Discussion on:

New Al Gore venture makes a game of proving climate science

It's a page out of Microsoft's playbook - Get fanatics to regurgitate your FUD and undermine your opponent.
I'm not arguing here whether climate change is FUD, but we all know MS's stuff is pretty crappy when compared to competing products. IMHO, This type of 'guerilla marketing' doesn't put a positive light on the climate change cause.

A fifth-grade teacher was teaching citizenship to her students, and gave them the chance to vote on what day to take their test, what game to play at recess, etc. That week one student brought a kitten to show-and-tell, and a discussion arose whether the kitten was male or female. One child raised his hand and said, "Let's vote on it!"

The point is, some things cannot be decided by asking uninformed people to "vote" what they believe. This debate belongs in the scientific realm, where people who understand how the scientific process works can do real research, and debate and defend their findings to their peers. Politicians and social media mavens can talk about it, but they need to remember that their "vote" doesn't determine the ultimate truth.

Well said syoung640

Remember, the "consensus" is unanimous, or so we are told.

"Satellites Show Sea Ice in Arctic Is at a Record Low", thus is supposed proof of "global warming".

Meanwhile, sea ice at the Antarctic is at a record high: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112729258/antarctica-sea-ice-increase-wind-patterns-111212/

If sea ice at the antarctic was at a record low, and sea ice at the arctic was at a record high, what would the narrative be?

That's the problem you run into when you only examine something at a superficial level. In science common sense doesn't always work.

Regarding sea ice first you need to understand the fundamental difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic. That is the Arctic region is an ocean surrounded by land and the Antarctic is land surrounded by ocean. That difference has profound effects on the sea ice.

For instance as long as we have been observing it the sea ice surrounding Antarctica melts nearly completely every summer then reforms the next winter. In the Arctic the observation has been that the sea ice melts a bit around the periphery but the core of ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean remained. (That is less true with the record melting in the past few years of course.)

Why Antarctic sea ice is expanding somewhat is really kind of fascinating. It mainly has partly to do with the ozone hole over the Antarctic and partly to do with global warming.

Ozone is also a greenhouse gas and the ozone hole over Antarctica in winter results in stronger cooling over the continent. This results in stronger winds around the continent which blows the existing sea ice around more opening up more polynyas, exposing more open water to the atmosphere which subsequently freezes over to create more sea ice area.

The global warming aspect is that warming results in more precipitation. This freshens the surface water making it easier to freeze and reducing its density which stratifies the water layers more strongly reducing the ability of warmer water to rise from below and break up/melt the surface sea ice.

Neither of those aspects could be arrived at just by superficial common sense which says "More ice must mean it's colder".

...which was if the scenario I suggested was what was happening, Al Gore and the sycophantic media would be ignoring the arctic and going endlessly on about the antarctic.

You're making the assumption that Gore is driven by political considerations more than science. I doubt that. All the media cares about is eyeballs. Anything it can sensationalize it will.

But if Arctic sea ice were increasing while Antarctic sea ice were decreasing it would be probably an indication that global warming wasn't happening. Depending on the reasons for Antarctic sea ice reduction I doubt Gore and others would be making a big deal of it. Trying to make the current increase in Antarctic sea ice a big deal is kind of misleading because it doesn't counter that global warming is happening.

Politics are secondary, it's the money he'll make that's primary

... if the scientists are right about anthropogenic climate change? Money is apparently more important to you than your life or the life of your children.

...I do. Al Gore is a politician, after all.

and pay attention to actual climate scientists. That's what I do.

...the title of this article was "New Al Gore venture makes a game of proving climate science".

It actually is about Al Gore, not science.

I did (re-)notice after I posted that and thought it a bit ironic but I still stand by my statement. Gore is like a spokesmodel for global warming using his political stature to publicize the science but I mostly ignore him because the actual scientists are much more interesting.

...if so many of those "scientists" in the climate community behaved more like scientists instead of politicians, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

My perception is that you think they're acting like politicians simply because you don't like what they're saying about the science. Accusing scientists of perverting their work in support of some supposed world socialism goal is absurd.

I imagine there is only one fact we can all rely on with this new venture: Al Gore will make even more money from pedaling his Global Warming oh wait thats now Climate Change.
I wonder how information is going to be vetted so participants can determine fact from hype?
Interesting term you use, Real Science, would that be only the science which supports the Climate Change message ?
Promoting this venture is beneath Smart Planet.

Why not? Gore's first scam worked amazingly well! I'm sure with far greater success than he ever imagined!

If they changed to Climate Change then how come the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (founded in 1988) wasn't named the Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming?

As I see it everyone has a stake in this poke. So when Big Al wants you to stop driving your cars because of the pollutants and hydrocarbons leaching into the atmosphere he can fly on his jet airplane and place all those nasty pollutants and hydrocarbons into the atmosphere directly. In other words everyone needs to do their part and cut back on the pollution!

and one who would use any means possible, in order to advance his agenda. His agenda is not real science, and this website should be ashamed of itself for trying to promote the stupid Gore idea.

Gore is, perhaps, the most visible and outspoken voice for the "global warming" agenda. Yet, when challenged to debate the subject in front of live audiences, he has always rejected the opportunity to show his "intellect" and knowledge on the subject. There is no denying that, he fears being exposed as a fraud, just like the "science" that he supports.

Science is a quest for the truth, for how the universe works. Some things are very complicated and hard to understand. Think the Theory of General Relativity or String Theory. Some things are easier to understand. Think greenhouse effect.

Climate change is scientifically valid. Therefore it is something you LEARN. Not something you either believe in or not. Are we still "debating" if the earth is round or flat? If the earth orbits the sun or the other way around?

All of the so-called counterpoints I've read so far attempt to refute this scientific fact using childish name-calling, and often try to use science to refute the data. It kills me when someone claims the climate changes we are experiencing now are just cyclical. That the earth has gone through warm and cold cycles. This is absolutely true, but HOW do we know this? Well, the same scientific community that TAUGHT us this is now TEACHING us that these CURRENT changes are due to man, not nature.

And even if the current global warming is not man-made(although it is), if it's real it's something we have to deal with. Finger pointing and name calling do us no good and are best left on the 5th grade playground.

I thought we'd have nearly 100% agreement on this on a site like Smartplanet!

"global warming is man-made" unscientific statement.

NOBODY can deny that "climate change" is real, because, the climate does change, and oftentimes, the change is drastic and for long periods. But then, that's been the case since the planet was formed billions of years ago.

The climate change lobby changed the mantra from "global warming" to "climate change" when their science didn't produce the results that they had predicted, and thw globe ended up with a period of about 13 years of cooling instead of the much higher temperatures they predicted.

What you are doing is not much different from what the environmentalists and the "global warming" junk scientists have done for decades, which is to start out with some reasonable sounding data and statements which can't be refuted, and, hoping that you've built up some credibility after that, you then hit us with the same dire doom-and-gloom nonsense.

The agenda is the only reason that the "global warming" nonsense persists, and real science suffers because of it.

Science is something one learns, but that science is not what "global warming" is about, therefore, it's not "real" science, and it's more "junk" than anything else.

But it's not the same scientific community "teaching" us now. The previous community was objective and took all data. The community that's "teaching" us now are a bunch of cherry picking data miners and spinners.

Global Warming skeptics aren't denying the fact that temperatures have risen in the past, 50, 100, or 150 years. We're contesting the cause.

The Kyoto accords penalized the U.S. and other major Western nations, while letting China and India off the hook. Meanwhile, in China rivers are so polluted that they are lime green and if you get the water on your skin you will get burned, literally. Their air pollution is also horrible.

Al Gore and others are using Climate Change as a way to force their political agenda.

What is the opimal temperature of the earth's climate, and at what period of history was that achieved? How long did it last? The earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age.

You make a lot of political arguments there but they don't do anything to counter the actual science of climate change. Understand the science first then it's possible to have a reasonable discussion about the political implications. If you think global warming is just contrived science to push a political agenda then it's probably impossible to reason with you.

Earth has no optimal temperature. But human civilization probably does have an optimal temperature range as all of our infrastructure is built around what it has been in the past couple hundred years and it's going to be very expensive (in both money and probably lives) to adapt to a new higher temperature.

and the methods used by the junk "scientists" prove that all the time.

If any science, no matter what field, ever took any of the data, whether the input or the secondary or the resulting data, and massaged it in any way to achieve a desired outcome, then it becomes completely NOT CREDIBLE, and can rightfully be called "junk science". Period!

When an agenda becomes part of the research, and the research is used to advance a cause, then the scientific principle for research has been damaged, and the resulting data or conclusions result in junk. It's the GIGO principle applied to "global warming", but, with global warming "science", there is plenty of real science to dispute the research. In fact, it's impossible to do any real research with "climate", since, there are millions of variables that would have to be studied and there isn't a means to capture all of the data, and there aren't any feasible or credible models to test against, and the results will always be questionable because of the lack of good science behind the research.

Global warming science has as much credibility as astrology.

The problem is....there is no "real" science to refute, so it is indeed political. Over the eons there have been many species who couldn't adapt to the various up and down climate changes. In the future, mankind may be nearly one of them yet again as has been in the past, but will more than likely find niches, adapt and then rebuild.

The part that worries me is someone may come up with something that will radically change the balance and interactions of the whole system and really muck the works up!

There is tons of science around climate change that is potentially refutable but since it's not been possible to refute it so far your side turns to political arguments. I'd be happy is we could all just agree on the science then we could argue about the implications and potential responses.

The part that worries me is someone may come up with something that will radically change the balance and interactions of the whole system and really muck the works up!

Like say increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% in 100 years? We're running a huge experiment by doing that right now with no guarantee we'll like the results.

and, by doing that ,you don't add any credibility at all to your side or your argument.

Global warming has been effectively refuted, but, the junk scientists and supporters don't want to admit that, it can't hold up to the scrutiny of real scientific research methods.

Specifically the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 is a physical fact that's been measured. The current level of CO2 is 395 ppm. For thousands of years up until the 1830's the level of CO2 hovered around 280 ppm.
((395 ppm - 280 ppm)/280 ppm) * 100 = 41.1%

You can bluster all you want about the science of climate change being refuted as junk science but that doesn't make it so. Most of the things the climate scientists said are going to happen are continuing to happen often faster than the scientists said they would.

When I offered you specific examples with references on another post you just dismiss it as junk science without offering any references of your own. Science is evidence based so you can't just dismiss it without specific evidence of your own.

In a way I feel sorry for you. If you can't eventually get past your rejection of the reality of climate science you'll just become a frustrated bitter old man/woman marginalized by your intransigence.