The Great Global Warming Swindle

Oh great, I can see where this thead is going.

First off, Congratz to Lux Aeterna and qqwref for 2 exellent posts.

Secondly, I personally believe that global warming is definately happening and I'm not really impressed with skeptics. But like everything, everyone is entitled to their own thoughts.
 
What is with this whole "climategate" thing? After hacking years and years of private emails (hundreds and hundreds) between a lot of guys, they found what scandals?

One guy said that he would "feel inclined to punch another guy". Another one said he would use a 'trick' to hide the decline. (That was in reference to leaving out data which was known to be bad). They know that tree ring data and temperature had a close correlation up until recently. So the 'trick' was to not include the tree ring data after a certain date.

What the conspiracy theorists didn't expose, was the emails where one of the scientists denies permission to lend his name to a global warming supporting journalist by saying "It's not that simple".
Another email had the 'scandalous' quote of "I can't account for the lack of warming". This was exactly what that scientist said in his research paper previously published.

Anyway, go to any university, in any country and you will find a consensus. I am sure (as all the scientists are openly saying) that climate science is still in it's infancy and there are many things that we don't know. However, there is no way that this whole thing is one big scam trying to deceive the general population. That is just crazy!
 
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Watched this a while ago on channel 4 about halfway through it went off air in the UK? coincidence? you decide? managed to find the rest on a download site. How does global warming explain that our winters are lasting longer and getting colder??
 
So if we're not even sure we're the problem, should we bother to care? Yes, absolutely we should. Think of it like a little miniature Pascal's wager. Suppose climate change isn't anthropogenic. If we do nothing, it carries on unabated. K. If we do something about it, it still just does its thing, and we wasted a little time. Not so bad either way. But now suppose climate change isn't anthropogenic. If we do something about it, maybe the situation gets better, maybe it stays the same. If we don't do anything about it, we (and much of the planet) are screwed.

Do you know this video? :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
 
Erik: I'm don't care to disagree with climate change. The climate may indeed be changing. Personally, I can't see it. I look out the window and everything seems the same as it always has been. But what makes a changing climate a bad thing? I believe that it is thanks to the formation of the alps that Africa changed from the most plentiful continent in the world to being a desert wasteland. It was also thanks to this change that we exist as we do today.

I still see no evidence whatsoever that the planet is warming up. Antarctica is obviously having problems, but where is the evidence that it never used to? And where is the evidence that this is due to increasing temperatures? Could something else be causing massive ice shelfs to fall off?
 
Watched this a while ago on channel 4 about halfway through it went off air in the UK? coincidence? you decide? managed to find the rest on a download site. How does global warming explain that our winters are lasting longer and getting colder??

:fp
I'm glad to see you've read the name of the phenomenon, now maybe next time you can read what it is?
 
The problem is, nobody debates with science anymore. I have seen it in responses to my articles in the past, and here, as well, people say "scientists say this," and give out no logical arguments or scientific facts. Most of these people, I'd say, are blindly accepting the theory, doing no research of their own, and therein lies the problem. Do you guys accept evolution because scientists say it, or because it makes sense? If you saw all the facts and they seem to say evolution was a load of crap, would you not question it? Of course, you should.
All the religious leaders in the world, believe in God. All the psychics believe in the supernatural. A lot of us, feel these things are completely wrong, for logical and scientific reasons, and you have to hold every theory to the same standard. How many of you have actually read up about both sides of the story, and formed an opinion based on facts. How foolish it is to base your entire stance on what you have been told the scientific community says.
I can guarantee there is a bigger dissent than you think, and ignoring them because they are not in the majority, is absurd. Please, I implore you to look up the facts, because the ones who do, often start to see the massive holes in the theory. Don't be reactionaries, because as I posted before, there can be consequences, terrible ones.
We have to ask questions. A) Is the globe warming at an unprecedented rate? B) Is it because of 100 years of industrialization? C) Is there really dire consequences to not acting? D) Is there a way we can stop this from happening?
If you can't answer Yes, to all these questions, with scientific reasoning, you shouldn't be pushing hard for regulations, and taxation, especially at a global level. You may not feel massive effects of banning oil consumption, but the developing countries will be destroyed, and people will starve.
The burden of proof is on you, claiming catastrophic, apocalyptic consequences.
 
Most of these people, I'd say, are blindly accepting the theory, doing no research of their own, and therein lies the problem.

This is pretty much exactly my stance on the issue. The science isn't as clear cut as we would like to think it is.

Some annoying little facts which started to get me thinking...

In September, I was browsing the UK met-office website to see if there was any information on what kind of winter we were going to have - this is important to me because if its a good winter we got more Snowboarding in Scotland. At that time the long-term forecast was for a mild winter. This forecast was based on the same climate models they use to make these wild 100 year projections. Now, fortunately this winter has turned out to be great for snowboarding in Scotland, and I'm in-fact going again this weekend (for the 6th weekend this winter!). If their climate models are so drastically terrible at predicting the general climate in the next 4 months, it is beyond me how they can make 100 year predictions without any sort of doubt. As a scientific modeller myself, I find this quite ridiculous.

As I've looked into it, there are some more of annoying facts which don't seem to add up.
* Sea level rise is said to be caused by temperature rise caused by anthropogenic CO2, however it's been on a steady increase since the 1800's (way before the industrial revolution).
* A similar story exists for glacial retreat.
* In ice-core temperature records CO2 rises lag temperature rises. How can CO2 be the cause of temperature rise, surely its the result of it?
* There was a drop in temperature from around the mid 40's to the mid 70's, while the rate of CO2 rise has been relatively constant since the beginning of the industrial revolution. In addition, there is evidence that recent global average temperatures show a decline.

Finally as Kyle said, I'd urge folks not to use the media as their source of information on climate change, as its unreliable at the best of times. If you have access, look at the scientific literature...
 
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If their climate models are so drastically terrible at predicting the general climate in the next 4 months, it is beyond me how they can make 100 year predictions without any sort of doubt.

What can you predict more accurately?

A. The average of your next 4 solves
B. The average of your next 100 solves
 
Al Gore made a nice documentary about this, "Inconvenient Truth" I think it was called.

You mean, 'The Inaccurate Powerpoint'.
As much as I am a supporter in action to prevent negative ecological effects, reduce fossil fuel usage, encourage biodiversity and have a proper scientific analysis of anthroplogical effects on the environment, that film presents just as biased a picture as 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'; they are both polemics.
 
If their climate models are so drastically terrible at predicting the general climate in the next 4 months, it is beyond me how they can make 100 year predictions without any sort of doubt. As a scientific modeller myself, I find this quite ridiculous.
It seems obvious to me. Short-term weather patterns can change for a lot of reasons; there's a lot of chaos in the global climate. But in the long term it evens out and you start to see trends. The current trends point towards a bad scenario, so it's perfectly reasonable to assume that if we don't change something that scenario will happen sooner or later.

Keep in mind the difference in time scales here, too, when you talk about inaccuracy. Suppose we can predict any major event to within two years based on global trends. If I said we'd have a really warm winter in two years (but it might be happening right now and it might be as much as four) you'd say I was pretty terrible at predicting things; but if I said we'd have a really warm winter in approximately 100 years, plus or minus two, you'd think that was pretty accurate. So, nobody knows what winter will be like in 2110. That's impossible to predict, same as the four-month scenario. But any good long-term model can tell you how an average winter 100 years from now will differ from an average winter today.
 
If their climate models are so drastically terrible at predicting the general climate in the next 4 months, it is beyond me how they can make 100 year predictions without any sort of doubt.

What can you predict more accurately?

A. The average of your next 4 solves
B. The average of your next 100 solves

What can you predict more accurately?

A. The average number of hours you will work each day for the next week
B. The average number of hours you will work each day in the 100th week from now


Now it's your turn :p
 
If their climate models are so drastically terrible at predicting the general climate in the next 4 months, it is beyond me how they can make 100 year predictions without any sort of doubt. As a scientific modeller myself, I find this quite ridiculous.
It seems obvious to me. Short-term weather patterns can change for a lot of reasons; there's a lot of chaos in the global climate. But in the long term it evens out and you start to see trends. The current trends point towards a bad scenario, so it's perfectly reasonable to assume that if we don't change something that scenario will happen sooner or later.

What can you predict more accurately?

A. The average of your next 4 solves
B. The average of your next 100 solves

This analogy works on using past measurements to predict future ones. For example, the more samples of previous weather I take, the easier it is to establish the trend and predict what happens in future.

This principle however does not hold with increasing the size of any future projections. The effect is the opposite. The further projections into the future are made, the less accurate the model becomes. This is because any small errors or inaccuracies in the short term tend to have a multiplicative effect in the long term.

When making future projections, modellers can improve their confidence in the results to some degree by running it under different scenarios/initial conditions, or in the case of stochastic models will carry out multiple runs using different random seeds.

What would happen if we changed the global warming question to: Are we polluting the air, water, & ground?

Bill
I believe that's a much more sensible and wide ranging issue to look at, and highlights the main problem with the current agenda. We're obsessing over the single issue of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, when (1) the science behind it isn't even conclusive and (2) there are many more important environmental issues which seem to be taking a back seat. Consider the massive and ever increasing population for example. Is that not a bigger problem?
 
Consider the massive and ever increasing population for example. Is that not a bigger problem?
What do you suggest, killing people? Forcing parents to use birth control when their culture tells them the best part of life is raising as many children as you can?

Some of the problems with overpopulation are results of industrialization. In some areas of the world it is normal to have a large number of children because it's expected that a significant percentage of them will die before adulthood; when that stops happening you get a ton of people. I don't know of any ethical way to reduce overpopulation, so I think we're just going to have to deal with it.
 
I don't know of any ethical way to reduce overpopulation, so I think we're just going to have to deal with it.

Deal with it how, by doing nothing? Unlike the rise in temperature, a continual rise in population is currently a certainty. It cannot grow forever. If society does nothing then we leave it to nature.
 
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