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"IN THE PAST few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. I would also argue that—should it occur—a modest warming would be on the whole beneficial."
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia

You can read the whole article or download it as a pdf.

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polititians goals=green tax
media = ratings (fear gets ratings)
public = green projects = money
but the major sinner of them all is the Enviro Scientist
that started the man made global warming idea..

Enviro Scientist = Job Security, tenure, and fat government check for saying its caused by man.

remember Greenland was once green, England once made better wine then France.

What is amazining is the switch with in the past year.
From it being man made to how its a money scam.

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I could not agree more .... until recently I was a climate agnostic .... didn't know, didn't care. But I was recently accosted at Heathrow airport by the so called "Climate Camp" so I started looking into it. What I have found is that the science is just debateable - for every model that suggest CO2 could be to blame there is irrefuteable logic and other data to suggest it can't be.

Far more interesting though is the human behaviour which has recently become prevalent. The global warming "believers" are showing increased signs of fanaticism. If you question the mantra, you are labelled irresponsible, if you say you don't believe it you are called stupid, if you own an SUV you are heted, if you make a DVD questioning Al Gores film you are labelled a heretic and serious folks will try and have your film banned (recent Channel 4 experience in the UK). And the more voices which question the mantra, the more fanatical the rhetoric gets.

I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and say "what is going on here ?" We should all remember that its better to read books than to burn them. And before we all start panicking about polar bears, it wouldn't hurt to rememember that Greenland was indeed once green.

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Originally Posted By: ImranCan
I could not agree more ....

Far more interesting though is the human behaviour which has recently become prevalent. The global warming "believers" are showing increased signs of fanaticism..............>

I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and say "what is going on here ?" We should all remember that its better to read books than to burn them. And before we all start panicking about polar bears, it wouldn't hurt to rememember that Greenland was indeed once green.


Yes of course Greenland was once green.
In the Pliocene era, Greenland was further south than now.
Much earlier it had previously been a land bridge for the movement of Dinosaurs between N America and Spain, before the Atlantic grew too wide. The type of Fauna, ferns and other tropical plants unearthed around the coast of south Greenland prove that.
The continent of Antartica was also a tropical paradise at that time, and contains substantial coal reserves to prove it.

If you think Greenland was ice free, say 2000 years ago.
Just tell me why the oceans were not 20 feet higher then, in the past than now?
All the coastal flooded towns found under the sea today, prove that the oceans were many feet lower 5000 years ago than today.
The oceans have been rising recently....I wonder why?

Dont pretend to be an Ostrich, and bury your head in the sand.

Pollution, dust, dirty rain and snow is falling everywhere.
But nowhere does it cause more damage than where it falls upon snow and ice causing surface melting, and the undermining of glaciers, snowfields, and ocean ice. Russian Siberia is fast turning into a bog and qagmire.
Norway's oil rig production from within the Artic Barents sea, is alive and well. Something impossible to contemplate 20 years ago, since the sea was frozen all year round.
Manmade city heat, plus cooling water from power stations, are all contributing to man-made warming.
Why has the sale of air-conditioners risen world wide?

And if you tell me warming is due to an increase in the heat output of our Sun, or our 26,000 year precession around our ecliptic plane, you are closing your eyes to reality.



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Originally Posted By: ImranCan
Far more interesting though is the human behaviour which has recently become prevalent. The global warming "believers" are showing increased signs of fanaticism. If you question the mantra, you are labelled irresponsible, if you say you don't believe it you are called stupid, if you own an SUV you are heted, if you make a DVD questioning Al Gores film you are labelled a heretic and serious folks will try and have your film banned (recent Channel 4 experience in the UK). And the more voices which question the mantra, the more fanatical the rhetoric gets.


I couldn't agree more. Do you mind if I borrow that statement?
Thanks

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Wow Mike.

Here are the sea levels:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_LG8nuR7-BEc/RlWz...l_Sea_Level.png



This doesn't show that "the oceans were many feet lower 5000 years ago than today."

Of course, it is not logical to suggest that Greenland has been called that in any language since the Pliocene era. It was likely called that based on a viking name when it was farmed 800 years ago or so.

Why was Greenland arable 800 years ago but the sea was not 20 feet higher? Perhaps that is because the guess derived from the computer models that suggests a 20 foot rise if Greenland glaciers melt is wrong.

You did get one thing almost right though. "Pollution, dust, dirty rain and snow is falling everywhere." We should fight pollution. The West has been, but now China's pollution has been detected here in Canada. This is a problem, but as the linked pdf says in the top post, "[h]uman activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way." Did you even bother to read the pdf?

Why has the sale of air-conditioners risen world wide? Because the price has come down.


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Hi John Reynolds,
No as it happened I did not read the pdf, but I will early tomorrow ....when I have more time.

Mike Kremer

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Mike - you could not have made the point more beautifully if you had tried. I made some basic observations - both about the science and about behaviours ..... And what happens ? - I get called an 'ostrich'.

Some of your own scientific observations might be right .... I don't dispute that on balance, evidence shows the would has warmed since the 1970's. And, on balance, the CO2 rise is probably due to humans. But these two things are not necessarily linked. Its just a question, just an curious observation from a curious mind and it is amazing that it can inspire such antagonism.

I also agree with you on the pollution in general. We all need to create and use energy more efficiently and search for alternatives. But please .... stop linking my SUV to polar bear problems.

And, in line with John, Greenland was named as such by the Vikings who farmed it. Not that long ago (1200 years) and I can assure you, as a geologist, Greenland has not moved that much since then.

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http://www.greenland-guide.gl/leif2000/history.htm

I'm not sure how accurate this history is but it looks about right ... anyway - just some info about the Norse settlements of Greenland. It was named "Greenland" by Erik the Red (how ironic) about 1000 years ago ... but it probably wasn't that 'Green'. However I think its safe to say that during the warm period at the time it was hospitable enought to settle - probably a bit warmer than the present.

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Quote:
Why has the sale of air-conditioners risen world wide? Because the price has come down.


But mostly due to CFC laws and energy laws. It keeps the industry alive when they pass laws that outdate refrigerants and equipment.

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Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer
Originally Posted By: ImranCan
I could not agree more ....

Far more interesting though is the human behaviour which has recently become prevalent. The global warming "believers" are showing increased signs of fanaticism..............>

I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and say "what is going on here ?" We should all remember that its better to read books than to burn them. And before we all start panicking about polar bears, it wouldn't hurt to rememember that Greenland was indeed once green.

[quote=Mike Kremer}
Yes of course Greenland was once green.
In the Pliocene era, Greenland was further south than now.
The type of Fauna, ferns and other tropical plants unearthed around the coast of south Greenland prove that.
The continent of Antartica was also a tropical paradise at that time, and contains substantial coal reserves to prove it.

If you think Greenland was ice free, say 2000 years ago.
Just tell me why the oceans were not 20 feet higher then, in the past than now?
All the coastal flooded towns found under the sea today, prove that the oceans were many feet lower 5000 years ago than today.
The oceans have been rising recently....I wonder why?

Dont pretend to be an Ostrich, and bury your head in the sand.

Pollution, dust, dirty rain and snow is falling everywhere.
But nowhere does it cause more damage than where it falls upon snow and ice causing surface melting, and the undermining of glaciers, snowfields, and ocean ice. Russian Siberia is fast turning into a bog and qagmire.
Norway's oil rig production from within the Artic Barents sea, is alive and well. Something impossible to contemplate 20 years ago, since the sea was frozen all year round.
Manmade city heat, plus cooling water from power stations, are all contributing to man-made warming.
Why has the sale of air-conditioners risen world wide?

And if you tell me warming is due to an increase in the heat output of our Sun, or our 26,000 year precession around our ecliptic plane, you are closing your eyes to reality.



......>..Continuation by Mike Kremer

I'm afraid I must direct a couple of paragraphs to John Reynolds.
Who is misguidedly assuming that Vineland or Greenland was so warm that it was eagerly populated by the Vikings, who discovered it.
In fact hey had a hard time ecking out an existence from this new land.
But they did paint a rosy picture of this new country, back to their homeland in their endeavour to get more settlers especially women, to come out Vineland, and join them.
Vinelands history was cold, difficult and hard, a land the settlers eventually abandoned.

Just because Greenlands archeology found that vineland once supported lush tropical forest, please do not assume that this was the case 1000 years ago, when the Vikings arrived
It was probably almost as cold as the Vikings homelands of Norway and Sweden.
Thousands of Vikings came, conquered, and settled in England, and the western coast of Scotland, a much warmer place for them. Relatively few settled, to stay in Vineland (Greenland).

John, people buy Air-conditioners to keep themselves, their offices and living areas, cool.....not because they are getting cheaper. People generally buy what they have a need for, irrespective of price, dont you think?

Also note that the price of cars have also fallen, as has the cost of refrigerators, and flying.
How about the price of the billions of light bulbs?. Light bulbs in particular store billions of heat watts within buildings, world wide.
Non of the above were around 150 years ago. Cities are larger now, and produce a lot of heat.
Yes, John you should consider all the machinery that goes to make up the running of a modern city. Machinery that produces the well known 'hotspots' that hover above our citys.

In addition every particle of dust produced by automobile and aircraft engines, that absorbs heat, cannot be reflected back into space. Another example of manmade warming.

Further-more it is my projected idea that the billions of window glass panes in the world, are another cause of Man made warming. Since they allow the suns heat into offices and rooms, but glass dos'nt let the longer heat rays out.
Sunlight which under normal circumstances, would have been largely reflected back out into space. Yet another producer of 'hotspots' over the worlds cities, and a further example of Manmade warming.

I have just thought up another, not implausible idea, that soap might be responsible for a subtle change in climate?

Prehaps soap in our oceans lessens the surface tension of the seawater, which inturn allows the wind and waves to increase the evaporation rate, above what it might have been normally?
More water vapour than normal, constantly up in the atmosphere would have some effect. Possibley a latent heat effect. Or the conversion to longer heat waves, similar to window glass?.

A couple of comments upon S.Fred Singer's pdf

**Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way.**

Well human activities are definately influencing local climate.
How about the air pollution in China and India? China releases over 6 Billion tons of CO2 every year.
Dam building, irrigation, and the diversion of waters, eg The virtual disappearance of the Aral sea. Dryness of grasses and forest fires that occur in Asia and Europe, (some are deliberate)
All these small imperceptabilities have added up to a noticable climate change in many parts of the world, over the last 150 years. In particular, the small rise in temperature of approx 0.6 degree and rising.

Or lets put it another way....Without any Human influence or activity, any natural Global Climate change would be imperceptable over the 1 million year time scale, that Fred Singer talked about.
Although I'm not quite sure what these natural phenomena are? Volcanoes? Even the biggest explosion in modern times, The Santorini volcanoe in the Mediteranean barely caused more than a few weeks of dust which soon settled. What natural phenomenon could possible cause the Global change we have been experiencing over the last 150 years? Try to answer that if you can.

**During much of the last century the climate was cooling while CO2 levels were rising. And we should note that the climate has not warmed in the past eight years, even though greenhouse gas levels have increased rapidly.**

Is Fred Singer kidding? Prehaps he should have checked the summer temperatures in Europe over the last 10 years. Europes climate is greatly influenced by the Gulf Stream and Atlantic trade winds. Thousands of people died from the summer heat in
France 3 years ago. While more thousands suffered from the heat in Greece this summer, with hundreds dying.
But don't pooh pooh the changes just because they were only over ten years. This heat was ground breaking,and had never ever had been experienced before. As were the floods in central Europe 5 years ago, that subjected the medieval city of Budapest to such severe flooding. Again not ever experienced before. Even America has been experiencing high heat, as well as low rainfall. As has Australia.

Fred S. Singer states-
**'Natural causes of climate change, for their part, cannot be controlled by man. They are unstoppable. Several policy consequences would follow from this simple fact:'**

Ha Ha! Now we come to the real reason why there are those that dont believe Man is responsible for Climate Warming.
These unbelievers are working hand in hand for their Goverments.
Goverments realise some years ago, that Global warming cannot be stopped.
They realise, that if they were to really try to implement KYOTO, it would bankrupt them.
It would certainly retard the development of that country, allowing others who did not subscribe to KYOTO to catch up and overtake them. Theres the reason.

The buying and selling of excess CO2 production, by Goverment, could only be realisable as a monetary burden, or tax, upon their population. I cant see any Goverment keeping in power, trying to solve an impossible solution by imposing extra taxes upon the public.

If China, India, and the oil derrick gas flare burners refuse to agree to cut their CO2 production, or implement KYOTO, then everyone else will say, 'Whats the use?'

For instance, here in the UK we produce a modest 2% of the Worlds CO2 output What is 2% against the Worlds 98% CO2 production.? Even if we were able to cut out our miserly 2% of CO2 production. We would end up as a 5th rate nation.
Correction, in fact I doubt if we would even exist as a country within a couple of years.
No, I just cannot see KYOTO being accepted.

I predict that Goverments, together with the collusion of their Scientists will be more than happy to blame Global Warming as a product of natural causes, however difficult that might be.
Just as long as they have the ear of the public and confidence of friendly countries
No doubt citing all sorts of scientific blather to account for this 'Natural' warming.
Those Scientists who blame the Suns heat fluctuations, Cosmic Rays, Meteorite dust, Magnetic or Gravity ideas will continue to be feted and employed by their Goverments, drawing fat pay checks. Just as long as they issue figures to support the 'Natural Global Warming' theory.

Its a pity the world will suffer in the end. KYOTO will die, the public will turn a blind eye,try to carry on as usual, batten down their hatches, and move to higher ground, and turn up their air conditioners.
Yes, its a tough one, those people that deny 'Man made global Warming', are just as bad, as future Goverments.
These people will be on the increase, and how will they be able to live with them selves? (Thats you and I)
I guess we will continue to exchange our light bulbs for the low energy type, and talk with smug satisfaction of how we are cutting down on the use of our car.

Then having done our bit to save the world, we will leave it at that.
And so no one, or no country will really do anything.
Everyone will leave the problem for the next generation to solve. Amen.






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Here in Australia we have 'aspirational' goals!! Nothing so crude as real targets.

What upsets me is that none of us reading this topic will be alive to see if cutting down consumption a bit and, for example, attempting to generate electricity with something other than the cheap, abundant and filthy coal we are using now may have helped. It will be our children's children who will know what we should have done when we had the chance.

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Mike - a few points ...
1) No one was making any statements that Greenland was recently lush and warm. All that is being stated is that, 1000 yrs ago when the Norse settled, it was warmer than today. Stop confusing geological time with human time.

2) Some of your arguments with Fred Singer have merit, but you are wrong about the temperature not being stable the last 10 years. I think it is very well established that the (post 1970) peak warm year was 1998 and the global AVERAGE temperature has not gone up since then. Singular point measurements like Europe summer 2003 serve no purpose other than as propaganda. Incidentally the warmest year last century was 1934, with 1998 coming second.

3) I find your quote interesting :

...."and if you tell me warming is due to an increase in the heat output of our Sun, or our 26,000 year precession around our ecliptic plane, you are closing your eyes to reality."

You are quite happy to believe that a gas which occurs in such minor concentations that it has to be measured in ppm's (parts per million) is the culprit of global warming but you ridicule the idea that the sun (which converts mass to energy at a rate of half a million kg per second, and will BURN you if you expose yourslef to it for longer than 10 minutes even though it is 150 million km away) can't possibly have anything to do with it.
How can even small variations in its output not have an impact ?

And if we are into quotes, one of my favourites is : "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time."

Regards
Imran






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Apologies all - On my point (2) above - the ranking of hottest years I am referring to is for the US only - not Global.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200708120001


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Originally Posted By: ImranCan said

Mike - a few points ...
1) ............ Stop confusing geological time with human time.


I certainly wasnt confusing Geological time with human time.
I was replying to John Warren, when he stated

Originally Posted By: John Warren

"remember Greenland was once green, England once made better wine then France."


That he wrote all All in the same line! Which to me seemed that he thought Greenland was green and free of ice at the time the Romans grew grapes here in the UK.
Which is why I went into a dialogue of the time Dinosaurs roamed Greenland, back in the Pleiocene era.
And again surprisingly, you also equated Polar Bears when Greenland was green.

Originally Posted By: ImranCan

And before we all start panicking about polar bears, it wouldn't hurt to rememember that Greenland was indeed once green.

Unfortunately I am not a Geologist as you say you are yourself.
My only qualifications are in glass formulae and Glass Fibre Manufacture, hardly a science for this Forum, so I rely upon people like yourself for my Geological info.
However I am well aware that non provable statements can be construed as 'bad science', which I try to avoid.
So, I ought to point out that its far more likely that Polar Bears lived in Kamchatka or the Aleutians around East Russia, where it was much colder,a few million years ago. Not in Greenland,when it was green, as you say. Of course thats assuming that Polar Bears existed then, in the same form as today?
Having put a few million years of evolution behind them, they may have been somewhat different in the past.
Again you state-

Originally Posted By: ImranCan

You are quite happy to believe that a gas which occurs in such minor concentations that it has to be measured in ppm's (parts per million) is the culprit of global warming but you ridicule the idea that the sun (which converts mass to energy at a rate of half a million kg per second, and will BURN you if you expose yourslef to it for longer than 10 minutes even though it is 150 million km away) can't possibly have anything to do with it.
How can even small variations in its output not have an impact ?

Do you believe the Sun has been getting hotter? If it was Greenland might still be totally green?
I prefer to believe Global Warming is a combination of many factors. A few I put down previously, and here.

Are there any measurements of our Suns heat output year in and year out? If there are any at all, how long do they go back?
The only change in the Suns heat out-put as far as I know are during its 11 year sunspot cycle, when its heat output actually decreases minutely.

Originally Posted By: ImranCam said

You are quite happy to believe that a gas which occurs in such minor concentations that it has to be measured in ppm's (parts per million) is the culprit of global warming but you ridicule the idea that the sun (which converts mass to energy at a rate of half a million kg per second, and will BURN you if you expose yourslef to it for longer than 10 minutes even though it is 150 million km away) can't possibly have anything to do with it.
How can even small variations in its output not have an impact ?


Again my reply is that the only small variation in the suns output that I am aware of is during its sunspot cycle.

I think you will find that I mentioned a number of possible resons for Manmade Global warming. One of them was CO2 gas-
Which as you say, does not seem a lot when compared with the total gases in our atmosphere. I also mentioned Water vapour, which holds a lot more latent heat than CO2. More below but first.
I mentioned the conversion of light into longer heat waves.
Mentioning the billions of light bulbs. Light bulbs that in particular store billions of heat watts within buildings, world wide.
Non of the above were around 150 years ago. Cities are larger now, and produce a lot of heat.
I considered some of the machinery that goes into the make up of running a modern city. Machinery that produces the well known 'hotspots' that hover above our citys.

In addition every particle of dust produced by automobile and aircraft engines, that absorbs heat, cannot be reflected back into space. Another example of Manmade warming.

Further-more it is my projected idea that the billions of window glass panes in the world, are another cause of Man made warming. Since they allow the suns heat into offices and rooms, but glass dos'nt let the longer heat rays out.
Sunlight which under normal circumstances, would have been largely reflected back out into space. Yet another producer of 'hotspots' over the worlds cities, and a further example of Manmade warming.
....>How about the air pollution in China and India?
China releases over 6 Billion tons of CO2 every year.
......>For instance, here in the UK we produce a modest 2% of the Worlds CO2 output What is 2% against the Worlds 98% CO2 production.?
So now back to water vapour.
I said-"Prehaps soap in our oceans lessens the surface tension of the seawater, which inturn allows the wind and waves to increase the evaporation rate, above what it might have been normally?"
A small amount of soap lessens surface tension. Is that such an impossible idea?
More water vapour than normal, constantly up in the atmosphere would have a larger effect than CO2. Possibley a latent heat effect. Or the conversion to longer heat waves, similar to window glass?."

Water vapour hold about 5X the amount of heat than CO2 (I think)
So together with the the idea that the conversion and trapping of heat to longer wavelengths...a lot of Suns output is unable to reflect back out into space, as it did before Man came upon the scene.
I also mentioned the 'dirty snow' in the Polar regions. Caused by pollution, that would absorb a finite amount of the Suns heat.

One final point, you said-
Originally Posted By: ImranCan

2) Some of your arguments with Fred Singer have merit, but you are wrong about the temperature not being stable the last 10 years. I think it is very well established that the (post 1970) peak warm year was 1998 and the global AVERAGE temperature has not gone up since then. Singular point measurements like Europe summer 2003 serve no purpose other than as propaganda. Incidentally the warmest year last century was 1934, with 1998 coming second.

OK, have it your way. There will always be a random high, or a random low reading, to be found over the years.
Granted it is DIFFICULT to prove that Global Air Temperatures have increased slightly over the last 150 years, since its very difficult to pin down and record variable moving air temperatures. Different wind speeds makes this very difficult to record temp data, from the relatively few recorders around the world. Some of them are getting too near the citys and towns that are expanding, and could effect readings when the wind blows from a building

But there is another way...To my mind the only way, and the best way to prove that Global Warming is Manmade.

Ocean temperatues probably lags behind by about 50 years, the average Global Warming air temperature figures.
But the oceans ARE warming, slowly and steadily. This data is showing a truthful, repeatable upward trend.
We have excellent figures showing this increase in Sea temperature.
Readings from the dozens of buoys placed in the oceans confirm this.
==Thats proof the world is getting warmer, and its all due to Man==

Keep on buying your air conditioners, they need them in India right now.


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Quote:
Are there any measurements of our Suns heat output year in and year out? If there are any at all, how long do they go back?"

Yes, but I'm not sure of the history. Output is only one factor. Sunlight "hours" is very important. Yes, there is a study on sunlight hours that started in 2002. So far, the amount of sunlight hours is a perfect match for the temperatures. I have the graph, I'll try to find it when I have time. The more sunlight hours...The hotter the year.

Quote:
However I am well aware that non provable statements can be construed as 'bad science'...So, I ought to point out that its far more likely...Of course that assuming that"

Really funny.:-)

Quote:
Having put a few million years of evolution behind them, they may have been somewhat different in the past.

No, Polar bears aren't that old. 250,000 years at best. They are nothing more than a Grisly with white fur.

Global Warming is not a collection of heat records, and heat sources. It is a flawed, dishonest claim that CO2 "traps" heat and prevents it from escaping our atmosphere. Heat loads are meaningless to the alarmists.

Quote:
I think you will find that I mentioned a number of possible reasons for Manmade Global warming.

Again, the study is on heat trapping gases. Heat loads are meaningless. Asphalt retains a lot of heat...But the alarmists insist that asphalt doesn't matter..Only CO2.

A/C sales are on the rise because it is cheaper to replace than repair...IF something is wrong with the coils or compressor. In the USA, you can't buy anything under 14 seer these days, so if your old seer 10 breaks...you have to replace. There is also a growing population. 0.6 C over 150 years isn't going to cause much of an increase in A/C sales...if any.

"Mean temperatures" are meaningless. Here, take a look at Texas, for just one example...
1980 was our hottest year, but it doesn't rank very high due to a cold winter. The heat wave of 1980 was the 7th deadliest natural disaster in American history.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p112/maxter-1/newtexas.gif
Link to verify the data...Click on Statewide, then Texas, then select "annual" under "period". I also changed the base period dates to 1895 and 2007 to include all of the available data.
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/cag3.html
And, a link to the USA Heat Wave of 1980.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_heat_wave

Quote:
But the oceans ARE warming, slowly and steadily. This data is showing a truthful, repeatable upward trend.
We have excellent figures showing this increase in Sea temperature.
Readings from the dozens of buoys placed in the oceans confirm this.

==Thats proof the world is getting warmer, and its all due to Man==

Wrong. The "oceans" are cooling. In fact, in just 3 years, they have lost 1/5 of the heat accumulated over the last 50+ years. "Proof" is usually followed by verifiable evidence...Like this.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/sep/HQ_06318_Ocean_Cooling.html

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Just a quick aside:

A member of the Thai government recently stated that Thailand had nothing to fear from rising sea levels because the country was so far from the melting glaciers.

OK back to you. smile


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Originally Posted By: redewenur
Just a quick aside:

A member of the Thai government recently stated that Thailand had nothing to fear from rising sea levels because the country was so far from the melting glaciers.

OK back to you. smile


So politican's are idiots - how's this news? Al "I am not going to spend much time on the science of it" Gore proves this every time he opens his mouth.

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a couple of points Mike

Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer

I also mentioned Water vapour, which holds a lot more latent heat than CO2.


I don't want to be pedantic, but people will take you more seriously if you use terminology correctly. Latent heat is the amount of heat required to shift a substaince from one phase to another (liquid water to water vapour).

Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer
Further-more it is my projected idea that the billions of window glass panes in the world, are another cause of Man made warming. Since they allow the suns heat into offices and rooms, but glass dos'nt let the longer heat rays out.


Glass does nothing to absorb IR radiation(I assume that's what you mean by longer heat rays). Glass does stop convection however, but who needs to worry about convection - certainly not climate modellers. wink

Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer

Prehaps soap in our oceans lessens the surface tension of the seawater, which inturn allows the wind and waves to increase the evaporation rate, above what it might have been normally?

I don't think you understand the scale of the oceans. Let me assure you, soap concentrations in the oceans are not at a level where they are affecting the surface tension. The volume of the oceans is 1.37 billon cubic kilometers.

Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer

Ocean temperatues probably lags behind by about 50 years, the average Global Warming air temperature figures.

Please provide a reference to the 50 year lag. Based on the volume of the oceans, I'll eat my hat if the ocean's response to a shift in atmospheric temperature only lags by 50 years. The numbers I have read suggest the lag is on the order of thousands of years http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/302C/role_of_oceans.htm

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Originally Posted By: Canuck
I'll eat my hat if the ocean's response to a shift in atmospheric temperature only lags by 50 years. The numbers I have read suggest the lag is on the order of thousands of years http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/302C/role_of_oceans.htm

Are we talking about the temperature above the thermocline or below it?

From your linked site I notice:

"The thermal properties of the deep ocean constitute a time lag in the climate system on the scale of 1000 years."

But:

"The thermal capacity of the mixed layer [top 70-100 metres] implies response times to surface changes on the order of years."

How would you like your hat? Medium, rare, or well done? laugh


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"It was probably almost as cold as the Vikings homelands of Norway and Sweden." -- So Greenland 800 years ago was probably nicer than their homelands? That must be why they settled there until the little ice age around 1600.

While most people will not buy an air conditioner if they don't need one, lower prices will permit more people to buy them which explains higher sales. If the global temp increased by less than one degree Celcius, that is not enough to spur enough people to buy an air conditioner. That just does not make sense. It makes more sense that they waited until the price came down.

"Machinery that produces the well known 'hotspots' that hover above our citys." Don't worry, there is no significant urban heat island effect according to Hansen. Any UHI has bveen accounted for through adjustments that have lowered the 1930's temps and raised the 1990's and 2000's temps. That is the exact opposite of what would be expected. Although Hansen appears to think that the UHI in St Petersburg has declined in the past 15 years ( http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2013 ).

"In addition every particle of dust produced by automobile and aircraft engines, that absorbs heat, cannot be reflected back into space. Another example of manmade warming." The drier and colder the earth gets, the more dust there is. This is shown in the Vostok data well before the 20th century. Some dust will reflect sunlight back to space. Darker colour dust will have a warming effect.

"Well human activities are definately influencing local climate." Local climate is not global climate. Only a small portion of the earth's land surface is actually inhabited. I think the number is around 5%.

Then you change topics to air pollution. That has nothing to do with global climate change. The fact that people removed vegetation which caused deserts to spread does not affect my climate in Northern Ontario. That they are rapidly fixing that situation will not affect my climate either.

"...imperceptable over the 1 million year time scale." Hmmm, the vostok data shows 100,000 year cycles where the temperature varied by 10 degrees Celcius ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg ). If that is imperceptable, then what are you complaining about 0.6 C for?

"Although I'm not quite sure what these natural phenomena are?" Are you asking? Google Milankovitch . And the Pinatubo eruption caused cooling due to light coloured aerosols' albedo affect. It took a few years for the temperatures to recover fully from that one.

"But don't pooh pooh the changes just because they were only over ten years." Your examples are simply examples of weather. That is not climate. The AGW theory states that the temperature will go up as the concentration of CO2 goes up. The CO2 levels have been increasing, but the rate of temperature increase has levelled off. Why? Try to answer that if you can.

I have run out of time. More later.

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Originally Posted By: redewenur
Are we talking about the temperature above the thermocline or below it?


Well, since I did quote the entire volume of the oceans, I would say I'm talking about the entire depth. I thought this was fairly clear. Perhaps I was wrong.

Originally Posted By: redewenur

But:

"The thermal capacity of the mixed layer [top 70-100 metres] implies response times to surface changes on the order of years."

How would you like your hat? Medium, rare, or well done? laugh


Please, give me a break. Is there a more well mixed part of the oceans where the response is short? Of course. I could go finer than you and say that the top 3-4 meters of water has a response time of months (which is true), but it doesn't mean that's the ocean's response time. We're talking about "the oceans".

Let me make this clear for you...... The point was made that the ocean's response time - so the total amount of time for equilbrium to be reached, for the entire ocean, not a subset of the ocean - was on the order of 50 years (with no reference). I called bull$hit on it, and said it was much longer.

Sorry, no hat eating from my end.

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The point being Canuck, as you well know, is that the ocean temperatures that will have any significance during the next hundred years are not in the sub-thermocline, they are in the top hundred metres. Knowing this, one wonders why you never bothered to raise the issue of 'whole ocean' versus the upper 'subset' as you call it. Sure you 'could go finer' than me, but 'finer' is irrelevant in this case.


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Originally Posted By: redewenur
The point being Canuck, as you well know, is that the ocean temperatures that will have any significance during the next hundred years are not in the sub-thermocline, they are in the top hundred metres. Knowing this, one wonders why you never bothered to raise the issue of 'whole ocean' versus the upper 'subset' as you call it.

Sorry red - the question was raised about the ocean's response time - that is why I never "bothered to raise the issue of 'whole ocean' versus the upper 'subset'". In systems analysis, response time is the length of time for the system to come to equilibrium after an input. Are you saying that the oceans temperature has reached equilibrium from an atmospheric temp increase after 100 years? (rhetorical, I know you're not). The question is, if you know equilibrium is not reached in 100 years, then why would you say the response time of the oceans is 100 years?
Originally Posted By: redewenur

Sure you 'could go finer' than me, but 'finer' is irrelevant in this case.


So looking at the shallow ocean temperature is irrelevant when looking at GW? Geez, you better get on the horn with NOAA/NASA/Hadley/IPCC, since they are using ocean surface temps, from the top 3-4 meters (likely even shallower), to determine the oceanic response to GW. I'd love to have a look at global ocean temperatures for the top 100 meters as well - after all, if it's so relevant, I'm sure there's a dataset out there. Could you pass it along please?


This site continues to astound me, people seemingly want to argue about fairly trival things - like whether the response time for the top 100 meters, or the entire ocean should be used to determine the "oceans response time", or argue about whether anecdotal evidence contributes to scientific evidence. But they never want to discuss the lack of peer review on how global average temperature is determined, never want to discuss the impacts when those average temperatures were shown to be wrong, never want to discuss how UHI may be impacting the surface record, never want to discuss how improved detection methodologies/looser criteria is likely responsible for the increasing trend in hurricanes, never want to discuss how CO2 measurements on top of an active volcano can actually be representative of background CO2, never want to discuss how observed trends don't match GW theory (there should be more warming higher in the atmosphere, we're seeing more warming at ground surface), never want to discuss why this global phenomenon of GW is not affecting Antarctica (or, after the Hanson mistake was found, neither the US – McIntyre is going through other continents attempting to find this warming, so far, no dice), or never want to discuss how the absorption band of CO2 is supposed to expand with higher concentrations.

I could go on, but I think I made my point - lets start having some meaningful discussion on here, and stop arguing about trivial definitions, in some pathetic attempt to "score" points.

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Having tested the water (yes, pun intended), I conclude that I was right.

Canuck, however correct your arguments may or may not be, your contribution to the climate threads comes across, quite frequently, as loathsomely ill-mannered, discourteous, and crudely aggressive. It is evidently impossible for you to make you points without a liberal dose of brash arrogance and conceited condescension? I recommend that you do yourself (and many others) a service and find yourself a site that will "astound" you somewhat less?

That would be my recommendation, but it's of no account to me since I've discovered better things to do with my time.


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Mike et al
Good discussion and good to see that lots of alternatives and other variables are being considered .... this is more like it !!!!

I just thought I would throw a couple of things out there for info and amusement .... to make us appreciate even more there are just so many things we don't know and/or can't control ..

1) Natural coal fires - the amount of CO2 produced from (just) Chinese "coal fires" is thought to exceed the CO2 produced from the entire USA automobile usage.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~prakash/coalfires/co2_emission.html
"In China alone, the figures given by various scientific groups vary in this regard. According to reports of the Beijing Remote Sensing Corporation (BRSC), Aerophotogrammetry and Remote Sensing Bureau of China Coal (ARSC) and works of Professor Guan Haiyan from China, the annual loss of coal due to coal fires in China is between 10 to 20 million tons. However, figures given by Rozema et al. in 1993 are 10 times higher which means that 100 to 200 million tons of coal are lost due to coal fires in China. Assuming these latter figures to be a realistic measure of the coal being burnt, the CO2 emitted, solely due to these fires, would amount to 2 to 3 percent of the world's total CO2 emission due to fossil fuels."

2) Y'all shoud just try reading a few things about the sun - amazing .... the idea that this doesn't have variations in output cannot be true - sunspots, solar flares, mass ejections, solar wind variation, impact of Jupiters gravitation, the fact that its constantly changing size, mass and composition (even thought thats a slow process) ...... bla bla bla ... the list will go on ...
http://www.abc.net.au/science/space/planets/sun.htm
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR04/03761/COSPAR04-A-03761.pdf


3) And just to show there are so many things we don't understand ... try the "expanding earth theory" ... no idea what this might do for global temperatures ... but they must get affected ... if it was true ...
http://www.expanding-earth.org/

Personally, I think its probably bull - although I did argue the merits in my final undergrad exams many years ago .... But I think its a good example of why its important to keep an open mind about a lot of things. Never believe what you read in the press and never fear to question the conventional wisdom. And if you're being told that you have to toe-the-line because there is now 'consensus' ..... then its definitely time to ask a few pointed questions ....

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Originally Posted By: redewenur
.....

Canuck, however correct your arguments may or may not be, your contribution to the climate threads comes across, quite frequently, as loathsomely ill-mannered, discourteous, and crudely aggressive. It is evidently impossible for you to make you points without a liberal dose of brash arrogance and conceited condescension? I recommend that you do yourself (and many others) a service and find yourself a site that will "astound" you somewhat less?



Personally I just want to say that I don't agree with this observation. Having read the 'offending' contribution, I find it to be sincere ..... maybe a little frustrated ... but certainly not deserving of the response above. On the content itself, I think the questions Canuck raises are exactly the reason the whole "CO2 causing warming" so called consensus is rapidly unravelling and the emotional responses (as per above) are more symptomatic of an assault upon a religion.

We must be allowed to question ......... and the questions Canuck poses must be answered ... properly ....

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Originally Posted By: ImranCan
Personally I just want to say that I don't agree with this observation. Having read the 'offending' contribution, I find it to be sincere ..... maybe a little frustrated ... but certainly not deserving of the response above. On the content itself, I think the questions Canuck raises are exactly the reason the whole "CO2 causing warming" so called consensus is rapidly unravelling and the emotional responses (as per above) are more symptomatic of an assault upon a religion.

We must be allowed to question ......... and the questions Canuck poses must be answered ... properly ....


Thanks for your words of support ImranCan - as you may suspect, there's some history here. In the past people who questioned anything to do with AGW were first attacked, then ostracized in these forums. This was led by a certain person who will remain nameless, and who is thankfully no longer active on this site. Some of his followers remain to do his bidding however. And this is where posts such as the one above come from.

You’re absolutely right on any questioning of AGW being met with the same resistance as somebody attacking a religion. When I heard "the debate is over" is the exact time that I got suspicious and started researching. With true sciences, the debate is never over -- that is the scientific method.


Here’s the first thread I took part in – one heck of a welcome eh? wink
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=17333&fpart=2

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Originally Posted By: Canuck
Originally Posted By: ImranCan
[quote=to Everyone]

We must be allowed to question ......... and the questions Canuck poses must be answered ... properly ....


Thanks for your words of support ImranCan - as you may suspect, there's some history here. In the past people who questioned anything to do with AGW were first attacked, then ostracized in these forums. This was led by a certain person who will remain nameless, and who is thankfully no longer active on this site. Some of his followers remain to do his bidding however. And this is where posts such as the one above come from.


I hope I am posting this in the right place (Mike Kremer)

Boy'O'boy,
This "Global Warming:- Man-Made or Natural?"
Has certainly got a few, people in the 'Natural' camp, more than
a little upset.
All I can say is:- Thank goodness those misguided individuals who
believe modern global Warming is a natural phenomenon of nature,
are getting fewer and fewer year by year
They certainly make a lot of noise, considering their relatively
few numbers.
If they took over, and had the ears of Goverments and People,
Nothing would get done, our granchildren, animals and plants,
might well be dying of heatstroke within 50 years.


As I stated earlier I am not a Geologist, and even less a climatologist, but those people in the 'Natural' camp have got to be blind to the warming events that are happening right now in our Polar regions.
I am immune to those that state. "Its happened before, with
Ice Ages, mini Ice ages" .etc

**I am not interested in Ice Ages that happened 100k Yrs ago.
Stupidly, the 'Natural camp' are**

A Post Glacial sea chart (nice one John) that dos'nt show the
Oceans were many feet lower 5000 years ago.
**True, they show the ocean a few feet lower. But you did'nt
mention that if you look back 13 thousand years, the sea level had dropped by about 150 feet, and thats while the Glaciers were still melting!

Someone even wrote that the Earth might be expanding?
**More likely to be contracting thru cooling, I'd say. If thats
an idea for the reason of the sea rising, its about as clever as
my soap idea. You dont need much soap to lower surface tension of sea water. (Homeopathic medicine manufacture, comes to mind?)**

John.M.R mentioned that CO2 is increasing, but so why
ar'nt temperatures keeping apace with this rise in CO2?
**Prehaps the excess is taken up by the sea, or Plankton?. Or
maybe we are, not producing enough CO2 OR heat yet!!!!

Troposphere is warming, but the Stratosphere is getting colder?
That some atmospheric dust reflects Sunlight, but that black dust absorbs, (as does asphalt. etc.)
**Well- You played right into my hands. Now you know why:-
The Stratosphere is a lot higher than the Troposphere,
Obviously there is not so much heat reaching the Stratosphere as
most of it is being absorbed by black dust, and NOT reflected.**

Someone mentioned that Polar bears are White grizzlys?
**Hehe, I dont believe that. Up in that cold sunless Polar region
I would have thought that evolution would have gone for a dark
fur. All the better to absorb the sun.
Prehaps the Almighty made the same mistake when he ensured that
Eskimos would feel the cold by making them virtually hairless?**

=And now for Ocean temperatures=
I think Max said the Oceans are cooling, having lost 1/5 th of
their heat over the last 50 years?
**Prehaps its heat, not been lost, but a result of mixing?**


Anyway, I will stand by my idea that Sea temperatures are the
best unequivable way to test 'Man made V Natural Warming'.
Maybe I got the sea depth, (my 50 year guesstimate) timescale
wrong. But I did mentioned Sea-buoys, which I knew, have been
taking sea temperatures for many years. They don't float deep.
So I am standing by the principle of this idea.

Global Average Sea Temp from 1850-2007

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Monthly/Hadplot_globe.gif

Air temperature Minus Surface Sea Temp 1850-2007

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Monthly/Hadplot_globe.gif

Stratosphere Versus Troposphere 1981-1990

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Monthly/upper_air_temps.gif

Nice Data supplied by the UK Metorological Office. Have a Browse

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/

Have fun, I will be away for 3 days. Regards to all.


.

.
"You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.


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I don't think anyine is disputing that global warming is happening. I'm sure it is.

I just don't think there is any clear incontrovertible evidence that it has anything to do with CO2 levels. Where is the evidence ?

And please don't refer to people who have a different opinion as you as "stupid" or "misguided". I, for one, certainly am not. So, instead of all the emotion and bluster, please just answer the question : where is the incontrovertible evidence that the warming is caused by CO2 ?

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"I would have thought that evolution would have gone for a dark
fur. All the better to absorb the sun."

Okay, someone is just having fun. I almost thought he was serious! lol!

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"...the warming events that are happening right now in our Polar regions." -- Actually, that would be Polar region. Only one. And only half of it at that. One link has some information and if you are looking for some anecdotal information, check another link. smile

"I am immune to those that state." -- You just admitted that you have a closed mind.

"A Post Glacial sea chart (nice one John) that dos'nt show the Oceans were many feet lower 5000 years ago." -- Then provide the proper link if my link is wrong. Mine is actually shown on wikipedia. The graph shows sea level rise since the end of the last glacial episode based on data from Fleming et al. 1998, Fleming 2000, & Milne et al. 2005. It shows that the sea level was about 130 meters (427 feet) lower 22,000 years ago than in now.

"Prehaps the excess is taken up by the sea, or Plankton?" I had the same thought a while back, but it is wrong. If the excess were being taken up then the levels in the air would not be rising. According to AGW theory, if the CO2 level increases, like it has been, then the temperature should increase. The fact is the increase in CO2 levels has been increasing steadily, but the tempertaure increase has not been. Its trend has been leveling off for the past 10 years.

"Or maybe we are, not producing enough CO2 OR heat yet!!!!" -- This is contradictory to the entire AGW debate. Which side are you on?

"...most of it is being absorbed by black dust, and NOT reflected" -- then we should be combatting black and brown dust and not CO2. But then again, the brown dust over parts of India made the news recently, but I have never read anyone suggest that airborne black dust is what is causing global warming. I have seen it blamed for darkening snow thus leading to increased snow melting, but that does not jive with observations either. Why would only half of the arctic reach new a minimum for ice while the other half did not?

"Prehaps its heat, not been lost, but a result of mixing?" -- Then the sea levels would be rising considerably faster due to thermal expansion. Look at the graph on the ucar page. The water below the 2500 meter level would contract slightly when heated to 3.89 C (277.04 K). The water above that level would expand if extra heat was mixed in. That ucar link also lets us know that "90 % of the total volume of ocean is found below the thermocline in the deep ocean." And another page shows that water at 0 C is 8.1% less dense than water at 3.98 degrees. (Hmmm. Mixing a liter of 8 C water with a liter of 0 C water may yeild water that is less than two liters.)

Your Global Average Sea Temp from 1850-2007 link is the same as your Air temperature Minus Surface Sea Temp 1850-2007 link.

Your Stratosphere Versus Troposphere 1981-1990 link proves that the AGW green house theory, which states that the stratosphere will warm more than the troposphere, is incorrect.

And while you are concerned about people dying of heat stroke, take a gander at the New York Times article. "The first is that winter can be deadlier than summer. About seven times more deaths in Europe are attributed annually to cold weather (which aggravates circulatory and respiratory illness) than to hot weather, Dr. Lomborg notes, pointing to studies showing that a warmer planet would mean fewer temperature-related deaths in Europe and worldwide.

The second factor is that the weather matters a lot less than how people respond to it. Just because there are hotter summers in New York doesn’t mean that more people die — in fact, just the reverse has occurred. Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, concluded that the number of heat-related deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the 1960s. The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning."

You already touched on that second factor.

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Not that the charts below show anything meaningful at all, but just interesting to note that, no sooner has a study been done to show than humans are affecting rainfall patterns (first link) than we get some of the worst rains in memory in Africa (second link). Except that the rains are occuring where the study predicted less precipitation - not more.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6912527.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6994995.stm


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Originally Posted By: ImranCan
I could not agree more .... until recently I was a climate agnostic .... didn't know, didn't care. But I was recently accosted at Heathrow airport by the so called "Climate Camp" so I started looking into it. What I have found is that the science is just debateable - for every model that suggest CO2 could be to blame there is irrefuteable logic and other data to suggest it can't be.

Far more interesting though is the human behaviour which has recently become prevalent. The global warming "believers" are showing increased signs of fanaticism. If you question the mantra, you are labelled irresponsible, if you say you don't believe it you are called stupid, if you own an SUV you are heted, if you make a DVD questioning Al Gores film you are labelled a heretic and serious folks will try and have your film banned (recent Channel 4 experience in the UK). And the more voices which question the mantra, the more fanatical the rhetoric gets.

I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and say "what is going on here ?" We should all remember that its better to read books than to burn them. And before we all start panicking about polar bears, it wouldn't hurt to rememember that Greenland was indeed once green.

as a person who seems intelligent consider this....so what!!
even if human activity is not causing global warming it seems obvios to any thinking person that our current lifestyle in industrialized nations is certainly creating a rapid destruction of our enviroment even if you choose not to believe that it is also affecting the atmoshere,you must see that it in the very least it is systematically destroying the earth and oceans,as well as most of the other speices, it is in fact NOT the global or local economy that feeds you but the earth itsef!!! our current lifestyle has to change and soon it doesnt matter if choose not to believe the facts about global warming .....look around you!!
you cannot crap where you eat!!! and because of pollution and human impact that is exactly what we are doing.
whether you ignore the c02 issue or not you have to see we are detroying the earth . this means no earth no us!!
even if mankind makes it off the planet we still have to be fed from it......it only makes sense to preserve it!!! think about it!! this planet is all we have big oil and industry have been destroying it without any regard or resevation ..even with the c02 issue out of the equation you must see this has to stop


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Benny - what you stated is exactly my issue with AGW. It really isn't about reducing CO2, the main goal is to reduce consumption. While this is a worthwhile goal, you're lying to the public, and twisting science to cause a sociological change. People who are involved in science shudder at the thought of science being manipulated to suit political agendas, and that's exactly what we have now. You want to reduce consumption, fine, I'm right behind you. But don't throw out idiotic threats (Al Gore) in hopes of causing change. The end never justifies the means.

The other huge negative with this, is you're focusing on the wrong issue. Lets spend trillions of dollars on reducing air pollution (and I'm not talking CO2), lets spend some money reducing water pollution. Let's work on keeping our soil from washing away. Let's develop infrastructure in the 3rd world, in hopes of reducing the 3-5 million deaths per year due to inadequate water or sanitation. These are real issues, that are occurring today, and they're getting left behind because they're not as 'sexy' as AGW is. The media would much rather report on some climate 'prediction' then a few million dying of diarrhea.

I'm guessing you know where I stand on this issue now.

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canuk you and i probably agree more than dis agree tha fact is the us gov. are masters of deception and propaganda
debate to be continued thanks alot...
benny checking out for now


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Benny
I could not agree with you more. I fundamentally agree with everything you have said - we must reduce consumption, we must become more efficient and we must act and live our lives in a more sustainable way. But you cannot, must not and will not achieve that goal on the basis of a lie. The end does not justify the means, becasue ultimately people (quite correctly) won't buy it. You will lose credibility and we will all be worse off for it, becasue we will have spent 20 years focussing on the wrong thing. All that energy up in smoke ....... to put it in suitably metphorical way .....

Rgds
Imran


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ImranCan (love the name by the way) wrote:

"But you cannot, must not and will not achieve that goal on the basis of a lie."

I'm beginning to believe the CO2 thing is being driven by those owning nuclear power generation technology. Nuclear power is certainly being promoted here as the answer to cutting CO2 emissions. Perhaps that's why the US admin is so keen to have a go at Iran. If we take Iran at its word (perhaps a bit of a gamble) they merely wish to develop the technology themselves so they can save their oil and so sell it for many years to come. Perhaps the US (and the West generally) wishes to keep a monopoly on the technology. Anyway it's a bit ironic that nuclear power is being promoted as the way to go in our part of the world yet military might is being threatened to prevent it developing in other parts of the world.

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Terry - I think there's at least some truth in your theory. Many people think Thatcher got Britian involved with global warming (starting the Hadley Institute), precisely because she wanted to move forward with nuclear power. This was right during the time when the coal worker unions were strong-arming the UK, via a series of strikes. A country can't live with out power.
Using GW as a way to attack coal fired plants, and go nuclear, would be a great way to lessen the power of the coal workers.

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Originally Posted By: Canuck
Benny - what you stated is exactly my issue with AGW. It really isn't about reducing CO2, the main goal is to reduce consumption. While this is a worthwhile goal, you're lying to the public, and twisting science to cause a sociological change. People who are involved in science shudder at the thought of science being manipulated to suit political agendas, and that's exactly what we have now. You want to reduce consumption, fine, I'm right behind you. But don't throw out idiotic threats (Al Gore) in hopes of causing change. The end never justifies the means.

The other huge negative with this, is you're focusing on the wrong issue. Lets spend trillions of dollars on reducing air pollution (and I'm not talking CO2), lets spend some money reducing water pollution. Let's work on keeping our soil from washing away. Let's develop infrastructure in the 3rd world, in hopes of reducing the 3-5 million deaths per year due to inadequate water or sanitation. These are real issues, that are occurring today, and they're getting left behind because they're not as 'sexy' as AGW is. The media would much rather report on some climate 'prediction' then a few million dying of diarrhea.

I'm guessing you know where I stand on this issue now.


First off 'Canuk' I have not "lied" to anybody ,second your desire to shoot down the effort to save our planet comes off as very shortsighted to me. You obviously consider yourself very intelligent. I don't care to spend a lot of time arguing with someone like you, but I have three childeren and have a big stake in the future. I however am only a single person and I know I cannot 'save the world' on my own. I would just like to leave something for my children, and if we fail to put the enviroment first and foremost on our list of priorities we will leave a much different earth than the one we live in behind.
I have read about the statistics on contaminated water, cancer rates, athsma, allergy and immune problems, climate change, erosion, and the loss of topsoil. It seems like the facts should be obvious to anybody ...but here you are!
The only logical argument you produce is C02 and so what? Even if C02 is not causing climate change, human activity undeniably is.
You seem to have the opinion that because part of the book on the enviroment is in debate (C02&warming) than the whole moral of the story must be wrong! How foolish is that?
Reducing consumption would mean living a very different lifestyle than the wise people of Canada currently enjoy.
Most of them would be unwilling to sacrifice the necessary luxories they currently have to help the cause.
Your comment on the development of the third world really reflects your wisdom......the earth after all could not sustain a whole planet of people who consume as much as Canadians, it in fact is the third world which provides the cheap excess that you enjoy...in fact it is you needing to live more like them being the solution rather than the opposite romantic notion that you have stated here.
The REAL issues, sir are pollution, excessive consumption and over-exploitation of the worlds resourses by industrialized nations (such as Canada) that continue to 'consume the earth' today.
Your attitude of indifference is part of the problem. You are the one focusing on irrelevant issues, who gives a @#$% about what the gov. says about C02, the problem at hand is preservation of the enviroment who cares what flag it flies under? It may already be too late mostly due to people like you wanting to argue about petty facts!!!!!
I don't care what people you have found on the web say about it, after all I can find somebody who does'nt believe in the holocaust if I look hard enough. The difference is I can look around me and see the evidence of a dying planet. It's dying because of human over-consumption......you have the right to believe what you choose (some people believe God is a computer)
but shame on you for trying to dis-credit a cause as noble as saving our planet because some polititions didn't say things the way you think they should.



I will do myself a favor and disregard your comments from now on.


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Originally Posted By: benny
i will do myself a favor and {sic} diregard your comments from now on


Please disregard my comments, also.

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Originally Posted By: Max
Originally Posted By: benny
i will do myself a favor and {sic} diregard your comments from now on


Please disregard my comments, also.

done-benny


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Originally Posted By: benny
Even if C02 is not causing climate change ....


Benny - given that we all seem to be on the same page re.the big question : "Is CO2 causing global warming ?", why are you so hostile to people who just question a dogma which is driving policy changes which will affect the quality of life of billions of people by removing their access to easy energy ....... all on the basis of an increasingly unproven (and alarmist) theory ?

And I'm not talking about people in the first world. As someone who lives a lot closer to those 'billions' than you ... I find it deeply disturbing that you can admit that CO2 might not be causing climate change but you still want to prevent vast swathes of humanity from achieving the quality of life you enjoy in Texas. Thats why you SHOULD give a "@#$%" what the government says !

No one denies your views on overall consumption and general pollution, but, seeing as it is not proven that CO2 causes climate change - do you object to China building coal fired power stations (at the rate of 1 per week), and if you do, what is YOUR alternative ?


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Honestly, I'm surprised benny. Your previous post on this thread was much less angry. Even stating that we aren't that far apart. Then you come back with this diatribe.

I'll try to go through your post (knowing full well you'll probably disregard it)

Originally Posted By: benny

First off 'Canuk' I have not "lied" to anybody,

You took my meaning too literally. I did not mean you specifically, but rather the pro-AGW side using the threat of 20 foot ocean level rises in order to bring about a sociological change.
And purposefully misspelling my name does not make you look intelligent.
Originally Posted By: benny

second your desire to shoot down the effort to save our planet comes off as very shortsighted to me. You obviously consider yourself very intelligent.

I don't consider myself anymore intelligent than most people. I do think I have the capability of critical thought. From my observances, this is short supply these days. I would guess the majority of the population would not even know the meaning behind it.
Originally Posted By: benny

I don't care to spend a lot of time arguing with someone like you, but I have three childeren and have a big stake in the future.

You have no more a stake then anybody else on this planet. I have one, another on the way. I suppose your next comment would be that you must care about your children more than I. Nothing like tugging at the heartstrings eh?
Originally Posted By: benny

I have read about the statistics on contaminated water, cancer rates, athsma, allergy and immune problems, climate change, erosion, and the loss of topsoil. It seems like the facts should be obvious to anybody ...but here you are!

Benny, we're focusing on climate change. Stop throwing everything into the same pot, and treating a question about one as an attack on all.
Contaminated water has nothing to do with climate change
Cancer rates have nothing to do with climate change
Allergy, asthma and immune problems have nothing to do with climate change.
Erosion of our topsoil has nothing to do with climate change.

Before somebody jumps out with some reference showing some of these issues may get worse with possible climate change, I'll put the caveat that climate change has had nothing to do with the historical occurrences of the environmental issues Benny listed.
Originally Posted By: benny

Even if C02 is not causing climate change, human activity undeniably is.

Oh really? If it's not CO2 causing climate change, then please share what aspect of human activity is causing it.
Originally Posted By: benny

You seem to have the opinion that because part of the book on the enviroment is in debate (C02&warming) than the whole moral of the story must be wrong!

This is absolutely false. Please show where I have said we shouldn't be living in a more sustainable manner. You are completely misrepresenting what I've said here, and feel. You want help preserving wetlands, replanting forests, reducing particulate emissions to our air, reducing waste discharges to our waters, reducing the amount of solid waste - then I am right there. And in reality, am already doing much of that - I work in an environmental consulting firm specializing in watershed management.
My issue is with GW taking much needed resources away from other critical, and more important areas.

Originally Posted By: benny

Reducing consumption would mean living a very different lifestyle than the wise people of Canada currently enjoy.
Most of them would be unwilling to sacrifice the necessary luxories they currently have to help the cause.

This is the only part of your post in which you're correct.
Originally Posted By: benny

Your comment on the development of the third world really reflects your wisdom......the earth after all could not sustain a whole planet of people who consume as much as Canadians, it in fact is the third world which provides the cheap excess that you enjoy...in fact it is you needing to live more like them being the solution rather than the opposite romantic notion that you have stated here.

An American is lecturing a Canadian on how wasteful Canadians are. If that's not funny I don't know what is.
I take it by your self-righteous attitude that you've given up all the "comforts" of the west. Sold your 3000 sq ft home and moved to a mud hut out in the desert, have you? I'm not sure how you're gaining access to the Internet - but I'm sure it must not be using a computer that has any parts built in developing countries (since that would be considered "cheap excess" which you so despise).
You want to know why I advocate the 3rd world developing? Birth rates, pure and simple. Every single environmental problem can be traced back to one thing - overpopulation. It doesn't matter how "sustainable" we become, with an ever increasing population, we're screwed. Now, numerous studies have shown that as a country moves from an agrarian society to a industry based society, a remarkable thing happens. Birth rates drop, and drop fast. If we want to get our environmental problems under control, there's one thing we need to do, stabilize and then gradually reduce our population. We can’t do that with birth rates that are above the replacement level, which is 2.1 (How many children do you have again? wink ) So as 3rd world countries develop, their populations stablize, and eventually start to decrease (as are the birth rates for every industrialized country on the plant)
But then that would be going after the root cause of the issue, rather than just slapping on a band-aid.

Originally Posted By: benny

The REAL issues, sir are pollution, excessive consumption and over-exploitation of the worlds resourses by industrialized nations (such as Canada) that continue to 'consume the earth' today.

Ok, I was wrong, you got two points right in your post. These are the REAL issues - not CO2 caused global warming.
Originally Posted By: benny

Your attitude of indifference is part of the problem.

I do not have an attitude of indifference. My field of work is dedicated to managing our water resources. What are you doing? Oh, that’s right, having more children than the replacement level.
Originally Posted By: benny

You are the one focusing on irrelevant issues, who gives a @#$% about what the gov. says about C02, the problem at hand is preservation of the enviroment who cares what flag it flies under?

You're not making too much sense here, but I gather you're saying who cares how we get people to change their ways, as long as it gets done.
Well, let me tell you - people that are concerned about the integrity of science are concerned.
Originally Posted By: benny

It may already be too late mostly due to people like you wanting to argue about petty facts!!!!!

Already passing the buck are you? Let me ask you again - what are you doing to combat global warming?
Originally Posted By: benny

I don't care what people you have found on the web say about it, after all I can find somebody who does'nt believe in the holocaust if I look hard enough. The difference is I can look around me and see the evidence of a dying planet. It's dying because of human over-consumption......you have the right to believe what you choose (some people believe God is a computer)
but shame on you for trying to dis-credit a cause as noble as saving our planet because some polititions didn't say things the way you think they should.

You're rambling at this point, and I'm having trouble following.
Benny, you sound that you are very passionate about our environment. You and I are not that much different (if you'd just breath, relax, and read my postings). We shouldn't need to "trick" people into changing our ways. Other people should see we're screwing up the earth, and need to change our ways. What can we do (other than tricking them with false science), to make them see this?

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Canuck:

"Every single environmental problem can be traced back to one thing - overpopulation."

Are we all agreed on that? I pretty much agree with the rest of your post too.

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Do we also agree that overpopulation is exacerbated by the 3rd world living conditons ??

Post transition fertility theory tells us that once society has achieved a certain increase in economic prosperity, fertility rates decline ....... and if economic prosperity is linked to energy consumption then the last thing we should be doing is limiting the 3rd worlds access to easy energy ..... true ? Any views ?


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Now that's an interesting perspective. Unfortunately things are never actually simple. At present energy companies are going flat out to gain monopolies on technology so there will be only a few people who benefit from any increased energy consumption in the 3rd world.

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Thats a different angle ....and you very well may be right.

I think the point I was trying to make is that in order to get control on the population problem (which we have agreed is the root cause of every single environmental problem), we have to bring as much of the world as possible to increased levels of economic prosperity and improved living standards. And that is going to require a lot more energy ..... is that a good thing or a bad thing ? And is that good thing or a bad thing if most of that energy is hydrocarbon generated ?

In other words, what's more important - reducing population growth or limiting CO2 emmissions ?


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If there is warming (let's agree there is) and if heat = energy (that seems established) and there is a debate on whether warming (heat) is caused by human activity or solar influence (fair enough) then.... We should acknowledge that the amount of energy reaching the Earth every day should allw some excess heat (energy) to be harnessed for third world development.

I realise it isn't this simple, but the debate is at times a bit ironic.

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Here's a catch all reply

Yup, I think we're all agreed - overpopulation is the issue we have to deal with.

Now, as far as ImranCan's idea that overpopulation is exacerbated by 3rd world living conditions – I would mostly agree, but with a slight clarification.

I don't think it's because there is no running water(specifically), that people are having 6 kids. I think it's because in agrarian economy, children are either seen as ways to increase family income, or as retirement funds. As you move away from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, children don't have the same affect; in fact they become more of a financial liability. Additionally, in an industrial economy women can have a greater positive financial impact to the family, by getting a job outside the home, rather than having children. Working women yields educated women, which we all know leads to even greater reductions in birthrates.

So I guess, I'd rather say “the lack of industrialization in the 3rd world is exacerbating the global population issue.”

So what is stopping industrialization from occurring in many 3rd world countries. Here's a list of the top of my head (won't be complete)
1) Transportation networks - rail, road, ports. Need to move goods
2) Water/waste water infrastructure. Need plenty of clean water
3) Electricity, and electricity distribution networks. Industry lives on power
4) Intellectual property and physical property rights. No industry is going to set up shop, if it's going to be stolen from them (Venezuela?)
6) Extensive financial rulesets - try to stop corruption
7) Biggest one (I think). Access to 1st world markets. They have to have somebody to sell their "stuff" to. This is why trade tariffs should come down. Any political party that is protectionist is enemy #1 in my books.

One final requirement - and this is something I haven't totally fleshed out. But I'm beginning to think it would be very tough for any 3rd country to make the leap to a capitalistic democracy without having some portion of the transition period being ruled by an authoritative government (aka dictator). There's probably too many difficult decisions to make in that transition, while still worrying about being elected. This is just a thought however.

Originally Posted By: terrynewzealand

At present energy companies are going flat out to gain monopolies on technology so there will be only a few people who benefit from any increased energy consumption in the 3rd world.

Remember though - economics is not a zero sum game, for every winner, there does not have to be a loser. Yes, energy companies will profit from increased energy consumption. There will be some that profit enormously. But where would the developed world be (and in reality, all of humanity), if we consumed no energy? I don't care to live in the Middle Ages smile

Originally Posted By: InramCan

In other words, what's more important - reducing population growth or limiting CO2 emmissions ?


Let me phrase this question a different way - we can industrialize the 3rd world, drastically bringing up their standard of living. Stop the 3-5 million deaths per year that are caused by improper sanitation/drinking water supplies. Stop the starvation. Connect the 4-5 billion people with the developed world, and tap into that massive pool of human ingenuity to tackle issues of today (and tomorrow). Greatly reduce war and other humanitarian disasters (compare the locations of such occurrences with how well "connected" the locale is). And generally create a much more "just" and "equal" world. But live with increased CO2 emissions.

Or, we could drastically cut CO2 emissions, convert all transportation to hydrogen based, mothball every coal fired plant in the world, put a halt on any new ones, and only allow nuclear/hydro/solar/wind plants. (How many solar panels do you think you'd need to run a steel foundry? How many nuclear plants do you think Bangladesh can afford?). All in hopes of stopping CO2 caused global warming, which is a hypothesis based on a 25 year warming trend seen in data collected from a spatially(and temporally) heterogeneous monitoring network placed in changing land covers, with changing operation techniques.

I'll need a much better reason than GW to sentence the developing world to the status quo.

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Originally Posted By: Canuck

Or, we could drastically cut CO2 emissions, convert all transportation to hydrogen based, mothball every coal fired plant in the world, put a halt on any new ones, and only allow nuclear/hydro/solar/wind plants. (How many solar panels do you think you'd need to run a steel foundry? How many nuclear plants do you think Bangladesh can afford?). All in hopes of stopping CO2 caused global warming, which is a hypothesis based on a 25 year warming trend seen in data collected from a spatially(and temporally) heterogeneous monitoring network placed in changing land covers, with changing operation techniques.



I think this discussion has moved to a much more positive level. For me, even if I believed that CO2 was causing global warming (which I don't), there is no point telling evryone to fly less or drive samller cars unless you address the fundamental needs of most people on the planet. Where is there energy going to coe from ? The growth in energy consumption in most parts of the world is huge - just go and visit China .... I lived there in 2003-4. These are much more important questions than whether the troposphere is warming or not, beacsue if you can't find solutions to that then whether you sell your SUV or not won't make any difference.

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interesting discussions over these forums...I would say quickly that the anthropogenic signal in today's warming trends have been well documented, and there is no denying that increased CO2 causes higher temperatures because of its chemcial and radiative nature. The lack of other natural forcings, as well as the simple physics behind what you get with a 100 ppmv increase in CO2, is strong evidence- but the topics have been studied in great detail with focus on climate, paleoclimate, geology, biology, ecology, astronomy, etc and has developed over decades. This paradigm has shown to have remarkable predictive power and explanatory with high confidence. Science does not "prove" things, so this word should stop being used so lightly over the topics.

For anyone who wishes to propose natural warming mechanisms from 1950 onward, or show why more CO2 would not increase temperature scientifically, it would be a fun debate. However, such statement like modellers don't account for atmospheric convection or it is a hypothesis 25 years old on a few unreliable sites should probably be disregarded because they are simply wrong. Every major scientific organziation now accepts the realities of AGW, and the silly arguments outlined in, say, the GGWS will not change that. I would advise people to read the relevant primary literature rather than wingnut sites which not only generate bad science, but demonstrate a poor understanding of climatic modelling, and the enormous amount of literature, measurements, and study given to any subtopic in the topic of climate change.

Chris

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Chris,
You are buying into Al Gore's religious experience. There is no legitimate study that validates AGW. It is nothing more than Al Gore talking to God.

CO2 IS Al Gore religion. Watch this clip. I can't believe what I'm seeing here! Talk about theater! Watch as Al Gore's silhouette walks into the circle of light as he says in a preacher like tone...At 3 minutes into the video.

"What is unusual is I had the privilege to be shown this, as a young man. It's almost as if a window had been opened through which the future was very clearly visible. "See that?" he said, "See that?" "That's the future in which you are going to live you life."

I didn't know that God or a male Oracle had talked to Gore and took him on a vision quest! Sheesh! Now, the man is a prophet! CO2 is a religion with the wildest "doomsday predictions" from "prophets" who "see" the future. Sound familiar? Pay attention, notice the church bells right after Gore made his claim. Too much! LOL

Did everyone hear that Europe was going to start auctioning off carbon credits to the highest bidder? LOL, What a scam!

Rise above for Big Al...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...h&plindex=4

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observing such a fundamental dispute about global wamring and considering scietific methods and evidence, one tend to wonder which evidence is there to support or refute both sides.

This opposition is really interesting when one compares the new summary for policy makers with the independent summary for policy makers, using the same information, getting to a completely opposite opinion about evidence, proof and future projection.

Perhaps it's not only science but also psychology / sociology. problem is that the physical truth has no consideration whatsoever for what we like to be true.

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Of course, climate change is man made, that's settled science. We know that the climate sensitivity is about 3 °C per doubling of CO_2 concentration, we know how much CO_2 we've put in the atmosphere and we can directly measure the increase oin CO_2 concentrations and temperature. It all fits the theory (based on elementary physics) reasonably well.

The only people who dispute this are a handful of scientists most of whom have have no solid background in physics. There is the odd economist who criticises the Hockey Stick, even though that criticism is irrelevant. This is similar to biology where you have a handful of scientists who do not believe in evolution. They waste their time criticising Paleontologists who made minor mistakes. Even if true, it doesn't prove that evolution is false and that God created the Universe in 7 days.

What matters in the end is that none of the criticisms are published in the leading journals like Science or Nature. These journals will not hesitate to publish a breakthrough that completely overturns the conventional wisdom.

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Originally Posted By: Count Iblis II
Of course, climate change is man made, that's settled science.


Given that this scientific forum spends most of the time discussing this very question, I find this to be a very polarising remark. This is the kind of position which is driving some very unhealthy behaviours - see attached article for what I mean.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/ngreen211.xml

I would disagree on a couple of points - i don't think the destruction of the 'hockey stick' viewpoint is irrelevant. It has been significantly discredited and ignoring this is just like saying you ingnore the data you don't like.

Additonally I want to raise a question about the so called "elementary physics" - isn't it true that ALL models based on this "elementary physics" predict that the troposphere will show the greatest degree of warming ? However data shows there has been no temeperature change whatsoever. So is this data irrelevant or are the models wrong ?


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Global warming is dangerously close to becoming a religion.
When people are attacked for not agreeing with the "herd", it's not science.
When people are told "the debate is over", it's not science.
When people say "yes, there's some errors in it, but don't worry, they're don't impact the results", it's not science.
When the 'leading experts' in AGW have absolutely no background in climate science, it's not science (Tim Flannery has recently got a lot of press for his calculation that showed CO2 equivalent-whatever that is-is already over 450 ppm. Flannery is a mammologist and a palaeontologist, incidentally he's also selling his book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth")

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Science is what is published in peer reviewed journals and presented at conferences. What is not science is to make allegations of errors and not follow up on that with peer reviewed publications, conference presentations etc.

Now, I'm not an expert in climate scince, so I can't give a detailed response to problems raised by skeptics. But it is up to the skeptics to make their point in the scientific community. So far they haven't so their criticism of global warming theory is definitely not science.

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Originally Posted By: Count Iblis II
Science is what is published in peer reviewed journals and presented at conferences. What is not science is to make allegations of errors and not follow up on that with peer reviewed publications, conference presentations etc.

Now, I'm not an expert in climate scince, so I can't give a detailed response to problems raised by skeptics. But it is up to the skeptics to make their point in the scientific community. So far they haven't so their criticism of global warming theory is definitely not science.


I think this statement is complete rubbish. Any proponent of any scientific proposal (including AGW) must be completely open to challenge and analysis from any quarter. That is the only way to ensure credibility. If someone postulates something, it isn't up to the rest of us to prove the opposite and get published in a journal as part this. A very good example is the recent case of the 0.15 degree error that was found in the ground based US temperature reading post 2000. These were simply pointed out by a Steve McKintyre .... and I may be mistaken .... but I don't think his observations were peer reviewed or published in any journal. And that was science at its very best.


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Originally Posted By: ImranCan
Originally Posted By: Count Iblis II
Science is what is published in peer reviewed journals and presented at conferences. What is not science is to make allegations of errors and not follow up on that with peer reviewed publications, conference presentations etc.

Now, I'm not an expert in climate scince, so I can't give a detailed response to problems raised by skeptics. But it is up to the skeptics to make their point in the scientific community. So far they haven't so their criticism of global warming theory is definitely not science.


I think this statement is complete rubbish. Any proponent of any scientific proposal (including AGW) must be completely open to challenge and analysis from any quarter. That is the only way to ensure credibility. If someone postulates something, it isn't up to the rest of us to prove the opposite and get published in a journal as part this. A very good example is the recent case of the 0.15 degree error that was found in the ground based US temperature reading post 2000. These were simply pointed out by a Steve McKintyre .... and I may be mistaken .... but I don't think his observations were peer reviewed or published in any journal. And that was science at its very best.



The adjustment to the temperature record was not significant, see here. Anyway, in science everything is peer reviewed. Of course, one can always contact a scientist and discuss some issue. That can then eventually lead to a peer reviewed work.

AGW has already been proven to the satisfaction of the climate scientitist. There have been many thousands of peer reviewed articles on this subject. So, it is established science. It is effectively challenged all the time when scientists do new investigations. These investigations always lead to scientific articles that confirm AGW. So, it isn't a mere postulate anymore.

In case of some untested postulate you could indeed say that the proponents of that postulate should invest some time to respond no non peer reviewed criticisms. However, in case of AGW, we have long passed that stadium. It is really similar to Evolution vs. Creationism, where the scientists do not respond to every criticism raised by creationists against evolution.

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"AGW has already been proven to the satisfaction of the climate scientitist." As the original post suggests, S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, would disagree with you.

Count suggests that "there have been many thousands of peer reviewed articles on this subject," but there are none that prove a link beyond correlation. All we have is a discredited hockey stick graph and some computer models that the IPCC 2007 report shows are incorrect. Count's saying that there are many thousands of peer reviewed articles on this subject is just another way of trying to convince people that a consensus exists and that a consensus matters in science. It does not exist. It does not matter. Climate is too complex. Climate science is still in its infancy.

It took 7 years for someone to figure out that there is an error in the post 2000 temperature data. The peer reviewed reports that were based on that data ended up being wrong. Look at the data for yourself. Don't rely on other people's opinions. Figure it out for yourself. The AGW theory does not match observations.

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AGW is based on elementary physics that most high school physics students know about. The complexity of the climate is only a factor in determining whether the climate sensitivity is 2.5 °C per doubling of Co2 or if it is 3.5 °C per doubling of Co2. But to say that the effect is way below these figures is nonsensical as that is in conflict with basic physics.

The hockey stick and temperature adjustments are just meaningless straw man attacks by people who do not know one iota about the science behind climate science. In astronomy, an error was found in the Hipparcos data. The Hipparcos satellite had accurately measured the parallaxes of nearby objects, but there was a small error. So, a mistake in old data was corrected. Can we now say that astronomy as a science is fundamentally flawed? Of course not!

Why is climate science different? It's different because unlike astronomy it is a politically charged subject and then all these rightwingers who have a problem with the fact that actions may need to be taken that contradict their ideology will not buy the scientific conclusions.

Oh, and consensus does exist and it does matter. Peer reviewed papers wrong? Nonsense again, because the adjustments are not statistically significant.

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Count - you're showing your ignorance in both "elementary physics" as well as a little something called the "scientific method".

I'm not going to bother challenging you on your points, because it's not going to do any good.
"The hockey stick and temperature adjustments are just meaningless straw man attacks....." Wow, just wow. This puts you into the Al Gore league.

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Count - even if the physics is basic (I don't fully understand it I'm certainly not stupid), the interplay between all the climate factors is hugely complex. As John has stated, understanding these inter-relationships is in its infancy.

And what is happening right here and now (on this forum) is a form of peer review - a form of challenge. Doesn't it bother you that for two seasons in a row, lots of hurricanes have been predicted and what has happened - the opposite. Are't you curoius as to how the IPCC 2001 models could be so far out in a short 6 year time span ? Don't you want to know why ? Aren't youa little perturbed when Al Gores film is banned from British schools on a stand-alone basis because there are so many untruths in it ?

I'm curious as to how a scientist like yourself isn't bothered by these problems. To me this behaviour is more interesting than the science itself.

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Al Gore's film banned? grin

Criticism posted in this forum is "peer review" grin

Quote:
Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field.



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And I would be bothered if the peer review system did not function well. E.g. if you had many scientists who had skeptical ideas who were complaining that their articles were unfairly rejected on political gorounds. In my field (physics) scientists will complain very loudly when they feel that they are being treated unfairly. If there were any truth in what Canuck is saying, then there should have been a huge amount of turmoil within the climate science field itself. This is not what we see. What we see is criticism from outside the climate science field by people who do not agree the scienctific consensus on climate change.

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Count - I have 3 points to make :
1) You may be correct that not everyone who writes something on this site is an expert or maybe not even YOUR peer. But your assumption that they aren't (when you have no idea who they are) displays only condescension and arrogance.

2) Below is the BBC report of the story about the High Court judgement on Al Gores film. READ this and then compare to the story posted on the RealClimate website. As you will see the judge banned the film from being shown on a 'stand alone' basis because of its bias and errors. If the RealClimate site wants to twist this to make it sound like the judge rejected a call to totally ban the film then you will never find a better demonstration of how the truth can be twisted and how SPIN can be put onto a topic to make it look different than it really is! JUST COMPARE THESE TWO STORIES.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/convenient-untruths/


3) You never answered my criticism : aren't you a little bit curious as to how the 2001 IPCC temperature predictions could be so far out by 2007 - just 6 short years into the future ? Stop spinning your own little wheels and answer this question - from a peer.

Imran

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Originally Posted By: Count Iblis II
What we see is criticism from outside the climate science field by people who do not agree the scienctific consensus on climate change.


No Count, what we see is environmental scientists working outside their fields as statisticians. Can they do the work? Possibly, but regardless it should be checked by actual statisticians. McIntyre (who I'm guessing you're referring to) is doing exactly that. He's rightfully staying away from the actual science, but focusing on how historical temperature reconstructions were generated.
Data is just that, data. The hocus pocus that people use to turn that data into temperature reconstructions is not climate science, but statistics.

But then again, the discussion surrounding the hockey stick graph is immaterial - right?
We just know climate from 1000 to 1850 was steady.

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Count. Here is some wisdom from the Financial times:
"Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them. Evidence versus authority was the issue on which Galileo challenged the church. The modern world exists because Galileo won."
Hat Tip

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Imran, I know enough of climate science (I work in physics) to know that I'm not expert enough in climate science to criticize it in the way it is criticized here.

McIntyre's criticisms may have some validity. But what matters is how relevant that criticism is. Statisticians may know much more about statistics than climate scientists. But they do not know more about physics. Take e.g. the field of astrophysics. When we do weak lensing studies we look at deformations in the images of far awy galaxies to infer the mass distribution inbetween theose galaxies and our postion that is bending the light a bit, thereby causing the deformations. There is a ,ot of statistcis involved in here.

Now, the astrophysicists who do these studies are not the best experts in statistics. That could lead to incorrect results in case of a lack of data. But usually you have enough data and the reconstructed picture of dark matter distributon is pretty accurate. The only thing you could argue about is if the probability that the dark matter shown in a particular reconstructed image is there at all instead of it all being due to a statistcal fluctuation should be 99.999% or 99.9999%. Now, we would be more than happy to let McIntyre figure that out.

In case of climate change it is the same story. You can argue about the Hockey Stick as long as you like, but it is not relevant anymore. It's like finding a flaw in Copernicus' reasoning that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. Right or wrong, it is irrelevant because we already know that the Sun is at the center anyway.


Now, as I wrote, I'm not an expert. I'm expert enough in physics to know that I cannot reasonably claim to know enough of the details of climate science to be able to have valid technical criticisms. I just note that most people who have critcisms do not understand even the basic physics involved and would thus be even less qualified to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with climate science.

Does this mean that a lay person can never criticise any science? Not really, but there are spme hurdles to overcome (for good reasons). In science peer review is very important, so one should try to write a peer reviewed article on the subject. Of course, the average non expert won't be able to do that. However, it should still be possible to contact scientists who are willing to listen and discuss the issue with them.

In this case, the skeptics could contact the few scientists who are sympathetic toward the cause of the skeptics, e.g. Richard Lindzen. He works in the field, and he would certainly be prepared to collaborate with a person if he has good ideas...

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Originally Posted By: Count Iblis II
Imran, I know enough of climate science (I work in physics) to know that I'm not expert enough in climate science to criticize it in the way it is criticized here.

Translation - If you don't have a PhD in climate science (and likely draw your research dollars from global warming funding sources) you're not allowed to wonder/question/criticize.
Sorry, don't buy it.
Originally Posted By: Count

You can argue about the Hockey Stick as long as you like, but it is not relevant anymore. It's like finding a flaw in Copernicus' reasoning that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. Right or wrong, it is irrelevant because we already know that the Sun is at the center anyway.

Besides you saying the hockey stick isn't relevant anymore, can you back up this statement?
Our current understanding of the climate is based on 1 thing, and 1 thing only - observations. Yes, theoretical science may be able to explain portions of the climate - but due to climate being as close to a chaotic system as you can get, theory only gets us so far. So we're left with observation.
Now, if our observations are incorrect (or rather the temp reconstructions), where does that leave us with respect to our understanding? What if the globe has experienced temperature fluctuations over the past 1000 years that rival the current one? Wouldn't that suggest that natural forcings have the ability to cause the current warming? The concept that natural forcings are not significant enough to cause the present trend is based on the "fact" that historical temperatures have not varied significantly in response to them. Remove that 'fact', and we're left with a pile of cards.

Knowing how the system has previously responded to forcings is absolutely required to understand it.
Originally Posted By: Count

I just note that most people who have critcisms do not understand even the basic physics involved and would thus be even less qualified to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with climate science.

It does not take an expert to realize that when somebody assumes a positive linear correlation between tree growth and temperature, in the face of studies that have shown the exact opposite - that there's a significant issue with pre-instrumental temperature data.
Actually - it's called critical thinking.....
Originally Posted By: wikipedia

Fundamentally, critical thinking is a form of judgment, specifically purposeful and reflective judgment. Using critical thinking one makes a decision or solves the problem of judging what to believe or what to do, but does so in a reflective way. That is by giving due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgement, the relevant criteria for making that judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming that judgment, and the applicable theoretical and constructs for understanding the nature of the problem and the question at hand. These elements also happen to be the key defining characteristics of professional fields and academic disciplines. This is why critical thinking can occur within a given subject field (by reference to its specific set of permissible questions, evidence sources, criteria, etc.) and across subject fields in all those spaces where human beings need to interact and make decisions, solve problems, and figure out what to believe and what to do.


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Thansk for the sincerity of your reply. I agree with you that this site is not a place of 'peer review' - the way it was described in Wikipedia. As an hugely ironic aside, isn't the main criticism of Wikipedia that it mimics an Encyclopedia but it actually popluated by non-experts ??

However challenge and critical thinking can come from anywhere. Don't forget, it was a young boy who asked "why isn't the emperor wearing any clothes ?"

I think I am aligned in the thinking of Canuck - it must be healthy for ANYONE to wonder, question and criticise. In this case here I am not questioning the physics - to be honest I don't have the depth of knowledge to really do that. What I am questioning is, if it is so "simple", why have the IPCC 2001 temeprature prediction models been proven to be so far out. Questions like that are hugely important to the rest of us "non-experts". Seeing as I haven't been able to get a straight or any answer from you, I'll try and answer it myself : Given that the physics is simple, I can only come to the conclusion that the worlds climate is a much more complex than we can currently model reliably. And if we can't model it reliably how can your statement "AGW has already been proven to the satisfaction of the climate scientist" be true.

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