The press release reads more like a global warming advocacy document rather than an objective summary.

The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years ... does not mean that global warming has gone away.

i.e. it's actually cooling, but our funding depends on people believing that it is warming.

forecast to be one of the top-ten warmest years.

i.e. we control the data, so we can make sure that it places in any position we think we can get away with.

The Met had a tough year in 2007. Besides their annual prediction issues, they had a bit of trouble with the UK summer prediction.

11 April 2007
Met Office forecast for Summer 2007 The latest seasonal forecast from the Met Office issued today, reveals that this summer is, yet again, likely to be warmer than normal. Following the trend set throughout 2006 and the first part of 2007, seasonal forecasters say there is a high probability that summer temperature will exceed the 1971-2000 long-term average of 14.1C.... there are no indications of an increased risk of a particularly dry or particularly wet summer.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070411.html

This year's postmortem

For many people in the UK, 2007 will be remembered as the year without a summer. The extreme rainfall of May, June and July and the large-scale flooding that followed gripped the nation for much of the summer, and the consequences are still being felt by many of those affected.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080102.html

I think they are trying to cover themselves once again just in case... I'll bet that 2008 is gonna be much colder than they think (when you add in TSI etc). Also, when both skeptics and AGW'ers cherry pick data to try to prove a point, is it not obvious that it proves that there is no global warming? (AGW = temperatures should be rising at ALL stations versus past data). What has happened to the lower troposphere forcing AGW theory? see IPCC versions 1-4. I don't think British Met office will be making any predictions after 2008... old soldiers never die they only fade away (same applies to AGW). BTW the Australian Met office also rose to the chorus pointing out the warmest ever temps in Southern Australia but not mentioning the coolest temps in Northern Australia so unfortunately they had to settle for 6th warmest!

cheers

Is this the death knell of AGW? latest lower troposphere temp (LTL) data December 2007 took a real dive we are now into negative territory pre 1979 before recordings started!
http://davidsmith1.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/0103082.jpg
Simply put:LTL cannot be going down and surface temps going up over the shown periods according to AGW. Expect UHA data to be even lower! Fortunately satellites cannot cherry pick (or can they?)

Hey, I have a prediction. I predict that the world will be warm, and the world will be cold. No, wait, I predict the world will be cold and the world will be warm.....No, wait again....I predict that Al Gore will break wind and it will wipe New York off the map......hahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

DENY DENY DENY THE GLOBAL WARMING LIE!!!!!!

Again these are just predictions. They can't get the weather right today yet along for the next year! So in a way it is pointless to say so.

YOU can help save the planet!

Easy and affordable carbon offsets. Nonprofit and verified. Just $5.50/ton.

www.carbonfund.org

Sign me up!

Interesting press releases. When the Met Office makes its forecast for 2007 saying it will be the warmest year on record they use words like "another warning that climate change is happening" (of course it is, but how much is attributable to man and should we care?) and "startling forcast" (startling in what way?). They also talk about how important this news is coming off the heels of a warm 2006 and the ongoing "strong El Nino". Of course we know now that 2007 was not the warmest year on record. In the 2008 forecast news release 2008 is predicted to "still fall wihtin the top ten" but that in no way means global warming has stopped. OK, but has it slowed? Is there possibly a new trend developing? Is it at least possible? Dr. Jones implores us all to focus on the rate of warming over the last seven years becasue that's what's really important. Funny, there was no mention of that in the 2007 forecast. The difference in tone and editorial comments between the two forcasts is striking. The 2007 forecast is sounding all sorts of alarms and the 2008 forecast sounds very defensive. Another statement I found curious in the 2008 forecast was, "The forecast value for 2008 mean temperature is considered indistinguishable from any of the years 2001-7, given the uncertainties in the data." Sounds like global temperature more or less leveled off over the past seven years while we've been pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere during that time. Could it be possible that CO2 is not the major player in climate change that we've all been led to believe?

I think world temp predictions are very similar to pre season football predictions, not worth the paper they are written on.

2/3's of the 1961 - 1990 time frame, led up to the prediction of the next ice age because it was so cold.
When you start your measurements at that point, even getting back to normal will show a huge underlying rate of warming.

Every years averages include anomalies. Trying to discredit a La Nina, when including other anomolies in the under-lying rate of warming, is lying.

BTW, how do they separate the underlying rate of warming from a La Nina, and not assume the same for El Nino's? They really pick and choose their data, don't they.

Until meterologists can better understand and better forecast ENSO events, seasonal and annual forecasts will remain hit or miss. The 2006-2007 El Nino event was weak at best, and should have signalled to forecasters that it would be short lived, and an El Nino neutral regime would evolve shortly. This is exactly what occured in early 2007, and by late summer our current La Nina regime evolved and has been strengthening ever since.

We seem to be at the tail end of a 30 plus years warm PDO event. We are also near the tail end of an active 200 year solar cycle. If anything, global temps will most likely begin slowly falling over the next decade. I'm sure most of our official climate organizations will continue to "adjust" temps upward -esp in favorable urban areas. If past climate transitions are good analogs, than we can expect quite a bit of extreme climate variations. The beginning of the LIA was marked not by extreme cooling, but by rapid fluccuations in both precipitation and temp patterns.

"These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends"

The same cyclical influences can mask underlying COOLING trends.

Strange they do not say the same thing about the past El Ninos.
But a current La Nina, only masks underlying warming trends.

And the point of this pronouncement is...????

I think that every group, or scientist, including the IPCC should be forced to make specific predictions based upon their expertise, experience, and clear consensus of what temperatures will be in just one years time. that way, when they bust bigger than life, we could finally put the whole AGW thing behind us and move forward with true science, instead of social engineered science.

Another forecast from the Brits! Sounds like they are hedging their bets after they missed 2007 by a mile. Just for fun, I went back to January, 2007 to see what they were saying then about the year just ended. I found an article in Reuters which reported on their 2007 forecast:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0318315620070104?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

I don't think I'll be wagering any money on their 2008 forecast coming true after looking at their track record. Maybe the Brits should pay these forecasters based on how close they come to reality. If they nail it, they get a 25% bonus for work well done. If they miss it as they did in 2007 then they get no increase in salary but get to try again next year. Missing it 3 consecutive years gets them a transfer to a remote weather station in some artic outpost like Nunavut. I bet that the number of meteorolgists living in Nunavut will show a steady upward trend.

Well at least Nature is now considering another possibility....(and allowing it to be published). maybe they have decided to slowly get out of the one way AGW mess that may happen sooner than later
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7174/full/nature06502.html

The whole thrust of the alarmism is to stop this upward trend of co2 emission that is contributing to the upward trend in concentration. Obviously, if the doomsayers used any other tactic they would not be doomsayers and they would not influence policy makers. It's a very simple premise. Co2 warms the atmosphere; man emits co2, therefore man should limit co2.

It can be done reasonably.

Brett-
Every Friday you manage to pick a article that is just plain funny. Thanks.
...and how come nobody is asking the infamous yet personable Dr. Hansen what ever happened to the "Super EL Nino" that the 2007 forecast was partially based on?
They can't predict one year ahead with their computers and the want us to trust them for a 50 year view?
Here is a hint: Go out and buy a Farmers ALmanac. It's about as accurate but they include some really neat recipes. Think about all the electricity and carbon offests you won't have to buy. LOL
Everybody is not stupid. They really need to quit scaring children and the ingnorant masses with nonsense.

Rich,
"Easy and affordable carbon offsets. Nonprofit and verified. Just $5.50/ton."

Hey in the last 40 years NY state has gone from 30% forests to 70%. How can some of the landowners get in on the bonzana of letting productive farmland go to scrub brush and then forest??? Do they invest only in out of the way places that you can't get to even with a map?
Follow the money and you'll see who wants AGW no matter what the science.
Folks just burn your money at least it will keep you a bit warm and do the same amount of good as these scams will.
Still a skeptic and from living in upstate NY you don't always have to see the actual manure to know it's being spread.
LOL have a great weekend.

An excellent review of 2007 and expected 2008 temps
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/01/2007-warmest-year-on-record-coldest-in.html

Here we have an interesting collection of comments:

1. Criticism of a weather service for making an incorrect prediction. Um, need I point out the obvious?

2. A complete amateur making his own predictions regarding the weather in 2008.

3. The same amateur suggesting the death the AGW theory.

4. An anti-AGW flatulence joke (I use the term 'joke' charitably).

5. A complaint that weather predictions aren't perfect.

6. A deconstruction of the semantics of the 2007 weather prediction.

7. A denial of the value of meteorological science.

8. A restatement of hoary old "ice age prediction" myth. (pun intended)

9. A climate prediction based on two cycles only.

and

10. A demand that confuses climatology with meteorology.

These comments inspire me to ask the AGW deniers here:

Aren't you embarrassed to be seen in such company?

***** MANMADE-NATURAL BREAKDOWN NEEDED *****

I would like to add to what Anonymous has said (1/4 10:33 and 1/4 11:48)

I wish alarmists would change something in the way they make their arguments, and that is to always give a breakdown between manmade and natural contributions to a particular warming result. Where possible, of course. For example, when temperature is discussed one does not usually see/hear a breakdown such as "of the 0.7 degree increase, approximately 10% is due to manmade greenhouse gasses." This is almost certainly inherent to the GCM's to the extent that they incorporate natural forcings.

At least the natural cycles people are forthright -- it is crystal clear that they think natural forcings are 100% of the warming seen so far.

Can an alarmist quote us a reference that breaks down global temperature increase between manmade greenhouse gasses and natural factors as a function of time?

Many thanks.

This could also mean it could be the warmest ever and they would still be correct in saying one of the top 10 warmest! However, if they were to use my "TUNNEL" idea that would cool things off!!I bet the same computer model would prove it????

RICH,

Thanks for the tip. I love this line-

According to the US National Academy of Sciences, the Earth's surface temperature has risen ... with accelerated warming during the past two decades.

http://www.carbonfund.org/site/pages/about_climate_change/

Considering that the past decade has cooled by most measurements, and even Hansen's bloated numbers show temperatures flat - one would have to conclude that either carbonfund.org or the National Academy of Sciences is not telling the truth.

anonymous,

The reason they don't say that cyclical influences can mask underlying cooling is because the global temeprature regime is one of general warmth over the last two decades. Of course it's not linear warming which is parsed as "global warming" which tends to support the argument that greenhouse forcing visa vis humans is weak. But the current paradigm does lend credence to what these Brits are saying.

When the global data indicates freefall, then we can dismiss what these scientists are saying

With the beginning of Solar Cycle 24 in Dec 2007, won't there be an increased in solar winds that will further block cosmic rays (very energetic particles and radiation from outer space) and a reduction of global temperatures? Cosmic radiation increase cloud cover. A reduction of cosmic rays should decrease cloud cover. For more than a year, the sun has been experiencing a lull in activity, marking the end of Solar Cycle 23, which peaked with many furious storms in 2000--2003. "Solar minimum is upon us,"

Does anybody know of any testable condition that would refute AGW?

The first real fallout from global warming insanity is just about to hit. All of you moralizing about protecting the poor of the world - think again. Al Gore will soon be a perpetrator of genocide.

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=213343

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

A cold spell soon to replace global warming:

MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) � Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason�solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

The whole article:
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html

Maurizio Morabito,

Does anybody know of any testable condition that would refute AGW?

How about using a computer model?

/sarc off

Hi Chris Crawford,

On one hand, you want us to accept the Armageddon claims of climate modelers, and on the other hand you are willing to blow off their gross failures as "a weather service for making an incorrect prediction."

Long term unverifiable model predictions are called "climate" and short term failures of the same models are called "weather."

What a joke. Very few professions reward mis-prediction and incompetence with Nobel "Peace" Prizes and increased funding - except for maybe economics. I wonder how many people will starve this year thanks to global warming politics?

Marie,

could you stay out of politics?
Could you please stop attacking Al Gore?
And please, stop complaining about aid given to 3rd Wolrd Countries! I bet your opinion would change if you lived in a 3rd World Country. Ever heard of generosity? I'm not saying the US should share the money with the rest of the world but hey, did you know that back in the 40's, after WW II 3rd world countries actually helped rebuild Europe, sending tons of food? That's generosity! Something that you might have never heard of!

It was minus 20 on the lack of farenheat scale here yesterday,the coldest I've seen in several years.We need La Nina to weaken a bit and a little more global warming wouldn't hurt either.We had 40 more inches of snow this December as compared to 2006 and most of it is still on the ground.El Nino needs to come back please.My wood stove is chewing up my carbon credits at a rate not seen in late years.These credits price out at roughly $52 per ton,and require lots of spent energy to harvest,cut,split,dry,carry in,and ashes out.I'm glad it snowed in Florida.I'd think having to cancel the Daytona 500 because of snow would be just fine.

Don't you alarmist have something more constructive to do with you time than bashing skeptical people?
I mean doesn't Al Gore have instructions on how to plan your "green day"?

Alarmist don't realize that when they attack people and become arrogant it only backfires with skeptics questioning AGW more.

If you believe in AGW fine.Just don't shove it down everybody else's throat.

Maurizio Morabito: Refer to
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/

Roger Pielke does a good job of questioning, if not disproving, the wide-spread beliefs in the attribution of AGW. As best as I can tell, he believes most of AGW results from land-use and albedo changes.

There are others who calculate the 20th century temperature rise with natural variations as the drivers--Richard Lindzen, for example.

And don't forget Steve McIntyre at:

http://www.climateaudit.org/

I hope they help.

One of the Met's modeling cohorts, from last year.

LONDON - A combination of global warming and the El Nino weather system is set to make
2007 the warmest year on record.

Strike 1

The forecast is for extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia
and leave California under a deluge.

Indonesia flooded, California had a drought. Strikes 2 and 3

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the
University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and
forecasters that this will be a crucial year for determining the response to and effects of global
warming.

According to climate fear mongers, every year has been crucial since the days when Agammenon sacrificed his only child to fix the climate, and Jonah was thrown overboard for the same reason.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming was set to be exacerbated by the
arrival of El Nino, the weather phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the
Pacific.

Hansen's "Super El Nino" - Strike 4

The resulting extreme weather worldwide would make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record.

Strike 5 - send him back to the minors, or as they would say in the UK - "relegate him to division 4"

http://aedatabase.vtc.edu.hk/2007%20set%20to%20be%20hottest%20year%20ever.pdf

Dear Emiliano,

I don't think you read or understood my post, as your reply was unrelated.

Here is some more reading you might enjoy.

it should be recognized that the 2007 IPCC report overstated the magnitude of global warming due to CO2, as well as failed to identify a serious shortcoming in the multi-decadal global climate models to accurately predict global average radiative feedbacks and forcings.

http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2008/01/04/why-we-need-estimates-of-the-current-global-average-radiative-forcing/

More global warming nonsense. One of the favorite AGW stories is that the Antarctic Peninsula is "the fastest warming place on earth." Secretary Ban described the "devastation" as he flew over the Peninsula during one of the coldest and snowiest springs on record.

Unfortunately, Dr. Hansen's data shows the Peninsula cooling substantially over the last ten years. It also shows Nunavut and the Canadian Arctic cooling as much as 8 degrees over the last ten years. Bottom line is that the whole global warming story comes down to data heavily weighted by Siberia - which is obviously not the most reliable source of long term temperature data.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2007&month_last=11&sat=4&sst=0&type=trends&mean_gen=1212&year1=1998&year2=2007&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=pol

BTW, If you are thinking about taking advantage of the warm weather in Siberia, it is averaging -61F this year.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/24688/2008/1/6/MonthlyHistory.html

Since Siberia is where the bulk of the "global" warming action is occurring, they should have the next "Bali" meeting in Ojmjakon instead of Honolulu. Then all of those terribly sincere people (racking up a spectacular carbon footprint) could witness the devastation for themselves.

Siberia aint Ojmjakon tho, that place has always been extra cold even compared to the brutal cold Siberia in a whole... Anyway, i agree most of your points Patrick that you make here. I never post here put I read this blog on regular basis....

I was directed to this discussion by a fellow who informed me that the discussion here was civil. And indeed the postings here are in general quite civil, and I applaud that. However, I am not so sure that there is anything here that I would call a "discussion". What I read are a bunch of political partisans who have no interest in discussing climate change.

That's a strong accusation, so let me back it up.

I'd like to begin with the observation that few of the commentators here have demonstrated an understanding of the science. To illustrate this point, I ask the reader three rhetorical questions:

1. Have you read the IPCC reports? These are the fundamental documents about climate change science. They aren't perfect, but they're the best overall assessment of all the issues. If you were really concerned with the science, you'd read them, at least the lower-tech versions they provide. But if you haven't read them, how can you claim to be interested in climate change science? It's like saying you're interested in American government but never bothered to read the Constitution.

2. What sources of information have you consulted? Have you checked a broad range of sources, including both denier sites and asserter sites? If you were really interested in the issues, you'd want to hear both sides. But if you're just here to argue, then you've spent most of your time on sites friendly to your preconceptions, loading up on ammo for your next big showdown.

3. If the solar radiant energy hitting the earth were to increase by 1%, how much would the earth's temperature increase (assuming no atmosphere)?

It's a simple question with a simple answer, and it's quite basic to understanding what's going on with climate change. I ask you, do you know the answer to that question? Could you figure out how to answer it? I'm not asking anybody to answer the question -- it's strictly a rhetorical question. If you cannot answer the question, then I'll state flatly: you don't understand the basic principles. And if you don't understand the basic principles, what are you doing arguing the fine points?

Which brings me to another important question: why are people arguing all these fine points? Why are we getting all this ado about temperature measurements, snowstorms, water vapor, and so forth? There are a great many other areas of science that are more interesting and pose fascinating challenges, yet we don't see much public argument about those issues. Why is this scientific topic so controversial?

The answer, I submit, is that this isn't a scientific controversy. It's a political controversy. And I don't mean to say that the both sides are political. I mean to say that one side (the deniers) is motivated exclusively by political beliefs, while the other side (the asserters) is motivated primarily (but not exclusively) by scientific analysis.

In rejoinder, deniers will point to Mr Gore and other political figures who have pressed this case for obviously political reasons. They are correct in so noting. But this does not deny two basic facts:

1. The deniers are overwhelmingly political in intent. They don't care about the science itself, they care about the consequences of the science.

2. The people who are motivated by scientific rather than political considerations are overwhelmingly on the asserter side.

As I have earlier pointed out, the deniers love to use "the shotgun": a rhetorical tactic in which you throw a big pile of complicated tedious arguments at your opponent in the hope that some of them will stick. The pile is so big that most bystanders get confused. The best indicator that somebody is using the shotgun is their failure to stand behind any of their arguments. If you tackle one of their claims in detail and show that it is incorrect, they don't respond -- they just move on to the next claim. I have experienced this behavior numerous times in my short time here.

To the deniers, then, I offer this advice: render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Don't stick your political nose into a scientific discussion. You are outclassed and wrong. Stop jawboning and start reading -- starting with the IPCC reports. Aren't you looking five or ten years into the future? Since you don't understand the science, you really have no idea how all this will turn out. You're relying on wishful thinking, not rational analysis. Here you are, loudly declaring to the world that climate change science is a hoax, but you really don't understand the science well enough to know what you're talking about. Which means that, ten years down the road, you could turn out to be utterly wrong. Ten years from now, the effects of climate change could be so glaringly obvious that the whole world will know that you were completely, totally wrong. And what's that going to do to your reputation? What's going to happen when the whole world decides that you deniers lied from the beginning, lied throughout the controversy, lied about everything, and continue to lie? What's going to happen when proponents of, say, a $50/ton carbon tax point to you and ask the public, "Whom do you trust, the deniers or us?" There'll be egg all over your faces and you'll lose every political battle you enter.

Now, of course, you might be right -- but you don't really know whether you're right or wrong, You don't understand the science. You want to believe you're right, but wishing don't make it so.

The sad thing is, you have solid ground elsewhere on which to fight: the decisions about how we combat global warming are intrinsically political decisions, they are difficult ones, and if you fought your battle there, you could actually accomplish something. But you have overreached yourselves. You have intruded into areas about which you know nothing, assuring the world of a truth you do not know to be true. You are so combative that you try to conquer more territory than you need or are able to conquer, and that will be your undoing. When the truth becomes clear to all, you will be so utterly discredited that your attempts to contest the real decisions -- what we do about CO2 -- will be doomed to failure.

The data keep rolling in, the science keeps advancing, and the outcome is clear to any observer whose mind is not fevered with political partisanship. Pride goeth before the fall. You will pay for this foolishness with loss of political sway. The sooner you start seeing reality as it is rather than how you want it to be, the sooner you'll stop losing ground.

I have heard that serious science never attributed Antarctic penninsula warming to AGW in the first place, although they don't do a good job of clearing up the confusion. I remember reading an article in National Geographic which was descringing the hroors of grass sprouting their in places where it hadn't before. A little bit later they included a caveat that it wasn't thought that AGW was causing th warming, just a multidecadal change in the local synoptic weather patterns.
I'm an AGW "supporter", and I myself get sick of the media sensationalism regarding AGW.

Patrick,

BTW, If you are thinking about taking advantage of the warm weather in Siberia, it is averaging -61F this year.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/24688/2008/1/6/MonthlyHistory.html

Good call. For those of you who don't know, the village Mr. Henry references is the site of the coldest temperature ever officially recorded in the northern hemisphere. Actually, a mere -61F is comparatively balmy; their all-time cold-temperature record was set back on January 26th, 1926 at a very cold -96F.

In fact, it was a bit warmer than normal in Siberia during December:

http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Anomaly.html

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30b.rnl.gif

Ojmjakon is located directly north of the Sea of Okhotsk in eastern Siberia.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=63.25000000,143.14999390

A handy tip: -60F is nothing new in that part of Siberia.

Also Patrick, you didn't mention the fact that the GISS map shows that parts of Alaska have warmed as much as 8 degrees since 1998.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2007&month_last=11&sat=4&sst=0&type=trends&mean_gen=1212&year1=1998&year2=2007&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=pol

Alaskans wouldn't take too kindly to you ignoring them in favor of Canadians.

cmbclean,

I apologize for using an extreme location in Siberia instead of suggesting that the IPCC move to a more temperate Siberian spot at -40F. As Mark pointed out recently, most of Siberia is actually warm and humid - similar to Nairobi.

BTW - Outside of the Barrow urban heat island, most of Alaska has cooled over the last 30 years.
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/7706Change.html
http://www.accuweather.com/us/ak/barrow/99723/city-weather-forecast.asp?partner=forecastfox&u=1&traveler=1

And we should all be concerned about the wicked hot temperatures in Barrow now, at -22F
http://www.accuweather.com/us/ak/barrow/99723/city-weather-forecast.asp?partner=forecastfox&u=1&traveler=1

Sorry, wrong link on the Barrow UHI
http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/HinkelEA-IJOC-03.pdf

I'm just an every day observer. I don't pretend to be a scientist but hard freeze warnings last week in Central Florida. Sure doesn't seem like any global warming to me. Check out my post at http://www.jeffwhitaker.com/blog

Chris Crawford, that rant appears to be a desperate emotional appeal and contains no objective scientific reasoning. The fact of the matter is that the AGW theory is not proven by any stretch of imagination, and more and more people are seeing just the opposite of what you claim.

Chris Crawford

No one will read a post over a page long - snore.

Chris Crawford,

Are you the reincarnation of Andrew? Haven't heard from him for awhile and he tends to quote from the bible of the Church of the Holy Zealots on a regular basis, just as you seem to be doing.

Well, fellow skeptics, it appears that the show is over, nothing more to see, the science is settled, and we are just here for the political side of AGW zealotry. So, pack up your keyboards, turn off your monitors, and head on home, Chris has spoken and it is good.

See you on the beaches in Barrow in a couple of years. Be sure to bring your suntan lotion.

/sarc off.

By the way, Chris. Why should I believe you? What makes you an authority on AGW? Just curious.

Chris Crawford,

You make many assumptions which you would not make if you had spent more time at this site, and had followed the discussions we've had.

I find this site refreshing. It publishes both sides. The Climate Science site refuses to publish the comments of deniers and also seems overly agenda-driven, and the Climate Audit site also appears agenda-driven and often becomes extremely technical. (I personally originally subscribed to the agenda of Climate Science, but over the past year I have increasingly favored the agenda of Climate Audit. Also the Climate Audit site has a better sense of humor.)

The advantage of this site over both those sites is that long, technical and tedious arguements are often put in a nutshell. Often links are also provided, so you can go read the scientific papers, (if you want to risk a migrane,) however most people who post here are more self-educated than you assume.

You have missed some wonderful discussions which taught me a lot. A discussion about whether solar irradience had any effect on recent warming wound up teaching me about cosmic rays creating clouds, and about how high clouds reflect heat while low clouds trap heat. Several alarmists directed me to graphs which showed irradience hadn't risen (besides sunspot fluxuations) since 1950, and I wondered what happened before 1950. It turned out that before 1950 solar irradience was far lower, and 1950 marked irradience leaping to unprecidented levels. In other words, the world might have been slowly warming to a new equilibrium ever since, with the warming masked by a cool cycle of the AMO (which was perhaps less cool than it would have been) followed by a warm cycle of the AMO, (perhaps warmer than it would have been.) When I mentioned this, using the analogy of turning up the stove in 1950, and it taking a half century for the pot (earth) to heat up, I was bombarded by interesting data by alarmists, all of which I carefully studied, and none of which totally changed my mind.

So you see, we are not quite as ignorant as you seem to assume. You apparently feel superior, and in a paternal position, as if we are all your children. The truth of the matter is that you are the ignorant one. You don't have any idea how many topics Brett has brought to our attention, and we have discussed. All your pontificating does is expose your own ignorance, and make you look, I fear, a bit foolish.

Regarding your assumption that alarmists are all altruistic, and purely interested in Science without a political bone in their body, I can only sigh and roll my eyes and shake my head.

PH: I don't fully agree re surface temps only Scandinavia-Siberia (if that is what you are refering to because even the RSS shows this constant warmth anomaly over Scandinavia-Siberia
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
However, I completely agree re its only a natural local cause: (global RSS is now negative so "AGW" can't be global can it?)
Also some extreme large very cold areas occurring over NH at the moment (newver mind the fact that the whole SH (antartica etc) is anomaly negative
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
CC: seems to be a "political" reply no data supplied
cheer up

Chris Crawford

Your last post was rather long, but one thing that I would dispute is that the deniers are politically motivated. I can't speak for others, but the fact that I don't believe a lot of what I have read the past year concerning global warming is because that voice in the back of my head is suspicious of the motivations of those that are promoting global warming. So unlike congress that apparently did not feel compelled to read the INTEL reports concerning Iraq before giving their blessing to invade without a plan, I need to be convinced by the so-called experts the man is in any way responsible for global warming. The deniers are not denying global change, but need to be convinced that the data is not flawed, and that there is really something tangible that we can do as humans to in any way influence weather. It doesn't help in the least that people are getting paid big dollars to support global warming theories. Does it not bother you that worry-wart Al Gore is getting six figures each time he is asked to speak? My biggest question to you and the experts, is when exactly was the our planet healthy? What year? So if the planet is sick now according to Al, give me a range of years that things were naturally in balance.

It is quite clear that the obfuscation tactics used by the AGW denialists are effective. Scarily, you will even confuse people by citing papers that are clearly supportive of AGW. As an example, take the Nature paper cited by Vincent on the Arctic warming. The message of that paper - if you read it carefully - was that advection has forced quite a bit of the warming to take place north of 60 N. I live above 60 N (have lived here for the past 35 years) and I can testify that indeed our winters are not the same the used to be. In fact we will soon have no winter at all - the 2007 winter was barely a month long, and this year might not be much longer.

Patrick Henry and your fellow Coloradoans: please send some of the cold back here in the Arctic where it belongs. Just shortly after the New Year it was +7 C in Longyearbyen, Svalbard (78 N). This is _very_ unusual. This is the kind of warming that the Nature paper was about. The cold records that you are breaking over the continent are no match to the even larger positive anomalies over the Arctic.

To those of you who claim that we have already started a cooling trend: don't hold your breath yet. What will you say when the Arctic is totally ice-free during the summer, possibly as early as 2013? Will you deny that, too, when it happens?

I think it is rather pointless to highlight trends that are less than 5 years. As a matter of fact, long term oscillations such as the PDO and AMO, as well as solar cycles such as the Gleisser Cycle have much more impact on our climate than do short term oscillations in regional climate (The AO, and NAO, PNAS). The IPCC and its authors rarely even attempts to answer long climate oscillations -only mentions them in passing, and instead appears to be in the business of making forecasts of very short term. HadCru, NOAA, and NASA continue to attempt to use the gridded temperature record as a global climate mean even though temperatures appear to autocorrelate with time, and region climate differences poision the data (hence, the need to adjust nebulous gridded approximations to fit statistical approximations of past temperature reconstructions).

Chris, the IPCC still uses MBH9X despite a ton of documented criticism. The IPCC still uses a linear relationship of CO2 forcing instead of a logrithmic relationship; the IPCC still hasn't answered why the tropical tropesphere remains either cool or neutral (there is no GHG AGW fingerprint in the tropics. The tropics is where the majority of the amtosphere remains.) There are plenty of other scientific crituqes (statistical, climatological,biological, archeological) that pose serious questions on the entire AGW enterprise, but are ignored.

Well, I knew my long post would generate some controversy, but I must say that I am disappointed with the reactions so far. Of course, Mr. Patrick Henry has yet to respond, and perhaps we'll see some insights from him. But the responses accusing it of being a rant, and of being too long -- surely my post deserves better than that.

Paul wants to know what makes me an authority on AGW. I don't claim to be an authority on anything. Paul, if you don't like my reasoning, then reject it. I'm not trying to force anything down anybody's throat.

Caleb, I appreciate your point about this site presenting the arguments in a more concise format than is to be found in the more technical sites. We need better popularization of this issue, and this site itself does that fairly well. The comments, however, are all over the map, and many of them are quite misleading. In a big complicated subject such as climate change, it's ridiculously easy to cherry-pick your data to prove just about anything you want, and a reader who is not especially on guard against that is easily misled. Yes, a free marketplace of ideas such as this is indeed the best way of finding the truth -- but you have to dig through a great deal of dreck in order to find the truth. If you're willing to hang in there, read each comment critically and analytically, follow up on the documentation, then indeed you can learn a lot. Even then, however, you'll still get a narrow version of truth and you probably won't get much in the way of the fundamentals. For example, have you learned about blackbody radiation in your time here? It's pretty basic to the whole controversy. What about absorption spectra? That's fundamental to the understanding of the greenhouse effect.

I certainly want to make a huge differentiation between the articles themselves and the commentary. The articles I have seen are all excellent. And some of the commentary is pretty good. But there's a lotta dreck in the commentary, too.

By the way, from your description, what you learned about solar irradiance is not correct. The real story is a good bit more complicated, involving instrumentation issues, atmospheric transparency issues, the nature of solar radiation, the solar spectrum, and the solar wind.

Caleb writes:

"So you see, we are not quite as ignorant as you seem to assume."

I'm not assuming anything -- that's why I asked those rhetorical questions. They're for your use alone -- I really don't want to know how educated or ignorant you are. I'm asking you to evaluate your own level of education on this issue and compare that level of education with the strength of your own opinions on the matter.

Caleb writes:

" You apparently feel superior, and in a paternal position, as if we are all your children."

Look, if you don't like my reasoning, refute it. Please don't waste our time with attempts to psychoanalyze me. If you have a hypothesis, offer it for my consideration, but don't try to use your psychoanalysis as part of a line of reasoning.

Caleb writes:

"Regarding your assumption that alarmists are all altruistic, and purely interested in Science without a political bone in their body, I can only sigh and roll my eyes and shake my head."

You have misread the statement I made. I wrote:

"2. The people who are motivated by scientific rather than political considerations are overwhelmingly on the asserter side."

I did NOT say that asserters are all altruistic, as you accuse me of saying. I said that most of those who are motivated by scientific rather than political considerations are on the asserter side. You chide me for taking a superior attitude, yet here I find myself in the position of teaching you basic logic:

Consider two sets of people in regard to the climate change controversy: those who are motivated primarily by scientific considerations and those who are motivated primarily by political considerations. Call these two sets A and B, respectively. Now consider two other sets of people: those in the denier camp and those in the asserter set. Call those X and Y, respectively. Now, X and Y will each contain members of both A and B. My statement was that most members of A are also members of Y. This does not in any way imply that most members of Y are members of A. You got the logic wrong. This is a high-school level mistake. I don't claim to be particularly smart, I just don't make dumb mistakes.

A digression: note how people use terminology to twist the debate. I use the terms "deniers" and "asserters" because there's nothing prejudicial about the terms and they're nice mirror images of each other. But note how you are using the terms "deniers" and "alarmists". That's prejudicial terminology. Why can't you use even-handed terminology in discussing this issue? Why must your terminology presume your conclusions?

Kricki Kachmar makes some good points about skepticism:

"voice in the back of my head is suspicious of the motivations of those that are promoting global warming"

That's good. But I hope that voice in the back of your head is equally suspicious of the motivations of those who are denying AGW. Everybody has motivations. In the final analysis, it boils down to two choices:

1. learn the science for yourself and render your own judgement, or
2. decide whom you're going to trust.

Neither choice is particularly palatable. If you want to go the first route, then please, please, PLEASE read the IPCC reports. These are the best possible starting places. Don't waste time with all the palaver on the web. Get to the source.

If you want to go the second route, then I urge you to consider the National Academy of Sciences. This organization was founded about 140 years ago by an act of Congress, with the specific mission of providing the government with authoritative analysis of scientific issues as they impacted public policy. The NAS is an invitation-only organization composed of the best scientists in the country. It's the elite of American science. It guards its reputation zealously, and it is very conservative in its decision making. Let's compare the NAS with the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court relies on 9 experts to decide matters of law; the NAS will bring scores or even hundreds of experts to decide matters of science. The Supreme Court renders each and every decision within a single nine-month term; the NAS takes as long as it feels it needs, sometimes years. The Supreme Court decides matters on a simple majority basis -- a 5 to 4 decision is definitive. The NAS doesn't publish conclusions unless it has a strong supermajority. But the best comparison is the results. The Supreme Court has issued many decisions that law experts now agree were serious blunders. The Supreme Court has contradicted itself, overturning previous rulings. But in 140 years of operation, the NAS has never, not once, been shown to be incorrect in its judgements. It has never retracted or overruled a previous decision. It has a perfect track record.

And what does the NAS say about AGW? I can get the link if you want it, but it's quite strongly in favor of the AGW hypothesis.

Patrick,

BTW - Outside of the Barrow urban heat island, most of Alaska has cooled over the last 30 years.

Thanks, I've read that paper before. So are you asserting that UHI is a phenomenon unique to Barrow and that somehow temperatures in other Alaskan cities (like Nome, Anchorage, Fairbanks, to name a few) are unaffected by UHI? That's extraordinary!

Let's just throw out all temperature data since it's all so unreliable anyway. We'll make our claims subjectively since temperature data is no longer objective (sure has been cold in Colorado this month. A new ice age is coming).

/sarc off

Besides, if you look carefully at the GISS map you generated you'll see that the part of Alaska I was referencing as having warmed as much as 8C is about 700 miles south-southwest of Barrow. But if we're to do it your way, let's take a look at the link you provided:

http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/7706Change.html

If I follow your advice and eliminate Barrow's grossly exaggerated temperatures, I still see nine cities that show annual warming since 1977, and only eight that show annual cooling. Last I checked, 9 was more than 8. I can check with students at my local elementary school if you'd like. Besides that, the five-year mean on the graph is higher than it was in 1977. If you're going to claim that 2006 was cooler than 1977 I won't even dignify that with a response. Don't bother.

Ah, but better yet! You made a trend map on the GISS site for 1998-2007. Let's make one for 1977-2007 and see what happens.

Wow, look at that! A whole lot of warming outside Barrow! In fact there's very little blue at all on the mainland. And the map must be accurate because it's the same software you were using to show that temperatures in the Canadian Arctic have dropped as much as 8C in the past ten years. All I did was change the input for the start year.

So between the link you provided and the 30-year GISS trend map, remind me how most of Alaska has cooled over the past 30 years....

Caleb:
Wow. Well said. You captured the essence of an incredibly complicated debate in six paragraphs.

The only thing I would add is a comment on Chris's complaint about no willingness to cite chapter and verse of any specific disagreements with the IPCC reports.
Nobody really disputes the basics of the CO2 hypothesis. Arguing about weather or not CO2 can cause warming is pointless. It is the degree of influence on global temperatures that is in dispute. That "degree of forcing" is simply a value judgment made by the IPCC and that is what is at the heart of the problem.
How much warming is caused by man's contribution is the question.
I tend to think that the skepticism of more than 400 scientists is more than enough to cast real doubt on the proclamations of a Political body with open aspirations to rule the world.
Chris suggests that; in the coming years when the truth is obvious; we will be embarrassed. I am doubtful.
I would suggest that alarmists should take care, they may be more than embarrassed, they are quite likely to be sued.

Caleb,

I agree with your points.

This is my second post,but have discussed this topic many times before Al Gore ever came along.Alarmist assume we skeptics have no interest in the science witch is dead wrong.

Should we change are habits on this earth regardless of the AGW theory? I think so.

Should we put a Science Fiction movie in all the schools across the U.S?

No.Leave the debating to people who can debate and know what questions to ask.

Should the AGW party stop going to the media to get there message across?

Yes it only makes things worse and get both sides hot.

What does it say about science IF this whole thing turns out to be a scam?

A lot about are world today and the extremes people go to get money.

Caleb,

I agree with your points.

This is my second post,but have discussed this topic many times before Al Gore ever came along.Alarmist assume we skeptics have no interest in the science witch is dead wrong.

Should we change are habits on this earth regardless of the AGW theory? I think so.

Should we put a Science Fiction movie in all the schools across the U.S?

No.Leave the debating to people who can debate and know what questions to ask.

Should the AGW party stop going to the media to get there message across?

Yes it only makes things worse and get both sides hot.

What does it say about science IF this whole thing turns out to be a scam?

A lot about are world today and the extremes people go to get money.

Patrick Henry,

Did you mean to respond to me about the temperatures in Siberia? I never said anything about them. That was Travis.

cb: "[Antarctic Peninsula warming is] just a multidecadal change in the local synoptic weather patterns." Don't reach for the barf bag quite so quickly. Did you check to see what the AR4 WG1 report had to say about this?

Bear in mind that the oceans and poles are difficult places to do what's referred to as "detection and attribution," meaning detection of a warming sgnal and attribution of it to AGW. To demonstrate how tricky this can be, a couple of months ago there was a paper that described recent acceleration of ice streams in the portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that's thought to be most vulnerable to collapse. The nature of the acceleration makes it clear that warming is going on, but nobody can figure out where it's coming from. It's most likely ocean currents, but atmospheric warming that hasn't been detected is still possible. The chance that AGW isn't behind this is approximately zero (IMHO), but until the warming signal can be identified it remains unproven in a formal sense.

Kricki, FYI most denialist regulars here have slipped up at one time or another and vented some comments about socialism, communism, etc. IOW their political slant is very clear. If you don't believe me do a sight search for those terms and see what turns up. And of course the attacks on Al Gore are ubiquitous.

Regarding your comment that "people are getting paid big dollars to support global warming theories," bear in mind that a lot more people are getting paid a lot more money to continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere. These latter also divert a bit of spare change to supporting the network of denialist sites whose work is often linked by commenters here.

"When was the planet healthy?" Hmm. I'd say that's not the right question. Better would be "How much different are we prepared to let the planet become compared to how it has been recently?" Actually that's a bit of a trick question since much of the change we're causing now won't be fully experienced for another century or more, but that's the aspect that makes this problem so hard to handle.

Caleb, what's most objectionable about the comment section here isn't the expressions of disbelief in AGW but the casual falsehoods frequently used to support those views. To be fair, many of them aren't even falsehoods, but rather off-the-cuff opinions or wishful thinking converted into "facts" to give them more weight. It amounts to a substitution of politics for scientific facts. Since Brett chooses not to do anything to discourage this practice, the comment section is kept from being a place where most people can learn about the science.

A variation on this theme is when climate science papers are represented as meaning something quite different from what's actually the case; we just saw this happen with the Arctic paper that Vincent cited (as pointed out by Petri). To be fair, Vincent very likely picked that up from a denialist site, but it was still a dishonest act since he knows those sites make no effort to present the science straight.

Personally, while I won't deny engaging in the occasional flame when driven to it by some of the more vehement deniers here (h/t Lost Boys!), in most threads where I participate I try to get out as much about the science as possible through explanation and links. This (and similar participation by a few others) means that anyone who's willing to wade through the flames and other doo-doo can learn something here. For understandable reasons, most won't have the patience.

Chris C., I for one appreciate your efforts! Here are a couple of papers that may be of interest if you're not already familiar with them (both ran in Climatic Change within the last couple of years):

"Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change:
Adults' mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter"

"EXPERIENCE-BASED AND DESCRIPTION-BASED PERCEPTIONS OF LONG-TERM RISK:
WHY GLOBAL WARMING DOES NOT SCARE US (YET)"

Both make important points, but I found the first one especially useful in explaining why so many people have a hard time understanding why the fact that the initial CO2 increase lags the initial temperature signal during deglaciations does not mean an anthropogenic CO2 increase won't raise temperature in the present.

Dear Emiliano,

This article is dedicated to you.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/06/br_r_r_where_did_global_warming_go/

Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?
January 6, 2008

THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.

I still see nine cities that show annual warming since 1977, and only eight that show annual cooling

Hi Travis,

Well that sounds like a statistically significant "consensus" to me. Lets raise taxes and export jobs to bring the world back in balance. I'm sick of all this prosperity in the west anyway, and would like to see us at parity with Zimbabwe - to ease the guilt of liberals everywhere.

Also, I appreciate your efforts to demonstrate that GISS data in Alaska reports higher readings than the more reliable temperatures taken on the ground. Probably the same story most places.

Golly, Marie, was necessary to paste the same piece three times to three different threads? Especially since the piece itself is nothing but a rehash of tired contrarian lies.

It sounds a lot like another of those shotgun blasts Chris Crawford wrote of.

Chris C. should be more than appreciated. I look at him as a savior. I'm sure he would agree with me that you don't conduct this experiment of carbon dumping into the atmosphere. It makes all the riposte moot.

Chris Crawford's post really nailed it on the head, and reflects what I've been saying the whole time: it is the deniers who are the politically-driven animals in this debate.

It's quite a shame, really, because deniers could offer a more constructive role in determining policy solutions to not only AGW, but energy related issues. There was a cover story in the ultra-conservative journal, National Review, even stating as such a few months ago. However, the Denial Machine continues to spend their energy dumbing down the debate with posts about their backyard weather.

"Also, I appreciate your efforts to demonstrate that GISS data in Alaska reports higher readings than the more reliable temperatures taken on the ground."

So GISS data is 'unreliable' in Alaska, but it's somehow good enough for you to use to prove the Antarctica peninsula and Canadian Arctic have "cooled by eight degrees" in the past ten years? LOL!!

Hi Thor,

No one is "conducting an experiment." Oil and coal are amazing blessings which have allowed our modern civilization to come into existence, and largely wipe out famine, war and disease. The average life span prior to the industrial revolution was about 30 years, and infant mortality used to be 60%. We haven't had a large war in over 70 years - which is unprecedented in modern history.

The "experiment" which concerns me is the idea of throwing us back into the dark ages over an insane and irrational fear.

How are the deniers so much more political than the group having meetings full of politicians, a politician as your most prominant figure, oh and lets not forget NBC being so alarmist, they are middle of the road right? No agenda there!

If the Geneve Conventions were political, than what about that little slumber party in Bali?

Patrick Henry offers us an excellent example of the old "post hoc, propter hoc" fallacy. The concept is that temporal succession doesn't imply causation. Just because A preceded B, you can't conclude that A caused B. Yet here is Patrick Henry, telling us that oil and coal are amazing blessings, that prior to the industrial revolution, things were bad, but now they're much better, and now we've had 70 years of peace. Gee, Patrick, if I applied the same skepticism to your claims of the beneficence of oil and coal that you apply to AGW, I'd be arguing that oil causes wars (which actually has a glint of truth to it).

Now, I agree that fossil fuels have done all sorts of wonderful things and without them we'd be in much worse shape. But that doesn't make them perfect nor without deleterious consequences.

Next, Mr. Henry offers us yet another example of poor logic when he provides us with this statement:

"The "experiment" which concerns me is the idea of throwing us back into the dark ages over an insane and irrational fear."

Boy, talk about an alarmist! Mr. Henry is hysterically suggesting horrible consequences if we do something about AGW. His dire predictions are ideal complements of the predictions made in movies such as "The Day After Tomorrow".

Veets questions my claims about deniers having a stronger political component. Again, I suggest that you read the actual statement that I made on Jan 5 at 2:28 PM. Here's a quote from it:

"I mean to say that one side (the deniers) is motivated exclusively by political beliefs, while the other side (the asserters) is motivated primarily (but not exclusively) by scientific analysis."

Mr. Bloom,

You state, Bear in mind that the oceans and poles are difficult places to do what's referred to as "detection and attribution," meaning detection of a warming signal and attribution of it to AGW. To demonstrate how tricky this can be, a couple of months ago there was a paper that described recent acceleration of ice streams in the portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that's thought to be most vulnerable to collapse. The nature of the acceleration makes it clear that warming is going on, but nobody can figure out where it's coming from. It's most likely ocean currents, but atmospheric warming that hasn't been detected is still possible. The chance that AGW isn't behind this is approximately zero (IMHO), but until the warming signal can be identified it remains unproven in a formal sense.

Wouldn't have anything to do with vulcanism, would it? Almost all of those little gray areas in West Antarctica are volcanoes with summit elevations in nearing 12,000 feet. If you'd like a better view, go to Google Earth and turn on the Volcano layer.

It turns out that these volcanoes are part of a rift system. Although, the rift system does not appear to be currently active, this paper suggests that a hot spot beneath Marie Byrd Land Dome may provide enough geothermal flux to induce the basal melting that moves the ice streams in West Antarctica.

I would not rule out geologic causes completely. There are many studies, both completed and on-going, looking at the geology of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and many of them point to non-AGW ice stream initiation and basal melting.

Also, I appreciate your efforts to demonstrate that GISS data in Alaska reports higher readings than the more reliable temperatures taken on the ground.

Umm...Patrick? The temperatures were taken on the ground:

[From the GISS site] The current analysis uses surface air temperatures measurements from the following data sets: the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998), United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) records through 2005, and SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) data from Antarctic stations.

Thought you might like to know. Only the full global (land and sea) maps use satellite data. Our maps used land station data only.

Hi Chris Crawford,

Please share with us your expert economic and political analysis of the consequences of President Barack Hussein Obama signing a legally binding agreement committing the US to a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions before 2020 - as he has promised to do.

I'm sure that you have thought this through quite carefully.

Hi Travis,

OK, so if the "Global Information Satellite Systems" group at NASA takes their Alaska temperature measurements on the the ground, why are they higher than the official readings monitored by the University of Alaska?

OK, so if the "Global Information Satellite Systems" group at NASA takes their Alaska temperature measurements on the the ground, why are they higher than the official readings monitored by the University of Alaska?

Perhaps because that particular page is looking at only a handful of weather stations whereas GISS uses rural stations in addition to the more urban stations listed at the UA site? And perhaps because it is looking at two points in time and not an overall trend? If you dug around a little more on University of Alaska's site, you might have come across this temperature anomaly time-series:

http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/30year/index.html

It would appear that this graph indicates an increase in the five year mean of temperature anomalies in Alaska as a whole since 1977. The UA site only has temp data through 2005, but given the relative similarity between the UA graph and the more recent graph provided by last year's NCDC annual summary, I think it's safe to say the five-year mean hasn't gone down all that much since then. That takes us through 2006, which brings us up to date with the individual station data you quoted originally. Of course the two graphs use different temperature scales, but as you know that does not alter the trend line itself; it only affects the magnitude of the anomaly value.

FYI, it's "Goddard Institute for Space Studies" but you probably knew that already, too.

Patrick Henry is starting to show some teeth. His latest comment bristles with irritation:

"Please share with us your expert economic and political analysis of the consequences of President Barack Hussein Obama signing a legally binding agreement committing the US to a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions before 2020 - as he has promised to do. I'm sure that you have thought this through quite carefully."

Actually, while I have in fact thought this through in some detail, I have no desire to address that issue just yet. As I have counseled you, this is in fact the area where you are on stronger ground for a serious discussion, as the costs and benefits of any particular program are far more difficult to evaluate than the climate change science.

But since we cannot even obtain agreement on something so obvious as climate change science, there isn't much point in discussing policy options -- if we can't get people to agree to basic physics, there's no hope of accomplishing anything more than a demolition derby of opinions in a discussion of policy responses.

BTW, have you read the IPCC reports?

Hi Chris Crawford,

since we cannot even obtain agreement on something so obvious as climate change science, there isn't much point in discussing policy options

The policy options have nothing to do with science. The thrust at Bali was to restrict the US and give China a free pass. All that would do is transfer US wealth and CO2 to China.

Obama will attempt to sign on to a 40% reduction by 2020, regardless of the science or lack thereof. This will be devastating to the US economy, and will have no noticeable impact on the climate. Your assumption that the momentum behind this movement is based on science, is incorrect. AGW scientists are the "useful idiots" being used to front social engineering.

Patrick Henry writes:

"The policy options have nothing to do with science. "

At last we have something we can agree upon! Well, I have to add the qualifier that the policy options are informed by the science (there's no point in talking policy options if we deny the science), but I do agree that the discussion of policy is a completely different ball park.

He further writes:

"Your assumption that the momentum behind this movement is based on science, is incorrect. AGW scientists are the "useful idiots" being used to front social engineering."

And what evidence have you that the IPCC report is not based on science?

BTW, have you read the IPCC reports?

Hi Chris Crawford,

Recent comments by the UN Secretary General show clearly that he is not interested in even the most exaggerated findings of the IPCC, other than the single concept that mankind is responsible. Nothing in the IPCC report suggests that mankind is on the brink of "oblivion," which is the favorite concept being pushed by the UN, Gore, Hansen, Greenpeace, and the green movement in General.

You are completely missing the point of what is going on here. It is not about science.

BTW - I'm not going to answer the same question more than once.

Patrick Henry,

Mr. Crawford says: BTW, have you read the IPCC reports?

According to bt, that is called trolling. Where is bt when you need him? He should be complaining to Brett.

Chris, your arrogance becomes you.

I reread your statement, and you still trumpet the fact that deniers/skeptics/contrarians are motivated exclusively by politics. I have seen a lot of science against AGW on here as well. Where is it you may be thinking? Well peruse the boards a bit and you will find it.

Now the believers as you say are almost wholly influenced by the science, but not exclusively. Yet your poster boy asserter is a "Do as I say, not as I do" good ol Politician!

Explain why we would have a political agenda so strong as mere deniers?

The "science" is there for both sides, it is how you interpret it (or in some cases, manipulate it) as per your beliefs.

Of course you can show me a graph of temperatures rising on one axis, and CO2 concentration rising on the other axis and claim it is a correlation. But as any one familiar with the FSM knows, the real reason for global warming is there are less pirates. Or maybe POLIO was keeping the temperature down, darn those vaccines!

According to bt, that is called trolling. Where is bt when you need him? He should be complaining to Brett.

Another contrarian attempting to put words in my mouth again.

"Trolling" is, for example, posting a comment that is designed to be provocative in the hopes of causing an outcry against it, and thereby a) draw attention to it and b) distract attention from more important topics. It is, sadly, one of the abuses frequently practiced by the contrarian/denialist community -- see a canonical example graciously provided by PH.

"Trolling" is frequently coupled with "The Repetitive Lie": the gambit is to post an easily-refuted lie over and over in hopes that the defenders of the truth will grow weary of responding, and the lie will win out. Examples of this abound here, which I prefer not to draw additional attention to by repeating.

Mr. Crawford is doing something much different: he is attempting to keep PH focused on a rather specific question, a question that PH apparently prefers to avoid.

Patrick Henry criticize the UN Secretary General. That's fine with me; I'm not talking about the UN Secretary General, I'm talking about climate change. He also notes that " Nothing in the IPCC report suggests that mankind is on the brink of "oblivion," which is the favorite concept being pushed by the UN, Gore, Hansen, Greenpeace, and the green movement in General." Again, I have no problem with his criticisms of these people and groups. I'm here to talk about climate change.

Next, we have a truly telling statement:

"You are completely missing the point of what is going on here. It is not about science."

Apparently not! At least, not in his mind or the minds of any of the other politically motivated commentators. Mr. Henry, by his own admission, really doesn't care about the science -- and he certainly doesn't know it, having now tacitly acknowledged that he really hasn't read the IPCC reports.

Patrick, I suggest that you would be more comfortable in an overtly political blog and leave the discussions of science to those who care about the science.

Hi Chris Crawford,

You aren't interested in science. You are interested in one narrow theoretical view of climate which unfortunately dominates the discussion.

Your lack of interest in the geologic record is extremely telling.

Veet writes:

"Yet your poster boy asserter is a "Do as I say, not as I do" good ol Politician!"

I urge you to consult my record of postings here or anywhere. I have never proffered Mr. Gore as a poster boy for climate change. I talk about climate change science. When asked, I always say the same thing: Mr. Gore is a popularizer, not a scientist. While his work has political value, it is part of the political domain, not the scientific domain, and I have no desire to argue politics. I am here to discuss science.

You write, "Chris, your arrogance becomes you." I implore you to keep this on a higher plane of discussion. We don't need to start with the mudslinging.

You write, "Explain why we would have a political agenda so strong as mere deniers?"

Because there are so very few scientists on the denialist side who are not in some way paid by corporations with financial interests in the political outcome. (And no, there are very few scientists on the asserter side who are accepting income from corporations with financial interests in the political outcome.)

But let's examine this issue more deeply, shall we? I offer a rhetorical survey for everybody's entertainment. Please answer each of the following questions with a simple "yes" or "no" depending on how strongly you agree or disagree with it:

1. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake.
2. Every woman should be able to have abortion on demand in the first six months of her pregnancy.
3. Illegal immigration is not a terribly important problem.
4. We should raise tax rates for the rich.
5. We should spend more money on social services and less money on the military.
6. Gays should be allowed to marry just like anybody else.

Now, count up how many times you responded with "yes". Next, note that none of these issues are in any way connected with each other nor are any of them connected to the global warming issue. They are all completely independent questions addressing completely different political controversies. In other words, there should be no correlation whatsoever between any of them. Moreover, I have worded them so that reasonable people can come down on either side of the controversy -- and in fact, in every one of these cases, there are lots of people on each side.

Now let's bring this home. I predict that, if you have a lot of "Yes" responses, then you are an asserter -- you accept the basic AGW hypothesis. If, however, you have very few "yes" responses, then you are a denier.

If politics had nothing to do with this issue, then it should not be possible to make any accurate prediction such as mine. But I now ask you, how do you think other people you know would respond? Do you not agree that my prediction does a pretty good job of predicting the actual behavior of people?

This does not prove that deniers are more political than asserters. This does prove that politics plays a major role in the decisions most people of both sides make about global warming.

So we appear to be stuck. But there's one more factor: there is one group of people who bring something more than politics to the picture: the scientists. They actually know what they're talking about -- unlike the politicized nonscientists. That should be worth a lot in our balance. And guess what: the great majority of the pertinent scientific experts are very much on the asserter side.

This is the third time I've said it, and some people still aren't getting it: I'm not saying that all deniers are politically motivated and all asserters are apolitical. I'm saying that the great majority of deniers are politically motivated and the great majority of non-politically motivated people are asserters.

You continue:

"The "science" is there for both sides, it is how you interpret it (or in some cases, manipulate it) as per your beliefs"

I agree that the best solution is to understand the science itself -- which is why I keep pounding the drum for reading the IPCC reports. But if you think the science can be manipulated, I invite you to try. Go ahead, pick out any section of the IPCC reports and try to twist the data around to support something completely different.

"Of course you can show me a graph of temperatures rising on one axis, and CO2 concentration rising on the other axis and claim it is a correlation."

Actually, we don't reason it that way. We start off with some basic physics that leads us to conclude that increasing CO2 concentrations should lead to elevated temperatures. Then we start looking at the data to see if we can confirm or deny what the basic physics tells us. So far, most of the data we're getting confirms the hypothesis. Some contradicts it. The overall balance, in the judgement of most experts, is that the confirming evidence outweighs the contradictory evidence. What's your problem with that? If your judgement is otherwise, tell us why. Cite page and paragraph in the IPCC report.

"Trolling" is frequently coupled with "The Repetitive Lie": the gambit is to post an easily-refuted lie over and over in hopes that the defenders of the truth will grow weary of responding, and the lie will win out.

Hmmm.... The IPCC report comes to mind as a fine example.

Actually, I answered yes to all but one of those, I dont think the rich should be taxed more, but all the others one I answered yes to.

On the political compass, I am just left of center, comparable to Will Clinton. But I am not so political that I feel the need to label myself as a democrat and fall in line with the majority of their beliefs just because I am a "democrat"

More importantly, I am a free thinker, and I do not doubt that the earth has warmed in (enter timeframe here) but I do nto believe it is because of our CO2 and yaddah yaddah yaddah. I think the UHI is about as far as the A in AGW goes.

I think people screaming and raving about AGW and having to change our lives would be akin to someone yelling and screaming that we were the reason for tectonic movement that caused Pangaea to "spread out." Lower your CO2 emissions, they are increasing the winds, which are blowing the continents further apart.

The planet is going to do what the planet is going to do.

What research do I have about this? Well I came here as a believer in AGW cause that is what the news and stuff and society spoon fed me. But following links and reading some of the stuff from both sides, I made my determination.

Seriously Chris, that is dang near the funniest post ever on this blog.

"I'm saying that the great majority of deniers are politically motivated and the great majority of non-politically motivated people are asserters."

What a self-important way of looking at that MR. POT, says the KETTLE.

The scientists by the way would most likely fall on the Asserter side in your little test. A better way to explain your test is that one is conservative and one is liberal. You could ask those same questions (with minor tweeks) 30 years ago, prior to the age of the AGW scare, and find that most of your scientists are indeed liberal. Therefore they are inclined to do what they can to ensure that AGW is deemed credible.

Asserters? What the hell is that? Do you mean the followers of the Gore? AGWers?

I thank Chris Crawford for this last marvelous post.

His simple six-question survey, and pithy explanation of the implications of its results, shine a halogen-bright spotlight on the reality of what's taking place here. Never mind the larger questions -- I'm talking about right here on this website.

I would love to see the results of his survey. And, for the record, I answer with an enthusiastic "yes" for all six questions. I am also, of course, an AGW asserter.

Thank you, Chris.

Ok guys, the gauntlet is on the table. For each of our regulars, from each side -- Steve Bloom, Andrew, Pete, Lost Boy Paul, Patrick Henry, Darren, RICH, Jim Arndt, ClaudeC, Oiznop -- how do you answer Chris's survey?

Oh dear. Now Patrick Henry is starting to get nasty. He accuses me:

"Your lack of interest in the geologic record is extremely telling."

Patrick, you assume incorrectly. I am indeed interested in the geologic record. You have shown a reluctance to follow through on discussions, constantly diverting to some new digression whenever we start to close in the substance of the issue, and so I am reluctant to follow you down yet one more of these wild goose chases. Take heart, I'll be departing soon and you'll be free to present falsehoods to the readers with fewer challenges. I don't like to argue.

Hi Chris Crawford,

I'm happy to hear that you are interested in the geological record. Now please explain to me why temperatures in the past were never more than 10C higher, despite the fact that CO2 levels were as much as 20X higher.

This does not correlate at all with the 2007 IPCC report which claims up to 7C warming over the next 50 years, due a relatively minuscule rise in CO2 concentration.

Instead of your usual log-winded obfuscation, how about answering the question?

Ok, bt. I'll humor you (and CC). Although, this has nothing to do with AGW.

1. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake.
2. Every woman should be able to have abortion on demand in the first six months of her pregnancy.
3. Illegal immigration is not a terribly important problem.
4. We should raise tax rates for the rich.
5. We should spend more money on social services and less money on the military.
6. Gays should be allowed to marry just like anybody else.

On second thought, forget it.

In thinking further... you are basically classifying GW into a political agenda, your questions are obviously geared toward political hot topics and then you further it by saying more yes answers means you are probably an asserter. Now more yes answers obviously makes you a liberal.

So anyways back to your little thing about the deniers being wholly political and the asserters being just slightly political, you proclaimed your political agenda test would discern asserters from deniers, and gosh I have read it a couple times, and I still cannot find anything science like about that test... are you 100% sure it would so easily discern both asserters and deniers?

Since we are labeling people, I am going to label you and Mark and BT into a group. I am going to call you the GW Globetrotters, except instead of doing tricks with basketballs, you try and put the earth on your finger and spin it to further your GW political agenda, spin away!

Chris,
I agree with Veets; for your type everything revolves around politics. You essientially have shown your true colors. The AGW debate for you is basically a political debate no different than the debates that rage around taxes, war and peace, etc...

Patrick, I fear that you are growing confrontational and are no longer willing to sustain a civil discourse. I appeal to your better nature to try to bring the discussion back into a courteous realm. I'm willing to take the first step with a courteous response to your question:

First, we don't have any really solid numbers on climate during the Ordovician period. We know that it was warm, and we know that it ended with a half-million year ice age. You say that it was 10 degrees C warmer. Well, that's a good estimate, but we don't really know that it wasn't 15 degrees warmer. We can reasonably guess that it wasn't 20 degrees warmer because those kind of temperatures would be killing for many life forms.

More important is the fact that, as several people have already noted, CO2 greenhouse effect has a logarithmic response to CO2 concentrations. That means that, at very high concentrations, you don't get that much of a response. You seem to be assuming that at 10x increase in CO2 concentrations should yield a 10x increase in temperature. That simply isn't the case because the response is logarithmic.

Moreover, the distribution of continental land masses was very different during the Ordovician and that would have resulted in very different oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns -- which themselves would have had a profound impact on climate.

Lastly, your representation of the IPCC estimates is misleading. They posit a 7 degree C increase in temperature as the high end scenario. They offer a range of scenarios, and you're picking their worst case scenario to hang your case on. They themselves acknowledge that this is not the most probable outcome.

I'm sorry that my response is "long-winded", but I am trying to give clear explanations rather than quick sound bites.

Paul and Veets, my point with the little rhetorical questionnaire is to demonstrate that the whole global warming controversy is driven by political, not scientific considerations. To oversimplify, left-wingers like Mr. Gore support AGW because it's the left-wing thing to do, and right-wingers oppose AGW because it's the right-wing thing to do. As Patrick Henry revealingly blurted out, "It's not about the science." Would all you politically motivated people please just go away and let the scientists do their jobs? You claim the scientists are untrustworthy, but whom would you rather trust -- people who DON'T know the science? People who haven't even read the IPCC reports? Politically motivated people are certain to be biased -- and most of them are ignorant to boot. The scientists are at least knowledgeable. And your assumption that they are biased is quite a big assumption for somebody who claims to be skeptical. If you were truly skeptical, you wouldn't accept such a gross assumption without solid evidence.

No, I think it's appropriate for me to point out what should be obvious: that this is just another left-versus-right political battle masquerading as a discussion of science. A pox on all you politically motivated people! Go home and leave the scientists out of your ugly mudslinging! Let the scientists do the science, and leave the political arguments to political topics -- such as what we're going to do about the scientific results.

Chris Crawford,

"Do you not agree that my prediction does a pretty good job of predicting the actual behavior of people?"

First, apparently you assume that scientist are not people.

"But there's one more factor: there is one group of people who bring something more than politics to the picture: the scientists."

So no scientist have any political views? Or only those that question AGW have political views?

How would Hansen answer your question?

BT:

OK I'll play...Say Brett, this thread is down on the list a bit and might go off the beaten path as it were, might be fun to keep it on somehow so we can all answer.

Darren, I am aware of that. Couple of reasons.......the server is running a lot slower than usual for some reason and with my limited time I am falling behind trying to post the comments. Believe me, I am not happy about it! The slowness is wasting a lot of my time. They are looking into the problem. I also had some family issues to deal with last night and this morning which has taken me away from the blog. Hopefully, things will get better soon, and I apologize to everyone for the delays.
Regards, Brett.

Though it is not really too climate related, I think the results are worthy of the task as I think it will be quite telling. I believe it is relevent because the politics are truly central to the overall issue You can tell by BT's enthusiastic response already.

I already looked at, and commented upon, Chris's post prior to BT's request, but this is a good excersize and would love to answer the questions. Please keep in mind everyone, that unlike some on this blog (and I do not want anyone to admit to anything they are not comfortable with) I have in the past already plainly stated that: I am conservative, voted for GW (twice even), and republican. So here goes...

1. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake.

NO

2. Every woman should be able to have abortion on demand in the first six months of her pregnancy.

YES

3. Illegal immigration is not a terribly important problem.

YES

4. We should raise tax rates for the rich.

NO

5. We should spend more money on social services and less money on the military.

NO

6. Gays should be allowed to marry just like anybody else.

YES

I will also implicitly state that I represent a fundamental change in the Republican party that is growing steam as a whole and my ideas will be the standard in the very near future. Further, several of the questions as written, namely #3 and #5 cannot be properly answered as such with a pat YES or NO. Rather, they are questions that are more complex and require modification for a proper answer.

I predict that the "asserters" among us will be consistent in their responses and the "deniers" will be not as consistent. In other words, they will not conform to the standard that Chris and BT have postulated. So, this will define which group is truly political.

I see Paul has already broken the mold just as I predict.

Thank you Chris for the test. Great Idea.

Brett please consider moving this back up on the list so we can all evaluate this part of AGW.

Hey guys,

That anonymous post was me and in my last question Chris it should read "questions"

JP writes:

"I agree with Veets; for your type everything revolves around politics. You essientially have shown your true colors. The AGW debate for you is basically a political debate no different than the debates that rage around taxes, war and peace, etc..."

I am astounded by this comment; the whole thrust of my comments has been that we have to separate the scientific from the political, and that the intrusion of political agendas into the scientific discussion is injurious to the truth. Why do you think I have been pounding the drum for reading the IPCC reports?

It is truly depressing to realize just how easy it is for people to read something and come to an interpretation 180 degrees off what was written.

Anonymous takes me to task for not including the political views of scientists. This is a reasonable objection. In defense of my claims, I'll offer two arguments:

1. Because their professional reputations are at stake, scientists will go to greater lengths to subsume their political beliefs to their professional judgement. After all, would YOU risk your career by injecting politics into a business decision argument with your boss?

2. There's an unspoken assumption here that scientists are uniformly liberal. I don't think that assumption is justified. It has been shown that there is a liberal bias in academia in general, but that cannot be applied to scientists in particular. Indeed, I recall seeing an item many years back showing engineering professors have a decided bias towards conservatism. Until we get some data on this, I think it inappropriate to assume the political convictions of the scientists.

Chris: Being a scientist myself, a biologist, I have to say politics plays a large part in our work. Now some of that is because I work for a government agency and our annual budget is set by politicians. While most of out budget is spent on issues we deem important, the politicians just love to get their 2 cents in and demand we do this or that. It gets very annoying. I agree with you that they should just let us do our work, but that isn't reality. NOAA, NASA, The Met Office, WMO, etc are all government agencies who's budgets are set by politicians. Even academia is linked to politics, especially land grant universities. The university I attended is funded by the state and the research that is done in my area of expertise is heavily funded by the Sea Grant which is administered by NOAA. Even the IPCC that you refer to so often is a political group. From their website: "The IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Its constituency is made of :

The governments: the IPCC is open to all member countries of WMO and UNEP. Governments of participate in plenary Sessions of the IPCC where main decisions about the IPCC workprogramme are taken and reports are accepted, adopted and approved. They also participate the review of IPCC Reports.

The scientists: hundreds of scientists all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC as authors, contributors and reviewers.

The people: as United Nations body, the IPCC work aims at the promotion of the United Nations human development goals

You see politics is very much involved.

SM, I don't deny the influence of politics in the government agencies -- and I'll point out that the political influence of the Bush Administration on government agencies has been heavy-handed in its attempt to promote its anti-AGW political program. The fact that there is so much pro-AGW material coming out of government programs is indicative of the strength of that intellectual position. Even the none-too-subtle efforts of the Bush Administration cannot completely stifle the flow of information.

As to state-level interference, that's much more of a mixed bag. The academics are especially touchy about political intrusion into research, and pressure from the states is, I believe, more in the direction of attacking problems of particular economic value to the state. That cuts both ways.

Yes, the weakest link in the IPCC process is the intrusion of governments at the highest editorial level. Fortunately, this pressure does not extend far down the organization, and remember too that the USA is one of the pressure groups exerting political influence on it -- all of it strongly anti-AGW.

Chris:

I still think the test is a great idea. You mentioned that engineering professors tend to be conservative.

As an engineer, I can tell you unequivocally that the engineering profs at OSU were uniformly liberal in their beliefs when I was in school. I have gone back relatively consistently and communicate with them several times per year and have found them to remain liberal in nature. Odd though, most of the students except those who plan on going into academia were and are conservative. Not sure why that is.

Now I do not have numbers or surveys to back up my comments but that was and is my personal experience with them. One of my favorite professors, a man of extraordinary knowledge and intellect, is wildly liberal.

Funny about him though, he has practically zero skill in solving real world engineering problems. But give him a theoretical situation, you can't beat him.

My answers are the same as Darren's on Chris Crawford's test with the exception of the immigration issue.The test was a great idea,wish more would take it.

Re: Chris Crawford's quiz.

Actually, the only one I would give an unequivocal "YES" to would be #1. I thought so then and I continue to think so now. On the other hand, now that we're there, we can't just pull out everyone at the drop of a hat and leave the Iraqis to their own devices.

As per the other five questions, I am not satified with the wording.

#2: Abortion should not be abused as a means of birth control but should remain an option when the health and well-being of mother and child are threatened.

#3: I think immigrants should come here legally, but the process for legal immigration needs to be streamlined to make it easier for people who wish to come here to make an honest living. Employers need to conduct background checks on their employees to make sure they are here legally, and the federal govenment should work to make that process as quick and easy as possible.

#4: Before we raise taxes in the interest of increasing government revenue, we should look for ways to make government more efficient. Nor do I think tax cuts are a cure-all for the economy.

#5: We need to spend more money on education. Period. The military also needs to be more careful where they throw American taxpayer dollars, but that's not a problem unique to them.

#6: Gays in committed partnerships should have the same legal rights as a married couple. I don't particularly care if they call it marriage or not.

Reply: Travis, he only asked for a simple yes or no answer.

Now how does this relate to my position on Global Warming? I'd say it's consistent with the idea of going beyond the superficial. Perhaps it also speaks to the fact that I don't lay claim to any organized political party, including Democrats and Republicans. Come November, whoever convinces me they're the one to lead this country in the right direction will have my vote.

Reply: Travis, he only asked for a simple yes or no answer.

I know. I guess my point is that I don't see the world in such black and white terms. To relate that to my opinions on global warming, I'd say I believe that humans have their impact on climate, but that does not mean I believe every thing that is thrown out there as a cause or effect of climate change. It certainly doesn't mean I agree with all of the solutions being tossed around.

I suppose if I was put up in a firing squad to get a straight yes or no out of me, I'd have to say yes to #1, #2, and #6 and no to the rest as they are worded. I'd still go out kicking and screaming at it, though.

If it werent for the politics the scientists wouldnt be able to do their jobs, so much of the funding is political in nature.

I pretty much think that the science has become tainted by the politics.