Copenhagen countdown: 38 days
This post - my second weekly round-up of political moves as we approach December's UN climate summit - is a little delayed, partly because the week's most important event took place on Thursday and Friday.
"File on final whistle," as editors say to football correspondents - most of whom are much better at it than I am.
So let's look first at the EU summit in Brussels from which environment groups hoped for so much.
Did they get what they were looking for - namely, a big fat firm wad of money to help developing countries curb their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts?
Not really. Broadly endorsing proposals that emerged last month from the European Commission, EU leaders agreed on the size of the pot that will be needed - 100bn euros per year around 2020 - and on roughly what proportion of it should come from public coffers - between a quarter and a half.
(It's envisaged that the rest would come from a global carbon market.)
But the EU is hedging what slice of that public pot it is prepared to stump up, only saying it would shoulder its "fair share" of the burden.
In the international context, there are two issues with this.
One is that if the EU can't put firm numbers on the table, no-one can. The US is hamstrung by domestic political concerns (more of that in a moment), and Japan's new government is not yet in a position to make any pledge.
The more developed developing countries (I trust you know what I mean - there's a case for sorting this nomenclature out once and for all) won't promise a bean until the richer governments have.
And yet most analysts say a Copenhagen deal isn't possible without some firm pledges on finance - so who's going to provide them?
The second issue is the size of the pot. The EU reckons about 100bn euros per year for mitigation and adaptation combined, and that's to be achieved around 2020.
A World Bank report issued last month calculates a need for $75-100bn annually for adaptation alone in the developing world from 2010.
An excerpt from the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook released this month estimates $110bn per year for clean energy measures that would put developing countries on the road to emission levels likely to avoid "dangerous" climate change; and that's from 2010 as well.
Put these two estimates together and you get an annual pricetag of about $200bn from next year. The EU's proposing that the developed world provides about 7bn euros next year.
In sporting terminology, that's a mismatch. That's Roger Federer against my cat.
On the surface, the week's most ambitious numbers came from the Brazilian government, which announced a target of cutting deforestation in the Amazon by 80% by 2020.
As deforestation accounts for about half of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, that equates to an emissions cut of 40% between now and 2020 - which looks big, given that it's a developing country with relatively high population and economic growth, and that the target is twice as ambitious as the US Boxer-Kerry bill aims to achieve.
President Lula is due to announce a final target next week, and may confirm the 40% figure.
However, there is a couple of caveats.
First, the 80% figure is only a slight advance on the 70% target announced last year - and the timescale for achieving it is a couple of years longer.
More importantly, estimates of Brazil's deforestation rate have dipped and soared as regularly as a volatile stock over the last few years.
In the year from mid-2006, the monthly rate slowed by 20%. Over the next six months, it apparently rose by a factor of four - a trend attributed to rising commodity prices encouraging farmers to clear land for soya and cattle.
This is clearly something that the government will have to address in order to give its pledge real credibility.
Copenhagen has already hosted a significant climate science meeting this year; and last weekend saw a gathering of 100 legislators drawn from across the major economies.
Brought together under the auspices of Globe - Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment - the idea was to build avenues of discussion between parliaments other than the ones facilitated by the UN negotiations.
The meeting agreed a set of "key guiding principles" that they said all countries should adopt - setting emissions targets, improving energy efficiency, protecting forests, and so on.
When it comes to influencing the formal UN negotiations, the hand of Globe tends to act very much behind the scenes, so the importance of this agreement is a little hard to assess; but the fact that the principles were originally set out by a member of the Chinese congress and a member of the US Senate working together might be interpreted as significant.
Following on from the discussion in last week's Copenhagen Countdown post about the slim chances of agreeing a comprehensive, detailed treaty this year, there's been some discussion this week about whether anything binding might be possible.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested that a legally binding agreement might be a step too far. But:
"If we can agree on four political elements, then that could be a hallmark of success on climate change."
UN officials (and reportedly, Danish ministers) have been speaking of a "politically binding" agreement... but some observers have been asking "what is that?"
Outside the strictly political arena, religious leaders emerged to take up the climate cudgels this week - at least in the UK.
On Thursday, the Archbishop of Canterbury hosted a multi-faith (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha'i, Jain and Zoroastrian) seminar that concluded with a declaration:
"As leaders and representatives of faith communities and faith-based organisations in the UK we wish to highlight the very real threat to the world's poor, and to our fragile creation, from the threat of catastrophic climate change.
"We recognise unequivocally that there is a moral imperative to tackle the causes of global warming."
And on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will speak to what looks like a bigger faith leaders' gathering at Windsor Castle.
How much effect do religious groups have on climate politics? Hard to say, but according to Olav Kjorven of the UN Development Programme:
"The world's faiths joined together in this cause - if viewed in terms of sheer numbers of people - could become the planet's largest civil society movement for change... the decisive force that helps top the scales in favour of a world of climate safety and justice for future generations."
Next week, the US Boxer-Kerry bill is supposed to come before the crucial - and divided - Senate Environment and Public Works committee. Republican members are planning a boycott.
It's one of the key spaces to watch next week.
Another is the meeting of G20 finance ministers in St Andrews, Scotland, at the very end of the week that might produce something more concrete in terms of pledges on money.
But most climate-oriented eyes will be on the UN session in Barcelona, the final week of formal negotiations before the Copenhagen meeting opens.
I'll be there from Wednesday and will be endeavouring to keep you hooked up.
As before, if you think I've left anything significant off this tour d'horizon, please post a comment.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~35~RS~)
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Do you think the involvement of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the multi-faith groups adds to the gravitas with which we should regard this issue? Does it perhaps bolster the rather shaky science to add another more ethereal dimension?
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Good point raising the religion angle digger (although I am not going to endorse your use of the term "shaky science"). I think this has been discussed a bit before. Religion has a massive role to play on the environment. I really think the main era it should address is family planning. Various religions are in very strong positions to advise their congregations on family issues. It would be unrealistic to ask the churches to become the champions of birth control... but one of the main reasons for environmental pressure is over-population. It seems to me that most religions are pro-environment and I hope that they can note that currently they are are thus giving some mixed messages by not encouraging their followers to try and limit excessive population growth. It certainly is a tricky area... one I certainly find hard to address... but it MUST be addressed. I hope the various faiths that can find ways to at least reduce population growth through their interaction with the family. Does that make sense?!!! Anybody agree/disagree?
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Why are we wasting money on a non existent threat. The scam that is Man Made Climate Change is already costing us billions wasted on so called Green energy projects. Without the tax payers subsidy these projects would not exist to "Save the Planet". They cost a fortune and contribute virtually nothing in power supplied to our Grid.
They are not saving anything except a legacy of failed projects and money wasted.
Time and again we have dipped into our pockets and given generously to third world countries only to see the money vanish into Dictators pockets [who we still recognize!] and those we tried to help are still starving!
We should help our own people first and get out of this pit of debt that Gordon Brown has dropped us in before we waste money on useless Green initiatives and overseas bottomless pits.
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"..The EU reckons about $100bn per year for mitigation and adaptation combined..", the EU reckons about 100bn euros in compensations, not dollars. Big difference
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well, Rowan Williams and his mates had an epiphany?
"As leaders and representatives of faith communities and faith-based organisations in the UK we wish to highlight the very real threat to the world's poor, and to our fragile creation, from the threat of catastrophic climate change."
tosh. why do we live in a world where a few are "rich" and the overwhelming majority remains "poor"?
those "nice" Christians, Jews, Muslims (ie. the followers of Abrahams "god") have shaped the modern world; the unholy mess of a world torn by war and strife, and poisoned by pollution caused (mostly) by the blind pursuit of personal profit can be laid squarely at the door of those religious types who have manipulated world affairs for 2000+ years.
eddhind, you ask "..various faiths that can find ways to at least reduce population growth through their interaction with the family. Does that make sense?!!!"
my personal view is that Earth could support at least 14bn people in relative comfort, perhaps more, so my answer is no. do you not agree that wars and industrial development for profit are much larger stumbling blocks, especially since (a) these play people one against another and (b) they consume (waste!) resources needed for development.
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Is it time to play the grandchild card ?
Imagine if our own grandparents had decided to ban cars, stop burning coal, and rely on windmills for electricity.
Where would we be now ?
I'm very proud of what my grandparents really did. They fought a war against the nazis. This involved hardship and danger and a lot of sacrifice. After winnning this war they rebuilt our own economies - pressing ahead with building roads, making cars, developing aviation. They burned coal and extracted minerals from the ground. They also helped the defeated germans and Japanese to rebuild their own economies - making all kinds of manufacturing industry.
They shaped the modern world and it's a lovely place.
Our own prosperity is vastly ahead of their dreams. We travel further and faster than they did - in more comfort and safety. We eat new and exciting foods they never did. They never had weekends in Barcelona, blogs, snowboards, ipods, skateboards, chicken tikka masala. IVF babies, artificial hips, sunbeds, lattes.
So please let's go forwards - for ourselves and for our own grandchildren. Forwards to increased prosperity, and freedom.
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Jack_Hughes_NZ #6.
"They shaped the modern world and it's a lovely place."
-- "Malaria is preventable and curable, yet every 30 seconds, a child in sub-Saharan Africa dies from the disease, according to the World Health Organization."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/23/world.malaria.day/
-- "Respiratory disease deaths"
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_res_dis_dea-health-respiratory-disease-deaths
-- "Small Arms—they cause 90% of civilian casualties"
http://www.globalissues.org/article/78/small-arms-they-cause-90-of-civilian-casualties
-- "The lack of suitable water for people and for nature is a growing crisis"
http://www.nature.org/initiatives/freshwater/people/
-- "The world hunger problem"
http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm
I could go on but I do not wish to spoil your enjoyment of your ipod whilst sipping lattes. ;-(
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Mr Black.
Invoking God and showing a picture of a photogenic third world female floating on water is absolutely scintillating journalism. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you win a prize of some sort.
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Dear Richard,
It seems that you went into the conference at Imperial with a bias in mind to belittle the points of the people on the panel. I am a scientist myself and do not accept the statements by politicians like Al Gore that all scientists agree with his point of view. It also does not help that he has enriched himself to the tune of 200 million dollars while traveling on corporate jets to lecture the little people about global warming and the evils of CO2 emissions.
Omid Moghadam
USA
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omidmoghadam
Al Gore, like his father also has a very close financial relationship to Occidental Oil. His father was a director of the the company and was known as 'the senator from Occidental'. Gore junior used his influence while Vice President to to get drilling concessions for them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/677105.stm
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Richard
Has it occurred to you reading these comments that by the time the 38 days have elapsed. It may be only you and Rowan who still believe any of this global warming tosh?
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The Archbishop of Canterbury can speak for over an hour without using the words "God" or "Jesus" - unlike people in our factory.
He tried to have a "flight-free" year in 2008 and failed when he accidentally bought a ticket and boarded a plane in Paris.
He has never studied science and he is no more qualified than Kevin from Rotherham to speak about climate predictions.
He did study Theology - like the US politician and businessman Al Gore.
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@jr4412
Lighten up, dude.
Neither of us has malaria nor are we firing small arms at our neighbours while starving and coughing.
Thanks to our grandparents we only see these things on TV (invented by them) or on the internet (invented by our parents plus Al Gore).
Many of these 3rd world problems will only be solved when 3rd world countries move forwards and develop their economies. Bjorn Lomborg writes a lot on this subject - and he's a carbon-believer not a skeptic.
Before the industrial revolution we also had these kind of problems.
PS: we can agree that ManySummits is probably not Richard.
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Richard wrote:
"...curb their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts."
Whilst it is quite true that this is the objecting of the politicians (and the IPCC) let us hope that some sanity prevails and the dive to cut carbon becomes a general drive to cut pollution, plant more trees and increase efficiency. If 'they' do not do this the people will quite shortly not forgive them for their error!
CO2 is the problem = Not quite the best scam going, but outside banking a really good one...
Let us face facts. Politicians and Civil Servants only want from science answers that support their prejudices. They want to tax us and generally crimp our style and this carbon tax nonsense gives them a new and valuable weapon in their armoury! The tax is a good idea in my opinion but they should not be spending it on anything except climate extremes amelioration anything else is highly likely to be a waste of money! Never mind the efficiency of bureaucrats (particularly British ones) in paying out money is absolutely dire - c.f the Single Farm Payments scheme on the basis of which it seems probably that the only organisations to benefit from the carbon tax will be foreign consultancies!
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As the "UK" is stoney broke presumably we'll have to borrow our contribution before we pass it on to the developing nations.
A successful days work according to Brown.
Another black day for the taxpayer.
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Another excellent summary Richard. I understand we have Angela Merkel to thank, at least in part, for the EU Council's wishy-washy finance agreement. With that in mind, we should keep a close eye on her address to a joint session of Congress next week, along with the EU/US summit (November 3-4) during which the climate negotiations will be discussed.
Re 11. At 9:01pm on 31 Oct 2009, diggerjock wrote:
"Has it occurred to you reading these comments that by the time the 38 days have elapsed. It may be only you and Rowan who still believe any of this global warming tosh?"
Nope, we are firmly in the majority.
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Some Good News !!
"U.S. Headed for Massive Decline in Carbon Emissions" (Oct 14, 2009)
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update83
- Manysummits -
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Jack_Hughes_NZ #13.
"Lighten up, dude."
trying, Jack, trying, my blood pressure runs high sometines because I'm all too aware that "Neither of us has malaria nor are we firing small arms at our neighbours while starving and coughing" simply because of an accident of birth. I'm not really "hair shirt green" as you probably know anyway, so, apologies for the 'ipod & latte' dig.
"Bjorn Lomborg" -- very interesting link, thanks.
"PS: we can agree that ManySummits is probably not Richard." :-)
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I'm a kiwi who was born and raised in Africa and the Middle East and I have to say kiwi's really don't know how lucky we are (no pun intended). "Neither of us has malaria nor are we firing small arms at our neighbours while starving and coughing simply because of an accident of birth" seems to sum it up perfectly. The fact that a poor Ugandan kid will live in poverty and violence over scarce available resources (water)while I sit in Aotearoa in relative safety is unjust.
The world is an interconnected whole where CO2 emissions (ie: from deforestation in Indonesia) are related to rising water temperatures which depletes available fisheries which impacts the poor who rely on fish as a part of their staple diet (40% of S Asia's protein intake comes from fish). Rising temperatures in SEAsia is also causing the spread of vector borne diseases down into Australia with some predictions for local communities in North Land NZ to become exposed to malaria.
On the religion point:
Social movement theory suggests that 'the masses' can be 'mobilised' by a shared point of commonality (ie: the black civil rights movement where the majority of the oppressed worshipped regularly in Christian churches). Regardless of our western views on faith the majority of the worlds population is religious and so 'mobilising the masses' via a shared point of commonality (ie: Jesus, Allah) to address climate change is potentially a v powerful force which could achieve alot.
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Even George Monbiot has found a modicum of self respect and hasn't mentioned Co2 for a month now. He stopped just after the Vienna climate conference.
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Climate change is not the issue here. We need to be tackling government. This hideous threat to our well being is draining our very will to live by stealing our hard earned cash to line their own pockets. We, the tax payer, have nothing left, the pips don't even squeak anymore.
Governement is there to serve the people not the other way round. What an unbelievable waste of money when we're on the bones of our backside!
We're not coming out of recession anytime soon as the customers of most businesses have been mugged by civil servants.
No to the idiots who think they can do anything about the planets natural cycles.
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This is a classic case of prisoners dilemma. No one is willing to make a sacrifice unless everyone else guarantees to do the same. It only takes one to default and break the pact. Since the major player is the USA, and they are unlikely to make any firm commitments because of huge domestic opposition to AGW, there will never be any useful global agreement. All there will be is voluntary pledges and token amounts of money, both of which are easily reneged on.
The only hope for a binding global agreement is if the USA puts her full weight behind it, and I just don't see that happening.
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I would of liked to have gone to the Windsor Castle meeting, I would have spent all of my disposable income to have gone, but I found out that is was by invite only. Stand up and be counted is what I say. A body of people determined by faith belief can achieve more goals than a group chained by the hope of financial reward.
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Richard, do you have any info on the chemicals that the world is dumping into our mother earth- land or into our water(lakes or ocean)?
I always hear or read about air pollution but not on matters that i mention above. Since we are trying to minimize the pollution of our Earth, then we have to approach all phases of pollution.
Using all our Natural Resources like wind, sunlight, Wave Currents, Waterfalls, Magnets and etc... We have a lot to tap on and make this world of ours a better place to live and longer. We just have to use more of these Natural Resources to power-up our World.
I just started to convert my home into a non-toxic/chemical-free environment by using what is Effective and Naturally-derived Ingredients that does the same work as those Hazardous Chemicals. It is a lot cheaper and more economical. Besides getting the Health benefits, I am NO longer dumping chemicals into the waterways that ends in our ocean and less plastics bottles into the landfills of our Earth and less VOCs-Volatile Organic Compounds into the air. I buy these products directly from a manufacturing company that have been doing business for a long time. So I buy direct and cheaper(No middleman and most household products are concentrated(some 6X concentrated so less plastic bottles to our land). I highly recommend this company to everybody who wants to convert into a SAFER Family, home and Environment. All of us in our own little way can contribute to make this world of ours better, safer and longer for our children's children to ENJOY.
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tetoen #24.
"..info on the [hazardous] chemicals that the world is dumping.."
this is how it is supposed to work, this shows how we try and circumvent those rules.
try google 'hazmat disposal statistics', loads of interesting results, those from the UN are in pdf format unfortunately, so cannot be linked here.
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9. At 8:36pm on 31 Oct 2009, omidmoghadam
It seems that you went into the conference at Imperial with a bias in mind
That would be contrary to all sorts of BBC policies, and therefore could not happen.
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John from Hendon said at #14
‘...They want to tax us and generally crimp our style and this carbon tax nonsense gives them a new and valuable weapon in their armoury!’
This reminds me of the old moan that speeding fines are about raising revenue through some alleged ‘stealth’ tax. The truth is of course that you just have to slow down! Maybe some courtesy for heavens sake. I’ve driven for thirty-five years, mostly got from A to B on time and never had a speeding ticket. It doesn’t ‘crimp’ anyone’s ‘style’ unless by that you mean ‘ego’. As we know driving fast is about ‘self’ and is irrational and fuel inefficient. Overall speed is controlled by junctions, lights and road congestion. Except, perhaps, on the longest motorway journeys, the time saved is minimal.
You say we should reduce all forms of pollution. Exactly.
So what is wrong with increasing the cost of inefficient machines of all kinds to achieve that goal? I agree that governments have to be made aware that people are not going to be taken for fools, but each of us then has an incentive, as the example above shows, to buy less (and thus avoid VAT, sales tax etc) and buy more efficiently (and thus avoid or minimise any taxes or charges).
The gigantic vehicles, that so many people now choose to drive, would gradually disappear, driving down the cost to the individual, reducing fuel consumption, making parking easier and a host of other benefits. It would also achieve your goal of reducing all forms of pollution. At the same time CO2 emissions would be reduced.
Everybody wins.
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Crikey! I hope from my point of view that the responses on these blogs are not a representative cross-section of societies opinions on the environment and especially AGW. That is not a criticism of the people writing on this blog (everyone is entitled to their own opinion)... just a personal hope that many of you are in the minority and that I can still cherish some hope that the human race will find a way to live with nature on this fine planet as an equal.
@jr4412 re #5
Personally, although deeply non-relegious, I think it is very harsh to dump on religion for 2000+ years of humanities failures as a whole. I am not even sure humanity has failed for 2000+ years. I think there has been a lot of success to. Maybe I am just a glass half full kind of person... I don't know.
Regarding your question: "do you not agree that wars and industrial development for profit are much larger stumbling blocks, especially since (a) these play people one against another and (b) they consume (waste!) resources needed for development"
I do not agree I am afraid. Wars can happen for many reasons, one of the major ones being a fight over already scarce resources (e.g. Oil, Water, Food). Further population increase will put further stress on these resources and make war even more likely. Regarding pint (b)... wars do indeed consume resources, but probably more financially than actual raw materials. There are too many ifs and buts in point (b) for it to stand to argument I am afraid.
@Jack_Hughes_NZ re#6
Nobody is asking your grandchildren to live in the Middle Ages. The fact is we can continue to modernise and reach new technological and social highs in our existence without harming nature by releasing CO2. We can achieve exactly the same using clean technologies. One may even argue that the achieving of these new greener and CHEAPER technologies, which are SECURE in their infinite supply could be humankind's greatest achievement to date. I think that would be a fantastic legacy to leave our grandchildren.
@all
There is are many words that belittle some of the posters creeping in to both sides of the debate and towards Richard who essentially is helping us by providing us a forum and topics to debate. I suggest we stop it. A society where everybody is negative and happy to throw abuse at any who disagrees with their point of view is certainly something I don't want to hand down to my grandchildren.
@Shaun re#21
I don't think this is just a government issue... this is a global issue. I am also not sure how MPs expenses (which I assume you refer to) has anything to do with environmental change. We must look at problems objectively. Temporary increases in spending to avert irreversible environmental degradation would in my opinion would be money well spent. If I had to pay extra tax for a few years to solve that problem then so be it. If I have to pay extra tax for MPs to fly in 1st Class, then fair play, that I cannot agree with. However, we are lucky to live in a democracy so we can rectify that.
n.b. I still believe reacting to climate change will save us all money. We will spend less money on energy needs, less on consumables and less on mitigating environmental impacts. So I ask you to try and look at this policy separate from the government failure that you perceive and analyse whether this policy will actually cost you money or not. If you still think it will, then ask yourself how you could actually use it to help you save money. Perhaps you will be able to afford that new XBox yet ;o)
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Richard:
Thanks for the continuing countdown to Copenhagen
and its outcome in the summit when it comes!
=Dennis Junior=
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Now that religion has entered the debate I feel that a real step forward is about to happen. Call me a snob but I believe that thousands of years of accumulated knowledge about mankind is a better than the results of a couple of decade or so of graph computer print-outs about the weather. My gut feeling is that if the heavyweights are about to join the debate then things may start moving because only man can move man. (We haven't quite reached the stage of robot domination) You may hate religion but it is a greater force than secularism because it has group purpose whereas secularism is more of an individual choice involving individual decisions and individual outcomes.
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\\\ A New Dawn ///
( Samhain - summer's end, November 1, 2009 )
The sun is rising an hour earlier this morning, and our clocks are once again in time with our nearest star.
I'm looking over my notes since 'jr4412', 'davblo2' and I published the 'Mayday Declaration' six months ago.
I am astounded at how much I personally have learned while on this blog, and continue to marvel at the incredible depth of the human soul.
As is usual for me, a number of books were read this last year, most of them entirely 'on topic' (State of the Planet).
From the heart, two stand out:
"Wind, Sand and Stars" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1939), about flying and life, by a pilot, poet and philosopher, lost while flying in the Second World War;
and "The Sun Climbs Slow" by Erna Paris (2008), about the founding of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
I have three gifts to contribute to this discourse, 36 days from 'Copenhagen,' on this greatest of Celtic feastdays. Each, I hope, is in its own way, entirely appropriate on our collective road to Copenhagen, and in the years ahead:
1) From "Wind, Sand and Stars"
"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it."
- Pilot Guillaumet, after an incredible trek out of the Andes Mountains following a plane crash.
2) From "The Sun Climbs Slow"
"When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright."
- Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough, quoted by Churchill over the BBC airwaves, April 27, 1941.
3) And from myself (a Celt), Underacanoe & Cloudrunner, a modernized Celtic blessing, in the early years of the twenty-first century:
"May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And, may we find the wisdom,
"To understand and protect our home planet" [1]
- Manysummits -
[1] Former NASA mission statement
PS: It was my privilege to work with 'jr4412' and 'davblo2' in writing the 'Mayday Declaration', and it is a continuing pleasure to join with the many bloggers on this site who have stepped forward to cast light into a shadowed place, for I think such is the world of environmental science on our planet, at this time.
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NATURE VERSUS CO2
For 1850, for the data from Hadley Centre, the mean global temperature anomaly was -0.44 deg C.
Mean Global Temperature Anomaly
The above result also show linear global warming at a rate of about 0.44 deg C/Century since 1850.
This same rate of linear global warming existed for 100 years before 1910! So it is not caused by CO2 emission.
Global Warming Before 1910
From the above results, the mean global temperature anomaly for 2008, as a result of the linear warming, is
= (2008-1850)*0.44/100 – 0.44 = 0.26 deg C.
The actual anomaly, from the first link above, for 2008 was 0.33 deg C, a difference of only 0.07 deg C from the linear warming value of 0.26 deg C..
How could CO2 be blamed for the natural global warming of about 0.44 deg C/Century that was going on for the last two centuries?
When you remove the long term linear warming of about 0.44 deg C, you can clearly see the global cooling that started from 1998 in the following chart.
Global Cooling Since 1998
"Action" (Tax) must be based on fact. The fact does not exist!
Facts don't matter any more?
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The above link is not working. Here it is again.
Global Cooling Since 1998
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For those interested, this week's Economist has an editorial and a feature article on the subject of population growth. These also address some of the implications for the environment, including in the context of climate change. (Previously much of the Economist is open access, but this policy has recently changed so I won't attempt to post the links here.)
One of the main points the Economist makes is that fertility rates are falling but growth in the world population is still expected over the coming decades. More will need to be done to address the environmental challenges that this still-growing population poses. However, since fertility rates are already declining at a considerable rate, population policy per se can do little more to alleviate environmental damage.
Instead the Economist argues that to minimise further environmental impacts, we will have to rely on technology and governance to shift the world’s economy towards cleaner growth: "Mankind needs to develop more and cheaper technologies that can enable people to enjoy the fruits of economic growth without destroying the planet’s natural capital. That’s not going to happen unless governments both use carbon pricing and other policies to encourage investment in those technologies and constrain the damage that economic development does to biodiversity."
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The motion before this house is that:
"Government and Science are not compatible"
How about it? Is it possible for politicians ever to take scientific advice? If it isn't, why should any scientist bother to offer them advice (as the posts are generally unpaid!)[c.f. Alan Johnson vs Proff Nutt etc etc etc etc]
[Leaving aside the political influence that exists in awarding grants to research institutions - which I suppose one can't leave aside.]
If politicians are so ignorant that they cannot understand logical scientific argument what is the point of communicating with them! Basically politicians have no skills themselves and can do nothing (except the lawyers!) and the qualifications of the Civil Servants are almost completely unscientific - this is a very major obstetrical to good governance in a highly scientific age with political issues such as Global Warming on the agenda.
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It is hard to escape the conclusion that the term 'aid' is being replaced by 'climate change'.
Except that the decisions on donations are decided not at National Governmental level but at supra-national organisational level.
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The carbon emissions tax presents a matter for concern. Once governments create a revenue stream they have a tendency to maintain that stream beyond the original rationale. Where would be the incentive for governments to reduce carbon emissions if they were realizing tax revenues? As it is also proposed as a funding source for underdeveloped nations to initiate green technologies the incentives to change are minimized. If the underdeveloped nations institute green technologies they would reduce this funding. I would think that the developed nations should be allocating more funds to create non-fossil fuel technologies rather than paying to continue to pollute. These policies are more a reflection of the power of the fossil fuel industries than an effort to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. Governments are the maintainence of the status quo. The ignorant have no problem ignoring the poor, yet are the first to blame governments when they are personally impacted. The proposals are sets of compromises that do little toward reaching the goals. Individuals continue to change and ,with deference to the deniers, that is how change takes place. The people are out front and the governments catch up. Governments change position for two basic reasons: Money and public opinion (becomning unelectable). We are still in the Money stage regarding Climate Change. Governments tend to only give up what can be taken from them anyway. Too few people, with too much wealth and too much influence.
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@ 35
You have kind of hit the nail on the head there. The trouble is politicians only know how to do one thing: Politics. Politics (or at least the current political system) is completely irrelevant. So the reality is they know nothing of any use. Sure they know how to spin a story or dodge asking a question, but they don't have any knowledge on how to prevent climate change, or teach a group of school children, or make people healthier.
I don't think they are ignorant to what scientists tell them, I think they are ignorant to the fact that they are not qualified to make the decisions we have elected them to make. It's not their fault, it's everybody's fault for not realizing the system its stupid.
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#35 john_from_hendon
i have a similarly dim view of the current govt, but global warming/climate change (it has never really had an 'official' name) is most definitely part of the scientific process. whatever you may believe, there are good scientists out there working hard trying to understand this and i do find many of the comments about them, their motives and competence pretty unpleasant. personally i think the comments say more about their authors than the scientists they refer to.
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#32 selti1
so you've cracked it. you're the boy that's pointed out the emperor has no clothes. fantastic.......so why is the scientific community taking no notice?
maybe it's something to do with taking just one graph (out of thousands) that's 4 years old and is accepted as part of the science but doesn;t show what you're claiming it shows.
climate science is difficult. there is no one piece of evidence you guys will link to that will overturn the consensus. if the consensus is wrong (extremely long shot but possible) it will come out because although science and scientists are not perfect, there is no conspiracy to hide the truth.
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Richard:
As you know I am a physicist of the same vintage as Piers Corbyn (in the same class at Imperial) and I recall him as being one of the top two or three of the class of ~160. I hold him in high regard, whatever others may have said about him on your earlier post.
I also want to quote from a letter to the US Senate entitled A Gaggle is not a Consensus: "You can do physics without climatology, but you can’t do climatology without physics". I fully agree with that statement and note that a lot of the so-called climate scientists are not physicists but are dendroclimatologists, mathematicians, computer scientists etc etc and I repeat "you can’t do climatology without physics". Many people say that very few scientists disagree with the "consensus" of AGW. This does not appear to be the case amongst those with the most relevant scientific background (physicists).
The open letter to the APS (American Physical Society), signed by 160 members and fellows of the Society states:
"As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science:
Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.
Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.
The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human – on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause."
You can see the letter at WUWT: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/02/160-physicists-send-letter-to-senate-regarding-aps-climate-position/#more-12383 and at http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/open_letter.html
So there you have the views of 160 scientists who are familiar with the issues and have concluded that natural processes can account for variations in the Earth’s climate and that climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.
I agree with them.
What are your views?
Are these 160 scientists what Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at the University of Queensland (on your previous post) called "sceptics (which I believe should actually be called what they really are, an anti-science special-interest lobby) continue to wilfully distort the conclusions of peer-reviewed science. One wonders what motivates these carpetbaggers and snake oil salesmen? Is it personal gain from pandering to special-interest, or is it simply a pathological condition? We will probably never know. However, what is very clear is that these individuals are playing a very dangerous game with our future on this planet"?
Indeed, am I a carpetbagger and snake oil salesman or just an interested and sceptical scientist?
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eddhind #28.
I've been thinking how to frame the reply to your post regarding your defense of religion, this has been 'complicated' by the posts of NZ_Harry (#19) and sensibleoldgrannie (#30), both of whom made very valid points.
ideally, I'd have given you the full argument, from educational monopoly during dark ages, via witches burned and the monks accompanying Cortez, thru to modern day land ownership and the taking advantage in Nigeria and places, but I feel too dispirited (read angry at all sorts of other stuff) at present, and, to be fair, it is not your fault that I'm not a "..glass half full kind of person". all the best.
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hi jr4412 (re 42)
Hope you aren't too dispirited!
It is a funny world in which I defend religion! I certainly agree with you that many horrific things have been done in the religion, but I also think horrific things have been done in the name of other things (nationalism, politics, business, classism, etc.). I guess my point, and I am sorry as I know it sounds a bit throw-away, but every walk of life has its bad eggs. Religion has its bad eggs too. However I am of the opinion that much of the badness can be put down to the very few - maybe the media hasn't done religion many favours in picking up on its horrors more often than it has done on the horrors of politicians, etc. That however is complete guesswork so ignore it. What I do believe is that there most religious people are just like the rest of us and many of them are very good people (most people are!). As a large group of very good people they have the potential to do very good things. I hope they will and I hope they do good things for the environment. Not for one second am I asking us to forget horrors created in the name of the religion, but we also have to move forward and accept this metaphorical olive branch they seem to be offering. Forgiveness is something we can all do... I think we may need to if we are going to save this planet. Sorry I know that was a bit confused... religion is not my strong suit. Personally I don't believe any of it maybe that is the scientist in me!), but most religions seem to have a common ethical base that I can identify with. As long as people are ethical I don't really care.
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#17 ManySummits
"Some Good News !!
"U.S. Headed for Massive Decline in Carbon Emissions" (Oct 14, 2009)"
I don't think there has been enough work done in this area. I read "somewhere" that Emissions last year in the USA were at 1980 levels. I would like to seem some calculations showing the effects of a long term recession or a 15 year depression on global climate change.
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Rossglory #40
You wrote, “so you've cracked it. you're the boy that's pointed out the emperor has no clothes. fantastic.......so why is the scientific community taking no notice?”
Here is the answer for your question:
There is difference between leaders of scientific organization and their members. Look at what the members are saying at post #41, by PAWB46, just below your post. Unfortunately, it is the leaders who are heared because of their authority. But science is not about consensus, majority or authority.
The fact is there was linear global warming of about 0.5 deg C/Century in the last century and in the century before that. CO2 is not the cause of this warming. Without looking at what was happening from 1810 to 1910, we can not get correct understanding of the mean global temperature behavior in the last century. We came out of what is called the little ice ages.
This is the best from the IPCC author:
Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade
Here are other papers that support my position:
Lindzen, R.S.&Y.S.Choi, (2009) Geophys. Res. Letts, Vol. 36, L16704, doi: 10.1029/2009GL039628,2009
Rind, D. 2008 "The Consequences of Not Knowing Low-and High-Latitude Climate Sensitvity" Bull. Am. Met. Soc., 89: 855-864
Reifen, C., and R. Toumi (2009) Geophys. Res. Letts, Vol. 36, L13704, doi: 10.1029/2009GL038082, 2009
Partridge, G., A. Arking and M. Pook, (2009) "Trends in Middle-and Upper-Level Tropospheric Humidity from NCEP Reanalysis Data" Theoretical and App. Climatology, Published online 26 Feb. 2009
Koutsoyiannis, D., A. et al, (2008) "On the Credibility of Climate Predictions" Hydrological Sciences-Journal-des Sciences Hydrologiques 53(4), pp 671-684 2008
Stainforth, D.A., et al., Phil Trans Royal Soc. A, (2007), Vol 365, 2145-2161
Govindan, R.B., et al., Phys Rev. Letts, (2002) Vol. 89, No. 2, pp 028501-1-4
Hobson, V.J., et al., Deep-Sea Research, 55, 155-162
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Seems like BBC are good at loosing settings as well as others are "good" at loosing temperature data, so back with a new nom-de-plume!
In the meantime I had hoped we were going to debate politicians etc., thought it might be something we could all be happy to agree on but alas I see we are back to the old "my evidence is better than yours!" routine.
How boring.
While I have been away I see that PAWB46 has been lavishing praise on Piers Corbyn so with time on my hands I did some research of my own.
Interesting fellow, Piers, seems like he gets some predictions right and some wrong and most of them somewhat similar to what you would expect for the location and time of year. But then I guess I read only what I want to read.
But......this reminded me of a clairvoyant I once new (personally) who had a high reputation, so high that for a while one of the county's (NZ) richest men (made heaps out of toilet paper which just proves the point there's money in muck) was making more money on the stock exchange using her predictions!
Then everything turned to custard!
But on a more serious note, I also viewed the video clip on Youtube of an interview with him on an American TV program when he stated that he would be elaborating on his methodology on October 28th, presumably the seminar at Imperial.
So.....did he or didn't he and to be more specific did he do it in such a manner that can be reviewed or does he consider that there is no one capable of reviewing his work?
Wish we could just get back to criticising politics and politicians.
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Well the politics are founded on the horribly flawed data and the utterly insane suggestions by the well-meaning but incredibly unrealistic green groups and those that follow them.
(sarcasm warning for the sarcasm impaired)
Oh my god, it's going to warm at .5C/decade for the next 100 years...yeah, like we've seen any evidence of THAT warming rate (its actually averaging about 1/10 that rate). I know, we'll throw all our political weight behind the idea of weaning ourselves from foreign oil and using the immature or futuristic technologies...THAT hasn't ever been tried before (USA, 1970s). While we're at it we'll have a revolution and redistribute the wealth so nobody's poor any more...yeah, THAT idea hasn't ever been tried before (do I need to give examples?). Let's silence our critics...THAT idea hasn't been tried either (all through history). ( /sarcasm )
Honestly about the only thing that really hasn't been tried before is this idea they've been floating lately that we can scale back industry to about 10-30% of previous levels while increasing energy costs, somehow while creating jobs and saving everyone money. There is of course a reason this has never been tried...it's impossible.
LOL, I keep complaining about these flawed ideas...but many (not all, of course) in the AGW camp seem to think that _I_ am the one being unrealistic and inflexible.
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Here we go again.
Now we have to raise yet more tax to give away to people on the other side of the world.
People need to start reacting to this 'environment' as an excuse for tax scam.
Lets spend our money on algae based biofuel, tidal power, more nuclear power stations, etc etc. Not more giveaways to already rich leaders in poor countries.
If the 'end of the world' is really coming then we need to start adapting. If it is not coming then we still need to adapt as the oil steadily fails to fill demand. Lets get on with it.
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On previous "blogs" under my previous nom-de-plume (wonderful how we can hide behind these whilst making the most outlandish commentaries) I thought I had made it very clear that I neither supported the pro-AGW lobby nor the anti- AGW lobby. I have my own "agenda" for my stance which has very little to do with whether or not CO2 is driver of "Climate Change/global warming)BUT........
The more I read some of the contributions here, the more I warm (pun intended) towards the pro-AGW lobby.
Like many other people, (the cinema was full, they had to put on an extra viewing) I watched Al Gore put on an excellent Hollywood performance, short on scientific content. A few months later I was able to be present at a poorly attended (fewer that 30 people in a former church hall) presentation from a far better qualified scientist over from an Australian university who gave a far better (scientifically speaking) presentation.
At the conclusion I asked the question:-
"From your presentation it would appear that there is no problem and we have no need to do anything?"
To which he hastily (and I repeat, hastily) replied:-
"that was not my intention, I should have made that clear at the beginning of my presentation!"
Work that one out for yourselves.But I suppose I could just be telling "porkies".
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48. At 09:05am on 03 Nov 2009, jon112uk wrote:
Lets spend our money on algae based biofuel, tidal power, more nuclear power stations, etc etc. Not more giveaways to already rich leaders in poor countries
Now that's more like it!
There is no such thing as a "rich nation" or a "poor nation"
In every "rich nation" there are incredibly rich people and many very poor people.
In every "poor nation" there are some incredibly rich people (usually educated in some western university) and a multitude of incredibly poor people.
And yet I am exhorted by some charity or other to support their activities in some other part of the world (just $25 a month etc. etc.) most of which will be swallowed up in "administration costs" and never get to the intended project while there are people in the country concerned who could very rapidly alleviate the said problem with minimal effect on their personal accumulated wealth.
I guess my "agenda" is beginning to show.
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John-from_hendon at #35
I would not agree with the motion "Government and Science are not compatible". However I wouldn't see much point debating the motion per se as I think it is posing the wrong question.
I would agree that "science" is not "government" - but that is such an obvious statement that it doesn't take one anywhere.
It might be worthwhile exploring why scientists feel disenfranchised from some government decisions; equally it might be useful to explore why governments may choose to override the concerns of some scientists. While government does need to take decisions based on science, that does not necessarily mean that the fault lies entirely with government when this goes awry. Moreover, science is just one of a host of valid inputs to decisions and the extent to which it should influence a final decision may quite rightly vary.
I also would suggest that this relationship between government and scientists (and society) really varies with location. In Sweden, for example, these relationships are much more consensual and have a higher level of trust than would appear to be the case in the UK.
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#47 poitsplace
fair enough. here's my attempt at sarcasm (or is it?) :o)
we have a free market capitalist system that assumes infinite resources, very, very cheap energy (oil/coal) and economic activity that can grow exponentially ad-infinitum. this has created a planet that is warming (we can of course disagree on the specifics), has massive pollution problems in the atmosphere in the oceans and on the land, has instigated a mass extinction, is running out of cheap energy fast etc etc. it has also created huge inequalities that have contributed to wars and terrorism. oh, and a small matter of the largest global recession we've ever experienced and is on track for another one around about 2018 I reckon.
apologies for not being cock-a-hoop with this situation but i'm of the opnion the we could, as a team, do a little better. maybe some totems will have to go but in the long run i think it'll be for the best (and sometime medicine doesn;t taste so great.....i remember cod-liver oil as a kid!).
i consider myself a pretty well-intentioned middle of the road environmentalist that has endured 30 years of a political/economic system that has failed utterly and miserably (for the environment and 99% of the human population) and what is most annoying is that it was completely predictable - well i was ranting like this back in the 80s, and that's a long time to be ranting :o(
so whether agw is here or not (and it's here) we're going to have to find something better. when i express these views, i'm accused of being a green nutter. what a strange world.
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NASA's 'Operation Ice Bridge'; Pine Island Glacier; Antarctic Spring 2009
While we wait for Copenhagen, scientific exploration continues.
It is Fall here, but not in Antarctica, and a specially equipped DC8 is flying low over the critical Pine Island Glacier gathering information.
I wonder if this up to the minute information has any impact on the delegates going to Copenhagen - if it informs them in any real sense?
There are some nice photos in the link posted below, and a number of youtube videos available:
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/icebridge.blog/posts/post_1256828160739.html
- Manysummits -
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@rossglory
I disagree with just about everything you said there. It is the times behind us (in the industrial nations) that are higher in pollution. As the standard of living and industrial base of a country increase it becomes an almost trivial matter to require better waste treatment. Its the lower industrial levels that are dangerous...not advanced/rich enough to properly deal with waste but with an output sufficient to make that waste faster than the environment can deal with it. Yes, yes...you guys LOVE to talk about how terrible the pollution but the UK, US and many other industrialized nations used to have air quality and pollution similar to china's. The difference is that we mostly grew out of it as a culture.
Infinite growth...ah, I remember when I was young and naive thinking those business types were crazy. But they never said infinite growth. They've never even hinted at it...they just never mentioned stopping. I don't mention that I'm going to stop when I get to the end of a dead-end road...I figure anyone with sense would just know that's my plan. But...we're waaaaaaaay away from the end of the road.
The world is full of people living without the benefit of running water, sewers, stable food production...SURELY we need to at the very least continue growth until THEY are in similar circumstances. After all, if you're trying to level off a population the most effective birth control ever appears to be industrialization with a dash of TV and internet. To get us through to this transition we've got PLENTY of fuel. As I've said numerous times, there's enough thorium fuel to last 8 billion people for 100-200 years at US per capita consumption rates of 40kw/hr per day.
Of course one thing you really fail to understand is that free markets haven't technically failed the world's poorest people. Free markets simply do not function under the unstable conditions of those countries. In fact, any country still dominated largely by tribal leaders is barely even considered a civilization at all. (seriously...look up civilization)
Your assertion that there's "something better" or that we as a team could do something better...its problematic. What you're saying is pretty much a failed ideology. Sorry but seriously it failed. It failed MISERABLY. It didn't JUST fail to fix poverty (actually seemed to amplify it)...it depressed the local economy and caused some of that pollution you seem so keen on stopping. (to be fair, I'm VERY MUCH against actual pollution, nothing wrong with hating pollution :)
I sometimes (rarely these days) point out that the only way out...is through. There is a technological level just beyond us which actually holds some potential to fix these issues and makes what you're talking about workable...but that's a post-singularity socioeconomic system. We're not there yet.
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manysummits #53.
hi, here's more on glaciers (following an item on TV last night), this time Asia instead of North America:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/04/byers-himalaya-changing-landscapes
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6352933&mesg_id=6353003
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/05/himalayas.glacier.conflict/index.html
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@selti1 #32 #33
(@rossglory #40)
1. Uncredited Orssengo article (again)
You really need to quote your sources
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/co2_driven_global_warming_is_n.html
2. Misleading graph labels
"Global Warming Before 1910"
should be
"Moberg et al 2005, 2000 year Northern Hemisphere Temperature Reconstruction (to 1980"
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
"Global cooling since 1998"
should be
"Detrended Hadley CRU temperatures since 1850"
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress%3A12/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.52/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.52/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.91/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.19
3. Unhelpful choice of second graph
Using a detrended graph is extremely misleading, and unnecessary for your argument.
A much better graph would be
Hadley CRU temperatures since 1997
(unless you really insist on taking advantage of the 2007-2008 La Nina and the incomplete 2009 year data)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1980/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1980/trend
@selti1 #45
(@rossglory #40)
Your quote from the Keenlyside et al paper is incomplete. This is extremely misleading.
"Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade"
should say
"Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
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@selti1 #32 #33
(@rossglory #40)
(Reposting my point 2 (from #56), as problem URL (pdf) took neighbouring good URL with it)
2. Misleading graph labels
"Global Warming Before 1910"
should be
"Moberg et al 2005, 2000 year Northern Hemisphere Temperature Reconstruction (to 1980"
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Moberg2005.html
"Global cooling since 1998"
should be
"Detrended Hadley CRU temperatures since 1850"
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress%3A12/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.52/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.52/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.91/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend%3A0.706/offset%3A0.19
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@jr4412
I don't suppose it's occurred to you that if the glaciers are melting fast and supplying 70% of the summer water that India is already well past sustainable levels and that their only hope is to develop enough to have a substantial system of reservoirs (not unlike other developed nations) before that time is up.
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@Forumdude2 #20
(@Richard Black)
Perhaps Forumdude2 has only been looking at Monbiot.com, and not his work in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/georgemonbiot )
"As the UK has higher emissions than most nations, it has to cut carbon by more than the global average. If we really want to avoid more than 2C of warming, we need to start with a 10% cut next year, as the 10:10 campaign demands."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/oct/12/climate-change-policy-committee
"Nor do I have a problem, unlike some Guardian colleagues, with the notion of shoring up the carbon price, to allow this or any other low-carbon technology to become viable."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/oct/19/monbiot-nuclear-waste-economy
"As two papers published last year in Science show (here and here), the carbon released by ploughing idle farmland to grow biofuels takes many years to repay."
"When you consider the other greenhouse gases produced by growing crops it looks even dafter. The Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has estimated that emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas arising from the use of nitrogen fertilisers – wipe out all the carbon savings biofuels produce (pdf), even before you take the changes in land use into account. It's significant that Andrew Mercer talks only about CO2."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/oct/29/oil-climate-change
Also since Forumdude2 made his comment about Monbiot, Monbiot has also produced the following
"It certainly doesn't reflect the state of the science, which has hardened dramatically over the past two years. If you don't believe me, open any recent edition of Science or Nature or any peer-reviewed journal specialising in atmospheric or environmental science. Go on, try it. The debate about global warming that's raging on the internet and in the rightwing press does not reflect any such debate in the scientific journals."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/02/climate-change-denial-clive-james
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poitsplace #58.
"I don't suppose it's occurred to you.."
you're right, frankly, what has occured to me is that in the near future we'll have well-heeled reporters and their camera crews from Reuters, BBC et al showing us pictures of persishing Indians, supplemented by soothing commentary in sonorous voices.
plus ça change...
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There was a very odd sentence extracted from a letter to the American Physical Society and quoted above, with a comment:
"'You can do physics without climatology, but you can’t do climatology without physics.' I fully agree with that statement and note that a lot of the so-called climate scientists are not physicists but are dendroclimatologists, mathematicians, computer scientists etc."
Most climate researchers aren't physicists, for sure. But then most aren't dendrochronologists, or atmospheric chemists, or palaeogeologists, or ecologists, etc. Just as an ecologist may not be able to tell you about IR absorption spectra or why oxygen isotopic ratios provide a good proxy for temperature, the physicist may not be able to explain interspecies interactions in Amazonian rainforest, or farmland in the British Isles, and use that to predict the likely consequences of shifts in climate. The physicist may or may not know how to code a workable climate model incorporating those absorption spectra, or how one actually extracts good-quality oxygen samples from ice cores. And all of them will need a friendly statistician from time to time to validate their analyses.
Conversely, many researchers start out in one field and gradually their expertise leads them into another. If you're an expert in isotope physics whose interest in dating methods gets you involved in analysing plant remains or associated artefacts on archaeological sites to map changes in staple food crops, and reconstruct a timeline of local climatic conditions, are you a physicist? An archaeologist? A climatologist?
In summary: whatever field you're in, you soon find that you don't (and can't) know everything, but that someone else can help. And sometimes you find your skills of use in an area you would never have imagined and end up doing something completely different from your original plan.
This criticism that "most climatologists aren't physicists" misses the point, and displays a tendency I have observed mainly in physicists and engineers (though, I hasten to add, only a small minority of them) to assume that their subject is the be-all and end-all of scientific knowledge. If we want to play "Which is the most important and fundamental academic discipline?" I suggest we all bow down to the mathematicians - as long as they leave the real world to the rest of us! ;-)
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PAWB46 at #41
A propos your comment about a letter signed by 160 members of the APS, it is worth noting that the APS web-site mentions that it has some 46,000 members.
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OK, having been forced to cite the Orssengo article to tidy up selti1's posts, I now have to respond to Orssengo (again).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/co2_driven_global_warming_is_n.html
Orssengo's claim that the trend is not due to carbon dioxide is flawed. He basically looks at the trend between 1850 and 2008 (after), and compares this to the trend between 1810 and 1910 (before). His version of "before" has a faster increase than his version of "after", so he says that carbon dioxide can't be doing it.
There are two problems with this. Firstly a comparatively trivial one. He treats the 1850-2008 trend as a straight line. But the trend appears to be a curve, shallower in the earlier years, steeper in the later years. This is why the detrended graph shows a low 1940s peak, intermediate 1910s and 1970s troughs and high 1870s and 2000s peaks. This has the effect of downplaying late 20th Century rises by averaging them with the 19th Century. It would take a qualified academic statistician to say whether it is fair for him to do this. But for a back of a cigarette packet calculation this is probably not much of a big deal.
What is much more of a big deal is his source for the 1810 to 1910 "before" data, and his choice of 1910 as a cut-off date for the "before" data.
Firstly the Morberg figures ("before") are Northern Hemisphere only, and they are not averaged evenly for the Northern Hemisphere.
There is a huge difference between the trends for the Moberg temperature reconstruction and the Hadley CRU temperature measurements. Both cover the years 1850 to 1910. The Moberg reconstruction shows a post Little Ice Age bounce between 1850 and 1910, in line with Western European observations. But the Hadley measurements show overall cooling between 1850 and 1910, a small rise then a big drop.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to%3A1910/compress%3A12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to%3A1910/trend
This doesn't just apply to the Hadley CRU global data; it also applies to the Hadley CRU Northern Hemisphere data. The Hadley CRU Northern Hemisphere also shows overall cooling between 1850 and 1910.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vnh/to%3A1910/compress%3A12/plot/hadcrut3vnh/to%3A1910/trend
So Orssengo is comparing apples and oranges.
And that brings me to my second point. 1910 is an extremely unfortunate choice of cut-off date for the "before" data. It maximises the amount of overlap where the Northern Hemisphere "before" trend is in the opposite direction to the Global "after" trend.
Orssengo could have avoided the overlap problem by using 1850 as his cut-off and going further back in time for his starting point. But he didn't. I wonder why. Perhaps more of the Moberg graph might answer that question.
(warning, the following graph stops short of the final decades of the 20th Century)
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Moberg2005.html
Orssengo's mistakes are more subtle than selti1's. But they would still have been avoided by the likes of Stephen McIntyre. His article does not contribute to competent critiques of global warming theory.
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Really I don't care if the so called skeptics (although when did skepticism stop being a rather desirable attitude for a scientist?) scientific case does not bear scrutiny. They are not asking for billions of dollars of taxpayers money to 'fix' the climate in the most inefficient way imaginable. The AGW believers are, and where is the real science?
The only 'proof' for AGW is as a forcing within the computer models. Since when did averaging a hundred different computer model outputs become accepted scientific policy? The output of the computer models is a joke, constantly predicing linear warming from a chaotic system based on CO2. The greenhouse effect is logarithmic, so these models must effectively have exponential positive feedback. That needs some explainging in a system that has been stable for billenia and entered an ice age with 12 times the current level of co2.
The recent cooling is claimed by the modellers to be caused by the El-nino which they had not predicted. Which means the previous warming was presumably allocated to CO2 'positive feedbacks'. This must have since been removed. How come the linear future predictions have not now got a lower slope, and the day of reckoning been postponed? The modeller in the FT suggested this meant the warming would be much stronger when the cooling period was over - with no explanation. The exact opposite of what you would expect.
Computer models would have to be very accurate to be making worthwhile predictions over this time frame. The models are clearly not up to this when a hundred different models produce vastly different predictions over a short time frame, all pointing in the wrong direction.
Greenland was green in viking times, and yet we still have supposedly serious scientific reporters reporting on receding ice in greenland as though this is out of the ordinary in climatic timescales. The polar bear is the poster child, but there are way more polar bears than there were 40 years ago. Monitoring of Earth's ice caps has only really been possible with satellite, but mars has been monitored for centuries. The fact that the mars ice caps were at a minimum at roughly the same time as earth's requires some explaining.
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#56 JaneBasingstoke
many thank's for that info, interesting stuff.
after quite some time trying to battle the pseudoscientific rubbish from the denialosphere i just gave up. even worse, i got the impression that trying to point out where they were wrong tended to give the impression of a real debate (since all they did was come back with more pseudo science).
from reading the monbiot article you linked, it seems extremely worrying that the denial tactics are working. similarly, i have no idea how to combat it.
it reminds me a bit of a non-newtonian fluid: the harder you push the more it resists.
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@larrylarry #64
Firstly "skeptics"/"sceptics" is the preferred title of those who dispute global warming theory. And using it out of respect does have the unfortunate side effect of getting little barbs like yours about the importance of scepticism in science.
Secondly there are three things that I personally think worth defending. Honesty within science. The environment. And the economy. (There are those on both sides of the debate that don't get the importance and interdependence of these three things.)
You say "[sceptics] are not asking for billions of dollars of taxpayers money to 'fix' the climate in the most inefficient way imaginable". Well "AGW believers" are not asking to significantly change the proportions of atmospheric greenhouse gases and the alkalinity of the oceans away from values that appear to be safe. Both damaging the economy and damaging the environment have the potential to cause problems.
Also most "AGW believers" would welcome advice from the world's best economists and scientists to ensure that any fix is the most efficient way feasible. If you have some constructive alternatives to those being discussed at Copenhagen then I think people on both sides of the debate would like to hear them.
PS. Greenland was green in Viking times? You do know how old the Greenland ice sheet is, don't you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Hi bloggers !
What do people here want from Copenhagen ? What would a good deal look like ?
(This is not a trick question)
For me: the 20,000 delegates vote to wait and see for 2 years. Then they walk home to save on c-c-carbon.
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Hey where is the seasonal forecast from the Met Office ?
Don't they normally predict a barbecue winter or similar in September / October ?
After getting these wrong 5 times in a row have they given up ?
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Assuming AGW exists (which the global leaders are) shall we get back to discussing the blog. I am sure there are other forums for discussing whether AGW exists. I am pretty bored of the circles being run blog after blog. If anybody has any original thought of their own to add fair play, but if not I can use Google. That said, by all means have your debate... who am I to stop you! ;o) To everyone else I ask what do you think of the EU's position?
I think the EU has to lead on this, especially given the huge carbon footprint it has left on the last century or so. Tentative commitments and commitments based on everybody else agreeing to join in are simply not good enough. Politicians haven't got time to wonder what big industry might think or whether they may loose a few votes (they will surely gain votes anyway if they act!)... The EU must not just make commitments to cut CO2 emissions. It must do that and then some! It must introduce immediate and pro-active legislation. It is already too late for action... the world is changing. The EU needs to set an example in minimising that change NOW!
That's my view... what do my fellow believers think?
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Eddhind #70
As AGW does not exist, it is a waste to spend world's limited resources and destroy peoples life (like Tiffany's family in Not Evil But Wrong) to solve a non existent problem. You solve problems that exist, not imaginary ones. The world has started its cooling phase.
The globe has been warming at a rate of about 0.44 deg C/Century for TWO centuries.
Linear Global Warming
Superimposed to this linear warming is decadal oscillation of mean global temperature that varies from a valley to peak by about 0.7 deg C resulting in global warming; and from peak to valley by the same amount resulting in global cooling. Climate change that results from this warming or cooling is NATURAL.
Decadal Oscillation of Mean Global Temperature
The above chart shows decadal oscillation of global temperatures, and shows global cooling until about 2031, for 22 more years.
The globe cyclically warms by about 0.7 deg C and cools by the same amount. We started the cooling phase in 1998. The globe had a linear warming of about 0.5 deg C in the last century and the century before the last one. This linear warming is natural.
In a cooling globe, based on data from the Hadley Centre, why all this hysteria?
Science is never about consensus or authority. It is all about the data. The data does not support the hysteria.
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Eddhind #70: ("what do my fellow believers think?")
I think we need to move to a wartime-like footing in combating the myriad enviromental assaults which we are suffering as we speak.
The real concern is not how bad it is already, but can we mobilize in time.
- Manysummits -
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Agh! Typos!
@selti1 #32 #33
(@rossglory #40)
(@ myself #56)
(Reposting my point 3 (from #56), as it used my trial version (from 1980) instead of my final version (from 1997) of graph, making MY title wrong and misleading)
3. Unhelpful choice of second graph
Using a detrended graph is extremely misleading, and unnecessary for your argument.
A much better graph would be
Hadley CRU temperatures since 1997
(unless you really insist on taking advantage of the 2007-2008 La Nina and the incomplete 2009 year data)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1997/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1997/trend
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JaneBasingstoke #73
You wrote, “Using a detrended graph is extremely misleading, and unnecessary for your argument.”
Let us look closer at this statement.
What trend have I removed?
Yes only +0.04 deg C/ decade. This is INSIGNIFICANT when making DECADAL mean global temperature predictions. As a result, here is the trend in mean global temperature for the short term.
Decadal Prediction of Mean Global Temperature
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The detrended graph isn't misleading at all. There is in fact an increase in the rate of warming about when you'd expect it and it shows up...as about .2C of additional warming. What _IS_ misleading is all of these graphs that show warming since the 70s or 50s.
Also misleading is any graph squashing temperatures down and inserting an exponential curve to 4C or higher...when atmospheric CO2 levels are only increasing linearly and CO2's forcing is logarithmic. In other words, if the (small) temperature increases are caused by CO2 the rate of warming should actually be decreasing. This of course ignores the previously mentioned, underlying warming trend.
I won't even bother to beat this dead horse here with Lindzen's findings that the models have earth's radiation balance backward.
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70. At 11:06pm on 03 Nov 2009, eddhind wrote:
"I am pretty bored of the circles being run blog after blog"
Me too EDD, as for me I'm off to do something useful like help Mum with the washing-up then go out and mow the lawn. Meet you down the pub in a couple of hours.
As I said earlier, I'm definitely "warming" to the pro-AGW team even when I'm still not convinced (either way) of the diagnosis.
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Mean global temperature anomaly for 1998 was 0.53 deg C.
Last year, the anomaly was 0.34 deg C.
Mean Global Temperature Anomaly Data
Why do politicians talk about limiting global temperature anomaly to 2 deg C when it was only 0.34 deg C last year?
Just unbelievable!
The probability of getting a temperature like the value for 1998 is less than 1%.
The more probable case is cooling until 2031.
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here's something for the copenhagen conference to chew on:
It has been thought that an increase in carbon dioxide will lead to global warming. While carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing over the past 100 years, there is no evidence that it is causing an increase in global temperatures.
The behavior of the atmosphere is extremely complex. Therefore, discovering the validity of global warming is complex as well. How much effect will the increase in carbon dioxide will have is unclear or even if we recognize the effects of any increase.
From the NOAA educational page, rapidly removed yesterday after being discovered by a sceptic:
Original page was here:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Wayback page here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060129154229/http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/jetstream/atmos/ll_gas.htm
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oops, i gave the link to the experiment - the full story is over at http://deepclimate.org/2009/11/02/contrarian-education-noa/
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Had been wondering when Mango would appear on this blog.
Why don't we try something different. Let's see if there are areas that we can all actually agree on!
Yeh! So I believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden too. But , on the other hand, there must be a lot that we can agree on.
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@selti
Sorry... absolutely no offence, but I have no interest in discussing your paste. I am more interested in how Copenhagen will unfold.
@manymoutainpeaks
I am starting to think what sort of direct action I can perform to make sure Copenhagen achieves something tangible. I fear I may have left it too late (as I certainly won't be in Copenhagen). If God is looking down maybe he can provide a sweltering hot day in Copehagen in December... That'll fox them. As a British national I think we should be sending a message to all politicians (not just the ruling Labour Party) that we will not tolerate weak policy on the climate, that they must lead. If we set an example in the EU, then I hope the EU will follow... and who knows the world... what message can we send? I would think petitions have been done to death...
Also I agree. It is not just about climate change... it is about the many environmental challenges that we have created. We must act on issues such as water quality, over-fishing, excessive packaging... etc. We need legislation and we need it now. Perhaps our direct action should be picking out many smaller steps which would be easier to legislate? e.g. Legislation against stand-by mode on TVs, etc. That might sound small. But lots of small steps taken quickly could make a big difference! The light-bulb legislation is very welcome, but it has been far to slow coming. Politicians need to find a way to fast track this essential legislation.
@SuperGrumpyMike
I think the way these debates bore people into submission may even be the problem. People get frustrated that nothing happens in government or policy (either way) and they become apathetic that they have the power to change things. Thus they stop caring. There is plenty of research that proves this at a local level. If people don't know who to mobilise against then it is much easier to give up. If nobody is listening... why shout? It is much easier for anti-capitalists as they have obvious targets... on climate change there are less obvious targets. Partially because some of the biggest polluters are the general public maybe?
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Mango, your last posting has left me a bit puzzled.
I followed the link you gave in #79 and read the article there which suggests that someone inserted misleading passages on the NOAA site.
I'm puzled why you think that should be 'food for thought' for Copenhagen.
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I see that the courts have now ruled that enviropanic is a RELIGION.
I've been saying that for years.
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Jane Basingstoke:
From wikipedia on greenland (although wikipedia is a poor source for this kind of stuff. Global warming used to have a balanced piece until the moderator was replaced with a strong AGW believer - you aren't staking your reputation writing for Wikipedia, so sensitive subjects are not always balanced)
From 986 AD, Greenland's west coast was colonised by Icelanders and Norwegians in two settlements on fjords near the southwestern-most tip of the island.[6] They shared the island with the late Dorset culture inhabitants who occupied the northern and eastern parts, and later with the Thule culture arriving from the north. The settlements, such as Brattahlið, thrived for centuries but disappeared some time in the 15th century, perhaps at the onset of the Little Ice Age.[7] Interpretation of ice core data suggests that between 800 and 1300 AD the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a mild climate, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years - which makes it possible to say that areas of Greenland may have been much warmer during the medieval period than they are now and that the ice sheet contracted significantly.[8]
As I understand it there are settlements still under ice. And your response to mars, and the earth entering an ice age with 12 times the current level of CO2? These points don't come from computer models. It is very strange for scientists to be claiming a strong case for AGW based on the forcing within a computer model, which can't even predict the direction of temperature change. For reporters to be identifying a tiny proportion of the earth's surface moving in their direction as proof of AGW, or identifying predictions of individual models hardly convinces.
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eddhind #81.
in your reply to manysummits you say: "We need legislation and we need it now. Perhaps our direct action should be picking out many smaller steps which would be easier to legislate?"
this troubles me for two reasons; first, legislation which is perceived as 'wrong' by the people is simply ignored (like, say, cannabis and other drugs), second, you cannot legislate against selfishness even where the legislation is supported, for example driving and mobile phone use. I think that peer pressure is a better way of achieving a change of culture/habits.
btw, "If God is looking down.." curious argument for a "..deeply non-relegious.." person. :-)
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@jr4412
re: If God is looking down - I am a curious person who reserves the right to use throw away religious terminology that has become common to society (non-religious or religious).
You can legislate against driving. Is it Singapore where you can only drive your car on two days of the week? I think it is.
You can legislate against mobile phone use. You can ban it in cars (as the have) and you can sit in quiet coaches on the train. If you can ban smoking you can ban mobile phone use. Those bans are often rooted in peer pressure anyway (as smoking had become).
I like your drug analogy, but I think each supply of what we legislate against may be different. Maybe we could employ electricity caps... if you exceed these then you could simply be cut off! How would people ignore that legislation... would dealers set up illegal power stations and provide electricity that way? Might make quite a cool film if it doesn't become reality.
I think you can legislate and it would be nice if the legislation was easily accepted. I believe the majority would back the legislation. Would you have to become Draconian about legislation if you had a minority who chose to ignore the legislation? Maybe...
The reason the government doesn't legalise cannabis is that most people are against it and lets face it it may not be that harmful, but it isn't harmless. I don't want to live in a nanny state, but i want us to do all we can to save nature. If we need to be a nanny state for 50 years to achieve that then I would hate the impact it had on my life, but it is a small price to pay for the future benefit of the planet and humanity. It doesn't have to be a nanny state though. We can make the necessary changes. It is not that hard... it just takes small sacrifices and some more effort. It just depends how selfish and how lazy we are to whether we make it! I think we will be ok but I have my fingers crossed!
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Cap and trade does not work. Look at what is happening to the aluminium industry. High energy industry becomes no longer viable in the west, and shifts to countries either with plenty of credits or who don't subscribe. The end result is the uk appears to reduce it's energy consumption but imports high energy goods from abroad. The west has higher energy efficiency in its industry, and so the end result is more emissions. As soon as it becomes international co-operation special interst groups get involved and the end result does not function as required. Perfect for politicians as they appear to be doing something. A lot of the politicians at copenhagen will be in it for what they can get for their country, not in some misguided attempt to save the planet. Everybody will put off cleaning up industry until they get special credits. A recent filter in China cost 50million dollars to implement. By the time it was sold to energy producers in Europe as carbon credits it cost them 4billion dollars with the difference going to beaurocrats in china and the UN. How exactly is that a good use of the world's resources? They would probably have had to install the filters anyhow to reduce the smog.
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@eddhind
The nanny state thing is and always has been a bad idea. The hypothesis of substantial AGW is a bad one and has no real evidence supporting it (not more than about 1C total, anyway). The whole redistribution of wealth thing sounds great but has historically been pretty much a one-way ticket to mutual poverty. Many of the concepts you're pushing work great in magical kingdoms from fairy tales...in the real world they pretty much have a 100% failure rate.
If you want to talk about PRACTICAL solutions to energy...I'm game. If you want to talk about dealing with overfishing...great idea. Habitat loss...anything reasonable. You're not talking about practical things though...you're talking about enforcing an entirely artificial and needlessly complex system on the entire world. Its doomed to failure.
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To jr4412 & eddhind:
Lester Brown indicates that major change has already occurred where people have simply taken the initiative, as in the US, where there is a defacto moratorium on new coal-fired plants.
This goes along with the value of the peer-pressure argument.
At some point a threshold will be reached, and people will unilaterally act, and governments will follow.
Right now the situation reminds me of the UK pre 1939, and Chamberlain negotiating with Hitler. Agonizing to those who saw reality, but too few to carry the day.
I and my family have already made significant lifestyle changes - I could write a book! But books have already been written, and not that many people read, and there is no need to convince the already convinced.
The blogosphere offers a wide audience, and may have unknown effects.
Here, to complete my 'glacial summary', is something on the Arctic Sea Ice Cover. Thanks to 'jr', the Himalayan mountain-melt, and by extension, all mountain areas, have been covered (post #55), I posted in #53 from the Antarctic, so here is the Arctic and a summary of links:
\\\ The Three Poles of Melting ///
"Arctic Sea Ice"
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ (note especially the graph a little ways down - the trendline 1979 to present)
"Himalayan Melt" (with direct food and water impact on roughly half of humanity)
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/05/himalayas.glacier.conflict/index.html (see 'jr4412' #55 for two more links)
"The West-Antarctic Pine Island Glacier"
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/icebridge.blog/posts/post_1256828160739.html
- Manysummits -
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88. At 11:45am on 04 Nov 2009, poitsplace wrote:
If you want to talk about PRACTICAL solutions to energy...I'm game. ...You're not talking about practical things though...you're talking about enforcing an entirely artificial and needlessly complex system on the entire world. Its doomed to failure.
============
Absolutely - that's pretty much where I stand.
Global reliance on the old fossil fuels like oil to meet increasing demand is clearly not going to work long term. We need to make a planned and orderly move to non-fossil energy sources.
But all this charge a penny for a plastic bag 'environment' stuff is ludicrous.
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poitsplace #88.
"The nanny state thing is and always has been a bad idea."
hear, hear.
re. your second paragraph, where do you stand on air travel, aircraft vs airships, etc. should we all be able fly to exotic destinations to our hearts content?
manysummits #89.
"I and my family have already made significant lifestyle changes.."
and that's the point (IMO), one has to lead by example. which is why governments -- and so many individuals on this blog and others -- struggle.
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@jon112uk
I agree... charging a penny for a plastic bag is ludicrous! We should introduce a tax where we charge 15 pence per bag. In Ireland there is a 15c plastic bag tax and resultantly bag use has dropped 90%. Not only does this mean that marine and terrestrial organisms are spared a premature death by plastic, it also means that less energy is used in producing bags. I highly siccessful tax, which has a high acceptenace rate by the public, that has worked in resolving an environmental issue. The UK could copy the Irish legislation and have this tax implemented in a couple of months. Do it now please politicians! :o)
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@simon-swede #82
There is no evidence to suggest a disgruntled employee or a hacker changed the web page in 2003 and it wasn't discovered until this week, that I am aware of. What would be the point in waiting so long?
If this is the case then I am certainly not condoning the action. Quite the opposite - sceptics don't need to resort to this type of skullduggery to show CO2 cannot be responsible.
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92. At 12:44pm on 04 Nov 2009, eddhind wrote:
@jon112uk
I agree... charging a penny for a plastic bag is ludicrous! We should introduce a tax where we charge 15 pence per bag. In Ireland there is a 15c plastic bag tax and resultantly bag use has dropped 90%.
=================
That's just the sort of nonsense I was refering to.
What we will do for energy in 20-30 years time as demand grows and supply falters is a serious issue.
But people are wasting time on irrelevant nonsense like that.
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i recycle my shopping bags as bin liners, because buying bin liners just wastes energy in producing the bin liners and my money in paying for them
~ puts red rag down and runs ~
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oops, should have posted here:
That web page is still up at NOAA:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/yos/resource/JetStream/atmos/ll_gas.htm
Must have been one very disgruntled employee (ex probably by now)
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#93, It's the link you give at #79 that makes that claim, not me. I'm simply puzzled... :-)
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@mango
That's fine... as long as plastic usage is down overall and it is desposed of responsibly (and as long as we start using that snazzy biodegradable plastic in our bin bags and non-reusable carrier bags).
@jon112uk
Au contrair Jon! We need the big changes such as a move to renewables (with a probably nuclear interim) and we need the "irrelevant nonsense". How much time would it really take to copy an Irish law into an English format and then pass it? Not much for the saving we would be making I would guess! Nothing is irrelevant if it helps the environment.
Oh and regarding energy failing as demand grows... well we are just going to have to reduce demand aren't we! Cue lots of energy saving measures like energy saving lightbulbs, motion-sensor lightswitches, better insulation, more energy efficient appliances, electricity quotas for major industry... all deliverable through legislation :o)
p.s. Not sure about the electricity quota idea. Is there a debate on electricty quotas or is that something I made up?
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95. At 1:19pm on 04 Nov 2009, MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
i recycle my shopping bags as bin liners, because buying bin liners just wastes energy in producing the bin liners and my money in paying for them
====================
Same here. Great majority of the evil shopping bags are clearly labelled as biodegradable. The acolytes of the eco-religion are a few years behind the technology (as usual).
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@eddhind #92
That's the kind of inflexible and unrealistic attitude that will make you lose the masses...and pretty much everyone else. If I had to pick between this kind of environmental policy and the status quo...I'd take the status quo every time and have you dropped off in the middle of the pacific on that trash island.
Of course a much better option would be to go with realistic and effective policies that have a low economic/social impact but a substantial gain. Maybe you should go for those first since they'll get you the majority of the way to your goal quickly.
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@poitsplace
The bag policy didn't lose anybody in Ireland. The plastic bag tax is fully accepted. I have never heard anybody complain about it. It seems a lot can be learnt from the Irish on this.
@jon
I am very glad the bags are biodegradable - it as in improvement, but it still takes them a long time to biodegrade. I don't want people simply chucking them around as they do currently killing seabirds, etc.
Can I just say as well that I agree that the plastic thing is minor, but at the same time it is easy to achieve so why not do it. At the same time we need to do so much more. Fortunately nothing is stopping us doing more. All we have to do is try!
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Does anybody know to what extent carbon trading schemes will be discussed in Copenhagen?
My worry is that once the system becomes trully global it will be very like the partial failure of the individual transferrable quotas (ITQs) in fisheries, where the quota becomes concentrated with the few rich nations and other nations are left without industry (crucial to their economy) as a result. I know the market needs liquidity if it is to work.. and thus it needs these players from all over the globe... but the potential for a few players to control the market (as a few major fisheries companies have with Iclandic ITQs) scares me. Any thoughts? Anybody on this blog currently in the carbon trading game?
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101. At 3:02pm on 04 Nov 2009, eddhind wrote:
@jon
I am very glad the bags are biodegradable - it as in improvement, but it still takes them a long time to biodegrade. I don't want people simply chucking them around as they do currently killing seabirds, etc.
===================
The shopping bag issue is a wonderful example of why people need to start questioning the new eco-religion.
We face serious problems in the near future. Exponential global population growth and economic development in countries like China are creating increases in demand for energy. The old stalwart (oil) is reaching the end of it's era. Unless some serious action is taken to find alternative sources of energy, economic collapse is a real possibility in over populated countries like england.
Serious alternatives (nuclear, hydrogen, tidal, bio-fuel) are out there.
But the best the envirozealots can come up with is nonsense like taxing a plastic bag.
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@selti1 #74
(@poitsplace #75)
Your argument about decadal variations is part of a larger argument over whether global warming exists. Displaying a detrended graph without making it clear that it is detrended makes it look like zero warming since 1850. This is extremely misleading to someone who has not noticed it has been detrended.
Orssengo avoided this issue by displaying both and discussing both separately.
@selti1 #77
Firstly 1998 was an el Nino (warm) and 2008 was a la Nina (cool). This naturally gives them temperatures that are significantly some distance apart regardless of any trend.
Secondly Hadley CRU data uses a baseline of the average between 1960 and 1990. So that's 0.34 degrees C since the baseline date, somewhere in the 1970s
http://www.woodfortrees.org/notes#baselines
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1961/to%3A1990/compress%3A12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1951/to%3A2000/mean%3A240
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@jon
The plastic bag example is an excellent example of how people are coordinating a response to an environmental problem. Smaller successes like this give us great hope for tackling the bigger issues such as implementing 100% renewable energy.
I wonder if anybody is or will trial a scheme in which those investing in renewables now get rewarded down the line. Currently electricity providers offer green electricity supply, but a premium cost. This premium cost is understandable in the short term as the infrastructure has to be put in place. Perhaps electricity companies should be offering those that switch to these plans the guarantee of cheaper electricity then those who haven't switched after a period of 5 years. Say perhaps a discount of 1/3rd to a 1/2 on the non-renewable rate? That could be the sort of incentive to get people to switch as it would make environmental and economic sense.
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@larrylarry
1. Greenland.
You needed to be clearer about your original Greenland comment. Take a look at your fellow sceptics on this thread. Some really know their science. Some really don't. Some of the latter could take "Greenland was green" to mean "green all over". Perhaps we can agree that Greenland's ice cap was substantially the same when the Vikings were there.
As to civilisation around the coastline, that is a more detailed issue, and requires a level of specialist knowledge that I don't have. I understand that Greenland is part of the region affected by the Mediaeval Warm Period, but that the Viking colony still had a hard time of it.
Now we could both spend time and effort trawling the internet for links to peer reviewed papers to prove our respective cases, or we could both say OK, another of those persistent disagreements between sceptics and believers that really ought to be resolved in the peer reviewed publications.
2. Mars
Not aware of any sufficiently long term temperature records for Mars for that comparison to be made. And not aware of anyone using telescope imagery of Martian polar caps as temperature proxies to fix that deficit.
3. Ice age despite high CO2
Right, you do understand the scientific pro-AGW arguments, don't you? They don't dismiss Milankovitch cycles or other natural influences out of hand. Similarly you won't find anyone arguing that days are warmer than nights due to CO2, or that el Niños are warmer than la Niñas due to CO2. Instead they argue that very recent warming is mainly caused by significant changes in proportions of greenhouse gases.
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but without evidence Jane
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Everybody talking about CO2 and Global warming! IPCC and UN bodies flying to Bali, with 3000 delegets on private jets! How much CO2 they are emitting? Al Gore flying to different conferences in different countries to lecture about the Climate change? What is his CO2 foot print, I guess he knows how to calculate. Why we are having so much of conferences in different countries flying all those so called expert to conference venues on Private jets. Jets are the highest emitter of CO2. Why don't they do vedeo conferences by using modern internet video technologies?
One can you tube and search "Man made hox of global warming"
A big business, right?
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@MangoChutneyUKOK
Plenty of evidence. Multiple interpretations.
Debunking the more scientific arguments of either side of the debate is non-trivial and should not be belittled. Look at the time and effort and expertise involved in McIntyre's work on Hockey Sticks, or Wegman's work on Hockey Sticks. And Hockey Sticks appear to be perceived as the weakest science in the pro-AGW camp.
larrylarry seemed to be under the impression that pro-AGW arguments ignored other influences on climate. Well that is wrong.
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wow! apparently Al Gore has stated CO2 did not cause the majority of the warming up to 2001!
http://www.prisonplanet.com/al-gore-admits-co2-does-not-cause-majority-of-global-warming.html
"Before we get too excited, Gore is not backing away from his support for the theory of man-made climate change, but his concession that carbon dioxide only accounted for 40% of warming according to new studies could seriously harm efforts to tax CO2, that evil, life-giving gas that humans exhale and plants absorb."
Was it manysummits who said he would not waiver in his support of the AGW nonsense until Al Gore, Hansen and the IPCC said it was wrong? A little sceptical now perhaps, manysummits?
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#83 jon112uk
was sure this would come up so thought of a response at breakfast, so glad i can use it :o)
you misrepresent the legal profession in the same way you misrepresent science. the 'religious' aspect is expecting ethical behaviour. the decision in court was whether the law good be used for expectations based on scientific fact (yep, that's fact) rather than just religious or philosophically based views. and they decided yes!! isn't that good news eh!
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Jane
I am a computer engineer, not a climate scientist. Computer models are only reliable when they are able to predict changes in cycles accurately and in advance. They haven't done this, and are instead constantly predicting linear output for ever into the future. Whatever science is in there is wrong. They appear to be assigning the general warming coming out of the mini ice age as a gradient, and then applying appropriately weighted corrections to previous changes - after they happen. If you read Lord Monckton's rebuttals and then try to find a response from the global warming lobby you find nothing but screams of climate denier. When they were just funding windmills I didn't care. When they start disrupting the world economy I do - especially in a counterproductive way.
For a forcing within a computer model to be used as evidence it's predictive ability should be nothing short of astounding. They aren't, this is just being forced through with political pressure. 15 years ago it was based on physical evidence from ice cores, that physical evidence has gone. For the scientific elite to be allowing an inconvenient truth into schools as a science video, and inferring that a skeptical scientist is a bad scientist suggests that basic scientific principle has given way to AGW belief by the very people whose job it is to promote science. This science will die, the special interest groups and damage it will do to the world economy will go on for decades, and the respect that the general public has for science will be the loser. I am already more sceptical of any science put forward by the government when I see this.
If you think my comment about skeptics was barbed, how would you feel as a scientist being compared to a holocaust denier for not believing somebody else's science? Did you see the scientific elite coming to their defence? Whatever their beliefs in AGW, scientifc principle should have come first.
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@JaneBasingstoke
I don't think you get the point of the detrended graph. The problem is that up until the 1940s there was only about 30ppm increase. The detrended graph removes the underlying .44C per century from this period and the period that follows. Atmospheric concentrations have gone up from about 310 to about 390 since the mid 40s...yet warming shows very little sign of increasing.
The numbers just don't add up. According to the (entirely untested) hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming almost all of the warming should have been since the mid 1940s with a much more shallow (nearly undetectable) slope up until that time. To explain this they simply ASSUME the natural .44C/century trend stopped around the 1940s and that all the warming since is due to CO2.
It is also claimed that thermal inertia is simply hiding a (still unverified speculation) great deal of the warming. They claim the heat is "in the pipe". The problem with this is that they also claim solar influences are tiny...yet the sun's influence shows up pretty much immediately (within the generally short solar minimums). Either the sun's affect is actually incredible and the short duration of the minimums (with additional cooling in the pipe) hides this...or what should be an equally fast response from CO2 forcing is largely absent.
It is very curious how the prevailing hypotheses on anthropogenic global warming actually require that CO2 work by an ENTIRELY different set of rules than all the other forcings. We're shown evidence from ice cores in a way that makes it SEEM that CO2 is driving temperature. While any CO2 forcing would indeed drive the other feedbacks, CO2 its self would be much more driven by nearly an order of magnitude more forcing from albedo and water vapor feedback (thats probably close to an order of magnitude more from...EACH!)
There are...problems...with the hypothesis of substantial anthropogenic global warming.
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@Edhind who wrote...
"The plastic bag example is an excellent example of how people are coordinating a response to an environmental problem. Smaller successes like this give us great hope for tackling the bigger issues such as implementing 100% renewable energy."
I'm not sure about conditions in YOUR part of the world...but here we don't actually have a big plastic bag problem. You don't even see the bags in the parking lots of the shops very much. The majority either get recycled (store bins), "recycled" (fuel in an incinerator) or tossed in the the trash where they make their way to the landfill. You probably have issues with the concept of landfills and the incredible space they take up...buuuuut you could fit the entire US trash output for 1000 years into a dump 50 miles square...I'm guessing the UK produces a bit less.
You've basically inconvenienced people. The people you've most likely inconvenienced are the ones not driving cars...ie, poorer people. The people with more money just keep their reusable bags in the car while the poor would have to pay the extortion...er uh...TAX for bags or hop back on the bus to go home (or walk). "Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought!"
Oh sure things like this sometimes get approval because in the current political climate you've given the people (that aren't busy struggling to survive) a pretty much useless gesture that they can use as a sort of personal pat on the back to say "I did good" when in fact the impact is negligible. YAY! Look at me...I offset 1/2 a mile of driving by not using these 2-3 bags and I saved the environment! Now all I have to do is buy some bags for when I take my lunch to work. Oh, wait...
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@poitsplace #113
I suggest you look back over selti1's posts. selti1 has repeatedly posted links to the detrended graph in ways that do not make it clear that it is detrended. And we are not talking a simple cut-and-paste typo either.
Regardless of the cause of the trend from 1850 onwards, it is actually there. To display a graph where that trend has deliberately been reduced to zero, with no warning, and in a context where the viewer would have no reason to suspect the trend has been reduced to zero is grossly misleading, especially bearing in mind the differing levels of knowledge and ability of those reading these threads.
I accept there are many circumstances when detrending is helpful. But this does not apply to the majority of selti1's posts.
You may also wish to look at selti1's inspiration, Orssengo's article in American Thinker, and my response at #63
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/co2_driven_global_warming_is_n.html
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@deadpoitssociety
The plastic bag example is not supposed to be blog dominating. It is 1 example of how policy and people can work together to make a difference. It has! I am happy it has :o)
Notes to make about discarded plastic bags - most end up in the sea... not landfill - in the world of marine science (my world) discarded plastic is a tragedy. Marine organisms grow on the plastic and thus adult birds feed them to their young for the benefit of this growth. The stomach full of plastic is a real bummer on life expectancy unfortunately. And also... if we can avoid 50 square miles of landfill why shouldn't we?
Next... Where I live poor people don't walk... just healthy people. And we don't use plastic bags... we use re-useable bags. Oh and NOBODY complains about the TAX TAX TAX TAX! I don't know where you live but seems they could learn from where we live. I encourage you to come across and visit and see how easy it is, You would be extremely welcome. Just offset your flight please and leave any negativity at home :o)
I am off down the shops with my re-useable bag. I think I might use the walk to work drop some glass bottles off at the recycling unit. I may even have time to think about policy direction on renewable energy :o)
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@larrylarry #112
What sort of computer engineer. One who works with computer models of the same type used in climate science? Or one who works with one of the other many fields in computers? Normally it wouldn't matter, but I'm sure you wouldn't want to accidentally claim more authority than you actually have when it comes to computer climate modelling.
You talk about the prerequisites for computer model accuracy. I gather that volcano eruptions, which inject vast amounts of material into the atmosphere, and contain different compositions of greenhouse gases and aerosols for each eruption, have been used to test the models. And as for the remaining unknowns, perhaps this is covered by the wide band of possible temperature rises documented in IPCC literature.
As for cycles, why would the models need to be fine tuned enough to pick up El Niños or La Niñas? And longer cycles like the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are in some of the models.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
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#83, #111 jon112uk, rossglory
For the uninitiated (aka me, anyway!), to which case are you referring and do you have a link where I can find the actual text of the ruling?
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#109 JaneBasingstoke
i wouldn't worry about mango's 'no evidence' mantra too much. he has no evidence that the there is no evidence, nore has he proposed a unique sugnal that would indicate there is no evidence (or at least shown no evidence that such a signal may exist....or not) :o)
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i find the suggestion (e.g. poitsplace) that countries produce less pollution when they develop rather naive.
if you take into consideration the fact that most pollution has been 'off shored' by the west, the amount of waste (plastic is a good example especially as recent research suggests plastic residue may well be toxic), the levels of eutrophication due to fertiliser and animal waste runoff (and in the atmosphere), xenobiotic chemicals (nanotech seems to have little regulation but potentially devasting consequences if released into the environment - again new research suggest fullerenes can be highly toxic) etc, then i don't think a 'let them develop and pollution will be solved' approach at all convincing.
personally i have sympathy with those that oppose a nanny state, instinctively my politics are liberal. however, the global threats we face will require concerted and centralised efforts and there is plenty of evidence that this kind of approach can be successful, as well as plenty of evidence that the past 30 years of western neoliberalism has been a dangerous failure.
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#83, #111 (and my own #118)
I think I have finally tracked down the "court case" you are referring to: the judgment made by Justice Burton on 3 November in the case of Grainger plc & others vs Nicholson.
If this is the judgement that you are referring to, then it is very misleading to claim that the judgement found that anthropogenic climate change is a religion.
Nicholson claims that he was dismissed because he held a philosophical belief about climate change and the environment which affects many aspects of how he lives his life.
One important consideration for the judge was whether the rules also extended to a "philosophical belief which is based on science, as opposed, for example, to religion" (those are the actual words used in the judgement). The judge ruled that such a science-based belief could be covered by the regulations.
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@rossglory #119
i wouldn't worry about mango's 'no evidence' mantra too much. he has no evidence that the there is no evidence, nore has he proposed a unique sugnal that would indicate there is no evidence (or at least shown no evidence that such a signal may exist....or not) :o)
Amazing that you and others keep bringing up this "there is no evidence of no evidence" rubbish, whilst conveniently forgetting it is up to the proponent of the evidence to furnish evidence.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
.....
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein
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#122 Mango
And when will you give up your "rubbish" mantra that "there is no evidence" and accept that you are merely arguing about how to interpret the considerable body of evidence that is available?
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when some evidence is produced that shows empirically that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change
and now it seems that the author of one of the hooky sticks now agrees that McIntyre has merit:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7575
Briffa is quoted as saying:
it is entirely appropriate to include the data from the KHAD site (used in McIntyre's sensitivity test) when constructing a regional chronology for the area.
.....
However, we simply did not consider these data at the time, focussing only on the data used in the companion study by Hantemirov and Shiyatov and supplied to us by them.
.....
Subsequent reports of McIntyre's blog (e.g. in The Telegraph, The Register and The Spectator) amount to hysterical, even defamatory misrepresentations, not only of our work but also of the content of the original McIntyre blog, by using words such as 'scam', 'scandal', 'lie', and 'fraudulent' with respect to our work.
Refer to Briffa's statement to verify above
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@rossglory #121
Well unfortunately it is you who are being naive. Pollution relative to GDP actually falls beyond a certain level of development...eventually falling so much that the environment is cleaner even though production is increasing. This is because the higher the standard of living, the more trivial the cost of equipment/processes to deal with pollution.
Now if you want to discuss the offshoring issue (which is a cross between an economic and environmental issue) I'm ok with that. It probably would be wise to reign in some corporations to stop them from doing that. However, much of the problem is the developing nations themselves...we're merely taking them up on low production costs (ironically helping them to develop in the process). Most of them will pollute though, even if its only in production to meet purely internal demand.
And the nanny state is most certainly not warranted for something like anthropogenic global warming which has never shown the slightest hint of going fast enough to push us to even MWP temperatures (not dangerous), much less Holocene optimum temperatures (also not dangerous)
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@eddhind #116 RE:taxes and walking everywhere
Yeah, the US has a problem with the idea of taxes. Its a recent thing. There are a lot of odd, social aspects of it you wouldn't expect that I won't go into.
With respect to walking everywhere...yeah, you can do that here if you live in some of the urban areas. But the US is surprisingly...empty. There are 30 states in the US that are 50% the size of the UK or larger. Heck, there are 10 states in the US that are just larger than the UK. We have a system of tree farms that covers an area larger than Scotland. (interesting trivia there for all that think we do nothing but cut down our trees)
Basically US has a population density about 1/7 the UK and it's about 40 times the size. If you visited, you'd notice you too needed to use a car in most places.
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#124, thanks Mango. I followed the link to the place where the Briffa quote actually came from and also noted the following conclusion:
"...So what can we conclude on the basis of this and McIntyre's sensitivity tests? Does either version of the Yamal chronology as presented in Briffa (2000) and Briffa et al. (2008) present a misleading indication of the likely history of tree-growth changes near the tree line in the Yamal region over the last two millennia, or can McIntyre's "sensitivity analysis" be taken as evidence that tree growth has not increased in this region in the second half of the 20th century as is clearly implied by the "extreme" version of the Yamal chronology he produced? On the basis of the evidence we report here, the answer is very likely "NO" on both counts...."
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@poit
I understand the difference in the US and realise the importance of the car. I have visited on several occasions and realise public transport my be a pipe dream on that vast scale. Also I know the population is mostly suburban and therefore walking is not an option.
The point I don't understand is why the poor would have to pay more tax for plastic bags? Couldn't they just use reusable bags as well as the rich people. Re-useable bags still cost less than a dollar. The poor would save many if we moved tax across to carbon use I reckon. Less purchase of consumables, less use of petrol, less energy consumption full-stop. the rich could save themselves tax by investing in insulation, solar panels, mini-turbines, etc. and more efficient cars. Social quality of life would improve through ride sharing as well.
A cleaner greener world is not just a more environmental place... it is a friendlier place. I like that :O)
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Jane:
This is a set of computer models intended to predict a chaotic system (the definition of which, is pretty much, it can't be predicted). Nobody claims that the science is complete, and for me that seriously compromises the predictive ability. Of course I expect them to predict the El-nino. If they want to prove the cause of the warming they have to prove their forcings are right (i.e. is caused by co2 and not something else). If they were not aware that the el-nino cycle was causing part of the warming, what were they saying was causing the warming the el-nino was responsible for? co2 perhaps? In that case they overrated the forcing, and I haven't seen them retract. How many other forcings in the model are caused by something else and is being assigned to c02? Have you seen the list of physical interactions that the modellers do not understand? Unimportant stuff like clouds and water currents. This is a hypothesis that the only theoretical evidence for lives in the middle of an incomplete computer model. These are iterative models, so any error in one iteration moves on to the next iteration, errors are added and it moves on to the next, and so on. Any positive feedback wrongly inserted in the system becomes huge after a large number of iterations. Do you know of another computer model of its type that is claimed to be more accurate over a 50 year period than a 1 year?
Discussing the content of the models is basically discussing theoretical physics. Are you suggesting that no matter how wrong the models are at predicting the real world, nobody but a climate modeller can determine their predictive ability? Can you point to any other science where the output is based on a computer model that has such a poor predictive record, but the science is still accepted as beyond question? You are doing exactly what the modellers are doing, and exactly why I don't believe them. We don't have to prove that global warming is man made, you have to prove it isn't and our only evidence is buried in this computer model, somewhere. In the meantime we will restructure the world economy on the basis of it. If you don't believe, look at the ice caps, think of your children. Everybody else believes, except him and he is a climate denier so better not believe him.
Sunspot activity would have predicted the downturn. co2 has been much higher than this for most of the time there has been life on earth and there have been plenty of ice ages. Mars ice caps melted at the same time. We are coming out af a mini ice age, and we still don't seem to be warmer than the medieval warm period, and the warming appears to have stopped. The input data is compromised (heat island effect and tree ring data both making the past appear colder than it was). The models predict steady warming in the future, that has never happened before. The people shouting loudest about the science are not climate scientists. The models have never predicted a downward trend before it happens. A slightly warmer planet with much more co2 would be good for the quantity and diversity of life on earth, this is ignored. All the loudest believers seem to go off and make a lot of money out of climate change. The greenhouse effect is logarithmic. The colder the planet gets the less time we have to save the planet from warming. The one way bet behind the funding. The fact politicians write the UN reports, not scientists. The way non scientists dismiss the scientific sceptics as non scientific. The fact the sceptic's case is bundled off to the far corners of the web without being answered.
I have worked on simulators of digital hardware before, but nowadays I just make sure that computer software does what the customer requested. I think they would be requesting a discount from the supplier for this.
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#129 - larrylarry - what puzzles me about the discussion in your post, is that it seems to suggest that everything hinges around the models and their predictive capability. The models - and there are many different types of different climate models, developed for different purposes, and at different scales - are only one of the products of climate-related science and not necessarily the most important ones. Don't make them more important than they are and don't conflate climate science with the modelling part of it.
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simon-swede
Excellent. Where? Everything else I have seen has confused cause and effect. I don't see any predictive ability in the climate models at all, and don't really see how anybody can show that warming in such a complex system has come from one form or another without an accurate model. I would be delighted to see the proof. I fail to see how the justification for the current conferences can be made without the models though...
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the fact remains simon, briffa has, for the first time, acknowledged McIntyre has a point
perhaps now the 2 sides will stop all the sniping and work together to try and figure out if this really is a problem
i hope so
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@larrylarry #129 (computer modelling)
Simulating hardware is a long way from simulating Chaotic systems.
You mischaracterise Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory states that chaotic systems such as the weather may look random close up, but can show significant patterns when viewed at a distance or in exotic mathematical spaces.
Your logic about greenhouse gases (not just carbon dioxide by the way) would also deny the ability to pick out weather trends based on time of day (tends to be warmest in the early afternoon), time of year (tends to be warmest for the month after the summer solstice) and time of Milankovitch cycle. None of these could ever predict an El Niño either. Yes the evidence for these trends is much much stronger than that for trends associated in greenhouse gases. But there is evidence that supports the AGW models, including the results of volcano eruptions.
Whether there is sufficient evidence to support the models is a matter of scientific debate. But it cannot be dismissed by your over-simplistic arguments.
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@larrylarry #129 (sun spots)
Sunspots? Really?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean%3A12/plot/sidc-ssn/from%3A1850/mean%3A12/scale%3A0.005/plot/sidc-ssn/from%3A1850/mean%3A132/scale%3A0.01
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@larrylarry #129 (sun spots)
(@ myself #134)
Need to be clear. I am not ruling out sunspots in contributing to the climate. Just driving the climate, especially recently.
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@larrylarry #129 (economy / precautionary principle)
As for your points about the economy I want to make two points.
Firstly I see protecting the economy as a good thing. But I also see protecting the environment as a good thing. We make the wrong choices, we hurt people. That applies both in deciding whether the balance of evidence is in favour of tackling global warming, and in deciding how we tackle it.
Secondly it has been argued superficially successfully that damage to the environment is worse than damage to the economy, partly because the economy is more dependent on a healthy environment than the other way round. But also partly because some people see minimal human activity as the null (= safe) position in the Precautionary Principle.
However this ignores the views of some very powerful political players that have the power of veto over the whole process. These people agree with you, they don't just take the sceptic view to AGW, they also interpret business as usual as the null (= safe) position in the Precautionary Principle.
So you are right that it is the job of my side of the debate to prove AGW. But again, your argument was over-simplistic.
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Jane
Jane
So you don't accept that whole sections of the models are missing and that an error introduced in one iteration would be passed on to the next iteration, and the further you get from a known set of data the less accurate the model predictions are?
This is a new science, you can see that from the way this is progressing. The next set of models will now include the el-nino and be more accurate for it. As understanding of the climate improves the black boxes in there will be populated with real physics, and the predictive ability of the models will improve.
Weather prediction has a much shorter cycle. Every time the cycle changes the computer models which didn't predict the change are updated, and more accurately predict the next change. This has been happening for decades, so from a computer model point of view I would expect weather prediction to be quite accurate by now. When you are trying to predict tomorrow, every day you get a chance to verify the accuracy of your models.
The problem with climate is that it is a very slow cycle, and has a stronger forcing of weather on the top. That means that climate modellers don't get to see their model is wrong very often, and so don't get to update it very often. It is that feedback from the real world into the computer model that improves the understanding of the real world, and makes the models accurate. For something as slow-moving as climate this will take a long time, and to pull such a strong forcing out of CO2 already is implausible.
I have no doubt that climate modellers are serious people who are trying to make the best predictions they can, but with the science at its current stage it is too early for the long term predictions they are trying to make. The politicians are pulling far more out of these models than I believe the climate modellers would honestly be comfortable with. That is why it is not the climate scientists standing up and saying what the true believers are saying, and they leave that to greenpeace or some chief scientific officer.
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@eddhind on the subject of being poor
People that are not poor usually fail utterly to realize the significance of being poor. Being poor removes just about all financial flexibility. In different areas it manifests in different ways. First and foremost is that they are living on a knife edge. Their main concern is avoiding catastrophic failure (loss of their dwelling, eating at all, basic energy costs). Every pound you tax carbon translates to a pound they don't have for something else. For a person making just enough to pay their current bills (to live in a small apartment in a bad area and eat the cheapest food available), a £100 per year increase for power has to come from somewhere.
Since they're already buying the cheapest things they can find its not going to mean making gourmet coffee at home instead of going to a coffee shop...it at best means no coffee at all. It might come out of their power...but they're likely already trying to ration their power. Unlike you...who makes a CHOICE to turn off the lights that you could easily afford, they turn them off...and turn down the heat so they can use the money on food instead. Of course EVERYTHING will go up under your low-carbon economy. Food will be more expensive (and they can't just grow it in their front/back yards since they likely have no front/back yards). Power will be more expensive. Transportation will be more expensive.
Basically, every £1 you add to the cost of living hits the poor like a hammer. People that aren't poor just don't travel as far for vacation, eat out less, buy a slightly less expensive car, etc.
Oh and let me just toss in that you should REALLY look up the economics of mini-turbines. Its terrible. Also solar "panels" (assuming you mean PV) are not the best of technologies for the UK. Probably about anything involving solar in the UK is going to need to track the sun and concentrate the sunlight...at least then you'd not only get power but you'd end up with significant amounts heat that you could use.
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I don't disagree that the environment is very important, but I do disagree that co2 is a pollutant - it is the basic building block of life.
Reducing fossil fuel usage is clearly a good thing, which is why I think nobody has really been pushing back particularly hard until now. The end result when international politics get involved is very different. So many special interest groups get involved, and even if the science of AGW were really well settled the mechanisms the politicians would have to use to fix it are nowhere near there. Does replacing your car with a more fuel efficient one really save the environment? Are windmills really effective when you take in construction costs and gas backup? Does putting a battery in a prius ever really save enough fuel to repay the energy to make the battery - and the extra weight of lugging it around. I don't think most of the current energy saving stuff has had anywhere near as much beneficial effect as is being claimed - and the speed with which this is being implemented with so many special interest groups involved does not give me any confidence they will get it anywhere near right. This will cause a lot of dislocation of industry, and it will take years to settle. I also suspect a lot of climate scientists would like to backtrack from the bolder claims, but are finding it somewhat difficult with the current environment. They should have stood up for their colleagues when they were being compared to holocaust deniers.
I also don't think this would be as difficult to fix 20 years from now as they claim. Solar panels are about to become cost effective in the next decade, algae farms in desert or ocean locations could sequester a lot of c02. Fusion would in effect allow you to decide how much co2 you wanted to sequester. Whereas other environmental concerns are far more pressing, and are being drowned out by the global warming debate. Soil degradation in particular I would suggest was a far more immediate problem than global warming. The whole disposable culture of expecting equipment to be replaced every few years rather than just the appropriate part replaced, which global warming hysteria is making worse -replace for fuel efficiency. I suspect a lot of those windmills have a design life of 10 years, whereas it should have been more like 100. In my view the longer you leave global warming the cheaper it will be to fix, the longer you leave soil degredation the harder it will be to fix. If they put half the effort they put into global warming into other environmental concerns, I think the people would be getting a lot bigger bang for their buck.
I also think a lot of the global warming solutions are causing a future recycling headache - solar panels and batteries in paricular. Waiting for the next generation of thin film solar may be far more sensible, and it is a gamble whether fuel cells or batteries will be the winning technology. Throwing money at solutions doesn't choose the winner, the eventual technology will choose that, and it often comes from a different scientific field entirely which could currently be seen as the culprit.
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@JaneBasingstoke (Re:sunspots)
Actually the correlation that jumps out at you is the inverse correlation to the duration of the sunspot cycle. This actually makes sense considering all the factors that SHOULD influence climate (total solar irradiance, the energy of the solar wind, the rapidity of coupling/decoupling of the earth/solar magnetic fields and cosmic ray intensity) should all tend to cause more cooling in long cycles and warming in short cycles. Long cycles have exceptionally low/long minimums and very low peaks.
Either way, we will find out within the next couple of years if the hypothesis of substantial anthropogenic global warming is valid or not. It should be EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS to you that anyone would want to jump the gun when temperatures have leveled off and when warming has NOT been significant...when it is obvious that nature has given us the obvious chance to test that hypothesis. If temperatures drop or even remain level for the next few years....it is highly unlikely that there is ANY chance of hitting an anomaly much higher than 1C. The PDO just switched to cool mode. The sun appears to have gone into a deep minimum. The impact they have over the coming years should be roughly proportional to the affect they had during the recent warming.
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@poitsplace #140
Nope.
Peaks and troughs generally show a mismatch. Except around 1910, where a temperature trough matches a low sun spot maximum.
I would interpret this as sun spots not driving climate, at least since 1850.
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@poitsplace #140 (PDO cool phase)
So if the PDO cool phase and similar decadal scale systems only cause a mild temporary cooling and then switch back to warming, will you be convinced that warming is real?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
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@poit
Fortunately (or I guess unfortunately) as I currently live a fair hack down the wealth scale I think I can relate to how hard it is to come up with this money. That is why I think it would be a good idea if the extra energy costs for renewables were optional... with a long-term payback if you took them up (see my earlier description). Off course if we get near peak-oil (which I don't think we will) then fossil fuel energy will vastly exceed the cost of renewables... so it is good for the poor if the rich invest in the renewable infrastructure now. It is a win win situation in my opinion.
I don't see why food need be more expensive. Local food would have less transport costs and the money spent would be re-invested in our own economy. Diets may be less eclectic but not that much.
I don't think there is cheaper transport than carbon free walking and cycling. I live in a town where 80% live close enough to cycle to work, but only 20% do (roughly). How hard is it to make a change like that? Not at all!
To save money by the way I picked up some energy saving bulbs at the euro store. If you know where to look you can save yourself money and have light and save the environment.
I really don't think the poor will have to pay more. I think they will have to pay less. And so will the rich... they will pay less as well (maybe after a brief hike whilst we invest in infrastructure).
re: mini-turbines - as they go into mass production they will become massively cheaper. Re: solar power - the UK can certainly use solar power in some cases (such as it is already in parking metres, road signs_ - it all counts, use it where you can. With solar panels I was referring more to the US where there are some very sunny parts. In the UK we can use wind and wave. We will be fine. Wind 1st of course until wave technology is up to scratch.
I am not having a rant here. Just trying to show that change isn't as hard as we think... why through up barriers. More than an increase in effort, we just need small changes in mindset. I will start with my dad... I suggest we all do the same!
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@JaneBasingstoke
The PDO and AMO do only cause mild temporary warming and cooling. What you're missing is that once you factor in this warming/cooling the "alarming" spike of the 80s and 90s isn't very alarming. Skeptics keep pointing this out and alarmist just ignore it completely. If you measure from the peak of the last warm period to the peak of this warm period (we now have a complete cycle) the warming rate is only about .5C/century. I think there may be some detectable, human-caused warming in there...but its a virtual certainty that at least half of the warming was caused by the normal cycle.
Now think you had a bit of a Freudian slip in your reply. You actually wondered if I would be convinced that global warming was real when it was _I_ that offered up the test scenario in the first place. This kind of implies that YOU are looking at it from the standpoint of substantial global warming being a certainty no matter what happens to temperature.
@eddhind
You do notice that in the examples of solar you gave for the UK it's not that the solar was remotely close to parity with grid connected power. Its purely a bottom line practicality issue. It would have cost a fortune to cut up the concrete get power to the parking meters and would have cost more in the long run if they'd used batteries. These practicality issues dominate the landscape of alternative energy...they are the REAL deciding factors and that's the reason I keep complaining about the totally unrealistic attitude of most in the "green" movement.
The US had the same grand plans in the late 70's and that's what ruined the whole thing. It wasn't "big oil", it was big idealism pushing for things that weren't workable. I think it's quite likely that you'll only have 1-2 years more before everyone stops worrying about the temperature...because temperatures are likely to remain level or fall. If you guys want to do ANYTHING with your momentum, you'll push for realistic solutions. Otherwise...having ignored the failures in the 70's...you are doomed to repeat them.
And make sure you choose your battles wisely. Look a round and run some numbers. Go with the plans that provide the least disruption and/or greatest gains. BTW, this is point where you say goodbye to micro turbines. The stupid things provide negligible power. In most locations they wouldn't even provide enough power to run the inverters...meaning their only practical use is in providing small amounts of power to remote locations with no power lines...and then only for very low power applications. I think solar PV actually works out to be cheaper and more effective than micro turbines.
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Here are the oscillation components of mean global temperature anomaly that changes in the short-term.
Mean Global Temperature Trend
From these chart, you can see for yourself the trend in mean global temperatures anomaly.
What I see is global warming around 1880, global cooling around 1910, global warming around 1940, global cooling around 1970, and global warming around 2000.
From this pattern, what do you expect for 2030?????
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@poit Yes these things were new power sources, but the fact is that the the technology exists. I agree though, not all solutions will work. That said I think the good ideas will win through and the planet will become greener. I hope people will not just try and put a spanner in the works just because something is "green". Some people see green as a dirty word, when actually it is the cleanest word out.
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Predictions of Cold & Warm World
From the above chart, we see:
Warm world around 1880
Cold world around 1910 (after 30 years)
Warm world around 1940 (after 30 years)
Cold world around 1970 (after 30 years)
Warm world around 2000 (after 30 years)
Prediction:
Cold world around 2030 (after 30 years)
Evidence of previous cold and warm world in the media.
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@poitsplace #144
1. "Alarming" spike.
A spike is obviously much less of a problem than a long term trend with the same upslope. Is it a spike? Is it a trend? Is it half spike half trend? Is it a small spike on a larger trend? Well that's where we can't find agreement, not on whether or not a long term upward trend is worrying.
Also if you have to refer to my side of the debate as "Alarmist", please recognise that it is a label of convenience rather than an accurate description of all of us, and that there are extremists and idiots on both sides of the debate.
2. Freudian slip
Not a Freudian slip. A request for clarification. Your comment could be read as no further net warming beyond 1 degree centigrade. So I thought I'd make the Keenlyside scenario more explicit, that any resulting pause or reversal was temporary, and ask for a comment on it.
3. "Real"
Do I really have to insert a "probably" disclaimer every time I refer to global warming in a comment? I think global warming is probably real. Significantly higher than 50% probability. But less than 100% probability. Are you going to tell me off if I say the sun rises at dawn too, or do I have to qualify that by mentioning Copernicus and/or non-inertial reference frames?
4. Value of underlying trend is debatable
I would also point out that your value of 0.5 degrees C per century ignores the fact that any underlying global warming looks like it has been speeding up since the 1940s local maximum:
(note, the following graph includes 10 and 60 year means, this will emphasise any patterns that are multiples of these time periods)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean%3A120/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean%3A720
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@JaneBasingstoke
Actually the peak to peak warming rate works out to between .5C/century and .7C/century, depending on how you look at it...although ironically these figures themselves do not constitute a statistically significant difference from the observed background warming trend (since it's very hard to work out what the "global temperature" actually is with any precision.
Its at this point you should perhaps stop and ponder the fact that they're saying the evidence is overwhelming...and compare that to the reality of us not knowing with certainty if the warming rate has even changed. The warming rate isn't so much "unprecedented" as it is "possibly a little higher".
BUT, even if we just go ahead and assume the temperatures are absolute, as if there was one, single global thermometer...there are serious problems with the hypothesis. The biggest problems are of course the recent plateau (which shouldn't happen at all if CO2 is a strong driver) and that when we actually take measurements of earth's radiation output it shows all indications of significant negative feedbacks. The negative feedbacks and meager warming are a good match. Also the observation of what appears to be negative feedbacks fits well with the relative stability of interglacial temperatures (verses the intermediate temperature ranges). The interglacial feedbacks are weak with respect to warming but of increasing strength with lower temperatures.
As for "real" I think there probably is some impact from CO2 but I have honestly seen no credible evidence that the outrageous warming suggested by many (greater than that suggested by absorption alone) would actually appear. Pretty much all the predictions have failed and the newer ones are starting to include "natural variation" that allows cooling for the next decade...but outrageous warming tacked on to the end. This revamping of the models makes little sense when it implies natural forcings have suddenly doubled or tripled in intensity. They of course ignore the fact that this sort of change would also increase the warming potential from natural causes in the 80's and 90s.
Beyond this the obfuscation by alarmists actually gets worse. Now we get into environmental impacts. In spite of overwhelming evidence that most of the great expansions of humanity (including the holocene in general) have taken place when temperatures were warmer than today. Yes, even with what alarmists propose as devastating, civilization destroying climate changes...these civilizations not only survived but expanded.
Looking at the Holocene optimum as an example of the "worst case scenario" with top end warming models and such...we find that virtually every corner of the world was better off. Africa and Australia were greener. The frozen wastes of the north were much more hospitable. About the only significant negative I found was in the midwestern US...where it supposedly dried out considerably. But again, these are moot points since we've never observed a warming rate remotely high enough to push us back to holocene optimum temperatures.
This vilification of carbon just seems excessive
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@eddhind #146
Ed, I think you will find that most people who come here, on both sides of this debate, are environmentalists. The fact that sceptics think the evidence is lacking for a CO2 driven warming, doesn't mean we want to stop pollution, deforestation etc
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CO2 does not drive mean global temperature, as we have global cooling until 2031.
CO2 + H2O + Sun Light => Plant Food => Animal Food.
As a result, CO2 is a foundation of life, and to say CO2 is a pollutant is extremely irrational.
We are closer for the verification of the prediction Arctic summers ice-free by 2013. Can not wait!
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@poitsplace #149
1. "overwhelming"
Firstly the reference to "overwhelming" applies to the sum of all pro-AGW evidence rather than any individual topic. Secondly the reference to "overwhelming" applies to a relatively staid version of pro-AGW attitudes, that AGW is real and it is a problem. Also "overwhelming" for Mr Average Scientist is not going to be the same as "overwhelming" for AGW sceptics who demand a much higher standard of proof.
2. Temperature plateau
Your statement that a temperature plateau "shouldn't happen at all if CO2 is [currently] a strong driver" is just plain wrong for temporary plateaus. It is also wrong for shallow temporary reversals, and wrong for any near future plateaus sufficiently above today's temperatures.
OK, I've tried the analogies of day/night, and summer/winter. As a completely different type of analogy, how about a staircase?
3. Feedbacks
Feedbacks are an acknowledged subject of scientific debate. They are complex, because although water vapour (greenhouse gas) is a positive feedback and easily modelled, daytime cloud cover (increases albedo) is a negative feedback and is far harder to model. Other significant positive feedbacks include ice cover (albedo) and methane emissions from methane-clathrates in the oceans and permafrost (methane is a greenhouse gas).
Strong evidence for the relative strength of positive and negative feedbacks does not exist. It therefore does not meet the strict standards of proof demanded by the sceptics for pro-AGW evidence. However you really can't claim that the evidence is significantly in your favour.
4. Holocene warming, pre-history / ancient history
I'm a little confused by your reference to peak Holocene warming. Obviously the peak Milankovitch cycle contribution to Holocene temperatures would have been pre-historic / very ancient history, and there does appear to be a local (timewise) maximum in that era when global temperatures were clearly warmer than pre-20th Century temperatures. But I am not aware of any evidence that clearly shows this local (timewise) maximum to be above today's global temperatures, the evidence suggests the opposite.
Unfortunately it is my understanding that the time period in question has rather less temperature proxies than are available for the controversial Hockey Sticks. It therefore does not meet the strict standards of proof demanded by the sceptics for pro-AGW evidence. However you really can't claim that the evidence is overwhelming in your favour.
5. More recent historical warming
And as to your references to warmer temperatures in the historical past, again I am not aware of any evidence that such temperatures were global. Again we are in Hockey Stick territory, the pro-AGW evidence does not meet the strict standards of proof demanded by the sceptics. But again, you really can't claim that the evidence is in your favour, especially by apparently skipping any reference to the evidence and launching straight into claims about the effect of a warmer planet on previous civilisations.
6. Vilification of carbon
By carbon do you just mean carbon dioxide? Or do you mean all carbon based greenhouse gases with a significant anthropogenic component including carbon dioxide, methane, and halocarbons such as CFCs?
Even if you include all significant carbon based greenhouse gases there's also anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions, and possible water vapour based amplification of temperature increases.
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IPCC projection already disproved.
When are they going to accept what they observe?
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