'Educated' opinions on climate change part 2 40

[josephv]

Greg, thanks for the article. It is not exactly what I was looking for (since it says that "hotter times still ahead"), but it is still quite good and informative. Stars for you.

Mother Nature Cools the Greenhouse, but Hotter Times Still Lie Ahead
Richard A. Kerr
A new paper shows that regional and even global temperatures are being temporarily held down by a natural jostling of the climate system, driven in large part by vacillating ocean currents.

 

[jmw]

Zdas04
There is a well known saying that expresses this quite well:

He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still.]/quote]

Samuel Butler. (1612–1680)
Hudibras. Part iii. Canto iii. Line 547.

However many examples of this we see, eventually the truth can emerge ().

Of course, the jury is still out in parts of the US on Creationism Vs Darwinian evolution, there are still people who believe in a flat earth (how many thousands of years has that been?), I expect there are still many advocates of Lysenkoism in the former USSR.
Some people still believe politicians when their lips move.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is set to be just another example. But on which side of the fence?
At the moment the sceptics are in the flat earth camp but the tide may be turning and it may well be the AGWs who end up in that category.

So why do we debate it?
Why does anyone debate anything?
Because there always remains the potential that minds will be changed. Epiphanies do happen.

The real problem is that to governments, truth doesn't matter, the "will of the people" is an irrelevance as Europeans are discovering afresh with the Irish no vote (following the previous French and Dutch no vote to the 98% unchanged preceding piece of legislation) - the politician's answer? no referenda.

This means that despite the "truth" or otherwise of the AGW argument it is a genie that cannot be stuffed back into its bottle.

Incidentally, there is no worse politician for this than one who knows he cannot lose the next election or who knows he cannot win the next election.. one who is not allowed another term or one who has finagled a life term.
But some who are neither still don't seem to understand... Chancellor Kohl, for example who pushed ahead with ein mark for ein mark, paid he price for his folly but the folly remained. (Some may think this was the right decision but that is not what a democracy is about, it is about representing the people. If we wanted feudalism we'd still have absolute governments).

The real problem then might be how to fix the political mechanisms, how to put science onto a better basis, to overcome the influences that see poor science dominate our lives.
It isn't just Global Warming, it is each and every new epidemiological study that emerges saying wine is good for us, then that it is bad for us or that white wine is good, red wine is bad, then that red wine is good. Butter is bad, butter is good. Smoking is bad secondary smoking is bad, alcohol is bad, secondary alcohol is bad (oh, yes, that is a genuine argument out there).
Maybe it is the cult of the Health and Safety nazis who would stop us al doing anything if it might be at all bad for us and governments who believe it is their duty to impose rules and regulations on us because "it is good for us".

Maybe we need to have some accountability for all these people who make these decisions or foster bad science or bad reporting, such as for he who has made his lifetimes passion fixing up the temperature data to support AGW.

Perhaps our fundamental problem is rather deeper than arguing over AGW, but while we argue about it we are distracted from the real problem.




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[rb1957]

i'm sorry joesph but "temperatures are being temporarily held down by a natural jostling of the climate system, driven in large part by vacillating ocean currents" is the sort of IMHO nonsense that is published today.

the ocean currents are a huge factor affecting climate, they have been and will keep on "vacillating" untill they boil off at the end of days.

of course there is "natural jostling" of the climate system, there has been and will always be "jostling" in the climate system untill the atmoshpere boils off at the end of days.

so why, oh why, are these effects producing "temporary" changes in the global temperatures ?

 

[josephv]

Hello rb1957,

I was simply posting the summary of the science magazine article that Greg posted, so that everyone could see it. In other words, I don't know much about this theory (ocean currents). But you could ask Greg, after all he is the one that posted it, or the writers of this article.

cheers,

 

[cranky108]

There has always been and will always be climate change, and it has been said a large part was the American indians who deforrested much of the Western US.

Who cares why it is happening, after all it will happen. But a bigger question would be is the cost of conserted human intervention more than the cost of letting it ride?

I'm all for recycling, but when we tax ourselves to the point it isen't worth working, then we stop progressing as a people. So is it worth it?

 

[ewh]

" a large part was the American indians who deforrested much of the Western US"

Sounds a lot like blaming them for the demise of the buffalo herds.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[jmw]

No, the Buffalo herds were virtually wiped out as a result of policy deliberately designed to destroy the plains Indians.

That isn't to say the Indian hunting methods were always considered, they would sometimes stampede whole herds over a cliff even though there were then more carcasses than they could handle. However, such actions had limited or no impact on overall numbers of buffalo since the buffalo numbers were so vast.

If the Indians actually destroyed the much of the forests then let's give proper attribution.

Not saying they did, perhaps Cranky108 will enlighten us.



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[LCruiser]

Buffalo Bill Cody et al almost did in the buffalo, but the Indians did do in the mammoth.

 

[KENAT]

"IndiansNative Americans Aboriginal Americans did do in the mammoth. "

According to one theory, I didn't realize it had been proven yet.

Antropogenic deforestation has been going on since the invention of tools. The difference is probably just the scale.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[LCruiser]

Good point Kenat. Correlation is not causation. Nobody witnessed it. We will probably never know for sure, but Aboriginal Americans (quite distant from the Indians of the last millennium) were certainly a contributing factor.

 

[GregLocock]

Correlation may not be causation, but in almost every case the arrival of Man on to a previously uninhabited island or continent is shortly followed by a large number of extinctions of tasty or dangerous animal species.





Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[LCruiser]

Greg - LOL - QED

 

[josephv]

"New genetic analyses confirm that Siberian woolly mammoth lived in two, distinct clans. Scientists are trying to determine why the groups appeared to live in the same region but went extinct at two different times."

"But, if the groups were different subspecies, “we can at least say clade II were not driven extinct by humans. The extinction was way before humans arrived” in this region of Siberia."

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33051/title/A_mammoth_divide

 

[LCruiser]

I think we can agree that the earlier extinction of the clade II subspecies, that was not in America, was not caused by American aborigines.

 

[Unotec]

Jeez, at this rate, the GHGE advocates are pretty soon going to be requesting for us to live in the moon or Mars!! Oh wait, how are we going to get the without burning fuel?!?!?!

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[cranky108]

Man is part of the enviroment, and has and always will be part of the change in the enviromant.

My point is that the cost of trying to change or prevent change needs to be evaluated agenst the cost of doing nothing.

You mean you haden't heard the theory that much of the western US was deforrested (Slash and burn method) by the plains indians, to increase the size of the Buffalo herds?
Maybe it's just local knoledge.

 

[rb1957]

the trouble is that there is no clear answer to the question "how significant are AGHGs to climate change ?"

some answer that it doesn't matter how significant, clearly (?) AGHG are having a negative effect (?) on climate change and the consequences are so significantly negative (?) that we have to do something (anything?) to reduce AGHG.

and as to the american buffalo, it only shows that there are at least two sides to any theory when you can't prove any of them !

 

[LCruiser]

rb -

You left out parts of the equation. You are correct that ghg's have an effect on the environment, but the significance does matter as we are killing the biosphere by overgrazing, so to speak. CO2 increasing helps it recover. Since our population is booming, we need all the help we can get until we become sentient as a species - meaning nobody is living at the base of Maslow's pyramid. We have a long way to go to get there - so it's incorrect to say "the consequences are so significantly negative that we have to do something to reduce aghg's". We don't know if it's even a bad thing, yet.

 

[rb1957]

that's why a prefaced the sentence with "some" ... i'm not one.

and really the more we look into it the less we know and the more opinions (uninformed/illinformed/wrong?) we have on the topic. as an example, there was a discussion in the last CC thread about whether trees are CO2 sources or sinks and with knowledgable comments about their CO2 flow changes with daylight/nighttime. i'm sure this is true, i'm not a biologist; but i Know that animals consume O2 and produce CO2 and so i Know there has to be something restoring the balance and I believe that is vegetation.

and i agree with your point that we are probably (certainly?) not the best custodians of our planet (possibly we are behaving more like robber-barons). however, i object to being told that there is a proven causal linkage between burning petrol (like drunken sailors?) and dire climate changes (leading to the end of the human race, which may not be such a bad thing for the rest of the biosphere, particularly the cockroaches may thank us for their opportunity to rise to the top of the food chain).

 

[cranky108]

So how do you deliver a message like cutting down trees is bad for the enviroment to some one who would other wise be using dried cow doung for cooking?

Doing something is fine, so how about teaching people in other countries to better improve there farm land in the place of cutting down more trees to move to better soil. You have to admit it's a better option than everyone lowering there standards.