If you don't mind my asking, could you point me to which Duplin wine you like? I live in NC and have tried just a few local wines (I tried some kind of uber sweet muscadine years ago). Thus far, I haven't found anything that jumped out at me.

I think that's -- without a doubt -- a big part (IMHO anyone who denies that evolution exists should be banned from politics). I think it would be wise to consider wider trends in academia as well, however, amongst both public and private institutions.

I'm not insinuating anything, I've said it several times!

I don't believe that many climate scientists deliberately falsify data. I'm sure there are some because there are people in every field that falsify data. I do believe that when funding is dependent on grants, and grants are highly available for AGW research topics, that researchers have a completely rational motivation to find AGW in places where there is perhaps ambiguity. I'm surprised this is a controversial statement. If you work in academia, finagling to get grants is just part of life. Five years ago just about every grant request in certain branches of physics and chemistry were modified to include something about "biosensors" or "chemical sensors" because there was a huge amount of funding available for homeland security projects. That's just what goes in academia--it is what it is.

Regardless of all of this, I absolutely stand by my statement that "97% of climatologists agree," as sourced in Cook et al., is totally false.

When I was an undergrad, the Republican group at my school pulled every faculty member's political affiliation. History, Art History, Women's Studies, African American Studies, sociology, anthropology, etc, had between them a large number of faculty (100, give or take) and not one Republican--all Democrats. Engineering, computer science, math, etc were spit more much closer, and in the economics department, there were more Republicans still. Why? Ideology obviously has a great deal to do with what people choose to work on. Correlation or causation? I know what I believe.

I have no doubt that most climate scientists do believe in AGW (hesitation over the 97% claim notwithstanding). I believe there are many reasons for this.

The good news is, we should no for sure within say, 10 years. If the models are right, we should see a statistically significant change by then. If the models are wrong...? Until then (and even then, unfortunately), factions will no doubt keep arguing.

You don't have to be rude to have a discussion. If you're going to avoid any discussion of facts and substance and stick with personal attacks though, I suppose it helps. No reason to perpetuate mere mean-spiritedness.

Yours is EXACTLY the kind of statement that makes me so uncomfortable. That is such an incredibly hysterical statement. Not even the most extreme estimates of sea rise produce anything like you say within centuries. Africa starve? 10,000 years ago the Sahara was green and wet. Maybe it will be again. There's so much uncertainty, we really, really don't know.

The Tea Party and libertarian strands of conservatism have made more traditional (paleocon if you will) noninterference conservatism more resurgent than it's been in years. The present Republican dove (nee neocon) can make some excuse by saying that "we learned from our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan."

What the heck excuse do the Democrats have? "We did such a bang up job in Afghanistan and Iraq (plus our limited interference in Libya) that we thought we ought to help out in Syria as well! Never mind the hundred thousand that have already died, a couple hundred deaths from chemicals weapons is the red line!"

Well no, that's actually not what you accused me of initially, but ok. I think there's a pretty huge difference between the statement that "97% of climatologists agree" and "97.1% of a subset of climate papers that contained a certain set of (in my view potentially biasing) words and in which the authors made some kind of judgment call about AGW posit that humans are responsible for at least some portion of global warming." At this level of disagreement, we're down to a religious wedge issue, so I don't expect us to suddenly come to an agreement, but that's how I see it. I do not believe that mine is an unreasonable statement.

To put it more waggishly (or "partisanly" as you may see fit)--is it a surprise that papers (funded by a government that believes in AGW) discussing anthropogenic global warming believe in anthropogenic global warming?

I generally don't respond to rude ACs, so if you want another response, you can either be less rude or post as non-AC (yes, you can be a rude non-AC :)

Obviously. There are a lot more trees that lives for "hundreds" of years than trees that live for "thousands" of years, however.

I have very few assumptions, because I know very little! From the little that I know, tree ring growth is NOT a simple issue.

See, e.g., http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/07/tree-rings-and-climate-some-recent-developments/

You can accuse me of providing a (in your view, at least!) flawed interpretation, but I copied the detailed numbers right from the paper and put them in post and provided my take on their meaning, so you can't accuse me of not reading them (or "reading into")!

These are pretty amazing claims to make considering that accurate, global instrumental records cover less than the last 100 years!

It's my understanding that most "paleo" records can indicate greater climate shifts, but with nothing like 20 year granularity.

I viewed the BBC page you linked to. It's a perfect example of why I find myself sickeningly torn when it comes to AGW. I'm a big, big believer in protecting lands, reducing pollution, and generally more sustainable living. Like a good 21st century American yuppie I compost my trash and have an organic garden (see, the $65 tomato :-P). However, when I see graphics like the map on the 3rd page, I get irritated! AGW is going to do so much damage--and there's NO potential good? I instantly become--excuse the phrase--skeptical when I see laundry lists of negatives and not even one positive. That just doesn't seem likely.

I find the tree ring cores fascinating, and am sympathetic to the inherent difficulties that paleoclimatologists have to deal with (natural variation being the least of them).

The one thing I've never seen answered about tree ring growth though is how do you separate the temperature signal from:

1) amount of CO2 in atmosphere
2) amount of rainfall
3) amount of sunshine
4) changing nutrient levels in the soil (the soil must change for trees that lives hundreds of years, right?)

I agree with you that it's totally obvious to see "good times" vs "bad times" in tree ring growth, but what exactly makes up good times versus bad times? I would really love to read more, if anybody knows of any good resources.

I'm curious with these models, do they work with backtesting? How accurate have they been with predicting the last 10 years? The last 20 years?

Wow, what a hostile response to a good point. You weren't one of those people yelling about rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina (stupid location, stupid city!), were you? If you're going to live in a 30-year, 100-year, or 500-year flood plain, eventually you're going to get hit by a flood! If you live in a coastal region that has been hit by many hurricanes in the past, eventually you're going to get hit by a hurricane! That's that.

The trade-off is of course how much money do you spend on precautions.

You're crazy; 97% of people parrot back talking points. You're clearly just a shill.

I completely agree with you. I think there's an entire new strand of luddites emerging today. This is party with good cause--we've learned a lot about chemicals, pollution, and health, that we simply didn't know 50 years ago. We SHOULD be cautious going forward.

But there's such a strand of "anything that has plastic is bad" and "anything that isn't all 'natural' is bad" that are followed by a belief that humans cannot possibly affect POSITIVE climate change, that I'm somewhat baffled.

Humans have in the last 100 years brought about a lot of positive environmental change. Let's going with what we can do, rather than what we're not able to do.

Look, nobody is stupid enough to believe that climate is static. It never has been in the past, and it certainly won't be so going forward. The big questions are what are the driving forces, what are the positives and negatives of climate change as it is currently occurring, what ought to be done, and what can be done. None of these questions are nearly settled.

As an aside, it's always interesting to me when the stereotypical political orthodoxy gets flipped. Republican doves and Democrat hawks on Syria? Likewise, liberals lampoon conservatives as being stuck in the past and afraid of change. Yet for many liberals, climate change is a great fear, a purely negative outcome, and has no conceivable positive results. ~shrug~

What's most interesting about your post is that you apparently find it wise to chastise your father for his foolish beliefs--and gosh darn it, the man just won't listen to facts! At the same time, it's pretty obvious you're throwing around statistics that you can't have read anything about.

I'm assuming the 97% statistic you are referring to is from Cook et al., Quantifying the Consensus on AGW. Cook et al. took two approaches to find the consensus number. The author team first searched databases for papers that had terms such as "global warming" and "global climate change" (I'm not a statistician, but I would think these terms would introduce some pretty intense selection bias right off the bat). Finding 12,465 match papers in the ISI Web of Science database, they tossed 520 (4%) and analyzed the results:

34.8% of these papers endorsed AGW
64.6% took no position on AGW
0.4% rejected AGW
0.2% were uncertain on AGW

Amongst ONLY those papers (34.8% of the total) that took a position on AGW, 97.1% "endorsed the scientific consensus."

The second approach was to mail out a survey to certain selected paper authors. The response rate of the survey was 14%. Again, I'm not a statistician, so I have no idea how good a result this is. Of these 1200 (14%) responses:

62.7% endorsed AGW
35.5% took no position on AGW
1.8% rejected AGW

This is all in the paper, so if I'm misinterpreted anything, or misrepresented anything, let me know.

I think perhaps the surprising thing is that given the search parameters (such as terms that are now highly politically tinged like "global warming") and given AGW is absolutely the easiest way to get funding today as an kind of academic who remotely deals with environmental issues, is that there were as many "no stand on AGW" responses as there were.

It's like asking the Pentagon and the CIA to write papers on the threat to the US from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Regardless of whether there really are threats (or the magnitudes), you can bet when their jobs are on the line, they'll find something!