DA Morgan. Thank you for your reply. It was appreciated. I'm happy to continue this discussion as long as you are or it doesn't annoy other forum members. It is interesting as long as it does not get particulary personal. I greatly respect someone willing to stand up for their collegues and for their views.
I disagree with you concerning credibility. If I got personal I could do exactly the same thing and attack your credibility. For a forum such as this that would be totally out of place. I too have varied interests and believe all that is needed for a rational, vigourous discussion is an enquiring mind and sufficient intelligence to understand the principals of what is being discussed, not necessarily high education qualifications in the particular field. Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time have been achieved by those that had no qualifications in the field they made the breakthrough in.
Questioning methodology is far from a task lacking in credibility. Scientific principals and the history of science (another field I enjoy but am no expert in) demonstrates that without dissent and a willingness to vigourously scrutinise accepted scientific principals almost nothing would have been achieved. Even as late as the 80s a simple doctor and a scientist suffered severals years of scorn and outright derision from the scientific community because they were willing to challenge a very accepted view in medicine because the evidence, when looked at closely, did not support that accepted view. They won the Nobel price last year. In my opnion, rather belately. Many people live much better lives today or are alive because of these two men. I'm not saying I'm in that league at all. Far from it. But any accepted view really does need close scutiny and someone willing to stick their hand up and say "Where is your proof?" and not accept "Everyone agrees that it is so, including numerous peer reviewed papers" If they are really willing to be condemned and be referred to as lacking credibility or suffer personal attacks they can take the next rather crutial step and ask, if relevant: "But is your underlying data accurate because if it isn't you have built a huge structure on a rather flimsy base".
It may be that the data is perfectly accurate but it certainly deserves to be scrutinised. There are those that have written papers that really do disagree with the underlying data and have some research to back it up cannot even get published right now? This is not opinion. One is a friend. Try and get the raw data to carry out research with a known position questioning the current conventional wisdom and see how far you get. That is not good science. That is bad politics. And yes, I know: "Where is my proof?" I will do some research on the net to locate people that I can quote. I can't quote my friend because he/she is currently worried about the funding they currently have.
Actually whether the US is overall a negative in warming is relevant. Continental US is a big place (and if you believe the arguments relating to humans and global warming the US is far out of proportion one of the major contributors). Surely this would tend to mean that the effect would show up locally in the US. The figures also hold true for those areas of Canada that have had the same sort of studies done. That means a big part of the northern hemisphere landmass has cooled over the last century, overall (actually that is a bit misleading in itself, the actual rate of cooling is not much) - according to the Goddard institute and peer backed research, as well as others.
Please tell me how else you determine whether the earth temperature has been rising? It is my opinion you have to look at accurate historic temperature measurements. If you disagree with that logic, please inform me where my logic is flawed.
The US is one place where the data is good for a long time. Canada is another place. Australia, too, has very good records, as does New Zealand, some Pacific Islands, some parts of India (thanks to the British keeping very good records over the dominions when they had it and India retaining the same principal). Ireland and England have records but not complete. Europe's records are not good due to the impact of world wars and other factors. The same for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. For instance, the cooling in the 70s was subject to "political" recording and reporting. Asia's records, including China also have problems. Africa has some good records but not enough or in large areas. All of this is opnion, based on research I did in the 70s trying to get the data that is very similar to that that could be used to prove or disprove global warming. We were aiming for only 100 points over the Northern Hemisphere with small towns unaffected by human created affects on weather or recording and went to the trouble of actually researching each location down to who took the readings, where the recording equipment was located and what had changed around the equipment. We wanted a lot more but in those days just getting 80 odd years of daily temperatures for one place was a major task. The records were mostly on paper. Even 100 meant a lot of data entry. We could not find 100 points in the northern hemisphere that were not in the US. Aside from Australia (which is also a large land mass and is also closely accords with the US statistics and is an overall negative although there is a bit of a difference between the hottest and coldest periods due to El Nino, El Nina, Southern Ocean turnover and the like) we could not find even a single "uncontaminated" site for large sections of the world. Even in the US, most sites we considered good canditates turned out to have had some even that contaminated the records.
It might take me a few days because of my condition but I will locate other peer backed research for other parts of the world that also show negatives, if it will assist DA Morgan or anyone else on this forum that has any interest.
DA Morgan, all you have thus far presented, is opinion. You have not backed it with any peer reviewed research or any other research. The only reference you have made is to the Goddard institute's graphs. Critisising a graph is an opinion but it is based on fact, facts that were provided by the institute that provided the graph. That is very different to saying "I think there is no global warming". Indeed, I do not think that at all. My opinion is there has been global warming. My full opinion is that that warming reversed a serious trend towards a significant cooling period. Whether that was simply fluctuations within our interglacial period, I have no idea, nor do I have any research except some quite out of date stuff to back it up.
Now it is my turn to ask. What proven rise in ocean temperatures? That is an opinion unless you back it up with reference to research. The same standard you require of me. Unless you do you are simply quoting a news report or a summary of a paper that is very new and scrutiny by other experts will not have occurred yet. Oh, and there is a very big distinction between peer review and scrutiny. Whilst you know very well how a paper is published, I will comment for any other interested reader my view on the process. To have a paper published, the publisher sometimes but not always refers the paper to others in the field to read and review. Just as in the cold fusion "breakthrough", peer review does not mean the reviewers agree with what is writen, only they believe it worthy of publication or cannot find a significant flaw in the logic flow or the general principals of science.
The last paper I was involved in that was published was reviewed and was published. It was an unproven theory (proven about 8 years later) but deemed worthy of publication. I would suggest that, for instance, a paper on the toxicity of environmental chemicals would also be published if the research seemed correct. The interviews with those that suffered or their families, the blood tests conducted, or whatever else that was done, would not be made available and there could be significant faults in that data but peer review would not detect it. It is my opinion but I have considerably little less faith in peer review as the basis for whether something is right. Many many papers are published that turn out to have involved fraud. You can do your own research on that one because it is so easy. You probably can quote me known examples. Most involved in academic fields know of examples of frauds.
As I will endeavour to provide you with appropriate references (and anyone else on this forum interested in the discussion), it would be nice if you didn't provide opinion without reference to specific research. The latest research, as best as I understand (my opinion completely) is based on modelling from very little real data. It may be completely valid but that is not the same as showing research over a period of more than say 50 years showing a rise in ocean temperatures over a substantial area in all regions of the arctic or antarctic (then of course, with the antarctic you have the fluctuations due to ice sheet calving which occurs periodically but that is another issue).
Finally DA Morgan, you wrote: "The ice in Greenland is not melting due to a temporary regional anomaly" How do you know this? Where is your reference?
By the way, I'd rather refer to you by your name than "DA Morgan" or Dr Morgan or whatever. My name is Richard, if you would like to use the same courtesy.
