Climate Change & Global Warming

[Guest CyprusPluto]

To take things along a slightly different line, here is a rather one-sided but sensible article:-

 

The Nuclear Option

 

Opinions?

 

It is a very one-sided article, but most are on the subject of how to provide future generations with power. I personally believe nuclear is the way foward.

 

I'm sure some of the money wasted on researchers telling us it's all doom and gloom because of climate change, or don't eat this nor drink that could be used more effectively on researching ways of disposing of the waste of nuclear plants.

[mogling]

Canna mind where I saw this quote, but:

"The one way to guarantee nuclear power, is to build windmills."

 

And where better to build a nuclear power plant than some back-of-beyond wee island with relatively few folk on it

 

 

Quite simple really, they are determined to install this Interconnector so they can import Electricity from one source or another.

When the windmills don't work out for whatever reason/s, the cable is in situ ready

 

 

"... some of the money wasted... could be used more effectively on researching ways of disposing of the waste of nuclear plants."

 

 

But there's already perfectly good ways of disposing of DU safely- you pack it into missiles and fire it off at enemies, and folk you're told you shouldn't like: problem solved

[ArabiaTerra]

And as if we didn't have anything else to worry about:

 

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2301

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/16/reese-halter-wild-weather-the-truth-behind-global-warming/

[ArabiaTerra]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/millions-of-barrels-of-oil-safely-reach-port-in-ma,17875/

 

/sarcasm

[ArabiaTerra]

[ArabiaTerra]

A review of the science so far this year:

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/19/climate-science-nasa-drought-drives-decade-long-decline-in-plant-growth/

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-phytoplankton-global-warming-boris-worm/

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/18/ocean-acidification-study-mass-extinction-of-marine-life-nature-geoscience/

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/25/nature-soils-carbon-dioxided-feedback-global-warming/

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/04/science-nsf-tundra-permafrost-methane-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-venting/

 

There is no good news.

 

Edit: Oh, and just to put this into perspective, this is what's happening after 0.8 degrees C of warming. There is another 1 degree in the pipeline. The carbon which will cause this is already in the atmosphere.

[ArabiaTerra]

Arctic ice volume heads for a record low, and the Northwest and Northeast passages are open.

 

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/28/arctic-sea-ice-volume-northwest-passage-david-barber-antarctic-sea-ice/

 

This year marks the third consecutive year–and the third time in recorded history–that both the Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage have melted free... The great polar explorers of past centuries would be astounded at how the Arctic has changed in the 21st century.

[Vicky]

The climate has been changing constantly since there was a climate.

 

The real question is, is it anthropic global warming?

And is there anything we can do about it?

[mogling]

<>

 

Yup. Exactly.

 

<

 

Well, depends on who you choose to listen to and believe as Truth...

 

Example: "Everyone knows that Crane Flies eat Mosquitos."

... erm, no, they don't actually, it's a misconception, and just because 300 Million+ people believe that, doesn't make it any nearer The Truth...

 

The natural cycles of the Sun - solar flares / sunspots affect the climate on Planet earth, so there will be natural periods of warming and cooling.

 

All this hot air about 'Carbon' / renewables etc etc etc ... somebody's surely making a good profit somewhere?{Meanwhile, the heat is nicely diverted away from industrial pollution, poisoning of our rivers, lakes, oceans, destruction of rainforests, decimation of species and the general raping of natural resources for a quick Buck.}

 

<

 

Our ancestors realised the importance and power of The Sun for survival, agriculture etc. and all 'Religions' can basically be traced back to Babylonian Sun Worship, so, maybe more of us should get out there and light bonfires at Midsummer, Yule etc. to appease the Sun God?

 

{Well, Shetlanders already have a bit of a headstart with all the Up Helly Aas }

[mogling]

"Meltdown of the climate 'consensus"

 

Interesting article in the New York Post today:

 

 

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/meltdown_of_the_climate_consensus_G0kWdclUvwhVr6DYH6A4uJ

 

 

{I have a Zippo to help light outdoor bonfires

[Gorgonzola Butt-cheese]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsAPmDoCA70

[DamnSaxon]

^^^

UKIP are not as barking mad as the media like to portray them - note that recent survey showing that about half of the UK (including myself) want out of Europe (= UKIP policy).

 

Back on climate, though, check out the GWPF report on the Climategate "inquiries" here. As anyone with experience of official "inquiries" would expect, the word "whitewash" sums it all up nicely.

 

Oh, and if you really, truly admire Al Gore and Rachel Carson, don't read this!

[Gorgonzola Butt-cheese]

This is a long one, but very well written

 

 

The climatology field has not yet developed to the point where it can make reliable predictions about future climate change with enough warning to allow time for useful proactive adaptations. It is therefore ludicrous to give credence to alarmist predictions over the next century.

 

Around the 17th century we had a cold spell (the Little Ice Age - LIA) when the Thames and other bodies of water froze in cold Winters, allowing ice fairs to be held on them. Such ice fairs have not been possible since the early 19th century. Therefore it is indisputable that there has been a period of warming over the last couple of centuries as we recovered from that cold spell. It is alarmist shroud waving over the cause of the warming that has caused such a panic.

 

There appears to be a longish cycle of the solar magnetic field that has just peaked. It oscillated through the warmer bronze age, a cooler iron age, the warmer Roman empire, when the Romans brought vineyards to England, the Dark Ages, the Mediaeval Warm Period when there were vineyards in England during Chaucer's time, the Little Ice Age as mentioned above, and now our little warm spurt which according to satellite data has, temporarily at least, ceased.

 

The IPCC computer models did not predict the cessation of the warming trend, which illustrates that something is driving the climate that the models do not know about. In addition, we are once more starting to hear predictions of cooling and maybe a repeat of the Little Ice Age. Deja vous anyone?

 

Computer models do not produce evidence - they only produce whatever their programmers want them to produce, in what is therefore a circular argument. So far the models have only proved that the computers are working, and that the output outside of their training data sets has been wrong every time, so far.

 

Furthermore, there is no evidence, despite every effort to finesse it, of an increased greenhouse effect in the atmosphere (hot spots in the troposphere) that was predicted by the computer models. However, we don't hear much about that from the warming industry.

 

Meanwhile the case for the AGW hypothesis remains an argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy where it is claimed it must be true because they (the warming industry) allegedly can't think of anything else. This is equivalent to blaming witches for crop failures in the middle ages.

 

Unfounded fear of man-made global warming, rather than the climate change itself, is the problem.

 

It had been common knowledge for a couple of years before Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' came out that over geological time periods the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere lagged behind temperature changes, typically by 800 years, so was driven by temperature rather than causing it. His graph was therefore a falsehood. CO2 has never driven climate change, or the Earth would not have cooled as it has after every past warming episode - runaway warming would have occurred instead, a long time ago.

 

Temperature and other data do not say anything about their causes. In addition correlation is not the same as causation, so neither settle anything either way

 

CO2 is already absorbing almost all of the energy that there is to be had in the relevant bands. Moreover, it does so fairly close to the Earth's surface. The effect is logarithmic so increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now only has a slight effect. In addition, CO2 and the other trace gases are pretty unimportant as greenhouse gases go. The warming industry has been concentrating on the wrong atmospheric processes. Water vapour and the atmospheric processes associated with it, especially negative feedback from the cooling effect of low level clouds, seem to be a more fruitful line of research.

 

Svensmark, a Danish physicist, has found empirical evidence in support of his hypothesis that a weaker solar magnetic field allows more high energy cosmic particles to reach the lower atmosphere, where they enhance the conditions for low level cloud formation, leading to cooling, and vice versa. This has been covered in the book 'The Chilling Stars' by Svensmark and Calder.

 

Any calculation of greenhouse warming based on CO2 alone does not come up with an alarming figure. Hence the assumption of positive forcing from water vapour, which is the only thing producing a 'doomsday' scenario. There is no empirical evidence to justify such an assumption.

 

Furthermore, there is no correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration over geological time-scales that supports the contention that CO2 drives climate change. Even if there was, it would not be the same as causation.

 

In addition, the homogenisation of the surface temperature data was not peer reviewed and there are allegations of the adjustment of data to fit theories rather than the other way round. This is part of Dr Bellamy's, "Fiddling while the Earth doesn't burn." The best example was the hockey stick, which was one of the most spectacular scientific blunders of all time.

 

There appears to be a roughly 60 year oscillation superimposed on the upward trend in the homogenised surface temperature data, which is explained by the Pacific and Atlantic decadal oscillations. On the last down-swing that ended in the mid 1970s (while CO2 levels continued to rise) we heard portents of doom about an impending ice age. The last upswing that ended over 10 years ago according to satellite readings triggered the current scare about global warming. One thing that stands out is that there is no anthropogenic warming signature in the temperature oscillations since the end of the LIA.

 

Without real (empirical) evidence of more than an insignificant amount of AGW due to CO2 the warming industry remains dead in the water.

 

Unheralded in the MSM, solar observers predicted a reduction in the sun's magnetic field about now, which has come to pass as evinced by a paucity of sunspots. In the past the phenomenon has coincided with cooling periods, including the Little Ice Age, as per Svensmark's hypothesis. We could therefore be looking at some real cooling during the next few decades.

 

In addition, the very low sunspot level might be the start of another Maunder Minimum, and a precursor to a repeat of the LIA. There also appear to be additional longer cycles which are linked to ice ages and warm periods.

 

Incidentally, there may be evidence that the iron age started because a temperature downturn disrupted the flow of tin to the Middle East, forcing metalworkers in Cyprus in particular to seek alternatives to bronze.

 

The agrarian and industrial revolutions occurred in Britain while the world recovered from the LIA. The industrial revolution was predicated on two things in particular. The first was an increase in access to energy from burning fossil fuels instead of wood and charcoal, and the second was the development and application of scientific and technical knowledge to harness and make use of energy, where steam power in particular was the major enabler, along with technical ingenuity that led to power weaving looms, blast furnaces, and today's computers, for example. One direct outcome is our ability to support a large increase in the world-wide human population, an increase that is directly dependent for its existence on our increased energy consumption and our artful application of it.

 

Some people are determined to ignore the bigger picture and to link the slight global warming since the 19th century to the industrial revolution, extrapolating a doomsday climate scenario despite a total lack of real evidence that one begot the other in any significant way. In particular they tend to focus on the years since about 1975 and to ignore all else, primarily because it doesn't fit their theory. They have built an entire industry on the hypothesis. However, they cannot find empirical evidence to support their increasingly threadbare theoretical conjecture.

 

A false perception was created in our society that there was a defined, legitimate job to do, based on sound science. In fact the carbon dioxide global warming concept had become fixed in people’s minds as a result of relentless propaganda generated by those with a great variety of pre-existing agendas - some legitimate, some less so, for example: energy efficiency, reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil, dissatisfaction with industrial society (neo-pasteralism), international competition, governmental desires for enhanced revenues (carbon taxes), and bureaucratic desires for enhanced power.

 

The whole western lifestyle is predicated on burning fuel to produce a lot of energy. Take that energy away and our lifestyle would collapse. Without electricity, for example, everything stops - literally. By claiming that we could be destroying the world by pumping combustion products from burning fossil fuels into the air, anti-west movements can attack us at the roots.

 

Various groups that would not normally give each other the time of day banded together in an unprecedented manner behind the CO2 flag, some good, some bad, some, like HRH Prince Charles, well-meaning but mistaken, but all with their own agendas. This has generated political implications.

 

Once politicians were involved, especially from the left, money followed in huge quantities. This created a 'positive forcing' and blew the whole structure out of all proportion. A lot of people now depend on the AGW industry for their living, creating a vast vested interest. Worse, the EU has bought into the illusion, which is dangerous since it is not subject to democratic control. There are also a lot of ex-communist apparatchiks seeking new ways to power since the USSR collapsed, and who see democracy as a problem, not a solution.

 

Unfortunately, after a huge campaign over decades, including in the education system, by many organisations with many different agendas (mostly anti-west or anti-industrialisation) there are a large number of brainwashed voters out there who erroneously believe that mankind has some control over these natural climatic changes, and where the voters go, the politicians follow, and they are not all benign beings under democratic control.

 

It now appears that the cover was recently blown on a covert 'Moriarity' organisation intent on imposing a non-democratic New World Government on the West initially through carbon rationing. It was hidden the the text of the draft Copenhagen treaty document. Similar intentions were revealed in the document published with a restricted circulation for the recent Bali conference. Such a mindset would suit ex soviet bloc apparatchiks intent on punishing us for the collapse of their beloved Soviet Union, and, of course, it was attractive to Bottler Brown and his kind.

 

Reducing energy consumption willy nilly in the short term appears to mean that the size of the world-wide human population that we can support must also reduce. An analogy would be forcing agriculture back to wooden ploughs, thus reducing the food supply, and therefore the number of people that can be fed. If so, then those who talk about short-term carbon saving measures (ie reducing overall energy consumption) are also talking about sentencing people and their children to death in their millions or perhaps even billions, while dismantling western civilisation and wasting trillions of money, all for a negligible impact on the climate. Without real evidence of significant AGW, and since the climate appears to be about to cool anyway, if enacted this could eventually land our beloved leaders into the dock at somewhere like the Hague.

 

As a final note, if the UK stopped CO2 production tomorrow, then China's increasing CO2 production would cancel out the sacrifice within a year. We would have destroyed our country for nothing. Other countries are laughing at the west and its AGW illusions all the way to the bank.

 

Reality is dawning in the corridors of power, and in academia. Face and reputation saving exits are being sought, and taken. We are seeing the beginning of a paradigm shift away from the IPCC alarmism, and towards an approach of adaptation to climate change (if any) rather than the hubris that we can control it.

 

However, politically it is too soon just to to dump the Zeitgeist of CAGW due to CO2 . That will have to be fed in gently as perceptions gradually change in the electorate as it dawns on them that writing computer programs to produce alarmist output does not affect the climate. So meanwhile we can pretend to blame the Chinese for warming, floods and all the rest of the alarmist stuff, while slowly withdrawing from the nutty renewable energy sources ideas, especially as the odds are that we heading for a cooling phase.

[crofter-amy]

^^A lot to take in there GBc.

[Spinner72]

I've remained silent on this thread for a while now as the "believers" tend to be as relentless as Romero zombies so debate (back when there was one) was pointless at best.

 

However, Gorgonzola's post deserves a round of applause. An excellent overview of the topic.

 

Unfortunately, the man made climate change industry/religion has such a foothold now that no amount of common sense and understanding will make it go away.