Climate Change & Global Warming

[ArabiaTerra]

Ghostrider, this post is an excellent summary of where we're headed:

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/eocenepark.html

[Dratsy]

the link has been explained to you once peat, if you are too dumb to understand then there is no point wasting time explaining again. Yep AT like you spends a lot of time trawling the net time that could be better spent finding gainful employment.

[shetlandpeat]

the link has been explained to you once peat, if you are too dumb to understand then there is no point wasting time explaining again. Yep AT like you spends a lot of time trawling the net time that could be better spent finding gainful employment.

 

[KOYAANISQATSI]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss-under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to-look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/

 

49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

Select excerpts from the letter:

“The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.â€

“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.â€

“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.â€

 

There is of course the standard issue reality deniers rebuttal...

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/13/nasa-climate-change-denier-stunts_n_1424492.html

 

"What's really telling is that they couldn't get people like Buzz Aldrin -- or for that matter John Glenn -- to sign this petition," Mann said. "I think it speaks volumes that the most prominent astronauts were completely uninterested in having any part in this ploy, and I was proud of them for that."

 

Wut wut?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q577ApejasY&feature=player_embedded#!

[ArabiaTerra]

Based on the job titles listed in the letter signatures, by my count they include 23 administrators, 8 astronauts, 7 engineers, 5 technicians, and 4 scientists/mathematicians of one sort or another (none of those sorts having the slightest relation to climate science). Amongst the signatories and their 1,000 years of combined professional experience, that appears to include a grand total of zero hours of climate research experience, and zero peer-reviewed climate science papers.

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/NASA-climate-denialist-letter.html

 

Says it all, really. A bunch of people who know nothing about climate science say nothing relevant about climate science.

[crofter]

Well, the people who do know about climate science have recently reported that extreme weather events are not linked to global warming. See this thread, previous page. So I wonder why Skeptical Science have still not changed their website? ("Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming") Makes you wonder how accurate the rest of their information is.

[ArabiaTerra]

Well, the people who do know about climate science have recently reported that extreme weather events are not linked to global warming.

 

Err, no they didn't. They said that they couldn't absolutely prove that such events were caused by global warming, but nothing about whether such events, which might have happened anyway, were made worse by global warming.

 

Anyway, that report is already out of date. This is a selection of science published after the cut-off point for the IPCC report:

 

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/SSD%20Trenberth%202nd%20proof.pdf

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/27/355639/noaa-climate-change-mediterranean-droughts/

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/01/06/399350/hansen-extreme-heat-waves-texas-oklahoma-moscow-were-caused-by-global-warming/

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/10/20/206899/ncar-daidrought-under-global-warming-a-review/

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/26/451605/nature-strong-evidence-manmade-unprecedented-heat-rainfall-extremes-causing-intense-human-suffering/

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/24/351770/study-russia-2010-july-heat-record-climate-warming/

[ArabiaTerra]

That is because they are trying to use insurance claims to investigate whether extreme weather events are related to climate change. If climate change is causing more extreme weather events, you would expect that as time passes and the climate changes, more money will be paid out due to losses from cyclones, floods etc. But they did not find that to be the case. Fair enough if you don't want to accept it, but I think it is a valid investigative method.

 

I just noticed this, which I meant to respond to when it was posted, but I got distracted by the windfarm approval, and then the council election, so if you don't mind...

 

Insurance claims is a terrible way to assess the effects of climate change.

 

Since 1960, the population of the world has more than doubled (3 billion to 7 billion) and the GDP per capita has increased nearly fourfold (just over $2000 per capita to almost $8000 per capita). That means twice as many people, with four times as much stuff each, to be insured. With that much more insurance, there is going to be a corresponding rise in claims, so you've got to filter out the rise from population, then the rise in stuff insured, before you can even begin to look for the signal from climate change, if any.

 

It's no wonder they haven't been able to filter out the the effects of climate change.

 

A once in 100 year flood causes a huge amount of damage. Did the size of the damage reflect climate change? Or that there were just more people living in the path of the flood? Or were the people just a lot richer than they used to be? Most likely it's a combination of these factors. How do you separate them out?

 

[Edit] And then you've got to factor in the political changes since 1960. Back then half the industrialised world was communist. Did they even have the concept of insurance under communism?

 

Do you think temperature proxies from tree rings are reliable?

 

Yes.

[crofter]

Well, the people who do know about climate science have recently reported that extreme weather events are not linked to global warming.

 

Err, no they didn't. They said that they couldn't absolutely prove that such events were caused by global warming, but nothing about whether such events, which might have happened anyway, were made worse by global warming.

 

Well skeptical science should still change their quote

 

"Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming"

 

To be accurate, it should say

 

Extreme weather events might be being made more frequent and worse by global warming

 

The articles you linked do not say "are" either, they use "likely" and "80% chance" and "could be"

[rgibson]

I only work when the wind blows and sometimes not even then.

 

What am I ?

[orkneypaul]

A Schooner with a dodgy crew?

[unlinkedstudent]

A fart-driven kite?

[ArabiaTerra]

[ArabiaTerra]

 

This is an interesting take in the "interesting times" we're living in. I think he goes a bit far into conspiracy land on the terrorism bit, but the rest is pretty good.

[KOYAANISQATSI]

At first I was all...

 

http://oi49.tinypic.com/28rnkfc.jpg

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/29/climate-war-lovelock

 

but then I was like...

 

http://oi49.tinypic.com/14v1j02.jpg

 

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change

 

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia†theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist†about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

 

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,†Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,†he said.

 

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,†he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth†and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers†as other examples of “alarmist†forecasts of the future.

 

Even more fascinating than I expected. Amazing to see how the Gaia hypothesis, which was dismissed when he came up with it, is now at the heart of the way we think about the environment and the climate. The programme also disproves the idea that scientists who speak about global warming are all in the pay of governments and universities - Lovelock's been working out of his garden shed for 40 years.

 

As “an independent and a loner,†Lovelock said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.†He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.