Climate change (again!)

[Brian Ellis]

Just had a phone call from a friend who is attending the IPCC conference in Paris.

Tomorrow's report will be much more unequivocal that the climate change is largely due to human activities than previous ones. The term he used was "plus que probable" which translates literally to "more than probable" but this sounds stronger in English than French. Possibly the official English will be "very probable" or "very likely". This is much stronger language than in any previous report.

The report is a preliminary one, the full one with all the science coming out in April. It has been very carefully written by 2500 top scientists from 130 countries participating. I understand that the wordsmithing is such as to eliminate any possible misinterpretation.

It would appear that the naysayers' arguments will be sunk in the scientific report in a few months.

http://www.ipcc.ch/

[cjolley]

...
It has been very carefully written by 2500 top scientists from 130 countries participating. I understand that the wordsmithing is such as to eliminate any possible misinterpretation.
...

You under estimate the talents of the highly paid nay-saying industry.

[Dr Mordrid]

He also overestimates the worth of 2500 scientists digging for research grants, which by the way only go to those who will presumably come up with the politically correct results.

I look at it as a self reinforcing causality loop.

[Brian Ellis]

He also overestimates the worth of 2500 scientists digging for research grants, which by the way only go to those who will presumably come up with the politically correct results.

I look at it as a self reinforcing causality loop.

I suggest you try to find out how the IPCC works before you make yourself look too foolish. I doubt very much whether more than 20 or 30 of them benefited from research grants. Probably half of those that did were in the USA and Australia, where the politically correct results would have been against anthropogenic climate change. Most of the atmospheric scientists were working at their everyday jobs but concomitantly collected and reported data and then met together to interpret what was found every 6 months. For example, one of the big shakers and movers was the WMO which did a lot of the co-ordination of the data.

One of the US Government-funded research establishments is the NOAA research facility in Boulder, CO (nice and close to the ocean!). I know Dan Albritton, the director of the air chemistry faculty, very well, having worked with him on ozone depletion. I also know that they are on a budget so tight that they have to fight for every cent. In the ozone depletion world, one of the principal worries are the effects of short-lived brominated compounds which are probably the worst ozone-depleting substances still in use in the developed world. Dan Albritton, as chair of the Scientific Assessment Panel, was charged by the Parties to the Montreal Protocol to report on the effect of such substances as 1-bromopropane - in 1997! He reported back, I think in 2000, some "back-of-envelope" figures, explaining that full modelling would cost about $100,000. In the meanwhile, a guy at the University of Illinois did some modelling, funded by one of the major producers of 1-bromopropane, and a Prof. Pyle at the Univ. of Cambridge (UK) had a research graduate do her PhD thesis on modelling the effects of these substances (with a number of approximations). By coincidence, the Illinois guy came up with figures most favourable to his sponsors, while the Cambridge figures were slightly higher than Dr Albritton's estimates. Today, 10 years later, sdefinitive figure, taking into account all the variables and applicable in all climates are still unknown, for lack of funding. So it is with climate change.

You are denigrating large numbers of dedicated scientists with your sweeping statement, the majority of whom are persons of high integrity working on low (and sometimes no) budgets.

[Mehen]

Ozone is overrated.

[Brian Ellis]

Wasn't able to find the report on the IPCC site yet, but I have it here

[cjolley]

Don't bother arguing with him Brian, Doc has drunk the Kool-Aid.

[Dr Mordrid]

Not hhe cool aid, just some common sense. Climatologists, or the equivalent thereof, have making like chicken little for over 200 years. For 25 years it's "we're gonna freeze!" then the reverse. Just as cyclical as the climate.

[Brian Ellis]

Don't bother arguing with him Brian, Doc has drunk the Kool-Aid.

No intention of arguing. I have now read this report and it only makes my convictions that much stronger. I look forward to reading the full scientific report in April; until that comes out, there is nothing sufficiently scientific that is quotable for a real humdinger argument. This one is really just an executive summary which does not go into the technicalities, but it is convincing per se to non-partakers of Kool-Aid. Even Prez Bush is watering down his Kool-Aid these days!!

[cjolley]

I can't resist.

Not hhe cool aid, just some common sense. Climatologists, or the equivalent thereof, have making like chicken little for over 200 years. For 25 years it's "we're gonna freeze!" then the reverse. Just as cyclical as the climate.

That argument is completely devoid of content. It is purely ad hominem.

Do refuse to believe that planes can fly because scientists said 200 years ago that a fixed wing couldn't provide lift and 60 years ago that a plane could not survive exceeding the speed of sound?

[cjolley]

Hey here's a good one.

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

...



The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

...

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.

[KRSESQ]

You fellows DO realize that there is only one way to resolve this dispute, right? ALL human greenhouse gas emissions must be eliminated completely and atmospheric carbon sequestration begun on an industrial scale to offset carbon emissions that we have no direct control over. Atmospheric carbon levels must be returned to their pre-industrial levels and THEN we have to wait and see if the climate stabilizes and returns to its pre-industrialization state.

Then to test it further, we have to INCREASE greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and see if the global mean temperature rises again! THEN we have to reduce the levels AGAIN and observe the results! ONLY then will we have enough information to conclusively and irrefutably state that human greenhouse emissions are responsible for global warming. This is going to take centuries, guys. So roll up your sleeves.

Then the questions arise: do we WANT the global climate to return to pre-industrialized levels? What if we inadvertantly trigger another Ice Age? What if we do eliminate ALL greenhouse gas emissions and drop the atmospheric carbon level to a pre-industrialized state and the climate STILL gets warmer? What do we blame next and what do we do about it?

We only learn how to ask more questions!

Kevin

[Dr Mordrid]

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The pro-warming crowd has the same economic incentive; they're called "research grants" and you're DAMNED unlikely to get one if you question the PC line. GW is a cottage industry for climatologists who actually want to earn a living off their degrees.

Can't do reduction until/unless developing nations like China are part of the protocol, which is why Kyoto is worse than useless and we didn't sign it.

While we move towards electric cars, flourescent/LED lighting etc. China plans on opening 544 coal-fired powerplants every year!!. They're already at half that rate; 5 per week.

Pfffttt...

[Mehen]

Ozone clogs your arteries ~ evil!! ~


(not directly, but look it up if you don't believe me).

If I was Stephen Colbert it would be on my On Notice board.

[Brian Ellis]

Hey here's a good one.

I particularly liked

The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash.