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Thread: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

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    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post

    As I said before, if the scientific analysis and arguments are sound and robust let them stand up to repeated scrutiny over time. As for the media, let's face it, the mainstream media is always going to present all kinds of distortions or be selective in what they publish.
    Yes, so you can understand why someone wouldnt want to give information to someone who may feed the media with stories

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post
    What really matters is the proper peer reviewed journals. Unfortunately, in this case the leaked emails seem to contain evidence of collusion to suppress undesirable findings from other researchers and even requests to delete all correspondence relating to certain areas of research. I'm not suggesting that climate change scientists are the only academics to have acted in this way, however, if they have influence on global policies it's important that we are not being misled.
    Maybe some researchers' work wasn't included because it was poor rather than because it was undesirable. The deletion of emails raises a few question marks over why they had to be deleted. Doesnt necessarily mean there was any wrong-doing though.

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    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    Doh! Now that is STUPID!

    If anthropegenic CO2 is the cause of current Global warming and there is a proven link, explain to us all Barry why:

    Since 1998 there has been a documented fall in Global tempreatures of 0.4° C despite a documented increase in anthropegenic CO2?
    Have you a link to that? That sounds a bit high to me.

    http://www.newscientist.com/articlei...ed=0CCQQ9QEwBg

    1998 featured a strong El Nino. As the area of warmest water in the Pacific spreads out in an El Nino, heat is released to the atmosphere. For this reason global air temperatures are higher in an El Nino than when there is not one. Note the sharp rise as El Nino sets in and the fall afterwards on the link above. The current El Nino situation in the Pacific is that there is a big one building - and November 2009 was the warmest November on record globally

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post

    Documented temperatures in Europe between 1945 and 1970 cooled by 0.3-0.4° C despite it being a period of intense post war industrial activity with obvious increases in anthropegenic CO2?
    Why there was a marked increase in Global tempreatures during the Medieval period of 1100-1400 AD followed by 'The Little Ice Age' in the 16th and 17th Century despite there being no known documented anthropogenic event to trigger them?
    Dunno, but there being natural variations doesnt mean that humans cant have an effect too.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post

    Why despite the fact that CO2 levels are fairly uniform globally why this has not resulted in uniform Global temperature changes?
    This is expected by the IPCC. For instance, snow reflects back a lot of incoming solar radiation. If it becomes warmer and this melts then a lot more solar radiation is absorbed by the ground. This then heats the air so the temperature rises a lot more than the average amount.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post

    Why despite the fact that some scientists claim a link to anthropegenic CO2 causing Global temperature increases that many areas report experiences of having endured extremely cold winters with snow in Buenois Aires, Johannesburg, Athens, the US and Shanghai and with NE Australia reporting the coldest winter on record?
    The weather is variable. Some places are always going to be colder than normal. Global warming will just cause it to be not as cold as it would have been previously. Many places have also reported very warm spells, for instance April 2007 smashed the previous warmest April on record in the UK.

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Omigod! Rocky points out that it would be impossible for global warming to be happening if some places were experiencing extremes of cold. The consensus must be wrong after all!

    Also, how silly of everyone not to have noticed that carbon dioxide being uniformly distributed means there can be no - um - weather-like variations in local conditions...

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    Registered User MarkW's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post
    There never needed to be a conspiracy at all. Our government told us we were having higher taxes on petrol and new taxes on air travel. They could've left it at that; but they didn't. For years they've also been telling us that the reason we must pay higher taxes in these areas is to reduce our carbon footprint. They have made the link, and as soon as the link is made there needs to be a sound scientific basis.



    I agree, energy efficiency savings make sound economic and business sense, we also have a moral obligation to future generations to keep the planet clean. However, that doesn't mean that scientists and politicians are absolved from being straight with us.



    As I said before, if the scientific analysis and arguments are sound and robust let them stand up to repeated scrutiny over time. As for the media, let's face it, the mainstream media is always going to present all kinds of distortions or be selective in what they publish. What really matters is the proper peer reviewed journals. Unfortunately, in this case the leaked emails seem to contain evidence of collusion to suppress undesirable findings from other researchers and even requests to delete all correspondence relating to certain areas of research. I'm not suggesting that climate change scientists are the only academics to have acted in this way, however, if they have influence on global policies it's important that we are not being misled.
    I'm not very good splitting quotes so I'll take things in order.

    In my opinion there has actually been sufficient evidence for a government to say that certain taxes are being raised to help control the carbon footprint. You are right that taxes could simply have been raised without doing this but you got me thinking. I have been looking at this area again and I'm surprised by how strong the consensus was from the IPCC in 2001 to the present day. So many climate change scientists and so many national scientific bodies have supported the consensus view that it's overwhelming. From a government/treasury point of view it makes sense to use the consensus as a sound scientific basis for implementing new taxes. It was not necessary but I would call it a reasonable thing to do.

    It would be better if politicians and scientists were both always straight with us. I guess my inner cynic has beaten my more hopeful self into expecting politicians to say and do things that will get them elected rather than anything more noble. As to the scientists, in general this group does quite well in terms of honesty, not presenting as fact things that are uncertain and being straight with us. It would have been better if the issues over apparent data manipulation had surfaced earlier as they could have been dealt with, assessed properly and any changes in points of view made before the Copenhagen meeting. How serious or trivial the issue is scientifically will emerge; in the meantime it has been politically damaging.

    I think you are right that proper peer reviewed journals are important. It is here that the case for man made global warming is probably at its strongest, being largely removed from the political arena. It has been my intention to speak for myself, using my own knowledge and reasoning to show why I think it is sensible to believe the theory of man made global warming. But I just can't do a full scale review of the literature so will refer to the work of Naomi Oreskes who found, in a large sample of peer reviewed published research pieces, very strong support for man made global warming as a theory. This does not mean I think that the work is all done and dusted. There will probably be new things to find that deepen our understanding of how climates change. There could be discoveries that lead to a downgrading of man made climate change as a problem. If so then so be it. Let's hope new discoveries don't show it's even worse! Until then I will go with the consensus because alternative theories have yet to supplant the mainstream theory.

  5. #45
    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Omigod! Rocky points out that it would be impossible for global warming to be happening if some places were experiencing extremes of cold. The consensus must be wrong after all!

    Also, how silly of everyone not to have noticed that carbon dioxide being uniformly distributed means there can be no - um - weather-like variations in local conditions...
    Noticed you ignored the other points Barry... maybe your not as smart as the 33,000 scientists on record who disagree with you after all...

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    Dickie Davies' love-child Cruella's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    Noticed you ignored the other points Barry... maybe your not as smart as the 33,000 scientists on record who disagree with you after all...
    You're talking to yourself, he has you on ignore. He only sees the bit's others quote. (Hence why he didn't see your other points to answer)
    Someone might need to repeat this to Rocky, as I'm probably on his ignore list

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cruella View Post
    You're talking to yourself, he has you on ignore. He only sees the bit's others quote. (Hence why he didn't see your other points to answer)
    Someone might need to repeat this to Rocky, as I'm probably on his ignore list
    Rocky talking to himself? Do you think he's as insultingly rude in those conversations as he is in conversations with other people? If we can persuade him to do a bit more of that it will save the rest of us from having to fight fire with fire...

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    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cruella View Post
    You're talking to yourself, he has you on ignore. He only sees the bit's others quote. (Hence why he didn't see your other points to answer)
    Someone might need to repeat this to Rocky, as I'm probably on his ignore list
    No, I hadn’t forgotten how intellectually bankrupt he is by engaging in 3rd party debates with people he has on ignore. But then I don’t expect him to act in an adult fashion given that he spat the dummy originally because I wasn’t prepared to entertain his passive aggressive ‘victim’ act…

    And he obviously did see the other points because JHutch quoted them..

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Rocky talking to himself? Do you think he's as insultingly rude in those conversations as he is in conversations with other people? If we can persuade him to do a bit more of that it will save the rest of us from having to fight fire with fire...
    Umm....

    Quote Originally Posted by knightengale View Post
    I am leaving this thread as Barry Shnikov is starting to be rather arrogant & pointless and completely off topic. I will no longer contiune adding a view when we have someone that is closed to any views that disagrees with them..

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    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    Have you a link to that? That sounds a bit high to me.
    Sure, it’s from The Chilling Stars, (Icon Books) Svensmark & Calder and you’ll also note that the lack of warming is a mentioned specifically in the East Anglia ‘Climategate’ emails;


    3. Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University) to Phil Jones "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't . . . Our observing system is inadequate"

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    The weather is variable. Some places are always going to be colder than normal. Global warming will just cause it to be not as cold as it would have been previously. Many places have also reported very warm spells, for instance April 2007 smashed the previous warmest April on record in the UK.
    And that’s exactly my point – you can’t on the one hand say it’s OK to dismiss Global low temperature variations as irrelevant and being based on local atmospheric conditions and then at the same time suggest that Global high temperature variations are completely valid and have nothing at all to do with local atmospheric conditions.. It’s down to measurement and more specifically the interpretation of that measurement - and what we know of Climate change models is that too much measurement is skewed to land based apparatus and skewed to the US - and that they can also be interpreted in different ways. This leads to a number of uncertainties..

    Uncertainties can be classified in several different ways according to their origin. Two primary types are ‘value uncertainties’ and ‘structural uncertainties’. Value uncertainties arise from the incomplete determination of particular values or results, for example, when data are inaccurate or not fully representative of the phenomenon of interest. Structural uncertainties arise from an incomplete understanding of the processes that control particular values or results, for example, when the conceptual framework or model used for analysis does not include all the relevant processes or relationships.

    And on that note I’ll remind you again that the most consistent criticism of the original IPCC report was that it implied a degree of certainty that was not supported by evidence. Special criticism was made of the panel’s reliance on predictions from mathematical models whose accuracy was disputed even by the modellers who worked on them. And if you think this kind of statistical manipulation is wrong, think again..

    1. Professor Phil Jones "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

    And what’s even more damning is that the reason why Prof Jones and his team has a problem with giving out original data is because they’ve thrown it all away! (Times 29th Nov) The only data they now have available is the data that they have personally ‘value adjusted’ . It’s yet to be fully confirmed, but if it is true it means that the data on which a large part of the World’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited and independently assessed.

    Now… why do you suppose they would have binned all the raw data…?

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    Yes, so you can understand why someone wouldnt want to give information to someone who may feed the media with stories
    The point I was trying to make was that journalists will twist reports and whatever else they can get their hands on whether you give them the raw data or not. Not producing the data has even become a story in itself!

    http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0908...l/460787a.html

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    Maybe some researchers' work wasn't included because it was poor rather than because it was undesirable. The deletion of emails raises a few question marks over why they had to be deleted. Doesnt necessarily mean there was any wrong-doing though.
    They've even admitted 'accidentally' or otherwise disposing of the raw data. What sort of a scientist does that? Even if you keep nothing else the raw data must be kept as it is the original source of the work. Doesn't that set alarm bells ringing? It should do!

    http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/...-dumping-data/

    Quote Originally Posted by MarkW View Post
    In my opinion there has actually been sufficient evidence for a government to say that certain taxes are being raised to help control the carbon footprint.
    The burden of proof required for action can vary enormously and may or may not require a manufactured threat. Certainly the climate change evidence is a lot stronger than that used to justify the Iraq war. I still don't feel that good about it though.

    Quote Originally Posted by MarkW View Post
    I have been looking at this area again and I'm surprised by how strong the consensus was from the IPCC in 2001 to the present day.
    Ahhhh. The IPCC. That'll be the same organisation that has tasked itself with investigating the leaked emails. That'll be as much use as getting the Fox to do a full inspection, audit, and headcount of the Chicken Coop. I wonder what the outcome of their investigation will be. Any kind of a U-turn on the man-made warming theory by the IPCC would be the equivalent of Turkeys voting for Christmas.

    Quote Originally Posted by MarkW View Post
    As to the scientists, in general this group does quite well in terms of honesty, not presenting as fact things that are uncertain and being straight with us. It would have been better if the issues over apparent data manipulation had surfaced earlier as they could have been dealt with, assessed properly and any changes in points of view made before the Copenhagen meeting. How serious or trivial the issue is scientifically will emerge; in the meantime it has been politically damaging.
    I'd like to see political processes put on hold until there's been a proper investigation. Only when all the bad scientists have been exposed and removed can we move forward in a meaningful way.


    I just can't resist adding this

    WARNING: This music video contains Climate Science lyrics of a sceptical nature!

    Last edited by Bubble; 10th-December-2009 at 01:18 PM. Reason: fix youtube link

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    Registered User David Franklin's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    And what’s even more damning is that the reason why Prof Jones and his team has a problem with giving out original data is because they’ve thrown it all away! (Times 29th Nov) The only data they now have available is the data that they have personally ‘value adjusted’ . It’s yet to be fully confirmed, but if it is true it means that the data on which a large part of the World’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited and independently assessed.

    Now… why do you suppose they would have binned all the raw data…?
    To be honest, I'm suspecting it's more incompetence than anything else.

    Part of what I do in my job is processing satellite data. I've been doing it for 10 years now. The datasets have always been "large" relative to the computing facilities I've had. And when you process the data, there's usually 5 or 6 'temporary' stages, all of which you need to store, at least temporarily.

    And then when you're finished, it's the processed data that you work with all the time, not the original. (That's why you processed it, after all). So that's the data that's "live" on the hard drives, that gets backed up, distributed to other users etc.

    Of course, the original data should be backed up as well, but that is usually passed onto the work of the system administrators / general dogsbodies. And (if they were made at all), those backups were probably made 10 years ago, and never checked.

    When you also factor in that the staff (particularly the sysadmin staff) tend to come and go in these places, it's quite likely that it's impossible to find where the stuff was actually backed up to.

    True personal story: So, we found a possible issue in some data that I processed something like 6 years ago. And our sysadmin person (who was responsible for backing them up) had just left the company - having said, "oh, everything's in the cupboard over there". I was then left searching through something like 500 badly labelled DVDs and external hard drives to try to find the data. Only to find out he'd backed up the wrong stuff!

    But, and it's a big but. I'm pretty paranoid about keeping copies of the original data. So I got out my personal backup stash of 300 DVDs, and I found the relevant DVDs. Only 4 of the 5 DVDs worked (not a perfect backup medium, in my experience), but they had the data I needed.

    I think it's pretty inexcusable that the researchers didn't safeguard the original data. But I do suspect it was more laziness/incomptence than anything else. (Particularly if it was originally on paper/magnetic tape. I can just see them getting a new computer system and then 2 years later realising "uh, you know that data on paper tape - we don't have anything that reads it any more". So the data on paper tape gets put into a warehouse of data on paper tape that's kept "just in case", and then 5 years later someone else says "what's the point of a warehouse full of stuff we never look at" and throws it all away).

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    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post



    They've even admitted 'accidentally' or otherwise disposing of the raw data. What sort of a scientist does that? Even if you keep nothing else the raw data must be kept as it is the original source of the work. Doesn't that set alarm bells ringing? It should do!

    http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/...-dumping-data/

    This material was dumped in the 1980s when data storage was a far bigger issue than it is today. Also, they got rid of their data because it was all being held elsewhere (NOAA?) so the raw data does still exist. This catches my interest but i think the fact that people believe fox news sets off more alarm bells for me

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post

    And what’s even more damning is that the reason why Prof Jones and his team has a problem with giving out original data is because they’ve thrown it all away! (Times 29th Nov) The only data they now have available is the data that they have personally ‘value adjusted’ . It’s yet to be fully confirmed, but if it is true it means that the data on which a large part of the World’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited and independently assessed.

    Now… why do you suppose they would have binned all the raw data…?
    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin View Post
    To be honest, I'm suspecting it's more incompetence than anything else.

    Part of what I do in my job is processing satellite data. I've been doing it for 10 years now. The datasets have always been "large" relative to the computing facilities I've had. And when you process the data, there's usually 5 or 6 'temporary' stages, all of which you need to store, at least temporarily.

    And then when you're finished, it's the processed data that you work with all the time, not the original. (That's why you processed it, after all). So that's the data that's "live" on the hard drives, that gets backed up, distributed to other users etc.

    Of course, the original data should be backed up as well, but that is usually passed onto the work of the system administrators / general dogsbodies. And (if they were made at all), those backups were probably made 10 years ago, and never checked.

    When you also factor in that the staff (particularly the sysadmin staff) tend to come and go in these places, it's quite likely that it's impossible to find where the stuff was actually backed up to.

    True personal story: So, we found a possible issue in some data that I processed something like 6 years ago. And our sysadmin person (who was responsible for backing them up) had just left the company - having said, "oh, everything's in the cupboard over there". I was then left searching through something like 500 badly labelled DVDs and external hard drives to try to find the data. Only to find out he'd backed up the wrong stuff!

    But, and it's a big but. I'm pretty paranoid about keeping copies of the original data. So I got out my personal backup stash of 300 DVDs, and I found the relevant DVDs. Only 4 of the 5 DVDs worked (not a perfect backup medium, in my experience), but they had the data I needed.

    I think it's pretty inexcusable that the researchers didn't safeguard the original data. But I do suspect it was more laziness/incomptence than anything else. (Particularly if it was originally on paper/magnetic tape. I can just see them getting a new computer system and then 2 years later realising "uh, you know that data on paper tape - we don't have anything that reads it any more". So the data on paper tape gets put into a warehouse of data on paper tape that's kept "just in case", and then 5 years later someone else says "what's the point of a warehouse full of stuff we never look at" and throws it all away).
    i think this is the article concerned

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6936328.ece

    As you can see, and as i said above, the data was binned in the 1980s when storage space was more of a concern than it was today. The original data is held somewhere.

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    Registered User Jhutch's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    Sure, it’s from The Chilling Stars, (Icon Books) Svensmark & Calder
    Have found some graphs of this now that show things in a little more detail. I think that you have to look at how much 1998 was above the temperatures of its time. It was 0.5 above both 1997 and 1999 so choosing that as a starting point is cherry-picking and i have explained above why it was so warm.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    and you’ll also note that the lack of warming is a mentioned specifically in the East Anglia ‘Climategate’ emails;


    3. Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University) to Phil Jones "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't . . . Our observing system is inadequate"
    Yes, the levelling-off through the 2000s is well known and seems to provide a challenge to scientists

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    And that’s exactly my point – you can’t on the one hand say it’s OK to dismiss Global low temperature variations as irrelevant and being based on local atmospheric conditions and then at the same time suggest that Global high temperature variations are completely valid and have nothing at all to do with local atmospheric conditions..

    So its a good thing i didnt do that It does annoy me the way that every media story about 'extreme' weather has to be linked to global warming.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    It’s down to measurement and more specifically the interpretation of that measurement - and what we know of Climate change models is that too much measurement is skewed to land based apparatus and skewed to the US - and that they can also be interpreted in different ways.
    Sources?
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    This leads to a number of uncertainties..

    Uncertainties can be classified in several different ways according to their origin. Two primary types are ‘value uncertainties’ and ‘structural uncertainties’. Value uncertainties arise from the incomplete determination of particular values or results, for example, when data are inaccurate or not fully representative of the phenomenon of interest. Structural uncertainties arise from an incomplete understanding of the processes that control particular values or results, for example, when the conceptual framework or model used for analysis does not include all the relevant processes or relationships.
    Yes, there are errors on the data going in and then the complexity of the atmosphere will mean that equations used to calculate the result will also have some errors (even if they turn out to be small).
    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    And on that note I’ll remind you again that the most consistent criticism of the original IPCC report was that it implied a degree of certainty that was not supported by evidence. Special criticism was made of the panel’s reliance on predictions from mathematical models whose accuracy was disputed even by the modellers who worked on them. And if you think this kind of statistical manipulation is wrong, think again..
    Special criticism by whom?

    Ideally you would want a computer model that has been tested on all the different states of the earth's climate, ie glacial, interglacial, going into ice age, out of ice age, North Atlantic thermohaline collapse, and shown to give very reliable results. However, given the relative stability of the earth's recent climate, this is not possible. You can go back and try to reconstruct what the glacial climate would have been like but reconstruction is not the same as the real world. So, yes, the models arent guaranteed to be spot on, the modellers would admit this and the IPCC would. This is one of the reasons that the IPCC sometimes quote a temperature range rather than one specific temperature. Another of course is that you are trying to predict the future - how much carbon dioxide will be released in the coming decades? However, this doesnt mean that the models are completely without use.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post
    1. Professor Phil Jones "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
    Not sure about that one but i understand the word trick to mean a clever way of doing something rather than something underhand. I cant remember what decline he was trying to hide, i think its something to do with tree rings? Its one that i will be looking up though

    The fact that i try to come back to is that carbon dioxide stops heat escaping. Therefore, adding it to the atmosphere will cause warming. There are all the feedbacks as well which complicate whether it will have a little warming or a big warming. Also, i think that to thoroughly understand all the issues takes up a lot of time so that by the time you've got through it all we'll probably know one way or the other anyway
    Last edited by Jhutch; 10th-December-2009 at 02:18 PM.

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    Registered User David Franklin's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    As you can see, and as i said above, the data was binned in the 1980s when storage space was more of a concern than it was today. The original data is held somewhere.
    The thing is, it may be elsewhere, but as the researcher, it's your original data. That is, it's the fundamental dataset you've based your calculations on. It seems really odd to me to not want to be in control of it. (All the data I work with exists elsewhere, but I really don't want to be on the phone to the USGS asking if they can send us another HD of data because we lost the last one). If nothing else, if the archives change for any reason, you're left saying "we no longer know how to reproduce our results". (And it's easy to see how changes could happen - unsurprisingly, there are "gaps" in the data that have to be filled in. Suppose NOAA find some missing data - a station is doing a clear out and finds a bunch of paper records they'd missed. They're going to update their archive, and then you *don't* have access to the data you used originally).

    And having now read (ok, skimmed) one of Prof Jones papers, I think it looks like pretty bad practice they don't have the original dataset lying around (I would accept a "raw" dataset that albeit not original, is an amalgam of original data with minimal processing, and a method of going from that dataset to find the original data source). Why? Because so *much* of the work concerns detecting outliers, choosing which of two competing values to use, etc. to create a "clean" dataset. Not only do you want to be able to show that manipulation is legitimate, but the fact is that the manipulation loses information. There's lots of things you can't do easily do with the manipulated data. For example, if someone comes up with some additions to the original dataset - a new set of observation data, say - then you want to be able to update your clean dataset. How can you do that without the original dataset?

    That's all assuming all the relevant data is there on the NOAA archives.

    Bottom line: if it really was available on the NOAA archives in a compatible format, then soon (if not already), you would have expect someone to say "Go to this link to get the data, and then run this program to process it, and you'll get exactly the same results as we've published".

    I very much doubt this is going to happen. Again, not because of malice, but because I bet the data isn't available in any simple way (I suspect it is actually amalgamated from many different sources) and I very much doubt they've documented things properly.

    It's going to end up with someone having to redo all the original work (whether this is easy or not depends on how available the data really is and how well documented the procedures for processing it are) - the public will have little faith in the CRU results until that is done.

    For the record, I'm not a climate change denier by any means - but if I'm honest, that's more because people I tend to think know what they're talking about in this area are convinced it's real than because I'm able to judge the data and analysis myself. But the CRU have scored a massive own goal here.

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin View Post
    For the record, I'm not a climate change denier by any means - but if I'm honest, that's more because people I tend to think know what they're talking about in this area are convinced it's real than because I'm able to judge the data and analysis myself. But the CRU have scored a massive own goal here.

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    Commercial Operator Rocky's Avatar
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    Not sure about that one but i understand the word trick to mean a clever way of doing something rather than something underhand. I cant remember what decline he was trying to hide, i think its something to do with tree rings? Its one that i will be looking up though
    Your definition of the word ‘trick’ is exactly the same as was used in the official response to the leaked emails, but seriously no-one believes that for one minute given the context: Do they think we all evolved from monkey’s or something?! It’s the ‘ to HIDE the decline’ bit at the end of the quote that IMO really reveals the true meaning of the word ‘trick’ in the context of the subject matter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    The fact that i try to come back to is that carbon dioxide stops heat escaping. Therefore, adding it to the atmosphere will cause warming. There are all the feedbacks as well which complicate whether it will have a little warming or a big warming. Also, i think that to thoroughly understand all the issues takes up a lot of time so that by the time you've got through it all we'll probably know one way or the other anyway


    Yes CO2 does trap heat, but its effect is minimal when compared to the other factors that effect the atmosphere.

    The concept originally goes back to a dissertation by Svante Arrhenius in 1896 titled ‘The Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air on the Temperature on the Ground’ and was the first time that the greenhouse analogy was used. However, Arrhenius made the mistake that has since been repeated a 1,000 fold of just assuming that the main greenhouse gases that would effect the atmosphere are CO2, methane and sulphur dioxide. Using the Stefan-Bolzmann equation his conclusion was that a doubling of CO2 would lead to an overall increase in temperature on the ground of 4-4.8°C. That of course did not happen and that’s because at the time he made his observations there was no way of accurately measuring the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere – and its concentration is very small. Even today with CO2 levels at around 0.04%, a doubling would have a negligible effect on Global atmospheric conditions (assuming one doesn't believe it's the main trigger) – but it was this initial report and its erroneous conclusions that set scientists off on a wild aquatic fowl chase for the next 100 years…

    CO2 is not the driver of climate change, it’s not now, and never has been. For billions of years the Earths climate has fluctuated through dramatic temperature variations and not once has CO2 been implicated in those historic changes – so why would any scientist ignore that fact? Arrhenius may have felt very proud of himself to see Global temperatures rise from the early 1900’s to 1940 by 0.5°C (although he missed the steepest rises as he died in 1927) but then, despite obvious increases in anthropogenic CO2 during the post war industrial period, temperatures fell by an average of 0.2°C for 35 years before rising again by 0.5°C from 1975-1998. Since 1998 despite the furore regarding the Earth getting so hot that you could fry an egg on a bald man’s pate, temperatures have plateaued and in fact have also marginally declined.

    Now come on everyone lets apply some logic here… over just the last 100 years we have seen two increases and two decreases in Global temperatures with the latest decrease occurring at a time when Politicians and funded scientists are telling us that we’re facing Global atmospheric Armeggedon and all of this occurred against a backdrop of steep increases in anthropogenic CO2… so it has to suggest that CO2 is NOT the driver of climate change, otherwise we would have surely seen a steady increase in temperatures over the last 100 years wouldn’t we?

    So what is the cause? Well, whilst CO2, Methane and Sulphur Dioxide are greenhouse gases that trap heat they are present in the atmosphere in tiny proportions. If you’re looking for a trigger to Global temperatures you have to look for a much larger agent and that agent exists in water molecules in the form of vapour and droplets. Water molecules are a far more potent greenhouse gas than either of the ones mentioned previously because firstly, they absorb energy over a very wide range of wave bands from infrared to visible light and secondly, because they are present in the atmosphere in enormous volume.

    It is therefore generally agreed that the water vapour and droplets in clouds contribute, at the very least, to 50% of the Global warming effect, although many scientists involved in cloud formation analysis now believe that the figure should be nearer to 90-95%. So why isn’t this data accounted for in Global Climate change models? It’s because cloud formations are especially difficult to measure and vary enormously from time to time and place to place – so their possible effect is just ignored as it’s too difficult to separate quantitavely from all the other data. And that’s where we go back to my original post regarding Svensmark and the CLOUD project – his research shows how cosmic rays affect water molecules by making them cluster together to form clouds – the more cosmic activity there is the more cloud we have and the warmer Global temperatures will be. When cosmic activity is low, we get less cloud and cooler temperatures. His research correlates cosmic activity with historical atmospheric data and currently, it goes along way to explain not only Global climate change over billions of years but also climate change in the last 100 years. As Mark W stated, yes it’s good that his research is finally getting funding, but his funding is less than 0.1% of that being spent on proving the hypothesis of anthropogenic CO2…

    It’s a sorry state of affairs - my belief is that after Arrenius started the ball rolling no-one really paid much attention to the CO2 argument because they could see that Global temperatures naturally fluctuated up and down as they had done for billions of years before anyway. But once we hit the late 1970’s and temperatures started to rise again, the political and financial band wagon got into full swing and simply chose to ignore the historical fluctuations – and once that had occurred too many reputations, too much money and too much funding was at stake to go back on the predictions (the Climategate emails being a prime example of this). So what we have now is the worst kind of creative accountancy whereby those that still rely on this political and scientific cash cow try to manipulate the figures to prove their case, and everyone else just looks on disbelievingly. Again I want to stress that 10’s of 1,000’s of scientists disagree with the concept of man made Global warming and that number is growing every day – the pro man-made climate changers are all going to end up with egg on their face soon, and at the rate the Earth is cooling it won’t be fried egg that’s for sure…

  18. #58
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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jhutch View Post
    This material was dumped in the 1980s when data storage was a far bigger issue than it is today. Also, they got rid of their data because it was all being held elsewhere (NOAA?) so the raw data does still exist. This catches my interest but i think the fact that people believe fox news sets off more alarm bells for me
    I heard that they burnt it all at a local CO2 measuring station to artificially increase Global CO2 figures....

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rocky View Post

    ...

    So what is the cause? Well, whilst CO2, Methane and Sulphur Dioxide are greenhouse gases that trap heat they are present in the atmosphere in tiny proportions. If you’re looking for a trigger to Global temperatures you have to look for a much larger agent and that agent exists in water molecules in the form of vapour and droplets. Water molecules are a far more potent greenhouse gas than either of the ones mentioned previously because firstly, they absorb energy over a very wide range of wave bands from infrared to visible light and secondly, because they are present in the atmosphere in enormous volume.

    It is therefore generally agreed that the water vapour and droplets in clouds contribute, at the very least, to 50% of the Global warming effect, although many scientists involved in cloud formation analysis now believe that the figure should be nearer to 90-95%. So why isn’t this data accounted for in Global Climate change models? It’s because cloud formations are especially difficult to measure and vary enormously from time to time and place to place – so their possible effect is just ignored as it’s too difficult to separate quantitavely from all the other data. And that’s where we go back to my original post regarding Svensmark and the CLOUD project – his research shows how cosmic rays affect water molecules by making them cluster together to form clouds – the more cosmic activity there is the more cloud we have and the warmer Global temperatures will be. When cosmic activity is low, we get less cloud and cooler temperatures. His research correlates cosmic activity with historical atmospheric data and currently, it goes along way to explain not only Global climate change over billions of years but also climate change in the last 100 years. As Mark W stated, yes it’s good that his research is finally getting funding, but his funding is less than 0.1% of that being spent on proving the hypothesis of anthropogenic CO2…


    I think some clarification would be useful here.

    Rocky is saying that data on water vapour and clouds is being ignored in climate change models. That is completely incorrect.

    http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf
    In the above link (to the IPCC assessment report) a statement is made on p593 (I've linked to only a 74 page long extract - still took a while to appear on screen though!) under the heading Development in evaluation of climate feedbacks. In the words of the IPCC's own report "Water vapour feedback is the most important feedback enhancing climate sensitivity".

    The report then goes on to make a statement about how different climate models differ mainly because of how they model clouds.

    What this means: They are modelling the water vapour and the clouds.

    It was very easy to find this out. I didn't post earlier because I've been a bit busy with one thing and another, including some dancing I'm pleased to say.

    In general it is probably wise to check one's own facts when posting about the integrity of another person or persons and using an expression like "sorry state of affairs" to describe their supposed deficiencies.


    Of infinitely less significance globally, but it matters to me, is to clarify that I do not consider it "good" (or bad) that a certain line of scientific research is being funded. I consider it simply to be a part of the normal scientific research process.


    It is occasionally stated, and not just by Rocky, that there are many thousands of scientists who disagree with the concept of man made global warming. This is, I believe, a reference to a petition usually called the Oregon petition after the location of its origin.

    This petition is itself highly controversial and I think it actually diminishes the credibility of man made climate change sceptics, especially anyone who refers to it in support of their views. If anyone wants to form their own view then I recommend starting with the most balanced discussion I could find (and which references many sources)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
    To me, a very significant part of this petition's history is the way that, initially, it was accompanied by an article that was made to look very much like a peer reviewed paper published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences when this was not true and, as far as I know, the article has never been published in a science journal.
    http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s04201998
    The article's format has since been changed.

    Finally, I would like to give my own view on what is happening in the field of climate change research.

    MY VIEW
    Responsible groups of scientists are working on global and regional climate change in many universities and research institutions around the world. The global climate system is difficult to model. I found a quote that to me epitomises the healthy scepticism that I associate with good science. This quote is, following a description of progress being made by climate change modellers, "Nevertheless, important deficiencies remain in the simulation of clouds and tropical precipitation". I found these words on p592 of the IPCC assessment report (the one I linked to earlier) under the heading "Developments in model climate simulation".

    My point is that scientific research in this area is not easy and that the climate scientists working on it are intelligent and experienced enough to realise that. They do consider alternative views. They doubt and test their models. They compare the predictions of different models and they know the work is not finished. The current predictions are their best predictions. I hope they prove to be massively pessimistic but fear they will most likely prove to be close to future reality. I want to be wrong, I want to be able to change my mind for good reasons.

    There is a real possibility that human activities will cause man made global warming with devastating effects over timescales that are very short compared to normal timescales for changes in global temperatures. The scientific consensus amongst climate change specialists is that the threat is real and imminent. Under these circumstances it would make more sense to take steps to slow down the production of man made greenhouse gases (including CO2) while we proved scientifically that there was no problem after all than just to carry on regardless while refining models that could very well confirm that we really should have done something when we had a better chance. [It is generally thought to be sensible to conserve fossil fuel reserves anyway for other reasons.]

    If the climate scientists' best estimates are proven wrong they may well have egg on their face. If those who attack them on factually incorrect bases manage to influence political decision makers so that steps which are subsequently proved necessary and helpful are delayed then they will have been direct contributors to whatever human and environmental pain flows as a result of climate changes that could have been avoided.
    Last edited by MarkW; 14th-December-2009 at 01:37 AM.

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    Re: Have the climate change camp had their fun?

    Quote Originally Posted by MarkW View Post
    Under these circumstances it would make more sense to take steps to slow down the production of man made greenhouse gases (including CO2) while we proved scientifically that there was no problem after all, than just to carry on regardless while refining models that could very well confirm that we really should have done something when we had a better chance.
    What an absolutely stunning one-sentence summary of the situation facing the world. Kudos, bruv. (I've added just a smidge of punctuation.)

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