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

Walter Hinteler wrote:

ican711nm wrote:
What percentage of the membership of the UN's IPCC are climatologists?

What percentage of the membership of UN's "an international group of science academies from the G8 countries and Brazil, China and India" are climatologists?

100% - if their profession is reported correctly and they didn't cheat with their academic degrees/positions.

Where has that been reported? Based on several news reports I heard(admittedly of uncertain reliability), they were all alleged to be scientists, but only a minority were climatologists.

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That certainly may be reasoned by the fact that not all univerities in all countries (if any outsite the USA) award in climology doctorates - e.g. here in Germany you get your degree in physics, or natural sciences, or ... similar.

Just go on the IPCC website, look at the members, follow to their native countries and look up their academic vita there.

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About the microgeneration of electricity, the fuel cell technology companies have produced trailer-size electricity producing fuel cell units using either natural gas/propane or hydrogen with the end products being pure water and electricity either AC or DC. These packaged units could hook up to the grid. Also, windmills could also be in Mr Blair's mind as these are obviously microgenerators and could also be hooked up to the grid.

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"Also, windmills could also be in Mr Blair's mind"

indeed

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I have always been fascinated by science. It was one of my best subjects in school, and I even served as the (honorary) science editor for a small newspaper once. I use that to preface my post, because I think there are real scientists out there doing real research looking for real answers. And I think there are a lot of make believe scientists out there doing make believe research or signing on to the politically correct point of view concluded by somebody. And every now and then you run across somebody who quietly served on research teams in which bogus research was in process just to net enough of a report to flesh out somebody's dissertation. Such people rarely say anything because if they do, they aren't invited to help out anywhere else.

We have all witnessed this in day to day life. One day you read that 'studies' show that some food has wonderful healing qualities and everybody jumps on the bandwagon until the next study maybe the next year can find no evidence of any unusual properties.

In the 70's the world's scientists and politicians were gathering to establish programs and policies to stop global cooling that was rushing us to an inevitable climatological disaster. Now 30 years later these same scientists are gathering to establish programs and policies to stop global warming that is rushing us to an inevitable climatological disaster. In the 1970's and today there were other scientists who said there was no evidence to support the theory.

So how do you know who to believe? The politically correct one? The most popular? Or is it reasonable for reasonable people to consider that rushing to judgment on a poorly supported scientific theory is maybe not the smartest thing to do?

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Foxy, you're trying to make it sound as if though no consensus about global warming existed today. Now, global warming is not a theory or a political correct attitude. It's a fact. We can look at the recordings we have for the last 100 or 150 years. There you go: warming.

Your post reminded me of something, though....

Quote:

Hundreds of thousands of health-conscious Americans drank bottled water laced with radium as a general elixir, known popularly as "liquid sunshine." Soon, radioactive toothpaste was marketed, then radioactive skin cream. Chocolate bars containing radium were sold as a "rejuvenator." As recently as 1952, LIFE magazine wrote about the beneficial effects of inhaling radioactive radon gas in Montana mines. Even today, people visit the radon-filled mines and report multiple benefits. However, numerous studies have concluded that the only demonstrable health effect of inhaling radon is lung cancer.

Now, following your logic, you should as well call the theories about how dangerous radiation is just "politically correct", "most popular" or a "poorly supported scientific theories", right?

If you want to discuss climate change, or the anthropogenic part of global warming, we might have a discussion. But to me, dismissing observable global warming as politically motivated seems to be outright ignorant.

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Darn. Rereading my post, I shouldn't even have used the word "consensus". That's pretty stupid as well. Either you have got the data, or you don't. In this case, we do.

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Foxfyre wrote:

So how do you know who to believe? The politically correct one? The most popular? Or is it reasonable for reasonable people to consider that rushing to judgment on a poorly supported scientific theory is maybe not the smartest thing to do?

Instead of believing anyone, try research. Try google polar melt, new salmon runs, drought, flooding, my favorite is "weather event"
strange, weird, crazy, ect ect. Trying to predict the biggest possible "weather event known to man" can be tricky when "they can't tell you if it will be sunny next week.reactions or possibly listen to insurance companies when they will not insure a situation what does that tell you?

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Foxfyre wrote:

In the 70's the world's scientists and politicians were gathering to establish programs and policies to stop global cooling that was rushing us to an inevitable climatological disaster. Now 30 years later these same scientists are gathering to establish programs and policies to stop global warming that is rushing us to an inevitable climatological disaster.

Who do you believe? How about those scientists who thought one thing and then, when they started studying it a few decades ago, realized that their fears were just the opposite from what they discovered.

You'd think that they'd want to hold onto their original theory as long as possible... yet... they studied this and then switched gears.

Hmmmmmmmm.

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old europe wrote:

Foxy, you're trying to make it sound as if though no consensus about global warming existed today.

I think she's trying to make it sound as if scientific consensuses can change on a similar timescale as the one on which the Kyoto treaty operates. And in the case of global cooling / global warming, it did.

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During the 70's the evidence was not very clear so the consensus veered in the cooling direction. But now the evidence is more pronounced as in Katrina with close 100 billion dollars' damage for the hurricanes in the last 2 years (four last year in Florida) not to mention the melting glaciers in Europe, Himalayas, Antarctic, North America, etc. The icecaps are shrinking, shallow island nations are losing more of their shores, etc.

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Heard a gag on TV last night.

A Government spokesman says: "The seas are not rising. The ice is being liberated."

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georgeob1 wrote:

The laws of thermodynamics and basic engineering principles very strongly favor large central stations for the production of electrical power.

Small scale local combined heat and power plants are more efficient. What if anything you might loose in economies of scale is more than made up for by reduced transmission losses. A large proportion of energy generated in large plants ends up keeping birds warm.

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Thomas wrote:

old europe wrote:
Foxy, you're trying to make it sound as if though no consensus about global warming existed today.

I think she's trying to make it sound as if scientific consensuses can change on a similar timescale as the one on which the Kyoto treaty operates. And in the case of global cooling / global warming, it did.

Okay. Maybe we should define some common denominators.

There is global warming, as in observable global warming. It basically looks like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

So far, there's no "theory". Hence not even a need for a consensus, right? You can just look at it, and what you see is global warming.

Now, from the observable data, you can extrapolate. That's were we'd get theories. And there we probably get a "global warming theory" as well, even though I thought that the 'consensus' today was more along the lines of, "Hey, it's really kind of unpredictable, but it'll very likely heat up more."

I think any honest and serious scientist today would refrain from painting horror scenarios. It wouldn't help anyway, trying to scare people into acting 'environmentally responsible'.

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old europe wrote:

Thomas wrote:
old europe wrote:
Foxy, you're trying to make it sound as if though no consensus about global warming existed today.

I think she's trying to make it sound as if scientific consensuses can change on a similar timescale as the one on which the Kyoto treaty operates. And in the case of global cooling / global warming, it did.

Okay. Maybe we should define some common denominators.

There is global warming, as in observable global warming. It basically looks like this:

So far, there's no "theory". Hence not even a need for a consensus, right? You can just look at it, and what you see is global warming.

Now, from the observable data, you can extrapolate. That's were we'd get theories. And there we probably get a "global warming theory" as well, even though I thought that the 'consensus' today was more along the lines of, "Hey, it's really kind of unpredictable, but it'll very likely heat up more."

I think any honest and serious scientist today would refrain from painting horror scenarios. It wouldn't help anyway, trying to scare people into acting 'environmentally responsible'.

OE, your model is looking at 140 years. It shows a warming trend over that 140 years, but 140 years is not even a blink of an eye in the history of earth climatology. You can look back to earlier times when the world was caught in an uncommon cool trend compared to previous centuries, and no doubt there have been countless centuries in which there have been warming trends.

I am not denying there is a warming trend now. I am saying there is plenty of scientific thought supporting the idea that this is neither unusual nor significantly affected by anything humans are doing.

To ignore those scientific opinions and just blindly follow the herd, most of whom have no more clue than the local shop owner, just makes no sense to me. I think both sets of data need to be looked at and considered before major policy affecting all of us is implemented. We've had quite enough bad policy created due to erroneous or incomplete information. I favor getting it right on this issue.

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Talk writes

Quote:

During the 70's the evidence was not very clear so the consensus veered in the cooling direction. But now the evidence is more pronounced as in Katrina with close 100 billion dollars' damage for the hurricanes in the last 2 years (four last year in Florida) not to mention the melting glaciers in Europe, Himalayas, Antarctic, North America, etc. The icecaps are shrinking, shallow island nations are losing more of their shores, etc.

Au contrare. It was on television and in all the best magazines and made front page headlines along with impressive looking graphs and charts and PROOF that the ice caps and glaciers were expanding and the ocean was cooling and growing seasons were shortened and we were on the verge of a climatological disaster all due to industrial pollution creating an industrial version of a nuclear winter. Mind you the industrial age was in full bloom without all the modern regulations and controls that have made the air significantly cleaner now than it was in the 1970's. Maybe we need to dirty it up some more.

Acid rain was a biggie back then too. You don't hear much about that anymore. Why?

So in 30 years it all changes?

Come on people. What's wrong with this picture?

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Foxfyre wrote:

OE, your model is looking at 140 years. It shows a warming trend over that 140 years, but 140 years is not even a blink of an eye in the history of earth climatology. You can look back to earlier times when the world was caught in an uncommon cool trend compared to previous centuries, and no doubt there have been countless centuries in which there have been warming trends.

Oh, I agree absolutely. Let's, maybe, have a look at the CO2 levels during the last 420.000 years. How do we know about those? For example, by drilling down through the ice of the polar caps and analysing the layers. It gives us a pretty accurate image of how the atmosphere was composed during that respective time.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

(Note: present is on the left side, 420.000 years ago on the right side)

What we see here are of course just the CO2 levels. In the past, CO2 levels and ice ages correlated, it appears. Now we can observe a rising CO2 level - one that never existed in the last couple of thousands of years.

Foxfyre wrote:

I am not denying there is a warming trend now. I am saying there is plenty of scientific thought supporting the idea that this is neither unusual nor significantly affected by anything humans are doing.

Okay. So we can look at the data we have. Without "buying into" any of the explanation models and just looking at the data, would you say that the assumption that such a rise of CO2 levels is manmade is

a) reasonable
b) not justifiable whatsoever

???

Foxfyre wrote:

To ignore those scientific opinions and just blindly follow the herd, most of whom have no more clue than the local shop owner, just makes no sense to me. I think both sets of data need to be looked at and considered before major policy affecting all of us is implemented.

Jup. Exactly. So, what do you think?

Foxfyre wrote:

We've had quite enough bad policy created due to erroneous or incomplete information. I favor getting it right on this issue.

Uhm... hard to argue, as everybody would agree with this, I think. But, what is your opinion? Do you see any relation between the current global warming we observe, the rising CO2 levels we measure and human activity on this planet?

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OE write

Quote:

Uhm... hard to argue, as everybody would agree with this, I think. But, what is your opinion? Do you see any relation between the current global warming we observe, the rising CO2 levels we measure and human activity on this planet?

Re the last chart showing CO2 levels, I don't know what to think. I do know that some pretty respected scientists are essentially disputing the data. Why is it that you trust that chart? Do you have personal knowledge of the person or group who produced it? Or do you accept what they're telling you on faith alone? Personally I neither discount the data nor accept it without question.

My expertise in this field is mostly based on the fact that that I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express once. (That's probably an American concept so if it doesn't compute, will explain. Smile

) I reject any notion that I am rejecting scientific data if I question it or if I choose to also look at different data.

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Acid Rain is still a serious problem, but one so ubiquitious that headlines* are down, yes. It is the patch of eczema on a person whose house is burning down. Note also that the person has the services of a dermatologist and his patch shrunk 25% since meds. were applied.

"America has made great progress in reducing air pollution. Over the last three decades, air pollution has declined by 29 percent."

Assume for just one moment that the CO2 chart is true and came from your own sources. Then what?

'Acid Rain' And Forest Mass: Another Perspective
...the term "acid rain" was coined. This problem, which ignores frontiers, happens because, due to the burning of fossil fuels, the amount of sulphur and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere is greater than that derived from natural processes. These oxides, in the presence of water vapour and under the oxido-reduction conditions present in the atmosphere, produce acids that are deposited, amongst other places, on the forest biomass. Also, intensification in the cattle sector, together with stabling and grouping together of herds, have given rise to the concentration of ammonia emissions in certain zones. This compound, deposited close to the sources of emission, is able to react with the acidic ions deposited at the same time. Subsequently, certain bacteria are capable of oxidising the compound, thus forming nitrate and liberating protons that acidify the soil. from Science Daily, October 15, 2005

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georgeob1 wrote:

The laws of thermodynamics and basic engineering principles very strongly favor large central stations for the production of electrical power.

It depends on what output you expect from the station. You are correct that centralized stations are better if electrical power is the only output. But decentralized stations (such as one per block) can serve double duty as a water heater, which is more efficient than generating electrical energy at 30%, throwing away 70% worth of energy in heat, then using some of the electrical energy to generate more heat. (I think we had this argument before, but I don't know what your counterargument was.)

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

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