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Global Warming Debunked?
limbicsystem writes, "I'm a scientist. I like Al Gore. I donate to the Sierra club, I bicycle everywhere and I eat granola. And I just read a very convincing article in the UK Telegraph that makes me think that the 'scientific consensus' on global warming is more than a little shaky. Now IANACS (I am not a climate scientist). And the Telegraph is notoriously reactionary. Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong? Because it seems to be solid, well researched, and somewhat damning of a host of authorities (the UN, the editors of Nature, the Canadian Government) who seem to have picked a side in the global warming debate without looking at the evidence." The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher.
"Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?"
/. buddy, what you'll get is a bunch of reasons why its right or wrong from people that didn't read the article.
This is
From the blurb: Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?
I'm sure we got a couple thousand people here who will tell you why it's wrong... the question is; are they right?
I'm afraid that you're probably going to get a lot of shoddy answers to a legitimate question here.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
http://www.junkscience.com/ is always a good place to read.
Dammy
I would like to point out TFA says nothing about Linux or Microsoft and I am confused.
Also, the graphs would be a lot sweeter if they were replaced with pictures of robots... or lasers.
After reading the article, it sounds like this is a case of some fanatics in power over exaggerating the effects of global warming. But you won't be able to convince people until the average yearly temperature about the world has passed the previously recorded high temperature. Then some more people will believe and then some more and maybe it will be too late. If we steadily head upwards of 0.1C per ten years, it will get there though. I guess only time will tell.
Statistics & empirical evidence is all we have for this case. Present confidence figures, not "+0.3C by 2000, for sure!" If you're a scientist, why not give them the raw data & your conclusions?
My work here is dung.
I think the biggest problem with the whole climate change debate, is that the common man can't easily do all the research to come to their own good conclusion. So they have to believe whoever in the media has the best song and dance show. This is the case with a lot of things though so there you go.
The answer to global warming is *very* simple, and *very* well known. We just need to plant massive amounts of biomass to soak up all the excess carbon. We just need to turn the United States into a temperate rain forest- with enough variety to ensure tree survival and food production from the rain forest itself. Lock up that carbon in wood- and then use the wood to build houses- locking up the carbon for decades, maybe centuries...
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
...but I don't look to newspapers for serious scientific research, I look to peer-reviewed scientific journals. But, that aside, the accusations in the article all seem to be things (relative role of solar forcing, the "medieval warm period", etc.) that have been discussed and dealt-with repeatedly in the literature, both as to their accuracy and their impact, there doesn't seem to be anything, on the first impression, new here.
Give me any conclusion on a topic involving a really complex process, and I'll find a way to poke a bunch of holes in it. I'll examine the process of investigation and nit-pick it to death, because no process is complete or fault-free. If necessary, I'll just go to the core assumptions and attack their validity. Easy enough.
Since none of the conclusions can be "proven", all we can do is go with our "best guess". In this case, the general concensus among scientists in the field is our best guess.
Granted I haven't had a chance to read the entire article yet, but it sounds like it's in line with what the climate scientists at my University have been saying for a while. Two things actually.
The first is that funding shapes science whether you want it to or not. If the general consensus is that global warming is happening, you're much more likely to get funded if you decide to do research on "why global warming is going on" or "what are the major contributors to global warming" etc. However, if you were to submit a proposal along the lines of "what if any effect has global warming had on climate change", good luck.
Therefore there's going to be a lot of science out there saying "Yes, global warming is happening and is the reason for climate change!", since that's what pays the bills, gets you published, and gets you invited to all sorts of posh international conventions on global warming. No one wants to invite the guy/gal that says "yes it's happening but it's not the cause, or certainly not the only cause behind global climate change".
Just my two cents. Keep and open mind, even when reading "science". At the end of the day scientists are human beings too, they have to pay the bills, report to a boss, have a reputation among their peers. Science is rarely about pure facts. The facts usually need to be teased out of the agenda, aggrandizing and ego of those doing the work.
Hello. I live in Alaska, and I vote for whoever makes sense, but like Democrats. We have been over the last 30 years, getting warmer weather every year. In 1978, I remember that was first year in memory when it rained in January. We saw so much rain last winter, 2005-2006, that we lost all our snow covering more than once for weeks during the period from January through April. We typically have snow from Halloween through March. So all in, I think the weather is changing, the plants are changing as it's warmer longer even on the tundra. So make your own conclusions.
-Dee
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! *snort*
Oh, I kill me. I really do.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
The real reason for the global warming vendetta is to convince Joe Public that it is a good idea to build more nuclear power stations. It has nothing to do with whether the temperature is going up/down, it has been going up and down for millions of years and will continue to go up and down for millions more...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This is the very first paragraph:
" Last week, Gordon Brown and his chief economist both said global warming was the worst "market failure" ever. That loaded soundbite suggests that the "climate-change" scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac's chilling phrase, "creating world government". This week and next, I'll reveal how politicians, scientists and bureaucrats contrived a threat of Biblical floods, droughts, plagues, and extinctions worthier of St John the Divine than of science." [Emphasis mine]
OK, so not only is the American right-wing co-opting Evangelical Christians and 'values voters' to take away our civil liberties and conduct mass surveillance on the American public, but now hippies, greenies, and environmental scientists are also going to take away our freedoms by reducing greenhouse emissions, raising vehicle fuel efficiency, and sequestering carbon!?
Man, things are getting really weird when people on both sides of the aisle are starting to agree with Alex Jones.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
global warming is to the left what terrorism is to the right. if you dont vote for me ------ will destroy us all. whatever wipes us out in the end...whenever it happens... ill be busy watching cartoons and the one who looks the least stupid by comparison.
Have people not finally come to the realization that, yes the world is warming, the only real debate is whether or not man is directly responsible for it.
"NASA's Rollercoaster For Moon Rocket Escape"
Xonk?
Any fool can ask a profound question that takes a wise man decades to answer. [This chinese proverb is distributed to you under GPL V2.0]
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think I'd give this article a bit more credibility if the author wasn't so dead set on demonstrating global warming was evidence of a UN conspiracy to take over the world.
Even if global warming does turn out to be wrong, there are *plenty* of ways for scientists to reach an incorrect consensus without resorting to black helicopters and secret cabals.
It's really annoying that politics has become so wrapped up in both sides of what should be a purely scientific issue.
I'll leave reviews of the science in the article to those more knowledgeable in the area than I am.
I'm afraid that you're probably going to get a lot of shoddy answers to a legitimate question here.
I'm actually expecting him to get flamed for daring to ask such a "heretical" question. Comparisons to George W are also virtually assured.
who is going to take the blame for warming on mars http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
And sometimes they may even be similar.
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Even better would be women in bikini's fighting robot rabbits with laser strapped to their heads. The lasers could be on the women or the bunnies whichever is cooler.
OH MY SCIENCE!
I think there's reason to suspect there's a certain amount of sensationalism about the reporting on global warming, BUT that's not why I reply. I just wanted to say that everyone who's interested in thorough treatments of global warming, by pros, should have a look here: http://www.scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/ sw_viewTheme.php?idTheme=13
There's a ton of really good info there.
whether global warming is happening. We know it is. We're recording it as it happens.
What is the issue is is this a natural process, a man-made process or a combination?
While we have evidence that warming and cooling cycles have happened in the past, this is the first time (that we know of) that the cycle has been recorded by man. If nothing else, it behooves us to study this phenomenon as critically as possible and determine if we are influencing things by our activities.
So no, global warming is not debunked. It is real and it is happening. The real question is why.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The article referenced goes through several studies and papers and points out poor methodologies and statistical analysis that is likely fraudulent. From this you can conclude, these studies are possibly flawed. So where does that leave you? Can you logically conclude from this that global warming is not occurring or even not occurring faster than any time in the past? Of course not. Discrediting a study does not prove the opposite of that study is true. It simply provides you a reason to place more weight on other, more credible, studies.
From my reading I have little doubt that global warming is occurring. Just look in peer reviewed journals and other credible sources. It may not be as dramatic as some would like, and the dramatic, but ill-concieved, doomsday scenarios painted by the popular media are entertainment, not fact. The truth is, there are very real indications of climactic problems, which will probably be gradual, but may be practically irreversible by the time they are apparent to skeptics.
Just be careful of your sources and pay attention. Both industrial concerns and people working for government grant dollars have incentive to obtain particular results. Look for peer reviewed results from experiments and observations that have been repeated by numerous scientific studies. Be cautious of interpretations of this data by the popular media, who are more interested in selling ads than presenting the truth.
This does not, of course, invalidate his views except insofar as I would suggest from personal knowledge that he will not in fact hold them at all. There is likely to be some huge flaw or deliberate mistake in his argument that will repay careful inspection, and which he will already know about.
I will be interested to follow this thread and see what people come up with.
Just from observing here in Tennessee, when I was young (30 years ago) I remember getting 4-5 good snows every winter. Now you're lucky if you see 1 good snow every other winter.
Tennessee is right on the border between "gets a ton of snow" and "no snow at all". So small differences in temperature are exaggerated.
The question is, is global warming man-made, or some sort of natural cycle, ala El Nino or something else we don't know about. I'd lean toward the latter.
Global warming is what happens between ice ages. I don't know what else there is to say about it.
Dear Submitter,
The reason the article seems correct and insightful is because of the limited scope. It doesn't take issue with the scientific consensus on global climate change, just with the recent report issued by the UN.
Oddly, though, instead of just pointing out why this report is wrong, it concludes that since the report is poorly written, then that proves there is no climate catastrophe.
I've actually come across other criticisms of the "hockey stick" graph that used it as a starting point for a discussion on good science vs. bureaucracy and the disadvantages of pegging all your arguments on a single "visual". (the biggest disadvantage? disprove the "visual" and that disproves your whole argument). Unfortunately that's not what we've got in this UK Telegraph article.
The large, full-colour "hockey-stick" was the key graph in the UN's 2001 report, and the only one to appear six times. The Canadian Government copied it to every household. Four years passed before a leading scientific journal would publish the truth about the graph. Did the UN or the Canadian government apologise? Of course not.
The Canadian government changed. And scrapped the previous government's policy. Actions speak louder than words.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Without reading TFA:
It doesn't matter whether man-made warming is real. It does get warmer, and the other riders of the apocalypse, namely storm, water and drought, are riding in in its wake. And oh, will they ever bring along the biblical set. With this in mind, it is our (as in mankind's) responsibility as a whole, to at least minimise our part in it, however small it may be. It is a fact that the enormous quantities of pollutants we release need to go somewhere, and that they do something, wherever they go. Those effects pose an incalculable risk to life on the planet.
So, no matter what lobbyists from either side of the fence may say, ignoring the problem (which is pretty real) is, as always, not the way to go. Governments and individuals are denying the greenhouse effect on various pretenses, which may even be valid in some ways. But when looking at The Big Picture, everyone who has not taken the short bus with the leaky exhaust, will clearly see a not so pleasant future that we may avoid by doing something, but that will definitely make life a lot less pleasant in the forseeable future if ignored.
I, personally, just hope that I will have a gun handy the day it gets too bad.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
If you think about it the whole premise of any prediction is gouing to be wrong: "If we carry on as we're going now..." is not possible. China is industrialising. The price of oil will react to its scarcity. The percieved importance of rainforest is increasing as it becomes scarcer. Regional climatic shifts like what started the 1997 Indonesian smog will become more (or maybe less) common as ocean currents shift.
We can (and probably will) argue ad nauseum about the relative importance of the historical CO2 and temperature records, sunspots, methane from the tundra, oceanic absorption etc. but the basic fact is that we're releasing huge amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere whilst destroying the ecosphere's long-established buffers. Whether the system is stable unstable, metastable or whatever is probably impossible to predict with certainty. I would rather err on the side of caution. Those with a vested interest with us carrying on as we are would rather we ignore the doomsayers until it's too late^W^Wscientifically proven.
I used to live in Scotland, and if you look back through my high school log books, it seems that the lake next to our school would freeze to the point that they'd close the school and everyone would go skating.
In ~20 years of living in that area I only once saw the loch frozen sufficiently to walk around the edges, and never frozen over like the old photos and records show.
"The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher."
That is easy to do with ANY argument, just go looking for a few morons that believe it.
Example: Here are 3 'arguments' about why it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light: 1)Einstein said so. 2) The Angel Gabriel pulls you over and gives you a ticket when you hit 0.5 warp. 3) As your speed increases, mass also increases, so more and more energy is required to attain the same speed increase, so it would take infinite energy to accelerate you to Warp 1.
How would you react to someone that attacked argument 2 and left argument 1 and 3 alone? Similarly, the author of this piece may or may not have done a good job picking apart the statements he has attacked. So what? It proves nothing. To win, he must make a viable argument that we can not prove wrong, not simply pick apart some, but not all of our statements. He made no arguments, just attacked others. He is not convincing at all, for that reason. The facts continue to be that 1) weather has been observably warmer. 2) we KNOW humans can cause radical changes in the environment (ozone, artificial chemicals, measured air and water pollution), 3) as of yet we do not have proof about how much of #1 is a coincidence 4) As of yet we do not have a definitive prediction about the future temperature. Everything else is just a question of how bad it will be, and there is a LOT of evidence that he did not attack that indicates it will get a lot worse.
Yes, the naysayers might be right - we might be OK. But the radical changes in the environment that we have already seen mean we would be morons to assume that is the case. The safest course is to assume we are heading off a cliff so we should SLOW DOWN and take a long look ahead.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Every year the evidence for global warming gets more convincing.
The scientific evidence just builds and builds.
And when youve just gone through a summer in northern europe
when the tempreture never went below 30c for 8 weeks who needs
scientists.
The really scary bit is this:
The classic argument against global warming is that the climate
has always varied wildly -- sometimes it gets warmer sometimes
it gets colder, shit happens.
However historians have been patiently examining all the cool
spells and they all correlate to drop offs in human activity.
The last really big dip in temperature happened just after the
Black Death when approx. one third of humanity died.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
I am a global warming believer. I personally have been concerened about the possibility of global warming since the 80's. A good site on the subject is http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics It contains a complete listing of the articles in "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic," a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four separate taxonomies; arguments are divided by: * Stages of Denial, * Scientific Topics, * Types of Argument, and * Levels of Sophistication.
San Francisco Photographers
and therein lies the problem.
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What I don't understand about the global warming skeptics is this unwillingness to say hey, we can generate energy in a better way. It's weird, really. There are huge financial opportunities to coming up with viable changes in the energy industries. We've seen changes throughout the decades in farming techniques (some good, some bad). Our desktop technology evolves. Does anyone still believe the GUI is a bad thing for computing like the skeptics decried in the mid-1980s? I still chuckle at people like Stan Kelly-Bootle writing endlessly in his Devil's Advocate column about how real men didn't use icons and the computer mouse would be the death of us all. But when it comes to burning coal and depending on petroleum it seems pursuing change is off-limits.
Whether or not one accepts global warming as a man-made phenomenon or just part of a natural cycle of the Earth, why wouldn't we still want to avoid contributing to making the situation worse? The drowning polar bears tell us there's definitely something happening. When your car is careening down a steep hill do you think it's smarter to use the brakes or the accelerator? We have achieved a technological level where we no longer need to generate energy the way we've done so since the 1800s. Time for a refresh.
The louder the Drums of Doom are beaten, the more it makes skeptics wonder if the motivations are political rather than scientific. A couple weeks ago the journal Nature had an article about "Green Scares", and why radical environmentalists have rejected science.
Another web site I recommend is World Climate Report, a blog that brings peer-reviewed science to light that does not support the current "consensus".
Still, I think it's important to hedge our bets. It behooves us to move away from fossil fuels simply because they are a finite resource.
in anything." - G.K. Chesterton.
There ya go. From his preface. People believe in climate change because they have lost their faith.
If that's not his argument...why is this one of the first things he says?
Also, he cites the concept that all climate scientists are saying there's a problem so they'll keep their jobs...before he gets to any actual numbers.
Then he says this...This is not true.
Then he says.Which is a classic mistake of mistaking weather for climate..and local for global.
Then he says it's not greenhouse gases...but the sun that is getting hotter.So, uh, it's not even that it's "global warming" that has been debunked...it's that the U.N. is wrong about what is causing it.
(yes, the headline is wrong).
Then he goes into the calculations...none of which is data he personally gathered (because if he did, that would be he is a climate scientist...which would mean he couldn't be trusted...as he would then be being paid to study the climate).
So...yea..that's why it's wrong.
+&x
There are a lot of things that can happen, and can't be undone until it's too late.
Global warming, Terrorists, or the Precrime unit from the movie Minority Report.
The problem is that without proof or understanding of what is happeneing how do you know you're doing the right thing?
"I'm a scientist. I like Al Gore. I donate to the Sierra club, I bicycle everywhere and I eat granola."
You could have saved a few keyboard strokes and typed "I am a douchebag"
It's all good.
..which is generally pretty levelheaded:
"Sir Nicholas may well err on the gloomy side. And it is certainly impossible to predict precisely what effect climate change will have had on the world economy in a century's time. But neither point invalidates Sir Nicholas's central perception -- that governments should act not on the basis of the likeliest outcome from climate change but on the risk of something really catastrophic..."
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I would say there is global warming. It's not just the snows of Kilimanjaro, but iceflows are retreating everywhere (Greenland and Alaska) not to mention that the coral reefs are dying off.
I also think that the effects of global dimming have been understated (and not even mentioned in this article) thus masking the effects of CO2 warming and thus would effect the CO2 numbers.
As one scientist puts it, you can't pump so much gunk into the atmosphere and expect nothing to happen, and that we are in effect creating one giant experiment on the atmosphere.
I do think that using misleading graphs is wrong and valid points are made in the article, and that the number of weather stations should be increased to measure and better understand the effect. And nobody is served by bad science. But to say that our enviroment is not changing, and probably for the worse, is putting your head in the sand.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Remember, even before whitey came, man was messing with the environment in the Americas. Many Native American tribes had traditions of starting fires. Not out of reverence, but out of knowledge that if they burned down a forest, it would be come a meadow. That meadow would attract deer and other game easier. Despite our large farming, and the blight that is urban sprawl, much of the land in the US that is situated for trees has been regrown.
Of course if you really want biomass. Add a few cargo loads of iron powder to the ocean in equator regions to promote the growth of aquatic plant life. (Although that has plenty of other issues).
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
The climate models described by the article point to the radiation received from the sun and the heat radiated into space but they don't seem to consider the heat originating from within the earth itself. It is obvious that the earth produces an enormous amount of heat from within, probably from radioactive decay, that affects temperatures at the surface (i.e. our 'climate') and yet the climate models never seem to consider that heat as an input into the model. The frequent and wide variations in the earth's climate over the last 500 million years may be partly caused by changes in the heat output from the Earth's core. Certainly there is no reason to think that that heat output is 'constant' if it originates from radioactive decay since there would have been a radioactive decay chain followed over that length of time that would have significantly changed the isotope mixtures and heat produced. It seems like at least the popular view of climate science is stuck on a simplistic view of climate driven by the 'greenhouse effect.' There must be some actual scientists somewhere who are a little more sophisticated in their modeling. Carbon dioxide and the 'greenhouse effect' simply don't explain the climate that the earth has experienced over the last 500 million years or even over the last 21,000 years.
My understanding of Global Warming on the whole isn't as great as it should be, however, recalling a few classes where the subject came up, most of the professors discussed global warming over periods much greater than a couple thousand years. IIRC, I thought that the hockey stick diagram that is heavily referred to in the report is suspicious not because of the increase of temperature, but because of when it is increasing and the rate at which it has been increasing? Is anyone able to shed light on that?
"Because it's in the Torygraph" is surely to goodness an adequate answer.
Apart from its political failings, it panders to a most bizarre class of pornography consumers. Just take a look at page two - several times a week there will be a story about a dead child. Now, children do die, and this does from time to time make the news, and from time to time is legitimately newsworth, but the Torygraph seems to find far more of these stories "newsworthy" than anyone else, and they always put the stories in the same place in the newspaper where any sickos who are into dead-children-porn know where to look.
(For American readers: the Torygraph would probably seem a bit Euro-communist to you if you actually read it, but to us it's towards the right of the political spectrum. Not that that means as much as it used to, with Tony Bliar's "Labour" party even further to the right.)
The Debate is realy heating up!
The beauty of science is that regardless of what you may think, most right-minded people who believe in science move on when something is debunked. That's what science is after all. You're talking more about people using science to back up their personal philosophical or political idealogy. This is nothing new. It doesn't mean that these theories can't be right. In fact, my personal opinion is that even if Global Warming isn't real, we have more to fear from Peak Oil theory anyway.
Although, on first pass, it comes off as a bit "condescending" even "acrimonious". I mean seriously, statements such as, "go look it up....we'll wait..." kinda leave me with the impression that this is one of those maniacal "ranting and raving" sites such as "forces.org". {go ahead....look it up...I'll wait -- *sorry, couldn't resist*}.
Then again, sometimes the lunatics have a point, I'll follow up as best I can with the material presented.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It's hardly surprising to learn that the author of this 'debunking' doesn't even understand basic thermodynamics, and who invokes a discredited claim about the Chinese navy sailing through the north pole in 1421:
a vy_disproves_global.php
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/11/chinese_n
Haven't seen the movie, but the Columbia Icefield is known to have retreated 1.5kms and lost half it's volume since man first arrived there to take pictures in the 1920s. I've been there.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
"Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong? ... The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist and former policy advisor..."
What more do you need to know? The UK newspapers and other news media, including the so-called "science" journals (cf. New Scientist's recent EMdrive farce), are so bad now that there's just no point in taking anything they say or write seriously. One of the reasons I stopped reading the UK newspapers some time ago was because I was so sick of being bombarded every day by appalling pseudo-science and relentless scientific "controversy" building in the name of "journalistic balance". UK media types are notorious for being scientifically illiterate and innumerate - and proud of it.OK, I admit that I haven't read the UN papers etc. to confirm, but if indeed the climatologists are basing their predictions on a revised value of Boltzman's Constant, they really need to mention their findings to the rest of the physicists. Even as a semiconductor engineer, I use it every day and if it's more than twice the value I'm using in my own calculations, none of my circuits are going to work.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I don't think it wise to use local weather as an indicator for global warming.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Hmm. Seems to repeat most of the arguments in the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was released soon after the original 2001 report, and is a very good and insightful read.
Both analyses are solid enough to make me doubt the vailidity of the "man-made global warming" conclusion.
-- GuardianLurker
... but the guys who are most qualified seem to be in agreement ...
I presume you are not a scientist. A scientist would only have faith in observations, not consensus, not conventional wisdom. Galileo and Darwin were individuals who were initially ridiculed by the most qualified men who were in agreement. I don't know to what degree global warming/cooling is effected by man, we may have no effect or a great effect, or we may have a very small effect but with the climate teetering on a natural precipice that small effect is enough to push it over. What I do know is that politics is heavily involved and that is never a good thing with respect to discovering the truth. The fact that the global warming question has a politically correct answer makes me a little skeptical, and a little more open minded toward opposing viewpoints. I'm not saying the opposition is correct, merely that political correctness makes it more important to consider the opposition's argument.
The very existence of your comment shows that you do not believe the debate is over.
Jeez, after seeing that i don't need to RTFA!
Now why on earth should I believe expert scientists on the matter when I've got a right-wing policy advisor to believe? And he even was a journalist!
Considering his references to sun flares as a possible cause for warming I'm kind of surprised there is no mention of global dimming.
Would seem to be a required plank for his argument that he's completely steered clear of.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
The Telegraph article gets a pretty high score.
I'm no climate scientist, but I find it strange that the article mentions UN 36 times, as if the UN is a peer reviewed journal or scientist. The article reads more like a political speech than a critique of a scientific model. Why else would he direct his attack against the UN?
There's very few people here that are climate scientists and can have a real understanding of what this guy is talking about beyond what he claims. I do find it curious that this argument against global warming is coming from a journalist, and not a reputable climate scientist. We all rely on the a writers reputation and ability to interpret of data in things we don't understand. I guess I don't understand why Mr. Monckton has any credibility in this area, and why anyone should seriously consider what he has to say.
AccountKiller
Re: 3) Really? I haven't seen that show yet, but I've seen this scence your talking about. I'd find it hard to believe nobody has addressed this yet -unless your "glacier changing sizes seasonally" thing isn't correct which I'm too lazy to look up. Anyway- I don't pay much attention to global warming stuff, and I assume I'm talking out of my behind here... but I don't hear anything at all about the rotation of the earth. I know it's tens of thousands of years to effect major climate change involving the "wobble" of the earth, but it's always seemed so fragile to me that the tilt of the earth is enough to cause our seasons, so a slight variation in the wobble would cause those seasons to be extended/shortened etc. I guess that stuff is measurable though and someone would have noticed by now if we're in the "warm phase" of that wobble.
If there wasn't such a huge incentive for industry to fund research that "debunks" the theory of global warming, I might be a little more willing to listen. But the fact is, you've got researchers on one side, and believe me, there's absolutely no upside to telling Americans that dumping tons of pollutants into the atmosphere is going to have a bad effect, so researchers on one side who are going where the data takes them and researchers on the other who are paid handsomely to find out that there's absolutely no problem with spewing ever-growing quantities of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
Who you gonna believe?
You are welcome on my lawn.
It would snow 5,000 times a year and each one would be 10ft deep, and we'd walk uphill in it 20 miles each day, and we'd come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
(On a more serious note, individual climate observations in any given site can only possibly demonstrate 'local' warming).
There has been documentarys on TV about this subject, that debunk it.
Apparently alot of guys involved with science (lets call them scientists) do not believe it is an issue.
It has happened years before, and will happen again, unless someone can get the climate data from 2000BC till now, Im sure your see similar pattern.
And NO the bible does not contian this data.
Yeah. Right. I'm a scientist, too, so two things everyone should know:
A) When someone unknown just suddenly says, "Gee, I used to be just like YOU, but I think I've found something that really changed my mind!" every friggin red flag should go off in your head. This person is selling you on the idea by taking advantage of perceived empathy. It is the OLDEST trick in the book. Say, buddy! I used to think I sould never find a good cup of coffee until I discovered Maxwell House! That's right! I thought coffee was bitter until I tried the smooth, clean tasting Maxwell House coffee available at your local grocer! Guess what? Maxwell House coffee sucks, and so does this article. This 'scientist' just wants to bias your views before you start reading the article.
B) Anyone that claims to be a scientist and sites a friggin magazine is either a shitty scientist or not a scientist. Either way, they will not provide you with accurate info.
Anyway, a few specific details he misuses. From his supplementary pdf:
"Sidelooking radar interferometry shows that the ice mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate 18 estimated at 26.8 gigatons per year, reversing a melting trend that has persisted for 6,000 years (Joughin et al., 2002)."
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1766064.stm:
Monckton isn't exactly being honest in the way he's citing that one, is he?
And to refute his argument that the mass of ice in Antarctica is increasing, there's this item from NASA (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=200 6-028) that says the overall mass of ice is decreasing.
Despite David Chamelion's "being green" phase, the Tories - and people who act like them i.e. the Telegraph - have generally been known to be less than caring about silly leftie issues like the environment. They will manipulate all sorts of "facts" to try and encourage more in the way of industry and wealth and such.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
Yes, but where did the UN actually say that CO2 ended the ice ages? How is the author reading their minds? Such a view would certainly be contrary to must of mainstream science, of course, so where's the evidence that the author isn't setting up a strawman?
The Co2 graphs show the reliability of ice core CO2 data as a proxy for finding out historical temperature levels, and also the potential for positive feedback effects if temperatures rise. They give an idea as to the sensitivity of the situation to perturbations.
So how does the author know, then?
This is pure and simply a lie. It's a lie, because all of these critics have ever show is the tendency for hockey sticks in PV01. But PV01 is a certain statistical consequence that is not the same as the actual reconstruction. Studies searching for the hockey stick tendency in the full reconstruction have come up with nothing, because there are other components in the full reconstruction that cancel out the first term.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/
This graph is comparing apples to oranges. The top graph is a global temperature anomaly graph. The bottom is the temperature of a relatively small continent, dominated by a warm ocean current. One is a average data over the world, and the other is strongly affected by local effects - such as the medieval warm period. The top graph is what global warming is talking about. The bottom graph is not relevant to the debate at all.
From wikipedia:
Stefan Boltzmann applies to a perfect blackbody. The Earth is not a perfect blackbody. In fact, not alot of things are. Doesn't it seem wrong to say that energy exposure always raises temperature to the same degree regardless of the object?
And so on and so forth.
You don't need computer models to "find" lambda. Its value is given by a century-old law... Using poor Ludwig Boltzmann's law, lambda's true value is just 0.22-0.3C per watt. In 2001, the UN effectively repealed the law, doubling lambda to 0.5C per watt.
I'm sorry, but this strongly suggests the author is screwing around with the truth. Even if we were living 100 years ago, a law of physics with an error bar of 36% (0.22 versus 0.3C) for one of its parameters would be just barely tolerable. Physicists would be jumping in immediately to improve on the accuracy. But this is 2006, so such inaccuracy is completely ridiculous. Extrapolating to the rest of his argument, the author is promoting many, complete falsehoods.
The problem with this "story", as that's an apt description, is that there are about 940 published peer-reviewed papers on global warming. Now out of 940 papers, guess how many of them are agin it? About 9. Guess how many totally crazy scientific papers get past the peer-review process? Maybe 1%. Hmmmmm....
Plate tectonics was laughed at by the scientific community when it was first proposed in the early 60s. By 1970 it was hailed as a breakthrough and widely accepted.
Just because the majority of papers support global warming doesn't necessairly make it so. Content is what matters.
The Sun's temperature is not constant
The ocean holds CO2 (when it rains, it get mixed into the ocean.. think soda)
When the Sun's temperature increases, the ocean releases CO2
Hence people think higher CO2 means higher temperatures, when the reverse is actually true.
You ALMOST got the joke, actually it's "Those who can't, teach"
So make sure none of your peer-reviewed papers are by professors"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I started to really question the global warming problem when it started becoming the default cause behind all sorts of natural phenomena, and of course the cause behind global warming is supposedly human beings. Thus, human beings caused hurricane Katrina.
Ok, that sets off some major red flags in my mind.
After digging into the problem a little bit, I learned enough to know that I'm not convinced that human beings are the primary cause behind global warming. A) There is not a complete consensus, and there is potential for abuse of science on both sides of the fence. Not all naysayers are crackpots. B) Human-created CO2 accounts for less than one third of one percent of all greenhouse gases. I don't know if that's a significant number or not, but it sure doesn't seem as significant the figure often stated -- comparing only human-created C02 with total C02. C) There are alternative causes that do have a great deal of merit, namely the sun and volcanic activity. These alternate or partial causes are very real but seem to glazed over by the consensus. D) The correlation between industrialization and temperature increase seems iffy (fast ups and downs), and sort of ignores past temperature changes in recent history (1000-2000 years is recent in this case). The correlation also shows that temperatures rise prior to the increase in carbon dioxide, which I thought was one of the big reasons that global warming hype sort of died down years ago (I first learned of this particular fact at least 10 years ago).
So there are some questions that don't seem to have concrete answers, and it doesn't feel like all of the possible explanations have been thoroughly exhausted. When I then factor in the weight that I give to both fear and ego, I think it's highly plausible that global warming fear is just that: massive hysteria. Consider the evidence that the average person throws into the pool: "I know there is global warming because the weather is strange this winter/summer/spring/fall." Well, it's no wonder that the global warming theory is so prevalently believed -- the weather is *always* weird this year, and the *fact* that the Earth is currently warming does not mean that it's your fault.
It's important to me that we all be very environmentally aware. I think that reducing pollution and our natural resource requirements is extremely important, both for the future of humanity and for the rest of the critters on the planet. If we didn't cause global warming, though, then this is a major setback for critical thinking and in the worst case could damage the ideology of environmentalism and science. In a somewhat dangerous time when it seems like the average joe is willing to equate science with religion, the "entire scientific community" being completely wrong about something could be very damaging indeed.
From TFA :
Sir Nicholas Stern's report on the economics of climate change, which was published last week, says that the debate is over. It isn't. There are more greenhouse gases in the air than there were, so the world should warm a bit, but that's as far as the "consensus" goes.
The Stern report is the first study of the economical effects of a worst case of the rise of temperature. It is recent, there has been no consensus yet for or against it in the scientific and economic spheres.
I think scientists said from years to politicians "Be careful, a climate change could occur and could be catastrophic". Of course, when confronted to something that hypothetical, a politician doesn't give a damn. The Stern report says "there is a consensus over the fact that the climate changes" even TFA acknowledges that, "and it could be THAT serious" and on this, no consensus, he took a plausible but worst case scenario. The Stern report is not a scientific piece, it is a translation in politic-speech that in the sake of precaution, something should be done.
I find it refreshing also that an official document reminds that there is in fact a consensus over the fact that the world will warm and that this should be of concern to politicians.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You are supposed to read the articles before commenting???
IANACS?!?! That's where I draw the damn acronym line...
I will forever be a student.
So they have to believe whoever in the media has the best song and dance show.
The media nowadays will publish whatever sells more advertising. That means: whatever sounds most sensational. Forecasting climate catastrophe sounds pretty sensational. It attracts more readers, generates more controversy, and (most important!) sells more advertising. So the media will go for it.
You not only don't have to "believe whoever in the media has the best song and dance show"; you're an idiot if you do.
You can look at the prediction track record of the people who are quoted. And understanding Monckton's criticisms is not rocket science. He says the graphs produced by the global-warming doomsayers in 2001 suppress the medieval warm period. By golly, he's right. The graph makes it look as though the current warming is exceptional, but it isn't. Fluctuations happen. The warming between 1000 and about 1400 AD was more than the current warming, and it's mentioned in many historical sources (e.g. Wikipedia) and has been confirmed by many studies. You don't need calculus to understand stuff like this.
It is prudent to be alert to risks of changing the climate. Modest measures to reduce our gross waste of fossil fuels would be sensible. For example, if the US raised its gasoline taxes to European levels, Americans might be less inclined to buy SUVs. But extreme and costly measures seem foolish.
Galileo may have invented the thermometer, but he didn't invent temperature, and we have a variety of methods of determining relative temperatures from the distant past. Tree rings and ice cores are pretty good, since they both vary in size relative to general weather patterns. I'll bet sedimentation layer thickness from lake and sea beds could be used too, under the right conditions. Hmm... coral reefs could also work. In fact, we can also determine average sea levels along coastlines by looking for ancient beaches and other evidence of erosion, and can use that to judge how much water must have been locked up in polar ice at the time. (The fact that we have this kind of evidence above sea level now suggests that sea levels used to be higher, and that the planet must have been warmer at some point in the geologically recent past.)
In historical times predating thermometers, we can still infer temperature data from things people wrote. For example, the article mentions a Chinese naval expedition circling the artic ocean in the 1400s. We may not have temperature recordings from that expedition, but we know if they really did it then there couldn't have been much ice, and we can estimate the average temperature that would be required to make such a voyage possible. (Hint: warmer than today.)
That depends on where you live, I suppose. Global warming is definitely better for plants, generally, though maybe not cold-adapted ones. I think it'd be generally better for us humans too, though we may have to move many of our cities.
That, by the way, is the big problem with the typical "We need to do something, anything, now to stop global warming" reaction. If the evidence suggested that global warming was most likely due to human activity, then sure, we should stop doing that. The problem is that the evidence strongly suggests that global warming is largely a natural event, which means it's unlikely there is anything we can do to stop it. Now, making more fuel efficient cars and reducing pollution is fine either way, but many of the evironmentalist strategies would weaken us economically and technologically, and that will be a problem when the rising oceans start to flood our coastal cities. We need to have the resources, energy, and technology that will be needed to protect our cities or move them if/when the time comes.
I remember looking into this 3 years ago. I could not find a reliable source online for the Sun's darkspots and the related temperature increases. The other thing that bothers me is that I just watched a science show on public TV that correlated the Plague with the cooler temperatures of the Middle Ages. Apperantly a clotting factor in fleas that amps up the tranmisibility of the Plague works best under cooler conditions. Also, did anyone see the reprint of the email concerning the "getting rid" of the Middle Ages warm hump?
This Summer I went to a little conference regarding this topic, hold by some Italian scientists (don't ask me the names, I don't remember them).. I'm not able to summarize the whole discussion in English, but the conclusion was something like this: Man is just just a little responsible about global warning; the big thing is that Earth has got it's own "big change of seasons" (i.e. a change every 300000 years) in which we have a succession of "glacial eras" and "non glacial eras". Hope it was clear enough.. A rapid Google search gives me this results: http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/thereisnoglobal.h tm, http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p31.htm and a interesting PDF doc: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/lav200 6forWeb.pdf
Conservative journalist Christopher Monckton, former advisor to Thatcher, says global warming is bollocks. Ahh, the smell of bullshit in the evening.
Dear Mr. Monckton, if you really are convinced you are right, submit your research to a scientific journal about climatology. Then we'll see what comes out of the discussion.
Real Science(tm) is made in research papers and conferences, not in opinionated columns in conservative newspapers (well, to be fair "not in newspapers" is enough said).
From his PDF that should detail his points, I take the first one:
A quack financed by oil companies and OPEC (guess where those ten grands came from, and why it is not mentioned: it is a think-tank built purposedly for this one prize to Lindzen) and 41 generic "scientists" (not climatologists I suppose, otherwise it would have been mentioned; I could not find the actual letter, it would have been interesting to have a link and check their credentials) are against the flow. So what? There are people who believe you can die on a bomb and be given 72 virgins in paradise, or that the Holocaust never happened. What about what appears in actual research papers? Where is the debunking of the consensus? "Consensus" does not mean 100%, it means more like "much more than 50%". Otherwise, there is no consensus the world is round.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I've run across a fascinating book that both debunks human-related global warming and explains the climate changes we are experiencing. It's written by a couple of well established scientists. Of course, such heresy will not be taken well by most folks here whose agendas would not be served if the mantras of Al Gore, et. al., were proven to be full of excrement. Check it out on Amazon: Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years.
And even if your numbers were correct about the percentages...
The majority has always been right, hasn't it? Am I right or am I right?
Atheism uses science to explain their faith
Um, not to be picky or anything, but atheists don't have faith. That's kinda what makes us atheists.
Besides, as an atheist living in a cold northern climate, every year I feel dissapointed by the lack of global warming during the winter. It's like some weird joke where they tell Linus about the great pumpkin coming to the thaw out the pumpkin patch every halloween, and he waits and waits, and still freezes his but off and has to buy a parka after all.
The solution is clearly survey papers written in an understandable manner by trusted sources, whether it's a "Does Global Warming Exist?" article in National Geographic, or a bit in USA Today. Which brings us to the survey article at hand
That's funny. I don't see any summary of opinions by climatoligsts. I see a few mentions of scientists, but largely an opinion piece constructed by a journalist. If this had actually quoted people in the field that were refuting global warming, that'd be a bit different. But this article is basically a journalist trying to play climate scientist. Does Mr. Monckton have any training in climatology? Does he have any training in science at all even? Not that I can tell.
AccountKiller
Point #1 makes about as much sense as saying "the camera was invented in the 1800's so I don't believe in dinosaurs. The global temperature data over time comes from a multitude of different proxies of temperature that have been preserved in geologic records just like ancient critters have been preserved as fossils.
I haven't seen much (actually I haven't seen any) argument that the historical temperature records are unreliable.
The real issues are the extent to which humans are responsible for climate change, the likely effects of such change, and whether climate change is a self-limiting/correcting or unstable-runaway process.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I'm not sure if you are kidding or not, so I'll answer these questions seriously.
1) There are a variety of ways of determining temperature without a thermometer. For example, we know the temperatures of planets, suns, asteroids, space, underground, high in the sky, in the past, and in the future. Fortunately, global warming is only partially about temperature, so that is just one of many indicators. A detailed discussion as to how and why this all is true is too much to post here. I would suggest starting with the Wikipedia articles on global warming and global climate change. They reference TONS of articles you can look at from there to get explanations on all of this.
2) Ironically, global warming may cause another ice age. Just like #1, start with the Wikipedia article. You don't have to trust it completely - just use it as a launching point for references.
3) I don't know when those photos were taken, and they could be photoshopped, doctored, taken at different times, or even completely different places. But the photos were there to illustrate the point, they aren't the factual evidence. If you want that, there are plenty of photos of receding glaciers over recent history. Ultimately, if you don't trust any of the sources, I've been told Greenland and Alaskan vacations are wonderful. A friend of mine recommended the glacier fly-overs. Breathtaking views. I would love to talk to the pilots who have been doing them for years.
Wow! Someone actually answering your questions!
IANACS, IANAS, I Am a Critical Reader.
First of all, this was a Telegraph article. If you considered it well written, take a second look at the writer's tone. His "everyman" style actually conceals a number of "ad hominem" (*) style attacks against the UN scientists, whom he portrays as evil, corrupt, NWO stooges. (including numerous references to their thought processes and behaviors that he could not know : like "placed the Medieval Period data in a folder marked "Confidential Data" )
However, it seems that his main point is this : The Earth has gotten warmer (and cooler) in the past all on its own, and the human race didn't die out. The current changes in climate are just minor fluctuations and will work themselves out, without the creation of any international agreements or organizations to change things.
The only counter-argument I can offer is that: the world might have gotten warmer (and colder) all on its own. The Earth has natural defenses such as trapping the carbon from CO2 in trees, an ozone layer, using the oceans as a heat sink, etc. All of these defenses have been damaged by human industry, and the rate of human industrialization is growing, not shrinking.
That said, I would like to research the Medieval Heat period, and seeing what went on there?
You wrote "Isn't global warming better than another ice age?"
Damn straight. I don't know why more people don't realize this. I've been making this point for years. The Stern report estimated something like a 5% hit to global GDP. I wonder what the economic hit to Chicago would be if it was buried under 2000 feet of ice?
Ultimately the people who lead the charge of "Global Warming is a BIG LIE!!" are people who okay with the idea of experimenting on your life support system.
When I go SCUBA diving, I make sure my equipment is in good shape, then in the water I don't mess with it. I do not at 100 feet decide I can close my valve so I get just enough air or anything else crazy.
People who want to keep running the experiment of how much crap can we put in the atmosphere, and our oceans, and Mother Earth will gratefully accept and recycle this crap for us, are living in a McMansion dream-land. If you SCUBA dive for enough years you could see the reefs are dying, as I have.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593.
I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593."
really? So you completely disavow any conclusions about tempratures from ice cores then.
"Isn't global warming better than another ice age?"
To the earth it's neutral. Just another season in the flow of time. To the humans just as bad if not worse.
"You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after?
Are the before and after both from the same season?"
Al Gore is a liberal commie, pinko, fag, granola, green nazi. He wants to destroy the western world and wants to institute a one world govt (TM). Don't believe anything he says. Also don't listen to the scientists, they are all liars (except the ones that say there is no global warming of course).
evil is as evil does
- The Hockey Stick graph used by global warming supporters ignores a warm Medieval period.
- Tree rings do not always tell the whole story; therefore, the Sun does.
- All important global warming scientists have forgotten the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
- The deep ocean is not warming as global warming scientists have predicted.
I certainly do not think that an article in the Telegraph can effectively debunk the scientific work of hundreds of climatologists. "Oh, look at that article... Stefan-Boltzmann-well, shit. He's right, I totally forgot about those dudes. My past 20 years of work on this topic are out the window. I think I'll quit my job and go work for an oil company." There are some interesting points. 60% of the article centers around the Medieval warming period. "It was warm back then!" Yes, for several hundred years that did coincide with intense solar activity. On the other hand, many climatologists are looking at core samples of CO2 concentrations over a few hundred thousand years and saying, "It is very high and it is definitely rising."Before man was making a global impact on the world, the Earth could respond to these changes with increase plant growth and favoring species that more efficiently consume CO2, but what we have now is a global impact of our industries on flora and fauna worldwide. We are effectively crippling the Earth's homeostatic systems by systematically destroying food chains, rain forests, and plant life in most of the arable regions (because we have so many people that we need more and more of it to feed them). Global warming science has never been precise. If it were, there would be no debate. But there is just no argument whatsoever about CO2 concentrations tripling since the beginning of the Industrial Age and those concentrations being the highest in over a hundred thousand years. No argument that CO2 traps heat (Venus), and no argument that this is having a significant impact on the Earth and us.
To be quite honest, if scientists doctored data to remove some data that would seem to provide a counterexample, I would think that it is targetted at the majority of people that will stick their head in the sand and not believe real effort is required on anything until it knocks down their door and starts running amok in front of their television. Ok, maybe that sounds awful, but people that have been studying this stuff for years are pretty terrified by the real dangers we are facing. They're terrified because no matter how much data they find and how compelling it is, the naysayers will do nothing until all the evidence is incontravertible and at that point it will be to late because the evidence will be something like, "500 million people will die of starvation in the next 2 years." Ok, maybe scientists hid a Medieval warming period in a graph presented for general consumption by the layman. One possibility is that this entirely refutes decades of research by the brightest minds in their field. But there are a great many other explanations that all involve our planet frying.
I know it's a British story but it's pretty scary how much of the same tactics the right uses there as in the U.S. I had a look at the article and the PDF. I'm not so sure I believe in the entire global warming scenario that is around today. I would like to see more research like this. However, and having said that, let me recap a couple of points that pertain to the PDF, and expose the attacks on science I perceive to be in there.
Ths PDF leads off with a few quotes, among which is one by GK Chesterton: "When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe
in anything." This set off an alarm for me immediately. The tying in of the religion vs. science angle in an otherwise inoccuous manner.
The first part deals with the so-called "consensus" on global warming. It presents a couple of points and then says 41 scientists recently wrote to the Telegraph and said they were not convinced by the "global warming consensus", and then fails to name any of them.
The next part talks about how critics of the global warming theory are often painted as tools of the oil industry since that's who funds them. In an attempt at "balance" the PDF points out that most scientists worldwide are stat-funded. Not sure what the point is here.
The next part talks about pine tree rings and says someone found a file of data on a computer marked "CENSORED DATA" that contained details of a warm period in Medieval times. Aside from the effect of that data on the calculations it is right up the alley of conservative conspiracy theorists. They are censoring data they don't want you to see!
The report goes on to talk about the incomplete historical record. This is what concerns me the most in my own distrust of the global warming theory. I think we simply don't know. We've been keeping records for far too short a time to make sweeping conclusions about climate effects being wrought by modern man in the last 60 years.
There's a lot more, but near the end he says, "Given that Greenland is cooler now than in the mediaeval warm period, and given that most of the Antarctic land-mass including almost all the world's 160,000 glaciers has cooled for 30 years, it is not likely that ice-melt will cause considerable rise in sea levels in the foreseeable future."
There are partisan hacks on both sides of this issue. I'm sure he was paid well.
For a good background on the Global Warming issue and the dangers of consensus opinion, I highly recommend reading this article (as a starter) on how politics influences science.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Not to mention that air pollution (other than CO2) caused by burning fossil kills hundreds of thousands of people every year - in the USA alone the estimates are generally around 25,000.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Does it ultimately matter whether it's a natural or man-made process? An asteroid hurling towards Earth is entirely natural, but the real issue is - are we going to do anything about it now that we know it's happening?
I posted this in the "Snowball Earth" thread, but it applies here too.
At the moment the question seems to be "Are humans having a serious negative impact on the global climate?" This is used to reinforce the status quo, right? It's not our fault, what we're doing isn't the problem, so why bother changing what we're doing?
Shouldn't the questions be:
"Is the climate changing?"
"Is it changing in a way that will benefit humanity?"
"If not, how do we manufacture the change we desire?"
These questions should be framed with the idea that the climate is changing and will eventually wipe life as we know it off the face of the Earth. Eventually, something will replace all that biodiversity. But mankind won't be around to see it, so it behooves us as a species to guarantee our own survival by making sure the climate changes in a manner that allows us to continue to thrive.
1. We foolishly believed the global warming nutcases, so we invested a lot in cutting down our pollution, reforesting the planet, breaking our dependence on fossil fuels, and generally investigating a sustainable approach to living on this earth. On the way, we created entire new industries and learned a lot about coordinating economic activity among countries. 2. We foolishly failed to believe the global warming scientists, so we squandered fossil fuels, filled the skies with pollution, cut down the remaining trees, watched the glaciers melt, and encouraged a massive biodiversity crash -- but at least the same old corrupt governments collected all the profits while they lasted, and spent most of the money on weapons as usual, so now we're all armed to the teeth to fight for what's left.
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
the snowball theory?
Truth is, we don't know. We had to have warming to get the glaciers out of Texas after the Ice Age, but then it had to be warm(er) in Siberia for the wooly mammoths found preserved with green vegetation in their mouths.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
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Atheism, like science requires proof, whereas your typical religious nuts will believe any twaddle they're told.
Arthur Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
The fact that the bible bashers think that science is a form of belief (the modern world presumably therefore based on a sinister form of magic) comparable to their own twaddle suggests it's simply too advanced for them to understand.
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I had occasion to visit Alaska this last summer, and one can walk up to some of the glaciers and see the markers on rocks showing where the front of the glacier was in, say, 1973. Glaciers are always moving, and they are generally fed by ice fields. The rate of retreat of a glacier is dependent on how quickly the ice field grows and how quickly the face calves.
Glaciers advance more slowly in the winter, because everything is frozen, if anything I might expect the seasonal front of the glacier advance further during the summer.
"It is one of the special beauties of science that points of view which seem diametrically opposed turn out later, in a broader perspective, to both be right."
- Emilio Segre, 1905-1989, Italian Physicist who studied under Fermi and worked at Los Alamos
All of the topics you mention seem to be areas where the unnecessary complexity was eventually discarded, to reveal a simple core truth. E=MC*2 is wonderfully, beautifully simple - that's its elegance.
Climatology is fundamentally different. It's a field, affected by huge numbers of variables. It's unlikely that you will be able to condense the problem down to a fundamental conclusion like "global warming IS manmade". Even if it becomes a devastating fact of life, and it wipes most of the life off of the planet, we still won't be able to definitively state that we caused it.
Of your original list, the 'Evolutionary Process" conclusion on "Origin and Differentiation of Biological Life" seems the most appropriate. Despite what we know of the process, we cannot definitively state the "Origin" of biological life.
Some temperature data is deduced from things like erosion patterns, fossil records, etc. Not all temperature data has to be direct. Indirect data carries less certainty but should not be outright dismissed.
The problems isn't that global warming is happening or that an mini ice age may happen. The problem is with the rate of change. Life adapts but if the climate changes too fast many species may go extinct. We may be one of them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Most of the issues brought up in this article are discussed in the Climate change Wikipedia article. There's at least as much climate change psuedoscience as there is actual science. Listen to what the actual scientists have to say, not the journalists and pundits.
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Theres also plenty of evidence of glaciers advancing. Theres also plenty of evidence that the world was warmer 2000 years ago and 700 years ago. Do you really want to blame anthropic carbon emissions for everything ?
1) And I don't trust Republicans, Libertarians or Democrats. What's your point? There are means other than thermometers of gauging temperature... Nobody built a giant glass tube filled with mercury and told the Sun to say "Open. Now close." [http://www.gly.uga.edu/schroeder/geol1121H/isotop e.html]
2) Ignoring the false dichotmoy, no. Not if it pushes the system out of it's current meta-stable position onto a different track/cycle.
3) Why don't you get back to us on that?
Were that I say, pancakes?
Why is it that "Faith in religion is BAAAADDD!!!" but "Faith in science is GOOOOODDD!!!" around here?
And for the record, real faith is *not* blind belief in *spite* of evidence. It is belief in something that has not *yet* been proven, but most everything *else* related to that subject *has* been proven. Hebrews 11:1.
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Later they claim that the 'UN' or scientists replace a fundamental law of physics with their Lambda value. This is again disingenuous. The lambda values used in this report do not represent a physical law but rather represent an empirical relationship between 'forcings' and temperature change.
He uses a mixture of miss information and real facts. The facts, or their interpretation can themselves be misleading. For example he mentions that the volume of ice mass in Antarctica has increased in the observations. This is true but does not support his case (the same UN report he seeks to attack mentions the same). As the temperature have warmed around the perimeter of Antarctica the precipitation (snow) has increased in the interior but the temperature remain well below that needed to remove ice mass.
The two examples above are just two strands that I picked up whilst reading through. What interests me is whether the writer really believes what he is writing? Does he really believe that this is a UN consipiracy to be debunked. He clearly has gathered a large amount of information together to make his case. I am curious about whether he believes what he writes or whether he has an agenda (perhaps to counter a contry agenda?).
When GW skeptics argue that scientists are deliberately producing results which indicate GW is happening and that they have an agenda I always ask myself "why?". The main argument brought forward is usually that you need to argue pro GW to receive funding. Now let's take a closer look at this argument. The biggest funding sources are usually government grants. Which government would provide the biggest research funding in the world, probably the US government. Now last time I looked the US government was, to put it mildly skeptical about GW. So why should they be trying to push a GW agenda? Then let's look at funding from outside the government. Who has the resources to fund large amount of fundamental research? Big cooperations, Now that is a group with a reputation of pushing environmental issues! . The argument of biased results because of the funding sources just does not stand up to a serious investigation.
1) So if you can find some phenomenon that correlates directly with temperature for all the time we've been able to record it, and you understand why it correlates, you don't think it is reasonable to assume that that record before we started recording is also a good indication of what the temperature was at that time? What about when you have dozens of such correlations by different mechanisms, but they all agree? 'Cuz that's where the temperature indications most scientists use come from.
2) Is being kicked in the face better than being kicked in the crotch? What about when the kick to the face is coming a hundred times faster than the kick to the crotch? A gradual change in temperature in either direction in a given location will cause problems. A rapid change in temperature will cause severe problems. What's better, a gradual cooling where it drop 1 degree every decade or all the ice caps melting tomorrow and the resulting rise in water level drowning everyone in every costal city?
It's not a simple matter of whether heating or cooling is better, especially given that rapid heating over a short time may lead to long term cooling. Climate is not so simple and it affects our world in profound ways from food production to dangerous species expansion, to hurricanes.
3) I haven't seen said movie. Your comment is empty of all value. I don't know when he photographed them and apparently neither do you so you're implying that it was misleading without presenting any reason for that implication. We do know the ice sheets are retreating, and rapidly. I've not seen any scientific study that did not conclude that.
Of course, there were so many reputable peer-reviewed journals in those days which allowed for significant public discourse to affirm/deny those theories. Additionally the "most qualified men" were all fully tenured, which gave them the protection to advocate controversial theories. Mind you, there was not much to worry as there was such a clear separation between church and state at the time...
Oh wait...*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Why does global warming have to either be universally accepted or flat-out debunked? Why can't it just be in a state of "still gathering research to find out exactly what's going on?"
Oh, right, because people attach politics to everything. Bastards.
"Sufferin' succotash."
There's also some discussion of it on a recent thread at RealClimate.
Monckton's rant is just the usual background noise. It's not hard to make up a story by selecting evidence carefully. The hard job is finding a story that is consistent with all the evidence. While we eagerly await the fourth IPCC assessment, the third IPCC assessment, the consensus of leading scientists in the relevant fields from 2001, is the best big picture we've got.
What some gadfly has to say should always be given due consideration, not less, but certainly not more. In the present case, not much.
mt
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Is it? What if that same warming melts glaciers, releasing fresh water that dilutes the ocean's salinity? That makes it increasingly difficult for cooling water to sink and return south towards the poles to pick up more heat. This kind of disruption could cause Europe's climate to cool down. We're already seeing signs that a component of the current system powering the Gulf Stream might be slowing down.
Dr. Benny Peiser at Cambridge College in England has been running the Cambridge-Conference mailing list ("CCNet"--see http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/CCNet-homepa ge.htm) for several years. Over the last few years, the forum's focus on neocatastrophism (large, cataclysmic events disrupting the "steady state" average of geology, climatology, etc.) has shifted to covering the global climate-change debate. Dr. Peiser has submitted his share of work & letters to the peer-reviewed journals questioning the idea of consensus in scientific investigation--see "The Letter that SCIENCE Would Not Publish" http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Sciencelette r.htm.
You are being stupid. First, the first thermometers were neither accurate nor ubiquitous. You would only get approximate measurements in Italy for a long time, and systematic ones only for the last century or less. Second, there are other ways to measure temperatures than a direct thermometer, just like there are indirect ways to tell that the magnetic north-south pole swap relatively often place without us ever measuring it.
You are presenting false alternatives. What about not screwing everything up instead?
You never saw a glacier. They are not snow, they are thick ice and do not melt that quickly. I remember always seeing glaciers on the top of the Orobian Alps from my grandma's house every summer we went there. They disappeared last year, now only moraines are left.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Unfortunately your personal experience does not add meaningful data to the debate, though that's a very, very common misconception. In fact, I hear scientists use anecdotal evidence to support global warming theory on a regular basis.
Two reasons:
1) Global warming is about the average temperature of the entire planet from year to year. There's so much normal variation and so many local weather cycles that observations from a single location are statistically insignificant. Your statement that Tennessee is right between two different climate patterns actually harms the applicability of your observations to a world-wide scale.
2) If global warming *is* happening then it's generally agreed that the rate of warming is about 0.1 degrees per decade across the planet, or a 0.3 degree increase over the 30 years you describe.
I'm not trying to tear you down here at all, and I don't claim to have any insight whatsoever into the validity or lack thereof of global warming, but it's easy to find individual situations to support either side, which is part of the reason why the debate is so choked with bad data.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
For the few scientists that think that global warming is unlikely, though possible,
I suggests thinking of it as insurance.
Spending billions on correcting for even the possibility of the effects of global warming would still be the safe thing to do.
You spend a thousand on auto insurance a year to prepare for the unlikely event of having an accident.
Spending billions now to prevent possible future damages of trillions seems like a wise thing to do.
For those that think that the earth is 5000 years old and global warming is a trick of media, I would ask you to reconsider history, science, and the motives of your politicians.
I tend to agree. Ice Age 1 and Ice Age 2 were both shocking movies. Ray Romano can kiss my chilly white ass. What is it with the studios thinking that celebrities can be decent voice artists, just because they're celebrities?
... and then they built the supercollider.
"I'm a scientist. I like Al Gore. I donate to the Sierra club, I bicycle everywhere and I eat granola."
We've just read about Republicans pretending to be Democrats; You understand the precautions, I'm sure.
A few nuts usually stick with it and in the long run it comes back into mainstream if its closer to correct. There IS easy funding out there for anti-global warming if you want to appear like an industry whore.
Ironic, the USA has a preemptive war policy but ignores global warming which has already begun. Furthermore, it will not actively look for more evidence.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Are they shrinking or not? For all the doubters and supporters of GW, I suggest you take a look and see what's happening with them. And ask the Canadians about all the ice that used to be between their main land mass and the Arctic. If they're suddenly having to worry about ships encroaching across their territory 9and screw the U.S. for recognizing their territory), gee, maybe that means the ice really is melting because, gee, it's really getting warmer.
/. nerds. Not all of you, but some of you.
Friggin'
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I was working in Norway in September on a small island near Bergen (on the west coast). Local people told me that 15 years ago there were no trees on this island. When I was there a forest was growing. There was one area on the road to the island that had very sparse vegitation, so I know what it looked like before. By the way, it was a restricted location, so the change was not due to any human activity. Climate change is they only reason.
At same time I was in Norway, some friends of mine were trekking in Nepal. They hiked up to a lake at 15000 feet to view a religious ceremony. When they arrived, the locals said that twenty years ago, the lake was at the edge of a glacier. Now, you could just see the ice field far up the mountain.
People and organizations that deny global warming have a political and economic agenda. Those who acknowledge global warming also have political goals, but they are typically outside the real power structure: the US government, the oil companies and the international oil cartels. Look at oil company profits and their political contributions in the US and you can see how it works. I live in Califorina, and the oil companys are spending huge amounts of money to defeat the oil tax/CO2 reduction measure that will be decided tomorrow, November 2nd.
Suppose you were bit by an animal, and you didn't know if it was rabid or not. Would you wait to see the results before you went to see a doctor and got anti-rabies shots? No rational person would wait. Global warming is the same decision. The outcome is terrible, and we have to face the problem before we know absolutly that how bad it could be. Denying the problem and refusing to take any preventitive measures is irrational. People who refuse to act are dangerous, self centered and stupid.
Study it. Try and comprehend. It really is very simple. Case closed.
Unfortunately those caught up in the fossil fuel economy seem to be unable or unwilling to grasp this simple concept.
What were Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief again? What was the first one? Oh right, denial.
Amen. I live below sea levels (and on the eight day, the Dutch created Holland) and I definitely have more faith in improved dikes and water management systems. They will protect us regardless of the cause of global temperature changes.
Likewise, I'm skeptical of stop biomass fuel. Deforestation is a far bigger problem and bio diversity isn't going to improve one bit with biomass fuels. Fission will do fine for now and hopefully fusion in the future (ITER).
Furthermore, anyone remember acid rain and smog? Sure, it still happens, but it's nowhere as huge as it was in the eighties, not in the uber-capitalistic modern world (YMMV). On the whole, we seem to be able to take care. Just because we hear about every single problem in the world in the Internet age doesn't mean there are actually more problems.
Terrorists will only kill a tiny number of us. Global warming will kill us all.
Guess which one is really scarier?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
[sorry for my poor english]
Even for temperatures since 1593, I'm not sure of their accuracy compared to today measurement.
But I'm confident in current CO2 measurement from ground layers, and scientists have demonstrated correlation between global warming and CO2.
The problem is the growth of CO2 due to human factors, they exploded in our industrial era. Yes, they may be other reasons for such augmentation, but only human impact explain its speed.
Now, its not really agreable for us to ear that we have responsibility and we have to change our way of life, find alternative energy sources, find less "energyvore" ways to do things.
And more, we must share this with third-world and emerging countries so that they dont use the same anti-ecologic development we did.
When a majority of scientists agree on an analysis (using gloves for points which are still under discussion and need further analysis - see UN report), opponent must give based and demonstrated arguments, just ideas and politician oriented views isn't enough (it's Bush administration which tries to limit scientists publications showing global warming, not the other way!).
And is global warming better than another ice age?
Who discuss about another ice age ?
Ask all these people living on grounds from zero to two meters altitude (generally from already poor countries).
Consider this warming speed compared to other "natural" (not coming from a comete...) evolution and the time needed for animals and vegetals adaptation (ie. most will simply disapear).
Take the problem of food production when water (and even drinking water) become a are and rare resource.
L.Pointal
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How to Lie with Statistics
lol! Dude, I think you posted in the wrong thread. No one in this thread said anything about humanity being the cause of receding glaciers.
The author of the Telegraph piece is Christopher Monckton, a retired journalist
That writes. Like. James T Kirk. Speaks.
I know it's a British story but it's pretty scary how much of the same tactics the right uses there as in the U.S. I had a look at the article and the PDF. I'm not so sure I believe in the entire global warming scenario either, and the pdf speaks to some of my reservations. However, and having said that, there are a couple of signs that wing-nuttery is alive and well in Britain.
Ths PDF leads off with a few quotes, among which is one by GK Chesterton: "When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe
in anything."
What the hell does that quote have to do with anything?
Then the reprot deals with the so-called "consensus" on global warming. It says 41 scientists recently wrote to the Telegraph and said they were not convinced by the "global warming consensus". It then fails to name a single one.
The next part talks about how critics of the global warming theory are often characterized as shills for the oil industry. In a murdoch-esque attempt at "balance" it then points out that most scientists worldwide are state-funded. Doesn't make a lot of sense but probably will be a convincing argument for the thinking challenged. That's what we've come to expect from the wingnuts at Fox news over here in the U.S.
The part about CO2 and pine tree trunk rings is interesting. Until it devolves into hysterical conspiracy theory. Someone found a file of data on a computer marked "CENSORED DATA" that contained details of a warm period in Medieval times that throws off the consensus when factored in. They are censoring data they don't want you to see!
In fact, a good deal of the report bases itself on the work of Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who it praises as being courageous for daring to go against the standard UN calculations and graphs and suffering the consequences of censorship as a result. They say the UN's 2001 temperature study was grossly flawed and cites a US Senate study from 2005 that backs this up. The 2005 US Senate. I wouldn't trust that bunch to tell me the right time of day.
So this report bears further scrutiny, although the right wing will hail it. As far as research goes, I hope others will chime in on their findings. There are partisan hacks on both sides of this issue. I'm sure the guy who wrote it was paid well.
Admittedly I have some problems with the stern report. It seems happy to assume that global warming is responsible for increased hurricanes, a result that is supported by a few suggestive papers but far from established. Also there were a few other reports about it that made me think it might be erring on the side of overestimation. Still I haven't read it myself so these could be misleading reports.
However, this article is clearly written as a hack job to take one from one report that might exaggerate a bit to the conclusion that global warming isn't a big deal and is being perpetrated as some sort of international conspiracy. Let's be reasonable here and use the same standard for global warming as we use for anything else. At worst this means there was a report released by someone who (in good faith) might have relied on effects that are supported by research but not well verified. It is totally ridiculous to attack global warming in general.
But what I really wrote this article to point out is how ridiculous the claim is about the UN cutting the predicted value from their model by three to get the right value for the 20th century. This piece cleverly avoids telling you that carbon dioxide is not the only forcing that needs to be considered here and there are significant negative forcings. Thus the temperature increase from CO2 will be far larger than the real temperature increase as it will be offset by temperature decreases from things like increased particulate matter in the atmosphere. However, since the other forcings tend to be bounded or increasing at relatively slow rates while the CO2 forcing is increasing quite significantly in the future we get to see more of the CO2 forcing, i.e., now we are looking at something like 6-4 in the future we get 10-5.
Also does anyone really think that the statisticians hired by the US senate were crazy greens who were dead set on defending some false science? More likely the UN graph really was meritorious. Perhaps the medieval warm period was only a local European phenomena not a global effect (and was thus offset by colder temperatures elsewhere)?
These sorts of articles really piss me off. They ultimately leverage the fact that global warming is a very complicated issue and that the scientific consensus is really only that it is happening at a significant rate. There is still much disagreement about what that rate should be. Additionally the very fact that there is such a consensus on global warming means that it isn't too hard to find one or two bad apples on the global warming side. Since the public doesn't really understand the scientific process these types of articles manage to trick them into seeing it the same way they see political parties, i.e., as consisting of organized sides who are blamable for all claims made by their side.
Grr.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Unless of course a few thousand tons of ice can melt in two weeks at ambient ;-) But then, one can also look at the tree line to see that the
temperatures
foreground is no longer being scoured.
Thanks
Were that I say, pancakes?
My fiance is a geophysicist. I attented a conference with her recently, and one of the presentation streams there was regarding climate change. There were several speakers from CSIRO (an Australian research institute). They all considered that anthropogenic climate change was occuring. It was painted in a manner similar to evolution vs creationism. The scientific consensus is that climate change is occuring, but the specifics of _exactly_ what/how is happening is not known.
- 1317 - interestingly this was caused by a "little ice age" ;-)
Thoughts:
- There's something comforting about being a skeptic. It's a bit like "I'm better than everybody else, because I know something that they don't." There are some aspects in the climate change debate that try to appeal to this trait in us.
-There are _clear_ vested interests that want to keep a "business as usual" economic model. Imagine you're sitting on a couple of billion barrels of oil - you definitely wouldn't want Kyoto ratified!
I heard this at a presentation: How many people have insurance to cover fire damage in their home? How many people have lost their homes to fires?
This illustrates an important principle. If there's a relatively small risk of something absolutely catastrophic occuring, then it's wise to take steps to reduce that risk. It's called the expected outcome. Let's think about climate change for a moment. If it's false, then we get business as usual - the world goes on mostly as it is. If it's true, we potentially get global famine, and hundreds of millions of refugees, as well as disease, etc.
We don't know what the probabilities of these outcomes are, but we can be sure that the probability of the second is NOT zero.
Here in the West, we're very secure. I've never been worried about where my next meal comes from. That security can definitley breed complacency. We should not assume that catastrophic change can't happen, just because we've never experienced it. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315
(Disclaimer - I did not read the article)
Check out the first laws of physics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy can only be converted. Second thing to consider is probability and statistics.
The problem is that too many people see facts and draw the wrong conclusions. Let's take one specific example as an illustration. There seems to be a growing fear that hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent in the southern US and people are attributing this to global warming. To determine if that is in fact true, you would first have to know the statistical average patterns and norms for variations in the patterns. The big problem here is we don't have enough data to make intelligent decisions. A 25 year old who has seen gradually warmer average summers for the last 18 years will panic about global warming BUT statistically, it is not meaningful. Our limited view of the last 250, 2500 years is inconsequential. The only really reliable data is from the last 50 years. "Data" that often gets quoted in the press is in fact hyperbole and innuendo based on someone interpretting a clump of clay or ice drilled out of the earth. That is not necessairly factual, although it could be.
Understanding the laws of energy are critical to add another dimension to the analysis. Nature loves to neutralize any imbalances that exist in most energy fields. Hurricanes happen when the water surface is warmed. A hurricance is simply a process converting thermal energy to kinetic energy and dissapating the energy. More hurricanes and more powerful instances means that nature is at work neutralizing the energy imbalance presumably created by man.
So what is the $64k question? When do things break to a point where the biosphere can no longer compensate? Trust me on this one - there is no consensus on the answer.
The notion that we can raise the world's temperature has also not been proven scientifically. Many scientists have hypothesized about links between certain polutants and an apparent warming trend over the last 50 years. Assuming one concludes that there is in fact a warming trend (a recent visit to my grandmothers house resulted in laughter over a 1970's issue of national geographic with the cover story "New ice age coming?") the question that needs to be answered is "is this above the normal fluctuations in the earths temperature range and is it a normal part of the cycle?". Anyone who claims to know that for sure is a fool.
I am much more concerned about the polutants and the effect they have on the general environment. Dumping draino to clear our drains before a salmon dinner is clearly the actions of a stupid race. Washing hair color and bleach down the drain then consuming duck pate is also as stupid. The bigger worry is that man is artificially binding atoms together than nature would not allow to exist otherwise. The earth has no mechanism to protect itself against many man made polutants.
For the record, I drove less than 3500 MK last year while putting 9,000 on my bike, don't use hair spray and use electricity generated via gravity. I didn't do this for global warming reasons but in fact just a general realization that car pollutants are bad. I grow my own organic food and do a number of other things to really think through my purchase decisions, even where conventional wisdom might seem to contradict.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
Hello,
I am not a climate scientist.
I have, however, spent some time researching the consensus view. I've also had the privilege of seeing Al Gore give his presentation in person.
In my time doing some research, I've understood enough of the issues, I think, to be able to comment on the veracity of the article in the Telegraph. And yes, of course, I have read it in its entirety.
My view is that the article is disingenuously factually inaccurate, and it does not directly address the actual arguments put forth by respected climate scientists who understand the most recent research and issues.
Unfortunately, I don't have the patience or the time to rehash the research and evidence (since I am not a scientist, I will have to re-read a variety of sources and synthesise my arguments back into a cohesive, convincing comment-- for someone not dealing with these arguments constantly on a daily basis, it would take me upwards of 24 hours to collate and synthesise the counter-argument) so I will leave the detailed rebuttal to a more qualified person.
But on its face, from the research I've done, it rings hollow-- a rehash of the same bullshit by disingenuous naysayers. I mean, the guy worked for Margaret Thatcher. What do you expect?
>And even if your numbers were correct about the percentages...
>The majority has always been right, hasn't it? Am I right or am I right?
You miss the point. This isnt a random on-the-street survey of bobbleheads, where the majority can be swayed byu the phase of the moon or what they had for lunch. it's a set of written papers, on which these scientists have spent their lives and risk their reputations. Quite a difference.
If it all depended on every scientist agreeing on something we'd probably still have to decide if the earth is round or flat. Irrelevant.
"rise above variability" is a terrible choice of words for possibly saying that the temperature is not outside the ranges. That is not the only factor to consider: last five years my place had average temperatures but, cold and warm seasons (the only remaining two it appears) came with temperature differentials of some 10 degrees celsius in a single day. What will influence crops and food, a statistic, or the actual weather?
Totally agree. One more reason not to meddle with the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Natural occurring irregularities of solar irradiance can amplify the effect of a different composition. For the better or the worse, SURE, but since the last millions of years of solar irradiance didn't get us all killed, while CFC seem to, why risk?
Errors spread in BOTH directions, usually. Doesn't it happen with last century measurements? unlikely. Or a conspiracy, which would have to be investigated.
Good reason not to meddle with greenhouse-gas, too.
An artificial temperature change is risky because is artificial, not because it's a temperature change.
Correct, life will find a way around human impact on the planet. At what cost for us homo sapiens? None, Decimation, extinction, forced genetic therapy in a worse-than-orwellian future where man can't breath or procreate without help from big brother?
So propose something else. Or does one ineffectual cure change the nature of the symptoms?
Irrelevant. Man managed to survive in this planet with less technology so a good use of technology with the least possible impact on environment is the way to go, cost effective or not. Filters on car exhausts are not cost effective either, do you propose to eliminate them?
What if I want to be irresponsibly free to live as my forefathers did? Clean air water and food, being able to make children with a woman, and if shit happens, too bad? But this is me. What about you? Do politicians listen to whom?
A new world order can sure be made from climate terrorism, as the journalist says. But assuming a conspiracy of these dimensions, and assuming a combination of power and technology can guarantee the survival of an elite (that is always true if the elite is small enough but it still has to do the conspiring, so can't be too little), I'd rather use pollution as a weapon, than the made up fear of it. BTW in the meantime, pollution is converting pure water into money under our eyes.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I don't know if the attack was so excellent. We have to get our information from some sort of public source (newpaper/TV/journal) or do the research ourselves. Very few people have the know-how and resources to do much research themselves, and even if you do have those resources, you can't research everything fully. Therefore, our choices are to trust some sort of publicly published material, or else ignore the situation altogether.
that there's undisputably a giant and growing hole in the ozone layer, radically odd weather phenomina including major floods and tidal waves, acid rain devastating Norwegian forests, and still some people want more evidence before they actually get off their asses and do something instead of find excuses.
To those people: Just how stupid are you and how bad does it have to get before you actually believe the worlds scientists over Bush who is practically owned by the US oil industry?
so lets weigh up the 2 worst cases:
If GW is happening and we don't act: Unreversible world devastation.
If GW isn't happening and we do act: The Gov. are out tax dollars cleaning up the air you breathe anyway even though it wasn't strictly necessary to avert armageddon.
And we have.
That's why we are on scenario B and C, not on the cataclysmic scenario A.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/00fig1.gif
The article includes some things which are completely discredited and some things which are merely out of context. Once again, a randomly assembly of data in a popular newspaper has failed to overturn years of peer-reviewed science.
Well, you don't know how earth science works, then. We have pretty clear measures of Greenland surface temperature going back 100,000 years, and Antarctic ones almost a million. It actually involves, hmm, a little science, though. We have pretty clear indications of global ice volume going back that far. We have geological evidence of previous ice ages and previous ice free ages.
It's called "evidence".
Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Obviously it depends on how much global warming and how much ice age. Why?
glaciers change size seasonally.
Not noticeably, I believe. I'm afraid you're making that one up entirely. But here at least you are making a verifiable claim. So provide some evidence, would you?
mt
3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after?
Are the before and after both from the same season?
Because the glaciers change size seasonally.
Did Al Gore show winter 1980 vs. summer 2005?
Ok, I don't find Images of a specific glacier to be convincing from a scientific perspective but I take issue with your point.
Do you have any idea how much ice is in a glacier and how long it would take to melt???
I live in Northern Alberta and we spend at least half of the year well above 0 (in the summer 20-30 C). The massive piles of snow that the city ploughs from the street can survive through the summer, in fact I've even seen snow drifts survive into the early summer by being under a pile of grass in the shade. The changes shown in the movie COULD NOT occur over the course of a season. It takes years for that much snow and ice to accumulate and well over a year for it to melt.
I stole this Sig
1) Good point; I concur :)
/. poster had in his signature, "the plural of anecdote is not data" but here goes, anyway.
2) I'm from Anchorage, Alaska, so I'm biased, but my $0.02 (or equivalent in other currency) is a resounding "abso-freakin-lutely!" (especially since it was a toasty 5 degrees F. this morning...)
3) Hmmm...good question. I can only relate to one glacier that's relatively close to home, and, as another
I moved to Alaska in 1989. The municipality of Anchorage spent I-don't-know-how-many-million dollars to build a visitor center at Portage Glacier right around the time I arrived here, because Portage Glacier was a really stunning sight and a local tourist attraction. Fast forward to the early to mid '90s (three to five years later, IIRC), and you could no longer see Portage Glacier from the visitor center, because it had retreated behind the mountain upon which it rests. By 2000-ish, you had to take a ride on the ferries that operate on Portage Lake to see the glacier any more. So, for this glacier at least, even if you compare winter now to summer then, the glacier has absolutely, positively, beyond any argument retreated.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Apparently Phillip Morris (Tabaco) and Exxon have heavily funded Global Warming Naysayers.
My background: I have a PhD in Physics, took a few courses in alternative energy and have followed Global Warming fairly closely for about 5 years now. I see its effects from more or less my doorstep in the Swiss alps. At the local premier of Gore's film, one of the IPCC authors (Professor at the ETH in Zurich), said that Gore's film was on the money for nearly all points. He said the world-wide population of serious nay-sayers could be counted on his fingers and the majority of them lack the appropriate training and background.
The CEO of Shell put it best: the debate is over.
I'm reminded of a poem, I'd like to share...
--Aaron Greenberg
1) Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593.
I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
You heard it here first folks, there weren't any ice ages. Never happened. All a hoax perpetuated by the liberal media! Mammoths were just elephants with hypertrichosis.
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
You just said you don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593? How can you believe there was any ice ages? Cocaine is a helluva a drug.
And then you brought politics into it which I won't even touch with a 10 foot pole.
Seriously though, when the readership of slashdot is this science brain dead and uninformed, I have little faith for the world at large.
What do you get when even your smart people are idiots?
Let's assume that everything that people say about global warming is wrong. Let's say that humanity isn't changing the climate. So what's the downside of acting on the assumption that we need to stop using as many fossil fuels and stop polluting as much?
So we have to spend a bunch of money making cleaner cars, factories, appliances, etc. Isn't spending money supposed to be good for the economy? It creates new jobs and new businesses that lead to hiring people in order to do these things.
I'll admit I'm no expert on the environment or economics, so maybe there's something more to it than there seems to be.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I understand that CO2 may not be causing this, but still...do we really need to use gas when we can further develop hydrogen fuel-cell cars and solar technology. Regardless, I think polluting should be slowed.
But the problem is, if you search for truth in the rejects, then you betray the scientific method itself. All published papers are essentially demonstrating ideas/results they've found in the hope that they'll gain acclaim and acceptance.
Swaying the scientific mind is not aobut digging through the reject pile of past papers, but performing more and more investigation about why something initially proposed was decided to be false. This happens all the time, and yes consensus can switch.
I believe the general public has succumbed to the politicalization of this topic. The science may disagree about details, and even have dissenters, but practically all science does all the time. You don't ignore everything just because there is controversy. You have to make choices based on the best evidence you have at the time. Many of mankind's largest, most-life changing inventions had disbelievers and detractors (the need for hygienic behaviors, electricity to the home, unbiquitous internal combustion engine vehicles, personal computers) - so you can doubt, but unless you're a scientist, simply rooting for the underdog isn't the best way to act.
In an overwhelming way, the growing pattern of global extremes of temperature and storm activity has been observed. Global warming is the current-best answer. Why not move in the direction of remedying this? There's no need to fight about it. I don't know how many people each year witness some atmospheric anomaly and then re-evaluate their stance on global warming's causes and effects. If you wait until your home is in a blackout in 110-degree heat for several days, you can get angry, but you can't say you didn't know it might happen.
"The remarkable centrality of carbon dioxide means that dealing with the threat of warming fits in with a great variety of preexisting agendas--some legitimate, some less so: energy efficiency, reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil, dissatisfaction with industrial society (neopastoralism), international competition, governmental desires for enhanced revenues (carbon taxes), and bureaucratic desires for enhanced power."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html
If the people who have no idea about global warming would not comment on it. When you hear that it is raining more because of global warming, raining less because of global warming, hotter because of global warming, colder because of global warming and all for the same area you have to wonder. The problem is the even the scientist really don't have an idea of weather cycles over the long term. Man has only been here a short time and we really no little about weather cycles on the very long term.
If man were not here it would still get hotter as the sun ages. The sun will burn more energy as it ages and the earth will get hotter. Over 1 million years the temperature on earth will rise to 160 degrees F. A truly large volcanic eruption and one will happen at some point in mans future, and global warming will be the last thing we will worry about. We can be pushed into an ice age so easily many people would be surprised.
Is man responsible for warming on earth? I would say yes. Is the earth going through a natural warming phase? I would say that is true as well. Those that want us to stop using fossil fuels will also have to make concessions if they want that to happen. More dams will have to be built, solar and geothermal as well. Maybe even nuclear power.
who did?
In the extremely unlikely event that you are actually interested in learning from the answers to your quesions, following is one reductio-ad-absurdum, one serious answer, and one from-the-hip estimate you may want to check out for yourself.
1) Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593.
I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
Heck, if you want to ignore other methods of measuring global temperature, you should go with the mid 1900's or so, when we started to have regular and reliable real-time thermometer readings from a significant portion of the globe. Or even better, why trust other people's readings at all? Why not simply say you won't believe it unless you make the recordings yourself?
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Depends on your definition of good. My definition has largely to do with the ability of the planet to support the current and projected population of humans (which is tightly coupled with the survival of many other plant and animal species). The little ice age (global) and the medeival period of warming in Europe (local - due to a shift in the Atlantic trade currents) were both relatively mild. A bigger swing either way, particularly if it happens rapidly, could be really bad. Even a relatively mild swing that happened rapidly would mean massive investment in infrastructure updates and/or energy (for agriculture and environment conditioning in buildings, most notably). The other downside of relatively quick swings is the shifting equilibrium, which leads to storms - I think those are bad either way.
I think the best guess is something like: No change is least costly. Slow large change (hotter or colder) is somewhere in competition with rapid small change (hotter or colder). Rapid large change (hotter or colder) is most expensive. That is; the speed and magnitude of the change is more significant than the direction.
Current indications are that we are experiencing a rapid change (hotter) of unpredictable magnitude. If it turns out to be small, it will simply put pressure on global standards of living (some say this is already happening as a result of both inundation and desertification). If it turns out to be medium, it may result in some moderate dyings-off (whether from natural or market-based starvation, natural exposure, or from violent competition for food and arable land). If it turns out to be large, and stays fast, there will probably be some large scale dyings. Not necessarily worse than a cold shift of equal magnitude, but still bad (if you see human population protection as good).
3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after?
Are the before and after both from the same season?
Because the glaciers change size seasonally.
Did Al Gore show winter 1980 vs. summer 2005?
I saw the Al Gore flick, but don't recall if the dates were from similar periods. They did not appear to be seasonal shifts for the most part, however. They looked like "here" versus "gone" for the most part. If that is what the pictures were, it would counter the seasonal argument - glaciers don't disappear seasonally (part of the definition of glacier).
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of scientific articles.
Until that happens, and none of the global warming deniers has passed that stage, it's just opinion pretending to be science.
Plus blind stupidity, IMHO.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
global warming was still a theory...
I for one do not believe it yet. How can I believe people that are using data that goes back 150 some years when the earth has been around for 4+ billion years. I still believe its the natural cycles of the earth mixed with the 11 year cycles of the sun and other various natural causes.
There have even been warmer and colder times ON RECORD long before cars and coal power was around, pre 1900's. Someone want to explain what caused these? Did global warming exists back then?
*puts up his flame shield*
Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?
As has been noted, any report on a complex issue can be picked apart. Any one piece that can be negated does not necessarily imply the entire report is flawed. But here's a glaring problem:
Global versus Local Temperatures
Those two graphs show global average temperature and temperatures in Europe. The implication is that the first chart is questionable because it does not agree with the second chart. Therefore, one must discount the first chart. But that is either exceedingly misinformed or deliberately misleading - the medieval temperature shift in Europe is well known to have been a local shift. It resulted from a change in the Atlantic trade currents. Local shifts like that are interesting for many reasons, but are not a measure of global average temperature. It is the global average temperature that is of interest in analyzing global warming (or cooling).
The distinction can be noted also from the use of the term, "global warming." If it were a question of local temperatures, it would probably be referred to as, "local warming."
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I'll grant the writer this much, I'm more doubtful of these specific studies than I would have been if I had heard of them before, but that's all. This article is aimed specifically at us, scientific thinkers who haven't studied global warming (and for the most part aren't researchers). The hope is that we'll read this article, see what looks like an effort to exaggerate the underlying science, and then start telling other people (who perhaps rely on us to interpret all the science related stuff in the news) that global warming is overhyped since we now have these nice little debunking arguments.
But lets look at what this article actually does. It attempts to debunk some specific studies and aproaches about global warming and shows that some of those may have been deliberatly exaggerated. Granted, those studies are UN studies but are they the only UN studies? Are they the major studies that are used to support the global warming argument? Are these critical parts of these UN reports? What kind of rebuttles do the report authors have to these alleged flaws?
This article very well may be accurate in its characterization of the science around global warming but at least for the time being I'm going to trust the majority of scientists when it comes to the critiquing of scientific studies.
I stole this Sig
I didn't read the article, but I'll comment. Does that make me a real /.er? http://www.realclimate.org/ is a great resource for this sort of thing -- it's a platform for climate scientists to respond to media refutations of global warming. Each of the sources for any specific charges Monkton makes have probably been covered in the archives.
hth!
The fate of human existence may hang in the balance. There is like 1 scientist for every 100 who thinks global warming isn't happening...and that scientist is well paid by the oil lobbies.
BTW, for those who might think (as I once did) that the word "meretricious" is somehow derived from "merit" and thus a good thing, think again. Here's widipedia's definition, other's you'll find are similar:
(The word that is derived from "merit" is "meritorious", deserving of praise.)
-- Alastair
Likewise, I'm skeptical of stop biomass fuel. Deforestation is a far bigger problem and bio diversity isn't going to improve one bit with biomass fuels.
That's a non sequitur. Deforastation is a bigger problem than - what? Global warming? Deforastation is a problem[1], so is global warming. They're not very related, though. Bio diversity isn't affected, either. You seem to think people are suggesting to chop down ancient groves to create bio fuels. (They only do that for surface coal mining.) That would defeat the whole point - which is to capture the amount of carbon dioxide you release instead of releasing CO2 sequestered a very long time ago.
[1] Not so much in Holland or anywhere in Central Europe, though, not to my knowledge. Scandinavia, maybe. Third world? Hell yes.
Furthermore, anyone remember acid rain and smog? Sure, it still happens, but it's nowhere as huge as it was in the eighties, not in the uber-capitalistic modern world (YMMV).
You're right - it does still happen, but not so much in the first world. Mostly because the heavy industry has been going down the drain for the past 30 years and is pretty much gone now. Not sure what your point is, though, moving the problem is not getting rid of it, it's just follows from cheaper manufacturing in China. And what progress there has been is pretty much all due to the extensive Green movement here in Europe.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I cannot comment on the article, but extrapolation is considered very bad practice in other branches of science.
Soooo, is my wooden house (with its wooden floors, furniture, etc..) rotted or burned? I'm pretty sure it's not rotted (uhh, I hope) and I know it's not burned.
Or is my understanding of what biomass is, incorrect?
I'll put my chips on the guys with nobel prizes, thanks. Better to err on the side of caution by producing half or 1/4 as much CO2 in 10 years than risking serious environmental collapse in 50 or 100 that could kill billions.
The majority has always been right, hasn't it? Am I right or am I right?
Let's take a vote and find out!
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
That article was right on! Give me enough data and grant money and I can prove anything!
A good 'discussion' in an easy to read format can be found in the book cited here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear
Keep in mind, however, that the book is fiction, even though the topic is real.
The clear take-away for me is this:
The "gee that sounds about right and makes common sense" approach to believing _anything_ just plain doesn't work.
The "I'll read the real research and decide for myself" also doesn't work (due to the large volume of research material.
A very interesting read...
With no real answers.
-Eric
not all should be aired in public.
I read the article and it is complete total and utter garbage. Its an opinion piece, little more.
His paper however, "temperature effects of greenhouse gas forcings" (buried at the end of his PDF opinion piece) may actually have some merit in showing that the IPCCs value for "the change in mean surface air temperature at the Earth's surface per unit radiant-energy forcing at the tropopause" may be too high. I use *MAY* here though since this paper has obviously not been publically peer reviewed. Ive not read the IPCC paper and thus cant comment and too be honest Ive been out of touch with the literature for the last 10 years.
What I do know is that our climate is an INCREDIBLY complex system - almost impossible to acurately model since we dont even know the state of many of its components. Making informed decisions about the validity if climate change arguments is very, VERY difficuly. One should be very careful in making absolute statements though since what may be true today from an observed state, may well not be true tommorrow.
Personally may favorite quote from the PDF article though. "That taking precautions, just in case, would be the responsible course. False".
Whhhhhopppieee ******* dooo. Its OK boys, forget the condoms, ***** em like your ******** the planet.
P.S. Summer lasted until mid October this year in England.
Tim Lambert's blog, Deltoid, addresses this directly. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/11/chinese_na vy_disproves_global.php
Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.
There may very well be global warming. Temperatures _are_ higher. Ever open a warm beer? CO2 increases at warmer temperatures. Effect, not cause. Humans are unlikely to be any cause: we emit annually about 0.070 kg/m2 (world average) into an atmospheric CO2 inventory of 5.4 kg/m2. 77 years of current [max] burning! And both are negligible compared to rain scrubbing of 800 kg/m2.
I wish I had mod points for you, sir...
1) Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593. I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
Then it's a good thing you don't have to, I guess, since more recent data works just fine anyway -- but I question the usefulness of your perspective. It seems akin to saying "Biological heritability of traits was discovered in the 19th century. I don't trust any data on species development prior to the 19th century." -- ignoring of course the fact that there are ways (many of them reasonably accurate, or at least all the evidence suggests so) of deriving that data after the fact.
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Since both of them have the potential to kill millions or billions of people, I'd have to say both of them are pretty bad, and would prefer to avoid either extreme. This is kind of a non sequitur anyway -- there is no reason to think there is an imminent ice age. There is reason to think global warming is a real problem. Why are we comparing a real danger with a completely different and far less plausible scenario?
3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after? Are the before and after both from the same season?
Err. This is the best you can do? "You know that one scene, I think he might have fudged that one" is enough, in your mind, to overturn widespread scientific consensus? You don't even have any reason to think your claim is true, you just ask whether it might be true, and that's good enough?
My suspicion is that the data was not fudged in the case you describe, but I can't personally back it up -- though hard data from elsewhere suggests that if he did fudge it, it was out of laziness rather than necessity, since these changes, even in the same seasons, are documented.
But either way, how does a question like this get modded so highly? It adds nothing to the discussion, you just ask a question that it should be perfectly possible for someone to check, a question that those who are involved in this research surely thought of, and accounted for even if Al Gore didn't himself. A vague question like that isn't insightful, it's just FUD, unless you're actually prepared to at least argue (you can even hand-wave, go ahead, this isn't a journal article) that your suggestion is actually true.
I am the man with no sig!
Ah where is Dragnet when you need him? There are lots of sane reasons to stop burning coal like we do today but CO2 isn't one of them. I've also been a 3 decade supporter of rmi.org because I love the end to end resource efficiency work they do.
3 simple questions:
Q1) What percentage of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor?
A1) Depending on who you ask it is between 70% and 94% (94 is from the EPA).
Q2) How much CO2 goes into the atmosphere from ALL sources?
A2) About 180 - 200 billion tons annually
Q3) How much C02 does mankind put into the atmosphere?
A3) 6 billion tons
So we as humans are responsible for about 3% of 6 to 30 % of the greenhouse gases.
Even taking the worst case (6 billion tons our of 180, then take the 3 1/3% of 30%) we are around 1% of the total greenhouse gases.
Are you on crack?
Greenland has not been ice-free for millenia. The ice cap is up to 3km deep. It was not ice free in the middle ages.
His graphs on atmospheric concentrations do not include recent figures such as Mauna Loa Research Station
It is sad that this person has gone to such lengths to mine any information that supports his pre-ordained view. This is hardly a dispassionate investigation.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
I see this argument to be very very similar to religious arguments. There may be a global consensus that a god exists, and should be worshiped. For the people who believe this there is a bounty of valid proof of such an existence, and besides, how painful is it really to go to church once or twice a week, just in case. The consequences of non-belief (hell) are far far worse than the price of following a religion. And also, non-believers are heretics, to be either ignored or converted, but not to be listened to. There also may be a global consensus that believe there is global warming and it is being caused by man. The computer generated models provided by leaders in the field 'prove' it to be true. And besides, the consequences of non-action are far far worse than the price of cleaning up our emissions. And also, the non-believers are shills bought and paid for by corporations, to be either ignored or converted, but not listened to. As someone who is on the 'wrong' side of both of these arguments, it just strikes me to be very interesting.
I haven't seen much (actually I haven't seen any) argument that the historical temperature records are unreliable.
Well of course you haven't -- it's non disprovable. What's someone going to say, "I was there and your results are wrong."?
You'll have a tough time proving God doesn't exist as well, but that doesn't mean he exists.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
I did not RTFA, but Grist Magazine recently published a comprehensive guide on How To Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic, which includes a debunking of many of the most common arguments against the climate change consensus. It also amusingly categorizes arguments by scientific veracity as well as "levels of sophistication" (including silly, naive, and specious).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
There has never been anything like a conensus in scientific communities on global warming. No consensus on its existence, no consensus on mans influence if it does exist. A consensus is often implied by the media because it makes for a scarier story. Period. The only people who believe in a consensus are either blinded by a political agenda or they get all their news from network television.
Yeah, this was definitely the best comment in this whole crap thread. Too bad I don't have an account, but here's +5 funny from the AC department.
I presume that a forum of geeks would be familiar with Pascal's Wager. The short of it, for those that do not know it, is that the "cost" to believe in God is small, and the benefits if you are right great, but the losses if you don't believe and are wrong are great as well.
So, why not the same for global warming? If it is happening, the numbers are that we would lose 1% of world productivity to directly address it now, and lose up to 50% of world productivity by 2050 if we do not. So, if we presume Global Warming to be true, we lose 1% in 2050. If Global Warming is real, then we "win" 49% in 2050. If we are wrong, we are out the 1% and have made a transition to more renewable resources. If we presume Global Warming to be false, then we do nothing. We will save that 1% in 2050 for a total 0 cost. But if we presume Global Warming is false and it is true, we lose up to 50% of world productivity in 2050.
By Pascal's Wager, I'm willing to bet on Global Warming being real. The "loss" is little if I'm wrong. The benefits are great if I'm right.
Learn to love Alaska
Works best run remotely, say, from an ivory tower.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
"Don't know" is a perfectly valid, if not especially satisfying, answer.
The problem with "Don't Know" is that's it's completely inactionable, and utterly useless, even if it is correct. With climatology we're pretty much assured that we will never "know".
With something as important as global warming, it makes more sense to listen to "we think", and make some decisions on our best guess, than it is to wait for certainty that is unlikely to appear.
I liken it to the first rumblings of "smoking might cause cancer". Many relatives of mine dismissed the idea because nobody knew for sure. Two died of lung cancer. Now if they had said, "Cigarettes might cause cancer? Gee - I should cut down on smoking!" then they might have had longer lives. But nobody could say for certain.
I know its a flawed analogy because there are serious economic costs associated with addressing global warming, while quitting smoking is essentially free. I don't expect people to bankrupt their nations. But it makes more sense to make the effort "in case it's us" than it does to deny,deny, deny until it's too late.
That doesn't mean we should wantonly cut down forests full of centuries-old trees, but I don't think that's a good way to battle global CO2 levels.
Nope, no sig
To the humans just as bad if not worse.
Nonsense. It may be catastrophic for people who live in coastal regions, but not for humanity as a whole. That's not to say we shouldn't try to prevent catastrophy when possible, but in the big-big picture, a global ice age would be much closer to an extinction-level event than a +7C change. An ice age would affect the world's food supply, for everyone and everything. That would certainly be worse than even repeated hurricanes or widespread coastal flooding.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=316580&pag e=1
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
The increase of Co2 levels that lead to effects Global Warming are but only one part of the whole problem you also have to contend with Global Dimming.
Global Dimming is what happens when small particles due to pollution generated by the burning of fossil fuels block the suns rays from entering the atmosphere. Right now global dimming is partially countering the effects of global warming by blocking the suns rays but as heavy industry and cars become cleaner, (lower particulate output) the effects of global warming accelerate unless we reduce our Co2 output. Many in the fossil fuel industry will happily show you how the math for global warming doesn't work out when you enter the data into a computer model. What they won't tell you is if you add the effects of global dimming to the same model things start matching up to the weather patterns we now see today.
So here I am sitting at my desk in Australia seeing news reports of massive drought problems and central Africa suffering the same effects exactly as the computer models showed when you add global warming and dimming to the equation.
So when you see these articles always ask around or "follow the money", the latter will often lead you to some fossil fuel industry lobby group.
Is very critical of the Sir Nicholas Stern paper:k /
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15563663/site/newswee
This article an example of why I still love /.
"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
This is exactly the type of article that will not make to the front pages of reddit, digg, et al. Why? Because it say some unpopular things and who is going to upmod unpopular articles?
This is where I can trust a thinking brain (or in this case a handful of brains) more than I can trust the masses.
Thanks /.
Joe J.
Poking valid holes in good science shouldn't be very easy. If your theories can have holes poked in them with little things like "facts" and "statistics", then maybe you should go back to the drawing board.
Poking holes is perfectly fine. It's part of the scientific process.
The basics of Newtonian physics are far less complex and much more testable than are the basics of climatology. Therein is the problem. I said I can poke tons of holes in the methodologies involved in making conclusions about complex systems. That doesn't mean I'll prove it wrong. I'll just seem to make the results seem untrustworthy, even if they are completely correct.
When somebody claims to be debunking global warming, it bothers me a bit just because there has been such a vast amount of work done in the field. The author will generally do what I said - cherry-pick some items to call into question, and ignore lots of other research examples that reached similar conclusions. They can have a point with respect to the cases they mention, and still be completely wrong overall.
I won't cover all the dubious points made in the article, but I will cover some of the more obvious ones.
The only data available for solar irradiance since 1750 is the sunspot count. Before the invention of the telescope sunspots were not known to European science. Yet the article also makes this statement:
The only evidence available for solar warming over this whole period is indirect evidence from a variety of sources. Yet all he does is include this statement in the article and we're expected to accept it because it is allegedly a quotation from a solar physicist. Evidently we're expected to accept this assertion without question. I do question the assertion. What is the evidence for the history of solar irradiance over the past 11,400 years? Do all solar physicists agree on the validity of this evidence? Is there contradictory evidence? Are there conflicting points of view on the past history of solar irradiance?
This statement is false because it implies that all the ice in these glaciers is less than 1000 years old. Yet glaciologists have done ice cores in these glaciers that go back more than 5000 years.
The above mathematics is dubious and misleading. It uses the UN's 2.7 figure from one set of data and multiplies it by another figure he's apparently plucked out of thin air (this figure is probably valid but one cannot check it because there are no cross references). How do we know it is mathematically correct to do this? If the 2.7 figure is in any way calculated based on the other figure (which is possible), then the article is being misleading. Even if it is correct to do this, I want to see firm proof of the validity of this method before I would accept it.
Oh, please. Are we to believe that all climate-physics textbooks are written by the UN? Is the author implying that there's a UN conspiracy afoot? More likely, the changes to the textbooks originated from peer-reviewed scientific papers which refined figures that they demonstrated to be incorrect. It happens in science all the time. This does not mean the 20C figure is any more correct than the 33C figure, but that the 20C figure is the one that is currently accepted.
In the attached PDF, the following conclusion is made:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.
Perhaps, though the consensus on Wikipedia, with lots of references, seems to be that the 1421 Hypothesis is not well supported by available evidence.
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"you'd do more than 20 Kyoto Accords put together"
Considering the fact that some of the major signatories to the Kyoto Protocols simply aren't following them...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The subject line comes from a mutual fund prospectus. It is required because people tend to believe that the past somehow helps predict the future. Much of the time, people who believe that are not disappointed. Looking back frequently does tell people what the future will be like. So much, that they are willing to invest in stocks that perform and quite a few of the people make money.
... It is JUST A CORRELATION.
... you have to look at the facts presented, weigh those facts, and look for what you believe. Sadly, none of the problems humanity faces are simple and clear-cut. Instead, they are multivariate, complex, and downright hard. Abandoning science in favor of political expediency is a great way to avoid the problems until our children and grandchildren have to solve them. At least it won't cost us anything in action, money, or personal freedom.
Now, about global warming. It is warmer now than it has been for a long time. Is anthromorphic CO2 causing it? Well, we have lots of good evidence that they are correlated. Ice cores, plantary studies, and lots of other measurements of the past indicate that. BUT
Just like cigarette smoking and lung cancer. A correlation. How can you really be sure that people who are genetically predisposed to get lung cancer are not also genetically predisposed to smoke? See? Accounts nicely for the data and requires no action on anybody's part to resolve the problem.
Just like the mutual fund disclaimer - ya gotta decide what you believe in order to take action. Let me put it this way, I stopped smoking.
The world faces a number of problems like global warming that require for their solution that mankind get its sh*t together. Some look at it as global control, one world government, and mostly somebody in their pocket stealing their money. They fear that more than the consequences of inaction. Meanwhile the problems fester, people die, and precious time is lost.
On the other hand, many of the same people are willing to surrender control of their lives in the name of security because they perceive that nobody is going to reach in their pocket to fight terrorism. Extremism to fight phantoms is OK because it doesn't cost them anything.
So - I drive a car that gets 35+ MPG and produces less CO2 than most. I keep my house temperature cool and dress warmly. I will be moving north as far as possible to minimize the personal consequences of human and political behavior which I cannot meaningfully change. My house will be insulated to minimize energy consumption for both heating ane eventually cooling. I guess you now know what I believe about global warming.
Bottom line is
People who claim that human activity has no effect should simply read the peer-reviewed articles on studies done after the grounding of aircraft due to 9/11. The link between all those aircraft buzzing around and changes in atmospheric temperature was impossible to mistake or refute. Check it out.
The unfortunate fact is that regardless of what the net effect of the way we live is, it is a long term effect. If we only react when we are 100% certain, the second thing that is 100% certain is that will be living in the outcome. The real question is "Is there a reasonable chance that our way of life is having a significant adverse effect on the environment?". Anyone answering no to that question is either ignorant, a complete fool, or has an agenda. You have to look at what we are risking and ask yourself if we can afford the risk, and as it stands today I think the risk is unacceptable. The thing that really hit the nail for me was the reference to a time when the earths seas were just 10 degrees warmer. Back then the water was much more acidic, so none of the mamals and fish that we are used to today could live in it. Consider for a moment that this condition occurred over the next 200 years. No new species could evolve in such a short timespan, so we would loose the majority of earths biodiversity and a major food source. What chance of this happening would you consider acceptable? As a reminder have a look at what happens in smaller waters when the temperature rises a bit. Algae growth goes crazy and nearly ALL fish suffocate. This isn't speculation, its something that happens quite regularily, although a bit more often lately. Why do you think fishermen go to the arctic region to fish?
No but you, Richard Dawkins, and Al Gore are on crack. Keep your filthy habits to yourself.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Eric Raymond once wrote an article called "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way". Its often considered rude to just reply with a link to it, but it is applicable in this case.
/. math and science background.
u rces-for-global-warming.html
You read an article on a scientific topic you were not familiar with. It was published in a British tabloid by an (informed) laymen, not a scientific journal. You yourself question the political slant of the publication. Now, faced with something you didn't understand did you ask questions of yourself? Did you try to understand it? Did you research terms you didn't know Did you read the IPCC report yourself to see what it said? Did you find summaries of what Hansen actually said? Did you Google "medieval warm period? Did you in any way try to think for yourself?
No, you submitted a quick story to Slashdot and asked other people to do your thinking for you. It's a dense 2400 word article based on a 40 page report. Do you really think people just sit around all day waiting for the chance to write a 50 page analysis for someone?
A thoughtful educated layman understanding of climate change is not difficult to achieve. This is not something where scientists (whatever their views) are mystics whose minds we can not hope to know. There is no reason for you or anyone else here to feel helpless or powerless before Al Gore or a British tabloid writer.
Now, if you are honestly interested in understanding climate change I can recommend some resources for you:
- Global Warming: The Complete Briefing
- The Discovery of Global Warming
The entire 2001 IPCC report is available online:
http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/tar.htm
The Summary for Policy Makers and Technical Summary are both perfectly readable for someone with a standard
realclimate.com and climateaudit.org will satisfy your urges to learn more of the immaturity of some adult scientists than you ever wanted to know.
An extended list of primers:
http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/09/primer-on-so
Someone else linked this page of common arguments:
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
Among people who disagree with the scientific consensus Richard Lindzen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen) has interesting things to say.
Are there a lot of things wrong with that article? Yes. If you study the sources you will be able to answer that question not only this time, but next time as well.
Peter Norvig (who most here are probably familiar with) was faced with a simlar problem. He heard conflicting reports on the level of scientific consensus that exists on climate change. So he looked at the data himself and drew his own conclusions (http://www.norvig.com/oreskes.html). He is a model to emulate.
Nope strong atheists have faith that god does not exist, weak atheists think that god does not exist because they haven't seen any proof or evidence.
Yet there is no proof that atheism is true and the only correct religion. Most atheists take it on faith that god does not exist and that some scientific theories are true, despite not being totally proven yet.
What I described is misusing science to explain someone's faith, which is pseudoscience and not true science. In fact, you wouldn't know true science if it bit you on the ass. There is no true science anymore, only scientists with an agenda to push their own personal beliefs on others.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Right-minded people are few and in short supply. If not there'd be world peace and an end to world hunger and poverty.
Atheists and other religious people use science to push their own beliefs on others.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
... can somebody "debunk" the results from the EPICA ice cores? You know, the ones that record CO2 levels for at least the past 650 kYears, and conclude that current CO2 levels are nearly 2 times higher than they have ever been over the last 8 ice ages?
And then there was another set of results that showed how CO2 levels and global temperature are very closely related.
Before I'm willing to believe that global warming is bunk, somebody is going to have to convincingly refute the above evidence to the contrary.
http://outcampaign.org/
"3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after?
Are the before and after both from the same season?
Because the glaciers change size seasonally.
Did Al Gore show winter 1980 vs. summer 2005?"
Uh, yeah, they can change a little seasonally, but usually not by much (unless it is a surging glacier, and those are rare). Certainly, not every glacier has retreated (and some are even advancing), but the majority are retreating, and many have retreated more than a kilometre over the last century or so, and thinned. There are innumerable places where you can take a picture and see hundreds of metres to a kilometre more of retreat "before" and "after" a few decades. I've seen pictures of some glaciers in southern Alaska where, in the space of about 50 years, the valley doesn't even have a glacier anymore, it has retreated so far up-valley into the mountains.
There is plenty of information at this wikipedia page about retreating glaciers, and that's just a sampler/summary. I don't know how anybody could look at some of the global surveys and fail to see an obvious trend: the great majority of glaciers world-wide are retreating and thinnning, especially since about 1980.
Excellent point. I think the counterpoints that were made are also valid. The acclaimed causes of Global Warming are far from being facts. It's true, the reason there is opposition to the claim of the dominant cause of Global Warming is because of the private funding. That doesn't mean the research isn't valid. I took an online Biology class that changed my outlook on this whole debate. We started talking about the ecosystem and soon the subtopic of Global Warming arose. One of the options for an assignment was to research this topic on our own, which I did. I was quite surprised to learn that there are a lot of holes in all of this Global Warming hype, and there is a lot of evidence against these major theories. We don't hear much about that evidence. Is that because the evidence is lacking? Or because people don't want to dismiss what they've already made conclusions on? In reality - there's no way we can conclude Global Warming isn't a natural process in the Earth's cycle.
Christopher Monckton is using the patented talking-head tactic, the Straw-man Argument.
Basically, you never have to prove your point, as long as you can disprove the other person's point. This article is an exercise in how to lie without lying, how to obfuscate issues, and how to win an argument even if you are wrong; pulled straight from the teachings of the nefarious Nick Naylor - a' la Thank You For Not Smoking.
'Interesting' view, but not particularly convincing
Look. it's not rocket surgery! To suggest that we can change the climate is to say we are a Type I Civilisation - WHICH WE MOST CLEARLY ARE NOT.
Case Closed. Nothing to see here. Go back to belching out CO2 as much as you like because WE CAN'T CHANGE THE CLIMATE!
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I don't really buy into the theory that man is responsible for global warming. Or at least I don't think we should do anything like wasting billions upon billions of dollars to slow down the effect for a few years. If we are going to get the CO2 emissions down we must force the developing countries to stop developing.
Up until the seventies(?) scientists believed we were heading for another ice age. What has changed since the seventies except the temperature? What kind of breakthroughs (appart from a higher temperature) has been made that invalidates the previous conclusion?
To me who has very little knowledge about climatology it just seems like they extrapolated the down going trend in the seventies and are doing the same thing now.
A bigger problem than global warming - regardless of cause. That they are not very related is exactly the important point: we'd get more done if we wouldn't throw global warming into the mix in every single environmental discussion.
Biomass? It will definitely add to deforestation - the stuff needs to be grown somewhere and it's not going to be farmland but former/present rainforest. Therefore I'd rather see fission and later fusion, for energy needs.
I also realise that the third world or booming industries down there are using the crap we used decades ago. That cycle however will continue to happen anyway. We continue to dump our vehicles, tools and current tech for the newer models, they get the dumps on the market. Once our 2000+ models hit their roads, smog and acid rain will be gone there as well. Sure, they'll worry about diesel's microdust for a bit, like we do now. On the long run though, we seem to be capable of solving our problems when we're focused and those solutions will trickle down. And when that's not the case, a thorough examination of where we can improve what seems more prudent than to focus solely on global warming and blindly accepting any solution to that particular issue (man-caused or not) without thinking through the big picture that includes other environmental issues.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
You started well, so I'll just stick to what I know.
* Monckton mentions that there is a direct correlation between number of sunspots and grain prices falling, attributing it to the fact that more sunspots mean that the sun is hotter. Actually, that's wrong. Sunspots are cooler regions on the surface of the sun (3800 K vs 5400K on the rest of the surface), which means that the sun is actually radiating *less* energy in the visible and infrared spectrum. So his entire point completely falls apart with this basic item of astrophysics.
* Monckton categorically states that the temperature of the oceans has decreased, without using sources. From what I know though, temperatures have increased. Can't find a bullet proof link for it (was looking for NOAA timelines, but no luck), but you can use coral-reef die-offs as a good proxy. There was also a lot of hubbub when people tried to tie the increase in surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico to the increased strength and number of Hurricanes that hit the US coast.
These are the two things that I categorically to be false. As for the rest of his arguments, they lack the data support I would expect from a debunking report. For example, why exactly did the ICCP remove the old temperature graph that showed in extreme fashion the warm and cold periods of the middle-ages? Besides, the temperature differences are still there - they are just not as blatant as before. There are also his 10 points which he thinks needs to be proven for Global Climate Change to be true, and what he thinks of them. Point 1 is a nice straw man, as someone pointed out already. Point 3 is another one, as people aren't arguing that the sun doesn't influence temperatures. They are arguing that the sun is less important than greenhouse gases. For the other points, I can give him the benefit of the doubt, even though all have significant problems with their wordings and his assessment of them.
In short, he might not be a shill - but there are enough problems in his "debunkation" to make me doubt the sincerity of his approach and his intentions. This might still be ok, if there weren't some massive errors in some of his arguments, which completely invalidate the points he is trying to make. As a result, I'm filing this under "waiting without bated breath to be properly ripped apart by people who know more".
Quite frankly, one reason I'm confident that we are in the beginning of Global Climate Change is that the only counter-arguments I see are poorly thought out, rife with personal attacks, lack data and make lots of statements without supporting data. If a group arguing for a position sounds like a bunch of idiots, I tend to take the opposite view.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
(and maybe convincing) but the one thing that disturbs me is that the guy is so interested in debunking the UN report that he fails to realize that the very data he "trusts" shows that only in the last 7 years the global mean temperature raised more than 30% of the whole 20th century! (and the "hockey-stick" in global mean temperature measure is the first "myth" he tries to debunk in the Telegraph).
You are right, science is not supposed to be a form of belief. Yet atheists see it as a form of belief for their personal views and opinions. That is not what science is to be used for anyway. Many religions do that, and yes atheism is a religion as well because strong atheists have faith that god does not exist. Now if they just doubted that god existed, they would be agnostics, which isn't actually a religion, more of a doubt. No, rather, atheists believe that god does not exist, and atheists have created their own scientific theories to explain their beliefs that god does not exist, and to attack other religions with, like you have done here.
All I say is that it is not true science, and there may be no true science left in this world. Save maybe some physics theories on dark matter, dark energy, and Hawking's work on black holes.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The first is that funding shapes science whether you want it to or not. If the general consensus is that global warming is happening, you're much more likely to get funded if you decide to do research on "why global warming is going on" or "what are the major contributors to global warming" etc. However, if you were to submit a proposal along the lines of "what if any effect has global warming had on climate change", good luck.
This is a standard tactic for debunking any controversial science, but it fails because there is never any quantifiable, objective support for the sentiment. In this case I do not know of a single study that shows a correlation between degree of professed "belief" in global warming, and grant funding levels.
This is a completely made up argument and should be treated accordingly. I will happily change my tune if a reputable source for this argument can be produced, but I have yet to find one that even treats the subject in a quantitative way.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/11/chinese_na vy_disproves_global.php#more
"... The main problem with his article is that he doesn't know what he's writing about it. He offers up an untidy pile of factoids, some of which are true but out of context, some of which are not at all true, and some of which he seems to have conjured up out of thin air. What they all have in common is that they support his position. Monckton seems to be unable to separate the wheat from the chaff...."
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The guy is so far off the mark, I didn't even bother going to the original sources. I'm a biologist, university prof, etc, etc, not a climate scientist, etc. etc. Since global warming affects biological systems so much, I'm reasonably familiar with the arguments.
Just a sampling of the nonsense. 1) Hockey stick graph. There was dispute about the first one that he mentions. Some people carped about how if you worked really hard at waving your arms and squinting at the data, you could doubt it. It has since been confirmed. It is so nailed down at this point that he had to refer to the old hockey stick graph, not the current one that goes even further through the roof.
2) Fluctuations in heat from the sun can account for global warming. Think about this. We get fluctuations in insolation every year. It's called summer and winter. The places that heat up the most are the ones that get the most sun, like the tropics, or the places in the summer season. The hallmark of human-caused global warming is night time warming, polar warming, and high altitude warming. In other words, it's not that hot places get hotter, it's that cold places get hotter. You'll notice that the polar ice is shrinking, the Canadian Northwest passage is becoming navigable, the permafrost of the boreal tundras is melting, the glaciers are disappearing, and so on. The BS about solar warming was debunked years ago.
The rest of his points are equally silly. For all of us who are not climate scientists, note that the consensus about global warming among people who actually are climate scientists is up there around 98%. Scientists would rather argue than eat. (Weigh scientists. You'll notice much less of an obesity problem than in the population at large.) They don't come to a consensus unless the evidence is overwhelming. They don't come to a 98% consensus unless there's no point arguing at all. The reason one can find 2% dissenters is that some people will say anything to justify either their paychecks or their preconceived notions. The fact that it's only 2% actually speaks pretty well for scientists, as a group, although 0% would be better.
Just one question. If the net annual glacial retreat is more then the seasonal advance and retreat, doesn't that mean that it's all horseshit to attribute it to temperature?
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A bigger problem than global warming - regardless of cause. That they are not very related is exactly the important point: we'd get more done if we wouldn't throw global warming into the mix in every single environmental discussion.
I'm not sure who this we is. You seem to be able to seperate the two issues, so can I. I don't see the two being intermingled a whole lot. If there is a problem, the solution is educating people about all the issues - it's not like those two were the only ones - not focusing on just one.
I also realise that the third world or booming industries down there are using the crap we used decades ago.
It's not so much that they're using our old technology. The high-pollution manufacturing industry has just pretty much moved out of Europe. Believe me, I know, I'm living in one of the regions hit hardest by that move (pretty close to the Netherlands, actually). Also one of the regions that has benefitted the most with respects to air quality and so on. Of course, that the manufacturing overseas is done using outdated technology doesn't help, and there need to be incentives for using cleaner technology. But I don't see that coming any time soon - incentivising clean technology was difficult in our wealthy countries, it's absurdly difficult in the expanding economies in the Far East.
On the long run though, we seem to be capable of solving our problems when we're focused and those solutions will trickle down.
Well, sort of, yeah - that's a fairly generic statement! But when there were problems, they weren't solved by, you know, ignoring them and hoping they will fix themselves. You have to identify them and develop a strategy to deal with them. Which is what people are trying to do with global warming - any other issues nonwithstanding.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Wow - thought I might have been wrong to flame, as I don't do it very often, but you just fully justified it. Thanks :) I know I was flaming, but at least it had content. As for getting bent out of shape, it wasn't so much the slashdot, although it is disappointing when a site that I truly value seems to value such inanity. I got bent out of shape because of the subject matter, which I consider a critical issue that has been successfully fudded to the point where a site devoted to a group that values insight and intelligence rates as interesting and insightful when it is neither.
Next time feel free to flame, but at least include some content in your diatribe. Might make you feel like less of a loser when you get slapped down.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Here in Texas, I listen to the local affiliate of the Republic Broadcasting Network. These guys are total yahoo's and are sometimes VERY intertaining.
Even the commercials are funny: One commercial was hawking a remedy to counteract the effects of exposure to contrails.
Anyway, you can spot these guys by their language. Look for these terms to detect a yahoo: "the Truth", "expose" or "exposed", "United Nations", "God fearing".
In a more general way, they can be detected by their goal-oriented scientific statements, by references to the United Nations or the New World Order, or their tendency to name everything. Lots of "-isms".
Maybe the author has good points. If so, too bad that comes off as he does.
--Richard
PS: If possible, try to take in a couple RBN
radio shows. I learned, for example, that
white settlers didn't kill off the American
Indians -- God did. I did not know that before.
So, to paraphrase, you are asking "I know how to read science papers, so should I base my stance on the preeminent issue of the day on an article in (an admittedly) reactionary newspaper?". (I pose the paraphrase in the best tradition of answering the question you wish you were asked, rather than the one that is actually asked).
OK. Well, I'm not a climate scientist, but I am an atmospheric scientist, and the answer to your question is: For the love of God man, what are you thinking? Did you think about the question before you posted it? I haven't read the article and I don't intend to. I can't imagine a more pure waste of time than trying to get educated on a science issue by reading a newspaper.
The more polite version of my answer is that if you want to get some measure of the science on climate change you'd better start reading review articles in the literature. They're not that hard to read, especially if you've got a career wading through papers in some other discipline. If you really want to start off with some light reading there are some easily digested summaries is things like EOS Transactions and such. I'd link all these nice things, but it's kinda pointless, you only have free access to the things you need if you have access to online journals via your school libraries and such.
I hate reading articles like this.
We face a problem that we have no way of knowing or proving incontrovertibly that greenhouse gasses are responsible for global climate change, or that global climate change even exists. The really sad part is, if it is reponsible we probably wont know until its too late. Either that or it will cost alot of people alot of money for something that didnt exist in the first place.
I know one thing, this year australia had 2 days of 38 (celsius) weather at the end of october (the highest ever recorded temperature for this period) and 15 above the average (a swing of more than 16 degrees in 24 hours). Amazing. Thats not proof though, and im neither for against the whole argument.
But, what the hell are we arguing for anyway? greenhouse gasses cause numerous other health and environmental problems. It makes no sence to me.
Dont get me wrong though, gcw is a problem unto itself and seems like the author is really kind of lost as to the real problem.
> watts per square metre per second
not sure if its just me (i've only got an a level in physics, and a couple of years undergrad chemistry) but does this unit make sense? AFAIK watts = joules per second, so this would be joules per square metre per second squared... can somebody let me know where the extra "per second" comes from please?
I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
What about temperatures calculated using ice cores? The process is not obvious enough for you to deem the results reliable?
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
Isn't getting kicked in the balls better than getting your genitals chopped off?
Did Al Gore show winter 1980 vs. summer 2005?
I hope you're not somehow daring suggesting that glaciers do not actually retreat and that Al Gore brought that up just to prove his point? Haven't seen the movie anyways, but don't need to. There
I don't mean to sound insulting, but I find it funny that you wouldn't have brought up those "points" if you weren't as ignorant as you are on that topic.
You just got troll'd!
The Vostok graph (P4 of Monckton's paper) shows a 10 degree cycle around 100,000 years or so in period. We're currently near the top of the temperature band in the wobbly bit where 2 degree variation is to be expected. If we continue to follow the same trends, we can expect the temperature to vary up and down a couple of degrees for another few thousand years or so, then drop by 10 degrees over the following 90,000 years. I'm not too worried about it, we're still on track.
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The Telegraph mentions the upcoming IPCC report and shows as proof of his part a graph about the temperature change and sets that in relation to the so called hockey stick curve. The first thing to say about this graph is that it compares apples with peaces or to be more percisely it compares the global climate development to local changes in Europe. This not very scientific as we all should know that an overall increase could cause also cooler regions.
Also I know this second curve. it has come up several times and it is flawed. There was also an article in the German version of the Scientific Amerian (Spektrum der Wissenschaft) which discusses these issues. The short answer is, the second curve is garbage.
Also there are OTHER indicators for an increasing temperature in total and more energy in the system earth. The mass of polar ice is decreasing. And the decrease is accelerating. I have seen such evidence at the AWI in Bremerhaven. And the trend will be public available in the next IPCC report, where this accelerating decrease is explained.
So don't give much thought in this document. He just want to insult the Canadian Government and the IPCC. For his reasons ask someone in the UK.
Regardless of whether global warming is true or not. I fail to see the harm in polluting less and finding alternative fuels. I would rather do something and be wrong about global warming than do nothing and be right.
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I'm not a Meterologist myself, but I do IT support for an organization that does atmospheric research. A large group of the meterologists I support see "An Inconvenient Truth" (Al Gore's movie) as a comedy and don't believe the data on global warming. I have downloaded the data Mr. Gore presented in the movie and reporduced his graphs, but my officemate (a Meterologist) points out that coorilation doesn't imply causation. (i.e. does C02 cause global warming or does global warming cause CO2?). Furthermore, he claims that there's an even better coorilation between global warming and sunspots. Of course we do have no less than 3 Toyota Prius's and 1 Ford Escape Hybrid in the parking lot, so others in the company may feel differently.
An no, I haven't read the article yet, but I just wanted to say that whatever the elusive "scientific community" may think, the issue is far from an open and shut case to to meterologists.
One point the anti-warming crowd brings up is the former belief in a pending ice age. I remember my grandparents talking about it. That's no small mistake. The Earth is either heating up because of greenhouse gases or it's cooling off and heading toward an ice covered existence. That's some flip-flop.
Climatologists have painted pictures of Armageddon every time the temperature fluctuates up OR down. The reactions of the community have been nothing short of reactionary and extreme. We're not talking about a simple warming trend or cycle, which we know to happen, but the collapse of all life itself? Oh no!
Do I think pollutants are good? Of course not. I'm glad that there are steps being taken to reduce pollution. But I'm not quite ready to believe that this trend won't reverse, just like the ice age believed to be around the corner during the 50's & 60's. That reversed so well that now we think we'll be cooked out of existence.
We don't know anything, not even the "experts." There is no consensus, at least not among the people that matter. We can't predict hurricanes, storms, or even guess at tomorrow's weather. Yet, I'm supposed to trust, that we CAN predict climate & weather over a longer period of time. That last prediction? Oh, just forget about that.
And really... where's the science in statistics? We should be able to calculate what warming effect CO2 has based on its distribution in the atmosphere, without correlating concentrations to 450,000 year old datasets. We have the ability to accurately model at least some of these equations. This just doesn't seem like science to me. They could be correlating two disconnected sets of data as they've done before. I think they need to try harder.
The reason it makes sense economically is because companies would be persuing it regardless of government coertion - by definition, since there is no current government coertion. If we get the government involved with edicts like "thou shalt develope only hydrogen or solar cars", then you have the broken glass fallicy. Essentially, if the government forces people to use more expensive/valuable resources than are currently used those resources are not available for doing something else. Money spent replacing cars (that already work just fine) is money not spent curing cancer, to rehash an overused phrase.
I don't advocate government coertion, requirements or edicts as you're suggesting above. Instead I propose that energy conservation and alternative production be encouraged and business as usual be discouraged. For instance a carbon tax on the production of CO2, the revenue then being used to pay for research on carbon neutral energy. Or a cap and trade system where a cap is set on how much can be emitted then allow businesses to trade, if company A is able to reduce their emissions say 10% they can sale the credit to company B who doesn't improve their emissions or goes above the level they have. Then have the emissions level to be reduced each year. And reducing emissions also improves health, for instance clusters of asthma occur where a lot of deisel engines are found.
This doesn't mean that there is no reason for government involvement, but it does mean that if there is government involvement jobs are lost, not created. (Interestingly enough you can prove that this is true in the general case of government spending, assuming only that a capitalist economy outperforms a government based one - but no one cares, not when it comes to their job! Something to remember whenever a congress-critter talks about the jobs they have brought to the state...)
All too true too often. Especially as regards congress critters, if they bring the bacon home they'll get reelected. And they get a great "retirement" package after just I believe ten years in office. Free healthcare, as well as yearly income. That's the thing that gets me about all these surveys the media releases. People complain about congress, but their reps and senators are doing good, it's just the others that are bad.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Wow. You believe anecdotal stories, but not actual data. Here's a thought: if you don't know something (like do the pictures represent the glacier at different seasons?), go find out. Don't simply complain that not everything is spoon-fed to you, and dismiss the entire discussion.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's funny how easily teen-age idiots identify themselves.
Sign 1: Ignorance on a subject is mistaken for actual knowledge.
Sign 2: OMFG.
Sign 3: They get terribly pissy when they get slapped around, because they don't take public humiliations as an indicator that they need to learn more.
Sign 4: Mom jokes.
Sign 5: BO jokes.
Don't worry, the rest of the world might take you seriously once you start acting like a normal person.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Saw in the news toaday that 100 NEW icebergs were spotted off the New Zealand coast. Some are a mile long, 400 feet high.
Just between you and me, that doesn't sound right.
..........FULL STOP.
I know that the sea ice at the poles changes pretty drastically with the seasons.
:)
:)
So you're saying glaciers don't do the same?
Icebergs have a basically unlimited supply of water to make ice during the winter and during the summer water causes a lot more heat transfer than just air and thus wears them down a lot faster. I should note being an Albertan I don't have a lot of experience with icebergs
On land I can't see differences that dramatic occuring seasonally if for no other reason than there wouldn't be nearly enough precipitation over the winter to replenish the ice lost over the summer if the changes in the two pictures were merely seasonal differences.
Having never been to Alaska, I'll take your word for it.
Alberta, I'm Canadian and not quite that far north
That being said I probably haven't seen many more glaciers than you but I know how long it takes snow and ice to form/melt between seasons.
I stole this Sig
Wow, now that was a witty rejoinder. Couldn't even come up with a new one, you had to repeat the same one you used in your last comment? Are you re-using it because you came up with it all on your own and are oh-so-proud of it? Or are you that much of a one trick pony? As to getting off the computer, why would I? I am proud to say I am a geek, and I make my living on the computer.
I must say, you are one classy act. You try and cast FUD on one of the most serious issues facing us today, and when it pisses me off and I call you on your bullsh** rhetoric and strawman arguments, you get all whiny and say I am taking Global Warming too seriously - you just end up sounding like a wimp, unable to back your sh** up.
For myself, I know that I was flaming when I posted my first comment, and I copped to that, but at least there is content. All you're doing is getting your whine on. You might want to stop posting here and try taking critical thinking class or a perhaps a course on logic? It might help you keep your foot out of your mouth and your head out of your ass.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
No, the real question is how quickly it will happen.
Scary what you learn from an introductory geology class.
Hell, what if the correlation is reversed? What if the increased temperature is driving more CO2 production by the atmosphere by increasing techtonic drift every so slightly as to produce more volcanic activity? How the hell would we know with such a limited dataset?
Oh but there is a positive feedback. As the earth warms the permafrost in Siberia thaws. And the ice traps methane gases which is released as the ice melts. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Just blame it all on all those sheep in New Zealand and Australia, they emit too much methane when they fart.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm saying that I doubt you have any actual proof of that claim with respect to climate change specifically.
It's possible to pull very reasonable-sounding ideas out of your head but that does not mean they are correct. If you're going to claim a correlation you should at least have a little proof to back it up.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There are other ways of getting a good approximation for the average temperature in an area before that date.
For starters, the fact that the area where France now is had glaciers at some point in history is a dead giveway that it was colder then
More in general, since in ice cores it is actually possible to distinguish the summer ice from the winter ice (and count years), it's actually possible to extrapolate temperature from things like the tickness of the ice accumulate in a year.
Granted, before 1593 the exact value for the temperature in Venice whenever somebody felt like measuring it and registering it for posteriority is not quite as realiable as afterwards - and we all know how much Venice's temperature taken at random moments is a good indicator of average global temperature.
Let me rephrase your question: "Isn't global warming beter that being shot in the head?"
Maybe, but then again nobody is trying to shoot me in the head.
As for addressing the part of your question that refers to events that are actually likelly to happen in our and our children's lifetimes:
If the ice on top of Greenland melted, the Earth's oceans would rise 6 to 7 meters (enough to flood London and New York). I suppose that for those that already live on top of a mountain that shouldn't be too much of a problem (though loosing the low lying farmland and the vagues of refuges might be a problem, even for those in the mountains).
Are you asking that because one of the pictures had sun and the other a thick cloud cover, or are you just making a wild accusation in the hope that it sticks?
----
Just out of curiosity, which PR agency do you work for? Your spin-style arguments (using things like misdirection, attacking a straw man and information control) kinda make me think you might be a pro.
Christopher Monckton's dear old dad, the 2nd Viscount of Brenchley, was the first Chairman of the Board of Defence Systems Limited, whose major clients include Amoco, British Petroleum, and Exxon, among others. DSL provides oil pipeline security, and security training for petroleum companies worldwide.
We are supposed to make policy decisions costing th U.S. alone billions possibly trillions of dollars. Based on a computer model using a great many assumptions lacking sociological data. That makes a weather prediction 100 years in to the future. When similar computer models have not even been very accurate within a decade time frame. I am not going to specifically attack the merits of the model because I don't feel qualified to do so. However the sheer lack of skeptical analysis in the scientific community on this issue is baffling to me. I think there is a lack of critical analysis here due to scientists not wanting to be branded heretics (or enjoying the resulting funding). There seems to be no room for criticality or debate on this issue it has reached a dogmatic standing even amongst scientists. I find that very disturbing and have to wonder if my faith in science is well placed any more. Or if scientists are no better than your average politician with an axe to grind.
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I like this article alot. My biggest complaint about the THEORY of Global Warming is the fact that people are now taking this THEORY and molding it into further fear tactics against educated people to put them in state a fear and make them donate money to environmental groups.
The newest theory that came about was this notion that methane gas is trapped at the bottom of the ocean and that most of the mass extinctions that have occurred on the planet have happened because global warming has caused this trapped gas to get released into the atmosphere and kill off most of the species on the planet. There are thousands of educated biologist, climatologists, chemists, and physicists out there, and not a single one even thought to look at this as possible cause of mass extinction, till global warming suddenly became a threat to our survival. Heck, global warming was blamed for the 1995 Hurricane season in the Atlantic and Carribean. If the global air and ocean temperature was increasing, the temperature should have been HIGHER this year and we should have seen even MORE hurricanes. But, we didn't. This was a rather mild hurricane season.
Another thing of interest is that in the 1970, we had the theory of global cooling. We were all heading for another ice age and everyone was a in a big panic about that.
The earth cools and the earth warms up. We're in a period of warming now. We could be in a period of cooling in the next 20 years. The earth does what it wants to do.
Regarding this article I have just one comment to make and the comment comes from movie "Thank You For Smoking". The narrator describes the "lab scintists" like this : "The guy is genious. He could disprove gravity."
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The frantic, hyperbolic, hysterical, barely-scientific side of the argument is that global warming is controllable, and caused, by-and-large, by humans. However, much of the scientific community believes that global warming is: Driven by the Sun Driven by geological events and, minutely contributed to by human behavior Otherwise, how do you explain that Mars, that dead, uninhabited planet is warming [space.com]? (And here, too. [heartland.org] I'm sorry, but there a bigger fish to fry. We are expending an awful lot of goodwill on democratic voter bases by distracting them with this stuff when we should be hitting them with what really matters: Poverty Disease Injustice None of which will be solved by getting my neighbor to give up his 2 trucks, '66 Charger, '66 Mustang, and 3 boats. None of which will be solved by Daryll Hannah driving a grass powered Geo. Let's focus on what we CAN fix and not expend energy on fear driven philosophies, adopted by those who don't realize the origins of the argument are from a much more nefarious origin.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Dude, did you actually read what I said, or did you only read a few words and jump to conclusions?
What I said, restated for the slow: One data point (the glacier with which I am familiar) does not necessarily correlate with what is happening to the world at large, so take the information I am presenting with a grain of salt. That said, the glacier with which I am familiar has indeed retreated a substantial amount in the last 17 years. This may or may not be indicative of trends on a global scale, and even if it is indicative of world wide trends, that doesn't prove anything about global warming, since other factors--such as average yearly precipitation--also affect whether a glacier grows or shrinks (yes, Virginia, it is entirely possible to have a glacier shrink due to reduced snowfall in the winter despite colder than average temperatures).
<rolls eyes>
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Civil engineers generall build dams and flood mitigation structures to withstand the so called 50 year flood. This means we expect a major flood ever 50 years and better spend the money to guard against it. Statistics show that there are large floods (anywhere) over a longer period, I think they use 75 or 100 years. We don't build structure or cities to withstand these. Well, in the case of London's tidal barrier they hoped it would handle these, same for Hollands zyders (dykes). Of course there are exception like New Orleans where the statistical risk of flooding in 50 years was not acted upon.
So we say it's worth spending the money on protecting against something that might happen in 50 years and that's accepted. The cost of the extra construction is most likely amortorised long before the actual flood hits.
Now for global warming look at what will flood in those 50yr storms if the sea level is now 1 or 7metres higher. How much will that cost to protect against. Sure, there's a huge difference in what structure we build (sea walls etc). I'm sure local and federal governments can work out the costs for each coastal city, industry and farm.
Let's see, a $200m seawall (don't ay it's not practicval because Holland has a seawall around the whole conutry just about, look at a map) or 2m lives or a city lost. How much did New Orleans cost?
What's the worst that can happen? A small percentage of rich ppl with ocean front homes lose their view, shipping ports need to be modified, we all breath cleaner air (what does just asthma cost per year in any given country to say nothing of other pollution related illnesses?)
It's the usual painful realisation that we got it wrong first time and now we have to fix things up and need to do it right.
It wouldn't surprise me if we have more disasters yet (floods, droughts) before people realise the changes are beyond the norm of accurately measured climactic conditions - ie the last 100yrs or so). It might be too late to prevent further changes but at least ppl/govts will be scared and hurt enough to clean up their acts so we breath better.
Global warming might take a long time to reverse if it's already underway, but clean air can come very quickly. Overall it's not a small price that has to be paid, it's a significant price, but the outcome of acting far outweighs the situation if we don't act.
pithy comment
You're response, like mine, accomplishes nothing. Way to be a democrat.
On to the second comment
Interesting that you would call me a cancer on slashdot - you are the one that started a conversation thread based on bad science (can't trust the temperature since it was before thermometers), bad logic (false dichotomy/strawman), and FUD (misleading statements about a movie you haven't even seen). What I consider a true cancer on slashdot is misinformed readers posting bullsh** on slashdot when they should know better and then getting kharma for it. I consider it an even bigger cancer to be unable or unwilling to back up you bullsh**, and instead resort to puerile insults and calls to suicide. Pathetic.
Now I know you think I don't have a life, but I actually need to get back to mine (although I have a warm fuzzy in my heart knowing that I will probably start the day tomorrow with a dumbass comment from you to make me laugh). So, unless you want to try and address some of the valid points I made in my initial post (even if they were on the harsh side), I don't think there is much point in continuing to point out the errors in your ways. You could always get that feedback from a critical thinking course.
P.S. The "I mean it" about me committing suicide was a nice touch - showed a certain level of sincerity, even if a bit juvenile.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Because a scientist would know that the real issue is not whether it is or it isn't, but how much so, and to what degree of uncertaintly. And with all present climate research the how much so is open to debate and the uncertainty is very great.
Now thats not going to stop the media and politicians from doing their thing now, is it?
I think you forgot:
:)
brandido
6 ???
7 Profit!
Thanks for the assist
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Thanks for the info on #2.
But despite everything you said, isn't it possible that our greenhouse emissions are actually preventing an ice age from happening? (Note: I said POSSIBLE. I'm not selling anything.)
Possible? Sure. But who cares what is possible? Do you base your actions on what is possible? It is possible that you are about to be struck by a meteor - duck! It is possible that your car will burst into flames when you next turn the key - best never to drive again.
I base my actions on what is probable. It is possible (or, rather, based on available evidence I should say it is probable) that you don't accept the evidence that supports global warming. That is not of any concern to me. The question was whether an ice age or global warming is worse. The answer is, "Either one would, if swift enough and great enough, cost us a shitload of money to survive and reduce (perhaps only temporarily) the ability of this planet to support human life."
If you want an explanation of why it is sufficiently probable that we should take action, try learning about it. The info is all available on the net - the science and the meta-science. It's not hard to interpret, and once you've looked at it, it is quite convincing. Your disbelief is indicative of your lack of awareness or understanding of the evidence, not of a lack of evidence. There is nothing wrong with that - nobody knows everything - not a problem at all (unless you're professing to others that you have any significant insight into the matter - that could lead others to skip the evidence and believe your misinterpretation - which it seems is what you have done).
As for #1, there is a big difference between trusting someone not to lie about their thermometer readings, and trusting someone's extrapolation of indirect "measurement" of temperature based on tree rings, ice density, etc.
Too many variables.
All of these indirect calculations have a large margin of error.
A thermometer uses light waves bounced off a metal inside a refractive medium, which are then bounced through a notoriously unreliable biological lens onto equally unreliable sensors, processed by an almost infinitely improbable and extremely erroneous processing network that, by means we have barely begun to observe let alone comprehend, leads to a spastic contraction of muscles which cause a hand gripping a stylus to dance around a page in a pattern that, amazingly, can be interpreted as having meaning (by another series of light wave bounces and shoddy biological mechanisms). Simply considering the complexity and number of variables, it is extraordinarily unlikely that anything has ever been seen, recorded, and reread with even a passing nod at truth.
Why do we believe it? Why do we believe anything is out there? Simple: Reproducibility. Every time I wave my hand, I see my hand wave (provided some bouncing light and that I don't have my eye-shutters shut).
And why do people believe in the results from those ice cores and tree rings? Same answer: Reproducibility. Every time we correlate tree rings with ice cores with the fossil record - we get points of correlation. Some of those correlations reproduce and confirm our findings from the past. Others refute it and make us adjust the assumptions. In science, the really big prizes go to the people who find refuting evidence that stands up to peer review. The magnitude of that refutation generally in science starts large and gets smaller. In climatology is now quite small. There is an answer that is pretty darned accurate, and it is available on the internet.
Your skepticism is evidence of your lack of understanding of the science in question - not a flaw in the science. Again - not a problem. There's lots of things I don't know about. As long as noone gets the flawed assumption that your disbelief is well founded, there's no harm done.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If he thought it was right and he is a scientist, I would guess he would send it to a peer reviewed scientific journal, not the Telegraph.
That is one of the easiest clues in these things. If it links to a pdf document on the Telegraph or New Scientist site, it most likely has as much merit as the relativity drive. When you see a link to Nature or something, take more notice.
Slashdot is powered by your submission.
Here's an article from Tim Lambert that says nasty things about Monckton's sources: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/11/chinese_na vy_disproves_global.php
Mark
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right, so I suppose if it's been "debunked" for the thousandth time, that we should continue just spewing crap into the atmosphere at an alarming rate, after all, everyone LOVES pollution. global warming or not, what we're doing to the earth right now is going to get us in big trouble eventually.
brian botkiller "Condensing fact from the vapor of nuance" - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
I offer two items: 1) for the last half century the pan evaporation rate, dependent only on incident sunlight, has been declining 2) CO2 correlates directly to increased temperature I don't know exactly how the sun has been behaving. You would have to measure that in space. In the days following 9/11, when planes were banned from the air, the temperature rose 1/2 a degree over the US and went down again when planes started flying once more. The implication being that smog has been countering the effect of increased CO2 and that paradoxically the warming will increase the more we clean up our act. It is clear from ice core samples that the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is 3X what it has been at any time in the last 600,000 years. The differences between ice ages and warmer periods are much smaller. My fear is that the amount now present may tip the scales catastrophically. It may already be too late. Only the youngest of us will know for sure. As for me, I'm glad I'll be dead before the worst. Anyone who thinks we can't collectively destroy all higher life forms on this planet is living an illusion. Most of the religious people don't care because, if life ends, it's God's plan and they'll all be laughing in heaven. As for me, I fear for our children, unlike the politicians who, like Louis the XIV, may cry "Apres moi, le deluge!" i.e. I don't give a flying fuck what happens after I'm dead!
One site to check is http://www.junkscience.com/ . I read a long time ago that if you run the climate predicting models backward they should predict the past (time's arrow being irrelevant here) but they don't. I also remember that one of the beginnings of chaos theory was based on finding that a weather model produced dramatically different results simply because of a very small change in one datum. "The butterfly flaps its wings . . ." etc. [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect%5D. When economists can predict interest rates accurately, I may start believing that weather models are useful beyond a short period.
I'm a scientist. If you want the straight dope on climate science, just visit realclimate.org. It's a site maintained by real climate scientists, expert in the science behind global warming. Global warming denialism is only interesting from a psychological viewpoint to me.
- warming-is-just-hoax.html) have all issued statements that a) global warming is real, and b) humans are the cause. Maybe one journalist knows something that has slipped by tens of thousands of scientists, but I seriously doubt it. Slashdot might be able to generate ad revenue by visiting this topic, but it won't advance the state of human knowledge.
I can't visit the linked article, the telegraph website appears slashdotted. I will point out that NOAA, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Society of the UK, as well as many other scientific societies (http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/global
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
The dinosaurs smoked *really* big cigarettes...
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Oh good. We can stop arguing then.
The climate changes. Not just year to year, but century to century. Heck, about 300 years ago there was actually a "little ice age" that really wracked Europe. Change is normal.
The odd part is, the current change will end the world, and is caused by the key thing liberals hate most: growing capitalism in America. (See also: Kyoto treaty that would hamstring America, while China didn't have to do anything under the accord.)
And exactly HOW do we change something so indescribably huge? Sure- particles. Exactly how to we manages to take so many particles aloft to change the environment, when 100 TONS gets spewed into the air each time a volcano goes off, somewhere in the world. Some people think we occupy 98% of this tiny world; we're insignifigant on the face of this planet.
And aren't these the same people who claimed there would be a "Population bomb" in the 60's, and then claimed a new ice age in 1977? (You can still see it in evidence of Barney Miller where it played a role in one night's episode.) These are the same people that told us that under their care, bigotry and hatred would be a thing of the past....meanwhile it was available in commercial quantities in the wake of Katrina. (A good example of Democrat-only control.)
I'm just so tired of hearing this lie, over and over, and over. And when this one runs out, it'll be something else- like species that are going away (they've managed to manage themselves for billions of years, right?)
So yeah...it's very probable that the current global change is normal, nominal, and NOT caused by anything man-made (since most scientists point to changes that happened before 1940).
Read this; think about it. Consider all the facts. This, too, will go away like the War on Poverty and the Women's Rights movement.
Yeah, mark me as a troll- I LIVED thorough decades of this stuff. I'm just passing it on.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Global warming doesn't "have to either be universally accepted or flat-out debunked". However, there's plenty of good, solid evidence in favor of the following points:
So, there are potentially some big stakes, beyond the politics, in acting now based on what we consider the most likely conclusions, even if there's still uncertainty in some areas.
"Nonsense. It may be catastrophic for people who live in coastal regions, but not for humanity as a whole. "
Since most of the flat land usable for agriculture is already being used for agriculture when that land dried up and becomes unusable the supply of food will diminish.
When the plankton and coral die en masse it will have severe consequences on the food chain for the entire world.
When mass extinction of plants and animals occur everything from pollination of crops to the availability of oxygen will be effected.
Severe weather extremes, more powerful hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts will effect every single human being on the planet.
I don't know where you get this idea that only coastal people will be effected. Even if only they were effected the economic ripple effects would be tremendous.
"That's not to say we shouldn't try to prevent catastrophy when possible, but in the big-big picture,"
In the big big picture nothing matters. Once the earth was ruled by dinasaurs. They lasted for millions of years. Then they all died, all of them. Not just them but virtually every living being on the planet. For millions of years the only thing on the earth were ferns and tiny creatures. You know how we know all that? All that catastrophy shows up as three inches of dirt layer.
We have been around for a few thousand years, after we are all gone there will not be even an inch of dirt to mark our passing.
evil is as evil does
The important questions are what actions can humans take at the present to stop changes. If changes cannot be stopped, then other measures need to be taken to prepare for the effects. If human activities have neglegible influence we can continue burning aoil as long as we wish (or as long as we have enough left). If there is a significant influence some steps, possibly drastic would be wise to take.
It is important to remember that the global climate is a complex system, with much memory. Even granting that CO_2 levels are related to global temperatures there are many other factors. Reducing greenhouse gasses in the future might not be enough to reverse trends, especially if critical thresholds are passed and the system falls into a different equilibrium. One example is the ocean currents, often thought of as the "flywheel of global climate". There is some evidence of dramitic reduction in the intensity of these currents. If the pattern of currents will change, it will have a huge effect on climate everywhere, and reversing the change would not be easy.
Since at the moment there is insufficient understanding of this complex system to predict its response to various actions, there are two things we must do. First, more research. The budgets for climate research have been reduced in the past few years. Funding is the biggest bottleneck limitting research being made.
Second, we need to be more aware of the possible scenarios, and be prepared for them. For example, A significant portion of oceanographers claim that a small temprature increase could lead to Greenland melting. It's a simple calculation that this would raise ocean levels by about 6 metres. Maybe this will not happen. However, the implications are so large that unless the odds are truely miniscule it would be reckless to ignore the possiblity.
This aspect is similar to the scenaroi of an asteroid hitting earth. This will not be the result of human actions, but eventually it will happen (probably not soon). Sufficient preparation can make a huge difference, or allow prevention.
Thus the real question is not whether or not humans have influence. The real question is whether this influence is large enough to be used to prevent catastrophy, and if not what sacrifices (economic, political) should be made now to mitigate the danger.
"Actually it is E=MC^2"
Good thing you caught my typo! Somebody might have gone on to repeat it. Then it might have gained mass acceptance, and gone on to undermine theoretical physics, setting us back a century.
I can just picture a physicist staring at a chalkboard of equations, shaking his head and saying, "Damn it, this just isn't working out like it ought to. I got the underlying basic equations from the internet, so they couldn't possibly be wrong!"
Are you willing to pay more on your monthly electric bill?
(You know better - our defense from Islamic terrorism does not affect the cost of wind power)
Without the front in Iraq, I'd expect the IT's would be targeting our Wind farms in CA and TN.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Its interesting that this guy cites so many studies to support his case. Dont u think ? Basically all he does if try to poke holes. Some of them might be valid actually. Some of them are deliberate twisting of studies etc. The real point though is IS there is NOT a scientific consensus.. WHERE are the peer reviewed articles that debunk global warming.
To a non scientist its always easy to make things in a study look non clear or debateable. Without actually knowing all the details how do you know if a stat is significant. For example is 0.1 C is a small amount or a large amount ? Will that amount cause no changes or wipe out entire ecosystems ? Depending on the situation - both statements can be true.
What it boils down to though is a controversy at this level ONLY in the popular press. In peer reviewed articles the debate now is not whether its happening - but as to how bad it will (or wont be)
Too bad I don't have moderator points today.
You said it well. The issue with the global warming folks however is that they can look at a graph and proclaim to have a background in science and they cannot read the graph. This reminds me when I was in High School math and the teacher asked the class to VOTE on the correct answer. I typically declined on the basis that it wasn't a popularity contest. Sometimes I voted for the worng answer to see what the reaction would be. Yup - the other kids were playing follow the leader. The teacher once commented that he didn't think I would miss the question. I replied that I didn't miss the question, I wanted to know how many classmates would follow me and vote for an answer that is clearly incorrect.
The issue with Global Warming is that were it real and were it driven by CO2 and were the dire consequences as predicted, then there would be reason for alarm. So many people take the safe route and proclaim that we should limit the emissions of CO2.
Well - CO2 is a plant nutrient. I'm for increased levels of CO2 on this basis. I'm for land irrigation as well. I'm also in favour of nuclear power.
It is our technology that has created the ability for 6 billion people to live on this planet. I am not in favour of the population increasing to 12 billion. However there is a lot of irresponsible human breading activity that is taking place. I think if we get the REAL problems under control that we won't need to worry about CO2. But we are a long ways away from even focusing on the right questions.
In all liklihood we are over the peak of world oil production now and there is going to be all hell to pay. I do not think global warming will be the story of interest by 2008.
Meanwhile we can do something to curb CO2 if we wish - and we can make money doing it. We can start by re-insulating our houses.
It costs about $1 bux per square foot of building envelope surface to bring insulation up to R50 when the building is being put up. This keeps the house warmer in winter and cooler in summer and it cuts the CO2 emissions by a HUGE amount. For some reason I do not see those who are alarmed about Global Warming proposing any practical solutions.
If a room is to be repainted, or if a house is to be re-sided, then the insulation can be brought up to R50 quite inexpensively. But do people do it? No - they sit around and grip about Global Warming and think being worried is going to achieve something - providing the next guy does it. But they usually NEVER do anything practical themselves even if it will save them money.
When oil reaches $300 per barrel and natural gas is back over $17 bux then I wonder... will we see insulation going into our horribly built houses? I just don't know what it will take.... but I do expect we will see people freezing in the dark long before anything practical is done.
The short of it is that if we could snap our fingers and put R50 in the building envelope of every house in North America, then we could reduce the amount of Natural Gas burned to produce electricity and heat by a factor of close to 50%. We could reduce the amount of coal burned and the amount of heating oil we use. We would create employment and we would probably make money in the process. We could defer the construction of nuclear power plants for probably over a decade. We would all enjoy life better because our houses would become far more comfortable.
We can do this now. Those who worry about Global Warming caused by CO2 can feel warm and fuzzy.
Folks, let's try to remember that the reason we don't get our scientific theories from mainstream media outlets is the same reason we ought not take Creationists seriously.
Until Monckton has published his paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, this is not a news item of any scientific merit whatsoever.
Typo:
That should read, "which don't contain data about the last 100 years of climate change"
http://outcampaign.org/
The Danish statistician who a few years ago did an analysis of the 'evidence' and it came up bust. He started the project to provide statistical proof of Global Warming. The response in the 'popular' scientific circles was to call him names and ignore his evidence.
Sadly, that is how both sides of this debate act. It isn't science, it's funding maneuvers.
A great many of the organizations investigating the 'warming' were the same organizations that 20 years ago were 'conclusively proving' Global Cooling. (We were to be well into the next Ice Age by now, according to the green press in the 70's. Often the same person who as a new researcher in the '70's used climate evidence to prove Global Cooling is now using the same evidence to prove Global Cooling. This time he/she is a 'senior scientist'.
It's clear that something is going on. Polar caps on both Earth and Mars are shrinking, by roughly the same percentage. In spite of all the doom sayers, sea level is not rising measurably. (Unchanged in the last 200 years, to within the margin of error.)
You should remember that a lot of the organizations on both sides of this 'debate' have an agenda. If you don't know the agenda, you won't know the 'researcher' bias. Most of the conclusions that get reported in the popular press are unrealistic. Take the headline here on Slashdot a day or two ago that in 30 years there won't be anything living in the oceans. They got there by combining a few worrisome statistics in unrealistic ways, then pontificating on how we should all adopt their politics to avoid the 'problem'. They didn't have any real solutions to the real problems of pollution and overfishing (which are very real, and not something to worry about in 30 years. They happened over 30 years ago.)
To solve these very real problems, we need real data, and then engineering analysis to create systems and policies that address the real root causes. I don't see that happening from either side of the debate.
The best solution at present seems to be more study and analysis. We don't seem to know enough yet to really fix the problem. (We aren't really sure what the problem is.) We need to make changes, but those changes have to take into account real peoples needs. If we don't, the result will be like Kyoto. Lots of camera ops, a few minor efforts, a few major hold outs, and total world wide failure.
I'm beginning to think that the real problem is politics. From all sides.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Why is the only data point this guy cites from 2001? The recent deep core sample analysis was a much more convincing argument.
This seems more like a rant against the UN and politics than anything else...
James
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
But reality is that there are a lot of people with agendas on both sides.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
You make a convincing argument Mr. linuxwrangler.
I guess I've been wrong about dinosaurs this whole time...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Now IANACS (I am not a climate scientist) Well then why don't you just shut yer hole. You already state you don't know what the fuck yer talking about so why are you still talking?!? Fuck off.
No respectable scientist would believe this article. As philosopher Karl Popper puts it, 'scientific hypotheses must be capable of being falsified through empirical observation.'
/. stories, and the decision to link to them, just get sillier by the day.
No claim made in the article is capable of being falsified by observable events. The article therefore is not convincing, it is a jibberish double-speak of irrelevant facts and figures pulled out of a hat. It is mere pseudoscience, belonging in the fiction category.
Global warming is actually occuring RIGHT NOW, industrialized nations continue to deplete the ozone layer, and no amount of crazy talk to the contrary designed to appeal to ignorant, fear-laden twats frightened of 'one world government conspiracies' should convince anyone otherwise.
Some of these
%^#%$@&($&@%^!!!
Paul B.
A whole article on the environment, and I can't spell environment correctly. I should just go to sleep.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Does it really matter if it's wrong or not? Do you have sex with a random person and not wear a condom just because they might not have AIDS? If so you're an idiot and have no business making decisions for the rest of us.
It is completely rational to do something about these *unnatural* amounts of Co2 we're spewing into the atmosphere as we have no idea what they're ultimately going to end up doing. Aside from Co2 there's lots of other KNOWN bad chemicals we're spewing out too.
Quite honestly I think this ask slashdot is a troll paid for by some stupid thinktank, just like the article they refer to...
I find it amusing that a number of people have given anecdotal evidence that goes something like this : "Well who needs scientists to tell us about global warming? In (place) it's warmer than ever! It doesn't snow anymore! My pants are on fire right now due to the extreme heat!"
We're talking about an average change of around one degree fahrenheit since most of us were born. That's not going to be noticeable.
As Gore mentioned in a recent documentary/presentation he did, a sampling of all research papers on the subject of global warming DOES NOT show disagreement from the scientific community.
A perusal of media articles by pseudo-scientists and pundits reveals that the only people denying the reality and likely impacts of global warming are media shills, politicians, and corps who don't like the impact on their bottom line if they're forced to deal with the damage they do.
Do we all need to fucking DIE before we stop listening to people who don't know what they're talking or writing about?
Look around the world. The damage to the antarctic, lake Chad, and more sensitive ecosystems around the world is undeniable. We cannot stick our heads in the sands any more, because it may already be too late to turn things around.
Personally, I think it's rather likely that it's "too late."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
1. Open door
2. Walk outside
3. Note that the weather is very much unseasonable for this time of year
4. Doh!
Folks, it's obvious that things are not as they should be, and that summer-like weather is consuming more and more of the year. Forget science - do your own experiment, as outlined above.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Ahem.... I think I wanted to post this as a response to your parent. Sigh. Not my day.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Is that we do NOT know where our technology that we have created... is taking us.
None of you... and obviously none of the scientists... can agree...
but we all made this...
and it might destroy us...
and we can't figure out if it will or won't
so..
once again...
methinks human sentience will be found to be a non-survivable characteristic.
Goodnight ladies and gentlemen...
Come on, we've got enough geeks of all varieties here - surely someone else must be in Nairobi for the 12th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and 2nd Conference of Parties/Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol... right?
/. is here at Gigiri, drop me a line or something - I'm here doing tech for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reporting team, and you can find an email link to me at the bottom of our coverage of the conference.
(Of course, if any other Slashdotters are here, they probably know, as I do, that "Global Warming" is an overly simplistic term that hardly anyone serious about climate change would ever think to use any more, since global climate change has different effects different places...)
Anyway, if anybody else from
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
You want the real truth? Here comes:
-- Nobody knows. We will see in a few hundred years who was right.
Now, there are some scary possibilities. Like, if the Siberian tundra melts, and releases a few billion tons of greenhouse-gases to atmosphere, consequenses will be, to say the least, interestring.
Yup.. GW has been apparent for all to see in the last 8 years.
(Those 8 years added ~220 billion tons to our atmosphere)
Yet, all of his chosen data sets end in 1998.
What a freaking ding dong, we don't live in a static world.
Likewise.. the article hasn't been peer reviewed.
Publishing in UK newspaper is not a proper venue.
You're being sold propoganda based on his misguided interpretation and selective use of data sets. (One must consider ALL available data, including the date period from 1999 through 2006).
"This is /. buddy, what you'll get is a bunch of reasons why its right or wrong from people that didn't read the article."
Yep, I skimed the article and found "the UN abolished the medieval warm period", if the submitter found the article "convincing" then it does not reflect well on his knowledge of the subject. My view is the guy has nothing new to add and is very pissed off about suggestions we should pay the full costs of an industrialised society.
Assuming the submitter really does want a detailed rebuttal on the climate (psudeo)science in the article he could try a seach for the word myth on RealClimate. If it has not already been debunked in that list then the world renowned climatoligists from the site (many of whom he is attacking), may have a look at it for him.
Having said that I would be very surprised to see something new, similar articles have appeared since the Stern report, and (surprisingly?), have also been debunked by the "mainstream media". Now this may be coincidence but I do belive Rupert has gone pale green.
BTW: Apart from the Melbourne Cup, the headlines today in Australia are telling us about the "the worst drought in 1000yrs". My only advise is to invest in solid gold "bling" and hunker down for the population implosion that is coming our way (Exhibit A: the plethora of "surviour" type TV shows).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I meant to type Lindzen and his Journalist friend. (Instead of the well respected Hanson of NOAA, who is using current Sat data which clealy indicates IPCC is right, my criticism of UK telegraph article remains the same).
Yup.. GW has been apparent for all to see in the last 8 years.
(Those 8 years added ~220 billion tons to our atmosphere)
Yet, the article's chosen data sets all stop in 1998.
What a bunch of freaking ding dongs, we don't live in a static world.
Likewise.. the article hasn't been peer reviewed.
Publishing in UK newspaper is not a proper venue.
You're being sold propoganda based on his misguided interpretation and selective use of data sets. (One must consider ALL available data, including the date period from 1999 through 2006).
Actually, take that idea one step further, and you'll find that the EPA is a research arm of private corporations. From www.projectcensored.org
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA's Primary Research Partner
Sources:
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, October 5, 2005
Title: "Chemical Industry Is Now EPA's Main Research Partner"
Author: Jeff Ruch
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, October 6, 2005
Title: "EPA Becoming Arm of Corporate R&D"
Author: Jeff Ruch
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research program is increasingly relying on corporate joint ventures, according to agency documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The American Chemical Council (ACC) is now EPA's leading research partner and the EPA is diverting funds from basic health and environmental research towards research that addresses regulatory concerns of corporate funders.
Since the beginning of Bush's first term in office, there has been a significant increase in cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with individual corporations or industry associations. During Bush's first four years EPA entered into fifty-seven corporate CRADAs, compared to thirty-four such agreements during Clinton's second term.
EPA scientists claim that corporations are influencing the agency's research agenda through financial inducements. One EPA scientist wrote, "Many of us in the labs feel like we work for contracts." In April 2005, EPA's Science Advisory Board warned that the agency was no longer funding credible public health research. It noted, for example, that the EPA was falling behind on issues such as intercontinental pollution transport and nanotechnology.
Furthermore, in April 2005, a study by the Government Accountability Office concluded that EPA lacks safeguards to "evaluate or manage potential conflicts of interest" in corporate research agreements, as they are taking money from companies and corporations that they are supposed to be regulating.
According to Rebecca Rose, the Program Director of PEER, "Under its current leadership, EPA is becoming an arm of corporate R&D." She also notes that the number of corporate CRADAs under the Bush administration outnumbered those entered into with universities or local governments, adding, "Public health research needs should not have to depend upon corporate underwriting."
In October 2005 President Bush nominated George Gray to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development (ORD). At that time George Gray ran a Center for Risk Analysis at Harvard University where the majority of the funding came from corporate sources. Gray indicated upon nomination that he intends to continue and expand his solicitation of corporate research funds in his position with ORD.
PEER's Executive Director Jeff Ruch warns, "Injecting outside money into a public agency research program, especially when it is tied to particular projects, has a subtle but undeniable influence on not only what work gets done but also how that work is reported." He adds, "As what was one of the top public health research programs slides toward dysfunction, nothing about the background, attitude or philosophy of Mr. Gray suggests that he is even remotely the right person for this job."
In 2004 & 2005, EPA was plagued by reports of political suppression of scientific results on important health issues such as asbestos and mercury regulation (see Censored 2005, Story #3). In response ORD launched a public relations campaign, entitled "Science for You," using agency research funds to clean up its image.
Comments: George M. Gray was sworn in as the Assistant Administrator of Research and Development at EPA on November 1, 2005, with unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate.
UPDATE BY JEFF RUCH
This story illustrates how key environmental research is being diverted away from public health priorities in order to m
My biggest problem with the climate skeptics, is that there is never an alternative hypothesis as to what will happen to all of this CO2 or why it will not impact the climate. 20 years ago most earth, atmospheric, and ocean scientists were skeptical of climate change. Every year there is a lot more evidence, and now most skeptics are not scientists. Most documents have some problems, but that does not mean that pointing out problems with one document disproves an entire branch of science.
Uh, no. Expedia says $1470 from Houston to Nairobi. Not all of us have trust funds...we have these things called "jobs" that require us to "work".
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I was sceptical about Global Warming (heard too much FUD from all the Greens over the years, "Waldsterben", etc), but reading the summary in Wikipedia kind of convinced me.
But it is certainly not 100 percent yet. There are some alternate hypothisis, and the world does have a surprising ability to adapt to what we throw at it.
Most scientists seem not to have a great interest in History. Well, they should. Medieval times were much hotter, and sea levels were higher than today. For what I know, if sea levels were higher in Europe, they should have been elsewhere. And there are consistent reports of this all over Europe!
Forest Fires account about 30% to CO2 emissions... Has anyone seen any of the scientists involved in global warming fire-fighting? Are there proposals for reducing forest fires? Nop. That's the whole lie... If forest fires could be reduced to half, it would do much more improvement than Kyoto!
Can't really blame the guy for ignoring the US. :-)
More importantly though, if you consider that the US was still to be discovered (apart from by Vikings that it), it tells you about the poor state of knowledge regarding the rest of the world at the time.
Europe is often quoted not because it had local climate anomalies (there is every reason to believe that they were global), but simply because Europe was keeping records throughout that period which survived to the current day.
Max Planck said: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
At that time, the majority of scientists would not accept his quantum theory. The majority is often times wrong. The "scientists" who in 1970s were predicting an Ice Age, are predicting Global Warming now.
As TFA says, there was a much warmer period in the Middle Ages. There were Viking farms on the coast of Greenland. It was named Greenland, because it was "green", not frozen white. After the warm period around 1100AD, there was a cooling period which killed off the colony on Greenland and virtually isolated Iceland. The colony in Vinland (America) was lost, too.
Hi.
One paragraph in, Monckton sets out an ensemble of conditions that have to be met in order for the prophets of doom to be right. One is that all scientists have to agree. It is hard enough to get all scientists to agree that smoking is bad for you, but it doesnt make it bad.
This is bad science by someone who has no idea what he is doing.
The piece is not peer reviewed and is full of fallacious arguments.
If it wasn't for his position and reputation as a rabble-rouser this garbage would have gotten nowhere near publication. The piece is not so much a comment on global warming as a commentary on the UK class system.
The man is an idiot.
It seems to me that ice layers are not so much like tree rings, because it is not possible for tree rings cannot melt.
I mean, couldn't you have (for example) 600 years worth of ice layers built up, and then there is a 50-year-long warm interval that removes the top 25 years' worth of ice rather than adding any? Then when it's over, and a few hundred more layers of ice are added on top, how could future scientists tell that it had ever happened?
I know I'm not a paleoclimatologist, but really, this is just common sense.
I rarely post on slashdot, choosing to browse instead, but I find that this is too hard to resist. Honestly, this is not Science, the author is constantly chiming in with "a leading scientific journal" and "a very important climatologist". If he had legitimate sources he could, I don't know, reference them perhaps. Furthermore, he claims that because a single (unreferenced) article disputes the findings of UN reports it has been "overturned". I'm sorry, it's just terribly frustrating that this sort of thing gets published and muddles the picture. One last comment, what did he mean by the Canadian Government copying the graph to every household. Is he suggesting that some sort of mass mailing happened, because none did.
Not sure this will ever be seen, as I'm just an AC, but...
There are exactly two sides to the global warming "debate":
IT EXISTS...and therefore it is the responsibility of the entire world to prevent life on Earth becoming a living hell for our grandchildren.
IT DOES NOT EXIST...and the people who protest that it does are trying to put a choke-hold on American industry and slow the course of human progress.
Now, remember that every single lie is driven by motive. FUD, Greed, etc. Given that one group is arguing for worldwide sacrifice and effort, and the other is arguing to continue doing exactly as they like, you can see why people get as emotional on this subject as they do.
However, it worth noting that suspicion has never made anybody more correct...
It is simple math. CO2 Today CO2 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago... Why? Well everytime you drill more oil out of the ground and burn it you are adding more CO2 into the atmosphere that was not there before. The only way to remove that CO2 is with trees/rainforests which are being cut down at an incredibly fast rate so IKEA can construct and sell you their latest new furniture peice ;)
Since we are all stating credentials here, I am a mathematician.
The problem with the calculations above is that is is based on the measurements of the Earth's albedo as a whole. It is somewhat plausible, then, that the calculation gives a somewhat reasonable result for some sort of whole-earth lambda, including some certain adjustments for the change in pressure as we increase altitude.
However, this value is not relevant to GW study, because in GW we are not interested in an averaged temperature over all of the volume of the atmosphere, but an averaged temperature at sea level over the surface of the Earth - for example, a consequence of GW is that air temperature at certain levels in the atmosphere actually cools, and so a large factor in this is the movement of high temperature from high levels to low levels in the atmosphere, something that is cancelled out in your calculations. Stefan Boltzmann, which uses idealised surfaces, does not capture this effect.
In fact, it is impossible to capture this effect without detailed measurements and modelling of how the atmosphere is structured. In this, the UN is fully correct in adjusting its estimates as measurements change and become more detailed, and Monckton incorrect in dismissing the details needed in this calculation.
They called it Greenland to convince their fellow Vikings to settle there. It wouldn't be as attractive if they called "Tundraland" now, would it? Do you think that con men are a new invention?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And if you believe anything that article has to say, I've got some beachfront property to sell you in Arizona...
From a quick overview, they've distorted: the "hockey stick", the climate trends in Europe, and actual history. These guys are certifiable loons.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Where did 85 per cent of his imagined 20th-century warming go?"
He doesn't seem to take global dimming into account in any of his calculations, and it has been shown to be a very likely theory.
Let's see, on one hand we have an article that is full of utter nonsense. (Right, you expect me to believe - without any references - that the Chinese sailed the Arctic in 1421 and didn't find any ice?) On the other hand, we have NASA. I hope you'll forgive me if I choose to believe NASA over a bunch of loons who like to invent their own facts.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The start of that article is the time-old "I'm a lifelong XXX but..." canard. Doesn't bode well for an article's reliability.
I'll pass.
"It's clear that something is going on. Polar caps on both Earth and Mars are shrinking, by roughly the same percentage. In spite of all the doom sayers, sea level is not rising measurably. (Unchanged in the last 200 years, to within the margin of error.)", YetAnotherBob
.. the scientists behind this study say they are the first to verify the trend using historical data"
5 15_030515_fishdecline.html
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=367
..
"Over the entire period from 1870 the average rate of rise was 1.44mm per year. Over the 20th Century it averaged 1.7mm per year; while the figure for the period since 1950 is 1.75mm per year
"You should remember that a lot of the organizations on both sides of this 'debate' have an agenda. If you don't know the agenda, you won't know the 'researcher' bias", YetAnotherBob
I figure those opposing are big Oil and the corporations as anything done to reduce human impact on the environment would impact revenue. What hidden agenda do those finding evidence for global warming have? You claim it's only about funding. Are we to believe that Scientists would fake research data and big Oil exectutives only ever tell the truth.
"Take the headline here on Slashdot a day or two ago that in 30 years there won't be anything living in the oceans", YetAnotherBob
I do know that edible fish round these shores have all but disappeared. Of what's left, the average size of catch is about one third of what it used to be. The seasons also seem to have disappeared. Doesn't get very cold in 'winter' and doesn't get very warm in 'summer' except when we get two weeks of a heat wave followed by a semi tropical hurricane.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0
"The best solution at present seems to be more study and analysis"
Let's do nothing
"the result will be like Kyoto. Lots of camera ops, a few minor efforts, a few major hold outs, and total world wide failure"
Kyoto 'failed' because the US out of all the signaturities refused to ratify it.
"I'm beginning to think that the real problem is politics. From all sides."
The only politicking is coming from your side.
re Re:Anybody remember (Score:5, interference)
davecb5620@gmail.com
This isn't the first time I've seen data like this. Has anyone read the novel 'State of Fear' by Michael Crichton? Yes it's a novel, but the background data is all allegedly genuine; the characters, story etc are obviously fictional. Very thought-provoking and in much the same vein.
However, I'm not convinced either way...
- For someone with a slightly lower UID than mine (715536 is his UID), I find it surprising that he's never posted any comments (at least none that I can see).
- He also has no "friends" or "fans" (or even "foes" or "freaks").
- His URL goes to a web-site named Vischeck.com. (Nothing wrong with that, just pointing it out.)
For someone who supports the Sierra Club (as I myself do), I find it odd that he never would have commented on any of the posts where the environment is an issue.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The temp graphs measure small changes, so far. A much more dramatic hockey-stick is the graph of atmospheric C02 -- see http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/globalchange/images/raw /fig01.gif Nobody disputes that C02 is a greenhouse gas. So unless we can reduce atmospheric C02, temp increases are unavoidable. Put another way, the only way to avoid unpleasant climate consequences is to reduce our output of C02.
NOAA (with their obvious liberal agenda - I mean after all aren't they part of that left-wing Bush administration?) or some author that actually believes that in "1421 a Chinese Imperial Navy squadron sailed right round the Arctic and found no ice anywhere"? (I downloaded the PDF that is supposed to have references and found no references for this ludicrous claim. Granted, he did not invent this claim himself, but I guess he's afraid to provide a citation for that.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Hi,
I browsed through the article. A couple of things I would like to see better backed up by scientific references.
ISSUE 1: Viking farms
Article: "There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. "
"Reference" linked from article: "Greenland in the Middle Ages: Eric the Red had named Greenland "Greenland" to encourage Danish
settlers, because in his time south-western Greenland was indeed green. It was ice-free, and was extensively cultivated until c.1425 AD, when the farms were suddenly overrun by permafrost. The Viking agricultural settlements remain under permafrost to this day - a powerful indication that the Middle Ages were warmer than the present, and that there is little cause for alarm at the current melting of Greenland glaciers because they are very likely to have melted to more than their present extent during the mediaeval warm period."
Permafrost or not, it seems that some vegetation does thrive in Greenland summer: http://www.narsaq.dk/green-00.html
A related article I found on the web: http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 776
According to this, the farms are indeed under permafrost. However, it seems the reason for failure of the farms was not frost, but sand blown over the farms. Which is naturally caused by runaway erosion, which I had understood the Vikings had caused themselves by chopping down everything resembling trees (as happened with Iceland). If there were forests before, losing them would also mean changing the local microclimates, exposing the farms to chilly winds, and thus triggering the local freezing?
So to me it is not certain that global temperature change caused the freezing or non-freezing of the farmed areas. Somebody got harder facts?
ISSUE 2: Polar bears and iceless Arctic
Article: "There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none."
Reference linked from article: "In 1421 a Chinese Imperial Navy squadron sailed right round the Arctic and found no ice anywhere. It is possible that at that time there was less of an icecap at the North Pole than there is now, particularly in summer. Yet the polar bears survived. Though there has been much discussion of the supposed threat posed by the warmer Arctic, the polar bears are thriving in the current warm period. Eleven of the thirteen principal known families are prospering as never before."
What does it mean "thriving as never before?" The Polar Bear Specialist Group has a table of the population status of 20 polar bear populations (http://pbsg.npolar.no/status-table.htm). Two populations are decreasing in numbers, and *additionally* "thinner bears, lower female reproductive rates, and reduced juvenile survival in the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population in Canada, which is at the southern edge of the species' range and the first to suffer impacts from global warming."
Most of the populations are tagged "W - evidence global warming effects on sea ice or populations"
The populations do not change in a few years time. "Polar bears rely almost entirely on the marine sea ice environment for their survival so that large scale changes in their habitat will impact the population (Derocher et al. 2004). Global climate change posses a substantial threat to the habitat of polar bears. Recent modeling of the trends for sea ice extent, thickness and timing of coverage predicts dramatic reductions in sea ice coverage over the next 50-100 years (Hassol 2004)." http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/2282 3/all
I would be extremely surprised about the adaptivity of polar bears had they survived without polar sea ice during hundreds of years during the assumed iceless period, and then within hundreds of years fully retaken
It is not that it might not be happening -- the growth of CO2 levels in the atmosphere over the last 300 years (industrial civilization) are clear. The probable consequences are also clear (planet gets warmer, ice caps may melt, etc.) What is not clear is that the time frame makes the debate irrelevant. You can take apart the planet (Earth) in far less time than global warming would occur. (Since I'm sure many will find the statement objectionable let me repeat it -- you can take the planet (Earth) apart in far less time than global warming would occur.) The problem is whether we will apply the tools we have (based on biotechnology) or the tools we might have (based on nanotechnology) to mitigating the negative consequences of the path we are currently on? *Everyone* involved in this debate is engaged in it from the standpoint that it is "destiny" -- rather than accepting that humanity has reached the point where it can write the script.
We can apply solutions much faster than the problem is developing if we choose to do so.
And I would like to point out that there seems to be a rather universal perception that global warming is "bad". But having a fair understanding of the amount of land in Canada and Russia which is currently "uninhabitable" but might become "inhabitable" should the global temperature increase I tend to view it as nothing more than a population relocation problem.
Should we not instead be asking questions like "What should the global average temperature be?" and "What is the best way to set that?"
First off, thanks for posting something that has any content - it is a nice change. And thanks for the morning laugh - knew I could count on you.
Secondly, wow, do you know what user IDs are, or kharma bonus? I have been reading and participating on Slashdot for years, and based on user IDs, for many years longer than you. So, as your Slashdot "elder" I will politely refuse your suggestion that I go just because you can't handle someone calling you to task for posting a crappy comment, no matter how much you whine.
Thirdly, attribution is an appropriate thing to do, even if it is "only" wikipedia. While I appreciate you finally posting some content, if you don't at least giving a link to the article that you ripped off whole sale, it is called plagiarism. It's also kinda embarrassing that you don't fight your own fight, and instead rely on other people's words without admitting it. I respect research, but not stealing other people's words.
Finally, to the meat of the issue. Did I state that I was posting a flaming comment? Yes, in my very first comment, so you don't really make much of a point. Did I raise valid issues that were relevant to the thread? Yes, issues that you never even tried to address. Basically, I mocked you relentlessly for the fact that you started a thread by questioning scientifically valid data with no reference, making strawman arguments, and critiquing a movie you never saw with an invalid comparison. Then I continued to mock you when you failed to ever respond to the content of any of my comments. The interesting thing is that the wikipedia article you cut and past states:
So, just because a post is hostile (like mine), if it raises valid points, it is not a flame in the strict definition of the word. Did you even bother to read the article you were ripping off?
On the other hand, did I say you lived with your mom? No. Did I say you lived in a basement? No. Do I encourage you to commit suicide? No. Tell you to get a life? No. Did I say you had a negative value for society? No? Call you a cancer? Did I plagiarize? No. Did I ever tell you to "leave Slashdot alone?" No. These are all things you did, without ever trying to reply to basic points of any of my comments. I, on the other hand was using logic and valid points as a basis for mocking you.
You, sir are the true flamer here, reacting to valid criticisms (albeit with an overtly aggressive tone) with ad hominem attacks and an utter lack of content. Kettle, meet pot. Not only is it sad, it is quite hypocritical.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Although sunspots are regions of the Sun that are cooler, the surrounding faculae are brighter, so solar luminosity is greater at sunspot maximum. So your first bullet is completely wrong.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh....Ummm....I apologize, then. Profusely :)
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
.... found evidence while doing completely unrelated studies.
There has not been an organized campaign to hype up global climate change.
As for the denyers, it has been shown ad nauseam that they are normally backed up by shameful interest groups.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In the Kyoto agreement China would have been not force to reduce emisions (because they were laughably small when compared with the US's and other industrialized countries).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If Greenpeace had that much money they would have made sure they got anybody but Bush and his cronnies in the White House.
The fact that most people in recent Republican administrations are intimately linked with oil companies should tell you all what you need to know about which side has the resources to spin their truth.
And it is not like all the evidence regarding global climate change is comming from Greenpace. Most of it comes from research institutes while carrying research tangentially linked to climate change but whose result are later found to be useful to explain the problem.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
just to keep things in perspective:
Detailed Chronology of Late Holocene Climatic Change
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
You either probe what you are saying or apologize and SFU.
I am sick and tired of this smear of scientists that reached a conclussion many years before it was fashionable for politicians to support this idea, or for it to be potentially profitable to research climate change.
Show us that climate change is a self interested theory supported by ecological interests (like if those "interests" had any money to be paying for the huge amount of research required for all these studies)...
Shows the names o the scientists being paid, the organizations paying for them and in general a patter of deceit and misinformation, which is what you are implying.
With the flat-earthers of global climate change, supported by their paymasters in the industry, it is trivial to cast a light on the puppet masters.
So go on, show us that what you are asying is at least marginally plausiable.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is absolutely no empiric, observable data, of the existence of a deity of any kind. It is simply an article of faith. You either believe it or you don't.
Global climate change is not an article of faith. We know, in rough terms if you wish, what is going to happen if the climate changes too drastically, and we are drawing conslussions from multiple sources about the most probable cause of this climate change (us, our industrial activity).
Os in conclussion, your analogy is complete rubish.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is no formulated formal theory that states "if there is water there is life". If there was one, you should be able to find it quickly (because it would be a monumental piece of science), but I am betting you you can't.
What people do is an informed guess, since the only kind of life we know so far requires water to survive, thus it makes sense checking first what we know has potential, rather that go aimlessly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The difficulty with this kind of science is that conclusive proof that one or the other view is correct is hard to impossible to find. At best we can say that on the basis of what we've seen, there is definitely grounds for concern - the odds that we are warming the earth with our greenhouse gasses - and that this warming is "A Very Bad Thing" are certainly non-zero. They may not be 100% - but they certainly aren't 0%.
There are two questions we can have a shot at though:
* What is the cost to humanity if we shift gears and work hard to stop CO2 emissions when in fact we didn't need to do that?
* What is the cost to humanity if we do nothing and it turns out that the greenhouse effect is real and that the effect of increased temperatures is a major global crisis?
That study that came out of the UK last week offers answers to these questions. It said that:
* If we take action immediately, the cost is 1% of GDP - and we gain the benefit of increasing the time before we run out of fossil fuels and improving air quality, etc.
* If we wait (and the implication is "If we wait and it all goes horribly wrong") then the cost is 15% to 25% of GDP - with a recession worse than any the world has seen, the destruction of cities, the loss of animal species, etc.
So - there are four outcomes: If we make the mistake of assuming that global warming is true and it turns out we were utterly wrong - it costs us 1% of GDP and brings with it some other benefits. If we mistakenly assume global warming is bogus and it turns out we were utterly wrong - wave goodbye to civilisation as we know it. If we assume global warming is true and we're right - then we pulled ourselves back from the brink at a reasonable cost. If we assume global warming is false and we're right - then we have the status quo.
If you just ignore all of the pro- and con- science and said "I can't tell whether all of this stuff is true or not - I'm going to say it's a 50/50 chance" - then what is the prudent course of action? OBVIOUSLY it's worth spending 1% of GDP in order to remove a 50/50 chance of losing the planet. What if you say it's only a one in three chance? One in ten? What is your tolerance for risk?
People spend MUCH more than 1% of their income on car, house and personal insurance, extended warranties on electrical goods, health insurance and so on. The risks for those things are tiny by comparison to the likely probability of global warming being true. Adding a further 1% GDP burden as "global warming insurance" seems like a small thing to me.
Shows us some data, even a few examples, showing which people are getting fund and which aren't.
And just for your information, not all countries work in the same way when it comes to research.
In many countries you have freedom to chose your research topic under many circumstances and your grant will come from monies budgeted for general research in advance.
And in any case, the interest groups trying to fight the global climate change theory are coming with crap science by people with no expertise in the relevant scientific fields.
If they had a leg to stand on surely they would be hiring with the enormous resources they have, reputable scientists in the filed to make their point. The fact they aren't should thell us something about the quality of ther claims.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So you have no data but bodly make unsubstantiated claims.
Way to go buddy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It has been thoroughly debunked.
No wonder, since Mr Lombok did not have a solid background in any relevant fields.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are many other ways to infer temperatures in the past. We don;t nee to keep manual records of them .
SOme of these go back thousend of years (rings on fosiled trees, ice core in glaciers).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am surprised more people aren't aware of Global Dimming which after recent long term research has been fully supported. The basic problem is that both Global Warming and Global Cooling are going on at the same time. As we all know Global Warming is caused by greenhouse gases. Global Dimming is caused by particulate pollution (soot, etc).
In a nutshell they have found that in heavily polluted (particulates not CO2) areas, especially China and India, that particulates in the air downwind of these areas cause clouds to reflect 10 to 30 percent more sunlight back out into space than unpolluted clouds. This huge difference in reflectivity easily shows up in both satellite images and ground solar radiation measurements. 10 to 30 percent is a HUGE difference in solar radiation heating the earth and would have enormous consequences except that most of the earth isn't polluted to that extent (particulate wise) and a lot of areas at any given time have no clouds over them at all so no loss of sunlight is happening then.
The particulate pollution causes clouds to be more reflective by causing larger water vapor droplets to form because they are larger than the dust and pollen these droplets normally form around. For some reason, larger water vapor droplets causes greater reflection of sunlight back into space.
The increase in particulate pollution from growing third world countries far exceeds the decreases of the same in the US and Europe. As a result this global dimming has reduced the global temperature by about 1.3 degrees Celsius over 20 years. Of course Global Warming has increased the temperature even more than this over the same period of time, BUT, if Global Dimming weren't cooling the earth, Global Warming would have caused 1.3 degrees even more warming than it has and there wouldn't BE a debate about Global Warming.
In the future as we clean up particulate pollution in these third world countries the cooling effect will disappear rapidly and global warming will seem to have accelerated dramatically. In actuality, we will just have lost one of our counterbalancing effects to Global Warming.
Scientists have tended to ignore Global Dimming in the past because it was obvious the Earth was warming up not cooling down, but now extensive studies in the Indian Ocean have made it clear that it is happening, but it is not as strong as Global Warming. This only makes it clear that Global Warming is worse than we thought because it has to overcome this temporary global cooling effect of heavy particulate emissions (until we clean them up).
If the ice on top of Greenland melted, the Earth's oceans would rise 6 to 7 meters
Oh dear, I read that too, in some pro-GW article in the Guardian. And if you do the math, or even estimate the result, you will realise it is pure bull.
The increase in volume of ice over the same amount of water is about 9%.
Approximate area of all oceans 105,000,000 square km
Area of ice in Greenland is is 1,755,637 square km
So average depth of ice on Greenland needed raise global sea level by 6 meters (without taking the increase in sea area into account):
105,000,000 / 1,755,637 * 0.006 * 1.09 = 266,953,106 km
Do I think we should reduce polution and find a way to stop using fossil fuels? Hell yeah.
Do I think that "the sky is falling!" eco-nutjobs are prepared to lie to promote their cause, and in the process unwittingly bring the whole eco movement into disrepute? Damn straight.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Damn, maybe I should have repeated that calculation: 0.39 km
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
"So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels."
A "sawtooth" implies multiple rises and falls. That gives us a chicken and egg problem. Whether CO2 increases preceded temperature increases or the reverse is determined by which one rises first on the chart. The one to rise first is obviously determined by when the timeline starts. Until we can make the chart go back to the day God said "Let there be CO2", we can't really know which came first just from a chart.
Personally I like the way that he criticizes the UN for not superimposing one graph over another while we fails to do the same.
hockey stick
medieval warm period
actual history
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Actually, the area of the oceans is 361,254,000 km2, you used the land area from your source :)
Redoing the maths:
The relation between the average depth of the ice in Greenland and the raise in sea level if it melts is:
361,254,000/(1,755,637 * 1.09) = 188.8
Thus for every meter of raise in the sea level the ice in Greenland must be 188.8 meters deep. For 6 meters, that's 1132.8.
Not totally irrealistic.
"If the best you can do is tell critics that, "you can poke holes in anything," then what you're doing no better than astrology."
Not every critic deserves real consideration. There are others in this thread who have addressed the problems in this critique. My comments were appropriate for their target, and are valid. "Debunking" conclusions in a field as complex as climatology should require providing proof that the conclusions are wrong. Otherwise you aren't really "debunking" it, are you?
No worries. There was no sign in my post that said "ignore post location - poster is on crack." :)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Hmm, not sure why you applied the water/ice ratio to the area of Greenland, but I sure screwed up the sea area!
Still, applying it to result is not so far off at about 224 meter ice depth per meter of ocean increase, or 1345 meters average ice depth for 6 meter increase in sea depth.
Assuming that some of that ice sheet will be considerably thinner than that, means that there would be some ice mountains to rival the Himalayas, and that there are no rock mountains hiding underneath.
So yeah, it's within the realms of possibilty, but I still suspect it's a wild over-estimate.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
I still find it incredible that anyone would be surprised to find algore mouthing a falsehood, when there's not a one of them who doesn't know perfectly well that he spent eight years learning at the feet of the master.
Thank you. I find that ad hominem attacks are quite convincing. Thank you for illuminating the issues for me. Ignore the guy. If he's an idiot, don't stoop down to notice. Stick with the facts.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Wouldn't an ad hominem attack require an, um, attack?
I was questioning a "fact" that was posted in the summary, and posted a little research to help judge the validity of the "fact". Yes, my comments were "ad hominem", but they weren't an attack. The original summary was also "ad hominem", as in, listen to me because I "like Al Gore" and "donate to the Sierra Club".
However, if you want some facts, how about we start with the most obviously bogus claim (and there's a lot to choose from) on this site: "a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none." Why don't you Google that and see what you come up with? (Unfortunately, there's no reference on the site's list of "references" to back up that claim, so Google will have to do you. You will find sites that make this claim, and you'll find sites that show why it's nonsense. Only you can make the final call as to what you believe.)
Makes you wonder how someone who "donate[s] to the Sierra Club" would find this to be a "very convincing article", doesn't it?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I've tried to verify your statement, but all I've found so far is that increased CO2 will lead to increased forest fires which will lead back to increased CO2 (how much was not stated), most of the contribution of forest fires to CO2 is due to tropical forests (think slash-and-burn), and that boreal forest fires (as opposed to tropical forest fires, for example), contributed 828-1,103 Tg of CO2 in 1998, compared to 2,214.837 Tg emitted by US fuels (only fuels, mind you) in 1998. According to that same link, the fuels are 40.5% of the total US contribution, so that comes out to about 5,470 Tg of CO2 from the US alone.
So, your facts might be correct, but it's hard for me to verify. Do you have a source?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The debate about the existence of global warming due to anthropogenic effects (burning fossil fuels) ended in the mid to late 90s. To think that this debate continues or to attempt to participate is merely to flaunt one's ignorance on the subject. The IPCC cleared this up for us some time ago folks. The debate now is what can/should we do about it. All ideas welcome. Articles like the one refered to are merely political gambits which prey upon the voting public's ignorance. I'm sure there is a quote about no-one ever losing money by underestimating the general public (why don't YOU google it ;) )
Thinking you or anyone else is qualified to reopen the global warming debate is like me challenging the theory of relativity simply because I do not understand it and haven't taken the time to learn about reimanian (?) manifolds
Oh and by the way I'm not convinced that light is a wave either - it looks to travel in straight lines to me ...and while we're at it, I have some pretty interesting ideas I'd like to share with you all about the non-local / holographic universe as a rational basis for magic / astrology. I know what the physicists say but shouldn't we all get a say in cutting edge physics? Is this a democracy or not?
So, now, instead of responding to my points, you once again retreat behind name calling and blatant plagiarism. I thought, briefly, that your previous post was an indication that you might actually include some content, however flimsy, in your comments. By this post you have made clear that you are only interested in spamming with plagiarized quotes in an effort to avoid any sort of thought on your own part. Clearly, your first post was the peak of your ability, and was probably plagiarized itself.
As it appears that you are only spamming in an attempt to drown out a voice you don't want to hear and to get the last word in, I won't bother pointing out how hypocritical you are being again. Instead I will just bid your vacuous, flaming, trollish, plagiarizing self adieu.
P.S. Wow, I just realized why you are so pissed - I am actually getting uprated, and you are getting troll rated. Oh, the irony.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If all the predictions are true, isn't this just a way of nature balancing itself out? The climate changes the doomsayers predict will have the effect of reducing the human population, which will reduce CO2 emissions, which will bring things back into balance.
Anyway, I live in cold-ass New England and even though I live in a coastal town, my house probably 70-80 feet above sea level, so if global warming means I need to do less snowshoveling and my winter heat bill goes down, and by the time I'm ready to retire the climate in Massachusetts will be like Florida and due to the rise in sea level I may have oceanfront property, I don't necessarily see a downside. Sucks for the rest of ya, I guess :-)
I'm not a bigshot scientist from Harvard or anything, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but just in case it might help someone out I'd like to suggest an idea on how to save yourself from being drowned by the big SUDDEN, FLASH-FLOOD rise in sea levels which supposedly will occur over the course of some 70 YEARS: don't buy or build a house on the shore or in a flood-prone area.
"Plus, the federal government is only funding research that promises to debunk global warming at the moment. Haven't you read the NSF web page lately?"
A quick look didn't show me anything like that. Got a link?
This is not a signature.
This is off topic, but:
The books of the Bible are not in the order in which they were written (in most publications). IIRC, Revelations was not the last book written. Remember, the Bible wasn't always one volume, it's a compilation of many religious writings. I would not presume that he was referring to a compilation which had not yet been made, therefore he most likely meant that anyone who altered the Book of Revelations was sinning.
This is not a signature.
It's a pity not to take McKitrick as seriously as we should when he publishes "debunking" papers in which he mixes up radians and degrees when computing solar flux at different latitudes. The quality of peer-review McKitrick's papers get in the journals that do accept them is evident from the fact that this error was not being caught before the paper went to press.
When the latitude-dependence is properly calculated, McKitrick's alleged refutation of anthropogenic global warming disappears.
There have been many serious errors in the McKitrick's publications and this was only one of the more glaring and idiotic.
I too have a job - actually, a few. The main one is research support in academentia, which pays peanuts (75% less than I was making in the dot-com world), but caps the number of hours I can work in a year and has some flexibility in scheduling. The others are also research support, but through a temp agency.
:)
I'm here under the auspices of a donation-funded non-profit NGO, so everything has to cost them as little as possible. That means digging 'til I found $1765 RT ITO-NBO (and ITO is about the furthest place from NBO), staying in a training hotel run by students from a hotel-management school, and so on.
This "trust fund" idea sounds promising... where's the line form?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I agree.
There are other simple things that can be done, like stopping deforestation. Replenish the vegetation that has been destroyed. Grow more trees. Regulate polluting industries or vehicles. Invest in cleaner technology. Invest in cleaner energy. Reward cleaner lifestyles, process, technology and energy (and penalize the opposite). And regulation doesn't necessarily mean the simple man has to pay through taxes, or giving up luxuries cars. But if all the money wasted on building military, wars (and space exploration) can be put into such policies, there could be a whole lot less hunger and a better future for the globe.
We don't feel the problem, now. And we won't find one big solution, later. We won't see the immediate effect of the solution(s), since we don't literally feel any adverse effect of global warming, right now.
Why should we choose to wait and see, to feel the full adverse effect of global warming? When it's painfully obvious that big business rapes and pollutes the earth.
We choose who we want to believe on the future of global warming, but you can't discount the pollution and the deforestation that goes on around the world.
If the earth should ever come across another iceage - which I assume to be more of a freak of nature - there is nothing that we can do. But if the build up of global warming gases is helped by the pollution we make,then we should be able to limit our contribution to the process.
I mean - truth, half-lies or not - how bad could any action be that is aimed at stopping pollution and deforestation, which are major factors to the contribution of global warming gases, and the benefits of R&D into inventing cleaner technology and energy? No, we cannot eliminate CO2. But we also cannot eradicate vegetation that can photosynthesize it into Oxygen.
To recap, we use the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, the (measured) albedo of earth, the approximate mean temperature of earth, and the solar constant to estimate the effective emissivity of earth for infrared. We find it agrees with Earth's mean albedo. Using this value of the emissivity and the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, we estimate lambda as 0.29 K / (W / m^2), in good agreement with Monckton, and poor agreement with the other estimates he mentioned.
6 /11/cuckoo-science/#more-367
As discussed in www.realclimate.org things with the same units do not have the same
physical meaning. Suppose I drive from here to the store, get a beer, and drive back.
I measure my average speed, and my average accelerator pedal position,
and divide the two to get a 'lambda'. That isn't the same as asking, "how much faster
will I go right now if I press down the pedal by a certain small amount."
The issue for lambda is not integrating from zero to the current flux we have now, or even taking derivatives on an overly simplified model, but a much more complicated issue involving the physical mechanisms of all the feedfowards
and feedbacks starting now. The meaning of 'lambda' per Monckton is not the same as what climatologists care
about, which is a far more difficult and complicated thing to know.
Consider that if the average temperature is O(280K) that generic 'first principles'
physics computations can get reasonably close without details, because you
are looking in a part or two in a few hundred. And of course, it has to, since
the radiation has to go somewhere.
But those small percentages, and most importantly the feedback loops therein, are exactly what do matter,
0.2 or 0.4 degrees K on 280 is from first-physics a really small change.
Monckton pursues an 'easy' physics problem which is irrelevant to the issue and thinks he's cracked the puzzle.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
"Climatology class is hard."
I am not a environmental scientist. However I am an expert at statistical analysis. (An expert statistical analyzer?) There is absolutely no question that the earth's core temperature is rising abnormally. However it is not entirely clear whether or not C02 is the prime culprit. At this point it is the best guess. As I'm sure all of you know, the scientific method requires laborious testing in closed conditions with isolated variables. In the best conditions an experiment can be run multiple times (often times in the 1000's). This allows for a large pool of data reducing the general variable error rates. Basically, if you flip a coin 4 times and record the results, you are more likely to see data sets of all heads or all tails. This might lead one to believe that one side is more likely to be flipped than another. However flip the coin 1000 times, you are more likely to get something close to a 50/50 split. Scientists are dealing with 1 earth. At best they have 3 examples to compare (Earth, Venus which has a dense C02 atmosphere, Mars) Point being, its clear that global warming is happening, its hard to be sure that C02 is the single most influential cause. Honestly I am very concerned that global warming has more than just a single cause. We are so eager for a simple, "single shot" answer in general these days... Outside of carbon dioxide emissions, I would like to see more done to combat the heat island effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_island) which may or may not be contributing to global warming.