[jdlegg]

You are wrong. My dictionary defines consensus as "general agreement" and this is clearly the case when it comes to climate science.

No one in the climate science arena disagrees that the changes in CO2 levels are 1) created by burning fossil fuels 2) driving the observed warming effect and 3) that the observed warming trends are outside the levels of natural variability.

The IPCC Third Assessment Report [1] outlines this in much detail. This report has been signed-off on by dozens of international science academies, including the Science Council of Japan, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Other institutions endorsing the IPCC report include NASA's Goddard Institute, NOAA, the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the American Geophysical Union, and the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

If this doesn't constitute "consensus" then I would like to hear what you WOULD consider sufficient. There are MANY debates in climate science, but they are generally about the HOW's not the IF's or WHY's.

[1] http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/clim...

[ekianjo]

CO2 is not the single driver. If it were, how do you explain we do not see significant temperature increase over the past few years while there is more and more CO2 in the atmosphere. You cant have it both ways.

And I repeat again, there is no consensus. Consensus in science is not like a democratic vote. The consensus in science is obtained when there is NO ONE debating anything anymore. Just like noone is casting doubt on Einstein s relativity theory in physics. Do we have that level of scientific certitude regarding climate? Hell no.

[justsee]

"June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe." (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-te...)

There is scientific consensus (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-co...).

Your understanding of scientific consensus is not correct: "Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus).

You clearly have an opinion on this topic, but everything you've asserted in this thread is simply wrong. Debate on these issues is always fine (even with a scientific consensus, it does not mean 'no further debate') but you do the opposing camp a disservice when you promote falsehoods.

Forgive the cheek, but you really should be doing this before assuming a position in a debate: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=scientific+consensus+on+global+warming

[brc]

3.7 x 10-99 is a very small number. It's considerably less than the number of stars in our solar system.

The last 327 months of my life I have been taller than my average lifetime height.

Half of the human population has more testicles than the average person.

Statistics are fun when you throw them around.

[justsee]

No sorry, you're wrong: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.7+x+10^99+%3E+stars+i... ( surely you weren't trying to make a point based on a typographical error?)

Your other points (if I can be that generous) are meaningless, so I'll leave them alone.

[brc]

10 ^-99, not 10 ^99 - read it again.

My other points are not meaningless at all.

The temperature has been rising for ~150 years or more.

Of course the most recent half of the trend is higher than the average. It's meant to sound scary when it's just a plain fact that a rising trend will have most of the later part of the trend higher than the entire average.

A probability of the last part of a series being higher than the average would only be interesting if the series was random. The temperature series isn't random - it has a trend upwards. So the probability business is just nonsense. It's just a ridiculous way of saying the temperature series has trended up for a long time. (Long in human lifetime measurements, but not geological lifetime)

Hence : in the last 327 months of my life, I'm taller than my lifetime average. Because it would be very unlikely that the opposite would be the case.

[jdlegg]

Temperatures have not been rising for 150 years or more. You need to check your facts.

Direct instrumental measurements only go back ~150 years, but another direct mechanism exists: borehole measurements [1]. This gives us a very good measurement of temperature over ~500 years. These show that at no time have temperature averages been as high as they are now.

We can go back even further, to the tune of 1000 years, through proxy data obtained via things like tree rings, coral growth, stalagmite layers, etc. This covers the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" and these data show the last century to be warmer than any other in the data set.

Not enough? Antarctic ice core analysis provides a record of the glacial-interglacial cycle over 100s of thousands of years. These data show that current average temperatures are higher than they've been over the last 100,000+ years. This is documented in Figure 2.22 of the IPCC Third Assessment Report [2].

[1] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/index.html [2] http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/clim...

[brazzy]

Hell, yes, there is. Sure there are dissenting voices. Just like there is no shortage of cranks who claim they can disprove Einstein.

[ekianjo]

The cranks who claim Einstein is wrong have no means to prove he is.

However, when a scientist argues against the lack of long term data to discuss global warming, and the inconsistencies of the theory, he is met with disapproval, insults, and shunning. There is a lack of scientific discussions because there is a huge political agenda behind it, and it is not a surprise to see most of 'climate scientists' funded by governments who approve of that theory and want to have this on their agenda.

Kind of hard to keep a straight face as a scientist when your funding depends on the theory itself. Of course youd be fighting to make sure it remains the 'mainstream' theory.

[kaybe]

- disclaimer: student of environmental physics here -

Uhm, no. We can still do climate science without the problems, and there will be funds (maybe not as much, but that's ok). Climate is still something we want and need to understand, even if there is no problem at the moment (just imagine another ice age.. )

All the researchers here (Heidelberg) would be happy - euphoric! - to be able to disprove the theory. Just image, you'd be able to tell everyone it's gonna be ok.. but it's most probably not. And there are so many students and grad students working on the data - if there was a problem, can you really imagine that not a single student would be idealistic enough to speak up? (I totally would, but then I might be in already.)

You can download raw data if you want, and look at them yourself. Most projects actually have a data base, and if not just ask. If there is a problem in the way the data has been taken and evaluated, notice the authors. But a lot of people have looked over it already.As I said, everyone would be unbelievably happy if the problem didn't exist. Look here for some oceanic data, for example: http://woce.nodc.noaa.gov/wdiu/

[chc]

Wouldn't that apply equally to almost all scientific research being conducted? Just about everybody has some result they're hoping for. This sounds more like bias on your part ("They could be exaggerating, and I'd like them to be, so I'll make the leap from mere possibility to certainty") than a fact-based analysis of the climate scientists' research.

[VMG]

> Just like noone is casting doubt on Einstein s relativity theory in physics.

You live a sheltered life.

[ktizo]

The consensus in science is obtained when there is NO ONE debating anything anymore.

No, that is called the end of science.