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G'day redewenur,

You're right it is abhorent. It is amazing the amount of people that say the debate should be over yet there are a number of greatly respected scientists such as Dr Singer, that do not agree with pretty much all of the mainstream views relating to global warming. They might be a minority but they aren't idiots or even zealots. As far as I can tell with the senior climatalogists that do not agree the debate should be over, they base their arguments on sound science and the belief that science should be forwarded by sound research.

I have children too, by the way. Five plus three. I would rather their world was better than mine and that includes environmental issues. But there are some things that despite sounding callous or as you said abhorent, there just isn't alternatives, and I'm one of those that ascribe to the theory that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. I just haven't seen anything in the way of a achievable solution, even if I agreed that carbon was such a big bogeyman and I really don't. But having more efficient cars, much cleaner coal power stations etc can only be a very good thing. I'm all for it for sensible reasons.

So if you think my comment is abhorent how about suggesting something, anything, that could practically and politically be achievable. By the by, such steps as turning air conditioning off, using energy efficient lighting, and even suddenly swapping to cars that are say three times as efficient would have almost no effect on the increase on carbon emissions now or ever. Our government has decided that all incadescent lights should be banned from 2009. Bugger the fact that there are serious environmental concerns for the fluorescent ones and they simply are not pratical in some locations. If every light was changed what would be the effect. The calculation was that it would be .0014% of Australia's carbon output. Now that is just ridiculous and this is from someone that actually has replaced all but two or three lights throughout the house with energy efficient ones.

So tell me redewener, what do you suggest? Oh and by the way, Global Warming or even a return to a glaciation should not effect your children providing your country does not get invaded because it is safe from the effects. The tropics do not warm up even in the past periods where the poles completely melted. And my children should be OK as well because the effect on the Southern Hemisphere would be perfectly manageble, unless you have an ocean front house and we certainly do not have that.

From paleo-climate evidence, even if the poles melted, the world would still be habitable. C02 has been many many times what it is currently or what it will be in 2100 with the earth closer to the sun and still not all that much happened. It was not a time of a major extinction event and a major glaciation occurred despite the fact that the earth had managed to get much hotter than all but the most absurd predictions. The dislocations would be huge. Vast tracts of the planet would go underwater such as Bangladesh, Netherlands and this would cause huge problems. But agriculture would be available over more areas than now and growth would be astonishing compared to today.

I'd prefer it didn't happen and suggest that it won't. My worry remains that some idiot or government such as Gore deciding to run, getting into power and funding the massive seeding of chorides or some other cooling chemical into the air, causing massive environmental problems and sending us into a glaciation. Now that is likely to kill your children. Actually not likely, almost certainly. Not because they will be cold but because the food supply would be sufficient for about 1% of the planet and it would take three to five years to get it back to a a level that would support large populations, assuming the industry remained in place to allow for the relocation of most of the earth's agriculture. For instance Australia's dry wheat belt would get way too much rain at the wrong times and other crops such as rice would have to be grown instead. That takes time.

It is the "big gesture" solution that terrifies me, not the carbon credits, the plans to replace coal with wind etc. Wind power can replace about 5% of coal stations based on current technology with problems that rarely get mentioned. No power is free. Solar power requires rare earth minerals and there just isn't enough to use this to replace all that much. Mirrors in Central Australia or desert parts of the world could supply energy but again way too little to do all that much.

One of our MPs wants to replace all coal power stations with thermal power from a massive hot water aquifer. The equations suggest it could replace a couple of percent but the risk is high that the energy transfer could trigger earthquakes etc.

I actually saw a "serious" proposal to use methane instead of petroluem to power cars. Oh what a terrific idea. Methane is a greenhouse gas about 40 times the effect of Carbon and there isn't a method invented that could burn methane cleanly. So it seems that the bogeyman has been selected as carbon to the point where, if you accept the damage greenhouses gases do, a more dangerouse greenhouse gas is offered up to reduce carbon.

To me, all the ideas so far, far from lighting a candle in the dark, are akin to lighting a candle in a hurricane. Doing nothing is the hardest thing man can ever do. Our brains are not wired for this but I would really like if scientists that came up with ideas that could effect large regions or the planet or even the economy should have to take an oath starting with the same beginning as the hypocratic oath, "First do no harm".


Regards


Richard


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G'day Mr Morgan,

Thanks for the link but I already have. So what does it prove. The majority of the information is based on one of the three major world SAT datasets that contains only monthly averages. It does not include any satellite data.

I just wrote a critique of a Hadley Centre research paper and you actually present a page that refers to research relating to it. How about addressing those issues?

Oh, and I really liked the following:

"Global analyses of SST, sea ice and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century". Reference at bottom of page. Now what was I saying about NIGHT temperatures. Of course I could also argue that the dataset used for ocean temperatures has amazingly bad data. I still prefer to use just the Admiralty UK data because it is consistent. Trouble is that data does not show an air or surface water temperature increase and where would the fun be in that. So how about you suggest why the Admiratly data is so different from the rest of the data.

And you are willing to continue this discussion I'll happily do so at least for a little while providing you do not reference news articles, opinion pieces or anything written by Dr Hansen. Preferably, you could actually answer the questions relating to assumptions, methodologies, datasets or even one of them.


Regards


Richard


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RicS

"By the by, such steps as turning air conditioning off, using energy efficient lighting, and even suddenly swapping to cars that are say three times as efficient would have almost no effect on the increase on carbon emissions now or ever."

Interesting. Can you present figures to support that?

"I'm one of those that ascribe to the theory that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness".

- What is the nature of your candle? I see those who make an effort - any effort, no matter how small - to combat energy consumption and pollution, to be the ones lighting candles. Whether or not they are successful is not the point; they try, that's the point. The fact that I may have no answers that satisfy your own particular criteria for being "worthwhile" is no grounds for giving-up-the-ghost. The fact that a particular energy saving policy reduces power consumption by a mere x% does not mean that the policy should be abandoned. Neither would I ridicule the use of "cars that are say three times as efficient", as you appear to be doing.

"Oh and by the way, Global Warming or even a return to a glaciation should not effect your children providing your country does not get invaded because it is safe from the effects. The tropics do not warm up even in the past periods where the poles completely melted. And my children should be OK as well because the effect on the Southern Hemisphere would be perfectly manageble, unless you have an ocean front house and we certainly do not have that."

- please, read what I said: "even if I didn't have kids". Do you really suppose that I'm callous enough to ignore the rest of humanity - shame on you, sir! - and do you imagine that any country will be immune from the effects? It's a small world, you know, full of interdependence. (Incidentally, I'm from England, and just happen to be living here right now)


"You're right it is abhorent"

"...you think my comment is abhorent"

-absolutely

"but I would really like if scientists that came up with ideas that could effect large regions or the planet"

- but you don't believe they should try, because you deny that there's evidence that calls for it.

Do you have any thoughts on Siberian tundra methane gas?



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RicS asks:
"So what does it prove."

It proves that you are incorrect.
It proves that what you are doing is invalid.
It proves that the laws of physics have not been violated.

RicS wrote:
"I just wrote a critique of a Hadley Centre research paper"

I just drank a latte' from Starbucks.

No references. No content. No substance. Don't you ever think that if the development of antibiotics had been left to the people who confuse science with unconventional opinion that we'd still be living in caves?

So far you've not presented a single verifiable fact.
So far you've not presented a single reason why NASA is wrong.
So far you've not presented a single reason why NOAA is wrong.
So far you've not presented a single reason why CSIRO is wrong.

What you've presented is verbosity.


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MOrgan morgan morgan . RicS wrote
"The majority of the information is based on one of the three major world SAT datasets that contains only monthly averages. It does not include any satellite data."

Address that in a proffesional manner and then others might give you the credibility you seek.

I think RicS is asserting that the data where the GW assumptions come from might have some serious limitations. RicS has valid points on past data collection and its limitations.
Jonathon Lowe does the same in raising the issue that the data used so far could be inadequate. Mr Lowe then goes on to give an alternative view. You reply to those with derision.

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factsvsfiction wrote:
"The majority of the information is based on one of the three major world SAT datasets that contains only monthly averages. It does not include any satellite data."

I can read.

Precisely what did he post that leads you to believe that this is true? Precisely did he post that leads you to believe that climatologists worldwide are using inadequate datasets to make the case about global warming?


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G'day Dan,

I'm leaving again. This is just a waste of time as a site to discuss anything. All that happens is rather than discuss the particular points, you level sometimes quite mean attacks at individuals.

As to you redewenur, I actually did provide one figure. Here's another. If Australia stopped everything the difference to the world's output of carbon would be 1.8%. Trouble is Australia cannot stop bushfires even if you killed every single human being. As to who is safe and who isn't, the things humanity now does manages to let millions and millions die each year and no one seems to complain. Global warming may effect lives or it might actually make lives better in third world countries. I find it fascinating that people are quite willing to damage and kill third world people in attempts to reduce carbon output yet are not at all willing to do really basic things to stop tens of millions of lives lost through such things as clean water, cheap medications and the re-introduction of DDT.

If carbon is the big culprit of global warming then anything you do, no matter how large, will have no effect. So saving energy etc is not going to help in any way at all. Every little bit helps is a saying that does not always hold true. If Kyoto was signed by every country in the world and adhered to the difference in CO2 increase would be so minute as to be not measureable. For instance your former home has signed it but does not adhere to it at all.

Anything that does other damage but makes you feel good, especially things that make individuals feel good but have no real use, are not at least doing something, they are causing harm.

As to figures, you can find them anywhere. Domestic energy use in developed countries accounts for a very small proportion of CO2 output. It is industry that uses most of it, industry that creates jobs and makes energy efficient cars or the batteries to power hybrid cars or whatever. I think I mentioned the brilliant idea of the Australian government of simply banning incandescent lights. Quite apart from the insanity of banning something without compensation to those that bought it legally and the legitimate uses that only incadescent lights fulfill, if every person complied the difference in energy efficiency would be .0014% for Australia.

In this particular argument CO2 rates in the atmosphere are going to GO UP for a very long time yet to come, no matter what we do. Everything that has been suggested is fairy tale stuff. It is not going to stop going up because it makes you feel good to turn off your air-conditioning or even if everyone did it.

And all of this without any hard science linking CO2 to global warming in the first place.

And Dan, so what that you drink at Starbucks, the subject is global warming. I actually said what I found wrong with the study. If you don't agree with me, tell me why scientifically I was wrong. Suggest why the assumptions used had validity. Your comments are just a personal attack with nothing to back it up.

As to proofs, what proves that I'm incorrect, or invalid or any of the other comments you made? You saying so? Huh. The data sucks big time. There is a great deal of documented critiscms of the data from very respected sources. They are easy to find. The guardians of the datasets themselves often indicate the inadequecies. Of course, then you get NASA whitewashing the whole thing by saying that the problems are minor, without ever actually showing why the problems are actually minor.

The simplest test of all is that the data from weather stations does not even remotely match the satellite data. How about addressing that. If the satellite data shows no trend overall since 1979, don't you think that suggests something is wrong? And if you don't then say why you don't, not why I'm wrong or an idiot. That just gets boring real fast.


Richard


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Dan,

One last word. If I was running this site, I'd have banned you long ago. Freedom of speech is fine but doing nothing but personally attacking others and refusing to actually discuss the topics to the point where no one is willing to stay on the site to offer a counter opinion is so damaging as to be worthy of restricting your rights.

You used to take part in discussions and offer counter views or reasons why you did not agree with someone. Now your personal attacks seem to be the only way you can argue in the Climate Change forum and you do it so frequently and so repetitiously that there is no one here that is willing to actually argue the science of why the whole global warming "fact" may not be as solid as most make it out to be.

To dismiss science because it doesn't agree with your world view or denegrate individuals because they don't take a popular view is not all that much different to the Catholics of the middle ages that managed to ensure their doctrine was the only one heard because they threatened imprisonment or excommunication to all those that offered a counter view. The current hysteria surrounding global warming doesn't go to the extreme of locking someone up but it certain can destroy careers, get people fired.

So this forum is supposed to discuss global warming. If everyone agrees with your point of view then what is the point of the forum? It's all been decided, according to you, so close the forum down. There is nothing left to discuss.

Stifling debate on any scientific matter is censorship. Your actions are of the worst kind because you not only have nothing substantive to offer in counter to any view that does not agree with you but your attacks questioning people's academic qualifications or straight personal attacks, quite aside from sometimes being defamatory, just result in driving away those that really could contribute to a debate here. For that you should be very ashamed.


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Originally Posted By: RicS
As to you redewenur, I actually did provide one figure. Here's another. If Australia stopped everything the difference to the world's output of carbon would be 1.8%.

I would say that's reasonable, since Australia's population is < 0.5% of the world's total. My point about your claims is not that they are necessarily all incorrect, nor that you don't give any figures; it's that you don't provide references/links to research that can substantiate them. This, quite naturally, leads one to believe that perhaps what you say cannot, in fact, be substantiated, and is simply your personal 'intuitive' conclusion. There's no further need here for emotionally charged confrontation. If the sources of your facts, as you see them, are available to all, then it would be most helpful if you could give references.


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RicS wrote:
"This is just a waste of time as a site to discuss anything."

Everything I want to say in response has already been said by redewenur: above.

"it's that you don't provide references/links to research that can substantiate them. This, quite naturally, leads one to believe that perhaps what you say cannot"

This is what I've been saying to you from day 1.


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G'day Redewenur,

What you are asking requires effort, something since, Mr Morgan will not accept any research that disagrees with global warming or questions scientific methodologies of studies that relating to global warming over and over and over again, is as best as I can see a big waste of time.

If you really were open minded, you should be willing to poke around a little yourself. I wouldn't suggest you look at future predictions based on computer models because to date none has proved even remotely accurate. However, there is a great deal of information available even on the net from respected scientists about the continued rise of CO2 in the atmosphere and reasonable projections based on solid data. I personally tend to agree that there will be a 60% increase in CO2 atmospheric output before there is any prospect of a levelling off simply because of the needs of developing nations mainly China and India. They are not going to simply stop modernisation because ANYONE suggests they should bear the brunt of a CO2 reduction.

The point you seem to be missing is that CO2 will continue to increase because of what we have done in the past with estimates ranging up to around 600ppm and that is without the sensible addition of the world's increasing ouput of carbon as the population peaks at 9 billion or a bit more and modernisation occurs. These sorts of figures can be found all over the place. Some of the predictions are really far fetched but you can find many where the arguments are reasoned and the science sound. I'm just not going to do the searching for you because I don't need to justify the comment at all. It was provided as "food for thought" rather than a post where I wanted to refer to very specific research.

Actually, the question of increased CO2 regardless of what is now to be done, is on so many pro-global warming sites, you would be hard put not to find such a reference.

My point was that if an increase to 330ppm is so disastrous then surely 400ppm or 500ppm or even 600ppm is even more so. And once the results are catastrophic the actualy degree of damage may not be that important. If, as is now being suggested, the "tipping point" has already been breached, then it doesn't matter what anyone does, the world is doomed.

If you turn off your airconditioning and so does everyone else, industry reduces CO2 by 60% in say 5 years but 330ppm is disastrous anyway, if everything you do means that the CO2 levels reach say 525ppm rather than 540ppm, do you really think that is going to really do anything to save the planet?

I don't know how far these threads are achived but, contradicting Mr Morgan completely, myself an two or three others, actually went to a great deal of trouble to answer specific points, including references to research. I even spent several hours once listing a reasonable list of research papers addressing points that Mr Morgan raised. The response? Mr Morgan said that basically were rubbish. And he said this after two days when, unfortunately, pretty much all research that I quoted is not available on the net unless you have a paid prescription to various sources.

However Mr Morgan has never, not once, actually discussed any issues raised as to serious flaws with various research. He refers to newspaper or news articles pretty much exclusively and almost all of those say "if this continues ...", "the scientists say this may ...", in other words guesswork about the future without anything solid to really back it up.

The Antartic is a prime example. Myself and another member quoted various studies that showed the actually locked ice had increased in 50 years. Mr Morgan ignores this type of comment, especially when it is backed by hard solid research. Yet he still happily posts threads that predict or point to the loss of ice from the Antartic. A much simpler example is that, unlike Mr Morgan, I have a decent background in palea-climatology and have been studying climate at a fairly detailed level for more than 30 years so when someone posts a comment about climate that is just plain wrong such is Mr Morgan did with respect to the supposed 2007 going to be a record hot year and I replied to that post detailing the events of the last few months relating to the switch from an El Nino event to a developing La Nina, you get ... deafening silence. You should have no trouble looking this up. It is a few threads down from this.

I've posted threads or posts on this site that have gone to considerable trouble to point out inaccuracies in global warming hysteria, including some major points relating to Mr Gore's book and film. None of these were the subject of counter discussion because that would then involve real science and that is not allowed on this thread.

Mr Thompson's study that Mr Gore uses extensively seems to be deeply flawed in its methodology. He drills six ice cores. He gets six different results. Two of them agree with his world view. Four do not. The two that do agree are statistically more extreme than the other four so Mr Thompson averages the results and announces to the world his findings "proving" his theory. I don't think any reasonable scientist would suggest that averaging results in this situation was appropriate or that the end results proved anything. Yet, Mr Thompson is a darling of the global warming brigade, despite a number of scientists, even those that think his conclusions are probably valid, have a great deal of difficulty with the science.

The hockey stick curve is another example of really flawed science. This one even very very pro global warming advocates attacked on the basis of the science. Mr Gore still uses it, as does a number of other prestigious institutes. And if you drill down to the actual science involved, it revolves around the use of tree rings to determine historic climate. Those that specialise in this field and solid scientifically valid methodology trials and tests show that tree rings are a terrible indicator of historic climate unless you know the precise precipitation rates where the tree was and what stresses the tree underwent. I don't need to refer to any of these studies to appeal to anyone with an understanding of basical agricultural knowledge to show why this is so. A thicker tree ring means the tree grew more that particular year. Why? Cut down a plantation pine ten years old where all weather data is known and the answer is: precipitation levels. More rain (up to the point of flooding) more growth. Next comes CO2 uptake. That is also just straight logic but again studies on trees such as plantation trees bear this out. If a tree takes up less CO2 because of disease, overcrowding, another tree falling into its canopy etc, then the tree ring will be thinner, regardless of precipitation or temperature. Finally, we reach the effect that is the one that everyone uses to "prove" historic temperatures, the change in the tree ring size because of temperatures. A mild winter and a warm summer and everything else being equal, the tree ring will be wider. But a really hot summer and low precipitation and the CO2 uptake goes down and the tree ring gets narrower.

So saying that a wider tree ring indicates a higher temperature is obviously not even close to the truth. Yet that is exactly what pretty much all global warming studies that want to argue about the relative temperatures during the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, the Romam Warm Period, the Bronze Warm Period, etc do.

And in the most general terms the studies do tend to suggest a trend in temperatures historically. There might be droughts periodically and too heavy rain at times and stresses over the life of the tree but pretty much any tree ring of the period will show a narrowing during the three Little Ice Age cold periods and a widening in the Medieval Warm Period. But other than the broadest terms, without actual rainfall records for the particular tree, relative temperatures simply cannot be determined. You can't say, for instance, that the Mediaval Warm period really wasn't that warm. From tree ring analysis all you can say was that it was warmer than the surrounding periods. It could have been record hot temperatures or only fractionally warmer with better average rainfall but the tree rings simply won't tell you this.

I have challanged Mr Morgan many times to discussions on any aspect of climate change, including backing everything up with actual peer reviewed research studies to back up the various views and Mr Morgan has never once even attempted to do this.

I asked him to simply go to the NASA site and look at their dataset to see for himself that the majority of world sites do not show a warming trend (not a particularly difficult task becgause of how the site is set up and takes only a few minutes to perhaps an hour depending on the sample you decide to use). I even did a random sampling, listed all the sample locations and what they showed, and invited discussion. The result? More garbage about Mr Morgan only believing something if it is in a peer reviewed paper. All that shows is Mr Morgan does not wish to actually think for himself. He's happy to insult people merciliously, attack their credentials (which is just straight defamatory and actionable but that hasn't stopped him even when warned) but not to actually do anything to really support his views.

Instead of taking what I said as an insult to humanity and to yourself because I suggested your family at least should be safe, perhaps you should actually think about the science involved in climate change, if it really is that important to you and actually go to the trouble of not simply accepting what is published as gospel but passing a critical eye over a few things.

My view wasn't actually a lack of humanity, by the way, but rather a failure to see how the current attempts will have any effect at all even where they have the potential to do substantial harm and to cause greater suffering and deaths in the third world. It really irks me that the US government now allocates $3 billion of its $9 billion pure research budget to global warming. It certainly needs studying but the studies should be subject to the same need to impose adequate scientific processes on the studies as for just about any other field. A fraction of that money could actually save millions of lives yearly if applied to really practical research, so even creating global warming as the preiminent threat the world and something that can obviously be solved if you throw enough money at it, donate as much as possible to Greenpeace, etc, has managed to cause immense harm for no discernable benefit.

Oh and as food for thought, perhaps you might like to watch a UK production of a show that aired in early March relating to "the great CO2 swindle". I haven't seen it and it might not even be backed by good science but I have been told that the science is actually backed by scientists that really should know their field and hard laboratory research. You might not agree with it at all but it has to be of benefit.

I read Mr Gore's book and watched the movie. I was amazed at how tenous his arguments often where and how sometimes the information was actually outright false but it still was enlightening. The presentation was exellent and Mr Gore relates to his audience very well indeed. I could easily see him as a US President if he campaigned a similar way to the way he does his presentations. Some of his facts were accurate and I did learn from it. Perhaps, if you wish to do other than insult someone for being a bit flippant, without really knowing how they actually felt about humanity at large, you might wish to look at just a fraction of what I have suggested here. Since I doubt I'll be back again, if you want further topics to look at such as sea temperatures, sea level changes, locked ice changes, glacier retreats, the science of ice core analysis to name but a small selection just go back a few months a read some of the posts. You might find the post on just how big a difference different averaging techniques for weather stations make to the statistics. I covered that one in considerable detail.


Regards


Richard




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Quote:
Short of returning to appalling living standards for most of the world's population, there is no solution to carbon output.


Nuclear energy is a realistic alternative. We could reduce carbon emissions to almost zero within a decade by being more efficient with energy use, by using renewable energy and using nuclear energy. Using fast breeder reactors we can breed enough fissile fuel from the known uranium and thorium reserves for the next 30,000 years.

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Yet again RicS you mistake size with quality.

2,181 words and not a single link to a single study that supports anything you've written.

Why someone might ask?

Perhaps because he can't find any.

He writes:
"Mr Morgan will not accept any research that disagrees with global warming or questions scientific methodologies"

But he is wrong. I will accept research. Long winded statements lacking in facts and peer review are not research.

He writes:
"I wouldn't suggest you look at future predictions based on computer models because to date none has proved even remotely accurate."

Which is pure nonsense (though I'd prefer a stronger word so please use your own substitution). Where's the evidence that the models are wrong Ric? Do you think us so lacking in IQ points that we will just accept your statement because you wrote it?

Tell us Ric why we should believe you and not the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/MIT_R.Prinn.CT07.pdf

Tell us your qualifications
Post your Curriculum Vitae
Send us a list of your papers (journal, title, and co-authors)

ROFL!


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RicS, see above.


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Quote:
I asked him to simply go to the NASA site and look at their dataset to see for himself that the majority of world sites do not show a warming trend


One would actually expect that the climate change signal is absent in the data of all the sites individually. You have to average over the data of hundreds of sites to average out the fluctuations and be able to see the climate change trend of 0.6 ?C per century.

If you only look at trends in the data of individual sites, you can only see a trend if there is a large change in local climate which must necessarily be much larger than the climate change signal.

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G'day Count,

[Just for Mr Morgan, to save him the hassle of pasting this into Word and doing a Word count, the total words are 2,731 not including this comment and there is not one reference. There is however a challenge for you and everyone that thinks they just know that global warming is a fact that does involve research. It should be very simple. So in a way there is a reference to research, just not to any specific research. I?m sure, since you just know I?m so wrong you and several others will have no difficulty in posting a single line post with an appropriate reference to valid research which should justify all these words if for no other reason than you will have the satisfaction of proving me wrong. I look forward to it.]

To Count, I'm sorry; I have no idea what you are talking about. A graph of an individual site over 120 years generally shows quite clear trends. It might show meandering around a mean, it might show a warming trend overall, a cooling trend or smaller trends, but it certainly normally shows some sort of trend. To put the statement you made, I can only wonder whether you have actually looked at many individual sites from the NASA dataset they present online in such a convenient form. Perhaps you have and your interpretation differs from mine. After all, it was for the purpose of working out a consistent method of analysis of the trends that I came back on the site, seeking contact with Mr Lowe. Unfortunately, it seems he has also become sick of the personal attacks and has permanently left so I guess my return will not last much longer before I have to assume this has happened.

The NASA data has been analysed by others (none that I personally consider all that well ? in respect to the question of validity and validation of the data only ? there has been other very good research done on the dataset). By my reckoning, and you are welcome to check by looking at the graphs of a large enough sampling to believe you have not just fluked a particular result, there is around 70% of world sites that show a cooling trend or no trend. There are around 25% of sites that show a warming trend but these sites tend to rise quite sharply from 1980 on. The median trend is a cooling one. The average is a warming one, so the overall trend of 0.6 degrees depends on what math you used and also what database. Out of the three main global temperature datasets, the trend is either 0.5 degrees, 0.6 degrees or 0.9 degrees.

But even if there is no problem with the database, as Dr Singer has noted in several interviews etc, as have a great many others, including a number of lead authors of the IPCC report on global warming, about 80% of the total warming of your 0.6 degrees occurred from 1880 to 1940. Then for four decades, despite man made carbon dioxide output into the atmosphere increasing exponentially, the world cooled. Then, depending on the dataset, around 1975 to 1979 it started warming again.

If CO2 is the reason for global warming, how come 80% of it occurred when man made CO2 output was relatively low, there was a four decade cooling trend when the CO2 output exploded, and then another warming trend starting when the world hit the oil shortages etc and the outputs actually dropped a little bit?

As to Nuclear Power stations, they cost around three times the amount to produce a Kw of power than a black coal power station and have a great many problems in themselves. Assuming the environmentalists would allow a great many power stations, the best that the world could do would be to replace around 25% of oil or coal power stations in the next 50 years. Since CO2 man made output is going to keep going up for at least 25 years whilst China, India and Africa plays catch up, even that huge effort, with the problems of actually supplying that much uranium safely, would not significantly reduce CO2.

Since Dan likes to challenge people to what their credentials are and accuse people of not having appropriate credentials perhaps he could say just what experience, expertise, published works or research he has done in climate science. This is not a challenge to Mr Morgan's credentials or knowledge of climate science, only a facetious challenge at him to show how meaningless such comments are on a public forum where non scientists have the same rights to their opinions as do those that have established backgrounds in the area discussed. And here is a challenge for anyone that firmly believes that global warming is a world threat AND is man made, find one single piece of hard science research that establishes any link between CO2 in the atmosphere and the climate warming.

I can quote more than 1,000 research papers that basically show no link at all; or much more correctly from the Vostok and all other ice core samples showing that CO2 increases FOLLOWS warming by between 80 and 800 years. I've actually gone to the trouble of providing citations in the past and Mr Morgan decided to ignore them, so I'll reverse the argument and challenge anyone to show research that establishes a link.

And how about a bit of social history. For around five years, there was a rather large environmental movement warning of a coming ice age. But then it warmed up a little bit. So how did global warming as a piece of climate theory come about? This is something that the co-founder of Greenpeace calls the biggest swindle foisted on the world to hijack legitimate environmental movements and allow anti-industry, anti-US, anti-globalisation forces to put on a friendly public face. I would suggest that the co-founder of Greenpeace might actually know something about the workings of the environmental movement and he doesn't believe there is any link between CO2 and global warming (nor does a great many climate scientists that were lead authors on the IPCC report that found their conclusions including the very important conclusion that there was no good evidence linking CO2 to climate change were altered by UN politicos - that little episode that includes the continuously quoted "consensus" when a significant number of the lead authors - scientists that actually knew what they were talking about - did not support any conclusion that said the link between human activity and global climate change had been established, many resigned in disgust, many asked to have their names removed, only to be told that they "contributed", even if they disagreed so their names stayed. Even the 2,500 scientists that were supposed to agree is actually a figure made up by a majority of non scientists i.e. political employees - oh and if you think I'm making any of this up, do a search in the New York Times archives, it was front page news about just how distorted the IPCC report was compared to what the lead authors originally wrote).

So how did it come about that global warming became a cause celebrity? The coal mining unions went on strike in Britain again during Maggie Thatcher's rule. The unions had already brought down one government and Thatcher was not going to have it happen to her so she took on the unions. It's a bit hard to remember all this but this was set against a background of OPEC cutting off oil supplies, hijackings of planes and the very real risk that oil supplies could become very uncertain. So Thatcher wanted to promote some form of power generation that did not involve unions or oil. Her solution? Nuclear. But the trouble was that most environmental groups opposed nuclear power with a vengeance so what did Mrs Thatcher do, she offered payment to climate scientists that published research that suggested that the warming that was then only a few years old was due to burning of fossil fuels. For the very first time, climate science actually had a ready availability of grant money as long as they went along with the very political pitch that CO2 was somehow causing warming.

The trouble is from a political point of view, this was like letting a genie out of the bottle. The radical environmental movements latched on to the idea with a vengeance because it was anti-industry and somehow living in mud huts without electricity is "natural" and "desirable" (well, as long as it is not the environmentalist who obviously needs to jet around the world, stay in air-conditioned hotels so they can get their important message across but rather some starving African or Asian who will likely die because burning timber or animal dung in a hut is an appalling way to live); it was anti-US because they are the biggest producer of CO2 of nations (actually the whole world's man made CO2 production is 100th of the CO2 released from animals, and about 1,000th of that released by oceans, as well as being less each year than the normal output by volcanic activity) and certainly anti-globalisation. It was heaven sent for environmental groups that were actually started to get on the nose of the normal first world country citizen.

None of this means that the theory might not be true, only that this little bit of social history has been very conveniently forgotten. The trouble is there just isn't any science to back the whole assertion up that CO2 causes global warming. There wasn't in 1985. Indeed, when the BBC ran a series on the earth's climate and predicted doom and gloom from cooling, one scientist suggested that CO2 output by man might actually reduce the amount of cooling. This was then a supposition, without any real science to back it up but there had just been shown that temperature and increases in CO2 are linked in paleo-climate, so the suggestion was made. It was roundly condemned at the time by many scientists that now wholeheartedly support the same theory but this was the first known public pronouncement concerning CO2 and climate.

Now, I've never been comfortable with the theory that CO2 or methane causes global warming. It never has in the whole of the past earth's climate so why would it now? That one never made sense to me. It didn't make sense when I was a Climate Science student in the mid 1970s and it still doesn't. On top of that, I believe there is good evidence that suggests that the world just hasn't warmed very much since 1880 and especially since 1980 and that the Holocene Maximum, the Bronze Warm Period and the Medieval Warm periods were all warmer than it is today although the evidence is mostly anecdotal and spotty at best. The balloon and satellite data put it at line ball for the period from 1980 and my research into surface air temperature data shows some very bad problems with the data, especially relating to how it is collected and averaged, with the averaging problem likely to have significantly over represented the average temperatures, strangely enough from around 1980. So my concern is that not only is there no proof in respect to CO2 but there doesn't even appear to be any significant warming.

Mr Morgan is obviously going to say that there is a great many words without any links but this one is for all those that are absolutely certain I'm wrong, in the pay of Exxon, or just a crackpot. In order to feel comfortable with your position you should be able to easily establish that there is a link between CO2 and warming and that the evidence is convincing and clear.

Shouldn't be too difficult. But you can't use Mr Al Gore's Vostok ice core correlations because what Mr Gore never mentioned (or more correctly made the rather strange statement that the evidence was very ?complex?, without explaining just what the complexities might be) is that while there is a very close correlation, the CO2 FOLLOWS the warming or cooling, not the other way around. Its just simple logic that a CO2 rise after the warming cannot possibly be responsible for the warming that happened before the rise. There is actually a pretty simple explanation, and it actually also relates to why carbon credits are such a huge waste of money and planting trees does not reduce carbon one iota from the atmosphere unless you get the tree at peak growth and bury it deep enough for the ground cover to be completely anaerobic. Most CO2 released or absorbed is done by the oceans. Next is the release by plants, bacteria etc. The oceans are so large and so deep that it can take centuries for the oceans to change in relation to the climate above them. The lag is known as a climate memory. When it warms, the oceans start to release carbon but this takes several decades and up to 800 years to actually get into full swing. Of course if in the meantime, a cooling occurs then the oceans start absorbing the CO2, but once again with a very long lag. Since the Pacific Ocean has a current that turns over vertically over a cycle of 10,000 years, a sudden change in a part of the ocean can actually reflect something that happened up to 10,000 years ago. And this is why predicting an El Nino or a La Nina until it actually starts to happen is so totally useless.

So all you have to do is find research that shows that climate has been changed by CO2 in the atmosphere rather than the other way around. If the global warming debate is over, then this should be a no brainer. All that is needed is a nice clear record of some past climate that shows an increase in CO2 that then resulted in an increase in temperature or even a nice controlled physics experiment that suggests that atmospheric CO2. Of course, the cosmic ray strength can't precede the warming because that would be a nice independent reason for warming since going back as much as 600 million years cosmic ray strength correlates inversely pretty much exactly with the worlds temperature.

But there still should be abundant evidence around since this is the core of the global warming theory and without it, the current warming is natural and therefore we shouldn't be doing anything about CO2 output (since CO2 is not a pollutant but actually a pretty good gas to produce a bit more of normally).

And if Dan Morgan would like to show a computer model of the world's climate that has had the predictions ring true without correction progressively for say 5 years, then he is welcome to sustain the comment that included the desire to swear that at least one model has proved to be accurate, despite not being able to model clouds and the fact that they are based on CO2 levels without any science to justify the nexus.

And speaking of computer climate models, there is actually starting to be a quite decent backlash at the lack of science holding up the global warming "fact", with an extremely important point being accepted as a major problem with any model that relates climate change to CO2 increase. In order for the theory to have any validity the models hold that the greatest warming would be in the troposphere, around 10km up. And that the earth's surface would lag behind for a while. Yet, the evidence is the exact opposite. The troposphere change in temperatures is much less than the earth surface. Now that one is a very big deal and I'd like Mr Morgan to point out one single model relating to climate change and CO2 increase that predicted that the warming would be greatest at the surface, not in the troposphere and indeed, the average of the troposphere shows no warming at all overall from 1980 (and if 1940 to 1980 was included it would show a pretty big overall cooling trend but since weather balloons were not used extensively enough to go back that far, there is a danger that extrapolating from the surface temperatures may give a false result).

And Mr Morgan, you have been warned before, that directly challenging credentials in a forum such as this breaches US defamation laws. Your belittling my credentials in your last post, when I have posted a number of times specific details of background and qualifications, is outright defamation, a deliberate slur or denigration of a person's reputation. You did this to Mr Lowe too not very long ago. Do you really want the owners of this site to lose their houses and have this site shut down for good? I do know that these discussions are being monitored by a rather right wing organisation that has an axe to grind with your type of personal attack so you are risking more than just me asking the moderator to remove the comment. I'd be well within my rights to demand that you be banned from commenting further in respect to anything I posted, with Kate risking a great deal if she did not comply. So DO NOT question anyone's academic qualifications or suggest that previously posted information may not be accurate again. I really don't think you realise what sort of risk you are taking, either that or you just don?t care about all those you put at risk and I can?t think you would be that uncaring. Given the time of the posting (and there would be no problem in tracking it back to the sending computer) if you posted the comment from a University computer, you have breached the University guidelines and could be disciplined and dismissed if the University decided the comments were defamatory. You are perfectly safe from me because there is no way I would put someone's employment at risk by lodging a complaint relating to a site such as this nor would I sue for the current types of comments you make, but you cannot just assume that no one else will ever take any action.

So, Mr Morgan, just do not attack anyone on this site personally or imply their credentials are lacking etc. It isn't all that hard. By all means insult people directly for their views, imply that they are crackpots or in the employ of the Republican Party or Exxon, count words and complain that no references were made, belittle any references that are made, whatever you want. But it should not be beyond the bounds of reason to limit the attacks to these things rather than step over the line to actionable matters. Better yet, how?s about just once actually discussing the topic of global warming by addressing the issues raised.

I?ll return at least once to see the flood of posts proving the CO2 ? warming link and naturally I will then admit my error. Being wrong is not a bad thing in science and it must be at least, oh a day or so, since I?ve been wrong in relation to climate change. I?m about due for another correction of my mistaken beliefs.



Regards


Richard


Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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RicS. You wrote you were seeking contact with Mr Lowe.
It's usually easy enough. Click on the name and some method of private contact pops up.

You mention the Holocene Maximum. It's my understanding that about 10,000 years ago the climate was much warmer than at present. It then cooled again and gave rise to what used to be called the Younger Dryas vegetation. Forest returned to europe as the climate warmed again after this. I'm sure it would be easy to find links.

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RicS wrote:
"Just for Mr Morgan, to save him the hassle of pasting this into Word and doing a Word count, the total words are 2,731 not including this comment and there is not one reference."

Thanks. You saved me the time I might have wasted reading your unsupported and unsupportable personal opinions hoping to glean one link to anything, however trivial, that might have supported your statements.

I read nothing beyond what I copied. "not one reference." A leopard doesn't change its spots.


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RicS, just as a matter of interest - if nobody here is listening to you, why do you waste your time on the tomes? Surely there must be someone, somewhere on the net, who will accept what you say in good faith. I find it hard to believe that your regular returns to this forum, having promised that each time would be your last, are merely out of love for banging your head against a wall, or venting your frustration by putting the boot in. This will be my last post in this topic - I promise.


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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One explanation: Some people are incapable of validating their pet theories against reality and altering their belief system.

Look at my President for example. He was expecting the Iraqis to welcome US armed forces and throw flowers at them. He was expecting to find WMDs.

He still is.



DA Morgan
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