Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Hi Steve! The Higgs boson may or may not be found at CERN, but at least your paleoclimatologist friend will confirm to you that our ancestors from 10,000 years ago walked from France to England and on to Ireland.

The English channel and the Irish sea were created by the melting glaciers covering much of the Northern hemisphere at the time - so ocean levels have risen by at least 100 meters in this - geologically speaking - very brief interval.

Unless you're prepared to argue that said ancestors drove from France to Ireland in paleolithic SUVs I don't see the relevance of your New Scientist quote, or the expressed surprise at the fact the glacier-melting process is continuing.

MSc Mathematical Economics
MSc Management (Finance)
Undergraduate in pure math and computer modelling

Brief note on computer simulation models: they do work, and one way to test them is by feeding in the past, known, inputs, and checking that we get the present, known, outputs.

For models at the femtosecond scale like nuclear weapons simulations we expect more precision, as already remarked here by MiniTax, but some uncertainty can never be resolved - it's the nature of the underlying processes! However in longer time scales the same tests are possible, e.g. in this simulation of geological eons made at the University of Chicago:

http://pgap.uchicago.edu/atlanticcontinentsrev.mov

Above at same link: http://pgap.uchicago.edu/KMApgeoglarge.html

You're welcome and your post shows that you don't read very carefully I think. I am quite willing to change my lifestyle given a good reason to do so. I conserve fuel and energy, buy biodegradable products as available, use recycled paper when feasable, and protect the environment as much as I can. This is for practical, aesthetic, and moral responsibility reasons.
I am not willing to otherwise significantly alter my lifestyle without a compelling reason to do so.

As for the survival of mankind, I am far more concerned about the intentional destruction of life and property by determined terrorists than I am worried about global warming. I think the chances of we humans sustaining any significantly damaging effect will more likely be from the impact of a large asteroid or from simultaneous eruptions of large volcanoes than from the effect of global warming.

The seed saving vault at the north pole could be useful in the wake of any number of major disasters as the article states, and I see it as a practical thing.

Unlike Heidi Cullen and her suggestion to silence any opposing voices by pulling scientific credentials, and unlike Ellen Goodman who equates AGW skeptics with Holocaust deniers, I am not convinced that global warming is an imminent threat to humankind.

Anyone watching the 2-hour special on Discovery?

Is it the same one they ran some months ago? If so, I saw it then.

Meanwhile here is another take on the issue of whether the debate is over as some suggest. Calder raises issues of which I think serious scientists would think deserve consideration:

From The Sunday TimesFebruary 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

And another scientist who does not dispute AGW, but who says the IPCC recent proclamations fail to include components that must be included in order to have credible science:

Cosmic rays blamed for global warming
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:08am GMT 11/02/2007

Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research.

Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.

In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.


High levels of cloud cover blankets the Earth and reflects radiated heat from the Sun back out into space, causing the planet to cool.

Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.

This, he says, is responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing.

He claims carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity are having a smaller impact on climate change than scientists think. If he is correct, it could mean that mankind has more time to reduce our effect on the climate.

The controversial theory comes one week after 2,500 scientists who make up the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change published their fourth report stating that human carbon dioxide emissions would cause temperature rises of up to 4.5 C by the end of the century.

Mr Svensmark claims that the calculations used to make this prediction largely overlooked the effect of cosmic rays on cloud cover and the temperature rise due to human activity may be much smaller.

He said: "It was long thought that clouds were caused by climate change, but now we see that climate change is driven by clouds.

"This has not been taken into account in the models used to work out the effect carbon dioxide has had.

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"We may see CO2 is responsible for much less warming than we thought and if this is the case the predictions of warming due to human activity will need to be adjusted."

Mr Svensmark last week published the first experimental evidence from five years' research on the influence that cosmic rays have on cloud production in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Journal A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. This week he will also publish a fuller account of his work in a book entitled The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change.

A team of more than 60 scientists from around the world are preparing to conduct a large-scale experiment using a particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, to replicate the effect of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.

They hope this will prove whether this deep space radiation is responsible for changing cloud cover. If so, it could force climate scientists to re-evaluate their ideas about how global warming occurs.

Mr Svensmark's results show that the rays produce electrically charged particles when they hit the atmosphere. He said: "These particles attract water molecules from the air and cause them to clump together until they condense into clouds."

Mr Svensmark claims that the number of cosmic rays hitting the Earth changes with the magnetic activity around the Sun. During high periods of activity, fewer cosmic rays hit the Earth and so there are less clouds formed, resulting in warming.

Low activity causes more clouds and cools the Earth.

He said: "Evidence from ice cores show this happening long into the past. We have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years.

"Humans are having an effect on climate change, but by not including the cosmic ray effect in models it means the results are inaccurate.The size of man's impact may be much smaller and so the man-made change is happening slower than predicted."

Some climate change experts have dismissed the claims as "tenuous".

Giles Harrison, a cloud specialist at Reading University said that he had carried out research on cosmic rays and their effect on clouds, but believed the impact on climate is much smaller than Mr Svensmark claims.

Mr Harrison said: "I have been looking at cloud data going back 50 years over the UK and found there was a small relationship with cosmic rays. It looks like it creates some additional variability in a natural climate system but this is small."

But there is a growing number of scientists who believe that the effect may be genuine.

Among them is Prof Bob Bingham, a clouds expert from the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils in Rutherford.

He said: "It is a relatively new idea, but there is some evidence there for this effect on clouds."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

Finally, this one is too long to post but hopefully those members actually interested in good science and accurate reporting will read it. It is quite enlightening re what is going on to squelch any scientific inquiries or research that doesn't conform to the 'consensus'.

Scenes from the Climate Inquisition
The chilling effect of the global warming consensus.
by Steven F. Hayward & Kenneth P. Green
02/19/2007, Volume 012, Issue 22
LINK

The global warming one world crowd is a very dangerous bunch, Foxfyre. I think they see the environment / climate change issue as the horse they can ride to their goal, and if they can use pop science, while squelching sound science, they will do it. Unfortunately, you also have innocent bystanders and even some scientists swept along with their trendy agenda, which is propped up with a bombardment of media hype over selected stories every day. Any time there is a snowstorm, a hurricane, a tornado, a heat wave, a deadly cold snap, whatever, anywhere in the world, the underlying message is the climate is changing and becoming more unstable, and we are causing it. And of course, there is always extreme weather somewhere almost every day.

Unfortunately, people are gullible by nature, and the media has tremendous power to manipulate and indoctrinate. We only need to look at the Obama candidacy, wherein his candidacy has been almost entirely caused and propelled by media hype. We are bombarded every single day with something about Obama. Of course along with what happened to Anna Nicole somebody? This morning, the headline on Fox internet is something about what was in her refrigerator. I didn't read it. It would be humorous if not so sad.

I don't think it is gullibility so much as the normal kneejerk resistance to eating crow, Okie. Once a mind is made up and a point of view is defended, it is hard to have to admit that the point of view is wrong or might be wrong.

There are a a couple of people posting in this thread who buy into the AGW theory without question and who I don't consider to be particularly gullible.

It is those who would silence any point of view but their own who frighten me, however. I thought we were long past the Inquisition and witch burnings and other ugly scenes of centuries long ago in which human thought was dictated and regulated and any heretics were punished most severely. An Al Gore who advocates that the media not publish the opinions of the skeptics or a Heidi Cullen who would pull the credentials of any scientists who dare to disagree with her is positively chilling.

Can you imagine anything that would set science back eons more than would discouraging or disallowing those who disagree with a particular 'consensus'? How much science would we have even now if countless thinking scientists had not been willing to challenge the conventional wisdom of their day?

I have posted several times about the effects of high solar radiation on the Earth. Everytime I was laughed at by those who only want to blame the human race for what is going on. Its good to see that some researchers are looking at this possible effect as well.

Yes. I've posted some research summaries on sunspot activity, etc. too and it was summarily dismissed when it didn't fit in with what the 'consensus group' is telling us.

Meanwhile, according to today's Drudge Report, we skeptics can welcome President Vaclav Klaus to our ranks, though I think most of us haven't yet developed the firm convictions that he apparently has:

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity
Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•

A: ...I am right...•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.

[English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl]

Developing...
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash.htm

Perhaps not gullible, but a bias in terms of desired result that it overwhelms their sense of reason.



I agree with everything you've said. The thought police is very much a threat. Now that we have hate crimes, where a crime is not simply the crime, but the thought is the crime. We are not allowed to express opinions now concerning some things in certain places. I never thought I would see such nonsensical people running around as they do today, one of your examples being the Heidi Cullen. We also have to put up with an educational system that indoctrinates our children and grandchildren on a daily basis with dis-information and indoctrination.

I like the quote from your last post concerning the Czeck president, indicating that a few people are waking up to this stupidity:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Its all politics plain and simple.

Klaus is known to be a global warming skeptic ... and for his Euroscepticism.

Truely one of your allies.


I meanwhile like the idea best that global warming is a result of .

Also note that Mr. Klaus presents his conclusions about global warming without even a shred of scientific analysis to back them up with.

Sheesh. Even the Brits are becoming euro-weenies now.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2264694.ece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Stern

Bloody leftist, true-believing tree hugging economist bastard.

To be fair, Stern's report takes a strong position about the tradeoff between present costs and future costs: He assumes a near-zero discount rate, which then gets him to conclude that we should make great sacrifices today to avoid problems in the very far future.

This position is not the one economists would take by default. An economist's default position would be to assume a discount rate similar to the real, long-run market interest rate (about 3%). If you make that assumption, you're back to William Nordhaus's view, which calls for delaying or even cancelling most of the sacrifices that Stern demands of us.

Admittedly, Stern has defensible ethical arguments for choosing the discount rate he chose. But my point is isn't his expertise as an economist that leads him to his policy recommendations. Rather, it's a position he takes on a debatable philosophical point, a position that's different from what economists choose by default. It's misleading to present the results of the Stern report as an inescapable conclusion of hard science.

Off the topic, but I thought you might want to see this thomas... Inequality Reading list from Brad Delong
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/02/preliminary_ine.html

I saw it already, but thanks for thinking of me!

This was an interview, not a scholarly presentation. Klaus wasn't asked for scientific analysis and said right up front that he is not a scientist. He was asked for his opinion and he gave it. He did say that it was based on his ability to read scientific papers, however.

For that matter, you state that he presents his conclusions about global warming 'without even a shred of scientific analysis to back them up with' while you appear to be denigrating him without presenting a shred of evidence to back up your opinion about him. Do you have any knowledge about what he has and has not read?