Man Made Global Warming - yet another opinion

thescouselander

cepheus wrote: »

Ah not during the last few months! Actually the graph is cut short, because November 08 was relatively warm and 2008 was warmer than nearly all years of the 20th century. All it requires is a cold spell to being the Deniers out of the closet.

Long term trends, correlations, statistics, Deniers could never be bothered to learn that sort of thing at school, and beside it destroys their illusion and ideology. Drama, public relations, and constant reiteration is far more influential than facts especially when its what a sector of the population want to believe, as Hitler knew.

Strange that, it was widely reported that 2008 was one of the coldest of recent years. Snow for the first time in living memory in Baghdad, a deadly cold spell in Canada (it really was cold, I was there at the time) etc etc. I also remember reading about record ice formation at the north pole.

The only time I remember hearing about 2008 being warmer than usual was when the IPCC (or someone similar) was caught reusing Septembers data again in October for Siberia or somewhere like that. After that "mistake" was sorted out the average temperature looked a good bit cooler.

punamulta

Prof Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish green who decided to check all the stats with a view to helping the green movement with their facts. When to his horror he found much of the data to be exaggerated and manipulated he published the book anyway, I recommend his book it's dynamite.

The Skeptical Environmentalist, cambridge uni press

Volcano

thescouselander wrote: »

Strange that, it was widely reported that 2008 was one of the coldest of recent years. Snow for the first time in living memory in Baghdad, a deadly cold spell in Canada (it really was cold, I was there at the time) etc etc. I also remember reading about record ice formation at the north pole.

Local weather incidents are irrelevant as ever.

2008 cold? Nope:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081216.html

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/events/10thwarmest

Ben84

geordie_joe wrote: »

Typo, it should have been .035%.
So what you are saying is all the heat in the atmosphere is contained in only 1% of it's mass (or should that be volume?). Either way, as CO2 is only .035 - .04% it is far less important than the gasses that make up the rest of the 1%

Not quite. I gave a simplified version of what is happening.

Absorbtion and emission of radiation depends on the type of bonds in molecules, for example H2O or CO2. Without going in to the atomic/molecular physics, which would take a very long time, you can assume it works something like a key and lock. Some fit and get absorbed, which heats up the molecule they're absorbed by, while others pass by without being absorbed and passing on their energy.

Solar radiation enters the atmosphere and is absorbed by the earth, which re-emits it in a different range of wavelengths which can be absorbed by gases in the atmosphere known as greenhouse gases. They heat up because of this and although they're a small amount of the gasses in the atmosphere, the heat from them spreads out throughout all the particles.

geordie_joe wrote: »

Another point, if only 1% of the atmosphere can absorb and retain heat, what happens to the heat/infra-red radiation that misses this 1%. By my calculations that should be about 99% of it?

It goes back out in to space. It is the retention of more of this energy that is making the planet warmer on average.

geordie_joe wrote: »

As someone pointed out earlier, CO2 is distributed evenly around the earth. If this is true then all the other gasses should be distributed evenly too. If these gasses absorb heat, then get distributed evenly around the earth, presumably by the wind, why are some parts of the earth cooler than others? Surely they should carry the heat with them?

Heated air is transported around the planet, but heat is a tricky thing to trap and contain to transport. Due to many energy gains, losses and conversions the environment will never be in a steady state.

The earth is constantly rotating and always has a cold side. The materials on the surface can both absorb and reflect solar radiation. Snow is reflective, water absorbs it well. The amount of radiation received per square meter is greatest at the equator due to the angle towards the sun, while the poles receive less. The materials in the environment also influence temperature a lot. The concrete and brick in cities has a huge thermal store and cities remain several degrees above average all year. Water has an even higher thermal capacity and is one of the greatest heat storing and transporting materials on earth. Water is also a very complex factor as it consumes huge amounts of energy every time it changes state, called latent heat. This energy is trapped in it changing structure, for example when it freezes it absorbs heat, which causes a chain effect when there is a lot of water at the freezing point. Water also makes clouds that reflect sunlight, but is also a greenhouse gas.

Matter might move and flow, and its path is greatly affected by energy passing through it, but the energy itself has its own flow.

I could list many more factors, but these show how the energy received is affected by the environment. The sun supplies a steady stream of energy, but the environment, both the earth's surface materials and the atmospheric gases decide how much is absorbed, retained and where it goes. They can direct it in a lot of different ways.

thescouselander

Volcano wrote: »

Local weather incidents are irrelevant as ever.

2008 cold? Nope:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081216.html

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/events/10thwarmest

Yes, 2008 was the coldest year in nearly a decade, which was my point - I said it was the coldest in recent years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/05/climate-change-weather



And it doesn't change the fact that climate change supporters have been caught out making "mistakes" that just happen to support their cause. Can the publicised data be trusted? Maybe not.

cepheus

thescouselander wrote: »

And it doesn't change the fact that climate change supporters have been caught out making "mistakes" that just happen to support their cause. Can the publicised data be trusted? Maybe not.

Reputable organisations compare data before official publication so any large scale anomaly that isn't correct should be picked up anyway. However, they do publish preliminary drafts which are subject to change.

Climate of 2008
December in Historical Perspective
National Climatic Data Center
15 January 2008

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/dec/global.html#temp

Usually any mistakes are exaggerated all out of proportion to make it appear as if they cannot be trusted. For example, I remember one temperature figure out of millions of data, for a part of the US being slightly out one year. This meant it (by a remarkable coincidence) that it just failed to break the records for some 1930s figures in that area of the world as previously claimed. However, when averaged globally it made virtually no difference at all. Suddenly scientists were accused of fiddling data and the 1930s were said to be really hotter (implying hotter globally).

Most sceptical sources are written by amateurs with a mission to misrepresent, exaggerate and mislead in an attempt to perpetuate their delusion and ideology. This is the only way they can make their criticisms appear genuine. They can rarely be trusted, this includes most of the rubbish written in the right wing press. .

worldwheeler

cepheus wrote: »

Ah not during the last few months! Actually the graph is cut short, because November 08 was relatively warm and 2008 was warmer than nearly all years of the 20th century. All it requires is a cold spell to being the Deniers out of the closet.

Cold spell, like the Little Ice Age. But that was a localised temperature fluctuation and therefore is meaningless! Yet, the figures for this period are used as the "hockey stick" handle to show the level the climate temperature has risen from in the dramatic 20thC. And, the Medieval Warm Period did not occur, as the evidence is completely(?) anecdotal!? And therefore in the MMGW ideology is to be ignored. Well bang goes most of history as mere stories.

cepheus wrote: »

Long term trends, correlations, statistics, Deniers could never be bothered to learn that sort of thing at school, and beside it destroys their illusion and ideology. Drama, public relations, and constant reiteration is far more influential than facts especially when its what a sector of the population want to believe, as Hitler knew.

Ah, name calling. Do you feel better now after a little rant.
Funny you should mention Hitler and coercion methods. MMGW is being driven by a press that emphasises any extreme weather event anywhere in the world as proof of MMGW. Anything that may put doubt about MMGW is not reported or gets a couple of column inch spaces in an obscure position. Any public figure who questions the MMGW concept is either shunned, ostracised, ridiculed and has funding withdrawn. Al Gore's film portrays slanted views and blatant misrepresentation of statistic and yet he won High Honours for it and it is reported that is to be added to education time tables as part of the curriculum. Now, this sounds exactly like the indoctrination methods of the Nazi's.

MMGW warming will melt the ice caps and flood London, Florida, Bangladesh, Manhattan etc?!? And the solution to this is higher taxes, carbon credits and energy from unpredictable, inefficient and unreliable wind turbines that require the very power source that is killing the planet to continue to run in the back ground. Ah but they are profitable for the installers, and the paying source is very reliable, the taxpaying public.

Ideologies??! MMGW is a belief. To not believe is not an ideology.


Correlation? You can equally produce graphs showing connection of the "hockey stick" to the spread of television.

cepheus

worldwheeler wrote: »

Correlation? You can equally produce graphs showing connection of the "hockey stick" to the spread of television.

And I have said this is not surprising because both television and global warming are the result of man, therefore they will correlate.

stephen163

In the heat of the debate, a lot of people seem to miss the fundamental argument IN FAVOUR of man made global warming. That is the well established mechanism by which CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) contributes to the greenhouse effect. Even if the avalanche of other supporting evidence did not exist, this scientifically proven and demonstratable mechanism should be enough (given that we agree that environment CO2 has increases, which we all do!).

Wikipedia:

A survey published in 2009 by Peter Doran and Maggie Zimmerman of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago of 3146 Earth Scientists found that 97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming.[49] A summary from the survey states that:
"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."

thescouselander

I dont think the debate is over by any means. A lot of the IPCC claims are derived from computer models - the problem is that those models have serious problems with them.

I am not a climatologist but I do know a lot about computer modelling as I work in this area. Any computer model needs to go through a Validation and Verification process, this is standard procedure when using computer models. From what I have seen climate models have a very difficult time in passing any sort of V&V test, this is probably down to the complexity of the real world system (the climate) and the fact a lot of things will be approximated or omitted in the model. There may even be processes going on in the climate that we are not aware of so are not modelled.

The fact remains that if the climate models cannot pass a V&V process they cannot be used as reliable evidence.