Our Scotland - www.our-scotland.org

Screegor · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:49 pm Post subject: Climate Change

I've been away for a while and instead of trawling the old threads I decided to start a new one.

Well I'm glad to say that the Met Office has since I have been here in the US; produced the following information, for the people who seem to want to follow the newspapers rather than the science. It also lays down the areas of uncertainty etc.

The causes of climate change

I invite everyone to read this, as it answers a lot of misinformation and critism that was put to me some weeks ago by people (person) not doing there own research into the subject.

SLG · Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject:

All looks like pretty bad news Screegor - what are you going to do about it?

Screegor · Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 6:26 pm Post subject:

Well I haven't driven a car for 3 months, but that may be related to the fact my car is 3000 miles from me at the moment.

I think I'll try and catch more trains than planes. I think that is really the most important thing at the mo, cut plane flights.
Included in this is eating more local produce. Despite the fact it is nice to eat cherries in the winter flown fresh from Argentina. I think that I may stick to eating neaps and tatties, a true scottish delicacy....... Confused

This is also better for the scottish economy as well as reducing C emmisions.

Anyway my major concern is other pollutant forms at the mo. So personally I'll stick to researching the agricultural pollutants. I will consider going into C again in a few years.

SLG · Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject:

That all sounds good. I try and follow is similar rules, although I do drive most days (can't wait for these trams Wink

). What sort of scale are these factors though? E.g. if car usage in western countries dropped 25%, 25% less air travel, if 25% less air miles were used supplying food to western markets... would this actually have a significant effect?

I think the world (certainly most folk I know) are full of good intentions, but it's very easy to make excuses by (i) thinking that it's all a bit of a myth and (ii) think that there is nothing as an individual you can actually do.

I think a lot more needs to be done to inform people, in practical terms, what they can achieve and what effect that will have.

gordon899 · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:17 pm Post subject: Re: Climate Change

LAz · Nationalist Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 113

I took a meteorology class and we talked about global warming quite a bit.

Humans have contributed a lot to it. But despite that, it is not the only 'cause of it. It would happen naturally too, as the earth heats up and cools down. We are in the process of becoming warmer naturally. Despite this, I feel that what we are doing is only speeding the warming. By how much? - I don't know.

There is also negative feedback and positive feedback processes'. How those things come in to play could make things even more messed up.

Screegor · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:52 pm Post subject:

Screegor · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 1:21 pm Post subject:

Screegor · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 1:32 pm Post subject:

Also I thought I would quickly inform the people on here of some interesting developments. I recently attended a Global Warming conference, including some of the main researchers and policy makers in GW research.

At this conference they displayed the latest information and results from the past 4 years. These results have not been published yet, and I believe this was the first time they were displayed.

Basically the interesting things:-
All climate models are currently being predicted on an increase in CO2 emissions at a rate of 1.6% per year.
However - in the last 4 years, CO2 emissions have increased by 3% per year on avergae.
When recalucating the climate models for T increases, this equates to a staggering 1 oC increase in the predictions by 2100. So best case - 4.5oC increase, worst case 10 oC increase.

Secondly, data was displayed showing that with the strictist CO2 curbing (nothing out there at the moment to do this). With a reduction starting now. By cutting the total emissions by 1% per year (so 4% less than current). This would reduce the overall global warming on average prediction (not extremes) by almost 2 oC (so there would only be about a 2.5oC rise in 100 years - ie it is enevitable for some rise). Of course this will not happen immediately (the curbing), and the prediction in saving for every decade we wait before we start reducing CO2 emissions. Increases the overall impact, temperature predictions, and needed CO2 emission cuts.

However, 'is it worth it' - yes. Based on IPCC impact assessment, this would impact the planet - but maybe within a controllable amount, but with current uncontrolled CO2 release at 3%, well the guy would not speculate what the effects on humans would be - it was off the current charts proposed.

LAz · Nationalist Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 113

Screegor · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 5:58 pm Post subject:

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 996

LAz wrote "I am not too interested in Global Warming".

That is, to say the least, a very short sighted attitude.

It would be strange if somebody was to say on this Our Scotland forum "I'm not too interested in what happens in Scotland". However, it would be a bit more understandable if somebody were to say "I'm not too interested in what happens in the countries of the former Yugoslavia", or even "I am not too interested in what happens in Ireland". But global warming, by definition, is something that effects the whole globe, the whole world, all of the countries and all of the people in the world, including those who say they are not too interested in global warming. When I first studied environmental science (in my mid-fifties!) back in 1994, all of our professors were already, at that time, teaching global warming, caused by human activity, as an established fact. The predictions which some of them made in 1994 have been proved correct in the years since then. Global warming is happening, and it is accelerating, and we could be in for a very bumpy ride indeed. Anybody who is still saying "I'm not too interested in global warming" really doesn't understand the world that we live in.

LAz · Nationalist Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 113

Neil · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject:

Catastrophe enthusiasts normally attack any sceptic on the grounds that at some time in the last 30 years they accepted money from business, or they knew somebody who did, or they have copuld have taken money or known somebody so we might as well accuse them anyway.

Since Screegor's link is to the Met Office which received quite a lot of money from a catastrophe supporting ourganisation (the government) all enthusiasts must naturally discount it to. In a similar vein we may note thar Alan Thorpe, the boss of NERC, which gets over £300 million from the government issued a public challenge to debate the alleged catastrophe online or in person - when it was accepted he ran away. (I will forward a copy of this to him & he may come out of his hole).

We have been over the warming scam before & the fact is that global temperature has not gone up since 1998 which makes "warming" problematic & catastrophic warming pure nonsense.
_________________
The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

Screegor · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 9:08 pm Post subject:

A few primary source, peer reviewed publications / quotes. For those that are interested in real science. This isn't my list, but a friend of mine put this together. Most of these are very new articles. As for the Met Office it is a world leader in climate predictions, and has been spot on in its predictions for the last 10 years.

**GENERAL**

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."

"Discernable human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patters."

"Anthropogenic warming of the climate system can be detected in temperature obsevations taken at the surface, in the troposhere, and in the oceans."

Hegerl, Zwiers, Braconnot et a. (2007)

"The warming effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations have been detected in all the regions examined, including North America and Europe."

Peter A. Stott "Attribution of regional-scale temperature changes to anthropogenic and natural causes" GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, NO. 14, 1728, doi:10.1029/2003GL017324 (2003)

**WARMING OCEANS**

"This suggests that the observed ocean heat-content changes are consistent with those expected from anthropogenic forcing, which broadens the basis for claims that an anthropogenic signal has been detected in the global climate system. Additionally, the requirement that modeled ocean heat uptakes match observations puts a strong, new constraint on anthropogenically forced climate models."

Tim P. Barnett, David W. Pierce et al. Science 13 Vol. 292.(2001)

"A warming signal has penetrated into the world's oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences."

Tim P. Barnett, David W. Pierce et al. Science 8 July (2005)

"the observed increase in ocean heat content may largely be due to the increase of anthropogenic gases in Earth's atmosphere."

Sydney Levitus, John I. Antonov et al. Science Vol. 292 (2001)

**ON THE ANTHROPOGENIC SIGNAL**

"The greenhouse gas signal in global surface temperature can be distinguished from internal climate varibility and from the response to other forcings (solar variation, volcanism, and anthropogenic forces other than greenhouse gases)"

"[Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is like to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentration (Mitchell et al. 2001)] This conclusion has been largely based on results using multiple regressions of observed surface air temperature onto fingerprints of greenhouse gas, sulphate aerosol or combined anthropogenic non-greenhouse gas emissions, and natural forcing"

Hegerl, G; Karl, T et al. "Climate Change Detection and Attribution: Beyond Mean Temperature Signals" Journal of Climate Volume 19 (2005)

More if you need: Karoly et al. 2003; Stott 2003; Zwiers and Zhang 2003; Karoly and Braganza 2005

***Some references illustrating the debunked science behind 'Swindle':***

"800-year lag of CO2 to temperature":

"the situation at Temination III* differs from the recent anthropogenic increase. As recently noted by Kump (2002), we should distinguish between internal influences (such as deglacial CO2 increase) and external influences (such as anthropogenic increase) on the climate system.

"Althought the recent CO2 increase has cleary been imposed first, as a result of anthropogenic activities, it natually takes, at Termination III, for CO2 to outgas from the ocean once it starts to react to a climate change"

Caillon, Serveringhaus (2003)

"Sunspots, blah blah blah"

"the last decade has seen a revival of various hypotheses claiming a strong correlation between solar activity and a number of terrestrial climate parameters...Analysis of a number of puplished graphs (swindle gragh) shows that the apparent strong correlations displayed have been obtained by incorrect handling of the physiacal data...their misleading character has not yet been generally recognized"

Damon, Laut- Eos Vol. 84 (2005)

***More random ones***

"The results indicate that, on the basis for the patterns for the variance, a distinction can be made between temperature change due to natural variability and temperature change due to changes in external forcing... a change in external forcing has to be invoked to explain the observed spring and summer warming. From the evaluation of greenhouse and natural variability in the climate model simulations, we infer that the observed spring and summer variance patters contain imprints consistent with anthropogenic warming."

Tank, Konnen and Selten, Journal of Climatology (2005)

**MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD**

"Reconstructions of hemispheric mean tempertures over roughly the past two millenia... support previous conclusions with regard to the anomalous nature of the late 20th century temperature... To the extent that a "Medieval Warm Period" of moderately warmer conditions can be defined from about AD 800-1400, any heisheric warth during that interval is dwarfed in magnitude by the late 20th century warmth"

Mann and Jones 2003 Geophysical Research Letters
Vol. 30, No. 15, 1820, August (2003)

"In experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually rather than jointly, human-caused changes in greenhouse gases are the main driver of the 20th-century SST increases in both tropical cyclogenesis regions."

Santera, Wigley (2006)

"High variability in reconstructions does not hamper the detection of greenhouse gas–induced climate change, since a substantial fraction of the variance in these reconstructions from the beginning of the analysis in the late thirteenth century to the end of the records can be attributed to external forcing. Results from a detection and attribution analysis show that greenhouse warming is detectable in all analyzed high-variance reconstructions"

Gabriele C. Hegerl, Thomas J. Crowley et al. Journal of Climate (2007)

**ON ANTHROPOGENIC AEROSOLS**

"Although long considered to be of marginal importance to global climate change, tropospheric aerosol contributes substantially to radiative forcing, and anthropogenic sulfate aerosol in particular has imposed a major perturbation to this forcing."

"This perturbation is comparable in magnitude to current anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing but opposite in sign. Thus, the aerosol forcing has likely offset global greenhouse warming to a substantial degree."

SCHWARTZ, HALES et al. SCIENCE 255 (1992)

**ON PHANEROZOIC CO2 LEVELS**

"CO2 levels were high during the Mesozoic and early Paleozoic and low during the Permo-Carboniferous and late Cenozoic. These results correspond to independently deduced Phanerozoic paleoclimates and support the notion that the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse mechanism is a major control on climate over very long time scales."

Berner, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Over Phanerozoic Time" Science (1990)

**ON MODEL UNCERTAINTY**

"Optimal detection analyses have been used to determine the causes of past global warming... To date however, these analyses have not taken full account of uncertainty in the modelled patterns of climate response due to differences in basic model formulation.

"we extend the optimal detection method to include, simultaneously, output from more than one GCM by introducing inter-model variance as an extra uncertainty. Applying the new analysis to three climate models we find that the effects of both anthropogenic and natural factors are detected. We find that greenhouse gas forcing would very likely have resulted in greater warming than observed during the past half century if there had not been an offsetting cooling from aerosols and other forcings."

Huntingford, Stott et al. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33 (2006)

"The effect of sampling error in surface air temperature observations is assessed for detection and attribution of an anthropogenic signal... Including the effect of sampling error is found to increase the uncertainty in estimates of the greenhouse gas–plus–sulfate aerosol signal from observations by less than 2%–6% for recent trend patterns (1949–9 Cool

, and 3%–8% for signal estimates from observations in the first half of the twentieth century. Random instrumental error shows even smaller effects."

Hegerl; Jones Journal of Climate (2001)

**WATER MASSES**

"Our results suggest that the observed changes are most likely to be a signal of anthropogenic climate change. The strong signal in the Southern Ocean, which is detectable in the model from the 1980s, is in marked contrast with the intermediate waters of the Northern hemisphere oceans, where internal climate variability is large and a signal of anthropogenic climate change is not detectable in the model until 2020 at the earliest."

Banks, Wood et al. Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 27 (2000)

Screegor · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject:

Neil · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 11:14 am Post subject:

I could paste up screeds of sceptical opinions if I wished to to prove my facility with Google too.

You have confused opinion with data. The link to the Met Office was not to data but to opinions beiing given by them - in such circumstances poiting out that they are funded by people committeed to the warming scare is perfectly proper.

Your use of temperature figues show you know perfectly well what the 1998 figure is & that all years since then have been cooler. That is not evidence of a catastrophic warming trend.

That temperatures are now at record heights is only true if you take the record back only 150 years. The fact is that temperatures are not higher than the Medieval warming & lower than the late Roman. Both were periods of prosperity not catastrophe.
_________________
The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

Chris · On A Journey (500 Miles) Joined: 16 Jun 2007 Posts: 23

Neil · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject:

As your graphs show we were clearly in a cooling period between 1940 & 1975 (which is why the environmental mopverment tried to frighten us with a new ice age then). Equally if you take your graph from 1998 to today (which is cherry picking a decade perhaps but not one year) we would also be on a cooling trend as indeed if you took a longer term trend from the Late Roman to Medieval to 1198 high points. What is clearly true is that you can establish any trend you want by carefully cherry picking the desired start point, as your graphs have done.

I'm not sure what your evidence is that the Medieval & late Roman warmings were confined to Europe (since air tends to move around & Europe will tend to be the same distance from the Sun as America this seems inherently improbable). I suggest that this is an invented claim relying on the fact that records from Medieval Europe are accessible & those of Australasia non-existent. In fact the dying out of the Viking colony in Greenland is normally taken as being due to a climate change you deny happened there & while precise records from China are relatively unavailable both were certainly periods of prospertiy. I look forward to your evidence that these warmings only happened in Europe & explanation of how this could happen.

Your guarantee that medieval temperatures were lower than now is not one that would require proof. The lower graph here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/m...ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml
says the opposite (though the alternative one, the Hockeystick, denies that any warming at all took place - which seems no longer to be part of your "consensus") - in any case you do not dispute that the Late Roman period was significantly warmer than now which is clearly inconsistent with catastrophism.
_________________
The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

SLG · Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:34 pm Post subject: