Posted                       

quote:

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A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clint Boggis:
Presumably he lives as though there is almost no future left for us on Earth then.

Has he given up work so he can evangelise for his (and our) final few days. No point in starting to read a book as he'll never get to the end. Why take the time to look after his house, car, his body?

And I assume no savings, no pension, no insurance, no subscriptions to anything, no memberships. Why bother when it all ends so soon? Does he bother shaving, cleaning his teeth and having a shower?

Surely we have to assume there's some future or everything would be pointless and society would collapse.

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
This is what should have appeared under the above quote:

Very funny. I actually recycle, have those new lightbulb thingies and believe that as far as caring for the environment there i nothing wrong with green concerns whatever. What I worry about is the 'meltdown' scenario of so-called man-made climate change and the rush to believe the almost spiritual doctrine of caring for mother earth - and if you don't do it in the zealous way Al Gore (hypocrite) tells you, then you are akin to a holocaust denier.

So, don't worry - ecology is fine - plant trees, recycle, reduce fishing, be good stewards etc, etc, all that stuff, but don't tell me that if I don't do it enough it's my fault if all the ice melts and floods Nepal. I do not believe the doomsday scenario nor do I believe that we are responsible for its causes - certainly not the Church!!

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog, presumably to explain why he considers Al Gore to be a hypocrite:
The amount of energy he uses (from 'green' sources or not)

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quote:

---

and the fact that he encouraged that ridiculous set of concerts last week with rock stars all jetting around the world

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
paganism and ecology.

Not true?
Refute it then.

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Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
unlike the stunt at the first Live Aid with stars performing in one venue then hopping on Concorde to perform at another one.

---

So are you criticising an amazing, historic event which actually raised money to meet actual and real needs in the developing world just because everyone involved didn't think about something no-one was actually thinking about at the time?



--------------------
'When ideas fail, words come in very handy' ~ Goethe

Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Littlelady:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
unlike the stunt at the first Live Aid with stars performing in one venue then hopping on Concorde to perform at another one.

---

So are you criticising an amazing, historic event which actually raised money to meet actual and real needs in the developing world just because everyone involved didn't think about something no-one was actually thinking about at the time?

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I actually recycle, have those new lightbulb thingies and believe that as far as caring for the environment there i nothing wrong with green concerns whatever. What I worry about is the 'meltdown' scenario of so-called man-made climate change and the rush to believe the almost spiritual doctrine of caring for mother earth - and if you don't do it in the zealous way Al Gore (hypocrite) tells you, then you are akin to a holocaust denier.

So, don't worry - ecology is fine - plant trees, recycle, reduce fishing, be good stewards etc, etc, all that stuff, but don't tell me that if I don't do it enough it's my fault if all the ice melts and floods Nepal. I do not believe the doomsday scenario nor do I believe that we are responsible for its causes - certainly not the Church!!

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Countless scientists have been studying this for decades. They have literally put in tens of thousands of man-years work into researching, debating, attending conferences, and general bickering. It's probably the most examined scientific question ever.

[snip very worried quotes from:

• American Meteorological Society
• Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias (Brazil)
• Académie des Sciences (France)
• Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy)
• Russian Academy of Sciences
• National Academy of Sciences (USA)
• Royal Society of Canada
• Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
• Science Council of Japan
• Academy of Science of South Africa
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Indian National Science Academy
• Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (Mexico)
• Royal Society (UK)
• American Geophysical Union
• Stratigraphy Commission (Geological Society of London)
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• The Union of Concerned Scientists
• The American Academy for Advancement of Sciences
• National Research Council
• The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society]

These are bright people, and it's their job to study this stuff. Thousands of them. For years and years.

And yes, they MIGHT be wrong, as most would acknowledge. Climate is complicated. But you sound extremely confident that they're virtually all wrong and it's not a significant problem. Where do you get that certainty from? And if you're not 100% certain, then how sure are you?

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Posted                          

quote:

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These are names of scientists who are questioning the global warming hysteria.

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quote:

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"If our climate in Wales is going to be more like Spain's or southern California's in the summer, then Spain will be more like the Sahara.
If that is the kind of climate shift we cannot avoid having by 2050, it will hardly be unhelpful to Wales."

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quote:

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"He was stressing that even if climate change has advantages for Wales it will be catastrophic for other parts of the world."

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Dr. Art Robinson, Founder, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

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quote:

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The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is a small research institute founded in 1980 to conduct basic and applied research in subjects immediately applicable to im­provements in human life — including biochemistry, diagnos­tic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine, and aging.

The Institute is supported by donations and the inde­pendent earnings of its faculty and volunteers. It does not solicit or accept tax-financed government funds.

The Institute has six faculty members, several volunteers who work actively on its projects, and a large number of volunteers who help occasionally...

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quote:

---

The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM's Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed "Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University", may have given some persons the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the academy's peer-reviewed journal. ...
In reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)

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Posted                       

quote:

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As a result of the burning of coal and oil, the driving of cars, and other human activities, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at a rate of about half a percent per year. … The physical effects of carbon dioxide are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind strength, and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase "global warming." This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading, because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:

But what about this list:
<snip list>
What's a muggle supposed to believe?

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Posted                          

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:

But what about this list:
<snip list>
What's a muggle supposed to believe?

---

Many thanks for the reply Mudfrog.

There are certainly individual scientists who dispute AGW - no-one would claim otherwise. But in any recent scientific theory will have opponents...the key thing is to realise what a tiny minority they're in here.

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code:

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--------------------  (pro AGW)
.                     (anti AGW)

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Posted                   

quote:

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On January 31, ‘07 the National Geographic Channel presented a special on global climate change. The first half-hour was a good representation of paleoclimate variation. The program then devolved into a Al Goresk type anthropogenic global-warming tirade. With the Vostok ice core record presented graphically, it was claimed that the temperature curve follows carbon dioxide, despite the obvious fact that didn’t. (CARBON DIOXIDE DOESN’T CAUSE GLOBAL TEMPERATURES TO RISE:)

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
On a whim? On the contrary, I spent a great many hours over several weeks comparing data and very soon concluded that the recent rise in hot air was due to political spin and not man-made CO2.

Really sad, that some now think Carbon Dioxide a toxic gas because of all the hype...

And Maggie must be smirking now that even the environmentalist lobby is backing the building of nuclear energy plants.. (see some pages back for the background).

This an example of where spin which passes for your "consensus of scientists" turns into farce:

quote:

---

On January 31, ‘07 the National Geographic Channel presented a special on global climate change. The first half-hour was a good representation of paleoclimate variation. The program then devolved into a Al Goresk type anthropogenic global-warming tirade. With the Vostok ice core record presented graphically, it was claimed that the temperature curve follows carbon dioxide, despite the obvious fact that didn’t. (CARBON DIOXIDE DOESN’T CAUSE GLOBAL TEMPERATURES TO RISE:)

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And, I wish some of that global warming would come my way..

Myrrh

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Archimandrite:
Have a go at a sarky comeback to my remarks a few posts ago, would you, there's a dear?

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quote:

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Dr Veizer's article, which appeared in the December 7, 2000 edition of Nature, was titled “Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon” and described the development of new databases for understanding the temperature of seawater and climate change over the last 550 million years. Based upon these new data-bases, Dr.Veizer was able to postulate in his article that CO2 was not the main driver of climate cycles on geological time scales. On December 7, 2000, the front-page headline of the Toronto Star announced: “Climate change theory stuns scientists.” The next day, a Calgary Herald headline further sensationalized Dr. Veizer’s research by stating:“Scientist deflates greenhouse theory.” Rather than celebrating his research achievement, Dr.Veizer found himself struggling to explain the true meaning behind his years of research. What he ultimately found is that front-page headlines do not always capture the full scope of scientific findings.

“What most people don’t understand,” says Dr.Veizer,“is that there is a natural greenhouse effect of 33°C, without which the Earth would be a frozen wasteland. About two-thirds or more of this temperature enhancement is due to water vapour, not CO2. And how much of the superim-posed 0.6°C temperature rise over the last century can be attributed solely to the 70 ppm (or 30 %) CO2 rise believed to be of anthropogenic origin is an open question. The situation is very complex. We are not saying that CO2is not a greenhouse gas. It is. But so is water vapour. How much each contributes to the greenhouse, let alone to climate change is something that we have yet to figure out

(Dr Veizer, see page 8)

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
On a whim? On the contrary, I spent a great many hours over several weeks comparing data and very soon concluded that the recent rise in hot air was due to political spin and not man-made CO2.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Let's take the first I googled:

quote:

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Dr Veizer's article, which appeared in the December 7, 2000 edition of Nature, was titled “Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon” and described the development of new databases for understanding the temperature of seawater and climate change over the last 550 million years. Based upon these new data-bases, Dr.Veizer was able to postulate in his article that CO2 was not the main driver of climate cycles on geological time scales.

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---

quote:

---

continuing the quote from the site Googled
And how much of the superim-posed 0.6°C temperature rise over the last century can be attributed solely to the 70 ppm (or 30 %) CO2 rise believed to be of anthropogenic origin is an open question. The situation is very complex. We are not saying that CO2is not a greenhouse gas. It is. But so is water vapour. How much each contributes to the greenhouse, let alone to climate change is something that we have yet to figure out

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
It's this attitude I find baffling. You spent "a great many hours over several weeks"?

Why do you even start to think that a couple of weeks self-study of dodgy websites gives you the skills needed to assess this? And to claim with such dazzling 100% certainty that you're right, and that the thousands of atmospheric physicists and paeleoclimatologists etc who spent decades debating this are liars or morons? And that they're part of a giant conspiracy that spans every scientific institution on the planet?

None of us here have a tiny fraction of the expertise needed for our opinions to be relevant to actual climate science.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
It doesn't take an an expert in climatology to analyse an argument.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
one of the first things I found was that some were dramatically and woefully unscientifically misrepresenting data and the chief offender was the IPCC itself which has even been taken to court for this by scientists who contributed information.

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
one of the first things I found was that some were dramatically and woefully unscientifically misrepresenting data and the chief offender was the IPCC itself which has even been taken to court for this by scientists who contributed information.

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I've looked, to no avail, for anything about this. Have you any information about who took the IPCC to court, when and over what issue?

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
That's what, about 80 names. Some of whom aren't really qualified (at least according to the job titles you've given) - "Applied Mathematics Professor", "Emeritus Professor of Molecular Genetics", "Associate Economics Professor" etc.

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Are you at all reminded of the lists YECcies produce of scientists who are YECcies? Which look impressive until you realise just how many scientists there are in the world and that there are more scientists called Steve who think YEC is horsefeathers than are in the list of YECcie scientists?

Project Steve

The parallels between YECism and global warming denial are quite striking sometimes. Along with the sort of crap which extremist anti-vivisectionists will sell you about how useless vaccines tested on animals are


--------------------
Might as well ask the bloody cat.

Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
These are scientific men who are entirely unconvinced about this stuff, say that it's a myth or at the very least say the science is unsafe and that global warming has little to do with man's activities.

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quote:

---

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Myrrh:
It doesn't take an an expert in climatology to analyse an argument.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes it does, if the argument is about technical aspects of climatology. You and I can listen to the experts' explanations, but we're in no way qualified to judge between conflicting theories. That may be a bitter pill, but it's the simple truth: we're irrelevant to the science of it.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Zealot en vacance:
Option 5. In fifty years time it has become evident that the overwhelmingly powerful effect described by the Milankovitch cycle is moving the planet into re-glaciation, and 'we' are all worrying about that.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
I'm replying here as an attempt to keep the "Is it real?" questions separate to the other climate thread...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Zealot en vacance:
Option 5. In fifty years time it has become evident that the overwhelmingly powerful effect described by the Milankovitch cycle is moving the planet into re-glaciation, and 'we' are all worrying about that.

---

It'd be good to think so.

Sadly, I can't discuss the Milankovitch cycle with you. I don't have the expertise in orbital physics, solar radiation, atmospheric heat exchange, atmospheric fluid dynamics, statistics and God knows what else for the conversation to be meaningful.

But I know that the Milankovitch cycles have been known about for a long time, and studied and debated extensively by people who do have the right skills. And the consensus from these countless fairly bright specialists is that the cycles explain ice ages quite nicely, but current warming is very different.

Why do you believe you are right, and almost the entire scientific community is so wrong? If you're wrong, 50 years in the future is likely too late to take meaningful action - so what level of certainty have you got that you know the real answer?

And hi Myrrh. The same question goes to you, again.

(Btw, I hope this doesn't come across as antagonistic. For what it's worth, I can entirely sympathise with people who say "pah, this can't be real". Most people I've come across like that are sincere, genuinely concerned for development in the third world, and intelligent. But it's still amazingly arrogant to so confidently dismiss the people who have spent decades studying this.)

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
You and I can listen to the experts' explanations, but we're in no way qualified to judge between conflicting theories. That may be a bitter pill, but it's the simple truth: we're irrelevant to the science of it.

Unless of course the theories are so obviously nonsense that a specialist would need to be either a moron or a liar to advocate it.

So as far as I can see there are three choices:

(a) The thousands of scientists contributing are all irredeemably idiots, and the leading international scientific bodies that universally endose their views are equally idiotic. This is despite them generally being recognised as some of the brightest people on the planet, with a culture that strongly favours cautious claims and neutrality. Similarly, the numerous corporations backing it (despite it potentially damaging their interests - e.g. BP) are doing so out of collective madness, while governments who don't agree on anything have decided to take part in the ruse as an excuse for taxes (despite the fact that it's plainly against most of their interests too).

(b) As above, except that the thousands of scientists are all, almost without exception, involved in a gigantic fraud. This is despite the fact that pressure to blow the whistle would be incredible, and people don't really go into atmospheric physics motivated by money.

(c) The science is fairly good, and you're mistaken after your few weeks of reading.

Occam's razor is relevant here.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Hi Myrrh,

...

Here's the question you didn't answer last time:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
You and I can listen to the experts' explanations, but we're in no way qualified to judge between conflicting theories. That may be a bitter pill, but it's the simple truth: we're irrelevant to the science of it.

---

---

quote:

---

Unless of course the theories are so obviously nonsense that a specialist would need to be either a moron or a liar to advocate it.

---

quote:

---

So as far as I can see there are three choices:

(a) The thousands of scientists contributing are all irredeemably idiots, and the leading international scientific bodies that universally endose their views are equally idiotic. This is despite them generally being recognised as some of the brightest people on the planet, with a culture that strongly favours cautious claims and neutrality. Similarly, the numerous corporations backing it (despite it potentially damaging their interests - e.g. BP) are doing so out of collective madness, while governments who don't agree on anything have decided to take part in the ruse as an excuse for taxes (despite the fact that it's plainly against most of their interests too).

(b) As above, except that the thousands of scientists are all, almost without exception, involved in a gigantic fraud. This is despite the fact that pressure to blow the whistle would be incredible, and people don't really go into atmospheric physics motivated by money.

(c) The science is fairly good, and you're mistaken after your few weeks of reading.

Occam's razor is relevant here.

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quote:

---

First, apologies for the snipey "Occam's razor" comment - it came out more harshly than intended. But which option do you go for? And how confident are you?

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quote:

---

A Major Deception on Global Warming

Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations organization regarded by many as the best source of scientific information about the human impact on the earth's climate, released "The Science of Climate Change 1995," its first new report in five years. The report will surely be hailed as the latest and most authoritative statement on global warming. Policy makers and the press around the world will likely view the report as the basis for critical decisions on energy policy that would have an enormous impact on U.S. oil and gas prices and on the international economy.

This IPCC report, like all others, is held in such high regard largely because it has been peer-reviewed. That is, it has been read, discussed, modified and approved by an international body of experts. These scientists have laid their reputations on the line. But this report is not what it appears to be--it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

continued on:

(A Major Deception on Global Warming
Op-Ed by Frederick Seitz Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996)


So first, let's debunk the myth that has been cultivated in the last decade. There is no scientific consensus on global warming nor, if there is such a thing, on the cause being attributable to anthropogenic driving.

Scientific consensus is not the same creature as intent to produce consensus which is the apparent understanding of the IPCC...

(Statement Concerning Global Warming
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology July 10, 1997)


All of this might not be relevant if models were trustworthy, but satellite measurements of upper level water vapor show profound discrepancies in model results. Under the circumstances, it is surprising that there is any agreement among scientists, but, in fact, most scientists working on climate dynamics would agree that increasing levels of carbon dioxide should have some impact on climate. The real argument is over whether the impact will be significant. The word `significant,' in this context, has a rather specific meaning. The climate is a naturally variable system. That is to say, it varies without any external forcing. Human society already has to deal with this degree of variability over which it has no control. For anthropogenic climate change to be `significant,' it must be as large or larger than natural variability. ...

..Let us begin by quoting this statement (which, in contrast to earlier IPCC reports, gives considerable more attention to important caveats):

"Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long-term natural variability and the time-evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse and aerosols, and land-surface changes. Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate."

...
The specific feature which led Santer (the lead author of Chapter 8 of IPCC 95) to claim discovery of the discernible impact of anthropogenic forcing fails the most elementary test of statistical robustness: namely, it disappears when additional data is considered.

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Posted                   

quote:

---

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:Not my claim to be able to, that there are conflicting theories is my main point, therefore no consensus.

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quote:

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From dictionary.com:
con·sen·sus /kənˈsɛnsəs/
1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.
2. general agreement or concord; harmony.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Myrrh:

quote:

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:Unless of course the theories are so obviously nonsense that a specialist would need to be either a moron or a liar to advocate it.

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And this is what I've found re 'global warming'.

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Myrrh:
What science there is shows that CO2 is index linked to rises in temperature, with a time lag of around 800 years

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quote:

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I'm fed up with the pseudo science produced by the IPCC bandwagoneers which makes ridiculous statements such as "likely to be anthropogenic" and so on WITHOUT the slightest bit of uncontroversial actual science to back it up, and, etc. etc.

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