Climate Change - The Scientific Debate

[LongQ]

I see the WWF Earth Hour ad is popping up at the top of the page on this trhead quite regularly.

Hmm. Cookies are not just for advertising - useful for attempted indoctrination and subliminal influences too. Who would have thought it?

Anyway, does PH get a sub from them every time someone hits the ad? If so it might be worth the effort. Just for fun.

The smutty logo today is interesting - "Doitinthedark" iirc.

"Do it in the dark but don't add to the population because we think there are enough of us already - too many actually." might be more appropriate.


WWF ad followed by an RSPB membership ad.

Probably be Greenpeace next.

[Le TVR]

d0ntp4n1c said:

Science really is an amazing subject and you should try actually finding out about it rather than dismissing it as the work of a leftist conspiracy.

Patronising little

Why do you think that just because a person does not hold the same view of this unvalidated hypothesis that they must in some way have a scientific understanding of the square root of fk all?
I have been involved in science and scientific research all my life but I also have an interest in cars. Which is why I frequent this site as well as many others that you may (or probably not) also be aware of.

If you want to deride your target audience then be very sure of their demographics. Failure to do so is likely to result in bite marks around the nether regions.

[Mr2Mike]

Le TVR said:

Patronising little

I wonder if he has stopped beating his wife yet?

[Jinx]

d0ntp4n1c said:

Science really is an amazing subject and you should try actually finding out about it rather than dismissing it as the work of a leftist conspiracy. And you should all read this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Know-What-isnt-Fallibi...

I see your link and raise you http://www.amazon.co.uk/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistak...

Read that and get back to me.

[AJI]

d0ntp4n1c said:

Apologies, I realised I was being very naive in posting what I did but having just been called an activist and a troll I thought maybe worth explaining myself. It's not impossible for someone to subscribe to New Scientist as well as evo, Autocar and Bike and to go see the Uncaged Monkeys as well as doing trackdays. If you're interested in how stuff works then all of these things appeal.

When I saw the Science! forum I thought it might actually be for people interested in science, so it would be something I could contribute to. You live and learn I guess. Maybe they could move this thread to a new forum Pseudoscience! where it would fit in perfectly.

For someone with a genuine interest in science it's utterly astonishing to see the level of antagonism generated by a mainstream view. Climate change is a well established field with broad agreement amongst thousands of researchers around the world. Whereas views you see on this thread are from the same lunatic fringe as anti-vaxxers, homeopaths and other anti-scientific nonsense. You honestly think that the Royal Society (with 80 Nobel laureates among its members) for example speaks for special interest groups? I guess the Delingpoles and Moncktons of this world really have been incredibly effective at getting their message out there. But then it's much easier to pick at the edges of other people's work rather doing anything useful yourself.

Science really is an amazing subject and you should try actually finding out about it rather than dismissing it as the work of a leftist conspiracy. And you should all read this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Know-What-isnt-Fallibi...

Mr Panic,
Maybe the best way is for you to start over again. I mean this with respect and in a way whereby you quote up your question and then we give a balanced civilised reply.

Because we need people like this in this topic whereby the science can be debated. And whereby the evidence can be discussed an the conclusions also questions, by both sides.


If we played this by doing one question at a time?
Best way forward yes?

[nelly1]

February 2013 global surface temperature – at 'normal'...



Now, where's this 'Global Warming' I've been hearing so much about?

[Mr2Mike]

What muppet chose the colour scale on that chart? Are the white bits -7, 0 or +11? Are the dark red bits +5 or +16?

[hidetheelephants]

Mr2Mike said:

What muppet chose the colour scale on that chart?

Whoever it was they're a colossal tt.

[LongQ]

The graphical display of colours is not really that much of a problem I would have thought although I would guess it loses something at web resolution compared to the original. I think this is a standard format for the display commonly used.

You have to assume that you are looking at temperature gradients rather than spot measurement - because that is what is being presented.(There do seem to be a few small challenges - Svalbard for example - but in the main it looks quite well differentiated.

From what I see it looks like by far the majority of anomalies fall into the +7 to -7 sectors - so anything outside those could well be ignored for 99% of the displayed image. That means the more challenging interpretations are not in play at all. The -11 "white", for example, could only appear if surrounded by greens . (Chosen just to provide one guideline example of the point).

[turbobloke]

Big drop in UAH global LTT anomaly for February with ocean temps flat

[funkyrobot]

Has this been posted yet? Noticed it whilst looking at the weather (I use the Met Office as one of many sources):

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/...

21 February 2013 - Human influence on global climate contributed to the causes of the 2011 East Africa drought, according to new research by the Met Office.

Millions of people in the region required emergency food aid after the failure of two rainy seasons - the 'short rains' (typically October to December) of 2010 and 'long rains' (March to June) of 2011.

Researchers used cutting edge climate change attribution techniques to quantify how the probability of these two unusually dry rainy seasons may have changed as a result of human influence on climate.

Dr. Fraser Lott, an Attribution Scientist at the Met Office and lead author on the paper, said: "We found that the particularly dry short rains in 2010 were most likely caused by natural variability. However, the chances of long rains as dry, or drier, as those of 2011 were found to have increased due to human influence."

The study used state of the art modelling techniques to see how likely the weather patterns that led to the drought were. They looked at both a world with mankind's influence on climate, as well as 'the world that might have been' without manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

While there is evidence of substantial human influence on the risk of failure of the long rains in 2011, the magnitude of that increase is difficult to quantify.

This is due to uncertainty in the estimated pattern by which human influence has changed sea surface temperatures. Three different models were used to assess how the sea surface temperatures may have changed.

Initial research based on the three models suggests that human influence is to blame for between 24% and 99% of the increased risk of the dry conditions seen during the long rains season of 2011. Further research is seeking to narrow down on this figure.

Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office and co-author of the paper, said: "It is rarely possible to declare that an event is entirely caused by anthropogenic climate change and would have been impossible without it.

"This study shows that both natural causes and human influence combined to cause the East Africa Drought. In this case, while we know human influence played a role there is considerable uncertainty about just how significant this was, highlighting the complexity of attribution."

The concept that human influence could have "loaded the dice" in favour, or against, the occurrence of a particular drought, flood or heat-wave has become widely accepted by scientists, but this doesn't mean that we are yet able to reliably quantify the changed odds of all occurrences of extreme weather.

The Met Office is playing a leading role in developing the science of climate attribution, collaborating with international scientists in the Attribution of Climate-related Events Initiative.

Dr Stott continued: "Our aim is to understand when we can reliably estimate the odds of particular types of extreme weather events and for which types of events further improvements are required".

[Mr2Mike]

funkyrobot said:

Researchers used cutting edge climate change attribution techniques

i.e. making it up as they go along.

[munroman]

I would rather the Met Office got it's weather predictions more accurate than making up 'what may have caused weather' tales.

A couple of friends who are commercial airline pilots use the Norwegian Weather Service for forecasts, as do many of their colleagues, as they find it consistently more accurate than Mystic Met's forecasts, should that not say something about how far behind best practice the true purpose of the Met Office has fallen?

[LongQ]

funkyrobot said:

Has this been posted yet? Noticed it whilst looking at the weather (I use the Met Office as one of many sources):

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/...

21 February 2013 - Human influence on global climate contributed to the causes of the 2011 East Africa drought, according to new research by the Met Office.

Millions of people in the region required emergency food aid after the failure of two rainy seasons - the 'short rains' (typically October to December) of 2010 and 'long rains' (March to June) of 2011.

Wow.

Terrible effect. I mean, droughts in East Africa are unheard of in history, right?

[Rochester TVR]

This email has just landed in my works inbox. Yes, I've had one everyday this week...

SHE Department said:

SENT ON BEHALF OF THE SHE DEPARTMENT
Day 5
Dear all,
So we have reached the final day of our Climate Change Week. Thank you for all your efforts this week.
Today’s Theme: Climate Change
Please remember these four top tips:
• SWITCH IT OFF: Switch off all non-essential equipment when not in use including computers, monitors, printers, photocopiers and plug sockets. Also switch off all lights when not in use including bathrooms, meeting rooms, corridors and any naturally lit areas.
• USE LESS: Only use the amount of water that you actually need, for example, turn off taps whilst brushing your teeth and only boil the amount of water you need. Also, turn down the temperature by 1oC to use less water and save 8% on your energy bills! Please be aware of this in the office and at home!
• REUSE & RECYCLE: Recycle and reuse wherever possible for example, reuse water from washing your fruit and veg to water your plants at home. Recycling saves energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change. Also avoid unnecessary waste of food.
• BUY GREEN: Make smarter decisions about everyday household products that can green your home and lifestyle and is good for the environment as well as cost efficient in the long term.

Today’s Challenge: SAVE IT
Save energy/water/waste/materials across everything you do!

Thank you for your participation this week.

[AJI]

Rochester TVR said:

I wonder how much energy from her monitor and PC was required to type and word everything on that email as opposed to the actual savings of energy and resources that people would have wasted having not read it?

I'm guessing the net energy/resources wastage was with the creation of that email - as ironic as it is.

[Silver Smudger]

Rochester TVR said:

This email has just landed in my works inbox. Yes, I've had one everyday this week...

SHE Department said:

SENT ON BEHALF OF THE SHE DEPARTMENT
Day 5
Dear all,
So we have reached the final day of our Climate Change Week. Thank you for all your efforts this week.
Today’s Theme: Climate Change
Please remember these four top tips:
• SWITCH IT OFF: Switch off all non-essential equipment when not in use including computers, monitors, printers, photocopiers and plug sockets. Also switch off all lights when not in use including bathrooms, meeting rooms, corridors and any naturally lit areas.
• USE LESS: Only use the amount of water that you actually need, for example, turn off taps whilst brushing your teeth and only boil the amount of water you need. Also, turn down the temperature by 1oC to use less water and save 8% on your energy bills! Please be aware of this in the office and at home!
• REUSE & RECYCLE: Recycle and reuse wherever possible for example, reuse water from washing your fruit and veg to water your plants at home. Recycling saves energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change. Also avoid unnecessary waste of food.
• BUY GREEN: Make smarter decisions about everyday household products that can green your home and lifestyle and is good for the environment as well as cost efficient in the long term.

Today’s Challenge: SAVE IT
Save energy/water/waste/materials across everything you do!

Thank you for your participation this week.

See, this is the problem with focussing on Carbon and Climate Change, the useful messages get polluted with the rubbish -

I can see nothing wrong with switching off unused lighting or equipment, it saves electricity which has to be paid for. Similarly, using less water saves money if you are on a meter and you pay for what it measures. I separate my rubbish at home, and use the paper recycling bin at work too, pointless waste is avoidable - However, I find that receiving messages like the one above encouraging me to 'green my home and lifestyle' makes me irrationally opposed to doing all these things.

[Rochester TVR]

Here, have some more... my inbox is full of this stuff...

SHE Dept email said:

• Using recycled materials in the manufacturing process uses considerably less energy than that required for producing new products from raw materials.
• There are extra energy savings because more energy is required to extract, refine, transport and process raw materials ready for industry compared with providing industry-ready materials.
• As recycling saves energy it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change. Current UK recycling is estimated to save more than 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year – the equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road.

[LongQ]

Rochester TVR said:

Here, have some more... my inbox is full of this stuff...

SHE Dept email said:

• Using recycled materials in the manufacturing process uses considerably less energy than that required for producing new products from raw materials.
• There are extra energy savings because more energy is required to extract, refine, transport and process raw materials ready for industry compared with providing industry-ready materials.
• As recycling saves energy it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change. Current UK recycling is estimated to save more than 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year – the equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road.

I would be very doubtful of those figures. The theory may have some basis but the practicality is likely to be somewhat different.

Of course that may depend on what factors one includes. It is possible that recycling of general waste is just about more cost effective than burying it IF you take Landfill tax into account.

Using recycled materials in a manufacturing process may indeed be worthwhile IF the resulting output os of comparable quality to that of the equivalent newly generated material and therefore offers full at least equal expected in service. If not the associated manufacturing and transportation costs, being much the same, will have a disproportionately high impact on whole life costs.

If one considers cars as an example ... increased safety requirements have, generally, added weight to designs over the past decade or two offsetting some remarkable gains in apparent engine efficiency. Moreover much better materials and general engineering have produced vehicles of, generally, a far higher quality and longer life expectancy than used to be the case.

However the most recent designs are using so much technology to achieve the 'targets' that they become very expensive to fix when things go wrong. In part this is due to the amount of development and manufacturing effort in the designs having to be factored in to the spare parts costs. On the other hand the developments have moved on so quickly that major components have a very short life on the production line meaning that the basic development costs are not so readily spread over the life of the prodct and that the demand for spare parts is also low (even if they are failure prone) compared to parts demand for something deployed over an extended period.

he result is high cost and low availability - so no one stocks them because they can be delivered form a central location withing 24/48 hours. Sounds good until you recognise that rarity adds to the price and the costs of distribution to some extent. If the costs of spare parts increases the point at which the value of the car becomes un-servicable, in pure economic terms, become earlier in its potential usable lifecycle. The the cost of the entire production, both fiscal and ecological, becomes higher per useful period of working life.

So, 30 or 40 years ago the car industry would manufacture stuff that would, mainly, have a likely useful life of 10 years or less before body corrosion or major mechanical failures would end its useful life. There were always exceptions but in the main 10 years was about what people would expect before "old banger" status took over the average rust bucket. If the car survived those ravages it would be relatively easy to find and use spare parts from scrapyards to keep the better example on the roads until they too finally succumbed to rust.

Now we tend to see little rust, partly due to the extended use of plastics, but certain mechanical components have become so expensive of so difficult to replace that thier failure, more common than one might expect given general engineering advances, make repair uneconomic. So perfectly sound bodies and other mechanical components, designed and manufactured at high cost compared to earlier times in order to achieve better performance and longer life, are scrapped because some other part has failed and resulted in the entire car become unserviceable due to the cost of repair. Net result is that the cost of the better build quality is, by and large, thrown away and along with that goes any concept of ecological improvement due to improved fuel efficiency and lower emissions - or whatever the developments of the day were intended to offer over a full lifecycle as expected beck then.

Of course no one will report these failures. It's not in the interest of the manufacturers to point out that they really should not need to produce as many vehicles as they do. The politicians rarely revisit history to see how their plans actually worked out unless they can score points over an opponent - unlikely in this case. The ecologists find it easier to simply treat all transport as sinful and feel no need to dilute the message by analysing such a belief to any useful degree. To do so might throw up flaws in their logic.

If they really wanted to do something worth the effort they could argue for all businesses to shut down. The energy saving from having no business to run would be remarkable. Add to that the people who would nat have to travel to work and the results would be instant and noteworthy. Shortly after that consumption would drop with the lack of purchasing power throughout the economy. Once all the available biomass had been burned (a few weeks?) an extremely low carbon state should ensue. Perfect. Worldwide "problems" solved in no time.

Right?

[Globs]

LongQ said:

If they really wanted to do something worth the effort they could argue for all businesses to shut down. The energy saving from having no business to run would be remarkable. Add to that the people who would nat have to travel to work and the results would be instant and noteworthy. Shortly after that consumption would drop with the lack of purchasing power throughout the economy. Once all the available biomass had been burned (a few weeks?) an extremely low carbon state should ensue. Perfect. Worldwide "problems" solved in no time.

Right?

I'm sure that is the aim of many greenies.
This short sighted thinking has been used with great success to enlarge some of best deserts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI