One thing we also know is that temperatures are rising faster than at any time in the past. It isn't just the projected temperatures that are likely to do us (and many other species) in, it is the speed with which things are changing. In the past natural cycles have been much slower than current changes allowing species to migrate or adapt.

No, categorically not true, we don't know this – the data presented indicates it – this is not splitting hairs, it goes to the absolute crux of the argument – the rate of change we talk about largely relies on the extrapolation of proxy data onto the much shorter temperature record – there are numerous arguments over the reliability of the yamal tree data, equally there are numerous questions over the reliability of the presented thermometer records, with changes in collection methods and locations, urban heat island effects, weighting, averaging and data manipulation to the point whereby we've now lost (or deleted?) a huge chunk of the raw data – the thermometer record for large portions of the planet is exceedingly sparse, and the more recent satellite data has been calibrated against arguably flawed data sets, there are significant discrepancies between the land based temperature records versus satellite data and sea based thermometer records, all these factors go to one simple question – is the published data that we draw our conclusions on reliable? If not, then the conclusions are nothing more than worthless!

epicyclo
"Personally I am more likely to listen to someone who is walking the walk rather than simply talking it. I regard hypocrites as untrustworthy.

To me it can be summed up by traditional concepts of thrift – consume no more than you need, waste not, learn to separate wants from needs, actively simplify your life, etc."

Spot on with this, could not argee more.

i'm off for a pint.

i'll be walking to the pub and i can turn my heating / lights off, i'm practically an eco warrior.

'save the planet – have a pint'

5thElefant – Member
The biggest problem we have is too many people. Why is climate change bad again?

Actually – I think this comment really does hit the nail on the head!

Z-11

No, categorically not true, we don't know this

Well we do know it in the same way that you say we know that there were changes of climate in the past. It's all proxy measurement after all.

You can't have it both ways.

You say there were temp changes in the past. The same scientists who say that have also indicated timeframes.

z-11

is the published data that we draw our conclusions on reliable? If not, then the conclusions are nothing more than worthless!

This is also just stupid. You make it sound like there is some single set of data that everyone either agrees or disagrees on. There are loads of different measures of proxy temperature, worked on by tens of thousands (probably) of scientists, from which many macro theories are drawn. There will be some data that is out one way, some that is out another, but we have to work with what we've got and do the best we can. Your argument is very similar to "my grandad smoked all his life and it never did him any harm"

What is certain is that as methods improve the conclusions all seem to be going one way.

Z-11

Your carrying capacity graph is probably more relevant to peak oil.

The likes of Richard Heinberg would argue that K is about 2 billion.

atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are known to have risen, the planet is believed to have warmed, therefore atmospheric carbon dioxide warms the planet – cause and effect, nice and simple!

is our understanding. We have an understanding of CO2 as a greenhouse gas – unless you wish to actually argue that it is not one – do you? A very poor point that a quick google should rid you of your doubt
I agree that temp has fluctuated over time , clearly that is beyond argument. I think it is clear that the temperature is increasing – I accept we could debate what the exact cause is and whether it will continue. We can accept that it is rising at a faster rate of change than it ever has in the past – though again we could debate why.
I accept you can have an argument/debate on the entire field – Z11 does well on this front – however I have not heard a convincing argument as to what process could be at work to alleviate the greenhouse effect of the increase in CO2.

One thing I have never understood about CO2 as a greenhouse gas is why it supposedly works only in one direction like a gaseous diode.

For example if it reflects the heat rising from the Earth back into the atmosphere, surely it does likewise with the heat from the sun, so wouldn't there would be less heat penetrating the atmosphere than otherwise? Thus balancing the equation.

One thing I think we probably could all agree on. Burning hydrocarbons for energy is doing none of us any good.

Sorry, been out, also at the pub.

Well we do know it in the same way that you say we know that there were changes of climate in the past. It's all proxy measurement after all.

Theres a whole different level of magnitude, and subsequent proof, between fossil records proving glacial/ice age levels of temperature change, and a thousand years worth of proxy data with a level of change/error of a couple of degrees.

This is also just stupid. You make it sound like there is some single set of data that everyone either agrees or disagrees on.

No, there i however a surprisingly small set of data from shared sources, essentially the national recording organisations, all the data goes into one shared pot to produce a couple of processed "global" records, such as the GISS and CRU/Hadley records. There have been proven errors in that processed data, for example an additional warming bias caused by the millennium bug, later corrected, in GISS – let alone the presence/absence of the Medieval warm period…

There are loads of different measures of proxy temperature, worked on by tens of thousands (probably) of scientists, from which many macro theories are drawn. There will be some data that is out one way, some that is out another, but we have to work with what we've got and do the best we can

.

Again, the reports hinge around surprisingly few, roughly ten, that best reflect the temperature record – remove and substitute some of them and the graphs look very different, read up on Bristlecone and Yamal data compared with the Schweingruber variation. as always, lies, damn lies and cherry picked statistics.

One thing I have never understood about CO2 as a greenhouse gas is why it supposedly works only in one direction like a gaseous diode.

For example if it reflects the heat rising from the Earth back into the atmosphere, surely it does likewise with the heat from the sun, so wouldn't there would be less heat penetrating the atmosphere than otherwise? Thus balancing the equation.

You'll be equally baffled by actual greenhouses made out of glass then?

And you know when you get into a car on a sunny day and find it's warm inside… …

Sorry epicyclo, please don't ever try to convince me that you have any understanding of science whatsoever ever again.

z-11

Can you explain this again when you're sober 😉 How does it relate to my point?

Theres a whole different level of magnitude, and subsequent proof, between fossil records proving glacial/ice age levels of temperature change, and a thousand years worth of proxy data with a level of change/error of a couple of degrees.

Simple enough RP

regards my questioning of the extent and speed of recent temperature changes, you said:

Well we do know it in the same way that you say we know that there were changes of climate in the past. It's all proxy measurement after all.

Tree ring Proxy data – questionable evidence of climate variation in the past few centuries

Glacial hanging valley – concrete proof of climate change in the last few hundred millenia:

rightplacerighttime – Member
You'll be equally baffled by actual greenhouses made out of glass then?

And you know when you get into a car on a sunny day and find it's warm inside… …

Sorry epicyclo, please don't ever try to convince me that you have any understanding of science whatsoever ever again.
Are you still emitting?

Mea culpa. I hadn't noticed that the Earth was surrounded by glass of the appropriate refractive index.

I was hoping that I would actually get some factual information rather than fatuous answers.

For example, the results of experiments measuring the reflectivity (if any) of CO2 from space compared to from Earth, or does it work like an inversion layer.

(BTW I'm not interested in convincing fundamentalists of anything. If you are sensitive to your religion being questioned, I suggest you avoid this topic.)

If you have no grasp of the actual science that you are doubting I suggest you just say nothing
Read my post above and type this in to google
why is CO2 a greehouse gas it will explain it to you , let you know the tempersature the earth would be without CO2,how the atmosphere works like a greenhouse on here and other planets etc.
It is not actually possible [well unlees you want to ignore facts] to argue that CO2 is NOT a greenhouse gas.
As i have said above you can discuss certain parts of this but others are beyond doubt. CO2 is a greenhouse gas READ UP on it.
And again to the doubters – you just keep ignoring this question
As CO2 is a grenhouse gas and CO2 levels are increasing can you explain why this will have no effect on climate
You cannot just critiscise you must also explain and predict what will happen so please do.
Lost count of the times I have asked this and none of you doubters have even tried to answer this – why could that be?

You cannot just critiscise you must also explain and predict what will happen so please do.

It's the same kind of models that failed to work in the banking sector. Don't put any faith in them. Some unaccounted for mechanism will kick in and everything will change.

Nobody has yet explained why climate change is a bad thing.

you gave NO explanation of your account did you? 🙄

Nobody has yet explained why climate change is a bad thing[/q
uote]
OMFG – try googkle and look at rising sea levels and take it from there.
Finally if you believe the same models are being used for both climate change and the global market can you show me this with particular reference to the equations used in the models?

I think your missing your audience there. There's a lot of inteligent arguement on here. However talking as a typical 'bloke in the pub' type of person that I am, your superior intalect is no match for the Jeremy Clarkson driving 6 litre cars, images of coal fired power stations, 50p plastic toys shipped across oceans, new electrical this new electrical that, more more more images and info shoved in the publics face.
People are doing stuff, but if it's ok to make a 6 litre car then surely it's OK to buy one. As far as climate change goes we're a nation of toe dippers. The good thing though is that I genuinely believe people aren't that stupid, and changes can be made.

Junkyard – if the system regards CO2 as a climate change driver was that simple, then you would expect there to have been a subsequent warming throughout the period since the industrial revolution, rather than a sudden hike in the temperature record in the past 30 years.

In fact, we saw a pretty clear cooling through the post war period.

Now, there may be alternative explanations, such as increased particulates, cooling effect of SO2, solar activity – the problem is we don't know for sure which of these factors came into play, which sort of undermines the theory that its a simple cause and effect equation – in just the same way as we cannot know for sure why over the past decade there has not been a significant warming trend despite increased CO2, its probable that this is down to variations in la nina/el nino, but again we don't know for sure, and theres at least some question that validity of this from preeminent scientists in the released CRU emails:

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't"

is there something going
on here w/ the energy & radiation budget which is inconsistent with the modes of
internal variability that leads to similar temporary cooling periods within the models.
I'm not sure that this has been addressed

source, and perhaps more importantly, context: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1052&filename=1255523796.txt

Now, that says to me that perhaps the science really is not as settled as we have been told, and I view the discussions revealed as going on here as very healthy, It actually reinforces my faith in the science that is going on within CRU and the other organisations, however unfortunately this is not reflected in the public utterances, and the attitude towards release of raw data – in essence, what I'm seeing is a discussion along the lines of "well, we don't actually understand everything, but we can work on that, in the meantime we have to present a united front against the sceptics" – I regard that as politics rather than science.

Dont get me wrong, I really, honestly, don't dismiss the fact that we have been subject to a level of warming recently, however I honestly question the scientific basis of the allegations that its unprecedented, and I also question the validity of the scientific theory that it is primarily anthropogenically caused through CO2 levels – As someone from a scientific background, I'd prefer to see scientists saying "well, we don't know for sure, however this is our working hypothesis" – I'd respect them a lot more for that,and I think that the public on the whole would be behind them more if they were honest and said that.

We've seen a lot of that over the last couple of decades in the UK, scientists coming out with quasi-political statements on issues like variant CJD and MMR, saying that something is proven, when a scientist left to their own devices is generally more couched in phrases like "we have no evidence that there is a risk"

Scientists are often their own worst enemies – organisations like Greenpeace their second worst, as I haven't seen any climate scientists producing statements like "lock the planet into catastrophic, irreversible climate change" or "our world is hotter than it has been in two thousand years" – let alone the rhetoric of politicians like "Fifty days to save the world" (copyright Gordon Brown!).

The point of science, is that its supposed to be beyond politics, black and white statements of fact – the released CRU mails don't reflect that ethos, and to me thats really concerning. When people are then going on to expand that science to call for billions to be spent on drastically reducing CO2 emissions to prevent climate change, rather than spending it on mitigating the upcoming effects of climate change that instead proves to be entirely natural and unavoidable, then they'd better have a pretty cast iron case, otherwise we're fecked.

One thing I have never understood about CO2 as a greenhouse gas is why it supposedly works only in one direction like a gaseous diode.

For example if it reflects the heat rising from the Earth back into the atmosphere, surely it does likewise with the heat from the sun, so wouldn't there would be less heat penetrating the atmosphere than otherwise? Thus balancing the equation.

I think the theory is that CO2 is largely transparent to visible light, but absorbs infra-red.

So, light arriving from the sun goes straight through it and warms the earth's surface. The warm surface radiates heat (i.e. infra-red radiation, the old black-body radiation thing). If there's more CO2 in the atmosphere then more of it gets absorbed, warming the air, rather than being radiated out into space.

On the other hand, I imagine the warmer CO2 at the upper levels of the atmosphere will now radiate more heat out into space itself. Could all get quite complicated quite quickly.

in just the same way as we cannot know for sure why over the past decade there has not been a significant warming trend despite increased CO2[/Quote]
Can I see your evidence for this I will cite this to refute your claim

and your own quote – see below

well, we don't actually understand everything, but we can work on that,
That is true for everyone’s understanding of everything [except the religious]. I don’t think anyone is claiming differently. I think we can all safely say we don’t fully understand weather, physics, medicine, gravity etc. It is true but you can use this argument against all knowledge.

Dont get me wrong, I really, honestly, don't dismiss the fact that we have been subject to a level of warming recently

You need to decide whether it is or is not heating up.

well, we don't know for sure, however this is our working hypothesis" – I'd respect them a lot more for that,and I think that the public on the whole would be behind them more if they were honest and said that.[/Quote]
I think scientists are doing this but politicians are presenting it differently though – see your later quotes

Good points re what we should be doing and we probably are better focusing on how we will cope with change of climate and the running out of oil and increasing demands faced due to an ever increasing population

I agree about the general limits of science and the weakness of the methodology but none of this is evidence that this is incorrect …not least because you would use science to disprive it and then I could say all the same things to you 😉 For sure though something we all beleive at the minute will be demonstrated to be false at some point in the future. That is what makes science superb it both creates and accepts complete changes to its paridigms
EDIT: Z- 11 you at least put forward coherent points …even after the pub !

For those that think we can just work around climatic change, have a look at the Permian paleoclimate. If CO2 levels go high enough that is what we can expect.

Oooh… another simulation from some academics.

When they can do something trivial like tell me what the weather will be like next week then I might take them seriously.

You don't need their simulations Elephant, just a geological hammer. The 10 day weather forecasts are excellent in these parts.

Junkyard:

significant warming trend – I'll quote myself from a previous thread:

HADCRU data, global mean, for the last decade

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt

Feel free to torture it yourself and look for a trend in the last decade (98-08, as the 2009 data not complete) then look at the trend for 97-07 and the trend for 99-partial 09

then draw a trend for the three sets of data, and they're so widely different, that I'll stand by my statement that its impossible to draw a significant discernible trend for the last decade worth of data

1997 0.351
1998 0.546
1999 0.296
2000 0.27
2001 0.409
2002 0.464
2003 0.473
2004 0.447
2005 0.482
2006 0.422
2007 0.405
2008 0.327
2009 0.440

🙂

So we're all straight:

My position on the trends and data:
There has been a warming trend over the last generation, particularly in the northern hemisphere – the extent of the warming frequently quoted in reports is in all likelihood not accurate, due to various bias and poor recording and reporting methodology – this makes it difficult for anyone to know for certain exactly how much warming has taken place, the level of error may exceed the level of detectable change and statistical significance, the causation of whatever rise there has been is not known for sure, however is probably due in part to natural variation, and in part due to anthropogenic effects, very possibly nothing to do with CO2 (wild hypothesis, the rise since the 1970's is down to reduced particulate pollution, putting us back in line with a natural oscillation that was disguised by the pollution of the industrial revolution, as seen with the post war cooling period) – the proportion between the two is uncertain, and on the balance of probabilities mainly (ie. more than 50%) due to natural variance over which we have no control. Assertions such as 'if CO2 levels go high enough then we're headed for a new permian paleoclimate' are silly – theres no suggestion whatsoever that CO2 was a driver of that change, rather that CO2 levels were a result of the increased temperature.

My position on the correct action:
reigning in pollution and consumption is clearly a good thing, however for a whole variety of reasons that have nothing to do with CO2 and climate change. I think its 100% impossible that we can prevent climate change itself, we may instead reduce its to some extent – however we can do a huge amount to mitigate the effects of something outside our power, and rather than standing like Canute holding back an advancing tide, we need to look at what we do to cope with it, this may involve mass migration and/or huge programmes of civil engineering and agricultural infrastructure, which would be a better place to concentrate our technological efforts and limited resource than carbon sequestration and biofuels.

I also think there are far more pressing and immediate problems than possible future climate change for huge swathes of the worlds population – famine, disease, poverty, oppression and conflict, Perhaps we should look at sorting out some of these problems before worrying about climate change, its a very bourgeois and comfortable position to be in that the biggest threat we can envisage is the chance that it will get warmer, when there are millions (billions?) of people worrying whether they will have enough to feed their children tomorrow.

My position on the Science:
Consensus science is ridiculous, quoting a scientific consensus as evidence that something is true is less than worthless, my mind harks back to everything from flat earth to phrenology. The entire CRU data debacle reflects very poorly on the recent trend pushed by the politicians, funders and many scientists that it is more important to be "on message" than to be scientifically accurate – see professor Nutt for a prime example. This comes out of a belief in "the greater good" – that we have to prevent the sceptics getting the data, because if we don't take action to save the world then we're all doomed" – this is anti science, science is supposed to be pure and above this, they should let the data stand on its own validity, and accept its flaws where relevant. The CRU emails reveal a culture that is very damaging to the impartiality of science.

I think you're spot on with the comment

"That is what makes science superb it both creates and accepts complete changes to its paridigms"

– science is bloody wonderful because its about the search for truth and understanding , even though we may never achieve it 😆

Might be better if we don't sort out developing world problems that limit population growth.

Presenting short term trends is not very helpful. A decade is very short in climatic terms let alone geological terms.

A lot of the pseudo science is paying people's wages but not very helpful. It was thinking big and very simple logic that started the greenhouse debate: Venus has a very high energy atmospheric environment why? The greenhouse effect. What can we learn from that about the Earths atmosphere? Oh FUUUUUUUCK!!!!

Getting bogged down in the detail means we are forgetting the essentials and doing nothing.

Z-11
Is it any one wonder we cannot explain science to the masses?
We disagree on conclusions/data and interpretation but we DO agree we are using the best method to disagree by?Progress eh 😯

Like your wild hypothesis BTW and your analysis of what to do is pretty much spot on however the main bourgeois bit is that we [west – USA esp] produce and use more than our own fair share of world resources whilst trying to hold back the others from doing the same as they may damage the planet and kill us all.

Edukator

It was thinking big and very simple logic that started the greenhouse debate

I think it was the big hole in the ozone layer and melting ice caps/glaciers that started the debate. It seemed reasonable to conclude that it was getting warmer and our fault for the hole …. do you have another hypothesis

Errr, when do you think the greenhouse effect debate started Junkyard? And you do realise that the hole in the ozone layer and has got nothing to do with either CO2 or the greenhouse effect don't you? The hole in the ozone layer has been stabilized since Dupont stopped making lots of Freon. Now we need to stop producing huge quantites of CO2 to limt climatic change.

epicylco, you're still doing it!

ffs!

you want us to tell you things you can read for yourself, and then wonder why we get annoyed with you.

you have google, you can ask it questions, it will tell you answers, but you're still here asking us to convince you.

you sir, are a stone throwing troll, i fed you, you win a point, well done.

imagine standing in a field, or a carpark, on a warm sunny day, you have shortwave radiation coming down (light) which isn't absorbed by the atmosphere, and you have short wave radiation (infra red) coming up from the warm ground.

The atmosphere absorbs longwave radiation and gets warmer, CO2 absorbs more than the rest of the average atmosphere, if you add CO2 to an atmosphere, it gets warmer.

people have known this for more than 100 years. i did the experiment at school 20 years ago.

you do make a good point; if we care, what are we doing about it? – the answer is 'not much'.

i'm sitting here now, wearing a hat, thermals, and 2 jumpers, drinking hot tea, because it's cheaper than putting the heating on. i haven't flown in 4 years, and i've decided not to have kids (broken up with 2 girlfriends over that one – current doris doesn't seem fussed yet).

but all that doesn't really achieve much if we still get our power from coil/oil/gas, we need to apply pressure on our government to invest our money in nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, renewables, tidal, biomass, bacterial reactors, blah, blah, blah.

and all this stuff is exactly what we'd be doing, if we were running out of coal/oil/gas, which we are.

climate-change is basically the same thing as peak-oil; we need to turn some lights off, change the way we generate power, and all the numbers suggest it's about to get nasty quite soon.

X

(by complete fluke, i just found this on the Beeb clicky)

I think it's a pity not to have one child purely on environmental grounds however environmentally committed you are. Those exes will have kids whether you are the father or not and they may well have three or four, but might have compromised at one or two with you ahwiles. If deep down you want a child, you think Doris would make a good mother and the idea of living at least the next 20 years with her and a child fills you with joy – go for it.

Likewise sitting in the cold is something you may be prepared to do but most won't, so we need to work on solutions that provide comfort levels acceptable to the masses that don't rely on fossil fuels. I don't have any heating on but at 16.6C don't feel the need. The weather is dismal and both meters (production and consumption) are reading 1 amp.

Self sacrifice and imposing suffering on others are unnecessary as we still have the technology and industrial capacity to make the change to renewable technologies. The window of opportunity won't last long.

climate-change is basically the same thing as peak-oil; we need to turn some lights off, change the way we generate power, and all the numbers suggest it's about to get nasty quite soon.

Ironically I'm already quite green and within 2 years will be greener than a tree-hugging lesbian tofu muncher. Ironic as I'm not green and couldn't give a shit about climate change, but peak oil… that's a different matter. I am and will change my behaviour for that.

Some unaccounted for mechanism will kick in and everything will change.

Aah – the "mummy will kiss it better" school of analysis. Very reassuring.

I'd prefer to see scientists saying "well, we don't know for sure, however this is our working hypothesis" – I'd respect them a lot more for that,and I think that the public on the whole would be behind them more if they were honest and said that.

Well, I think scientists do sort of take that as understood between themselves, but they see the problem as halfwits like 5thElefant who will say "see, it's just a THEORY" and use that as an excuse to go on as before, without action or even without (serious) thought. So they feel under pressure to present a simplified version to the public – you can blame the lack of general scientific education if you like.

Aah – the "mummy will kiss it better" school of analysis. Very reassuring.

So… you assume that the changes suggested by a mickey-mouse model are bad, but the stuff they've missed in the model must be good? They could be even 'worse'. The point is that the models are crap.

There is no good or bad. There is opportunity. Al Gore is the finest example of this.

halfwits like 5thElefant

Oh no, I've been called a halfwit by a religious fanatic! How am I going to ever recover!! 😆

Al Gore has a carbon fottprint the size of Texas.

But if he didn't would you have heard of him?

So… you assume that the changes suggested by a mickey-mouse model are bad, but the stuff they've missed in the model must be good? They could be even 'worse'. The point is that the models are crap.

Mmmm … no .. I assume that the current climate models are our best guess as to what will happen in the future.

To just imagine, without any argument, that they are wrong (and wrong in a way that will conveniently make all our boo-boos go away) is as intellectually satisfying as religionists appealing to imaginary friends for salvation.

it is disingenous in the extreme to call us religous whilst claiming that a hitheto unknown thing will appear to save us…which one of us has faith in an imagenery thing?

On the models wantto support this assertion yet

It's the same kind of models that failed to work in the banking sector

I am still waiting for the equation that covers banking and climate change 🙄

Why all the argument over models? Models serve to refine the understanding of and improve the reliabiltiy of predictions about systems we understand already. If you don't understand the mechanisms you can't develop a model (which would explain the failure of so many economic models).

The ideas and understanding are key and we had those before computers with the capacity to model much more than a space mission.