its complicated

8/14/2009 4:09:31 PM

Boy it sure is hot out today. I bet it is because of global warming. I mean, what else could it possibly be?!?!?

8/14/2009 4:14:31 PM

Quote :

"And no scientist I've ever heard of has ever made that claim."

Then you haven't been fucking listening.

Quote :

"McIntyre says he doesn't expect any significant surprises after analysing the raw data, but believes that reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific principle, and so raw data and methods should be disclosed."

Get that bullshit out of here. Science isn't about reproducibility. Jeez.

8/14/2009 4:32:52 PM

uh

8/14/2009 6:17:27 PM

Fan et al. Chinese Science Bulletin 2008

Quote :

"The recent increase in typhoon (tropical cyclone) activity has attracted great interest and induced heated debates over whether it is linked to global warming or only a return to an active phase of the well-known multi-decadal variability."

8/14/2009 11:10:32 PM

We only have two more months until the point of no return.... and then it will be only two more months.....then two more months....we gotta do something now in the next two months before its too late....

Every decade there is a new enviro disaster that needs to be fixed. When did the global warming buzz start? Or will we get a new one in 2010?

8/14/2009 11:15:57 PM

Quote :

"Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004: Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

This is an exceptionally bad idea, which runs against the grain of how science is done, and thus makes the science poorer as a result. I have a real problem with this kind of mentality, which we wouldn't tolerate in any other branch of science.

8/14/2009 11:44:47 PM

^
Reading the blog rankexploits will give a better idea of the story behind this. Lucia is one of the better "skeptic" blogs since as far as I can tell she isn't a total crackpot and will actually criticize some of the crap put force by the "auditors".

[Edited on August 15, 2009 at 1:51 AM. Reason : x]

8/15/2009 1:51:10 AM

Here's a good opinion/perspective on things imo.

Quote :

"Global warming and the new dark ages Environmental Policy Examiner - Thomas Fuller I just finished reading Heaven and Earth--Global Warming: The Missing Science by Ian Plimer. I'll do a longer review later (short version--I learned an awful lot, he could be a better wordsmith and I'm still a 'lukewarmer'). But towards the end of the book Plimer gives a passionate defence of science and an attack on the global warming industry, and he brings up an analogy that is so apropos that I can't believe I haven't seen it before. Plimer compares what's happening now regarding the debate on global warming to what happened with Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union 7 decades ago. When Lysenko convinced Stalin that he could improve grain production by treating seeds before they were planted, Lysenkoism became a state approved methodology. Dissenters were killed or sent to the gulags. An entire nation converted their agricultural system to accommodate Lysenko's theories. But the grain refused to grow. Sixty years later, they went back to science. It seems to me that global warming has divided scientists into two basic camps. The AGW proponents are a new breed, confident in their computer models, dismissive of those who think skepticism should be the first response to new theories, and for the most part conducting their science while driving a computer. The second camp is both older and older-fashioned, for the most part, and is bent on going out and getting the data and seeing where the data leads them. Probably pretty obvious from my description which camp I favor. AGW proponents have experienced considerable political success, and national governments and world institutions are contemplating changing the world's infrastructure to suit the needs of this new political doctrine. But the science is clearly not there yet. When competing papers by Michael Mann and Chris Landsea come out the same week giving diametrically opposed conclusions about the frequency of hurricanes, given Mann's problems with proxies and statistics in the past I know whose paper I'm more inclined to trust. The debate is not yet over. But if the political decisions are made now, while the debate is still in progress, we risk turning away from our best chance to lift one third of the planet out of poverty, using the same tools that lifted us out of poverty just a century ago--cheap and readily available energy. We can not only condemn these people to a life of miserable deprivation, we can turn our backs on our own futures and begin to retreat from what technology can give us. If instead we moved practically and sanely towards a greener technology base, led by research and development instead of eco-lobbyists and windmill producers, we could stabilise and then reduce emissions over the course of this century without actively oppressing the poor (what else on earth can you call it?) and continue to move ahead. The worst of the eco-warriors are not shy about saying they want a much lower population on this planet living a vastly reduced lifestyle. Again, just this week one such said that he wanted more natural disasters to strike the U.S. to drum up support for repressive measures against CO2 emissions. Men like that are the enemies of the rest of us who want to live a normal life and give our children a better future. By brazenly claiming that there is no future without sacrificing our energy base, they propagate a Big Lie that would send us back to a past long before Lysenko--back to a cold, cold period we called the Dark Ages. But they didn't need Lysenko back then--they had the Inquisition to tell them how to treat skeptics."

http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d14-Global-warming-and-the-new-dark-ages?cid=exrss-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner

8/17/2009 4:55:22 PM

That's the biggest bunch of shit I've read on this topic in a while. That shouldn't have even been posted.

8/17/2009 5:46:07 PM

thank you for that deep insight into what was posted. Surely, your rebuttal using facts and sources will be extremely helpful to those reading your post.

8/17/2009 6:39:44 PM

Not worth the time or effort to rebut, hence my response. There is just so much wrong with it, and anyone with any sense knows it.

8/17/2009 7:49:47 PM

so, really, you are just saying what Al Gore told you to think. got it.

8/17/2009 7:54:32 PM

I USE SCIENCE TO THINK!

8/17/2009 7:58:54 PM

lol, yeah we're totally not using "climate change" as an excuse to try to deny developing nations of dirt cheap power. Not at all.

8/18/2009 12:16:59 AM

personally i dont want china having dirt cheap power

8/18/2009 12:19:17 AM

^^ I'm sure you really care about that

8/18/2009 8:24:07 AM

^nice crappy argument. It doesn't matter whether I care about or not. It's the damn truth. Millions of Africans die every year of disease, poverty, and genocide/war and the western countries keep telling them that global warming is something they should worry about. If that's not the biggest crock of shit ever, then I don't know what is.

8/18/2009 9:07:56 AM

^^ yah, it cracks me up. So many AGW skeptics have jumped on this argument as if they actually give a shit. I wonder how many of them would continue to care if someone suggested easing the consequences for poor nations by reducing western farming protections and increasing foreign aid. "Thay gonna take ur jurbs and our taxes!!!! "

Basically, all AGW skeptics are not skeptic of the science or the moral consequences, they'e skeptical of government intervention and higher taxes. You will never meet a progressive AGW skeptic. Why? Because its all politics.

8/18/2009 9:23:09 AM

who's keeping cheap power from 3rd world countries? who's doing this? i just would like to know. sure, the power infrastructures in most developing countries are dog poop, but to say that it's because of global warming activist is kinda silly. yes, people are trying to help them find alternatives to chopping down all their forests, but no one is keeping fossil fuels away from them.

if anything, these folks need to get nuclear power, not coal or ng, but we would never let that happen for other reasons...

8/18/2009 9:52:36 AM

^they're being constantly discouraged from building coal plants. They're still doing it, but they're being told they shouldn't b/c global warming will be the death of us all, so to speak.

^^Socks, who really cares. The end result of a carbon tax or cap and trade (globally) is FUCKING over 3rd world countries.

8/18/2009 12:17:42 PM

Why do we not have natural gas cars.

I was thinking at work the other day; if we had natural gas cars using a quick disconnect line i could fill my car up at home. With this implemented i would never visit a gas station again.

Then i realized our friends at ExXon and Chevron would be out $billions . No wonder the EPA license for a natural gas filled car is prohibitively expensive, at home filling of natural gas cars is outlawed, and little research or economic policy is in place to encourage their use. No matter common sense, economic feasibility, and cleaner emissions when Big Oil has to take a hit in the wallet!

USA #1

8/18/2009 12:22:13 PM

yeah not really. Do you honestly think Exxon and BP wouldn't hop on the natural gas train?

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 12:34 PM. Reason : gasoline is still more energy dense as well]

8/18/2009 12:34:21 PM

Quote :

"The following graph (Graph C) shows the ERBE results in the _____________, which is real recorded data, not a computer model. The 11 other graphs are the results from the models used by the UN and everyone else which state that more radiation should be held within Earth’s system, thereby causing warming of the climate. More simply put, the UN results illogically predict that as the oceans got warmer, the earth would simply hold more heat. The UN explains that it is CO2 which is holding this extra energy. This theory is not supportable by the simple fact that CO2 cannot hold that much heat, it is a very poor greenhouse gas compared with water. If anything, more clouds -water vapor- would conceivably hold the extra heat, but the corresponding rise in global temperatures this would cause have not been observed. This leaves only one conclusion, the Earth is radiating the extra heat into space, and this is supported by the data. The ERBE results, which are factual data from real measurements made by satellite, show the exact opposite result from the UN/IPCC Projections (computer models which are not real data). As seas warm on earth, the earth releases more heat into space and the satellite results prove it. "

Who wants to guess which one of these is actual real satellite data and not a computer model?

(hint: its the one totally different than the others)

8/18/2009 1:31:23 PM

^ Am I right that you're getting that from a MySpace Webforum?
http://forums.myspace.com/t/4584687.aspx?fuseaction=forums.viewthread

Or is this a chain mail that is getting passed around that I have no received yet?

8/18/2009 2:28:37 PM

I have not. I don't go on Myspace.

8/18/2009 4:14:04 PM

Quote :

"'Postpone Kyoto successor', urges climate boffin The chances of an international climate agreement being made at Copenhagen in December were already looking unlikely - but Japanese scientist Dr Syun Akasofu thinks we may as well call it off completely. The Copenhagen Conference is where the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty to reduce CO2 emissions, is due to be signed. It's big business for climate quangos - one of the preliminary conferences in Poznan attracted 10,000 attendees, and that was just one of several preliminaries 'on the road to Copenhagen'. Akasofu reasons that because the USA and China will be developing coal for some years, until they can build out their nuclear energy capacity any promises to make cuts will be what he calls "rhetorical". India has already politely declined Western advice to de-industrialise (before it's barely begun to industrialise), and has rejected calls for CO2 emissions targets. "Is it useful to have any more conferences on global warming?" he asks in a paper published on Tuesday, adding that "such conferences are useless, although they are better than a world war". Akasofu accepts the hypothetical effects of CO2 to cause global warming, but says the observations point only a weak correlation (the rapid release of CO2 into the atmosphere since 1946 hasn't created a disaster) and absolutely no evidence of causation - so more science must be done. "Temporary or not, there must be unknown forces and causes to suppress the CO2 effect or even overcome it. In science, unlike in politics, a minority can be right," he adds. Akasofu was founding director of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, and is a former director of the Geophysical Institute. He was in a majority of scientists in a report for the Japanese Energy Commission which questioned the idea that industrial greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for climate change, and which we partially translated here. You can download his paper here (pdf). After another preliminary (this time in Bonn) ended last week, the EU's information website EurActive reported that: "Observers are now toning down their expectations for Copenhagen, as a complete agreement seems to be slipping out of sight in favour of a basic framework that could then be filled with substance in the course of 2010." In June, Russia said it would release 30 per cent more greenhouse gases by 2020, with President Dmitry Medvedev stating: "We will not cut off our development potential." With China and India backing him, economic growth could be the big winner in Copenhagen. ® "

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/20/postpone_kyoto/

8/21/2009 4:09:27 PM

clearly that guy has been paid off by the oil industry. you can't trust a word he says

8/21/2009 4:46:54 PM

^ lol how can you honestly mock that type of argument? You do the same thing when you complain that the majority of climate scientists (you know, the ones that believe AGW is real) are blinded by poiltics and elitism?

You shouldn't throw stones at glass houses?

8/21/2009 7:58:19 PM

it's hardly a "vast majority." No accurate poll has ever been conducted

8/21/2009 8:00:49 PM

^ hahaha yah, i want to hear your excuses on why all the polls i've posted in this thread that contradict your impressions (polls conducted by academics at the Univ of IL) are wrong and you're right (you're expert in polling too huh? AMAZING).

Anyways, I'll take the fact that you did not claim that you never make bullshit arguments questioning the motives of climate scientists as evidence that you acknowledge this fact.

Thanks bro.

[Edited on August 21, 2009 at 8:08 PM. Reason : ``]

8/21/2009 8:07:53 PM

Hey, I have no problem saying that many of the top alarmists are political hacks with agendas. I won't say that all scientists who believe in global fear-mongering are hacks, though.

It's been shown that there is a great deal of pressure put on scientists and university faculty members to toe the line. That is one of the reason I say there aren't any "accurate polls." When you fear for your job, are you really going to come out against the higher ups? Hell no.

8/21/2009 8:14:13 PM

hehe. But you ARE going to mock people that make the same kinda argument against climate change skeptics. lol you're a fucking hoot.

I also love your definition of an accurate poll means one where we can see past people's words and into their hearts. hehee because who can trust what people say.

Yep, you're above all reproach, my friend. A fact driven expert of all fields.

Peace out.

[Edited on August 21, 2009 at 8:27 PM. Reason : ``]

8/21/2009 8:18:21 PM

Just about every poll out there these days shows that the general population puts global warming last on a list of concerns, and the percentage of people that believe humans are to blame is becoming smaller and smaller.

8/24/2009 8:38:30 AM

I'm sorry, but there is a massive difference between pointing out the actual fact that the major proponents of AGW have massive agendas and mocking the claim that all AGW detractors are paid off by the oil lobby. I'm sorry that you don't see the difference

8/24/2009 8:58:55 PM

^ Wow, AGW proponents must be real idiots if they say that ever single skeptic is bought-and-paid for by the oil industry. Its such a bad argument it could be dispelled with a simple google search! Of course, that may be why I have rarely (never?) seen anyone on this board (let alone in the scientific community) make such a simplistic argument. It is a fact that some climate change skeptics are indeed funded either directly or indirectly by industries that have an interest in thwarting GHG regulations. Is every single AGW skeptic on the planet on the payroll? I don't think so. And I have never heard anyone make such a blanket claim that I remember. It sounds like you're creating a straw man to make your "argument" sound more reasonable.

That's gonna be all I gotta say about that. So don't think posting some hyperbolic editorial as "proof" that this argument is widely made by reasonable people and expect me to respond. If you google long enough, you will find kooks. And I don't feel like playing a game where you google AGW proponent kooks while I google AGW skeptic kooks. Its a waste of time.

[Edited on August 26, 2009 at 11:41 AM. Reason : ``]

8/26/2009 11:29:05 AM

Interesting article in Foreign Affairs about how we can fight climate change quickly and cheaply by reducing black carbon pollution (mainly from diesel vehicles and biomass burning stoves in developing countries) and ground-level ozone.
http://www.igsd.org/documents/PR_RamFAarticle_20Aug_1245pm.pdf

Not a long-term solution (since GHGs are what we really have to curb in the long run), but its "low hanging fruit" in the battle against climate change.

Here is a blog post from TNR explaining the issue.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/08/24/two-overlooked-climate-culprits.aspx

8/26/2009 11:32:26 AM

Exxon Mobil has donated over 4 times as much to global warming supporters than skeptics and yet you still spout crap like this. When will people realize that these energy companies will stay in the business of supplying energy, whether its oil or something else.

Quote :

"Much media attention has relentlessly focused on the influence of “Big Oil”—but the numbers don’t add up. Exxon Mobil is still vilified1 for giving around 23 million dollars, spread over roughly ten years, to skeptics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It amounts to about $2 million a year, compared to the US government input of well over $2 billion a year. The entire total funds supplied from Exxon amounts to less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008. Apparently Exxon was heavily “distorting the debate” with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time. (If so, it’s just another devastating admission of how effective government funding really is.) As an example for comparison, nearly three times the amount Exxon has put in was awarded to the Big Sky sequestration project to store just 0.1% of the annual carbon-dioxide output of the United States of America in a hole in the ground. The Australian government matched five years of Exxon funding with just one feel-good advertising campaign , “Think Climate. Think Change.” (but don’t think about the details). Perhaps if Exxon had balanced up its input both for and against climate change, it would have been spared the merciless attacks? It seems not, since it has donated more than four times as much to the Stanford-based Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). Exxon’s grievous crime is apparently just to help give skeptics a voice of any sort. The censorship must remain complete."

http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2009/08/putting-to-rest-big-oilskeptics-myth.html

8/26/2009 12:21:44 PM

^ Wait so you just posted evidence that Exxon did in fact give money to climate change skeptics...then critize me for saying that oil companies have given money to climate change skeptics????


I never said anything about relative size of donations (let alone talk specifically about Exxon's funding habits). But here I am getting drawn into another troll argument about things I have never said but are attributed to "my side" (as if its a damn football game).



Thanks but no thanks.

[Edited on August 26, 2009 at 12:30 PM. Reason : ``]

8/26/2009 12:29:32 PM

come on! i was showing they donate to both sides. and by all means, i know you're not naive enough to think that corporations like Exxon are gonna be left in the dark if there's a "green revolution".

8/26/2009 12:36:42 PM

At best you showed they are hedging their bets. They are funding AGW skeptics, but if they can't win the argument over AGW, they are also investing in alternative fuels. The article does not mention them funding research to show that AGW is real.

But even if it did, that would not contradict what I said.

8/26/2009 12:41:11 PM

lol, the point was that they gave less money to the skeptics. but it doesn't matter its a meaningless argument anyway.

8/26/2009 12:50:39 PM

Possibly because they think it is growing more likely that GHG emissions in the U.S. and other countries are going to be capped one way or another. Its in their best interests to come up with products that will make them money when those regulations are put in place.

Does it change the fact that they are funding skeptics? No.

But you're right that it is a meaningless argument. But for some reason, aaronburro thinks it is one worth having because he brought it up *shrug*

8/26/2009 1:20:50 PM

Quote :

"In a paper recently published in the international peer-reviewed journal Energy & Fuels, Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh (2009), Professor of Energy Conversion at The Ohio State University, addresses the residence time (RT) of anthropogenic CO2 in the air. He finds that the RT for bulk atmospheric CO2, the molecule 12CO2, is ~5 years, in good agreement with other cited sources (Segalstad, 1998), while the RT for the trace molecule 14CO2 is ~16 years. Both of these residence times are much shorter than what is claimed by the IPCC. The rising concentration of atmospheric CO2 in the last century is not consistent with supply from anthropogenic sources. Such anthropogenic sources account for less than 5% of the present atmosphere, compared to the major input/output from natural sources (~95%). Hence, anthropogenic CO2 is too small to be a significant or relevant factor in the global warming process, particularly when comparing with the far more potent greenhouse gas water vapor. The rising atmospheric CO2 is the outcome of rising temperature rather than vice versa. Correspondingly, Dr. Essenhigh concludes that the politically driven target of capture and sequestration of carbon from combustion sources would be a major and pointless waste of physical and financial resources."

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N31/EDIT.php

9/2/2009 4:34:39 PM

From the article cited:

Quote :

"Some 99% of the atmospheric CO2 molecules are 12CO2 molecules containing the stable isotope 12C (Segalstad, 1982). To calculate the RT of the bulk atmospheric CO2 molecule 12CO2, Essenhigh (2009) uses the IPCC data of 1990 with a total mass of carbon of 750 gigatons in the atmospheric CO2 and a natural input/output exchange rate of 150 gigatons of carbon per year (Houghton et al., 1990). The characteristic decay time (denoted by the Greek letter tau) is simply the former value divided by the latter value: 750 / 150 = 5 years. This is a similar value to the ~5 years found from 13C/12C carbon isotope mass balance calculations of measured atmospheric CO2 13C/12C carbon isotope data by Segalstad (1992); the ~5 years obtained from CO2 solubility data by Murray (1992); and the ~5 years derived from CO2 chemical kinetic data by Stumm & Morgan (1970)."

However:

Quote :

"The atmospheric lifetime of CO2 is often incorrectly stated to be only a few years because that is the average time for any CO2 molecule to stay in the atmosphere before being removed by mixing into the ocean, photosynthesis, or other processes. However, this ignores the balancing fluxes of CO2 into the atmosphere from the other reservoirs. It is the net concentration changes of the various greenhouse gases by all sources and sinks that determines atmospheric lifetime, not just the removal processes."

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

Quote :

"A model of the ocean and seafloor carbon cycle is subjected to injection of new CO2 pulses of varying sizes to estimate the resident atmospheric fraction over the coming 100 kyr. The model is used to separate the processes of air-sea equilibrium, an ocean temperature feedback, CaCO3 compensation, and silicate weathering on the residual anthropogenic pCO2 in the atmosphere at 1, 10, and 100 kyr. The mean lifetime of anthropogenic CO2 is dominated by the long tail, resulting in a range of 30–35 kyr. The long lifetime of fossil fuel carbon release implies that the anthropogenic climate perturbation may have time to interact with ice sheets, methane clathrate deposits, and glacial/interglacial climate dynamics"

http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf

Quote :

"CO2 released from combustion of fossil fuels equilibrates among the various carbon reservoirs of the atmosphere, the ocean, and the terrestrial biosphere on timescales of a few centuries. However, a sizeable fraction of the CO2 remains in the atmosphere, awaiting a return to the solid earth by much slower weathering processes and deposition of CaCO3. Common measures of the atmospheric lifetime of CO2, including the e-folding time scale, disregard the long tail. Its neglect in the calculation of global warming potentials leads many to underestimate the longevity of anthropogenic global warming. Here, we review the past literature on the atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 and its impact on climate, and we present initial results from a model intercomparison project on this topic. The models agree that 20–35% of the CO2 remains in the atmosphere after equilibration with the ocean (2–20 centuries). Neutralization by CaCO3 draws the airborne fraction down further on timescales of 3 to 7 kyr."

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100206

[Edited on September 2, 2009 at 5:03 PM. Reason : .]

9/2/2009 4:44:11 PM

Quote :

"Such anthropogenic sources account for less than 5% of the present atmosphere, compared to the major input/output from natural sources (~95%)."

Again, if the natural sources are in equilibrium, then the "~95%" is negligible. It was already there and just continues to be there.

9/2/2009 6:32:46 PM

Where does the debate stand on the multiplier effect nowadays? Doubling CO2 by itself is supposed to raise temperatures 1.2 deg C according to the IPCC, not much historically. The Al Gore effect is this 1.2 turning into 5 or more degrees due to expected multiplier effects in the Earth's atmosphere. as I understand it, this is the part that is controversial, as systems that have shown themselves to be stable over long periods of time are rarely dominated by positive feedback. Especially not to such a degree (as a natural system, it would be only surpassed by nuclear fission).

So, where does everyone here stand? Do you accept global warming, but insist the earth is dominated by either neutral or negative feedback and therefore is not much to worry about? Or do you accept the that the Earth's climate is dominated by positive feedback?

9/2/2009 10:34:36 PM

^the problem is that all the climate models use positive feedback. Unfortunately (for them) most evidence leans towards negative feedback. This would be why they're dreadfully wrong.

9/3/2009 8:44:40 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/ap_on_sc/us_sci_arctic_warming

this thing says the humans are making the arctic hotter than its been since ppl were buildin pyramids

9/3/2009 10:16:30 PM

stick to chit chat.

9/3/2009 10:17:54 PM