Global Warming - us, or <sinister background music> something else?

[Manxman]

In summary, if you haven't go time to read this story in full:
1) global warming is happening;
2) it's cyclical....not human.

Feck, imagine what the greenies will say when we slip into the next cooling cycle? "Burn more coal/buy more SUVs/buy more cows (delete as appropriate)", "China is the earth's saviour".

Believe what ya like...I happen to think that this guy is at least as credible as all of the other so called experts on this subject.

Foremost Weather Scientist Mocks Gore Film
A pioneer in seasonal hurricane forecasts says the theory former Vice President Al Gore advanced to help him share a Nobel Peace Prize was "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works. "A pioneer in seasonal hurricane forecasts says the theory former Vice President Al Gore advanced to help him share a Nobel Peace Prize was "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works. "Dr. William Gray, one of the world's foremost meteorologists, last week told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth. "We're brainwashing our children," said Dr. Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie ["An Inconvenient Truth"] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous. "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing," he added. Mr. Gore and the United Nations climate panel shared the award. His film has also won several awards, including an Academy Award. Dr. Gray, however, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place. That same cycle, he said, meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years. "We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was" Dr Gray said. Alternate periods of global warming and cooling have appeared throughout the history of measured weather patterns, Dr. Gray said, citing statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed. "The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," he said. "It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."(c) 2007 Newsroom.

Make sure your kids get both sides of the story before making up their minds.

[98tls]

If you look at the last few recipients of said prize its obvious its become a crock of shite,remember the dictator and that silly bitch that supposedly watched her brother starve to death but then he turned up alive and very well thank you in New York.

[Swoop]

Where's the option for "it is another method for the UN to tax the crap out of everyone and make vast amounts of profit for themselves"?
Power games.
"Scary monster" - "We'll save you - give us money and power to fix it".

[Winston001]

Where's the option for "it is another method for the UN to tax the crap out of everyone and make vast amounts of profit for themselves"?
Power games.
"Scary monster" - "We'll save you - give us money and power to fix it".

Oh goody, the old conspiracy theory once again. Yep, there is a cabal of wealthy secretive men (no women allowed) who dream up scary scenarios just to make money from the proles.

In fact they are so powerful they can persuade thousands of scientists in places as diverse as CSIRO, CRIs, and NIWA to falsify data and come up with fake global warming research.

Mine eyes have been opened.... :gob:

[Deano]

I'm dubious. Remember the millenium bug and how many computer consultant's made a shitload ?

If ice ages are cyclic, isn't it logical that warming is also ?

[Mr Merde]

I'm dubious. Remember the millenium bug and how many computer consultant's made a shitload ?

If ice ages are cyclic, isn't it logical that warming is also ?


Ssssh,

Dont buck the trend. You may finish up being burnt at the stake for heresy in you make further observations of this ilk.

One must just swallow all we are told because the people in white coats getting big grants do know better than us.

[Swoop]

I'm dubious. Remember the millenium bug and how many computer consultant's made a shitload ?

If ice ages are cyclic, isn't it logical that warming is also ?
Apparently not in Invercargill.

[The Pastor]

the internet is not a big truck, its a seris of tubes!

[Bullitt]

There was a post on here awhile back that had a link to a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

The link dont seem to be working anymore. But if you get the chance I recommend you view it. I wish it was as well known as an inconvenient truth, at least its made by Scientists.

[Romeo]

Don't forget tax-free carbon credit trading between the multinationals and governments :niceone:

[The Pastor]

with all this carbon you'd think carbon fiber prices would drop, but noooooo

[Swoop]

There was a post on here awhile back that had a link to a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

The link dont seem to be working anymore. But if you get the chance I recommend you view it. I wish it was as well known as an inconvenient truth, at least its made by Scientists.
Something similar (http://iceagenow.com/).

[Manxman]

Where's the option for "it is another method for the UN to tax the crap out of everyone and make vast amounts of profit for themselves"?
Power games.
"Scary monster" - "We'll save you - give us money and power to fix it".

Ah, yes...well spotted. That - of course - is the hidden agenda part of this whole bullcrap sensation to be foisted upon us.

[Swoop]

Ah, yes...well spotted. That - of course - is the hidden agenda part of this whole bullcrap sensation to be foisted upon us.
Australia is the most sensible of the nations. NOT signing up to the kyoto taxation scheme, BUT taking active measures to become "greener and friendlier to the environment".
China + USA = :nono:

NZ = like a dog being thrown a bone, instant reaction that the UN knew would respond to...

Go the Ozzies!

[James Deuce]

I'm dubious. Remember the millenium bug and how many computer consultant's made a shitload ?

If ice ages are cyclic, isn't it logical that warming is also ?

We started working on Y2k at Telecom in 1992. I didn't make "shitloads". It WAS an issue, but people did their job plus little bits here and there to make sure that irritating things didn't happen to people.

People forget things like Barclays losing nearly 2 billion pounds in Credit Card transactions. Barclays did nothing at all about Y2K and everything from their call centres to their electronic transactions stopped working until well engineered and tested patches were applied to their credit card systems within 48 hours of that date change.

I sound like a stuck record, but it is irritating that people continue to parrot the myth that because "nothing" happened during Y2K then there obviously wasn't a problem. Geeks worked their arses off for the better part of a decade testing and fixing. The testing didn't uncover a lot of problems, but we fixed or developed solutions that were designed to be transparent and shared.

For those who still give a hoot, the Y2k ramifications are still with us for 2008. The year 2000 wasn't supposed to have been a leap year. Online software modifications were required as early as 1996 for some Cobol based systems as a result and that leap year issue flows through until 2008 for some long forgotten reason.

But I agree with your reasoning about cyclic cooling and warming phases.

[Xile]

*ahem*

Earth is living moments of warming and cooling by cycles since it exists. If I remember well, it happen about every 15000-30000 years (but im really not sure was a while ago when i learnt it). It is normal to have periods of warming and other of cooling, as glaciation periods etc.
However, the action of humans is visible in the sense that we accelerate the speed of the period of warming we are living.
And this except, having a hole in the ozone layer is the only and alone action of humans. And this is resulting in lot of bad consequences "en cascade" (dunno whats the english word :P)

I think as well that Al Gore is certainly not the most qualified to talk about these things, but he had the advantage to have moved politics' arses and open eyes to some people about caring of environment (in general). And coming from Paris, I appreciate the fresh and pur air of New Zealand and hate your fucking bad sun too :p

[James Deuce]

And this except, having a hole in the ozone layer is the only and alone action of humans. And this is resulting in lot of bad consequences "en cascade" (dunno whats the english word :P)



That's a big stinky lie, if you'll pardon the language.

How do you make O3? You ionise O2. What do you need to ionise something? Electromagnetism.

Sol's normal period of Sunspot activity is an 11 year cycle, observed and reliably documented since Galileo, Brahe, and Copernicus turned their hairy medieval eyes to the heavens.

We missed two cycles from the late 60s through to the early 90, conveniently while we bunged comms satellites in LOE. Anyone remember the drama a couple of years ago when the bSykb satellite network went boom when that Sunspot cycle reasserted itself and a nice big solar storm took it out as well as a number of relay satellites? No?

To make ozone in the upper atmosphere you need regular solar flares to ionise O2 into O3. It has long been recognised that the cfc thing was a myth, that that particular molecule was too big to rise through the atmosphere to the ozone layer and maintain its chemical bonds.

Guess what? After a couple of years of decent solar activity the ozone hole is starting shrink. It's the smallest it's been for a decade this year.

People's focus on Earth as a standalone system is blinding them to external stimuli our atmosphere is under. Our issues aren't just generated on Earth by us.

[Ocean1]

There was a post on here awhile back that had a link to a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

The link dont seem to be working anymore. But if you get the chance I recommend you view it. I wish it was as well known as an inconvenient truth, at least its made by Scientists.

Yes, interesting that it's vanished from various video sites, yet "an inconvenient truth" is everywhere. Still, try this: http://en.sevenload.com/videos/ha4PoKY/The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle

And some wurds about the documentary: http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com/

[devnull]

Another link that points out the flaws in Gore's film (can't call it a documentary, 'coz those are usually factual)
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/

[James Deuce]

I think the greatest environmental threat we face is dihydrogen monoxide. Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there.

Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

[MisterD]

Hah. Al Gore's film is just a way of giving his political career a boost (bloody successful too eh?). Perhaps in future we'll have rock stars making documentaries to boost their careers rather than playing those charity gigs...oi! Bono! Noooo!

[Badjelly]

I have never seen such a load of willfully ignorant rubbish in one place. It's all a conspiracy, the scientists are making big bucks off global warming alarmism, Al Gore is fat, whatever. It's not the fact that people don't know that bothers me, it's that they want not to know.

The Global Warming Swindle *was* a swindle. The producers falsified graphs because the the real data didn't fit what they wanted to show. The sun does affect climate (obviously), but it doesn't explain the warming of the last 30 years.

Re the first post, Bill Gray (who I studied under at Colorado State University in the 1980s) is talking just about the hurricane-climate change link. The science there is unsettled. The basic science behind greenhouse gases and anthropogenic global warming is not.

I've heard them all: there's global warming on Mars; the satellites don't show warming; CO2 is an effect not a cause; it's been cooling since 1998. Rubbish.

[ZeroIndex]

Where's the option for "it is another method for the UN to tax the crap out of everyone and make vast amounts of profit for themselves"?
Power games.
"Scary monster" - "We'll save you - give us money and power to fix it".

I'm telling you... ManBearPig is real... I'm super duper sereal! Unless you support me, he's gonna get you, he's gonna get all of us!

[MSTRS]

Oh goody, the old conspiracy theory once again. Yep, there is a cabal of wealthy secretive men ....

How will we know if (when?) the ShadowMen knock on your door? We need to be able to protect ourselves. Should we all head for the Ureweras while we still can?

[vifferman]

It doesn't matter what we think. 'They' have decided "global climate change" (they've changed the name so they can hedge their bets) is a reality, and so now everything's geared towards carbon credits, electric cars, biofuels, solar panels, and a whole bunch of other nonsense.

Personally (not that it matters), I think that based on my own research, and 6 years of Earth Sciences at university (including paleoclimatology), "global climate change" is a bit of a beat-up and bandwagon, and it's rather arrogant to think we can have much of an impact on weather patterns, given the largely poorly understood weather mechanisms, the short period of accurate data gathering, and the effect of 'natural' mechanisms that far outweigh those due to human activity. However, I do agree that activities like merrily burning fossil fuels, deforestation etc are not good, and anything that acts as a catalyst to change this is good. But not if it's silly.
F'rinstance: the Greenies love solar panels. Solar panels are EXTREMELY inefficient, and take something like nine times the amount of energy to manufacture as they produce in their lifetime. Useful yes (in some circumstances), but ultimately very silly.
Biofuels? Good, if the sums add up. Pointless and silly if they lead to people starving or more energy being used in their production than digging some dinosaur spooge out of the ground.
The dumbest thing is our Gummint falling over backwards to appear green, when we have an appalling record of pollution and waste, are hopeless at recycling, and countries like Japan, the US and China are busily devouring fossil fuels and polluting at such an enormous rate that us fucking up the economy to be good is pointless, idiotic and hypocritical.

[Street Gerbil]

In summary, if you haven't go time to read this story in full:
1) global warming is happening;
2) it's cyclical....not human.

Feck, imagine what the greenies will say when we slip into the next cooling cycle?
They will undoubtedly credit their green ways for that and will herald themselves as saviors of humankind. On the other hand, now that I am thinking about it, their activism is actually beneficial since it will preserve more fossil fuels for the global cooling time when it will actually make a difference.

[Badjelly]

This blog post and the resulting discussion has some good stuff:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/many-factors/

I especially like this comment:


So let’s see. We have two potential explanations for modern
climate change: greenhouse gases or increasing solar irradiance.
Simple physics tells us that either one would produce a warming
effect. We know with very high confidence that GHGs are in fact
increasing, but that for several decades at least, TSI [total solar irradiance] isn’t.

As if that weren’t enough, the observed changes — greatest warming
in winter, at night, and at high latitudes, accompanied by cooling
of the stratosphere — is *exactly* what would be predicted by GHGs
and *exactly the opposite* of what would be predicted by solar.

A lot of the noise from the “skeptic” side seems to focus on
haggling over minutiae while studiously avoiding the simple and
obvious.

and this one

Bottom line, if something other than GHGs just happens to be
causing a pattern of warming that exactly mimics what we’d expect
from GHGs (warmer at night, at high latitudes, and in the winter;
colder in the stratosphere) … then you also need to explain how
GHGs mysteriously *aren’t* providing the radiative forcing that
simple physics says they should.

[devnull]

The only "simple" thing seems to be the posters Mark.
How about this (Vincent Gray is an expert reviewer for the UN Panel on Climate Change):



I have been an "Expert Reviewer" for the IPCC right from the start and I have submitted a very large number of comments on their drafts. It has recently been revealed that I submitted 1,898 comments on the Final Draft of the current Report. Over the period I have made an intensive study of the data and procedures used by IPCC contributors throughout their whole study range. I have a large library of reprints, books and comments and have published many comments of my own in published papers, a book, and in my occasional newsletter the current number being 157.

I began with a belief in scientific ethics. that scientists would answer queries honestly, that scientific argument would take place purely on the basis of facts, logic and established scientific and mathematical principles.

Right from the beginning I have had difficulty with this procedure. Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely.

Over the years, as I have learned more about the data and procedures of the IPCC I have found increasing opposition by them to providing explanations, until I have been forced to the conclusion that for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound. Resistance to all efforts to try and discuss or rectify these problems has convinced me that normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic. and was part of the organisation from the very beginning. I therefore consider that the IPCC is fundamentally corrupt. The only "reform" I could envisage, would be its abolition.

I wonder whether I could summarize briefly some of the reasons why the scientific procedures followed by the IPCC are fundamentally unsound. Some of you may have received more detail if you received my recent NZClimate Truth Newsletters.

The two main "scientific" claims of the IPCC are the claim that "the globe is warming": and "Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible". Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed..

To start with the "global warming" claim. It is based on a graph showing that "mean annual global temperature" has been increasing.

This claim fails from two fundamental facts

1. No average temperature of any part of the earth's surface, over any period, has ever been made.

How can you derive a "global average" when you do not even have a single "local" average?

What they actually use is the procedure used from 1850, which is to make one measurement a day at the weather station from a maximum/minimum thermometer. The mean of these two is taken to be the average. No statistician could agree that a plausible average can be obtained this way. The potential bias is more than the claimed "global warming.

2. The sample is grossly unrepresentative of the earth's surface, mostly near to towns. No statistician could accept an "average" based on such a poor sample. It cannot possibly be "corrected"

It is of interest that frantic efforts to "correct" for these uncorrectable errors have produced mean temperature records for the USA and China which show no overall "warming" at all. If they were able to "correct" the rest, the same result is likely

And, then after all, there has been no "global warming", however measured, for eight years, and this year is all set to be cooling. As a result it is now politically incorrect to speak of "global warming". The buzzword is "Climate Change" which is still blamed on the non-existent "warming"

The other flagship set of data promoted by the IPCC are the figures showing the increase in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. They have manipulated the data in such a way to persuade us (including most scientists) that this concentration is constant throughout the atmosphere. In order to do this they refrain from publishing any results which they do not like, and they have suppressed no less than 90,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide made in the last 150 years. Some of these were made by Nobel Prizewinners and all were published in the best scientific Journals. Ernst Beck has actually published on the net all the actual papers.

Why did they do it? It is very subtle, brush up your maths. In order to calculate the radiative effects of carbon dioxide you have to use a formula involving a logarithm. When such a formula is applied to a set of figures the low figures have a greater weight in the final average radiation.The figure obtained from the so-called "background figure" is therefore biased in an upwards direction.

My main complaint with the IPCC is in the methods used to "evaluate" computer models. Proper "validation" of models should involve proved evidence that they are capable of future prediction within the range required, and to a satisfactory level of accuracy. Without this procedure no self-respecting computer engineer would dare to make use of a model for prediction.

No computer climate model has ever been tested in this way, so none should be used for prediction. They sort of accept this by never permitting the use of the term "prediction", only "projection". But they then go ahead predicting anyway.

There is a basic logical principle that a correlation, however convincing, is not proof of causation. Most scientists pay at least lip service to this principle, but its widespread lack of acceptance by the general public have led to IPCC to explore it as one of their methods of ":evaluating" models.

The models are so full of inaccurately known parameters and equations that it is comparatively easy to "fudge" an approximate fit to the few climate sequences that might respond. This sort of evidence is the main feature of most of the current promotional lectures.

The most elaborate of all their "evaluation" techniques is far more dubious. Since they have failed to show that any models are actually capable of prediction, they have decided to "evaluate" them by asking the opinions of those who originate them, people with a financial interest in their success. This has become so complex that many have failed to notice that it has no scientific basis, but is just an assembly of the "gut feelings" of self-styled "experts". It has been developed to a comples web of "likelihoods", all of which are assigned fake "probability" levels.

By drawing attention to these obvious facts I have now found myself persona non grata with most of my local professional associations, Surely, I am questioning the integrity of these award-winning scientific leaders of the local science establishment. When you get down to it, that is what is involved.

I somehow understood that the threshold had been passed when I viewed "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Yes, we have to face it. The whole process is a swindle, The IPCC from the beginning was given the license to use whatever methods would be necessary to provide "evidence" that carbon dioxide increases are harming the climate, even if this involves manipulation of dubious data and using peoples' opinions instead of science to "prove" their case.

The disappearance of the IPCC in disgrace is not only desirable but inevitable. The reason is, that the world will slowly realise that the "predictions" emanating from the IPCC will not happen. The absence of any "global warming" for the past eight years is just the beginning. Sooner or later all of us will come to realise that this organisation, and the thinking behind it, is phony. Unfortunately severe economic damage is likely to be done by its influence before that happens.

[Usarka]

Some one has to be wrong. I'm not a scientist so i dont have the answer. What i do know is that we have two options. If we treat it as real and it turns out to be wrong then we've wasted a lot of time and money. If we get the other option wrong then we are stuffed.

There are also plenty (if not more) experts who say it is real, so why do you chose to believe the ones that say it isn't. Do you have enough expert knowledge yourself to refute the other point of view yourself or are you relying on your chosen experts to provide you their version of the truth?

What thought process do people use to come to the conclusion that one "expert" is right and another is wrong? The stakes are high - is your reasoning sound enough to bet all our chips?

[Ocean1]

Some one has to be wrong. I'm not a scientist so i dont have the answer. What i do know is that we have two options. If we treat it as real and it turns out to be wrong then we've wasted a lot of time and money. If we get the other option wrong then we are stuffed.

There are also plenty (if not more) experts who say it is real, so why do you chose to believe the ones that say it isn't. Do you have enough expert knowledge yourself to refute the other point of view yourself or are you relying on your chosen experts to provide you their version of the truth?

What thought process do people use to come to the conclusion that one "expert" is right and another is wrong? The stakes are high - is your reasoning sound enough to bet all our chips?

A lesson in correlation and causality

Tags: peter cochrane, climate change

By Peter Cochrane

Published: Thursday 26 July 2007

For the last week my wife and I have been living in and working from a 22-story hotel in Barcelona. Our room was on the sixteenth floor and getting an elevator always seemed to be a big deal. We always seemed to be in a hurry and had to wait a long time for a car to arrive, and then it would stop at four or five floors on the way up or down.

After about three days this became really frustrating and I have no idea why but my wife started holding down the door-close button.

Bingo! On every trip we always went from floor sixteen to the ground floor, or from the ground floor to sixteen non-stop.

I couldn't see any reason why this should be a purposely engineered facility as it would defy all queuing theory design, not to mention service-time targets and fairness objectives applied in these cases.

Belief systems are more powerful than truth and always lead to long-sustained ignorance and waste.
But in the selfish interest of getting to our destination floors fast, we persisted. It worked without fail!

Had we stumbled on something strange but useful, or was it a succession of chance occurrences? Basic statistical analysis said this phenomenon was rapidly approaching as close to certainty as it needed to convince me it did indeed work.

At this point it would have been very easy to believe but the scientist in me kept waiting for a failure to disprove this growing evidence base.

Sure enough - on the sixth day it happened! We boarded on the sixteenth floor, and the car stopped for a call on the fourteenth. So was it a fluke? Did we fail to press the 'door close' button quickly enough? We soon found out. Over the next two days the failures came thick and fast in both the up and down directions, at all times of the day and our belief rapidly dissipated.

So how did we enjoy such a long run of success? Hotel occupancy seems to have been the culprit. There had been a dip in the number of residents that led to a smaller demand for cars. And of course, elevator systems, like so many transport systems, fail catastrophically. That is, they go from a satisfactory service level to a perceived failed state (ie irritatingly slow) in a matter of a few extra customers.

The moral of this experience is of course that correlation does not automatically infer causality. As a student one of the most important things I was taught was to always try and prove things theoretically and practically from many different directions, and always try and destroy the argument from even more. If the case survives this assault, then in all probability it is likely to be correct.

One really nice, comical example of correlation and no causality popped onto my screen while I was looking at venganza.org the other day. Below you can see a graph from that site which shows the relationship between global average temperature and the number of pirates.

(see below)

If we believed the facts as presented we would start recruiting more pirates in order to stop global warming. But common sense tells us this is nonsense.

Unfortunately there are many cases like this, where people want something to be true and then go on to build up a belief that is unshakable.

Tragically in many cases no amount of scientific, engineering or mathematical proof will shake that belief. This leads to bad decisions and huge waste for society and spans every aspect of politics, healthcare, business, environment, technology and behaviour.

A good case in question is the mobile phone headache syndrome.

Hundreds of scientific studies and reports fail to find any positive evidence that mobiles cause health problems.

And of course these err on the conservative side in providing qualified statements because reputations are at stake and we now live in a blame culture, which only affords an opportunity for a blitz of criticism from the believers.

Just look at all the reporting and investigations for bias. It is clearly evident in the pro-problem direction and can be easily construed in the con-problem direction - and even more so if you want to believe. Right now I am definitely in a dense RF environment and have a bit of a thick head but that I think is more to do with a series of late nights and a lot of travelling!

Is there anything we could do to help? I think not! Belief systems are more powerful than truth and always lead to long-sustained ignorance and waste. My prognosis for the mobile, and other similarly inflicted industries is that they are up against 'Flat Earthists' and the debate and waste will rumble on for decades.

In the meantime the real problems in society that see thousands of deaths a year and a lot of suffering will continue to go unaddressed and neglected. To my mind that is the real tragedy. We only have a finite amount of time, money and skill - and it ought not to be wasted.

[Usarka]

Belief systems are more powerful than truth and always lead to long-sustained ignorance and waste.


Your belief may be wrong also?

[Edit:]
Flat earth. Some one came up with an idea that challenged a long standing view. The flat-earthers used all arguments possible to refute the claim that challenged the scientific status quo. As time dragged on more and more people believed the earth was in fact round, while a decreasing number of experts held onto their view.

Who are the "flat-earthers" in the global warming debate? are you one of them?

[Badjelly]

You can become an expert reviewer for the IPCC by asking to be one.

You can't estimate average trends because you only measure temperature twice a day? Rubbish.

So the warming not's real because the surface temperature measurements are too sparse? What about glacier retreat, satellite measurements of tropospheric temperature, boreholes, changes in growing seasons?

90,000 measurements of CO2 were suppressed? That's because they were taken in cities, near vegetation, where the concentration is affected by local sources. And some of them used bad techniques. This was sorted out with great difficulty in the 1950s by Callendar and Keeling. Ernst-Georg Beck and Vincent Gray seemed to have missed that.

The models haven't been tested? Computer models in the 1980s did a good job of predicting global warming over the next 15 years.

The absence of any global warming for the past 8 years? Look at the data!

[Badjelly]

RE the article by Peter Cochrane: correlation does not prove causation. Indeed not. Thank you Peter and ocean1. I don't see why you needed quite so many words to say that.

[Kinje]

Incoming solar radiation (red line) enters Earths atmosphere with a relatively short wavelength and effectively passes through to the surface with the absorbtion and scattering of the UV rays by O2, O3 and suspended atmospheric particles.

Radiation emitted from the Earth surface has a longer wavelength (purple and blue lines) due to the lower source temperature. The Greenhouse gases (GHGs) absorb some of the outgoing radiation at various long wavelengths depending on the gases and their chemical properties. Natural concentrations of these are required to trap some of this outgoing radiation, which is then distributed through global circulation currents of air and sea to maintain the temperatures we require for life.

Increasing the concentrations of the GHGs will increase the amount of absorbtion of outgoing radiation in the respective wavelengths. Information I have seen suggests the concentrations of these GHGs is increasing, so I would expect more absorbtion of the long wave radiation. This may eventually cause changes in global circulation patterns, bringing changing climates to regions.

Devnull posted a quote that the worldwide CO2 measurements may not be increasing everywhere. 90 000 measurements were supressed, but how many have been included in the dataset, and are they still statistically significant? And does it really matter if the measurements are not increasing everywhere? If they are increasing in a sensitive area, the change in absorbtion over that area alone may bring about a change in circulation patterns.

Or it could all just be a lack of Pirates.

[Ocean1]

RE the article by Peter Cochrane: correlation does not prove causation. Indeed not. Thank you Peter and ocean1. I don't see why you needed quite so many words to say that.

I'm stiring up funding to support a life as a pirate.

[Ocean1]

Your belief may be wrong also?

I don't have beliefs, just observations. I observe that science appears to have been substitute by belief in much of the debate about climate change.

The first rule of scientific learning: First look, then describe. Political and social activists are influential in this debate, wherever I can identify them I ignore their data.

[devnull]

I don't have beliefs, just observations. I observe that science appears to have been substitute by belief in much of the debate about climate change.

The first rule of scientific learning: First look, then describe. Political and social activists are influential in this debate, wherever I can identify them I ignore their data.

Agreed. The whole global warming debate seems to be a quasi-religion rather than based on scientific data.

A true scientist will look at the data, and use it to construct a theory. Then he'll adjust the theory as further data shows that his original theory was incorrect.

In this case though, it's a political football, that seems to be very loosely based on scientific theory. Ice cores dating back 450k years show cyclic temperature variances, but the "official" theory seems to ignore that info.

Anyway, how the hell can these models be accurate? I mean, they can't even tell us if it's going to rain tomorrow, let alone the day after :lol:

[Badjelly]

What thought process do people use to come to the conclusion that one "expert" is right and another is wrong?

Damn good question. There is no simple answer. I do think, however that you look for people who make their arguments in a forum where they have to actually write them down and say exactly what they mean. This means scientific papers and reports based on scientific papers, like the IPCC reports. Not blogs, not editorials, not popular articles, not movies. I'm not saying blogs, editorials, popular articles, movies shouldn't discuss climate change, but you have to realise that people can get away with all sorts of distortions and evasions in these media.

Quite a few of the commonly-cited denialist arguments really are rubbish and you can see they're rubbish because there's nothing there. "There's global warming on Mars and there are no humans on Mars, so obviously global warming can be produced without humans and probably the Sun has been putting out more heat." Yeah but as far as anyone can tell, the Sun hasn't been putting out more heat recently and the people who make this argument haven't got a clue what caused the "warming" on Mars (dust on the icecaps, probably) and it's never been written up in a scientific paper because if you did that you'd realise there were gaping great holes in the argument.

But again, you're right, it is damned difficult to judge scientific debates from the outside. It comes down to credibility, but all politicians know poking holes in someone's credibility is relatively easy.

If you want (mostly) good info on climate change, in my opinion you can't do better than visit the RealClimate blog:

http://www.realclimate.org/

These guys (particularly Gavin Scmidt, the chief contributor) are knowledgeable and honest and they tell you what they think and *why* they think it.

[Badjelly]

Ice cores dating back 450k years show cyclic temperature variances, but the "official" theory seems to ignore that info.
What?! Every single climate scientist who contributed to the latest IPCC report knows about cycles you're referring to. You mean the 100 kyr ice age cycles, right:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

Chapter 6 of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report describes the cycles and what's known about the causes in stupefying detail

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch06.pdf

Perhaps the word "ignore" means somethign different on your planet?

[vifferman]

In my mind (such as it is), the problem with trying to get to the truth of "global climate change" is that it is not being dealt with in an objective and dispassionate manner, because personalities, reputations, money and media sensationalism have got mixed up in it. Even in this short thread you can see that, with personal attacks and emotive language taking the place of carefully considered debate. Instead of refutation using facts we instead have insults.

And hidden agendas - this further complicates things when you consider what motivation various players might have. Reputation? Vote catching? Future funding budgets? Employment? Attention seeking? Personal grudges? Share portfolios?

[Badjelly]

In my mind (such as it is), the problem with trying to get to the truth of "global climate change" is that it is not being dealt with in an objective and dispassionate manner, because personalities, reputations, money and media sensationalism have got mixed up in it.

Well, there is an objective and dispassionate assessment of climate change. It's called the IPCC 4th Assessment Report.


Even in this short thread you can see that, with personal attacks and emotive language taking the place of carefully considered debate. Instead of refutation using facts we instead have insults.

Well it is the Rant & Rave forum. And I thought my refutations were using facts and insults, but more of the former.

But I guess this was uncalled for...


Perhaps the word "ignore" means somethign [sic] different on your planet?

...so I withdraw it.

[vifferman]

It was good that you posted the links that you did - thanks for that.
But next time you post stuff like that, put the appropriate warning on it. :blink:

I now have a headache - I'd forgotten what it was like to try to make sense of scientific publications. :wacko:

[Ocean1]

And hidden agendas - this further complicates things when you consider what motivation various players might have. Reputation? Vote catching? Future funding budgets? Employment? Attention seeking? Personal grudges? Share portfolios?

Well my motives are perfectly transparent. I need to maintain an image befitting my rugged porn star lifestyle.:whistle:

Edit: wana see some of my favourite links?

[Badjelly]

But next time you post stuff like that, put the appropriate warning on it.
Did I miss something? Was there porn?

[Badjelly]

I need to maintain an image befitting my rugged porn star lifestyle.
I've been wondering for a while: why are they all porn stars? I mean what about all the run-of-the-mill porn hack actors? How come you never hear about them?

[Ocean1]

I've been wondering for a while: why are they all porn stars? I mean what about all the run-of-the-mill porn hack actors? How come you never hear about them?

Because run-of-the-mill porn hacks are all moonlighting scientists who's global warming opinions are being suppressed. Obvious init, if they sacrificed their professional ethics to support the rabid scaremongering rabble they wouldn't need to fuck nubile young ladies for a pittance. Fine upstanding bunch of fullas, salt of the earth etc.

[Grahameeboy]

I have always been sceptical about humans being responsible for global warming when you consider that our output is just a pin prick compared to when volcanoes were erupting on mass.

I reckon the earth adjusts to us anyway.

[Badjelly]

I have always been sceptical about humans being responsible for global warming when you consider that our output is just a pin prick compared to when volcanoes were erupting on mass.
Sorry if this sounds condescending, Grahameeboy, but that it just plain wrong.

The rise in CO2 since 1750 or so has been caused by humans:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

CO2 is a greenhouse gas and you'd expect an increase of the magnitude we've caused to have some effect:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/

Beyond that, there's more room for research & debate, but you can't reasonably dismiss the whole thing on the grounds that it's impossible.

The Earth is round. Get used to it.

[Badjelly]

Because run-of-the-mill porn hacks are all moonlighting scientists who's global warming opinions are being suppressed. Obvious init, if they sacrificed their professional ethics to support the rabid scaremongering rabble they wouldn't need to fuck nubile young ladies for a pittance. Fine upstanding bunch of fullas, salt of the earth etc.
The pity of it is that sacrificing your professional ethics to support the rabid scaremongering rabble is worth so little.

I've just noticed that this forum is called "Rant or Rave" not "Rant and Rave". I'm going to have to choose.
__________________

[Pixie]

I think the greatest environmental threat we face is dihydrogen monoxide. Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there.

Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
It is also the most common industrial solvent and evil wealthy capitalists dump it down drains with impunity

[Pixie]

Even if what the greenie anti-capitalists and global warming industry public teat suckers say is true,mass extinction is a good thing.It gives nature the opportunity to come up with new and interesting organisms.If it wasn't for the KT event we would still be in a burrow hiding our furry little shrew like bodies from the dinosaurs.

It can't be denied that the best thing for the environment would be to lose 6 billion homo sapeins

[Ocean1]

Beyond that, there's more room for research & debate, but you can't reasonably dismiss the whole thing on the grounds that it's impossible.

Sure you can, you can find compelling qualified opinion to support fucking near anything, that's my point, very few of us have the wherewithal to evaluate those opinions. Occasionally we can spot an error or a propensity to obscure unfavourable data, and trim the dependability of the source accordingly, but that’s about it. The real crime here is not that humans have shat in their own nest, it’s that political interest has completely destroyed the value of scientific research by introducing specialist lobbyist tactics.

Debate away, I’ve done it before, ad-nausea, from both sides and from neither. I’m none the wiser, I’m in the same position as everyone else: I’ll believe the predictions when they’re matched by incontrovertible fact, and that’s not yet. In the meantime, what balance my time can afford:

http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161

http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0503119

[Ocean1]

The pity of it is that sacrificing your professional ethics to support the rabid scaremongering rabble is worth so little.

Oh the money's very good, just turns out not to enjoy quite the same fringe benefits.


I've just noticed that this forum is called "Rant or Rave" not "Rant and Rave". I'm going to have to choose.

Meh, nobody will notice the difference dude.

[James Deuce]

Sorry if this sounds condescending, Grahameeboy, but that it just plain wrong.

The rise in CO2 since 1750 or so has been caused by humans:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

CO2 is a greenhouse gas and you'd expect an increase of the magnitude we've caused to have some effect:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/

Beyond that, there's more room for research & debate, but you can't reasonably dismiss the whole thing on the grounds that it's impossible.

The Earth is round. Get used to it.

Like all global warming activists you're operating in the very short term

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0080-4622(19880429)318%3A1191%3C487%3AGWCODS%3E2.0.CO%3 B2-G

Did we do that? No! The Mid-Atlantic trench is one big line of volcanic activity and has a huge impact on the world's ecology. It also pumps out one heck of a lot more CO2 than we do.

It's not a case of impossibility, but the lack of empirical data is astonishing, which HAS to bring into question the science around global warming. 160 years of data collection (some of it very poorly done) on a 4 billion year old planet that had twice the level of oxygen in the atmosphere than it does now only 150 million years ago means that scientists shouldn't be talking in absolutes.

During the 70s and 80s there was a lot of ranting about global cooling. The trend changed and now there's ranting about global warming.

There's no conspiracy of any sort, just the simple fact that if you don't buy into the Global Warming concept, less funding comes your University's way. Scientists have become pragmatists thanks to the desire of Governments around the developed world to have universities pump out "stuff" that makes money right now thanks, not as some indirect result of waffley research.

[Badjelly]

Yeah, Ocean1, I'm beginning to flag too. Thanks for the ArXiV links. I've read the abstracts. I'm inclined to think the Gerlich & Tscheuchner paper is not worth reading, but the Fabara & Hoenisen one might be. Don't get cynical on me, old man! What I try to keep remembering is that there is a real world out there, just one, and we've learned a hell of a lot more about it in the last few hundred years.

Jim2, can you give me a link or reference to support this (anything will do):


The Mid-Atlantic trench is one big line of volcanic activity and has a huge impact on the world's ecology. It also pumps out one heck of a lot more CO2 than we do.

I've heard this a couple of times recently and I wonder if there's actually anything behind it.

Re this:


During the 70s and 80s there was a lot of ranting about global cooling.

That's an oldie but a goodie. During the 70s there was a *bit* of ranting about global cooling. (I remember the 70s.) Well, speculation more than ranting. The vast majority of scientists at the time dismissed it as speculation and ignored it, as one does. The number of scientific papers that took it seriously could be counted on the fingers of Troy Bayliss's right hand. The IPCC assessments are not ranting.

[Badjelly]

Hi again Jim2. I'm surprised you didn't mention the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

Now that was a beauty!

Hmm, climate system is variable (not completely unstable, or we'd all be extinct, but certainly prone to oscillations & shifts). Better bump up the greenhouse gas concentrations for a couple of hundred years, then, and see what happens.

[Mr Merde]

....
I've heard this a couple of times recently and I wonder if there's actually anything behind it.


..

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6238&page=28

[Winston001]

I think the greatest environmental threat we face is dihydrogen monoxide. Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there.

Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

That....that's appalling! How come no-one knows about this stuff? Does it affect pirates?

Signed
Worried

[Badjelly]

That....that's appalling! How come no-one knows about this stuff? Does it affect pirates?
Aaarrr me lad, only if they drinks it.

[Badjelly]

I think that somewhere in this thread I asked for some justification for the idea that undersea volcanic CO2 emissions are (or might be) greater than (or comparable with) human CO2 emissions. A few posts back Mr Merde posted a link to a paper from a PNAS colloqium that talks about big changes in ocean carbon chemistry on century time scales near Bermuda, and much else besides. But it didn't talk about whether it was feasible for volcanoes to have produced a significant proportion of the rise in CO2 for the last few centuries or decades. (I mean, you'd think you'd notice something.) Damned interesting paper though, I'd lile to get hold of the full text.

However I did find the following on

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html



Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)


So where are all these volcanoes?

This illustrates my point. In science, if you have an idea, an hypothesis, you have to write it down, consider its consequences (where might these volcanoes be, how would they change the ocean chemistry around them). Then you go out and test your ideas about the consequences (predictions) and see if they hold up. If your aim is just to obfuscate and confuse you just throw out vague ideas and by the time people have realised they're rubbish you've moved onto the next one. Meanwhile the old idea (which might have been discredited, or so vaguely described it can't be discredited) lives on like a zombie in the half-world of blog forums.

But re the underersea-volcano idea, I'm not ruling it out, I'd lust like more information on how it might work.

It's a nice day out there!

[steveb64]

I think that somewhere in this thread I asked for some justification for the idea that undersea volcanic CO2 emissions are (or might be) greater than (or comparable with) human CO2 emissions. A few posts back Mr Merde posted a link to a paper from a PNAS colloqium that talks about big changes in ocean carbon chemistry on century time scales near Bermuda, and much else besides. But it didn't talk about whether it was feasible for volcanoes to have produced a significant proportion of the rise in CO2 for the last few centuries or decades. (I mean, you'd think you'd notice something.) Damned interesting paper though, I'd lile to get hold of the full text.

However I did find the following on

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html



So where are all these volcanoes?

This illustrates my point. In science, if you have an idea, an hypothesis, you have to write it down, consider its consequences (where might these volcanoes be, how would they change the ocean chemistry around them). Then you go out and test your ideas about the consequences (predictions) and see if they hold up. If your aim is just to obfuscate and confuse you just throw out vague ideas and by the time people have realised they're rubbish you've moved onto the next one. Meanwhile the old idea (which might have been discredited, or so vaguely described it can't be discredited) lives on like a zombie in the half-world of blog forums.

But re the underersea-volcano idea, I'm not ruling it out, I'd lust like more information on how it might work.

It's a nice day out there!

Yep. Warm...

And then there's the GHG's being released from the melting permafrost...
Quote - "A frozen peat bog covering the entire sub-Arctic area of Western Siberia, the size of France and Germany, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas that is melting for the first time since since it was sequestered more than 11,000 years ago before the end of the last ice age."

Link: http://www.terranature.org/methaneSiberia.htm

...and this interesting article...
Link: http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-081005.htm - and if you're thinking - Nah, the ice couldn't melt that fast... There's the fact that >3200 sq kms of ~200 metre thick iceshelf (Larsen B) broke up and floated away in 35 days a few years back...
Link: http://nsidc.org/iceshelves/larsenb2002/

...and the acceleration of melting of the Greenland icesheet... Link: http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10006908.shtml

And then there's the fact that the IPCC appear to be underestimating things a bit... "The world's recent carbon dioxide emissions are growing more rapidly than even the worst-case climate scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say researchers.

The team, led by Michael Raupach of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, looked at the growth of CO2 emissions and found that emissions growth suddenly accelerated in 2000. During the 1990s, emissions grew by 1.1% per year on average, but the number shot up to 3.3% between 2000 and 2004, when the study ended."
Link: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11899-recent-cosub2sub-rises-exceed-worstcase-scenarios.html


Personally, I think it's too late to try and stop global warming - if any of you have studied airconditioning theory (yeah - got to study some odd stuff when I was a NZPO (Telecom) Tech) there's a thing called thermal inertia. Like regular inertia, it means that it takes a sustained input to get things (like temperature) changing - and then once they DO begin to change, if you stop the input, the change doesn't stop immediately. An example of this is summer/winter... ever notice how the warmest part of summer is AFTER the longest day... and conversely for winter... colder after the winter solstice?

Me - I'm more interested in preparing for the climate change, rather than in trying to prevent it. Sure, I'm also trying to reduce my impact on the planet as well - but I'm not a fanatic about it. Still drive a 4x4 - just try to use it as little as possible (more due to fuel price than anything else), use hi-efficiency lights (replaced them years ago, as the old style bulbs died) in the house, and have been (well, the wife has - mine tend to die) been busy planting trees - for food, shelterbelts, and firewood...

After having been through a 1-in-250 year flood (end of March), a 1-in-200 year storm (mid June - and the worst I've ever been in), and a 1-in-100 year flood (a week later!) this year - I'm still battening the hatches down!

Then there's being able to sit outside, at Turangi in the evening, in mid August, in our T-shirts! And I'm warm blooded....

[Jantar]

... You can't estimate average trends because you only measure temperature twice a day? Rubbish.

Perhaps you need to do a basic statistical methods refresher course. A linear trend when applied to a cyclical variable is meaningless. Yes, it can be done, but no significance can be attached to the resultant.


So the warming not's real because the surface temperature measurements are too sparse? What about glacier retreat, satellite measurements of tropospheric temperature, boreholes, changes in growing seasons?

Some warming is real, some isn't. Warming in urban areas is certainly happening due to UHI. But if we consider your other evidence Glacial retreat is occuring in some places, but Glacial advance is happening in others. Sattelite data shows that we are now in a cooling cycle. Boreholes show that warming has occured since the MIA, but most warming occured in the first half of the 20th century.


90,000 measurements of CO2 were suppressed? That's because they were taken in cities, near vegetation, where the concentration is affected by local sources. And some of them used bad techniques. This was sorted out with great difficulty in the 1950s by Callendar and Keeling. Ernst-Georg Beck and Vincent Gray seemed to have missed that.

So you consider it OK to take temperature data from cities, but not CO2 data? So is it still OK to blame temperature on CO2?


The models haven't been tested? Computer models in the 1980s did a good job of predicting global warming over the next 15 years.

The absence of any global warming for the past 8 years? Look at the data!

The data shows that temperatures have fallen since 1998. I have posted the link to the actual data on here many times, and shall do so again when I am back on my own computer.

[Jantar]

...Increasing the concentrations of the GHGs will increase the amount of absorbtion of outgoing radiation in the respective wavelengths. Information I have seen suggests the concentrations of these GHGs is increasing, so I would expect more absorbtion of the long wave radiation...

Quite correct, but the relationship is a logarithmic one. That is it requires 10 times as much CO2 to a achive a doubling of the CO2 contribution to warming.

Its a bit like painting a window with black paint. The first coat stops 90% of the light getting through. The second coat stops 90% of whats left, so now only 1% gets through. A third coat will stop virtually all the remaining light. putting on further coats does nothing. With Green house gasses the earth is usually in a state that further increases will not make any significant difference.

[Badjelly]

Is this thread still going? Just a couple of responses

So you consider it OK to take temperature data from cities, but not CO2 data?
Well they are different quantities with completely different spatial distributions. CO2 is uniform through the troposphere, except near big sources and sinks (eg plants, industrial sources in cities). To characterise CO2 trends all you need is some stations in isolated areas, a few in each hemisphere (Mauna Loa, Baring Head, South Pole). Temperature varies diurnally, annually, with height, according to surface type, so you have to measure it in more places to get a global mean. Still, if you want an estimate of global average temperature over the last few decades, why not try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Satellite_Temperatures.png

This shows surface temperatures and satellite estimates of tropospheric temperatures. They differ in detail and the trends aren't exactly the same, but they're pretty similar don't you think?


The data shows that temperatures have fallen since 1998.

To me, the graph I linked to above shows a rising trend with a few troughs and spikes, including a big spike in 1998. To you it shows cooling since 1998. Oh well.