Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’

[Walter]

Best statistical, scientific talk on global warming

January 27th, 2008
Some careful readers to this blog have pointed out the work of Australian geologist Bob Carter. If you have not yet seen his work, you should. So I want you to drop whatever you are doing and watch his talk below. It is the best statistical and scientific public talk I have yet seen. I’ll write more about this later, after you’ve seen his talk.

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/01/27/best-statistical-scientific-talk-on-global-warming/

 

[Walter]

Czech president calls EU climate measures 'tragic mistake'

17 hours ago
BERLIN (AFP) — Right-wing Czech President Vaclav Klaus slammed the EU's sweeping new measures to fight climate change as a "tragic mistake" in an interview with a German newspaper on Thursday.
"I believe that our government and others will stand up against these bureaucratic ideas," Klaus told the Handelsblatt business daily.
"This package is without doubt a tragic mistake, a misunderstanding of nature and an unnecessary limitation of human activity," the outspoken Eurosceptic leader added.
"For me it is almost a tragedy."
Klaus has previously compared German Chancellor Angela Merkel's pro-environmental platform to Soviet-era centralised planning and described evidence of global warming as bogus.
He said the measures presented by the European Commission would threaten economic growth and limit personal freedom.
The energy blueprint is designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, by setting targets for industry.
It also stipulates that the use of renewable energies like biomass, wind and solar power have to make up 20 percent of all energy forms by 2020.
The European Union aims to enact the new measures by the spring of 2009.
The Czech Republic is due to hold the rotating EU presidency for the first half of 2009, followed by Sweden.
The Czech parliament will next week begin to elect a new president as Klaus's term expires in March. He faces a challenge from Czech-American professor Jan Svejnar.

Another big oil shill.

 

[Extrafire]

Then try an academic search. The articles you've read must have picked the information up from somewhere, unless it's swift boating crap.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I do have a life, and this forum is a very minor part of it. I'm sure you've noticed how infrequently I respond. That's because I have other interest that take up my time, the main one of which is wood turning. I may not be able to respond to all posts today because shortly I'll be going to a friends house to take a lesson in the Norwegian art of rosemolling. The point I'm making is I don't care to devote that much of my life here that such research requires. (As an aside, I've frequently wondered how you manage to spend so much time here. I would have thought that as a full time student you would be otherwise occupied.)

Is that what I said? No. What I said is that the current sulfate emissions are not explosive enough to reach the the upper atmosphere. When was the last explosive volcano eruption? The active volcanoes are mild. That's not lame, that's a fact.

That's BS. I wonder if you've even read the reports. The third report had an entire section on aerosols(as do all of the reports), and a dedicated section to volcanic forcings. It's section 5.2.2.8. It's been in every single report, as it is an important factor in the radiative balance.

The effect of volcanoes on climate is well known. That wasn't the subject of the claim. It was that sulfates produced by human activity (coal fired electrical plants) were cooling the earth. And no, I haven't read the reports. See above. Very few people have, but some of them report on them and from those I trust, I accept their analysis. Most people who claim to have read them have actually only read the summary which is put out by the politicos.

What bad science are you referring to here? The past global cooling 'panic' was based on very little science. You've yet to prove how pervasive that really was in the scientific literature.

I believe I mentioned before that it wasn't all that pervasive simply because the environmental organizations didn't have the influence that they have now. If they were no more influential than then, we'd hear similar news reports, but government funding of the topic would be all but non-existent.

The IPCC is not bad science, it is conservative science. Each country has to agree to every single word in the reports. It's not a majority matter at all. Only one country has to object to the wording of anything, and it won't be included.

Oh please! IPCC is politics.

Correct. You are restating the obvious. Like I said, a forcing is a forcing.

No causality I've ever seen from comets. Milankovitch cycles, yes. There are regular shifts in the angle of our axis, the wobble, and the elliptical. But there's no evidence of those cycles lining up right now. It inevitably will happen, but the strength of the forcing to our climate depends on which of the cycles, and if it/they are in tandem with another cycle.

I didn't suggest a comet was the cause, I only provided an example of an external cause.

Right, but quantified. Like I said, I never said the pattern wouldn't repeat. I said there is no evidence that it is upon us. Why rehash the same thing over and over again?

Well, over the past couple decades, a number of scientists have said that the evidence suggests that it is upon us. As I said, if you had told me 20 years ago that you wanted names, I would have taken notes.

So, pray tell, where do you see that it soon will be upon humans? We don't live in a geologic time scale. That's why minerals for all intents and purposes are none-renewable resources.

I see it in the same recurring pattern that the scientists saw it in. We actually do live in a geologic time scale. It just may not be noticeable until the event arrives because of human observation perspective. But we do live in it.

 

[Tonington]

This may come as a surprise to you, but I do have a life, and this forum is a very minor part of it. I'm sure you've noticed how infrequently I respond. (As an aside, I've frequently wondered how you manage to spend so much time here. I would have thought that as a full time student you would be otherwise occupied.)

I had noticed. I also noticed there was some flooding in your area I think it was. I was wondering if you and yours were keeping dry. I manage to spend time at many places as well as here. I finish my work well before the evening sets in. Sometimes I stop by during the day when I have free time.

Anyways, I was only suggesting that it should be fairly easy to find. You came across it once, so it stands to reason you can come across it again. Especially as the ramifications would be something that I'm sure the blogosphere would jump all over.

But whatever. I'm not much interested in conjecture.

The effect of volcanoes on climate is well known. That wasn't the subject of the claim. It was that sulfates produced by human activity (coal fired electrical plants) were cooling the earth. And no, I haven't read the reports. See above. Very few people have, but some of them report on them and from those I trust, I accept their analysis. Most people who claim to have read them have actually only read the summary which is put out by the politicos.

I would suggest they aren't very trustworthy then.

I believe I mentioned before that it wasn't all that pervasive simply because the environmental organizations didn't have the influence that they have now. If they were no more influential than then, we'd hear similar news reports, but government funding of the topic would be all but non-existent.

Funny how that works, as we learn more about the world...

Oh please! IPCC is politics.

It's part politics, part science. As you say, it's patently obvious that most who comment on it haven't actually read it. Those who suggest otherwise are ignorant, or following ignorant/biased news sources.

I didn't suggest a comet was the cause, I only provided an example of an external cause.

And I didn't say you did. I said I've never heard of such an explanation.

Well, over the past couple decades, a number of scientists have said that the evidence suggests that it is upon us. As I said, if you had told me 20 years ago that you wanted names, I would have taken notes.

And I'm telling you that there is no evidence it is upon us, so looking at long time scales and applying them to the present is analogous to the misquoted reports of an oncoming ice age in the 70's.

I see it in the same recurring pattern that the scientists saw it in. We actually do live in a geologic time scale. It just may not be noticeable until the event arrives because of human observation perspective. But we do live in it.

We do not live in a geologic time scale. We live within a specific geological epoch. But we do not live in a geologic time scale. The fossil fuels we're burning were created by geologic forces, and they aren't being replaced as we use them.

Can you recognize the factors which brought about shifts in periodicity in the past? How do you know that it won't revert to a longer period? It's not possible to know that right now.

 

[Walter]

Said one polar bear to another …

"Quit griping, son," said grandpa polar bear. "Our species has finally hit the jackpot. Humans were our only enemy. Now we’re the official mascots of the climate-change industrial complex. We’re as charismatic as whales. We’ve got lobbyists all over Washington."
"It won’t last," said papa polar bear. "Wait till everyone finds out the ice cap naturally gets thinner or thicker all the time. Wait till they all realize we can swim 30 miles before breakfast. Wait till they see two-thirds of us haven’t died by 2050 because of a little global warming.
"But what if ‘60 Minutes’ turns on us and catches us eating baby seals?" asked mama polar bear.
"Don’t be such alarmists," said grandpa polar bear. "Al Gore will never let it happen.
"The mainstream media, politicians and school kids have been completely suckered. We’re apex victims of modern mankind. Senators from New Jersey are working to put us on the Endangered Species list. Congress is talking about doing a study to make sure we won’t be hurt before they allow those new oil and gas leases to be auctioned in the Chuckchi Sea. It’s only a matter of time before we get Pell Grants for polar bears.
"So stop worrying, kids," said grandpa polar bear, slipping off the ice floe for a little five mile swim. "We’ve never had it so good." (Bill Steigerwald, Tribune-Review)

 

[Walter]

Ooops! Has Global Warming Stopped?



Will Media Expose Global Warming Con Job?

The Chinese word for crisis is a combination of the two ideograms Wei, which means "danger" and Ji, which means "opportunity."

In the past several months, a new "crisis" has heated up the controversy over man-made global warming.
A few major-media writers and TV personalities are actually reporting statements by credible scientists who are challenging the assumption that carbon dioxide is the primary force causing global warming.
There’s a real possibility that big-name journalists will break ranks and pursue their next Pulitzer Prize by exposing the lack of scientific consensus on CO2 as a planet-heating pollutant.
That would create a crisis of confidence among the activists, researchers and global-governance apparatchiks who want a global carbon tax to build their political and financial power base.
As an agricultural journalist, I find this a fascinating new development in the climate controversy. I’ve studied weather and climate for more than 50 years. In the early 1970s, I wrote a short book, Tomorrow’s Wild Weather, which warned what could happen if there was a long-term continuation of the cooling trends in the mid-latitudes since the 1930s.
As climatologist Reid Bryson advised me at the time, a cooler climate in temperate zones would have been serious for world agriculture: Westerly winds would intensify, making U.S. weather more extreme. Africa’s Sahel desert would expand much farther southward, spreading famine across northern Africa. The data looked ominous: Average temperature in the 48 U.S. states had fallen by more than six-tenths of a degree Celsius since 1930.
This cooling attracted widespread press coverage and even some political pressure-to reduce "aerosols" or fine particles of pollutants which must be making our atmosphere more opaque. But the "New Ice Age" scare faded as more refined data emerged and the longer-term, slow recovery from the Little Ice Age resumed.
I’ve continued to follow the climate controversy, especially since the 1997 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since that conference, billions of dollars in government funding have generated floods of research data, a myriad of computer models, political posturing and the Kyoto Protocol. (Jerry Carlson, AIM)

 

[Walter]

Finding the right words

Definitions for the global warming fanatics who can't tolerate disagreement with their views

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN

Despite repeated appeals to reason, decency and common sense, global warming fanatics continue to disparagingly refer to people who disagree with them as "global warming deniers" or as part of the "global warming denial industry."
Their absurd, disgusting and juvenile attempts to suggest anyone who doesn't bow down before their half-baked ideas, self-righteous prattle and mindless propaganda is comparable to a Holocaust denier, have gone on unchallenged for too long.
Enough is enough. It's time those of us who do not believe New York is going to be wiped out by a 20-foot rise in sea levels caused by global warming either next Tuesday, or 50 years, or 1,000 years from now -- they'll get back to us on that -- struck back with some mocking terminology of our own.
Ready? Here we go.
Feel free to borrow as many as you like and come up with your own. Fun for the whole family!
STEPHANE DION DISEASE
Definition: A medical condition in which you can't decide whether to pull Canadian soldiers out of Afghanistan by February 2009, but are confident you can predict the climate of the planet 100 years from now, based on computer models.
JACK LAYTON SYNDROME
Definition: Obsessive concern about the negative impacts of global warming on Taliban prisoners captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
GILLES DUCEPPE DISORDER
Definition: The belief that global warming will stop when Quebec separates from Canada.
ELIZABETH MAY FEVER
Definition: A chronic condition in which the subject spends large amounts of time and energy explaining that the last time she said something really dumb and incendiary about global warming, or anything else, it wasn't actually as dumb and incendiary as it sounded. Either that, or it was all Stephen Harper's fault. Take your pick.
AL GOREITIS
Definition: The mental state of anyone who piously lectures everyone else about reducing the size of their carbon footprint on the Earth, while personally living a luxurious, high-consumption, high-flying lifestyle that they condemn for anyone but themselves. Also known as "celebrityitis" and "Hollywooditis".
DAVID SUZUKIITIS
Definition: The belief that everyone is entitled to their own opinion about global warming ... as long as it agrees with yours and that if not, they should be jailed.
WEATHER CHANNEL PSYCHOSIS
Definition: Anyone who simultaneously holds the beliefs that last year's mild winter and this year's harsh one are both evidence of global warming. Possible symptoms include having your head explode because of all the BS you've jammed into your brain. More generally speaking, a term used to describe any self-proclaimed expert on global warming who doesn't understand the difference between "weather" and "climate."
KYOTO ACCORD SYNDROME
Definition: Delusional belief that the same political geniuses who keep promising to "fix" medical wait times can "fix" the climate.
SCHOOL BOARD SICKNESS
Definition: The belief that global warming can be solved by opening up a black-focused school in Toronto, which, come to think of it, seems to be the Toronto District School Board's "solution" for solving pretty much every crisis it faces these days.
GREEN RIGHTS FEVER
Definition: A relatively new disease among Canadian human rights commissions, causing them to believe any journalist who writes about global warming is likely to expose minority groups to hatred or contempt. They just haven't figured out how ... Yet.
MEDIA MADNESS DISEASE
Definition: An affliction common among journalists who pontificate ad nauseam about what Canada's policy on global warming should be, without ever having read a book on climate change or even knowing the difference between the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Possible cures include reading a Grade 8 science textbook.

 

[Walter]

David de Torquemada

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 11, 2008
'David Suzuki delivered a scathing and powerful speech to a packed house at McGill [University]," according to a story in the McGill Daily, four days after the Jan. 31 address. The scientist and eco-crusader called on "young people and business leaders to reverse the demise of ecology at the hand of short-sighted economic theory."
OK. Nothing new there. Socialists, environmentalists, feminists and a whole host of other denizens of the modern left have been calling for years for an end to rational economic examinations of the world in favour of methods more likely to support their ideological causes. In 2000, I covered the UN's Millennium Conference on creating one world government and had to sit through some moonbat's lecture on dispensing with GDP and money theory in favour of the "love economy."
Speaking at the opening session of the McGill Business Conference on Sustainability, Dr. Suzuki also said "You all think growth and [climate] change is normal. It's not."
Ah, yes, those halcyon days when both the economy and the climate were in constant, unfaltering harmony, when no community grew, no new houses were built, no new jobs were created because none were needed, no business ever expanded, none ever went bankrupt and each year the seasons brought just the right amount of rain and snow, sunshine and wind. Everyone ate only food grown within 100 miles of their homes and there were never droughts or floods.
You know, before Big Oil paid off its friends in the Bush administration to use the CIA's secret weather machines to mess everything up so Big Industry could make obscene profits (aren't all profits obscene?) selling us outsourced goods we don't need from Wal-Mart through mind-controlling advertising.
Then, of course, Dr. Suzuki exhorted, "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing (on the environment) is a criminal act." According to the Daily, his audience responded with "rounds of cheering and applause."
It's hard to know which is most disappointing: That McGill's business faculty invited this screed, or that Dr. Suzuki delivered it, or that the students and business leaders in attendance hailed it.
After his speech gained some notoriety, the Great Suzuki sent one of his minions out to tell reporters his words were not meant to be taken literally.
If a speaker says, "Why those folks oughta be in jail for being so dense," he is indulging in a figure of speech. When he challenges listeners "to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail," that sounds pretty literal.
Consider, too, that the Strand, a student newspaper at the University of Toronto, reported that on Jan. 18, while addressing students at that school's Convocation Hall, Dr. Suzuki claimed "What our government is not doing is a criminal act," and our leaders "should go to jail for what they're not doing right now."
Maybe it's just me, but I think I see a pattern here.
Don't blame Dr. Suzuki, though. His instinct to imprison those who disagree with him is as old as science itself. Every time someone has dared deviate from the accepted dogma, there has usually been some Commissar of Conformity eager to throw him in prison for heresy.
Never mind that Dr. Suzuki is defending a secular faith rather than a theological one, he is merely picking up the time-honoured tradition of Tomas de Torquemada, inquisitor-general of the Spanish Inquisition. Over its active run of approximately 140 years, the Inquisition tortured, tried and imprisoned some 14,000 people for heresy, 4,000 for superstitions and another 4,000 for crimes against the Inquisition itself.
Give a skeptical review to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and end up in some Suzukiite re-education camp in the wilderness of northern B.C. Or a gulag. Or a state psychiatric hospital, for surely anyone who disagrees with the Green worldview must be criminally insane.
The Dr. Suzukis of Galileo's day sentenced him to house arrest for nearly a decade, had his books banned, and forbade him to lecture on science because he believed the Earth revolved around the sun. The inconvenient truth for Galileo's judges, and for Dr. Suzuki, is that sometimes the heretics are right.

 

[Praxius]

It kinda blows that David Su. hopped that bandwagon. I mean, he was right along with the stuff I grew up learning, and yet he doesn't notice that obvious factor that his and their predictions in the 80/90's didn't come true, and that perhaps they should think a bit as to why.

Dr. Suzuki also said "You all think growth and [climate] change is normal. It's not."

Wh.. wha..... what? Dave, pass over the pipe dude, you're not making sense anymore.

Growth is normal to some degree, and has happened plenty of times in the past to the point of that species and other's around its own extinction. It's perfectly normal in nature. Much like locusts.

And climate change is normal ffs.... I mean, come on Dave..... the Ice Ages? That wasn't climate change? No, must have been just a bad snow storm.

Then, of course, Dr. Suzuki exhorted, "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing (on the environment) is a criminal act." According to the Daily, his audience responded with "rounds of cheering and applause."

It's hard to know which is most disappointing: That McGill's business faculty invited this screed, or that Dr. Suzuki delivered it, or that the students and business leaders in attendance hailed it.

Wow... geez David, come here *reaches in his inside pocket, grabs dave's stash*

No more of this for you, frig man, look at yourself, you're a mess. Stop hanging around with those tree hugging neo-hippies. They rotted your mind.

Bake'o

Ever since that episode of Nature of Things on Pot and BC, he's been all screwy. Some people just can't hold their stuff.

 

[Walter]

Veteran Loch Ness Monster Hunter Gives Up

Feb 13 2008 By Bob Dow
LEGENDARY Nessie hunter Robert Rines is giving up his search for the monster after 37 years.
The 85-year-old American will make one last trip in a bid to find the elusive beast.
After almost four decades of fruitless expeditions, he admitted: "Unfortunately, I'm running out of age."
World War II veteran Robert has devoted almost half his life to scouring Loch Ness.
He started in 1971. The following year, he watched a 25ft-long hump with the texture of elephant skin gliding through the water.
His original trip was to help another monster hunter with sonar equipment and quickly identified large moving targets.
He was smitten and returned the next year, which is when, he says: "I had the misfortune of seeing one of these things with my own eyes."
Since then, he has been obsessed with tracking down the creature with a staggering array of hi-tech equipment. It was this gear that took the famous "flipper" picture that year which created a stir around the world.
Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.

 

[Walter]

 

[Walter]

Tornadoes not a sign of global warming


By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, February 18, 2008

In his book State of Fear, Michael Crichton wrote about exploitation of fear by environmental extremists. He should write another book about exploitation of lack of knowledge.
Climate and environment were previously outside of politics, but once they became potential election issues politicians exploited them better than environmentalists. It fulfills H.L Mencken’s observation that, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
So before anyone attempts to make political gain from the tragic events of the tornados that killed people across the southern US recently, let’s put the science on the record. And while we’re at it let’s explode another false claim that storms and severe weather will increase with global warming. (CFP)

 

[Walter]

Global Warming? It’s The Coldest Winter In Decades

Well… yes, but… we are in the La Niña ENSO phase and global conditions are expected to be cooler. Likewise poor old Sol just can’t seem to get going with Cycle 24 and that doesn’t make for warm weather either. Moreover "loss" of Arctic sea ice is believed to have had much more to do with Polar wind direction than temperature and this whole "global warming" thing is pretty much a crock anyway. In either case, warming or cooling, the only sane response is to protect people and the only way to do that is through development and wealth-generation. Either way "carbon control" is just plain stupid.

Global Warming? It’s The Coldest Winter In Decades
By Tony Bonnici

NEW evidence has cast doubt on claims that the world’s ice-caps are melting, it emerged last night.
Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature.
It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming.
But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back.
Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels.
Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.
The data flies in the face of many current thinkers and will be seized on by climate change sceptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

 

[Walter]

Another Global Temp Index Dives in Jan08, this time HadCRUT

19 02 2008
The global surface temperature anomaly data from the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit (Temp anomaly is plotted below) has just been released, and it shows a significant drop in the global temperature anomaly in January 2008, to just 0.034°C, just slightly above zero.
This caps a full year of temperature drop from HadCRUT’s January 2007 value of 0.632°C


above data is HadCRUT3 column 2 which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here
The ∆T for the past 12 months is minus 0.595°C which is in line with other respected global temperature metrics that I have reported on in the past two weeks. RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year. We are in an extended solar minimum, we have a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to a cold state, and we are seeing arctic ice extents setting new records and rebounding from the summer melt.While weather is defined as such variability, the fact that so many things are in agreement on a global scale in such a short time span of one year should give us all pause for consideration.

 

[Extrafire]

I had noticed. I also noticed there was some flooding in your area I think it was. I was wondering if you and yours were keeping dry.

And now I have even less time. I've been asked to do a series of columns for a small local publication and vanity made it too difficult to say no. As to the flooding, it only involved a relatively small area. I and mine have not been affected, and I thank you for your concern. It's all over now for a couple weeks and people have returned to their homes. The residential area that was affected is a semi-rural setting with small, pastoral acreages and every time I've been in the area in spring or summer I've wished I lived there. I just recently changed my mind about that!

I manage to spend time at many places as well as here. I finish my work well before the evening sets in. Sometimes I stop by during the day when I have free time.

Well, all I can say is I'm impressed. My studies took up considerably more time than that.

Anyways, I was only suggesting that it should be fairly easy to find. You came across it once, so it stands to reason you can come across it again. Especially as the ramifications would be something that I'm sure the blogosphere would jump all over.

But whatever. I'm not much interested in conjecture.

I looked for about an hour. I thought it would be easy to find again too, which is why I didn't bother to bookmark it.

I would suggest they aren't very trustworthy then.

If you're referring to those who have only read the summary, I agree. Have you read the full reports?

Funny how that works, as we learn more about the world...

No, actually that's a matter of what political activists can accomplish in this day of internet communication. No internet back then. World-wide activism was a very slow affair back then.

It's part politics, part science. As you say, it's patently obvious that most who comment on it haven't actually read it. Those who suggest otherwise are ignorant, or following ignorant/biased news sources.

It's more spin than science. The claims of authority based on scientific credentials is without basis:

For the uninitiated, here is the lowdown: Andrew Dessler is a professor at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University. He is complaining about a US senate report which listed hundreds of individuals who have been reported in the media during 2007 as speaking against the "scientific consensus" on climate change, claiming that they are scientists. The report naturally challenges the very principle of the consensus, which has given climate policies the authority they have needed to be carried forward. The global warming camp have sought to undermine the value of this new list, by claiming that the scientists lack scientific qualifications, expertise, or moral integrity.

[...]

But Dessler doesn't tell us exactly how we are to measure the qualifications, we just have to take his word for it that the 400 sceptics aren't qualified, but the IPCC scientists are. So it's not simply a consensus, it's a qualified consensus, and he gets to call the qualification. So much for science. So, apparently, the IPCC scientists who represent the consensus are more qualified than their counterparts.


Or, maybe not.

We decided to test Dessler's claim. So we downloaded IPCC WGII's latest report on "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability". There were 380 contributors to the report [...] we focused on the contributors who operate in the UK. Of the 51 UK contributors to the report, there were 5 economists, 3 epidemiologists, 5 who were either zoologists, entomologists, or biologists. 5 worked in civil engineering or risk management / insurance. 7 had specialisms in physical geography (we gave the benefit of the doubt to some academics whose profiles weren't clear about whether they are physical or human geographers). And just 10 have specialisms in geophysics, climate science or modelling, or hydrology. But there were 15 who could only be described as social scientists. If we take the view that economics is a social science, that makes 20 social scientists.

[...]

There were a few professors, but few of them had the profile Dessler gives them. Many of them were in fact, hard to locate to establish just how much better than their counterparts they were. [...]

Among the remainder - most of whom are not professors, but research associates at best, are an assorted bunch, many of whom are better known for their alarmist statements in the mainstream press than they are for their contributions to scientific knowledge - activists in other words, with their own political motivation. And in spite of being reported as "climate scientists", involved in scientific research, also seem to be working within the social sciences, albeit for "climate research" institutions, such as Tyndall. Johanna Wolf, for example, is an IPCC contributor from the University of East Anglia, who works in the department for "development studies". Does that make her a climate scientist? Anna Taylor, of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Oxford has no PhD at all, her research focuses on "stakeholder engagement in adapting to multiple stresses, including climate variability and change, water scarcity, food insecurity and health concerns" - not climate science, and has simply not been alive long enough to join the ranks of the specialists of specialisms that Dessler demands of sceptics. Similarly, Susanne Rupp-Armstrong, listed as a member of Southampton University only appears to have ever contributed to one academic paper. Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, Maureen Agnew does not focus her research on climate science, but on such things as “Public perceptions of unusually warm weather in the UK: impacts, responses and adaptations”, and “Potential impacts of climate change on international tourism.” Katherine Vincent specialising in "Social Capital and Climate change" at the UEA, only began her PhD thesis in October 2003. How can she be cited as a specialist in climate science?

LINK

And I didn't say you did. I said I've never heard of such an explanation.

It wasn't intended to be a serious example of an explanation.

And I'm telling you that there is no evidence it is upon us, so looking at long time scales and applying them to the present is analogous to the misquoted reports of an oncoming ice age in the 70's.

Looks like we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

We do not live in a geologic time scale. We live within a specific geological epoch. But we do not live in a geologic time scale. The fossil fuels we're burning were created by geologic forces, and they aren't being replaced as we use them.

We don't live according to a geological time scale, but we do live in one. It is impossible not to. An epoch is a specific portion of time and has its own significance, but the geologic time scale is merely a different measure from a human time scale, much as an hour is a different measure than a second. The second is still within the hour.

Can you recognize the factors which brought about shifts in periodicity in the past?

No.

How do you know that it won't revert to a longer period?

I don't.

It's not possible to know that right now.

Correct. However, it is illogical to assume that the most recent pattern will not repeat when you have no evidence of any factors about to cause change. The only logical assumption is that the pattern will repeat. It ignore that and assume it will not is no more than wishful thinking.

I'll try and get to the other posts this weekend. Might be difficult as I have a lot going on.

 

[Walter]

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 25, 2008
Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.
Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."
He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

 

[Walter]

 

[Walter]

THE GLOBAL WARMING SCAM - Dr Vincent Gray



PowerPoint presentation by Dr Gray at International Conference on Climate Change, New York, 3 March, 2008
Alternatively we have converted it to .pdf (717kb) here: The Global Warming Scam

 

[Tonington]

We don't live according to a geological time scale, but we do live in one. It is impossible not to. An epoch is a specific portion of time and has its own significance, but the geologic time scale is merely a different measure from a human time scale, much as an hour is a different measure than a second. The second is still within the hour.

No, a second and an hour are units of time. Geologic time scales of course are made up of units of time, but they aren't differentiated by set time periods, they are unequal in their distribution of time. They are separated by events, mostly the arrival of new fossil assemblages. The time scales are millions of years and more, and we haven't been here more than 200,000 years. Even less time as recorded history. Saying we live in a geologic scale is meaningless, as geologic scales create sedimentary rock, fossilize animals, create petroleum and other minerals. They aren't being replaced as we use them.

No.I don't.Correct. However, it is illogical to assume that the most recent pattern will not repeat when you have no evidence of any factors about to cause change. The only logical assumption is that the pattern will repeat. It ignore that and assume it will not is no more than wishful thinking.

Look, I'm not saying there will never be an ice age, I'm saying there is no evidence that we're on the cusp of anything close to what would be considered an ice age. The ice sheets and glaciers are still in retreat, some show signs of speeding up, the Antarctic sheet is behaving exactly as was predicted by some of the very first climate models back in 1981, and the multi-year ice in the Arctic was the smallest ever last summer. Of course it grows back in the winter, that's what happens, but it isn't replacing the thick multi-year ice. Species are progressing Northward in our hemisphere, not south.

No signs of an ice age on the horizon.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

I admire you Tonington, you've got a lot more patience than me. I gave up trying to have a rational discussion with people who have an amazing ability to ignore overwhelming evidence.