Forget global warming?

[Rockstar]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

[Tchocky]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation

This foundation exists to argue a specific line against a specific idea.

[Rockstar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation

This foundation exists to argue a specific line against a specific idea.

Nothing wrong with an opposing idea is there? Unfortunately each camp it seems are extreme in their views. One proclaims it's all our fault we are going to die before our time from heat exhaustion. The other says we are all going to freeze to death because of a naturally occurring phenomena.

[Tchocky]

Thinking about this in terms of "camps" is ridiculous.

The issue is scientific at first, and then becoming political (as in policy and legislation) once solutions come into consideration.

This foundation are being political (as in agendas and pushing a line regardless of evidence) rght from the get-go.

[Oberon]

Haven't had a Frost Fair in a while, would be interesting to see one in my lifetime.

[tater]

Thinking about this in terms of "camps" is ridiculous.

The issue is scientific at first, and then becoming political (as in policy and legislation) once solutions come into consideration.

This foundation are being political (as in agendas and pushing a line regardless of evidence) rght from the get-go.

Ideally, I agree with you completely. Practically, much of the most influential AGW "camp" is in fact also very political and has been from the start. The guys working on the IPCC, for example. You can read their internal conversations to see how they marginalize anyone who disagrees with their narrative (not just the more "political" internet skeptics, but even other scientists that publish papers that don't toe the line, or reviewers who allowed any contrary papers to be published). They stonewall FOIA requests, etc, even when they are paid by the public, doing work for which policy is to be based on.

The other reality is that they are also advocating for HUGE expenditures of government money. That instantly makes anything they do political. They should go back to doing basic science, and STFU about policy, IMHO.

When a JPL guy gets in front of a camera, and tells us that an asteroid is going to hit the earth on a certain day, you can take that to the bank. He's a physicist, and will have worked it out actually understanding uncertainty, measurement error, etc. He will have a answer to many significant figures using models that are demonstrably capable of very accurate prediction. When a climate scientist tells you of impending disaster based on the code he wrote himself (he took FORTRAN in grad school 30 years ago, doncha know)... I'd not bet my life's savings on it. I'd not bet even a few grand on it yet.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Frost fair? In the age of health and safety? I don't think so no matter how frozen the Thames gets.

[Skybird]

What does he mean by "no convincing evidence by 2015"...? :har: What else does he need? The sun falling into his pool and making it boil?

Anyhow, that optimistically so-called "think" tank has a very well-known, corrupted reputation anyhow. It is no think tank but a lobby organisation.

Anmd Tchocky is right, this is no issue of camps. We have parrots in some cities of the Ruhr area now - several thousands. We have insects and animals moving into Germany, also botanic species both on land and sea and in rivers, that before were unable to suriorve here - before it was too cold for them. Now it obviuously isn't that cold for them anymore - else they would not be here, and spread.

So many evidence that oyu want in most parts of the world, Mr. Peiser, and throughout the globe's oceans. You just need to open your stupid lobby-eyes and actually wanting to see reality like it unfolds around you unharmed by propaganda and special interests.

But that is not what you would get payed for, right, Mr. Peiser? ;)

[tater]

Convincing to me requires a good deal of accuracy, and prediction. The climate is far more complex than the current models account for. I'm stunned that they report prediction in terms of fractions of a degree C over vast time frames.

Anyone trained in science should scratch their heads. How can data taken by midshipmen on sailing ships a few hundred years ago from a small number of discrete spots be as accurate as modern satellite data? I can't imagine the old data being any more accurate than +- 1 or even 2 degrees C. Since the sum total change they are concerned about is on the order of 1-2 °C, this is a huge issue. For older stuff, they use things like trees as proxies for temp***8212;when clearly precipitation is the likely driver, not temperature (and they throw out any tree data that doesn't agree with what they want to see into the bargain).

I think the recent data is good, and if it shows warming during that instrumental record (satellite, anyway, I think the ground stations are skewed by UHI effects), then it has been warming, clearly. The trick is to determine if it is warming unnaturally, and I think making that claim is a huge leap given the low quality of old temperature data, AND uncertainty of such data. You can only claim accuracy to the level of your most uncertain data. If their 2000 year old temp data is +-10 degrees, then that's the best they can report now if they want a single, consistent model to back predict with.

Once you decide to make trillion or more dollar impacts, you need to demonstrate exactly how effective your mitigation will be. Else you need a cost-benefit look at the expense to mitigate vs prevention---where prevention is a probability of prevention with HUGE error bars. We might spend a trillion and save 5 trillion with a 5% probability, or we might spend a trillion and save nothing at all with a 40% probability, etc. Figure out the expectation value... is it a good gamble? Right now, I think the uncertainty is too great to gamble any large expenditure even assuming 100% global compliance. Without 100% global compliance, it's not worth spending a dime.

[Catfish]

What does he mean by "no convincing evidence by 2015"...? :har: What else does he need? The sun falling into his pool and making it boil? [...]


You forget tornadoes in Germany, devastating houses, stripping roofs and leaving a path of destruction. We have never seen that before :o
Actually this year a "normal" storm (not a tornado) removed some roof tiles from our 4-year-old house, and it also cracked one of the sun collectors.
This f'n weather is getting expensive :shifty:

Greetings,
Catfish

[danasan]

OK, we all know there is a difference between weather and climate...

But here, where I use to live, we have never had a December month that warm, maybe since weather is recorded...

[Tribesman]

It is quite shocking, I think I just read a whole daily mail article and at no point did immigrants get the blame.

[Rockstar]

OK, we all know there is a difference between weather and climate...

But here, where I use to live, we have never had a December month that warm, maybe since weather is recorded...

I never seen a warmer winter either. However it was forecast by the farmers almanac last year, so it shouldn't really be a surprise. Also too there is tangible scientific evidence global warming and cooling is a naturally occurring phenomena since the dawn of time. Long before the man the Internet and arm chair climatologists.

[magicstix]

I have been keeping very close tabs on the local temperature, and I have noticed that, in the past 3 months, since around late September or so, the average temperature has dropped an astounding 30 degrees F!!! Extrapolating into the future, should this trend continue, I predict we will have another "Snowball Earth" the likes of which have not been seen in several billion years on this planet!

I require a truck load of research money to fill in the finer details of my theory.

:D

[Tchocky]

It is quite shocking, I think I just read a whole daily mail article and at no point did immigrants get the blame.

Global warming hysteria is having a negative impact on our house prices.

One would gladly sacrifice a swan on the Cenotaph to invoke Spirit Churchill's favour.

If only the illegal immigrants had not eaten them all.

I weep for Albion.

[August]

...maybe since weather is recorded...

Which is only a tiny fraction of human existence and only a tiny fraction of that is recorded with any great degree of accuracy. They can't even prove that what degree of impact, if any, that humans actually have upon present climate change let alone predict future changes.

Yet we're supposed to spend trillions of dollars on things that aren't even likely to fix what problems do exist. Worse any scheme that is proposed requires 100% world compliance and participation. Good luck with that one.

[magicstix]

Which is only a tiny fraction of human existence and only a tiny fraction of that is recorded with any great degree of accuracy. They can't even prove that what degree of impact, if any, that humans actually have upon present climate change let alone predict future changes.

Yet we're supposed to spend trillions of dollars on things that aren't even likely to fix what problems do exist. Worse any scheme that is proposed requires 100% world compliance and participation. Good luck with that one.

Actually a lot of scientists are starting to come out against the gloom and doom predictions and point out there isn't any real evidence of catastrophe awaiting us even if the warming turns out to be both real and caused by human activity.

[Tribesman]

If only the illegal immigrants had not eaten them all.

:rotfl2:
There was a run a while back about the foriegners killing and eating all the swans down Claddagh...then they caught a fella red handed and he was a Dub.
Though they are kinda like foriegners ain't they:03:

[mookiemookie]

Also too there is tangible scientific evidence global warming and cooling is a naturally occurring phenomena since the dawn of time.

Irrelevant as that was never up for debate. The debate is about anthropogenic (human caused) climate change.

[TorpX]

I have been keeping very close tabs on the local temperature, and I have noticed that, in the past 3 months, since around late September or so, the average temperature has dropped an astounding 30 degrees F!!! Extrapolating into the future, should this trend continue, I predict we will have another "Snowball Earth" the likes of which have not been seen in several billion years on this planet!

I require a truck load of research money to fill in the finer details of my theory.

:D

Yes, it's the Chicken Little syndrome. One scientist says "the sky is falling.......the sky is falling.... We'll all be killed!". The other scientist says "there is no evidence the sky is falling......there is little danger that anyone will be killed.....". Who do you think will get the most research money?

[mookiemookie]

My favorite statement on the whole sideshow carnival of a "debate"

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Images/administration/facilities/Cartoon.jpg

[Skybird]

"Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their nature and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.”

Leopold von Ranke


"The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs."

Jared Diamond

[Rockstar]

Actually a lot of scientists are starting to come out against the gloom and doom predictions and point out there isn't any real evidence of catastrophe awaiting us even if the warming turns out to be both real and caused by human activity.

We adapt, this isn't the first time the earth has warmed and cooled. The caveman survived the ice age and life certainly went on after the Miocene period. Only today we have political activists pointing fingers and poor scientists searching out government funding to stay in business. Creating a better world for tomorrow is fine just lay the hype and hysteria.

[Skybird]

You comfortably bypass that "biological survival of a species" and "survival of a civilisation" are two very different things. And the latter we have had very very often over far smaller, regionally limited enviuronmental and geograpohical issues. It then led not rarely to the end of the biological survival of members of said civilisations, too.

And life on Earth in general repeatedly was almost deleted by phases of extreme global warming that were accompanied by intense poisening of the atmosphere and oceans. In this context I only refer to the growing concerns about the huge - and accelerating - destabilisation of methane hydrate reservoirs both in the perma-frost regions of the polar circle, and certain huge areas on the oceans' seabeds. Over 95% of that carbon that led to past mass exticntions of life and a hellish climate on Earth in the past - are bound in these reservoirs of cartbon hydrate. I have no doubt that if that stuff becomes instable - and how should it nbot if oceans and terrains become warmer - and gets into the atmosphere, we are pretty much finished. Civilisationally as well as biologically.

The attempt of seeing these reservoirs as a carrier of energy that our industry should exploit in the future, maybe is the most dangerous and potentially suicidal game mankind has ever played. I compare it to a group of small kids playing with a candle in a log cabin full of opened barrels of gun powder.

And another thning. Time and again scientists become "surprised" by how fast processes they have been warned of in the past have speeded up meanwhile and are still accelerating. Past calcuations of timetables too often were too linear, "fixing" speeds by which processes unfold, and not taking into account that the growing net effect feeds back on the speed by which the process causing the effect is running. Prime examples are glaciers that disappear. By the process of melting down, they create more water below their ice shield on which they slide faster, creating more gaps in a given time and more break-offs and thus accelerating the speed by which their icy inside gets exposed to the warmer atmosphere that thaws them. The majority of glaciers that are monitored are disappearing faster than former projections suggested.

It'S not that different with many processes of changes in the atmosphere and maritime environment as well: the changes accelerate.

[Diopos]

...
In this context I only refer to the growing concerns about the huge - and accelerating - destabilisation of methane hydrate reservoirs both in the perma-frost regions of the polar circle, and certain huge areas on the oceans' seabeds. Over 95% of that carbon that led to past mass exticntions of life and a hellish climate on Earth in the past - are bound in these reservoirs of cartbon hydrate. I have no doubt that if that stuff becomes instable - and how should it nbot if oceans and terrains become warmer - and gets into the atmosphere, we are pretty much finished. Civilisationally as well as biologically.
...


In a twisted kind of sense, burning methane is better than realising it "raw" to the atmosphere, as it is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. I am almost certain that this will become a fundamental argument of the "carbon burning" companies in the years to come. Interesting isn't it? The people/interests who regard Global Warming a falacy, will rush in to save us from it by burning more carbon !!!:yep::doh::hmmm::hmmm::hmmm:

[Ducimus]

Hell, this winter is nearly evidence of global warming itself. Were I live, we should have had snow on the ground in the later end of december. A "white christmass" is the norm here, and there was none this year. We're just NOW starting to have some, and it melts off by noon most of the time. I should have to be using a snow shovel on my drive way and walk way right now. Its completely snow free.

[tater]

Irrelevant as that was never up for debate. The debate is about anthropogenic (human caused) climate change.

This.

The earth's climate changes over time. Part of the problem with politicized climate change like the IPCC is that they are trying to paint a picture of past climate as static. In fact the earth has been colder, as well as warmer (colder is invariably worse for the bulk of life on earth).

I have zero problem with the hypothesis that humans can alter climate. It seems almost a given to me that we have some effect. The question of course is "how much?" The doom and gloom types are very likely over-weighting anthropogenic CO2 contributions, as well as really mucking up the water vapor feedback (they have it positive, so it is a multiplier of CO2 effects, when that seems to lack a well demonstrated physicality (some show a negative feedback).

Bottom line is that it's very complex. Too complex, IMHO, to make an accurate cost-benefit analysis of mitigation schemes. On top of that, any mitigate has to be global. You can't let the PRC and India off the hook, or even some other, tiny country. Why? Because whatever places are immune to new rules will simply become magnets for new industrialization. Then we have likely worse pollution in some poop-hole country, AND we burn oil to ship it to the US and Europe for purchase.

In such a scheme, it is in the powerful best-interest of some countries to never sign on. It's like when the dems were selling health care votes for the idiotic ACA. Hold-out votes needed to pass got all kinds of pork in return for their "yes." The hold-outs for global warming mitigation (which cannot even be proved to be cost effective) will be the next China if they don't sing on. "Come to our banana republic and build whatever factories you want! We don't hold with this IPCC crap! Our taxes are a fraction of what your mitigation costs would be (but will none the less make our country RICH)!"

[Ducimus]

Personally i think the climate was getting warmer anyway. All our shenanigans did was speed up the process a little. So i'm on the fence. On one hand, i think the alarmists are full of it. However on the other hand, i think the denialist's (is that a word?) are also full of it. That sentiment however, doesn't mean I don't think we should protect the environment, or do what we can to not trash the place. I hate living in a pigsty.

[tater]

The use of "denier" was first done in an effort to conflate AGW skeptics with the normal (in modern times) use of "denier" to refer to holocaust deniers. There are some "political" anti-AGW types out there, and they are just as dogmatic as many of the AGW proponents. The thing is that the dogmatic AGW group also includes many of the leading scientists doing the work, whereas the anti-AGW nuts are just internet experts. Guys who are skeptical, and doing good science, are lumped by the AGW scientists as "deniers," when in fact they are being good scientists (be skeptical of everything).

I consider myself to be appropriately skeptical of climate science right now. My background is in "hard" science, and frankly I think of many of these vocal climate guys (Mann, et al) as zeroith-order science people. I think that it will eventually become a more hard science, but frankly, I think it's about like very early astronomy (sort of astronomical zoology), or sociology. More the latter. They use math, but don't really understand what they are doing with it ;)

The base hypothesis is entirely reasonable, and for the period of satellite observations we know that temps rose, then fell. The earlier instrumental record shows an upward trend, too, but it is not terribly comparable to the satellite record, IMO. Older records should have huge error bars, IMO, so making claims about "unprecedented" temperatures seems pretty fast and loose to me.

[August]

Guess it's not as simple as we've been led to believe:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/08/article-2415191-1BAEE1D0000005DC-503_640x366.jpg

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html

[Tchocky]

Not as simple as the Daily Mail would have you believe either.

[Takeda Shingen]

Shouldn't there be a study or official scientific statement linked somewhere in that article? As great as the news would be and as much as I'd like to believe it, every article I find on this links back to the Daily Mail, which links to nothing, but spends 2/3rds of the article space thumbing it's nose at the BBC. Odd.

[Tribesman]

Shouldn't there be a study or official scientific statement linked somewhere in that article?
Well its the Daily Fail so regression is apt.
Regression towards the mean is the term. One years measure means nothing for a comparison, especially when the other measure used is the lowest ever.
Its the 10th claimed "recovery" which has in reality still been a 75% fall.

[Skybird]

Those images are so far not much, scientifically. A snapshot.

What is more important is that temperatures are since 15 years now in kind of a plateau phase that is not consistent with the models of that timeframe predicting them to climb. This still doe snot mean that Earth is warming, cooling, or "plateauing". It means not more and not less the models are not as clever as previously thought.

I still think the globe is conserving wamrth, we have had record summers and record temperature sin these 15 years. But our predictions on how that energy accumulation results in effects, need a big overhaul, obviously. Developments around the ice at the polars have pretty much been predicted to show paradox effects since I think the mid-80s already. That impresses me not much. The change in in global sea currents, the change in ph-indices and salienation levels, and the still present rise in mean temperatures in the oceans seem to indicate what is going on, and what has been underestimated: that the oceans, who have a multiple times as high capacity to store warmth energy than the whole atmosphere together, swallow up and store more of that warmth than previously thought, relieving atmosphere a bit. But the capacity of the ocean to do so is limited. When the limit is reached it might be possible that then the drop in storage capacity may lead to a faster increase in global temperatures then.

The thing that can be seen as certain is that the relations between warmth and weather effects are not as linear as was stated in models before.

Focus is massively shifting now, I repeatedly learned, to sensor deployment in the very deep sea: we have too little data about what is going down there, I mean really deep down there. It's dawning on scientists that the deep sea has far more influence on the weather than the conventional models so far have articulated.

So, in best scientific methodology, a correction - and partially: replacement - of used models and theories is in order. States that are netto profiteers from the global wealth redistribution campaign that bases on the ecologist worst case dogma used at the UN, will try to prevent this. Netto payers of it will try to use the needed theoretic corrections as an argument to do less. The UN and IPCC will, as usual, turn it all into a total mess. Careers are at risk, reputations are in danger, patterns of money flowing threaten to change - danger, alarm, red alert!!!

[antikristuseke]

Guess it's not as simple as we've been led to believe:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/08/article-2415191-1BAEE1D0000005DC-503_640x366.jpg

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html


And that tells us nothing about the VOLUME of sea ice, only the surface area...

[August]

And that tells us nothing about the VOLUME of sea ice, only the surface area...


And that has nothing to do with the claims that the arctic would be ice free by this summer.

[Tribesman]

And that has nothing to do with the claims that the arctic would be ice free by this summer.
Its the Daily Fail, always check the actual source.:rotfl2:
Possibly the reason you are on the backfoot is because that was not claimed.:yep:
If you change a word and add a word you get the actual claim from 2007, but when you do that there is no story.:know:
So Rose will have to go back to his nonsense from last year where he claimed sea ice levels was an irrelevant measure because they didn't fit his agenda.:yeah:

[Oberon]

http://www.safety4sea.com/images/media/test/Nortrhern_Sea_Route.gif

The Yong Sheng arrived in Rotterdam from China a few days ago, via the Arctic sea.