Global Warming???

[ucodegen]

This is the type of article I like. It looks like it attacks the conjecture on the reliability of Cosmic Ray Flux reconstruction, not on the actual possibility of Cosmic Rays effecting the earth’s climate.

Yes, this is how science works. Notice that articles by the cosmic ray crew were in fact published, and have some justification, and other scientists seriously consider them. Solar issues have been looked at for decades now.

I never said they weren’t. Basically it is fundamental to the whole discussion. That is why I asked for the reference.

Real complexity in clouds was known quite a while ago (note that even with strong cloud feedback reducing temperature you will still change climate and weather enough potentially to be quite significant!)

Disagree (with respect to cloud behavior being ‘known’ enough to accurately quantify). Second sentence is contingent on the first above. Most models I have seen use a constant feedback and don’t take into account energy transport in cloud formation. It is also why I try to watch the modeling community. My opinion is that the science is still evolving. This is also why I asked about center frequency of earth blackbody emissions as measured from space.

A quote from James Hansen:
It is uncertain whether the cloud feedback is positive or negative, because clouds can increase or decrease in response to climate change.
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html
Even he admits that factor is unknown. On a planet where the surface is 60% coverd by water, that is a big deal.
More:
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/jp/publications/news/no23/eng/04p.html
See third paragraph…
Note: The forth assessment report is the one that just came out.

Your ‘solution’ is interesting.. I think there may be quicker interim solutions and non-centralized.. ie. localized solar that will significantly help w/o too serious of an impact on the populace. Of course the established power companies will not like that.. and they are major contributors to both political parties(hedge their bets). I also think that the ‘sequestering’ of C02 is basically a non-starter. Takes energy to do most artificial forms of this.. and where will the energy come from.. more fossil fuel?

[Anonymous]

Indeed clouds have been a problem for a while, but I think that the magnitude of their influence has been reasonably bounded—-but of course even if you have feedbacks to keep dT at zero, if clouds change enough to make up this difference that could conceivably screw up weather for agriculture.

OK, it’s better now to talk about mitigation.

I think wind and solar are fabulous but they will not be anywhere nearly quantitatively significant enough to make a dent in coal for at least a century. And we have to deal with coal now. Coal is baseline power, just like nukes.

The largest wind plant in the world I think is 160 MW or so, and that’s offshore (where winds are stronger) in Europe. A typical nuclear plant is now 2000-3000 MW, coal maybe 1500-2000 MW. Individual reactors are now up to 1200-1600 MW. It looks like hundreds of new coal plants are going to be built in the next 4 years. Now do you see the scale of the problem? We need hundreds of nuclear plants as soon as possible to try to preclude coal and eventualy shut it down.

In real reality, opposing nuclear means supporting coal, and that is climate catastrophe. Gas and oil will soon be too expensive anyway.

Fortunately, the critical paths for wind, solar and nuclear don’t really intersect and I favor maximum effort being applied to all of them (and engineered geothermal) to the limit of logistical reality.

I think localized photovoltaic solar is going to remain financially insignificant to utilities (and hence quantitatively insignificant in power replacement) for 20 to 50 years.

Wind is much more practical than solar and much more significant in generating capacity, and it is now a serious commerical industry, at last. Even still, and with recent large wind farm expansion, wind is about at 0.04% of US generating capacity. Coal is about 50%, gas and nuclear about 15-20%.

The laws of physics are unfortunately what they are; it would be great if safe and easy and cheap solar and wind would be able to do it, but they won’t.

My opinion: we need serious nuclear fission for about 200 years. By then, we may be able to retire it.

[kewp]

“I’m done discussing this topic. Thanks especially to ucodegen and DrChaos for a great discussion!”

Thank you for your contributions! Good to know the denialist position is as intellectually-bankrupt as its always been.

[FutureSDguy]

I’ve also learned something also. The alarmist position hinges more on character attacks than real discussion of the evidence (which is inconclusive anyway.) Many folks are confused by the science, and I think part of this confusion is intentional (it’s called a “snow job”). Even the less-scientifically inclined warmists give up when pressed to defend AGW–that’s when they revert to hurling insults, or simply saying “well, regardless, it can’t hurt to reduce our pollution anyway just in case” (a lot like saying “well, yeah, I can’t prove God exists, but it’s better to go ahead and believe in Him in case there really is a hell.”) But I tell you what–it’s REALLY difficult to find a unbiased discussion of the science, in layman’s terms, on the internet.

[kewp]

If you consider climate science produced by climate scientists, following scientific protocols, as hopelessly biased, then your state of confusion is going to be forever permanent on this topic.

Looking to petroleum industry insiders and astrologers for the answer is only going to make it worse, btw.

[FutureSDguy]

If a climate scientist follows scientific protocol, calls out the assumptions in their predictive models (better yet, call out the possibility that their models may not correspond with real behavior), and do proper peer reviews including people who aren’t excluded based on their AGW views, then I will consider the work to be unbiased.

If people aren’t at least a little confused, then I say that they aren’t reading both sides of the issue. I’d rather be confused and keep turning stones than to place blind faith into whatever IPCC wants me to believe or take this “consensus” as gold.

And, don’t worry, I’ve also read material from reputable scientists also, those who look at the actual data and provide alternative explanations. I was not aware of the astrology history of that author–the material just looked interesting.

And if the Earth does indeed start to cool as a result of a downturn in solar activity, then I’d like to see a refund back to the tax-paying public in the form of $5 Billion dollars paid to IPCC to do scientific research that turned out to be a deliberate scam.

[kewp]

“If a climate scientist follows scientific protocol, calls out the assumptions in their predictive models (better yet, call out the possibility that their models may not correspond with real behavior), and do proper peer reviews including people who aren’t excluded based on their AGW views, then I will consider the work to be unbiased.”

Ok, let me get this correct.

You are an admitted climate science amateur, to the point that you are not capable of discerning the difference between pseudoscientific astrology/numerology and real science.

Yet, you are somehow also able to accurately judge current climate models, the peer review process and bias of the primary investigators?

Have you considered the possibility, at all, that perhaps you are mistaken?

Assuming you are, will you now expect Exxon/Mobil to cover the trillions of dollars of damage caused by fossil-fuel induced climate change?

[Anonymous]

If a climate scientist follows scientific protocol, calls out the assumptions in their predictive models (better yet, call out the possibility that their models may not correspond with real behavior), and do proper peer reviews including people who aren’t excluded based on their AGW views, then I will consider the work to be unbiased.

Funny, that’s what’s happened over the last 30 years.

Believe it or not, global warming from fossil CO2 didn’t just pop up yesterday. I gave a reference from one of the most prominent oceanographers of the century, practically an Einstein or Fermi in his field, and also the founder of UCSD. That was 1957. People have been investigating, seriously, with physical instruments and science, and peer review for ages before anybody outside those with graduate PhD’s had heard of this issue. There were no movies then. Global warming is much too esoteric and bizzare to come out of some lefty’s Marxist ideas. It came out of serious planetary physicists. People have been improving and validating models for quite a while. It was sufficiently mature that in the late 1980’s, e.g. from Jim Hansen, there were a number of prediction and models which could be forward tested over the last 17-20 years. They worked. In fact, the Mt Pinatubo eruption (which temporarily put cooling aerosols into the stratosphere for a few years) provided a very good test of some of the physical assumptions, and thereby the climate sensitivity to CO2 increase (the bottom line number).

Why do all chemists believe that molecules are made out of atoms? Should equal weight be given to atomic-theory-skeptics? In 1850 that might have been reasonable. By 1920 it wasn’t. Could an obnoxious layman tell when the strength of the evidence was good enough? No, scientists said when it was good enough.

Right now the belief in unreasonable scenarios is those who imagine that the enormous range of physical and biological scientists who study this issue are intentionally lying, for supposedly political reasons.

And if the Earth does indeed start to cool as a result of a downturn in solar activity, then I’d like to see a refund back to the tax-paying public in the form of $5 Billion dollars paid to IPCC to do scientific research that turned out to be a deliberate scam.

First, the IPCC doesn’t get money, the individual institutions which employ the scientists provide the money for their research.

And in what way is it a scam? More CO2 and CH4 increases the temprerature, period. Physical fact. Not belief. That will continue to be true even as the Sun changes.

There’s always a chance that the Sun could do something unexpected in either direction—how would we know now? But so far it hasn’t, and chances are that it will behave about as it’s behaved now. Solar physics has absolutely not been ignored, and in any case, lower solar insolaton would just subtract from increased greenhouse effect.

Of course, it could go the other way too, in which case we’ll be really fucked.

Getting back to real estate—if your house didn’t burn down last year, is your property insurance a ‘scam’?

[FutureSDguy]

“And in what way is it a scam? More CO2 and CH4 increases the temprerature, period. Physical fact. Not belief. That will continue to be true even as the Sun changes.”

So you think its a great to reduce the temperature on the order of .01 to .1 deg C for the cost of trillions of dollars when the natural variability of the earth’s climate over the period of 50-200 years is on the order of +/- 1 to 3 deg C?

[Anonymous]

Seems to be left political side of global warming coming out:

http://www.politicsofmoney.com/pages/interviews.php

listen to Sept. 27, 2007 Noel Sheppard – Contributing Editor
Newsbusters.org and Lord Monckton – Viscount of Brenchley
Lord Monckton calls out Al Gore and brings the facts on Global Whining.

Who says science is unbiased? Now I will put on my helmet as the flack going to fly at me!

MGL

[NeetaT]

I like global warming. If it means more places to golf and fish, I can’t wait until it takes the full effect. Let’s hear it for the Tropics!!!!!

[Arraya]

listen to Sept. 27, 2007 Noel Sheppard – Contributing Editor
Newsbusters.org and Lord Monckton – Viscount of Brenchley
Lord Monckton calls out Al Gore and brings the facts on Global Whining.

Why are they calling out Al Gore? He is not a climate scientist. That is like asking Don King to get in the ring and box.

Bring the facts? That is such a funny thing to say. For a science that has been studied for 3+ decades by thousands of scientists in many many fields.

Newbusters? I assume that is a scientific jounal of some sort right?

Its sad that once an issue becomes politicized that there is no more rational discussion.

[Arraya]

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[Anonymous]

I don’t really feel like writing a long message, as I’ve read in this thread quite a lot of absurd/false/speculative statements, instead I would strongly recommend this lecture at the Birch aquarium, La Jolla, this monday.
http://aquarium.ucsd.edu/Calendar/?type=lecture

Perspectives on Science: The American Denial of Global Warming
Mon, Oct 08 2007
6:30pm to 8:00pm
In the past year or so, public debate on global warming has shifted considerably, and several bills are now pending in Congress to address it. Even so, polls show that between one-third and one-half of Americans still believe that there is “no solid” evidence of global warming, or that if warming is happening it can be attributed to natural variability. Others believe that warming is happening, but that scientists are still debating the point. Join scientist and historian Dr. Naomi Oreskes as she describes her investigation into the reasons for such widespread mistrust and misunderstanding of scientific consensus and probes the history of organized campaigns designed to create public doubt and confusion about science.
All ages
Members Free
Non-Member Adult: $8.00
Non-Member Child: $8.00
RSVP on line.

Very enlighting work.

[Ricechex]

This was an interesting thread, from what I could understand, though as an environmentalist, I think anything to reduce CO2 emissions is a good thing. And, yes, I do believe in global warming.

I work for the government, and I have seen some research projects that are, IMHO, nothing but a scam and twisted numbers. Granted, they are human behavior studies, so it is not scientific, but the government could save hundreds of thousands of dollars if they just asked us grunt workers what was the problem, rather than feeding money to a fancy scam artist, otherwise known as a “researcher” and endorsed by University of Colorado. (I will never forget graduate school in which we were taught to manipulate and skew numbers to make research valid….)

Sometimes, it is the people at the bottom of the chain that know what is going on.

Now, here is what the pest control dude said (15 years in the business, and granted he is exposed to the media):
In the last 5 years he has seen an increase in pests and rodents, and stated he thinks it is due to an increased hotter and drier climate, which could result from global warming. From the mouth of the worker bee.

[Author]

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