Climategate's Final Days 872
The Bad Astronomer writes "Climategate may be on its way out. An investigatory committee at Pennsylvania State University has formally cleared climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of any scientific misconduct. Mann was central in the so-called Climategate scandal, where illegally leaked emails were purported to indicate examples of scientists trying to cover up any lack of global warming in their data. This finding by the committee (PDF) is another in a series of independent investigations that have all concluded that no misconduct has occurred."
Denialism uses the same arguments (Score:2, Informative)
Creationists, climate change deniers, the tobacco industry ... they all use the same arguments. You can go through The Fine Art of Baloney Detection and find the examples right to hand.
At least the tobacco industry has mostly given up claiming smoking isn't bad for you. Now their shills are working for the climate change deniers. Yes, it's the same shills.
RationalWiki (unfinished) comparative example: A comparative guide to science denial [rationalwiki.org].
Re:Climategate? (Score:2, Informative)
Deforestation and pollution help cause climate change. And increases in global temperatures accelerate desertification, increasing deforestation. Increasing global temperatures also are predicted to cause significant droughts throughout the world. Significant droughts reduce the available amount of food. Reductions in the available amount of food mean starvation and/or wars to procure resources. And then there's the probable destruction of most coastal cities due to rising ocean levels.
The risk from starvation and violence related to the effects of climate change are far greater than the risk of getting cancer. The Pentagon (that bastion of squishy liberalism) has included climate change in their strategic planning documents as a key driver of security issues in the future.
So, to summarize, we shouldn't be dumping shit into the environment, but you should be more worried about changing the climate than possibly getting cancer from drinking from a plastic bottle, cause the consequences of that are liable to kill you the old fashioned way - through starvation and violence.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Informative)
See? This is what eldavojohn was talking about. You make a baseless assertion that the 'global warming nuts' have no evidence. Well, you are wrong. In fact, the amount of comprehensive, cohesive evidence supporting global warming is astounding. Why do you say it isn't? You obviously have no idea how much evidence is out there and you haven't read any of it. In fact, the evidence is so great, the burden of proof is now on those who deny global warming. So, where's your proof that this literal mountain of evidence is either wrong, or does not exist?
Re:University panel declares university innocent (Score:5, Informative)
Universities regularly find faculty guilty of various forms of misconduct. Check out the Ward Churchill case, for example. Or any number of the recent data falsification scandals in Physics.
It's in the university's best interests to appear to support honest investigators. Not doing so reduces applications, donations, and ability to land grants.
Re:We All Wish (Score:2, Informative)
This sentence alone indicates that you have no comprehension of how science is done at all. It is most certainly *not* independent reproduction of results- that's utterly absurd. When given something to review, you don't drop everything, set up the experiment and rerun it- nobody has the time, the funds, the lab space or anything else.
Peer review is a sanity check. The reviewer should be very familiar with the field the paper is in. What you do is look the paper over- are there theoretical mistakes? Has the experimenter accounted for known sources of error with the methods and equipment used? Does it agree with the sources that they are citing? Is the data strong enough to support the conclusions they are trying to draw? Is it clearly written and easily readable, at least for the intended audience? (Sadly, less common than you might expect) If so, go ahead and publish, or send back with suggestions for revisions.
It is not, and has never been, an attempt to reproduce the experiment done. Where you got this idea I have no idea.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
We aren't assholes, and we have proved our claims. It is not our problem that you have not read or understood the proof.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
There aren't any peer-reviewed publications because those who control the publications wont publish dissenting opinion, and you can prove there's no validity to the dissenting opinion by pointing to the lack of peer-reviewed publications....
Re:Uh... no issues? (Score:2, Informative)
1.calling it man-made is complete speculation at the current point(yes it is, there's correlation at best, no proof of causality)
If you leave human influences out of the models, they diverge significantly from real measurements. If you put that influence in, the model results track real world results. This is in the IPCC report. Whether you call it "proof" is a bit philosophical, but it's definitely well beyond "complete speculation".
2.calling it warming is kind of fucked up since it's warming in some places, and cooling in others
Overall it is warming. Nonetheless, you're right that it's oversimplistic, and this is why we often now talk about "climate change" rather than "global warming".
Re:"illegally leaked emails" ? (Score:3, Informative)
Those papers should be peer reviewed to ensure that the science in the paper is sound (not necessarily *right* - a published theory may later be proven wrong).
The letters in question were hacked from a mail server and released by the hackers.
I am not a scientist, I am sure some other
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
Calling your opponent a fucktard hardly helps make your case. In fact, reasonable undecided readers will likely write you off for using the word.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php [skepticalscience.com]
http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures [pewclimate.org]
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ [epa.gov]
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html [nationalgeographic.com]
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ [skepticalscience.com]
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/ [grist.org]
http://www.ecosalon.com/top-10-global-warming-denier-arguments-debunked-part-2/ [ecosalon.com]
http://earthfirst.com/desmogblog-debunks-the-global-warming-skeptics-handbook/ [earthfirst.com]
http://mediamatters.org/research/200601250007 [mediamatters.org]
Hope this helps.
More science still (Score:3, Informative)
Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
Yes. Have YOU looked into the problems [google.com] with said report? Because science doesn't stop with one report . Science means other people get to question your results, your assumptions, and your methods.
Science means other people get to ask exactly how you arrived at a conclusion and you tell them so they can reproduce your results or raise issues with your methods. Yet what the emails revealed, was that even in the face of FOI requests the "scientists" would not release data or methods - and after looking at the actual computer modeling code also leaked, you can understand why. Because the "scientists" over time, became less interested in the actual science than in proving a conclusion they had reached, at any cost.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Informative)
If you can't apply your aw-shucks logic to these problems, then why do you think climate science is any different?
Because you can see the climate. Well, actually not, only the weather, but that's not a visible difference.
People like to argue about things that they have an intuition about. That they can see, touch and grasp with their senses. We are biologically evolved that way, to have an opinion on our environment.
The Higgs boson and mathematical theories don't fall into that category, and as such they are left alone. A discussion about climate change on Venus would not yield 1% of the opposition.
Re:Denialism uses the same arguments (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and those guys who destroyed John Kerry's (admittedly already-weak) presidential bid through that swiftboat nonsense? They're for hire.
A group of dissatisfied conservative alumni used them to remove the president of my alma mater a few years back. They rallied the usual suspects (Limbaugh, WND, etc.) and within a few months the president (and the college by extension) was a liberal bogeyman. In turn, the president was fired, and the state pulled a great deal of funding from the college.
ACORN (who were unambiguously cleared of any wrongdoing whatsoever) were brought down by the same guys as well. That "incriminating" video was very heavily edited -- the ACORN staffers opted to offer phony money laundering advice to the guy because they had called the cops, and needed to stall him.
Re:We All Wish (Score:4, Informative)
The temperature peaked around 8000 years ago and it's been getting cooler since then up until industrialization started the current warming. The global trend was a cooling one and it did start warming. Have a look at this graph. [wikimedia.org]
Re:More science still (Score:3, Informative)
I only skimmed the results and read some of them that looked promising (a Google search results page is not exactly the best way to do these sorts of things), but all the problems, the few there are, appear to be in the Working Group II report. The one he linked to was the Working Group I report, and was even explicitly labeled as such. If you know of "the problems with said report", it'd be nice if you could provide some sources, preferably reasonably credible ones, that actually point out such problems.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
The earth has been getting warmer for thousands of years. Right now, where I am sitting, there used to be 2KM of ice. That ice is clearly gone now. That glacier has melted. Our current glaciers are just continuing to melt.
Your reasoning is flawed, and is based on an ignorance of the scientifically determined factors that affect the climate. If I may summarize the structure of your argument: The climate has changed in the past. Humans have not always existed. Therefore, humans cannot be causing climate change now.
The implicit reasoning is flawed because overemphasizes some causes of past warming, namely orbital fluctuations and asteroid collisions with the Earth, while underemphasizing the past role of greenhouse gas concentrations in causing the Earth to warm. The fact that other things have influenced the climate in the past does not mean that human produced greenhouse gasses cannot cause warming today. And if the climate is currently warming, and we can (and have) eliminated other possible causes for that change, then human produced greenhouse gasses are the most likely cause of our current warming.
This fallacious reasoning can be quite effective, since many in the public have lost their habit of logical analysis. The fact that this posting has been modded to 5, interesting is testament to this.
Re:You missed part of the controversy (Score:5, Informative)
Having seen both of the papers in question, I can tell you that they wouldn't pass muster as undergraduate term papers at Podunk U.
The fact that those papers somehow made it into reputable journals is the real scandal.
Re:State alone, 500k (Score:4, Informative)
Just for the record, $500 K over 5 years is pretty small change for research, overall. That won't even hire a post-doc once you take out the overhead.
Re:We All Wish (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, but at least the scientific evidence is on their side. I mean, with the heat capacity and warming of oceans, the fact that the earth is heating insanely fast is not even a question, its a blatantly obvious fact. The earth has never heated by this much, this fast, in any history we can read. It typically takes thousands or tens of thousands of years, and happening within the past 100 years, more than half of the increase in the past 50? That is not natural.
We put out a lot more CO2 than the earth itself does, and our cow farms (don't get me wrong, I love eating meat) produce a shit-ton of methane, but you are right. The earth produces a ton of greenhouse gas, water vapor. And as the oceans rise due to the other greenhouse gasses, more of the water moves into the air, the climate becomes less stable, and traps more heat.
Also, those of us that actually know our science, know all of your arguments have to do with air and surface temperature, or solar patterns. Well, right now we are at a very abnormally low solar minimum, and as for air/surface temperature, you could not possibly be more wrong. Let me show you what I mean:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs456.ash1/25081_334304084498_536119498_3617109_7576783_n.jpg [fbcdn.net]
The heat capacity of the atmosphere and earth's surface is so low, that it varies drastically within a few hours every day. Bodies of water, on the other hand, hold about 100x as much heat per unit volume. I have been debating global warming for a damn long time, and NOBODY has ever had a damn thing to say about the real global heat content (including oceans), just debating bullshit air temperatures, which account for almost nothing compared to ocean temps.
Every argument has idiots that don't understand the concepts and subscribe to it, but global warming deniers don't have anyone that understands the concepts , otherwise they wouldn't deny it. And seriously, don't reply angrily until you look at the link, it is an incredibly simple graph of heat content. Not rocket science, I am sure that even you can do it.
Also, some people believe science without question, because science has a solid foundation upon which it is built, the rest is idiot media sources perverting what science has to say to reach some end goals. The uninformed church going conservative on the other hand, doesn't have any logical foundations on which it is built, besides the bible (which is very not solid).
And please, criticize the ocean data, or apologize for being an idiot. Otherwise I am sure you will be modded flamebait even worse for running off like a coward. Anybody who knows about global warming knows that air temp doesn't matter in the big picture of the climate, and knows that the evidence is so overwhelming that somebody would have to disprove the info on ocean heating to make a valid argument. But again and again I just see the same shit come out of you people "air temps, air temps, air temps" is all you know how to fucking look at, and the actually CO2 and methane levels, you don't have a clue how much society produces compared to natural causes, right now people make about 50x as much as nature puts out.
One last thing, like republicans, especially the overly christian kind, don't try to use guilt to try to shame people into accepting government oppression, excessive violations of privacy and freedom, and moral regulation that parallels that of what churches want.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Denialism uses the same arguments (Score:2, Informative)
Then how about their voter registration drives where they basically only registered democrats and then a bunch of the "volunteers" got arrested for submitting fake names on the voter rolls? Oh forgot about that one? Guess where their funding came from? Democrats in congress who handed it to them. Pretty nice game there. Pay money to a non-profit to go out and collect more votes for you under the guise of helping the poor and downtrodden. What a bunch of Bullshit. ACORN was so corrupt you could see the corruption from space.
Re:All policy makers (Score:4, Informative)
Wait, who have you ever heard say that humans are the only thing affecting climate?
Anyone who has ever said that expensive changes in industry will result in significant change in global warming. So, basically any policy maker, and pretty much every single person at those AGW global summits.
Really? Please cite one that has actually said that. They may say that humans are making a very significant impact on the climate, but they don't say that we're the only thing affecting it.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
It's appeal to authority. And referring to an expert is *NOT* by definition a logical fallacy.
It's only a logical fallacy when the "authority" is not an "authority" on the subject being debated.
Example:
A statistician makes a claim that the mathematics being used by a climatologist are inaccurate, and the climatologist cites another climatologist (as an authority) who backs up his claim, THIS is an appeal to authority fallacy.
Re:We All Wish (Score:1, Informative)
I think your name would be more apt as 'blowhard'.
"Climate Scientists bile"
Only bile I see was left here by you.
Just sayin'
I don't see many facts in these posts. (Score:1, Informative)
I don't see many facts in these posts so here are some of mine.
OK, I'm not a scientist, I'm a historian. One of the things I've studied is the settlement of Greenland. When I saw the hockey stick I knew it was bogus. Greenland was warm enough to farm and then it got cooler and farming was no longer possible. The hockey stick shows the temperature for the last thousand years being constant within a degree or so. If that were the case, history would have been a lot different.
When I see scientists claiming that the late 20th century warming was unprecedented, I look at the historical record of what crops grew where and that makes me sure they're wrong.
Someone pointed me to the work of Briffa. He calculates ancient temperatures based on tree rings. He has a tiny data set and he assumes that trees make a reliable thermometer. IANAS but I think I will trust the writers of the Norse sagas over his trees any day of the week.
Re:We All Wish (Score:2, Informative)
For every uninformed church-going conservative, there's an uninformed liberal who watched Al Gore's movie, believes everything in it without question, and thinks all changes in climate are due to human activity while ignoring the biggest producer of greenhouse gases--the earth itself.
Except the earth, in its state before human civilization, was largely able to compensate for what it produced (catastrophic extinction-level events aside; since I'm guessing we'd like to avoid those today as well). Plants need CO2, an abundance of CO2 meant more plants. Then human civilization began blossoming, which started by clearing forests, which reduced the ability of the earth to compensate for itself. Then industry began blossoming, which introduced more CO2 into the atmosphere than the species of earth had ever evolved to compensate for.
What you're ignoring is that anything our technologically-inflated population produces is not part of the natural cycle that kept itself in check. It doesn't matter how much we actually contribute in relation to the rest of the earth, what matters is that we tipped the scale.
Re:It won't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Have you read the IPCC working group reports? They cover that chain of proofs pretty well.
If you have and you still don't think that global climate change has been proven, what level of evidence would it take to prove it to you? After all, you use the quotation that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; what level of evidence would you consider to be extraordinary for the theory of global climate change?
Honestly though, I'm not certain I'll get a reasonable answer from you. The two links you provided are pretty tangential to your point. Don't like the US surface station data? Well, the European and Japanese surface station data shows the same trends. Don't like any surface station data? Well, the satellite data shows the same trends. Hell, even the decrease [wikipedia.org] in average bird sizes [wordpress.com] over the last 46 years is indicative of an upward trend in average temperature. Even data from studies that are entirely unrelated to climate science show indications of increasing average temperatures! How is that not extraordinary?
Re:The damage has already been done (Score:4, Informative)
If you want the data, go here [realclimate.org].
Though, lacking the ability to do a google search is hardly a recommendation of someone's ability to deal with the data and draw any meaningful conclusions anyway...
Re:Denialism uses the same arguments (Score:3, Informative)
None of those things point to actual corruption, or the fabricated issues which led to the organization's dissolution.
The District Attorney for Brooklyn, the California Attorney General, and the Government Accountability Office all cleared the organization of any wrongdoing.
Other investigations are still ongoing, but are expected to produce similar results.
Newsweek and Factcheck.org found the claims about 2008 voter registration to have been grossly overstated, and largely incorrect. It's also no surprise that an organization that focuses on aiding the urban poor would register more Democrats than Republicans, given that Democrats poll extremely well with this demographic.
Despite all this, the issue is still too toxic for any politician to even mention.
Actually, this is not true (Score:5, Informative)
We put out a lot more CO2 than the earth itself does,
Actually, it's not even close [wikipedia.org].
We put about 5% of the carbon into the atmosphere, but that 5% is enough to tip the balance and cause CO2 levels to rise, because the biosphere cannot absorb it.
Re:We All Wish (Score:2, Informative)
CO2 levels have risen from 280 ppm to 380ppm since the onset of the industrial revolution.
The earth's biosphere can absorb only a certain amount of CO2, i.e. - that which is produced naturally.
Historical CO2-levels in the atmosphere range from over 4000ppm (even 7000ppm further back) to ... about 280ppm. Why is the lowest number suddenly the only number the biosphere can handle?
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2002-051.html [nasa.gov]
Re:That's not even what this debate is about (Score:1, Informative)
"Climate change is happening, but the primary source of the change is not necessarily human activity. A common argument is that the sun is the main driver of the change."
Holy shit, the sun?! I'm sure glad you are here to point that out. No way that all of those scientists in all those different fields would have ever thought about the sun causing all that climate change! /snark
Seriously, it's only a "common argument" for the deniers, because that is the *first* thing scientists looked at. It has been studied to death by those who went to school for 8+ years and do this for a living:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;272/5264/981
"In other words, a lot of temperature data shows that we have flat-lined or cooled since 1998"
Wrong again. 1998 was an abnormally hot year for Earth, but 2000-2009 was still the hottest decade since modern temperature records started. Way to cherry-pick your data.
"it is no reason to shutter our industries and destroy our economies"
The solution to climate change starts to cross over into the political spectrum, but we as a society need to get our heads out of the sand, stop pretending this isn't happening and start thinking about real solutions.
Re:The best inetrests (Score:3, Informative)
That is to say, you can't bring up monetary incentives as proof of accuracy without noting that there's a lot of money going both ways - which is true in the meta-sense of the global warming debate. There are literally trillions of dollars, not to mention the very notion of who controls industry, at stake in this discussion.
You have a very novel definition of "a lot" then. There are trillions of dollars on one side (the carbon industry), and low tens of millions on the other.
No one gets rich doing science.
Re:We All Wish (Score:2, Informative)
Historical CO2-levels in the atmosphere range from over 4000ppm (even 7000ppm further back) to ... about 280ppm. Why is the lowest number suddenly the only number the biosphere can handle?
The lowest number since when?
If we're talking about the last 400 thousand years, you are completely and entirely wrong [wikipedia.org]
Sure, if you want to go back to a time when the earth was inhospitable by humans, there was more CO2 in the atmosphere. What does that prove? Exactly nothing.
I didn't find the data you're talking about in your link, but I'm guessing you're comparing the CO2 concentration from tens or hundreds of millions of years ago to today. Umm... why?
I'm not quite sure as to how to answer your question, because it is completely nonsensical, based on a faulty assumption, and displays a profound ignorance. You've basically asked me to give you an entire education from scratch in paleoclimatology. But I'll give it a shot, briefly.
The amount of CO2 the biosphere can absorb is related mostly to the amount the ocean soaks up, and the amount used by plants in respiration. At different periods in the Earth's history, there have been differing amounts of volcanic activity, flora, and fauna. Each of these contribute to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The time period you are referring to is a time period in which there was a much different balance of these factors on the Earth.
Hopefully this answers your question.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
God damn, people like you are annoying! Did you even fucking read the first sentence of the article?
Scientists have determined that a number of human activities are contributing to global warming
The key word here is CONTRIBUTING. Jeez, it's impossible to make a scientific statement without people like you trying to make it into something it isn't. That quoted statement is true and plainly stated. It is only a problem when read by people like you, who read too much or too little into it.
If you can find examples of qualified people saying "global warming is caused only by human activity", then I will have heard that for the first time.
And if you can find a HELL OF A LOT of people saying that, then you will have educated me and shown that I wasn't paying close enough attention.
But as it is, all you have shown is that you are a jackass who doesn't pay attention.
Re:That's not even what this debate is about (Score:5, Informative)
Main Point: We don't argue that climate change isn't happening, and if that's what you think the debate is about then you are completely wrong.
It's interesting that you brought that up, given the history of the climate change "debate." Because until about 10 years ago, saying global warming doesn't exist was the position of the deniers. The position was that global temperatures were not increasing. Then the position was changed to admitting that that temperatures were increasing, but no faster than historical rates, even though it's clearly exponential growth. (i.e. the hockey stick, and yes, even the "new" "refined" hockey stick) Even earlier this year you had conservatives mocking global warming because of a blizzard [politico.com].
You're the one that doesn't understand the history of your own position.
As a historical parallel, I suggest you read up on cancer and the tobacco lobby. "Doctors smoke Camels," but the tobacco industry knew they caused cancer [youtube.com]in nineteen-fifty-fucking-three [usatoday.com] , yet they denied it for 45 years. Even recently before Congress, the CEOs of the tobacco industry declared under oath, I believe that nicotine is not addictive [youtube.com], even though the American Heart Association (you know, doctors), have said "nicotine addiction has historically been one of the hardest addictions to break."
No you're being played, but you don't realize that, because you're too "intelligent" and "independent" to realize it.
Re:That's not even what this debate is about (Score:1, Informative)
The answer is No and unfortunately you are compromised. The biggest lie about mitigating climate change is that it will destroy economies. There are two reasons to perpetuate such nonsense 1) you make money or derive power from long-dead dead algae 2) you are ignorant and have been manipulated by people who make money and yield power from long-dead algae. Guess what? As of 2007, the international community can develop solar power faster than coal or nuclear power. In 2005, wind power was cheaper without subsidies than natural gas generated electricity. In 2009 solar fell to $1/W; cheaper than coal. Guess what? land granting, tax breaks, and quid-pro-quo deals for fossil fuels over the last 150 yr have destroyed countless industries, yet the economy continued to grow. The same is true of all new and destructive capitalist enterprises of the last 150. Why should it be any different now? Why are we letting the ~15-20% GDP of us with vested interests against clean energy hold the rest of us back? Have you seen a 2GW coal plant, the coal mine, and the 200 car coal train required to support it? Have you seen a 2 GW Si wafer plant? A fucking 3yr old has the mental capacity to recognize the future and economies of scale, yet this is apparently beyond your cognitive abilities. Thus, like most lemmings, your decisions can not be trusted. Return to your queue.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit! First result on google.com http://environment.about.com/od/faqglobalwarming/f/globalwarming.htm [about.com] Notice that there is no mention of the fact that some warming is happening because WE ARE COMING OUT OF AN ICE AGE! Fucking Morons!
Bullshit yourself. We are not "coming out of an ice age" - technically we are in an interglacial of the current and ongoing ice age. For the less technical definition of "ice age" (i.e. "glacial period"), we have been out of the last one for about 10000 years. And while the about.com article is fairly atrocious, it does say "a number of human activities are contributing to global warming" (emphasis mine). Of course, aerosol emissions by humans also counteract global warming...
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
Wait, who have you ever heard say that humans are the only thing affecting climate? I have literally never ever heard that, except perhaps from deniers mis-characterizing their opponents.
Bullshit! First result on google.com http://environment.about.com/od/faqglobalwarming/f/globalwarming.htm [about.com] Notice that there is no mention of the fact that some warming is happening because WE ARE COMING OUT OF AN ICE AGE! Fucking Morons!
From the link you posted, right at the beginning: "Scientists have determined that a number of human activities are contributing to global warming by adding excessive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere." Contributing means there are other causes. Also, they probably didn't mention we are coming out of an ice age because it isn't actually true...we came out of an ice age thousands of years ago, the global temperature reached a peak during the medieval warm period, and then it began trending downward, bottoming out in the "little ice age" (not a true ice age) whose end followed the onset of the industrial revolution. Since industrialization, we've far exceeded the peak of post-ice-age adjustment.
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We All Wish (Score:3, Informative)
Your sentence is incorrect. The climate history may show that CO2 release follows warming, but that does not mean that warming does not follow increased CO2 proportions.
Which it may, as I said. Which doesn't make my sentence "incorrect".
And for stating this simple fact, I have been called a "denier", ignorant, a creationist, a "cretiodenialist", modded as "flamebait", and troll, etc., etc.
And this is why the warmers are losing the battle for public opinion: they cannot engage in rational debate without attacking any questioners as enemies and shills, or ignorant puppets. New facts and points of view are disallowed just as they are in a religious conclave.