The Climate Change Thread

[Inside Shoulder]

Yes, condescension. Always the winning road to take.

I apologise for trying to point out that it isn't the job of scientists to 'convince' the public of x or y. You seem to have a warped view on what scientists in this field should be doing. You are skim-reading abstracts and making sweeping statements about the entire debate, which Bru has repeatedly tried to correct. But again I apologise.

I'm out.

.

good - someone wants to know the answer and wont accept your say so
On Bru's own response the abstract did not reflect what the article proved.
You added nothing to this debate. You should consider it a good days work.
I must say, having reread my post, I cannot see an ounce of condescension: I responded to you as my equal.

 

[Bruwheresmycar]

Your are making positive claims:

• the scientific consensus is....
• the literature supports AGW
• the literature implicates CO2

Good point, I did make those claims (but they were in response to posivitve claims you made which misrepresented these simple facts).
Do you think I'm wrong on any of those points IS?

It is a common tactic of "believers" that if someone wants to know how we got to the consensus they are labelled a "skeptic".

No, I absolutely hate using that term. I am of the opinion people who think AGW is a load of crap are giving skeptics & rational minded people a bad name. I wish they'd stop labeling themselves as such.

But the way this discussion has evolved, I just say "skeptic" to avoid unnecessary confusion. I used it in this post because people who think AGW is a load of crap commonly refer to the "poltical implication" argument - which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. How did we get from discussing a nature paper to that? There is no logical connection.

I am skeptical about everything - I require proof in order to accept things.

I am a pretty skeptical person as well. I hate pseudoscience with a passion.

Now, you say you require "proof". But you don't seem very willing to look at the evidence or willing to check the sources of the experts you keep saying you don't know who to believe.

I'm not asking you to speculate about their personal opinions.

Yet the rest of this post is a speculation on opinions. There are publishing scientists who believe the IPCC are underestimating changes to the climate. But you don't need to find out why they think that, you just need to read what their research infers from experiments/physics/mathematics as to where the climate is heading. Same goes for climate skeptics publishing for the IPCC. Look at the research not the opinions.

Anyway I'm just repeating myself over and over so 1 more post will do me.

edit:

On Bru's own response the abstract did not reflect what the article proved.

Not at all. The abstract is written for scientists to interpret the contents of a paper, which is exactly what they did and it reflected their paper. The actual research you do only takes up a small part of an abstract. http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html

 

[Scarfman]

IS, you're spamming this thread. 11/20 of the previous posts are yours. And based on your reaction to the one piece of science you have quoted, you are prepared to turn black into white. I really detest the fact that no reasonable conversation is possible in this thread because you are taking up so much space. I'm "ignoring" your profile as I write this, but all it will do is make the thread incoherent.

 

[cyclopath]

IS, you're spamming this thread. 11/20 of the previous posts are yours. And based on your reaction to the one piece of science you have quoted, you are prepared to turn black into white. I really detest the fact that no reasonable conversation is possible in this thread because you are taking up so much space. I'm "ignoring" your profile as I write this, but all it will do is make the thread incoherent.

Yeah, that will make the thread incoherent. A short step from its present status of unreadable.
How about everyone step back from the keyboards and save everyone from more of the same. Clearly, there are parties here who cannot reach any common ground, no matter how convincing some of them may be.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

IS, you're spamming this thread. 11/20 of the previous posts are yours. And based on your reaction to the one piece of science you have quoted, you are prepared to turn black into white. I really detest the fact that no reasonable conversation is possible in this thread because you are taking up so much space. I'm "ignoring" your profile as I write this, but all it will do is make the thread incoherent.

I am going to step away save for this: that is wrong and is itself a misrepresentation. Apparently "given" in a scientific abstract does not mean what it means in every other part of human discourse.
I think that may be the real problem with leaving the scientists to explain the issue.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Yes, condescension. Always the winning road to take.

I apologise for trying to point out that it isn't the job of scientists to 'convince' the public of x or y. You seem to have a warped view on what scientists in this field should be doing. You are skim-reading abstracts and making sweeping statements about the entire debate, which Bru has repeatedly tried to correct. But again I apologise.

I'm out.

.

26 April 2012
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/changeyourmind/

http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/Chapter4.pdf

For those of you who havent blocked me i can thoroughly recommend the article immediately above as a fantastic analysis of the learning, confirmation that communication by scientists is a problem and acknowledgement that scientists need to communicate.

 

[Scotty]

IS, you're spamming this thread. 11/20 of the previous posts are yours. And based on your reaction to the one piece of science you have quoted, you are prepared to turn black into white. I really detest the fact that no reasonable conversation is possible in this thread because you are taking up so much space. I'm "ignoring" your profile as I write this, but all it will do is make the thread incoherent.

Not that I disagree with your point, but writing that and pressing ignore at the same time doesn't really give him the right of reply, does it?

 

[Scarfman]

Yeah, I did think about that. So I clicked on "show ignored content" once, just to be fair. If you can read those posts, you'll know that I instantly regretted it.

 

[Sully]

I'd like to ask a question.
13 months, 37 pages, 729 replies, has anyone changed their mind about one thing reading this thread? (I'm actually interested)

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Yes - although the thread only got me looking and serendipitously the ABC ran a promotion for a show on 26.4.2012...which then got me looking on their website and googling the name of the author of the above link.
My quest for understanding would have been thwarted by Scarfman's conviction as to his own knowledge and ability to communicate. He may have the former but it is impossible to tell by reason of his glaring deficiency in the latter.
Having read the article to which I provided the link above I regret to say that he would be wasting his time writing a book if his aim were to communicate something: there are people far better equipped to do so.

 

[fatprop]

Climate change alarmist warnings all hot air, says British scientist James Lovelock

• Gemma Jones
• The Daily Telegraph
• April 25, 2012 12:00AM

CLIMATE Commissioner Tim Flannery's work has been labelled "alarmist" by a world renowned climate scientist who says his own dire predictions were "wrong".
Just six years after predicting climate change would kill billions by the end of this century, British scientist James Lovelock said warming was not happening at forecast rates.
"There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," Mr Lovelock, who still believes in climate change, told MSNBC.
"The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time ... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that."
In the interview from his home in Britain, the 92-year-old said Professor Flannery's book The Weather Makers and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth were "alarmist".


Drought of climate facts
THE three wise monkeys of Australian climate science, Professors Will Steffen, Matthew England and David Karoly, wrote a self-justifying report.
Professor Flannery has praised Mr Lovelock in the past, particularly his Gaia theory that the earth is a single and self regulating organism.
Has Tim Flannery been discredited with all the wet weather lately? Do you still believe in man-made climate change, or is it just like Y2K for the new millennium? Tell us below
"Within this century the concept of a strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest," he told the ABC last year. In a review in The Monthly of Mr Lovelock's last book The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, Professor Flannery said his scientific credentials were "impeccable".
The book, Professor Flannery said, had an "important message" that "in a few years, or a few decades at most, abrupt changes in Earth's climate will begin, which will end up killing almost all of us". A Climate Commission spokeswoman defended Professor Flannery's work.
"The Weather Makers is an accurate and balanced work. It's a critically acclaimed piece of work that inspires motivation to act, not fear," she said.
"The most important message is that hope is not lost, we can still act to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
Greens Leader Christine Milne said the climate was still warming.
"Every single year from 2001 on has been one of the 13 hottest years on record and the clear scientific evidence is that it is human activities driving temperatures ever higher ... we can't get complacent about what needs to be done," she said.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Hold on fatprop I've only just worked out what to believe

 

[Scarfman]

Two populist writers go head-to-head in the Murdoch press. Who needs scholarly papers?

I love the fair and balanced poll question:

Has Tim Flannery been discredited with all the wet weather lately? Do you still believe in man-made climate change, or is it just like Y2K for the new millennium?

Q. Do you think climate change is a real threat

Yes 18%
No 82%

Maybe they could ask if Iraq had anything to do with 911 while they're at it.

 

[Bruwheresmycar]

I don't know how the author of that article read that entire interview and thought the key points were that Tim Flannery is wrong and "the world should be half way to frying". Here it is: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_new...lock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

He seems to have written some things in a book he wrote 7 years ago and backtracked on some of the stuff he wrote. He also said other people at the time were exaggerating things. It's got nothing to do with climate science but popular books. But we shouldn't let that get in the way of a good story.

Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”
He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.
“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.
He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.
“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment...he-said-on-global-warming-20120425-1xlnc.html


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Karl]

Just a comment on the raft of predictions that are not being born out or have comprehensively been shown to be wrong - this must mean the models, and the methods of modeling, for future climate system behavior are flawed. In addition, many of the supposed consequences of warming are being contradicted by actual events (I've posted links and other material, all of it actual data or perfectly credible and often from relevant journals).

So we have, on any objective assessment, flawed models using incomplete information generating bad data. And yet we are expected to accept it as gospel and make far reaching laws and economic policy based on the predictions made using these same models or tweaked versions of them.

What a strange situation.

 

[Scarfman]

About every ten pages or so I like to make this point. The upside of climate change governance is that we might save the world, and we'll certainly make it nicer, and we were going to have to move away from fossil fuels anyway. The downside is that as individuals, we might be very slightly worse off financially.

Anyone who prioritises the latter over the former is a sad, small person.

 

[Karl]

About every ten pages or so I like to make this point. The upside of climate change governance is that we might save the world, and we'll certainly make it nicer, and we were going to have to move away from fossil fuels anyway. The downside is that as individuals, we might be very slightly worse off financially.

Anyone who prioritises the latter over the former is a sad, small person.

\


You'll certainly make it nicer? How is that? Carbon Dioxide is hardly the only threat to the environment (if indeed slightly higher levels of co2 are in fact any threat to the envoronment). What about deforestation (which is also one of the largest contributers to carbon output), chemical pollution, mining, other harmful outputs from industrial processes, habitat destruction, over fishing, poor agricultrual practices, over-development etc? Is your carbon tax going to fix that?

And you say we might be very slightly worse off financially. How about you explain for us the impacts on resource costs and power prices and the costs of manufactured goods and general economic impacts and identify the nature and extent of this "very slightly" you speak of.

 

[Bruwheresmycar]

Just a comment on the raft of predictions that are not being born out or have comprehensively been shown to be wrong

Which predictions?

 

[Gnostic]

As Scarfie likes to reiterate his point every few pages, there are number of points that both sides like to ignore.

1) How will changing the output level of CO2 at the exclusion of al the other Greenhouse gases reach the temerature reductions we seek? SOme polutants have significantly higher Greenhouse impacts than CO2 depending on the atmospheric zone of deposition. Indeed given the other impacts that CO2 concenration is predicted to have by way of altering PH, osmotic transfer at the cellular level and other effects, the increasing of the other pollutants really needs to be addressed as well.

2) At no point in the massive push for "renewable" energy sources has there been any significant discussion on the input fotprint to produce the renwable source. For exampe, think of the inputs required to build a wind turbine. They are genrally made from a composite of Carbon Fibre (the resins being largely derives from petrochemical sources or very highly energy intensive production) and Aluminium (a very energy intesive metal). I have read studies which have assessed the lag time for the average wind turbine to break even in regards to its carbon inputs as opsed to its carbon savings from renewable energy production as being in the vicinity of 40 years. Now as those studies were funded by the current genration operators I would suggest that the figures are a worst case scenario, but even at 30 or 25 years it is a disaster as the maximum life expectancy on one of these units is 25 years (and given the operation stresses that is optimistic). This does not taken into account the carbon inputs for maintenance and repairs etc. Considering these units cannot meet base load this is a major issue IMO that just has not been discussed at any length. Any balanced discussion would calculate the inputs for a wind turbine and its savings to present a balanced argument for their use.

3) Urbanisation. The massive increase in urban areas is responsible for a massive "heat tank" effect raising the temperatures in major cities and town by anywhere up to 10 degress C. Where is the research and discussion regarding this, as whilst there has been a massive increase in CO2 gereation since the Industrial Rev. there has been a comensurate increase in Urbanisation. What is the impact of this on temperature.

4) Population. As a alluded to a couple of pages back with an ever increasing population even limitting energy use per individual to less than half the current usage would not be sufficient to reduce the current global pollutant output. There is no political will to address this in any form, which I can understand, as what would be the reaction if one said "for the good of the planet the world's population must be reduced by half"?

I have tried to bring these issues into the debate in this thread by playing devil's advocate and posing as a non-believer, this simply does not work because contrary to Scientific thought many supporters of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) have focused all their attention on Carbon to the exclusion of all else and anybody questioning this approach or the validity and efficacy of measures like the Carbon Tax tend to get branded as unscientific etc. Whilst on the true non-believers side they peddle half truths and take great pleasure in pointing out failed predictions of Climate Changists (which I must add they were very unwise and unscientific to make as we can't predict the weather with any certainty tomorrow let alone next year).

I do not support the Carbon Tax simply because it will have no effect what so ever on the issue it seeks to address. I have always argued that a drive for efficiency in less polluting industry of all kinds would have been a better method to achieve lasting change and improve the technology of all industry. The system we now see in place is selectively funding Power Generation sources which cannot meet base load, and are likely to prove a negative Carbon (and resource generally) investment long term.

Make no mistake I fully believe in Climate CHANGE, as distinct from warming, and I do believe that our population and its activities are a major contributing factor in driving this change.