Climate Change & Global Warming

[ArabiaTerra]

The data is not lost. It is still available from the weatherstations which collected it.

 

Popular technology is an american right wing propaganda site. It is not in any way independent or unbiased, in fact quite the opposite.

 

Any other denier lies you'd like to discuss?

[Claudias]

^ ^ ^

 

Which is the finest ten or twenty denier? I think that they are all fine.

[DamnSaxon]

I was amazed to discover that the denier number is the weight of nine kilometres of the thread. It's not only a surprising distance, but ... why nine?

[Skunnered]

What precisely are the so-called "deniers" accused of denying?

[ArabiaTerra]

^^^^ AGW

[Skunnered]

^^^So how can the IPCC claim that they have a consensus on AWG when many of those who challenge their hypothesis and statistics are scientists or statisticians? Surely to have a consensus they would need the agreement of all of the scientists, which they clearly don't have.

[DamnSaxon]

Oops, nearly forgot.

 

The data is not lost. It is still available from the weatherstations which collected it.

 

Yes, we may hope, scattered all over the globe. So will you join me in the opinion that all the corrupted data at CRU (etc) with those unspecified "adjustments" (of which they seem to have no record - not very scientific) should be destroyed, and a fresh database of actual data should be compiled and used - and kept easily verifiable - in future?

 

Any other denier lies you'd like to discuss?

 

It's not the "denier lies" that are the problem, it's the "catastrophist lies" - starting with all that corrupted, sorry, "adjusted" data, working through some curious claims about science (not least the apparent attempt by the UN to redefine Boltzmann's constant to fit their claims some years ago, but there are a good few other parts of the story which make me blink) to a suitably scary conclusion.

 

Looking at the realclimate site tells me it's shouty. Doing the whois myself and then searching on the name tells me it's a media spin operation, not a scientific one. The Popular Technology site may be an American right-wing propaganda site (I agree that there is some quite weird stuff around the rest of the site), but that does not ipso facto mean that every word they post is a lie (as I said, I did look around to investigate their claim), nor that realclimate is independent or unbiased.

 

And, climatically speaking, I'm still much more worried about the Sun than any minor variation in the level of a trace gas in the atmosphere. It's in a very quiet and rather odd state at the mo, and quite possibly heading towards another spot-free (and noticeably cooler on Earth?) period. That's where 99+ percent of all climatic variations, and 100% of the terrestrial energy input, come from, and there's nothing at all we can do to change it. And if it ain't providing as much energy in, we're not going to see much in the way of warming - rather, the opposite.

[Carlos]

And, climatically speaking, I'm still much more worried about the Sun than any minor variation in the level of a trace gas in the atmosphere. It's in a very quiet and rather odd state at the mo, and quite possibly heading towards another spot-free (and noticeably cooler on Earth?) period.

Some interesting reading in this Wikipedia entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

[Skunnered]

^^^Are the sunspots on the up again?

http://spaceweather.com/swpod2009/30dec09/plot.jpg?PHPSESSID=16265tspmqunvjbl9ueb2apa64

http://spaceweather.com/

[ArabiaTerra]

^^^So how can the IPCC claim that they have a consensus on AWG when many of those who challenge their hypothesis and statistics are scientists or statisticians? Surely to have a consensus they would need the agreement of all of the scientists, which they clearly don't have.

The thing is, just because someone with a scientific qualification raises an objection about some aspect of AGW doesn't give that objection any weight. For that to happen it has to be published in the peer-reviewed literature. It will then be examined and other scientists will take it and attempt to falsify it (basically test it to see if it's true). This is exactly the same process which any paper supporting AGW theory has to go through.

 

One particular alternative theory (and this is also in answer to DamnSaxons post above) is the theory that the Sun is responsible for the observed warming. This was proposed, papers were published and it was examined. It was found that, at most, the Sun is responsible for only 10% of the observed warming since the beginning of the 20th C. Furthermore it was found that most of the Suns influence occurred in the first half of the 20th C and for the last thirty years or so the Sun has actually been cooling overall.

 

A couple of further points about Solar activity. The difference in Solar output between a Solar Maximum (Sunspots) and Minimum (no Sunspots) is about 0.1w/m2 1w/m2 out of a total Solar heating effect of 1000w/m2 at noon on the equator on a clear day. Also, since the beginning of the Satellite age, we have been able to monitor the amount of Solar energy reaching the Earth very precisely, and if it was changing by the amount needed to explain the present warming, we would very definitely know about it.

 

On the other hand, we also have satellites measuring the amount of heat being radiated back from the Earth at night, and this is changing, and more particularly, it is reducing in exactly the wavelengths absorbed by CO2 and by exactly the amount required to explain the current warming trend. This measurement confirms the theory that the current warming is being caused by the increase in CO2 which has been happening since the beginning of the Industrial age.

 

This satellite evidence, while it only extends back to the early 60's, is completely independent of the surface temperature record which DamnSaxon is having so much trouble trusting, and is, for me, independent proof of AGW.

 

To sum up.

 

The amount of energy being radiated back from the Earth is falling.

 

The wavelength of the energy being absorbed matches the wavelength which CO2 absorbs.

 

The rate of fall corresponds to the rate of rise of the CO2.

 

Oh, and we know the increase in CO2 is due to the burning of fossil fuels because the change in isotope ratios measured in the carbon in the atmospheric CO2 (C12:C14) matches what would be expected if the extra CO2 came from that source.

 

Does that help?

 

Edit: Woops! Got my Solar variation figure wrong by about a factor of 10. It's 1w/m2, not 0.1w/m2.

[Greenfingers]

Any of you catch that shameless piece of propaganda which was featured on the BBC news yesterday trying to convince us that the Big Freeze which the country is going through just now fits in with Global warming.

If you missed it here it is:-

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8447262.stm

 

The presenter tries to convince us that the weather and the climate are different. For the climate(he says) we have to look over a 30 year time span.

Yea right........I did and what do I find. 30 years ago, scientists tried to convince us that we were entering a New Ice Age. Maybe now that we have had 20 years of the Global Warming scare,scam,myth (call it what you like) we will slowly revert back to a New Ice Age scare,scam,myth (call it what you like).

But the best bit ( or maybe the worst bit ) is where they show a 3D animation of the world with the top bit ( northern hemisphere) in lovely shades of blue and the bottom bit (southern hemisphere) in vibrant reds and orange, and the presenter explains that the blue bits in the north are cold but in the south and east there are hot bits. What he does not say is that it is blue in the north because we are having our winter and red /orange in the south because it is their summer. What they are obviously banking on is that many viewers will not engage their brains and grasp this simple fact. They are hoping that most viewers will see all the red/orange and think yes it must be true (Global warming that is).

 

Don't accept everything that you are told. Ask questions. You will be surprised where it takes you.

[Malachy]

What he does not say is that it is blue in the north because we are having our winter and red /orange in the south because it is their summer. What they are obviously banking on is that many viewers will not engage their brains and grasp this simple fact.

 

Perhaps I was looking at a different graphic, but the red area they highlighted as being unusual was over Italy and Greece. Are you saying that it's summer in the Mediteranean now? I'm not sure I believe you.

[Snaz]

I think you should have another look Greenfingers. It should be winter all over Europe.

[ArabiaTerra]

What he does not say is that it is blue in the north because we are having our winter and red /orange in the south because it is their summer. What they are obviously banking on is that many viewers will not engage their brains and grasp this simple fact.

 

Perhaps I was looking at a different graphic, but the red area they highlighted as being unusual was over Italy and Greece. Are you saying that it's summer in the Mediteranean now? I'm not sure I believe you.

Also, Greenfingers, the colours represented the difference from the seasonal norm. In other words, the seasonal variation had already been taken into account.

 

The moral here: Learn to read a graph before spouting off about it.

[bug]

... and if your colourblind it all looks pretty much like as business as usual