Remember the 1970s when the same "climate scientist" types solemnly assured us that unless "particulates" being emitted from mufflers and from industrial smoke stacks were eliminated immediately, the earth would experience a "new ice age" by right about now, killing off mankind if the carcinogens in the dreaded "particulates" didn't do us all in first?

More recently, remember how "climate scientists" solemnly assured us that this hurricane season would be especially "busy" with many large storms and that the U.S. would likely be hard hit? I think they played the same tune last year, too, with similar accuracy.

Reflecting on this and the fact that honest meteorologists candidly acknowledge that any weather forecast that attempts to predict conditions more than a day or 2 in advance is just as likely to be wrong as it is to be right, why does anyone have any faith in "scientists" who presume to predict conditions years and decades into the future?

Don't people understand that most of them are driven by mercenary motives? They don't get grants, speaking fees, book royalties, etc. unless they have something controversial or politically appealing to peddle. With highly visible "scientists" it is always necessary to follow the money trail to determine what is really driving their pronouncements.

Peer pressur is real! People traditionally have a very hard time doing their own thinking. Especially when they have spent 12 to 20 years in the public brainwashing and political indoctrination stations otherwise known as public schools.

' the theory of global man-made warning is "incontrovertible."'

That makes it clearly religion, not science. The definition of a scientific theory is that it must be falsifiable. That is, it must present a statement that can be tested experimentally to determine whether it is true or false.

If it is incontrovertible, it is not possible to experimentally disprove it. Ergo, it is not a scientific theory, but a religious belief. Not that there is anything wrong with worshipping at the altar of manmade climate change.....It's just that arguing that a theory is incontrovertible is an admission that it is not a scientific theory.

Money, prestige, power....the science is settled...who are the true "flat earthers?"

It's amazing how many "scientists" would tie themselves to the "science is settled" side of the global warming..er..climate change "theory." My understanding of the scientific method was that you continually search for proof/data to substantiate or disprove your theory. I guess these "scientists" must have a perfect understanding of the earth as a system and have perfect predictive models. Right!

They are a disgrace. For them to call themselves "scientists" is an insult to real scientists past, present, and future.

It seems a great amount of time and I'm sure expense was used to arrive at this conclusion when a very simple baseline procedure could be used to ascertain the facts much more quickly.

Is Al Gore associated with it?

Are liberals associated with it or support it?

Is the government trying to promote it?

Then it is a sham and a lie, that is all, move along, nothing to see here.

global warming can also be attributed to the hot air coming from politicos and bureaucrats..

Big yellow FireBall in the sky in daytime = Hot

Round/curved white Icecube in the Sky at night = Cold

Evidence of Climate change cycles throughout earth's geologic history - without man or manmade industry.

Source of Global warming/Climate Change? I'll go with the Fireball. We are all scientists - some just don't have a degree.

Yeah, we knew that. Anyone who had any science in grade school and high school prior to, say, 1970, already understood that the sun is the SOLE reason for weather changes.

Not that there is anything wrong with worshipping at the altar of manmade climate change.....

@Mike - love that nod to political correctness! Enjoyed :)

Glad to see CERN doing its work and men of integrity standing up to the grotesque politicization of science. The politicians remind me of Stalin and his pronouncement that all artists should make work that have 'peopleness' and 'partyness.' No one know what those things were. You only knew yours didn't when you ended up dead.

I especially enjoyed a Myth Busters episode in which they attempted to find out whether a vehicle with the windows rolled down or with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on got better fuel consumption. First they used a computer model in the vehicle and it showed that the air-conditioned one got better gas mileage. However, not to be satisfied with that, they had two identical vehicles which they drove each with a given amount of gas. They were surprised when the vehicle with the windows down won. I have thought of that often as I listen to those who are so certain that the computer models are correct when the weather refuses to cooperate!

I'm reminded of a story I like to tell children when they ask about "climate change".

If you are quietly sitting in a cold environment with a warm winter jacket on and I put a blanket over you, will you be significantly warmer? The answer is probably no.

Because you are sitting quietly, your body is producing a given amount of heat. Your warm winter jacket is holding that body heat in and keeping you comfortable. If you continue sitting quietly and I put a blanket over you, you are not going to start sweating and getting hotter. Your warm winter jacket is already holding in the heat, thus there is little more escaping that a blanket could reflect back to make you significantly warmer.

Now, instead of sitting quietly, if you start exercising with your warm winter jacket on, you will obviously start to sweat and overheat because your body is producing more heat. So how did you get warmer without changing the amount of insulation?

The analogy with the earth is the same. Solar radiation is the "body heat" and green house gasses are the "warm winter jacket". If the solar radiation stays the same, it really doesn't matter much if the green house gasses are increased. You can sit quietly in a cold room with just a warm winter jacket or a huge pile of blankets, but you’ll probably be just as warm either way. But if you increase the amount of solar radiation, the temperatures are going to go up, even with just a "warm winter jacket" on (i.e., no change in green house gasses).

Man (and nature) can make all the green house gas it wants to. The "thickness" of the insulating blanket is less important than the amount of "body heat" being produced.

It's interesting to note that this article provides no evidence at all to back up the claim it makes. That's because no such evidence exists. CERN researchers have said no such thing. It's an observed fact that there has been no trend in cosmic rays for as long as we've been observing them (50 years or so) - in other words, whatever mechanism is found for cosmic rays to affect climate, they can't possibly have had anything to do with the current global warming. This is the fact of the matter.

Global warming is real, it's caused by us, and it is destroying our habitable climate. Children alive today, and future generations (if they ever exist) will curse us for what we have done. They will curse us for depriving them of the comfortable world we have grown up in, out of greed and subservience to sociopathic industrialists.

Mike McGinn: Your analogy doesn't work for the Earth's climate. A larger greenhouse effect, which is what we're causing now, does have a significant effect on climate because it causes infrared (i.e. heat) to be radiated away to space at a higher, and therefore colder level of the atmosphere. Hence less heat escapes, more is retained at the surface, and the planet heats up until outgoing radiation once again balances the incoming radiation from the sun. That's why Venus has a surface temperature of over 400C, hot enough to melt lead.

Well, Icarus62, you must be drinking the Kool-aid. CERN did make that claim and did publish documents about that: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/423808

This was easily found by a simple Google search. Where are your proofs on "observed fact" on no changes on cosmic rays? "whatever mechanism is found for cosmic rays to affect climate, they can't possibly have had anything to do with the current global warming. This is the fact of the matter." Are you kidding me? You really believe the sun has nothing to do with current climate change? Climate is changing as it has since the world began, even without our "help".

Mike McGinn, guess what? If it's cold outside and I'm sitting quietly in my winter jacket, it's still cold. If I use a blanket, I really will be significantly warmer.

The sun doesn't do jumping jacks. Give or take tiny variations, and ignoring the upward drift in brightness that unfolds over billions of years as our star makes its way toward an inevitable red-giant death, it gives a constant flow of energy.

The earth is warmer than the moon because we have water vapor and CO2 in our atmosphere. The moon---doesn't even have an atmosphere.

Add extra C02 (about 50% more than before the industrial revolution, and headed toward double) and you'll get an increased effect.

That's about as close to incontrovertible as science gets. In principle, even the roundness of the earth isn't "incontrovertible". But the evidence in favor of it is overwhelming. Flat-earthers are rightly derided. For the very same reason, those who maintain that extra CO2 cannot and does not warm the earth don't get much respect in scientific circles.

The intensity of the Climate Change discourse and the intrinsic interest and excitement in the detective work is an unequaled pleasure.

Climate is in flux, as always. The many variables involved at last count arguably exceeded 15, so one 'culprit' is unacceptable.

My concern: Water vapor is the major interactive gas. It interacts according to air temperature. We are covering millions of acres with 'sunshades' or solar panels, capturing wattage/energy currently warming earth (or roof) and creating warm air rise. By definition we have meddled with thermals. Next, into the consequently reduced wind between the upward-thermal and the downward-cooled air we are inserting devices to capture/remove yet more energy by the hundreds of Megawatts, even Terawatts, again changing the speed, temperature, and moisture and energy content of a previously undisturbed system. Where is this model? Clouds not formed, air just not moved as before, moisture interactions altered. Where is even an acknowledgment that we are messing about NOW with the MAJOR 'greenhouse gas' - water vapor. We argue endlessly about fractional long term temperature change - is clearly argumentative, based upon fossil fuel use, yet NOTHING is said about DIRECT intrusion into the weather, hence Climate system. All those years of graduate school wasted. A shame.

willie: You'll note that your link refers to something produced by a science *writer*, not a scientist, and certainly *not* CERN itself, and even then it doesn't support the claims of the article here.

The point about there being no trend in cosmic rays is indisputable -

http://www.realclimate.org/images/cr2011.jpg

So cosmic rays clearly cannot account for any significant portion of the warming trend of the last 50 years. What we do know is that the anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing is *much* larger than the solar forcing over this period, and it isn't going to go away - we can't invent some other natural forcing and get CO2 'off the hook'. It doesn't work that way.

The same is true about evolution. Show me the evidence for it. But if you're a scientist, you better not pursue the evidence against it(and there's a ton) because you will lose your career. It's no different for the evidence that homosexuality is in the genes. There's no evidence there either but you better not say it or you might end up flipping hamburgers at Mcdonaldsand that's only if Mcdonalds still agrees to hire you). George Orwell, you were right....only about 27 years too early.

Icarus your screen name says it all

@ JJB,

I immediately thought the same thing myself. I've debated macro-evolution here and on other fora many times. I have a long list of questions for people who consider evolution to be "settled science." I'm still waiting for an answer to even one of them that is based on anything observed in nature or demonstrated in a laboratory.

Belief in macro-evolution takes even more faith than belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change - at least APG is theoretically plausible: the same cannot be said of macro-evolution.

Why does life development have to either progress by Evolution, or spontaneously appear by Creationism?

Could it not, just as likely, be some combination of both?

When someone rejects biological science for ideological reasons, as we see here, then it's not surprising to see them reject other science as well (including climate science) for the same kind of reasons.

If the fact of our evolutionary origins conflicts with your religion, then so much the worse for your religion. If the fact of anthropogenic global warming conflicts with your political views, then so much the worse for your political views. We can't change the world by refusing to accept reality.

Isn't science wonderful? Everything new we learn simply adds to knowledge I was taught in university some forty-five years ago. The repetitive progression of global warming goes something like this if my memory serves me right. The Earth has an axis which is tilted > the earth's axis wobbles or tilts a couple degrees every forty-thousand years so so > when the tilt exposes the poles to extra sun-light as it is now, the poles begin to melt & the earth's atmosphere in general warms-up (global warming) > polar-ice is fresh water; this fresh melt-water dilutes the salinity of the oceans > this dilution directly affects oceans currents such as the Gulf-Stream which now longer carry heat to the temperate zones of the earth > the polar hemispheres cool down rapidly, hence a new ice-age and so on etc. Keep the politicians away from science!