Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Sunsneezer]

Possibly, but where I differ from you is I do believe in an actual physical reality that can be described - at least approximately - by use of the scientific paradigms. I also believe that such scientific paradigms can be distorted by Power-Knowledge continuums.

No you do not differ from me on these points. Scientists and the scientific community is exposed to power and ideological struggles, as illustrated by the climategate.

What I don't get about the point you are making is how exactly is the position you are defending on climate change free from the influence of "Power-Knowledge continuums"?

You are merely on the other side of the debate, sharing the point of view of industry, libertarians and right-wing lobbies. Which have been demonstrated to be responsible for a fair share of distortion of their own... As illustrated by the climategate.

 

[lomiller]

All phytoplankton are algae, not all algae are phytoplankton

The Nature paper was specifically about phytoplankton, so why do you keep insisting on trying to move the goalposts and bring up other organisms?

algae blooms have been around long before agricultural fertilizers. Warming alarmists have previously stated that global warming will lead to increased algal blooms - as demonstrated by the link I provided

algae blooms have been around long before agricultural fertilizers.

So you think that proves that the increase algae blooms are not attributed to increased use of fertilizer?

have previously stated that global warming will lead to increased algal blooms - as demonstrated by the link I provided

There is an abundance of literature on the consequences of climate change Give us evidence in the form of papers that this particular claim is among this or stop equating peer reviews science with random stuff you thought you heard someone say once.

 

[lomiller]

Whether or not I provide a valid critique and whether or not a theory adequately represents physical reality are two different questions.

Indeed "your" inability to provide a valid critique is of little consequence. The people who study and publish on this topic, well that is another matter...

 

[lomiller]

Oh the exquisite irony from someone who an hour ago was claiming..."Umm
1) algae isn't phytoplankton"

There is nothing wrong with that statemt, your own posts confirm it. Do you also think that because water is a liquid all liquids are water?

 

[lomiller]

I am more interested it looking at what sort of scientific culture can simultaneously claim that global warming is leading to algal blooms and disappearing phytoplankton.

Fist you need to support you claims that scientists are claiming a connection to algae blooms then you need to show us that the algae they are talking about is phytoplankton.

As it stands no you are looking to oppose claims no one but you has ever made.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

Science is a process,a method of learning about the world around us. You learn something every time you use it, without fail. To say science sometimes works and sometimes doesn't is to not understand the meaning of the word.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

I've never understood why people get so worked up about the possibility of global warming and the things we could do to limit it.

If it exists and we do nothing the devastation we'd have/leave would be massive due to the sheer number of cities (and countries) at or below sea level which at best would all have to be evacuated and the social distress of massive population movement as parts of the earth become desert and parts become fertile (move the american midwest to canada?)


If it turns out to be an artifact and we do act as if it exists, all we'll have done is polluted less and made out very limited supplies of fossil fuel last longer. Sure there will be an economic cost, but wether that will be worse than the current crisis is debatable. Especially as the current crisis was caused by mere greed and had no positive side effects at all.

 

[little grey rabbit]

I've never understood why people get so worked up about the possibility of global warming and the things we could do to limit it.

If it exists and we do nothing the devastation we'd have/leave would be massive due to the sheer number of cities (and countries) at or below sea level which at best would all have to be evacuated and the social distress of massive population movement as parts of the earth become desert and parts become fertile (move the american midwest to canada?)


If it turns out to be an artifact and we do act as if it exists, all we'll have done is polluted less and made out very limited supplies of fossil fuel last longer. Sure there will be an economic cost, but wether that will be worse than the current crisis is debatable. Especially as the current crisis was caused by mere greed and had no positive side effects at all.

Which is why I say it is absolute crap but I am not really concerned about it.

If I object to it is opposing an economic cost without a sensible technical solution to go to. There is no real viable alternative to fossil fuel driven cars at the moment, so in the end if you put a tax on it all you are doing is put a burden on people's lifestyle without really altering behaviour.

Did people drive that much less during the soaring fuel prices 2 years ago? Perhaps but only very limited. So provide a good alternative to petrol or diesel fueled cars and provide a financial incentive for people to move to it. But don't just apply taxes through some misguided environmental self-flagellation.

As it happens, I don't own a car, so I am probably about the person here with the smallest carbon footprint.

 

[Corsair 115]

Questions which come to mind for me when reading the thread title:

A bogus climate scare created by who? To what purpose? Organized by who? Funded by who?

 

[nvidiot]

Been going through the climate thread here and found a couple of links to a site run by Roy Spencer. I went to his blog and found a most interesting post on there dated July 23rd. Can anyone here explain if he's proposing that the laws of thermodynamics are wrong?

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/07...ts-can-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still/

I'm a little confused by it, whilst a science minded geek I have no qualifications, only interests, but this seem to say that a cold object can make a hot one hotter? Is that right or just nutbarriness of a whole new magnitude?

 

[Trakar]

Seems like "followers" like you are keeping Bruno Latour awake at night.
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html

I rather enjoyed that, thank-you for sharing.

 

[Sunsneezer]

If I object to it is opposing an economic cost without a sensible technical solution to go to. There is no real viable alternative to fossil fuel driven cars at the moment, so in the end if you put a tax on it all you are doing is put a burden on people's lifestyle without really altering behaviour.

I get that. You are not agreeing with the economical incentive solution. Criticism of climatology, criticism of economics , and criticism on how to apply an economic solution to a climate problem are very 3 different issues. Your opinion that the proposed economic solution is inadequate doesn't make climatology itself "absolute crap".

You also haven't proved that point with your two links. Both articles are about first-of-a-kind measurements that are presented as insufficient to draw conclusions of any kind by themselves because of the lack of reference. Both are very different measurements taken in very different contexts, and nothing suggest that they can't possibly be both right at the same time (or at a 4 years interval, as it is).

 

[lomiller]

I'm a little confused by it, whilst a science minded geek I have no qualifications, only interests, but this seem to say that a cold object can make a hot one hotter? Is that right or just nutbarriness of a whole new magnitude?

Some points to keep in mind:

On a quantum level photons be randomly exchanged in either direction but is more likely to move from the warmer object to the cooler. At any given time there are photons being emitted by cooler air that end up being absorbed by warmer surface thereby transferring heat energy from the cooler object to the warmer one. There are even more going the other direction, so the net flow always goes from the warmer to the cooler.

wrt climate we are not dealing with a closed system, there is heat introduced at the surface. The temperature at the surface is a function of this incoming heat minus the heat it radiates away

Heating the air above a warm object slows the loss of heat from that object because the air emits more photons that are subsequently absorbed by the object.

IOW the back radiation from the cooler air can cause the warmer object to get even warmer, but only if it has energy coming in from some other source. Another way of looking at it is that warming the air around an object slows down it’s heat loss allowing it to heat up.

(greatly oversimplified, but hopefully you get the idea)

 

[Mikemcc]

Been going through the climate thread here and found a couple of links to a site run by Roy Spencer. I went to his blog and found a most interesting post on there dated July 23rd. Can anyone here explain if he's proposing that the laws of thermodynamics are wrong?



I'm a little confused by it, whilst a science minded geek I have no qualifications, only interests, but this seem to say that a cold object can make a hot one hotter? Is that right or just nutbarriness of a whole new magnitude?

yes, though it's not quite right to simply say that the colder object makes the hotter one even hotter. What happens is that the colder one also radiates, some of which impacts the hotter one. The net effect of this is to reduce the flow of energy from the hotter object to the environment, so the temperature rises in the hotter one.

 

[Furcifer]

Baloney. It's the opinion of one guy in one department based on his reading of selective emails, that is meaningless. And even if you think that it is OK to harass scientists with frivolous FOIA requests in order to tie up their time and prevent them from doing actual science, the fault lay with East Anglia's administration and lack of procedures for dealing with requests for information, particularly when part of an organised campaign of harassment and intimidation.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Nobody supports "frivolous FOAI requests", that's obstructing. But the concerted effort to hide information isn't just the opinion of one guy, I'm not sure where you got that idea.

 

[nvidiot]

But only if the hot object has an influx of heat right? So if the hot object is being actively heated by an external energy source, and is surrounded by a cold sheath, then the energy loss from the hot object is reduced thus allowing it to heat up. But if the hot object is not being actively heated by another energy source, it can't get hotter by surrounding it with something cold right? It can only go up in energy if the net loss of energy to the cold object is lower than the net gain from it's source?

If I have an iron bar with a heater inside, which is providing heat energy to the bar, and I surround it with a cold sphere. Provided that the cold sphere reduces the loss of energy from the iron bar more than the energy is being lost from the bar normally whilst being heated internally it will increase in temperature? But if I just have a hot iron bar with no external heat source, and enclose it in the same cold sphere, it should still have a net energy loss no matter what right? It won't increase in temperature even if the energy loss rate is slowed down?

I hope that makes sense. Hard to write what I'm trying to describe.

 

[OMGturt1es]

algae blooms have been around long before agricultural fertilizers.

There's no doubt excess nutrients increases algal growth. Fertilizers certainly provide increased nutrients. It's a problem. Then again, we need to eat. I don't see any easy solutions. But I do know that denying the problem isn't a solution.

I used to fish in a slough on my parents' property. We had some orchards, but we didn't use huge amounts of fertilizer, and we didn't drain excess water into the slough. When new orchards were planted along the opposite bank, they excavated drainage ditches into the slough and used a great deal of fertilizer. Within a year we saw a massive algal bloom. The slough is now subject to cyclic bloom and die-off, causing the water to become quite oxygen poor. Years ago I tried fishing after a die-off. No sign of fish.

The study, published in the journal Nature[/b] did sort of let the cat of the bag.
There are many other previously published studies saying the exact opposite.

Please show me the abstracts.

It doesnt matter which direction the response is, so long as it is extreme, unheard of, catastrophic and most importantly of all.....
....we are all doomed

The abstract is not written in an alarmist manner.

The content, however, should be alarmist. It should send up red flags. We're seeing trends that we've seen in the rocks. Increasing ocean acidity, increasing ocean temperature, increasing atmospheric CO2, sea level rise, increasing ocean anoxia, decreasing biodiversity, etc. And now it appears the base of the ocean food chain (and a rather large and important carbon sink) is decreasing rapidly. We've seen these trends in the rocks. The results are generally not good for living things.

It doesn't mean we're all going to die. These are indicators. We don't know for sure what will happen. But we never know for sure what will happen. We have to work with incomplete data sets. We're forced to. And we're forced to now.

I can't tell you with 100% certainty that we're on a path to destruction. I can only tell you that we've got to be idiots to not be concerned with these indicators. Hey, maybe that blood you've coughed up and the decades of smoking don't actually mean you have lung cancer, but I'll bet you're still worried.

 

[bit_pattern]

Two wrongs don't make a right. Nobody supports "frivolous FOAI requests", that's obstructing. But the concerted effort to hide information isn't just the opinion of one guy, I'm not sure where you got that idea.

You replied to an article that made a claim that, in the opinion of an official interviewed, the emails showed that UEA broke the law but the only reason they weren't charged were statutes of limitations. That is the opinion of one guy, in one department, and is in no way indicative of their guilt or otherwise in this matter.

On a different topic, everything you wanted to know about climate science in under 10 mins.

James Powell, Executive Director, National Physical Science Consortium, has produced an excellent YouTube video summarizing the evidence for anthropogenic global warming

Powell is a former college and museum president. “President Reagan and later, President George H. W. Bush, both appointed Powell to the National Science Board, where he served for 12 years.”

Great for sending to any septics you may know:

 

[Warmer1]

A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to help inform our families, friends and the public about the threat of climate change but we are battling a very clever and well funded disinformation campaign and the amount of time that we have left to respond to the threat is quickly running out. Perhaps some of our time would be well spent developing better sources of information which are much easier for people that are new to this issue to comprehend and which are far more compelling than what is currently available.

I have two suggestions and would appreciate your thoughts.

1. The first is to draft the "Mother of All" scientific consensus statements regarding AGW and then have this statement posted at the majority of the world's scientific institutions. As scientists have now been singled out and threatened by misinformed and cleverly conned citizens I think many scientists would support this effort. IMHO this would be a much more powerful resource for all of us to use as a reference in our efforts to convince people of the scientific opinion than the smaller polls and studies that have been completed to date.

A. A draft statement on AGW consensus could be developed which is so clear that even the lay person can understand it. If this is best drafted with one statement per line and signed one line at a time by the supporting and dissenting scientists then that's fine. The statement that is distributed would need to be identical worldwide.

B. There would need to be a clearly defined level of relevant education required for scientists to be allowed to sign the document, and there would also need to be a verifiable process to check their credentials. Perhaps a small number of prominent scientists at each institution could volunteer to oversee and verify the signatures on the consensus statement. A few institutions could jointly host, backup and monitor the main database.

C. An international organizational structure could easily be created to list the various countries alphabetically, with each countries institutions listed alphabetically, and then the scientists listed alphabetically by institution along with their credentials. The statement would be in English and where needed posted in the native language as well. A running total listing the number of scientists supporting or disagreeing with the statement would be tallied at each institution, uploaded to a central database, and then downloaded and posted online at every institution. Perhaps Google Earth or an interactive global map could be used as a nice graphic interface.

D. This process can be initiated and continue as a work in progress as institutions gain and verify signatories rather than waiting for a set time for the statements to be completed, compiled and posted.

I can't imagine many scientists or institutions not wanting to support the consensus effort after the Climategate fiasco. Perhaps this will eventually help save us all a lot time haggling with poorly informed people and deniers regarding what the scientists believe, and hopefully our time can be better spent working towards possible solutions.


2. The second idea is to collectively create a website which will;
A. provide a very easy to understand overview of the subject of climate change with more in-depth science and supporting information linked to the overview.
B. categorize and organize the specific topics and links to articles and videos that many of us refer to, effectively creating a much faster and easier to access database which should reduce the amount of time we spend digging through old posts and trying to find articles we have read. A numbering system could be established for each topic to help simplify referral and access time with ample capacity designed for expansion as information is added and updated .
C. post the most common counter arguments and discussions which we can point people to rather than having to type out the same responses year after year for every new person that comes along. This is a great resource http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

Optional
D. contain a lies repository to store the disinformation and lies that are presented by the people and organizations that are paid to misinform the public eg. Lord Monckton, Myron Ebell, Fox News, etc. and also show the sources of their funding and vested interests.

I have a single webpage started but it needs a lot of work and some reformatting.

Many of you have spent countless hours, months and years posting the evidence of climate change and I'll always remember Piggy making a long post about how frustrated he was with the deniers but that he felt his time was well spent if he could help any fence sitters on the issue eventually understand climate change. Perhaps a larger and more definitive resource would be helpful.

As I started to gather my links and ideas to respond to the following two statements I realized how scattered all the information that I reference is and thought that many of us are probably in the same situation spending a lot of time digging through lots of links and websites and that having a more well laid out website/ database may save us all a lot of time in the long run.

Once again a post from post #247

"I've never understood why people get so worked up about the possibility of global warming and the things we could do to limit it."

and from the next post

"Which is why I say it is absolute crap but I am not really concerned about it."

Thanks for your honesty Lukraat and Little Grey Rabbit.

We are not winning the battle for the support of the change that is needed as easily as we should be given the consensus among scientists, the amount of information that was all have links to, and the gravity of the threat that we are facing.

The recent media spin of Climategate and other mistakes at the IPCC has really undermined people's beliefs regarding AGW. There is disturbing news in a recent article on CNN titled "Americans cooling on climate change, survey says" which stated
"Fifty-seven percent of Americans polled at the end of 2009 and early 2010 believe climate change is happening compared with a figure of 71 percent in October 2008."
The report, "Climate Change in the American Mind" published jointly by Yale University and the George Mason University Wednesday also reveals a picture of falling trust in scientists, politicians and the media concerning climate change." (snip)........."What this all underlines, Leiserowitz says, is the need to educate the American people."
"There is a real need for improved public education and communication on this critical
issue. The science is getting stronger and public opinion is going in the opposite
direction."

Please let me know what you think about these ideas and there are obviously more qualified and educated people than me that should head something like this up if there is enough interest. There is a large list of like minded individuals on these forums and if we all gradually contribute a little bit of time we could create an amazing resource. It would be great to catagorize all the latest science posts in the "Climiate News from the Science Press" thread which is excellent.

There is probably not much time left to initiate the global effort that is needed to stop the permafrost from melting if we are not too late already.

 

[Trakar]

There's no doubt excess nutrients increases algal growth. Fertilizers certainly provide increased nutrients. It's a problem. Then again, we need to eat. I don't see any easy solutions. But I do know that denying the problem isn't a solution.

An entirely reasonable position,...IMO.

That said, I'd probably prefer "issue" to "problem," but that's perspective. I wouldn't even go so far as saying that fertilizer is the problem, so much as the wasteful, inefficient application of fertilizer and lack of coordinated, large-scale consideration, planning and design of everything from the fertilizer to the overall topology and flow of local and regional aquifers. IOW, issues often have many potential resolutions, but regardless of how we choose to address the issue, it seems apparent to most that the traditional and customery practices are unsustainable and increasingly undesireable,...at the least.

I used to fish in a slough on my parents' property. We had some orchards, but we didn't use huge amounts of fertilizer, and we didn't drain excess water into the slough. When new orchards were planted along the opposite bank, they excavated drainage ditches into the slough and used a great deal of fertilizer. Within a year we saw a massive algal bloom. The slough is now subject to cyclic bloom and die-off, causing the water to become quite oxygen poor. Years ago I tried fishing after a die-off. No sign of fish.

I learned to ice-skate on frozen sloughs in SE Alaska (...he mumbles to himself codger-like)

Ah...anecdotes! Aren't they fun?!

There are lot's of ways to fertilize.

I tend to look at such runoff problems as wasted money. I don't understand why that is an unusual perspective?

Not that I disagree with your statements, rather, I find them encouraging and productive.
As a cross-country ski enthusiast,
AGW is increasingly depressing
(especially in the middle of summer)