Posted                       

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Originally posted by TomOfTarsus:
Maybe the chose the year Mt. St. Helens blew her stack! Hey, there's more than one way to find the number you need!

Thanks again, I don't mean to make you rehash the whole thing...

Blessings,

Tom

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Suffice to say for now that this is a 'what should we do about climate change' rather than a 'is climate changed caused by humans' question.

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
For those as interested as I am in the ongoing debacle of The Global Climate Change Swindle (if there is anyone!),

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Not me ...

I would imagine the people interested in any controversy are either (a) those like yourself who already believed what was said was wrong, or (b) those who don't understand/aren't interested in/aren't convinced by the science. There were other issues raised by the programme that you have hardly mentioned, nor has any other pro-manmade global warming person on here so far as I can see. That was one of the attractive aspects of the programme: it had many dimensions and was very good at introducing and outlining the various issues involved. It also represented the 'alternative view', which was needed and welcome to the skeptical and/or confused among us.

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

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
It also represented the 'alternative view', which was needed and welcome to the skeptical and/or confused among us.

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Originally posted by Mr Clingford:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
It also represented the 'alternative view', which was needed and welcome to the skeptical and/or confused among us.

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And the programme helped by lying (volcano emissions, for instance) and misrepresenting?

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
As for you accusing the programme of lying and misleading ... you mocked it when it was first shown; you came to it with a kind of "it's all bollocks" attitude so you are bound to think it was all lies, lies and more lies, aren't you?

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Originally posted by Mr Clingford:

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
[qb] As for you accusing the programme of lying and misleading ... you mocked it when it was first shown; you came to it with a kind of "it's all bollocks" attitude so you are bound to think it was all lies, lies and more lies, aren't you?

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When simple facts like volcanic emissions are very easy to check, and the programme got them wrong, I don't need to do anything as complicated as "thinking".

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I have checked over my posts and I don't think I have mocked it

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
The programme also discussed issues like the politics surrounding the debate, the affects of those politics on the developing world, etc, yet the focus on this thread since the programme was shown has been on specific issues of science, which in itself is a reflection of the politics surrounding the debate of course, along with the much-wished-for ticking off of Channel 4 of course.

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Imagine a programme called The Great Evolution Swindle. It features some scientists who are creationists.

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Some are, in that they see God as the creator behind it all (rather than God as creating individual creatures). My brother is one such: he has a Phd too, and studies the little things in life (viruses, bacteria, etc - he's the family 'poo doc' ). I don't make assumptions about scientists, but that's possibly because I've got one in the family.

I've actually no idea how people came about and I'm quite sure any respectable scientist will confess that evolution is actually a theory, not a proven fact or even a fact. It's a theory they find more plausible than any other (creationist theory among them).

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The answer has been said time and again - published science (but if you don't believe Alan on these boards whom you do respect I don't know who you do believe).

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Well, I respect Alan as much as I can respect anyone who isn't an expert in the field and whom I have never met! Sometimes Alan could have been talking Greek for all I understood him! But I could say the same for someone discussing car mechanics or the intricacies of high fashion. As I said earlier, the post of Alan's I fully understood was the one on probabilities. Not only did I understand it but it also seemed far more plausible than much of what I have read on here. I can deal in probabilities when we are talking about something that hasn't happened yet (and may never happen), but I cannot deal in certainties when we are talking about those same things. So any dogmatic statements or persistent assertions sail right over my head. Either that or they annoy me and make me more determined to stick to my guns!

Since Alan's post, incidentally, I have felt far happier in conceding that we might well have something to do with what is happening on the global climate scene. I don't believe it's all our fault, as many are claiming, but I've begun to notice just how much polution and how much energy is being used up around me (I've always been an energy saver, but only because my parents brought me up to dislike waste and recycle whenever possible).

It's all about understanding one's audience, Noiseboy.

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

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I've still not had a chance to watch the whole of the programme, though I have found the UTube copy. I have, however sat through a few bits of it.

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From what I've seen, it's in raising issues about how policies regarding greenhouse gas reduction could affect the development of poorer nations that the programme is at it's strongest.

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The "what can we do about it?" question is being addressed elsewhere.

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Committee on Energy and Commerce Report
These are the findings of the ad hoc commitee report [27] authored by Edward J. Wegman, George Mason University, David W. Scott, Rice University, and Yasmin H. Said, The Johns Hopkins University in July 2006:
* MBH98 and MBH99 were found to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b were found to be valid and compelling.
* It is noted that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.
* A social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction of at least 43 authors having direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him is described. The findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies' may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
* It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.
* Overall, the committee believes that Mann's assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis. http://en.allexperts.com/e/t/te/temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years.htm

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Let's start at the beginning, the reason the earth has the climate it has and not that of Mars or Venus is primarily its position relative to the sun and a magnetic field which gives us the climate we have

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the sun is a effin big star that is half way through its 10 billion year life. One day the earth will get so hot that it will burn up completely, quite regardless of our existence or what we do.

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It is not proved that a) there is now unprecedented global warming and b) that this is driven by higher levels of CO2 and c) that this is caused by our increased levels of CO2 production.

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Interesting and real scientific data even when presented accurately is spoiled by such unsubstantiated claims as on this page's parting shot in an otherwise rational look at the Milkanovich data. http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/a/milankovitch.htm

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Though Milankovitch cycles do explain long-term climate change, they can't account for changes being made by humans, which appear to have an even greater effect than variations in earth-sun interaction.

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There's no science here, the driving force for this theory is man made wind.

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
I've become increasingly irritated by the myth that a) the current warming is 'unprecedented' and b) it's all our fault.

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Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
I've become increasingly irritated by the myth that a) the current warming is 'unprecedented' and b) it's all our fault.

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So what? It's happening, and we have to deal with it whether or not it is our fault or it happened before.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
That and the chemistry of the atmosphere of the earth that includes small quantities of potent greenhouse gases sufficient to keep the earth relatively warm (cf the temperature of the Moon, which shares the same solar energy input but has a significantly lower mean temperature - the greater lunar temperature variation is simply an effect of having no atmosphere, an atmosphere of any sort will act as a heat reservoir evening out the temperature extremes). The effect of the magnetic field on the earths climate is minor; though it is significant in terms of reduction in harder radiation levels on the surface, and hence on the evolution and survival of life as we know it.

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Yeah, cos the sun will burn us up in 5 billion years (give or take a few years) that means we don't have to worry about what we're doing that will impact the next few decades and centuries? Let's just screw most of humanity for our own comfort now, after all it doesn't matter cos we'll all be dead in 5 billion years. What a load of bollocks. I've more respect for Martin PC Not's "Jesus'll fix it" argument than that.

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It is not proved that a) there is now unprecedented global warming and b) that this is driven by higher levels of CO2 and c) that this is caused by our increased levels of CO2 production.

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What more proof do you want? I recall you brought out a load of temperature data to "disprove" Mann - and that data still showed that recent temperature rises have been unprecedented.

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And, that those temperature rises correlate with unprecedented levels of CO2 in the last 20 million years.

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And, the physics of how CO2 behaves show conclusively that it acts as a greenhouse gas.

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Oh, and there's tons of evidence that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is a result of fossil fuel burning - not just the temporal correlation that as we burn more fossil fuel CO2 increases, but also things like 14C:12C ratios proving that the mean age of atmospheric carbon is getting older (well, it was until we let off a load of nukes and pumped more 14C back into the atmosphere).

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http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/a/milankovitch.htm

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Hmmm, if you think that summary of the orbital dynamics of the earth constitutes "real scientific data" I'm really concerned about your understanding of science.

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It is, of course, a summary of real data. And, a pretty good and accesible one at that.

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I'm not quite sure what you mean aboput the parting shot. Do you mean this?

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Though Milankovitch cycles do explain long-term climate change, they can't account for changes being made by humans, which appear to have an even greater effect than variations in earth-sun interaction.

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That seems to be an equally good summary of scientific data.

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If recent warming is driven by Milankovitch cycles then our understanding of orbital dynamics is up a creek without a paddle - because in relation to Milankovitch cycles we should be at the warmest part of an interglacial, in fact we've been there for centuries,

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quote:

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and if the cycle is driving anything it should be getting colder. There's a consistent increase in temperature at the end of each glaciation that's driven by Milankovitch cycles, then an approximatley constant temperature before the cycle sends us into a cooling period leading to another glaciation. We've already had that temperature increase for this interglacial, and we've just had the same level of increase on top of that. That simply can not be explained by the Milankovitch cycle.

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There's no science here, the driving force for this theory is man made wind.

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Yep, I agree. Your pontifications on this thread reveal no science at all, simply Mryhh made wind.

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Er, minor? But of course, the mininmal amount of C02 in the atmosphere isn't minor when its rising levels are driving global warming.. The Moon and Mars lost their magnetic fields and so lost all their atmosphere, the magnetic field is the main line of defence against solar radiation.

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rising CO2 levels which by all sensible accounts show an 800 year time lag between periods of warming and playing catch-up CO2 levels.

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• Natural System: slow release of CO2 from deep oceans in response to a temperature rise, due to the several centuries it takes for ocean circulation patterns to bring deep water to the surface.
• Anthropogenic System: rapid release of CO2 from fossil fuels through burning said fuels, with increased temperature in reponse to this.

Posted                   

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Yes, CO2 is a minor constituent of the atmosphere as a percentage of the whole. But, that it's only 380ppm doesn't reflect it's importance in the global scheme of things. It's something that's common in many areas; most vitamins are very small proportions of our total food intake, yet we'd be very unwell without them. I take it you're not advocating ignoring the advice of nutritionists because they keep harking on about very small parts of our diets. I'm sure I've made that point before.

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rising CO2 levels which by all sensible accounts show an 800 year time lag between periods of warming and playing catch-up CO2 levels.

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I think I've said this before too. But, at the risk of repeating myself I'll try again.

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But, in our present situation, something new is happening. There's no largish disturbance of the climate as a result of solar changes resulting in changing CO2 equilibriums.

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"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years." Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

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quote:

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We're directly changing the CO2 concentrations by introducing a new source of CO2 - burning the fossil fuel carbon reservoir. Instead of a small temperature rise resulting in a small release of CO2 from the upper oceans with a few centuries of lag before the deep ocean releases some of its CO2, we're releasing the same amount of CO2 that the deep ocean typically releases during the onset of an interglacial. That's rapidly driving temperature upwards as the atmosphere responds quickly to that increased CO2 by trapping more heat through the greenhouse effect.

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quote:

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Is that clear? Here's the summary:
[list]
...

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a really long url


Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."

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another long url

Another trend scientists have picked up on appears to span several centuries. Late 17th century astronomers observed that no sunspots existed on the Sun’s surface during the time period from 1650 to 1715 AD. This lack of solar activity, which some scientists attribute to a low point in a multiple-century-long cycle, may have been partly responsible for the Little Ice Age in Europe. During this period, winters in Europe were much longer and colder than they are today. Modern scientists believe that since this minimum in solar energy output, there has been a slow increase in the overall sunspots and solar energy throughout each subsequent 11-year cycle.

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yet another long url

Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming
By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer
20 March 2003

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

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quote:

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http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA203.html John Carlisle

The evidence for future cooling is supported by considerable scientific research that has only recently begun to come to light. It wasn't until 1980, with the aid of NASA satellites, that scientists definitively proved that the sun's brightness - or radiance - varies in intensity, and that these variations occur in predictable cyclical patterns. This was a crucial discovery because the climate models used by greenhouse theory proponents always assumed that the sun's radiance was constant. With that assumption in hand, they could ignore solar influences and focus on other influences, including human.

That turned out to be a reckless assumption. Further investigation revealed that there is a strong correlation between the variations in solar irradiance and fluctuations in the Earth's temperature. When the sun gets dimmer, the Earth gets cooler; when the sun gets brighter, the Earth gets hotter. So important is the sun in climate change that half of the 1.5° F temperature increase since 1850 is directly attributable to changes in the sun. According to NASA scientists David Lind and Judith Lean, only one-quarter of a degree can be ascribed to other causes, such as greenhouse gases, through which human activities can theoretically exert some influence.

The correlation between major changes in the Earth's temperature and changes in solar radiance is quite compelling.

Continued HERE

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Oh please, we've both covered this point before...

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quote:

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The level of CO2 is minor in the the greater constitution of greenhouse gases, water vapour being the greatest. Which other consituents are conveniently ignored by global warming cranks in their modelling to prove it's CO2 the culprit.

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The problem here is you're not listening to the examples I've given which contradict CO2 as the driving force of which the 800 year time lag is the in your face evidence that the theory doesn't work.

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I would have thought you'd have made an effort to look at the Durkin programme

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I think you're a part of spin doctoring on this subject since I find it inconceivable that a true scientist would simply refuse to look at contradictory evidence presented by other scientists.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Except that climate scientists do not ignore other atmospheric gases. I'll repeat that incase you missed it; other atmospheric gases are not ignored by climate scientists. Do I need to say it again? I'll accept that out of convenience the various greenhouse gases are lumped together as "CO2 equivalent", which is a long way from ignoring the other gases. Anyone who says otherwise has either misunderstood the science, or is being deliberately untruthful.

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quote:

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The Great Global Warming Swindle
March 19, 2007
S. Fred Singer


Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, has met its match: a devastating documentary recently shown on British television, which has now been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. In spite of its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science by recording the statements of real climate scientists, including me. An Inconvenient Truth mainly records a politician.

The scientific arguments presented in The Great Global Warming Swindle can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof at all that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activities, such as the generation of energy from the burning of fuels.

continued on: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1945

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The problem here is you're not listening to the examples I've given which contradict CO2 as the driving force of which the 800 year time lag is the in your face evidence that the theory doesn't work.

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No, the problem is that you're failing to read what I said. I never said CO2 is the driving force of the 800 year time lag. The 800 year time lag is a simple reflection of the time it takes deep ocean waters to circulate to the surface. At the end of the glaciations, CO2 is not primarily driving the temperature change but is driven by the temperature change. The atmospheric CO2 concentration only starts to significantly rise when the vast reservoir of CO2 in the deep oceans comes to the surface. That is how the natural system works.

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I think you're a part of spin doctoring on this subject since I find it inconceivable that a true scientist would simply refuse to look at contradictory evidence presented by other scientists.

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Well, I've seen some contradictory evidence. Probably not all of it, but a fair bit. And, most of it isn't anywhere near as convincing as that which proves beyond any reasonable doubt/ that human activity is a significant contribution to the recent observed changes in the global climate. There are a few questions around the edges about just how much of a contribution and the extent to which other factors such as changes in solar activity are also contributing. But the basic science is IMO totally compelling.

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And, most of it isn't anywhere near as convincing as that which proves beyond any reasonable doubt/ that human activity is a significant contribution to the recent observed changes in the global climate.

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Your next post simply seems to prove the point at the end of that paragraph. There are factors in addition to human activity that may be contributing to global warming. Which is something noone, not even the IPCC, is denying.

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Now, are you going to contribute anything sensible? Or are you going to keep pushing a theory that has already been shown to be false? The theory that human activity isn't influencing the climate and contributing to global warming is scientifically tenable as the theory that the earth is a flat disk supported by turtles all the way down.

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Alan And, most of it isn't anywhere near as convincing as that which proves beyond any reasonable doubt/ that human activity is a significant contribution to the recent observed changes in the global climate.

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http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

Cold Facts on Global Warming
Introduction
What is the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to global warming? This question has been the subject of many heated arguments, and a great deal of hysteria. In this article, we will consider a simple calculation, based on well-accepted facts, that shows that the expected global temperature increase caused by doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is bounded by an upper limit of 1.4-2.7 degrees centigrade. This result contrasts with the results of the IPCC's climate models, whose projections are shown to be unrealistically high.

.....
CO2 is more evenly distributed than water, so if CO2 caused warming it would have a proportionately greater effect in areas where there is little water vapor (such as deserts and in very cold regions), while in areas with a lot of water, the effect of CO2 may be insignificant compared to the effect of water vapor. This is one of many factors that mitigate against the idea of a "climate catastrophe."

....

The net effect of all these processes is that doubling carbon dioxide would not double the amount of global warming. In fact, the effect of carbon dioxide is roughly logarithmic. Each time carbon dioxide (or some other greenhouse gas) is doubled, the increase in temperature is less than the previous increase. The reason for this is that, eventually, all the longwave radiation that can be absorbed has already been absorbed. It would be analogous to closing more and more shades over the windows of your house on a sunny day -- it soon reaches the point where doubling the number of shades can't make it any darker.

The analogy with a greenhouse would be that the glass in the roof becomes slightly thicker. The effect of warming also depends on the conditions inside the greenhouse. If the greenhouse were full of ice at exactly -0.01 degrees Celsius, making the glass slightly thicker just might be enough to melt all the ice and flood the greenhouse. But if the greenhouse had some regions that were hot and some that were very cold (as the planet Earth does), it would have a very small overall effect.

As an aside, the term "greenhouse effect" is actually a misnomer. In greenhouses, most of the warming that is observed is not caused by carbon dioxide, or by absorption of infrared radiation by the glass as many people think, but by reduction in convection [11].

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Originally posted by Professor Kirke:
Hosting again

Myrrh,

You obviously know how to use the URL button for Instant UBB code, or at least how to code a URL yourself, because you do it every so often. Please make a consistent habit of coding URLs so that they do not break the scroll-lock for others.

Professor Kirke
Purgatory Host

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Alan, re Durkin programme. An analysis of the 2007 IPCC report by Christopher Monckton
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, one of the contributors.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070201_monckton.pdf

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Alan, re Durkin programme. An analysis of the 2007 IPCC report by Christopher Monckton
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, one of the contributors.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070201_monckton.pdf

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Quelle surprise. Christopher Monkton is an ex-editor of the London Evening Standard, after spending time as Margaret Thatcher's policy advisor. He now writes for the Daily Telegraph. He is completely ignorant of climate science. To see what actual climate scientists make of his nonsense, try this.

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Fear not Myrrh - I don't feel the need to debunk every spurious link you post, but this was too easy to resist. In the end, my previous list of organisations supporting the consensus - and your inability to counter with a single reputable source - speaks for itself.

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If anyone is really interested in how far science can be manipulated by quacks to make it say absolutely anything they want to say, I thoroughly reccomend this stunning page, which makes Monkton look like the amateur that he is.

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
The whole of this global warming hypothesis rests on the claim that CO2 drives global warming.

Prove it.

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Posted                   

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
The whole of this global warming hypothesis rests on the claim that CO2 drives global warming.

Prove it.

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Physics.

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