Global Warming/Climate Change Discussion Thread

[GT4_Rule]

I thought rainforests turn out O2s, not CO2s?

 

[Famine]

I thought rainforests turn out O2s, not CO2s?

You'd think so - if you've been taught that "plants make oxygen".

 

[Zardoz]

...The minority of the scientific community is the "Humans cause global warming" collective...

Really? Then why has the "majority" you seem to think exists not risen as one and thoroughly denounced this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

"The scientific consensus on global warming is that the Earth is warming, and that humanity's greenhouse gas emissions are making a significant contribution. This consensus is summarized by the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the Third Assessment Report, the IPCC concluded that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". This position was recently supported by an international group of science academies from the G8 countries and Brazil, People's Republic of China and India."

We all know how significant Wikipedia has become. You know what happens when something bogus is posted: It gets disputed and discredited, and flags are posted on the page. If it's all BS, it gets deleted.

Why was this blurb about this slightly significant issue allowed to stand with no mention of a dispute?

If you are right, why has the scientific community not burned this page at the stake?

 

[Famine]

Really? Then why has the "majority" you seem to think exists not risen as one and thoroughly denounced this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

"The scientific consensus on global warming is that the Earth is warming, and that humanity's greenhouse gas emissions are making a significant contribution. This consensus is summarized by the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the Third Assessment Report, the IPCC concluded that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". This position was recently supported by an international group of science academies from the G8 countries and Brazil, People's Republic of China and India."

We all know how significant Wikipedia has become. You know what happens when something bogus is posted: It gets disputed and discredited, and flags are posted on the page. If it's all BS, it gets deleted.

Why was this blurb about this slightly significant issue allowed to stand with no mention of a dispute?

If you are right, why has the scientific community not burned this page at the stake?

Now read the whole article.

 

[Zardoz]

Now read the whole article.

I did:

"Various other hypotheses have been proposed, including but not limited to:

The warming is within the range of natural variation.

The warming is a consequence of coming out of a prior cool period — the Little Ice Age.

The warming trend itself has not been clearly established.

At present, none of these has more than a small number of supporters within the climate science community."

I do agree that those hypotheses have some support among economists, conservative media columnists, and auto enthusiasts.

I read this article, too:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

"This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect."


Please cite a source other than yourself that indicates that you are correct in your opinion.

 

[Famine]

Now read the whole article.

By which I meant "rather than pulling random one-liners which appear to support your position when not read in context".

Amazingly, the scientific community tend not to use Wikipedia as an outlet. Even more amazingly, the most recent not-deleted contributors to the article include a politcally active fifteen year old radical from Singapore, a serial Wiki-abuser, a software consultant, a "semi-degree-ed philosopher scientist", a Dutch mathematician, an Ivy Leaguer, a railway enthusiast, an MDiv holder, a student at Boston... Not a single climatologist between them.

Your other link is just as interesting.

In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities

They say. They then provide a backup quote...

"Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"

Hold up there... Their corroborative quote does nothing of the sort. It says:

• Human activites change components in the atmosphere (duh!)
• Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases have probably lead to warming (double duh!)

It doesn't say "Human activities which change the components in the atmosphere are what lead to warming.". And with the massive gaps they've put in their quotes, it could say anything at all in the interim. Allow me to demonstrate:

Have I ever said that there's actually something we can do about it? I don't recall ever trying to advance that point. I'm so discouraged by the fact that the population of this little marble is continuing its insane, unabated rapid growth that I don't see how we can get out of this. There will be NINE BILLION of us by 2045! That just won't fly, folks. That is not going to work.

... there's actually something we can do about it ... see how we can get out of this ... [That] is ... going to work

Further to this:

That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change"

Only 928 papers published on Climate Change in 10 years? That's barely even 2 a week. I wonder if it's anything to do with the fact that the phrase "Climate Change" didn't even enter common scientific usage until about 1997.

Please head on over to http://www.junkscience.com/. You can find all sorts of references which aren't me which question if the reality of "anthropogenic climate change" is as most journalists and politicians present it...

June 21, 2005

One point apparently causing confusion among our readers is the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere today as compared with Earth's historical levels. Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective - understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly "catastrophically high." Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years.

Given that the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that's a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current 'guesstimations' of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet, we admit significant scepticism over simplistic claims of small increment in atmospheric CO2 equating to toasted planet. Granted, continental configuration now is nothing like it was then, Sol's irradiance differs, as do orbits, obliquity, etc., etc. but there is no obvious correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature over the last 600 million years, so why would such relatively tiny amounts suddenly become a critical factor now?

 

[Zardoz]

By which I meant "rather than pulling random one-liners which appear to support your position when not read in context"...

Okay.

Tell you what: We'll just watch as things continue to rapidly melt, and we'll take this up again in ten or fifteen years. We'll both need the data compiled in that time for either of us to change our minds, won't we?

See you then...

 

[DeLoreanBrown]

Denial is not an unexpected reaction but it is a very dangerous one, as is all complacency and laxness when dealing with very large forces ( not trivial & erroneous 0.28% votage 'innocence' ), heres a re-iteration of how denial is not worthy;

Quote:
Originally Posted by Touring Mars
It seems to me that the current available evidence is pointing in the direction of human activity rather than a natural cycle. That is the problem with evidence. No one single piece of evidence is of value in and of itself. Only with the slow and steady accumulation of mutually supporting evidence does one start to get a clearer picture of reality. The problem we are faced with is really a question of how to interpret the evidence we do have, and then we need to make a judgement call based on the strength of that evidence, whilst accumulating more evidence as we go along. But in the absence of conclusive evidence either for or against GW caused by human activity, it would be sheer folly to disregard the trends...

The cost of being wrong about this issue is potentially catastrophic. If those who believe that the current evidence points to global warming by human activity are wrong, but industrial emissions are cut anyway, then the consequences will not be any worse than they were going to be... no-one loses, apart from big businesses who are doing most of the polluting. But if it turns out that they are right, and the evidence (as it stands now) is ignored or (more likely) not judged to be substantial enough to justify action, then we are all in big trouble... (well, our grandkids will be anyway...) My point is, we can, in my view, only benefit by cutting emissions, so why not do it anyway?


Absolutely TM! Scientific evidence seems to always lean on probability theory with sufficiently large & complex datasets. The message, whichever way it is cut, is that we most be doing something tremendously practical about perceived tonnages at this time, whether we are correct in curbing emissions inc which ones is irrelevant as long as the awareness and momentum are in place.

Lets get the outlook from the metoffice, the weatherman from TM & Famine's neck of the woods & NO NOT from junksciencedotcom or the catoinstitute, both of which are from Zardozes neckof.

This little Hadley PDF
Stabilising climate to avoid dangerous climate change — a summary of relevant research at the Hadley Centre.

As Zardoz would have it, these weather people are hallucinating!

Here areTwo images from Hadley Centre documents that surely must rank as disreputable and silentfunded as the 'hosted' image that Famine & Danoff were splashing about in posts 157 & 168, it being the third image down.

,

SURELY

As we used sing on Sesame Street; 'One of these things is not like the other, One of these things just does'nt belong.'*

For a start the Hadley shots are simulations run on a piffiling NEC SX-6 supercomputer.

The last image data (aside from the host); THIS SITE BY: Monte Hieb and Harrison Hieb-- 1996 ,Last update: February 10, 2003.

This image is given w/out reference of generation on the site.

So are how these GWPs we're supposed to laud constructed?

I refer you to the pdf in the link above, as these scientist boffins at large government research institutions don't get their knickers in a twist over some steam & a rainbow, but quietly, as in a chessmove, they qualify their graphical offerings; 'In both
cases, the emissions scenarios include other greenhouse gases and aerosols, and concentrations of these in the atmosphere are stabilised after 2100.'

So lets take that middle image for a second; these guys are only modeling from datasets within a very tight window in and around the present day (1900-2100 in this case). They are not extrapolating from ice cores or to ice ages. They make no such claims in that direction, only the local tremors, their mappability and posited scenarios. As is their brief.
So the projected mean eurotemps for the early twentieth are roughly equivalent, the latter half of the century again the real is bounded by the virtual but woah! check out that 2003 scenario! - Has to be some of that there continuing natural warming that ended the last ice age and is now progressing into our humdrum quotidian little interglacial minding it's own business, hardly worth bothering about, eh?

That first image is a real toastie; someone put a labrador-sniffer on our THC & Crikey! are all those red lines bottoming out the free hot water bottles for grannies on the NHS?

The middle image is percentile nothing but is scalar @200 to the solar cycle of this nicelittleearner lump of shytrock. The top image is SIX on the same scale!!!!(Getting into year seven's winter is like getting into the gulag; minus twenty! from The CET, one of the most reliable temperature statistics in the history of statistics!)

But these are hypothetical scenarios i hear you cry - Pray do tell & Water-Vapour is a fluctuating unknown that any scientist worth their NEC SX-6 would have to *cough* overlook in the favour of the 'methane' consortium - Yes, one fart from the Leopard of the deep N.Atlantic & Greenland will be (in creationist time, check the PDF, that's still seconds to the 'dead' 'unhomeostatic' earth), no sic will be - green, dark, inviting.[/ironicals]

Time for a refutational quote from the documentation in focus & please keep in mind that this is the met office of england's website whois the publisher;

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]'The Hadley Centre maintains the long-term record of sea-ice cover and sea-surface[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]temperature, known as HadISST. This shows that until the 1960s, the extent of Arctic[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]sea ice was relatively constant, but since 1970 it has decreased by about 7.5%[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif](a million square kilometres). Using only natural factors — such as internal ‘chaos’[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]and solar and volcanic changes — we were not able to reproduce this change with[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]the Hadley Centre model. However, when human activity is also taken into account,[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]model simulations are in good agreement with observations, implying a man-made[/FONT]​

[FONT=StoneSerifITC-Medium, serif]cause for the melting of Arctic ice.'[/FONT]​

Do peruse this source for 'myths' concerning;i) how carbon is & is projected not to be sequestered in the 'flush once' 'nature'.ii) Methane hydrates were possibly illegal and now they're the floor below lingerie.
While your at it, review the exciting world of climate model building & it's graphs (PDF, of course, at least) in teh Jenkins Document. Make a pitstop from denial & other boring flappery at the true scientist playground of the Third Culture (me faves at present being Lynn the Margulis agus Roger the Penrose)

If ure willing to deny the impeccability of these links do post up some fatuous twaddle funded by dodo industries w/ murderous hidden interests & toys for your seat.










* or is it that Lena Zavaroni winner cover " West Virginia mountain mamma, take me home, country road".

​

 

[Zardoz]

Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

 

[Zardoz]

Time Magazine's cover story this week

Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

Synopsis:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/26/coverstory/index.html

We're in deep s**t.

 

[GT4_Rule]

You have lots of webpages and soureces ehh?

Yeah, we were in deep **** from long time ago.

 

[Famine]

Time Magazine's cover story this week

Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

Synopsis:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/26/coverstory/index.html

We're in deep s**t.

...

The media portrays a dramatic image of how the ice is melting in the polar regions as a consequence of global warming. We are warned that the North Pole might become icefree during the summer months at the end of this century and that the polar bears might become extinct due to this development.

But is this really a realistic image? Sure, there is research that indicates that the ice sheets are being reduced, but there are also studies that show the complete opposite. An example of this is a study in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letter where the Swedish researcher Peter Winsor compares data collected by submarines below the Arctic ice. His conclusions are that the thickness of the ice has been almost constant between 1986 and 1997.

If you look at the South Pole there are studies that show an increase in the mass of the ice. In a study published in the journal Nature a number of polar researchers showed that they had observed a net cooling of 0.7 degrees in the region between 1986 and 2000. Another study published in Science showed that the East-Antarctic ice sheet had grown with 45 million metric tones between 1992 and 2003.

Are the ices growing or melting? The simple answer is that there exist studies that point to both directions, perhaps indicating that scientists know relatively little about global climate. But what counts to most ordinary people is what media is reporting, and media is often highlighting the most alarming studies and seldom report of studies that go against the notion that human activity leads to global warming. To put it simply, the news is filtered through an environmentalist view of the world.

An interesting example of how media sometimes gets it wrong is how journalists reported that there had never been so little ice in the Arctic than in 2005. This claim was based on satellite images by NASA which showed that the geographic extent of the ice sheet had never been so small since measurement began in 1979. One must however keep in fact that about half of the ice in the Arctic melts each summer and that two months before this measurment the extent of the ice sheet was the same as the previous year. The problem is that satellite images show the surface of the ice but not the thickness.

Capten Årnell at the summer expedition with the polar-ship Oden could tell that he had never seen so much ice in the Arctic than in 2005. It was with great difficulty that he had passed through the region. What had happened in 2005 seems to be that the ice had packed densely against the Canadian part of the Arctic. The geographical extent had been reduced but the ice was thicker.

There is evidence that the McGinnis Glacier, a little-known tongue of ice in the central Alaska Range, has surged. Assistant Professor of Physics Martin Truffer recently noticed the lower portion of the glacier was covered in cracks, crevasses, and pinnacles of ice--all telltale signs that the glacier has recently slid forward at higher than normal rates. It has not been determined whether the glacier continues to surge.

Truffer, of the Geophysical Institute's Snow Ice and Permafrost Group, is having difficulty finding evidence of the glacier's history. He says the glacier hasn't been on anyone's radar screen for some time. Much of what has been written about the glacier is that it was covered with debris after several landslides broke loose from Mount McGinnis after the 2002 Denali Fault earthquake. In fact, that's what prompted Truffer to explore the glacier just a few days ago on a recreational snowmachining trip with friends.

"We were going to look at the landslide area and instead we saw that the entire glacier had surged. It was completely by chance," he said.

In a small aircraft on March 13, Truffer flew over McGinnis Glacier with Professor Emeritus Will Harrison to confirm the signs of the glacier's surge. The glaciologists saw trim lines high up on the glacier and accordion-like crunching at its base. A surge starts high up on a glacier and then propagates in a wave down the length of the glacier. Truffer says surging is unusual, however the Alaska Range is unique in that there are several glaciers located there that experience this. The most well known surging glacier in Alaska is the nearby Black Rapids Glacier, which advanced within a half a mile of the Richardson Highway in 1936.

the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that's a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current 'guesstimations' of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet

 

[Danoff]

Okay.

Tell you what: We'll just watch as things continue to rapidly melt, and we'll take this up again in ten or fifteen years. We'll both need the data compiled in that time for either of us to change our minds, won't we?

See you then...

Death.

This, Zardoz, indicates that you can't support your position. If you can't support your position you have no reason to have it.

Yes, global warming is a popular scare tactic by the media to get people to tune in and buy magazines these days. You can quote hundreds of them... but you're not going to find one that has anything more than circumstantial evidence at best.

Instead of doing your regular thing, dragging another article that says nothing, hoping that with enough articles that don't prove anything, you've actually proven something - why not try a new strategy? Why not try actually addressing some of the points Famine and I (mostly Famine) have laid out? Take a look at that C02 chart and the lack of corresponding temperature change. Take a look at the solar output charts I put on this thread 50 pages back and try addressing those.

Both Famine and I have quoted your articles and showed how they use inferences to draw conclusions which aren't supported. We've disputed your points (though, admittedly, not all 50 billion articles you've cited), you might try disputing one or two of ours. And try not to fall back on logical fallacies like "attacking the source" either. Just because Exxon sponsored it doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because a million journalists agree with you, doesn't make you right.

 

[Zardoz]

Death.

Yeah, on a scale like none of us ever imagined it could possibly happen.

I really hope that you, Famine, Steve Milloy, and George W. Bush are right. God help us all if you're not.

The way things are playing out, we won't have long to wait to find out.

 

[Danoff]

Yeah, on a scale like none of us ever imagined it could possibly happen.

I really hope that you, Famine, Steve Milloy, and George W. Bush are right. God help us all if you're not.

The way things are playing out, we won't have long to wait to find out.

I don't totally understand what you mean by hoping I'm "right". Do you mean that you hope I'm right about it being a scare tactic to get you to purchase magazines and watch television? Because it is (whether or not it's a legitimate story is another issue). I haven't said that we're not causing global warming. I've simply said that the evidence isn't convincing. I'm surprised you find it convincing.

 

[Swift]

Yeah, on a scale like none of us ever imagined it could possibly happen.

I really hope that you, Famine, Steve Milloy, and George W. Bush are right. God help us all if you're not.

The way things are playing out, we won't have long to wait to find out.

I'm not trying to be a jerk or an ignorant fool here. But I've also heard studied that show the polar ice caps actually getting larger. Not at the fringes, but at the peaks and mountain like regions. So basically it's just recycling. Is that not what it's supposed to do?

 

[FoolKiller]

So basically it's just recycling. Is that not what it's supposed to do?

Good question. Unfortunately only 30 years worth of satellite data is not going to be near enough to determine if the poles have some sort of cycle to them.

 

[Zrow]

It seems as if environmentalists would like nothing more than environmental disaster, just so they can say, "See, told ya so!".


If you're that concerned with the state of the ice caps and the environment, shouldn't you be, like, happy about the studies that suggest they might not be shrinking?

 

[GT4_Rule]

But if the ice caps are getting larger, why are so many polar bears stuck in one section because the ice has broken and their only way of transportation (swimming isnt effective - they cant swim too long; look at their body weight)

 

[Famine]

But if the ice caps are getting larger, why are so many polar bears stuck in one section because the ice has broken

Smaller surface area but thicker.

(swimming isnt effective - they cant swim too long; look at their body weight)

Please explain the Blue Whale.

 

[kikie]

I haven't search this thread but i've been looking for links (internet) where I can watch satellite images ===> air pollution. Does someone knows any links?? I want to know and see (satellite images) the air is supposed to be breathable (world wide)

 

[Kylehnat]

In Google Earth, heavily-polluted areas can appear to be hazy brown, but it's certainly not conclusive. The type of soil and time of day can influence how the picture looks. For instance, Tripoli is a very scary red color. Perhaps the apocalypse is coming.

 

[Zrow]

Today my anthropology professor described being skeptical of global warming as "believing the world is flat". Figured some of you might find that interesting.

 

[Danoff]

Today my anthropology professor described being skeptical of global warming as "believing the world is flat". Figured some of you might find that interesting.

...and an anthropology professor is an authority on global climate patterns?

 

[Kylehnat]

"believing the world is flat".

My uncle and I had a nice discussion about this as we gazed out over the Pacific Ocean. We concluded that the earth IS flat, but at the edge, there is a hill which slopes down gently on either side. The funny thing is, the hill is always directly in front of you no matter which part of the horizon you're looking at...

(Anyone who still believes that the world is flat really needs to go to the beach. The evidence against is irrefutible).

 

[Zrow]

I'm pretty sure that he just meant it was the same style of thinking of people who used to think the world was flat.

 

[Danoff]

I'm pretty sure that he just meant it was the same style of thinking of people who used to think the world was flat.

So... wrong then? I mean what does it really mean? It means he thinks they're wrong. If he turns out to be wrong, it'll be he that was more like the folks who thought the Earth was flat.

Not much can be extracted from a statement like that.

 

[Zrow]

Oh I know, I just kind of thought it was a funny part of his standard liberal complain-fest. He's the biggest cynic of western culture I've ever heard, honestly.

 

[Zardoz]

There goes that damned media again:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12016838/site/newsweek/

But what's significant is that the issue now has the high-minded imprimatur of the Ad Council, which gave the world Smokey Bear. This has not escaped the notice of people on the other side of this issue, such as James M. Taylor, the spokesperson for climate issues at the Heartland Institute, a conservative Chicago-based think tank. The Ad Council is supposed to be nonpartisan, Taylor wrote in an e-mail, but "global warming alarmism is markedly controversial ... This Ad Council campaign amounts to nothing more than an end run around a skeptical Congress, a skeptical president and a sharply split scientific community." Like the groups promoting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution, Taylor's outfit is fighting to convince the public that there's even a debate going on. But in a statement earlier this month he actually went further, asserting, preposterously, that the only remaining scientific debate is over how much "marginal" harm—or benefit—global warming will bring to humanity.

Taylor's evidence for a split in scientific opinion is a petition—circulated by the eminent physicist Frederick Seitz and signed by some 17,000 scientists in various fields—calling on the United States to reject any limits on carbon emissions. It was attached to a study by four scientists, none of them climatologists, which called global warming "an invalidated hypothesis." But the paper and the petition date from 1998, and climate science has come a long way since then, says Dan Lashof, a researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The paper makes much of a chart showing that atmospheric temperatures measured by satellites appeared to decline from 1979 to 1997. Then, after the paper was written, they began to climb. The climatologist who did the original satellite study, John R. Christy of the University of Alabama—who is personally skeptical of the need to control carbon dioxide—told NEWSWEEK in an e-mail that "ince the El Niño of 1997-98, our satellite trend has been positive." That doesn't prove anything by itself, but it calls into question the fairness of using decade-old data to make a political point in 2006.


Whatever happened to that "petition", and has anybody ever bothered to check out who actually signed it?

(This means nothing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4855822.stm

Two big cyclones hitting Australia in quick succession is meaningless, I'm sure. No cause for concern here, right?

I mean, it proves nothing, right?)

 

[FoolKiller]

Oh I know, I just kind of thought it was a funny part of his standard liberal complain-fest. He's the biggest cynic of western culture I've ever heard, honestly.

Next time he starts ask if he can stick to the subject because he isn't being paid to give political rants. Seeing as how you are paying for his services you should have every right to ask him not to do this.

A professor/teacher that subjugates their students to this (from either side of the aisle) make me sick. If I stood around having political debates at my job I would get fired.

That's an idea. If he tries to tell you he can rant like that remind him that at a real job he would be fired if he acted in the same manner. Be sure to include the emphasis on real.