68 replies to this topic

[Arbenol68]

Merc14, on 15 October 2012 - 02:28 AM, said:

Al Gore is a billionaire from global warming.  

And the anti-global warming campaign is funded by existing billionaires who'd like to keep hold of their dosh. Difficult to know who to believe, isn't it? How about a scientist with no vested interest? Oh, hang on. Sorry. No, they all fudge their data to keep the grant money rolling in, don't they?

[Paracelse]

Br Cornelius, on 14 October 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

Hot oceans (think Gulf stream) generate water vapour. The warmer the Gulf Stream the more vapour generated. As soon as it arrives at the first bit of land (Northern Europe) it is compressed by the land - squeezing out the moisture as rain. More water vapour equals more rain. The Gulf stream is more energetic (warmer) than previously and has generally moved further north bringing more storm systems (the Gulf stream stears the jet stream which brings storms). What has happened in Northern Europe is entirely predictable from first principles physics. Meanwhile since the Gulf stream is further north there is more drought in the Mediterranean region at exactly the same time - which is entirely predictable given that they are not strongly influenced by the warm wet Gulf stream.

So basically wha( you're saying is that the gulf stream is like retired Americans who go North for the Summer and go South for the Winter??? Cause in case you haven't noticed winters are harder in Northern EU.

[Michelle]

I've enjoyed the snows global warming has dumped on us. I rarely got to see snow when I was growing up and it shuts our part of the world down when it happens. We actually had a couple of very white Christmases lately. I have yet to see the rhyme or reason as to why and where global warming is happening.

[John Rayne]

I thought the "Average" temperature of the earth and "over a periord of time" climate/weather paterns, sea levels, lenght of seasons, and other changes we a natural part of the earth's life cycle.  Most of the data used and correct me if I'm wrong, is from the time of man, (actual civilized, cultures that doccumented their histories.  I also thought popular consensus was that the earth was around far longer, and even if you are christian you could argue that it started with 1 man and 1 woman and took quite a while to build up to a civilized culture.  So how is this period of time being evaluated.  Is it carbon dating, digging and reading it from the earth or is it speculation and theory?  I would say both, but my point is there could be a for example, (random made up figure) 22,000 year cycle on all the above mentioned attributes of the earth's life cycle.  I am not sure if I am getting this out right, but I would like some feedback!

[Br Cornelius]

Paracelse, on 15 October 2012 - 05:35 AM, said:

So basically wha( you're saying is that the gulf stream is like retired Americans who go North for the Summer and go South for the Winter??? Cause in case you haven't noticed winters are harder in Northern EU.

The Gulf stream does indeed move, and you may not have noticed that winters have been getting milder in northern Europe. Even the recent two cold snaps of the last two winters have been exceptional in that the full sweep of the winters has still been milder than historically.
The complicating factor is the melting Arctic ice cap which is pushing back for the moment.  Extreme flooding events have occurred in the Med due to the unpredictable movement of the Gulf stream in recent years.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 15 October 2012 - 08:04 AM.

[Br Cornelius]

Michelle, on 15 October 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

I've enjoyed the snows global warming has dumped on us. I rarely got to see snow when I was growing up and it shuts our part of the world down when it happens. We actually had a couple of very white Christmases lately. I have yet to see the rhyme or reason as to why and where global warming is happening.

Snow has all but disappeared from Ireland over the last 20yrs - only a flurry around a week at xmas. Used to be common for people to have to dig their way out of their houses.

Br Cornelius

[Br Cornelius]

John Rayne, on 15 October 2012 - 05:54 AM, said:

I thought the "Average" temperature of the earth and "over a periord of time" climate/weather paterns, sea levels, lenght of seasons, and other changes we a natural part of the earth's life cycle.  Most of the data used and correct me if I'm wrong, is from the time of man, (actual civilized, cultures that doccumented their histories.  I also thought popular consensus was that the earth was around far longer, and even if you are christian you could argue that it started with 1 man and 1 woman and took quite a while to build up to a civilized culture.  So how is this period of time being evaluated.  Is it carbon dating, digging and reading it from the earth or is it speculation and theory?  I would say both, but my point is there could be a for example, (random made up figure) 22,000 year cycle on all the above mentioned attributes of the earth's life cycle.  I am not sure if I am getting this out right, but I would like some feedback!

For a natural cycle to account for current events you would have to identify a forcing agent which has significantly changed. There is something worth spending a week trying to find - since I have never found one in 5yrs of looking.

Natural is not a catch all get out of jail card - it still has to have a cause which can be measured and used to predict outcomes - that is where AGW CO2 comes in as its the only explanation which plugs the gap between what is happening and what should happening if all "natural" forcings are accounted for.

Br Cornelius

[Br Cornelius]

It is worth quoting in full the response of the MET office to this article;

Quote

Met Office in the Media: 14 October 2012

14

10

2012

An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’
It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.
To address some of the points in the article published today:
Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.
Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.
You can see our full response to all of the questions Mr Rose did ask us below:
Hi David,
Here’s a response to your questions. I’ve kept them as concise as possible but the issues you raise require considerable explanation.
Q.1 “First, please confirm that they do indeed reveal no warming trend since 1997.”
The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.
As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.
Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.
Q.2 “Second, tell me what this says about the models used by the IPCC and others which have predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees celsius per decade for the 21st century. I accept that there will always be periods when a rising gradient may be interrupted. But this flat period has now gone on for about the same time as the 1980 – 1996 warming.”
The models exhibit large variations in the rate of warming from year to year and over a decade, owing to climate variations such as ENSO, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. So in that sense, such a period is not unexpected. It is not uncommon in the simulations for these periods to last up to 15 years, but longer periods are unlikely.
Q.3 “Finally, do these data suggest that factors other than CO2 – such as multi-decadal oceanic cycles – may exert a greater influence on climate than previously realised?”
We have limited observations on multi-decadal oceanic cycles but we have known for some time that they may act to slow down or accelerate the observed warming trend. In addition, we also know that changes in the surface temperature occur not just due to internal variability, but are also influenced by “external forcings”, such as changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions or aerosol emissions. Combined, several of these factors could account for some or all of the reduced warming trend seen over the last decade – but this is an area of ongoing research.
———–
The below graph which shows years ranked in order of global temperature was not included in the response to Mr Rose, but is useful in this context as it illustrates the point made above that eight of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade.

http://metofficenews...ed_combined.png

The highlighted part of the comment is the whole and sole basis on which Rose is able to make the claim. As such he is selecting a frame of reference which is totally unrepresentative of climate.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 15 October 2012 - 08:57 AM.

[Doug1o29]

Merc14, on 15 October 2012 - 02:28 AM, said:

Peer review is only worthwhile when the peers in question aren't on the take.  Al Gore is a billionaire from global warming.  Fatally flawed computer models crunching fatally compromised and corrupted data reported by people on the take to people in the UN who want to be billionaires like Al Gore sounds like just the kind of science an Obama administration would embrace.

First, Al Gore is NOT a climatologist.  He isn't even a scientist - he carefully avoided taking math classes and majored in GOVERNMENT!

If he has ever been peer-reviewed, it was for an article on GOVERNMENT, not climate, and I'm not even sure if he was ever peer-reviewed at all.  He made his money from "green" investments - something anybody with investment savvy could do.

All you had to do was Google:  Al Gore  and you'd have come up with more data on the man than anybody would ever want to read.  Don't be so lazy; do just a little research.  With the Internet at your fingertips, you have no excuses.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore

Global warming theory does not rest on climate models.  You don't need one to undertsand the basic physics.  If you want to know what will happen when CO2 levels reach 400 ppm, you look at the geologic record and see what happened last time.

Warming is confirmed by thousands of weather station volunteers working for over 140 years across the US and for longer periods in other parts of the world.  We even make use of Thomas Jefferson's diary - he kept weather logs at his home in Mount Vernon.  You just called Jefferson a liar.  You're trying to say that thousands of people were in on a giant cover-up for more than a century and we just now found out about it?  Get real.

And the tree-ring data I work with, is mostly stuff I collected myself.  And my chronologoies agree with other published chronologies.  So I know they're accurate.  You have no idea what you're talking about.
Doug

Edited by Doug1o29, 15 October 2012 - 12:54 PM.

[stevewinn]

it was once called global warming when it was pointed out it wasnt a uniformed warming of the planet they changed the name to the modern day climate change, what does that mean? it simply means a get out of jail free card. one region could be experiencing a milder winter while another part is experiencing a cooler summer. they the soothsayers can give predictions without fear of being held to account.

[Doug1o29]

stevewinn, on 15 October 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

it was once called global warming when it was pointed out it wasnt a uniformed warming of the planet they changed the name to the modern day climate change, what does that mean? it simply means a get out of jail free card. one region could be experiencing a milder winter while another part is experiencing a cooler summer. they the soothsayers can give predictions without fear of being held to account.

It's still called global warming when you're talking about temperatures.  But the term doesn't make much sense when you're talking about changes in length of the growing season, or centimeters of rainfall, or changes in isolines.

It's called GLOBAL warming because GLOBAL temperatures are rising.  That's what you need to look at to determine whether what you're saying is true or not.  What happens at a given place may or may be the same as other places.

The fact that GLOBAL temperatures are rising is getting boring.  What's interesting are the ups and downs of local climate and why they're happening.  That's where the best research is being done now.
Doug

[Br Cornelius]

Global warming and climate change are both occurring and one doesn't replace the other. To make that statement shows a very basic lack of understanding.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 15 October 2012 - 01:38 PM.

[Little Fish]

Doug1o29, on 15 October 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

It's called GLOBAL warming because GLOBAL temperatures are rising.  

but they aren't.

Quote

The fact that GLOBAL temperatures are rising is getting boring.  

but they aren't.

to quote lewis carrol, what you say three times is true, right?

[Doug1o29]

Little Fish, on 15 October 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:

but they aren't.

http://data.giss.nas...GLB.Ts dSST.txt

I'm getting tired of posting this.  How about if you at least look at it this time?

2010 was the hottest year on record (since 1880), so far.  Looks like 2012 is shaping up to be a cool one, if you can call the 7th hottest summer on record "cool"  (Fifth hottest spring and 15th warmest winter.).

Quote

but they aren't.

I stand corrected.  YOU do not find rising temperatures boring.  I do.

If you want to understand climate, look at what goes up when other stuff goes down and vice versa.
Doug

Edited by Doug1o29, 15 October 2012 - 02:38 PM.

[Nathan DiYorio]

Global Warming also accompanies mass cooling because of the change in ocean currents. With the warming comes melting, which means cooler waters being swept to a new locale, which will start cooling with those waters.

The events occurring are largely a natural cycle. However, that doesn't mean we should ignore them. Meteors crashing into the Earth is also a natural event, as are tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, solar flares, and many other things which like to murder us. So claiming "IT HAPPENS NATURALLY" isn't going to stop anybody from getting dead when fit hits the shan.