Climate Change & Global Warming

[stilldellin]

Well said AT, you've got my vote..

[Ghostrider]

As far as Shetland goes, the growing season has apparently lengthened by two months since 1960, though I'd like to hear this confirmed by someone working the land here (Have you noticed this, Crofter?).

 

One word answer, "No!"

 

http://i460.photobucket.com/albums/qq330/Redneck_Hillbilly0504/Bovine_Excrement21.gif

[Carlos]

I presume there are growing seasons and growing seasons?

A March that is 0.5C warmer than it used to be would be an extended growing season, but if it is full of wind and rain it might not end up very effective?

[crofter]

As far as Shetland goes, the growing season has apparently lengthened by two months since 1960, though I'd like to hear this confirmed by someone working the land here (Have you noticed this, Crofter?).

 

The weather is definitely changing. We used to cut peats in May, but I would think April these past few years would have been better. Although the old rayburn is converted to oil nowadays I doubt if the growing season is 2 months longer than it was 50 years ago, but I honestly don't know.

[euripides]

Thanks for your reply AT. It doesn't answer my question. There's no doubt that global warming is happening, but climate change science is relatively young. IMHO the North African example demonstrates that there are unknowns out there that haven't been taken on board (yet?) in long-term warming forecasts. Nor have temperatures in the last decade risen in line with the earlier forecasts. Any science should be open to scepticism and robust examination from the inside and the outside. Using words like "bull...t, lies, distortion, slander" to deal with any suggestion that not everything fits in with present climate change models and forecasts cheapens this important debate.

[ArabiaTerra]

^^^^ Your point would be true if what we were seeing was "scepticism and robust examination from the inside and the outside", but it isn't. Instead, what we are seeing is a bunch of right wing, corporate ideologues who can't or won't understand the science spreading "bull...t, lies, distortion [and] slander" for political aims. There is a whole industry dedicated to rubbishing the science and the scientists coupled with a stew of ludicrous conspiracy theories about one world governments and back door socialism and how the whole of AGW science is a plot to raise your taxes and secure grant money for the scientists.

 

The CRU hack is a case in point. There was nothing in those e-mails which was even remotely dodgy. And then there was the recent furore about mistakes in the IPCC reports. The most significant mistake in the IPCC reports was the fact that the sea level rise was seriously underestimated ( by a factor of 100%). Where was the sound and fury about that?

 

Your saying that temperatures in the last decade have not risen in line with predictions is a case in point. Who is saying this? Not the scientists. There have been bumps and wiggles in the graph of temperatures over the last decade, but no scientists ever claimed that the temperature rise would be a uniform straight, smooth line. There was a spike in 1998 due to the strongest El Nino ever recorded and there have been a couple of strong La Ninas over the last decade as well which have slowed the warming of the atmosphere, but the warming overall has continued.

 

The thing with La Nina is that the defining characteristic of this is cold water rising to the surface of the central Pacific. The effect this has is to suck heat out of the atmosphere to warm this water, thus reducing the amount of heat in the atmosphere. This means that the warming ends up in the ocean instead of the atmosphere. The warming hasn't stopped or slowed, it has just moved around. This is well understood by scientists, but have you ever seen it explained in the media?

 

The main stream media (MSM) has failed big time on this subject by giving column inches to fools like the Telegraph's Christopher Booker and James Delingpole. It has decided that it is correct to give equal space to both sides of the debate despite the fact that one side has decades of peer reviewed science and mountains of evidence while the other side has what? What do the deniers have? Nothing. Since the Sun was ruled out as a major contributing factor in recent temperature rises, the anti AGW side has had nothing and instead has relied on lies and smears instead.

 

When was the last time you heard any argument against AGW that actually carried any scientific weight?

 

The MSM has failed us and now our politicians are failing us. They failed in Copenhagen, putting narrow, short term, nationalistic, self interest ahead of the future welfare of the entire human race and they are failing now. All three of the main parties in this upcoming election should be building their entire manifestos around dealing with climate change, instead, it has hardly been mentioned.

 

I've been following this debate since it started twenty years ago and while it is true that there are things which we don't fully understand about the science, the main thing I've noticed is that every time something new pops up which surprises the scientists, it has almost exclusively been that things are worse, bigger and happening more quickly than scientists have expected. I see no reason to believe that this is going to change in the future.

 

[ArabiaTerra]

Some examples of the denier distortion industry and the failure of the main stream media:

 

http://www.desmogblog.com/greenpeace-releases-20-year-history-climate-denial-industry

 

http://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-extensive-funding-climate-denial-industry-unmasked

 

http://www.desmogblog.com/forest-scientist-simon-lewis-files-formal-complaint-against-uk-sunday-times-over-dishonest-reporting-%E2%80%9Camazongate%E2%80%9D

 

Edit: And a link to the report in question:

 

http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/dealing-in-doubt.pdf

[MuckleJoannie]

Highlights from a BBC Today interview with Professor James Lovelock.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm

 

Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet.

 

The man who achieved global fame for his theory that the whole earth is a single organism now believes that we can only hope that the earth will take care of itself in the face of completely unpredictable climate change.

 

Interviewed by Today presenter John Humphrys, videos of which you can see below, he said that while the earth's future was utterly uncertain, mankind was not aware it had "pulled the trigger" on global warming as it built its civilizations.

 

What is more, he predicts, the earth's climate will not conveniently comply with the models of modern climate scientists.

 

As the record winter cold testifies, he says, global temperatures move in "jerks and jumps", and we cannot confidently predict what the future holds.

 

Prof Lovelock does not pull his punches on the politicians and scientists who are set to gain from the idea that we can predict climate change and save the planet ourselves.

 

Scientists, he says, have moved from investigating nature as a vocation, to being caught in a career path where it makes sense to "fudge the data".

 

And while renewable energy technology may make good business sense, he says, it is not based on "good practical engineering".

 

At the age of 90, Prof Lovelock is resigned to his own fate and the fate of the planet. Whether the planet saves itself or not, he argues, all we can do is to "enjoy life while you can".

 

Trying to save the planet 'is a lot of nonsense'

[crofter]

 

When was the last time you heard any argument against AGW that actually carried any scientific weight?

 

What about the post I made a few pages back which shows that ocean heat content is not increasing? Or the question I have been posing for a while; what caused the rise in arctic temps 1915-1940? Can Agw theory answer that?

 

Or methane hydrates/ unstoppable feedbacks - why are there any methane hydrates left? CO2 has been much higher in the past, so why did the world not melt millions of years ago when these out-of-control "tipping points" were reached? Surely if AGW theory is correct , the positive feedbacks would have already caused doom a long time ago and unstoppable warming would have turned the world into a fiery ball? ?

[crofter]

As far as Shetland goes, the growing season has apparently lengthened by two months since 1960, though I'd like to hear this confirmed by someone working the land here (Have you noticed this, Crofter?).

 

Thinking about this a bit more. Assuming you are correct. Why is this anything but a GOOD thing?

[Ghostrider]

^^ It would be an excellent thing, if there was one grain of truth in it. It used to be the custom back in the 80'sand 70's to slip the ram around 21st November, so that the lambing started mid April when the first decent green peck was starting to come, the last 15-20 year more and more folk have been delaying slipping until around the 28th - 4th December because there's never girse worth a damn until the end of April these days.

 

Likewise, if the growing season were longer there would be no need any longer for the vast majority of lambs to be off the isle between late September and mid-October because girse was running out, like its always been back to the 60's and far before that. There would be a sight less feed imported in the Sooth Mooth in bags too were the growing season longer, every second rig at the Ness would be under barley, and not just the same select few in favourable locations with the best aert, the same as it was in the early 70's when the first combine was imported making barley growing feasible. All of which are still fighting the same battle every year, of the season never quite starting early enough to get barley sawn, nor quite lasting long enough to get it full enough and ripe enough to cut, the same as they were the first they tried it 35+ year ago.

 

90 - 100 years ago folk grew a lot of bere, it was their principal meal, they aimed to saw it by the end of March and share it by the end of August. The last anyone grew bere that managed anything near that, it was on pure sand at ten foot above sea level, a century ago they were doing it on a variety of soils up to 150 feet reasonably successfully.

 

While I won't argue that the growing season may have lengthened in the back end a bit, its been at the cost of coming later in voar, so there is no net gain, rather just a shift around the calendar of maybe about a month.

[ArabiaTerra]

What about the post I made a few pages back which shows that ocean heat content is not increasing?

Yes it is.

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Total-Heat-Content.gif

 

Or the question I have been posing for a while; what caused the rise in arctic temps 1915-1940? Can Agw theory answer that?

Weather not climate. Posting data from a couple of isolated weather stations is cherry picking and therefore irrelevant.

 

Or methane hydrates/ unstoppable feedbacks - why are there any methane hydrates left?

Methane hydrates are constantly forming from gas migrating from depth along geological faults and there is evidence that a catastrophic release of methane hyddrates was the main driver of the Permian mass extinction which wiped out 95% of the species on the planet. (The so-called Clathrate Gun Hypothesis)

 

CO2 has been much higher in the past, so why did the world not melt millions of years ago when these out-of-control "tipping points" were reached? Surely if AGW theory is correct , the positive feedbacks would have already caused doom a long time ago and unstoppable warming would have turned the world into a fiery ball? ?

Millions of years ago, the Sun was cooler. And recent research has revealed that during the Ordovician high CO2 period, CO2 wasn't actually that high at all. See here.

 

As far as Shetland goes, the growing season has apparently lengthened by two months since 1960, though I'd like to hear this confirmed by someone working the land here (Have you noticed this, Crofter?).

Thinking about this a bit more. Assuming you are correct. Why is this anything but a GOOD thing?

I've no idea if it's correct or not, which is why I was asking if anyone working the land had noticed this. It was something that Scientist who gave a talk at the Toon Hall last year said. (I can't remember his name at the mo')

 

It would be a good thing, if it's all that happens. But assuming it's true, it is just the beginning and the same warming or more is happening in Greenland and leading to an accelerating reduction in the ice mass. See here.

 

Edit: Ghostriders's posted above saying it hasn't happened and he sounds like he knows what he's talking about so, as I know absolutely nothing about the subject, I'm happy to bow to his superior wisdom on this one.

[crofter]

What about the post I made a few pages back which shows that ocean heat content is not increasing?

Yes it is.

 

No it isn't. Look at an up to date graph.

 

 

Or the question I have been posing for a while; what caused the rise in arctic temps 1915-1940? Can Agw theory answer that?

Weather not climate. Posting data from a couple of isolated weather stations is cherry picking and therefore irrelevant.

 

They are not cherries.

 

Then I found a graph which shows Latitude Range 70 to 90, Longitude Range - 180 to 180 (From the Jones et al. dataset) so I posted that one as well because I thought the entire arctic data set was more meaningful than just Nuuk. So, what caused the warming in the arctic 1915-1940? AGW theory seems a bit deficient when it comes to explaining that? The present warming (or cooling for the past 10 years) is not "unprecedented".

 

Oh, and it was warmer when they used to grow crops at Scatness in prehistoric times....

[trout]

View video clips @ Lovelock: 'We can't save the planet'

 

Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet.

 

The man who achieved global fame for his theory that the whole earth is a single organism now believes that we can only hope that the earth will take care of itself in the face of completely unpredictable climate change.

[Carlos]

Been doing a lot of interviews lately!

Also here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-climate-change

 

and the same interview in more depth here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock

 

 

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."

 

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."