Resisting Climate Hysteria

[Smurf1976]

So instead of blaming man pollution on Global Warming or as they now call it Climate Change, why not have such a discussion on the Sun and the Earth?

I'd really like to see someone credible (a proper research organisation employing real scientists, meteorologists and other relevant people) look into the big picture.

We know about the sun. NASA etc has a lot of useful data there.

We know about ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) and various meteorological organisations have a lot of data about that one.

More recently we've become aware of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and again the meteorological organisations have data.

We know about man-made heat additions from the burning of fossil fuels, nuclear reactors, hydro power etc. The International Energy Agency (IEA), the Energy Information Administration (EIA, a US government agency), and BP (as in BP the oil company) all have very good data sets covering current and past energy production from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro. The only real uncertainty relates to biomass although there are some pretty good estimates available.

We don't have precise data, but some reasonable estimates are available (largely based on IEA, EIA and BP data) relating to other emissions too. SO2, NOx, CH4 and so on.

NASA and others have historical satellite images useful for determining the extent of large scale land use changes over time. Eg bitumen roads absorb solar radiation far more than a forest does. With proper analysis a lot of useful information could be gained from this.

And we know about the weather. Meteorological organisations have a lot of data on rainfall, temperature, wind speed and so on as well as things like sea surface temperatures. Others, such as water utilities and hydro-electric operators collectively have a huge amount of data relating to surface runoff. Others such as National Parks services, fire brigades, agricultural organisations etc have data relating to soil moisture levels both in developed and natural areas.

There are other possibly useful data sources as well. Eg highway departments, councils etc would in many cases have historic data about snow and ice impacts on roads. Airports and airlines might have some useful data relating to weather at airports too - it's definitely something they pay a lot of attention to operationally.

What it really needs is someone to put that altogether and come up with some plausible explanations as to what's going on. As I said, you don't have things like the two downward "steps" in runoff in south-west WA and much of Tasmania without there being a cause. There have been other observations of changes in various parts of the world too.

It really needs someone credible to look at all the data from a proper research perspective.

At present, all we've really got is politically tainted research which assumes a link to CO2 plus the various efforts of everyone from farmers to dam operators to economists trying to match various data sets in order to find some sort of linkage relating to their own specific area of interest.

 

[basilio]

The study of climate change has developed enormously in the past 30-40 years. All of the areas mentioned (solar flares, changing orbits of the earth, El Niño/La Nina, land use changes and many others ) have been explored and continue to be explored in the context of our changing climate.

They do have an effect but to date the overwhelming effect of the change in climate over the past 100 plus years has been the increase in green house gases.

For those who are interested in the overall development of climate science in the past 150 years check out the last 3 graphs

Cheers

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=57
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=58
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=60
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=61
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=62

 

[Smurf1976]

But there's still a lot of stuff we don't know about the climate or even short term weather.

From a Hydro Tas media release today. This commences tomorrow and runs until the end of October.

The full version is here. http://www.hydro.com.au/about-us/news/2014-04/start-hydro-tasmania-cloud-seeding-program

The Southern Ocean is the source of much of the winter rain across southern Australia. However, some aspects of the ocean’s influence on weather patterns are poorly understood, resulting in limited ability to generate accurate long-term forecasts.

Gaining a greater understanding will support development of modelling tools that will result in improved long-term forecasting. This is vital to improving water resource management in many parts of southern Australia, including Tasmania.

Hydro Tasmania will conduct flights during the 2014 cloud seeding season to coincide with the passage of satellites over Tasmania, providing ‘in-situ’ validation of satellite measurements. Key measurements will be taken, including air temperature, wind and liquid water content of the atmosphere.

The research is being led by Monash University with support from scientists at Hydro Tasmania, Snowy Hydro, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, and the Department of Sustainability and Environment (VIC).

Whilst this is about weather not climate, it's hard to assess any change in climate when we don't even properly understand what drives the weather. I mean, a few years ago the drought was being linked to CO2 and then someone took a look at the Indian Ocean Dipole, linked it with the Southern Oscillation data, and came to the realisation that the IOD was also a very relevant factor. Given the length of some of these cycles and the many combinations that are possible, it would be easy to assume that a particular weather pattern lasting many years is linked to CO2 even though there may well be another explanation for it.

 

[basilio]

I agree with you Smurf that there is no certainty about our ultimate knowledge of a subject. Understanding the full details of local weather and longer term climate falls into that category.

The reason I posted the last links was to highlight the current understood range of influences on climate. If you check them out you can see that there certainly are an extensive range of short and long term influences. However on all the current evidence the largest impact on the climate changes in the past 100 odd years have come from the steep increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

In the big picture the increased heat retention caused by extra greenhouse gases will drive up global temperatures. On a local level however there can easily be some differing results as a consequence of changes in wind patterns or other effects of an increase in global temepartures.

For example there have been concerns that the Gulf Stream might be threatened by global warming. If in fact the warm waters of the Gulf Stream stopped in their tracks Europe would rapidly freeze over.

I suppose thats why we now call it Climate Change rather than Global Warming. Things won't be simple

http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarmingandweather/a/gulf_stream.htm

 

[Logique]

You didn't follow the link did you.

Your post is nonsense. Beginning to end. It is the climate alarmists who now desperately search for a crutch.

Clive Palmer and PUP are smarter than you.

My apology to you Sydboy007 for this post of mine.

The tone of it is below the standard I set myself for in here. Civility to all posters is the benchmark.

 

[wayneL]

Fwiw I think exampl3s of this can be found at both extremes of the debate

 

[basilio]

Latest research from glaciologists and Earth science researchers say that melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is now unstoppable.

Antarctic ice sheet collapse ‘unstoppable’, scientists say


ICE is melting in the western Antarctic at an unstoppable pace, US scientists say, warning that the discovery holds major consequences for global sea level rise in the coming decades.

They say the speedy melting means prior calculations of sea level rise worldwide made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will have to be adjusted upwards.

“A large sector of the West Antarctic ice sheet has gone into a state of irreversible retreat. It has passed the point of no return,” said Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California Irvine.

He noted that surveys have shown there is no large hill at the back of these glaciers that could hold back the melting ice.

“It will raise sea level by 1.2 metres or four feet,” said Rignot, whose paper appears in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters journal.

A separate study published in the journal Science on Monday found that Thwaites glacier is melting fast and that its collapse could raise global sea level nearly 61 centimetres.

That study was based largely on computer modelling of the future, in addition to airborne radar measurements of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Study author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington, said the process is now expected to take between 200 and 1000 years.

Current projections of sea level rise, agreed upon by international surveys, do not account for the Antarctic ice sheet melting.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/e...e-scientists-say/story-e6frflp0-1226915299389
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...et-collapse-has-already-begun-scientists-warn

It will be interesting to see how politicians/countries respond to the research. This is not a "tomorrow" catastrophe - but in geological terms a rise of 4 metres in sea level with the collapse of West Antarctic ice sheet would totally redraw the maps of the world.

 

[sptrawler]

The good thing about the report is that it claims the melt is irreversible.
Now they may get down to formulating a global plan and carbon reduction scheme.

It will certainly redraw the USA

 

[noco]

Latest research from glaciologists and Earth science researchers say that melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is now unstoppable.


http://www.news.com.au/technology/e...e-scientists-say/story-e6frflp0-1226915299389
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...et-collapse-has-already-begun-scientists-warn

It will be interesting to see how politicians/countries respond to the research. This is not a "tomorrow" catastrophe - but in geological terms a rise of 4 metres in sea level with the collapse of West Antarctic ice sheet would totally redraw the maps of the world.

Now tell me, who do we believe?


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...at-record-levels/story-e6frg8y6-1226913708208

 

[burglar]

Now tell me, who do we believe?


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...at-record-levels/story-e6frg8y6-1226913708208

Sea Ice is different to Land Ice ... but what would I know!

 

[burglar]

The good thing about the report is that it claims the melt is irreversible.
Now they may get down to formulating a global plan and carbon reduction scheme.

It will certainly redraw the USA

Do I detect a faint whiff of humour? :


Surely if it is irreversible, we can forget a carbon reduction scheme and teach our grandchildren .
to build floating homes!

 

[wayneL]

Watts' article on basilio's link:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/...ark-again-gets-called-out-by-nyt/#more-109037

 

[explod]

The article in the Australian noco, is describing seasonal ice not the deep ice established over millions of years.

The seasonal ice dissipates completly in the summer. It is caused by increased cloud from warming. The odd effects of global warming give amunition to sceptics but unfortunately at our future peril.

 

[wayneL]

The article in the Australian noco, is describing seasonal ice not the deep ice established over millions of years.

The seasonal ice dissipates completly in the summer. It is caused by increased cloud from warming. The odd effects of global warming give amunition to sceptics but unfortunately at our future peril.

Citations please.

 

[basilio]

Watts' article on basilio's link:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/...ark-again-gets-called-out-by-nyt/#more-109037

Thanks for the link Wayne. It was worth reading teh full Press Release from the science body that did the research

To be clear my original quote was from the News Media source. I added The Guardian link because it expanded on the story.

I think this a fundamentally revolutionary piece of research. Ok the Western Antarctic ice shelf won't melt in a 10 years or 50 or 70. The time line starts at 100 years. But there will be ongoing and probably rapidly escalating melt (particularly if temperatures continue to rise on a business as usual basis) and in conjunction with other ice melting sea level rises for this century will most likely be on the high side of a metre

But in the long term it seems to be "gone" with all the implications of a sea level rise of at least 4 metres (this doesn't include any further contribution from the Greenland ice cap)

Implications
1) Completely destroys climate skeptics assertions about relatively small effects of climate change.
2) Puts the world on notice that for all intents and purposes major population centres on coastal fringes will be unlivable in a century or so.
3) Creates fundamental uncertainty about the future extent of sea level rises. So exactly how far up the hill do we build ?
4) Raises the issues of how do we deal with this seemingly certain but long time line catastrophe. ? For example how much more infrastructure development do we put into current cities versus planning and building the cities for tomorrow ?

I would be interested Wayne in hearing the skeptics view of the strength of the Antarctic ice shelf research. In fact I would be even more interested to hear how all other relevant scientists assess the work.

 

[Sdajii]

Thanks for the link Wayne. It was worth reading teh full Press Release from the science body that did the research

To be clear my original quote was from the News Media source. I added The Guardian link because it expanded on the story.

I think this a fundamentally revolutionary piece of research. Ok the Western Antarctic ice shelf won't melt in a 10 years or 50 or 70. The time line starts at 100 years. But there will be ongoing and probably rapidly escalating melt (particularly if temperatures continue to rise on a business as usual basis) and in conjunction with other ice melting sea level rises for this century will most likely be on the high side of a metre

But in the long term it seems to be "gone" with all the implications of a sea level rise of at least 4 metres (this doesn't include any further contribution from the Greenland ice cap)

Implications
1) Completely destroys climate skeptics assertions about relatively small effects of climate change.
2) Puts the world on notice that for all intents and purposes major population centres on coastal fringes will be unlivable in a century or so.
3) Creates fundamental uncertainty about the future extent of sea level rises. So exactly how far up the hill do we build ?
4) Raises the issues of how do we deal with this seemingly certain but long time line catastrophe. ? For example how much more infrastructure development do we put into current cities versus planning and building the cities for tomorrow ?

I would be interested Wayne in hearing the skeptics view of the strength of the Antarctic ice shelf research. In fact I would be even more interested to hear how all other relevant scientists assess the work.

Read a bit more into it, basilio. The 'expert' alarmists on this one aren't saying anything noticeable is going to be happening for hundreds of years, and it could be over a thousand years before the sea levels rise dramatically. They say it will be at least 200 years, probably about 600 years. Apparently it will very slowly rise as the ice slowly melts, then suddenly (probably about 600 years from now) it will rise quickly. That's far enough into the future for no one to care about it today in terms of economics, and even if it was certain fact, anyone who wanted to could dismiss it as unimportant and we'd forget about it for generations.

Big predictions like this come from science all the time, and usually they turn out to be wrong. In this case it will be generations before we can be certain.

It's worth considering that over the next thousand years or so all sorts of other things could happen. Maybe somewhere else something will happen to counter this melting (if it is as certain and dramatic as they say). Either way, I'm guessing that in 500 years we'll have the means to reverse it artificially if need be.

I really don't think that saying "We convinced that we can extrapolate things and say that this is going to be a big problem hundreds of years from now" immediately destroys anyone's idea about anything.

Even if we absolutely knew this to be fact and we all agreed, it wouldn't change the value of waterfront properties for a few generations. Look at the slums in Detroit which were the wealthy areas just decades ago. Look at the wealthy areas today which were slums just decades ago. These things come and go within much smaller timeframes, we have hundreds of years to plan for it, if it is even going to happen. Look at the buildings we are putting up today. For the most part we really don't expect them to still be in use in 500 years. We don't generally put skyscrapers built to last right next to the ocean, and hey, even they are disposable in that sort of timeframe. How many massive buildings were there 500 years ago?

Even so, people acting like sea level changes are unnatural and catastrophic is a bit silly. Within recent history (tens of thousands of years) sea levels have risen and fallen hugely. Multiple times over recent history we have had land bridges form and vanish between places like Australia and PNG, and with those events came massive changes on what still is land in Australia (and of course all over the rest of the world). None of that had anything to do with human activity, and of course that sort of thing was going on hundreds of thousands of years too (before humans even existed) and millions of years before that. We even had continents drifting apart, smacking into each other, etc. It's not like any of that is going to stop regardless of what we do or don't pump into the atmosphere. Everyone seems to think that if we reduce our CO2 emissions or had never produced any, the climate never would have changed, but that's just a modern myth. If we want a constant climate and sea level we'll only achieve it through artificial manipulation, and it will very much be an unnatural thing - the climate has never before sat still. Among other myths is that despite the fact that the climate has been warmer and cooler than at present before, the rate of change has never been greater. Even that's not true, climate scientists aren't even sure that the current rate of change is the greatest in the last thousand years, and it's certainly not the greatest ever, it has been greater many times before.

Interestingly, since we know that the climate has been warmer than at present many times before, including not all that long ago, this ice melting must have occurred then too. Presumably the rate of warming isn't relevant to the ice - it isn't alive, it doesn't evolve, it'll melt whenever it's warm. So this is just a normal cycling thing too.

We'll probably develop the means to keep the climate constant within the next few hundred years, though we may or may not choose to do that.

As usual, the alarmists are making a big deal out of something which isn't unnatural (the timing may be, but it has happened before and would have happened again with or without us) and may not be happening at all, and even the scientists are predicting it to be in at least 200 years, probably three times that.

 

[Smurf1976]

So far as predicting the future, based on whatever information is available at the time, is concerned then it is usually not that difficult to get the overall direction right. It's timing that tends to go horribly wrong.

I can say with confidence that the stock markets will crash and I can say with confidence that there will be major bushfires in Victoria and Tasmania. There will also be a large aircraft crash somewhere and the price of petrol will go up. And all of us will die.

Forecasting the "what" is the easy bit. It's the "when" that is difficult.

So I can accept that sea levels might rise 4 metres but I don't place any credibility on the timing. All sorts of things will happen over the next 100, 200, 500 or however many years that will wreck any attempt to forecast the timing. If they did get it right then that would largely come down to luck since you can't, for example, make any reasonable forecast of CO2 emissions, natural cycles and so on beyond the short term.

So, sea levels will change = almost certainly yes. But I won't be taking any notice of timing predictions unless they are over the short term (20 years at the most) and based on specific, well understood causes. Beyond that, things change.

 

[basilio]

Smurf I disagree with the logic and implications of your comments on the research around the West Antarctic ice shelf.

As I see it the work is largely an engineering analysis of what is happening to the ice. The researchers have discovered that the ice shelf seems to be breaking away from the bedrock below as a result of warm water undercutting the shelf. because there is nothing to stop the shelf they think it will (almost) inevitably slip off the land and end up melting in the sea with consequent raising of sea levels by around 4 metres.

The suggested time span is obviously a guesstimate 200-1000 years. But if temperatures continue to increase as rapidly as they have then you wouldn't want to bet on the long time scale.

There is no suggestion that future changes in CO2 levels are necessary to continue this result. The shelf seems to have broken. ( Mind you I'd want to have a lot more evidence than just a couple of research efforts. I wonder how willing governments will be to focus on this work ?)

The final result also won't just happen at the end of the time scale. We would expect to seeing significant increases along the way.

Unlike stock market crashes, fires or plane crashes the world won't go back to "normal" . We will have to decide when our current coastal cities have to be abandoned and where we move hundreds of millions of people - if in fact we can at all. The required time span and resources necessary for such a move are beyond anything current societies have had to face. Theres no point in comparin this change with rises and falls in sea levels when the earths population was in the millions and cities didn't exist in any substantial form.

 

[Smurf1976]

The suggested time span is obviously a guesstimate 200-1000 years. But if temperatures continue to increase as rapidly as they have then you wouldn't want to bet on the long time scale.

That is precisely my point. There are all sorts of things that could happen over the next 200 - 1000 years which cause the prediction to become inaccurate. It could easily turn out to be 100 years or it could turn out to be 2000 years.

If you are projecting something hundreds of years into the future then you only need a tiny error in measurement, calculation or assumptions, compounded over a few centuries, to be way off the mark.

 

[wayneL]

Some interesting stuff on Cook's thoroughly discredited 97% consensus paper and University of Queensland.

Astonishing stuff http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/...s-data-for-a-scientific-rebuttal/#more-109318