Florida ? Not Lately . . .

[cliffdykes]

Originally Posted by FSMike

Cliff -
Hard as it may be to believe, some of us colonials do know where the University of East Anglia is located. I was indulging in some apparently unnoticed sarcasm. Or, I was being snide, your choice.

Nice one! Must have gone right over my head. I'll try to pay more attention in future

Cheers
Cliff

[gettinthere]

Climategate U-turn: Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits data not well organised | Mail Online

"he (Professor Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit) said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming"

This is a major flip flop by one of the leading GW proponents. He still tries to use wiggle words to support the theory of global warming but he backpeddling fast.

It has been documented that a significant number of temperature stations (mainly in China) that showed cooling were excluded from IPCC studies yet temp stations that have had asphalt parking lots built around them are still relied on.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Therapy

2 I don't doubt it. "New" energy is being sought all the time. Efforts toward it are directly related to the cost of present energy. Humans as a total group simply cannot look at the future of a resource and form a workable plan to conserve while working on the next replacement for that resource. It is one thing that is not possible. Humans are what they are. No different today than what they were 100 or 1000 (or more) years ago. No different than a herd of deer that find a corn field. Eat and reproduce till the food runs out (oil = food, by the way) then starvation thins the herd to sustainable levels. The way of nature.

IMO

We just think we are so smart.

Agree 100%
The species of animal called homo sapiens is no more capable of influencing its´ future as a species than were the first few rabbits introduced to Australia. If that were the case then human population levels would not be at the plague levels seen today. We just think we are so smart...

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by gettinthere

Climategate U-turn: Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits data not well organised | Mail Online

"he (Professor Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit) said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming"...

You might look up the meaning of “statistically significant”; to appreciate how little meaning (none) this statement has to the subject.

[ad_astra]

Originally Posted by gettinthere

Climategate U-turn: Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits data not well organised | Mail Online

"he (Professor Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit) said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming"

This is a major flip flop by one of the leading GW proponents. He still tries to use wiggle words to support the theory of global warming but he backpeddling fast.

It has been documented that a significant number of temperature stations (mainly in China) that showed cooling were excluded from IPCC studies yet temp stations that have had asphalt parking lots built around them are still relied on.

What Jones actually said:

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

If you want to see an informative discussion of statistical significance of global climate trends, I highly recommend this page in particular, this graph showing the derived temperature trend until present from various start years, along with the 95% confidence levels. The net result is that it's impossible to derive any statistically significant result in less than 15 years of data.

As to your claims about weather stations near asphalt parking lots being warmer, the effect is well documented and accounted for. From here:

Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects have been documented in city environments worldwide and show that as cities become increasingly urbanised, increasing energy use, reductions in surface water (and evaporation) and increased concrete etc. tend to lead to warmer conditions than in nearby more rural areas. This is uncontroversial. However, the actual claim of IPCC is that the effects of urban heat islands effects are likely small in the gridded temperature products (such as produced by GISS and Climate Research Unit (CRU)) because of efforts to correct for those biases. For instance, GISTEMP uses satellite-derived night light observations to classify stations as rural and urban and corrects the urban stations so that they match the trends from the rural stations before gridding the data. Other techniques (such as correcting for population growth) have also been used.


How much UHI contamination remains in the global mean temperatures has been tested in papers such as Parker (2005, 2006) which found there was no effective difference in global trends if one segregates the data between windy and calm days. This makes sense because UHI effects are stronger on calm days (where there is less mixing with the wider environment), and so if an increasing UHI effect was changing the trend, one would expect stronger trends on calm days and that is not seen. Another convincing argument is that the regional trends seen simply do not resemble patterns of urbanisation, with the largest trends in the sparsely populated higher latitudes.

[hellosailor]

Considering that a planet witha "static" and steady climatic state is usually called a DEAD PLANET like Mars...there's a huge amount of graveyard humor to be found in anyone wishing that Earth had a "static" and unchanging climate as well.

As long as we have a molten core, plate tectonics, minor changes like the central american isthmus rising and blocking the ocean currents, the Himalyas creating Monsoons...Huge swings in climate including radical ice ages will continue to be the norm, and we should probably thank our stars that the NORMAL and USUAL global ice ages have been held back by the recent (12,000 years?) global warming.

Meanwhile, we can either accept that we need to understand climate triggers and anticipate or control them, or we can whine "Why? Why?!" as they happen despite us.

The earth, like the sea, doesn't give a damn what we have planned.

[IronRoamer]

Hellosailor,
I might add that the Sun's spot cycles have been historically underestimated. Is it a coincidence that during the second half of the 20th century, the sun was experiencing the "Modern Maximum" portion of it's cycle? The more sunspots = hotter planet (GW), fewer sunspots = cooler planet, i.e. between 1600-1750 the sun was at the "Maunder Minimum", a time when the Thames river was completely frozen and good Brits took to ice skating!

It is absolute humanist arrogance to assume that humans can have any affect on this living and powerful planet. We are gnats in the grille of a Mack.

[knothead]

Originally Posted by IronRoamer

It is absolute humanist arrogance to assume that humans can have any affect on this living and powerful planet. We are gnats in the grille of a Mack.

You've got to be kidding! You call the earth living and powerful, you're right. But do you really believe that humans can't influence it? Humans, especially in recent years have been acting like pathogens attacking their host. Pathogens are the tiniest little things and they have only one aim. To multiply and eventually poison their host.
How can you witness the devastating results of slash and burn farming, the myriad sewage spills that happen every year, the mercury in the food chain. I could go on and on.
Like I say, you've got to be kidding.

[IronRoamer]

Knot,
You must broaden your perspective to see how insignificant humans really are. "Slash and Burn Farming", sewage spills, even oil spills, have no lasting effect on the environment. If we disappeared tomorrow, virtually everything man-made would be back to it's natural form within 200 years (save some of our longer-lived nuclear isotopes). 200 years is a joke in the greater time-line of the earth.

Anything humans create, as long as it's created with elements found on Earth, will be disassembled via natural process.

People fret over oil spills, did you know that before we starting drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the pressurized crude oil used to seep from the ocean floor? (it even happens in the over-regulated/under-drilled California coast) The earth even has a natural process to decompose the oil, a bacteria called "Beggiatoia".

This discourse is healthy, it's nice to know it can happen with such civility, quite enjoyable.

[jkleins]

Originally Posted by IronRoamer

It is absolute humanist arrogance to assume that humans can have any affect on this living and powerful planet. We are gnats in the grille of a Mack.

And a little microscopic bacteria couldn't possibly cause a problem in a human being either. Could it? Oops!

Jim

[Sea Yawl Later]

We left this morning. The sailing is great. It is COLD but the sailing is good, we haven't run the motors except to get out into the Gulf and we are making between 4.5 to 6.5. The winds are much less than forecast. We will be in Panama at the Panama City Marina in about 2 hours. We love vistors, so if you are out and about come on by. We leave for Clearwater, Fla early tomorrow.

Sea Yawl Later!!

Linda

[IronRoamer]

Originally Posted by jkleins

And a little microscopic bacteria couldn't possibly cause a problem in a human being either. Could it? Oops!

Jim

Jim, you prove my point, the earth even has a system to keep us in manageable numbers!

[rover88]

S/V Geneve,

Yeah, Boggy was about the same that weekend. Ice skating on my deck was most fun. Sadly, we have not had a really decent weekend since that storm.

Does anyone have Al Gore's number? I need to call and ask him where my global warming he promised is.

Look for me on the bay this weekend no matter how damn cold it is. Three months without sailing and I am in serious withdrawals.

If I freeze to death - you can have my boat shoes.

[s/v Geneve]

Originally Posted by rover88

Look for me on the bay this weekend no matter how damn cold it is. Three months without sailing and I am in serious withdrawals.

If I freeze to death - you can have my boat shoes.

I'll take them! You can always use another pair of boat shoes

This weekend is supposed to be back to the 60's where it belongs, I hope to see you out there!

[knothead]

Originally Posted by IronRoamer

Knot,
You must broaden your perspective to see how insignificant humans really are. "Slash and Burn Farming", sewage spills, even oil spills, have no lasting effect on the environment. If we disappeared tomorrow, virtually everything man-made would be back to it's natural form within 200 years (save some of our longer-lived nuclear isotopes). 200 years is a joke in the greater time-line of the earth.

Anything humans create, as long as it's created with elements found on Earth, will be disassembled via natural process.

People fret over oil spills, did you know that before we starting drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the pressurized crude oil used to seep from the ocean floor? (it even happens in the over-regulated/under-drilled California coast) The earth even has a natural process to decompose the oil, a bacteria called "Beggiatoia".

This discourse is healthy, it's nice to know it can happen with such civility, quite enjoyable.

I'm not arguing that humans are pretty insignificant in the big picture. The earth would certainly continue if we manage to eliminate ourselves and I believe it would heal itself from the damage we caused.
But I would rather see us living in harmony with this powerful living thing that we call earth so that we don't go extinct.
Isn't that the whole point?