Climate Change

[Alecadi]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

They are the same thing with slight differences regarding how the wealth is to be exploited and controlled. Communist want the state to both own and control all wealth, socialist are happy to allow the illusion of private ownership as long as they control the wealth.

Generally you can take it that the socialist, and any other leftists, have totalitarian tendencies in that they want to control every aspect of your life. The rights tendency is towards authoritarian rule, they don't particularly care what you do as long as you do not challenge their authority.

It is a matter of the lesser of two evils.

You are completely mistaken and you don't know much about it.
You make me think about O'Reilly and the " mistery" of the tides.
We can continue this conversation when you are more informed.

[Eddiefuego]

This is what I do...so ...if you would like to see what a reasonable public policy for the US might look like...take a read of this.

Beyond carbon policy: A national feed-in tariff | SmartPlanet

[RaymondR]

You are completely mistaken and you don't know much about it.
You make me think about O'Reilly and the " mistery" of the tides.
We can continue this conversation when you are more informed.

Most of old age is the pits except where you don't have to lie to yourself anymore.

[Eddiefuego]

Read and weep. So sad since the solutions are here today and yet so many of us are still completely hoodwinked (brainwashed) by the monied interests. So sad. Glad I do not have grandchildren. So sad for the other species.

From Potsdam and the National Academy of SCIENCE.
"Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down again," concludes Levermann. "Thus we can be absolutely certain that we need to adapt. Sea-level rise might be slow on time scales on which we elect governments, but it is inevitable and therefore highly relevant for almost everything we build along our coastlines, for many generations to come."



New Projections on Future Global Sea Level Rise - Climate Change Weather Blog

[RaymondR]

From Potsdam and the National Academy of SCIENCE.
"Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down again," concludes Levermann. "Thus we can be absolutely certain that we need to adapt. Sea-level rise might be slow on time scales on which we elect governments, but it is inevitable and therefore highly relevant for almost everything we build along our coastlines, for many generations to come."

Sea level rises and falls have been occurring continuously since there were seas on earth whether mankind was burning things for warmth or as fuel for other purposes or not and will continue whatever we do. Similarly coastlines pro and retrograding.

This is just another ACC group jumping onto the ACC bandwagon.

[foolishsailor]

What really gets me that has been made obvious by this debate is the lack of faith in Science. This seems to be more coming from the Americans more than their European counterparts. When did this happen?

There are so many anti-science sound bites in the arguments of those who don't believe in AGM. You don't see these same in Europe. Did this loss of faith in science come at the same time that we decided we no longer wanted someone smarter than us to lead us?

Now instead of listening and respecting anyone with an advanced degree and years of peer reviewed research we instead call them "out of touch" or "elitist" and we think we know more as we are all "the common man" with street smarts and common sense.

But that's not enough, we try ad hominum attack after attack on the scientists themselves attempting to taint peer reviewed research by claiming that scientists only release data that protects their self interests and don't release the truth. These type of beliefs show a fundamental lack of understanding of both the Scientific method and Peer Review process. Trying to claim Confirmation Bias dictates the pursuit of truth is also to misunderstand this psychological bias in what is effectively a competitive arena.

An example of this to illustrate the fallacy of a scientist releasing faulty data to maintain grants.

This is long but bear with me...

Scientist A: well call him Goofus. Goofus is a longstanding Climatologist who is seeking tenure at an international university. A great way to secure tenure is to acquire a large open ended grant. Doofus takes his Climate data and manipulates it in an undetectable way that makes it appear that the climate is warming 5x faster than it really is. He flies to Al Gore and gets a ten year grant and secures tenure. He releases the data to the science community, the science writers pick it up and it makes headlines.

Goofus is delighted with his new key to the professors toilet.

Scientist b: we'll call him Gallant. Gallant is also a longstanding researcher seeking tenure and job security. He is also a Climatologist. He, like many researchers, spends a huge amount of time reading abstracts for various research projects in his field. He comes across Goofus' research and is amazed that his results are so at odds with his own. He calls the research department at Goofus' university and asks for all the raw data, project parameters, methodologies, basically everything used to conduct the experiment and analyse the data. He compares the data to his own, much of which comes from open source stations and is available to all, and attempts to duplicate the data. Unable to duplicate the results and finding flaws in the data Gallant releases his results to the science community. Several more researchers all attempt to replicate the results and are unable to do so. Goofus is forced to withdraw his paper, results and immediately loses his research grant. Gallant is given tenure and an inquiry is begun by the university on Goofus research practices.

This is what really happens in the science community - they self police and it is a fiercely competitive world. No real scientist at an international level would knowingly falsify results for money as they would be crucified by their peers with the potential to lose everything they have spent decades building.

Does this mean that the conclusions are always right? No, every single climatologist could be wrong.

The sun could also orbit the earth, we have never actually been to the sun or left the solar system - so how do we really know?

[conachair]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

.

Its reminds me of the smoking debate in the 80 s. now long over.

Dave

With some of the same people involved and similar tactics.

They must love the web , get a website up and there are plenty of little gopher minions to spread the stuff around countless forums.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

What really gets me that has been made obvious by this debate is the lack of faith in Science. This seems to be more coming from the Americans more than their European counterparts. When did this happen?
...

Thanks FS. I'm soooo with you on this point. It really speaks to one of the great dilemmas of our time. In theory, we have the most informed and educated (although I think that is back-sliding now ... at least over here in NA) population. At the same time we see this rise in anit-intellectualism, anti-science. It appears to be centred in the US, but is finding root all over the world (especially here in Canada). It's like we're heading into a new Dark Ages.

Some social science research has suggested this retrenchment is a reaction to the tidal wave of globalization, and of the powerlessness people increasingly feel. Social science is slippery at the best of time, so I wouldn't hang my hat on it yet, but as the old Buffalo Springfield states: "There's something happening here / What it is ain't exactly clear."

What is becoming clearer to me is that the evolutionary biologists are probably right: we're not rational beings. We use rationality to justify our beliefs and attitudes. Our rational minds are not the drivers, but more like cheerleaders or groupies. It's why I try to abstain from stepping into the climate change fights (although sometimes I fall off the wagon). Nothing I can say to the likes of Delfin will sway his beliefs, and although it pains me to admit it, the reverse is probably (mostly ) true.

But that's the whole point about science, and the scientific method. It forces past people's innate irrationality. The process of science is a self-correcting system that drives towards contingent truths. Not Truth, as in the absolute, but truths as in the best match of data, observation and experiment to coherent theory.

Scientists are just humans with lab coats. They have the same irrational natures as us all. They are better trained to see their own irrationality, but they still have the same limitations. What's amazing is that we -- this irrational species -- has developed a process that doesn't care how irrational we are. Science meanders its way to an improved understanding of phenomena, regardless of our evolutionary limitations.

THIS is what gives me hope.

[conachair]

Interesting piece on how it works..

http://m.eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/c...&pmid=19158101

"Denialists are usually not deterred by the extreme isolation of their theories, but rather see it as the indication of their intellectual courage against the dominant orthodoxy and the accompanying political correctness, "


" Whatever the motivation, it is important to recognize denialism when confronted with it. The normal academic response to an opposing argument is to engage with it, testing the strengths and weaknesses of the differing views, in the expectations that the truth will emerge through a process of debate. However, this requires that both parties obey certain ground rules, such as a willingness to look at the evidence as a whole, to reject deliberate distortions and to accept principles of logic. A meaningful discourse is impossible when one party rejects these rules. "

[boatman61]

Well... I'm no Greenie... I'm just a mourner who travels looking for new places coz the places I've visited that were once beautiful are now f**ked... I remember the Hindu Kush as a kid in the 50's... I remember Antigua, Grenada and Trinidad in the 60's... S Africa, Mozambique, the Deccan Plateau of S. India... real life... not some Google search on scientific ******** that sings the song required by the sponsor of research..
The human race has shot its bolt and all that's left are the 'Cash Cow's' looking after themselves and trying to get rich enough for their own dome...
But hell... I'll be dead soon enuf so do I care... not really... but its still sad to see what short sighted "I'm so clever" twats have done... and continue to do..

[Brian T]

This graphic has always been my favorite answer for the arguments about the warming being part of the natural cycles... (derived from air samples taken from glacial ice cores that show our climate history like rings in a tree trunck) Yes, there are natural heating and cooling cycles that have taken place for the last 650 Mil years, however it is PRETTY obvious what that trend has done since the inception of the industrial revolution!

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by Brian T

This graphic has always been my favorite answer for the arguments about the warming being part of the natural cycles... (derived from air samples taken from glacial ice cores that show our climate history like rings in a tree trunck) Yes, there are natural heating and cooling cycles that have taken place for the last 650 Mil years, however it is PRETTY obvious what that trend has done since the inception of the industrial revolution!

Brian, unfortunately the graph shown looks like a bit of a mashup. Whoever prepared that conflated temperature fluctuations and ice ages, which is what the graph shows, with CO2 levels, which has been appended onto the end. Below is the source for your graph, with your graph next to it.

I've also included another graph that shows CO2 levels as measured by the Stomatal Index, which is considered by many to be the best way to estimate historic CO2 levels. Ice core concentrations of CO2 are also used and give a different answer, although if you investigate it, you will find that changes in temperature in Antartica precede changes in CO2 by around 1,000 years meaning it is pretty hard to argue that what follows (CO2) caused what precedes (increased temperatures.) You also have to assume that air bubbles trapped in ice for 400,000 years are completely stable, with no change in gas composition to accept these measurements as gospel. Maybe, maybe not.

All this helps explain why many climate scientists and geoscientists don't buy into AGW theory - the connection between warming and atmospheric CO2 just isn't robust enough to warrant drawing the conclusions drawn by some.

Now, we've already heard from posters who have asserted that if you don't believe in AGW, then you're a 'denier', unscientific, right wing, blah, blah, blah. But these same people will ignore all contrary data to their hypothesis or challenge the motivations or credentials of those presenting the data, which makes their allegations of their opponents not being scientific pretty laughable. I'd be perfectly happy to accept that atmospheric CO2 is so bad that we must spend trillions reducing it, if the data can be shown to prove the point. I suspect, however, that however long the planet stays cool or how ever much data is presented challenging their hypothesis, AGW fans will remain committed to an ideologic interpretation of reality. Now, who's being unscientific - those unsure and as yet unwilling to spend vast resources to solve what may be a non problem, or those who regardless of the data want to plow full steam ahead with crippling economic sanctions against current energy sources?

[jackdale]

An update on CO2 and temperature lag.

The covariation of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature in Antarctic ice-core records suggests a close link between CO2 and climate during the Pleistocene ice ages. The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature. Here we construct a record of global surface temperature from 80 proxy records and show that temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO2 during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation. Differences between the respective temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere parallel variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation recorded in marine sediments. These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture10915.html

In plain English

“It was really simple science,” he said. “We said, we’ve got 80 records from around the world, let’s just slap them together, average them into a reconstruction of global temperature.” What a fabulous idea, for such “simple science”!

“What you see when you put them all together is a pattern of global warming at the end of the ice age that really strongly mirrors the rise in CO2 at the end of the ice age. Even more interesting, you find that the global temperature started warming a bit after the CO2 rose.” This is very different from the view that many people currently hold that temperature changed first during the last glacial melt. “That is true for Antartica, but if you look globally, that’s not the case,” Shakun said. “Global temperatures are following CO2.”

But the punches keep coming. As Shakun points out, the amount that CO2 rose at the end of the ice age was only around 100 parts per million. “That sounds small… but it was apparently enough to really help drive the end of an ice age – that’s a huge effect,” Shakun said.

What is even more sobering is that today, humans have brought CO2 levels up another 100 part per million more. “So we have done just as much,” Shakun said. “And in a century, we are looking to go up, going on as we are, by several hundred more. So 100 parts per million to end an ice age, and we are talking about people bringing it up many times more… this is NOT small potatoes what we are talking about here, what we are doing with CO2. This is big stuff, big changes.”

Old News for Carbon Dioxide, New Threats for Climate Change

What we now know is that historically CO2 was amplifier of warming, it is now a trigger.

[S/V Alchemy]

Has anyone yet mentioned that whatever else one thinks of the Chinese, they do not let a crisis stand in the way of an opportunity:



In short, we can continue to fruitlessly argue about the reasons until the ice is all gone. Meanwhile, 12-15 days off a 50 day voyage is a big deal in shipping.

I somehow think those same Chinese won't be so quick to clean up their oil spills when the inevitable shipwrecks happen, however.

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by jackdale

An update on CO2 and temperature lag.



http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture10915.html

In plain English





Old News for Carbon Dioxide, New Threats for Climate Change

What we now know is that historically CO2 was amplifier of warming, it is now a trigger.

Nice try, though...

"According to Barnola et al. (1991) and Petit et al. (1999) these measurements indicate that, at the beginning of the deglaciations, the CO2 increase either was in phase or lagged by less than ~1000 years with respect to the Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly lagged behind the temperature at the onset of the glaciations."

In plain English, during warming periods, CO2 buildup lagged from 0 up to 1,000 years increases of temperatures, and during periods of cooling, CO2 definitely lagged behind temperatures falling. If increased CO2 caused increases in temperature, then it could never lag increases in temperature and if decreases in CO2 caused decreases in temperature then it should not lag those temp decreases either.

The reason CO2 in the atmosphere goes up during warming periods (lagging, generally) is because it is an effect of the warming where CO2 in solution in the oceans outgases into the atmosphere as the water warms. This stimulates plant growth, which stimulates rainfall, which accelerates the carbon/silica cycle, entrapping CO2 under the continental shelf, reducing atmospheric CO2. All of this just means that the build up of CO2 follows warming and the decrease follows cooling.

Which is why so many climatologists find no causal relationship between CO2 and warming, and can't justify spending vast sums to reduce it.

Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)