Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

[Grammatron]

My reply was in reference to your post about Al Gore not doing enough as a vicepresident.

That's not what I said, re-read my post.

I showed you that this was not the case.
Anyway, Al Gore is not the point of the film, he raises very important issues about what´s happening with the Planet. People seem to forget that the most endangered species are us. Many who oppose taking measures to reduce CO emissions think that it is matter of choosing between being environmental friendly or reducing your profits. It is not a choice, either you die or live.

I don't think this is accurate and is a problem with environmental movement.

 

[Q-Source]

That's not what I said, re-read my post..

I did. You made it look like he did nothing. You perfectly know that the US government is not a dictatorship and most of the time the President or vicepresident can´t impose their own agenda on the Congress.

[/QUOTE]
I don't think this is accurate and is a problem with environmental movement.[/QUOTE]

I am going to take it as your own particular opinion, nothing else.

 

[a_unique_person]

The report of the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Interesting stuff about "flux adjustments". Ask you friend about them, the CSIRO model has a good few apparently so he/she should be familiar with them.

So far, the models have been pretty well correct. If anything, they have underestimated the rate of change.

 

[Geckko]

So far, the models have been pretty well correct. If anything, they have underestimated the rate of change.

I suppose my concern is that this statement doesn't concur with the appraisal of the IPCC

 

[a_unique_person]

Do you have a reference?

 

[skeptifem]

Global warming already killing species, analysis says



http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/21/climate.species.ap/index.html

It says in the article its impossible to prove that any of that is caused by global warming.

when its a news article and not the data I dont really want to take their word for it. Especially when the people who looked at everything had been 'predicting this for years', and they just compiled data from other studies. That would normally be ok except none of us know the source of the studies or who did them- there are an awful lot of nut jobs who talk about species going extinct all the time and some without a doubt just bad info. Im sure i could compile a list of studies about how GMOs are dangerous because there are many of them, but by just compiling the data no one could see how terribly the studies were done.

 

[a_unique_person]

That's not what I said, re-read my post.

Nah, you just shouldn't say stupid things.

 

[a_unique_person]

It says in the article its impossible to prove that any of that is caused by global warming.

when its a news article and not the data I dont really want to take their word for it. Especially when the people who looked at everything had been 'predicting this for years', and they just compiled data from other studies. That would normally be ok except none of us know the source of the studies or who did them- there are an awful lot of nut jobs who talk about species going extinct all the time and some without a doubt just bad info. Im sure i could compile a list of studies about how GMOs are dangerous because there are many of them, but by just compiling the data no one could see how terribly the studies were done.

what did it actually say? "While it's impossible to prove conclusively the changes are the result of global warming, the evidence is so strong and other supportable explanations are lacking, Thomas said, so it is "statistically virtually impossible that these are just chance observations.""

You cannot say with absolute certainty that any one event was the result of global warming, when hundreds of these events occur, however, when other explanations are lacking, then global warming can be reasonably taken to be the cause.

perhaps you could listen to these words of wisdom

whenever ive witnessed an argument of this sort it goes like this:

poster1: it didnt happen

everyone posts proof

poster1: not THAT many people died, *long explanation with no facts*

everyone posts proof again and logical arguments against the numbers being inflated to an extreme degree.

poster1: well all that stuff about people being gassed in showers is BS!

and so on. None of the deniers answers for anything, they just keep on coming up with whacky stuff to be debunked. I can see how it would be easier to believe things that bad didnt happen/were exaggerated. The didnt happen/was exaggerated transition happens a lot, most of the time people dont know what the hell they are talking about and just repeat what they have heard on stormfront.

 

[Geckko]

Do you have a reference?

The IPCC

Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis.

I would have thought anybody who takes a strong position on this subject would be familiar with this document.

 

[a_unique_person]

I was wondering what part of it supports your claim. It's a big document, you will have to refer to the specific part of it.

 

[Grammatron]

I did. You made it look like he did nothing. You perfectly know that the US government is not a dictatorship and most of the time the President or vicepresident can´t impose their own agenda on the Congress.

Sounds like you are arguing with yourself then

"I wonder how things would have been different if Al Gore had been the President."

I am going to take it as your own particular opinion, nothing else.

Well, duh.

 

[Geckko]

I was wondering what part of it supports your claim. It's a big document, you will have to refer to the specific part of it.

I made no claim. I said I am scratching my head, because I find I read all sorts of conflicting information or claims and when I go to the most authoritative source (the IPCC) I still can't get a single answer without significant caveats attached. I don't think you will find any supporting evidence in that document that I am scratching my head. You will just have to take my word for it.

The reason I am scratching my head is in that document. Yes, it is a large document, but surely you can read a table of contents and find a chapter relevant to climate models?

On the other hand, you did make a claim in response:

So far, the models have been pretty well correct.

Can you show me where the IPCC supports that? In fact I would have thought someone who makes such claims would be pretty familiar with the IPCC work - it does represent the global scientific authority on such matters (although we are awaiting an update imminently).

 

[Questioninggeller]

Penn and Teller

Not to derail this thread, but Penn and Teller's Bullsh!t coverage on global warming was fairly poor. They could have quoted Carl Sagan's thoughts on it as expressed in "Demon Haunted World." It seems they only want to quote Sagan when his ideas match theirs.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Not to derail this thread, but Penn and Teller's Bullsh!t coverage on global warming was fairly poor. They could have quoted Carl Sagan's thoughts on it as expressed in "Demon Haunted World." It seems they only want to quote Sagan when his ideas match theirs.

It seems like they only want to quote ANYONE when their ideas match their own.

 

[Q-Source]

Not to derail this thread, but Penn and Teller's Bullsh!t coverage on global warming was fairly poor. They could have quoted Carl Sagan's thoughts on it as expressed in "Demon Haunted World." It seems they only want to quote Sagan when his ideas match theirs.

Do you care to elaborate? Do they think that it is a conspiracy theory?
I'd like to know on what ground they refute scientific evidence collected systematically in the last decades.

 

[a_unique_person]

I made no claim. I said I am scratching my head, because I find I read all sorts of conflicting information or claims and when I go to the most authoritative source (the IPCC) I still can't get a single answer without significant caveats attached. I don't think you will find any supporting evidence in that document that I am scratching my head. You will just have to take my word for it.

The reason I am scratching my head is in that document. Yes, it is a large document, but surely you can read a table of contents and find a chapter relevant to climate models?

On the other hand, you did make a claim in response:



Can you show me where the IPCC supports that? In fact I would have thought someone who makes such claims would be pretty familiar with the IPCC work - it does represent the global scientific authority on such matters (although we are awaiting an update imminently).

The IPCC is about to be updated, but not much is changing in terms of the basic science behind AGW. It's only going to be more of the same.

You raised the issue of models, and having to wonder about 'models'. I was wondering why you had an issue with models, what you based this suspicion on. If you read any scientific paper, if it is worth anything, it will always have qualifications and statments on the bounds of certainty of the findings. That's just normal. If a scientific paper didn't have them, you would want to question it. I have a friend who has been doing peer review of papers for the upconfing report. He sent one back with serious criticisms because it had a graph that did not specify the reliability of the data being plotted, or the upper or lower limits for the projection. None of these guys want to be the one that publishes a paper that is found to have serious errors in it, nor that pass one that has.

 

[Geckko]

The IPCC is about to be updated, but not much is changing in terms of the basic science behind AGW. It's only going to be more of the same.

You raised the issue of models, and having to wonder about 'models'. I was wondering why you had an issue with models, what you based this suspicion on. If you read any scientific paper, if it is worth anything, it will always have qualifications and statments on the bounds of certainty of the findings. That's just normal. If a scientific paper didn't have them, you would want to question it. I have a friend who has been doing peer review of papers for the upconfing report. He sent one back with serious criticisms because it had a graph that did not specify the reliability of the data being plotted, or the upper or lower limits for the projection. None of these guys want to be the one that publishes a paper that is found to have serious errors in it, nor that pass one that has.

Who said I had an issue with models? First you said I made a "claim", next you said I "have issues". Neither of which I have done (unless you can point out where I did).

Did you read what the IPCC has to say about the current state of climate modeling? Yes or no?

If no, and you don't intend to, I can't see this discussion going very far.

 

[a_unique_person]

Who said I had an issue with models? First you said I made a "claim", next you said I "have issues". Neither of which I have done (unless you can point out where I did).

Did you read what the IPCC has to say about the current state of climate modeling? Yes or no?

If no, and you don't intend to, I can't see this discussion going very far.

You said "I suppose my concern is that this statement doesn't concur with the appraisal of the IPCC". Fair enough, but I was wondering what part of the IPPC gave you that concern?

 

[a_unique_person]

OK, http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/315.htm#842.

Marotzke and Stone (1995) show that using flux adjustment to correct surface errors in the control climate does not necessarily correct errors in processes which control the climate change response. Flux adjustments can also result in spurious multiple equilibrium states of the tropical (Neelin and Dijkstra, 1995) and thermohaline (Dijkstra and Neelin, 1999) ocean circulation. On the other hand, a good representation of, say, sea-ice extent may be important to produce the correct magnitude of ice-albedo feedback under climate change, and it may be preferable to use flux adjustments to give a good sea-ice distribution than to omit the flux adjustments but to have a poorer sea-ice extent. Overall, differences have been seen in the climate change response of flux adjusted and equivalent non-flux adjusted models (Fanning and Weaver, 1997b; Gregory and Mitchell, 1997), but it is not clear whether the differences are due to the flux adjustment itself, or to the systematic errors in the non-flux adjusted model. The only practical way to resolve this issue may be to continue the progress which has been made towards models which achieve good surface climatology without flux adjustment, whereupon the effect of flux adjustments will cease to be of concern.

The models are not perfect for telling us exactly what the response of the earth will be to the warming effects of CO2. The basic science is correct, however, more CO2 will lead to more warming, and that is what has happened. Australia had a prediction of more drought in certain areas, and that is what has happened. That is, the weather patterns have moved south, so that the south of Australia is missing out on rain from the Souther Oceans. Waiting until the models are pefectly correct means that nothing will ever be done until it is too late to do anything.

 

[Geckko]

OK, http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/315.htm#842.



The models are not perfect for telling us exactly what the response of the earth will be to the warming effects of CO2. The basic science is correct, however, more CO2 will lead to more warming, and that is what has happened. Australia had a prediction of more drought in certain areas, and that is what has happened. That is, the weather patterns have moved south, so that the south of Australia is missing out on rain from the Souther Oceans. Waiting until the models are pefectly correct means that nothing will ever be done until it is too late to do anything.

Now we a talking.

This is why I am scratching my head.

What this excerpt says is that the errors evident in models when replicating past climate history are sufficiently large to require the modellers to include special adjustments (those are the "flux adjustments") to keep them on track. However, including such adjustments makes it difficult (impossible?) to assess how well the models will predict the future.

I take this to mean that the statement you made earlier:

So far, the models have been pretty well correct.

is not supported by peer reveiwed research (and doesn't appear to be a claim by any of the modellers as far as I can ascertain).

So, that is why I am scratching my head. I will read somewhere that models are predicting X Y and Z to happen to the climate. However, as this extract shows and the IPCC report also says, there is no level of certainty that the present state of modelling allows such claims to be made.