Frank,
Yes, I understand what you are getting at now, thank you for the clarification.
From some of your earlier comments I felt that you were rather put out by the style of debate that has taken place on this this thread.
Cheers - HS
Global Warming Hysteria
by metatron 262 Replies latest jw friends
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zagor
I'd have to say that the lack of evidence for the cause of Global Warming being caused by humans, any other than a small fraction, as proved by this thread, is indisputable.
That was actually quite funny, you've just elevated discussion and conclusions reached here to the level of serious scientific forum, lol.
Forgive me for saying it but words like "indisputable", "prove beyond the shadow of any doubt" reminds me so much of WTBS. I remember few years ago having discussion with this elder about 607BCE and he pointed to me the paragraph in "Reasoning book" where is uses words like "weight of evidence" points to the year 607BCE and then proceeded to explain to that it basically meant there is more evidence for than against. My response to him was simple ' I know what expression weight of evidence" means in English how about you show me the evidence instead of giving me a lecture in English grammar. Using impressive language does not equate to verifiable truth. There are quite a few scientists who are not that good at expressing themselves but their work speak for itself.Speaking of dispute regarding GW (global warming) I have to tell you that you would find similar disputes in any scientific discipline (except mathematics I suppose) it is just that in this case subject reached general public who is now under impression that whole issue is highly disputed (which is not) What you have to look for is general consensus and convergence of findings from many disciplines.
Like in the case of evolution, proponents of ID are quick to point out that there are scientists who actually believe in a supreme being. While this is true what they ususally fail to mention is that these are minority (with greatest number of these in US and doesn't exceed 20% while in Europe and elsewhere that figure probably doesn't exceed 10%). Now does that mean that consensus on evolutionary theory is actually disputed? Of course not! There will never be a 100% agreement in scientific community about anything but we have to look at best available data and draw conclusions from that. Heck, some reputable scientists back in 1960's were saying it was probably unsafe to land on the moon as the lunar lander would very likely sink into the lunar dust ....
In any case I sense that real problem here is not so much GW (not on this board anyway) but underlying current of fear that talking about GW means return to religious dogmatism. And I can appreciate that fear more than you realize, but we have to rise above it if we are to move forward and deal with real issues, after all as I pointed out in my last post, religions and opportunistic politicians use real issues to draw attention upon themselves as saviors.
The truth is that we really have no map for the future but only a past with which to draw our lessons from.
Agree, though I fear it is in our nature not to learn lessons from anyone but our own mistakes. Take for instance what happened to Easter Island few hundred years ago. Easter Island is just one example of the collapse of an entire society unable to cope with changing circumstances, perhaps made more poignant by its having occurred in relatively recent times. A mere handful of Polynesian wanderers first populated the then lushly forested island only in the 5th Century. The new colony developed and flourished over the next thousand years, acquiring a complex social structure, division of labour, religion, art and science. The human population of Easter Island peaked at perhaps 7,000-10,000 in about 1500 (although some estimates range up to 20,000[Diamond 1995]).
By this time the island’s forests had been destroyed by over-harvesting, seed ‘predation’ by introduced rats and the loss of pollinating birds. Consequently, the people were no longer able to build the large canoes essential to maintaining their diet of porpoise and fish. Shellfish, nesting seabirds (many of which were wiped out) and domestic chickens proved an inadequate substitute and the human population began a steep decline. It had collapsed to about 2000 wretched individuals by the time the island was “discovered” by the Dutch Admiral Roggeveen on Easter Sunday in 1722.
Roggeveen found the sorry remnants of Easter Island society living in rude reed huts and caves, eking out a sparse existence from a denuded landscape and cannibalistic raids on each other’s camps.
The obvious question is, how could the Easter Islanders have allowed this spectacular rise and fall in their collective fortunes to unfold unchecked? Was it not self-evident that resource depletion in such an obviously finite habitat would lead to disaster? After all, the people of the island must have been aware “…that they were almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, must surely have realized that their very existence depended on the limited resources of a small island… Yet they were unable to devise a system that allowed them to find the right balance with their environment” (Ponting 1991,7).As noted, Easter Island set no precedents. Even those used to assuming that continuous technological progress is the norm, and that modern society has forever banished Malthus’ ghost, might be taken aback to learn that collapse seems to be an inevitable stage in the development of human societies. Indeed, “what is perhaps most intriguing in the evolution of human societies is the regularity with which the pattern of increasing complexity is interrupted by collapse…” (Tainter 1995, 399). In his most comprehensive treatment of this great enigma, Tainter (1988) reviewed two dozen examples of this cycle and dozens more undoubtedly go unremarked by the historical record. So the real question here is: are we indeed about to “follow the lead” of Easter Island?
This question may seem preposterous to the modern mind. Technological optimists and many others living today believe that modern society has transcended nature, that, sustained by human ingenuity it is inherently sustainable. From this perspective, “the rich historical record of societies that have collapsed represents… not the normal destiny of complex societies, but a set of anomalies needing to be explained’ (Tainter 1995, 398).
By contrast, many scientists now are staring to see now that the pattern set by Tainter’s cases and the implosion of Easter Island is, in fact, the norm. Indeed, the future is potentially more problematic for technological ‘man’ than for any preceding culture. In short, the structure and behaviour of the modern human system are fundamentally incompatible with the structure and behaviour of critical ecosystems. No realignment of the present set of interacting components and relationships can be sustainable without a fundamental change in critical socio-cultural variables determining those relationships. In addition, I would argue that the seeds of human ecological and social unsustainability spring from the very nature of Homo sapiens. That is, a genetic predisposition for unsustainability is encoded in human physiology, social organization and behavioral ecology.
The historical record represents the phenotype of this fundamental flaw; modern technological prowess as manifested in, for instance, globalization merely spreads the damage and increases the risk to everyone.The situation is not entirely bleak. We can draw some optimism from the fact that that human evolution is at least as much determined by socio-cultural factors as by biological factors. The bad news here is that, like maladaptive biological mutations, cultural variations are also subject to natural selection. The unbroken history of societal collapses is graphic proof that maladaptive cultural traits and even whole cultures can be ‘selected out.’ The good news is that modern society has a major advantage over its predecessors. We are uniquely positioned to understand the forces of bio-cultural determinism that have heretofore had the quality of inevitability. In theory, this gives us the power at last to seize control over our own destiny and end the cycle of cultural boom and bust.
The question is are we conscious enough as a society to really seize control of our collective destiny. Because civilizations before us have fallen with alarming regularity so what we are essentially talking about here is a turn in history, inventing something that has never been before. To let our modern civilization survive and transform and not fall like every other civilization thus far. For that to happen we need to rethink fundamental values that drive or consumer society at this point in time before it is too late before we all return back to the stone age.
References so you can check:
Diamond, J. 1995. “Easter’s End.” Discover Magazine (1 August 1995).
Ponting, C. 1991. A Green History of the World. London: Sinclair-Stevenson.
Tainter, J. 1995. “Sustainability of Complex Societies.” Futures 27: 397-404.
Tainter, J. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
hillary_step
Zagor,
Using impressive language does not equate to verifiable truth.
I must say that you used some pretty impressive language yourself in that interesting post.
The only thing I am having a problem with is trying to identify where you stand on the issue of whether man is responsible for the majority or the minority of Global Warming - the subject of this thread.
Best regards - HS
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5go
Nasa's climate scientists 'gagged by White House'
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 20 March 2007
James Hansen, the Nasa scientist who first warned the US government about global warming, yesterday delivered a withering critique of the way the White House has "interfered" with climate scientists at the space agency.
Dr Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said that the space agency's budget for studying the Earth's climate has been slashed and that its scientists have been systematically gagged about speaking of their concerns.
In detailed written testimony delivered yesterday to the US House of Representatives, Dr Hansen said that there had been creeping politicisation of climate change with the effect that the American public has been left confused about the science of global warming.
"During my career I have noticed an increasing politicisation of public affairs at headquarters level, with a notable effect on communication from scientists to the public," Dr Hansen writes in his testimony. "Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," he says. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now.
Political appointees within the public affairs office at Nasa headquarters were accused by Dr Hansen of interfering in scientific statements and of blocking reports that link rising temperatures or melting sea ice with global warming. He says instructions and reprimands were often made orally so that there was no paper or electronic record of the interference, which allowed press relations personnel to dismiss gagging allegations as hearsay.
"My suggestion for getting at the truth is to question the relevant participants under oath, including the then Nasa associate administrator for earth sciences, who surely is aware of who in the White House was receiving and reviewing press releases that related to climate change," Dr Hansen says.
When Dr Hansen gave a lecture to the American Geophysical Union about the record global temperatures in 1995, the White House called Nasa headquarters to complain of the resulting media attention. "The upshot was a new explicit set of constraints on me, including the requirement that any media interviews be approved beforehand and that headquarters have the right of first refusal on all interviews," he says.
"It became clear that the new constraints on my communications were going to be a real impediment when I was forced to take down from our website our routine posting of updated global temperature analysis."
Since then, Nasa has slashed its budget for the study of earth sciences.
"The impact is to confuse the public about the reality of global warming, and about whether that warming can be reliably attributed to human-made greenhouse gases," he says.
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5go
cover upGlobal warming. -
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dilaceratus
Hillary_step, in reply to Zagor: "I must say that you used some pretty impressive language yourself in that interesting post."
Unfortunately, the bulk of the language in that interesting post is the work of William E. Rees, Phd, from the University of British Columbia, and appeared in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society under the title "Globalization and Sustainability: Conflict or Convergence?" in August 2002.
Google's HTML version of the PDF file, demonstrating the substantive lifting, can be read here. -
Frank75
Above Zagor discusses the comments of William E Rees who borrows from Diamonds conclusions. Diamond books although not originally intended relates to our past failures and what they can show us to help us avoid failure in the future. "Guns Germs and Steel" shows why the Sino and Eurasian civilizations have prospered while others have failed and disappeared. Wikipedia says of Diamond "He claims that ecological factors account for the development of civilizations and technologies. He identifies the main processes and factors of civilizational development that were present in Eurasia, from the origin of human beings in Africa to the proliferation of agriculture and technology. He posits, for instance, that agricultural development and complexity are a function of climate. Ultimately, the explanation does not center on humanity itself, but rather the resources at human disposal relative to geography, climate, and the availability of food and shelter."
While Rees is more pessimistic of his view of our future, believing collapse is inevitable (and he is discussing total collapse) Diamond does show that some cultures have endured especially Eurasian societies. They both do believe that we as humanity are capable (contrary to Wikipedias generalization) to deal with the problems confronting our survival as Rees says, " We are uniquely positioned to understand the forces of bio-cultural determinism that have heretofore had the quality of inevitability. In theory, this gives us the power at last to seize control over our own destiny and end the cycle of cultural boom and bust."
Now people are going to say, "See, we are better than them because we know about CO2 and can reverse or undo it's affects, and we are not ignoring it... see what has been accomplished through Kyoto and IPCC" (blah blah blah)
However simplistic comments like that imply that CO2 forcings on the climate are what's behind GW and that fixing that will save the earth from disaster. The collapses Diamond deals with in the book not only cover disasters that were ignored or unforeseen, but also where the societal response was incorrect. An example of this is the two cultures that inhabited Greenland during the Little Ice Age, the Norse and the Inuit. Both cultures dealt with the climate change in different ways. The Inuit survived and even thrive up until today, while the Norse collapsed. Diamond points out that they made a valiant effort to maintain themselves despite the change, however chose for some reason not to change their diet to a fish species that were abundant nearby. Perhaps it was a miscalculation, societal taboo or other factor. Regardless it shows us that wrong choices are just as bad as the disaster itself.
Although not a disaster per se, the US management of forests (see here) is an example of making wrong choices to a perceived threat. Due to a large scale forest fire in 1910 a policy was adopted called "total suppression". Management of the nations forests was geared towards various ways to avoid forest fires and achieve that objective. The result was " 1994 was a record setting fire season in fire fighting costs until 2000 and subsequently 2002, at $845 million, $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion respectively. Furthermore the 2000 season consumed 8.4 million acres, the most in 50 years (National Interagency Fire Cent, 2003)."
Sounds like our present mythology of becoming carbon neutral along with buying and selling carbon units so those with money can still fly leer jets to and from work.
That is our challenge today. Putting things in perspective. I mentioned earlier in this thread about Diamonds comments on the Island of Hispaniola. Shared by two nations with an intertwined history but with two different political environments. Arguably the DR side is a little different than the Haiti side geographically 9as well as slightly larger), but still similar enough to compare and the people are similar in regards to the impact they have on the environment around them.
Looking today, Haiti is deforested, erroded, infertile and in all manner of speaking has been ravaged to the brink of collapsed with very few options. The DR on the other hand despite the abuses of corruption and despotism seems to be fairing quite well environmentally at least. All of this is pretty much due to Trujillo banning deforestation and importing fossil fuels such as propane to replace wood as a source of heating/cooking energy. The failure to have a dictator committed to preservation of the forests on the Haiti side has brought about the different outcome.
Having lived on the Island for 3 years, I saw first hand the struggle of developing nations such as the DR and underdeveloped Haiti (Not for lack of trying!). There are many challenges that face the majority of earths population and some of the so called deniers are saying just that. Even if all of the evidence pointed to CO2 from our emissions as the cause of GW (I remain unconvinced) I can hardly justify in my mind denying the benefits of inexpensive energy in our modern society due to the life I live and what i have seen in the 3rd world. What I see happening is us finding ways to mitigate the detrimental effects of fossil fuels (of which CO2 is only a small component), bringing our explosive consumption under control, and eliminating the worst offenders (coal as it is used presently) as a natural course of our societies ongoing development.
Back to Diamonds research noted above, he points out that the world is not so similar so as to be lumped always together as a whole, which is what Global Averaging of data attempts to do. Transplanting European society to South Africa netted positive results because of its similar climate whereas Europen introduction into tropical climates was at times an utter failure. A similar climate was of no help in Australia initially due to other factors such as the irratic weather of that region, but North America was and on it goes.
In a paper Christy et al. 2007 the following comments are made in harmony with criticism of a global modeling as it relates to the debate:
First, it is apparent that we have little skill at reproducing and predicting changes on regional scales of the size up to a region like conterminous U.S. Secondly, it is therefore far more difficult to predict the climate effect of a particular policy aimed at altering current emissions of greenhouse gases (by small amounts) and thus somehow "hold back global warming". In other words, we are unable with any confidence to predict or detect climate outcomes from Kyoto-like policy options, especially on the scale where our citizens live.
Many of the statements below will use the terminology "consistent with" rather than "proof of". This is the way science works in the field of climate because we basically cannot give "proof" of the type found in laboratory experimentation
Even though Christy has been involved with papers in favor of AGW does Christy embrace the main argument about CO2's involvement?
In the following testimony I will first describe how a carefully reconstructed time series of temperatures in the Central Valley of California indicate that changes since 1910 are more consistent with the impacts of land-use changes than the effects currently expected from the enhanced greenhouse theory.
His critique of the present data?
This and other research points to the need for a better temperature index than what is used now over land: daytime temperatures, rather than the average daily temperatures (used now), are more directly representative of the layer in the atmosphere affected by greenhouse gases. Secondly, I will describe results from two papers which examine our knowledge of atmospheric temperatures as they relate to the surface. The results point to a more modest atmospheric warming than anticipated from our current understanding of the enhanced greenhouse theory. Further, I argue for an independent program with significant funding to evaluate climate model simulations and projections with a healthy, objective eye.
So referring to his study last year of the San Joaquin Valley (inhabited with accompanying land use, irrigation etc) and Sierra Nevada (mostly uninhabited) climate using recorded data from the last 100 years He relates what the figures extrapolated in those two different regions, please note why there is a need to proceed with caution before jumping to conclusion such as the cause of "Global Warming":
We discovered that indeed the nighttime temperatures in the 18 Valley stations were warming rapidly, about 6°F in summer and fall, while the same daytime temperatures fell about 3°F. This is consistent with the effects of urbanization and the massive growth in irrigation in the Valley.
And the nearby Sierra Nevada?
The real surprise was the composite temperature record of the 23 stations in the central Sierra foothills and mountains. Here, there was no change in temperature. Irrigation and urbanization have not affected the foothills and mountains to any large extent. Evidently, nothing else had influenced the Sierra temperatures either.
Quelle suprise! So what about the models being used AT THE PRESENT TIME?
Because these results were provocative, we performed four different means of determining the error characteristics of these trends and determined that nighttime warming in the Valley was indeed significant but that changes in the Sierras, either day or night, were not.Models suggest that the Sierra’s are the place where clear impacts of greenhouse warming should be found, but the records we produced did not agree with that hypothesis.
For policymakers in California this result is revealing. It suggests that to "do something" about warming in central California means removing agricultural and urban development rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The paper then goes on to describe similar micro applications of the climate models in other areas, such as the SE USA and Midwest. Applying the models show warming trends there too while the macro data shows there has been moderate cooling.
[Note: as a follow-up to Christy (2002) on Alabama temperature trends, we examined the output from 10 climate models. All models showed a warming trend for 1900 to 2000 in the SE U.S. However, observations show a cooling trend (common throughout the SE U.S.) Additionally, Kunkel et al. 2006 perform a similar analysis for the central U.S. where temperatures have not experience a warming trend while model simulations of the same period do. Kunkel et al. identified this feature in the central U.S. as a "warming hole".]
The conclusion I draw is the same as Christy. Applying our expertise and resources to flawed data and projection models may give us a feeling of well being, but nothing will have substantially been accomplished with regard to the problem at the outset.
The bottom line here is that models can have serious shortcomings when reproducing the type of regional changes that have occurred. This also implies that they would be ineffective at projecting future regional changes with confidence, especially as a test of the effectiveness for specific policies. In other words it will be almost impossible to say with high confidence that a specific policy will have a predictable or measurable impact on climate.
Given the warnings of people like Reese and Diamond, it is vital we do something when society is faced with verifiable predictable catastrophe and or collapse. Our societal problem is not Global warming, but rather unsustainable consumption of resources. The last time I checked, those resources included much more than fossil fuels. Rather than unreliable computer models that can be shown to be weak, questions of conservation and resource management need not require much more than a slide rule, calculator or spreadsheet. Oh and possibly a little diet and exercise!
The debate continues.
Frank75
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Abaddon
Frank
The burden of proof is on you to support your position.
My main postions are;
1/ the evidence is that there is currently an unprecidented rise in average global temperatures
2/ that there are no natural forcings which can explain this
3/ that the vast majority of climatologists support AGW
I also feel there is loads of anti-AGW hysteria and fallacious argumentation (like "they were wrong the '70's about an ice age therefore they are wrong now") and that many of the most vocal anti-AGW scientists have qustionable track records, but I have already covered these in depth, and to be honest neither point addresses the question of whether AGW is real or not, so, like, whatever.
Looking at 3/ first, regarding Peisers, he is typically quoted by AGW skeptics to bolster one of their false arguments, viz.; "there is no overwhelming majority of climatologists supporting AGW", when Peisers now believes there IS an overwhelming majority. Present the facts in any order you like but this is the state of play today.
Secondly you quote in detail the results of a survey which I had already shown was based on unsound methodology.
Thus contention 3/ above stands, based on the evidence of the very person most used by AGW cynics to deny such a majority exists. If you deny "the vast majority of climatologists support AGW", please let me know and provide supporting evidence. If you can't do this my contention stands.
You have gone to a deal of effort in analysing claim 1/ and 2/, looking to see if the current trends are indeed unpresidented. However, you also seem to think that a temperature graph ALONE proves something other than temperatre. When I say unprecidented it means scale + timing + lack of natural forcings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
This shows delta degrees C, CO2 ppm and dust ppm
It clearly shows a coupling betwen CO2 and temperature, with dust peaks in cold dry periods. Note the fact there is a 'lag' between temperature rise and CO2 rise doesn't disprove AGW. These are showing cycles in the past where us monkeys were not burning billions of tons of fossil fuels, and the natural cycles observable in this do not apply when we increase CO2 levels 30% above anything seen in the past 400,000 years by fossil fuel burning in a 200 year long period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Milankovitch_Variations.png
This shows Precession, Obliquity, Eccentricity, Solar Forcing and Stage of Glaciation
At the risk of repeating myself, current trends are unprecidented. If this is untrue, please indicate when we had the same delta of degrees C in such a compressed period with the Precession, Obliquity, Eccentricity, Solar Forcing we currently have. You can't, and it's not because of the scale of the graph either. It is because current trends are unprecidented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar-cycle-data.png
This shows Solar Variation since 1975
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Satellite_Temperatures.png
Temperature in the same period
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png
CO2 of slighly more than the above period
Looking at the three graphs together one can clearly see how Solar Varations effect on temperature can be seen, but how over and above this we see a steady trend in temperature rise corresponding to level of CO2.
In light of the above I think Contentions 2/ and 3/ stand too. If you can show another period where identical forcings to that we have now triggered a climate change like that we have now, please do. If you can show natural forcings that explain current trends, please do. Please note I have already mentioned the research that may explain >35% of current change, so you can't quote that as I am not disputing that possibility; you need to look at forcings to explain the remaining 65%. If you can't do this my contentions stand, as supported by the evidence supplied above.
By way of an aside, I note in your last post you are ignoring the calculations made about the overall contribution towards global warming by urban heat islands and the citing of weather stations I posted earlier. The quoted material doesn't change these calculations one iota, so the relevance of what you posted is questionable in the debate about global warmig.
