Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

Hmmm, typical response when painted in a corner, insults. But, you just stick to your guns, and justify the records that date all the way back to the 1880's. People kept records then by watching a mercury thermometer outside the window. Accurate data wasn't kept until the 1980"s. So the AGW folks manipulate the numbers to suit themselves. And you call me a skeptic?

We're still waiting for you to answer Heretic's questions...

Quote :

* Which studies were compromised, how? be specific. Cite papers and data sets. What is the evidence? where is it? what work is affected? how? show me the evidence that says so.

* This supposed scandal involves perhaps a half dozen people, how does it affect the work of the 3,000+ others who’s work makes up climate science?

* How does it affect the work that was done before the alleged culprits graduated from univeristy? the work from before they were born?

* Of the 30,000(ish) studies that make up climate science, which ones are undone? where is the evidence? be specific … show us exactly how and why?

* You are certain it topples climate science? how? where? which studies? what evidence? You don’t know? then how are you certain?

* Please run through a list of the studies you believe are affected? Hockey stick? what’s that? please refer to specific papers and studies.You don’t know? then how can you be certain?

* Ahhh, Soandso 2004? so just how is it compromised? what part of the work? I thought you were certain?

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

Hmmm, typical response when painted in a corner, insults.

Typical denialist, still avoiding my questions. I've given you ample opportunity to prove you're not the standard partisan hack that I've dealt with a thousand times before, but for whatever reason, you don't seem interested.

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

But, you just stick to your guns, and justify the records that date all the way back to the 1880's.

The temperature records? Done and done. More here.

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

People kept records then by watching a mercury thermometer outside the window. Accurate data wasn't kept until the 1980"s.

The thermometer was invented in the 1600s. Temperature observations were being published in journals by 1653. You're a little off...

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

So the AGW folks manipulate the numbers to suit themselves.

So again... where's your proof? And which "AGW folks" exactly? The scientist that first proposed the theory in 1850? Or maybe the JASON Defense Advisory Group that went all liberal/commie bastard on us in the 70's after designing us the atomic bomb decades earlier? Or are you ignorant enough to believe that the theory was developed in the past 10 yrs by Al Gore and a handful of America-hatin', money-lovin' scientists at NASA?

Scientists cooked the data, huh? Does it embarrass you that your arguments are indistinguishable from creationists and 9/11 Twoofers?

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

And you call me a skeptic?

No. I could if your skepticism was honest, but we all know it isn't.

Artie60438 wrote:

We're still waiting for you to answer Heretic's questions...

Well if I remember correctly, you get your news from Jon Stewart and Comedy Central. What does he say about it?

Quote :

Jon Stewart on ClimateGate: 'Poor Al Gore - Global Warming Debunked Via Internet You Invented'
By Noel Sheppard
Created 2009-12-02 10:43

If you needed any more assurance the growing ClimateGate scandal is far more significant than America's media has been portraying, you got it Tuesday night from Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

Somewhat surprisingly, "The Daily Show" host in his opening sketch tore apart the scientists involved in sending the obtained e-mail messages for showing "a clear effort to raise fears about global warming, and hide evidence against it."

Stewart even mocked the man responsible for spreading more fear on this subject than anyone on the planet:

Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. OH. OH the irony.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/02/jon-stewart-climategate-poor-al-gore-global-warming-debunked-internet

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Scientists Hide Global Warming Data
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

As he put it:

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Now does it disprove global warming? No, of course not.

Gee, as long as you want to quote NASA figures...

Quote :

NASA Climategate Cover Up

The recent release of the Climategate papers from the Climate Research Unit isn’t the first time those pushing to global warming scam have been caught suppressing information.

Miklós Zágoni was Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocols until he came across the work of Ferenc Miskolczi, a NASA whistle blower who discovered a major flaw in the equations that have been used to predict catastrophic global warming. http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001668.html

When Arthur Milne developed the equations 80 years ago he mistakenly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere as a boundary condition. Assuming boundary conditions is a common practice when solving differential equations, but assuming anything close to an infinitely thick atmosphere only makes sense when dealing with black holes.
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/Biographies/Milne.html
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/blog.php/2009/11/30/nasa-climategate-cover-up/

...as if those guys weren't afraid funding was going to dry up under Obama?

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

We're still waiting for you to answer Heretic's questions...

Well if I remember correctly, you get your news from Jon Stewart and Comedy Central. What does he say about it?

Quote :

Jon Stewart on ClimateGate: 'Poor Al Gore - Global Warming Debunked Via Internet You Invented'
By Noel Sheppard
Created 2009-12-02 10:43

If you needed any more assurance the growing ClimateGate scandal is far more significant than America's media has been portraying, you got it Tuesday night from Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

Somewhat surprisingly, "The Daily Show" host in his opening sketch tore apart the scientists involved in sending the obtained e-mail messages for showing "a clear effort to raise fears about global warming, and hide evidence against it."

Stewart even mocked the man responsible for spreading more fear on this subject than anyone on the planet:

Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. OH. OH the irony.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/02/jon-stewart-climategate-poor-al-gore-global-warming-debunked-internet

BWG,You should really submit a photo of yourself to Keith Olbermann so he can include you with the Fixed News meat puppets that like to rewrite reality....

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

Gee, as long as you want to quote NASA figures...

Yes, the government is out to get you. Obviously NASA has been cookin' the books for the past eight years. A pro-warming stance was the only way to get funding from the Bush administration and a Republican controlled Congress.

Quote :

NASA Climategate Cover Up

The recent release of the Climategate papers from the Climate Research Unit isn’t the first time those pushing to global warming scam have been caught suppressing information.

Miklós Zágoni was Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocols until he came across the work of Ferenc Miskolczi, a NASA whistle blower who discovered a major flaw in the equations that have been used to predict catastrophic global warming. http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001668.html

Holy hell, are your standards abysmally low...

Phil Bowermaster wrote:

Don't know if Miskolczi is is right -- the math goes over my head pretty quickly on this stuff...

Gee... that's surprising.[/sarcasm]

Phil Bowermaster wrote:

One of the questions we've had about global warming is why are other planets in the solar system -- where they don't have a greenhouse gas problem -- warming up at about the same rate as Earth?

No, it hasn't been a problem:

Climate myths: Mars and Pluto are warming too
Global warming on Mars, ice caps melting
Global warming on other planets in the solar system

And from the blogs DailyTech link:

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Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. "Money", he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

But of course. It's a conspiracy. One has to wonder why he didn't retire at age 25 with a mansion on a beach like the rest of NASA scientists. Sorry, but Miskolczi simply being wrong is far more likely than a massive government conspiracy.

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

When Arthur Milne developed the equations 80 years ago he mistakenly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere as a boundary condition. Assuming boundary conditions is a common practice when solving differential equations, but assuming anything close to an infinitely thick atmosphere only makes sense when dealing with black holes.

Who's Arthur Milne?

Here's some more links on the original topic (apologies if any are repeats):

Via Time:

Quote :

The Stolen E-Mails: Has 'Climategate' Been Overblown?

The truth is that the e-mails, while unseemly, do little to change the overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of man-made climate change. But they do hand a powerful political card to skeptics at the start of perhaps the most important environmental summit in history.

. . .

4. Do the e-mails weaken the scientific case for global warming? Put it this way: when it comes to climate-science analysis from the representative of the world's biggest oil-producing state, it's wise to be suspicious. In the weeks since the e-mails first became public, many climate scientists and policy experts have looked through them, and they report that the correspondence does not contradict the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, which has been decades in the making. "The content of the stolen e-mails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming," wrote 25 leading U.S. scientists in a letter to Congress on Dec. 4. "The body of evidence that underlies our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust."

. . .

It's true that the e-mails reveal CRU climate scientists were dismissive of skeptics, often in harsh terms, but that's not unusual for scientists. Science is a rough arena, as anyone who has ever survived a doctoral examination knows, and scientists aren't shy about attacking ideas they believe are wrong — especially in private communication. Still, Jones et al. could have been more open and accepting of their critics, and if it turns out that e-mails were deleted in response to the Freedom of Information request for data, heads should roll. (Jones maintains that no e-mails or documents were deleted.)

Ultimately, though, we need to place Climategate/Swifthack in its proper context: amidst a decades-long effort by the fossil-fuel industry and other climate skeptics to undercut global-warming research — often by means that are far more nefarious than anything that appears in the CRU e-mails. George W. Bush's Administration attempted to censor NASA climatologist James Hansen, while the fossil-fuel industry group the Global Climate Coalition ignored its own scientists as it spread doubt about man-made global warming. That list of wrongdoing goes on. One of the main skeptic groups promoting the e-mail controversy, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, was recently revealed to have links to the energy company Exxon-Mobil, which has long funded climate-change deniers. "This is being used to confuse the public," says blogger James Hoggan, whose new book Climate Cover-Up details Exxon-Mobil's campaign. "This is not a legitimate scientific issue."

From the IPCC

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The key finding of IPCC AR4, "The warming in the climate system is unequivocal [...] ", is based on measurements made by many independent institutions worldwide that demonstrate significant changes on land, in the atmosphere, the ocean and in the ice-covered areas of the Earth. Through further, independent scientific work involving statistical methods and a range of different climate models, these changes have been detected as significant deviations from natural climate variability and have been attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases.

The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists worldwide. The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges, many of whom have dedicated their time and effort to develop these findings in teams of Lead Authors within the production of the series of IPCC Assessment Reports during the past 20 years.

The IPCC assessment process is designed to ensure consideration of all relevant scientific information from established journals with robust peer review processes, or from other sources which have undergone robust and independent peer review. The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as by governments. Consequently, there is full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of published literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views.

In compliance with the procedures of IPCC, the conclusions of AR4 have undergone scrutiny in the form of several stages of reviews by peers and governments, have been revised and refined to take into account these review comments, and have finally been approved word by word by the governments of the world1.

Every layer in the process (including large author teams, extensive and multi-step reviews, independent monitoring of review compliance, and plenary approval by governments) plays a major role in keeping IPCC assessments comprehensive, unbiased, open to the identification of new relevant literature, and policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. Therefore, no individual scientist in the IPCC assessment process is in a position to change the conclusions, or to exclude relevant peerreviewed papers and scientific work from an IPCC Assessment Report.

In conclusion, IPCC WGI firmly stands behind its unique procedures and behind the scientific community and their collective work which has been, and continues to be, the basis of unbiased, open and transparent assessments of the current knowledge on the climate system and its changes.

From NewScientist:

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Why there's no sign of a climate conspiracy in hacked emails

The leaking of emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, has led to a media and political storm. The affair is being portrayed as a scandal that undermines the science behind climate change. It is no such thing, and here's why.

Popular Mechanics:

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What East Anglia's E-mails Really Tell Us About Climate Change

In the past two weeks, scientists like myself have been gripped by news of the theft and online release of more than a decade of e-mails from one of the world's leading centers for climate-change research, the Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain's University of East Anglia. During these same weeks, world political leaders have been preparing for a climate summit in Copenhagen and a new study has indicated that a major ice sheet in eastern Antarctica, previously thought to be stable, is in fact losing mass. But those developments have been clouded by the stolen e-mails and what they may imply about how research into human-induced global warming is carried out.

Scientific American:

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Climate change cover-up? You better believe it

Was Sen. James Inhofe right when he declared 2009 the year of the climate contrarian? A slew of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit highlight definite character flaws among some climate scientists—including an embarrassing attempt to delete emails that discussed the most recent report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—while also exposing what looks like a failure of scientists to acknowledge a halt to global warming in the past decade.

Sadly for the potential fate of human civilization, rumors of the demise of climate change have been much exaggerated. The past decade recorded nine of the warmest years in recent history as well as the rapid dwindling of Arctic sea ice, surely the result of imminent global cooling if climate change contrarians are to be believed. After all, one of the most "damaging" emails in question from Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., is actually mourning the paucity of Earth observation systems and data in the past decade, such as satellites (gutted by a lack of funding and launch miscues in recent years) to monitor climate change in the midst of natural variability.

. . .

There is, in fact, a climate conspiracy. It just happens to be one launched by the fossil fuel industry to obscure the truth about climate change and delay any action. And this release of emails right before the Copenhagen conference is just another salvo—and a highly effective one—in that public relations battle, redolent with the scent of the same flaks and hacks who brought you "smoking isn't dangerous."

As physicist and climate historian Spencer Weart told The Washington Post: "It's a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we've never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance. Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers." Well, probably they did, but point taken.

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Climate science statement from the Met Office, NERC and the Royal Society

The 2007 IPCC Assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.

Here's more from the government (that's out to get you):

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Climate Projections Underestimate CO2 Impact (USGS)

The climate may be 30–50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long term than previously thought, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience yesterday.

Projections over the next hundreds of years of climate conditions, including global temperatures, may need to be adjusted to reflect this higher sensitivity.

“Climate change is affecting water supplies for cities and farms; leading to more severe droughts, hurricanes, and floods; contributing to more intense forest fires; and putting coastal communities at risk,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who is on his way to the global climate change conference convening this week in Copenhagen. “This study and the ongoing work of our USGS scientists will help us continue to build more precise long-term projections and to prepare for the impacts of climate change on our world."

And the Big One from the EPA:

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EPA: Greenhouse Gases Threaten Public Health and the Environment - Science overwhelmingly shows greenhouse gas concentrations at unprecedented levels due to human activity

After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.

GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.

. . .

Scientific consensus shows that as a result of human activities, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high levels and data shows that the Earth has been warming over the past 100 years, with the steepest increase in warming in recent decades. The evidence of human-induced climate change goes beyond observed increases in average surface temperatures; it includes melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide, changing precipitation patterns, and changing patterns of ecosystems and wildlife.

All of which has been orchestrated by none other than the All Powerful:


The conservative worldview may be completely looney, but it sure is fun!

Heretic wrote:

Who's Arthur Milne?

E. Arthur Milne

AKA Edward Arthur Milne

Born: 14-Feb-1896
Birthplace: Hull, Yorkshire, England
Died: 21-Sep-1950
Location of death: Dublin, Ireland
Cause of death: Heart Failure

Gender: Male
Religion: Anglican/Episcopalian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Mathematician, Physicist

Nationality: England
Executive summary: Kinematic relativity

British mathematician and astrophysicist E. Arthur Milne is best known for his research into the atmosphere of the Earth and Sun, internal physics of the stars, and the theory of limb darkening. He developed what is now called Milne's integral equation, and wrote extensively on the theory of relativity. He advocated a theory of dual time, where "dynamical time" (the clocks of everyday life) run simultaneously but at different rates than the "kinematic time" of subatomic phenomena.

He studied for only a year and a half at Cambridge before World War I intervened. Deemed unsuitable for military duty due to his poor eyesight, he was assigned to the Anti-Aircraft Section of the Munitions Inventions Department, where he researched fuse and explosive physics, helped develop better listening trumpets (a pre-radar aircraft detection system) and was lashed to the wings of early aircraft to take air pressure and temperature readings in flight. During World War II he researched armor piercing weaponry and the stability of projectiles. His health was always precarious, and he died of a heart attack at the age of 54, while attending a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in Dublin.

Father: Sidney Arthur Milne (school headmaster)
Mother: Edith Cockcroft (teacher)
Wife: Margaret Campbell Milne ("Margot", m. 1928, two daughters, one son)
Wife: Beatrice Brevoort Renwick Milne (m. 1940, d. 1945, one daughter)

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

British mathematician and astrophysicist E. Arthur Milne is best known for his research into the atmosphere of the Earth and Sun, internal physics of the stars, and the theory of limb darkening.

Yeah. I got as much from Wikipedia, though I couldn't find any relevance to AGW (he's noticeably absent from my History of Climate Science link among many others). Neither could you, apparently.

But I digress; do continue regaling us with your grand tales of government conspiracy.

Heretic wrote:

The conservative worldview may be completely looney, but it sure is fun!

Ain't that the truth? This whole thing has degenerated into a "9/11 was an inside job!" kind of argument. I see that Galileo is back... again.

I think I'm beginning to understand the real reasons for the denial of global warming, Heretic. There is no way a person of any character could look themselves in the mirror in the morning if they actually believed in it and made these kinds of arguments.

I may be stating the obvious, but it strikes me as ludicrous that these yokels would rather believe in a massive global conspiracy consisting of players on every level of government, the media, even the military!

It's just surreal. It really is.

Gave up on the emails already? Back to the "Al Gore farts methane" argument so soon? Good to see how much conservative debate skills have improved over the years since An Inconvenient Truth.

I've said it before, a thousand times: Hypocrisy, no matter how blatant, cannot alter our physical reality. So come back when you can actually comment on the science.

Scorpion wrote:

I may be stating the obvious, but it strikes me as ludicrous that these yokels would rather believe in a massive global conspiracy consisting of players on every level of government, the media, even the military!

And they display their stupidity so proudly and openly... like a badge of honor or something.

The earth has always had periods of warming and cooling, before modern man was figured into the equation.

And that renders the greenhouse effect nonexistent how, exactly? Please be as specific as possible.

Here's an interesting document from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. It doesn't mention anything new on this phony email controversy:

Quote :

Although there is no clear evidence of scientific fraud or misconduct at this early stage, if further investigation were to reveal that misconduct had occurred, the scientific consensus regarding human‐induced climate change, as stated by the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and virtually every relevant scientific body (see listing below), is not likely to be affected. The data sets involved in the discussions have been reproduced independently by other scientists in other countries and yield similar conclusions. Moreover, the data sets discussed in the emails, while relevant, are not essential to our understanding of contemporary climate change.

But it does list several more players in this Massive International Conspiracy that I was unaware of:

American Association for the Advancement of Science
European Science Foundation
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of Australia
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Royal Meteorological Society
American Quaternary Association
International Union for Quaternary Research
American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
American Society for Microbiology
Australian Coral Reef Society
Institute of Biology (UK)
Society of American Foresters
The Wildlife Society (international)
American Academy of Pediatrics
American College of Preventive Medicine
American Medical Association
American Public Health Association
Australian Medical Association
World Federation of Public Health Associations
World Health Organization
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American Institute of Physics
American Physical Society
American Statistical Association
Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
International Association for Great Lakes Research

Evidence of how far reaching and insidious this conspiracy is...

:rolfcry:

I'm too lazy to sort through the PDF file to copy/past the links to the individual statements, so if you are interested in any, you'll just click through the file yourself. Besides, we all know the "skeptics" here wouldn't read 'em even if I did.

Heretic wrote:

And that renders the greenhouse effect nonexistent how, exactly? Please be as specific as possible.

I never said it did. People account for only 2%. The bulk of the rest is from volcanos, gases given off by animals, and decaying vegetation.

Tiger1 wrote:

People account for only 2%.

Two percent of what?

I'm guessing you meant CO2 emissions, which means your statement is FALSE.

Quote :

Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter

It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

The consumption of terrestrial vegetation by animals and by microbes (rotting, in other words) emits about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 every year, while respiration by vegetation emits another 220 Gt. These huge amounts are balanced by the 440 Gt of carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere each year as land plants photosynthesise.

Similarly, parts of the oceans release about 330 Gt of CO2 per year, depending on temperature and rates of photosynthesis by phytoplankton, but other parts usually soak up just as much - and are now soaking up slightly more.

Ocean sinks
Human emissions of CO2 are now estimated to be 26.4 Gt per year, up from 23.5 Gt in the 1990s, according to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in February 2007 (pdf format). Disturbances to the land - through deforestation and agriculture, for instance - also contribute roughly 5.9 Gt per year.

About 40% of the extra CO2 entering the atmosphere due to human activity is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks, mostly by the oceans. The rest is boosting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

How can we be sure that human emissions are responsible for the rising CO2 in the atmosphere? There are several lines of evidence. Fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago. They therefore contain virtually no carbon-14, because this unstable carbon isotope, formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, has a half-life of around 6000 years. So a dropping concentration of carbon-14 can be explained by the burning of fossil fuels. Studies of tree rings have shown that the proportion of carbon-14 in the atmosphere dropped by about 2% between 1850 and 1954. After this time, atmospheric nuclear bomb tests wrecked this method by releasing large amounts of carbon-14.

Volcanic misunderstanding
Fossil fuels also contain less carbon-13 than carbon-12, compared with the atmosphere, because the fuels derive from plants, which preferentially take up the more common carbon-12. The ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and ocean surface waters is steadily falling, showing that more carbon-12 is entering the atmosphere.

Finally, claims that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities are simply not true. In the very distant past, there have been volcanic eruptions so massive that they covered vast areas in lava more than a kilometre thick and appear to have released enough CO2 to warm the planet after the initial cooling caused by the dust (see Wipeout). But even with such gigantic eruptions, most of subsequent warming may have been due to methane released when lava heated coal deposits, rather than from CO2 from the volcanoes (see also Did the North Atlantic's 'birth' warm the world?).

Measurements of CO2 levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO2 each year - about a hundredth of human emissions (pdf document).

While volcanic emissions are negligible in the short term, over tens of millions of years they do release massive quantities of CO2. But they are balanced by the loss of carbon in ocean sediments subducted under continents through tectonic plate movements. Ultimately, this carbon will be returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes.

Next.

Heretic wrote:

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

British mathematician and astrophysicist E. Arthur Milne is best known for his research into the atmosphere of the Earth and Sun, internal physics of the stars, and the theory of limb darkening.

Yeah. I got as much from Wikipedia, though I couldn't find any relevance to AGW (he's noticeably absent from my History of Climate Science link among many others). Neither could you, apparently.

But I digress; do continue regaling us with your grand tales of government conspiracy.

The fact that you didn't know who Arthur Milne was shakes the impression I had of you as being a person of science. I had astronomy as a minor, and I knew who he was. Sort of questions your credibility about ANYTHING you post.

Says the man who believes the entire scientific community is involved in the largest conspiracy ever conceived.

Come back when you can comment on the science.

Heretic wrote:

Says the man who believes the entire scientific community is involved in the largest conspiracy ever conceived.

Come back when you can comment on the science.

Once again, Mr. Science. I said LIE, not conspiracy. Do you know the difference?

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

I said LIE, not conspiracy.

Lies are the core of all conspiracies. Lies for grant money and funding, international collusion involving multiple organizations and governments... which is what these emails allegedly show. How can that not be a conspiracy? You do know what a conspiracy is, right? You didn't think this through, did you?

Or is this the small, still functioning, rational part of your brain recognizing how irrational a belief in such a conspiracy would be, and you're trying to redefine your way out of embarrassing yourself further?

Heretic wrote:

BigWhiteGuy wrote:

I said LIE, not conspiracy.

Lies are the core of all conspiracies. Lies for grant money and funding, international collusion involving multiple organizations and governments... which is what these emails allegedly show. How can that not be a conspiracy? You do know what a conspiracy is, right? You didn't think this through, did you?

Or is this the small, still functioning, rational part of your brain recognizing how irrational a belief in such a conspiracy would be, and you're trying to redefine your way out of embarrassing yourself further?

Mr. Science. Ha.

You (and "others") base AWG on the fact that global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century. What you won't even consider is that 80% of that data was obtained from someone staring out a window and jotting down the temperature from a mercury thermometer. This occurred all over the world.

What exactly is the:
1. Human Error factor
2. Error factor concerning primitive instruments

So many questions.
And Al Gore, the inventor of the Internet, has all the answers. Is he a Democrat or a Republican, I forget.