"Global Warming" or not? Doesn't matter.

[SnakeBoy]

By the way, feel free to test WC's intellectual honesty.


I already did in my earlier posts in this thread. He's a complete denier. I don't believe global warming theory is correct but he denies that there is any reason to reduce CO2 emissions.


That is still not quite certain. What is more certain is that the longer we wait the less likely we will be able to do something about it, and the more expensive it will be.

As I mentioned 2050 is the conservative prediction of doom and gloom. At some point you have to agree that the predictions of global warming theory have to be correct or global warming theory isn't correct.


Please don't tell me you are one of the "nuclear is the only answer to fossil fuels" crowd.

Nuclear has its share of drawbacks that outweigh it benefits enough to the point where it isn't really an economically viable option.

If the 2050 prediction is correct then nuclear is the only thing that can be done fast enough and provide enough energy. If you subract litigation from environmentalists it only takes around 6 years to build a reactor. It is economically viable, the South Texas Plant is currently building two new reactors (the 1st new reactors in the US over 25 years). They're doing it with investor money, didn't need to raise taxes or have some cap and trade scheme. Storage of waste isn't a problem, Yucca mountain. Plus advances in plasma waste disposal technology or something similar will probably eliminate the need to store nuclear waste.

See this is where I always begin to question wether GW believers actually believe there own words. The world is coming to an end but it would be better to let it happen than storing some nuclear waste underground in the middle of a desert. Makes no sense.

[DarrinS]

I thought this was a good article. Have there been ANY environmental catastrophic predictions that HAVE been correct?





Environmentalists' Wild Predictions
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/Article_HTML/Slide13.png

Here is a good example of how to make a case with graphs.


Further, look at the graph for solar irradiance.

in 1750 it was at a tad over 1370. Now it seems to be a tad under 1371.

This is LESS than a variance of 7 hundredths of one percent.

Yet temperatures have climbed by more than 7 hundredths of one percent in that time, if you simply look at the average global temperatures in the same graph.

The slope of average global temperatures shows a general upwards curve, yet the slope of the solar irradiance line is virtually flat.

Why is that?

[RandomGuy]

Storage of waste isn't a problem, Yucca mountain.


Really? How much waste is currently stored there again?

[RandomGuy]

I don't really have anything against nuclear per se, but the fact that nukes have a VERY poor record of massive cost overruns would tend to indicate to me that they aren't really economically viable.

To get me on board, you would have to handle the following concerns not present in other competing forms of power.

1) Security of waste/fuel shipments.
2) Use of water.
3) NIMBY. (all forms of power have the NIMBY effect, but anyone who says that nukes don't have MUCH more resistance than other forms of power, rightly or wrongly, is lying)
4) Cost overruns. (see NIMBY, all it takes is a lawsuit to delay construction a few years and watch the costs mount)

I would support something like this from nuclear power:

1) Uniform, standardized, most current generation reactors. France did what they did using standardized reactors, and this cut their unit costs considerably to my understanding.

2) Very limited use of water. Water is becoming a serious drawback for steam powered electricity generation, as well as cooling reactors.

3) Very very very limited and secure waste/fuel shipments.

Personally, the above seems like more bother than it is worth, when one could just as easily spend money on standardizing and improving solar and wind, especially for distributed generation schemes that offer the added benefit of making the grid more robust.

[Wild Cobra]

Ah yes, the Global Warming Petition Project.
A list of signers shows the components of that 31,000
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Qualifications_Of_Signers.html

Like…

IV) Food Science (74)
II) Electrical Engineering (2,075)

Because Food Science and Electrical Engineering are disciplines intimately involved in evaluating climate data, right?

The requirements to get on this list of petitioners?
A printer, a stamped envelope, and legible handwriting.
Sounds to me to be eerily similar to the Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth.

They have a petition too.
First of all, the requirements were B.S. (Bachelor of Science) degree of higher.

Attacking Food Sciences? From wiki on Food Sciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Sciences):


Food science is a highly interdisciplinary applied science. It incorporates concepts from many different fields including microbiology, chemical engineering, biochemistry, and many others.

Some of the subdisciplines of food science include:

Food safety - the causes, prevention and communication dealing with foodborne illness
Food microbiology - the positive and negative interactions between micro-organisms and foods
Food preservation - the causes and prevention of quality degradation
Food engineering - the industrial processes used to manufacture food
Product development - the invention of new food products
Sensory analysis - the study of how food is perceived by the consumer's senses
Food chemistry - the molecular composition of food and the involvement of these molecules in chemical reactions
Food packaging - the study of how packaging is used to preserve food after it has been processed and contain it through distribution.
Molecular gastronomy - the scientific investigation of processes in cooking, social & artistic gastronomical phenomena
Food technology - the technological aspects
Food physics - the physical aspects of foods (such as viscosity, creaminess, and texture)


Tell me that understanding Food Chemistry and Molecular Gastronomy doesn’t enlighten one to parts of Climatology. You must have all the prerequisite sciences for these classes.

How about Electrical Engineering]:


Electrical engineers typically possess an academic degree with a major in electrical engineering. The length of study for such a degree is usually four or five years and the completed degree may be designated as a Bachelor of Engineering, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Technology or Bachelor of Applied Science depending upon the university. The degree generally includes units covering physics, mathematics, computer science, project management and specific topics in electrical engineering. Initially such topics cover most, if not all, of the sub-disciplines of electrical engineering. Students then choose to specialize in one or more sub-disciplines towards the end of the degree.

I know from experience the level of mathematics and physics that such a degree entails. Probably far more than required for climatologists!

I did a search, and once I found a list at a university, I looked at it. For a BS in Climatology, CHEM 111 and 132 are required. CSCI 142 or 201. MATH 191, 192, 291, and 394. PHYS 221 and 222, and STAT 225. Several Atmospheric (ATMS) courses. Problem here, is they are all simple weather and metrology except for one:


420 Applied Climatology (3)
Application of climatological and statistical principles to weather-sensitive fields such as agriculture, construction, transportation and energy conservation. Prerequisite: ATMS 405 or permission of instructor. See department chair.


That doesn’t add much to being a climatologist if you ask me.

There were Climatology related courses not required:


223 Physical Climatology (3)
Causes of spatial and temporal climate variation, with special emphasis on energy and water balance regions of the earth and its atmosphere. Consequences of anthropogenic climate change will be explored. Prerequisite: ATMS 103 or 105. On demand.

331 Principles of Air Pollution (ENVR 331) (3)
Sources, sinks and controls of air pollution, legal aspects, meteorological factors which influence air pollution, analytical techniques for quantifying air pollution. Prerequisites: CHEM 111,132 and one of the following: ATMS 103 or 105, or ENVR 130. On demand.

340 General Climatology (3)
A technical study of the physical controls of climate and the applicability of climatology to people's activities. Prerequisites: ATMS 103 or 105; MATH 191. See department chair.

Here are the required courses:


CHEM 111 General Chemistry Laboratory (1)
CHEM 132 General Chemistry (3)
CSCI 142 Computer Programming I (FORTRAN) (3) or 201 Introduction to Algorithm Design (3) [weird! Misprint on one maybe?]
MATH 191 Calculus I (4)
MATH 192 Calculus II (4)
MATH 291 Calculus III (4)
MATH 394 Differential Equations (3)
PHYS 221 Physics I (4)
PHYS 222 Physics II (4)
STAT 225 Introduction to Calculus-Based Statistics (4)
ATMS 103 Introduction to Meteorology (3)
ATMS 205 Weather Analysis (3)
ATMS 241 Geography in Meteorology (1 hr)
ATMS 251 Mathematics in Meteorology (1 hr)
ATMS 261 UNIX Applications in Meteorology (1)
ATMS 305 Atmospheric Thermodynamics and Statics (3)
ATMS 310 Atmospheric Kinematics and Dynamics (3)
ATMS 320 Meteorological Instruments (3)
ATMS 405 Meteorological Statistics (3)
ATMS 410 Synoptic Meteorology I (4)
ATMS 411 Synoptic Meteorology II (4)
ATMS 420 Applied Climatology (3)
ATMS 455 Physical Meteorology (3)
What’s missing? The most important things. [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosciences]Geosciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_Engineering)! That’s why I use the likes of NOAA and NASA research to complete my knowledge. Not mere Climatologists. Most of them are a joke when they fall for the political dogma of global warming. They have no understanding of long term solar effects and other things relaing to the weather that are not associated with day to day predictions. Climatology, by title, does not give the person the proper background to assess global climate changes. It is only a very small slice relative to geosciences. Climatology is limited to the present climate. Not any long term fluxes involved, or historical comparisons. The people to listen to are those with Goescience degrees, like paleoclimatologists. Not glorified weathermen! My God… How many times are meteorologists wrong? As for Climatologists, they are no more capable by title to measure and predict cause and effects of long term climate changes any more than any other profession requiring a Bachelor of Sciences degree.

I’ll bet the sciences of chemistry and physics are more demanding in many areas other than Climatology!

[Wild Cobra]

They say most, not all.

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.8
This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most
of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to
have been due to the increase in GHG concentrations” (Figure
2.5). {WGI 9.4, SPM}

The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4
in 2005 exceed by far the natural range over the last 650,000
years.
Probability of Occurrence IAW IPCC:


<01% Exceptionally Unlikely
<05% Extremely Unlikely
<10% Very Unlikely
<33% Unlikely
<50% Less Likely than Not
33% to 66% About as likely as not
>50% More Likely than Not
>66% Likely
>90% Very Likely
>95% Extremely Likely
>99% Virtual Certainty

Confidence in Conclusion:

<10% Very Low
~20% Low
~50% Medium
~ 80% High
>90% Very High

So, you like a 2 out of 3 chance augmented by most (50%), or 1 in three odds?

Wow... 33% is good with you?

[SnakeBoy]

Really? How much waste is currently stored there again?


This is a typical tactic of so called environmentalists. Do everything possible to prevent any progress through litigation and political pressure. Then use the lack of progress as an argument against it.

The fact remains that nuclear energy is the only viable technology to solve the problem in the short amount of time we suppossedly have left. The "green" solutions (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal) only have the capacity to be supplemental forms of energy production. I believe solar will ultimately be the energy source for mankind but not in our lifetimes. There needs to be considerable advances in it's efficiency and perhaps more importantly a true breakthrough in energy storage technology.

Interestingly enough, the same illogical approach is used in the area of transportation fuel. Simply pursuing efficiency technology such as carbon fiber to make vehicles lighter and switching to natural gas would reduce CO2 emissions from vehicles to an acceptable level. Instead of pursuing this approach the GW chooses to pursue electric vehicles and biofuels, both of which have serious issues in terms of viability.

With electric vehicles you have the whole issue of lithium supply. There probably isn't enough lithium on the planet to switch all the vehicles over. And once again there isn't enough time to develop new battery technology according to the GW doomsday timeline.

Pursuing biofuels is even worse. First there is the question of viability but even worse is the fact that we are actually increasing CO2 levels by pursuing biofuels. Some estimate that up to 20% of manmade CO2 emissions could be mitigated simply by halting the clearing of rainforests. Not just from the uptake of CO2 by forests but because burning is the method use to clear the forests. Instead rainforests are being cleared at an ever increasing rate to grow valuable biofuel crops. If you like the idea of man's closest relative, orangatans, living happily in the forest well too bad. It's pretty much accepted that they have no chance of surving now that Borneo's forests are being cleared rapidly because palm oil brings such a nice price now.

I think it's an interesting question as to why so called environmentalists are opposed to real solutions in favor of ineffective or even harmful solutions. I don't really know the answer but I think for some it's just a niave feel good factor of technologies that they deem earth friendly. For the more powerful (Gore, Pickens, etc.) I think the motivation is simply money. In any case, I think environmentalists are often the worst friend the environment could ever have.

And just for grins, here is an article on an evironmentally friendly wind farms.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm

[Wild Cobra]

That was a tad unfair. I would give the Global Warming Petition project a bit more credibility than the twoofers any day.

But, it does not show me an overwhelming consensus of scientists. Nor does it provide a large, formal organization that disbelieves the AGW theory.
31,000 is not an overwhelming consensus compared to the 52(?) who wrote and edited the final writing for the IPCC? Or other alarmists?

Remember. The hundreds the IPCC claims are not part of their consensus!

[RandomGuy]

And just for grins, here is an article on an evironmentally friendly wind farms.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm

:lol

Fuck birds. Gimmie my electricity.

























Didn't see that one coming didja? :p:

Seriously, the birdkill is a price I am willing to pay for wind power. All forms of electricity have their costs, and, in my opinion, the costs in this case are far outweighed by the benefits.

[RandomGuy]

They say most, not all.


Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.8
This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most
of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to
have been due to the increase in GHG concentrations” (Figure
2.5). {WGI 9.4, SPM}


The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4
in 2005 exceed by far the natural range over the last 650,000
years.



Probability of Occurrence IAW IPCC:

<01% Exceptionally Unlikely
<05% Extremely Unlikely
<10% Very Unlikely
<33% Unlikely
<50% Less Likely than Not
33% to 66% About as likely as not
>50% More Likely than Not
>66% Likely
>90% Very Likely
>95% Extremely Likely
>99% Virtual Certainty

Confidence in Conclusion:

<10% Very Low
~20% Low
~50% Medium
~ 80% High
>90% Very High

So, you like a 2 out of 3 chance augmented by most (50%), or 1 in three odds?

Wow... 33% is good with you?

http://media.bigoo.ws/content/image/bunny/bunny_11.gif

Let me go back and re-do your math for you, Mr.-I'm-smarter-than-99%-of-the-population.


Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.


Probability of Occurrence IAW IPCC:

<01% Exceptionally Unlikely
<05% Extremely Unlikely
<10% Very Unlikely
<33% Unlikely
<50% Less Likely than Not
33% to 66% About as likely as not
>50% More Likely than Not
>66% Likely
>90% Very Likely
>95% Extremely Likely
>99% Virtual Certainty

I won't even bother with "most" for you, and will stick to your 51%.

.51*.9= .46%

In this case, we aren't even talking about odds, we are talking about expected values ala basic probabilities.

Why should I assign weight to your assessments if you both can't read and confuse simple concepts?

[RandomGuy]

31,000 is not an overwhelming consensus compared to the 52(?) who wrote and edited the final writing for the IPCC? Or other alarmists?

Remember. The hundreds the IPCC claims are not part of their consensus!

31,000 people signing a petition is not a formal organization, is it?

If that is the definition of a large formal organization, then you must include the Architects and Engineers for 9-11 truth as a valid organization by the same definition.

Originally Posted by RandomGuy

It also begs the question:

"Are all of these scientists really that irrational/illogical/unethical, and you out of the thousands of people who have looked at the data aren't?"



They have been bought and paid for by politicians, or jobs in jeopardy if they don’t play along.

So all of these scientists that you disagree with are putting out lies and spin and useless junk science, but the ones you agree with are the only ones doing actual research with evidence that logically supports their conclusions?

Gotcha.

As long as you agree with the ideology, then the science is valid.

That sounds just like what drove the Soviet science community to totally suck, and to lag behind western science.

Since you have ascribed a motive to all of these scientists, please provide proof of this motive, and proof that they are deliberately lying and falsifying evidence.

[SnakeBoy]

Seriously, the birdkill is a price I am willing to pay for wind power. All forms of electricity have their costs, and, in my opinion, the costs in this case are far outweighed by the benefits.

Well going back to the my interesting question. Why are you willing to pay any price for a technology that will do virtually nothing to impact global warming dilema you believe in? Seriously, I really would like to know why people like you embrace these types of things. It is just an irrational, illogical way of thinking to me.

[DarrinS]

zfafW_3oJ3Q

[RandomGuy]

Well going back to the my interesting question. Why are you willing to pay any price for a technology that will do virtually nothing to impact global warming dilema you believe in? Seriously, I really would like to know why people like you embrace these types of things. It is just an irrational, illogical way of thinking to me.

Solar and wind will do "virtually nothing", but nuclear will be the panacea to stave off the worst effects of CO2-caused global warming?

Seriously?

I am an accountant. I am about what is economically feasible, and what offers the best cost per dollar spent.

Birdkill for wind power is not "any price" it is a rather measurable and known quantity, just as the problems associated with nuclear, which you failed to address.

These problems are solvable and quantifiable. (http://www.unenergy.org/Popup%20pages/Comparecosts.html)

The only reason you don't like wind is that it doesn't seem to be your pet idea.

The reality is way more complex and doesn't point to any one solution, sorry. Nuclear will be part of a future power mix, but do not offer much bang for the buck, because at present it has a lot of serious drawbacks.

How do you propose to solve the water problem of cooling?
How do you propose to solve the problem of water consumption in the fuel mining process?

These are logical questions to ask, and should be addressed by any reasonable proposal.

You want to shoehorn me based on some cardboard cutout of what you think a "liberal" is, and sorry reality doesn't work that way either.

I get very leery of people who claim to have a monopoly on "logic and rationality".

Based on the evidence that I have seen, solar and wind offer the best alternative, with geothermal following close behind.

Nukes are all well and good, but the first time a waste shipment is targeted by 20 idiots who aren't afraid to die and have access to enough high explosive truck bombs to breach the container, the costs associated with nukes will go waaay past what most are willing to pay.

I would rather not bother, and think we can better spend our money elsewhere. If that is "illogical and irrational", oh well.

[RandomGuy]

zfafW_3oJ3Q

mF_anaVcCXg
10 minutes to put the whole debate in perspective.

[DarrinS]

mF_anaVcCXg
10 minutes to put the whole debate in perspective.


If you follow this guy's logic, we should have been trying to warm up the atmosphere back in the 1970's to stave off the global cooling that was being predicted.

[SnakeBoy]

These problems are solvable and quantifiable. (http://www.unenergy.org/Popup%20pages/Comparecosts.html)


Well thanks for the unbiased link. Under what cost category is fighting legal challenges from environmental groups?

Where is the acreage required to supply energy needs category?

The design of coal and nuclear plants can't be duplicated. :blah I loved that one.



The only reason you don't like wind is that it doesn't seem to be your pet idea.


No, I don't like it because it isn't a viable alternative. Same with solar. You really can't do more to "go green" than Germany has done. They're now building new coal fire plants.



How do you propose to solve the water problem of cooling?
How do you propose to solve the problem of water consumption in the fuel mining process?


Get more water. Or ask the French, Japanese, US plants, how they do it? It's not a new technology.

[DarrinS]

I'm all for wind and solar, but the amount of windmills and solar arrays would have to be increased by orders of magnitude to supply our energy needs. Maybe we can get everyone to move out of Nevada and cover the entire state with solar panels?

https://www.eere-pmc.energy.gov/PMC_News/images/energypie.jpg

[RandomGuy]

Originally Posted by RandomGuy

These problems are solvable and quantifiable. (http://www.unenergy.org/Popup%20pages/Comparecosts.html)


Well thanks for the unbiased link. Under what cost category is fighting legal challenges from environmental groups?

Where is the acreage required to supply energy needs category?

The design of coal and nuclear plants can't be duplicated. :blah I loved that one.



No, I don't like it because it isn't a viable alternative. Same with solar. You really can't do more to "go green" than Germany has done. They're now building new coal fire plants.



Get more water. Or ask the French, Japanese, US plants, how they do it? It's not a new technology.

I made no claim about the links veracity or trustworthiness. The implication was merely that costs and benefits are quantifiable, and that the link provided was an example of such an analysis. There are a couple of things in the analsysis that I noted were probably a bit inaccurate, namely that nuclear and solar PV plants probably have much longer useful lives than was assumed.

I am not the one advocating nuclear power plants, if you don't know how they are getting their water, then don't make me do the research.

Your claim that it is the only solution, your burden of proof.

[RandomGuy]

I'm all for wind and solar, but the amount of windmills and solar arrays would have to be increased by orders of magnitude to supply our energy needs.

https://www.eere-pmc.energy.gov/PMC_News/images/energypie.jpg

Not only that, we would need to solve the problem of storage. I think that was mentioned by Snake at some point.

Distributed power generation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_generation)would alleviate a lot of this problem.

[Wild Cobra]

That isn't a yes or no answer.

Either it is plausible or not.

Why do you complain about me not answeing simple questions that I have.

It is past plausable, it is real. There is a real warming effect from CO2. It is just insignificant!



If we do nothing, and continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate far higher than it is absorbed, then is it at least plausible that we will see higher temperatures?

Yes, up to maybe another 1 C past current warming. However, I believe feedbacks will keep this from happening. We are talking about extreme levels of CO2 to do that however.



You have answered this question "yes" from what I understand, so let's go from there, I won't belabor the point.

If we dump a lot more CO2 into the air at a rate far faster than it is absorbed, exponential abasorption or not, will that mean a greater impact on temperatures?

Only a small impact on temperatures as CO2 already traps most the IR that it can.



I expect you to dodge this question with either a non-answer, or another question. That would not be intellectually honest. Yes or no please, it is a fair question.

You complain about dodging questions, I just see repeated questions as irrelavant. I have never said more CO2 does not have no warning effect!

How about going back and answering my questions to you that you haven't yet?

[SnakeBoy]

I'm all for wind and solar, but the amount of windmills and solar arrays would have to be increased by orders of magnitude to supply our energy needs. Maybe we can get everyone to move out of Nevada and cover the entire state with solar panels?

https://www.eere-pmc.energy.gov/PMC_News/images/energypie.jpg


I have no problem with renewable energy sources as a supplemental engery supply. They have been used for decades.

The entire point of my posts to RandonGuy have been about the logic flaw in global warming predictions versus their proposed solutions. Everytime I have had this discussion it goes exactly the same. They try to change the subject because they really don't have a valid argument.

I'll restate the facts...

If the predictions of Global Warming theory are not valid then Global Warming theory is not a valid science.

If the predictions of Global Warming theory are correct then the only solution in the short time we have is an all out effort to go nuclear in the next 15-20 years max. All the "green" proposals cannot be implemented fast enough to avoid the doomsday prediction.

If you go back to my original post in this thread you'll see the real issue with CO2 emissions. We have considerably longer to address that issue and so we can pursue a much more reasonable approach now and hopefully new technologies will emerge over the next 50 - 100 years to resolve the issue entirely.

I am not proposing an all out effort to go nuclear. It's just the only realistic solution to the problem that alarmists believe in. And they are against it.:rolleyes

[Wild Cobra]

By the by, the term for this is "half life", in that it is very similar to radioactive decay. That is the term that the climate scientists use to describe the persistance of greenhouse gasses.

I also noticed that, for all your reading on the subject, you couldn't answer the question of how persistant CO2 is.

To my knowledge, there is no known answer for this within any certainty I'm comfortable with. They use ratios of C12 to C13 to determine such things. However, all it tells us is how much fossile fuels were converted to atmospheric CO2 in the mix. Persistance is far too complicated, and not important. The other factors in the carbon cycle are more important. Sinking and sourcing. If sink = 0, persictance = infinity! If the oceans are warming, persistance is increased. If they cool, persistance is decreased. It has variations of it's own.

Persistance is highly skewed anyway when you consider the normal 92 gigatons of sinking in cold water to the 90 gigatons of sourcing from warm water. With only about a 2.2% annual reduction in CO2 at the current equilibrium imbalance.



Your graph implies that the half-life of CO2 is (to my eye) about 10 years. The research I have read says it is more like a hundred or so, if not much longer.

It depends on the equilibrium imbalance. In balance, it's infinity.

Why does it matter?



Since this is your baliwhack, you find something about this on a website you trust and get back to me with a more firm answer as to the "half-life" of atmospheric CO2. Surely there is something in your denier peer-reviewed science about this.

Again, why does it matter?

Please stay with subjects of importance, or convince me it's important.

[Wild Cobra]

http://media.bigoo.ws/content/image/bunny/bunny_11.gif

Let me go back and re-do your math for you, Mr.-I'm-smarter-than-99%-of-the-population.





I won't even bother with "most" for you, and will stick to your 51%.

.51*.9= .46%

In this case, we aren't even talking about odds, we are talking about expected values ala basic probabilities.

Why should I assign weight to your assessments if you both can't read and confuse simple concepts?

I don't play well with statistics. I realized I should have done that differently after posting the numbers.

Key point. None of the usage by the IPCC is certain!

I don't care if they claim 90% or more. They are wrong!

Facts make statistics.

Statistics DO NOT make facts!

[DarrinS]

Not only that, we would need to solve the problem of storage. I think that was mentioned by Snake at some point.

Distributed power generation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_generation)would alleviate a lot of this problem.



Not only that, but it will take a massive amount of fossil fuels to make this happen. Have you seen all the big trucks hauling the windmill blades lately? I can only assume they are all being hauled to T. Boone Pickens' wind farm. All I know is I see them almost daily heading West.

[Wild Cobra]

Take a closer look at the scale of the "solar irradiance" measurements.

They vary from 1368 Watts per square meter, to 1372 Watts per square meter.

Over the last 50 years it has varied from 1370 to 1371. A total difference of 0.073%

7 hundredths of one percent variation.

Surely this causes some of the increased temperatures, and no one, not even the IPCC disputes this, as their bar graph shows.


Let's see. Earth with no solar radiation, best case, 55 K
Earth currently at 288 K

288 - 55 = 233 change in temperature (K or C).

233 times 0.0007 = 0.163 change in Celsius based on 55 K dead earth temperature and 0.07% solar radiation increase.

From IPCC; AR4WG1_Pub_Ch01.pdf, chapter 1.4.3, Solar Variability and the Total Solar Irradiance, page 108:


These satellite data have been used in combination with the historically recorded sunspot number, records of cosmogenic isotopes, and the characteristics of other Sun-like stars to estimate the solar radiation over the last 1,000 years (Eddy, 1976; Hoyt and Schatten, 1993, 1997; Lean et al., 1995; Lean, 1997). These data sets indicated quasi-periodic changes in solar radiation of 0.24 to 0.30% on the centennial time scale. These values have recently been re-assessed (see, e.g., Chapter 2).

They say they have reassessed the value. However, a 0.3% increase would account for about all the warming we have seen, and a 0.24% would be more about 2/3rds of it!

Now in Chapter 2, the IPCC uses a model of about They have a human +solar effect at 0.6 watts to 2.4 watts. Solar is at 0.06 watts to 0.3 watts. If we take their estimated 1.6 watts of warming and do some math with the estimated 0.12 solar:

1.6 watts of warming = 0.74 C = 2.16 watts per degree C
0.12 watts of solar = 0.055 C due to solar.

That’s by the IPCC numbers. However, they admit a minimum of 0.24% increase in solar radiation. The Earth would be dead cold without the sun. The be is around 5 K to 55 K with no sun. At 5 K the sun warms the earth with the greenhouse effect feedback system to about 15 C, or about 283 K of warming. Only 233 K of warming at 55 K for no solar radiation.

0.24% of 233 K = 0.56 C of warming
0.24% of 283 K = 0.68 C of warming

Why does the IPCC purposely lie? They aren’t that ignorant to solar radiation, are they? Did they misplace a decimal point? Maybe that’s what happens when you have Climatologists assess situations that include solar radiation with no such disciplines of science?

If we use the 0.3% the IPCC admits to:

0.3% of 233 K = 0.7 C of warming
0.3% of 283 K = 0.85 C of warming

Warming is estimated by the IPCC report at 0.74 C +/- 0.18 C (0.56 C to 0.92 C.)

Is this how they justify the lie, chapter 2 Executive Summary, page 132:


The direct RF due to increases in solar irradiance since 1750 is estimated to be +0.12 [–0.06, +0.18] W m–2, with a low level of scientific understanding.

[Wild Cobra]

By the way, feel free to test WC's intellectual honesty. Perhaps he will respond to you.

I have had no luck in getting straight, honest answers from him.

I think you simply don't understand my answers!

[ClingingMars]

that video made me lol. it's as if it's trying to destroy the debate, and force the global warming religion down our throats, just because there is a remote possibility that it could happen.

-Mars

[Wild Cobra]

Here's a very important video related to the solar effects:

DbAe_g41Zl4

From Failure to Warm
Occasional Address
AGM Lavoisier Group 22 October, 2007
David Archibald (http://www.mikechurch.com/joomla/images/stories/global_NOT_warming/David_Archibald_Lavosier_solarcycle_24.pdf):

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/CO2warmingDavidArchibald.jpg

Here's a short temperature reconstruction:

GA1mAOuOFeo

And one on why CO2 cannot be blamed:

rTUDWy6T050

[Wild Cobra]

Here's another thing to consider. The northern ice melt:

Hi Resolution Animation of the Norther Ice melt 2008 (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/2008.movie.for.web.mov) (88 MB)

Satellite reconstruction of Ice Melt animation (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/multiyear.ice.quikscat.mov) (40 MB)

Why is the majority melt under the Jet Stream that comes from Asia?

Could it be the soot it carries...

[clambake]

i found ice in my freezer.

[Wild Cobra]

Haven't seen a reply since last year (two days ago.)

[RandomGuy]

Not only that, but it will take a massive amount of fossil fuels to make this happen. Have you seen all the big trucks hauling the windmill blades lately? I can only assume they are all being hauled to T. Boone Pickens' wind farm. All I know is I see them almost daily heading West.

Not really "massive amount" of fossil fuels. Any power source built today will consume fossil fuels.

To be sure, you burn oil digging up ore, transporting it, smelting and forming to into something useful and transporting and assembling it, just like any other machinery, and you will burn some oil fuels maintaining them, but after the initial investment, it starts adding CO2 free energy into the system for decades.

The good thing about wind though over coal is that you don't have to continuously burn energy digging up coal transporting it, then cleaning up after burning it.

[RandomGuy]

that video made me lol. it's as if it's trying to destroy the debate, and force the global warming religion down our throats, just because there is a remote possibility that it could happen.

-Mars

It isn't advocating either theory. It is advocating a response to risk.

There is a remote possibility that your house will burn down, but yet you buy fire insurance. Why?

[RandomGuy]

The design of coal and nuclear plants can't be duplicated. :blah I loved that one.


By the by, I didn't say that at all. The nuclear power plants built in the US were of many different designs.

Standardization tends to drive unit costs down, and one of the things that has made nukes expensive in the past has been a lack of standardization.

[RandomGuy]

If you follow this guy's logic, we should have been trying to warm up the atmosphere back in the 1970's to stave off the global cooling that was being predicted.

Indeed we would have started taking some steps, as would have been prudent based on the best available information.

If you follow that guy's logic, you would avoid drinking bacon grease with every meal.

If you follow that guy's logic, you would avoid smoking cigarettes.

If you follow that guy's logic, you would buy health insurance.

If you follow that guy's logic, you would insure your house against damage.

We CAN'T know the future, but we CAN take reasonable steps to mitigate the risk of loss.

[RandomGuy]

Here's another thing to consider. The northern ice melt:

Hi Resolution Animation of the Norther Ice melt 2008 (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/2008.movie.for.web.mov) (88 MB)

Satellite reconstruction of Ice Melt animation (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/multiyear.ice.quikscat.mov) (40 MB)

Why is the majority melt under the Jet Stream that comes from Asia?

Could it be the soot it carries...

Indeed, it could be. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion.

[SnakeBoy]

By the by, I didn't say that at all. The nuclear power plants built in the US were of many different designs.


I was referring to the chart in the link you gave.

[RandomGuy]

I have no problem with renewable energy sources as a supplemental engery supply. They have been used for decades.

The entire point of my posts to RandonGuy have been about the logic flaw in global warming predictions versus their proposed solutions. Everytime I have had this discussion it goes exactly the same. They try to change the subject because they really don't have a valid argument.

I'll restate the facts...

If the predictions of Global Warming theory are not valid then Global Warming theory is not a valid science.

If the predictions of Global Warming theory are correct then the only solution in the short time we have is an all out effort to go nuclear in the next 15-20 years max. All the "green" proposals cannot be implemented fast enough to avoid the doomsday prediction.

If you go back to my original post in this thread you'll see the real issue with CO2 emissions. We have considerably longer to address that issue and so we can pursue a much more reasonable approach now and hopefully new technologies will emerge over the next 50 - 100 years to resolve the issue entirely.

I am not proposing an all out effort to go nuclear. It's just the only realistic solution to the problem that alarmists believe in. And they are against it.:rolleyes

1) Nuclear is NOT the only realistic solution to the problem. That is a false assumption.

2) I have never advocated a radical multi-trillion dollar, do it all right now approach. That is silly. Please stop claiming I do without actually asking me what I think, it's rude.

My biggest pet peeve about conservatives is that in Conservative World, all "liberals" believe that we need to stop burning any fossil fuels right now, give up our cars, start eating grass, and lower our standard of living to levels that would make a midieval monk's lifestyle look like Caligula.

Please stop it.

Here is what I think we SHOULD do based on what evidence is available:

A strong investment in renewables, starting with solar and wind.
Encourage and promote a more distributed and robust electrical grid.
Encourage and promote efficiency.
Research and development into large-scale storage systems, such as industrial-sized fuel cells.

[RandomGuy]

Given:

Risk has two dimensions.

Scale of loss and probability of occurance.

WC and the deniers, when they are being honest, will agree that if we really do get into the worst case GW scenario as the AGW alarmists claim, it will be catastrophic.

They spend their time attacking the probability of occurance, which they put at virtually nil.

OK, fine.

They say then, that we should do/change absolutely nothing based on this, because "we will ruin our economy doing it", which is their worst-case scenario.

OK, fine.

Now provide data that supports that assessment of probability.

It is claimed to be a near certainty that we will ruin our economy and standard of living by moderating our greenhouse gas emission profile.

Your claim.

Your burden of proof.

[DarrinS]

WC and the deniers, when they are being honest, will agree that if we really do get into the worst case GW scenario as the AGW alarmists claim, it will be catastrophic.



Aren't you glad that we didn't spend billions of dollars back in the 70's trying to prevent the impending ice age that scientists were predicting?


A simple question for you. If IPCC model predictions are erroneous over the short term, how much confidence do you have in their long-term predictions?


By the way, when IPCC reports use bad science, include numbers that are off by an order of magnitude, and censor comments from scientists whose opinions don't support their agenda, I have to consider them no more credible than the UN.

[DarrinS]

An interesting quote from Albert Einstein:

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."



I wonder what he would think about "consensus" science?

[SnakeBoy]

You started off good but have been slipping on the intellectual honesty scale. Let's try it this way.


A strong investment in renewables, starting with solar and wind.

What percentage of world energy supply do you believe renewables can supply and how long will it take to implement? Doomsday is in 41 years max.


Encourage and promote a more distributed and robust electrical grid.

What impact will this have on atmospheric CO2 levels and how long will it take to implement? Doomsday is in 41 years max.


Encourage and promote efficiency.
Specifics? How much can we reduce CO2 emissions through efficiency factoring in the fact that the world population will increase from 6 to 9 billion by 2050? How long will it take to implement these improvements in efficiency? Doomsday is in 41 years max.


Research and development into large-scale storage systems, such as industrial-sized fuel cells.

How long will research, development, and implementation take? Doomsday is in 41 years max.


Your claim.

Your burden of proof.

Global Warming Theory is your claim not mine.

[RandomGuy]

Global Warming Theory is your claim not mine.

Economic Implosion Theory is your claim, not mine.

...or to be more precise, WC's.

Do you think we should not do anything because it would harm our economy for something that doesn't exist?

Yes or no or an alternative.

[SnakeBoy]

Define "anything".

[RandomGuy]

You started off good but have been slipping on the intellectual honesty scale.

I've given it a lot more shrift than you have, actually.

Intellectual honesty and good critical thinking requires one to provide proof for one's assertions when asked fairly.

You have not done so, when asked for some simple proposals as to how the limitations of nuclear will be overcome to make it the "only realistic option" for massively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.


What percentage of world energy supply do you believe renewables can supply and how long will it take to implement? Doomsday is in 41 years max.

Renewables can supply 100% of the world's energy supply. Before you go apeshit about that statement, I will add the caveat: given enough time and investment. I would put that time frame to be well over a century if you want to go completely renewable. We only really get about 2% or 3% of our electricity now from renewables, and increasing that is not too hard within 10 years to 10 or even 20%. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.


What impact will [distributed power grids] have on atmospheric CO2 levels and how long will it take to implement? Doomsday is in 41 years max.

Distributed power grids actually mean less economic losses from outages from any kind, and also offer less transmission loss. I don't have and likely can't provide definitive statements on the exact impact of CO2 levels. It would provide efficiency gains that would alleviate the need for new power plants, part of which would be coal, and would reasonably be concluded to reduce CO2 emissions. It would take about 10-20+ years to really implement on a large scale, to what I have read. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.


Specifics [on encouranging and promoting efficiency]? How much can we reduce CO2 emissions through efficiency factoring in the fact that the world population will increase from 6 to 9 billion by 2050? How long will it take to implement these improvements in efficiency? Doomsday is in 41 years max.

Specifics on energy efficiency would take an entire discussion in and of itself. It is estimated that this is, out of all the things we do, the quickest and easiest thing, and has the capability of completely negating the need for new power plants to keep up with economic growth, even with global increases in population. Implementation on this would be immediate and continuous. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.



How long will research, development, and implementation [into large-scale storage systems, such as industrial-sized fuel cells] take? Doomsday is in 41 years max.

Unknown. Were I to guess, 10-15 years. Large fuel cells are more efficient than small ones and MUCH more technically/economically feasible. We aren't starting from scratch, and there are a lot of promising technologies out there. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.

I don't think it is really possible to completely totally stop buring fossil fuels and eliminate CO2 emissions in 41 years, or even entirely desirable.

It is VERY possible to push any Doomsday scenario back long enough for us to really find something revolutionary, or simply give ourselves the room to change at a much more gradual and sustainable pace.

We can't do it all instantly, but we didn't get our present economy instantly either. We can start the process, and buy ourselves time to really see if WC is right or not.

By the way, we can and should invest in nuclear power as well at some level, simply because, even with its limitations, it is still better than coal. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.

[RandomGuy]

Define "anything".

Should we not attempt to do any mitigating of our CO2 emissions at all because it would harm our economy to the point of a needless economic meltdown?

[Wild Cobra]

Originally Posted by DarrinS

If you follow this guy's logic, we should have been trying to warm up the atmosphere back in the 1970's to stave off the global cooling that was being predicted.Indeed we would have started taking some steps, as would have been prudent based on the best available information.

We may have done that to some extent, but by coincidence rather than intent. By the 70's we saw a terrible trend and severe problems from smog. We formed the EPA and started cleaning up the air. As I have stated before, it takes a long time (lag) before we see results from causes on global scales. These particle pollutions were no doubt, cooling the earth to at least some extent. When we removed most of them, I believe the natural warming from the increased solar radiation 1900-1950 started showing itself again.

[Wild Cobra]

1) Nuclear is NOT the only realistic solution to the problem. That is a false assumption.

2) I have never advocated a radical multi-trillion dollar, do it all right now approach. That is silly. Please stop claiming I do without actually asking me what I think, it's rude.

I have also drawn that conclusion by the way you say we should error on the side of caution. Small amounts of money will not mitigate CO2 emissions by any degree to matter. It will take trillions, and maybe more.



My biggest pet peeve about conservatives is that in Conservative World, all "liberals" believe that we need to stop burning any fossil fuels right now, give up our cars, start eating grass, and lower our standard of living to levels that would make a midieval monk's lifestyle look like Caligula.

Please stop it.

Well, I don't see it quite that way. I do see that, in general, liberals have all these plans to make changes without offering acceptable solutions that really work!



Here is what I think we SHOULD do based on what evidence is available:

A strong investment in renewables, starting with solar and wind.
Encourage and promote a more distributed and robust electrical grid.
Encourage and promote efficiency.
Research and development into large-scale storage systems, such as industrial-sized fuel cells.
For the most part, these are great goals. However, you can only so so much with the power grid structure without superconductor technology. Making grids more reliable is economically done by making more power plants rather than trying to redistribute power. Solar and wind cannot effectively be used until we have energy storage systems. Wind really doesn't do much now because other power generation needs to be on Hot Standby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_standby) in case of the sudden loss of wind. Solar is still pretty small, and shades large portions of the earth.

Efficiency... How much is acceptable?

Connecting grids sound great, but the power losses involved in sending electricity more than a few hundred miles become rather massive.

Fuel cell storage. This is probable the most efficient method we could use today. Same thing however. You have energy losses in creating the hydrogen for storage, and then recombining it to electricity.

Large grid problems...

You may want to look over this:

Power System Security in the New Industry Environment (http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r7/toronto/events/oct0303/prabha.ppt)

Worse than loss of efficiency, When you start switching high power long distances, the 0.23 HZ oscillations really fuck things up! I was trying to find the power loss factor of the 3.1 giga-watt Pacific Intertie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Intertie) when I found that.

I wonder if 0.23 hz was the frequency Tesla was playing with?

edit/add:

I'm unsure what you mean by "a more distributed and robust electrical grid." If you mean what a Distributed Power Grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_generation) would technically mean, then I agree with you.

I thought about that after answering and realized I may have jumped to conclusions. It's long distances from energy source to user that causes us grid problems which are plagued by power losses, spikes, and reflect power.

[Wild Cobra]

Given:

Risk has two dimensions.

Scale of loss and probability of occurance.

WC and the deniers, when they are being honest, will agree that if we really do get into the worst case GW scenario as the AGW alarmists claim, it will be catastrophic.

Problem with this is that I see their worse case scenario as having a ZERO percent chance of being correct! It is not supported by science.



They spend their time attacking the probability of occurance, which they put at virtually nil.

OK, fine.

It is nil. Not virtually nil. Their worse case is simply impossible. Just scare tactics.



They say then, that we should do/change absolutely nothing based on this, because "we will ruin our economy doing it", which is their worst-case scenario.

OK, fine.

Now provide data that supports that assessment of probability.

It is claimed to be a near certainty that we will ruin our economy and standard of living by moderating our greenhouse gas emission profile.

Your claim.

Your burden of proof.

It's to preposterous to give numbers with any accuracy. How much xcan we go into debt before the US currency is worthless in the world? We are already getting close, especially with this current bailout!

There are now enough facts available to show the alarmists are gravely in error. They went by obsolete models with assumptions built in that continue to be revealed as false assumptions. The models will continue to show the results they were built for. They refuse to incorporate the real facts we've seen these last few years about solar irradiation and soot. Why? Because they destroy their arguments.

Look at what their dogma says we need to do. Since CO2 is so persistent, we need to cut emissions far faster than we can replace zero emission energy with. To avoid their doomsday scenario, what else can we do?

Random, I have shown you facts behind solar and soot that the alarmists clearly ignore. When you subtract the solar and soot effects from measured warming, there is almost no warming left to be caused by CO2.

[Wild Cobra]

Why is the majority melt under the Jet Stream that comes from Asia?

Could it be the soot it carries... Indeed, it could be. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion.Now consider, how much the oceans are warming from the lack of ice cover. They now absorb about 90% of the solar radiation that makes it through the atmosphere rather than reflecting about 90%. That a pretty large power change in a sizable area of the earth. Even when it's melting, the soot is trapping that heat rather than letting the ice reflect it.

This whole concept is an inconvenient truth to the powers to be and the new business of selling Carbon Credits.

NASA has solid research, entirely ignored by the IPCC and others on "Black Ice." They give very small numbers of 'radiative forcing' of soot, but never updated it to real numbers.

Here is a re posting of post #1 of the thread titled Black Carbon Global Warming (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2903700#post2903700):


Black Carbon rather than CO2 I will claim to be the major anthropogenic warming on the Earth.

Black Carbon is simply soot. It is expelled into the atmosphere by the incomplete burning of fuels. In small quantities, we see it in the USA from older cars tailpipes, and from diesel trucks when they accelerate hard. It’s the black smoke we see. Since the 70’s, here in the USA we have regulated pollution to the point that we generate very little of it in the global picture. The real culprit is Asia. They have been building and using coal power plants, without implementing the pollution controls we do. We are seeing the jet streams carry this soot to both the Arctic region, and causing occasional smog in the Pacific Northwest, which otherwise would have no smog. A few articles and some info contained within:

Wiki: Black Carbon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon):


Black carbon contribution to global warming
Black carbon is a potent climate forcing agent, estimated to be the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide (CO2). Because black carbon remains in the atmosphere only for a few weeks, reducing black carbon emissions may be the fastest means of slowing climate change in the near-term.

Estimates of black carbon’s climate forcing (combining both direct and indirect forcings) vary from the IPCC’s conservative estimate of + 0.3 watts per square meter (W/m2) + 0.25, to the most recent estimate of 1.0-1.2 W/m2 (see Table 1), which is “as much as 55% of the CO2 forcing and is larger than the forcing due to the other greenhouse gasses (GHGs) such as CH4, CFCs, N2O, or tropospheric ozone.”

In some regions, such as the Himalayas, the impact of black carbon on melting snowpack and glaciers may be equal to that of CO2. Black carbon emissions also significantly contribute to Arctic ice-melt, which is critical because “nothing in climate is more aptly described as a ‘tipping point’ than the 0°C boundary that separates frozen from liquid water—the bright, reflective snow and ice from the dark, heat-absorbing ocean.” Hence, reducing such emissions may be “the most efficient way to mitigate Arctic warming that we know of.”
OK, for those of you who error on the side of caution. The first paragraph says “reducing black carbon emissions may be the fastest means of slowing climate change in the near-term.” The second paragraph has the IPCC increasing it’s estimated impact from 0.3 to 0.55 watts of warming to 1 to 1.2 watts. Shouldn’t this most easily controlled measure be attempted first before regulation CO2 emission levels?

If warming from soot increases, then what did they say before is decreasing… I’ll bet they don’t, but I’d say they are seeing CO2 isn’t the culprit they claim it is. Considering on the below graph, they gave CO2 something like a 1.5 to a 1.8 watt range, that would now be reduced to maybe 0.8 to 1.5 watts! However, the below graph must be older yet. It shows soot at 0 to 0.2 watts. Correcting to the higher soot figure drops CO2 to even more. Because of the way the range these, I won’t attempt to quantify a valid change. Just that it’s even farther. Along with the truth that solar irradiance changes should be higher than the approximate 0.1 to 0.3 watts the give, you can see that CO2 can easily be getting smaller. Solar irradiance by official NASA and other agencies than monitor the sun clearly increase by at least 0.3 watts.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Radiative-forcings.svg/250px-Radiative-forcings.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Radiative-forcings.svg )

Second article, by MSNBC; Soot may speed up melting of Arctic ice (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7318240/):


Using computer models and information from NASA satellites, scientists located significant accumulations of black carbon soot in the Arctic region. This soot may contribute to the warming of a region that has already seen rapidly increasing temperatures in recent years.

"This research offers additional evidence black carbon, generated through the process of incomplete combustion, may have a significant warming impact on the Arctic," said Dorothy Koch of Columbia University and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Funny thing is that CO2 doesn’t produce the right calculation to be the primary reason for warming that has been observed. Climate models have been made since the 80’s on the assumption greenhouse gasses were the primary cause of warming. What almost any article I see on the subject fails to do is acknowledge that if we are seeing other factors contributing to warming, then CO2 must not be warming the earth as much as first assumed. They refuse to see past the Flat Earth mentality.

Is soot, not CO2, to blame for the loss of Arctic ice? (http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/04/05/is-soot-not-co2-to-blame-for-the-loss-of-arctic-ice/):


The Arctic is especially vulnerable to pollution. In recent years the Arctic has significantly warmed, and sea-ice cover and glaciers have diminished. Likely causes for these trends include changing weather patterns and the effects of pollution. Airborne soot also warms the air and affects weather patterns and clouds.
Black carbon has already been implicated as playing a role in melting ice and snow. Basically, when soot falls on ice, it darkens the surface and accelerates melting by absorbing more sunlight than ice would, just as wearing a black shirt in the summertime makes you feel hotter than if you wore a lighter color. Dark colors absorb heat and light, and lighter colors reflect it keeping surfaces cooler.
From ABC News; Can We Save the Polar Bears? (http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/TenWays/story?id=3618049):



Scientists are discovering that what appears to be pristine, white snow may be more polluted than it seems. They're finding tiny particles of black carbon — too small for the naked eye to see — from forest fires and human pollution.

Under a microscope, scientists can see black carbon particles by the trillions. Those black carbon particles cause the snow to melt faster.

"Black carbon absorbs sunlight and it causes warming," said Stephen Warren, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington.

Scientists have traced soot blown into the Arctic region to industrial sources in North America, Europe and now Asia, but there's still hope.

"I think we can still save the Arctic," said NASA's James Hansen. "Our calculations are that we could keep the sea ice in the Arctic from melting much more than it has already."

That can only happen if emissions cuts include greatly decreasing black carbon from smokestacks and tailpipes, according to Hansen and other scientists. That's an effort everyone has to strive for, from China to the United States.


A few more links:

Soot Could Hasten Melting of Arctic Ice (http://www.livescience.com/environment/050328_arctic_soot.html)

IGSD/INECE Climate Briefing Note: 9 June 2008 (http://www.igsd.org/docs/BC%20Summary%20June%2010.pdf), A must read. Nice data. Has the most recent BC estimates of forcing at 1.0 to 1.2 watts.

Study: Black Carbon Pollution Major Factor in Global Warming, 23 March 2008 (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/study-black-car.html)

Global Warming Hoax (http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php?extend.66):

http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_images/newspost_images/black_carbon_heating_per_country.jpg

Notice how out closest source of Black Carbon emissions at high levels is Mexico City? I know that from a better map of this I've seen. Somewhere, I have a few NASA links that cover the BC levels better. I think I covered enough here. Threads getting a bit big already.

[Wild Cobra]

Renewables can supply 100% of the world's energy supply. Before you go apeshit about that statement, I will add the caveat: given enough time and investment. I would put that time frame to be well over a century if you want to go completely renewable. We only really get about 2% or 3% of our electricity now from renewables, and increasing that is not too hard within 10 years to 10 or even 20%. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.

Renewable and clean energy are two different things, then it depends on what you mean by 'clean' also. Renewable energies like ethanol don't really help the carbon footprint at all. If we are to talk about reducing or eliminating man-made greenhouse gasses, then be careful with the word renewable.

We actually get something like 18% of our world wide energy by 2006 numbers from renewables. 13% from biomass and 3% from hydroelectric. I'm skeptical of this particular wiki link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy). Maybe I need to read it more, but it doesn't completely make sense to me. Here's a but from it:


Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished). In 2006, about 18% of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, such as wood-burning. Hydroelectricity was the next largest renewable source, providing 3% (15% of global electricity generaiton), followed by solar hot water/heating, which contributed 1.3%. Modern technologies, such as geothermal energy, wind power, solar power, and ocean energy together provided some 0.8% of final energy consumption.

---

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Ren2006.png



Distributed power grids actually mean less economic losses from outages from any kind, and also offer less transmission loss. I don't have and likely can't provide definitive statements on the exact impact of CO2 levels. It would provide efficiency gains that would alleviate the need for new power plants, part of which would be coal, and would reasonably be concluded to reduce CO2 emissions. It would take about 10-20+ years to really implement on a large scale, to what I have read. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.

Reading this is why I edited the prior post I made. Proble is, stated like California don't want any more energy generation in their back yard. That's why we have a 3.1 Giga-Watt DC interconnect from the hydropower in the Pacific North-Left to them.



Unknown. Were I to guess, 10-15 years. Large fuel cells are more efficient than small ones and MUCH more technically/economically feasible. We aren't starting from scratch, and there are a lot of promising technologies out there. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.

We are still speaking of very large hydrogen storage, safety, etc.

I have no problems going this route, if we can overcome the obstacles. There are also problems around the membrane life and destroying it is the hydrogen is contaminated. Now we need super cleaning also.

Did you know that in 1996, clean room space costs about $10,000 per square foot... Just a little factoid I know from being in the industry... Point is, it gets very expensive to keep things clean enough.



I don't think it is really possible to completely totally stop buring fossil fuels and eliminate CO2 emissions in 41 years, or even entirely desirable.

The way technology changes, there is really no way to know how feasible it is. Personally, I think we should try to maintain a 400 ppm to 500 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is we can. Maybe more. Agriculture loves it!



It is VERY possible to push any Doomsday scenario back long enough for us to really find something revolutionary, or simply give ourselves the room to change at a much more gradual and sustainable pace.

Doomsday scenarios based on CO2 emissions belong in science fiction.



We can't do it all instantly, but we didn't get our present economy instantly either. We can start the process, and buy ourselves time to really see if WC is right or not.

I have no time to take a boat or plane around the Earth to see it's round either. I trust the circumstantial evidence I see, just like I trust the Global Warming scare is ridiculous. Understanding the sciences as well as I do. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the alarmists are flat out wrong!



By the way, we can and should invest in nuclear power as well at some level, simply because, even with its limitations, it is still better than coal. By investing in this we buy ourselves time and push the Doomsday scenario back.

Nuclear, Geothermal, New Hydropower designs friendly to fish (also tear down and replace existing hydro), Biomass from waste, and limited solar. I'm for these completely. I'm not so keen on wind and over doing solar energy for several reasons. I'd like to see solar power limited to roof tops and parts of the desert, elevated to provide shade for wildlife. I think wind power looks tacky, and I love natural scenery. I say we keep enough clean burning coal plants and natural gas plants to keep plant friendly levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Cars...

The future of cars will change as oil maintains higher prices. I am a firm believer in the lightly regulated marketplace. Designers are going to electrical powered cars. If we can start supplying enough electricity in the grid, and design better batteries, I'm sure we will see electric car technology develop to be the rule rather than exception. Even if we need to burn fuel oil, large scale power can be more easily adapted to burn nearly pollution free rather than from millions of individual combustion engines. Although we may have high losses in conversion and distribution, it is less than the inefficiency of the internal combustion engine.

I'm not at all for doing nothing about advancing technology. I just don't want it to be rushed and end up with other technological disasters. We cannot rush into something out of fear. Let the market forces work like they are meant to. It will come about in time.

Oh... I doubt hydrogen fuel cells will ever become a viable reality. Still too many technical problems. [URK=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_methanol_fuel_cell]Methanol fuel cells[/URL] are more promising I think! If Wiki is correct, they are already in commercial and research designs of up to 1 maga-watt. I thought there was also a methane fuel cell. I'm either wrong, or didn't find anything on it. I think a LNG fuel cell would work nice for transportation if they were available. Hydrogen fuel cells are the most efficient non-polluting cells that can be made to relatively large power requirements, but hydrogen is so hard to work with. Methane and methanol storage is so much easier.

Methane fuel cells are what I want to see. I think this (http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/membersonly/feb01/features/echem/echem.html) was a legitimate one, but it never made it to market. Safety? Reliability? Regulations? Who knows:


Plug Power engineers designed the HomeGen 7000 so it can be installed within a day. The energy system, measuring 75 inches long, 35 inches wide, and 55 inches deep—about the size of a refrigerator—is placed on a precast concrete pad. Installers will attach its fuel and water connections to the residence's gas and water lines, and its output cable to the service panel.

The PEM fuel cells within the GE HomeGen 7000 will provide homes with as much as 7 kW of electricity and hot water as a byproduct to improve its fuel efficiency.

Once installed, the fuel cell system runs continuously and will provide up to 7 kW free of grid power interruptions. Plug Power has indicated that the first HomeGen 7000s should become commercially available early next year, and are intended for installations where grid power is available. A year later, Plug Power will introduce a grid-independent, LPG-fueled system for use in stand-alone applications.

http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/membersonly/feb01/features/echem/50b.gif

[SnakeBoy]

Intellectual honesty and good critical thinking requires one to provide proof for one's assertions when asked fairly.

You have not done so, when asked for some simple proposals as to how the limitations of nuclear will be overcome to make it the "only realistic option" for massively reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Note that you have once again ommited "in the amount of time GW theory says we have left".


I have done so. You are trying to change the subject when I was not trying to debate nuclear energy. I was making the point that your solutions simply cannot provide enough energy and/or be implemented fast enough to make a difference if GW theory is correct. You have basically conceded that point in your responses. Your rather weak statement of "by investing in this we push back the doomsday scenario" is simply untrue. You cannot provide any substantial proof of that statement. In fact Global Warming scientists even disagree with you. I generously gave you 41 years to show how your proposals could change the path that Global Warming theory predicts and you are not able to do so. The reality is that many GW scientists say we have less than 20 years. Others say we ran out of time 10-15 years ago.

As for nuclear energy, I don't claim to be an expert on nuclear energy so I can't reassure you of all the fears you may have of it. You might look into the high pressure pebble reactors that China is moving forward with as they go nuclear. Pebble reactors are gas cooled, said to be 100% safe under all circumstances. China's High pressure design also produces hydrogen for use as fuel and is very quick to build. First one to be built this year.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
China has licensed the German technology and is actively developing a pebble bed reactor for power generation [8]. The 10 megawatt prototype is called the HTR-10. It is a conventional helium-cooled, helium-turbine design. The program is at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The first 200 megawatt production plant is planned for 2007. There are firm plans for thirty such plants by 2020 (6 gigawatts). By 2050, China plans to deploy as much as 300 gigawatts of reactors of which PBMRs will be a major component. If PBMRs are successful, there may be a substantial number of reactors deployed. This may be the largest planned nuclear power deployment in history.

Tsinghua's program for Nuclear and New Energy technology also plans in 2006 to begin developing a system to use the high temperature gas of a pebble bed reactor to crack steam to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen could serve as fuel for hydrogen vehicles, reducing China's dependence on imported oil. Hydrogen can also be stored, and distribution by pipelines may be more efficient than conventional power lines. See hydrogen economy.

Of course China does not have the "Left" to deal with politically so they get to just move forward. Meanwhile we can't use our own resources, can't go nuclear, can't have a sensible energy policy.

[Wild Cobra]

How about this article Random:

Pål Brekke: Internationally renowned climate sceptic and solar expert (http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/News/Pal+Brekke+Internationally+renowned+climate+scepti c+and+solar+expert/1203528336519). Excerpts:


The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) has determined that the earth's temperature has risen by about 0.7° C since 1901. According to Dr Brekke, this time period coincides not only with an increase in human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, but also with a higher level of solar activity, which makes it complicated to separate the effects of these two phenomena. For this standpoint, he has been accused of being in the pocket of the powerful Norwegian petroleum industry and of being the mouthpiece for the country's least environmentally focused political forces.

Some climate researchers have told Dr Brekke that he is unqualified to put forth his opinion since he is not a climate researcher. Dr Brekke asks, "Just what makes someone a climate researcher? Couldn't someone who studies solar radiation also be considered a climate researcher?" Dr Brekke has published more than 40 scientific articles on the sun and on the interaction between the sun and the earth.

"There is much evidence that the sun's high-activity cycle is levelling off or abating. If it is true that the sun's activity is of great significance in determining the earth's climate, this reduced solar activity could work in the opposite direction to climate change caused by humans. In that case," contends Dr Brekke, "we could find the temperature levelling off or actually falling in the course of a 50-year period" - an assertion that provokes many climate researchers.

Or this one:

Fired at D.O.E. (http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/happer.html):


Last spring physicist William Happer found out what happens to federal scientists who ask the wrong questions. He was fired.

Happer, director of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy for two years, was asked to leave at the end of May. Although he was a political appointee, he had expected to remain until his replacement was nominated, since the Clinton administration had asked him to stay on in January. But he was pushed out two months beforehand. "I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy," he says. Now the DOE's former chief scientist is back at Princeton.

"Science was not going to intrude on policy"... I have mentioned this before. If you don't play politics with science, you lose your job. This has happened to several scientists who refuse to lie about science.

[RandomGuy]

I have also drawn that conclusion by the way you say we should error on the side of caution. Small amounts of money will not mitigate CO2 emissions by any degree to matter. It will take trillions, and maybe more.

Trillions? Really?

Do have some source material for this, so that I can read up on the costs and see for myself?

[RandomGuy]

For the most part, these are great goals. However, you can only so so much with the power grid structure without superconductor technology. Making grids more reliable is economically done by making more power plants rather than trying to redistribute power. Solar and wind cannot effectively be used until we have energy storage systems. Wind really doesn't do much now because other power generation needs to be on Hot Standby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_standby) in case of the sudden loss of wind. Solar is still pretty small, and shades large portions of the earth.

I'm unsure what you mean by "a more distributed and robust electrical grid." If you mean what a Distributed Power Grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_generation) would technically mean, then I agree with you.

I thought about that after answering and realized I may have jumped to conclusions. It's long distances from energy source to user that causes us grid problems which are plagued by power losses, spikes, and reflect power.

With a more distributed electrical grid, you don't need superconductors.

You are entirely right that going completely solar won't really help to much because of the hot standby problem.

There are ways around that, and some promising research into the problem using solar concentrators that store heat in the form of melted salts that are used to generate steam power at night and smooth out the production curve. Storing heat is, from what I have read, far more efficient in terms of energy than storing electricity directly.

Large industrial size fuel-cells are another part of the storage problem that holds some promise and offer a feasible way to store power on a meaninful scale.

If every large building was generating power for storage on the weekends and off-peak time, and that power was stored in the building itself, you have essentially cut the transmission loss factor out of the equation, because you are generating power where it is actually used, meaning you don't need a 1 for 1 replacement of generating capacity.

There are some extremely good solutions in the offing that offer ways to both cut emissions, make us more energy independent, and promote the economy with non-outsourceable jobs.

[Winehole23]

Does the upcoming Obama stimulus include energy R&D in addition to transportation? If so, what?

[RandomGuy]

I have also drawn that conclusion by the way you say we should error on the side of caution. Small amounts of money will not mitigate CO2 emissions by any degree to matter. It will take trillions, and maybe more.


Trillions? Really?

Do have some source material for this, so that I can read up on the costs and see for myself?

I noticed this simple question didn't get answered, even though you logged on and posted for a couple of hours.

Just in case you missed it.

[RandomGuy]

Does the upcoming Obama stimulus include energy R&D in addition to transportation? If so, what?

This answer is likely easily found in a google search.

[Winehole23]

This answer is likely easily found in a google search.Forgive my laziness in deferring to someone obviously more learned than me, RG.

I found this:

http://earth2tech.com/2008/12/11/report-obama-should-spend-100b-on-green-stimulus/

Green school construction and renovation, $7.3 billion
Greening affordable housing, $5.0 billion
Green job creation, $100.0 billion That green job creation portion will include (but is only a portion of the spending):

The Weatherization Assistance Program, $0.9 billion
The Federal Energy Management Program, $1.3 billion
Refundable residential energy efficiency tax credits, $5.0 billion
Solar roofs on federal buildings, $3.5 billion
Smart grid federal matching funds, $1.3 billion
Building retrofits, $10.0 billion
Energy efficiency and conservation block grants, $5.0 billion
“Cash for Clunkers” rebates for older cars, $2.5 billion
Electric transmission grid, $10.0 billion
Advanced technology vehicle manufacturing and retooling, $7.5 billion
Replacing aging buses and acquiring rail cars, $4.0 billion
Local transit infrastructure, $8.0 billionPoints out that Obama's $150 billion a year for ten years on energy R&D presumes a thriving market for carbon credits:

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-01/st_essay

From Mr. Obama's website:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.p

[RandomGuy]

It's to preposterous to give numbers with any accuracy.


Small amounts of money will not mitigate CO2 emissions by any degree to matter. It will take trillions, and maybe more.


RG-- Source?

WC-- (silence)

:rolleyes

[Wild Cobra]

I noticed this simple question didn't get answered, even though you logged on and posted for a couple of hours.

Just in case you missed it.

I'm not going to look up other peoples work on the matter. I'm sure you've heard the numbers yourself. Replacing cars as we know them would cost how much alone? Carbon sequestration for power generation... How much?

You're the accountant. Run the numbers yourself. It's in excess of three Trillion, just those two items.

I thought it was a no-brainier that didn't need explained.

[Wild Cobra]

Large industrial size fuel-cells are another part of the storage problem that holds some promise and offer a feasible way to store power on a meaninful scale.

Have you looked at the efficiencies of large capacity fuel cells? The clean systems do not exceed 50%, and the way they work, that's at low level loads. Not rated loads.

[Wild Cobra]

RG-- Source?

WC-- (silence)

:rolleyes

Bullshit.

I have given several sources that show CO2 is not a a problem to points that mitigation makes any relevant difference.

It's not my fault you don't understand the material. You still believe CO2 is the problem. As long as you believe that, my sources will never be the right answers for you.

[RandomGuy]

I'm not going to look up other peoples work on the matter. I'm sure you've heard the numbers yourself. Replacing cars as we know them would cost how much alone? Carbon sequestration for power generation... How much?

You're the accountant. Run the numbers yourself. It's in excess of three Trillion, just those two items.

I thought it was a no-brainier that didn't need explained.

In accounting for different investment options, one only considers the differences between options. One nets all the differences and comes up with a "cost" or a "benefit" from any given option.

Gasoline-powered cars wear out and are replaced as they wear out periodically, usually about 5 o 10 years to my knowledge.

Any switchover to new types of vehicles that replaces the older fleet at a rate equal to or less than the wearout rate is not a net cost and should not be considered in any consideration of options. If the newer vehciles were, on average, more or less expensive than the ones they were replacing, that would be a cost one should consider.

If, say, you replaced a fleet of SUV's that cost $40,000 each with a fleet of smaller economy cars that cost $20,000 each*, then there is actually a net benefit $20,000 for each car. Take a fleet of 1 million SUV's, 1/7th, or 14%, of which wear out each year, is 140,000 times $20,000, and you get a net of $2.8Bn saved each year, and this doesn't include other avoided costs like the difference in gasoline consumption** between the two fleets.

Carbon sequestration is a better concept to figure into this, as it is a cost that must be added to carbon-based fuel sources.

Factoring in this actually makes green renewables more economically competitive, as this an expensive option that is not needed for solar, wind, or geothermal.

Personally, from an economic point of view, I think we should require coal power plants to 100% scrub all of the really nasty things like heavy metals and sulphur from their emissions, as both of those have health and environmental costs that are forced on other people. Allowing coal power plants to pollute is essentially stealing from other people, and doesn't represent the true costs associated with that form of power.

*Note this doesn't assume any new technology, both fleets are gasoline powered internal combustion engines.

**Estimated yearly fuel consumption difference, if the entire fleet was replaced, assuming 18mpg for the old fleet and 35mpg for the new fleet and 10,000 miles driven per year, would be 270M gallons of gasoline, or roughly $430M per year at current prices, or $1.07Bn at $4/gallon. Replacing the entire SUV fleet with electrical cars would save 555M gallons of gasoline, minus electricity costs of driving 10,000 miles.

[RandomGuy]

Bullshit.

I have given several sources that show CO2 is not a a problem to points that mitigation makes any relevant difference.

It's not my fault you don't understand the material. You still believe CO2 is the problem. As long as you believe that, my sources will never be the right answers for you.

No, I asked for a source for your "it will cost trillions and trillions" to reduce carbon emissions to any appreciable degree.

It's not my fault you don't understand the underlying economics.

[DarrinS]

Regardless of your credentials, this is what happens to you when you're a "denier". Listen to Barbara Boxer's comment at the end of Dr. Spencer's testimony.

Qzf6z-oHP8U


Listen to this same bitch rail against hurricane expert, Dr. Gray.

xNIlfyef-b0


Barbara Boxer is sponsor of numerous climate change acts.

[RandomGuy]

Regardless of your credentials, this is what happens to you when you're a "denier". Listen to Barbara Boxer's comment at the end of Dr. Spencer's testimony.
Listen to this same bitch rail against hurricane expert, Dr. Gray.
Barbara Boxer is sponsor of numerous climate change acts.

If I were a scientist studying this and really doubted AGM theory, and had some valid science, I would spend more time getting my science published in valid, peer reviewed journals, and less time in front of congressional panels. It isn't the congresspeople you have to convince, it is their staff who has time to read complex issue papers who brief congress anyways.

If WC, or any "denier" is as good as he says at "disproving" AGM theory, then he should quit bitching about it in internet forums, and start publishing his science. That is how real scientists deal with novel ideas. They don't cry about "they just don't like my politics" because real science either has data or not. Boo-fucking-hoo, your idea isn't widely accepted, get out there and do the science to support it.

[DarrinS]

If I were a scientist studying this and really doubted AGM theory, and had some valid science, I would spend more time getting my science published in valid, peer reviewed journals, and less time in front of congressional panels. It isn't the congresspeople you have to convince, it is their staff who has time to read complex issue papers who brief congress anyways.


Dr. Spencer has published peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Gray got involved in GW because people started attributing GW to hurricane frenquency and intensity and Dr. Gray is an expert on hurricanes.




If WC, or any "denier" is as good as he says at "disproving" AGM theory, then he should quit bitching about it in internet forums, and start publishing his science. That is how real scientists deal with novel ideas. They don't cry about "they just don't like my politics" because real science either has data or not. Boo-fucking-hoo, your idea isn't widely accepted, get out there and do the science to support it.


LOL.

Can you explain to me how one goes about disproving something that's not proven in the first place? Seems like all that any good "denier" would have to do to disprove AGW is ..... nothing.

[Winehole23]

Can you explain to me how one goes about disproving something that's not proven in the first place?Tautology. Circular reasoning. You just assume something to be true or untrue in the first place and hope nobody calls bs.

[DarrinS]

Tautology. Circular reasoning You just assume something to be true or untrue in the first place and hope nobody calls bs.


In 50 years, Florida and California will be underwater.

You can't prove me wrong. Well, at least not for 50 years. Now give me some research grant money, damn it!

[Wild Cobra]

No, I asked for a source for your "it will cost trillions and trillions" to reduce carbon emissions to any appreciable degree.

It's not my fault you don't understand the underlying economics.

This is trivial. I'm not going to bother arguing the added up costs. I address the real issues. That CO2 does not contribute any significant warming. It is solar, which we cannot do anything about, and soot, which we can, yet nobody addresses soot.

Worrying about CO2 is ridiculous, at any cost, until we address the one we can that's far cheaper. Soot!

I am very conservative on my estimates. I use 55K for a solar free earth and 0.2 % increase in solar radiation. Other sources I have found say the earth would be far closer to absolute zero than I use and even the IPCC has solar radiation increases at 0.24 to 0.3%

Why don't we argue the important stuff?

[Wild Cobra]

Can you explain to me how one goes about disproving something that's not proven in the first place? Seems like all that any good "denier" would have to do to disprove AGW is ..... nothing.

Thank-You. That's what exactly what I have been doing.

[RandomGuy]

Dr. Spencer has published peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Gray got involved in GW because people started attributing GW to hurricane frenquency and intensity and Dr. Gray is an expert on hurricanes.

LOL.

Can you explain to me how one goes about disproving something that's not proven in the first place? Seems like all that any good "denier" would have to do to disprove AGW is ..... nothing.

All one has to do is prove conclusively that something else has caused warming trends other than man-made greenhouse gases, and provide enough weight of evidence for honest scientists who actually are good critical thinkers to find that the evidence points to the alternative.

It isn't some secret, it just takes people who are good at critical thinking, which is not something that political hacks who pretend to be scientists generally excel at.

The right's problem with this is that, like WC and seemingly yourself, you can't envision people who don't really have a political agenda, because you are so mired in your own political blinders that it is inconceivable that there are people who aren't.

"I am a political hack, so EVERYBODY must be a political hack of one shade or another, and incapable of honestly evaluating evidence."

That is an erroneous assumption.

[RandomGuy]

No, I asked for a source for your "it will cost trillions and trillions" to reduce carbon emissions to any appreciable degree.

It's not my fault you don't understand the underlying economics.


This is trivial. I'm not going to bother arguing the added up costs. I address the real issues. That CO2 does not contribute any significant warming. It is solar, which we cannot do anything about, and soot, which we can, yet nobody addresses soot.

Worrying about CO2 is ridiculous, at any cost, until we address the one we can that's far cheaper. Soot!

I am very conservative on my estimates. I use 55K for a solar free earth and 0.2 % increase in solar radiation. Other sources I have found say the earth would be far closer to absolute zero than I use and even the IPCC has solar radiation increases at 0.24 to 0.3%

Why don't we argue the important stuff?

So I can safely then assume that it will not only not cost trillions, but changing over to a low CO2 economy will actually make the economy bigger then it would have been had we not changed anything.

Thanks for ceding the point.

[Wild Cobra]

The right's problem with this is that, like WC and seemingly yourself, you can't envision people who don't really have a political agenda, because you are so mired in your own political blinders that it is inconceivable that there are people who aren't.


You just don't get it.

I understand enough of the sciences to know Anthropogenic Global Warming as laid out by the left is a lie.

I guess if you understood physics, and chemistry enough, I could get through to you. I do know not all have a political reason. The problem is that people like to believe we are the cause, and they are doped. You are doped too.

The Alarmists are attributing greenhouse gas emissions for the warning we have seen. There are without a doubt, more clear causes of the warming.

I have shown you conclusive evidence the primary two causes of warming are the suns change in solar intensity and soot. Play ignorant to the sciences. I don't care. You are a lost cause.

[DarrinS]

All one has to do is prove conclusively that something else has caused warming trends other than man-made greenhouse gases, and provide enough weight of evidence for honest scientists who actually are good critical thinkers to find that the evidence points to the alternative.

It isn't some secret, it just takes people who are good at critical thinking, which is not something that political hacks who pretend to be scientists generally excel at.

The right's problem with this is that, like WC and seemingly yourself, you can't envision people who don't really have a political agenda, because you are so mired in your own political blinders that it is inconceivable that there are people who aren't.

"I am a political hack, so EVERYBODY must be a political hack of one shade or another, and incapable of honestly evaluating evidence."

That is an erroneous assumption.



People skeptical of AGW don't have to prove anything. AGW is not some great "truth" that so-called "deniers" have the burden to disprove. If it were, there would be no need for this thread, right?

[RandomGuy]

People skeptical of AGW don't have to prove anything. AGW is not some great "truth" that so-called "deniers" have the burden to disprove. If it were, there would be no need for this thread, right?

Actually, there is a burden of proof.

If warming trends are caused/increased mainly by something other than greenhouse gasses emissions, then showing what factors are causing most of the warming, like sun activity, is the best way to debunk the AGW theory.

One can also attempt to replicate the work of the AGW scientific papers and ask some critical questions. One hallmark of valid science as opposed to pseudoscience is the ability to replicate results.

This means taking the data from the last 50-200 years and re-examining it and attempting to show how it supports some other primary cause of past warming trends.

[RandomGuy]

You just don't get it.

I understand enough of the sciences to know Anthropogenic Global Warming as laid out by the left is a lie.

I guess if you understood physics, and chemistry enough, I could get through to you. I do know not all have a political reason. The problem is that people like to believe we are the cause, and they are doped. You are doped too.

The Alarmists are attributing greenhouse gas emissions for the warning we have seen. There are without a doubt, more clear causes of the warming.

I have shown you conclusive evidence the primary two causes of warming are the suns change in solar intensity and soot. Play ignorant to the sciences. I don't care. You are a lost cause.

I don't have the time to delve into this to the level of being able to really truly evaluate the data. I have said as much.

What I, and just about everybody else for that matter, am faced with is formulating a course of action based on known data and weigh evidence according to a subjective assessment of reliability.

You have proven yourself to be biased and generally untrustworthy when it comes to intellectual honesty about the strengths and weaknesses of your assertions. I cannot trust your evaluation of this data with any real degree of certainty.

By the same token, you and Darrin have provided some fair evidence that the bodies behind the bulk of the AGW theory have some of the same intellectual blinders that you do.

There exists on one hand, a fair amount of data supporting a conclusion from someone absolutely known to be biased, but cannot be logically dismissed as incorrect simply because they are not honest.

There exists on the other hand, data from people who do appear to have some bias, but who have a lot of data that supports a completely opposite conclusion. This also cannot be logicaly dismissed as incorrect simply because of this bias.

I still need to make a decision, because there is at least a reasonable possibility that the IPCC is at least somewhat correct.

This goes all the way back to the OP, yet again.

The worst case scenario for AGW may indeed be unlikely or even remote, but the conservative risk-mitigation strategy says that a moderate effort to avoid this is warranted.

If it really turns out to be false, we have not broken the bank to avoid AGW, and if it turns out to be true, we have at the very least bought ourselves as a civilization time to fix/avoid the worst.

This is especially true since WC and the "deniers" (for wont of a better term) can provide so little evidence of how likely their worst-case scenario is, i.e. a ruined economy. That it is reasonably possible suggests we moderate our response, as I have advocated. It is also reasonably possible that our economy will actually grow faster if we act to cut our greenhouse gas emissions. This mitigating factor adds to the case for acting to cut them.

This is how to deal with uncertainties. You evaluate risks, data, and a course of action and find the solution that offers the best mitigation of known risks.

You are right. I don't completely understand your data, just as I don't completely understand the data underlying the IPCC report. I don't have to.

[Winehole23]

^^^Honest, restrained, learned and reasonable.

In other words, a very typical RG post.

[RandomGuy]

^^^Honest, restrained, learned and reasonable.

In other words, a very typical RG post.

Thank you.

And by the by, my earlier comment about searching for an answer on google came out snarky and that is not at all what I intended, sorry about that.

A better response would have been::

"Sorry, I don't have that answer about Obama's stimulus plan off the top of my head, it is probably not too hard to find though."

[Winehole23]

.A better response would have been::

"Sorry, I don't have that answer about Obama's stimulus plan off the top of my head, it is probably not too hard to find though."Eh, you were right.

Some of us are constrained by having a real life, and everybody gets a little cranky in here.

[RandomGuy]

Eh, you were right.

Some of us are constrained by having a real life, and everybody gets a little cranky in here.

I really wasn't cranky, it just came out that way. I had little time to post and didn't really think through the reply.

I have noticed that WC hasn't bothered to support his "trillions" figure, beyond some half-assed glib generalities.

I win. HA!

/thread

[Wild Cobra]

I really wasn't cranky, it just came out that way. I had little time to post and didn't really think through the reply.

I have noticed that WC hasn't bothered to support his "trillions" figure, beyond some half-assed glib generalities.

I win. HA!

/thread
I haven't bothered supporting it because it has been in the regular news as costing that much on a semi regular basis. To be stuck on such a point is your war of rationalizing not being able to deal with the facts of global warming from a real scientific perspective.

I challenge you to do this. Find anyone you know with a BS degree. Ask them to take the IPCC report data that solar intensity changes are from 0.24% to 0.3% and ask them how much that changes the temperature of the earth. Simply remind them that the earth would be really cold without the sun. Let them pick their point and maybe tell them I believe it would be between 5 kelvin to 55 kelvin with no solar radiation.

Ask then how much that 0.24% to 0.3% increase makes that the IPCC report acknowledges.

[DarrinS]

Every time I think this thread is gone, it rears its ugly head again.

[RandomGuy]

I haven't bothered supporting it because it has been in the regular news as costing that much on a semi regular basis. To be stuck on such a point is your war of rationalizing not being able to deal with the facts of global warming from a real scientific perspective.

I challenge you to do this. Find anyone you know with a BS degree. Ask them to take the IPCC report data that solar intensity changes are from 0.24% to 0.3% and ask them how much that changes the temperature of the earth. Simply remind them that the earth would be really cold without the sun. Let them pick their point and maybe tell them I believe it would be between 5 kelvin to 55 kelvin with no solar radiation.

Ask then how much that 0.24% to 0.3% increase makes that the IPCC report acknowledges.

That is your support for your costs? The liberal media news that you don't trust? "Common knowledge?"

That is pretty weak.

As for the rest of it, why bother? It will work itself out eventually one way or another, if the science is good.

I can make reasonable decisions without being 100% certain about the issue.

[Wild Cobra]

Every time I think this thread is gone, it rears its ugly head again.

As long as I hear libtards talk about anthropogenic warming, I will be a proud Denier!

[RandomGuy]

As long as I hear libtards talk about anthropogenic warming, I will be a proud Denier!

By the way, what is up with the Confederate Battle Flag???

The surfing pic was pretty cool.

[Wild Cobra]

That is your support for your costs? The liberal media news that you don't trust? "Common knowledge?"

That is pretty weak.

As for the rest of it, why bother? It will work itself out eventually one way or another, if the science is good.

I can make reasonable decisions without being 100% certain about the issue.
I'm not going to bother with the trillion plus. It doesn't matter if the number is larger or smaller. It is too large at almost any cost considering it will be spent in useless ways when the truth is denied.

Can we focus on the facts of warming please?

[RandomGuy]

As long as I hear libtards talk about anthropogenic warming, I will be a proud Denier!

... and still unable to grasp the basics of economics. ;)

[RandomGuy]

I'm not going to bother with the trillion plus. It doesn't matter if the number is larger or smaller. It is too large at almost any cost considering it will be spent in useless ways when the truth is denied.

Can we focus on the facts of warming please?

It won't be useless at all, in fact, our economy will actually be better off going to a low CO2 energy structure.

The whole debate about AGW is irrelevant because of that, so worrying about the science is pointless. Leave that to the eggheads.

[Wild Cobra]

By the way, what is up with the Confederate Battle Flag???

The surfing pic was pretty cool.

I decided to be a bit more bold than I already am. I am a rebel at heart. I am a firm believer in states rights, and that's what that symbol signifies to me.

As for the natural waterslide pic?

That's off the side of Mt. Palgongsan in S. Korea, of me, but from 1983, maybe 1984, when I was stationed on that mountain top.

[RandomGuy]

I decided to be a bit more bold than I already am. I am a rebel at heart. I am a firm believer in states rights, and that's what that symbol signifies to me.

As for the natural waterslide pic?

That's off the side of Mt. Palgongsan in S. Korea, of me, but from 1983, maybe 1984, when I was stationed on that mountain top.

I thought it was a surfing pic. Kinda hard to tell being that small.

As for states rights: meh. I think if the Libertarians really got their way, it would be an economic catastrophe of the highest order.

[DarrinS]

Today, we are no more in a position to predict the climate of 2030 than people of 1975 were in a position to predict our current climate.

/thread



http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/the_cooling_world_newsweek_2.jpg

[Wild Cobra]

I thought it was a surfing pic. Kinda hard to tell being that small.

As for states rights: meh. I think if the Libertarians really got their way, it would be an economic catastrophe of the highest order.
We simply disagree. That's a bit outside this thread also. Question about the avatar change is answered.

[RandomGuy]

Today, we are no more in a position to predict the climate of 2030 than people of 1975 were in a position to predict our current climate.

/thread

Since you have brought it up, let's see if you can see the logical flaws in your implication as well as the factual errors in the above statement.

Let's begin, then, with a simple question that has a yes or no answer.

Are you honest?

[DarrinS]

Since you have brought it up, let's see if you can see the logical flaws in your implication as well as the factual errors in the above statement.

Let's begin, then, with a simple question that has a yes or no answer.

Are you honest?


There was no logical flaw in my statement and I am honest.

[RandomGuy]

There was no logical flaw in my statement and I am honest.

There is no logical flaw in your statement. Your statement:

Today, we are no more in a position to predict the climate of 2030 than people of 1975 were in a position to predict our current climate.

... is factually incorrect.


The implication that "Because scientists said something different 30 years ago, their contradiction means they are wrong now."

... is logically flawed.

I will take you at your word that you are honest until proven otherwise.

Let's start with the factually incorrect statement.

True or false:

We have done absolutely no research into global climate and climate systems since 1975.

[Wild Cobra]

True or false:

We have done absolutely no research into global climate and climate systems since 1975.
Why does it matter when the science is incomplete and tainted?

[RandomGuy]

Why does it matter when the science is incomplete and tainted?

The question was not directed at you, and you didn't answer it in the form it was asked.

Either it is true or it is false. Perhaps you can find the answer in the "peer reviewed" science that you posted yourself. If any of it was done after 1975, then we have the answer.

To answer your question, the only way it would not matter is if 100% of all the research done, if any, since 1975 was completely fabricated/false.

We can address this, but first must ascertain whether or not there has been any research.

The question remains.

True or false:

We have done absolutely no research into global climate and climate systems since 1975?

[DarrinS]

There is no logical flaw in your statement. Your statement:

Today, we are no more in a position to predict the climate of 2030 than people of 1975 were in a position to predict our current climate.

... is factually incorrect.



You can't prove whether that statement is true until 2030.

By the way, the first IPCC models estimates were already wrong in their first 10 year prediction. Why should I have faith in estimates 20 or 30 years out?

You can take a crappy computer model and run it on the fastest computers in the world and it's still a crappy computer model. Similarly, there are computer codes written in the 1970's that are fast, robust, and still in use today (see BLAS and LAPACK).




The implication that "Because scientists said something different 30 years ago, their contradiction means they are wrong now."

... is logically flawed.


I suppose so, but can you name ONE, just ONE prediction of environmental catastrophe that has come true? They don't have a great track record.




I will take you at your word that you are honest until proven otherwise.

Let's start with the factually incorrect statement.

True or false:

We have done absolutely no research into global climate and climate systems since 1975.


It is true that a lot of shoddy research into climate change has occurred since 1975, especially in the last 10 years or so. The "hockey stick" analysis done by Mann, et. al., that was plastered all over early IPCC reports, but has all but disappeared from their most recent reports, is a good example.

I don't have much faith in any "model" that turns random white noise into "hockey sticks".

[RandomGuy]

True or false:

We have done absolutely no research into global climate and climate systems since 1975.




It is true that a lot of shoddy research into climate change has occurred since 1975, especially in the last 10 years or so.

So the answer is: True, we have done research into global climate and climate systems. Thank you.

On to the next bit, with a nod to WC and the other points you brought up.

Is 100% of the science and research into global climate and climate systems done since 1975 completely false/erroneous? i.e was there ANY valid science done sinc 1975?

This is another yes or no question, asked fairly.

[DarrinS]

Is 100% of the science and research into global climate and climate systems done since 1975 completely false/erroneous? i.e was there ANY valid science done sinc 1975?

I'm sure there has.

[RandomGuy]

I'm sure there has [been some valid research done on climate since 1975].

Good.

So, since we have done at least some valid research into climate, we MUST therefore be "more in a position to predict the climate of 2030 than people of 1975 were in a position to predict our current climate".

This then contradicts your earlier statement, making it factually incorrect.

I could also point out that our ability to model climate has markedly improved, simply due to the revolution in computing power that allows us to test things. The models may be right or they may be wrong depending on whose assumptions you use, but one cannot reasonably claim that this development has no effect whatsoever on our ability to predict the figure.

Now we get to move onto the implication and its logical fallacy.

[RandomGuy]

The implication that "Because scientists said something different 30 years ago, their contradiction means they are wrong now."

... is logically flawed.


I suppose so, but can you name ONE, just ONE prediction of environmental catastrophe that has come true? They don't have a great track record.

So you do at least see the logical contradiction then.

You are entirely correct. We don't have a good track record of long-term climate prediction, just as before 1902, humans didn't have a good track record of heavier than air flight.

One cannot logically conclude that predictions based on AGW are false, simply because past predictions have been false. In Russian roulette, you can predict that any given pull of the trigger will give an empty click, but it only takes being wrong about that once to prove that assumption that it will always produce a click to be terribly wrong.

One can logically factor the past track record into assessments of the reliability of predictions, however. This is both logical and reasonable.

[DarrinS]

Good.

So, since we have done at least some valid research into climate, we MUST therefore be "more in a position to predict the climate of 2030 than people of 1975 were in a position to predict our current climate".

This then contradicts your earlier statement, making it factually incorrect.




Just because research has been done doesn't mean our ability to predict future climate has improved.




I could also point out that our ability to model climate has markedly improved, simply due to the revolution in computing power that allows us to test things.


Powerful computers don't make "good" models. Good modelers (i.e. humans) do. Yes, some computer models can help you test things. VALIDATED models can do that. If I hand you a piss-poor computer model, what is it you think you're going to be testing?




The models may be right or they may be wrong depending on whose assumptions you use, but one cannot reasonably claim that this development has no effect whatsoever on our ability to predict the figure.


I didn't say ALL models have poor predictive capability, just the IPCC's models.

[DarrinS]

One cannot logically conclude that predictions based on AGW are false, simply because past predictions have been false. In Russian roulette, you can predict that any given pull of the trigger will give an empty click, but it only takes being wrong about that once to prove that assumption that it will always produce a click to be terribly wrong.



Guns are perfectly safe when they aren't loaded. :toast


But you are correct. I cannot logically conclude that predictions of environmental doomsday are false, simply because ALL past predictions of environmental doomsday have been false.


I just don't have a lot of FAITH in them -- which is all AGW theory is anyway.

[RandomGuy]

Just because research has been done doesn't mean our ability to predict future climate has improved.

Correct. If 100% of the research is faulty, then that statement is accurate.

If we have done any valid research, as you have acknowledged we have, then our ability to predict future climate has, by definition improved.

Let me help you out here, and give you a step further in your argument. The distinction that you are probably trying to get to, but can't quite put into words is this:

We have improved our ability to predict future climate, sure, but have we done so enough to produce reliable predictions?

[RandomGuy]

[putting into words a point Darrin was trying to get to] We have improved our ability to predict future climate, sure, but have we done so enough to produce reliable predictions?


The implication here is that you are trying to totally dismiss the AGW theory by saying it is based on faulty research.

What you are missing then, is that a blanket statement that dismisses ALL research, and says that we haven't done enough research to reliable predictions says that the research that supports WC's ability to categorically say that we aren't in for a good spell of warming is also unreliable.

WC is of the impression that we clearly have done research that can support reliable predictions about the effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.

If you want to make that case, then take it up with WC.

[RandomGuy]

Guns are perfectly safe when they aren't loaded. :toast


But you are correct. I cannot logically conclude that predictions of environmental doomsday are false, simply because ALL past predictions of environmental doomsday have been false.


I just don't have a lot of FAITH in them -- which is all AGW theory is anyway.

Good points, both along with some intellectual honesty. That is refreshing after trying to drag an honest answer from WC for the longest time.

The problem with evaluating the evidence is that I took a look at the actual sources that WC gave as being "peer reviewed" (it wasn't actually peer reviewed, but I let that slide), a lot of those same studies cited by the "summary" given in the petition project seem to be used by the AGW theory people as well. The quote from a paper by David Archer was a concrete example of this.

The ONLY thing that differs in WC's position is the conclusions drawn. After looking though the petition project's sources, it was obvious they were cherry picking items from the same sets of research, just as they accuse the IPCC of doing. This is ok if you are making a case for a theory, but real scientists will address both the strengths and weaknesses of their case, this was not done.

Since both groups are apparently using the same data, we are left, once again, with two conflicting theories, but still must formulate a course of action based on ambiguous data.

All of which leads right back to the OP, and the unavoidable logic.

You might say that the gun is unloaded, as WC would imply, but not having seen if it was loaded or not before it was handed to us, prudence would suggest that we not point it at our collective heads and pull the trigger.

The first rule in any gun safety course is NEVER point ANY weapon, even unloaded, at another human being that you don't intend to shoot, is it not?

[DarrinS]

Correct. If 100% of the research is faulty, then that statement is accurate.

If we have done any valid research, as you have acknowledged we have, then our ability to predict future climate has, by definition improved.

Let me help you out here, and give you a step further in your argument. The distinction that you are probably trying to get to, but can't quite put into words is this:

We have improved our ability to predict future climate, sure, but have we done so enough to produce reliable predictions?



I disagree totally.


For example, we know a TON about atmospheric physics and thermodynamics. The first time weather was successfully predicted by numerical methods was in 1950 on the ENIAC computer. Obviously computers and weather models have become more sophisticated in the last 60 years, but there is a limit to how far we can predict weather. The reason: both our weather and climate are too chaotic and complex for us to do any reasonable long-term predictions.


I know a thing or two about computer modeling, because it's what I do for a living.

[DarrinS]

The implication here is that you are trying to totally dismiss the AGW theory by saying it is based on faulty research.

What you are missing then, is that a blanket statement that dismisses ALL research, and says that we haven't done enough research to reliable predictions says that the research that supports WC's ability to categorically say that we aren't in for a good spell of warming is also unreliable.

WC is of the impression that we clearly have done research that can support reliable predictions about the effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.

If you want to make that case, then take it up with WC.


Actually, I'm not trying to completely dismiss AGW theory. I just have issue with it being considered a scientific reality like continental drift. I just don't agree that we know enough (right now) to say one way or the other.


Furthermore, whether there is AGW or not, I'm certainly not convinced that is constitutes a "crisis".

[DarrinS]

All of which leads right back to the OP, and the unavoidable logic.

You might say that the gun is unloaded, as WC would imply, but not having seen if it was loaded or not before it was handed to us, prudence would suggest that we not point it at our collective heads and pull the trigger.

The first rule in any gun safety course is NEVER point ANY weapon, even unloaded, at another human being that you don't intend to shoot, is it not?


If you watch the video in the OP, you have to accept the premise that AGW, if it is really happening, represents a catastrophe in terms of environmental, economic, political, etc. etc.

There should be 8 scenarios instead of 4.

[RandomGuy]

I disagree totally.


For example, we know a TON about atmospheric physics and thermodynamics. The first time weather was successfully predicted by numerical methods was in 1950 on the ENIAC computer. Obviously computers and weather models have become more sophisticated in the last 60 years, but there is a limit to how far we can predict weather. The reason: both our weather and climate are too chaotic and complex for us to do any reasonable long-term predictions.


I know a thing or two about computer modeling, because it's what I do for a living.

Then you should know the distinction between trying to predict the weather in New York City on February 14, 2062, and the overall average temperatures for an entire year.

When you aggregate data points together, your ability to generally predict trends goes up.

The stock market may go down tomorrow, and the day after that, and then up, etc, but over the long term one can say it is very likely that it will go up at a rate close to some percentage that can be determined based on past data.

You can't get, and the IPCC doesn't try to get, a specific "global average temperatures WILL be X degrees in Y year". It doesn't work that way.

If one looks at the language used by those predicting climate changes, they couch their statements in way that allows for those statements to be supported by data, as any good science does.

That sounds something like this: "It is highly likely that we will see this range of temperatures during this time period."

They allow for a possibility that they are wrong a good deal more than WC does, or would have you think they do.

Over time, our ability to find that probable range will, and is, going up because we will have more data, more research, and yes, more complex models that account for more variables.

That is why I am a bit less concerned about who exactly is currently 100% right, much to WC's dismay.

I know that as time progresses, we will have more data, and be better able to find the most likely range, AGW or not. Time will provide the answer.

One thing that models do give us is the ability to test how changing starting assumptions affects outcomes, and identifies the most critical assumptions that should be where we focus our research first.

[RandomGuy]

If you watch the video in the OP, you have to accept the premise that AGW, if it is really happening, represents a catastrophe in terms of environmental, economic, political, etc. etc.

There should be 8 scenarios instead of 4.

Indeed. He actually has a follow-up video that does just that.

For purposes of risk mitigation however, one only primarily needs to consider worst/best possibilities.

You do have to accept the premise that AGW if it is really happening represents a catastrophe, just as you have to accept WC's premise that if we go off and go CO2 neutral it will needlessly cost our economy "trillions", because both are the presented "worst-case" scenarios.

Any contingency planning, military or business, uses the same methodology. The ultimate purpose of such analysis is to clearly see a range of possibilities and outcomes, be prepared for as many of them as possible, and avoid/plan for the worst possible outcomes, given available resources.

[DarrinS]

Then you should know the distinction between trying to predict the weather in New York City on February 14, 2062, and the overall average temperatures for an entire year.


Obvisously. I did indicate that weather and CLIMATE are not predictable. Or, at least have not successfully been predicted over a long period. If you can find an example, please enlighten me.





When you aggregate data points together, your ability to generally predict trends goes up.


Whether aggregate or not, a flawed model does not have good predictive value.




The stock market may go down tomorrow, and the day after that, and then up, etc, but over the long term one can say it is very likely that it will go up at a rate close to some percentage that can be determined based on past data.


One of the IPCC estimates predicted a temperature change of 1.5C to 6C by the year 2100. That's a 400% variation! If I had a computer model that could predict stock values, but with 400% uncertainty, would you want to use my model to guide your investment decisions?





You can't get, and the IPCC doesn't try to get, a specific "global average temperatures WILL be X degrees in Y year". It doesn't work that way.


Yes, I know. As I've pointed out, they give a range. And it's a range that is unacceptably large.





If one looks at the language used by those predicting climate changes, they couch their statements in way that allows for those statements to be supported by data, as any good science does.


Well, they based one of their early reports on the "hockey stick" data by Mann, et. al. That "hockey stick" analysis has been shown to be a flawed analysis.

Here's a corrected version:

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/hockey_stick/mcintyre_corrected.jpg




Over time, our ability to find that probable range will, and is, going up because we will have more data, more research, and yes, more complex models that account for more variables.


Perhaps.

[RandomGuy]

Actually, I'm not trying to completely dismiss AGW theory. I just have issue with it being considered a scientific reality like continental drift. I just don't agree that we know enough (right now) to say one way or the other.


Furthermore, whether there is AGW or not, I'm certainly not convinced that is constitutes a "crisis".

I would agree with you on both points. Shocking, isn't it?

I think a lot of people tend to take AGW with a much higher degree of certainty than the science suggests. It is a popluar idea.

Whether it is a crisis, is also something I am not entirely convinced of.

As I have said before though, it seems to be at least a fair possibility that it is both real and catastrophic.

I don't know if the gun is loaded, or if there is a round in the chamber, so I am not going to point it at my face and pull the trigger.

There is, also, a very strong possibility that the fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) causing the problem are going to get VERY expensive in 10-20 years.

The benefits of avoiding energy sources that rely on these coincides with low CO2 emissions.

That is why the case for doing something now has two potential benefits:

1. Avoiding the cost swings associated with commodity fuels, as well as a massive competitive advantage over those who don't.
2. Avoiding the worst case scenario of AGW.

WC's worst case scenario is in MY area of expertise, and I judge his worst case scenario as being about as remote as he judges the worst case AGW theory. Not only is it highly unlikely, there is a pretty fair possibility that the exact opposite is true.

I CAN provide data and reasoning showing this, and have given some of it here.

He wants to dismiss this as being irrelevant, because it suits him on some emotional level I guess, but any consideration of a course of action must take into account possibility of occurance. It suits WC's confirmation bias to do so in one case, but to be blind to that fact when it comes to his own assertions. That is partly why I assign his conclusions so little weight.

I don't have first-hand knowledge of IPCC bias, but WC's is readily apparent.

[DarrinS]

You do have to accept the premise that AGW if it is really happening represents a catastrophe, ...


No, really I don't.

[RandomGuy]

One of the IPCC estimates predicted a temperature change of 1.5C to 6C by the year 2100. That's a 400% variation! If I had a computer model that could predict stock values, but with 400% uncertainty, would you want to use my model to guide your investment decisions?



Actually, as WC probably rightly points out that variation is not 400%.

You have to consider that the variation is not 1.5 to 6 degrees, but rather
the variation is 256.6 to 262 degrees above the nomitive "dead earth" scenario.

That makes the swing much less than 400% to my understanding.

Again, you will have to take that up with WC.

[RandomGuy]

No, really I don't.

You do if you want to do responsible contingency planning.

Whether or not you chose to do that is your business. If you choose not to, we can muddle along. :lol

[RandomGuy]

Lunch hour is up.

Take care.

[doobs]

That risk management video is really stupid. Really, really, really stupid.

First of all, he doesn't really explain what he means by "action." He also assumes that whatever "action" is taken will be effective at combating global warming. What if man-made global warming is real and a threat to our very existence, and we undertake costly governmental intervention that completely fails to address the problem? Then we will have spent a ton of money, endured economic consequences from now until our extinction, and still suffered the "catastrophic" consequences of global warming. That scenario sounds pretty miserable to me.

Which brings me to my next point. He assumes that global warming is a bad thing. He assumes "catastrophic" consequences. What if man-made global warming is real, and we do nothing to address it, but the consequences are far from catastrophic? What if global warming is actually a good thing, and brings prosperity?

Is global warming even occurring?

If so, is global warming even a bad thing? How so?

To what extent is man actually the cause of global warming, and to what extent is global warming attributable to a natural warming trend?

If it is a bad thing, and if man is the cause, what can actually be done to effectively combat global warming? (That is, poorly-defined "action" is not enough. As with any government program, there is a risk of throwing money around with no results. As with any regulatory scheme, there is a risk of unnecessarily hindering business with no results.)

Which of these questions have actually been answered, to a thinking person's satisfaction?

There are just way too many variables for me to seriously consider some nerd's oversimplified, bullshit dry erase board demonstration.

[Shastafarian]

Which brings me to my next point. He assumes that global warming is a bad thing. He assumes "catastrophic" consequences. What if man-made global warming is real, and we do nothing to address it, but the consequences are far from catastrophic? What if global warming is actually a good thing, and brings prosperity?



:lol

How could it possibly be beneficial overall? If scientists are correct in their predictions, places like NYC, Shanghai, Kolkata (Calcutta), etc. will be under water. That will displace millions of people and kill who knows how many. And at what point does it end? If scientists are correct then we're causing all of this. We'll continue to heat and destroy our planet. So I'm asking, what are your boundaries for global warming being a good thing? Will it take a temperature rise of several degrees worldwide to make you think it's a bad thing?

[DarrinS]

:lol

How could it possibly be beneficial overall? If scientists are correct in their predictions, places like NYC, Shanghai, Kolkata (Calcutta), etc. will be under water. That will displace millions of people and kill who knows how many. And at what point does it end? If scientists are correct then we're causing all of this. We'll continue to heat and destroy our planet. So I'm asking, what are your boundaries for global warming being a good thing? Will it take a temperature rise of several degrees worldwide to make you think it's a bad thing?


BZcp_wcDXec

[doobs]

:lol

How could it possibly be beneficial overall? If scientists are correct in their predictions, places like NYC, Shanghai, Kolkata (Calcutta), etc. will be under water. That will displace millions of people and kill who knows how many. And at what point does it end? If scientists are correct then we're causing all of this. We'll continue to heat and destroy our planet. So I'm asking, what are your boundaries for global warming being a good thing? Will it take a temperature rise of several degrees worldwide to make you think it's a bad thing?

What? Are you just repeating the plot to The Day After Tomorrow? If you don't realize the crazy assumptions you're making, then I suppose my comments are wasted on you.

Am I convinced that global warming is bad? No. Am I convinced that global warming is good? No. It's an uncertainty, and nerdy guy fails to really consider that.

[Shastafarian]

What? Are you just repeating the plot to The Day After Tomorrow? If you don't realize the crazy assumptions you're making, then I suppose my comments are wasted on you.Oh I see you don't understand global sea levels and the impact of melting ice. My mistake.


Am I convinced that global warming is bad? No. Am I convinced that global warming is good? No. It's an uncertainty, and nerdy guy fails to really consider that.HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY BE GOOD?

[Shastafarian]

BZcp_wcDXec

Are you using John Stossel to say if ice continues to melt global seas levels will remain the same? Has anyone taken remedial science courses here?

[doobs]

Oh I see you don't understand global sea levels and the impact of melting ice. My mistake.

HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY BE GOOD?

You're missing the main point, which doesn't surprise me.

You merely parrot alarmist doomsday scenarios and insist that we must therefore "act" to combat global warming. You're making assumptions about the consequences of global warming, and about man's role in contributing to global warming, and about the effectiveness of "doing something about it." That kind of hysteria creeps me out. I'm advocating the status quo, for now, because of the uncertainties associated with global warming, as I pointed out previously. You should be willing to admit, at the very least, that the supposed consequences of global warming are purely speculative and tenuous at best.

Anyway . . . how could it possibly be good? I don't know, maybe you should look to the 13th Century, a fairly prosperous time when the average global temperature was probably about 7 degrees warmer than it is today. Again, you must be assuming that melting ice will wash cities away and kill millions in a space of hours or days, like in The Day After Tomorrow.

First of all, ice is actually thickening in many parts of the world, so the concern about San Francisco or New York being submerged is unproven hysteria at this point. Secondly, if sea levels are indeed rising due to melting ice and global warming, it will be a fairly slow process. People will adjust and move inland.

In short, NO ONE knows with any certainty what the consequences of global warming will be. Scientists are making guesses, based on questionable models and, to some extent (if I may be so frank), skewed political perspectives. Go ahead and live your life in fear, but I sleep very well at night.

[Shastafarian]

You're missing the main point, which doesn't surprise me.

You merely parrot alarmist doomsday scenarios and insist that we must therefore "act" to combat global warming. You're making assumptions about the consequences of global warming, and about man's role in contributing to global warming, and about the effectiveness of "doing something about it." That kind of hysteria creeps me out. I'm advocating the status quo, for now, because of the uncertainties associated with global warming, as I pointed out previously. You should be willing to admit, at the very least, that the supposed consequences of global warming are purely speculative and tenuous at best.Actually I've done none of that. I was giving you a hypothetical situation in which global warming is real.


Anyway . . . how could it possibly be good? I don't know, maybe you should look to the 13th Century, a fairly prosperous time when the average global temperature was probably about 7 degrees warmer than it is today. Again, you must be assuming that melting ice will wash cities away and kill millions in a space of hours or days, like in The Day After Tomorrow. No I'm not a complete idiot. I don't look to movies to get my information. If seas levels rise because of the melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica, then those places I mentioned would be under water.


First of all, ice is actually thickening in many parts of the world, so the concern about San Francisco or New York being submerged is unproven hysteria at this point. Secondly, if sea levels are indeed rising due to melting ice and global warming, it will be a fairly slow process. People will adjust and move inland.Wow. Ignorance must be bliss. Where should these people move? I can't see any problems arising out of millions of people moving. Nope. Not a one.


In short, NO ONE knows with any certainty what the consequences of global warming will be. Scientists are making guesses, based on questionable models and, to some extent (if I may be so frank), skewed political perspectives. Go ahead and live your life in fear, but I sleep very well at night.
Who says I live in fear? I guess you don't understand hypothetical situations. Again, my mistake.

[DarrinS]

Are you using John Stossel to say if ice continues to melt global seas levels will remain the same? Has anyone taken remedial science courses here?



I guess you missed the part in the video where Al Gore's "documentary" stated that sea levels could rise by 20 FEET and that IPCC's worst case scenario was 7 to 20 INCHES.


Based on my redmedial science, 7-20 inches is much less than 20 feet.

[doobs]

I guess you missed the part in the video where Al Gore's "documentary" stated that sea levels could rise by 20 FEET and that IPCC's worst case scenario was 7 to 20 INCHES.


Based on my redmedial science, 7-20 inches is much less than 20 feet.

But . . . but . . . but . . . global warming is bad. Drugs are bad. Mkay.

[DarrinS]

Good article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3312921/The-deceit-behind-global-warming.html





No one can deny that in recent years the need to "save the planet" from global warming has become one of the most pervasive issues of our time. As Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, claimed in 2004, it poses "a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism", warning that by the end of this century the only habitable continent left will be Antarctica.

Inevitably, many people have been bemused by this somewhat one-sided debate, imagining that if so many experts are agreed, then there must be something in it. But if we set the story of how this fear was promoted in the context of other scares before it, the parallels which emerge might leave any honest believer in global warming feeling uncomfortable.

The story of how the panic over climate change was pushed to the top of the international agenda falls into five main stages. Stage one came in the 1970s when many scientists expressed alarm over what they saw as a disastrous change in the earth's climate. Their fear was not of warming but global cooling, of "a new Ice Age".

For three decades, after a sharp rise in the interwar years up to 1940, global temperatures had been falling. The one thing certain about climate is that it is always changing. Since we began to emerge from the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, temperatures have been through significant swings several times. The hottest period occurred around 8,000 years ago and was followed by a long cooling. Then came what is known as the "Roman Warming", coinciding with the Roman empire. Three centuries of cooling in the Dark Ages were followed by the "Mediaeval Warming", when the evidence agrees the world was hotter than today.

Around 1300 began "the Little Ice Age", that did not end until 200 years ago, when we entered what is known as the "Modern Warming". But even this has been chequered by colder periods, such as the "Little Cooling" between 1940 and 1975. Then, in the late 1970s, the world began warming again.

A scare is often set off - as we show in our book with other examples - when two things are observed together and scientists suggest one must have been caused by the other. In this case, thanks to readings commissioned by Dr Roger Revelle, a distinguished American oceanographer, it was observed that since the late 1950s levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere had been rising. Perhaps it was this increase that was causing the new warming in the 1980s?

Stage two of the story began in 1988 when, with remarkable speed, the global warming story was elevated into a ruling orthodoxy, partly due to hearings in Washington chaired by a youngish senator, Al Gore, who had studied under Dr Revelle in the 1960s.

But more importantly global warming hit centre stage because in 1988 the UN set up its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). Through a series of reports, the IPCC was to advance its cause in a rather unusual fashion. First it would commission as many as 1,500 experts to produce a huge scientific report, which might include all sorts of doubts and reservations. But this was to be prefaced by a Summary for Policymakers, drafted in consultation with governments and officials - essentially a political document - in which most of the caveats contained in the experts' report would not appear.

This contradiction was obvious in the first report in 1991, which led to the Rio conference on climate change in 1992. The second report in 1996 gave particular prominence to a study by an obscure US government scientist claiming that the evidence for a connection between global warming and rising CO2 levels was now firmly established. This study came under heavy fire from various leading climate experts for the way it manipulated the evidence. But this was not allowed to stand in the way of the claim that there was now complete scientific consensus behind the CO2 thesis, and the Summary for Policy-makers, heavily influenced from behind the scenes by Al Gore, by this time US Vice-President, paved the way in 1997 for the famous Kyoto Protocol.

Kyoto initiated stage three of the story, by formally committing governments to drastic reductions in their CO2 emissions. But the treaty still had to be ratified and this seemed a good way off, not least thanks to its rejection in 1997 by the US Senate, despite the best attempts of Mr Gore.

Not the least of his efforts was his bid to suppress an article co-authored by Dr Revelle just before his death. Gore didn't want it to be known that his guru had urged that the global warming thesis should be viewed with more caution.

One of the greatest problems Gore and his allies faced at this time was the mass of evidence showing that in the past, global temperatures had been higher than in the late 20th century.

In 1998 came the answer they were looking for: a new temperature chart, devised by a young American physicist, Michael Mann. This became known as the "hockey stick" because it showed historic temperatures running in an almost flat line over the past 1,000 years, then suddenly flicking up at the end to record levels.

Mann's hockey stick was just what the IPCC wanted. When its 2001 report came out it was given pride of place at the top of page 1. The Mediaeval Warming, the Little Ice Age, the 20th century Little Cooling, when CO2 had already been rising, all had been wiped away.

But then a growing number of academics began to raise doubts about Mann and his graph. This culminated in 2003 with a devastating study by two Canadians showing how Mann had not only ignored most of the evidence before him but had used an algorithm that would produce a hockey stick graph whatever evidence was fed into the computer. When this was removed, the graph re-emerged just as it had looked before, showing the Middle Ages as hotter than today.

It is hard to recall any scientific thesis ever being so comprehensively discredited as the "hockey stick". Yet the global warming juggernaut rolled on regardless, now led by the European Union. In 2004, thanks to a highly dubious deal between the EU and Putin's Russia, stage four of the story began when the Kyoto treaty was finally ratified.

In the past three years, we have seen the EU announcing every kind of measure geared to fighting climate change, from building ever more highly-subsidised wind turbines, to a commitment that by 2050 it will have reduced carbon emissions by 60 per cent. This is a pledge that could only be met by such a massive reduction in living standards that it is impossible to see the peoples of Europe accepting it.

All this frenzy has rested on the assumption that global temperatures will continue to rise in tandem with CO2 and that, unless mankind takes drastic action, our planet is faced with the apocalypse so vividly described by Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

Yet recently, stage five of the story has seen all sorts of question marks being raised over Gore's alleged consensus. For instance, he claimed that by the end of this century world sea levels will have risen by 20 ft when even the IPCC in its latest report, only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches. There is also of course the harsh reality that, wholly unaffected by Kyoto, the economies of China and India are now expanding at nearly 10 per cent a year, with China likely to be emitting more CO2 than the US within two years.

More serious, however, has been all the evidence accumulating to show that, despite the continuing rise in CO2 levels, global temperatures in the years since 1998 have no longer been rising and may soon even be falling.

It was a telling moment when, in August, Gore's closest scientific ally, James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was forced to revise his influential record of US surface temperatures showing that the past decade has seen the hottest years on record. His graph now concedes that the hottest year of the 20th century was not 1998 but 1934, and that four of the 10 warmest years in the past 100 were in the 1930s.

Furthermore, scientists and academics have recently been queuing up to point out that fluctuations in global temperatures correlate more consistently with patterns of radiation from the sun than with any rise in CO2 levels, and that after a century of high solar activity, the sun's effect is now weakening, presaging a likely drop in temperatures.

If global warming does turn out to have been a scare like all the others, it will certainly represent as great a collective flight from reality as history has ever recorded. The evidence of the next 10 years will be very interesting.

[RandomGuy]

That risk management video is really stupid. Really, really, really stupid.

First of all, he doesn't really explain what he means by "action." He also assumes that whatever "action" is taken will be effective at combating global warming. What if man-made global warming is real and a threat to our very existence, and we undertake costly governmental intervention that completely fails to address the problem? Then we will have spent a ton of money, endured economic consequences from now until our extinction, and still suffered the "catastrophic" consequences of global warming. That scenario sounds pretty miserable to me.

Which brings me to my next point. He assumes that global warming is a bad thing. He assumes "catastrophic" consequences. What if man-made global warming is real, and we do nothing to address it, but the consequences are far from catastrophic? What if global warming is actually a good thing, and brings prosperity?

Is global warming even occurring?

If so, is global warming even a bad thing? How so?

To what extent is man actually the cause of global warming, and to what extent is global warming attributable to a natural warming trend?

If it is a bad thing, and if man is the cause, what can actually be done to effectively combat global warming? (That is, poorly-defined "action" is not enough. As with any government program, there is a risk of throwing money around with no results. As with any regulatory scheme, there is a risk of unnecessarily hindering business with no results.)

Which of these questions have actually been answered, to a thinking person's satisfaction?

There are just way too many variables for me to seriously consider some nerd's oversimplified, bullshit dry erase board demonstration.

Not even sure where to start. For one thing pretty much everything in this post has already been addressed in one form or another.

I will say merely: you are mistaken as to what the guy was saying, and what the guy was assuming.

Go back and read through the rest of the thread to catch up.

[RandomGuy]

endured economic consequences from now until our extinction,




I think a lot of people tend to take AGW with a much higher degree of certainty than the science suggests. It is a popluar idea.

Whether it is a crisis, is also something I am not entirely convinced of.

As I have said before though, it seems to be at least a fair possibility that it is both real and catastrophic.

I don't know if the gun is loaded, or if there is a round in the chamber, so I am not going to point it at my face and pull the trigger.

There is, also, a very strong possibility that the fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) causing the problem are going to get VERY expensive in 10-20 years.

The benefits of avoiding energy sources that rely on these coincides with low CO2 emissions.

That is why the case for doing something now has two potential benefits:

1. Avoiding the cost swings associated with commodity fuels, as well as a massive competitive advantage over those who don't.
2. Avoiding the worst case scenario of AGW.

WC's worst case scenario is in MY area of expertise, and I judge his worst case scenario as being about as remote as he judges the worst case AGW theory. Not only is it highly unlikely, there is a pretty fair possibility that the exact opposite is true.

I CAN provide data and reasoning showing this, and have given some of it here.

He wants to dismiss this as being irrelevant, because it suits him on some emotional level I guess, but any consideration of a course of action must take into account possibility of occurance. It suits WC's confirmation bias to do so in one case, but to be blind to that fact when it comes to his own assertions. That is partly why I assign his conclusions so little weight.

I don't have first-hand knowledge of IPCC bias, but WC's is readily apparent.

[Wild Cobra]

:lol

How could it possibly be beneficial overall? If scientists are correct in their predictions, places like NYC, Shanghai, Kolkata (Calcutta), etc. will be under water.

etc. etc. etc...

This is a prime example of needless fear mongering. Anyone who has a grasp of the sciences and applicable data knows better.

Shasta... do you have any idea how much warmer the Earth would have to be to melt that ice at the temperature it averages? Not just 5 to 10 degrees warmer average, but probably 20 or more. Life would be devastated long before Antarctica and Greenland melt.

[Shastafarian]

This is a prime example of needless fear mongering. Anyone who has a grasp of the sciences and applicable data knows better.

Shasta... do you have any idea how much warmer the Earth would have to be to melt that ice at the temperature it averages? Not just 5 to 10 degrees warmer average, but probably 20 or more. Life would be devastated long before Antarctica and Greenland melt.

And where are you getting these numbers? The usual place? Cuz if it's the usual place can you spray something, I don't like my "facts" smelling like shit.

[Shastafarian]

Virtually everyone agrees that the complete disappearance of the 2-mile-thick (3-kilometer-thick) Greenland Ice Sheet would cause an estimated 23-foot (7-meter) rise in global sea levels. That would inundate coastal regions around the world. At the same time, virtually everyone also agrees that even under the worst-case scenario, it would take centuries of warmer weather for Greenland's ice to disappear completely.

It's the rate of change in the ice sheet, and its variability over time, that is at issue.

Rignot and Kanagaratnam say their calculations indicate that the Greenland melt currently contributes about two-hundredths of an inch (0.5 millimeters) to the annual 0.12-inch (3-millimeter) rise in global sea levels. The glacier speed-up is responsible for more than two-thirds of that contribution, they say.

Moreover, the type of speed-up seen in Greenland may be affecting glaciers elsewhere as well, Rignot said.

"We think something very similar is happening in the Antarctic Peninsula, where the ice shelves in front of these glaciers has collapsed," he told MSNBC.com, specifically pointing to 2002's demise of the Larsen B ice shelf.

Mark Chandler, a climate researcher at Columbia University, said the fate of the world's ice sheets is "probably the biggest concern that people are looking at right now" in the field of climate prediction.

"There's a lot of fear out there right now, even among scientists, that ice caps are not all that stable," he told MSNBC.com. If the pace of global ice loss accelerates, sea levels might conceivably rise 6 to 16 feet (2 to 5 meters) over the course of a century, which he said would be "devastating."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385475/

[Wild Cobra]

Today's edit in brackets [].



WC is of the impression that we clearly have done research that can support reliable predictions about the effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.

If you want to make that case, then take it up with WC.

First of all, I have only addressed CO2 on the issue [in regards to greenhouse gasses]. Such spectral and blackbody radiation sciences are well known [when concerning heat absorption and intensities]. I know with absolute certainty that more CO2 is harmless to the Earths temperature [unless you wish to challenge the known thermal sciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation) and Spectrocopy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy) as wrong]. I blame solar activity and soot from Asia for nearly all the warming we see. I've been looking into tidal activity as well, but have nothing reliable.

Again Random, even the IPCC says the sun has increased in intensity by 0.24% to 0.3%. These are scientifically accepted numbers by those who you say are peer reviewed. Thermal calculations are simple linear math problems until there are also chemical reactions or state changes. Pick a no sun temperature and calculate how much 100% solar radiation is and how much 100.24% solar radiation is.

0 Celsius = 273.15 Kelvin.

The Earth is about 15 Celsius now, average.

Considering the coldest recorded surface temperature is -89 Celsius, you have to give the solar component over 100 degrees of influence. 100 x 1.0024 is an absolute minimum of 0.24 degrees of influence. I think most geoscientists would say the sun has at least 200 degrees of influence, or a minimum of about a half of a degree with that 100 year change acknowledged by the IPCC.

Honestly. How can CO2 attribute as much as you would like to believe in the IPCC scenario?

Pssst...

A little hint. Climatologists are not a proper authority for global warming. Geoscientists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoscience) are!

[doobs]

So who here has bought their robot insurance?

And, seriously, why haven't we started construction on the Death Star to protect against alien invasion?

[AlamoSpursFan]

P0pjm40RxEw&hl=en&fs=1"

[Shastafarian]

So who here has bought their robot insurance?

And, seriously, why haven't we started construction on the Death Star to protect against alien invasion?

The proper analogy would be that we detect an incoming alien warship. We're not sure if them detecting our energy output (radio signals, etc) is causing them to come but we know they're on their way. We can either 1) do nothing and hope they can't detect us or we can 2) change the way we output energy and bank on our improved technological advances being able to mask our existence.

[RandomGuy]

So who here has bought their robot insurance?

And, seriously, why haven't we started construction on the Death Star to protect against alien invasion?

There are two dimensions of risk.

One is magnitude and the other is probability.

If one does risk mitigation one considers both, as has already been addressed.

The problem with your standpoint is that you likely haven't spent the time to accurately assess and understand the data on both sides of the debate.

What you so inexpertly attempt to allude here is that we can't really know the probability of AGW with certainty, which I agree with, but we do have evidence and data that suggests it is a fairly real possibility.

If you have any research data that suggests a real possibility of an alien invasion or robot attack, feel free to present it.

If you can't, then your emotional comparison is not only invalid, but illogical.

[Winehole23]

We will not have certain data to act on and must choose a course of action based on incomplete data, as is often the case in anything.

"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."

- Samuel Butler

[RandomGuy]

bump. just so I can have this thead a bit more accessible.

[DarrinS]

I hear people in Austrailia are bursting into flames.

[Wild Cobra]

I hear people in Austrailia are bursting into flames.
I should get a winter home there. I love the heat. I've been a Popsicle too long now.

[RandomGuy]

I hear people in Austrailia are bursting into flames.

Any thoughts on the new study of our south pole that shows that overall it hasn't really been getting colder?

Doesn't that take away another talking point for the skeptics who have been using that as some kind of "proof" to debunk the AGW theory?

[RandomGuy]

I should get a winter home there. I love the heat. I've been a Popsicle too long now.

Maybe you should get to work on publishing all that science in actual peer-reviewed journals.

That might warm you up.

[DarrinS]

Any thoughts on the new study of our south pole that shows that overall it hasn't really been getting colder?

Doesn't that take away another talking point for the skeptics who have been using that as some kind of "proof" to debunk the AGW theory?


There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists that are skeptical of AGW theory, but don't worry, Obama's spending the money anyway, so you can sleep well at night now.

[RandomGuy]

There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists that are skeptical of AGW theory, but don't worry, Obama's spending the money anyway, so you can sleep well at night now.

I will. Because spending to combat global warming will make our economy stronger, and that is a very good thing.

[RandomGuy]

There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists that are skeptical of AGW theory,.

There are thousands (yes thousands) of scientists who believe AGW is the most likely explanation.

Now what?

I noticed you didn't comment on the new study. :p:

[RandomGuy]

For reference:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/21/tech/main4745503.shtml

Antarctica Not Immune From Global Warming
New Study Finds South Pole Getting Warmer - Reversing Idea That It Was Not Affected

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2009

ntarctica, the only place that had oddly seemed immune from climate change, is warming after all, according to a new study.

For years, Antarctica was an enigma to scientists who track the effects of global warming. Temperatures on much of the continent at the bottom of the world were staying the same or slightly cooling, previous research indicated.

The new study went back further than earlier work and filled in a massive gap in data with satellite information to find that Antarctica too is getting warmer, like the Earth's other six continents.

The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"Contrarians have sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming?," said study co-author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. "Now we can say: no, it's not true ... It is not bucking the trend."

The study does not point to man-made climate change as the cause of the Antarctic warming - doing so is a highly intricate scientific process - but a different and smaller study out late last year did make that connection.

"We can't pin it down, but it certainly is consistent with the influence of greenhouse gases," said NASA scientist Drew Shindell, another study co-author. Some of the effects also could be natural variability, he said.

The study showed that Antarctica - about one-and-a-half times bigger than the United States - remains a complicated weather picture, especially with only a handful of monitoring stations in its vast interior.

The researchers used satellite data and mathematical formulas to fill in missing information. That made outside scientists queasy about making large conclusions with such sparse information.

"This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical," Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. "It is hard to make data where none exist."

Shindell said it was more comprehensive than past studies and jibed with computer models.

The research found that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) but still is 50 degrees below zero (-46 Celsius). West Antarctica, which is about 20 degrees (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than the east, has warmed nearly twice as fast, said study lead author Eric Steig of the University of Washington.

East Antarctica, which scientists had long thought to be cooling, is warming slightly when yearly averages are looked at over the past 50 years, said Steig.

However, autumn temperatures in east Antarctica are cooling over the long term. And east Antarctica from the late 1970s through the 1990s, cooled slightly, Steig said.

Some researchers skeptical about the magnitude of global warming overall said that the new study didn't match their measurements from satellites and that there appears to be no warming in Antarctica since 1980.

"It overstates what they have obtained from their analysis," said Roger Pielke Sr., a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado.

Steig said a different and independent study using ice cores drilled in west Antarctica found the same thing as his paper. And recent satellite data also confirms what this paper has found, Steig added.

The study has major ramifications for sea level rise, said Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada. Most major sea level rise projections for the future counted on a cooling - not warming - Antarctica. This will make sea level rise much worse, Weaver said.

[RandomGuy]

Oddly enough, the scientist who did the study pointed out a couple of things:

Anarctica is a very big place. The "eastern" part (his word) was trending colder due to the hole in the ozone layer (ozone is a greenhouse gas, btw), while the western part was warming.

Most of the readings of temperature were done on the part that was cooling, and the new study is, to my understanding, taking into account a lot more data from the entire continent, not just the colder eastern part.

[Sec24Row7]

Oddly enough, the scientist who did the study pointed out a couple of things:

Anarctica is a very big place. The "eastern" part (his word) was trending colder due to the hole in the ozone layer (ozone is a greenhouse gas, btw), while the western part was warming.

Most of the readings of temperature were done on the part that was cooling, and the new study is, to my understanding, taking into account a lot more data from the entire continent, not just the colder eastern part.

Hole in the OZONE LAYER? I thought that bullshit was over in the 90's.

[DarrinS]

Co-authored by Michael Mann, a.k.a. "hockeystick boy", but I digress.

Emphasis added by me.



For reference:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/21/tech/main4745503.shtml

Antarctica Not Immune From Global Warming
New Study Finds South Pole Getting Warmer - Reversing Idea That It Was Not Affected

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2009

Antarctica, the only place that had oddly seemed immune from climate change, is warming after all, according to a new study.

For years, Antarctica was an enigma to scientists who track the effects of global warming. Temperatures on much of the continent at the bottom of the world were staying the same or slightly cooling, previous research indicated.

The new study went back further than earlier work and filled in a massive gap in data with satellite information to find that Antarctica too is getting warmer, like the Earth's other six continents.

The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"Contrarians have sometime grabbed on to this idea that the entire continent of Antarctica is cooling, so how could we be talking about global warming?," said study co-author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. "Now we can say: no, it's not true ... It is not bucking the trend."

The study does not point to man-made climate change as the cause of the Antarctic warming - doing so is a highly intricate scientific process - but a different and smaller study out late last year did make that connection.

"We can't pin it down, but it certainly is consistent with the influence of greenhouse gases," said NASA scientist Drew Shindell, another study co-author. Some of the effects also could be natural variability, he said.

The study showed that Antarctica - about one-and-a-half times bigger than the United States - remains a complicated weather picture, especially with only a handful of monitoring stations in its vast interior.

The researchers used satellite data and mathematical formulas to fill in missing information. That made outside scientists queasy about making large conclusions with such sparse information.

"This looks like a pretty good analysis, but I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical," Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an e-mail. "It is hard to make data where none exist."

Shindell said it was more comprehensive than past studies and jibed with computer models.

The research found that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) but still is 50 degrees below zero (-46 Celsius). West Antarctica, which is about 20 degrees (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than the east, has warmed nearly twice as fast, said study lead author Eric Steig of the University of Washington.

East Antarctica, which scientists had long thought to be cooling, is warming slightly when yearly averages are looked at over the past 50 years, said Steig.

However, autumn temperatures in east Antarctica are cooling over the long term. And east Antarctica from the late 1970s through the 1990s, cooled slightly, Steig said.

Some researchers skeptical about the magnitude of global warming overall said that the new study didn't match their measurements from satellites and that there appears to be no warming in Antarctica since 1980.

"It overstates what they have obtained from their analysis," said Roger Pielke Sr., a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado.

Steig said a different and independent study using ice cores drilled in west Antarctica found the same thing as his paper. And recent satellite data also confirms what this paper has found, Steig added.

The study has major ramifications for sea level rise, said Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada. Most major sea level rise projections for the future counted on a cooling - not warming - Antarctica. This will make sea level rise much worse, Weaver said.

[DarrinS]

From http://www.indystar.com/article/20090131/OPINION12/901310301/1002/OPINION



So-called "global warming" has shrunk from problem to punch-line. And now, Leftists are laughing, too. It's hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won't cooperate.

Nearly 4 inches of snow blanketed the United Arab Emirates' Jebel Jais region for just the second time in recorded history on January 24. Citizens were speechless. The local dialect has no word for snowfall.

Dutchmen on ice skates sped past windmills as canals in Holland froze in mid-January for the first time since 1997. Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop, who inhabits a renovated 17th Century windmill, stumbled on the ice and fractured his wrist.

January saw northern Minnesota's temperatures plunge to 38 below zero, forcing ski-resort closures. A Frazee, Minn., dog-sled race was canceled, due to excessive snow. Snow whitened Surf City, North Carolina's beaches. Days ago, ice glazed Florida's citrus groves.

As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte Right-wingers and lachrymose Left-wingers find Albert Gore's simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious.

"In terms of [global warming's] capacity to cause the human species harm, I don't think it makes it into the top 10," Robert Giegengack, former chairman of University of Pennsylvania's Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, told the Pennsylvania Gazette. Giegengack voted for Gore in 2000, and says he likely would again.

Commentator Harold Ambler declared Jan. 3 on HuffingtonPost.com that he voted for Barack Obama "for a thousand times a thousand reasons." He added that Gore "owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming." He called Gore's assertion that "the science is in" on this issue "the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind."

"Not only is it false that human activity has any significant effect on global warming or the weather in general, but for the record, global warming is over," retired Navy meteorologist Martin Hertzberg wrote on carbon-sense.com. The physical chemist and self-described "scientist and life-long liberal Democrat" added: "The average temperature of Earth's atmosphere has declined over the last 10 years. From the El Niño Year of 1998 until January 2007, it dropped 1/4 C [0.45 degrees Fahrenheit]. From Jan 2007 to the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 3/4 C [1.35 degrees Fahrenheit]. Those data further prove that the fear-mongering hysteria about human-caused global warming is completely unjustified and is totally counterproductive to our Nation's essential needs and security."

"It is a tribute to the scientific ignorance of politicians and journalists that they keep regurgitating the nonsense about human-caused global warming," veteran left-wing commentator and Nation magazine columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote. "The greenhouse fear mongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution -- and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism, and greed."

Some leftists believe the collective hallucination of warmism distracts from what they consider urgent progressive priorities.

"The most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might," University of Ottawa physics professor Denis Rancourt has written. "The global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth."

Social historian David Noble of Canada's York University concurs. He has lamented that warmism is "diverting attention from the radical challenges of the global justice movements."

Geophysicist Claude Allegre, previously Education Minister in France's late 1990s Socialist government, denounced the "prophets of doom of global warming." He sounded amused in a September 2006 L'Express article. "The ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people."

"The so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming is not holding up," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.), told his colleagues Jan. 8. "It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left vs. right issue."

So-called "global warming" has accomplished the impossible: It has united liberals and conservatives in laughter.

[DarrinS]

Over 30,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition, over 9000 of them PhD's. 15 times more PhD's than involved in the IPCC process.

[Wild Cobra]

For you alarmists....

There are finally sunspots!

A new sunspot cycle may be beginning, and indication the sun is warming up. Now you can go back to blaming CO2 in a few years, unless it's as weak as predicted. Then we will still cool down rather than warm up!

Solar Cycle 24 has officially started (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/04/solar-cycle-24-has-officially-started/)

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/reversed_sunspot_010408.jpg (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2008/04jan08/newspot.jpg)

[Wild Cobra]

Over 30,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition, over 9000 of them PhD's. 15 times more PhD's than involved in the IPCC process.
Not only that, but Climatologists by title are not qualified as global warming experts. It takes a great deal more sciences than what their degree requires.

Geosciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosciences) people...

[SouthernFried]

The Earth warms...the Earth cools...

Animals thrive, and animals go extinct...

Been happening since the dawn of, well...everything.

Until now...

Stop animal extinction, and stop climate change...cuz nature cannot be allowed to run amuck any longer.

Thank you...that'll be $800,000,000,000.00 please.

We'll send someone by to pick it up.

anonomoose

[RandomGuy]

Over 30,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition, over 9000 of them PhD's. 15 times more PhD's than involved in the IPCC process.

How many of those have degrees in food science?

Does this mean the IPCC should have nutritionists contributing to their reports too? :wow

[RandomGuy]

Co-authored by Michael Mann, a.k.a. "hockeystick boy", but I digress.

Emphasis added by me.

Indeed. I noted that stuff too. Astonishingly enough the liberal media actually gave some time to the skeptics.

Someone must be asleep at the switch in the Liberal Media Headquarters.

[RandomGuy]

Not only that, but Climatologists by title are not qualified as global warming experts. It takes a great deal more sciences than what their degree requires.

Geosciences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosciences) people...

How many people who signed that petition would you say are actually qualified to make some educated determination?

Just curious.

[Winehole23]

Indeed. I noted that stuff too. Astonishingly enough the liberal media actually gave some time to the skeptics.

Someone must be asleep at the switch in the Liberal Media HeadquartersThe Liberal Media Elite are at pains to demonstrate there is actually enough opposition to them to justify the line item in their budget for their ongoing suppression of the truth.

Therefore, the appearance of a coordinated opposition to them only serves to strengthen the hand of our liberal media masters against the unorthodox.

A one-dimensional society needs a credible illusion of an adversary as a pretext for its transgressions, past and intended.

[DarrinS]

How many of those have degrees in food science?

Does this mean the IPCC should have nutritionists contributing to their reports too? :wow


Research in this field would be greatly improved if they had more mathematicians and statisticians. Evidently, a principal components analysis is not the strong suit of a paleoclimatologist.

[DarrinS]

How many people who signed that petition would you say are actually qualified to make some educated determination?

Just curious.



I think you need to look into who are the lead authors of IPCC's reports. You'll be surprised.

[ClingingMars]

it's snowing!

-Mars

[RandomGuy]

Research in this field would be greatly improved if they had more mathematicians and statisticians. Evidently, a principal components analysis is not the strong suit of a paleoclimatologist.

(shrugs)

Whatever produces better science, I am all for. Quite frankly though, I was not quite impressed with the "peer-reviewed" science that WC presented in support of the "CO2 isn't the principle component of recent warming trends" bit.

Sooner or later we will get to the bottom of it in a way that is fairly concrete. I just hope that we don't have to lose coastal cities to provide a level of proof that WC would accept, and have it be a bit late to do anything about it.

[SouthernFried]

When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years forecasts right...I'll start paying attention to these morons who think they know what's gonna happen in the decades to come.

[RandomGuy]

When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years forecasts right...I'll start paying attention to these morons who think they know what's gonna happen in the decades to come.

When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years' forecast for the stock market, I will start investing.

A trend is a trend. One doesn't have to be able to give you the exact temperature in Barcelona on February 20th, 2015 to be able to say that the world will be slightly warmer.

[SouthernFried]

"A trend is a trend"

Stock Markets have trends too. You wanna bet 1 Trillion dollars that the market is gonna keep going down?

But, you'll bet that the earth's warming trend will continue to go up?

As long as your betting your own money, be my guest. Gambling and smoking are two vices I've been known to indulge in myself.

But, don't demand my money to do it with. One should gamble with one own's money.

Well, unless your really sneaky smart, and can get other folks to back your gamble...and give you their money.

And that folks...is what "man made" global warming con men are all about.

What are you gonna give? :)

[boutons_]

Australia Faces Collapse as Climate Change Kicks in: Are the Southwest and California Next?

By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress
Posted on February 2, 2009, Printed on February 2, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/124689/

Australia has been suffering its worst heatwave on record, the first time temperatures exceeded 110 F for 3 days running. It’s been so hot that on Thursday, the low at Melbourne airport was 87 F.

Australia is the canary in the coal mine for climate-driven desertification. The astonishing decade-long drought in southern Australia was declared ‘worst on record’ last year. My headline quote is from the UK’s Independent story, which notes:

Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, is regarded as highly vulnerable. A study by the country’s blue-chip Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation identified its ecosystems as "potentially the most fragile" on earth in the face of the threat.

Australia is but the first and most seriously impacted of the arid sub-tropical (and near-sub-tropical) climates that are facing horrific desertification from climate change. For instance, Lester Snow, Director of California’s Department of Water Resources said Friday

We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history.

Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d) published research that "predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest" -- levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. The UK’s Hadley Center warned in November 2006 that their research predicted multiple permanent Dust Bowls around the planet on our current emissions path:

Extreme drought is likely to increase from under 3% of the globe today to 30% by 2100 -- areas affected by severe drought could see a five-fold increase from 8% to 40%.

Extreme drought means desertification, especially if it lasts for hundreds of years, as the recent NOAA-led study found (see NOAA stunner: Climate change "largely irreversible for 1000 years," with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe). The regions that NOAA identifies as facing permanent Dust Bowls:

* U.S. Southwest
* Southeast Asia
* Eastern South America
* Southern Europe
* Southern Africa
* Northern Africa
* Western Australia

Again, since Western Australia is the most sensitive, since Australia is already the driest of the habitable continents, it’s no surprise that Australia is the first to see such climate change driven decadal drought:

Most of the south of the country is gripped by unprecedented 12-year drought. The Australian Alps have had their driest three years ever, and the water from the vast Murray-Darling river system now fails to reach the sea 40 per cent of the time. Harvests have fallen sharply.

It will get worse as global warming increases. Even modest temperature rises, now seen as unavoidable, are expected to increase drought by 70 per cent in New South Wales, cut Melbourne’s water supplies by more than a third, and dry up the Murray-Darling system by another 25 per cent.

When you throw a brutal heat wave on top of the desertification, then all hell breaks loose:

Ministers are blaming the heat -- which follows a record drought -- on global warming. Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.

At times last week it seemed as if that was happening already. Chaos ruled in Melbourne on Friday after an electricity substation exploded, shutting down the city’s entire train service, trapping people in lifts, and blocking roads as traffic lights failed. Half a million homes and businesses were blacked out, and patients were turned away from hospitals.

More than 20 people have died from the heat, mainly in Adelaide. Trees in Melbourne’s parks are dropping leaves to survive, and residents at one of the city’s nursing homes have started putting their clothes in the freezer.

"All of this is consistent with climate change, and with what scientists told us would happen," said climate change minister Penny Wong.

As an aside, I wonder when the United States will get a Department of Climate Change. Probably not for a decade or more, until we are hit by an extended Australian-scale drought somewhere along with one or more of the other near-term climate Pearl Harbors?

AFP’s story’s calls this "once-in-a-century heatwave that has claimed dozens of lives and sparked wildfires." But, in fact, Professor David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, said last week: "The heat is unusual, but it will become much more like the normal experience in 10 to 20 years."

One final (very) small point. We already saw Tiger Woods win the "Hottest Major of All Time" and the parched "brown British Open."

But this Australian open is going to go down as the hottest tennis major of all time (so far):

Earlier in the week, as the historic heat took grip, men’s champion Novak Djokovic sensationally pulled out of his Australian Open quarter final with heat-related problems, the first defending champion to withdraw in the Open era.

Three-time champion Serena Williams, who will take on Russia’s Dinara Safina in Saturday’s women’s final, described playing as an "out-of-body" experience before the roof of the Rod Laver Arena was closed and a row over the Australian Open heat policy ensued.

In the future, more and more major sporting events will have to be moved away from the summer and perhaps, like the Super Bowl, actually be held in the winter (if not indoors where possible).

Of course, if we really turn one third of the planet into permanent desert by century’s end -- and raise global temperatures an average of 10°F, with sea levels 5 feet higher and rising 10 inches a decade, I wonder just how much interest will remain in such "nonessential" activities like professional sports.

© 2009 Climate Progress All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/124689/

==========

So pick your weather to make your case:

snow very far south for a couple days, or

or long term extreme heat and drought moving away from the equator and desertifying temperate regions.

[SouthernFried]

Gee...the earth's climate changes.

Who'd a thunk it?

[ClingingMars]

Gee...the earth's climate changes.

Who'd a thunk it?

:lmao

this is pretty entertaining.

[DarrinS]

A trend is a trend. One doesn't have to be able to give you the exact temperature in Barcelona on February 20th, 2015 to be able to say that the world will be slightly warmer.


What is the trend of the last 10 years?

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/04/28/rss_monthly_global_temperature_anomalies_1998-2008.png

[Wild Cobra]

When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years forecasts right...I'll start paying attention to these morons who think they know what's gonna happen in the decades to come.
Aint that the truth.

Just because a degree in climatology requires one more course than a degree as a meteorologist, they think they can predict better?

Give me a break.

[Wild Cobra]

When they can get tomorrows, next weeks, next months, or next years' forecast for the stock market, I will start investing.

A trend is a trend. One doesn't have to be able to give you the exact temperature in Barcelona on February 20th, 2015 to be able to say that the world will be slightly warmer.
But like the stock market, nature has natural cycles not influenced by man!

[RandomGuy]

"A trend is a trend"

Stock Markets have trends too. You wanna bet 1 Trillion dollars that the market is gonna keep going down?

But, you'll bet that the earth's warming trend will continue to go up?

As long as your betting your own money, be my guest. Gambling and smoking are two vices I've been known to indulge in myself.

But, don't demand my money to do it with. One should gamble with one own's money.

Well, unless your really sneaky smart, and can get other folks to back your gamble...and give you their money.

And that folks...is what "man made" global warming con men are all about.

What are you gonna give? :)

Trends are trends, indeed.

There is a danger in the "straight line" assumption, namely that the future will necessarily follow any given trend line.

What the past and present trends can give you, however, is a better idea as to the range of possible outcomes, and some idea as to the probability of their occurance.

Will I bet that the earth's temperature will continue to go up?

Yes.

The weight of evidence to me points that direction.

There is evidence on both sides of this, as WC points out, and the weight of that evidence points to our continued effect on the overall climate.

Until the bulk of peer-reviewed science points to a different conclusion, that is the most probable outcome.

WC will undoubtedly protest this, but still hasn't concretely shown any peer-reviewed papers on the subject, so I must assume that peer-reviewed evidence that supports his theis is somewhat limited.

[RandomGuy]

What is the trend of the last 10 years?

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/04/28/rss_monthly_global_temperature_anomalies_1998-2008.png

Which is more desirable in order to draw conclusions from, 10 years worth of data, or 50?

[RandomGuy]

"A trend is a trend"

Stock Markets have trends too. You wanna bet 1 Trillion dollars that the market is gonna keep going down?

But, you'll bet that the earth's warming trend will continue to go up?

As long as your betting your own money, be my guest. Gambling and smoking are two vices I've been known to indulge in myself.

But, don't demand my money to do it with. One should gamble with one own's money.

Well, unless your really sneaky smart, and can get other folks to back your gamble...and give you their money.

And that folks...is what "man made" global warming con men are all about.

What are you gonna give? :)

The argument actually goes just as easily the other way.

Why are you betting my money on the fact that this is false?

If we really are markedly affecting our climate, doing nothing has a definite cost, and one you would force on me with your proposal to do nothing.

That particular line of reasoning doesn't really help clarify the issue, does it?

[Wild Cobra]

Which is more desirable in order to draw conclusions from, 10 years worth of data, or 50?
Neither.

Look at several thousand years past. You'll see there were two points in history that civilizations say far greater warming than today, and it cooled back down.

Then on top of that. It is absolutely clear to those who look at the facts that CO2 does not drive warming. It does slightly steer it, but it is a very small contributor.

[doobs]

You've changed, Earth.

[Winehole23]

You've changed, Earth.That was truly oracular, doobs.

[DarrinS]

Mr. Gore : Apology Accepted (from right-wing ultra-conservative website, Huffington post :lol)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html





You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).

So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate change," which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.

Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated," he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not "complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.

3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.

Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.

4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.

If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays. When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.

Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.

Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the "flat-Earther" now?

What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the "flat-Earther" here?

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.

And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.

P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.

More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.

For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!

[RandomGuy]

Mr. Gore : Apology Accepted (from right-wing ultra-conservative website, Huffington post :lol)



You did not answer my question.

That's ok.

I will answer it for you.

The answer is: 50 years is better for determining overall trends, and, if available, even longer periods.

Go back too far, say tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years and the data actually starts to mean less, because the climate is a complex system, and conditions in the past, such as continent placement, biosphere, and so forth were too different to draw meaningful conclusions.

The other question that your happy fun graph immediately brought to mind:

What was the effect of CO2 in that period?

Nothing about the AGW theory says that you can't have cooling trends. To suggest otherwise is either to deliberately mislead, or demonstrate a lack of udnerstanding of the issue.

Were you attempting to be misleading?

Or did you, for whatever reason, forget to include enough context to be intellectually honest about the graph? If so, why?

[RandomGuy]

Neither.

Look at several thousand years past. You'll see there were two points in history that civilizations say far greater warming than today, and it cooled back down.

Then on top of that. It is absolutely clear to those who look at the facts that CO2 does not drive warming. It does slightly steer it, but it is a very small contributor.

What were the swings on concentration of CO2 in those periods in percentage terms?

[doobs]

Mr. Gore : Apology Accepted (from right-wing ultra-conservative website, Huffington post :lol)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html

He must be silenced . . .



Arianna Huffington has put out the following message:

Harold Ambler reached out to me about posting a critical piece on Al Gore and the environment. We are always open to posts that present opinions contrary to HuffPost's editorial view -- and have welcomed many conservative voices, such as David Frum, Tony Blankley, Michael Smerconish, Bob Barr, Joe Scarborough, Jim Talent, etc., to the site. We have featured also countless posts from the leading lights of the Green movement, including Robert Redford, Laurie David, Carl Pope, Van Jones, David Roberts, and many others -- and I myself have written extensively about the global warming crisis, and have been highly critical of those who refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence.


When Ambler sent his post, I forwarded it to one of our associate blog editors to evaluate, not having read it. I get literally hundreds of posts a week submitted like this and obviously can't read them all -- which is why we have an editorial process in place. The associate blog editor published the post. It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.

[Winehole23]

Well, they already published it, so Arianna's talking out of both sides of her mouth.

[Winehole23]

But yeah, that's a diktat.

[Winehole23]

I find the dogma refreshing. Just declare your bias.

[doobs]

I find the dogma refreshing. Just declare your bias.

Well, we're not discussing whether the earth is flat or round, or whether two plus two equals four. We're discussing man-made global warming. There's certainly room for debate, so it cracks me up (in a sad way) that many so-called "liberals" are so rigid in their views and want to shut people up. They pride themselves on supposedly being rational and skeptical and willing to ask tough questions---but when it comes to environmentalism (which is their religion) or Al Gore (who is one of their high prophets) they lose their damn minds.

[Winehole23]

It's still refreshing.

Why pretend the stand is rationally taken? Just declare the controversy over. If you can't be just, be arbitrary.

Faith based versus faith based.

Many bear the thyrsus (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Thyrsus.html), but few are the bacchantes.

http://borro3.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/bacchante_with_thyrsus.jpg

[RandomGuy]

I find the dogma refreshing. Just declare your bias.

That's the thing that chaps my hide about this thread.

I really don't have much to say either way. From what I understand, the bulk of the science points in one direction, and I am inclined to go along with the consensus, because, as I have said repeatedly, I don't have the time to really dig into it.

But

I end up having to sort of play devils advocate with people who are very obviously biased in one direction, who seem to labor under the mistaken impression that I am some dogmatic hack on the subject. It's irritating.

[DarrinS]

You did not answer my question.

That's ok.

I will answer it for you.

The answer is: 50 years is better for determining overall trends, and, if available, even longer periods.

Go back too far, say tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years and the data actually starts to mean less, because the climate is a complex system, and conditions in the past, such as continent placement, biosphere, and so forth were too different to draw meaningful conclusions.

The other question that your happy fun graph immediately brought to mind:

What was the effect of CO2 in that period?

Nothing about the AGW theory says that you can't have cooling trends. To suggest otherwise is either to deliberately mislead, or demonstrate a lack of udnerstanding of the issue.

Were you attempting to be misleading?

Or did you, for whatever reason, forget to include enough context to be intellectually honest about the graph? If so, why?



Well, CO2 was rising between 1940 and 1970, so why did the average temperature decline during that period?



By the way, the hottest year in history was 1934, not 1998 (after the "hockey stick" was thoroughly debunked and NASA corrected their data). You'll probably remember the hockey stick graph because it has been featured so prominantly in IPCC reports as well as the giant graph in Al Gore's science fiction thriller.

[DarrinS]

I really don't have much to say either way. From what I understand, the bulk of the science points in one direction, and I am inclined to go along with the consensus, because, as I have said repeatedly, I don't have the time to really dig into it.


Can you give me some QUANTITATIVE figures on this so-called consensus? If you REALLY look into it, you'll be surprised.

[DarrinS]

http://i.imwx.com/images/maps/current/acttemp_600x405.jpg

[Winehole23]

http://i.imwx.com/images/maps/current/acttemp_600x405.jpgSingle snapshots aren't statistically significant. Or was that your point?

[2centsworth]

Single snapshots aren't statistically significant. Or was that your point?

:lmao and you picked just one of his posts to make your point.

[Winehole23]

:lmao and you picked just one of his posts to make your point.The thread is a behomoth. Jeez. Can't I say something about just one of DarrinS's persistent themes?

He keeps posting daily temperatures as if that meant something. I'd like him to explain why. If he already explained it, I forgot and I'm too lazy to check, ok?

If you know the answer, please share it with me, 2cents.

Why be content to raise your leg on the conversation, when you can correct it?

[2centsworth]

The thread is a behomoth. Jeez. Can't I say something about just one of DarrinS's persistent themes?

He keeps posting daily temperatures as if that meant something. I'd like him to explain why. If he already explained it, I forgot and I'm too lazy to check, ok?

If you know the answer, please share it with me, 2cents.

Why be content to raise your leg on the conversation, when you can correct it?

how about the 2 posts immediately preceding the one you pointed out. Seemed to me all three fit together in his argument.

[Winehole23]

how about the 2 posts immediately preceding the one you pointed out. Seemed to me all three fit together in his argument.As a joke, right? I only sort of understand what they're talking about to begin with.

DarrinS asks RG for "quantitative" information, then goads him by posting US temperatures? Something like that?

[2centsworth]

As a joke, right? I only sort of understand what they're talking about to begin with.

DarrinS asks RG for "quantitative" information, then goads him by posting US temperatures? Something like that?


Well, CO2 was rising between 1940 and 1970, so why did the average temperature decline during that period?



By the way, the hottest year in history was 1934, not 1998 (after the "hockey stick" was thoroughly debunked and NASA corrected their data). You'll probably remember the hockey stick graph because it has been featured so prominantly in IPCC reports as well as the giant graph in Al Gore's science fiction thriller.


Can you give me some QUANTITATIVE figures on this so-called consensus? If you REALLY look into it, you'll be surprised.

then he followed those up with the weather map. Looks like he's saying more than it's cold today so GW doesn't exist.

[Winehole23]

then he followed those up with the weather map. Looks like he's saying more than it's cold today so GW doesn't exist.I couldn't believe he would be saying something that dumb, so I ruled it out to start with. Are you sure?

[DarrinS]

I couldn't believe he would be saying something that dumb, so I ruled it out to start with. Are you sure?


Showing the map was a joke.


A bigger joke is telling people that a trace gas that makes up less than 4 one-hundredths of one percent of our atmosphere will push us past some ficticious "tipping points" that will flood our costal cities.

Oh, and by the way, humans only contribute about 3 percent to that 0.04 percent in our atmosphere.

If we'd signed Kyoto, at a mere cost of 300 billion PER YEAR, maybe we could save humanity. :rolleyes

[Winehole23]

.If we'd signed Kyoto, at a mere cost of 300 billion PER YEAR, maybe we could save humanity. :rolleyesBargain basement. :lol

Any chance it's gonna be accidentally beneficial in some way?

[RandomGuy]

Bargain basement. :lol

Any chance it's gonna be accidentally beneficial in some way?

The answer to that question is yes, and Darrin is probably honest enough to grudgingly admit that, but WC is not.

Now ask him or WC to provide a source and reasoning for the cost that he picked, and ask him to explain how that cost was derived.

If he or WC, can't then they are as guilty as sucking up something without being skeptical as they say the "liberals" are.

I might not have the time to piss around with learning enough about climate science, but cost analysis is another matter.

[2centsworth]

Showing the map was a joke.


A bigger joke is telling people that a trace gas that makes up less than 4 one-hundredths of one percent of our atmosphere will push us past some ficticious "tipping points" that will flood our costal cities.

Oh, and by the way, humans only contribute about 3 percent to that 0.04 percent in our atmosphere.

If we'd signed Kyoto, at a mere cost of 300 billion PER YEAR, maybe we could save humanity. :rolleyes

i got the joke. winehole is just lost.:lol

[Winehole23]

i got the joke. winehole is just lost.:lolPerhaps my guide led me somewhat further astray. But yes, I'm lost.

[DarrinS]

Looks like a lot of Americans are scared shitless of Global Warming.

http://people-press.org/report/485/economy-top-policy-priority


http://people-press.org/reports/images/485-1.gif


They list lobbyists as a higher priority. :lmao

[Winehole23]

They list lobbyists as a higher priority. :lmaoIs that so unrealistic?

[DarrinS]

James Hansen's former NASA supervisor says that Hansen embarrassed NASA.





Subject: Climate models are useless

Marc, First, I sent several e-mails to you with an error in the address and they have been returned to me. So I’m resending them in one combined e-mail.

Yes, one could say that I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation. He was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). He thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.

My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

With best wishes, John





Look at the bio of this flat-Earther:





Subject: Re: Nice seeing you

Marc, Indeed, it was a pleasure to see you again. I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that Global Warming is man made. A brief bio follows. Use as much or as little of it as you wish.

John S. Theon Education: B.S. Aero. Engr. (1953-57); Aerodynamicist, Douglas Aircraft Co. (1957-58); As USAF Reserve Officer (1958-60),B.S. Meteorology (1959); Served as Weather Officer 1959-60; M.S, Meteorology (1960-62); NASA Research Scientist, Goddard Space Flight Ctr. (1962-74); Head Meteorology Branch, GSFC (1974-76); Asst. Chief, Lab. for Atmos. Sciences, GSFC (1977-78); Program Scientist, NASA Global Weather Research Program, NASA Hq. (1978-82); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch NASA Hq., (1982-91); Ph.D., Engr. Science & Mech.: course of study and dissertation in atmos. science (1983-85); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics, Radiation, & Hydrology Branch, NASA Hq. (1991-93); Chief, Climate Processes Research Program, NASA Hq. (1993-94); Senior Scientist, Mission to Planet Earth Office, NASA Hq. (1994-95); Science Consultant, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (1995-99); Science Consultant Orbital Sciences Corp. (1996-97) and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab., (1997-99).

As Chief of several NASA Hq. Programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research. This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles. I hope that this is helpful.

Best wishes, John

[DarrinS]

Is that so unrealistic?


It actually should be a higher priority because lobbyists are real.

[Winehole23]

It actually should be a higher priority because lobbyists are real.Yeah. There's that.

[RandomGuy]

The answer to that question is yes, and Darrin is probably honest enough to grudgingly admit that, but WC is not.

Now ask him or WC to provide a source and reasoning for the cost that he picked, and ask him to explain how that cost was derived.

If he or WC, can't then they are as guilty as sucking up something without being skeptical as they say the "liberals" are.

I might not have the time to piss around with learning enough about climate science, but cost analysis is another matter.

Never did get an answer.

Funny how some people will piss and moan about other people taking things at face value, and when you point out their own cool-aid, they put their fingers in their ears and ignore you.

[DarrinS]

Never did get an answer.

Funny how some people will piss and moan about other people taking things at face value, and when you point out their own cool-aid, they put their fingers in their ears and ignore you.


To believe in AGW, you have to believe the following are true:


1. The global temperature of the 1990's to present is remarkable and unprecedented.

2. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at unprecedented levels in history and are largely because of human activity.

3. There is a direct causal relationship between CO2 and temperature, i.e. increased CO2 results in an increased temperature.


If any of these are not true, then one would have to be skeptical of AGW. If ALL are untrue, then you'd have to be VERY skeptical of AGW.

[DarrinS]

By the way, CO2 concentration is currently at 383 parts per million. If the atmosphere was a gallon, then the total C02 would be about 0.29 teaspoons. The amount of C02 produced by human activity is about 3% of that, or 0.008 teaspoons.

Scary stuff

[SouthernFried]

"But, if we don't spend the 20 gazillion dollars and increase controls over the populace...then we could all die.

Will you risk death...will ya?

Spend the money...and if we're wrong. Your only broke and in economic slavery. If we're right, your alive...and broke, and in economic slavery.

But, your alive...right?"

Fear is the biggest motivator, and best tool in any politician's or activist's pocket. Obama knows this well.

Oh well, I still have several can's of "The dry look" hair spray I've been hoarding since the 70's when they banned it cuz of the hole in the sky. When nobody's looking, I use 'em, then spray old freon cannister's in the backyard. Cools things off, and decreases the humidity so if I go outside, my hair still looks damn good.

Lemme know how that hole is doing. I don't wanna kill anyone y'know.

I just wanna be nice and cool...and have damned good looking hair.

[RandomGuy]

To believe in AGW, you have to believe the following are true:


1. The global temperature of the 1990's to present is remarkable and unprecedented.

Incorrect. This is a distortion of the science.



2. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at unprecedented levels in history and are largely because of human activity.

Incorrect. This is a distortion of the science.


3. There is a direct causal relationship between CO2 and temperature, i.e. increased CO2 results in an increased temperature.

Correct. You got one out of three right. If you don't understand the theory you are supposed to be skeptical of, it makes it kind of hard to sift through the evidence, doesn't it?


If any of these are not true, then one would have to be skeptical of AGW. If ALL are untrue, then you'd have to be VERY skeptical of AGW.[/QUOTE]

[RandomGuy]

By the way, CO2 concentration is currently at 383 parts per million. If the atmosphere was a gallon, then the total C02 would be about 0.29 teaspoons. The amount of C02 produced by human activity is about 3% of that, or 0.008 teaspoons.

Scary stuff

Also incorrect.

Cite a source for this.

[RandomGuy]

If we'd signed Kyoto, at a mere cost of 300 billion PER YEAR, maybe we could save humanity.

Please cite a source for this cost.

[DarrinS]

Also incorrect.

Cite a source for this.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html

[DarrinS]

Please cite a source for this cost.

http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/11399.pdf

[DarrinS]

Incorrect. This is a distortion of the science.


Yes, Mann's hockey stick graph that filtered out the medieval warming period and turns random white noise into "hockey sticks" is a distortion of science. This has been completely discredited and should be a complete embarassement to the IPCC and Al Gore.




Correct. You got one out of three right. If you don't understand the theory you are supposed to be skeptical of, it makes it kind of hard to sift through the evidence, doesn't it?


I agree there is a relationship. The ice core record has shown that when temperatures have risen, CO2 levels have FOLLOWED. It's the exact opposite relationship than the one put forward by AGW alarmists.

[RandomGuy]

By the way, CO2 concentration is currently at 383 parts per million. If the atmosphere was a gallon, then the total C02 would be about 0.29 teaspoons. The amount of C02 produced by human activity is about 3% of that, or 0.008 teaspoons.

Incorrect. Source?


http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html

Given source does not outline the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere produced by human activity.


Because the decay curve depends on the model used and the assumptions incorporated therein, it is difficult to specify an exact atmospheric lifetime for CO2. Accepted values range around 100 years.

It can be inferred from the data however,:

Pre-1750 tropospheric concentration 283 ppm
Current tropospheric concentration 383.97 ppm

Given that we don't know exactly how much of that 100ppm increase is from natural and how much is from man-made activity from the given source, you can't really justify the statement that only 3% of the current concentration is from man-made sources.

The rate of change of concentration is unprecedented in the historical record however, and given that we haven't seen any sustained series of massive volcanological events in the last 100 years that might account for such an increase it is a reasonable assumption that a pretty high percentage of that 100ppm increase is due to burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years.

100ppm being roughly 25% of the current concentration in the atmosphere. If only 50% of that increase was due to human action, then this would imply that roughly 12% of current concentration is due to humankind's actions.

I have no real idea what the exact % is, but it would seem that 3% is probably a low-ball estimate, and given our rather recent massive spike in CO2 emissions in the last 25 years, I would guess that if we are indeed responsible for most of this increase, that we will see concentrations continue to climb markedly.

All of this depends on the ability of the planet to absorb CO2 and the complex, but little understood mechanisms for this, of course.

[DarrinS]

Given source does not outline the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere produced by human activity.


According to numerous sources including the IPCC, natural sources emit 150 million tons of CO2 and human sources are almost 30 times less than that. 1/30 is roughly 3% according to my calculator.




The rate of change of concentration is unprecedented in the historical record however, ...

When I stated this exact thing earlier, you said I was "distorting the science".




All of this depends on the ability of the planet to absorb CO2 and the complex, but little understood mechanisms for this, of course.

I thought it was completely understood and a "settled" science.

[DarrinS]

By the way, RG, no one has explained to me why temperatures cooled between 1940 and 1975, a 35-year period when there was substantial CO2 emmissions.

[RandomGuy]

Originally Posted by RandomGuy

Please cite a source for this cost [of $300bn annual cost]



http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/11399.pdf

Thank you for taking the time to get this. I really do appreciate it. I was really wanting to get to the basis for this claim for some time, but have been unable to find it.

GDP in 1992 dollars in 2020, base case (no Kyoto) $11,478
GDP in 1992 dollars in 2020, Kyoto implemented: $11,245

Long-term, even this incomplete economic look gives a grand total of 2% difference in GDP after 20 years.

What was lacking in this document was any consideration of NET jobs lost/gained.

Nowhere in the document did it weigh in ANY potential benefits to the economy, such as increases in employment in the renewables sector. It did show an increase in renewable output of electricity, but didn't mention anything about their starting assumptions.

Funny that these numbers were based on (gasp) computer modeling of complex systems, in this case the economy.


Science based on computer models that are already wrong.

How do we know that the ideological bent of the economic study's authors didn't color THEIR starting assumptions?

Hell, this study was from 1998, and gas price increases have already exceeded what they thought would happen under the Kyoto treaty restrictions, so it can be pretty easily shown that their starting assumptions for how the economy would work out were wrong, simply from the benefit of hindsight.

Sorry, but that document not only doesn't prove the costs, it actively proves that there is absolutely no basis whatsoever to the claim that we would hurt our economy by limiting our CO2 emissions in some manner.

[DarrinS]

Originally Posted by DarrinS

Science based on computer models that are already wrong.


Gee, sounds good to me. Let's spend lot of money.






You didn't pick up on my sarcasm? I don't understand why you're quoting me here.

[RandomGuy]

You didn't pick up on my sarcasm? I don't understand why you're quoting me here.

'cause I accidentally hit the post button in the middle of putting together somethign kind of complicated. I fixed it in an edit though. Sorry.

Lunch hour is up, but I will try to get back to you at some point.

Adios.

[Wild Cobra]

Given source does not outline the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere produced by human activity.



It can be inferred from the data however,:

Pre-1750 tropospheric concentration 283 ppm
Current tropospheric concentration 383.97 ppm

Given that we don't know exactly how much of that 100ppm increase is from natural and how much is from man-made activity from the given source, you can't really justify the statement that only 3% of the current concentration is from man-made sources.

The values of man made CO2 in the atmosphere can be determined by the ratio of isotopes. Natural CO2 has carbon-14 in it's makeup and fossil fuels have none. Fossil fuels only have carbon-12 and carbon-13 in them since they are so old, the radioactive carbon-14 has dissipated.

I completely forgot about this aspect. I know this has been attempted to be quantified, but there is much disagreement on the results. This method shows that man-made CO2 is smaller than the subtraction of present from past levels.

I have done some searches and so far found little useful. Salmon scales seem to be one of the better proxies by how much of each isotope they contain for ocean sinking.

[Wild Cobra]

According to numerous sources including the IPCC, natural sources emit 150 million tons of CO2 and human sources are almost 30 times less than that. 1/30 is roughly 3% according to my calculator.

This is very true Random. Go to any Carbon Cycle model, and look for yourself. The first one has a total of 6.3 GTons from fossil fuels and concrete sources and 201.6 from natural sources. The second one has 5.5 vs. 221.6. That means that less than 3% of the increased atmospheric CO2 is man made. If we take 380 - 280 for a 100 ppm difference, man is responsible for only a 3 ppm increase! Even if you include land use because we change the landscape, the numbers don't rise very much.

This is why I say you can often find good data in the IPCC report, just that they they ignore certain facts that don't fit their agenda.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/carbon_cycle-1.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Carbon_cycle-cute_diagram.jpeg

Remember that the carbon cycle and everything involved is dynamic. Not static. Theo things immediately come to mind to account for increased CO2 levels:

1) As the ocean temperature rises, they are not capable of holding as much CO2. Consider the idea that the majority of the warming could be solar and soot driven. Just like a cold beer retains its CO2, and a warm one is flat, the same thing happens here. The warmer the water, the less CO2 it reatains, increasing the atmospheric CO2 levels.

2) The oceans are acidifying. The alarmist like to blame it on CO2, but the known equations show that higher acidity reduces CO2 absorption.

Both the two items reduce how much CO2 the oceans can sink as a ratio.

[RandomGuy]

This is very true Random. Go to any Carbon Cycle model, and look for yourself. The first one has a total of 6.3 GTons from fossil fuels and concrete sources and 201.6 from natural sources. The second one has 5.5 vs. 221.6. That means that less than 3% of the increased atmospheric CO2 is man made. If we take 380 - 280 for a 100 ppm difference, man is responsible for only a 3 ppm increase! Even if you include land use because we change the landscape, the numbers don't rise very much.

This is why I say you can often find good data in the IPCC report, just that they they ignore certain facts that don't fit their agenda.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/carbon_cycle-1.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Carbon_cycle-cute_diagram.jpeg

Remember that the carbon cycle and everything involved is dynamic. Not static. Theo things immediately come to mind to account for increased CO2 levels:

1) As the ocean temperature rises, they are not capable of holding as much CO2. Consider the idea that the majority of the warming could be solar and soot driven. Just like a cold beer retains its CO2, and a warm one is flat, the same thing happens here. The warmer the water, the less CO2 it reatains, increasing the atmospheric CO2 levels.

2) The oceans are acidifying. The alarmist like to blame it on CO2, but the known equations show that higher acidity reduces CO2 absorption.

Both the two items reduce how much CO2 the oceans can sink as a ratio.

All of which is highly irrelevant, because doing something along the lines of the Kyoto treaty would end up helping our economy, Global Warming or not.

Checkmate.

[DarrinS]

All of which is highly irrelevant, because doing something along the lines of the Kyoto treaty would end up helping our economy, Global Warming or not.

Checkmate.


Since you're such a stickler for sources, can you provide a source to back up your assertion?

[doobs]

Since you're such a stickler for sources, can you provide a source to back up your assertion?

I wouldn't expect anything persuasive if I were you.

[Wild Cobra]

All of which is highly irrelevant, because doing something along the lines of the Kyoto treaty would end up helping our economy, Global Warming or not.

Checkmate.
WTF...

What have you been smoking. May I have some please?

[DarrinS]

Good paper by a a left-leaning scientist

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/hertzberg.pdf

My favorite quote from the paper:

"In comparison to water in all of its forms, the effect of the
carbon dioxide increase over the last century on the
temperature of the earth is about as significant as a few farts in
a hurricane!”


There's also a very good graph that shows the potential warming effect of CO2 as a function of CO2 concentration. It's a decaying exponential, essentially the same logrithmic graph that WC presented, but flipped about the horiztonal axis.

[RandomGuy]

Since you're such a stickler for sources, can you provide a source to back up your assertion?

That deserves its own thread.

Thanks for the idea, and yes, I can provide sources. Bit of a research project, but I think I can make a pretty decent case.

Give me a bit of time, and remind me in case my absent-mindedness gets the better of me.

[Wild Cobra]

The alarmists here like to cite RealClimate dot ORG. Suggest you read this:

GAVIN SCHMIDT'S RESPONSE TO THE ACQUITTAL OF CO2
SHOULD SOUND THE DEATH KNELL FOR AGW
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD (http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/gavin_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html)

[FreeMason]

"That is a distortion of science my good sir."

I like that, I'll have to put it to use in the future.

[DarrinS]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/jan/02_01_2009_DvTempRank_pg.gif

[101A]

The Southwest proves AGW is happening; the Northeast is natural fluctuations and prove nothing.

[RandomGuy]

Since you're such a stickler for sources, can you provide a source to back up your assertion?


whoot.

[RandomGuy]

The Southwest proves AGW is happening; the Northeast is natural fluctuations and prove nothing.

Because as we all know, one' years data proves/disproves everything. :rolleyes

[DarrinS]

Because as we all know, one' years data proves/disproves everything. :rolleyes

How about 10 years?

[RandomGuy]

How about 10 years?

50-500 years would be better. What are the trends over that period of time?

One would want to focus mostly on the industrial revolution, as that is one very obvious variable introduced into the rather complex system of our climate.

[RandomGuy]

mF_anaVcCXg10 minutes to put the whole debate in perspective.

I am all about risk management.

[RandomGuy]

Besides lowering CO2 emissions would create a lot of jobs and improve the economy.

Why do the deniers hate the US and want to see us in economic ruin?

[DarrinS]

One would want to focus mostly on the industrial revolution, as that is one very obvious variable introduced into the rather complex system of our climate.

If one looks even further back and sees a period that is as warm as today, wouldn't our current "warming" seem unremarkable?

[RandomGuy]

because we seem to want to have this debate, yet again.