General Climate Change Discussion Continued:

[Guest diessoli]

Regarding the lack of warming over the last 10 years, 10 years is not a long enough time span to be able to refute the notion of warming, against an upward trend over the last 30, 50 and 100 years. Perhaps if we get another 10 years of near-stagnant global temperatures,

It's funny how one can point this out time and time again, and people will still claim the there has been a negative trend over the last ten (or whatever) years.

I don't much like linking to blogs, but if you really think "the earth is cooling" , read this: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/ and tell us what is wrong with it.

(the stall over the last 10 years alone does, to me, suggest that the warming of the 1980s and 1990s was not entirely down to AGW). But what the mainstream scientists argue is that at least some of the warming is due to AGW.

I am curious: what has the "stall over the last 10 years" to do with what caused the warming in the 80s and 90s?

D.

[stewfox]

Nobody's trying to, ah, hide a decline, stewfox, and a few years that qualify as fractionally less hot than 2005 / 1998 a declining trend do not make! Sure it looks like we hit a peak if you look at the last five years or so, but the same happens if you look at previous 'peaks' in the general warming trend of the last 40 years - namely you'll get a hot year, followed by a few years not as hot, before the increase continues. It will only be if we get a sustained decline (and preferably substantial decline, which we've not seen) in temperatures over many years can you talk about a trend that is anything other than the observed upwards trend of the last 40+ years. BTW, Toronto is not 'most parts of canada', in fact is it rather close to USA. I'm talking about the greater part of Arctic Canada as you could see on Dev's chart at the end of the last thread. You can't just cherry-pick individual locations, you must look at the hemisphere as a whole. Much of the heat at present is trapped beneath the jetstream, which as you'll know is well south, producing those above-average temperatures in southern / Eastern Europe and North Africa. I imagine it'll be released northwards eventually.

Err, SC: have most of the winters of the past 20 years been warmer and wetter than average or cooler and drier?

Seems in both cases here there's a tendency to highlight individual occurrences rather than long-term trends. There is no such thing as a uniformly warming trend, and there never has been one predicted. So you can't just say "AGW is wrong because it's been cold for a year or two".

Most parts of canda now are on cool down and I'm afraid Toronto is part of canada. Look at the charts for the whole of North America for Saturday from highs in the 30s in Northern Florida to to central plains of Canada and beyond. I havent seen charts like that since Florida last lost its oranges

The point however isn't 'AGW is wrong', if I could say that I should be able to provide Global Temps for the next 50 years. Same if AGW was robust you could provide charts for the next 50years.

All I can say is AGW is as yet unproven, so lets go pick up a billion plastics bags and look at CO2 emissions with 'level heads'.

There still seems to be a question that people who like to see unbias evidence dont care about the planet not true.

ps 20 past winters in uk are not the climate of the global

Edited January 7, 2010 by stewfox

[Devonian]

An adjoining (Labour) council where one of my friends lives has run out of grit.

It does, however, feel it necessary to employ its very own Climate Change Officer on a salary not unadjacent to 30k plus all the other LA perks.

I wonder what he did to earn his crust today, with the roads being all but impassable?

He certainly wouldn't have been able to indulge in his usual activity of visting the schools in the district and brainwashing the children.

Probably "worked" from home.

Well, if cynicism and snark melted ice the roads would be perfect...

As it is in reality councils set budgets, they have to plan ahead. But, you wouldn't complain about wasted taxpayer money if your council had a mountain of expensive salt left in May and had bought ten new £100,000 snow ploughs only used once a decade would you...

Grrr, there was some beardy-halfwit on the BBC Newsround the other day explaining that it was snowing due to Climate Change, and now we have to get used to hotter summers & COLDER winters !!!

They can't even get their story straight these days.

'Beardy-halfwit' eh? Good thoughtful stuff - not.

To whoever this may concern,Hello, my name is Christopher O'Rorke and i'm a student at the University of Leicester and follow the weather keenly. To put it bluntly I am completely baffled by your constant plugging of 'Global Warming' or as you've now changed it to 'Climate change'. Aside from the obvious financial gain and media coverage your receiving I'm very confused why your making such a fuss about nothing. I'm very disappointed in the Met office jumping on the bandwagon of Al Gore and for also being caught trying to pay off scientists to agree with Climate change even though they didn't study this subject in particular.I would really appreciate a reply from you, which convinces me why Climate change is now a bigger issue than World Poverty and how this problem deserves more funding than solving world hunger. An estimated $10 billion is needed to solve the world's water problems but you and other brainwashing meteorologists are demanding that this money is spent on what is simply the earth's cycle! If I do not get a reply expect one from me in 5 years when your plugging 'Global Cooling'.Thankyou for your time.Chris.

This is an email ive just sent to the metoffice, haha had to get it off my chest!

You allege financial and scientific corruption and are persistently condescending. I would bin your mail (especially given your 'haha') but expect someone will do you the courtesy (not that you showed it at all) of replying...

[Gray-Wolf]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8437703.stm

Well here's a 'we're off the hook' for those who would prefer it.

As I have fretted about on here over the past 4 yrs the permafrost under the Siberian Shelf sea does seem to be letting go (faster than it was supposed too) so the doubling of CO2 it promises can be put down to nature.

Seeing as it has occured at least once before (causing a mass extinction event) we can (if we choose) put it all down to 'nature' and say "it's all happened before....."

[stewfox]

http://news.bbc.co.u...ech/8437703.stm

Well here's a 'we're off the hook' for those who would prefer it.

As I have fretted about on here over the past 4 yrs the permafrost under the Siberian Shelf sea does seem to be letting go (faster than it was supposed too) so the doubling of CO2 it promises can be put down to nature.

Seeing as it has occured at least once before (causing a mass extinction event) we can (if we choose) put it all down to 'nature' and say "it's all happened before....."

How desperate can you get ? anyway...

This interview was good re global warming and climate change yesterday on the Politics show (interview with head of Met)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8443687.stm

[Thundery wintry showers]

I am curious: what has the "stall over the last 10 years" to do with what caused the warming in the 80s and 90s?

D.

Quite a lot. There were some suspicions out there that the rapid warming of the 1980s and 1990s were entirely the result of AGW, and represented the rate of warming that AGW is currently responsible for. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, modes of natural variability (notably NAO and ENSO) pointed towards enhanced warming. In the 2000s those modes flipped back to more neutral states, and temperatures stayed roughly constant. This, to me, suggests that those modes of natural variability contributed to the warming trend of the 1980s and 1990s, but of course cannot come close to explaining all of it (in particular why didn't we cool this decade when those variability modes became more neutral?).

I'm basically suggesting that AGW is currently likely to be causing a background warming trend of about 0.1C/decade rather than the 0.2C that the rapid warming of the 1980s and 1990s may have suggested.

[Devonian]

How desperate can you get ? anyway...

This interview was good re global warming and climate change yesterday on the Politics show (interview with head of Met)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8443687.stm

John Hurst is not obviously an expert on climate, trends and averages and I'm afraid Neil knows enough about cherry picking figures to thus give him a hard time (and demonstrates that with climate data with a rising trend you can always find two point that flat line and claim 'no rise').

Well, most of Laserguy's posts insist that AGW is a "sham", "myth" and all the rest of it, and try to deny that the world has ever warmed, so it would seem that for certain individuals, there is more than just magnitude under dispute. But yes, any half-objective analysis of the evidence will suggest that it's more a case of "how much" rather than "if".

How much, indeed? There is still a lot that we don't know very well about the way the Earth's climate system works- while the simplistic CO2-temperature link is fairly well understood, many of the feedback processes that it triggers are still somewhat open to question. Papers upon papers are coming out disputing the effects of aerosols for example.

Interesting to see the BBC being scrutinised for possible pro-AGW bias. I think they have got better at it in the last year or two, but before that, I did sense some pro-AGW bias- they didn't tell lies about the subject, but rather over-simplified it and presented only one side of the story. Regarding journalists they have a tendency to get polarised to two extremes- either "AGW is a sham" or "AGW is really serious and we're all going to die"- whatever makes the most headlines, really.

Dev, I'm afraid I have to pull you up on this one- "because the emails were stolen", as an argument to support the notion that the leaking of them was theft, is circular reasoning. It's like when someone questions the idea that ripping legitimately purchased CDs to mp3 to play on your PC is theft, and getting a response like "it's theft because the mp3s are stolen from the CD", often accompanied by a threat of punishment for condoning stealing music. OK, so there's a huge moral difference between that and leaking emails- but the "theft" misconception is much the same.

I answered this in the previous thread, so to clarify, I think the emails were stolen, (what other word is there for it, 'it' being the secretive taking without permission of someone elses property?) I don't think those who handle the emails are thieves.

Edited January 7, 2010 by Devonian

[Solar Cycles]

John Hurst is not obviously an expert on climate, trends and averages and I'm afraid Neil knows enough about cherry picking figures to thus give him a hard time (and demonstrates that with climate data with a rising trend you can always find two point that flat line and claim 'no rise').

I answered this in the previous thread, so to clarify, I think the emails were stolen, (what other word is there for it, 'it' being the secretive taking without permission of someone elses property?) I don't think those who handle the emails are thieves.

Matters not, it's what's alleged to have been said that matters. If e-mails had been stolen from Climate Audit, and it was alleged that Steve McIntyre had falsely adjusted raw data he was given from Hadley, would you be taking this holier than now stance then?

Edited January 7, 2010 by Solar Cycles

[Devonian]

Matters not, it's what's alleged to have been said that matters. If e-mails had been stolen from Climate Audit, and it was alleged that Steve McIntyre had falsely adjusted raw data he was given from Hadley, would you be taking this holier than now stance then?

Theft is theft. Still good to see you tacitly admit the email were stolen.

[Solar Cycles]

Theft is theft. Still good to see you tacitly admit the email were stolen.

I've never denied it was anything other than Theft Dev, it still doesn't change what was said in those e-mails!

[Gray-Wolf]

Seeing as I don't like handling stolen goods I've no idea what was in 'those E-Mails'.

Could someone enlighten me as to what the fuss is all about?

[Thundery wintry showers]

I answered this in the previous thread, so to clarify, I think the emails were stolen, (what other word is there for it, 'it' being the secretive taking without permission of someone elses property?) I don't think those who handle the emails are thieves.

The taking without permission of someone else's property is only theft if it involves depriving the "someone else" of the property. Cloning it without permission and taking the clone for yourself and/or giving it to others is not theft, but it is usually an infringement of copyright or privacy or along those lines.

As I say, there are those who say that buying a music album from a store, and then ripping mp3 files from the album to play on your PC, is stealing because the mp3s are taken without permission, and the files are the property of the people who own the copyright to the album. This is a common tactic to hinder attempts to extend or protect fair use provisions, as they can say that such attempts are condoning theft, which is a more black and white issue than copyright infringement. And also, as I say, science is at risk of being infested by trends like the above. I don't agree with taking/sharing of personal emails without consent, but it isn't theft, it is morally wrong mainly for privacy-related reasons.

[Gray-Wolf]

So if I took all of your love letters out of your file TWS, photo copied them, and gave them out to all and sundry, it'd just by impacting your privacy and taking them out of the file would not be theft so long as I put them back?

Can cyberspace really change morality that much or is it merely an excuse for the times we live in?

Edited January 7, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Methuselah]

More importantly peeps, none of the Climategate nonsense (talk about red herrings!) negates the fact that we are in a warming world??

[sunny starry skies]

I would have thought that the emails issue could be put to bed by now. Can anyone honestly say, hand on heart, that there is anything that alters the underpinning science or data supporting AGW in the stolen emails? Because when the various supposedly damning excerpts are viewed in their proper context, there is nothing that changes the scientific basis or the evidence. They refer to already published research, well-known issues, well-known problematic journal/editors. They have been deliberately taken out of context so they sound bad (I wonder why...), but if you place them back into context there is nothing untoward. Even the FOI issue is not as bad as it sounds, as organisations like the CRU did not have the permission to give out the data as requested so could not allow the FOI requests. Though some of Phil Jones' comments were at best injudicious and crass.

But still we have deniers on here flagging the emails up like they are some kind of insight into bad science being done by climatologists. Well, given that the thieves nicked 10+ years of emails and failed to find any actual bad science or genuine admission of wrongdoing, it can very reasonably be said that the emails go to support the fact that these top climatologists are actually doing very good, rigorous science!

/rant

Anyway, back to a little real science.

http://www.realclima...sons/#more-1810

Interesting comparison between recent model runs, old model runs and real data. Looks like they are pretty happy with the way the models are shaping up too - the La Nina blip during this decade still keeps us within the 95% confidence range, with a justified expectation of a warmer 2010 that would probably take us back above the mean of the AR4 predictions.

And as an aside - 1998-2009 temperature trends for HADCRUT3 reported as positive (just to respond to Stewfox). A nice discussion of how you can cherry-pick short-term data (such as 2002-2009 in GISTEMP to report a negative trend. So it's pointless to cherry-pick a few years here or there - you need to look at longer-term trends. If I pick carefully I can find negative trends in the 1980s and early 1990s for short spells, yet when they are placed into their context of a longer timescale they are merely part of an upward trend. When you look at the longer-term trends (>15 years or so) they are resoundingly positive and there's no reason to suggest that the last few years of levelling off was any more than a La Nina-induced wobble in the overall trend.

Something else for the deniers - we know there is year-to-year variability within the climate system, but can you go and find me anything where climate scientists predicted a uniform year-on-year increase in global temperature. Because it seems that this is what is demanded before some deniers will accept a general trend of warming, let alone that it is caused by us!

sss

Edit: you got there first and more succinctly Pete on Climategate!

Edited January 7, 2010 by sunny starry skies

[Turnedoutniceagain]

More importantly peeps, none of the Climategate nonsense (talk about red herrings!) negates the fact that we are in a warming world??

And it was ever thus. I can only assume the Vikings were being ironic when they called their new discovery Greenland !!

[Devonian]

And it was ever thus. I can only assume the Vikings were being ironic when they called their new discovery Greenland !!

Close but think instead of estate agents...

Edited January 7, 2010 by Devonian

[Methuselah]

And it was ever thus. I can only assume the Vikings were being ironic when they called their new discovery Greenland !!

Probably no more so, than when European settlers decided to call Manhattan Island New York??? :lol:

[Thundery wintry showers]

So if I took all of your love letters out of your file TWS, photo copied them, and gave them out to all and sundry, it'd just by impacting your privacy and taking them out of the file would not be theft so long as I put them back?

Can cyberspace really change morality that much or is it merely an excuse for the times we live in?

If you took something away from me, made copies without consent and then gave it back, that would actually make you guilty of two offences- stealing (the initial act of taking it away is theft, even if you subsequently give it back) and then copying without consent.

Just because I'm pointing out that copying and theft aren't the same, it doesn't mean that I think copying is always acceptable. In some cases a modest amount of copying can be beneficial, but in other cases, copying can be even more damaging than theft is, and leaking sensitive information on a large scale often falls into the latter category. Copying is not a morally black and white issue- it all hinges on what is being copied, and on how large a scale the copies are distributed. That's why it's important that people see it for what it is instead of seeing it for what theft is.

Good posts by Pete Tattum and Sunny Starry Skies- after all, if the modes of natural variability have moved towards more neutral phases than they were in the 1990s, then why haven't we cooled as a result? There must be a background warming trend coming from somewhere else to offset them.

[rob48]

Well, if cynicism and snark melted ice the roads would be perfect...

As it is in reality councils set budgets, they have to plan ahead. But, you wouldn't complain about wasted taxpayer money if your council had a mountain of expensive salt left in May and had bought ten new £100,000 snow ploughs only used once a decade would you...

'Beardy-halfwit' eh? Good thoughtful stuff - not.

You allege financial and scientific corruption and are persistently condescending. I would bin your mail (especially given your 'haha') but expect someone will do you the courtesy (not that you showed it at all) of replying...

Yes, they have to plan ahead.

Perhaps they struggle because they take the advice of the Met Office and CLIMATE CHANGE organisation and thus no longer plan for colder than average winters.

Regarding waste, if that was all that they wasted I'd be rather pleased.

[Gray-Wolf]

They do use salt on melted road tar over summer Dev!

I seem to remember this from the 03' 'Arctic Summer' we suffered (oh to be blessed with a memory eh....what a cold decade we had to suffer?)

[Guest]

I cannot show that CO2 will not add to Global Warming because physics show that it has this property, so this part is unarguable. However, the amount this is contributing is. Nor do we fully understand the earth's mechanism of controlling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. There have been times in the Earth's history when much much more CO2 has been released through volcanic eruptions and the Earth's "Control System" appears to have coped with it; otherwise we would not be here today.

CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, water vapour and methane are others.

On newsnight about a couple of weeks ago a man was expounding the argument that the man-made CO2 was responsible for GW and that it it been rising since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to this, he said the CO2 levels were more or less constant. I take it from this that the CO2 did NOT cause the warm period during Roman Times or the Medieval Warm spell when it appears that the climate was if anything warmer than it currently is i.e. grapes ripening in North of England and the Viking settlements in Greenland, so called because it was green.

This being the case there must have been some other reasons for the constant heating and cooling of our climate and I suspect that such heating or cooling is occuring through a multitude of different causes which come together to produce the effect. At one extreme we get a full blown Ice Age and at the other a much warmer climate than we have now.

I am sure that the climatology scientists are very sincere in their research but I do wonder whether they get too blinkered in their own detail and perhaps it would be a good idea to stand back and look at the situation as a whole.

Meanwhile different governments have jumped on the band wagon and used the situation to impose stealth carbon taxes and have been trying to keep the general public duped for as long as possible.

I agree that we should keep man made CO2 in check but there is only a limited supply of fossil fuels and in the blink of an eye in geological terms this will run out.

Meanwhile we should make efforts to source the methane produced from rotting rubbish and use it to provide power. I'm afraid we can't do anything about cows farting yet but if we are still to enjoy our steaks, butter, milk and cheese they are essential.

:lol:

Edited January 7, 2010 by mike Meehan

[Solar Cycles]

If you took something away from me, made copies without consent and then gave it back, that would actually make you guilty of two offences- stealing (the initial act of taking it away is theft, even if you subsequently give it back) and then copying without consent.

Just because I'm pointing out that copying and theft aren't the same, it doesn't mean that I think copying is always acceptable. In some cases a modest amount of copying can be beneficial, but in other cases, copying can be even more damaging than theft is, and leaking sensitive information on a large scale often falls into the latter category. Copying is not a morally black and white issue- it all hinges on what is being copied, and on how large a scale the copies are distributed. That's why it's important that people see it for what it is instead of seeing it for what theft is.

Good posts by Pete Tattum and Sunny Starry Skies- after all, if the modes of natural variability have moved towards more neutral phases than they were in the 1990s, then why haven't we cooled as a result? There must be a background warming trend coming from somewhere else to offset them.

But most of us are aware of a background warming trend, but as of yet, no one can prove what is causing that warming. And so the circle of doubt continues!

[Gray-Wolf]

I cannot show that CO2 will not add to Global Warming because physics show that it has this property, so this part is unarguable. However, the amount this is contributing is. Nor do we fully understand the earth's mechanism of controlling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. There have been times in the Earth's history when much much more CO2 has been released through volcanic eruptions and the Earth's "Control System" appears to have coped with it; otherwise we would not be here today.

CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, water vapour and methane are others.

On newsnight about a couple of weeks ago a man was expounding the argument that the man-made CO2 was responsible for GW and that it it been rising since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to this, he said the CO2 levels were more or less constant. I take it from this that the CO2 did NOT cause the warm period during Roman Times or the Medieval Warm spell when it appears that the climate was if anything warmer than it currently is i.e. grapes ripening in North of England and the Viking settlements in Greenland, so called because it was green.

This being the case there must have been some other reasons for the constant heating and cooling of our climate and I suspect that such heating or cooling is occuring through a multitude of different causes which come together to produce the effect. At one extreme we get a full blown Ice Age and at the other a much warmer climate than we have now.

I am sure that the climatology scientists are very sincere in their research but I do wonder whether they get too blinkered in their own detail and perhaps it would be a good idea to stand back and look at the situation as a whole.

Meanwhile different governments have jumped on the band wagon and used the situation to impose stealth carbon taxes and have been trying to keep the general public duped for as long as possible.

I agree that we should keep man made CO2 in check but there is only a limited supply of fossil fuels and in the blink of an eye in geological terms this will run out.

Meanwhile we should make efforts to source the methane produced from rotting rubbish and use it to provide power. I'm afraid we can't do anything about cows farting yet but if we are still to enjoy our steaks, butter, milk and cheese they are essential.

Is it not a worry that when we know old mother nature can naturally produce 'warm periods' (as you highlight) that we have put our greenhouse blanket in place?

If we are to believe the recent info on methane release and the NASA paper on water vapour then we are already beyond a point of no return and must hope that Mother N. does not put any 'warming trend' on.

Edited January 7, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Admiral_Bobski]

...if the modes of natural variability have moved towards more neutral phases than they were in the 1990s, then why haven't we cooled as a result? There must be a background warming trend coming from somewhere else to offset them.

Why would the movement of natural forcings towards neutral phases cause cooling? Surely we would need [i[negative phases to cause cooling. Would neutrality not simply lead to more neutral temperature trends (temperature stasis, if you like)? If so then is this not what we have seen over the last few decade or so?

CB

PS - I agree with you wholeheartedly on the theft issue. I've actually been making that exact same argument ever since Napster got into trouble all those years ago and the issue of copyright "theft" (or, more correctly, copyright infringement) became a pub talking point!