Cool Video. Nice work Eva!
I needed a video like this because i was working on my split jerk for the first time the other day. Thanks HQ!

Indonesia now - awesome!

How much does Eva weigh? That's some serious weight she's lifting.

Eva is my hero

Nice work J-Rad and Spuke!!!!

Orson Scott Card wrote Ender's Game, Speaker For the Dead, Xenocide and Ender's Shadow. All AMAZING books. Read them...very creative, very thought provoking Looking forward to this article.

Coach,

I like your style. There isn't anything political that is off limits with you and I will await the fire storm that will surley follow. You are a brave man to continue to wade into some of these arguments but I can see how you must enjoy the fireworks that ensue.
I'm amazed that I've lived long enough to remember when these same folks were getting us to believe we were all headed for a Global Winter. The next ice age was almost upon us. These are the same type of scientists that won't fess up to the faking/doctoring of the evidence in support of evolution. Where is the scientific minds in looking into intelligent design? The religious zealots of secular humanism have a basic problem. The more real science shines the light into the corners of their "gospel" the more the road map doesn't fit the terrain. Have a great rest day all and I will eagerly await the rest day political firestorm.

What!!?!?!?!! Does this mean that my "beach front" property investment in Western Maryland ISN'T going to pan out? Dang, I hate when that happens.

Sweet! Climate change again.

One of todays news stories...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17632043/

Apparently NOAA and NASA are in on the conspiracy. EPA accepts global warming as well although they have a lot of IPCC stuff on their website so that's questionable from the beginning.

The main question I want to ask everyone is why? Why would so many scientists go to so much effort and risk their reputations if it weren't true? How does putting scrubbers on smokestacks and finding alternate energy sources punish rich countries? Why do they want to punish themselves?

I'm going to order the book and read it so next time we have climate change I can talk intelligently about it.

Cheers!
JP

Glad to see Spu, J-Dub, Rubes and of course the womanizer himself kicking some Indo-ass into shape.

Good article. I hope he writes an article about getting away from the automobile, and I hope Coach posts it. Card is a great writer...again, I recommend his books.

Not sure about that evolution comment...I mean, evolution and intelligent design are not exactly mutually exclusive concepts. Also, how can scientists look into intelligent design? I think the reason none are "looking into" it is because that would be impossible by definition.

We have religious leaders to contemplate the ethereal...

The standard for medical literature (I'm work in a medical field) is that all statements of fact must be referenced. In some articles the list of references can be pages long and be a great source of infomation on the topic of the article.

I have taken this as a rule in my own life and believe all infomartion to be dependable and accepted as fact must be "Hard-Nosed, Literal, Precise and Accurate."

When applying this rule it is very difficult to find sterotypes and credibly make statements such as "the same type of scientist..." without naming the scientist. Or, "faking/doctoring of the evidence..." without providing the actual evidence that was "doctored." What does "doctored" mean anyway. (see comment #8 above)

In my life I find stereotyping and seeking information or point-of-views that support my biases is one of the greatest henderances I face in recognizing reality. I believe this is a nearly universal problem.

hmm thanks for the article gets my brain rolling

Funny, when I started reading that article I swore he was going to say the context was Doug Feith and the 'ironclad' intelligence for going to war with Iraq.

Works both ways, I think.

Did anybody notice the banner ad after the end of the article. It was by Native Canada. It had a picture of two polar bears with the following text rotating through:
"Their Habitat is Melting"
"They Need Our Help"
and the kicker
"Let's Stop Global Warming"

Does anyone find this as ironic and hilarious as I do?

I wanna be Eva T. when I grow up. ;)

JPW, it punishes rich countries because poor countries are not obligated to do anything at all. As I recall, this was one of the fundamental flaws in the Kyoto treaty...third world crap-holes were allowed to pollute as much as they wanted...even some VERY LARGE and VERY POWERFUL ones.

This is an awsome documentary:

"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831

I keeping with my theme 2 rest days ago, would one of the "True Believers" in global warming please explain me:

How are man's activities here on earth causing the the polar ice-caps to melt on Mars?

Crossfit Indonesia

Anyone got any contacts for them?

Looks like a TNI base.

I will be there next week.

Cheers

Jerry

The standard for medical literature (I'm work in a medical field) is that all statements of fact must be referenced. In some articles the list of references can be pages long and be a great source of infomation on the topic of the article.

I have taken this as a rule in my own life and believe all infomartion to be dependable and accepted as fact must be "Hard-Nosed, Literal, Precise and Accurate."

When applying this rule it is very difficult to find sterotypes and credibly make statements such as "the same type of scientist..." without naming the scientist. Or, "faking/doctoring of the evidence..." without providing the actual evidence that was "doctored." What does "doctored" mean anyway. (see comment #8 above)

In my life I find stereotyping and seeking information or point-of-views that support my biases is one of the greatest henderances I face in recognizing reality. I believe this is a nearly universal problem.

Ken #14,

Surely you agree that exhaustive citation would be too cumbersome for this forum.

And surely you agree that referencing sources of information, while helpful, does not necessarily make them true. We all know an accepted set of facts can change over time (e.g. high carbohydrate diets, traditional weight training, etc.). One certainly bolster's one's argument by citing credible resources, but we can always find statistics to support our opinion if we look hard enough.

That said, I haven't read the article, I'm sore from yesterday, and I just saw 300 and feel terribly inadequate.

great article and great video (#20). I think the politics of the environmental movement relate well to this book. http://www.amazon.com/Guilt-Blame-Politics-Allan-Levite/dp/0966694309/ref=sr_1_2/104-7976878-1495941?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174023311&sr=1-2

As Rx'd 7:36

I have to admit I skimmed a little.

wow, my callus hurt from my hands from all the exercises, anybody knows where i can get the powder (not sure what the powder used is called) for all these excersises.

Re: #20 Please see this article for information on the Mars argument: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/

Also, please see this link for a response to the "Swindled" television program: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/

I've understood Coach as a proponent of getting as much information as possible before jumping to conclusions, being responsible for your own actions, etc and I respect that. I'd encourage you, Coach and readers, to actively pursue that information with regards to our species' actions on this earth and their implications, both with regards to "climate change" as well as other pollution, environmental health and biodiversity issues. I believe www.realclimate.org to be a decent, scientific forum from which to begin or further hone your search for a better truth in relation to our climate. As has been touched on in this forum thread, and I'd like to echo, please be wary of articles in the popular press with regards to this topic. Proponents of both sides of the argument are certainly guilty of many misleading, over-simplifying, and even false statements. In the end simple physics tells us that CO2 helps hold heat in our atmospheric system, it's why we have life. We are releasing a lot of CO2 as a species. More CO2 must mean more heat. From there it just tends to get complicated (the global climate system is rather big and involved) not "undecided" as many folks like to say. As for Mr Card's article and main point you might search realclimate.org for information with regards to solar forcing, solar radiation variances and its effects on our climate for more detailed, technical analysis of what the research is finding as well as for information on the Mann debate. You might start here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/

If anyone is interested in finding links to more studies and scientific analysis of the information available to our academic community I'd be happy to forward some of the research I've read and done to you, specifically with regards to counter arguments to many climate change denier's main talking points. However, I do love this little rant about information gathering and questions: http://www.gymjones.com/deliverance.php

The issue may seem politicized, and it has become that way in the popular press. The issue may seem disconnected from our lives personally, and danger could certainly seem that way to an ostrich with it's head in the sand. The planet won't blow up, humans won't cease to exist, we're just going to change the way things look. We'll probably loose sensitive ecosystems, habitats and species, and alter the habitability of many regions of the planet. I, personally, don't want to be responsible for those changes nor do I want to pass the responsibility on to my children. We have a duty to be stewards of our home.

Best,
Geoff

The amount of money that is wasted on the farce that is "global warming" could likely pay for universal health care and a few other things...when the Citizens finally realize that...they'll surely be pissed.

#3 do you even know anything about Indonesia other than that they are the largest muslim population of any nation? Moderate muslims, who are doing alot more in asia to keep extremists under control than most countries around the world with an economy that can barely be considered poverty. The reason you probably don't know that is because they broadcast what they do over BBC or CNN because the liberals would cry about human rights violations ...

don't broadcast it too =P
take 5 points off my grade for typo's

I don't buy Card's article. First, however much Card might wish it otherwise, the "Hockey Stick Report" is NOT the basis of climate change theory. There are a plethora of studies, literally thousands, that support the theory of anthropogenic global warming. So even if Card's claims were true, it wouldn't matter all that much.

But as it happens, they aren't true. For example, Card makes the following statement in his article:

"Anybody who cares to can verify the story. In fact, one of the leading science journals was prepared to publish Steve's results. But then, before publication, they kept cutting back and cutting back on the amount of space they would let Steve's report take up in the journal.

Finally the space they were going to allot was so small that they concluded Steve could not tell his story in that number of words, and therefore they decided not to publish it at all."

They decided not to publish at all? Then what the heck is this?

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.grl.2005.pdf

There is "Steve's" paper, published for all the world to see in Geophysical Research Letters, February 2005. Card's claim that it was not published, that it was "suppressed" by "Global Warming Alarmists" is a flat-out lie. Either Card is lying, or he's just accepting the word of people who are lying to him, without even the most minimal fact-checking. It took me less than 60 seconds to find that paper, and I didn't know going in that it even existed.

I hope this wakes up some of the people who have been buying into Card's hack piece without question. His "facts" are demonstrably wrong.

There's more like this. Card says "Even the IPCC, which was so heavily biased in favor of Global Warming alarmism, could not get its pet scientists to agree that Global Warming in recent decades is even probably caused by human activity." That is flat wrong. The IPCC's annual reports for the last several years (the reports written by their "pet scientists") have stated more strongly each year that global climate change is in fact caused by human activity.

The "Global Warming alarmists" that live in Card's head are some tiny cadre of ultra-liberal scientists who hate America and have managed to "ruthlessly suppress" dissent. But this is nothing more than Card's overactive imagination divorced from its useful outlet in his fiction. Science doesn't work that way (and I say that as a scientist myself). If there is strong evidence for or against any theory it comes out, usually sooner rather than later. To date there is no strong evidence against global climate change. And you can see the truth of that in the fact that when Card goes looking for that evidence he has to make it up.

I guess I'm getting old too. So far I've been through predictions of a new ice age, global warming caused by a hole in the ozone layer, (remember that one?) and now global warming caused by co2.

In the 80's we spent billions getting rid of chloro flouro carbons in spray cans, refrigierators and a million other devices because the hole in the ozone layer would fry us. Result, ozone hole went down too quickly to be attributable to human actions and the temperature still went up. Shit, we better look for the 'real' cause quick!

Very interesting documentary on UK tv last week called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" about this subject and the politics behind it. You can find details at http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/

If you can't get it abroad using the on demand service you might want to look for it as a download on your favourite p2p service. There's a lot of reputable scientists on it, but guess what? The day after it was broadcast they suddenly weren't reputable anymore!

Sad world.

Do you wear gloves on rest day?
J

Question #32

As I understand it, you only wear gloves on a rest day if you intend to comment on the ROD (Read of the Day). In which case they should be flame proof. ;-)

#32 J- What are you a nube? Refer to the FAQ and don't plug up the comment space with fashion questions. This is for times, weights, funtional trolling, and gentlemanly discourse about the things that effect our future WODs (recommend that we add cold weather survival vids that compliment the oncoming iceage). . . I cannot wait for underwater muscle ups and HSPUs. a little Linda with snorkle gear . . . yeah!

Initially, I thought "Mann" was a pseudonym for McGovern and "Steve" a pseudonym for Gary (Taubes). I thought the article was about nutrition!!

First, I liked the article as it applies to any aspect of scientific study. Science is to be "rationally" questioned to an inch of its life then "rationally" questioned some more.

Sadly, you get comments like #8 that feel left out in the cold because scientist don't take the intelligent design theory seriously. Sorry, forgive me for scoffing at your idea that aliens created life on this planet. You think aliens created us, fine, then at least provide rationale beyond thought experiments.

And if we were put here by aliens, what's the theory behind where the aliens came from and what created the aliens?

Goofy science fiction it sounds like, pardon me for not wanting it taught with seriousness in school.

Great Video!!!!!

Excellent Eva.

TE wrote: "The amount of money that is wasted on the farce that is "global warming" could likely pay for universal health care and a few other things...when the Citizens finally realize that...they'll surely be pissed."

Global warming is not a farce it is a fact. That being said, I think it would happen whether humans were helping it along or not. I mean the glaciers that use to exist in America did not recede due to human causes, yet they did recede.

Anyone who has taken a college level astronomy course knows how the story ends: As our sun ages (it is a G class star right now aka a yellow dwarf) it will expand to become a Red Giant and consume all the planets. A Red Giant star is—if memory serves—about 100x the diameter of our sun. That is just the natural progression of our sun. Too bad, so sorry, sad ending for all. But we can all take comfort knowing that nodoby gets out of this world alive.

Seriously, I am not saying we should not try and prolong our planet's life as long as possible, I think we should, it is the only place my kids will have to live but just remember that in the end we are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Oh yeah TE…health care is NOT A RIGHT nor should it ever be! Doctors should get paid what the market will bear not what the pencil necks in DC say they should. Our government does very little well, health care will be no exception. If you really want to piss people off go ahead and fight for a lazy man’s healthcare system. But I will leave it at that…. I pray I pray that universal health care will come up on rest day soon.

Great workout, Eva!
I love watching videos like this before hitting the gym. It is both educational and inspiring. Keep them coming.

If you want to see a weightlifting video that is mind boggling, check this one out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVB_rQFSsEg

It is of 3-time Olympic champion (82.5 to 85kg)Pyrros Dimas doing a workout. It is amazing to see that much strength and power from a guy who weights only 175lbs. Check it out.

Did "Fran" for the fun of it today.
3:44 PR today
Previous: 4:35

Let me start by saying, I AM NOT AN EXPERT ON CLIMATE CHANGE! Saying that, it seems to me with all the technology out there, #8, neither is the weatherman or scientist. None of these people can accurately predict the number of hurrincanes we are going to have let alone next weeks weather - that's with using all of the advanced technology. And as for Hockey Sticks - those are for hitting hockey pucks and whacking your opponent upside his head, not for climate change examples.

Seems to me we have much more to worry about in the world. Is it getting warmer, I don’t know. I am more worried about the welfare of this great country imploding, which is happening right before you eyes, and my children's future. We have a bunch Bull S**tters sitting in Washington who care more about themselves and their interest than they care about the citizens or this country. And I don't mean President. We as a country lack and lost one important thing - COMMON SENSE.

Geoff #26,

Though I applaud the atttempt you make, the evidence sited by realclimate seems odd to me.

Mars can be affected by things such as dust clouds and seasons, but our planet can not. This is weird when one considers the size of our fluid-state oceans and the sheer amount of water vapor that is created when less clouds are present.

That being said, what makes this whole thing so hard to bite off on is historical evidence of our own world warming and cooling.

Finally, the most repugnant part of it is the Global Activists. Perhaps it would be more attractive of a theory to wrap my head around if every time there was rally there was not the usual crowd of "Che" flag waving leftists who have decided to take over all things enviro.

The most revealing part of the documantary was the co-founder of Green Peace exlaining how the global leftists hijacked his movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR.

The most suprising was the link between PM Thatcher's request(and funding) for scientists to research global cooling in the late '70s. when the temps started to rise they decided global warming was now the threat.

Follow the money.

This "Carbon Credit" stuff to help one lead a "Carbon Neutral" lifestyle is another hoax.

Howdy,
Question
Who sings the song that accompanies the box jump video from 01FEB07 and the song that accompanies today's video (my inner city students have not heard of this song). Thanks...

TimmyTheNoose wrote: "but just remember that in the end we are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."

I guess. But rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic does not seem quite as pointless when the Titanic is not going to crash for another 4-5 billion years (estimated time until Sun enters red giant phase and destroys the earth).

#8 Bill,

with regards to intelligent design, give the book written by Tom Collins, the former head of the human Genome Project called "The Language of God" a read.

He is a serious scientist. Also a seriously spiritual person, who does not agree with ID.

I'd also just second #13-Joey's point. Evolution is biology.

and then DDD wrote: "TimmyTheNoose wrote: "but just remember that in the end we are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."

I guess. But rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic does not seem quite as pointless when the Titanic is not going to crash for another 4-5 billion years (estimated time until Sun enters red giant phase and destroys the earth)."

That was meant tongue in cheek, I am not really that fatalistic my man...did you catch the other part of my post that said I was FOR preserving our planet for our kids? My point was no matter what we do, it all ends the same, only the timeline changes...hugs man, hugs.

one question, where did you get that estimate, I have never heard that...not saying you are wrong, just never heard it, please leave a link...thanks

#42 JLW- Common sense is only common if everyone has it.

#43 Joey-
You pretty much said everything I was going to say, so I will just say good post!

Kate

#47 Timmy- That estimated timeline that DDD used was given out to my 4th grade science class.

Did you also see the video posted quite some time ago about Free Hugs?

Kate

Couple things.

Logic is not science. "More CO2 must mean more heat" is a hypothesis vulnerable to observational falsification. In point of fact, credible hypotheses that are consistent with observable facts have been proposed--and were referenced in the article--that model the Earth's atmosphere essentially as a self-buffering system which uses the oceans as CO2 traps, and which reliably correllate atmospheric CO2 levels with global warming, as an AFTER-effect, meaning that as a combination of solar output and the Earth's relative position to the Sun vary--with corresponding increases in temperature--the oceans warm, and more CO2 is released. As the Earth cools, that CO2 is reabsorbed.

The net is that the basic mechanism posited--CO2 as heat-trapping--has consistently failed to generate the sorts of predictive power that makes science science. Water, in point of fact, is the principle greenhouse gas. This is well known.

I have come to realize there are really two possible definitions, at least, of Science. One, the theory. Two, what scientists do.

In theory, persons conforming perfectly to the Scientific Method are infinitely and perennially skeptical. As anyone who has an understanding of Signal Theory knows, the only way to guarantee perfect detection of an anomaly is to set your filter at catching 100% of possible signals. Whatever you just "proved" is contingent upon the next test, and perfect scientists are constantly trying to "break" their own work.

The theory exists this way because of the very human tendency to become enmeshed in belief systems, which become self-reinforcing, which become the preferred filter through which to view the world. Which become dogmatic.

In the real world--i.e. in the realm of "science as what scientists do", Scientists will obviously have their biasses, but they need to have the discipline--the character, and this isn't easy--to treat them formally, and not back off from ideas that might overturn what they believe.

For example, if you believe x,y, or z, for it to fit within the realm of science, you have to be able to make statements like: "If X is true, then Y will happen. If Y does not happen, then X is flawed in some way."

This is PRECISELY what has NOT happened in the Global Warming debate (I call it a debate, but it has failed rise to that level; rather this discussion consists on the one side of what appears to me to be reasoned opposition, and on the other hysterical shrieking). We do NOT see scientists making predictions that can in any way be confirmed within anything approaching the timeframe within which they want us to make economically life-altering decisions. In short, they have provided NO evidence that should be admissable in "scientific court", and in point of fact the most salient piece of "evidence", the Hockey Stick, appears to be an outright fraud, and demonstrably so.

Someone mentioned that the article was published. Card did not say it wasn't published. He said it wasn't published in SCIENCE. If you yourself are a scientist, you should know that there are countless thousands of publications out there, and consequently if you want wide "air play" there aren't a lot of players in town.

The reason I think there hasn't been more coverage of this story is that it shows clearly that thousands of scientists went along with the crowd, and ASSUMED somebody else had done their job. And in fact, that no one did should and does reflect soundly on their collective level of professionalism, and--now that the story is out and they are keeping their mouths shut--their professional integrity.

Net: the piece of "evidence" stating that 7 of the last 10 years are the warmest on record (meaning, after the current warming period began in the late 1800's) is documentably fraudulent, and current computer models of our climate cannot currently predict the past or the future. They predict nothing, and consequently have roughly the same scientific standing as unicorns, and the people using them as "evidence" should be ashamed of themselves.

Hey Boys and Girls,there was an article in the liberal press about this was the warmest winter on record. I gues,it was just a lie they needed to take up space. Who cares? I think we should all drive our Hummers up to the Newfoundland to find out for ourselves. Maybe,one the way,we can stop at a flea market and pick up some WOD from Saddam arensal. What do you think?

Barry,

**Someone mentioned that the article was published. Card did not say it wasn't published. He said it wasn't published in SCIENCE. If you yourself are a scientist, you should know that there are countless thousands of publications out there, and consequently if you want wide "air play" there aren't a lot of players in town.**

You need to read Card's article again. That is simply not what he said. Quoting him:

"In fact, one of the leading science journals was prepared to publish Steve's results. But then, before publication, they kept cutting back and cutting back on the amount of space they would let Steve's report take up in the journal.

Finally the space they were going to allot was so small that they concluded Steve could not tell his story in that number of words, and therefore they decided not to publish it at all."

Note the phrasing: "A leading science journal," unnamed. In fact, Geophysical Research Letters IS a leading science journal in that field. Card did mention the journal Science specifically - when he was referring to an article that WAS published there.

**For example, if you believe x,y, or z, for it to fit within the realm of science, you have to be able to make statements like: "If X is true, then Y will happen. If Y does not happen, then X is flawed in some way."

This is PRECISELY what has NOT happened in the Global Warming debate...We do NOT see scientists making predictions that can in any way be confirmed within anything approaching the timeframe within which they want us to make economically life-altering decisions. In short, they have provided NO evidence that should be admissable in "scientific court"**

Again, this statement is simply false. In the earth sciences (geology, astronomy, atmospheric chemistry, climatology, etc.) it is frequently not possible to make predictions about future discoveries that can be verified at will. When the world is your laboratory, you often have to wait until she shows you what you're hoping to see. Scientists in these fields can predict what should happen under certain conditions, but then they have to wait until those conditions can be observed. It's not like chemistry, biology, or physics, where we can usually just make the experiment happen.

That said, predictions have been made in global warming theory, and have been verified. Ice core studies are a good example, in which CO2 is predicted to vary along with indicators of global temperatures.

And the "solar cycle" theory has been generally discredited. Check the literature.

**in point of fact the most salient piece of "evidence", the Hockey Stick, appears to be an outright fraud, and demonstrably so.**

Once again, this is also simply false, in more than one way.

First, Mann's study is NOT "the most salient piece of evidence," not by a long shot. It has been confirmed by multiple studies using different methodologies.

Second, it is not "an outright fraud," demonstrable or otherwise. The criticisms of Mann's study prompted Congress to call for an investigation by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences. Now these were the same criticisms, you'll recall from Card's article, that never came to the attention of anyone important because they were "suppressed" by "Global Warming alarmists." Just more evidence of Card's fictionalizing.

In any case, the NAS published a long analysis of Mann's work and other climate-change research in 2006. You can download it here if you like:

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676

The National Academy of Sciences concluded that while Mann's work could have been more rigorous (a spank to him in scientific terms) nevertheless his methods ended up producing few problems for the reliability of his results, and that his conclusions "have subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years."

So, no, he wasn't a fraud, and such a claim is not demonstrable. In fact despite your claims and Card's, scientists have not simply accepted Mann's work and closed their eyes to criticism. They rechecked both and determined that Mann's work was the scientific winner. The demonstrable fraud here is the claim of bias and lack of scientific study.

**The reason I think there hasn't been more coverage of this story is that it shows clearly that thousands of scientists went along with the crowd, and ASSUMED somebody else had done their job. And in fact, that no one did should and does reflect soundly on their collective level of professionalism, and--now that the story is out and they are keeping their mouths shut--their professional integrity.**

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. Scientists NEVER "just assume someone else has done their job." A scientist working in a particular field (such as climatology) keeps abreast of the literature in that field. When he begins to develop an idea or an experiment, he goes back through the literature and checks, with his own eyes, to see what other scientists have done that has bearing on his work. He cites the relevant papers in his own research. He checks to see if earlier results have been reproduced. Et cetera, et cetera. He doesn't "assume" anything.

What I'm seeing here is a lot of claims, by you, Card, and others, that are just factually WRONG, and that can be shown to be wrong with very little effort. If there's anyone making convenient assumptions and failing to do their homework, it's not climate scientists.

RE: rack jerks
Are those the people that I have to let finish their curls before I can squat?

See Figure SPM-4, page 11-18

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

"It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica (see Figure SPM-4). The observed patterns of warming, including greater warming over land than over the ocean, and their changes over time, are only simulated by models that include anthropogenic forcing. The ability of coupled climate models to simulate the observed temperature evolution on each of six continents provides stronger evidence of human influence on climate than was available in the TAR."

TAR = Third Assessment Report, 2001.

Notice that this is not based solely on a 10-year-old model with some fairly trivial flaws (okay, 9-year-old). I'm not saying this figure is fact; there might be things the modelers haven't considered (although it might be worth looking at the models).

I'm only saying that when people claim that climatology isn't a science, I disagree. There are hypotheses, alternative hypotheses, tests of those hypotheses involving comparisons of real data to those hypotheses' predictions, and conclusions based on those tests.

Scientists aren't idiots. And nobody gets into science to get the wrong answer (and almost never to score some kind of political point).

When someone says, Your models standardized its data in such a way that biased its results, other scientists tend to scrutinize the models pretty closely. Nothing makes a competing scientist happier than proving a colleague isn't as smart as he is.

When newer models show results that are the same or qualitatively similar to the original models, and political forces (anti-climate change) ignore those but continue to cite the papers from a decade ago rather than the ones that have addressed the problems, I can only question the motives of people like Orson Scott Card.

He's a very good science fiction writer.

CF Community,

I must applaud all for the civility of the discourse on this rest day discussion. It is a far cry from the vitrol spouted around the Iraq war discussions and seems to be much more thought provoking.
I tend to fire off with out doing all the linking to resources as our more computer literate posters and for that I apologize. The fact that th climate is changing and is either cooling or warming is beyond controversy. This is a fact as pointed out in other folks posts. We have evidence of several ice ages with glaciers receding from North America in the not so distant past. The real question or premise of the hoax is whether or not man (ie. the U.S.) is responsible. That is the fundamental problem I have with this issue. The "cooked" book science is a challenge for scientific communities, medical, geological, meteorlogical, etc. Having facts and crushing them to support your hypothesis is the problem. The facts need to support or deny your hypothesis. When the facts refute your hypothesis, you must, by definition of the scientific process, come up with a new hypothesis.
"Evolution is biology" is just a way to end the argument before getting it started. Evolution is a theory put forth by Darwin in the 1800's. Reading Darwins book of evolution leaves some clues as what may disprove his theory. Lack of fossil evidence of cross over was just one of the things that Darwin listed as being a problem with his theory. Intelligent design is a theory. It addressed the problems with irriducible complexity that are at present plagueing the evolutionist staunch hold on their theory. Pure science should be more committed to the scientific process and not to a specific ideology. Christianity or Secular Humanist, both need to set aside their biasis as they head into the labratory.

Sorry for all the mis-spellings. I pity the person that can only spell a word one way! :-)

Card IS a great science fiction author. Ender's Game and Speaker For the Dead fostered my genuine, although novice, interest in theoretical physics and cosmology when I was a child.

I recommend to anyone interested in those subjects: Read Brian Green's books "The Elegant Universe" and "Fabric of the Cosmos". He writes for the layman, and uses profound yet simple examples to help explain the complicated ideas he presents.

The Universe, matter, and the properties of spacetime are all fascinating subjects...

I think saying that "Scientists NEVER just assume..." is an example of the American tendency to worship at the feet of science, rather than engaging their own common sense, researching issues, and applying checks and balances. Education and the scientific method does not equate to giving up one's personal agenda, nor does being a scientist mean that you evolve beyond human flaws.

That's why debates like this are so valuable. There should be no blind faith in science, just as there shouldn't be blind faith in religion. Scientists need to be questioned, and not just trusted.

Personally I haven't done enough research into this subject to have reached a conclusion. I would like to know what other studies besides Mann's are considered definitive in proving the global warming theory, if anyone has any thoughts.

Global warming? Climate change? This time of year I like to call it "spring."

Bill, I must disagree.

**The real question or premise of the hoax is whether or not man (ie. the U.S.) is responsible. That is the fundamental problem I have with this issue. The "cooked" book science is a challenge for scientific communities, medical, geological, meteorlogical, etc. Having facts and crushing them to support your hypothesis is the problem.**

There is no "hoax." There is no crushing of facts. As I've pointed out with multiple links and citations Card's claims to this effect are, at best, the results of inexcusably bad fact checking. At worst, he knows perfectly well that the facts refute him and he's simply lying.

I've learned over the years to check claims of fact made by creationists and climate change skeptics, because more often than not their "facts" are either badly distorted or just plain false. Card's article is par for the course.

**"Evolution is biology" is just a way to end the argument before getting it started. Evolution is a theory put forth by Darwin in the 1800's. Reading Darwins book of evolution leaves some clues as what may disprove his theory.**

When someone says "Evolution is biology" they are making a statement of fact. However it's no more "ending the argument" than saying "clouds are water vapor in the atmosphere" ends an argument about the weather.

And really, we need to nip this "evolution is only a theory" nonsense in the bud. A scientific theory is not just a guess, the way the word is used in everyday language. It's a model for investigation that is already supported by a large body of evidence. This is true of the Theory of General Relativity, Atomic Theory, the Germ Theory of Disease, and yes, the Theory of Evolution. But only the last of those threatens anyone's religious beliefs, so it's the only one that they call "just a theory."

**Lack of fossil evidence of cross over was just one of the things that Darwin listed as being a problem with his theory.**

Darwin was writing over 150 years ago. Since then, we have found many, many, MANY transitional fossils. See here for further discussion.

http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html#transitional

**Intelligent design is a theory. It addressed the problems with irriducible complexity that are at present plagueing the evolutionist staunch hold on their theory.**

"Intelligent design" is not a theory, scientific or otherwise. It is badly disguised theology. William Dembski, the primary mover and shaker behind ID, is a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky. He has said on the record that "theology underpins all his views of science and intelligent design." Quoting Dembski directly:

“I started out as a straight research mathematician but got into these questions of philosophy and theology because I was so exercised in my spirit about the unbelief I saw in the academy [and] why it seemed so reasonable to disbelieve the Christian faith. That is what really motivated me to work on Christian worldviews and apologetics and it is in the background of my work on intelligent design as well."

Source: http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=19115

ID is not causing any particular problem for evolutionary theory at all. "Irreducible complexity" is a poorly-defined fiction. Dembski's methodology was examined scientifically and discarded as badly flawed. And that's pretty much the end of the story. They only reason scientists are paying any attention to it all these days is because evangelicals keep trying to use it as a back-door to get Christianity back into school science curricula. Scientifically, ID is simply garbage, just like Card's article.

Global Warming is a hoax.

Government grants ALWAYS prop up endeavors that can not stand on their own, and then create an enviorment where those funded by them must keep up the lie to receive more funding.

If addressing Global Warming leads to new technologies that result in cleaner air and water, reduce dependency on non renewable resources and spurs job growth in the green industry and Global warming ends up a completely natural, not caused by man, occurence what has been lost? The way this issue is politicized as being "anti capitalist" is ridiculous. Humans are chewing our way through the resources that sustain us and spewing poison into the environment. This is a fact. If the global warming/climate change topic can begin to inspire discussion about how to best sustain human endeavor within the biosystems we depend upon for existence us than it's a good thing. Whether it is caused solely, partially, or not at all by humans may never be known fully. What can be known is whether or not we grow out of the adolescent stage of capitalism that demands more, faster and cheaper and progress into a grown relationship with the world we inhabit.

Guinevere, I didn't say that scientists never make assumptions. We're human like anyone else. I said that scientists don't just assume that "somebody else has done the work," as Barry claimed. And they don't. They check to make sure. That is not "the American tendency to worship at the feet of science." That is my experience after 25 years of working in and writing about the sciences.

As for other studies besides Mann's, the list is literally too long to go into in detail. However you can get started by reading this article and following the links:

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

You may be particularly interested in a survey referenced there (along with many other valuable studies that I encourage you to check). It was published in 2004 in the journal Science, by a scientist named Naomi Oreskes. She surveyed almost 1000 papers in the scientific literature (collected simply by a keyword search for "global climate change") and found that 75% supported the model of human-caused climate change while the other 25% were on ancient climatology and took no position one way or the other on modern climate change. Not one of the papers surveyed disputed the current model. Not one.

You can read Oreske's study for yourself here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

You can read other studies on this subject by following the links at the first site I posted.

Paul S,

Looks like I was mistaken about the article. Fortunately, this is irrelevant unless you want to base your arguments on my character and related fact checking capacity, as you are implicitly wanting to do with Card.

Let's go tit for tat, shall we?

You state "And the "solar cycle" theory has been generally discredited. Check the literature." a couple paragraphs after stating: "Card did mention the journal Science specifically - when he was referring to an article that WAS published there."

And what were the contents of that article?

"On 16 November 2001, the journal Science published a report on elegant research, done by unimpeachable scientists, giving us the Earth's climate history for the past 32,000 years -- along with our climate's linkage to the sun" (p. 8).

They quote Richard Kerr of Science:

"... the climate of the northern North Atlantic has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years in step with the waxing and waning of the sun."

And Kerr quotes glaciologist Richard Alley of Penn State:

"The ... data are sufficiently convincing that [solar variability] is now the leading hypothesis to explain the roughly 1,500-year oscillation of the climate seen since the last ice age, including the Little Ice Age of the 17th century" (p.8).

We're not talking about fly-by-night wackos. We're talking about leading scientists doing solid research.

And other scientists have found data that correlates closely with their findings all over the world. In other words, these solar oscillations account, completely, for the global variations."

The basic problem with this whole debate is that it is extremely technical, so much so that non-specialists, or people unwilling to become specialists, in effect cannot challenge, on a detail level, what scientists have written. This is what makes our trust in those scientists so critical.

You posted a link to a 2,000 page book that, self evidently, I'm not going to read.

In order to assess this thing properly, we would need to analyze the regressions done by Mann, and the criticisms of them ourselves. I don't want to do that.

Much simpler:

1) crop cultivation and growth in Greenland in the Middle Ages are well attested. Hence GREENland. Self evidently, that means it was much warmer then. Why?

2) "The opposite is the case with the Global Warming alarmists. Their human-emitted Carbon Dioxide hypothesis is made ludicrous by the fact that most of the warming since the 1860s occurred before 1940, an era when human CO2 emissions were not significant. And we had significant global cooling between then and 1970, precisely the period when CO2 emissions were steeply rising."

What do you make of this? Obviously, the Global Cooling articles were appearing at the beginning of the 70's.

3) "All the computer models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict that past.

That is, when you run their software with the data from, say, the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, they project results that have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.

In other words, the models don't work. The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done."

Obviously, if a model is accurate, you can extrapolate forwards as well as backwards, and can start at any arbitrary point, and compare your predictions to what is known to have happened. If you consistently fail to do this, you have a bad model. Period. And as Mann showed clearly, you can always make any model work with any data set. But that isn't science.

What is your response to that?

4) the following link is helpful, in that among other things it uses plain language, and shows the actual construct--the Hockey Stick--so people can see it. This is a good summary of the debate.

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/1928/Haidars_Hero_Ayatollah_Sistani

Some folks asked about the moderate Muslim leaders in Iraq some time back - here's a really short one written in the words of an Iraqi. It's all true, to the best of my knowledge; this guy is a living symbol of peaceful religious leadership. I'm sure if I read his theology, I'd find plenty to disagree over, but in terms of his leadership of his flock, I admire him greatly.

WRT Indonesia, and Islam, I think the correlation with religious extremism and poverty is not substantiated - it's religious extremism and state repression, and in particular when the state advocates a fairly simplistic, puritan religious as a means of its oppression; Saudi Arabia being "king" of that group of nations.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0314/p08s02-comv.html

Here's a short bit about the tenor of things in Indonesia. Strategically, we needn't put these folks on our list of enemies. The US comptroller general said by 2040 or so, forecasts indicate we'll have only enough money to pay for national debt and social programs aka 'entitlements.' That's a far greater threat to the US than Indonesia and any harm from "global warming."

Just wanted to post a "THANKS" to Doug Chapman of CrossFit Ann Arbor/HyperFit. Top notch facility with a great guy running it. Thanks again Doug.

Brian

Noose - can I be part of your "praying for no universal health care" communion?

All these years to demonstrate the fallacy of socialism, distressingly few people have paid attention. I've also been hoping for that 'health care' rest day.

I can't download today's vid or article from work - will try from the hooch in a few minutes.

Paul S on # 60:

I tracked to both of your links. The one that was in support of the cross over links proving evolution were interesting yet showed the same photos and proof that we have seen since the 70's highschool text books. The second link, proving that Dembski is a religious whacko, lists an impressive bio of someone that I would put serious weight behind what he thinks or sais. Thanks for the links and for the discussion.

Dembski holds seven degrees, including two Ph.D. degrees -- one in mathematics from the University of Chicago and the other in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and a Master of Science degree in statistics. In addition, Dembski has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago and in computer science at Princeton.

A little food for thought.

We have the responsibility to protect our earth. However, the up and coming scam of "carbon credit" makes the whole thing a farce. You can now spend your money by calculating your "carbon footprint", based on how much you consume (vehicles, electricity, etc.) you can pay someone to plant trees and invest your money in companies that don't pollute as much and it's supposed to give you a clear conscious by cancelling out your co2 emissions. Arnold Schwartzenegger is already doing it to make up for all his private jet flights. Think about where this will end up in the coming years as the widespread acceptance of global warming becomes more and more severe. Will we all be required to pay ridiculous amounts of money to offset our fossil fuel consumption/co2 emissions? And if so what will the ramifications of that be?

Barry, I really think you need to sit down and read something BESIDES articles by people like Card before you try to continue this.

As you say, tit for tat...

I'm not attacking anyone's character. I'm saying that the failure to check simple facts - like Card's claim that McIntyre's paper was never published (when it's posted on McIntyre's own blog) and your attempt to excuse Card by claiming he wrote something he didn't - call into question the reliability of the conclusions that a writer is drawing. I don't think that's a revolutionary idea.

You go on to quote Card quoting Avery and Singer quoting a paper by Richard Kerr from 6 years ago. But as near as I can tell neither you nor Card actually bothered to read the article in question or any of the scientific response to it in the 6 years since.

What Card didn't tell you, and you didn't bother to check, is that Richard Kerr AGREES with anthropogenic climate change theory. Here's a list of Kerr's papers from Science magazine, 2001.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=20&hl=en&lr=&q=climate+author%3A%22RA+Kerr%22&as_publication=Science&as_ylo=2001&as_yhi=2001&btnG=Search

The piece that Card was re-requoting was from Kerr's summary of a different article (written by someone else), which he posted as a news piece, not a scientific paper. And Card didn't give you the whole quote. Kerr goes on to note that "some researchers" believe (in 2001) that the sun might be a primary mover behind global climate change.

That was true - in 2001. It's even true to a lesser extent today. However in the intervening 6 years opinion has been moving away from that model.

The actual article in question is this one:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/294/5549/2130

That's a discussion of possible effects of solar variations on earth's climate during the Holocene era (roughly the last 12,000 years, not 32,000 as Card's source reported). It does not address possible solar effects in the currently observed global warming. Card is simply requoting authors who lifted the study out of context.

As for the general theory of solar cycles and climate change ("solar forcing" is the technical term), here's a summary of research SINCE 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_forcing#Solar_variation_theory

Quoting: "Solar variation theory is one attempt to account for global warming. Various hypotheses have been proposed to link terrestrial temperature variations to solar variations. The meteorological community has responded with skepticism, in part because theories of this nature have come and gone over the course of the 20th century."

You might also be interested in this paper:

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2004/pressRelease20040802/

Again, quoting: "Studies at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research reveal: solar activity affects the climate but plays only a minor role in the current global warming."

So yes, I stand by my statement: Solar forcing has been generally discredited as an explanation for the observed global warming. Your third-hand reference to a 6-year old paper doesn't change that. Once again, simple fact checking would have shown this.

You wrote, "You posted a link to a 2,000 page book that, self evidently, I'm not going to read."

Once again, CHECK YOUR FACTS. The link I posted is to a paper that is only 160 pages long, NOT 2000. And if you can't be troubled to actually read the science on this subject, or even skim the conclusions that they summarize in the first 5 pages, then you simply can't claim to have an informed opinion about this.

I posted a link to an article that directly refutes several of Card's claims, to wit:

Card claims that no one of any importance heard about the criticisms of Mann's work, because they were "suppressed" by "Global Warming alarmists." So I showed you a paper examining that very issue at the request of the US Congress.

Card (and you) claim that scientists have willfully refused to examine these criticisms. So I showed you 160 pages of examination.

Card claims that Mann's work is a demonstrable hoax. So I showed you a paper that concludes that it is not.

I show you the evidence, and you reply (without even looking closely enough to get the page count right) that "self evidently" you aren't going to examine it. I think that says everything that can be said about climate change skepticism, both yours and Card's.

Until you actually get out there and get some facts that haven't been filtered through Card's propaganda, you simply don't know what you're talking about here.

Interesting. It seems that my posts on this subject are now "being held for review by the blog owner." So if you don't see anything further from me on this, you'll know why.

Paul S,

Mine get held up all the time. Occasionally--twice--they failed to reappear. Why was clear to me on both occasions.

I'll be expecting a detailed rebuttal of the link I posted. As far as I could tell, he offered compelling and darn near scientifically unimpeccable evidence in favor of the model that was generally embraced prior to the appearance of the Hockey Stick, in addition to pointing to serious methodolical problems with the approach Mann--and his followers, using the same method--took.

Nate,

I'm wondering if I'll have to account for my tobacco use? I'm sending a plume of smoke into the air as I write. J. Paul's Special #1, in a fine Danish pipe. Good, good, and good.

Briefly ...

Science certainly doesn't develop through consensus ... but a consensus emerges around a theory because it best explains the data.

Few would argue with the circulation of the blood these days, or with a germ theory of infectious disease. Of course, some scientists do ... and some credible scientists try to define the edges; where an otherwise useful theory breaks down.

Climate Change theory does not rely on one single data set, manipulated by one single individual. Nor does it rely on one set of indicators for the climatic effect of putting more energy (solar heat) into the Earth's ecosystems.

Doubtless, somebody somewhere has fudged some of the data - maybe that's Mann. I dunno - I've not seen or inspected his data. That does not invalidate the numerous other studies which also support the human-generated climate change hypothesis. It just says that one individual was crooked.

My F-I-L is a world renowned scientist - he holds honourary degrees, and also the highest civilian honour Canada can give ... for his contributions to science. For two decades now, he's been one of the members of the Royal Society to review the credentials, credibility, and scientific impact of OTHER scientists ...to see which are also exceptional enough to be nominated to the Society. That makes him rather uniquely placed to evaluate the quality and legitimacy of research programs, data manipulation, and hypothesis development.

He is convinced that climate change is occurring, thanks to human activity. Not because he's wanting to be part of a consensus - in fact, his career was built on challenging consensus positions.

He believes the climate change consensus because it is the hypothesis which most adequately explains the masses of multiply sourced data. Enough for me.

So, let me get this straight. We have a climate change conspiracy that benefits a few hundred or at most a few thousand scientists with grants totalling in the millions, but the coal and oil industries, with profits in the 100's of billions is on the straight and narrow, and no amount of pollution, consumption, and waste will ever be too much for the earth to handle. Yeah, that's it.

Barry, we'll see what gets through. I wrote you a post detailing several of your questions, and pointing out that, again, you and Card had not checked your facts. In particular the paper I linked you to was 160 pages, not 2000 pages as you claimed, and summarized the conclusions in the first 5 pages.

Evidently you didn't look closely enough even to get the page count right. But that paper specifically addresses and refutes several of the claims that you and Card are making, most especially claims of fraud and suppression of data.

If, as you say, you aren't willing to even look at the evidence when it's presented to you, then there's very little point to continuing this.

But we'll see what actually gets through to the board.

That article was absolutely awesome. While I'm all for doing our best to keep the earth clean and safe for all, there's a point of diminishing returns. You can have a billion dollar company spend say $1M on environmental controls to get 98% of the way there, but the problem is, these super liberals want them to spend $100M to get up to 99%. There's no reason to do so.

But it's spot on, hit up my blog for more on global warming and other thoughts: keepusfree.blogspot.com

A few interesting bits on the global warming debate. First this from Andrew Brown's blog @
http://www.thewormbook.com/helmintholog/ on why some people are sceptical.

"... a thought about Melanie Phillips: Steven Poole has been wondering why she is such a passionate Global Warming denialist. Obviously, she passionate about it because she doesn’t do calm and reasonable any more. But why so perversely disbelieve the evidence? Why should just this have become a right-wing cause?

I think in her case the explanation is personal. She was a friend of a good friend of mine at the time when she began her swing from the Left. It was sparked off by the discovery that the local state school was no bloody good even though, at the time and since, there were great numbers of experts asserting that British children have never been so well-educated and so forth.

Similar things happened when she started to study social policy, and discovered — rather ahead of the pack — that things like absent fathers really matter.

So two of her formative political experiences involved the discovery that all the respectable experts were wrong (cf also Conquest’s Law, that everyone is a reactionary about the subjects that they understand). Something similar happened to her beliefs about social policy, where it also turned out that a lot of large and inconvenient truths were being suppressed in polite discourse. A non-loony, non-conspiracist version of this is found in the work of “Theodore Dalrymple”.

So I think she expects everything else to fall into the same pattern of a self-serving bureaucracy bamboozling the public. It’s a credible stance because such bureaucracies do appear and are sometimes influential. In any society that is failing at something important, a lot of expert opinion is spent ignoring or denying the bleeding obvious for dishonourable motives. Other examples would be

almost everything said officially about church membership in the last forty years
almost everything said by respectable American commentators about foreign policy"

And then a piece about the program "The Great Global Warming Swindle," I mentioned earlier can be read @ http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/comment/0,,2032573,00.html (Free registration required).
Seems that playing with data is the name of the game on both sides of the debate, but fails to address the critical points, i.e.
1. That there appears to be no conclusive scientific proof that it is man that is causing/significantly contributing to global warming or that any of the proposed actions will have any significant effect upon climate change.

2. That the main protagonists of the climate change debate seem to have an ulterior political motivation.

Went in today because we're supposed to get 12" of snow overnight, followed by an inch of ice tomorrow, so I won't be driving/walking/sledding/snowshoeing to the gym.

CFWUx2

4000m row in 16min flat

Bench press (because my bp has gone down a bit since starting cf, and because I'm a typical guy and on bad days a small bench makes me feel like a small man)

135x10
225x8
245x3
255x3
255x3
225x5

Followed with oly bar snatch practice

Paul S,

I've participated in many of these debates, and reviewed many dozens of pages of "documentation" and found it to be evasive and arguably polemical. However, since you took the trouble to post it, it's reasonable to ask me to read it, which I did, or at least the Summary.

I'm curious: did you? I'm just asking, before I go to the trouble to retype the text that directly supports my contentions. Cut and paste is not available.

Crossfit has landed in Indonesia? Man and I thought I was going to be the first to bring it there, you guys beat me to the punch already!!! Are you guys training the Indonesian army over there because judging by the uniform and the crewcut, it looks like those are the Indonesian green beret.

I withdraw that. I made an error. See how that works?

Rereading the text, the net is that they think all previous warming and cooling periods can be explained by solar and volcanic activity, and that they are reasonably confident in their proxies, and that the current period is anomalous, with the presumptive culprit human produced greenhouse gasses.

However, the point remains that the basic thrust of the Hockey Stick is that our climate historically has existed within a relatively narrow band of fluctuation, and that has only changed in the last 20-30 years.

Yet, we have considerable evidence that it was warmer in the Middle Ages, and as near as I can determine, the proxies they used are qualitatively quite similar to those of Mann, which is to say existing within a SUBSTANTIAL zone of potential error, none of which is reflected on their graph. You see the yellow +/- in my link, which is absent in their graph, which would likely otherwise pretty much fill the space between the top and bottom, as Mann's does, when it is shown properly.

I have offered proxies that are consistent with a range of fluctuation within which our current average global temperatures are non-anomalous, and which match well what was consensus reality prior to Mann's work.

Why was Greenland green?

Paul S:

Posts get held for review because of filters that scan for certain words - foul language, but also pretty weird stuff. I've had some heated debates on here and my posts always made it through in the end.

That said - thanks for putting the time in here to present the actual case for Climate Change.

Crossfitters!

Notice how Paul (#30) & Geoff (#26) are giving you links to current, reputable sources. Yes, you are free to believe in a world-spanning liberal conspiracy as an alternative to trusting your nation's scientific academies.

Notice how Paul & co (actual scientists, I gather) are able to respond to anything Barry "The Dabbler" Cooper comes up with.

I said this the last "Climate Change" day, but I'll say it again now:

It is true that the IPCC is not able to predict the future, and that the models that have been developed have not taken into account many aspects of reality that could very be important in regulating climate. This is because it is currently *impossible* to do so. We don't have the computing power or the data. Scientists are doing the best they can with what they've got. And they're frantically deploying new technologies and resources in an effort to do better. Why can't they just say "we're not sure what's going to happen" until the models are perfect? Because (1) that will never happen, and (2) the topic is rather time-sensitive. The CO2 hockey-stick is very, very real (there are hundreds of monitoring stations worldwide) and we're already well into uncharted territory as a result of (primarily) the burning of fossil fuels. Are climate scientists foolish to be concerned with such a massive human adjustment to atmospheric chemistry? Does it not make sense to be conservative with respect to the atmosphere of the only planet we have? The stakes are pretty frickin' high gentlemen. Yes, there are opportunity costs associated with taking positive action to mitigate our impact on the atmosphere. Finding a balance in resource allocation is the job of the world's governments.

So who should you turn to for advice on this subject? Here are your choices:

1. The scientific community.
2. Science-fiction writers and/or exercise websites.
3. Nobody. Your gut-feeling is probably pretty accurate anyways.

Even if you don't have 100% confidence in the first choice, why on Earth would you have more confidence in the second or third?

This *is* an appeal to authority - and a valid one. I don't get my workout advice from my grocer, and I don't get my teeth inspected by my hairdresser.

If this issue gets under your skin at all, why not take the trouble to educate yourself on it? *Really* educate yourself on it. Take a textbook on climate science out from the library. A good one will not hesitate to point out the shortcomings of current methodologies. A bad one, perhaps intended for a first-year "environmental science" course, might. That done, browse the articles in a recent issue of Science or Nature (again, your library probably has these). Why turn to armchair scientists like Barry for your information when you can become a well-informed amateur yourself?

Jay

Paul S., #52.

It's a bit of a cheap shot but I can't resist: Mann's hockey stick was "fake but accurate"?

And on this: "That said, predictions have been made in global warming theory, and have been verified. Ice core studies are a good example, in which CO2 is predicted to vary along with indicators of global temperatures."

Why do they vary together? Which is the cause and which is the effect?

At this point you must know that the causal relationship between CO2 and temperature in the paleoclimate data is the *opposite* of what you suggest. Temperature climbs for approximately 800 years before CO2 begins to rise - and this occurred in multiple deglaciation cycles, and is confirmed by multiple ice core and sea floor sediment reconstructions from around the world. In paleoclimate records CO2 is an effect, not a cause of global warming. The unsinkable SS Anthropogenic Global Warming appears to have a large hole below the waterline.

You may wish to refer to Jeffrey A. Glassman, Ph.D.s paper at the Rocket Science Journal and particularly to his response to Gavin Schmidt. http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html Dr. Glassman asserts (and he will forcefully correct me if I am wrong) that global CO2 varies with global temperature as a function of the temperature-dependent solubility of CO2 in the oceans.

Best regards,

Harry,

Come on, you remember, "fake but accurate" like the Dan Rather forgeries of GW's record.

I think the most telling thing about this debate is that President Bush now accepts, at least publically, that climate change is real. What does he gain from that? What made him change his mind? Has he converted to the "global warming alarmist" movement?

Which is more likely?

1. A bunch of scientists want grant money so they are making up and supporting false claims to alarm the public into action, which is working brilliantly. The thousands of people in on the conspiracy never admit it to anyone.

2. A bunch of scientists studied the issue every way they could think of and the evidence suggests something the public doesn't want to hear so non-scientists come up with ways that the scientists must be wrong.

#72 you rock!

JPW

Hmm. Post held. I'll remove some abbreviations that might look naughty to an algorithm.

***

BTW: I will describe myself as a well-informed amateur, in case anyone is wondering. I have an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science from one of Canada's "Ivy League" universities, took a graduate course in Global Biogeochemistry (with an emphasis on the cycling of carbon and CO2), and have assisted research into CO2 cycling in wetlands. I am married to a woman with a Master's in Geography that studied paleoclimate for her degree.

I *still* don't presume to kick back on the Crossfit forum and hold forth on the topic except in a general way.

Barry? Your credentials?

This is a topic that requires serious consideration. If you want to be done in 10 minutes or even 10 hours - you're out of luck. The fact that you need to wade through a layer of politics (on both sides, admittedly) makes the task all the more difficult. You're not doing anyone a service by settling for "Why was Greenland Green?"

BCJay

My latest post has been held as well.

Jay

BCJay,

I'm curious, did you read my link?

Why do YOU think Greenland was green?

I'm not quite sure contempt substitutes for argument.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I don't have time to at the moment, but I'm going to go back and read the paper upon which this was based, and I have a strong suspicion that what happened is that data with a VERY high margin of error--so high that its' use at all can only be countenanced with the greatest of caution--was imported, the highs prior to this century artificially removed, and the margin of error concealed, as it was in the link Paul S. posted, unjustifiably, as it led to the impression the data was solid, when in fact every scientist on that panel knew it to exist within a large continuum of doubt. If that fact was later corrected, in other than small print, please let me know.

BCJay, not that it matters, since you are in my a dogmatist, but did you know that the existence of mental telepathy has been proven to within a small er margin of error than the efficacy of aspirin in preventing fatal heart attacks? You know, I see Halfprin on the shelves. Makes you wonder. I don't want to do that debate here. Just making a comment.

As you were. I'll be back. As you know.

In the meantime, please read my link, and point out the flaws in logic or data to me.

does anyone know what the numbers in the rankings on the faq page are based on. like is it the big three totals added up or what???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy#_note-14

I realize that wikipedia is not a totally unboased entity, but heck... anybody can edit the entries... they eventually reach a steady-state which often is "middle of the road."

So lets throw it into the mix. It's pretty self serving to post an article written by *one* with their bias.

Did I read the study? Yes - through Chapter 8 in depth, the remainder less so.

Before getting into an analysis of your post, I would like to point out once again that the mere existence of this document invalidates Card's claims that criticisms of Mann's data were "suppressed" and that Mann's work was never reviewed. Merely sitting on the shelf, this document commissioned by Congress proves that there is no deep conspiracy to suppress evidence and keep poor Steve McIntyre from being heard.

I'd also like to point out that the conclusions of this paper put to rest the claim that Mann's work is "fraudulent," and the claim that it has not been supported by subsequent work. So right off the bat, a lot of what you've been claiming here is shown to be wrong. Now, onward and upward.

You wrote: "Rereading the text, the net is that they think all previous warming and cooling periods can be explained by solar and volcanic activity, and that they are reasonably confident in their proxies, and that the current period is anomalous, with the presumptive culprit human produced greenhouse gasses."

More or less. What they're saying is that the previous history of the earth's temperature (including the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and so on) are consistent with normal variations caused by non-human effects, but that the last several decades cannot be explained that way.

Of course, this is exactly what the theory of anthropogenic global warming states.

**However, the point remains that the basic thrust of the Hockey Stick is that our climate historically has existed within a relatively narrow band of fluctuation, and that has only changed in the last 20-30 years.**

Yes, exactly. And the paper notes: "It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies."

Which is what the "Hockey stick" shows, is it not?

By the way, there's no problem with cutting and pasting from the report. I just did it, there above.

Note also the graphic on Page 2 (Figure S-1), showing seven different studies, using different methodologies, all giving results similar to Mann's original "Hockey Stick" study. This shows that whatever the statistical problems with Mann's work (and the paper acknowledges them) they do not markedly change the conclusions. Other people get the same results using different methods. This is very strong support, scientifically speaking.

The paper goes on to say that estimating temperature beyond about 1600 is more difficult and less precise, and that they would therefore be "less confident" in saying that current temperatures are higher than any period before the last 400 years. But that even with this caveat (and again, look at Figure S-1), "Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900." That includes the "Medieval warm period."

Finally, the paper concludes that while they have some reservations about Mann's methods, in the end he appears to be substantially correct in what he says. The only serious qualification they have is to say that Mann's claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade on record is probably too narrow a claim for his evidence to support. Nevertheless, the trend he identifies is real, and is not explainable by solar fluctuations or volcanic activity.

**Why was Greenland green?**

Because it was being settled in the middle of the Medieval Warm Period, which, as we've both noted, is explainable by natural causes in ways that the current warming is not. So you're comparing apples and oranges, and so is John Daly and everyone else that you reference with regard to this. The Medieval Warm Period was a longer and much more gradual climate change than we're seeing now, and even at its peak it was not as warm as we're getting now.

I can hear you thinking, "Then Greenland should be getting green again, right?" And the answer is, "Yes, it should, and it is."

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/jakobshavn.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/ice_sheets.html

By the time Scandinavian settlers arrived in Greenland, the Medieval Warm Period had been advancing for some little while. Even so, only the southernmost coast of Greenland was actually "green." The rest was still icebound (and home to Inuit tribes that interacted with the Norse). The current warming period is much faster than that one, and the expected effects are only now becoming obvious in Greenland. But in fact what we would expect to see is what we are seeing.

Great job Eva. You are an inspiration to me.

Barry Cooper,

You might have to plant an extra blade or two of grass in your front yard because of your tobacco use, but your second-hand smoke might leave you responsible for someone else's cancer. HA!

Nate

Harry,

You wrote, "It's a bit of a cheap shot but I can't resist: Mann's hockey stick was "fake but accurate"?"

You're right, it is a bit of a cheap shot, since that's not what I wrote, and it's not what the NAS report concluded. They stated that while they had reservations about some of Mann's bolder claims, in the end his results were confirmed both by their analysis and by the work of others.

Had they been talking to him directly, they probably would have said something like this: "You didn't prove it quite as well as you thought you did, but the weight of subsequent studies confirms most of what you wrote."

Rather different from your "cheap shot."

I'm afraid I'm not impressed by Dr. Glassman's paper. He's not a climatologist and says so, and while he offers us many pretty graphs, he has not one single peer-reviewed analysis of the Vostok data to back them up. His analyses are his own and those of other skeptics who, for some reason (doubtless the conspiracy) haven't been published anywhere that would have been rigorously reviewed by other scientists.

Nor does he have any peer-reviewed agreement with his claim that the oceans can be blamed for "all the Vostok data." In fact the only scientific source he cites on the subject says the opposite: that observed increases in CO2 are predominantly the result of human activity.

So actually, I'm not aware of the things you claim. I am aware that you're drawing your information from the personal blog of a climate skeptic who has no formal training in the field and who has not found any peer-reviewed source who IS expert in the field to back him up.

One thing I've learned as a scientist is not to claim expertise outside my field. That's why I've been careful throughout this discussion to reference the work of people whose discipline it is.

@Barry

Yes, I did visit your link. I did not read it exhaustively it has flawed premises that render the larger analysis irrelevant.

"If the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today, with no greenhouse gas contribution, what would be so unusual about modern times being warm also?"

No one is denying the reality of the Medieval Warm Period or the fact of past temperature change without human interference.

"If the variable sun caused both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, would not the stronger solar activity of the 20th century account for most, if not all, of the claimed 20th century warmth?"

It certainly could. The last time I was well up on the literature, it didn't.

Note that the most recent citation in Daly's article comes from 2000, and he is working off of the 1995 IPCC report.

BCJay

Wow Paul S. Great responses.

Honestly, I think many people argue against human-caused global warming SOLELY because it is portrayed as a liberal/leftist movement. Just as, perhaps, many latch onto it because it is portrayed as a liberal/leftist argument.

Is it really so hard to believe that 6-7 billion people burning and consuming things would have a negative causal effect on our environment, specifically the climate/atmosphere? Even after Paul S. has laid it out, and debunked the spurious arguments against anthropogenic warming?

@Barry

You know - I might surprise you one day. You accuse me of being dogmatic, but I don't see how I've been put to the test. Certainly not by you.

Link hopping I've ended up reading Jeff Glassman's paper on the oceanic "solubility pump" and some of the previous climate change debate on Xfit. Interesting stuff.

Jeff's approach agrees with my understanding of oceanic chemistry, and raises interesting points that should be addressed. I look forward to reading the response Gavin Schmidt made and working to improve my understanding of the entire issue. Paul S.'s criticism based on a lack of peer-review stands, but may be addressed with time. Glassman's credentials are unusual but solid, in my estimation. May the best theory win.

Jay

Bill,

**I tracked to both of your links. The one that was in support of the cross over links proving evolution were interesting yet showed the same photos and proof that we have seen since the 70's highschool text books.**

That's because it was true then, and it's still true. On the one hand people complain that scientific opinion develops over time, now you seem to be suspicious of the fact that well-established and attested evidence does not change.

As for Dembski, he's a good mathematician. But why do you think that makes him qualified to speak on biology? In particular, why do you think that when the link I posted shows, in his own words, that Intelligent Design is simply the implementation of his theological beliefs?

I say again: Intelligent Design has been extensively examined by real biologists and statistical biologists (such as the National Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and others) and found wanting. It has been determined to be theology, not science. It makes no testable predictions, it has no actual basis in experimentation, it is based on bad mathematics (which is inexcusable for someone with Dembski's qualifications), and it is an overt attempt to legitimize the most conservative Christian religious views.

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/darwinanddesign.html (If you read only one of my links, read this one. Very thorough and lets the ID advocates speak in their own words.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Design
http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution/pdf/QA_Evolution.pdf
http://www.nasonline.org/site/DocServer/Alberts_Evolution_Message_NY_Times.pdf?docID=801
http://www.ncseweb.org/article.asp?category=8

My comments: that is one awesome video, Eva motivates the hell outta me.

#32
Joey,
While a broken economy is a great leverage point for extremists, you seem to be stereotyping a country simply because they are muslim. So does that mean because Turkey has some economic vulnerabilities they will be the next next war after Indonesia. Some truths: Achenese make up the majority for extremist muslims in Indo; The government while not stern in there judicial process has begun to aggressively push muslim extremists out of indo; Malaysia produces far more jihadists who route their travel through indo(more recently through the Borneo region) to train and equip booger eaters in the southern philippines.
Is GWOT in Indonesia? Absolutely!! Will we ever have troops there? most likely... but not fighting the Indo government, much like Iraq, or Afghanistan we are fighting extremists there not the government. Could I be wrong?? shakes the 8 ball.... always that possibility!!!!

I've now read Gavin Schmidt's response to "The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide", and it's anticlimatic. In fact, it's 89 words long and is mostly references to realclimate.org with little or no explanation. This is unfortunate, but we can't really claim that he "owes us more." I do think that the fact that Jeff responds to the 89 words with over 5000 is not very sporting.

This doesn't necessarily take anything away from Jeff's work, but it certainly doesn't allow us to see that work being put to the test in a meaningful way. Guess we'll have to wait for the peer review.

Jay

Timmy #99

"Panties in a bunch?" Cute, witty, kinda funny if taken in the right way. "Now I understand why people would send you hate e-mail." Not OK, not under any circumstances, not here, not anywhere, and not excused by your following statements.

Your arguments on previous Rest Days imply an intellect and a passion that deserves attention. #99 did not. Kate deserves better, and you have better to give.

D.

Timmy 'Da Noose...

easy there, disagreements aside, she did not attack you. Bingo is right, you have better to give.

i've been cfing for 2 months. i've worked out since i was 15 yo. ive seen fad workouts come and go, and rarely tried any of them, as they all were flawed or variations on the same thing. my brother, a fireman, turned me on to your site, and i am hooked and overwhelmed at the changes ive seen in this little time.

anyway, i never thought my first comment would be over a political issue, and not a workout. anyone, any time can manipulate any data on any subject, including climate to get any result they want. just pay attention to the stock market for a few months. data is constantly manipulated to fuel interest rates, investment, money production, foreign investment, all biased by one person's perceptions of our country's economic status (Bernake, and to some extent-still-Greenspan).

true science can only occur when unbiased funding is provided to a group of unbiased scientists at an unbiased facility in an unbiased country and results are interpreted without bias by a reputable and unbiased publication. this doesn't happen anymore. Scientists today have to have bias to receive funding. therefore, they enter 'research' with an end in mind, not to see what the end will be. everyone has their agenda and bias. this type of research and numbers crunching is time consuming and expensive. there are precious few if any organizations or individuals with the monetary capability to fund a study that aren't biased.

the problem this causes is that rather than focus on climate, we now focus on who is reporting what and why, and not on the climate itself.

with all the heat generated by today's comments, i can only assume we are suffering from global warming:) very few comments here are without bias. i hope i didn't offend with my bias towards using the word bias!

Comment #39

Timmy...

Did I say universal health care was a right? Nope. I am a staunch conservative...and didn't do 45 combat mission in Afghanistan and Iraq for for the sake of universal health care...just an example I threw out...

Do not put words in my mouth Timmy.

Regarding my previous post to Kate and comments 100 & 101... You guys are right, I was out of line because I thought she was taking a cheap shot at me regarding the 4th grade line. I should have let it go by or not been so uptight about it. So for the record and for all the world to read.

Kate, I apologize.

CCTJOEY and Bingo, thanks for keeping me honest.

TE, yes the way your post is written one could infer you support it, if you do not then you are a good person :)

Hugs for all

I (22/m/165) did CFWUx 3 nice and easy just to keep the blood moving... my brother (18/195) deadlifted heavy. After warming up, he set a new PR of 335, then did 315x4. awesome stuff.

1. how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere from all sources currently?
2. how much of that CO2 total is caused by human activity?

I remember reading somewhere that the man made contribution to CO2 emissions is fairly small, like tiny small.

Anyone know the answer?

#22, Gant:

Yes, I do expect people to actually list their references. It slows discussion down and lends itself to ALOT fewer claims.

In many ways it becomes an exercise in defining adjectives. I cited the example from #8 of "doctored." It's not define. If #8 had defined "doctored" he might have discovered it wasn't accurate or that some other statement would have been more accurate, e.g. "I disagree with the analysis of people who maintain global warming is real."

Being Hard-Nosed, Literal, Precise, and Accurate, is tedious, and boring. It is the best way I have found to discern reality.

160#/33yom

WU: Stretching
WOD: Rest ("...and the righteous don't need it") Day - "Chelsea"

5 pull ups
10 push ups
15 squats
30 rounds in 30 min.

I add an occasional rest day on my own, so thought I'd pick a WOD for today's "rest". I had never done "Chelsea" before so thought I'd give it a shot. I figured I'd shoot for keeping the 1rd/min pace through 20, but made it all the way through starting each round on the minute and ending on 29:37. Now my whole body feels rubbery.

BTW - just read the Gym Jones article "Quality". Found it pretty motivating to get the chest to the bar on every pull up and to the ground on every push up.

@105 Schmidty,

You'd be right to say that the amount of CO2 released due to human activity is small(ish) in comparison to the amount released every year due to natural mechanisms.

Are you asking because you think this might mean the whole thing is overblown? That doesn't follow.

Think of your bank account. As long as your earnings balance your expenses, you're doing okay. If you had a net gain of 5% every year, you'd be happy. A new loss of 5% every year, you'd be in trouble.

That's the situation here. There is a natural Carbon bank balance with natural inputs and outputs. While some of the extra, human-produced CO2 is getting absorbed by natural systems, not all of it is. This has led to a gradual increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

You can check out

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

for a simple diagram of the process and the relative sizes of the fluxes at work.

You can google further if you want to find out what the current numbers are.

Jay

Interesting how many people come out of the woodwork to comment on the rest day articles. Many I don't recognize from WOD comments.

Great article Mr. Card! Much like the evolution vs. creation arguement. We should research and be taught both sides of the arguement to make the best judgements. All we see today is out-dated evolutionary theories and global warming in our schools and on television. Why is it that articles like this one are almost NEVER seen in the mainstream media today? I think I know.

I only come out of the woodwork on rest day because I work 12 to 15 hours a day and have a family so rest days are the day I have time to post really .. hugs to all ... not being a smart a$$ just a plain old A$$...cheers have a great rest day to all ..=)

#105, Schmidty

It was about half due to people when I was studying chemical engineering (circa 1990). I can't remember the total amount or, more accurately, I can't remember the units, the number was 6,000,000 due to people and the same by natural causes. Vegetation and the like could absorb about the same amount, 6,000,000, and the unknown was how much the oceans would absorb. The context was a mass balance lecture. The point was that we can't know if the atmospheric CO2 was increasing or not because a major part of the equation was unknown. Produced - absorbed = accumulated. (6,000,000 + 6,000,000) - (6,000,000 + ? )= ? I have no idea why I can remember the number but not the units. Since then the amount of vegetation has decreased (reducing the right half of the equation), the number of people has increased (increasing the left half of the equation) and they've figured out a way to measure atmospheric CO2 directly, and (although many crossfitters don't believe them) they figured out that it is causing a problem with climate.

-JPW

Paul S.

You bristle a bit excessively, though I do not fault you for that under the circumstances.

Mann's data, analysis and results are fake, and are completely unnecessary to your argument since the faked results have been reproduced by presumptively credible studies. (At least I have no grounds to dispute your assertion to that effect). There