"Global warming" my arse.....

[Dr Mordrid]

The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures prevailing at sites around the world.....

According to the researchers, the evidence confirms suspicions that today's "unprecedented" temperatures are simply the result of examining temperature change over too short a period of time......

Dr Philip Stott, the professor emeritus of bio-geography at the University of London, told The Telegraph: "What has been forgotten in all the discussion about global warming is a proper sense of history."

According to Prof Stott, the evidence also undermines doom-laden predictions about the effect of higher global temperatures. "During the Medieval Warm Period, the world was warmer even than today, and history shows that it was a wonderful period of plenty for everyone."

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/ne...06/ixhome.html

Sounds a lot like what I posted a few weeks ago

Dr. Mordrid

[K6-III]

Not quite enough info to generalize yet...

As it appears to me, you post only the news that supports your pre-existing viewpoint.

[Wulfman]

simple question: who funded the review?

mfg
wulfman

[Indiana]

Originally posted by K6-III
Not quite enough info to generalize yet...

As it appears to me, you post only the news that supports your pre-existing viewpoint.

Correct. But don't you do the same?

[UtwigMU]

Well, we have a warming.

We have manny hipotheses explaining it:

- CO2
- natural cycles of warm and cooler periods (eg, Greenland was warmer in not so recent periods)
- combination of the two

Also what CO2 greenhouse effect can induce is also only speculated:
- global warming
- fluctuation of gulf stream, which would result in global cooling
- or (joke) new fashion and bigger crops

EDIT: little ice age that was mentioned in Mordrid's link is the Greenland being warmer I mentioned.

Anyway global climate is a very complex system, subject to manny factors and I'd say we don't understand it enough to predict it well enough (eg. no Master of Orion style terraforming for a long time).

[KRSESQ]

Recent studies indicate that the sun may also be increasing in temperature, in addition to its normal 7-11 year cycle. How long its been increasing and how much hotter it will get, is too early to tell.

Some scientists believe that the sun may have been as much as 10 percent hotter during the Jurassic Period.

(links pending)

What it boils down to is, NOBODY KNOWS exactly what the "normal" mean temperature for the Earth is. If global warming is occurring, is it just part of a natural cycle of temperature fluctuation? How much is due to man-made CO2? Or is there any human impact at all? Too many unanswered questions, too much supposition, and too many people at the highest levels of the argument with a political axe to grind.

Kevin

[Jon P. Inghram]

I resent being considered an "unnatural" part of the environment anyway.

[Brian R.]

Originally posted by Indiana
Correct. But don't you do the same?

Some people mainly post information that supports what they believe, and others post unbiased information. It is obvious who does what.

[The PIT]

it's got to be getting warmer, look it's hardly rained this year. The hedge has stopped the ground is dry. Shit I forgot it chucked it down the same time last year.

All I can say is come and ask the question in million years. Thats if we're still around that is.

[Paddy]

All I can say is come and ask the question in million years. Thats if we're still around that is.

I agree.

[Brian Ellis]

1. Fact (i.e., scientifically proven): CO2 levels in 1850 were 280 ppm and in 1995 were 358 ppm, global average

2. Fact: CH4 levels in 1850 were 800 ppbv and in 1995 were 1720 ppbv

3. Fact: these two increases are anthropogenic

4. Fact: the levels of CO2 from 160,000 years BP to the early 20th Century have fluctutared between about 190 ppm to about 290 ppm. Never once has it passed 300 ppm until the mid-20th c. Furthermore, the global average temperature curve has followed the CO2 curve with a remarkable correlation. (If somebody wishes to see the curves, published by the NERC, from data extracted from air trapped in bubbles in ice cores at Vostok, Antarctica, I can scan then in).

5. Fact: the sun is a variable star. The 11 and 22 year cycles are known, as well as the 100,000 and 410,000 year periodicities of the eccentricity cycle, the 42,000 year obliquity cycle and the 18,000 and 23,000 year precession cycles of the earth. The solar irradiance cycles make a difference of about +/- 1 W/m2 out of a total usually considered as a global average of over 1,000 W/m2. Of the orbital forcings, we are currently pretty well in the middle of all three:
Ecliptic obliquity: 23.4 deg (range 22-24.5 deg)
Eccentricity: 0.0167 (0.005 - 0.0607)
Precession: 0.0164 (-0.05 - +0.05)

6. Fact: The overall global mean radiative forcing due to changes in the atmospheric gas composition from pre-industrial to the present is about 2.45 W/m2, which is about 2.5 times more than that due to any solar irradiance and orbital changes (Houghton et al. 1996)

7. Fact: The IPCC correlation between solar irradiance, orbital changes, atmospheric gas concentrations (including water vapour), albedo etc. and the observed average **global** temperature is an extremely good fit, with a confidence level exceeding 0.95

8. Fact: the IPCC agree that there are still some minor fluctuations which require a better understanding of, notably, the effects of negative and positive feedbacks, the albedo effects of different kinds of clouds, atmospheric turbidity, thermal coupling between the oceans and the effects of the rate of change of natural variability. These uncertainties explain the other 0.05 in the confidence level of the correlation.

Personally, I have no axe to grind, one way or the other, but I have over 2 decades professional experience in atmospheric sciences, having worked as a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme, so please give me a little credit for knowing what I talk about.

As for Prof P. Stott, he is an extremely controversial naysayer who politically contradicts every possible environmental action. His web site states clearly: " Please also note that this is not a straight 'science' site, but rather one aiming to deconstruct environmentalist constructions of knowledge.". Note that he deconstructs knowledge, not theory, and that he does not use science. He has zero credibility amongst atmospheric scientists who have spent decades studying their métier, while he has been professing biogeography (i.e., life forms on earth) and not atmospheric physics and chemistry. He also states that his views are personal.

It is my opinion, based on years of study of atmospheric sciences and of consultation with my scientific colleagues on the UNEP panels and committees on which I sit, that man-made changes to the atmosphere, which are undeniable, are a very likely cause of global climate change.

Finally, please let me make clear my vested interests: I have undertaken consultancy work for UNEP in the past, for which I was paid standard rates. The last UNEP mandate terminated in 2001. I currently have a single mandate operational, whereby the Swiss Government pay my expenses to represent them on the UNEP Technical and Economics Assessment Panel and also a Technical Options Committee. This is an annual lump sum which is over 2/3 used for travelling expenses: the remaining 1/3 is my "profit", which, if divided by the hours I work for this, would yield about $ 8 or 10 per hour. I have been doing this for Switzerland since 1988 and, overall, have given thousands of hours of my time to the job, because I believe that I'm helping to improve the global environment.

[GNEP]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
the levels of CO2 from 160,000 years BP

Hehe - 160,000 years "before petroleum"? Or a freudian-typo?

(I work for a, cough, oil major, so perhaps that's why I found it amusing and no one else will...)

Otherwise, good point all round. Probably more persuasive though is "try breathing the air in most large cities and tell me you don't want lower emissions vehicles?" OK burning pure CH4 does nothing about CO2 emissions, but it helps with NOx, SOx etc. Or go to hydrogen fuel cell (which will happen, just not quite yet, and remember that hydrogen will only ever by a "battery" - oil & gas are still going to be the most significant source of pure enery (apart from the sun of course) for a little while longer...

Sorry - monday morning stream-of-conciousness type thing going on here hence no sense...

[RedRed]

well written Brian.
Its not a subject I can claim much knowlege, sadly... no smart comments from me!

RedRed

[Brian Ellis]

BP is used in science as "Before Present" and has nothing to do with blood pressure, boiling point, the British Pharmacopeia or even British Petroleum (which is less Brit than I am!). Sorry, not Freudian nor Jungish.

Actually, CH4 is the organic fuel giving the best energy:carbon ratio, so is preferable to liquid fuels. The only problem is that it leaks easily and is 20-50 times worse than CO2 as a "greenhouse gas". Unfortunately, it is often contaminated with SO2 and H2S, so must be purified to meet your criterion. NOx depends on how it is combusted. As it burns at a higher temperature than most liquid fuels, it can actually generate more NOx.

I agree with you about the air in cities. This alone is a good reason to cut down on fossil fuels. The incidence of pulmonary diseases in cities like Mexico C, Cairo, Bangkok and, above all, New Delhi has risen almost exponentially with the consumption of petroleum products. Even in temperate cities with reasonable pollution control, such as in N. America and W. Europe, the incidence has also risen, especially of juvenile asthma, but also some malignant diseases. This is costing the collectivity gazillions of $$$ in world-wide health care. If just half this sum were invested in renewable energy, safe nuclear energy and energy efficiency, we could rid ourselves of this modern plague and, in a few years, save ourselves a lot of tax money.

I think the H2 fuel cell in cars will remain a pipe dream. H2, today, is generated by cracking (CH4)n gases and the C goes up into the air as CO2. I know there are many who prone electrolytic hydrogen generation from water, but this would be environmentally sound only if the electricity required came from renewable sources, such as wind farms. Optimistically, the overall efficiency, counting from the HP in a windmill's blades turning, to the HP in a car's wheels turning is abysmal. If you use solar PV panels, the overall efficiency will be less than 4% . Then, I would hate to think that I had 30 kg of compressed hydrogen in the back of my car. In an accident, it would make a Palestinian suicide bomber look like an amateur . Not to mention the distribution infrastructure. Not to mention that there ain't enough platinum in the world to make the fuel cells for all the cars in this world. I have more faith in low-consumption hybrid cars, at least over the next two decades or so. IMHO, it should be possible within 2 or 3 years to make medium hybrid cars with a fuel consumption of better than 2 l/100 km (as against ~ 10 l/100 km for an equivalent conventional petrol car today or 3 - 5 l/100 km for current hybrid cars).

Don't apologise

[Dr Mordrid]

Brian;

All those nice studies by the IPPC take the short-term view; meaning from the end of the little ice age to the present. In their papers they seem to be imitating the practitioners of psych-babble in that if you create enough new terminology and new "scientific" terms made up for the purpose it makes what you're saying true. Nope. All it means is that they're looking at the trees and not the forest.

Those who are now looking at long term cycles are seeing patterns that indicate a post-glacial cycle of 500 years that our current situation falls right in line with, and at the previous high points of this cycle humans were obviously pre-industrial.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says this;

"For a long time, researchers have possessed anecdotal evidence supporting the existence of these climate extremes," Baliunas says. "For example, the Vikings established colonies in Greenland at the beginning of the second millennium that died out several hundred years later when the climate turned colder. And in England, vineyards had flourished during the medieval warmth. Now, we have an accumulation of objective data to back up these cultural indicators."

The different indicators provided clear evidence for a warm period in the Middle Ages. Tree ring summer temperatures showed a warm interval from 950 A.D. to 1100 A.D. in the northern high latitude zones, which corresponds to the "Medieval Warm Period." Another database of tree growth from 14 different locations over 30-70 degrees north latitude showed a similar early warm period. Many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

In short it's hard to buy the current temperature increases known as "global warming" as being caused by human activities when even larger effects in a longer climactic cycle are seen in pre-industrial times, no matter how many ways Houghton & company cook their numbers to make the IPPC models work.

Dr. Mordrid