Czech president: Gore is insane.

[Arrian]

Apologies to BlackCat, since I called you out and then disappeared. I've been sick as a dog for the last three days. Nasty little ****er of a bug, I tell ya.

Thanks for your answer. I remain skeptical - of both sides. As you pointed out, this thing has gone political.

In my job, I've learnt to be skeptical even of "scientific reports." I see reports by paid env. consultants of polluters who do their best to downplay the environmental damage caused by their clients, and angle for the cheapest possible remedy. Natural attenuation - a fancy word for "do nothing." "The solution to pollution is dilution."

I've seen the opposite from claimants who are seeking a "cadillac" remedy, or a settlement based on the cost of such a remedy.

Given the above experience, I continue to believe that questioning the source is important.

Thanks to Mad Viking, by the way, for ripping apart the hackjob I found on Dr. Ball.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Arrian: Would you have been among the ones to support the consensus on the theory of spontaneous generation against the work of Friedrich Henle and others? I'm not just trying to be a jackass here. I'm just curious when it became gnerally accepted that consensus = science in the mind of the general public. It clearly doesn't.

First off, I thought I made it clear that I do not accept the concensus view. I haven't made up my mind, and despite the wailing of many, I don't think the "scientific community" has either. Politicians are another matter...

However, just because the minority view has sometimes turned out to be right doesn't mean that is always will... or even will much of the time. All the times the lone crackpot (I exagerate, obviously, don't get going on that) was wrong, history quietly forgot it.

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Arrian
First off, I thought I made it clear that I do not accept the concensus view.

Mea culpa. I must have missunderstood your posts.

However, just because the minority view has sometimes turned out to be right doesn't mean that is always will...

I never meant to imply that it did. Only that views that claim to be based on science shouldn't be championed based on how much "consensus" they happen to achieve but on how sound the science is. Consensus belongs in the realm of politics not science.

[Arrian]

I guess the distinction comes down to this:

I do not "champion" either evaluation of the data. I am not a scientist, and I'm certainly not a climateologist. So if I had to make a choice at gunpoint and I chose the GW "concensus" opinion, that doesn't constitute championing the concensus.

I am trying to figure out for myself as best I can who is right. To this point, I've largely punted. I lean a bit toward the "concensus" (not sure there really is one as portrayed by journalists) view, but remain skeptical concerning the wilder claims of imminent disaster.

As others have noted, the whole thing is political, which makes it difficult to trust what anybody says.

-Arrian

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Arrian
Apologies to BlackCat, since I called you out and then disappeared. I've been sick as a dog for the last three days. Nasty little ****er of a bug, I tell ya.

It must have been a nasty one if it kept you away from your computer/poly - or was it wifey that kept it away from you ?

Thanks for your answer. I remain skeptical - of both sides. As you pointed out, this thing has gone political.

Oh, don't worry - I'm just as sceptical to results from suspicious financed studies as I am to findings supported by IPCC.

What worries me a lot is such statements as this about Henrik Svensmark :

The chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, the chief agency investigating global warming, then castigated them in the press, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible."

How can you trust a person saying such about a person that certainly isn't neither paid by oil nor a crackpot. The man has a theory supported by experiments wich CERN are going to repeat on larger scale. I wonder what the chairman will say about CERN if they can validate the theory.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Odin


WHA...???

CO2 levels are high when the Earth is in a "hot-house" phase and low when it is a "ice-house" phase. CO2 levels over long stretches of geological time (over millions of years) are the result of changes in tectonic activity.

During periods of with lots of orogenic (mountain building) activity, especially orogenic activity caused by continent-to-continent collisions, the CO2 level decreases because young mountain ranges erode rapidly and erosion removes CO2 from the atmosphere (eventually ending up as the carbonate ions in limestone on the ocean floor) faster then volcanoes can add CO2. We are currently in a period with lots of orogenic activty. The Carboniferous, another ice-house period, is another period with a lot orogenic activity.

When there is little orogenic activity and lots of volcanic activity CO2 levels increase. The Cretaceous period is a good example.

Nice. But this still does not pursuade as CO2 levels have varied dramatically during the ice ages and have followed temperatures. The fall in temperatures that coincided with an ice age inception was not preceded by a fall in high CO2 concentrations, but preceded the subsequent fall in CO2.

What these seems to suggest is that CO2 levels seem to be largely is dependent on temperature and not the other way around.

[Ned]

While this is old news to me, a fresh report from Antartica. It's getting colder, not warmer, and snowfall is less, not more as predicted.

"Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions
COLUMBUS , Ohio – A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.

This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.

It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.

...

Last year, Bromwich's research group reported in the journal Science that Antarctic snowfall hadn't increased in the last 50 years. "What we see now is that the temperature regime is broadly similar to what we saw before with snowfall. In the last decade or so, both have gone down," he said. "

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd021207.php

[Ned]

BTW, Odin, since Global Temperatures seem largely dependent on sunlight reaching the ground, I would suggest that periods when the Earth was warmer coincided with time when more land was receiving sunlight and was not covered by snow, and had little to do with tectonic activity and CO2 levels.

[BlackCat]

Ned, where do you get that from ? It's just as essential, if not more, how much that are prevented from leaving the planet.

Edit : Just to be sure. I hope that you are aware of the fact that this planet would be a lump of ice without GH gases ?

[Solly]

Originally posted by Ned
While this is old news to me, a fresh report from Antartica. It's getting colder, not warmer, and snowfall is less, not more as predicted.

"Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions
COLUMBUS , Ohio – A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.

This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.

It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.

...

Last year, Bromwich's research group reported in the journal Science that Antarctic snowfall hadn't increased in the last 50 years. "What we see now is that the temperature regime is broadly similar to what we saw before with snowfall. In the last decade or so, both have gone down," he said. "

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-atd021207.php

Yeah, old news to me too. Still, good to educate people about what's really happening out there.

[Ned]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Ned, where do you get that from ? It's just as essential, if not more, how much that are prevented from leaving the planet.

Edit : Just to be sure. I hope that you are aware of the fact that this planet would be a lump of ice without GH gases ?

BC, take a look at this chart. It demostrates that recent temperature and CO2 levels both track solar activity. This does not suggest that CO2 has anything to do with forcing temperature changes as CO2 has always tracked temperature changes.

Besides, during this time of increased solar activity, there is evidence that Mars is warming, which one would expect.

Just because there have been recent rises in temperatures on this planet that coincide with CO2 increases, it does not logically follow that CO2 increases cause the temperature increases as alarmists would like you to believe. They may be a positive reinforcement factor to temperature change, but there are much larger reinforcement mechanisms such as water vapor. CO2 accounts for only for a small fraction of 1% of natural GHG, and even a major change in this variable could not conceivably overcome the larger forcing factors of solar activity, Earth's orbit and tilt, and the relative location of continents on Earth (over millions of years).

[Ned]

Chart

the chart I promised

[BlackCat]

I think that you have missed something about greenhouse gases. The atmosphere are litteraly filled with them and CO2 is only a secondary contributor. The problem in current dispute is that it seem like the main culprit are considered stable and only changes in CO2 are considered to have an influence.

[Solly]

January 2007 was the 49th warmest in 112 years. I haven’t noticed a press release.

[BlackCat]

Depends where you live - here it was the hottest since 1870.