Australians and others who were happy to be included on Senator James Inhofe’s list (PDF, may need converting) of “scientists” whose “work” contradicts the mainstream view on anthropogenic global warming (scare quotes deliberate) may be interested to know that Inhofe has now emerged as a Birther, or at least a fellow traveller. Of course, Inhofe is also a young earth creationist, and his list includes people like creationist weathercaster Chris Allen who has no more (and no less) relevant qualifications than most of the Australians on Inhofe’s list.
It’s sad to see people with distinguished careers like those of Don Aitkin and Ian Plimer ending up supporting lunatic conspiracy theorists like Inhofe. But the whole basis of climate science delusionism is a conspiracy theory. It’s only by invoking a conspiracy among mainstream climate scientists that delusionists can argue that any attention should be paid to the views of a minority so tiny that even a list of 650 has to be padded out with economists, retired historians, weathercasters and lots of cranks: the number of active, regularly publishing climate scientists on the list is in the single digits.
John Quiggin 
@Tony G
You may find it hard to believe, but just because you do is no evidence that such accurate measurements are impossible. Scientists spend a lot of their time figuring out how to do these measurements accurately and reliably. It is their job.
pedro:
I am not interested in your new set of goal posts. You lost the original argument so you have used up your quota of credibility.
Smiths @ 31 page 2
The result is;
the carbon dioxide dissolves in oceans, is used to form sedimentary rocks and animals and shells are carbon based. Fossil fuels are also carbon based. All of this uses up the carbon dioxide, so there is only a small amount in the atmosphere. about 378ppm or sweet FA or an inconsequential amount.
So Oatsy,
Of the 0.037% of the atmosphere which is carbon, the 5% of that 0.037% that is said to have come from anthropological souces, can be proved categorically anthropological souced by the Carbon 12 isotope?
Where’s the evidence for that?
Yes, a 33 deg C warmer world than without it is so inconsequential.
Refer to Ferdinand Engelbeen’s description of the subject in section 5.3 the 13C/12C ratio.
@jquiggin
Oops, posted before, seems to have gotten lost.
Yes, you are right. I looked at the general introduction, and somehow my eyes couldn’t see “scientist Lomborg” together.
Please guys, remember not to debate delusionists on scientific issues. I leave that to Deltoid. As you can surely see, there is no possibility of overcoming determined ignorance.
And, in the special case of Tony G, I’m waiting for the Nobel Committee to decide if he should receive the prizes for physics, chemistry and economics simultaneously, with literature and peace thrown in as bonuses, or whether they should wait for him to announce his revolutionary overthrow of mainstream medicine so they can give him the whole set at once.
Tong G should get a Knowallbel its seems.
Doubting Thomas’es, be sure to have the Ten Commandments down pat! Tony, go to head of class 🙂 polite applause…
With regards to your question to me, in my best John McEnroe voice, You can’t be serious! Google it.
@Donald Oats
There is no budging Tony, Don. No amount of facts or evidence will deter him from his mission in life to be the last GW skeptic still standing.
Yeah, AGW illusionists go off and debate en masses in a room privately with yourselves; come back when you get some real evidence….
It is agreed the science is settled on there being a marginal increase in atmospheric carbon, but…
Come up with some conclusive proof;
On the source of that carbon. (the 13C/12C ratio is GIGO; 12C is in 98.5% of all carbon and 13C is in about 1%. Unfortunately for the illusionist esoteric AGW cult, no one knows which isotopes are natural occurring and which are anthropological sourced in that 1% of carbon.)
That the atmosphere is actually warming.
It is very difficult to measure conclusivly the temperature in real time at a single location, let alone the whole atmosphere over eons.
There is no need to ask for proof of causation until you satisfy the above 2 issues.
Again, everyone, no feeding the trolls.
“Again everybody”, don’t be patronising, insulting or use derogatory terms as it could incite trollism.
Terms like Birther, Creationist and Delusionism are excepted as well as terms like “I’m waiting for the Nobel Committee in special cases”, but under no circumstances use terms like what a bunch of w…ers, regardless of how close to the mark it is.
@Tony G
You’re not fooling anyone Tony. You’re entitled to wage your personal campaign for cultural rectitude anyway you like, but you can’t expect people to take you seriously when you make outlandish claims about the nature of measurable and well-attested processes.
While I’d disagree with you a lot, I’d respect you more if you were plain about the reasons you oppose protecting the biosphere. Why do you set no store by it? What bad stuff do you think will happen if we humans start looking after what is our life support system with a maintainable program?
Fran, others are entitled to their opinion based on their world view, just as I am and they should be respect for that; even if IMHO it is a misguided one; considering contrary to the opinions around here, the fact is, the actions of humanity is generally inconsequential in relation to the universe,
but…
When one side of the debate resorts to a intellectual w*nk, utilising childish terms such as Birther, Creationist and Delusionism etc; they are belittling their own arguments plus themselves and elevating those of whom are the target of their own vile.
I give little regard to my tone here as I’m the retaliator; to me being targeted by this sought of crap is like water of a ducks back, but to others here obviously it isn’t, as they can dish it out but they can’t take it.
@Tony G
Tony … the term “Birther” (see below) has been adopted as a badge of honour by those party to it so all though its use has derisory connotations for most, it’s not merely “childish”.
http://www.thebirthers.org/
“Creationist” liekwise is a term used by those favouring the concept (see also YEC)
I’ll grant you that “delusionist” has not yet been taken up by your crowd, though denialist is not uncommon.
Nice try Fran but… it has not been adopted as a badge of honour;
“We are the Birthers, we are those who are under attack by the Mainstream Media, the once bastions of truth, have become the purveyors of cheap words. They want to mock us by giving us a label to discredit and marginalize us. This is nothing new, when people have no direction they attack those who do.”
@Tony G
And yet, they wear the name.
Some while back on a blog I was dubbed a warmenista. Although intended as an insult I kind of liked it and said so. It’s runs of the lips a hell of a lot better than “proponent of anthropogenic climate change mitigation” and has a nice warm fuzzy feeling. It even recalls the Sandinistas and maybe Che Guevara (OK I wasn’t a big fan of Che who was a rather unforgiving Stalinist but there’s a kind of vibe).
Maybe this is what the birthers are doing?
Since we like facts here on this blog, anyone care to guess how much water – a well known greenhouse gas – is in the atmosphere? The answer is that water and carbon dioxide combined are less than 1% of the atmosphere. Fascinating.
Some delightful people – well, one actually – insist that the 0.038% of carbon dioxide is way to small to do anything; they even claim that it’s all down to water vapour ’cause it is a GHG and all of the climate models ignore it. Well water is less than 1%, so by the standards of the delightful person it is way too little (compared with like, the other 99% of the atmosphere) to do anything!
How do reality-based scientists know the constituents of air so accurately? Well, they travel all over the place, including up up and away, and they catch it in bottles. Once bottled, it may be taken to the laboratory for testing with an infrared gas analyzer; ironically it applies the principle of the greenhouse effect in order to measure the concentration of CO2. In other words, it blasts the gas with known intensity of infrared light.
Oxygen concentration in the bottled gas may be determined by the using interferometry. As explained on page 86 of Broecker’s book^fn1, oxygen refracts ultravoilet light more strongly than nitrogen does, while nitrogen refracts visible light more strongly than oxygen does. By using two wavelengths of light, and the fact that the nitrogen concentration is constant, the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen may be determined with great precision. The oxygen concentration may therefore be measured to within one part per million. Is that good enough for the ultimate skeptic, I wonder?
Probably not. Figuring out what fraction of CO2, lingering up there, is human produced, may be done by measuring the isotopic ratios for atmospheric CO2. Since fossil fuels don’t contain the carbon isotope C-14, and since fossil fuels are millions of years old, all of the C-14 has transmogrified. Now, if our emissions from fossil fuels are accumulating in the atmosphere, then the ratios of the isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere should reflect the lack of C-14 in the CO2 we emit. There should be some kind of dilution effect. And no prizes for guessing the isotopic trend in the CO2 time series.
These atmospheric gas measurements have been performed independently by numerous climate scientists; the agreement of results is strong enough to convince climate scientists to treat this observations as fact.
fn1: Wallace S. Broecker and Robert Kunzig, “Fixing Climate”, Hill and Wang (2009).
PS: Being too skeptical about everything is to guarantee a string of false negatives.
Don as I have stated before on this blog I respect the generous and courteous manner you conduct yourself and I admit you know alot more about the intricacies of AGW theory than I do.
Putting the carbon issue aside for the moment, you are opening up a can of worms with water vapour and how it is dealt with in the AGW contexts, oh well lets start here;
Well Don, IMHO there is none.
WIKI Quote;
Water vapor is a very different type of air constituent than oxygen and nitrogen. Oxygen and nitrogen are always gases at Earth temperatures, having boiling points of 90K and 77K respectively. Practically, they always act as ideal gases. But extraordinary water has a boiling point of 100°C= 373.15K and can exist in solid, liquid and gaseous phases on the Earth. It is essentially always in a process of dynamic exchange of molecules between these phases. In air at 20°C, if the vapor pressure has reached 17.54 mm Hg, then as many water molecules are entering the liquid phase as are escaping to the gas phase, so we say that the vapor is “saturated”. It has nothing to do with the air “holding” the molecules, but common usage often suggests that.
So Don how does the AGW theory account for the almost infinite variables of realitive humidity?