How will the predicted 4C rise in global temperature by 2050 affect the planet?
The UK’s Met Office has produced this interactive map showing just how dramatically Earth could change in our lifetime if urgent action isn’t taken to curb this grim forecast.
Copyright © 2008 Private Media Pty Ltd, Publishers of Crikey.com.au. All Rights Reserved.
Independent news, blogs and commentary on politics, media and business.
Editor: Jonathan Green.
Publishers: Eric Beecher, Diana Gribble.
Level 7, 22 William St, Melbourne, 3000. Ph: 1800 985 502 Fax: (03) 8623 9975
45 Comments
“…the predicted 4C rise in global temperature by 2050…”
Presumably, this is the same Met Office that now says:
“…Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust — with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080. It is unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020…”
Why yes. Yes it is.
So just how we can have a 4C rise in GLOBAL temperature by 2050 and not have ANY coincident ice melting is the question for the climate acolytes today.
Pffft.
That’s the sound of all the (hot) air coming out of the specious argument (still) posed by those (like the Met and their believers) who live on the fringe of climate lunacy.
The models are obviously busted…it might be time to rig the data again.
Most Delusional Mama #1
It’s called perturbations, and there’s evidence when a complex system enters a phase transition that the first thing that happens is that oscillations for components of the system become exaggerated. See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v333/n6174/abs/333618a0.html for the gory details.
So there’s lunacy, and something is busted, but it’s closer to the most delusional mama than she is aware of. If 50 years ago the average age of ice on the ice cap was decades or centuries old, and now a large proportion of the ice is seasonal, where’s the argument being busted again?
Get over yourself, your desire to pretend there’s no problem makes you look foolish at best.
“…Most Delusional Mama…”
Grow up child.
Your argument is old and busted…even the Met concede this.
MDM #3
Just calling you out for what you are – deluded.
Your argument doesn’t hold up to even the most superficial examination. Happy delusions!
Ice in arctic regions has a more complicated behavior than glaciers. This is because even in summer with a 4C rise it is still below freezing in most parts of the arctic.
Another useful tidbit for you. Most years have below average rainfall. This is because the average gets skewed by the extreme events.
“…It’s called perturbations…”
Your “perturbations” theory has holds about as much scientific rigour as Occam’s razor.
Then – hla As for using ‘predicted’ (LOL) extreme events as your support evidence
You’re all silly, everything is going to be just fine. Lalala, I heard these scientists were talking about the cooling before and now it’s the heating and they can’t get their story straight and then channel 9 told me the other night that they couldn’t agree on anything but my friend’s house in narrabeen might get washed away sucks to be him.
I don’t believe in climate change just like I don’t believe in other religions cause its a religion that has no proof and all these scientists in their coats they’re just like the priests in their gown things and it’s not like they know anything what has science ever done for me anyway scientists are rubbish.
Wait, I need to go heat my coffee up in the microwave then I’ll come back and type on this computer some more.
kdkd
Why don’t you direct me back to that glorious self-effacing ‘thread’ where you explain things so well to all the flat-earthers.
I think the point is that static means are not a meaningful measure. The arctic ice cap is undergoing increased perturbations, and that in itself is a cause for serious concern, pointing as it does to a set of very concerning positive feedback mechanisms.
MPM. You have nothing interesting to say, and what little you do say is a condensed to meaninglessness subset of the talking points much loved and much discredited from the climate change delusional set. What’s your interest financial, or just trying to kick against a particularly poorly chosen set of the pricks?
MPM do you have a problem understanding the English language?? You quote:“…Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust — with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080. It is unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020…”
Um hello? “LONG-TERM TREND OF REDUCTION IS ROBUST” What does that mean to you? Huh? I don’t know where you quote mined that, I don’t know how old it is, but whether the arctic goes summer ice free in 2020 or 2060 what difference does it make? Oooh, now I get it. You don’t care if the climate is stuffed by 2060. You’re probably bargaining on not being around by then so you don’t actually care.
Furthermore on this issue of modelling. You do your best to discredit it, but any rational human being (you clearly do not fall into that subset), would realise that scientists are trying to predict the future. Personally, I would rather they use their models which are based on scientific knowledge to warn us of what is likely to happen, than blindly stumble into the future not knowing. I accept that the reality of the future may not be exactly the same as the output of any particular climate model. That’s not the point. You don’t get it, never will get it because you are too arrogant to listen to anyone who says something which you think conflicts with your conservative world view – your right to go on and use all the energy you want and be damned future generations.
I think the browser heading for this page sums up the map quite well: “This is your planet, 4C later – Rooted”.
Avoiding and unnecessary feeding of the trolls,
I notice that we have +6 degrees in some already really hot bits of Australia. That can’t be good even if you don’t live in soon-to-be submarine Eastern Sydney. Get the mortgages payed off before the bank forcloses, people, no-one likes rising damp in collateral they can’t offload.
The atmosphere has a cooling effect as well as a warming effect. The deceptive term “greenhouse effect” implies only a warming effect, yet gasses behave as a liquid to temperature and while they may warm, they also cool. If they did not then every thing living at equator would be cooked alive at noon on a daily basis. The surface of the moon (which of course has no atmosphere) reaches 123º C in the sun.
CO2 absorbs heat but it cannot trap heat. When it has absorbed heat it expands as do the all the other gasses it is mixed with such as nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour. Do not be fooled by the false claims that CO2 is special or unique in the way it is effected by heat. All gasses absorb and re-emit heat. It does not matter that they do this at various frequencies, all that maters is that they all do it. If they did not they would not be gasses, they would be solid ice. Therefore all gasses absorb and re-emit heat and so must all be greenhouse gasses, if not then none at all.
These mixed gasses when warmed, then rise up through the atmosphere and exchange the heat with colder gasses higher up. The higher they rise the colder it gets. As space is 0 K or – 273º C there is only one possible outcome. All the heat energy received from the sun is re-emitted back into space. You do not need to be a scientist to understand this concept. It is more than attested to by 4, 500,000,000 years of relative temperature stability. If CO2 could trap heat and cause global warming it would have done so already. Perhaps when CO2 was @ 1000 ppm or 2000 ppm or even when it was @ 3000 ppm. Maybe runaway global warming should have occurred when CO2 was 4000, 5000, 6000, or 7000 ppm as it has been in the past. But it has never occurred at these levels so why should we be concerned about 100 ppm increase?
The answer of course, is that we shouldn’t.
Gasses in a greenhouse cannot convect but gasses in the atmosphere can convect. So in a greenhouse there is a “greenhouse effect” but in the atmosphere there is not.
A “greenhouse gas” is a gas inside a greenhouse.
The key is convection which is why you will never hear the topic of convection being properly discussed by proponents of AGW.
Like I said earlier, you do not need to be a scientist to work this out. The truth is hanging there like an over ripe apple waiting to be plucked. All you need to do is reason it through with logic and common sense and the AGW scam as it is will evaporate.
wtf: what a genius you are! Wow, who would have thunk that it would be all that easy? with twenty line comment on crikey wtf has single handedly brought down the sciences of atmospheric physics, radiative physics, quantum mechanics and quantum physics, the first and second laws of thermodynamics, disproven the Lambert Beer Law, disproven the Stefan Boltzmann law, disproven the theory of black bodies. And all with his all powerful reason and common sense? Move over Einstein with your puny thought experiments, wtf is on scene and on the case now! Pure brilliance! Where is this man’s Nobel prize in physics, chemistry, economics, medicine, peace? He should win them all!
kdkd,
Your poor attempts at smartassery above (@9) belie a clumsy, largely incoherent ramble.
To wit:
“…The arctic ice cap is undergoing increased perturbations…”
Really. A startling lack of evidence would suggest otherwise.
Laughably, your proof is that hoary old chestnut, the ‘chaos theory’.
Great stuff.
I look forward to your further expansion on the ‘Butterfly Effect’.
“…I don’t know where you quote mined that, I don’t know how old it is, but whether the arctic goes summer ice free in 2020 or 2060 what difference does it make?…”
Do some research.
Start with the Met Office and work back from there.
“…scientists are trying to predict the future…”
EPIC. FAIL.
They can’t….learn to deal with that fact.
They do however try their everlovin’ best to make it up so amorphous doe-eyed believers like yourself wake up screaming every morning.
So far it seems to be working.
“…Avoiding and unnecessary feeding of the trolls…”
Yawn.
Standard dribbling leftoid retort.
Rinse. Repeat.
No wonder you are so popular on the Pure Poison blog.
MDM:
Your assertions on your previous posts are based on lies, deliberate or accidental attempts at scientific illiteracy, and such a strong ideology that it blinds you to everything else. Now go away and stop wasting all our time with your crap.
Your standard right wing deluded drivel is tiresome.
MPM, why don’t you do some research? Why don’t you go and check how the models are verified by hindcasting them? Your arrogance is totally overwhelming. Why should I think that you (whatever you are) will know more than hundreds of trained scientists doing this work every day? Why do YOU think you know more? But you do. It’s totally mindboggling.
MPM in the morning: “Climate change is not happening, climate change is not happening, climate change is not happening, climate change is not happening, climate change is not happening. There. It’s not happening. Right, let me go and see how arrogant I can be and dismissive of anyone who disagrees with my far right wing(nut) (uninformed) view of the world.”
Okay, lets leave all the personal attacks and whether or not climate change or even human-induced climate change is real out of the equation for the moment. Doesn’t it make sense to use non-renewable energy as efficently as possible, move towards using a greater proportion of renewable energy and living in a more sustainable way. By that I mean, living to have a smaller impact on the earth. I bet I sound like a hippy don’t I.
Ooh, look,
A well known communist sympathiser, and kneejerk revolutionary who wants us to go back to the stone age has come out in sympathy with his subversive comrades:
“Unmanaged climate change is a threat to our assets, our shareholders, and our employees, and also to civil society and political institutions in many of the countries in which we operate and across the globe.”
That’s the chief executive for energy and minerals at Rio Tinto.
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/10/29/senate-shocker-coal-operator-believes-in-global-warming/
Firstly, GrebB, best slapdown of a climate change troll comment (Wtf) I have read for a while. I think it is a point well made that you need a spectacular level of narcissism to conclude that because APW doesn’t make sense to you, there is nobody cleverer on the planet to whom it might make sense. This is the logical fallacy of googleage.
Secondly, can’t resist kicking a dead troll. If I understand Wtf correctly the basic point is that all the heat absorbed by the Earth must eventually be re-radiated because otherwise it would be Venus-like here already. So, no problem then.
Not being a physicist, I would say that is correct but irrelevant (fallacy of ignoratio elenchi, apparantly – see, we all have google). The point is what does this energy heat up on the way out – does it all just get reflected back into space or does it bounce around in the oceans for a few hundred years before leaving, for example. Both are thermal equilibria, but they are entirely different systems.
Oh, and I don’t think MPM needs to do any research. Looking at his many, many posts they are all basically a cut and paste quote from someone else followed by a few posing comments of outraged incredultiy and/or right-wing distain (for leftoid greentard sheeple who follow the cult of APW to an unquestioning economic apocalyse etc etc etc). They are completely information free.
Personally, I am beginning to think MPM is really some kind of coal industry/national party algorithm. I mean, true AI is a fair way off as it requires a comprehensive theory of mind and congition, but we can probably simulate a nationals backbencher fairly easily using spare processor capacity. Its like SETI, you just run Tucky in the background and send the output to parliament every so often. Saves a forture on perks and, cudos to the coal industry, for taking the eco-friendly option of replacing supportive people with virtual replicas.
wtf #13: Wow. Just… wow.
I’m just some pond scum who is turned off by the aggressive pro and anti climate warming projection bickering, and its use as a quasi religious power struggle (not to mention the growth in use of acronyms). Isn’t it all guesswork? yes there are proven fundamental principles that can be thrown at each other but the interaction between them all in a chaotic climate is not proven. All for not shitting on the planet but the earth will slap us down, it seems a lot more in control of us than we arrogantly think.
Mr Pastry,
The complexity is less of a problem than it seems from a scientific perspective. To date, the projections of scientists have mainly erred on the side of being too conservative – i.e. warming is faster and more serious than originally thought, due to positive feedback effects that we were unaware of.
So the complexity makes it difficult to predict what’s happening, not impossible to predict as the climate delusionists would claim.
Thanks kdkd,
So predictions have been incorrect in the past because of effects not understood at the time, to me this makes climate science consensual thinking and not a truth. It is perfectly reasonable to think the models are incorrect. That aside, I’ll go along with the warming and agree risk management is needed, but who in their right mind believes a “government department to save the world” (ETS – as long as the relevant forms have been filled), will have any impact. I do hope the increases don’t happen during long service leave. All of a sudden a government process is going to work and all in it are going to be honest and truthful. Look at the shambolic tax system which misses vast amounts of syphoned, stashed cash kept out of taxable pot. Why would an ETS be anything other than a similar mess that will be rorted. I can almost feel the spray of salivating Lawyers on ETS training. Still reckon it is up to individuals to behave – the Earth did very nicely without us and will do again.
I guess nihilism is an option and gets harder to resist the worse the outlook becomes. Not sure the government is quite as hopeless as this; the tax system is not perfect but it does successfully collect revenue to keep services running with a fair minimum of fuss or corruption. The ETS is different because there will, as you point out with the salivating lawyers, be whole areas of industry who don’t accept the legitimacy of any regulation and see it purely as something to be gotten around. Thats one reason why I think a tax, rather than some rubbery permit system, would be easier to police.
I think that saying its all up to individuals to fix the system is giving in a bit, because it is not individuals by themselves who are the problem. Sure, we all drive cars etc and have to decide to make other arrangements. But the power system, transport infrastructure etc are all run by collective groups such as corporations and governments. So individual choices can only be made by influencing these groups – just being a good person by ourselves isn’t really going to acheive very much IMHO.
Mr Pastry:
The ETS is indeed dreadful, designed to shore up the fossil lobby so they can keep pillaging australia’s natural resources for longer (ok so maybe overstatement).
It’s not really an individual problem, it’s a collective problem and we need to solve it by fixing the collectively used and maintained infrastructure. Especially in Australia where a very large proportion of emissions are industrial in origin. On the other hand, this requires that we engage in a big shift of cultural attitudes towards energy usage, which will have spin-offs to both individual and collective behaviour. My main objection to the ETS is that it does nothing, or less than nothing to promote the cultural change required …
Too bad the ocean sea temperatures aren’t warming as the climate change alarmists said they would..another oops, but heck they just make another change to their theory to suit what ever pops up. In the meantime we do nothing to protect ourselves from much bigger global problems: http://www.shareswatch.com.au/blog/opinion/are-climate-change-and-global-warming-dangerous-distractions/
I bet they wish that Argo Project never got up and running.
Nothing like the referencing standards of climate change denialists, Greg, so thanks so much for kindly referring to an article by you on some kind of business oriented website as evidence that APW is not happening.
After reading sed article, I can only say that you list of things which are more serious that climate change is a tad at variance with the facts. These include:
1. A global pandemic. Considering the worst of the pandemics on record had a case fatality rate of about 2.5 percent and lasted, at most, three years it seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that this is worse than a global catastrophy which could make large sections of the planet uninhabitable more or less forever. The projected death rates are several orders of magnitude different. You could bring back smallpox and still not equal the death toll likely to result from the loss of agriculture in SE Asia once the glacially fed rivers and/or monsoons fail.
2. Nuclear weapons. Well, can’t disagree with that one but the major difference here is that we don’t have people claiming nuclear weapons are harmless, we have tried to control their proliferation and, ultimately, it would require human action to cause a nuclear apocalypse. In contrast, we still have people claiming climate change is not a problem, attempting to stymie any action on the issue, and pretty soon feedback mechanisms are going to make any action to remediate the situation impossible. Pick which apocalyse is under better control.
3. Which leaves war. On this one I agree with you, but one of the greatest causes of war in the near term is likely to be movements of people caused by environmental degredation. Don’t believe me, take it from the professionals and read the Pentagons Age of Consequence scenarios paper, or read ‘The Climate Wars’ for a more lay explaination. Arguably conflicts such as that in Dafur are already fed by the loss of agriculatural land as a result of desertification.
As for the assertion that oceans are not warming, that is factually incorrect and the only thing in your article even remotely like an argument about this is a vague reference to a discussion between Senator Feilding and the Wongbot. Nuff said on those authorities, really.
Altakoi the Spanish Flu killed between 50 – 100 million people back when the world was less urbanised and travel between continents was not as easy today. Hit the books and you will find that the death toll today would most likely be at least 10x that amount if a similar outbreak occurred place today. 1 billion+ dead not enough to worry about hey? Ever noticed how worried the WHO get about major flu outbreaks.. or perhaps you feel you have a better grasp on the issue than them?
Secondly the Argo Project has the hard data on ocean temperatures. Go have a look at the data before you accuse people of making factually incorrect statements: see http://www.argo.net/ Even scientists who are pro-global warming are wondering why the oceans temperatures are not rising as expected.
Finally if you are going to hide behind an alias and throw mud try coming up with a better term than “denialist” I think Al Gore has a copyright on that one.
P.S Nobody denies the climate changes, the debate is about what causes the change and that sort of debate use to be what science was about until armchair experts and politicians become involved.
@kdkd – Ok I’ll buy collective responsibility but that also means change in individual (cultural) behaviour. But a collective paper policy will never reflect what actually goes on, the environment does not use KPIs for its behaviour. Rabid consumption is idolised in our culture and everyone appears to aspire to extravagant peacock feathers. My simplistic view of economics has an economic system based on ever increasing population numbers, with voracious consumption. This is completely at odds with climate change worries, but governments still want the population increases so why bother doing anything.
Apologies for rambling.
Greg Atkinson
The correct term is delusionist, as this is a more accurate summary of the position of people who seek to pretend that global warming is not happening. Your delusions are twofold. They seem to comprise two fundamental errors:
1. That financial websites are trustworthy sources of science journalism.
2. That the global warming theory suggests that a warming signal should be detectable since the start of the Argo buoy programme in 2004.
Neither of these assumptions are true, therefore everything you’ve contributed has been a waste of electrons, being based on false premises.
Greg Atkinson (again)
I read your quote “Nobody denies the climate changes, the debate is about what causes the change and that sort of debate use to be what science was about until armchair experts and politicians become involved.” with interest.
It’s easy to demonstrate that increased co2 emissions are driving climate change using statistical methods familiar to anyone with a university education that covers multiple regression. A quick precis of the results of the kind of analysis that shows this is here: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2009/04/08/climate-change-cage-match-a-fight-to-the-death/comment-page-17/#comment-1558 – co2 has well and truely taken over other variables as the cause of temperature anomaly since the 1980s, regardless of which sufficiently long data set you look at.
Greg, again again.
The substance of your paper was that there were things far more dangerous than climate change to be worrying about. So,
1. Yes, we all know a pandemic would be very bad, but 1 billion is on the high side of published estimates. However, as with your nuclear weaspons argument the difference is that we recongise the H5N1 threat and have effective means for minimising the impact – a huge research and industrial program in vaccine capacity since about 2003 for a start. This is not true of AGW, which is a threat with no current effective mitigation strategy and people keenly trying to reduce recognition. This makes it a higher risk than pandemic influenza even if the hazards were equivalent. I would propose, in any case, that the collapse of the world food supply, particularly in SE Asia would easily top 1 billion deaths.
2. I believe what the ARGO project said was that they have not observed any ocean warming since 2003. This is not a statement that ocean warming is not occuring (see CSIRO) or that it did not occur through the 20th century to 2003. This appears to be another version of the ‘climate change ended in 1998′ argument. However, if you would like to write to any of the climate scentists actually working at ARGO and get them to say that the ocean has not, is not, and will not warm as a result of APW I will be willing to eat my hat on this. Personally, I think they might be less than amused with your referencing.
3. I like the term denialist. Short, accurate, well understood. Don’t know what Al Gore has to do with it, but words in common usage are not under copyright.
4. The debate is not about what causes climate change, thats just the debate (there’s a pun there, but I won’t) you’re having. Many other people are having a debate about what to do about the climate changing to something which is incompatible with the current world population or industrial society. The ‘its natural, just go with it, man’ argument is just cynicism dressed up as nihilism impersonating environmentalism.
5. I use the alias because, while I wouldn’t even claim to be an armchair expert on climate change – thats just about my passion for continuing to be alive – I sometimes post on topics for which my more informed contrarian opinions might get me into professional trouble. Nothing ever dies on the internet, afterall, and that google is a b-tch at a job interview.
MPM = Mining Petroleum mining just sell those dirty shares and GA dont walk too close to the edge of the world, remember what your dad said. Is that you A. Bolt.
Altakoi where to start? Okay first the estimated deaths from a major global pandemic being around 1 billion is not at the higher end of published research/estimates. There are plenty of higher estimates and these are dug up when it suits certain interest groups. Plenty of highly respected scientific bodies both public and private are very concerned about an outbreak of disease and another global pandemic. Sadly they don’t get much a look in these days because the global warming debate over-shadows all else.
But never fear, reducing CO2 emissions won’t do a thing to help people who will die of starvation and a whole host of other problems that we won’t be addressing via a emissions trading scheme or some feel good agreement to be signed in Denmark.
Secondly you better check your facts regarding the Argo project, you appear way off the mark. (not a good look for someone who accuses others of making factual errors) Perhaps the data on the projects website is a bit tough for you to decipher?
kdkd..ah another alias. If you dig into a university database (or just use google)you will find what you have stated about the so called proven link between C02 levels and rising temperatures to be false. In fact even the IPCC have had trouble making this connection hence the reason the UN and others have funded researchers to traverse the globe digging up ice cores etc. But alas you have solved the problem, so all those scientists out in the field trying to prove the link are wasting their time. (why didn’t they simply read the crikey blog!)
Barry I suspect you will be moving into a tent, selling your car or are you another person who lives a 21st century lifestyle whilst ranting on about the evils of mining etc. By the way you better stop using a PC because it is full of stuff dug up by evil miners.
Hey Greg.
I think if you look hard enough you can find my real name no problem. You’ll find it quite easy learn that I’m a social scientist working at a well known australian university.
So hand me your easy to find references that show that the “proven link between C02 levels and rising temperatures [is] false”. I certainly haven’t found anything matching that description in my extensive examination of the scientific literature. My understanding that the whole originates in the 19th century from work done by the chemist Ahrennius, and has been worked on considerably by chemists, geologists and meteorolissts in the 150 or so years since then, so that our understanding of the link between co2 and the greenhouse effect is actually quite good.
So you’re either lying, deluded or withholding information. If it’s the latter you’d better come up with the goods to prove you’re not just yet another delusional waste of space [1]
The only counter argument I see to me (and others) are assertions not backed by your sources. And a bit of grubby rhetoric at the end. Well done at contributing nothing meaningful.
[1] The risk here is that you expose yourself to showing how you’re either lying or scientifically illiterate. Perhaps silence is the most prudent course of action for you.
Greg, you could start with a few of those references.
The estimated mortality of a global 1918-like pandemic in the modern world published by C Murray in the Lancet December 2006 is 51-82 million. I believe the WHO quoted figure is an upper range of 150 million. Since pandemic influenza has an estimated upper attack rate of 40%, and all of these things are estimates, 1 billion deaths would require a mean case mortality rate of 41% (which is actually 3 times higher than smallpox). Even if deaths resulted from disruption to trade etc it would require a pandemic 20 times more lethal than the 1918 pandemic (or 19 additional deaths for every one from pandemic influenza) to get 1 billion casualties. While that is not impossible, is greatly at variance with the planning assumptions of the WHO, The US DHS, the UK MOH, Health Canada and own Department of Health and Ageing.
And yes, many respected scientific authorities are concerned about a possible pandemic – even more so because we are actually in the middle of fighting one – but they do not claim it is a greater threat than climate change.
But it is refreshing, at least, to have a climate change ‘confabulist’ (my new word) arguing for something on the basis of scientific consensus for once.
As for ARGO – well yes, the data is a too tough for me to decipher because, as I said, I’m not an expert in this area. So I just went with what the guys from ARGO said:
“There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. “Global warming doesn’t mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming.
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it’s also possible that something more mysterious is going on.” (Josh Willis, JPL, quoted NPR).
I certainly haven’t claimed that I came up with APW theory myself, its a scientific consensus thing. Plenty of highly respected scientific bodies both public and private are very concerned about global warming.
“There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Willis says.
Oh dear. Way to confuse the fossil fuel blinded interpretivist arty-farty types. If you find a trend, first you estimate it, then you decide if it’s significantly different from zero. That is you estimate a range with which you’re 95% sure that the actual value lies in, and that tells you the confidence interval for the gradient. If the 95% confidence interval intersects with zero you have no trend. I can guarantee you that with the kind of data from global temperature monitoring exercises in the present day, you need a minimum of 15 years or so of data to be able to demonstrate a statistically significant trend (more so if you’re using the more strict rules of time series analysis) [1].
So claiming that the Argo buoys show cooling is ludicrous and dishonest. The poor scientist explaining this, is unfortunately probably not well educated in dealing with the mostly scientifically illiterate media.
[1] And if you don’t believe me, it’s reasonably easy to do test for yourself using publicly available data.
Ok, I would like to take the discussion in a new direction.
Greg has me convinced. Accepting that human induced global warming is a SCAM, I believe it is important to find out -
Who is the Scammer? Something this big had to take enormous planning by someone.
How can you draw so many scientists into the scam? I’ve heard of ‘group think’, but how can you get it to go global so effectively?
How are they going to make a buck out of it? They can’t have gone to this much trouble just for kicks, and Al Gore’s DVD royalties can’t be big enough to be worth going to this much trouble.
How can I get in on it and make a few bucks myself? Researching and building new technology or fighting for AGW research dollars seems has hard as the old way to make money. These Scammers must have something up their sleeves?
fe – I never mentioned the word scam. My point is quite simple in that I think there are other things along with global warming we need to focus on. In addition I am simply highlighting that the science behind man induced global warming is a theory, it isn’t proven and many respected scientists offer compelling and alternative views on the subject.
Anyway debate on the subject should be encouraged, not shut down by calling people with differing views “deniers” or making personal attacks on those who question the consensus view. .
kdkd – you are right, data can be twisted and interpreted in many different ways. But why exactly do you believe only one side of the debate is doing that? Are you saying the scientists who dispute the theory behind AGW are under the influence of the “dark side”?
By the way, I see the global warming debate is on for young an old over the The Australian: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/seeing_through_hoax_of_the_century/
Altakoi…let me dig up the more scary pandemic scenarios. The ones I saw were way over the 500 million mark because they factored (modelled) in air travel/urbanisation etc. Funny things models…they can sort of churn out whatever results you like
Greg,
The way debates work in scientific communities is quite different to the way debate progresses in non-scientific fields. It’s quite clear from the climate delusionals focus on paranoid conspiracy theory, and non-rigorous approaches to analysis of the data that they’re trying to sew confusion and doubt rather than trying to clarify the more rigorous aspects of the science.
Presumably if your car broke down, you would take it to a qualified mechanic, or you’d rely on your own mechanical skills to fix it. You wouldn’t blindly rely on some unqualified no-hoper like Janet Albrechtson or Alan Jones who make the unsubstantiated claim that either your car wasn’t broken, or it’s not possible to fix it, and for good measure that mechanics really don’t understand how cars work (finally let’s say they have an undeclared interest in selling you a new car …). So why do you think this piss poor epistemology works for climate science?
You’ve been hoodwinked by the greenhouse mafia mate.
There are other pressing problems facing humanity, but these generally occur on time scales we can comprehend. Climate change occurs on the time scale of a lifetime, and being animals evolved from the natural environment, we (collectively) have trouble internalising and acting on this kind of problem. So it’s a special case. What we do now doesn’t affect today, it affects what happens at the end of the next generation.
Greg (again).
Here’s some more faulty thinking on your part.
“In addition I am simply highlighting that the science behind man induced global warming is a theory, it isn’t proven”
A proof is a set of logical premises that leads to an inescapable conclusion. With large, diverse and noisy datasets such as found in climate science, or in public health, it is simply not possible to produce this kind of deterministic logical argument.
If you examine the science behind climate change, it’s not proven in the same way that the theory of infectious disease transmission is not proven. However if climate change were a pure public health problem, the science is in such a state as to mean the public health physicians, and the authorities would be all over it like a rash [1]. And then some.
[1] In fact they are. Check the table of contents for various medical journals like the BMJ, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine for many. However this is treating the symptoms, not the cause.