Eat that GW believers!

[TallDave]

TallDave,
Correction on your benefit. According to your reference, the benefit would be in taking out CO2 and sequestering it from the atmosphere

No, that's not what I'm talking about at all (I don't even agree that's necessarily beneficial). I'm talking about ocean life. I'm just saying we probably don't know the optimal pH level of the oceans for overall ocean life.

to sugest that introducing toxic waste into the environment is good for us (directly), is an oxymoron

One organism's toxic waste is another's food.

[Jccarlton]

It will have to be reconstructed, if that is even possible.

It's proxy data. Why can't it be reconstructed?

Here's what happens when somebody tries:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/w ... more-13373
The bad overwrites the good. Once the crap gets in the milk you can't make the milk usable again. Especially when the bad is "pushed" which the cabal is guilty of doing repeatedly.

And why the proxies are bad:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1362

If, as they seem to have done, the raw data are destroyed we have nothing to base anything on to interpret bad results from good results. That leaves with only be able to say all the results are bad.

[Jccarlton]

It's proxy data. Why can't it be reconstructed?

Here's what happens when somebody tries:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/w ... more-13373
The bad overwrites the good. Once the crap gets in the milk you can't make the milk usable again. Especially when the bad is "pushed" which the cabal is guilty of doing repeatedly.

And why the proxies are bad:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1362

If, as they seem to have done, the raw data are destroyed we have nothing to base anything on to interpret bad results from good results. That leaves with only be able to say all the results are bad.

confirmation that the data has indeed been destroyed:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 936328.ece

[rcain]

Sorry but this sort of statement demonstrates you've got a religious bias. Your mind is obvioiusly made up. You need to realize all the information and memes that have programmed you into having that made up mind were lies. You need to go into deprogramming as badly as someone rescued from a cult.

what utter rubbbish are you talking about IntLibber?
too many people on this forum simply seem to be trollers looking for a fight imo.

[kcdodd]

It is very sad that this sort of activity has occurred. But it proves nothing about human caused climate change. The climate will react regardless of what people say about it as it always has. We know for a fact that if you dump enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere you will get trapped energy. That is the very definition of greenhouse gas. It is not beyond reasonable qualitative analysis to expect increase CO2 to increase trapped energy. All we cannot do is set a quantitative value of the proportionality. That also means we cannot say if it poses an immediate threat, or only a future threat.

[seedload]

I am teaching myself R.

Right now, I am playing with the Mann 08 proxy data used for his latest hockey stick graph. After this excersize I have decided that either (1) Mann is an idiot or (2) he is intentionally designing his methods to produce the desired results.

I know a grad student at Penn State that says he has a serious ego but that he is smart. That seems to rule out idiot. I guess I will go with (2).

BTW, guess who taught a scientific ethics seminar for all new graduate students this year.

[jmc]

jmc, that is silly.
I would rather guess that the fleet is operated by the group of countries that pay for them. Also, it would be easy to secure this contractually somehow.
Further, I think that noone is that crazy to make money.
Besides, once it gets to cold, people will complain and politicians will emmediately ask for a stop so they get reelected.
And last but not least, I doubt that the world gets to a tipping point that easily either way.
Also, as I said, one would have to do it slowly anyway and monitor the effects. A sudden extreme cooling would result in catastrophic weather effects.

What is the proper temperature for the Earth?

My question exactly, and if there really is a -1 degree error in the 18th century data then if we try to "restore" the Earth to its previous temperatures we could end up making it 1 degree cooler than it was which could set off a viscious cycle of positive feedback plunging us into an ice age (or at least a little ice age).

Skipjack:
The climate doesn't just have a set of knobs you can adjust, it exhibits hysteresis, if you seed the clouds and the climate cools down, there's no guaratee that if you stop seeding them the climate will necessarily warm up again.

[jmc]

How do you justify that as not a problem.

Easy. No one actually knows for sure if it's a problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

It might even be a net benefit to ocean life. A lot of people don't seem to realize the oceans aren't becoming acidic, they're becoming less alkaline.

Anyways, given how much salinity has varied, its likely ocean life has seen far bigger changes than this.

What is wrong with taking on a moral decision?

What's wrong with wasting trillions on a non-problem? A lot. People will die sooner, have less to eat, less money to spend on necessary healthcare, less energy to heat their homes... this is a big deal. You need to be a lot more certain than we are now.

One must recognize their responsibility in any spaceship designed to carry our ethos.

Indeed. We need to be sure we aren't wasting trillions of dollars that could be spent on something useful. It would be nice if the people at CRU were taking their responsibility more seriously.

Interesting that your wikipedia link gives numerous reasons why it is thought to be a problem.


Might be a net benefit.... in 10 million years time. Life evolves to adapt to its current environment. If you change that environment you typically get a dieback and a reduction in diversity. That diversity then slowly recovers as the animals and plants adapt to their new environment. So if your prepared to wait a few million year, I'm sure the new equilibrium could be just as good as the existing one.

Come to think of it though, I wonder whether putting alkaline tablets in areas of bleached coral might help it to grow back again?

[TDPerk]

"It is very sad that this sort of activity has occurred."

At the very least it is borderline criminal, and may just be criminal.

"But it proves nothing about human caused climate change."

It proves we know nothing which is statistically valid about any climate changes we may be causing.

"The climate will react regardless of what people say about it as it always has."

And in response to the inputs we generate, it may well react in no way which we can reliably measure. So no reason to put ourselves out over it--even slightly.

"We know for a fact that if you dump enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere you will get trapped energy."

And we know CO2 very likely can't do what the warmists talk about, because it's effect will be saturated above a certain temp gain, also, CO2 has been much higher before and there was no runaway effect.

"That is the very definition of greenhouse gas."

As far as it goes, which is not nearly as far as Mann-made global warming goes, yep.

"It is not beyond reasonable qualitative analysis to expect increase CO2 to increase trapped energy."

Which is not to say it will increase temperatures measurably for the CO2 we can expect we'll put into the atmosphere. It seems to be beyond quantitative analysis.

"All we cannot do is set a quantitative value of the proportionality. That also means we cannot say if it poses an immediate threat, or only a future threat."

Actually, as has been pointed out before, we can't say it will be a threat at all. It may well be a very good thing for the globe to warm up several more degrees and stay there. And given that it has been warmer in the geologically very recent past, and the Micronesian islands, et al, settled in that time, even that has no precedent for drowning any territory such that you'd notice...nor will folks who paddle dugout palm trunk canoes.

[jmc]

As well as a group of people with long term totaltarian objectives:
http://green-agenda.com/
http://www.clubofrome.org/eng/home/
http://www.soros.org/

I looked at your George Soros link.. it's not obviously a den of evil and iniquity, mostly talks about development projects in poorer areas and promoting democracy, can't find any quotes on it saying "WHOA HA!HA! HA! HA! We're planning on bringing about a fascist totalitarian new world order"

[MSimon]

It is very sad that this sort of activity has occurred. But it proves nothing about human caused climate change. The climate will react regardless of what people say about it as it always has. We know for a fact that if you dump enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere you will get trapped energy. That is the very definition of greenhouse gas. It is not beyond reasonable qualitative analysis to expect increase CO2 to increase trapped energy. All we cannot do is set a quantitative value of the proportionality. That also means we cannot say if it poses an immediate threat, or only a future threat.

All very well an good if the system was static. But dang. Real life isn't even close to static.

We have heat pipes in the atmosphere. Durn good ones. The ole water vapor thingy.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... n-sky.html

And that water vapor once it gets high in the sky creates clouds. Clouds do a couple of nice things. They reduce night time radiation and decrease day time insolation.

So the boffins haven't got this one sorted close enough to say in fact how things work. You have an approximately zero delta T heat transfer mechanism. (not counting adiabatic cooling from increase in altitude).

You have a night time "heat shield" and a day time "radiation shield".

And all this is coming and going on time scales from minutes to days.

Got a parameter?

The argument now is: what is the overall gain? The warm hysterics claim it runs between 1.5 and 4 or more. The geometric mean is 2.44 - and 4 is about 163% of 2.44.

Now compare that to the cool guys who say the gain is .5 +/- .1 - a mere +/- 20% variation. Who would you say had a better handle on the situation? Which is not proof of course.

And there is no atmospheric PROOF that CO2 does what is claimed. All we have is dodgy computer models fed with dodgy data. Hide the decline.

But we have been running a short experiment. For the last 10 years CO2 has been rising and yet temperatures have not. And so far "the heat in the pipe line" can't be found and doesn't seem to be working.

This was not predicted. OK. The science was not so good 10 years ago. Computers were a lot slower. I propose we run the latest models get some predictions and see what happens in 10 years.

As an alternative I propose we get the raw data and check it out. And use that suitably and openly corrected data to see what we have got. What UEA CRU destroyed the data?

Most unfortunate

If the climate programs have been tuned to the temperature record (they ought to be - in the sense that if there is no match the model is wrong) and the temperature has been doctored then we can predict nothing. Or the wrong thing.

Ah. but the current group claims an out. Ocean circulation. Known since 1997 and yet some how left out of all models until about 2 or 3 years ago and so far not in all models.

I'd say we had a minimum of a 5 year project (once it starts) to compile a temperature record. Define all the inputs and internal variables to the model. Assign parameters to each - where the physics is too complicated to be modeled in reasonable time. And see what we get.

Then do some predictions and give it about 10 years to see if we know anything useful.

The science has settled for now. In a garbage dump.

[jmc]

"It is very sad that this sort of activity has occurred."

At the very least it is borderline criminal, and may just be criminal.

"But it proves nothing about human caused climate change."

It proves we know nothing which is statistically valid about any climate changes we may be causing.

"The climate will react regardless of what people say about it as it always has."

1) And in response to the inputs we generate, it may well react in no way which we can reliably measure. So no reason to put ourselves out over it--even slightly.

"We know for a fact that if you dump enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere you will get trapped energy."

And we know CO2 very likely can't do what the warmists talk about, because it's effect will be saturated above a certain temp gain, also, CO2 has been much higher before and there was no runaway effect.

"That is the very definition of greenhouse gas."

As far as it goes, which is not nearly as far as Mann-made global warming goes, yep.

"It is not beyond reasonable qualitative analysis to expect increase CO2 to increase trapped energy."

Which is not to say it will increase temperatures measurably for the CO2 we can expect we'll put into the atmosphere. It seems to be beyond quantitative analysis.

"All we cannot do is set a quantitative value of the proportionality. That also means we cannot say if it poses an immediate threat, or only a future threat."

2) Actually, as has been pointed out before, we can't say it will be a threat at all. It may well be a very good thing for the globe to warm up several more degrees and stay there. And given that it has been warmer in the geologically very recent past, and the Micronesian islands, et al, settled in that time, even that has no precedent for drowning any territory such that you'd notice...nor will folks who paddle dugout palm trunk canoes.

To both 1) and 2) I disagree. The climate is a complex system we don't understand, its certainly true that it undergoes natural variation but there's a lot to be said for the saying if it ain't broke don't fix it when climate skeptics point out that the data is dodgy they have a point and a valid criticism. When they start saying "let's do business as usual who cares about emitting CO2" that's where I really disagree.

The kind of certainty skeptics express that everything will be fine is just as unfounded as the alarmist notion that were doomed if we don't change our tune in the next 20 years.

One link Jcarlton gave saying how tiny the size of the Carbon molecule was and how it was "physically impossible" a trace gas could affect climate really made me angry. Because doubling CO2 would cause an increase of 1 degree, maybe that's a factor of 3 away from a scary change in temperature, but its not a factor of 100. Maybe CO2 won't be a problem in 50 years time, but if we go on emitting and growing and relying on fossil fuels for energy we may well double or even treble the CO2 content in the atmosphere over the next 150 and amplification factor of 3 is inside the realms of possibility.

That it is safe to emit CO2 is not some trivial thing that any school child would know the answer to... its a serious question that needs serious investigation (which it seems the IPCC aren't doing) and we don't know what the results will be.


That we should replace fossil fuels with nuclear and renewables as a precautionary meassure seems very prudent even though there is uncertainty of the risk. What's more it will prepare us for the oil peak so it will be doubly good.

Note: Even if the oil peak isn't immediate but decades away its still worth beginning the transition because installing generation capacity takes energy so the best time to do it is at a time of rising production, since if you do it when production is falling, you'll exacerbate the problem still further by removing even more energy from the economy.



As to the attitude that we don't know the optimum and that things might improve with climate change... unless you're miles away from the optimum all change is bad this is because lifeforms adapt optimally to their environment so any change in that environment tends to push them away from that optimum.

[MSimon]

That it is safe to emit CO2 is not some trivial thing that any school child would know the answer to...

CO2 has been up to 7,000 ppmv in geological time. No tipping point.

OTOH man made CO2 has special properties (caused by quantum entanglement with humans) that makes it prone to wild temperature swings and tipping points.

This is based on Mann's Determinism Theory. Which states "I have determined CO2 is bad. Fall in line or else."

So yes It is possible that things are really bad. It is even possible that they are worse than we thought. What are the odds?

But I agree. We should be doing something about CO2 where it is profitable to do so. Planting trees. Growing crops. Seem to work out well in that respect.

[MSimon]

As to the attitude that we don't know the optimum and that things might improve with climate change... unless you're miles away from the optimum all change is bad this is because lifeforms adapt optimally to their environment so any change in that environment tends to push them away from that optimum.

Check with Darwin dude. He says that adaptation is going on all the time. Catastrophic changes give you very fast differentiation and adaptation. Slower changes mean slower adaptation.

[Luzr]

One link Jcarlton gave saying how tiny the size of the Carbon molecule was and how it was "physically impossible" a trace gas could affect climate really made me angry. Because doubling CO2 would cause an increase of 1 degree

There is yet long way to actually doubling CO2. To quadrupling, it might take centuries.

We can agree that the issue should be investigated. But costly cutting CO2 emissions now might be doing wrong thing for wrong reason.

What if we are headed into next little ace age and higher CO2 concentrations are vital for sustaining crops to feed those 8 billions of people?

Scary scenarios are mostly about rising sea levels. Which might be sort of annoyance, but in reality no real problem. Most buildings have limited lifespan and get demolished in 50-100 years anyway. Just do not build them in the same place...

I believe there are chances that stopping CO2 emissions might be exactly the WORST thing to do. It is as reasonable to predict this as to predict otherwise.

energy we may well double or even treble the CO2 content in the

Quadruple?

atmosphere over the next 150 and amplification factor of 3 is inside the realms of possibility.

OK, so we will have 6 more degrees. Fine with me.

Frankly, I guess most people so far just enjoy warmer climate, except there are less opportunities for skiing

That it is safe to emit CO2 is not some trivial thing that any school child would know the answer to... its a serious question that needs serious investigation (which it seems the IPCC aren't doing) and we don't know what the results will be.

Come on. Every school child knows that emitting CO2 the crime against humanity. Or that is what they are taught...

That we should replace fossil fuels with nuclear and renewables as a precautionary meassure seems very prudent even though there is uncertainty of the risk. What's more it will prepare us for the oil peak so it will be doubly good.

We could have done that long time ago, except that the same people that are now crying about CO2 prevented it.

Nuclear definitely makes sense.

And for the record, I am really looking forward to my first electric car (generally, not that I plan to buy some now, but I am quite sure that in 5 years, I will have some) - not because I worry about climate, but because I like the concept and I think electric cars will be more comfortable.

Note: Even if the oil peak isn't immediate but decades away its still worth beginning the transition because installing generation capacity takes energy so the best time to do it is at a time of rising production, since if you do it when production is falling, you'll exacerbate the problem still further by removing even more energy from the economy.

I can agree. These are all legitimate reasons to develop non-fossil dependant sources.

But "CO2 science does not matter" is quite different from "CO2 science is settled".

As to the attitude that we don't know the optimum and that things might improve with climate change... unless you're miles away from the optimum all change is bad this is because lifeforms adapt optimally to their environment so any change in that environment tends to push them away from that optimum.

Uh, I would rather expect that for 6 degrees rise, there would be some migration in the first place. Actually, we live through the process right now - e.g. in central europe, some species that were not present 30 years ago are now normal. Of course, this is presented as negative effect of CO2 emissions by greens, but in fact, it is adaptation in progress.

Just for the record, if there are one species extremely skilled at adapation, it is human race...