Who says that the climate debate is not evolving? According to the daily newspaper the Guardian, a new application (‘app‘) has been written for iPhones that provides a list of climate dissidents’ arguments, and counter arguments based on more legitimate scientific substance. The app is developed by John Cook from ‘Skeptical Science‘. It’s apparently enough to have the climate dissidents up in arms – meaning that it’s likely to have some effect? Some dissidents are now thinking of writing their own app.
Here on RC, we have developed a wiki, to which I also would like to bring the reader’s attention. Furthermore, I want to remind the readers about other useful web sites, listed at our blog roll.
Wilt@500, Remember:
1)What matters is temperature rise to reach equilibrium
and
2)CO2 sensitivity is one of the most tightly constrained parameters in climate models.
Ray Ladbury (#501), you are right with respect to your first remark (situation at equilibrium is what matters). As for CO2 sensitivity, I am not relying completely on model predictions and I think this is still open to debate. Apart from the Solomon data mentioned earlier: part of the uncertainty about feedbacks is related to the magnitude of the climate sensitivity of the global carbon cycle (release of CO2 at higher temperature). As you probably know, a recent Nature article indicates that although this feedback remains positive it seems to be much lower than previously thought. Link: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
[Response: We did a post on that a couple of weeks back, with much back and forth about the realism and significance of the results for the future.–Jim]
The Easter Islanders scenario that you mentioned (#499) is indeed very gloomy. In this case I sincerely hope that you are wrong. Personally, I take some comfort from the observation that during a long period the climate system has managed to avoid a runaway scenario.
Wilt,
The climate sensitivity studies run across a broad range of different lines of evidence: onset of ice ages, interglacials, volcanic eruptions, seasonal patterns, response to perturbations… You are interpreting Solomon’s result as a feedback. There is no evidence to suggest this. The carbon sensitivity paper was also reviewed here. I’d say it doesn’t provide much of a constraint for current conditions where we are melting large areas of permafrost, etc. It is not something I’d want to bet the future of civilization on–and again, the research does not affect CO2 sensitivity estimates.
A runaway greenhouse effect is in no way necessary to bring about the end of human civilization. All that has to happen is that in conjunction with strains of trying to feed 9-10 billion people, rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns adversely affect the globe’s productive capacity. We know that ocean acidification will decimate global reefs, and this will in turn severely affect fisheries. We know that many crops will not be able to grow in their old fields and that areas further north lack the topsoil (due to glaciation). And on and on. For even higher temperature rises, we could start seeing oceans produce more H2S and less O2. This is a risk that at present we cannot bound. As a risk management professional, that concerns me.
wilt (500): all that matters in my view is how much of the warming during the previous century can be attributed to CO2 increase (instead of other causes)
BPL: then DO THE MATH!!! Here’s all the raw data you need:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Sun.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/LeanTSI.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/SvalgaardTSI.html
I also have time series data for the PDO if you want it. Guess what? I’ve DONE those analyses, and carbon dioxide accounts for 3/4 of the warming since 1880. There’s your answer.
Ray Ladbury
Easter Island, the real story: how exaggerations hurt the cause
I have heard the touching story of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) a long time ago, and I have always regarded it as a warning to be careful with our resources. I assume that Ray Ladbury felt the same and therefore brought it up (#499). But recently I have taken a closer look, and it turns out that not the inhabitants of the island but rats (brought along by European colonists) were primarily responsible for the deforestation. Terry Hunt wrote a paper on this subject in J Arch Science (2007), and wrote an overview in American Scientist that can be found here:
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/2006/5/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island/5
In this overview he writes: ‘I believe that the world faces today an unprecedented global environmental crisis, and I see the usefulness of historical examples of the pitfalls of environmental destruction. So it was with some unease that I concluded that Rapa Nui does not provide such a model. But as a scientist I cannot ignore the problems with the accepted narrative of the island’s prehistory. Mistakes or exaggerations in arguments for protecting the environment only lead to oversimplified answers and hurt the cause of environmentalism. We will end up wondering why our simple answers were not enough to make a difference in confronting today’s problems.’
Barton Paul Levenson (#504)
I could present many different arguments with respect to your calculation, but I have the impression that only arguments coming from IPCC or IPCC-linked scientists might convince you. So first, here is part of a recent BBC interview with Phil Jones (former director of CRU, supplier of temperature data to IPCC).
Question: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
Answer:
[…]
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend (degrees Celsius per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
Second, with respect to the warming in recent years (last part of 20th century) the IPCC report only claims that MOST of the warming during this period can be ascribed to increasing CO2, implying that there were other contributing factors. Everyone who looks at the CO2 concentrations and who realizes that the logarithm of the CO2 INCREASE is relevant when it comes to forcing, will understand that the CO2 contribution to warming was much lower in 1910-1940 (compared to the contribution in recent years), and was almost negligible during 1860-1880.
So if you claim that carbon dioxide accounts for 3/4 of the warming since 1880 you are free to do so, but I can find no support for that claim even among IPCC-linked scientists. Perhaps you should read Terry Hunt’s remarks that I recently quoted (#505) about exaggerations in arguments and oversimplified answers.
wilt – My reading of the Easter Island analysis you link says a lot more about the ‘rape’ of ecosystems [including the human population fraction thereof] by “advanced” Europeans, than about rats. The European “invasive species” is really more “at fault” than the Islanders cutting the trees or the rats eating the seeds. Any ecology needs to be considered as a complete system, including the human species. I think that’s the root of many poor analyses, we are a part of the system, not apart from it, and that’s where we over-simplify. Saying the rats were more at fault than the humans is quite like the contrarians now saying humans couldn’t possibly be having an effect on climate, or if CO2 is a problem, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Wilt,
The role of rats in the destruction of forests on Easter Island does not dimish the point: Once the rats were widespread, the natives were helpless observers. Of if you don’t like Easter Island, take two islands where environmental catastrophes are ongoing: Haiti (even before the quake) and Madagascar.
Ray Ladbury, you wrote (#499) “Consider the effect that would have on people knowing things would get worse and worse and that there was nothing you could do to improve things. Rather like the Easter Islanders after they chopped down the last tree.” It seems to me that in the last sentence the blame was laid primarily with the islanders. If I understand Terry Hunt’s conslusions correctly than it was primarily the rats.
That is precisely the crucial point in discussions on warming and climate change: if we haven’t precisely enough diagnosed the cause(s) we can not be confident that the right therapy will be chosen. And exaggerations are not helpful in the debate. Once again, I am not accusing you personally here, but some contributors on this log seem to think that anything goes.
wilt (506): So if you claim that carbon dioxide accounts for 3/4 of the warming since 1880 you are free to do so, but I can find no support for that claim even among IPCC-linked scientists.
BPL: You’ve never taken a statistics course in your life, have you? You have no bloody idea how to do the very simple calculation I did.
Here’s a hint–you don’t need to know the theory behind regression analysis or how to derive the normal equations. Use Excel. Tools Menu, Data Analysis (it’s the last entry, look at add-ins if it isn’t visible), choose “Regression,” fill out the pop-up form.
Better yet, take a statistics course. And in the meantime, don’t criticize results you don’t understand. Your criticism is meaningless if you don’t know what the person is talking about.
What a bizarre, even by denier standards, discussion of Easter Island. It wasn’t the fact that they’d chopped down every tree or spent their energies on non-productive activities (the statues) that did them in, it was the rats that got introduced! Oh, well, that’s all right then, nothing to learn about human dependence on healthy environments there then, is there? The ONLY importance of Easter Island is as a parable in a microcosm about the importance of the environment and the tendency for humans to behave like the apocryphal frog in boiling water. Those lessons are available all round the world. To suggest that “the rats did it” is a message not to worry about global warming leaves me gob-smacked.
Wilt, the cause of the current warming is known with 90-95% confidence–at a minimum. It was predicted long ago; there is no viable competing mechanism and the data are consistent with the mechanism. What possible additional evidence would you require to convince you?
David Horton (#511), a last word about the Easter Island story.
Here is what Ray Ladbury wrote (#499): “Rather like the Easter Islanders after they chopped down the last tree”. This formulation suggests that the islanders were primarily responsible, and this is the way the story is usually told – even by Ray Ladbury who apparently knew better, which disappoints me. As with every theory, it is good that people investigate it in a scientific way, and then it turns out that the rats were primarily responsible. The scientist in this case (Terry Hunt) writes that he is convinced that we face an environmental crisis but warns that exaggerations are counterproductive. That is basically the point that I was making. As far as I understand, this debate we are having is about man-made warming, not rat-made warming.
And I do realize that a healthy environment is crucial for our survival. Just take a look at the devastating effects of earthquakes like the one in Haiti or Chile. But you would not use that as an example to prove your theory that man is responsible for everything that goes wrong, would you? As always, start with the right diagnosis before you start the treatment.
Barton Paul Levenson (#510), I take distance from your patronizing tone. I have been a scientist all my life, and have used quite a bit of statistics so you really do not have to explain to me how Excel works. But this is not about statistics. You use the wrong starting point as I explained before. If CO2 acts as a driving force to increase temperature, it does so by increasing its concentration year after year. So it’s the INCREASE, right? So one must compare CO2 concentration one year with the concentration in the previous year (you can of course also compare decades instead of years), calculate the ratio, and take the natural logarithm. If you do this properly you will find that the contribution of CO2 increase was almost negligible in 1860-1880, and in 1910-1940 was much lower than in the recent years. This is what was discussed during several contributions of Philip Machanick, Ray Ladbury and me.
Another thing is that whatever calculation one makes, at the end a rational person will look whether the outcome makes any sense at all. If you come up with an estimation of 3/4 and no else does (including the IPCC scientists) then it just might be that you are wrong instead of everyone else.
Ray Ladbury (#512), CO2 is not ‘the cause’ of the current warming and you know this. It probably is a PART of the explanation for the temperature rise during 1975-1998. Everyone (that is, everyone who is not too dogmatic) tries to find out how much the climate is sensitive to CO2 increase, and so far no one has come up with an undisputed answer. Of course one can take very broad limits and say that it can be anything between six degrees Celsius and a value below 1 degree for a doubling, and that answer is probably right but it is not very helpful.
#515 wilt
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-warming-is-only-part-human-caused
It is more easily arguable at this point to say that the warming trend is virtually 100% human caused simply by considering the path we should have been on vs. the path we are on.
There are always error bars wrapped around a model but that does not eliminate the degree of variance from which confidence is derived.
Humans altered the forcing levels
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/forcing-levels
We are on a new path in climate and it is a warming path.
Your arguments are generally obtuse of the red herring brand. It may be that you are simply incapable of understanding what is happening due to your own confirmation bias.
If I were you, that is where I would look first when it comes to trying to understand this global warming event.
wilt (514),
I used ln Xco2. I regressed NASA GISS temperature anomalies and found that it accounted for 76.4% of the variance from 1880 to 2008 (N = 129). That’s the fact, Jack. I list all the data I used. Try it yourself.
I find it hard to believe you’re a scientist if you dispute how much variance someone found in a simple linear regression. There’s only one possible answer. It’s a calculation, not a wild guess. Want the equations?
Wilt,
It is absolutely clear from both physics and the correlation that CO2 is the predominant mechanism in the temperature increase–to the point where if CO2 were not in the picture, warming would be indistinguisable from zero over the period. Barton’s analysis makes sense and provides strong empirical support to the prediction made by Arrhenius 114 years ago.
There simply are no other credible mechanisms nor are any others needed to explain the observations.
wilt — I believe you misunderstand how to apply the Arrhenius formula. In any case, I’ve done it correctly, but with now both a decadal and bidecadal lgas on the Whatevergate thread. I will, later today, do this once more for the semidecadal case.
Unfortunately I found the iPhone app misleading, contradicting and too vague with some of the answers.
If you take one question and look at the answer for it, it makes sense. But, if you look at the answers over multiple questions, contridictions start to happen.
The Sun is a classic. In some answers we get the Sun has shown little or no long term trends, yet in others, a recent cooling effect.
The answer to one of the extreme weather queries is basically its happening because we say so and there is no information to back it up.
The main issue with those who are arguing against AGW is that the IPCC report cannot be fully trusted as if simple problems can be found in this so called ‘peer reviewed’ document, how can the rest of it be trusted.
The only was to shut down the debate, one way or the other, is to have total transparency in both the data and the models.
After all, it is the future of the planet we are talking about. If AGW is real then we do have a mandate to prevent it as much as possible. If not, then we also have a mandate not to spend trillions of dollars chasing a red hearing.
I think this is a great idea. Having an iphone app can get the generation involved that needs to be involved. They are the ones we can depend on to help save our earth in the future and the sooner they learn, they more they will know when they are going to need to know it. I think it’s a wonderful idea.
Barton Paul Levenson (#517), I have tried to explain to you several times now that there is a difference between CO2 concentration and increase of CO2 concentration. I will give it one last try, using a simple example.
Suppose for a minute that during a hundred years CO2 had been increasing 0.00001 ppmv every year, and temperature had been increasing for instance 0.5 degrees every decade. You would be plotting temperature versus CO2 concentration and this would yield a ‘perfect’ correlation with an unbelievable correlation coefficient and p-value, and you would probably shout that the science had been settled.
At the same time I know, and virtually everyone knows, and presumably even you know that such a small CO2 increase would have no measurable impact at all on temperature. That is the reason that not the concentration (X) but the change in concentration (deltaX) should be taken into consideration. This is precisely what had been done by Philip Machanick. I agree with his approach, but you will remember that I made a correction in his calculation (all this has been explained in my previous posts on this topic). That yielded in the end an estimate of 0.8 degree Celsius for a CO2 doubling.
wilt, I know what you’re saying. I’m saying it doesn’t matter. The hypothetical case you bring up is not what we’re really seeing. What we’re seeing is that ln CO2 accounts for 76% of the variance of dT in the same year for a sample size of 128 recent years. And no, it’s not a spurious correlation. Did you ever read the damn web page? Did you see where I performed Cochrane-Orcutt iteration to account for autocorrelation in the residuals and CO2 still came out accounting for 60% of the variance? What does it take to get through to you?
CO2 is driving temperatures. It was predicted in 1896 (Arrhenius) and again in 1938 (Callendar) and again in 1956 (Plass). In 1958 we started collecting the data that eventually confirmed it. Note the past tense. CONFIRMED. CO2 is driving temperature and accounts for most of the increase. I get 76% in a direct correlation. Three-fourths. Adjust for autocorrelated residuals: three-fifths. Still a majority.
Not the sun. Not galactic cosmic rays. Not air-ocean oscillations. Not geothermal energy. Not urban heat islands. Not conspiratorial number alterations by evil climatologists. There’s nothing else. We have the theory that CO2 should raise temperature, and the evidence fits the theory.
Deal with it. Stop living in a fantasy world. You’re wrong.
“520
Dave says:
28 February 2010 at 6:59 PM
Unfortunately I found the iPhone app misleading, contradicting and too vague with some of the answers.”
Lets look at the examples:
“The Sun is a classic. In some answers we get the Sun has shown little or no long term trends, yet in others, a recent cooling effect.”
What determines a long term trend depends on the question you’re asking.
In the long term (centuries), that baby will die and leave no progeny behind. In the long term (of decades), that child will live and grow healthy and have children of their own.
“The answer to one of the extreme weather queries is basically its happening because we say so and there is no information to back it up.”
Basically you’re saying “I’m making this up”.
Basically, you need to say what they say, not what you read into it.
“The main issue with those who are arguing against AGW is that the IPCC report cannot be fully trusted as if simple problems can be found in this so called ‘peer reviewed’ document, how can the rest of it be trusted.”
How can the case against it be trusted when so much of it has so many dense errors:
E.g.
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
How can you believe the press when they state that “So and so said something”:
http://deepclimate.org/2010/01/11/mojib-latif-slams-daily-mail/#more-1409
?
The app isn’t about the IPCC WG2/3 report. It’s about the common cases against AGW.
“The only was to shut down the debate, one way or the other, is to have total transparency in both the data and the models.”
Pyshician, heal thyself.
How about a little transparency on the denialotrope? When Heartland open up as much as the IPCC or CRU or GISS, or … THEN talk about more transparency.
“Suppose for a minute that during a hundred years CO2 had been increasing 0.00001 ppmv every year, and temperature had been increasing for instance 0.5 degrees every decade.”
Suppose playboy bunnies were mad for internet geeks.
Wilt, you’re not even trying.
The point is not that there’s a correlation but that correlation ties in with physical models.
Though your “no thought experiment” would show correlation, that would lead to a sensitivity much higher than any model would see. A sensitivity far higher than physics or the past evidence would or could explain.
So, if models predict around a 3C warming for doubling CO2, 0.8C already seen and 0.5C dialed in from lags in the system and ocean oversequestration, and an increase of 41% of CO2, then that’s a fairly good agreement.
If it had been 1% increase in CO2, this agreement would not hold unless CO2 sensitivity is at around 120C per doubling.
Related to the function of this application:
Huffington Post is a popular site, esp. for the comment threads. I am convinced it is a place where many people acquire an “understanding” of the GHG problem.
In case you know anyone who could spend some time on the climate change threads, HP could use the help. It has turned into one large talking point party. Many of us who attempt to educate there (I refer often to Skeptical Science, because it’s quick and accessible and because it targets specific talking points) have lost our patience and are in need of relief.
A good bombarding might raise the level of discourse.
> (all this has been explained in my previous posts on this topic). …
> an estimate of 0.8 degree Celsius for a CO2 doubling.
When you claim to have corrected modern physics, you owe your readers is an actual citation to where your work appears–at the very least a link or pointer to a timestamp in a blog thread somewhere people can find the work, not just claims that the work was accomplished somewhere.
Nobody follows anyone that closely taking notes about what they said earlier.
You have to keep track of yourself so you can show people what you said, not just say you already did it.
wilt (522) — Well, you are thinking about it incorrectly, I fear. On the Whatevergate thread I have several fairly recent comments which apply the Arrhenius formula to obtain estimates for GISTEMP which agree well with the actual anomalies.
But first, have you read “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart, first link in the science section of the sidebar?
Hank Roberts (#527), you are right that the discussion on this topic, the estimation of climate sensitivity from temperature increase in the past, has become complicated, partly because some contributions have appeared in this thread, and others in the Whatevergate thread. So I made a reconstruction, as concise as possible but without distortions. So I will use complete quotations of the relevant remarks as they appeared (including an occasional typing error).
Ray Ladbury, Whatevergate #627
“Thus the increased warming due to increased CO2 in the 1910-1940 period was about half that for the period 1975-1998.”
I challenged that view (Whatevergate #648) and got a more precise answer:
Ray Ladbury, Whatevergate #653
“Wilt, the thing you have to realize is that the increase in CO2 forcing is not linear in CO2 concentration but logarighmic. Thus if we look at the increase from 1910-1940, from roughly 295-395, that’s a factor of 1.03. Take the log, and we get 0.0333. Now look at the increase from 1974-1998 from roughly 330 to 360 ppmv, a factor of ~1.09, the log of which is .087. Thus the increase in forcing from 1910 to 1940 was less than a factor of 3 less than that from 1974 to 1998. Do the math.”
Wilt, Whatevergate #687
“Well, here is my calculation. For a fair comparison the length of the periods should of course be the same, so I compare the most recent years 1980-2009 with a similar 29-year period 1910-1939.
For 1910-1939 I use the ice core data (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.combined.dat) and for recent years the Mauna Loa data.
1910-1939 CO2: 300-310 ratio 1.03 and the log value is 0.033
1980-2009 CO2: 339-387 ratio 1.14 and the log value is 0.132
Therefore the contribution of CO2 to warming during the period 1910-1939 is less than 25% compared to the period 1980-2009. When one chooses the period 1970-1999 instead of 1980-2009, the outcome is about the same (CO2 326-368, ratio 1.13, log value is 0.121 therefore CO2 contribution about 27% during 1910-1939 compared to 1970-1999).”
Ray Ladbury, Throw in your iPhone (#269)
“Wilt@259, the periods in the Harrabin question were 1910-1940 and 1974-1998. That is where I got my figure. But fine, take 1980-2009. The fact ramains that CO2 forcing still rose about 25% as much as during the modern period.”
Philip Machanick, Throw your iPhone (#460):
[Remark from Wilt: disturbing typing error in second sentence, 219 ppm should read 291 ppm]
“Here’s a simple calculation to get a handle on climate sensitivity. Since 1880 CO_2 has increased from 219ppm according to CDIAC’s ice core records. Current CO_2 is approximately 388ppm. Over the same period, NASA’s world temperature anomaly has increased about 0.8°C.
If the relationship between CO_2 and temperature is logarithmic, we expect the change in temperature dT from concentration C0 to the current level C to be given by: dT = k (log(C/C0))
If you have a decent model you can determine k but let’s see what the numbers give us vs. the expected effect of a doubling resulting 1.5-4.5°C warming after feedbacks, with 3°C most likely.
Using the numbers we have and natural logs (the base doesn’t matter: it will change the value of k but that remains consist for all calculations),
0.8 = k (ln (388/291))
0.8 = k (ln (1.33333)
so k = 2.78
This being the case a doubling would result in a temperature increase of 2.78 (ln 2) = 1.9°C”
Wilt, Throw your iPhone (#466):
“Philip Machanick (#460), with all due respect but your ‘simple calculation’ with respect to climate sensitivity is really far too simple. No serious climate scientist would claim that all of the temperature rise since 1880 is due to increasing CO2. The temperature increase from 1910-1940 was primarily due to increased solar irradiance. The contribution of rising CO2 to warming during that period was about 25% of the CO2 contribution to warming in the recent years (see my discussion with Ray Ladbury on this topic, #259 and #269). And even for the warming in the recent years the IPCC statement is that ’MOST of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations’ (my capitals). There are several other contributing factors that were already known at the time of the IPCC report, and since then there have been several important new articles, for instance Susan Solomon’s recent paper in Science, suggesting that about 30% of warming during the 1990s is related to decreased water vapor in the stratosphere (see my post #383).
So if you were to make a rough estimate of the contribution of CO2 increase to global warming during the whole period since 1880, then I would suggest for the whole period a mean value of approximately 40 % (let’s say 65 % in the recent years, and a quarter of that meaning about 15% during 1910-1940). In that case your calculation for a doubling of CO2 would yield a value of about 0.8 degree Celsius. If that value would be correct than there is apparently a net negative feedback (compared to the generally accepted ‘pure’ effect of CO2 doubling of about 1 degree Celsius).”
Hank Roberts, I hope this answers your question. And no, I did not have the intention to correct modern physics. I tried to correct a miscalculation, mainly because I dislike exaggerations.
John Cook of Skeptical Science adds a master resources page for various arguments pro/con climate change.
The Skeptical Science list of skeptic arguments is one of the larger compilations going around, currently numbering 91 different arguments. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Whenever I encounter a skeptic argument, I add it to the database which currently contains 242 skeptic arguments. The 91 are those which I’ve found the time to research and write a summary of what the peer-reviewed science says on the topic. Now all 242 arguments have been categorised and displayed on a new Global Warming Links page. And just to open up a potentially huge can of worms, you can add to the list of skeptic arguments yourself!
There’s more to this list than just the skeptic arguments. Besides each skeptic argument, you’ll notice a green and red number. The green number denotes the number of web pages about that skeptic argument that endorse man-made global warming (let’s call them pro-AGW). The red number denotes the number of skeptic links. This is the guts of Global Warming Links – a resource of global warming links expressing both sides of the debate.
Sometimes Skeptical Science is accused of being unbalanced. This criticism is certainly true in terms of the links collected so far. There are substantially more skeptic than pro-AGW links. This is because I’ve been collecting skeptic links for years, since before I started Skeptical Science. However, I’ve only been collecting pro-AGW links since I started developing the Links page a few weeks ago. So I would encourage anyone if they encounter a webpage or blog post about a particular skeptic argument to submit it in the Add New Link form.
I’ve also added two other interesting pages which are linked to from the top of Global Warming Links. There’s Last Week which lists the most popular skeptic arguments submitted over the last week. This should be useful for keeping track of the latest, most popular skeptic arguments. The problem is currently there are only a handful of articles submitted over the last week so it’s not a terribly comprehensive representation yet. Hopefully the list will fill up in quick time. There is also Last Month which lasts the most used skeptic arguments over the last 30 days.
More:
Every skeptic argument ever used
The database is freely accessible for people committed to living in the material world as well as those holding out for a more idealized existence.
Fwiw, I’m trying out this experimental approach to education: Video: Desdemona News for 5 March 2010.
Surely this will be another tool to generate it to create awareness or changes must be generated.