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Topic: The Flipping Point (Read 94975 times) |
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Fritz
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #195 on: 2009-02-26 18:05:18 » |
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Quote:| [Hermit]I don't care if anthropogenic influence is "an hypothesis" or not any more than I care whether evolution - or Ohms law are "hypothesis" (they are). |
Thanks for reframing that article, my little voice suspected as much, and once again (after I looked up 'anthropogenic ') you cut through 'it' and saved me.
Cheers
Fritz
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #196 on: 2009-03-08 14:43:02 » |
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Scientific Controversy? What Scientific Controversy?
Most-Cited Authors on Climate Science
The 'Why'
I've been studying climatology and the science behind global warming in my spare time for several years now. Through my studies, I've come to recognize the names of the top authors and research institutes. Through following this issue online and in the media, I've also grown all too familiar with the tiny minority of 'climate skeptics' or 'deniers' who try to minimize the problem, absolve humans of any major impact, or suggest there is no need to take any action.
I've gotten pretty fed up with the undue weight given to the skeptics in the media and online. Many media reports aimed for a false 'balance' by interviewing one mainstream scientist followed by one 'skeptic.' On the web, it's even crazier, with numerous sites promoting "climate denial" by collecting names of skeptics, "quote-mining" for skeptical or ambiguous statements, and producing dodgy climate-denial 'petitions' claiming numerous "scientists" as signatories. Most of these skeptics/deniers/petition signers have little to no academic credentials in this specific field, although a handful stand out as widely published in this or a somewhat related field.
And from
Most-Cited Authors on Climate Science
Also included for comparison are some of the most widely cited climate 'skeptics' based on their explicit endorsement of any of five public declarations or open letters that argue against the need for immediate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. See below for notes on these. I distinguish between statements that individuals were able to endorse on their own initiative, as opposed to appearing in a list maintained by someone else who claims those listed are skeptics or have made statements the list keeper interprets as challenging (refuting?) the IPCC/mainstream/consensus. I've begun adding notations of who is listed on Marc Morano's list, but I haven't had time to process the over 600 names he puts forward.
While the IPCC Assessment Reports themselves obviously constitute strong calls to action, there is a recurring suggestion that the reports hide some underlying division or groundswell of dissent. Those claims are not borne out by the results I present below. I've highlighted separately the names who signed any of six 'activist' declarations apart from the IPCC reports themselves.
Observe that:- none of the 619 contributing authors to AR4 wg1 have signed any of the five public declarations of 'skepticism;'
- 157 of the 619 have signed one of the four 'activist' statements I've identified;
- just one of the 619, Dr. Christopher Landsea, has resigned over differences on the treatment of hurricane risks;
- of the sixteen people interviewed in Martin Durkin's climate skeptic film The Great Global Warming Swindle only John Christy was on AR4 wg1 (and there are real problems with how Durkin interpreted and presented the views of those interviewed.)
- of the top 500 most cited authors in the larger list, just 18 (3.6%) have signed any climate skeptic declaration, while 184 (37%) -- nearly ten times as many -- have signed an 'activist' statement (aside from the IPCC reports themselves.) [Note: these stats may vary slightly as I update the list with new names and stats.]
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Fritz
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #197 on: 2009-03-08 15:16:32 » |
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F'in Brilliant little piece, Thx Hermit.
I will be a insufferable at the water cooler tomorrow. 
"Why" indeed !
Cheers
Fritz
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #198 on: 2009-03-18 13:51:09 » |
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Gwynne Dyer has long been a favorite of mine, not the least of which is his ability to redefine sarcastic and dry wit, in the face of absurd stupidity and still call it. He seems to get his message by the FOXonion type sensors.
Cheers
Fritz
Laughing at the apocalypse with the dire Dr. Dyer
Source: CBC
Author: Richard Handler CBC News
Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | 4:21 PM ET
If you have to hear bad news, there's no better way to be told than from the mouth of Gwynne Dyer. If anybody could announce the apocalypse with the appropriate mix of concern and curiosity, I'd vote for the dire Dr. Dyer, journalist and historian.
Hindus bathe in the Ganges during a holy day in January 2009. Will it be the source of a climate war if its headwaters dry up? (Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press)
In fact, this is almost what he does with his silky baritone and customary irony on a three-part series on Ideas called Climate Wars. (He's also written a book with that title.)
Over the years, Dyer has been a regular fixture on the CBC. Born in Newfoundland, though you can't tell by his accent, he's a foreign affairs and military analyst based in London, England.
Hindus bathe in the Ganges during a holy day in January 2009. Will it be the source of a climate war if its headwaters dry up? (Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press)Hindus bathe in the Ganges during a holy day in January 2009. Will it be the source of a climate war if its headwaters dry up? (Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press)
No doubt you've seen him on TV with his trademark goatee and weathered green, leather jacket. (I understand he's on his second one.) He's served in three navies, the U.S., British and Canadian. The jacket is his civilian uniform.
Now, if you're like many CBC listeners, you've probably heard your fair share of climate-change stories. Global warming has been everybody's favourite subject for a while now though lately it's been overtaken by the melting economy.
But Gwynne Dyer, with his mildly gleeful tone and curt, weathered irony, is the perfect person to tell us how we're heading for a real global disaster. His tone is avuncular so the message goes down smoothly.
'Positive feedback'
What's scary in this scenario isn't just the fact that the icecaps will melt, or the temperature will rise, or that some places will be soaked while others are turned into deserts. The really scary thing has a bland, scientific name: "positive feedback."
Positive feedback is, in effect, nature's tipping point. That's when one or several small events will trigger a cascade of bigger events, each more disastrous.
Right now, we think we're in at least partial control. We think we may be able to prevent global warming by curtailing greenhouse gases. But once positive feedback takes over, we become passengers on Mother Nature's roller coaster.
Dyer himself tells us that he really only started worrying about climate change when the Pentagon and other military planners began to worry.
During the George W. Bush administration, which never took global warming seriously, the generals had to hide their growing obsession with climate. So they began to farm out their work to institutes and then translated the findings into what they love to do: create war games.
Here's an example: by 2040, the glaciers at the headwaters of the Ganges, on the Indian subcontinent, will melt. There will be floods, then drought. Millions of people will be endangered. India and Pakistan share these waters. Both have nuclear weapons. A nuclear war may be triggered over who controls the remaining water.
Want more?
That's just one scenario. Another would see half of China turn into desert, sparking a war with Russia over a now temperate, grain-producing Siberia.
Then there is the prospect that Bangladesh will sink like the fabled Atlantis, drowning millions.
If nature takes a different twist, the European Union could break up. Northern Europe will wall itself off from super-heated Italy and the Mediterranean. Italy and Spain will demand food, threatening the north with sophisticated weapons.
Meanwhile, boatloads of Africans will pile into southern Europe, as they are doing now, only the trickle will become a human flood.
On this side of the Atlantic, Dyer thinks America will build a bristling wall between itself and Mexico. Equipped by electronic sensors and "shoot anything that moves" machine guns, Mexicans fleeing their starving country would be gunned down on the Texas border. U.S. Hispanics will rise up in anger and civil strife will break out in the larger centres.
Should that happen, it is not a big step to seeing an imperiled America making new demands on a once friendly Canada. Do you think we can stand up to a frightened superpower?
A debt to be paid
Aren't war games fun? You can become almost giddy hearing about them from the faintly cheery Dyer.
When will all this happen? That's the problem with scenario-mongering and trying to outguess a clever Mother Nature. Ten years? Twenty? According to Dyer, the smart money is on 2040.
If you were born in 1980, you'd be 60 and could well have grandchildren. What a legacy to leave them!
If you think we're borrowing now to fend off financial calamity, which your kids will have to pay for with their increased taxes, imagine their reaction when Mother Nature starts demanding eco payback.
Meet Father Greed
For this to happen, all it takes is a rise in global temperatures of a little more than two degrees Celsius, which is quite within the realm of possibilities. But really, who knows what number will set off the global apocalypse?
At the tipping point — the positive feedback marker — the sea ice will melt and wildfires will sweep the Amazon rainforest as well as Canada's arboreal forest, already weakened by the northward lurching pine beetle. The Arctic permafrost will also melt, in the process releasing methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The fact my RRSP tanked in 2008 seems like a benign news story now.
But these two events are actually linked. Overconsumption and a wasteful, fossil fuel-driven economy have created the conditions for this mess.
In the words of the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, this is what happens when Mother Nature meets Father Greed. Journalists can be mighty clever when opining about disaster.
This is good news?
But back to Dyer. A man who speaks this convincingly must leave us with some good news, right?
One area Dyer explores is "geo-engineering," technical fixes, like putting sulfur into the atmosphere to block sunlight or blanketing the sky with sun shields to reflect the sun's heat away from Earth.
These are measures that are highly controversial. But Dyer doesn't believe that today's policy makers will meet their own deadlines for fossil fuel reduction. And even if we do, we may trip over nature's tipping point, anyway.
So you come away after listening to Dyer thinking that he believes we will eventually have to try for some pretty large-scale techno fixes.
And it is in groping toward these large-scale fixes that hope may lie. Or, as Dyer sees it, that nations will come to see climate catastrophe as if it were an outside invader, then band together to fix the planet.
That's the sci-fi scenario and it's oddly comforting. A new empowered planet to rewrite the rules on how nations live with each other.
There is a wild card in this, of course, which Dyer is only too happy to point out: a planet under stress will create hordes of disturbed individuals, some of whom will have the technological wherewithal to create a round of terrorism that dwarfs anything we've seen.
"We didn't want to end on an up note!" joshes Dyer, at the end of the three-hour series. Dyer may be the only person I know who can get away with laughing at the apocalypse
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #199 on: 2009-03-18 16:42:38 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-02-26 00:37:42
Things around the world are changing and are changing at unexpectedly rapid rates. If the cause is not anthromorphic, it is inexplicable as there are no hypotheses to deal with them, |
In stages:
"Things around the world are changing ..."
Indeed, and so they should, it would be in keeping with what to expect. I expect the climate to change (perhaps you did not?), but what I did not expect was that for every single observation and measurement of change to be labelled as the result of man being a bad animal.
"... and are changing at unexpectedly rapid rates"
'Unexpected' to whom, a computer model?
Perhaps you meant 'unprecedented'? Yes, CO2 has been rising at an unprecedented rate, unfortunately, temperature is not playing ball.
"If the cause is not anthromorphic, it is inexplicable as there are no hypotheses to deal with them"
What was the hypothesis that "dealt with them" before there was man and his CO2? Why is that hypothesis no longer valid, after all, it has been hotter and colder before than it is now ... ?
If the science is indeed "settled" this last question should be a cinch and a deal maker ....
I await in anticipation.
-iolo.
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #200 on: 2009-03-18 17:05:53 » |
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All scientific disciplines - not only climate science - are subject to fraud. Some frauds are well-known (e.g. the Piltdown Man), but it is likely that many scientific frauds go undetected or unreported. And even significant but fraudulent scientific 'findings' can survive for many years before being exposed (e.g. the Piltdown Man).
Now another case that demonstrates how peer review is not a defence against scientific fraud has come to light. Next time some AGW zealot says something must be right because it was peer reviewed and published in a "respected journal" by a respected scientist with several previous publications then shout "Reuben" ... or, shout "Wang" ...
All information should be assessed on its merits and not by who provided it, where they published it, and/or whether or not "peers" and/or others approved it. AGW-advocates always use 'argument from authority' because that is all they have, unless you count pointing at a change (and any change will do) in the climate and leaping to conclusions.
-iolo ... who finds it amusing how anything can be said with a straight face about the IPCC methodology.
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #201 on: 2009-03-18 17:09:06 » |
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Hey, is anyone interested in seeing a calving glacier?
I know, it is not as life threateningly dramatic and newspaper selling as a melting one, but ....
No, didn't think so ... 
-iolo
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Hermit
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #202 on: 2009-03-18 19:01:31 » |
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Iolo, I still grant you full marks for persistence. Less for anything else. I don't plan to rehash these discussions, I'm too busy, I'm simply providing a starting point to others who might see your latest assertions and consider a lack of a reply as meaningful.
You have been down the solar path before, but not very successfully. Remember that as you increase radiation to a black body, which the Earth would approximate if it didn't have an atmosphere containing greenhouse gasses, the radiation from the black body will increase in accordance with Kirchoff and Stefan–Boltzmann's laws and the temperature wouldn't vary much at all. Given that we do understand these laws, and can measure radiation in and out as well as model the effects of the gasses, this is an area based on thoroughly comprehended science. If I remember correctly, I established that solar output variation accounts for under 14% of the observed temperature changes.
Some of the evidence you have not successfully addressed include:- the false claims the climate change denialists have made about glaciers. The reality is that according to gravimetric surveys, glaciers around the world are vanishing. This correlates well with photographic evidence.
- the evidence on accelerated Antarctic warming and break-up as well as the Arctic.
- borehole temperature research showing rising temperatures towards the surface and annually shallower freeze zones.
- record droughts around the world from Alaska to Australia, from South America to China.
- earlier springs, latter falls, more insects surviving through winter.
- soaring Methane and Carbon Dioxide levels. Given that both are greenhouse gases, the only way they could not affect the weather is if the greenhouse effect, which is, let me remind you a well validated physics derived theory, is retracted.
- more extreme weather patterns. The fact is that the last decade has seen more temperature records set than any of the previous century.
The massive preponderance of evidence explains why the vast majority of in-field experts consider climate change denial to be the equivalent of the young-flat earthers and no longer even attempt to debate it any more than a geologist would debate an Earth formation earlier than about 4.3 billion years before present, a cosmologist a tray shaped planet, or a biologist debate about creationism. It wastes energy and grants a spurious credibility that there might be something worthy of debate to what is clearly a lunatic fringe.
Given that the "anthropogenic global warming" crowd are the only people who predicted all the above, I am with them on much of what they say even while I acknowledge that the models are far from perfect and our knowledge far from complete. Given that the denialists now appear to be at the point where they are attacking observation, normalization and personalities rather than theories, with all the fervidity of outraged religious sects, and appear to have predicted nothing, somebody as logical as yourself (in most areas) should be reevaluating your position.
Kindest Regards
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #203 on: 2009-03-19 04:08:11 » |
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[Blunderov] This piece encapsulates, I think, the gist of Iolo's argument. (Iolo will correct me if I'm wrong I'm sure.)
thejakartapost.com/news/2009/03/03/climate
Thursday, March 19, 2009 2:38
Climate change superstitions put human well being at risk
Christopher Lingle , Ubud , Bali | Tue, 03/03/2009 1:47 PM
For evidence of bureaucratic inertia, look no further than the recently concluded UN climate conference in Poznan . Like a meeting on Bali last year and another meeting in Copenhagen next December, the aim is to go beyond the Kyoto Protocol to try to halt global warming. This is serious stuff since implementing the Kyoto Protocol could cost to $180 billion annually.
These meetings and Kyoto reflect an underlying premise promoted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). For its part, the IPCC lives and dies by the hypothesis that human contributions to greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate change.
Manmade global warming has become what scientists call an "ex cathedra" doctrine that, like a superstition. Challenging such positions puts reputations or financial support at risk.
While the authority of the IPCC report comes from its scientific aspects, its policy conclusions are less reliable. This is because the "Summary for Policymakers", the most commonly-cited aspect of the report, presents a consensus of government representatives and not scientists. In the end, it supports granting more power and revenues to governments, a view welcomed by eager plutocrats and spendthrift politicians.
But widespread public acceptance and a dogmatic belief structure has lulled alarmists and government officials into denial concerning climate. For example, data from the Global Carbon Project show that the global growth rate of carbon emissions was 3.2 percent in the five years to 2005 compared with 0.8 percent from 1990 to 1999. And it is likely that high average global economic growth rates after that period pushed that trend up.
Even though greenhouse gas emissions increased four times as fast as in the 1990s, average global temperatures moderated or fell from the beginning of this Millennium. And so, despite higher atmospheric CO2 levels, average global temperatures stopped rising in 1998 and the planetary average in 2008 was the lowest for a decade.
Indeed, some scientists find evidence of a cooling episode, possibly a mini-ice age. As it is, there have been many, very long climate cycles with globally cooling the most recurrent and most dangerous problem.
The fact is that IPCC models do not comport with reality. But this should not be surprising since in striving for simplicity to set policy objectives, the IPCC overlooked its own admonition. In its own wording, climate is "a complex, non-linear, chaotic object" whereby predictions about long-term evolution are highly unreliable.
With so much of gloom expressed about the future environmental conditions based upon computer modeling, it worthwhile to ponder what such models involve. First, scientific inferences behind the construction of any model, whether of an economy or the climate, reflect inclinations and biases of the person constructing the model.
Second, they inevitably leave out imponderables that simply cannot be modeled, like unpredictable acts of nature. For example, volcanic eruptions or a flurry of sunspot activity can impact more on mankind immediately than mankind can have on the environment over many decades.
For its part, the insistence of the IPCC to focus blame for climate change on human actions that affect CO2 levels weakens the motivation to find natural explanations.
As it is, IPCC models do not consider the impact of variability in solar activity on climate sensitivity. Nor do they consider aerosol effects or how reported solar dimming and brightening of the sun over the past 30 years impact upon absorption and reflection.
Being wedded to the notion that human contributions to greenhouse gases primarily cause climate change may lead to costly policies that may be unnecessary or ineffective. Indeed, current economic problems may be worsened by costly eco-inspired burdens being imposed on industries.
All the talk about "balanced" ecosystems or "environmental tipping points" implies that current or recent conditions are optimal or preferred arrangements for the earth. Consider the complaint that global warming will lead to higher sea levels and shrinking coastlines. But sea levels have risen or fallen at varying rates since the end of the last ice age recorded more than 10,000 years ago.
Claims have been made that global warming could lead to a meltdown of Greenland's glaciers leading to a calamitous rise in the sea level by 2100. But these warnings were an extrapolation of data from a few years used to depict a trend assumed to continue for a century into the future. In the end, images of accelerated glacier calving so that the Maldives and Bangladesh are submerged were based on temporary phenomena unlikely to persist.
As it is, attempts to alter human behavior to avert climate change reflect a primitive mindset whereby a vast, misunderstood force is appeased through contrition or sacrifices. But it also ignores the simple fact that global climate has always and will always change independent of what humans do.
In all events, a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science removed any sense of urgency to take action to reduce greenhouse gases.
Indeed, it suggests that whatever curtailments of CO2 we undertake now will have almost no impact on future warming.
The lead author in the study, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that even if CO2 emissions ended, released heat from oceans will keep temperatures "almost constant" for nearly 1,000 years. Since reducing global CO2 levels cannot alter the climate change already triggered, it does not matter if we curtail greenhouse gases now or later or at all.
The writer is Research Scholar at the Centre for Civil Society in New Delhi and Visiting Professor of Economics at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala.
*[Bl.] This seems to be at the heart of the climate skeptics argument and the logic, ISTM, is dubious. Because there are past variations in climate that were nothing to do with humans it does not follow that current climatic shift is also necessarily nothing to do with humans .(Not to forget that dinasauria significantly altered the ecology of their times - as did the proto-ooze that spawned us all.) It may or it may not be. We are left with the problem of inference which, it seems to me, amounts to assessing probabilities. And the overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the probability of climate change being anthropogenic is very high. Which is not to say there is no place for climate skepticism. There may be something we don't know that we don't know. But the "Monte Carlo Method" <tee hee> suggests otherwise to me. There is a burden of proof on the climate skeptics it should not be forgotten; credible suggestions as to what, in fact, might account for this current variability would be helpful.
(I'm a little bemused at this business of glaciers "calving". The term seems ambiguous. Some seem to use it in the sense of chunks breaking off of the mother but without a nett gain in mass, and some suggest a mass gain as well as that separation. The implications are different. From what I've seen there appears to be a nett loss loss if exotic gravitational measurements are to be trusted.)
Best Regards.
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #204 on: 2009-03-19 05:42:32 » |
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Hi Hermit,
I will return to your post when I have the time.
I would like to quickly address Blunderov now.
Quote:| *[Bl.] This seems to be at the heart of the climate skeptics argument and the logic, ISTM, is dubious. Because there are past variations in climate that were nothing to do with humans it does not follow that current climatic shift is also necessarily nothing to do with humans. |
SNIP
Quote:| There is a burden of proof on the climate skeptics it should not be forgotten; credible suggestions as to what, in fact, might account for this current variability would be helpful. |
IMO you have this the wrong way around. We know that the GMT has been hotter in the past (for e.g. Mycenean Warm Period, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, etc.) and thus there must be a hypothesis that can account for that warming that does not include anthropogenic CO2.
My question is simple. What is that hypothesis and why is it not true for the current warming? And if we do not know what that hypothesis is, then how can we know it is not true now?
-iolo
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Blunderov
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #205 on: 2009-03-19 10:26:47 » |
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[Blunderov] We all seem a bit pressed for time so, briefly...
What is unique about now are the unprecedented CO2 levels. It seems a hypothesis is required about what mechanism might negate this. I suppose there must be some but they do not seem to have met with much peer review approval.
More anon.
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Hermit
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #206 on: 2009-03-19 11:56:35 » |
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[Blunderov] What is unique about now are the unprecedented CO2 levels. It seems a hypothesis is required about what mechanism might negate this. I suppose there must be some but they do not seem to have met with much peer review approval.
[Hermit]
CO2 and Methane. Both are extremely effective greenhouse gases, but the release of a mole of Methane has the impact of the release of 72 Moles of CO2. And so far as we can tell, Methane levels are the highest they have ever been.
Then, while it is true that there have been many frozen eras in Earths past, if sufficient Methyl Hydrates were released from the oceans of the Earth (threatened by one American "alternative energy scenario), or the Methane products of decomposition (including abandoned smoldering coal seams) increase too much, we could easily trip into a Venusian scenario. Which would not be compatible with current forms of Earthlife.
When over long periods we tamper with delicate balances that we are alleged not to comprehend we risk these outcomes. Which might be regarded as not being the most sensible thing an Earth dependent species could accomplish.
It is why my caveat that if the recent changes are not driven by anthropogenic factors then they are a great deal more threatening than they appear if they are. In addition, we are clearly in the end-phase of readily available, and thus cheap, liquid fossil carbons, and have no equivalently priced energy, lubricant or hydro-carbon sources available. As the last price flurry showed, the costs of other forms of fossil carbon are dependent on and tightly coupled to the cost of oil, so when the cheap oil ends, the supposed cheap (but much dirtier) alternatives also stop being affordable.
Given that our ability to provide water and food to the 6.5 billion on the planet, not more than 2 billion of whom can be fed sustainably, will be massively compromised by this within the next 12 years (the time it takes to build a nuclear reactor - which does not substitute for fossil carbons), even if we begin building today - of which there is still no sign - there is likely to be a serious gap between energy shortfalls we could address and energy demand.
Meantime water supplies around the world have become more critical than fossil fuels, we have triggered an extinction greater than the CT transition and the composition of the oceans which provided 2 billion of us with our protein has been irrevocably altered.
And some people continue to claim, and most continue to behave as if, there are no reasons for anxiety. At this point the very sensible publishers of the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" would erase the "Don't" from the back cover, even if it affected sales.
Meanwhile, the USA, which has a sustainable population (assuming that clean water and fertilizer remain available at 2000 levels - already untrue) of not more than 200 million, is pleased to announce that its population growth has increased to 2.1, that last year saw the greatest number of babies ever born in the USA (some of whose mothers are likely congruent with the 50% of inner city Americans who do not complete 12th grade) and the number of abortions are steeply down (largely because availability has collapsed). Are we not very special.
Kindest Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #207 on: 2009-03-19 12:03:54 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-03-18 19:01:31
Some of the evidence you have not successfully addressed include:
the false claims the climate change denialists have made about glaciers. The reality is that according to gravimetric surveys, glaciers around the world are vanishing. This correlates well with photographic evidence. |
On average all glaciers have been reducing since the last Ice Age, but with periods of advance and retreat. Some are now advancing and others retreating, but on average they are retreating because the world has been warming from the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA) for nearly 300 years.
Climate changes: it always has and it always will. But some deny this natural climate change and they assert climate is now changing because humans are changing it. Their claim is unfounded, but these climate-change-deniers bolster their delusion in their own minds by asserting things like, “See, glaciers are vanishing”. Of course, their assertions ignore the facts that warming from the last ice age and from the LIA has nothing to do with human activities but would be expected to reduce glaciers.
Quote:| the evidence on accelerated Antarctic warming and break-up as well as the Arctic. |
Almost all of the Antarctic is measured to be cooling. Only its small Antarctic Peninsula exhibits warming and it protrudes into the warm(er) Southern Ocean. A recent publication by Steig et al. in Nature attempts to refute the measurements of Antarctic cooling but has been severely criticized by many; e.g. Kevin Trenberth (a staunch AGW advocate) criticized the paper by Steig et al. paper saying, “It is difficult to create measurements where none exist”.
95% of all ice on Earth is in the Antarctic, and the Antarctic ice is increasing. Of course, ice breaks from polar regions (which is why ice bergs exist), but “break-up” of the Antarctic ice would require the Antarctic to warm by 7 deg.C (n.b. the Antarctic is cooling) and to maintain that higher temperature for 1,000 years.
Quote:| borehole temperature research showing rising temperatures towards the surface and annually shallower freeze zones. |
Yes, global temperature has been rising for the ~300 years since the LIA. But human activity cannot have been the cause of this.
Quote:| record droughts around the world from Alaska to Australia, from South America to China. |
There has been no observed increase in the frequency of droughts. And there is no example of a “record drought” anywhere recently except as a result of increased water usage. Indeed, most of Australia is in constant drought and everywhere gets droughts sometimes. One could cherry-pick data to pretend the opposite to this ridiculous claim of “record droughts”; e.g. North America has not again seen a drought like that of the 1930s.
Quote:| earlier springs, latter falls, more insects surviving through winter. |
This recovery from the LIA is completely beneficial. “Earlier springs and latter (sic) falls” is the same statement as ‘longer growing seasons’. And “more insects surviving through winter” is the same statement as ‘warmer winters’: cold winters kill more people than hot summers.
Quote:| soaring Methane and Carbon Dioxide levels. Given that both are greenhouse gases, the only way they could not affect the weather is if the greenhouse effect, which is, let me remind you a well validated physics derived theory, is retracted. |
Atmospheric methane concentration has stabilized and is not rising. Carbon dioxide concentration has increased from about 0.03% to about 0.04% of the atmosphere. This is a trivial change to the atmosphere.
However, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (GHG), and nobody doubts that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase radiative forcing, but AGW-proponents say this will cause the atmosphere to respond in a particular way. Other warming effects will produce different patterns of warming in the atmosphere. The pattern of the proposed warming from GHGs is a ‘fingerprint’ for AGW. (Indeed, this argument that a ‘fingerprint’ for AGW exists has repeatedly been asserted by the IPCC in its reports but each such assertion has been disproved in subsequent scientific publications.) Therefore, if a ‘fingerprint’ of AGW is absent then any observed warming is not a result of the AGW the climate models project.
Importantly, the ‘fingerprint’ of AGW is absent. All the climate models show most warming in the upper troposphere relative to the surface in the tropics as a result of increased radiative forcing from increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. But measurements of temperatures in the troposphere obtained from weather balloons and from satellites both fail to show any such warming of the upper troposphere in the tropics (they suggest slight cooling of the upper troposphere in the tropics).
Quote:| more extreme weather patterns. The fact is that the last decade has seen more temperature records set than any of the previous century. |
There is no evidence of any kind for “more extreme weather patterns”: indeed, tropical storms have reduced in both their frequency and strength in recent decades. And temperatures were higher in the Medieval Warm Period (a mere 1,000 years ago) and the Roman Warm Period (2,000 years ago) than in “the last decade”.
Of course, “the last decade” showed warmer temperatures than in the twentieth century because “the last decade” is at the end of the warming trend from the LIA. But global temperature has fallen over “the last decade”. Global temperature cannot change very fast because of the thermal capacity of the oceans, so a plummet down to the temperatures of the LIA could not have happened “over the last decade” (but ice cores suggest it could happen over 50 years).
Quote:| The massive preponderance of evidence explains why the vast majority of in-field experts consider climate change denial to be the equivalent of the young-flat earthers and no longer even attempt to debate it any more than a geologist would debate an Earth formation earlier than about 4.3 billion years before present, a cosmologist a tray shaped planet, or a biologist debate about creationism. It wastes energy and grants a spurious credibility that there might be something worthy of debate to what is clearly a lunatic fringe. |
This paragraph contains ad homimem abuse and no facts. And the “lunatic fringe” is the mob who deny natural climate change and assert that climate is now changing only because humans are changing it. Such delusion has happened to science in the past and has always caused disaster: e.g. eugenics, Lysenkoism, etc..
Quote:| Given that the "anthropogenic global warming" crowd are the only people who predicted all the above, I am with them on much of what they say even while I acknowledge that the models are far from perfect and our knowledge far from complete. Given that the denialists now appear to be at the point where they are attacking observation, normalization and personalities rather than theories, with all the fervidity of outraged religious sects, and appear to have predicted nothing, somebody as logical as yourself (in most areas) should be reevaluating your position. |
To date, the “anthropogenic global warming crowd“ has not correctly predicted anything. Indeed, their models predicted warming in the present decade when cooling has happened.
Hermit, in previous paragraphs your have made assertions which are factually not correct, and your assertions which are correct are of observations of effects which initiated decades or centuries before there was an “anthropogenic global warming crowd“.
Regards,
-iolo
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Hermit
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #208 on: 2009-03-19 18:57:41 » |
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Meta Topic - Anthromorphic Atmospheric Composition Amendment
It is widely recognized that we have been responsible for massive changes in the surface of the planet since about 250kyBP and particularly in the last 5 to 7k5 yBP. If this is acknowledged, and it affected rainfall distribution (which it indubitably did), does this not imply that we affected the atmospheric composition, particulate levels, reflectivity levels, etc?
Of course we did.
Meta Topic - Late Modern Anthromorphic Atmospheric Composition Amendment
Most of Europe and the Americas and large areas in Asia, Africa and the Pacific were forested. Wars and the consequential need for timber for ships and charcoal for metallurgical processes, along with the need for wood for energy, drove deforestation in Europe. Colonial expansionism, population growth and the need for farmland and fuel drove deforestation in the rest of the world.
Areas which had been forested throughout the Holocene became grassland due to human and other species action and interaction. Consequential reductions in rainfall saw catastrophic top soil losses and desertification. Drainage systems killed bogs and swamps leaving the vegetation to rot and releasing vast amounts of Methane. Current palm plantation establishment is doing the same thing. Current clearing practices mean that it will take three hundred years of palm oil production to counterbalance the impact of the clearing needed to grow the palms. Given that we don't have a carbon offset for previous clearing efforts, the consequences were likely far worse.
It was only when we ran out of trees to burn that we started to burn coal on a significant scale.
So claims that man did not engage in massive atmospheric composition change, and particularly CO2 and Methane levels, prior to the modern era must necessarily fail.
Atmospheric CO2 levels tell some of the story. Methane confirms and accentuates it.
Based on Ginko stomata, we entered the Holocene at about 280ppmv CO2. By the 1830s it had increased to about 284 ppmv. Today at over 390 ppmv we have increased atmospheric CO2 levels by about 100 ppmv or, translating this into a percentage, by 35%. Given that we now have rather good data on the carbon budget which supports the anthromorphic origin of these releases, claiming that this is not anthromorphic or that it doesn't affect the Atmospheric Greenhouse seems facile. Can you explain the mechanism whereby this sudden localized alteration of the laws of thermodynamics is alleged to occur?
Glaciers
[Iolo Morganwg] On average all glaciers have been reducing since the last Ice Age, but with periods of advance and retreat. Some are now advancing and others retreating, but on average they are retreating because the world has been warming from the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA) for nearly 300 years.
[Hermit] Thank-you for the acknowledgment that the glaciers are shrinking and that the world is warming. Many of the denialists are apparently still trying to fudge this. The results of this are already catastrophic water shortages as precipitation ends up speeding to the ocean taking valuable topsoil along with it, silting dams en route and resulting in droughts for all the rest of the year when water is not trickling off the glaciers and snow packs. Especially difficult for the half of humanity currently dependent on the Himalayas for their drinking water.
[Iolo Morganwg] Climate changes: it always has and it always will. But some deny this natural climate change and they assert climate is now changing because humans are changing it. Their claim is unfounded, but these climate-change-deniers bolster their delusion in their own minds by asserting things like, “See, glaciers are vanishing”. Of course, their assertions ignore the facts that warming from the last ice age and from the LIA has nothing to do with human activities but would be expected to reduce glaciers.
[Hermit] A 35% increase in atmospheric CO2 due to anthromorphic activities (Refer Meta-Topics) has not perhaps had some impact? You believe this, why?
Antarctica
[Iolo Morganwg] Almost all of the Antarctic is measured to be cooling. Only its small Antarctic Peninsula exhibits warming and it protrudes into the warm(er) Southern Ocean. A recent publication by Steig et al. in Nature attempts to refute the measurements of Antarctic cooling but has been severely criticized by many; e.g. Kevin Trenberth (a staunch AGW advocate) criticized the paper by Steig et al. paper saying, “It is difficult to create measurements where none exist”.
[Iolo Morganwg] 95% of all ice on Earth is in the Antarctic, and the Antarctic ice is increasing. Of course, ice breaks from polar regions (which is why ice bergs exist), but “break-up” of the Antarctic ice would require the Antarctic to warm by 7 deg.C (n.b. the Antarctic is cooling) and to maintain that higher temperature for 1,000 years.
WikipediaAntarctic contribution
The continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive and significant at >0.05°C/decade since 1957.[37] [38] [39] [40] The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has warmed by more than 0.1 °C/decade in the last 50 years, and is strongest in winter and spring. Although this is partly offset by fall cooling in East Antarctica, this effect is restricted to the 1980s and 1990s. [41] [42] [43].The West Antarctic ice sheet, lying at an average height of about 1,800 metres, holds enough ice to boost global sea levels by up to six metres. [44] [45]
On November 29, 2008 it was announced that the Wilkins Ice Shelf had lost around 2,000 square kilometers (about 772 square miles) so far this year, the ESA said. A satellite image captured November 26 shows new rifts on the ice shelf that make it dangerously close to breaking away from the strip of ice -- and the islands to which it's connected, the ESA said.[46]
During 2002-01-31–2002-03-07 the Larsen B sector collapsed and broke up, 3,250 km² of ice 220 m thick disintegrated, meaning an ice shelf covering an area comparable in size to the state of Rhode Island disappeared in a single season.[47]
As yet the contribution to sea level rise of the Antarctic is small, but the trend of warming and ice sheet collapse is causing concern.[48]
[Hermit] So much for Antarctic cooling and alleged increase in ice-mass.
Global Temperature
[Iolo Morganwg] Yes, global temperature has been rising for the ~300 years since the LIA.
[Hermit] Thanks for the acknowledgment.
[Iolo Morganwg] But human activity cannot have been the cause of this.
[Hermit] Refer Meta (supra). Why ever not?
Drought
[Iolo Morganwg] There has been no observed increase in the frequency of droughts. And there is no example of a “record drought” anywhere recently except as a result of increased water usage. Indeed, most of Australia is in constant drought and everywhere gets droughts sometimes. One could cherry-pick data to pretend the opposite to this ridiculous claim of “record droughts”; e.g. North America has not again seen a drought like that of the 1930s.
[Hermit] Perhaps you have not been following the news. May I refer you to this map and article at SmarterEarth.
Shorter less intense winters
[Iolo Morganwg] This recovery from the LIA is completely beneficial. “Earlier springs and latter (sic) falls” is the same statement as ‘longer growing seasons’. And “more insects surviving through winter” is the same statement as ‘warmer winters’: cold winters kill more people than hot summers.
[Hermit] No climate driven species extinction event is beneficial. About 50% of the species that have adapted and survived thousands of millennia are now extinct or threatened (which points to significant changes at the planetary level). When water resources dry up or become seasonal due to warming, and topsoil is removed due to flooding after each precipitation event, then agriculture dependent on topsoil and clean water has <sarcasm> quite a hard time maintaining production</sarcasm>, and the lakes, rivers and oceans receiving the discharge suffer even more. Many insects are not beneficial to man or his crops. Examples include the corn borer, the red ant and the mosquito. QED.
Atmospheric Composition
[Iolo Morganwg] Atmospheric methane concentration has stabilized and is not rising.
[Hermit] The previous methane increases were largely driven by land use changes, particularly decomposition driven by dying, drying and decomposing swamps and increases in cows. Things we have done for millennia. The next big methane boosts are likely going to be to sources the planet has not seen before as a consequence of warming: Tundra defrosting and decomposing and Methyl Hydrate releases. I predict nothing good from either source. Our ability to manage this if it becomes an issue is very limited and due to positive feedback, our reaction window will likely be very small.
[Iolo Morganwg] Carbon dioxide concentration has increased from about 0.03% to about 0.04% of the atmosphere. This is a trivial change to the atmosphere.
[Hermit] See Meta. A 35% change in a major greenhouse gas is not trivial. Especially not when coupled with increases in other greenhouse gases and the potential for positive feedback loops.
[Iolo Morganwg] However, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (GHG), and nobody doubts that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase radiative forcing
[Hermit] Thank-you for the acknowledgment.
[Iolo Morganwg] but AGW-proponents say this will cause the atmosphere to respond in a particular way. Other warming effects will produce different patterns of warming in the atmosphere. The pattern of the proposed warming from GHGs is a ‘fingerprint’ for AGW. (Indeed, this argument that a ‘fingerprint’ for AGW exists has repeatedly been asserted by the IPCC in its reports but each such assertion has been disproved in subsequent scientific publications.) Therefore, if a ‘fingerprint’ of AGW is absent then any observed warming is not a result of the AGW the climate models project.
[Iolo Morganwg] Importantly, the ‘fingerprint’ of AGW is absent. All the climate models show most warming in the upper troposphere relative to the surface in the tropics as a result of increased radiative forcing from increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. But measurements of temperatures in the troposphere obtained from weather balloons and from satellites both fail to show any such warming of the upper troposphere in the tropics (they suggest slight cooling of the upper troposphere in the tropics).
[Hermit] I am not addressing this. I am not qualified to assess its significance, do not know if it is really a prerequisite to acceptance of current theories, don't know if the predictions were made and have failed, were not made and have not failed or were not made and did not fail or any other combination. As I have repeatedly stated, change is happening. Our "fingerprints" are all over CO2 and CH4 levels and the fact that these are greenhouse gases, that the changes are significant and unprecedented and predicted by the AGW proponents, in other words, that the acknowledged temperature rise was predicted, that the acknowledged deglaciation was predicted is sufficient to accept it as a working hypothesis until something better comes along. The fact that 50% of the families that existed for the last 5 million years and species of the last 500,000 are extinct or threatened, and that the total number of species extinct or threatened now exceeds those from the CT boundary event points to how significant this event is.
[Hermit] What we need to do is arrange our lives for the end of cheap energy and to reduce our populations and our ecological footprint will be dramatically reduced. If we want long term significance, we need cheap access to space and a continued high technology culture. This would lead to the ability to manage the Earths temperature through managing insolation.
Weather Patterns
[Iolo Morganwg] There is no evidence of any kind for “more extreme weather patterns”: indeed, tropical storms have reduced in both their frequency and strength in recent decades. And temperatures were higher in the Medieval Warm Period (a mere 1,000 years ago) and the Roman Warm Period (2,000 years ago) than in “the last decade”.
[Hermit] I don't know where you get your data. I recommend a glimpse at Wikipedia
[Iolo Morganwg] Of course, “the last decade” showed warmer temperatures than in the twentieth century because “the last decade” is at the end of the warming trend from the LIA. But global temperature has fallen over “the last decade”. Global temperature cannot change very fast because of the thermal capacity of the oceans, so a plummet down to the temperatures of the LIA could not have happened “over the last decade” (but ice cores suggest it could happen over 50 years).
[Hermit] I really don't know where you find your data. The attached graph is courtesy of Wikipedia too.
[Hermit] I'll skip the opinions on opinions and reiterate: "Given that the denialists now appear to be at the point where they are attacking observation, normalization and personalities rather than theories, with all the fervidity of outraged religious sects, and appear to have predicted nothing, somebody as logical as yourself (in most areas) should be reevaluating your position."
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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the.bricoleur
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making sense of change
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #209 on: 2009-03-20 04:09:04 » |
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Thanks for your reply Hermit, I will address it shortly, but first, there were a few things I wanted to flesh out from your previous post. I will do that first and then return to your latest offering.
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Quote:| You have been down the solar path before, but not very successfully. Remember that as you increase radiation to a black body, which the Earth would approximate if it didn't have an atmosphere containing greenhouse gasses, the radiation from the black body will increase in accordance with Kirchoff and Stefan–Boltzmann's laws and the temperature wouldn't vary much at all. Given that we do understand these laws, and can measure radiation in and out as well as model the effects of the gasses, this is an area based on thoroughly comprehended science. If I remember correctly, I established that solar output variation accounts for under 14% of the observed temperature changes. |
Solar variation in irradiance is not the only factor influencing the climate, something warmers fail to accept (or understand). Solar variations in its magnetic field output are more important than the simple heat received. Warmers go wild when one talks to them about close correlation between solar system influences (as baricecenter, Jovian cycles, etc, something that Dr. Timo Niroma has explored quite well). Of course, warmers get near the cardiac arrest when hearing about works by Abdusamatov, Charavátova, and other astronomers and astrophysicists.
Quote:| * the false claims the climate change denialists have made about glaciers. The reality is that according to gravimetric surveys, glaciers around the world are vanishing. This correlates well with photographic evidence. |
So, as stated in my previous post, many glaciers are advancing and many more are retreating. But more are stable and the overwhelming majority are uncertain. See the graph from WGMS (World Glacier Monitoring Survey) data:
And this graph from an IPCC report shows glacier retreat began before any human influence on climate:
And to demonstrate the cherry-picking ... notice how the graph shows glaciers advancing since 2000, but does not show the famous advancing ones, e.g. Perito Moreno and Pio XI in Patagonia, or Franz-Joseph (NZ), and many others. I understand that the exclusion of said glaciers does make the graph look gloomy ...
Quote:| * more extreme weather patterns. The fact is that the last decade has seen more temperature records set than any of the previous century. |
I am going to guess that you have read the article by Vincenzo Ferrara in ”Rivista di Meteorologia Aeronautica”, Vol XLII n. 1, Jan-Mar 1982. Vincenzo Ferrara was up until April 2008 the science advisor to the Italian Environment Minister.
I quote the translation, and remind one that it is from 1982:
Quote:If you are a climatologist and you want to survive as a climatologist, perhaps even increasing your reputation, all you have to do is provide the exact diagnosis and prognosis that people expect.
To the question “Is the climate changing?“, by all means, never, ever reply “No, everything’s normal“, or “It’s just fakery pumped up by newspapers and on television“: because people would unanimously conclude that you understand nothing about metereology, and nothing about climate.
It would be the end of your career.
The only sensible answer is: “Of course it is changing! It’s a well-known fact, scientifically confirmed and one that none cannot argue against“. You can then launch yourself in forecasting for the next hundred years a climate identical to the current one, amplifying the latest phenomena to extreme consequences.
If it is cold you’ll therefore predict “ice ages“, if it’s warm a “torrid period“, and if there are signs of strong variability “short-term climatic extremes” and more-or-less the same climate in the long term.
You may be wondering, how can a serious climatologist provide impossible, mutually-excluding forecasts without looking silly? Fear not: science will provide all the support needed.
Because climatology has already thought of everything and will supply the right solution in every circumstance, even in the most hopeless cases.
So if it is cold, here’s what you will have to say: “The climate is changing and we are approaching an Ice Age.
This fact has already been scientifically assessed because since 1940, the average temperature of the northern hemisphere has diminished by approximately 0,4°C, probably because of a decrease in atmospheric transparency due to air pollution.
The cooling of the air causes an increase in the extension of glaciers and of snow fields, furthering lowering temperatures with their highly reflecting (high albedo) surfaces. Glaciers therefore increase even more, in a positive feedback that will bring us to a new Ice Age in a hundred years or even less“.
What if it is warm? Then the discourse becomes: “The climate is changing and we are approaching a Torrid Age.
This fact has already been scientifically assessed because since 1850 the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere has progressively increased and just in the last twenty years has gone from 315 to 334 parts for million. That means that in 2020 the accumulation of carbon dioxide will have more than doubled, taking into account the continuously increasing energy demands and consumption of fossil fuels.
The increase of carbon dioxide reduces the Earth’s long-wave emissions to space (greenhouse effect) so within half a century the average air temperature will increase by approximately 2 or 3°C; the polar ice will dissolve and a sizeable sea level increase will submerge several coastal cities“.
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I shall return with my response to Hermit's latest without my tongue in cheek.
-iolo
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