Global warming or not?

[Daithi]

There are actually some well known and respected scientists that are still sceptical of global warming caused by man. See this Wikipedia Article.

MIT is probably one of the finest universities in the world, so if Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology and chair of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science at MIT is sceptical then I'm willing to listen.

[Daithi]

My favorite line about "climategate":

This is the biggest scientific scandal since NASA faked the moon landing.

[Dulin's Books]

97% of climate scientists don't agree- that is an oft misquoted number that is used to try to stifle dissenting opinions. More accurate would be that 90% of climate scientists who have done work attributable to previous work done by Jones and Mann and Hansen et al and the models they built believe in AGW. The models may very well be wrong and with the release of the information it looks even more like they had doubts themselves and worked to make their models match their conclusions instead of making the models
accurate.

-You are correct there is evidence of increases in atmospheric CO2. The science on whether temperature rise is a cause or an effect of the increase is not settled. Several recently done studies of the actual ocean and of the historic data show the increase in CO2 is caused by warming not the other way around

-True to a point , the root of the dissent is in how much effect it has etc and the physics of the assertions by the climate scientists have been calle din question
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Fals...ion_of_CO2.pdf

- Seas raise atmospheric temps not the other way around,
Land temps show variations and for the last 10 years or so have shown a decline and the southern hemisphere temps have not shown a marked increase even when the NH was showing increase

Coral bleaching is a result of ocean warming and acidification. the acidification is a result of the release of CO2 from lower depths during the warming and from agricultural runoff. The Atmosphere doesnt warm oceans. it is the other way round. There is a very good recent paper that describes the ocean mixing much better than i can in this space. ill dig it out.

that glaciers are receding ( and not all are some are growing see http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-...per%20_him.pdf) is quite expected at teh end of what is called the little Ice Age. Receding glaciers do indicate climate change- but not necessarily AGW.

Large chunks of Antartica- well this recent article suggests there has been no warming over antartica for 30 years and they have discover teh reason http://news.scotsman.com/world/Antar...ing.5871004.jp

so atmospheric warming didnt cause the chunk to fall in the ocean. In fact the scientists most familiar with it have said that global warming couldn't be determined as the cause and that many other factors including fissure placement and depth were more determining factors. Also that the ice had actually been unstable for decades so the "sudden" collapse want actually sudden.

more about natural disasters later dinner time.

[XNN]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

-True to a point , the root of the dissent is in how much effect it has etc and the physics of the assertions by the climate scientists have been calle din question
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Fals...ion_of_CO2.pdf

I tried to wade through the Gerlich and Tscheuschner arXiv article. Long story short, it is gibberish. Reviewing the trusty atmospheric radiation textbook seems to confirm that story. A link to what seems like a reasonable arXiv response that fits my admittedly rusty knowledge can be found here:

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/02/a...now-about.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324

I notice that the "CO2-increase-lags-temperature-increase-thus-violating-causality" argument has been raised a few times here. A simple rebuttal of this idea can be found in a somewhat unlikely spot here:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1190/1.3192838
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~woodbur/OCCAMforTLE-1.pdf

[okalyddude]

There should have been an option for

"It's happening to some degree, it's probably partially our fault, and probably part of the Earth just "doing stuff that we don't fully comprehend" - but regardless, we should stop polluting so much, and plant more trees."

[Dulin's Books]

I would like to preface this by apologizing for any past and future bad typing. I am historically one of the worst typers around and even after years of forum posting it just seems to get worse instead of better.

Xnn- The physics seems in doubt. I'll have to see if there was a rebuttal from G and T to Arthur Smith's paper.
I did find some discussion on Atmoz from 2007
http://atmoz.org/blog/2007/07/10/fal...house-effects/

I also found this heated response by Gerlich and Tscheuschner on a random blog while searching (i'll grant the blogspace seems a bit out there

http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2008/0...ople-have.html

interesting article and well written argument, but there is an issue. his whole discussion is based on the idea that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of warming as he states himself

When the cause of warming is anthropogenic CO2, either temperature leads CO2 or, perhaps for more complicated models, CO2 leads temperature.

the issue is he has not done the other side "when the cause of warming is NOT anthropogenic CO2......" I've seen physicists and climatologist use Occam's razor to support the opposite

Studies show that warming Oceans release CO2. Meaning there is a net loss of previously absorbed CO2 into the atmosphere since there is still some absorption due to surface mixing.

The warming ocean warms the atmosphere and increases atmospheric CO2
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture06227.html
http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/11/t...bon-cycle.html

Make sure to read through the comments of that Harvard article.

Also Acidification is not necessarily a bad thing
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1201182622.htm

Back to Flooding for a moment. River flooding events happen periodically and have many causes. My wife works in river/wetlands restoration here in oregon and can(as well as others) readily tell you that urbanization, inadequate runoff management, river/stream channeling and encroachment into traditional flood plains are very real causes of contemporary flooding.

this study(possibly the only study) of the 2007 flooding in England and Wales reports the same issues as the root cause

http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archi...s_item_05.html


hmm.. I have been typing in short bursts while having family time. There was more I was going to add here but its late . Ill have to pick it up another time

[Icarusbop]

Originally Posted by fugazied

I really find it amazing that so many people reject the science on global warming which is agreed upon by 97% of climate scientists.

Fingazide - I covered this one earlier, but I think it got overlooked, so I will re-post....

Not so I'm afraid:
Look up the
'Oregon Petition' 19,700 against and
'The Global Warming Petition Project' 31,486 againt
(And they both have quite a number of scientists who have signed up)
Granted, the same scientist may have signed both, but, either of these on it's own has more signatories than the report that was presented at Koyoto, for the agreement (I think it was around 3,300 scientist signatories, but annoyingly cannot find the actual numbers - sorry)

So the commonly stated 'Fact' of ' Most climate scientists agree' is in fact actually not a fact..

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Icarusbop

Fingazide - I covered this one earlier, but I think it got overlooked, so I will re-post....

Not so I'm afraid:
Look up the
'Oregon Petition' 19,700 against and
'The Global Warming Petition Project' 31,486 againt
(And they both have quite a number of scientists who have signed up)
Granted, the same scientist may have signed both, but, either of these on it's own has more signatories than the report that was presented at Koyoto, for the agreement (I think it was around 3,300 scientist signatories, but annoyingly cannot find the actual numbers - sorry)

So the commonly stated 'Fact' of ' Most climate scientists agree' is in fact actually not a fact..

So now we're going to argue about the arguing....

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by XNN

...if anyone would like to ask some questions, I might be able to answer. There are definitely some misconceptions about what being a working scientist in this field is like, about publication/peer review, the relative importance of different radiative forcings on the climate system, the role of climate modeling, etc.

What is your view of the level of debate in the general public arena?
Can people who don't work in this field aquire enough knowledge and information to make an informed opinion (without having to get PhDs)?

Would you recommend any books aimed at the ordinary reader which stand out from the rest??

[Icarusbop]

Originally Posted by kennyc

So now we're going to argue about the arguing....

You can if you want.
The point remains that there are at least two sides to the argument, depending on which scientists you believe and which data you believe.

I guess this could be a situation where too much information is a bad thing. the internet being a victim of it's own success....

[rireed3]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

No, I don't "believe" the science. Belief in the absence of verifiable evidence is religion, not science.

Your argument hinges on the temperature having increased. But as I showed in my previous post, the temperature data cannot be trusted. Since you cannot show that the temperature has increased, your arguments about anthropocentric global warming have no merit.

I think Nate has the distorted popular view of 'science'. No scientist worthy of the name would ever argue for an hypothesis "in the absence of verifiable evidence". Nate also seems not to understand the nature of evidence.

Climatology is an academic category, and the academicians involved in it contribute the gathering and interpretation of evidence in a written, supervised and organised manner.

That organised manner is a system that has been developed for centuries under standards carefully agreed by universities around the world. "Fugazied" refers to this system as "peer review". These academic 'scientists' work very hard even to get their reports taken seriously and published for this expensive scrutiny. The evidence they gather is often unprecedented, and dozens of poeple must be convinced before the debate starts. Even after this, debate is often furious and lengthy, continuing as has 'climate change' for decades.

This whole process is hindered by pressures from outside this system of "peer review", because the scientists are human and vulnerable to all the threats of human society, but the system itself is less corrupt than, say, politics, or journalism, because money, class, or politics won't get you into it, only a steady record of publication before an incredibly skeptical bunch of brainy people.

Not every self-proclaimed 'scientist' is one. I'm not, but I've seen enough of what some of them go through to have a bit more respect for them than I do for most of the windbags who have never known one and choose to rubbish everything they do.

Richard

[GeoffC]

most of the windbags who have never known one and choose to rubbish everything they do.

politicians?

[GeoffC]

BBC web-site link

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by rireed3

No scientist worthy of the name would ever argue for an hypothesis "in the absence of verifiable evidence".

Isn't the Higgs Boson a hypothesis awaiting verification?

[rireed3]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

BBC web-site link

Science!

Well spotted