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New Research Forecasts Global 6C Increase By End of Century
jamie writes with this snippet from the UK's Independent:
"The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. ... [The study] found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available. On average, the researchers found, there was an annual increase in emissions of just over 3 per cent during the period, compared with an annual increase of 1 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Almost all of the increase this decade occurred after 2000 and resulted from the boom in the Chinese economy. The researchers predict a small decrease this year due to the recession, but further increases from 2010."
How do they know if the CO2 is from fossil fuels or from natural sources, is there actually a test for this?
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
We think it might be the multiple of a groat, furlong and an acre foot.
I wonder whether there is correlation between those who still use Fahrenheit exclusively and those who pretend that there is no such thing as man made climate change...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
It's even better - the source cited in the story above is the CRU (funny how "University of East Anglia" started being the source when everyone found out that CRU was more than a bit corrupt) - the same people who just got busted with all of that leaked data and incriminating emails just this week.
So they apparently decided to double down on their predictions, instead of trying to pretend nothing happened - but hiding the provenance.
Anyone want to bet the lead author on the paper wasn't the lead author last week, and got "promoted" when the real researchers' names were tainted?
Given that the greenhouse effect involves a complex feedback cycle, that is not a valid assumption.
I suggest everyone reads about ClimateGate (http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d21-ClimateGate-emails-provide-unwanted-scrutiny-of-climate-scientists) and then provides his/her own
analysis that fits best with what you believe.
Science has become politics and hence can not be trusted anymore.
As to why etc. I'll leave that to some else.
A predicted 6 degrees Celsius rise in a century? Oh, how scary! Let's introduce onerous carbon-curbing measures.
But wait, the models that make these predictions all have CO2 as the driving factor behind climate change. The historical record shows, however, that the atmospheric CO2 concentration follows changes in global temperature instead of leads it. Not surprising: higher temperature -> oceans heat up -> less dissolved CO2.
Moreover, there is a perfectly plausible alternative explanation for what is causing the rapid climate fluctuations (historically going both up and down on a fairly short timescale): the sun. If you include the EUV and X-Ray bands of the spectrum, it becomes obvious that the sun's output changes much more than it is being given credit for: http://www.usc.edu/dept/space_science/sem_data/SEM%20Data%20Graphs/SEM_1996-2009.jpg
If you look at the temperature from outer sky you might measure the heat emission from earth to outer space. The higher the temperature, the higher the heat emission. If a greenhouse effect is effective, it reduces the heat emission and thus the temperature. In this scenario there would be a lower temperature in the upper atmospheric region as long as until a new equilibrium is reached, with higher temperatures at the surface of the earth.
Why would people on the left want there to be global warming?
Because left-wing ideology, from Marx and Mussolini to the present day, is about State control and limits on individual freedom. Irrespective of their accuracy, the theories of AGW are an excuse for a State power grab, complete with the introduction of new taxes and new laws to control how we all live.
You remember the Patriot Act and how most of us didn't like it? AGW laws are similar: created on equally specious grounds, and with the identical aim of removing our freedoms and strengthening the state.
Let me add, AGW does have a political dimension here in Europe, but big media does not report dissenting (skeptical) views. Big media sides with Government propaganda, especially in Britain, where the Government is constantly broadcasting commercials with our tax money: "Act on CO2" or the Green God will flood this land and drown your puppies and kittens. No, seriously.
And you're more qualified then most other people to be able to interpret a basic line graph?
I'm just putting this out there because you slamming a very large and ever growing crowd by calling them ignorant, unqualified and knuckle-dragging. You also go further and tell them their views don't count in this debate. And yet I don't see why I should value your views and opinions any more then I should theirs. What makes you so much better?
As a Canadian I say...
If it is not true... wonderful climate change is not that bad.
If it is true... wonderful... no more snow in winter!
Sorry to any part of the world negatively affected by global warming. Where I live (away from the ocean, in a cold climate), a degree warming can only be a good thing.
Allow me to extensively quote John Cook (http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-do-the-hacked-CRU-emails-tell-us.html), as he is closer to the topic than I am.
What do the suggestive "tricks" and "hiding the decline" mean? Is this evidence of a nefarious climate conspiracy? "Mike's Nature trick" refers to the paper Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries (Mann 1998 http://www.elmhurst.edu/~richs/EC/FYS/Mannetal.OriginalPaper.pdf), published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann. The "trick" is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.
The "decline" refers to the "divergence problem". This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692171/pdf/43XA8LK6PCMVMH9H_353_65.pdf). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 ( http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/4/741/2008/cpd-4-741-2008.pdf ) which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature.
In the skeptic blogosphere, there is a disproportionate preoccupation with one small aspect of climate science - proxy record reconstructions of past climate (or even worse, ad hominem attacks on the scientists who perform these proxy reconstructions). This serves to distract from the physical realities currently being observed. Humans are raising CO2 levels ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm ). We're observing an enhanced greenhouse effect ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm ). The planet is still accumulating heat ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling.htm ). What are the consequences of our climate's energy imbalance? Sea levels rise is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm ). Greenland ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/greenland-cooling-gaining-ice.htm ). Arctic ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-melt-natural-or-man-made.htm ). Globally, glacier ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing.htm ). Antarctic ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm ).
When you read through the many global warming skeptic arguments ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php ), a pattern emerges. Each skeptic argument misleads by focusing on one small piece of the puzzle while ignoring the broader picture. To focus on a few suggestive emails while ignoring the wealth of empirical evidence for
It's a lot more than that. You can see people conspiring to delete data which might impugn their conclusion, and they're trying to do it before they can be hit by a freedom of information request. Criminal conspiracy to hide publicly-funded data by destroying it, hmmmm? Prosecutors in the UK should definitely be hitting these folks with an order not to destroy any data nor to delete any emails, and then they should be seeking a copy of the emails directly from the site.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I submitted article with the real truth, wonder if slashdot will post it?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Life insurance companies will be very much in favor of longer lifespans. For health insurance companies it depends on whether you're in good health for the extra years; if so, it will benefit them as well.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Those who bear false witness and say the mean world temperature is not rising have one more fact that they seem unable to explain to account for:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/22/east-antarctic-ice-sheet-nasa
If is not getting warmer, why is ice melting everywhere at accelerated rates and bringing local temperatures in various places temporarily down with it?
actually, the stall would be BEFORE big ice melts as heat capacity of ice is much higher, to say nothing of the huge amount of energy it takes to make the phase change to liquid water. so the stall should have been much earlier, not now!
The heat capacity of water is about 2x that of ice, and melting ice takes ~80x the energy of heating water 1C. So any stall should happen while the ice is melting, which is apparently now.
This data dump has been out for a week or so, and here's the damning evidence:
# Michael Mann feels that a journal has published a sub-par paper, for reasons that are highly political, and wants other scientists to consider not submitting there. He doesn't destroy the journal or force anyone not to submit there. (1047388489)
# Tim Osborn uses a known, published technique --- that has been widely discussed in the literature --- to deal with the fact that one (of many) datasets is inconsistent. (0939154709).
# Phil Jones discusses his role in the assassination of skeptic John Daly!! (Just kidding, this email is tactless but has no impact on the science, and you know that perfectly well.) (1075403821)
# This FOI stuff does sound "awful" out of context. But here's the thing --- a hacker just stole their entire database, so who needs FOI requests? I mean, if they're avoiding FOI requests to hide some malfeasance, I'm sure you guys'll find it now. But instead of finding a smoking gun, all we get are a bunch of silly emails. (1219239172)
This is not experimental science. Experimental science involves performing an *experiment* with varying initial parameters, measuring the results and then arriving at a correlation.
In this specific case, we are talking about measuring tree rings in Yamal - this is purely an *observational* science as the scientist isn't actually performing any experiment but just documenting observed trends.
When you are observing trends, it is disingenuous, to include readings from a completely different set of subjects in a study which does not reference them so that the results tie into a specified hypothesis.
This is deliberate mangling of data to serve an agenda. Let us not grace this by calling it a science - and especially not an experimental science
The models were coded using assumptions, and we are talking about a chaotic system that is difficult to predict 7 days in advance let alone 70 years. In fact many of these models are based on models of ocean currents recently shown to be wrong. Not that anyone seems to care.
Then, of course, is the question of other factors that might be understated. Solar activity increased in the past 50 years too, but now we have had 18 months and that activity has vanished. Temperatures have historically increased and decreased with the increase and decrease of solar activity. It is an accepted factor in global warming, but looking at Mars and Jupiter it is strange how much extraterrestrial climate change is happening at exactly the same time. Maybe they have underestimated the Sun's importance.
My problem is this: "Climate change" is no longer a real science. The one thing that the hacked emails proved is that Climate Change has become far too political to be called a science. You don't need stolen emails to prove that proponents of the current climate change theory are doing what they can to stifle debate. When the debate is gone, there is no science.
I am willing to admit when I am wrong, but it is not time for that yet. Solar activity may be approaching a minimum, and if it does, it will prove me right or wrong. But I am sure-- damned sure --that if global temperatures fall with the solar activity, a good many of the current scientists echoing the conventional wisdom will adjust their models to prove that they were right all along.
Yeah, right. Because no one in the climate sciences has heard about Cross validation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation_(statistics) ).
And btw, if a model predicts the 1930's accurately [b]and theses years were not part of the sample set[/b], that is pretty good cross validation in my book.