Climate change anyone?

Goodaye Steve,

The only 'scandal' is that the emails were 'stolen'. Can't wait to find out who!

And they deserve to get into trouble, but this doesn't have anything to do with the climate change phenomena, just the reporting of same!

Yep I wonder who?

Fair enough, and if he's guilty, fair enough.

Mr Beddington also said in the same interview, "It’s unchallengeable that CO2 traps heat and warms the Earth and that burning fossil fuels shoves billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. But where you can get challenges is on the speed of change.
When you get into large-scale climate modelling there are quite substantial uncertainties. On the rate of change and the local effects, there are uncertainties both in terms of empirical evidence and the climate models themselves.”
…..Professor Beddington said that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction: “Some people ask why we should act when scientists say they are only 90 per cent certain about the problem. But would you get on a plane that had a 10 per cent chance of landing?”

Would you have a reference please Steve as I couldn't find it, not doubting it's there, but need a reference to look it up, thanks!

 

stickleyC, you still haven't announced whether you're a climate change skeptic / denier or not? I have to keep assuming you are, going on your posts.
Regarding your most recent post, as I posted to Dr Arbes in the previous post, this doesn't change the fact that climate change / global warming due to anthropogenic causes is occurring, it only challenges, and fairly so, the reporting of same.
Heard on the radio an academic Lawrence or Laurence from James Cook University saying that it could be worse than the 40%, and there were many peer reviewed articles stating same.
You don't have to announce your position, I surely don't have to look them up for you, mark.

 

In a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach.
-- Encylopedia Brittanica, on debate

In that light, does my propensity to subscribe to one side or the other matter?

What if, instead, I realize that I am a biomechanist and, like everyone else involved in this thread, NOT a geologist, climatologist or geophysicist...although apparently that is not a pre-requisite to forming unbudging conclusions on that topic as even the head of the IPCC does not hold these expertise.

What if, as a scientist and researcher, instead of choosing to only accept the opinions of the experts one side of the argument, i simply attempt to use my knowledge in the areas of science and research to "attempt to" objectively critique the process and draw attention to the possible shortcomings that each side might possess in their process (which obviously will shed light on the credibility of the data)?

What if my assessment is that the debate has been far from even-handed?

Does that mean I am a skeptic or does that mean I'm not convinced yet from a scientific standpoint that "the debate is over."

For example: A scientist with experience, knowledge and credentials raises a question about the veracity of some aspect of man-made global warming. A common response from the side is to quickly disparage this person as having connections to "big-oil" while this bit of information is all but ignored:

Published In: London Telegraph
Publication date: 12/20/2009

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations.

The issue of Dr Pachauri’s potential conflict of interest was first publicly raised last Tuesday when, after giving a lecture at Copenhagen University, he was handed a letter by two eminent ‘climate sceptics’. One was the Stephen Fielding, the Australian Senator who sparked the revolt which recently led to the defeat of his government’s ‘cap and trade scheme’. The other, from Britain, was Lord Monckton, a longtime critic of the IPCC’s science, who has recently played a key part in stiffening opposition to a cap and trade bill in the US Senate.

Their open letter first challenged the scientific honesty of a graph prominently used in the IPCC’s 2007 report, and shown again by Pachauri in his lecture, demanding that he should withdraw it. But they went on to question why the report had not declared Pachauri’s personal interest in so many organisations which seemingly stood to profit from its findings.

The letter, which included information first disclosed in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, was circulated to all the 192 national conference delegations, calling on them to dismiss Dr Pachauri as IPCC chairman because of recent revelations of his conflicting interests.

The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director-general in 2001. Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India’s largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group, with interests ranging from steel, cars and energy to chemicals, telecommunications and insurance (and now best-known in the UK as the owner of Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus, Britain’s largest steel company).

Although TERI has extended its sponsorship since the name change, the two concerns are still closely linked.

In India, Tata exercises enormous political power, shown not least in the way that when it expressed its interests in developing land in the eastern states of Orissa and Jarkhand, it led to the Indian government displacing hundreds of thousands of poor tribal villagers to make way for large-scale iron mining and steelmaking projects.

Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries, which may now seem odd for a man who has since become best known for his opposition to fossil fuels. He was, for instance, a director until 2003 of India Oil, the country’s largest commercial enterprise, and until this year remained as a director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, its largest electricity producer.

In 2005, he set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.

However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved, such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms.

Dr Pachauri’s TERI empire has also extended worldwide, with branches in the US, the EU and several countries in Asia. TERI Europe, based in London, of which he is a trustee (along with Sir John Houghton, one of the key players in the early days of the IPCC and formerly head of the UK Met Office) is currently running a project on bio-energy, financed by the EU.

Another project, co-financed by our own Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the German insurance firm Munich Re, is studying how India’s insurance industry, including Tata, can benefit from exploiting the supposed risks of exposure to climate change. Quite why Defra and UK taxpayers should fund a project to increase the profits of Indian insurance firms is not explained.

Even odder is the role of TERI’s Washington-based North American offshoot, a non-profit organisation, of which Dr Pachauri is president. Conveniently sited on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol, this body unashamedly sets out its stall as a lobbying organisation, to “sensitise decision-makers in North America to developing countries’ concerns about energy and the environment”.

TERI-NA is funded by a galaxy of official and corporate sponsors, including four branches of the UN bureaucracy; four US government agencies; oil giants such as Amoco; two of the leading US defence contractors; Monsanto, the world’s largest GM producer; the WWF (the environmentalist campaigning group which derives much of its own funding from the EU) and two world leaders in the international ‘carbon market’, between them managing more than $1 trillion (£620 billion) worth of assets.

All of this is doubtless useful to the interests of Tata back in India, which is heavily involved not just in bio-energy, renewables and insurance but also in ‘carbon trading’, the worldwide market in buying and selling the right to emit CO2. Much of this is administered at a profit by the UN under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol, which the Copenhagen treaty was designed to replace with an even more lucrative successor.

Under the CDM, firms and consumers in the developed world pay for the right to exceed their ‘carbon limits’ by buying certificates from those firms in countries such as India and China which rack up ‘carbon credits’ for every renewable energy source they develop – or by showing that they have in some way reduced their own ‘carbon emissions’.

It is one of these deals, reported in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, which is enabling Tata to "mothball" nearly three million tonnes of steel production at its Corus plant in Redcar, while opening a new plant in Orissa with a similar scale of production, gaining in the process a potential £1.2 billion in ‘carbon credits’ (while putting 1,700 people on Teesside out of work).

More than three-quarters of the world ‘carbon’ market benefits India and China in this way. India alone has 1,455 CDM projects in operation, worth $33 billion (£20 billion), many of them facilitated by Tata – and it is perhaps unsurprising that Dr Pachauri also serves on the advisory board of the Chicago Climate Exchange, the largest and most lucrative carbon-trading exchange in the world, which was also assisted by TERI in setting up India’s own carbon exchange.

But this is peanuts compared to the numerous other posts to which Dr Pachauri has been appointed in the years since the UN chose him to become the world’s top ‘climate-change official’.

In 2007, for instance, he was appointed to the advisory board of Siderian, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specialising in ‘sustainable technologies’, where he was expected to provide the Fund with ‘access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level’,

In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise £100 billion.

In the same year he became a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by EDF and E.On, two of Europe’s largest electricity firms, to promote ‘bio-energy’. This year Dr Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a ‘strategic adviser’, and was made chairman of the advisory board to the Asian Development Bank, strongly supportive of CDM trading, whose CEO warned that failure to agree a treaty at Copenhagen would lead to a collapse of the carbon market.

The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on. He has become head of Yale University’s Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding. He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank. He is Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and was until recently an adviser to Toyota Motors. Recalling his origins as a railway engineer, he is even a policy adviser to SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company.

Meanwhile, back home in India, he serves on an array of influential government bodies, including the Economic Advisory Committee to the prime minister, holds various academic posts and has somehow found time in his busy life to publish 22 books.

Dr Pachauri never shrinks from giving the world frank advice on all matters relating to the menace of global warming. The latest edition of TERI News quotes him as telling the US Environmental Protection Agency that it must go ahead with regulating US carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to pass its cap and trade bill.

It reports how, in the days before Copenhagen, he called on the developing nations which had been historically responsible for the global warming crisis to make ‘concrete commitments’ to aiding developing countries such as India with funding and technology – while insisting that India could not agree to binding emissions targets. India, he said, must bargain for large-scale subsidies from the West for developing solar power, and Western funds must be made available for geo-engineering projects to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

As a vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri repeated his call for the world to eat less meat to cut down on methane emissions (as usual he made no mention of what was to be done about India’s 400 million sacred cows). He further called for a ban on serving ice in restaurants and for meters to be fitted to all hotel rooms, so that guests could be charged a carbon tax on their use of heating and air-conditioning.

One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies for which he works publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.

As for TERI itself, Dr Pachauri’s main job for nearly 30 years, it is so coy about money that it does not even publish its accounts – the financial statement amounts to two income and expenditure pie charts which contain no detailed figures.

Dr Pachauri is equally coy about TERI’s links with Tata, the company which set it up in the 1970s and whose name it continued to bear until 2002, when it was changed to just The Energy Research Institute. A spokesman at the time said ‘we have not severed our past relationship with the Tatas, the change is only for convenience’.

But the real question mark over TERI’s director-general remains over the relationship between his highly lucrative commercial jobs and his role as chairman of the IPCC.

TERI have, for example, become a preferred bidder for Kuwaiti contracts to clean up the mess left by Saddam Hussein in their oilfields in 1991. The $3 billion (£1.9 billion) cost of the contracts has been provided by the UN. If successful, this would be tenth time TERI have benefited from a contract financed by the UN.

Certainly no one values the services of TERI more than the EU, which has included Dr Pachauri’s institute as a partner in no fewer than 12 projects designed to assist in devising the EU’s policies on mitigating the effects of the global warming predicted by the IPCC.

But whether those 1,700 Corus workers on Teesside that will be losing their jobs next month will be quite as excited about the international ‘carbon market’ as Dr Pachauri, is quite another matter.

 

This is not a well-conducted debate, no argument, it's not even a debate, it's you lecturing me on etiquette. I don't give too much for etiquette when such an important subject is involved.
Yep, I respect Dr Arbes, we don't agree on anything, except podiatry (a field in which he knows far more than me and no I'm not brown-nosing, it's obvious) but he at least doesn't fiddle faddle play with words pretends to sit on the fence while attempting to present only one side of the show.

Nor have I claimed to be. I assume you're not a political historian, does that stop you from discussing politics, I assume you're not a chef, does that disqualify you from discussing recipes / food??

You know for a fact that Pachauri has 'unbudging' views? And Lindzen et al aren't 'unbudging'!

Yes both sides, like you and I aren't.

Does this mean you think one of the 'sides is using unfair tactics'. Which side would that be? and more importantly please elaborate with an example(s).

From your posts only ever including 'points' from one side I'd definitely say you were a skeptic / denier.

Yes for the 'big oil' connections, you don't mention the skeptics / deniers constantly using the 'cabal of climatologists all in it for the grant money / vested interests'. Same thing.
And please please please please give me an example of ' while this bit of information is all but ignored:'
In five posts you haven't raised one single statistic to support your position, all you do is lecture and bag the construction of a report.


And here we go again not arguing / discussing the subject. Have you read his history? He has a joint PhD in Industrial Engineering and Economics! An error / omission in this article, can we trust this article, no it's all tainted!

 

Of course the climate is changing - as it has done many times before - ice ages etc etc - and for reasons that probably our learned scientists still don't know about. Solar activity, geo-orbital tilts in axis, increase in methane in atmosphere - take your pick. No doubt we pollute and spoil this planet, but whether that pollution will lead to a change in climate that threatens mass extinction of plant and animal life - who knows? Should we treat our environment better - yes. Should we seek a better way to live in harmony and with equilibrium to our surroundings - yes. Is the current approach - increasing taxes - the best way to achieve this - no. Is there a religious-type fervour associated with the climate change arguments - yes. Are corns curable? Who knows.....

 

I have a question:

WHY is it going to cost the USA (and other nations) BILLIONS to "fight" climate change (I guess no one uses the term global warming anymore). Where is this $$$ going and what is it going to be spent on?

Also, I don't understand how MILLIONS will die if we do not spend billions on Climate Change.

Steve

 

Well you have an administration that seems to enjoy "fighting" other, in their opinion, worthwhile causes such as 'Terror', 'Drugs' etc etc., and no doubt the biliions of dollars can be channelled into some or other friendly institution like Halliburton or Clearwater so that the sponsors of politics can have their just rewards at the expense of the poor, the impoverished, the taxpayer. And millions of people do die through pollution - think Bhopal Disaster 1984, think Fox River in your own Wisconsin. Sure there are many polluters and not just the USA, but one would think you would be a leading light for ethical change rather than one which acts in conjunction with vested interests like what happened in Iraq and the Middle East.....

 

WOW:
Those nasty Big USA Corporations again (the ones that have donated over 100 Million $ to Haiti - most likely more than any other NATION other than the US Government, $40 million in the first week!)

Are you REALLY saying that CLimate Control is more important than fighting terror????? WOW.

SO, what's the name of this world you are living in?

Mark ; the idea is that the PIE gets bigger. Just because a person gets a dollar doesn't mean it's at the expense of someone else. Good healthy capitalism (especially without Government control) helps everyone.

So again, I ask.WHAT is so expensive about fighting climate control? I honestly do not understand. WHat costs so much? Please explain it to me.

Steve

 

Steve,

I really do not know whay fighting climate control costs so much. Or indeed if it really does. Everything we read and hear about these days seems to come with a value attached. Who makes the valuations and on what basis, eludes me, I'm afraid. The problem I have with "good healthy capitalism" is that it rarely is. Rather, it is a system of commerce which is open to abuse and exploitation and where the control of monies is run in an arbitrary manner, often without much thought or conscience to the effects on others. I really do not want to start on injustices or inequalities, individually or nationally, or responsibilities of nations and regimes - as this is primarily a podiatric forum - however, when you mention Haiti, you should also factor in the veto of billions of dollars of aid by the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration before it. I agree that the USA is a generous nation and in times of global disasters is often the first to mobilise aid. But there are countless other examples where they exploit and impoverish developing nations for political, monetary and mineral advantage. And before you point the finger, I am no supporter of the British Empire, who did exactly the same to many nations and peoples during its ascendency.

Fighting terror? Look closer to home, Steve. Peace not war. Love not hate. Sell it to your representatives in the Senate and Congress.

 

"Fighting terror? Look closer to home, Steve. Peace not war. Love not hate. Sell it to your representatives in the Senate and Congress."

Well, the problem is YOU and I may feel that way, regrettably the terrorists don't.

Haiti is a corrupt country. I don't care HOW much $$$ you send in. Throwing money at problems rarely solves them.

Haiti's ONLY HOPE of progressing into the 21st century is a big ole dose of capitalism. Period.



Did you get a new avatar?

 

Mark - you have done a commendable job of demonstrating why a serious debate on this topic is not possible with you. You made it clear from your initial post that you were not interested in debate but simply wanted to either convince those who didn't hold your view why they are wrong or at least excoriate those who wouldn't come over to your side.

This was further followed-up with the usual 97% of scientists... language and other statements that make it clear that in your mind there is no room for debate. You made it clear you will marginalize and disregard those with far more expertise in the field of climatology than you or I if they don't agree with those you've chosen to regard as correct.

In my experience, in this type of "debate", all you can do is attempt to address where the thought process may be faulty.

Again, this analogy only holds if neither party is of the belief that their opinion is "undebatable". I would never waste the time of discussing the fine points a supreme court decision with someone who held that their view was undebatable.

Refusing FOIA requests for data and refusing to provide fellow scientists with the information necessary to reproduce your results comes to mind. If the goal is truly scientific altruism instead of protecting your own interests (whether that might be financial, prestige in a hot topic area, even maybe protecting what has for some become their religion substitute) then that behavior is not defensible.
In general though, I do think there is a concerted effort by the "pro-man-made climate change/catastrophe is coming" side to win the argument by trying to convince the general public that there is no room for debate on any point.

I agree they are the same thing. The difference is that is seems you have been saying that it could never be the case that a scientist's interpretation of what's going on could ever be influenced by vested interests if they are on the pro-man-made global warming side. I would never make the same claim in either direction - of course there are 'deniers' whose interpretations are based on subjectivity and there are those touting the apocalypse to come who are completely well-intentioned. The opposite though is also true - you do not seem willing to concede that point.

So the fact that this article exluded his "industrial engineering" credential (which I'm still not sure makes him the world's leading climatologist) makes everything else they are saying tainted but yet when the IPCC report is shown to contain faulty methodology you defend its credibility and maintain "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" - this is a double standard.

Call it playing devil's advocate against a seeming display of the religious fervor that Mark Russell mentions.

What I see as the major problem of the arguments from most die-hards is lack of clarity. The argument as it is presented always seems to be: There is data evidence that temperatures are changing which means man is destroying the earth and we will all soon die if we don't spend millions of dollars and regulate what people in the western world are doing.

In reality, the issue is:
1. Has there been a change in temperatures?
If yes then:
2. Is the amount of change we are seeing going to kill us all?
If yes then:
3. Is the change being caused by man/ to what extent?
If yes then:
4. Is the extent to which man is causing the change enough that altering it would save us?
If yes then:
5. Will the proposed millions in expenditures and "punishing" of developed countries alter the changes enough to save us?

Die-hards seem to say the evidence for 1 is a resounding "yes" so therefore 2-5 and it is undebatable and anyone who dares question it is a skeptic/denier.

In that case, I guess I am a skeptic/denier because from all appearances, while I would agree that #1 is true, the further down the list you go, the less clear it seems to get.

As a quick example, of why debating specific facts with you seems pointless: take the CO2 & temperature rise - which comes first issue. As you described previously:
Scientist A says "CO2 causes temperature rise even though there is a delay which makes it seem like temperature rise comes first and here is a theoretical explanation that is plausible."

Scientist B says "I disagree with that theory based on my interpretation of things".

You seem to say "Scientist A is undeniably correct and Scientist B's argument has no merit."

I say: "Here are 2 experts (in a field of which I have next to no technical expertise) who disagree and are debating the issue, therefore the issue must not be as "beyond debate" as Al Gore suggests"

This is where the common response is "97% of scientists agree with scientist A"

I'm sure 97% of scientists once agreed the sun orbited the earth....
I'm sure 97% of scientists once agreed the atom was the smallest unit of matter...
Then 97% of scientists probably agreed the the proton/electron/neutron was the smallest...

Maybe we can start our own "Project Steve" for the global warming debate

 

Well, you need to ask yourself why "terrorists" feel the way that they do. And who are the terrorists exactly. If a family in a remote village in Afghanistan were vapourised by mistake and recorded as casualties of collateral damage and you were a relative, how would you feel towards the occupying army? Terrorists? Or would you be grateful that you might be offered a suitcase of American dollars as compensation? Understanding that, no matter what you think about the Taliban or the corrupt Karzai government, it was okay that your relatives had to perish in the name of the greater good and that all that matters is that your country gets a good dose of capitalism?

Steve, there is much I like about the USA and its people, but I am afraid there is much I, and most of the rest of the world - including many honourable and decent Americans - find repugnant about the actions, morals and ethics of some of its institutions such as the CIA, military strategists, financiers and certain direct and indirect arms of government.

And you say that Haiti is corrupt??? Haiti is a bankrupt and impoverished third-world hispanic country - it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere - and its peoples have suffered terribly under succesive corrupt regimes Papa Doc and Baby Doc. Their first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in a CIA backed coup in 2004 because he was "unacceptable" to the Bush Administration. Regime change, Steve, runs counter to international law and the principles of the United Nation's Charter. But of course, these really don't matter when it's not in the "interests" of the US Administration. I would like to think that Obama, perhaps in recognition of previous administration failures, expedited the aid to Haiti on the basis that it was the right thing to do and for all the right reasons. I just hope he has the courage of his convictions in seeing through all the other changes the USA needs to make to recover its position in the world.

Fairness, equality, justice and liberty. I despise violence and see no sense in war whatsoever. But I also understand the measures people are forced to take when they are the subject of injustice and inequality. Terrorism? Let me quote you from the greatest terrorist of all - Nelson Mandela.

All the best

 

Good argument.

 

Goodaye Mark

Now we have another reason, anthropogenic greenhouse gas production. Man would have certainly had caused micro-climate changes in the past but this is of a different magnitude.

Yep; if it changes the climate sufficiently then can you imagine the rate of ‘evolution’ not occurring on a grander scale than it is now; yep; and yep.

A specific tax? And I wouldn’t have a clue. Mr Pachauri would have a far better idea.

And justifiably so imo.

Sorry Mark, if you’re saying that climate change is unavoidable I would requote …..Professor Beddington, Chief Scientific Officer, said that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction: “Some people ask why we should act when scientists say they are only 90 per cent certain about the problem. But would you get on a plane that had a 10 per cent chance of landing?”

Don’t know regarding the finances needed. I’ll call it ‘global warming’. Wouldn’t know.

Not sure on the numbers, has anyone modelled to get some? Climate change, environment change >> evolution, including possibly/ probably changes in species numbers. Normally I wouldn’t mind but my kids and their kids etc are part of those numbers.

Good on them!

WOW WOW back at ya. This is where I can’t believe a intelligent person, as you obviously are, can not comprehend the magnitude of the problem. ALSO (I’M NOT SHOUTING STEVE MY KEYBOARD IS THROWING A TIZZY, APOLOGIES) ‘FIGHTING TERROR’ IS SURELY THE BIGGEST CAUSE OF MORE TERROR, AND DOES NOT OUR INVASION AND OCCUPATION INCLUDE MANY ACTS OF TERRORISM.
WILL CONTINUE AFTER I GIVE THE KEYBOARD A FEW GENTLE ADJUSTMENTS!

 

Heres a quote that I love on the subjest of terrorist

 

Hi Mark:

I comprehend it, I just don't believe it.

As of this morning 63% of the united states was covered in snow!!!!!! This includes parts of Texas, arizona, new mexico, california.

Global warming????? Give me a break, I'm freezing my butt off!!!!!

Maybe you should move on to something else to worry about for your children, like the national debt, the spread of drugs or pornography, the deterioration of our culture, starving children, obese children, children with flat feet............there's any number of issues you can get behind and actually do something about.

GLobal Warming - especially caused by us......I'm not buying it. Death of MILLIONS caused by Global Warming????? Come on......

Steve

 

Fair enough, not sure about the "excoriate".

That's 97% of " those with far more expertise in the field of climatology" than you or I imagine yourself. What's so 'usual' about stating it? Don't get you. I think it's quite justified to mention. I use it to state exactly what it says. I will, in this case, be convinced by those 97% and query the 3% yep. I don't disregard them, I wish to challenge their 'follower's like yourself.

Fair enough, let's address our thought processes. I gather you mean how we come to our opinion.

Yep guilty of the first charge. Fair enough, let's stick to climate change.

Yep fair enough except why don't we lay off the 'religion' emotive word use, it's not good argumentative practice.

I could say EXACTLY the same for the deniers / skeptic lobby.

Sorry stickleyC what's the same thing? (English was my worst subject)

If I've given that impression then it's probably because I get annoyed / and challenge the denier/skeptic tactic of painting all " pro-man-made global warming" advocates? as being " influenced by vested interests". I find that extremely unbelievable, as for some being influenced I could believe that occurred. How would it affect the data, not sure?

Again, my error in expressing myself. I believe that some denier /skeptics scientists do honestly believe their position. Can't really comment, I'd definitely have to have read more to have an 'accurate' assessment of same. Guessing game on both our parts.

I do believe strongly that there are on both sides scientists who are 'hanging on to their bone', who have stated opinions in the past and do not / can not alter their stated opinion despite 'new' evidence.

EXACTLY (my keyboard isn't stuck this time) that's why I said this, you are 'painting' the whole 2007 IPCC report and the advocates? (not sure this is correct word for those who believe anthropogenic climate change is occurring) as unworthy because of, now, three faulty claims, in a 3000 page? document whereas the 'pseudo-journalism' (using your term) you quoted is acceptable. I was trying to point out the ridiculousness of doing same. Yes, 'worlds leading climatologist', unfounded but an interesting CV and makes sense how he got there.

 

one of the experts david karoly

 

Hi Mark:
Didn't listen to the entire thing, but, I can tell you that according to NASA, 1934 was the warmest year on record, not '99. The second warmest was 2009! Hard to believe.

I assume that he goes on to say that surface temperatures worldwide have dropped since 1998 (I read one of his transcripts instead, it takes too long to listen to a video.

Steve

 

goodaye Steve, I enjoyed watching (twice) your President addressing the Republican caucus! I'm sure you have a youtube of same saved as a "Favourite"
I agree transcripts are far easier to use.




2nd part first, "What about the claim that the Earth’s surface has been cooling over the past decade? That issue can be addressed with a far higher degree of confidence, because the error due to incomplete spatial coverage of measurements becomes much smaller when averaged over several years. The 2‐sigma error in the 5‐year running‐mean temperature anomaly shown in Figure 2, is about a factor of two smaller than the annual mean uncertainty, thus 0.02‐0.03°C. Given that the change of 5‐year‐mean global temperature anomaly is about 0.2°C over the past decade, we can conclude that the world has become warmer over the past decade, not cooler.

Why are some people so readily convinced of a false conclusion, that the world is really experiencing a cooling trend? That gullibility probably has a lot to do with regional short‐term temperature fluctuations, which are an order of magnitude larger than global average annual anomalies. Yet many lay people do understand the distinction between regional short‐term anomalies and global trends."http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/


And a comments section from the same article, "“I wonder about the people who use cold weather to say that the globe is cooling. It forgets that global warming has a global component and that its a trend, not an everyday thing. I hear people down in the lower 48 say its really cold this winter. That ain’t true so far up here in Alaska. Bethel, Alaska, had a brown Christmas. Here in Anchorage, the temperature today is 31[ºF]. I can’t say based on the fact Anchorage and Bethel are warm so far this winter that we have global warming. That would be a really dumb argument to think my weather pattern is being experienced even in the rest of the United States, much less globally.” "



Now for first part of your post. I got into NASA website and, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/updates/200708.html,
"The effect on global temperature (the left side of the figure; was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable.
Contrary to some statements flying around the internet, there is no effect on the rankings of global temperature. Also our prior analysis had 1934 as the warmest year in the U.S. (see the 2001 paper above), and it continues to be the warmest year, both before and after the correction to post 2000 temperatures. However, as we note in that paper, the 1934 and 1998 temperature are practically the same, the difference being much smaller than the uncertainty.

 

HEy MArk:
As you know, I'm NOT an Obama fan!!! To say the LEAST. He pronounced "CORPSMAN" three times in the same speech as CORPSMAN with the "P" and the "S" (not realizing it's pronounces core-man) !!!!
The man is an idiot. IF Bush had done that it would have been repeated on the news ad nauseum.....but I doubt ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, CNN etc...will air it.

SO, 1934. How do you account for that? Apparently quite a few industrial/rich/capitolistic/antienvironmental waccos were really turning up the combustion engines that year!

Steve

 

One more I saw today in the news...this isn't the entire thing but I think you can get the idea.


==================================

"The U.N.'s controversial climate report is coming under fire -- again -- this time by one of its own scientists, who admits he can't find any evidence to support a warning about a climate-caused North African food shortage.

The statement comes from a key 2007 report to the U.N., and asserts that by 2020 yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% in some African countries thanks to climate change.

But this weekend, a key author of the team behind that report told The Sunday Times that he could find no evidence to support his own group's claim. The revelation follows the retraction by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, dubbed 'Glaciergate' by commentators....."

 

1934 was the hottest year in the USA' s recorded history fot the 'lower 48 US states'. This 'heatwave' was restricted to the north west particularly and less so for the west and south. Interestingly the north-east 1934 temperature readings were 'below average'. Again what is of significance is GLOBAL temperature average, see graph, after adjustment for small error. This is the GLOBAL temperature trend for the 1880-2005

 

A regular heat wave!
I thought I felt really hot now as compared with the 60's..... maybe .5 degrees (worldwide, of course.in 50 years............... maybe)

and where did these surface temp. measurements come from? Currently, the Hadley Centre maintains the HADCRUT3, a global surface temperature dataset!!!!!!!!

The Hadley Center again. Oh my.!!!!!!

==============================================================================
"The uncertainty in annual measurements of the global average temperature (95% range) is estimated to be ~0.05°C since 1950 and as much as ~0.15°C in the earliest portions of the instrumental record. The error in recent years is dominated by the incomplete coverage of existing temperature records. Early records also have a substantial uncertainty driven by systematic concerns over the accuracy of sea surface temperature measurements.[26][27] Station densities are highest in the northern hemisphere, providing more confidence in climate trends in this region. Station densities are far lower in other regions such as the tropics, northern Asia and the former Soviet Union. This results in less confidence in the robustness of climate trends in these areas. If a region with few stations includes a poor quality station, the impact on global temperature would be greater than in a grid with many weather stations"

 

good morning Steve, the Hadley Centre, what have the blogs / media from the dark side been saying? Awaiting feedback re. why so warm in the US in the early 30's, will let you know when the 'forces of enlightenment' let me know.
You're definitely a 'glutton for punishment' Dr Arbes.

 

The Heartland Institute is a lobbying group which has received $676,000 from ExxonMobil[1]. In 2007 it published a list of “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares”[2]. These people, it maintained, supported “the very important view that the
Modern Warming is natural and no more dangerous than were the Medieval Warming, the Roman Warming and the Holocene Warming before it.”

But they didn’t. Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog.com started contacting the people the Heartland Institute had listed. He asked them whether they endorsed the views the Heartland Institute said they held. Within 48 hours, 45 people responded, all outraged that they had been traduced. Here are some samples of their replies to Kevin and their messages to the author of the list, Dennis Avery:

“I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite.”
Dr. David Sugden, Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh.

“I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there.”
Dr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University

“Please remove my name. What you have done is totally unethical!!”
Dr. Svante Bjorck, Geo Biosphere Science Centre, Lund University

“Because none of my research publications has ever indicated that the global warming is not as a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, I view that the inclusion of my name in such list without my permission or consensus has damaged my professional reputation as an atmospheric scientist.”
Dr. Ming Cai, Associate Professor, Department of Meteorology, Florida State University.

“They have taken our ice core research in Wyoming and twisted it to meet their own agenda. This is not science.”
Dr. Paul F. Schuster, Hydrologist, US Geological Survey

“Please remove my name IMMEDIATELY from the following article and from the list which misrepresents my research.”
Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth, Department of Geology, State University of New York at Buffalo

None of these names have yet been removed from the institute’s list.



JUST CHECKED THEY'RE STILL ON IT, MARK might have a look at the other names when I'm not so busy.

 

http://www.sacbee.com/state/story/2522836.html
Palin likens global warming studies to 'snake oil'

REDDING, Calif. -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called studies supporting global climate change a "bunch of snake oil science"…….

(AND I THOUGHT IT WAS THE OTHER WAY AROUND!)



The media were barred from the event,……

(GOOD MOVE SARAH!)


my comments in parentheses, mark

 

Palin............
I think the operative word here is "studies"

My problem with all of this is that it's so out of hand and environmentalists want EVERYONE to pay up and fix it, change our life style, limit our ability to manufacture and expand our economies.....

Even if you accept all the data, so what? Maybe our AVERAGE GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERATURES raises .4 or .5 degrees in the past 25 years. SO what?

Steve

 

Goodaye Steve, let's call it quits, and I do hope you're right, all the best, mark

 

Hey Mark:
Thanks.

I'm sure we'll find something else to disagree on.

Steve

 

Sorry Mark.I just can't resist ONE MORE. I saw this today.
====================================

Scientists have been forced to retract a paper that claimed sea level were rising thanks to the effects of global warming, after mistakes were discovered that undermined the results.

The study was published in Nature Geoscience and predicted that sea levels would rise by as much as 2.7 feet by the end of the twenty-first century.

The paper also highlighted that it reinforced the conclusions of the U.N.'s controversial Fourth Assessment report, which warned of the dangerous of man-made climate change.

However, mistakes in time intervals and inaccurately applied statistics have forced the authors to retract their paper -- the first official retraction ever for the three-year-old journal, notes the Guardian. In an officially published retraction of their paper, the authors acknowledged these mistakes as factors that compromised the results.

"We no longer have confidence in our projections for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and for this reason the authors retract the results pertaining to sea-level rise after 1900," wrote authors Mark Siddall, Thomas Stocker and Peter Clark.

Since the leak of e-mails from the U.K.'s top global warming scientists in early December, many other errors and sloppy mistakes have been uncovered in leading report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Flaws in weather stations have led some to question claims of rising temperatures, sloppy math led to holes in postulates that the Himalayas were rapidly melting and fears of a man-made food shortage in Africa seem unsubstantiated as well.

Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall told the Guardian,, "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion.

"Retraction is a regular part of the publication process," he said. "Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances."

 

"The end of the world is nigh." This fear has always been, and will always be, although the suspects may change. After awhile, everybody laughs.

Abraham Lincoln: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Soon, everybody will be laughing (except "some of the people" perhaps).


Cheers

 

Hi Frederick:
The downside to all this (besides the obvious, needless economic cost) is that their scaring the kids!
My niece, who is just 13, is convinced the Polar bear is doomed, the north pole is melting and that both new york and San Francisco will be under water IN HER LIFETIME (unless the world comes to an end in 2012 that is)

Steve

 

No worries Steve.


I'll have to 'return your serve'.


From
http://permaculture.org.au/2009/12/08/the-real-climate-scandal/#CaseStudies
regarding the 'stolen' emails
"Even if you were to exclude every line of evidence which could possibly be disputed – the proxy records, the computer models, the complex science of clouds and ocean currents – the evidence for manmade global warming would still be unequivocal"

and
"When I use the term denial industry, I’m referring to those who are paid to say that manmade global warming isn’t happening. The great majority of people who believe this have not been paid: they have been duped".


From
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin/
if you get the time, a must read.

"in which a few journalists have misled the public with grossly overblown or entirely fabricated pseudogates, and many others have naively and willingly followed along without seeing through the scam."


Polar bears and their Arctic sea ice, from
http://nsidc.org/

 

Oh hell, Steve, the kids are fine. It will be a good lesson, learning that "experts" can lie or be idiots like rest of us.

Maybe she'll start to think for herself, a most unusual trait.

Sarkozy gave away a good reason for this scam some time ago when he said that if China didn't clean up its act, tariffs would be imposed. And of course the carbon neutral technologies that China will need to buy all come from the West, and are expensive.

Basically, science can only predict the future of a fairly complex system in Astronomy. It has been repeating for quite some time, and works on simple Newtonian principles.

Weather (climate is just averaged weather) is incredibly more complex. Even with all the work on hurricanes, one simple weather system, there has been no improvement in the 24 hour warning accuracy in the past 50 years!

Now, if these experts could predict something simple like the stock market, we would all be interested.

A tip for your grandaughter. The tone of an argument usually gives it away. People who know what they are talking about aren't hysterical. They don't make grandiose claims.

Cheers

 

I hope they are, and they continue to be so.

Yep, there sure are some academics, an English viscount, and many media personalities making fools of themselves at the moment.

I’m sure that wasn’t what you meant.

And this is the reason for the ‘dramatic’ rise in global temperatures concurrently with the ‘also dramatic’ rise in atmospheric CO2. Wow, amazing!

Yep climate modelling is apparently extremely fraught with problems, but the facts of the data of the last ~150 years isn’t it’s fact.

Glenn Beck comes to mind!

Yep, see 2nd reply this post.

William, if you’d like to actually use a fact, a statistic, I’d be more than happy, not hysterical mind you, happy to do my best to show you where you were ‘duped’, mark

 

And . . . if we do in fact have global warming (you notice the quibble factor has come into play now with "climate change") it is a good thing. Since most of us believe that the climate has cycled quite dramatically over time, global warming has a distinct advantage over global cooling for most of the world.

Unless you live in Australia, I guess.

Cheers

 

Okay 'you believe' that the climate has cycled... over time', and this would be based on what scientists (including climate scientists) have claimed and yet you doubt that there is anthropogenic global warming that 97% of climate scientists are claiming. I don't get it?

Why not the climate at it would be if there wasn't so much anthropogenic contribution?
And I'd rather not the 'catastrophic consequences' of unnatural sudden global warming.

All the best to you, mark

 

Oh Mark!

You say you don't get it? Jeez! History is easy, it already happened, we can study it at our leisure.

Predicting the future is quite another thing. (You know, because we can't really tell what's going to happen.)

Does that clear it up a little?

Cheers

 

Frederick, you'll have to reread my post,

I'm talking about the last ~150 years, mark