The planet has been warming since the end of the last big ice age. We have had warming spurts and cooling. Cherry picking is what they did to get man made global warming. Over the last hundred years, we are warming, over the last thousand years we are warming, over the last million years we have been warming, over the last 60 million years we have been warming. Over the last billion years, we have been warming. Man has only been the dominant species for the last 10k years. The last big ice age lasted a few hundred million to as much as two billion years. Sorry going off of memory here. To take a fifteen-year snap shot of our climate and say that not only is the planet warming but it is due to man is silly at best. Historical records are all we have and they are spotty at best. We have not had any comprehensive climate data until the early 1960's and we have not refined this data collecting method until the early 90's. When Dr. Jones says recently been cooling he means the last 15 years the same time that everyone was screaming man made global warming. We had a mild warming trend that peaked around 1995 and has been going down ever since. The data points to the world getting warmer, it points to the Sun contrary to your documentaries you graced us with. I will try to explain it again if you don't mind.

The Sun is getting older, as it ages it expands. With that expansion, we have a habitability zone, as the Sun expands the zone moves out with the expansion. The zone is about one hundred million miles wide at one time the zone covered the planet Venus and the Earth was in the cold. We are now at the back end of that zone. Mars is getting warmer because it is in the front of the zone, while Venus is so hot it boiled off all its water, The Earth will suffer the same fate as Venus. Eventually the Sun will expand and swallow Mercury, and then Venus. Scientists are still debating if the Earth will be swallowed up or not before the Sun dies but all agree that either way all life on Earth will be extinguished long before the Sun dies.

This expansion does not happen over night, it happens slowly over time. So you will see times when there is more expansion and times when there is less but it is still expanding like the child being measured for growth. For math purposes, it is accepted that the Sun is expanding about 10% per hundred or thousand years depending on whom you ask. The Sun is already a million miles across and is getting bigger. The expansion is due to reduced mass, from the consumption of fuel, this reduces its gravitational pull on itself and the planets in the system. The warming has been documented as far out as Pluto yet, we are told that the warming from the Sun is not all that important. No, Sun no heat, but don't pay attention to that minor fact. It is all man's fault. No credible scientist is saying that the Earth is not warming the argument is if man is the cause, a contributing factor, a negligible factor, or no factor at all. The IPCC's four reports on Man Made Global Warming, which is now called Climate Change, point to man playing a minor role in climate change, at a rate of, if all their data is correct and all their models are right on the mark, say that man will be responsible for a rise in average global temperatures by .006 of one degree over the next hundred years. This is what everyone is screaming about. Can any one here tell when the temp drops or raises .006 of a degree?

Now we find out that their data is not all that scientific. The numbers have been played with just to reach the .006-degree mark. The best they can do to predict the weather is 4 days out and they update that every day, the rest of your seven day forecast is educated guesses that are close but they get to amend them each day. with that in mind i find it hard to believe that we can tell with any certainty what the weather will be like 100 years from now, warmer or cooler. We don't have 100 years of data to work with for guesses that big. We have almost 30 years of good data so far and we still don't have world wide data only data in populated areas of the world and even that does not go back a full 30 years.

What in god's name are you talking about? The sun is expanding in *size* i.e. radius, or volume, or output or what every 100 to 1000 years? You have got to supply some citation for this because this is just nuts.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun "the Sun is gradually becoming more luminous (about 10% every 1 billion years), and its surface temperature is slowly rising." That's 10% every BILLION years. Also "The increase in solar temperatures is such that already in about a billion years, the surface of the Earth will become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life." Also see Distant future of the Sun and Earth revisited.

Of course then having setup this sun centric model of climate that increases by 10% every 100 years you make no conclusion and simply jump to the following undocumented claim about the IPCC reports.

Show me where in the IPCC report it says the human contribution of global warming is .006 degree over the next 100 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report:_Climate_Change_2007

From the above link the best case IPCC prediction is 1.1 - 2.9 °C by 2100 and that presumes measures that no one at this point seems willing to take. The more likely scenarios are within the 1.4 - 6.4 °C range by 2100. As far as what portion is due to human activity is not stated in the wiki summary but it does state 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 (human) greenhouse gas concentrations" and "Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium." This is hardly .006 degree in 100 years.

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="10" id="2541804"]”Yeah, yeah. More garbage from Watts and D'Aleo, full of errors per usual.
Since you don't bother to provide any reference to this unnamed report I guess I'll have to do it for you.

The 111 page report itself is Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? by Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts, both infamous deniers with documented ties to ExxonMobil and whose expertise is pretty much limited to having been TV weathermen. Of course this is not a peer reviewed article nor would any reputable journal publish such drivel.[quote]

Which shows 2 things immediately:

1. You dont know what you are talking about.  They are skeptics, not deniers.

2. Then why Was the Work of Watt stolen by Dr.Menne? And then they could not even get the raw data right!

Clearly the only denier is Grant Foster who is more of a raving denier of facts than anyone else you list (or was that supposed to be a secret who Tamino is?)

You see the only deniers in this are those so blinded by their religious faith that they cannot even acknowlege a point when it does not contradict their dogma!  But the APPEARANCE that it may sends them into fits of rage, right MF?

Dig and dig?  They are up to over 24 errors in the AR4 (and just starting to look at AR3) without hardly trying!  But then I guess digging through 2600 pages of dogma is dig and dig to the faithful!

But even better is you using opinion to argue against facts!  The "rebuttal" you quote offers no quantative rebuttal to D'aleo and Watt, just some smoke and mirror opinions lacking in factual basis!  But since it comes from your gods, you take it as facts!  You have lost all comprehension of facts versus opinion, but then that is nothing new.

Sorry I was on vacation and did not check to see what "opinions" MF was dealing as facts before today.

Don't you love how the "deniers" of truth always resort back to Wiki, even though it has been proven They had an inside man at that site making sure that only the religious answers got published?

Paladin, check your mail - re: Silent Thunder

1. You can't deny that their only expertise is having been TV weatherman.

2. You can't deny they have documented ties to ExxonMobil.

3. You can't deny that their article is not peer reviewed.

4. You can't deny that their article is unpublished by any reputable journal.

In other words you respond to the single trivial point of whether they should be called skeptics or deniers but ignore 4 major points casting doubt on the validity of their so-called "work" which (per usual) involves no original effort on their part but instead is essentially a book report based on the data and work of people to which they cannot hold a candle.

As to anything else you have to say, I have so little interest in your opinion I'm surprised I've bothered to give you even this much of a response.

1. Only?  Yea, I guess you are only a kid - as you stopped progressing when you were 6 as well.  What an assinine statement!

2. Ties?  So do I!  I buy gas there.  And your point is?  How about the 70m that exxon gave to the AGW crowd.  BP gave to Jones?  Again you are an idiot as if you can find 7 degress of separation that is your proof of a conspiracy, and then you stop looking before finding the mote in your own eye!

3. Peer reviewed?  Oh, like the ones that Amman and Wahl pulled?  The Jesus paper and the teleportation paper?  taht Peer reviewed?

4. Unpublished?  Like how the CRU gang torpedoed all the papers they did not like?  Geez!  You are so stale you are starting to crumble!  Pulling out crap that has been refuted long ago.  Don't you ahve any new tricks or are you still relying on discounted lies that have been shown (by the emails, and investigative reporting from the blogosphere) to be bunk? OMG!  I said Blogoshpere!  They could never find out the truth about anything, right?  rathergate.

The problem with you is that if RC does not print it, it does not exist to you.  So you miss most of the story and continue to rely on already debunked myths.  I guess you are going to now claim the Met has been taken over by your feared "deniers"!

Try doing some real investigation instead of relying on the "No dissent" RC site and its ilk.  If you actually read anything that allowed dissent (from both sides), you would see how shallow your "points" are.

And as I said before, it is easy to fish you in.  All you need is some facts as bait and you will byte to show how little you know and how much faith you have.  The only doubt you have cast is in your intelligence for all others to see.

Taking me longer to look at than I'd hoped (can't read the data on this computer, have to use a different one), but thanks for the link, at first glance it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for

FOIA is not usually required for Propaganda and indoctrination sites.  If you want some real sites, try climateaudit.org, noconcensus.wordpress.org, bishophill.squarespace.com, pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com, icecap.us, etc.  Like Realclimate, they are blog sites, but at least they invite opposing views, not stiffle them.

Yes, I can recognize them.  Want me to teach you how to?

Weathermen are members of the climatologicall society, to be a member you have to be certified as a climatologist. So being a weatherman is not a bad thing and it is within their realm of expertise. You do know that the girl at the weather channel is trying to get all deniers kicked out of the society and taken off the air? Sounds like an open debate to me.

Doc, it is obvious that since they received money from big oil that what they have to say is wrong and we should not listen to them.

[quote]Show me.

Show me where in the IPCC report it says the human contribution of global warming is .006 degree over the next 100 years.[/quote

I love the fact that you use Wiki as your go to site. while I foolishly read all the actual reports. below are excerpts from my posts that date back to 2008. The IPCC stuff are quots from the report cut and pasted to my articles, I have not edited or left out anything from the actual reports. Keep in mind that the IPCC put out four reports. I am in error, using only my memory I wrote .006 when in reality it is 0.05 if you want the full story look up my articles on global warming over the last two years they are a bit more accurate than Wiki. Don't be put off by the big words, if you need help I am sure Dr. Guy can help you sound them out. Cheep shot i know but i only mean it in jest.

The IPCC Report:

It is very likely that the current atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (379 ppm) and CH4 (1,774 ppb) exceed by far the natural range of the last 650 kyr. Ice core data indicate that CO2 varied within a range of 180 to 300 ppm and CH4 within 320 to 790 ppb over this period. Over the same period, antarctic temperature and CO2 concentrations covary, indicating a close relationship between climate and the carbon cycle.

• It is very likely that glacial-interglacial CO2 variations have strongly amplified climate variations, but it is unlikely that CO2 variations have triggered the end of glacial periods. Antarctic temperature started to rise several centuries before atmospheric CO2 during past glacial terminations.

• It is likely that earlier periods with higher than present atmospheric CO2 concentrations were warmer than present. This is the case both for climate states over millions of years (e.g., in the Pliocene, about 5 to 3 Ma) and for warm events lasting a few hundred thousand years (i.e., the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 Ma). In each of these two cases, warming was likely strongly amplified at high northern latitudes relative to lower latitudes.

All models assessed here, for all the non-mitigation scenarios considered, project increases in global mean surface air temperature (SAT) continuing over the 21st century, driven mainly by increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, with the warming proportional to the associated radiative forcing. There is close agreement of globally averaged SAT multi-model mean warming for the early 21st century for concentrations derived from the three non-mitigated IPCC

Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES: B1, A1B and

A2) scenarios (including only anthropogenic forcing) run by the AOGCMs (warming averaged for 2011 to 2030 compared to 1980 to 1999 is between +0.64°C and +0.69°C, with a range of only 0.05°C).

Release Date: Aug 14 2008          

According to recent news reports, a top observatory that has been measuring sun spot activity predicts that global temperatures will drop by two degrees over the next 20 years as solar activity slows and the planet drastically cools down. They suggest this could potentially herald the onset of a new ice age. Following the end of the sun’s most active period in over 11,000 years, the last 10 years have displayed a clear cooling trend as temperatures post-1998 leveled out and are now decreasing.

News flash!!!!!

The IPCC has been challenged by credible scientists with real scientific reports and in order to retain some semblance of scientific credibility. The IPCC has acknowledged the reports are correct and true. What is this great truth? That the Earth is in a cooling phase in its cycle. Yes, folks the Sun has been less intense the last 9 years resulting in the Earth cooling which agrees with the established solar cycle that has been published and accepted by the scientific community back in the 1970’s.

In reality the only requirements to be a TV weatherman or woman is to be able to stand in front of a green board and be able to point towards the left when looking at the monitor at something that appears to be on the right. That's pretty much it.

I will however grant that there are certainly a lot of TV weathermen with *meteorological* expertise. Again it’s not something that’s an absolute requirement of being a TV weatherman but it’s something that is reasonably common and I will grant that *most* TV weatherman have a reasonable amount of meteorological expertise.

The thing is *meteorological* expertise is not the same thing as *climatological* expertise.

In any case with regard to Watts as far as anyone can tell he never even graduated from college. From http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts.

“Watts grew up around Cincinnati, Ohio and reportedly attended Purdue University, studying Electrical Engineering and Meteorology. Watts' “About" page mentions neither his Purdue attendance nor whether he graduated. Watts has not been willing to say whether he graduated.”

“Watts holds an American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval (a discontinued credential that does not require a bachelor's or higher degree in atmospheric science or meteorology from an accredited college/university) with a status of retired.”

“Some online lists incorrectly refer to Watts as "AMS Certified", but this is incorrect; the American Meteorological Society reserves its "AMS Certified" designation for its Certified Broadcast Meteorologists and Certified Consulting Meteorologists, and Watts possesses neither certification.”

Again this in no way “proves” that he does not have an expertise in climatology but on the other hand it certainly by no means “proves” that he has any climatology expertise. However when Watts states something that conflicts with someone that has a PhD in a field specifically related to climatology, that has been working in that field for many years and has published literally hundreds of peer reviewed articles then I apologize but I will place my trust in the accredited professional over the unaccredited amateur every single time.

As far a D’Aleo is concerned he actually holds both a BS and an MS in *Meteorology* from The University of Wisconsin. He also is a Certified Consultant *Meteorologist* and was elected a Fellow of the American *Meteorological* Society. While I do want to point out (again) that *Meteorological* is not the same as *Climatology*, I will grant that D’Aleo certainly has more documented expertise than Watts. Again not necessarily up to the level of a PhD climatologist but some level of expertise nonetheless. The above is from http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1276.

But I am not a total credential snob. I will grant that just because someone does not have credentials that necessarily means they know nothing, but again I maintain that being a TV weatherman does not automatically qualify *anyone* as an expert on climatology.

Of more importance to me is being published in peer reviewed reputable journals. And contrary to the blogosphere there has in no way been any proof that a handful of climate scientists hold any kind of stranglehold on the peer reviewed publishing process. While I do have a PhD it’s in Electrical Engineering not climatology, and I make no pretense at any expertise in the subject of climatology. Someone with sufficient knowledge could easily “snow” me, however the peer review process requires that someone convince their “peers” which by definition are people that will not be facetiously misled. To me the process is the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” It's the same process used in all other scientific fields and while people have recently denigrated this process based on a sentance or two out of thousands of emails *nothing* has been even close to sufficiently proven to cause me the least bit of doubt in this process.

I assume this focus on the expertise of TV weatherman is based on my reply #10 where I mentioned in passing that Watts’ and D’Aleo’s only claim to expertise is being a TV weatherman, but that hardly was my primary argument. My primary argument in rebuttal to the report that ID referenced (i.e. Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?) was the article The IPCC vs. Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts.

Of course no one bothered to address the arguments presented in this article preferring instead to claim that every TV weatherman is a qualified climatologist and their every utterance is to be taken as proven fact.

So if someone wishes to address the real content of the rebuttal then fine, otherwise all you’re really doing is pissing in the wind.

And if you’re *really* interested here’s another pair of rebuttals to the Watt’s D’Aleo article. Dropouts from the denigrated for no apparent reason Tamino/Grant Foster and ‘Extraordinary Claims’ in KUSI Broadcast On NOAA, NASA … but ‘Extraordinary Evidence’? by Zeke Hausfather who I’m sure will be found unacceptable for some reason or other.

I'm perfectly familiar with the claims made against William Connolley and his "editing" of AGW related articles. I've debunked this claim a number of times myself and that's the thing about "skeptic" claims, they just get repeated and repeated without any kind of proof, no matter how many times and by how many people these claims have been shown to be baseless. The thing is that to the "skeptics" it really doesn't matter. There's no need to show any credible evidence, it's sufficient to merely make a claim because the goal is to merely confuse and obsfucate.

For example what happened to the argument that the sun was increasing by 10% every 100 or 1000 years in some vague and unspecified way? What was the point of introducing that and then just as quickly dropping it as if you had never said such a thing.

Anyway, like I said I'll respond to your other points sometime later as this reply is way too long already.

That's a very head-in-the-sand approach, completely ignoring that 'what is said' by either might matter.

Hardly baseless, and tell me how you debunked it when Wiki could not even do that (and eventually pulled his admin priveleges).  Indeed, for you to "debunk" it, you would have to prove that he never audited any climate articles on Wiki.  So since you claim it, prove it.  Show us how he never edited or audited any climate posts on Wiki.

You claim a lot and have yet to prove any of your claims.  I can see why you are in the Mann/Jones camp.  Birds of a feather and all.

However I'm under no obligation to "prove" anything to you, just as you have "proven" nothing yourself other than to parrot accusations.

Even if I wanted to take the time and effort to "prove" my assertions there is no proof that would be sufficient to change your mind. Nor is it my goal to change your mind. In effect I'm not really arguing or talking to you at all, I'm arguing and talking to the occasional person that might happen to read this thread that might actually have an open mind.

So basically the entirety of your "proof" is that the Wiki pulled his admin privileges and that therefore "proves" he behaved badly in some unspecified manner in regards to climate posts on the Wiki.

If that's your "proof" then you must not have read the Arbitration case regarding Abd (a Wiki "contributor") and William M. Connolley which is publicly and easily accessible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley

Firstly the entirety of this case rests with the interaction between a specific user, Abd, and Connolley which also specifically occurred in regard to the Wiki Cold fusion article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion.

There is no reference whatsoever in any of these arbitration proceedings related to any editing or administration malfeasance of *any* climate related articles.

Secondly read the arbitration proceedings above and come to your own conclusion. There are statements from all the users involved. There are also statements from multiple sources that show Abd to be known problem user with a history of edit wars.

Finally read the remedies section. Abd was banned from the entirety of the Wiki for 3 months after which he was required to identify a mentor to approve his future activity, was further banned from the cold fusion article for one year, was prohibited from participating in any dispute resolution discussion of which he was not an originating party and was admonished to not edit war, to not engage in personal attacks and for failing to even attempt to substantiate allegations of misconduct leveled at other editors.

The remedies against William Connolley were that his administrative privileges are revoked, although he may apply to have them reinstated at any time, either through the usual means or by appeal to the Committee. Connolley was also admonished to not edit war. The most damning criticism of Connolley's use of administrator tools was that he was found to have "inappropriately extended a block that he had made, because of incivility directed at himself [and] later inappropriately reapplied his block after it was reversed..."

That's pretty much it. The bottom line is that Connolley's loss of admin privileges had nothing whatsoever to do with any climate related article, was related to one specific user and based on "incivility directed at himself." In other words someone was an asshole to him and he retaliated by using his admin privileges for which he lost those privileges.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with Wiki climate articles other than Connolley just happened to be one of many admin involved in the many different climate related articles that are in the Wiki.

So I know this "proves" nothing to you but as I said I really don't care what you think. This is for those that might read your baseless accusations but still be open minded enough to follow the links I've provided and make up their own mind.

Again this is like the 5th time I've had to go through all of this and like most other skeptic arguments I'm sure these same accusations will be repeated in the next thread or even in the next page of this thread. And the next, and the next, ...

Q.E.D.

WRONG (and a cop out, why am I not surprised?).  YOU CLAIM to have debunked the issue.  So you have to PROVE your CLAIM.  I have not claimed anything other than to show you your errors, which I have proven (with links and all the pretty stuff).  just because you do not read them does not make them invisible.

But I do love your weaseling.  To then "not prove" (since you stated you would not), you then quote the compromised source!  Again, if I was to ask Kim il Sung if he was a ruthless brutal dictator, I am sure I could prove to you that he was just a mis-understood benevolent care taker of the worker's paradise! 

If nothing else you are amusing. 

Now if you do not want to prove your claim, remove it.  if you do want to prove your claim (or I should say offer data to support it as it is not provable since it is patently false), I will offer evidence that destroys your evidence and show that indeed Connolley was monkeying with the Wiki entries to the point as to make them just a propaganda stunt, and not a resource for AGW.

You have a lot to learn about science, debunking, claims and proof.  I thought you were just another mindnumbed AGW robot.  Turns out you are not even that smart.  Just one of George Orwell's sheep.

I did in fact "prove" you wrong.

And your "proofs" are limited to childish name calling that are not worth a response.

Rant all you want, you are beneath notice.

Sorry, I don't know what you are talking about. My point was that you choose to read filtered information and make your opinions based on others opinions. I read the actual reports, found errors long before I knew others had found them and more and posted them as I discussed the issue. My issue is not with the person you mentioned but the fact that anyone can write about a topic and until it is challenged, the truth remains hidden. People listed as dead that are still alive until it is refuted. A law firm in NY made all kinds of political hit pieces on their enemies using Wiki some of them remain there years after being proven wrong. This is why I don't trust Wiki, it is good to get you in the ball park but I rarely rely on it as trusted information unless I have verified it through more than one independent source. I find that bringing up this person is a distraction rather than the truth. A little about me. I like to keep busy and sleep about 4 hours a day I write a few books a week. I run three businesses; I work for DHS as a contract counterterrorism consultant. In my spare time I have been studying astrophysics which is why the errors in the IPCC reports were so glaring to me. Until I read the reports I had no real opinion on the topic. The data did not jibe with the data I have been studying since the late 60's. The fact that you believe the AGW crap is your business, you defending them is sad but understandable because you are a layman on the subject. Did you know that the Atlantic conveyer was discovered by a paleo bug scientist in the late 70's and the climate scientists debunked and ignored it for 30 years? Their argument was that the sciences was not a climate scientist. Now it is fully accepted by them as if they discovered it. That scientist mapped out the weather more accurately than the climate scientists have with their models, his findings are still not acknowledged by the climate people because they can't make it fit in their climate models and blows AGW out of the water. He has thousands of years of data to back him up while the climate people have 20 years of data. I am inclined to go with the guy with peer revied data that was published long before the climate change people came along.

One more thing, the documents/ e-mails posted from East Anglia were not hacked from an outside source. They were sent to the BBC from someone on the inside, the person waited a month for the BBC to report it and then the person posted it on the web. The person knew that the information was explosive and wanted the world to know what was going on. The crap that is AGW is a hoax, the IPCC reports are trash, and each week we are learing more and more how the information is being adjusted to keep the lie alive. As I have posted many times over the last few years is that the planet is getting warmer and has been getting warmer for thousands of years. THis has been documeted and peer reviewed and accepted for 40 years, our water is boiling away as you read this, and man has nothing to do with it, since man has nothing to do with it man has no way to stop it. To give you an example of the planets getting warmer look at this fact. In the late 60's man went to the moon. The temperature there got as high as 240 degrees, now the high temp is 250, that is a ten degree increase over the last 30 years, what keeps us cool on Earth is our weather system, do you think that the ten degrees are only warming the Moon? Why then is Mars getting warmer? Are we putting CO2 into Mars? Oh wait, the atmosphere on Mars is almost all CO2, why is the heat not trapped there? The warmth of the Sun has not expanded enough to dramatically warm that planet yet because it is farther from the Sun, but as the Sun expands it is starting to warm up the planet, all planets and moons are getting warmer at the same rate. Ignore the climate crap on Earth and look at the whole system. That was the thing that got me on the climate crap. For the IPCC reports to be right then the space science of the last 40 years is wrong. No one has refuted the space science only Earth science. That was what makes the IPCC reports wrong, they ignore the Sun and what it does. We see that a lack of Sun spots has brought colder weather. This has happened before, 1940's was real cold while the 1930's had record high temps. We had record high temps in the 80's and it peaked in the 90's and now it is getting colder, documented to have gotten colder over the last decade. Ignore the documeted data and embrace the IPCC reports if you want but don't be surprised when you finally look at the data and see the cycle.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm

The basis of this argument is that the sun must be causing global warming and in fact, warming throughout the solar system. There are several flaws in this line of thought. Firstly, the characterisation that the whole solar system is warming is erroneous. Around 6 planets or moons out of the more than 100 bodies in the solar system have been observed to be warming. On the other hand, Uranus is cooling (Young 2001).

Secondly, the theory that a brightening sun is causing global warming falls apart when you consider the sun has shown little to no trend since the 1950s. A variety of independent measurements of solar activity including satellite data, sunspot numbers, UV levels and solar magnetograms all paint a consistent picture. Over the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been moving in opposite directions.

That begs the question - what is causing warming on other planets? With the exception of Pluto, climate change on other planets are fairly understood:

• Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo. Global dust storms increase the surface albedo by settling brighter dust on dark surfaces. Higher albedo leads to more sunlight being reflected which has a cooling effect. Snapshots of Mars' surface in 1977 and 1999 find that the surface was brighter in 1977 and darker in 1999. However, this doesn't necessarily point to a long term warming trend - the 1977 snapshot was made shortly after a global dust storm while the 1999 snapshot occured before a dust storm. Consequently, there is little empirical evidence that long term global warming on Mars is occuring (Richardson 2007). More on Mars...
  
• Neptune's orbit is 164 years so observations (1950 to present day) span less than a third of a Neptunian year. Climate modelling of Neptune suggests its brightening is a seasonal response (Sromovsky 2003). Eg - Neptune's southern hemisphere is heading into summer. More on Neptune...
  
• Neptune's largest moon, Triton, has warmed since the Voyager space probe visited it in 1989. The moon is approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years. During this special time, the moon's southern hemisphere receives more direct sunlight (Elliot 1998).
  
• Jupiter's storms are fueled by the planet's own internal heat (sunlight is 4% the level of solar energy at Earth). When several storms merge into one large storm (eg - Red Spot Jr), the planet loses its ability to mix heat, causing warming at the equator and cooling at the poles (Marcus 2006). More on Jupiter...
  
• Pluto's warming is not clearly understood. Pluto's orbit is much more elliptical than that of the other planets, and its rotational axis is tipped by a large angle relative to its orbit. Both factors could contribute to drastic seasonal changes. As Pluto's orbit is equivalent to 248 Earth years and observed warming spans only 14 years, it is likely this is a seasonal response (Sromovsky 2003).

I still fail to see any "smoking gun" come out of the thousands of emails that were hacked. To the best of my knowledge there are 5 or so complaints based on a sentance or two out of a handful of emails all of which have reasonable explanations. But perhaps you have knowledge that I don't have. It reminds me of a commercial from long ago where an old woman asks "where's the beef". I've heard a lot of complaints but I've seen very little "beef".

At this point I've seen virtually nothing substantive but I do know there are at least two investigations going on. I'm sure we'll all be interested in hearing the results.

I'm less interested in who as opposed to why they did it and what they thought it would accomplish. I don't particularly see why whether the source was internel or external specifically "proves" anything one way or the other. People do various things for many different reasons. I mean what meaning does the fact that Amy Bishop was an insider have to do with anything other than the fact that there's something seriously wrong with her.