Climategate

[DJ Droood]

Didn't most people drop "global warming" a number of years back, and agree that "climate change" could take many forms? These days, I only hear "global warming" from conservative talk radio hosts working for the oil companies. (and thier loyal listeners)

[Merlyn]

Yes they dropped the term "global warming" for two reasons.
#1 It is over!
#2 The climate is changing! to freakin' COLD!

[DJ Droood]

Yes they dropped the term "global warming" for two reasons.
#1 It is over!
#2 The climate is changing! to freakin' COLD!

locally...and hot/dry in other areas at other times..wetter in places that are usually dry...dry in places that are wet...storms are stronger and out of season...it is fun to listen to the talk radio people...every time it snows, they say "Al Gore and David Suzuki are liars! Buy a new car! open a new landfill!"

[Merlyn]

You might not be old enough to remember, but this is much more normal to me as an old man .
Waiting a couple of weeks for the ponds to ice over and out playing hockey is how we spent our winters.

Carbon falls on the glaciers and makes them melt. Just the way a black jacket keeps you warm in the sun on the coldest days.
Understanding why the glaciers melt means they will continue, no matter the climate so long as those near them burn wood and coal and do not capture the carbon, planes spew it across the sky and cars run on it.

This new understanding of why things are happening is why CO2 is the problem. .7 of a degree over 100 years isn't the issue, we will see that drop back over the next 100 years.
Polluting the oceans with nuclear waste trying not to burn coal isn't going to go well either.

As Drui it should be obvious, we are sun worshippers after all, or we were anyway.
Perhaps it is time to get solar. Wind is a nice idea, good for lots of things, but generating electric power isn't it's strong suit. Wind power produces a good deal of raw torque able to pump water, grind wheat etc. Water driven hydro-electric is the best solution, for areas near rivers.

Yup, global warming is out.
Climate change is in!


Gotta move with the times!

Merlyn

[DJ Droood]

Waiting a couple of weeks for the ponds to ice over and out playing hockey is how we spent our winters.

Americans playing hockey..how cute!

we'll see how that turns out tonight:

CANADA BATTLES USA WITH WORLD JUNIOR GOLD ON THE LINE

http://www.tsn.ca/world_jrs/story/?id=304773

[Kernos]

The living pine trees shed pine cones like crazy, all over the place. They make good fire starters.
I believe them more than any scientific graph. Call me a druid, but, that prediction has been spot on so far.

A Druid would seek the truth and not engage in wishful thinking.

[Merlyn]

I wish it was warm

Climate change is based in real facts. The pine cones were spot on, (like it or not.)
Global warming still needs some work, a few more tree-ring studies and deep ocean temperature readings, perhaps over this coming decade or two.

Those in the great white north however are not seeing the change quite the way we are,

It looks like the overall pattern through January will almost be upside down compared to what you would normally expect. What do I mean? Compared to normal January temperatures, much of northern and western Canada will be well above-normal in terms of temperature, while the heart of the cold air masses settle in across the eastern two-thirds of southern Canada and the United States. You can thank the negative Arctic Oscillation.

http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blog ... g=anderson

So our friends to the north are all saying... who took our weather?
We did
Anytime you want it back just go right ahead.

Stoking the fire
Merlyn

[DJ Droood]

So our friends to the north are all saying... who took our weather?
We did
Anytime you want it back just go right ahead.

Pretty normal winter so far in central Canada..almost "classic"...nice bit of snow before Festivus....bone chilling for a few days, followed by milder temperatures and a snow dump or two, then back to bone chilling...nothing to email the University of East Anglia about, thus far.

[Merlyn]

Normally (normal hasn't been the case for a long time, but) if we get hit like this early on in the winter we get the flip in February, only to be hit in March again.
March, in like a lion, out like a lamb or visa versa depending on the year.

Merlyn

[Merlyn]

This was a bit of a climate gate news day, as the UK climate czar announced that global warming never happened.
And so climategate takes a new turn, one of law suits and men in suits getting canned.
Some of the buzz of the day;
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/11/23/cn ... e-never-ha
And for a wider view on the topic, based on an overwhelming scientific summary;
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-main ... onment/759

In a July 18, 2008 widely circulated article entitled "No Smoking Hot Spot," Australian Greenhouse Office scientist David Evans came out of the global-warming skeptics' closet. Although having written the carbon accounting model used to measure Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, Evans was wrestling with a problem: the greenhouse-gas signature is missing. If CO2 is the cause of global warming, then it must be absorbing solar energy and warming the air, which in turn warms the surface. Both alarmists and skeptics agree that all models predict a "hot spot" at 10 kilometers above the tropics. But there is no such hot spot. Quoting Evans:

We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes — weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever. If there is no hot spot, then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature, then I would be an alarmist again.

Wishful thinking ???
Seems the dam has broken and heads are rolling.
The entire scam is coming out and why.
http://www.wnho.net/global_warming.htm
My main concern is that polluters will continue to pollute, and all of this soap opera science will distract attention to the real problems.

The truth finally comes on, even on CNN, that global warming never happened...
And so the pine cones were right all along.

Merlyn

[mwyalchen]

You are such an optimist...

P.S.: (Edit) - I thought at first you were referring to the UK Spectator - which has a very bad record of promoting people who've already been discredtited. Turns out, though, that the link you provided, to the U.S. Spectator, doesn't say anything at all about the "U.K. Climate Czar" today - in fact, it's from November, and doesn't actually say much at all. (end Edit.)

And, something from July 2008 is not exactly breaking news. if there was anything to it, don't you think it would have had some effect by now?

Finally: your last link - the "World Natural Health Organization" - who are they supposed to be? Well, "The World Natural Health Organization was established by Dr. James A.L. Dussault, a Christian bishop, naturopathic therapist and martial artist, who was also the founder of the Global Martial Arts Federation. The WNHO's stated purpose is "to unite the world in truth concerning natural health care," to "educate the world concerning medicine, nature and natural, alternative health care modalities, and "in order to unify all natural health care modalities, institutions of higher learning, clinics, hospitals, manufacturers of natural herbal formulas, healthy restaurants and other institutions that take the public health seriously."
http://en.allexperts.com/e/w/wo/world_n ... zation.htm Other banners on their home page: "Proud to be Pro-Life", "Jesus is the reason for the Season". http://www.wnho.net/

Just the sort of people you'd expect to know what's what about climate change, eh?

[Kernos]

Merlyn, you really need to look at the data and not the ramblings of the status-quo conservatives.

[mwyalchen]

Round 2: after a little bit of finding out about your David Evans: it turns out his claim about the "greenhouse-gas signature" is entirely wrong. And he's made a lot of other claims about climate change, and, guess what, it turns out he's wrong about those, too. (This extends as far as claiming that NASA only publishes land-based data, when in fact one NASA series is entitled "Global Temperature Land-Sea Index." Maybe that might have been a clue?)

This article goes through his claims one by one and shows clearly that he is indeed wrong - take a look. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07 ... nce_16.php

So much for your "overwhelming scientific summary" so I'm asking, what made you decide this was so overwhelming? Or did you just decide to believe what you were told? Because just a little bit of work on your part would have allowed you to find out that some of the claims Evans makes are not just wrong, but obviously and painfully wrong.

So, who is David Evans?

According to his own resume, Evans has not published a single peer-reviewed research paper on the subject of climate change. Evans published only a single paper in 1987 in his career and it is unrelated to climate change.

Evans has published an article for the Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises Instutute, a right-wing free-market think tank.

Evans also published a "background briefing" (pdf) document for the Australian chapter of the Lavoisier Group, a global warming "skeptic" organization with close ties to the mining industry.

"I am not a climate modeler"

From 1999 to 2006 Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office designing a carbon accounting system that is used by the Australian Government to calculate its land-use carbon accounts for the Kyoto Protocol. While Evans says (pdf) that "[he] know[s] a heck of a lot about modeling and computers," he states clearly that he is "not a climate modeler."

Background


David Evans lives in Australia and gained media attention after an article he wrote titled, No Smoking Hot Spot was published in The Australian in June, 2008.The article claims that climate change is not caused by C02 emissions because there is no evidence of "a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics." Evan's claim has been thoroughly debunked by Tim Lambert, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.

According to his bio, Evans claims to be a 'Rocket Scientist' and one article claims that he is a 'Top Rocket Scientist.' While Evans background does show that he has a PhD in electrical engineering, there is no evidence that he was ever employed as a rocket scientist.

Evans answered our inquiry about his claim to being a rocket scientist with the following explanation:

In US academic and industry parlance, "rocket scientist" means anyone who has completed a PhD in one of the hard sciences at one of the top US institutions. The term arose for people who *could* do rocket science, not those who literally build rockets.Thus the term "rocket scientist" means someone with a PhD in physics, electrical engineering, or mathematics (or perhaps a couple of other closely related disciplines), from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and maybe a few other institutions.

I did a PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford in the 1980s. Electrical engineering is your basic high tech degree, because most high technology spawned from electrical information technology. I specialized in signal processing, maths, and statistics.
The definition provided by Evans would appear to be at odds with the conventional use of the term 'rocket scientist' which according to various sources is "One specializing in the science or study of rockets and their design."

http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket ... avid-evans

Yep, that bit about working for Australian Greenhouse Office scientist sounds very impressive - until you find out what he was really doing, and how little he knows about climate.

Merlyn, it took me less than ten minutes to find out about this guy, and another fifteen or so to find the best evidence and work out how to present it. Why can't you do this yourself?

You are fond at the moment of telling us what "a Druid" would do. Well, I say that "a Druid" would not promote misinformation spread by people who lie about their background.

[Merlyn]

what made you decide this was so overwhelming

That is a fair question, and so are the rest.
Here is "it".

While I watch party politics try and banter with scientists.... NOTHING IS GETTING DONE!

Now get this... Climate change is real, and no one prepared for it. It is N o r m a l
No one stocked for the cold winter, all those jobs were lost, and in the reverse, no one did the forestation needed during the warming, lives, homes and jobs lost again!

You might ask... what? What is Merlyn rambling about....?
And I get the pro and con this graph and that scientist is a nut ball.

But all the while no one is watching the store!
It's like everyone forgot that pollution stinks, contaminates so bad we drink bottled water!

Is it getting any clearer?

Merlyn

[mwyalchen]

Not a good answer, Merlyn.

You told us that Evans' work was an "overwhelming scientific summary". Turns out it's actually a pack of lies. When I ask you why you thought it was an "overwhelming scientific summary" you reply with a ramble that says nothing about Evan's work, just repeats general points you've already made many times.

You think pollution is a bad thing (I agree). You think you can assess climate change by looking out of your window at the snow (I disagree.) Fine.

But why waste our time and energy posting what claims to be science but is actually garbage, if you're not prepared to engage with the science anyway?

Meanwhile: Round 3: you started that post

This was a bit of a climate gate news day, as the UK climate czar announced that global warming never happened.

Well, I've now been through most of the U.K. press websites. Your story (which would be big news) is not to be found easily at the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Guardian, or even the Daily Mail (who would surely be headlining it.)

Come to that, "UK Climate Czar" doesn't bring up anything recent on Google News either.

So where did you get that from?

[Merlyn]

We don't condone e-mail theft by hackers, though these e-mails were covered by Britain's Freedom of Information Act and should have been released. The content of these e-mails raises extremely serious questions that could end the academic careers of many prominent professors. Academics who have purposely hidden data, destroyed information and doctored their results have committed scientific fraud. We can only hope respected academic institutions such as Pennsylvania State University, the University of Arizona and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst conduct proper investigative inquiries.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... l-cooling/

And of course no matter what, everyone who has some sense in this is "wrong"... right?

And the lack of a hot summer and this following record cold winter is just "me" or the weather, or caused by global "warming" just out MY window

Sure!
Merlyn

[mwyalchen]

Still avoiding the question.

You are the one who keeps posting bits of so-called "science" - but when challenged, you reply "Oh, don't bother me with graphs". But science is not simply a matter of opinion. If you want to post scientific arguments, you should either be willing to check that the science is plausible, or you should have the integrity to admit that you are posting it without knowing if it's true. In which case, you really shouldn't be telling us it's an "overwhelming scientific summary".

And if you can't tell us where you got the bit about the UK climate czar, I'm afraid the inference is that you made a claim without being able to back it up. Or maybe, just made it up completely.

I thought Druids were supposed to care about truthfulness?

[Merlyn]

Ok,
Most of the problem is the comprehension of all that causes climate change.
This site is really good at making it easy to understand.
How does particulate matter affect temperature? What have they done and what do they do? This is one small example, and they even include cows
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/ ... uses01.jsp

Small particles in the air (aerosols) may have warming or cooling effects, depending on their characteristics. Sulfate (SO4) aerosol, for example, is light-colored and reflects sunlight back into space. The cooling effect of volcanic aerosols from the Mt. Tambora eruption of 1815 caused North America’s “year without a summer” in 1816. Sulfate aerosol is also produced by fossil fuel burning. Black soot, which is a familiar component of urban smog and smoke from wild fires, has the opposite effect. The dark particles absorb the Sun’s energy in much the same way that dark asphalt roads become warm on sunny days.

Today, water vapor produces two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse effect. All of the other gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, etc. – contribute the other third. The effect of water vapor is so significant that the global average temperature would be below freezing without it.
Warm air can contain more moisture than cold air. This is the basis of the water vapor feedback. As the atmospheric temperature rises and the amount of water vapor increases, the greenhouse effect is enhanced, further increasing temperature.
The water vapor feedback is critical for producing the glacial/interglacial cycles. Uncertainty in the magnitude of the water vapor feedback is an important source of uncertainty in projecting future climate warming.

Druidry taught me some bad habits, like trusting my own observations, making my own choices in life and get me in trouble all the time
When I pointed out the pine cones to my friends last fall, and mentioned it was a sign of a very hard winter, they kind of said "ok, we'll see"
They are now e-mailing me and calling me and such saying "U weren't kidding about what an abundance if pinecones signafies!"

I learned to trust the trees, live ones that is

The glaciers have been melting since the last ice-age, and understandable will melt faster when covered with carbon and exposed to a carbon rich atmosphere.
However... this triggers other factors in the cycles of the earth's oceans, and can be abated by other factors with respect to green house gas and the idea of global warming.
Without CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth would not support life very well, if at all. We have indeed made a contribution to this. However it may not be near enough to create the prophecy of never ending warming. In fact this prophecy has already failed. Since 1998 the earth has been getting colder, despite the rise in CO2.
The cycles of hurricanes predicted to continue, has not and in fact reversed, due to the much stronger climate changes natural to the earth. These climate changes are not just atmospheric, and in fact are greatly due to the ocean, and this is a much stronger climate changer then other factors.

Trouble now is we have humans multiplying like rabbits! This cooling cycle and other cycles causing drought and floods will shift from one place to another, causing problems ans solving others. One thing it will solve is the overpopulation problem if left to false prediction and assumptions that the earth will forever warm. This has left too many thinking so.
Resource is really the core issue here. If indeed we are tipped into an ice age, we do not have enough fuel to go the stretch. We also do not have enough farm land to feed this population explosion.

One example is in up-state New York, where farming towns flourished during a climate change. This warming cycle ended abruptly, like it is now, and those towns sit as reminder to this. Change in resource can help, going to natural gas, as example. But even that resource has it's limits.

The fear that India, china and other developing countries will ever increase CO2 falls flat with the argument that we have already run out of oil... coal.. Truth is we have plenty, but getting to it is much more difficult. Strip mining causes real troubles locally, and off-shore drilling is expensive, falls prey to weather, and dangerous to us and the ocean if it fails, pollutes or does as it has, and needs to be transported long distance. Refining fuel is contribution enough to greenhouse gases, let alone using it in airplanes and industry.

I watched a History channel show, and they are often interesting, showing the result of NY city under 6ft of water. All this while watching yet another snow storm and the coldest winter on record for the entire US. We are indeed confused, and climate gate is one example of just how confused, conflicted and misunderstood climate change is.

We can show people graphs, but that is not "comprehensive" and one scientist will call another a quack, and that just makes the fudged and trick data even further from being understood. Even if we stopped all the cows, quit all use of oil and so on, we may still find ourselves in a coming ice age, just as we may see no change at all.
We could also see warming. Too many things affect the climate, and a volcano or two can change the picture entirely, as can the ocean currents.

What I see, is fatalism and failure to act on the obvious due to a obsessive preoccupation humans have for reasoning. All the while, population explosion is being left unchecked, resource is being squandered, horded, and even ignored. First and foremost people need to realize our earth cannot provide for our population as it is. Having families of 15 kids is suicide and causing real problems. What woman wants to be pregnant for so long anyway? Or am I missing something?

The real problems can come fast and furious. How carbon affects us needs to be easy for even the most illiterate to understand.
And carbon might just not be a bad thing to have, seeing as no CO2 would make the planet uninhabitable.
Too much is easy to understand if we simply make it real. But compared to the other issues which are being ignored, CO2 pales by comparison.

Ozone was once feared, until understood. "The great Ozone hole" was going to end it all!
But we then learned and we still need to. Global warming has stopped the need and action for preparing for normal climate change, let alone man made contributions to it. Mostly because it has stopped and the earth has been cooling down since 1998.

CO2 however has not stopped and continues to be a problem, and has been before.
This is not the first time in earth's history and may not be the last. If we continue to deforest, and stop emitting CO2 we could trip the environment into a much more serious problem. We simply need to learn and understand much more.

There is much more to climate change than CO2, a lot more. And unfortunately blaming ourselves, and saying it is what it isn't will do us no good.
We cannot control climate change, in the bigger sense. We can however prepare for it, and overpopulation is driving every part of the climate change issue to disaster.

Merlyn

[Kernos]

Merlyn, The only thing in that mess I can find to be based on sound science and scientific principles is your statement "...overpopulation is driving every part of the climate change issue to disaster". THough I would put it differently.

I agree that the population issue is ignored when it comes to solutions to stop and decrease the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, CO2 and CH4 being those humans can most easily control with the right political will.

[Merlyn]

Hi Kernos,
The climate gate issues fall apart over a few issues and missed the real issues.
The international community was largely ignored for the sake of the already developed countries in essence to the point of Co2 and the predictions of global warming.
Despite what Obama stated "The discussion is over" it is far from over.
Even if the US and China agreed to stop pollution, the real issues of natural climate change were left untouched.
And, the issues of why glaciers really melt is totally missed. They can melt even if the climate stays cold due to soot, Co2 and deforestation.

The rather self centered results of the issue are missing the whole picture. As example; oil has indirect connections with food supply. Cheap fuel drives a dislocated economy dependant on transportation. Commuting to work, supporting urban sprawl, making electric-dependant cities and all are part of the expanding problem.

Food production, water and basic needs just seem irrelevant to the ideas of global warming. And if we do go into another ice age cycle, these issues amplify.
The population issue is what makes the problem. Forever adding thousands more people a day on the earth, than those who die is driving the problem to catastrophic levels.
What is a poor family thinking, bringing large numbers into our world? Even a fairly well-off family cannot properly support large family in most cases. This then is going to be who's problem? Government? The ideology behind unsupported overpopulation is sinister at best, now. Hundreds of years ago it may have been a good idea with food and resource in abundance, to create and make sustainable culture. However now this is totally wrong thinking.

The earth is a limited resource. That is the bottom line.
Man made or not, climate change is a very real, and uncontrollable fact.
Polluting the earth is a very real way to diminish our resource.

I am waiting to see when we begin sending our trash in space and to the moon.... Oh wait, we already do that.

Merlyn