How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[mhaze]

History will be your judge.

In a different place and period you'd have been right behind Neville Chamberlain and "Peace In Our Time". Hansen, on the other hand, has the Churchill air about him.

http://icecap.us, Jeebus, is this Forum the furthest you ever get from your comfort zone?

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

LOL. The problem is that in this case Churchill will lose the war:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5595/981

We have good luck that AGW isn't real. If so, ther will be no way to achieve the reduction asked by Hansen

Science 1 November 2002:
Vol. 298. no. 5595, pp. 981 - 987
DOI: 10.1126/science.1072357
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Review


[SIZE=-1]ENGINEERING:[/SIZE]
Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability: Energy for a Greenhouse Planet

Martin I. Hoffert,1* Ken Caldeira,3 Gregory Benford,4 David R. Criswell,5 Christopher Green,6 Howard Herzog,7 Atul K. Jain,8 Haroon S. Kheshgi,9 Klaus S. Lackner,10 John S. Lewis,12 H. Douglas Lightfoot,13 Wallace Manheimer,14 John C. Mankins,15 Michael E. Mauel,11 L. John Perkins,3 Michael E. Schlesinger,8 Tyler Volk,2 Tom M. L. Wigley16
Stabilizing the carbon dioxide-induced component of climate change is an energy problem. Establishment of a course toward such stabilization will require the development within the coming decades of primary energy sources that do not emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, in addition to efforts to reduce end-use energy demand. Mid-century primary power requirements that are free of carbon dioxide emissions could be several times what we now derive from fossil fuels (~1013 watts), even with improvements in energy efficiency. Here we survey possible future energy sources, evaluated for their capability to supply massive amounts of carbon emission-free energy and for their potential for large-scale commercialization. Possible candidates for primary energy sources include terrestrial solar and wind energy, solar power satellites, biomass, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, fission-fusion hybrids, and fossil fuels from which carbon has been sequestered. Non-primary power technologies that could contribute to climate stabilization include efficiency improvements, hydrogen production, storage and transport, superconducting global electric grids, and geoengineering. All of these approaches currently have severe deficiencies that limit their ability to stabilize global climate. We conclude that a broad range of intensive research and development is urgently needed to produce technological options that can allow both climate stabilization and economic development.

 

[CapelDodger]

Look him up. Absurdity personified.

"Solar Cycle 24", I'd almost forgotten about that. Has it even started yet? Who knows, who cares? Anything's grist to the mill for GWSceptics if it's sciency. Little Ice Age? Low sunspot number. Arctic sea-ice loss? Low sunspot number. One size fits all, as long as it contains no AGW.

 

[CapelDodger]

LOL. The problem is that in this case Churchill will lose the war:

At the time Churchill was accused of being a war-monger.

We have good luck that AGW isn't real. If so, ther will be no way to achieve the reduction asked by Hansen

Luck doesn't enter into it, and AGW (just like German revanchism) is real. Of course nothing will be done about it until the wave breaks, and of course we'll be unprepared when it happens. Wishful thinking is a big part of the human condition.

 

[mhaze]

"Solar Cycle 24", I'd almost forgotten about that. Has it even started yet? Who knows, who cares? Anything's grist to the mill for GWSceptics if it's sciency. Little Ice Age? Low sunspot number. Arctic sea-ice loss? Low sunspot number. One size fits all, as long as it contains no AGW.

The big momma (nope, no SC24 yet) could not care less your idle chatter:



By the way how are these shivering "climate tourists" doing? You know, the ones that got stuck on their way to see the north pole sea ice before it was all gone?



Please do continue to alert us to the harbingers of doom in the arctic this summer, will you?

 

[CapelDodger]

That's a new ploy : if you've got nothing to say, say nothing and put a smilie on it. Let no-one say you're immune to change.

 

[CapelDodger]

The big momma (nope, no SC24 yet) could not care less your idle chatter:

[URL]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_14224483df590a3d0d.png[/URL]

By the way how are these shivering "climate tourists" doing? You know, the ones that got stuck on their way to see the north pole sea ice before it was all gone?

[URL]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_14224483e9e791ad7e.png[/URL]

Please do continue to alert us to the harbingers of doom in the arctic this summer, will you?

You do live in the moment, don't you? Let us know how that works out.

I've put my marker down already : less Arctic sea-ice than summer 2005. Where that leaves your cruise on the SS 60-80 Year Cycle is for you to judge. Did you check out the lifeboats before you got aboard?

 

[Complexity]

I didn't realize that mhaze and David Rodale were still at this stuff. I'd have thought they'd have given up and gone away by now.

I'm not naive - I know they're woo incarnate and immune to rational argument and the social signals that would lead others to creep away in shame, but...

Sigh. Perseverance in delusion in the face of reality isn't a pretty thing.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Luck doesn't enter into it, and AGW (just like German revanchism) is real. Of course nothing will be done about it until the wave breaks, and of course we'll be unprepared when it happens. Wishful thinking is a big part of the human condition.

I share the feeling. See, If I would believe in AGW then the Science article quoted above would be very bad and sad news to me. Since you believe in AGW, I'd suggest you to post less on AGW and more on how to develop totally new energy supplies to cope with the prerceived problem. Hey, even if AGW is not real your work can be usefull. Because now, for your reasoning, we are doomed with no posibility of survival.

 

[mhaze]

You do live in the moment, don't you? Let us know how that works out.

I've put my marker down already : less Arctic sea-ice than summer 2005. Where that leaves your cruise on the SS 60-80 Year Cycle is for you to judge. Did you check out the lifeboats before you got aboard?

My, my no, this is your cruise ship, of hapless frightened warmers, now stranded on your sea ice. I only thought, since you repeatedly excitedly prophesize low ice, that you might know if fellow poor shivering warmers had been rescued, or if, preferred for your cause, perhaps the ice surrounding the brute of the ship, had melted, such that these gullible Climate alarmists thence might savor, the fear of a hellishly hot doom nigh.

 

[bobdroege7]

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_14224483e9e791ad7e.png[/qimg]

My, my no, this is your cruise ship, of hapless frightened warmers, now stranded on your sea ice. I only thought, since you repeatedly excitedly prophesize low ice, that you might know if fellow poor shivering warmers had been rescued, or if, preferred for your cause, perhaps the ice surrounding the brute of the ship, had melted, such that these gullible Climate alarmists thence might savor, the fear of a hellishly hot doom nigh.

Ice free in summer, not spring, what part of that do you not understand.

Ice extent looks similar to last year, we'll wait till September to try the northwest passage, not May.

 

[Pixel42]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature...
​

Absurdity, indeed.

The analogy is with the CEOs of the tobacco companies who knowingly supressed evidence that smoking caused cancer and paid "experts" to spread disinformation. Many people think it far from absurd to hold them at least partly responsible for the lives that were lost as a result.

Not that even Hansen really expects such a prosecution to happen. It's just a way to draw attention to the motives of the deniers and the precedents for their behaviour, and hence (it is to be hoped) reduce its effectiveness.

 

[CoolSceptic]

It's not the absolute magnitude that matters, it's the shape of the graph.

But a moment ago you were claiming... oh never mind. You're entitled to be wrong.

On the ice-age scale (110,000 years or so) there's a long-term stable glaciation with a short-term stable inter-glacial. On the daily (or hourly) scale the hydrological cycle is all over the place. No self-similarity.

Are you suggesting a stochastic model does not fit with the glacial / interglacial cycles, and that it could not be self-similar? You're wrong, of course. I don't have time to explain why, but I don't have to - Carl Wunsch explains it in great detail, far better than I ever could, in this paper.

Short excerpt (to avoid copyright issues) from the abstract:

Evidence cited to support the hypothesis that the 100 Ka glacial/interglacial cycles are controlled by the quasi-periodic insolation forcing is likely indistinguishable from chance

And from the discussion:

The appeal of explaining the glacial/interglacial cycles by way of the Milankovitch forcing is clear: it is a deterministic story. But the rather modest variance directly explained by the orbital components supports the inference that the stochastic contribution cannot be ignored solely because it is not deterministic.

Many papers have made the point that there are problems with the Milankovitch hypothesis [...] The simplest explanation of the results they describe is that they are not dominated by the Milankovitch forcing, but rather reflect the much more energetic background spectral continuum.

Carl doesn't recommend a model (although he does demonstrate that simple Markovian models seem inadequate, see fig 7), but it should be clear to anyone that fig 2 has strong power-law scaling and that the resulting time series would exhibit self-similarity.

 

[a_unique_person]

Carl Wunsch also believes that AGW is basically a sound theory, and demanded his part be removed from TGGWS because it completely misrepresented what he thinks.

Carl Wunsch

Carl Wunsch, professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT, was originally featured in the programme. Afterwards he said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed.[26][3] He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two."[27] Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action[27] and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator.[28] The production company denied that he had been misled and that correspondence to Wunsch had clearly stated the programme would 'examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily caused by industrial emissions of CO2'.[3] Filmmaker Durkin responded, "Carl Wunsch was most certainly not 'duped' into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said."[27] Wunsch has since said that Durkin "clearly quite deliberately understood my point of view but set out to imply, through the way he uses me in the film, the reverse of what I was trying to say" [4].
Although Wunsch has admitted that he finds the statements at both extremes of the global change debate distasteful [3] he wrote in a letter dated March 15, 2007 that he believes climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component". He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance "over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts". He raised objections as to how his interview material was used:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous—because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."[3]
​

On March 11, 2007, The Independent covered the Carl Wunsch controversy, and asked Channel 4 to respond to what it described as "a serious challenge to its own credibility". A Channel 4 spokesman said:

"The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that."[26]
​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Carl_Wunsch



​

 

[Diamond]

Carl Wunsch also believes that AGW is basically a sound theory, and demanded his part be removed from TGGWS because it completely misrepresented what he thinks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Carl_Wunsch
[/INDENT]

Yet another misdirection. Carl Wunsch has not received any apology or retraction from Channel Four or Martin Durkin.

Why? Because the programme did not misrepresent Prof Wunsch's views on the reason why carbon dioxide rises and falls centuries after the temperature rises and falls, because of the storage of carbon dioxide in the deep ocean.

The question then becomes whether Prof Wunsch knew about the nature of the programme he was participating in - with Dirkin saying he did and can prove it and Wunsch saying, well, nothing.

The misdirection in this case was about the amazing inability of carbon dioxide rise to ever cause warming when the leading pseudoscientific theory saying that it must do, and all of the evidence to the contrary. Something that I asked you to demonstrate four or five years ago, but despite many prompts, you refuse to do so.

Because the evidence doesn't exist.

Since we're in the mood for redirection (and because Capeldodgy's flaccid brain needs regular kicking) here's a nice graph showing the amazing prophetic skillz of James Hansen, global warming prophet of Doom:

As you can see, its now a half a degree cooler than when he first set off the Great Global Warming Scare off on a hot summer's day in 1988. This time he has called for Oil Company Execs to be arraigned from "crimes against humanity and Nature", with the oil company execs I would imagine saying "Bring it on. Hansen is a nut"

But never mind. Capeldodgy was never one to let mere facts get in the way of his prejudices and neither will it for you.

 

[JoeEllison]

Are the denialists still at it? Still?

Global warming is real, and is a real problem. Of course, doing something about it will be costly and involve compromises... two things that the right-wing is incapable of even considering. So, the denialist movement: the right-wing machine spews nonsense, and the followers lap it up and repeat it religiously.

The point of the denial machine is to put off doing anything at all for as long as possible. I'm not sure what mental defect drives the followers, other than that they ARE followers.

 

[a_unique_person]

Yet another misdirection. Carl Wunsch has not received any apology or retraction from Channel Four or Martin Durkin.

Why? Because the programme did not misrepresent Prof Wunsch's views on the reason why carbon dioxide rises and falls centuries after the temperature rises and falls, because of the storage of carbon dioxide in the deep ocean.

The question then becomes whether Prof Wunsch knew about the nature of the programme he was participating in - with Dirkin saying he did and can prove it and Wunsch saying, well, nothing.

The misdirection in this case was about the amazing inability of carbon dioxide rise to ever cause warming when the leading pseudoscientific theory saying that it must do, and all of the evidence to the contrary. Something that I asked you to demonstrate four or five years ago, but despite many prompts, you refuse to do so.

Goddam drongo. That's why it's called AGW. We weren't around before, nor were the massive quantities of hydrocarbon. This is something new.

 

[CoolSceptic]

Carl Wunsch also believes that AGW is basically a sound theory, and demanded his part be removed from TGGWS because it completely misrepresented what he thinks.

Another example of the unscientific, sloppy thinking on AGW from a supposedly "critical thinking" web forum.

I don't care what you (and a handful of wiki authors) think that Carl Wunsch believes.

It might be half interesting to hear what Carl Wunsch thinks Carl Wunsch believes. But belief remains neither evidence nor science.

What is really interesting is the analysis carried out by Carl Wunsch, like the piece I linked to, not opinions, beliefs or political propaganda pieces. You remember, actually doing the maths and all that stuff? And working out what that analysis tells us? Rather than waving around beliefs and wiki pages?

The analysis Carl Wunsch carried out illustrates that Capeldodger's claim that the glacial/interglacial cycles are too periodic to be explained by natural variability is a false claim. A stochastic explanation for the vast majority of these cycles is quite consistent with the data. And this is backed up with analysis and reasoning, not belief.

 

[mhaze]

Carl Wunsch also believes that AGW is basically a sound theory, and demanded his part be removed from TGGWS because it completely misrepresented what he thinks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Carl_Wunsch

[/indent]

Wikipedia, "open to edit by anyone" cannot show "what the views of Carl Wunsch are". So you may or may not be right, but should not use Wikipedia as a reference to prove the assertion.

Quite obviously, Wunsch's views as relevant to this matter are reflected by his work as shown in his published papers.

But credit is due to you for good misdirection.

 

[mhaze]

Originally Posted by mhaze

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting...e9e791ad7e.png

My, my no, this is your cruise ship, of hapless frightened warmers, now stranded on your sea ice. I only thought, since you repeatedly excitedly prophesize low ice, that you might know if fellow poor shivering warmers had been rescued, or if, preferred for your cause, perhaps the ice surrounding the brute of the ship, had melted, such that these gullible Climate alarmists thence might savor, the fear of a hellishly hot doom nigh.

​

Ice free in summer, not spring, what part of that do you not understand.
Ice extent looks similar to last year, we'll wait till September to try the northwest passage, not May.

Sorry, it's not I in your or their "we". Your gullible warmers jumped the gun a bit, did they? Guess they believed all the propaganda. So the propaganda is a lie, and you/they need to wait until the ice has melted to the largest extent possible to maybe find a tiny sliver of time and race through the gauntlets of ice?

Yes, that does conform to the spector of "an ice free Arctic within 30 years". By the way, when exactly did that 30 year forecast start? 1988? 1998? 2008?

Indeed.

None of which answers my very simple question. Are they still stuck up there? It's been 30 some days. I'd think Warmers would be taking up a collection to fund a helicopter rescue operation. Or is all the money devoted to the TV media blitz?