Load of rubbish. Stop falling for it. "Climate change" is an industry. You know the ones selling "green fossil fuels" (hint: this is impossible) and "carbon offsetting" (hint: this doesn't actually exist - it's a another way of trading futures) conveniently via people's guilt and fear. You're jumping right in and supporting their agenda.

For the younger people amonst us, you probably won't remember the ice age that was about to kill us all in the 1970s, which drove energy sales.

We simply do not have enough accurate data to model the climate on a microscopic or macroscopic level. The data we have is pretty much random static. The "climatologists" (scientific heretics if you ask me), pick a regression model which matches what people have paid to see. Anyone who did A-Level mathematics or has a half decent graphic calculator, excel or a pen and some time can see it's crap.

Yes it's getting warmer. It's done it before. Then it went cold again. It was warm enough that the Romans though hey-ho let's plant masive vineyards near Peterborough.

An analogy is:

Day 1: "I feel sick, I'll be better soon"
Day 4: I feel much better".
Day 8: "I feel sick - I'm going to die because I've never been this sick before".
We are on day 9.
Day 10: "I feel much better now".

Argh this annoys me terribly. It's the blind leading the blind.

A better analogy is this:

Patient: What is wrong with me?
Doctor 1: Too much smoking. You better quit smoking.

Patient: That doctor is an idiot. I better see another doctor
Doctor 2: Smoking is bad for your health. Quit now.

Patient: He doesn't know what he is talking about. I better see another one.
Doctor 3: Your coughing is getting serious. Smoking aggravate it.

Patient: Another stupid doctor. Let me try again....
>
>
> and again, till...
>
>
DOCTOR 9: Well it is stil not established if smoking is really bad for you. I smoke myself. Your coughing will pass away, sooner or later.
Patient: At last a doctor who knows what he is talking about.



‘There is no evidence’ — Yes, there is

Objection: Despite what the computer models tell us, there is actually no evidence of significant global warming.

Answer: Global warming is not an output of computer models; it is a conclusion based on observations of a great many global indicators. By far the most straightforward evidence is the actual surface temperature record. While there are places — in England, for example — that have records going back several centuries, the two major global temperature analyses can only go back around 150 years due to their requirements for both quantity and distribution of temperature recording stations.

These are the two most reputable globally and seasonally averaged temperature trend analyses:


NASA GISS direct surface temperature analysis

 http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/


CRU direct surface temperature analysis

 http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/



Both trends are definitely and significantly up. In addition to direct measurements of surface temperature, there are many other measurements and indicators that support the general direction and magnitude of the change the earth is currently undergoing. The following diverse empirical observations lead to the same unequivocal conclusion that the earth is warming:

Satellite Data

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


Radiosondes

 http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/angell/angell.html


Borehole analysis

 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/pollack.html


Glacial melt observations

 http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/glacier_balance.html


Sea ice melt

 http://nsidc.org/news/press/20050928_trendscontinue.html


Sea level rise

 http://sealevel.colorado.edu/


Proxy Reconstructions

 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html


Permafrost melt

 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725124.500


There is simply no room for doubt: the Earth is undergoing a rapid and large warming trend.


 http://grist.org/series/skeptics

Yes there is global warming but its been warmer before. That implies that it must have cooled at some point. We're very arrogant to suggest that a climate model for a few years is accurate. This planet has been around for billions of years and we don't understand it. It's convenient to pretend we do when there is money made.

The carbon sequestration model is bollocks as well: they've not yet worked out the entire CO2 pathways. I mean someone actually worked out in 2009 that the trees do pretty much sod all and the ocean algae do all the work.

The difference this time being about 337 BILLION TONS of carbon released into the atmosphere since 1751AD. Half of this amount was releases since 1970. Releases in 2007 being 8.365 billion metric tonnes.
Source:
 http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html

There has been no increase in capacity to sink this gas.

A tank of air, a heat lamp, some CO2, a thermometer, and a stopwatch makes a straight forward project.

I guess about 40 billion more tons have been released since that data was published.

Sure, some people will try to make money.. they will try whatever the weather.

No! for fuck sake it is not a "moral" challenge. The problem is capital, the commodity and it's show. THAT is what has to be defeated if we are going to have a snowball in hells' chance.

Objection: Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by environmental extremists and liberals who want an excuse for more big government (and/or world government via the U.N.).

This is a common line, regardless of how ridiculous it is, so it should not go unanswered.

Answer: Here is a list of organizations that accept anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically well-supported:

NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS):
 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120806/

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):  http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):  http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm

National Academy of Sciences (NAS):  http://books.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html

State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC) –  http://www.socc.ca/

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):  http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html

The Royal Society of the UK (RS) –  http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3135

American Geophysical Union (AGU):
 http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/pdf/position_statements/AGU_Climate_Statement.pdf

American Meteorological Society (AMS):  http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeresearch_2003.html

American Institute of Physics (AIP):  http://www.aip.org/gov/policy12.html

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR):  http://eo.ucar.edu/basics/cc_1.html

American Meteorological Society (AMS):  http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/jointacademies.html

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS):  http://www.cmos.ca/climatechangepole.html

Every major scientific institution dealing with climate, ocean, and/or atmosphere agrees that the climate is warming rapidly and the primary cause is human CO2 emissions. In addition to that list, see also this joint statement (PDF) that specifically and unequivocally endorses the work and conclusions of the IPCC Third Assessment report. The statement was issued by:

Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil)
Royal Society of Canada
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Academie des Sciences (France)
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
Indian National Science Academy
Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
Science Council of Japan
Russian Academy of Sciences
Royal Society (United Kingdom)
National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)

You can also read this statement [PDF], which includes all the above signatories plus the following:

Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

But if scientists are too liberal and politicians too unreliable, perhaps you find the opinion of key industry representatives more convincing:

BP, the largest oil company in the UK and one of the largest in the world, has this opinion:

There is an increasing consensus that climate change is linked to the consumption of carbon based fuels and that action is required now to avoid further increases in carbon emissions as the global demand for energy increases.

Shell Oil (yes, as in oil, the fossil fuel) says:

Shell shares the widespread concern that the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities is leading to changes in the global climate.

Eighteen CEOs of Canada’s largest corporations had this to say in an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada:

Our organizations accept that a strong response is required to the strengthening evidence in the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We accept the IPCC consensus that climate change raises the risk of severe consequences for human health and security and the environment. We note that Canada is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Have the environazis seized the reigns of industrial power, in addition to infiltrating the U.N., the science academies of every developed nation, and the top research institutes of North America? That just doesn’t seem very likely.

 http://grist.org/climate-energy/global-warming-is-a-hoax/

 http://grist.org/climate-energy/there-is-no-consensus/

 http://grist.org/series/skeptics/

WHy? What are you hiding before that date?

Ummmm,

Global warming is a naturally occuring phenomenon caused by temperature variations which occur as a result of the earth being tilted on its rotational axis. If you spin a deflected ball in front of a flame with icy cold temperatures on its reverse side then you get some odd temperature variations which are not universally distributed. On planet earth, these temperature variations are distributed in the weather system so you get localised spikes of unusually high or low temperatures swimming around in amongst pressure systems.

Because of this, the cloud cover increases because high temperature spikes in normally cold areas have the effect of producing high precipitation. That doesn't happen if cold weather spikes in areas covered by desert or arid terrafirma. So if the weather changes at all, you see odd temperature spikes in odd places. The world doesn't need to heat up, or even cool down for this to happen. You just need to see any kind of change where wind direction or temperature spikes take place in places that are unusual.

As a result of the temperature spikes and higher precipitation, the cloud cover increases and you see larger areas of sheet ice forming. On a planetary scale, this can cover entire continents and last for thousands of years.

Its no big deal in the general scheme of things but for us humans living here now...it is indeed truly terrifying. But its also worth saying that ice ages take time to form and its slow enough for you to move to warmer climes without your hair catching fire through sheer head exploding panic. In fact you could be inside a forming ice age right now and the disruption wouldn't be much more than you are currently experiencing through austerity. Its a slowish process and only just detectable on a daily basis.

As activists, you should be concerning yourself with why you are being pointed to this panic-striking subject again and who is doing the pointing.

The last time pointy fingers were this twitchy, was during the late 60's and early 70's.

Vietnam war anyone?

I can confirm through an official experiment that a frog does not sit in a beacon of slowly heated water.

The frog does indeed attempt to jump out when the water gets too warm.

Al Gores a fucking plank!

Objection: One hundred and some years of global surface temperatures is not long enough to draw any conclusions from or worry about anyway.

Answer: The reliable instrumental record only goes back 150 years in the CRU analysis, 125 in the NASA analysis. This is a simple fact that we are stuck with. 2005 was the warmest year recorded in that period according to NASA, a very close second according to CRU. Because of this limit, it is not enough to say today that these are the warmest years since 150 years ago, rather one should say ‘at least’:

1998 and 2005 are the warmest two years in at least the last 150.

But there is another direct measurement record available that can tell us things about temperature over the last 500 years, and that is borehole measurements. This involves drilling a deep hole and measuring the temperature of the earth at various depths. It gives us information about century-scale temperature trends, as warmer or cooler pulses from long term surface changes propagate down through the crust.

Using this method we can see that temperatures have not been consistently this high as far back as this method allows us to look. This way of inferring surface temperatures does smooth out yearly fluctuations and even short term trends, so we can not know anything directly about individual years. But given the observable range of inter-annual variations recorded over the last century, it is quite reasonable to rule out single years or even decades being far enough above the baseline to rival today.

Using this record, we can reasonably conclude that it is warmer now than any time in at least the last 500 years.

It is possible to make reconstructions of temperature much further back, using what are called proxy data. These include things like tree rings, ocean sediment, coral growth, layers in stalagmites, and others. The reconstructions available are all slightly different and provide sometimes more and sometimes less global versus regional coverage over the last one or two thousand years. Note: this covers what is often referred to as the Medieval Warm Period. As noted, all these reconstructions are different, but …

… they all show some similar patterns of temperature change over the last several centuries. Most striking is the fact that each record reveals that the 20th century is the warmest of the entire record, and that warming was most dramatic after 1920.

Thus, we can reasonably say it is warmer now than any other time in at least the last 1,000 years.

 http://grist.org/series/skeptics/

Wow, this must have been reposted on some climate deniers/sceptics forum, the amount of regurgitated and debunked lengthy shit they are posting here (either that, or the quality of intellect of Indymedia readers has plummeted).

Don't believe their oil-funded lies.

Either human-caused catastrophic climate change is on it's way or it isn't - if we do something, then less of us die or we just become more efficient/responsible/create new jobs.....or we do nothing and many many more people and species die or we just go on as usual.....

Though I don't have to think about that either/or myself because I've studied reputable peer-reviewed reports....if you are a nutter or otherwise have your head in the sand. it's clear that the safer approach is the precautionary one.

I'm not revisiting this thread so deniers, debate amongst yourselves if you haven't anything better to do.

You can't argue with stupid people with the ability to copy and paste, so I'll summarise with my knowledge.

I suggest you spend your time with the actual data, even from the IPCC and actually run a regression analysis yourself. Check a simple linear regression then a sinusoidal regression.

Right - go and find a book and learn about limits, then calculus. Plot ALL the data you can get your hands on on a graph where X=time and Y=average temperature. The slope of the line (as x tends to zero) points towards a positive incline if you consider the absolutely microscopic amount of data from 1860. That is where the justification for warming comes from.

It is correct. It's getting warmer (at the moment).

If you zoom out on the x axis (to show a greater time as recorded from the ice cores that have been collected and published by NGS), a sinusoidal regression will fit the data pointing to a cyclic average temperature over the last few thousand years.

Now zoom back in - 50% of the time (differentiating the result), it's warming. The other 50% of the time, it's cooling.

Sorry but it's just fucking impossible to actually believe a word of the whole carbon crisis crap.

Also, historically, going back millions and millions of years, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere at all. It's our horrible polluting fucking proterozoic bastard ancestors that created it all and poisoned everyone with their doom-breathing.

“We are already committed to a 0.6°C rise on 1990 levels…Even the IPCC…sees us approaching close to a 2°C rise in global temperature by 2100.”

The International Eneergy Agency has said that by 2020 atmospheric CO2 will be high enough to produce a 2°C rise in global temperature. Their Chief Economist has said it looks like we’re headed for a 6°C rise in global temperature some time late this century.