Global warming really is happening... (well, duh!)

[Minty]

... you intellectual pygmy:

 

Class just oozes from every word you type...

[buctootim]

To be fair Willie Soon is just one of many highly qualified men of science who argue that climate change is a result of natural phenomena, I'm sure that there's a list of them somewhere. Perhaps GM didn't pick the most shining example amongst them though because Willie , well he's taken a lot of grant money from fossil fuel companies. That's not to say that he doesn't believe what he maintains to be correct though.

 

Thats true - but its fallacious of GM to pretend that the case for anthropogenic climate change ignores natural variations in climate. Yes, of course, the climate has always changed naturally - climate change scientists are not unaware of past ice ages or very warm epochs. That doesn't change the fact that higher concentrations of CO2 have an insulating effect which traps more heat. A 15 tog duvet makes you warmer than a 3 tog duvet, regardless of the amount of heating in your house.

 

Of course not every questions is settled, this is still a relatively new area of science. Increases in temperature have an effect on cloud cover; reductions in reflective snow cover; methane release from thawing permafrost; changes in ocean currents and winds; increased rainfall. Increases in CO2 have an effect on plant growth and ocean biomass. Do the current climate models synthesise these competing dynamics perfectly? no. Do we fully understand the effect of the sun? no. Does any of this contradict the overwhelming global consensus that putting more and more insulating gases into the atmosphere is a bad idea? no. Climate does change naturally and there may even be a time in the distant future when we need to pump out all the CO2 and methane we can in order to counteract the effects of a naturally cooling climate. That time isn't now.

Edited 23 January, 2014 by buctootim

[Polaroid Saint]

The purpose of science is to question human understanding and by doing so improve upon it.

 

Science is a continual cycle of postulating and disproving, refining knowledge to a point where it becomes useful.

 

All scientists are sceptics by definition.

 

All scientists have specialist areas and all scientists 'needs to gets paid', course they do. Unfortunately this also means many of the associations and sponsorships in modern science are less transparent.

 

If you remember that then it is a lot easier to work out that not all science, or reported 'results' or statistic based science, is worth your time or heartache.

[Guided Missile]

Class just oozes from every word you type...

I'm just basing my opinion on the evidence...

[Minty]

The purpose of science is to question human understanding and by doing so improve upon it.

 

Science is a continual cycle of postulating and disproving, refining knowledge to a point where it becomes useful.

 

All scientists are sceptics by definition.

 

All scientists have specialist areas and all scientists 'needs to gets paid', course they do. Unfortunately this also means many of the associations and sponsorships in modern science are less transparent.

 

If you remember that then it is a lot easier to work out that not all science, or reported 'results' or statistic based science, is worth your time or heartache.

 

Indeed. Being a skeptic is healthy... as long as you remain open-minded. Closing the mind just leads to... well... threads like this!

[Saint George]

The purpose of science is to question human understanding and by doing so improve upon it.

 

Science is a continual cycle of postulating and disproving, refining knowledge to a point where it becomes useful.

 

All scientists are sceptics by definition.

 

All scientists have specialist areas and all scientists 'needs to gets paid', course they do. Unfortunately this also means many of the associations and sponsorships in modern science are less transparent.

 

If you remember that then it is a lot easier to work out that not all science, or reported 'results' or statistic based science, is worth your time or heartache.

 

Indeed. Being a skeptic is healthy... as long as you remain open-minded. Closing the mind just leads to... well... threads like this!

 

The alarmist claimed "The debate is over".....yup in just a couple of decades of spotty research and a few dodgy models they claimed the debate over. The IPCC took that on board and Governments around the world have subsequently implemented policies based on that very statement.....Now you pay the price like it or not, right or wrong...."The debate is over"

 

Well I have 2 words for that......F*ck You!!!! (not you guys personally)

[Window Cleaner]

The alarmist claimed "The debate is over".....yup in just a couple of decades of spotty research and a few dodgy models they claimed the debate over. The IPCC took that on board and Governments around the world have subsequently implemented policies based on that very statement.....Now you pay the price like it or not, right or wrong...."The debate is over"

 

Well I have 2 words for that......F*ck You!!!! (not you guys personally)

 

 

Some EU governments are relaxing their efforts a bit are they not ? The 2020 goals will still be maintained but the 2030 targets

are being lowered somewhat I believe. I'm not a climate change man by any means but that's what I understood from colleagues who are the other day.

Edited 23 January, 2014 by Window Cleaner

[badgerx16]

Some EU governments are relaxing their efforts a bit are they not ? The 2020 goals will still be maintained but the 2030 targets

are being lowered somewhat I believe. I'm not a climate change man by any means but that's what I understood from colleagues who are the other day.

 

They have said that, but it's probably mainly because they want to limit increases in domestic fuel bills.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25828181

 

"We are determined to keep people's energy bills as low as possible and that means having the flexibility to cut emissions in the most cost effective way".

[Verbal]

To be fair Willie Soon is just one of many highly qualified men of science who argue that climate change is a result of natural phenomena, I'm sure that there's a list of them somewhere. Perhaps GM didn't pick the most shining example amongst them though because Willie , well he's taken a lot of grant money from fossil fuel companies. That's not to say that he doesn't believe what he maintains to be correct though.

 

Willie Soon has not just taken 'a lot' of his grant funding from fossil fuel companies. His entire research income since 2002 has come from oil and gas interests and the infamous Donors' Trust - the so-called 'black money ATM' which conceals the exact energy companies' contributions to climate-denying academics.

 

GM is either pretending that Soon is 'independent' or he's hopelessly gullible. Probably the latter.

[Sheaf Saint]

The alarmist claimed "The debate is over".....yup in just a couple of decades of spotty research and a few dodgy models they claimed the debate over. The IPCC took that on board and Governments around the world have subsequently implemented policies based on that very statement.....Now you pay the price like it or not, right or wrong...."The debate is over"

 

Well I have 2 words for that......F*ck You!!!! (not you guys personally)

 

One or two people may have put forward the opinion of 'the debate is over' but actually the IPCC's latest report concludes with a 95% probability that human activity is responsible for the observed warming over the last century. I don't know about you but to my mind, a 95% probability is a pretty sound basis for implementing policy. As this thread and many other debates like it have proved, there will never be a 100% consensus on the issue, therefore we cannot afford to continually delay and wait for that which will never occur before taking action.

 

I believe it was Minty who has mentioned the precautionary principle a few times already on this thread, and you don't even need to know a single thing about climate science to appreciate just how much common sense it makes in this matter.

[Saint Paul C]

This paper is worth a read - if slightly long and heavy on the technicalities of modelling techniques

Records from the GISP2 Greenland ice core are considered in terms of dynamical systems theory and nonlinear prediction. Dynamical systems theory allows us to reconstruct some properties of a phenomenon based only on past behavior without any mechanistic assumptions or deterministic models. A short-term prediction of temperature, including a mean estimate and confidence interval, is made for 800 years into the future. The prediction suggests that the present short-time global warming trend will continue for at least 200 years and be followed by a reverse in the temperature trend.

 

http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Conferences/IAMG//Sessions/N/Papers/kotov.pdf

[Hokie]

This paper is worth a read - if slightly long and heavy on the technicalities of modelling techniques

Records from the GISP2 Greenland ice core are considered in terms of dynamical systems theory and nonlinear prediction. Dynamical systems theory allows us to reconstruct some properties of a phenomenon based only on past behavior without any mechanistic assumptions or deterministic models. A short-term prediction of temperature, including a mean estimate and confidence interval, is made for 800 years into the future. The prediction suggests that the present short-time global warming trend will continue for at least 200 years and be followed by a reverse in the temperature trend.

 

http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Conferences/IAMG//Sessions/N/Papers/kotov.pdf

 

Thanks for that, Paul.

 

Interesting mathematics, but I'm not sure I'd put too much stock in a heuristic model (still waiting for someone to make money with them on the financial markets) tuned to proxy temperature measurements from a single location. It may be my bias but I think the way forward is more mechanistic within a Bayesian framework, like this http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/2793/2013/acp-13-2793-2013.pdf.

 

It would be a bit unfair to criticise a conference paper, but there are a number of questions that come to mind: how precisely did the author arrive at the parameters used for the Lorenz equations? What was the rationale for choosing the X coordinate for the reduction, rather than y, z, magnitude, or some other combination? While I liked the choice of PCA, why was oxygen isotope ratio broken out and considered a second data set? Did they consider including that in the PCA? Is there a quantitative assessment of the predictive capability, rather than just showing a chart that qualitatively looks similar? Perhaps these are answered in the paper, which I must admit I was reading over a beer on weekend evening.

 

The paper strikes me as the beginning effort of a larger modeling process, but I can't find future additions to the model in the literature. Do you know if Kotov has done more with it?

[Viking Warrior]

Interesting the way statistics are mis used toady it was reported that Shetland has been battered by arguably the worst spell of protracted winter gales seen since 1993, according to Fair Isle weatherman Dave Wheeler.

 

“This run of poor weather with incessant strong winds and frequent gales is probably the worst since 1993,” Wheeler said, referring to the storms of 21 years ago which pushed the Braer oil tanker onto the rocks.

 

He explained that an area of high pressure sitting over Scandinavia, which is experiencing dry and cold conditions with little snow, was blocking areas of low pressure to the west of Scotland. That is resulting in seemingly “endless” south easterlies.

No mention of climatic change , but the winds were worse before 1993 in terms of Sustained periods of gales etc . And yes it it is equally bad in Orkney as well . Several ships have taken refuge in Kirkwall bay tonight .

[Saint Paul C]

Thanks for that, Paul.

 

Interesting mathematics, but I'm not sure I'd put too much stock in a heuristic model (still waiting for someone to make money with them on the financial markets) tuned to proxy temperature measurements from a single location. It may be my bias but I think the way forward is more mechanistic within a Bayesian framework, like this http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/2793/2013/acp-13-2793-2013.pdf.

 

It would be a bit unfair to criticise a conference paper, but there are a number of questions that come to mind: how precisely did the author arrive at the parameters used for the Lorenz equations? What was the rationale for choosing the X coordinate for the reduction, rather than y, z, magnitude, or some other combination? While I liked the choice of PCA, why was oxygen isotope ratio broken out and considered a second data set? Did they consider including that in the PCA? Is there a quantitative assessment of the predictive capability, rather than just showing a chart that qualitatively looks similar? Perhaps these are answered in the paper, which I must admit I was reading over a beer on weekend evening.

 

The paper strikes me as the beginning effort of a larger modeling process, but I can't find future additions to the model in the literature. Do you know if Kotov has done more with it?

 

Your comments on Heuristic modelling are valid. A risky approach but when applied in the right scenarios a useful tool.

 

In my field, working with CSG companies to enable them to understand the characteristics of reservoirs including gas saturation, porosity etc.. we typically rely on multivariant, multivariate, multidimensional and stochastic methods. However, is some cases the use of correctly applied heuristic principles enables us to jump the gap to an accurate yield forecast for wells/stages etc. If you have access take a look at an SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) paper 135523 I had involvement in which describes a practical application of these.

 

Looks like Kotov has no been overly prolific with his output as the paper I linked was approx 10yrs old and nothing of note since 2007.

[Hokie]

Your comments on Heuristic modelling are valid. A risky approach but when applied in the right scenarios a useful tool.

 

In my field, working with CSG companies to enable them to understand the characteristics of reservoirs including gas saturation, porosity etc.. we typically rely on multivariant, multivariate, multidimensional and stochastic methods. However, is some cases the use of correctly applied heuristic principles enables us to jump the gap to an accurate yield forecast for wells/stages etc. If you have access take a look at an SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) paper 135523 I had involvement in which describes a practical application of these.

 

Looks like Kotov has no been overly prolific with his output as the paper I linked was approx 10yrs old and nothing of note since 2007.

 

Looks good, Paul. I can only access the first page here, but it seems like a good application of neural nets. Its a few years past publication, are you still using this model? As you add more data, is it performing better?

 

Fascinating tool--one I studied (lightly!) 20+ years ago, but have never found an application for in my work.

[Guided Missile]

Lovely to see the academics disappearing up their own ar$e$ with a "heuristic" approach to climate change. For those remotely interested, that involves deriving an expression they can get their heads around that can approximate a set of circumstances so complex, that they have no hope of modelling with their puny brains. Meanwhile, the Met Office continues to falsify the data their crap models rely on, here.

[Saint George]

LOl...and they release the new 'no warming' models on Christmas eve...talk about trying to hide bad news.......To think peeps still fall for this crap

[Saint George]

Meanwhile New Orleans has ground to a halt due to the cold weather....No schools, no garbage collection, Interstate and other roads closed just about everything shut down......My house is 80 years old and has never had insulated water pipes in the attic or crawl space because it's never been necessary ......Hell it hasn't been this cold here since 1970, 1949 and 1923....Al Gore said it would never happen again...lying bastard

[buctootim]

Lovely to see the academics disappearing up their own ar$e$ with a "heuristic" approach to climate change. For those remotely interested, that involves deriving an expression they can get their heads around that can approximate a set of circumstances so complex, that they have no hope of modelling with their puny brains.

 

Translates as "I don't understand it so I'm going to lash out again"

[Whitey Grandad]

Translates as "I don't understand it so I'm going to lash out again"

 

Not really. I interpret it as saying that the models are adjusted to fit the data and not the other way around.

[buctootim]

Not really. I interpret it as saying that the models are adjusted to fit the data and not the other way around.

 

No he's saying the data is put into computer models because the people involved are too thick to work the problems out for themselves. That itself shows he doesn't understand what the climate models do - which is not to come up with THE answer - but to see what happens when different variables are altered.

[Whitey Grandad]

No he's saying the data is put into computer models because the people involved are too thick to work the problems out for themselves. That itself shows he doesn't understand what the climate models do - which is not to come up with THE answer - but to see what happens when different variables are altered.

 

But such models can never be tested except with the real data, and as such can only ever predict past events. (Is there a postdict?)

[aintforever]

But such models can never be tested except with the real data, and as such can only ever predict past events. (Is there a postdict?)

 

Models will never be able to predict the future, I'm not sure what your point is?

[buctootim]

But such models can never be tested except with the real data, and as such can only ever predict past events. (Is there a postdict?)

 

Again no (imo). If, for example, you want to predict the impact of atmospheric C)2 at 500ppm with all other factors variables remaining the same you can do that with a high degree of probability by looking at changes with CO2 at 300ppm, 310ppm, 320ppm and on etc. Its what much science is built on. When material sciences look at how pesticide degrades over 50 years, or office building steel structures respond to weathering over 100 years they don't actually wait around for the results in real time, its modelled.

[Whitey Grandad]

Models will never be able to predict the future, I'm not sure what your point is?

 

Then what's the point of the models?

[Whitey Grandad]

Again no (imo). If, for example, you want to predict the impact of atmospheric C)2 at 500ppm with all other factors variables remaining the same you can do that with a high degree of probability by looking at changes with CO2 at 300ppm, 310ppm, 320ppm and on etc. Its what much science is built on. When material sciences look at how pesticide degrades over 50 years, or office building steel structures respond to weathering over 100 years they don't actually wait around for the results in real time, its modelled.

 

Only if you're certain that you have included all the factors.

[aintforever]

Then what's the point of the models?

 

Obviously to try to predict whats going to happen but there are so many factors in play it's impossible. It's hard to see how anyone could predict the recent fall in solar activity for example.

[Polaroid Saint]

Interesting stuff from the academics*, thank you.

 

I was particularly interested in the talk of heuristic modelling, as I rely upon Heuristic approaches in a lot of the stuff I do. I was intrigued to hear that it is not favoured in modelling so much.

 

I guess heuristics, by their very nature, are 'real world' - empirical conclusions and comparable data that can be used in real time - and therefore almost impossible to 'model'. Makes sense then.

 

*Although I did enjoy GM's attempt to translate the dictionary definition of heuristics in order to take a pop at 'academics'. Bless.

[derry]

Are the Chinese, Indians, Russians and the US etc still ignoring global warming? If they are why are we, a microscopic speck on the planet, getting so obsessed with it.

[Sheaf Saint]

Are the Chinese, Indians, Russians and the US etc still ignoring global warming? If they are why are we, a microscopic speck on the planet, getting so obsessed with it.

 

No.

 

Both the US and China are investing massively in solar technology, while India is leading the way with thorium-based nuclear reactors.

[Whitey Grandad]

Interesting stuff from the academics*, thank you.

 

I was particularly interested in the talk of heuristic modelling, as I rely upon Heuristic approaches in a lot of the stuff I do. I was intrigued to hear that it is not favoured in modelling so much.

 

I guess heuristics, by their very nature, are 'real world' - empirical conclusions and comparable data that can be used in real time - and therefore almost impossible to 'model'. Makes sense then.

 

*Although I did enjoy GM's attempt to translate the dictionary definition of heuristics in order to take a pop at 'academics'. Bless.

 

In my day heuristic meant 'suck it and see', or in other words 'guesswork'. I suspect these days it's used to mean 'adaptive'.

[Polaroid Saint]

Are the Chinese, Indians, Russians and the US etc still ignoring global warming? If they are why are we, a microscopic speck on the planet, getting so obsessed with it.

 

IMO, and at the risk of sounding like I'm on the Olympic Deliverance Committee, it's all about sustainability.

 

Global Warming, or Climate Change, concentrated population growth, destruction of flora and forna, pollution, resources and logistics are stretched.

 

These are problems for everyone, everywhere, local, national, global; but the more we can do as an island nation to sustain our own population advancement the better everyone will be.

 

Maybe I'm an optimist, but there is plenty to suggest mankind will manage - somehow.

 

The sooner we recognise and factor in the effects of climate change (whatever its cause) on the way civilisation and societies function, the sooner we can adapt.

[buctootim]

Only if you're certain that you have included all the factors.

 

Obviously you don't know if other factors will change in the future so you can never have total certainty. What I find odd is that people accept without question modelling for their life expectancy, for their probability of having a car crash and claiming on insurance, for the number of time an IKEA drawer can be opened. However when it comes to something important - being reasonably cautious with the only planet we have to live on - ie using the precautionary principle, there is all this rank outcry and attempts to say scientists are stupid or in some kind of collusion.

[Sheaf Saint]

IMO, and at the risk of sounding like I'm on the Olympic Deliverance Committee, it's all about sustainability.

 

Global Warming, or Climate Change, concentrated population growth, destruction of flora and forna, pollution, resources and logistics are stretched.

 

These are problems for everyone, everywhere, local, national, global; but the more we can do as an island nation to sustain our own population advancement the better everyone will be.

 

Maybe I'm an optimist, but there is plenty to suggest mankind will manage - somehow.

 

The sooner we recognise and factor in the effects of climate change (whatever its cause) on the way civilisation and societies function, the sooner we can adapt.

 

Excellent post Polaroid Saint. There are essentially two debates to be had regarding climate change... What is causing it, and what can we do to adapt to it?

 

The first one has been done to death on here already, and as we have seen there are still many who bluntly refuse to accept the overwhelming body of evidence which suggests it is anthropogenic.

 

The second one, however, is perhaps more important. The undeniable fact is that the planet is warming so, regardless of the causes, what do we do as a society to adapt to the changing climate? We saw in the news this week that the UK's environment secretary Owen Paterson has slashed the climate change budget in half, amid concerns that he is a climate skeptic. Whatever his motivations this is worrying, because we need to focus on the fact that the climate IS changing and implement appropriate adaptation policies, rather than continue to argue about what is causing it.

[Guided Missile]

Meanwhile New Orleans has ground to a halt due to the cold weather....No schools, no garbage collection, Interstate and other roads closed just about everything shut down......My house is 80 years old and has never had insulated water pipes in the attic or crawl space because it's never been necessary ......Hell it hasn't been this cold here since 1970, 1949 and 1923....Al Gore said it would never happen again...lying bastard

I have an answer for you, George. The extreme cold weather you are experiencing is due to global warming, aka climate change. I know this, because organisations such as the BBC, the Met Office and the Guardian have told me.

 

Luckily, their part in the greatest con since the start of the industrial revolution is now being exposed.

 

 

1. The BBC here in the Telegraph:
   

   How was it that, over the past six years, the BBC has been so ready to betray its statutory duty to impartiality by such relentlessly one-sided promotion of the scare over global warming and all it entails, such as the Government’s policy on wind farms? No organisation has done more to obscure the truth about an issue whose political and financial implications for us all are incalculable.

2. The Met Office here in the Times:
   

   The Met Office’s method of predicting the annual increase in global average temperature may have a “warm bias”, according to a BBC weather forecaster.Paul Hudson said that the yearly headline predictions made by the Met Office had been “too warm” for 13 of the 14 years so far this century.
   In December 2012, the Met Office gave a “best estimate” based on computer models that the global temperature would be 0.57C warmer than the 1961-1990 average of 14C.
   Last month, it said that a “central estimate” of real measurements up to the end of October showed an increase of 0.49C in 2013.
   While the difference is small, Mr Hudson, who spent 15 years working for the Met Office, noted in a blog that the incorrect predictions this century “have all been on the warm side and none has been too cold”.

3. The Guardian:
    
   
   

[Guided Missile]

The truth about the BBC regarding their "climate change" bo££ox is here...

 

What a disgraceful use of taxpayers money and led by that ageing eccentric "luvvie", Sir David Attenborough...(famous quotes: "..humans are a plague on Earth", "We say, get the United Nations to send them (Ethiopians) bags of flour. That’s barmy")

 

The BBC, home of peodophiles, nutters and sex pests, funded by you and me...

 

 

 

[Sergei Gotsmanov]

No.

 

Both the US and China are investing massively in solar technology, while India is leading the way with thorium-based nuclear reactors.

 

Yes that is borne out in the number of coal fuelled power stations China and India are building. Did I read that it was 4 a week?

[Saint George]

No.

 

Both the US and China are investing massively in solar technology, while India is leading the way with thorium-based nuclear reactors.

 

Well that turned out well......Yet another disgusting waste of tax payers money ****ed away on another hopeless liberal agenda.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/31/bankrupt-solar-panel-firm-took-stimulus-money-left-toxic-mess-says-report/

 

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/22/technology/solyndra/

 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/21/news/suntech-solar-bankruptcy/

 

 

BTW...its good to see the word "adapt" creeping into the vocabulary of a few of the alarmist's on here....That's a healthy change from the previous rhetoric of 'controlling nature' to suite our needs'.

 

I recon the penny's starting to drop with a few....According to the alarmist's the climate we've had over the last 15 - 19 years was never supposed to happen...peeps with any sense should at this point now be sitting up and asking a few more questions, which will take some doing for some. Discovering the 'inconvenient truth was in fact nothing more than a multi billion dollar scamming lie will be a bit like the day they found out Father Christmas didn't really exist.....But we all have to face reality one day.

 

Nature will still be here way after we're gone and until the sun farts or dies the best we can do is exactly that..."adapt"

[Sheaf Saint]

Well that turned out well......Yet another disgusting waste of tax payers money ****ed away on another hopeless liberal agenda.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/31/bankrupt-solar-panel-firm-took-stimulus-money-left-toxic-mess-says-report/

 

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/22/technology/solyndra/

 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/21/news/suntech-solar-bankruptcy/

 

I have just one word for you in response to this.....

 

Enron.

[Sheaf Saint]

Yes that is borne out in the number of coal fuelled power stations China and India are building. Did I read that it was 4 a week?

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/09/12/the-war-on-coal-goes-global-china-bans-new-plants-as-obama-epa-plans-killer-regs/

 

China’s State Council has announced that it is banning the construction of new coal-fired power plants near Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong. The goal is to cut air pollution in the country’s eastern megalopolises...

 

By shifting new power plant construction to natural gas, nuclear and solar, China hopes to bring its reliance on coal down below 65% of total power generation, from about 70% today (the U.S. gets about 35% of its electricity from coal). That shift is underway, with dozens of nuclear plants under construction. The expectation is that China’s nuclear capacity will grow from 12.5 gigawatts now to 50 GW by 2017.

[Sheaf Saint]

The truth about the BBC regarding their "climate change" bo££ox is here...

 

Truth? The author of that document is a total fraud whose arguments and opinions have no basis in fact...

 

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/04/christopher-booker-says-climate-change-has-reversed-itself/

 

http://www.campaigncc.org/climate_change/sceptics/hall_of_shame

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/may/13/christopher-booker-misleading

[Lord Duckhunter]

I reckon what ever the weather patterns over the next 10 years it'll be down to man. If the rain fall is higher than the previous 10 years it'll be down to man. If its lower, it'll be man again. If it stays the same it'll be a "pause". Same with temp, up man, down man, same pause. Everything is down to man, and the con is you can't take a contradictory position. When people like Jim Jones said the world was going to end on x date and it didn't, he loses credibility. When All Gore says by 2013 the north pole will be ice free and the sea levels would rise 20 feet, the establishment don't go to him and say "so Al, what a crock of sheite" they say " we need to redouble our efforts". Perhaps a tree hugger could post a climate change experts scientific evaluation of where we'll be in the next 10 years, we could then close this thread and comeback in a decade and see if he was right. If he was , I'll freely admit I was wrong, but to just bla,e whatever the weather is on man is just nonsense. There was climate change before man, I believe.

Edited 1 February, 2014 by Lord Duckhunter

[aintforever]

Prince Charles has got it spot on. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/10610108/Prince-Charles-climate-change-deniers-are-headless-chickens.html

 

""It is baffling, I must say, that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything – until, that is, it comes to climate science.

"All of a sudden, and with a barrage of sheer intimidation, we are told by powerful groups of deniers that the scientists are wrong and we must abandon all our faith in so much overwhelming scientific evidence."

 

I think football forums have more than their fair share of the "headless chicken brigade".

[Guided Missile]

Prince Charles....

 

In 1982, Prince Charles was elected as President of the British Medical Association (BMA) and promptly challenged the medical orthodoxy by advocating alternative medicine. In a speech at his inaugural dinner as President, the Prince lectured the medics: ‘Through the centuries healing has been practised by folk healers who are guided by traditional wisdom which sees illness as a disorder of the whole person, involving not only the patient’s body, but his mind, his self-image, his dependence on the physical and social environment, as well as his relation to the cosmos.’ The BMA-officials were impressed – so much so that they ordered a full report on alternative medicine which promptly condemned this area as utter nonsense.

 

In 2004, Charles publicly supported the Gerson diet as a treatment for cancer and Prof Baum, one of the UK’s most eminent oncologists, was invited to respond in an open letter to the British Medical Journal: …Over the past 20 years I have treated thousands of patients with cancer and lost some dear friends and relatives to this dreaded disease…The power of my authority comes with knowledge built on 40 years of study and 25 years of active involvement in cancer research. Your power and authority rest on an accident of birth. I don’t begrudge you that authority but I do beg you to exercise your power with extreme caution when advising patients with life-threatening diseases to embrace unproven therapies.

 

 

In a 2006 speech Prince Charles told the World Health Organisation in Geneva that alternative medicine should have a more prominent place in health care. The Prince urged every country to come up with a plan to integrate conventional and alternative medicine into the mainstream. But British science struck back. Anticipating Prince Charles’s sermon in Geneva, thirteen of Britain’s most eminent physicians and scientists issued a widely quoted “Open Letter: Use of ‘Alternative’ Medicine in the NHS”. The letter expressed concern over “ways in which unproven or disproved treatments are being encouraged for general use in Britain’s National Health Service.” The signatories, who included three Fellows of the Royal Society, one Nobel Laureate (Sir James Black, FRS) and the son of another (Professor Gustav Born, FRS), cited the overt promotion of homeopathy by the NHS, including its official website. The Open Letter warned that “it would be highly irresponsible to embrace any medicine as though it were a matter of principle.”

 

 

But I doubt that anyone can put it better that the late Christopher Hitchens who repeatedly wrote about Charles’ passion for anti-science:

 

 

“Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The “vacuum” will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labour of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it causally slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover.”

[aintforever]

Prince Charles has spouted some b*ll*x before but doesn't make his headless chickens comment any less true.

 

It's amazing how people refuse to believe the science just because of how it might effect their lifestyle. As long as they can drive their 4x4 w@nker-mobiles around guilt free, that's all that matters.

 

Prince Charles is also a shining example of why nothing will/can ever be done about climate change anyway, despite his beliefs he is happy to carry on with the lifestyle that must have the same carbon footprint of half of St Mary's.

[Saint Paul C]

Dr. Don Easterbrook – a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State who correctly predicted back in 2000 that the Earth was entering a cooling phase – says to expect colder temperatures for at least the next two decades.

 

Easterbrook’s predictions were “right on the money” seven years before Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for warning that the Earth was facing catastrophic warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide, which Gore called a “planetary emergency.” “When we check their projections against what actually happened in that time interval, they’re not even close. They’re off by a full degree in one decade, which is huge. That’s more than the entire amount of warming we’ve had in the past century. So their models have failed just miserably, nowhere near close. And maybe it’s luck, who knows, but mine have been right on the button,” Easterbrook told CNSNews.com. “For the next 20 years, I predict global cooling of about 3/10ths of a degree Fahrenheit, as opposed to the one-degree warming predicted by the IPCC,” said Easterbrook, professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University and author of 150 scientific journal articles and 10 books, including “Evidence Based Climate Science,” which was published in 2011. (See EasterbrookL coming-century-predictions.pdf)

 

In contrast, Gore and the IPCC’s computer models predicted “a big increase” in global warming by as much as one degree per decade. But the climate models used by the IPCC have proved to be wrong, with many places in Europe and North America now experiencing record-breaking cold. Easterbrook noted that his 20-year prediction was the “mildest” one of four possible scenarios, all of which involve lower temperatures, and added that only time will tell whether the Earth continues to cool slightly or plunges into another Little Ice Age as it did between 1650 and 1790.

 

…

 

On the PDO:

 

“What I did was I projected this same pattern forward to see what it would look like. And so in 1999, which was the year after the second warmest year on record, the PDO said we’re due for a climate change, and so I said okay. It looks as though we’re going to be entering a period of about three decades or so of global cooling.

 

“And so in 2000, I published a paper with the Geological Society of America in which I predicted that we were going to stop warming and begin cooling for about 25 or 30 years, on the basis of taking the temperature records that go back a century or more and simply repeating the pattern of warming and cooling, warming and cooling, and so on.

 

 

PDO fluctuations and projections to 2040 based on past PDO history.

 

- See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-who-got-it-right-predicts-20-more-years-global#sthash.jTgQD6lj.dpuf

[aintforever]

Dr. Don Easterbrook – a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State who correctly predicted back in 2000 that the Earth was entering a cooling phase – says to expect colder temperatures for at least the next two decades.

 

2001-2010 was the warmest decade on record.

[buctootim]

2001-2010 was the warmest decade on record.

 

Exactly

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/january/nasa-finds-2013-sustained-long-term-climate-warming-trend/

[Hokie]

Dr. Don Easterbrook – a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State who correctly predicted back in 2000 that the Earth was entering a cooling phase – says to expect colder temperatures for at least the next two decades.

 

Do you consider CNS an unbiased news source?

 

Prof. Easterbrook is at Western Washington University, not Washington State (University). A big difference.

 

The "right on the money" is a quote from whom? Prof. Easterbrook, the CNS reporter?

 

"author of 150 scientific journal articles". Scopus has him down for 35. Web of Science lists 37. His web site seems to consider having an abstract at a conference as a publication, but its incorrect for CNS to call it a "journal publication." It's not.

 

"And so in 2000, I published a paper with the Geological Society of America..." I can't find a 2000 paper that addresses this. Perhaps its this 2001 work? Easterbrook, D.J. and Kovanen, D.J., 2001. The next 25 years: global warming or global cooling? Geologic and oceanographic evidence for cyclical climatic oscillations: Abstracts with Program, Geological Society of America, vol. 33, 253. It's not really a paper, its an "abstracts with program."

 

I'm really not having a go at Prof. Easterbrook, but if the article relies on "appeal to authority", I think one can factually refute the specifics of said appeal. Further, in 5 minutes and google I found 3 factual errors in the story. (The "right on the money" and a reporter asking, "How does it feel to have been right?” without actually checking to see if he was right, are choices I'd criticise as well.)

 

The article's focus on Al Gore, I consider to be a warning that the story is politically biased. (The photo of Gore is special, too.) Al Gore is not a scientist, or researcher in climate science. To call the IPCC models "Gore and the IPCC’s computer models" is an wholly inaccurate label, meant to appeal to the fact that Al Gore is basically a plank. (Logically, just because a plank believes it, doesn't prove a claim is false. Right?)

 

Anyhow, saving up the big criticism, is the graph you've included. I notice its stripped off the confidence intervals. When judging the accuracy of the predictions of the IPCC models, that's huge. Its more inconsistent when the text accurately text claims IPCC models predict up to 1 degree C per decade. Up to is the largest estimate. Look at the graph, and IPCC predicts (the red line) a increase of 1 degree over 40-50 years. That's the median. What't the lowest value? Can we agree that this article is political spin?

 

Further, the graph dates to 2000 (2001?). We have a decade plus of data. Can we compare the Easterbrook prediction to the 2000 IPCC predictions? That would be a chance to make a case! I actually want to see it!

 

BTW, I fully acknowledge that we could be going into a cooling due to a number of periodic mechanisms. But that needs to be shown, not speculated.

[Whitey Grandad]

2001-2010 was the warmest decade on record.

 

But not the warmest ever.