Do humans contribute to climate change substantially?
Poll: Do humans contribute to climate change substantially?
Total Members Polled: 599
Discussion
ds with a south facing roof and a heavily subsidised feed in tariff paid for by our shivering Grandparents. Bedazzled said:
Slight tangent, I've been reading about extreme climate events in history and found an interesting account of severe cooling in 536AD thought to be caused by a volcanic dust cloud - see here. It was followed only a couple of years later by the Plague of Justinian (first black death pandemic)... not a nice time to be around.
Apparently the Vikings sacrificed all their gold to the Gods in a desperate plea for a better climate; nothing changes!
Oooh smelling the coffee? Apparently the Vikings sacrificed all their gold to the Gods in a desperate plea for a better climate; nothing changes!
turbobloke said:
In the Warmipendent too!http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-c...
1 deg C appears to remove all recorded warming even on the homogenised sites like Hadcrut4.
Should we expect an apology from CRU now, "Sorry guys the heat island effect was even more powerful than our homogenisation."?
Globs said:
In the Warmipendent too!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-c...
I clicked on the 'Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science' expecting to read about Al Gore. Sadly it was the usual tripe. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-c...
Matt Ridley: A Lukewarmer’s Tests
(ten in the original but seven here purely for convenience)
What it would take to persuade me that current climate policy makes sense
I have written about climate change and energy policy for more than 25 years. I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. What I do not accept is that the change is or will be damaging, or that current policy would prevent it.
For the benefit of supporters of climate change policy who feel frustrated by the reluctance of people like me to accept their assurances, here is what they would need to do to change my mind.
1. I need persuading that the urban heat island effect has been fully purged from the surface temperature record. Satellites are showing less warming than the surface thermometers, and there is evidence that local warming of growing cities, and poor siting of thermometers, is still contaminating the global record. I also need to be convinced that the adjustments made by those who compile the global temperature records are justified. Since 2008 alone, NASA has added about 0.1C of warming to the trend by unexplained “adjustments” to old records. It is not reassuring that one of the main surface temperature records is produced by an extremist prepared to get himself arrested (James Hansen).
2. Despite these two contaminating factors, the temperature trend remains modest: not much more than 0.1 C per decade since 1979. So I would need persuading that water vapour will amplify CO2’s effect threefold in the future but has not done so yet. This is what the models assume despite evidence that clouds formed from water vapour are more likely to moderate than amplify any warming.
3. Nor am I convinced that sulphate aerosols and ocean heat uptake can explain the gap between model predictions and actual observations over the last 34 years. Both are now well understood and provide insufficient excuse for such an underperformance. Negative cloud feedback, leading to total feedbacks being modest, is the more plausible explanation.
4. The one trend that has been worse than expected – Arctic sea ice – is plausibly explained by black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. Soot from dirty diesel engines and coal-fired power stations is now reckoned to be a far greater factor in climate change than before; it is a short-lived pollutant, easily dealt with by local rather than global action. So you would need to persuade me that this finding, by explaining some recent climate change, does not further reduce the likely sensitivity of the atmosphere to carbon dioxide. Certainly, it “buys time”.
5. Even the Met Office admits that the failure of the models to predict the temperature standstill of the last 16 years is evidence that natural factors can match man-made ones. We now know there is nothing unprecedented about the level and rate of change of temperature today compared with Medieval, Roman, Holocene Optimum and other post-glacial periods, when carbon dioxide levels did not change significantly, but temperatures did. I would need persuading that natural factors cannot continue to match man-made ones.
6. Given that we know that the warming so far has increased global vegetation cover, increased precipitation, lengthened growing seasons, cause minimal ecological change and had no impact on extreme weather events, I need persuading that future warming will be fast enough and large enough to do net harm rather than net good. Unless water-vapour-supercharged, the models suggest a high probability of temperatures changing less than 2C, which almost everybody agrees will do net good.
7. Nor is it clear that ecosystems and people will fail to adapt, for there is clear evidence that adaptation has already vastly reduced damage from the existing climate – there has been a 98% reduction in the probability of death from drought, flood or storm since the 1920s, for example, and malaria retreated rapidly even as the temperature rose during the twentieth century.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/01/Rid...
(pdf)
(ten in the original but seven here purely for convenience)
What it would take to persuade me that current climate policy makes sense
I have written about climate change and energy policy for more than 25 years. I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. What I do not accept is that the change is or will be damaging, or that current policy would prevent it.
For the benefit of supporters of climate change policy who feel frustrated by the reluctance of people like me to accept their assurances, here is what they would need to do to change my mind.
1. I need persuading that the urban heat island effect has been fully purged from the surface temperature record. Satellites are showing less warming than the surface thermometers, and there is evidence that local warming of growing cities, and poor siting of thermometers, is still contaminating the global record. I also need to be convinced that the adjustments made by those who compile the global temperature records are justified. Since 2008 alone, NASA has added about 0.1C of warming to the trend by unexplained “adjustments” to old records. It is not reassuring that one of the main surface temperature records is produced by an extremist prepared to get himself arrested (James Hansen).
2. Despite these two contaminating factors, the temperature trend remains modest: not much more than 0.1 C per decade since 1979. So I would need persuading that water vapour will amplify CO2’s effect threefold in the future but has not done so yet. This is what the models assume despite evidence that clouds formed from water vapour are more likely to moderate than amplify any warming.
3. Nor am I convinced that sulphate aerosols and ocean heat uptake can explain the gap between model predictions and actual observations over the last 34 years. Both are now well understood and provide insufficient excuse for such an underperformance. Negative cloud feedback, leading to total feedbacks being modest, is the more plausible explanation.
4. The one trend that has been worse than expected – Arctic sea ice – is plausibly explained by black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. Soot from dirty diesel engines and coal-fired power stations is now reckoned to be a far greater factor in climate change than before; it is a short-lived pollutant, easily dealt with by local rather than global action. So you would need to persuade me that this finding, by explaining some recent climate change, does not further reduce the likely sensitivity of the atmosphere to carbon dioxide. Certainly, it “buys time”.
5. Even the Met Office admits that the failure of the models to predict the temperature standstill of the last 16 years is evidence that natural factors can match man-made ones. We now know there is nothing unprecedented about the level and rate of change of temperature today compared with Medieval, Roman, Holocene Optimum and other post-glacial periods, when carbon dioxide levels did not change significantly, but temperatures did. I would need persuading that natural factors cannot continue to match man-made ones.
6. Given that we know that the warming so far has increased global vegetation cover, increased precipitation, lengthened growing seasons, cause minimal ecological change and had no impact on extreme weather events, I need persuading that future warming will be fast enough and large enough to do net harm rather than net good. Unless water-vapour-supercharged, the models suggest a high probability of temperatures changing less than 2C, which almost everybody agrees will do net good.
7. Nor is it clear that ecosystems and people will fail to adapt, for there is clear evidence that adaptation has already vastly reduced damage from the existing climate – there has been a 98% reduction in the probability of death from drought, flood or storm since the 1920s, for example, and malaria retreated rapidly even as the temperature rose during the twentieth century.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/01/Rid...
(pdf)
foreverdriving said:
Globs said:
In the Warmipendent too!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-c...
I clicked on the 'Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science' expecting to read about Al Gore. Sadly it was the usual tripe. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-c...
Actually that's irrespective of subject, even in the Torygraph I usually just read the comments.
@Turbobloke
I wonder if you might like to PM me, re. a possibly interesting opportunity to support someone inside the Dept. for Environment etc. - someone 'on our side'!
I have shared and can provide a fair bit more data/detail/argument but think you would be in a much better place to provide the most hard hitting/influential analysis on the subject.
If you would be interested in adding to the dialogue please let me know...
I wonder if you might like to PM me, re. a possibly interesting opportunity to support someone inside the Dept. for Environment etc. - someone 'on our side'!
I have shared and can provide a fair bit more data/detail/argument but think you would be in a much better place to provide the most hard hitting/influential analysis on the subject.
If you would be interested in adding to the dialogue please let me know...
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