Global warming or not?

[GeoffC]

More4 late tomorrow eve - Catastrophe ...

[Dulin's Books]

interesting that they can claim to know the temp for the full year when the year isnt over and they dont have December's data yet.

Of course that is explained in the emails from CRU

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emai...=848679780.txt

I wish they wouldnt put quotes around skeptics.

The choosing of 1998 as a point for the cooling is made by the climate scientists and Nasa not the skeptics. 1998 was proclaimed the warmest on record and only one year since then has passed it with most years being cooler than the one before.

this can be found by looking at Nasa/GISS annual summations for 2004 onward. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070208/

Its funny that they mention HadCrut3 matches this Nasa data. CRU took it down a few days ago but you can still check it with googles cache of the page. Nasa actually has a spike in January of 07 that i havent found an explanation of yet

[crutnacker]

Personally, I'm amazed at how many people become expert contrarian scientists when it comes to this issue and evolution.

I personally don't understand scientific issues turned political and can find plenty of reasons to distrust the deniers (who often tend to listen far too much to conservative entertainers and/or trust in junk science provided by people with a vested interest in companies that will be hurt by global warming legislation).

It is not hard to see the correlation between our actions and the changes in the environment. Dying trees, rising seas, depleted water supplies WILL cause major issues no matter what the cause. If you think people like to war over oil, imagine what happens if water literally dries up in major population centers.

It is an important issue to address and deal with, not one to bury your head in the sand and say "It's all a myth."

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by crutnacker

Personally, I'm amazed at how many people become expert contrarian scientists when it comes to this issue and evolution.

I personally don't understand scientific issues turned political and can find plenty of reasons to distrust the deniers (who often tend to listen far too much to conservative entertainers and/or trust in junk science provided by people with a vested interest in companies that will be hurt by global warming legislation).

It is not hard to see the correlation between our actions and the changes in the environment. Dying trees, rising seas, depleted water supplies WILL cause major issues no matter what the cause. If you think people like to war over oil, imagine what happens if water literally dries up in major population centers.

It is an important issue to address and deal with, not one to bury your head in the sand and say "It's all a myth."

Absolutely.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by crutnacker

Personally, I'm amazed at how many people become expert contrarian scientists when it comes to this issue and evolution.

I personally don't understand scientific issues turned political and can find plenty of reasons to distrust the deniers (who often tend to listen far too much to conservative entertainers and/or trust in junk science provided by people with a vested interest in companies that will be hurt by global warming legislation).

It is not hard to see the correlation between our actions and the changes in the environment. Dying trees, rising seas, depleted water supplies WILL cause major issues no matter what the cause. If you think people like to war over oil, imagine what happens if water literally dries up in major population centers.

It is an important issue to address and deal with, not one to bury your head in the sand and say "It's all a myth."

hear hear ....

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by crutnacker

Personally, I'm amazed at how many people become expert contrarian scientists when it comes to this issue and evolution.

I don't think I've made any statements about evolution but for the record evolution can be seen all around us all the time.

Originally Posted by crutnacker

I personally don't understand scientific issues turned political and can find plenty of reasons to distrust the deniers (who often tend to listen far too much to conservative entertainers and/or trust in junk science provided by people with a vested interest in companies that will be hurt by global warming legislation).

You mean like "big oil" for instance Shell , BP , Esso/Exxon, electric utilities and other energy segment companies?

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emai...&filename=.txt

seems like its not just a "deniers" that get their money from such corporations

Originally Posted by crutnacker

It is an important issue to address and deal with, not one to bury your head in the sand and say "It's all a myth."

Thats the crux actually isn't it. What to do about the possible effects. Cap and trade wont do anything as far as adaptation. All it does is enrich traders. It doesnt curb emissions which is what its being pushed as a solution for and doesnt do anything to, say .. protect low lying areas from flooding caused by sea level rise.

but then you have to know sea levels are rising/will continue to rise if you want to direct funds towards protection/offsetting the effects. Are they? at what rate? how much time do we have to figure out a good method? maybe more dikes? maybe get people to move out of those low areas?

the measurement of 3mm rise for the past year thats being reported is within the margin of error for the satellite data http://sealevel.colorado.edu/.

how much of the "rising sea" level is caused by thermal expansion
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GL028492.shtml

and how much is caused by continental rebound
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...t/292/5517/679

and to expect millimeter accuracy out of historic tidal gauges is not realistic as even modern ones have an accuracy of only about 1-1.5 cm



glaciers melting- what about the latest study i linked to earlier about Himalayan glaciers not showing the rapid melting that others have claimed.

dieing trees- Destructive invasive species are indeed a huge problem. More funding needs to go towards dealing with these issues from keeping them out to stopping them once they are here. the zebra and quagga mussel, Asian carp and beetle issues need more attention and a better plan.

water is going to be a problem warming or not because of population growth
(although even that is not certain http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE57477520090805 ) so more work needs to be done to secure better water rights for all, to educate about conservation and towards better/more productive desalination.

[happy_terd]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...organised.html

this true?

[astra]

Green industry is making lots of money. They will not surrender so easily. Just like publishers.
As I said 6 years ago that GW is a BS.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by happy_terd

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...organised.html

this true?

Well, it would be consistent with the e-mail hacks.....

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by happy_terd

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...organised.html

this true?

Daily Mail? Healthy pinch of salt required.

That stuff about the last 15 years is old news; and their statement that climate change advocates say the hockey stick graph "shows that the world is hotter now than ever before" is just wrong.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by happy_terd

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...organised.html

this true?

I doubt it. I always skeptical of science stories reported on non-science media sites. Too many newspapers and other news organizations have had to make fiscal cutbacks to stay afloat, and one of the first things to suffer under these cutbacks seems to be science reporting.

There was an article about Phil Jones published yesterday on Nature's website entitled "'Climategate' scientist speaks out: Climatologist Phil Jones answers his critics in an exclusive interview with Nature."

Here are some highlights:

Speaking exclusively to Nature, Jones is reluctant to discuss how the past few months have affected him personally, and says he cannot comment on allegations that freedom of information requests for raw climate data were mishandled by the university. But he is eager to set the record straight on the science.

---

"The science still holds up"

---

One of the most politically charged allegations is that Jones, together with scientific collaborators, tried to systematically downplay the importance of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a brief phase of natural, pre-industrial warming that may have occurred around 1000 AD. But if the MWP was restricted to mild local warming, it would mean that present-day global warming is unprecedented for the past 1,000 years, as claimed by climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in his famous 'hockey stick' global temperature reconstruction. That claim, however, relies on controversial data from tree rings.

---

Palaeoclimatologists are confident that the width of tree rings reliably represents real temperatures because they tally with data from thermometers and other instruments taken since the nineteenth century. After the 1960s, however, there is a divergence, with most tree-ring proxy temperatures seeming to be lower than those from instrumental records across the Northern Hemisphere. The exact cause of this problem is unknown, and is still being investigated by scientists.

Some argue that if the tree-ring data are unreliable for the recent past, including them in older temperature reconstructions is highly questionable, and could understate historic warming — including the MWP — relative to the present day. "It potentially does," admits Jones, but says that analyses using other methods — proxy temperature markers from ice core samples, for example — still show much the same temperature change over the past 1,000 years, backing up Mann's hockey stick.

---

It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. "[I'd] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they're being drowned out."

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I doubt it. I always skeptical of science stories reported on non-science media sites. Too many newspapers and other news organizations have had to make fiscal cutbacks to stay afloat, and one of the first things to suffer under these cutbacks seems to be science reporting.

There was an article about Phil Jones published yesterday on Nature's website entitled "'Climategate' scientist speaks out: Climatologist Phil Jones answers his critics in an exclusive interview with Nature."

Here are some highlights:

Speaking exclusively to Nature, Jones is reluctant to discuss how the past few months have affected him personally, and says he cannot comment on allegations that freedom of information requests for raw climate data were mishandled by the university. But he is eager to set the record straight on the science.

---

"The science still holds up"

---

One of the most politically charged allegations is that Jones, together with scientific collaborators, tried to systematically downplay the importance of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a brief phase of natural, pre-industrial warming that may have occurred around 1000 AD. But if the MWP was restricted to mild local warming, it would mean that present-day global warming is unprecedented for the past 1,000 years, as claimed by climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in his famous 'hockey stick' global temperature reconstruction. That claim, however, relies on controversial data from tree rings.

---

Palaeoclimatologists are confident that the width of tree rings reliably represents real temperatures because they tally with data from thermometers and other instruments taken since the nineteenth century. After the 1960s, however, there is a divergence, with most tree-ring proxy temperatures seeming to be lower than those from instrumental records across the Northern Hemisphere. The exact cause of this problem is unknown, and is still being investigated by scientists.

Some argue that if the tree-ring data are unreliable for the recent past, including them in older temperature reconstructions is highly questionable, and could understate historic warming — including the MWP — relative to the present day. "It potentially does," admits Jones, but says that analyses using other methods — proxy temperature markers from ice core samples, for example — still show much the same temperature change over the past 1,000 years, backing up Mann's hockey stick.

---

It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. "[I'd] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they're being drowned out."

I wonder how the other proxy temperature markers were calibrated, as well. Were they correlated to existing markers, i.e. tree rings, or some form of direct measurement.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I wonder how the other proxy temperature markers were calibrated, as well. Were they correlated to existing markers, i.e. tree rings, or some form of direct measurement.

makes you wonder if there is any incestual process in this - there has to be a reliable starting point ....

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

makes you wonder if there is any incestual process in this - there has to be a reliable starting point ....

That has been my point. We have only had widespread accurate temperature measurement for around 150 years. Everything else keeps getting looser and more indirect the further back you go. If tree rings don't fully reflect temperature rises, do annual snow pack layers really match with temperature, or are they also under-reflecting temperature rises? If they don't, you'd think there'd be some mention of the lack of correlations at various times to the tree rings. The more you try to look at the raw data, the shakier it gets....

[wodin]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

makes you wonder if there is any incestual process in this - there has to be a reliable starting point ....

I don't wonder.