Global Warming

[Super Nova]

I think technology is part of the answer. A change in behaviour is also required. That's the hard bit.

I agree an unbalanced world where only some play fair to change their behaviour will not work.

It's a pity the debate has stalled because of some bad science.

[IQS.RLOW]

The whole premise has been based on making existing energy more expensive so that others are competitive.

This is a open to rorting and will result in technology going backwards because funding will not be directed to the most efficient and cleanest forms of energy production. It will be directed at those who can garner the new system.

The cycle of invention, human needs and technology cannot be played with by government and politics. It need to run its natural course.

Anything else is destined to fail.

[Rorschach]

Backsliding SN?

Most Geoscientists and Engineers are Global Warming skeptics

When researchers Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer asked geoscientists and engineers their opinion about global warming, they discovered that two thirds of them think that the current warming is mostly due to nature.

They also found out that skeptics are scientifically informed and in positions of power and influence. What they didn’t figure out is why this is bleedingly obvious once you start with correct assumptions. Even though the skepticism of well respected scientists matches the skepticism of meteorologists (think about that) the researchers assume the skeptics are “deniers”.

Of course, polls of scientists are not evidence about our climate. But it is evidence that one of the main forms of argument “97% of climate scientists say man-made warming is real” is not just meaningless, but misleading. It’s PR, not science. The endorsement of “science associations” is one of the main points of “evidence” offered by pro-carbon-market activists. But few of those associations ever asked their members, their endorsement is usually just a committee pronouncement from six networking types on the “climate policy” committee. And few researchers even ask “most scientists” what they think. The one large survey was done by volunteers (and done twice) and they found 31,000 scientists who disagree with the six-member-committees of science associations.

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Did no one wonder what happens to a climate change expert if it turns out that (a) climate change is natural and there is no need to spend billions to try to control the weather (or fund large grants to study it), and (b) the climate scientists were mostly wrong, barking up the wrong tree and not very good at their jobs?

The influence of the vested interests in fossil fuel related work is real but not particular strong. The stakes are not that high. Fossil-fuel-based-scientists know that even if CO2 causes a significant climate shift, it won’t cripple their industry. For the foreseeable future people will still be buying coal, oil and gas because there are no real alternatives (apart from nukes).

For climate scientists, the stakes are all or nothing. If CO2 is not a big problem, many careers will crash. Did the researchers ask the geo’s their opinion on wind and solar, and the likelihood it would threaten their jobs?

[Rorschach]

Remember Australia's latest heatwave?
Remember the media hysteria?

How well did that 50 degree forecast work out for the BOM?

You could almost be forgiven for wondering if the Bureau of Meteorology is a science unit or a PR agency. They seem professionally adept at getting headlines, but not so hot at predicting the weather.

On Jan 7th the BOM models forecast 50 spanking hot degrees across hundreds of square kilometers in central Australia. But it was a whole week ahead, the prediction itself cooled with a day or two, and in the area under the “purple searing spot” the result on Jan 14th ended up being around 40C instead. That’s fine in itself — predictions are difficult. What’s not fine is the PR storm that ensued, which is still being used, as if somehow the very fact that our faulty climate models predicted a record temperature (but failed) is evidence of man-made global warming. How many thousands of people all around the world now think that Australia had a 50C plus day this January? Did anywhere hit the fifty mark? No report of one so far. Watch the loop of Australia’s January temperatures here. The highest brown bar on that graph is 45 – 48C, and those hot spots are a thousand kilometers from the purple patch.

That said, it was awfully hot for a couple of weeks. Birdsville got to 49C on Jan 13th. Moomba 49.6C on the 12th. But even these temperatures are not “a new climate”. How many people around the world realize that 50C plus days have occurred many times before across Australia? Even if it had got to 51C, there are many approximate equivalents in the last 180 years. It’s like trying to rewrite history. The BOM were probably 100 years too late in adding colors to the scale. They should have been there all along.

The wild PR success of the “new colours” meme, meant that newspapers all over the world carried yet another free but disguised advert promoting bad government policies, poor science, and fraud-prone and unnecessary marketing schemes. Did the BOM push this angle, or was it the media?

So the modelers get it wrong, yet score a PR success anyway. What pain and embarrassment ensued when people realized the fuss was overdone? (Why put out predictions with so much map detail, if the details are so unreliable?)



The prediction (left) versus reality (right). The scale on the prediction graph goes up to 54C, but the scale on the reality stops at 48C. (For scale Australia is 4,000 km across.)

How big was the fuss? The message made it to Australian newspapers everywhere. In the SMH the headline read: “Temperatures off the charts as Australia turns deep purple.” Then there was Adelaide Now, The Age, The Courier Mail, Plus Australia Popular Science.

Overseas, the story was picked up by all and sundry like the Telegraph UK , New York Times, Scientific American, Google hosted news, News Yahoo , CBS news, Business Insider and people were writing letters in foreign newspapers. Reuters made it sound like a living hell, “Australia’s record-breaking heatwave has sent temperatures soaring, melting road tar and setting off hundreds of wildfires – as well as searing new colors onto weather maps.” It was all caused by climate change and was “catastrophic” for Rolling Stone. The Guardian got so excited they incorrectly said it was unprecedented and read the colors wrongly as well, saying the forecast was for “over 52″ when the forecast was for 50C. Atlantic Wire made a similar mistake: “See that deep purple in the middle of this acne-red weather report from Down Under? That right there represents 129.2° F or 54 °C — it’s a brand-new shade that the Australian bureau of meteorology was forced to add to its heat index because their country is, you know, kind of on fire. ”
Wired at least had a different take: “Australian Heat Wave Threatens Gadgets…” (This heat must be really serious).
The Economist got so excited they thought this heat wave would convert sceptics saying, “Some climate experts are convinced the 2013 heatwave will prove a turning-point in how Australians respond to warnings about human-induced climate change. In a country that relies on fossil fuels for much of its well-being (coal is the second-biggest export and produces about four-fifths of electricity), climate-change sceptics have often swayed political debate.”
(Let’s just say those unnamed climate experts predicting that a short heatwave will convert skeptics are probably the same ones predicting catastrophic warming, right? ‘Nuff said.)

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[ramrod]

The next time Greg Combet, Tim Flannery or any other flat earther tries to sell this world wide bullsht scam on Global Warming he should at least have the correct protocol and politeness by beginning their comment with "Once upon a time" and finish with "and they lived happily ever after"!

[Rorschach]

The assumption that was wrong
Or the hotspot that wasn't/isn't.

Researchers made an assumption that water vapor would amplify the direct warming of extra CO2 from a small harmless amount to a large catastrophe. They started with the theory that relative humidity would stay constant in a warmer world and the thicker layer of water vapor would warm the world even more. Greenhouses gases in this instance means mainly water vapor; the assumption is that extra water vapor is heating up the upper troposphere (both by displacing colder drier air, and by condensing and releasing the latent heat absorbed in evaporation). It was predicted by James Hansen in 1984, is repeated by all the climate models and by the IPCC in AR4.

The graphs from this recent paper show once again that the models are wrong, the observations lie far outside most of the models. No matter how many ways they reassess the same data and rejig the models, they aren’t getting a match.

The problem in a nutshell: If they drop the assumptions about amplification by upper tropospheric water vapor, the models will match reality but they won’t predict a crisis.

The weather balloons produced the dramatic images showing just how “missing” the hot spot is. But people have been searching with satellites too. The satellites don’t have the vertical resolution of the weather balloons, because they measure large thick bands of sky. So while researchers won’t find the “hot spot” exactly with a satellite, they hope to find the right ratio of trends in the upper atmosphere compared to trends in lower bands. (More cynically, one might say they hope to get a vague fit to the models by using the less precise and more fuzzy satellite data rather than the higher resolution data from the weather balloons.)

[Super Nova]

Backsliding SN?

RS,

You were accusing me of not listening to the facts. I did not believe what you were saying at the beginning of the thread. I looked into it and found that what you were saying about a 10 ear lack of warming to be true and verified on some respectable sites.

I look into it more and find what I think is a set of scientists holding back on the truth because it was not in line with someone agenda.

This further validated the concern that laws and taxes were being introduced for something that was not understood and brought into the question the real impact on the global climate.

If a bunch of greenies are telling porkies to create a change in our behaviour, I think this is just bloody wrong. If humanity are ignoring the facts, that just bloody wrong.

It appears to me these lies or omissions have now gone to the extreme in painting the climate issue a non-issue because you can point to the models having failed to predict the lack of warming over the last decade plus this debacle over the credibility of some of the scientist intentions and this lack of credibility has reduced this to a "global climate warming is all lies" debate.

I think we are having an effect that is warmign the planet. The seas are still warming. The current lack of warming is something not understood. We will see a major acceleration in warming once the handbrake is off. We should do something about it before it is too late.

This crap around the credibility of some of the scientists who have forgone good science to push their greenie agenda has hurt the cause for pro-active action.

If seeking to understand WTF is going on is "backsliding" then so be it.

[Aussie]

If seeking to understand WTF is going on is "backsliding" then so be it.

While noble in intent SN, debating any issue with Roachy Poachy Puddin' and Pie is a complete waste of time. It's always gonna be his way or the highway. Best to just put shit upon him, like he did with others...................who have now departed. Maybe, it's a domination complex? I think I have already offered to buy him at my price and sell at his.

[Super Nova]

If seeking to understand WTF is going on is "backsliding" then so be it.

While noble in intent SN, debating any issue with Roachy Poachy Puddin' and Pie is a complete waste of time. It's always gonna be his way or the highway. Best to just put shit upon him, like he did with others...................who have now departed. Maybe, it's a domination complex? I think I have already offered to buy him at my price and sell at his.

[Rorschach]

Seems to me you've got a lot more thinking and reading to do SN.

If you bothered to read my opinions on the issue you'd have noticed I already spoke about adaptation and the impact of future technologies.

I don't know how many times I need to point out to you that skeptics are not deniers or quote them... hence my question to you.