"Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 3 42

[jmw]

At 273 posts I guess the time has come to request the old thread archived and continue in a new thread and it is in this thread that I think the latest news has its proper place.

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

Oh dear,
just what do you have to do to lose the last shreds of credibility?

Tell me honestly folks, how many engineers would still have a job with a track record like Hansen?
Actually, perhaps we'd better not answer that because I suspect the answer is that in any profession there are complete f***-ups who will never be brought to book simply because the credibility of the people who have believed them for so long is also at risk and once one goes then the domino effect comes into being.

I guess that it is only when NASA closes that we will see and end to the career of this fine purveyor of temperature data but we can be sure he will turn up in some other role on the IPCC or as an acolyte of Nobel Laureate, Al Gore.

Success, it seems, depends not on getting it right but on notoriety and why else would so many deadly politicians earn so much on the speaking circuit once they have finally left office and while their dark deeds are still fresh in everyone's mind?


You know I can't help wondering, if it weren't for those "Chads" I wonder what sort of a condition the world would be in now? And, if we are in dire financial straits now, what kind of position would we otherwise be in?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Tomfh]

Lcruiser,

Do you have anyone to reference aside from people like Booker, Morano and Motl?

These people aren't atmospheric scientists. They are just noisy commentators.

Your 100% assuredness of your own position and your tendency to quote commetanry as fact is rather telling.

 

[GregLocock]

Stirring the pot - apparently the sun makes a difference.

Solar Link to 50% of Warming During the Past 100 Years?
There is a new paper 'in press' in Geophysical Research Letters by Eichler et al entitled, 'Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing.'

The Abstract states:

The role of the sun on Earth's climate variability is still much debated. Here we present an ice core oxygen isotope record from the continental Siberian Altai, serving as a high-resolution temperature proxy for the last 750 years. The strong correlation between reconstructed temperature and solar activity suggests solar forcing as a main driver for temperature variations during the period 1250-1850 in this region. The precisely dated record allowed for the identification of a 10-30 year lag between solar forcing and temperature response, underlining the importance of indirect sun-climate mechanisms involving ocean induced changes in atmospheric circulation. Solar contribution to temperature change became less important during industrial period 1850-2000 in the Altai region.

In the Results and Discussion the authors write:

"Our reconstructed temperatures are significantly correlated with the 10Be and 14C based solar activity reconstructions in the period 1250-1850, but not with the greenhouse gas CO2 (Figure 2b). This indicates that solar activity changes are a main driver for the temperature variation in the Altai region during the pre industrial time. However, during the industrial period (1850-2000) solar forcing became less important and only the CO2 concentrations show a significant correlation with the temperature record. Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun."

Whilst this paper supports studies by Scafetta et al, it is clear that solar factors are still poorly understood, and there are many factors other than CO2 or Solar involved in climate change. A correlation with post industrial CO2 does not necessarily imply causation. For example, Tsonis et al, 2007 investigated the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation. By studying the last 100 years of these cycles' patterns, they found that the systems synchronized several times. In cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then, a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability. The suggestion is that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century.

abstract at;

http://climateresearchnews.com/2008/12/solar-link-to-50-of-warming-during-the-past-100-years/

the paper is at;

http://www.agu.org/contents/journals/ViewPapersInPress.do?journalCode=GL

Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[cranky108]

And does the prediction indicate the effects of volcanic activity? This is a variable that can make the models deviate from the prediction.

As volcanic activity can add a decade or more of CO2 to the atomsphere, where would that put our atempts to control CO2 emmissions?

Also volcanic activity can place enough ash to supress solar radation reaching the earth for several years after the event.

It's no wonder the models aren't correct.

 

[jmw]

Watched a program about a mass extinction event when 95% of life was wiped out.
Baldrick (Tony Robinson?)was the commentator.
I was confused because so much Sulphur was released causing terrible cooling and so much CO2 was released causing terrible warming and he used the terms climate change and global change so often that at the end I was convinced that we had caused the extinction (and not the basaltic lava flow from the massive Siberian volcanic activity).

The only thing that puzzled me was to figure out how what we do in the 20th and 21st centuries could have such far reaching effects as to wipe out life 250million years ago. But once you can show that we cause global warming and the sun doesn't have any effect (sorry, correlation isn't causation... the AGW types have already addressed any heresey that the sun causes climate) then this was a snip.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[LCruiser]

Tomfh -

Apparently you didn't follow the link. Let me try again, this time to the full report:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....Store_id=37283205-c4eb-4523-b1d3-c6e8faf14e84

or

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ipcchistory

There are quotes there from 650 scientists.

And, I'm not sure what you mean by "100% assuredness of your own position". My position is that models are too primitive to predict *anything* because, for one thing, they don't even predict that warm air rises. There is no doubt that increasing CO2 tends to warm the surface, all other things being equal. However, all other things are *not* equal, and there is no evidence the signal is even detectable, let alone that the warming would be "bad". Warming has always been good for mankind. It is cooling that has been bad. What, exactly, are you talking about concerning my position?

Here's the acid test: How many people live on the 10% of the land closest to the poles, and how many people live on the land closest to the equator? It doesn't take much to realize that warming isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[GregLocock]

So, um, b2theory, you seem to have gone a bit quiet. Are you still shocked that we haven't all dived under the media-driven steam-roller of consensus? I may be fat, and I may be squishy, but that is one juggernaut I ain't jumpin under.



Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[Tomfh]

Lcruiser,

Yes I followed the link. It's not a report, it's just a petition. So 650 scientists have signed it. So what?
700 scientists signed "A scientific dissent from Darwinism". Such lists are propaganda, not scientific evidence.

Besides, the list of 650 isn't even a particularly good propaganda effort. I was expecting 650 climate scientists to have signed it. Instead it's stacked with economists, geologists, chemists, meteorologists, a horticulturalist, and...drum roll, "an Award winning NASA astronaut".

 

[kchan711]

Although I agree that the list makes for a bit of propaganda machine, I still trust the chemist for information over the others, including the climate scientist. He/she most likely has a better understanding of the natural world, much like a physicist does as well. Put them into a room with some engineers, and we might actually get some solutions to real problems. Just a thought...

Kyle Chandler

http://www.chiefengineering.net

 

[rb1957]

greg, that looked like a really interesting find, but the agu.org link doesn't find the article (any more ?), no hits on "Eichler" ... maybe the article is now "unhistoried"

 

[GregLocock]

I think you have to buy it.

Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[b2theory]

Sorry, for the delayed response to your comments. Working and grad school finals left no time for other conversations for a bit.

GregLocock (Automotive):
Agreed. So the models are inherently noisy and cannot be used to make predictions to the accuracy claimed for them. Since anthropogenic CO2 is only around 3% of the CO2 in the total cycle it is absurd to claim that the effect of the 3% is able to be modelled given all the other effects in the models.

Not so fast. You cannot throw out the models because of public the squabbing over the degree this month or that month vs a year ago, as goes on almost daily in the media. The models predict a general trend that agree with past observations. It is more than likely that the future climate will agree with the model-predicted trend.

Also, your claim about about the percentage of CO2 emissions against the natural emission levels is both kind of correct yet obviously misinterpreted. It is in reality closer to 5%. That 5% or so is additional flux beyond the equilibrium sources and sinks that have kept CO2 at roughly 270 ppm for the past 10,000 years. That total additional flux in CO2 will establish a new equilibrium as it is integrated over the decades of industrialization. This fits the observations. We have raised the equilibrium by over 100 ppm.

incidentally how can the strength of weight of numbers of objectors to Einstein be an argument FOR the IPCC report, which claims that the consensus is in?

My point wasn't to argue consensus. I wanted to make a direct comparison between the current cultural conflict. The climate change consensus has peer reviewed science on its side. Just as Einstein did. Yet both experience(d) extraordinary opposition from crowds that had their world views torn up as a result of their positions. I even go so far as to point out that Einsteins detractors were far more credible than those of the consensus view on climate change.

 

[LCruiser]

b2theory -

I'm not sure how you can support models when they don't even predict that warm air rises.

Do you not remember your thermo?

 

[cranky108]

The problem with models is the same as what they say about computers, garbage in, garbage out. Who, other than the database keeper, knows what is, and isen't in these models.

As has been said,'Trust but verify'. We haven't verified anything yet.

 

[civilperson]

My personal observation: it is getting colder and the satellite photos of arctic ice have little correlation to average earth temperatures. The amount of water contained in all glaciers, (volume), divided by the surface area of the oceans,(area), gives increase potential in ocean depths. This arithmetic exercise has been quoted by idiot news casters as being many meters in depth. Please try it as a intellectual problem to gage the stupidity of this crisis, (Apologies to the great humanitarian Al Gore).

 

[BobM3]

Another personal observation: It sures seems hotter now when the sun is hitting me. For sure I burn and tan faster than I did as a young person. The number of people with skin cancer is on the rise. Wouldn't an increase in CO2 in the atmoshere tend to absorb or reflect some of the sun's infrared and ultraviolet radiation away from us surface dwellers?

 

[LCruiser]

As civilperson says, it is getting colder. The temperature trend this century continues to be downward by the only objective measure we have, which is MSU (satellite). Every year since the turn of the century has been colder than 1998.

A glimmer of understanding coming out:

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1217/1

 

[CajunCenturion]

Hey, it's snowed in Lafayette, LA last week - first time in 20 years.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[owg]

As a long time global warming skeptic I am coming around. The following url should take you to a plot that may be useful as a basis for discussion. It seems to me that the next 5 to 10 years should tell us if the planet is warming due to CO2. This should tell us how to interpret the last 10 years of no warming. If we get another 10 or even 5 years of no warming I will be back among the skeptics. Too bad about the economic slowdown, that will certainly muddy the waters.


HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[owg]

Sorry about the link, try this one:


HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[SnTMan]

No doubt it is getting hotter, it was 75 F (high) here on Sunday.

No doubt it is getting colder it was 19 F (high) here on Monday.

I much preferred Sunday

Regards,

Mike