Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[Kirkhill]

Hang gliders are Plan B.

 

[exsemjingo]

I don't quite understand what you mean, are you trying to argue that global warming isn't something that we should be concerned about because it won't affect us? In which case I disagree, see the last 4-5 pages, its very relevant to us in our lifetimes, or are you trying to say we shouldn't be that concerned with natural changes the earth is going to go through over the next few millennia, in which case I'd largely agree.

What I mean is that we shouldn't be so arrogant as to think we control the earth's climate through greenhouse gas production.  As far as being concerned with climate changes, these occur whether we pay attention to them or not, and the time-frame for those is so large that it is not even worth thinking about.
I started this thread because it looks like the "solution" proposed by certain environmentalist advocates is actually worse than the "problem".
As far as climate change relevance in our lifetimes, well, the terrorist threat then is very very relevant, overpopulation is very very very relevant, etc.
Personally, I think that even now Nuclear Winter is a more likely scenario than catastrophic global warming.
But that's another thread.
Carry on....

 

[a_majoor]

Follow this link to see more on the solar connection: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/04/ncosmic04.xml

 

[a_majoor]

The supposed solution is the problem:

http://www.conservativelife.com/blog/index.php/canada/2006/10/03/environmental_groups_should_start_playin

Environmental Groups Should Start Playing Both Sides

The problem with most environmental groups is that their senior membership consists of people who also advocate for other social agenda items. As such they have become mouthpieces for particular political ideologies rather than their intended cause. Case in point...

John Bennett, senior policy adviser on the atmosphere and energy for the Sierra Club of Canada, said it's impossible to speculate on what the parties will discuss.

"This government prefers to speak to industries rather than speak to the public or to organizations that have been working on these issues for a long time," he told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday.

John Bennett had the opportunity to lambast the Liberals for caving to the automotive industry by placing voluntary standards on them for the past fifteen years. Instead, he chose to attack "the government" for "speaking with industry" instead of him. Poor John didn't get a free lunch.

It is precisely because of this paritsan mentality that the Liberals were given a free environmental pass over the past fifteen years for merely signing the Kyoto accord and failing miserably at progressing towards its objectives. In case you didn't pick up on my insinuation, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club are actually doing harm to the environment through their partisanship. Conservatives feel as though it is a lost cause trying to please them and Liberals know that tokenism is sufficient to placate them. Environmental groups need to get over their partisanship if they actually want to help the environment. Fortunately for them, it appears as though Mr. Harper has a genuine desire to improve the environment regardless of how little gratitude it gains him from the Sierra Club - now that is a breath of fresh air!

 

[Klc]

PS I consider myself rational if not reasonable.  ;D

As I see it, more rational AND reasonable than many with the opposing view.

BTW, Thanks for articulating what I have been trying to explain to people for some time.

 

[a_majoor]

And stopping global warming by burning vast amounts of jet fuel:

http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/blog/index/weblog/inuit_elders_and_environmentalists_fly_to_ottawa_in_jets_to_warn_about_glob/

Inuit elders ("and environmentalists") fly to Ottawa in jets to warn about global warming
Posted by Joel Johannesen

I can only presume that the officially venerable and always credible-sounding and appealing to the emotions Inuit “elders” arrived in Ottawa from the frozen (-- whoops—melted!) north in high-powered jet aircraft carrying few people besides them and their weighty briefs. 

If so, they’ve already lost me as a supporter, naturally, because it would be just too illogical to support their flying down to Ottawa in jet aircraft in this technological age to lecture us on state-run news agency TV—an agency which uses my cash to buy fancy TV cameras for their use there in the frozen (damn I mean melted) north.

If not —if they walked or arrived riding musk ox, as they prefer we all do starting in the year 2007, I’d love to hear their proposals aside from the liberal-left’s proven dismal failure of a plan which is called “Kyoto”. 

Unfortunately he didn’t have any ideas like that.  Just a bunch of talk at me.  So either way, it’s a utter waste on a thousand levels. 

Then the state-employed news agency CBC Newsworld “anchor” (and I use the term “anchor” advisedly but it could be replaced with dead weight) Nancy ("very interesting!") Wilson debated a representative from the evil evil Satan-like petroleum industry (they’z from Alberta—yuck!), whose member-firms supply energy needs for the Wilson-mobile —no doubt an automobile which burns gas faster than she emits it from her own mouth (and bum!) —which we as taxpayers no doubt pay for on top of her salary.  And we even pay for the very medium through which she and them are delivering their message to us, which is powered by some kind of energy—electricity I think. (They have not offered to shut up for six days a week to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as far as I know.  Correct me if I’m wrong.)

Apparently nobody from the scientific community which thinks the man-made global warming and Kyoto Accord is total or even partial BUNK was invited, as was nobody from the Fraser Institute, or from the best example of all, President George Bush’s United States, where they are doing much, much better at reducing the increase in greenhouse gas emissions (and they’re doing so outside of the stupid Kyoto Accord), than we are in Canada under the liberal-left’s insane attempt at adherence to it.  This is an object lesson in agenda-driven leftist media, but at least it burned tons of fuel to produce it. 

I should go now because I left my car running outside while writing this so the windshield would defog before I go out and mow my lawn for the third time this week. 

edit to put in correct link (whoops!)

 

[a_majoor]

Look at the implications of this:

http://greenspin.blogspot.com/

Do I detect the first tiny rumblings of a paradigm shift in climate-change science?

"The greenhouse effect must play some role. But those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification. It's pure guesswork." [Henrik Svensmark, Director of the Centre for Sun-Climate Research, Danish National Space Center, joint author of the new research, as quoted in The Copenhagen Post (October 4)]

Yesterday, some extremely important new research on climate change was quietly released. Few newspapers picked it up, The Daily Telegraph (October 4) and the Copenhagen Post (October 4) being but slight exceptions, both carrying only brief reports.

This key research, long in gestation, and embargoed until October 4, appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A (October 3). Here is the press release:


"'Do electrons help to make the clouds?'
By H. Svensmark, J.O.P. Pedersen, et al. (doi:10.1098/rspa.2006.1773)*

Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists trace the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy - the cosmic rays - liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than atmospheric scientists have predicted. That may explain the link proposed by members of the Danish team, between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change."

And here is the link to the report from the Danish National Space Center: 'Getting closer to the cosmic connection to climate' (October 4).

One especially eminent science writer has already declared: "The implications for climate physics, solar-terrestrial physics and terrestrial-galactic physics are pretty gob-smacking....."

I say, watch this space. Slowly, but surely, this revelation could well open a can of wormholes in climate-change science.

The reason is simple. The experiment ties in beautifully with the brilliant work of geochemist, Professor Ján Veizer of the Ruhr University at Bochum, Germany, and the University of Ottawa in Canada, and Dr. Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Racah Institute of Physics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who for some time have been implicating cosmic rays and water vapour, rather than carbon dioxide, as the main drivers of climate change. Indeed, they have put down 75% of climate change to these drivers.

Cosmic rays are known to boost cloud formation - and, in turn, reduce temperatures on Earth - by creating ions that cause water droplets to condense. Ján Veizer and Nir Shaviv calculated temperature changes at the Earth's surface by studying oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils. They then compared these with variations in cosmic-ray activity, determined by looking at how cosmic rays have affected iron isotopes in meteorites.

Their results suggest that temperature fluctuations over the past 550 million years are more likely to relate to cosmic-ray activity than to CO2. By contrast, they found no correlation between temperature variation and the changing patterns of CO2 in the atmosphere.

But the mechanism remained far from understood.....until now. For it seems that the Danish team may well have discovered that mechanism.

Do I detect the first deep and quiet rumblings of a long-term paradigm-shifting piece of work?

Indeed, I sense the first minute bounce in a new Kuhnian curve. Of course, for the moment, the work will be drowned out by the clamour of the Great Grand Global Warming Narrative. After all, it is the last thing the committed - and politicians like Cameron, Campbell, and Gore - want to hear.

May I thus encourage all readers of EnviroSpin to work especially hard to bring the significance of this vital research to as many journalists and politicians as possible?

Thank you. It is time to begin to change the paradigm.

Philip, nice to be back. And just in time for tea!
[*Here are the complete details of the new research paper: Proceedings of the Royal Society A, October 3rd, 2006. Full title: ‘Experimental evidence for the role of ions in particle nucleation under atmospheric conditions’. Authors: Henrik Svensmark, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, Nigel Marsh, Martin Enghoff & Ulrik Uggerhøj]

Of course, you could believe that human beings are somehow responsible for creating supernova in the far reaches of the galaxy......

 

[Kirkhill]

Of course, you could believe that human beings are somehow responsible for creating supernova in the far reaches of the galaxy......

By grief.  Will George Bush stop at nothing?

 

[Retired45]

People there is still no coloration between green house gases and global warming. Scientists are still trying to figure out if the human element is contributing to what we call the “problem”-leading leading climate scientists around the world believe that it is a natural phenomena that occurs in cycles approx every 20-40,000 years. Three million years ago there was warm fauna plants growing in the artic, 40,000 years ago Greenland was all “Green” I’m sure that our ancestral cave dwellers 40,000 years ago didn’t drive cars or heat there caves with natural gas did they? What caused the climate to change? I’m sure a herd of Mammoths passing wind didn’t cause it.

As for smog, scientists at CSU (California State university) have been studying the Los Angeles smog problem for years and they come to the conclusion that the smog created around the city is “static” it doesn’t move up into the upper atmosphere, because its to dense and has no correlation to the green house gas problem.

Some people are just alarmists and Al Gore is one of them, he’s trying to take his 15 minutes of fame to one hour.

 

[exsemjingo]

Hear hear, retired45. 

 

[youravatar]

Watch out here it comes.

Global warming is here. There's no debating that point what so ever. YES the earth does go through natural cycles of heating and cooling. YES there are natural ways in which the earth heats and cools itself. But all research shows that the earth is waming well beyond what was even the "Medival Warm Period" which was so aptly debated at the beginning of this thread.

Educate yourselves please. There is no one size fits all solution to global warming. Yes we need to start investing now in renewables. The action we take now will determain how bad this will be in the future, and it will get bad. Very bad.

Just please go to these sites. They have some valubale information on them. Like saving money? There's some stuff on there about it too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/climatechange/
http://www.climatehotmap.org/
http://www.climatecrisis.net/   <--- Al Gore's Site.  : Thought i'd throw this out there.

 

[Kirkhill]

Wikipedia, David Suzuki, the CBC and Al Gore........

Now there's some research for you.

 

[youravatar]

Wikipedia, David Suzuki, the CBC and Al Gore........

Now there's some research for you.

I put those up because those were the most accessible to the public.

 

[Klc]

I think what kirkhill was getting at was that they aren't exactly known for their reliable and unbiased factual information...

 

[couchcommander]

Take a look at the dozens of peer reviewed scientific papers I've posted over the last few pages, especially you Retired45 (i.e. ""Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change", from a report on page 10).

As for this latest development, I'd actually heard of it a little bit before it was posted here. I eagrly await its review and to see if its conclusions stand up to scrutiny (or if the conclusions in the blog are even the ones came to in the paper, I seem to remember the other report about it I read mentioning something about there being nothing inherently contradictionary about this and CO2 based global warming).

 

[couchcommander]

Well I finally got off my butt and looked at it.

The recent (Oct 6.) paper mentions nothing about global warming. It just implies that cosmic rays have a significant role in cloud formation. Cool.

....That says nothing about CO2 and present warming....

For that, we move onto the baseless conclusion papers, namely those quoted by the "greenspin" blog as concluding:

"Their results suggest that temperature fluctuations over the past 550 million years are more likely to relate to cosmic-ray activity than to CO2. By contrast, they found no correlation between temperature variation and the changing patterns of CO2 in the atmosphere."

Interestingly, the very paper this is quoted from specifically says that this this is only valid over multi-million year time frames - not of the few hundred or thousand year time frame we are looking at with global warming.

Interestingly, their conclusions were quickly refuted by Stefan Rahmstorf, Denton Ebel, David Archer, Otto Eugster, Jean Jouzel, Douglas Maraun, Gaving Schmidt, Jeff Severinghaus, Andrew Weaver, and Zim Zachos from such places at the Nasa Center for Climate Systems Research, the Museum of Natural History and the Swiss Academy of Sciences in a letter from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

Specifically, they conclude that:

"Two main conclusions result from our analysis of Shaviv and Veizer(2003). The first is that the correlation of CRF and climate over the past 500 million years appears to not hold up under scrutiny. Even if we accept the questionable assumption that meteorite clusters give information on CRF variations, we find that the evidence for a link between CRF and climate amounts to little more than a similarity in the average periods of the CRF variations and a heavily smoothed temperature reconstruction. Phase agreement is poor. The authors applied several adjustments to the data to artificially enhance the correlation. We thus find that the existence of a correlation has not been convincingly demonstrated.

Our second conclusion is independent of the first. Whether there is a link of CRF and temperature or not, the authors' estimate of the effect of a CO2 doubling on climate is highly questionable. It is based on a simple and incomplete regression analysis that implicit assumes that climate variations on time scales of millions of years...for much higher CO2 levels than at present, and with unaccounted causes and contributing factors, can give direct quantitative information about the effect of a rapid CO2 doubling from pre-industrial climate. The complexity and non-linearity of the climate system does not allow such simple statistical derivation of climate sensitivity without a physical understanding of the key processes and feedbacks. We thus conclude that Shaviv and Veizer (2003) provide no cause for revising current estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2."

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2004/RahmstorfArcher.html

To paraphrase, they did not actually demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between cosmic ray forcing and climate change, never mind a causative link, and secondly their modeling of the effects of CO2 in comparison was poorly done to the point of being useless.

I find this really funny though. For the last however many pages you (the royal "you") have been deriding the research I've presented as not being able to demonstrate causation - without actually presenting much in the way of refuting evidence - yet you're willing to jump on a paper that fails to even do a good job showing correlation. Is it simply because that this one paper has a conclusion that you support?

In the end though, it is not really challenged that solar variation and the such has had a significant impact on our climate. The truth of the matter is however, that says nothing about the effect that CO2 has.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

I find this really funny though. For the last however many pages you (the royal "you") have been deriding the research I've presented as not being able to demonstrate causation

Ahhh, the irony ...

without actually presenting much in the way of refuting evidence

Are you forgetting or ignoring the Wegman report I linked to a few pages ago (that's Edward Wegman, Chairman of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Theoretical and Applied Statistics)?

Here it is again: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf (if you're too lazy, just check out "Findings" and "Recomendations" of the Exec. Summary on Pages 4 & 5).

Or read the fact sheet: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_fact_sheet.pdf.

Or read the WSJ Editorial: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/News/07142006_1990.htm

>>They do NOT have a statistically valid model: regardless of how many "peers" review the data and/or the methodology and/or provide "supporting" evidence, the fact of the matter is that at the end of the day the global warming model is MEANINGLESS.

yet you're willing to jump on a paper that fails to even do a good job showing correlation. Is it simply because that this one paper has a conclusion that you support?

Physician, heal thyself.

 

[couchcommander]

I'll repeat what I said before, I'm willing to accept that Mann et al. is flawed.... and? It's one paper, just one. I'm actually surprised more haven't been outed as having faulty data. Go check how many of the 30 or so other papers I cited rely on Mann to make their point (none), yet they all say the same thing, along with hundreds if not thousands of others.

I'm interested though... why is it you trust Wegman and not Mann? Not that I am defending one or the other, but I'd like to know what type of source I need to present to have you find it credible.

In the end though, its a side show, a song and dance, possibly even a jigg.

So yes, as I said, without much in the way of refuting evidence.

Physician, heal thyself.

Thousands of peer reviewed, scientific papers, over decades, backed by observation. Not one or two or even three or four. Can you say the same thing?

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

I'll repeat what I said before, I'm willing to accept that Mann et al. is flawed.... and? It's one paper, just one. I'm actually surprised more haven't been outed as having faulty data. Go check how many of the 30 or so other papers I cited rely on Mann to make their point (none), yet they all say the same thing, along with hundreds if not thousands of others.

No, this is wrong ... dierectly from the Wegman report:

In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our 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.

I'm interested though... why is it you trust Wegman and not Mann?

Because Mann et.al. are using statistical methods to prove their hypotheses.  Unfortunately they (evidently) do not have enough proficiency in the subject to realize the extent of their errors (they have already acknowledged a whole bunch).  Moreover, they won't even allow their work to be reviewed properly by statisticians.  Wegman is a highly-respected statistician. 

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. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.

Not that I am defending one or the other, but I'd like to know what type of source I need to present to have you find it credible.

They need to make their methodolgy open to review by independent statisticians.  This has never happened and almost certainly never will, almost certianly because they have already been made aware of what the answers would be.

In the end though, its a side show, a song and dance, possibly even a jigg.

So yes, as I said, without much in the way of refuting evidence.

Yes, it doesn't fit with your preconceived bias, so pretend it isn't happening (BTW, what do you mean by "jigg"?).

Thousands of peer reviewed, scientific papers, over decades, backed by observation. Not one or two or even three or four.

This is the point: they are NOT scientific and they are NOT independently reviewed: the environmental community believes it because they want it to be true (see: "DDT. Malaria") ... we are going down the path of Eugenics and the Ether.

 

[couchcommander]

No, this is wrong ... dierectly from the Wegman report:

What part of that quote says anything about what I said? Exactly what part of that statement wrong?

Not to mention the logic is a wee bit funny... Mann has co-authored 43 papers, thus there is no independent review. How about Bunnies are pretty, thus the world is going to explode? Geeze, if a climatologist did that it wouldn't even get past the universities own internal review system!

And by the by, it wasn't bloggers or angry Conservatives that debunked "Eugenics" or the "Ether", it was this same process you're trashing.

*edit* But this  is a tangent. Show me the paper, preferably one that stood up to review for more than a month, that actually says "there is no CO2 based global warming", and we'll discuss it. Or even, show me the paper that goes through and debunks all of the statistics for all of these papers. No, the wegman report wasn't it, that was ONE paper, and from that it drew far flung conclusions that it could have only supported by, oh I don't know, looking at more than one paper.