Climate Change - The Scientific Debate
Discussion
TransverseTight said:
mybrainhurts said:
You have absolute faith in your sources, do you?
You must be a robot. Anyone who questions someone's sources means they don't know how to think for themselves or do their own research and therefore has no intelligence (i.e a preprogrammed robot). I first encountered that on the Bad Science forums long ago, wherein the climate scientist zealots ask your sources when you say it's raining and you're standing in it.
Beaut...
Jinx said:
TransverseTight said:
Regardless of what people think about AGW cars are getting more efficient. That should make us all happy as the fuel we have will last longer.
30,000 extra deaths due to fuel poverty in the UK alone last winter. But I get an extra 5 miles per gallon on fuel that costs me twice as much. And that's a good thing?The net energy cost may be something else.
The modern world of safety consciousness has led to the design of larger and heavier cars with more expensive components, notably some interesting metals in the electronics and catalytic converters.
And significant complexity that makes long term maintenance uneconomic. The trends through the 90s and early 00s for building cars of ever improved longevity seems to have gone into reverse. Almost anything post 2007 (in Europe and perhaps other places) has so much electronic technology built in and such a high level of short life obsolescence that the market seems them as uneconomic to repair at a very early stage in their build quality lifecycle (relative to expections). Yet the energy cost of production and total lifetime energy budget is no less and likely much more then the simpler and longer used vehicles that went before.
So politicians can set objectives without a care for the long term consequences (even assuming they understand them) and science can find ways to produce numbers that, ostensibly, show greater efficiency for the things that are being measured. (What gets measured gets done. Or, to put that another may, nothing is done unless it is measured.) The chances of a truly positive un-fudged outcome are small. The headline numbers (Official fuel consumption for example) are usually the work of computer models and don't translate to real world use.
As it currently exist (C)(A)GW / CC is post science. As TT said some way back in the thread the proper scientific approach to Climate assessment would indeed involve and extended period of observation using properly controlled (and consistent) instrument observations - which would mean accurate work to calibrate devices in advance as one failed and another replaced it.
Of course the planetwide experiment will always be likely to fail. Too many variables, not the least demand. To put that another way - if one suspends both pro and anti positions for a moment - can science and engineering deliver efficiencies that satisfy the objectives whilst allowing for population change and the expectation of ever improving standards of living throughout the world?
With politicians in charge this seems unlikely. With scientists in charge it would seem less likely. Based on historical records it seems fair to suggest the most important individual inventions and discoveries seem to have appeared from individual sources rather than governments or "consensus science".
But that is probably a discussion for the Politics thread.
TransverseTight said:
WinstonWolf said:
One question:
Where is the warming?
All around but mostly in the sea.Where is the warming?
Have you looked at any graphs? One that go back further than 1997? I wouldn't try and predict anything for the next 10 years if I only had 15 years of data to use.
TransverseTight said:
Sorry, I was being tongue in cheek amd its didnt translate I forgot the [rolls eyes].
Really. If someone cant tell me where the source that graph is from they have absolutely NO leg to stand on when it comes to debating climate science.
Again you presuppose that CO2 variation has anything to do with climate. Really. If someone cant tell me where the source that graph is from they have absolutely NO leg to stand on when it comes to debating climate science.
CO2 is totally swamped by water vapour, a simple Beers-Lambert analysis shows it is irrelevant.
And now they are trying to con us that the oceans are warming. Given than longwave radiation doesn't actually penetrate the surface I'm not convinced that they know anything but how to get politically expedient grants.
Globs said:
TransverseTight said:
Sorry, I was being tongue in cheek amd its didnt translate I forgot the [rolls eyes].
Really. If someone cant tell me where the source that graph is from they have absolutely NO leg to stand on when it comes to debating climate science.
Again you presuppose that CO2 variation has anything to do with climate. Really. If someone cant tell me where the source that graph is from they have absolutely NO leg to stand on when it comes to debating climate science.
CO2 is totally swamped by water vapour, a simple Beers-Lambert analysis shows it is irrelevant.
And now they are trying to con us that the oceans are warming. Given than longwave radiation doesn't actually penetrate the surface I'm not convinced that they know anything but how to get politically expedient grants.
Its b
ks, pure and simple. Sure, with the volume of water an increase in bulk temperature of a hundredth of a degree would indicate a huge energy input, but we dont/cant/will never be able to measure the whole ocean (ffs we cant even measure the whole land surface accurately, let alone the ocean which is twice the size and has the third dimension, depth, added in just to make it even more interesting), so any attempt to suggest that the "heat is hidden in the oceans" is, scientifically speaking, bulls
t.IainT said:
It's a strawman, and an insulting one, because your portrayal of the key argument is entirely fictitious.
Your four points, which may well be individually true, are not actually the crux of the argument.
The argument is not about CO2, it's act as a greenhouse component or our contribution to increasing amounts. The argument is far far subtler and is one of degrees.
The last point first – I'm questioning my thinking in a site where I can see the established regulars are the status quo and are anti AGW hypothesis– in the hope that I can learn something. If I went on an Eco loon site, I just get “Cars are bad and we need to use more pedal cycles”. Yeah right.Your four points, which may well be individually true, are not actually the crux of the argument.
The argument is not about CO2, it's act as a greenhouse component or our contribution to increasing amounts. The argument is far far subtler and is one of degrees.
- What effect does increasing CO2 have on temperatures? [clue: the models get it wrong]
- What is the main cause of rising CO2? [clue: it's more complex than burning fossil fuels]
- What is the normal level of CO2? [clue: it's been massively higher naturally in the 'recent' past]
- What is the correct temperature for the planet? [clue: we're actually in a particularly cold period]
- What are the impacts of rising temperatures? Are they largely bad, good or balanced? [clue: life exploded when it was far warmer]
- Where is the missing heat? [clue: not where the models say it should be; try behind the sofa]
- Why do models completely fail against all objective measures? [clue: because they're wrong]
- Are the model assumptions based in reality or policy? [clue: they're only as good as teh understanding of the modellers]
Er, next, so mine wasn't a straw man argument. If it was a straw man argument - I'd have said something like contrarians don't believe CO2 causes climate change because they think the scientific method doesn't take into account calcium in the sea. i.e. It depends on me making as statement about someone else's belief is based on some nonsense - which is easily disputed. But might win an argument if it gets passed unchallenged.
I know you don't think CO2 causes climate change, and aren't claiming that you believe otherwise. What I have asked is, if all these facts are true - how can we ignore CO2 as a contributor when we burn so much stuff!
To elaborate:
1) CO2 is a warming gas. This has been known since the 1850s. It's only a small percentage of the atmospheric make up. It used to be 0.00028 measured, and is now 0.00039 but that little bit - makes a big difference to the mean global surface temperature. There are about 3,000 billion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere, (rounded to make the following maths easier later).
2) Burning stuff makes CO2. Basic chemistry I don't think anyone can argue that.
3) We burn lots of stuff - as measured by governments around the world so they can collect taxes. Give or take a few million tonnes, we add about 30 billion tonnes extra to the atmosphere each year.
4) 30 billion of man made emissions each year over 3000 billion there already is 1%. Note this ignores volcanoes and cow farts, which are natural. The CO2 increase each year is offset by plants consuming 1/2 of that, visible in the annual CO2 graphs. Which bring net annual increase to 0.5%.
So continuing:
We established in point 1, that 0.00025. is enough to make a difference to the earth's temperature i.e the green house effect (which for idiots is not climate change, but the stable state) – why can we claim that scientists who think increasing the 0.00025 to 0.00039 is irrelevant – when that's a 40% increase in the thing that does part of the warming. I'm not claiming it will lead to a 40% warming, maybe 1% but also maybe 1000%. Because that's the bit even after years of reading up on it no one can give an accurate estimate of. For people saying it's bugger all of bugger all, I'll repeat that... a change from 280 to 390ppm is an increase of 40% in a couple of hundred years.
More worryingly - the current 400ppm is 50ppm higher than recent records show. Now when you say CO2 has been higher in recent times - do you mean since life began or since mankind was around? I'm sticking to the one that I'm more interested in the part where my ancestors were here.
If you think something other than burning stuff is responsible for the CO2 increase (ignoring whether or not it causes temperature rise for now) I'd like to know what it is. Please don't say volcanoes or cow farts. The other way to say this is that after burning a known amount of fossil fuel which gives rise to a known amount of CO2 how can we not expect that to end up in the air?
I agree we can then debate how much warming is caused by that.
Now a few other points:
These again are my own thinking not from a blog, but questions I want answered...
If you tell me the ice records evidence is flawed because recent studies show CO2 was probably much higher than the ice climate scientists had previously thought, how can you prove this? If the ice records can't be used to prove scientists got the estimating method wrong, you can't claim any other method is more correct... as neither method involves the use of measuring apparatus and a time machine. You can't say don't trust scientist who think man made warming is real – you can only trust scientists who say it isn't.
This applies to the latest lead vs lag debate. It was only last year the hot topic of alarmists was there's been no warming for the last decade. Now were being told – that its the warming that is causing the CO2. Surely both these statements can't be true?
I would ask - is this enough evidence 1 or 2 papers? To state there is no man made warming. Just like for year we were told there isn't enough evidence there is warming, with a few thousand reports to back it up? I've always said to mates / colleagues etc, don't you think if someone could prove categorically there's no warming, it would be Nobel Prize level stuff. We could get on with solving world hunger or something more useful. Like how to get energy for free.
This issues are why I sit on the fence - but 75% in the its man made camp. There's still decent - which is good, but I've not seen anything yet that will get that Nobel prize for proving its all nonsense.
I've got bored of replying to all this - got to much other stuff to do, I'm not here to try and change your mind but to ask you questions and to challenge my thinking....
but I think I've made my key observations on the debate. In that
a) There's a lot of facts that get discarded as bogus claims
b) Scientists can't be 100% sure of anything
c) The general public hasn't got a clue on the scientific process and it easily opinion led by the media.
d) Lots of people have different opinions despite having read the same stuff.
For the record – I'm a conflicted eco worrier/petrol head who, whilst aware of the issues has recognises that until there's a big push that doesn't involve taxation, there's sweet FA I can do on me own. Enjoy our V8's whilst we still can. I've done the maths and owning a 3 litre straight 6 costs me about £400 a year more than a 1.2 eco box. A price worth paying IMHO. Actually – mine sits on the drive most of the time as it's quicker and more relaxing to get to work by train. LOL.
That's why I object to being labelled warming central as if I've got an agenda to push, when in fact I'm asking questions that seem time and time again to be overlooked. Just basic simple stuff on CO2 balances.
Goodnight.
TransverseTight said:
IainT said:
It's a strawman, and an insulting one, because your portrayal of the key argument is entirely fictitious.
Your four points, which may well be individually true, are not actually the crux of the argument.
The argument is not about CO2, it's act as a greenhouse component or our contribution to increasing amounts. The argument is far far subtler and is one of degrees.
The last point first – I'm questioning my thinking in a site where I can see the established regulars are the status quo and are anti AGW hypothesis– in the hope that I can learn something. If I went on an Eco loon site, I just get “Cars are bad and we need to use more pedal cycles”. Yeah right.Your four points, which may well be individually true, are not actually the crux of the argument.
The argument is not about CO2, it's act as a greenhouse component or our contribution to increasing amounts. The argument is far far subtler and is one of degrees.
- What effect does increasing CO2 have on temperatures? [clue: the models get it wrong]
- What is the main cause of rising CO2? [clue: it's more complex than burning fossil fuels]
- What is the normal level of CO2? [clue: it's been massively higher naturally in the 'recent' past]
- What is the correct temperature for the planet? [clue: we're actually in a particularly cold period]
- What are the impacts of rising temperatures? Are they largely bad, good or balanced? [clue: life exploded when it was far warmer]
- Where is the missing heat? [clue: not where the models say it should be; try behind the sofa]
- Why do models completely fail against all objective measures? [clue: because they're wrong]
- Are the model assumptions based in reality or policy? [clue: they're only as good as teh understanding of the modellers]
Er, next, so mine wasn't a straw man argument. If it was a straw man argument - I'd have said something like contrarians don't believe CO2 causes climate change because they think the scientific method doesn't take into account calcium in the sea. i.e. It depends on me making as statement about someone else's belief is based on some nonsense - which is easily disputed. But might win an argument if it gets passed unchallenged.
I know you don't think CO2 causes climate change, and aren't claiming that you believe otherwise. What I have asked is, if all these facts are true - how can we ignore CO2 as a contributor when we burn so much stuff!
To elaborate:
1) CO2 is a warming gas. This has been known since the 1850s. It's only a small percentage of the atmospheric make up. It used to be 0.00028 measured, and is now 0.00039 but that little bit - makes a big difference to the mean global surface temperature. There are about 3,000 billion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere, (rounded to make the following maths easier later).
2) Burning stuff makes CO2. Basic chemistry I don't think anyone can argue that.
3) We burn lots of stuff - as measured by governments around the world so they can collect taxes. Give or take a few million tonnes, we add about 30 billion tonnes extra to the atmosphere each year.
4) 30 billion of man made emissions each year over 3000 billion there already is 1%. Note this ignores volcanoes and cow farts, which are natural. The CO2 increase each year is offset by plants consuming 1/2 of that, visible in the annual CO2 graphs. Which bring net annual increase to 0.5%.
So continuing:
We established in point 1, that 0.00025. is enough to make a difference to the earth's temperature i.e the green house effect (which for idiots is not climate change, but the stable state) – why can we claim that scientists who think increasing the 0.00025 to 0.00039 is irrelevant – when that's a 40% increase in the thing that does part of the warming. I'm not claiming it will lead to a 40% warming, maybe 1% but also maybe 1000%. Because that's the bit even after years of reading up on it no one can give an accurate estimate of. For people saying it's bugger all of bugger all, I'll repeat that... a change from 280 to 390ppm is an increase of 40% in a couple of hundred years.
More worryingly - the current 400ppm is 50ppm higher than recent records show. Now when you say CO2 has been higher in recent times - do you mean since life began or since mankind was around? I'm sticking to the one that I'm more interested in the part where my ancestors were here.
If you think something other than burning stuff is responsible for the CO2 increase (ignoring whether or not it causes temperature rise for now) I'd like to know what it is. Please don't say volcanoes or cow farts. The other way to say this is that after burning a known amount of fossil fuel which gives rise to a known amount of CO2 how can we not expect that to end up in the air?
I agree we can then debate how much warming is caused by that.
Now a few other points:
These again are my own thinking not from a blog, but questions I want answered...
If you tell me the ice records evidence is flawed because recent studies show CO2 was probably much higher than the ice climate scientists had previously thought, how can you prove this? If the ice records can't be used to prove scientists got the estimating method wrong, you can't claim any other method is more correct... as neither method involves the use of measuring apparatus and a time machine. You can't say don't trust scientist who think man made warming is real – you can only trust scientists who say it isn't.
This applies to the latest lead vs lag debate. It was only last year the hot topic of alarmists was there's been no warming for the last decade. Now were being told – that its the warming that is causing the CO2. Surely both these statements can't be true?
I would ask - is this enough evidence 1 or 2 papers? To state there is no man made warming. Just like for year we were told there isn't enough evidence there is warming, with a few thousand reports to back it up? I've always said to mates / colleagues etc, don't you think if someone could prove categorically there's no warming, it would be Nobel Prize level stuff. We could get on with solving world hunger or something more useful. Like how to get energy for free.
This issues are why I sit on the fence - but 75% in the its man made camp. There's still decent - which is good, but I've not seen anything yet that will get that Nobel prize for proving its all nonsense.
I've got bored of replying to all this - got to much other stuff to do, I'm not here to try and change your mind but to ask you questions and to challenge my thinking....
but I think I've made my key observations on the debate. In that
a) There's a lot of facts that get discarded as bogus claims
b) Scientists can't be 100% sure of anything
c) The general public hasn't got a clue on the scientific process and it easily opinion led by the media.
d) Lots of people have different opinions despite having read the same stuff.
For the record – I'm a conflicted eco worrier/petrol head who, whilst aware of the issues has recognises that until there's a big push that doesn't involve taxation, there's sweet FA I can do on me own. Enjoy our V8's whilst we still can. I've done the maths and owning a 3 litre straight 6 costs me about £400 a year more than a 1.2 eco box. A price worth paying IMHO. Actually – mine sits on the drive most of the time as it's quicker and more relaxing to get to work by train. LOL.
That's why I object to being labelled warming central as if I've got an agenda to push, when in fact I'm asking questions that seem time and time again to be overlooked. Just basic simple stuff on CO2 balances.
Goodnight.
mondeoman said:
You cannot measure the temperature of the ocean to the degree of accuracy that they claim has been done to show even a hint of warming.
Its bks, pure and simple.
Sure, with the volume of water an increase in bulk temperature of a hundredth of a degree would indicate a huge energy input, but we dont/cant/will never be able to measure the whole ocean (ffs we cant even measure the whole land surface accurately, let alone the ocean which is twice the size and has the third dimension, depth, added in just to make it even more interesting), so any attempt to suggest that the "heat is hidden in the oceans" is, scientifically speaking, bullst.
With what level of accuracy can you claim that? Scientists can claim to measure how long it takes a photon to travel through 7km of rock. Surely that's BS Too?Its b
ks, pure and simple. Sure, with the volume of water an increase in bulk temperature of a hundredth of a degree would indicate a huge energy input, but we dont/cant/will never be able to measure the whole ocean (ffs we cant even measure the whole land surface accurately, let alone the ocean which is twice the size and has the third dimension, depth, added in just to make it even more interesting), so any attempt to suggest that the "heat is hidden in the oceans" is, scientifically speaking, bulls
t.Alternatively they claim they can measure the time difference between a signal sent from satellites only a few thousand km apart, when we all know radio waves travel at the speed of light.
They're all liars. Or maybe they can measure small things smaller than 1 degree to quite a level of accuracy!??
TransverseTight said:
mondeoman said:
You cannot measure the temperature of the ocean to the degree of accuracy that they claim has been done to show even a hint of warming.
Its bks, pure and simple.
Sure, with the volume of water an increase in bulk temperature of a hundredth of a degree would indicate a huge energy input, but we dont/cant/will never be able to measure the whole ocean (ffs we cant even measure the whole land surface accurately, let alone the ocean which is twice the size and has the third dimension, depth, added in just to make it even more interesting), so any attempt to suggest that the "heat is hidden in the oceans" is, scientifically speaking, bullst.
With what level of accuracy can you claim that? Scientists can claim to measure how long it takes a photon to travel through 7km of rock. Surely that's BS Too?Its b
ks, pure and simple. Sure, with the volume of water an increase in bulk temperature of a hundredth of a degree would indicate a huge energy input, but we dont/cant/will never be able to measure the whole ocean (ffs we cant even measure the whole land surface accurately, let alone the ocean which is twice the size and has the third dimension, depth, added in just to make it even more interesting), so any attempt to suggest that the "heat is hidden in the oceans" is, scientifically speaking, bulls
t.Alternatively they claim they can measure the time difference between a signal sent from satellites only a few thousand km apart, when we all know radio waves travel at the speed of light.
They're all liars. Or maybe they can measure small things smaller than 1 degree to quite a level of accuracy!??
dickymint said:
TransverseTight said:
mybrainhurts said:
Do we have another Ludo or Kerplunk in TransverseTight?
If so, I think he slipped out before graduation.
Please explain??If so, I think he slipped out before graduation.
These people fail on several levels:
1) Total failure to connect CO2 with any climatic event whatsoever, except as an irrelevant indicator
2) Total failure to acknowledge that CO2 is vital for plant growth, and more of it means less starvation
3) Total failure to connect man to any CO2 rise
4) Complete failure of any any CO2 policy to do anything other than increase CO2, raise bills and thus kill tens of thousands of people in winter.
And then about 16-18 years ago, while CO2 is still rising faster than ever the real temperatures stop dead in their tracks, wrecking all of the climate models and quite a few reputations. Suddenly there's a great mystery, blamed on the poorly measured oceans, whereas in reality what happened was very very simple: CO2 never had any connection to climate in the first place.
Remember NOT ONE single model predicted this at all, and they claim to be able to predict with 1C over the next 100 years. f
kers.If they understood the first thing about water vapour, absorption spectra of CO2, O3, water vapour and water they'd have dismissed CO2 years ago. And then there is the stupid theory itself that produced a number of predictions like warming, tropospheric hotspot etc, but unlike most theories this one was special because _every single_ damn prediction was wrong.
But it was picked up by the politicians because it's also a measure of energy, and you can tax energy use, and trade in it etc. All these idiot greens are doing is running around working for people like Al Gore, while being suckered into the alluring fantasy that they are saving the planet like Superman.
f
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