Earth: The Climate Wars

[StuartDH]

A new series called "Earth: The Climate Wars" starts on BBC2 at 9pm tonight to look at the battle of opinions and concerns over climate change (warming and cooling) throughout history; and how it's not just a recent issue

[mrs fish]

That sounds like something to watch , thanks

[tameblackbirds]

Originally Posted by StuartDH

A new series called "Earth: The Climate Wars" starts on BBC2 at 9pm tonight to look at the battle of opinions and concerns over climate change (warming and cooling) throughout history; and how it's not just a recent issue

Watching as I type this

[mrs fish]

I watched the first 30mins but had mislaid the matchsticks so fell asleep.
What I saw was interesting

[LynM]

I've recorded it as I was far too busy watching Joanna Lumley enthusing about the northern lights! Typical of the Beeb to put two programmes on at the same time which are likely to appeal to the same people.....

[Billy Wobble Dagger]

Originally Posted by LynM

I've recorded it as I was far too busy watching Joanna Lumley enthusing about the northern lights! Typical of the Beeb to put two programmes on at the same time which are likely to appeal to the same people.....

I did the same Lyn. The scenes at the end were magical.

[Dan Salter]

I watched it....fell asleep in the middle (no fault of the program) and watched the end...ao i may re watch it as i recorded it too...seems very good though.

Seems to be an extension of Earth: the power of the planet...we now have Earth: the climate wars....both with the excellent Dr Ian Stewart.

[StuartDH]

I've just watched it on the BBC iPlayer:

BBC iPlayer - Earth: The Climate Wars: The Battle Begins

It seemed well balanced with clear and easy to understand explanations of the science and politics of climate change. There are also many warts and all frank admissions about why/when/how climate scientists can get it wrong.

It looks at how many climate scientists used to predict global cooling, but that a basis of science is that you have a theory and see if the evidence fits, if it doesn't fit then you have to change the theory. Evidence in the 70s pointed to global cooling, but as they continued the research they discovered that we were actually predicting global warming, and while the science can never be 100% certain, the fact that we don't know everything, doesn't mean we don't know anything.

I guess it's unlikely to change any hardline skeptic's view, which often seem as fundamentalist and cult-like as they usually claim to be the problem with proponents of anthropogenic global warming, but the next episode is all about the skeptics so looking forward to see what it comes up with.

[shirl]

I watched it last night and thought it really was well balanced, investigating "both sides" of climate change. I must say I think Dr Ian Stewart does present an excellent programme which should appeal to a wide audience. I always remember our Environment tutor when I did my degree - he said that there is no doubt CO2 has always varied in the atmosphere and has been much higher in the past than it is now. It's not the amount that is there it is the rate at which the amount increases, a mere snip in geological timescales. Makes adaptation to change much more difficult.

Shirl

[Dan Salter]

I thought the second in the series tonight was excellent!!...

Reminded me of somf of the climate debate aruguments i had forgotten about...very interesting stuff and easily explained without heavy duty science.

[RobSutton]

I found the emotive and almost defamatory language of some of the "eminent" sceptics who were talking about the original hockey stick graph as being "scientific fraud" quite shocking. How these people can maintain that view in the face of the repeated confirmation of the data by other studies and still claim to be scientists beggars belief - ostrich syndrome. I think many of them are not actually climate scientists and are pushed forward as experts even though their experience is often in very different fields.

[Dan Salter]

Originally Posted by RobSutton

I found the emotive and almost defamatory language of some of the "eminent" sceptics who were talking about the original hockey stick graph as being "scientific fraud" quite shocking. How these people can maintain that view in the face of the repeated confirmation of the data by other studies and still claim to be scientists beggars belief - ostrich syndrome. I think many of them are not actually climate scientists and are pushed forward as experts even though their experience is often in very different fields.

I totally agree...

[mrs fish]

I enjoyed the second part to, the sun spot theory nearly made it.

I didn't know about Thomas Midgley , what a life and death !

[forfi]

From a chap in the Caymen islands to Cayman News

Dear Sir,

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been discredited in recent years, particularly in the last two years. In fact, there is nowhere near a scientific consensus on the dramatic and sensational claims made by this panel.
Their famous “hockey stick” shaped graph of recent world temperatures has been shown to be fraudulent. Their mathematical models on long term climate change, which I have looked at, are packed with guesses, called “parameterizations” to replace unknown and unmeasurable quantities and feedback gains which are needed by the models.
It’s no wonder that none of their models can track or explain the known climate changes in the past, or even predict climate changes even one year ahead.
Last winter was so severe that it broke cold records all over the world and set global warming back by at least 10 years. The current winter underway now in Australia, and the current summer in Canada, are continuing this cooling trend.
Many climatologists are concerned about the global cooling, which began around the year 2000. What’s more, this cooling trend correlates with the sun’s activity as measured by the number of sunspots.
It is known that the medieval mini ice age, which lasted for 400 years, is correlated with a period of little or no sunspot activity called the Maunder Minimum. It was very cold. The Thames River froze over annually and the Baltic Sea froze hard enough for people to walk from Sweden to Poland.
The relevance of this to our climate today is that the number of sunspots has been declining since about 2002. Solar Cycle 23 ended two or more years ago, and Solar Cycle 24 has not yet started. Solar scientists are worried because they do not know the reason. No one knows when the sun will start up again.
Last winter was the most severe in a chain of recent cold winters, which indicates that we may be in a trend. I hope not, but our coming winter will be very interesting indeed.
CO2 concentration is another non-problem. Many climatologists are now saying there is very little, if any, correlation between CO2 and world temperatures. One even said that we need triple the CO2 concentration that we have now, to optimise plant growth and food production.
So instead of trying to reduce CO2, we should be increasing it.
Nevertheless, we should not be burning fossil fuels for energy, and not because of any adverse climate effects. Oil, in particular, is far too valuable for other uses, such as making plastics, paints, and the chemicals we need for industry.
So, what is the best way to replace the power generated from fossil fuels? The US gets 50 percent of its electricity from coal, 20 percent from nuclear, and about 20 percent from natural gas.
The obvious solution is to build more nuclear power stations. They burn uranium, which useless for anything else, and produce no pollution at all. There are new designs which are modular, compact, intrinsically safe, breed more fuel than they use, and produce very little waste.
For example, the new Hyperion Power Generator, can produce 25 megawatts for 10 years on one fuel charge, requires no moving parts and fits into a small space. It will be shipped as a modular, sealed, unit at an estimated cost of $25 million.
Can wind power, solar power, wave power, tidal power, geothermal power, algae power, ever produce the concentrations of energy that we need to run our industries?
No, they are far too dilute. Solar energy is only 1200 watts per square meter, out of which only 240 watts can be harvested using our most efficient solar cells. Thin film solar cells are only 10 percent efficient.
For example the 560 megawatt thin film solar power plant recently announced in California will cover 9.6 square miles, and will only work when the sun shines.
Wind power is also too dilute. The most popular wind turbines generate one megawatt under optimal wind conditions, requiring 1,000 of them to equal the output of one standard fossil or nuclear fueled power plant. And, once again, only when the wind blows.
Geothermal plants have many problems, including pipe corrosion, scaling, plugging and cooling the geothermal reservoirs from which they draw their heat. Because of low temperatures, around 300 deg. F maximum, their steam cannot efficiently drive steam turbines.
I know of no alternative energy commercial power plant, existing or planned, which does not require public funds and subsidies.
The national electrical grid is not designed to supply the whole country. It is designed to carry power between load points, and depends on large generating stations to anchor those load points.
For example, New York’s recent power outage was caused by New York not having enough of its own power generation. Its power demand simply overloaded the power grid.
I am mentioning this because it costs a lot of money to install and maintain power grids. You just cannot hook up diverse wind turbines to any power grid, unless they are supplying enough power to make it worthwhile.
Depending on distance, terrain, and other factors, you may need thousands of megawatts to justify feeder lines to the nearest power grid.
This works in favour of large fossil or nuclear power plants, and against solar or wind power. The place for solar and wind is on rooftops, or in neighborhoods.
The trouble today is that no one seems to think in terms of overall system efficiency and cost.
The Internet and press are chock full of hype that will never see the light of day. Most of them are chasing public money, trying to find investors or bureaucrats who are dumb enough (not hard to find) who will give them money.
Ideas that are not even close to being practical are being announced every day, for example, oil from algae.
All this does is confuse the public. It’s way past time that the powers that be start asking for overall systems analysis before wasting our taxpayers’ money. For heaven’s sake, why do not they hire a few independent systems engineers to make a public report before committing our money on what are usually hare-brained schemes?

Gerry Miller, P.Eng. (retired)

[RobSutton]

I didn't know ostriches lived in the Cayman Isles

[jackieaswain]

Earth;the climate wars. Found the series so far very interesting, but must admit I fell asleep duuring the first part and then had to rerun it on Iplayer.
Useful too in my revision for my O.U. Environment exam next month
jackieaswain

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by forfi

From a chap in the Caymen islands to Cayman News

from bbc news earlier this month (probably a bit more credible a source than "a bloke in the cayman islands")

A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 "hockey stick" graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct.

Michael Mann's team analysed data for the last 2,000 years, and concluded that Northern Hemisphere temperatures now are "anomalously warm".

Different analytical methods give the same result, they report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 1998 hockey stick was a totem of debates over man-made global warming.

The graph - indicating that Northern Hemisphere temperatures had been roughly constant for 1,000 years (the "shaft" of the stick) before turning abruptly upwards in the industrial age - featured prominently in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2001 assessment. The hockey stick is alive and well

But some academics questioned its methodology and conclusions, and increasingly strident condemnations reverberated around the blogosphere.

One US politician demanded to see financial and research records from the scientists involved.

However, a 2006 report from the National Research Council (NRC), commissioned by the US Congress, broadly endorsed its conclusion that Northern Hemisphere temperatures in the late 20th Century were probably warmer than at any time in the previous 400 years, and perhaps at any time during the previous 1,000 years.

Twin study

Since then, a number of research groups have produced new "proxy records" of temperatures from the centuries before thermometers were widely deployed.

Such proxies include the growth patterns of trees and coral, the contents of ice cores and sediments, and temperature fluctuations in boreholes.


Unravelling 'climate scepticism'

In their latest study, Dr Mann's group collated more than 1,200 proxy records - the majority from the Northern Hemisphere - and used different statistical methods to analyse their cumulative message.

"We used two different methods that are quite complementary in the assumptions they make about data, so that provides a test of the sensitivity of data to the methods used," he told BBC News.

"We also made use of a far wider network of proxy data than previously available.

"Ten years ago, the availability of data became quite sparse by the time you got back to 1,000 AD, and what we had then was weighted towards tree-ring data; but now you can go back 1,300 years without using tree-ring data at all and still get a verifiable conclusion."

Both analytical methods produced graphs similar to the original hockey stick, though starting further back in time. The "shaft" now extends back to about 700 AD.

The same basic pattern emerged when tree-ring data - whose reliability has been questioned - was excluded from the analysis.

"I think that having this extra data and using more methods to analyse it makes the conclusions more robust," commented Gabi Hegerl from the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was not involved in the research.

Past lessons

Critics of the idea of man-made climate change argue that conditions 1,000 years ago were as warm as, if not warmer than, they are today.

The new paper adds to the evidence against that notion. One of the analytical methods used suggests that temperatures in the Mediaeval Warm Period could have been no higher than they were in about 1980; the other suggests they were no higher than those seen 100 years ago.
The growth patterns of corals are a valuable proxy record of climate

In any case, said Dr Hegerl: "The whole line of argument [about whether temperatures have been as high in the past as they are now] is not very relevant."

The climate has always responded to factors such as changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, and always will, she said; the issue now is how it is responding to greenhouse gas emissions.

"In any case, the paper still comes to the firm conclusion that the most recent decades are unusual."

Ten years on from the study that provoked all the ire, Michael Mann's conclusion is that far from being broken, "the hockey stick is alive and well".

But, the Penn State University researcher added: "If we want to understand things like El Nino and how it relates to climate change, it's not enough to know just how anomalously warm the climate is today.

"We need to learn from the palaeoclimatic record. The science is not all done, there's still a lot of work to do; but what we are seeing now is definitely unusual in the context of the past."

A particular desire of scientists in the field is to increase the amount of data from the Southern Hemisphere. The majority of proxy records come from land rather than sea, and from land not covered in ice at that, which is in relatively short supply south of the equator.

[forfi]

So if the Little Ice Age did not happen,is there another explaination for this ?

The glaciers in the Iberian Peninsula's mountains were formed in the Little Ice Age. The coldest period in which the greatest spread of glaciers in the Spanish high mountains was recorded occurred between 1645 and 1710

Glaciers In The Pyrenees Will Disappear In Less Than 50 Years, Study Finds

[forfi]

Originally Posted by RobSutton

I think many of them are not actually climate scientists and are pushed forward as experts even though their experience is often in very different fields.

And the new IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri is ?

Just so you don't have to Google ,he is a Railway Engineer and an expert in his field

[forfi]

Originally Posted by eeyore

from bbc news earlier this month (probably a bit more credible a source than "a bloke in the cayman islands")

Manns latest revelations appeared on line on Sept 5th with 1357 series, this was deleted and reappeared with 148 series removed.This loss of data has yet to be explained by Mann and yet the conclusions remain the same. I have heard people say that if you put the London telephone directory through Manns model that it will still show the results that he wants,I am begining to think that this is true and not just a joke.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by forfi

So if the Little Ice Age did not happen,is there another explaination for this ?

where does it say that the little ice age didnt happen ? - what it says is that the meadival warm period wasnt as warm as some climate sceptics say.

Anyway I'm not going to be dragged into yet another fruitless debate - we have at least three threads running for this argument and it would be a shame to hijack this one into being a fourth.

[forfi]

Originally Posted by eeyore

from bbc news earlier this month (probably a bit more credible a source than "a bloke in the cayman islands")

This" bloke" is a retired power engineer,a useful qualification and a credible source.As he is retired he most likely earned his degree in times when such things were earned and not handed out like sweeties.

[forfi]

Originally Posted by eeyore

where does it say that the little ice age didnt happen ?.

In Mann's hockey stick and lots of other contrived sources.I am merely pointing out that it is a bit silly for people to bemoan the loss of glaciers while being in denial of the event that formed them.I use that report to illustrate the point.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by forfi

This" bloke" is a retired power engineer,a useful qualification and a credible source.As he is retired he most likely earned his degree in times when such things were earned and not handed out like sweeties.

that may be so i'm not questiong his qualification in his field but he clearly doesnt understand even the basic concepts on which the global warming argument is based.

for example one cold winter (or more accurately a winter that is cold in some areas - i dont recall it being outstandinly cold here) doesnt "set global warming back 10 years" as GW is about the mean average global temperature increasing

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by eeyore

where does it say that the little ice age didnt happen ? - what it says is that the meadival warm period wasnt as warm as some climate sceptics say.

Anyway I'm not going to be dragged into yet another fruitless debate - we have at least three threads running for this argument and it would be a shame to hijack this one into being a fourth.

I quite agree - shame that someone has hijacked the thread with the same old reiteration of arguments with little or no new insights. I'm sure lots of you have found it already but there is quite a nice website that gives a very useful refutation of the supposed problems of the little ice age and medieval warm period and many other discussions of climate change:

RealClimate

To summarise the ideas very simplistically I think this is what they say - the little ice age and medieval warm periods were local or regional phenomena and were not reflected in the overall global temperatures as determined by many of the proxy temperature records (data from sea bed cores and the like).