Article: Climbate Change Irreversible - What to do now? - Page 4

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-11, 06:08 AM

Originally Posted by Warborn

97 - 98% of published climate researchers agree that global warming is due to human activities.

People who believe there is significant disagreement about global warming are mistaken. There is overwhelming consensus on the issue. If you believe that the researchers who support the idea of anthropogenic global warming are "experts", rather than experts, you would need to throw out the entire field of climate research and start anew.

There is not disagreement over it amongst researchers. This is exactly like evolution, or the 9/11 collapses, or any number of other things. The actual experts whose job it is to know the answer agree to an overwhelming extent. The only ambiguity that exists does so in the minds of lay people who aren't able to discern a credible source from a non-credible one.

Rush Limbaugh is not a credible source. Glenn Beck is not a credible source. [A Politician's Name Here] is not a credible source. Uncle Joe who seems to have a knack for anticipating the weather is not a credible source. There are people who have advanced degrees in related fields who get paid to study the climate and understand it. These are the people who you should be paying attention to. And around 98% of them who publish material for their colleagues to review agree that the cause of global warming is humans.

And that's that folks. Thanks for playing.

Originally Posted by elfailo

Nobody ever wants to acknowledge this, and I will get mocked and ridiculed for bringing it up, but the biggest problem we currently have is that there are simply too many people on this planet.

Something's gotta give, and a third world war isn't going to be enough.

Ah, carrying capacity. Hello old friend.

This is actually terrifyingly true. the earth cannot support the number of humans we have now at our current level of technological advancement. And we're only growing more and more. I am so happy I won't be around for when it all reaches critical mass.

ziegler · 2012-07-11, 10:27 AM

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...trial-age.html

Interesting.

Warborn · 2012-07-11, 10:48 AM

I like that article. No references whatsoever, just Daily Mail writer Rob Waugh laying it out old school.

ziegler · 2012-07-11, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by Warborn

I like that article. No references whatsoever, just Daily Mail writer Rob Waugh laying it out old school.

I can agree with you there, journalists arent too keen on providing actual data or even links to the data.

But our Overloads at Google do that for us.

http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/15491.php

Not sure if you can get the actual paper or if they have or are going to publish in one of the scientific journals.

Warborn · 2012-07-11, 11:18 AM

Ah, I found it: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journ...imate1589.html

I found the website you linked and tried to find the article but I wasn't able to until just now. You'd think someone making conservative tabloid news about a scientific article could at least link to the article. I'll see you in hell, Rob Waugh.

Yeah, so, that's fine. The Daily Mail article kind of misses the point. There has been a cooling trend based on that article, but there is also unambiguously a recent, dramatic warming trend. The issue isn't that the Earth has never been as warm as it is now -- it was even hotter when dinosaurs were around -- it's that the global temperature will continue to rise because our activity is what is causing the temperature rise. So unlike during the first century CE, where temperatures were apparently comparable to now and then declined, they'll continue to rise. And in the next century or so that could mean unpleasant things for human way of life.

So it's not a "global warming isn't real" kind of thing at all.

ziegler · 2012-07-11, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Warborn

So it's not a "global warming isn't real" kind of thing at all.

Right, even the little I looked at it, the most important thing I wanted to point out is that the IPCC panels data wasnt accurate which is where most of the global warming argument originates from.

This along with the gent from england that has been shown to have manipulated data and destroyed data and purposefully withheld data from opponents makes if very difficult to put blind faith, or really, any faith at all in their finding of catastrophic consequences. Not saying it isnt possible just that it's hard to take them seriously when it's been shown that they havent been honest or trustworthy. This is the problem with our society as a whole, there is either A or B ...and nobody is truly interested in finding the truth, just the proof that their agenda is warranted. It does a scientist no good to say...Our conslusion is that we arent needed to do this research anymore, which is what it boils down to.

Like Carbon credits...that isnt going to do anything to fight global warming, it's a money making scheme. If we were really interested in doing something, we would be planting trees instead of cutting them down.

Warborn · 2012-07-11, 12:31 PM

Does the "gent from England" have a name?

The IPCC's data doesn't stand as a monolith. Climate change being man-made is based on research by people from around the world, like Jan Esper there. If their model needs to be updated with new information, that's fine, but it isn't like this changes the conclusion.

ziegler · 2012-07-11, 01:11 PM

Originally Posted by Warborn

Does the "gent from England" have a name?

The IPCC's data doesn't stand as a monolith. Climate change being man-made is based on research by people from around the world, like Jan Esper there. If their model needs to be updated with new information, that's fine, but it isn't like this changes the conclusion.

yeah...but damned if I can remember it. Let me see if I can google it up for ya.

Here is a quick googled link I found that reports on what I am talking about. Phil jones is the name in the article, but that doesnt seem like the name I recall being a part of this.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504383_1...80-504383.html

Sirisian · 2012-07-11, 01:27 PM

Originally Posted by ziegler

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...trial-age.html

Interesting.

I haven't really replied yet, but that article seems odd. Why are they looking back that far for global cooling. Climate change is looking at the recent change of the earth's temperature cause by human interaction from the industrial age onwards. Look at their image even:

Someone that was looking for a general cooling trend could use that and agree that there is an overall decrease. Someone that's curious if humans have an impact in global climate change can't use that. (Unless you want to use the spike at the end, but that could just be a statistical blip). I can't tell if this article is purposely written to confuse the public.

ziegler · 2012-07-11, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by Sirisian

I can't tell if this article is purposely written to confuse the public.

From reading the article, I surmise that their purpose was to point out or prove that the data used to generate the models and conclusions of the IPCC report, which is the main report that everybody goes off of, was inaccurate and therefore the conclusions are wrong as well and need to be redone with the accurate data.

Now the DM article is the usual global warming debunk and as Warborn pointed out, didnt even bother to link to the actual report or study, which he was kind enough to do.

**Malorn** · 2012-07-11, 03:54 PM

Meh.

Figment · 2012-07-11, 05:26 PM

Originally Posted by Sirisian

I haven't really replied yet, but that article seems odd. Why are they looking back that far for global cooling. Climate change is looking at the recent change of the earth's temperature cause by human interaction from the industrial age onwards.

Anthropogenic (ie. human induced) studies do indeed focus on that bit.

But it's quite easy to say why they look at the trend: Because if you want to show an exception to the rule and want to claim "humans did it", or something being part of the rule, you have to know if it's significantly different from the natural trend. Tbh, I think the time period they chose here is very short, but of course, that's down completely to the sample trees they have access to.

It's always good to show complete data. The other article on the email traffic and all was rather... worrying with regards to how trustworthy some stations bookkeeping was being done. But does that mean every single station in the world tracking independently is wrong?

Does that mean glaciers aren't melting en mass all over the world where the data obtained from ice cores suggests it's been there for hundred thousands of years?

And if there was a global cooling trend that continued despite some irregularies, shouldn't those old glaciers continue to grow rather than recede further than ever before? >.>

Look at their image even:

Someone that was looking for a general cooling trend could use that and agree that there is an overall decrease. Someone that's curious if humans have an impact in global climate change can't use that. (Unless you want to use the spike at the end, but that could just be a statistical blip). I can't tell if this article is purposely written to confuse the public.

You know, if you want a trendline with a steeper gradiant, you can pick various parts of that graph and make it happen.

https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news...atural-cooling

^ This also says there was cooling, but concludes something different: we're countering it.

And this 2000 years again is a small part of a trendline that's even longer (meaning there's ups and downs in the longer periods too). And yes, in the long term, considering the thing called entropy, earth should be steadily cooling unless something heats it back up.

The question in anthropogenic climate change is how the clear break with the trendline starting around 1850 (coinciding with industrialization) might be different from other trendlines we've seen before. (Do note that several models suggest a steep drop in temperature, even a mini-ice age, after an initial rise of just a few degrees in the near future).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lta_D_plot.svg
(taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core )

This is data from 420.000 years worth of ice cores (meaning the year numbering is done in 1.000s of years BEFORE PRESENT (so left is where we are now)).

Note that rather than temperature alone as the tree study above does on a short term scale, the levels of carbondioxide are considered hugely important for obvious reasons on a long term scale. Again, the tree's drop is actually in line with ice core data for that period.

However...

The levels of carbon dioxide on a short term scale though are a peak that's absolutely incredible compared to the natural trendline:

The peak is more obvious here than in the other images. The question is, what will happen?

One thing is clear though, sea levels will rise if land ice melts and flows to sea (opposed to sea ice that already has Archimedes Law working for it). And land ice is melting. Rapidly, noticably and increasingly. If it was just the north pole ice melting, meh. But it's Greenland's ice, Canadian ice, mountain range ice and Antarctic ice.

Saifoda · 2012-07-11, 06:13 PM

Gotta say figment, the whole hockey stick graph has been proven to be a farse for several years now.

Figment · 2012-07-11, 06:16 PM

Originally Posted by Saifoda

Gotta say figment, the whole hockey stick graph has been proven to be a farse for several years now.

Sources please.

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

Because if you may note, I'm not using the small flat hockey stick with just a few hundred years that's been questioned. And most separate, individual studies show the same "hockey stick" and most pretty much confirm the data, while using far greater source (lake and tree data). So to say it's been a farce... is a bit much. A trend that was expected to continue for another 4000 years by most these historical data sets was broken, quite likely by us.

Personally, I prefer to look at the info of ice core data, rather than short term data. I don't think those look very hockey stick to me.

MasterChief096 · 2012-07-11, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

It's probably a lost cause, but for those of you who don't want to be victims of bad science and hysteria...

You can start here.
http://junksciencearchive.com/Greenhouse/index.html

For the tl;dr, here's the summary. If you want to know how they arrived at these messages, read the fucking document.

And the base site www.junkscience.com is a good read in general.

Yes, I'm going to take your linked website (that is hardly credible, and believe me, I read the credentials. Most if not all of the work on that site is done by a single guy who has authored several books that are strictly from his point of view of things, while borrowing statistics from various organizations and scrapping them together to once again fit his point of view.) over a consensus of approximately 96%-99% of the world's leading climate researchers (who by the way, are less likely to have agendas, I've had the privilege to meet and talk with post-doc researchers several times now, and most of them are just curious about our world, lets not forget climate change sprouted from people who wanted to know more about our climate, go figure).

Lets also not forget that the biggest source of hate and deterrence towards climate scientists comes from people who are really really close to well established energy and oil companies. People claim climate scientists want to "establish a new world order" with a global carbon tax but that's just rubbish. You seriously think a bunch of PhD level climate researchers FROM AROUND THE WORLD have the time to meet in secretive communities and plan their dominion over the planet? Lets assume the 0.000001% chance that this is right, and they do want to take over. I'd rather live in a green totalitarian society than one that dumps sludge into the oceans and pollutes our environments.

Climate change was not a huge concern until noble scientists started to recognize the patterns in the data from their routine climate research practices. Then it became a concern, because they said, "oh shit, I wonder if there's a correlation between this and our industrialization, lets study it a little bit more." What'd'ya know? There was a STRONG correlation.

Humanity probably isn't the ONLY thing influencing climate change, but we are a strong influence. There are probably planetary forces that are millions of years old working right now to influence climate change but we have artificially inserted our influence into those forces.

We can either take predictions that are based off of solid observational data at face value and attempt to avoid some of the problems that can arise or we can do nothing and hope to god that it all turns out good for us in the end.

Case in point, there is more DATA lending to the idea that something bad will happen than there is ACTUAL, FACTUAL, DATA that nothing bad will happen. I'd take the precautions. Besides, an incentive to research new technologies that can help alleviate energy problems can't be a bad thing. Oil won't last forever.