Global Temperatures have NOTHING to do with CO2

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Rath said:

HappySqurriel said:

Crashdown77 said:

HappySqurriel said:

Suppose you had a collection of pseudo-scientists claiming that the steady increase in sin was going to lead to cataclysmic holy wrath in the not too distant future, and the only way you were going to avert this outcome was to stop sinning or to pay tithes to a religious body to alleviate your sin. The only supporting evidence they really have is computer models which assume sin is going to lead to cataclysmic holy wrath, and supposed increases in extreme weather which could easily be attributed to increased tracking and reporting of extreme weather. You know and can demonstrate that the people funding the research are either fundamentalists or will directly or indirectly see a cut of the tithes and will profit from it; and any contradicting research is discredited immediately if it receives any funding from a company which has a product which could be considered sinful. To what extent would you believe that you needed to change your lifestyle or pay tithes to avert this holy wrath? In what way is the situation I presented any different from the Global Warming debate?

I think the difference is that a lot of "real" scientists claim that global warming is happening, which is a pretty big difference in my book. Unless of course you think that any scientist that might disagree with your take is a "psuedo scientist", in that case I have just wasted a couple hundred letters here.

Very few "real" scientists will make the claim that increases in man made CO2 are leading to long term cataclysmic changes to the climate based on a short term warming trend and unproven climate models.

The IPCC is actually made up of real scientists.

There are plenty of issues with the IPCC scientist and well-known experts in the various fields the IPCC report covers have been becoming more vocal over some of the claims they've made.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=0ea8dc23-ad1a-440f-a8dd-1e3ff42df34f&p=2

"I know of no major scientist with any long record in this field who agrees with the pronouncements of the alarmists at the IPCC," states Prof. Reiter, whose history in his research field spans three decades and five continents, and who is well familiar with the scope of work occurring in the mosquito-borne research community.

"On the contrary, all of us who work in the field are repeatedly stunned by the IPCC pronouncements. We protest, but are rarely quoted, and if so, usually as a codicil to the scary stuff."

....

As Prof. Reiter testified to a U.K. parliamentary committee in 2005, "The paucity of information was hardly surprising: Not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published "professional" articles as an "expert" on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS.

"Among the contributing authors there was one professional entomologist, and a person who had written an obscure article on dengue and El Nino, but whose principal interest was the effectiveness of motorcycle crash helmets (plus one paper on the health effects of cellphones)."

How do such people become numbered among the IPCC's famed "2,500 top scientists" from around the world? Prof. Reiter, wanting to know, wrote the IPCC with a series of detailed questions about its decision-making process. It replied: "The brief answer to your question below is 'governments.' It is the governments of the world who make up the IPCC, define its remit and direction. The way in which this is done is defined in the IPCC Principles and Procedures, which have been agreed by governments." When Prof. Reiter checked out the "principles and procedures," he found "no mention of research experience, bibliography, citation statistics or any other criteria that would define the quality of 'the world's top scientists.'"

....

Even the peer-review process -- ordinarily designed to ensure rigorous science -- has mutated to meet IPCC needs. In professional science, the names of peer reviewers are kept confidential to encourage independent criticism, free of recrimination, while the deliberations of the authors being critiqued are made public.

"The IPCC turns this on its head," Prof. Reiter explains. "The peer reviewers have to give their names to the authors, but the deliberations of the authors are strictly confidential." In effect, the science is spun, disagreements purged, and results predetermined.

So in truth the IPCC is far more of a Government body than a scientific one...by their own assertion.

Either way their position is wrong because it is factually and emprically wrong..not because of who they are, what their agenda is, or who they represent.

PS - To answer your first question to me...no particular reason.  I honestly don't normally even think about it.....although I do catch myself doing it from time to time.  Ultimately the point gets across though and both parties know what is meant so I don't worry about it too much.