Originally posted by zeeblebotAnd you conservatives don't do this? Please give an answer that is a clear affirmation or denial of this.
the problem with talking heads is that eventually they wind down and you have to insert the key again. but it's amusing to see them all chattering in unison. yadayadayada, bla bla bla. must be comforting, too amongst themselves, rather like a school of fish or a sheepherd. nice and warm ...
Originally posted by ElleEffSeeemaybe he "may be the world’s most famous hurricane expert" who has very perspicacious points (in the linked article) that have gone unanswered by the sheeple on the Debates forum. load this page and scroll down to the bottom. as far as "the latest technology" is concerned, you would expect him to have access to it.
Maybe Bill Gray is an old egomaniac technophobe who dismisses global warming purely because it's what the latest technology predicts?
http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-05/departments/discover-dialogue/
gray stepped down from primary authorship of the Tropical Meteorology Project late last year to pursue the global warming issue. let's see what he comes up with.
Originally posted by WajomaWhat are you saying all of New Zealands super funds crashed and burned?
When my parents were younger they were told by the pollies; "Give us this money now (OR ELSE), we'll look after it, and when you're ready to retire, (errr not when you're ready actually, we're going to set an abitrary age), well, when you reach that age, we're going to look after you, we're going to give it back."
"So how's that? What do you think?"
"errr, ...[text shortened]... it in a world trip...you see in FreeWorld that's their business, not yours.
Originally posted by Vapatas'okay ... i'm having a go at the global warming people 🙂 ... but when thequi1ck posted a 2-d graph showing the results of a political persuasion survey that a bunch of RHP people took, i was very near the origin ... comparatively ...
I thought you were having a go at liberals, sorry. (since all of the people to whom you were reffering were liberals, and since liberals and conservatives seem to constantly be insluting one another in this site)
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unfortunately the graph link seems broken ...
http://www.odbo.co.uk/polcom.jpg
Originally posted by zeeblebot'The idea is to frighten the public' - I don't think it's irresponsible or scaremongering to tell the public what sort of devastation could happen to the planet. If that leads to more funding I don't know why Bill is cynical about it - surely that's a good thing as it's an issue that affects the entire globe, so we need more research. The research may very well ultimately say humans aren't the cause of the global warming, but current models say they are and will have devastating warming affects on the planet should CO2 levels continue to rise. To be honest I think you can get set in your ways as a scientist. It doesn't surprise me that he's struggling to get funding, young guys with fresh ideas are far more likely to get it. And you also make an assumption of your own 'you'd expect him to have access to it'. Why when he can't get funding?
maybe he "may be the world’s most famous hurricane expert" who has very perspicacious points (in the linked article) that have gone unanswered by the sheeple on the Debates forum. load this page and scroll down to the bottom. as far as "the latest technology" is concerned, you would expect him to have access to it.
http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-0 ...[text shortened]... roject late last year to pursue the global warming issue. let's see what he comes up with.
Did anyone remember seeing an ITV doco years back called the Greenhouse Conspiracy?
Lindzen was one of the debunkers they used to "deconstruct the myth of Global Warming" by "Challenging the (three or four) Pillars on which the theory rested.
1. The temp record is flawed because of "concrete islands" urban constructs of concrete bitumen and modern industrialised activity mean that for most of the centres which collect land based temperature data(most of which worldwide are found in the US) have succumbed to an encroachment of urban sprawl and are contained in these "concrete islands". The mean temp difference between these "islands" and outlying surrounding areas, can be as much as 2 to 3 degF. Also many weather recordig stations are located at airfields which with all the surrounding sealed bitumen runway surfaces also suffers this same effect. Aparently when these land based data and trends are compared with satelite data which has been collected from the sixties the land based data seems amplified.
2. Carbon Dioxide is not the greatest greenhouse gas, water vapour is. Without the action of water vapour in our atmosphere life as we know it would not exist. The specific heat properties of water vapour maintain a choke hold on the range of temperatures that are/can be experienced on the globe. As 70% of the landmass is water it is virtually impossible to affect the range of temperatures we experience over any concerted length of time. For two reasons. Water vapour turns out to be natures perfect feedback cycle to ensure that the temperature needed on this planet for life to be preserved is maintained. If for some reason there are no clouds and the water surface is heated, this will form precipatation which eventually will cause incoming sunlight to be reflected back out into the atmosphere causing the ambient temperature to drop causing the precipatation to dissapate causing the cycle to start again. Carbon dioxide is supposed to act as a greenhouse gas, an analogy derived from the old greenhouse. What some ask you to believe is that on a cold winters day the CO2 acts like the windows of a glasshouse which shields the plants from the winds and cold outside and lets in radiant energy which tends to generate a bit of humidity inside he glasshouse which acts as a nice thermal trap. However what is not told the GP is that CO2 because of its geometry vibrates to the tune of a set range of ultraviolet and infrared frequencies(the mechanism by which it absorbs energy and hence traps heat.) Apparently though at night time when the absorbed heat of the planet is radiated back out into space the frequencies that do not "vibrate" CO2 also take a lot of energy with it which for the sake of the analogy is a bit like removing a few panes of glass from the greenhouse. That is why these fequencies are termed CO2's radiative windows, because regardless of the relative concentration of CO2 on the atmosphere these radiative windows are always open. All the heat that can be trapped is already done so by current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. As any increase in CO2 concentration cannot close these windows concerns that increasing CO2 levels will serve as a mechanism for global warming are unfounded.
3. Computer modelling is all GIGO. garbage in garbage out. When you try and reduce a complex interelated system comprising thousands of variables, such as is the weather, and try and represent it with a model based on a few of those variables only, which typically may mean averaging the height of the land topography to 12ft; simplyfying the dynamic 70% global water mass as a stagnant body of water(the systems of heat exchange and heat redistribution by major currents are just too complex to even contemplate) then what you end up with is a model that makes brilliant predictions based on a severely simplified model. Are the computers at fault? Or are the programmers? Its a case that at any given point in the program the divergence from any trend is exponential, but we simply do not have the sort of programming languages and ultimately computational power to even simultaneously consider one hundred of those variables simultaneously.
4. Global warming is a political stunt engineered by Maggie T herself a science graduate. The 70's in Europe was so cold people were then being scared into believing that we were rapidly approaching a mini ice age. Then came the aerosol scare with demonstrable holes developing in the ozone layer including large portions of unprotected sky over the poles. Public mobilization was swift behind getting CFC's banned and the program (remember the ITV program) asserts that environmental issues were seen as the new way forward as Maggie with Ronnie in tow were looking for another "other" to scare us witless with considering they were just about through with finally nailing their cold war enemy Russia into a grave of irrelevance.
It would seem in my not so humble opinion that people like Professor Lindzen would look out of his ivory tower towards those who would donate large sums of cash and find a symbiotic mutually beneficial relationship with oil companies to be a voice of reason in a yet as unproven phenomena, which would keep his department funded without having to misrepresent anything. One thing no-one will talk about is the strong correlation between temperature fluctuations and 11 year sun spot activity.
For this whole debate I take the stand that if climate change is real, then let it stand up to rigourous investigation and attack, because if it is real then I would like to know based on real science not on some character assasination claims of that opinion is flawed because of the sponsor. I would totally agree that our fossil fuel burning is crazy for no other reason than NOx emissions and other nasties hat get formed when we internally combust. Yes we should use oil in fuel cells not in reciprocating engines. Yes we should use Nuclear power not burn coal for our electricity. Yes we need a total comprehencive repsonse to energy that embraces Solar, wind, tidal. geothermal, etc etc.
Just dont try and sell me something that smells worse the closer i look at it or requires me to suspend my disbelief.
Great post kmax.
Just a couple of comments as it's past my bed time (😴).
1. Radiosonde data shows surface to mid-level warming over the latter half of the 20th century, which is not affected by the ground reading issues you mention in point 1.
2. Just because models make a heck of a lot of assumptions doesn't mean they should be ignored. Infact model simulations have been performed of the 20th Century using observations as forcing data and they do a pretty good job of simulating the climate. One valid recent reference is Stott et al 2006, J. Clim, 2763-2782.
http://ams.allenpress.com/amsonline/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3731.1
which describes the latest and greatest model from the UK Met Office and how it can only account for the warming observed when anthropogenic forcings are involved. This same model predicts a global temperature increase of 4.5K over the next 100 years if CO2 levels were to double 😲😲.
Originally posted by ElleEffSeeethat sort of scaremongering has been going on for awhile, at least since the seventies .... that funding has to come from somewhere. there a lot of people chasing public dollars, and they can come up with all kinds of reasons why they should be the ones to get it. so where's the counterpoint? it appears only one line of research is being funded; the one that "everyone" agrees with. how is that good?
'The idea is to frighten the public' - I don't think it's irresponsible or scaremongering to tell the public what sort of devastation [b]could happen to the planet. If that leads to more funding I don't know why Bill is cynical about it - surely that's a good thing as it's an issue that affects the entire globe, so we need more research. The r ...[text shortened]... f your own 'you'd expect him to have access to it'. Why when he can't get funding?[/b]
re age vs. funding, is that how it is? if so is it right? i'd expect the gray heads to be at the top, deciding who gets the funding. and that it would not necessarily all go, or even the majority go, to the young kids just because they have more energy. item 2) the period he is talking about would appear to start in 1992, he was not that old, then.
what kind of technology is needed that is not freely available?
zeeb ... i wonder what is going on ... the whole world around you tells you that something is happening ....
why do you resist? what is wrong with accepting the truth?
if everyone in a room said they saw a child spit in your food, the child denies it ... would you trust the child, and simply eat that food and refuse to believe the adults?
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Originally posted by kmax87It is under rigerouse investigation and attack. The impression that is given though by the papers (other news outlets) untill very recently and still in some cases, is distorted. not by intent but by there attempts to be unbiased. something like 96% of qualified scientists beleive that the data we have supports significant man induced global ave temperature rise. if you right an 'unbiased' article which gives 50% of it's space to the 96% of scientists who think it is happening and 50% to the remaining 4% who don't, it gives the impression that the two camps are equal, when in reality they are not. A similar argument (although in this case intentional) applies to the people who say that 'Intelegent Designe is a scientific theory like Evolution and there exists in the scientific comunity a debate as to which is right, in other words scientists don't know which is right so you have to pick wich to beleive, and that they are equal in that respect.' this is totaly wrong and missleading as ID is not a scientific theory and there is no debate in the scientific comunity, yet you often get stories about the argument between the two camps which devote 50% of the article to either camp in the interst of being 'unbiased'. the problem is doing that means that the ID camp has allready won, as the 50-50 coverage implies a 50-50 debate, which is not representative of reality.
For this whole debate I take the stand that if climate change is real, then let it stand up to rigourous investigation and attack,
Just dont try and sell me something that smells worse the closer i look at it or requires me to suspend my disbelief.
Global warming (man induced) is pretty much as close to a uncatagorical 'truth' as science produces. the case scientificly is as close to clear cut as you can get without hindsight. and as more time passes and we gain more hindsight the scientific comunity has only got more certain that it is happening and that it will probably be worse than we were first predicting. more reaserch is being done and our models are getting better and we are understanding the complex systems better and better so our predictions will get even better in the future and we will be able to predict what will happen with greater accuracy and more certanty, but our current predictions show that if we carry on like we are at the moment and wait for ever more accurate models on the off chance that we might be wrong, then the overwhelming probability is it will be too late and we will have to spend vastly greater sums of money and put up with depression style hardship or worse dealing with climate change, than we would have solving the problem now. also papers screw up scientific stories on a very regular basis, scientists look at headlines about their predictions or models or results and often say that the headline (and often story) isn't just missleading it is just plain wrong. there was one a couple of years back about a new climate model that predicted that the totla warming may be as much as 10 deg cel, but this was very unlikely and it would be more likly to be 4.5 deg cel, (bell curve probability coming up from about 1.5 degrees warming to 10 with the peak at 4.5 (ish i am quoting from memory), in this 10 deg is the unlikly maximum) the headline in one paper read, along the lines of 'New climate model predicts 10 degrees warming by end of century'. that was the outside max rise, and it was after several centuries, not by the end of this one.
Global warming is a Theory in the scientific seanse. That means it HAS stood up to rigerouse testing and is still intact. and the more tests we do the stronger it has got. so at what point do you stop complaining about the steadily deminishing posiblity that the vast majority of science is wrong and act on it's recomendations? before or after it's too late?
Originally posted by flexmorebandwagons are pretty nice, the ride is comfortable and you don't even have to answer any of William Gray's points.
zeeb ... i wonder what is going on ... the whole world around you tells you that something is happening ....
why do you resist? what is wrong with accepting the truth?
if everyone in a room said they saw a child spit in your food, the child denies it ... would you trust the child, and simply eat that food and refuse to believe the adults?
Originally posted by googlefudgeI don't see how it can be an established scientific fact that human activity causes global warming.
It is under rigerouse investigation and attack. The impression that is given though by the papers (other news outlets) untill very recently and still in some cases, is distorted. not by intent but by there attempts to be unbiased. something like 96% of qualified scientists beleive that the data we have supports significant man induced global ave temperat ...[text shortened]... science is wrong and act on it's recomendations? before or after it's too late?
The problem is that the evidence can never rise above the circumstantial, at least not in the short-term. We can't do an experiment to rule out non-human influences; our capacity to quantify or even identify relevant confounds is highly limited; and we don't know enough about the causes world's climate to exclude the possibility of a spontaneous rise in temperature occurring.
This is not to say we shouldn't err on the side of caution, and take radical remedial steps now; we should. But we should be confident enough to state that we are doing so on the basis of a strong suspicion, not an incontrovertible truth. If scientists maintain that human-induced global warming is an incontrovertible truth, then they play into the hands of those in the pro-carbon lobby who are able to raise legitimates doubts.