Jim Morin for January 10, 2014

Are we really rated that highly?

What about the polar ice cap study that shows that Earth goes through hot and cold cycles every 50,000 years.

I guess we should be glad that “global warming” is still a hot topic. It helps divert our attention from dull stuff like the central government’s attempt to control every aspect of life in the U.S.

Any time someone who doesn’t believe in the global climate change wants to post a link to a reputable scientific article I’m happy to read it. I keep asking, and so far not a single person has met the challenge. Instead we get silly comments about Al Sharpton and Al Gore. Get serious, Doctor.

Try listening to some real scientists instead of repeating your nonsense about Sharpton and Gore:New study: 9,135 of 9,136 authors of peer-reviewed climate articles support global warming. One (1) rejected it. This is based on a story of 13,950 articles on “global warming” OR “global climate change.” Previously it was noted by this author that only 24 articles explicitly rejected the theory (that’s 99.828% support for AGW). This study went to the authors of those studies. ALL DATA IS AVAILABLE BEHIND THIS LINK. The author says “Anyone can repeat as much of the new study as they wish—all of it if they like.”That’s 99.989% of publishing scientists who agree AGW is real and happening.http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/01/08/why-climate-deniers-have-no-scientific-credibility-only-1-9136-study-authors-rejects-global-warming

On “American Dad” a Guy dressed as a bullet said that we don’t need gun control. Since it was a cartoon I think we must need it.

Al Sharpton and Al Gore never claimed to be scientists, they are just reporting what every credible climate scientist is saying. Please, follow the money. When you find a group trying to convince you that climate change is a natural occurrence, it usually only takes two clicks to expose the oil and gas industry, which has real money riding on your gullibility. Academic scientists get paid no matter WHAT their results are, and a scientist who found credible evidence that climate change ISN’T happening would be guaranteed a grant to study it further, because that would be a very surprising and interesting finding.

Thank your local GOP legislators.

After all, oil and coal are such small burgeoning industries. Heck they only manage to be 6 of the 10 largest companies on earth.

Seems to me that the points in the article are disputable and are moreso PR. The Question of AGW can be measured in many different ways. What is significant warming.

25% ? 50%? 75% ? 90% ? 100%

Using the earliest you get an overwhelming consensus and the latest an overwhelming rejection

However when one looks at change in climate the ecosystem has been balanced for thousands of years based on gradual shifts. Increasing how fast things change gives less time to adapt, hence favoring short living and generally invasive lifeforms.

Seven Decades before Columbus sailed for the New World, the Chinese had already sailed through an ice free Arctic Ocean, taking the Northwest Passage from Iceland back to China.They had completely circumnavigated the Americas. Admiral Zhou Wen took half his fleet across the Northwest Passage from the Caribbean while the other half retraced their steps back around the Cape of Good Hope and back to China.

One cannot sail across the Arctic Ocean when it is choked with ice when one is using large sailing junks as ships. Ergo, the Arctic must have been relatively ice free in 1421-1423, long before the industrial revolution and the so-called human influence on climate. Polar bears have survived just fine, Mr. Gore.

How about starting with the fact that the “hockey stick” has been THOROUGHLY validated? So it’s not a lie.And debating what is “significant” warming is merely silly. It is having a meaningful impact on the real world.

Here are a few links for you:1. Taylor’s total lack of credentials for the space he specializes in writing about:http://www.desmogblog.com/james-taylor2. An example of Taylor’s inappropriate “investigation” from a previous article:http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2013/02/15/denialism-from-forbes-courtesy-of-heartland-hack-james-taylor/3. Here’s another example of his articles being smacked down by actual astronomer Phil Plait:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/29/no-new-data-does-not-blow-a-gaping-hole-in-global-warming-alarmism/#.UtCjT3kbGPA Realclimate.org points out that he has been CAUGHT misrepresenting data by angry authors 6-7 times in the past year. But here’s a thorough explanation of why Taylor is not a trustworthy source:http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545He’s just a flack for oil companies. Period.

From your link:" Al Gore Predicted Arctic Summer Ice Could Disappear In 2013September 13, 2013 – 11:05 AMBy Barbara Hollingsworth (CNSNews.com) – A 2007 prediction that summer in the North Pole could be “ice-free by 2013” that was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech has proven to be off… by 920,000 square miles.

In his Dec. 10, 2007 “Earth has a fever” speech, Gore referred to a prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming caused by carbon emissions.

Gore said that on Sept. 21, 2007, “scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar icecap is, in their words, ‘falling off a cliff.’ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week warns that it could happen in as little as seven years, seven years from now.”+So he gave a range — from 2013 to 2029. I think we have to wait to see if he’s right.

It’s very important that scientific claims be challenged. Only if they stand up to the challenge can they be considered valid. So I think it’s good that people challenge the claim that there is a rapid rise in global average temperatures, and that the rise is to some extent caused by human actions. It’s especially important to challenge this claim because of the really serious political implications. So I say, bring on the challenges.+But they have to be serious challenges. And so far I haven’t seen much in the way of a serious challenge here. The best is a post that Harley posted on this stream which challenges the famous hockey stick diagram. That one I took seriously (though there are some internal inconsistencies in the article itself) and I did some reading, and I am now pretty confident that the hockey stick diagram weathers the criticism. Here’s part of what I learned. Evidently, the earlier part of the diagram uses what are called proxy figures — that is, they aren’t direct measurements of temperature (because for the earlier periods we just don’t have direct measurements) but proxy measurements, for example, from looking at tree rings to get estimates of temperatures. For more recent figures, there are some problems with the proxy figures, but fortunately we have real measurements for more recent times. So the diagram includes proxy figures for the earlier figures and real measurements for more recent times. But the basic shape of the diagram is clear — there has been a rapid increase in global average temperatures, as the diagram shows. And if the models are correct, that increase will continue. As always, I am open to amendment or correction. Thanks Harley for alerting me to this challenge. I learned something from it.

Lord help us, some of the right wing conservative(?) commenter’s, with all their different user names, are showing themselves to have multiple-personality disorder.

“About 100,000 bats may have died as a result of last weekend’s heatwave in southern Queensland, the RSPCA says.

Mass deaths at about 25 separate colonies have been reported since the weekend, including at Mt Ommaney, Redbank, Boonah, Palmwoods, Laidley and Gatton.

RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty says the heatwave was a significant hit to the population of bats across the state.

“The heatwave was basically a catastrophe for all the bat colonies in south-east Queensland,” he said.

“That’s obviously going to have a pretty disturbing impact on those colonies and those colonies are vital to our ecosystem.”

The smell of bat carcasses has caused problems for locals.

The Scenic Rim Regional Council, west of Brisbane, has organised rubbish collectors to clear up the carcasses of about 2,000 bats.

Residents near Boonah’s Athol Terrace lookout say they have been putting up with the stench of the dead animals for four days.

Hundreds of bats also lie dead in trees and nearby bushes, and are being eaten by maggots."+Welcome to the future.

Sigh. Harley, don’t expect me to accept some site that refers to “Al Gore’s Hockey Stick.” It isn’t.Also, Jeffrey Glassman is not a climate scientist. He is a retired aerospace engineer and physicist. Gavin Schmidt has clobbered his hypotheses before, e.g., Glassman thought the oceans were a source of carbon to the atmosphere, whereas we already know it is a carbon sink.Amateurs trying to assert themselves in a complex field are not likely to succeed.

Global Warming = a vast LEFT wing conspiracy