New study on climate change

Um...that people who aren't climate scientists can have strong opinions. Opinions mind you, not backed up by science...because they publish those opinions in an interview in Pravda that's then recounted other places, rather than in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

There's a lengthy discussion on this fellow in a realclimate comments thread, and, to my mind, he is best summed up in comment 303:

Abdussamatov also argues that the upper layers of the ocean have begun to cool in recent years. That contradicts the actual measurements. Crackpot. He argues that the warming on Mars is due to increased solar activity - when there has been no increased solar activity - and what has been warming Mars is diminished albedo. Crackpot. He argues that in the case of greenhouse gases, they immediately warm up and carry the heat up so that they will have an entirely negligible effect even if their levels are increasing. This strongly suggests a misunderstanding of how greenhouse gases work by absorbtion and re-emission. The level of greenhouse gases (i.e., water vapor) near the surface has been increasing along with the CO2. Doesn’t matter if they get carried up by convection as they would be immediately replace by the greenhouse gases which have cooled. Crackpot.
Three strikes…
Crackpot.

 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

Some old-timers will remember a series of 'bombshell' papers back in 2004 which were going to "knock the stuffing out" of the consensus position on climate change science (see here for example). Needless to say, nothing of the sort happened. The issue in two of those papers was whether satellite and radiosonde data were globally consistent with model simulations over the same time. Those papers claimed that they weren't, but they did so based on a great deal of over-confidence in observational data accuracy (see here or here for how that turned out) and an insufficient appreciation of the statistics of trends over short time periods.


Well, the same authors (Douglass, Pearson and Singer, now joined by Christy) are back with a new (but necessarily more constrained) claim, but with the same over-confidence in observational accuracy and a similar lack of appreciation of short term statistics.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/

 

We are about to come full circle. There are publications of persuasion and there are publications of education. Remember how you opened the thread? It does not take long to figure out that this is a publication of persuasion, that's why I (correctly or incorrectly) basically agreed with your opening comment.

I have little interest in trying to educate anyone directly about the pros and cons of the present GW arguement. With dicipline, it is quite straightforward for someone who truly wants to know the details of CO2 pollution/effects to find out with all the good research available on the internet.....but it is far easier for those who have a preconceived notion to find others that support those notions. (Which are you?) In the former case, I have little to add to the solid material out there, In the latter case I do not want to participate.

 

Pure crap I suspect. Mr Singer is a lonely man in the world of climate science.

 

Thanks for your answers. (You have had to put up with some overly aggressive responses.) Obviously skepticism is needed, but my point is that skepticism needs to be followed up with investigation of the facts. All you examples of GW doom are indeed propaganda, so I agree there, but the original article you linked has the same characteristics as these.

When faced with the same extreme views years ago, I finally figured out that focusing on GW actually misleads from the core issue, CO2 pollution (not a catchy phrase, but I am trying to be accurate). The consequences of dumping all of our combustion products unabated is not going to turn out good, so I am doing what I can do to reduce what I can.

 

I'm not sure I would call them extreme views from years ago. The earth is indeed in a natural cooling cycle (since the peak of the Holocene thermal maximum of about 6,000yra) but anthropogenic inputs have changed that to a warming cycle.

More info on the Holocene maximum



"Looking at the rhythmic curves of past cycles, one could hardly resist the temptation to extrapolate into the future. By the late 1980s, most calculations had converged on the familiar prediction that the natural Milankovitch cycle should bring a mild but steady cooling over the next few thousand years. As climate models and studies of past ice ages improved, however, worries about a swift descent into the next great glaciation — what many in the 1970s had tentatively expected — died away. Improved calculations said that the next ice age would not come naturally within the next ten thousand years or so. The conclusion was backed up in 2004 by a heroic new ice core from Antarctica that brought up data spanning the past eight glacial cycles.(53*)
The scientists who published these calculations always added a caveat. In the Antarctic record, atmospheric CO[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE] levels over the past 750,000 years had cycled between about 180 and 280 parts per million. The level in the late 20th century had now climbed above 370 and kept climbing. (The other main greenhouse gas, methane, was soaring even farther above any level seen in the long ice record.) Greenhouse warming and other human influences seemed strong enough to overwhelm any natural trend. We might not only cancel the next ice age, but launch our planet into an altogether new climate regime."

Source: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm


FL_Prius_Driver,

I do agree with the second half of your post for a number of reasons. Just sitting back to wait and see is not an agreeable action in this situation due to the host of associated consequences of inaction that will affect ecosystems (of which we are a part) and geographic systems worldwide.

 

Your link leads to a reposting of information from a website called globaloscillations run by David Dilley, a denialist noted for existing mainly on the internet in comment threads. Mr. Dilley is a retired weatherman, creating his web site from home in his free time. He has no peer-reviewed publications. This is odd, given that he claims to have proved global warming is a natural cycle that will end by 2010. If there were even the slightest plausibility to his science, his story would tend to exist in sources other than the comments sections of internet web pages (and the comments are often posted by Mr. Dilley himself). I mean, why hasn't Fox news covered him yet? If his science is too implausible for Fox News, it must really be out there.

The science on his site looks about as reliable as that on the water4gas sites that get brought up here every few months.

For a genuine discussion of the issues Mr. Dilley is talking about, see
Past reconstructions: problems, pitfalls and progress

 

Whoa, "Just sitting back to wait and see...." ???? You must have got your posters mixed up. I am doing just the opposite!

It is easy for some (if wrong) to oppose GW just because there are so many "publications" supporting the "GW is not fully understood" approach. This political manipulation affects many rational readers. However, when the focus is shifted to CO2 pollution, then it becomes black and white. The "It's not there" position is not defendable and the rational reader is unlikely to believe that transforming all the worlds oil and coal into CO2 will have no effect.

 

It looks like Singer has at least 100 friends that signed an open letter to UN during the recent conference. I guess these guys are all crap as well?

(Click on link below for the 100 signatories to the open letter)

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164004


Open Letter to the UN Secretary General Concerning Global Warming

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, NY
United States of America

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,
Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The Summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

§ Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

§ The average rate of warming of 0.1 - 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20thcentury falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

§ Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is ‘settled’, significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed to consider work published only through May 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the ‘precautionary principle’ because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

The current UN focus on “fighting climate change”, as illustrated in the November 27th UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to preventglobal climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.

Yours faithfully,

 

No, I was not refering to you with that comment my friend. I was refering to post prior to yours.

For the above:
It seems we have yet "another" contrarian who has decided to "grace" us with opinion. Let me guess, you have no hybrid, you drive a gas guzzler and you have the exact same view point as the other guy (the one with 5 usernames)? lol

 

You are correct that I don't drive a hybrid (my 911 gets 18 mpg city/25 highway) however how does that change the fact most of the signatures of the document all have PhD behind their names?

Are you saying that these people can be bought? Interesting such notable universities of higher learning as Ohio State, Princeton, Univ of OK, Univ of Notre Dame, etc. would have these bought and sold hacks on their facility. The parents of students need to get their money back if these degrees can be bought.

 

Of course they can be bought. We call them biostitutes in my field. Ever seen a Ph.D. in theology? I always find those fairly interesting as well. UC Berkeley is one our local scandals so even "hippy" universities can be bought.

 

Then if that is the case (experts can and are bought) I could make the argument that experts claiming GW is man-made are being bought by policy makers looking to gain added tax revenues and placing economic limits on certain countries.

I do agree all reasonable efforts should be made to lower energy usage. I use energy efficient light bulbs, installed a 90% plus efficient furnace and installed a 15 SEER a/c unit both controlled by a setback programmable thermostat in my newly constructed 2400 ft^2 condo (downsized from 3000 ft^2 house). Having done all of this I also think it is reasonable to question experts that state with 100% certainty that GW is man-made.

At this point I just do not believe either side can state how much (if any) of GW is man-made. The science is just not there. There is no denying our planet has experienced both ups and downs in global temperatures. The last mini ice age ended long before large scale carbon based fuel was being used to power homes and devices to transport people. If the scientists at that time were actually trying to understand the rise in temps coming out of the mini ice age their conclusion could well have been the rise in temp was being caused by increased smog in large European cities.

 

That is why you need to have a large enough sample of scientists making observations. If it were only a few scientists I would be skepitcal as well. Fortunately we can see the effects in the field and test how various gases react in controlled conditions.

"Ice ages" in the past are usually explained by solar flucuations or by gas concentrations and particulates in the atmosphere. That is why it is believed we are in a cooling period yet we are warming instead due to the acculumation of GHGs. Continent placements and shape also played a large part in climate conditions in prehistory as well.

SMOG could have created localized cooling instead of warming in a lot of cases due to the abundance of particulates in the air. This has been studied in the Maldives in the INDOEX study. Models are very tricky though so unless a model has a history of accurate retrodicting I am skeptical of their predictions.

 

Oh my goodness the sacrifices you have made must surely place you well for a Nobel prize.

Just a little maths and not bothering too much with being overly accurate, just indicative.
Lets say you have 10 lights on in your condo 24 hours a day.
Each of those light is fitted with a low energy compact Floro and has a nominal light output equal to a 100 watt incandescent light.
Each globe saves 80 watt-hours of electricity per hour, so you save 800 watt-hours per hour with 10 globes or 19,200 watt-hours per day. That is more significant than I thought it was going to be however I think you can see I am using worst case here, it's unlikely you have 10 lights on at once all that often and you most likely don't run them all day. We will go with these numbers all the same.

You drive a Porsche which you proudly proclaim uses a gallon of petrol to travel just 18 miles in the city and 25 miles on the highway. Lets assume you are pretty average in your vehicle use even though I suspect you are a car enthusiast so likely travel more than the average vehicle miles, we will work with 12,000 miles a year, or 33 miles a day. (I rounded up a little, really it's 32.877 but 33 for an enthusiast.) we will also assume you drive 50% city and 50% highway giving an average of 21.5 MPG consumed meaning you use 1.53 gallons of petrol a day.

A gallon of petrol contains about 60 kilowatt-hours of chemical energy so in your daily energy used by your Porsche is about 92,000 watt-hours of energy! If you drove a Prius you could easily half that number saving a further 46,000 watts of energy a day!!

Now just like how you suffered to have those CF light globes in your condo there is about the same level of sacrifice to convert from a gas guzzler to a Prius. Hey the Prius isn't the ultimate in resource savers, but like the energy saving light globes you can turn it off to save even more.

Tell me again you conserve.