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"The earth had dramatic warm and cool periods long before humans, and will continue to despite us."

Ok, what you're trying to do here, in the context of my first post, is make a case for one of those 'unknown processes' that I talked about. Now, I'm all for that, I'm not closing any doors, but if you want me to accept that there is some other, natural, process going on, you're going to have to show some evidence for it. Show me that the sun's output has changed and is causing the rise in temperature, or that the real culprit is volcano emissions, or amoeba farts, or whatever.

"If the case for anthropogenic global warming is so strong, why are scientists falsifying data like in ClimateGate?"

There have been I don't know how many independant investigations (about 5 or so at last count) into "ClimateGate", and they have all cleared scientists of lying or falsifying data. So I throw your question back to you - if this is all a big put on by scientists, why can we never catch them lying/falsifying the data? I mean, we should be able to if this is a coverup, right?

"Much evidences suggests that we are headed into another "Little Ice Age" like in the 1700s. But few people talk about this for some reason." Well, the reason that we don't talk about it is because there isn't any evidence that we're heading back into a mini Ice Age. But again, apply the scientific process to this. Your hypothesis is that we are heading back into a mini Ice Age. Well, the last time that happened, we saw a drop in CO2 levels, which is what you would expect to see according to modern climate models. This time round, CO2 is rising and temperatures are rising. Bearing in mind the facts from my first post, I don't see how you can possibly expect that we are about to head into another mini Ice Age, unless you are once again proposing some mysterious cause that we haven't yet detected that is going to force the climate into a colder state. Once again, I'm willing to listen, but you're going to have to back your position up with some evidence if you want me to accept the hypothesis.

>why are scientists falsifying data like in ClimateGate?

You've repeated this accusation several times in this thread. Can you back this up? I've asked people many times, nobody ever produces anything. They just assume that it was proved, without ever actually checking their hypotheses.

Here's an example of what scientific misconduct looks like, from my field:

http://www.economist.com/node/21528593

The researchers screwed up through basic sloppiness, then refused to correct their errors after they were pointed out. Has there been anything this bad in the the leaked climate emails? BTW, as a scientist I know that "trick" has more than one meaning, particularly when it comes to problem solving, so if you think that the use of the word "trick" is rock-solid proof, please explain how deception was perpetrated rather than clever problem solving.

Really, ClimateGate is the least of my concerns as far as "bad science" goes - most of the bad science is not being hidden behind conspiracies, it is in our face.

To be honest - I do not know if the researchers really hid or falsified data, and I do not know what attempts were made (if any) to further cover this up. But I do know that it did come into public light, and that raises my suspicions a little bit. But regardless if they did hide anything or not, I am more concerned with the fact that scientists are so eager to prove that AGW has a major impact and seemingly hesitant to try and prove the opposite.

The hypothesis testing approach to statistical inference, which is what most of the scientific community uses, explicitly demands researchers try to prove that, say, AGW has no major impact, before reporting on their failure to do so.

The hypothesis of a major impact is suggested because negligible impact cannot be, in the face of data. The popular Neyman-Pearson test doesn't even account for failing to detect an effect - it concerns itself strictly with not seeing ghosts.

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors...

Demallien -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/

Here you go :)

I would emphasize that there is no more proof that we are headed into an Ice Age than there is that we are headed into a particularly warm period, I only mention the Ice Age because so few people talk about it. Weather is very difficult to model - we can barely model next month's weather accurately, let alone the next hundred years.

In particular, here is the major fallacy: Even if weather did sharply rise over a century, there is no telling what that might mean for the following century. In fact, if you look at most temperature spikes, they are usually followed by cool periods. It is like saying that because tomorrow is hot, and the next day hotter, that we must be headed into a really hot period. It simply does not work like this.

As for ClimateGate, I'm not really into conspiracies, but it would not surprise me if some scientists had their asses covered. Imagine the people who would look stupid for handing a Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore. Not that hard to pull strings on these so called "investigations" - everyone has a price.

That article doesn't say what you seem to think it says. Or at least, the Register, in their usual slip-shod journalistic style, have been very fast and loose about the sources of different pieces of information in the article. NASA notes that their measurements indicate that the Sun is going into a low-activity period. They also note that the last time we saw this, it correlated to the Little Ice Age. They do not make any claim about a causal link between the two, simply noting that it something that is perhaps worth investigating. The Register then go on to wildly speculate that this could mean that we are heading into a Little Ice Age. I hope you don't mind if I don't take the opinion of a journalist at The Register as a serious scientific exposition.

There are major problems with this hypothesis. Firstly, it doesn't fit with our reductionist understanding of how the climate interacts with the Sun. For example, this period of 'low activity' corresponds to a drop of just 0.1% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation) of the Sun's output - a drop that is too small to produce the Little Ice Age all by itself.

Secondly, even if the Sun's output of energy drops, there is the question of whether it's lower output can offset the calculated rise in temperature due to the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. The answer there is a resounding 'no', based on our current understanding of how greenhouse gases work. So once again, you're trying to argue for an unknown deus ex machina to save the hypothesis.

If you haven't noticed, each objection to climate change finishes in that same way - they all rely on some unknown effect changing the results that simulations are currently showing. Not surprisingly, most scientists prefer to wait for some substantial evidence that such an effect exists before throwing out the explanation resulting from all effects known as of today.

Also, if you really want to rely on the Sun's output to save us from global warming, I have to note in passing that a) we can't control the Sun, and b) we can't even predict the Sun very well (no one anticipated the latest minimum, so we have no idea when it's going to change).

You can poke at anomolies all you like, but unless you can upset the basic reductionist science that I outlined in my original post, you aren't doing science, you're doing politics.

Demaillien:

I completely agree with you on this:

"If you haven't noticed, each objection to climate change finishes in that same way - they all rely on some unknown effect changing the results that simulations are currently showing. Not unsurprisingly, most scientists prefer to wait for some substantial evidence that such an effect exists before throwing out the explanation resulting from all effects known as of today."

We can create all sorts of models but the harsh truth is that they are all very rough estimates. We know that solar fluxations cause temperature change, we know that CO2 does, etc. The problem lies with the measurements. We cannot accurately measure our future CO2 levels, we don't know exactly how much CO2 is getting transformed by trees and at what rate, and we do not know how much CO2 is coming from under-sea vents and how much methane from cow farts. In fact, our models have already been proven wrong many times over, inside and outside of climate research. In fact, 60 percent of all scientific studies done have been wrong. We have a tendency (as humans) to make invalid assumptions and jump to conclusions about data without accounting for all of the dependent and independent variables. There are a ton of variables, and no accurate way to measure all of them yet.

Arguing for or against climate change is like trying to tell a religious person that God does not exist. You cannot prove or disprove it, so it is kind of fruitless either way.

At the end of the day, there is one take-away: differentiating facts from hypothesis. We have a lot of hypotheses, but very few facts.

In fact, 60 percent of all scientific studies done have been wrong.

84% of all statistics are pulled from thin air.

This is why we have statistical inference

As science is done in big teams I'd say it would take a lot to cover someones ass. You usually have a professor, some scientists and a heckload of students of all levels, all interested in finding out the truth (more or less I guess).

I'm in climate research (as a Bachelor candidate, granted) and I wouldn't let anything like that slip, and I know I'm not the only one.

Like I have pointed out several times - there is no (known) truth. There are only hypotheses. You can easily cover up bad data, but you can't easily prove that someone covered up that data.

You say it's easy. I don't think so, for several reasons:

- If you collect raw data, everyone in the group knows. You can claim instrument failure, of course, but then you'd have everyone around trying to help.

- From the raw data alone it's hard to say what to dismiss. So you'd have to do the long-term analysis first and then decide what to ditch - harder then because your data will be on backup, and you will probably have talked about things with people - because it's a group.

- You're most probably not the only person using this data. As I said, there are students doing some work for you, other scientists in your group using your data.. and everyone would be happy to find something new.

- Additionally, I cannot think of a single professor who wouldn't love to find that global warming is not true.. but I could have misjudged here, of course.

demallien has already pointed out what we know and what we think, so I won't go into this.

We learned about the ice ages coming in cycles in school, 25 years ago. It is common knowledge - I think the climate researchers have probably heard about it, too. Honestly, I am so tired of hearing this oh so clever counterpoint.

I guess we should just ignore all counterpoints, because you are tired of hearing them. That's real science!

No, because they are invalidated on the grounds of being common knowledge.

I think your conspiracy should falter if it's details are being told in high school. What kind of conspiracy would that be?

Tichy - I do not think there is any conspiracy around ice ages - all that data is readily available. There is, apparently, willful ignorance though.

Tichy (won't let me reply directly, think its nested too deep) - "Do you have evidence that any climate researchers ignored the cycles of the ice ages?"

Yes, actually. If you look at 99 percent of studies, they are based on temperatures from maybe 1500 (at the earliest) to present. In geological time, this is the blink of an eye.

Here is a relevant quote from Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada:

"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

I don't see any mentioning of ice ages in that quote.

If you want to argue that no meaningful science can be done with data from 1500, then of course the answer of the effect of human CO2 output has to wait for a couple of million years. The whole research is then impossible in your opinion. I don't know about that...

As for Patterson's claims, I am no climatologist, so I can't comment. I don't think CO2 is generally thought to be the only thing affecting temperatures. Ok, off the top of my head: it is known that ice ages affect temperatures. That must probably be independent of CO2 (ice ages are not driven by CO2 changes), otherwise Patterson's remark would make no sense. So there is clearly at least one other known factor (the one that brings about ice ages), which Patterson conveniently forgets to mention. What do you say?

Sorry, but did you just argue that there is a slow cooling effect that cannot be seen, but that explains or will soon negate the rapid warming effect that has been detected?

Ice ages appear in cycles, that much is known. Sorry it was 25 years ago that I learned about it, so I forgot about the causes. However, the cycles are rather slow, so it seems possible that warming catches up with us faster than the next ice age. IANACS, though

Do you have evidence that any climate researchers ignored the cycles of the ice ages?

"why are scientists falsifying data like in ClimateGate?"

Um, they didn't. There wasn't really a ClimateGate, either, only some people wanted to fabricate one.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/...

The scientists admitted to these emails.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7...

Everybody seems to love dismissing ClimateGate, rather than at least becoming a little suspicious.

As far as I remember, there was an official investigation into this, which found no misconduct. The quotes are out of context and rather ridiculous ("I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.") - uh oh, they used a "trick"!!! They must be cheaters. The trick could actually just be some clever idea, which is what scientists tend to come up with to make progress, but people hear what they want to hear.

Becoming a little suspicious is exactly what the skeptics want you to become, hence the attempts to blow those emails out of proportion.

It might also be worth noting that attacking the science based on those emails is not actually scientific criticism, it is merely ad hominem. If you wanted, you could perhaps draw some conclusions from the skeptics resorting to such attacks, rather than science. But lets not go there...

Edit: for completeness sake, here is a random result from Google about the investigation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/24/climategate-investi...

There was an official investigation into the $2.3 trillion that Pentagon could not account for 10 years ago. They found nothing, conveniently. There are billions of dollars riding on green energy, government grants, and reputations on the line. I don't think it would be hard to do a "similar" investigation to the one done on the Pentagon.

You suffer from selection bias. You'll believe any source, no matter how tenuous, when it detracts, but refuse to believe one that supports, citing some kind of nebulous conspiracy. You're behaving in a profoundly unscientific manner.

Well I think the emails are public in their entirety, which is a distinction to the oval office accounting books? So everybody can do an investigation. Where are the results from skeptics (other than out of context quotes)? I am sure they invested in analyzing those emails?

In any case, you chose who you trust. Of course the impression that you can not trust anybody in the climate discussion is also beneficial to some parties (it is called FUD).

What do you think an average climate scientists earns, btw? I mean, what would be their incentive for faking it all?

I do not think that everybody is faking it - at most, there were a handful of scientists who covered up some bad data (if that even happened). Most scientists are benevolent - they are proposing hypotheses they honestly believe in. The problem is that they get attached to the consensus because it is the easiest thing to believe, and do not address all of the factors that could be wrong with their hypothesis. Being skeptical against AGW is much harder - I should know. For the first 25 years of my life, I was a die-hard AGW proponent.

What does AGW stand for - is it not the belief that no global warming is happening?

Anyway, this is all just guesswork (what scientists are doing, I mean). More interesting are your motivations for believing certain things. Maybe you need the self-image of being a skeptic?