Post by: m1911owner on January 24, 2007, 09:27:55 AM
What I have heard and read are:
1. Statistical indications of rising temperatures:
a. A generally-conceded statistic that global mean temperatures have risen by a fraction of one degree Fahrenheit over the last hundred years. (I note that while this figure is "generally-conceded", it is still somewhat in doubt because our temperature recording stations are mostly in "heat islands" (typically airports) that are problematic to compensate for.)
b. Satellite readings of atmospheric temperatures that have stubbornly refused to show "global warming", until somebody recently figured out how to fudge the data to get it to show "global warming."
2. Various anedotal "proof" of "global warming":
a. "The polar caps are melting!!!" (Not mentioning that there is a 50-year freeze-thaw cycle, and the arctic is now in the "thaw" part of that cycle.)
b. "The glaciers are melting!!!" (Not mentioning that other glaciers are growing.)
c. "The seas are rising!!!" (I haven't seen any actual evidence of that, only screeches.)
d. Assorted other anecdotes.
3. A great deal of hysterical screeching that (1) and (2) prove that humans are causing "global warming."
They have presented no evidence at all, that I have seen, showing that there is any connection whatsoever between human activities, and the "evidence" in (1) and (2).
The closest I have seen is the measurable fact that CO2 levels have been rising for a long time. But, from what I've seen, the correlation in time between CO2 levels and fluctuations in mean global temperatures is very close to zero. Hardly what one could call "evidence" with a straight face.
So, my question--Have I simply missed the "smoking gun" that everyone else is aware of (in which case, would somebody please explain it to me?), or is it indeed the case that no causal connection has been demonstrated, despite all the screeching?
Post by: StopTheGrays on January 24, 2007, 09:52:32 AM
Post by: Brad Johnson on January 24, 2007, 10:11:48 AM
Quote
What!?!?!? You cannot mean Al Gore is making it up? What is next? There is no man-bear-pig either
This problem is thuper therial!
Brad
Post by: Iain on January 24, 2007, 11:04:02 AM
The journey to alternative sources written by scientists (qualified I might add), that I will keep posting links to, can be started here - www.realclimate.org
Read it and come back and tell us that your original post was exactly on the money.
Post by: m1911owner on January 24, 2007, 11:20:20 AM
I looked over a few articles linked on the realclimate page you pointed to, and in the articles I happened to pick out I saw tons of anecdotes about places experiencing weather (which has been going on for several billion years now, without needing help from humans), but I didn't see any evidence presented of a causal connection between any human activity and "global warming."
Perhaps you could point out a specific article on that site which discusses this?
Post by: Iain on January 24, 2007, 11:48:38 AM
That aside, there is significant danger of babies going out with bathwater. Al Gore and others may be running around giving us worst case scenarios, and the motives of some may be questionable, but the case cannot be dismissed purely on the basis of the irritating nature of the most prominent advocates.
I'll be honest here, I'm not a climate scientist. Nothing that has been posted on these discussions in the past has convinced me that I'm any more or less qualified to have this discussion than anyone else, and I don't think I'm qualified at all. If your motive in posting this was pure in the sense that you are looking for genuine discussion about this issue I think you've come to the wrong place. Firstly because I'm about the only vocal 'contrarian' about and I'm not a climate scientist and in no position to debate the science. Secondly, neither is anyone else that has yet contributed to these threads. Third, the vast majority of these threads are little more than the seeking of reassurance amongst those who share the same viewpoint and so the same points crop up again and again, which is why I post specific links to realclimate where I can.
So I'll give you this - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/q-a-global-warming/ - as a starting point, which links to a Q&A with John M. Wallace of the University of Washington (who according to realclimate was initially a sceptic) The second question is specifically on the link between human activities and CO2
I don't link to realclimate because they are my holy grail, the arbiter of truth and right in my universe, I'm not in a position to make judgements about what they say. I post links there because they have tackled (not a value judgement) almost every one of the usual 'this is/isn't happening because...' arguments that I've yet read.
I've also had a quick scan through this - http://bostonreview.net/BR32.1/emanuel.html - which is written by a meterologist at MIT, and is recommended reading by realclimate. It seems readable and clear, with this of note:
Quote
The IPCC reports are fairly candid about what we collectively know and where the uncertainties probably lie. In the first category are findings that are not in dispute, not even by les refusards:
• Concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide are increasing owing to fossil-fuel consumption and biomass burning. Carbon dioxide has increased from its pre-industrial level of about 280 parts per million (ppmv) to about 380 ppmv today, an increase of about 35 percent. From ice-core records, it is evident that present levels of CO2 exceed those experienced by the planet at any time over at least the past 650,000 years.
• Concentrations of certain anthropogenic aerosols have also increased owing to industrial activity.
• The earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2°F in the past century, with most of the increase occurring from about 1920 to 1950, and again beginning around 1975. The year 2005 was the warmest in the instrumental record.
• Sea level has risen by about 2.7 inches over the past 40 years; of this, a little over an inch occurred during the past decade.
• The annual mean geographical extent of arctic sea ice has decreased by 15 to 20 percent since satellite measurements of this began in 1978.
• Concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide are increasing owing to fossil-fuel consumption and biomass burning. Carbon dioxide has increased from its pre-industrial level of about 280 parts per million (ppmv) to about 380 ppmv today, an increase of about 35 percent. From ice-core records, it is evident that present levels of CO2 exceed those experienced by the planet at any time over at least the past 650,000 years.
• Concentrations of certain anthropogenic aerosols have also increased owing to industrial activity.
• The earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2°F in the past century, with most of the increase occurring from about 1920 to 1950, and again beginning around 1975. The year 2005 was the warmest in the instrumental record.
• Sea level has risen by about 2.7 inches over the past 40 years; of this, a little over an inch occurred during the past decade.
• The annual mean geographical extent of arctic sea ice has decreased by 15 to 20 percent since satellite measurements of this began in 1978.
Now, I should note that if argument is sought there is little point anyone arguing with me. Not because my mind is made up, but because my google jedi is as strong as anyone elses', and that's about all it seems any of us here have got on this issue.
Post by: m1911owner on January 24, 2007, 12:17:38 PM
The same is the case the bostonreview quote. Particularly ironic is that they note the pattern of warming and cooling over the last century, and fail to point out that that pattern is almost completely uncorrelated with "greenhouse gas" levels.
Edit to add: I do believe that it is pretty clear that human activities have increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere--I'm not questioning that. What I am objecting to is the apparently unquestioned assumption that this increase in CO2 is having a major impact in on climate. As I understand it, CO2 is a quite weak "greenhouse gas", and its effects are pretty much totally swamped by the effects of water vapor, which is a much stronger greenhouse gas. I don't think the buildup of CO2 is a good thing, and if it continues to increase over a long period of time will probably cause something to break, but I haven't seen any evidence that there is any correlation between CO2 and global temperatures that would lead me to believe that there is any substantial causal relationship.
Post by: Iain on January 24, 2007, 12:47:38 PM
To summarise my understanding of it - yes water vapour is an important part of the greenhouse effect, but it isn't as strong as is commonly claimed (95-98%). Also, water vapour is a feedback mechanism, put crudely, if something causes the temperature to rise water vapour levels will also rise and so cause the majority of the warming experienced. However, on average water vapour remains in the atmosphere for only ten days and so doesn't cause long term warming.
Post by: Ron on January 24, 2007, 01:59:36 PM
If that is the case I am more concerned with our actions in regards to adapting to climate warming than I am concerned with reversing a trend nobody is sure we have even caused.
We need to roll with it, we are coming out of the little ice age.
Post by: mustanger98 on January 24, 2007, 02:06:32 PM
What!?!?!? You cannot mean Al Gore is making it up? What is next? There is no man-bear-pig either?
I'm reminded of yesterday's Day by Day... Damon saying "if Al Gore's theories on deforestation fall down... does anyone still hear them?".
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 24, 2007, 02:10:52 PM
http://www.junkscience.com/
Post by: Tallpine on January 24, 2007, 05:09:35 PM
Quote
and we're all going to die!
Well ... wouldn't the enviro-nazis think that human extinction would be a good thing for the global ecosystem
Post by: Harold Tuttle on January 24, 2007, 05:34:22 PM
Its kind of hard to shovel a mile thick sheet.
Mayhaps the unintended consequence of our environmental impact is thwarting the big cool off.
Post by: Harold Tuttle on January 24, 2007, 05:38:59 PM
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/greenhouse/past.html
Post by: wacki on January 24, 2007, 07:14:43 PM
This man is a fraud and a hack. Anyone that blames acid rain on volcanoes and says CFC's are too heavy to float in the air should not be taken seriously by anyone that has an inkling of a clue.
Post by: Sergeant Bob on January 25, 2007, 01:45:54 AM
This man is a fraud and a hack. Anyone that blames acid rain on volcanoes and says CFC's are too heavy to float in the air should not be taken seriously by anyone that has an inkling of a clue.
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp4/question1232.html
http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/air/acid.htm
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/VolcWeather/description_volcanoes_and_weather.html
http://www.volcanolive.com/acidrain.html
Post by: Standing Wolf on January 25, 2007, 03:38:39 AM
It may, indeed, be the case that Homo sapiens has had some very small effect upon the planet's weather.
That said", the socialist so-called "necessary action" to combat so-called "global warming" is just another eruption of leftist extremist tyranny, intrinsically no different from the horrors of Bolshevism, Nazism, Maoism, et cetera. Leftist extremist "cures" are invariably infinitely worse than the "problems" they purport to address.
Post by: richyoung on January 25, 2007, 06:49:22 AM
This man is a fraud and a hack. Anyone that blames acid rain on volcanoes and says CFC's are too heavy to float in the air should not be taken seriously by anyone that has an inkling of a clue.
BY ALL MEANS, lets talk about the PREVIOUS environmental and climatological case of "Chicken Little-ism", CFCs and the hole in the ozone (that only occasionally happens at the South Pole, and threatens no one, and doesn't exist anymore, despite the fact that the "turd world" is producing and dumping into the atmosphere Freon at record levels....). Billions of dollars spent to re-tool residential and vehicle cooling systems for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. I am sick of the idiot doomsayers.
Post by: Iain on January 25, 2007, 09:11:40 AM
Post by: richyoung on January 25, 2007, 10:40:03 AM
Post by: Brad Johnson on January 25, 2007, 12:14:50 PM
Quote
it is contrary to the accepted science of ozone depletion
Accepted by whom, to what degree, and with what causality?
Brad
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 25, 2007, 01:35:16 PM
I have climbed, and stood at the crater edge or near steam vents of more than one volcano though. Some I have climbed ooze sulpher-laden steam fairly slowly like Mt. Ranier, Mt. Hood, Mt. Cayambe and Mt. Gede. Others have pretty high outputs like Cotopaxi (Ecuador) and Popocapetl (Mexico) where everything is stained yellow from the sulphur. It smells like a thousand matches being struck under your nose at the same time. Popocatepetl in Mexico has been erupting so violently for the last several years that it is closed to climbers. There are hundreds or thousands of other volcanos with some level of activity and that are releasing sulphur into the air that causes sulphuric acid content in rain. This is the same effect caused by burning high-sulphur coal in power plants. I agree with the environmentalists that we should try to clean up power plants, but we can't put big blue UN corks in the volcanos, therefore we can't eliminate all acid rain.
One of my pet peeves is a low-flush volume toilet in my home. It is mandated for water conservation. It uses one half the water of a normal toilet every flush. The problem is that it works so poorly that I usually have to flush it four times. I checked with a plumber about getting a replacement. He advised against it because he said the toilets meeting the newest standards would work even worse. I can't repeat what he said about the politicians that enacted this law!
Post by: MechAg94 on January 25, 2007, 07:29:47 PM
Quote
"well it was once accepted that the earth is flat"
I really dislike this argument. How many scientists were there in the 1400's to argue this concept and debate it? Wasn't the circumference of the earth measured long before this time? Maybe my memory is off.
Post by: MechAg94 on January 25, 2007, 07:32:49 PM
The Eratosthenes Measurement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth
More perspective from Wikipedia.
Post by: m1911owner on January 25, 2007, 07:59:32 PM
That said, do you have any evidence to present of a causal connection between human activity and "global warming"?
Post by: bedlamite on January 26, 2007, 02:54:40 AM
Post by: 280plus on January 26, 2007, 03:28:25 AM
then...
Quote
the fact that the "turd world" is producing and dumping into the atmosphere Freon at record levels....).
Yea, but here in the US we have a law against it so you KNOW it's not happening here. 
Post by: MechAg94 on January 26, 2007, 04:11:40 AM
Quote
OK, I for one am willing to agree that the fact that some people may or may not have once believed that the earth is flat says nothing at all about whether current opinions about "global warming" will ultimately prove to be true or false.
That said, do you have any evidence to present of a causal connection between human activity and "global warming"?
That said, do you have any evidence to present of a causal connection between human activity and "global warming"?
No, I don't. The earth is flat crap is just a hot button for me. In global warming and evolution debates, anytime some idiot wants to just tell everyone to shut up and listen to their betters, they pull out the "well, everyone once thought the earth was flat also." It is kind of like calling someone "Hitler", it pretty much means their argument sucks.
I would like to see some evidence that man is responsible for global warming myself. IMHO, mankind my accelerate or decelerate warming or cooling trends, but I don't think we have the power to create them.
One other thing, these global warming guys never adequately address solar activity.
Post by: Iain on January 26, 2007, 04:19:51 AM
One other thing, these global warming guys never adequately address solar activity.
Start here - RealClimate. Solar Forcing
'IMHO' is pretty worthless when it comes to this subject. That applies to me too.
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 04:28:16 AM
Post by: Iain on January 26, 2007, 04:33:56 AM
Post by: Tallpine on January 26, 2007, 04:36:07 AM
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 04:57:26 AM
Do more than parrot Milloy.
OK:
1. CO2 levels are TRAILING indicators of warming: the planet's water is a major carbon sink in the form of dissolved CO2 - when the water gets haotter, ican no longer hold as much gas in suspension, so it releases it - just like your soda pop when it gets warm.
2. CO2's effect on global warmth is NOT linear: past a certain point, addin "X"% more doesn't result in "X"% more retained heat. It's called diminishing returns - just like whitewashing a fence, one reaches a point at which additional coats don;t make it perceptably whiter. Once the frequencies of infrared radiation that CO2 absorb and re-radiate are already being done so in the high 90 percentile range, additional CO2 has little additional effect.
3. CO2 is PLANT FOOD - increasing levels of it directly increases crop yields.
4. The principle effects of CO2 warming are felt on summer nights - which also increases crop yields.
5. There has only been about 30 years of satellite data, and only about 70 years of lower quality data before that. That's not long enought to trend a system like the earth's climate, with some known cycles in the hundreds of thousands of years.
6. The same "scientists" behind the "global warming" hoax were behind:
A. "Nuclear Winter" - (same models, proven false)
B. "Ozone Hole" - (don;t hear much about THAT one any more, do we?)
C. The Irreversable coming Ice Age ( AKA "That 70's Global Cooling Show")
D. The Mercury in the Fish from Colored Toilet Paper scare - (funny - remains of 10,000 year old sardines had the SAME MERCURY LEVELS - they must have been Squeezin' the Charmin back in the Bronze Age...)
E. DDT Doesn't Work And Its Killing All The Birdies - (2 lies for the price of one - only resulted in the deaths of 30 million or so PEOPLE<...
...plus Alar, Tris, Sacharine, yada, yada, yada,...
so you will UNDERSTAND if I am not just chomping at the bit to compromise my life style, spend billions of dollars and maybe KILL a few tens of millions of people, given their track record...
Post by: Iain on January 26, 2007, 05:14:13 AM
Go to realclimate, read their responses to every single one of your climate related assertions (there is some ozone stuff there too), they have responses about CO2 lag, CO2 fertilisation, climate modelling and everything else. It's not as simple as junkscience and Milloy being the holders of universal truth.
Again, I'm not going to get involved too much in a debate that is by definition highly technical and scientific when neither of us understand the science.
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 05:25:49 AM
Assertions. Straight from Milloy too. Remind me of your qualifications in these (climatology, meterology and apparently also public health) fields?
Go to realclimate, read their responses to every single one of your climate related assertions (there is some ozone stuff there too), they have responses about CO2 lag, CO2 fertilisation, climate modelling and everything else. It's not as simple as junkscience and Milloy being the holders of universal truth.
Again, I'm not going to get involved too much in a debate that is by definition highly technical and scientific when neither of us understand the science.
Go to realclimate, read their responses to every single one of your climate related assertions (there is some ozone stuff there too), they have responses about CO2 lag, CO2 fertilisation, climate modelling and everything else. It's not as simple as junkscience and Milloy being the holders of universal truth.
Again, I'm not going to get involved too much in a debate that is by definition highly technical and scientific when neither of us understand the science.
Speak for yourself - I understand it just fine. And I am not the only one...
Quote
So is it really game-set-match in favor of the global warming alarmists? Not so fast, say the skeptics.
When University of Alabama-Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, a prominent climatologist, factored the newly reported corrections into his calculations, his estimate of atmospheric warming was only 0.12 deg. C/decade -- higher than the prior estimate of 0.09 deg. C/decade, but well below the Science study estimate of 0.19 deg C/decade and the surface temperature estimate of 0.20 deg. C/decade.
As to the claimed errors in the weather balloon measurements, Spencer says that no other effort to adjust the balloon data has produced warming estimates as high as those reported in the new study and that it will take time for the research community to form opinions about whether the new adjustments advocated are justified.
Climate expert Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project says the temperature adjustments are not a big deal.
Greenhouse theory says (and the models calculate) that the atmospheric trend should be 30 percent greater than the surface trend -- and it isnt, says Singer. Furthermore, the models predict that polar [temperature] trends should greatly exceed the tropical values -- and they clearly dont ... In fact, the Antarctic has been cooling, adds Singer.
Singer also had some related thoughts concerning the gloom-and-doom forecasts concerning future temperatures.
Last January, a study in the journal Nature estimated that a doubling of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would increase global temperatures anywhere from 1.9 degrees Centigrade to 11.5 degrees Centigrade by mid-century. But Singer says the researchers varied only six out of many more parameters necessary to model clouds& Their result confirms& that clouds are still too difficult to model and that climate models underlying the Kyoto Protocol have never been validated.
So its far from case-closed on global warming skepticism. Moreover, aside from the controversy over the satellite and weather balloon data, many key climate questions remain unanswered including: whether humans are causing significant warming; whether warming is undesirable; and whether anything be done to avert any undesirable warming.
When University of Alabama-Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, a prominent climatologist, factored the newly reported corrections into his calculations, his estimate of atmospheric warming was only 0.12 deg. C/decade -- higher than the prior estimate of 0.09 deg. C/decade, but well below the Science study estimate of 0.19 deg C/decade and the surface temperature estimate of 0.20 deg. C/decade.
As to the claimed errors in the weather balloon measurements, Spencer says that no other effort to adjust the balloon data has produced warming estimates as high as those reported in the new study and that it will take time for the research community to form opinions about whether the new adjustments advocated are justified.
Climate expert Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project says the temperature adjustments are not a big deal.
Greenhouse theory says (and the models calculate) that the atmospheric trend should be 30 percent greater than the surface trend -- and it isnt, says Singer. Furthermore, the models predict that polar [temperature] trends should greatly exceed the tropical values -- and they clearly dont ... In fact, the Antarctic has been cooling, adds Singer.
Singer also had some related thoughts concerning the gloom-and-doom forecasts concerning future temperatures.
Last January, a study in the journal Nature estimated that a doubling of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would increase global temperatures anywhere from 1.9 degrees Centigrade to 11.5 degrees Centigrade by mid-century. But Singer says the researchers varied only six out of many more parameters necessary to model clouds& Their result confirms& that clouds are still too difficult to model and that climate models underlying the Kyoto Protocol have never been validated.
So its far from case-closed on global warming skepticism. Moreover, aside from the controversy over the satellite and weather balloon data, many key climate questions remain unanswered including: whether humans are causing significant warming; whether warming is undesirable; and whether anything be done to avert any undesirable warming.
From Fox news...got a beef with Spencer and Singer?
Post by: Iain on January 26, 2007, 05:38:02 AM
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 05:46:41 AM
We've had these discussions before, and you're a google jedi, but if I recall correctly not a good enough one to check the qualifications of those you sourced quotes from. Attributing sources seems to have been an issue more recently too. Apply those skills to searching for criticisms of Singer and every other cherry picked article you're about to post links to, I'm not interested in arguing.
Lets see - just who is Roy Spencer? Wikipedia says...
Quote
Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Dr. Spencer is the recipient of NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
He is principally known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society's Special Award.
He is principally known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society's Special Award.
I freely admit he knows more about global climate than I do, and suspect he knows more than you do...but hey, when you can;t refute the FACTS, attack the sources, right?
Post by: m1911owner on January 26, 2007, 06:17:23 AM
One other thing, these global warming guys never adequately address solar activity.
Start here - RealClimate. Solar Forcing
'IMHO' is pretty worthless when it comes to this subject. That applies to me too.
OK, I went and looked at a goodly number of those posts, and noticed something very, um, curious...
They all make reference to original work by apparently credible scientists that points to solar activity as a driving force behind global temperatures. Yet, the work of not even one of these scientists is posted there. All the posts in that section, with no exceptions whatsoever, are attempts to refute the work of the aforementioned scientists.
This very clearly shows that the Real Climate site, rather than being an attempt at getting to objective scientific truth, is in reality an agenda-driven site whose primary purpose is to advance the "global warming" agenda.
Rarely in science does starting with the conclusion, and then working to prove that conclusion, end up producing good science.
Post by: m1911owner on January 26, 2007, 06:25:44 AM
However, I don't buy the argument, "Milloy is evil. Milloy said that, so it must be false." If you want to refute something Milloy said, refute what he said, rather than resorting to ad hominems.
Post by: Iain on January 26, 2007, 07:15:50 AM
There are plenty of pro and anti Milloy writings out there on the web. Make your own mind up, but not based on your assessment of Milloy's work as being quite 'reasonable', or because Milloy's work agrees with your own political views. Of course Milloy's work seems reasonable and accurate if you are inclined to agree with his overall views, I asked for more than a parrot of Milloy because there was a risk this thread would turn into little more than a paraphrasing of 'junkscience', without any science or understanding thereof.
Criticism of his work abounds, you have to read that too. Like I said, and no-one has yet given me cause to revise my opinion, we could link back and forth to things we don't really understand, but what would be the point.
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 08:27:54 AM
1. there is NOT ENOUGH good data to model or predict a system as complex as the Earth's climate - we simply haven't been keeping records of sufficient trustworthiness for long enough. Think about it - we have less than TWO sunspot cycles of satellite data (which we still argue over how & how much to "correct"); perhaps twice that of balloon data. Some climate cycles are measured in hundreds of thousands of years - long enough that continental repositioning changes how they manifest over time. Your gonna predict THAT with 30 years of data? Thats like predicting the winner of the Indy 500 by by timing the first hundreth of the first lap. The global warming advocates are claiming WAY MORE for their data than it can be stretched to prove.
2. No computers sophisticated enought to BEGIN to completely model the effects of water vapor exist, and if they did, there is NO consensus on how to model them - that research is ongoing.
3. Even if global warming is occuring, there is no credible evidence that mankind is CAUSING it. Correlation DOES NOT equal causation. The rooster crowing does not cause the sun to rise.
4. Even if global warming is occuring, it is not necessarily bad - it may delay the onset of the next Ice Age, which will be a disaster for civilization. It WILL increase crop yields though CO2 fertilization directly, and indirectly through longer, wetter growing seasons over a larger percentage of the earth's surface.
5. As I've pointed out, the track record of the alarmists isn'very good. The respons of the Other Side, when I pointed that out, is to ask for MY credentials: here they are - I can READ, and I don't swallow every BS story at first exposure.
6. The GW advocates suspiciously REFRAIN from attacking data or arguments, prefering instead to go through this drill:
A. All credible scientists believe in man-made global warming.
B. Dr. X does not believe in global warming.
C. Therefore, Dr. X is not credible.
D. Dr. Z believes in global warming.
E. Ergo, Dr. Z is credible.
Where have I seen this before? Oh, yeah - its called CIRCULAR REASONING. NOT a good sign for the veracity of global warming proponents.
7. NO, NONE, ZERO measurements show atmospheric warming in the ratio to global warming that the pro-global warming computer models predict.
8. Its actually gotten colder diring WWII (remember the Germans in winter in Russia?) and over the last 6 years. How can that be with sustained CO2 output through those years, absent a large negative forcer such as volcanic or meteoric impact debris?
In short, the "Global Warming" emporer has no clothes, and "because I say so" ISN'T science.
Post by: griz on January 26, 2007, 09:09:08 AM
Quote
Like I said, and no-one has yet given me cause to revise my opinion, we could link back and forth to things we don't really understand, but what would be the point.
How did you form an opinion on something you don't understand? I can see relying on someone more knowledgeable, but you seem to be saying that only the scientist that agree with GW are to be believed. Sounds sort of circular to me.
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 09:12:05 AM
< Scientific paper? I thought ALL scientists agreed that global warming was real, and that there were "no credible, published, peer-reviewed papers that say otherwise". Somebody's confused...>
In testimony before Congress, he said that he has been dismayed over the bogus science and media-hype associated with the man-made global warming theory. As a boy, growing up here in Washington, D.C., he said, I remember the many articles on the large global warming that had occurred between 1900 and 1940. No one understood or knew if this warming would continue. Then the warming abated, and a weak global cooling trend set in from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. The global warming talk ceased and speculation about a coming ice age came into vogue. I anticipate that the trend of the last few decades of global warming will come to an end, and in a few years we will start to see a weak cooling trend similar to that which occurred from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.
"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 09:19:12 AM
Quote
Sir David Kings Queenie Fit
Shutting down dissent.
By Iain Murray
The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out.
The chairman of the conference told the press that the leader of the disruptive delegation "had brought several scientists along with him and he insisted that the program should include among the speakers only those scientists and no other. So, he came over, selected scientists at his discretion, scientists who were to be given the floor in his opinion and scientists who were to be denied an opportunity to speak." A top official of the host government commented, "For some participants the main goal was the search for the truth, understanding of real processes. Other people had the task of disrupting the seminar, so that other people who were seeking the truth could not do so."
Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Shutting down dissent.
By Iain Murray
The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out.
The chairman of the conference told the press that the leader of the disruptive delegation "had brought several scientists along with him and he insisted that the program should include among the speakers only those scientists and no other. So, he came over, selected scientists at his discretion, scientists who were to be given the floor in his opinion and scientists who were to be denied an opportunity to speak." A top official of the host government commented, "For some participants the main goal was the search for the truth, understanding of real processes. Other people had the task of disrupting the seminar, so that other people who were seeking the truth could not do so."
Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
rest of the article: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/murray200407230903.asp
Post by: richyoung on January 26, 2007, 09:24:27 AM
Quote
The fact is the Kyoto protocol that will be a global treaty within months is based on fraudulent science. Assertions that global temperatures are higher today than any time in the past are completely false. Fluctuations in climate patterns have existed for millions of years -- for all earth history. Global temperatures were higher in the Roman times when grapes were grown on British islands and Hannibal's elephants walked through the Alps into Italy. They were higher in the medieval period when the Vikings found and colonised the island that they have called Greenland and when Norwegians grew grain on the fields that are 300m in altitude higher than it is possible to do today.
Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.
Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.
Post by: m1911owner on January 26, 2007, 09:39:51 AM
..and now for a word from that bastion of appologists for capitalist corporate greed, the Russian Academy of Sciences:
Quote
The fact is the Kyoto protocol that will be a global treaty within months is based on fraudulent science. Assertions that global temperatures are higher today than any time in the past are completely false. Fluctuations in climate patterns have existed for millions of years -- for all earth history. Global temperatures were higher in the Roman times when grapes were grown on British islands and Hannibal's elephants walked through the Alps into Italy. They were higher in the medieval period when the Vikings found and colonised the island that they have called Greenland and when Norwegians grew grain on the fields that are 300m in altitude higher than it is possible to do today.
Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.
Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.
Yep, that pretty much sums up my understanding of "global warming." Hence my original question, asking if anyone can present any actual evidence of a connection between human activity and "global warming." Even though this isn't a climate science forum, it is a place peopled by many intelligent who are pretty well in touch with what's going on in the world. I figured that if "global warming" is indeed such a scientific slam-dunk as the screechers would have us believe, then somebody on this forum would at least know what the presumably very-well-known proof is.
Thus far, that proof is yet to be presented.
Which leads me to believe that the "proof" is political wishful-thinking, backed up with a lot of screeching.
Post by: Iain on January 26, 2007, 10:56:05 AM
How did you form an opinion on something you don't understand? I can see relying on someone more knowledgeable, but you seem to be saying that only the scientist that agree with GW are to be believed. Sounds sort of circular to me.
I'm not saying anything of the kind. What is often lost in APS discussions on GW is that I don't really have an opinion, I used to until I was honest enough to go out there and do some reading, then I quickly realised that I was in so deep it was going to take years to even begin to grasp what was going on. These days I tend to admit when I don't know.
Like I said, the only reason that I post stuff from realclimate is to counter the endless Milloy-esque (even Milloy-lite) contrarian postings.
1911owner - I'm not sure what standards of proof you'd accept. But I reckon if you're really really looking, proper hard and serious, you wouldn't be here. I don't mean to be rude, but on this question this is not the place, you'll have to expose your ideas and your standards of proof to some forum where this is the main topic, and then be prepared to be deluged with articles, studies and various other stuff to read. Until you really understand this, you aren't in a position to judge the various 'proofs' that have been claimed on either side, and that takes us right back to where this thread started.
Post by: m1911owner on January 26, 2007, 12:02:14 PM
Quote
1911owner - I'm not sure what standards of proof you'd accept.
What we're being told is that "global warming" is "settled science", and that we should drastically diminsh our standard of living in order to prevent destruction of the world. For that, my standard of proof is very high indeed.
I ask here because I hang out here, and because there is intelligent life here. I've perused other venues, and have yet to see any actual evidence of a causal human connection.
Post by: MechAg94 on January 26, 2007, 01:07:44 PM
Post by: wacki on January 26, 2007, 02:02:11 PM
This man is a fraud and a hack. Anyone that blames acid rain on volcanoes and says CFC's are too heavy to float in the air should not be taken seriously by anyone that has an inkling of a clue.
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp4/question1232.html
http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/air/acid.htm
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/VolcWeather/description_volcanoes_and_weather.html
http://www.volcanolive.com/acidrain.html
Sergeant bob, my bad. I've been working extreme hours and I'm short on time. I really botched that sentence up. If you go to this google cache page:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:-LEzIAh8knUJ:www.junkscience.com/may99/freon.htm+Congress+outlawed+future+U.S.+production+of+the+CFC-based+refrigerant&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
You will see that Milloy says:
Quote
The problem with this theory is that the chlorine molecules in Freon are heavier than air; they
settle to the ground upon release - many tens of thousands of feet below the ozone layer.
settle to the ground upon release - many tens of thousands of feet below the ozone layer.
Anyone familiar with basic physics/chemistry knows gases are not sorted by slight differences in weight when there is wind or even low level convection. And anyone that has looked at the balloon, satellite, and airplane readings of CFC's knows that Milloy is flat out wrong here.
He continues to say:
Quote
the eruption of Mount
Pinatubo in the Philippines generated more chlorine in a few short hours than if all the man-made
CFCs in the world were vented en masse.
Pinatubo in the Philippines generated more chlorine in a few short hours than if all the man-made
CFCs in the world were vented en masse.
Which is where I was trying to go with Milloy's volcanoes. The chlorine released from volcanoes tends to be in the form of salt (NaCl), hydrochloric acid (HCL), and various other volatile chemicals. These chemicals are very very different than CFCs. For one they are water soluble so they dissolve in the clouds and fall back down as acid rain. The acid rain stays below the stratosphere (the location of the ozone layer). Milloy is basically claiming volcanoes cause *stratospheric* acid rain and stratospheric chlorine ion buildup. If you read this:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/images/ozone/20questions.pdf
You should realize why this is simply not true. Milloy is a fraud and a hack. And he's not even a very good one. Some of his arguments are written well enough that they require some advanced scientific education to debunk. But many of his arguments require only a fundamental understanding of highschool chemistry and physics to spot the horrible flaws. His CFC argument is one such example of this. I honestly think the only reason he is taken seriously is because highschool physics and chemistry is so easy to forget if you aren't using it somewhat frequently.
Post by: wacki on January 26, 2007, 02:10:51 PM
Quote
What we're being told is that "global warming" is "settled science", and that we should drastically diminsh our standard of living in order to prevent destruction of the world. For that, my standard of proof is very high indeed.
No, that is what conservationists and morons like Al Gore want you to believe. Most scientists want to replace oil and coal with much more advanced technologies. The media understands this concept about as well as they understand firearms. Which is to say they are pretty clueless.
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 26, 2007, 02:35:57 PM
Post by: Ron on January 26, 2007, 04:51:02 PM
Quote
How did you form an opinion on something you don't understand? I can see relying on someone more knowledgeable, but you seem to be saying that only the scientist that agree with GW are to be believed. Sounds sort of circular to me.
It is the consensus of the scientific community that man is contributing to global warming.
Consensus is when a bunch of folks with the same presuppositions all get together and agree with each other, not to be confused with the scientific method.
There is comfort in numbers.
Post by: griz on January 26, 2007, 05:20:01 PM
At any rate, I suspect that I also do not know enough to authoratively say what is right, but I will still be skeptical until I see the one thing that several people have asked for: evidence that man has caused GW.
Have a good weekend, Griz
Post by: Iain on January 27, 2007, 02:22:56 PM
Ron, I'm not sure how to address the issue of consensus in science. I think when you say it is not to be confused with the scientific method you overstate your case. Consensus is when scientists agree that the theory best fits the facts, and it is usually arrived at by this method of peer review. I'm loath to mention Naomi Oreske because there lies a whole other can of worms, but a quick search on her name will take you to her study of peer reviewed climate science papers and how many of them (in her estimation, which is part of my hestitation to mention her) disagreed with the consensus position on climate change.
There are definite valid questions as to whether (as a scientist acquantaince of mine put it earlier today) science drives consensus or consensus drives science. But I would be very careful about assuming this is mere safety in numbers or that this is based on 'presuppositions', the consensus position is that of the IPCC 3rd Report, and the signatories to that report include very weighty bodies from around the world. I'm not about to delve greatly into Popper and the scientific method, but perhaps the idea that consensus is not part of the scientific method, but comes about as a result of the scientific method is worth a thought.
I find consensus difficult because there is always someone who disagrees with consensus and thinks that this makes them the new Galileo. Sure there are very notable exceptions - but in general the vast vast majority of those who oppose the scientific consensus turn out to be wrong.
And to mountainclmbr and my last contribution to this thread. If someone other than me in one of these threads read the words '...and scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970's...' and responded by saying something like 'Not one peer reviewed scientific paper has yet been found that predicted global cooling in the 1970's. Sure there were newspaper stories about it, but there have been newspaper stories about all sorts of questionable scientific claims. To compare a few newspaper stories to a vast canon of peer reviewed scientific work, regardless of my views of the veracity of those papers, is to err on the side of the ridiculous' then I'd probably quit these discussions pretty happy.
And griz, hope you have/had a good weekend too.
Post by: m1911owner on January 27, 2007, 02:59:11 PM
Like, for example, the prediction that the "climate experts" made that the 2007-2008 hurricane season will be the most devastating on record. The devastating hurricanes we've experienced this fall and winter provide evidence that the theory is correct.
Oops, what a minute... What hurricanes?
Post by: wacki on January 27, 2007, 03:38:12 PM
Like, for example, the prediction that the "climate experts" made that the 2007-2008 hurricane season will be the most devastating on record. The devastating hurricanes we've experienced this fall and winter provide evidence that the theory is correct.
Oops, what a minute... What hurricanes?
Oops, what a minute... What hurricanes?
The meteorologists made those predictions and not the climatologists. The climatologists do things on multi-year averages. For an explanation as to why there were no hurricanes this year please read this:
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/SAL.htm
It's due to a dust storm called Calima. There is no dust storm in the Pacific and they are setting record numbers of typhoons.
Post by: m1911owner on January 27, 2007, 04:39:25 PM
The meteorologists made those predictions and not the climatologists.
So, are seriously going to try to tell me if there actually were a lot of serious hurricanes this year, the climatologists wouldn't be falling all over themselves saying, "See, I told you so!"?
When I was in school, cherry-picking results would earn you an "F".
Post by: wacki on January 27, 2007, 05:15:41 PM
The meteorologists made those predictions and not the climatologists.
So, are seriously going to try to tell me if there actually were a lot of serious hurricanes this year, the climatologists wouldn't be falling all over themselves saying, "See, I told you so!"?
That is exactly what I'm saying. Well, at least among the good climatologists. If you go to Realclimate.org you will see they are constantly reminding us not to look at any individual year. The new GRACE satellite has been suggesting catastrophic ice melt for almost four years now yet the guys at realclimate have been saying "it's too early to tell". Some climate functions only need a sample set of a week. Other climate functions need decades of data. It totally relies on the underlying physics of what they are studying.
Quote
When I was in school, cherry-picking results would earn you an "F".
Well know offense but the only person that is jumping to conclusions based off of any single year is you. You made a conclusion and I explained to you why it is wrong (dust storm Calima). In all honesty I don't think eliminating our fossil fuel consumption is something we need to fear. I have no doubt it can be accomplished with very little, if any, pain to society. My gut feeling is that in the long term it will make us much much better off. However, I also think the systems many democrats want us to follow are just absolutely retarded and even counterproductive. History has shown us that complex regulations get abused and manipulated. And if you look at what is going on in Europe, you will see that Kyotto is no exception.
Post by: Ron on January 27, 2007, 05:35:31 PM
Quote
In all honesty I don't think eliminating our fossil fuel consumption is something we need to fear. I have no doubt it can be accomplished with very little, if any, pain to society.
Thats just wacki!
OK, I admit when I saw your username I made a mental note to use that line first chance I got, lol.
If it was THAT easy I think we would be moving away from fossil fuels. Instead I think it is more likely we will be strip mining more and making oil from coal.
I would rather see more nuclear power and domestic drilling ie. ANWAR
Post by: wacki on January 27, 2007, 06:08:57 PM
If it was THAT easy I think we would be moving away from fossil fuels. Instead I think it is more likely we will be strip mining more and making oil from coal.
No we wouldn't. The person that owns a mine or oil well has a life long cash cow. If solar cells become mainstream then your solar power plant is only as good as the next generation of solar cells. Competition becomes fierce and decentralized. Anybody willing to put a panel on their roof is a possible competitor. That would be a nightmare for the current generation of power companies. You simply can't own the sun.
And I didn't say it would be easy. It will be difficult. The good news is that there is lots of low hanging fruit. I mean we are still using civil war era battery technology in our cars for crying out loud. It will take billions of dollars and many years of research, but there is little doubt it can be done. Some say it will take an effort on the scale of an 8 year Manhattan project. I personally don't think it will take that long for most of the major improvements but it certainly won't be a small effort. There are some people that believe a 1 billion dollar "sacrificial lamb" would bring solar power into the mainstream. The sacrificial lamb is for the construction of a solar silicon/wafer fab plant. That way solar companies won't have to rely on computer industry waste. Once the economy of scales are in effect then a market will open and other techs like thin film will likely replace silicon based solar cells. When it comes to a multi-trillion dollar industry like fossil fuels (nevermind auto, trains, etc), 1 billion dollars is nothing. Unfortunately nobody is willing to burn a billion dollars of their hard earned money and the fossil fuel industry owns Washington. If nobody is willing to risk 1 billion, who is going to risk 5 billion a year for 10 years? There are only two industries that can make that kind of investment. They are the oil/coal companies and Washington. Neither one of those have any interest in making changes at the moment. Their current projects are mostly for show. Talk to any real scientist in the field and he/she will tell you that both hydrogen and corn-ethanol are boondoggles.
As for nuclear, did you know that coal releases 100x more radiation into the air? Nuclear is actually a really clean tech (outside of the nuke dumps) and there have been numerous breakthroughs with breeding fuel from waste and long term storage. Waste really isn't a problem IMO. However, there is only a limited amount of uranium and if we go to plutonium and other fuels we will have major security problems with weapons grade nuclear fuel. Thorium offers a lot of hope for a clean and safe nuclear future but the last time I read up on it the tech is still being developed.
Post by: MechAg94 on January 28, 2007, 06:04:05 AM
Quote
I find consensus difficult because there is always someone who disagrees with consensus and thinks that this makes them the new Galileo. Sure there are very notable exceptions - but in general the vast vast majority of those who oppose the scientific consensus turn out to be wrong.
The problem is that "consensus" is being thrown about some sort of proof or justification for proceding with the assumption that man is causing global warming. Consensus, in and of itself, is not evidence and proves nothing. Normally, consensus develops as facts, evidence, and experimentation prove that a theory is correct. In this case, AGW supporters can't find the evidence so they seem to be skipping that part and trying to develop consensus anyway.
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 28, 2007, 06:46:19 AM
Most of the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO think that Global Warming and Global Cooling cycles have natural causes. Most try to stay away from politics, but have privately said that the conclusions of many scientists seems driven by where their funding comes from. The wife of one of my coworkers is an environmental professor who studies GW. Her specialty is proving humans cause GW through observations of bird migration and flight patterns. I have been PC with this coworker and have not asked how you can prove one proves the other.
A funny story I heard from one of the NCAR scientists. He said that a big group of them went to the opening of Al Gores "An Inconvenient Truth". He said that the movie was so stupid that they were just busting up laughing, but it was during parts that were supposed to be serious or even frightening. He was sure everyone else in the theater thought they were crazy.
Post by: Iain on January 28, 2007, 07:12:22 AM
MechAg94, I think you'd find that if you presented such an argument to a climatologist they'd tell you that their consensus has come about because of the science, and that they're very sorry you haven't done the reading to understand that.
Mountainclmbr - I guess your acquaintances from NCAR didn't do any work to this page then*. Or any number of other pages on NCAR's website. Strangely that page addresses quite a lot of the usual stuff. Does your claim ("Most of the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO think that Global Warming and Global Cooling cycles have natural causes") have any basis in reality?
We could wait until after February the 2nd and then give some the NCAR scientists who are working on the up coming IPCC report a call - http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2007/ipcctips.shtml One of those heavily peer reviewed documents that outlines what the 'consensus' (dirty word, dirty dirty word) is.
*Note this, it seems to directly contradict your assertion
Quote
However, climate simulations at NCAR have shown that solar changes explain less than a third of the warm-up during the last century. The most straightforward explanation for a warming Earth is the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned in homes, gas and coal-fired power plants, vehicles, and factories.
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/future.jsp
Post by: m1911owner on January 28, 2007, 09:22:39 AM
Quote
However, climate simulations at NCAR have shown that solar changes explain less than a third of the warm-up during the last century. The most straightforward explanation for a warming Earth is the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned in homes, gas and coal-fired power plants, vehicles, and factories.
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/future.jspThe above-referenced article demonstrates well exactly what I've been talking about.
1. First, they acknowledge that solar output has increased.
2. They then posit that this change has been "fraction of a percent since 1900." However, we've had satellites that can measure this flux for less than thirty years. They are simply guessing the rest of the last century. And if their logic has been the same as on the RealClimate site, their guess is that solar output has been increasing while we've been able to measure it, but hasn't been for the rest of the century.
3. They then assert that this increase in solar output accounts for no more than a third of "global warming", based on their simulations. That would be the same simulations that predicted the devastating hurricanes this year? And when they can't even get a single year right, we're supposed to believe these simulations when extrapolated out for a full century, based on input that's a (politically-biased) wild-ass guess to begin with?
(By the way, the astute might observe that if we were simply to suppose that the rest of the contury has been similar to the 30- years we've been able to measure, and applied exactly their logic with that assumption, it would account for around 100% of the "global warming" they purport.)
4. And then they conclude (paraphrased): "Since we can't figure out where this 'global warming' is coming from, we figure it must be anthropogenic."
I note that this last statement is essentially a complete admission that they actually have no evidence of a causal relationship between human activities and "global warming."
Post by: Iain on January 28, 2007, 09:38:33 AM
You've already had the hurricane issue addressed, but you've failed to respond to it, but raise it again. You have no basis or expertise to make the judgements you have made throughout this thread, both of those facts seriously reflect on the sincerity of your inquiries. In fact I'll go so far as to say that like near every other thread on this issue here on APS what you wanted was someone to agree with you, someone to reassure you that you were right, so I apologise for my input. Why do you think I constantly stated that this isn't the best place for this inquiry, I was giving you the opportunity to prove that your inquiry was genuine. It wasn't.
Post by: m1911owner on January 28, 2007, 10:20:01 AM
Post by: wacki on January 28, 2007, 01:27:35 PM
In this case, AGW supporters can't find the evidence so they seem to be skipping that part and trying to develop consensus anyway.
Just curious, have you ever read a single article on global warming that wasn't from an industry hack? Just about every single paleoclimate proxy supports the global warming theory.
Post by: wacki on January 28, 2007, 01:54:08 PM
Quote
However, climate simulations at NCAR have shown that solar changes explain less than a third of the warm-up during the last century. The most straightforward explanation for a warming Earth is the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned in homes, gas and coal-fired power plants, vehicles, and factories.
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/future.jspThe above-referenced article demonstrates well exactly what I've been talking about.
1. First, they acknowledge that solar output has increased.
Yes, but very little. If the sun was a possibility then don't you think Lindzen would be all over it?
Quote
2. They then posit that this change has been "fraction of a percent since 1900." However, we've had satellites that can measure this flux for less than thirty years. They are simply guessing the rest of the last century.
Israel has been taking sunlight measurements since 1950. And they can reconstruct cosmic radiation measurements via isotope reading in the ice cores. That gives us a million years of readings. Charles Greeley Abbot, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, started studying the relationship between solar variation and weather in 1900. So that gives us direct measurements that are over a hundred years old. Your assertion that they are simply guessing is very wrong.
Quote
4. And then they conclude (paraphrased): "Since we can't figure out where this 'global warming' is coming from, we figure it must be anthropogenic."
That's not how it works. People have been predicting global warming since the 1800s. (Joseph Fourier, 1827) Those predictions were based off of basic principles of physics. What is even more surprising is that the calculations made back then (Svente Arrhenius, 1896) have been rather accurate.
Hard science is a lot more robust than you are making it out to be. There are plenty of loons in the soft/social sciences. I tend to be very skeptical of any statistical study of human nature. That kind of science is just way too error prone. But climate change is based off of very basic and very old physics. The laws of physics are pretty solid.
Post by: wacki on January 28, 2007, 01:55:33 PM
Iain, sorry I haven't had more time to respond to the hurricane issue in more depth. I have to leave right now, but briefly: I don't consider the hurricane issue to have been "addressed." That article was essentially, "Here's why you shouldn't hold our models to account for this spectular failure, and should believe everything else we have to say." I don't buy that argument. And the failure of their hurricane predictions remains a spectacular failure that very vividly demonstrates that their models are incapable of the sort of long-term prediction they assert for them.
Did you even read the article on Calima I posted? It sure doesn't seem like it.
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 28, 2007, 03:22:38 PM
And since when did peer review prove something right? I have worked in research and development and have both written papers and reviewed papers. If you can pick your reviewers you can pick the result.
You can be pretty sure that human activity did not cause the sudden warming that ended the ice age 12,000 or so years ago. And did not cause either the preceeding ice ages or the interruptions in the ice ages for millions of years prior to that. And human activity probably did not cause the warming or the little ice age observed in Europe in the middle ages.
With thousands of interrelated variables affecting climate, there is no way to perform an experiment where you vary one thing, hold the other variables constant and measure what happens. But, it has always proven true that when socialism is the goal that the ends justify the means. That is why I am a skeptic.
Post by: MechAg94 on January 28, 2007, 06:40:46 PM
Post by: richyoung on January 29, 2007, 04:36:18 AM
Post by: wacki on January 29, 2007, 05:07:26 AM
...when they can put CURRENT data in the models, run them backwards for 100 years, and get results that correspond to the records, then we'll talk.
Can we talk yet?
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/models-dont-work.html
Quote
Until then, its a stone cold fact that the so-called climatologists have to "correct" their best models to get CURRENT conditions when fed CURRENT data. Further, since everyone wants to talk credentislas, I'm a computer guy, working for the government in the field of combat simulations, where we have to MODEL lots of things, including weather effects. We do not now, nor are we ever likely, to have a computer complex and fast enough to model weather and climate and generate reliable results in a useful time span. Even if we did, there isn't a sufficient historical record of good data, noer are there suffiecient sensors to take the "temperature" of the earth as a whole.
Are you saying accurately predicting the climate 20 years in advance is not useful? Ok.
read that link please. BTW, I'm a computer guy too. :-D
Post by: wacki on January 29, 2007, 05:10:15 AM
I have read a couple articles that were largely interviews with scientists running the models and publishing their results. It was interesting reading just how much they had to mess with their model in order to show the global warming results they were looking for.
Who am I to trust? Your sourceless, linkless, and nameless post or this list of quotes:
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm
?
Post by: richyoung on January 29, 2007, 12:26:58 PM
...when they can put CURRENT data in the models, run them backwards for 100 years, and get results that correspond to the records, then we'll talk.
Can we talk yet?
No. For one thing, historical records of temperature are highly doubtful as to accuracy, and are biased toward the presence of people to take the recordings. The results are then "corrected" by various SWAGS to get the data that fits their massaged models - the same flawed models used to agitprop the "nuclear winter" scare n the furtherence of "better Red than Dead" socialism. In short, what was the "temperature of the Earth" in 1880? No one really knows - some claim to prop up their guesswork with ice core samples, but the dirty little secret is they have to massage that data to fit their curves - ignoring for the moment the vey problematic endevour that calculating the amount of a water-soluable gas in a frozen water matrix that is known to undergo sublimation is little more than an attempt to pin the data "tail" on the theory "donkey".
Second, you talking about a delta of less than one degree over one hundred years, when even NOW, with satellite IR data, a difference of 0.2 to 0.3 degrees is about the best we can hope to get out of the data without running into near-endless arguments on how to "correct" the data for skew, obital drift, sensor degradation, etc, etc, etc. Even if the older data were good, (and thereis no way to tell), you are looking at +/- 0.4 C over a CENTURY - including substantial chunks, (1940s, last 6 years) where no warming but rather cooling occured - NOT the behavior of a system prone to thermal runaway...
...which brings me to my next point - if Earth's climate were indeed prone to thermal runaway, we would not be around to have this discussion - we would be sulfur eating bacteria on a deep ocean vent, waiting for some stable millenia that will never come to evolve to a higher form (at leat, according to the evolutionists...)
Lastly, there are three sets of data: satellite, balloon, and ground observation. 2 of the 3 pretty much agree with each other - the satellite data and the balloon data. Neither one shows the level of atmospheric warming that MUST be occuring in order for the "global warming" climate models to have any validity. The set of data that DOESN'T fit, for a variety of reasons that compromise its integrity, are the ground obs. Your chart is using the ground observations temps that are known to be flawed. It HAS to be, because the balloon data only goes back to the WWII era, and the satellite data only goes back 30 years or so, and that with LESS confidendce in the early years.
Quote
Are you saying accurately predicting the climate 20 years in advance is not useful? Ok.
I'm saying when you can accurately predict TOMMOROW, and a WEEK from now, THEN we'll talk about 20 years from now. The planet * I * live on, they can't.
Quote
read that link please. BTW, I'm a computer guy too. :-D
Then you know the meaning of "Garbage In - Garbage Out". At work, if AK-47s are taking out M1 tanks in the simulation - we don't go running to the pentagon about commie "super rifles" - we fix the BAD DATA. Just because a computer "modeled" it, doesn't mean its so - someone with an agenda can "prove" whatever they want with computers.
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 29, 2007, 12:36:23 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070129/sc_nm/globalwarming_dc
The draft report says there is at least a 90 percent probability that human activities are to blame for most of the warming in the past 50 years. The previous report, in 2001, put the probability at 66 percent.
I would multiply those percentages by a "trust" percentage. I trust the UN 0% so (0.9)X(0.0)=0.0%
Post by: wacki on January 29, 2007, 10:50:51 PM
Quote
I'm saying when you can accurately predict TOMMOROW, and a WEEK from now, THEN we'll talk about 20 years from now. The planet * I * live on, they can't.
I hope you realize that predicting which way the wind blows in a week is a completely different set of skills than calculating the energy balance of the earth. And if you bothered to read that thread they successfully predicted the temp 20 years in advance.
Quote
...which brings me to my next point - if Earth's climate were indeed prone to thermal runaway, we would not be around to have this discussion - we would be sulfur eating bacteria on a deep ocean vent, waiting for some stable millenia that will never come to evolve to a higher form (at leat, according to the evolutionists...)
So I take it you don't believe in evolution?
Post by: wacki on January 29, 2007, 10:56:10 PM
I would multiply those percentages by a "trust" percentage. I trust the UN 0% so (0.9)X(0.0)=0.0%
Feel free to choose any other major scientific society then. They are all saying the same stuff.
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 04:24:17 AM
Quote
I'm saying when you can accurately predict TOMMOROW, and a WEEK from now, THEN we'll talk about 20 years from now. The planet * I * live on, they can't.
I hope you realize that predicting which way the wind blows in a week is a completely different set of skills than calculating the energy balance of the earth. And if you bothered to read that thread they successfully predicted the temp 20 years in advance.
Successful prediction without a credible method means nothing, and twenty years is an eyeblink in climatological terms - less than one sunspot cycle, even. It means nothing.
Quote
Quote
...which brings me to my next point - if Earth's climate were indeed prone to thermal runaway, we would not be around to have this discussion - we would be sulfur eating bacteria on a deep ocean vent, waiting for some stable millenia that will never come to evolve to a higher form (at leat, according to the evolutionists...)
So I take it you don't believe in evolution?
I have grave reservations about the theory of evolution as a cause of speciation in complex organisms - particularly given the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. The theory of evolution rests on the assumption that simularities in morphology automatically mean genetic relation - this ignores the possiblity of parallel development, for one thing. While I can see isolated poulations selectively developing traits that enhance survival, I can't see frogs truning into rats. At the genetic level, the theory of evolution is equivalent to the idea that we can put a bunch of Timex parts in a paint can, clamp it into a paint shaker, and if we run it LONG enough, a Rolex will be inside when we turn it off.
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 04:51:07 AM
I would multiply those percentages by a "trust" percentage. I trust the UN 0% so (0.9)X(0.0)=0.0%
Feel free to choose any other major scientific society then. They are all saying the same stuff.
How about the Russian Academy of Science - THEY don't say "the same stuff" - they come out and admit that global warming is a hoax.
How about the GKSS?
Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 05:01:11 AM
I would multiply those percentages by a "trust" percentage. I trust the UN 0% so (0.9)X(0.0)=0.0%
Feel free to choose any other major scientific society then. They are all saying the same stuff.
Lets take a little look at the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change: (IPCC), shall we?
Quote
Concern about bias within climate research has spread to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose findings are widely cited by those calling for drastic action on global warming.
In January, Dr Chris Landsea, an expert on hurricanes with the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC, claiming that it was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound".
In January, Dr Chris Landsea, an expert on hurricanes with the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC, claiming that it was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound".
From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 05:16:40 AM
Quote
The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.
The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.
Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.
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However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.
They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.
The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.
Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.
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However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.
They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 09:41:39 AM
How about the Russian Academy of Science - THEY don't say "the same stuff" - they come out and admit that global warming is a hoax.
Then why did they sign this?
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 09:47:52 AM
They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.
Benny Peiser is a fraud and a piss poor one at that. He cited a pro-carbon sequestration and pro-alternative energy paper as "debunking the consensus". It doesn't take a college education to figure out how pathetic that is.
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/BPeiser.html
He is a joke and anyone that checks his work and continues to take him seriously is a joke as well. It took him 2 years to admit he was 97% wrong on the categorization of the abstracts.
I'll address the rest of your criticisms later... got work to do.
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 10:35:24 AM
How about the Russian Academy of Science - THEY don't say "the same stuff" - they come out and admit that global warming is a hoax.
Then why did they sign this?
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Can it be that you are UNAWARE that the Russian Academy of Science has RETRACTED and REPUDIATED that signature?
"The international scientific community was plunged into disarray as news emerged yesterday how Britain's Royal Society has been orchestrating a political campaign behind the back of the Russian Academy of Science. In a calculated attempt to overthrow the well-known sceptical position of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) on climate change, the Royal Society appears to have pressured its president, Yuri Osipov, into signing a politically motivated document against the expressed stance of its own organisation.
The RAS had never seen or discussed the text of the Academies' statement. After having done so, the RAS climate scientists have come to the conclusion that the statement of the Academies is "lacking scientific proof and having contradictions in logic in its many assertions."
The shenanigans of Lord May and his cronies appears to have backfired: Instead of providing evidence of an international "scientific consensus" on climate change, the public retraction by the Russian Academy of Science from the Royal Society's unduly political G8 statement has exposed the whole exercise as a complete farce. As a result, the reputation and integrity of the world's leading scientific academies have been severely damaged"
From RIA Novosti:
Russian academicians are still negative about the Kyoto protocol to the UN convention on climate change, a leading scientist told a Friday news conference.
Academician Yury Izrael, who chairs the Russian Academy of Sciences' council-seminar on the Kyoto protocol, said the council had confirmed its position on climate change remained the same.
[...]
Russian academicians asked [Russian Academy of Sciences President Yury] Osipov to recall his signature. "The document has been passed to the Academy of Sciences' president," said Izrael, before adding that Osipov would now have to decide how to resolve the matter.
Russian scientists said they still considered the Kyoto protocol was scientifically ungrounded, and would be an ineffective way to try to achieve the aim of the UN convention on climate change. They also said it was harmful for the Russian economy.
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 11:03:18 AM
They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.
Benny Peiser is a fraud and a piss poor one at that. He cited a pro-carbon sequestration and pro-alternative energy paper as "debunking the consensus". It doesn't take a college education to figure out how pathetic that is.
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/BPeiser.html
He is a joke and anyone that checks his work and continues to take him seriously is a joke as well. It took him 2 years to admit he was 97% wrong on the categorization of the abstracts.
I'll address the rest of your criticisms later... got work to do.
While I think you overstate the issue, I'll admit you brought to light something I didn't know about Peser - so let place in his stead:
Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Dr. Spencer is the recipient of NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.
He is principally known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society's Special Award. He denies the predominant scientific view that human activity is responsible for global warming.
In several self-published articles Spencer has espoused opinions that defy mainstream scientific views.
In 2006 Spencer criticized Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth saying "For instance, Mr. Gore claims that the Earth is now warmer than it has been in thousands of years. Yet the latest National Academies of Science (NAS) report on the subject has now admitted that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years, which is mostly made up of the "Little Ice Age"." [1]
Post by: Bogie on January 30, 2007, 11:21:12 AM
100 years is an eyeblink. What would you say if you went to see your doctor following a particularly bad meeting, and without looking at anything but the immediate results, he put you on strong blood pressure medication, tranquilizers, and anti-seizure meds, because you were evidencing some real nervous twitches... Now, you're not normally that way, but that is the ONLY data set he's paying attention to.
And we've got a LOT of media attention. And a lot of people who WANT it to happen.
That results in bad science.
A particularly telling thing is that folks keep pointing fingers at the US... They conveniently ignore third-world countries with HUGE populations who do not place, or enforce, vehicle emission controls, who are burning whatever fuel they can scrounge, without benefit of scrubbers, and who are having babies like nobody's business. We have VOLUNTARILY enacted a lot of restrictive measures which they have not.
Frankly, the world's luddites want the US to stop. So that they can "have a level playing field." And we have people who have been conditioned by our government school system to "play fair," who think that is a good idea. Those people need to examine air quality in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles on a bad day, and then fly to Mexico City...
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 11:26:49 AM
Guys, frankly, we've got a microscopic data set that folks are trying to extrapolate from.
100 years is an eyeblink.
100 years is an eyeblink.
Give that man a cigar & the carbon credits to smoke it!
Post by: HankB on January 30, 2007, 11:37:32 AM
Quote
Give that man a cigar & the carbon credits to smoke it!
Hmmm . . . you might want to rethink that offer as according to Drudge: Quote
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a significant contributor to global warming!
Post by: Brad Johnson on January 30, 2007, 11:40:05 AM
Brad
Post by: Bogie on January 30, 2007, 11:46:17 AM
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2007/01/28/
Post by: Iain on January 30, 2007, 12:02:00 PM
Post by: richyoung on January 30, 2007, 12:05:51 PM
wacki, I think you're wasting your time. Those posting endless links to 'authorities' ...
Roy Spencer, Russian Academy of Science, Quote
that they choose to defer to know full well how much they have to ignore to find them,...
"Science" is NOT "democracy" - the "majority" can be, and often is, WRONG!
Post by: mountainclmbr on January 30, 2007, 07:01:45 PM
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 10:43:34 PM
How about the Russian Academy of Science - THEY don't say "the same stuff" - they come out and admit that global warming is a hoax.
Then why did they sign this?
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Can it be that you are UNAWARE that the Russian Academy of Science has RETRACTED and REPUDIATED that signature?
Did I link to the Royal Academy Joint Statement? No, I linked to the US National Academy statement.
Do you realize you the words you were quoting were Benny Peisers? A man that has a history of being 97%+ wrong? If you are going to be honest you need to reference the source. BTW, the Russians backed away from a press release. That same press release was criticized by the president of our own National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22649-1681145,00.html
The row was not over the science but the political statements attached to the scientific reports. The Royal Society made some accurate statements about Bush's suppression of scientific reports. The US Academies objected because they do not think politics and science should mix. Find me a statement where the Russians reject the US joint statement which they signed and then we can talk. Until then it appears you have been bamboozled.
BTW, I agree with the Russians on Kyotto.
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 10:55:45 PM
wacki, I think you're wasting your time. Those posting endless links to 'authorities' ...
Roy Spencer, Russian Academy of Science, Roy Spencer doesn't believe in evolution. He also claims there is a "near total absense (sic) of transitional forms of life in the fossil record."
http://www.ecoenquirer.com/flying-whale.htm
Are you going to trust him on either of those statements? Spencer did great work on Microwave Sounding Units but some of the stuff he's said lately is demonstrably false. I mean you can take a trip to the natural museum of History and handle items which according to Roy Spencer don't exits.
One problem with brilliant people in general is that some of them go crazy when they get older.
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 11:06:40 PM
While I think you overstate the issue, I'll admit you brought to light something I didn't know about Peser - so let place in his stead:
I'm overstating the issue? Did you even read Peisers 34 abstracts? Are you aware that he slandered the scientific community?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/01/ixworld.html
The man is either putting on a show or completely delusional. And unless you can realize what he's doing we are going to have a real problem talking in the future.
Here is an abstract which he says disagrees with and disproves the consensus on climate change:
Quote
AQUATIC BIOMASS RESOURCES AND CARBON-DIOXIDE TRAPPING
CHELF P, BROWN LM, WYMAN CE
BIOMASS & BIOENERGY 4 (3): 175-183 1993
Intensively managed microalgal production facilities are capable of fixing several-fold more carbon dioxide per unit area than trees or crops. Although CO2 is still released when fuels derived from algal biomass are burned, integration of microalgal farms for flue gas capture approximately doubles the amount of energy produced per unit of CO2 released. Materials derived from microalgal biomass also can be used for other long-term uses, serving to sequester CO2. Flue gas has the potential to provide sufficient quantities of CO2 for such large-scale microalgae farms. Viewing microalgae farms as a means to reduce the effects of a greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, CO2) changes the view of the economics of the process. Instead of requiring that microalgae-derived fuel be cost competitive with fossil fuels, the process economics must be compared with those of other technologies proposed to deal with the problem of CO2 pollution. However, development of alternative, environmentally safer energy production technologies will benefit society whether or not global climate change actually occurs. Microalgal biomass production has great potential to contribute to world energy supplies, and to control CO2 emissions as the demand for energy increases. This technology makes productive use of arid and semi-arid lands and highly saline water, resources that are not suitable for agriculture and other biomass technologies.
CHELF P, BROWN LM, WYMAN CE
BIOMASS & BIOENERGY 4 (3): 175-183 1993
Intensively managed microalgal production facilities are capable of fixing several-fold more carbon dioxide per unit area than trees or crops. Although CO2 is still released when fuels derived from algal biomass are burned, integration of microalgal farms for flue gas capture approximately doubles the amount of energy produced per unit of CO2 released. Materials derived from microalgal biomass also can be used for other long-term uses, serving to sequester CO2. Flue gas has the potential to provide sufficient quantities of CO2 for such large-scale microalgae farms. Viewing microalgae farms as a means to reduce the effects of a greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, CO2) changes the view of the economics of the process. Instead of requiring that microalgae-derived fuel be cost competitive with fossil fuels, the process economics must be compared with those of other technologies proposed to deal with the problem of CO2 pollution. However, development of alternative, environmentally safer energy production technologies will benefit society whether or not global climate change actually occurs. Microalgal biomass production has great potential to contribute to world energy supplies, and to control CO2 emissions as the demand for energy increases. This technology makes productive use of arid and semi-arid lands and highly saline water, resources that are not suitable for agriculture and other biomass technologies.
A freaking paper calling for alternative energy disproves climate change? Give me a break. Do a google on Coby Beck Peiser if you need to know more.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=zmV&q=coby+beck+peiser+grist+oreskes&btnG=Search
Peisers behavior has not changed much since then.
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 11:08:06 PM
I think Al Gore is a significant contributor to global warming, what with all that hot air and bovine feces he spews forth.
Brad
Brad
No argument here.
Post by: Bogie on January 30, 2007, 11:14:36 PM
HIV/AIDS is a political phenomenon.
Breast Cancer is a political phenomenon.
Now, before y'all lynch me...
Far more people die of other diseases than HIV/AIDS, but since the disease package has a sizable group of people who feel they have a stake in it, it gets a LOT more thrown at it. Be interesting if they went after malaria with as much vigor...
As for breast cancer - hey, it's bad. But so's lung cancer, heart disease, etc., etc... But the pink ribbons make the news.
With global warming, the chicken little crowd is out in full force, and they're joined by people who just hate any sort of business or industry. And the news media ain't helping... Then again, they wouldn't have a story if they just reported "we really don't know what's going on, or even if anything is going on... check back in a century or so..."
Post by: wacki on January 30, 2007, 11:20:37 PM
Guys, frankly, we've got a microscopic data set that folks are trying to extrapolate from.
100 years is an eyeblink.
100 years is an eyeblink.
Give that man a cigar & the carbon credits to smoke it!
add about 4 more zeros on his statistic for a cool million years. Even if his statement was true Newtonian physics doesn't operate by chance. The type of date is far more important than the size of the sample set.
Post by: richyoung on January 31, 2007, 04:26:01 AM
wacki, I think you're wasting your time. Those posting endless links to 'authorities' ...
Roy Spencer, Russian Academy of Science, Roy Spencer doesn't believe in evolution. He also claims there is a "near total absense (sic) of transitional forms of life in the fossil record."
http://www.ecoenquirer.com/flying-whale.htm
Both of which are true statements. Neither of which have anything to do with his credentials for generating and interpreting satellite measurments - for which he LITERALLY wrote the book. If there is anything to know about satellite IR, he knows it...and he says Global Warming is bunk.
Post by: richyoung on January 31, 2007, 04:40:15 AM
While I think you overstate the issue, I'll admit you brought to light something I didn't know about Peser - so let place in his stead:
I'm overstating the issue? Did you even read Peisers 34 abstracts? Are you aware that he slandered the scientific community?
Technically, I don;t think you COULD "slander" th eglobal warming cheerleaders: what they do is NOT science, but rather a naked power grab wrapped in chicken-littleism. When confronted with the very real fact that there is NOT enough good data to even indicate unusual warming, much less man causing it, they retreat to problematic ice core data, which can pretty much be manipulated to say whatever you want. Four irrefutable facts PROVE that the GW crowd is wrong:
1. Previous ice ages ended without anthropogenic CO2 output - proving that natural variation can account for ALL of the change we have obsovered in our microscopic maount of data.
2. CO2, as shown by the ice core data the GWs want to use, is historically a TRAILING, rather than a LEADING indicator of warming.
3. No current model of climate accurately accounts for the effect of water vapor - the problem with that is that water vapor, in both direct and indirect effects accounts for by far the majority of greenhouse effect - up to 93% of it. Not modeling it pretty much makes the computer models a non-starter. Not only do they NOT model it - they CAN'T. The nature of the effects, which can be both positive and negative feedback, are not clearly known.
4. Earth's climate is not prone to thermal runaway. If it was, it would not have life. Mars and Venus ARE prone to thermal runaway, & BTW, Mar's polar ice caps are melting - blame THAT on my SUV!
Quote
Here is an abstract which he says disagrees with and disproves the consensus on climate change:
...and you are somehow unaware that one of the arguments against GW is biomass sequestration of CO2?
Post by: wacki on January 31, 2007, 08:16:34 AM
Both of which are true statements.
So you don't believe in evolution? So you believe the fossils in the natural museum of history are fake?
Quote
Neither of which have anything to do with his credentials for generating and interpreting satellite measurments - for which he LITERALLY wrote the book.
And Karry Mullis wrote the book on PCR and won a noble prize. He testified on behalf of OJ Simpson, claims HIV doesn't cause aids, says both the ozone and global warming are bunk, and talks to glowing racoons.
He has even better credentials than roy spencer. Are you going to believe him too? I mean he wrote the book on DNA so if he says OJ is innocent then surely OJ is innocent right? Credentials are not everything. There are a lot of scientists on the planet and some of them go crazy. This is why peer review and assessment reports are so important.
Quote
If there is anything to know about satellite IR, he knows it...and he says Global Warming is bunk.
So are you implying satellite data says global warming is bunk? Please show me the data. Not even Richard Lindzen is dumb/crazy enough to say that.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170
Cliff notes: some satellites were falling in altitude and gave false readings.
Post by: wacki on January 31, 2007, 08:29:44 AM
Quote
Four irrefutable facts PROVE that the GW crowd is wrong:
Irrefutable? We will see about that.
2. CO2, as shown by the ice core data the GWs want to use, is historically a TRAILING, rather than a LEADING indicator of warming.
Please read the first link on this google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=coby+beck+lead+not+lag&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
There are some very obvious flaws to that argument. We are warming up right now and the frozen tundra/permafrost is melting and releasing methane. Since we were warming up before the methane was released does that prove methane isn't a greenhouse gas? Of course not. You should find a different source of news as the one you are using is incompetent. The major 'switches' in the ice cores were caused by Milankovich, DO events (changes in ocean currents), etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovich_Effect
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/gw/articles/html.format/orb_forc.html
None of this belittles the *feedback* effects of CO2. Natural CO2 is a feedback. Human CO2 can be considered forcing while the melting of the permafrost is a feedback of human activity. Get it?
Quote
Mars and Venus ARE prone to thermal runaway, & BTW, Mar's polar ice caps are melting - blame THAT on my SUV!
Are you aware that planets wobble? You can find dozens of papers that say the melting observed on 1 polar cap is due to topographic forcing. Please show me 1 *peer-review* article that shows there is a global trend in temp increase. Good luck finding one.
Quote
...and you are somehow unaware that one of the arguments against GW is biomass sequestration of CO2?
That is an argument that says we can fix AGW not that the science behind AGW is bunk. The difference should be obvious and you appear to be trolling.
more later.... have to go downtown.
Post by: Bogie on January 31, 2007, 10:03:12 AM
Going beyond that, we have extrapolations and GUESSES.
Looking at written materials, it's been warmer, and it's been colder. Dryer and rainier.
The "environmentalist" crowd is also completely ignoring any heating from the sun. You'd think they'd look up occasionally.
The "environmental movement" is basically a religion, composed of people who, for the most part, do not understand science, and who flat-out HATE business, industry, or anyone who can afford to drive a car. You see, it's kinda hard to earn a living and establish a credit rating if all you do is hang out in the student center and then go to live in a yurt, smoke dope, and make tie-dyes (which is actually more work than one would imagine...).
Post by: Iain on January 31, 2007, 10:10:01 AM
The "environmentalist" crowd is also completely ignoring any heating from the sun. You'd think they'd look up occasionally.
You'd think you might go back and read this thread properly. Or just go and do some proper reading of your own elsewhere. Same old arguments, been at least addressed with some proper scientific rigour out there in the world of science, and yet around they come again.
Are you sure you understand the science any better than those 'religionists' (not a notion I'd entirely disagree with you on, except that I'd say that there's quite a bit of dogma going around) that you accuse of not understanding it?
Post by: m1911owner on January 31, 2007, 10:16:20 AM
For one thing, there is nowhere that experiences the global average; the only thing anyplace experiences is its own local weather.
And for another thing, it is danged difficult to intenionally make a simple sensor that accurately measures with an accuracy of better than 1 degree F. I know--I've looked at thermistor and semiconductor sensors, and none of them have that level of accuracy. It buggers the imagination to think that some natural phenomenon is recording global temperatures with the accuracy that is attributed to these studies.
Thus, I will include myself among those who are inclined to think that ice core data and the like is read with a great deal of religious-based fudging.
Post by: Sindawe on January 31, 2007, 10:33:56 AM
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And for another thing, it is danged difficult to intenionally make a simple sensor that accurately measures with an accuracy of better than 1 degree F. I know--I've looked at thermistor and semiconductor sensors, and none of them have that level of accuracy.
What? I hope thats a typo. I demand and get better accuracy and resolution on the cheape instruments I use on my aquarium. When I worked in Biotech we used instruments from these guys: http://www.gecinstruments.com/ Production used the thermocouple ones, Metrololgy used the thermistor ones to verify that the thermocouple instruments were on spec. Their instruments had to be NIST verified.
Post by: Bogie on January 31, 2007, 11:55:06 AM
One thing I've noticed is that each side seems to have its own data. And works like hell to debunk the other side's.
That dog don't hunt, at least not in a modern research environment. I think that what we have are a buncha folks who are looking for some serious grant money, so that they can spend the next 20-30 years studying... And the "environmentalists" who desperately want to hurt "big business" (and with some of these clowns, some guy who truck farms 10-15 acres is a "big business"), are in support.
Follow the money, folks... Follow the money...
Post by: richyoung on January 31, 2007, 12:04:00 PM
Both of which are true statements.
So you don't believe in evolution? So you believe the fossils in the natural museum of history are fake?
One does not imply the other. As I typed before I have reservations about evolution as a cause of speciation - nor am I the only one. As to the nature of the fossils, I have no reason to beleive they are anything but genuine - where, pray tell, are the transitional forms?
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Neither of which have anything to do with his credentials for generating and interpreting satellite measurments - for which he LITERALLY wrote the book.
And Karry Mullis wrote the book on PCR and won a noble prize. He testified on behalf of OJ Simpson, claims HIV doesn't cause aids, says both the ozone and global warming are bunk, and talks to glowing racoons.
Regardless WHAT glowing animals he speaks to, he is 100% correct about global warming and the ozone hole.
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He has even better credentials than roy spencer. Are you going to believe him too? I mean he wrote the book on DNA so if he says OJ is innocent then surely OJ is innocent right? Credentials are not everything. There are a lot of scientists on the planet and some of them go crazy. This is why peer review and assessment reports are so important.
If you think politics and fads have NO EFFECT on publishing and peer review, I have some low tide land in Florida I'd like to sell you....
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If there is anything to know about satellite IR, he knows it...and he says Global Warming is bunk.
So are you implying satellite data says global warming is bunk? Please show me the data. Not even Richard Lindzen is dumb/crazy enough to say that.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170
Cliff notes: some satellites were falling in altitude and gave false readings.
Cliff notes to your cliff notes: the "correction": for the false readings was vastly overstated according to... Spencer, who is the man who took the readings in the first place.
from da man hisseff:
"Since we (UAH) had already been working on a new diurnal adjustment technique, based upon the newer and more powerful AMSUs that have been flying since 1998, we rushed our new method to completion recently, and implemented new corrections. As a result, the UAH global temperature trends for the period 1979 to the present have increased from +0.09 to +0.12 deg. C/decade -- still below the RSS estimate of +0.19 deg. C/decade.
...
I only hope that the appearance of these three papers together, with considerable overlapping of authorship, does not represent an attempt to make measurements fit theoretical models. For when this happens, actual measurements can no longer fulfill their critical role in independent validation of climate models. Ideally, measurements would be analyzed with no knowledge of what any given theory predicts they should be."
"
from:http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=312
Post by: Bogie on January 31, 2007, 12:15:52 PM
If you don't think that organisms mutate, refuse to accept any antibiotic developed past 1960.
Global Warming is iffy science distributed as soundbites by people fishing for grant money, and accepted with open arms by people who hate anything developed since 1800 (except, well, except for better living through chemistry...). The same people who expound such concepts as "suicide to save the planet," and the like...
Post by: richyoung on January 31, 2007, 12:20:01 PM
Tell ya what... put your belief system where your metabolism is...
If you don't think that organisms mutate, refuse to accept any antibiotic developed past 1960.
If you don't think that organisms mutate, refuse to accept any antibiotic developed past 1960.
A mutated bacteria is still a bacteria - it is not an aomeba, paramecium, virus, spotted owl, tyranosaurus, etc. Hopefully, intelligent design research will one day determine how many millions of years it should take to get to "here" from "there" - it will be interesting to see how that compares to the calculated age of the planet.
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Global Warming is iffy science distributed as soundbites by people fishing for grant money, and accepted with open arms by people who hate anything developed since 1800 (except, well, except for better living through chemistry...). The same people who expound such concepts as "suicide to save the planet," and the like...
...no argument from me on that...
Post by: mountainclmbr on February 01, 2007, 07:05:52 AM
Post by: JonnyB on February 01, 2007, 09:59:37 AM
I related to a (far-left global warming disciple) co-worker that Al is in good company with Yassar Arafat. The latter knew as much about peace as the former does about science!
JB
Post by: Matthew Carberry on February 01, 2007, 11:03:20 AM
Post by: Iapetus on February 04, 2007, 10:33:22 AM
At the genetic level, the theory of evolution is equivalent to the idea that we can put a bunch of Timex parts in a paint can, clamp it into a paint shaker, and if we run it LONG enough, a Rolex will be inside when we turn it off.
I know this is going off topic somewhat, but since it has been brought up, that is not what the theory of evolution says.
Evolution is not a sequence of entirely random changes that turn one type of organism into an entirely different organism.
Evolution is a series of random changes that are continually filtered by natural selection ("does this work?") which results in changes to a species or selection of a species.
If the species (or selection of it) is sufficiently isolated, and subject to sufficient pressure, then it will eventually change into something that is sufficiently different from its "cousins" that it can no longer interbreed with them. You then have one or more new species, which are similar to their ancestors, but not the same as them.
The process continues, with environment, predation, competition etc continually "filtering" the changes, so that what works better than the previous version endures.
Eventually, the cumulative changes mean you end up with creatures very different from their distant ancestors. You do not go from a frog to a rat, but from a thing rather like a frog to another thing rather like a frog, to something more or less like a frog but vaguely rat-like (or at least vaguely mammalian), ... to something nothing like a frog but still not very much like a rat... to something almost like a rat, to a rat.
Post by: Ron on February 04, 2007, 10:57:37 AM
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You do not go from a frog to a rat, but from a thing rather like a frog to another thing rather like a frog, to something more or less like a frog but vaguely rat-like (or at least vaguely mammalian), ... to something nothing like a frog but still not very much like a rat... to something almost like a rat, to a rat.
True enough.
The problem probably arises due to the astonishing lack of intermediate step life forms in between the species we observe.
I'm sure one of local materialists will come along with some obscure "critter" that science has called an intermediate specie.
Post by: Matthew Carberry on February 04, 2007, 11:02:41 AM