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32,000 scientists dissent from global-warming “consensus”

Where was the error on the side of caution when it predicted a seven foot rise, back in the 80s? Surely the knowledge base was less then than it is today, giving the IPCC of the 80s, even greater reason to err on the side of caution.

To be fair to all the contributors here, you appear to have referred to the IPCC more than anyone else on this thread.
 
You know, it's funny. You people can be right sceptics when it comes to some things, but trusting believers when it comes to others.

[My thanks to Lomborg for the ensuing analogy]

The media is painting a doomsday scenario with respect to global warming. People get freaked out when someone tells them that the rainforest is going to catch fire, and the seas are going to boil.:eek:

hotter & hotter temperatures will eventually lead to the amazon catching fire in the not too distant future, releasing vast amounts of more greenhouse gases.

amazon rainforest is a big part of air conditioning of the world. That much less plants & trees soaking up CO2 will mean much more CO2 stays in the atmosphere for even longer, driving temperatures further still.

Drive the temperatures far enough, and ~10,000,000,000,000 tons of methane hydrates, a greenhouse gas 21 times stronger than CO2, start to melt more rapidly from the bottom of the oceans & within permafrosts, causing the oceans to boil in a firy-display, savvy enough to use the word "armageddon..."

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/7/7/14264/22740

I mean shit dude, that is scary stuff!:D

Too bad it's scaremongering whipped up by a media hot for greater issue sales. The unfortunate thing is that the vast majority of people never look behind what's told to them. I admit that there is a handful of people here who have looked at the science, but I'll bet my bottom dollar that most of the people on this board who are so hot for the global warming issue, know squat about the science behind the doomsday predictions.

I say that to a certain extent, we're being sold a bill of goods, and most people are swallowing it.

Here's the analogy:

A few years ago, Bush and Co. told us that Saddam Hussein was the devil incarnate, and that he was building WMDs, nukes, poison gas, in giant underground bunkers in the Iraqi desert.

Colin Powell went to the UN, with pictures and everything, showing that it was so. The head of the CIA said it was dead certain that this was going on. All the authorities and experts, said it was so, and something had to be done about it now. And the usually fractious Congress, and the UK parliament mostly, shut up and toed the line.

And people ate it up. Hell, I did.:oops: So, off to war we go, to spend trillions of dollars, waste a bunch of lives white and brown and black, but.....the whole premise of the war was either a mistake, or an outright lie.


So, here we are today. A bunch of political types, including the IPCC [see free spirit above, saying that the IPCC tailors its releases for political purposes], telling us that once again, the sky is falling, big time. Doomsday is right around the corner, and we have to do something big, now.

In this case, they want to tax our asses off, for the benefit of 'future generations'. What that means, is that they'll tax us, but they aren't making any promises about what they're going to spend the tax money on.

Does any of this rub you even slightly the wrong way?

You were pretty much right about the govt last time, with Saddam. So are you going to take the fishhook firmly in your cheek on this one, meekly, without asking any questions at all?
 
Hmm, well, yes and no. Biomass fuel can be a component of sustainable development, or it can be a component of unsustainable development. For example, if someone cuts down a forest that has historically provided fuelwood and other forest products to a given community in order to sell the wood elsewhere and raise cattle on the land that's been cleared, it has a number of unsustainable consequences. It directly contributes to soil erosion and it often causes the local communities who had previously used biomass in a reasonably sustainable way to start using it unsustainably.

So for example they start using dung and crop residues for fuel instead of for mulching, and contribute to soil erosion. You can't blame them, because they need that fuel now and cutting down their forest has put them in a position where they can't actually afford to care that in a few years their topsoil will wash away.

But that's market forces for you, they can always go live in a shanty town and make Nikes when their crops fail.
 
I might of known this petition would originate in the US.

Why is it never the UK, Austrialia, Germany or anywhere else?

That's because there's an ideological debate being fought in the US with one side refusing to admit that capitalism can have any faults at all.

The most exhaustive investigation so far into global warming is that by the IPCC - they concluded that there is a 90% probability that global warming is caused by man-made activity.

The IPCC is made up of scientists from 113 countries

This was based on not their own research, but the analysis and collating of all ready existing research.

http://www.ipcc.ch/
 
I beg to differ.
On what basis?

So what you're saying, is that when the IPCC comes out with doomsday scenarios
Provide citations for any "doomsday scenarios" the IPCC has come out with.

but when it comes out with conservative predictions, you are sceptical based on it being 'a political decision'?
He didn't say that. Please don't make up false quotes of other posters.

What is this overweening need to believe only in calamity?
Straw man. Nobody here has shown any such need.

[the IPCC] predicted a seven foot rise, back in the 80s
Provide a citation to support this claim.

However, in both instances, the probability is very low.
State how low and show either how you calculated it or from where you sourced it.
 
Explain why you want us to defend something written in a blog none of us has linked to and from which you have selectively quoted completely out of context.

A few years ago, Bush and Co. told us
Just because politicians lied about one issue does not mean that scientists are lying about a different issue. :rolleyes:

BTW you were the one supporting Bush's lies here.

the IPCC telling us that once again, the sky is falling, big time. Doomsday is right around the corner
Provide a citation where the IPCC said that.
 
So what you're saying, is that when the IPCC comes out with doomsday scenarios, you accept that as 'good science', but when it comes out with conservative predictions, you are sceptical based on it being 'a political decision'?

:D
no, what I'm saying is that you need to look at what the numbers actually represent otherwise you get a misleading picture of what the IPCC is saying.

The IPCC specifically states that it's sea rise predictions exclude any contribution from increased rates of melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Quoting these figures without emphasising that point either means you haven't got a clue what you're talking about, or you're deliberately misrepresenting what the IPCC are saying.


What is this overweening need to believe only in calamity?
it's what studying this at university, then spending 9 years looking at the data and reading the reports does for you - ie this is the only logical interpretation of the data that is coming out, combined with the only robust model taking into account all factors to explain climate changes that have already happened. Take out the anthorpogenic greenhouse gas emissions, aerosol emissions and land use changes, and the natural factors can't explain the change in temperatures we've had by themselves.

btw - this will only become a calamity if we continue to sit here going 'nananananana I can't hear you' and doing fuck all about it like we have for the last 20 years. It's entirely possible for us to avoid the worst excesses if we take some decisive action, we've just run out of time for dithering.

If it does end up being catastrophic it will be people like you* and bigfish who are to blame for spreading doubt and confusion when you should really just be listening to what the experts who have spent most of their lives studying this are saying.

btw, when I say I've looked at the data, I mean I've looked at both sides - I've checked out every single link bigfish has ever posted on here about climate change, and as far as I can remember he's never once actually managed to stand his ground and back his point up when I or others have either refuted it entirely, or shown why it's not at all inconsistent with anthropogenic climate change theory. There are 2 reasons for this - 1 he doesn't know what he's talking bout, and 2 he's wrong.


*ok, the likes of the producers of channel 4's documentary have much more impact, but it's the same thing on a different scale... illinformed people going 'yeah but why... I'm not going to read that report, I'm not an expert, just tell me why... oh but this glacier here is still expaninding / it snowed here on tuesday, so that must mean it's all bollocks'
 
As you know, something in excess of 2.5 billion people in the world, rely on biomass for their energy needs.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2006/fs_cooking.pdf

That means, burning wood in campfires or cook stoves, burning dung, etc. This has a number of negative effects, on health, on deforestation, etc. But it also has serious economic effects as much time must be spent collecting biomass, and the inefficiency of the fuel acts as a deterrent to these economies moving forward, and thus enriching the people of the third world.

Making the switchover for these people from biomass, to fossil fuels, be it oil or natural gas, etc, makes sense for their health and economic welfare in the short to medium term. When you do the math, the cost associated with bringing about this change, while concentrating resources in development of renewable energy sources, makes much greater economic sense than the ham handed Kyoto approach, and is more humanitarian, in that it is a method of bringing about betterment in the lives of third world citizens now and in the short term, as opposed to expressing concern for the welfare of their descendants, who will be alive 100 - 200 years from now.

Also, enabling the Third World to advance economically, allows them to participate in the energy supply corrections that are needed, as opposed to remaining a perpetual drain on resources.

Why direct our gaze to people who can't afford to cook any other way? They're hardly a massive problem.

In fact,

WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT POOR PEOPLE COOKING WITH SOLID FUELS AND BEING UNCONNECTED TO POWER GRIDS (WHICH THEY DON'T HAVE FINANCIAL RESOURCES TO BUY OR USE), WHEN GOVERNMENTS PERMIT THE EMISSIONS OF MANUFACTURERS AND PRODUCERS WHICH POLLUTE THE AIR, LAND, AND SEA.

Producers and manufacturers to use massive amounts of energy to make products that people don't need.
Governments allow producers and manufacturers to spew pollution into the environment that damages the health of the ecosystem.



UK GOVERNMENT UNDER LABOUR HAS FORCED LOCAL COUNCIL TAXPAYERS TO FIND THE FUNDS TO CLEAN UP AFTER MANUFACTURER AND PRODUCER POLLUTION IN THEIR LOCALITY.

UK Government also allows corporations who have historically polluted the land and water table to continue to operate in UK.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
it's what studying this at university, then spending 9 years looking at the data and reading the reports does for you...

Hang on a minute - if you have all that experience, how come you are unable to anti up an exposition of the CO2 driver theory from first principles?

ie this is the only logical interpretation of the data that is coming out, combined with the only robust model taking into account all factors to explain climate changes that have already happened. Take out the anthorpogenic greenhouse gas emissions, aerosol emissions and land use changes, and the natural factors can't explain the change in temperatures we've had by themselves.

And this is just arrant nonsense. "Natural factors", i.e, the influence of the Sun, cosmic rays, clouds, etc. are more than capable of explaining the variation of global temperature over the entire Holocene period, including the 20th century warming of less than 1C, which is well within the bounds of natural variability and not at all "unprecedented". On the other hand, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are known to follow temperature on all time scales. Right now, temperatures are falling while CO2 is rising. The models are little more than the sum of the modelers prejudices, i.e. the CO2 driver "theory" prejudice, which is endemic among climate modelers of the IPCC variety. So when you "take out the anthorpogenic greenhouse gas emissions" (i.e. the CO2 driver "theory") there's little wonder your model doesn't work. That doesn't mean that reality is wrong and that the models are right. It means that you are practicing pseudoscience and trying to palm it off here as the real McCoy.
 
Hang on a minute - if you have all that experience, how come you are unable to anti up an exposition of the CO2 driver theory from first principles?
No scientists dispute the greenhouse effect. If you wish to dispute it, you have the burden of proof. Nobody here is obliged to explain it to you yet again. If, as you claim, you don't understand the theory of the greenhouse effect, then you are in no position to dispute it.

BTW, you still haven't answered the question you were asked when you brought this up in November.

On the other hand, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are known to follow temperature on all time scales.
How many more times are you going to post up this myth? :rolleyes:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11659

Right now, temperatures are falling while CO2 is rising.
How many more times do we need to explain to you that this is about long term trends and that nobody is claiming that CO2 is the only factor? :rolleyes:

It means that you are practicing pseudoscience
You are the one promoting pseudoscience.
 
... Here's the analogy:

A few years ago, Bush and Co. told us that Saddam Hussein was the devil incarnate, and that he was building WMDs, nukes, poison gas, in giant underground bunkers in the Iraqi desert.

Colin Powell went to the UN, with pictures and everything, showing that it was so. The head of the CIA said it was dead certain that this was going on. All the authorities and experts, said it was so, and something had to be done about it now. And the usually fractious Congress, and the UK parliament mostly, shut up and toed the line.

And people ate it up. Hell, I did.:oops: So, off to war we go, to spend trillions of dollars, waste a bunch of lives white and brown and black, but.....the whole premise of the war was either a mistake, or an outright lie.


So, here we are today. A bunch of political types, including the IPCC [see free spirit above, saying that the IPCC tailors its releases for political purposes], telling us that once again, the sky is falling, big time. Doomsday is right around the corner, and we have to do something big, now.

In this case, they want to tax our asses off, for the benefit of 'future generations'. What that means, is that they'll tax us, but they aren't making any promises about what they're going to spend the tax money on.

Does any of this rub you even slightly the wrong way?

You were pretty much right about the govt last time, with Saddam. So are you going to take the fishhook firmly in your cheek on this one, meekly, without asking any questions at all?

First class analogy, JC - it takes backbone to admit to a big mistake as you do above, so kudos to you for doing it.

Anyway, here's another analogy you might enjoy:

A person went to see a doctor who diagnosed a potentially fatal disease.

The doctor prescribed a course of treatment that was claimed to halt the
disease and restore good health.

Unfortunately the treatment was too much for the person, who died a slow and excruciating death.

Some time later a post-mortem was carried out on the patient.

It was discovered that there was no evidence of the potentially fatal
disease.

In fact, the disease was non-existent and the person was very healthy.

It was the course of treatment that killed him!

(Sound familiar? Just substitute climate scientist for doctor; anthropogenic global warming for the disease; and elimination of CO2 emissions for treatment)
 
A person went to see a doctor who diagnosed a potentially fatal disease
You should stick to the Cut&Paste jobs. You might make yourself look foolish with them, but that's nothing compared to when you try to write something yourself. :)
 
A few years ago, Bush and Co. told us that Saddam Hussein was the devil incarnate, and that he was building WMDs, nukes, poison gas, in giant underground bunkers in the Iraqi desert.

Colin Powell went to the UN, with pictures and everything, showing that it was so. The head of the CIA said it was dead certain that this was going on. All the authorities and experts, said it was so, and something had to be done about it now. And the usually fractious Congress, and the UK parliament mostly, shut up and toed the line.

And people ate it up. Hell, I did.:oops: So, off to war we go, to spend trillions of dollars, waste a bunch of lives white and brown and black, but.....the whole premise of the war was either a mistake, or an outright lie.
The problem with this analogy is that many people asked to see the evidence and did not believe Bush, Blair and co for one second. Hans Blix, the equivalent of the IPCC in your analogy, explicitly refused to agree that there was evidence.

In this case, there is evidence, plenty of it. This is the reverse of before - with Saddam, you believed without evidence; with the IPCC you refuse to believe despite the evidence. I would suggest that the mechanisms you use to make judgements are faulty - you start with what you would like to believe is true and work backwards from there.
 
The problem with this analogy is that many people asked to see the evidence and did not believe Bush, Blair and co for one second. Hans Blix, the equivalent of the IPCC in your analogy, explicitly refused to agree that there was evidence.

In this case, there is evidence, plenty of it. This is the reverse of before - with Saddam, you believed without evidence; with the IPCC you refuse to believe despite the evidence. I would suggest that the mechanisms you use to make judgements are faulty - you start with what you would like to believe is true and work backwards from there.

You're wrong. There was evidence, it just turns out that it was incorrectly interpreted, or insufficient, or fabricated. It was played up by Bush.

Bix was one of a few knowledgeable voices crying out in the wilderness. The average citizen, like yourself, was sceptical simply because they didn't like Bush and the US.

Today, with climate change, the evidence is equivocal on many fronts, and contrary to what you've said, there are scientific and economic equivalents of Hans Blix, taking a stand against the established doctrine. One difference is that this time around, the 'Hans Blix' characters aren't being merely scoffed at, they are being demonized by reactionary elements on the opposing side that are seeking to quell any discussion or dissent.
 
I would suggest that the mechanisms you use to make judgements are faulty - you start with what you would like to believe is true and work backwards from there.

I would suggest that your judgement is coloured by your previously held beliefs, such that, being 'anti-war', etc. you will naturally conclude that anything said by those 'promoting' it, must be faulty or fictitious; and since you are an 'environmentalist', anything said by those who oppose capitalism or the economic status quo, must similarly be lying or deluded.

I suggest you revisit Descartes, and give your own judgement mechanism a makeover.
 
The 2007 IPCC report estimates that the sea-level rise over the next century, will be about a foot. [IPCC 2007b:fig 10.6.1]

That's not peanuts, but the earth has experienced the same amount of sea level rise since the 1860s, without catastrophic results.

Also, the IPCC keeps lowering its estimate. In the 80s, when the whole scare got started, the prediction was more than 6 feet. By the 90s, the estimate was revised down to two feet.

Now it's down to one foot.

About 9,500 years ago, you could walk to Denmark to Eastern England.
The 20-40mm sea level rise per year following 7,500BC is about the same
predicted for the next century. Although this seems like a small change, the
effects were catastrophic. At 7,500BC, the coast of northern Europe ran
directly from eastern England to Denmark. Doggerland—the region now
submerged below the North Sea—had a coastline of lagoons, marshes,
mudflats, and beaches
http://geochemistry.usask.ca/bill/Courses/Climate/Coastal catastrophe prt.pdf
 
But that's what Bigfish has just said if you bothered to look. :p
No it isn't. Try reading it yourself before you accuse me of not doing so. :rolleyes:

This is what bigfish said:
increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are known to follow temperature on all time scales.

This is what the article said:
New Scientist said:
The ice ages show that temperature can determine CO2 as well as CO2 driving temperature. Some sceptics – not scientists – have seized upon this idea and are claiming that the relation is one way, that temperature determines CO2 levels but CO2 levels do not affect temperature.

To repeat, the evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas depends mainly on physics, not on the correlation with past temperature, which tells us nothing about cause and effect. And while the rises in CO2 a few hundred years after the start of interglacials can only be explained by rising temperatures, the full extent of the temperature increases over the following 4000 years can only be explained by the rise in CO2 levels.
 
I would suggest that your judgement is coloured by your previously held beliefs, such that, being 'anti-war', etc. you will naturally conclude that anything said by those 'promoting' it, must be faulty or fictitious; and since you are an 'environmentalist', anything said by those who oppose capitalism or the economic status quo, must similarly be lying or deluded.

I suggest you revisit Descartes, and give your own judgement mechanism a makeover.
But one of the considerations when weighing evidence is to ask what motives someone may have for pushing a particular agenda. So, for instance, with Bush and Blair, it seemed clear to me that they wanted war, so without cast-iron proof there was no reason to believe them.

What motives does the Hadley Centre, for instance, have for 'pushing' the idea that anthropogenic climate change is now proved beyond reasonable doubt, and deliberately falsifying their models? The only motives I can think of would be for them to be pushing the opposite agenda.
 
What motives does the Hadley Centre, for instance, have for 'pushing' the idea that anthropogenic climate change is now proved beyond reasonable doubt, and deliberately falsifying their models? The only motives I can think of would be for them to be pushing the opposite agenda.
More money for further research and equipment?

Satellites don't come cheap, neither do supercomputers. ;)
 
More money for further research and equipment?

Satellites don't come cheap, neither do supercomputers. ;)
So it's an internally decided conspiracy to which all workers there will have to be signed up, but which, if found out, would make the government funders very angry? Sorry, I've met people who work there and I don't buy that for a second. They're just honest research scientists.
 
its-a-conspiracy.jpg
 
But that's what Bigfish has just said if you bothered to look. :p

Are you absolutely certain?

Here's what Bigfish said again:
On the other hand, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are known to follow temperature on all time scales. Right now, temperatures are falling while CO2 is rising. The models are little more than the sum of the modelers prejudices, i.e. the CO2 driver "theory" prejudice, which is endemic among climate modelers of the IPCC variety. So when you "take out the anthorpogenic greenhouse gas emissions" (i.e. the CO2 driver "theory") there's little wonder your model doesn't work.

First bigfish says 'Rise in C02 is caused by rise in temperature'.(i.e. C02 rises only following a temperature rise).

Then he says 'temperature is falling while C02 is rising'. (implying that CO2 will fall because temperature is falling).

These look like a reverse of 'CO2 driver theory' - a one-way model that temperature drives CO2 (no scientist uses a one-way model because even though there is a correlation between CO2 rising and temperature rising, this doesn't mean that one causes the other).

e2a: sceptic myth number 363: CO2 rises as temperatures fall (http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11640)

Then bigfish claims IPCC climate modellers use a one-way 'CO2 driver theory'.

No idea whether this is true of the IPCC climate models or not.
But I did find this: http://www.google.com/search?&q=Prize-Winning+Peacekeeper+Asks+UN+to+Admit+Climate+Change

Unfortunately the reply Bigfish gives to Signal 11 on 'anthropogenic CO2 from industry being removed from climate modelling is almost unintelligible to me.


In all the papers I've read, the correlation between C02 levels and temperature has been discussed, but I have never read anywhere that 'CO2 drives temperature change' (CO2 driver theory).

No scientists claim a one-way relationship between CO2 and temperature.
Bigfish has claimed that IPCC base their models on the one-way 'CO2 driver theory'
 
This is what the article said:

All the graphs in that article show CO2 following the temp.


And if as you and the article claim that this is simply an initial lag whereafter the CO2 drives the temp then why do all those graphs also show the temp start to drop while CO2 is still rising?

:D:D:D
 
These look like a reverse of 'CO2 driver theory i.e. that temperature drives CO2 (never heard of that before).

Funny that but climatologists keep stating that warming oceans will release more CO2. This is a fundamental part of the positive feedback that climatologists are so worried about.
 
Funny that but climatologists keep stating that warming oceans will release more CO2. This is a fundamental part of the positive feedback that climatologists are so worried about.

I think the oceans are a key factor in the whole cycle.

Water is the biggest carbon-sink after atmosphere, vegetation/landmass.

My small scientific brain is telling me there's probably a maximum CO2 saturation point for the ocean that affects the ocean/atmospheric C02-temp relationship in a dramatic way - for example - increasing acidification of the oceans via C02-absorption could explain mass extinctions of ocean fauna and flora at the end of the Cambrian Period (which trilobites survived, only to disappear the end of the Permian Period).

I really ought to read up on it at some point.

Back to anthropogenic influence on climate change. We're right to be worried, and right to be concerned about human-caused change to the environment. Our effluence and air-pollution is changing the environment - that much we do know. Humankind and the plants/animals we like to eat prefer a certain type of environment, and we ought to do everything within our power to ensure we keep the water and land and air as clean as is humanly possible.
 
Provide a citation where the IPCC said that.

I'm happy to provide citations for any factual assertions, and I will do so, but a question: when I do, what difference will it make to you? Why do you want me to do so? Will any citation cause you to reassess your position?

In other words, are you looking for the sources in order to check them, and weigh that evidence against what you believe, or are you merely hoping that I've slipped up, so that you can finger point at the 'nonbeliever'?
 
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