A little note on a geologist's global warming claim

Ok, so I was taking an astronomy tour with this really nice old guy in Kaotunu, near Whitianga in the Coromandel. He’s got a sweet telescope set up for observing the night sky and for a cheap $40 each, me and my girlfriend got a nice tour of various sky features, including nebulae, carbon stars, star-forming clusters and more. It was a really lovely evening and we all had a lovely discussion over tea and cake. I highly recommend it.

Anyway later in the evening, after we’d had a few conversations we got to the subject of Ken Ring (what was I thinking?). “I disagree with everything the man says,” he starts, “apart from Global Warming”.

Uh-oh. He proceeds to show me a paper he had published in the New Zealand Geological Society newsletter. He took me through a few points, many of which are covered by the rebuttal by NIWA working scientists in the next issue of the newsletter. Of course he didn’t mention his paper was rebutted.

He made a series of points, and armed with much knowledge on the matter I was able to knock most of them back immediately - with the exception of a comment about UV sun output covered here. He tried to tell me that CO₂ increases followed warming, not preceded it; I both pointed out how that was a known consequence of the consensus understanding of past warming and also a false dilemma. He showed me the graph showing temperature correlating with Sunspots. While not precisely the same, you can apply the rebuttal from Crock of the Week (skip to 7:08) to it; because the graph stops at 1980 or so. He talked about Antarctica gaining Ice Mass, and I was able to say, “that’s no longer the case, GRACE data shows Antarctica is losing overall Ice Mass

But best of all, in our parting moments, he said, “you have to be able to keep an open mind, and change your opinion”.

My response?

I already have.”

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