Climate change

[Al_U_Card]

Intuitively it seems to me you are right about that. I noticed that Monsanto is one of the sponsors of the Doomsday Seed Vault. What do you suppose they are up to with that?

 

Same reason ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are all into "green" energy programs. (Except less government subsidies but a better chance of "cornering" the market-garden, so to speak.) :angry:

[onoway]

Intuitively it seems to me you are right about that. I noticed that Monsanto is one of the sponsors of the Doomsday Seed Vault. What do you suppose they are up to with that?

They get access to the seeds in there (although you and I can't) and so can use the material for their genetic engineering. I imagine it's also what Al_U_Card said, PR, but it's like allowing the fox to help guard the chickens.

 

In spite of the patents, scientists are still not "creating" anything, they're just moving things around into new combinations and messing about with what they consider the raw material. So the seed bank is a treasure trove to them of raw material.

[Al_U_Card]

A rising tide of...

 

sentiment? awareness? precision?

 

From the abstract:

 

The location of tide gauges is not random. If their locations are positively (negatively) correlated with SLR, estimates of global SLR will be biased upwards (downwards). We show that the location of tide gauges in 2000 is independent of SLR as measured by satellite altimetry. Therefore PSMSL tide gauges constitute a quasi-random sample and inferences of SLR based on them are unbiased, and there is no need for data reconstructions. By contrast, tide gauges dating back to the 19th century were locatedwhere sea levels happened to be rising. Data reconstructions based on these tide gauges are therefore likely to over-estimate sea level rise.

We therefore study individual tide gauge data on sea levels from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) during 1807 – 2010 without recourse to data reconstruction. Although mean sea levels are rising by 1mm/year, sea level rise is local rather than global, and is concentrated in the Baltic and Adriatic seas, South East Asia and the Atlantic coast of the United States. In these locations, covering 35 percent of tide gauges, sea levels rose on average by 3.8mm/year. Sea levels were stable in locations covered by 61 percent of tide gauges, and sea levels fell in locations covered by 4 percent of tide gauges. In these locations sea levels fell on average by almost 6mm/year.

[onoway]

Intuitively it seems to me you are right about that. I noticed that Monsanto is one of the sponsors of the Doomsday Seed Vault. What do you suppose they are up to with that?

Dr. Vandana Shiva ( http://www.myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=Shiva ) started another seed saving project with the express purpose of saving seed which may otherwise be lost forever, and that seed most definitely will not be available to Monsanto and their ilk.

 

Meanwhile, the UN has even got into the discussion and called for a drastic change in agricultural practices for a number of reasons, but diversity is high on the list:

http://permaculturenews.org/2013/09/18/paradigm-shift-urgently-needed-in-agriculture-un-agencies-call-for-an-end-to-industrial-agriculture-food-system/

[onoway]

Something which came to my attention today and is quite alarming;

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/live-updated-presentation-the-most-important-topic-of-our-time/

[PassedOut]

Something which came to my attention today and is quite alarming;

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/live-updated-presentation-the-most-important-topic-of-our-time/

Be careful with stuff like that. The notion that the US government is secretly spraying "chemtrails" over us has gained a foothold among some folks, just like the notion that the US government was complicit in the destruction of the twin towers. For a government that can't keep anything secret for long, I don't imagine that they'd be able to shut up every pilot who has been ordered to spray his relatives from the sky.

[onoway]

Be careful with stuff like that. The notion that the US government is secretly spraying "chemtrails" over us has gained a foothold among some folks, just like the notion that the US government was complicit in the destruction of the twin towers. For a government that can't keep anything secret for long, I don't imagine that they'd be able to shut up every pilot who has been ordered to spray his relatives from the sky.

yeah I was just coming back to edit that as when I started to look into it a bit more it quickly got into some strong "conspiracy" stuff which raised red flags. Still, as they say, "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean nobody is out to get me" and some of the the connections deserve a closer look I think.

 

As far as the pilots go, I think that would be easy to manage. Pilots are used to doing stuff like seeding rain clouds (they've done that for decades) and puffing out messages and crop dusting. Unless they thought they were carrying bombs or something they are unlikely to think anything much about what they are spraying, and I'm sure they wouldn't be told it was harmful. It might even be that the people doing it (IF they are) don't think it IS harmful.

 

I think there are two questions; 1) are they doing this and 2) is it deliberate. I think there might be a problem in that at least some of the people associated with this seem to think it's deliberately harmful and that's unfortunate. It might be the same as GMO seeds..someone had a bright idea with good intentions, thinking it was a win/win and then it got away from them. History is littered with such events the classic being rabbits in Australia.

 

The conspiracy aspect may actually make it more difficult to find out what, if anything, is actually happening, as then people automatically dismiss the whole thing.

 

What gave some credence to me about this were a couple of things, mostly because a few years ago there was a whole lot of discussion about various techniques which might be used to tackle global warming, and dumping stuff in the atmosphere was being energetically and publicly promoted by various scientists. If you couple that with patents and governments led by politicians way out of their depth in terms of any of the sciences, it could well be happening, albeit with the best of intentions.

Deserves a closer look anyway, I think.

[ArtK78]

I hear the theme music from "The X Files" playing in the background.

 

:)

[Daniel1960]

Something which came to my attention today and is quite alarming;

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/live-updated-presentation-the-most-important-topic-of-our-time/

I echoed Passedout's comments. Another take on his presentation has been posted here:

 

http://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-dane-wigingtons-10-bullet-points-regarding-geoengineering.615/

 

Dane appears to be a contract employee, lacking a sufficient scientific background, and making claims based on limited evidence.

[onoway]

Be careful with stuff like that. The notion that the US government is secretly spraying "chemtrails" over us has gained a foothold among some folks, just like the notion that the US government was complicit in the destruction of the twin towers. For a government that can't keep anything secret for long, I don't imagine that they'd be able to shut up every pilot who has been ordered to spray his relatives from the sky.

yeah I was just coming back to edit that as when I started to look into it a bit more it quickly got into some strong "conspiracy" stuff which raised red flags. Still, as they say, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean nobody is out to get me" and some of the the connections deserve a closer look I think.

 

As far as the pilots go, I think that would be easy to manage. Pilots are used to doing stuff like seeding rain clouds (they have done that for decades) and puffing out messages and crop dusting. Unless they thought they were carrying bombs or something they are unlikely to think anything much about what they are spraying, and I'm sure they wouldn't be told it was harmful. It might even be that the people doing it (IF they are) don't think it IS harmful.

 

I think there are two questions; 1) are they doing this and 2) is it deliberate. I think there might be a problem in that at least some of the people associated with this seem to think it's deliberately harmful and that's unfortunate. It might be the same as GMO seeds..someone had a bright idea with good intentions, thinking it was a win/win and then it got away from them. History is littered with such events the classic being rabbits in Australia.

 

The conspiracy aspect may actually make it more difficult to find out what, if anything, is actually happening, as then people automatically dismiss the whole thing. Oh and at least they don't single out the US Government, this is an equal opportunity conspiracy, include all the major world governments :ph34r:

 

What gave some credence to me about this were a couple of things, mostly because a few years ago there was a whole lot of discussion about various techniques which might be used to tackle global warming, and dumping stuff in the atmosphere was being energetically and publicly promoted by various scientists. If you couple that with patents and governments led by politicians way out of their depth in terms of any of the sciences, it could well be happening, albeit with the best of intentions.

[onoway]

I echoed Passedout's comments. Another take on his presentation has been posted here:

 

http://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-dane-wigingtons-10-bullet-points-regarding-geoengineering.615/

 

Dane appears to be a contract employee, lacking a sufficient scientific background, and making claims based on limited evidence.

Well... I read a bunch of the posts on metabunk and he lost me on three different points, at which point I found other (better?) things to do. The first, he claimed that scientists cited by Dane did not say anything about urgently needing to learn more about methane erupting from the thawing permafrost; one of the sentences in the very first paragraph of the article he cited said exactly that. When someone showed a BBC clip of a boat sinking in an air bubble mimicking a methane plume, his only retort was that it looked like it had been set up to sink (which of course it was, the point being that it DID) and finally when he claimed that tropical soils were basically suffering from specifically an aluminum surplus in the soil which made crops at the very least unprofitable, and demonstrating the difference between an aluminum resistant corn and an aluminum sensitive corn. It's typical of such studies to isolate one element and deal with only that element and then crow with glee that they've proven their point.

 

People have been working in these areas to help the indigenous people there to manage their soils better through other techniques than growing gmo corn with a good deal of success. You might want to watch the BBC series on GMO soybeans in Brazil to see what that's about. I can likely find the link if you're interested.

 

I think it's unfortunate when one person with (apparently) an axe to grind faces off with another with the opposite axe to grind as neither forwards knowledge a whole lot.

[mike777]

Onoway

 

 

what is your big really big main point?

 

 

 

I understand right wingers will disagree but what is your point>

-------------------

 

 

mY POINT has always been .....global warming...yes.....how urgent...I don't know...

[Al_U_Card]

a point worth consideration

 

0.3% climate consensus not 97.1%

MAJOR peer-reviewed paper by four senior researchers has exposed grave errors in an earlier paper in a new and unknown journal that had claimed a 97.1% scientific consensus that Man had caused at least half the 0.7 Cº global warming since 1950.

 

A tweet in President Obama’s name had assumed that the earlier, flawed paper, by John Cook and others, showed 97% endorsement of the notion that climate change is dangerous:

 

“Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” [Emphasis added]

The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.

 

The consensus Cook considered was the standard definition: that Man had caused most post-1950 warming. Even on this weaker definition the true consensus among published scientific papers is now demonstrated to be not 97.1%, as Cook had claimed, but only 0.3%.

 

Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.

 

This shock result comes scant weeks before the United Nations’ climate panel, the IPCC, issues its fifth five-yearly climate assessment, claiming “95% confidence” in the imagined – and, as the new paper shows, imaginary – consensus.

 

Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: a Rejoinder to ‘Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change’ decisively rejects suggestions by Cook and others that those who say few scientists explicitly support the supposedly near-unanimous climate consensus are misinforming and misleading the public.

 

Dr Legates said: “It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper claiming a 97% climate consensus when on the authors’ own analysis the true consensus was well below 1%.

 

“It is still more astonishing that the IPCC should claim 95% certainty about the climate consensus when so small a fraction of published papers explicitly endorse the consensus as the IPCC defines it.”

 

Dr Willie Soon, a distinguished solar physicist, quoted the late scientist-author Michael Crichton, who had said: “If it’s science, it isn’t consensus; if it’s consensus, it isn’t science.” He added: “There has been no global warming for almost 17 years. None of the ‘consensus’ computer models predicted that.”

 

Dr William Briggs, “Statistician to the Stars”, said: “In any survey such as Cook’s, it is essential to define the survey question very clearly. Yet Cook used three distinct definitions of climate consensus interchangeably. Also, he arbitrarily excluded about 8000 of the 12,000 papers in his sample on the unacceptable ground that they had expressed no opinion on the climate consensus. These artifices let him reach the unjustifiable conclusion that there was a 97.1% consensus when there was not.

 

“In fact, Cook’s paper provides the clearest available statistical evidence that there is scarcely any explicit support among scientists for the consensus that the IPCC, politicians, bureaucrats, academics and the media have so long and so falsely proclaimed. That was not the outcome Cook had hoped for, and it was not the outcome he had stated in his paper, but it was the outcome he had really found.”

 

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s imminent Fifth Assessment Report, who found the errors in Cook’s data, said: “It may be that more than 0.3% of climate scientists think Man caused at least half the warming since 1950. But only 0.3% of almost 12,000 published papers say so explicitly. Cook had not considered how many papers merely implied that. No doubt many scientists consider it possible, as we do, that Man caused some warming, but not most warming.

 

“It is unscientific to assume that most scientists believe what they have neither said nor written.”

 

Contact David Legates at Udel.edu for more information

 

SkepticalScience...the gift that keeps on giving. :blink:

[Al_U_Card]

Dr. Vandana Shiva ( http://www.myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=Shiva ) started another seed saving project with the express purpose of saving seed which may otherwise be lost forever, and that seed most definitely will not be available to Monsanto and their ilk.

 

Meanwhile, the UN has even got into the discussion and called for a drastic change in agricultural practices for a number of reasons, but diversity is high on the list:

http://permaculturenews.org/2013/09/18/paradigm-shift-urgently-needed-in-agriculture-un-agencies-call-for-an-end-to-industrial-agriculture-food-system/

 

An interesting presentation of a paper on diversity and the effect that climate policy could have on it. Lots of issues and "unintended" consequences as per the usual governmental approach to anything.

 

Adapt or mitigate, that is the question.

 

http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/presentation1.jpg?w=750&h=579

[Al_U_Card]

AR5 is out and confidence (limits) rules!

 

Despite not as much warming as previously expected.

 

Despite observationally-based calculations of a lower climate sensitivity to [CO2].

 

Despite the continued failure of the models to provide similarity to real-world situations (hot-spot etc.).

 

The IPCC is even more sure that the warming climate (well, the "stalled" warming due to deep-ocean heat sequestration...) is even more confidently due to.....not greenhouse gases friends....but the filthy, evil, reprehensible....HUMAN INFLUENCE!

 

Oh the prevarication....it burns!!!

[Daniel1960]

AR5 is out and confidence (limits) rules!

 

Despite not as much warming as previously expected.

 

Despite observationally-based calculations of a lower climate sensitivity to [CO2].

 

Despite the continued failure of the models to provide similarity to real-world situations (hot-spot etc.).

 

The IPCC is even more sure that the warming climate (well, the "stalled" warming due to deep-ocean heat sequestration...) is even more confidently due to.....not greenhouse gases friends....but the filthy, evil, reprehensible....HUMAN INFLUENCE!

 

Oh the prevarication....it burns!!!

 

The report is out, and the fanfare is well, less than grandiose. We are more confident that the world has warmed over the past half century. That is good. The rest of us have known that for years. Mankind is responsible for more than half. Rather vague, but acceptable. Exactly how are we responsible? Does not say. But mankind contributing 0.3C to a 0.5C temperature rise is a bit of a yarner. The IPCC has finally admitted what most scientists have been saying about the recent warming hiatus. Hopefully, those in denial will drop their pretenses. The report has lowered the lower range on most predictions, without changing the upper, although I feel they should have lowered them further. The ranges are so wide, you could plow a bulldozer through them without scraping either end. Almost makes them meaningless. It would similar to a pollster saying that Obama will win 51% of the vote, give or take 10%. Expected, both sides are picking their favorite parts to show that their views are still correct. With any luck, this will be the final report, and we can go on to doing meaningful work.

[Al_U_Card]

The most interesting aspect is the "sausage-making" that went on to transform this latest report into the SPM (Summary for Policy Makers). Lots of commentary on that and how the science says one thing but the alarmists want to stick to their agenda...

 

I came across this while looking at recent Arctic ice recovery and some work on sea-level increase.

 

http://icons.wunderground.com/data/climate_images/sealevel200-2000.png

 

Hardly unprecedented, I would say.

[Al_U_Card]

Meanwhile, back at the range (of just what "unprecedented" things COULD happen depending on the refurbished definitions of abrupt and irreversible)

 

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/source/ipcc/5ar/graphs/table-12.4-v2.gif

[Al_U_Card]

As hurricane errr.... tropical storm errrr....tropical depression Karen dissipates in dry air and wind shear in the Gulf of Mexico, one can only speculate on the beneficent effects of a warming world... :lol:

 

Meanwhile, the IPCC is doing backflips, trying to justify the billions that it has caused to be spent AND the trillions in damages that it has caused governments to inflict on their taxpayers.

 

We can only hope that the whole sorry mess will be defunded and disbanded.

[Daniel1960]

Articles like the following have appeared bemoaning the fate of the Pacific walrus:

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/melting_sea_ice_displaced_these_10000_walruses/

 

Unfortunately, the articles misses the most important point in that this indicates a rebound of the walruses after years of hunting and expanded sea ice. For whatever reason, an increase in the walrus population poses a problem. This appears similar to the increase in the polar bear population.

[Al_U_Card]

More perspective

 

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BU2mZNvCIAIhTcB.png

 

Slowdown? Perhaps recycling would be more appropriate...

[PassedOut]

By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past, Scientists Say

 

If greenhouse emissions continue their steady escalation, temperatures across most of the earth will rise to levels with no recorded precedent by the middle of this century, researchers said Wednesday.

 

Scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa calculated that by 2047, plus or minus five years, the average temperatures in each year will be hotter across most parts of the planet than they had been at those locations in any year between 1860 and 2005.

 

To put it another way, for a given geographic area, “the coldest year in the future will be warmer than the hottest year in the past,” said Camilo Mora, the lead scientist on a paper published in the journal Nature.

Seems like a good idea to hold onto property far from the equator.

[Daniel1960]

By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past, Scientists Say

 

 

Seems like a good idea to hold onto property far from the equator.

 

While this sounds rather ominous, it is not different from that observed today. Starting from their temperature enddate of 2005, they are looking 42 years into the future. Going back 42 years from today (1971), the warmest years (CRU data) were 1944 (+0.121C), 1941 (+0.078), 1878 (+0.028), and 1940 (0.020). The last year cooler than the hottest year from 1880-1972 was 1993 (+0.106), so the past 20 years have all been hotter than the hottest year prior, and that is half the future timeframe stated in the article. Even starting from the previous warmest year, 1944, this was achieved after 50 years. So, it would not take much warming to accomplish this feat.

[Al_U_Card]

ESPECIALLY if they keep adjusting the past temperature record down and raising current values (Hadcrut3 vs. Hadcrut4 etc.)

 

Besides, they will have to make do with alarm from nothing since nothing that is happening is alarming... :blink:

[Al_U_Card]

By 2047, Coldest Years May Be Warmer Than Hottest in Past, Scientists Say

 

 

Seems like a good idea to hold onto property far from the equator.

Of course, some real science and understanding of how actual measurements and observations can go a long way.

 

The "pause" that refreshes...