It's been a bad week for deniers

I certainly would not ask uforya to stop offering his opinions here or elsewhere. If he disagrees with the national-security report I referenced above, his disagreement is with its authors not with me.

Of course, he&I do disagree on many things related to climate, energy and carbon, but that's OK. The 'grand experiment' is underway (how much CO2 can we add to the atmosphere and not revisit the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum?). Fossil carbon emissions by the US continue to rise, along with almost all other large nations. It seems quite likely that we will find the answer to the question.

With enough luck, we'll find that the answer is 'a lot'. Or we'll find out otherwise and take the foot off the accelerator before we make the task of recovery unpleasantly large..

Without enough luck, the enviro-zealots will be (among those) cursed later for not being forceful enough. Indeed it is an interesting time to be alive. Made more interesting by reading and trying to comprehend science, if I may dare to say so.

 

I might just note, that I have never suggested that anyone should not be allowed to opine,, merely that I contend he (Ufour) is wrong in his opinion.

 

Speaking about opinions of the US military on climate and energy 'futures'. In another PC environmental thread djras (I think) drew our attention to a 2010 US Joint Forces Command report linked to here

When should we pursue energy transition? | SmartPlanet

or just skip the smartplanet affinity web site and click straight through to

http://www.peakoil.net/files/JOE2010.pdf

I think it is worth looking at.

 

Uforya tagline is an example of cutting both ways. Entitled to own opinions? Ubetcha.

Own facts? this is where the science upsets Pangloss' dream.

 

hey lets be optimistic as long as it is not Permian–Triassic extinction event..

isn't China #1 now, not US? and India #3?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2

 

O.K. fellas, I've spent countless (by my standards) hours on this site in the past countering the links presented by others with my own. I have discovered that, with very few exceptions, my linked sources went unread.

After having ignored what I presented, I was then treated to ad hominem attack rather than informed 'converesation'. The Great Arbiter could always be counted on to condescendingly disparage the sources I presented. He never read them, of course. His opinion was all he needed. I see that hasn't changed.

Now, having said that, let us click through to the second link above to find in the first paragraph:

...This document is speculative in nature and does not suppose to predict what will happen in the next twenty-five years. Rather, it is intended to serve as a starting point for discussions about the future security environment at the operational level of war...​

Do a web search of something like 'the truth about peak oil' and you might find about 3 million links. I am going to tell you that there are plenty of assertions ranging from, "Oh my God, we're doomed" to, "We can expect oil reserves to last at least a hundred years" to, "There is no end in sight."​

Let me be up front. I no longer have a Prius. I came to this site regularly when I did own one and occasionally became embroiled in spirited 'converesation'. ​

I was once suspended for suggesting that Al Gore had a personal and political agenda and didn't know squat about the climate! There's your free speech on a privately owned site. In other words, conform to our ideas - we don't appreciate the truth.​

I just dropped by to see if Mr. Ickes was still as rigidly uninformed and ideological. I see he is. I'm sure the rest of you are fine fellows. I leave you all to your own devices. ​

If you have any interest in my views, they are all available in past threads and you can find them. All of them, that is, that have not been disappeared by eFusco. Yes, he deleted an ENTIRE thread of hundreds of postings because Mr. Ickes whined that I retaliated in two instances with the equally disparaging 'doughnut punchers' to counter his constant use of 'teabaggers' to disparage patriotic tea partiers.​

So, in short, I just stopped in briefly to confirm that nothing has changed. It hasn't. Well, except the weather (and the climate). Enjoy the echoes!​

One last thing. I'm not sure why the video posted has any relevance to this thread, but if my guess is correct, here is a counterpooint:​

...watching all of the parts might further your knowlege or understanding. I'm not holding my breath - to reiterate Jeff Id.​

 

I don't have a Prius any more either. In fact no car at all. It works for me here, but it would be inconvenient in the US. So I can't recommend it to most readers here.

Glad that uforya highlighted the 'speculative', even though it should not have been missed by other readers of the document. People who think about the future, and try to prepare for a range of options are all speculating, more or less Aspects of the future that are not speculative are...well you can all come up with lists. Mine draw heavily on physics, chemistry, biology, stuff like that.

The degree of warming we might anticipate at 500, 700, 900 ppm CO2 are also speculative. But as they are derived from physics of radiative transfer and the chemistry of paleotemperature proxies, they are science-based speculation as opposed to ...what? Speculation speculation? Perhaps someone else can say it in a fairer way.

But the two sciencey things above both suggest 3 oC per CO2 doubling. And yes, the oceans do behave differently year to year, and their heat flux varies and so every year is not locked in to be hotter than the year before. But the decades average that ocean thing out, so the decadal air temperature should increase (forced by CO2 and amplified by water vapor), and...they do.

Ad hominems (real or imagined) don't change that, and they don't change played -out oil fields. Looking to the future, I speculate that tar sands could really extend our access to fossil fuels. But I also speculate that this might not be the best course for us to follow, unless a substantial part of the resulting CO2 is sequestered not emitted. But, in fact CO2 sequestration is not happening (yet), so there you go.

We are living in uforya's preferred world, except for some inconveniences like the Clean water act and clean air act. Seems to me he has what he wants, but perplexingly he is unhappy about it.

Cyclo, China has been top CO2 emitter since about 2007. Can download the country-level data from DOE or IEA. I don't think we could redo the Permian Great dying - the biosphere has gotten a lot better organized (and stabilizing) since then. Actually I am depending on the biosphere to keep sequestering CO2 at the current (amazingly large) rate. Without that blessing...well, I'd rather not speculate.

Sorry to all, that I cannot view your youtube links. That site is blocked in my country of residence. Y'know what I miss on youtube though? Aviation videos. I do miss flying the little airplanes, though their CO2 emissions are crazy high. Ah the guilty pleasures...

 

not so sure. Putting Siberian traps aside it was the complete melt of ice caps and stop of oceanic currents what killed the life. It is not inconceivable the polar caps can melt and cause another planetary methane belch.

If you look at CO2, it is not that bad, but if you add CH4 from permafrost and oceanic methane clathrate, there is less cause for optimism.

 

i will jump in middle of this conversation to toss a few cents in FWIW; listening to SciFri on umm what day was it?? oh ya!! Friday the 4th. it was mentioned that Scientists now believe with "90% Certainty" that the 2010 Russian Heatwave was made much worse by effects of Mankind upon the homestead.

pretty great debate on what the phrase meant and that it was of course, clarified several times that absolute proof (which many deniers require, but only so they can better reinforce their stand. it nevers seems to be acceptable in any circumstance) is not possible but evidence is mounting that we are guilty. whether it be criminal (which will never happen since money is the law and oil has all the money) or conscious-able.

so once again we can still say that "hey, i threw the ball at the picture window and it did not break, so i am not doing anything wrong!!"

 

is this a personal medical issue? just wondering because 90% of the diagnosis depends on a patient's history. not giving accurate information or failing to volunteer pertinent information simply makes their job nearly impossible.

if you want your Doctor to fail, i can assure you, it is not difficult at all

 

dont let the temperature today lull you into complacency tomorrow. ever see the beach 5 minutes before a Tsunami?

 

we had a similar discussion on russian heatwave in diff thread, and it boils down that when you are looking at GW and indirectly connected climatic events be it the atlantic hurricanes, mid-west tornados or russian heatwave or any other naturally occurring anomalies all you can do is talk about increased effects and probabilities. It is almost impossible to prove something with 100% certainty.

On other hand if a <denier> makes a claim that it is not related, to have scientific credibility, he/she has the same burden of proof. How could you prove that your hypothesis (russian heatwave) was not worsen by effects of GW? and your proof has to meet the same level of scrutiny.

there seems to be a huge disconnect in understanding that scientific method is not court of law, where you presumed to be innocent and the burden of proof lays on other side. In science any time you make a claim it is your responsibility to supply proof.

 

i think the climate change issue is difficult to grasp globally because we like to think we think globally but most of our thinking is predicated on how we live. the seemingly imperceptible changes we live thru on a daily basis. iow, we reason locally. we see locally. TV has broadened our horizons, but trust me, its a false education.

i can read this and that and increasingly i begin to notice that i am reading what someone else wants me to read. for Russian heatwave, unless its a native Russian relaying the information, all we have is numbers. sure numbers help but we are never provided all the numbers. we only see what the author wants us to see.

our environment needs sooo very little to make great changes. does anyone really think some super massive flood created the Grand Canyon? no of course not. no one thinks that because we have so much data to refute that type of thinking but is it really all that far-fetched?? look at the result. its a big trench with water at the bottom. what does a casual observer see 300,000 year after fact?

i know a guy who was born and raised in Forks, WA (ya the movie place) its considered one of the most inhospitable areas for boating anywhere in the US. rocky coast, swift currents, etc, makes landings in the area a suicide mission.

a few years ago, he told me he went to see his Grandfathers shack that was built on the beach. it was put there for shelter against the relentless wind and rain that pounded the coast (they do get some rain!... btw, its also home to the ONLY rain forest that still exists in the Continental US) he was shocked to see that beach the shack sat on was gone.

now this is due a one foot rise in sea level? after all, the time frame is only like 35-40 years. so how does that happen? the area has been hit with windspeeds averaging 40+ mph and 200 inches of rain for EVER!! so how did one foot of water do so much??

well, that is how it works. a one foot change is like a one degree arc change. an inch here means a mile there.

so, we are back to the burden of proof...but for what? warm weather?? well when you put it that way? ok, so it gets hot sometimes, sometimes it does not.

burning oil is popular because it does a really good job at its purpose. its like taking the freeway across town to avoid mid day cross town traffic. but the goodness of the idea has its limitations. i recommend slowing down since we see an accident ahead and continuing at 65 mph is not advised.

now we can debate the accidents presence since we cannot see it yet. we only have a growing sea of brake lights and 102.3 traffic report blaring in our ears but that is still all assumptions made.

or we can change station...100.9 on the FM dial; story about economic crisis, growing fed deficit, increase in gas pricess, nooo!!! not helping

change station..

96.1 FM report on study showing link between city dwellers breathing the "good stuff" and shortened life spans, increased medical costs which "they" dont pay ( i wonder who does?)

ok, radio aint working turn it off

 

Dave, you should understand much of the pushback is from the scientists at NOAA, not some crazy deniers that don't understand science. Your statement can not be really made from the study. Here is what the author of the study said

RealClimate: On record-breaking extremes

Then they do a nudge nudge wink wink that they think its warming because you know it has to be.

Dole et. al. did do an attribution study and looked at global warming and climate variability as it related to the russian heat wave. This study disputes some of the data, but as you see NOAA finds this critism does not change the results, which is current climatic models of global warming do not attribute the Russian Heat Wave to warming.
Scientific Assessment of 2010 Western Russian Heatwave - Additional Information

What the study that supposedly proved global warming caused the russian heatwave actually said was local warming gave moscow a 5% chance of hitting a new high in 2010, while a model with only random weather and not climate variability or climate change would have only had a 1% chance. The Dole et. al. atrribution study said that climate variability and weather variability were much higher than in the event than any global warming influence, and tried to test whether global warming could help explain the climate variability at the time of the heatwave, they did not find that it did. Note the new study and the attribution study both can be interpreted as saying climate variability is involved with both the Moscow record high and the Russian heat wave.

So scientists that look at the evidence will tell you the new study does not test attribution, so that reporting and your conclusion are not supported.

Absolutely. but if there is a little muslem boy on the street and your window breaks, I would hope you would check to see if he was even playing baseball at the time before blaming him for the broken window.

 

ok but all i present here is not to accept or deny something that cannot be proven, only observed. because we are simply talking about something that we "think" we know about. but we can only explain its actions afterward with success although we spend a fortune attempting to predicts its actions in advance and that is the weather.

with a billion $ in technology behind them, meteorologists frequently get it wrong...very wrong. and that is just a few hours in advance. not predicting what is going to happen decades from now.

my contention is that no matter what evidence is presented, the sides on the issue are unlikely to show any demonstrably noticeable change...

but in any scientific observation, conclusion, determination or whatever else you choose to categorize this. there must be someone that has to ask "why is this?" when those questions stop, the issue is resolved which i think is not a wise decision to make since once again, we are talking about something like we know what we are talking about

the deniers have actually been counterproductive to their task; refuting GCC. it has caused scientists to dig farther and farther and the results have benefited them.

deniers simply say prove it. but have no other real ammunition

 

Well you started out taking a study that did not look into the causes and was misreported, and then talked about deniers. The deniers in this case are actually the good scientists Dole, Barriopedro and their teams that actually assume global warming in their analysis. You should look at what they came up with before you claim we don't really know, and it is really likely the reporters misreporting and not the scientist looking at the climate are more likely to have looked at the event fairly.

Your taxpayer money did fund these studies. They did not take fortunese though, and IMHO it is worth it to help try to understand these weather events and not just take some politicians word for it. My cousin heads one of the modeling teams, and they do not have these models down to the granularity to accurately predict these weather events, that doesn't mean we should stop working on the models.

There is good evidence that melting of the arctic ice has at least partial attribution to ghg. There is not evidence that the record cold temperature in January in Oklahoma or the Russian heat wave can be attributed to ghg. Sometimes things just happen, we should not call people deniers that don't think these things were not caused by ghg, especially when people have looked at the evidence. Muller and Linzden are scientists and sometimes play devil's advocate, this is healthy. We should not just leave science to al gore and phil jones.

Totally agree here.

IMHO politicians like imhofe and gore that take oposite side are counterproductive. When we get down to some of the skeptical scientists, well that is what science is all about.

Are you including Dole, Linzden, Muller in that denier camp? Or do you just mean the politicians and weathermen.

 

that i do not keep tabs on. the whole issue was brought up to begin with as a redirect away from the real issue and that is BIG OIL REVENUE

 

That is an entirely different manner. My objection is the portrail of scientists like muller as denialists because that are partially funded by the koch brothers and actually have legitamate criticism of gore's exageration. That was the point of the climate progress piece that seemed echoed in the news item with the idea that he couldn't get away with his denial. Now having good physicists at major universities take oil money is only bad if it taints their research. Since this obviously didn't it should be a dig at that political blog that made the insinuation.

On the next order, which you want to talk about, will this change oil revenue. I would say its unlikely. I don't think we learned anything in this that we didn't already expect. The Koch brothers gain legitamacy in their message by having good research done. This only hurts them if somehow this was a slam against current science that made burning oil look worse. It looks exactly the same as in march. Now it does help undermine watts up with that who said they would trust it and now are going back on their words, and it undermines climate progress. But these blogs seem to be followed by believers and they may continue to believe whatever is pushed out there, whether it is correct scientifically or not.

Now would an oil tax help the environment, I definitely think so, as would a legitimate cap and trade of pollution from electrical generation. I don't think it will happen, nor do i think the cap and tax passed by the house then rejected would have reduced much greenhouse gas. This is all independent of name calling.

 

oh i did not say this decision would change oil revenue. the entire debate was generated by Big Oil to deflect interest from their pocketbook to a topic they knew would rage on forever. more eyes on GCC means less eyes on them.

they knew decades ago that burning oil would change our climate. they just always assumed they had plenty of time.

 

since it is not being put to rest, here we go:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Moscow"]Climate of Moscow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

monthly averages statistics for 1948-2010 (in russian) http://www.pogoda.ru.net/data/27612.zip

The heatwave may have been a fluke, however the averages were steadily rising well before; and not only in July throughout the year. And July wasn't the only record setting month in 2010, so was August and November which cannot be blamed all on one heatwave. April, May and June were not record setting but were 2-3C warmer then avg.

it does not take a genius to realize that if annual avg goes up by +4F, records will follow.

There is no proof that heatwave was caused by global warming; however the record highs would not have been record highs if not for additional +4F contribution.

The actual raw unadjusted data (as provided) seem to be in disagreement with Dole et al NOAA data interpretation. One can only guess if it were due to inaccuracy in NOAA data or is a result of "special data preparation".

We definitely need to see all e-mails related to Dole et al study. :rockon: