most skeptics aren’t questioning the basics, but have a more nuanced skepticism about a range of issues that are still open for debate among everybody except the denialists and alarmists.
The fact that in the ice core data temperature rises near universally lead (by 800 years) the rises in CO2 is one very big point of concern for me when it comes to the AGW theory. A much bigger source of concern is that temperature drops lead CO2 drops (by 800 years). For temperatures to drop in spite of what at the time is historically high CO2 levels suggests that CO2 has been mostly irrelevant in driving temperature.
This also suggests to me that those non-activists around here (eg Graeme Bird) who claim that higher CO2 levels will help us avoid the next ice age are probably kidding themselves.
The historical evidence says that CO2 is a follower not a leader. Of course if we don’t like that fact we can chuck out the ice core data and pretend something else. Personally I think the ice core data is about as good as we will get.
JH, Oreskes’s claim that no papers directly dissent from consensus does appear to be false, but Peiser’s errors – false positives – are a lot harder to make than Oreskes’s false negatives. “Deliberately misleading” may be a little strong, but you must concede that it takes a pretty solid case of confirmation bias to get a “disagrees with consensus” out of abstracts 4 and 20. In other words, Peiser’s study looks much more to me like it was prodded into shape until he got the result he wanted than Oreskes’s does. If Oreskes had conceded a few papers which dispute consensus, what difference would that have made to her findings?
I think, as ever, this may come down to semantics. As Lambert said, there is not a “debate” on climate change just because there are a few articles published disputing consensus, any more than there is a debate on Big Bang theory because of a few steady staters publishing articles.
I can assure you that my skepticism is alive and well. I remain to be convinced by a benefit/cost analysis that the world should spend trillions of dollars avoiding this problem. Things should become clearer in another 5 to 10 years.
I wasnt aware of the CO2-temperature lag (I have to say that that was rather glossed over in An Inconvenient Truth, among other places) but there’s an article on it here. I would say that the graph doesn’t prove or disprove anything, which is a fair change from my former position, I’ll admit.
I agree with most of what you say Chris, except that you seem to have swallowed the idea that there’s no debate. There are more than a couple of papers questioning the mainstream position on GW and if you look at the issues it is easy to see why there is debate. On many areas the level of knowledge is simply too low to delcare the issue resolved.
I accept that denying the existence of more co2, or denying the temperature trends, or denying the theoretical link between co2 & temp can be called denialism and that it could be equated with creationism.
But the real debate between skeptics is more nuanced that the above examples and is indeed continuing. On several issues I think the mainstream position is more likely. Much like an honest observer may have accepted that Iraq had WMDs pre-invasion (though I note that I was skeptical of that too at the time).
I was dismissive. What evidence was there?
JQ: “As regards Peiser, Tim Lambert took his effort to pieces – read his blog.”
Don’t talk nonsense Quiggin. Lambert is not capable of taking anyone to pieces.
Lets see some POSITIVE evidence for catastrophic warming from you anti-science alarmist-denialists.
You are very good at picking people up on real and imagined mistakes. But where’s your positive evidence? Its not there is it? You are just trying to steal off us aren’t you?
Terje: “I was dismissive. What evidence was there?”
You are playing silly buggers. There was plenty of evidence. And you know it. And WMD was WAS!!!! found and on top of that its not been proven that the WMD wasn’t there.
Graeme — you posted four comments. Next time, try to put all your points in one comment (as I’ve done for you).
The evidence for WMDs was weaker than the evidence for AGW. It was all about “shut up and trust your government”, which you did. Sucker. And they did not find WMDs & the CIA has concluded that WMDs were removed in the 90s. The debate is over Graeme and you lost.
No the evidence was overwhelming.
There wasn’t an intelligence service in the world that didn’t think that Saddam had and was pursuing WMD.
And there is no evidence whatsoever that this wasn’t the case.
And WMD was in fact found.
So you are wrong and you’ve lost that argument.
Graeme — not only are you undermining the idea of skepticism with your blind (and idiotic) faith in government, but you’re also derailing this topic.
I don’t care what the government’s think. Most government’s think we should act on AGW too. And they think we should have a welfare state. But I was unconvinced of WMDs at the time, as was Terje, as was a good part of the skeptical libertarian community.
And WMDs were not found and the CIA has concluded that WMDs were removed in the 90s. This isn’t an argument Graeme, this is a statement of fact. I know you alarmists don’t like facts. I know you government lovers and tax-eaters hate the fact that us skeptics are often right. But tough luck.
Chris says: “Oreskes’s claim that no papers directly dissent from consensus does appear to be false”.
You’ve been misled by Humphreys. Oreskes did not say that there were no papers that dissent from the consensus. She looked at sample of almost 1000 papers and none of them dissented from the consensus. Read what she wrote and don’t take Humphreys word for it.
Tim, you are being very misleading.
I wrote: Regarding the idea of there being a real debate in the scientific community she says “this is simply not the case”, and she claims that “scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC” and regarding the impression of disagreement, “that impression is incorrect”.
I provided direct quotes and I provided a link to her article. Nowhere was I misleading. She made the above claims and she was wrong. By trying to hide this fact you are being intellectually dishonest.
Sure, she also said that her 928 abstracts didn’t dissent, but that was misleading. Unsurprisingly, Lambert approves. Most of those the papers in her sample gave no opinion and 13 didn’t even exist. Most articles that gave opinions (both mainstream and skeptical) were not in her list.
The fact remains that there are plenty of dissenting papers out there and the debate goes on. In response, Tim can only lie, mislead and try and try to avoid the central issue.
No no. I’ve not expressed any blind faith in government. You are lying about that.
You are being a complete dupe a fuckwit and probably a liar and are bending over forward showing you complete blind faith in leftists.
“But I was unconvinced of WMDs at the time, as was Terje, as was a good part of the skeptical libertarian community.”
Bullshit. Prove it!. When? Were you unconvinced in early 2002? Lets see evidence for that. You were wrong to be unconvinced because WMD was in fact found.
WMD was in fact found and don’t lie about this again.
And if you are getting your information from CIA summaries you may as well be going to the tooth fair for information. Nonetheless I would like to see you back up that claim.
In summary you’ve been duped by some of the lamest statists around.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lambert. Stop talking around the issue fat man and come up with some POSITIVE evidence for catastrophic warming.
Graeme, either provide some evidence for the finding of WMDs or stop embarassing yourself. You expressed faith when you believed the government propaganda about the war. My position isn’t based on faith in leftists, but a skeptical view of government and multi-billion dollar government programs. You are showing the same sort of regard for truth as Lambert (and both to justify a huge stupid government program to solve a irrational fear of impending doom).
You ask for evidence. In 30 January 2003 (before the war) I wrote a blog post called “Be a good citizen and trust your government” (which you have unfortunately taken seriously).
In that article I write: “I know, I know… I’m a shocking skeptic – but I just can’t seem to get my head around the idea of blindly accepting the word of the government” and then “…consider who it is that’s asking for your trust. If Blair and Howard asked you to just trust them on education, health, welfare, tax, industry policy, censorship, civil liberties, the drug war, transport, regulation or the enviornment – would you?”
Your apology is accepted.
There was plenty of skeptical libertarians at the Independent Institute and CATO and other think-tanks. The vaste majority of the US Libertarian Party were also skeptical. As was Terje and many of my Australian libertarian associates. This isn’t surprising. As a general rule libertarians are skeptical of huge government projects, know that the government will distort the truth to achieve a political goal. We also generally understand that the government isn’t always perfectly knowledgable or benevolent and appreciates that government policies often lead to negative unintended consequences, tend to be more expensive than advertised and never go according to plan.
But not Graeme. You had faith in your government, which is the worst possible sort of faith to have. If you want to have blind faith go join a religion and stop stealing my money.
I was calling Bush a liar on http://www.insidepolitics.com.au. However that website is no longer around. On the wanniski.com forum there is commentary from 2004 where I received an admission from a fellow forum participant that I was right and they were wrong about WMD. However you will need a login to see it. So I can’t prove nothin.
The following tells the story of WMD pretty comprehensively:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Survey_Group#Duelfer_Report
Well you were wrong to call Bush a liar about WMD.
Since neither he, Howard nor Blair lied about WMD.
So this is your fault and not theirs.
They found WMD. But at this point people who are bullshitting about this start redefining the meaning of WMD on the fly. We have to lock down what is meant by that or Humphreys will define it as enough ICBM’s pointed at Manhattan to break through any American shield and enough backpack nukes for the destruction of America by infiltrators over the Rio Grande.
No Humphreys. It is you who has been shown to be the total dupe to Washington-lifer-propaganda. All these wrong ideas you got either came from hard-core leftists or Washington and American spooktown lifers.
Yes, Terje did say Bush was a liar on insidepolitics. I still can’t make up my mind as to whether Bush was simply believing his lying advisors or was lying himself.
It’s a shitty attitude to start calling people liars. Unfortunately for the person who made that insult, I have a good memory. If you any integrity, apologise.
Graeme, provide your evidence or shut up. I learnt the idea of not trusting government from libertarians, not leftists. You should learn the same lesson. Repeat after me five times: “I will be skeptical of big government projects” and “I will not support big government projects based on a fear campaign unless there is clear evidence of a benefit”. Now, apply this thinking to AGW & terror. Don’t be scared.
And I note (once again) that I analysed the war on the assumption that Iraq had WMDs, and that they would be passed to terrorists, and the terrorists would increase their successful strikes against the west, and that the Iraq war would defeat all terrorism for ever. And the war still didn’t pass a benefit-cost analysis.
You need to learn some skepticism Graeme. You’re too easily fooled by a government salesman selling snake oil.
No no.
We have to nail down what WMD meant in (lets say) 2001. Because the next step is for you to change the definition mid-stream.
You’re a total dupe to the Washington lifers thats for sure. And your narrow short-run bean-counting analysis doesn’t pass muster as a sophisticated defense policy.
I don’t think Clauswitz, Sun Tzu or Machiavelli would ever have chosen your methodology for the winning of war or the maintenance of the peace.
And really its just your sort of thinking that is the reason for the high cost in Iraq.
They too have spent all their time pretending that the regimes were not involved. They have spent all this time pretending that they could put off doing anything about or simply ignore the fact that the bordering countries to Iraq are at war with them.
Which is the reason for all this killing and why a cheap war became an expensive one.
And by the way. Your whole attitude reaks of fear and cowardliness.
You can come out from underneath your desk now Mr Humphreys.
You’re projecting Graeme. You’ve been duped by a terrorist fear campaign into supporting a massively expensive (and mostly unsuccessful) campaign of government spending and reduced liberty. But fear not. The risk is low! Don’t be scared.
You have provided no evidence because you have none. You reject rational analysis because you are irrational (and scared of the conclusions). I am sketpical of government because I’m a libertarian. You arguments (sic) are left lying dying twichin in a ditch along with your credibility.
It would have been more accurate to say that the “Bush Administration” lied. And I’ll even concede that it would have been better yet to say that they might simply have believed their own propoganda (ie they were stupid).
What name did you go by back then Dead Soul?
No the Bush administration didn’t lie.
You are lying.
No you are talking shit Humphreys.
You are just full of shit and you don’t have a skerrit of evidence that any of the three Anglophone administrations lied about any of this.
They didn’t lie. But you are lying.
John, so where did you think that Chris got the idea that Oreskes claimed that there were no dissenting papers at all? From you or from me?
You’ve repeatadly claimed that Oreskes was wrong, but you’ve offered no evidence to support this except a link to opne paper. Creationists offer more evidence that there is scientific debate about evolution.
You claim the Oreskes was misleading because “Most of those the papers in her sample gave no opinion”. But 75% implicitly or explicity accepted the consensus. And you write “Most articles that gave opinions (both mainstream and skeptical) were not in her list.” Apparently you don’t understand the concept of taking a sample.
You are beating around the bush Lambert.
Lets see some POSITIVE evidence. Rather then all this nitpicking not important to the main thrust of anything.
From what I know of the sample one could conclude that most scientists do not express an opinion on AGW.
terje, 75% of the abstracts implicitly or explicity accepted the consensus.
Tim/Graeme — I can deal with your arguments together because you are both scared of some impending doom, both promote a huge government program to fix it, and will both be misleading and hide behind irrelevant details to avoid facing up to contrary arguments.
Graeme — put up or shut up. Evidence of WMDs. Or as you would say, where is the evidence for CATASTOPHY? Commie.
Tim — Chris got the impression that Oreskes claimed no dissenting papers probably because I directly quoted her saying it. Because it’s true. I’ve repeatedly said Oreskes was wrong because she is. One paper is enough to prove there is more than zero papers, but there are obvious more than one paper out there. You know this, so you are being intellectually dishonest.
Less than 2% explicitly agreed with the consensus. Implicit agreement is vague and misleading. It often makes sense to assume the mainstream position if you’re talking about another issue, even if you’re skeptical. It is wrong to take this as agreement with the consensus.
There is no problem with my understanding of sample. You seem to miss the woods for the trees. By using a sample that excluded most relevant papers and then proclaiming that her sample showed no dissent she was being misleading. The issue is whether dissent exists, not whether she made a sampling or statistical error.
Your cheap shot about samples and repeated misleading or irrelevant comments shows you to be intellectual dishonest, petty and totally uninterested in the actual issue at hand.
No no Humphreys. It you and Lambert that are the clear chickenshit buggers here.
Don’t be an idiot about this.
But you are right about Lambert.
>>>>>>>
Now where is this evidence that the Anglo-sphere administrations lied Mr quivering-under-the-bedsheets?
I sez its YOU who are lying.
“Graeme — put up or shut up. Evidence of WMDs. Or as you would say, where is the evidence for CATASTOPHY? Commie.”
No no fella.
You’ve got to back down on your lies. Now I already said. I know what you are going to do next. You will simply change the definition of WMD.
I’ve said that already and you still haven’t locked in a pre-2002 definition of what we meant by WMD in this context.
And the fact that you haven’t done so is testimony to your general all-round gutlessness.
However this is rather good:
“Your cheap shot about samples and repeated misleading or irrelevant comments shows you to be intellectual dishonest, petty and totally uninterested in the actual issue at hand.”
And I’m so glad I put you onto this.
John, you did not quote Oreskes as saying that there were no dissenting papers in the literature because she did not say that. She said that there were no dissenting papers in her sample and she was correct. Even Peiser has admitted that his claim that there were 35 dissenting papers was very wrong.
It is untrue that less than 2% explicitly endorsethe consensus. Peiser claims that there were just 13 in the whole set, but I looked at the absttracts from just one year (out of eleven) and found eleven. Furthermore other categories like mitigation proposals implictly accept the consensus. It makes no sense to propose mitigating warming by sequestering CO2 if CO2 is not causing warming. Similarly papers on impacts of future expecting warming accept the consensus since if the warming is natural there is no reason to expect it to continue. Indeed, if you think it’s natural you should be predicting cooling.
“It makes no sense to propose mitigating warming by sequestering CO2 if CO2 is not causing (MUCH) warming. Similarly papers on impacts of future expecting warming accept the (PRETENDED) consensus since if the warming is natural there is no reason to expect it to continue. Indeed, if you think it’s natural you should be predicting cooling.”
Yeah well thats all true Lambert. I am predicting mid-century will be cooler then now for example.
I just had to clean it up with a couple of words added and there it is. The truth from Lambert.
THE TRUTH FROM LAMBERT.
I thought I’d better make note of it quickly.
Since its not likely to happen anytime soon again.
And it is true we ought to be worried more about cooling as you say here for the very first time.
Terje said,
It would have been more accurate to say that the “Bush Administration” lied. And I’ll even concede that it would have been better yet to say that they might simply have believed their own propoganda (ie they were stupid).
What name did you go by back then Dead Soul?
—-
Gee Terje, who are these people around here who think governments don’t lie to suit their own interests? Consider Anthony Eden and Suez Canal fiasco. I don’t believe that the Bush administration was that stupid. If they were we really are in big trouble … . Though I have to admit that one of my sayings in these days is “Dumb as Dubya”. Yeah, I’ll admit he has a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock but many in the administration are brilliant people, it is hard to conceive that they weren’t pushing a hidden agenda. Just how much money has Halliburton made????
Who I was then is unimportant. Let the arguments speak for themselves, not me.
Well the fact is they didn’t lie. And neither Humphreys or Terje has produced evidence that they lied.
This will be my last comment on this thread.
Tim — I will leave it to others to check the quotes. I think they are clear. And it makes perfect sense for a skeptical person to still consider what would happen if the mainstream is correct. When I consider the public policy analysis regarding GW I take my temp predictions from IPCC. Likewise, when I analysed the Iraq war I assumed they had WMDs. They were working assumptions, but did not imply belief in those assumptions (I was skeptical of the WMD story too). And I have never denied a co2-temp link (indeed I have supported the idea) and I have never said all warming is natural (indeed I have rejected this idea). I’m tired of these misrepresentations.
Graeme/Dead Soul/Terje — I’m not sure if they lied and I don’t think it matters too much. What matters is that they were wrong and there was ample reason to be skeptical of what they were saying. I never outright rejected the idea of WMDs in Iraq, but I was skeptical. When the government offers hugely expensive and largely pointless spending programs, most libertarians are.
“What matters is that they were wrong and there was ample reason to be skeptical of what they were saying”
Where is the evidence that they were wrong?
“This will be my last comment on this thread.”
Don’t be such a pussy.
“When the government offers hugely expensive and largely pointless spending programs, most libertarians are.”
They offered nothing of the sort.
But indeed it HAS become very expensive because they’ve followed your basic approach. Being as they’ve assumed the killing isn’t government based. And that it isn’t government based and so it might go away some time or other.
But when Syria and Iran and Saudi Arabia are helping the killing of coalition soldiers and Iraqis this bloody murder isn’t going away until they can be persuaded by sheer terror that they don’t want to be doing this sort of thing. By terror or death.
The fault of this fiasco is in YOUR TYPE OF THINKING. The idea that you can treat war as if it is not the function of concious minds. And this pretense that terrorists aren’t a function of regimes.
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Here are Oreskes’ exact words:
“This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies.”
Notice she does not use the phrase “universal consensus” so Peiser and Humphreys are changing her argument. Her use of “this analysis” makes it clear that she is talking about her survey of 928 abstracts. It is interesting that the qoutes above remove the subject of her sentence.
Skeptics do publish, but very rarely and in weak journals with weak peer review policies (or even due to the political inclinations of editors, as in McIntyre and McKitrick.)
I disagree with your interpretation Boris.
It goes with out saying that she’s drawing her conclusions from her study (“this analysis shows”) but the relevant thing is what her conclusion is (“scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC”). And that’s not true.
When she also says regarding whether there is a real debate “this is simply not the case” and regarding the impression of disagreement “that impression is incorrect” then I think she is denying the existence of any debate. This is certainly how Gore interpreted her and how her study has been used by activists.
And these conclusions aren’t a fair conclusion from reality (because skeptics do publish and debate continues) or her study (because it included very few opinionated papers in either direction).
I agree that skeptics are in a minority, but I would add that the skeptical position is more nuanced than the mainstream admits with many skeptics (myself included) accepting parts or most of the IPCC position. For example, it would be possible to interpret parts of my writing as an endorsement of the mainstream position (temps up, co2 up, co2 causes temps, etc), but that would be misleading.
“We last encountered anti-Kyoto activist John Humphreys in this post when I tried to get him to correct a post that incorrectly claimed that satellites showed a cooling temperature trend and he responded by repeatedly accusing me of lying. Now…”
But Fatty-Lambert.
The satelites DO SHOW A COOLING TREND depending on which two years you start and finish with.
Of course this is all silly because we ought to have an oceanic bias. The atmosphere being so comparatively flimsy.
But if Humphreys said that then Humphreys is right.
But the alternative trend could be shown with two other years as start and finish points.
Now look here at what an idiot Fatty-Lambert is being.
“This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies.”
Right.
Stop right there.
When someone says peer-reviewed I reach for my torch and then my rifle.
We have got to get rid of this peer-review crap.
Its a running sore on the face of a very sick world of science.
graemebird said
“When someone says peer-reviewed I reach for my torch and then my rifle.
We have got to get rid of this peer-review crap.
Its a running sore on the face of a very sick world of science.”
Damn right, people tend to take peer review like some sort of gold standard. It is anything but, which is not surprising given some peer reviewers aren’t paid for their work. Scientists don’t even get paid to publish, sometimes having to pay for the publication themselves. Meanwhile, publishing houses make a fortune, hence the near universal outcry against Elesvier group a few years when they jacked up their journal fees to ridiculous heights. What a sad situation, where the people making human progress posssible are being ripped off by those more interested in making a buck than making a contribution.
The scientific method is only a tool, it teaches us nothing.
“like some sort of gold standard”.
Hmmm. What an interesting choice of words.
Would you rather peers did not review eachothers work? Would you rather that editors employed more subeditors? What are you actually asking for?
Terje,
Over the years I have developed a different strategy. It takes a great deal of hard work though but I just keep ploughing through the literature, memorising a great deal, then cross referencing everything. Over time the patterns emerge. Textbooks, at least for me, are a waste of time, these generalise far too much, ignore the real problems, and often give undergrads the wrong impression. For their intended purpose textbooks are fine but sadly too many people stop at the textbooks. Relying on the primary literature though is extremely hard work. You have to have a powerful memory and a lot of determination to play this game.
I’m not advocating the abolition of peer review, just its enhancement. Who reviews the reviewers? To give you an idea of how difficult this becomes, studies on Nobel Prize winners demonstrate considerable bias in the giving of the prizes.
Yeah, it is appropriate you picked me up on the gold standard, I remember you threw up an interesting thread on the gold standard, this after our discussion about the mathematical absurdity of having the principle quantifier, the dollar, as a variable. You are the first person I have encountered who had the insight to realise that this a big problem.
PS: shouldn’t you be at work!
Peer reviewed does not mean “correct”. It just means checked for obvious problems and deemed worthy of discussion. I think it is labourious enough without “enhancements”. Once published a wider audience of interested parties will review it and time will sift the quality from the dross.
Such a pity that web server died.
“Peer reviewed does not mean “correct”. It just means checked for obvious problems and deemed worthy of discussion.”
Its crap and its got to go.
Laity review would be acceptable.
Peer review should come BEFORE THE SUBMISSION FOR PUBLICATION.
Any sane person ought to know they can make silly mistakes. A good scientist ought to have a network of specialists in other fields that he can rope in to check a segment of what he’s doing without seeing the whole deal and therefore getting uppity and biased.
But the current Peer review cult and way of doing things is anti-scientific and it must be defeated and it ought to be part of our platform to run it through and rip its head off… draw and quarter it and blowtorch it and cremate it then send it out of a cannon.
We are living under the Tyrrany of the statisticians. And that has to be overturned…..
These statisticians offering their services for a healthy wage. And doing their job lest they starve of perish as factory fodder.
Graeme
Peer Review does occur before submission. Many scientists do have networks where they distribute drafts, if only within their own departments.
Laity review would be laughable, even most specialists would acknowledge that there are many papers in their field which they cannot understand.
Statistics is a big problem but most papers are reviewed by scientists in the field, not statisticians.
Terje, I do what you mentioned but it takes up a great deal of time. To give you an idea, at one point I was receiving 60 e table of contents into my inbox, some monthly, many weekly. Part of the problem here is the publish or perish imperative leading to many papers being published that are often unnecessary replications. The problem is now so vast I frequently see news reports of “original research” which I know had been done years ago. This occurs for publicity reasons but also because the researchers simply are unaware that the research has been done previously. At the most fundamental level there is some remarkable research being done. Have a look at this link, this chap has been studying these receptors for years. Now this is brilliant research that will not make the mass media and many would struggle to appreciate its significance:
http://www.physiology.wisc.edu/jones/
Have a look at the graphic lower down on this page, wonderful stuff.
http://www.physiology.wisc.edu/faculty/jones.html
With this sort of research, right at the cutting edge, peer review is extremely difficult because there is no-one else around with that level of expertise!
Getting rid of peer review is not the answer, there are no easy answers to this problem. As Terje suggested, for the time being we simply have to put up with it.
“Does denial of some of the most important tenets in the science of economics make John Quiggin a denialist? A denialist of even lesser regard than those people he character assassinates from denying AGW?”
He’s a denialist when it comes to the evidence of the strength of CO2 as well. He’s sort of a full spectrum denialist.
“Peer Review does occur before submission. Many scientists do have networks where they distribute drafts, if only within their own departments.”
I didn’t say it didn’t occur.
“Laity review would be laughable, even most specialists would acknowledge that there are many papers in their field which they cannot understand.”
No laity review would not be lauughable. And the second part of your argument makes no sense and does not support your claim. Laity review would force these guys to present their data and their arguments in the most accesible way.
At the moment you see these papers and you don’t have access to the data.
“Statistics is a big problem but most papers are reviewed by scientists in the field, not statisticians.”
Scientists in the field are often little more then trumped up statistician-field-workers these days. Or so it seems to me.
When I talk about the “Tyranny of the Statisticians” I don’t mean that there are people calling themselves statisticians out there doing scientifc work.
I mean that in a lot of cases… Like for instance in econonomics.. the field can be dominated by people who in effect are little more then trumped-up statisticians.
“We are living under the Tyrrany of the statisticians. And that has to be overturned…..”
That’s PRECISELY NOT THE PROBLEM, Graeme.
We live in a world where correlation is causation, data smoothing and lazy regressions are run instead of analysing the trends with proper time series analysis and association means a relationship.
Lomborg went some way in unravelling this crap.
Gee – I’ve just discovered another wasps nest.
1. Peer Review is crap – take my word for it as a medical practitioner. I am the ultimate sceptic – and I can assure you all that over the lat 25 years of reading medical and scientific journals most papers have less credibility than – dare I say it – TL and JQ.
2. Graemebird makes more sense than most GW theorists – which should lead you all to obvious conclusions.
3. On C02 – I was referred by one of mny of the folk who ridiculed my attempt to understand the CO2 paradox to a site that supposedly would lead me to greater understanding
This is what it said
“The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data”and “Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later”
Now just a question – with the risk of being condemmed to a vicious attack by the rabid Rabett, the quizzical Quiggin or the know it all Lambert – What is the “unknown” factor that was referred to in 2004 Real Cimate – could this same “unknown factor” be active now? – come on guys you know it all. You know that the projected AGW temp range is 0.6 to 7 C.
Please help me and many other IQ 80s (accusation from one of the many pro AGW bloggers on your sites) to understand this.
In YOUR OWN WORDS.
Yes well Andrew you are on to it. And I know exactly where you got that incredible rationalisation. Its the set of excuses found on realclimate.com.
Now here it must be admitted that they could be right. It could be that the CO2 is having an amplifying effect. But a number of things must be understood.
1. That amplification effect must either be tiny or very slow-acting. And you might expect it to be slow-acting since focusing on the atmosphere alone is a bit foolish since its really the atmosphere-and-oceans together that comprise the totality of greenhouse substances. And this flimsy alleged amplification effect would have to warm up the oceans as well.
2. Though its POSSIBLE that there is this amplification effect as described by realclimate.com.fuckthedata.org its either so slow or so small that they cannot prove it exists.
3. They have to make this rationalisation since they cannot find a single time in history, pre-history or geological history where they have CO2 being the PRIMARY MOVER for such a warming. If there is one time it would have to be in the time where the world reached a heat maximum about 55 million years ago.
But that occasion had its starting point with a phenomenally warm planet already. So much so that you could swim in the water at either pole. So everything favoured warming in those days. Because you had unobstructed currents flowing to the Poles.
Now this is what I was trying to explain to David the other night and my mind went totally blank.
Unobstructed current flow will be condusive to warming because of the Stefans-Boltzmans law. Since the energy will circulate to or near the poles it will even out world temperatures. Stefans Boltzmanns law has the radiative effect of a body in space increasing TO THE FOURTH POWER as the bodies temperature increases above Kelvin.
So when the current flow to the Poles in impeded you cannot get that evening out of the temperatures. And a marginal analysis will then have a greater amount of energy being radiated out into space.
But once you have that unimpeded flow you can get a situation where the oceans and then the deep oceans start warming up.
So it might be that all this extra methane and CO2 wound up taking us from a very warm planet to an even warmer planet now 55 million years ago.
But it would be pushing shit uphil to try and get this to happen now with Antarctica where it is.
4. If CO2’s effect is either negligible or slow-acting like the data tells us then we don’t have a damn thing to worry about with industrial CO2 anyway. Since industrial CO2 is projected to peak by 2100. And even if realclimate.org.fuckthedata.coms speculation about that 5000 year amplification was correct we would have to be able to keep the CO2 levels elevated for many thousands of years before we might get substantial warming.
In summary they don’t have a data. And global warming could never be a problem while the Antarctic is where it is.
Dear Dead Soul and Graemebird
Firstly – peer review on the face of it should almost always be “superior’ to lay review in that the peers are almost always going to be in a more informed position wrt to the topic in hand.
I will discuss briefly three relatively important areas (there are others of course) – two medical and one non-medical wherein after many years of research (10 minimum) the outcome has been no better than tossing a coin from the outset.
This is because (like GW) the science has been complex and therefore many arguments and counterarguments were produced (based upon up to date knowledge of the “fundamentals”).
1. The effect of moderate drinking – ie 6 beers a week on long term cognitive function. I took intense interest in the subject for many years (for personal reasons) – conclusions – you gotta be a serious pisshead (alot more than 6 beers a week) before alcohol has any adverse effect on longterm cognitive function. Problem with much of the research was that it failed to take into account numerous confounding variables.
2. HRT and women – from first principles was expected to preserve cognition and prophylact wrt to cardiovascular disease. Neither proved to be the case
3. My wife received 3 “speeding tickets” in as many monhs in 2002. Smelling a rat I harangued the traffic police authorities and got huge piles of data under the official information act. I reviewed all the research I could on the matter – much of it produced by Monash Accident C (MUARC).
I concluded that the draconian enforcement of speed limits had absolutely no effect on the road toll. The vast majority of research appeared to prove a link. All peer reviewed.
I pointed out to the LTSA the flaws in their methodology and failure to incorporate major confounding variables into their analyses.
There is more to this tale – but suffice to say less than 50% of the population (vs more than 80% a few years ago) now believe blindly in the efficacy of draconian speed enforcement – simply because it has not delivered the goods.
The point of all of the above is that rabid verbal assasination of those who query AGW will not alter the truth.
The truth will ultimately out.
Currently – after extensive reading – I find myself leaning toward the notion that there must be a degree of GW from increased CO2 (simply because it is a minor GHG) – but the current ranges offered by the IPCC are so broad as to be almost useless in the determining the correct response.
While this uncertainty persists it will be difficult to convince emerging economies that they should reduce their emmisions.
Ian Gould or Guthrie have made the point that China is already making changes which will reduce their GHG emmisions.
I would like to see them produce a more comprehensive analysis of the overall effects of the modernisation of China.
Given the protean putative contributors to AGW they need to move beyond bland assertion into deeper analysis.
You have touble with that Rabett guy as well?
He appears to be a scientist of sorts. You go to his own website he appears to have a theory as to why the extra CO2 since the industrial revolution hasn’t made much difference to the temperature.
Or at least this is what I thought he was implying.
You see he appears to be saying that the ground has absorbed all the extra joules.
I don’t know if the better science will win out in time andrew.
Because there is just so much funding keeping the bullshit momentum going this might not be like the experiences you’ve had.
And the other thing is that there is a new forecast out for solar cycle 24.
Previously it was thought that solar cycle 24 would be a small one and solar cycle 25 would be a small one also.
And if that had come to pass we would have started cooling right about now (we are towards the end of cycle 23) and because its two-in-a-row its likely that this would be enough for a significant cooling.
The problem is now that the new forecast some people have come up with is that 24 will be a hot one. And 25 WILL BE THE COLDEST ON RECORD.
But looking at these things in the past it does not appear that the best predictions can be made on the basis of a single up or down cycle.
In any case since 24 may be a strong cycle that could keep this Global Warming panic in the air for many years yet. And enough years for these guys to do enourmous economic damage.
Particularly since we have come to a time where we will need to substitute away from oil. Strategically its the worst of all times to be gettiing in the way of Coal-energy-production.
And our party ought to come out with great fervour in favour of our coal industry. And with great nastiness at any who would hurt it.
Its time to start kicking heads on this. Kicking heads and accepting funding.
We need to work hard on getting a lot of regulations tossed out. Make it easier to set up coal-energy and coal-liquid-fuel generation plants.
Dear Graeme
Re Rabett
To be brief – I think he is a complete tosser.
I should be more discrete – but I find his cutsie pie mascot persona antithetical to the manner with which he presents himself on internet forums.
I am not religious in any conventional sense but Jesus said “ye shall know them by their deeds”. So he is what he is – nothng more or less. (refer to the second sentence above).
That said – far more important than any ego consideration is empirical truth – that is what this is all about.
I am interested in the points that you have raised above – could you do me a favour and do the “here here here”thing in blue like he other guys do so I can access the info.
Or gimme the internet refs.
Cheers Andrew M
Well my own blog has my attempts as a non-scientist to work through these things.
I cannot link you to anything that takes the line I do since its just my own non-quantitative based thinking through the subject. There are a lot of links sprinkled throughout my blog which you’ll be able to cut and paste to your browser.
I suspect if I put in all those links here this post would be considered spam by the spam-filters.
Here’s probably the earliest global warming thread that is likely to be worthwhile.
I don’t have all the data I would want because they all seem to make it hard for us to get it.
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/sample-browning-newsletters/
thanx graeme -I’ll have a look
I think that those who are in the guide climate change debate debate erratically and that should guide the protection of the environment and the future of such causes insecurity. Other orintaciones versus evil debate are those relating to the causes and consequences.