Comments by Sense Seeker

I'm sorry that you blame me and my secret organisation for your inability to get your ideas out there, rather than on your incompetence as a scientist, but so be it.

I am not "correcting" politically incorrect entries, but scientifically incorrect entries. Politics is largely a matter of values, in which case there is no issue of one person correcting another. mostly people just want different things because they hold different values.

Factually, scientifically incorrect entries are a different matter entirely. In science, there is right and wrong ways of analysing data and interpreting facts. I have explained you at least three times why your analyses are rejected: it's because the conclusions you base on them are simply not valid. You can blame me if you like, or think that I am part of some weird conspriracy, but if there is such a thing it is a conspiracy of common sense.

That said, you honestly seem to believe in your correlations of changes with changes, and I am trying to think hard if there isn't a way I can explain you why that is not valid in the case of CO2 and average temperature.

It's not the data. They are okay, provided you don't select parts of them based on outcomes. But for heaven's sake, you must realise that if there are multiple influences that move temperature up and down (seemingly) at random, that the modest (on a yearly of monthly basis) warming due to CO2 will not result in a strong correlation?!

Well, at least you seem to have moved from monthly values to yearly values. That is an improvement, and you do find some hint of a correlation now.

Some people are skeptics, others are simply deniers.
Skepticism is an overall approach that requires all information to be well supported by evidence. Skeptics always look for facts and ask for evidence, which they try to evaluate as objectively as they can. Skeptics change their position. Scientists are natural skeptics.
In contrast, denialism takes a contrarian position regardless of any evidence, and even when repeatedly confronted with evidence they cannot refute on the basis of logic and accepted facts. Deniers are only interested in facts that support their position and ignore any evidence to the contrary. Deniers simply know the truth when they see it. They never change their mind.
Denialism is part of a broader phenomenon of people choosing their positions on what they want to believe is true, not what the evidence indicates is most likely to be true. Obama is a muslim, the holocaust didn't happen, global warming isn't happening or if it is, it's just due to natural variation. That kind of thing.
The Heartland fundamentally isn't interested in objective truth. It accepts money from corporations and other donors with vested interests to spread ideas (true or false, that is irrelevant) that support the interests of those parties. That's what they do, it's their business model. They sell messages. They are not into fact finding. No fact will change their position unless it changes the position of their funders.
The Heartland takes money from tobacco companies like Altria and Reynolds and downplays the risks of smoking. In matters of climate change they take the money of Koch, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies and spread the message that their products are okay and CO2 does not cause climate change.
And yes, there was evidence that a Koch-related foundation supported the Heartland in those leaked documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute#February_2012_docum...). A mysterious Anonymous Donor provides by far most support, and it would be naive to believe that donor has no interests in the fossil fuel industry. And anyway, if the funders are all bona fides, why the secrecy?

So can you give an example of 'the other side' (who? scientists? the US Academies of Science?) using this kind of tactics?

Regardless, in some cases the ignorance is on one side and the scientifically established facts on the other. This is such a case. The Heartland has been exposed as a lobbying organisation for fossil fuel industries. Only fools gives them any credibility.

"There are a lot of scientist that disagree and have been silenced."

Like which ones? You clearly live in the US, echoing such anti-government nonsense without properly examining the facts. You imply that tens of thousands of scientists, from all over the world, are all corrupt. Where is the evidence? Just the fact that they ultimately are funded by governments is not proof.

You are just stating our *belief*, treasure. And that belief is based purely on ideology, not fact.

Well, they were the ones that pulled out. Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Microsoft and a range of other corporations paid the Heartland too, at least until recently, and I haven't heard them saying they withdrew support.
See http://www.desmogblog.com/will-heartland-institute-s-corporate-funders-t...

Oh no - another self-made climate scientist who singlehandedly proves the whole field of climatology wrong.

First you argue that the greenhouse gas is a 19th century mistake that for some reason you don't mention has never been found out - even with the satellite data we now have.

Then you come with a frankly ludicrous analysis that relates annual changes in CO2 to annual changes in temperature. Knowing full well that since CO2 is not the only factor that influences temperature (solar variation, El Nino/La Nina southern oscillation and volcanic activity also play a role, to name the most important ones, you cannot expect good correlation. You even give this explanation yourself! The correct analysis is, of course, to take CO2 levels (not changes in those levels) as predictor variable, along with the above three factors, and have average temperature as your outcome variable. Try it, and I predict that you'll find the 'correlation' is much stronger that what you found. (But I do believe I explained you this several times over already, haven't I? By now for sure you could have had it out in print in a peer-reviewed journal, if your analysis had any validity at all.)

Lastly, you take a single data point out of many and find a lag between CO2 and temperature. Why that point, out of many? Because you like the pattern you see in it?

Nowhere do you refer to a peer-reviewed study. Nobody checked your data. Nobody examined your methods. Nobody can vouch for the validity of what you write here.

Climate science is a complex scientific field. People study decades to become experts. Quality control is stringent, certainly for the high-impact journals like Science and Nature. Yet on the internet there are always these people who think they know better and can disprove one of the core findings an entire scientific field, just with a simple correlation of some data they found on the internet. Amazing.

OzHawkeye, if you want to be taken seriously, please get your stuff published in a decent climatology journal. You are wasting your wisdom on a non-scientific blog like this.

A price on CO2 does not necessarily mean redistribution to other countries. The US can perfectly well choose to keep the proceeds and use them to give all citizens a handout, reduce its debts, or whatever.

But all of this is quite a separate issue of whether CO2 causes global warming. That is a scientific matter on which I think we simply have to accept the scientific consensus. What we do with that knowledge is the next question.

"I like being a denialist"

Well, at least you honestly caregorize yourself and don't claim to be a 'skeptic'.

But the sun was there the whole time! And it didn't get any brighter over the past 30 years.

(To apply denialist standards of evidence: You can see this yourself. Or did you notice any difference?)

Feeling a bit misanthropic today, Blegoo?

You're getting things mixed up, isemeoe.

First unidentified geoengineers cause global warming, but then you're saying I can't stop the Chinese anyway, which implies that you do understand it's CO2 that warms our climate? Or are you suggesting that I pick another cause because I can't do much about CO2?

And even if English is not your native language, you might use a spelling check.

'Weather manipulation'? By whom, how and why?

Personally, I believe that mainstream science, affirmed by all major Academies of Science, is most likely to give the correct answer regarding the cause of global warming. That means our CO2 emissions are, in all likelihood, the main culprit.

Do you honestly believe that is what climate scientists are doing?

That's uninformed rubbish, isemeoe. All fact-free opinion. Try some real research results instead: Ocean warming, La Niña, & cyclone produced Queensland floods

http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science/triple-whammy-ocean-warming-la-...

This study shows global warming was a major contributor to the 2010/11 Queensland floods that caused billions of damage.

"If you think global warming is settled science think again."

Do you think you have disproven global warming with your few selected observations?

With an average sea level rise of 3.19 mm/yr at this moment (but up from 1.7 mm/yr over the 20th century), and with the tides and waves in your marina, did you really expect to see that 1.9 cm difference? And what does it prove that you don't see it?

And because a few persons made foolish predictions, can we assume all the climate scientists are wrong too? Can we now safely ignore all satellite- and other evidence that shows global warming and sea level rise are happening?

Who are you trying to fool? Just one look at the websites of NOAA or NASA shows how you are cherry-picking your 'evidence'.

Sorry to hear about your hokcey [sic] stick. Talk to professor Mann, he might lend you his. His climate hockey stick is still very much intact and confirmed multiple times over, using different lines of evidence. http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

Make sure they have a good life, with enough food, good shelter, ample education and the health care they need. Especially the children. Then over time their numbers decrease. Take Japan or W-Europe as an example.

Yes, when you bring everything back to taxes and how much you get in your hip pocket, things become really simple.

But remember: "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

- Henry Louis Mencken

I don't have much confidence in geo-engineering either. But with our CO2 emissions we are already conducting a geo-engineering experiment on an epic scale.

From your point of view, of course, the challenge will be to calibrate the warming so that you will have your beach side property, but keep your feet dry. :)

Yes, just close your eye to the problem.
(How can a TE reader be so ill-informed, and show such lack of curiosity?)