Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Global Warming Is A HOAX

scpgo2, I KNEW this would get your attention!

This article,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176986-2,00.htm

and another recent one in Newsweek,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/

are shedding light on the fact that "Reliable Sources" can be bought to publish reports that debunk Global Warming studies.




I found it rather interesting that Europeans are far more likely to believe the warning signs than are Americans. Why is that? Is it because Europeans are "next door" to Africa and Asia? For Americans, next door is Canada and Mexico, and most Americans have never even been to those countries. The physical isolation of North America leads to a sort of psychological isolation. That's not good.

It's too late for a lot of our Animal Friends, let's hope it isn't too late for us.

Yes, there seems to be an increasing cultural divide between the European and the American, and it has nothing to do with plate tectonics. I'm not too sure what the reasons are. Is it something to do with politics? If so, is the culture driving the politics or vice versa? This has cropped up in several threads in one way or another. Maybe the historians will have a better perspective.

Perhaps the Eurpoeans notice natural signs of warming because they have access to longer historical and anecdotal evidence. For instance the locals may have been fishing in a particular spot in April for 100s of years and suddenly (and it does seem to be suddenly) the fish are there in March. In our garden, (in Australia) after a very cold winter, the blossom trees are, as every year since 1990, blooming earlier. And we have our freaky weather... with a drought that still continues, storms and huge bush fires. Such folklore is ignored as unscientific ( which it is probably) but really- isn't research just documented testing of anecdotes- under the splendid name of hypotheses?

The fires in Greece must give pause to those who hold the obdurate disbelief in the reality of Climate Change. I think we are the frogs in the pot--and the water is getting hotter all the time. Certainly here in Australia our Prime Mininster, a firm disbeliever, has, as a result of popular opinion, given some concern to this area at last. Not with much conviction, but better than nothing.

Ellis, there is a problem with folklore because it is indeed not scientific. For example, how can you have a drought and storms? Drought and huge bush fires go hand in hand, but storms bring rain. Like the newsweek article implied, people have selective memory.

Believe me in Australia we have drought and storms (sometimes even in the same place), and storms light bush fires, especially during drought! I was answering the musings of Rede who was wondering why the Europeans are more open to the idea of the reality of Climate Change than Americans, by giving my opinion that there are anecdotal records in Europe that go back 100s of years and there aren't the same historical texts/customs/habits in the US, or indeed in Australia.

"Anecdotes" are hardly scientific, but my Dad relocated from Poland to British Columbia when the Nazis moved in 1939. He remembers that the Fraser River would freeze up in Winter, allowing he and his buddies to walk across on the ice to a Liquor Store on the other side. They made money selling booze. That same stretch of river NEVER freezes up now. I'll bet there are thousands of stories like that, all over the World. We just never hear them. Of course, the Naysayers will tell you that there is no basis in fact to these anecdotes. The preponderance of memories of our ancestors is ignored.

Is that simply an anecdote? Looks like a verifiable observation that contributes to the scientific evidence from where I'm sitting.

Of course. if some guy had stuck a thermometer in the river and recorded the winter temperatures, those Naysayers would probably be less sceptical. Or they might want to argue about where exactly the guy actually stuck the thermometer, and whether the thing was working properly, whether guy's eyesight was 20/20 etc, etc...

You are right on, Rede, the body of evidence points to a startling change in our climate.

But, sigh, if it isn't witnessed by "accredited experts", it means nothing. Unfortunately, those most affected by Climate Change, the Butterflies, the Frogs, the Songbirds of the World, have no voice.

More information is needed though to make it more scientific. Did it freeze in the mid 1930s? His neighbours would have been able to tell him that. In what year did it stop freezing? Did it freeze every year before that point? Did it only freeze for a couple of years? Was there significantly less precipitation the years it froze thus making it more apt to freeze due to a slower flow rate?

Anecdotes usually don't have enough information to make them valuable.

Yes they do John, it's just that in some places people who make the decisions aren't listening.

Anecdotes usually do have enough information to make them valuable? Great. Here is anecdotal information from my backyard. In 2000, we put in two ponds connected with a fast running stream. We designed it this way so it would best be able to resist freezing. We had it easily running through the winter that first year; however, every year afterward it has frozen over. That must mean that we are headed for global cooling.

Unbelievable.......this is a science forum, and there is people arguing that because "Pappy" says he used to be able to walk across the Fraser River in 1939, that we must be in an anthro-CO2 initiated global warming event.
Anecdotes are not science.

Real science says that the average temperature for the US (the country that has over 25% of the world's climate stations), has a temp trend that is well within the uncertainty range(0.21C over the last 86 years, or 0.024C per decade).

BUT THE US IS ONLY 2% OF THE WORLD'S SURFACE!!!!! People cry. Of course it is, but that 2% of the world's surface (5% of the land area) is the best monitored. It has 25% of the climate stations used in the GISS estimate, it has the most rural stations (don't tell me don't tell me that surrounding a thermometer by asphalt doesn't impact the observations), and it's telling a different story then the rest of the world. Is the difference because of regional differences in temperature trends? Or does it boil down to crappy data used for the rest of the world?

Garbage in = garbage out

"Unbelievable.......this is a science forum"

Cool it Canuck.

Anecdotal evidence, although not science, can be evidence worth investigating. Mammas and Pappies once put Jenner on the right track...

"It had been noted that where milkers of cows had been infected with the matter from pustules forming on the teats or udders of the cows, they showed an insusceptibility to small-pox attack. Proceeding on the lines of this observation Jenner made experiments whereby he transferred from the hands or arms of dairy servants this matter to other persons..."

I completely agree with you that anecdotal evidence can used used to focus scientific studies. I have no problem with that.

However, you called it a
which it is not.

But lets use this anecdote to focus in on southwest BC and and look at the scientific data. Here's a link to a paper on "Climate Change in British Columbia - A Paleoenvironmental Perspective". Published in 2003 in the Canadian Water Resources Association Journal.

The graph that might interest Wolfman is on page 15 of the pdf document, or page 545 of the Journal. It's a temperature reconstruction for the Pacific Northwest from 1750 to 1980 using tree rings (I'm sure nobody here has issues with temperature records from tree rings).

See any warming there?


As an aside, I would love to see proxy temperature data compared to the surface network for recent years. Let's see if the trends shown in the climate network are borne out in the proxy datasets. It seems all proxy datasets end in 1980. Proxies are good enough for us to estimate the global average temperature in 1500, surely they equally as good in 2007.

Noone is suggesting that anecdotes taken in insolation are a scientific finding, but isn't most science, if not all, the result of testing a hypothesis based on observable phenomena? And, is your argument Canuk, that these observable phenomena can make no valuable contribution to science?

My arguement is, that somebodies father saying he used to be able to walk across the Fraser river in winter, or that snowbanks were waist high, or anything from a person's "memory", is not a scientific observation.

A scientific observation would be climate station records or proxy temperature data (the graph that I linked to). Look at trends in that data, and see if Wolfman's father was right, or if perhaps he was helping himself to that bootlegged booze.

Wolfman did not claim scientific veracity for his father's recollections, in fact he says that thay are not scientific. He merely presented them as the sort of recollections that could form part of a body of anecdotes that may lead to further discussions. Science is not some great event that happens when people of immense intellect sitting in bare rooms in splendid isolation think of things to research. In fact research happens in response to need, curiosity and observation. Successful people of immense intellect however do understand that Wolfman's grandpa, and others like him are disturbed by something different that they do not understand. These scientists look for the 'why?' and thus conform to the description of science in the dictionary---'the study,description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of the nature and behaviour of phenomena in the physical and natural world'.

verify: to check whether or not something is true by examination, investigation, or comparison

Perhaps you're right in this particular instance. However, the point being made is clear enough. Anecdotal evidence should not be ignored.

In Primitive Cultures stories told by ancestors were considered Wisdom. Here we are ignoring our Ancestors. And look at the mess we're in.

Of course not. It also should not be used as "scienfitic evidence"

Yes, one fine mess. How is our infant mortality compared to primitive cultures? How is our life expectancy compared to primitive cultures? How about the proportion of the global population that goes hungry or is poor?

Everything is not as bad as some would think. Do we have work to do, sure as hell. But we're on the road.

People tend to have a very romantic notion of "primitive cultures" and how they were "one with nature". This is bull$hit. Primitive cultures were just as exploitative as us. They just didn't have as much of an impact because too many of them died before having more kids.

Ellis - I was responding to red's comment that it was a "verifiable observation that contributes to the scientific evidence"

He's quite right Ellis. The guy with the thermometer wasn't there, only someone's 'Pappy'

But I still think these climate change events are most likely "anthro-initiated". Well, i'll leave you guys to get on with throwing rocks at each other...

I've had enough too. I just hope we ARE wrong in thinking that the climate is changing. --Oh- and we have just had the warmest winter (the last 3 months) on record in spite of record cold and heavy snowfalls earlier in July, (not just anecdotal, that's the weather bureau's calculations).

Canuck wrote:

"Primitive cultures ... didn't have as much of an impact because too many of them died before having more kids."

Not true. Research in NZ has shown that the first settlers here (Polynesians) were easily as destructive as the later European arrivals. And the population grew rapidly for a start and then crashed. By the time Europeans got here the earlier inhabitants had been forced to adopt a more conservation based strategy through necessity. They would have died out otherwise. The same has been shown to be true in Australia although they had more time to adapt there. And for the country to adapt to their presence. I would assume the same is true for North America although there seems to be extreme opposition there to accepting this possibility.

Ellis. We've had a fairly mild winter here too.

Hi Terry - I meant that primitive cultures simply did not have the wherewithal to cause large-scale destruction like modern man has. We're saying the same thing, that both primitive cultures and modern man are just as exploitative - I'm just making the statement that we are much better at it.
You're absolutely right about Native Americans, although you might get lynched for saying so in NA (there's that extreme opposition you hinted at). There is a real feeling upon North Americans that Native Americans were one with nature, and would never do something to overexploit it. Truth of the matter is, most of the Native American societies where semi-nomadic, and would completely exhaust the local resources before moving onto the next locale.



As far as weather goes - Summer here in southern Ontario has been cooler than in recent years. Only had a couple real heat waves where I had to put the AC on.
Alternatively, we could just stop guessing and look at the satellite data for this summer(or winter, depending on your hemisphere;) )
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_ti...Ocean_v03_0.txt

Canuck, I think you might under-estimate the influence of "primitive" cultures. Let's say the Maori have been in NZ for one thousand years, probably an over-estimation. Europeans have been here two hundred years. I can't put my finger on the figures but the rate of bird extinctions for the first 800 years of human habitaion is exactly the same as the last 200 years, something like forty species compared to ten species. But we shouldn't get too carried away just with humans. The ecology changes with the arrival of any new species. As I've said elsewhere it is ecology change that causes extinctions.

I prefer to stay out of the climate debate except to point out climate is constantly changing. And why should it not? There's absolutely no reason why it should be constant. Of course the real debate is whether human activity alters it. I'd presume it does, just as the activity of all forms of life on the planet do.

"Oh- and we have just had the warmest winter (the last 3 months)"

"Ellis. We've had a fairly mild winter here too"

"As far as weather goes - Summer here in southern Ontario has been cooler than in recent years"

And in the UK : Summer has been cooler than average - and the wettest on record.

Maybe on average this shows there is no global warming. Shame though - the UK could have done with a temperature boost.