Climate change another name for Weather

[Smurf1976]

Basilio,
The world is right to study it and should reduce fossil fuel use anyway for other reasons such as hydrocarbon and soot pollution etc and energy security.

One of my primary concerns with the response to climate change (ignoring the "does it exist" arguments) is the widespread call for a shift from coal to natural gas.

With just 3 countries, Russia, Iran and Qatar, dominating world reserves whilst UK, US etc production is in decline that rings more than a few alarm bells for me. At best, the OECD countries will end up in the dark with wrecked economies. At worst, here comes WW3 when someone cuts off supply or sends the price to the moon.

The situation with gas, in the long term, is one of greater geographic concentration than even oil. The Saudi's claim about a quarter of world oil reserves and about 10% of production. The Russians have over 40% of the world's gas. There's a rather large geopolitical risk if we try and run just about everything on it.

If the calls were for nuclear, geothermal and, where available, hydro and other renewables to replace coal then I'd be far more comfortable with the whole argument. Trouble is, environmentalists have spent a few decades violently opposing two of those so don't have too much room to move.

 

[spooly74]

Climate change deniers who hark on about the shortcomings of IPCC models, or modelling per se, are simply clutching at straws on the "forcings" front.

Firstly, what is a climate change denier so we all understand who/what you are referring to?

Secondly, don't the current IPCC models already include radiative forcings with their current predicted temperature increases (2C century/0.2C decade)?

Considering we've observed less than half the predicted warming, I'd hardly say climate change deniers (whatever the hell that is) are clutching at straws.

 

[wayneL]

In the end, what is real is a warming earth.
To which climate change deniers find more and more creative ways of obfuscating.
In the end, I support the links I post.
Your denial of that is unsurprising given the lack of credibility of much you post.

This line of argument is bizarre. I really don't know what your point is.

I could give a flying **** whether you or I support any links posted.

What I care about are facts and this is where models come unstuck... when facts fail to support the model. The incontrovertible truth is that the IPCC model doesn't work. Therefore, the entire AGW hypothesis is in trouble.

There is no requirement for obfuscation from climate realists to point this out, in fact what we are doing is eschewing obfuscation to bring forth the apolitical truth.

 

[ghotib]

What I care about are facts and this is where models come unstuck... when facts fail to support the model. The incontrovertible truth is that the IPCC model doesn't work. Therefore, the entire AGW hypothesis is in trouble.

The IPCC data distribution centre provides links to the outputs from 23 climate models used in the 2007 report. Which one do you mean?

Ghoti (puzzled)

 

[Smurf1976]

There is no requirement for obfuscation from climate realists to point this out, in fact what we are doing is eschewing obfuscation to bring forth the apolitical truth.

This is a political debate just like taxation, health and fixing the roads are political debates. Science has very, very little to do with it and that's the problem.

 

[rederob]

What I care about are facts and this is where models come unstuck... when facts fail to support the model. The incontrovertible truth is that the IPCC model doesn't work. Therefore, the entire AGW hypothesis is in trouble.

It's a "model".
Actually, there are many versions of the model.
They attempt to replicate the affects of a wide range of parameters.
The model does not change observed data.
The long term trends are well established.
The models "fit" historical trends reasonably well, and are getting more sophisticated.
They make no attempt to provide "weather" forecasts.
Make of the models what you will. The underpinning science is not likely to change.

 

[Largesse]

potentially hottest week in the last 107 years this week

must be global warming......


or it could just be a hot week......

i'm going to move to New Zealand, i heard they don't have global warming as badly over there

 

[wayneL]

This is a political debate just like taxation, health and fixing the roads are political debates. Science has very, very little to do with it and that's the problem.

Amen Smurf.

But somewhere in between all the rhetoric, hyberbole, misinformation, lies and distortions, is the the scientific truth, or some facsimile of it anyway.

ghoti and rederob,

"The model" is a generic term for the IPCC's apocalyptic, cash generating scaremongering, AGW hypothesis. It is analogous the way I use the term model in relation to options. It serves as a proxy for all models when talking generically.

The fact that there is 5, 27, or 127 of them only serves to illustrate the nonsense of "tipping points", predictions of sea level rises that just aren't happening (in excess of the linear trend of the last two centuries) and other scaremongering predictions that IPCC scientists purport as fact and inevitable.

FFS what is wrong with the common sense approach of cleaning up our act on a host of other real, measurable and imminently damaging environmental issues, with the reduction of co2 as a by product?

Ah yes.... the politics... the politics

 

[Smurf1976]

FFS what is wrong with the common sense approach of cleaning up our act on a host of other real, measurable and imminently damaging environmental issues, with the reduction of co2 as a by product?

Ah yes.... the politics... the politics

The other issues can, in most cases, be addressed without a paradigm shift in the global economic and political order. Not so with CO2, hence it offers political and economic potential (for some) that no other issue offers.

 

[ghotib]

This is a political debate just like taxation, health and fixing the roads are political debates. Science has very, very little to do with it and that's the problem.

Certainly this thread has very little to do with science. That's obvious from the title. There are real scientific disciplines of meteorology and climatology and the real scientists - including those who dispute the details of anthropogenic global warming - seem find the distinction useful. Probably political debate would find it useful too <sigh>

Ghoti

 

[Julia]

i'm going to move to New Zealand, i heard they don't have global warming as badly over there

Then you will be miserable with the cold. If we were to ever genuinely have global warming and NZ were to participate in it, then I could go back there to live. Meantime, it's far more cold than when I was a kid there.

 

[ghotib]

"The model" is a generic term for the IPCC's apocalyptic, cash generating scaremongering, AGW hypothesis. It is analogous the way I use the term model in relation to options. It serves as a proxy for all models when talking generically.

Yabbut Wayne, a proxy generic term is not the science. The science of the IPCC report is 23 different models of different parts of the climate system, what differences in their results indicate about where better data is needed, what further work is needed to improve the models themselves, whether and where different models yield the same outcomes, and so on.

The fact that there is 5, 27, or 127 of them only serves to illustrate the nonsense of "tipping points", predictions of sea level rises that just aren't happening (in excess of the linear trend of the last two centuries) and other scaremongering predictions that IPCC scientists purport as fact and inevitable.

I think it serves to illustrate that understanding the climate system of the entire planet is a very hard problem that is being tackled in many different ways. Reconciling them is part of finding the answers, and publishing the failures and the differences is part of normal scientific process.

FFS what is wrong with the common sense approach of cleaning up our act on a host of other real, measurable and imminently damaging environmental issues, with the reduction of co2 as a by product?

Completely agree. Also that reducing CO2 emissions should have the highly desirable by product of cleaning up a host of other real, measurable and imminently damaging environmental issues.

Wayne, I started seriously reading about climate and climate change after you posted the link to The Great Global Warming Swindle. I watched that and then I started researching as best I could within the limits of my small and amateur scientific training. I wish very much that my investigations had turned up evidence that nothing much has changed in the last hundred years or so, or that the changes are within normal variability. But they haven't. Instead it seems that evidence from many different directions - not just climatology but plant and animal behaviour, disease patterns, ocean chemistry, and more - indicates that human activity is making the planet unable to support human civilisation as we have known it. I don't really care if why we change the way we live as long as we do it.

So I'm going to switch off my computer and all the lights and go to bed.

 

[wayneL]

Yabbut Wayne, a proxy generic term is not the science. The science of the IPCC report is 23 different models of different parts of the climate system, what differences in their results indicate about where better data is needed, what further work is needed to improve the models themselves, whether and where different models yield the same outcomes, and so on.

Semantical arguments aside, which are a waste of time, there must be a theme or scientific narrative that draws all these models together into a cohesive hypothesis. That narrative is that MM industrial gases, particularly co2, are causing the climate to gradually heat up.

I think it serves to illustrate that understanding the climate system of the entire planet is a very hard problem that is being tackled in many different ways. Reconciling them is part of finding the answers, and publishing the failures and the differences is part of normal scientific process.

Your statement here underlines why the AGW hypothesis is still only a hypothesis... not even a valid theory. Furthermore, it underlines the idiocy of Al Bore and his cohorts in claiming AGW as irrefutable fact... tipping points and other such scaremongering nonsense.

Look! As I've stated a hundred times; it is a valid hypothesis, we should be aware/concerned that human industrial activity may be having an impact on global climate. Let's get to the bottom of it.

But the sad truth is that only theses that promote the idea of anthropogenic CC are encouraged and funded and those that go against the hypothesis are rejected, unfunded, ignored, attacked and politically marginalized.

THIS IS NOT SCIENCE.

The truth is that despite the disadvantage that dissenting science suffers, observations are coming from everywhere that refute the IPCC hypothesis. But instead of changing the hypothesis to suit new data. new data is changed or ignored to suit the hypothesis.

THIS IS NOT SCIENCE EITHER.

More and more people are becoming aware of the ruse, but instead of isolating the IPCC ruse and accepting more valid concerns, the great unwashed has learned to mistrust the entire environmental movement.

People no-longer just bag the Al Bore fraud, they don't trust us Great Blue Tit savers either

Completely agree. Also that reducing CO2 emissions should have the highly desirable by product of cleaning up a host of other real, measurable and imminently damaging environmental issues.

That's true, but the effect is only partial. Only pollution involving co2 is reduced. The other way round, all pollution is attacked, including those involving co2 (itself not a pollution).

Wayne, I started seriously reading about climate and climate change after you posted the link to The Great Global Warming Swindle. I watched that and then I started researching as best I could within the limits of my small and amateur scientific training. I wish very much that my investigations had turned up evidence that nothing much has changed in the last hundred years or so, or that the changes are within normal variability. But they haven't. Instead it seems that evidence from many different directions - not just climatology but plant and animal behaviour, disease patterns, ocean chemistry, and more - indicates that human activity is making the planet unable to support human civilisation as we have known it. I don't really care if why we change the way we live as long as we do it.

So I'm going to switch off my computer and all the lights and go to bed.

Yes well, everything depends on where you source your information. To get a truly balanced view, you have to at least take in the opposing argument.

Nobody is questioning the trend of warming that has been in place since the last ice age, but the argument as to the reason for it is by no means settled, as is claimed by the pro lobby.

 

[rederob]

Yes well, everything depends on where you source your information. To get a truly balanced view, you have to at least take in the opposing argument.

I've carefully looked at the opposing arguments. They seldom measure up.
For example, last December (2008) a paper was to be presented at the AGU's fall meeting which looked like providing a dissenting view on climate change. The paper was withdrawn, so I followed the links back from the abstract to see why. In very simple terms there was no rigor to the science. There was "science" within the paper, but nothing particularly coherent when linked to its conclusions.
Despite the above, climate denying media and websites trot out his work as yet another example of why the IPCC have got it wrong. Remember, this was just over a month ago!
There is also a view that money only goes to pro-climate change science. In fact, some astonishing figures are bandied about. Governments do fund science, and have done for a very long time. So does the private sector. In fact, the best paid jobs are in the private sector.
Given the profitability of oil/gas/coal companies you might think they would be out there funding scientific research that demonstrably refuted the IPCC's findings, and were submitting these papers to regular and rigorous peer review. You might think that.
Instead, the wealthy CO2 emitting substance producers are involved in the very same tactics that let them battle on ozone depletion many years back.
Little surprise, some key scientists for the chlorofluorocarbon camp are today engaged in the "science" of climate change denial. Maybe they think they are on a winner this time.

 

[wayneL]

I've carefully looked at the opposing arguments. They seldom measure up.
For example, last December (2008) a paper was to be presented at the AGU's fall meeting which looked like providing a dissenting view on climate change. The paper was withdrawn, so I followed the links back from the abstract to see why. In very simple terms there was no rigor to the science. There was "science" within the paper, but nothing particularly coherent when linked to its conclusions.

Oh Rob,

Your whole premise is that therefore the pro argument does measure up... LOL.... it doesn't.

I can give an even more recent example.. the Antarctic temperature extrapolation of only last week. It should never have seen the light of day and only survives because the pro AGW forces (eg The Guardian - AKA the Labour Party News) refuse to publish the embarrassing deconstructions of the (non) science.

Heck, they are even still using the discredited hockey stick graph.

 

[rederob]

Oh Rob,

Your whole premise is that therefore the pro argument does measure up... LOL.... it doesn't.

I can give an even more recent example.. the Antarctic temperature extrapolation of only last week. It should never have seen the light of day and only survives because the pro AGW forces (eg The Guardian - AKA the Labor Party News) refuse to publish the embarrassing deconstructions of the (non) science.

Heck, they are even still using the discredited hockey stick graph.

I think the above response reflects your inadequacy in this whole saga.
The Antarctic temperature "interpolation" has not been debunked.
Certainly, many are questioning its veracity.
And it got more attention than this paper 8years ago:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/....1175/1520-0442(2001)014<1977:DLCIWA>2.0.CO;2
Even the "hockey stick" holds true at many levels, despite climate change deniers using this attack at every opportunity in the hope that unthinking people will jump on their bandwagon.

When you show me which of the "Antarctic" data are erroneous or fabricated, we might have something more to discuss. In the meantime their results are "out there" for the scientific world to ponder or fault.
I'll take that community's opinion a bit more seriously than any tribe of cretins that shoot first and ask questions later.

 

[basilio]

What are the main arguments that skeptics bring up against the climate change being real? And what is the response to these queries? It seems really easy to make a confident, sweeping generalisation that "Al Gore got it wrong" or "The models don't work" and then expect the audience to accept that 99.9% of scientists who are studying global warming are barking up the wrong planet (let alone tree.)

As usual there is an excellent website which details each and every objection and explains why it is either misleading, inappropriate or just plain stupid. FYI I have attached part of the list and the site.

Cheers

PS I am quite heartened that this discussion has become more thoughtful in past few posts

Skeptic Arguments

This is a list of every skeptic argument encountered online as well as how often each argument is used. How this is calculated...

1 It's the sun 7.8%
2 Climate's changed before 7.0%
3 There is no consensus 6.1%
4 It's cooling 5.1%
5 Models are unreliable 4.6%
6 Surface temp is unreliable 4.5%
7 Ice age predicted in the 70s 3.8%
8 We're heading into an ice age 3.6%
9 It hasn't warmed since 1998 3.5%
10 Al Gore got it wrong 3.2%
11 CO2 lags temperature 3.2%
12 Global warming is good 3.1%
13 Antarctica is cooling/gaining ice 3.0%
14 Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming 2.7%
15 It's freaking cold! 2.6%
16 Mars is warming 2.5%
17 1934 - hottest year on record 2.4%
18 It's cosmic rays 2.3%
19 Urban Heat Island effect exaggerates warming
20 Greenland was green 1.8%
21 Other planets are warming 1.8%
22 Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

 

[wayneL]

What are the main arguments that skeptics bring up against the climate change being real? And what is the response to these queries? It seems really easy to make a confident, sweeping generalisation that "Al Gore got it wrong" or "The models don't work" and then expect the audience to accept that 99.9% of scientists who are studying global warming are barking up the wrong planet (let alone tree.)

As usual there is an excellent website which details each and every objection and explains why it is either misleading, inappropriate or just plain stupid. FYI I have attached part of the list and the site.

Cheers

PS I am quite heartened that this discussion has become more thoughtful in past few posts

Skeptic Arguments

This is a list of every skeptic argument encountered online as well as how often each argument is used. How this is calculated...

1 It's the sun 7.8%
2 Climate's changed before 7.0%
3 There is no consensus 6.1%
4 It's cooling 5.1%
5 Models are unreliable 4.6%
6 Surface temp is unreliable 4.5%
7 Ice age predicted in the 70s 3.8%
8 We're heading into an ice age 3.6%
9 It hasn't warmed since 1998 3.5%
10 Al Gore got it wrong 3.2%
11 CO2 lags temperature 3.2%
12 Global warming is good 3.1%
13 Antarctica is cooling/gaining ice 3.0%
14 Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming 2.7%
15 It's freaking cold! 2.6%
16 Mars is warming 2.5%
17 1934 - hottest year on record 2.4%
18 It's cosmic rays 2.3%
19 Urban Heat Island effect exaggerates warming
20 Greenland was green 1.8%
21 Other planets are warming 1.8%
22 Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

[sigh]

Ask a bunch of people in a pub and you'll get these sorts of satirical contructs easily. I could easily ask a bunch of people in a pub and get equally asinine answers why we'll all be swimming in boiling seas in about 3 1/2 weeks if we don't stop driving our cars.

LOL Ridiculous.

I give up. I give a little in the debate to approach the real truth of either anthropogenic or natural climate change, but you lot in your zealotry refuse to reciprocate. Therefore the chance of an intelligent debate here is zero. It's like arguing politics with revolutionaries.

Look! Good luck to you, buy a house on high ground, bid for government funding, lecture your colleagues on why you driving your car has less impact than them driving their car... whatever.

I'll live in the real world and so will the majority of us who do our best while observing the gross hypocrisy of the pro AGW lobby. I'll take concrete steps to try and change the world we live in for the better, while your lot just provokes depression in the youth of this world.

I'll give hope, while you lot take it away in zombie fashion, for your political thought police masters.

Good luck, you'll need it. The plebs are catching on.

 

[GumbyLearner]

[sigh]

Ask a bunch of people in a pub and you'll get these sorts of satirical contructs easily. I could easily ask a bunch of people in a pub and get equally asinine answers why we'll all be swimming in boiling seas in about 3 1/2 weeks if we don't stop driving our cars.

LOL Ridiculous.

I give up. I give a little in the debate to approach the real truth of either anthropogenic or natural climate change, but you lot in your zealotry refuse to reciprocate. Therefore the chance of an intelligent debate here is zero. It's like arguing politics with revolutionaries.

Look! Good luck to you, buy a house on high ground, bid for government funding, lecture your colleagues on why you driving your car has less impact than them driving their car... whatever.

I'll live in the real world and so will the majority of us who do our best while observing the gross hypocrisy of the pro AGW lobby. I'll take concrete steps to try and change the world we live in for the better, while your lot just provokes depression in the youth of this world.

I'll give hope, while you lot take it away in zombie fashion, for your political thought police masters.

Good luck, you'll need it. The plebs are catching on.

LMAO Now that's a retort!

 

[rederob]

I give up. I give a little in the debate to approach the real truth of either anthropogenic or natural climate change, but you lot in your zealotry refuse to reciprocate. Therefore the chance of an intelligent debate here is zero. It's like arguing politics with revolutionaries.

Not a scintilla of "intelligent debate" from you.
You have consistently avoided debating matters I have asked about.
You just trot out the same old tripe.
How, for example are the latest West Antarctica findings "debunked"?
The truth is you just blindly followed a lost leader.
Had you explored the article in Nature you would have been quite pleased with the findings.
But rest peacefully in ignorance if that's your pleasure.