It’s taken 21 months, four professors, and three associate/assistant professors, and THIS is the best they could come up with? The printed version listed no author (the pdf has been updated with John Cooks name*) yet wears the logo of the University of Western Australia (UWA), which will embarrass that university as word spreads of the intellectual weakness of their “Guide“.

Did UWA commission this piece of rather inept, qualitative “feel-good” science and clumsy reasoning? Stephan Lewandowsky invited John Cook to speak at UWA and “offer assistance“.

The booklet uses a mislabeled graph with a deceptive scale, won’t show the damning graphs it supposedly debunks,  assumes positive feedback occurs despite the weight of empirical evidence against it (Douglass, Spencer, Lindzen), and repeats irrelevant information even though The Skeptics Handbook describes why rising sea levels and glaciers and ice sheets can’t possibly tell us what causes the warming. It misleadingly discusses a different fingerprint — one that isn’t the key point and isn’t disputed by skeptics. Cause and effect are mixed up, and naturally there are strawmen arguments to unnecessarily destroy for the spectacle of being seen to do something. To top it off, Cook still thinks a measurement is [...]

The volunteers keep coming. Please take a moment to appreciate how much work it takes to do a proper translation, to check it, to edit it, and to edit and arrange the artwork. Then take another moment to think of old friends and contacts who might find it interesting, and e-mail it on. Thanks.

The reach of our global human network is changing polls.

Thanks to Weeraboon Wisartsakul for his expertise and patience.

See www.wwisartsakul.wordpress.com for his Thai blog.

Thanks to Jimmy Haigh for the double-checking and help.

Click on the image to download the pdf.

Volunteers have translated the first Skeptics Handbook into German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Balkan, Spanish, Thai, Czech and Lao. The second Skeptics Handbook is available in French and Turkish. See all posts tagged Translations.

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How do you tell a scientist from a non-scientist? Where does science end, and propaganda, politics, and opinion begin? You only need to know one thing:

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Straight away, this sorts the wheat from the weeds. We don’t learn about the natural world by calling people names or hiding data. We don’t learn by chucking out measurements in favor of opinions. We don’t learn by suppressing discussions, or setting up fake rules about which bits of paper count or which people have a licence to speak.

A transparent, competitive system where all views are welcome is the fastest way to advance humanity. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific association in the world. Its motto is essentially, Take No One’s Word For It. In other words, assume nothing; look at the data. When results come in that don’t fit the theory, a scientist chucks out his theory. A non-scientist has “faith”, he “believes” or assumes his theory is right, and tries to make the measurements fit. When measurements disagree, he ignores the awkward news, and “corrects”, or statistically alters, the data–always in the direction that keeps his theory alive.

I am delighted to announce that finally, after drafts have been sent between three continents, the Spanish translation is ready to share. With over 330 million native speakers of Spanish, I expect it will be one of the most popular of all the translations.

Download the 1.2Mb emailable version.

Thanks especially to Víctor González García in Mexico, who did most of the work and coordination, and with editing help from Pepe Salama in Spain.

Please send links to this page or to Pepe’s blog page to your Spanish speaking friends, so they can download copies from either site. And consider PePe’s page as the main home for discussion of the Handbook in Spanish.

There is a larger 7Mb version here for printing.

All translations and versions are available on this page.

Volunteers have translated the first Skeptics Handbook into German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Balkan and Spanish. The second Skeptics Handbook is available in French and Turkish.

The carbon that’s already up in the atmosphere absorbs most of the light it can. CO2 only “soaks up” its favorite wavelengths of light, and it’s close to saturation point. It manages to grab a bit more light from wavelengths that are close to its favorite bands, but it can’t do much more, because there are not many left-over photons at the right wavelengths.

The natural greenhouse effect is real, and it does keep us warm, but it’s already reached its peak performance.

Throw more carbon up there and most of the extra gas is just “unemployed” molecules.

This graph shows the additional warming effect of each extra 20ppm of atmospheric CO2.

AGW says: The climate models are well aware of the logarithmic absorption curve, and use it already. Skeptics say: The models make brutal estimates and many assumptions (guesses). “Lab-warming” doesn’t necessarily translate to “planet-warming”: Test tubes don’t have ocean currents, clouds, or rain. The “clouds and humidity” factor is bogglingly complex. For example, high clouds tend to warm the planet, but low clouds tend to cool it. So which effect rules? Models don’t know, but they [...]

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” Source: www.petitionproject.org

The Petition Project is funded by donations from individuals and run by volunteers. It receives no money from industry or companies. In late 2007, The Petition Project re-did the petition to verify names again.

AGW says: Everyone knows the petition is bogus and filled with duplicate and fake names.

Skeptics say: Name 10 fakes.

NOTE: This is potentially distracting. Science is not democratic. The numbers and qualifications on either side don’t matter except to put an [...]

The only thing we know for sure about climate change is that big government-funded committees [...]

In 1985, ice cores extracted from Greenland revealed temperatures and CO2 levels going back 150,000 years. Temperature and CO2 seemed locked together. It was a turning point—the “greenhouse effect” captured attention. But, in 1999 it became clear that carbon dioxide rose and fell after temperatures did. By 2003, we had better data showing the lag was 800 ± 200 years. CO2 was in the back seat.

AGW replies: There is roughly an 800-year lag. But even if CO2 doesn’t start the warming trend, it amplifies it.

Skeptics say: If CO2 was a major driver, temperatures would rise indefinitely in a runaway greenhouse effect. This hasn’t happened in 500 million years, so either a mystery factor stops the runaway greenhouse effect, or CO2 is a minor force, and the models are missing the dominant driver.

Amplification is speculation. It’s a theory with no evidence that it matters in the real world.

Conclusion: 1. Ice cores don’t prove what caused past warming or cooling. The simplest explanation is that when temperatures rise, more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere (because as oceans warm they release more [...]

It’s unthinkable. Big Government has spent $79 billion on the climate industry, 3000 times more than Big Oil. Leading climate scientists won’t debate in public and won’t provide their data. What do they hide? When faced with freedom-of-information requests they say they’ve “lost” the original global temperature records. Thousands of scientists are rising in protest against the scare campaign. Meanwhile $126 billion turned over in carbon markets in 2008 and bankers get set to make billions.

With impeccable timing, the Danish Translation is here. The back up copy is on this site.

Thanks to Anne-Kit Littler in Perth Australia for dedicatedly working through the words over the past three months. Perth is a long way from Denmark, and Anne-Kit tells me she couldn’t have done without her two Danish proofreaders and co-translators: Hans Henrik Hansen and Claus Schmidt.

Ralph Tittley from www.kane-tv.com appeared from nowhere just when we needed help with graphic design. Quickly it was obvious he doesn’t just know photoshop, it’s an extension of his right arm. Graphics came back as fast as 10 Mb files transfer. (Before I realized that he’s an expert at editing moving images I actually asked if he had enough room on his site to upload our  ‘big’ graphic files. ha ).

Thanks to Karl J. Hansen in Denmark for being the man on the ground. Thank the lord for the internet* (or should I thank Al?), how else would we get the message out to so many people with a team spread [...]