Re: @phuzz

The Koch brothers funded some of the best recent research which showed that global average temperatures *had* risen since the start of the 20th century (and the research they funded was a lot better science than the CRU / Phil Jones' dubious and unreproducable work). So you're incorrect to use them as an example of "denying" as the science they've funded has been used as the basis for some AGW theories.

Re: Constant Solar output by Loyal Commenter

Solar output is not "pretty much" constant. Yes it goes in cycle's of around 11 to 13 years, but you're incorrect to think that these cycles are always around the same baseline. Look up the Modern Maximum: the period of increasing solar activity that began in 1900. You shouldn't speak with such certainty and correct people, because you're actually wrong.

"questions (3) and (4) are more important than (2)"

Well... sorta. It depends whether (2) is "what can we do to stop climate change" or whether it is "what can we do to protect ourselves from the results of climate change".

Man-made problems can conceivably be solved by stopping whatever it is that we are doing. Natural climate fluctuation could perhaps be solved by planetary scale engineering projects (terraforming Earth!) but that's clearly far beyond our abilities.

Protecting ourselves from the results is a sensible issue to focus on regardless of the cause.

Re: A useful result

JimmyPage is not just a great guitarist

2) Is it man made ? is only relevant in that it is likely to be answered by 4) What can we do ?

If there's something happening that we don't want to happen and can prevent from happening it really doesn't matter if we made it happen in the first place.

One more question

"Is it a bad thing?"

One should not assume that change is bad. That requires proof.

Re: El Reg Scepticism

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and should be met with a healthy amount of sceptisism"

I'd agree with that. Claims that nothing unusual is going on and we don't need to do anything about it and everything will just work out fine should be treated with extreme skepticism.

There's pretty much a scientific consensus about AGW. On the other 'side', you'll find charming people like the Koch brothers and an assortment of contrarians. Who's more believable?

Re: El Reg Scepticism

@jubtastic1: "I believe this is an age thing, where the older you get the more you recognise the pattern of "we're all going to die unless we spend billions on x" as a repeating meme"

Agreed - that same pattern repeats in many ways. A good example is guidance for a healthy diet - "don't eat this or you'll die a horrible death" and, "eat this or else!!". Problem is, the advice constantly changes, reverses, and contradicts. You begin to realise that, although there may be some underlying truth, most of the 'information' promulgated by the media is sensationalism. News is primarily entertainment - if you want facts, you have to work much harder to find them.

Re: El Reg Scepticism

Claims that "Something unusual is going on and it's definitely our fault" are the ones that should have been treated with said "extreme skepticism."

There are two claims here - "It's unusual" and "It's our fault" - leading to a third of "we can change it"

The unusual one is tough to answer as we don't really know the speed of the major climate changes in the past, but let's accept that the current change is much faster than the changes shown in deep time.

However the current rate of change looks like that recorded during the medieval warming period, an event that wouldn't show up in deep time records as it was over too fast.

Previously the MWP was assumed to be a local event - now it appears that it was in fact global.

So our current climate change may not be "unusual" and may even be self-correcting - if it's the same kind of thing that happened then.

The claim that "It's our fault" is then based on the assumption that it's unusual and a few cherry-picked climate models using cherry-picked data that don't even predict the previous decade given the inputs we know, let alone the MWP.

Basically, those models are wrong, and are known to be wrong because they don't match known history.

It's not surprising, because climate is really hard to predict and to make it even worse, direct evidence of climate only exists for the very, very recent past.

Unfortunately politicians and pressure groups have grabbed these bandwagons and the science was left behind years ago - in both directions.

Possibly the worst part is that if it is not caused by us, then our spending of vast resources trying to prevent it is wasting the resources we'll need to deal with it while at the same time littering our environment with all kinds of pollutants in the name of "CO2 reductions".

This makes me sad :(

@AC

Given the overwhelming consensus supporting the theory of AGW and the catastrophe it presents, the burden of proof for the hypothesis that "it doesn't matter and everything will be fine if we keep doing what we're doing" is on the deniers.

David Mitchell sums this up rather well.

Re: @AC

"Given the overwhelming consensus supporting the theory of AGW and the catastrophe it presents, the burden of proof for the hypothesis that "it doesn't matter and everything will be fine if we keep doing what we're doing" is on the deniers."

In the middle ages the vast majority of people believed with all their hearts that the world was flat and you could fall off the edge if you travelled far enough. Later, when we learned to understand the science properly we learned the world was round, but at the time they believed it as ardently as the alarmists believe in mmgw today and as ardently as the deniers do not.

As with many other things, the majority of people flock like sheep around some cause or other the majority of them know bugger all about, but hey, if everyone else believes it and there is a consensus, they must be right hey?

The burden on EITHER side is to provide conclusive or substantive EVIDENCE of their case. Life is not the X factor, something is not right or wrong just because the most people vote for it, and you can't decide huge issues affecting people all round the world by a head count.

@Tarquin ftlb

In the middle ages the vast majority of people believed with all their hearts that the world was flat and you could fall off the edge if you travelled far enough. Later, when we learned to understand the science properly

It's not about the "vast majority of people" but what the vast majority of climate scientists believe.

Life is not the X factor, something is not right or wrong just because the most people vote for it, and you can't decide huge issues affecting people all round the world by a head count.

These aren't just 'people' who are agreeing, they're climate scientists, FFS.

The burden on EITHER side is to provide conclusive or substantive EVIDENCE of their case.

There aren't two equal sides to this. AGW is supported by every recognised relevant scientific authority. The 'denialists' have no such credibility. There are two 'sides' in the same way that the theory of evolution is opposed by the intelligent design side. Or the theory of gravity opposed by those who believe in intelligent falling...

Re: El Reg Scepticism

You're jesting, right. Pull up Hansen's 1998 predictions, add the error bars and stand back and admire his prescience - damn good. Sadly. The models work exceptionally well.

@JC_: You're problem here is that science has NEVER, EVER

depended upon "recognized authority" and has instead relied upon PUBLISHED, REVIEWABLE THEORIES and DATA. The AWG warmmongers have never provided latter and incessantly demand that we recognize the former. If we depended upon "recognized authority" for science we'd all still be calculating epicycles for the planets in an Earth-centered universe.

@Tom 13

You're problem here is that science has NEVER, EVER depended upon "recognized authority" and has instead relied upon PUBLISHED, REVIEWABLE THEORIES and DATA. The AWG warmmongers have never provided latter and incessantly demand that we recognize the former.

Is this deliberate misinterpretation? I said: "AGW is supported by every recognised relevant scientific authority". These are the scientific institutions and the scientists who are climate science professionals, the people who publish and review.

Re-read the post, you've gone off on quite a shouty tangent.

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

"There aren't two equal sides to this. AGW is supported by every recognised relevant scientific authority. The 'denialists' have no such credibility. There are two 'sides' in the same way that the theory of evolution is opposed by the intelligent design side. Or the theory of gravity opposed by those who believe in intelligent falling..."

I didn't say they were equal, although your comparison with religion is interesting because religion and mmgw have a commonality of fundamentalist fervour. We are right, everyone who doesn't agree with us is a "denier".

I am open minded unlike either side. My point is that we start at the status quo. If either side wants to suggest a deviation from what we are doing, (in either case) it is up to them to make the scientfically supportable case for it. Just because someone is a climate scientist doesn't make them automatically right. Scientists are often wrong, it is how science works. Postulate a theory and try and find the evidence to support or disprove it.

I accept the climate is changing, I find the case that we are a significant cause, as yet unproven, and no amount of shouting and crowd sourcing will change that. With some of the alarmist "evidence" having been discredited, it makes it harder to take them seriously when they next claim to have evidence.

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

Claiming to still be "open minded" in the face of a mountain of evidence and overwhelming scientific consensus isn't a virtue, it's weaseling out.

Either you accept the evidence, or you state your case for what you believe is the alternative. Any fervour you're picking up on is just irritation at seeing the same old tricks of mis-interpretation and wilful ignorance that get played in the 'debate' over evolution.

I'll repeat myself: every single scientific organisation of stature accepts the theory of AGW. Every single one.

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

Equally, rejecting any evidence that doesn't fit your case is weaselling out. It is lazy thinking.

In my younger years, we spent time at school being taught that the evidence (which all of the same scientific organisations accepted at the time) showed we would be in a mini ice age before long because of the long period of global cooling. The fear and concern was as real then as it is now over warming. Maybe I am getting long in the tooth, but it just feels like we oscillate between fear of global cooling and global warming.

Maybe humans just need to be afraid of something bigger than they are, or can't accept that that some things are bigger than we are.

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

Tarquin, you're arguing like a homeopath. Cherry-picking a study here and there and giving it outsize importance while ignoring the overwhelming majority of studies isn't keeping an open-mind, it's foolishness. "Evidence that doesn't fit the case" is welcome, but don't make the leap that it invalidates the case.

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

No, I am defending the point of view that just because a large number of people, however respected, believe something passionately, and bang on about it it doesn't mean they are right.

The debate is so polarised that "alarmists" have to put anyone who doesn't agree with them into the "denier" box and "deniers" have to put everyone who doesn't agree with them into the "alarmist" box. This is part of the problem.

I have only said I am not convinced of the argument, and have not tried to assert that mmgw does not exist, but you seem determined to put me in a "denier" box, and if it makes it easier for you, then put me there.

I remain unconvinced either way, so let's just agree to differ.

@Tarquin ftlb and @JC_

"In the middle ages the vast majority of people believed with all their hearts that the world was flat and you could fall off the edge if you travelled far enough."

No they didn't. Seriously. This myth was bruited about during the 1800s and has long since been discredited: the ancient Greeks already knew the Earth wasn't flat. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anyone in the Middle Ages believed the Earth was flat. The evidence that it isn't is easy to find: just go stand on the coastline and look out to sea. See those ships rising over the horizon as they approach port? That. See how the cliffs and mountains of your home port drop slowly below the horizon as you head out to sea? Again, that.

That there are people in this thread arguing on both sides who appear to have fallen for this myth hook, line and sinker makes me suspect the quality and level of debate here.

Even so, I don't understand this fixation on "the scientific consensus". It's a blatant Appeal to Authority. Unfortunately, this "authority" has variously supported Pholgiston, Aether, Miasma and other equally discredited theories—London's Victorian sewage system was constructed because of a firm belief in the Miasma theory. It was successful despite its original design intentions, not because of them. And it took the better part of a generation for "the scientific consensus" (for which, read "the scientific establishment") to accept Plate Tectonics.

Granted, the establishment isn't always wrong, but it's clearly not always right either. And, when they are wrong, they can clearly be spectacularly wrong on a staggering scale, so what the establishment happens to believe at any one point in time is an utter irrelevance. They are no more an indicator of truth than my brother's pet cat.

Finally, a scientist doesn't simply accept the status quo as dictated from on high. A scientist works to disprove a hypothesis. Only by doing so will we chip away the unwanted lies to reveal nature's truths. When large groups of powerful vested interests in the status quo insist on supporting one hypothesis over another, that process becomes much, much harder as funding becomes more difficult to find.

This is wrong. It is not how science is supposed to work and is why I take a very cynical view of the "Anthropogenic Climate Change" camp's politics and media exposure. The science in this field is clearly being deliberately skewed in favour of supporting a preferred political stance. And that is unacceptable. It is bad science.

There is no way in hell that Climate Science can be considered old enough and mature enough to be able to have such a consensus in place already. We have barely a century's worth of solid, reliable temperature readings (and even that's a stretch), whereas the Earth's climate has an age measured in millions of years. Our evidence for global temperatures beyond the 1800s is fragmentary at best. Most of it is conjecture at best. We can measure tree rings, we can measure ice cores, we can look at core samples taken from various geographical locations, but these are just the equivalent of archaeological test pits: we're only getting a tiny, tiny glimpse of the full picture at each site. We have no idea of the full context of each sample.

(This is a problem which plagues archeologists too. Anyone who's ever watched a few seasons of "Time Team" soon realises that there's an awful lot of guesswork and conjecture going on. The evidence often throws up surprises that can completely change the context of a site.)

Anyway, the point is that I'm just not satisfied that the science is there yet. This article points out some context-changing evidence. Granted, it might just be that the MWP only affected northern Europe and a few other unusually specific sites, but this new evidence suggests that it may well have been a global event. (Yes, there are some qualifiers in the original paper, but note my points above about the stifling effects of an "establishment" view. There are political repercussions involved here too.)

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

Tarquin, you're not in the "denier box", you're in the "weasel box" :) You say that you aren't convinced by the already overwhelming evidence, but can't give a reason for this.

The "large number of people" you refer to are the scientists who have the knowledge and have done the research. If their work can't convince you, then there's no hope of any rational way of getting there.

@Tom Reg

other than nuclear and conservation, we really have no tools available. Nuclear is unpopular with voters, and conservation is unpopular with big companies.

Really? Replacing coal with natural gas does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions?

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

Sorry, but if you fail to convince me, that is your failure, not mine. Have a good weekend. :-)

Re: El Reg Scepticism

You don't have to be old to understand people are driven by fear.

No one listens to bringers of glad tidings, everyone listens to prophets of doom.

No one gets praise, respect or funding for sitting around saying there is no problem. There plenty of praise, respect, funding and even Nobel prizes for people running round saving the planet (regardless of there actually being anything to save it from).

You only need to look at religion to see how people will believe any old crap without a shred of evidence as long as enough other people believe it.

This huge imbalance is justification for huge scepticism.

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

"Equally, rejecting any evidence that doesn't fit your case is weaselling out. It is lazy thinking."

So what is your evidence then?

"In my younger years, we spent time at school being taught that the evidence (which all of the same scientific organisations accepted at the time) showed we would be in a mini ice age before long..."

This is another of those spurious claims that keeps being brought up. It's not true. There were a couple of papers in the 70s that postulated that we were about to enter a new ice age. This in turn was picked up by the press in their usual hysterical fashion, which is what most people remember. But it was never mainstream scientific opinion. If you know otherwise let's have the evidence; otherwise can we *please* drop this one?

Re: @Tarquin ftlb

Actually, we covered it in Geology in my sixth form years, so it IS true. It was taught. There are enough dodgy claims around without trying to rewrite history too.

Re: El Reg Scepticism

Clearly the hottest decade != "the earth has not warmed for over 10 years at this point"

What the !!!

@ AC 26/3 08:14

"Actually, we covered it in Geology in my sixth form years, so it IS true. It was taught. There are enough dodgy claims around without trying to rewrite history too."

You might have been taught that some scientists thought that we headed for global cooling. If you think you were taught that this was the prevailing scientific opinion at the time, either you are misremembering, or you were taught incorrectly, or this was a very long time ago. I'm not sure what the science was saying before about the mid-60's but the claims that people make these days that "they were all predicting cooling a few years ago" tend to be referring to the 1970s. As I said, there were some scientists then who thought cooling to be more likely but they were very much in the minority. It was the press that made it into a bigger story.

Re: Don't feed the troll

If people read the paper (and it'd be interesting to know if Lewis did), the authors are much more hesitant about their results than this article makes out. They use the words 'tentative' and 'suggests' as well as being clear that they cannot precisely age all of the crystals.

It's a shame that Zunli Lu et al's work is being sensationalised by people who don't have a background in the subject to sharpen their own axes.

Re: Don't feed the troll

"If people read the paper (and it'd be interesting to know if Lewis did)..."

More interesting to know if he understood it before committing finger to keyboard.

Re: Business as usual.

This goes both ways you know, all scientists are funded by vested interests on both sides. Oil companies and others may fund the sceptic camp but thats only logical given they stand to lose so much.

Of course the "renewable energy" industry and the governmental quangoes like the IPCC are funding the Pro camp because anything found negative will upset their own gravy train as well.

After all if global warming is disproven what use is the IPCC for? They'd be shut down andlooking for new jobs, and the renewables sector would lose the subidies that keeps it afloat because their business is so uneconomical.

Business as usual, every scientist needs funding and those who provide it to both sides are certainly not impartial.

Re: Business as usual.

From the Guardian: "26/07/2011 · Oil giant BP said it had benefited from higher oil prices as it reported quarterly profits of $5.3bn (£3.2bn)."

Compare to the UK's EPSRC total yearly budget of ~0.8bn (for all physical and engineering sciences). Look at http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/plans/deliveryplan/Pages/next.aspx, and marvel how climate science takes up such a big fraction of that (haha) . And as an exercise, can you even find the climate science spending at all?

I think we might be able to tell who has the biggest gravy train, and which funds based on commercial interest, and which on the basis of peer review.

Re: Business as usual.

Actually, he's right. This is all about climate change effects on human society, whatever the cause. If we weren't here, the earth would carry on as normal, just like all the other (and much more extreme) climate variations in the past. That is, species die out and other species develop to replace them.

epsrc?

Yikes, should have quoted NERC funding (total income 430m) not EPSRC

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/budget/

apols.