G'day Dan and anyone else still reading this thread,
Major Problems with Global Warming as a World Threat Arguments To Dan: You asked for it.
Here are main points of contention. Feel free to post links or details of studies that contradict them.
Summary - ALL climate data before 1979 is extremely bad for comparison purposes.
- Tree ring and ice core data particularly suspect. Lab tests show neither good at ascertaining past temperatures.
- SAT (Surface Air Temperature) most unreliable set of data of pretty much any "science"
- Climate Change positions now hopelessly extreme. Those that disagree are on the side of the oil industry or accused of such. Thus that strongly support it in the payroll of luny environmentalists or accussed of such.
- Actual science hardly ever gets examined.
- Satellite and Balloon data do not correspond, either in pattern or in raw figurs to the SAT, even the very latest SAT excluding urban effect major cities.
- Water temperature data hopelessly contaminated, or inconsistently observed.
- Studies on Climate Change seem to be aimed at "proving" global warming, rather than aimed at ascertaining what is really going on with the climate.
- Solar studies consistently ignored.
- No one knows how much water was locked up in the Antarctic or the Arctic or whether this is increasing or decreasing, except in the last few years.
- Ice Core studies seriously flawed by the simple problem of two ice cores never agreeing, even when only metres apart
- The science of greenhouse gases never actualyl demonstrated other than by models.
- The quantity of greenhouse gases produced by volcanoes never mentioned even though significant.
- Volcanoes are mentioned when any cooling data appears as the reason for such cooling even in the face of global warming.
- Sulphates blamed for the whole of the Eastern Half of the US, cooling.
- Simple arithmetic has produced errors in data many many times greater than the rise or fall in average world temperatures over the last century or so.
- No such thing as a "World Average Temperature" yet this is never mentioned (Satellites, while not giving a world average, at least give a figure that should be comparable over time against satellite data).
Main Points I would agree with global warming wholeheartedly if there was good science to back this up (and rather than some smart come back, how about proving me wrong by referring to some good scientific studies?).
I used to think the world was warming but whether this was due to CO2 or not I wasn't at all sure. The more I study this particular field, the less I am sure of this or anything.
I frankly do not believe that anyone currently has enough data to suggest that the world has even warmed since 1880, which seems a ludicrous suggestion. since 1880 was the tail end of the LIA (Little Ice Age) and simple anecdotal evidence suggest the world is now a warmer place (a good thing - the LIA really suppressed human endeavour and caused a great deal of misery).
Mr Al Gore might like glaciers because they are pretty and he likes to climb them with his kids, however, anyone living in a valley near a glacier normally has a much dimmer view of glaciers. Overall, a warmer interglacial period has and is a godsend to humans. But as with everything you can have too much of a good thing. But are we now getting too hot and is man to blame?
Actually there is substantial evidence that man is to blame for a whole lot of things. But whether he has finally been able to cause global weather change is a little different to whether he is able to kill off large animals or pollute rivers or chop down forests.
Climate change requires really only one thing to indicate it is happening. That is data that is consistent, covers enough of the world to say that it is global in extent, and has records long enough for reasonable comparisons.
2005 was a record hot year for satellite records. But 30 years is not long enough to show any trend of anything to do with climate. In any 30 year period there must be a record hot, a record cold and several years that do nothing much at all. The interesting thing about the satellite data (no matter how adjusted - the maximum adjustments still only alter the trend by a very small fraction of a single degree) is that in that 30 years they show nothing much at all. Some cold years. Two particularly hot ones (1998 and 2005) but not the record 14 out of 21 hot years that the SAT data shows.
Balloon data matches the satellite data so closely, the argument that the balloon data was wrong in the 70s due to lack of shielding suggests that either the satellites in the 70s had a similar bizarre problem or the lack of shielding really had almost no effect on the figures.
The two arguments relating to satellite and balloon data, are amazing in the gall of those that make the accusations. The most accurate temperature data available by an incredible factor is condemned because it might be out by a very small fraction because of a drift problem with the satellites (amounting to all of 0.003 degrees in decade if even true) and lack of shielding which might have a slightly larger effect than the satellite drift but still is a pretty small number.
Yet the data on which everyone else relies has no validity at all, for the purposes of comparison over time. I used to qualify this but not any more. I've done enough calculations and comparisons of known data with the data sets available (chielfy the GHCN data set) to be fairly certain the errors implicit in the data sets currently used are just so huge that a movement of less than about 3 degrees Celcius could not be relied upon to be anything but a problem with the data.
In another thread I went into some detail about the problem of "average". I won't do it again but Dan is welcome to challenge that comment. Actually so is anyone else. Worse, when you get data from particular locations and compare them to the data in the data set, the comparisons do not seem to work except in the most general terms. Where the data shows a cooling trend using daily averages, a significant warming trend might be shown in the GHCN data. (And no, there is no research for this, it is my own research - wait about two years and I'll happily post it on my website and provide a link, including to every tiny bit of background data used so anyone else who wishes to can go through calculations to check for errors etc).
If the satellite data does not match the surface air temperature data, not even remotely, except sort of roughly in extreme years, how can the SAT be considered reliable at all?
Actually even with the GHCN, if major cities are removed, there are more localities that show a cooling trend than a warming one. It is just that the warming ones show a much larger trend than the cooling ones. That does not make a great deal of sense. Ignore the argument about global warming causing regional cooling. The areas this is supposed to happen is just not large enough to explain why over 4,000 localties show cooling trends out of 6,000 odd weather stations.
Take out any weather station that has had a major change and you end up with a few hundred stations. These show a major cooling trend. Hmmm. Does that mean the earth is cooling? Of course it doesn't. It just means there is not good enough data to determine anything.
Tree rings show how much rain falls, how much CO2 is available and absorbed by the tree and to a very small extent, the temperature of a particular year. The precipitation is the biggest one. Ignore the studies that show this and just think of the logic for a moment. Which makes more sense? We have a nice warm year with lots of rain. Then we have a really really hot year with no rain. Then we have a cold year with lots of rain. Then we have a normal year with normal rain. What will the tree rings look like for each year? If you think for one moment that they will be larger depending on heat then you have no real understanding of just what a tree does in a drought.
Ice cores have problems for many reasons but the really simple one is the fact that you cannot get repeatable results. Drill two ice cores, a metre apart and you get dramitically different ratios of Oxygen 16 to 18. All that suggests is that this is a very unreliable way of estimating past temperatures. It might be useful for rough trends but not much else. And the very best example of just how bad ice cores are would be the research of Lonnie Thompson, made famous by Mr Al Gore in his film and slide road show. Mr Thompson obtained six ice cores. They had widely different results. Don't take my word for it. Look at his research paper. Well actually that is rather hard because all you will find on the Internet are references to it. But I have looked at it and he very plainly states the results of each ice core and how they bear almost no relationship to each other. But he still manages to average the results, despite there being no scientific rationale for averaging dissimilar results.
Conclusion There are no links in this post because I could not easily find research papers online that I have access to by other means. So I've tried to write things that are just plain logic.
And as I have now done maybe 50 times, I'd be happy to be referred a research paper that uses valid data that shows a warming trend.
I never thought that this was other than an intellectual exercise until the last six months when there has been serious suggestions made to cool the "runaway global warming". The most potentially damaging of all these was the sulpate seeding one. This one could be done without even needing a consensus of governments. Heck, just one really extreme regime could probobly pull it off because the stuff is similar to a major volcanic eruption. You do not need to release the stuff over any particular country, only at certain latitudes. The prevailing air circulation will do the rest. So what happens if this is actually attempted. Well, you could just pollute wide areas for no good reason. Or it could actually work and everyone freezes to death unless the "runaway global warming" was exactly as extreme as those proposing the method think it is. Would you really like to bet the life of 98 or 99% of the planet on that argument?
Dan, if you've even read this far. Here's the challenge. You are so much an advocate that you are given the opportunity to press the button to release the pollutants that has a change of wiping out pretty much everyone unless global warming exactly what you think it is. Are YOU willing to push that button?
To me, that's a rather sobbering thought. No one greatly cares if carbon credits have cost the UK close to $20 billion. That really hasn't changed wealth of the nation by much at all. So anyone can advocate Kyoto. But how about something that really can damage everyone unless global warming is exactly as described. Just how confident do you remain in the face of that?
Do you think that someone like me is so stupid that I cannot even work out an averaging error or sees an averaging error where none exist? What about the several hundred other scientists that have also done research that does not agree with the "consensus" on global warming? Are all of these people crackpots? And please do not blame oil companies or the Bush administration. I know some of these scientists. They are not normally even Americans and they get bugger all funding from anyone. I've declared my pecunary interests in the past. I do not get funding from oil companies. I am supposed to receive funding from a very pro global warming organisation (their attempt at balance I guess).
Regards
Richard
