# Arguing that Global Warming exists



## Brian G Turner (Sep 5, 2007)

I used to read New Scientist every week in the late 1990's.

All through that time, climate scientists were warning that observational evidence suggested that not only had humanity adversely impact climate conditions, but that those climate conditions would adversely impact 
humanity. 

It was science, pure and simple, with the motive of measuring current observations against past records and future predictions.

Trouble is, the root of the observation was based in heavy industry contributing heavily to Global Warming. The oil industry particularly.

As the observations mounted up, so it became political.

The trouble is, the political issue was this - the warning entailed that industrial activity be curtailed, modified, or else compensated for.

That meant that we either face the threat of Global Warming responsibly - or else those interested parties should debunk the whole issue.

And now we're in the ridiculous situation where climate scientists are being debunked as either leftist troublemakers, or else even in the pocket of some mysterious multinational company.

Do people realise that the biggest shares on the London stock exchange belong overwhelmingly to oil companies? In fact, companies such as BP are so huge that their entire market value dwarfs most of the rest of the FTSE 100 companies _together_?

And that's just in Britain.

Point is, the weird argument coming from anti-Global Warming campaigners is that oil companies are our friends. We need them. And anything that says those big ol' sweet and fluffy oil companies are bad must be evil rubbish distributed by anarchists.

So now we're in a propaganda war, with science being used as a tool against science.

Anyone else here remember reading about how in the 1950's tobacco companies set up false studies and released scientific papers "proving" that tobacco wasn't harmful?

After all, you can statistically "prove" that cigarettes don't give people cancer - just that people prone to cancer are more likely to smoke. I mean, seriously, all those Type A personalities...

I think we're seeing the exact same obfuscation from heavy industries here, trying to exonerate themselves in the fact of continuing pressure.

As someone who watched the developments before the politics really kicked in, I can honestly say that the whole anti-Global Warming charade disgusts me.

Sure, the anti-Global Warming campaigners can put forward some pretty convincing sounding arguments. Trouble is, it's the same method I read from pro-Creationism ridiculing science. And it takes a really good understanding of the subject to counter the baseless attacks on real science.

Most of us were probably taught that evolution probably explains the diversification of species to some degree, and in accepting that as fact, it's easier to see innate problems in Creationist rants against evolutionary theory.

Climatology, though, has no such advantage - and so the arguments against can really weigh against our knowledge of the subject much more easily.

Maybe one day we'll be able to treat science as science.

In the meantime, there are plenty of people who seem to be graduating out of the same kind of school that says Global Warming is a conspiracy, evolution a fraud, and cigarettes are good for you.

I'm just bloody glad I never went there.

2c.


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## mosaix (Sep 6, 2007)

Good post Brian.

I think oil companies know that the writing is on the wall, just as tobacco companies did over lung cancer in the 1950's. They're fighting a rear-guard action as best they can and reaping in the profits whilst the going remains good.

The evidence continues to mount, however. It's going to be a tough, dirty, fight with a lot of casualties.


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## Curt Chiarelli (Sep 6, 2007)

Absolutely correct guys. 

However, to look at the positive side (and no one will _ever_ accuse me of being a Pollyanna!), even though these entities have thrown the vast weight of their political and financial power into suppressing this information and perverting political poilcy to accomodate their bottomlines, we _have_ made progress in not only informing the public, but also forcing our governments to do something about the problem.

Although it's infuriating to know that some portions of the populace still buy into the oil cartel's propaganda, the tide is beginning to turn. Let's hope that it's not too late for our species.


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## tangaloomababe (Sep 6, 2007)

To young to remember the 50's tobacco issues, but it has been now proven that smoking is not good for you, its what killed my dad. He died from emphasemia from years of smoking, he realised it to but it was to late for him.

Oil companies are reaping what they can before we all go down, literally through rising sea levels.  Hey it won't affect them, so why should they worry about global warming, they make a fortune from it, why bite the hand that feeds you so to speak.

Curt I wish I had your optimism but I don't see to many changes taking place yet!


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## Curt Chiarelli (Sep 6, 2007)

Hey, someone just called me an optimist! I guess there's a first time for everything! 

Well, getting the wheels of progress going and reversing this situtaion is going to be agonizingly slow - too slow for my tastes, that's for sure. And those thugs running the oil companies (and ruining our world in the process) are going to fight us tooth and nail all the way. 

We have to keep up the pressure and let them know that the people have their focus trained on them and will give no quarter. We've danced to their tune long enough - it's now time for some role reversal. 

I'm reminded of what stunning victories the Bolivian people achieved against the very powerful corporate interests who had privatized the rights to their drinking water._ I mean, they were charging the people usurious rates for a basic resource, a fundamental neccessity._ They took to the streets and won. This moment in history remains a wellspring of inspiration for me, showing how powerful we all are when we work together in a united front to wrest control of our future away from tyrants.


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## mosaix (Sep 6, 2007)

In my view next year is extremely important. We we very unlucky to have Bush in the White House at a time when global warming started to become an important issue. The new president and the next eight years are going to be crucial for all our futures. 

What we need now is leadership - let's hope we get it.


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## Allegra (Sep 6, 2007)

Excellent points, guys.


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## ray gower (Sep 6, 2007)

Oil companies do make a big fat soft target don't they?

And yes it is true that they do have a lot of political clout everywhere they don't own, but let us consider the people who gave them that clout... 

Hello... wake up... YOU! 

Along with the other 4 billion people that live on our little mud ball planet.

Everything you wear, eat, drink and touch is reliant on the oil industry, if not directly like an environmentalists imitation, 'Made in ROC' jeans and poly-cotton 'Ban the Bomb' tee-shirt, then indirectly because your organically grown strawberries have been flown in from Spain. We won't say anything about the drive to Tesco/Walmart to buy them.

I will not apologise for the oil companies, there are aspects of their business that do need regulation and control and I think the scientists are right about global warming, but then I believed them when they said North Sea oil would have run out by 1985 (prophesies doom often enough and you will be right eventually). But to condemn them out of hand for producing something essential, without consideration to why we have made it essential is at best two-faced.

The real problem is that the scientists have teamed up with environmentalists. The thing about environmentalists is they are devoid of any form of creative or logical thought and have an intellectual lexicon consisting of one word 'No'.

_*Want to build a power station?* 
“Hello Mr Green. You think there is a problem with global warming. Yes I am sure we can replace it with something sustainable. I'll build a wind plant instead.”
“Oh hello Mr Green, nice to see you again. As you can see the towers for your wind plant are arriving today... Ah. You think there is a problem with environmental impact?”

All made rather worse when I know that my local veggie chomping green activist has just had the latest 60” 200 Mega Watt home cinema installed._

Between them they are not offering me a practical alternative beyond going to bed when the sun goes down, hunting with a stone club, eating ferocious maneating squirrels and generally living the stone-age equivalent of the good life.

Now the government is getting involved and in the usual way, it is a potential revenue source. It is entirely up to me to reduce the 7.5 tonnes of CO2 they say I produce every year (already 2.5 lower than the average household of my size) to get to the efficiency they require (5 tonnes).
I do not live an extravagant life style either- I walk to work, go shopping once every 3-4 weeks, only heat the water I use, only the lounge and bathroom are ever heated and only then when I am in them, I can barely get in the loft for the insulation, put out all of a carrier bag full of rubbish per week, energy saving bulbs, nothing on stand by etc. 
To cut back to what they say I'm allowed to produce, I am getting close to stone clubs and squirrels again, except I think even grey ones are protected now.
I suppose I could cut out the decadent things like bathing and breathing?

So don't tell me there is a problem. Tell me what I can do about it?


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## dwndrgn (Sep 6, 2007)

It's not so much what you as an individual can do (though that is important too) it is what you do to ensure that others are doing their parts.  Don't patronise the store that refuses to buy local produce, spend your money at the retailers that do their part, recycle your used items, buy used items rather than new, reuse disposable items more than once, tell your local government and retailers what things are important to you, stop eating meat, eat foods grown and raised without pesticides and fewer fossil fuels burned in their growth, convince others, spread the word.

Here is a rather not fun article that relates to this discussion:
http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/185


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## ray gower (Sep 6, 2007)

Some of what Dwndrgn says almost makes sense, until you start thinking about it.
To consider a couple of claims:-

Recycle used items. Very good idea. But what happens to them?
60% of all iron reclaimed in Europe is thrown on a boat bound for China. Why?
Because they don't have any form of environmental controls, so burning the paint and tin off metal isn't a problem. All you have done is ship the problem on to somebody else. While a few ecological disasters in China may not be of direct or great concern to anybody in Florida, there are after all a lot Chinese people, it is unfortunate that we share the same planet. 

Buy used items rather than new and you inherit somebodyelses problem.
Take a refridgerator. By the time it is 10 years old only about 10% of the refridgerant is left in there. Not only is it not going to work, it is costing 10 times more to proving it.

You could of course buy the latest energy efficient appliance. But you have to be careful there too. Because they are all made in China, where they don't care, many of these 'Energy Efficient' items actually cause more environmental damage in their manufacture and disposal than their less 'Green' alternatives. Laptops are a classic example. There is more energy used in building a laptop than can be recovered against the higher power use of a desktop, and that is before you consider the battery, which is quite capable of destroying all life over a twenty mile area when it leaks into the water table.

Stop eating meat. What twaddle! 
Being a vegetarian is a personal thing and has no bearing what so ever on the environment.
In our petro-chemical-free future, cattle are going to be even more important part of the diet, if only because a sizable area of the land is only able to support animals, and the output from pesticide and fertilizer free farms, already about 30% lower than elsewhere, cannot be sustained without their by-products!
That said, in the West we throw away half the food we produce, the loss of a third of all production is possibly not a great loss. Just the diet becomes more monotonous. Elsewhere (Parts of Africa and extents of the old USSR) the population subsist on the equivalent of two packs of crisps per day because they can't grow enough. That is more a political logistics problem than environmental concern.

I'm sorry but you are going to have to do better than that?


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## dwndrgn (Sep 6, 2007)

ray gower said:


> Some of what Dwndrgn says almost makes sense, until you start thinking about it.
> To consider a couple of claims:-
> 
> Recycle used items. Very good idea. But what happens to them?
> ...


I'm not talking absolutes and I'm not saying that it is possible to recycle everything.  Recycle what you can, educate yourself as to what can be recycled and what cannot and/or should not.  If 60% of all reclained iron in Europe is sent to China (which sounds wrong to me, it seems like that would be the costliest option but I certainly don't know) then tell the people who do this not to.  Make sure they are aware of what they are doing and that the people in charge of them know what they are doing and so on.  Write to the paper, tell the civic leaders, get a group together.  



ray gower said:


> Buy used items rather than new and you inherit somebodyelses problem.
> Take a refridgerator. By the time it is 10 years old only about 10% of the refridgerant is left in there. Not only is it not going to work, it is costing 10 times more to proving it.


Obviously not all items are going to be this way.  Non chemical and non mechanical items are the ones that are reused best.  Furniture, clothes, props, art, etc.  This is stuff that should be reused.  



ray gower said:


> You could of course buy the latest energy efficient appliance. But you have to be careful there too. Because they are all made in China, where they don't care, many of these 'Energy Efficient' items actually cause more environmental damage in their manufacture and disposal than their less 'Green' alternatives. Laptops are a classic example. There is more energy used in building a laptop than can be recovered against the higher power use of a desktop, and that is before you consider the battery, which is quite capable of destroying all life over a twenty mile area when it leaks into the water table.


 This is why education is so important.  Know what you are buying, who makes it and how. 



ray gower said:


> Stop eating meat. What twaddle!
> Being a vegetarian is a personal thing and has no bearing what so ever on the environment.
> In our petro-chemical-free future, cattle are going to be even more important part of the diet, if only because a sizable area of the land is only able to support animals, and the output from pesticide and fertilizer free farms, already about 30% lower than elsewhere, cannot be sustained without their by-products!


Well, it may be twaddle to you but all of the information I've gleaned over the past year proves to me that today's meat farming methods including pesticides, water, mechanical labor, wastes etc. destroys more land and water reserves than paper factories.  Do a little research yourself and you may be surprised.  Vegetable farming is also damaging but not nearly so as meat farming.  Yes, vegetarianism is a personal thing - so is environmentalism, catholicism, any other ism.  Everything we do in this life is personal.



ray gower said:


> That said, in the West we throw away half the food we produce, the loss of a third of all production is possibly not a great loss. Just the diet becomes more monotonous. Elsewhere (Parts of Africa and extents of the old USSR) the population subsist on the equivalent of two packs of crisps per day because they can't grow enough. That is more a political logistics problem than environmental concern.
> 
> I'm sorry but you are going to have to do better than that?


I'm not sure what you question is here so I'll just leave it.


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## Ursa major (Sep 6, 2007)

Being a bit(!) of a cynic, I suspect that governments will decide that big oil is bad, and pay its owners vast sums of money in compensation for forcing them out of this business, just as the last few drops of oil dribble up to the surface.

But then, I'm not much of an optimist either.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 10, 2007)

ray gower said:


> Oil companies do make a big fat soft target don't they?



Would you suggest the same sympathy for tobacco companies?

It's not intended as a direct comparison - I just personally think it's a pointless opener.



ray gower said:


> And yes it is true that they do have a lot of political clout everywhere they don't own, but let us consider the people who gave them that clout...
> 
> Hello... wake up... YOU!



Well, we live in a society dependent on the industrial and production technologies available. As we can't use fusion power yet...




ray gower said:


> But to condemn them out of hand for producing something essential, without consideration to why we have made it essential is at best two-faced.



I don't think we're condemning oil companies, are we? I figure let's blame the politicians for representing their wallets, rather than their voters?




ray gower said:


> The real problem is that the scientists have teamed up with environmentalists. The thing about environmentalists is they are devoid of any form of creative or logical thought and have an intellectual lexicon consisting of one word 'No'.



I'd personally say that smacks of complete crap. 

Environmentalists who've helped raise the message that, you know, it's not all that great to piss in our own water then try clean it up - that filling the atmosphere with toxic gases is probably not the best idea - that wanton destruction of natural habitats, the world's ecosystems, and biodiveristy may harm us in the long-run - I'd say that's nothing to claim as intellectually base. The reverse, yes.

Some environmentalists I'm sure can be extreme - it wouldn't be difficult to define them as a caricature. But that's all it would be.


ray gower said:


> Now the government is getting involved and in the usual way, it is a potential revenue source. It is entirely up to me to reduce the 7.5 tonnes of CO2 they say I produce every year (already 2.5 lower than the average household of my size) to get to the efficiency they require (5 tonnes).



Funnily enough, this is the government's idea. It's not private business or individuals that are getting fat off environmentalism - but HM Revenues and Customs who instead have seen fit to introduce new layers of tax, as they the exchequer seems to love to see them do.




ray gower said:


> So don't tell me there is a problem. Tell me what I can do about it?



Funnily enough, that's what environmentalism does. Acid rain exists! So let's cut down on the sulphur dioxide emissions. Global Warming exists! So let's cut down on the massive CO2 emissions...

Oops. Hit a political nerve, there.

Noticed the APACS group announce a commitment to protecting the environment against global warming, without any actual commitment. Just a load more polluting hot air...

2c.


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## ray gower (Sep 11, 2007)

I said:


> Would you suggest the same sympathy for tobacco companies?


As a smoker, I accept the risks and benefits smoking offers, just as anybody who smokes should. So yes I would.
But I have never forced my consumption on those who do not smoke.



I said:


> I don't think we're condemning oil companies, are we? I figure let's blame the politicians for representing their wallets, rather than their voters?


You are referring to one particular politician and he heads the government of the largest oil consumer market in the world?
Or perhaps you would include President Putin or Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, as the largest oil producers in the world?
Or Chairman Mao, whose, for all his nasty tendencies, only sin, like Prime Minister Singh, is to try and improve stability and bring something akin to prosperity to his people and for them that means the environment sits somewhere behind the back seat?
I personally can't stand Prime Minister Brown. Leading a supposedly socialist leftward leaning party I struggle to think of anybody more right wing short of Cpl  A Hitler, but I have to give him his due, he is not in any oil pocket.



I said:


> Environmentalists who've helped raise the message that, you know, it's not all that great to piss in our own water then try clean it up - that filling the atmosphere with toxic gases is probably not the best idea - that wanton destruction of natural habitats, the world's ecosystems, and biodiveristy may harm us in the long-run - I'd say that's nothing to claim as intellectually base. The reverse, yes.


And I am grateful to them I'm sure for pointing out the dangers.
But it is those same environmentalists that have been complaining about global warming that turned out to complain about noise, habitat destruction and environmental pollution to nine different environmentally friendly power plants locally: A replacement nuclear plant (2000 made redundant), two tidal plants, two small hydro plants, three wind farms and an experimental solar plant. Okay, eight if you discount Wylfa B.
It was also environmentalists that helped stop development of fusion power in the late fifties as a joint project between Manchester University and Calder Hall's development team. The Government of the time was just itching to save money.
I am also mindful of a supertanker Shell wanted to scrap just a few years ago. Shell wanted to scrap it on the Clyde where the waste would have been contained and recycled in a relatively environmentally friendly way. In the end it went to India, where it is being broken up on an open beach. I confess I don't know how much waste oil gets left in the hull of a 250,000 tonne oil tanker at the end of its life. But you can check, it's bobbing around in the Indian Ocean.
Being obstructive is easy you just have to shout "Yaboo-sucks" and a lot of people are quite good at it.
Being constructive in a practical or realistic way is far more important and this has to-date not been something the environmental fraternity has been good at.



I said:


> Some environmentalists I'm sure can be extreme - it wouldn't be difficult to define them as a caricature. But that's all it would be.


Caricature certainly, but caricature develops from repetition and environmentalists doing it certainly appear with monotonous regularity.



I said:


> <In reply to:So don't tell me there is a problem. Tell me what I can do about it?.>
> Funnily enough, that's what environmentalism does. Acid rain exists! So let's cut down on the sulphur dioxide emissions. Global Warming exists! So let's cut down on the massive CO2 emissions...


But those are not solutions, they are goals to be achieved!
It is akin to going to a doctor with a broken leg and being told not to stand on it when walking!
If we stopped breathing, then, after a few months for our bodies to decay, our CO2 emissions are zero. Job done! 
But you must agree it is not an ideal way for us to go about it?
There has to be a means of achieving the goal, that we can apply, that does not immediately reduce us to the level of cavemen before they discovered fire, or dead?



I said:


> Funnily enough, this is the government's idea. It's not private business or individuals that are getting fat off environmentalism - but HM Revenues and Customs who instead have seen fit to introduce new layers of tax, as they the exchequer seems to love to see them do.


At least we agree on something!


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 12, 2007)

Heh, I think we can agree on the inconsistent messages as well - I've seen it up here in Scotland, that everyone's all for going green, unless the wind farms are placed nearby, the powerlines need upgrading, or similar. Suddenly different groups come out objecting to the environmental damage these would cause. But if they are that bad in the first place, why are they recommended as green solutions?


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## Spartan27 (Sep 12, 2007)

I said:


> I used to read New Scientist every week in the late 1990's.
> 
> All through that time, climate scientists were warning that observational evidence suggested that not only had humanity adversely impact climate conditions, but that those climate conditions would adversely impact
> humanity.
> ...


 
Brian I agree with almost all your points, but I don't agree with one in which because I don't believe in the theory of evolution..hence I don't believe in global warming. Global warning has been going on since the industrial age.

Other than that one point I am in agreement...and one other thing you don't have to be a scientist to open your eyes and look around and see the changes taking place around us. It's bad stuff...and hope we can fix it before it fixes us.


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## dustinzgirl (Sep 12, 2007)

Spartan27 said:


> Brian I agree with almost all your points, but I don't agree with one in which because I don't believe in the theory of evolution..hence I don't believe in global warming. Global warning has been going on since the industrial age.
> 
> Other than that one point I am in agreement...and one other thing you don't have to be a scientist to open your eyes and look around and see the changes taking place around us. It's bad stuff...and hope we can fix it before it fixes us.



Actually global warming has been going on since the Ice Age or the world would still be covered in Ice.

(ps) To explain that better, think about when you cook a roast. 8-10 hours of slow, low heat cooking doesn't destroy the roast, dry it out, and suck out all the juices...it makes a good roast. But turn up the heat just fifty degrees, and you have a dry, burnt up, nutrient deficient roast. 

Humans are just making it worse with all the pollutants (which I also believe is causing insanity in most of the population).


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## Spartan27 (Sep 17, 2007)

dustinzgirl said:


> Actually global warming has been going on since the Ice Age or the world would still be covered in Ice.
> 
> (ps) To explain that better, think about when you cook a roast. 8-10 hours of slow, low heat cooking doesn't destroy the roast, dry it out, and suck out all the juices...it makes a good roast. But turn up the heat just fifty degrees, and you have a dry, burnt up, nutrient deficient roast.
> 
> Humans are just making it worse with all the pollutants (which I also believe is causing insanity in most of the population).


 
Dusty I agree....


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## ray gower (Sep 17, 2007)

And to think back in the sixties the scientists were predicting the next ice age would begin in the mid 21st Century!


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## HardScienceFan (Sep 17, 2007)

which only goes to show the dialectics of science.
and its progress.
we now know more than in the sixties


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## ray gower (Sep 17, 2007)

Is it really that we positively know more, or just that we think we know different? 

In the case of climate change the computer models are more sophisticated and they have another forty years of statistics to build predictions upon. But predictions are based upon current trends. 
Perhaps because they suggest certain doom, they are popular amongst a vocal group of fatalists, who think that because we are involved in it, we might be able to do something about it.

But there are other groups who are rather less certain of the eventual outcome. They are watching the ocean currents that give us our weather, change their path. Climate change obviously has an effect on these, but so do a lot of other things to a greater or lesser extent, from magnetic poles to the reproduction habits of plankton.
Their prediction is that some of these currents will reverse. That, according to the sixties theory, is what will cause a new ice age. At which point the sh1 really hits the spinning object and those 'Know nothings' from the sixties polish their glasses with not inconsiderable doses of 'Nah-Nah- Told you so!".
What they haven't worked out is how much the temperature will drop or how far the currents must change direction before the great switch over, only that the rate of change is increasing.

A lot of exceedingly clever people agree there are dark clouds just around the corner, including me (No claims to being exceedingly clever, but thought I'd mention it  ). What they don't necessarily agree on is what colour the lining is.


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## HardScienceFan (Sep 17, 2007)

well methane hydates have been discovered since the sixties,for one.
Paleoceanographic proxies are now better constrained.
El Nino is better understood,and NAO,and Julian-Madden oscillations,and iron fertilization,there's been TOPEX,and a host of others,remote sensing has progressed immensely,and you know what 

Analog modelling is comming back too

hey ho


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## Curt Chiarelli (Oct 1, 2007)

And you know, it would all be hilarious if the right-wing media whores bought off by the oil corporations didn't have such pervasive control of the airways to disseminate this drivel which endangers us even further:

Think Progress » Right Wing Launches Dishonest, Misinformed Attacks Against Live Earth


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## Rosemary (Oct 1, 2007)

If it's not Global Warming which is melting the glaciers in the Himalaya and the Arctic, what is?


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## Curt Chiarelli (Oct 1, 2007)

Rosemary said:


> If it's not Global Warming which is melting the glaciers in the Himalaya and the Arctic, what is?



The hot air blowing from Washington and Whitehall.


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## dustinzgirl (Oct 1, 2007)

HardScienceFan said:


> which only goes to show the dialectics of science.
> and its progress.
> we now know more than in the sixties



Yeah, but if we had their drugs...lol!

I don't really understand how anyone can argue global warming. I think we need to start examining the crap we put into the environment and find better ways to do it. There are better ways, many of them, but industry and corporate will not use them because they are expensive, so the EPA lets them get away with substandard environmental protection, but the real problem is in nations like China with lots of factories and no environmental laws. They should totally host the 2008 Olympics with a "Green Beijing" theme. Just wear a chemical mask.


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## paperclipchevy (Oct 2, 2007)

Scientists all agree its happening and humans have a major impact. Do not believe anything you hear or read saying otherwise, period. The fact of the matter is that there is a conspiracy of science and information that is preventing a unified scientific collaboration. Hell most still think the earth had one big island and that all religions derive from completely different sources. 

Some things to consider; 

 deep ice core drilling "inconvienient truth displayed this very well" shows based on past history of the Earth's natural cycles we should expect the earth to heat up and then drop into another ice age. Many theories believe this is due to the earth's and Sun's natural cycle in our solar system. The earth is believed to be soon entering that cycle when the wobble in it's rotation balances, the poles may flip, and its magnetic field diminishes significantly. It is also supposedly a time of intense solar storms from the sun and transit of Venus aswell.

A catch 22- Green house gasses might actually be protecting the earth from the sun's increasingly intense solar winds passing through our diminishing magnetic sheild, but at the same time trapping heat. 

HAARP- Based on theory, today we should literally be able to use the HAARP device to poke a hole in the magnetic sheild and release greenhouse gasses in massive quantities, or beam tuned electromagnetic waves to reinforce it.

Terraforming- We can easily create atmosphere by releasing certain metallic chemicals from planes at high altitudes. Is it already going on to reduce sun's effects on global warming?

Energy Sources- There are thousands of viable alternatives to produce energy, some from 100s of years ago that could be easily implemented to stop pollution at any time.


 My personal theory is that we are at war with ourselves, and our psychotic needs of possesion and feelings of fear are destroying our nations and slowing down the real battle which is the battle of the human race's survival. If we created a demand in the market for non-polluting energy making it extremely profitable we would create the largest market in history, and all corrupt corporations would jump on our band wagon, reguardless if they wanted to kill the earth for fun. The war needs be fought in the schools, where unfortunately America is losing. Science and education are being destroyed in the name of profit and control for those who are truly insane and want nothing more than pleasure for their lifetime for they know they will not have to face the hardships the future generations will be forced to deal with. Also a psychotic mindset that a centralized, controlled machine of an elite microcivilization would be able to endure these hardships like noah's ark are false. If more people had an elevated education such as the rich, we would have a larger force, a massive global brain connected through our modern information technology that would be able to prevent any imaginable global catastrophe through science. Those people throughout history who were the giants of discovery and history all received this education reserved for only the extremely wealthy. With the computer/information age upon us this should be available to all for free, as well as free energy.  We need a nation of Edisons and Franklin's, not a nation of Britney Spears and gansta rappas.


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## chrispenycate (Oct 2, 2007)

Oh, dear. Not all scientists agree that the planet is warming, let alone that it is mankind that is responsible. Actually you'd be hard put to find anything that all scientists agree on. I know some that are creationists, and I'm willing to bet I could find a couple of flat earthers if you gave me the research buget. Not accepting "known truths" is a very large part of what science is about. However, global warming is fashionable, so those in favour (and a few antis) are newsworthy.
Which doesn't mean I don't think it's a darn good idea to stop pumping various gasses into the atmosphere; even if they're not responsible for the overheating, we've evolved without them, so we don't need them, and in all probability are better off without them.

Poking a hole through the Earth's magnetic field would not release the greenhouse gasses; they're held down by gravity, not magnetism. Anyway, since most of the effective gasses are heavier than air, (not methane, admittedly) the oxygen would go first, which would be inconvenient.



> A catch 22- Green house gasses might actually be protecting the earth from the sun's increasingly intense solar winds passing through our diminishing magnetic sheild, but at the same time trapping heat.


 I would like to know why greenhouse gasses should be any better at stopping the charged particles emmitted by the sun than any other gas molecules. It seems to me, fast moving charged particle hits gas molecule, we're still short of an electron in the total, total momentum is maintained, and either slow moving charged particle goes on, or slow moving hydrogen atom continues, slightl charged air molecule is pushed slightly down. Misses, hits planet (probable traversing biological entity between) Certainly, the magnetic field maintaining the Van Allen belts is useful (not to say crucial), but it is unaffected by greenhouse (or almost any other) gasses. 




> We can easily create atmosphere by releasing certain metallic chemicals from planes at high altitudes.


 I don't get this one at all; it sounds like the idea for thinning Venus' atmosphere by reacting its active components with metals, so the heavy salts would fall down. What's this "create atmosphere"? Lots of mercury vapour (if so, I'd like to emigrate to another planet, please)


> There are thousands of viable alternatives to produce energy, some from 100s of years ago that could be easily implemented to stop pollution at any time.


 There are very few established means of producing energy which are not being experimented with. The reason they didn't give problems a few centuries ago was frequently that there were fewer people, and each one used less power. It's the population size, plus people having got a taste for luxury, that is killing us. Even geothermal is producing side effects, hydroelectric is close to it's limits, wind? for a few places. No, the problem is not as trivial as you are attempting to make out. It has to be solved, though. 

All of which doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see scientists better paid than lawyers (which seems logical to me, but as most politicians are lawyers...) or advertising executives, to attempt to draw a reasonable percentage of the available brainpower into the fold) but don't ever believe it's going to be easy, or cheap in terms of lifestyle. But it's going to be necessary remarkably soon (though I doubt if I'll see it), and global warming is a good argument to accelerate the research.
Even if it isn't truly there the problem.


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## dustinzgirl (Oct 2, 2007)

Rosemary said:


> If it's not Global Warming which is melting the glaciers in the Himalaya and the Arctic, what is?



They are not melting, Rick Moranis is shrinking them


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## Overread (Oct 3, 2007)

Well I might have missed this in all the talk, but the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th report FEb 2007 identified (amung other things) three key points concerning global warming:
1) they are more certain the ever that the recent changes in global warming is due to humans and not natural phenomina

2) there are no longer any discrepancies in the scientific measurement of global warming

3) it will take a significant reductin in greenhouse gas emissions to limit projecteed changes in climate.


Further, the US is now starting to think about terraforming the Earth to combat global warming. Now this scares me, I remember when they thought they could stop hurricanes by dropping ice into thier paths, it moved the hurricanes general direction right onto a group of islands. There is no way we can predict the effect of trying to change the environment because we do not know even half of the facts that we need to, and when things get taken up to the global scale many models break.

examples of proposals for climate changing are: giant reflective satalites to reflect the suns energy away from the earth; clound seeding; adding salt to the oceans


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## Dave (Oct 3, 2007)

Overread said:


> ...examples of proposals for climate changing are: giant reflective satellites to reflect the suns energy away from the earth; cloud seeding; adding salt to the oceans


The reflective satellites was my idea in another thread here. Can I get royalties?

But they also proposed something more interesting: Pumping water from the deep ocean low in dissolved CO2 up to the surface to dissolve more CO2 from the atmosphere.

I really hope they throughly investigate all the possible consequences of doing that first, otherwise it may cause more harm than good.


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## Overread (Oct 3, 2007)

To be honest there is no way of telling what will happen - and chances are that what ever they try will backfire badly. The system is already broken because of us, I see no reason why we should tamper further to try and fix it, let the system solve the problems itself.

However I think the pressing concern that is present which will force governments to try mad ideas is not that humanity could not survive an ice age (we did it with sticks and stones) but that our current global population would not be sustainable during those times (Ok its not even sustainable now).


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## Dave (Oct 3, 2007)

I find it interesting that if you read old future predictions from the 1950's and 1960's of things people though possible one day they often have *Weather Control* among them. Putting a man on the Moon was way down the list. I don't think we are ever going to successfully tame nature the way we once believed that we had.


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## Overread (Oct 3, 2007)

True but it seems that part of being human is trying to obtain a "stable" environemnt to live in, which is completly against the natural system which (whilst moderatly balanced in the long term) is in a constant state of change. Even if we managed to control an aspect of the weather for a short time, another shift would take the matters right out of our hands.


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## Rosemary (Oct 3, 2007)

Quote:
                         Originally Posted by *Overread* 

 
_...examples of proposals for climate changing are: giant reflective satellites to reflect the suns energy away from the earth; cloud seeding; adding salt to the oceans

*Well I still can't undertand why they just can't blow the hot air out through the hole in the ozone layer!    


*_


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## NickB (Oct 16, 2007)

A few responses to Ray from a climate scientist who also works in the field of archaeology. I'm not going to get into arguments over the science - frankly I'm just about past caring and am reasonably happy to accept that a 2 degree rise in global temperature by 2050 and a 3 degree rise by 2100 are really, really, likely, if we're "lucky" (if we're unlucky, it will be more, approaching the magnitude of warming between the peak of an ice age and where we are now). When I say "happy" I don't mean I think this will be anything other than bad, just that I'm now used to the idea and have normalised it into my worldview. Now to specific issues.



ray gower said:


> The real problem is that the scientists have teamed up with environmentalists.



I'd challenge you to substantiate that sweeping generalisation. Just yesterday I was talking to a colleague about the hoo-ha in the UK press over the move to Ban Al Gore's film from schools and the intention by those who tried to ban it to distribute copies of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" to the same schools. We were talking about whether either film should be shown in schools and under what circumstances. My colleague wanted to keep them both out on the grounds that "they are both ****" (apologies for the language if this is deemed inappropriate, but it's a quote, and is informative). I have broad sympathy with this view. Most of my colleagues get really frustrated with environmentalists exaggerating climate change (frankly, it's bad enough without needing to exaggerate it) - this is counter productive, and reflects badly on scientists because people wrongly lump us together with environmentalists - something about us apparently being on the same side, hmm. This doesn't stop us loathing the people at the other extreme who are bent on perverting the science for ideological or economic reasons. Frankly the statement that we've teamed up with environmentalists is verging on slander as far as I'm concerned.



ray gower said:


> Between them they are not offering me a practical alternative beyond going to bed when the sun goes down, hunting with a stone club, eating ferocious maneating squirrels and generally living the stone-age equivalent of the good life.



There is no archaeological evidence that our prehistoric predecessors ever used stone clubs for hunting, or for anything else for that matter. There are a few "anarcho-primitivists" that advocate a return to a stone-age lifestyle, but this would be impossible in a world of over 6 billion people, and to claim that anyone suggesting we need to address climate change is advocating such a "solution" is just nonsense. Even if they were, there wouldn't be any stone clubs involved....



ray gower said:


> So don't tell me there is a problem. Tell me what I can do about it?



I agree that the government is wrong in trying to push the responsibility for tackling climate change onto the individual when they are doing very little apart from talking about the need to address it. Most governments that acknowledge a problem with climate change are self-righteous, lazy, hypocritical and cowardly when it comes to tackling it. I can tell you there's a problem, as I've spent the last 12 years studying climate change and its impacts on human societies in various forms. I can tell you some of the things you CAN do about it, but frankly this isn't my area of expertise. There are plenty of things we can do to try and tackle climate change, but these need to be negotiated and go way beyond individual action (which won't be anywhere near enough to solve the problem). I can't outline a course of action for you as an individual that will magically make everything alright, and my own lifestyle also contributes to climate change by because I operate within the system that's driving the problem.

Are you saying that I should keep quiet about the problem because I don't have "the solution"? Even if I thought I did have the solution (and there is no single or easy solution that I can offer to you on a plate) I certainly wouldn't tell you what you SHOULD do about it. That's because I'm a scientist, not an environmentalist. My duty is to share what I know about climate change insofar as it can help people decide how to respond, not to evangelise for this or that course of action. As a scientist, not an environmentalist, I'm not going to campaign to "save the planet" - rather I'm going to help us understand what the problems are and what we might do to about them. Whether you or anyone else wants to take up the challenge of doing anything is up to you. Most people aren't prepared to do what it will take to keep climate change to a manageable level, and I don't believe we'll get away with it. We will have a period of crisis and transition, and then things will settle down again (maybe after a century or two, maybe longer) as humanity recovers from the impacts of climate change. Of course it doesn't have to be like this, but it's not up to me - it's up to individuals and governments to act together to do what they think is appropriate, and this is a really big challenge. If humanity collectively think it's appropriate to carry on as we are and pay the price later, then fine with me. Many smokers choose to carry on smoking regardless of the risks, and that's their choice. Collectively we're in the same position, although of course we're talking about groups of people indulging themselves with affluent fossil-fuel intensive lifestyles at the expense of others who are poor and more exposed and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change - there is actually no such thing as a collective decision when we're talking about humanity as a whole. 

In an ideal world governments would support solutions that provided a social and economic context in which people could live as they wanted without causing problems such as manmade climate change. Then individuals wouldn't have to don the metaphorical hair shirt. As things stand we probably need a combination of both individual and government action, which will reinforce each other. If we do nothing it's not the end of the world, but it may be the end of the global economy, of many societies across the globe, of many existing ecosystems and species, and of what little peace and security there is in much of the world. But perhaps that's a price worth paying for a brief flurry of fossil-fuel led affluence. Shame though, if we could enjoy rich and fulfilling lives while not screwing the environment up for ourselves. I guess we'll never know whether the latter would have been possible. At least I'll be able to write lots of papers about how climate change negatively impacts societies, and test my ideas that have developed out of studying past episodes of severe climate change. On one level it will be fascinating. Perhaps I should be thankful, as a scientist, for the wonderful laboratory of idiocy that my fellow human beings are laying at my feet.


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## Overread (Oct 16, 2007)

Thank you Nick (I think I am in three or four GW debates, and I usually wind up on my own - nice to also see someone who is in the profession - I hope you stick around chronicles)


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## Nik (Oct 16, 2007)

*Slightly off=topic...*

Um, seems some scientists are taking advantage of the current *remarkable* ice-minimal conditions in NorthWest Passage to do some serious sediment sampling.

Hopefully this will provide data on what *really* has been going on there for last thousand years, settle the 'anecdotal' arguments.

Hope is the data will show if current 'Open Passage' is a recurring feature, a statistical whatsit like a 'Century Storm', or last seen during anomalous 'Medieval Warm Period' when Eric The Red started the ill-fated Greenland colony...

IMHO, there's also a possibility that isotope analysis at those high latitudes may show strong correllations with solar activity...

IIRC, the opposite swing aka 'Little Ice Age' may have been more 'European' than global, and the trade-mark 'Few SunSpots' only applied to part of the time...

Curioser & Curioser...


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## NickB (Oct 17, 2007)

There is certainly evidence that solar activity is associated with changes in climate on long timescales - for examples there seem to be correlations between solar activity and African lake levels. Also, a small component of observed global warming in the early twentieth century may have been due to solar variation. However, solar variability is included in many global climate models (although many contrarians will tell you that it isn't, along with volcanic activity - they are wrong), and it cannot explain recent increases in global mean surface temperature. 

Examining ocean sediments in the Arctic may give us some interesting data, but this will still be a local record, and cannot tell us whether the medieval warm period was regional or global in extent.  In fact when we get back past about 500 years the geographical coverage of proxy climate records is pretty limited, so it is difficult to say how widespread warming or cooling signals were. The view among climate scientists is more in favour of the medieval warm period being a regional event. But we cannot be absolutely certain - our confidence in reconstructions of global temperature variations on timescales of decades to centuries (and longer) declines the further back in time we go, at least for the period since the end of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. However, it seems likely that global mean surface temperature (which is what we're talking about) hasn't varied by more than about half a degree or so over the past 5000 years or more. Local changes have been much greater, due to changes in the distribution (not total amount) of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. All this is written up in Chapter 6 of Working Group I of the latest IPCC report, if you want to Google it - unfortunately I can't post links here.

The climate has certainly varied dramatically in the past at the regional and local level (and at the global level if we go back the end of the last ice age and earlier), and when it has it has had some severe impacts on human populations (and some positive ones too). Studying past climate change adds to our understanding of how the climate system works. However, the extent to which climate has changed in the past is somewhat of a moot point when we're trying to establish what the impacts of climate change may be in the near future. The fact that climate changed in the past doesn't mean that changes in the future would be a good or neutral thing - in some senses we are less able to adapt than our predecessors did in the distant past, when smaller populations tended to respond to environmental changes by migrating.  Not too much chance of that happening without much fuss today. 

Increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels, and agriculture and changes in land use, remain the only decent explanation of what we are seeing today, once we've examined (and discounted) other possible explanations such as solar variation (which is of the wrong sign to be associated with recent warming). Maybe there are other factors that are important, but this is pure speculation at present, and the "manmade global warming" model works pretty damn well in explaining observed change. Until we have evidence that something else is going on, it behoves us  to stick to the evidence we have. Some people may have changed this into a dogma - that's their problem. The fact that this is so doesn't undermine the science.


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## NickB (Oct 17, 2007)

Overread said:


> Thank you Nick (I think I am in three or four GW debates, and I usually wind up on my own - nice to also see someone who is in the profession - I hope you stick around chronicles)



Oh, it's so easy to get sucked into these when you accidentally stumble across them! I try and avoid it as a rule - I could spend all my time debating this on the web. But I have a soft spot for SF forums and this seems to be a pretty intelligent one by and large. And as an SF fan myself  I know the SF constituency is generally pretty smart and worth engaging with.

Anyway, the appreciation is, well, appreciated.

Cheers

Nick


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## mosaix (Oct 17, 2007)

NickB has contributed two excellent posts - many thanks.


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## Dave (Oct 17, 2007)

mosaix said:


> NickB has contributed two excellent posts - many thanks.


Agreed except that his post appears to tar all environmentalists with the same brush.





NickB said:


> Most of my colleagues get really frustrated with environmentalists exaggerating climate change (frankly, it's bad enough without needing to exaggerate it) - this is counter productive, and reflects badly on scientists because people wrongly lump us together with environmentalists - something about us apparently being on the same side, hmm. This doesn't stop us loathing the people at the other extreme who are bent on perverting the science for ideological or economic reasons. Frankly the statement that we've teamed up with environmentalists is verging on slander as far as I'm concerned.


I agree almost entirely, many people see the green movement as communism under a different coloured banner, and sometimes they are, but I would ask that isn't the real reason for all of this to be:

1) the lack of research itself.
2) the woeful scientific ignorance of journalists.

On the lack of research: the picture is becoming clearer now, but until very recently you could easily argue for and against the man-made warming, or even that there was no warming at all, and have enough flimsy scientific evidence to back it up because it was so unclear. With a lack of research you do have to make a subjective judgement based on your own world view. That will quite obviously be different for different people because of their backgrounds and political affiliations. It would be different for someone living on a floodplain who is currently living in a caravan, from someone who's whole town is employed by the local energy-inefficient factory. This is an important and emotive issue, the future livelihood of your family could not be more important. I work in a customer driven environment, I can tell you that customers always exaggerate issues.

You also appear to think of this is a modern development. Take a look at the research into the effects of acid rain pollution in England in the late 1960's and 1970's. Look at who paid for the research and then match it up to the results which the different research papers found. That doesn't mean that the scientists were in the pockets of the CEGB, nor that they were in league with anarchist environmentalists, "perverting" science as you called it. It is simply a vital part of the scientific method. Each piece of research brought in different variables that had never been thought of before, not because they had been deliberately hidden. Peer review of all the current research then brings a consensus of opinion, (although the British government continued to argue with the Scandinavians about the effects on their lakes right up until the 1990's.) 

We still have not reached that point on climate change where a consensus is possible and only more research is the answer. Worrying to me is that I've seen commentators in the US saying research into climate change is a waste of money.


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## NickB (Oct 18, 2007)

Dave said:


> Agreed except that his post appears to tar all environmentalists with the same brush.



Guilty as charged! I have no quibble with the aims of many environmentalists, by which I mean activists who aren't necessarily expert in the science (although many are very well informed). But there is a tendency to exaggerate, which is counter-productive. I was really trying to make the point that there are tensions between scientists and environmental activists, whereas the media and public often fail to differentiate between the two groups.

As for there being a lack of research, I'd say there has been an enormous amount of relevant research since the early 1990s (and indeed before, although this wasn't all framed by the "global warming" paradigm). I think it has been quite a number of years since there was any serious doubt that we are affecting the climate. It is only since 2001 that scientists have become more confident about how sensitive the climate is to increased greenhouse gas concentrations (it is now thought a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, which we will reach in the middle of this century at the current rate) will increase global mean temperature by around 3 degrees C. In 2001 there was a lot more uncertainty, with estimates ranging from around 1.5 degrees to 4.5 or more. 

As for people "perverting" the science, of course there is lots of room for interpretation and disagreement. But this is really in terms of the details - magnitudes and rates of warming, the nature of impacts and the role of feedbacks in the climate system - not on the existence of human-induced climate change. There are always questions to be answered, and one should never be dogmatic about the science. But there are certainly people out there (most of who are not bona fide scientists, and almost none of who have a background in climate science) who deliberately distort and misinterpret the science for their own ends. Most of the public uncertainty, and most of the public perception of disagreement in the climate research community, is the result of deliberate campaigns to confuse the public and reduce support for action to mitigate manmade climate change. A strong claim, but one I'd stick by. Google "climate change myths" and you will find a lot of material here - some attacking the science and some defending it. You can also google my blog (Sand and Dust) - there are some posts here on this issue, plus links.

All the best

Nick


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## Dave (Oct 18, 2007)

NickB said:


> Most of the public uncertainty, and most of the public perception of disagreement in the climate research community, is the result of deliberate campaigns to confuse the public and reduce support for action to mitigate manmade climate change.


That's where my second point comes in.





Dave said:


> 2) the woeful scientific ignorance of journalists.


Most people never read a science magazine, even less a research paper. They get their knowledge from the TV and newspapers. And as you rightly point out, the Internet with it's very dubious authenticity, and more than it's fair share of wackos. That's why I'm not sure that I agree with you on banning those two films from schools. Yes, they are both propaganda, but they balance each other and it is important that children learn to differentiate facts from fiction. They are certainly not going to be shielded from it when they leave school.


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## NickB (Oct 19, 2007)

Dave said:


> That's why I'm not sure that I agree with you on banning those two films from schools. Yes, they are both propaganda, but they balance each other and it is important that children learn to differentiate facts from fiction. They are certainly not going to be shielded from it when they leave school.



I'm not dogmatically in favour of banning them. On the one hand I think we should avoid using school kids as pawns in ideological battles. Maybe this is hopelessly utopian of me - kids can't help but be exposed to all the unexamined ideological assumptions of their teachers and those who make education policy. But perhaps we should avoid the more explicit, deliberate exposure of children to propaganda, whether we sympathise with it or not.

On the other had I have no problem with school children being shown either (or preferably both) films, as long as they are presented as representing particular points of view, and not as works of science. In fact they would make very good departure points for a discussion about science versus ideology in the context of climate change. The trouble is, I'm not sure that most teachers (even science teachers) are well enough versed in the science to be able to really tackle the issues raised in the films and the reality of what the science does and doesn't say. I haven't examined the treatment of climate change in the national curriculum - maybe I'm not putting enough faith in the system to deliver education on this issue that reflects the state of the science.


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## jackokent (Oct 21, 2007)

NickB said:


> I agree that the government is wrong in trying to push the responsibility for tackling climate change onto the individual when they are doing very little apart from talking about the need to address it. Most governments that acknowledge a problem with climate change are self-righteous, lazy, hypocritical and cowardly when it comes to tackling it. .


 
I hear a lot of complaint about Government in-action on this and other threads.  I agree in part.  However, I wonder what it is we expect Governments to do and how.

We, Joe public, through our media, are the very first to shoot down anything radical that a politician suggests. We do not like restraint... we call it control and use phrases like Big Brother.  We do not like inconvenience, we feel we have a right to our cars, our mod cons, our bin collections etc etc.  

People really really want the Government to do something... as long as it doesn't put them out.

I am critical of the Government.... but I am also very critical of the people who do not let them act.  If we want our Government to take massive / radical action we have to be prepared for restraint and control... and we just don't put up with it.


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## Coolhand (Oct 22, 2007)

Interesting title of this thread, but I don’t think anyone is arguing that global warming hasn’t happened. The thrust argument now seems to be how much of it is down to us and how much is natural, and how bad is it going to get i.e. bad enough to spend the trillions of pounds it’s been estimated to cost to “fix.”

I’m just an average dude in the street with no real scientific training. But I’ve learned not to trust journalists or pressure groups at all when it comes to this kind of issue, and so I tend to just listen to the scientists argue and then make up my own mind as to who’s data and theories come out the most reliable. As a result, I’ve followed the whole “anthropogenic climate change” debate with interest but also with frequent confusion, and irritation with both sides.

The thing that really annoys me is the time and effort spent by both sides accusing the other of having agendas, rather than addressing the actual data and theories. People interviewed for news items tend to be notably bad for this. 

At the end of the day, a scientist could be Captain Evil, who’s hobbies include selling his soul to Satan and whipping puppies with barbed wire, but if his research and data is accurate, then it’s accurate. So people should spend their time attacking the data, and not the fact that their opponents have jumped into bed with Shell Oil or Greenpeace. 




NickB said:


> A few responses to Ray from a climate scientist who also works in the field of archaeology.


 

Ooh, cool! A climatologist! I was wondering if I could pick your brains for a second on subjects that I keep hearing argued back and forth? I try to keep an open mind on it all.

What’s your opinion of the Mann Hockey Stick Graph?

What’s your opinion of the claim that ice core records show a link between CO2 rises and temp rises? 

What’s your opinion of the sun’s influence on climate?

What kind of sea level rise do you think we’re going to see?

Which of the climate computer models do think holds the most reasonable predictions for the future changes?

What kind of effect will warming have on the spread of insect based disease such as malaria?

I’ve heard many conflicting claims about the recent increase in global temperature, including some that it actually hasn’t gone up for the last couple of years and others claiming that it has? What are the actual measurements saying? And how many separate measurements are getting taken?

Thanks in advance, NickB, for any of those you choose to answer.


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## Overread (Oct 22, 2007)

"Which of the climate computer models do think holds the most reasonable predictions for the future changes?"
Well I can answer this one from one of my lecturers - none of them, they all mostly start breaking or taking such wild guesses/estimations at the global scale that they cannot truly be expected to produce accurate modelling of the future.


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## Coolhand (Oct 23, 2007)

Overread said:


> "Which of the climate computer models do think holds the most reasonable predictions for the future changes?"
> Well I can answer this one from one of my lecturers - none of them, they all mostly start breaking or taking such wild guesses/estimations at the global scale that they cannot truly be expected to produce accurate modelling of the future.


 
So, err, at the risk of asking a dumb question, what's the point of them then?


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## Rawled Demha (Oct 23, 2007)

id guess because any model, however vague is better than no idea. these models can then be refined to make better ones, and so on.

as long as you're aware that its a model, and not telling te future without any doubt.


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## Coolhand (Oct 23, 2007)

Well yeah, but as you pointed out in the parrallel universe thread, flawed maths isn't maths at all. I mean, what's the point of a model that just takes vauge wild guesses? _I _can take vauge wild guesses, I don't need a computer for that. I thought the whole point of these computer models was that they were supposed to be a very good indicator of what's going to happen 20, 50, 100 years from now.  

You could argue that a model that gives you the WRONG data is actually WORSE than no model at all, coz it sends you off in the wrong directions.

Or am I being thick?


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## Overread (Oct 23, 2007)

"_I _can take vauge wild guesses, I don't need a computer for that."

scientists can also make wild guesses and also make conclusions based upon collected data; however whilst our current data and understanding of the world is strictly to limited to produce the perfect answer, the data we do have is to vast for people to be able to work with one their own, or even in groups. Thus computer models allow the use of larger data pools to draw conclusions, however it has to be strongly recegnised that they are flawed results. They will let you make connections between events and devise theories to expline those connections, but these have to then be tested in the real world. In the case of global warming theories, the only way to test them is to go through global warming itself


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## Coolhand (Oct 23, 2007)

Overread said:


> Thus computer models allow the use of larger data pools to draw conclusions, however it has to be strongly recegnised that they are flawed results. They will let you make connections between events and devise theories to expline those connections, but these have to then be tested in the real world. In the case of global warming theories, the only way to test them is to go through global warming itself


 
Yeah, that sounds logical.

The problem seems to be that we’re expected to form wide-ranging and serious international policies at great cost to ourselves (financial and otherwise) based on models that most people seem to agree are seriously flawed and may not in fact reflect the future at all.

I heard a great idea from someone a while back about sorting out all this doubt about the reliability of the models. I think it was from Michael Crichton and, regardless of what you think of his general stance on climate change, this idea is pretty hard to argue against.

It was basically to run all the models publicly for a ten year period, and compare what the models predict will happen to what actually happens in the real world. If the models show a good, solid ability to generate data that closely matches what actually happens in the real climate, then the question will have publicly been answered to a large degree, and we know that when the models say "Eeek, Doomsday unless we slash our CO2" we should probably pay attention. But if the models are shown NOT to be accurate over this ten year period, then maybe it's time to think a little harder before we sign the multi-trillion pound check for emergency carbon slashing. 

As far as I know, (and I’m open to correction) this has never been done, and the models were run in the past show a very poor level of reliability when compared with what actually happened over that timeframe.


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## Overread (Oct 23, 2007)

From what you say you want the models to run either in real time, or to predict the next year - well first off, this would reuire serious computing power (most computer models take years to run - by which time they are also out of date). Plus, we all ready know tat this will not work to produce accurate results - we can't even be certain about what the weather will be tomorrow, but we can do it a lot better now than in the past.
Also, after those 10 years, there will be new data and new models - should those then be ignored? The problem is that we do not know, but also that government must be seen to act, thus they select models/data and then use this to produce policies - however there is always the feeling with these at the moment, that much is done for show - e.g. wind farms and all those differnet bins they make us put our rubbish into


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## Rawled Demha (Oct 23, 2007)

Coolhand said:


> Well yeah, but as you pointed out in the parrallel universe thread, flawed maths isn't maths at all. I mean, what's the point of a model that just takes vauge wild guesses? _I _can take vauge wild guesses, I don't need a computer for that. I thought the whole point of these computer models was that they were supposed to be a very good indicator of what's going to happen 20, 50, 100 years from now.
> 
> You could argue that a model that gives you the WRONG data is actually WORSE than no model at all, coz it sends you off in the wrong directions.
> 
> Or am I being thick?


 
crude models are not based on flawed maths. they are based on insufficient data. when we can get a hold of this data, the models that we have been using can be refined to make a more accurate one - NOT the final model. there is no such thing as a right answer with modelling, they are all based on approximations and assumptions.

the guesses only become vague and wild because we are missing some crucial data, specific to that model.

yes you could take vague wild guesses, and sometimes they may be as good as a computers guess. but you are only human, and where you may forget to take into account any given factor, if a computer is told to, it will not. even if it isnt told to consider certain data, when we refine it, it will. and also, the computer _computes_ a hell of a lot quicker than any human could. i think.

and yes, there can be instances when certain models are so bad that we are better off without them - but then, nothing is infallible.

ps. the flawed maths in the multiverse thread is in the "proof" of 1=0, where you divide by zero. i dont think there is anything along these lines in the models we are talking.


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## Coolhand (Oct 23, 2007)

Rawled Demha said:


> ps. the flawed maths in the multiverse thread is in the "proof" of 1=0, where you divide by zero. i dont think there is anything along these lines in the models we are talking.


 
Whoops! I apologise for the misquote. I get the wrong end of the stick sometimes, as you can probably tell.




Rawled Demha said:


> crude models are not based on flawed maths. they are based on insufficient data. when we can get a hold of this data, the models that we have been using can be refined to make a more accurate one - NOT the final model. there is no such thing as a right answer with





Rawled Demha said:


> modelling, they are all based on approximations and assumptions.
> 
> the guesses only become vague and wild because we are missing some crucial data, specific to that model.


 
I agree with the insufficient data problem, but there’s also the assumption that there are no flaws in the actual mechanics of the model itself. If the mechanics that drive the model are flawed or contain incorrect assumptions, then even the correct data is going to give you mangled results.

The conclusion that everyone seems to agree on is that the models give you a vague idea of a future that may or may not be true. Which as Overread quite rightly points out doesn’t sit well in the political arena.



Overread said:


> The problem is that we do not know, but also that government must be seen to act, thus they select models/data and then use this to produce policies


Ah well. I mostly walk to work anyway so my CO2 footprint's pretty damn low...


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## Sabina (Oct 28, 2007)

In the case of climate change the computer models are more sophisticated and they have another forty years of statistics to build predictions upon. But predictions are based upon current trends. 
Perhaps because they suggest certain doom, they are popular amongst a vocal group of fatalists, who think that because we are involved in it, we might be able to do something about it.


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## NickB (Oct 29, 2007)

First apologies - I've been away for a bit, and will be disappearing again soon. But while I'm here...



Coolhand said:


> The thing that really annoys me is the time and effort spent by both sides accusing the other of having agendas, rather than addressing the actual data and theories. People interviewed for news items tend to be notably bad for this.


 
All parties have an agenda. The non-scientist pro and anti (mitigation through reducing greenhouse gas emissions) lobbies certainly have economic and ideological agendas (more ideological for the green looby groups, a mixture of both for the contrarians). Hopefully the agenda of most scientists is the improvement and dissemination of our scientific understanding of climate change.

Now briefly, as this could take up pages....



Coolhand said:


> What’s your opinion of the Mann Hockey Stick Graph?


I believe there were some problems with the methodology with which the first version was produced, but these were addressed by the authors. I think this represents the best reproduction of past temperatures we have at the global level. Once we get back past a century or so there is more reliance on proxy data (i.e. inferred temperature from ice cores, pollen, etc etc) as there are few instrumental records. As we go back centuries the coverage of the record becomes sparser, and by the time we go back some 1200 years (you can see such a reconstruction in the latest IPCC report) there is quite a bit of uncertainty - most records come from a few northern hemisphere sites and the temperature reconstructions are not strictly global. That said, the people who work on this particular issue are pretty confident that temperatures are now higher than at any time in the past 500 years, and think they are probably higher than at any time in the past 1200 years, but with much lower confidence. I know some of these people and they're not eco loonies. Far from it Going back to the hockey stick, I think it's been criticised more than is justified by people determined to undermine the science. It's not perfect and we can't be 100 % confident in all aspects of it, but I'd say it's highly credible.



Coolhand said:


> What’s your opinion of the claim that ice core records show a link between CO2 rises and temp rises?


Throughout much of the ice core record temperatures do rise before CO2 levels, but this is to be expected as the driving mechanisms of climate change during past glacial cycles are changes in the Earth's orbit. These lead to warming which releases greenhouse gases which further amplify the warming. So the fact that warming precedes CO2 increases suggests that once warming is started it is then amplified further by feedback processes. This is not encouraging. If anything the ice core data make me more pessimistic! But the mechanisms evidence in the ice cores are different to those driving climate change today - there is much to be learned here but to invoke the ice core data to "demonstrate" that rising greenhouse gas concentrations don't cause temperatures to rise is disingenuous, and indicates a lack of understanding of the science.



Coolhand said:


> What’s your opinion of the sun’s influence on climate?


The sun does seem to have an influence on climatic variations, e.g. there are good correlations between solar activity and African lake levels in the past. It appears that the sun was driving part of the warming in the early 20th century, but its importance was overtaken by increases in greenhouse gases as as the century progressed. Apparently trends in solar activity are now such that we'd expect a cooling of the Earth if this was the major driver. While there is more work to be done on uncovering links between solar behaviour and climate, it's also worth pointing out that greenhouse gas increases represent the best way of explaining what we observed happening to the climate, based on our understanding of the basic physics, on observations, and on modelling studies. For a treatment of solar variability see Chapter 2 of Working Group I of the 2007 IPCC report - free to download from the IPCC website (I can't post links here, but it's ipcc and the country is ch).



Coolhand said:


> What kind of sea level rise do you think we’re going to see?


 The IPCC has "downgraded" its estimate to up to around 60 cm by 2100 (from a maximum of, if I recall correctly, around 88 cm in 2100). However, it emphasises that this is very uncertain, and does not attempt to put probabilities on different estimates (as it has with temperatures). More recent work by Stefan Rahmstorf suggests a possible increase of up to 1.4m by 2100. In the longer term it looks like we're very likely to be committed to the loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which would add 6-7 m to global sea level. If we lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that's another 5-6 m. And it's possible other ice from Antarctica could be lost. The ice dynamics of Antarctica are not well understood, and some elements of these dynamics are not considered by the IPCC because they cannot be quantified. Many climate scientists, including at least some (maybe all - I don't know) of those who authored the sections on sea level in the IPCC, view the IPCC estimates as conservative. My advice to planners wanting to adapt to climate change is plan for at least a metre by 2100, and (if any were to look further ahead) at least 1m per century for the next few hundred years. I think this is pretty plausible - I wouldn't be surprised to see a rise of up to around 15 m by sometime between 250-3000, although that is no doubt too far ahead to be of more than passing interest to most people. 



Coolhand said:


> Which of the climate computer models do think holds the most reasonable predictions for the future changes?


I wouldn't single any particular models out. The best way of looking at the most plausible futures is to look at a collection of models and see what degree of agreement there is. The more consistent the projections, the more faith I'd put in them. Consistency varies from region to region, and there is always the possibility that something important has been missed in the way the models are parameterised. For example, most climate models have difficulty in reproducing past "abrupt" climate change, and it is very plausible that the projections we are getting are underestimating the possibility of abrupt atmospheric, oceanic, or ecological transitions in the future.



Coolhand said:


> What kind of effect will warming have on the spread of insect based disease such as malaria?


Some areas will become more suitable for malaria transmission, and others will become less suitable for it (same for other diseases). But malaria and other diseases aren't controlled deterministically by climate - their transmission depends on all sorts of other factors, principally how they are managed, but also with factors such as land management. I'd guess that in some places malaria will be exacerbated by climate change, and in others the situation might improve.



Coolhand said:


> I’ve heard many conflicting claims about the recent increase in global temperature, including some that it actually hasn’t gone up for the last couple of years and others claiming that it has? What are the actual measurements saying? And how many separate measurements are getting taken?


Not sure precisely how many measurements are being taken - thousands, certainly. These go into large gridded datasets (such as those held at the Climatic Research Unit in Norwich, UK), which are then processed in order to look at global and regional average temperatures. No-one expects each year to be progressively hotter than the last - the global mean temperature varies due to all sorts of factors such as El Nino. The warming trend is superimposed on these year-to-year variations. 1998 is still the hottest recorded year, followed by 2005. See Chapter 3 (p 242) of Working Group I of the 2007 IPCC report.



Coolhand said:


> Thanks in advance, NickB, for any of those you choose to answer.


No worries - hope that helps. All a bit rushed so probably not as articulate as it could be. For more information, you could try the UK Met Office "Climate Change Myths" page, or the "Realclimate" website. Both are run by climate scientists and are reputable. New Scientist Magazine also has a page listing 26 "climate change myths", and there are quite a lot of other decent sources addressing the confusion and disinformation. The Royal Society also has something. 

Cheers

Nick


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## NickB (Oct 29, 2007)

Coolhand said:


> It was basically to run all the models publicly for a ten year period, and compare what the models predict will happen to what actually happens in the real world. If the models show a good, solid ability to generate data that closely matches what actually happens in the real climate, then the question will have publicly been answered to a large degree, and we know that when the models say "Eeek, Doomsday unless we slash our CO2" we should probably pay attention. But if the models are shown NOT to be accurate over this ten year period, then maybe it's time to think a little harder before we sign the multi-trillion pound check for emergency carbon slashing.
> 
> As far as I know, (and I’m open to correction) this has never been done, and the models were run in the past show a very poor level of reliability when compared with what actually happened over that timeframe.



This is essentially what is being done - if anything the models seem to give conservative projections of future changes, at least for some phenomena. Modellers are desperate to see if their models are getting it right.

Models represent the best, educated, quantitative guesses of future change. They are far from perfect, but they are continuously assessed for accuracy, for example by seeing how well they "predict" observed climate over the past century or more. They have their flaws, but are not just wild guesses of the future that are treated as gospel. Anyone treating a single model projection as a true prediction of the future needs their head examined, but results from a group of models can be used to assess plausible future changes, and perhaps likely future changes if the projections are consistent with emerging observed trends. Model output is used more for what is known as "scenario planning" in which a range of possible future outcomes are examined, and existing or planned policies are assessed for their robustness under these plausible futures. Well, that's the idea - in reality not much attention is paid at the government level to how climate change will impact development, despite the fine words.


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## NickB (Oct 29, 2007)

Sabina said:


> In the case of climate change the computer models are more sophisticated and they have another forty years of statistics to build predictions upon. But predictions are based upon current trends.
> Perhaps because they suggest certain doom, they are popular amongst a vocal group of fatalists, who think that because we are involved in it, we might be able to do something about it.



See my earlier piece about models generally being poor at reproducing past episodes of abrupt climate change that we know have occurred from the palaeoclimatic record. 

Models are not just based on current trends. If this was the case they wouldn't have to be so computationally powerful and sophisticated. If we were just extrapolating current trends we could do that with a pencil and a piece of graph paper. Extrapolating current trends would give us much smaller values of future warming than the models are projecting. 

Models are based on physics, and while statistics is important in representing the physical behaviour of the climate system within models, they attempt to represent the dynamics of the climate system, so that we can examine how it might evolve under different external forcings. It's good to be critical of models, and I generally am, but I think they're getting short changed here - people seem to think they are much more simplistic and arbitrary, and run and interpreted much more sloppily, than they actually are. The guys at Realclimate might have more to say on this - they're much more expert in the area of modelling than I am.


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## Coolhand (Oct 29, 2007)

Hi NickB.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my various questions. Some good food for thought. Really appreciate it.


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## Sabina (Nov 2, 2007)

He wear a chemical mask.


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## Coolhand (Nov 6, 2007)

Hi NickB
Hope you’re still around. I know you said you'd be dissapearing for a bit.

I’ve been pondering the information you posted, thinking hard about it and reviewing the info the sites you posted (already familiar with realclimate.org but hadn’t read the met office or royal society before.)
It’s all interesting stuff and has gone into the melting pot of my brain, but there’s just something you said I was wanting to come back on.



NickB said:


> The IPCC has "downgraded" its estimate to up to around 60 cm by 2100 (from a maximum of, if I recall correctly, around 88 cm in 2100). However, it emphasises that this is very uncertain, and does not attempt to put probabilities on different estimates (as it has with temperatures). More recent work by Stefan Rahmstorf suggests a possible increase of up to 1.4m by 2100. In the longer term it looks like we're very likely to be committed to the loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which would add 6-7 m to global sea level. If we lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that's another 5-6 m. And it's possible other ice from Antarctica could be lost. The ice dynamics of Antarctica are not well understood, and some elements of these dynamics are not considered by the IPCC because they cannot be quantified. Many climate scientists, including at least some (maybe all - I don't know) of those who authored the sections on sea level in the IPCC, view the IPCC estimates as conservative. My advice to planners wanting to adapt to climate change is plan for at least a metre by 2100, and (if any were to look further ahead) at least 1m per century for the next few hundred years. I think this is pretty plausible - I wouldn't be surprised to see a rise of up to around 15 m by sometime between 250-3000, although that is no doubt too far ahead to be of more than passing interest to most people.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Nick


 
Just after you posted this I read an article by a Dr Cliff Ollier from The University of Western Australia in which he basically claims that it is impossible for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice sheets to collapse in the way that models by Dr James Hanson and other predict. I’m no geologist so I’m hardly the best judge of what he says. I’ll just post the link here so that everyone can read and make up their own minds.

Klima

Any thoughts from anyone?


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## NickB (Nov 7, 2007)

Coolhand said:


> Hi NickB
> Just after you posted this I read an article by a Dr Cliff Ollier from The University of Western Australia in which he basically claims that it is impossible for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice sheets to collapse in the way that models by Dr James Hanson and other predict. I’m no geologist so I’m hardly the best judge of what he says. I’ll just post the link here so that everyone can read and make up their own minds.



Yes, I saw this piece as well - distributed on Benny Peiser's newsletter. By the way, if you really want to see all the arguments against the "global warming orthodoxy" you can subscribe to Peiser's newsletter. Peiser is a contrarian when it comes to climate change, and he works very hard to disseminate any material that challenges the mainstream view of human-induced climate change. Google him. It's clear where he stands from the tone of some of his newsletters. But they're a good way of keeping up with stuff like this.

I've just re-read Cliff Ollier's article, and will make a few comments. First, I should say that for all I know he may have a point - I'm no glaciologist and there are always criticisms to be made of the models. But a few things make me suspicious, and I'll list these below.

1. He claims that the understanding of ice sheets (which certainly has its limitations) is based on one model (Hanson's) and a few "copycat models". So he's immediately setting us up to think this is all based on the work of just a few people using limited, badly designed models. I suspect that people working in this area would be a little upset about this - there are a lot of people working on ice sheets, using a variety of models.

2. His terminology is a bit odd. He refers to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (usually denoted by the acronym WAIS) as the "West Antarctica Ice Sheet", and then throughout the article as the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Now the WAIS and the "Antarctic Ice Sheet" are very different things, and this terminology is surprising.

3. Perhaps the conflation of the WAIS with the whole of the Antarctic ice sheet(s) is deliberate, so that he can then talk about Antarctica as a whole. By doing so he can accurately state that collapse is extremely unlikely. No-one is suggesting a collapse of, for example the East Antarctic Ice Sheet - it is the WAIS that has been exercising the minds of climate scientists.  And this is just a small fraction the Antarctic ice. So if anyone suggests that people are claiming that "Antarctica" is going to melt, they're either misleading you or have been misled themselves. 

4. Ollier talks about the location of Vostok, and the Vostok ice core, arguing that temperatures here are too cold for ice to melt and that the Vostok core reveals continuous layers of ice going back hundreds of thousands of years. This is all correct. But Vostok is in East Antarctica, not on the WAIS, so this is a bit of a red herring. 

5. Ollier states that "Some of the present-day claims that ice sheets ‘collapse’ are based on false concepts. Ice sheets do not melt from the surface down – only at the edges". The concern about ice sheet "collapse" is not that this will occur as a result of melting from the top down, but that ice sheets will become unstable where they are grounded on submerged land in warming waters, or where fringing ice shelves which act as a break on glacier flow at the margins of ice sheets, collapse, allowing more rapid glacier flow and altering the balance between accumulation and loss of ice.

6. As for past analogues, it's thought that the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) contributed up to 5 metres to global sea-level rise during the last interglacial some 130,000 - 110,000 years ago, when global mean surface temperature was probably 1.5 - 2 degrees warmer than it has been over the past century. Projections for global mean surface temperatures by the end of the 21st century are between 2 and 6 degrees. There now appears to be more consensus about the more or less inevitable loss of the GIS than about the less certain loss of the WAIS. Note that Ollier's figure for the antiquity of ice cores in Greenland doesn't reach back into the last interglacial.

7. There is a lot of confusion about the term "collapse", which might indicate the sudden loss of a huge ice sheet in a few years. We're talking about centuries for the loss of the GIS and WAIS, if indeed they do "collapse", and "disintegration" would probably be a better term - this would likely consist of fairly gradual trends on which were superimposed episodes of relatively rapid loss. The term "collapse" does sound catastrophic, and plays into the hands of those who want accuse scientists of doom mongering. 

8. Ollier is using the polemical language of the climate contrarians, which makes me suspicious. I'm not above a bit of polemic myself, but I tend to restrict this to blogs and keep it out of articles that are meant to make a scientific contribution to a debate. His concluding paragraph seems to say it all. He states that "The global warming doomsday writers claim the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting catastrophically, and will cause a sudden rise in sea level of 5 or more metres." Are the "doomsday writers" the scientists here? People are talking about rapid melting at the fringes of large ice sheets, but no-one is saying catastrophic melting/collapse is already happening - loss of the GIS and WAIS is a distinct possibility (many researchers believe we're committed to loss of the GIS, but pretty much everyone agrees that the future of the WAIS is more uncertain). No-one is saying there will be a "sudden" (whatever that means" rise in sea level of 5 metres or more. I wouldn't be surprised to see anything up to 15 metres over the next 1000 years, but I wouldn't call that sudden. The worst case scenario for this century, which has any scientific credibility, is probably 1.4 metres (based on work by Stefan Rahmstorf, which post-dates most of the stuff in the IPCC).

9. Ollier states "The existence of ice over 3 km thick preserving details of past snowfall and atmospheres, used to decipher past temperature and CO2 levels, shows that the ice sheets have accumulated for hundreds of thousands of years without melting." This is based on his discussion of the Vostok core, and he is simply extrapolating this to all ice sheets, relying on the fact that a non-specialist audience sympathetic to the contrarian viewpoint will miss this sleight of hand. 

There is a lot more to say here - I've just scratched the surface, but time and the fact that I don't have the entire edifice of climate change research committed to memory mean that I'll leave it there for now. I'll try and do some more digging on this and perhaps get back to the forum with it. In summary, it looks to me as if this is a polemic driven by a dogmatic position. A lot of his statements are (it appears deliberately) misleading, and dogmatic statements such as "collapse is impossible" are just not scientific. Ollier is using the well-worn tactic of setting up a straw man - in this case the apparent claim by doom mongers that we're going to see a "rapid" (over years, decades?) increase in sea levels of many metres. He plays down the amount of scientific work going on in the area of ice sheet dynamics, and simply dismisses what he does acknowledge. He states that ideas of ice sheet collapse are based on surface melting, when they are not. His argument that ice sheets are affected only by creep and not by interactions with the surfaces on which they are grounded, and with processes occurring at their edges, seems simplistic at best and absurd at most. Ditto for his statements about glacier retreat being nothing to do with warming (Ok there is a debate about Kilimanjaro, but glacier retreat is seen across the globe and in most cases the relationship with climate is less controversial).

If he does have a valid argument and is able to demonstrate convincingly, and scientifically, that the orthodoxy is wrong, then great. Let him put it in a scientific paper and submit it to a journal so that it can be peer reviewed. I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that this won't happen. He might (I don't know) argue that the peer review process is rigged against anything challenging the orthodoxy, but if he did he'd be joining the ranks of the conspiracy theorists. I think he's probably another contrarian scientist from outside the field of climate change, writing outside his main area of expertise. On the University of Western Australia website he is listed as an Honorary Research Fellow whose interests are "Africa, Australia, Geomorphology, Mountain Evolution" (the last but one word is somewhat corrupted in my browser). His stated interests don't cover ice sheets or polar regions. This might sound like sour grapes on my part, but it seems that this particular piece on ice sheets is written by someone who isn't an expert in that particular field. So what's his motivation?

Hope this helps a bit. 

Nick


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## Coolhand (Nov 12, 2007)

Thanks Nick.


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## NickB (Nov 13, 2007)

No problem. For all their lunacy, dogma, and lack of scientific rigour the contrarians do serve to keep us on our toes.

I'm away for a while as of next week, so will probably not be posting much here until the New Year (and even then things are busy). But I'll try and keep up with the thread.

All the best

Nick


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## Coolhand (Nov 13, 2007)

NickB, I appreciate that you know a hell of a lot more about this subject than I do, and I appreciate your taking the time to chat, but… 



NickB said:


> No problem. For all their lunacy, dogma, and lack of scientific rigour the contrarians do serve to keep us on our toes.


 
…I’m afraid I do take issue with that, just the same as I’d take issue with someone who dismissed the non-contrarians as tree hugging hippies or scare-mongering media junkies. The contrarians appear to contain quite a number of serious scientists who appear to have no motive other than genuinely believing what they say and believing they have the data to prove it. It’s true that they form the minority opinion and are outside of the accepted scientific consensus, but I don’t for one second buy them one-and-all as looney, dogmatic or lacking scientific rigour.

Anyway, have a good holiday.


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## NickB (Nov 14, 2007)

Coolhand said:


> NickB, …I’m afraid I do take issue with that, just the same as I’d take issue with someone who dismissed the non-contrarians as tree hugging hippies or scare-mongering media junkies. The contrarians appear to contain quite a number of serious scientists who appear to have no motive other than genuinely believing what they say and believing they have the data to prove it. It’s true that they form the minority opinion and are outside of the accepted scientific consensus, but I don’t for one second buy them one-and-all as looney, dogmatic or lacking scientific rigour.



We'll have to agree to disagree here. You say that "The contrarians appear to contain quite a number of serious scientists who appear to have no motive other than genuinely believing what they say and believing they have the data to prove it". If you'd like to name them we can assess their credentials. The overwhelming majority of the contrarians are not specialists in the area of climate change. There are a few meteorologists and one or two people with a background in climate-related research, and most of these take money from vested economic interests and/or publish little or anything in the peer reviewed  scientific literature. There is one eminent contrarian with a background in meteorology who is always wheeled out  as the voice of science, but who hasn't published anything in 20 years. There is another who describes himself as a "state climatologist", where the state he purports to serve has disowned him. I'm not going to get into names and mud-slinging - you can always google "prominent climate change contrarians" or some such. There is also a handful of astrophysicists determined to place all climatic variation at the door of the sun, or cosmic rays. I disagree about the extent to which serious scientists are represented in the contrarian camp.

As far as I am concerned there is no professional equivalence between the contrarians and the climate scientists who contribute to the IPCC. The vast majority of contrarians are actually professional lobbyists (a number are economists) and these characters purport to base their arguments on the work of scientists who actually aren't climate scientists, and who generally know little about the science of climate change. The "science" that you see presented from the contrarian camp is usually either fake science, or deliberate distortion and misinterpretation of real scientific data. Often the "alternative" explanations are old arguments that were had by the scientific community years or decades ago - the science has now moved on. In other cases they are wildly speculative. An example is the idea that climate change is controlled by cosmic rays. Cosmic rays may play a role in cloud formation but at this stage this mechanism has not been seriously investigated. Nonetheless, this doesn't stop the contrarians wanting to jettison the entire edifice of climate change science, which offers a good explanation of the dynamics of climate change which is consistent with observations, in favour or a speculative theory with no supporting data other than a plausible hypothesis (which is what the contrarians dismiss "global warming" as). There is a lot of clutching at straws going on here. 

I have absolutely no problem with any real evidence that challenges or undermines the existing scientific "orthodoxy". That is the essence of science - challenging existing models with new data. But every time I see an article from the contrarian camp and examine it in detail it dissolves in a puff of propaganda, word play and pseudo-science. I'm afraid if you think the contarians have the same degree of credibility as those involved in the real science, then you've been duped. This is precisely their intention - to set up opinion and pseudo-science as equivalent in weight to science. In fact this is something that has been a feature of the Bush White House of the last seven odd, which is pretty cosy with the contrarians, particularly via the oil industry. The latest US administration has placed faith on a similar or higher level to evidence - it's not what you know but what you believe that's important. This has characterised policy from climate change to the Iraq war. This is incredibly damaging to science, and to the public understanding of science, because it makes all opinions appear equally valid, whatever their origin. Ironic that science has been the victim of a neocon-inspired relativism when the political right is always using the charge of relativism to attack its opponents. If we're going to give the same weight to the pseudo-scientific nonsense emanating from the contrarian camp as we do to science, we may as well shut down the computer models, stop carrying out research in to the behaviour of the climate through studies of past climates, and employ an army of clairvoyants instead. After all, crystal balls are much cheaper than research. 

Our understanding of climate change will certainly change and evolve, and we may revise our existing models of what is actually going on. But this isn't going to happen as a result of anti-scientific lobbying by people who dismiss climate change as, for example,  “…the Left's best excuse for increasing government control over our actions in ways both large and small …the ideal scare campaign for those who hate capitalism and love big government… anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-human" - that's Christopher C Horner, a Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming". He no doubt does a great job of putting across the "alternative scientific evidence" within its august pages. 

I think if you want to understand what's going on here you should look to the debate between evolutionary biology and creationism. Like climate science, evolutionary theory is not perfect, and there are outstanding questions there. Arrayed against the necessary careful and cautious approach of the scientists trying to unpack our apparent evolutionary past is an army of very articulate and intelligent people who use and distort science to their own ends, jumping on the smallest disagreement or controversy, in order to argue that evolutionary theory is entirely wrong. They claim that there is scientific evidence for "intelligent design", and in their single mindedness can sound very convincing. They invoke science even as they pervert it, and I maintain that this is precisely what the climate contrarians do. Listening to an especially effective advocate of intelligent design is enough to make any non-specialist doubt the credentials of evolutionary theory. Now maybe God made the world and planted the fossils there for fun, and maybe pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere isn't making it any warmer (perhaps it really is cosmic rays). But as a scientist I feel compelled to  interpret the world based on the best scientific evidence - this gives me a flawed and incomplete model of the world around me which I nonetheless believe is more useful, sensible  and accurate than any amount of wishful thinking, idle speculation, or ideologically-driven model building. Climate contrarians and creationists start from the other end - with a belief of how the world should be, and then bend the evidence to fit their favourite world view, ignoring evidence that doesn't fit. 

I'm not saying that anyone who challenges the existing scientific understanding is wrong - that would be unscientific and stupid. There are a number of debates about the impacts of climate change in which is appears existing or early models of the sensitivity of systems such as the North Atlantic circulation and the Amazon rainforest may be what we could call alarmist. But these are debates within the scientific community, based on scientific understanding, observation and modelling. This is a world away from what I will still maintain is the dogmatic approach of the contrarians, who start from the assumption that everything is OK, then cherry pick the "data" that support their view. We have to distinguish between arguments about the science, and arguments that invoke the science but are acutally not scientific in nature.

I wouldn't bother arguing the point with a contrarian any more than I would with a creationist. There's no point having a scientific argument with someone for whom science isn't important, and who believes that faith is a better foundation than science for understanding the world. You're comparing apples and oranges, and have lost before you've begun. Although I suspect that a lot of the contrarians believe their own propaganda a lot less than the creationists believe their own arguments. The debates that you see between the "two alternative views on climate change" are not scientific debates - they are ideological debates dressed up as, and drawing on, science. That's not to say that there can't be a debate about whether we are warming the Earth that IS based on science - but first we need some decent scientific data challenging the existing scientific understanding. As yet we have none.

Anyway, I'm off to do lots of (work-related) flying, so on my behalf you can hope that I and my colleagues are wrong about climate change - at least then I'm off the hook ethically. And by the way I won't be offsetting, as I think this is a dubious and unsustainable way of addressing the issue that may actually be counterproductive by encouraging us to believe that we can carry on as normal as long as we plant enough trees. I'd just be doing it to assuage my guilt, which perversely would make me feel more guilty, and indeed unbearably smug. As I believe I've said before, I don't think we're going to take sufficient action to avert climate change of a magnitude and rapidity that is likely to be very problematic. So those of use who do accept the science may as well fly without too much guilt and embrace the inevitable, as everyone else seems determined to wait and wait for more and more "proof" before doing anything about climate change ;-)


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## HardScienceFan (Nov 14, 2007)

let's just say I'm careful about stating that there is a secular,longlasting trend towards higher average annual temperatures,and that it is anthropogenic.


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## NickB (Nov 15, 2007)

HardScienceFan said:


> let's just say I'm careful about stating that there is a secular,longlasting trend towards higher average annual temperatures,and that it is anthropogenic.



Well, I'm obviously more convinced, and so are my colleagues who have been working for decades in the field of climate change, many of them working precisely on the question of long-term trends and attribution. The evidence for a trend is incontrovertible - the upward trend hasn't been smooth with each year necessarily being hotter than the last (no-one would expect that to be the case), and without the huge amount of work on climate modelling and projection there would be no reason to believe it would necessarily continue, but it is there nonetheless. And once you start looking more deeply the evidence that this is very largely (not necessarily entirely, for example at the beginning of the 20th century) due to anthropogenic emissions is extremely strong. In fact this seems to be the only satisfactory explanation - i.e. that works. 

I suggest you take a look at Working Group I of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. Chapters 3 and 9 are most pertinent, on observed surface changes and attribution of these to human activity respectively, but other chapters may also be of interest (e.g. on sea-levels, and snow and ice cover). You can download the IPCC material chapter by chapter, for free. Just Google "IPCC" (I can't post links here). Once you've digested these feel free to come back and offer a point by point refutation of the material therein if you are still not convinced.

Alternatively, you can dismiss the IPCC and not bother to look at it, disregard the views of many hundreds - indeed thousands - of bona fide scientists who have been working on this issue, maintain that peer review is a fiction to mask a vast conspiracy, and instead take the word of a collection of lobbyists, businessmen, ideologues and TV producers that we are all lying to you. It would be a shame if you'd been had by the army of vested interests arrayed against the science, and believed their pseudo-scientific straw grasping over the real science that underpins our understanding of climate change.

It's up to you - if you prefer the latter route I'm not going to bother arguing  about it - there really would be no point.

Regards

Nick


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