I totally support that science can NOT exist without evidence, but i think you missed to highlight the concept of TRENDS. For me this is what makes no scientific groups to doubt from science.
If you tell someone that gravity exists then you drop and apple and TESTED! there is gravity. Temperature systems are extremely slow systems, if it takes 20 min to warm one oven how much it takes to warm a planet? there is when trends come in to play…We can not judge just from what we see now (express evidence). We have to look into the past and validate trends…this is something really important to validate science assertions..

I would say that you look just for sentence he said. There was more. From my 2nd row view it was - stop discussing if there is global warming, but start to discuss what to do with global warming. Stop talking about title of book - start to read a book.
And I do think that it is call for Th!nking.

Yes, I don’t think Jorgensen was telling us not to think. But there certainly are a lot of questions we don’t have satisfactory answers to; or if answers are available, then which are not widely discussed. I ask, for instance why it is that current warming appears to have begun around 1800 or even earlier according to the ice cores, but the CO2 concentrations began to rise later. This makes me ask whether if the world as a result of some other factor whether you would not then expect atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise in consequence? Having said that - it is quite clear that we need to do all we can to bring CO2 and other GHG concentrations down.
So we don’t need to worry too much about the causes - just accept the result - which is what I believe Mr Jorgensen was saying.

Stop talking and start doing? Doing what?

Before we treat the disease, we must first know the diagnosis, know the cause.

What if the illness was caused by something else? Then you risk selecting an unfuncntioning cure. Once you realise you used the wrong pills, it may be too late.

Imagine year 2090: We managed to get the CO2 levels down to 250 ppm, but warming still continues. Panic. How is it possible? What to do? Warming was caused by something else and…. Bang. Too late.

Sounds like M.D.House. But in this case we need to understand what can create more damage - treating with some certain possibility to succeed or just to leave for progression.
I always liked idea of House that we can treat and loose or we can just wait and loose. Which is one you choose?

Maybe you are right and we do not have the time to wait for scientific evidence.

But maybe it is just a tactic to silence opposition (in science, in politics). To push through measures, which are not rooted in scientific evidence.

Which seems disturbing. Whole our technical civilisation is based on science.

If we do it my way, we risk climate. If we do it your way, we risk destroying science (burning heretics, Galileo and such stuff).

Which pill will you take? The red one or the blue one?

I would agree that if we are uncertain of the exact cause of Climate Change then we shouldn’t abandon our search for a concrete explanation - but at the moment most fingers are pointing at human development as a major contributor and as such we have to act on that information. Yes, it would be crazy to silence dissent on the topic and reject the idea that there may be other explanations. It would be equally crazy however, to sit on our hands while we rule out all other possibilities. So what, we may wake up in 2050 and realise that our efforts haven’t been completely successful. At least we could look our children in the eye. On the other hand it’s very likely that we will have made some difference, and hopefully bought enough time to find a solution.

You all say, we should “do something”. I say, we need to “do the RIGHT thing”. The scientifically sound thing.

I remember a TV commercial, where a boiler exploded and the people were shouting “what shall we do now”. And another guy looks into the camera and says “No we shall enjoy this fine chocolate”. Which is a “something” but it does not solve the problem, does it.

There are lots of things which help the environment, are cost effective and are useful regardless if the GW is manmade. This is what we should do.

We should not do things, which are useful only on the assumption, that we have a manmade GW caused by CO2

Example: From this point of view CCS storage (trapping CO2 underground) is a bad move. On the other hand sponsoring research of more efficient solar power plants is a good move - it will give us energy, that is FREE (once you pay back the start up costs)

Although I was determined to follow Asbjørn’s advice even before I heard it I cannot leave the blatant errors in your post uncommented. So here it goes…

—1—
“The belief of some environmentalists, that “climate change deniers” deny the existence of climate change, is a misinformation.”

You may be “better” than the rest but the major “denial” campaign did indeed deny, deny, deny to begin with. (See “The Facts About Global Warming Denial
” http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/4_stages_denial.php ) One of the poster boys of denial was Danish Bjørn Lomborg who has gone through all the common stages of denial and is now working on whole new levels of it - I picked his first book apart on the climate change part in an article in Danish: “Lomborg level 4
” http://avisen.dk/blogs/benno/lomborg-level-4_11315.aspx - just the fact that deniers are changing arguments all the time tells everything about their credibility.

—2—
“However science does not know, how big is the human contribution to the greenhouse effect. Is it really “significant”?”

Wrong! In fact, even the graph from the Der Spiegel article shown at the conference shows this in all its self evidence. We have pumped the atmospheric CO2 levels beyond any previous levels.

—3—
“Google up the words “Suess cycles” or “Hallstadtzeit cycle”. Now when IPCC comes and says “hey, these rules, that worked for billions of years, do not work any more”, they should prove it.”

IPCC and all other serious scientists do indeed take known sun cycles into account. In the Danish Environmental institute’s popular book on the climate science (9MB PDF available for free here http://www2.dmu.dk/Pub/MB13.pdf ) you will read this (in Danish) page 18-20. There is some variation along with the sun cycles but a much more significant rise in temperatures on top of that. It also discusses the impact of volcano eruptions and Henrik Svensmarks highly hypothetical cosmic rays and models that include all those but exclude human impact - according to which we should have seen a DROP in recent temperatures where in stead we have seen a rise!

—4—
“Stop talking and start doing? Doing what? Before we treat the disease, we must first know the diagnosis, know the cause.”

Wrong. Even if the human impact is over estimated it is extremely unlikely that lowering GHG emissions will not lower the greenhouse effect.

We know more than enough to act NOW!

Hope you understand my position: I welcomed Asbjørn’s advice since he is a teacher of journalists and the teaching of journalism is to always present “both sides” - which has been exploited to keep alive irrelevant opinions on climatology. EOD.

Well yes, I think the lecturer also can have this kind of argument, but it doesn’t mean we could not discuss it. It’s just a strong argumentation, though, I agree with you that tings are not as simple as that. We really need to cover this theme in every possible way. So I understand you getting upset of what he said. I was a little surprised too myself.

(probably a too lengthy) Reply to Benno Hansen:

All these questions deserve a separate blog posts. But anyway:

1)  Do you really think you know better than the deniers, what they think? I am a sceptic and I know what we believe in. Do not put your words into our mouths. Pleeease. We do not deny existence of warming of sea level temperatures between cca 1975 – 2000. If you start quoting some sceptical lunatics who harm the reputation of us sceptics, I can retaliate by quoting Dave Foreman or Unabomber.

2)  Wrong. We know for sure, that CO2 levels have increased significantly. That is a fact and nobody disputes it. But we do not know:
a.  How much humans contributed to this rise of CO2 levels? Annually humans are responsible for just some 3% of CO2 emissions – does this really matter? Can a 3% change of something destabilise Gaia, which has survived four billion years of climate disasters?
b.  If CO2 really plays a strong role in the greenhouse effect? Even if CO2 rises four times, it may have little impact on temperatures. Because it represents only 0,03% of the atmosphere. And because CO2 is responsible just for a quarter of the greenhouse effect.

3)  Wrong. IPCC claims, that solar influence on climate change is just some 0,1%. So they decided to ignore solar cycles in their climate predictions. None of their models expects that sunspot cycles still play a role.

4)  You are right. Even if human contribution is overestimated, lowering of CO2 emissions will lower the greenhouse effect. By how much? Lowering it by 0,0001%? Is this a good use of money? When rich countries are up to ears in debts and the poor countries are starving?

I am happy we have this discussion, in spite of Asbjorns advise. Thanks for the argumentation.

I don’t think presenting “both sides” is always the good choice. Consider evolution: is it really the mission of journalists to present the view of some religious lunatics? I don’t think so. If you cover a story about human rights, you are not going to ask a nazi party their opinion because you want a “balanced” article.

Furthermore, there is no such thing a objective journalism. There isn’t even such a thing as objective views. This doesn’t mean you can’t write fair and balanced stories, but being human means having a personal view which will always affect your work.

A last one: even if there was no climate change, there will not be enough oil left for the next generations. And hoping we will invent nuclear fusion in time is not the solution.

@Vitezslav Kremlik

1) Just too hard to discuss seriously. But yes, I did follow the debate for many years so I know the various “denial” arguments well enough.

2) Yes, we know the CO2 levels have sky rocketed.. AND a) we know we have emitted CO2 like crazy and entirely unprecedented… AND we know there is pretty much nowhere else for it to go than the atmosphere, b) the effect of CO2 is known in minute physical and atomic detail, it’s stood the test of almost 200 years of scientific testing, thank you.

3) We’re getting in a circular argument if I answer again. Bottom line: you don’t trust the IPCC / established science. Your issue, not mine.

4) see my answer to 2 and 3.

That’s all folks. Let’s move on!

There’s no + without - , no good without evil, no global warming man made supporters without skeptics. And it’s normal, because this is how a natural equilibrium is kept.

@Vitezslav - Everything you wrote so far is representative for a Th!nker. And this is what the tshirt is supposed to underline, that we use our brains and speak up, we have arguments that support our ideas.

@Benno, thanks for those links you shared in the comment. I knew about the tree hugger article but not about the other one or the pdf.

Reply to Joel:

Your conempt to freedom of speech is quite surprising. Don’t you value the freedom to write blogs? If freedom of speech is lost, you will not be allowed to do so.

I believe in freedom of speech so strongly, that I think, that even the racists and creationists should be allowed to say, what they say.

If you banish certain ideologies and statements from textbooks, you actually introduce your own official ideology. Which is against the US constitution.

If children at school could compare both darwinist and creationist arguments and choose freely, what to believe… wouldn’t it be wonderful? I am a darwinist myself and I am sure, that the creationists would be defeated by our arguments in 9 cases out of ten.

Censorship always starts hitting the people you do not like. And ends up hitting you.

Just like the best approach to teaching gravity may not necessarily be to get students arguing about whether apples might start falling upwards tomorrow, as the late Stephen Jay Gould said, it is not necessarily instructive for people who are not scientifically trained in the subject to discuss whether there is manmade climate change. There is a proper place for such discussion, and that is in peer-reviewed academic journals.

In these journals, meanwhile, there are no articles that dissent from the view that human-caused climate change is ‘very likely’ as the fourth IPCC assessment report has it. This was shown in a 2004 article by Naomi Oreskes in Science, which you can find here.

Meanwhile, the entire idea of ‘let’s do this on the intertubes anyway’ has been hashed and re-hashed to death, as the very comprehensive Grist series ‘How To Talk To a Climate Skeptic’ shows.

Starting every argument anew is akin to wanting to reinvent the wheel, which, well, might not be the most interesting thing to blog about. Everyone’s free to do as they please, but it’s not bad advice to suggest that you might better cut in with something different.

Reply to Nanne:

In Czechoslovakia under communism we also had no scientists, who would write against communism. We had a consensus that communism is cool. Do you know why? The scientists did not want to lose jobs or go to jail. So they always put Marx quotations to every paper they published. Do you think they really believed it? No, it was just survival.

Yet I often experience this: I read a peer reviewed article, which brings denier-style evidence. And then, all of a sudden, the article ends with sentence like “...but in spite of these findings we still believe, that warming is manmade”.

Let me ask you. If you were a scientist and came to have sceptical opinions, would you dare to publish it? Sceptics are ridiculed or even kicked out of their jobs. Would you jeopardise your career and family income?

This is one of the reasons, why Naomi Oreskes article is really misleading. Aside from the fact it is not true - the antihockeystick article of McIntyre and McKitrick was peer reviewed for instance. According to Naomi it does not exist? And the other peer reviewed sceptical articles I have read do not exist either?

So apparently I must have been hallucinating, when I read them. I should see a doctor.

The Oreskes article reviewed articles included in the ISI database. The journal in which McIntyre and McKitrick published is not included in this database, probably because it is a dedicated journal for sceptics.

The comparison with communism in the Czech Republic is absurd. We’re not living under a totalitarian system. Scientists don’t have to worry about the government knocking on their door. All they have to worry about is their reputation among their peers. But there are always scientists who got into the business for the romantic ideal of science, and there is always some oil industry money waiting for those who have more mundane motivations.

Think about this: If you define a peer reviewed journal as a “journal, that is not climate sceptical”, it is not surprising, that you get zero number of peer reviewed sceptical articles. This explains everything.

I think my first blog post might interest you. I don’t think you are right, when you equalize accepting the facts with stopping to think.

I didn’t said I was against freedom of speech. But every right (like freedom of speech) has its borders. In many countries in europe you can’t say the holocaust never happend. Why? Because you hurt the rights of other people with it.

It’s a stupid idea to inculde theories from religions in biology textbooks.

It’s ot only because it hurts peoples feelings. It is because it is a lie and therefore nothing more than dangerous propaganda directed against democracy itself and basic human rights.

Thumbs up! The sentence in the presentation IS a complete disregard of scientific approach and smells a lot like scripture.
Now, do we blindly believe or do we try to search for evidence and keep our head open?

By the way, in 2008, the average thickness of an ice flow near Upernavik, Greenland, was almost 5x the one in 2006, while in the 14th century, Greenland WAS actually green and allowed for survival of European sheep and cows - should we just presume that Greenland is excluded from the global warming because of these three facts? Should we claim it is actually getting colder and blame the Greenlanders for it, forcing them to change their lifestyle to prevent this imaginary threat?

It would sure be a parallel to what the fanatic believers do - draw bold conclusions from a pitiful amount of facts, while insulting and harming those of a different opinion.

Oh, and how do I know about the ice thickness? Well, I was there to measure it! Greetings from Danish Technical University! ;o)

Come on, Tom. You can’t be serious. When I say, that the solar/climatic cycles, that worked in the past, still do control Earth,  it is a “dangerous propaganda directed against democracy itself and basic human rights”???

In that case we need to put all solar physicists, pedologists, geologist and astronomers into jail, right? If they are so dangerous…

No, I was responding to Joel there and talking about why there are laws in some countries, that prohibit to say the holocaust never happened.

To comment on what Tom Schaffer said:
I believe anyone should be completely free to say anything. Words do not hurt people, actions do. Words, which remain unsaid, are far more dangerous than those that are said.

Why? Because once words are said, anyone is free to argue them or simply make an opinion about the author based on them. While unsaid, words are just a dangerous secret within a person, undisputed and thus forever considered true by the owner. By speaking our minds, we can sharpen our opinions closer to truth by discussion and also warn the others by revealing our real beliefs.

If someone tells me he doesn’t believe the holocaust happened, I can try to convince him otherwise or I can simply note to avoid this person in the future. But if he is forbidden to tell me what his heart and soul believes? I could even become a friend with the person and never know how mistaken, stupid or cruel he really is… do we really want that?

Any opinion should be expressed. Wrong opinions, like diseases, can be cured or avoided by others. But no disease has ever been cured by forcing the infected to not demonstrate his symptoms. It only makes the curing impossible and the spreading easier.

I totally understand that position and I can accept it. Still I am quite convinced it was the right thing to prohibit those “opinions” in Austria after WWII. Those were a danger for Austria’s democracy back then and sometimes still are dangerous nowadays. But I think this is not the right place to discuss this kind of legislation.

I would not prohibit to express scepticism about man-made climate change. I just could not take someone seriously who does so.

Tom, I think you might probably be a young man with a very strong opinion to things that you consider important. But I also think that as you grow older, you will realise that our subjectives truths are not as absolute as we tend to believe.

I used to BELIEVE in man-caused global warming until I simply found out that there was not enough evidence one way or the other. It can be disturbing, but it is understandable, scientifically sound and I learned to accept it as a fact. Possibly reviewable in the future, but currently steady. It doesn’t mean that I stopped to act enviroment-friendly, it doesn’t change anything for me. It’s just a matter of what can and can not be proven right now. We simply DO NOT KNOW anything for sure YET.

Do you still think that I can’t be taken seriously just because of this lack of belief?

I would be lying if I wouldn’t say that I have a hard time to do so.

...but there sure are people I consider far worse.

I am behind Vitezslav in this. He has the same exact feelings I have. I’ve been living in the US for about 15 years now and I have this gut feeligs that people, you can say scientist in this matter, are not comfortable say out loud their feelings, discoveries, observations. I am too from Czech Republic, was born under communist regime, and I can smell this stuff coming from media, news, articles, where a nice idea could be developed but in the last sentence or ending of a thought there usually comes their alibi , not to be too different from what is to be politically correct. Or those ideas not politically correct are completely omitted in mainstream medias. I have lived through this when I was young and as I said it’s deep down in my guts.

My father was a farmer, I can picture our nature being destroyed by chasing water out of our lands, by cutting down trees, natural habitats, polluted by fertilizers, oil, pollutants of any kind, common increase of allergies are a big warning sing. But that thing you cannot measure and is not handy for corporate world. To measure ppm of CO2 is easy, so look at that CO2 is rising and say this is a cause of warming, and create a CO2 business market might be good. I’d say that is a flat Earth theory.

Oceans take energy from the sun, they are warming from the sun irradiation, not from the air, no way, ocean absorbs sun irradiation immensely, they have low albedo, look how much water there is on our planet, have you looked at our globe lately, oceans are responsible for our climate releasing energy from the sun. Golf stream is the weather maker in Europe.  Albedo of our Earth is a bible of our weather, together with principles what creates clouds, maybe underwater volcanos, I am not mentioning catastrophic scenarios.

I want to hear people talk about this not to shut up. Stop cutting down trees and discuss how is the weather being formed on Our Earth.

@ Vitezslav Kremlik, “veneti” & “Hucul”:

Nanne Zwagerman provided you a link to a series of articles that answer most of your doubts and uncertainties. It’s good stuff, I vouch for that. Particularly, you should at least try to read and understand the following before repeating your claims:

* Greenland used to be green

http://www.grist.org/article/greenland-used-to-be-green
* It’s the sun, stupid

http://www.grist.org/article/its-the-sun-stupid (even though I already did point towards a graph that clearly shows how the IPCC takes solar cycles into account)
* There is no consensus

http://www.grist.org/article/there-is-no-consensus

And something very basic: What Asbjørn gave us was ADVISE. Since he’s not editor and this is blogging you are free to feel smarter

Thank you for the links. I am happy I am in this blogging event. It helps me to learn more. I did not know, there is a “manual” how to talk to sceptics. I also did not know about the Naomi Oreskes article. I will give my opinion about these arguments in my blogs. This is why I am in the competition, aren’t I? Comparing our arguments.

to Benno Hansen, Greenland
http://www.osel.cz/popisek.php?popisek=12976&img=1253275801.jpg
temperatures they have there were there before

....About it’s the sun stupid,
that is a known fact that sun irradiation has not increased or decreased lately, during our satellite era, before it is MAYBE. Otherwise that article says pretty much what I think sounds right, first article ,especially about clouds.
Our ocean is THE distributor, how, when is its warmth released that should be our foremost matter of discussion, our ocean streams can redistribute energy, hold it for a while we probably don’t know about.
For example not much related but a story too: East coast of US had raising level on its beaches this year, some places up to 2 feet during June and July, what was it? Combination of moon influence, wind and slower Golf stream. Did anybody forecast it? I don’t think so.
I cannot wait the day, they start to look at positions of our planets and moon to forecast weather.

.... and about last link,
We should stop to pollute Earth, protect forests, nature, heck 50 biggest tankers of the world pollute our Earth more than all cars on Earth combined. But to focus all we got on CO2? CO2 is rising and rising (last year maybe not, not sure, have no numbers) but global temperature is falling more than five years, how come? For CO2 believers it should be pretty much disturbing, a cause to scratch their heads, what caused that cooling. Or they believe is distribution of energy by oceans in this case but not at fist place. Our oceans ice covers of Arctica is raising again, what caused it when Oceans are warming up by those supporters. Of coarse, you go elsewhere and you have different data, that oceans are cooling, so as we say, old grandma ,give me advice (not pointed at you, just saying).
Just one remark. Raising ice cover around North Pole was predicted very wrong, heck by what models?

Hi,
I wrote a post in answer to this article:
http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/climate_change_scepticism_science_and_reason/

Cheers,

Fede

Update: Climategate confirmed what I was saying in this post. The green cabala is trying to suppress free speech. In their private e-mails the alarmist climatologists write:

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Cheers, Phil”

Or:

“The two MMs [McKitrick, McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”

In other e-mails they conspired to kick an editor out of job, because he published some non-alarmist paper.