Farnortherner,

Demanding my “profession” is an appeal to authority fallacy. Science isn’t true or false depending on who cites it. The Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, NASA, NOAA - their tide-gauge data and satellite records don’t change if I’m a teacher, a tradie, or a taxi driver.

That’s the whole point of empirical evidence.

On the 1874 “hoax,” you’ve admitted it was satire. Good - so we can park that. It’s irrelevant to climate science, which rests on lab physics from Tyndall (1859) and Arrhenius (1896), long before Mead or modern politics.

On Mead: even if her Samoan fieldwork was contested, that has nothing to do with whether CO2 absorbs infrared radiation (measured in labs, confirmed by satellites). That’s a genetic fallacy - dismissing science by smearing an unrelated part of someone’s career. Climate science predates Mead by a century and has been replicated endlessly since.

On Plimer and Ridd: they’re contrarians, not the mainstream. Plimer’s Heaven + Earth was reviewed by Prof. Ian Enting, who documented “hundreds of errors, misquotations and contradictions.” Ridd’s GWPF pieces aren’t peer-reviewed science, they’re lobby group pamphlets.

Meanwhile, AIMS, GBRMPA, and CSIRO - scientists who actually survey the reef system-wide - publish open datasets showing repeated mass bleaching and long-term stress. That’s where the empirical weight lies.

So no, sidestepping into careers, Samoa, or sceptic books doesn’t answer the evidence. The reef isn’t “fine.” It’s being hit harder and more often, and pretending otherwise by waving Plimer around doesn’t change that.

So John D believes a couple of scientists messing about with test tubes in strictly limited archaic conditions back in the mid 19 century provided "empirical evidence" that CO2 is the main driver of climate change. ROTFLMAO as the kids would say.
Even today's most ambitious scientists with their hands out for government funds can't replicate the hugely variable conditions of our open atmosphere and the influences of global orbit variations, ocean currents, movement of the Poles, undersea volcanoes and vents, water vapour (a much more effective greenhouse gas as stated by NASA) and other natural cyclical factors that result in climate always changing.

JD says: "And the evidence against anthropogenic climate change? Zip."

As I've stated repeatedly there is heaps of documented work by scientists NOT dependent on government funding or climate models which give a desired (false) result. Here is one:
A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO₂-Global Warming Hypothesis: Empirical Evidence Contradicts IPCC Models and Solar Forcing Assumptions
SCC-Publishing
Michelets vei 8 B
1366 Lysaker, Norway
ISSN: 2703-9072
Correspondence:
cohler59@gmail.com
Vol. 5.1 (2025)
pp. 13 - 28
Grok 3 beta1*
, Jonathan Cohler2, David Legates3, Franklin Soon4, Willie Soon5
1xAI, USA
2Cohler & Associates, Inc., USA
3Retired Professor, University of Delaware, USA
4Marblehead High School, USA
5Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science, Hungary

https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Grok-3-Review-V5-1.pdf

Mikko2,

So this is the big “new evidence” you’re leaning on? A paper whose first listed author is literally an AI chatbot - “Grok 3 beta” - not a climate scientist.

That alone should tell readers everything.

In proper science, AI tools can be acknowledged (like software or statistical packages), but they are never authors, because they cannot take responsibility for data, methods, or conclusions. Listing a chatbot as first author is a red flag that this isn’t mainstream science, it’s advocacy dressed up as scholarship.

Then look at the rest of the author list: David Legates (a Trump appointee who’s been aligned with denial think tanks for years) and Willie Soon (long documented as fossil-fuel–funded). One co-author is from Marblehead High School. That’s not “independent science,” it’s a rogues’ gallery of professional contrarians with a chatbot on top.

And where is it published? Science of Climate Change (SCC-Publishing, Norway) - a vanity outlet not indexed in Web of Science or Scopus. Real science goes through established journals where it’s independently refereed, not pushed through boutique websites with no oversight.

As for the content, it just recycles the same tired lines: “CO2 is only 4% of the carbon cycle,” “short residence time,” “models are unreliable.” All of these have been answered for decades:

That “4%” is precisely the problem - natural fluxes balance, our extra 4% is what accumulates and drives CO2 from 280 ppm to 420 ppm.

Residence time isn’t molecule turnover, it’s system adjustment. A large fraction of excess CO2 lingers for centuries.

Multiple independent datasets (NASA, NOAA, HadCRU, JMA) all converge on the same warming trend, even with different methods.

So no, this isn’t a peer-reviewed refutation of climate science. It’s an unindexed vanity paper, co-signed by a chatbot, fronted by long-time contrarians, recycling arguments that have been answered again and again.

If that’s what you have to fall back on, it says more about the weakness of your case than it does about the science.

The evidence against climate change?

Still zip.

Yeah right JD just like you claimed "empiracle evidence" about CO2 driving climate change was uncovered in archaic laboratories back in the 1800s.
You totally ignored this fact: "Even today's most ambitious scientists with their hands out for government funds can't replicate the hugely variable conditions of our open atmosphere and the influences of global orbit variations, ocean currents, movement of the Poles, undersea volcanoes and vents, water vapour (a much more effective greenhouse gas as stated by NASA) and other natural cyclical factors that result in climate always changing..."
I remember writing an article about 20 years ago quoting a Victorian man who posted a statutory declaration promising to pay $10,000 to the first person who could provide him with the same empiracle evidence you claim has existed for almost a century.
The result? As you say, Zip.
Maybe it's in an account earning interest...

Mikko2,

//A couple of scientists messing about with test tubes in the 1800s isn’t empirical proof.//

That "messing about" was John Tyndall’s 1859 spectroscopy experiments showing CO2 absorbs infrared. That’s physics, not tinkering. Today, satellites detect those same absorption bands in the atmosphere. Lab -> observation -> replication.

That’s empirical.

//You can’t replicate the whole atmosphere in a lab.//

Nobody claims you can. Nor is that necessary.

Labs establish the mechanism; global measurements confirm it. Surface radiation budgets, ocean heat uptake, and satellite data all show the same signal. That’s how physics and atmospheric science fit together.

//Natural cycles like orbits, volcanoes, currents, water vapour drive climate.//

They all matter, and they’re already accounted for.

Orbital cycles are on 20,000+ year scales and would be cooling us. Volcanoes cool, not warm. Ocean cycles shuffle heat but don’t add energy. And yes, water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas - but it’s a feedback, not a driver. It amplifies the warming initiated by CO2, it doesn’t start it. NASA makes that clear.

//Nobody has ever claimed the $10,000 prize for proof.//

That’s no different to Kent Hovind’s "$250,000 prove evolution" challenge. It was rigged so no evidence would ever count, because the judge decides what "proof" is.

It’s theatre, not science.

Meanwhile, the real evidence doesn’t sit in prize funds - it’s published and replicated in open journals, by multiple independent teams.

And let’s not forget:

- Tyndall measured CO2’s absorption in 1859.
- Arrhenius calculated the effect in 1896.
- Satellites since the 1970s directly observe CO2’s fingerprint in the atmosphere.
- Argo floats show oceans steadily taking up the excess heat.

That’s empirical. That’s physics, observations, and replication across decades.

So no, it’s not "Zip." What’s zip is the evidence against CO2-driven warming. Which is why contrarian outlets keep offering gimmicky challenges - they’re great theatre, but they collapse under the same scientific standards everyone else has to meet.

John D - And climate will always change despite human's puny efforts and the hugely expensive "renewables" (unreliables) scam pushed by our Labor government.
You recently posted:
"Mikko2,
So this is the big “new evidence” you’re leaning on? A paper whose first listed author is literally an AI chatbot - “Grok 3 beta” - not a climate scientist. .."

Well, If you checked you would see that so-called climate scientists also use AI, as do organisations such as NASA, the IPCC and our CSIRO:
"AI Overview
Yes, the CSIRO actively uses, conducts research on, and partners on artificial intelligence (AI) projects to solve national challenges and benefit industry and the community. With one of the largest applied AI capabilities in the world, CSIRO employs AI to address issues like bushfire management, climate change, agricultural productivity, and cybersecurity.
AI Overview
Yes, climate scientists widely use AI to improve climate modeling and predictions, analyze vast datasets for patterns in climate and weather, and assess climate change impacts. AI enhances computational efficiency in forecasting, allowing for faster and cheaper predictions than traditional methods. It also helps develop climate action tools for policymakers, such as systems that track policy effectiveness, though challenges remain regarding model transparency and bias"
So it's ok for organisations and scientists pushing their climate catastrophe agenda to use AI, but not for independent scientists with a contrary view!
Yeah, right.