Donate SIGN UP

Global Warming

Avatar Image
rov1100 | 12:32 Fri 04th Nov 2011 | Science
239 Answers
As the global temperature has remained steady for the past 10 consecutive years can we assume the panic is over? Or is it that Britains efforts (only 2% of the world's emitters) have succeeded in creating equilibrium?
Gravatar

Answers

21 to 40 of 239rss feed

First Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next Last

Best Answer

No best answer has yet been selected by rov1100. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.

For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.
Kayless // but son of krakatoa puts out more than mankind has been erupting continuously since the 19th century! What about the Icelandic erruptions, undid an estimated 10 years of mankinds efforts? So all the volcanic erruptions don't count?? It's like fixing a small leak in a boat only to discover that one whole side is missing! //

This is a very common myth repeated widely by skeptics who don't even bother to check the facts. In fact total volcanic emissions are estimated at less than one percent of human emissions.

No spikes in carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere occur following major volcanic eruptions definitely clearing them as the potential source of rises.

Like many, Kayless doesn't appreciate the magnitude of the emissions from human activity. Last year humans burnt two cubic miles of solid coal. Even more of our energy come from oil. Do try to get a perspective.

Any objective analysis by anyone intelligent enough to understand the science will reveal that Climate Change is a very real problem being caused by humans.
Question Author
Its nice to know how often the experts get it wrong. Whether is Global cooling, Higgs Boson and you can imagine the ridicule Einstein got for rewriting Newtons laws. We once had a flat earth society. Maybe global warming will go the same way.

You need an open mind and for Beso to criticize anyone who disagrees with him is just being a bigot.
If you or anyone else have looked, you will see whatever efforts you appear to be referring to CO2 has risen more steeply and only a small dip in 2008 when production was reduced by a world recession, which is the only way to actually do it.

As for the climate, I think most groups now realise after the record El Nino in 1998 temperatures have now stabilised, for the simple reason forecasting equipment was never designed or able to see more than a few months ahead maximum, and the only action man ought to take on climate is 'wait, see, and react'. More new studies are now shedding light on the previously little understood solar influences, and feedback properties of clouds and water vapour, and although the IPCC and BBC have not yet chosen to acknowledge them in fact the view that most climate change is natural and we have been confused by a high level of CO2 and jumped to a conclusion it must be related to temperature it is now pretty unlikely as the two have now diverged.

Further to that there is the lab experiment which assigned 1C of the 33C greenhouse effect to CO2 at 260ppm. The only reason the IPCC have acted scared over global warming was they thought increased sea evaporation would increase the real greenhouse gas (0ver 90% of the total) of water vapour by making more clouds overall. In fact this experiment is half way through, CO2 is exactly 50% higher and the IPCC graph since 1850 is 0.8C higher on an existing 22,000 year rising trend. This means with a 50% rise in CO2 already average temperatures have risen pretty well in line with zero feedback. Outside indications are the sea level fell 10 mm in the last two years, after a 3mm or so rise till then for over a century (which has never increased at all since then but slowed down as it has since the last ice age), and arctic ice, where the only warming had been taking place (although the Antarctic has grown with 90% of the world ice) has just frozen at 40% higher than the average rate by November.

If any human activity was responsible for the rise and fall of the temperature then the CO2 would have had to follow both the rise and the fall but it only gave a rough impression of correlation but pretty unlikely to see any more than the most limited causation now the experiment is running its course in the real atmosphere.
It is the sceptics who need to open their minds instead of steadfastly refusing to accept the science. You start by assuming that the science on Gloabl Warming is incorrect and then fit you arguments around that.

Global Cooling is a concept that is overhyped by sceptics. In fact it was based solely on the observed patterns of glaciation which indicated that we were due for a return to colder times. Subsequent investigations have shown that there are factors overwhelming the natural cycles evidenced in the geological record.

The Higgs Boson is a hypothetical explanation for the underlying structure of the universe. It stands because it fits the behaviour but is not based on anything but supposition. Like the colliders built before it, the whole point of the LHC was to test if the hypothesis could be supported by observations that are predicted by the theory. The jury is by no means out on that yet as the range of expected masses have not been fully explored and there are a number of reasons why the Higgs boson might not be observable at all. If it is not found then the scientists will have to come up with a better hypothesis. that is how science works.

Also note that the previous colliders found the hypothetical particles they were designed to observe and hence backed the scientific therories. Not finding the Higgs would be a single failure among a vast body of theory that has proved to be correct.

Yes many scientist rejected Einstein's work. It took a generational change for it to reach mainstream acceptance. However far from being a supporting position for the rejection of global warming, this is actually a perfect parallel to the views of the sceptics who won't accept the new science.

Only the ignorant continue to reject the reality of global warming in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence. The bigots are the sceptics who despite having no knowledge in the field continue to arrogantly insist they know better than the assembled wisdom of the entire scientific community.
As for David H. What a complete load of cobblers. It is one of the most profoundly stupid posts I have ever seen on this issue.

Global temperatures have not stabilised during the past decade but continue to rise. Indeed they continued to rise through the recent solar minimum.

There is no evidence whatsoever for the claim that there are previously unknown solar cycles involved. These claims were demolished almost as they were introduced yet sceptics continue to present them to fools who swallow it because they so desperately want to avoid the facts and wouldn't dare investigate even if they had the intellect to do so.

The second paragraph is almost pure gibberish.

A claim that the sea level has fallen 10 mm in the past two years is not only a blatent lie but but utterly ridiculous. Did you even bother to check this figure? No of course you didn't yet you repeat it here like you are some kiind of expert.

Temperature fluctuations continue as normal. They are not due to man's activities and an expectation that man's activities should be reflected in the short term shows a complete ignorance of the huge stabilisiing influence of the oceans in everything related to climate.

Solar cycles are involved and we do see this but the upward trend is unabated and is consistent with the models used by the IPCC. The accuracy of the models continue to increase as more and more factors are accounted for. The goal is to produce a model that accurately matches the detail of the climate as evidence by the geological record. Just recently a big step was made in atmospheric modelling leading to accurately matching the temperature distributions between the poles and the equator for a big part of geological history.

As accuracy increases the models are increasingly showing that the expected changes will be at the worst end of the range of values prediced by earlier models.

The wait and see approach is ridiculous. Everything is telling us that continuing like were are will lead to changes in the environment that are irreversible on anything less than geological time scales. The sensible solution is to begin action now. There will be no harm in the unlikely event that things are not as bad as predicted but we face disaster by doing nothing if the predicitons are correct.

Every day that fools spread the combustion industry propaganda is a lost opportunity.
Unfortunately, as poor Dr B has demonstrated, you all only know what the media allow you to, unless you make your own enquiries as all studies are available online. The Economist and all other papers on that day missed a bit out. The general conclusion on the temperatures was reported, and then the conclusion was:

“Such changes may be independent responses to a common forcing (e.g.greenhouse gases); however, it is also possible that some of the land warming is a direct response to changes in the AMO region. If the long-term AMO changes have been driven by greenhouse gases then the AMO region may serve as a positive feedback that amplifies the effect of greenhouse gas forcing over land. On the other hand, some of the long-term change in the AMO could be driven by natural variability, e.g. fluctuations in thermohaline flow. In that case the human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.”

Now without that bit the rest is totally meaningless. All it did was mention the correlation, and although the possible explanations for causation were included they were not reported. Everyone was conned and I am actually in the process of filing an official complaint about it.

Meanwhile it's so easy to quote the IPCC as they spend so much money making sure they are quoted. But they have many more quotes they do not want mentioned. The 2007 report gives as many advantages of possible warming than not, none have ever been reported although freely available to read online. Last week a Japanese satellite completed two year's of results and found the more industrialised countries all absorbed CO2 while the less inhabited added it. Who here knew that? Because the media didn't tell you. Three independent papers this year all affirmed solar links with temperature including the Met Office, the sea and ice levels speak for themselves but how many papers tell you they are changing when it's in the wrong direction?

The combined material in all the new data tells us one thing for certain. There is no certainty in either the past, present or least of all future climate, and anyone who claims there is has put their fingers in their ears and whistled every time a doubt has been raised by new findings. Even NASA have found water vapour is replaced by added CO2 from their AQUA satellite, reducing the greenhouse effect by swapping a powerful gas for a weak one. Who knows the absorption spectra of CO2 here and saturation point? Well I can answer the second for you, no one. Scientists haven't a clue how much more CO2 can be added to the atmosphere before it stops saving heat as a) it's never happened here while we've been able to do it, and b) How can you realistically run such an experiment in advance? That's not me talking, but the accepted state of science on it.

And don't worry about my status for reporting, all I've done is share the work of scientists who are qualified as you won't be likely to see them otherwise. as illustrated perfectly by the missing part of the BEST article which reversed its meaning, I'm just the messenger and suspect you may have a personal agenda here beso. The first time I called someone on it was a caller before me on LBC who sounded very much like you, and they said it was Lord Winston, a Labour peer employed to do just that. Most people outside the field only tend to if they're heavily into green politics, which is hardly impartial either. I have studies for every one of my claims, are you saying there's something wrong with every single one of the scientists who wrote them, and if so why are they wrong and the others not?
I’m not going to get bogged down on the Global Warming argument on AB because it has been done to death so many times over. As this question shows, the answer cannot be resolved and will only be settled when our descendents are all here in a couple of centuries time, still living in much the same conditions as we are now (but a lot poorer).

I’ll just say this: in the course of my lifetime I have lost count of the number of times I have been told than mankind was doomed because of various prophesies. I cannot remember them all, but some of them that spring immediately to mind:

- Half the world’s population will be infected with AIDS.
- Another half will die from swine ‘flu.
- Another half will die from BSE (total in the UK, less than 30 cases I think)
- Millions more will be infected with Bird ‘flu (30 million doses of vaccine dumped in the UK)
- “Acid Rain” will wipe out most of the vegetation on earth

(to mention but a few).

All of these prophesies were made by “experts” (who mainly just extrapolated some short term trends, compounded them up and produced long term forecasts). All of them proved woefully inadequate and can now be seen as the work of a few well meaning but misguided cranks.

What’s different this time? (Apart from the fact that various governments, most notably European, believe they can control the climate by setting up a government department, building useless wind farms and taxing people to pay for them).
cont:

I'm amazed someone has directly called me a liar here, I've been a member for 8 years and if I dared to quote rubbish my future credibility would be close to zero. If someone doesn't trust claims without sources then I can always add them, and there wasn't just one but two reports within a week, the first showed a 6mm fall last year while the second which I can find more easily was he one I quoted, showing a 10mm fall over two years. But the wonderful quotes which followed were straight out of the Al Gore PR handbook and so laughable you'd need to be hard of thinking not to analyse them in seconds, and I quote:

"400ppm was the level in the Pliocene Epoch. Despite the Sun being slightly cooler than today, temperatures were two to three degress Celcius higher and the ocean was 25 meters deeper."

As New Judge quite rightly points out, you can't extrapolate from a tiny amount and find a huge amount, it's bad science and doesn't work, and all the examples show how. Let me explain. Our CO2 is now 390ppm, so beso has just said in front of all of us that a 10ppm rise should make the sea rise 25 meters. I'm not good at maths but that even looks wacky to me. Surely that should tell everyone else that as CO2 now is not associated with massive sea levels the two cannot be connected? Or have I missed something?

Here's my sea level quote and can produce a link for each of my claims if requested http://www.real-scien...nues-historic-decline and as for the even funnier joke about the 'combustion industry' (I didn't know Brock's were part of the global warming debate, but remain to be educated) anyone who actually learns a little economics would know that CO2 restrictions raise the price of oil, fuel and energy, so the 'combustion industry' (besides the boom on fireworks night, pun fully intended) actually get a lot more for the same limited amount of resources, so why Shell, BP and many others support cap and trade and have a green PR campaign themselves. Energy is not an elastic commodity so by raising the price you will always maintain the consumption level, even when the poor drop out as the rich will pay the remainder. These oil magnates support global warming as much as Al Gore as the free carbon credits have earned them billions already in the last year. So thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain the position and yours, and please let people make their own minds up, but on adequate data and not just what the biased left allow them to read.
Well your examples of doom sound as if they are taken from newspapers not researchers.

What's different this time?

This time there is a consensus

Every reputable research body in the world backs this

Every National Science body

Every single one.

If you disagree find me a research body (not an individual howling in the wilderness) that is ready to say than Human emissions are not causing climate change.

I you can't I suggest you either become a world expert on climate physics or listen to people that are
Of course they were taken from newspapers and television reports, jake. How else are we to be informed about such trivia?

The theories were all developed by "experts", there was widespread concensus at the time. The difference was, nobody took any notice of them.
Oh, sorry, apart from the UK government who bought 30miilion does of swine flu vaccine and later dumped it in the river.
David, I don't feel "poor", just trying to read and learn as a non-expert. I agree beso's post is out of line - ad hominem attacks don't advance understanding.

New Judge raises the issue several past "scares"; it seems to me in many cases (e.g. acid rain) the predicted future may have been altered by current actions (e.g. trying to reduce sulfur emissions). As someone who seems to be up on all the issues (David), do you feel that any current attempts to reduce carbon emissions are wasted effort, or are there some potential benefits? I have no dog in this fight and am simply genuinely curious as to your opinion.
What - you know better than the entire climate research community and you get your information from newspapers?


Show me the evidence of this widespread consensus - I don't recall it

I don't recall the Royal Society saying that

Nor the American Acadamy of Science

etc.

You think you know better than experts throughout the globe and your information comes from Newspapers!

Your arrogance is dumbfounding.

I suppose if the Telegraph wrote an article on Brain Surgery you'd bless us all with your insight on that and tell us how the surgeons were all conspiring!
Here's another good one from NASA no less, new studies find CO2 traps far less than computer models predicted. I'd always rather rely on my own observations than an electronic clairvoyant.

http://www.forbes.com...bal-warming-alarmism/
Unfortunately everyone misled by the media is poor, as they are lacking sufficient information to be informed, and suffering as a result without actually being aware of it.

As for the question " do you feel that any current attempts to reduce carbon emissions are wasted effort, or are there some potential benefits?"

I can do the one word (two letters in fact) answer to the benefits, a simple 'no'. The quick reason for that is that you need a problem for a solution. The 'solution' here is to raise energy prices for the poor who then spend less on luxuries, more on energy and reduce the overall economy as a result. The fact the alleged dangerous CO2 emissions do not and cannot fall as a result tells us all we need to know. You can't stop people keeping warm, travelling, or ultimately living, unless you make each one practically impossible. They are working on this, so to avoid a problem where at the worst case scenario by 2100 (when none of us will be here to find out anyway, more bad science if you can't see the result) the world will only be 7 times better off rather than 8 times if CO2 had remained stable (IPCC 2007 report). But raise the price of energy and everyone's instantly worse off, CO2 is not reduced anyway, and green investors such as the Climate Change Investment Fund (part of the BBC pension scheme and headed by a BBC director) make a fortune at the taxpayers expense. Subsidies for power which basically doesn't perform taken from our taxes is extortion, and if the alternative power worked it could replace fossil fuel on its own merits. Try driving an electric car beyond its 60 mile limit and see what happens if you're not home when it needs charging, or try making a hospital run on wind and solar power.

Even if CO2 was evil (OK, we'd all be dead without it, so that's a big ask), nothing anyone's either proposed or tried has reduced it besides a world recession, so if we want a permanent recession that will slow it down a little, and the quality of our lives will go down the toilet for certain as well, unlike the fate of the climate. Every penny wasted on this fiasco is a penny down the toilet, or worse still into the pockets of investors cashing in on compulsory tax increases. Bottom line, you need an actual problem before you start worrying about a solution, and as far as I can see it's far too uncertain to risk a single penny on it for dubious ends at best.
I'll try and swing the balance, and I can't get my information from newspapers as they don't publish most of it.

Arctic ice increasing http://www.real-scien...ncreased-85-september

How many dissenters does it take to still maintain a consensus?

http://en.wikipedia.o...ent_of_global_warming

UV radiation affects temperature

http://thegwpf.org/th...f-little-ice-age.html

Polar bear populations are healthy

http://www.ctv.ca/CTV...E2%80%A6%20ar-110630/

22,000 year trend in sea level continues

http://hockeyschtick....atingto.html?spref=fb

CO2 absorption data

http://lasersparkplug...2_Absorption_Data.pdf

There's plenty more where that came from, but what I mean about information poverty means that unless people spread what's posted online and nowhere else everyone who does only rely on the media will assume we're talking rubbish when we claim global warming is very doubtful to be man made. If you don't have the data then how on earth are you expected to make up your mind?

Every single study I quote is from the apparently non-existent scientists who don't form part of the consensus. They all share roughly equal qualifications, so impossible to fault them on that, so if they still continue to disagree there is only one conclusion, they aren't certain. Anyone who says they are is either sticking their head in the sand or benefitting financially. It's impossible to be certain about anything when so much data is contradictory, or in the case of cloud cover from future CO2 increases or CO2 saturation point agreed to be unknown at present.

I wouldn't dare to tax a nation under those conditions.
List of quotes from PhD scientists, who clearly weren't told there was a consensus. Tim Ball has also just written a classic article which pretty well sums up everything I've just said.

http://kingsbury.mult...he_science_is_settled

Dr Robert Balling: "The IPCC notes that "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected." (This did not appear in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers).

Dr. Lucka Bogataj: "Rising levels of airborne carbon dioxide don't cause global temperatures to rise.... temperature changed first and some 700 years later a change in aerial content of carbon dioxide followed."

Dr John Christy: "Little known to the public is the fact that most of the scientists involved with the IPCC do not agree that global warming is occurring. Its findings have been consistently misrepresented and/or politicized with each succeeding report."

Dr Rosa Compagnucci: "Humans have only contributed a few tenths of a degree to warming on Earth. Solar activity is a key driver of climate."

Dr Richard Courtney: "The empirical evidence strongly indicates that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is wrong."

Dr Judith Curry: "I'm not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don't have confidence in the process."

Dr Robert Davis: "Global temperatures have not been changing as state of the art climate models predicted they would. Not a single mention of satellite temperature observations appears in the (IPCC) Summary for Policymakers."

Dr Willem de Lange: "In 1996, the IPCC listed me as one of approximately 3,000 "scientists" who agreed that there was a discernable human influence on climate. I didn't. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that runaway catastrophic climate change is due to human activities."

Dr Chris de Freitas: "Government decision-makers should have heard by now that the basis for the longstanding claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of global climate is being questioned; along with it the hitherto assumed need for costly measures to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. If they have not heard, it is because of the din of global warming hysteria that relies on the logical fallacy of 'argument from ignorance' and predictions of computer models."

Dr Oliver Frauenfeld: "Much more progress is necessary regarding our current understanding of climate and our abilities to model it."

Dr Peter Dietze: "Using a flawed eddy diffusion model, the IPCC has grossly underestimated the future oceanic carbon dioxide uptake."

Dr John Everett: "It is time for a reality check. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios of climate change. I have reviewed the IPCC and more recent scientific literature and believe that there is not a problem with increased acidification, even up to the unlikely levels in the most-used IPCC scenarios."

Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen: "The IPCC refused to consider the sun's effect on the Earth's climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change."

Dr Lee Gerhard: "I never fully accepted or denied the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) concept until the furor started after [NASA's James] Hansen's wild claims in the late 1980's. I went to the [scientific] literature to study the basis of the claim, starting at first principles. My studies then led me to believe that the claims were false."

Dr Indur Goklany: "Climate change is unlikely to be the world's most important environmental problem of the 21st century. There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk."

Dr Vincent Gray: "The (IPCC) climate change statement is an orchestrated litany of lies."

Dr Kenneth Green: "We can expect the climate crisis industry to grow
How come Britain was 4C warmer on average back in 1215, (Magna Carta), growing red wine grapes as far north as Bedford and white wine to Edinburgh...and that wine along with mead was our drink of choice, not beer or any grain drinks (16thC onwards)

Source Danny Danziger, "1215" and a very interesting tome on life and society in the UK back at Magna Carta - from weather to foodstuffs, from politics to religion, from sex to executions and the legal system. A well written read.
Why are the glaciers in the Antarctic, South America, and Greenland melting?
as they have done in the past.....and then refrozen

21 to 40 of 239rss feed

First Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next Last

Do you know the answer?

Global Warming

Answer Question >>