Global Warming is happening

[UberKnee]

The temperature of the earth has always changed, hell there was once an ice age on this planet long before mankind's meddling. I'm not saying we're not causing it, but we're not 100% responsible. Through the course of history the earths temperature has heated up and cooled down numerous times, at most we're just marginally increasing the process. But "we're killing the planet" sells more newspapers and gives politicians something to fight against.

[2011G6E]

Originally Posted by Neale

Has anyone thought that it may be the sun warming up the earth it is a constant variable with its solar flares we are moving around it at varying distances that we have no control over.

For example, When I burn the toast I dont blame the bread.

A few years back they noticed warming trends on Mars and even as far out as Jupiter as well...they were put down to changing solar radiation patterns. Mainly because there's no one driving old cars or burning coal there to blame I suppose...the highest life form we can expect on Mars is maybe bacteria, and in Jupiters atmosphere maybe huge floating gas bags or something.

Our science is still in its infancy, and to presume we know it all now and know how to fix it is naive. No other branch of science requires us to "just believe" and trust future predictions with pin point accuracy. In every other branch you make predictions, then wait and see if they come to pass. If they do, you have a working theory, if it doesn't happen, then you change your hypothesis and wait for results again.
What you don't do is look at the current situation, make some assumptions based on possible past events, and say with absolute certainty what is going to happen in the future and make big decisions right now based on that.

[chamb0]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

A few years back they noticed warming trends on Mars and even as far out as Jupiter as well...they were put down to changing solar radiation patterns. Mainly because there's no one driving old cars or burning coal there to blame I suppose...the highest life form we can expect on Mars is maybe bacteria, and in Jupiters atmosphere maybe huge floating gas bags or something.

Our science is still in its infancy, and to presume we know it all now and know how to fix it is naive. No other branch of science requires us to "just believe" and trust future predictions with pin point accuracy. In every other branch you make predictions, then wait and see if they come to pass. If they do, you have a working theory, if it doesn't happen, then you change your hypothesis and wait for results again.
What you don't do is look at the current situation, make some assumptions based on possible past events, and say with absolute certainty what is going to happen in the future and make big decisions right now based on that.

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

As for climate, there is no "normal"...it's a dynamic, constantly changing system with a million variables, changing from year to year, affected by the sun and the Earths orbit and tilt and by volcanos and changes in solar radiation and other things in ways we do not understand and probably never will completely. It's foolish to look at it as it is today and draw conclusions from what has happened in the past. We can get a small idea of what might be going to happen, but when even the best supercomputers can't predict the weather more than maybe three days ahead with even passable accuracy, please don't tell us with pinpoint precision what the climate is going to be like in a century or twos time.

2011G6e, I’m sure you understand that weather and climate are two very different things. Climate is the relatively long term average of daily weather. People who have a lot more working knowledge than you or I about the variables you mentioned spend a lot of time and brainpower designing and refining very sophisticated models, the finer points of which we may just have to humbly admit surpass our lay understanding. If somebody possesses an equivalent or greater level of expertise than them, then they can legitimately criticise their methods. Can we agree on that?

What did you make of the NASA reference I posted? We’re talking about Earth.

As for ‘pinpoint precision,’ if you were up to speed with the research, you would know that the projections for future temperatures, the global water cycle, carbon budgets etc are usually expressed in confidence intervals. You would also know that the effects of a changing climate are measurable and observable today and are consistent with, and in many cases greatly exceeding, past predictions, and are not limited to some far-off point in time.

ltd, In regards to the 2007 IPCC report: rather than being slapped together by a handful of undergraduates on centrelink between Xbox sessions, it had around 450 lead authors, 800 contributing authors, and 2500 experts reviewing draft documents over six years. There is a list of these authors on the IPCC website. These contributors were widely recognised experts in their fields, came from 130 countries, covered many relevant disciplines and came from all across the political spectrum. This was the very best collection of knowledge on the issue getting around and while still not 100% flawless you would be very hard pressed to find any scientific research summary anywhere which has been put through so much rigorous checking and balancing to ensure very high standards and fair coverage. The type of peer review process for this report was far more exhaustive than scientific journals normally use. We live out our daily lives happily accepting many other scientific premises and findings which have undergone far less scrutiny, but in attacking climate science we can’t see our inconsistency on that.

As for being ‘alarmist,’ the latest data shows that many of the predictions summarised in that report were overly cautious and conservative and underestimated how quickly the planet would respond to warming, and the effects of that (such as the rate of melting of the Greenland icesheet, and the self-perpetuating cycle of carbon feedback from permafrost melt). The IPCC Fifth Assessment is due in 2013/2014.

We now have a reasonably clear picture of what the future looks like. As just one example among many, here’s an EEA report outlining how climate has already changed across the European continent and what we can expect next:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/publication...rability-2012/
Link to the 2007 IPCC Report: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...eports.shtml#1

It’s ironic that somebody mentioned all this fuss is due to political correctness – climate science has often had to struggle to get the message across intact to apathetic governments unwilling to listen or act, media who very often misunderstand, omit details or deliberately twist the science, and defend itself from other powerful vested industry interests which actively work on covertly undermining it.

It’s not through a lack of credible scientific knowledge on the issue that there is all this confusion among the public. There are issues with how complicated science is communicated clearly over the divide between scientists and the general public without losing important information (what level of scientific literacy to do you express it in, how do you convey the meaning of jargon to those not familiar with it, who is responsible for communicating it?). Human nature being what it is, we then see it through the lens of confirmation bias, fallacies, emotion, the influence of politics/religion/media/ideology, people with vested interests pushing an agenda, people challenged by a complex world so they feel the need to simplify it, and a big one: profound misunderstanding of the scientific process. It’s a jungle of opinion out there. All of which makes for some, er, interesting personal views.

It’s strange that in this day and age that although we are lucky enough to have greater access to vast reams of high quality, transparent research than at any other time in human history (it’s only a few mouse clicks away), many us still find it too hard and continue to insist on reciting pseudo-science and hearsay like a broken record.

When you want legal advice you talk to a solicitor not a parking inspector, when you need a doctor you (should) seek the advice of a qualified medical professional not the local septic tank cleaner. It logically follows that if you really want reliable information on the climate sciences, you look to what the professionals in those fields have written in peer-reviewed papers in recognised academic journals, not the opinion of the Murdoch press, chain emails, questionable thinktanks and 'institutions', A Current Affair, Exxon Mobil or the dribbling nutcase in the youtube comments section. Personal opinions on scientific matters without credible references are fine as long as you realise they are unsupported views and don’t trump robust scientific investigation no matter how much someone may want them to.

In my experience, some people just don’t have an open mind on the matter, and regardless of the amount of evidence at their disposal, they will never, ever change their mind. You can lay all the information out for inspection but unfortunately they have selective blindness and have already cemented in their beliefs, and interpret incoming information to confirm them rather than the other way around. To give an AFF relevant analogy, these people are the Harold Scruby’s of the science world.

Madaya, may I suggest that if you are looking for clear rationale on the matter in a forum setting you are probably better off visiting somewhere like scienceforums.net rather than AFF. Even better, look up the research papers and hard data yourself and cross check all the references. Google Scholar is a good place to start looking and will direct you to the academic journals.

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Our science is still in its infancy

We’ve come a long way since the Flat Earth Society… Or have we?

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

the actual facts about the planet are far more amazing

I’m glad we agree.

[2011G6E]

That's the favourite response when you question the accepted religion of climate change..."we're talking about climate, not weather".

The problem is that climate change believers cannot use this as a come-back...news items concentrate on weather events-weather events-weather events, and if someone points out something about weather that doesn't agree with the climate change predictions, they turn around and say 'It's climate, not weather". Well it's their fault for constantly pointing out weather events as evidence for climate change.

Here's a couple of interesting news items...
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...204-2ascn.html

Eighteen weather stations in south-eastern Australia recorded their hottest November days on record last week as the country sweltered through one of its most significant spring heatwaves.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) people better get used to it - they'll become more common as a result of climate change.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/we...206-2awjz.html

The mercury in Canberra plummeted to 0.3 of a degree overnight - the coldest December minimum on record.
The unseasonably chilly temperature was recorded at 5.44am, and by 6.45am the mercury was still only sitting at four degrees.
A duty forecaster from the Canberra office of the Bureau of Meteorology said the minimum this morning was the coldest Canberra has experienced in 75 years of records.
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"A frontal system has moved up from the south bringing cold air with it," she said.
"It's what we call an air-mass change."

...so...one is automatically blamed on climate change, the other is nothing to be worried about, it's just an "air-mass change".

Remember a few years ago when there were terrible cold periods in the northern hemisphere, the worst on record? The "CC" words didn't get uttered once during that time either.

Why is it only climate change when it's hot...?

[chamb0]

Localised weather events form patterns which are up for analysis. When looking at individual weather events it's difficult but not impossible to say how they are influenced by climate change. So the patterns and overall numbers are analysed over timespans of years and decades.

When the 2007 IPCC report was released the trends for extreme weather, heat, drought, intense rainfall etc were all trending upwards, and research in the meantime shows that trend is not just continuing, but for a lot of parameters, accelerating much faster than expected.

I won't pretend to know the intricacies of weather extremes and why those record temperature lows occurred, although a quick search (which I'm sure you could have managed, you seem very motivated) suggests a change in the way heat is distributed in the northern hemisphere. The regional and localised effects of a changing climate are incredibly varied and complex, wind and current patterns change, some places get cooler, some hotter, some more rain, some less, but on balance there are clear overall global trends.

There's some papers referenced by New Scientist on that very topic that you can get stuck into for your bedtime reading:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/200...GL035607.shtml
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailin...rature2009.pdf
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...d-weather.html

Originally Posted by New Scientist

why, if the world is warming, have so many places in the northern hemisphere been experiencing record lows? The answer is that for the past few decades cold Arctic air has mostly stayed in the Arctic over winter, trapped by strong winds spinning around the pole. This winter the vortex has weakened and in many places cold air is spilling further south than usual.


The result has been freezing weather for places as far afield as Florida, China and the UK. However, the Arctic, Greenland, much of the Mediterranean and southern Asia have been warmer than usual. So overall the northern hemisphere winter may be no colder than in previous years, it's just that the heat is distributed differently. Indeed, the average surface temperature of the entire planet during January may yet turn out to be one of the warmest on record.


Most atmospheric scientists regard the recent weather as nothing more than the kind of extreme event that happens from time to time. Others are not so sure. Xiangdong Zhang of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, Alaska, has found that atmospheric circulation patterns in the Arctic are changing drastically as it warms. He says these changes might have contributed to the recent unusual weather.


Either way, some areas could have more cold weather in the future. That will not change the big picture: the world warmed over the 20th century and it is going to get warmer still. Anyone who tells you a cold spell proves otherwise is either intellectually challenged or plain dishonest.


Update 10 February: Accuweather reports that according to satellite measurements, this January was the warmest since records began in 1979.

Anyway, don't take my word for it, I know you probably won't - read from reputable scientific sources instead to get a better picture, and I suggest reading the newspaper in one hand with some cold, impassive scientific literature metaphorically in the other to give you a few more tools for critical thinking.

[GasoLane]

Of course Humans are responsible for 'climate change'.
Didn't the Mammoth become extinct around the time fire was invented?

Oh, and here's a gem I saw in the paper from Tim Flannelhead......

"Feral cats eat 70 million native animals a day"
The newspaper figures that to be about 25 billion cat attacks every year!

[irish2]

Originally Posted by karj

The "ozone layer" which is desirable, is found in the stratosphere and you will not find anyone saying we want more low level ozone. That is also a pollutant.

Edit: Actually, now that I think of it... how does carbon dioxide react to produce ozone?

Sorry I was wrong, it is CO that reacts to produce ozone.

[Maka]

Another google search- http://www.skepticalscience.com/argu...=2&t=63&&a=227

I had quick look not too bad, others may find interesting too! The myth section is pretty good.

cheers,Maka

[ltd]

I just love the references to various scientific bodies which have struggled for funding for years and are now welded on to climate change theorem on the basis of a continuing source of government grants.
The UN IPCC has been thoroughly debunked and if you actually take the blinkers off, you'll see that the alleged consensus was actually only between a handful of students studying science - not even one of them had a degree. Then you have perennial academics like David Karoly and Tim Flannery manufacture hysteria which has no scientific basis such as:
"In 50 years the sea level will rise by 100 meters" - Tim Flannery 2007
"If we halved the worlds emissions of C02 it would take around 10,000 years for a 0.05 degree change in temperature" - Tim Flannery in 2011.
"Feral cats eat 70 million native animals a day" - Tim Flannery this week. Thank god for cats Tim, that way they're saving us from 25 billion animals attacking us every year.

Facts are, the momentum behind the climate change nonsense has run out of steam, and frankly the hypocrisy and stupidity accepted as peer reviewed propaganda has failed to convince governments to follow the agenda 21 nonsense; save for the stupid governments such as the renegade red-headed retard in the lodge who sold her fat behind to the greens (reds) just to stay in power.
Follow the money people, it's very simple to realise once you know where the dollars are that this is nothing but an exercise of collective rod-walloping.

[Spinner77]

chamb0,

Thank you for raising two points often championed. Yours is a line Malcolm Turnbull used to use (maybe he still does) to justify why he is out of step with most of his colleagues on climate change. I'll put my thoughts in two posts

1. Trust the experts, not internet nut-jobs

With man-made things, often we can say we know most things, even everything, about them. The internal combustion engine is a thing that can be fully understood, at least in a practical way. With the universe, ah, well, no: we don't understand everything. Maybe we have a lot wrong. We do not even know everything about the human body and diseases.

The weather is not a human invention. You get the point.

Experts are often wrong, sometimes because they don't know things they should (like the misdiagnosing GP), but sometimes because of Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

Experts often disagree. This is point the warmists are astoundingly reluctant to acknowledge.

Here's a practical example of expert disagreement, from my own experience. A friend of mine is radiologist. A decade ago he told me he was not allowing his teenage daughter to have a mamogram, in the absence of other evidence. This was the time of the mamogram craze, driven, you might recall, by a certain movement that is not a parsec away from the greenies and warmies.

His reasoning was as follows. The numbers showed that despite mass screening, the incidence of breast cancer had not diminished. Partly that may have because more cases were being discovered. But partly, he felt in his guts, it must be because of the x-rays themselves initiating some cancers.

He was not going to say that publicly of course. He would have been vilified if he had. Today, the expert advice is to careful having too many mamograms, especially if there are no suggestive features (like in the family history).

Another example. A decade ago, the expert advice for men was to have a prostate test. If the result was positive, you could have a small operation to remove it. Problem solved.

The only downside, in the fine print, was that you had a 30 per cent chance of becoming impotent, incontinent or both. Better than dead, eh? Well, today you will not get that advice. Older men especially are at least as likely to die of other things first.

Lastly, look at how highly knowledgeable people, of considerable talent and exceptional intelligence, deal with expert advice. The best example is that of Andy Grove, founder of Intel.

With a Ph.D. from Berkeley, he knew a thing or two about science and scientists. This came in handy when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer:
http://www.phoenix5.org/articles/Fortune96Grove.html

[Spinner77]

Here's the second point.

2. Unless something is peer-reviewed it is worthless

The truth is that there are more Ph.D.s around today than there are IQ points to satisfy them. In other words, most scientists, like those in other professions are hacks, with jobs they need to keep. Most earn less than a decent tradie. So they can't allow dissenters to be heard who might threaten their livelihood - by saying that established opinion in the relevant field is hogwash, a lot of old cobblers, and a fraud upon the public and the tax-payer providing the (modest) salaries.

The peer system means that the inside club can ensure that no troubling thoughts ever see the light of day in a respectable journal.

Just my opinion? Well try this:

...the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being "filtered out" or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process

What crank publication is this in?

They are writing for Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, published by Elsevier. From the publisher's website, 'Elsevier serves more than 30 million scientists, students and health and information professionals worldwide. [They] partner with a global community of 7,000 journal editors, 70,000 editorial board members, 300,000 reviewers and 600,000 authors to help customers advance science and health...'

And the nut-jobs who wrote it?

The paper's lead nut-job is Dr Georg Steinhauser. He is currently at the Vienna University of Technology as the Reactor Operation Deputy Commander of the Atominstitut's 250 kW TRIGA Mark II research reactor.

You can see a list of all the nut-jobs who have signed up to Steinhauser's paper, as well as the full abstract here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23054375

[wookie836]

heres a tid bit on misguided attempts at saving the planet... for earth hour, the night where people are asked to turn off their lights for a hour in a bid to reduce the use of power, only 1/3 of the world participates [id assume this is the western world].
If those paticipants lit 2 candles instead of using power, it would create more greenhouse gases burning them than would have been made by using the lights in the first place.

[Dash_XR]

And if global warming doesn't get us..

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

[2011G6E]

The biggest thing that warmists rely on is what I call the phenomenon of "If it isn't on the internet, it didn't happen".

You and I know that twenty years ago we were promised dire consequences and disasters including flooding of coastal estates here in Australia and other massive upheavals in weather and climate, all to happen "at the beginning of the 21st century".
The problem is that, amazing as it may seem to younger people, not everything is available at the click of a button...not every news item from every paper and not every TV story and interview is archived somewhere...a lot is gone forever or maybe exists only as news clippings or, if you're lucky, microfische in a warehouse or back office or obscure country library.

This means that (and you must have seen this), when you bring up some prediction or other from a long time back, the other guy in an online argument or discussion can quite successfully shut you down by smugly asking "Source?", and if you can't supply one, whatever you have said is immediately disregarded as "heresay" and "anecdotal", to be safely ignored.

It is immensely frustrating when you and other people in the discussion know that something was said, but you cannot find a link to it online.

Take Flannerys stupid prediction of "In 50 years the sea level will rise by 100 meters" is absolutely accurate...most of us beyond a certain age would have seen it on TV and read it in the papers, but he made it a long time ago now. I want you to go and try and find a news source with that story archived online. Cut and paste that sentence and see what you turn up...I'll wait.

What did you find? Bugger all, right?
Well, the links you would have found would be from websites that are skeptical to global warming...meaning they can be ignored as "being in the pocket of big oil" or some similar comment meaning anything the report is not to be listened to.

Andrew Bolt is another hated person by the warmists...even if he is simply reporting something that has been reported elsewhere, it means that if "Andrew Bolt" is the guy who wrote the article, they will also ignore anything he has said. Amazing.


Science doesn't work by making predictions and then shutting off all debate...real scientists are happy to be proved wrong...they enjoy someone finding that long-held theories and laws that were once thought set in stone are wrong, and new ones will have to be thought up.

Climate science is the opposite...they have their mind made up, and any new evidence or new ideas are to be squashed...this isn't how science is supposed to work...

[chamb0]

Originally Posted by ltd

I just love the references to various scientific bodies which have struggled for funding for years and are now welded on to climate change theorem on the basis of a continuing source of government grants.
The UN IPCC has been thoroughly debunked and if you actually take the blinkers off, you'll see that the alleged consensus was actually only between a handful of students studying science - not even one of them had a degree. Then you have perennial academics like David Karoly and Tim Flannery manufacture hysteria which has no scientific basis such as:
"In 50 years the sea level will rise by 100 meters" - Tim Flannery 2007
"If we halved the worlds emissions of C02 it would take around 10,000 years for a 0.05 degree change in temperature" - Tim Flannery in 2011.
"Feral cats eat 70 million native animals a day" - Tim Flannery this week. Thank god for cats Tim, that way they're saving us from 25 billion animals attacking us every year.

Facts are, the momentum behind the climate change nonsense has run out of steam, and frankly the hypocrisy and stupidity accepted as peer reviewed propaganda has failed to convince governments to follow the agenda 21 nonsense; save for the stupid governments such as the renegade red-headed retard in the lodge who sold her fat behind to the greens (reds) just to stay in power.

Follow the money people, it's very simple to realise once you know where the dollars are that this is nothing but an exercise of collective rod-walloping.

A few points about the IPCC.



The scientists who contribute to the IPCC report do so on a voluntary basis, and are none of them are paid by the IPCC for their work. The IPCC does not do its own original research, it only coordinates the process of compiling the literature and integrating it into a readable summary, in a way that you and me and governments can understand. So even if they did not do this, the literature they summarise would still be there anyway with the same message.


The IPCC itself have hardly any staff (10 full-time plus a few technical support), but with thousands of contributing scientists they represent a fair chunk of the scientific community. The review decisions are made by the lead authors – who as I said, are widely recognised experts in their fields.


The IPCC is guided by a set of transparent principles and procedures:
http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/orga...l#.UMFtb2cY2So


and are transparent in listing contributors and their affiliations:
‘List of Reviewers and Review Editors’ by country, along with their affiliations:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...ssannex-v.html


‘List of Contributors: Authors, Review Editors and Reviewers’ by country, along with their affiliations:
http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/pub...ontributor.pdf


A write-up outlining some of the myths, spin and facts getting around about the IPCC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...acts-and-spin/


The IPCC have a good track record in following up and correcting any errors and loose practices in the process and reports.


When the IPCC predictions are compared with observed data gathered over the last few years, rather than being over-exaggerated, they were too conservative in several areas. The original IPCC statement was too conservative in its estimations of attribution of GW to humans, sea level rise, and Arctic sea ice melt, as compared with data gathered in the meantime. The EEA report I linked to earlier is just one of numerous papers that support this:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/publication...rability-2012/


Another major, recent piece of research on the underestimations for key points in the 2007 report is here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10....382-012-1585-8


The Skeptical Science blog also recently discussed this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc...-consensus.htm



It seems to me that far from having scientists paid off to do their bidding, for years governments all over the world have done their best to ignore the Assessment Reports in practice, not to mention the science in general.

Originally Posted by Spinner77

1. Trust the experts, not internet nut-jobs

With man-made things, often we can say we know most things, even everything, about them. The internal combustion engine is a thing that can be fully understood, at least in a practical way. With the universe, ah, well, no: we don't understand everything. Maybe we have a lot wrong. We do not even know everything about the human body and diseases.

The weather is not a human invention. You get the point.

Experts are often wrong, sometimes because they don't know things they should (like the misdiagnosing GP), but sometimes because of Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

Experts often disagree. This is point the warmists are astoundingly reluctant to acknowledge.

Thanks for your thoughts. I absolutely agree that there is a lot about the universe we don’t know. However climate science is relatively mature and many of the fundamental principles have been well understood for many decades now. The greenhouse effect was first described in the early 1800’s, the basic physics was understood by the 1950’s. Anthropogenic global warming was first proposed in the late 1800’s, was becoming a concern to the scientific community by the 1970’s, and in the decades since, a consensus has emerged.


Some parts of the science are known with close to 100% certainty, others less. However the world we live in is not a world of certainty. Science is not about 100% certainties (with the exception of mathematics), instead, conclusions are made on the balance and weight of evidence. As more independent evidence supports a theory, the more likely it is closer to the truth.



With the climate sciences, the sheer weight of evidence means there is strong consensus on the core issues, beyond the level of reasonable doubt. However there are fuzzy edges around that, which you will find scientists debating the finer points of. That the scientific community is deeply divided over the fundamentals is a fallacy.


Science is not a flawless method, there are shortcomings as your link pointed out. However it is by far the best method we have.



True scepticism is a healthy, crucial component of critical thinking, and drives scientific progress and curiosity by providing a platform by which scientific questions and hypotheses can be proposed. Outright denialism however is just a stubborn refusal to reasonably consider the facts before you. It is the latter that I find so frustrating.

Originally Posted by Spinner77

2. Unless something is peer-reviewed it is worthless

The truth is that there are more Ph.D.s around today than there are IQ points to satisfy them. In other words, most scientists, like those in other professions are hacks, with jobs they need to keep. Most earn less than a decent tradie. So they can't allow dissenters to be heard who might threaten their livelihood - by saying that established opinion in the relevant field is hogwash, a lot of old cobblers, and a fraud upon the public and the tax-payer providing the (modest) salaries.

The peer system means that the inside club can ensure that no troubling thoughts ever see the light of day in a respectable journal.

I’m not an academic myself but I do know that those scientists who get closer to the truth and establish new lines of enquiry are the ones who gain recognition and status. For this reason there is no interest in maintaining the status quo.



Further to my previous comments on the way science is communicated to the public – in my opinion there can sometimes be a problem with the traditional model media uses to report on scientific issues, where both sides of a story are given equal coverage in the interest of balance and fairness. While this is good for investigating many things, when it comes to portray the level of scientific consensus on a particular matter, it may not give a true picture of the situation. For example, scientist A is interviewed, giving support for whatever finding, Scientist B is then tracked down and gives a contrary statement. To Joe Bloggs, it would appear on the face of it that the scientific community is divided 50/50 on the issue – when in fact a strong consensus may exist, and the number of scientists agreeing with B is negligibly small.

Originally Posted by [[COLOR=windowtext

wookie836[/COLOR]] heres a tid bit on misguided attempts at saving the planet... for earth hour, the night where people are asked to turn off their lights for a hour in a bid to reduce the use of power, only 1/3 of the world participates [id assume this is the western world].
If those paticipants lit 2 candles instead of using power, it would create more greenhouse gases burning them than would have been made by using the lights in the first place.

Interesting point, at a guess I would say – it probably depends on a few things. How many candles vs. how many lights would have normally been on, was the electricity supply was supplied by renewable sources, what type of candles (petroleum vs. beeswax etc)? Really I think your question is: are people doing Earth Hour undermining themselves, or hypocrites? Rather than being an exercise in trying to curb carbon emissions for one hour of the year, Earth Hour aims to raise a general awareness on wider issues and show support for action on climate change that extends beyond that one symbolic hour.

Originally Posted by [[COLOR=windowtext

superyob[/COLOR]] I don't think it's called global warming anymore, climate change seems to be the fashionable term now.

Sometimes reality is a bit more mundane than the imagination. The two terms have different definitions. Global warming refers specifically to an increase in surface temperatures over the globe, while climate change refers to all climate effects that occur when greenhouse gas levels increase, including global warming.


I’m tired now :(

[wookie836]

great reply chamb0... the WWF should say that if youre going to go without power on earth day, dont use paraffin candles, choose the non petrochemical based ones. awareness only goes so far, lately with the rise of social media, 'awarness' just seems to promote slacktivism.

we cant make the world a better place unless we make ourselves better people. trying to change our environment isnt going to do much when we dont change our attitudes first.

at the end of the day we arent the cause of climate change, based on carbon emissions 'trends', weve just sped it up. so does that mean that eventually it was going to happen anyway? that is a question that we cannot answer. we have no scientific data to form a basis on what the world was like, only the recent past and the present, we cant predict the future but we like to think that we can. **** millennia ago the world was covered in volcanos, ash and radioactive material, its still there as most radioactive elements are naturally occuring, just buried below lots of rock.

sometimes the media likes to move the goal posts half way through the game, we were told that our emissions per capita put us as one of the most polluting countries in the planet. unlike other countries, the majority of our emissions are made by industry not the people at home after work. but yet the people are expected to pay for this. back when the govt and greens were saying how high we are on the list we were a few years ago, Australia was #17 on the worlds emissions lists, between mexico and singapore. that put things in a different perspective for me, of course with such a large country with a small population, when you quote values in per capita, were going to look like scum.

[Maka]

This webpage is a bit clunky but well worth checking out also-

http://theconversation.edu.au/climat...community-1808

cheers, Maka

[chamb0]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

The biggest thing that warmists rely on is what I call the phenomenon of "If it isn't on the internet, it didn't happen".

You and I know that twenty years ago we were promised dire consequences and disasters including flooding of coastal estates here in Australia and other massive upheavals in weather and climate, all to happen "at the beginning of the 21st century".
The problem is that, amazing as it may seem to younger people, not everything is available at the click of a button...not every news item from every paper and not every TV story and interview is archived somewhere...a lot is gone forever or maybe exists only as news clippings or, if you're lucky, microfische in a warehouse or back office or obscure country library.

This means that (and you must have seen this), when you bring up some prediction or other from a long time back, the other guy in an online argument or discussion can quite successfully shut you down by smugly asking "Source?", and if you can't supply one, whatever you have said is immediately disregarded as "heresay" and "anecdotal", to be safely ignored.

It is immensely frustrating when you and other people in the discussion know that something was said, but you cannot find a link to it online.

Take Flannerys stupid prediction of "In 50 years the sea level will rise by 100 meters" is absolutely accurate...most of us beyond a certain age would have seen it on TV and read it in the papers, but he made it a long time ago now. I want you to go and try and find a news source with that story archived online. Cut and paste that sentence and see what you turn up...I'll wait.

What did you find? Bugger all, right?
Well, the links you would have found would be from websites that are skeptical to global warming...meaning they can be ignored as "being in the pocket of big oil" or some similar comment meaning anything the report is not to be listened to.

Andrew Bolt is another hated person by the warmists...even if he is simply reporting something that has been reported elsewhere, it means that if "Andrew Bolt" is the guy who wrote the article, they will also ignore anything he has said. Amazing.


Science doesn't work by making predictions and then shutting off all debate...real scientists are happy to be proved wrong...they enjoy someone finding that long-held theories and laws that were once thought set in stone are wrong, and new ones will have to be thought up.

Climate science is the opposite...they have their mind made up, and any new evidence or new ideas are to be squashed...this isn't how science is supposed to work...

I realise I typed too harshly to you yesterday, I apologise to you for that. Sorry. I was trying to distinguish between the weight you should give to peer-reviewed literature and the weight that personal comments have in the context of a formal discussion on science.

Earlier today I also tried to search for those comments by Tim Flannery and like you I had no luck. However I'm not going to do your work for you! If he said it, it'll be tucked away somewhere.

I dislike Andrew Bolt because in my view he attacks science (and a lot of other important things) from an ideological position and a master at manipulating the truth. In the process does a lot of damage, and a lot of people hang on his every word. I would rather that science was more free of the influence of ego and politics etc, sadly good work is often stifled.

[2011G6E]

Originally Posted by chamb0

I dislike Andrew Bolt because in my view he attacks science (and a lot of other important things) from an ideological position and in the process does a lot of damage - a lot of people hang on his every word. I would rather that science was more free of the influence of politics etc, sadly good work is often stifled.

That's the problem...unfortunately people like Bolt and people like him are the only ones who dare report anything anti-global warming. I don't have a lot of time for him either, but if you want to see links to reports that go against global warming, then you have to go to people like him and Alan Jones and the like. "Reputable journalists" don't dare touch anything "anti", even if they come from well respected sources overseas. It can be a real career-killer to publish and report on anything like that, as you will automatically be lumped in with those "nut jobs" like Bolt and Jones.

If you see anything with evidence against global warming in the "normal" media, it will be short, light on links, and printed with a lot of qualifiers that just wouldn't be there if it was "pro" global warming.


Back to the science and history.

In recorded history there have been instances of hot and cold periods far beyond what we are experiencing now...the medieval warm period and the little ice age are just two of the best known ones. They show that before the industrialised period of our history, the climate changed dramatically all on it's own...usually helped along by volcanic eruptions and changes in the suns output.
To digress, the sun isn't the nice, pleasant, stable star we think it is. It's actually a slight variable star. Most variables are ones that brighten and dim in hugely noticeable amounts, but our sun is only a slight variable, but variable nonetheless.
Here's a good NASA website with a lot of info on that big bright thing in the sky:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...010/05feb_sdo/

Earth is a planet...a minor rocky inner one, and will be affected dramatically by changes in the suns output and sunspot activity. There's a reason we have a system of solar observatory sattelites and especially one further in towards the sun keeping an eye on what the sun is doing to try and give us a bit of warning if a big flare comes our way.

Right now we are just coming out of a long solar minimum period...the sun was very very quiet for a long time. We will then be heading into a solar maximum period. That has unknown effects on our weather and climate at the moment, but we will just have to wait and see.

[GREGL]

If they really want to get seriuos about climate change why don't they look at our diet. If they moderated our intake of say bake beans that would surely reduce our emissions. Hang on, has any one done a study on the morning after for patrons of mexican eateries, or kebeb cuisine. Off to apply for a study grant now.

[fanboi]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

The biggest thing that warmists rely on is what I call the phenomenon of "If it isn't on the internet, it didn't happen".
.

Wow because my best mate a professer of Geology and Physics spends lots of time studying things that happened a few hundred thousand years ago.

[karj]

Originally Posted by GREGL

If they really want to get seriuos about climate change why don't they look at our diet. If they moderated our intake of say bake beans that would surely reduce our emissions. Hang on, has any one done a study on the morning after for patrons of mexican eateries, or kebeb cuisine. Off to apply for a study grant now.

I realise that you're being facetious, but it's not actually as silly as you make it sound. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN had this to say about farming and livestock and its effect on climate change.

Originally Posted by FAO

The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.

ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e00.pdf

This is one of the reasons why I agreed with irish2 when he mentioned the issue of expanding population.

[Madaya]

chamb0, thankyou for your insight and well researched input. I agree, that there are other web forums that are better focussed on the issue that I presented to FF. At the time, it was done (like many internet posts), perhaps a little flippantly, and (like many internet posts) was self-centred.

I've lived in the South West of WA for just over 40 years, and from my own perspective, I cannot but notice a huge decline in winter rainfall. Areas of land that where submerged during wet winter spells, have been for the last 20 years, relatively water free. As a lad, playing winter weekend sport (soccer), every 3rd weekend, you were going to get wet. I recall playing on virtual lakes, the ball almost floating. The same ground as a senior player, rain was never a problem. As a coach of junior players, around 2005, I don't think I needed an umbrella all season and that included training.

I have many mates, older and more attached to the land than I, who don't need the BOM site, or even their rain gauge, to tell them that we are not looking at short term droughts, or a longer term dry spell, but a 'change'. The evidence is in the ancient tree's, caves, lakes and coastal areas of the South West.

From reading the posts, in response to my initial enquiry, we can break down the replies thus (You can replace Global Warming with Climate Change, I think we can agree that the sigma is the same)...

Those who believe it is happening and can be wholly attributed to human activity.
Those who believe it is happening and can be partially attributed to human activity.
Those who believe it is happening as natural event (Solar activity, 'sea' weather).
Those who believe it is not happening.
Those who believe we are observing a short term event (i.e. a weather anomaly).

These catergories can be divided into several sub catergories, for example, climate change is happening as a natural event and we should or should not try to alter its outcomes.

or

Governments are using the spectre of climate change as a means to tax us more (control us through fear).

One thing I know, and I have not seen this reported in the press, is that many of the major players in the world's industrial complex, believe that Climate Change is real. I work for a major player in mining and resources and CC is part of their charter. As a Lab Analyst, in the industry I am involved in, we are collecting samples that contribute to an overall picture of our overall CO2 emmisions of the company.

It's not governments, but the big players that are concerned by CC, and they are the ones that are investing a lot of money into research, to establish how CC will affect their bottom line.

[Spinner77]

In today's papers:

MEASURED
Measured warming rate, 1997-2012 0.0 Cº/century
Measured warming rate, 1952-2012 1.2 Cº/century
Measured warming rate, 1990-2012 1.4 Cº/century
Measured warming rate, 1860-1880 1.7 Cº/century
Measured warming rate, 1910-1940 1.7 Cº/century
Measured warming rate, 1976-2001 1.7 Cº/century

PREDICTED - IPCC
Predicted warming rate in IPCC (1990), 1990-2025 3.0 Cº/century
Predicted warming rate in IPCC (2007), 2000-2100 3.0 Cº/century

PREDICTED - UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA (UEA)
Predicted warming rate by UEA (2012), 2000-2100 4.0-6.0 Cº/century

________

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by Madaya

Look, I aint a greeny or similar, just a plain old bloke like yourself. I've spent the last several years trying, and sometimes finding, holes in the Global Warming argument.
The last several months have swayed my opinion. It is real, it is happening. End of the World = No. But big changes will have to happen, driven by climate and rising sea levels.
Okay, so the data is in (doesn't matter whether you are Labor or Liberal at question time).
From what I have researched = the following...
CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) as well as CH4 (Methane) absorb Infra Red light. This is predominently supplied by the Sun, but a small fraction is supplied by us. When I say absorbed, this basically means, they retain the heat (energy) imparted to them, hence warming the particular enviroment they are contained in, i.e. the Earths Atmosphere.
How to fix...
A friend once showed me a series of graphs, concerning absorbed and reflected light (heat).
Bottom line was that if everyone built or painted ther house roofs with 'white' paint (I guess off white is okay), and world wide, it is a lot of houses, we may well be faced with Global Cooling. The reflected light would bounce back into outer space and not interact with our atmosphere.
A black, or dark roof, absorbs light, and emmits Infra Red (heat), ready to be gobbled up by CO2 and etc.
What astounds me, is the number of newly built houses that have black or dark roofs. Mate, this is Australia, you want to reflect the heat, not draw it in. This works in reverse in what we used to call winter. The light coloured roof, reflects heat back into the house, keeping you warmer. The black roof is an open radiator to the atmosphere.

. nice try mate . if it happens humans cannot change it .
your fix theory blames humans again . there are 7 billion people on our planet . i dont know how much area that would take up if we all held hands and formaed a square . however if we all did this and waved into the sky , would people in the spacestation see us .
now lets assume , that there are 3.5 billion roof tops . which i doubt . and they were all made of black and joined together , now flying over in the space station you might see a black area say the size of tasmania , would this be heating up the atmosphere ???????

[chamb0]

Originally Posted by Maka

This webpage is a bit clunky but well worth checking out also-

http://theconversation.edu.au/climat...community-1808

cheers, Maka

Great link Maka,
Interesting to note that some of the ‘free thinking’ central figures in the climate change denial camp are the very same ones who manufactured doubt in the past about the links between smoking and cancer (which delayed regulation), and HIV and AIDS (where their AIDS denial directly influenced the South African government away from HIV retrovirals, with terrible consequences) among other things. The sheer bloody-mindedness of these people might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that there’s so much at stake.

Note this is talking about a handful of the hardcore influential group of ‘deniers’ fabricating false science, hanging around the fringes of academia, not your average person off the street.



http://theconversation.edu.au/climat...community-1808

‘An open letter from the scientific community’ – I’ve pulled a few comments out of the various sections.


Professors Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Ashley
"Normally the underbelly of obsessed contrarians that strangely afflicts many areas of science would go unnoticed.

With climate change, however, we are in the extraordinary situation where the deniers have had almost free reign in media outlets such as The Australian, while scientists are given short shrift.

The editors there claim to be providing balanced commentary for their readers to make informed decisions. In reality they are doing a great disservice to the community by publishing junk science.
Providing a platform for deniers, thereby enabling political leaders to mistake contrarian cranks for real science, can have horrendous consequences, as we have seen in the case of HIV, where perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have needlessly died.

There is an ethical imperative to hold deniers accountable for their actions.

[…]

There is an important lesson here: an overwhelming scientific consensus does not imply the absence of contrarian voices even within the scientific community.

Over time, those contrarian voices simply fade away because no one takes them seriously, despite their shouts of “censorship” and accusations of bias.

This is not to say that a scientific consensus is never overturned.

There are well-known examples such as the Helicobacter pylori discovery in medicine, and continental drift in geology. But in both cases the arguments were won and lost in the peer-reviewed literature, not by contrarians sitting on the side-lines writing opinion pieces about how they were being oppressed."



Professor Ian Enting
"Authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, backed up by documents obtained in the course of tobacco litigation, show that not only was greenhouse denial using the same misinformation techniques as the tobacco industry, but that it was often the same groups and the same people. These anti-science activities hide behind names such as “Friends of Science”.

In Australia we have a similar phenomenon, with the additional twist of often using names that aim to capture a “martyr for science” image. They present themselves as being ignored by an entrenched establishment, when in reality they are ignoring or distorting the accumulated scientific knowledge."


And a demographic profile of who they are likely to be:


Professors Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Ashley
"But the question remains: what motivates deniers?

With very few exceptions, academic climate deniers are male and either retired or close to retirement.

The climate deniers’ champion, MIT’s 71-year old Richard Lindzen, has had a distinguished career, but 30 years after his major contributions, he appears to struggle to respond to devastating peer reviews when he attempts to publish his contrarian views in a major journal.

More commonly, the academic climate denier will have had a mediocre career that escaped public notice and left little imprint on science. Some haven’t been able to keep up with the rapid advances in science coming from its increasing complexity and the impact of computers and new technologies. Once respected, these scientists find themselves “out of the loop” and being ignored, which sometimes makes them quite grumpy.

There is much truth in the eminent physicist Max Planck’s observation, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up,” sometimes paraphrased as, “science advances one funeral at a time.”

A strong motivation for contrarians appears to be the attention that they can gain or re-gain in the public arena.

Any scientist, no matter how out of touch, can become the darling of talk shows by simply disagreeing with the consensus on climate."


The Conversation
"Aided by a pervasive media culture that often considers peer-reviewed scientific evidence to be in need of “balance” by internet bloggers, this has enabled so-called “sceptics” to find a captive audience while largely escaping scrutiny.

Australians have been exposed to a phony public debate which is not remotely reflected in the scientific literature and community of experts.

[…]

The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence."

[flappist]

Originally Posted by chamb0

The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence."

Well whether or not there is any validity to this can you answer why the future burden always seems only to be paying of debt from taxes wasted futile experiments championed by social engineers and academics..........

[irish2]

Originally Posted by chamb0

Thanks for your thoughts. I absolutely agree that there is a lot about the universe we don’t know. However climate science is relatively mature and many of the fundamental principles have been well understood for many decades now. The greenhouse effect was first described in the early 1800’s, the basic physics was understood by the 1950’s. Anthropogenic global warming was first proposed in the late 1800’s, was becoming a concern to the scientific community by the 1970’s, and in the decades since, a consensus has emerged.

How come nobody can accurately tell me what the weather will do over the next week, but people make 100% sure predictions about 100 years from now. There is so much we don't know about weather patterns it isn't funny.

[karj]

Originally Posted by irish2

How come nobody can accurately tell me what the weather will do over the next week, but people make 100% sure predictions about 100 years from now. There is so much we don't know about weather patterns it isn't funny.

chamb0 alluded to it earlier, but confidence intervals are used to descibe uncertainty in estimates, and estimates of error can also be calculated.

Uncertainty can be a difficult concept to explain or understand, but you should be able to find a decent plain english explanation of CI's on the net. To be honest, unless you have the background, the technical mathematics is probably beyond many people here... I recall studying CI's in 2nd year uni for what it's worth (and my memory is fading lol).

Part of the problem here is that you read a "news" report that may quote a figure from a scientific paper or expert (or sometimes not even an expert!), but that "news" report doesn't detail all the statistical analysis that has gone into that estimate, thus you come away thinking "100% sure predictions." It's a bit more complicated than that and this is one of problems stemming from getting the "news" to report (and oversimplify) "science". Journalists/Columnists/Bloggers are no more qualified than Joe Bloggs on the street to explain science.

This is also why I don't think there is much point to this thread; because most of us AFF members are just Joe Bloggs (myself included).

[irish2]

Originally Posted by karj

chamb0 alluded to it earlier, but confidence intervals are used to descibe uncertainty in estimates, and estimates of error can also be calculated.

Uncertainty can be a difficult concept to explain or understand, but you should be able to find a decent plain english explanation of CI's on the net. To be honest, unless you have the background, the technical mathematics is probably beyond many people here... I recall studying CI's in 2nd year uni for what it's worth (and my memory is fading lol).

Part of the problem here is that you read a "news" report that may quote a figure from a scientific paper or expert (or sometimes not even an expert!), but that "news" report doesn't detail all the statistical analysis that has gone into that estimate, thus you come away thinking "100% sure predictions." It's a bit more complicated than that and this is one of problems stemming from getting the "news" to report (and oversimplify) "science". Journalists/Columnists/Bloggers are no more qualified than Joe Bloggs on the street to explain science.

I didn't mean to say scientist think they are 100% accurate, but the government spin doctors who purport the 'facts' for scare mongering.