Is there any science in climate change?

[Injunear]

Surely including discussion about climate change in a board about science is an oxymoron?

[Slarti]

[url=Sea Ice https://14adebb0-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.goo ... edirects=0[/url]Well you could start with the above.

And then follow it up with [url]https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm[/url]

As far as I am aware, there are no reputable scientists who deny climate change and only a few who deny that it is caused by human activity.

Slarti

[tjh290633]

As far as I am aware, there are no reputable scientists who deny climate change and only a few who deny that it is caused by human activity.

Slarti

The climate is contually changing. There are many scientists whom consider that much of the so-called evidence for anthropogenic warming is biased and fabricated.

As far as I am concerned, the only real evidence is measurements taken at the same point under the same conditions, and not interpolations and averages of remote points. What was once the middle of a green field may have become a sea of concrete and buildings, and there is no valid historical comparison. I do have the evidence of my own measurements, taken ouitside my back door, which indicate a maximum average annual temperature of 10.9°C in 1990. It fell to a minimum of 7.8°C in 2010 and has since shown a gradual rise. There are intermediate maxima and minima along the way, but the moving average over 4 years shows a maximum of 10.34°C in 1993, then a gradual fall to 9.04°C in 2013 and a slight bounce back to 9.13°C.

My local weatherman agrees with me.

TJH

[Alaric]

The climate is continually changing.

In geological terms, it's quite recent that the Arctic ice cap extended all the way to Southern England. So something made that happen and later caused its reversal.

Urbanisation makes some areas warmer than they used to be which has some local climate effects.

[Slarti]

As far as I am aware, there are no reputable scientists who deny climate change and only a few who deny that it is caused by human activity.

Slarti

The climate is contually changing. There are many scientists whom consider that much of the so-called evidence for anthropogenic warming is biased and fabricated.

As far as I am concerned, the only real evidence is measurements taken at the same point under the same conditions, and not interpolations and averages of remote points. What was once the middle of a green field may have become a sea of concrete and buildings, and there is no valid historical comparison. I do have the evidence of my own measurements, taken ouitside my back door, which indicate a maximum average annual temperature of 10.9°C in 1990. It fell to a minimum of 7.8°C in 2010 and has since shown a gradual rise. There are intermediate maxima and minima along the way, but the moving average over 4 years shows a maximum of 10.34°C in 1993, then a gradual fall to 9.04°C in 2013 and a slight bounce back to 9.13°C.

My local weatherman agrees with me.

TJH

What the weather is in one location is, to a large extent irrelevant to global temperatures as shown by last year being the warmest year on record (3r in a row) while parts of North America have recorded their coldest winter temperatures.

Weather records have been kept over most of the world for at least the last 300 years and show a marked correlation between increased human population, industrialisation and climate.

Of the many scientists whom consider that much of the so-called evidence for anthropogenic warming to be biased and fabricated, would you care to name some reputable ones who don't work for the oil and coal industries?

Slarti

[Slarti]

Those of us old enough to remember, may care to think back to 1960's and 70's. Back then the science was settled too. The scientific consensus was that we were definitely heading into a new ice age.

That is the thing with science, it is never settled, it is always just the current theory that best matches the evidence.

In the 60s/70s the reason for saying a we were heading into a new ice age was to do with Sun cycles and that we should be going into a Solar minimum. I think that although we are in a solar low, it was realised that the coincidence of cycles of various lengths that would have brought about a minimum had been miscalculated.

The global warming theory seems to be doing quite well in its predictions with ice melting everywhere, glaciers retreating, sea levels rising, us not having winters, etc. Though the last one may change if the ocean currents change and we are no longer protected by the Gulf Stream.

Slarti

[tjh290633]

Slarti, you asked if I could name some reputable scientists who do not agree with the anthropogenic warming theory. There are many and the published evidence shows that the hockey stick model is wildly incorrect. That is not to say that carbon dioxide is not an absorber of infrared radiation, but water vapour is a far bigger absorber, and is completely ignored because it does not fit their theory.

If you want an eminent person, my suggestion would be Professor Ian Plimer, who pointed out that the king had no clothes several years ago.

TJH

[Slarti]

Slarti, you asked if I could name some reputable scientists who do not agree with the anthropogenic warming theory. There are many and the published evidence shows that the hockey stick model is wildly incorrect. That is not to say that carbon dioxide is not an absorber of infrared radiation, but water vapour is a far bigger absorber, and is completely ignored because it does not fit their theory.

If you want an eminent person, my suggestion would be Professor Ian Plimer, who pointed out that the king had no clothes several years ago.

TJH

I've come across references to Plimer before and his directorships in coal and other mining companies put him in a less than disinterested position.

There have also been many holes kicked in his theories, even geological ones eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2009/dec/14/climate-change-sceptic-ian-plimer


Next.
Slarti

[wheypat]

Look to our nearest planetary neighbour to see what happens with too much CO2. Venus, albeit closer to the sun, has a surface temperature in excess of 400 degrees c. And an atmosphere of 97% CO2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect

Interestingly, do scientists believe that on balance global warming, due to greenhouse gasses, is good or bad? Well, on balance, good. Given the Earth's location in space if all the greenhouse gasses were removed, we would have an expected average surface temperature of around 6 degrees. But we don't, we have a an actual surface temperature of around 15 degrees. Given that in the little ice age the temperature dropped by about 1.5 degrees lowering the temperature by 9 degrees is a huge difference!

Incidently the same model puts Venus's surface temperature at around 55 degrees, not 450+ as measured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/06 ... use-gases/

[Injunear]

As far as I am aware, there are no reputable scientists who deny climate change and only a few who deny that it is caused by human activity.

This is a joke, right?

Have you heard of Nobel prize winning physicist Ivar Giaevar? Is he disreputable?

As he points out, even the idea that one can either measure or compute a "global mean temperature" is risible. let alone that one could measure a change within it.

As far as I am aware no one has ever denied that the weather and consequently the climatic conditions on the planet can vary hugely. For example, I am not aware that anyone has ever denied that there was a long period of glaciation that covered much of the planet, nor that this period ended without any human intervention by burning fossil fuels. The lack of science is in the prevailing religion (i.e. based on faith without evidence) that people have anything to do with changes in large scale weather patterns. Or ever have done.

[Injunear]

The production of excess volumes of CO2 from the industrial combustion of a large fraction of the worlds fossil hydrocarbon deposits is also known chemistry, amply demonstrated via rising atmospheric CO2 records.

Is this another joke? Have you head of the carbon dioxide cycle. This is the naturally occurring emission of CO2 into the atmosphere by dead matter (mostly vegetation) and the naturally occurring sequestering of CO2 by growing matter (again mostly vegetation). This happens every year in each hemisphere as plants grow in the summer and die in the winter.

Do you have any idea what the volume of this naturally occurring cycle (flow into and out of the atmosphere) is? Are you aware that it dwarfs any man-made CO2 from fossil fuel production? Are you aware of the CO2 produced by the human population from simply breathing in and out? Are you aware that atmospheric CO2 levels have, based on the evidence always risen in a pattern that lags temperature rises?

[77ss]

Surely including discussion about climate change in a board about science is an oxymoron?

That reads like a closed mind to me.

There is a huge amount of science involved.

Debate the quality of the science, by all means, but not the relevance of science, per se.

[tjh290633]

Do you have any idea what the volume of this naturally occurring cycle (flow into and out of the atmosphere) is? Are you aware that it dwarfs any man-made CO2 from fossil fuel production? Are you aware of the CO2 produced by the human population from simply breathing in and out? Are you aware that atmospheric CO2 levels have, based on the evidence always risen in a pattern that lags temperature rises?

Another factor which is conveniently ignored, is that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases as temperature rises, so that warming is likely to cause less CO2 to be absorbed by the oceans, and so the atmospheric level to rise. Which is cause and which is effect?

TJH

[Slarti]

As far as I am aware, there are no reputable scientists who deny climate change and only a few who deny that it is caused by human activity.

This is a joke, right?

Have you heard of Nobel prize winning physicist Ivar Giaevar? Is he disreputable?

As he points out, even the idea that one can either measure or compute a "global mean temperature" is risible. let alone that one could measure a change within it.

I hadn't and so looked him up
[quote=Wikipedia]To give balance, the vast majority of scientists working in the field disagree with Giaever. Giaever's field of expertise is not climatology, and indeed he has never published a peer-reviewed paper on the subject. As he admits in his speech to Nobel Laureates mentioned above, he spent a day and a half on Google researching the subject.[/quote]

He is also involved with the Heartland Institute which is a far from savoury organisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute

He may be a respected scientist for his past work, but he is far outside his area of competence, here and just because he doesn't know how to measure a global mean temperature, doesn't mean that others don't.

Slarti

[XFool]

Surely including discussion about climate change in a board about science is an oxymoron?

"oxymoron
noun
a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithful kept him falsely true )."

So, you couldn't even get that right!

[XFool]

Is this another joke? Have you head of the carbon dioxide cycle. This is the naturally occurring emission of CO2 into the atmosphere by dead matter (mostly vegetation) and the naturally occurring sequestering of CO2 by growing matter (again mostly vegetation). This happens every year in each hemisphere as plants grow in the summer and die in the winter.

Do you have any idea what the volume of this naturally occurring cycle (flow into and out of the atmosphere) is? Are you aware that it dwarfs any man-made CO2 from fossil fuel production? Are you aware of the CO2 produced by the human population from simply breathing in and out? Are you aware that atmospheric CO2 levels have, based on the evidence always risen in a pattern that lags temperature rises?

Tell you what, why don't you write it all down very simply and clearly in a letter. Then you can send it to some of the senior scientists involved in climate research. I am quite sure they will be very, very grateful to you for pointing out the elementary mistakes you have uncovered in their work, which they must all have been making for decades. Who knows, there may even be an award in it for you from a grateful scientific establishment for putting them all back on the right track.

Give it a go!

[Injunear]

Tell you what, why don't you write it all down very simply and clearly in a letter.

Tell you what, why not do some basic research and discover that many reputable scientists did just this thing many years ago.

I admit that when I first started to do my own reading on this subject I could not understand why something so readily falsified on the evidence as the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis was getting such attention. Then I learned how much research funding was being thrown at the topic. As a previous editor of the reputable New Scientist magazine observed, accurately, if you want to get grant funding to study the habitat of the red squirrel you have little chance. If you applied to get funding to study the impact of climate change on the habitat of the red squirrel, you will have no problem.

There is an entire industry that has grown up on the back of this false prospectus. There are thousands of people whose professional reputation, future career and livelihood now rest on maintaining the emperor's new clothes illusion. They have even created a new kind of priesthood and dogma - climate science and climate scientists - which has no need to respond to the normal disciplines and methods of real science and conveniently means that no one who is not in the priesthood, like, say, a highly distinguished Nobel prize winning physicist, can say anything about their dogma because he is not in the priesthood.

So any number of reputable scientists could have and indeed in some cases have written the letter you suggest. They are all ignored or dismissed, in the same manner as some posters here have done. It's a Catch 22 - "You can't be listened to because you haven't published a peer reviewed article about climate science", "But I'm a reputable scientist", "We don't care - propose an article for us to peer review", "But you don't want to hear anybody who disagrees with you - how could I publish a paper that you have peer reviewed if you won't listen" "That's your problem".

So, I'll tell you what, write down in letter simply and clearly an explanation of what the scientific consensus means. Whilst you are at it you might explain how the scientific consensus once believed in phlogesten, and how the scientific consensus was mistaken on this and so many other occasions, especially when they stopped trying to apply the scientific method of disproving their hypotheses and instead began to build elaborate models based on their assumptions and used these models to "prove" that they were right.

[redsturgeon]

So, I'll tell you what, write down in letter simply and clearly an explanation of what the scientific consensus means. Whilst you are at it you might explain how the scientific consensus once believed in phlogesten, and how the scientific consensus was mistaken on this and so many other occasions, especially when they stopped trying to apply the scientific method of disproving their hypotheses and instead began to build elaborate models based on their assumptions and used these models to "prove" that they were right.

You mean "phlogiston"?

I think you will find it went out of favour over 200 years ago...due to scientific consensus!

John

[XFool]

Dear oh dear! :-[

Tell you what, coming at this from another direction completely... I think the OP may well have a point. (Shock, horror!)

What I mean is, on TMF there was a Science thread and a separate Climate Change/GW thread and just possibly it might be as well to revert to that on here? Then we can have a 'proper' Science thread for people simply interested in science. Others, who are interested in err... 'alternatives', can then bang on to their heart's content on their very own thread - rather like Alt Medicine or whatever on TMF.

Otherwise, the LMF Science thread seems to me at risk of being swamped in crankery and pseudo-science.

Make sense?

[Injunear]

There is a huge amount of science involved.

Please do feel free to identify any.

I shall be particularly impressed with any science that identifies how CO2 molecules allow radiation to be transmitted in one direction but not another. And even more impressed with any science that can explain how the CO2 molecules could ever know which direction is "Up" and which is "Down".