LMAO @ you! So you believe this guy when he says that while England and Europe experienced warmer temps for hundreds of years, it might not have been a global occurance?? Are you for real?
Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 06/04/2003) Johnny Heathbar where did you get this article? Just curious.
You do know Europe is farther north than Maine don't you? You do realize it is ocean currents that keep Europe relatively temperate, and if those currents change that climate changes regardless of what other weather related factors are changing in the same way elsewhere in the globe? So you do realize what happens in one climate (heat, rainfall, etc) is affected my many factors may or may not similarly impact another part of the globe. Basically the study suggests W. Europe (or at least many people in what is now GB) may have benefited from a long period of heat. Further if that period of heat was global, it is highly likely in other parts of the world the extra heat lead to draught and other negative consequences for the life there. Further the study does not refute that global warming is occurring now, or whether man has any role. Geologists have known for some time we get fluctuations in temperature. The questions right now are 1) are we (or are we not) in another fluctuation of high global temperatures (the general scientific consensus is yes), 2) is man exacerbating the problem if so, and 3) regardless if man has a role or not what are the global implications so we can do what we can to prepare--if man does have a role obviously we can do a little more to prepare by directly lessening the problem. If you think these are easy questions to answer with obvious conclusions from the data at hand it shows you certainly are not “for real” and simply playing a game to try to further political positions w/o the support in science, reason or logic.
Foremost we should acknowledge that JohnHeath's conclusion is utterly false and hence misleading. Climatologists use theories that look much farther back. For instance, the Milankovich Theory specifically looks at 10,000 year cycles of climate change based on our orbital occillation, not 200 years. Second, he has no defense of the study. DS has indicted and he only continues to reassert the same conclusions with no qualifications or answers. Finally, your conception of how climate works is kindergarten simplistic. Global warming does not mean that all areas of the globe get hotter. It means that climate changes rapidly in the face of new atmospheric gases, which will cause droughts in plush regions, ice expansion is warmer areas, super hurricanes in the oceans, etc. Can you connect the dots? Or are the droughts in the South, the projected EIGHT large hurricanes in the Caribbean this year, and the ice in Baltimore not a big enough sign for you?
Desert Scar is spot on according to all the info I have. Now, I'm not a climate modeller, but I'm closer to the relevant scientific literature than, oh, say, the author of the article that started the thread. Why any reasonable person (so you're exempt, Heath) would give Desert Scar grief is beyond me -- he's not championing a hippie viewpoint or raving about SUV's and he's even set out the best arguments for the conservative position. It's hilarious, actually. And for those that think the entire atmosphere of Earth sits at one temperature at any given time, I can only say: HOMEWORK ASSIGNED! In fact, there are so many variables to the global thermal budget that anyone saying they've found conclusive proof of any position or another is either nuts or agenda-driven. What we do know definitively is this: CO2, methane, and water vapor (to name the main players) absorb solar radiation better than other components of the atmosphere. So we definitely know (and have proven) that an atmosphere with elevated levels of these components will retain more heat. Is it enought to make a big difference? What's the extent of the impact compared to thousands of other factors? No person can answer those questions with certainty.
I have to admit I started with an inflammatory bit about Heath, Coulter, Limbaugh and Trader-Junior and such. I can understand Heaths reaction to some of the nature of my criticism, I withdrew the inclusion of MrClutch--as he engaged, and has before, in meaningful dialogue. I generally like engaging with conservative posters--Max, Giddyup, for example, who I rarely ultimately agree with, but who by every indication are sincere about wanting to learn more about others positions and engage in substantive dialogue. It is just some of the arrogance and sloppiness of some of others that every once in a while needs to be called out. I like the debate thread to be less like a debate between Rove, Limbaugh, McAulif(sp?), or Bill Price sound bites (see I can pick on sloppy or totally politically motivated liberals too) and more a debate of reasonable people who just disagree on solutions or policies when all the pieces are put together.
This is a great point, i've learned alot listening to intelligent posts from opinions from the right I wish we had more. Everytime I get worked up about one of MrC posts I see that darn "Go Rockets" sig that reminds me what this is all about. Now anyone who feels that Global warming is not occuring is a MORON!(It was almost a 100 degrees in May today) *HUNG JURY*
Richie Head, this article was in the UK Telegraph, and was based on a Harvard study. Put it in your search engine, and you will find it.
Perhaps because, in true BBS D&D fashion, he started out by calling me a liar. Read the damn posts please, before you add in your two cents.
YOU'RE WELCOME I have been less active lately because things have been so busy at my job. I actually missed the Rice baseball game today as a result of a very long meeting in which I was participating. I still have a few cases to close on some old economics/finance threads that I will attempt to get to when time permits.
Troubling Lack of Science Behind Global Warming Claims One February 27, Christopher Essex, a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario, and Ross McKitrick, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Guelph, gave a Cooler Heads Coalition congressional staff and media briefing on their new book, Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming. Essex, who studies the underlying mathematics, physics and computation of complex dynamical processes, raised some very fundamental scientific issues with regard to the science of global warming. Take, for instance, the "average global temperature," which is a mainstay of the debate. Such a thing doesn’t exist, according to Essex. You can’t add up temperature and take its average like you can with physical quantities such as energy, length, and so on. "Thermodynamic variables are categorized as extensive or intensive," said Essex. "Extensive variables occur in amounts…. Intensive variables [such as temperature] refer to conditions of a system, defined continuously throughout its extent." For example, one could add the temperature of a cup of ice water to the temperature of a cup of hot coffee, but what does that number mean? It doesn’t mean anything because there is no such thing as total temperature. Dividing that number by two to get the average doesn’t mean anything either. Yet that is exactly what occurs when the average global temperature is computed. Essex also pointed out that the internal energy of a system can change without changing the temperature and the temperature can change while the internal energy of the system remains the same. "This disconnect happens routinely in the natural world around us all the time," said Essex. "Ultimately this has to be so because temperature and energy belong to two fundamentally different classes of thermodynamic variables." Global warming enthusiasts want us to believe that average temperature can tell us something about what is going on in the climate, but it is just a number with no physical content. To add insult to injury, Essex explained that there are literally an infinite number of averaging rules that could be used, some of which will show "warming" and others that will show "cooling," but the "physics doesn’t say which one to use." Essex also explained that the earth’s so-called greenhouse effect does not work like a greenhouse. "Incoming solar radiation adds energy to the Earth’s surface," he said. To restore radiative balance the energy must be transported back to space in roughly the same amounts that it arrived in. The energy is transported via two processes – infrared radiation (heat transfer) and fluid dynamics (turbulence). A real greenhouse works by preventing fluid motions, such as the wind, by enclosing an area with plastic or glass. To restore balance, infrared radiation must increase, thereby causing the temperature to rise. Predicting the resulting temperature increase is a relatively straightforward process. But the "greenhouse effect" works differently. Greenhouse gases slow down outgoing infrared radiation, which causes the fluid dynamics to adjust. But it cannot be predicted what will happen because the equations which govern fluid dynamics cannot be solved! Scientists cannot even predict the flow of water through a pipe, let alone the vastly more complex fluid dynamics of the climate system. "No one can compute from first principles what the climate will do," said Essex. "It may warm, or cool, or nothing at all!" Saying that the greenhouse effect works the same way as a greenhouse, which is a solvable problem, creates certainty where none exists, said Essex. Surely scientists are aware of the issues that Essex brings up (and several other equally devastating points that aren’t discussed here). If so, then how have we come to a place where the media and politicians repeatedly state that there is a scientific consensus that the planet is warming up, it is caused by man, and the effects will be catastrophic? McKitrick offered a very convincing explanation. He discussed several relevant groups, but we’ll focus on politicians and what McKitrick calls "Official Science." Politicians need big issues around which they can form winning coalitions. Global warming is a good issue because, "It is so complex and baffling the public still has little clue what it’s really about. It’s global, so … you get to have your meetings in exotic locations. Policy initiatives could sound like heroic measures to save the planet…, but on the other hand the solutions are potentially very costly. So you need a high degree of scientific support if you are going to move on it. There’s a premium on certainty." This is where Official Science comes in. Official Science is made up of staffs of scientific bureaucracies, editors of prominent magazines, directors of international panels, and so on. These members of Official Science aren’t appointed by scientists to speak on their behalf, but are appointed by governments. They have the impossible job of striking "a compromise between the need for certainty in policymaking and the aversion to claims of certainty in regular science." What happens is that science ends up serving a political agenda rather than a scientific one. "If things were as they should be, leaders would want a treaty because they observe that scientists are in agreement. What happens instead is that Official Science ‘orchestrates’ agreement because leaders want to make a treaty."
January 8, 2003 Antarctic Ice Sheet not in Danger from Global Warming Fears that the Western Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) is experiencing accelerated declines due to global warming are unfounded, according to a new study in the Jan. 3 issue of Science. A team of scientists, led by John O. Stone with the Quaternary Research Center and Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, found that deglaciation of the WAIS began at least 10,000 years ago and that the rate of melting has remained constant until the present time. Robert P. Ackert, Jr., of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, notes in a perspective on the research that only recently have scientists been able to determine conclusively that, "In large and critical areas, the ice sheet surface is lowering and ice volume is decreasing." This has caused concern because even a 1 percent decrease in ice volume would raise sea level by 5 centimeters and could eventually raise sea level by as much as 5 meters. "Are we witnessing the early stages of rapid ice sheet collapse, with potential near-term impacts on the world’s coastlines?" asks Ackert. "To answer this question, we must view the new short term measurements in the context of recent ice sheet history and ask whether the observed changes are unusual compared with those of the last 10,000 years. Stone et al. provide a partial answer by reconstructing the recent history of a previously largely unexamined sector of the WAIS." Stone et al. found that, "Surface exposure ages of glacial deposits in the Ford Ranges of western Marie Byrd Land indicate continuous thinning of the West Antarctic ice sheet by more than 700 meters near the coast throughout the past 10,000 years. Deglaciation lagged the disappearance of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere by thousands of years and may still be under way. These results provide further evidence that parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet are on a long term trajectory of decline. West Antarctic melting contributed water to the oceans in the late Holocene and may continue to do so in the future." Ackert notes that, "Recent ice sheet dynamics appear to be dominated by the ongoing response to deglacial forcing thousands of years ago, rather than by recent anthropogenic warming or sea level rise." On the whole, the WAIS has thinned at a consistent rate of 2.5 to 9 cm/year over the last 9300 years. Ackert also points out that contrary to prior assumptions, "The results suggest that the WAIS is not in equilibrium with present environmental conditions and has been thinning for the last 10,000 years." This means that predicting the future behavior of the ice sheet is significantly more difficult than simply building "quasi-steady state models that reproduce the current ice sheet and then perturb them with possible climate or sea-level forcing." Instead, scientists must use "dynamic models that reproduce the deglacial history…as a baseline."
For the record I did not call you a liar. I said you either were not thorough/unselective in the "research" you post or were being an arrogant caricature in the spirit of trader-junior/Limbaugh—either way that isn’t a liar. Someone really studying the issue would not say “there is no evidence” or is a “sham” as if it was a slam dunk case against, or even for, man caused global warming. It is a young science and we know a lot less about global climate change and man’s roll than we do know about it. Here is some of the more inflammatory comments I made however… As you can see I had already discussed some limitations about the study you went on to dig up. Doesn’t mean the study doesn’t have something to offer—but to present it as a slam dunk case that global warming can’t be impacted by man at all is sloppy scientific interpretation. As far as the two recent studies you can always find dissendents scientists, but that doesn't mean there is not scienitific consensus just because some guy with a PhD writes otherwise. There are still some researchers out there claiming HIV doesn't cause AIDS and smoking doesn't cause cancer--which are a whole lot more clear cut cases than global warming. Further, many industries fund scientists but control what they can publish, and engage in psudoscience aimed not at generating knowledge but nothing more to support profitable industry policies (junk science movement). Other psuedoscientists are just trying to make a buck on their nonpeer reviewed book by being controversial and fitting in with a political ageda. Doesn't mean it can't happen on both liberal and conservative issues--but when the research is funded & dissementated (fundamentally controlled) by industry and not peer reviewed--those are big time warning signs.
jh, Excellent article about essex. Most of the science is perfectly explained there. However... Disagree slightly here. I think the writer got confused. The so-called "greenhouse effect" is simply based on methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor (among others) absorbing solar radiation more vigorously than your more standard components (oxygen, nitrogen, etc). I don't think many climate modellers would say that these gases "slow down outgoing infrared." That's kind of odd. By the way, everybody, methane and water vapor are not known to be carcinogenic. If they were, we should all quit breathing and farting. As far as I know CO2 is fine also. Here, I more or less agree again. Although some basic principles can still apply. If you absorb more of the sun's incoming energy, chances are quite good that, over the long haul, you will experience a change in the status quo of your climate. For what it's worth, I looked up the dude's publication list. Nothing too impressive, but he seems like a very solid and honest scientist. And by the way, I always read the damn posts. You were taking shots at the substance of DS's arguments, not just whining about name calling. That's lame, as is name-calling. The article you posted with some straight dope science speak was fantastic, and it's starting to look like we're all coming up against the idea that we just don't know what kind of effect we'll have and what the extent of it will be. We are tweaking the system in any case. Well, I'm not because I never fart, but the rest of you are.
Department of Economics at the University of Guelph. You have a ballot. Who do you go with? 2,500 scientists that say global warming is happening? Keep in mind 1,200 of those scientists were Nobel Laureates. OR Someone from the University of Guelph? But the answers ring a familiar tune... "Lee Raymond has been President of the ExxonMobil corporation since 1987. Raymond questioned the scientific consensus on global warming by citing a petition signed by ‘17,000 scientists’ dismissing global warming. The petition had been widely discredited two years earlier after it was found not to have been organised by climate scientists and to have misled recipients into thinking it came from America’s respected National Academy of Sciences, which it did not. Signatories included fictional TV characters from MASH and members of the Spice Girls."
