The pro-AGW crowd generally act like a bunch of power mad barbarians, more in line with members of the Inquisition than logical and rational scientists sunsettommy. It’s no surprise they behaved in a way that caused them to be banned. I think some of them do it deliberately when their arguments are going nowhere, then they can rationalize it in their minds that they are really right and it’s the evil deniers who banned them because they don’t want to hear the TRVTH.

One was banned for arguing with the Administrator.

The other was banned for his obnoxious attitude.

Realclimate, yeah, there’s an honest site. And I am being facetious. Their response to the claim that the retreat of the ice/snow pack on Kilimanjaro was illuminating. They shrieked that claims that the loss of snow were not due to global warming were lies, lies I tell you! All based on one newspaper article, that’s it, there were no papers or truth to it. 5 minutes of googling and anyone could and did find at least 4 papers in peer reviewed journals that stated the real reasons, deforestation and land use changes leading to less precipitation, and the fact that the temps at the summit had actually cooled over time. Their response to this was that the papers didn’t actually say that it wasn’t global warming!!! Because they didn’t start off with “GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT WHAT’S CAUSING THE SNOW TO MELT” in large friendly letters, even though they proved it was another factor, wasn’t enough proof for them.

They have been picked apart by other forums.

There has been scientists who show up making comments at Realclimate tearing them apart.Niv Shaviv was one of them.It was a real treat!

Here is his website:

LINK

Realclimate, yeah, there’s an honest site. And I am being facetious. Their response to the claim that the retreat of the ice/snow pack on Kilimanjaro was illuminating. They shrieked that claims that the loss of snow were not due to global warming were lies, lies I tell you! All based on one newspaper article, that’s it, there were no papers or truth to it. 5 minutes of googling and anyone could and did find at least 4 papers in peer reviewed journals that stated the real reasons, deforestation and land use changes leading to less precipitation, and the fact that the temps at the summit had actually cooled over time. Their response to this was that the papers didn’t actually say that it wasn’t global warming!!! Because they didn’t start off with “GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT WHAT’S CAUSING THE SNOW TO MELT” in large friendly letters, even though they proved it was another factor, wasn’t enough proof for them.

Sheese, you can’t make this stuff up. I wonder if they’ve ever updated their excuses on this or if they are still hawking the same lies.

We have had a total of TWO AGW members since the forum was funded in March.All the rest have been rational.

The funny part is that those TWO have been BANNED! Just those two.

The rest have been good and they are skeptics.

I have detected a trend on many forums I go to that AGW’s are in retreat.They seem to have just one website they drool over.Realclimate

A website that contains several discredited authors of foolish climate claims.

LOL

Where are you?

Has all the postings since a week ago scare you off?

LINK

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

“If we didn’t have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time.”

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man’s activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

“That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then,” he said.

“We couldn’t do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates.”

Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as “The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2″ and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.

“The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?

“It’s become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt,” he said.

In 5 to 10 years max I believe we’ll be in another cooling phase, perhaps a significant one. Unfortunately, given the current political climate by then we’ll be hamstrung with all manner of idiotic regulations based on poor science that, like most laws and regulations, will live on with their negative effects long after they’ve been proven to be unnecessary.

And to further gall everyone like us, the usual suspects will claim that the cooling is due to the laws, regardless of the fact that no real reductions have occurred in CO2, and even if CO2 was the culprit they claim not enough time would have elapsed for reducing it to have an effect even if it had been reduced. And the press and greenies and governments will all publicize their “success” story regardless of facts just as they are pushing this AGW story regardless of facts.

You are right, the peer review process is a flawed, but it still beats an unchecked flow of “information” submitted by people who may or may not be quailified and those who may or may not have an agenda. Flawed or not, it is the only process we have to try and weed out bad science. However, you are right, in that the peer review process can be hijacked by members who are part of a consensus.

Unfortunately, in the case of anthropogenic global warming activist scientists, along with their fellow travelers at the journals and those who fund research, are in a position to enforce an orthodoxy. As has been mentioned previously in this thread, this has happened before, and it will happen again. I hesitate to call this process a conspiracy, but when it happens, it seems like agenda-driven scientists are aided by powerful forces, such as the media or government, which empowers them and enables them to stifle dissent. For those who don’t believe the global warming movement is enforcing orthodoxy and stifling dissent, consider a few examples:

- A number in the media have suggested that dissent in this area should be called “climate change denial”, and that such dissenters are criminals. Trials, like those for the Nazis at Nuremberg, have even been proposed.

- Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist for the weather channel, has proposed de-certifying any meteorologist who does not tow the AGW line.

- George Taylor, David Legates and Patrick Michaels, state climatologists from Washington, Delaware and Virginia, respectively, have all been fired or threatened by their governors for having the wrong opinions on global warming.

- Canadian climatologist Timothy Ball has received death threats after speaking out on global warming issues.

These examples are not isolated. Global warming skeptics are, in general, marginalized and called crackpots. It is small wonder that many scientists prefer to remain silent on the issue, especially when speaking out could literally mean losing or limiting their careers. Unfortunately, it will take courage on the part of these scientists to bring the curtain down on this charade. The truth will eventually emerge when another cooling period occurs, but probably too late to prevent handing over control of much of the economy and much of the freedom in our lives to enviro-fascists.

In the end, “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron. Science is not decided by voting. Something is either a proven fact, or it’s a theory. The idea that man is responsible for global warming is hardly a proven fact, despite the cult-like fanaticism of its followers.

This article is right on the money in my experience:

How many times in the past year as global warming has become a headline issue have you heard a liberal media member or Hollywood elite talk about a consensus of peer reviewed scientists?

So much so that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, correct?

As an example, pop singer Sheryl Crow during her recent Stop Global Warming College tour would toss the term “peer-reviewed science” around to her audience like a frisbee, as if she had any idea what it actually meant.

With that in mind, a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute, Dr. Robert Higgs, published an article Monday that should be required reading for folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his followers (emphasis added throughout):

I have served as a peer reviewer for more than thirty professional journals and as a reviewer of research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and a number of large private foundations. I was the principal investigator of a major NSF-funded research project in the field of demography. So, I think I know something about how the system works.

It does not work as outsiders seem to think.

Tell us more, Doctor:

Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from important, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to a complete farce, where they are not. As a rule, not surprisingly, the process operates somewhere in the middle, being more than a joke but less than the nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny that outsiders imagine it to be. Any journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to knock down a submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee reports. As I have always counseled young people whose work was rejected, seemingly on improper or insufficient grounds, the system is a crap shoot. Personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion and a great deal of plain incompetence and irresponsibility are no strangers to the scientific world; indeed, that world is rife with these all-too-human attributes. In no event can peer review ensure that research is correct in its procedures or its conclusions.

As for the other buzzword folks like Gore, Crow, and Laurie David like to throw around:

At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.

Researchers who employ unorthodox methods or theoretical frameworks have great difficulty under modern conditions in getting their findings published in the “best” journals or, at times, in any scientific journal. Scientific innovators or creative eccentrics always strike the great mass of practitioners as nut cases―until it becomes impossible to deny their findings, a time that often comes only after one generation’s professional ring-masters have died off. Science is an odd undertaking: everybody strives to make the next breakthrough, yet when someone does, he is often greeted as if he were carrying the ebola virus. Too many people have too much invested in the reigning ideas; for those people an acknowledgment of their own idea’s bankruptcy is tantamount to an admission that they have wasted their lives.

Just thought I’d point that out. Food for thought.

From:

USGS

Hawaii Volcano Observatory

Volcanic gas Measurements on Mauna Loa are an expanded challenge

LINK

You asked questions,

You bring up a point I’ve not seen discussed adequately, which is, is it wise to measure atmospheric CO2 from an active volcano? I mean, why is Mauna Loa chosen as a site for this? I can understand wanting to measure it in the middle of the ocean away from land masses, but wouldn’t some place like Christmas Island be a better choice?

Atmospheric carbon dioxide record from Mauna Loa

C.D. Keeling and T.P. Whorf

Carbon Dioxide Research Group, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, La Jolla, California 92093-0444, U.S.A.
Period of Record
1958-2004

SNIP:

Trends

The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 measurements constitute the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 concentrations available in the world. The Mauna Loa site is considered one of the most favorable locations for measuring undisturbed air because possible local influences of vegetation or human activities on atmospheric CO2 concentrations are minimal and any influences from volcanic vents may be excluded from the records. The methods and equipment used to obtain these measurements have remained essentially unchanged during the 47-year monitoring program.

Because of the favorable site location, continuous monitoring, and careful selection and scrutiny of the data, the Mauna Loa record is considered to be a precise record and a reliable indicator of the regional trend in the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 in the middle layers of the troposphere. The Mauna Loa record shows a 19.4% increase in the mean annual concentration, from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004. The 1997-1998 increase in the annual growth rate of 2.87 ppmv represets the largest single yearly jump since the Mauna Loa record began in 1958. This represents an average annual increase of 1.4 ppmv per year. This is smaller than the average annual increase at the other stations because of the longer record and inclusion of earlier (smaller) annual increases.

LINK

You bring up a point I’ve not seen discussed adequately, which is, is it wise to measure atmospheric CO2 from an active volcano? I mean, why is Mauna Loa chosen as a site for this? I can understand wanting to measure it in the middle of the ocean away from land masses, but wouldn’t some place like Christmas Island be a better choice?