 |
|  |
 |
|
DarkCloud
|
 |
of Lists
Jul 2000 time: 05:18
|
|
An increaes in temperature by 2 c?
That seems incorrect from this data:
quote: "Is global warming occurring?
ØAccording to Accu-Weather, the world’s leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."
ØSatellite data indicate a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years. These satellites use advanced technology and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers.
ØProjections of future climate changes are uncertain. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans, or the sun, are still not well known and often inadequately represented in the climate models --- although all play a major role in determining our climate. Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation. Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered. " |
From: http://www.globalwarming.org/brochure.html
and-
quote: Are humans causing the climate to change?
Ø98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.
ØBy most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)
|
and: To URBAN RANGER- quote: ØLarger quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer climates would likely lead to an increase in vegetation. During warm periods in history vegetation flourished, at one point allowing the Vikings to farm in now frozen Greenland. |
Although I agree with this, I disagree with the websites' claims that New Orleans wouldn't flood. But I agree with just about everything else.
-
And If you really want to reduce the alleged "global warning"
quote: Will the policies actually stop global warming?
ØBy all estimates, only severe reductions in global CO2 emissions -- on the order of 60 percent or more -- will alter the computer forecasts. The resulting economic dislocations would be tremendous, potentially outweighing the negative impacts of even the most apocalyptic warming scenario.
ØIf the policies do not include developing nations the result will likely be a reallocation of emissions to developing nations, not a reduction of emissions.
ØIf the entire world is included and CO2 emissions are severely restricted, the science is not clear what impact, if any, it would have on the world’s climate.
|
"
|
|
|  |
 |
|
CyberGnu
|
 |
of the Virtual Serengeti
Apr 1999 time: 05:18
|
|
Wraith, look, you are a smart guy and you have obviously read a lot about the subject. Nevertheless, as far as I know, you don't hold a degree in climatology, even less a professorship or even a PhD.
The commision I talk about is THE presidental commision. There has only been one in the last few years, and the commions findings was widely publizied (2001). The members of the commision were picked by the National Academy of the Sciences, and approved of by the administration.
While I'm not familiar with the climatologists in the NAS, I do know the chemists. These people are respected scientists in their field, generally university professors and formerly industrial chemists with more than 20 years of experience. I have no reason to believe that the standards for the climatology section are any less...
Whatsmore, while there might be a theoretical possibility that every single one of the commision might be lying or incompetent, the most important issue is the lack of controversy over the commisions findings. That humanity are most likely causing global warming is in the scientific community an accepted situation...
Now, we can argue details in different studies all day long, but the truth of the matter is that they don't really matter, since NONE of us here have the background to evaluate them. We just have to accept that the studies passed peer review, and thus hopefully were scrutinized by someone who actually does have the required knowledge.
|
|
|  |
 |
|
Wraith
|
 |
Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999 time: 23:18
|
|
--"The orbits of satellites tend to degrade"
Which is not a hard to control for factor. It's not like we don't keep track of where they are or something. In any case, the satellite data is far more trustworthy than the surface data (and it does agree with the weather balloon data).
--"Try reading the rest of it, particularily the studies which measure the rate of sea level rising, and how the past 100 years has been signifigantly greater."
We have a hard enough time getting accurate sea-level change measurements now. Anything taken a hundren or more years ago is going to have a large enough margin of error as to be worthless for the purposes of this "proof". We quite simply do not have anywhere near a large enough sample set of reliable data to draw any conclusions.
Nevertheless, I'll try to make time today to read it thouroughly.
--"The commision I talk about is THE presidental commision. There has only been one in the last few years,"
Then please provide a link to their findings. I've been searching for presidential commission with global warming or climate change and all I can find are stories about it being appointed from 1997. If nothing else, give me the _actual name_ of the commission, since we all know politicalese has little in common with English.
--"I have no reason to believe that the standards for the climatology section are any less..."
These are the people who have a vested interesting in making everyone believe that global warming is real. It gets them more grant money and long-running government panel jobs, after all. Just thought I should mention this, since the other side of that has been brought up.
I can't comment on the "scientists" until I find out who they were, and what commission this was. A lot of these government studies have little to no scientific involvement. DDT is an example here, since the EPA's science board was overriden by an administrator who insisted on the ban.
--"the most important issue is the lack of controversy over the commisions findings."
Lack of controversy my ass. Just because the media is not giving massive coverage to [url=http://www.oism.org/pproject/the dissenters[/url] does not mean they aren't there.
--"We just have to accept that the studies passed peer review"
Were they even peer-reviewed? Sorry, but this doesn't matter a whole lot. Just look at the IPCC for an example of how actual science can be totally distorted beyond recognition. Everyone keeps going on about the number of scientists involved with it, and never realize that the people setting policy (the IPCC) are just a bunch of buearacrats working from a highly politicized summary of a report (the original is nowhere near as certain as the IPCC and the media are making it out to be).
Wraith
"Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."
-- Richard Feynman
Last edited by Wraith on 17-03-2002 at 19:29
|
|
|  |
 |
|
Wraith
|
 |
Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999 time: 23:18
|
|
Well, I've read the report. It's far less detailed than I expected, and it certainly does nothing to support your position. It does talk, at length, about how difficult it is to get accurate measurements, and how there are way too many factors to be able to use it to support global warming theories.
Some quotes:
quote: . Douglas [1992] carried out a systematic global analysis of sea level acceleration, and arrived at a similar result that no acceleration of global sea level has occurred over the last 150 years that is statistically significantly different from zero at the 95 authors have bounded any acceleration that might have occurred in the last 150 years at an order of magnitude or more less than that predicted to accompany global warming in the future [ Houghton et al., 1990]. |
quote: But the basic issue remains. If global warming causes increased precipitation at very high latitudes with concomitant storage of water in the form of ice, sea level rise due to thermal expansion of the ocean or melting of small glaciers could be offset to a greater or lesser extent. |
quote: From these considerations it is clear that simply obtaining a value for global sea level rise in the past, or detecting an increase in the future, is not enough for sea level rise to serve as an unambiguous indicator of global climate change. |
None of this paper supports your conclusion.
Wraith
"A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he's talking about"
|
|
|  |
 |
|
Adalbertus
|
 |
Cologne, Germany
Feb 2001 time: 06:18
|
|
From the data I know, global warming exists. The main question would be where they come from.
About the positioning of the weather stations, I would guess that one has put much thoughts in their placings. They are preferably at free or open spots, as Airports (which in Germany are outside the densely populated areas), or hill tops in towns or cities, sometimes on mountains (which often give a different thermal profile). So I would guess the effect of the warming due to cities is accounted for.
The main problem is that climate is something very complex. There are lots of unknown effects. One can detect an 11 years oscillation which is due to the sunspot cycle. For those two reasons alone it is nearly impossible to get a reliable answer on the general trend from measurements which go over only twenty years. There is another cycle due to the dynamics of the solar system (I don't recall its exact origins) which has a periode of about 24000 years (I think) and which might be responsible for the "big" glaciales of the past. From roughly 1400-1600 the climate in Europe was considerably colder than nowadays or in medieval times. This apparently roughly coincides with a complete disappearence of sunspots (they were reported by Chinese astronomers in medieval times, and after some time neither by Chinese nor by European astronomers until Galilei, who maybe saw one of the first ones). Today we are still in a warming phase after this "little glaciale". From the data I know, there is definitely a trend to warming, which is definitely partly natural. On the other hand, it seems that manmade warming has a similar strong influcence. (I've heard half of the increase is natural, the other half man-made, but I guess this was by someone who was sure that both influences do exist and was completely unable to give better numbers; I would doubt that it is so easily possible).
IMHO, it will take a long time (several decades) until we have collected enough data to be sure to know what happens. Simulations to really calculate what happens due to a changed immission of gas X are very demanding to computing powers and still likely lack of accuracy. But: Our highly developped societies are very sensitive against any drastic changes as they would be caused by global warming. (All those changes I know of in human history have caused serious wars and problems, sometimes even for centuries). We know that with our activities we increase the tendency of the nature to go away from the equilibrium state we are used to. We know that this will cause problems, because not only "Goodbye New Orleans" but also "Goodbye Bangladesh", "Goodbye half Netherlands", "Goodbye London", "Goodbye Hamburg", and I wouldn't wonder if this means a Farewell to some 100 million of other people, too.
So, we have to act, even if G. W. Bush is too stupid to see this.
|
|
|  |
 |
|
Wraith
|
 |
Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999 time: 23:18
|
|
--"About the positioning of the weather stations, I would guess that one has put much thoughts in their placings."
Theoretically, but not always in practice. Here are some examples of the variability of placement.
For those who don't want to click:
quote: The above are a selection of photos published at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website, designed to show the surroundings around the weather boxes in Australia (the louvred white boxes known as `Stevenson Screens' mounted a metre above ground on each photo).
The top photo (`the Good') from Mildura is an example of a well-placed box, well away from urbanisation, growing vegetation or structures, all of which would skew the record towards warming over a period of time.
The second photo (`the Bad') from Toowoomba looks idyllic, but is seriously flawed as a serious location from which to detect climate change. It is sheltered from the cooling winds by the residential house and growing tall vegetation surrounding it - a nice little sun trap in fact - just what the people living there may want, but exactly what the box should not have if it is to accurately measure climate change.
The last photo (`the Ugly') from Melbourne is a complete abortion of a location, plain and simple, right at the intersection of two busy highways near the centre of the city (itself with a population of over 3 million). It can only be useful for measuring current city weather, not regional or global climate. The additional heat from increasingly busy traffic will warm that box artificially, giving a false impression of climatic warming. The problem is so severe that neither CRU nor GISS could credibly correct for it.
But when we hear about `global mean temperature' or that some new `record' has been broken, it is well to remember that it is from places such as these that the data comes from.
The alternative is to believe what the satellites tell us. They cover the earth evenly, with no distortions from urbanisation and vegetation and give a result accurate to one hundredth of a degree. But the IPCC prefers to believe the nonsense given them by the instruments at Melbourne and places like it. |
--"Our highly developped societies are very sensitive against any drastic changes as they would be caused by global warming."
Those "drastic changes" are seriously overstated in the media. Talk of island disappearing beneath the waves and major storms and so on are based on fantasy, not science. So far, the most likely results of any warming would seem to be milder winters in the coldest areas and longer growing seasons, which are not really problems.
--"So, we have to act, even if G. W. Bush is too stupid to see this"
Even Kyoto advocates admit it does next to nothing. Human outputs of CO2 are around 5% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. Methane is a bigger human-caused issue, but hasn't been dealt with nearly as much. And still the most important greenhouse gas of all isn't dealt with at all, nor is it one we have a whole lot of control over.
The "we have to act" crowd does not seem to be familiar with the idea of opportunity cost. The money things like Kyoto would cost us is much better spent on other things.
Wraith
"Change is the essential process of all existence."
|
|
|  |
 |
|  |
 |
|
Adalbertus
|
 |
Cologne, Germany
Feb 2001 time: 06:18
|
|
quote: There has only been a .45 increase in global temperatures over the last century! |
I haven't found this number directly, but it is certainly not far off truth. The point is that 0.45 degree is quite a lot when it isn't weather but climate. (And there are predictions that Europe will become colder due to global warming because the gulf stream will be less effective. Take a world map and you'll see that the gulf stream shifts the isotherms - lines of equal temperature - about 1000 to 2000 km to the north.)
quote: So far, the most likely results of any warming would seem to be milder winters in the coldest areas and longer growing seasons, which are not really problems. |
Not really. But it also makes the dry period during the summer in warmer regions longer and thus people start starving and pressing north. People living north don't like that and fight back in some way or another. This is the origin of the social troubles I mentioned.
About sea level rising I think it is interesting to look at the history of the Netherlands: They are famous for their windmills, and their main purpose was not to produce flour but to pump water from the fields. There were three players: The Dutch who pumped, the sea level which fell and rose with the little ice age, and the geology who is constantly sinking the Netherlands. (IMO, finally the geology will win :evilgrin The Dutch started to effectively gain land exactly in the 17th century where the little ice age started helping them. Up to today, they still have enough technology to keep their land pumped (Yes, they'll have to constantly pump 1/3 of their territory!), and so they are not really interested in a global warming. Neither their neighbours.
Climate is a game of only several tenth of a degree or a few meters of sea level. But on the average this wins against 60 (or even 100, as I've heard of Alaska) degree between a really hot summer day and a really cold winter night. To detect the traces of our (long-term, not daily) activity in these small changes is a hard thing. But everything we do follows an exponentially increasing function unless we are in a saturated state (and humanity still is far off such state). And when our activities become clearly visible it is too late to act, because catastrophies will be faster.
quote: Human outputs of CO2 are around 5% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. |
This looks very much like a number where deforestation is not taken into account (no attempt to defend Russia). And those 5% can do lots of harm if nature is unable to dispose of them. Which it certainly partly does, but also here I fear that it might be too late by the time we have researched the correct numbers.
The problem is that everything is fine as long as we are a little disturbance to the big system of nature. And this is what our nature and behaviour relies on. But we are approaching dimensions where we are no longer this "little disturbance" but a major player. We don't have the intuition to play this game correctly (i. e. to secure our own survival), nor the knowledge to do so.
Btw. I don't fear for nature. There is always some sort of nature, just take a look to the moon. I even don't fear for life on earth. I perhaps fear a bit for mammals, but even then I think rats and some other animals will survive. It is really about our own survival.
|
|
|  |
 |
|
Adalbertus
|
 |
Cologne, Germany
Feb 2001 time: 06:18
|
|
quote: And this is based on... oh yeah, environmentalist fear mongering since there is no previous environmental catastrophy to base this little theory of "we're going to be too late" on. |
Sorry, I'm not a real environmentalist (Reading a lot about the consequences of the Chernobyl accident after 10 years made me from "indifferent" to "carefully pro nuclear power").
The problem is people (environmentalists as well as their opposite) refuse to accept some fundamental properties of differential equations (which basically govern most of ecological, economical ...) systems. Things are quite stable as long as you change only little to the parameters. There are usually threshold values with which you get into a region of chaotic behaviour. We have close to no idea where these threshold values are. (From the instabilities in the temperature curves I would guess they are not too far away, but it's only a guess).
It is the human nature not only liking to neglect things but as well to overreact when one really feels the need to do something (and some environmentalists simply do overreact). So there will be a sharp change in the human controlled parameters to the equation. The system will react strongly to these changes, this a property of any differential equation. So the system will start to (chaotically or not) rapidly oscillate. Just imagine what means a rapidly oscillating world population number...
quote: I don't think this would make enough of a difference. There's already a food surplus globally (the problem is getting it to the right places), so I don't see
any significant changes in who's starving or where. |
I think it does. The hot south is already more populated than the cold north (compared to their technical/economical abilities to grow food), and the distribution of food already doesn't work. The Swedish certainly will be happy when there are some 30 million African people who say: We don't have food, we have the choice to fight or to die. You benefitted from global warming, we lost. Let us in.
quote: There is already a large amount of evidence for radical climate changes in the past, well before humans were industrialized. The climate is not a steady-state system, after all. |
Certainly. And Humanity survived, somehow. It increased the number of wars and uprisings. If you like to see an increasing number of wars in the future, go on.
|
|
|  |
 |
|  |
 |
|
mactbone
|
 |
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Sep 2001 time: 23:18
|
|
I wonder if this correlates to the Medieval Global Warming?
Here's an article on Medieval Global Warming
http://www.co2science.org/subject/e...s/europemwp.htm
quote: Medieval Warm Period -- Europe -- Summary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Was there really a Medieval Warm Period in Europe? To cut to the end of the story, there certainly was. But let's take a little time in getting there and review some of the evidence for that contention.
Based on analyses of subfossil wood samples from the Khibiny mountains on the Kola Peninsula of Russia, Hiller et al. (2001) were able to reconstruct a 1500-year history of alpine tree-line elevation. This record indicates that between A.D. 1000 and 1300, the tree-line there was located at least 100 to 140 meters above its current location. The researchers state that this fact implies a mean summer temperature that was "at least 0.8°C higher than today."
Moving from land to water, in a study of a well-dated sediment core from the Bornholm Basin in the southwestern Baltic Sea, Andren et al. (2000) found evidence for a period of high primary production at approximately A.D. 1050. Many of the diatoms of that period were warm water species that the scientists say "cannot be found in the present Baltic Sea." This balmy period, they report, "corresponds to the time when the Vikings succeeded in colonizing Iceland and Greenland." The warmth ended rather abruptly, however, at about A.D. 1200, when there was "a major decrease in warm water taxa in the diatom assemblage and an increase in cold water taxa" that are characteristic of what they call the Recent Baltic Sea Stage, which still prevails to this day.
Mikalsen et al. (2001) likewise made detailed measurements of a number of properties of sedimentary material extracted from the bottom of a fjord on the west coast of Norway, deriving a relative temperature history of the region that spanned the last five millennia. This record revealed the existence of a period stretching from A.D. 1330 to 1600 that, in their words, "had the highest bottom-water temperatures in Sulafjorden during the last 5000 years."
In eastern Norway, Nesje et al. (2001) analyzed a sediment core obtained from Lake Atnsjoen, deriving a 4500-year record of river flooding. They observed "a period of little flood activity around the Medieval period (A.D. 1000-1400)," which was followed by "a period of the most extensive flood activity in the Atnsjoen catchment," which resulted from the "post-Medieval climate deterioration characterized by lower air temperature, thicker and more long-lasting snow cover, and more frequent storms associated with the 'Little Ice Age'."
Moving to Switzerland, Filippi et al. (1999) analyzed a sediment core extracted from Lake Neuchatel in the western Swiss Lowlands. During this same transition from the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) to the Little Ice Age (LIA), they detected a drop of approximately 1.5°C in mean annual air temperature. To give some context to this finding, they say that "the warming during the 20th century does not seem to have fully compensated the cooling at the MWP-LIA transition." And to make the message even more clear, they add that during the Medieval Warm Period, the mean annual air temperature was "on average higher than at present."
Rounding out our mini-review of the Medieval Warm Period in Europe, Bodri and Cermak (1999) derived individual ground surface temperature histories from the temperature-depth logs of 98 separate boreholes drilled in the Czech Republic. From these data they detected "the existence of a medieval warm epoch lasting from A.D. 1100-1300," which they describe as "one of the warmest postglacial times." Noting that this spectacular warm period was followed by the Little Ice Age, they suggest that "the observed recent warming may thus be easily a natural return of climate from the previous colder conditions back to a 'normal'."
That Filippi et al. (1999) share similar views is demonstrated by their citing of Keigwin (1996) to the effect that "sea surface temperature (SST) reconstructions show that SST was ca. 1°C cooler than today about 400 years ago and ca. 1°C warmer than today during the MWP." Citing Bond et al. (1997), they further note that the MWP and LIA are just the most recent manifestations of "a pervasive millennial-scale coupled atmosphere-ocean climate oscillation," which, we might add, has absolutely nothing to do with variations in the air's CO2 content.
The story from Europe thus seems quite clear. There was a several-hundred-year period in the first part of the last millennium that was significantly warmer than it is currently, contrary to the claim of the climate alarmists that the warmth of that time was nothing special. In addition, there is reason to believe that the planet may be on a natural climate trajectory that is taking it back to a state reminiscent of the Medieval Warm Period, which we could probably call the Modern Warm Period. And there is nothing we can do about it ... but reap the benefits!
References
Andren, E., Andren, T. and Sohlenius, G. 2000. The Holocene history of the southwestern Baltic Sea as reflected in a sediment core from the Bornholm Basin. Boreas 29: 233-250.
Bodri, L. and Cermak, V. 1999. Climate change of the last millennium inferred from borehole temperatures: Regional patterns of climatic changes in the Czech Republic - Part III. Global and Planetary Change 21: 225-235.
Bond, G., Showers, W., Cheseby, M., Lotti, R., Almasi, P., deMenocal, P., Priori, P., Cullen, H., Hajdes, I. and Bonani, G. 1997. A pervasive millennial-scale climate cycle in the North Atlantic: The Holocene and late glacial record. Science 278: 1257-1266.
Filippi, M.L., Lambert, P., Hunziker, J., Kubler, B. and Bernasconi, S. 1999. Climatic and anthropogenic influence on the stable isotope record from bulk carbonates and ostracodes in Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland, during the last two millennia. Journal of Paleolimnology 21: 19-34.
Hiller, A., Boettger, T. and Kremenetski, C. 2001. Medieval climatic warming recorded by radiocarbon dated alpine tree-line shift on the Kola Peninsula, Russia. The Holocene 11: 491-497.
Keigwin, L.D. 1996. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea. Science 174: 1504-1508.
Mikalsen, G., Sejrup, H.P. and Aarseth, I. 2001. Late-Holocene changes in ocean circulation and climate: foraminiferal and isotopic evidence from Sulafjord, western Norway. The Holocene 11: 437-446.
Nesje, A., Dahl, S.O., Matthews, J.A. and Berrisford, M.S. 2001. A ~ 4500-yr record of river floods obtained from a sediment core in Lake Atnsjoen, eastern Norway. Journal of Paleolimnology 25: 329-342.
|
|
|
|  |
 |
|  |
 |
|
Wraith
|
 |
Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999 time: 23:18
|
|
--"and the distribution of food already doesn't work"
Yes, I did mention that. Which is why I don't see any increase in wars or unrest, since it's already an issue.
--"Certainly. And Humanity survived, somehow."
And many of those changes happened before humanity was ever around...
Please stop with the war and unrest talk. It's silly. We're humans, we've been bashing each other with rocks ever since we figured out opposable thumbs. We have too many excuses already for this to be a big factor. There are plenty of other historical and social reasons for the levels of conflict we've seen.
--"It is of course happening."
That thread's amusing, too. Adam Smith answered it pretty well, but forgot to mention that the icepack in question was on the edge of the antarctic circle, and was expected to break off anyway (it's only the speed that was interesting).
What's more amusing is the sensationalist press that's sprung up around this. The original (I think) BBC article is pretty decent. Then we get The Guardian, which seems to have problems with zeros, since they changed 500 billion to 500 million billion. As did Reuters. Even The Independent was able to get the number of zeros right, although I can't say much positive for the rest of their article.
Ahh, sensationalism.
--"And then you have the presidential commission. They put out their results"
Would you happen to know the name of that commission? Osweld isn't answering, so maybe someone can.
--"Global Warming still doesn't exist ?"
You still believe everything you hear? It's amazing how much people decide on this based on What Some Bloke in the Pub Told Me.
--"I suggest a visit to Biosphere 2 in Arizona to change your tunes on Global Warming!"
Are there any links in particular on that site we should look for? I'm curious as to how a biodome is supposed to provide evidence for global warming, since by definition it is an experiment involving studying a section of the planet cut off from the rest of the climate.
--"I went there being 99% convinced of global warming"
Soka... I get it now.
--"Did anyone bother to read the article I posted"
Heh. Why would they do that? 
Wraith
"Faith is that faculty in men that enables us to believe things that we know are untrue."
-- ("Nosferatu")
|
|
|  |
 |
|  |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:18. Apolyton Time is 00:18. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|