BS: Where's the Global Warming

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 12:03 AM

BTW, I encourage EVERYONE to go to the website Sawzaw linked to.

It is www.skepticalscience.com.

I suspect that Sawz hopes that you to only see the chart he blicky'ed, but please look at the entire site:

www.skepticalscience.com

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 12:13 AM

While it is not a surprise

never forget that the most money spent to debunk and delay climate change research and response is Saudi Arabia. As partners with the Arabs firms like BP and Exon have merely been the local architects as well as Bush political appointees to counter any and all research, findings and pro active programs to reverse global warming effects.

When drill baby drill folks repeat "there ain't no such thang as climate change, they are speaking for the interests of Saudi Arabia and their petroleum sub subsideries that refine our gas.

Those guys have hard cash to pass out to people like the Bush family and Sarah Palin but your average Joe just gets screwed at the pump and dooms his future family for someone else's short term profit.

Go ahead and fight for outrageous profits for Saudi Arabia, but don't whine about all of the terrorists of 9-11 being Saudis.
You should not have it both ways. If you support the No Global warming Mantra then you support Saudi interests above the USA and in turn support the Saudi terrorists of 9-11

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,thurg
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 08:47 AM

Britain will be throwing 1.5 billion at the problem. Just heard it on the BBC lunchtime news. It turns my stomach to see this clown Brown taking taxpayers money and handing it out to any overseas tinpot group that can't run their own country. In the meantime, our local hospital faces closure due to lack of funds. Our two schools need 2.2 million spend on them and the government said "Sorry no money".

This government must be booted out next year. Hopefully the next one will get the workshy off their ass and into employment. Government figures show unemployment isn't rising as expected. The answer is very simple. Because nobody wants to live on unemployment benefit and get hassled by interviews, so they sign on the sick and leech. These figures are never released.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Ed T
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 09:45 AM

Interesting article ion Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7274/full/nature08555.html

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Ed T
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 09:47 AM

Sorry, Here it is
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7274/full/nature08555.html

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 10:33 AM

"Global warming is happening before our very eyes. All over the world, from the Arctic to Antarctica, scientists are observing the impacts of climate change. In the three years since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was drafted, hundreds of peer reviewed papers studying climate change have been published. A summary of the latest research has been compiled in The Copenhagen Diagnosis, released by the University of NSW and authored by 26 climate scientists. It's a resource heavy report, referencing hundreds of papers. Here are some of the highlights:

At a time when we need to be lowering our carbon footprint, global CO2 emissions have been sharply rising. In fact, the acceleration in fossil fuel CO2 emissions is tracking the worst case scenarios used by the IPCC AR4. Consequently, atmospheric CO2 is increasing ten times faster than any rate detected in ice core data over the last 22,000 years."

Details and charts can be seen here.

"Over the past 25 years, global temperature has warmed at a rate of ~0.2°C per decade. Superimposed over this long term trend is short term variability. Most of these short-term variations are due to internal oscillations like El Niño Southern Oscillation, the 11-year solar cycle and volcanic eruptions. Over periods less than a decade, such short-term variations can outweigh the anthropogenic global warming trend. For example, El Niño events can change global temperature by up to 0.2°C over a few years. The solar cycle imposes warming or cooling of 0.1°C over five years. However, neither El Niño, solar activity or volcanic eruptions make a significant contribution to long-term climate trends. Consequently, over the past decade (1999-2008), the warming trend is 0.19°C per decade. consistent with the long term trend."

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 01:51 PM

Funny how slogans about "getting the workshy back to work" always seem to go hand in hand with policies which throw hardworking people out of their jobs.

But that's drift, and toxic drift into the bargain.
....................

Evidence won't convince the climate change deniers. Neither the evidence of scientific research, nor of their own eyes. It's the same mindset as with so many other "Conspiracy Theories", it's not really about seeking out the truth.

And, as so often is the case, there actually is a conspiracy, it's just not the one that's being played up. There's a serious bid being made to sabotage efforts to behave rationally to respond to a major crisis that threatens to turn into a catastrophe.

The conspiracy is made up of people with money at stake and with short-term interests to defend, and with money to spend; it's made up of media guns for hire, because there's bestsellers to be assembled and peddled denouncing climate change as a fraud; there are ordinary people clutching at easy words that seem to offer a shield against a frightening future; and there are the politicians who see a way of using all this as a lever to give themselves a free ride into power.

It's comical enough in a way. But it is threatening our very survival.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 01:16 PM

140 top climate scientists ask for proof in an open letter to UN...

                                                 give us real science, not computer-generated predictions

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 01:40 PM

The Heartland Institute, to which pdq linked, is a conservative/libertarian think tank devoted to "finding free-market solutions" to all social problems. Among their many non-government interference free-market causes, they oppose all tobacco taxes as a method of discouraging smoking (one of the Heartland Institute's biggest contributors is the Philip Morris tobacco company), and they oppose any laws intended to limit smoking in public places. They maintain that any links between smoking and lung cancer is "junk science." They compiled a long list of "scientists" who agree with them.

This is also their answer to anything having to do with climate change and global warming.

By the way, computer generated projections are real science.

Gotta do a bit better than that, pdq!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 01:43 PM

from the letter:

"Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters and other natural phenomena."

*sigh*... I see their concern, but they, being scientists, should know that some dangers can't wait to be addressed until they are all convinced of "solid observational data".

The situation IS complex, as the Earth undergoes 4-5 different cyclical changes on many different time scales... dozens of years (El Ninó), hundreds of years(the worlds currents), 43,000 years (axis tilts), 100,000 years(Earths orbit)...and even millions of years(continental drift). These all affect climate, and are operating semi-indepentently of humans. (I think I left out one)

but... No matter what else is happening, the HUGE amount of fossil fuel burning and deforestation, etc. that we contribute cannot be ignored!

I repeat....even IF human effects were not exacerbating the standard cycles, reducing our carbon footprint and living more in harmony with the Earth cannot help but be positive for everything...except those whose bank accounts are tied to short-term exploitation.

Concerned scientists need to show their concern by gathering the most data possible, not just by providing nay-sayers with fuel for continued denial.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 18 Dec 09 - 12:35 PM

Dear Tia:

My question was what caused the first four spikes. Was it dinosaur farts?

Every spike is different. My parakeet said so ;}

Amos the climate expert:

"peer reviewed papers studying climate change have been published"

The papers that disagree were rejected. The authors were accused of being part of a conspiracy.

Bingo. All of the peer reviewed papers agree.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 18 Dec 09 - 12:53 PM

PS: even my goldfish knows that when I write "I am not denying" it means I am not denying. Apparently the average temperature has been rising recently but it could suddenly stop like it has in the past. It may have already stopped.

I am looking for proof that it is man made and stoppable. I see too many conflicts and people jumping on the bandwagon.

All these screechy warnings and "your a idiot if you disagree" talk is making be even more questioning.

I think the subjectivity is gone from the issue when people like Al Gore are so cocksure that they refuse to debate anything.

I think he is an arrogant hypocrite, stricken with the bighead (hubris).

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Dec 09 - 01:21 PM

"I am looking for proof that it is man made and stoppable."

"Proof" is something that happens in math! What we have is strong evidence and data that suggest the problem is real! It is not 'arrogant' to try to get that strong evidence out in as clear a manner as possible. It would be reprehensible to see a potential problem of that magnitude and NOT warn people!
Al Gore didn't invent this situation.He read data from concerned scientists and used his own bully pulpit to spread the word. Al Gore has being reading, writing and studying environmental issues for 20 years or more. I listened to an audio book by him 16 years ago, when I barely knew who who Al Gore was, and was strongly impressed by his thorough treatment of the issues.

You, Sawzaw, are being shallow & dense in your refusal to see the relevance of the data in proper context!

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 18 Dec 09 - 06:28 PM

Merry Christmas to all you blizzard sufferers in the Northeast.

Expect about one foot of Global Warming tomorrow in New York.

Perhaps near two feet in DC.

I here Bing Crosby singing...

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 01:33 AM

"He read data from concerned scientists and used his own bully pulpit to spread the word."

He used his bully pulpit to bully the world.

"This week former US vice-president Al Gore told the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen that new data suggests the Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime in as little as five to seven years from now."

"Gore said polar scientists told him that the latest data "suggest a 75% chance the entire polar ice cap will melt in summer within the next five to seven years"."


But climatologist Wieslaw Maslowski, the scientist whose work Gore cited as "fresh" evidence of the claim said, "It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at . . . I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 01:46 AM

Mr Bill:

Can you tell me what caused those previous spikes in Temperature and CO2?

They are all different but seem to be evenly spaced and peak out the same.

We are clearly on the cusp of another spike.

Is the current spike man made?

If so is it stoppable?

Got any answers or do you arrogantly avoid answering by calling someone asking questions shallow & dense?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 07:53 AM

Dear Sawzaw:
Natural astronomical cycles caused them.
Now please have your parakeet tell me why the last one is so different from the first four.
Even a dim-witted bird (which I am sure yours is not) can see that the "peak" is really not so peaky as the first four.
Why is that?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:12 AM

Looks like it has not peaked yet. Also it shows CO2 climbing while temperatures are dropping which conflicts with the CO2 causes warming theory, not that I am claiming that the theory is wrong.

It also shows CO2 bottoming about 2000 years ago then shooting up to a peak in the next approx 1000 years. Where was the mass consumption of fossil fuels 1000 years ago? I look at the chart and I see questions, not answers.

Tell me why the first peak is different from the second peak. What caused that variation?

What caused the first four peaks? You are not answering that question.

Here is the chart again

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 10:40 AM

Looks like it has not peaked yet. ***Agreed. but it also does show the same rise, then rapid fall. Looks like it is "stuck" on warm*** Also it shows CO2 climbing while temperatures are dropping which conflicts with the CO2 causes warming theory ***where feedbacks are involved, simple analysis of who is leading who cannot be done by looking at a graph of one parameter***, not that I am claiming that the theory is wrong. **good**

It also shows CO2 bottoming about 2000 years ago then shooting up to a peak in the next approx 1000 years. Where was the mass consumption of fossil fuels 1000 years ago? ***none of course*** I look at the chart and I see questions, not answers. ** no worries, I'll answer them for you***

Tell me why the first peak is different from the second peak. What caused that variation? ***Earth's flora, fauna and lansdcape change a lot over the 100000 years between peaks so some variation is expected****

What caused the first four peaks? You are not answering that question. ***get your parakeet to show you my previous post again. The first thing I did was answer your question!****

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 11:20 AM

Exactly TIA. A+ on that one.

If natural Astronomical cycles caused them, why isn't that the reason for the current cycle?

The cycles are almost evenly spaced so aren't we due for one anyway? Maybe mankind has finally been able to replace a natural cycle with one of it's own making.

Now tell me why the peaks are all different?

After you have politely cleared up all my undecidedness with out resorting to personal attacks, please answer my overarching question which in my opinion makes the current debate, which the real smart people claim is over because they have lost their subjectivity, irrelevant and short sighted.

If and after this greenhouse gas "crisis" is solved, How are we going to prevent the build up of heat in the atmosphere that is produced by even 100% clean and efficient energy sources of the future?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 12:19 PM

It is precisely the very recent deviation (since 1975) from the natural cycle that demonstrates that the current conditions are not driven by the same old astronomical cycles. These cycles are inevitable. But, climate change is occurring far more rapidly now than at any time in the past 800000 years. Note that the Vostok ice core record you linked to is at a scale that simply cannot show the industrial revolution, let alone post-1975.
What that graph shows is the 100000 year Milankovitch Cycle. Again, you need to read more carefully because I just did explicitly tell you why the peaks are different. I will do it again in more detail:
There are feedbacks between T and CO2 that make the relationship sensitive and unstable. CO2 can cause warming, which causes outgassing of CO2 from the oceans, and CO2 affects plant growth which for some plants causes them to sequester more CO2, and for others, possibly the opposite. It is way too interdependent to expect a world with a particular flora and distribution of oceans to react exactly the same way 100000 years later when there is a different flora, and different oceans.

As to the overarching question. In the long term, there is no stopping climate change. There is no stopping dramatic climate change. Rate of change is everything. I posted this on the Palin vs. Gore thread, so sorry to everyone for the repeat, but it answers Sawzaw's overarching question:

A static environment is not the goal. We realize that this is impossible. Earth processes will never allow this. Climate has changed in the past, and uniformitarianism assures that it will change in the future.

The issue is not "change" versus "no change". It is "change on a geologic timescale" versus "change on a human time scale". "Natural" climate change is typically slow, proceeding at a pace that allows flora and fauna to adapt or migrate. Yes, there have been sudden global climate changes in the past. And, every one that we know of is associated with a mass extinction event in which the contemporary dominant genera disappear (and Homo is certainly among the modern dominants).

Today, climate is changing, and at a pace never before seen in the geologic record. There is good evidence that human activities contribute to this pace. How shall the world's flora and fauna react? It is proceeding too fast for evolution to help us adapt. The world is too full of anthropogenic barriers to allow sudden mass migrations. So, the response of Earth's biota cannot be uniformitarian.

Shall we throw up our hands and admit that we are quite possibly fuct?

Or, shall we acknowledge the possibility that we are contributing to the pace of climate change, and try to slow it?

Or, you may suggest something else.

A lot of people are simply in denial because trying to slow the pace will certainly have a dramatic effect on their lifestyle. They rationalize this by saying that the science is uncertain or even flawed. But they are not exercising the Precautionary Principle that they use in all other aspects of their lives: If there is baby formula with a 1% chance of causing adverse effects, we would all stop using it immediately. So why, in this instance, are we insisting on 100% certainty that we are harming our babies before we stop? **

Happy Holidays!

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 12:49 PM

Thanks to TIA for laying out the details. I am not a scientist.... my degree is in Philosophy, where I studied how to recognize good & bad thinking.

I still consider it 'good thinking' to pay attention to the large **majority** of experts who see some serious data pointing to human causation as part of this situation.

I consider it 'bad thinking' to resort to wishful thinking and cherry-picking odd bits of data and presenting them out of context in order to cast doubt on what we...and those polar bears... can plainly see.

It sure is strange how those who deny the human element in climate change and those who want to defeat US health care reform and those who voted against Obama...etc... seem to have similar political stances. A pattern? Hmmmm...

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 01:08 PM

"Expect about one foot of Global Warming tomorrow in New York.
Perhaps near two feet in DC."

What we got here is "climatary anomaly" ...it has been one of the warmest years on record, and sunshine predicted for later in the week...but we'll take all the holiday wishes.

Merry Christmas to you, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 19 Dec 09 - 04:56 PM

More weather=climate silliness.
Right now, it is warmer in Thule Greenland than in Washington DC, so the Arctic must surely be melting, right?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 06:37 AM

I dont think anybody denies that human activity is a factor, I dont like the way "denier" is often used in these discussions.....like "holocaust denier".

Whether it is a MAJOR factor(which I believe), is still very much open to question, so dont let us start waving the tar brush around right now.

To me the important point is, IF we really believe human activity is the major factor in climate change and co2 production....how far are we prepared to go to combat it?

Are we prepared to bring down the system which encourages consumerism, or are we only prepared to tinker with what is already in place?

That's a very difficult question.....but if we are not prepared to answer it, we should just turn over and go back to sleep.
Abusing those who think the cure will be worse than the disease is no answer at all.......Ake

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 04:40 PM

Here is a good example of subjective research. in this set of charts covering global temperatures over the last 1 million, 150 thousand, 16 thousand and 150 years.

Look at the third chart. Notice that for the last 8000 years or so the average temperature has been declining. During those 8000 years there are dips and peaks far more sudden and extreme that the current exaggerated one shown in the last chart.

Now look at right side of the second chart. It shows the world heating up between 16000 and 4000 years ago and then cooling down beginning 4000 years ago.

Now notice that the third chart which is supposed to be a blow up of the right side of the second chart, does not even match.

You will notice the last chart was scaled at 1 degree while the others are scaled at 5 degrees. Why? To make the most variations seem more dramatic.

Why not make the last chart a blow up of the last 2000 years? That would show a 1 degree drop but nooooo, we can't have anything like that. It goes against the mindset that the smart people are attempting to foist on the unwashed masses and damn do they get arrogant when they are unsuccessful.

It is an example of "we know the world is heating up now how do we cherry pick data to prove it".

I will say this though. If the first chart is accurate and if you take the mean of the first full swing from high to low and draw a line to the mean of the current swing, it shows an overall rise of about 1/4 of a degree C. or 1/2 degree F. over the last million years.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 06:37 PM

From Phys.Org:

"Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases.


The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels was associated with substantial global warming about 4.5 million years ago during the early Pliocene.
Coauthor Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the study indicates that the sensitivity of Earth's temperature to increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is greater than has been expected on the basis of climate models that only include rapid responses.

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, leading to increased atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures. Relatively rapid feedbacks include changes in atmospheric water vapor, clouds, and sea ice. These short-term changes probably set in motion long-term changes in other factors--such as the extent of continental ice sheets, vegetation cover on land, and deep ocean circulation--that lead to additional global warming, Ravelo said.

"The implication is that these slow components of the Earth system, once they have time to change and equilibrate, may amplify the effects of small changes in the greenhouse gas composition of the atmosphere," she said.

The researchers used sediment cores drilled from the seafloor at six different locations around the world to reconstruct carbon dioxide levels over the past five million years. They found that during the early and middle Pliocene (3 to 5 million years ago), when average global temperatures were at least 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was similar to today's levels, about 30 percent higher than preindustrial levels.

"Since there is no indication that the future will behave differently than the past, we should expect a couple of degrees of continued warming even if we held carbon dioxide concentrations at the current level," said lead author Mark Pagani, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University.

Provided by University of California - Santa Cruz (news : web)

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 06:46 PM

"If there is baby formula with a 1% chance of causing adverse effects, we would all stop using it immediately."

Well it should be easy and should not cost anything to change baby formulas.

Then OTOH if your baby was starving and it was the only thing you have to feed them it would ensure a 99% survival.

Your analogy is not analogous.


438,000 deaths each year from smoking.

Why do people smoke?


Motor vehicle crashes = Deaths per year: 43,200

Why does anybody travel in an automobile?


In midsize cars, the death rate in single-vehicle crashes was 17 percent lower than in minicars.

Hmmmm. Wht does the Givernment allow manufactureres build small cars?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 08:40 PM

Per Amos:

"Since there is no indication that the future will behave differently than the past, we should expect a couple of degrees of continued warming even if we held carbon dioxide concentrations at the current level," said lead author Mark Pagani, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University.



So how is reducing CO2 emissions going to turn around global warming?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 09:13 PM

"it answers Sawzaw's overarching question"

No it does not.

The question is about the future when and if the suspected global warming from CO2 can be stopped.

How are we going to prevent the build up of heat in the atmosphere that is produced by even 100% clean and efficient energy sources of the future?

If you look at the chart where you are fixated on the last spike. look at the bottom of the dips.

You will see temperature rising while CO2 is falling. That conflicts with the unarguable consensus.

Then look at the peaks where CO2 is still rising after Temperatures start falling. Another conflict with the unarguable consensus.

***Earth's flora, fauna and lansdcape change a lot over the 100000 years between peaks so some variation is expected****

So variations in the peaks are expected but you keep saying the last one is different. Why is it that only the difference in the last one matter?.

Are we due for a peak or not? If so why is it not caused by the same things that caused the last 4?

When a minor piece of data conflicts, you claim it is minor, unimportant and does not matter.

When a minor thing agrees with your bandwagon mindset, you claim it is very important and proves you are right.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 09:26 PM

The combination of your deepseated apathetic indifference and your poverty of intellect are overpowering, Sawz.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 10:18 PM

Amos: So that means what? Does it mean this fact you posted is wrong?

"we should expect a couple of degrees of continued warming even if we held carbon dioxide concentrations at the current level,"

Does it mean you need ad hominem attacks to cover up for your lack of knowledge?

This chart should unleash a flurry if hostile uncivil remarks from the Illuminati.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 05:30 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming?

Blowing out of Gore's ass!!

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: TheSnail
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 07:16 AM

Sawzaw's latest chart is of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation index which, as far as I can make out, is a measure of the sea temperature along the Pacific coast of North America normalised over the period so as to separate the oscillations from any long term trends.

See Is Pacific Decadal Oscillation the Smoking Gun for more details.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 07:39 AM

Sawzaw,
You are being intentionally obtuse.
Your position is clearly ideological and fixed.
I will spend my efforts elsewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 12:09 PM

A few people, (I think Little Hawk was one) have asked the question 'how come a small amount of CO2 can have such a large impact on our climate? I've been trying to find a good reference for this that doesn't get terribly technical very quickly.
This is the best I can find so far
How do we know CO2 is causing warming?

My understanding (as a chemist not a physicist) is that, molecule for molecule, CO2 is a much stronger greenhouse gas than water. That is, its infra-red absorption bands will be more intense. There is generally more water in the atmosphere so that will have more impact in total than CO2. Some people quote 98% of total contribution from water, others say its more like like 60%. If you believe the first figure, then CO2 is about as strong a greenhouse gas as water, if you believe the second figure, then its hundreds of times stronger (which is apparently what the basic physics would suggest).

So we (global humanity) are currently conducting a world-wide experiment to see what happens when you dramatically increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - you might say the ultimate 'field trial'!

Hope this is useful
KP

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 12:44 PM

No, it means you cannot follow the first-order logical implications of a statement without twisting things, Sawz. That's all.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 01:57 PM

"My understanding (as a chemist not a physicist) is that, molecule for molecule, CO2 is a much stronger greenhouse gas than water." ~ GUEST,KP

Well, if we think about a molecule's ability to retain heat, it depend upon the mass of the molecule.

Molar mass of H=1, C=12, O=16 (all approx.)

So CO₂ has a molar mass of 44 while water has a molar mass of 18.

Yes, CO₂ may be a more powerful per unit than water vapor, but at 361 parts per million (a number I got from an Israeli website that does not seem to be as politicized as US and UN-sponsored websites).

That means that for every CO₂ molecule in the lower atmosphere, there are 2770 molecules of someting else. This is actually a "CO₂-starved" condition from an historical perspective.

Yes, heat leaving the Earth has the chance of striking another type of molecule 2770 time the chances of striking the a molecule of CO₂.

The GW proponents claims just don'tmake sence. Do the math.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 02:05 PM

PDQ:

I think your math is a little one-dimensional. The issue is how much heat-retention increase occurs when CO2 is added to atmosphere, given its greater molar weight. Also your statistical probability seems to assign the same size to all molecules, which is surely oversimplification.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 02:33 PM

Actually water vapor (and methane) are many times more powerful greenhouse gasses than CO2. But because of feedbacks, Earth's climate system is very sensitive. CO2 is the one that humans have been pumping inot the atmosphere, but a slight warming due to CO2 causes increased evaporation (water vapor) which makes a lot more warming. Similarly, a slight warming due to CO2 can thaw permafrost which releases huge amounts of methane and accelerates warming. CO2 is not necessarily powerful in itself, but it has giant leverage over Earth's climate system.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 03:45 PM

Methane gas? At 1.7 parts per million it can barely be detected. It is not important in the GW theory.

Here is a statement made in 1971. I can't give proper attribution because the bibliography referred to has 2000 entris, but here 'tis anyway:

"Largely out of simple curiosity about geochemical cycles involving minor carbon and hydrogen compounds, in the 1960s and 1970s, scientists cataloged a variety of sources for methane in the atmosphere. It turned out that emissions from biological sources outranked mineral sources. Especially important were bacteria, producing the methane ("swamp gas") that bubbles up in wetlands. That included humanity's countless rice paddies.

These studies, however, gave no reason to think that the gas had any significance for climate change. Thus an authoritative 1971 study of climate almost ignored methane. "To the best of our knowledge," the review concluded, "most atmospheric CH4 is produced [and destroyed] by microbiological activity in soil and swamps." The annual turnover that the experts estimated was so great that any addition from human sources added only a minor fraction. "For this reason, and because CH4 has no direct effects on the climate or the biosphere, it is considered to be of no importance for this report." The authors recommended monitoring the atmospheric levels of the gases SO2, H2S, NH3, and even oxygen, but not methane."

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: TIA
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 04:24 PM

Yes. Methane. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. But its concentration is smaller. It probably contributes only 28% of the warming that CO2 does (Dlugokencky et al., 2003).

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~houwelng/PUBLICATIONS/2003GL018126.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 05:15 PM

Actually, I find the methane situation rather more scary than the CO2 one. We know that:

Methane is at least 20 times worse as a GHG than CO2;

There are vast quantities of it locked up in clathrates and in frozen soil, so there is potential for a nasty positive feedback effect if this gets released by warming/deforestation;

Other pollution (Carbon monoxide, sulphur oxides) causes methane to persist longer in the atmosphere;

There has been at least one methane induced major climate change and mass extinction
'PETM'

Also we probably don't know enough about the sources and sinks of methane.

KP

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 05:21 PM

The link from TIA is about 127 KB and is...

                         right here

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 05:47 PM

We certainly know about one major source, as we have all been sinks for it at one time or another, not to mention the image of Jimmy Swaggert on the garage wall...



A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 09:43 AM

"Your position is clearly ideological and fixed"
You must be joking. I am looking for proof and finding none, just Ideological bullshit and logical fallacies.
There is no possibility that you could be wrong is there?

If CO2 causes global warming, I can understand how temperature could overshoot CO2. But That means rising CO2 could not overshoot the temperature.


"without twisting things"
Amos claims that looking at things from different points of view is twisting things. How inflexible, how fixed can a persons mind be?

When one lacks the ability to determine the truth by themselves they must accept the conclusion of someone else and criticize all who disagree. They must jump on the bandwagon for fear of looking stupid.

The bandwagon fallacy is committed by arguments that appeal to the growing popularity of an idea as a reason for accepting it as true. They take the mere fact that an idea suddenly attracting adherents as a reason for us to join in with the trend and become adherents of the idea ourselves.

This is a fallacy because there are many other features of ideas than truth that can lead to a rapid increase in popularity. Peer pressure, tangible benefits, or even mass stupidity could lead to a false idea being adopted by lots of people. A rise in the popularity of an idea, then, is no guarantee of its truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 10:02 AM

Rajendra Kumar Pachauri (born August 20, 1940) has served as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002. He has also been director general TERI, a research and policy organization in India, and chancellor of TERI University. He has become an icon for the LGBT community in India as a result of offering internships to younger members of the LGBT community in order to promote acceptance within the country.

Telegraph UK

Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as "the world's top climate scientist"), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in 'carbon trading' and 'sustainable technologies', which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international 'climate industry'.

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri's links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world's leading 'climate official' can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC's recommendations.

The issue of Dr Pachauri's potential conflict of interest was first publicly raised last Tuesday when, after giving a lecture at Copenhagen University, he was handed a letter by two eminent 'climate sceptics'. One was the Stephen Fielding, the Australian Senator who sparked the revolt which recently led to the defeat of his government's 'cap and trade scheme'. The other, from Britain, was Lord Monckton, a longtime critic of the IPCC's science, who has recently played a key part in stiffening opposition to a cap and trade bill in the US Senate.

Their open letter first challenged the scientific honesty of a graph prominently used in the IPCC's 2007 report, and shown again by Pachauri in his lecture, demanding that he should withdraw it. But they went on to question why the report had not declared Pachauri's personal interest in so many organisations which seemingly stood to profit from its findings.

The letter, which included information first disclosed in last week's Sunday Telegraph, was circulated to all the 192 national conference delegations, calling on them to dismiss Dr Pachauri as IPCC chairman because of recent revelations of his conflicting interests.

The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director-general in 2001. Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India's largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group, with interests ranging from steel, cars and energy to chemicals, telecommunications and insurance (and now best-known in the UK as the owner of Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus, Britain's largest steel company).

Although TERI has extended its sponsorship since the name change, the two concerns are still closely linked.

In India, Tata exercises enormous political power, shown not least in the way it has managed to displace hundreds of thousands of poor tribal villagers in the eastern states of Orissa and Jarkhand to make way for large-scale iron mining and steelmaking projects.

Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries, which may now seem odd for a man who has since become best known for his opposition to fossil fuels. He was, for instance, a director until 2003 of India Oil, the country's largest commercial enterprise, and until this year remained as a director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, its largest electricity producer.

In 2005, he set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.

However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved, such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 10:20 AM

world's leading 'climate official' can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC's recommendations.

Dr Pachauri's TERI empire has also extended worldwide, with branches in the US, the EU and several countries in Asia. TERI Europe, based in London, of which he is a trustee (along with Sir John Houghton, one of the key players in the early days of the IPCC and formerly head of the UK Met Office) is currently running a project on bio-energy, financed by the EU.

Another project, co-financed by our own Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the German insurance firm Munich Re, is studying how India's insurance industry, including Tata, can benefit from exploiting the supposed risks of exposure to climate change. Quite why Defra and UK taxpayers should fund a project to increase the profits of Indian insurance firms is not explained.

Even odder is the role of TERI's Washington-based North American offshoot, a non-profit organisation, of which Dr Pachauri is president. Conveniently sited on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol, this body unashamedly sets out its stall as a lobbying organisation, to "sensitise decision-makers in North America to developing countries' concerns about energy and the environment".

TERI-NA is funded by a galaxy of official and corporate sponsors, including four branches of the UN bureaucracy; four US government agencies; oil giants such as Amoco; two of the leading US defence contractors; Monsanto, the world's largest GM producer; the WWF (the environmentalist campaigning group which derives much of its own funding from the EU) and two world leaders in the international 'carbon market', between them managing more than $1 trillion (£620 billion) worth of assets.

All of this is doubtless useful to the interests of Tata back in India, which is heavily involved not just in bio-energy, renewables and insurance but also in 'carbon trading', the worldwide market in buying and selling the right to emit CO2. Much of this is administered at a profit by the UN under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol, which the Copenhagen treaty was designed to replace with an even more lucrative successor.

Under the CDM, firms and consumers in the developed world pay for the right to exceed their 'carbon limits' by buying certificates from those firms in countries such as India and China which rack up 'carbon credits' for every renewable energy source they develop – or by showing that they have in some way reduced their own 'carbon emissions'.

It is one of these deals, reported in last week's Sunday Telegraph, which is enabling Tata to transfer three million tonnes of steel production from its Corus plant in Redcar to a new plant in Orissa, thus gaining a potential £1.2 billion in 'carbon credits' (and putting 1,700 people on Teesside out of work).

More than three-quarters of the world 'carbon' market benefits India and China in this way. India alone has 1,455 CDM projects in operation, worth $33 billion (£20 billion), many of them facilitated by Tata – and it is perhaps unsurprising that Dr Pachauri also serves on the advisory board of the Chicago Climate Exchange, the largest and most lucrative carbon-trading exchange in the world, which was also assisted by TERI in setting up India's own carbon exchange.

But this is peanuts compared to the numerous other posts to which Dr Pachauri has been appointed in the years since the UN chose him to become the world's top 'climate-change official'.

In 2007, for instance, he was appointed to the advisory board of Siderian, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specialising in 'sustainable technologies', where he was expected to provide the Fund with 'access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level',

In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise £100 billion.

In the same year he became a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by EDF and E.On, two of Europe's largest electricity firms, to promote 'bio-energy'. This year Dr Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a 'strategic adviser', and was made chairman of the advisory board to the Asian Development Bank, strongly supportive of CDM trading, whose CEO warned that failure to agree a treaty at Copenhagen would lead to a collapse of the carbon market.

The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on. He has become head of Yale University's Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding. He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank. He is Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and was until recently an adviser to Toyota Motors. Recalling his origins as a railway engineer, he is even a policy adviser to SNCF, France's state-owned railway company.

Meanwhile, back home in India, he serves on an array of influential government bodies, including the Economic Advisory Committee to the prime minister, holds various academic posts and has somehow found time in his busy life to publish 22 books.

Dr Pachauri never shrinks from giving the world frank advice on all matters relating to the menace of global warming. The latest edition of TERI News quotes him as telling the US Environmental Protection Agency that it must go ahead with regulating US carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to pass its cap and trade bill.

It reports how, in the days before Copenhagen, he called on the developing nations which had been historically responsible for the global warming crisis to make 'concrete commitments' to aiding developing countries such as India with funding and technology – while insisting that India could not agree to binding emissions targets. India, he said, must bargain for large-scale subsidies from the West for developing solar power, and Western funds must be made available for geo-engineering projects to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

As a vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri repeated his call for the world to eat less meat to cut down on methane emissions (as usual he made no mention of what was to be done about India's 400 million sacred cows). He further called for a ban on serving ice in restaurants and for meters to be fitted to all hotel rooms, so that guests could be charged a carbon tax on their use of heating and air-conditioning.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 10:22 AM

One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies for which he works publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.

As for TERI itself, Dr Pachauri's main job for nearly 30 years, it is so coy about money that it does not even publish its accounts – the financial statement amounts to two income and expenditure pie charts which contain no detailed figures.

Dr Pachauri is equally coy about TERI's links with Tata, the company which set it up in the 1970s and whose name it continued to bear until 2002, when it was changed to just The Energy Research Institute. A spokesman at the time said "we have not severed our past relationship with the Tatas, the change is only for convenience".

But the real question mark over TERI's director-general remains over the relationship between his highly lucrative commercial jobs and his role as chairman of the IPCC.

TERI have, for example, become a preferred bidder for Kuwaiti contracts to clean up the mess left by Saddam Hussein in their oilfields in 1991. The $3 billion (£1.9 billion) cost of the contracts has been provided by the UN. If successful, this would be tenth time TERI have benefited from a contract financed by the UN.

Certainly no one values the services of TERI more than the EU, which has included Dr Pachauri's institute as a partner in no fewer than 12 projects designed to assist in devising the EU's policies on mitigating the effects of the global warming predicted by the IPCC.

But whether those 1,700 Corus workers on Teesside will next month be so happy to lose their jobs to India, thanks to the workings of that international 'carbon market' about which Dr Pachauri is so enthusiastic, is quite another matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 11:26 AM

Just on a hunch, I looked at other examples of stories from that link....wow, says I.

Then, still working on a hunch, I searched Google using the term "Most conservative newspapers". What did I get? Link after link describing "The Telegraph" as one of the most conservative.

Why am I not surprised that they publish article after article hyping supposed 'evidence' of shady dealings by anyone opposed to their basic opinions?.... and MORE articles belittling Obama and his presidency.

So...DID DR Pachauri make some money in his enterprises? Might he be willing to push certain policies to make his enterprises more profitable? Maybe so.... does that negate any basic truths about the reality of what is happening to global climate? Read a few NON-conservative newspapers and see what you think.