Climate Change, is it real?, or the new Y2K Bug?

[Xray]

I dont think the "experts" have sound evidence to show that tiny increased amounts of CO2 in air alter weather significantly or indeed that weather is even abnormal now.

I dont think they have accurate records of previous CO2 levels either,
Or temperature records for that matter.

In fact is the world warming at all or cooling?
If so, why or does it matter?
Can CO2 even cause this?

This theory fails on several fronts, if I am wrong explain why.

What are the implications for politics, economics and science of this theory simply fading away?

[eoinmn]

There was an article in the Guardian today basically saying that climate change skeptics give real skeptics a bad name.

I won't make any presumptions about you Xray, but the friends I have who don't believe the science around anthropogenic climate change, curiously DO believe in luck, ghosts, heaven an hell, and hang on the every word of that type of folk meteorologist who reckon that the sight of hedgehogs walking backwards in December predicts a cold July.

[Xray]

There was an article in the Guardian today basically saying that climate change skeptics give real skeptics a bad name.

I won't make any presumptions about you Xray, but the friends I have who don't believe the science around anthropogenic climate change, curiously DO believe in luck, ghosts, heaven an hell, and hang on the every word of that type of folk meteorologist who reckon that the sight of hedgehogs walking backwards in December predicts a cold July.


Right so you have a reliable temperature chart then?

Come on the guys that are the "experts" were caught before xmas making up the basic scientific data to suit the result they wanted, therefore they are to be ignored totally. The UN admits it basically made up claims ice is melting in Asia and is not sure why it did so, but is also sure that this is not an issue.

Not meaning to get at you, but it typical to resort to attacking the man when any serious questioning of this theory arises. It strikes me as absolute nonsense of the highest order to be honest. It has more in common with religion preticting the end of the world than Darwin or any serious science. It is virtually impossible to question it without being cast out as a heretic etc.

I content that several aspects of the science are in fact not science at all, they are nonsense. The world is not warmer, CO2 levels changing by small amounts do not matter and the sea is not rising at biblical rates. In fact the world is colder over the last number of years and has never ever maintained a constant temperature over time. It is perfectly normal for it to go up and down as it is doing. It is now decreasing again.

I might not believe in ghosts etc but I am more given to trust my own eyes than the opinion of journalists that probably failed junior cert science.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2010/0222/1224264940284.html

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:tF4aSWd7XTkJ:www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524861.400-climate-change-menace-or-myth.html+climate+change+myth&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/moregw.htm


"There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded—not resulted from—increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapour is far, far more important than CO2."


Whether someone believes in ghosts is not scientific evidence that this theory is correct, accurate temperature, CO2 and sea level charts are.
They apparently dont exist.


And much as I hate to link the mail :- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1251565/ANDREW-ALEXANDER-Power-profits-grim-cost-climate-myths.html

[C. Flower]

I have no disposition to disbelieve the man-made climate change theory, but I still haven't got to the point where I can say I have read conclusive evidence that it is happening.

These guys seem to have made a good enough call in 2008, when they predicted short term cooling.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm




The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted. A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.


See how modelled temperatures may develop (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm#map)


The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.
The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.



Perhaps the generally average success rate of short term weather forecasting is one of the things that has contributed to scepticism.

[Xray]

I have no disposition to disbelieve the man-made climate change theory, but I still haven't got to the point where I can say I have read conclusive evidence that it is happening.

These guys seem to have made a good enough call in 2008, when they predicted short term cooling.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm




Perhaps the generally average success rate of short term weather forecasting is one of the things that has contributed to scepticism.


I would have to say I don't believe it not to be true, I just dont believe it to be true. I am open to the possibility that it is true, but it seems less and less likely. I think modern human thinking has an amazing capacity for arrogance but total belief that it has moved beyond it. We dismiss the beliefs of older generations with glee while replacing them with equally ill throughout unquestionable dogma.

[imokyrok]

I used to think that there was controversy on the subject because I was only getting the "facts" from the media. A couple of years ago when Michael Shirmer -well known and respected skeptic changed his mind stated that there was concensus and concluded agw is a serious issue for the world, I finally got my finger out and stated reading the science at it's source rather than misquoted and sensationalized in the papers. I have no doubts now at all that agw is very serious and that out grandchildren and grandchildren will be living in a very different world to the one we enjoy.

[C. Flower]

Which aspect of the science convinced you ?

[imokyrok]

Which aspect of the science convinced you ?

Theres just so much of it - thousands and thousands of papers based on such a wide variety of measures which resulted in 97% of the climatologists saying yes agw is happening. The http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php site is the best place to get clear information.

Nasa has released some material including a recent video that is worth googling for showing satellite data.

And this human interest piece goes beyond the raw data to look at what it will mean for our grandchildren. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126971.700-how-to-survive-the-coming-century.html?full=true

Basically our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be ok here in Ireland but it is going to get very very crowed indeed. Good night for now.

[5intheface]

Basically our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be ok here in Ireland but it is going to get very very crowed indeed. Good night for now.

I must admit I haven't read nearly enough to voice a strong, argument supported opinion but I do find James Lovelock very interesting. If we accept what he says, I wouldn't worry about any current dip in the property market, seems real estate in Ireland, Britain, Canada and New Zealand will rocket. We may lose the views however.

He reckons Britain needs to make contingencies for a population of 100 -120 million.

[youngdan]

Everything tells us there is global warming, except for the fact we are freezing to death.

Years ago I said the warmers would be peaching while they frooze to death and sure enough they are still chirping even when Washington is buried in snow.

I see it is -4 in Ireland tonight. Just how cold must it get to wake these guys up

It is an ice age that is coming

[Lapsedmethodist]

Everything tells us there is global warming, except for the fact we are freezing to death.

Years ago I said the warmers would be peaching while they frooze to death and sure enough they are still chirping even when Washington is buried in snow.

I see it is -4 in Ireland tonight. Just how cold must it get to wake these guys up

It is an ice age that is coming

This should help explain it. But I doubt it.
YouTube- It's so Cold, there can't be Global Warming

[Lapsedmethodist]

FYI... I found Sinclairs video by googling " It's snowing so there can't be global warming "

sigh.

[Almanac]

Theres just so much of it - thousands and thousands of papers based on such a wide variety of measures which resulted in 97% of the climatologists saying yes agw is happening. The http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php site is the best place to get clear information.

That's a great link Imokyrok. Assuming that the information is accurate, it seems the skeptics are wrong about this one.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Its refreshing to see a thread about climate change that is polite and relaxed.

[Xray]

Its refreshing to see a thread about climate change that is polite and relaxed.

It is quite disappointing to be honest, I was hoping some fanatic on one side of the other would start frothing at the mouth. When I am not under attack I almost believe the theory might be true. :cool:

[cheal]

I would just like to point out that Y2K was not a spoof, I believe the incident with the PS3 last week showed what could have happened. The only thing that was predicted at the time with any degree of certainty was that nobody knew for certain what would happen. Within 3 -4 months of the new year I seem to remember a general consensus that everything would be okay, but my recollection may be off.

I also believe that climate change is happening, that human activities are contributing to it and that it is a problem.

[Almanac]

I would just like to point out that Y2K was not a spoof, I believe the incident with the PS3 last week showed what could have happened. The only thing that was predicted at the time with any degree of certainty was that nobody knew for certain what would happen. Within 3 -4 months of the new year I seem to remember a general consensus that everything would be okay, but my recollection may be off.

I also believe that climate change is happening, that human activities are contributing to it and that it is a problem.

This does seem to be an example of a genuinely false conspiracy theory.

[Fing Fers]

I dont think the "experts" have sound evidence to show that tiny increased amounts of CO2 in air alter weather significantly or indeed that weather is even abnormal now.

I dont think they have accurate records of previous CO2 levels either,
Or temperature records for that matter.

In fact is the world warming at all or cooling?
If so, why or does it matter?
Can CO2 even cause this?

This theory fails on several fronts, if I am wrong explain why.

What are the implications for politics, economics and science of this theory simply fading away?

I'm not convinced at all, looking back to industrial times far more pollutants in the sky, every house hold, factory, mine, mill, steel plant and so on were flat out burning everything they could to generate energy and heat. No real effect on the environment in those times.

The eco warriors seem to now think leaving a light bulb on and having a stat up an extra few degree will lead us to doom. The whole carbon tax is just another stealth tax designed to raise more revenue from a cash strapped public. People are only using fuel as they need to, its not like fuel is cheap so cant see a carbon tax working to reduce the amount of fuel consumption, its just more cash to line the pockets of the wealthy.

[Tombo]

Definitiely up there with the "Y2K Bug".

Alarmists have learnt valuable lessons from that episode though. Never make your dire predictions falsifiable within any finite period, or at the very least not within your own lifetime.

This whole edifice of alarm rests on forecasts of distant outcomes. Just take a look at fears being articulated on this thread:


I have no doubts now at all that agw is very serious and that out grandchildren and grandchildren will be living in a very different world to the one we enjoy.


what it will mean for our grandchildren

[Xray]

I would just like to point out that Y2K was not a spoof, I believe the incident with the PS3 last week showed what could have happened. The only thing that was predicted at the time with any degree of certainty was that nobody knew for certain what would happen. Within 3 -4 months of the new year I seem to remember a general consensus that everything would be okay, but my recollection may be off.

I also believe that climate change is happening, that human activities are contributing to it and that it is a problem.

It was a spoof, like all great lies it had a bit of truth in it. There was an issue with 2000 on computer clocks. But we were led to believe planes would crash, reactors melt down, satellites die, biological safe guards fail, hospitals crash.

I was working in a hospital at the time that spend a small fortune looking at every single piece of equipment for months. Each thing was given a sticker that was green, orange or red depending on the risk associated with using it on the nite in question (new years eve 1999). Obviously nobody wants to start a medical procedure at 11pm on a machine that will die an hour later.


One piece of equipment got a red light, it was an expensive piece of equipment and had been manufactured in 1999. When push came to shove nothing else had a problem. A fortune was spend preparing for a disaster, extra staff were on and military field tents on stand by in the car park. Utter nonsense, panic, pseudo science.

The following day (the first) was a far busier day when everyone got over the panic and got on the beer. Where are all the "experts" now that we were sick listening to at the end of 1999, they dismissed anyone who said it was not big deal as not understanding computers. Just like we don;t understand how a cooling planet is heating, or how the sun is not a driver of climate I guess.

If its true prove it or prepare to be ignored.

[C. Flower]

Theres just so much of it - thousands and thousands of papers based on such a wide variety of measures which resulted in 97% of the climatologists saying yes agw is happening. The http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php site is the best place to get clear information.

Nasa has released some material including a recent video that is worth googling for showing satellite data.

And this human interest piece goes beyond the raw data to look at what it will mean for our grandchildren. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126971.700-how-to-survive-the-coming-century.html?full=true

Basically our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be ok here in Ireland but it is going to get very very crowed indeed. Good night for now.

That article would be worth a thread in is own right. It sets out options for how we could best sustain life for our population in a much warmer world.

[Pat Gill]

I would just like to point out that Y2K was not a spoof, I believe the incident with the PS3 last week showed what could have happened. The only thing that was predicted at the time with any degree of certainty was that nobody knew for certain what would happen. Within 3 -4 months of the new year I seem to remember a general consensus that everything would be okay, but my recollection may be off.

I also believe that climate change is happening, that human activities are contributing to it and that it is a problem.

Nail on the head, the Y2K problem went away because thousands of coders spent hundreds of millions of folding stuff making it go away.

And in a similar vein there are people working on the solutions required for this symptom of our real problem (http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?t=299) as well.

[Almanac]

Ibis, I have been usurping your role round these parts.


what consensus?
that porn causes what?

this is a bit like the global warming consensus, ie it is not a consensus at all. just a moral panic with some inconclusive evidence behind it. at best the jury is still out.

http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

[Almanac]

Oh and regarding climate change


That humans are causing global warming is the position of the Academies of Science from 19 countries plus many scientific organisations that study climate science. More specifically, 97% of climate scientists actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position.

Skeptical Science (http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php)

[Almanac]

yes but what is a "climate scientist"?
I suggest that any scientist that did not already support the theory would not describe them selves in such terms.
you might as well say 97% of mining engineers believe that mining is ecologically sound. So what?


So 97% of chemists of masters or higher level believe in it?

there is no consensus on either of these issues, because there are two sides. Its that simple....

[Almanac]

yes but what is a "climate scientist"?
I suggest that any scientist that did not already support the theory would not describe them selves in such terms.
you might as well say 97% of mining engineers believe that mining is ecologically sound. So what?

Climatology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatology)

[Almanac]

"is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time,[1] and is a branch of the atmospheric sciences"

so 97% of people in a very narrow field of science believe that field to be extremely important.
they may be right, but i will listen to the other 99.99% of scientists also.

100% of them also believed the ice in the mountains feeding millions of people was melting a few months ago.

bit off topic for porn though :D...

[Almanac]

Ignoring them (climatologists)? :D

I doubt it.


Inevitably, there will be scientists who are skeptical about man-made global warming. A survey of 3146 earth scientists asked the question "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" (Doran 2009). More than 90% of participants had Ph.D.s, and 7% had master’s degrees. Overall, 82% of the scientists answered yes. However, what is most interesting is responses compared to the level of expertise in climate science. Of scientists who were non-climatologists and didn't publish research, 77% answered yes. In contrast, 97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded yes. As the level of active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement that humans are significantly changing global temperatures.

Source (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm)

[Almanac]

Got a little off topic over in the adult only forum.

[C. Flower]

...

Clearly the problem with lack of involvement in the debate so far has been not enough sex.;)

[youngdan]

This should help explain it. But I doubt it.
YouTube- It's so Cold, there can't be Global Warming (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTUuckNHgc)


When are we going to see the warmth which is everywhere but here. When is the sea going to rise.

Ye will have to fight global warming yourselves. Few believe it here and has zero chance of enactment

[Almanac]

When are we going to see the warmth which is everywhere but here. When is the sea going to rise.

Ye will have to fight global warming yourselves. Few believe it here and has zero chance of enactment

Getting warm around these parts. I had to take off my jumper today at one point.

QED

[C. Flower]

Me too. Got out me summer vest.

[Almanac]

This is dedicated to you, Dan

YouTube- Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

[youngdan]

I just checked the RTE weather, it says that it will be down to -2 in the midlands.

Sounds like a sizzler in mid March sure enough.


5c here now.

Decent weather by Wednesday.


Anyway the argument is over in the US, ye can feel free to pay all you like

[jmcc]

I dont think the "experts" have sound evidence to show that tiny increased amounts of CO2 in air alter weather significantly or indeed that weather is even abnormal now.The Y2K Bug was real. Now I remember reading in that well respected technical journal, the Irish Times (I'm being highly sarcastic here in case anyone is wondering ;) ), some rant from a technologically ignorant individual just after Y2K date that it was not real. While it was exploited, there was a very real issue with Y2K that had to be fixed. For months afterward on the web, the effect of the Y2K bug was even visible on some websites using Javascript. The date changed to 1900 on some of these scripts.

Global warming as a theory is in trouble. Climate change is real but the reality is that some areas will have a changing climate where they will get warmer and other areas wil get colder. The problem is that when all these microclimates are put together to provide a single global temperature. Such simplicities are great for the Al Gore Worshippers as they don't have to do any serious thinking.

Regards...jmcc

[C. Flower]

The Y2K Bug was real. Now I remember reading in that well respected technical journal, the Irish Times (I'm being highly sarcastic here in case anyone is wondering ;) ), some rant from a technologically ignorant individual just after Y2K date that it was not real. While it was exploited, there was a very real issue with Y2K that had to be fixed. For months afterward on the web, the effect of the Y2K bug was even visible on some websites using Javascript. The date changed to 1900 on some of these scripts.

Global warming as a theory is in trouble. Climate change is real but the reality is that some areas will have a changing climate where they will get warmer and other areas wil get colder. The problem is that when all these microclimates are put together to provide a single global temperature. Such simplicities are great for the Al Gore Worshippers as they don't have to do any serious thinking.

Regards...jmcc

On Y2K, I chanced ignoring it and got away with it, but then I wasn't running any nuclear arsenals.

On global warming, it's been widely publicised that sea temperatures were "warmest on record" in 2009 and also that January, globally, was the "warmest on record". Are you dubious that we actually have the capacity to make this measurement?

I have no time for Al Gore, but I do have time for science. The problem I have is that I'm still waiting for a scientist to "nail it" for me that the projections of man made warming of 2 degrees plus is right. In the long run of things we still seem to be possibly in the realm of normal patterns.

[jmcc]

On Y2K, I chanced ignoring it and got away with it, but then I wasn't running any nuclear arsenals.Well if the banks had ignored it, it could have been a problem. :)


On global warming, it's been widely publicised that sea temperatures were "warmest on record" in 2009 and also that January, globally, was the "warmest on record". Are you dubious that we actually have the capacity to make this measurement?I don't think that the models are detailed enough to make such simple claims. Also I think that Ibis mentioned something about the measurement of sea temperatures being an issue. The "warmest on record" stuff is, in my opinion, more political soundbites than science.


I have no time for Al Gore, but I do have time for science. The problem I have is that I'm still waiting for a scientist to "nail it" for me that the projections of man made warming of 2 degrees plus is right. In the long run of things we still seem to be possibly in the realm of normal patterns.It is easy for AGWers to say that the temperature will rise by n degrees as they are really playing on the fears of people who trust them. The planet's weather system is a very complex one and the "man made" climate change took a major beating when those CRU e-mails were disclosed. Climate changes over time but it is the conceit of these AGWers that they think that it is man made rather than Mann made.

Regards...jmcc

[cheal]

It was a spoof...


I have a degree in Computer programming. I KNOW from first hand experience that computers, at the best of times can he very very unpredictable. The point of the Y2K bug is that people weren't actually sure how computers would react. We could guess, but nobody could really know for sure. Now I do not doubt it was exploited, but there were genuine concerns that there may have been serious malfunctions with old software. If the worst had come to pass, and little or nothing was made of the danger when it was known, the story of the Y2K bug would have been very different, but because the problem was identified early, and people worked on solving the possible issues which may arise, nothing came of it.

The same with Swine flu. A damp squid I think all will agree, and I didn't bother with the vaccination myself, but certainly a lot more people would have died without that vaccination.

The point being, that the PS3 incident has proven that computers can be sensitive to inaccurate information, and while I would imagine it was the DRM system which caused the break down in the PS3 units, it shows how potent a problem it can be. If that had happened on the 1 of January 2000, and no warning given prior? There very well may have been planes literally falling out of the sky.

[Almanac]

I just checked the RTE weather, it says that it will be down to -2 in the midlands.

Sounds like a sizzler in mid March sure enough.


5c here now.

Decent weather by Wednesday.


Anyway the argument is over in the US, ye can feel free to pay all you like

I won't be paying anything, buddy.

[Xray]

I have a degree in Computer programming. I KNOW from first hand experience that computers, at the best of times can he very very unpredictable. The point of the Y2K bug is that people weren't actually sure how computers would react. We could guess, but nobody could really know for sure. Now I do not doubt it was exploited, but there were genuine concerns that there may have been serious malfunctions with old software. If the worst had come to pass, and little or nothing was made of the danger when it was known, the story of the Y2K bug would have been very different, but because the problem was identified early, and people worked on solving the possible issues which may arise, nothing came of it.

The same with Swine flu. A damp squid I think all will agree, and I didn't bother with the vaccination myself, but certainly a lot more people would have died without that vaccination.

The point being, that the PS3 incident has proven that computers can be sensitive to inaccurate information, and while I would imagine it was the DRM system which caused the break down in the PS3 units, it shows how potent a problem it can be. If that had happened on the 1 of January 2000, and no warning given prior? There very well may have been planes literally falling out of the sky.


I am not denying that people are very concerned about CO2 or that they were concerned about Y2K. I just strongly suspect that they will laugh at us in century at the thought of us swimming around london.


We tend to over state risk.

[Almanac]

I have a degree in Computer programming. I KNOW from first hand experience that computers, at the best of times can he very very unpredictable. The point of the Y2K bug is that people weren't actually sure how computers would react. We could guess, but nobody could really know for sure. Now I do not doubt it was exploited, but there were genuine concerns that there may have been serious malfunctions with old software. If the worst had come to pass, and little or nothing was made of the danger when it was known, the story of the Y2K bug would have been very different, but because the problem was identified early, and people worked on solving the possible issues which may arise, nothing came of it.

The same with Swine flu. A damp squid I think all will agree, and I didn't bother with the vaccination myself, but certainly a lot more people would have died without that vaccination.

The point being, that the PS3 incident has proven that computers can be sensitive to inaccurate information, and while I would imagine it was the DRM system which caused the break down in the PS3 units, it shows how potent a problem it can be. If that had happened on the 1 of January 2000, and no warning given prior? There very well may have been planes literally falling out of the sky.

Not only that but computers were affected all over the world. The fact that many more weren't may well be due to the preventative measures taken.

[Xray]

So if a few plants die and tie comes in another few inches will that count as global warming having happening?
Because I don't remember anyone saying the Y2K is a problem but it will be ok.


The last time I saw these type of media campaigns it was Stalin or Hitler running them. This is BS.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7440664/Government-rebuked-over-global-warming-nursery-rhyme-adverts.html

[Xray]

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01596/climate_1596973f.jpg

[Tombo]

Not only that but computers were affected all over the world. The fact that many more weren't may well be due to the preventative measures taken.

This gets regurgitated all too often. It is complete fiction. There are more standard debilitating "blue screen" issues every day than there were Y2K issues in total. And that includes countries that didn't lift a finger to do a thing (like Italy and Japan)

[Tombo]

On global warming, it's been widely publicised that sea temperatures were "warmest on record" in 2009 and also that January, globally, was the "warmest on record". Are you dubious that we actually have the capacity to make this measurement?

Are you convinced we can make this measurement?

Did you consider the estimates fot he potential errors of this measurment?

Did you make even the briefest common sense check?

Did you stop and think about what the "temperature of the worlds oceans" represents?

Have you even thought about what practical difficulties you might face even trying to estimate the temperature of a bath full of water?

And did you stop and think what time period "the record" constitutes?

Did you consider how has the data been collected over that period?

People seem to drop their cirtical faculties when anyone insists that the world is at risk.

[C. Flower]

Are you convinced we can make this measurement?

Did you consider the estimates fot he potential errors of this measurment?

Did you make even the briefest common sense check?

Did you stop and think about what the "temperature of the worlds oceans" represents?

Have you even thought about what practical difficulties you might face even trying to estimate the temperature of a bath full of water?

And did you stop and think what time period "the record" constitutes?

Did you consider how has the data been collected over that period?

People seem to drop their cirtical faculties when anyone insists that the world is at risk.

I considered all those things, hence the quotation marks.

[Tombo]

I considered all those things, hence the quotation marks.

But you seemed to omit any comment on them and then posed what appeared to be a loaded question.

[C. Flower]

But you seemed to omit any comment on them and then posed what appeared to be a loaded question.

This was my comment. It was a straight question to jmcc, with whom I wouldn't alway agree, but who I respect.


On global warming, it's been widely publicised that sea temperatures were "warmest on record" in 2009 and also that January, globally, was the "warmest on record". Are you dubious that we actually have the capacity to make this measurement?

I have no time for Al Gore, but I do have time for science. The problem I have is that I'm still waiting for a scientist to "nail it" for me that the projections of man made warming of 2 degrees plus is right. In the long run of things we still seem to be possibly in the realm of normal patterns.

Your points are all sound as a bell, but they don't rule out the possibility of AGW.

I haven't enough good quality information to know.



http://www.politicalworld.org/images/misc/progress.gif

[Xray]

Proving a negative is impossible, they must prove it is happening or as near as damn it.

[C. Flower]

Proving a negative is impossible, they must prove it is happening or as near as damn it.

"They" are strangely bad at it. Unless I blinked and missed it, I don't remember anyone coming up with even a decent popular science book to put over the reasons why a lot of scientists have come to believe/know there is AGW going on.

A lot of what you get is wild assertions of projections as fact, and that immediately puts people backs up.

it could just be that the IPCC is poorly set up for communications.

[Tombo]

This was my comment. It was a straight question to jmcc, with whom I wouldn't alway agree, but who I respect.



Your points are all sound as a bell, but they don't rule out the possibility of AGW.

I haven't enough good quality information to know.



http://www.politicalworld.org/images/misc/progress.gif


They also don't rule out the possiblity of floating pink elephants. That is the crux of "the science".

AGW - and this gets very confusing, but dangerous AGW is what we really mean - needs to be proven, no disproven.

While some climate scientists (not all - don't believe the hype) believe that has been done to their satisfaction, that is where their input ends.

It is up to others to understand what policy ramifications are and whether they are actually worth pursuing. Something climate scientists typcially spend a lot of time expounding on, but have absolutely no authority on which
to comment.

And that is before we even get to the political issues, towhit governments do what people want not the other way round, despite the desires of politicians.

[C. Flower]

They also don't rule out the possiblity of floating pink elephants. That is the crux of "the science".

AGW - and this gets very confusing, but dangerous AGW is what we really mean - needs to be proven, no disproven.

While some climate scientists (not all - don't believe the hype) believe that has been done to their satisfaction, that is where their input ends.

It is up to others to understand what policy ramifications are and whether they are actually worth pursuing. Something climate scientists typcially spend a lot of time expounding on, but have absolutely no authority on which
to comment.

And that is before we even get to the political issues, towhit governments do what people want not the other way round, despite the desires of politicians.

There isn't even agreement about what a "climate scientist" is, so far as I can see. But it appears that there are a lot of reputable scientists who believe on the balance of probabilities, that AGW is going on.

I am less convinced than they are, but then I've done a lot less reading. There has been a lot of work done and I'm not rushing to right it off.

So far as I'm concerned its a hypothesis and a lot of scientists are persuaded that there is enough empirical evidence to take it very seriously indeed.

There are certain things that have stopped me buying in 100%. One is the very obvious fact that historically rises in atmospheric Co2 (again, in so far as we have suceeded in measuring them) have followed global warming.

The collapse of sea fish stock is serious enough to show that our species is able to have devastating effects on the planet. If science is able to demonstrate a strong probability that dangerous AGW is taking place that should be enough to act on. Hanging around saying that we need 100% proof would be taking a very big chance. Particularly when there is an obvious need to manage resources a lot more cleverly than we have been in the past.

Where I do feel frustrated with the IPCC is the abject failure to communicate. The issuings are patronising and unhelpful.

[Tombo]

Where I do feel frustrated with the IPCC is the abject failure to communicate. The issuings are patronising and unhelpful.


Well, your feelings don't betray you. The gatekeepers at the IPCC (e.g. Jones, Trenberth of Climategate fame and Pachauri etc.) turn themselves inside out to avoid a proper transparent expanation of how much uncertainty is contained in so many of the intertwining issues and areas of research, from understanding of the actual physical system they are trying to explain, the historical characteristics of our climate, the relationships between climate and weather etc. etc.

The result comes across us something that gives all the appearance of treatise that is design to brush over a bulk of important detail so not to "confuse" the little ones and risk them reach the "wrong" conclusions or not be suitable convinced

[C. Flower]

Well, your feelings don't betray you. The gatekeepers at the IPCC (e.g. Jones, Trenberth of Climategate fame and Pachauri etc.) turn themselves inside out to avoid a proper transparent expanation of how much uncertainty is contained in so many of the intertwining issues and areas of research, from understanding of the actual physical system they are trying to explain, the historical characteristics of our climate, the relationships between climate and weather etc. etc.

The result comes across us something that gives all the appearance of treatise that is design to brush over a bulk of important detail so not to "confuse" the little ones and risk them reach the "wrong" conclusions or not be suitable convinced

It surely does, and some have fallen flat on their faces over it. But the "other side" is not uniformly appetising either - no personal offence intended :)

[Xray]

They also don't rule out the possiblity of floating pink elephants. That is the crux of "the science".

AGW - and this gets very confusing, but dangerous AGW is what we really mean - needs to be proven, no disproven.
While some climate scientists (not all - don't believe the hype) believe that has been done to their satisfaction, that is where their input ends.

It is up to others to understand what policy ramifications are and whether they are actually worth pursuing. Something climate scientists typcially spend a lot of time expounding on, but have absolutely no authority on which
to comment.

And that is before we even get to the political issues, towhit governments do what people want not the other way round, despite the desires of politicians.


Key point there, it is virtually certain that human activity affects weather and the climate. It is also likely CO2 and other gases etc do trap heat to some extent. It is a massive leap from there to saying that the self regulation of the planet will be so effected within our lifetimes that many places will be totally destroyed. This planet is amazing for what it can sustain without wild changes. I think there has been a wild use of scare tactics here that has back fired badly.

[Tombo]

Key point there, it is virtually certain that human activity affects weather and the climate. It is also likely CO2 and other gases etc do trap heat to some extent. It is a massive leap from there to saying that the self regulation of the planet will be so effected within our lifetimes that many places will be totally destroyed. This planet is amazing for what it can sustain without wild changes. I think there has been a wild use of scare tactics here that has back fired badly.

And the localised climate affects (which aren't globally dangwerous by definition) are generally brushed over. but of an order of mangitude or two greater than CO2 forcing.

I am talking about land clearance, urban heat islands etc.

[Tombo]

It surely does, and some have fallen flat on their faces over it. But the "other side" is not uniformly appetising either - no personal offence intended :)

None taken, I think.

[cheal]

Proving a negative is impossible, they must prove it is happening or as near as damn it.

Incorrect. It's easy prove a negative provided it is a negative that can be proven. For instance. I can prove that there is not a mars bar on my desk by taking a picture of the desk. Voila, proof that the mars bar I describe (i.e. the one on my desk) does not exist.

It's all about conditioning the negative. It is impossible to prove that some form of entity we could percieve to be a God does not exist. It IS possible to prove that specific forms of God do not exist. Taking the bible literally, we can prove that THAT God never existed because we know that those things he is said to have done, never in fact occurred. We consider these things "facts" to the extent we can consider anything a "fact".

Also this:
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01596/climate_1596973f.jpg
Is wrong and I agree that it amounts to propaganda and abuse of free speech.

[Xray]

Incorrect. It's easy prove a negative provided it is a negative that can be proven. For instance. I can prove that there is not a mars bar on my desk by taking a picture of the desk. Voila, proof that the mars bar I describe (i.e. the one on my desk) does not exist.

It's all about conditioning the negative. It is impossible to prove that some form of entity we could percieve to be a God does not exist. It IS possible to prove that specific forms of God do not exist. Taking the bible literally, we can prove that THAT God never existed because we know that those things he is said to have done, never in fact occurred. We consider these things "facts" to the extent we can consider anything a "fact".

Also this:
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01596/climate_1596973f.jpg
Is wrong and I agree that it amounts to propaganda and abuse of free speech.

OK you can prove there is no mars bar on your desk. But it is an old trick in debating, state something untrue but complex, then invite someone to disprove it.

The WMD in iraq was a classic. You still could not prover there are not 6 fully fueled nuclear missiles ready to launch in Iraq. If you come up with the theory its up to you to prove it.

Saying we cant take the chance on global warming and there is not time to debate it etc is more nonsense. Just show the facts.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

This Global Warming debate is way too civil. Where is all the personal attacks and Battle of the Somme tactics?!

Come on people!

[Almanac]

This gets regurgitated all too often. It is complete fiction. There are more standard debilitating "blue screen" issues every day than there were Y2K issues in total. And that includes countries that didn't lift a finger to do a thing (like Italy and Japan)

Got any evidence for that claim? And Italy did take remedial action. It was just not as extensive as in other countries. Here are some examples from countries that were affected:


* In Ishikawa, Japan, radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight, but officials said there was no risk to the public.[20]
* In Onagawa, Japan, an alarm sounded at a nuclear power plant at two minutes after midnight.[20]
* In Japan, at two minutes past midnight, Osaka Media Port, a telecommunications carrier, found errors in the date management part of the company's network. The problem was fixed by 02:43 and no services were disrupted.[21]
* In Japan, NTT Mobile Communications Network (NTT DoCoMo), Japan's largest cellular operator, reported on 1 January 2000, that some models of mobile telephones were deleting new messages received, rather than the older messages, as the memory filled up.[21]
* In Australia, bus-ticket-validation machines in two states failed to operate.[22]
* In the United States, 150 slot machines at race tracks in Delaware stopped working.[22]
* In the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory, which runs the master clock that keeps the country's official time, had a Y2K glitch on its Web site. Due to a programming problem, the site reported that the date was Jan. 1, 19100.[23]
* In France, the national weather forecasting service, Meteo France, said a Y2K bug made the date on a webpage show a map with Saturday's weather forecast as "01/01/19100".[22] This also occurred on other Web sites, including att.net, at the time a general-purpose portal site primarily for AT&T Worldnet customers in the United States.

Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem)

[cheal]

OK you can prove there is no mars bar on your desk. But it is an old trick in debating, state something untrue but complex, then invite someone to disprove it.

The WMD in iraq was a classic. You still could not prover there are not 6 fully fueled nuclear missiles ready to launch in Iraq. If you come up with the theory its up to you to prove it.

Saying we cant take the chance on global warming and there is not time to debate it etc is more nonsense. Just show the facts.

There is time to debate it, and it will be debated for a long time to come, however we are running out of time to take action and to large extent, it is far to big a problem to take a chance with. The banking collapse was far smaller a problem than climate change could be but governments are POURING money into that. Far less investment could address a lot of the issues of climate change and there is also huge scope and great profit to be derived from this investment. IF Britain invested in renewables it could cease its reliance on oil and save billions on pointless wars in the ME while providing thousands of jobs at home and maybe even selling that energy to other countries. There is an initial investment required but I believe it would pay itself back and then some.

The market can not deal with climate change because the market is wholly reactive. It's faster usually than governments and more efficient generally but in this case government have a far greater capacity to bring about change, and they are being advised to do so by the vast majority of the scientific community. Not senior civil servants, not banks, not legal advisors but professional scientists who for the most part should be trusted. Unless you prescribe to the belief that they are all corrupt and just research and provide evidence on climate change to get grants. In which case I doubt there is much point in debating climate change anymore.

[Almanac]

If the Y2K bug was hyped it was due to the media in any case- not the scientists. You can read about how this happened in one chapter of Flat Earth News.

Which demonstrates of course that as regards exact information the media is an unreliable source.

[Tombo]

If the Y2K bug was hyped it was due to the media in any case- not the scientists. You can read about how this happened in one chapter of Flat Earth News.

Which demonstrates of course that as regards exact information the media is an unreliable source.

Wait a minute.

There was no outcry from the IT profession, be it professional or academic. Virtually all the "experts" or in your climate analogy "scientist" let this story run and run and did nothing to stop it. Whether that was because they simply moved with the croawd, they were doing well personally out of it, or the proper critical facilities became distorted with irrational fear of uncertainty I don't know.

But it sure sounds familiar.

[Tombo]

Got any evidence for that claim? And Italy did take remedial action. It was just not as extensive as in other countries. Here are some examples from countries that were affected:



Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem)

Your list is ludicrously puny and insignificant (some ticket machine stopped working, a strange date appeared on a website, an error was found in "date management" - fixed before dawn). That list is really scraping an empty barrel

What is the average number and nature of non-Y2K IT problems that occur around the world on an given day?

The materiality of the problem was riduculously tiny, minute. The amount of resources poured into "solving" this non-problem was proportionately astronomical.

[cheal]

Your list is ludicrously puny and insignificant (some ticket machine stopped working, a strange date appeared on a website, an error was found in "date management" - fixed before dawn). That list is really scraping an empty barrel

What is the average number and nature of non-Y2K IT problems that occur around the world on an given day?

The materiality of the problem was riduculously tiny, minute. The amount of resources poured into "solving" this non-problem was proportionately astronomical.

Well I've already made the point that generally people were not sure what would occur, which makes it significantly different to global warming because climate change can be predicted to some extent. What if it was worst case scenario, what we have seen with the PS3 consoles, and the Y2K bug caused computers to malfunction and turn off. Planes would fall out of the sky, literally. The media went overboard with the threat it posed but in reality it could not be properly predicted how each individual piece of software would react, so it was prudent to be cautious.

Computers are pretty unpredictable tbh.

[Xray]

Wait a minute.

There was no outcry from the IT profession, be it professional or academic. Virtually all the "experts" or in your climate analogy "scientist" let this story run and run and did nothing to stop it. Whether that was because they simply moved with the croawd, they were doing well personally out of it, or the proper critical facilities became distorted with irrational fear of uncertainty I don't know.

But it sure sounds familiar.

Well the media only let you hear the compuer geeks and scientists that fit with their story. I heard many engineers before the Y2K telling us at work it was not that big a deal and not to worry. That did not make a good front page of Time.

Neither does slightly warmer wetter winters and earlier springs. We have to have the statue of liberty swimming to get the juices flowing.

Until I see some proper evidence and coverage of this I will not be taking any personal action against CO2 beyond saving money. It reminds me of the certainty of the defenders of church teaching a short few years ago. Its not good enough to say "its true becuase its true" or "dont think, there is no time, someone else knows."
They dont know. It is a simple enough thing to explain and justify. so either do it or fade away. False data nazi style fear inducing adds are a joke.

[C. Flower]

Where is the nice little best seller handbook that sets out properly the science-based case that there is very probably AGW ?

The IPCC stuff is very heavy going.

[Almanac]

Wait a minute.

There was no outcry from the IT profession, be it professional or academic. Virtually all the "experts" or in your climate analogy "scientist" let this story run and run and did nothing to stop it. Whether that was because they simply moved with the croawd, they were doing well personally out of it, or the proper critical facilities became distorted with irrational fear of uncertainty I don't know.

But it sure sounds familiar.

So have you got evidence for those claims- "no outcry"... "all the 'experts'"?

In fact, the case is precisely the opposite. As I said, read the account of what happened in Flat Earth News.

[Almanac]

Your list is ludicrously puny and insignificant (some ticket machine stopped working, a strange date appeared on a website, an error was found in "date management" - fixed before dawn). That list is really scraping an empty barrel

What is the average number and nature of non-Y2K IT problems that occur around the world on an given day?

The materiality of the problem was riduculously tiny, minute. The amount of resources poured into "solving" this non-problem was proportionately astronomical.

These are the problems that occurred in spite of the measures taken. Naturally there are IT-related problems every day for a variety of reasons. The point is that the Y2K problems all stemmed from the same single source.

[Xray]

Where is the nice little best seller handbook that sets out properly the science-based case that there is very probably AGW ?

The IPCC stuff is very heavy going.


It is also wrong

[Xray]

This Global Warming debate is way too civil. Where is all the personal attacks and Battle of the Somme tactics?!

Come on people!

Who asked you?

We are all sick of you coming on here spouting off your badly thought out nonsense.

Just F-off you tree hugging commie

hows that?
:rolleyes:

[Tombo]

These are the problems that occurred in spite of the measures taken. Naturally there are IT-related problems every day for a variety of reasons. The point is that the Y2K problems all stemmed from the same single source.


There was virtually no Y2K action in Japan. Similarly for Italy.

Hence those countries make the perfect experimental controls to falsify the types of claims you make.

[Tombo]

Well the media only let you hear the compuer geeks and scientists that fit with their story. I heard many engineers before the Y2K telling us at work it was not that big a deal and not to worry. That did not make a good front page of Time.

Neither does slightly warmer wetter winters and earlier springs. We have to have the statue of liberty swimming to get the juices flowing.

Until I see some proper evidence and coverage of this I will not be taking any personal action against CO2 beyond saving money. It reminds me of the certainty of the defenders of church teaching a short few years ago. Its not good enough to say "its true becuase its true" or "dont think, there is no time, someone else knows."
They dont know. It is a simple enough thing to explain and justify. so either do it or fade away. False data nazi style fear inducing adds are a joke.

I know from my experience that our company was hamstrung into implementing an expensive and full blown Y2K program.

It was a self feeding monster. Once it became "the concensus" no public company could ignore it, regardless of whether the directors thought it a load of cobblers or not. You were obliged to do something and report what you were doing to your shareholders.

I see many parallels in the current climate change hysteria.

[Tombo]

Well I've already made the point that generally people were not sure what would occur, which makes it significantly different to global warming because climate change can be predicted to some extent. What if it was worst case scenario, what we have seen with the PS3 consoles, and the Y2K bug caused computers to malfunction and turn off. Planes would fall out of the sky, literally. The media went overboard with the threat it posed but in reality it could not be properly predicted how each individual piece of software would react, so it was prudent to be cautious.

Computers are pretty unpredictable tbh.

What if... what if...

What iffery is a path to paralysis.

Let's just use our common sense.

[Tombo]

So have you got evidence for those claims- "no outcry"... "all the 'experts'"?

In fact, the case is precisely the opposite. As I said, read the account of what happened in Flat Earth News.

You're joking, right?

Here is some of the "expert testimony" that Congressional Coommittees were hearing in the US. Ed Yardeni was world famous for this issue and had a massive following.

http://banking.senate.gov/97_11hrg/110497/witness/yardeni.htm

[C. Flower]

What if... what if...

What iffery is a path to paralysis.

Let's just use our common sense.

Or even use science, properly.

[C. Flower]

It is also wrong

How could all of the IPCC stuff be wrong ? It consists of thousands of independent pieces of work.

[Tombo]

Or even use science, properly.

I don't see science as being anything but common sense.

[Tombo]

How could all of the IPCC stuff be wrong ? It consists of thousands of independent pieces of work.

Are you sure about that?

[Almanac]

There was virtually no Y2K action in Japan. Similarly for Italy.

Hence those countries make the perfect experimental controls to falsify the types of claims you make.

I already posted several examples of incidents in Japan- including one in a nuclear reactor. The fact that more serious incidents didn't occur is utterly irrelevant since one can't anticipate precisely what the effects might be. Good science is about anticipating and preventing potential threats as well as dealing with current problems. Hence, for example, the skies are monitored continually. That the problem was exaggerated as I already stated was the fault of the media.

[Almanac]

You're joking, right?

Here is some of the "expert testimony" that Congressional Coommittees were hearing in the US. Ed Yardeni was world famous for this issue and had a massive following.

http://banking.senate.gov/97_11hrg/110497/witness/yardeni.htm

Joking about what? You made vast, expansive claims which are counterfactual. There was a problem, but it was one which was grossly exaggerated by the media:


"Life-saving hospital equipment and 999 services in London face total breakdown on January 1 2000." (London Evening Standard)... "National Health Service patients could die because insufficient time and thought have been devoted to the millennium bug." (Daily Telegraph).... "Banks could collapse if they fail to eradicate the millennium bug from their computer systems." (Guardian)...... "Riots, terrorism and a health crisis could follow a millennium bug meltdown" (Sunday Mirror)... "All trace of pension contributions could be wiped out in businesses failing to cope with the millennium bug." (Independent). The threat is not merely that systems will fail and cause chaos in the organisations which rely on them, but that some of those systems will carry on working and choose their own terrifying new course. "The millennium bug could cause prison security doors and cell doors operated by computer to open," according to the Independent on Sunday, while the Times has told its readers of a "Nato alert over Russian missile millennium bug" and reported "alliance fears of an attack from the East by rogue nuclear weapons systems".

Nick Davies who recounts this in his book Flat Earth News also records the efforts of scientists, including the first to warn of the potential problem, to rein in the media hysteria- but to no effect.

The point is that it is the media establishment that is prone to exaggeration and distortion- not the scientific establishment.

[Tombo]

I already posted several examples of incidents in Japan- including one in a nuclear reactor. The fact that more serious incidents didn't occur is utterly irrelevant since one can't anticipate precisely what the effects might be. Good science is about anticipating and preventing potential threats as well as dealing with current problems. Hence, for example, the skies are monitored continually. That the problem was exaggerated as I already stated was the fault of the media.

You posted a short list.

As I said. post a list of ALL It issues over the period, then we have something against which to benchmark the problem.

It was a puny problem, proven to be so.

[cheal]

What if... what if...

What iffery is a path to paralysis.

Let's just use our common sense.

And 'what if' the property bubble was to burst? The point is in both cases the what if was based on a scientific basis, in both cases exaggerated by the media to some extent. But just like the property bubble the what if of it bursting was based on precedent and analysis of the facts.

The Y2K bug was a problem, one largely dealt with, and one exaggerated by the media. It's not just a case of 'what if', we have seen that the bug caused some devices to malfunction and we know, based on the PS3 issue which occurred recently that such minor details can have debilitating effects on computer systems.

I don't really care about your opinion on Climate change, you would never be convinced that it is real. You are blinded by your own determination to be right. The idea that scientists are all shouting about climate change to get government grants or to facilitate a one world government (whatever your own perverse view on it is) is ridiculous and while it's not outside the realms of possibility that the data collected has been misleading and that actually there isn't a problem, it's becoming highly unlikely.

[Tombo]

And 'what if' the property bubble was to burst? The point is in both cases the what if was based on a scientific basis, in both cases exaggerated by the media to some extent. But just like the property bubble the what if of it bursting was based on precedent and analysis of the facts.

The Y2K bug was a problem, one largely dealt with, and one exaggerated by the media. It's not just a case of 'what if', we have seen that the bug caused some devices to malfunction and we know, based on the PS3 issue which occurred recently that such minor details can have debilitating effects on computer systems.

I don't really care about your opinion on Climate change, you would never be convinced that it is real. You are blinded by your own determination to be right. The idea that scientists are all shouting about climate change to get government grants or to facilitate a one world government (whatever your own perverse view on it is) is ridiculous and while it's not outside the realms of possibility that the data collected has been misleading and that actually there isn't a problem, it's becoming highly unlikely.


Firstly,


A short list of IT malfunctions falls short of indicating that Y2K was ever a meaningful theat to anything.

A minor hiccup with a computer gaming console is not something we should get in a flap about.

The absence of any geneuine problems in places like Italy and Japan are ample proof that far too much time and money was wasted on the Y2K issue.

You are pretty arrogant to claim you know what will or will not convince me of the Dangerous Anthropogenic Climate Change Hypothesis. That is alarmist denial at its grandest and a complete straw man.

[Xray]

There is a fail safe climate model currently running that will prove one way or the other if the planet is warming. It is called the world. Early indications seem to indiate that it is not.

A large nuclear reaction at the center of our solar system that was recently discovered that is in a cooling cycle may have something to do with it. Now I know its hard to believe a massive nuclear reaction blasting the planet could effect climate, but it might.
http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/

CO2 concentrations continue to increase yet temperatures have been falling since 2002? Polar ice is growing. Storm intensity is in decline. One reason may be that solar activity is at the lowest level in almost a Century

[Almanac]

You posted a short list.

:p Sorry if my time is limited.

[Tombo]

:p Sorry if my time is limited.

Exactly my point :p

[C. Flower]

And 'what if' the property bubble was to burst? The point is in both cases the what if was based on a scientific basis, in both cases exaggerated by the media to some extent. But just like the property bubble the what if of it bursting was based on precedent and analysis of the facts.

The Y2K bug was a problem, one largely dealt with, and one exaggerated by the media. It's not just a case of 'what if', we have seen that the bug caused some devices to malfunction and we know, based on the PS3 issue which occurred recently that such minor details can have debilitating effects on computer systems.

I don't really care about your opinion on Climate change, you would never be convinced that it is real. You are blinded by your own determination to be right. The idea that scientists are all shouting about climate change to get government grants or to facilitate a one world government (whatever your own perverse view on it is) is ridiculous and while it's not outside the realms of possibility that the data collected has been misleading and that actually there isn't a problem, it's becoming highly unlikely.

My problem is that I'm ready to be convinced that there is AGW and that its caused by the greenhouse effect, but the big picture historically is that the rises in C02 came after the temperature rises, not before.

I've been told that temperature rise has been occurring at a faster rate than at any time in previous history, but no one has produced a graph to show that, at least I have not been able to find one.

There is a pattern of oscillating temperatures going back billions of years, and we seem to be within that pattern still. Just.

[Xray]

http://www.independent.ie/weather/gulf-stream-is-not-slowing-down-scientists-claim-2117799.html

Another major hole in this daft theory.
Ireland is safe from climate change.

[Andrew49]

What's all this about Global Warming ?? At this precise moment we are having thunder and lightning storms, sleet and snow and damn cold arctic winds. And the damn broadband keeps cutting out when the lightning flashes!

[ibis]

Ibis, I have been usurping your role round these parts.

Not a problem!

[Almanac]

Not a problem!

It's been a revelation looking at things from the other side of the fence, as it were.

[ibis]

It's been a revelation looking at things from the other side of the fence, as it were.

That almost sounds like an admission....

joking!

[Almanac]

That almost sounds like an admission....

joking!

Let's just say I'm glad I didn't become too heavily involved in this particular debate. :)

[Xray]

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/icy-winds-of-march-coldest-in-23-years-2122272.html

[ibis]

Let's just say I'm glad I didn't become too heavily involved in this particular debate. :)

Like some other contentious debates, it has the irritating feature that it's hard to tell (for a while) whether someone is genuinely uncertain and/or sceptical, or is basically a climate *****. There are plenty of people who genuinely don't understand the difference between local climate and global weather - and then there are the people who may or may not understand the distinction, but whose agenda is to use that confusion rather than relieve it.

[disability student]

This should help explain it. But I doubt it.
YouTube- It's so Cold, there can't be Global Warming (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTUuckNHgc)

That was an interesting one as i learn something new everyday. Video was great with subtitles that Google has started doing it early this year.

[Xray]

Like some other contentious debates, it has the irritating feature that it's hard to tell (for a while) whether someone is genuinely uncertain and/or sceptical, or is basically a climate *****. There are plenty of people who genuinely don't understand the difference between local climate and global weather - and then there are the people who may or may not understand the distinction, but whose agenda is to use that confusion rather than relieve it.


Just to be clear I am a climate *****, I honestly could not careless either way. I just like bursting fundamentalist bubbles. It may well be a real thing that may occur, but the people pushing it are like a cult.

[ibis]

Just to be clear I am a climate *****, I honestly could not careless either way. I just like bursting fundamentalist bubbles. It may well be a real thing that may occur, but the people pushing it are like a cult.

Well, you're as entitled to your opinion as the next person.

[C. Flower]

Like some other contentious debates, it has the irritating feature that it's hard to tell (for a while) whether someone is genuinely uncertain and/or sceptical, or is basically a climate *****. There are plenty of people who genuinely don't understand the difference between local climate and global weather - and then there are the people who may or may not understand the distinction, but whose agenda is to use that confusion rather than relieve it.

Ibis - please help me here. Would you be able to cite 2 or 3 pieces of research that you think are most important and conclusive in establishing that AGW is taking place ?

[ibis]

Ibis - please help me here. Would you be able to cite 2 or 3 pieces of research that you think are most important and conclusive in establishing that AGW is taking place ?

No, I wouldn't engage in that exercise - like imokyrok, I'd point you instead to the fact that there are literally thousands of such papers, stretching back for over a century. This is science, not a courtroom TV drama.

[C. Flower]

No, I wouldn't engage in that exercise - like imokyrok, I'd point you instead to the fact that there are literally thousands of such papers, stretching back for over a century. This is science, not a courtroom TV drama.

That's part of the problem. I've wrestled with IPCC Reports, but most people, myself included, don't have time to go through the process of reading thousands of papers ( I am well aware they exist). So we're left with "take it or leave it" - the science has been decided by others: just believe it.

No wonder there is so much scepticism.

Has no one written a decent properly referenced study summarising the evidence ?

Is there, specifically, something that deals with the speed of change ?

[Dagger John]

Can anyone explain why the Pacific is now entering a cooler PDO?
Can the explain what happens when the Atlantic will follow suit in the next 5 years?
Can they explain what happens when we will enter a period of NAO?

What happens all the models on which or wind energy industry are founded collapse?

[Xray]

Many papers in different fields of science are themselves structured reviews of the available papers. Many people do a "lit review" as their research. So it should be quite possible to reference a couple of papers that give an overview, nobody needs to read 1000s of papers about anything unless they are deeply involved in one particular element of the research. Core elements of this theory have been holed below the water line in public now, if that is answered by point to a library of research papers instead of addressing the specific scientific questions then there is no theory as I understand scientific theory. I have no problem scientifically ignoring such work as it is not science.

That is the major issue I have with this theory. Despite the spin it is not different to medicine, engineering or physics, it is relatively simple to example and demonstrate the facts to other disciplines. You don't have to be a "climate scientist" to understand any more than you have to be a heart surgeon to understand how a by pass works. Relatively basic science and understanding of the way research is written and read is all that is required. At most a degree in any field of science should be enough. It is utter nonsense to dismiss people concerns about this theory because they are not "climate scientists". At that term means is that they make a living out of investigating global warming in many many cases.

The evidence we are seeing going to the surface via the media looks very unlike any science I have encountered in any other field of science, except perhaps the research done on drugs by drug companies.

[Xray]

Can anyone explain why the Pacific is now entering a cooler PDO?
Can the explain what happens when the Atlantic will follow suit in the next 5 years?
Can they explain what happens when we will enter a period of NAO?

What happens all the models on which or wind energy industry are founded collapse?


You ask very important questions there, because if they are dropping since we started measuring and monitoring them, that is the only reliable data set we really have.

Most likely the world has never been a constant temperature either in total or locally. It moves in large patterns and cycles over time and randomly. It is almost impossible to pick out all the patterns as we have such an amazingly short and inaccurate data set to use, we have also been using different tools to measure the same thing over that period. Even if the Pacific is cold now than a decade ago, maybe it is warmer than 50 or 100 years ago. The truth is that nobody know unless the changes were so large as to result in a change in fossils etc. All of this stuff about Ice cores and gases trapped in them has been largely shown to be more complex and less reliable than we were lead to believe.

To say an ocean is warmer now than 200 years ago we would need to know what temp is was then. We don't know that and likely never will.

[ibis]

That's part of the problem. I've wrestled with IPCC Reports, but most people, myself included, don't have time to go through the process of reading thousands of papers ( I am well aware they exist). So we're left with "take it or leave it" - the science has been decided by others: just believe it.

No wonder there is so much scepticism.

Has no one written a decent properly referenced study summarising the evidence ?

Is there, specifically, something that deals with the speed of change ?

That's what the IPCC reports are for - they're a review of the state of the science, and they grind through the new papers published since the last report to produce a synthetic view of the whole thing.

Of course, if you haven't read any of the papers, and don't, you have no idea whether what the IPCC produces bears any relation to the truth, so it's easy for people to be put off by 'sceptical' attacks on the credibility of the IPCC and the reports. However, if you have, then you know that stuff like "Climategate" and the rest doesn't amount to a row of beans - and to be fair to most 'sceptics', they haven't read the papers, so their opinion of the IPCC is at least honest.

Unfortunately, given that the IPCC is the review process you speak of, and given that the only way you know you can trust the IPCC's reviews is by reading a reasonable chunk of the science itself, there is no short-cut to a position of credible certainty except by reading the science. That's why I personally don't "get my faith shaken" by all the stuff the 'sceptics' come out with - because mine is not a "take it on trust" position but a position of credible certainty based on reading the science over 20+ years - regrettably, that's no use to you, unless you choose to take my word for it.

If you need a very thorough overview of the essential science behind climate change, I recommend this website (http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm), which does a good historical coverage starting with Tyndall and Arrhenius in the 1800's.

The basic science of the 'greenhouse effect' itself is incredibly simple, and was established by those nineteenth century scientists long before the theory was worked out. Simply put, carbon dioxide and some other gases absorb infra-red radiation emitted by the Earth, and radiate it back to Earth and into the atmosphere, heating the air and earth. Despite the sceptics, that's indisputable - but the effect of all the greenhouse gases together would only amount to maybe a degree of warming, which isn;t anything to really worry about.

The problem is that it doesn't stay at 1 degree. Most of the Earth's "natural" greenhouse effect is provided by water vapour - and warm air holds more water vapour, and warm seas give off more water vapour. So the anthropogenic gases push the temperature up by 1 degree, and then the water vapour multiplies the effect. There are other feedbacks, both positive and negative (increasing the rise or reducing it), and other possible inputs, like solar changes - working them out, together with their magnitude and dependencies, has occupied much of the last 20 years of climate research. That's how we're 95% sure it's not the solar changes, and that there aren't any remaining big possible negative feedback systems that might stop severe climate change in the absence of emissions control.

The "consensus position" of all the different estimates of the outcome of multiple feedbacks is what the IPCC is there to establish - naturally enough, since it can only work with published science, and takes some time to review it, it's always behind the curve, and it leaves off the most extreme scenarios. Naturally it would be nice if the reviews were slightly less historical in nature, and had time to explore more of the outlier scenarios, but you're talking about an organisation whose entire funding since 1988 is smaller the production budget for the film "The Day After Tomorrow" - IPCC budget $100m since 1988, single inaccurate Hollywood film about climate change $125m production budget, $43.7m advertising budget. Those are our priorities.

At this stage, really, the latest science is almost irrelevant, except insofar as it allows for increasingly sophisticated regional predictions. The debate at governmental level is finished already - it's only a question, as it is with all politics, of compromising between inconvenient facts and the desire of politicians to get re-elected.

[Xray]

The IPCC is a joke, it is so factually wrong on the most basic facts that I could not take any of it seriously. It is straight in the bin, it is totally counterproductive to even mention it as a support to this theory.

"Last weekend, this paper revealed that the panel had based claims about disappearing mountain ice on anecdotal evidence in a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

And on Friday, it emerged that the IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency.

Researchers insist the errors are minor and do not impact on the overall conclusions about climate change. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html


I can list endless links like this about the IPCC.

[C. Flower]

Thanks for the link, Ibis, I'll take a look.

I could handle a book up to the size of War and Peace, collating research and the history and theory of the science, written by a reputable scientist. It doesn't have to be the most up to date stuff. Is there anything like that ? Surely it would be a best seller ?

Xray - even if the entire panel were dressed as Coco the Clown and were under the age of 10, it would still not prove that AGW is not happening. There is a very wealthy lobby that wants to convince us it isn't.

Perhaps we should see if we can look at some of the studies ourselves.

[ibis]

Thanks for the link, Ibis, I'll take a look.

I could handle a book up to the size of War and Peace, collating research and the history and theory of the science, written by a reputable scientist. It doesn't have to be the most up to date stuff. Is there anything like that ? Surely it would be a best seller ?

Xray - even if the entire panel were dressed as Coco the Clown and were under the age of 10, it would still not prove that AGW is not happening. There is a very wealthy lobby that wants to convince us it isn't.

Perhaps we should see if we can look at some of the studies ourselves.

Naturally enough, the full report is available from the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html). It is a pretty long read alright, and if you choose to go on and read the references, even longer. Still, even the report gives a good idea of just how much science is being dismissed with hand-waving by the climate opposition - indeed, the simply enormous pile of facts and theories the IPCC reviews to produce a single report gives some idea of how meaningless the sort of claims Xray is making are. Even if every error the climate opposition likes to trumpet the finding of were an error, you're talking about virtually insignificant error rates. Currently, the climate opposition is concentrating on trying to find out where the IPCC references non-peer-reviewed sources, which will be spun hard into a pretend error rate which assumes every non-peer-review reference is an error - but if worst comes to worst, they'll just go back to claiming that peer review is a fraud.

The FAQ chapter (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-faqs.pdf) for the "Physical Science" part of the report is a good start.

[Críostóir]

This gets regurgitated all too often. It is complete fiction. There are more standard debilitating "blue screen" issues every day than there were Y2K issues in total. And that includes countries that didn't lift a finger to do a thing (like Italy and Japan)

The only reason there weren't significant y2k issues was because it was a known problem for years ahead of time. Many millions of man hours were spent patching code to deal with the date problem, and that's the real reason it wasn't a big deal.

[C. Flower]

Naturally enough, the full report is available from the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html). It is a pretty long read alright, and if you choose to go on and read the references, even longer. Still, even the report gives a good idea of just how much science is being dismissed with hand-waving by the climate opposition - indeed, the simply enormous pile of facts and theories the IPCC reviews to produce a single report gives some idea of how meaningless the sort of claims Xray is making are. Even if every error the climate opposition likes to trumpet the finding of were an error, you're talking about virtually insignificant error rates. Currently, the climate opposition is concentrating on trying to find out where the IPCC references non-peer-reviewed sources, which will be spun hard into a pretend error rate which assumes every non-peer-review reference is an error - but if worst comes to worst, they'll just go back to claiming that peer review is a fraud.

The FAQ chapter (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-faqs.pdf) for the "Physical Science" part of the report is a good start.

The IPCC has produced a number of reports and I've read the summaries /tops and tails as they've come out. Thanks for for this: it will go on my reading list and I'll start a thread on it.

You mentioned to me previously that the speed of warming at the moment (last 100 years?) is faster than has occurred previously (pre modern man). Would you have any source for that that I could look at ? Frankly, if its stood up I would consider that on its own to answer the question enough to satisfy me.

[ibis]

The only reason there weren't significant y2k issues was because it was a known problem for years ahead of time. Many millions of man hours were spent patching code to deal with the date problem, and that's the real reason it wasn't a big deal.

Skeptic: "yeah, I'm not going to bother to get the flu jab this year"

Friend: "oh? why not?"

Skeptic: "well, I don't get flu anyway"


The IPCC has produced a number of reports and I've read the summaries /tops and tails as they've come out. Thanks for for this: it will go on my reading list and I'll start a thread on it.

You mentioned to me previously that the speed of warming at the moment (last 100 years?) is faster than has occurred previously (pre modern man). Would you have any source for that that I could look at ? Frankly, if its stood up I would consider that on its own to answer the question enough to satisfy me.

The most obvious source for that is the Copenhagen Diagnosis report (http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/download/default.html).

[Xray]

Thanks for the link, Ibis, I'll take a look.

I could handle a book up to the size of War and Peace, collating research and the history and theory of the science, written by a reputable scientist. It doesn't have to be the most up to date stuff. Is there anything like that ? Surely it would be a best seller ?

Xray - even if the entire panel were dressed as Coco the Clown and were under the age of 10, it would still not prove that AGW is not happening. There is a very wealthy lobby that wants to convince us it isn't.

Perhaps we should see if we can look at some of the studies ourselves.

I cant prove it is not happening, nor should I have to. The people claiming it is happen need to prove it is happening.

[Xray]

Naturally enough, the full report is available from the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html). It is a pretty long read alright, and if you choose to go on and read the references, even longer. Still, even the report gives a good idea of just how much science is being dismissed with hand-waving by the climate opposition - indeed, the simply enormous pile of facts and theories the IPCC reviews to produce a single report gives some idea of how meaningless the sort of claims Xray is making are. Even if every error the climate opposition likes to trumpet the finding of were an error, you're talking about virtually insignificant error rates. Currently, the climate opposition is concentrating on trying to find out where the IPCC references non-peer-reviewed sources, which will be spun hard into a pretend error rate which assumes every non-peer-review reference is an error - but if worst comes to worst, they'll just go back to claiming that peer review is a fraud.

The FAQ chapter (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-faqs.pdf) for the "Physical Science" part of the report is a good start.

So why is the UN having a review of the whole thing, face it, it is a flawed process.

[C. Flower]

Any link about the UN review Xray ? UN Reports aren't everything I would have assumed them to be. I came across one on drug use recently that was carried out by a Think Tank that was definitely not unbiased and that I would have described as having Bizarre tendencies.

[Xray]

Any link about the UN review Xray ? UN Reports aren't everything I would have assumed them to be. I came across one on drug use recently that was carried out by a Think Tank that was definitely not unbiased and that I would have described as having Bizarre tendencies.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34036&Cr=climate+change&Cr1=

bit biased, but none the less an amazing climb down.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8561004.stm
The conflict of interest charge has been levelled against the IPCC's chair, Rajendra Pachauri, over his business interests.



If these guys cannot even tell the truth about a massive ice sheet melting now, what chance have we on finer details of science that we cannot see. This is deeply deeply flawed "science", it is an insult to anyone that actually cares about the enviroment or people living on the edge on this planet.

[ibis]

So why is the UN having a review of the whole thing, face it, it is a flawed process.

Because it's not as good as it could be - and it should be as good as it could be (although I sometimes wonder what the point of having good information is if it's not going to be acted on anyway).

Theoretically, and assuming that governments are actually going to act on the science, then the IPCC reports need to be as close to perfect as we can make them. In that sense, the total focus of the denial industry on public nit-picking is quite useful - not that they have any real choice.

Having said that, finding a typo and couple of questionable references in a 5-year project that reviews the state of an entire field of science is hardly the earth-shattering matter that denialists think it is. It's convincing only to those who already want to be convinced.

[Dagger John]

I like to follow this guy.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

for polar ice melt

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/03/quote-of-the-week-33-what-no-death-spiral%20/#more-18153

The summer will be good however we are heading to a very cold winter again. La Nina is coming, and we are, if the example of 97-98 is followed in for a big fall of global temperature which is a double hit.

The chances of a cold PDO is now plainly showing, and I would be of the opinion that the latter 3 months of this year will be the coldest for at least the last ten years. Now if wse have a big hurricane season in America this year you will know I am on track.

If you have any children buy some sledges. Next winter they will get the value out of them.

We are seeing the last kicks of the cycle of global warming and are no on the cusp of the fall.

see those Dickensian scenes on the Christ Mass cards? That is a reality in.ten to 15 years

[Tombo]

The only reason there weren't significant y2k issues was because it was a known problem for years ahead of time. Many millions of man hours were spent patching code to deal with the date problem, and that's the real reason it wasn't a big deal.

Repeating oneself gets a bit annoying.

There was virtually no remedial action taken in many countries like Japan and Italy. That is a well accepted truth.

There was no difference in experience between those countries and others post Y2K.

All the IT work was little more than a placebo.

[Tombo]

The French Academy of Sciences to stage a debate at the request of the French Environment Minister:

http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/761-france-to-hold-official-debate-on-global-warming.html

Of course this must be some sort of side show becasue the "science is settled", right?

[C. Flower]

The French Academy of Sciences to stage a debate at the request of the French Environment Minister:

http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/761-france-to-hold-official-debate-on-global-warming.html

Of course this must be some sort of side show becasue the "science is settled", right?

Science is never settled, its an iterative process of developing, testing and refining new knowledge.

A debate sounds to me like a very good idea.

Whatever about the science end of things, the communications end of the IPCC has been a disaster. The assumption seems to have been that if a consensus could be reached in the scientific community, then the public would doff caps and fall in line. Being told to go off and read several thousand studies is not much use to the public.

I notice the sceptic protagonist has written a book. It's high time that there were a couple of properly referenced books produced on the AWG side. Or perhaps there are ? For something this important, there is surely an audience ?

So, the ball has been grabbed by a well-funded sceptic lobby that has devoted far more of its money to communications than to science.

[ibis]

Science is never settled, its an iterative process of developing, testing and refining new knowledge.

A debate sounds to me like a very good idea.

Whatever about the science end of things, the communications end of the IPCC has been a disaster. The assumption seems to have been that if a consensus could be reached in the scientific community, then the public would doff caps and fall in line. Being told to go off and read several thousand studies is not much use to the public.

I notice the sceptic protagonist has written a book. It's high time that there were a couple of properly referenced books produced on the AWG side. Or perhaps there are ? For something this important, there is surely an audience ?

There are plenty of books, but...


So, the ball has been grabbed by a well-funded sceptic lobby that has devoted far more of its money to communications than to science.

That's pretty much the difference - one side is spending its money and time on science, the other on 'communications' (PR). The reason for spending money on PR rather than science is that there isn't any science they can do to disprove climate change, so they quite reasonably don't bother. A similar balance is to be found in certain other debates.

[C. Flower]

There are plenty of books, but...

That's pretty much the difference - one side is spending its money and time on science, the other on 'communications' (PR). The reason for spending money on PR rather than science is that there isn't any science they can do to disprove climate change, so they quite reasonably don't bother. A similar balance is to be found in certain other debates.

I notice that the UN is going to "enquire" into the communications aspect (..reporting back in which year??). There is no excuse for not doing both.
The top down approach at the end of the day never works. People are infuriated by the arrogance.

Please would you recommend one book, properly referenced ? I'd like to get a serious thread going here, on a Book Club basis maybe, with a shared text to which people can refer.

[Xray]

Having said that, finding a typo and couple of questionable references in a 5-year project that reviews the state of an entire field of science is hardly the earth-shattering matter that denialists think it is.

This is what really concerns me about this consensus, you are in denial. There is far more wrong with that report than a couple of typos, any body of work that size is going to have many such errors. It is wrong in the broad sweep of things on huge issues like whether a massive source of drinking water to millions of people is melts(it is not and they said it was going to be gone soon) and at what sea level a country is at (Holland).
That is not a typo that is a totally bizarre serious of totallly made up facts. I might as well say there is no danger to the Dodo and say it is a typo.

[Tombo]

There are plenty of books, but...



That's pretty much the difference - one side is spending its money and time on science, the other on 'communications' (PR). The reason for spending money on PR rather than science is that there isn't any science they can do to disprove climate change, so they quite reasonably don't bother. A similar balance is to be found in certain other debates.

Not only is there directly funded PR out of all the (taxpayer funded) alarmist research bodies, there is also the quasi scientific entities like Realclimate (go find out how that is financed) as well as the heavyweight budgets of Greenpeace, the WWF and the like. Not to mention the compliant MSM from the BBC to the Grauniad and the like.

Go have a look at the grovelling that a Grauniad editor has been doing over at Realclimate because the newspaper "got off message":

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/the-guardian-responds/

The PR resources and budget of the warmy alarmists is massive.

[C. Flower]

This seems like a good idea - a new satellite to monitor the thickness as well the spread of ice.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/satellite-aims-to-track-global-warming-452963.html

It's surprising that the old satellites were not replaced, so there must now be a gap in the data.

[Críostóir]

Repeating oneself gets a bit annoying.

There was virtually no remedial action taken in many countries like Japan and Italy. That is a well accepted truth.

There was no difference in experience between those countries and others post Y2K.

All the IT work was little more than a placebo.

I'm a programmer for a living, and I know for a fact those sorts of errors introduced by assuming something (like two digit years) can be disastrous if not handled properly.

I don't see how any thinking person can't immediately intuit why this could have been a huge problem.

[C. Flower]

I'm a programmer for a living, and I know for a fact those sorts of errors introduced by assuming something (like two digit years) can be disastrous if not handled properly.

I don't see how any thinking person can't immediately intuit why this could have been a huge problem.

What was the worst thing that actually happened, or nearly happened ?

[Críostóir]

What was the worst thing that actually happened, or nearly happened ?

It's not a question of something catastrophic happening, per sé, but rather the dependence of any number of software systems on two digit dates.

Any time you need to determine how much time has passed between one year and another, you're vulnerable to all sorts of system crashes. Let's say, you rented a car on new year's eve 1999 and returned it two days later in 2000. A typical program might estimate that the rental agency owes you money because you rented the car for -99 years.

A bit of a silly example, but you get the point. Most critical applications were of course coded defensively, and I don't think we ever had to really worry nuclear weapons launching or the like. The real problem was any number of small non essential systems failing in non-graceful ways. The sorts of things that would have everyone on the phone to their banks, credit cards, etc.

Found this article about it:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/y2k.htm


The 2-digit year format creates a problem for most programs when "00" is entered for the year. The software does not know whether to interpret "00" as "1900" or "2000". Most programs therefore default to 1900. That is, the code that most programmer's wrote either prepends "19" to the front of the two-digit date, or it makes no assumption about the century and therefore, by default, it is "19". This wouldn't be a problem except that programs perform lots of calculations on dates. For example, to calculate how old you are a program will take today's date and subtract your birthdate from it. That subtraction works fine on two-digit year dates until today's date and your birthdate are in different centuries. Then the calculation no longer works. For example, if the program thinks that today's date is 1/1/00 and your birthday is 1/1/65, then it may calculate that you are -65 years old rather than 35 years old. As a result, date calculations give erroneous output and software crashes or produces the wrong results.

The important thing to recognize is that that's it. That is the whole Year 2000 problem. Many programmers used a 2-digit format for the year in their programs, and as a result their date calculations won't produce the right answers on 1/1/2000. There is nothing more to it than that.


It is a fact that programmers in the early days simply didn't look ahead to when the date flipped, and so of course if you're doing subtraction of dates you're going to get the wrong answer. What happens next just depends on the nature of the software.

Saying y2k wasn't a problem is essentially denying that programmers ever coded dates using just two digits, which is demonstrably false.

[eoinmn]

I found a Y2K bug just last year in a program. It was a trivial problem in a non-essential report, but it had to be fixed anyway.

[Críostóir]

Don't get me wrong: the problem was overhyped and marketed. It was more of a problem to individual firms or software providers/maintainers whose money and reputation was now on the line if their software were to fail..

Found this info on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem#Documented_errors

Documented errors
[edit] Before 2000

* On 28 December 1999, 10,000 card swipe machines issued by HSBC and manufactured by Racal stopped processing credit and debit card transactions.[2] The stores relied on paper transactions until the machines started working again on 1 January.[19]

[edit] On 1 January 2000

When 1 January 2000 arrived, there were problems generally regarded as minor. Problems did not always have to occur precisely at midnight. Some programs were not active at that moment and would only show up when they were invoked. Not all problems recorded were directly linked to Y2K programming in a causality; minor technological glitches occur on a regular basis.

Reported problems include:

* In Ishikawa, Japan, radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight, but officials said there was no risk to the public.[20]
* In Onagawa, Japan, an alarm sounded at a nuclear power plant at two minutes after midnight.[20]
* In Japan, at two minutes past midnight, Osaka Media Port, a telecommunications carrier, found errors in the date management part of the company's network. The problem was fixed by 02:43 and no services were disrupted.[21]
* In Japan, NTT Mobile Communications Network (NTT DoCoMo), Japan's largest cellular operator, reported on 1 January 2000, that some models of mobile telephones were deleting new messages received, rather than the older messages, as the memory filled up.[21]
* In Australia, bus-ticket-validation machines in two states failed to operate.[22]
* In the United States, 150 slot machines at race tracks in Delaware stopped working.[22]
* In the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory, which runs the master clock that keeps the country's official time, had a Y2K glitch on its Web site. Due to a programming problem, the site reported that the date was Jan. 1, 19100.[23]
* In France, the national weather forecasting service, Meteo France, said a Y2K bug made the date on a webpage show a map with Saturday's weather forecast as "01/01/19100".[22] This also occurred on other Web sites, including att.net, at the time a general-purpose portal site primarily for AT&T Worldnet customers in the United States.

[edit] On 1 March 2010

In relation to computing errors regarding the leap year function, in 2010, on March 1st, a massive portion of Sony Playstation 3 users were affected by this computation error, causing the non-slimline and older "fat" versions of the console to be unable to sync trophies or connect to the PSN (Playstation Network) servers because the dates on the OS were out of sync to the consoles themselves. This rendered "Trophy" games unplayable because a trophy sync was required and was unable to be obtained, hence, this resulted in an 8001050F error, followed by a force quit.

This directly impacted the priorities of Sony, but on the following day it was able to be resolved by an automatic resolution, where the consoles automatically passed the "non-existent" day.[15]

[ibis]

I'm a programmer for a living, and I know for a fact those sorts of errors introduced by assuming something (like two digit years) can be disastrous if not handled properly.

I don't see how any thinking person can't immediately intuit why this could have been a huge problem.

In Tombo's case, the answer is probably because he doesn't wish it to be - either that, or you've already identified the problem in your statement.

[Almanac]

Saying y2k wasn't a problem is essentially denying that programmers ever coded dates using just two digits, which is demonstrably false.

I don't think the fact that it's "demonstrably false" will have much of an inhibitory effect on this particular source.

[Xray]

Equally CO2 maybe a problem, but just not that big of a one.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

A severe solar minimum is at play here. The lowest in a century and ongoing. Its going to be a cold summer and another bitterly cold winter.

[C. Flower]

A severe solar minimum is at play here. The lowest in a century and ongoing. Its going to be a cold summer and another bitterly cold winter.

What's a solar minimum Cassandra Syndrome ? Cold weather ? :D

[Cassandra Syndrome]

What's a solar minimum Cassandra Syndrome ? Cold weather ? :D

Its banned science Cactus. I could be burnt at the stake for talking about it!

[C. Flower]

Its banned science Cactus. I could be burnt at the stake for talking about it!

Witchcraft, you mean then ?

[Stendec]

Its banned science Cactus. I could be burnt at the stake for talking about it!

at least you'd be warm :):):)

[Cassandra Syndrome]

at least you'd be warm :):):)

Ha Ha :)

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Witchcraft, you mean then ?

Well ssshh. Remember way back saying that the world was around, and the Earth revolves around the sun, you would be tortured and executed?

Well you see, variations in solar activity and sunspot numbers influence climate.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/700px-Sunspot_Numbers.png

http://www.weathernewengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ap-index-dec-2009.png

http://clouddragon.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/witch-of-the-west.jpg

[Dagger John]

the cold is caused due to a negative Arctic Oscillation and a negative North atlantic Oscillation. This does seem to be linked to solar activity. I will predict a very hot august however, with an extremely cold December to boot, be prepared for a return to Dickensian Christmas card scenes as the world starts cooling. The pacific is cooling and the Atlantic follows in about 5 years.

The present warm cycle is at its zenith

[C. Flower]

Well ssshh. Remember way back saying that the world was around, and the Earth revolves around the sun, you would be tortured and executed?

Well you see, variations in solar activity and sunspot numbers influence climate.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/700px-Sunspot_Numbers.png

http://www.weathernewengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ap-index-dec-2009.png

http://clouddragon.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/witch-of-the-west.jpg


There was a thread on Machine Nation were I tried with Ibis's help to look at long trends with graphs. It was very interesting. I may be able to find some of them, I'm not sure. Yes, there are very interesting oscillations as the earth wobbles about the place and also different effects from solar changes.

We are towards the peak of a high point that could be within the normal range of things, but if agw is occurring it would take hardly anything to go beyond that. Ibis's point was that the speed of change is unprecedented and that that proves there is AGW. I must have a dig around and see if I can find those posts. Ibis suggested some reading, but the economy and this place + work isn't leaving much head room for it.

[Sam Lord]

Cactus, you do not need to do any digging. AGW is the consensus in the scientific community. The only people denying it are those who will tell you that Obama is a socialist and that man never landed on the moon. Everything has to be a conspiracy. It is one of the afflictions of our age .....

[Xray]

Well ssshh. Remember way back saying that the world was around, and the Earth revolves around the sun, you would be tortured and executed?

Well you see, variations in solar activity and sunspot numbers influence climate.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/700px-Sunspot_Numbers.png

http://www.weathernewengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ap-index-dec-2009.png

http://clouddragon.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/witch-of-the-west.jpg

I cannot believe a large nuclear reaction beside us could be affecting our temperature slightly.

[C. Flower]

Cactus, you do not need to do any digging. AGW is the consensus in the scientific community. The only people denying it are those who will tell you that Obama is a socialist and that man never landed on the moon. Everything has to be a conspiracy. It is one of the afflictions of our age .....

Well then, it should be simple enough for me to become part of that consensus. I'm entirely pro-science and the only conspiracy I can see is those oil-funded lobbyists and dirty tricks operators who want to discredit AGW.

The scientific consensus has been wrong in the past about other things. I need to see the evidence and evaluate it for myself.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Cactus, you do not need to do any digging. AGW is the consensus in the scientific community. The only people denying it are those who will tell you that Obama is a socialist and that man never landed on the moon. Everything has to be a conspiracy. It is one of the afflictions of our age .....

What happened during the Maunder and Dalton minimums? The warm spell during High Middle ages of the 10th to 12th century was caused by what?, CO2 emissions by less than 1 Billion people?

As for Obama being a Socialist, so was Bush. What else would you call an economy that almost two thirds of which is state run?

Have you a problem with people who do not share your viewpoint?

Do you know anything about solar science or is just an inconvenient truth?

[Sam Lord]

Well then, it should be simple enough for me to become part of that consensus. I'm entirely pro-science and the only conspiracy I can see is those oil-funded lobbyists and dirty tricks operators who want to discredit AGW.

The scientific consensus has been wrong in the past about other things. I need to see the evidence and evaluate it for myself.

I'm not sure if you could describe it as being wrong. Our understanding is never complete ... I look on the scientific approach as giving us the best possible explanations at any particular time. Of course science develops and so do the explanations. Newtonian physics could not explain stuff at the subatomic level but you you could still use it to land a man on the moon. (Although this may have been a conspiracy :))

You cannot possible hope to do all the research on every scientific topic, read ever paper, etc. to evaluate it all for yourself. Firstly, you probably do not have the training to evaluate correctly and secondly you would probably need to live five hundred years and have nothing else to do to evaluate all the scientific theories out there.

For my part when it comes to choosing between the accepted view of the vast majority of scientists worldwide who are trained and do this stuff every day and the views of some crank internet conspiracy theorists ... I know what side I will fall on.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

See what I mean !

Loonytunes ...

This site shows total government expenditure in the US at 6 Trillion US Dollars

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php

This shows Gross National Income at nearly 10 Trillion US Dollars

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gro_nat_inc-economy-gross-national-income

Land of the free alright.

PS - I expect an apology for that personal uncalled for attack.

[Sam Lord]

This site shows total government expenditure in the US at 6 Trillion US Dollars

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php

This shows Gross National Income at nearly 10 Trillion US Dollars

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gro_nat_inc-economy-gross-national-income

Land of the free alright.

PS - I expect an apology for that personal uncalled for attack.

The extent of your ignorance of socialism is only exceeded by the extent to which you wallow in that ignorance.

I thought of suggesting some reading material to you but why disturb your bliss.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

The extent of your ignorance of socialism is only exceeded by the extent to which you wallow in that ignorance.

I thought of suggesting some reading material to you but why disturb your bliss.

Ignorance? Did you read the stats? Do you know what socialism is?

Thats another unwarranted personal attack. I'd stop and think the next time you click Submit Reply if I were you.

[C. Flower]

[QUOTE=Sam Lord;26503]I'm not sure if you could describe it as being wrong. Our understanding is never complete ... I look on the scientific approach as giving us the best possible explanations at any particular time. Of course science develops and so do the explanations. Newtonian physics could not explain stuff at the subatomic level but you you could still use it to land a man on the moon.*********

That's very confused. The deepening of knowledge that is a reflection of reality through science in a general way doesn't preclude scientists from being wrong about a particular matter. In the real world, there is good and bad science. For example, it was the consensus not too long ago that drugs didn't pass through the placenta to an embryo - hence disasters like thalidomide. The zig zag progress includes plain wrong at times.


You cannot possible hope to do all the research on every scientific topic, read ever paper, etc. to evaluate it all for yourself. Firstly, you probably do not have the training to evaluate correctly and secondly you would probably need to live five hundred years and have nothing else to do to evaluate all the scientific theories out there.

That's not suggested and is an attempt to reduce to the absurd. Which bit of climate change research have you found impossible to understand ? Most of it that I've seen is straightforward enough.


For my part when it comes to choosing between the accepted view of the vast majority of scientists worldwide who are trained and do this stuff every day and the views of some crank internet conspiracy theorists ... I know what side I will fall on.

I would assume that neither of us is interested in the views of "some crank internet conspiracy theorists" (why drag that bogeyman in to your argument). I'm talking about the science.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

[quote]

That's very confused. The deepening of knowledge that is a reflection of reality through science in a general way doesn't preclude scientists from being wrong about a particular matter. In the real world, there is good and bad science. For example, it was the consensus not too long ago that drugs didn't pass through the placenta to an embryo - hence disasters like thalidomide. The zig zag progress includes plain wrong at times.



That's not suggested and is an attempt to reduce to the absurd. Which bit of climate change research have you found impossible to understand ? Most of it that I've seen is straightforward enough.



I would assume that neither of us is interested in the views of "some crank internet conspiracy theorists" (why drag that bogeyman in to your argument). I'm talking about the science.

+1

Yes the oil industry have jumped on the global warming hoax bandwagon, but that is not the fault of those who correlate the sun's activity with climate change.

Its the same of the AGW side. It has become politicised and used for ulterior motives. Still doesn't mean that there aren't any genuine scientists who believe that CO2 is responsible for global warming.

People who believe in the solar science, want renewable energy as well. Who doesn't want cheap, clean energy. I believe that carbon laws are delaying the natural evolution to renewable energy as oil is a fundamental component in developing the capital technology.

[Sam Lord]

That's very confused. The deepening of knowledge that is a reflection of reality through science in a general way doesn't preclude scientists from being wrong about a particular matter. In the real world, there is good and bad science. For example, it was the consensus not too long ago that drugs didn't pass through the placenta to an embryo - hence disasters like thalidomide. The zig zag progress includes plain wrong at times.


I would accept that. It is possible to be plain wrong on something. You are correct. I would not accept, however, that the vast majority of the scientific community today could be engaged in bad science.




That's not suggested and is an attempt to reduce to the absurd. Which bit of climate change research have you found impossible to understand ? Most of it that I've seen is straightforward enough.


I was not specifically talking about climate change in relation to our ability to understand the science but scientific theories generally. We do not feel the need to be masters of every current theory in the field of physics, chemistry, biology or whatever ... and would not be capable of generally. So I guess my point is why should anyone feel a need to evaluate all the evidence for agw for themselves. It is not like you are going to spot something the entire world scientific community has missed. Someone may have a particular interest in the topic and wish to be informed and on top of it .... I have no problem with that. But for Joe Bloggs on the street to tell me that it is to satisfy themselves that the scientific community is doing it's job correctly ... that is laughable.




I would assume that neither of us is interested in the views of "some crank internet conspiracy theorists" (why drag that bogeyman in to your argument). I'm talking about the science.

It is not a bogeyman. The vociferous questioning of agw did not arise from within the scientific community or even from laymen with a particular interest in science. It arose from those with a vested interest in the continued burning of fossil fuels and was taken up by as one by all the right wing cranks on the planet who see a conspiracy in everything. You know as well as I do that just about everyone questioning this science is ideologically driven.

[Sam Lord]

Ignorance? Did you read the stats? Do you know what socialism is?



I know enough to know that anyone who thinks George Bush was a socialist is away with the fairies.....

[C. Flower]

[QUOTE=Sam Lord;26584]I would accept that. It is possible to be plain wrong on something. You are correct. I would not accept, however, that the vast majority of the scientific community today could be engaged in bad science.


Many of the things over the years that I've been told to accept as given have proven to be untrue. I think AGW is probably a correct theory. But even the consensus of scientists is only a consensus that AGW is probably ocurring. There must be a spectrum of views within that consensus. Put me at the more sceptical end of that spectrum for the time being.



I was not specifically talking about climate change in relation to our ability to understand the science but scientific theories generally. We do not feel the need to be masters of every current theory in the field of physics, chemistry, biology or whatever ... and would not be capable of generally. So I guess my point is why should anyone feel a need to evaluate all the evidence for agw for themselves. It is not like you are going to spot something the entire world scientific community has missed. Someone may have a particular interest in the topic and wish to be informed and on top of it .... I have no problem with that.


Never did I suggest that I should evaluate "all of the evidence". I'm certain that no one has done that.

Most theory we operate by has been well tested in practice and in the laboratory. AGW is new and relatively untested theory. If a new theory emerges that requires that we make very major and possibly life threatening changes in the way we live, then the least we can do is engage with it and try to understand it.


But for Joe Bloggs on the street to tell me that it is to satisfy themselves that the scientific community is doing it's job correctly ... that is laughable.

It's science, not religion. Most of the concepts, outside physics, are quite straightforward.


It is not a bogeyman. The vociferous questioning of agw did not arise from within the scientific community or even from laymen with a particular interest in science. It arose from those with a vested interest in the continued burning of fossil fuels and was taken up by as one by all the right wing cranks on the planet who see a conspiracy in everything. You know as well as I do that just about everyone questioning this science is ideologically driven.

It was a bogeyman in that there is no dispute on that issue. You can see the oil lobby coming a mile off.

[Sam Lord]

[quote]

It's science, not religion. Most of the concepts, outside physics, are quite straightforward.



I would beg to differ. I think that most things in science are beyond the grasp of the ordinary layperson.

As an example, I developed many years ago an interest in the views of what were known then as the Aids dissidents. These were people who believed essentially that the link between HIV and AIDS was invented by Western governments and the drugs companies to create a multi billion-dollar market for the drugs used in the treatment of AIDS. I read dozens of articles and papers on the question over weeks and months and at the end of it was no more equipped to give an opinion on the matter than fly to the moon, and I am not a stupid person. I really think that I would have had to do a degree in microbiology or whatever to give any sort of intelligent opinion.

I suspect that a lot of science is like that.

And we all know how the scientific process works. People research for years, publish peer reviewed articles in scientific journals, these are commented on by other scientists, etc. ... and the whole things progresses painfully slowly.

Then you get the internet cranks coming along who probably have no degree to their names and certainly have never published anything in their lives ... but, on the basis of reading some stuff they are predisposed to, are quite prepared to assert on forum all over the world that the whole scientific community is engaged in a hoax.

It is beneath contempt ...

[toxic avenger]

I would beg to differ. I think that most things in science are beyond the grasp of the ordinary layperson.

As an example, I developed many years ago an interest in the views of what were known then as the Aids dissidents. These were people who believed essentially that the link between HIV and AIDS was invented by Western governments and the drugs companies to create a multi billion-dollar market for the drugs used in the treatment of AIDS. I read dozens of articles and papers on the question over weeks and months and at the end of it was no more equipped to give an opinion on the matter than fly to the moon, and I am not a stupid person. I really think that I would have had to do a degree in microbiology or whatever to give any sort of intelligent opinion.

I suspect that a lot of science is like that.

And we all know how the scientific process works. People research for years, publish peer reviewed articles in scientific journals, these are commented on by other scientists, etc. ... and the whole things progresses painfully slowly.

Then you get the internet cranks coming along who probably have no degree to their names and certainly have never published anything in their lives ... but, on the basis of reading some stuff they are predisposed to, are quite prepared to assert on forum all over the world that the whole scientific community is engaged in a hoax.

It is beneath contempt ...

There is a strong correlation between AGW denialists and the AIDS/HIV denialists, and the anti-MMR brigade for that matter. I'd say the 9/11 troofers are a good match too. Which points to another conclusion, one somewhat internal to those people...

[Cassandra Syndrome]

I would beg to differ. I think that most things in science are beyond the grasp of the ordinary layperson.

As an example, I developed many years ago an interest in the views of what were known then as the Aids dissidents. These were people who believed essentially that the link between HIV and AIDS was invented by Western governments and the drugs companies to create a multi billion-dollar market for the drugs used in the treatment of AIDS. I read dozens of articles and papers on the question over weeks and months and at the end of it was no more equipped to give an opinion on the matter than fly to the moon, and I am not a stupid person. I really think that I would have had to do a degree in microbiology or whatever to give any sort of intelligent opinion.

I suspect that a lot of science is like that.

And we all know how the scientific process works. People research for years, publish peer reviewed articles in scientific journals, these are commented on by other scientists, etc. ... and the whole things progresses painfully slowly.

Then you get the internet cranks coming along who probably have no degree to their names and certainly have never published anything in their lives ... but, on the basis of reading some stuff they are predisposed to, are quite prepared to assert on forum all over the world that the whole scientific community is engaged in a hoax.

It is beneath contempt ...

What about solar science? Do we reject it? Do we assume that the sun can vanish overnight but because of our Venus like atmosphere we can sustain heat for sometime? Is it that minute of an exogenous factor that we discount solar science altogether?

What about simple psychology, in which somebody who spent their whole lives researching something only to discover that they were barking up the wrong tree, is reluctant to simply give up? Ever hear of tacit knowledge?

I can research myself about climatology and apply some Praxeology to that and make my own mind up thank you very much. The last person I'll ask advice from is an arrogant upstart like yourself.

And you are the one that is coming across as the internet crank with all the personal attacks. This thread was light hearted until you to you started laying in to people.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

I know enough to know that anyone who thinks George Bush was a socialist is away with the fairies.....


Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist.
Sure, he has cut taxes, a not-too-difficult feat when your own party controls both houses of Congress. But spending? You really have to rub your eyes, smack yourself on the forehead and pour yourself a large gin and tonic. The man can’t help himself.

The first excuse was the war. After 9/11 and a wobbly world economy, that was a decent excuse. Nobody doubted that the United States needed to spend money to beef up homeland security, avert deflation, overhaul national preparedness for a disaster, and fight a war on terror. But when Katrina revealed that, after pouring money into both homeland security and Louisiana’s infrastructure, there was still no co-ordinated plan to deal with catastrophe, a few foreheads furrowed.



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article570387.ece

[Cassandra Syndrome]

There is a strong correlation between AGW denialists and the AIDS/HIV denialists, and the anti-MMR brigade for that matter. I'd say the 9/11 troofers are a good match too. Which points to another conclusion, one somewhat internal to those people...

Could you provide some econometrics on that model? I would love to know the correlation coefficient.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

There is a strong correlation between AGW denialists and the AIDS/HIV denialists, and the anti-MMR brigade for that matter. I'd say the 9/11 troofers are a good match too. Which points to another conclusion, one somewhat internal to those people...

We can just run with the AIDS denialist as the independent variable and the AGW denialists and the 9/11 truthers as the dependent variables separately as a univariate model and then run them together as a multivariate model and compare results, ok.

I only ask this because I understand you take a high moral ground on such statements as not being falsehoods and we just simply need to verify this.

Thank you.

[Kid Ryder]

I think that one of the main things driving AGW denialism is the use that the global political class have made of the latest climate science to impose taxes that will perforce be paid by you and me and not the real global polluters - the corporate sector. Companies like CRH will have their carbon credits purchased for them out of taxpayers money one way or another, and instead of blaming the corporate capitalist system for dodging the bullet like it always does, the cranks turn on the scientists as the people I think that are behind denialism (large corporate polluters, certain mass media corporations) have encouraged them to do.

There are shades of the 17th Century in what's going on. Let's use the analogy of calendar time for today's carbon-based energy usage. It's like as if the kings across Europe levied 'heliocentrism credits' on all churches and clock-bearing buildings, and the Catholic Church in its vindictive anger attempted to deny and discredit the scientific work of Copernicus and Galileo, even though the Pope remained confident that he could prevail upon their majesties to make the Mass-goers pay instead; meanwhile canons incited the faithful to start burning 'those impious books'.

[C. Flower]

I think that one of the main things driving AGW denialism is the use that the global political class have made of the latest climate science to impose taxes that will perforce be paid by you and me and not the real global polluters - the corporate sector. Companies like CRH will have their carbon credits purchased for them out of taxpayers money one way or another, and instead of blaming the corporate capitalist system for dodging the bullet like it always does, the cranks turn on the scientists as the people I think that are behind denialism (large corporate polluters, certain mass media corporations) have encouraged them to do.

There are shades of the 17th Century in what's going on. Let's use the analogy of calendar time for today's carbon-based energy usage. It's like as if the kings across Europe levied 'heliocentrism credits' on all churches and clock-bearing buildings, and the Catholic Church in its vindictive anger attempted to deny and discredit the scientific work of Copernicus and Galileo, even though the Pope remained confident that he could prevail upon their majesties to make the Mass-goers pay instead; meanwhile canons incited the faithful to start burning 'those impious books'.

There are millions of people who don't believe in AGW because they are not sufficiently equipped educationally to understand the difference between climate and short-term weather, or because they haven't seen a cogent and convincing summary of the evidence for it.

I'm not talking about a few odd people: at this stage the majority don't believe in AGW. The approach of telling people that the scientists must be right and not to trouble their heads with trying to understand it because they are too stupid has not worked. In fact, its been a disaster.

[disability student]

Could you provide some econometrics on that model? I would love to know the correlation coefficient.

Econometerics .... it's very unpopular subject with economic students. It put me off/others.

[ibis]

Cactus, you do not need to do any digging. AGW is the consensus in the scientific community. The only people denying it are those who will tell you that Obama is a socialist and that man never landed on the moon. Everything has to be a conspiracy. It is one of the afflictions of our age .....

Also, all one really has to point out is that all CS is offering are graphs of solar activity. You'd need them to correlate with global temperature, but they don't:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Temp_vs_TSI_2009.gif

CS believes that because there is currently a solar minimum, and it is cold where he lives, that the world is cooling, and that this correlates with the solar minimum. The cold weather in Europe is in fact related to the solar minimum (it causes a kink in the jet stream which prevents us getting our usual mild westerlies and substitutes cold north-easterlies), but it's a regional effect - the global average temperature continues its inexorable if unsteady rise.

http://sites.google.com/site/whythe2009winterissocold/_/rsrc/1269838244748/httpsitesgooglecomsitewhythe2009winterissocold/Jet%20stream%20Europe%20winter%202010.jpg

There's the path of the jet stream during our cold winter. It's a regional effect, much like the famous "high pressure ridge over the Azores" which gives us nice summer weather sometimes. I'm afraid CS simply ignores everywhere where the data doesn't agree with his views of what ought to be happening. Solar activity was the main driver of global temperature before our emissions changed the picture - it no longer is.

See, for example, here (http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm).

[C. Flower]

Lovely graph and map, and useful too. Didn't I read somewhere that it was globally a very warm January.

Just not in my garden (:

[Sam Lord]

A severe solar minimum is at play here. The lowest in a century and ongoing. Its going to be a cold summer and another bitterly cold winter.

Where?

[Sam Lord]

I posted this previously on the dark side. There has not been a harsh winter in Canada in years (despite any solar minimum). The "climate has changed" their senior climatologist asserts.

" ... Of the last 37 seasons, only two were colder than normal, and it's been a decade since a winter season wasn't unseasonably mild compared to historical averages, said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips.

"Winter is different now than it used to be," Phillips said in an interview. "The dice have clearly been loaded to give us warmer-than-normal seasons, including the winter. The climate has changed."

[ ...]

It's been a while since Canadians were exposed to a true Canadian winter and most have likely forgotten what real cold is, Phillips said.

"We used to be able to handle tough weather in this country and I wonder if we're getting soft," he said of the annual complaints about the winter cold.

"If we ever had an average winter - not a brutal winter but just an average winter - it would be absolutely brutal on us. If we faced something like back in the 50s, 60s and 70s we would find it probably very punishing."

Most children and teenagers have never faced a winter like their parents, Phillips said, giving credence to all those stories of walking to school - both ways - in deep snow and blinding winds."

[....]

And Phillips said there's no clearer evidence of Canada's warming trend than the weather over the last four seasons.

"Last year in Canada we had the warmest winter on record, almost four degrees warmer than normal," he said.


"Last fall was the 2nd warmest fall on record, we had the warmest spring and the 2nd warmest summer on record. If anything, this last 12 months has probably been the warmest 12 months we've seen in the last 60 years in Canada."

CTV Toronto - Environment Canada predicts another mild winter - CTV News, Shows and Sports -- Canadian Television

[ibis]

Lovely graph and map, and useful too. Didn't I read somewhere that it was globally a very warm January.

Just not in my garden (:

That's because your garden's in the blue bit there:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4364769963_4177d733ab.jpg

Globally, it was indeed a warm January:


The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record.

[Sam Lord]

Having had his/her ass handed to him/her on a platter by posts 32 and 36 I think the only question remaining is whether CS is big enough to admit that she/he is wrong on this question.

[C. Flower]

I would have thought that ball not man was easier to grasp than agw.

[C. Flower]

That's because your garden's in the blue bit there:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4364769963_4177d733ab.jpg

Globally, it was indeed a warm January:

And a long trend to an increasing sea temperature too.

[C. Flower]

I posted this previously on the dark side. There has not been a harsh winter in Canada in years (despite any solar minimum). The "climate has changed" their senior climatologist asserts.

" ... Of the last 37 seasons, only two were colder than normal, and it's been a decade since a winter season wasn't unseasonably mild compared to historical averages, said Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips.

"Winter is different now than it used to be," Phillips said in an interview. "The dice have clearly been loaded to give us warmer-than-normal seasons, including the winter. The climate has changed."

[ ...]

It's been a while since Canadians were exposed to a true Canadian winter and most have likely forgotten what real cold is, Phillips said.

"We used to be able to handle tough weather in this country and I wonder if we're getting soft," he said of the annual complaints about the winter cold.

"If we ever had an average winter - not a brutal winter but just an average winter - it would be absolutely brutal on us. If we faced something like back in the 50s, 60s and 70s we would find it probably very punishing."

Most children and teenagers have never faced a winter like their parents, Phillips said, giving credence to all those stories of walking to school - both ways - in deep snow and blinding winds."

[....]

And Phillips said there's no clearer evidence of Canada's warming trend than the weather over the last four seasons.

"Last year in Canada we had the warmest winter on record, almost four degrees warmer than normal," he said.


"Last fall was the 2nd warmest fall on record, we had the warmest spring and the 2nd warmest summer on record. If anything, this last 12 months has probably been the warmest 12 months we've seen in the last 60 years in Canada."

CTV Toronto - Environment Canada predicts another mild winter - CTV News, Shows and Sports -- Canadian Television


It's recognised in the Med, too that the climate has already changed. A Greek friend told me ten years ago that it had become much hotter and dryer and their agricultural practices had had to change.

[Sam Lord]

I would have thought that ball not man was easier to grasp than agw.

That's hardly playing the man ... it is a figure of speech...

[charley]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,694484,00.html

[Sam Lord]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,694484,00.html

I think links with no comment should be deleted ...

[C. Flower]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,694484,00.html

Hi charley - would you have time to quote a short relevant paragraph, and/or summarise ?

[charley]

i found it earlier today and thought it explained itself fairly well without my comments.
i have noticed that the climate change wishers call for censorship the minute their stance is questioned

[Sam Lord]

i have noticed that the climate change wishers call for censorship the minute their stance is questioned

Where did you notice that, Charley?

[C. Flower]

Hi charley - would you have time to quote a short relevant paragraph, and/or summarise ?

That was a very good read. What did you think of Der Spiegel's article, Ibis ?



Immense public scrutiny made life extremely difficult for the scientists. On May 2, 2001, paleoclimatologist Edward Cook of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory complained in an e-mail: "This global change stuff is so politicized by both sides of the issue that it is difficult to do the science in a dispassionate environment."


It suggests that there's been a propoganda war between pro and skeptic, that may at time have pushed the science into second place.

It doesn't really look at the science itself, just the battle.

[charley]

I think links with no comment should be deleted ...

check through other threads. links do not always require comment

[Sam Lord]

check through other threads. links do not always require comment

They may not have them (that is an issue for the mods) but in a discussion forum I would have thought they do require them. Otherwise, it would be like going to a debate in which no one says anything ... they just push books and articles in the direction of each other.

Boring.

[Kid Ryder]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,694484,00.html

What I got from the link was that there was a defensiveness on the part of the pro-AGW climate scientists in their dealings with the media. They felt that they couldn't afford to explain to the public that their research models had a degree of uncertainty attached to their outcomes/extrapolations/estimates of previous climate patterns because the corporate-sponsored denialist lobby would latch on to this to confuse and mislead lay opinion. The mass media loved all this, because they like nothing more than a high-powered row.
This then encouraged some of them to become cheerleaders for NGOs trying to influence global intergovernmental summits on the AGW/climate change issue, and these folks hyped up the catastrophic-side outcomes on their models thinking that fear would trump the self-interest of the institutionally corrupt. Thirteen (or more) years on, many researchers in the field now complain that it's impossible to do dispassionate research on climate change, because everyone now has an agenda that subtly influences either the questions you ask, or how you interpret the data you choose to gather, or how you present the results when you publish your paper.

Pretty even-handed report in my opinion. Explains well (but not concisely) where the sources of bias/manipulation originated. There was a type of strategic dissimulation going on on the part of the AGW-believing climate scientists that was defensive in its 'justification', while the denialists got to work on 'the less educated folks', as they themselves called the lay public. Both sides behaved shamefully in denying the public access to the facts in the debate, because neither side had any faith (or in the case of the denialists, interest) in the public's ability to call the real picture.

[C. Flower]

What I got from the link was that there was a defensiveness on the part of the pro-AGW climate scientists in their dealings with the media. They felt that they couldn't afford to explain to the public that their research models had a degree of uncertainty attached to their outcomes/extrapolations/estimates of previous climate patterns because the corporate-sponsored denialist lobby would latch on to this to confuse and mislead lay opinion. The mass media loved all this, because they like nothing more than a high-powered row.
This then encouraged some of them to become cheerleaders for NGOs trying to influence global intergovernmental summits on the AGW/climate change issue, and these folks hyped up the catastrophic-side outcomes on their models thinking that fear would trump the self-interest of the institutionally corrupt. Thirteen (or more) years on, many researchers in the field now complain that it's impossible to do dispassionate research on climate change, because everyone now has an agenda that subtly influences either the questions you ask, or how you interpret the data you choose to gather, or how you present the results when you publish your paper.

Pretty even-handed report in my opinion. Explains well (but not concisely) where the sources of bias/manipulation originated. There was a type of strategic dissimulation going on on the part of the AGW-believing climate scientists that was defensive in its 'justification', while the denialists got to work on 'the less educated folks', as they themselves called the lay public. Both sides behaved shamefully in denying the public access to the facts in the debate, because neither side had any faith (or in the case of the denialists, interest) in the public's ability to call the real picture.

Best post on the "debate" aka war of 2 camps, that I've read. Ta, K R.

[ibis]

What I got from the link was that there was a defensiveness on the part of the pro-AGW climate scientists in their dealings with the media. They felt that they couldn't afford to explain to the public that their research models had a degree of uncertainty attached to their outcomes/extrapolations/estimates of previous climate patterns because the corporate-sponsored denialist lobby would latch on to this to confuse and mislead lay opinion. The mass media loved all this, because they like nothing more than a high-powered row.
This then encouraged some of them to become cheerleaders for NGOs trying to influence global intergovernmental summits on the AGW/climate change issue, and these folks hyped up the catastrophic-side outcomes on their models thinking that fear would trump the self-interest of the institutionally corrupt. Thirteen (or more) years on, many researchers in the field now complain that it's impossible to do dispassionate research on climate change, because everyone now has an agenda that subtly influences either the questions you ask, or how you interpret the data you choose to gather, or how you present the results when you publish your paper.

Pretty even-handed report in my opinion. Explains well (but not concisely) where the sources of bias/manipulation originated. There was a type of strategic dissimulation going on on the part of the AGW-believing climate scientists that was defensive in its 'justification', while the denialists got to work on 'the less educated folks', as they themselves called the lay public. Both sides behaved shamefully in denying the public access to the facts in the debate, because neither side had any faith (or in the case of the denialists, interest) in the public's ability to call the real picture.

It would be fairer to say that the scientific community released exactly as much information as it usually does about anything, and with all the usual caveats and error bars. The media dumbed it down, sexed it up, dropped the caveats, and presented it as truth from on high. Once the novelty value in that had died down, and the climate opposition PR boys had got up to speed (most famously after a meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists), it became fun to present the contrarian view (in the case of the Murdoch papers, this was the angle from the get-go). The "debate", such as it is, remains in essentially that framework - the scientists do science, the PR and media do PR and media, and the "debate" happens in the media - there is no scientific "controversy" in AGW, because the science is rock solid at this stage.

Whether people believe / disbelieve / understand / don't understand is entirely irrelevant. The world is warming, the data keeps coming in, and the vested interests invent ever more far-fetched reasons why we should just pretend everything is hunky-dory, nothing to see here, don't listen to those loons, just as they did about the world economy. Except this isn't the sort of short-term ****-up we make of economic cycles - this will be a legacy for the descendants of people who live in countries not yet born, the enduring legacy of a spendthrift age.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

What I got from the link was that there was a defensiveness on the part of the pro-AGW climate scientists in their dealings with the media. They felt that they couldn't afford to explain to the public that their research models had a degree of uncertainty attached to their outcomes/extrapolations/estimates of previous climate patterns because the corporate-sponsored denialist lobby would latch on to this to confuse and mislead lay opinion. The mass media loved all this, because they like nothing more than a high-powered row.
This then encouraged some of them to become cheerleaders for NGOs trying to influence global intergovernmental summits on the AGW/climate change issue, and these folks hyped up the catastrophic-side outcomes on their models thinking that fear would trump the self-interest of the institutionally corrupt. Thirteen (or more) years on, many researchers in the field now complain that it's impossible to do dispassionate research on climate change, because everyone now has an agenda that subtly influences either the questions you ask, or how you interpret the data you choose to gather, or how you present the results when you publish your paper.

Pretty even-handed report in my opinion. Explains well (but not concisely) where the sources of bias/manipulation originated. There was a type of strategic dissimulation going on on the part of the AGW-believing climate scientists that was defensive in its 'justification', while the denialists got to work on 'the less educated folks', as they themselves called the lay public. Both sides behaved shamefully in denying the public access to the facts in the debate, because neither side had any faith (or in the case of the denialists, interest) in the public's ability to call the real picture.

Excellent Post, Kid Ryder.

I try and simply follow the truth. The discipline of Praxeology has taught me a lot. Occam's Razor is the shining light.

I know this can be an emotive issue for people, so I do not wish to enter a tennis match of stats and graphs.

All I can say is that some people are genuinenly believers in Solar science and just respect them for that. There is no ulterior motive, just respect for the yellow ball in the sky.

Maybe thats the Pagan in me? :)

[Sam Lord]

I do not wish to enter a tennis match of stats and graphs.



I can translate that ... "I have no argument that holds water."




All I can say is that some people are genuinenly believers in Solar science and just respect them for that. There is no ulterior motive, just respect for the yellow ball in the sky.

Maybe thats the Pagan in me? :)

Fair enough. So you are religious. There is nothing unusual in that. Some people believe in virgin births .. some people think 60 virgins await them in heaven. That is your business. But don't confuse it with science and don't try to have rational arguments on the basis of it. It is your superstition ... nothing else. Keep it to yourself.

[Xray]

[quote=Sam Lord;26609]

I would beg to differ. I think that most things in science are beyond the grasp of the ordinary layperson.

As an example, I developed many years ago an interest in the views of what were known then as the Aids dissidents. These were people who believed essentially that the link between HIV and AIDS was invented by Western governments and the drugs companies to create a multi billion-dollar market for the drugs used in the treatment of AIDS. I read dozens of articles and papers on the question over weeks and months and at the end of it was no more equipped to give an opinion on the matter than fly to the moon, and I am not a stupid person. I really think that I would have had to do a degree in microbiology or whatever to give any sort of intelligent opinion.

I suspect that a lot of science is like that.

And we all know how the scientific process works. People research for years, publish peer reviewed articles in scientific journals, these are commented on by other scientists, etc. ... and the whole things progresses painfully slowly.

Then you get the internet cranks coming along who probably have no degree to their names and certainly have never published anything in their lives ... but, on the basis of reading some stuff they are predisposed to, are quite prepared to assert on forum all over the world that the whole scientific community is engaged in a hoax.

It is beneath contempt ...


I am not a "lay person" I have a degree and post grad in a scientific field. The research as displayed looks like utter nonsense to me, it is not conducted or presented properly. I cannot take that at face value. I have spent a few hour actually reading thru journals only available by subscription etc and I have to say that there is no black and white case put forward at all other than by politicians. Whats more the earth is simply not hotter now as we were told it would be. That is undeniable.

[C. Flower]

It would be fairer to say that the scientific community released exactly as much information as it usually does about anything, and with all the usual caveats and error bars. The media dumbed it down, sexed it up, dropped the caveats, and presented it as truth from on high. Once the novelty value in that had died down, and the climate opposition PR boys had got up to speed (most famously after a meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists), it became fun to present the contrarian view (in the case of the Murdoch papers, this was the angle from the get-go). The "debate", such as it is, remains in essentially that framework - the scientists do science, the PR and media do PR and media, and the "debate" happens in the media - there is no scientific "controversy" in AGW, because the science is rock solid at this stage.

Whether people believe / disbelieve / understand / don't understand is entirely irrelevant. The world is warming, the data keeps coming in, and the vested interests invent ever more far-fetched reasons why we should just pretend everything is hunky-dory, nothing to see here, don't listen to those loons, just as they did about the world economy. Except this isn't the sort of short-term ****-up we make of economic cycles - this will be a legacy for the descendants of people who live in countries not yet born, the enduring legacy of a spendthrift age.

I think Kid Ryder accurately summarised what the article in Der Spiegel says. Its popular journalism, unreferenced, and I would be interested to know if you think it presents event fairly and accurately.

You can't have it both ways. Either it matters whether people put appropriate weight on the science, or it doesn't. If people don't believe/understand the very high probability that AGW threatens conditions for life on the planet, they won't be prepared to make big and costly changes in the way they live.

The communications obviously haven't lived up to the science.

People are not fools and won't be convinced through hype and by playing of the man re petrol lobbyists. The petrol lobby can reply that the first people to promote the idea of AGW were pro nuclear.

Tough and all though it is, the science has to be communicated, honestly.

[C. Flower]

[quote=Sam Lord;26616]


I am not a "lay person" I have a degree and post grad in a scientific field. The research as displayed looks like utter nonsense to me, it is not conducted or presented properly. I cannot take that at face value. I have spent a few hour actually reading thru journals only available by subscription etc and I have to say that there is no black and white case put forward at all other than by politicians. Whats more the earth is simply not hotter now as we were told it would be. That is undeniable.

Here's a very short article which shows how data collection changes have over-emphasised cooling and also why a temperature drop does not necessarily mean that CO2 is not having an effect on temperatures.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming.html

[Cassandra Syndrome]

I can translate that ... "I have no argument that holds water."



Fair enough. So you are religious. There is nothing unusual in that. Some people believe in virgin births .. some people think 60 virgins await them in heaven. That is your business. But don't confuse it with science and don't try to have rational arguments on the basis of it. It is your superstition ... nothing else. Keep it to yourself.

:p

Ha Ha!. You entertain me now. Keep it up. The words "under" and "skin" no longer exist. Now it amuses. Great progress.

Yeah I am a big everything denying, Pagan. The crops are not going to fail this year as we had a human sacrifice on Mayday. Great craic.

However I have responsibility here so as I said I am not getting into a personal slagging match and a tennis game of graphs and stats
Anyone interested in Solar activity stats, graphs, history, daily updates, here is a good website. If you are into number crunching there are lots of data files to play with. Enjoy!

http://sidc.oma.be/index.php3

OK, I am off to dance in me nip around a fire, have lots of free love in open, eat shrooms and drink lots of recently distilled alcohol........

[C. Flower]

Somewhere back here, there was a pretty good conversation on climate change.

What I'm going to do is split off the questions about disappearing threads into the Site Moderation thread so the mystery can be clarified. Then, hopefully the AGW discussion can continue in this place.

Thank You

CF Admin

[Xray]

has there even been a time when constant global temp alterations have not occurred?, seems to me that change is the norm

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Somewhere back here, there was a pretty good conversation on climate change.

What I'm going to do is split off the questions about disappearing threads into the Site Moderation thread so the mystery can be clarified. Then, hopefully the AGW discussion can continue in this place.

Thank You

CF Admin

Thats the best thing to do. Thanks.

[ibis]

I think Kid Ryder accurately summarised what the article in Der Spiegel says. Its popular journalism, unreferenced, and I would be interested to know if you think it presents event fairly and accurately.

You can't have it both ways. Either it matters whether people put appropriate weight on the science, or it doesn't. If people don't believe/understand the very high probability that AGW threatens conditions for life on the planet, they won't be prepared to make big and costly changes in the way they live.

The communications obviously haven't lived up to the science.

People are not fools and won't be convinced through hype and by playing of the man re petrol lobbyists. The petrol lobby can reply that the first people to promote the idea of AGW were pro nuclear.

Tough and all though it is, the science has to be communicated, honestly.

I have no disagreement with that - and I've never claimed the science was either well communicated, nor that scientists were doing enough to communicate it. That's one of the reasons it gets left to the media and the politicians, both of whom simplify and distort it in line with their own agendas.

Unfortunately, we're up against two issues - first, that many scientists feel it's simply not part of their job to "communicate science" any more than it's your plumber's job to "communicate plumbing" - indeed, there are plenty of scientists who genuinely feel that scientists should absolutely not engage in "communicating science" - and second, many scientists are probably incapable of dealing with public communication, and are a liability in terms of the public debate. Phil Jones is an extraordinarily good example of the latter issue - far from being some kind of scheming Svengali, he's a nerd. The kind of guy who will give a literal answer to a question without ever questioning the framing of the question. Indeed, I don't know if many scientists would know what "framing the question" means. Watching most scientists attempt to communicate with the public is a very painful business.

As it happens, I strongly disagree with the idea that scientists don't have a responsibility to communicate directly with the public - more and more policy issues are scientific, or are the subject of scientific research - but I think that we're some way from establishing a modus operandi that is comfortable for scientists, useful to the public, and offers minimal opportunity for hijacking by the agendas of politicians and media. I think that making all publicly funded research available to the public that funds it is an obvious and necessary first step, but it's hardly sufficient, and there's a long road from there - one I'd be very interested in being part of, though.

[C. Flower]

I have no disagreement with that - and I've never claimed the science was either well communicated, nor that scientists were doing enough to communicate it. That's one of the reasons it gets left to the media and the politicians, both of whom simplify and distort it in line with their own agendas.

Unfortunately, we're up against two issues - first, that many scientists feel it's simply not part of their job to "communicate science" any more than it's your plumber's job to "communicate plumbing" - indeed, there are plenty of scientists who genuinely feel that scientists should absolutely not engage in "communicating science" - and second, many scientists are probably incapable of dealing with public communication, and are a liability in terms of the public debate. Phil Jones is an extraordinarily good example of the latter issue - far from being some kind of scheming Svengali, he's a nerd. The kind of guy who will give a literal answer to a question without ever questioning the framing of the question. Indeed, I don't know if many scientists would know what "framing the question" means. Watching most scientists attempt to communicate with the public is a very painful business.

As it happens, I strongly disagree with the idea that scientists don't have a responsibility to communicate directly with the public - more and more policy issues are scientific, or are the subject of scientific research - but I think that we're some way from establishing a modus operandi that is comfortable for scientists, useful to the public, and offers minimal opportunity for hijacking by the agendas of politicians and media. I think that making all publicly funded research available to the public that funds it is an obvious and necessary first step, but it's hardly sufficient, and there's a long road from there - one I'd be very interested in being part of, though.

There's a need for a three way effort, from the public, from scientists and from specialist scientist-communicators. If there aren't any of the latter, we should make some.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

I said I wouldn't intervene in this thread anymore, but that is a very good post Ibis.

For example, the website I linked earlier which is a solar science one has data files on sunspots, x rays, CMEs etc. which can be imported into an econometric software system I use to play around with and see for myself patterns, correlations etc. The date goes way back to 1800.

I can't seem to find any sites that provides datafiles for temperature measurements since records began. The more this is shared for everyone the better.

[ibis]

I said I wouldn't intervene in this thread anymore, but that is a very good post Ibis.

For example, the website I linked earlier which is a solar science one has data files on sunspots, x rays, CMEs etc. which can be imported into an econometric software system I use to play around with and see for myself patterns, correlations etc. The date goes way back to 1800.

I can't seem to find any sites that provides datafiles for temperature measurements since records began. The more this is shared for everyone the better.

Absolutely - I may disagree with the way you use the data, but I would strongly defend your right to have it, to coin a phrase.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Absolutely - I may disagree with the way you use the data, but I would strongly defend your right to have it, to coin a phrase.

Ah yes, well paraphrased! one of my own liberty favourite soundbites. Well your post earlier just like the hydrogen sulphide example you used, got me thinking.

Lets throw out some of the other varibles such as intergalactic gamma rays, Earth's orbit, water vapour, volcanos and sulphur aerosols for this equation.

We disagree on the weight the change in solar activity and the weight of change in manmade CO2 emissions as inputs. But I assume we both acknowledge that each variable is a causal factor. Its just you would think CO2 is high but acceot the sun has a minor role to play and I think the opposite.

I would concede that even though the low cycles in the 16th - 19th centuries correlates with cold climate, that manmade CO2 emissions were extremely low back then, as a result of low population and low per capita emission rates. The 20th century has had high solar cycles in comparison. However the CO2 emissions has rocketed. So even though I would still be pointing to the graphs of solar activity as the main exogenous factor, CO2 emissions are an enogenous factor and it is hard to quantify what impact it had on our climate.

We had a low solar cycle in the 70s and the climate had cooled then. However this cycle should be analysed with another cycle 200 years ago to compare the temps. If the temps were higher but the cycle was the same intensity than by logic CO2 emissions had a role to play here.

What I am getting at here is that the severe solar minimum now should be compared with the 1 back in 1915 and the Dalton minimum start to see how other enogenous factors have influenced. If this solar minimum goes on for 6 months or more it is as bad or worse than the one 100 years ago. If measuring like to like we find that although we had a cold summer and a cold winter again, it was no where near as bad as the weather 100 years ago or during the Dalton minimum, than the AGW case has a lot of merit.

Because this minimum won't lass for ever and solar maximums can happen within 3 years. And just because this is a severe minimum does not imply the next one could not be a huge 300+ Maximum.

If we find that the difference in CO2 levels made a difference in the 2 severe minimums mean temperatures well then a severe maximum coupled with high CO2 levels could pose a huge major risk.

See where I am coming from? If we both agree that both variables influence climate change but we disagree on the weight of each variable, it will mean major problems to result in a massive solar maximum with large levels of CO2 hovering about.

[Xray]

I have no disagreement with that - and I've never claimed the science was either well communicated, nor that scientists were doing enough to communicate it. That's one of the reasons it gets left to the media and the politicians, both of whom simplify and distort it in line with their own agendas.

Unfortunately, we're up against two issues - first, that many scientists feel it's simply not part of their job to "communicate science" any more than it's your plumber's job to "communicate plumbing" - indeed, there are plenty of scientists who genuinely feel that scientists should absolutely not engage in "communicating science" - and second, many scientists are probably incapable of dealing with public communication, and are a liability in terms of the public debate. Phil Jones is an extraordinarily good example of the latter issue - far from being some kind of scheming Svengali, he's a nerd. The kind of guy who will give a literal answer to a question without ever questioning the framing of the question. Indeed, I don't know if many scientists would know what "framing the question" means. Watching most scientists attempt to communicate with the public is a very painful business.

As it happens, I strongly disagree with the idea that scientists don't have a responsibility to communicate directly with the public - more and more policy issues are scientific, or are the subject of scientific research - but I think that we're some way from establishing a modus operandi that is comfortable for scientists, useful to the public, and offers minimal opportunity for hijacking by the agendas of politicians and media. I think that making all publicly funded research available to the public that funds it is an obvious and necessary first step, but it's hardly sufficient, and there's a long road from there - one I'd be very interested in being part of, though.

I think you have a point there, from my point of view there are only three possibilities.

1. That the theory of CO2 dangerously warming the planet is correct but has been amazingly badly explained.

2. There is a bit of truth to it, but it is not that serious and the case has been overstated. Other cooling mechanisms are now hiding the underlying warming from CO2 thus making it a theoretical irrelevance.

3. The scientific world has totally over called this one and is now stuck with it despite new evidence suggesting that the picture is far more complex than was set out in computer models in the 1990s.


Now if its 1. they really need to sort themselves out. There should be no problem in answering a few basic questions from non experts on internet chat sites if that is the case. If I can understand how a nuclear power station or MRI scanner works I can have solar cooling or CO2 levels explained to me.

[C. Flower]

At last I've found a piece of writing that pulls together the issues of scientific method and data in only 17 pages. Published 10th May this year.

The Paper aims to learn lessons for the future by looking at species collapse that has taken place in the past. It goes through all the questions raised in this read - what type of scientific evidence is reliable/acceptable, how AGW takes place, what is the evidence that its been going on etc. It also looks at adaption and how global warming won't finish the planet off, but has the potential to finish many species off, including our own. It ends by looking at possible solutions. I'm posting extracts that provide answers to some of my questions on this thread.

In terms of methodology, the paper takes the line that while empirical evidence isn't absolute proof, that man has made huge developments based on it and it has validity as part of an iterative process of learning. An example given was the use of salysilic (sp?) acid - aspirin - for hundreds of years before the reasons for its effects were understood.

http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Research/wp/pdf/paper485.pdf




Climate Change:
Lessons for our Future from the Distant Past
David F. Hendry - Economics Department and The James Martin 21st Century School,

Oxford University
May 10, 2010


Abstract


We consider information from many sciences bearing on the causes and consequences of climate change, focusing on lessons from past mass extinctions of life on Earth.
The increasing atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gases are now established, as is their source in human activity.

Worldwide temperatures are rising on a high variance stochastic trend.
Evidence from the past 500 million years provides a major warning: climate change is the main culprit in previous mass extinctions,

with several different triggers–humanity is the latest trigger. The different approaches and sources
of evidence across so many disciplines make a compelling case.
Economic analysis offers a number of ideas, but the key problem is that distributions can shift, making action to avoid possible future

shifts urgent. Adaptation ceases to be meaningful if food, water and land resources become inadequate, whereas the first mitigation steps are not costly and should stimulate innovation, creating opportunities as new technologies develop.

JEL classifications:

Q54, Q51.
KEYWORDS: Climate change; Mass extinctions; Greenhouse gases; Location shifts



I've emailed for permission to reproduce these extracts and will take them down on request.

[C. Flower]

How the Greenhouse Effect Works


The physics of greenhouse gases are quite well understood, and date from insights starting in the late 19th century (see Arrhenius, 1896, who argued that atmospheric temperature change was proportional to the logarithmic change in CO2. Heat enters the earth’s atmosphere from the sun as radiation, warms the surface, then is re-radiated back through various atmospheric layers where greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat. This is then re-radiated, with some radiation therefore directed back towards the planet’s surface. Thus, greater concentrations of greenhouse gases increase the amount of absorption and hence re-radiation. In turn, that increases convection between the surface and sequentially through atmospheric layers, raising their temperatures and water vapour content, thereby changing cloud cover. Only a sophisticated general ‘equilibrium’ model of the system can capture the many complicated interactions and interdependencies between all the components.



We now consider the four gases in turn.


First, water vapour is currently the most important and prevalent of the greenhouse gases, and is obviously crucial to life on earth, inducing cloud cover and rainfall etc. However, increased concentrations of water vapor in upper levels of the atmosphere would reduce heat loss from radiation.


Second, carbon dioxide is also key to life, and like water vapour has been a major greenhouse gas long before the evolution of modern humans. The present half-life time of CO

2 in our atmosphere is 30–100 years, depending on factors like ocean absorption capacity and plant growth (see e.g., Lovelock, 2000). There is roughly a 30-year lag between emissions and their full effect on warming. Naturally, many other factors can impinge, some leading to cooling effects, such as particulate matter emissions from industrial activity and volcanoes (e.g., the 1815 AD eruption of Tambora leading to 1816 being ‘the year without a summer’: see Stommel and Stommel, 1979), as well as aircraft vapour trails changing cloud cover, La Ni˜na, etc. Other factors lead to warming, such as re-release of CO 2 from the oceans as they warm.


Third, nitrous oxide comprises about 7 percent of gases influencing global climate. Measures suggest it is about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. In addition,following the
reductions in CFCs,4 nitrous oxide is now the most potent destructive force attacking the ozone layer(see Ravishankara, Daniel and Portmann, 2009).

Fourthly, methane is about 20 times as powerful as CO 2 as a greenhouse gas, albeit that its halflife in the upper atmosphere is about 15 years. Methane gradually gets converted to CO 2 in the upper atmosphere so has a second effect on climate. Present estimates of the total volume of methane already show it is vast: worldwide, the amount of methane gas hydrates alone is estimated at over 6 trillion tonnes–about twice the amount of carbon equivalent in all fossil fuels.

[C. Flower]

How we affect the four greenhouse gases

Anthropogenic effects on climate from greenhouse gases seem to date back to the origins of agriculture
around 10,000–12,000 years ago (see e.g., Bellwood, 2004), beginning at the end of what is called the
Weichsel glacial period,6 and the start of our (Holocene) era. This was followed by pottery and domestication
of animals, with a rapid rise in population and land clearance, leading to increased outputs of CO2.
Carbon dioxide output increased greatly during the industrial revolution, and is now mainly due to power
generation from fossil fuel consumption, primarily coal, gas and oil, exacerbated by tropical deforestation.

7 As living standards rise and population growth is non-negative, ‘business as usual’ projections
would lead to sustained growth in CO2 emissions.
Nitrous oxide output has doubled since the 1970s, mainly from modern agricultural practices and
burning gasoline (see Energy Information Administration, 2008, for US data). Catalytic converters in
car exhaust systems break down the heavier nitrogen compounds, as well as oxidizing carbon monoxide,
forming CO2 and nitrous oxide in the process, producing more of the latter when the exhaust system is
cold or stressed. Fertilizer overuse leads to run-off and the release of nitrous oxide: as Ravishankara

et al. (2009) show, nitrous oxide is becoming an increasing component of greenhouse gases.
Methane is produced by living plants and animals as a by-product (e.g., cattle), and also by rotting
vegetation. If warming substantially melts the Siberian permafrost, greenhouse gas output could jump.
Already, at any lake in northern Siberia, drill a hole in the ice to fish, then hold a flame over the hole–but
jump back to avoid being burned by the methane catching fire. That is one of several possible ‘tipping
points’, including general release of subsea methane hydrates, and a collapse in rainforest ecology
through changes in rainfall patterns.
4.2

[C. Flower]

How Can We Be Sure That Human Activity is Responsible for Global Climate Change ?

Since all the great extinctions seem due to global climate change, albeit from possibly different causes, and since greenhouse gases lead to temperature changes, what is the evidence for the accumulation of CO2 equivalents in the atmosphere? The records collected at Mauna Loa in Hawaii by Charles Keeling starting in 1958, show an unequivocal upward trend, with large seasonal variations around it. For a recent graph showing the increase in CO2 levels from the low 300 parts per million (ppm) to near 400ppm since 1958, see Scripps CO2 Program (2010). Levels of 172-300 ppm are found in deep ice-core data over the past 800,000 years (see L¨uthil, Le Floch, Bereiter, Blunier, Barnola, Siegenthaler, Raynaud,Jouzel, Fischer, Kawamura and Stocker, 2008). Moreover, Loulergue, Schilt, Spahni, Masson-Delmotte,Blunier, Lemieux, Barnola, Raynaud, Stocker and Chappellaz (2008) establish that methane concentrations in the atmosphere are double relative to the levels seen over that time scale, and also show that strong correlations of methane and CO with temperature reconstructions are consistent back 800,000 years’. Weart (2010) provides an excellent history of the discovery of global warming.

How can we be sure human activity is responsible? Here is how. Keeling’s records reveal that the seasonal surge in CO2 coincides with Northern Hemisphere winters when more fossil fuels are consumed.There have been trend increases in our use of fossil fuels and in deforestation. Since Suess (1953) it has been known that radioactive isotope carbon-14 is created by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere hitting molecules, after which the radioactivity gradually decays. Since coal and oil deposits were laid down hundreds of millions of years ago, their radioactivity has dissipated, so carbon dioxide released by their burning lacks this radioactive isotope. The changing ratio of the isotopes of carbon detected in the atmosphere would point directly at anthropogenic sources. Unfortunately, atmospheric nuclear explosions have radically altered that ratio, making it inapplicable as an indicator of human fossil fuel consumption. However, the ratio of another heavier isotope, carbon-13, relative to carbon-12 in atmospheric CO2 is also larger than its ratio in fossil fuels, and is not affected by nuclear tests. Consequently, if additional CO2 output is due to burning fossil fuels, the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 should be decreasing–as is occurring.

[C. Flower]

Evidence that Climate Change Caused by Man has Been Taking Place


4.2 Some evidence of our impact
There is a long list of evidence for a world-wide temperature trend.
Many plants flower in spring in both hemispheres about 2-3 weeks earlier than when accurate, reliable,
and almost continuous, records began about 1850. Satellite pictures confirm the melting of the


Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves over the last 30 years, with concomitant rises in ocean levels of
between 0.1 and 0.2 meters during the 20th century, partly offset by increased storage in dams. Evidence
of warming of many parts of the oceans is associated with bleaching of some coral beds. Most directly,
global air temperatures over the last century reveal that most of the warmest records occur in the latest
decades, based on data collected sufficiently far from cities to avoid contamination from ‘local warming’.
The resulting world-wide temperature ‘trend’ is both stochastic and slow relative to fluctuations from
all sources, so it is easy to be skeptical about that trend and its rate of progress. As a related example,
until recently, it was believed there had been essentially no growth in English gross domestic product
(GDP) per capita over 1300–1700, because real wages seemed static. However, Apostolides, Broadberry,
Campbell, Overton and van Leeuwen (2008) have shown that real growth was 0.13 to 0.16 per cent per
annum. That is tiny against the huge fluctuations caused by the Black Death, famines, wars and so on,
and therefore such a trend is hard to detect. Nevertheless, by nearly doubling living standards over 400
years, was a precursor to the Industrial Revolution from the resulting high cost of labour as documented

by Allen (2009). Moreover, some ‘counter arguments’ are invalid, including the claim in the

Australian that there was ‘little world temperature growth from 1998 to 2006’ (July, 2008): an economics student
who selectively joined the peak of one boom to the trough of the next slump and claimed that proved

there was no economic growth would be failed.
It is change in the climate, rather than the level within bounds, that causes problems for life, because



adaptation is not instantaneous, as the following discussion of ‘great extinctions’ emphasizes.

[C. Flower]

It looks like the IPCC has been reading this thread :) and major reform is proposed - hopefully more engagement with the public and better communication of findings will lead to a higher quality of debate and better science.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/un-climate-change-panel-promises-more-open-view-462833.html




The UN body on climate change, accused of ignoring critics and allowing glaring errors into its work, today declared a broader range of experts will write its next report on global warming.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change included more women and scientists from developing countries, but also selected authors with a wider range of backgrounds than previously - partly in response to recent criticism that earlier groups refused to address dissenting views.

The previous panel had 559 members, chosen from 2,000 nominations. This one has 861 experts, picked from 3,000 nominations. Some 60% of the scientists are new to the role.

The group, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, issues reports that governments, businesses and individuals use to determine how they will deal with climate change. It began in 1989, and has issued four reports so far - the most recent one in 2007.

Roger Pielke, an environmental studies scientist at University of Colorado and past critic of the IPCC, said the list "looks like business as usual," but insisted the authors should be given a chance to show they could improve on previous reports.

He said his concerns with the reports have "far less to do with the individuals involved than a deeply flawed process."

Chris Field, who co-chairs the group that will examine the impact of climate change, said the IPCC authors were open to making changes to their work if recommended to do so by the independent review.

Among the most blatant errors in the fourth report was the conclusion that Himalayan glaciers would disappear as early as 2035 - a date that turned out to be wrong by hundreds of years.

Climate change critics say IPCC scientists have in the past overestimated the effect of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and underplayed natural cycles of warming and cooling, which cannot be controlled.

Others have claimed the authors, who are not paid for their work, exaggerated the effects that climate change will have on the environment and human life.

A series of emails stolen last year from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Britain showed climate scientists discussing ways to keep the research of climate sceptics out of peer-reviewed journals.

Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/un-climate-change-panel-promises-more-open-view-462833.html#ixzz0rhTsATdy

[Cassandra Syndrome]

The records collected at Mauna Loa in Hawaii by Charles Keeling starting in 1958, show an unequivocal upward trend, with large seasonal variations around it. For a recent graph showing the increase in CO2 levels from the low 300 parts per million (ppm) to near 400ppm since 1958, see Scripps CO2 Program (2010)

Did you know that station sits on the side of an active volcano?

[Mod3]

Did you know that station sits on the side of an active volcano?

I didn't but I'm sure that the scientist involved noticed ....:)

So are you asserting that the Volcano has been releasing increasing amounts of CO2 year by year since 1958 and that this accounts for the readings taken there?

And if so why do the readings conform pretty much to those taken at dozens of other sampling stations scattered around the globe?

[Cassandra Syndrome]

I didn't but I'm sure that the scientist involved noticed ....:)

So are you asserting that the Volcano has been releasing increasing amounts of CO2 year by year since 1958 and that this accounts for the readings taken there?

And if so why do the readings conform pretty much to those taken at dozens of other sampling stations scattered around the globe?

Just find it an odd location. Most of the others apart the Anarctica station are around the Pacific rim. St Helena would be an ideal place for a station.

My concern is Global Cooling. Depopulation, famines, plagues and poverty resulted during the 2 major periods of cooling in the past 2000 years. The 6th century and the 14th century. The High Middle Ages of the 10th -12th century was a warmer period even more than today and their was relative prosperity not seen since the Roman times. Then, as the world cooled again in the 13th and 14th century breeding crop failures, famine and the Black Death the population levels did not return to what they were, until the 18th century.

Another concern is the vanishing of Bees, probably due to insecticides. This could lead to massive crop failures. If Katla erupts and a few other volcanos that are due to go off erupt as well and if this is a very weak solar cycle that is already the deepest minimum in more than a century, things could get very, very messy.

[C. Flower]

New York is having a record-breaking heat wave with temperatures of 102 degrees fahrenheit.

It's been a record-breaking 6 months, globally.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/global-heat-is-on-in-2010-so-far/?permid=3&scp=9&sq=hottest%20year%20ever&st=cse

By the time I had gone back to the NY Times to get a link, the record was 103 degrees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/nyregion/08heat.html

[Sam Lord]

As they say ... every cloud has a silver lining.

In this case Cassandra will be relieved.




My concern is Global Cooling.

[C. Flower]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=6&submitted=Get+Report

Latest NOAA Report - is it time we started taking this thing seriously? This decade, even by AGW scientists, was predicted as being slightly cooler than the trend


Global Highlights



The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C (61.1°F), which is 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). The previous record for June was set in 2005.
June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.
The June worldwide averaged land surface temperature was 1.07°C (1.93°F) above the 20th century average of 13.3°C (55.9°F)—the warmest on record.
It was the warmest April–June (three-month period) on record for the global land and ocean temperature and the land-only temperature. The three-month period was the second warmest for the world's oceans, behind 1998.
It was the warmest June and April–June on record for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and all land areas of the Northern Hemisphere.
It was the warmest January–June on record for the global land and ocean temperature. The worldwide land on average had its second warmest January–June, behind 2007. The worldwide averaged ocean temperature was the second warmest January–June, behind 1998.
Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean continued to decrease during June 2010. According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/), La Niña conditions are likely to develop during the Northern Hemisphere summer 2010.

[C. Flower]

Great mapping here of the NOAA mapping showing air and sea temperatures. Terrible droughts across Eastern Europe, Russia, the USA, the hottest summer for the UK on record.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/2010-has-been-hottest-year-on-record-noaa.php

One thing going right for us is the beautiful temperate summer.

[ModestMouse]

How Can We Be Sure That Human Activity is Responsible for Global Climate Change ?

..... see Scripps CO2 Program (2010)....]

Scripps eh? Didn't they invent Global Warming?

[C. Flower]

Scripps eh? Didn't they invent Global Warming?

Did they?

Invent, or discover ??

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Cold winter across the Southern Hemisphere this year. Solar Cycle 24 has started off quite weak after the lowest solar minimum in 100 years. Next 6 months will be interesting. I will map the progress of this cycle here. So far it is similar to the Dalton Minimum activity of the early 18th century that resulted in severe winters and Global Cooling.

Global Cooling is a much worse outcome for our civilaisation than Global Warming. Game plans on how to deal with this scenario should at least be entertained.

[C. Flower]

Cold winter across the Southern Hemisphere this year. Solar Cycle 24 has started off quite weak after the lowest solar minimum in 100 years. Next 6 months will be interesting. I will map the progress of this cycle here. So far it is similar to the Dalton Minimum activity of the early 18th century that resulted in severe winters and Global Cooling.

Global Cooling is a much worse outcome for our civilaisation than Global Warming. Game plans on how to deal with this scenario should at least be entertained.

Those temperatures are for the planet as a whole. There were predictions from a lot of scientists that we were at the beginning of a cooler decade, within the ongoing trend to warming. Instead, we have the hottest year "on record".

[ModestMouse]

Did they?

Invent, or discover ??

That is the big question.

Only time will answer it, and I doubt we will be around to argue about it by then.

[C. Flower]

A limited Kyoto deal has been made. Only Bolivia held out for something stronger, in the UNI and outside, with music and dancing.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/kyoto-retained-in-climate-deal-20101211-18thi.html

[TotalMayhem]

Zoellick just launched his new carbon casino (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B65EN20101208) in Cancun ...

[C. Flower]

Zoellick just launched his new carbon casino (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B65EN20101208) in Cancun ...

Te total funding would not keep the Irish banks open for a week.


The fund, which could reach up to $100 million, will provide technical and other support to developing countries to develop their own carbon markets.

[TotalMayhem]

As it goes with such ponzi schemes, it'll be blown up to 100 billion in no time.

And the carbon levy is as close as it gets to 'taxing the air that we breathe'.

[C. Flower]

It's been one of the warmest years on record, globally, and due to the slipstream change, the coldest on record in parts of Europe including Ireland.

In the US there have been a serious of apparently unconnected mass deaths of animal, bird and now fish species, which may relate to rapid change in climate.

http://www.thejournal.ie/up-to-2m-dead-fish-reported-on-us-coast-2011-01/

[Rich]

It's been one of the warmest years on record, globally, and due to the slipstream change, the coldest on record in parts of Europe including Ireland.

In the US there have been a serious of apparently unconnected mass deaths of animal, bird and now fish species, which may relate to rapid change in climate.

http://www.thejournal.ie/up-to-2m-dead-fish-reported-on-us-coast-2011-01/

Thats not global warming, thats Biblical!!!!!!

Oh and to the original poster Y2K was real, and did have a number of small effects, however most places were prepared for it.

[TotalMayhem]

In the US there have been a serious of apparently unconnected mass deaths of animal, bird and now fish species, which may relate to rapid change in climate.

I thought these deaths are foreboding the imminent reversal of the magnetic poles. :D

Seriously, they assume a hailstorm or lightning strike was the cause or that the birds died from fireworks-related stress and exhaustion ... but nothing 'global warming'.

[Rich]

I thought these deaths are foreboding the imminent reversal of the magnetic poles. :D

Seriously, they assume a hailstorm or lightning strike was the cause or that the birds died from fireworks-related stress and exhaustion ... but nothing 'global warming'.

Once again too many people not thinking Biblically - there must be something in Revelations on birds falling from the sky. :)

[TotalMayhem]

Once again too many people not thinking Biblically - there must be something in Revelations on birds falling from the sky. :)

I hear ya ;)

Dead Birds Fall from the Sky -- What the Bible Says (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6184154/dead_birds_fall_from_the_sky_what_the.html)


The mysterious events of birds falling from the sky in three states in the past few days have many people looking for answers in their bibles. Why? Because many people believe that the holy book has many of
the answers to today's problems, be those problems concerning codes of conduct, life's situations, or the overarching march of history and ongoing events. Some believe that the bible not only is a guide to a way of life for each individual but also a guide to what is to come for the collective. So when strange and ominous-seeming events like 5,000 red-winged blackbirds falling from the sky make the news, some turn to their bibles, particularly to the apocalyptic Book of Revelations, not only for the comfort of their faith but also for an interpretation of omens, portents, and signs.

But there are no mention of dead birds. None. At least not in the standard King James version of the bible. There are no references or prophecies about dead birds or dead blackbirds at all.

Still, Christians will look. Not being able to find anything by cross-referencing terms in hard copy bible, many have and will turn to looking up biblical portents or prophecy on the Internet. They'll look up terms like "bible dead birds" and "dead birds Revelations" and "blackbirds in the bible." They'll type in "What does the bible say about dead birds?" And they will find nothing with regard to omens and prophecy.

Why do people feel the need to check to see if dead blackbirds falling from the sky is in the bible? Because many Christians believe that they are living in the End Times described in the Book of Revelations in the bible. In fact, according to a Pew Research Survey, 41 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ, the Christian messiah, will return for his Second Coming before 2050. Some would no doubt like to be prepared...

And since black birds are common enough in folklore, many undoubtedly believe that dead blackbirds falling from the sky had to be some sort of holy sign or warning, something foretold in the bible.

But they are not.

[Rich]

This is even scarier


Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Call out to every kind of bird and all the wild animals: 'Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood. Ezekiel 39:17 NIV

And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great." Revelation 19:17-18 NIV

Damn you birds!!!! Damn you to hell

[C. Flower]

I thought these deaths are foreboding the imminent reversal of the magnetic poles. :D

Seriously, they assume a hailstorm or lightning strike was the cause or that the birds died from fireworks-related stress and exhaustion ... but nothing 'global warming'.

The fish, possibly, or severe weather conditions. It's possible that this is just a news cluster of events that take place regularly, but that aren't normally reported in connection with eachother.



The Baltimore Sun reports that state officials suspect cold temperatures (http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/bs-gr-fish-kill-bay-20110104,0,5624655.story) may have killed the fish discovered at Chesapeake Bay. Water quality in the bay does not appear to be a problem, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment, but the average air temperature in the area was more than four degrees lower than normal last month.
In Britain, the cold weather and low sea temperatures are thought to have killed thousands of Velvet crabs (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344242/40-000-devil-crabs-washed-British-beach-freezing-conditions-hypothermia.html), the Daily Mail reported yesterday.
Over 40,000 crabs and a smaller quantity of whelks, sponges and anemones were found washed up along the Kent coast. Like Ireland, Britain has been experiencing a much colder winter than usual this year, with severe icy spells and snow.

[carolmon]

here's a link to google maps that highlights all the areas where these incidents have taken place

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=201817256339889828327.0004991bca25af104a22b

[TotalMayhem]

Like Ireland, Britain has been experiencing a much colder winter than usual this year, with severe icy spells and snow.

And how is that proof of global warming?

[charley]

Funny sunset this evening
http://i907.photobucket.com/albums/ac271/chipthedog/DSCF0287.jpg

[C. Flower]

Shepherd's delight.

[tea drinker]

dust from sahara probably. Not the actual clouds, but sitting in the atmosphere between the sunlight and clouds, filtering it. It's said there were fantastic sunsets after Krakatoa.

Nice though :-)

[morticia]

I'm still convinced governments are hiding the true extent of resource depletion and leaning on global warming to try and persuade people to cut back on carbon consumption.

We will find nothing works like ever increasing prices, I suspect.

On the plus side, we may not have enough cheap oil left to force AGW too much higher.

[charley]

I'm still convinced governments are hiding the true extent of resource depletion and leaning on global warming to try and persuade people to cut back on carbon consumption.

We will find nothing works like ever increasing prices, I suspect.

On the plus side, we may not have enough cheap oil left to force AGW too much higher.

There is the possibility of the opposite, Huge oil resources that China and India would gobble up and leave Europe and the US at a disadvantage. Do you not consider it strange that "Global Warming" seemed to coincide with the thawing of the cold war and the possibility that the former communist countries could become more influential than the old guard of the US and EU
Did you ever consider it stange that despite huge technological advances vehicle economy has only crept up slightly. A 2 litre car today while it may be a bit more powerful isn't any more fuel efficient than a 2litre from 25 years ago. The whole thing has been a scam from day one, remember the ozone layer was supposed to be gone by now.
TG4 showed a documentary about "Planned Obolesence" on Thursday night and it showed all the electrical goods that have been handed in for recycling turning up in containers in Ghana.
All this AGW is an attempt at planned obsolesence ,you have to change your car,your lightbulbs,your house and all its contents to save the planet,YEAH RIGHT

[Theresa]

I love reading my daughters CSPE and geography books. They must be all propaganda and lies if climate change is not real. The facts are there, it's part of our national curriculum. Why would we be teaching our children climate change is real if it's not?

There are two points made to me that help deliver the impact of the science -
If over 90% of a planes engineers told you it could crash would you fly on it?
If your body temperature rose by 2 degrees would you be concerned? By 4 and you would be dead.

Then again maybe they're wrong. Are you willing to gamble that they are?

[youngdan]

do you consider yourselg gullible.

do you believe brian cowen, enda kenny and eamonn gilmore for example.

Let me guess. You voted Yes to Lisbon for jobs, as well

[Theresa]

:D well I used believe Brian, Enda and Eamon, even the parish priest sometimes but then someone clever - much older and wiser than all of them, told me the truth. He's turned out to be a lovely man. You may even know him yourself? Goes by the name of santa claus? He's a first cousin of my friend the tooth fairy!!!

I suppose you believe oil grows on trees too? :rolleyes:

I may have my stints of naivety which I feel is good - not too good to be smug in your superior knowledge. I am an entirely logical person. I see it like this - if you can die from sitting in a room full of gas/smoke/emissions then why is it beyond comprehension that sitting in a bigger room - the planet - with our collective gas/smoke/emissions cannot have the same effect? I refuse to argue accelerated climate change because from my point of view - logic - there is plenty of science to show how, when and why.

[youngdan]

Well let me know when it starts getting warmer as my heating bill is getting a bit high.

I am enjoying a toasty -10C here at the moment

[Sam Lord]

Well let me know when it starts getting warmer as my heating bill is getting a bit high.

I am enjoying a toasty -10C here at the moment

You are confusing climate with weather ... yet again.

Here, read the following. If there is anything you do not understand feel free to pm me.

"Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elements in a given region over a long period of time. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these same elements and their variations over shorter time periods."

[morticia]

Well let me know when it starts getting warmer as my heating bill is getting a bit high.

I am enjoying a toasty -10C here at the moment.

I'd believe all that CO2 is unlikely to be doing any good.

However, when it comes to cold, scientists have not identified many possible negative feedback loops. That does not mean they don't exist. One such would be a postulated mechanism where increased meltwater entering the seas around the N. Pole disrupts ocean currents such as the Gulf stream, leading to a colder North Atlantic. Another is that decreased ice cover around the Kara-Barents sea results in increased evaporation, leading to more snow cover in winter and more unstable air mass movements

There is also the possibility that temporarily low solar activity may be depressing temps in the Northern Hemisphere particularly. That doesn't mean it'll last for ever.

But it is, to my mind, all still up for debate. (CO2 bad, effects unpredictable)

Oil is, however, a finite resource. And getting more finite all the time

Youngdan, may I do some market research?? At what precise oil price do you dump your monster truck and buy something more economical?? After all, you're very aware of the value of money, do you really want to continue increasing the funding of dodgy middle eastern regimes (and the Russians), at the expense of the USA's balance of payments??

[youngdan]

well after these record breaking 3 winters, there are very few in the US that are worried about global warming. The debate is over here. You lost. move on and deal with it.

Ye will have to save the planet on your own

[C. Flower]

You are confusing climate with weather ... yet again.

Here, read the following. If there is anything you do not understand feel free to pm me.

"Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elements in a given region over a long period of time. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these same elements and their variations over shorter time periods."

Youngdan is an engineer. Its all cogs and wheels. :p

[morticia]

well after these record breaking 3 winters, there are very few in the US that are worried about global warming. The debate is over here. You lost. move on and deal with it.

Ye will have to save the planet on your own

What is the average Joe in the US saying about fuel prices and the fact that US money funds places like Saudi, through buying their oil??

You are both fighting terrorism and inadvertently supplying the money to fund them further. So are we. I don't like it, but we have no choice.

It is perhaps this that we need to debate, not climate change.

[youngdan]

What is the average Joe in the US saying about fuel prices and the fact that US money funds places like Saudi, through buying their oil??

You are both fighting terrorism and inadvertently supplying the money to fund them further. So are we. I don't like it, but we have no choice.

It is perhaps this that we need to debate, not climate change.

If the average Joe looks it up he will see that the US gets relatively little oil from the arabs. they get it from canada, mexico saudi, venezuela,nigeria, angola. canada twice as much as mexico or saudi

[morticia]

You get 1/4 from Saudi, as much as you get from domestic reserves. I was also not aware of any of the states you mentioned (apart from good old Canada of course) being pillars of the global community, or, indeed particular friends of the US. Although I think Angola is improving a lot....

Not that we are any different. I personally am very concerned that so much of a vital fuel is garnered from very unstable sources....scarcity is likely to be used against the West. We need to have a plan. Is that Bakken field in Kansas anywhere near being properly tapped?? Or still in unproven reserves.

Global warming may be the last of our worries if we can't afford to move food around too well. And the climatic instability it's generating is making the self same food problem worse. Queensland, Victoria, Pakistan, all within 12 months?? Wrecked wheat and potato crops in Russia last year??

Dunno about global warming, but climate change appears very....changeable at the moment.