You won't see this on CNN

[landrun]

... or ABC, CBS, NBC and probably not FOX either.

The global warming political movement/scam
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017028.php

[soonerboomer93]

Maybe we're causing global cooling and not global warming?

[Jerk]

Awesome! Thanks

[royalfan5]

Maybe we're causing global cooling and not global warming?
Maybe it's both and it will average out Global Nice Weather all the time?

[Jerk]

damn!! This is pure gold!

[SCOUT]

I just watched the whole thing. I found it very interesting. I put it in the same category as much of the global warming material. It sounds reasonable but I don't know enough to tell whether or not it is truly accurate. I will say that it reinforces many of the points that I am skeptical about.

I hope Fraggle gets a chance to watch it and comment. I would love to hear his take on it.

I found the subject of authors of the IPCC report the most interesting. It is shocking to me that dissenters are credited with approving of the overall message. That alone should put the IPCC report under the microscope.

[OUHOMER]

somebody email this to Gore please. Oh but wait then he would be without a job.

[Harry Beanbag]

Just as I suspected, the Sun is in charge of temperature on Earth. Amazing.

[OklahomaTuba]

The sad thing is, everyone wants to see the same things like clean renewable energy, clean environment, etc. The nut jobs going bat **** crazy over this stuff just does more to turn people off than anything. And making Mr. Interenet the face of the global warming movement just makes it twice as worse.

[SoonerStormchaser]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
GLOBAL WARMING IS A CROCK OF ****!

[achiro]

THis is the flick the guy in this thread was talking about.
http://www.soonerfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90159

How long is the video, I am gonna try and see it tommorrow.

[SCOUT]

THis is the flick the guy in this thread was talking about.
http://www.soonerfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90159

How long is the video, I am gonna try and see it tommorrow.

1 hour 13 minutes

[OUHOMER]

I found the subject of authors of the IPCC report the most interesting. It is shocking to me that dissenters are credited with approving of the overall message. That alone should put the IPCC report under the microscope.

And that all the IPCC are experts.
its like saying Shawn Penn is an expert on evacuating people from flooded areas :eek:

[SoonerStormchaser]

Wow, I guess people like to neg me for stating my opinion.

[soonerboomer93]

Wow, I guess people like to neg me for stating my opinion.

new here?

[Newbomb Turk]

the global warming **** is really getting old. That includes those that believe in it and those that think it's a crock.


http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i60/munchkin_2/Beat_Dead_HorseSanitysBlog.jpg

[mdklatt]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414



On Thursday March 8th, the UK TV Channel 4 aired a programme titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle". We were hoping for important revelations and final proof that we have all been hornswoggled by the climate Illuminati, but it just repeated the usual specious claims we hear all the time. We feel swindled.




http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/


The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin. Although it was written in a highly personal and opinionated style- speaking freely of “lies”, and the “shrill frenzy” of “scare stories” – we never saw Durkin or discovered his personal credentials. As George Monbiot has revealed Durkin is closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological opposition to environmental science (more on Durkin and the RCP.

In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue a humiliating public apology over a previous series of anti-environment programmes directed by Durkin called “Against Nature”. The Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.”



Enjoy!

[Jerk]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414





http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/




Enjoy!


We're all those scientists who disagreed with global warming members of the RCP too?

[rebmus]

Just as I suspected, the Sun is in charge of temperature on Earth. Amazing.
"crazy talk". :P

[sooneron]

Yay commies!!! you repubs are in good company, cuz everyone knows that commies aren't kidding themselves. Mazel tov!

[SleestakSooner]

We're all those scientists who disagreed with global warming members of the RCP too?

Why do you hate capitalism... commie sympathizer!:texan:

[sooneron]

Speaking of no Global warming my comrades, I was just watching this video series-
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3
where they say that although the temps are up in major cities, they are not really up everywhere. :rolleyes: Uh, where does most of the earth's pop. live? Ok, it's a major city, full of CO2 emitting crap, well that can't be caused by man!

[Jerk]

Speaking of no Global warming my comrades, I was just watching this video series-
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3
where they say that although the temps are up in major cities, they are not really up everywhere. :rolleyes: Uh, where does most of the earth's pop. live? Ok, it's a major city, full of CO2 emitting crap, well that can't be caused by man!

Major cities have lots and lots of concrete, pavement, and asphault. Granted, I'm not a weatherman or a climatologist, but I think I remember hearing that the concrete soaks up heat and retains it. Thus, the cities will stay warmer at night and have a higher temp the next morning to start the day.

[SCOUT]

where they say that although the temps are up in major cities, they are not really up everywhere. :rolleyes: Uh, where does most of the earth's pop. live? Ok, it's a major city, full of CO2 emitting crap, well that can't be caused by man!

In order for it to be global warming the warming would have to be, well global. If the warming is isolated, you have weather not climate.

Also, the C02 affects the troposphere not the skylines of big cities.

[mdklatt]

I found the subject of authors of the IPCC report the most interesting. It is shocking to me that dissenters are credited with approving of the overall message. That alone should put the IPCC report under the microscope.

The guy they are talking about, Paul Reiter, is an entomologist. He was concerned about language that stated that global warming would increase malaria deaths. This has nothing to do with the causes of global warming, just the potential consequences.

That apparently hasn't stopped him from becoming a global warming denier-for-hire.

[sooneron]

Major cities have lots and lots of concrete, pavement, and asphault. Granted, I'm not a weatherman or a climatologist, but I think I remember hearing that the concrete soaks up heat and retains it. Thus, the cities will stay warmer at night and have a higher temp the next morning to start the day.

That is true, but only somewhat.

Most major cities these days are like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix etc. They aren't like NYC or Chicago. They are just spread out and annexing small towns.

[sooneron]

Also, the C02 affects the troposphere not the skylines of big cities.
Hey, I didn't say it...

[mdklatt]

Major cities have lots and lots of concrete, pavement, and asphault. Granted, I'm not a weatherman or a climatologist, but I think I remember hearing that the concrete soaks up heat and retains it. Thus, the cities will stay warmer at night and have a higher temp the next morning to start the day.

This is called an urban heat island. I'm not sure how exactly it's done, but this can be controlled for when trying to make homogeneous temperature records. But global warming is not just seen in temperature data from cities. The increase in ocean temperatures and melting polar ice would obviously not have anything to do with urban effects.

[picasso]

That is true, but only somewhat.

Most major cities these days are like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix etc. They aren't like NYC or Chicago. They are just spread out and annexing small towns.
yeah but what's your point? there's hella concrete in the DFW area. it's a frickin concrete jungle.
I also heard a guy talking about how concrete, cities, etc. are contributing to the problem. that sounds man-made to me too.:D

[sooneron]

This is called an urban heat island. I'm not sure how exactly it's done, but this can be controlled for when trying to make homogeneous temperature records. But global warming is not just seen in temperature data from cities. The increase in ocean temperatures and melting polar ice would obviously not have anything to do with urban effects.
No. It is soley the effect of blue states, you idoit. Mankind is doing NOTHING to impact the environment. Please return your head to the sand.


I'm going out and buying a Yukon with a 6 liter now. Cuz, I'm 'merican and it is my right to do so. So what if I have no need for it. I want one, cuz my neighbor has one.

[Jerk]

yeah but what's your point? there's hella concrete in the DFW area. it's a frickin concrete jungle.
I also heard a guy talking about how concrete, cities, etc. are contributing to the problem. that sounds man-made to me too.:D

Well, damn.

Considering that I drive a semi loaded with 26 tons of cement powder every day, I'm, like, a living double whammy to the environment :eek:

[Jerk]

Someone wants to ban or regulate just about everything I love or have a passion for, or is part of my daily life:

trucks
guns
cement
tobacco
alcohol
the bad part of the internet
talk radio
rock n roll
large breed dogs
hunting

when the radical feminists take control and ban football (cuz it's unfair to girls) my life will be competely totalled.

[SCOUT]

The guy they are talking about, Paul Reiter, is an entomologist. He was concerned about language that stated that global warming would increase malaria deaths. This has nothing to do with the causes of global warming, just the potential consequences.

That apparently hasn't stopped him from becoming a global warming denier-for-hire.

Actually, that was just one person. There were several others who made similar comments. They didn't go as far as threatening legal action but they were credited even though they dissented.

The entimology part was pretty interesting though, don't you think? The study says that mosquitoes can't live in climates above 18 degrees (they actually gave a range, but you get the idea) and with global warming malaria will become an even bigger problem. He chimed in because this is factually incorrect. In fact, the largest malaria epidemic happened in Siberia in the 30's (in much colder temperatures). Given that information, he seems pretty relevant to the discussion. He wasn't a "global warming denier-for-hire" he was an expert in his field who was ignored.

[mdklatt]

Actually, that was just one person. There were several others who made similar comments. They didn't go as far as threatening legal action but they were credited even though they dissented.

Dissented about what? A paragraph? A sentence? The producer of that show, Martin Durkin, is apparently quite a piece of work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_%28television_director%29


Martin Durkin is a television producer and director, most notably of television documentaries for Channel 4 in Britain. He has caused consistent controversy over the alleged bias found in many of his documentaries.
...

In 1997, Channel 4 broadcast Durkin's Against Nature, a documentary series which criticized the environmental movement for being a threat to personal freedom and for crippling economic development. Against Nature was subsequently investigated by the Independent Television Commission of the UK, following a number of complaints from viewers and from some of the interviewees featured in the program. ... [T]he Commission also concluded that Durkin had misled his interviewees about the nature and purpose of the documentary, and that he had misrepresented and distorted their views by editing the interview footage in a misleading way.

...

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a 2007 documentary film which premiered on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2007. The film features scientists who are sceptical of the prevailing consensus that global warming is caused by human activity. ... Professor Carl Wunsch (professor of physical oceanography at MIT), stated that he was "completely misrepresented" by Durkin in his documentary. Currently considering making a formal complaint, Wunsch claims he was "totally misled" as to the content of the program.



There are also accusations (with plenty of evidence) that some of the graphs in the show were fabricated. I'm quoting Wikipedia again, but I've seen basically the same stuff all over the place.


Durkin was also questioned by the Independent newspaper regarding the origins of a graph of global temperatures in recent years that was crucial to his argument. He was also quoted in the independent as saying "The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find".

I usually try not to confuse the message with the messenger, but I'm finding it difficult to take anything this guy is responsible for seriously.

I can't find the link now, but I ran across a story in The Times where he responded to a critical (but not negative) e-mail after the show aired by calling the guy a "c**k" and then in a subsequent e-mail told him to "**** off".

[SCOUT]

Dissented about what? A paragraph? A sentence? The producer of that show, Martin Durkin, is apparently quite a piece of work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_%28television_director%29

There are also accusations (with plenty of evidence) that some of the graphs in the show were fabricated. I'm quoting Wikipedia again, but I've seen basically the same stuff all over the place.
I usually try not to confuse the message with the messenger, but I'm finding it difficult to take anything this guy is responsible for seriously.
I can't find the link now, but I ran across a story in The Times where he responded to a critical (but not negative) e-mail after the show aired by calling the guy a "c**k" and then in a subsequent e-mail told him to "**** off".
Did you watch the video? There were several scientists/climatologists who said that they disagreed with the conclusions of the IPCC but were still listed as those endorsing it.

I find it confusing that you are attacking the producer because he is unreliable but ignoring the fact that there are blatant errors in the IPCC report. Why the free pass to one, but scrutiny for the other?

I don't personally trust either, so don't get me wrong.

[mdklatt]

Given that information, he seems pretty relevant to the discussion. He wasn't a "global warming denier-for-hire" he was an expert in his field who was ignored.

It sounds to me like this guy has a grudge against the IPCC for a perceived snub, and now will talk to anybody who will listen--for a fee, no doubt--about how much it sucks. If we're supposed to question the motives of global warming scientists--who apparently are all becoming rock-star rich with all the money being thrown at them :rolleyes:--how about we do the same thing for the deniers?

[SCOUT]

It sounds to me like this guy has a grudge against the IPCC for a perceived snub, and now will talk to anybody who will listen--for a fee, no doubt--about how much it sucks. If we're supposed to question the motives of global warming scientists--who apparently are all becoming rock-star rich with all the money being thrown at them :rolleyes:--how about we do the same thing for the deniers?

I don't have any problem questioning those who argue against global warming. If they have an agenda it should be pointed out. I am just asking why it seems to be a one way street?

The mosquito example is just one that is demonstrably false. Why does that get a free pass?

[1stTimeCaller]

someone had better alert Frozen Mike that he will not be needing any OFF this year as mosquitos can't survive in Alaska.

[mdklatt]

Did you watch the video?

My connection timed out or something about halfway through. Which conclusions did these dissenters (the ones who aren't getting read to sue Durkin for fraud, that is) disagree with? Do they disupte anthropogenic global warming? Or did they have a nitpick about the grammar of the third sentence of the fourth paragraph on page 152? From what I did see of the show, it was shot using context-free film.




I find it confusing that you are attacking the producer because he is unreliable but ignoring the fact that there are blatant errors in the IPCC report. Why the free pass to one, but scrutiny for the other?


Show me evidence of the "blatent errors" that didn't come from the editing room of the unreliable producer. I freely admit that I'm more inclined to give a free pass to the work of 2500 experts in their field--some of whom I know personally--than to a reputed crackpot TV producer and some contrarians who may or may not be funded by the likes of Exxon (http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=421).

[SoonerGirl06]

Speaking of no Global warming my comrades, I was just watching this video series-
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3
where they say that although the temps are up in major cities, they are not really up everywhere. :rolleyes: Uh, where does most of the earth's pop. live? Ok, it's a major city, full of CO2 emitting crap, well that can't be caused by man!



That is true, but only somewhat.

Most major cities these days are like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix etc. They aren't like NYC or Chicago. They are just spread out and annexing small towns.

What in the wide world of sports are you trying to say? :confused:

[soonerboomer93]

My connection timed out or something about halfway through. Which conclusions did these dissenters (the ones who aren't getting read to sue Durkin for fraud, that is) disagree with? Do they disupte anthropogenic global warming? Or did they have a nitpick about the grammar of the third sentence of the fourth paragraph on page 152? From what I did see of the show, it was shot using context-free film.




Show me evidence of the "blatent errors" that didn't come from the editing room of the unreliable producer. I freely admit that I'm more inclined to give a free pass to the work of 2500 experts in their field--some of whom I know personally--than to a reputed crackpot TV producer and some contrarians who may or may not be funded by the likes of Exxon (http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=421).


yeah, because only green peace or an environmental lobbiest group is allowed to fun research or documentaries on the environment :rolleyes:

[sooneron]

What in the wide world of sports are you trying to say? :confused:
Uh, that most cities aren't like the cities of old, they are just spread out minor cities that have increased in pop.

[Harry Beanbag]

I find it confusing that you are attacking the producer because he is unreliable but ignoring the fact that there are blatant errors in the IPCC report. Why the free pass to one, but scrutiny for the other?


I'm pretty sure you already know the answer to that question.

[mdklatt]

I'm pretty sure you already know the answer to that question.

Apparently you know this answer, too. So why don't you enlighten us? We've already seen that man made global warming is all a hoax because, in fact, mosquitos can survive in temperatures above 18 C. It's so obvious now. What else you got?

[1stTimeCaller]

jeez, mdklatt. Why are you taking this discussion so personal? You're acting like Tuba.

[usmc-sooner]

jeez, mdklatt. Why are you taking this discussion so personal? You're acting like Tuba.

no shi%

[jk the sooner fan]

i'm a scientist, why dont you guys take me seriously!!!!!!!!!!!!:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[KABOOKIE]

I can forecast a 70% chance of global warming and if it doesn't happen I'm still right because I also forecasted a 30% chance of global cooling!

[Harry Beanbag]

Apparently you know this answer, too. So why don't you enlighten us? We've already seen that man made global warming is all a hoax because, in fact, mosquitos can survive in temperatures above 18 C. It's so obvious now. What else you got?


You guys can be really dense sometimes, who gives a **** about mosquitoes? The answer to Scout's question is that you agree with the IPCC report and think humans are destroying the planet, that's why you are going after the British dude. The same hypocritical tactics that you and your buddies here accuse everybody else of using. Your opinions are right, differing views are wrong and must be destroyed. :rolleyes:

[SCOUT]

Apparently you know this answer, too. So why don't you enlighten us? We've already seen that man made global warming is all a hoax because, in fact, mosquitos can survive in temperatures above 18 C. It's so obvious now. What else you got?

Saying that incorrect mosquito information is proof that there is no global warming is on par with saying that since a producer is communist then global warming must be true. That is obviously (at least I hope that was obvious) not my point. I was trying to understand why one transgression was acceptable and one was not.

I don't have anything else. I was hoping to hear the opinions who are more knowledgeable than I am on the information presented in the video. For example, they say that the temp correlations that Al Gore uses are misleading. They talk about the various producers of C02 and how insignificant human production is in the scheme of things. Etc.

As I said in my original post, I am skeptical of both sides of this story. It seems like getting a straight answer from either side is more difficult than it should be. When that happens there is usually an agenda at work.

[mdklatt]

Saying that incorrect mosquito information is proof that there is no global warming is on par with saying that since a producer is communist then global warming must be true.

:confused:


That is obviously (at least I hope that was obvious) not my point. I was trying to understand why one transgression was acceptable and one was not.

One the one hand we have a TV show, produced by somebody who has a history of documentary shenanigans. This show has a literal handful of global warming dissenters. Except that 1) one of them, Philip Wuntch, has filed a formal complaint and is accusing the dodgy producer of fraud and misrepresentation; 2) one of them, Paul Reiter, is an entomologist who has nothing to say about anthropogenic global warming, but instead has a beef with the IPCC over mosquitos; 3) the others I know nothing about except for Richard Linzen. Linzen agrees that global warming is occurring, but does not think there is enough evidence to pin the majority of the blame on human CO2 production. Here is a summary of Linzen's position, and a point-by-point rebuttal: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=222.

And what else to say about the TV show? There is one graph that is attributed to NASA, but in fact either came from some place else or has been doctored. By just about any account, it's flat out wrong. Honest mistake? I'm sure. All of the scientific arguments used in the program are nothing new, and have been addressed time and time again. Did they mention that in the show? Of course not.


On the other hand, we have the IPCC report. This was produced by the consensus of hundreds of scientists based on decades of research. There is no doubt some politics are involved in the process, and I'm sure some feelings were hurt. The one claim of factual error made by the documentary has absolutely nothing to do with the central thesis of the report. And, we're given no information about how this became part of the report; was Reiter overruled by other malaria experts and now he wants to take his marbles and go home? For the other dissenters, are we ever given any clue as to what they were unhappy about in the report?

You decide which source has more credibility.



As I said in my original post, I am skeptical of both sides of this story. It seems like getting a straight answer from either side is more difficult than it should be. When that happens there is usually an agenda at work.

What is the agenda of the climate science community? Not Al Gore, not Greenpeace, not the MSM, not the Trilateral Comission of liberals who runs the world and wants to take all our guns and money, kill all our babies, and make us get gay married in a ceremony presided over by an atheists.

On the first page of this thread I posted a critique of the documentary from realclimate.org. Check it out. They give a point-by-point rebuttal for the claims made in the show, along with references.

[mdklatt]

jeez, mdklatt. Why are you taking this discussion so personal?

It's like this. What if somebody were to now say to you:

Of course you would think global warming is just a big hoas. You work for an oil company. No agenda there, huh? You and all your cronies **** your pants every time somebody says 'renewable energy'. Just keep on earth-raping, earth raper, because it's always about the bottom line with you guys. Exxon and Haliburton and Dick Cheney--partners in crime who invaded Iraq just to keep the Middle East at war and oil above $70/barrel.

Innuendo, factual errors, misconceptions...would you let that slide?


You're acting like Tuba.

:les: YOU TAKE THAT BACK!

[Paris of Troy]

Carl Wunsch, MIT Oceanographer shown in the special, gives his unvarnished opinion...

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2359057.ece

"I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component. ...

In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important - diametrically opposite to the point I was making - which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

[usmc-sooner]

It's like this. What if somebody were to now say to you:

You work for an oil company. No agenda there, huh? You and all your cronies **** your pants every time somebody says 'renewable energy'. Just keep on earth-raping, earth raper, because it's always about the bottom line with you guys.


:les: YOU TAKE THAT BACK!


I'll take earth rapers over tree huggers any day of the week.

[SleestakSooner]

I'll take earth rapers over tree huggers any day of the week.

So which head do you have buried in the sand? :eek:

[StoopTroup]

You fools.

Your all going to die!

Follow me!

http://www.ufos-unbound.com/ufos/heavens-gate.jpg

[1stTimeCaller]

It's like this. What if somebody were to now say to you:

Of course you would think global warming is just a big hoas. You work for an oil company. No agenda there, huh? You and all your cronies **** your pants every time somebody says 'renewable energy'. Just keep on earth-raping, earth raper, because it's always about the bottom line with you guys. Exxon and Haliburton and Dick Cheney--partners in crime who invaded Iraq just to keep the Middle East at war and oil above $70/barrel.

Innuendo, factual errors, misconceptions...would you let that slide?



:les: YOU TAKE THAT BACK!

sure, i'm good at letting things slide. :D

I think the earth is getting warmer. I don't think that man is causing it. I have no proof other than a bunch of scientists in the 70s or such said the earth was cooling and had scientific data and big words to prove that an ice age was decades away or some such.

Should we conserve energy and resources? You bet. If you tell me that you have a solution or have identified the exact cause of global warming you just lost my attention to you and your cause.

Should you be able to water your lawn 4 times a day in June, July, August and September? No. Why? because it's retarded and clean, potable water is better served elsewhere, like a lake so I can burn gas in a boat to wakeboard.

[mdklatt]

I have no proof other than a bunch of scientists in the 70s or such said the earth was cooling and had scientific data and big words to prove that an ice age was decades away or some such.


Well, there was cooling, which any global warming denier worth his salt says disproves global warming...while he simulataneously tells you out of the other side of his mouth that this proves that scientists don't know what they're talking about. In other words, they're somehow both right and wrong.

The period of post-WW II cooling was due largely to aerosols, which we've done a great job of cleaning up in the last 30 years. The scientists never said an ice age would happen in a couple of decades; they were talking in geologic terms, i.e. a long ****ing time instead of a really long ****ing time. It was the media hitting the panic button back then. The media is certainly hitting the panic button about global warming, but the scientific community is a lot more certain about global warming than it ever was about global cooling. Fortunately, we don't have to rely on the media for all of our information anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling


Concern peaked in the early 1970s, partly because of the cooling trend then apparent (a cooling period began in 1945, and two decades of a cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming), and partly because much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference[8]). However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports.

[Harry Beanbag]

So aerosols would help the planet now, I say we bring 'em back.

[1stTimeCaller]

Well, there was cooling, which any global warming denier worth his salt says disproves global warming...while he simulataneously tells you out of the other side of his mouth that this proves that scientists don't know what they're talking about. In other words, they're somehow both right and wrong.

It's kind of the fool me once dealio. They were wrong then and they're wrong now. Maybe 'not right' is a better term than wrong.

Every so often the scientists in the food and nutrition business say that italian food is unhealthy or mexican or some other style of food is unhealthy for you then it comes out that that particular food is not only not unhealthy but it's actually healthy and good for you.

Whenever 'they' are questioned, anyone that has ever worn a lab coat comes running out saying that the people doing the questioning have never worn a lab coat and they need to STFU. That process is cyclical, much like the warming and cooling periods on earth.

[Fraggle145]

I hope Fraggle gets a chance to watch it and comment. I would love to hear his take on it.

I just saw this thread... as soon as I get a chance, I am sure I wont be able to resist weighing in ;).

Stay tuned :eek:

[Fraggle145]

Well, it looks to me now that I have seen the video and read the thread, like mdklatt has been holding it down. What I will be curious to see is the scientific community's reaction/or lack thereof to this piece. It seems to me that it is just a chock full of propaganda as Al Gore's piece. The main difference is that hardly anyone knows who this guy is and he doesnt have the political clout of Gore so he is less vulnerable (although not invulnerable as seen in this thread) to attack.

Basically, I think what I am glad about is that this forces the issue even more into the public eye. Like I have said before, maybe not nearly as eloquently is that people need to read the papers and make up their own mind. mdklatt has presented a really good resource in http://www.realclimate.org/ That has links to the papers. It also has a counterpoint discussion to the relevant points raised in the video.

The video didnt change my opinion. It did however make me realize that I need to read more literature if I want to comment more intelligently on the subject. The real problem in my mind is that there is a real disconnect between the scientific community and the rest of the public. The literature really isnt accessible unless you are somehow affiliated with a university or large academic institution. However, I dont think those of us that belive anthorpogenic changes are causing global are being alarmist, hell on this board we are in the minority :D

I think its kinda funny we dont have a global warming sticky or "official thread" of some sort, it seems like we have at least one of these a week!

[mdklatt]

The real problem in my mind is that there is a real disconnect between the scientific community and the rest of the public.


Exactly. And the only go-betweens are the media who doesn't really know what they're talking about, and people like Al Gore who may be knowledgable but also have their own motivations for doing what they do.



However, I dont think those of us that belive anthorpogenic changes are causing global we are being alarmist

The problem is that as soon as the a certain segment of the population hears the words "global warming" all they can think of is Al f'in Gore and their brains shut down.

[Fraggle145]

Exactly. And the only go-betweens are the media who doesn't really know what they're talking about, and people like Al Gore who may be knowledgable but also have their own motivations for doing what they do.


I dont think those of us that belive anthorpogenic changes are causing global are being alarmist, hell on this board we are in the minority :D

Sorry I also had to rewrite this statement, somehow an extra we got stuck in there :eek: ...


The problem is that as soon as the a certain segment of the population hears the words "global warming" all they can think of is Al f'in Gore and their brains shut down.

I agree. That is the worst part of this whole debate, on both sides. Instead of sticking to the science and the data and attacking the evidence, we have to come up with gimmicky ways to present our graphs, etc... and attack the politcs adn the scientists personally (granted when someone says your science sucks you tend to take it personally).

[Harry Beanbag]

Sorry I also had to rewrite this statement, somehow an extra we got stuck in there :eek: ...



I agree. That is the worst part of this whole debate, on both sides. Instead of sticking to the science and the data and attacking the evidence, we have to come up with gimmicky ways to present our graphs, etc... and attack the politcs adn the scientists personally (granted when someone says your science sucks you tend to take it personally).



Your science sucks. ;)

[Harry Beanbag]

Fraggle and mdklatt,

What are your thoughts on this? I have no idea who geocraft is or how accurate this work is, although I'm sure they're just a bunch of Global Warming deniers with their heads in the sand. To a nonbeliever in the hysteria like me, they make a pretty decent argument.


http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

[Fraggle145]

Fraggle and mdklatt,

What are your thoughts on this? I have no idea who geocraft is or how accurate this work is, although I'm sure they're just a bunch of Global Warming deniers with their heads in the sand. To a nonbeliever in the hysteria like me, they make a pretty decent argument.


http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

The short answer I have until I can read it more critically is that its well documented that Water vapor is the largest contributor to the green house effect, however the rise in CO2 and corresponding rise in temperature cause a positive feedback that in turn increases the amount of water vapor, further increasing temperature and available CO2 from the ocean, etc...

I'll look at it more closely and try to construct a better answer, or maybe mdklatt will respond by then as well...

[mdklatt]

Fraggle and mdklatt,

What are your thoughts on this? I have no idea who geocraft is or how accurate this work is, although I'm sure they're just a bunch of Global Warming deniers with their heads in the sand. To a nonbeliever in the hysteria like me, they make a pretty decent argument.


http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html


This is an oft-repeated red herring used by people who don't know better...or who are full of ****.



Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.


First of all, my climatology textbook says water vapor is responsible for 80% of the greenhouse effect. But this is the salient point: NOBODY IS SAYING THE NATURAL GREENHOUSE EFFECT IS BAD. The earth is currently about 60 F warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect. It's the unnatural greenhouse effect that is causing all the trouble. There is a huge difference between being 60 F warmer and 61 F warmer on a global scale. That is an enormous amount of energy.



Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!


If CO2 keeps increasing, it's share of the greenhouse effect will increase too, won't it? And again, it doesn't take a significant increase to create a signficant problem. You can change the temperature of an ice cube from -50 F to 31.9 F and nothing will happen--but what happens if go one tenth of a degree farther?


Forget all the math and mumbo jumbo for a minute. This is real basic stuff here, Climatology 101. Do you really think it's been somehow overlooked by evey single meterologist studying climate change? This goes for every "smoking gun" you see on some random web site somewhere. This is like standing up at the football game and yelling "Hand it off to AD!"

Maybe the sun is causing global warming? OMG! Why didn't we think of that?? :rolleyes:

(FYI, during the satellite era there has been no significant variation in the amount of solar radiation the earth receives.)

[Fraggle145]

The other point I would make, which is purely my speculation, would be that if CO2 is such a small part of the atmosphere, I think that it would take much less to cause alterations in climate than would be caused by say an increase of the same amount in water vapor.

[Ike]

OK, so I'm about a third of the way through this video and there are a couple of issues I have with it. Note, I am not a climatologist. I am just a mere scientist in another field, and I am assuming that the data presented in this video is all I know. In other words, you should have these same problems with the video as well.

Issue the first: Temperature variations not matching times of industrialization. This seems to me to be a bit of a red herring...temperatures fluctuated in the past with no industrialization at all, so there is some natural effect. If man made GW is happening, it is happening in addition to natural causes of temperature variation. Comparing the temp-vs-time plot to times of industrial growth tells you nothing at all unless you can correct for the natural causes of climate change, which if I understand the current state of climate science, we can't.

Issue the second: The lack of warming in the troposphere.
The video points out that all of the greenhouse models say that the troposphere should warm significantly if the greenhouse effect is the cause of GW, yet the warming is not so significant there. One interviewee claims that this falsifys man-made GW. I do not think this to be so. It instead states that whatever is causing our current climate changes is not modeled very well. This may mean that we do not understand the greenhouse effect very well, or it could mean that there are other natural or man-made causes. The scientist who leaves this fact as being a "head-scratcher" is right. The one who claims it falisfies man made GW is over-reaching, IMHO. It is a head scratcher because it means that we don't well enough understand what is going on. I would think that we would need a better understanding before one claims that this fact falsifies anything.

Issue the third: Time Lag of historical atmospheric CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature.
Again, here the data that is being presented is not enough to falsify claims of CO2 related GW, and here's why. The information presented here is supposed to make you believe that temperature increases cause CO2 increases, and indeed that may be the case...some of the time. But so far as I have seen in the video, the data are insufficient to state that this is what happens all of the time. Is there a "turn over point" where CO2 concentrations are high enough that they are actually the factor (or a factor) that drives temperature increases (or decreases)? The data presented here make no claim one way or the other regarding this question. Are the lagging parts that they showed on the video points in time where CO2 concentrations were abnormally low? The data presented is not enough to falsify the claim that CO2 is a leading cause of global warming because it does not address how this time lag varies with CO2 concentration.


Anyway, those are the main problems I have with this so far. I'm trying to approach this with an open mind, and some of these people do make salient points...but so far it seems that most of the people interviewed are over-reaching with their conclusions...at least from the data that they are presenting here. (granted, that probably happens a lot from the Al Gore's of the science world too, but I'm just dealing with this video for the time being).



The guy from NASA, IMHO is doing a good job presenting his side.
The guy from MIT comes across as being a self-important blowhard. (which I'm told is not uncommon of people from MIT)

[Fraggle145]

OK, so I'm about a third of the way through this video and there are a couple of issues I have with it. Note, I am not a climatologist. I am just a mere scientist in another field, and I am assuming that the data presented in this video is all I know. In other words, you should have these same problems with the video as well.

Issue the first: Temperature variations not matching times of industrialization. This seems to me to be a bit of a red herring...temperatures fluctuated in the past with no industrialization at all, so there is some natural effect. If man made GW is happening, it is happening in addition to natural causes of temperature variation. Comparing the temp-vs-time plot to times of industrial growth tells you nothing at all unless you can correct for the natural causes of climate change, which if I understand the current state of climate science, we can't.

Issue the second: The lack of warming in the troposphere.
The video points out that all of the greenhouse models say that the troposphere should warm significantly if the greenhouse effect is the cause of GW, yet the warming is not so significant there. One interviewee claims that this falsifys man-made GW. I do not think this to be so. It instead states that whatever is causing our current climate changes is not modeled very well. This may mean that we do not understand the greenhouse effect very well, or it could mean that there are other natural or man-made causes. The scientist who leaves this fact as being a "head-scratcher" is right. The one who claims it falisfies man made GW is over-reaching, IMHO. It is a head scratcher because it means that we don't well enough understand what is going on. I would think that we would need a better understanding before one claims that this fact falsifies anything.

Issue the third: Time Lag of historical atmospheric CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature.
Again, here the data that is being presented is not enough to falsify claims of CO2 related GW, and here's why. The information presented here is supposed to make you believe that temperature increases cause CO2 increases, and indeed that may be the case...some of the time. But so far as I have seen in the video, the data are insufficient to state that this is what happens all of the time. Is there a "turn over point" where CO2 concentrations are high enough that they are actually the factor (or a factor) that drives temperature increases (or decreases)? The data presented here make no claim one way or the other regarding this question. Are the lagging parts that they showed on the video points in time where CO2 concentrations were abnormally low? The data presented is not enough to falsify the claim that CO2 is a leading cause of global warming because it does not address how this time lag varies with CO2 concentration.


Anyway, those are the main problems I have with this so far. I'm trying to approach this with an open mind, and some of these people do make salient points...but so far it seems that most of the people interviewed are over-reaching with their conclusions...at least from the data that they are presenting here. (granted, that probably happens a lot from the Al Gore's of the science world too, but I'm just dealing with this video for the time being).



The guy from NASA, IMHO is doing a good job presenting his side.
The guy from MIT comes across as being a self-important blowhard. (which I'm told is not uncommon of people from MIT)

Well stated... The main thing that I thought about the relationships and temperature and this goes for my side of things too, is that it is a correlation, which doesnt necessarily mean causation. and apparently as I research it the MIT guy (not the one from the ocean but the one with the beard in his office) statements are the same stuff he has been spouting for ten years (wrong or right) and some of it has been falsified by the field in general.

[Harry Beanbag]

This is an oft-repeated red herring used by people who don't know better...or who are full of ****.

So are you saying the scientists referenced on that page don't know any better or are full of ****?




First of all, my climatology textbook says water vapor is responsible for 80% of the greenhouse effect. But this is the salient point: NOBODY IS SAYING THE NATURAL GREENHOUSE EFFECT IS BAD. The earth is currently about 60 F warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect. It's the unnatural greenhouse effect that is causing all the trouble. There is a huge difference between being 60 F warmer and 61 F warmer on a global scale. That is an enormous amount of energy.

I think the point of the article was that the unnatural greenhouse contribution isn't nearly as large as it is being made out to be, in fact it could be referred to as miniscule.




If CO2 keeps increasing, it's share of the greenhouse effect will increase too, won't it? And again, it doesn't take a significant increase to create a signficant problem. You can change the temperature of an ice cube from -50 F to 31.9 F and nothing will happen--but what happens if go one tenth of a degree farther?

I find it incredibly hard to believe that 0.117% of the atmosphere is going to destroy the planet as we know it, Earth just isn't that fragile. Of course I don't know better and I'm apparently full of ****.

And if you think nothing is happening to an ice cube from -50 F to 31.9 F, you're not as smart as I assumed you to be.




Forget all the math and mumbo jumbo for a minute. This is real basic stuff here, Climatology 101. Do you really think it's been somehow overlooked by evey single meterologist studying climate change? This goes for every "smoking gun" you see on some random web site somewhere. This is like standing up at the football game and yelling "Hand it off to AD!"

Maybe the sun is causing global warming? OMG! Why didn't we think of that?? :rolleyes:

Quotes like this make me think that no, it hasn't been overlooked, but it doesn't fit the agenda so let's leave it out, the lemmings lap it up anyway...


Conceding that it might be "a little misleading" to leave water vapor out, they nonetheless defend the practice by stating that it is "customary" to do so!

[mdklatt]

Issue the first: Temperature variations not matching times of industrialization.

Right. Man-made is not the only cause of global warming, but it seems to be the dominant cause of the current century of global warming. Different causes can have the same effect.



Issue the second: The lack of warming in the troposphere.
The video points out that all of the greenhouse models say that the troposphere should warm significantly if the greenhouse effect is the cause of GW, yet the warming is not so significant there.

The claim that the troposphere is not warming is not true. It was based on a paper that has subsequently been corrected more than once.




Issue the third: Time Lag of historical atmospheric CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature.


Temperature and CO2 have a positive feed back relationship. Increasing temperature will put more CO2 in the atmosphere due to various reasons, such as bringing it out of solution in the ocean. But like you said, that doesn't rule it out as a forcing agent. It's a chicken-or-egg situation. CO2 now seems to be the egg. Or should that be the chicken? :confused:



The guy from MIT comes across as being a self-important blowhard.

I've heard the same thing from people who have met him.

[Harry Beanbag]

Issue the first: Temperature variations not matching times of industrialization. This seems to me to be a bit of a red herring...temperatures fluctuated in the past with no industrialization at all, so there is some natural effect. If man made GW is happening, it is happening in addition to natural causes of temperature variation. Comparing the temp-vs-time plot to times of industrial growth tells you nothing at all unless you can correct for the natural causes of climate change, which if I understand the current state of climate science, we can't.

Issue the second: The lack of warming in the troposphere.
The video points out that all of the greenhouse models say that the troposphere should warm significantly if the greenhouse effect is the cause of GW, yet the warming is not so significant there. One interviewee claims that this falsifys man-made GW. I do not think this to be so. It instead states that whatever is causing our current climate changes is not modeled very well. This may mean that we do not understand the greenhouse effect very well, or it could mean that there are other natural or man-made causes. The scientist who leaves this fact as being a "head-scratcher" is right. The one who claims it falisfies man made GW is over-reaching, IMHO. It is a head scratcher because it means that we don't well enough understand what is going on. I would think that we would need a better understanding before one claims that this fact falsifies anything.

Issue the third: Time Lag of historical atmospheric CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature.
Again, here the data that is being presented is not enough to falsify claims of CO2 related GW, and here's why. The information presented here is supposed to make you believe that temperature increases cause CO2 increases, and indeed that may be the case...some of the time. But so far as I have seen in the video, the data are insufficient to state that this is what happens all of the time. Is there a "turn over point" where CO2 concentrations are high enough that they are actually the factor (or a factor) that drives temperature increases (or decreases)? The data presented here make no claim one way or the other regarding this question. Are the lagging parts that they showed on the video points in time where CO2 concentrations were abnormally low? The data presented is not enough to falsify the claim that CO2 is a leading cause of global warming because it does not address how this time lag varies with CO2 concentration.


These are all great points and I agree with them. The common point in all of this is that we don't understand how the planet works well enough to make any kind of concrete decision on what is really happening...either way.

I realize these scientists want to feel all important and everything, but maybe they were just born a few hundred years too early to make these bedrock statements that we've been hearing.

[Fraggle145]

I find it incredibly hard to believe that 0.117% of the atmosphere is going to destroy the planet as we know it, Earth just isn't that fragile. Of course I don't know better and I'm apparently full of ****.

And if you think nothing is happening to an ice cube from -50 F to 31.9 F, you're not as smart as I assumed you to be.

Maybe I am missing the issue... The global warming crisis/argument/whatever is about whether humans are affecting the climate and then what are the ramifications if we are, and what should we do about it. I dont think that it is about whether it is going to destroy the Earth per say, but rather that it will have dramatic effects on our ability to survive in it, as well as, GW dramatically affecting the environment and the organisms within it and their opportunity to change/evolve as "naturally" as possible.

[Vaevictis]

The other point I would make, which is purely my speculation, would be that if CO2 is such a small part of the atmosphere, I think that it would take much less to cause alterations in climate than would be caused by say an increase of the same amount in water vapor.

I don't think that this follows unless you assume that the impact of a certain amount of CO2 is disproportionately large compared to a similar amount of H20.

(ie, yeah, it's easier to increase the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere as compared to H2O, but that doesn't necessarily translate to increasing the amount of heat in the system by the same or similar amount. What if the impact of a m^3 of H20 is 10 times the impact of an m^3 of CO2?)

[Fraggle145]

I don't think that this follows unless you assume that the impact of a certain amount of CO2 is disproportionately large compared to a similar amount of H20.

(ie, yeah, it's easier to increase the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere as compared to H2O, but that doesn't necessarily translate to increasing the amount of heat in the system by the same or similar amount. What if the impact of a m^3 of H20 is 10 times the impact of an m^3 of CO2?)

I probably could have phrased this better in the form of a question (i didnt mean to imply that it was that simple, I was just probing to see if someone could better explain that relationship better than I can)... but while I am thinking about it, I thought one of the unfair things in the video was the fact that they attempted to make the correlation that those that support global warming want to subvert the development of third world countries, which I dont think is the case at all... Why couldnt we fix those problems and work to solve the problems of gw? I didnt understand that and thought it was a weak, cheap shot at best that was an attempt to draw attention away from the issue. Even in Kyoto there are allowances for developing nations, so i didnt get that.

[Harry Beanbag]

I probably could have phrased this better in the form of a question (i didnt mean to imply that it was that simple, I was just probing to see if someone could better explain that relationship better than I can)...

I don't think anyone alive can seriously answer that question.




but while I am thinking about it, I thought one of the unfair things in the video was the fact that they attempted to make the correlation that those that support global warming want to subvert the development of third world countries, which I dont think is the case at all... Why couldnt we fix those problems and work to solve the problems of gw? I didnt understand that and thought it was a weak, cheap shot at best that was an attempt to draw attention away from the issue. Even in Kyoto there are allowances for developing nations, so i didnt get that.


Yeah, I didn't understand that either. Obviously, the goal is to subvert the United States and other first world countries, Kyoto proved that didn't it. ;)

[Harry Beanbag]

Maybe I am missing the issue... The global warming crisis/argument/whatever is about whether humans are affecting the climate and then what are the ramifications if we are, and what should we do about it. I dont think that it is about whether it is going to destroy the Earth per say, but rather that it will have dramatic effects on our ability to survive in it, as well as, GW dramatically affecting the environment and the organisms within it and their opportunity to change/evolve as "naturally" as possible.


Well, I said destroy as we know it...

Here's the thing, nobody forced humans to build cities on the shoreline of every ocean on Earth. We as a species haven't been here for even a blink of an eye in regards to the planet's history. When New Orleans, New York, Boston, Miami, London, Melbourne, etc. were settled, absolutely zero thought went into the ice caps someday melting and flooding out the entire coast, something that has happened countless times in the past.

Animals have gone extinct and evolved for milions of years for various reasons and will continue to do so. How arrogant are we to think that we can control what happens on this rock to the magnitude that we are being led to believe?

We didnt start the fire
It was always burning
Since the worlds been turning
We didnt start the fire
No we didnt light it
But we tried to fight it

[Ike]

These are all great points and I agree with them. The common point in all of this is that we don't understand how the planet works well enough to make any kind of concrete decision on what is really happening...either way.

I've been saying that for a little while now. The IPCC report (which this thing bashes unmercifully, perhaps justly, perhaps not) says 90% chance that we are causing global warming. Well, with the 20 or so years that people have been studying this issue, I think that 90% means not very strong evidence (I know fraggle disagrees with me some here...the difficulty of doing studies and controlling for variables make 90% acceptable in some fields, I suppose) and that a 90% confidence level is a terrible number to wager multibillion dollar decisions on. The biggest problem that the video points out, perhaps correctly (again, I am not a climatologist, so I can't say for sure), is that funding is directly tied to whether or not you are studying something related to global warming. IMHO, this is a HUGE mistake by the funding agencies. They should instead be giving funds to people wanting to really understand through experiment exactly how climate and climate change works...not just the relation of CO2 to climate change. That should be a small part of it sure, but not the only part.


I realize these scientists want to feel all important and everything, but maybe they were just born a few hundred years too early to make these bedrock statements that we've been hearing.
well, some of them are reasonable...the other guy from MIT, Ocean guy I'll call him, seemed reasonable. Beard guy was just annoying. We have people like him here, and I don't like them here either.

[Harry Beanbag]

I've been saying that for a little while now. The IPCC report (which this thing bashes unmercifully, perhaps justly, perhaps not) says 90% chance that we are causing global warming. Well, with the 20 or so years that people have been studying this issue, I think that 90% means not very strong evidence (I know fraggle disagrees with me some here...the difficulty of doing studies and controlling for variables make 90% acceptable in some fields, I suppose) and that a 90% confidence level is a terrible number to wager multibillion dollar decisions on. The biggest problem that the video points out, perhaps correctly (again, I am not a climatologist, so I can't say for sure), is that funding is directly tied to whether or not you are studying something related to global warming. IMHO, this is a HUGE mistake by the funding agencies. They should instead be giving funds to people wanting to really understand through experiment exactly how climate and climate change works...not just the relation of CO2 to climate change. That should be a small part of it sure, but not the only part.

Follow the money for everything, it's the same thing for every aspect of life. :(



well, some of them are reasonable...the other guy from MIT, Ocean guy I'll call him, seemed reasonable. Beard guy was just annoying. We have people like him here, and I don't like them here either.

I wasn't specifically talking about the dudes in the video, I was also talking about the IPCC folks.

[mdklatt]

So are you saying the scientists referenced on that page don't know any better or are full of ****?


Most of those references said nothing about global warming. The one that did is from 1998 and refers extensively to the Chrissy paper that (erroneously) says there isn't an evidence of tropospheric warming.





I think the point of the article was that the unnatural greenhouse contribution isn't nearly as large as it is being made out to be


Made out to be by who? The fact that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas is not exactly a revelation.




I find it incredibly hard to believe that 0.117% of the atmosphere is going to destroy the planet as we know it, Earth just isn't that fragile.


Who said anything about destroying the planet?




Of course I don't know better and I'm apparently full of ****.


I didn't think you were the one claiming that water vapor is some kind of smoking gun.




Quotes like this make me think that no, it hasn't been overlooked, but it doesn't fit the agenda so let's leave it out, the lemmings lap it up anyway...

Ah yes, the mythical "agenda". I guess all the climatologists got together one day and said, "Let's make up a doomsday scenario so we'll be showered with fame and riches."

[mdklatt]

a 90% confidence level is a terrible number to wager multibillion dollar decisions on

I read somewhere that the 90% number is qualitative. It was put in the executive summary because it was decided that terms like "likely" weren't very compelling to a lay audience. I don't know the veracity of this.

But even if there's nothing we can do about global warming, or it isn't even real, what is the downside from weaning ourselves from fossil fuel?





The biggest problem that the video points out, perhaps correctly (again, I am not a climatologist, so I can't say for sure), is that funding is directly tied to whether or not you are studying something related to global warming.

This is not my experience at all, but I can't speak authoritatively on it. It's not like researchers are saying to the government, "Give me $100,000 to prove/disprove global warming." The global warming stuff comes organically from existing research. That is, you may highlight the climate change applications of your research in you next proposal, but you're not materially changing what you do.

How much of the perception that global warming is getting all the money is real, and how much is sour grapes from somebody who got their funding cut for some other reason?




well, some of them are reasonable...the other guy from MIT, Ocean guy I'll call him, seemed reasonable.

Philip Wuntch? He's the guy who is repudiating his role in the video, and accusing the producer of fraud and misrepresentation.

[Ike]

I read somewhere that the 90% number is qualitative. It was put in the executive summary because it was decided that terms like "likely" weren't very compelling to a lay audience. I don't know the veracity of this.

But even if there's nothing we can do about global warming, or it isn't even real, what is the downside from weaning ourselves from fossil fuel?

well, the report previous to this one had it's number of merit at 67%, so quantifying it certainly wasn't a recent development. As for the downside of weaning ourselves...well, I'll go with an analogy. My wifes folks quit smoking some 10-15 years ago by using the nicotine gum. They are still using the gum to this day, and spend more money buying the gum than they did buying cigarettes. Weaning ourselves from fossil fuels can have the same effect.





This is not my experience at all, but I can't speak authoritatively on it. It's not like researchers are saying to the government, "Give me $100,000 to prove/disprove global warming." The global warming stuff comes organically from existing research. That is, you may highlight the climate change applications of your research in you next proposal, but you're not materially changing what you do.


How much of the perception that global warming is getting all the money is real, and how much is sour grapes from somebody who got their funding cut for some other reason?

thats not quite the feel I got from it, but I had an idea driving home from work to test the idea that man-made pollutants cause changes in climate/weather patterns...I'd spell it out, but I want to see if I can get 100K from the govt to do it.



Philip Wuntch? He's the guy who is repudiating his role in the video, and accusing the producer of fraud and misrepresentation.
well, I didn't think he was denying GW...just presenting some of the things he saw. Of course, I tried to watch the video with as little emotional response as possible, which is exactly the opposite of what the producers wanted.

[SoonerGirl06]

Uh, that most cities aren't like the cities of old, they are just spread out minor cities that have increased in pop.

And what does that have to do with anything? Or rather... what point are you trying to make?

[Fraggle145]

Well, I said destroy as we know it...

Here's the thing, nobody forced humans to build cities on the shoreline of every ocean on Earth. We as a species haven't been here for even a blink of an eye in regards to the planet's history. When New Orleans, New York, Boston, Miami, London, Melbourne, etc. were settled, absolutely zero thought went into the ice caps someday melting and flooding out the entire coast, something that has happened countless times in the past.

Animals have gone extinct and evolved for milions of years for various reasons and will continue to do so. How arrogant are we to think that we can control what happens on this rock to the magnitude that we are being led to believe?

We didnt start the fire
It was always burning
Since the worlds been turning
We didnt start the fire
No we didnt light it
But we tried to fight it

It is interesting that you bring up some of these points. 1st of all the reason most of us are settled along coasts and rivers is easy to understand using an anthropology perspective of its where the most abundant resources were. Estuaries (save for the gulf of mexico now since we have polluted the hell out of it) are typically very highly productive systems.

As for the comment that animals have been evolving for a lo9ng time and they will evolve to this too... there is an extreme problem with that. C. Parmesan (from UT Austin) and G. Yohe have a paper published in 2003, Nature 421: 37-42, that discusses the effects of GW causing aniumals to disperse northward. They looked at approximately 1700 species and found that ~95% of them responded to the climate signal in a way that would be predicted by climate change. Further work by her and her husband have shown that loss of genetic diversity is a real problem as species attempt to move north. Essentially new mutations arent arising within populations that would correspond to phenotypes that would lead to survival in increased temperatures, rather animals are losing their ability to be plastic and are at the upper limits of there thresholds to evolve. They have illustrated this using butterflies across the entire state of california, that they have, i think ~20-30 years of data on.

So I would say we wouldnt be very arrogant at all to assume that we can have an effect on this earth and the life in it, if we are the ones causing/or increasing global climate change.

[Harry Beanbag]

It is interesting that you bring up some of these points. 1st of all the reason most of us are settled along coasts and rivers is easy to understand using an anthropology perspective of its where the most abundant resources were. Estuaries (save for the gulf of mexico now since we have polluted the hell out of it) are typically very highly productive systems.

Yeah, no kidding. Do you think I'm 4 years old?




As for the comment that animals have been evolving for a lo9ng time and they will evolve to this too... there is an extreme problem with that. C. Parmesan (from UT Austin) and G. Yohe have a paper published in 2003, Nature 421: 37-42, that discusses the effects of GW causing aniumals to disperse northward. They looked at approximately 1700 species and found that ~95% of them responded to the climate signal in a way that would be predicted by climate change. Further work by her and her husband have shown that loss of genetic diversity is a real problem as species attempt to move north. Essentially new mutations arent arising within populations that would correspond to phenotypes that would lead to survival in increased temperatures, rather animals are losing their ability to be plastic and are at the upper limits of there thresholds to evolve. They have illustrated this using butterflies across the entire state of california, that they have, i think ~20-30 years of data on.

So what did their studies tell them when all the animals moved southward during the last Ice Age? Or when they moved northward during the previous warm period? This has been happening forever. You have heard of Darwin right?

[Fraggle145]

Yeah, no kidding. Do you think I'm 4 years old?

No. Wasnt trying to put you down...


So what did their studies tell them when all the animals moved southward during the last Ice Age? Or when they moved northward during the previous warm period? This has been happening forever. You have heard of Darwin right?

Have I heard of darwin...:rolleyes: All of ecology revolves around its principles...

That isnt how evolution works... Moving is their immediate response to the selective pressure of warming. No one was around to determine the trends when the ice age was occuring and uncovering that genetic material is very difficult in order to retrace what may have occured.

However, there has to be mutation if you want to maintain genetic diversity within a species. If you lose that diversity then the species loses adaptability, or its ability to respond evolutionarily to change. Global climate change is resulting in a loss of diversity without any novel genetic material being reintroduced via mutation. The problem is if we are causing this selective pressure to occur, via anthropogenically caused global warming, at a faster rate then we may be losing biodiversity that wouldnt have otherwise been lost.

[Harry Beanbag]

No. Wasnt trying to put you down...

You didn't, you're missing every point I'm making.




Have I heard of darwin...:rolleyes: All of ecology revolves around its principles...

That isnt how evolution works... Moving is their immediate response to the selective pressure of warming. No one was around to determine the trends when the ice age was occuring and uncovering that genetic material is very difficult in order to retrace what may have occured.

However, there has to be mutation if you want to maintain genetic diversity within a species. If you lose that diversity then the species loses adaptability, or its ability to respond evolutionarily to change. Global climate change is resulting in a loss of diversity without any novel genetic material being reintroduced via mutation. The problem is if we are causing this selective pressure to occur, via anthropogenically caused global warming, at a faster rate then we may be losing biodiversity that wouldnt have otherwise been lost.

You guys are having problems seeing the forest for the trees.

[Ike]

alright...I finished this last night, and there was one other major issue that really bugged me. Cosmic Ray Cloud formation. This notion just seems more than a bit flaky, as I would expect aerosols already in the air to play a much bigger role than cosmic rays. Indeed in the literature I could find on google, there is much dispute over this. At CERN they have proposed an experiment to test this idea. So we'll just have to wait and see. :)

[usmc-sooner]

there's also a geo scientist at OU who claims that global warming is a myth, it's a long paper but what I remember he points to temperatures being higher in the bronze ages.

Everyone seems to keep saying well the scientific communities though is this, well there are scientist on both sides of the argument not mention there are politics involved in scientific communities. I think the bottom line is nobody knows.

[Petro-Sooner]

I havnt read the entire thread. Maybe I should before I chime in. I dont claim to be a climate expert at all. However, I have had a couple classes on climate. Since the beginning of the industrial age the CO2 levels have increased a dramatically. I think we have contibuted to this "warming". But during I believe the Silurian to Devonian time period. Around 350-450 m.y,a, the CO2 levels were something like 20 times what they are now. What gets me is this whole doom and gloom that people put out in the media. The earth will balance itself out. Just my two cents.

[NC_Tigah]

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif
Climate Change (http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/)

Fact: There is no question that we are in a period of Global Warming.

Fact: There is no question that similar periods of Global Warming occur every 100,000-150,000 years.

Fact: We don't know what, if any, role man plays in this most recent period.

[Vaevictis]

But during I believe the Silurian to Devonian time period. Around 350-450 m.y,a, the CO2 levels were something like 20 times what they are now. What gets me is this whole doom and gloom that people put out in the media. The earth will balance itself out. Just my two cents.

Most people that are concerned aren't concerned about the earth balancing itself out. The earth has a habit of doing that. It also has a habit of creating mass extinctions when that happens, and who knows, we might just be on the receiving end of that. :D

[mdklatt]

it's a long paper but what I remember he points to temperatures being higher in the bronze ages.

So?




Everyone seems to keep saying well the scientific communities though is this, well there are scientist on both sides of the argument

Except that there are a lot more scientists on side of the argument than the other. The more I look into the GWD side of things, the more I see it's all the same handful of people. They reference each other's papers, and incorrectly reference the papers of others the cherry pick the data they want. Some of their work has been published in journals, but a lot of it is in reports issued by think tanks like the "Competitive Enterprise Institute".

[mdklatt]

Fact: We don't know what, if any, role man plays in this most recent period.

We knows CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know that combustion produces CO2. It has been shown in modelling studies that the only way to reproduce the warming of the past century is to include observed CO2.

[mdklatt]

As for the downside of weaning ourselves...well, I'll go with an analogy. My wifes folks quit smoking some 10-15 years ago by using the nicotine gum. They are still using the gum to this day, and spend more money buying the gum than they did buying cigarettes. Weaning ourselves from fossil fuels can have the same effect.

So, they would better off if they still smoked? :confused:




I had an idea driving home from work to test the idea that man-made pollutants cause changes in climate/weather patterns...I'd spell it out, but I want to see if I can get 100K from the govt to do it.


I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that the government will give out funding to anybody if they say the magic words "global warming"?

[Fraggle145]

You didn't, you're missing every point I'm making.
You guys are having problems seeing the forest for the trees.

I could say the same thing for you... I think we are looking at different forests.

[Fraggle145]

Most people that are concerned aren't concerned about the earth balancing itself out. The earth has a habit of doing that. It also has a habit of creating mass extinctions when that happens, and who knows, we might just be on the receiving end of that. :D

Beanbag, This is the forest I am talking about. It is also the forest that if we are causing it to burn then maybe we should think about if we should stop. Sure there will be species left, will we be one of them?, and how many would have been left if we didnt mess it up? these are the questions I am asking.

[Fraggle145]

there's also a geo scientist at OU who claims that global warming is a myth, it's a long paper but what I remember he points to temperatures being higher in the bronze ages.

Everyone seems to keep saying well the scientific communities though is this, well there are scientist on both sides of the argument not mention there are politics involved in scientific communities. I think the bottom line is nobody knows.

Ya this is David Deming. he is also responsible for such great quotes as "I just want to point out, that Kletter's 'easy access' to a vagina enables her to 'quickly and easily' have sex with 'as many random people' as she wants." in response to a woman (Kletter) who wrote a gun control article.

I also saw him in a debate with David Keroly the head of meteorology. He was using outdated graphs or graphs that had shortened the axis to disguise the warming trend. And in at least one of his papers he says that his data is not enough to refute that global climate change is caused by man and in fact even uses man made CO2 to explain away some of the effect. I just dont think he is the best guy to be getting information from.

[mdklatt]

I also saw him in a debate with David Keroly the head of meteorology.

FYI, David Karoly is the assistant director of SoM. Fred Carr is the director. Just thought I'd put that out there before somebody else jumped on it.

(And before anybody gets to excited, that's just an administrative position.)

[Fraggle145]

FYI, David Karoly is the assistant director of SoM. Fred Carr is the director. Just thought I'd put that out there before somebody else jumped on it.

(And before anybody gets to excited, that's just an administrative position.)

My mistake...:eek:

[Harry Beanbag]

We knows CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know that combustion produces CO2. It has been shown in modelling studies that the only way to reproduce the warming of the past century is to include observed CO2.


6+ billion people breathing produces CO2 as well. Maybe what we need is another world war to thin out the pairs of working lungs. There was a 30 year cooling period after the last one. Just a thought.

[mdklatt]

6+ billion people breathing produces CO2 as well. Maybe what we need is another world war to thin out the pairs of working lungs.

This seems to be the Bush administration's strategy. :pop:

[Harry Beanbag]

Beanbag, This is the forest I am talking about. It is also the forest that if we are causing it to burn then maybe we should think about if we should stop. Sure there will be species left, will we be one of them?, and how many would have been left if we didnt mess it up? these are the questions I am asking.


The planet has been here longer than humans and will be here long after the humans are all gone. It would really suck to be the last generation of humans on Earth, but it's gonna happen someday. The number of extinct species of the past dwarfs the number of living species today, that's what happens here on the Blue Planet.

By the way, I've stated numerous times that I'm all for finding alternate energy sources, have been for years, but for different reasons.

[Harry Beanbag]

This seems to be the Bush administration's strategy. :pop:


This is sad even for you.

[mdklatt]

This is sad even for you.

Lighten up, Francis.

[Harry Beanbag]

Lighten up, Francis.


That's funny considering the tone of your posts in all these GW threads.

[Ike]

So, they would better off if they still smoked? :confused:

considering that one of them got cancer anyway, maybe...at least they'd have less stress. My point was that making a judgement of which way to go gets us "better off" in that case and in cases like global warming is not an easy thing to do. What good is it to save the planet if we have to go back to living in caves to do it, or if the cure costs so much that it makes energy prohibitively expensive.




I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that the government will give out funding to anybody if they say the magic words "global warming"?
No...actually, I really do have an idea for a study...I just don't want you to filch it from me and steal my potential funding. ;)

[mdklatt]

That's funny considering the tone of your posts in all these GW threads.

I'll tell you exactly why I get a tone in these threads. Please read with this with my tongue-in-cheek intent in mind, but search for the deeper meaning.

Imagine that in addition to being an OU football fan you're also a basketball fan of a school that doesn't have a football team, so they're not very knowledgable about college football. We'll call them the Wolves. So, you're on the Wolf bball message board, and there's a thread that says "OU Football Sucks"...

Harry Beanbag: OU football does not suck.

Wolf Fan #1: Are you serious? They're terrible. I wish the media would just shut up about them already. I'm sick of the hype.

HB: OU is one of the best teams in country year in and out.

WF#1: Whatever. Toby Keith is a huge OU fan, and that's all I need to know. He's a total toolshed.

WF#2: Toby Keith is an OU fan? That guy sucks. OU must suck balls.

HB: Now wait a minute...what the hell does Toby Keith have to do with anything??

WF#1: Well looky here, I found this message board called gopokes.com that says you guys went 3-5 against Oklahoma State. How can you be one the best teams in the country if you're not even the best team in your own state? :rolleyes:

HB: Dude, that's an Oklahoma State fan site. Those guys are morons. They're just cherry picking 1995-2002 because that was a down period for us. Our series record with them is 78-16-7. We've won the last four. In 2005 we beat them by six touchdowns.

aggie: GOONERS SUCK!!! AND THEY INVENTED CHEATING!! ASK HIM ABOUT BARRY SWINDLER!

WF#2: How many points is a touchdown?

aggie: Hey Gooner, if you're so great, how come we had more points per game than you last season?

WF#2: Wow, is that true? How good can OU be?

HB: That's irrelevant! Our record was 11-3, oSU's was 7-6.

WF#1: aggie called you on something, and now you're trying to change the subject. Typical OU fan.

aggie: The gooners didn't even win their bowl game! HA HA HA!

HB: Neither did you! And we were in a BCS bowl!

WF#1: I'm not sure what a BCS bowl is, but I'm not impressed. All bowls are the same. I can't imagine that losing a BCS bowl is any better than losing any other bowl.

WF#2: I just googled "OU sucks", and the first site listed is hornfans.com. They've got a thread in there about how the OU quarterback was thrown off the team last year for getting paid. Somebody called "caphorns" says he's got it on good authority that once the dust settles the NCAA is going to give them the death penalty. Wow.

HB: Oh for crying loud. Can you guys find a college football expert who thinks OU sucks? Read any of these sites and see for yourself: cfbnews.com, espn.com, sportsline.com, any major sports web site.

WF#1: ESPN? You've got to be ****ting me. They're a joke.

HB: Then look at any of the other sites.

aggie: Ask the gooner how bad OU is going to suck when Bob Stoops is coaching the Dallas Cowboys next year.

HB: Now you're just making crap up.

aggie: Oh yeah, then how come it says "JERRY JONES HAS EYE ON STOOPS?" on the Dallas Morning News web site?

HB: Did you notice the question mark at the end? Did you check the date? SOMEBODY ELSE HAS ALREADY BEEN HIRED!

WF#2: I found an expert for you. He was the head coach at Texas and won two national championships there, and was even an OU player. His name is Darryl Royal, and he says OU is a bunch of cheaters. Case closed. OU sucks, and Toby Keith is still a ******.

HB: :mad:

[KABOOKIE]

Um coach. I got a few questions and I'll take it off the air......

Where's the fancy thermometer that can accurately measure the Earth's mean temperature to within a tenth of degree? What kind of computer is required to crunch the mega dose of climatologic data that mysteriously spits out the exact temperatures (to within a tenth of a degree) of those previously recorded for the last 100 years and does Gary England use it for his 7 day forecast? TIA.

[mdklatt]

Where's the fancy thermometer that can accurately measure the Earth's mean temperature to within a tenth of degree? What kind of computer is required to crunch the mega dose of climatologic data that mysteriously spits out the exact temperatures (to within a tenth of a degree) of those previously recorded for the last 100 years and does Gary England use it for his 7 day forecast? TIA.

I'm not sure what you're getting it. What's your fixation on a tenth of a degree?

[KABOOKIE]

There is a huge difference between being 60 F warmer and 61 F warmer on a global scale. That is an enormous amount of energy.


I'm not sure what you're getting it. What's your fixation on a tenth of a degree?


It makes it easier for data collectors to see a change between 1 whole degree.

[mdklatt]

It makes it easier for data collectors to see a change between 1 whole degree.

So...you think global warming isn't real at all?

[KABOOKIE]

So...you think global warming isn't real at all?


No. Just questioning the method used to determine the overall mean temperature of the Earth. Also, the computer and code used to crunch the entire amount of climatologic data (you know, temperature, pressures, densities, element ratios, at the troposphere, stratosphere and on and on there's a zillion possible parameters to that DEQ) from the previous 100 years that predicts the Earth's temperature mean temperature. AND!!! Does Gary England use the same code crunching for his 7 day forecast?

[mdklatt]

No. Just questioning the method used to determine the overall mean temperature of the Earth.

This comes from in situ and satellite measurements. Even the manual thermometers I send out can be read to a tenth of degree. Electronic thermometers have at least the precision. I recently saw a talk about the reconstruction of historical temperature data (like all the way back to the early 1800s) records at a conference, and I think that data had a precision of 0.1 F (~0.05 C). I would guess that satellite temperature readings have a precision of 0.1 C, at least. I don't know what the error bars are on the calculated trends.



Also, the computer and code used to crunch the entire amount of climatologic data...Does Gary England use the same code crunching for his 7 day forecast?

Same code? Sort of. FYI, I don't believe the TV stations run their own forecasts, but compile them from a combination of NWS and commercial sources.

[Fraggle145]

I'll tell you exactly why I get a tone in these threads. Please read with this with my tongue-in-cheek intent in mind, but search for the deeper meaning.

Imagine that in addition to being an OU football fan you're also a basketball fan of a school that doesn't have a football team, so they're not very knowledgable about college football. We'll call them the Wolves. So, you're on the Wolf bball message board, and there's a thread that says "OU Football Sucks"...

Harry Beanbag: OU football does not suck.

Wolf Fan #1: Are you serious? They're terrible. I wish the media would just shut up about them already. I'm sick of the hype.

HB: OU is one of the best teams in country year in and out.

WF#1: Whatever. Toby Keith is a huge OU fan, and that's all I need to know. He's a total toolshed.

WF#2: Toby Keith is an OU fan? That guy sucks. OU must suck balls.

HB: Now wait a minute...what the hell does Toby Keith have to do with anything??

WF#1: Well looky here, I found this message board called gopokes.com that says you guys went 3-5 against Oklahoma State. How can you be one the best teams in the country if you're not even the best team in your own state? :rolleyes:

HB: Dude, that's an Oklahoma State fan site. Those guys are morons. They're just cherry picking 1995-2002 because that was a down period for us. Our series record with them is 78-16-7. We've won the last four. In 2005 we beat them by six touchdowns.

aggie: GOONERS SUCK!!! AND THEY INVENTED CHEATING!! ASK HIM ABOUT BARRY SWINDLER!

WF#2: How many points is a touchdown?

aggie: Hey Gooner, if you're so great, how come we had more points per game than you last season?

WF#2: Wow, is that true? How good can OU be?

HB: That's irrelevant! Our record was 11-3, oSU's was 7-6.

WF#1: aggie called you on something, and now you're trying to change the subject. Typical OU fan.

aggie: The gooners didn't even win their bowl game! HA HA HA!

HB: Neither did you! And we were in a BCS bowl!

WF#1: I'm not sure what a BCS bowl is, but I'm not impressed. All bowls are the same. I can't imagine that losing a BCS bowl is any better than losing any other bowl.

WF#2: I just googled "OU sucks", and the first site listed is hornfans.com. They've got a thread in there about how the OU quarterback was thrown off the team last year for getting paid. Somebody called "caphorns" says he's got it on good authority that once the dust settles the NCAA is going to give them the death penalty. Wow.

HB: Oh for crying loud. Can you guys find a college football expert who thinks OU sucks? Read any of these sites and see for yourself: cfbnews.com, espn.com, sportsline.com, any major sports web site.

WF#1: ESPN? You've got to be ****ting me. They're a joke.

HB: Then look at any of the other sites.

aggie: Ask the gooner how bad OU is going to suck when Bob Stoops is coaching the Dallas Cowboys next year.

HB: Now you're just making crap up.

aggie: Oh yeah, then how come it says "JERRY JONES HAS EYE ON STOOPS?" on the Dallas Morning News web site?

HB: Did you notice the question mark at the end? Did you check the date? SOMEBODY ELSE HAS ALREADY BEEN HIRED!

WF#2: I found an expert for you. He was the head coach at Texas and won two national championships there, and was even an OU player. His name is Darryl Royal, and he says OU is a bunch of cheaters. Case closed. OU sucks, and Toby Keith is still a ******.

HB: :mad:

Beauty.


You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to mdklatt again.

[Vaevictis]

Also, the computer and code used to crunch the entire amount of climatologic data (you know, temperature, pressures, densities, element ratios, at the troposphere, stratosphere and on and on there's a zillion possible parameters to that DEQ) from the previous 100 years that predicts the Earth's temperature mean temperature.

You really don't need to know all of those things to predict the mean temperature of a system, which is exactly why they want to talk about the global average temperature instead of trying to predict localized ones.

If you really want to know about it, go read the thermo section of a basic physics or chemistry book, but to summarize what it will tell you: Predicting the mean temperature of a system is trivial (usually it just boils down to Q=m*deltaT or some variant of it), and if it mentions predicting localized temperatures at all, it will basically say, "That's too hard for a basic book like this!"


AND!!! Does Gary England use the same code crunching for his 7 day forecast?

Assuming you're trying to imply the same thing most people are implying when they say stuff like this, (ie, "they can't get next week's prediction right, how can they get the average temperature right out further?"), I'll just repeat myself: Predicting the average temperature of a system is many orders of magnitude easier than predicting localized temperatures within the system.

When talking about average global temperatures, it would be far more appropriate to ask: How good is the model of net heat transfer to the earth, and how good is the specific heat capacity term they're likely using?

[KABOOKIE]

You really don't need to know all of those things to predict the mean temperature of a system, which is exactly why they want to talk about the global average temperature instead of trying to predict localized ones.


OMG! :rolleyes:

Mean = average.

Earth's mean temperature = Earth's average temperature.

[mdklatt]

OMG! :rolleyes:

Mean = average.

Earth's mean temperature = Earth's average temperature.

That is where you were going with that, right? That how can forecast models be right about the average temperature 100 years from now when they can't even get tomorrow's forecast right?

It's exactly like the difference between predicting the result of an individual coin flip and the cumulative results of 10000 coin flips.

[mdklatt]

You really don't need to know all of those things to predict the mean temperature of a system, which is exactly why they want to talk about the global average temperature instead of trying to predict localized ones.



Actually, the current generation of climate models do predict all of that stuff. They're essentially the same as a forecast model, with a few differences. For example, a climate model needs to also simulate ocean dynamics, changes in land cover and surface ice, and radiative transfer (the greenhouse gas stuff) because those are significant over a forecast period of years. On the other hand, they don't need complexities like cloud microphysics and non-hydrostatic vertical motion. The may not include compressibility, either. The resolution of a climate model is obviously a lot lower than a forecast model, or else you'd practically have to run it in real time.

[usmc-sooner]

still the bottom line, some scientists say it's bogus, some believe it. I think more and more scientists are starting to see a lot of flaws in some of the Global warming claims. BTW there is another scientist/researcher/ prof at OU not the one already mentioned in this thread. Who is now claiming GW as a myth.

[mdklatt]

still the bottom line, a few scientists say it's bogus, the overwhelming majority believe it.

Fixed.



I think more and more scientists are starting to see a lot of flaws in some of the Global warming claims.


In all of the "skeptic" literature I see, the same handful of names keep coming up. They're certainly perfecting their spiel and getting better at exploiting the media's obsessions with "equal time", so maybe that's why you think the debate is getting stronger. The reverse is true. More and more scientists who were previously unconvinced are reviewing the available evidence and concluding that anthropogenic global warming is not a myth.

The skeptics keep rehashing the same arguments again and again, and they are all demonstrably false. The warming trend did not stop in 1998. The troposphere is getting warmer. We know what cause the post-WW II cooling trend, and why it has reversed. The importance of water vapor is not being ignored in climate models, and it's not responsible for 99% of climate changes. Solar output has not been increasing. It doesn't matter what happened 100,000 years ago because things are not the same as they were 100,000 years ago. That a global warming in DC was postponed due to a blizzard doesn't prove anything. There is no connection between global warming here and on other planets (which is all speculative in the first place). Hating Al Gore doesn't make global warming a myth. Wishful thinking about not wanting to have your lifestyle disrupted doesn't invalidate the science.



BTW there is another scientist/researcher/ prof at OU not the one already mentioned in this thread. Who is now claiming GW as a myth.

Who? Which department? This is another trick of the skeptics--using the generic credential "scientist". For example, Paul Reiter is frequently credited as a "scientist" and "global warming skeptic". There are a couple of things wrong with that. Most importantly, he doesn't deny anthropogenic global warming; his beef was a statement by the IPCC that global warming was a significant factor in the spread of malaria. And why does he know about malaria? Because he's an entomologist, i.e. a bug scientist and not a climate scientist.

None of this matters, though. Everybody who doesn't want to think global warming is real is going to latch onto every little discredited scrap of skepticism they find while ignoring the big picture.

[usmc-sooner]

well since the overwhelming majority believe in it according to an anonymous internet poster then science must be like Family Feud, majority wins. Survey says 65% believe then GW it is. Maybe we can ask Dean Blevins he's percentages, Oh I don't know 70-30 in favor. I guess weatherman put stock in percentages like that. At one time a majority of scientist believed in Global Cooling. Hell a long time ago scientist believed the Sun revolved around the earth. One guy said no, he was put in jail while the overwhelming majority sat in silence. If this is your kinda science then I see why you believe in it so wholeheartedly.
BTW when they speak about this issue they mention that scientist are divided on it.

[mdklatt]

well since the overwhelming majority believe in it according to an anonymous internet poster then science must be like Family Feud, majority wins.

What is science like then, in your expert opinion?


Hell a long time ago Christians believed the Sun revolved around the earth. One guy said no, he was put in jail while the overwhelming majority sat in silence because they didn't want to get killed by the Christians.




BTW when they speak about this issue they mention that scientist are divided on it.

Who is "they"?

[usmc-sooner]

What is science like then, in your expert opinion?


well you can have a theory based on your family feud science but you can't prove something is happening based on science by saying well most people think or 60% believe.







Who is "they"?

the people who talk about the division of scientist who disagree on the cause of Global Warming. I'm sure you'd feel better being a weather guy if I made a wild *** guess and slapped a % to it.

[mdklatt]

the people who talk about the division of scientist who disagree on the cause of Global Warming.

Ummm...okay.

[usmc-sooner]

Ummm...okay.

don't ask if, if you don't want to know. I know it goes against your little theory that you want to pass off as fact, but hey that's the way it is.

[mdklatt]

don't ask if, if you don't want to know.

Know what? That what wasn't even an answer.

The people who say there's not a consensus are the people who say there's not a consensus.

Brilliant!

[usmc-sooner]

Know what? That what wasn't even an answer.

The people who say there's not a consensus are the people who say there's not a consensus.

Brilliant!

You can't read I said the people who talk about this issue (people who debate) mention the fact that their is a division among scientist over the cause of GW.

If you don't understand this, you don't understand it. Would you like me to explain who "you" is and what understand means.

Don't you have some weather reports to get wrong.

[Vaevictis]

For example, a climate model needs to also simulate ocean dynamics, changes in land cover and surface ice,

Roll that up in cv or cm...


and radiative transfer (the greenhouse gas stuff)

... and roll this up in Q...

... and you've essentially got what I was talking about. I wasn't trying to say that the whole thing is as easy as Q=mc*dT, just that compared to...


On the other hand, they don't need complexities like cloud microphysics and non-hydrostatic vertical motion. The may not include compressibility, either. The resolution of a climate model is obviously a lot lower than a forecast model, or else you'd practically have to run it in real time.

... it might as well be.

Basically, I'm getting at the whole "Oh no, they can't forecast the local weather accurately, so they can't POSSIBLY get the much bigger GLOBAL weather right!@#" The assumption inherent in that is that predicting a system-wide average is a much more complex problem than predicting a local value when:

1. There's no evidence to that effect.
2. For every other thermodynamics problem EVAR, the opposite holds true.

[mdklatt]

You can't read I said the people who talk about this issue (people who debate) mention the fact that their is a division among scientist over the cause of GW.


But the only people who debate this are the people who want you to think there is a debate. When there isn't.

I'm going to say something now. Before I do, keep in mind that I have no personal antipathy towards you. I've never even met you. I know we disagree on some issues here, but there are surely things we do agree on. I'm know I've even spekked you before, and I'm sure I will again at some point. It's just a message board, right? This is not a personal attack, I just don't know how to say it more succinctly:

When it comes to global warming, I DON'T THINK YOU KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

It seems like you've been doing at least some research on this subject, but you're either looking in all wrong places or only looking in the places that confirm your preconceived notions. This has nothing to with Al Gore, or pubz or libz, or carbon taxes or SUVs. If I'm being honest with myself, I have to admit that it's hard for me to get worked up about global warming because I'll probably be gone by the time the **** hits the fan anyway. The real reason I'd like to see us reduce our carbon emissions is because:

1) Higher mileage cars--who doesn't want that?

2) Wouldn't it be great if we could one day give Hugo Chavez and the entire Middle East the finger? Just Take all of our marbles out of that godforsaken place and leave them to their own devices.


Anyway. If you just want to admit to yourself that you hate Al Gore and the UN, and nothing is going to change your mind about Global Warming, then move on with your life and stay away from these quagmire threads. I don't have a problem with that at all. (Notice that I never start these threads, I just jump in once the BS starts to get too deep.) If you actually are interested in this stuff, here are a couple of web sites:

http://www.realclimate.org/

This one is good because it acknowledges all the skeptics' arguments, and then explains their flaws. It can get pretty techical, though.

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

I just stumbled upon this the other night; it's another point-by-point analysis/rebuttal of all the skeptic arguments. It takes a lot of the material from the first site gives it a more straightforward explanation.

Seriously, dude, no hard feelings (I hope).

[mdklatt]

Roll that up in cv or cm...



... and roll this up in Q...



For a viscous, compressible fluid surrounding a rotating, unevenly heated oblate spheroid of nonhomogenous composition that is a lot easier said than done. :D

[Vaevictis]

For a viscous, compressible fluid surrounding a rotating, unevenly heated oblate spheroid of nonhomogenous composition that is a lot easier said than done. :D

But much easier than say, trying to predict the local weather, yes?

[Vaevictis]

But seriously folks, it's really very easy. First, we'll assume a spherical horse...

[Fraggle145]

well since the overwhelming majority believe in it according to an anonymous internet poster then science must be like Family Feud, majority wins. Survey says 65% believe then GW it is. Maybe we can ask Dean Blevins he's percentages, Oh I don't know 70-30 in favor. I guess weatherman put stock in percentages like that. At one time a majority of scientist believed in Global Cooling. Hell a long time ago scientist believed the Sun revolved around the earth. One guy said no, he was put in jail while the overwhelming majority sat in silence. If this is your kinda science then I see why you believe in it so wholeheartedly.
BTW when they speak about this issue they mention that scientist are divided on it.

It isnt according to some anonymous internet poster... I have provided the actual article that shows just how much of a majority it is in this thread and in another thread http://www.soonerfans.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1820590&postcount=13. If dean was gonna guess the percentages it would be more like 95-5%. We all know that a few climate scientists once believed in global cooling however there were not near as many that believed in global cooling as now believe in global warming and that was a ball the media ran with before there was near as much science completed as there has been for global warming. This I believe also has been addressed perviously in this thread. And also just because it was wrong then doesnt mean that this science is wrong now. Everyone on the other side likes to keep bringing up these examples of one genius being so much smarter than everyone else... they fail to mention how many times the majority has been right. You also have to remember that not to long ago people who believed in anthropogenically caused gloabl warming were in the minority and apparently at least according to this board in many places they still are.

[mdklatt]

But much easier than say, trying to predict the local weather, yes?

The same basic equations go into forecast and climate models. The only difference is that we're only looking for averages from the climate models, so we can make the random errors go away. Forecasts do use ensemble techniques to reduce the random errors, but they certainly don't go away. The results are better than flipping a coin, though.

[Vaevictis]

The same basic equations go into forecast and climate models. The only difference is that we're only looking for averages from the climate models, so we can make the random errors go away. Forecasts do use ensemble techniques to reduce the random errors, but they certainly don't go away. The results are better than flipping a coin, though.

So yes then, and for the same reason why Q=mc*dT is easier than trying to predict localized temperatures within a system :p

Why you gotta make it so complicated?!@# :D

[KABOOKIE]

That is where you were going with that, right? That how can forecast models be right about the average temperature 100 years from now when they can't even get tomorrow's forecast right?

It's exactly like the difference between predicting the result of an individual coin flip and the cumulative results of 10000 coin flips.

No. I was asking about Earth's mean temperature. Someone thought I was asking about local temps and said I needed to review elementary thermodynamics and should be looking at average temps. Well NFS. The mean IS the “average.”

[Fugue]

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/26.gif

[Vaevictis]

No. I was asking about Earth's mean temperature. Someone thought I was asking about local temps and said I needed to review elementary thermodynamics and should be looking at average temps. Well NFS. The mean IS the “average.”

*smirk* Actually, I didn't care what you were asking about. It sounded similar to a familiar refrain which is one of my pet peeves, and I will take any opportunity to shoot it down in the hopes that it will stick to at least one of the people who like to parrot it.

[mdklatt]

We all know that a few climate scientists once believed in global cooling

It was mostly geolgists, I think, and they still believe in it. They were saying "global warming is going to happen soon", and they're probably not wrong. The only catch is that "soon" in geological terms means the next million years or something. It was the media that ran with that story--as usual--and misinterpreted it--as usual.




You also have to remember that not to long ago people who believed in anthropogenically caused gloabl warming were in the minority and apparently at least according to this board in many places they still are.

I mentioned this earlier, but the skeptics are taking the same arc as just about everybody else, just more slowly as the evidence becomes even too much for them to gloss over. The skeptical consensus used to be that global warming wasn't happening at all, and now they'll admit it's happening but that it's all natural. The next stage for them will be to agree that anthropogenic global warming is real, but to say that carbon taxes and higher mileage isn't going to do any good (which I'm sure has nothing to do with the funding the get from companies like Exxon).

It's like the stages of grief or something.

Denial - Global warming isn't happening
Rage - You can't prove it's our fault!
Resignation - We can't stop it anyway so why bother.
Acceptance - ???

:D

[Harry Beanbag]

*smirk* Actually, I didn't care what you were asking about. It sounded similar to a familiar refrain which is one of my pet peeves, and I will take any opportunity to shoot it down in the hopes that it will stick to at least one of the people who like to parrot it.


I thought I was done with this signature, but I see it's still needed for a little while longer.

[Fraggle145]

http://www.inthegreen.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/deconstructing_.html

For a rebuttal of the video with links to the science articles and some other sources... unfortunately some of the links assume you have subscription access to the peer reviewed literature, but they can be looked up as well. I went through and relinked the copied text with the links that were provided.


Deconstructing Channel 4's Great Global Warming Swindle
Those of you watching Channel 4's slick documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle (http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html), may be forgiven for second guessing the foundations upon which many of us rest our policy research. The big guns were wheeled out to cut into Global Warming theory, and to the layman it could have appeared to be a bloodbath. Even the Channel 4 announcer took a swing before the start: "Climate change; is it down to the car you drive, the airmiles you clock, the light you didn't turn off? Questionable."

The documentary had plenty of big names, and much name-dropping of institutions and awards. The content, however, was riddled with old half-truths and some straw man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)arguments thrown in for good measure. The main content is summarized below, and annotated with comment and links for better info. I would be happy to discuss any of my comments here - feel free to make corrections, improvements, additions below.

1. Climate is always changing, this temperature is not strange. We shouldn't worry, as warming will bring "vineyards ... [a] wonderfully rich time." (Philip Scott) Climatologists have never denied that temperature variation has been a part of the Earth's history. What is worrying, however, is that the levels of CO2 are higher than they have been for 650,000 years (link (http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2211568.ece)) and likely in 20 million years (link (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/096.htm)), and the rate that current changes are taking place (see here (http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1603667.ece) and here (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8850-atmospheric-cosub2sub-accumulating-faster-than-ever.html)) are much faster than they have been in the past. And while we may have vineyards and a wonderful time here in the UK, the developing countries will certainly get the short end of the stick (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/658.htm).

2. Historically, CO2 trends appears to lag global mean temperature increases; CO2 doesn't drive temperature change. Yet another old argument. Oddly, they laugh at Al Gore's comment that the relationship between CO2 and temperature change is "complicated", suggesting he was glossing over the details and hid the truth. (If the carbon cycle isn't complicated, I don't know what is!) They then proceed to give an overly simplistic view of the climate, stating that during the heaviest industrialisation post-WWI, there was global cooling - therefore CO2 had no effect. They fatally neglect the time lag for warming from CO2, or the cooling impact from aerosols like SO2. But Real Climate to debunk their claim here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13): the apparent lag of CO2 from temperature in the historical records is a result of feedbacks which release more CO2.

3. Human's can't change the atmosphere - it's so immense. [Update 15.03.07: Having read the transcript, I see that misheard Stott's comment. He indicated the Sun was so immense, suggesting we were just small fry with no impact. I think my comment still holds, however.] Logical fallacy here - appealing to emotion and wonder. For a really accessible example of humans impacting the climate, we just have to look at the impact that the lack of airplane contrails had on temperature in the US after 9/11 (link (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6898/full/418601a.html)).

4. Humans contribute only a minor part of total CO2. This is also not disputed. However, we do know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas), and that humans have contributed to recent increases in CO2 concentrations (link (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87), link (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/096.htm)). It appears, that by disrupting the natural balance of the carbon cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas) (which involves the atmosphere, plants, animals, oceans, and geology), we are able to warm the planet.

5. The surface of the Earth is warming faster than the troposphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troposphere), which is the opposite of what greenhouse warming theory would suggest. This argument has been going on for years. However, a 2004 article in Nature (link (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6987/abs/nature02524.html), and more discussion here (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7017/full/nature03210.html)) puts rest to these concerns, and the IPCC Fourth Assessment report will conclude that the troposphere is warming at least as quickly as the surface - consistent with theory. The confusion of whether the troposphere was warming quickly enough arose from a cooling bias from the stratosphere (which cooled as a result of less ozone). [Update 15.03.07: See also a US CCSP report which Christy himself co-authored here (http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf). It said: "Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. ... This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected."]

6. Media and scientific self-interest in reporting more and more dramatic results. The global warming community needs to perpetuate itself to keep the money flowing. This, however, is not an argument against the science, but a clever tactic by the documentary makers to get the audience thinking that it is all a big conspiracy. Yet they fail to mention that hysteria is not new to the media - see crime, pedophilia, and immigrants as other examples. As for self-interest in science, it is of course in anyone's interest to promote the importance of their work - for publicity or money. However, the documentary makers failed to show how this debunked the theory of global warming.

7. Cosmic rays can explain warming, as they affect cloud cover - which has a cooling affect. The argument from Nigel Calder and Danish space science skeptics has featured on this blog before, and on BBC's Newsnight - where Calder was thoroughly demolished by an atmospheric physicist from Imperial College. Basically, the Danes have found that cosmic rays produced ionized particles, an published it in a peer reviewed paper here (http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/(hlpg5b45kymtlknghgameijk)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,5,19;journal,3,137;linkingpublication results,1:102023,1). The article made no mention of global warming or climate change, but Calder and the Danes wrote a book anyway, making numerous jumps of assumption to say that those ionized particles would produce more clouds and thus cool the Earth. However, those assumptions have not been peer-reviewed, and there exists no long-term trend for cosmic ray flux, while global mean temperature keeps rising. RealClimate has discussed his claim (here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin/)). More arguments for cosmic rays came from Nir Shaviv et al. These have also been questioned in peer-reviewed literature here (http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_etal_eos_2004.html) and discussed in RealClimate.org here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=308#comment-13470).

8. Environmentalists say industrialisation causes global warming, and thus want to stop industrialisation and the great improvments it has given our lives. A straw man argument if I've ever seen one. By associating CO2 emissions with industrialisation and economic growth, the documentary plays an emotional trick by making us think that the quality of life we have will be taken away from us if the environmentalists had their way. While CO2 emissions are indeed associated with industrialisation, it is not a relationship that cannot be undone. For example, Vestas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas) in Denmark have generated immense wealth by producing wind power generators. China has recently decoupled economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions growth (link (http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/189348.htm)) [Update 15.03.07: Better info in this (http://ccso.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/2001/200105/200105.pdf) and this (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VC6-3YRVR07-8&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b5525b8cd5b8aafbdb123bfaac3f3f0c) article. Thanks, Bruce, for the comment.].

9. "Developing countries are coming under intense pressure not to develop." They finally claimed that environmentalists are stopping developing countries from installing fossil fuel plants, forcing them instead to use expensive renewable source of energy instead. This was called "anti-human". Unfortunately, no evidence was presented on this point - no data on World Bank projects, or similar. They did, however, visit a hospital that had been fitted with a solar panel, which could power either the fridge or the lights - but not both. The inference was that if environmentalists hadn't stopped the building of a fossil fuel power stations, the hospital could use the fridge and lights at the same time. Yet did the documentary prove that the hospital was in proximity to be wired to the grid at lower cost than the panel? You bet they didn't! [Update 15.03.07: See a further discussion regarding rural renewables in a new post by Chiara from In the Green here (http://inthegreen.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/remote_generati.html).]

[Vaevictis]

I thought I was done with this signature, but I see it's still needed for a little while longer.

shrug, if my being an *** is what determines need, you're never going to be done with that signature. :D It's not something that's going to change.

(Actually, it's only an approximation. When interacting with people with certain select qualities, I refrain. However, so very few people have them, so most of the time... an *** it is!)

[Harry Beanbag]

shrug, if my being an *** is what determines need, you're never going to be done with that signature. :D It's not something that's going to change.

(Actually, it's only an approximation. When interacting with people with certain select qualities, I refrain. However, so very few people have them, so most of the time... an *** it is!)


And what would those select qualities be? In the same room so they're able to throat punch you? :D

[Vaevictis]

And what would those select qualities be? In the same room so they're able to throat punch you? :D

You might think so, but considering how many times my mouth has gotten me into a fight, I doubt it.

The qualities themselves are hard to pin down, but usually, when a person has them, I say to myself, "Now here is a person who just doesn't deserve my ****." And so I restrain myself. MamaMia is one such person, for example.

(I think with her, it's because she is invariably either kind or at least polite.)

In person, anyone who is currently in a uniform (military, police or firefighter, mostly. Otherwise, on a per-case basis) gets the same treatment, and invariably gets a "sir" or "ma'am." You have to be in the uniform at the time though. If you're off duty, you're fair game.

[Harry Beanbag]

You might think so, but considering how many times my mouth has gotten me into a fight, I doubt it.

The qualities themselves are hard to pin down, but usually, when a person has them, I say to myself, "Now here is a person who just doesn't deserve my ****." And so I restrain myself. MamaMia is one such person, for example.

(I think with her, it's because she is invariably either kind or at least polite.)

In person, anyone who is currently in a uniform (military, police or firefighter, mostly. Otherwise, on a per-case basis) gets the same treatment, and invariably gets a "sir" or "ma'am." You have to be in the uniform at the time though. If you're off duty, you're fair game.


So you have a thing for uniforms huh? ;)

[Fraggle145]

So you have a thing for uniforms huh? ;)

They make him hot... like the earth ;)

[Vaevictis]

So you have a thing for uniforms huh? ;)

Heh. I was just taught as a kid to respect the office.