Chill!

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 17 Dec 2010, 16:53

UndercoverElephant wrote:how is it possible for us to be releasing vast amount of greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere, and this not change the climate?

This is the question I've asked many times. The MacGs of this world seem to find the question inconvenient.

I wonder - if MacG's not getting paid directly for his obfuscation - if he's some kind of politician? Or does he come across as too intelligent for that?

Post by **clv101** » 17 Dec 2010, 16:59

UndercoverElephant wrote:The next question is: how is it possible for us to be releasing vast amount of greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere, and this not change the climate?

'cos the climate system isn't that simple? I don't really know where you are going with these questions. Everyone accepts the principles of 'greenhouse effect' and 'greenhouse gas', yes even MacG. That issue was put to bed over a century ago. It is also uncontested that all else held equal increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will increase global temperatures, again I'm confident MacG would agree with this.

What doesn't follow in the the obvious way I think you are suggesting that the details of the IPCC reports are correct, that the climate sensitivity is 3C per doubling of CO2 for example and and not 0.5C or 6C, that's a dramatically more complicated question. All else very much isn't equal.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:02

emordnilap wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote:how is it possible for us to be releasing vast amount of greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere, and this not change the climate?
This is the question I've asked many times. The MacGs of this world seem to find the question inconvenient.

MacG wasn't exactly serious opposition. The moment he said "Venus is very bright because it REFLECTS a lot of sunlight. That doesn't fit global warming predictions." it became rather obvious that he doesn't really understand anything at all about the greenhouse effect. There must be doubters out there with a bit more of a grasp on the issue than that.

I wonder - if MacG's not getting paid directly for his obfuscation - if he's some kind of politician? Or does he come across as too intelligent for that?

Why would a politician be posting propaganda here?

stumuzz · Post by **stumuzz** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:05

UndercoverElephant wrote:
If you want to defend MacG, then please do so.

I don’t want to defend MacG. Simple reason is I do not know anything about climate change.

What I found interesting about the thread was the one contrarian view was set upon by a pack of baying wolves at the scent of blood! It reminds me of animal farm when the pigs start chanting, two legs bad four legs good.

From a laypersons view it seems that the belief in the science is fragile and must be supported by chants of ‘troll’ or ‘ paid agent provocateur’. The same baying wolves talk a lot of sense about peak oil.

However, a question you could answer, or anyone else for that matter (not Biff, he only gives snide, unhelpful replies. Yes Biff there are probably grammatical errors in this post, ten out of ten for spotting them) if the climate is warming at the rate you think it is, what are you going to do about it? What are you doing about it?

Peak oil I get. The preps we have made have paid dividends. What I am trying to say is if you are right about warming, so what? If you are wrong, so what? What am I missing about climate change that causes otherwise intelligent and rational people to get so worked up?

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:05

clv101 wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote:The next question is: how is it possible for us to be releasing vast amount of greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere, and this not change the climate?
'cos the climate system isn't that simple?

No, it's really complicated, which is part of the problem. That's why it is easy to predict the climate will change but difficult to predict what the changes will be.

I don't really know where you are going with these questions. Everyone accepts the principles of 'greenhouse effect' and 'greenhouse gas', yes even MacG.

Then why didn't he just answer "yes" to the question about venus? Why the nonsense about it being bright, which is totally irrelevant?

That issue was put to bed over a century ago. It is also uncontested that all else held equal increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will increase global temperatures, again I'm confident MacG would agree with this.

???

What doesn't follow in the the obvious way I think you are suggesting that the details of the IPCC reports are correct, that the climate sensitivity is 3C per doubling of CO2 for example and and not 0.5C or 6C, that's a dramatically more complicated question. All else very much isn't equal.

I accept that.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:06

UndercoverElephant wrote:Why would a politician be posting propaganda here?

Not sure, it was only a thought - politicians never use the words 'yes' or 'no' and rarely answer any question put to them.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:11

stumuzz wrote:if the climate is warming at the rate you think it is, what are you going to do about it? What are you doing about it?

Good questions. The answers? "Very little".

emordnilap wrote:It's all deckchairs, really. Climate change has to come about. None of us has much choice in that. That's not being defeatist: think Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, Cochabamba etc etc. The people who can, won't. Nothing's going to be done, so we have to face biospheric chaos.

Ironically, if we did prevent climate change, then the MacGs will claim they were right and money was wasted. If we don't, we're all fecked anyway.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:19

stumuzz wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote:
If you want to defend MacG, then please do so.
I don’t want to defend MacG. Simple reason is I do not know anything about climate change.

What I found interesting about the thread was the one contrarian view was set upon by a pack of baying wolves at the scent of blood!

We are involved in an ideological war which is likely to determine the future of civilisation, a war which is largely being played out on the internet.

It reminds me of animal farm when the pigs start chanting, two legs bad four legs good.

It may do, but that doesn't mean the situations are actually similar. Some claims are simply nonsense and need to be identified as such. If they are also very dangerous nonsense, then you can expect a very firm response.

From a laypersons view it seems that the belief in the science is fragile and must be supported by chants of ‘troll’ or ‘ paid agent provocateur’.

That that is the way it seems to a layperson just indicates the seriousness of the problem. I think it seems that way because laypeople are being bombarded with propaganda which is designed to cause to question the results of climatology in a way which similarly-secure results from other sciences are not questioned.

However, a question you could answer, or anyone else for that matter (not Biff, he only gives snide, unhelpful replies. Yes Biff there are probably grammatical errors in this post, ten out of ten for spotting them) if the climate is warming at the rate you think it is, what are you going to do about it? What are you doing about it?

Apart from buying the most efficient petrol car on the market and refusing to buy crap that I don't need, there's precious little that I can do about it. And in fact even if I lived like a saint, it would make precious little difference to what is likely to happen in the future. A few people making personal sacrifices may well do them a world of spiritual and psychological good, but it's going to make no difference to the direction the world in general is heading in. The only thing that can do that is radical, systemic change in the wake of rapidly declining living standards all over the world. There is an ideological revolution coming, because the ideology behind the system as we know it is itself bankrupt.

Peak oil I get. The preps we have made have paid dividends. What I am trying to say is if you are right about warming, so what?

So nothing. I got mad at MacG because he was peddling propaganda designed to hide the scale of the problem from laypeople. If you want to discuss what we are actually going to do about the whole eco-catastrophe we face, then we will need to discuss all sorts of other issues.

If you are wrong, so what? What am I missing about climate change that causes otherwise intelligent and rational people to get so worked up?

I've already explained that. It is an assault on science itself, and therefore an assault on rationality, and it is being motivated by greed and corporate power. The answer to your question is that we are involved in an ideological war with nothing less at stake than the future of humanity and the Earth's ecosystem. If you aren't aware of that war, or don't really understand what it is about, then I'm not surprised you find some of the reactions here to be extreme.

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 17 Dec 2010, 17:50

I'm not a scientist, and I don't want to believe that climate change that could have a dramatic effect on my life is happening. I would love to be convinced that it isn't happening, or if it is, is not harmful. But nothing I've heard or read has convinced me yet. The deniers, or whatever we want to call them, don't put forward arguments that convince me, and some of them seem to have a seriously loose screw.

If I live to the same age as most of my immediate family, I'll be pushing up the daisies from 2045, 5 years before we're told that we need an 80-90% reduction in CO2 emissions. So when TS really HTF if we do nothing serious about it, I won't be in a fit state to do much about it. Being old, decrepit and incapable of looking after myself by then is a pretty scary thought. So it's no wonder I get a bit irritable about climate change deniers at times.

Hogfish · Post by **Hogfish** » 17 Dec 2010, 18:39

Climate scientist lurker here.

There are a lot of issues. Climate science is not one big book of facts that you have to take or leave, although some people try to present the IPCC reports that way. Every result obtained by scientific methods comes with an uncertainty, which expresses our confidence that the "truth" is close to what we measured it as. Over time, we make more observations which either support or don't support our hypothesis, and we update either the result or the uncertainty margin in accordance with that.

So climate science has got a lot of different results, and they each come with some uncertainty. There is very little uncertainty around the statement that "greenhouse gases in the atmosphere cause the temperature of the earth to go up". It relies on very simple physics that has been known for a hundred and fifty years. There is also very little uncertainty that "if the temperature of the earth changes, then other aspects of the circulation and climate system will change". On the other hand, there is a lot of uncertainty around the statement that "European winters will get warmer by 2050". This relies on a whole lot of different physics and atmospheric dynamics, which is only reasonably well understood to begin with and then modelled by incomplete computer simulations. And when you start to talk about emissions scenarios, which involve all sorts of assumptions about behaviour and politics, then you are moving outside the realm of positive science altogether and towards normative economics and ethics.

I have no problem with people expressing doubt about the longer-term results of climate models. Anyone telling you that they know how much the sea level will rise by 2100 or how much rain you will get in 2050 is not a good scientist unless they tell you the uncertainty of their estimate, or at least a range of possible values: you will find that these are uncomfortably large. But some statements have more uncertainty than others, and when people start talking about CO2 doing nothing to the atmosphere they display only ignorance. On the other hand, we could have a proper debate about whether the current snowy weather is "due to" or "despite" anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

The undisputed basics of climate science are:
- CO2 is being emitted by human use of fossil fuels
- CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing (google the Keeling curve)
- Other greenhouse gases are also increasing
- This causes the earth to warm, on average
- The poles warm up more than the tropics
- It also causes changes in atmospheric circulation
- There are also many ways in which the earth system can change without human intervention

The fairly uncertain bits are:
- The tropics will increase in temperature and precipitation will probably increase as a result
- The poles will warm faster, but we're not sure exactly how fast
- The midlatitudes will get more variable weather patterns
- The ice will melt, but we're not quite sure how fast it can do that
- What would have happened to the climate in the absence of human activity

The really uncertain bits are:
- What happens to storms in the midlatitudes?
- What happens to precipitation almost everywhere?
- What happens to the monsoon regions?
- Are there any tipping points and when will we get to them?

Personally, I think it is the uncertainty that surrounds some of the more critical climate projections that is the most scary part. What does happen if the Indian Monsoon moves/fails (we're not very good at modelling that), or the methane in the permafrost is released (we don't know when that will happen)?

What am I doing about it? I try to act in a way that demonstrates that I believe my own research: I do not fly to conferences, I do not buy things I don't need, I have tried to reassess my career options to put myself and my family into a position where we will be less vulnerable and more able to help others in the future, and I try to communicate. As others have said, the actions of one person do not count for much, but they count for something.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 17 Dec 2010, 18:42

The ugly face of AGW denial: my MEP Roger Helmer and my MP Sir Peter Tapsell, have been the leading lights in our local anti-windfarm campaign. This morning the planning appeal (the local council had previously rejected it) announced that it had been rejected.

The Chairman of East Lindsey District Council’s Planning Committee, Councillor Stephenson Eyre, is delighted: “This is the result the Council and community wanted. We successfully fought this appeal together.

Just in case any body remembers Cameron saying Tories were green, the various politician against the windfarm are Tories.

2 As and a B · Post by **2 As and a B** » 17 Dec 2010, 19:09

Coldest December for 100 years apparently, if the second half turns out as forecast.

So where in the northern hemisphere is it warmer than average at the moment?

Post by **clv101** » 17 Dec 2010, 19:58

foodimista wrote:Coldest December for 100 years apparently, if the second half turns out as forecast.

So where in the northern hemisphere is it warmer than average at the moment?

Here's the air temperature anomaly for the 1st two weeks of Dec. Europe has been 3-4C colder than the 68-96 average. Greenland and north east Canada is some 6-10C warmer though.

Not as many newspapers in Greenland though.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 17 Dec 2010, 21:39

This very short film is a must for anyone who comments about the chilly weather:
http://www.oneclimate.net/2010/12/16/cl ... s-weather/

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 17 Dec 2010, 21:58

Hogfish wrote:Climate scientist lurker here............<snip>....

Thank you Hogfish for that very sane and sensible explanation of what science can and cannot tell us.

I may even print it out for some of my students - with your permission of course.