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

[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

[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:V...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/...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.

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

[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.

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?