Huge International Protests On Climate Change

[nimrod]

This is the nasty bit! I dont know what it's like in the UK, but here in Sweden you cant get a research grant for questioning anthropogenic global warming. Such an application would ruin your career....

To me, thats really crappy science. More like politics or religion actually...

That rings bells. Question any 'accepted' orthodoxy with anything approaching effectivelness, and you're likely to become persona non grata with the 'establishment. When was it ever any different? There are a whole gamut of issues like that here in the UK. The thought police are everywhere and you'd damn well better not cross them - or else.

As you say - in this context it really is scary science.

[nimrod]

.... And this is exactly the problem. If you only give people the peak oil message, they will think we can just shift over to coal. On the other hand, if you only give them the climate change message, they won't see the urgency of the matter, as people in general seem to believe climate change will be a long way off and not affect them directly.

.
Frankly, in the absence of oil or equivalent and expanding access to renewable alternatives (in other words a pipe dream when you look closely at the constraints) I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of persuading anyone not to use coal. And especially so when the persuading is being done to 'developing' countries by 'developed' countries who have achieved their 'development' by profligate use, not to say squandering, of the finite and soon to start diminishing-in-availability resource - oil.

I may turn out be too pessimistic about timing the onset of the worst effects of peak oil but I know this much: when they do hit, any bleating/persuation about the evils of fossil fuels (coal, wood etc) is likely to be forced onto the back-burner (excuse the pun) in favour taking the steps necessary to simply survive.

[peaky]

So, is the climate changing in a way which should concern us? If no, then no problem. If yes, is it anthropogenic? How can I tell who's right and not? If the IPCC say that yes it is and yes we're doing it then why are they saying this - what is their motivation? Is it just to keep them all in jobs?

I was at a climate change talk in Brighton on Friday evening and there was a guy from Sussex University (Dominic .. can't remember his surname) who said he'd been analysing climate change for 15 years but had always been skeptical that it was human induced until about 3 years ago and now he's changed his mind. I asked why and (it was physically a little awkward to hear his reply in the room, but) I think he said "because of the satellite scans".

Those of you who don't think it's caused by us, are you saying that the increase in extreme weather events is just part of the way things have always been and we're just caught up in it at this moment in history?

[snow hope]

Yes, to your last question peaky. Normal climate change. 6,000 years ago, temperatures were 2c warmer than now. 800 years ago temperatures were at least as warm as they are now. 300 years ago we were in the Little Ice Age and the Thames often froze over and fairs were held on it in the winter. In the 1940s temperatures dipped and did not start to warm up again unitl the 80s. So much so that some of the scientists who now say we are experiencing AGW, said 20 years ago we were about to enter the next glacial (ice-age). In the 1920s and 1930s we had a warm couple of decades.

This is what the normal climate does. It changes all the time. 20,000 years ago we had ice more than a mile thick covering most of Britain! Where I live in N Ireland it was thought to be 2 miles thick.

I am sure that many of the people who believe that mankind is causing the climate of the earth to change are completely genuine. There are also a fair number of genuine people who doubt this. Some people say that 95% of climate scientists are convinced of AGW - this is like me saying that 50% of climate scientists do not believe in AGW. I can't prove it and neither can they!

I know a couple of scientists who have studied the climate and they are sceptical that mankind has the ability to impact the climate of the earth. I hear some people say that "the consensus" is that AGW is beyond doubt. This is like the Saudis saying that the Gawhar field will go on producing increasing yields for the next 20 years. Very hard to prove or disprove.

You have to make up your own mind. I am sceptical of AGW, I think it is normal climate cycles and I expect to see a cooler period over the coming two decades. By then, we will be back to an imminent ice-age.

[mikepepler]

So if anthropogenic climate change isn't happening, what does that mean for all the fuss about CO2 emissions? Why are people keen on cutting back, and how are they managing to persuade governments of the need to, even though they'd rather not? Surely any good evidence that it wasn't happening would be jumped on by goverments and businesses all around the world so they don't have to go through the painful process of curring back on CO2? I can't believe it's just because they're too scared to challenge the scientific status quo - there's too much money at stake for businesses and economies.

Or is it because they all know about peak oil, but have decided that's too unpleasant to tell people about, so climate change and CO2 will be a good cover story to push the required measures through?

Or something else?

[MacG]

Or is it because they all know about peak oil, but have decided that's too unpleasant to tell people about, so climate change and CO2 will be a good cover story to push the required measures through?

I belive it's very close, but I dont belive it's a conscious choice. I mean, honestly, we KNEW about oil, it's origins and depletion, didn't we? Even before "waking up". This thing with "beeing aware" of PeakOil and such is more about ending denial rather than beginning thinking.

Our entire western HiTech civilisation, many scientific discoveries and all other things we take pride in are built on depleting energy sources. Of course we dont want to think about it! Only trouble is this cognitive dissonance thing which get harder and harder to handle, specially when entering the decline phase. One way to handle it is by diversion - AGW, here I come!

I dont belive in any big conspiracy, I only belive in fundamental human psychological processes. Speaking about that, anyone remember Odysseus? When he had the wrong winds for sailing where he wanted to go, he sacrificed a couple of oxen to some god, and voil? - wind changed to his advantage. Rain dances anyone? It is very deep in som animistic soul of ours that we are so important that our actions affect the weather.

[nimrod]

So, is the climate changing in a way which should concern us?

I don't know is the short answer. But I vividly remember my mother's constant refrain through the 50's and 60's following one particularly vicious winter, some oddly hot summers and other alleged peculiarities about the weather - It was all on account of the regular atmospheric nuclear tests that were going on then, she would say.

I incline to Snow-Hope's prognosis. But even if AGW IS occuring, it's precise effects are disputable to a degree that makes agreement on the steps necessary to halt it very problematical indeed. Just how much economic/'lifestyle change' are people prepared to accept and for what degree of result - Halting AGW? slowing it? reversing it? - and all 'just in case' it is happening.

PO is different. on present trajectory, and in the absence of supply constraints, global Crude oil consumption is set to double in 30 or so years. Even the most optimistic PO sceptics concede that peak production is likely to be hit at around the same time. So the whole issue becomes far simpler in campaigning/education/awareness terms.

My own view is that we are probably at the peak about now. But I'm not going to get precious about it. I simply invite people to study the evidence from the likes of CERA and the USGS on the one hand through the IEA to ASPO on the other. You only have to be open-minded and honest in the endeavour to see, with crystal clarity, that we are heading for an almighty energy crunch and that the only possible way of substantially mitigating its effects is to start a crash program of energy useage reduction right now. That makes it far and away the more important issue in my book.

All the climate-change hoo-ha certainly makes campaigners feel good about themselves, but IMHO it only serves to confuse and dissipate energy that would be better directed elsewhere.

Also - I believe that most governments are as aware of PO as anybody. They are simply at a loss to know how to address it politically. Unlike MacG, I do believe in conspiracies though - at least to the extent that governments consistently hide their real motives whilst making strenuous efforts to conceal awkward information from the public - they are masters at obfuscation and blame shifting. On matters deemed to involve 'State Security' - such 'conspiricies' pass from administration to administration (and their servants the CS). Just ask yourself what the hell we are supposed to be doing in Iraq - with PO firmly in mind.

[RevdTess]

All the climate-change hoo-ha certainly makes campaigners feel good about themselves, but IMHO it only serves to confuse and dissipate energy that would be better directed elsewhere.

Amen to that. The PO evidence and potential impact is so in-your-face compared to the vague hand-waving of human-induced climate change. To believe in the latter at the moment I'd have to make a leap of faith equivalent to suddenly believing in God. I certainly couldn't campaign on it.

Then again, there are people who have the exact opposite position - they are total believers in the utter doom of climate change but insist on believing that technology will save us with respect to oil.

[clv101]

Indeed, I've read a fair bit over the years on climate change and haven't come across evidence or argument for anthropogenic CC anywhere near as convincing as those for peak oil. I think this is why I'm sometimes a little disappointed by all the energy that is levelled at the CC issue whilst the majority of the people won't give peak oil the time of day - despite the evidence being clearer, the arguments more convincing and the actual actions that should be taken having a very close correlation with the actions the CC campaigners are wanting anyway!

[GD]

I'm sometimes a little disappointed by all the energy that is levelled at the CC issue whilst the majority of the people won't give peak oil the time of day - despite the evidence being clearer, the arguments more convincing and the actual actions that should be taken having a very close correlation with the actions the CC campaigners are wanting anyway!

Absolutely!
I?ve been in touch with my local Greenpeace & FOE and they don?t seem to want to know. I?m baffled!

[nimrod]

I'm sometimes a little disappointed by all the energy that I?ve been in touch with my local Greenpeace & FOE and they don?t seem to want to know. I?m baffled!

I'm personally pretty disillusioned with Greenpeace.

Their speciality is to undertake spectacular, eye-catching stunts which raise their public profile, providing a platform and audience for their spokesmen., which is fair enough, provided:

1. The medium (stunt) is not confused with the message

2. The message is consistent, credible and accurate.

I well remember the hoo ha over the decommissioning of the Brent Spa oil storage buoy when it became redundant following completion of the Sullom Voe pipeline in 1996. Shell had decided to sink the structure in the deep Atlantic Ocean. Greenpeace objected on gounds of potential pollution risks. They mounted a very clever and successful campaign which resulted in the structure being towed to a Norwegian Fjord and dismantled at huge cost (@?100 million) and risk of worse pollution + human injury.

Greenpeace remained immune to the simple facts that the structure contained (at most perhaps 25-50 tons of 'pollutants' - Crude residue + other bits and pieces), whereas several hundred thousand tons of Oil had been sunk with Allied shipping losses in the Atlantic during WW2 with no known polluting effects to this day.

Their campaign was clearly good for their profile - and probably paid for itself handsomely from donations made during the campaign. The campaign was fundamentally dishonest though - but hey! - lets not let the facts get in the way of a good campaign - especially when it's raising so much lovely money. It's that sort of dishonesty that really pisses me off and it's not an isolated case either. The animal rights movement is another cause with groups that are masters at it - as are most political parties to a greater or lesser extent. The methodology: Stir up moral panic/outrage/indignation with plausible sounding, populist half-truths (downright lies will do at a pinch); demonise the people allegedly responsible; as preludes to demanding/initiating government action against them.

The thing is, they MEAN well, conveniently forgetting that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Here's a link that summarises the Brent Spa saga for anyone interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spar_oil_rig

[SherryMayo]

Re global warming - I disagree with the skeptics on this site. On the other hand I haven't got the energy for a long debate, but at heart it is about radiation balance, not weather. I have a buddy who is a paleoclimatologist who is very concerned about global warming despite his knowledge of past climatic variations.

The graphs that were posted of past climate (on another thread?) earlier neglected to include the almost vertical uptick that represents the recent warming. I'm not going to get stuck into this further here but recommend realclimate.com for more informed debate (go to the comments section for comments by skeptics - the site is run by scientists who are convinced by anthropogenic global warming - but the skeptics respond at length in the comments).

It should be noted that a lot of the skeptical side of the debate (though not all - to be fair to genuine scientific skeptics like the Pielke's) has been manufactured by US-based think tanks, not by scientists - check out sourcewatch/prwatch etc and follow the money.

[skeptik]

The graphs that were posted of past climate (on another thread?) earlier neglected to include the almost vertical uptick that represents the recent warming.

Which may or may not exist. Thats the point. It has been argued that the hockey stick is an artifact of the method used to analyse the data.

http://www.climate2003.com/pdfs/2004GL012750.pdf

Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 32(3), Feb 12 2005, copyright 2005 American Geophysical Union (doi: 2004GL012750). Further reproduction or electronic distribution is not permitted. This is a preprint of the GRL paper that shows Mann's program mines for hockey sticks and overstates the statistical significance of the final result. As of today (July 22, 2005) there have been 4 technical comments submitted to GRL in response. We submitted replies to all 4, and they were sent out for refereeing. Two of the comments have been rejected by GRL."

Its not a case of pure logic like a peak of global oil production, which has to exist if one accepts that the world is finite and that crude is not somehow being continuously magicked into existence...

The uptick is based on a lot of proxy data and complex analysis including a lot of 'adjustments' or fudge factors as I perfer to think of them. How the data is interpretted is arguable. Mann (who producced the famous 'hockey stick' graph) has already had to issue corrigenda (published in Nature) for his slop under criticism from Ross Mckitrick and Steven McIntyre. The Hockey stick graph is the only one of many published studies of past temperatires which makes the (at least previously) widely accepted Mediaeval Maximum mysteriously disapear..Its not as clear cut as it is often presented.

once you've persuaded me convincingly that the 'uptick' is real then we can start discussing how much of it is anthropogenic and how much natural. I doubt there will ever be an answer to that one.

Personally, compared with the potential problems associated with Peak Oil I dont think its worth discussing. Nothing will ever be done to significantly reduce CO2 emissions. If we accept the CO2 hypothesis as it is presented, people will not starve or freeze themselves to death or voluntarily make themselves significantly poorer to make the world cooler in 2100. The Kyoto limits (even if adhered to, which they wont be) will make no signficant difference.

Who pays for any research is irrelevant. Mentioning it constitutes an ad hominem attack. One could say the same thing about all the climate scientists who have garnered many billions of government and charity money supporting 'global warming' research over the last 15 years. Nice work if you can get it! Thanks, Al. All that matters is the data and arguments . If its good research I dont really care if Aldolph Hilter, Pol Pot or Ghenghis khan paid for it.

Personally Im convinced that anthropogenic climate change does exist, just as Im convinced that climate also changes naturally, both cyclically and erratically, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly. The changes are both local, regional and global. for instance on a regional level, Alaska is currently getting warmer while the interior of Antarctica is getting colder. The Mediterranean basin is getting drier while the Southern Sahara is getting wetter (or at least noticably greener)

Im also convinced that we'll never be able to disentangle the two effects. We dont and never will understand the processes which constitute 'climate' nearly enough to make accurate predictions for 100 years down the line, anymore than the stock markets 100 years down the line. The 2 problems are similarly complex, as well as, I think, being equally poorly understood.

one good link deserves another...
http://climateaudit.org/
http://www.john-daly.com/
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4216

make your own minds up folks... I'd ignore what the bunch of burocrats called the IPCC , environmentalists and environment ministers have to say and take a look at the raw data and basic science, if you have the patience. The recent reconcilliation of balloon and satellite data ( which had previously contradicted eachother in terms of the climate models) is good support for a recent warming trend. going further back things get more murky...
-----------------------------

and finally finally (added later) talking of murk...

Phil Jones, well known climate 'scientist', whose work heavily underpins the last IPCC report on climate change, in an email to Warwick Hughes, Australian sceptic :-

"Even if WMO (World Meterological Association) agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

okey dokey... never challenge the priesthood. They get irrational and start frothing when challenged by mere mortals... mere mortals should not be allowed to find something wrong with their work... science? lol

...and why would WMO not agree to the public release of bog standard meteorological data? State secret or something? Only the priesthood who can be relied on to give it the 'correct' interpretation allowed to get a look see?

http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/

[SherryMayo]

A rebuttal of M&M's "hockeystick debunking" is found here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121

This site is run by climate scientists (including but not restricted to Mann) *not* IPCC bureaucrats or environmentalists. None of the links you gave are run by climate scientists. I think you would do better to cite the Pielkes (father and son) as more credible semi-skeptics with similar objections to yours re weather and chaos. http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/
Or these guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sc ... _consensus

Ross Mckitrick and Steven McIntyre who are the originators of the "debunking" and of the websites you use are not climate scientists (a retired miner and an economist) and the latter is from one of the conservative thinktanks I mentioned earlier. This does not necessarily detract from their conclusions but it gives me the same concerns that pronouncements from environmentalists or the IPCC give you. They have done a good job of getting Mann to check his methods but have not significantly changed the conclusions (see link above). They are a bit like Lynch WRT peak oil in that he makes some reasonable complaints about Hubberts peak methodology (in peer reviewed journals) but these don't change the general conclusions even if you take them into account. Other "hockeystickers" have used different methods than Mann to give much the same result.

We really need skeptics, though, that are skeptical on a proper scientific level . Their objections have in some cases resulted in improvements and refinements to climate models for instance - it is all part of the process.

John Daly (RIP) who you linked above is a well meaning bloke but he is also not a climate scientist, he confuses local measurements with global trends.

Re oil depletion (eg your third link) - give the long time frames and the vast quantities of coal available oil depletion may only make a temporary dent in carbon emissions. A bigger dent would only occur if there was a total collapse OR a major effort to reduce emissions. My hope is for the latter but fear (aside from total collapse) is an attempt at business as usual using coal-to-liquids.

It is worth drawing attention to oil depletion in emissions scenarios, however, there are many emissions scenarios available (eg so climate models can be run for various "what if" scenarios) which would more than encompass the range of possibilties re peak oil.

[nimrod]

Personally, compared with the potential problems associated with Peak Oil I dont think its worth discussing. <Snip>

Personally Im convinced that anthropogenic climate change does exist, just as Im convinced that climate also changes naturally, both cyclically and erratically, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly. <Snip>

Im also convinced that we'll never be able to disentangle the two effects. we dont and never will understand the processes which constitute 'climate' nearly enough to make accurate predictions for 100 years down the line <snip>

okey dokey... never challenge the priesthood. They get irrational and start frothing when challenged by mere mortals... mere mortals should not be allowed to find something wrong with their work... science? lol

Cracking post there Skeptic. Hit loads of nails squarely on the head.

I've no wish to fall out with AGW people either. They no doubt mean well. But as you say, even successful FULL implementation of the Kyoto protocol only scratches the surface of the alleged problem. I just think it would be much more beneficial to mitigating AGW (if it IS a serious problem) were they to devote equivalent energy to raising awareness of PO - that's all.

give the long time frames and the vast quantities of coal available oil depletion may only make a temporary dent in carbon emissions. A bigger dent would only occur if there was a total collapse OR a major effort to reduce emissions. My hope is for the latter but fear (aside from total collapse) is an attempt at business as usual using coal-to-liquids

Good points. I think there WILL be desperate attemtps to re-engineer our dependance on oil and maintain 'business-as-usual' through coal and a host of other 'substitutes'. I also think that no amount of climate change warnings are likely to change that. However, It is pretty clear to me that they will also fail and are failing. From my studies of the available evidence (and that includes the most wide-eyed pollyannas) there is only one way to avoid your 'total collapse' and that involves major and immediate programs to reduce overall energy usage. So far as I can see, the 'alternatives' to oil (including coal liquifaction, Tar-sands, shales, nuclear/electric/hydrogen etc etc) CANNOT possibly maintain anything like our present levels of dependance upon cheap transportation - let alone fertilizer production and other agricultural energy usage. The implications of that are dramatic changes - forced or otherwise - to pretty well everything we regard as defining progress/economic development right now.

I don't have any detailed proposals and, if I'm honest, I frankly feel that PO mitigation will remain reactive and a million miles from optimised, with all that implies for major resource conflicts and social disruption. I just feel that the evidence for PO is so "in your face" - as someone said earlier, that if anything can be forced onto the non-clandestine political agenda, this ought to be it.

Won't hold my breath though