The inescapable apocalypse has been seriously underestimated
The atmosphere is cooling, the ice is expanding, the seas are not rising -- even though carbon emissions are increasing. The evidence is now crystal clear to anyone with an unwashed brain that man-made global warming theory is sheer unadulterated bunkum. So how do the warmers react to the ever more embarrassing evidence that they have hitched their reputations to the biggest anti-scientific scam in history? By ratcheting up the hysteria to fever pitch and shrieking that their predictions about the impending irreversible environmental apocalypse have grievously underestimated the catastrophe which is going to be far, far worse.
At the international climate change conference in Copenhagen this week, we were told that the seas would rise by as much as a metre by 2100, that they would turn into acid, and that even the rainforests would be felled not by the loggers’ chainsaws but by the greatest pollutant in the history of the universe, carbon dioxide.
Read these reports carefully and you can see the scam at work. All of these hysterical predictions revolve around a massive ‘if’. They are all based on the assumption that rising carbon dioxide levels produce runaway global warming and inevitable ecological catastrophe. Ignoring the self-evident fact that this theory has already been proved false – as CO2 levels have risen, the climate has stayed pretty flat and in recent years has even cooled -- they then apply this bogus premise to topics not previously covered – the acidity of seas, rainforests – and hey presto, a fresh range of even greater catastrophes is conjured up from their crystal balls computer models.
The Independent reported:
Sea levels are predicted to rise twice as fast as was forecast by the United Nations only two years ago, threatening hundreds of millions of people with catastrophe, scientists said yesterday in a dramatic new warning about climate change. Rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to push up sea levels by a metre or more by 2100, swamping coastal cities and obliterating the living space of 600 million people who live in deltas, low-lying areas and small island states.... The Greenland ice sheet, in particular, is not simply melting but melting ‘dynamically’ - that is, it is collapsing in parts as meltwater seeps down through crevices and speeds up its disintegration.
Well that’s mighty strange, because here’s an article in Science last January, drawing upon a meeting of the American Geophysical Union the previous month, which said the precise opposite:
So much for Greenland ice’s Armageddon. ‘It has come to an end,’ glaciologist Tavi Murray of Swansea University in the United Kingdom said during a session at the meeting. ‘There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off ‘ of the speed-up, she said. Nearly everywhere around southeast Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000. An increasingly warmer climate will no doubt eat away at the Greenland ice sheet for centuries, glaciologists say, but no one should be extrapolating the ice’s recent wild behavior into the future.
News of a broad slowdown comes from a wide-ranging survey of glacier conditions across southeastern Greenland. Researchers reported in 2007 that two of the area's major outlet glaciers--Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq--had slowed by the previous summer. But at the meeting, Murray and 10 of her Swansea colleagues reported results from their 2007 and 2008 surveys of the shape and appearance of the 14 largest outlet glaciers of southeast Greenland. When glaciers speed up, they thin, and their lower, leading edge that floats on the sea retreats. So the Swansea researchers flew laser altimeters over the glaciers to estimate their changing volumes and, indirectly, their changing velocities. They also studied satellite images and aerial photographs in order to track the movements of natural markings on the ice.
Taken together, the data show ‘there's a pattern of speeding up to maximum velocity and then slowing down since 2005,’ Murray said. ‘It's amazing; they sped up and slowed down together. They're not in runaway acceleration. Something happened that has switched off’ the acceleration event of 2003 to 2005.
Now look at what another expert said at Copenhagen:
Jonathan Bamber, an ice sheet expert at the University of Bristol, told the conference that previous studies had misjudged the so-called Greenland tipping point, at which the ice sheet is certain to melt completely. ’We're talking about the point at which it is 100% doomed. It seems quite an important number to get right.’
It certainly does.
‘We found that the threshold is about double what was previously published’, said Bamber. It would take an average global temperature rise of 6C to push Greenland into irreversible melting, the new study found. Previous estimates, including those in the recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the critical threshold was about 3C - which many climate scientists expect to be reached in the coming decades. ‘The threshold temperature has been substantially underestimated in previous studies. Our results have profound implications for predictions of sea level rise from Greenland over the coming century,’ the scientists said.
Profound implications indeed – the first being that Greenland’s melting ice sheets are probably not going to drown the world after all, and the second being that once again the IPCC got the science wrong.
And now look at something else Bamber told the conference:
He said evidence from past climates confirmed that Greenland should be able to survive temperature rises higher than 3C. An ice sheet about half the size is known to have persisted there during the Eemian period, about 125,000 years ago, when temperatures were about 5C higher than today.
Greenland was 5 degrees warmer 125,000 years ago than it is today, eh? Must’ve been all those motor cars and coal fired power stations and industrialisation. And it wasn’t the end of the world either. Fancy!
Professor Nils-Axel Mörner is the former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. He is probably the foremost expert in the world on the subject of sea-level rise. This is what he said in 2007 about the alleged sea level rise at that point. There was no evidence of sea level rise anywhere. None. There was no trend to report. Sea level rise was a myth. Prof Mörner was an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is what he said about the process which led the IPCC to make its predictions of alarming (if subsequently reduced) sea level rise:
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC’s] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn’t look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn’t recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a ‘correction factor,’ which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow— I said you have introduced factors from outside; it’s not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don’t say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!
That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They ‘know’ the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it!
I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them— none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing.
For this heresy, Prof Mörner is undoubtedly to be damned along with the rest of us for being a global warming ‘denier’ (or even more dementedly, a ‘climate change creationist’ -- yes, I know, I know, but when did elementary logic ever make an appearance in such circles?).
Unfortunately for the warmers, more and more such distinguished scientists are now openly denouncing the scam – and such sceptics now have the wind in their sails. Virtually unreported this week, a parallel international conference on climate change was taking place in New York. This conference attracted no fewer than 800 scientists and others to discuss ‘Global warming: was it ever a crisis?’ The BBC, whose Today programme yesterday devoted its prime 0810 slot to unchallenged ‘melting ice/rising seas/we are all doomed’ propaganda, has not even mentioned the New York conference. And as far as I can see, of the British papers only the Guardian attended it – not to report the proceedings, but to sneer. Thus Suzanne Goldenberg wrote:
It would be easy to dismiss this gathering as a pity party for people on the fringes of modern thought
which of course she proceeded to do. The attendees were
almost entirely white males, and many, if not most, are past retirement age
and worse still, other than the academics,
they are affiliated with rightwing thinktanks.
Well, say no more.
Even Goldenberg, however, could hardly dismiss as some maverick nutter one of the speakers, the eminent meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT. Having crisply observed that most scientists are unaware that doubling or even tripling CO2 would have only a marginal impact on global temperature, Lindzen explained why so many scientists have gone along with the man-made global warming scam:
Most funding that goes to global warming would not be provided were it not for the climate scare. It has therefore become standard to include in any research proposal the effect of presumed AGW on your topic, quite irrespective of whether it has any real relevance or not. Lindzen asserted that it boils down to a matter of scientific logic against authority. The global warming movement has skilfully co-opted sources of authority, such as the IPCC and various scientific academies... the pro-alarm policy statements that are issued by various professional societies express the views of only the activist few, who often control the governing Council.
But it was the Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who knows a thing or two about totalitarian ideologies, who summed up the phenomenon:
He likened the situation to his former experience under communist government, where arguing against the dominant viewpoint falls into emptiness. No matter how high the quality of the arguments and evidence that you advance against the dangerous warming idea, nobody listens, and by even advancing skeptical arguments you are dismissed as a naïve and uninformed person. The environmentalists say that the planet must be saved, but from whom and from what? ‘In reality’, the President commented, ‘we have to save it, and us, from them’.
Quite.
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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.
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Dixon
March 13th, 2009 1:09amNow wait for the chorus of the usual drones to appear here with their sarcasm and arrogations of intellectual superiority...you'll know who I mean when they do.
shockwaver
March 13th, 2009 2:36amscience should impact public policy decisions. the agw debate is one more example of special interests masquerading as scientists to push their political agenda.
the big loser here is the good name of science and public policy makers who are denied sound advice.
realclimat
March 13th, 2009 3:22amEven if the forecast was essentially correct --The co2 crowd's solution is idiotic and irrational. Certainly coastal protection, plans to migrate to Canada and Siberia etc,--not giving up exhaling!
journeyman
March 13th, 2009 3:54amThought I,d say a couple of words before the Left Wing/Liberal/Multi-Cultural/Morally Superior/Heresy Inquisititon mob gets here.
Yes,thats right,I,ve been paid hansomely by the sub-human,Neo-Con,Global conspiracy to join the climate change deniers.
Global warming has become quiet an infallible religion over the years.A global academic industry that keeps a large number of people employed.
As usual,the Global Warming Lefties will trundel out the Liberal Fascism routine to silence any dissent from the party line.
Frank Bi
March 13th, 2009 6:29amDixon doth protest too much, methinks.
EC
March 13th, 2009 7:53amThe unspeakable in pursuit of the unheatable!
EC
March 13th, 2009 8:02amDixon, Unlike the ice the drones will eventually melt away. However we will be left with the hum of the wind turdbines.
gavin
March 13th, 2009 8:03amIt's a millenial apocalypse cult, I'm sure. Sad to say, many of their goals are great - who wants to live with massive pollution? This has looked more like religion than science for some time, and I knew something was wrong the moment the British government started pushing it.
badstephen
March 13th, 2009 8:15amForgive me for any intellectual superiority but watching from the sidelines I can't help be worried about the way this debate breaks up on entirely predictable lines. Those who were dismayed by the fall of Communism are delighted to have a new whipping post for the capitalist system. Those who cannot conceive that the free market could ever be harmful to mankind deny that anything is going on. To the rest of us, this seems too important a debate to be dictated by the old ideologies.
I don't know much about science but I know a bit about scientists, having observed them at close quarters. And the idea of a massive, co-ordinated conspiracy involving thousands of them is ludicrous. Put three of them in the same room and you'll get an argument.
Meanwhile, we're told the deniers have got it right, but exactly which antis? Those who say there is no global warming, period. Those who say there is global warming but nothing we can do about it as it's not man-made? Those who say it is manmade but the climate change will be a good thing?
Anyway, if climate change is correct, it will be the world's poorest who get it in the neck first - Bangladesh, the Maldives, sub-Saharan Africa, so not to worry eh? And yes, that was sarcasm
Foster
March 13th, 2009 8:16amPhillips' support of Creationism (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-496394/The-real-nutters-fanatics-despise-religious-belief.html) and erroneous assertion that the MMR vaccination and autism are linked (blog entries passim) undermine her scientific credibility somewhat.
Owen Morgan
March 13th, 2009 8:19amI suspect that the Guardian's bile is aimed at Christopher Booker, of the Sunday Telegraph, who has been exposing the climate change scam for years, and who is speaking in New York. I've never met Mr Booker, but he probably qualifies as an "almost entirely white male" and he probably is "past retirement age". Thankfully for the future of common sense, he stubbornly refuses to go away. The presence of President Klaus in New York also arouses the ire of the Guardian, because President Klaus has become a hate figure for euromaniacs, for expressing doubts about the euro-constitution (alias "the Lisbon Treaty").
Dave
March 13th, 2009 8:27amDixon: No point, mate you got there first!
As for Mel. Oh where to start. But a as rule of thumb scientists who also think dowsing is real (Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, http://www.astromeditions.com/library/Bookresp.asp?Book=R56) are perhaps unlikely to lend much credibility to your argument.
Raymond Joseph Douglas
March 13th, 2009 8:49amOnce again Melanie , you speak the truths that must be told. Even if, as ON so many other issues that the fashionable liberal left espouses, you are ignored. Keep going Melanie, the day you stop writing, the world will know a real catastrophe !
Boudu
March 13th, 2009 8:51amIt's surely time for all self respecting scientists to stand up and be counted. For too long they have gone along with the 'consensus', willing to let those who shout loudest deafen the public to the debate. For evil things to happen only needs good people to do nothing.
Stephen Wilde
March 13th, 2009 9:20amFor the past year I've been formulating and publishing piecemeal a new perspective on climate change which seems to accord better with real world observations than do the models.
See here if interested:
http://climaterealists.com/news.php?tid=37
Andre
March 13th, 2009 9:37amThe global warming jihadists seem to me to be composed of the same people who joined the CND, loathe Israel and sneer at Christianity.
RayD
March 13th, 2009 10:04amOnce apon a time, of course, being a white male past retirement age meant you probably knew something.
Now it just means you're a silly old buffer.
logdon
March 13th, 2009 10:14amDid anyone else pick up on Brown's cat out of the bag comment in the US last week? Climate change employment will now make up the losses in the financial job market. So there we go, oor honest and upright Son of the Manse Broony cynically latching on to another pseudo lifeline whilst he watches the wreckage of his previous mice and men plans crash and burn. Not too long ago the City was king, we were the global leaders and finance the panacea for all those lost manufacturing jobs, his bragging was endlessly sickening. Now it's global warming. How can anyone take this chancer and ex chancer-ler seriously? Nothing is beyond the charlaton in his bid for glory or as it is now turning out, merely to cling to power.
Rachel Miller
March 13th, 2009 11:15amDave, your comment is what is technically known as an ad hominem attack on Prof. Morner. Do you have any points to raise that contradict his assertions as reported above?
Sergey
March 13th, 2009 11:34amAs someone who, like Vaclav Klaus, lived for decades under Communist rule, I can inform you that no conspiracy is needed to perpetuate pseudo-science: ideology works just as well, even better. Everything hangs on computer models, which nobody understand except a few who built them, and 99% of climatologists accept these projections as facts, incapable to assess them professionally.
William Vincent
March 13th, 2009 12:28pmBy the way, Miss Phillips, I noticed that George Monbiot has included you in a list of Top Climate Deniers.
Congratulations.
The interesting thing is that if you read the responses to Monbiot and Goldenberg's pieces in the Guardian, "denialist" comments far outweigh those of, er, denial deniers. This in the Guardian, house-paper for the beardy (including many of the men) well-meaning but dim.
The debate on global warming is, if you'll pardon the expression, hotting up. A few more years of cooling, or even the absense of warming, on top of the recent cooling trend, and the whole man-made global warming premise will be exposed. Of course, however, the believers and their political and media drones (with the BBC, of course, in prime position) will fight to keep the myth alive and their grants and taxes flowing. Cooling will be dismissed as natural, whereas any warming will be entirely due to man.
In short, I'm afraid that you'll have to keep up the good work - there's a long way to go before the sky-is-falling believers will move on to inventing their next non-existent crisis.
John.
March 13th, 2009 12:36pmA rise or fall in planetary temperature is caused by the greater or lesser amount of cosmic radiation or of magnetic radiation bombarding the Earth. The amount of cosmic radiation depends upon the number, distance and age of super novae in our region of the galaxy. The amount of magnetic radiation depends upon the number of sun spots upon the surface of the sun. No one has the slightest chance of controlling super novae or the surface of the sun. Climate change is nothing new - obviously. Even in the time of the Romans and in the early Middle Ages Britain was far warmer than it is now. Nigel Lawson and Christopher Booker,(plus Dr. North), have both written well-informed books dismissing the CO2 theory as nonsense - "An Appeal to Reason" and "Scared to Death". Another book to read is "The Chilling Stars". The principal experts in climatology have been ousted from the IPCC, which has an expert in motor-cycle helmets amongst other similar luminaries on its board. Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish scientist has pointed out that even were the rubbish talked by the IPCC to be true, by 2100, and after unimaginable expenditure and sacrifice,the onset of catastrophe would have been delayed by only 6 years! Far better he suggests would be to lavish all this incalculable amount of cash on eliminating malaria, tuberculosis and other plagues and epidemics, educating all the children in the world and eliminating ignorance. It should be pointed out also that the belches,(not farts!),of ruminants provide 4 times more lethal so-called greenhouse gases than does CO2, yet there is no move to ban meat and cheese eating or the drinking of milk. There are about 328 parts of CO2 to a million in the atmosphere - an utterly negligible proportion. By now the IPCC should have been completely discredited. The reason that it is not is the persistent support given to it by the Gov't and, in particular Defra. What is Defra gaining from propagating expensive lies in the middle of the severest depression we have undergone in 100 years? That is the question we should all be asking ourselves.
Original Tony
March 13th, 2009 12:38pmI read somewhere that human activity only contributes 6% of all greenhouse gases. I read in the same article that cows farting produce almost as much as the human race does.
Furthermore, decaying vegetation produces vastly more than the cows and people put together!
I also read that ONE active volcano spews out more gases in a month than all of humanity's combined mess for an entire year!
Do you remember British TV presenters in the 1970's, all huddled together in greatcoats, foretelling a new ice-age would hit the planet in 2010?
Vine street in London, named after grapes were grown there by the Romans?
More info...the 'beneficaries' of this scam get £4 BILLION a year, world-wide, to support their studies. Who would want to give that up? There's a lot of cushy jobs and bursaries in there!
It's sunspots and sun activity that causes these fluctuations, for that's all they are...yes, even the 10-year-long COOLING cycle we are in now.
And it's a tax for St.O and Gordon!
Hannah
March 13th, 2009 1:01pmFoster can't undermine a single word in Mel's post (ooh, I'm loving this!) and so hopes this might save the day:
Mel's "erroneous assertion that the MMR vaccination and autism are linked"
No, no, no, Foster. I know it hurts to be caught out with your global warming trash but you should never have hitched your wagon to it in the first place.
Autism and the vaccine MIGHT be linked. Can the scientists who wish to research this idea in order to discount it please be allowed to do so?
Or do we have to do it like all these global warming nutters basing it on computer model predictions rather than what actually happens to sea levels?
Mike
March 13th, 2009 1:26pmFoster wrote: "Phillips' support of Creationism undermine her scientific credibility somewhat."
Try getting your head into the sunshine!
I wish you liberals would focus on the "facts" presented instead of trying to tear down the person speaking.
As an engineer it annoys me when the fools have no facts and begin arguing about the package. If the liberals dealt more with facts and ignored the mud, they might be taken more seriously.
Rollo Reid
March 13th, 2009 2:20pmIf there is warming, it is the oceans that will hold most of the heat. Surely there must be concrete evidence of (temperature rise x volume) to show whether heating is or is not happening? And no-one predicts that change will be uniform: is it not true that the polar ice has been shrinking for years, and only last year out of many saw it increasing? And then only back to a level of a few years ago? We cannot claim one year proves or disproves a trend.
Tom Norton
March 13th, 2009 2:38pmWhy can't people realise that global warming is as much a fact as the melting of the ice caps at an ever accelerating rate. Global Denyers are no more than reckless and stupid escapists.
Tom Norton
March 13th, 2009 2:43pmReally Melanie! I will go with the mainstream scientists on this one. Global warming is not a risk any sane person would want to contemplate. Moreover, scams involve money with intent to defraud. Can you supply any evidence for this extraordinary assertion?
badstephen
March 13th, 2009 2:54pmWilliam V.
"The interesting thing is that if you read the responses to Monbiot and Goldenberg's pieces in the Guardian, "denialist" comments far outweigh those of, er, denial deniers."
Yeah. The other explanation, of course, might be that the beardies over at The Guardian actually believe in freedom of expression and debate.
Polly Toynbee's articles on the Guardian website invariably have hundreds of comments, many of them downright hostile. Meanwhile, you try getting an even mildly critical comment on Melanie's articles or Richard Littlejohn's on the Daily Mail website. Actually, try saying anything other than "Congratulations Richard/Melanie on another brave article. You speak for the silent majority of true Brits on immigration/global warming/homosexuality/Europe/Jonathan Ross/single mothers."
In fact, I'm pretty sure this comment won't make it through.
Foster
March 13th, 2009 2:56pmHannah, I made no mention of global warming in my comment. It therefore puzzles me that you quote me as spouting 'global warming trash' - you have no idea what my opinions on this matter are. But anyway.
Regarding Phillips. Given her track record of supporting nonsense (Creationism) or bad science ('MMR and autism are linked') why should we pay attention to her opinions on any scientific matter?
tommy
March 13th, 2009 3:06pmRising sea levels have nothing to do with global warming.
It is the population explosion coupled with immigration that is causing this country to sink resulting in a knock on effect being experienced by other securely anchored landmasses
Archimedes principle proves this
Can I have my MBE now
Excellent article Ms Phillips
logdon
March 13th, 2009 3:35pmOriginal Tony
March 13th, 2009 12:38pm
"Vine street in London, named after grapes were grown there by the Romans?"
Or even Greenland? I wonder where that name came from?
Because it was an shimmering ice enveloped, wasteland?
Some kind of early tourist board's idea of spin to falsly encourage li-lo and fish and chip sales?
Or a North Atlantic proto stand up comedian's take on irony?
Course all of this is an inconvenient truth for the climatologist crew, obsessed with the hockey stick theory and only history which meets their ideological idiocy.
Rick Bonsteel
March 13th, 2009 3:48pmA few weeks ago, the CBC in Canada led with a story that "Global Warming is Happening Faster Than Expected". The body of the story: CO2 emissions were higher than expected through the first years of this century. No one at the CBC saw fit to ask the question, Wait a minute! If CO2 is going up, but temperatures have levelled, and even decreased slightly, in the same period, isn't that exactly opposite of what our alarmist headline was trying to inply?!
Hannah
March 13th, 2009 4:13pmTom Norton, March 13th, 2009 2:43pm "Scams involve money with intent to defraud. Can you supply any evidence for this extraordinary assertion?"
Eh?
This scam is being used to levy taxes, is it not? How is that not fraudulent with such phoney reasoning?
KB
March 13th, 2009 4:17pmThere's a really disappointing trend in the comment sections of newspapers and publications, from both sides of the Global warming debate, to merely pick holes in tiny sections of arguments made by other commentators. As far as I am aware Melanie Phillips is just another one of these commentators. So am I and so are you. Yet, many smugly assume some kind of ordained knowledge of the facts - it's like reading the right-wing Monbiot; just as sneering, unpleasant and unhelpful.
I don't understand the science fully because I didn't study for years in a specific field to allow me to create computer models or assess the data from thousands of studies worldwide.
I doubt anyone who has posted above has done.
Opinions are equally valid and in this case equally inane as well. What I would argue is that at some point, even in these cynical times, we might need to trust someone or some intellectual body and the information they provide.
Again, this will depend on the individual, and as such I have decided to reject the notion of an international, suprapolitical conspiracy being carried out by climate scientists for financial gain. I would argue too, that being a climate denier is equally profitable, if not more so, since there are fewer of them and plenty of media platforms from which to comment.
I will side more with the majority of scientists rather than the minority since the peer review schema of science favours this approach.
Furthermore, the idea that something needs to be ignored simply because it's adopted by a political party is arguably rather anti-intellectual; education, universal healthcare and many other public run sectors, like the police were supported by politicians in recent history (how well these institutions work is a purely political argument) yet, they enjoy cross-party support. Global warming (a wholly inaccurate moniker) or rather climate change also enjoys support from all sides of the idealogical spectrum. I again, perhaps incorrectly, choose to believe that this supports the claims of scientists, rather than undermining their theories.
It is also worth bearing in mind that for years climate science was largely dismissed by governments around the world, and that it took a 97% scientific consensus to persuade many governments that this is indeed taking place, and is indeed due to human activity. Hardly, reactionary. Whether it's being used as a political leverage is undoubtable but it doesn't change the fact that the science that informed the initial shift.
Debate is healthy, no question, and understanding climate shifts better is paramount if we are to adapt an over-crowded, under-nourished and resource strained eco-system. With carbon fuel prices rising and supplies dwindling along with their prohibitive costs, lack of clean water and food shortages already undermining the security of much of the world, it is inconceivable that we can carry on functioning the world economy in the same way.
So we can try to accept shifts, regardless of their source and create a more sustainable economic and environmental situation or we can spend the next 25 years making petty arguments and picking holes in opinions.
The choice has been made by some on this board. And what a shame that is.
Orwell Spinning
March 13th, 2009 4:29pmOK. Supposing that global warming happening, but that it's not anthropogenically forced.
What would be the right thing to do with regard to those countries most affected by it in terms, say, of flooding or other environmental damage that makes those countries less habitable, or uninhabitable?
Would it be right for areas such as Northern Europe, which may benefit from global warming, to leave other countries to fend for themselves?
Orwell Spinning
March 13th, 2009 4:31pmPostscript to my previous post.
What would be accepted here as evidence that global warming, whether anthropogenically forced or not, is happening?
And what would be accepted as evidence that anthropogenically forced global warming is happening?
kinglear
March 13th, 2009 4:48pmI'm not sure it's a bad thing having people who are beyond retirement age discussing things. After all, they have their pensions already, can tell the truth without fear or favour and generally have a better grasp of commonm sense than the panic merchants
Orwell Spinning
March 13th, 2009 4:57pm@Rick Bonsteel.
Predictions for the next ten years are for a slight cooling, due to La Niña.
Predictions for the longer term are for an upward trend. The notion of a faster than expected long term upward trend is not at odds with short term cooling.
Think of the stock market. If you look at the long term trend, it is upward, but there are many short periods of time when it is downward. The short downward turns do not disprove or undermine the long term upward trend, although they may slow things down.
Barry
March 13th, 2009 5:03pmIt seems that Prince Charles is doing his best to keep the pot boiling with his latest scare mongering in South America.
Has the Rev Al offered him some of the profits?
Dixon
March 13th, 2009 5:09pmKB:
"I don't understand the science fully because I didn't study for years in a specific field to allow me to create computer models or assess the data from thousands of studies worldwide.
I doubt anyone who has posted above has done"
Thats the red herring in the debate. Its not about "specialised knowledge" but the validity of claims to what constitutes "science". In other words, it is irrelevant what the anthropogenic camp argue the specifics to be or indeed whether they are right or wrong. Even a broken clock tells the "correct" time , exactly, twice every day. No, its that their thought processses are fundamentally unscientific, whatever their conclusions. Principally in that they keep retrospectively changing their predictions to fit events which they had not predicted. This is the kernal feature of pseudo-science. Its what in Popperian terms is known as the "ah but" factor. As when a psychic fails to read someones mind and then says "Ah but...you were blocking your thoughts from me" or when an environmentalist is confronted by ten years of not-increasing temperature and says "Ah but, the models have been re-written now to explain that as having been ptredicted had they been re-written earlier!"
There then is the elephanting question in the room as to why you, me or anyone else should make material sacrifices in the here and now on behalf of other peoples brats as yet not born, nor indeed even conceived. I think that presumption is fundamentally and very, very deeply disgusting.
If you dont have kids there is NO ISSUE. If you DO have kids, then you have already done more to increase the likelihood of anthropogenic climate change than any amount of motoring or flying or industry creating jobs. Frankly, if environmentalists are so adamant, the solution for them is VERY simple, just dont have kids. Those that do...lets face it, most of them...and continue to demand that everyone else should change on their behalf are disgusting, sickeningly disgusting, obnoxious, filthy hypocrites.
Dixon
March 13th, 2009 5:27pmOrwell Spinning
March 13th, 2009 4:31pm
Postscript to my previous post.
What would be accepted here as evidence that global warming, whether anthropogenically forced or not, is happening?"
VERY SIMPLE: An actual increase in global mean temperature!
Noone, not even the IPCC, denies that there has been none this century.
Really reliable data doesnt yet exist and will not for the foreseeable future given that the sattelite built to gather such data was destroyed during launch a couple of weeks ago.
Before the next question even arises, that one needs addressing.
David in Davis
March 13th, 2009 5:37pmIn an article disussing proprosed cap and trade legislation in CNN MONEY today, Global Warming vs. Unemployment, author Steve Hargreaves, states:
"LOADED WITH SPECULATION
Predictions for how a cap-and-trade bill would play out are largely speculative, and vary depending on what is put into them. As one expert put it, '"they are assumptions based on assumptions, fed into models.'"
Ironic that this same statement perfectly sums up "global warming science"
Michael B
March 13th, 2009 5:57pm"Science" as political slogan; "science" as ideologically invested interest; science qua science, rigorously conceived.
Straydingo
March 13th, 2009 6:03pmlogdon,
lol u made me chuckle :)
Bob
March 13th, 2009 6:34pmThe world will be encased in 1,ooo foot sheets of ice and the great, great, great, great great, great grandson of Al Gore will be running around with his hair on fire shouting to the Eskimos that global warming is imminent.
Boudu
March 13th, 2009 6:45pmSo how many years of a cooling world will it take to prove anthropogenic global warming ?
Come on get real. The AGW hypothesis says that global temperature will rise in line with increasing levels of CO2. Well CO2 levels are rising, temps are falling. Any sane scientist would be looking for a new theory.
But hold on, why bother you with the facts - you've already made your mind up.
Dixon
March 13th, 2009 6:48pmOrwell Spinning
March 13th, 2009 4:57pm
@Rick Bonsteel.
Predictions for the next ten years are for a slight cooling, due to La Niña.
Predictions for the longer term are for an upward trend. The notion of a faster than expected long term upward trend is not at odds with short term cooling.
Think of the stock market. If you look at the long term trend, it is upward, but there are many short periods of time when it is downward. The short downward turns do not disprove or undermine the long term upward trend, although they may slow things down."
The analogy is spurious: a fluctuation is distinguished from a trend by its brevity or transience in relation to the duration of the trend. Ten years of non-warming cannot be dismissed as a fluctuation because 1) it is proportionately enduring at more than 5% of the period of past modern warming and 2) we do not yet know when it will change again until it does.
Furthermore, the warming trend of the past 2 centuries itself is a fluctuation outside of a broader trend going back thousands of years. Greenland was indeed Green and colonised by farmers from Scandinavia until the encroaching ice sheets covered their land.
But the stock market analogy is indeed instructive. Economists pretend to be scientists just as environmentalists do, the majority of them failed utterly to predict the current disaster in the world economy. They , too, kept talking of a continuing upward trend. They to denounced the few who saw what was coming as "deniers" and cranks.
Verity
March 13th, 2009 8:50pmAnd there is Prince Charles solemnly warning us this week that we only have 100 months to save the planet. (The planet he occupies, apparently, and nothing to do with the rest of us.)
Suffolkbor
March 13th, 2009 11:15pmThe MMGW wallahs should get Jeffery Archer to say he believes in it all .
Then we would all know it was true wouldn,t we ?
Ellen Stuttle
March 13th, 2009 11:50pmJust a comment on Ms. Goldenberg's report that the attendees at the Heartland event were:
"almost entirely white males, and many, if not most, are past retirement age. [....] Aside from a smattering of academics from well-known universities, they are affiliated with rightwing thinktanks."
She did attend the conference; I saw her at one of the session presentations (though I didn't know then who she was; I recognize her picture as that of someone who was at one of the sessions I also attended).
She's right that there were few blacks; where she gets that there were few women, I can't imagine. (I'd estimate that maybe a fourth or more of the attendees were women.) Or where she gets that aside from "a smattering of academics from well-known universities," everyone else was "affiliated with rightwing thinktanks." Or that possibly "most" were past retirement age. A number of attendees were past retirement age, but her "many, if not most" exaggerates.
Multiple other details of her report similarly mislead.
wolf
March 14th, 2009 4:33amlogdon - bravo a voice of reason at last. I know very little about climatology/oceanography certainly not as much as mel.
I logged on to the Heartland Institute site - the alternative conference organisers and found their agenda slightly watered down,from total denial to solutions! I still cant get in to my head that Greenland was green, Eric the Red was red the Greenland ice sheet is only 800 and Earth 6000 years old.
Dixon
March 14th, 2009 1:13pmwolf
March 14th, 2009 4:33am
logdon - bravo a voice of reason at last. I know very little about climatology/oceanography certainly not as much as mel.
I logged on to the Heartland Institute site - the alternative conference organisers and found their agenda slightly watered down,from total denial to solutions! I still cant get in to my head that Greenland was green, Eric the Red was red ..."
This is the problem, you dont know anything really. Certainly you dont know anything about archaeology.
By your childish analogy a "White paper" cannot be written on white paper either.
Yours is exactly the sort of smirking numb-nut comment I predicted at the very start of this thread. Thanks for that.
Augustus
March 14th, 2009 2:29pmVaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic was the hit of the evening recently when he told the International Conference on Climate Change that the real motivators behind climate change are "political rent-seekers, interested neither in temperature, carbon dioxide, competing scientific hypotheses and their testing, nor in freedom or markets. They are interested only in their businesses and their profits - made with the help of politicians."
So there you have it, like most things in life, it's all about money. And there's big money in the global warming fraud, and government is no exception. In America, Obama's plan isn't designed to save the environment. It won't significantly reduce CO2 emissions, but it will significantly increase energy costs paid by the consumer, and hardest hit will be the 95% of working families Obama keeps mentioning he's concerned about.
People say that you either accept the scientific argument, or you don't. But the reality is that there is no reality, at least not yet. The science is both too complex and incomplete, because nobody yet knows for certain whether man's contributions to forms of destructive climate change are greater than the degree with which nature is able to redress the balance.
Ellen Stuttle
March 14th, 2009 3:55pmWolf:
"[...] the Greenland ice sheet is only 800 and Earth 6000 years old."
Earth is on the order of 4.5 billion years old.
andy
March 14th, 2009 4:17pmman-made global warming and the theory of evolution... both came from crystal-ball computer models
boxermk
March 14th, 2009 4:18pmThere is zero scientific evidence to back up the claim of Man Made Catastrophic Global Warming. Zero. It's not a conspiracy - it's just hysteria perpetuated by leftist ideologues: former scientists, politicians, media-types, etc.
I have yet to see any global-warming advocate actually debate the issue. And it is clear the only system in human history to advance towards a better environment, cleaner "green" technology is in a free-enterprise system. Period. Having bureaucrats take over industry and regulate a gas every human exhales is the surest way to destruction, both of humanity and of the environment.
Belief in global warming is a far less scientific belief than creationism (which I do not believe in at all), a flat earth, or a talking duck.
Orwell Spinning
March 14th, 2009 4:32pm@Dixon
Point taken about economists getting it horribly wrong!
Back to long and short term trends in general though. I think the problem is not just the amount of change. The problem is the amount of change, the speed of that change, and the number of people it affects. I would guess that humanity could cope with relatively large changes if it is spread over hundreds of years, since, as has often been pointed out here, people can and do adapt.
Even in times of war, people adapt, but it is a messy and painful process. So for me, the question is about how best to deal with these changes. I think this is a technical, social, moral, economic and of course political question, which is what makes it controversial.
As far as data goes, do you mean data such as this? (from Wikipedia, so the usual "pinch of salt" advice applies).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png
Ann
March 14th, 2009 5:35pm"The evidence is now crystal clear to anyone with an unwashed brain" -
yep, once again the standard hysterical and ignorant nonsense from Mel (who is not scientifically trained, and who thinks that trained scientists who disagree with her ignorant pronouncements are 'brain-washed'). Utterly pathetic.
Dixon
March 14th, 2009 6:31pmSeems from Ellen Stuttles comment that wolfs sarcasm has somewhat backfired. Hur, hur ( and thats not the chariot racer ).
Neil
March 14th, 2009 8:25pm'Andy' writes that the theory of evolution came from 'crystal ball computer models'.
You do know that 'On the Origin of Species' was published in 1859, don't you? Of course you do. You're just being facetious.
James Hodson
March 14th, 2009 9:36pmChill out or warm up everyone. Either way I'm not particularly bothered. Having no children it's only the rest of mankind I ought to be concerned about - or not.
One thing I have noticed is that the warmers are far less polite than the coolers.
A declaration of interest: I am quite sceptical about MMGW. However, unlike the "zealots" - a phrase certainly no worse that "deniers" - I am quite prepared to accept that I am wrong.
Scared to Death and The Abolition of Reason are certainly worth a read.
Anne-Kit
March 15th, 2009 4:32ambadstephen, March 13 8.15:
"I don't know much about science but I know a bit about scientists, having observed them at close quarters. And the idea of a massive, co-ordinated conspiracy involving thousands of them is ludicrous. Put three of them in the same room and you'll get an argument.
Meanwhile, we're told the deniers have got it right, but exactly which antis? Those who say there is no global warming, period. Those who say there is global warming but nothing we can do about it as it's not man-made? Those who say it is manmade but the climate change will be a good thing?"
An interesting example of self-contradiction and muddled argument. On the one hand you are saying that scientists inherently disagree about everything (put three of them in a room .... etc.) I agree; it would seem that getting scientists to agree on anything is like herding cats!
On the other hand you are saying that statements like "the science is settled, the debate is over, there is scientific consensus" are believable. This does not make logical sense, which is precisely why it makes me (and many others) suspicious.
The very fact that the sceptics' camp is not speaking with one voice and that sceptical scientists disagree on various points should make it more realistic, using your own arguments. Think about it!
By the way, no credible sceptical sources claim "there is no global warming - period!"
Dixon
March 15th, 2009 11:00amOrwell Spinning...
The data I was referring to would be the first to come from a sattelite specifically designed for the task. Theres lots of other data, but its all compromised in various ways. For example temperature readings from weather stations that have been moved from a field to the roof of a tower-block built since at the same location. Or that one uncovered for the first time after thirty years buried under snow. The sattelite data has been adapted from machines not actually designed for the task. Some of them border upon Trabants or Ladas in terms of their technology.
The real benchmark will be if the Maldives actually do not dissapear in the next thirty years. Thats something tangible which anyone will be able to verify simply by looking at a map.
What you say about pace of change is true except that no change ever has been faster than the events between 1933 and 1953, when whole nations dissapeared under the tide of history and others were created anew from the depths like Sirtse emerging from the North Sea. The point being that Humanity never goes away, only societies and institutions collapse under the stress of change, whilst the results of such collapse are very often beneficial, such as in 1989-1991. What George Galloway describes as the "greatest catastrophe to happen in my lifetime".
The worst predictions suggest a 1 metre increase in sea level in a century. At the end of the ice age, shorelines increased by thirty metres PER WEEK! Our ancesters not only coped with that but thrived. It always amuses me that a very large chunk of Holland has been well below sea level and habitable only due to technology for several centuries. Something similar for Norfolk.
This is the thing about the debate, its all so narrowly fixated, like a person undergoing hypnotic induction who seems to hear nothing and see nothing but the hypnotist. The climate change lobby is narrowly and exclusively focussed upon one, very narrow, very blinkered narrative.
Like Malthus and his followers, centuries before them.
wolf
March 15th, 2009 2:07pmEllen Stuttles & Dixon.
Whaow!Cant argue with scientific facts!Especially Dixons very first post.
P.S.The expert climatologist(Christopher.B.)is back from another sightseeing trip,don't miss his article!!
wolf
March 15th, 2009 2:20pmDixon: Hur, hur??
I think your alcohol intake will soon be restricted to 20 units a day by our so caring government!
Ann
March 15th, 2009 2:57pm"There is zero scientific evidence to back up the claim of Man Made Catastrophic Global Warming. Zero. It's not a conspiracy - it's just hysteria perpetuated by leftist ideologues: former scientists, politicians, media-types, etc"
The hysteria is coming from your side. Your hysterical label "leftist ideologues" is a classic case in point. This accusation is hurled around by those with no rational argument to put forward. I am not remotely 'leftist', and the same goes for many others who on balance accept the probability of man-made climate change.
Ann
March 15th, 2009 3:09pm"I don't know much about science but I know a bit about scientists, having observed them at close quarters. And the idea of a massive, co-ordinated conspiracy involving thousands of them is ludicrous. Put three of them in the same room and you'll get an argument."
Absolutely. Except that if you put ONE in the same room you'll still get an argument.
I can't find the post from the person who compares this to ideology in the old Communist world. What nonsense. Clearly you have not yet understood how non-Communist societies work - or how scientists work. They do not accept ideologies at face value. They disagree and try to disprove them. And to say that 99% of climatologists don't understand the computer models but accept them because they are the prevailing ideology - this again is nonsense. You are claiming to understand the scientific situation better than the climatologists (are you really better at understanding computer models than 99% of climatologists? Aren't you the modest one), and accuse scientists of being effectively illiterate. This is hilariously ignorant.
Ellen Stuttle
March 15th, 2009 6:51pm[2nd try]
Dixon:
* "Seems from Ellen Stuttles comment that wolfs sarcasm has
somewhat backfired."
If "wolf's" comment was meant sarcastically, yes, I missed
that.
Ellen Stuttle
March 15th, 2009 7:33pmAnn:
* "And the idea of a massive, co-ordinated conspiracy involving thousands of them is ludicrous."
-
There isn't a conspiracy which involves thousands of scientists, but there is:
~~ a coordination of efforts which leaves thousands of scientists represented in the professional organizations by a small cadre who speak for the membership without polling the membership;
~~ a blockage against publishing the work of sceptics in prestigious journals;
~~ a skewed funding apparatus funneling billions of dollars toward research which ~assumes~ that AGW is true;
~~ a whole generation of younger scientists who have gone into climatology lured by the available funds and who have accepted ad-hoc (and adjustable to suit presuppositions) modeling procedures as a substitute for data.
-
A source in print which addresses a number of these problems is a paper by Richard Lindzen titled:
-
"Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?"
-
This is available as arXiv:0809.3762, Submitted on 22 Sep 2008, last revised 29 Nov 2008.
-
http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.3762
-
Unfortunately, it's in .pdf version and has to be downloaded -- and it's long: 36 pages.
-
I'm working on compressing the information from this paper and from other sources into a form more accessible to the general public.
-
Here is the abstract of the article:
-
* "For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. Such factors as the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs, the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead, and the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations are co[n]sidered. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of."
Henry Halloway
March 16th, 2009 3:01amDid you know that the U.S. wants to regulate human flatulence, which contains greenhouse gasses CO2 and methane, to reduce global warming? The full story at globalvillageidiot.org
John Thomas
March 16th, 2009 12:14pmMelanie reports Goldenberg's sneers, in the Guardian - but Goldenberg gives the game away, doesn't she? If the anti-AGW people are "right wing", then clearly the pro-AGW people are "left wing" - ie. it's all about politics, and where you stand in the political spectrum - all politics, and not science, or reason, at all - like so many things today (eg. the origins of life/the world).
andy
March 16th, 2009 7:52pmsorry Neil, what i really mean is that just as the man-made global warming 'evidence' is speculative so is the 'evidence' for evolution,
anoniab
May 25th, 2009 8:47amAfter this last winter and the low activity of the sun, I'd say Greenland's ice sheet is doomed all right - to become larger. So much for any "tipping point."
Chris Mason
July 2nd, 2009 8:18amThis comment is a little late. However here it is. I have just done a quick calculation on Global Warming
1. The athmosphere weighs about 5393,3 trillion tons.
CO2 in the atmosphere weighs 2.04 trillion tons.
3. The amount of dissolved CO2 in the Oceans weighs 750,000,000,000 tons.
4. The Suns warming of the sea circulates 150,000,000,000 tons of CO2 in & out of the ocean every year. An increase in the suns activity is what was causing Global Warming not human beings. The Earth is now in a cooling phase. Even so they intend to TAX the populations of the World many trillions of dollars for s myth thought up by Al Bore, sorry Al Gore. By all accounts $3000 per family in The USA, and probably the same here in Australia.
5. A note. The total of all the known coal, oil, gas, reserves of the World are estimated at 350,000,000,000 tons, or less than half the weight of the disolved CO2 in the oceans. Note 2. There is no more CO2 on the Earth than was 4000,000,000 years ago. Note 3. The largest deposit of CO2 is 100 trillion tons in the sub stratum of the Earth, this deposit is near enough 20 times as much as the total atmosphere weighs. Just what are the political reptiles up to now ??????????????????????????