Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Russian scientist predicts global cooling

If you can get some actual studies, then we will discuss them. as long as you "studies" are nothing more than a political hacks opinion, there is nothing to discuss. Show us the studies themselves. show us the data and will discuss it. Dont give us opinions and call them studies. How can you refute an opinion. the opinion is there, that is a fact. its irrefuteably an opinion.

data on the other hand or studies we can discuss and point out the flaws in them. Or perhaps with the studies, themselves you can show us where were wrong. as long as its marely someones opinion, we cant discuss the data or the study.

Let me see if I get this right.

Jet Propulsion Laboratories managed by the California Institute of Technology is political hacks?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-176

The National Science Foundation is political hacks.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/melting.shtml

NASA is political hacks.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2006/2006032322000.html

So what you are saying is that Murray Gell-Mann is a political hack. Richard Feynman was a political hack. Albert Einstein was a political hack.

Oh how I wish to some day be labeled a political hack by you. In fact I aspire to earn that label.
What impressive company.

Did I ever tell you about the rule of holes?
When you find yourself in one you should stop digging.

G'day Dan,

I cannot resist a comeback. Well, gosh Dan, yet another N E W S article, and one that has absolutely nothing to do with global warming at that, only a discussion about mechanisms that may occur during warming periods during glaciations.

At least it seems that the authors of the research had the good sense not to crow it was further proof of global warming when it relates only to perhaps the swiftness of climate change or one possible mechanism that may aid such change. It was actually interesting.

You had enough time to actually count the words I used and the lines but not to read it I guess. Studies were quoted and I even provided a willingness to list hundreds of studies. Actually I named studies that do refute global warming as a fact. But one thing that is impossible to do is to nominate studies that refute other studies.

This is where it really gets tedious. I quote:

And:
Appropriate Methods of Debate

• Actually debate the issues.
• If you use references, make sure they are refered to correctly. WHAT studies Dan? You posted news articles. That has been pointed out over and over and over and over and over but you simply choose to ignore the point and continue to just do the same.
• By my count I used four studies as examples with sufficient information for them to be located, if you have adequate access.
• Respond to the issues at least once in a blue moon.

So you think global warming is a "fact" and every study is without fault. Fine. You are entitled to think what you like but you are on a forum where opinions are welcomed but the whole purpose of the forum is to debate.

And I do run on way too much with these posts. I acknowledge that. Learned to type very fast and not well enough to spend to time needed to really edit what I write here. That is a bad fault of mine. But I will engage in the discussion and directly discuss the issues with other participants. That might include giving examples of faults in studies, the ludicrous situation of having no real data to rely on for climate change studies, expressing purely personal views on climate science, or referring in general to studies.

But Dan, I have not seen you do the same. Just once, rather than finding another news article, how about addressing anything posted by anyone that does not accord with your current view. For your children's sake perhaps?

I actually don't want to be right. That is not the point of scientific study. I'm not trying to cure cancer, where being right is rather important, my particular interest is in an academic field of climate science that should have no relevance at all to weather or short term climate trends of today. The whole point to such enquiries is to test hypothesis. I did that in the 70s with an argument that the switch to this interglacial period took three years. The research is interesting even if it eventually establishes that the argument is completely wrong. It still achieves something academically.

As to global warming, how can I be right, Dan, when I do not say that global warming is not occurring? I do have very strong views about scientific methodology that includes the fundamental view that any research must be repeatable and verifiable by others, that data must be reasonable for the purpose to which it is being used.

If you wish to defend a study that I suggest has a fault, such as Mr Thompson's studies, please feel free to do so. If a study has a major fault, and you think that I'm off my rocker or falsely maligning research, then by all means point out where I have gone wrong. Insisting that someone post a link to an opposite study that refutes a study is a good way of avoiding the points raised, especially where you have no counter points available.

And I'm continuing to engage you for one reason. In the beginning, while I did not like your methods of personalising the issues, you sometimes raised some points worth discussing. I was hoping that you would do so again. Make it interesting.

That is up to you. If you want to discuss glacier studies, fine. I'll happily trot out about 50 studies that do not support global warming as a reason for glacial retreat or even that glaciers are not necessarily retreating. I still find it amazing how many "quality" newspapers repeated the photos provided by Greenpeace of a South American glacier, showing it rapidly retreating over the years, AFTER it was pointed out that Greenpeace had failed to mention that there were six glaciers feeding into one lake and five of them had been expanding.

Pick any topic relating to global warming, and I will happily provide a list of studies (but not links, for the reasons already pointed out). But in return, you need to put up an argument in the first place, not simply refer to more news articles as if they are somehow self evident.

By now there should be no one reading these posts except you and me and perhaps dehammer. Everyone else should quite rightly have been turned off by how little these particular posts actually relate to any discussion concerning global warming but rather about HOW to discuss them or more correctly how not to.


Regards


Richard

PS. This post was being compiled while the previous two posts were written.

Dan, "Albert Einstein". How did he get in there? And your links are to news articles, not studies and ones that you've used before. I do think the political hack reference was to the authors of the news articles, not to the scientists that are mentioned briefly in them. Dan, read the articles you are using as your proof. They are opinion pieces that do not even quote specific research, only mention it. They sometimes quote the opinion of a researcher but that really is not the same as the research. Global Warming is particularly prone to conclusions in actual research being personal opinions not even backed up by the research itself, let alone the off the cuff opinion of the very pro global warming people that are quoted in these articles.

As to holes, read your posts and really, who is digging a hole here? Aside from telling us we are wrong and providing the odd link to news articles, exactly what has been your contribution in any of these threads to the discussion? What personal opinions have you expressed, discussing the actual issues involved? When have you actually replied to any specific point raised by those you seem to think hold such crackpot and untenable views?

I'm reading these posts.

Amaranth

I hope so Rose. No doubt you too are seeing a lack of references, citations, or links to even a single study that conflicts with those of NASA, NOAA, etc.

This seems to be like a love affair. I keep asking for roses and they keep delivering tickets to a football game.

G'day Dan,

Actual Citations Answered

So the four specific references were not a "single citation". How are these then?


Evidence Contradicting Glacial Retreat as Man Made, Part of Global Warming Etc
1:
T Molg, DR Hardy and G Kaser
2003
Solar-radiation-maintained glacier recession on Kilimanjaro ...


2:
Kaser et al
2004
Modern Glacier Retreat on Kilimanjaro as Evidence of Climate Change: Observations and Facts
Internation Journal of Climatology


Very Bad Science Examples - Glaciers

3:
Thompson et al
2003
Tropical Glacier and Ice Core Evidence of Climate Change on Annual to Millennial Time Scales


More Ice Cores
4:
Ramirez et al
2003
A New Andean Deep Ice Core from Nevado Illimani (6350m), Boliva
Earth and Planetary Science Lettters

Attack on Consensus View on Global Warming
Another Example of Very Bad Methodology
N Oreskes
2004
The scientific consensus on climate change
Science

A direct contradiction to Ms Oreskes' research can be found at:
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm
It is also an example of what happens in major scientific journals. Science published the Oreskes findings but refused to publish this, despite the credentials of the author and the reasonable research. I did some research on this as well and found 1,600 papers not 982 relating to climate change and fairly quickly found more than 40 that questioned whether climate change was even real (you get a different result depending on just how the search is structured. 'global warming' gets a much bigger number, 'global climate change' the smallest. Even repeating the search will give slightly different numbers). Hmmm. But don't believe me, read the above reference.


Comment
Phew! This is hard work. Digging up specific research and providing citations is not as easy as doing a Google search.

How about responding to any one of these, Dan? Or you pick a topic and I'll cite research relating to it specifically. The only one that is a waste of time is accuracy of data or flaws in the GHCN data set or any of the other major data sets. This just has not been adequately addressed, hence my current interest. But this problems with data sets are pointed out on the NASA site as well as many other sites. They are not difficult to track down, if you wish to.


Regards


Richard

RicS you still don't get it. Is it willfull or accidental? You wrote:
"Evidence Contradicting Glacial Retreat as Man Made"

I don't care whether it is man made or natural. That is totally irrelevant to where we are. The question is one of IS IT or IS IT NOT happening.

All studies agree that it is happening.

Are you now claiming that you too agree that it is happening?

BTW: Your link:
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm
is to a letter ... not a published peer reviewed research study. Do you understand the difference? This fact is made even more poignant by the title in bold faced bright blue that reads: "ANOTHER LETTER SCIENCE REFUSED TO PUBLISH".

Gee I wonder why. ;-)

G'day Dan,

A favourite movie trick. "A movie breathtaking in its stupidity" easily becomes "Breathtaking" on the billboard. That is exactly what you did to my heading: "Evidence Contradicting Glacial Retreat as Man Made". It also said "Part of Global Warming etc" but that would not have fitted your reply at all. That is called misquoting.

Your reply is just starting to be hypocritical now.

The letter was titled a letter because it was, a letter. It was clearly stated as such. There are no studies refuting Ms Oreskes' study because they cannot be published, as shown by the letter.

I did not say that I agree that global warming is happening. To quote my own post, I said: "... when I do not say that global warming is not occurring". Ignoring the poor English by use of the double negative, this cannot be translated be an agreement with global warming. I said in another post I didn't have a clue and that does fit with the comment I made. Actually I do not believe anyone can have a reasonable assumption as to the global change in climate based on the current information available. That is a world of a difference.

The big thing about global climate is that it is allegedly accelerating and is man made. If it was natural then what is the worry? It is just part of the earth's cycle in that case. No need for Kyoto or anything else.

It is a point that the Oreskes study was allegedly making, that there was a consensus that global warming was a fact and was man made. If it is not man made then it is not related to CO2 increase, which is man made, if the CO2 records are to be believed and I could have a very long and tiresome debate about that minutae of Climate Change if you actually wanted to discuss issues.

You asked for studies that contradicted the current general view and I provided a sample. Argue those.

You inability to argue anything about global warming except that everyone but you is wrong unless they toe the "consensus" line, is breathtaking in your ability to use the very comments that are being levelled at you against anyone asking you to put up or shut up. You have done neither. You have not for a second suggested that the SAT is valid. You have not addressed any of the many many other issues raised.

Now you decide, out of several examples that because one is a letter, and a relevant one at that because it relates to difficulties in getting any contra view published and very clearly sets out faults with a study, you need not lower yourself to respond in any way but with attacks.

"All studies agree that this is happening" You state, except the studies that do not that is, and those include examples given to you.

This is tiresome and tedious. You obviously do not wish to discuss any issues but have the self satisfaction of believing you truly know climate and therefore must be right. Obviously you have no interest in learning anything about this subject, and by now you should have learned a lot. The various threads on this subject have mostly been terrific, with people's views well expressed, the majority not in agreement with what I write. By simply accepting press releases as science you will learn nothing and will remain as ignorant of this field as any non-scientist who has an opinion because their favourite newspaper told them what it was.

As an acadamic, your position really is strange but no different to the "true believers" that seem to populate the climate science field right now, almost none of whom actually have any qualifications in climate science. The most famous and often quoted people have swapped over to this field. Does that make them wrong? Actually, no. But you have to wonder how come so few PhD's in climate science exist and how few of the experts are willing to obtain PhDs in their newly chosen field rather than just publish in it.

You have a right to your views but if you want to participate in a thread on climate change, then contribute please.


Richard

then why have we been argueing.

all along my point is that they cant prove that man has caused any increase in global temperature. All along, Ive been stating that there are cycles that are perhaps right this minute raising the temperature globally, but next year could be lowering them.

You on the other hand keep coming up with news articles about how the writer believes that global warming is due to man and since it is strickly man made it will destroy our civilization unless we get rid of all the things makeing co2. IF that is not what you believe why are you using ariticles written by people who do as arguements.

the links you keep giving are links to news articles written by people who believe that global warming is man made. that makes them political hacks no matter what organization they work for. Albert Einstien was not a writer, he was a scientist. He did not write articles talking about the politics of one thing or another. When he wrote things, unless it was in a letter such as the one he wrote to the president concerning the a bomb, was about science. The links you gave were articles written to express a view. they did not give one bit of evidence, did not give people any thing to make up their own minds with, it told them what to think. That in my mind makes the writer political hacks.

dehammer wrote:
"then why have we been arguing."

Good question. Never once that I can recall have I made the percentage contribution by humans the issue.

The issue to me is that the quality of life on this planet is going into the proverbial toilet if we don't do something about it. And we won't know if we can if we don't try.

dehammer wrote:
"all along my point is that they cant prove that man has caused any increase in global temperature."

But it is still true that every bit of evidence gathered does point in the direction that we are a substantial portion of the cause. It really does. That is the belief system, based on research of every respected climatologist in the field for which I can find papers and references.

Is there some crank or Russian out there claiming otherwise? Of course. There are still scientists claiming tobacco doesn't cause cancer. But this opinion is so marginal as to be essentially ignored. And that is the case with those who claim human behavious is not significant. Not the entire story ... but significant.

The thing that bothers me most about global warming is that weather forcasters often seem unable to predict what the weather is going to do tomorrow let alone 50 years time. Admittedly I live on a narrow north/south peninsular surrounded by sea.

RicS. It's probably reasonable to mention research published in journals but not available on line. My local library subscribes (or has access through other libraries) to many journals and for a small fee they are able to get copies. I have used the service often.

G'day Terry,


Climate and Weather Forcasting


Actually your point is quite valid although weather and climate are different things. For instance, I cannot tell you if your town will get swamped by massive waves in the next week but can tell you the exact time of high tide several years from now. Some patterns of weather and more particularly climate are predictable.

Those solar scientists who have only just begun to connect solar activity to climate (and I wonder if that is because almost a third of the research budget of the US is now devoted to global warming) find it self evident that the patterns of solar activities align so precisely with climate change. Often, they find it amazing that climate scientists either dispute this or just ignore it.

But to get to Climate Change, you must rely on weather readings and thus the weather of a locale really is important to this discussion, just not what is going to happen next week. And many of the very same difficulties in predicting weather apply to climate, just on a much more complex and mind boggling scale. The dynamics of how clouds affect climate is unimportant for weather predictions but becomes very important in climate modelling.

My personal view is climate models are close to worthless because there is no indication yet that these models take into consideration enough variables or even that the data they do have is reasonable.


Citations

I have now mentioned a few citations of research and you may be able to locate them through your library. If you have any specific interest in an area, please feel free to ask and I'll provide a few more citations. My particular interest currently is in weather records that make up the data that everyone then uses to state what the "average" has been and more importantly what changes have occurred to this over the period generally from 1880 to the present. I am also interested in 11,300 years ago to the present (plus or minus 300 years), the Holocene.

Because of my interest, I have more data in those areas. Funnily enough it is also the area with the least amount of research or studies. Sure I can provide citations to physics studies that suggest ice cores are terrible ways of determining CO2 concentration or temperature, but not to research that provides a better way or even one that provides a reasonably consistent way of determining climate change.


Available Evidence of Climate Change

The best information of climate change for the last 1,000 years or so is anecdotal, and indirect such as taxation records, harvest reports etc. A painting of a lake that is now free of ice but was frozen in 1200 is a good indication of local climate change. If you also have a painting or vase art from China in the same period showing a cooler climatic scene, and a record of poor harvests in some other part of the world, you can state with a pretty good degree of confidence that it was colder at that time than now. By how much? That it doesn't tell you and there just isn't enough information to do a trace through regions so that you can work out the southern most impact areas and from that extrapolate a relative figure. But none-the-less, it is a pretty good indicator, and much more accurate than tree rings.


Message Specific to Dan - Just Why Global Warming as a Looming Disaster and a Fact Annoys Me

And to Dan (I should also say Mr Morgan for those that do not know that DA Morgan is Dan), I noted you simply are not responding to either dehammer's or my request for any specifics or addressing any of the points raised. This time you chose to at least put a position rather than just attack someone else. Hurray.

Despite the problems in discussing anything with you Dan, I do not for a moment doubt your sincerity. The world has substantial problems. Millions die a year from malaria because your country's environmentalists decided that the most effective and cheap weapon might cause cancer in a few individuals and managed to get it banned. Pollution damages complete river systems in Europe, the former Soviet areas, heck, pretty much everywhere. The seas are being overfished (and what does Greenpeace do, go after waling vessels because whales make good posters, leaving the Japanese long line trawlers to destroy whole eco-systems - and yes, I'm being symplistic, but the point is still valid).

Humans have done a great deal of damage to this planet. But humans are strange creatures. Doom and gloom scenarios just do not work, unless they actually happen. Evolution has not made humans so that they can easily assess the risks of anything on massive scales that have not just happened. Why do you live near potentially devistating volcanos, for instance? Why are the largest hospitals built in areas of California liable to be flattened WHEN the next big earthquake hits? Why does so many people die each year in China from flooding when they know it happens almost every year? Humans either assume the risk because of the need to farm (such as the Chinese) or because they just cannot comprehend that an event that seems remote will ever effect them. I mean who really would be stupid enough to live in a city that was 2 metres below sea level and not bother to maintain their levees well? Answer. Poor African-Americans who had no choice because they really wanted to work and bring some monies in for their families. If the FEMA budget had not been shifted to Homeland Security and a whole heap of the US Army Corp of Engineers' budget been allocated where real need was rather than to the research and lobbying of global warming, then real tragedy would be lessened.

Katrina really showed how you can distort a scientific academic argument to shift blame. New Orleans was because the world was getting warmer. Blame the car manufacturers and sue them! Oh, what a brilliant idea. How about New Orleans was just very lucky that the last few hurricanes went east or west rather than hit it and was very much overdue for an impact of a hurricane. So, instead of blaming those that really were responsible, the Congress for diverting funds because, let's face it, poor blacks are not worth as much as people that really count. The selfish system that has bits and pieces of largesse tacked on to so much legislation so the real work of governments, that is to provide basic infrastructure and support to its citizens in return for their hard earned tax dollars, is being subverted. Global warming as our biggest threat. Tell that to the poor that have to live in trailer parks in Florida, or the kids of parents who die of Malaria because no one could weigh up the cost/benefit ratio of a simple chemical that could have saved millions or if they did, decided that 1 US life was worth millions of third world lives.

Global Warming might be real. Let's even say it was man made. So what! Climate is not like fixing a car. You simply cannot change out the spark plugs and it will run again. So blaming ever natural occurrence on Global Warming, which is now happening, such as the loss of Islands in the Pacific when their are far simpler reasons, is not just a question of whether academics are individually brilliant and as a group breathtakingly stupid. Spending billions on global warming or blaming everything on it has and will lead to real consequences, since the old adege remains true: "How come people always talk about the weather when they can do nothing about it".

And please do not argue that anything man can do will reduce man-made global warming in the forseeble future. If CO2 is to blame, then it will continue to be a problem for at least 100 years regardless of how punitive the restrictions were. Any attempt to really alter the climate downwards such as sulphate seeding will likely kill pretty much all of us. And Dan, how many hundreds of metres can you live under where you are because it would be measured in hundreds of metres.

Point out that gas consumption in the US is absurd. That the SUV craze makes you a consumer of the earth's resources that the US seems to think it has a right to because it can initially pay for it. Or that pollution kills people in areas such as LA and do something about those issues. But blaming Global Warming to achieve the same ends will backfire badly. How many voters in California do you think agree with the government suing the car companies for instance? And of the ones that agree, how many drive SUVs?

The preceding is a very political view of the world and the issues on global warming. It is the one bit about global warming that causes anger in me. That real issues are either going to be drowned out or governments and the people that eventually sway what they do will get turned off when all this doomsday fails to materialise and real issues such as actively attempting to raise the mpg average for the US up to at least those of the worst third world country is actually a good idea even if the world is cooling (actually especially if the world is cooling).

Unfortunately, once you take the lobby groups, the environmental groups, and the universities that are getting quite rich off global warming as an industry, the real science is far less certain.


Suggested Short Research for Mr Morgan on Climate Data

Actually, it isn't a bad idea for anyone interested in Global Warming to try this. It is very easy to do and shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, depending on how many sites picked.

Dan, if you've bothered to read this, do take some time to look at the GHCN data set. Find locations you are familiar with and find where there are multiple records for the same place. Really why are they so different? Pick a hundred sites around the world at random. Go to the NASA site and use their map and just click away. Print out the graphs. The majority show a cooling trend. That is not in some study but as an academic do you need to read only a peer reviewed paper before you believe anything? Don't you have the ability to do anything for yourself? Just do it, then come back and argue that this data set is not flawed, if you can.

Go further and do some calculations of different averaging systems for average daily temperatures. Just look at the different results. Firstly they trend upwards in temperature with increasing recording, producing "global warming" without any change in temperature. But if this is so why do the majority randomly picked locations trend downwards. What about urban effect? In Berlin, it is about 2.8 degrees Celcius (which is much more in fahrenheit). How much is it in a small town? Have no idea? Actually I do because I've looked at weather stations where nothing has changed and then their neigbours where the town has modernised and the town, even of less than a couple of thousand people has an noticeable urban effect.

And on the basis of this data, with an average change of 0.8 degrees coming out of the LIA, global warming is a run away disaster?

When you look at the data, feel free to select areas that have not allegedly cooled because of being downwind of polluting areas. NASA has a map of those areas to make it easier. Use any method you wish to attempt to eliminate from your random pick, anything that should falsly lower the temperature.

More than anything to do with global warming - not glacier retreat being exagerated, or mass of Greenland or Antarctic starting from absurdly bad data, or tree rings or ice cores being turned into precise measuring machines when they are nothing of the sort, the errors inherent in the world weather station temperature records and in the data sets now relied upon by those who wish to prove global warming (all of which are inconsistent avareges except a few such as the US which shows a cooling trend), the really bad data is what makes me the most sceptical of any claim that the world is getting much warmer today than it was half a century ago.


Regards


Richard

actually there was one point where i had a link that said that man had caused very little of it, and pointed out several other causes, and possible causes, to which you replyed that it showed no sign that man was not the major contibutor. You called that scientist a crank, because he was saying a large part of the warming was caused by solar flares.

personally, i dont see what that has to do with global warming. its over population, and polutants that are the problem that is causing that.

actually, that is where we are having some problem here. all the evidence ive seen, says that its not man that is the substantial portion, but nature. Ive yet to see where man co2 emissions have been proven to be causing any problems. the cities themselfs are generating weather patterns because of the heating effect of ashalt, concrete and such, but save for models that dont seem to be working with out constantly "correcting" old data, there is no sign of the problem outside of the city areas. what man is guilt of is polutions and its problems.

At one point is was the scientist that claimed tobacco cause cancer that were being called cranks. All the respectable ones said tobacco was safe. Does that mean it has always been safe, no. it means that tobacco was able to get the scientist to back them up. eventually they got discredited and all the scientist save a crank or two claim its not safe.

few people say that we have had no effect on our environment, but its where we have had the effect that is the problem. putting the spot light on co2 and greenhouse, and people forget about sulfer dioxide, about ozone, about hydrocarbons in the air, water, and earth. spending millions on getting the co2 emissions down will do little more then take away the money to get hydrocarbons out of the air and out of our lakes and seas. Put political pressure on people to reduce co2 emissions and they back off on the drive to get trash out of the ocean and stuff like that.

Lets not continue the miscommunication. The most important thing is that we all agree the planet is warming, the artic and antarctic ice melting, the glaciers receding, and that we are in real danger of stopping the North Atlantic conveyor. We do that and life as we know it ends.

But with respect to our (human) contribution check these out.

University of Illinois
http://www.news.uiuc.edu/scitips/00/08globwarm.html

Harvard University:
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/10.23/ExpertsDebateEf.html

Colorado State University:
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/05/26/fundamental-global-warming-questions/

Columbia and Georgetown Universities:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/december97/protocol3.html

NOAA:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/newsandeventsScienceandPolicyNews.html

UCAR (National Science Foundation)
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/oceantempsfacts.shtml

MIT
web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/cloudy_skies1.pdf

University of California
people.ucsc.edu/~mboykoff/Boykoff.Boykoff.GEC.2004.pdf

And I haven't edited these presenting only those that favour my opinion. I just googled and copied those from reputable organizations. These are not the opinions of hacks.

I find it interesting that one of your links leads to this

journal of atmospheric and solar-terrestrial physics
http://www.arm.ac.uk/preprints/433.pdf

in other words it sites non man made causes for much of the global warming.

these may or may not be political hacks, but these are still stories (for the most part) written by people how firmly believe in global warming, without giving the raw data from which they have take their opinions from. they are still telling people what to believe without giving them the data to make up their own minds.

another point is that while some glacers are retreating others arent. some are advancing.

another one is that changes will happen slow enough that they will likely not have that great effect on our way of life. Polution on the other hand can do some serious damage in only a single decade. yet with major hype about global warming going on, there is little being done to get rid of hydrocarbons in the air, and out of our water. with all the money spent on finding "solutions" to the "co2 problem", there is little left over to find solutions to the trash in our lakes and seas. With the blinding spotlight highlighting the hype over co2 destroying our way of life in the next half century, few can see how fast we are destroying it with ozone and such.

G'day Dan,


Assumed Agreement Where None Exists

Who is "all"? I don't agree that the world is warming. I certainly do not agree that the poles or their environs are melting. There is good evidence to suggest Antarctica is increasing in locked H2O. I don't agree that glaciers are all receding. Some are growing. Some have been receding for more than 150 years. I do not agree that there is danger of stopping the Thermohaline circulation (or meridional overturning circulation or if you are not a scientist at all great ocean conveyor or perhaps global conveyor belt). I do not even accept there is such a thing as the "North Atlantic Conveyor". The system to which you refer is global in nature, crosses several oceans and is a turnover of water that is completely different to the Atlantic Current in that it is not wind driven or surface but rather 3 dimensional. The thermoline circulation runs on a thousand year cycle for starters and did stop about 8,000 years ago. Life for humans did not end.

Putting words into others' mouths is not polite.


Yet More News Articles or Opinion Pieces
Please, please refer to some climate change research occasionally
Again with news sites. Your tally stands at, about two dozen news and opinion sites and not one reference to research relating to the science of climate change, at least in the discussions I've had with you. This time you managed: News, News, Opinion, News, really inflated opinion (the hurricane stuff is just wrong), opinion, and a research paper, followed by another research paper.


Research on Public Opinion Belongs in a Sociology Thread, Not in Climate Change Discussions

I thought for a second you actually had finally contributed research but I was wrong. Sigh. Both the research papers were studies on public opinion on global warming. What does that have to do with the science of global warming? Nothing! It is a good argument actually for cutting back research grants for such studies. MIT backed a study that starts with some assumptions that real climate change studies do not support and used IPCC opinion on the link between CO2 and global warming as part of this research. The second paper was similar but seems quite flawed in that the authors, not being experts in the field of climate science, actually made decisions about what constituted balanced reporting on global warming for their analysis. If you don't like the poor science that goes into global warming research then I would suggest balanced would be to report on just how the research was carried out each time, something that is never done. If you are very pro global warming then balanced requires that you report global warming as a fact with only marginal matters around the edges worthy of discussion as to disagreement.


Concluding

I have to give Dan his due. The last post was a significant improvement. He is right, the opinions are not of hacks. For the most part they are from significant institutions. But they remain opinion and I think one thing that everyone on this site can agree is that the majority of climate scientists and probably a bigger majority of the general public really believes in the "fact" of global warming being real and man-made.

That really isn't an issue, Dan. My arguments relate to just how good the science is that backs this belief. No scientist can be good or even understand that much of Vulcanology, Glaciology, Biology, Migratory Behaviour, Mammal Population Fluctuation, Paleo-Climatology, Weather, Cloud Dynamics, Fluid Dynamics, Solar Radiation, Solar Cycles, Solar Magnetics, Ocean Currents, Ocean Salinity, Methane Deposits and Mechanics of Release, Ice Formation, Sea Level Fluctuations, Physics, Chemistry, Tree Ring Analysis, etc, etc.

Aside from the field they are expert in, most scientists have to rely on the expertise of others for fields which may effect a general condition such as climate change. From a simple perspective the evidence of global warming is overwhelming. But there is one scientific endeavour that does allow a very good view of the evidence on global warming, and that is the field of scientific methodology analysis and data bias, manipulation etc.

So if I was a mathematician and create a climate model, based on variables I rely upon other experts to tell me will provide an accurate picture of climate, then my model will show global warming and I will have no doubt it exists. If I am a glacialogist, and have now seen so many studies where the conclusion is that global warming is a fact, then I will be much less likely to question problems in my own research relating to inconsistency of sampling, the physics questions of whether the sampling creates an accurate picture of previous climate, etc, and show that glaciers are retreating or use cores to demonstrate some aspect of climate further confirming global warming.

Actually this does not explain things such as deliberate distortion of data such as Australia's CSIRO's brochure on global warming where they used only 2 of the 21 long term sea level measuring stations to "prove" that sea levels are rising and global warming is a fact. It sort of explains some poor methods but still a lot of it, I'd call fraudulent.

However, if the whole basis of suggesting global warming is occurring, the increase in average surface air temperaturs of a bit less than a degree in 120 odd years, is so suspect that it shows nothing, how much research would anyone expect to pronounce global warming so stridently?

In other words, global cooling relied on weather station data that was not very good in the 70s and because of this a number of research papers suggested we were about to enter another ice age. Global warming relies on the same data to show that there has been a warming from 1980 to the present and that even though there have been three major cooling phases, overall the planet has just been cooking itself from 1880 on. If that data showed no real change at all or a slight cooling trend, how much global warming research papers would anyone think there would be published? Not much.

So again I challenge Dan. Forget glaciers, Greenland, whether CO2 really creates a heat trap of some sort, and just look at the data used that underpins the entire concept of global warming. Without it then even if Greenland is losing ice, no one would suggest it was going to end life as we know it. They would just say it was a local or even global cycle. It would still be worth studying of course. The trouble with pretty much all of global warming arguments is there are pretty good counter arguments. You say the Antarctic is melting. Even NASA does not agree with that one.

But rather than argue the peripheral points, look at the data and the research that has been used to work out average world temperatures further back than 1979. I have. The data sucks.

GHCN Data - One of the Problems Provided by the Compilers of this Data

?A meteorologist working in a tropical country noticed one station had an unusually low standard deviation. When he had an opportunity to visit that station, the observer proudly showed him his clean, white instrument shelter in a well cared for grass clearing. Unfortunately, the observer was never sent any instruments so every day he would go up to the shelter, guess the temperature, and dutifully write it down.?

In British colonies shelters were placed under the eave of a building but in a great many locations the British forgot to swap sides for the Southern Hemisphere. This was later corrected, well mostly.

The time for taking temperatures has changed dramatically. I've gone on and one about "average" but this error is many times greater than any perceived global warming with the error being one that shows an increase in temperature over much of the 20th century without any change in the real temperature. Then you have urban effect, modernisation effects.

But by far the biggest problem with the data, is that almost none of it is consistent or contiguous. Does not matter whether it is US even. Very few sites have not been moved or records have been lost or recording was interupted. This should mean nothing being random but it is not random. Movements almost always were to a spot warmer. Further inside a town as it grew so that urban effect was larger.

If you want to say that global warming is a fact, then firstly show data that is reasonable that actually supports that argument. Really big problem there because such data does not exist.


Regards


Richard

RicS wrote:
"I don't agree that the world is warming. I certainly do not agree that the poles or their environs are melting."

I wasn't refering to you. I was referring to the proponderance of opinion on university campuses and among researchers in the field.

Your agreement is not relevant nor is mine. But I find it fascinating to see you denying that which is so easily proven as to make your statement laughable.

This is indisputable by any rational person:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5344208.stm

I'd suggest you not volunteer for the "crank" or "crackpot" label. It is very lonely out there.

Come on Dan,

Another news article. I do not think you get the point at all. This is a scientific forum. Don't like my views, debate them. Telling me I'm volunteering for "crank" label is not a debate. It ventures back into insult territory.

Actually, I don't mind being lonely. I hold a point of view because of the science and serious flaws in scientific methodology I found.


Focusing on the Science - A Quick Analysis of the News Article in the Preceding Post

Let's look at your BBC (a very pro global warming news organisation often clashing with the Government that pays its bills) article for a moment. Firstly it is not research. It is a news story with spin. That is true for pretty much every news story. There has to be a theme or angle otherwise it would not be readable.

How accurate is it? The reporting of the extremely small loss of ice (0.7 percent per decade is very much below what you would expect in any cyclic variability) yet the report says it is a "drastic" loss. Secondly, aside from the satellite data mentioned, how was the original ice sheet size determined. Going back decades it was not by satellites, that's for sure, and this is where the research or the news article for that matter breaks down.

Even the article hedges its bets by talking about changing wind patterns. And of course the shrinkage would be the largest since 1978 in 2005. 2005 was the record year. Any 30 odd year period has to have a record year. Before that was 1998 but they do not mention this year because the ice shrinkage did not conform to the allegations of this also being a record year. They do not mention 2006 (but you most graciously provided a link to a site that actually tracks ice sheet size in this area) and we know this was pretty much a 'standard' year for the 1979 to present period. A bit more shrinkage than the average, to be expected coming out of a very hot year, but not be a huge amount, but also trending back to the average.

What does 30 years of ice sheet which involves only a small fraction of the locked ice in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere tell us? Actually very little since anecdotally and from various other artefact evidence, it has happened many times before in the not so distant past (a scale over hundreds of years, not before the Holocene).

So just what does this news article do for global warming? Nothing. It assumes that a 0.7 percentage loss is drastic when anyone reading this would start to think that 0.7 percent and drastic do not really match each other. That makes scientists look stupid. The rest of the article is full of "may", "might" and is just speculation.


The Issues of Being a "Crank"

Whether my opinion is a very small minority one or not should not be relevant. Since my opinion is one based on research and the science. It should mean that I get support even if you vehemently disagree with me. Perhaps if instead of deciding what everyone else believes, you actually did a little research yourself. Perhaps even looked at the data as I suggested, you would not be so quick to condemn.

Just because everyone agrees with you does not make you right. Think of religions. Logic says only one or none of them are right yet you may have a billion people or more object to anything you say if you disagree with the teachings of the Qu'ran or the Bible or the Torah. Would that make you wrong? I don't think Selman Rushdie thought so. However, I understand religion is a matter of faith and faith is a personal matter that should be respected, as long as it does not intrude on other's beliefs. This is a matter of science.

Everyone just knew the sun revolved around the earth. Every earth scientist just knew that plate tectonics was rubbish, until, well, it wasn't. The first was in our "unenlightened" past, the second went through to the 1960s.

Please focus on the science. Otherwise why are you in a Global Warming post at all? You are right of course, so do you think it is your mission to convert everyone else? Because you certainly are not discussing the science.


Richard

That's the thing I find depressing about this Forum. We have a very vocal contingent of "Nay-sayers" who love nothing better than to discredit those who are concerned about the future of the Planet. Global Warming is, in their view, nothing more than a whimsical event of Nature. Man, a Transgressor? Oh, rubbish, the things of Earth were put here for Man. It's that type of hubris that has driven so many species into extinction. If we aren't careful, we could follow. How does a world of Cockroaches, Flies, Rats Dandelions and Crabgrass sound?

G'day Wolfman,

As far as I know, there are only two people who regularly contribute to threads on global warming, that do not agree mostly with the prevailing view. dehammer and myself. That's not a vocal contingent and I do not believe either of us attempts to discredit anyone. Well actually I speak ill of some researchers who's use of bad science irks me.

I personally agree with you that man's place as the supreme being on this planet is not as robust as some seem to think as being a divine right. I find it very sobering that a sudden return to a cool period about 70,000 years ago was so close to causing the extinction of man it was amazing we survived.

But just because man causes damage to this planet, does not necessarily follow that there is global warming or that it is man made.

Global Warming seems to have become an article of faith. Those that are skeptics are tarred as not caring about the planet.

And climate change is far from whimsical. It has the ability to wipe out around 90% of all species on this earth and has was the cause of three of the four really big mass extinctions that have occurred.

Getting really hot would be bad for the earth but based on the evidence that uses solid science it will probably be another 20 years or so before any trend would be disernible and even then there is a question of what is the cause. I say this simply because that will then give us almost 50 years of reliable temperature data and that may be enough. No other data to date has shown much of anything if comparable over time (such as the use of the British Admiralty ocean temperature readings rather than combining them with readings, the methodology of which has changed substantially over time).

Going back to the generally more normal climate of this ice age (90% to 95% of this current Ice Age) has the potential to kill just about everyone and a great many species that man has managed to bring to the brink of extinction through habitat degredation, indiscriminate hunting or poaching or simply introducing more competitive species such as the humble bunny to Australia. I wouldn't call that whimsical at all.

Now the philosphy of global warming has been discussed, how about getting back to a discussion on climate change and the science being used. Even those that completely agree with man made global warming, surely realise that there are a great deal to do with climate change that still warrants discussion, research, and deverging views.


Regards


Richard