All together now: 'The science is sett...' no, wait...

Neil Turner

I was watching BBC news 24 yesterday, listening to a senior Met Office bod.

The presenter asked him about the numerous emails BBC were receiving to the effect of "what global warming ?!"

Met Office man gave the patronising reply that the UK's cold weather was just one country, and just a few weeks of snow and ice, and that this was not typical of the global situation / trend

Reference to the "Watts Up" website destroys this myth

The Met Office become more like Orwell's Ministry of Truth every day

James O'Sullivan

Ok, I have no clue about who to believe when it comes to global warming.

One this I am sure about though, is that there will be less and less oil in the planet and soon we will have to do something about this.

Oil/gas etc is used to make plastics, medicines, electricity, everything.

So maybe let us save it for these important things and have less useless packaging, less useless cracker presents, less stuff we don't need. And stop arguing about the weather.

Occasional Ostrich

Yes, Melanie, and did you watch Tuesday night's documentary about the ancient Kingdom of Nubia, which existed in green, fertile lands (as evidenced by the types of animals they farmed) 5 to 7 thousand years ago (depending on the mood of the interviewees), and which has been for over 2000 years a largely arid desert. No significant CO2 emissions which might have been accused of causing that, were there? Yet it happened. Can any of these AGW wonks point to any evidence in the (unsullied) data for the cause of that catastrophe. If their proxy records are worth anything, they should. Unless AGW is just another new age religion.

Adrian

Yes there is going to be less and less oil, but no we dont need to do anything about it. The market will do it all by itself.

d1carter

But, but Algoracle said it was settled. He must be out of the USA now, because the rest of us are freezing our Goracles off.

Tendryakov

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/16/highereducation.climatechange

Global warming could end Sahara droughts, says study.

Bad news. It seems that grass is starting to grow there. If grass starts growing seriously, it might matt all the sand together and stop it from blowing about in the way God intended. Terrible. Whatever next? Trees? Vegetables? Flowers?

Sergey

Cold spell in just one country lasting a week is weather. But cold spell engulfing all Northern Hemisphere for several weeks is already a climate event, and if it lasts two month - a serious climate event demanding explanation. It is disingenious to ascribe every heat wave to global warming but explain away all extremal cold events as "just weather". Actually climate is just weather on larger spatial and time scale; I would not object any reasonable arbitrary drawn line between the two, but this distinction must be fixed and equally applied to all extreme weather events, cold or hot.

Dixon

"James O'Sullivan
January 6th, 2010 4:36pm
Ok, I have no clue about who to believe when it comes to global warming.

One this I am sure about though, is that there will be less and less oil in the planet and soon we will have to do something about this.

Oil/gas etc is used to make plastics, medicines, electricity, everything."

Under present economic conditions, an oil well is retired from production after only 35-45% of its capacity has been extracted. Therefore, as a matter of fact, more than half the oil ever discovered is still in the ground available for extraction by new methods currently in development.

This takes no account of the likelihood that most oil reserves remain to be discovered.

The plastics etc that you refer to can be obtained from coal as easily as oil. Coal reserves exist for some thousands of years consumption at present rates, which are liable to be a peak.

The only strategic benefit of reduced oil consumption is reduced dependence on Arab producers. However, the same result could be obtained by switching to synthetic fuel produced from coal. Except for CO2 hysteria.

Nonetheless, the USAF is currently certifying ALL of its aircraft, of all types, to operate on synthetic fuel produced from coal. The B52 bombers have been flying on a mix of fuels for several years.

These measures are all much more expensive than easy-oil. But the point is that ample resources sufficient to our requirements exist to permit us to switch to other technologies at a sensible rather than precipitously, as we are being urged to.

Panic about diminishing resopurces is as hysterical as panic about climate change.

Augustus

History shows that global cooling is far worse for the human race than global warming. The constant low temperatures in the early centuries of civilization led to grain husbandry shifting hundreds of miles southwards. This was one of the main reasons why the Germanic tribes in South Scandinavia and North Germany became agitated which later contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire. And the little ice age in the 17th Century led to colonial expansion by North European countries and many peasants found little work on the land and went to sea. Practically all
great civilizations came about in warm climates. The modern western civilization is an anomaly as its welfare is based on research and technical ability, not environmental circumstances. If Britain gets warmer it will get the climate of the French Riviera. What's wrong with that? Surely the climate of Provence is more comfortable than Birmingham or Leeds? And it will also mean having to burn less fossil fuel to keep warm. But the reason why politicians like Ed Milliband cannot now go back on their doom scenario hype is because then they will be rumbled by their voters that they have been duped. And companies expecting to make billions because of climate change also don't want officials to change their policies, because they can easily charge the costs of complying on to their customers.

In fact, the whole global warming hype is a plot to squeeze billions out of the western world, or rather its taxpayers. Western leaders have abused the feelings of guilt created in voters' minds to get them in a even tighter grip. Some even dream of a world government. And like Brown and others, they let themselves be accused by developing nations and even by their competitors in Asia, for the gobal rise in CO2, and that it is all the fault of the West, so now they must pay for it. If you want to know what really threatens the planet, it isn't CO2, but a population explosion in the third world. We have a simple choice: We can cover the world with people who lead a basic minimum existence and despise and extinguish all other
forms of life, or we can put a brake on population growth and in so doing make sure that less people lead a more comfortable existence somewhere on the planet. The choice isn't hard to make.

andrew adams

The current cold spell is weather, not climate. You wouldn't expect climate models to predict it. And in any case extreme weather events such as we are currently seeing are to be expected with global warming (whatever its cause).
As for Knorr's study I've no idea what you think it proves. The fact that "only" 45% of CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere is already well known - no one, absolutely no one, claims the figure is 100%.

andrew adams

It is disingenious to ascribe every heat wave to global warming

Well it would be if anyone actually did this.

Jack R

'Greenies' in Kent, being warmed by heat produced from COAL-FIRED power-station at Kingsworth today:

'We must occupy Kingsnorth again this summer and close it down, along with the other coal-fired power stations producing 41% of Britain's power.'

Philo

Sergey,
Meteorologists say that the current cold snap is caused by fluctuations in the jet stream which occur from time to time, causing the prevailing Westerlies to reach land further south than usual leaving Britain in the grip of Easterlies. This is simply a normal feature of the weather system and not relevant to the debate about climate change. Are the meteorologists wrong about this observed regularity in the weather?

Pete

"Minister for Climate Change Ed Miliband"

That description alone made me feel I wanted to puke!

John East

How many times, today and yesterday have you seen the 1962/63 bad winter story ob the BBC? I've seen this report five times now, and as I type this the video is running again on News 24.

The message is clear, that winters were far worse in the 1960's than today thanks to global warming.

SimonP

The only thing that's settled is the snow.

Sergey

"Are the meteorologists wrong about this observed regularity in the weather?"
O course, they are not. Every observed regularity of weather patterns is an integral part of the climate system. There are lots of such regularities, including North Atlantic Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, ENSO (El Ninja -Southern Osciallation) and so on. But this natural variability is not properly included in computer models used by IPCC and does not have proper attention in climate change debate. And this is a serious conceptual error, since at decadal scale natural variability has much better correlation with average global temperature than carbon emissions. I do believe that better understanding of natural variability will make any variations of greenhouse gases irrelevant for explanation of observable climate changes. Ocean currents dominate at decadal scale as the main drivers of climate.

andrew adams

But this natural variability is not properly included in computer models used by IPCC and does not have proper attention in climate change debate.

These events have a short term effect and don't alter climate over the long term. They explain why global warming doesn't go in a nice straight line (please remember this next time a "skeptic" claims no warming since 1998) but they are not relevant to the question of whether human CO2 emissions will cause warming over the rest if this century.

Having said that, climate models DO include ENSO - see here for example.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/ENSO-summary.shtml

James Murphy

Brr - it's so delightfully cold, isn't it? Nothing to do but watch and laugh as AGW fascists lose their footing in the miraculous landscape of statistical snow and ice! Meanwhile, two very obvious pieces of logic for them to chew on: if this freeze is just a blip in a trend, what happens if there's another blip next year, and the year after that? At what stage do those blips themselves constitute a trend? Secondly, re. the absurdity of the very notion of a 'trend', permit me to cite a pertinent (and suitably childlike) central heating metaphor: if I heat up a room constantly (and for 'room' read 'world', etc, etc), it doesn't suddenly stop getting hotter for no reason (the blip,) it just gets hotter and hotter until I stop heating it! - Oops there goes a religion.

Sergey

"Having said that, climate models DO include ENSO - see here for example."
I did not say they don't include it - I said they do not include it PROPERLY. These models do not envisage permanent changes in ocean circulation emulating these short-term events at much larger time scale. But I read some articles in Science magazine about paleoclimatology, namely explanation of middle Eocene climate transition. Authors postulate from sea sediment data that these time there was "El-Nino-like" circulation pattern, or permanent El Nino, which kept global climate system 14 degrees warmer its present state. Such long term circulation changes were not included in any IPCC models, and geological past gives plenty of arguments how powerful such changes can be. We now know pretty nothing about factors governing ocean circulation, and this is a huge gap in our "settled science". All models accept present patterns for granted, and there is not a shred of evidence why we can hold such assumptions.

Sergey

See, for example,
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5735/758
There are lots of reasearch papers on the theme in peer-reviewed literature, but all of them are simply ignored in debates centered on variation of greenhouse gases content.

andrew adams

James Murphy,

The current freeze is not global and does not constitute a "blip" in the trend. The relatively cool (in recent terms) 2008 was a blip in the trend, due to the combination of a la Nina and a solar minimum.
Your central heating metaphor does not apply - you would expect a linear rise in temperatures as you turn up the thermostat, which you don't with increasing CO2 emissions because of the other factors which cause short term variations as we have been discussing in this thread. Actually, it might apply if you left your windows open.

Crocodile Dan Dee

The earth's temperatures and sea levels have been rising and falling for thousands of years, this has been proven by carbon dating of molluscs at the Uni of New England in NSW Australia, these variances all took place without any assistance from mankind. Sure we are polluting too much and actions should be taken to reduce this unfortunate side effect of civilisation, but please spare us from the Apocolyptic BS that the Greens continually espouse. According to them the sky is always falling and the press just love stories that scare the Bejesus out of any gullible readers

andrew adams

Sergey, I don't dispute (in fact I don't know much on this particular topic) that such things are not neccessarily well understood, but then climate scientists do not claim that that they know everything there is to know about our climate. That doesn't in itself throw AGW into doubt.
Models handle ENSO well enough as it exists now - the fact that it was different four million years ago is certainly interesting but our concern is about what is happening now and what will happen for the rest of this century.

From a very quick Google, if anything it seems that the paper you link to seems to suggest we should be even more wary of increasing temperatures -

"Many aspects of the climate system that appear stable within a certain range of temperatures can shift dramatically when a particular threshold is passed," Wara said. "We can't say where that threshold is, but it is a concern as we continue this ongoing global experiment of adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere."

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002961.html

Sergey

"climate scientists do not claim that that they know everything there is to know about our climate. That doesn't in itself throw AGW into doubt."
Actually, that is exactly what some of them claim when declaring "science is settled". No, it is not, even to the first approximation. And this does throw AGW into doubt, because all current observations can be explained without any changes to the earth radiation balance or CO2 concentations. We had higher temperatures than now without higher CO2 values, due different circulation patterns. Untill natural variability is properly understood, all theories ascribing climate change to rising CO2 levels, are preposterous.

Sergey

Inclusion of ENSO into climate models is only one-way: they can realistically reproduce global temperature and precipitation patterns for given phase and strength of ENSO, but the can not derive or predict ENSO from given meteo data. This is not a bug, but a feature: causation is also one-way, from changes of global circulation to temperature distribution, but not other way round. That means the principal inability of climate models to reliably predict anything, while they can explain actual development in retrospect. But IPCC used these models as a predictive tools, which is fallacy.

Ian C

The science is not settled - by definition.

What is settled is that the idots have taken over the asylum and we're all going to pay for it.

AP

"It does show that only 45% of man's emissions, not 100% as warmers claim, stays in the atmosphere, and that includes the carbon emissions of the private jets that flew to Copenhagen last month and the limos that drove the occupants around. The rest is absorbed by nature, and that percentage hasn't changed since 1850"

Really? According to John Redwood, 'warmers' have been claiming that the airborn fraction is 100%, and that they will be shocked to learn that that hasn't changed much for some time. I guess Knorr 09 has really shown them up then. Er, hasn't it?

Here is what Hadley Centre was saying on the on a poster from 2007: "The airborne fraction (AF)[45%]has remained remarkably constant over the last five decades since observations of CO2 began at Mauna Loa..." Gotcha! Typical warmist misinfor....whah? Hmm.

Well, what about the IPCC? "There is yet no statistically significant trend in the CO2 growth rate as a fraction of fossil fuel plus cement emissions since routine atmospheric CO2 measurements began in 1958. This ‘airborne fraction’ has shown little variation over this period." Ah hah! Oh.

Can someone explain what Redwood's on about?

Baron Pippin II

andrew adams: it is undeniably true that mammals, including humans, have been around for a while as the measurable parameters like temperature, rainfall, CO2 density and stuff of the world climate were changing, and changing considerably. Agreed? If that were not true you wouldn’t be here for a start.

One can never be sure when it comes to the past, but it’s a reasonable assumption to make that not until now the species that have ever inhabited this little insignificant speck of the universe adapted to those changes rather than fooled themselves with the idea of stopping it. We cannot control the weather, how could we control the climate? It’s not insanity, it goes beyond it.

‘Science is common sense at its best. Rigid accuracy in observance, and merciless to fallacy in logic,’ said Sir Thomas Huxley. How I wish some could dig the great man up.

Augustus

Sergey makes very astute and useful comments. The science regarding man-made global warming is certainly not settled
because it can't possibly be determined whether a warming period is due to entirely natural processes. There was a mini-ice age until the beginning of the 19th Century.
Since then temperatures have risen, but similar warm periods occurred in the Middle Ages, as well as during the Roman Empire when temperatures were purported to be higher than the present. And during the last decade it hasn't got any warmer despite increases in CO2 levels.
One can in all honesty therefore
question whether mankind itself can simply regulate the Earth's
thermometer to any degree; either warmer, or colder. But what mankind can, and should do,
is to fit in with nature's whims, because variations, in climate, as in all things, is nature's way.

James Hodson

William Thomson (aka Lord Kelvin, who, one assumes, knew a bit about temperature), once said, "Science is bound by the everlasting laws of honour to face fearlessly every problem that can be presented to it."

Both Ed Miliband and the IPCC ought, perhaps, to have this imprinted somewhere or other.

James Hodson

I read today that the Houses of Parliament's bills for heating have roughly doubled in the last five years.

Has this anything to do with the EU measures to reduce carbon emitted from Europe and the UK's self-doing and similar actions?

I wonder weather [yes, I know] how many MPs actually bothered to read what they were voting for.

Charles

Yes, the climate has changed in the past. Yes, people have adapted to it.

What's different is that the change appears to be happening fast, and the number of people on this planet is greater than it ever has been. Large scale, rapid adaptation to such changes is politically difficult; that's the problem.

Any creature can affect its environment in dramatic and irreversible ways, if sufficiently numerous, and that includes humans, one of the larger land-based animals on the planet. Are there any other large mammals with a global population even approaching 6,600,000,000?

Sergey

This is a common misunderstanding that in the past environmental changes were always gradual and slow. Actually, some of these past transitions were very rapid and abrupt. That is why most geologic strata can be so readily and unambiguosly discerned.
On the global scale the role of large mammals is negligeable. They occupy the very apex of food chain, and the flows of energy and matter are significantly bigger at lower tiers of trophic pyramid. Humans do not readily fit into the paradigm of ecology: they have not definite niche, all depends on the technology used. Contrary to the common view, the most harm to environment is done not by wealthy urbanized populations, but by the most primitive ones: cut-and-burn agriculture of nomadic tribes in the tropics. A square mile of land can support only one family this way, and the burned land can be used for growing crops only for 3 years. It turns into badland with irreversly destroyed soil. In contrast, the same land used for growing rice can support 100 times more people, year after year, without soil degradation. By improving agriculture and introducing modern cultivars we can rise the world food production tenfold. And this is not the limit, too: we use only one-hundredth of potentially edible plant species. The bottom line, there is no such thing as Earth maximum capacity for humans numbers, it only refers to the present day technology.

Charles

"The bottom line, there is no such thing as Earth maximum capacity for humans numbers, it only refers to the present day technology."

So it's possible to fit an infinite number of people into finite space?

Sergey

"So it's possible to fit an infinite number of people into finite space?"
Theoretically, no. But in practice it is only deficit of arable land and its yeld is now limiting factor. And there very big improvement is possible, especially with new methods of irrigation and desalination factories to make fresh water from sea water. Expected number of humans at which further growth will stop due plummeting almost everywhere fertility rates is below 10 bln, at 2100. This is way below what can be mantained even without new technologies that can emerge before that, and about which we have no idea now.

James Hodson

Let's all have a sensible chat of whom to dispose.

I'd start with the Greenies.

Charles

Sergey: " Expected number of humans at which further growth will stop due plummeting almost everywhere fertility rates is below 10 bln, at 2100."

I think numbers are predicted to peak at about 9 bn mid-century, and then decline after that. As you say, the technology isn't (or shouldn't be) an issue. I suppose my concern is with how problems that are basically global can be dealt with politically, without disenfranchising even more people than are already disenfranchised.

Which is a roundabout way of wishing that countries could come to some sort of agreement!

John.

Why is it that people still insist on talking about CO2 being the factor reponsible for global warming/climate change, when it is well-known that in the distant past there was 12000% more CO2 in the atmosphere at the same time as therewas an ice age and also that CO2 only increases AFTER the temperature has risen? As there is only a component of 0.038% of CO2 in the atmosphere and a tiny fraction of that comprises humanity's contribution to that, it would seem pointless to get worked up about it in any case!
Secondly, what kind of a world would it be in which the maximum possible number of humans was managing to survive? An enormous percentage of the present number of animal and plant species would have become extinct in order for this to be possible. Surely they have the right to exist as well? And how enjoyable would life be for the burgeoning numbers of humans in such circumstances?

john holland

Im sorry to sound rude, but why are nearly all of the anti-AGW posts in this catalogue of idiocy so proud of their combination of opinionatedness and an almost total inability to even try to apply either reason or gain any scientific knowledge whatsoever?
If someone is really so silly as to not understand why the present weather has little connection with long-term climate forecasts, please, keep quiet about it, or try reading a simple book about it,but for Christs sake, , don't think your ignorance is advancing what is very important debate. Here's a question; this week, parts of Australia experienced the hottest night temeratures ever recorded. According to your logic, that's evidence for global warming, if your idiotic contention that our weather is evidence against it is true. So why talk about one but not the other? If your going to be ignorant, at least try to be consistent.

john holland

ps Does John really think there was 120 times more CO2 in the atmosphere in the last ice age? No, because not only is he wrong, he doesnt even know enough to realise why that statement is absurd. I guess he doesnt think he needs to worry about these things, the truth is, by definition, whatever pours out of his brain. Again, sorry to be rude but this drivel is becoming so depressing.

Sergey

"If someone is really so silly as to not understand why the present weather has little connection with long-term climate forecasts"
John, I agree that present weather has no connection with long-term climate forecast due a simple reason: weather is real, while long-term climate forecast is a pure mythology. My one-time boss, Vladimir Arnold, Vice-chairman of International Union of Mathematicians and the leading world specialist in non-linear dynamics, was charged by Russian government to analyse the possibility of long-term climate forecast. His conclusion was unambiguous: such thing is not possible, because horizon of prediction is 2 weeks.
And you tone is not only rude, but positively insulting.

Sergey

"this drivel is so depressing"
I can understand why warmists, like john holland, are now so depressed that can't even be reasonably polite. Their worldview is coming apart around them, and people in this condition often behave like psychopaths. Be ready to observe more of that in nearby future.

Charles

Sergey: Arnold's findings may well be true of models based on non-linear dynamics. But as I understand it, the models used for climate projections are more akin to agent-based models, whose outputs are a range of long-run probabilities for particular outcomes, rather than unambiguous predictions of the future.

For me, that's a key reason to take the models seriously. They don't claim perfection, but they do claim to offer a plausible warning of a possible negative outcome.

Of course, even if you have a perfect model that says there's a ninety percent chance of a particular event, it does not preclude the possibility that the event won't happen. Nor is the model wrong if the event does not happen. It simply means that in real life, the less probable outcome was what actually happened.

If someone told me that there was a fifty-fifty chance that I would be hit on the head by a brick if I walk under a ladder, I wouldn't walk under the ladder. Equally, if someone tells me there's even a seventy percent chance that AGW is happening, I'll feel inclined to try and respond.

Sergey

See the following quote from IPCC official document (I can give a link) and compare this sober estimate with media hype:
8.7.3 Unforced Abrupt Climate Change
Formally, as noted above, the changes discussed here do
not fall into the definition of abrupt climate change. In the
literature, unforced abrupt climate change falls into two general categories. One is just a red noise time series, where there is power at decadal and longer time scales. A second category is a bimodal or multi-modal distribution. In practice, it can be very difficult to distinguish between the two categories unless the time series are very long – long enough to eliminate sampling as an issue – and the forcings are fairly constant in time. In observations, neither of these conditions is normally met.
Models, both AOGCMs and less complex models, have produced examples of large abrupt climate change (e.g., Halland Stouffer 2001; Goosse et al., 2002) without any changes in forcing. Typically, these events are associated with changes in the ocean circulation, mainly in the North Atlantic. An abrupt event can last for several years to a few centuries. They bear some similarities with the conditions observed during a relatively cold period in the recent past in the Arctic (Goosse et al., 2003)
Unfortunately, the probability of such an event is difficult
to estimate as it requires a very long experiment and is certainly dependent on the mean state simulated by the model.
Furthermore, comparison with observations is nearly impossible
since it would require a very long period with constant forcing
which does not exist in nature. Nevertheless, if an event such as
the one of those mentioned above were to occur in the future,
it would make the detection and attribution of climate changes
very difficult."
In short, models can predict nothing, because changes in ocean circulation can not be modelled. And they (not greenhouse emissions, just as I asserted)really determine outcomes.

John.

john holland: I'm afraid your intemperate rantings are not based on facts. I did make a mistake by accidentally putting an extra "0" on the amount of CO2 there was in the atmosphere at one time, but nevertheless, ice core samples prove that there were 12 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere in the distant past at the same time that there was an ice age. The other facts I mention - which are only a few of the proven facts - can be vouched for if you take the trouble to read a few books yourself - Christopher Booker's "Scared to Death", Nigel Calder's "The Chilling Stars", Lord Lawson's "An Appeal to Reason", Bjorn Lomberg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist", and "Cool It", Plimer's "Heaven and Earth" let's say for a start. The discussion is not about whether global warming is or isn't occuring anyway it is about what are the real causes of temperature and climate change. They certainly have nothing whatsoever to do with CO2! While the hottest ever recorded temperature for the time of year may well have been registered somewhere in Australia I would like you to also consider the extremely low temperatures in Britain at the moment and in the North American prairies, not to mention the fact that all of Antarctica except the Antarctic Peninsula, pointing up towards Chile, is getting much colder. I'm not just plucking all this out of the air Mr Holland - it all comes from reputable sources. I suggest that you just try doing a bit of reading yourself, before you rage at others in the future.