Czech president: Gore is insane.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

SPM was drawn together before 2006 data could be included.

Funny but

Study: Glacier melting can be variable

Feb 13 10:13 AM US/Eastern


BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 13 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggests two of Greenland's largest glaciers are melting at variable rates and not at an increasing trend.

The study, led by Ian Howat, a researcher with the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, shows the glaciers shrank dramatically and dumped twice as much ice into the sea during a period of less than a year between 2004 and 2005.

But then, fewer than two years later, they returned to near their previous rates of discharge.

Howat says such variability during such a short time underlines the problem in assuming glacial melting and sea level rise will necessarily occur at a steady upward trajectory.

"Our main point is that the behavior of these glaciers can change a lot from year to year, so we can't assume to know the future behavior from short records of recent changes," he said. "Future warming may lead to rapid pulses of retreat and increased discharge rather than a long, steady drawdown."

The research is online in the journal Science Express.

Again why rush the Summary for Policy Makers report?

[Solly]

Have they explained yet why greenhouse gases are causing Antarctica to cool and expand?

[The Mad Viking]

Originally posted by Arrian
I did a search on Mr. Ball, and found this dissenting piece:



Now either he's right or they're right. It cannot be both. That's a simple fact-checking thing.

-Arrian

This is slander of the worst kind. Oh, hes a PhD (Doctor of Philsophy) not a PhD (Doctor of Science). Well then.

If you got your PhD by studying and doing a thesis on Climatology, and you lecture on Climatology, but like every other University in the world there was no Dept of Climatology, but Climate was (and is) part of the Dept of Geography, does that make you a liar? Or does it make the "journalist" that wrote the slander a mud-slinger slimeweasel?

[PuddlewatchHQ]

I suspect some rather "serious" people will

be having a private chat with the good President in the coming days. Assuming this "chat" hasn't already happened. This sort of "tripe" coming from the less diplomatically versed is one thing. Coming from a sitting President this sort of "behaviour" is inexcusable.

[Solly]

Re: I suspect some rather "serious" people will

Originally posted by PuddlewatchHQ
be having a private chat with the good President in the coming days. Assuming this "chat" hasn't already happened. This sort of "tripe" coming from the less diplomatically versed is one thing. Coming from a sitting President this sort of "behaviour" is inexcusable.

He'll be redeemed in years to come. Let's start making a list.

[The Mad Viking]

I don't know how many of you have taken the time to download and read the 2nd report of the IPCC.

Its huge.

I am not a scientist, my credentials are meagre; I did win Physics and Biology awards in High School, finished 10th in the National Sir Isaac Newton, and studied statistics, among other things, at University.

I can read, and I can tell the difference between a scienitific paper and a political piece.

The IPCC vol 1, media summary is simply a political piece. It goes to great lengths to obfuscate any doubts and uncertainty.

The technical volumes are edited to death, but you really get the sense that is doubt being expressed by the authors, and then repressed (not quite eliminated) by the editors.

There is no doubt that they are trying to prove a thesis. There is no doubt that they are trying to discredit anyone who has contrary DATA, let alone contrary hypotheses.

Global Warming is nowhere close to a proven theory. It is a hypothesis, and there are a lot of unanswered questions.

I really want to know what caused the end of the last ice age. I'm pretty sure this was a prolonged period of melting ice and increasing temperatures, and I know for sure it wasn't anthropogenic.

Why is it not feasible that the same phenomena today are caused by whatever caused the end of the last ice age? (Or the previous ice ages)

Variations in solar radiation?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
I really want to know what caused the end of the last ice age. I'm pretty sure this was a prolonged period of melting ice and increasing temperatures, and I know for sure it wasn't anthropogenic.

Why is it not feasible that the same phenomena today are caused by whatever caused the end of the last ice age? (Or the previous ice ages)

Variations in solar radiation?

The comings and goings of the Pleistocene ice ages are usually put at the feet of the Milankovic cycles - I haven't read Wiki's article on them but it might be a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles


Not that the "warm" conditions of the last ~10k years is merely a mild snap in a wintery age - temperatures are still well below the Phanerozoic average.

[Odin]

Give me a recent peer reviewed article saying that global warming is not anthropogenic.

Oh, and I've noticed that many of the arguments the denialists use to attack the consensus comes dangerously close to sounding like the anti-intellectual rhetoric of post-modernists

[DinoDoc]

Odin: What does consensus have to do with science?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Arrian
DD - if a scientist funded by people for toxic sludge tells me that toxic sludge is good for me, I'll be skeptical. If a scientist for the Sierra Club tells me that the spotted owl is the linchpin of the food chain, I will likewise be skeptical.

The source is important. The science is more important. I am, as you may have noticed, a layman, not a scientist. Therefore, I cannot review the science behind competing claims... and, AFAIK, neither can anyone else who has posted in this thread.

Laugh some more, BlackCat. Or, if you are a climateologist, perhaps you can take this discussion to the next level and discuss the science?

-Arrian

As DD says, you can't make science based on consensus, wich is what IPCC does. They claim that two thousand scientists agrees on this last document, and especially the political short story. The short story was made by no more than tree hundred, and the final result was not confirmed by the rest of the group. It is right that those others have contributed to the scientific document, but if I understand it right, then several of those disagreed but was ignored.

You say that you are suspicious against fundings made by toxic sludge, but what about scientist that depends on fundings policy makers that also wants a specific result such as Gore et al ? Won't the latter also be hesitant to publish findings going aginst what the funders want ?

The problem with GW is that it has become a political issue, and such has a tendency to ignore facts.

I'm not a climateologist, though, I have a degree in electronical engineering, so the math etc. is understandable for me.

What really bothers me in the climate debate is that the sceptics isn't torn to pieces by scientific proofs but mainly by smearing them and unarguing dismissing their claims with "not significant" and alike.

I don't know wether the current climate changes is made by human impact, or is the result of natural flucuations, but I'm very sceptical about IPCC that without any doubt has become a political body wich should be treated accordingly.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Ned


Rufus, do you note any internal inconsistency with saying both that there is a healthy debate and that debate is pretty much over in the scientific community. The reason I post these threads is to show that there is a positive suppression of debate by the activists. They refuse to discuss the issue, claim there is a consensus of opinion and ridicule anyone who does not adopt these views as "nutjobs" or corporate whores.*

Rufus, are you an activist?

No contradiction at all. Read what I said. The debate is largely over in the scientific community; it has now moved to the public sphere. So complaints that "there's no debate" are false on their face; the debate's going on right now.

Complaints that scientists aren't debating this issue, on the other hand, ignore the fact that scientists have been debating it, for years, and have now largely settled on a conclusion.

There's an analogy here to what happened with smoking in the 1960s. In the 60s, the surgeon general finally agreed that smoking is deadly, and we have to do something about it. That pronouncement wasn't a bolt from the blue; that was the logical culmination of decades of study and, yes, debate within the scientific community. Subsequent attempts to "debate" the link between smoking and lung cancer -- and there have been many, almost always funded by Big Tobacco -- have been derided and dismissed out of hand by responsible scientists, largely because they've spent decades doing the hard work of coming to a conclusion, have done it out of scientific rather than political interest, and have done it well enough to convince almost all of their colleagues of their position. Faced with contrary points of view from non-scientists and/or paid shills, they reacted much as a cardiologist would while trying to discuss medicine with a Christian Scientist, and rightly.

The debate in the public sphere is a different matter, to be sure. With some notable exceptions (and I count Gore as one of them), it's shrill, dogmatic, and ill-informed, on both sides. But that has nothing to do with the issue, per se; it reflects only the sorry state of public discourse in the US. As Limbaugh/Coulter/Fox News fan, you frankly are part of the problem rather than the solution.

And no, I'm not an activist.

[Berzerker]

I really want to know what caused the end of the last ice age. I'm pretty sure this was a prolonged period of melting ice and increasing temperatures, and I know for sure it wasn't anthropogenic.

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html

they offer a nice timeline, albeit a bit dated. But I haven't seen any new info challenging the basics. What is stunning is how fast we can go in and out of cold/warm phases. This would reduce the emphasis on orbital characteristics since they take time. But the changing tilt and eccentricity drive a longer cycle so that if the Earth is more tilted with a more circular orbit, the world would trend warmer. When the tilt lessens and the orbit stretches, the world trends cooler. A third factor is which hemisphere (S or N) has its winter nearest the sun. Today the northern hemisphere has winter when Earth is closest to the sun. As the link shows, the world has been warmer when mankind supposedly wasn't contributing.

The last ice advance began 18,000 ya and ended 14,000 ya. A Tlingit legend places the Great Flood at 14,000 ya. About a 1,000 years after the end, massive lakes of cold meltwater trapped by ice sheets and glaciers were released resulting in 1,300 years of cold. By about 9,000 ya the world was warmer and wetter than today. I suspect as ice sheets grow too large, they become unstable. When they meet or overlap large bodies of water they can break off re-introducing large quantities of fresh water into the climate.

Oh yeah, history shows we do better with a warmer world

What has some people freaked out is the rapid rise in CO2, we know we're responsible for alot of that. The question is: does increased CO2 increase temperatures and if so, how much? We dont know because our models are only as good as what goes in the computer and we're still learning about climatology.

I want a warmer world, ice ages suck so we better figure out a way to stay as warm as possible when the orbit trends cold.

Paleoclimatologists are debating this inspite of what some of y'all think.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Odin
Give me a recent peer reviewed article saying that global warming is not anthropogenic.

Why when almost no one claims such a thing? People do however claim that the anthropogenic component of global warming is overstated. No one really has a clue as to what portion of global warming is manmade vs. natural. Certainly much debate exists as to the rather arbitrary fudge factors for feedback effects considering no one understands whether feedbacks are positive neutral or negative towards global warming.

Oh, and I've noticed that many of the arguments the denialists use to attack the consensus comes dangerously close to sounding like the anti-intellectual rhetoric of post-modernists

You mean like adhom attacks on individuals claiming they are not a climatologists, paleoclimatologists, dendrochronologists etc. (despite the fact that they merely are looking at data manipulation not the interpreatationof raw data), or that those scientists in opposition to 'consensus' are labeled as in the pay of big oil, or calls for decertification from American Meterological Society for having the temerity to hold a view contrary to 'consensus'.


Amongst some of these anti-intellectuals one must of course deal with 'light weight' intellectual 'deniers' such as:

Dr. Wegman

Dr. Tol

Dr. Christopher Landsea

Dr. Duncan Wingham

Dr. Richard Lindzen

Dr. Svensmark

Dr. Nigel Weiss

Dr. Henk Tennekes

Dr. Abdussamatov

Dr. Nir Shariv

[Ned]

Originally posted by Berzerker

What has some people freaked out is the rapid rise in CO2, we know we're responsible for alot of that. The question is: does increased CO2 increase temperatures and if so, how much? We dont know because our models are only as good as what goes in the computer and we're still learning about climatology.

B, there is a relationship between temperature and CO2 levels that one can see without mathematics by looking at the ice ages and CO2 levels. What is most interesting is that CO2 levels

FOLLOW

temperature. CO2 levels have been quite high when we slid into ice ages. This somewhat demonstrates that CO2 levels cannot fundamentally alter the basic processes that are warming and cooling the Earth. This much is obvious from historical data.

Since the end of the mini-ice age, temperatures have warmed dramatically. CO2 levels followed, as they have historically followed. The rise is CO2 levels was not necessarily caused by man, although they could have bee in part caused by man.

But, it is argued that the most recent rise in CO2 levels is almost all due to man. Maybe. Likely, yes. But it does not follow that this will force temperature changes as predicted as CO2 has not, in the past, affected temperature to any noticeable extent. High CO2 levels did not prevent the inception of ice ages, which one would have expected if CO2 were the dominate factor in Earth's temperature.

I have, in other threads, linked articles to show that the amount of sunlight reaching the Northern Hemphisphere is the dominate mechanism for climate temperature. Nothing else is as important. That level varies according to our orbit and our tilt. It is also affect by solar activity and by

AEROSOL polution.

That polution has been dropping the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth dramatically in recent years. We can and should expect temperatures to cool as a result. Even the IPCC has said that GW will be dramatically less than earlier predicted due to AEROSOL polution. But the IPCC assumes that GHGs cause warming, when they have no physical evidence to confirm this, except, if one assumes that temperatures follow CO2 levels, when historically, the opposite is true..

[Ned]

It appears the IPCC (and Gore) is lying about glaciers retreating across the globe as well.

"Some experts have questioned the alarmists theory on global warming leading to shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. VK Raina, a leading glaciologist and former ADG of GSI is one among them.

....

"His views were echoed by Dr RK Ganjoo, Director, Regional Centre for Field Operations and Research on Himalayan Glaciology, who is supervising study of glaciers in Ladakh region including one in the Siachen area. He also maintained that nothing abnormal has been found in any of the Himalyan glaciers studied so far by him."

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1925164,0008.htm