Mod+ 234. GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR ILLUSION OF CONTROL

Alex, the issue of whether or not AGW is solvable is itself a contentious issue; as is whether or not it exists in the first place. My opinion on it is that it's solvable provided that people act in time. However, that can’t happen until there’s a collective understanding that unless we act, sooner rather than later, then we’re in for major trouble. In order to get to that level of awakening there first needs to be a discussion pertaining to the reality of AGW and its seriousness. In that regard, my question to you is, what do you find to be “wacky” about the idea that global warming is real and is caused by humans?

what "people"? How are you going to get China and India to go along with your plan (whatever it is)? Why on earth would less industrialized countries agree to a plan that leaves them impoverished while we worry about the carbon footprint of our new Mazda.

If you don't have a reasonable policy solution you're not really engaging the issue... you're just trying to yourself feel good.
 
can anyone please tell us how you would implement, manage and enforce policy to effect a 30% reduction in CO2 within the next 20 years (wacky idea... pipe dream).
pick any figure you like the point is the same.

There's been a 12% DECREASE of CO2 emissions in the U.S., in the last five years. The biggest drop came just last year - even as the economy grew. This is not spam from a conservative think tank; this is verifiable data from the unbought and unbiased U.S. Energy Information Administration. Why did CO2 drop ? Mostly because of electricity generation switching from coal to natural gas. And why did they switch to gas? I'd say it's partly because previous government policy decisions made dirty coal too expensive (2/3rds of the drop) and because of public support for renewables (1/3rd of the drop).

why do our politicians continue to pretend like there's some kind of real policy decision here?

Maybe a better question is: how come we don't hear about it dropping ? I'd say that's maybe because the fact doesn't fit into anyone's pre-conceived bias - neither the so-called alarmists, nor the alarm skeptics. And the best question is : if it can drop 12% without any noticeable pain - how far could we get it to drop if we agreed it was even a goal. . . .?

http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/
 
Sadly, I think time will show its you who is being silly Alex. That's sad for the planet and sad given everything you have achieved with increasing the visibility and acceptability of the science into anomalous experience and consciousness.

so you've read the emails and think it's ok for scientists to plot and scheme to deceive other scientists and the public!

you keep referencing these ridiculous CYA reports... reminds me of the BT Barnum quote, "who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes".

I'm done with topic... moving on to 235.
 
what "people"? How are you going to get China and India to go along with your plan (whatever it is)? Why on earth would less industrialized countries agree to a plan that leaves them impoverished while we worry about the carbon footprint of our new Mazda.

If you don't have a reasonable policy solution you're not really engaging the issue... you're just trying to yourself feel good.

First of all policy solutions first have start with acknowledgement that there is a problem. China acknowledges there is a problem and is responding to it as John Collins was confirming in the interview: Luckily for all of us China doesn't see things your way.


Global Governance against Global Warming and China’s Response
抑制地球变暖的全球治理以及中国的反应

Hongyuan Yu
Shanghai Institute for International Studies, China.
Shanghai, China
e-mail: hongyuanyu@126.com



ABSTRACT
In coming decades, China will become the world's largest source of pollutants causing
global warming and resulting climate change. Given China's rapidly increasing emissions of thes
pollutants, understanding its policies on climate change is extraordinarily important. According
to the fragmented-authoritarianism model of bureaucratic politics, one would expect the making
of China's climate change policies to be disjointed, protracted and incremental. However, China's
policy making in this area is actually highly coordinated.
What variables explain this
coordination of environmental – and particularly climate change – policy in China? This essay
addresses this and related questions by focusing on domestic policy-making institutions and by
linking regime theory with the behavior of Chinese bureaucracy. We focus on the role of China's
National Coordination Committee on Climate and discuss the influence of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) on the committees' creation, development
and operations. We find that China's highly coordinated policy making on climate change was in
large part stimulated by the FCCC process.


http://www.chinaipa.org/cpaq/v2i4/Hongyuan Yu.pdf
 
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so you've read the emails and think it's ok for scientists to plot and scheme to deceive other scientists and the public!

you keep referencing these ridiculous CYA reports... reminds me of the BT Barnum quote, "who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes".

I'm done with topic... moving on to 235.

I notice you don't even reference the unabridged emails. I would have thought that was the least that was owed for journalistic integrity. It makes me think you've never read them. And if you haven't how can you possibly cry fraud. I guess if I'm wrong you will post the links.

Its interesting that you have used Randi's favourite quote. It's kinda creepy...
 
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I registered for the Skeptiko forum, so Psiclops won't need to be a go-between.

This is my first post. It is puzzling that some people seem to think that new posters are somehow suspect. Is the forum some sort of exclusive club where it is assumed that only long-time posters have something to say that is worth considering?

Although I am new to the forum, I'm not new to Skeptiko. Prior to the eruption of the climate change issue, I had downloaded a lot of episodes and listened to most of them - some more than once. I had listened to a number of recent shows and then had gone back and started listening from show number 1. Most of these were downloaded from the old website. I was just about to send an email to Alex reporting that it can be very difficult to locate shows on the new website. I wanted to recommend that a friend listen to shows 33-35, but it is nearly impossible to locate them on the new website. If you page back from the main page, the list starts with 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 16, 27, 64… The last time I checked, shows 33-35 also weren't listed in the "Show Links" page. There were (apparently) missing shows on the old website, but the new website seems to list fewer shows. Luckily, I had made a file to keep track of which I had downloaded and which I had listened to, and this included URLs of the pages for the shows. The pages for 33-35 still exist on the website, but are nearly impossible to locate if you don't know the URLs.

I listened to the global warming show - twice. I was astonished by Alex's aggressive hostility towards the guests and the AGW subject in general. I have not listened to any other shows that had such hostility towards the guests. I had been just about to recommend some of the Skeptiko shows (e.g., 33-35) to some scientists I know to try to convince them that conventional science gets it wrong about psi because they refuse to look at the data. However, after the global warming show and subsequent forum squabbling, there is no way I would consider recommending Skeptiko to anybody. The credibility of Skeptiko has been seriously damaged.

There has been criticism of policies advocated by people who think AGW is a problem. However, I think it is important to recognize that AGW skeptics are also advocating a policy: the policy of continuing with business as usual. As described by Naomi Oreskes, by creating confusion and doubt about the science, the skeptics are currently succeeding in having their preferred policy adopted. I am quite certain that there will come a time when the reality of the AGW problem is undeniable in the minds of the general public. When that happens, the public will demand that action be taken to address the problem. This will result in much greater government control and intrusion into businesses and people's lives than would have been the case if action to address the problem had begun decades ago when climate scientists recognized the problem.

-- Jim Torson
 
this kind of silliness is really hard to take. JUST READ THE EMAILS:

/// The IPCC Process ///

Thorne/MetO:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary [...]
<snip>

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/climategate-2-0/#sthash.eWMLiI0l.dpuf


When the Climategate affair exploded in 2009, I spent a great deal of time studying the actual emails in their full context. I also studied the many claims of wrong-doing on the part of the scientists. I was not convinced that the attacks on the scientists were valid.

You seem to not understand a basic concept:

Isolated quotes taken out of context can be very misleading.

Another thing to understand is that the Climategate emails involved accusations against a relatively small number of climate scientists. Even if we make the (incorrect) assumption that all the work of these scientists is fraudulent and should be disregarded, this does not negate the basic idea of climate change because it is supported by the work of many thousands of other scientists. Climate science is not a house of cards that crumbles if a relatively small amount of research is shown to be erroneous or fraudulent.

Below is a new survey of recent climate change literature. I do not understand how anybody could think that these 9136 scientists are part of a gigantic world-wide conspiracy and are producing fraudulent scientific papers while only one is publishing correct information. I encourage you to read his discussion of the one dissenting article (see links at the website).


http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/01/0...y-1-9136-study-authors-rejects-global-warming

Wed, 2014-01-08 05:00

Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility: Only 1 of 9,136 Recent Peer-Reviewed Authors Rejects Global Warming

This is a guest post by James Lawrence Powell.

I have brought my previous study (see here and here) up-to-date by reviewing peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals over the period from Nov. 12, 2012 through December 31, 2013. I found 2,258 articles, written by a total of 9,136 authors. (Download the chart above here.) Only one article, by a single author in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, rejected man-made global warming. I discuss that article here.




My previous study, of the peer-reviewed literature from 1991 through Nov. 12, 2012, found 13,950 articles on “global warming” or “global climate change.” Of those, I judged that only 24 explicitly rejected the theory of man-made global warming. The methodology and details for the original and the new study are described here.



Anyone can repeat as much of the new study as they wish--all of it if they like. Download an Excel database of the 2,258 articles here. It includes the title, document number, and Web of Science accession number. Scan the titles to identify articles that might reject man-made global warming. Then use the DOI or WoS accession number to find and read the abstracts of those articles, and where necessary, the entire article. If you find any candidates that I missed, please email me here.

The scientific literature since 1991 contains a mountain of evidence confirming man-made global warming as true and no convincing evidence that it is false. Global warming denial is a house of cards.
 
Hi Jim, welcome.

I was just about to send an email to Alex reporting that it can be very difficult to locate shows on the new website. I wanted to recommend that a friend listen to shows 33-35, but it is nearly impossible to locate them on the new website. If you page back from the main page, the list starts with 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 16, 27, 64…
We had this discussion on the old forum. I eventually found most of the episodes elsewhere on the internet, and downloaded them, but now they're no longer available (on the internet). As to most of the shows not having been transfered over from the old Skeptiko, yeah, maybe you could ask Alex about that.

If you, or anyone, is interested in one of those early mysteriously vanished Skeptko episodes, tell me and I'll try to make it available. However, I would then ask you or someone to point me to a way where I could put these online somewhere without my having to register to something that then tracks my footprints on the internet! ;)

I was astonished by Alex's aggressive hostility towards the guests and the AGW subject in general.
Funny, I didn't get that impression at all. Alex was telling them that he needed to "push" them, and Rick and John were very OK with it. Why doesn't someone e-mail Rick or John and ask them if they thought Alex was "aggressively hostile"?
 
Funny, I didn't get that impression at all. Alex was telling them that he needed to "push" them, and Rick and John were very OK with it. Why doesn't someone e-mail Rick or John and ask them if they thought Alex was "aggressively hostile"?

I nominate You, Ian, to write to Rick and John. You seem to have approached this discussion with an honest and agnostic mindset.
 
Yeah, we have to be careful with our ascribing political motivations to different posters here because of their positions on climate change. Some here (and previously) have made clear their conservative-to-right-wing inclinations, but I knew that didn't fit Michael L..

If he's wrong, he's just plain wrong, not politically motivated wrong ;). (joke)

Ian, you might be very surprized that I rated this little humble post of yours as "best"... ;) But, in a few words, you summarized the very essence of the problem which is described in my long promomtions of scientific method and anti-censorship discourse in the area of controversial topics. Because, being very short, my idea is this: if we want to do real science, we should analyse the evidence - not the political links and affilations, sources of funding, cultural consensus and social policy-making.

This thread - as well as other CAGW-related threads before - sadly demonstrate how easily people move from discussing the data to inquiring who funded whom, and then condemning the ones who (possibly) had funding from Bad Sources (the degree of "badness" is determined according to the political sympathies and antipathies of particular poster).

This is what is really scary - the modern mainstream science is quite ready to put politics, economics and dominant culture before evidence, logic and mathematics.

The Journal of Scientific Exploration had good articles about this state of events. This one, by Daniel Deming, analyses it in relation with climate change debates; another one, by Henry Bauer, in relation with science in general.

As for me, politics is a tragicomical enterprise that can be studied only with a good dose of humor and irony; otherwise you'll soon become deeply depressed and with a strongly shaken faith in humanity. Timothy Leary summarized the problem neatly: “The only intelligent way to discuss politics is on all fours, since it all comes down to territorial brawling in the end”.

Debates on the politics of climate change research may be used as a perfect illustration for this Leary's quote. :mad:
 
If they want to know more about this issue from the sceptical side, then I recommend they go to either http://wattsupwiththat.com/ or http://climateaudit.org/ and enter "Marcott" in the search box.
The 'wattsup' site is run by a weatherman and 'climateaudit' was founded by a long-time mining industry executive, both of whom have ties to the fossil fuel industry.

For those interested in genuine scientific inquiry and analysis as it relates to global warming, I highly recommend Skeptical Science and RealClimate. Skeptical Science has a some useful pages that list the common climate myths that the skeptics frequently promulgate. There are three pages with different formats: Argument, Popularity, and Taxonomy. If someone tries to con you with lies about global warming you can go to one of those pages to look up what the truth actually is. As of today there's 154 myths listed.

Of course, you yourself wouldn't resort to mudslinging about McKitrick, who besides being an economist is a rather good statistician, and climate science could do with a lot more of those.
Pointing out McKitrick’s profession and affiliations isn’t “mudslinging”, it’s stating undisputed facts. If you were truly proud of his background you would have said my pointing out his allegiances was a compliment. You didn’t do that.

If not arguing in good faith means I don't have faith in the church of global warming, paint me pink with purple stripes and call me guilty, for I certainly don't.
No, that’s not what it means. It means: not obfuscating. You’re a flagrant violator in that regard as I pointed out in my previous posts.

Your faith is touching, but it shouldn't be a matter of faith at all.
Huh? You mean my good faith? That just means I debate honestly.

Save your faux and stilted indignation on this issue, it doesn't wash.
Why so skeptical about my “indignation”? It’s one of my emotions that I don’t have any trouble genuinely feeling and expressing. Trust me, it’s real.

Whatever you say, Marcott created the impression that the graph came solely from the proxy data, and that was the thing that everyone got excited about: for if it could independently duplicate the actual C20th instrumental record, that would validate the pre-C20th proxy record he came up with.
You might have gotten that "impression", but how would you know, really? You obviously didn’t read their paper. As far as “everyone” getting “excited about” it is concerned, I think we all know by now who those people are. You cite them exclusively all the time…they're the ones that bring conclusions that don't have any scientific merit. Also, Marcott was specifically asked about this just a couple of weeks after the publication of his paper and he unequivocally stated that the 20th century data came from the instrument record as I previously pointed out. The fact that denial blogs didn't discuss it is their own doing. I'm certain that it was premeditated...or was that also a conspiracy?

But Marcott says the record shows just how unusual our current warming is. "It's really the rates of change here that's amazing and atypical," he says. -- NPR
The above is a true statement based upon best available evidence that we have today.

Marcott neglected to tell NPR his methodology did not recognize ‘fast’ century changes at all–until recent thermometer records were spliced onto the 73 paleosites. -- Rud Istvan
That above assertion is incorrect. I’m sure that some "fast" temperature excursions go undetected with the methodology that Marcott et al. used. However, given a large enough spike the signal can be detected. Instead of Rud proclaiming "at all", he would have been more correct to say: "...not recognize 'fast' century changes less than X degrees".

"Any small “upticks” or “downticks” in temperature that last less than several hundred years in our compilation of paleoclimate data are probably not robust, as stated in the paper." -- Marcott​

The question is how big of an uptick is required to register? I don't know the answer to that. I saw that Taminio posted some interesting work that he's done in that regard which may provide further insight into this.

Michael, I've linked to that ridiculous video that you previously posted along with the recent Shakun-Marcott reconstruction (Figure 1) that I posted in response to it so people can see the genesis of the current debate that we're having.
 
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Ok, time for a novel approach. This is supposed to be a place where psychic phenomena are given credence so let's put that to the test. I use a pendulum. I have extremely good spiritual access with it. Over the past couple of days I have asked the same questions put in a variety of different ways. I get the same answers every time.
  1. Is Global Warming really happening? Response...YES
  2. Is human activity the main cause of Global warming? Response...YES
  3. Is this a risk to some of the lifeforms on this planet? Response...YES
  4. Can we act fast enough to reduce Global Warming? Response...YES
  5. Will we act fast enough to reduce Global warming? Response...EQUIVOCATE
  6. Is there a conspiracy in the Climate Science community? Response...NO

If we're bringing mediums into it, UFO contact has been warning people for years that we are destroying the planet .

Jules, Steve, I do understand that your posts were half-jocular, but you pointed the fact of receiving information with psychic and spiritual methods.

I told in my posts already (and for several times) that information obtained via spiritual and psychic means are always partially imaginal and based on mystic's or psychic's preffered cultural patterns and principles.

Because this is not a joke, but a real problem that must be always remembered by any spiritual seeker and psychic person.

In his recent exchange with Ersby on the subject of remote viewing, Craig Weiler mentioned that the less remote viewer knows about the target, the better results (s)he usually have. And this is exactly what I expected.

There is no clear line separating perception from imagination and thought; in fact, they are always conflating with each other. This is true for body-based sensory perception; this is even more true for psyche-based extra-sensory perception. In latter case, imagination and thought can easily replace genuine ESP.

To prevent such replacement when practicing ESP, one should do 3 things:

1) Not to give imagination and thought too much "food". The more you know about your target, the more your subconscious would bother itself with processing all this information (changing and modifying it according to your imaginal and thinking patterns), and your ESP would be weaken. To the contrary, the little amount of information will let you to concentrate your volition and intention to perform actual act of ESP without interference.

2) To face and understand your biases, and to cleance your mind from them. Your should achieve your inner balance and concentration, and be ready to accept any information which you will obtain via ESP, whether you would like it or not.

3) The most important: to verify the verifiable/falsifiable parts of your experience - either yourself, or with reliable sources, and be ready that some of it would possibly be falsified by actual facts.

ESP can be useful, appliciable tool - one could look at psychic archeaology and other forms of applied parapsychology. But, as every tool, it should be taken critically. The purpose of ESP is to identify the most probable avenues for further search - but we can be sure about the results only when we verify them with more stable methods, such as biological senses and physical instruments.

The trained psychic can point to the most probable location of the missing person, and so help the efforts of search for him or her; but the real amount of psychic's help would be vindicated only if/when the person will be actually found on the psychically-pointed location.
 
If you don't have a reasonable policy solution you're not really engaging the issue...

You still don't get it. Nothing gets done collectively without a consensus. Consensus is only established through the spreading of ideas. Policy is formulated through consensus. That's how ALL significant cultural and political change gets enacted. There is no magic wand, either people choose to not destroy their habitat or deny there's a problem. There’re also those who throw their hands up in the air and give up, which you seem to be doing.

The only viable solution is for people to become aware of the seriousness of global warming and how detrimental it is to the survival of the species. There is only one solution: the population has to force their political leaders to enact change. To be successful in that cause there has to be enough pressure applied. That can only occur if enough people are in the coalition to apply sufficient pressure. Rallying the people is the key. That means convincing others like what some of us are doing here on your blog.

Why is the above so hard for you to understand?

Without a consensus there's no hope. And don't tell me you can never get 100% consensus. There doesn't have to be unanimous agreement. There's a critical mass at which point political leaders have to act accordingly; that percentage is always significantly less than 100%. There's obviously monumental resistance to overcome. The fact that your adversary is strong means doesn't mean you quit, it just means you have to fight harder.

I have to say, Alex, I find your defeatist attitude to be in poor form, to say the least. You have a decent venue in which you can help spread the consensus but you choose not to. Why? Is it because you believe that not enough people can manifest sufficient pressure, or is it because you don't believe global warming to be a real threat? Maybe both?

... you're just trying to yourself feel good.

My feelings don’t dictate my actions as far as what I see needs to be done in order to prevent the impending destruction of our ecosystem. My motivation stems from my intellectual understanding that humans are destroying the biosphere. If acting on that understanding made me feel bad, then I would still do it because I objectively know that it’s the right thing to do morally, ethically, and spiritually.
 
... you're just trying to yourself feel good.
Now that I think about it, I don’t think that acting morally, ethically, and spiritually can be separated out from how one feels. In any event, Alex, I think your “feelings” premise is a strawman because you can attribute that motivation to anyone about anything. It therefore doesn’t serve to delineate the relevant parameters of the debate. Another problem with that form of argument is that it presumes something that you can’t know given it’s subjective nature. In other words, your comment is also presumptuous.
 
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If it's irrelevant, there's hardly a need to comment.

My point was not particularly on the specific topic, but on the types of behaviour and interactions, where in some cases a type of behaviour is criticised, while on other occasions the same behaviour is praised. It does illuminate many of the debates which go on here. Only a very tiny proportion of time in any discussion is devoted to the facts, the vast majority of discussions revolve around different types of human behaviour.

Well, the problem is simple: the CAGW debate was badly politicized long ago, and remains in this sad state today.

As for behaviour... I myself warned against loose comparisons between different controversies, such as ones of psi and CAGW. However, suspecting that such comparisons would probably be made anyway, I want to explain the important differnce between psi and CAGW debates.

The CAGW debate proceeds inside the disciplines that are dedicated to the climate change research (climatiology, geology, biology, chemistry, physics). If one still want to make some comparisons with the psi debate, the question of the very existence of psi (e.g. classic proponents vs. skeptics) is not a revelant comparison: it is agreed by virtually all academic parapsychologists that psi exist - or, at the very least, that there is a lot of good evidence suggesting its very probable existence. The best psi-related comparison to CAGW debate is survival vs. super-psi debate: it proceeds inside the psi researchers' professional community, as sometimes becomes quite hot. Unlike climatologists and other CAGW researchers, parapsychologists do not have big money, public fame and career opportunities to fight for: they refused all these academicians' benefits, choosing the hard pursuit for the real evidence despite all difficulties it will bring... So, they are free from the pressing temptation to gang up on opposing colleagues, defame them, reject their research and supress their public discource, reaching the goal to create the "science-selling cartel" that will support bureaucrats and corporatists with faulty (but well-paid and kudos-receiving) research.

As for psi "skeptics", most of them are just ideologues and have little to do with science anyway. So, they are attacking it from outside: the best comparison here are some Bible-pushing young earth creationists. As for the few skeptics who actually did some parapsychological research (like Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman), and may be technically called "academic parapsychologists", they may be compared to "skydragons" who deny greenhouse effect despite the hard experimental evidence that it exists.
 
Funny, I didn't get that impression at all. Alex was telling them that he needed to "push" them, and Rick and John were very OK with it. Why doesn't someone e-mail Rick or John and ask them if they thought Alex was "aggressively hostile"?

I also felt Alex was too aggressive, particularly during the first half of the interview. Rick is a friend of Alex, and is not an expert in the subject, he had forgotten about 'climategate' ? I got the impression that John is secure in what he thinks, and unlike Alex, is quite content not to force his view ? I think Alex is a good guy, but he let himself down on this topic.

I think publically they would say ' of course not ' to any such question , but I'd bet the interview left a slightly bad taste ? Not so much on the spiritual stuff.
 
This thread - as well as other CAGW-related threads before - sadly demonstrate how easily people move from discussing the data to inquiring who funded whom, and then condemning the ones who (possibly) had funding from Bad Sources (the degree of "badness" is determined according to the political sympathies and antipathies of particular poster).

If I can't mention that the skeptical scientists receive "speaking fees" from Exxon, then the skeptics should not be allowed to suggest that the mainstream scientists are "merely protecting their funding."

if we want to do real science, we should analyse the evidence - not the political links and affilations, sources of funding, cultural consensus and social policy-making.

And if it is NOT funding that motivates the mainstream scientists, then the skeptics cannot claim it is 'group-think' that motivates the mainstream - for that would force them to deny their own existence. In other words, if EVERYBODY in that camp agrees. . . then how come the skeptics manage to slip out of the group ?

And if it is not political affiliations, we are left with a curous fact that only 6 percent of scientists are Republicans in the first place - ---

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/lab_politics.html
 
By now, I guess everybody is aware that Skeptical Science is a good place to see what mainstream climate scientists have to say on various issues:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html

However, from this it can be difficult to see the big picture and understand the impacts we face in the coming decades if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. Here is a good discussion of what mainstream science says about the impacts:

An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/14/1009121/science-of-global-warming-impacts-guide/

This ends by showing the failure of one type of climate model: the Arctic Sea Ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected.

I would also highly recommend this excellent discussion of the sea level rise problem:

Sea Level Rise: New, Certain & Everywhere
http://thebenshi.com/?p=4662
 
Hi Jim, welcome.
Funny, I didn't get that impression at all. Alex was telling them that he needed to "push" them, and Rick and John were very OK with it. Why doesn't someone e-mail Rick or John and ask them if they thought Alex was "aggressively hostile"?

I wouldn't have called Alex hostile but my impression was definitely that John Collins was just blocked every time he tried to demonstrate AGW was still happening. He couldn't finish a sentence.
 
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