Earth: The Climate Wars

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Dan Salter

Ha ha Touche!....im starting to love you pressld..ha ha

Okay, now I'm worried!

Dave P.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Okay, now I'm worried!

Dave P.

you just wait til he starts a thread entiled "how fit is pressld2 ??" then you will really have cause for concern

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Many times, it's a very well documented fact going back to Roman Britain. The last frost fair on the Thames was held in 1814 although the river probably froze again after that date. However it definitely hasn't frozen since 1870, but this tells us precisely nothing about the temperature either before or since that date. The winters of 1947 and 1963 were two of the coldest on record but the river didn't freeze. The reason is that between 1865 and 1870 the Victoria and Albert embankments were built. These narrowed the river making it faster flowing which in turn meant that temperatures would have to fall much, much lower for it to freeze. If you don't factor that in then your conclusions will be flawed in much the same way that Dr Roy Spencer's conclusions were flawed when he failed to take into account the degradation of the satelites' orbits.

And even if the Thames freezing was a reliable indicator of the temperature in London it would still tell you nothing at all about global average temperatures.

Dave P.

very good point on the thames freezing / not freezing issue dave (though as there is probably a pedant lurking somewhere we should perhaps point out that water always freezes at 0 degrees celcius regardless of speed of flow , but that more prolonged cold spells or much lower temperatures would be required for faster flowing water to freeze solid)

[RobSutton]

I said I wouldn't post again on this thread but there was something nagging away and now I've got to the bottom of it. Much of what Forfi presents seems to be lifted verbatim from briefing documents released on CO2 Science

This organisation states in the one on the Little Ice Age in China:

In an attempt to rewrite climatic history, certain scientists have claimed that the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were neither global in extent nor strong enough where they did occur to have a discernable influence on mean global air temperature. By doing so, they have made the putative dramatic warming of the latter part of the 20th century appear highly unusual, which they equate with anthropogenic-induced, which they associate with the historical rise in the air's CO2 content, which gives them a pretense to call for huge reductions in the use of fossil fuels, which we believe to be unwarranted. Hence, we continually search the emerging scientific literature for evidence that the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were truly significant global events. This summary reports what we have learned over the past few years about the Little Ice Age in China.

Searching for evidence to support your view is fine but to do so and to disregard conflicting evidence is not scientific. Perhaps not suprising given the apparent fact that the organisation is according to Greenpeace a front for Exxon through the Western Fuels Association.

ExxonSecrets Factsheet: Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Maybe Enron funds windmills but the oil companies seem to be funding Forfi's sources of information. Hardly unbiased scientific information then.

[pressld2]

One of the most telling points for me was when the keynote speaker at the sceptics' conference actually accepted both that the end of the twentieth century was anomalously warm and that this was at least in part due to human activity. And credit to him for having the guts to stand up in that venue, in front of that audience, with a TV camera recording him, and say so.

Part 3 is downloading now...

Dave P.

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by pressld2

One of the most telling points for me was when the keynote speaker at the sceptics' conference actually accepted both that the end of the twentieth century was anomalously warm and that this was at least in part due to human activity. And credit to him for having the guts to stand up in that venue, in front of that audience, with a TV camera recording him, and say so.

Part 3 is downloading now...

Dave P.

There does seem to have been some slow movement in the USA towards recognising this. Sure there are doubts about the causes and consequences of climate change but the thing that always strikes me is that all the measures suggested to mitigate climate change are in themselves sensible things to do given the finite nature of the oil resource that is available. It seems a total no-brainer to take steps to look after what is a precious resource, reduce the dependency of the west on politically problematical sources of oil in the Middle East and Russia and mitigate some of the likely consequences of climate change.

[Rob_D]

What struck me about the second episode was not about the oil companies coming up with reasons not to act (of course they will), but that the Republicans were worried they were vulnerable on the issue of the environment and developed a policy of denial to counter it.

We are clearly seeing the after-effects of this policy still filtering about now, but it's interesting that McCain's position is now different to Bush's. And even Palin has done an abrupt 360 on the issue now she's going for VP. So maybe we see far fewer attempts to deny the scientific evidence now the politics have changed?

Generally I liked the programmes - more informative and less sensationalist than most TV documentaries.

[Strontium]

Originally Posted by forfi

Cherry picking? The papers from China are just 2 of the 33 that I have to hand. Similar research is available globally.
Manns hockey stick is based on data collected from car-parks and roof tops and ohter dubious places.Have you ever heard of the ice fairs held on the Thames ? Is that an odd bit of data?

I don't have an agenda,but I do have an aversion to politically inspired numpties trying to scare the hell out of people with bad science.
Do you mean the scientists allied to the IPCC? All 2500 of them? There are some 400,000 science grads. in India each year,just to put a perspective on the numbers game. And make no mistake about it, not all of those attached to the IPCC are climate specialists either.You are no doubt aware that there is satillite data in the public realm showing that the global temperatures have been dropping?
I will consider Manns output again when I recieve a satisfactory explaination of the missing series from his latest efforts.
Which fairy tale is correct,Dickens and the ice fairs or Mann and the hockey stick ? Dickens is by far the better writer,maybe I am biased.

I agree with some of what you said, the hockey stick graph didn't agree with some other methods of recording temperatures over the mini ice ages, warm period. But neither did those other methods agree with each other. Furthermore if you took those studies that seemed to contradict Manns dataset, and collect the readings to complete the plot of temperatures into these last few years, you'd see that they too have an upturn. Its magnitude varies, but all show the same trend. This alone is statistically unlikely, pointing to some unknown factor that is causing disruptions. Im glad that finally, the issue of the solar output has been removed as the questionable factor.

Can I also point out that there is satillite data from the troposphere that indicates the earth does not warm up at all? Why do you think that is? Is the solar output now similar to the last 5, or 10 years?