650 List

Hendrik Tennekes

2009-02-24T14:58:00.000-08:00

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes

List cites a few blog posts

Arguments Condensed:

Models might be wrong
Climate modellers are incompetant
Scientific conspiracy
Accepts human co2 induced warming

Quotes

"I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate models are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society."
"I agree with IPCC that there is a likely link between fossil fuel consumption and increased temperatures"

Chris Schoneveld

2009-02-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

Dutch Geologist Dr. Chris Schoneveld, a retired exploration geophysicist, has become an outspoken skeptic regarding the human influence on climate over the past four years.

List cites a comment to a media article and there's also a blog comment
He has a profile page here: http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/ChrisSchoneveld
And a long message/letter:

Arguments Condensed

Climate's changed before
It's uncertain

Quotes:

"There has never been a UN-organized conference on climate change where skeptics were invited for the sake of balance to present their case"
"As long as the causes of the many climate changes throughout the Earth's history are not well understood, one cannot unequivocally separate natural causes from possibly manmade ones."
"Who are the geologists that the IPCC is relying on? Is the IPCC at all concerned about the frequency and recurrence of ice ages? Who are the astronomers that advise the IPCC on other cause of possible climate change (sun spots or earth’s elliptical orbit, tilt and wobble of its axis) so as to ascertain that we are not just experiencing a normal trend related to interglacial warming or variation in solar radiation?"

Classifying Arguments

2009-02-22T14:59:00.001-08:00

To move towards classifying skeptics I thought to first try and categorize their arguments at a very high level, so looking at maybe half a dozen different groups that all arguments can be put into. A good example of grouping arguments can be seen in the structured heirarchy of Creationist Claims. Those are field based categories though, I want to group the fundamental argument types.

So far I have come up with a preliminary 5 groups:

Data Based: "I am skeptical because of this simple fact...."
Ignorance based Arguments: "I am skeptical because we don't know enough"
Theory Based: "I am skeptical because I know of an equally good/better theory to explain it."
Political: "I am skeptical because Al Gore flies in a private jet"
Conspiracy: "I am skeptical because they are in it for the taxes and grants"

I'll update this in future as I think it can be improved, but here is some more detail and explaintions about these categories:

Data Based

It hasn't warmed since 1998 (literally true, but in context of climate, wrong)
Human co2 is a tiny % of co2 emissions (literally true but irrelevant)
Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas (literally true but irrelevant)
Volcanoes emit more co2 than man (false)

These are simple claims about basic data. It's pretty simple to check whether these are true or not. Usually such claims are at least literally true, but misleading in some way - ie strawmen, or omitting an important fact.

Because these claims are so easy to verify, it is a real red flag when someone who should know better uses them as an argument.

Ignorance based Arguments

Climate is all chaotic and we don't understand it at all
Uncertainty mentioned in IPCC reports, some paper, temperature records
Models are unreliable
The concept of global temperature is meaningless

Usually made by people who stick to Political Arguments. The result of such arguments is that the arguer doesn't have to get into the science. They might argue that any theory of climate is as good as any other.

Theory based arguments

It's the Sun
Imminent global cooling
The greenhouse effect is a myth
co2 was higher in the 40s [2]
(insert personal climate theory)

These arguments go beyond simple claims based on data. These are alternative theories contradicting the mainstream. They have to explain why they don't accept the mainstream theory. This often occurs in three ways:

This has simply overturned the mainstream theory.
An Ignorance based Argument: They claim that their theory is no less likely than the mainstream one because so little is known, etc.
A Conspiracy Argument: For example Ernst Beck who coined the "co2 was higher in the 40s" theory uses a Conspiracy Argument to explain the existance and acceptance of the mainstream theory.

Note that the first and third cases are making positive assertions about how the climate works (or some aspect of it) and therefore they can no longer make Ignorance based Arguments in these areas. For example if they are going to claim "recent warming on earth is caused by the sun" as a fact they then can't turn around later and claim "The concept of global temperature is meaningless" without contradicting themselves.

Political Arguments

Al Gore's house has a runway of Private Jets
I am skeptical because environmentalists don't live in mud huts

These arguments have no bearing on the science. I have distain for these arguments. I generally ignore them, but I include them as a group here because often these arguments are made by the same skeptics. As noted above these arguments are often made in conjunction with Ignorance based Arguments.

Conspiracy based arguments

The Journal of Inactivism has an interesting genealogy of climate conspiracy theories which lists the various conspiracies used by skeptics to explain why manmade global warming is such a prominent theory. Highlights include:

In the 80s we get "Mainstream scientists are soviet stooges", it's a "soviet plot" [1]
A "doctrine to replace marxism" [1]
Scientists "artifically sustain debate" (ie "commit fraud") for funding and grants [1]
Politicians use it to increase taxes [1]
I've heard Margret Thatcher get blamed for it somewhere

I will probably revisit this list at some point and update it. Some arguments can be seperated out better and I might be missing some categories. Ideas/corrections are welcome.

References
[1] F. Bi. 2008. Towards a genealogy of climate conspiracy theories. Intl. J. Inact., 1:37–42

[2]E. Beck. 2007. 180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods., Energy & Environment, Volume 18 No. 2

Philip Stott

2009-02-22T14:40:00.000-08:00

UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London
List cites this EPW blog post

He also has a blog

Arguments Condensed

climate's changed before
We know very little about climate
It hasn't warmed since 1998 (although specifically he says "since at least 2001")

Quote

"But, finally, we must return to basic science. Climate is the most complex, coupled, non-linear, semi-chaotic system known. The claim by UK MPs that they can manage climate predictably is the ultimate folie de grandeur. In such a system, both doing something (i.e., emitting gases) and not doing something (i.e., not emitting gases) at the margins are equally unpredictable as to outcomes." [ref]
"Interestingly, the world average surface temperature has now exhibited no ‘global warming’ since at least 2001" [ref]

Notes:

He argues mainly from politics, only occasionally wading into trying to justify his claims scientifically

Ernst-Georg Beck

2009-02-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

German scientist Ernst-Georg Beck, a biologist, authored a February 2007 paper entitled 180 Years of Atmospheric C02 Analysis by Chemical Methods that found
levels of atmospheric CO2 levels were not measured correctly

A paper published to the Journal "Energy and Environment":
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm

There are also other statements made on the same website, eg:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/CO2-Dateien/CO2-no-climate-driver.pdf [ref1]
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/CO2-Dateien/7-kern-PIKe.pdf [ref2]

Arguments Condensed

Atmospheric co2 level was higher in the early 20th century
Ice core co2 histories are wrong
Scientific conspiracy
Human co2 is a tiny % of co2 emissions (2)
Ocean acidification is of no concern (3)

Notes:

There's a gold mine of claims on that site, just about every claim under the sun can be found.
In the PDF above he compares co2 concentrations with temperature of antarctica over 200 years and concludes "there is no connection"
(2) [ref2] "A reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by 1% means 26GT/year instead of about 29 GT CO2/year (= 3% of the whole natural CO2 emissions). The 26,7% are still negligible compared to the natural emissions of oceans and biomass."
(3) [ref2] "A pH-range of sea water of 8,2-7,7 is a normal range and was still measured during the warm period since 1920 and 1930 [4]. A pH higher than 7 is still alkaline."

"analysis" of list so far

2009-02-09T15:17:00.000-08:00

About 24 entries have been added. It was decided that 5 of them shouldn't be on the list as they didn't show any convincing skepticism of manmade global warming.

That leaves 19. There are a number of issues with doing any meaningful analysis on this, including:

There are only 19
The 19 are not a random sample from the list.
There are probably gaps where I didn't see an argument used
They are represented unequally. Some have whole websites full of arguments, some only a single short letter of arguments.

This is the reason for quotes around "analysis" in the title. What follows is simply an interest/trivia look at an aspect of the entries so far.

The top 5 arguments used by the 19 entries and the breakdown are:

It's the sun (6) Bob Breck, John L. Casey, Art Horn, Dr. Cal Evans, Mike Thompson, Richard Mourdock

water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas (6) Bob Breck, Dr. Martin Hertzberg, Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh, Frank Britton, Art Horn, Dr. Cal Evans

CO2 concentration is small (5) Bob Breck, Dr. Martin Hertzberg, Hans Schreuder, Frank Britton, Dr. Cal Evans

It hasn't warmed since 1998 (5) Bob Breck, Dr. Wilson Flood, Allan M.R. MacRae, Bill Steffen, Joseph Conklin

human co2 is a tiny % of co2 emissions (4) Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh, Frank Britton, Art Horn, Mike Thompson

As #3 and #4 points out, the reason many of the same names are present is probably due to unequal representation.

A relevant hypothesis I have held for a long time, not based on the above, is that whatever makes a person susceptible to believing one of the worst arguments (I consider the above to be some of the worst), they will be susceptible to all of them.

ie if a person is not skeptical of the "human co2 is a tiny % of co2 emissions" and readily believes it, then they will very likely also be taken in by the "water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas" argument. At least I see little reason why a person would believe one and not the other.

So I suspect to see a pattern like the above where a person using one argument will tend to also be using the other.

Skepticalscience directly covers 4 of the 5 above arguments, with "CO2 concentration is small" covered in related topics. It is interesting that the worst arguments are perhaps the most popular, but perhaps this is explained by the simplicity of the arguments and the relatively few people who look into them in any detail.

So a classification system for skeptics will probably contain a large group consisting of people that believe these type of arguments. There are many other skeptics who would distance themselves from such arguments and so would have to placed in different groups.

Bruce Schwoegler

2009-02-09T14:56:00.000-08:00

Atmospheric scientist Bruce Schwoegler, former U.S. Navy meteorologist and Boston broadcast meteorologist, rejected man-made climate fears.

List cites a letter to the list creators.

Arguments condensed

"significant global warming is a concern"
"there is a likely relationship between human induced impacts and climate change"
It's all too complicated!

Quotes:

"But has anyone truly ascertained the scope, depth and outcome in our planetary system which is rife with natural checks and balances? Quantifying them and resultant interactions remains mostly a game of my theory versus yours"

Notes

I added this one for variation. It is a position of 'we don't know enough to conclude anything'. This position is in contradiction of the position of skeptics who claim to know that warming is not due to greenhouse effect enhancement (such as the EPW he is writing to for example...). He also mentions significant global warming as a concern, at odds with skeptics who have the position that warming is beneficial (although this depends on what "significant" is).

trivia: I hit my first duplicate just now. I almost started doing John L. Casey again, fortunately I got deja-vu just in time.

Bob Breck

2009-02-09T14:32:00.001-08:00

Chief Meteorologist Bob Breck of WVUE-TV

No link for this one, the list cites a letter to the list creators.
But I found a blogspot blog (join the family) of his:
http://bobbreck.blogspot.com/

Seems to contain more arguments than the letter, so most of the below are from the blog:

Arguments condensed

Ice age predicted in the 70s
It's the sun
It's ocean cycles
It hasn't warmed since 1998
Dr James Hansen predicted cooling in the 70s
They're in it for the money
CO2 concentration is small (from http://bobbreck.blogspot.com/2008/12/fronts-keep-coming.html)
Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

There's probably more..

Dr. Wilson Flood

2009-02-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

Dr. Wilson Flood, of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a chemistry education
consultant

Cites this article and this one

Arguments Condensed:

It hasn't warmed since 1998
co2 won't double by 2100
climate sensitivity is 0.18K/wm-2 (roughly calculated by dividing 33C by 150wm-2...I suspect the last figure is calculated by surface radiation minus outgoing radiation)

Quotes:

"Of all the scientific disciplines, chemistry equips us best to grasp the essentials of the global warming debate"

Georgia D. Brown

2009-02-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

Geologist Georgia D. Brown, an instructor of Geology & Oceanography at College of
Lake County in Illinois, who co-authored a 1993 peer-reviewed study on the CO2
content in the magma from Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii in the prestigious journal
American Mineralogist

Cites a letter (?!) to a website

"Arguments" Condensed

I talk to my students about this topic every semester, not just when we are covering glacial geology, but at different points throughout the term. I want them to know that they shouldn't take every alarmist claim at face value. Fear is a means of controlling a population, and since the cold war has ended, the government needed new fuel for its control fire.

yea sorry, but that's all the "argument" we get. A real scrape of the barrel. Disappointing. In fact it's not even clear if she is skeptical of manmade global warming. Read the letter and see for yourself.

Irony

"Anyway, keep up the great work! On my end, from here on out, I intend to make it an assignment for my students to visit your website."

The website in question is iceagenow.com, you know the one titled:

Not by Fire but by Ice
THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!
Discover What Killed the Dinosaurs . . . and Why it Could Soon Kill Us

Lets revisit part of Brown's argument:
"I want them to know that they shouldn't take every alarmist claim at face value"

Wow.

Allan M.R. MacRae

2009-02-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

Professional Engineer Allan M.R. MacRae of Alberta, Canada, authored a scientific
analysis critical of man-made global warming in 2008.

Cites this article and this article

Arguments Condensed:

It hasn't warmed since 1998
rate of co2 rise correlates with temperature on annual timescales, therefore co2 doesn't cause warming

Quotes:

"Since ~1945 when CO2 emissions accelerated, Earth experienced ~22 years of warming, and ~40 years of either cooling or absence of warming"

"In fact, strong evidence exists that disproves the IPCC's scientific position. The attached Excel spreadsheet ("CO2 vs T") shows that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lag (occur after) variations in Earth's Surface Temperature by ~9 months (Figures 2, 3 and 4). "

Bill Steffen

2009-02-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

Meteorologist Bill Steffen of Grand Rapids, Michigan
List cites his blog:
this entry
and another that no longer exists

Arguments Condensed:

It hasn't warmed since 1998
co2 is not the only factor. Volcanic eruptions effect climate.

Notes:

There's a UAH graph on the page, yet still the 1998 argument gets made

Summary to date

2009-02-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

So far about 20 names have been added, only about 3% of the total list. I was distracted in January so only 3 names were added, compared to 17 in December. But I plan on doubling the list this month. This is not an attempt to debunk the 650 list, if that were the motivation I would stop now as there is already now plenty of material elsewhere on the internet for anyone objective to find which questions the list.

I am going to continue, get some more names added and to try and group the skeptics. Some of them share similar positions and arguments, some are quite distinct. Perhaps I will find a decent classification system to group these skeptics and any skeptics in future, including blog comment and forum skeptics (they don't have to be semi-famous).

It would be quite interesting to be able to assign a skeptic to a particular group for example and therefore be able to "stereotype" them by other members of that group.

The current method most people employ is to use a personal name to refer to all skeptics (eg "denier", "inactivist", "contrarian", etc). This is not particularly descriptive or representative of the disperse spread of credibility in different skeptics and I believe categories would capture information that could be exploited in debate (and I am essentially an arguer, so this is what I want)

Dr. Martin Hertzberg

2009-02-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry

Cites this media article this media article

However the article doesn't directly quote Hertzberg much and even contradicts him in one case.

The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide -The Innocent Source of Life by Dr. Martin Hertzbergment (PDF) is a better source of arguments directly from him

Arguments Condensed:

warming causes co2 rise not the other way round
co2 is already saturated
CO2 concentration is small
water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Scientists' conclusions are motivated by money.
Ice age predicted in the 70s (well he says 60s, but same deal)
It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
CO2 rise is caused by the oceans
Volcanos emit more co2
co2 lifetime in atmosphere is only 5 years

Notes:

Seems to suffer from a focus on co2 emissions rather than co2 concentrations, ie to think emissions should correlate with warming rather than concentration.
Confuses atmospheric average lifetime of a co2 molecule with the residence time for a pulse of co2 added:
"The global warming advocates including the IPCC argue that the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere lasts for centuries....The most authoritative study of the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere was done by a Norwegian, Professor Tom Segalstad of the University of Oslo. The measured lifetime, based on the studies of some 50 independent researchers is at most about 5 years"

An original argument..

1. human co2 emissions fell 30% from 1929 (1.17 Gt) to 1932 (0.88 Gt).

2. But co2 concentration rose about 1.5ppm in that time.

3. Given 1+2, therefore human co2 emissions aren't causing the rise in co2.

This brilliant argument is described as:

"One of the more dramatic contradictions to the Gore-IPCC hypothesis is one that I came up with myself, and which appealed to Cockburn and to an Australian group of fellow skeptics."

Dr. Christopher L. Castro

2009-02-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

note: as far as updates go, lets mark January down as a bad month

Dr. Christopher L. Castro, a Professor of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona

List cites a blog post and a news article
The blog post links through to a series of lectures (some of these are not available..I suspect they will be available nearer the specified date. It would be particularly interesting to see the contents of the global warming ones)

Also there are some presentations here:
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/~castro/Presentations/

The P-10 contains some interesting info

Arguments Condensed:

Accepts manmade global warming
Regional climate modeller
Global circulation models are inaccurate at regional scale
Shouldn't be on the list

Notes:

The reason for the "Shouldn't be on the list" tag is there is no indication he doesn't accept GCM results. His arguments concern their ability (or lack of) to be accurate at the regional level.

Quotes:

"I believe the balance of evidence from the paleoclimate record, recent climate history (particularly since the 1980s), and the anthropogenic attribution GCM experiments (e.g., Meehl et al. type studies) support the conclusion that recent climate change is due, in part, to anthropogenic forcing."

Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh

2009-01-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh, a Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion in the department of Mechanical Engineering at Ohio State University, who has published over 45 peer reviewed studies

List cites a freerepublic post that still has a copy of an original news article that is no longer available:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1422147/posts

It starts off badly with "man’s addition to the carbon-dioxide flux in the atmosphere, by fossil-fuel combustion, is essentially irrelevant"

Arguments Condensed:

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
The "Arctic Ocean Model" explains warming
We need the greenhouse effect
co2 rise is natural
I am part of a "large minority"

Notes:

uses the phrase "so-called greenhouse gas". I see this phrase a lot. What does it mean? Are they casting their luck whether co2 is a greenhouse gas? Perhaps they are suggesting the possibility that "greenhouse gases" don't even exist. What is up with this frequently used phrase?
This author actually puts forward their own explaination for the warming: "And behind that again is the alternative warming concept, most generally known as the Arctic Ocean Model, which is considered by many to be the real driver for the temperature oscillations and has been for the last million years or so.".

Dr. Robert E. Davis

2009-01-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

Dr. Robert E. Davis, a Professor at University of Virginia, a former UN
IPCC contributor and past president of the Association of American Geographers,
and past-chair of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on
Biometeorology and Aerobiology

List cites:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=051205D

Arguments Condensed:

Warm records are meaningless because the records are too short
Can't see global warming in last 150 years of PDO record...
PDO unreleated to global warming

Notes:

He says: "The unprecedented great Pacific climate shift of the late 1970s linked to global warming was, in fact, precedented and unrelated to global warming". I guess he's therfore ruling out the PDO as an explaination for the recent (post 70s) warming?

Alan Titchmarch

2009-01-02T22:05:00.000-08:00

Horticulturalist Alan Titchmarch, a prominent naturalist who hosts the popular "The Nature of Britain" program on the BBC, received the Royal Horticultural Society’s highest award – the Victoria Medal of Honor – for outstanding services to horticulture.

Links to the following news article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/10/06/nosplit/bvtvtitchmarsh06.xml

edit: the correct spelling is Titchmarsh I believe.

Arguments condensed:

Climate's changed before
Why no warming during the industrial revolution?
We’ll lose some species, but we’ll gain others.
Accepts manmade global warming and acting on it.

Notes:

In the news article he says: "Why didn’t we have global warming during the Industrial Revolution? In those days you couldn’t have seen across the street for all the carbon emissions and the crap coming out of the chimneys."
Also says: "I’m sure we are contributing to global warming, and we must do all we can to reduce that"

Hans Schreuder

2008-12-19T15:48:00.000-08:00

Analytical chemist Hans Schreuder who publishes the UK based website
ILoveMyCarbonDioxide.com

list cites said website:
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/about.html

Arguments condensed:

co2 concentration is small
the greenhouse effect doesn't exist
greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics...

Notes:

This is amazingly crazy stuff. Is it just one big joke?
"Atmospheric "greenhouse forcing" does not warm the planet, never has and never will. In fact, the very idea that there is a greenhouse effect in our atmosphere is absurd."
Simply noting the "co2 concentration is small" argument doesn't pay justice to the extraordinary effort made in giving it, the amazing 173x2860 gif and all: http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/graph.html This and other effort on the site suggest it isn't a joke and the author is actually being serious.
Some arguments are given on these pages: http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/theory.html
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/FAQ.html
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/carbondioxide.html
links to "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics" and "Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics", and says " I salute all scientists who agree with these papers and will gladly publicise all papers on this subject"...

mwhaha! it's FALSE I tells you!!11 (Quotes):

"The settled science that a greenhouse warms up due to re-radiated light (energy), as set out by Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), Arrhenius (1896), NASA (2008), et al., is false."
"Yet carbon dioxide’s re-radiation of infrared energy warming up planet earth is the preposterous theory hailed by not only the alarmists, but accepted and elaborated by most skeptics as well, with mathematical theorems that do little more than calculate the number of fairies that can dance on a pinhead."

Joseph Conklin

2008-12-19T15:26:00.000-08:00

Meteorologist Joseph Conklin launched a skeptical website called Climatepolice.com

list cites:
http://climatepolice.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/global-warming-movement-falling-apart/

Arguments condensed

1930s hottest decade on record
Urban heat island effect and microsite biases
It hasn't warmed since 1998
predicts global cooling

Notes

"This conclusion agrees with a previous study suggesting that no new warming has occurred (Lindzen, 2006) since 1998. It also agrees with a report (Gray, 2006) predicting that global temperatures will begin decreasing." link

Dr. Jeffrey A. Glassman

2008-12-19T14:32:00.000-08:00

Applied Physicist and Engineer Dr. Jeffrey A. Glassman wrote an October 24, 2006
paper entitled "The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide."

list cites: http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html

Arguments Condensed

warming causes co2 rise, not the other way round
lack of runaway warming in past 400,000 years
recent co2 rise is natural from the oceans
skeptical of mauna loa co2 record

Notes:

Here is a quote from the "The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide":

"According to at least one report, climatologists are at a loss to
explain the source of the CO2:
Where did the carbon dioxide come from? “This is one of the grand
unsolved puzzles in climate research,” said Thomas Stocker, a climate modeler at
the Physics Institute of the University of Bern. Schoen [1999].
Moreover and to the contrary, climatologists dismiss the oceans as the source."

Here is the article with the Thomas Stocker quote. It continues:

“This is one of the grand unsolved puzzles in climate research,” said Thomas
Stocker, a climate modeler at the Physics Institute of the University of
Bern. "About 50% of the 80-ppm glacial-to-interglacial increase
can be explained by a change in the solubility of carbon dioxide.
Warmer ocean water carries less carbon dioxide than colder
water. However, there are complicated biochemical processes in the ocean, such
as pH, the depth of the dissolution level for calcium carbonate, and the net primary
productivity of the marine carbon cycle that are also playing a role."

So the claim that "Moreover and to the contrary, climatologists dismiss the oceans as the source" doesn't seem justified.

The "Aquital" continues:

"Gavin A. Schmidt (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York, New York; and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, New York.) and his blog group at RealClimate believe …
The oceans cannot be a source of carbon to the atmosphere, because we observe them to be a sink of carbon from the atmosphere."

This article is titled How much of the recent CO2 increase is due to human activities?

I have emphaised the word "recent". The article is pointing out that recent co2 rise cannot be due to an ocean source, not that the oceans weren't a source of co2 during glacial warming periods.

There's a whole mess of confusion after that where the "Aquital" makes the same mistake between different statements from the IPCC.

It gets worse, I'll probably come back to this one there are probably quite a few arguments left to record.

Quotes:

"What they did next was revise their own embryonic global climate models, previously called GCMs, converting them into greenhouse gas, catastrophe models. The revised GCMs were less able to replicate global climate, but by manual adjustments could show manmade CO2 causing global warming within a few degrees and a fraction!"

"Back to Engelbeen, his first argument silently rests on the well-mixed hypothesis. His data appear to be Mauna Loa measurements, and not necessarily global data. The IPCC reports that investigators calibrated the other sites to match the Mauna Loa measurements. Mauna Loa as you suggest has influences of the volcano, but also of El Niño, and apparently the investigators calibrated or adjusted these effects out of their data. Meanwhile MLO sits in the wandering, variable plume of the Eastern Equatorial Pacific outgassing. And al the time, Earth is warming (an essential tenet to the AGW conjecture), causing the natural outgassing to increase (which the IPCC nowhere computes"

Frank Britton

2008-12-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Chemist Frank Britton rejected man-made climate fears in 2007.

list cites a news article, but the article seems to be gone:
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_6489861

unable to find other references so far.

Arguments condensed

co2 concentration is small
Most co2 comes from ants and termites
co2 is not a "particularly effective" greenhouse gas
political conspiracy
scientific conspiracy
Humans have no measurable control over global temperatures

Notes

Think he's thinking of methane with the termites and ants argument.
The conspiracy arguments are that politicians and scientists know it's wrong but either for financial or ideological gain they push it nevertheless.

Quotes:

"Out of the wide spectrum of radiation received from the sun, CO2 only absorbs energy from
three very narrow levels"

Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund

2008-12-18T14:20:00.001-08:00

An April 2007 study revealed the Earth’s climate “seesawing” during the last 10,000 years, according to Swedish researchers Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan
Hammarlund of Lund University.

These scientists appear to have been wrongly included on the 650 list just because someone thought their research was skeptical of manmade global warming. From the blog Uppsalainitiativet we learn that these scientists are not too happy about their inclusion on the list:

Cited Swedish Researchers in Inhofe 650 are upset

http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.com/2008/12/cited-swedish-researchers-in-inhofe-650.html

Here is a press release they made about the paper, as listed on sciencedaily in April 2007:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070428170229.htm

The citations on the EPW List don't come from nowhere. They are always based on some media article or blog post somewhere. So on a hunch I went over to wattsupwiththat.com and went back to April 30th 2007, the day that the sciencedaily article was released and started flipping forward.
Aha:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/05/02/earths-climate-is-see-sawing/

So here's the story of how Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund got onto the EPW list. Or rather here's my guess at how it really happened:

Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund announce their research which appears on a number of online news sites.
Because it contains the statement "These results imply that Europe may face a slightly cooler future than predicted by IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" it gets jumped on by the skeptic blogs.
The skeptic blogs load it with words it doesn't even say or support.
Because it's been featured on skeptic blogs it gets auto-collected onto the EPW list of 650, probably without a second check.

I bet this research was "interpreted" at some point by icecap.us as well.

Justin Berk

2008-12-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

Meteorologist Justin Berk asserted that the "majority of TV meteorologists" are
skeptical of dire man-made global warming claims.

The list cites this news article (alternative source, the link on the list is broken). I have also been pointed to Justin Berk's blog - there's a recent post on global warming here. Also see an article on his other blog.

Arguments condensed

Notes:

Most of his blog posts are on the subject of weather with only a brief mention of climate change now and again.
His major argument, which seems to be his main reason for being skeptical of the theory is that warming and cooling have occured naturally in the past.
Some of the things he says suggest he isn't very familiar with this issue, for example: "A story yesterday in Investors Business Daily pointed out that the planet has been cooling since 1998, ice growth had begun in the northern Hemisphere last year...".

Quotes:

"Many have stated that Global Warming is a Theory, since according to the basic scientific method, it is not a proven Law. Therefore is should still be up for debate." (link)

"The stable global temperatures and increasing support for cooling in recent years has only strengthened the scientists who were forced into silence out of fear of dissent. Yup, there was a lot of pressure to keep many scientist quiet." (link)

John L. Casey

2008-12-18T12:04:00.000-08:00

NASA consultant and former space shuttle engineer John L. Casey of the Florida
based Verity Management Services Inc. (VMS)

See:
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/i-am-ngudima-madriguru-climate-minister-of/

And:
Press Release (sorry it's a .doc document)

Arguments condensed

It's the sun
"near 100% match between low temperatures and solar activity lows
between now and as far back as 900 AD"
Global cooling obvious in 2012

Notes:

Seems to implicitly support the idea of increased hurricanes and increased hurricane intensity in a warmer world: "Regarding the impacts of the next cold climate period on hurricanes, Casey summarized by saying "I would not be surprised to see the lowest number and least intense storms ever recorded in the US during this cold epoch, for obvious reasons."

The names on the 650 list

2008-12-17T16:13:00.000-08:00

From the 650 list, ordered alphabetically with duplicates removed. A few names might be missing due to error in extraction. There are 673 names in the list below.

The names were taken from the 650 list full report PDF linked to from this page:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674e64f-802a-23ad-490b-bd9faf4dcdb7

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov
Tom Addiscott
Alexandre Amaral de Aguiar
Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck
Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia
Don Aitkin
Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Dr. Glatzle Albrecht
David Aldrich
Kjell Aleklett
Dr. William J.R. Alexander
Dr. Claude Allegre
Chris Allen
Noor van Andel
Dr. Bjarne Andresen
David Archibald
Dr. Scott Armstrong
José Ramón Arévalo
Dr. Ritesh Arya
Bob Ashworth
Augie Auer
Geoff L. Austin
Dennis Avery
Dr. Herbert Backhaus
Donald G. Baker
John W. Bales
Dr. Sallie Baliunas
Dr. Timothy Ball
Gregory J. Balle
Allen Barr
Dr Jack Barrett
Don Barron
Romuald Bartnik
Colin Barton
Vladimir Bashkirtsev
Steve Baskerville
Joe Bastardi
Matthew Bastardi
Dr. Franco Battaglia
Ernst-Georg Beck
Hubert Becker
Gary S. Becker
Paul G. Becker
Larry Bell
Dr. David Bellamy
Greg Benson
Dieter Ber
Dr. Paul Berenson
Rikard Bergsten
Justin Berk
Sally Bernier
Andre Bernier
M.I. Bhat
Lord Lawson of Blaby
Dr. John Blethen
Dr. Edward F Blick
Peter Bloemers
Martin Bock
Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
Karl Bohnak
Frederick Bopp
Bruce Borders
Chris C. Borel
Dr. Norman Borlaug
Brigitte Bossert
Paul Bossert
Daniel Botkin
Dr. Donald J. Boudreaux
Dr. R. W. Bradnock
Bob Breck
Dr. Pal Brekke
Dr. William M. Briggs
Dr. John Brignell
Frank Britton
John Brodie
Adriaan Broere
James Brooks
Dr. John W. Brosnahan
Georgia D. Brown
Stephen Brown
Atholl Sutherland Brown
Harold Brown
Dr. Reid Bryson
James Buckee
Gerd Burger
Donald S. Burke
Dr. Tony Burns
Nigel Calder
Mark Cantley
Patrick Carroll
Dan Carruthers
Dr. Bob Carter
John L. Casey
Dr. Christopher L. Castro
Dr. Randy Cerveny
Kent A. Chambers
Dr. Phil Chapman
Dr. George Chilingar
Tom Chisholm
Dr. John Christy
Dr. Petr Chylek
Jim Clark
Dr. Ian D. Clark
Roy Clark
James Clarke
Donald Clauson
Charles Clough
Michael Clover
Michael Coffman
Dr. Roger W. Cohen
John Coleman
Dr. W.J. "Bill" Collins
Rosa Compagnucci
Dennis Compayre
Martin Coniglio,
Joseph Conklin
James Cook
Dr. Paul Copper
Piers Corbyn
Dr. Paulo N. Correa
Allan Cortese
Larry Cosgrove
Dr. William R. Cotton
Vincent Courtillot
Dr. Richard S. Courtney
James Cripwell
Dr. Susan Crockford
Dr. Matthew Cronin
Dr. Claude Culross
Walter Cunningham
Tim Curtin
Dalcio K. Dacol
Grant Dade
Dave Dahl
Dr. Peter Dailey
Joseph D'Aleo
Dr. Robert E. Davis
Luc Debontridder
Dr. Fred W. Decker
Robert DeFayette
James DeMeo
Dr. David Deming
Roger Dewhurst
Peter Dietze
David Dilley
Jack Dini
Dr. William DiPuccio
Delgado Domingos
Dr. Art V. Douglas
Dr. David Douglass
James F. Drake
M.K. Dubey
Dr. Donald DuBois
Geoffrey G. Duffy
Jonathan DuHamel
Bernard J. Dunn
Robert Durrenberger
Dr. Denis Dutton
Dr. Freeman Dyson
Dr. Don J. Easterbrook
Klaus-pulse Eckart
Dr. Michael J. Economides
Gunter Ederer
Bob Edleman
Alexander G. Egorov
Dr. Theo Eichten
Werner Vermess Eisenkopf
Robert Ellison
Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser
Lance Endersbee
Ferdinand Engelbeen
Per Engene
Gary England
Hans Erren
Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh
Dr. Christopher Essex
Dr. John R Etherington
Bill Evans
Dr. David Evans
William Evans
Dr. Cal Evans
Ray Evans
Dr. John T. Everett
Mike Fairbourne
Donald W. Farley
Dr. Michael F. Farona
Jesse Ferrell
Eduardo Ferreyra
Dr. Wilson Flood
Frederic Fluteau
Viv Forbes
Robert Jacomb Foster
Louis Fowler
Dr. Michael R. Fox
Dr. Patrick Frank
Dr. Neil Frank
Stewart Franks
Dr. Oliver W. Frauenfeld
Dr. Chris de Freitas
Dr. Peter Friedman
Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen
Ivan Frolov
Brian Fuchs
Gordon Fulks
Mick Fuller
Dr. Serge Galam
Maureen T. Gallagher
Edgar Gardeners
R. W. Gauldie
Dr. David Gee
Bas van Geel
Dr. Lee C. Gerhard
Dr. Gerhard Gerlich
Ivar Giaever
Dr. Robert Giegengack
Tony Gilland
Dr. Jeffrey A. Glassman
Grob Glienicke
Dick Goddard
Indur M Goklany
Fred Goldberg
Stanley B. Goldenberg
Victor Goldschmidt
Dr. Mel Goldstein
Sergei Golubchikov
Guillermo Gonzalez
Wayne Goodfellow
Jim Goodridge
Harry A. Gordon
Dr. Laurence I. Gould
Brian van de Graaff
William K. Graham
Dr. David A. Gray
Gary O. Gray
Dr. William Gray
Thomas B. Gray
Dr. Vincent Gray
Dr. Kenneth P. Green
Dr. Howard Greyber
Dr. Michael Griffin
Dr. Hauck Guenther
Guido Guidi
Alois Haas
Eugenio Hackbart
Dr. Keith D. Hage
Robert W. Hahn
Jeff Halblaub
Morten Hald
Michael Hammer
James Hammond
Charles Hammons
Cliff Harris
Dr. Peter Harris
Tom Harris
Dirck T. Hartmann
Dr. Jon Hartzler
Dr. Howard Hayden
Ross Hays
Dr. Detlef Hebert
Wilfried Heck
Dr. Klaus P. Heiss
Branford Helgo
Dr Peter Heller
David Henderson
Marc Hendrickx
Flick Hendrikje
Dr. Ben Herman
Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera
Dr. Martin Hertzberg
Hug Hienz
Dr. Robert Higgs
Ted Hinds
Louis A.G. Hissink
Wayne Hocking
Rainer Hoffman
Heinz Hofman
Ferdinand Furst zu Hohenlohe-Bartenstein
David Holland
Dr. Dennis Hollars
Art Horn
Dr. Ludecke Horst-Joachim
Douglas V. Hoyt
Warwick Hughes
Ole Humlum
William Hunt
Steve Hynek
Dr. Sherwood Idso
Keith Idso
Dr. Craig Idso
Arthur T. "Terry" Safford III
Andrei Illarionov
Dr. Olafur Ingolfsson
Dr. Kiminori Itoh
Yury Izrael
Barrie Jackson
Albert F. Jacobs
Craig James
Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Jon Jenkins
Dr. Dennis Jensen
Terrell Johnson
Daniel P. Johnson
Wm. Robert Johnston
Raymond J. Jones
Hub Jongen
John Lott, Jr.
Norm Kalmanovitch
Andrei Kapitsa
Bill Kappel
Al Kaprielian
Dr. Wibjorn Karlen
Dr. Joel M. Kauffman
Dr. David Kear
Dr. Geoffrey Kearsley
Dr. Richard Keen
Douglas J. Keenan
Harald Kehl
Dr. Aynsley Kellow
Dr. Kelvin Kemm
John Kettley
Dr. Madhav Khandekar
William R. Kininmonth
Jasper Kirkby
Dr. Arnold Kling
Paul C. Knappenberger
Paul Knight
Dr. Wuntke Knut
Dr. James P. Koermer
Tom Kondis
Dr. G. Cornelis van Kooten
Jan J.H. Kop
Bill Korbel
R.W.J. Kouffeld
Roderick W. Van Koughnet
Dieter Kramer
Dr. Gerhard Kramm
Dr. Albert Krause
Olavi Kärner
Salomon Kroonenberg
Dr. George Kukla
Dr. Takeda Kunihiko
Ray Kurzweil
Olav M. Kvalheim
Dr. A.T.J. de Laat
Dr. Hans H.J. Labohm
Dr. Christopher W. Landsea
Dr. Willem de Lange
Rune B. Larsen
Michael Laughton
Dr. Thomas Lavin
Dr. Douglas Leahey
Peter R. Leavitt
Dr. David R. Legates
Jay Lehr
Dr. Christoph Leinb
Kevin Lemanowicz
Arthur E. Lemay
Nikolaus Lentz
Dr. Marcel Leroux
G. Lesins
Bryan Leyland
Edward Liebsch
Michael Limburg
William Lindqvist
Dr. Richard Lindzen
Dr Gerrit van der Lingen
Peter Link
Endel Lippmaa
Al Lipson
Martin Livermore
Dr. Philip Lloyd
Dr. Gerhard Lobert
Dr. Keith Lockitch
Dr. Craig Loehle
Justin Loew
Dr. Bjorn Lomborg
A.J. Tom van Loon
John Loufman
Jonathan Lowe
Dr. Anthony Lupo
Dr. Richard Mackey
Allan M.R. MacRae
Horst Malberg
Björn Malmgren
Augusto Mangini
Dr. Francis T. Manns
Dr. Oliver K. Manuel
Rob Marciano
Ronald C. Marks
Dr. Jennifer Marohasy
Peter Martin
James A. Marusek
Nigel Marven
Galina Mashnich
Prof. Francis Massen
Dr. Paul Matthews
Dr. John Maunder
William F. McClenney
Mike McConnell
Les McDonald
Tom McElmurry
Dr. Alister McFarquhar
Peter McGurk
Stephen McIntyre
Dr. Ross McKitrick
John McLean
Ian McQueen
Dr. Owen McShane
Bill Meck
Jean Meeus
Rob Meleon
Rob Melon
Dr. D. Bruce Merrifield
Amos Meyer
Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
Dr. Fred Michel
Adam Mickiewicz
Dr. Daniel W. Miles
Frank Milne
Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi
Dr. Asmunn Moene
Alan Moghissi
H. Michael Mogil
Michael Monce
Lord Christopher Monckton
Des Moore
Dr. Thomas Gale Moore
Sir Patrick Moore
Alan Moran
Dr. Dick Morgan
Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan
Dr. Nils-Axel Morner
Dr. Lubos Motl
Richard Mourdock
R. John Muench
Vincent U. Muirhead
Jan Mulderink
Dr. Tad Murty
Michael J. Myers
Dr. Nasif Nahle
Robert Neff
Dr. Muriel Newman
Dr. John Nicol
David F. Noble
Gary Novak
Mr. David Nowell
Dr. James O'Brien
Peter R Odell
Peter Oliver
Dr. Cliff Ollier
Dr. Perry Ong
David Orrell
Curtis Osgood,
Nikolai Osokin
Jim Ott
David Packham
Dr. Norman J. Page
Dr. Nathan Paldor
Morgan Palmer
Dr. Garth W. Paltridge
Dan Pangburn
Mark Paquette
Donald Parkes
Arthur M. Patterson
Dr. R. Timothy Patterson
Dr. Theodore G. Pavlopoulos
Benjamin D. Pearson
James A. Peden
Dr. Benny Peiser
Dr. Al Pekarek
Dr. Hans Penner
Dr. Robert A. Perkins
Charles Perry
J.T.Rogers
Dr. Ian Plimer
Victor Pochat
Boylan Point
Daniel Joseph Pounder
Patrick Powell
Brian R. Pratt
Dr. Harry N.A. Priem
Gwyn Prins
Dr. Andreas Prokoph
Dr. Tom Quirk
Ed Rademacher
Dr. Art Raiche
VK Raina
Dr. Denis G. Rancourt
Steve Rayner
Bernie Rayno
Josef Reichholf
William E. Reifsnyder
George A. Reilly
Dr. George Reisman
Dr. Paul Reiter
Henriques Renato
Dr. Peter Ridd
Rolf Riehm
Thomas Ring
J.A.L. Robertson
Colin Robinson
Dr. Art Robinson
Dr. Alex Robson
Colonel F.P.M. Rombouts
Robert G. Roper
Dr. Arthur Rorsch
Dr. Robert Rose
Curt Rose
Robert Roseman
Dr. Hugh Ross
Dr. Kenneth Rundt
Gabriel Salas
Michael R. Salazar
Daryl Sas
Nichola Scafetta
Rob Scagel
Jeffrey P. Schaffer
Henk Schalke
Clive Schaupmeyer
Tom Scheffelin
Jerome J. Schmitt
Jack Schmitt
Dr. David W. Schnare
Dr. Chris Schoneveld
Hans Schreuder
Olaf Schuiling
Joel Schwartz
Bruce Schwoegler
Peter Sciaky
Mark Scirto
Dr. Tom V. Segalstad
Dr. Frederick Seitz
Milos Setek
Marcel Severijnen
John Shade
Dr. Vladimir Shaidurov
Dr. Gary D. Sharp
Dr. Nir Shaviv
Glen Shaw
Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen
Clinton H. Sheehan
Vedat Shehu
Richard F. Shepherd
Gary Shore
C. Robert Shoup
Topper Shutt
Alan Siddons
Paavo Siitam
Hardin Simmons
Dr. Joanne Simpson
Dr. S. Fred Singer
Dr. Rainer Six
Hajo Smit
Dr. Ron Smith
Lenny Smith
Dr. Robert Smith
Dr. G LeBlanc Smith
Dr. L. Graham Smith
George E. Smith
Dr. Joe Sobel
Dr. Willie Soon
Dr. Oleg Sorochtin
Douglas Southgate
James Spann
Glenn Speck
Dr. Roy W. Spencer
Karl Spring
Dr. Jim Sprott
Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr.
Dr. Walter Starck
Bill Steffen
Herb Stevens
Leighton Steward
Don Stewart
Dr. Peter Stilbs
Dr David Stockwell
Dr. Hans von Storch
Dr. Alex Storrs
Philip Stott
Arlin Super
Brian Sussman
Brad Sussman
John K. Sutherland
Dr. Henrik Svensmark
Dr. Gordon E. Swaters
Wojciech J. Szalecki
John Takeuchi
Dr. Elwynn Taylor
George Taylor
Dr. Mitchell Taylor
Malcolm Taylor
Uwe Tempel
Dr. Hendrik Tennekes
Heinze Thieme
Sherwood Thoele
Dick Thoenes
Mike Thompson
Tim Thornton
Dr. Wolfgang P. Thuene
Alan Titchmarch
Dr. Richard Tol
Dr. Eduardo Tonni
Anthony Trewavas
Göran Tullberg
Anton Uriarte
Dr. Brian G. Valentine
Dr. Jan Veizer
Frank Wachowski
Dr. Chris Walcek
George Waldenberger
Gösta Walin
Len Walker
Haydon Walker
Dr. James Wanliss
Dr. Fred Ward
Dr. Kevin Warwick
Kenneth E. F. Watt
Anthony Watts
Dr. Charles Wax
Dr. Gerd-Rainer Weber
Dan Webster
Jack Wedel
James Weeg
Dr. Edward J. Wegman
Rich Weiss
Dr. William L. Wells
Dr. Bruce West
Dr. David Whitehouse
Chuck F. Wiese
William Wilkinson
Stephan Wilksch
John Williams
Kevin Williams
Dr. Richard C. Willson
Dr. Ian Wilson
Dr. Terry Wimberley
Dr. Duncan Wingham
Dr. Boris Winterhalter
Bruno Wiskel
Sylvan H. Wittwer
Dr. David Wojick
Dr. Frederick Wolf
Jan Pieter van Wolfswinkel
Robert Woock
Arnold Woodruff
James Woudhuysen
Raphael Wust
Tom Wysmuller
Sun Xian
Chris Yakymyshyn
Dr. Lynwood Yarbrough
Roger Young
Dr. Gregory Young
William R. Young
Yury Zaitsev
Josef Zboril
Lev Zeleny
Dr. Miklós Zágoni
Lin Zhen-Shan
Dr. Antonio Zichichi
Raphael Wust Zichichi
Stan Zlochen
Dr. Jeff Zweerink

Art Horn

2008-12-15T14:36:00.000-08:00

Meteorologist Art Horn, currently operating The ‘Art' Of the Weather business

The list cites nothing, and that's the shortest introduction so far. Horn has actually written to the EPW according to the list.

But here's some more info:
http://www.theartofweather.com/arthorn.htm
and he has a website:
http://www.theartofweather.com/index.htm

On his FAQ page he has a topic "Is Global Warming For Real? Click here for the answer"
http://www.theartofweather.com/PageQ4.htm

There's also a news article interviewing him here where he talks about global warming:
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=2114

Arguments condensed

Climate's changed before
Global warming is good
Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Carbon dioxide concentration is a very small number
It's the sun
Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
"concerns over warming are silly since he believes the world could be in store for another little ice age."
Natural Cycles (the God Did It of arguments)
Global warming industry conspiracy

Notes:

When I found the news article and started reading it I wondered why The List hadn't cited it, as it cites many news articles for other names. My guess is because at the end of the article Horn's arguments are firmly tackled by climate scientists Dr Bill Chameides and Dr Brenda Ekwurzel:

"Ekwurzel or Chameides both discounted Horn's claim that only three percent of carbon emmisions are man-made.
"The claims are common if you haven't been trained in climate science," said Ekwurzel. "He's looking at the composition of the atmosphere and drawing conclusions without understanding all the various properties of water vapor versus carbon dioxide and so on."

Quotes:

"A self-described political moderate, Horn said he first conceived of the global warming presentation to engage with the popular topic of climate change, and he started from the premise that global warming didn't exist."

"Horn said that he wasn't alone in his beliefs about global warming, citing Web sites such as icecap.us and climatescience.org"

"In addition, Horn says, only about three percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is man-made. The amount of man-made carbon in the atmosphere, Horn says, composes less than a tenth of the total atmosphere. According to Horn, such a small percentage couldn't possibly have an effect on global climate."

Qualifications:

From the article we learn that Horn has a BSc in meteorology.

Dr. D. Bruce Merrifield

2008-12-15T12:58:00.001-08:00

Ivy League Organic Chemist Dr. D. Bruce Merrifield is a former Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the Visiting Committee for Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago.

List cites this article which contains a lot of figures and graphs:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/global_warming_and_solar_radia_1.html

Arguments condensed:

Rate of greenhouse gas rise hasn't risen since 1988 despite increased fossil fuel emissons

solar radiation, co2 and temperature closely track across time

Glacial warming caused primarily by sun and secondary feedback from rising greenhouse gas

CO2 Stopped rising in 1988?

This is what I thought the argument was when I read it first. I took another look and now think the claim is actually that co2 rise hasn't accelerated since 1988, with the argument that it should of done given increased human co2 emissions.

The 400 list quotes this part of the article:

"The current 100 year solar radiation cycle may now have reached its peak, and irradiation intensity has been observed to be declining. This might account for the very recent net cessation of emission of green house gases into the atmosphere starting about 1988, in spite of increasing generation of anthropomorphically-sourced industrial-based green house gases."

Here's another sentence of the same argument:
"Interestingly, starting about two decades ago (1988), the total increase of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere has abruptly stopped, in spite of increased burning of fossil fuels."

This does sound like it's saying the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere abruptly stopped in 1988. But the use of the word into, rather than in, could mean it's talking about the rate of increase in greenhouse gases has stopped since 1988. This explaination is far more likely given that the claim co2 stopped rising in 1988 is nuts.

The claim cites figure v, which depicts the % gain of co2 per year. But the graph only goes up to 1993. Here's a graph of the same thing but going up to 2008. Not only does it show that co2 rise has accelerated since 1988, but it also exposes how convenient it was for the article to cut the graph off in 1993. Also note that even a steady % growth rate is an exponential rise anyway.

In addition the 1988 spike was probably due to the strong El Nino in that year, just as the 1998 spike can be attributed the same. In fact emissions in the first few years of the 1990s did not rise, but were fairly level (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2005.ems), perhaps owing to the collapse of the soviet union.

So in summary is a lot wrong with the article's argument from the serious to the trivial:

CO2 data shows the argument is wrong.
Cutting off the data past 1993
Continuing to make a claim that co2 rise hasn't accelerated since 1988 despite not having the data past 1993.
Thinking 5 years of co2 data past 1988 are sufficient to determine anything significant about the trend considering the noise on the graph.
Not realising (or mentioning) the cause of the 1988 spike
Describing it as the "net cessation of emission of green house gases into the atmosphere" which betrays a lack of understanding that co2 absorption plays a role. Why not just say co2 rise has slowed or remained steady since 1988?
The phrase "anthropomorphically-sourced".

Notes:

Figure X is from JunkScience.com (this one http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.gif), printed out on paper, scanned back in and uploaded to the web article. Somewhere in that process the last 40 years of the Lean reconstruction has been lost. This is the second graph that has and end section missing, and in both the argument relied on the omission.

Figure IX is from another internet site "Global Warming:A closer look at the numbers" (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html), an webpage with a number of inaccuracies. The table itself is cited back to the "US Department of Energy", except the geocraft site has inserted the "natural additions" and "man-made additions" columns itself, and coincidentally (or not), those are the same columns that contain incorrect values.

The articles says: "The amounts of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere have increased about 1.8% per year since pre-industrial times, rising from about 280 ppmv to 383 ppmv now -- the highest in 160,000 years." probably refering to figure 2 that shows ice core data going back 160,000 years. Yet amazingly the article has missed it's own figure #1 which is the vostok graph stretching back even further, 400,000 years.

Despite a lot of errors in the article, the following explaination of glacial warming is far better than I would have thought. The author could have simply said greenhouse gases are irrelevant, but doesn't. I think maybe they have simply made a decision based on insufficient info: "The onset of each 100,000-year abrupt warming period has been coincident with emissions into the atmosphere of large amounts of both carbon dioxide and methane greenhouse gases, which absorb additional heat from the sun, a secondary warming effect. Solar radiation would appear to be the initial forcing event in which warming oceans waters release dissolved carbon dioxide, and melt methane hydrates, both of which are present in the oceans in vast quantities. Subsequent declines in radiation are associated with long cooling periods in which the green house gases then gradually disappear (are re-absorbed) into terrestrial and ocean sinks, as reflected in the data from coring the Antarctic Ice Cap and Sargasso Sea."

Dr. Cal Evans

2008-12-14T13:50:00.000-08:00

Oxford-educated Geochemist Dr. Cal Evans, a prominent researcher who has advised the Alberta Research Council, the Natural Sciences, and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and who is affiliated with the Calgary-based group Friends of Science

This is the article the list cites:

http://www.dobmagazine.nickles.com/article.asp?article=magazine/070709/MAG2007_L90001.html

Arguments condensed:

It's the sun
It's cosmic rays
Carbon dioxide appears to be a very minor factor.
Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
carbon dioxide is a very inefficient greenhouse gas
rejects water vapor feedback
Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
Mars is warming

Notes:

Accepts many glaciers are melting
Accepts the co2 rise since the industrial revolution, although preindustrial figure slightly wrong, and says ocean warming is the cause "at least in part" of the co2 rise.
Accepts that sunspot activity on its own cannot account for the full swings in global temperature (although confusingly the article cites Habibullo Abdussamatov as claiming evidence that "current global warming on both Mars and Earth is being caused by a long-term increase in solar irradiation")

Quotes:

"The slight increase in ground temperature has no parallel in the troposphere. If atmospheric CO2 concentration was actually a significant factor in global warming, it stands to reason that atmospheric temperatures would rise but that hasn't happened."

"To date, no one has been able to identify a link between higher CO2 concentrations and greater volumes of atmospheric water vapour"

BIO info:

(this is from the article, unfortunately I can find no other references at this time)

-former head of Esso's research arm
-appointed executive vice-president of Canada's largest upstream petroleum producer in 1980
-worked for Pemoco Ltd, "Oil And Gas Field Services"

Luc Debontridder / Belgian Weather Institute

2008-12-14T13:34:00.000-08:00

Belgian weather institute’s (RMI) August 2007 study dismisses decisive role of CO2 in warming

Another one that shouldn't be on the list.
See:
http://jules-klimaat.blogspot.com/2008/12/inhofes-650-list-misrepresents-belgian.html

Dr. Elwynn Taylor

2008-12-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

"Iowa State Climatologist Dr. Elwynn Taylor, Professor of Meteorology at Iowa State University and a former project scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, expressed skepticism of man-made climate fears."

The list cites this article:
http://ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=3177&q=&page=all

Arguments condensed:

co2 rise part human caused and part natural (no specific proportions given)
co2 is a greenhouse gas, and rising co2 will cause warming
noone knows how much of recent warming man has contributed.
natural cycles have produced similar warming in the past and he finds it plausible they could explain recent warming.
people are exaggerating manmade contribution to global warming when it isn't certain.
Exageration is bad because if man's contribution to global warming turns out to be less then people will feel misled and won't do anything.
We should take action to stop greenhouse gases rising because we're not really sure what it will do.

Quote Mining

The list quotes part of the article:

"Taylor accepts that global warming is occurring. But he says the extent to which man is contributing to its acceleration is debatable...he says the popular theories floated by the likes of Al Gore may be slightly overcooked."

The ellipses are not part of the article. In fact the article reads (bold text is the part which the list has not quoted):

Taylor accepts that global warming is occurring. But he says the extent to which man is contributing to its acceleration is debatable. That said, Taylor has obvious concerns about the probable effects of greenhouse gases contributing to the warming of the Earth's atmosphere, and hence triggering increasingly erratic weather.

There is a lot of text following this before the rest of the list's quote. Here's where it picks back up, again bolded text is the parts of the article the list does not quote:

Taylor doesn't pretend to have all the answers, though, and he says the popular theories floated by the likes of Al Gore may be slightly overcooked. "I think people are exaggerating the idea that all of the temperature change occurring on Earth is being caused by this," he says. "They shouldn't be saying that. Because pretty soon we could discover that these things are only partially true. And then people, feeling misled won't do anything. And in fact we should do something about this great change we're causing, if for no other reason than it's not a good idea to change the environment like this when we're not really sure what it will do.

Quotes

"The growth of the hole has been curtailed because—and this is a vastly underrated example of global cooperation—human beings have stopped using the Freon gas that eats away at the protective atmospheric stratum"

The point that Taylor makes with his ozone story is not, "Hey people, the ozone hole is our fault, so global warming probably is, too," but rather, "Hey people, human beings have cooperated and stopped the ozone hole from getting worse, so we just might be able to stop global warming from getting worse, too."

Taylor says he's not sure what the impact will ultimately be, but he's rather certain that serious checks need to be put in place immediately. "There's no question that carbon dioxide is up," he says. "There is little question that it is up substantially and it looks like human activity has about doubled the natural effect during the past couple of centuries. This is a significant thing. We probably shouldn't let our carbon dioxide balance continue to get off kilter like this."

"but what I do know is that we had a global cooling period from around the middle 1800s to around 1900, global warming from 1900 to around 1940, global cooling again from 1940 to 1972, and global warming since 1972. Thermometers have measured this for us."

"Fifty years and half the polar ice sheet is gone," Taylor generalizes. "If it continues to melt at this rate you'll be able to sign up for a cruise to the North Pole in late summer 35 years from now."

Dr. Fred Ward

2008-12-14T12:04:00.000-08:00

"Meteorologist Dr. Fred Ward, who earned his PhD in Meteorology from MIT and is a former meteorologist for Boston TV"

The list cites this article Dr. Fred Ward authored:
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Fred+Ward%3A+Don

This is disputing a figure concerning the amount of warming in the New England over the past 30 years. He also mentions global cooling in the 70s, makes an argument against temperature proxies and argues not to use anecdotal weather events when temperature records are available.

However in a subsequent article dated April 2008 he writes:

"These data should not be interpreted to mean the globe, or New England, is not warming, or that we are not influencing the present and future climate. There are solid scientific reasons for expecting that adding CO2 to our atmosphere, by burning fossil fuels, will increase the global temperature."
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Fred+Ward%3a+New+England+winters+have+cooled+in+past+decade&articleId=7e9416bf-55e0-4ecd-8e1b-31a77446700f

So I would have to say his name on the 400 list (and I assume he'll be on the 650 list) is questionable.

There is even a comment by a skeptic on the 2nd article attacking Ward for thinking rising co2 causes warming:

"Fred Ward is wrong about CO2. There is no physical process that would allow CO2 to affect temperature except to the extent that increasing CO2 increases plant growth which reduces solar heating because plants convert solar energy into the energy in the chemical bonds that hold complex carbon molecules together."

BIO info:
Ph.D. in meteorology

Mike Thompson

2008-12-13T10:41:00.000-08:00

"Chief Meteorologist Mike Thompson of Kansas City’s Fox TV Channel 4 is a former U.S. Navy meteorologist who holds the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Seal of Approval and is a certified Broadcast Meteorologist"

The list cites an entry on his blog, although his comments in the comments section are more revealing:
http://community.myfoxkc.com/blogs/wxteam4/2008/04/14/Not_Over_Yet

Arguments condensed:

"There have been a number of scientists who have lost grant money simply because they had a dissenting voice over global warming"
"The truth is that only 3.5% of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from human sources"
"The warming is coincident with the rise in solar irradiance since the mid 1850s"
"More and more climate scientists are admitting that the sun has played a major...if not the only...role in the warming that we have experienced"
"If you look at charts of CO2 content over the past centuries, you will find there were times when the CO2 concentrations were at or above 7,000 ppm"

Notes:

Claims that "today we're at 360 ppm" co2.
The list claims "Thompson dissented from the view of a man-made climate crisis in 2008", yet a 2006 blog entry makes it clear he didn't accept manmade global warming back then either: http://community.myfoxkc.com/blogs/wxteam4/2006/09/25/USING_SCIENCE_TO_SCARE
The 2006 blog entry contains a link to JunkScience.com, which (conicidentally?) contains the claim that only 3.5% of co2 emissions are human caused.
In the 2006 blog entry he says "The key to understanding what is true, and what is not…is to take time to learn as much about the subject as possible. I cannot claim to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination."

Richard Mourdock

2008-12-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

"Geologist Richard Mourdock, a licensed professional geologist and former field geologist who now serves as an environmental and energy consultant"

The list cites this news article:
http://media.www.indianastatesman.com/media/storage/paper929/news/2008/04/25/Campus/Students.Meet.State.Treasurer-3349761.shtml

Only a small part of it contains Richard Mourdock's comments on global warming.

Arguments condensed:

Notes:

"Mourdock explained that humans aren't the cause of global warming and that it's something bigger in the universe, such as the sun."
"Global caps in the last 15 years receded until last year on Mars, but what do we have in common with Mars? Last time I checked, only the sun."
"With a graduate degree in geology, Mourdock said his studies have convinced him that global warming is not happening."

BIO info:

http://www.richardmourdock.com/aboutrichard.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mourdock

MSc in Geology, 1975
BSc in Natural Systems (combined degree in Biology, Geology, and Chemistry), 1973

He graduated in 1975 after which he moved through various roles:

Field geologist with a coal company.
Senior Geologist with an oil company.
Vice President of a coal company.
President of a coal mining subsidiary.
"2001 to present", "Self-employed as a private consultant in the environmental and energy businesses"

Dr. Phil Chapman

2008-12-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

"Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut, served as staff physicist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),"

Inclusion on the list seems to be based on this April 23rd 2008 article he authored:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html

Arguments condensed:

0.7C cooling since 2007
We might be facing global cooling so should focus less on global warming
Close correlation between variations in sunspot cycle and Earth's climate
"reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming"

Notes:

Doesn't mention the La Nina, possibly is unaware of it. This is probably the biggest weakness with the argument as it relies on the cause of the cooling being unknown and so potentially catastrophic.
Proposes a solution to global cooling: "We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun"
Another solution which indicates he does accept the greenhouse effect: "We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits."
Claims that "All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007", but this article was written in April 2008 and by then temperature in HadCRUT had already started rising again: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2006
Claims "the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770."
Prediction: "We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades."

The article was rebutted by a following article by David Karoly:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23612876-11949,00.html

BIO info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Chapman

"From 1956 to 1957, he worked for Philips Electronics Industries Proprietary Limited in Sydney, Australia. He then spent 15 months in Antarctica with the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE), for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) as an auroral/radio physicist. The work required that he spend most of the winter with one other man at a remote camp."

There do not appear to be any published papers or evidence of work in the field of climate since then.