TheEEStory.com

The world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario of perilous climate change and extreme weather events, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday.

On current trends, "rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change," the IEA concluded in its annual World Energy Outlook report.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/World_has_fiv...

We don't need yet another thread. That point was answered anyway on the one a few threads lower down.

So if we are still here in five years will all you treehuggers shut the hell up? I'm willing to make bets with anyone on this.

HEEman wrote:

So if we are still here in five years will all you treehuggers shut the hell up? I'm willing to make bets with anyone on this.

"The world will end in 5 years"

and

"In 5 years time it will be too late to stop the world ending in 50 years time."

It's just too subtle for some people.

Regards,
Peter

Last edited Thu, 10 Nov 2011, 6:12pm by Technopete

anybody notice that this is the International Energy Agency's stance?

The same group that is known for this:

In 2009, Guy Pearse stated that the IEA has consistently underestimated the potential for renewable energy alternatives.[12]

The Energy Watch Group (EWG), a coalition of scientists and politicians which analyses official energy industry predictions, claims that the IEA has had an institutional bias towards traditional energy sources and has been using "misleading data" to undermine the case for renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

A 2008 EWG report compares IEA projections about the growth of wind power capacity and finds that it has consistently underestimated the amount of energy the wind power industry can deliver.[13]

Hey fossil fuel apologists.... the tide is turning against you... little by little. Muahahahaha

An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of extra cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacials" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "Ice Age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in the ice age that began at the start of the Pleistocene (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).

For some strange reason, I can't get very alarmed about the prospect that our planet might finally and fully emerge from the latest ice age. The idea that this would be a "catastrophe" is ludicrous. Humans have been around for several ice ages and several interglacials. The idea that one more complete emergence from an ice age would be "the end of the world"...

I'd laugh my ass off at this idiotic Chicken Little alarmism, if the Natural Global Warming Denier alarmists hadn't been whinging about this for so long. Unfortunately the joke wore off long ago.

Fibb wrote:

anybody notice that this is the International Energy Agency's stance?

The same group that is known for this:

In 2009, Guy Pearse stated that the IEA has consistently underestimated the potential for renewable energy alternatives.[12]

The Energy Watch Group (EWG), a coalition of scientists and politicians which analyses official energy industry predictions, claims that the IEA has had an institutional bias towards traditional energy sources and has been using "misleading data" to undermine the case for renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

A 2008 EWG report compares IEA projections about the growth of wind power capacity and finds that it has consistently underestimated the amount of energy the wind power industry can deliver.[13]

Hey fossil fuel apologists.... the tide is turning against you... little by little. Muahahahaha

You win Fibb the world is warming and its all man's fault. So what are we going to do in the next 5 years to fix it?

Lensman wrote:

An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of extra cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacials" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "Ice Age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in the ice age that began at the start of the Pleistocene (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).

For some strange reason, I can't get very alarmed about the prospect that our planet might finally and fully emerge from the latest ice age. The idea that this would be a "catastrophe" is ludicrous. Humans have been around for several ice ages and several interglacials. The idea that one more complete emergence from an ice age would be "the end of the world"...

I'd laugh my ass off at this idiotic Chicken Little alarmism, if the Natural Global Warming Denier alarmists hadn't been whinging about this for so long. Unfortunately the joke wore off long ago.

If my electrician was to put a soldering iron into both of your eyes, you couldn't be more blind.

TecsFanEE wrote:

Fibb wrote:

Hey fossil fuel apologists.... the tide is turning against you... little by little. Muahahahaha

You win Fibb the world is warming and its all man's fault. So what are we going to do in the next 5 years to fix it?

And Fibb is wrong. The truth is the tide is turning against AGW skeptics... big by big, not little by little.

Regards,
Peter

Last edited Fri, 11 Nov 2011, 3:08am by Technopete

Technopete wrote:

HEEman wrote:

So if we are still here in five years will all you treehuggers shut the hell up? I'm willing to make bets with anyone on this.

The usual superficial treatment from AGW skeptics. They can't tell the difference between :-

"The world will end in 5 years"

and

"In 5 years time it will be too late to stop the world ending in 50 years time."

It's just too subtle for some people.

Regards,
Peter

It really makes no difference if you fall off a cliff or get on a slide headed for the cliff from which there is no escape - you are eventually going over the cliff either way.

I just wish we could get the "science settled" and have an "consensus" on the 5 year timeframe. Then we could have a big countdown clock in Time Square or something.

As I recall we had a 10 year alarm like this about 10 years ago.

Kahuna wrote:

As I recall we had a 10 year alarm like this about 10 years ago.

And 20 years ago. And 30.

It's amazing how long some people can run around squawking "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" It's even more amazing that so many other people continue to believe it after all this time.

Lensman wrote:

Kahuna wrote:

As I recall we had a 10 year alarm like this about 10 years ago.

And 20 years ago. And 30.

It's amazing how long some people can run around squawking "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" It's even more amazing that so many other people continue to believe it after all this time.

It should be "The sea is rising! The sea is rising!".

A personal opinion is that the climate disasters such as New Orleans and Australian floods have an undue influence on public opinion. Australians and extreme Southerners were probably much more convinced by AGW after these events than they were before, even though the statistical link with AGW is not significant enough to prove anything.

Unfortunately the folk of New Orleans were more likely to be AGW agnostic than AGW skeptic to start with.

There will be more disasters like these, and whether or not they are actually due to AGW, they will probably convince some of the remaining skeptics in the countries experiencing them that AGW is real!

Shame it takes that rather than the real science to do so.

Regards,
Peter

Real statistical math trumps your real science.

The Natural Climate Change Deniers' claims of a link between global warming and increased hurricane activity is one of the worst embarrassments of the pro-CAGW crowd. The majority of hurricane experts reject this alarmism.

Claims in the media that global warming is making hurricanes worse are running into a gale of their own from scientists who specialize in studying the tropical storms.

"I'm quite sure that in 15 to 20 years, everyone will look back and see what a phony issue this was," William M. Gray, head of Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project, said. "Most of my colleagues, who have given their careers to study this, are skeptical as hell."

Experts Dispute Claims

Nonetheless, the theory that global warming is increasing the intensity and frequency of hurricanes is drawing increasing attention, especially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and other well-publicized storms making landfall in the U.S.

In August, for example, the media focused on a study published in the August issue of the journal Nature, which concluded the duration and strength of hurricanes have increased by about 50 percent in the past 30 years. The author of the study linked the increase to rising ocean temperatures and global warming.

Before the study's release, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told MSNBC, "Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions."

But James J. O'Brien, director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University, and numerous other hurricane experts dispute the theory that global warming primes and intensifies hurricanes. These scientists say that if global warming has any effect on hurricanes, it would be small. They also attribute swings in hurricane activity to natural, 25- to 40-year cycles.

Theory 'Demonstrably False'

O'Brien was among a group of five climatologists and other experts on climate change who wrote U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in September 2004 a letter calling "demonstrably false" the theory that global warming was creating a surge in hurricane activity. They said the theory was based on two misconceptions: That hurricanes are increasing in intensity or frequency and that continued ocean surface warming will generate more frequent and intense storms.

In the letter to McCain, who conducted hearings on global warming in November 2004, the scientists pointed out that according to a century of National Hurricane Center reports, the decade with the largest number of hurricanes to come ashore in the United States was the 1940s, and that hurricane frequency has declined since then. They also cited data from the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Association that hurricane frequency has declined since the 1940s.

The letter said well-documented and centuries-old evidence, as well as computer models, suggest warmer periods may actually generate a decline in the number or severity of such storms.

As population continues to grow on the coast and people build more structures, losses from hurricanes will go up drastically but it isn't because of global warming, one of the world experts on the topic said at a University of South Carolina appearance Thursday.

Chris Landsea, science and operations director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said the notion that global warming is causing an increase in hurricanes gained widespread attention after the stormy seasons of 2004 and 2005.

But that perception is wrong and the statistics don't bear it out, Landsea told about 200 students and professors in the auditorium at USC's geography building.
Further study continues to show that hurricane activity occurs in cycles of 20 to 45 years, he said. Even though the seasons of 2004, when four hurricanes bashed Florida, and 2005, when Katrina devastated New Orleans and neighboring parts of the Gulf Coast, seemed shocking, they were no more intense than some storms in the early part of the 20th century and in the 1930s, Landsea said.

The 1926-1935 period was worse for hurricanes than the past 10 years and 1900-1905 was almost as bad, he said. So it is not true that there is a trend of more and stronger hurricanes.

"It's not a trend, it's a cycle: 20-45 years quiet, 20-45 years busy," Landsea said. Scientists currently have no idea what causes the time period.

What makes the recent storms seem worse is the amount of damage, and that is because of the amount of people and their structures on the coast, elements that barely existed in the early 1900s.

One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand.

The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.

The research, appearing in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is all the more remarkable coming from Emanuel, a highly visible leader in his field and long an ardent proponent of a link between global warming and much stronger hurricanes.

His changing views could influence other scientists.

"The results surprised me," Emanuel said of his work, adding that global warming may still play a role in raising the intensity of hurricanes. What that role is, however, remains far from certain.

TecsFanEE wrote:

Fibb wrote:

anybody notice that this is the International Energy Agency's stance?

The same group that is known for this:

In 2009, Guy Pearse stated that the IEA has consistently underestimated the potential for renewable energy alternatives.[12]

The Energy Watch Group (EWG), a coalition of scientists and politicians which analyses official energy industry predictions, claims that the IEA has had an institutional bias towards traditional energy sources and has been using "misleading data" to undermine the case for renewable energy, such as wind and solar.

A 2008 EWG report compares IEA projections about the growth of wind power capacity and finds that it has consistently underestimated the amount of energy the wind power industry can deliver.[13]

Hey fossil fuel apologists.... the tide is turning against you... little by little. Muahahahaha

You win Fibb the world is warming and its all man's fault. So what are we going to do in the next 5 years to fix it?

I love warming!
And this would be great for Canada.
A bunch of new nude beaches in Nunavut!

Lensman wrote:

The Natural Climate Change Deniers' claims of a link between global warming and increased hurricane activity is one of the worst embarrassments of the pro-CAGW crowd. The majority of hurricane experts reject this alarmism.

I have seen some articles of late which say that CO2 is rising even faster World-Wide than had been predicted (although not in the U.S.), yet temperature has been essentially flat for a decade or more. Since AGW theory says that temperature is primarily a function of atmospheric CO2 levels, how can the temp resist the added CO2 forcing for so long. Clearly there must be other counteracting forces at play. Given that fact, how in the world can say that we understand the CO2/Temp relationship well enough to bet our economy on it? I do not get how the IPCC et al are so sure of the relationship impending doom when it has not played out according to the theory so far.

This Forbes article hits most of the high points of my quandry:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11...

Kahuna wrote:

I have seen some articles of late which say that CO2 is rising even faster World-Wide than had been predicted (although not in the U.S.), yet temperature has been essentially flat for a decade or more. Since AGW theory says that temperature is primarily a function of atmospheric CO2 levels, how can the temp resist the added CO2 forcing for so long. Clearly there must be other counteracting forces at play. Given that fact, how in the world can say that we understand the CO2/Temp relationship well enough to bet our economy on it? I do not get how the IPCC et al are so sure of the relationship impending doom when it has not played out according to the theory so far.

This Forbes article hits most of the high points of my quandry:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11...

1) Discounted Cash Flow and Net Present Value
If you do a discounted cash flow on the possibility of the world economy mainly collapsing in 50 years then you find that today's Net Present Value of the world is not very dependent on whether it happens or not - much the same as having a 99 year lease on a building - most people are not going to live this long so do not think about it. However, for mankind it would generally have some very severe consequences, and most people with grandchildren would probably wish to avoid it at all costs.

2) So how much would it cost to insure against such severe disruption due to climate? Measures to save CO₁₂ emissions mainly pay for themselves in the end, and will probably result in increased growth rates for economies which have to import a lot of energy, like the USA. So the budget should be quite large if you think the probability of major disruption due to climate will be higher than just insignificant.

If AGW magically disappears and you spend 1% of the GNP per year to guard against it, then we will all survive with not too much disruption to standard of living.

If AGW is real (and it looks like it is) and will cause major disruption, then one way or another the bill will arrive at the feet of the perpetrators of CO₂ emissions - of which the USA is the outstanding historical emitter which currently has done almost zero to mitigate emissions, unlike most of the rest of the world. Can't you see the foreign claims coming in starting 2030 ro so, not to mention claims for subsidies from the inhabitants of Miami as they slowly submerge.

3) Why doesn't warming always mean increase in temperatures? The oceans can absorb heat to keep the air temperature on land down. These have both surfaces and deeper bits, with complex currents which transfer heat upwards and downwards.

If you think about it, atmospheric pressure is equivalent to around 32 feet of water, so you might expect the a given area of land with atmosphere above to store a similar quantity of heat as if it had 32 feet of water above it. Water will store more heat than the same mass of air, but let's ignore that.

Now around 70% of the earth is covered by ocean and half of it is at least 10,000 feet deep. So the average depth is at lest 5,000 feat. Spread this around 100% of the earth's surface and you get 3,500 feet.

The atmosphere is worth 32 feet remember in terms of crude heat storage. So the heat stored by the atmosphere is less than 1% of the heat which can be stored in oceans.

Global warming means that the combination of oceans and air are getting warmer. But >99% of the heat is stored by the oceans, and air temperature over just a few years is therefore very dependent on what goes on in the oceans, including currents caused by el nino, la nina etc. In principle this clearly makes sense - so the real question is whether the current small increase in air temperatures is more than balanced by a large increase in the heat stored in the oceans.

Over the long terms you would expect these oceanic oscillations to even out and the long-term surface air temperature to reflect the heat stored in ocean + air. But not necessarily short term.

Thus a true picture of how much warming on average there will be is going to be more complicated than most people realise.

Which is why the AGW skeptics like to seize on individual figures and say "it is not happening." without really pursuing the big picture in detail. Politically, this is also easy to do - the vast majority of politicians and businessmen are non-scientists and have a vested interest and the vast majority of voters are pretty stupid too.

So who should we believe? The majority of climatologists who understand the subtleties and complexity of climate which has to be modelled, or the "let's pick on this graph today to campaign against global warming, before the climatologists find an argument to rebut it" skeptic?

Regards,
Peter

Last edited Fri, 11 Nov 2011, 1:10pm by Technopete

Pete, the question for me is not if the climate is changing. It always has been changing; it's never been constant. The question is if the current changes are being influenced by human activity. Many of us are simply not convinced. Your very arguments about the complexity of it all only serve to work against your case. How can these people be so sure? This system is too complex. Also, perhaps more importantly, the radical warming scenarios assume positive feedback loops. How can they be sure this will happen? the models in use in the 90s and early 2000s did not predict the lack of warming in the past decade. Why? Simply because they are not good enough. If they can't predict what would happen 10 years out, then why should I trust them to predict things 50+ years out.

Cheap energy is what pulls people out of poverty. Cheap energy is the fuel for prosperity. why aren't the pro-AGW folks pushing for the clean energy sources to be cheaper? Knock down the price per KWH, and they won't have to convince anyone that their models are good; we'll use those energy sources anyway. Why aren't their campaigns in places like NY State, where I live, that say spend extra money to get your electricity from clean energy sources to "prime the pump?" I actually do pay about 30% extra, and I don't even believe in AGW. Climate change is real, and so are VOCs/soot/etc. I accept but don't like mining and oil drilling, but I can help out by buying my electricity from solar/wind. Still, I make a good salary, and can afford an extra $30 a month on average. Sure the producers advertise a bit, but why isn't Greenpeace standing on 86th street handing out fliers supporting this; if not a particular supplier? They are standing there for other reasons; I see them there every other week. Why are they not standing in front of HomeDepot handing out fliers helping people understand you can save money buying the LED bulbs, let alone CFLs? I own several of each. Why aren't they applauding things that get us partially there, like Natural gas mines that help us mine less coal? That's helping.

Technopete wrote:

Lensman wrote:

Kahuna wrote:

As I recall we had a 10 year alarm like this about 10 years ago.

And 20 years ago. And 30.

It's amazing how long some people can run around squawking "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" It's even more amazing that so many other people continue to believe it after all this time.

Wrong analogy.

It should be "The sea is rising! The sea is rising!".

A personal opinion is that the climate disasters such as New Orleans and Australian floods have an undue influence on public opinion. Australians and extreme Southerners were probably much more convinced by AGW after these events than they were before, even though the statistical link with AGW is not significant enough to prove anything.

Unfortunately the folk of New Orleans were more likely to be AGW agnostic than AGW skeptic to start with.

There will be more disasters like these, and whether or not they are actually due to AGW, they will probably convince some of the remaining skeptics in the countries experiencing them that AGW is real!

Shame it takes that rather than the real science to do so.

Regards,
Peter

New Orleans wasn't a global warming disaster it was an engneering disaster. Some people build a city on ground that is sinking and is 18 feet under sea level and surrounded by water on 3 sides. This is the equivalent of putting your pet hamster in a bowl and floating it in your bath tub with you and then blaming its drowning on the fact that when you rolled side ways to wash your butt crack you created a wave that flipped the bowl. The point is you should have never put the hamster in the bowl in the bathtub to begin with.

Technopete wrote:

Here are some things you should think about.

1) Discounted Cash Flow and Net Present Value
If you do a discounted cash flow on the possibility of the world economy mainly collapsing in 50 years then you find that today's Net Present Value of the world is not very dependent on whether it happens or not - much the same as having a 99 year lease on a building - most people are not going to live this long so do not think about it. However, for mankind it would generally have some very severe consequences, and most people with grandchildren would probably wish to avoid it at all costs.

2) So how much would it cost to insure against such severe disruption due to climate? Measures to save CO₁₂ emissions mainly pay for themselves in the end, and will probably result in increased growth rates for economies which have to import a lot of energy, like the USA. So the budget should be quite large if you think the probability of major disruption due to climate will be higher than just insignificant.

If AGW magically disappears and you spend 1% of the GNP per year to guard against it, then we will all survive with not too much disruption to standard of living.

If AGW is real (and it looks like it is) and will cause major disruption, then one way or another the bill will arrive at the feet of the perpetrators of CO₂ emissions - of which the USA is the outstanding historical emitter which currently has done almost zero to mitigate emissions, unlike most of the rest of the world. Can't you see the foreign claims coming in starting 2030 ro so, not to mention claims for subsidies from the inhabitants of Miami as they slowly submerge.

3) Why doesn't warming always mean increase in temperatures? The oceans can absorb heat to keep the air temperature on land down. These have both surfaces and deeper bits, with complex currents which transfer heat upwards and downwards.

If you think about it, atmospheric pressure is equivalent to around 32 feet of water, so you might expect the a given area of land with atmosphere above to store a similar quantity of heat as if it had 32 feet of water above it. Water will store more heat than the same mass of air, but let's ignore that.

Now around 70% of the earth is covered by ocean and half of it is at least 10,000 feet deep. So the average depth is at lest 5,000 feat. Spread this around 100% of the earth's surface and you get 3,500 feet.

The atmosphere is worth 32 feet remember in terms of crude heat storage. So the heat stored by the atmosphere is less than 1% of the heat which can be stored in oceans.

Global warming means that the combination of oceans and air are getting warmer. But >99% of the heat is stored by the oceans, and air temperature over just a few years is therefore very dependent on what goes on in the oceans, including currents caused by el nino, la nina etc. In principle this clearly makes sense - so the real question is whether the current small increase in air temperatures is more than balanced by a large increase in the heat stored in the oceans.

Over the long terms you would expect these oceanic oscillations to even out and the long-term surface air temperature to reflect the heat stored in ocean + air. But not necessarily short term.

Thus a true picture of how much warming on average there will be is going to be more complicated than most people realise.

Which is why the AGW skeptics like to seize on individual figures and say "it is not happening." without really pursuing the big picture in detail. Politically, this is also easy to do - the vast majority of politicians and businessmen are non-scientists and have a vested interest and the vast majority of voters are pretty stupid too.

So who should we believe? The majority of climatologists who understand the subtleties and complexity of climate which has to be modelled, or the "let's pick on this graph today to campaign against global warming, before the climatologists find an argument to rebut it" skeptic?

Regards,
Peter

What you seem to not understand is two things.

1. The world is already teetering on bankruptcy so taking 1% out of the worlds economy could push it over the edge.

2. Even if we gave 1% of the worlds economy to fix global warming there is no evidence it solve the problem.

Realistically what you are looking at TechnoPete is that your best real world outcome that can be achieved at this point is the status quo and a slow moving towards green energy.

Most countries are in debt up to their eyeballs and won't even be able to meet the commitments they have already made to their citizens.

There is no money to reengineer society. In fact I think what you will see is that the environment will get worse, because countries will have to start stripping away environmental regulations in order to compete or survive. Worst case the global economy collapses and you have people burning whatever they can find to heat their homes and power some vehicle to get themselves around in.

The western world economies will collapse and they will begin to function more and more like third world countries.

Places like China, India, and Pakistan will pollute more and more as their population grows and they crawl their way up the ladder of progress.

Last edited Fri, 11 Nov 2011, 3:29pm by TecsFanEE

Technopete wrote:

If AGW is real (and it looks like it is) and will cause major disruption, then one way or another the bill will arrive at the feet of the perpetrators of CO₂ emissions - of which the USA is the outstanding historical emitter which currently has done almost zero to mitigate emissions, unlike most of the rest of the world. Can't you see the foreign claims coming in starting 2030 ro so...

Natural climate change has always been with us, and unless we gain the technology to control the weather, it always will be. So why talk about it as if it's a disaster, or that it will create an "expense" that someone has to "pay for"? Are the farmers in Canada, and mineral prospectors in Siberia, who will benefit from global warming, gonna have to pay someone for having a better climate?

Ridiculous. It's up to us as human beings to adapt to changing conditions. If we can't, then as a species we deserve to become extinct.

Technopete wrote:

...not to mention claims for subsidies from the inhabitants of Miami as they slowly submerge.

Well, there ya go. If something bad happens, we must first find someone to blame. And it's even better if we can sue them!

Nevermind that the Earth has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. We hafta blame those evil American CO₂ emitters, even though the current warming trend-- including gradual sea level rise-- started about 1820, but there was no significant CO₂ rise until about 1950.

We'll find some way to blame them anyway! Maybe they used time machines to dump all their evil CO₂ in the past.

Technopete wrote:

If you think about it, atmospheric pressure is equivalent to around 32 feet of water, so you might expect the a given area of land with atmosphere above to store a similar quantity of heat as if it had 32 feet of water above it. Water will store more heat than the same mass of air, but let's ignore that.

Water has a higher specific heat (resistance to temperature change) than any other substance in the universe except gaseous hydrogen.

So let's not ignore that very significant difference.

Technopete wrote:

So who should we believe? The majority of climatologists who understand the subtleties and complexity of climate which has to be modelled, or the "let's pick on this graph today to campaign against global warming, before the climatologists find an argument to rebut it" skeptic?

I think I'll continue to believe in the science coming from fields controlled by scientists. And not the dogma masquerading as science coming from a field controlled by politicians. The IPCC is made up of politicians and scientists. Scientists are, mostly, good at science; politicians are, mostly, good at controlling other people. So I guess we know who controls the IPCC, don't we?

For example, the current chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, has degrees in Industrial Engineering and Economics, with no education or training in climatology. He also has been director general of TERI, a research and policy organization in India.

Thank goodness the other branches of science are not controlled by politicians.

Last edited Fri, 11 Nov 2011, 3:45pm by Lensman

And Nunavut would be able to contribute in farming!
Who could possibly be against that!

At least Lens is consistent in his approach, (paraphrased, not a quote:) )

"I believe that scientists that say what I want are 100% correct, but scientists whose research indicates otherwise are 100% wrong."

Lens, do you believe there is ANY possibility that the majority of climate scientists could be correct? Maybe even a 1% chance??

hador_nyc wrote:

why aren't the pro-AGW folks pushing for the clean energy sources to be cheaper?

Clean energy sources are already cheaper. The incumbents have huge external costs that do not get factored into the price per kWh. Once you internalize these costs, combustion is OUT - it's a complete loser - purely on economics.

The only reason these external costs are still external is because of: bribery and corruption, massive afronts to free market ideals, and disregard to democractic principles.

http://www.theeestory.com/posts/217521

http://www.theeestory.com/posts/217246

Last edited Fri, 11 Nov 2011, 5:28pm by Fibb

Yazzur wrote:

Lens, do you believe there is ANY possibility that the majority of climate scientists could be correct? Maybe even a 1% chance??

Oh, I'd give them a greater than 1% chance. A few years ago, the conclusion of the annual IPCC report "only" claimed 90% certainty that humans were responsible for the majority of global warming, so that would appear to give them at least a 10% chance they're right (or at least were at that time).

But seriously, one of the problems ever since I've been following this-- the late '70s-- is that in public statements they keep insisting they must be correct and that the CAGW skeptics must be wrong.

They keep insisting this even though we keep discovering new factors influencing climate. So we know their climate models have been inaccurate in the past, and we have no rational reason to think they are accurate now.

I once had a conversation, on another forum, with someone who was trained as a climatologist but was never employed in the field. I thought that gave a reasonable chance that he'd have an objective opinion; since his salary and his ability to get published in peer-reviewed climatology journals didn't depend on "toeing the line" of the Natural Climate Change deniers, he had no reason to practice self-censorship of what he knew to keep from being treated as a pariah by the Natural Climate Change deniers which control the field of climatology.

So I asked him, what did he think about the issue of anthropic global warming? He replied that he didn't think the evidence was conclusive, but that his educated guess was that human factors were responsible for perhaps about half the temperature rise since the time that humans started making significant additions to total greenhouse gasses.

That sounded perfectly reasonable to me. If that's what the so-called "consensus" of climatologists was saying, then I would not be arguing against their position.

But what I hear from the IPCC crowd, the Natural Climate Change deniers, doesn't sound at all reasonable.

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As is usual for me, Yazzur, what I argue is not that people who assert something absolutely and positively without sufficient evidence must be wrong, but that they shouldn't be so sure they're right. You may not notice this in any individual post of mine, but if you look back thru older threads you'll see I argue against the hard-line position of those denying the reality of global warming, too.

Lens:

That was a somewhat more reasonable post the many of your previous ones, I don't think I've seen you previously admit that anthropological factors may impact climate.

I think if you actually read the published papers, you'd find that the "absolutes" are not common at all. In fact, the 2007 IPCC reports are very careful to provide probabilities relative to statements. If you actually read AR4 and the technical papers you would realize they do indicate warming rate has only doubled over the last 50 years vs. the 100 year rate, so a rough estimate is 50% of the increase from anthropological causes. So you do generally agree with the IPCC reports, whether you realized that or not.

I am not aware of any climate scientist that claim 100% of warming is from anthropological causes. I do know of "skeptics" that say there is no warming, or that none it is from AGW causes.

TecsFanEE wrote:

Technopete wrote:

Lensman wrote:

Kahuna wrote:

As I recall we had a 10 year alarm like this about 10 years ago.

And 20 years ago. And 30.

It's amazing how long some people can run around squawking "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" It's even more amazing that so many other people continue to believe it after all this time.

Wrong analogy.

It should be "The sea is rising! The sea is rising!".

A personal opinion is that the climate disasters such as New Orleans and Australian floods have an undue influence on public opinion. Australians and extreme Southerners were probably much more convinced by AGW after these events than they were before, even though the statistical link with AGW is not significant enough to prove anything.

Unfortunately the folk of New Orleans were more likely to be AGW agnostic than AGW skeptic to start with.

There will be more disasters like these, and whether or not they are actually due to AGW, they will probably convince some of the remaining skeptics in the countries experiencing them that AGW is real!

Shame it takes that rather than the real science to do so.

Regards,
Peter

New Orleans wasn't a global warming disaster it was an engneering disaster. Some people build a city on ground that is sinking and is 18 feet under sea level and surrounded by water on 3 sides. This is the equivalent of putting your pet hamster in a bowl and floating it in your bath tub with you and then blaming its drowning on the fact that when you rolled side ways to wash your butt crack you created a wave that flipped the bowl. The point is you should have never put the hamster in the bowl in the bathtub to begin with.

Yazzur wrote:

I think if you actually read the published papers, you'd find that the "absolutes" are not common at all. In fact, the 2007 IPCC reports are very careful to provide probabilities relative to statements.

Gosh, I guess I should thank all the pro-AGW advocates on this forum, who keep telling me I should read some actual so-called "peer reviewed" climatology papers, for their helpful advice.

But thanks, I already have.

Yazzur wrote:

...AR4 and the technical papers... indicate... a rough estimate is 50% of the increase from anthropological causes. So you do generally agree with the IPCC reports, whether you realized that or not.

No, I do not agree. You have misinterpreted my previous post.

The important point here is that we don't know enough about how the various factors affecting climate interact to assert anything with certainty regarding the importance of any one factor, other than insolation (sunlight).

Once you accept that, then you'll realize that any estimate of how much or how little human additions to greenhouse gasses are affecting climate can't be anything but a guess.

Since it is just a guess, then I agree that "about half" is a reasonable guess. But then, "an insignificant amount" and "less than experimental error" are also reasonable guesses.

Yazzur wrote:

I am not aware of any climate scientist that claim 100% of warming is from anthropological causes.

In a post in a previous thread, I quoted one single Internet article which gave no less than nine variations on the statement "global warming is real and man made". You'll note that's not "partially man made" or "mostly man made", it's just "man made", period.

Now I do agree that the actual science publications tend to be more cautious... to show more tendency to express proper scientific skepticism. But there is a deliberate policy on the part of many or most pro-CAGW advocates, a policy of exaggerating the danger of global warming and the degree of human influence, in what is communicated to the general public. They excuse this by saying it's necessary to get the attention of the public.

To quote Stephen H. Schneider, Prof., Dept. of Biological Sciences and Sr. Fellow Inst. for International Studies, Stanford University:

...we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.