Orth, how are mars and Venus experimental examples of global warming? Please tell me you aren't going to say that their temperature differences from the earth are a result of their atmospheric conditions.

The temperature difference between summer and winter on EARTH is about 40 degrees in most places just due to a slight tilting of the earth in relation to the sun. To say that the temperature differences of Venus (25 million miles closer) and Mars (50 million miles farther) are due to green house effects, rather than than proximity to the sun is simply crazy!

You'd have to explain why mercury is the hottest planet with no atmosphere somehow.

Remember when we used to cry about the "hole im the ozone layer"? :-)

@Philcore, Venus is twice as far from the sun as Mercury, the average surface temperature on Venus is 462ºC, the day time temperature on Mercury is only 427ºC. (with night time dropping to -173ºC)

Tell me the atmosphere on Venus doesn't affect the surface temp. And that, given the fact that solar intensity drops off at the square of the distance, we can't use these examples to illustrate exactly what I claimed.

And no Mercury is certainly not the hottest planet. No atmosphere means it has no insulation and lose heat faster than Venus, hence the very low nighttime temp.

And Draug - i believe you will find i do recall, and you'll note that the ozone layer has nothing to do with Global warming (UV rays blocked by ozone don't cause cancer, which is great, but also completely unrelated)

I was trying to lighten the intensity a touch. Note the smiley.

But there is one key difference between the planets regardless of atmosphere. Mass and surface area. The greater the mass and larger the surface area, the nor energy the object can absorb on the daytime side and the more has to be bled off on the dark side. Atmosphere spreads this energy around through currents as does liquid surfaces like water. So solid rock or fully molten planets without any liquid surface or gaseous atmosphere tend to heat up more on the daylight side. And the larger they are, the more direct radiation hits them and the more they can and do absorb.

"Orth, how are mars and Venus experimental examples of global warming? Please tell me you aren't going to say that their temperature differences from the earth are a result of their atmospheric conditions"

Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, but it is also more reflective than Earth. If it were not for the greenhouse effect Venus would be colder than Earth. That is an uncontroversial fact of physics. Because of the greenhouse effect Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System.

Mars is affected to a small degree by the greenhouse effect. It is warmer by about 5 degrees Celsius than it would be otherwise.

Pretty much no expert in physics or climatology denies the greenhouse effect. Even scientists who are climate change deniers accept the fact of the greenhouse effect. Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist at MIT who is one of the best known deniers of AGW himself says the only people who deny the greenhouse effect are "nutters".

http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf

On Lindzen, I challenge you climate change supporters to look at Figs 7a and 7b in this paper and confidently put the correct time scale on the X axis.

Maybe while you are doing it you might stumble across this opening statement:
70
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
Volume 18
Number 3
Fall 2013
Science in the Public Square: Global
Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents
Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D.
70
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
Volume 18
Number 3
Fall 2013
Science in the Public Square: Global
Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents
Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D.
Though valuable as a process, science is always problematic
as an institution. Charles Darwin often expressed gratitude
for being able to be a gentleman scientist with no need for an
institutional affiliation. Unfortunately, as a practical matter, the
gentleman scientist no longer exists. Even in the 19th Century,
most scientists needed institutional homes, and today science
almost inevitably requires outside funding. In some fields,
including climate, the government has essentially a monopoly
on such funding.
Expanded funding is eagerly sought, but the expansion of
funding inevitably invites rent-seeking by scientists, university
administration, and government bureaucracies.
The public square brings its own dynamic into the process
of science: most notably, it involves the coupling of science to
specific policy issues. This is a crucial element in the climate
issue, but comparable examples have existed in other fields,
including eugenics and immigration, and Lysenkoism and
agronomy.
Although there are many reasons why some scientists
might want to bring their field into the public square, the cases
described here appear, instead, to be cases in which those
with political agendas found it useful to employ science. This
immediately involves a distortion of science at a very basic
level: namely, science becomes a source of authority rather
than a mode of inquiry. The real utility of science stems from
the latter; the political utility stems from the former

I wonder why such a great and well respected mind published this in a journal for medical doctors, instead of other experts in his field. I suggest it would have been torn to shreds in peer review. This is little better than an opinion column. None of the data can be trusted because those who review (if it is indeed reviewed) this paper are not climatologists.



You might find these interesting as well if you wish to "consider the source" of your message, fullhamish:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-journal-of-american-physicians-and-surgeons-ideology-trumps-science-based-medicine/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons

So YJ - If you can post a link to an article/blog that discusses ideology trumping science in something as important as medicine - which is a life-and-death kind of thing...why can you not equally admit that the "science" of global warming (which is *by no means* a life-and-death kind of thing...) is in fact fraught with politics?

There is no other way to explain the consistent funding of a "science" that so consistently fails to produce accurate results other than that the motivation (of both "scientist" and their financial backers -- i.e. politicians) is political in nature. The electorate believes it because of all the initial scare-tactics used when the "science" began (i.e. believe this is true or the world will die), coupled with *very effective* brainwashing of the youth through a bought-and-paid-for school system, and you build a circular hell of perpetual idiocy:

Scientists publishes scary predictions about "destroying the planet"; ill-informed, uneducated population gets scared, votes for idiots that will continue funding bad science; politicians fund scientists, who continue to make dire predictions to secure funding, and they give their dire predictions to an ignorant, uneducated public, which demands their politicians fund research...

Problem is - THE DIRE PREDICTIONS NEVER COME TRUE. THE "SCIENCE" IS A LIE.

@orth, I looked up the data about mercury and Venus after I posted, and was surprised to see that I was wrong. I hate it when that happens! Luckily, it doesn't happen very often ;-)

krellin, I understand you believe all of that fundamentally, and I also understand it's pointless to try to argue the case with you. It's just not worth the investment in energy it takes to make a rational case with you, sorry.

@'(which is *by no means* a life-and-death kind of thing...)' - i believe you will find that it is considered life-and-death kind of thing.

@Phil, it's refreshing to hear someone willing to admit the small things.

@orth, don't play my admission down. It wasn't a small thing! In fact my error that I admitted to was quite literally "astronomical"

@YJ - I'm just asking you to admit that if *every* other realm of science is admitted to be subject to fraud and deciet, often for the purposes of politics (i.e. not science), then why is it so hard for you global warming believers to believe and admit that fraud and deceit exist in climate studies, for the purposes of pleasing political backers (read "funding mechanisms" --> i.e. job security).

We have proven cases of fraud in climate science, and we have case after case of climate scientists basically saying (when yet another dire warming fails to come to pass), "Oh...well...it seems x,y, and z are also a part of this, and we didn't take that in to account...so we really don't know why this is happening...BUT ALL OUR WARNINGS STILL STAND even though we have been repeatedly wrong and admit our lack of comprehension of the subject matter...)

By the level of belief you have in the scare tactics of the global warming crowd, I seriously don't grasp why you don't give religion a chance. That's all I'm saying...

If some joker tells you over and over again the gas pedal is used to stop your car, and you repeatedly read end people at red lights, but the joker tells you, "No, man, if you use the brake I swear you'll get in an accident and die!" are you going to eventually think the joker might not have a clue what he is talking about? Yeah...the jokers are the ones stealing tax dollars for their fraudulent, never-correct global warming science.

And here the prrof in the pudding...it isn't "global warming scientists" any more. Not even THEY believe that. Their "climate change scientists". And since everybody looks out the window in the morning to see what the weather is going to be like (because they don't trust the forecast...) we all know weather "changes"...therefore they have built themselves (finally...) a "science" that can't be contested....yes, climates change (and did so quite well, thank you very much, before man showed up on earth...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGG7JGT4Fdo nice short video.

" I'm just asking you to admit that if *every* other realm of science is admitted to be subject to fraud and deciet, often for the purposes of politics (i.e. not science), then why is it so hard for you global warming believers to believe and admit that fraud and deceit exist in climate studies, for the purposes of pleasing political backers (read "funding mechanisms" --> i.e. job security)."

Climate change scientist are as human as any other scientists. Climate change is an on-going multidisciplinary study. It is inevitable that sometimes the data will be wrong, or results misinterpreted, or parts of the theory replaced/updated as new evidence comes to light, or even subject to fraud. But this doesn't mean that the entire science is totally discredited. Evolution was not totally discredited just because piltdown man turned out to be a hoax.

It is a shame that the study has become so politicized, but this cannot be avoided because, to a greater extent than just about any other study, findings have profound political consequences.

I certainly don't think scientist should feel compelled to avoid publishing results that differ from the orthodoxy however. For example if Richard Lindzen is acting with good faith, and if he believes he has found a compelling reason why we do not need to be concerned, and if his studies are making progress, then he should be able to say what he things without feeling like a pariah. Even if it turns that he is wrong at he will still have contributed to the study of climate change.

typo.... he should be able to say what he *thinks without feeling like a pariah

Nope, krellin, I'm absolutely done with you on this topic. You just repeat the same stuff over and over again, and I'm not going to keep going over with you why it's still bullshit this time.

By refusing to engage with you, I'm doing you the best kindness I know how, so I hope you can respect that. You're free to say whatever you like, my position is that it's entirely unworthy of a response.

Krellin what would it take to prove AGW to you?

For example let's say the theory says we should expect temperatures to increase over the next twenty years (pure hypothetically)

If at the end of 20 years the temperature has risen in line with the predictions would this validate the theory?

On the other hand if temperatures stay the same or even fall slightly does this invalidate the theory?

Alternatively given the latter scenario, scientists say "ahhh we now realize that as a consequence of climate changes ocean currents have changed and this is why we think temperature did not rise as as expected". Would this last claim be a cop-out, in your view?

OK so these guys think that the Medieval Warm Period reached temperatures of a similar order to today's. I wonder what the driver was then or is the climate just intrinsically variable? The ''Climategate'' emails are particularly revelatory on this score.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n12/abs/nclimate1589.html

Solar insolation changes, resulting from long-term oscillations of orbital configurations1, are an important driver of Holocene climate2, 3. The forcing is substantial over the past 2,000 years, up to four times as large as the 1.6 W m−2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 (ref. 4), but the trend varies considerably over time, space and with season5. Using numerous high-latitude proxy records, slow orbital changes have recently been shown6 to gradually force boreal summer temperature cooling over the common era. Here, we present new evidence based on maximum latewood density data from northern Scandinavia, indicating that this cooling trend was stronger (−0.31 °C per 1,000 years, ±0.03 °C) than previously reported, and demonstrate that this signature is missing in published tree-ring proxy records. The long-term trend now revealed in maximum latewood density data is in line with coupled general circulation models7, 8 indicating albedo-driven feedback mechanisms and substantial summer cooling over the past two millennia in northern boreal and Arctic latitudes. These findings, together with the missing orbital signature in published dendrochronological records, suggest that large-scale near-surface air-temperature reconstructions9, 10, 11, 12, 13 relying on tree-ring data may underestimate pre-instrumental temperatures including warmth during Medieval and Roman times.

@yellowjacket
''I wonder why such a great and well respected mind published this in a journal for medical doctors, instead of other experts in his field.''

Putting aside your fallacy of an ''argument from authority''

Lets take Phil Jones, he of the Hadley Centre and famous Hockey stick graph, shall we? Just a couple of points about him -

1) He managed to’’ lose’’ some vital raw data:
"I thought it was the right way to get the data. I was specifically trying to get more rural station data that wasn't routinely available in real time from [meteorological] services." "[The loss of station location data is] not acceptable, [It's] not best practice."
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/weather-stations-china?guni=Article:in%20body%20link

2) He won't supply some of the raw data he has actually ‘’retained’’, the accumulation of which was/is largely paid for by the public purse -
‘’The emails reveal repeated and ­systematic attempts by him and his ­colleagues to block FoI requests from climate sceptics who wanted access to emails, documents and data. These moves were not only contrary to the spirit of ­scientific openness, but according to the government body that administers the FoI legislation were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation".
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/freedom-of-information-hacked-emails?guni=Article:in%20body%20link
3) He tried to censor his critics and keep them out of the peer review process:
In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University saying that he had
"recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised."
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/peer-review-block-scientific-papers?guni=Article:in%20body%20link

Much more where that came from.

Hi Fullhamish.

For starters, an argument from authority is not fallacious if the authority in question is actually an expert. It's OK (and in fact often necessary) to appeal to a credible authority with professional knowledge of the subject matter (that is to say not me, and not you).

For your citations... I'm sorry I don't follow how this addresses my question. I don't know who Phil Jones is, and I don't know anything about hockey sticks. Can you explain what you are trying to show with this? It appears you are laying a case for some sort of conspiracy. Is that what you are claiming?

@Argument from Authority, nobody is saying 'the scientists say the climate will warm, and they must be right because they are experts' - They are saying, 'the scientists have a theory, which they have explained, and you can work out the consequences for yourself' - Very different things, though it may come across as some kind of grey area.

Also being harassed by skeptics/deniers, with Freedom of Information requests - which take a lot of time/paperwork to complete and prevent you from doing your job - is not an ideal situation. Regardless of the law, it is not sensible for a scientist to be paid public money to spend all their time responding to freedom of information requests. (not to suggest i'm against openness and transparency in science, i think all data should be publically available, as it sometimes is in genetics, and all journals should be free to the readers - as some are becoming)