Climate change

[Al_U_Card]

Einstein only required one piece of contrary evidence to refute his theories. He was a mensch.

 

My opinion is mine alone and if you have seen any of the previously posted data and measurements (as well as commentary and analysis by peer-reviewed scientists) on this or the other threads on Global Warming that were derailed, it is clear that something is seriously amiss in the "settled" science.

 

I will posit that vitriolic, beneath contempt and detestable demonstrations of incoherent invective do, in fact, actually demonstrate the true nature of the warmist believer.

 

Your opinion, of me or any of the information that I have posted would interest me if it is backed up by facts and figures. No problem there, as there are scads of data out there that refute the alarmist agenda, yet little that supports the impending "crisis" that has taken a break for the last 15 years or so...

 

No need for strawman arguments however (beginning of the universe....)or for personalized attack, as that just besmirches your approach. What is one-sided, so far, has been the settled science meme and the refusal to actually debate and just do things like Peter Gleick did. Sad but true.

[Al_U_Card]

An interesting turn of events.

 

Distancing themselves perhaps?

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.

“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,”

[mike777]

Sorry Al but you are unclear

 

 

how do you define global warming and how do you measure it?

 

When you do measure it what measure did you find?

[PassedOut]

Indeed for the most part I like Richard's style.

The thing is, Richard has in the past shown several of Al's posts to be completely wrong. Unlike Richard, Al never admits it, never even addresses it. Instead, he tosses out something else equally wrong. After a few iterations, no one wants to waste time looking into the latest claim to see what is wrong with that one. Reminds me of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

[Al_U_Card]

Sorry Al but you are unclear

 

 

how do you define global warming and how do you measure it?

 

When you do measure it what measure did you find?

 

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming = The attribution (95% confidence limit) that the addition of 100+ ppm of atmospheric [CO2] creates a temperature increase that is not only beyond the natural variation of global climate cycles but that it has demonstrable deleterious effect.

 

Anything else is a scam.

[Al_U_Card]

The thing is, Richard has in the past shown several of Al's posts to be completely wrong. Unlike Richard, Al never admits it, never even addresses it. Instead, he tosses out something else equally wrong. After a few iterations, no one wants to waste time looking into the latest claim to see what is wrong with that one. Reminds me of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

 

A shallow dive but answerable. Not being the Pope (also concerning infallibility) I never claimed to be correct without exception. This is why I post after your continuing presentations of warmist pronouncements to show why they are that and only that. Just look at all of your posts and what immediately follows them. Factual refutation of the premise presented.

 

p.s. I only answer people who are not beneath my contempt.

[Cascade]

The thing is, Richard has in the past shown several of Al's posts to be completely wrong. Unlike Richard, Al never admits it, never even addresses it. Instead, he tosses out something else equally wrong. After a few iterations, no one wants to waste time looking into the latest claim to see what is wrong with that one. Reminds me of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

 

Maybe this is correct. I admit I have not followed this thread closely from the start but I have read quite a lot equally from both sides and followed references and links without commenting. Maybe it is not correct. Largely it is irrelevant though. As Al said a few posts back "Einstein only required one piece of contrary evidence to refute his theories." The skeptic is in a much stronger position than the advocate of a theory. The skeptic only has to find one piece of contrary evidence to debunk a theory. Sure there may still be some truth left but the theory needs to be reformulated and retested. The advocate needs to prove everything about the theory is true. It is right for the skeptic to ask repeatedly "what about this... ", "... and this ..." indeed the advocate doing proper science should have already asked all or at least many of those questions. The theory needs to be open to scrutiny. In my admittedly limited view this theory is not open to the sort of scrutiny that science should be. Sure there is peer review. However that process is essentially closed. In other forums we are repeatedly told the science is settled mostly without the scientists fronting up and explaining their theory or the questions that others have about it. Honestly I cannot remember ever hearing directly from a climate scientist on this subject except when I have sought out to listen to or read the arguments or perhaps short pieces (sound bites) on news shows. On the other hand many times I have heard of these scientists declining to participate in debate sometimes even after initially agreeing to the debate. Further I read reports of them hiding their data, manipulating it in non-standard and non-transparent ways, just a few posts back hiding their communications when they are supposed to be transparent, other email scandals of deception etc etc. Yes you can say that skeptics do some of these things but its not the same. If a skeptic is proved wrong that does not prove the theory. Every skeptic needs to be proved wrong. Many times the scientists and AGW protagonists do not even attempt to prove the skeptic wrong they just engage ad hominems. These don't further the case for AGW.

 

As an illustration yesterday a friend posted a link in another forum showing only 24 out of 13950 peer-reviewed articles reject global warming. This is supposed to make the skeptical position look bad. However it is largely flawed:

 

1. Who cares how many as Einstein said if one, yes only one proves an obstacle then the theory is flawed

 

2. The statistic does not say that the other 13950 peer-reviewed articles prove global warming. It could be that fewer than 24 have that position and most are neutral. Indeed what I found was that when I did the exact same search in the published methodology that many were of the form "If ... then ..." where the if clause was something assumed and not proven about global warming.

 

3. In a few minutes of searching I found an article that criticized global warming, remember my search was the exact same one that the author (Powell) claimed he did. The article by Khandekar (2010) concluded

 

"The undue importance by the IPCC and its adherents to summer weather extremes has distorted the reality of climate change

which continues to exhibit a range of weather extremes that cannot be explained by a simple greenhouse gas-induced warming hypothesis. A careful analysis of all weather extremes will allow us to determine if indeed the earth’s climate is following a certain “warm” path or otherwise. The IPCC and by extension the climate science community have overemphasized the issue of mean temperature trend and its calculation, while paying little attention to weather extremes and their linkages to climate change."

 

This seems skeptical of global warming to me and yet apparently did not meet the criteria required by Powell to 'reject global warming'. I searched fewer than 100 of the nearly 14000 articles. My search was cursory and less thorough than what Powell claimed. I searched in 2010 chosen at random, he searched a longer time frame that included 2010. This just suggests that the popular statistics that he formulated were misleading.

 

Further Khandekar's own commentary of this paper states that the empirical evidence "seem to contradicts the AGW hypothesis".

 

"The increasing occurrences of cold weather extremes seem to contradict the AGW hypothesis and IPCC 2007 Climate Change Documents which project ‘increasing Warm weather extremes in future’."

 

If Khandekar's view is not skeptical one has to wonder what would meet Powell's criteria. Again one counter example is enough to debunk Powell's graph and statistic. I wrote to Powell and suggested that his statistics and graph would be a textbook example of a misleading use of statistics. My opinion is that Powell's graph and statistic was designed to present a biased view and as such was propaganda not statistics. These actions do not enhance the case for AGW even if it does happen to be true. And my experience is that this is far from an isolated case from warmists.

 

I would love to know the truth but I don't feel that I will ever been in a position to do so whilst the warmists (especially scientists) hide from debate, flood the market with misleading statistics and engage in ad hominem attacks.

 

Until I see appropriate proof and appropriate actions I remain skeptical. To me that is the only proper scientific position to have.

[Al_U_Card]

Matt Ridley takes the renewable energy movement in Britain to task:

 

 

Not one to avoid controversy, Matt has addressed the Royal Society as keynote speaker.

 

 

Yet, for all the furore wind power generates, the bald truth is that it is an irrelevance. Its contribution to cutting carbon dioxide emissions is at best a statistical asterisk. As Professor Gordon Hughes, of the University of Edinburgh, has shown, if wind ever does make a significant contribution to energy capacity its intermittent nature would require a wasteful "spinning" back-up of gas-fired power stations, so it would still make no difference to emissions or might make them worse.

And wind is not the worst of the renewables. By far the largest source of renewable energy is bio-energy (ie vegetable matter turned into solid, liquid or gaseous fuel), which is expanding fast and doing less than nothing to cut emissions. Even the big three green multinationals - Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF - have come out against biofuels.

Last year, despite a decade of subsidies and the desecration of quite a bit of countryside, 96.8 per cent of our total energy still came from fossil fuels and nuclear. The rest came from bio-energy (2.6 per cent), leaving a derisory 0.6 per cent from wind, hydro, solar, wave, tidal and geothermal put together. It is therefore a little-known fact that 77 per cent of Britain's renewable energy involves burning something. (All these figures for 2011 are from the Department of Energy).

And there is nothing carbon-saving about bio-energy. Take wood, a more carbon-rich fuel even than coal. As the environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel, of Rockefeller University in New York, has shown, when you burn wood more carbon dioxide is emitted than from coal for the same amount of energy.

[PassedOut]

The skeptic is in a much stronger position than the advocate of a theory. The skeptic only has to find one piece of contrary evidence to debunk a theory. Sure there may still be some truth left but the theory needs to be reformulated and retested.

Sure. And whenever a theory proves inadequate, scientists modify it accordingly. The mechanism for that is built into science.

 

We have a local fellow who believes strongly that the government (on behalf of the UN) is systematically poisoning us with chemtrails and is responsible for the observed warming of the earth: Monitoring the Planned Poisoning of Humanity. No evidence convinces him to modify his belief.

 

The web has lots of videos like this:

 

The death dumps, otherwise known as chemical trails, are being dropped and sprayed throughout the United States and England, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Europe. I have personally seen them not only in the United States, but in Mexico and in Canada. Birds are dying around the world. Fish are dying by the hundreds of thousands around the world. This is genocide. This is poison. This is murder by the United Nations.

My local chemtrails guy also believes that "9/11 was an inside job," that "global warming is a complete hoax," and that "evolution is a satanic plot hatched by atheistic scientists." In fact, nothing that scientists say can sway him because he has convinced himself that scientists are themselves the problem.

 

I have known a number of scientists over the years and am confident that the ones I know are not the problem. Of course there are many scientists that I don't know, but when they make mistakes, other scientists quickly (or eventually) jump all over them. I definitely put a lot of stock in what scientists say and none at all in what my chemtrails guy says.

 

Even if more information comes in that alters what scientists now predict -- and there will be some -- I'm too conservative to advocate the huge, unnecessary gamble of pouring more and more billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere of the planet we live on. Arguments that the US will be more prosperous as a result of global warming and, therefore, will be in position to dole out charity to those wiped out by it, don't strike me as either moral or realistic.

[lalldonn]

As an illustration yesterday a friend posted a link in another forum showing only 24 out of 13950 peer-reviewed articles reject global warming. This is supposed to make the skeptical position look bad. However it is largely flawed:

 

1. Who cares how many as Einstein said if one, yes only one proves an obstacle then the theory is flawed

That seems a bizarre criticism to me. If someone told me that 24 out of 13950 peer-reviewed articles reject a theory, my first thought wouldn't be "There is a reasonable chance the theory is wrong." It would be some version of "I guess in any group of 13950 you will find at least 24 who are dumb/biased/gullible/took an unlucky sample for their data (take your pick). In fact I'm surprised there aren't more." It's not like some mathematical theorem in which you can just find at least one number as a counter example (all odd numbers are prime - untrue because 9 is not prime). This is an analysis by people, in which some small amount of people will always be bound to reach the wrong conclusion simply because people are imperfect.

[Al_U_Card]

Bank of America and supporting the climate change movement...to the tune of 50 billion.

 

We all know how altruistic banks are...

 

 

The bank's new initiative includes lending, equipment finance, capital markets and advisory activity and carbon finance, as well as advice and investment help.

 

Bank of America will focus on promoting energy efficiency; renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydropower; lower-carbon transportation like electric and hybrid vehicles; and water and waste treatment and disposal initiatives.

[Al_U_Card]

Sure. And whenever a theory proves inadequate, scientists modify it accordingly. The mechanism for that is built into science.

 

We have a local fellow who believes strongly that the government (on behalf of the UN) is systematically poisoning us with chemtrails and is responsible for the observed warming of the earth: Monitoring the Planned Poisoning of Humanity

 

The web has lots of videos like this:

 

Another strawman argument. Please address the issue.

[Al_U_Card]

That seems a bizarre criticism to me. If someone told me that 24 out of 13950 peer-reviewed articles reject a theory, my first thought wouldn't be "There is a reasonable chance the theory is wrong." It would be some version of "I guess in any group of 13950 you will find at least 24 who are dumb/biased/gullible/took an unlucky sample for their data (take your pick). In fact I'm surprised there aren't more." It's not like some mathematical theorem in which you can just find at least one number as a counter example (all odd numbers are prime - untrue because 9 is not prime). This is an analysis by people, in which some small amount of people will always be bound to reach the wrong conclusion simply because people are imperfect.

 

Consider the funds available for and to the warmist position. About 1000 to 1 or so over funds destined for challenging the orthodoxy.

Remember too that "data" that consists of model runs, adjusted to see how an artificial system can be perturbed with specific forcings, realistic or not, are often the content of many "worse than we thought" studies. Cui bono.

[lalldonn]

I knew I would regret posting in this thread. It had simply become far more interesting with Richard and Wayne's recent participation. I'll go back to silently laughing.

[hrothgar]

Potentially here we have some AGW protagonists engaging in the sort of dishonest behaviour that Richard was finding so vile. Lets see what reaction we get to this dishonest behaviour.

 

I'd like to reserve the right to see the outcome of the actual congressional hearings before making any kind of comment.

 

The right wing is constantly manufacturing new ridiculous scandals. I find it useful to wait until there is some actual balanced coverage rather getting worked up over the "The Liberal War on Transparency" or whatever the cause d'jour of the Moonie Times might be...

[Cascade]

That seems a bizarre criticism to me. If someone told me that 24 out of 13950 peer-reviewed articles reject a theory, my first thought wouldn't be "There is a reasonable chance the theory is wrong." It would be some version of "I guess in any group of 13950 you will find at least 24 who are dumb/biased/gullible/took an unlucky sample for their data (take your pick). In fact I'm surprised there aren't more." It's not like some mathematical theorem in which you can just find at least one number as a counter example (all odd numbers are prime - untrue because 9 is not prime). This is an analysis by people, in which some small amount of people will always be bound to reach the wrong conclusion simply because people are imperfect.

 

I think you miss the point. I too am surprised there are not more. But while they highlight the 24 saying the reject the theory they don't say that the others support or rather prove the theory which is more like the standard they impose on the 24. It could be for example that 10 only prove the theory and the huge majority is neutral - they just don't say. And my can through 100 or so articles selected exactly as Powell told me to select them showed that at least on my superficial look the vast majority just assumed the theory and made some other observation that followed from it rather than proving the theory. I imagine with similar methodology I could easily come up with a statistic that 24/13950 or similar supported AGW based on some strict criteria that I had imposed. But obviously that would not be very useful. This isn't 13950 articles that are measuring the global earth temperature by different methods.

 

On your criticism, to me one counter example doesn't mean one data set. Obviously we would expect considerable variation in data analysis. This is weather data after all. It is something much stronger than that. Nevertheless I only need one valid criticism to debunk a flawed theory. The rigour of a theory comes from standing up to the scrutiny of those who criticize it. Therefore even if there are only 24 papers that reject the notion the theory is not valid until the criticism in all 24 of those papers have been answered.

[kenberg]

I confess I do not follow this thread in detail but a couple of points:

 

24 out of 13000+ : Whatever Einstein said, I doubt he meant that each and every skeptic must be convinced. There are still people who think the Earth is 5000 years old. But we can perhaps agree that scientific truth is not a matter of majority vote.

 

Yes/No: Wait. Isn't it something of a continuum? Some (not many I think) may contend that global warming is not occurring at all. Other might say that yes, it is getting warmer but the temperature goes up and down over time, no big deal. Still others contend that yes the temperature is going up, but this is not due to human activity. Perhaps it will keep going up, perhaps not, but it's not due to us and we can't stop it. Others would say yes, it's going up and we have a role in this, but it's no big deal, we just have to adapt. Then you move on to others who think it is a very big deal, and there is a whole scale here. If I am indeed describing this correctly, then a yes/no vote is not really the issue.

 

But should we act?: Even here there is a continuum. Some actions are more substantial than others. But at least some things here have a yes/no flavor to them.

 

How to decide?: Well, not by me reading all of the papers. Or even all of this thread. It's getting longer than the e-mails from Kelley to Allen. I guess the central question is: Do we have faith in the scientific community? It is natural for there to be strong views. Some no doubt have blind spots, one way or the other. But I would hope that there is a rather large group of scientists who are not so ego involved in this that they are immune to evidence. If a large number of very prominent scientists who, unlike myself have the necessary scientific background, review the various studies and come largely to agreement then I would hope that those in a position to decide on action, or inaction, would pay attention. That does not mean that we must have unanimity. It does not even mean that the large group that agrees on the general state of affairs has to be in complete agreement on details. Skeptics should not be shut out, not at all. But if a very large number of highly capable scientists largely agree that we must act and act soon, I would suggest we do it.

[Al_U_Card]

28-gate continues to provide grist for the mill.

 

yet more of the same but, yes Ken, it will have to be faith in something other than alarmism

 

The seminar’s co-organisers, Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith, were later able to boast that one of the first fruits of their good work was the BBC’s Climate Chaos season, a stream of unashamedly propagandist documentaries, led off with two fronted by Sir David Attenborough which featured a string of ludicrous scare stories.

This was merely the prelude to hundreds of further examples, up to the present day, of how the BBC has abandoned any pretence at honest or properly researched reporting – all in accord with the party line agreed on at that seminar, the nature of which the BBC was so desperate to keep secret.

As with the Savile scandal, there seems no end to the further embarrassments the BBC cover-up has been bringing to light. Harrabin and Smith ran a small outfit set up to lobby the media on global warming, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, WWF and the University of East Anglia (home of the Climategate emails scandal).

Stranger still, their co-sponsor of the BBC seminar was another lobbying group calling itself the International Broadcasting Trust, which in the past seven years has received £520,000 from the Department for International Development’s foreign-aid budget for “media research” – which includes lobbying the BBC on issues such as climate change. This body in turn is part of a “coalition” known as the Broadcasting Trust, and one of its partners in that is the Media Trust – of which the BBC is a “corporate member”.

So our climate-change obsessed governments have given public money to bodies to lobby the BBC, including one closely associated with a body that the BBC itself belongs to – all to ensure that the BBC promotes government policy.

[blackshoe]

"lobbying is media research" is doublespeak.

[Al_U_Card]

"lobbying is media research" is doublespeak.

 

Not surprising considering the two-faced nature of the warmist advocates... :angry:

[billw55]

Science is often unable to completely explain things. For example, the beginning of the universe is still a subject with many open questions. Would you suggest that it therefore never happened?

As I understand, that is in fact one theory, something about the space time geometry and terms like "finite but unbounded". Even philosophically, why is it in principle less absurd to believe that the universe can have infinite duration into the future, than into the past? Interesting stuff, although not applicable to GW theory.

 

Put 10 AIs on TV in debate against sensible scientists and I think the results will be more positive for those proposing such measures as the carbon tax than 10 years of IPCC data and models.

This is one common problem: scientists aren't really good at live television debates. The debates they are used to play by certain rules, such as burden of proof , factual data, etc, that are largely ignored in this setting in favor of emotional persuasion in all its forms. Most scientists do not excel in such a debate.

 

 

[Al_U_Card]

An interesting and sensible discussion among climate scientists concerning the severity and attribution aspects of the Arctic sea-ice melt.

 

Not agenda, just science and opinion based on informed analysis

 

 

The Arctic sea ice extent has been decreasing steadily for the past three decades. Scientists discuss the potential causes of this decrease.

 

Below you find the introductory article that is written by the Climate Dialogue editorial staff. The guest posts of the invited scientists have been written in response to this introductory article.

 

We have chosen to place the different articles in so called custom fields. By doing this we can keep the articles all together on one url.

 

For practical reasons expert comments (comments by the invited scientists) are also separated from public comments. Anyone can comment. You need to subscribe once or use your own WordPress account. Public comments should be polite and on-topic and are moderated in advance.

 

We hope you will enjoy this new platform.

 

Climate Dialogue editorial staff

Rob van Dorland, KNMI

Bart Strengers, PBL

Marcel Crok, freelance science writer

[PassedOut]

Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided

 

The 4°C scenarios are devastating: the inundation of coastal cities; increasing risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutrition rates; many dry regions becoming dryer, wet regions wetter; unprecedented heat waves in many regions, especially in the tropics; substantially exacerbated water scarcity in many regions; increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones; and irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.

 

And most importantly, a 4°C world is so different from the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs.

 

The lack of action on climate change not only risks putting prosperity out of reach of millions of people in the developing world, it threatens to roll back decades of sustainable development.

 

It is clear that we already know a great deal about the threat before us. The science is unequivocal that humans are the cause of global warming, and major changes are already being observed: global mean warming is 0.8°C above pre industrial levels; oceans have warmed by 0.09°C since the 1950s and are acidifying; sea levels rose by about 20 cm since pre-industrial times and are now rising at 3.2 cm per decade; an exceptional number of extreme heat waves occurred in the last decade; major food crop growing areas are increasingly affected by drought.

 

Despite the global community’s best intentions to keep global warming below a 2°C increase above pre-industrial climate, higher levels of warming are increasingly likely. Scientists agree that countries’ current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change emission pledges and commitments would most likely result in 3.5 to 4°C warming. And the longer those pledges remain unmet, the more likely a 4°C world becomes.

This is not a reasonable risk to take, even if one expects the brunt to be taken by future generations.

[Daniel1960]

An interesting and sensible discussion among climate scientists concerning the severity and attribution aspects of the Arctic sea-ice melt.

 

Not agenda, just science and opinion based on informed analysis

 

 

The Arctic sea ice extent has been decreasing steadily for the past three decades. Scientists discuss the potential causes of this decrease.

 

Below you find the introductory article that is written by the Climate Dialogue editorial staff. The guest posts of the invited scientists have been written in response to this introductory article.

 

We have chosen to place the different articles in so called custom fields. By doing this we can keep the articles all together on one url.

 

For practical reasons expert comments (comments by the invited scientists) are also separated from public comments. Anyone can comment. You need to subscribe once or use your own WordPress account. Public comments should be polite and on-topic and are moderated in advance.

 

We hope you will enjoy this new platform.

 

Climate Dialogue editorial staff

Rob van Dorland, KNMI

Bart Strengers, PBL

Marcel Crok, freelance science writer

I have contributing to this site, and find it contains a wealth of information and commentary, not found on the websites that cater to either extreme of the global warming debate.

[cherdano]

As an illustration yesterday a friend posted a link in another forum showing only 24 out of 13950 peer-reviewed articles reject global warming. This is supposed to make the skeptical position look bad. However it is largely flawed:

 

1. Who cares how many as Einstein said if one, yes only one proves an obstacle then the theory is flawed.

This is not how climate science works.

 

Climate scientists make models trying to predict future climate. Any such model is a huge simplification. They have to use their judgment to determine which simplifications still yield valid results. This judgment isn't completely subjective - it can be tuned based on past data, the results can be compared with other models, etc. But there is still enough judgment involved that a smart well-trained scientist with idiotic judgment may get wrong results. His paper showing "If we make the following assumptions, an increase in CO2 emissions will result in global cooling." could still be worth publishing, because, well maybe its true that a model with these simplifications predicts global cooling. This isn't physics where you can make hundreds of experiments - there i s only one climate, and experiments on its reaction to large scale greenhouse emissions cannot be run very frequently.

 

Your argument is a bit like saying "10 weather forecasters predict rain tomorrow, one predicts sun, so we can't conclude anything". Or "10,000 doctors claim I should quit smoking, but 20 think it increases my health, so there is nothing I can do until about my health until I have understood why each of these 20 doctors is wrong".