The Great Global Cooling/Warming Thread

[Slybacon]

Have you Turbo charged your fingers WD.... F'n hell mate you can type!

More input on topic later.....................

[Slybacon]

CHANGSHA, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- More than 10,000 people spent their three-day New Year's Day holiday clearing ice-coated highways in central China's Hunan Province where thousands of passengers were still stranded due to slowed traffic.

The work continued Tuesday as nearly 2,500 people in some 660 vehicles were stranded along the Kunming-Shanghai expressway in Hunan, after a cold spell brought snow to the region since Jan. 1.

As of Tuesday morning, 20 sections of four inter-province expressways and ten provincial highways were still closed due to thick ice on the road, said He Dingguang with the provincial highway management administration.

"We have drawn on the experience in 2008 to organize people to clean up the icy roads and prepare emergency supplies," said He.

In the winter of 2008 after unprecedented snow and ice coated south China roads, about 100,000 people were stranded on the Beijing-Zhuhai expressway in Hunan alone.

Weather forecasters predict the low temperature will persist through till Jan. 12 and a new round of snow will hit the province on Jan. 8.

Many icy highways in southwest China's Guizhou Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have reopened as the relief work kicks in, but the local highway authorities are still on guard.

Nandan County in Guangxi has prepared instant noodles, bottled water, down coats, and quilts, altogether worth 2.7 million yuan (408,700 U.S. dollars).

Four ambulances and 200 policemen are on call for emergencies in the county as well.

Icy rain and a deep freeze wreaked havoc in southern China in 2008, stalling traffic, damaging power facilities, and disrupting people's lives.

Freezing rain in southern China led to the evacuation of more than 22 thousand people with hundreds of homes damaged. Abnormally cold weather resulted in the first days of the New Year in freezing rain in Guizhou Province, located in the southwestern part of China.

According to preliminary estimates, more than half a million people have been affected by the inclement weather. Thousands of people are forced to wait out the bad weather in their cars on ice-glazed roads in the region. Only on Tuesday evening traffic was partially restored.

According to meteorological forecasts, cold weather will persist in the province for another five days.

(SCWXA) - A storm system has brought snow to the Santa Clarita Valley where it is actually accumulating.

"Deep inside the Winter Weather Advisory issued this morning, I mentioned the chance of low elevation snowfall and it would make it through the Highway 14 area to the valley zones", said Southern California Weather Authority Meteorologist Kevin Martin. "Areas in Downtown Los Angeles will not see the snow though."

WINTER MAY BE COLDEST IN 1000 YEARS

30th December 2010

By Steve Hughes

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/16957...-in-1000-years/

Whiteout: South London was covered by a blanket of snow on December 19 and forecasters are now warning that this winter's 'mini ice age' could last until mid-March

Deep freeze: With the average temperature across the country being -0.8C in December, this fountain in Nottinghamshire was frozen solid on Boxing Day

BRITAIN’S winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years.

Latest figures reveal that the average temperature since December 1 has been a perishing -1C.

That makes it the second coldest since records began in 1659.

The chilliest on record was 1683/84, when the average was -1.17C and the River Thames froze over for two months.

But with January and February to come, experts believe we could suffer the most freezing cold winter in the last 1,000 years.

The Met Office’s Charlie Powell said: “It’s rare to have cold this prolonged, with temperatures falling incredibly low.

“Temperatures will be down again by Sunday, with nights below freezing and daytimes below average at 3C to 5C. Our outlook forecast to January 26 shows temperatures 2C or 3C below average, frost and ice likely and the highest chance of snow or sleet over the northern half of the UK.”

Although official weather records only go back to 1659, weather experts said the centuries from 1100 to 1500, dubbed the “Medieval warm period”, would not have produced winters as cold as today.

So 2011 could end up being the coldest winter of the last millennium.

Brian Gaze, of The Weather Outlook, said: “It’s very unusual to have a sub-zero month.”

[email protected]

Edited January 9, 2011 by Slybacon

[bℓσωηG]

Eco-Fascists Call For Prison Cities

http://www.prisonplanet.com/eco-fascists-call-for-prison-cities.html

[WoodDragon]

Oh, and about Morano's list, it is another example of where some reading would help. Greenfyre has had a bit of a look, but anyone who has half a clue about Mark Morano's history would know well enough to take anything he says with a truck-load of salt.

Seriously, Synchro, check out the background to some of this stuff. I know it sounds credible at first blush (that's the whole point of it!), but it just doesn't stack up.

[Slybacon]

Global COOLING Anyone?

Monday, December 20, 2010

http://tvpclub.blogspot.com/2010/12/sunspo...new-dalton.html

Nearly TWO YEARS ago (January 2009 and December 2009) I predicted that the now current Sunspot Cycle #24 would peak at 80. I am now revising that down to a peak of only 60, based on a great posting by David Archibald at Watts Up With That, the most widely read and respected climate website in the world.

We may be in for a new Dalton Minimum similar to the period from 1790 to 1830 when temperatures were unusually low. Indeed, we may come to welcome the cushion of warmth, perhaps 0.1 to 0.2ºC, that may be due to recent human activities. (The IPCC Climate "Team" claims 0.6 to 0.8ºC rise mostly due to human-caused Global Warming, but that is most likely an over-estimate.)

As the graphic shows, at the time I made the 80 prediction, NASA was predicting a peak of 104, having revised it downwards a couple of times from their original, wildly high estimate of a 156 peak. The most recent NASA projection is 90.

Description of the Graphic

[Click graphic for larger version] The base for the graphic is from Archibald's posting (Figure 9). The BROWN curve plots actual data from Solar Cycles #3, #4, #5, and #6 (late 1700's through early 1800's). The GREEN curve plots the corresponding actual data for Solar Cycles #22, #23, and the first part of #24, (1990 through December 2010)

I have added the annotations in RED and GRAY, indicating NASA's incredible string of highly incorrect predictions from 2006 to most recent (red hoops) and my original January 2009 prediction and my revised prediction (gray hoops).

Historical Correlation of the Dalton and Maunder Minima with Sunspot Activity

The very cold temperatures from 1790 through 1830 are usually explained as being due to increased volcanic activity, including the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815 that caused the Year Without a Summer, 1816. However, low solar activity, with peak Sunspot counts of only 45 for Sunspot Cycles #5 and #6, is most likely the major cause. Even lower Sunspot counts (below 10) occurred during the earlier Maunder Minimum (1650 to 1700). These periods of Global Cooling were marked by crop failures that are inimicable to human life.

Explanation of the Effect of Sunspot Counts on Climate

The NY Times interviewed Henrik Svensmark last year about his theory of Sunspots and Climate:

One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

Conclusion

Before we destroy industrial economies with extreme measures to reduce carbon emissions, it will be a good idea to consider how that might not only not be effective in reducing human-caused Global Warming, but how a bit of carbon-warming could be welcome during the coming period of Global Cooling. By the way, I am still in favor of an across-the-board Carbon Tax because the steady rise in CO2 levels is unprecedented and that is the most intelligent way to utilize our market-based economic system to speed the development of renewable energy sources. However, that effort has a multi-decade time horizon and is no emergency.

[WoodDragon]

Slybacon.

I think I've said elsewhere that heavy snows and rains are a consequence of warming, and not a contradiction of it. As more water evaporates with warming, more vapour occurs in the atmosphere. However, the residence time of water molecules in the atmosphere is only several days, so they precipitate out again. When moisture from the tropics and the temperate regions reaches the higher latitudes it falls as snow, and heaps of it. The irony of global warming is that until temperatures are so warm that it is actually difficult to reach freezing point very often, there will be more big snow dumps in the cooler parts of the globe than there are now.

Remember too that the warmer overall global temperatures can act to move cold air bodies away from the North Pole. This is recognised in the science of the Arctic oscillation, discussed

. [Edit: Please watch it - it's a good explanation of the heavy snowing that you've pictured!]

Blowng.

I'm the last person to support prison cities, if the claim is credible. However, whatever a group of numpties might think is a good idea, the science itself stands. It's a strawman fallacy to tie that stuff to the climatology of global warming, and I don't know of a single scientist who has ever said anything remotely supporting prison cities.

Whatever society (not science) decides that it wants to do about CO2 emissions and warming, prison cities are not the choice of any sensible person.

Edited January 9, 2011 by WoodDragon

[Slybacon]

^^^^ Ahhh so it the warming making all this ice. I see now

[WoodDragon]

Slybacon.

Your graphic at #30 actually shows why we should be very concerned about the warming that is in evidence, in spite of the fact that we are experiencing a solar minimum!

The comparison of present conditions with the Dalton minimum sunspot level is spurious, because there was no appreciable industrial quantites of CO2 being released in the period 1777 to 1817. Apples and oranges - but this is the sort of poor science that Watts promotes.

and learn.

Everyone, stop for a moment and think about what you're posting. Popping crap at me is all well and good, but it's all been dismantled if one looks for the material.

[dundee]

[WoodDragon]

Slybacon.

Ahhh so it the warming making all this ice. I see now

Dude, watch the video, and watch it again if you have to. I know that some of this stuff is counter-intuitive, but heck, so is relativity, and yet it works to make our GPSs tell us where we are to within centimetres.

I have to go now, but if you're still struggling with understanding why warming can cause more snow, I'll try to explain it again in detail later.

[qualia]

i don't understand why people would argue for not trying to reduce pollution?

which is what you're saying when saying nothing needs to be done,,

[bℓσωηG]

Unfortunately WoodDragon , sensible people and sensible scientists are not running the show ...

Global climate science is impossible to predict with certainty, there may actually be a global climate crisis .

It is also easy for some to assume it's just another money making scam on carbon trade , with the added benefit of further restriction of the population, taxing them harshly while the corporations are left to continue polluting us, our air, water, soil and food.... If theye so serious about helping , let them ''the global elite'',do something about it not just dump the blame on ordinary people just trying to survive.

[WoodDragon]

Global climate science is impossible to predict with certainty

Actually, that's not really true.

Climate physics can predict climate quite well given the boundary conditions that operate. What is dificult to predict is weather, which is chaotic in nature at the scale of days to years because one is attempting to predict from initial values.

Climate is, by definition, the trend in weather over time such that initial value problems are subsumed by boundary conditions. It usually requires several decades of weather data to establish climatic characteristics, but once this is done it is entirely possible to predict what the future climate of a location will be. This is why we have the USDA agricultural zones that are used around the world, and it's why the Corroborree has a "Climate or location" field in each of our member summaries.

The thing is, weather is not fractal. It is very predictable at short scales (if it is sunny now, it is more likely to be sunny in the next 15 minutes, rather than pissing down rain), and it is predictable over the decadal/century scale at which we refer to it as 'climate'. It's the in-between scale that is awkward, because the initial values used in short term characterisation no longer apply, and the boundary conditions that operate at long scales don't inform well for intermediate-scale variations.

So, whilst science can't say that Cairns will have rain on a particular day 6 months in advance, it can say that it will have a "tropical climate, with generally hot and humid summers and milder dryer winters", with an average annual rainfall of just under 2000 mm on an average 154 days, and it can predict that "[t]he majority of Cairn's rainfall occurs during summer between January and March".

Similarly, if we change the boundary conditions of the planet we are able to model, with a good degree of accuracy, what will happen to the global climate. So, if we add a 'greenhouse' gas, or reduce polar albedo by melting the ice, we know that the atmosphere will be warmer, and that the increased retention of heat energy will result in more extreme weather events such as storms, floods, and droughts.

The warming over second half of the twentieth century was first predicted back in the 1800s, using exactly the same physics that we use to put humans and complex instruments into space, that we use to communicate right around the world, and that operates in the computer that you're using right now. If you want to get specific, our understanding of CO2 radiation physics that applies to climatology is exactly the same physics that we use in CO2 lasers, and no-one doubts that they work...

It's an enticing idea that science doesn't have the facility to understand what will happen if we alter the boundary paramteres of the atmosphere. The truth, though, is that science does have this facility, and confusing it with the issue of weather is to confabulate two different concepts.

On the matter of money, sure - there are a lot of people looking to make a buck or a million from climate change. That's human nature, and it's why we have lawyers who chase ambulances and used car salesmen who sell lemons. I am not one to condone scams, and there are scams in the climate area just as there are elsewhere (don't start me on them!), but if a price is put on the true cost to the planet of carbon pollution, well, I for one am quite happy to pay it. Why wouldn't I be? If I break a vase in a shop I have to pay for it, and if I let my bonfire escape and burn my neighbour's orchard, I'd have to pay for that too. If my activities are damaging the environment, I'm happy to pay my share of the damage, even if it is miniscule at a personal level, and as long as it is commensurate with my share of the damage.

User pays. What's wrong with that?

And as far as the "ordinary people" go, we in the West are not "ordinary". We are members of the wealthiest 20% of the planet, and we are putting far more than our fair share of carbon into the atmosphere. If someone can justify why we should have this privilege without paying for it, then I'm all ears. Of course, I firmly believe that the wealthiest of us should be at the front of the queue to fork out, instead of hiding from their responsibility as they so often do...

Edited January 9, 2011 by WoodDragon

[Slybacon]

WD...... Do you believe in god? or do we need proof?

[synchromesh]

Selected Highlights of the Updated 2010 Report featuring over 1,000 international scientists dissenting from man-made climate fears:

“We're not scientifically there yet. Despite what you may have heard in the media, there is nothing like a consensus of scientific opinion that this is a problem. Because there is natural variability in the weather, you cannot statistically know for another 150 years.” -- UN IPCC's Tom Tripp, a member of the UN IPCC since 2004 and listed as one of the lead authors and serves as the Director of Technical Services & Development for U.S. Magnesium.

“Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!” -- NASA Scientist Dr. Leonard Weinstein who worked 35 years at the NASA Langley Research Center and finished his career there as a Senior Research Scientist. Weinstein is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace.

“Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself -- Climate is beyond our power to control...Earth doesn't care about governments or their legislation. You can't find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.” -- Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, and was formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

“In essence, the jig is up. The whole thing is a fraud. And even the fraudsters that fudged data are admitting to temperature history that they used to say didn't happen...Perhaps what has doomed the Climategate fraudsters the most was their brazenness in fudging the data” -- Dr. Christopher J. Kobus, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, specializes in alternative energy, thermal transport phenomena, two-phase flow and fluid and thermal energy systems.

“The energy mankind generates is so small compared to that overall energy budget that it simply cannot affect the climate...The planet's climate is doing its own thing, but we cannot pinpoint significant trends in changes to it because it dates back millions of years while the study of it began only recently. We are children of the Sun; we simply lack data to draw the proper conclusions.” -- Russian Scientist Dr. Anatoly Levitin, the head of geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Hundreds of billion dollars have been wasted with the attempt of imposing a Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory that is not supported by physical world evidences...AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks.” -- Brazilian Geologist Geraldo Luís Lino, who authored the 2009 book “The Global Warming Fraud: How a Natural Phenomenon Was Converted into a False World Emergency.”

"I am an environmentalist,” but “I must disagree with Mr. Gore” -- Chemistry Professor Dr. Mary Mumper, the chair of the Chemistry Department at Frostburg State University in Maryland, during her presentation titled “Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming, the Skeptic's View.”

“I am ashamed of what climate science has become today.” The science “community is relying on an inadequate model to blame CO2 and innocent citizens for global warming in order to generate funding and to gain attention. If this is what 'science' has become today, I, as a scientist, am ashamed.” -- Research Chemist William C. Gilbert published a study in August 2010 in the journal Energy & Environment titled “The thermodynamic relationship between surface temperature and water vapor concentration in the troposphere” and he published a paper in August 2009 titled “Atmospheric Temperature Distribution in a Gravitational Field.” [Update December 9, 2010]

“The dysfunctional nature of the climate sciences is nothing short of a scandal. Science is too important for our society to be misused in the way it has been done within the Climate Science Community.” The global warming establishment “has actively suppressed research results presented by researchers that do not comply with the dogma of the IPCC.” -- Swedish Climatologist Dr. Hans Jelbring, of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at Stockholm University. [Updated December 9, 2010. Corrects Jelbring's quote.]

“Those who call themselves 'Green planet advocates' should be arguing for a CO2- fertilized atmosphere, not a CO2-starved atmosphere...Diversity increases when the planet was warm AND had high CO2 atmospheric content...Al Gore's personal behavior supports a green planet - his enormous energy use with his 4 homes and his bizjet, does indeed help make the planet greener. Kudos, Al for doing your part to save the planet.” -- Renowned engineer and aviation/space pioneer Burt Rutan, who was named "100 most influential people in the world, 2004" by Time Magazine and Newsweek called him "the man responsible for more innovations in modern aviation than any living engineer."

“Global warming is the central tenet of this new belief system in much the same way that the Resurrection is the central tenet of Christianity. Al Gore has taken a role corresponding to that of St Paul in proselytizing the new faith...My skepticism about AGW arises from the fact that as a physicist who has worked in closely related areas, I know how poor the underlying science is. In effect the scientific method has been abandoned in this field.” -- Atmospheric Physicist Dr. John Reid, who worked with Australia's CSIRO's (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) Division of Oceanography and worked in surface gravity waves (ocean waves) research.

“We maintain there is no reason whatsoever to worry about man-made climate change, because there is no evidence whatsoever that such a thing is happening.” -- Greek Earth scientists Antonis Christofides and Nikos Mamassis of the National Technical University of Athens' Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering.

“There are clear cycles during which both temperature and salinity rise and fall. These cycles are related to solar activity...In my opinion and that of our institute, the problems connected to the current stage of warming are being exaggerated. What we are dealing with is not a global warming of the atmosphere or of the oceans.” -- Biologist Pavel Makarevich of the Biological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Because the greenhouse effect is temporary rather than permanent, predictions of significant global warming in the 21st century by IPCC are not supported by the data.” -- Hebrew University Professor Dr. Michael Beenstock an honorary fellow with Institute for Economic Affairs who published a study challenging man-made global warming claims titled “Polynomial Cointegration Tests of the Anthropogenic Theory of Global Warming.”

“The whole idea of anthropogenic global warming is completely unfounded. There appears to have been money gained by Michael Mann, Al Gore and UN IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri as a consequence of this deception, so it's fraud.” -- South African astrophysicist Hilton Ratcliffe, a member of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and a Fellow of the British Institute of Physics.

http://climatedepot.com/a/9035/SPECIAL-REPORT-More-Than-1000-International-Scientists-Dissent-Over-ManMade-Global-Warming-Claims--Challenge-UN-IPCC--Gore

[WoodDragon]

Synchro,

seriously bro', read carefully Greenfyre's initial take-down of Morano's piece. Seriously mate - I mean it! It'll take time, and it's still only an initial look at Morano, but a lot of what you've referred to has already been discredited.

Listing so many quotes doesn't automatically invalidate any of the science, because Morano is not actually tackling any point. Look carefully at the selection, and in fact look carefully at the whole document. You'll notice that there's not actually any serious science in it - as Greenfyre observes, "utterly absent is any trace of of actual science or any reference to it except in the most abstract and meaningless ways".

The scattergun method of listing this sort of quoting without carefully putting forward the context, a favourite technique of Morano and his mates, is hedging toward the fallacy of plurium interrogationum, and it only serves to tie up an argument without actually getting to the meat of the disagreement. If you have a sincere problem with the actual science of global warming, rather than a shivery fear that's the result of the words of people such as Morano, please detail it to me and I will try to address the specifics. Trying to address the quotations in a list like the one above is like trying to put out burning garbage bins along a street whilst the school on the other side of the fence is blanketed in smoke.

Neverthless, I'll try to give the potted version of my knowledge of each quote, with the proviso that you shouldn't believe me any more than you should believe the quote in isolation - you need to go back to each and explore them in detailed context.

1) Tom Tripp is a metallurgist, who:

stopped short of commenting on climate modeling used by the IPCC, saying that "I don’t have the" expertise,

and who misrepresents his status with the IPCC.

2) Leonard Weinstein is a former engineer who has produced no credible work that actually refutes any of the basis of climatology. Greenfyre has more.

3) Robert B. Laughlin? Oh, Morano must mean this Robert B. Laughlin, who earned a lot of scorn from scientists by publishing his nihilist views without actually producing any climatological science at all.

4) Christopher J. Kobus. Mechanical engineer (climate change deniers are notorious for being engineers or geologists - can you figure out why?). Note how his quote does not actually contain, nor does it refer to, any, you know, science?

5) Anatoly Levitin. Oh god, his quote is just so stupid that I can't believe that even Morano put it on a list. No, actually, I can... The physics of climatology is not about how much energy humans release, but about how much energy-absorbing 'greenhouse' gas we release. The CO2 that we release absorbs and re-radiates back to earth far, far more energy than we actually directly release from fossil fuel. That energy comes from that stonking great ball of thermonuclear-fusing fire of hydrogen in the sky - the sun. We don't need to release energy ourselves to warm the planet, all we need to do is to put a big blankie around it and the sun will do the job for us. This nonsense is so priceless that any science graduate should laugh, if they didn't cry first at the sheer idiocy of it.

6) Geraldo Luís Lino. Geologist. (Heh, I should do astrology...) One of a fat cadre of people who are threatened by the fact that their profession is implicitly tied with the extraction of the materials that are causing the current warming, and in this case someone who makes quite some money, thank-you-very-much, selling books reassuring people that the science is a fraud - although he produces no useful science to back up any of his claims.

7) Mary Mumper. Who? Sorry, never heard of her, but her quote is a huge non sequitur. It matters not if she considers herself an "environmentalist" (so do the Japanese whalers - truly!), or if she "disagrees with Al Gore". What she needs to do is to produce some science - either her own original work, or a credible analysis and summary of someone else's. No sign of that.

8) William C. Gilbert. Well, he's ashamed, but what else is he? I can't find anything remotely climatological by him in the scientific literature, and the fact that he published in Energy and Environment (see my earlier post) instantly tells me that he is either incompetent, or completely clueless, or speaking crap, or all three. Seriously, E&E is no better than Woman's Day for scientific cred.

9) Hans Jelbring. Another 'who'? Apparently he has a PhD thesis about climate and wind, which was a hopeful start, but as it's only 111 pages I started to grow a little suspicious - that's a bit limp, but as it's not available for reading, I'll let that one go to the keeper. Next clue is that he's another star of E&E (a paper titled "Greenhouse Effect as a Function of Atmospheric Mass") - uh oh... And guess what, it seems that he's one of the curious folk who doesn't actually understand gas physical chemistry or thermodynamics, when he really should. From his E&E paper:

A sufficiently dense atmosphere will also dampen temperature variations related to daily and seasonal variations of irradiation.

This is true if there are 'greenhouse' gases (water, CO2, methane, etc) in the atmosphere. Otherwise, if the theoretical atmosphere simply contains gases such as nitrogen or oxygen, incoming and outgoing radiation will go their merry ways in spite of any atmosphere, as these gases are completely transparent to infrared radiation. No difference in temperature variation, in spite of any non-'greenhouse' gas variation - not unless the atmosphere is so bloody dense that it actually absorbs heat kinetically from the planet's surface. And that's a different kettle of fish.

Another of his quotes:

The surface temperature of Venus... has little to do with the fact that 95% of its atmosphere consists of the “greenhouse” gas carbon dioxide.

is so hilariously, screamingly wrong that I am amazed that even Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the editor (and another geologist ), allowed this to go to print. The thermodynamics is too complicated to go into here, but there are sources for discussion if anyone is really interested. Actually, thinking about it a little, I recall that Science of Doom had something to say about this a while back, and sure enough... Just search for "Jelbring" on the page.

10) (Fuck, double digits, and I'm still going) So, Burt Rutan. Engineer. Right. Experience in climatology? None. Reading of the science? None, apparently. Claim?

Those who call themselves 'Green planet advocates' should be arguing for a CO2- fertilized atmosphere, not a CO2-starved atmosphere...Diversity increases when the planet was warm AND had high CO2 atmospheric content

.

Ah, he's one of those simplistic twits...

Yeah, some plants grow much better in a high-CO2 atmosphere. That's trivially understood. What he doesn't say is that many crop species are outcompeted by weeds, when grown in a high CO2 atmosphere, and that their nutritional content decreases to more than offset the productivity gain. And pest species that eat crops chew through them so much more too, because they can't gather efficiently the nutrients they need. Oh, and with a high CO2 content comes a higher temperature and thus a higher soil evaporation rate, so if you're not in an area that benefits from regular increased rain, you're screwed. Oh, and many soil symbionts are screwed by higher CO2, as are many plants in natural plant association, so those parts of the global ecosystem can go belly-up too. A lot of this is covered in the second half of

.

Combine the effects of increasing CO2 and increasing temperature on ecosystems, and you'll FUBAR the current state of the biosphere before any decent substitute for the productivity that we rely upon reappears. We certainly won't be here to see it, and it's unlikely that future humans would either, for centuries or even for millenia.

[Edit:

Another thing that is worth pointing out is that until human activity went berserk with the Industrial Revolution, biodiversity was greater in the current epoch that it ever was at any time in the Earth's history. And this biodiversity was achieved with an atmospheric CO2 concentration of around 280 ppm - plants did not "starve" from CO2 "scarcity" during this time, and they are indeed exquisitely adapted to such levels.]

Oh, and have I mentioned ocean acidification yet?

Fuck this for a joke. I'm just torturing myself

I've wasted an hour and a half of my life picking at the lame-arsed claims of people who don't present any real, factual science to the public, and that's an hour an a half that I'll never get back. What pisses me off even more is that I just found a review similar to mine - my only consolation is that I lasted for one more than he did.

One of the things that characterises most of the people in Morano's list is that they have very different reasons for saying that there is no global warming - to the point that they have contradictory and often mutually exclusive views. Some people say that there is no greenhouse effect; others say that there is but that it is negligible, and others say that CO2 in not a greenhouse gas. Some of the people on the list claim that CO2 in the atmosphere is not increasing, or that it comes from volcanoes (humans produce more than a hundred times more CO2). Some of them say that there is no temperature increase, and others say that there is but that it's not caused by humans. And it just goes on and on and on: it's a dog's breakfast of denial, and nowhere in there is there actually any real science to support their case. And in petitions such as this some otherwise-credible people are in fact misrepresented, or were asked trick questions in order to get the answer that the lobby group wanted so that they could use their names on a list.

The one thing that climate change denialists have in common is that they know how to sound all sciency to lay people, but they never actually engage in any real science, and certainly not in exchanges with real, professional climate scientists. There are only a handful - literally - who do, and almost to a man these people admit that there is a greenhouse effect and that the planet is warming: their take (or the public face of it, at least) is that it is not warming as quickly as physics, instrumental data, and empirical evidence indicate. And sadly, most of these blokes have obvious ties to the fossil fuel industry or similar lobbies.

Syncro, I'll say again - if you have a specific point of science where you believe that the issue of anthropogenic global warming falls down, elucidate it here and I'll try to tell you what the best understanding on the area is. But first, please - I'm begging you - take the stuff from the denialists with a huge dollop of salt, and think about trying to track down some of the science yourself. Googling won't bring it up immediately because denialists spend more time on the web spreading their gear than do scientists, but if you start with Google Scholar, or even go down to your local uni library or to the Physics/Physical Chemistry departments, you'll be able to find folk who would be happy to talk to you.

It breaks my heart that otherwise clued-in dudes don't seem to have their minds open about this. Look past the screaming headlines of the denialists, and don't pay any attention to the overly-hyped stories from the media either. Learn the science, the real science. The truth is out there, and it's not nearly as conspiratorial as you might think, and sadly the end result if we get it wrong will be worse for future generations than just about all of the hyperbole that the media currently bath us in - it'll just be a slow and inexorable path there, and fortunately (or otherwise) none of us will be around to see the worst of it...

Edited January 9, 2011 by WoodDragon

[WoodDragon]

WD...... Do you believe in god? or do we need proof?

1) Does it matter if I do or do not?

2) Why would we?

and

3) what is the relationship of the metaphysical question of god, with the physics of global warming?

[nabraxas]

Basically we're not helping with what we're currently doing so we have to change our ways permanently regardless of the percentage we're affecting things right now.

seems to be the bottom line.

edit: BTW thanks WD for going to so much effort.

Edited January 9, 2011 by nabraxas

[Slybacon]

1) Does it matter if I do or do not?

2) Why would we?

and

3) what is the relationship of the metaphysical question of god, with the physics of global warming?

 

I was just wondering. As you seem like the Dr Carl of The Corroboree. No offense intended.

On the topic of this thread. I dont sit on either side of the fence but Im of the opinion that the responsibility of climate change should rest in with the system the people in power have put in place. At this stage all that seems to be happening is science is being used to put blame on the people who as blowng said are just trying to survive.

Most of the world is thinking more about how they will get there next meal not how much CO'2 they are emitting.

3. What is causing climate change? <<<there seems to be an error on this question.

greenhouse gases from human activity 30.9% 1,602

solar variation 33.1% 1,718

natural processes 75.8% 3,934

There is no climate change. 6.2% 320

answered question 5,188

skipped question 2

 

6. What is "climate sensitivity"?

the degree to which global temperature responds to concentrations of greenhouse gases 32.6% 1,692

an unknown variable that climate scientists still do not understand 52.2% 2,708

the phrase on which the fate of human civilization hangs 0.6% 30

all of the above 14.6% 758

answered question 5,188

skipped question 2

 

7. Which policy options do you support?

a carbon tax 15.1% 781

cap and trade (a price on carbon via an overall limit on emissions paired with some form of market for such pollution permits) 8.5% 441

increased government funding of energy-related technology research and development 38.8% 2,015

cap and dividend, in which the proceeds of auctioning pollution permits are rebated to taxpayers 6.6% 343

keeping science out of the political process 65.1% 3,375

answered question 5,188

skipped question 2

 

http://hockeyschtick...think-ipcc.html

PS- I apologise that i still haven't watched your link WD. When I get home from work today. By the way, you'd probably find it interesting that I work in the solar industry, so this is a pretty hot topic at work.....

Edited January 9, 2011 by Slybacon

[hutch]

WoodDragon, you seem to be a very passionate supporter of carbon induced global warming. Could you follow this link for me and give this pdf file an explanation. Please don't browse the document and just disregard what it has to say, please read it. If the science is so settled and so sure of it's self then why do they need to cheat, lie and deceive.

http://jonova.s3.ama...-corruption.pdf

I am awaiting your explanation with interest.

Hutch

[hutch]

Synchro,

It breaks my heart that otherwise clued-in dudes don't seem to have their minds open about this. Look past the screaming headlines of the denialists, and don't pay any attention to the overly-hyped stories from the media either. Learn the science, the real science. The truth is out there, and it's not nearly as conspiratorial as you might think, and sadly the end result if we get it wrong will be worse for future generations than just about all of the hyperbole that the media currently bath us in - it'll just be a slow and inexorable path there, and fortunately (or otherwise) none of us will be around to see the worst of it...

 

I think it has been and is still the other way around...I remember people looking down their collective noses at me because I am a "denier"..That's the tool that the group have used at the IPPC to make anyone with a different view seem deluded and dangerous. Seems it is starting to turn the other way....Even Bill Shorten has softened his line considerably as he starts to make his move with the knife into Gillards back. You say you are sick of doing this. but so are we.....You have fallen for the biggest con in the history of this planet.

Respect

Hutch

[WoodDragon]

I was just wondering. As you seem like the Dr Carl of The Corroboree. No offense intended.

None taken, Bacon!

I just wasn't sure if I was missing something!

For what it's worth, I don't believe in the literal version of God as a boy-dude with a beard and a cranky disposition in response to sinners. That whole concept is so flawed with human inconsistencies and anthropomorphic projections that it's silly. On the question of 'divinity', I fit into a 'panentheist' category, but the extent to which such divinity constitutes the existence of supernatural life/awareness after death is really the meat of the lifetimes of many thinkers and philosophers... I doubt that there is actually an discrete, achieveable answer, and the existence of "evidence"s probably as contentious as the conclusions themselves!

I suppose that's one reason why religions have manage to hold on to mandates that stretch for millenia...

[Slybacon]

I think essentially at there roots both science and religion are trying to achieve the same thing. That being said, they are both the tools of the elite to keep control of their power.... Be careful how you use science to make an idea a reality, you may just become part of that reality.... ;)

It is nice to have both wings represented tho

[WoodDragon]

Hutch.

JoNova (aka Joanne Codling) is a notorious distorter of climate science. I swore off ever visiting her blog again, for the simple reason that it is populated with fossil fuel industry shills like Richard Courtney, and pseudoscientific-theory believers like geologist Louis Hissink, who subscribes to the idea that the sun is a ball of burning iron, and that the atmosphere is actually heated by electric currents that permeate the universe.

I think it has been and is still the other way around...

Actually, it's not.

Basically, science is about testing ideas, and about analysing the data. It is certainly done by humans, and it is thus vulnerable to human frailties, but these are held in check by the laws of physics and by the laws of logic. In the processes of peer-review and of replication, flaws in thinking or procedure are weeded out, and information that is consistent with the laws of physics and of logic are retained, to the best capacity of humans to be objective.

Climate change denialism passes none of the tests for objectivity or for scientific rationalism. If you have a point to contradict this, let's put it on the table and carefully dissect it. Pick one claim of denialism, and let's test it. I've listed a few questions at #25 that I use to try to discover where any particular denialist's rejection of the science occurs, but I can rephrase them here if you like.

1) Do you accept that gases with polar bonds are able to absorb certain frequencies of electromagentic radiation, and subsequently reradiate them in random directions?

2) Do you accept that when such absorption is of infrared radiation originating from that reflected from the surface of the earth, that the random re-radiation results in the planet's surface/lower atmosphere warming?

3) Do you accept that CO2 is such a radiation-absorbing/re-emitting gas?

4) If "yes" to the previous question, what do you understand the sensitivity of warming to be, per doubling of the concentration of pre-industrial CO2?

5) Do you accept that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing?

6) Do you accept that humans are responsible for the current increasing of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?

7) Do you accept that there is much independent instrumental evidence that the planet has been warming over the last century?

8) Do you accept that there is much phenological, ecological, and hydrological evidence that the planet has been warming over the last century?

9) Given the most robustly defensible determinations of climate sensitivity to CO2, does the current observed warming fit with our understanding of orbitally-driven warming? Does it fit with our understanding of the sun's level of activity in the past century? Does it fit with our understanding of 'greenhouse' gas physics?

If you yourself deny the conclusion of climate science with respect to the warming of the planet, indicate the point in this list of questions at which you believe the science fails. We can then pick it apart, and decide whether it is the scientists or the denialists who have a better grasp of the relevant facts, analyses, and knowledge. We'll see where the con actually is, and who it is that has fallen for it.

As for Codling's promotion of that pdf, did you know that it's author, Dave Evans, is her partner? Dave Evans himself is rather less qualified to contradict climatological experts that he might pretend...

Quite frankly, it's beyond a waste of time to rehash so many of the canards that Evans recycles, as they have been dealt with thousands of times elsewhere. If you really want to know how Evans' piece stacks up, visit Skeptical Science and UTFSE, because all of the shit that Evans has produced is debunked there.

I'll make one point though. His reference to Watts SurfaceStations project is nonsense. The US Bureau of Meteorology already compensates for compromised stations, and for the urban heat island effect, and this was well and truly demonstrated when Menne et al 2010 demonstrated that by taking out the stations that Watts thought would cause a false warming signal in the US temperature record and leaving only the "best" stations, there is actually more warming than has been reported!!!

Dude, there certainly are people who have been suckered, but it isn't on the science side of the issue. Watts has been completely discredited, and the fact that Evans uses Watts as a source for 'information' says much about Evans. In fact, if anyone is prepared to waste enough hours of their life doing so, the rest of Evans' material can be similarly discredited.

I'm just pissed off that I wasted 4.3 mb downloading that shit of a pdf in the first place, and half an hour of my life, that I won't get back, on this post.

[Slybacon]

but I can rephrase them here if you like.

1) Do you accept that gases with polar bonds are able to absorb certain frequencies of electromagentic radiation, and subsequently reradiate them in random directions?

Yes

2) Do you accept that when such absorption is of infrared radiation originating from that reflected from the surface of the earth, that the random re-radiation results in the planet's surface/lower atmosphere warming?

Yes

3) Do you accept that CO2 is such a radiation-absorbing/re-emitting gas?

Yes

4) If "yes" to the previous question, what do you understand the sensitivity of warming to be, per doubling of the concentration of pre-industrial CO2?

I do not believe there is currently any accurate way of determining this information. I believe there are alot of factors involved in the increase in CO2 pre post industrial rev. I believe this information is mainly derived through Ice core samples and I accept CO2 has increased, but I also believe there are too many factors contributing to temperature increase and the cause cannot rest on the industrial revolution alone.

5) Do you accept that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing?

Yes , see above

6) Do you accept that humans are responsible for the current increasing of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?

Yes , see above

7) Do you accept that there is much independent instrumental evidence that the planet has been warming over the last century?

Yes, but as stated above, I don't think this increase rests on our shoulders

8) Do you accept that there is much phenological, ecological, and hydrological evidence that the planet has been warming over the last century?

See above

9) Given the most robustly defensible determinations of climate sensitivity to CO2, does the current observed warming fit with our understanding of orbitally-driven warming? Does it fit with our understanding of the sun's level of activity in the past century? Does it fit with our understanding of 'greenhouse' gas physics?

Too many factors involved to accurately ascertain the evidence required to claim it is created mainly by humans.