I will say though that the reason some Geologists are skepical of AGW specifically (as I said I’ve never met a single one who said they were in any way skeptical of GW as a whole) is that the subject they study provides them with numerous examples of previous warming periods which can in no way have been caused by humans due to the rather damning fact that we didn’t exist. It’s also clear from Geological evidence that, like ice ages, warming periods are cyclical. To someone who knows all that, studies it for a living, and who tends to view humans as fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things (it’s hard not to when studying Geology) it’s hard to believe that we puny humans can have had a significant effect on the planet, and most of my lecturers would happily argue amongst themselves as to what extent humans had sped the process up. But not a single one of them denied that climate change was happening or that human industrial activity had had some effect, no matter how small they may personally believe it to be.

I don’t understand why you would discount the opinions of Geologists and Meteorologists. Meteorologists study weather patterns after all, and I was taught that climate is simply the average weather conditions over a region over a time period of decades, especially with regard to temperature, rainfall, and wind conditions.

And I’m a Geology graduate, and not only did we learn alot about palaeoclimates and the processes involved in climate change and viewed alot of evidence about past climate change in the rock record, and thus are in a position to understand it, I have never met a Geologist who would contest that climate change is happening. So I don’t understand your point there.

Reviewing your initial comment (#16), I have misinterpreted your statment and I apologize for that. I, alone, ignored the content & context of the majority of your comment and I, alone, misread your final paragraph.

I was not objecting to your claim that geology is a key part of climatology – indeed, climatology as a science is really just a subset of geology (IMO).

My criticism of your comment was off-base and unequivocally incorrect. The error is mine and I apologize.

composer99 says: I’m sure you can provide some specific examples of these “true skeptic” geologists and their validated criticisms.

Also, I’m sure you can provide some high-quality articles from the literature showing how climate research & modelling is “bankrupt”.

Wow, way to completely miss the point of my post. Do you know any of those names I quoted? Did you bother to look up any of them?

Hopefully every geologist ever reviewing a paper before publication is a ‘true skeptic’. I bet the authors of this paper (http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/paper-claiming-hottest-60-year-span-in-1000-years-put-on-hold-after-being-published-online/) wish that they had had more skeptical reviewers to catch their data error before Steve McIntyre did.

How much do you know about climate modeling? For one thing, the instrumental temperature record is insufficient data to determine the key climate sensitivity variable. If the climate community were to lose all the paleotemperature data painstakingly gathered by geologists and geochemists, the models would indeed be ‘bankrupt’. And the role of ‘true skeptics’ here? Paleotemperature determination using ‘standard’ isotope fractionation is an undetermined problem, you have one measurement and two variables, temperature and reservoir composition. If a modeler doesn’t understand that, and doesn’t understand how reservoirs can be spatially and temporally variable (the realm of geologists), paleotemperatures can be easily misinterpreted. Paleotemperature determination is neither simple nor clear-cut. You need a complete (geological) understanding of the system, not just an instrumental reading. The clumped isotope system I mentioned in my first post is a cutting edge development (by geologists) to reduce that source of error in the data by using rare isotopologue systematics that allow you to calculate (absolutely) both the temperature and the reservoir isotopic composition from geologic samples.

The climate models require high resolution geologic data showing how CO2 levels and the other temperature forcings have co-varied with temperature in the past prior to instrumental readings in order to calculate the climate response to increasing CO2. It’s not a linear response. Without the geologic record and geologic understanding, climate research and modeling would indeed be ‘bankrupt’.

Any further questions?

The percentage of people believing in ghosts goes down a lot with age, which is not something I’d expect. I’d sorta expect that older people, who tend to be more religious, would also tend to believe in ghosts at least as much.

But then, belief in paranormal and superstitious crap is common among “irreligious” people, who don’t have religious nonsense to obsess about, so maybe that’s a bad expectation.

Still it’s striking how much it goes down with age—from 44 percent (among 18 to 29 year olds) to 23 percent (for the over 65 group).

What’s even weirder is the percentage of people who say they’ve seen a ghost, which goes down from an amazing 49 percent among the youngest adults to 15 percent among the oldest.

WTF? All other things being equal, that number should go up, or stay stable unless only young people ever see ghosts for the first time. As you get older, you have more chances to see a ghost.

But no, apparently as people get older, more than two thirds who think they’ve seen a ghost decide the ghosts they saw weren’t ghosts after all.

Or maybe it’s a cohort effect—maybe it’s the current crop of young people who see more ghosts than older people.

Is there an epidemic of ghosts, overwhelmingly revealing themselves to young people? Has it gotten worse and worse for several decades, since each cohort claims more sightings than thge next older one?

In a few more decades, will all the kids see ghosts?

And there’s one really odd pair of numbers—among the youngest group, more people claim to have seen a ghost (49 percent) than say they believe in ghosts (45 percent).

So one in twenty young adults doesn’t believe in ghosts but nonetheless claims to have seen one?

Gotta wonder how people interpreted the questions on this poll.

Kids these days. Hmph.

Disparage individual geologists if you want, although many of the geologists that are skeptical of AGW, are true skeptics, demanding what they see is the need for better research, rather than irrational denialists. If you want to discard the contributions of geologists though, you’ll be left with a very bankrupt field of climate research and modeling.

I’m sure you can provide some specific examples of these “true skeptic” geologists and their validated criticisms.

Also, I’m sure you can provide some high-quality articles from the literature showing how climate research & modelling is “bankrupt”.

You do realize that a huge bulk of the paleoclimate research and interpretation is produce by geologists? All the geophysical models done by number crunches at their computers need the actual data taken from the geologic record. How do you think that we know what atmospheric carbon dioxide was a million years ago? During the Eocene thermal maximum? Most paleoclimate and paleotemperature thermometers were developed in large part by geologists, for example, see Kate Huntington, U. of Washington and the new clumped isotope paleothermometry method.

Individual skeptics not-withstanding, geologists are among those on the forefront of research and public outreach on global climate change (Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, etc).

Disparage individual geologists if you want, although many of the geologists that are skeptical of AGW, are true skeptics, demanding what they see is the need for better research, rather than irrational denialists. If you want to discard the contributions of geologists though, you’ll be left with a very bankrupt field of climate research and modeling.