Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[faceman]

okay here's a link, apparently 90% of the worlds leading scientists agree that we are the cause of global warming.
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=99FB6D4E-E7F2-99DF-3030E2BDAB849DC5
this isn't crack pot science either, Scientific American is PRIMO science!  Unless you think god put fossils in the ground to test us.....
I'm still shocked about people's speculation on this thread, if you don't know what your talking about it's best not to talk.  That's why citations where created so you could quote people who do know things about it, IE. masters and phd level scientists.  I'm not a big fan of any of the economic measures surrounding this issue like carbon credits, i think the answer is really about long term vision.  As a society we're not going to be able to live on oil for more than 100 years anyways so why not start in moving away from oil based economics...is it really that hard to build windmills, put solar panels on the roof and build electric and hydrogen cars?  Where there's no will, there's not way, unfortunately.  just my two cents

 

[George Wallace]

...is it really that hard to build windmills, put solar panels on the roof and build electric and hydrogen cars?  Where there's no will, there's not way, unfortunately.  just my two cents

I won't address you 90% claim, as I don't believe it, having seen figures to the contrary.  I will address the above statement though.  It is not hard to build windmills and they are popping up all over Europe.  Unfortunately, here in Canada, the same people who are complaining about the harm we do to the environment are also the people who complain that they don't want a noisy windmill within 100 m of their homes.  They are the same people who complain about plans to build better roads to alleviate the problems of motorways becoming parking lots full of idling cars during rush hours.  They are the people who do nothing but complain, and have no acceptable solutions.........no even for harnessing all the hot air they spew.

 

[aesop081]

if you don't know what your talking about it's best not to talk. 

That applies to you too sport....

  electric and hydrogen cars? 

Even the enviro-hugging pinkos dont want to support the only source of energy that will make electric veh. possible. Hydrogen is a dream we need to wake up from.

 

[JBG]

okay here's a link, apparently 90% of the worlds leading scientists agree that we are the cause of global warming.
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=99FB6D4E-E7F2-99DF-3030E2BDAB849DC5
this isn't crack pot science either, Scientific American is PRIMO science!  Unless you think god put fossils in the ground to test us.....
I'm still shocked about people's speculation on this thread, if you don't know what your talking about it's best not to talk.  That's why citations where created so you could quote people who do know things about it, IE. masters and phd level scientists.  I'm not a big fan of any of the economic measures surrounding this issue like carbon credits, i think the answer is really about long term vision. 

I think that scientists are biased towards finding a problem, since "non-problems" don't get study funding.

As a society we're not going to be able to live on oil for more than 100 years anyways so why not start in moving away from oil based economics...is it really that hard to build windmills, put solar panels on the roof and build electric and hydrogen cars?  Where there's no will, there's not way, unfortunately.  just my two cents

Peak oil has been postphoned repeatedly since 1920. I don't buy it.

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

okay here's a link, apparently 90% of the worlds leading scientists agree that we are the cause of global warming.
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=99FB6D4E-E7F2-99DF-3030E2BDAB849DC5
this isn't crack pot science either, Scientific American is PRIMO science!  Unless you think god put fossils in the ground to test us.....
I'm still shocked about people's speculation on this thread, if you don't know what your talking about it's best not to talk.  That's why citations where created so you could quote people who do know things about it, IE. masters and phd level scientists.  I'm not a big fan of any of the economic measures surrounding this issue like carbon credits, i think the answer is really about long term vision.  As a society we're not going to be able to live on oil for more than 100 years anyways so why not start in moving away from oil based economics...is it really that hard to build windmills, put solar panels on the roof and build electric and hydrogen cars?  Where there's no will, there's not way, unfortunately.  just my two cents

1)  It is questionable at best that you heckle the skeptic side of the argument after posting a single link as I can guarantee you the skeptic side in general is much more well-read, and well-researched on the subject that the lemming side of the argument that watched Al Gore's movie and bought in whole heartedly to the "Mankind is Bad" hippy crap message.
2)  When you're talking about science, don't confuse your "long-term vision" issues with the Global Warming debate.  They are two separate and distinct issues that both need to be reviewed and assessed on their own.  The fact the pro-AGW crowd generally characterizes the anti-AGW crowd as non-Environmental shows their ignorance.  In fact most of us on the skeptic side of the Global Warming debate do believe that we are overconsuming, overpopulated and man is living in an unsustainable fashion on this planet. 

Bottom Line:  Your statement very much implies that i) AGW is true because of your link, and ii) That even if it AGW is not true, it should still be promoted as part of a larger effort to change man kind's behaviour.  Bluntly, AGW is a crock.  I'll let you do your own research over the next several years to make your own determinination because sadly this debate too often on the pro-AGW side resembles religion instead of science, and arguing with a zealout is a waste of everyone's time.  And re: Other changes (like reducing dependency on oil due to peak oil, and in general lowering our footprint), that's best left to another thread as in that vein, you'll most certainly find unanimity on the subject between both pro-AGW and anti-AGW  posters.



Matthew. 

P.S.  Just for some context:  I started out several years ago on the pro-AGW side of the debate and eventually read enough that I could no longer sustain the position and I've been reducing, recycling, composting and doing things like carrying re-usable linen grocery bags since long before it became cool & trendy to do so....

 

[DBA]

okay here's a link, apparently 90% of the worlds leading scientists agree that we are the cause of global warming.
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=99FB6D4E-E7F2-99DF-3030E2BDAB849DC5
this isn't crack pot science either, Scientific American is PRIMO science!  Unless you think god put fossils in the ground to test us.....

When I was young Scientific American contained actual science, usually real papers rewritten for a wider audience and it was a valued resource of detailed information for me. These days it's the science equivalent of Popular Mechanics with interesting but shallow articles. You get about the same depth in local newspapers when they cover a topic. The editors have fallen into the same trap as any opinionated loudmouth: just because they are well read on a topic they think they are an authority on it.

 

[a_majoor]

Scientists are people like the rest of us (movies like "Rocky Horror Picture Show" notwithstanding), and can fall into groupthink, respond to positive and negative pressures (i.e. what fields are being funded), or just make mistakes. Read this all the way through and you will see a prediction made on the basis of limited observations. You will also see something refreshing, which is a real debate on the issue.

There is a zinger, but I will leave you to find it! 

 

[Old Sweat]

Good'un, Thuc. I was surprised to find that BB was still alive, until I got to the top of the fourth column.

 

[Old Sweat]

The following article is reproduced under the fair comments section of the Copyright Act.

From The Sunday TimesAugust 3, 2008

Captains’ logs yield climate clues
Records kept by Nelson and Cook are shedding light on climate change
Jonathan Leake
Britain's great seafaring tradition is to provide a unique insight into modern climate change, thanks to thousands of Royal Navy logbooks that have survived from the 17th century onwards.

The logbooks kept by every naval ship, ranging from Nelson’s Victory and Cook’s Endeavour down to the humblest frigate, are emerging as one of the world’s best sources for long-term weather data. The discovery has been made by a group of British academics and Met Office scientists who are seeking new ways to plot historic changes in climate.

“This is a treasure trove,” said Dr Sam Willis, a maritime historian and author who is affiliated with Exeter University’s Centre for Maritime Historical Studies.

“Ships’ officers recorded air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperature and other weather conditions. From those records scientists can build a detailed picture of past weather and climate.”

A preliminary study of 6,000 logbooks has produced results that raise questions about climate change theories. One paper, published by Dr Dennis Wheeler, a Sunderland University geographer, in the journal The Holocene, details a surge in the frequency of summer storms over Britain in the 1680s and 1690s.

Many scientists believe storms are a consequence of global warming, but these were the coldest decades of the so-called Little Ice Age that hit Europe from about 1600 to 1850.

Wheeler and his colleagues have since won European Union funding to extend this research to 1750. This shows that during the 1730s, Europe underwent a period of rapid warming similar to that recorded recently – and which must have had natural origins.

Hints of such changes are already known from British records, but Wheeler has found they affected much of the north Atlantic too, and he has traced some of the underlying weather systems that caused it. His research will be published in the journal Climatic Change.

The ships’ logs have also shed light on extreme weather events such as hurricanes. It is commonly believed that hurricanes form in the eastern Atlantic and track westwards, so scientists were shocked in 2005 when Hurricane Vince instead moved northeast to hit southern Spain and Portugal.

Many interpreted this as a consequence of climate change; but Wheeler, along with colleagues at the University of Madrid, used old ships’ logs to show that this had also happened in 1842, when a hurricane followed the same trajectory into Andalusia.

The potential of Royal Navy ships’ logs to offer new insights into historic climate change was spotted by Wheeler after he began researching weather conditions during famous naval battles. Later, as global warming moved up the scientific agenda, he and others realised that the same data could shed light on historic climate change.

He said: “British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 alone. They are a stunning resource.”

Most of these earlier documents contain verbal descriptions of weather rather than numerical data, because ships lacked the instruments to take numerical readings. However, Wheeler and his colleagues found early Royal Navy officers recorded weather in consistent language.

“It means we can deduce numerical values for wind strength and direction, temperature and rainfall,” he said. The information will ultimately contribute to the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmos-phere Data Set, a global database maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US government agency.

Wheeler makes clear he has no doubts about modern human-induced climate change. He said: “Global warming is a reality, but what our data shows is that climate science is complex and that it is wrong to take particular events and link them to CO2 emissions. These records will give us a much clearer picture of what is really happening.”

The Met Office has also set up a project, part-funded by Defra, the environment ministry, to study 900 logbooks kept by the East India Company on voyages between Europe and the Far East between 1780 and 1840. Its vessels carried thermometers and barometers so the data is of higher quality.

Faced with logs taken over so many voyages, the researchers have had to be selective. One of the most avid recorders of such data was Nelson himself, whose personal logbook records the air pressure and other readings he took up to several times daily.

Explorers with a weather eye

Britain’s explorers left vital records of weather around the world

— Robert FitzRoy was captain of HMS Beagle on two expeditions in the 1820s and 1830s. Charles Darwin was his passenger

— Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s voyages took him to the Arctic, the East and West Indies and the Mediterranean before his death at Trafalgar in 1805

— Captain James Cook mapped much of Canada and the Pacific in the 1760s and 1770s

If nothing else, it certainly is thought provoking.

 

[a_majoor]

So who exactly is supposed to save us from "Climate Change"?

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/08/carpooling-good.html

Carpooling: Good for the environment, too bad it's illegal

In many cases, the goals of environmentalism and capitalism coincide. Take, for instance, the fact that less packaging is a savings for a company. So, too, are those new instructions in hotel rooms: "To save the environment, we only wash those towels that you leave on the floor, letting us know that they're dirty."

If it saves money, great. Things get cheaper, people become wealthier. Life is good, and everyone is happy.

Environmentalists have also become very entrepreneurial. The guy who founded Whole Foods, for example, is a libertarian. And there's no shortage of clever companies popping up here and there trying to accomplish two things at once--make money, and save the environment.

Too bad the state is always getting in the way.

Did you know we have a car company in Canada? It's all electric, good for the environment. It's also illegal in every province except British Columbia. From a Western Standard story on the ZENN (Zero Emissions, No Noise) vehicle:

"Until late last year, Transport Canada stated that the ZENN did not meet Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and it was only after the CBC aired a story about this egregious government oversight that the ZENN was cleared for sale. But the regulatory barriers to be cleared were far from over; after being approved for sale in Canada the ZENN now needs to be approved for operation in each individual province. Since British Columbia approved the operation of ZENN cars in 2000, no other provinces have followed suit."

And now comes word that a nifty new carpooling service called PickUpPal is going to get the boot in Ontario.

Why?

It violates Ontario's Public Vehicles Act!

Quoting now: "No person shall arrange or offer to arrange transportation of passengers by means of a public vehicle operated by another person unless that other person is the holder of an operating licence authorizing that other person to perform the transportation."

Of course, it was a competitor who raised the objection. Trentway-Wagar, a bus company, is pushing to ban PickUpPal in Ontario. And that's what regulations are for, generally: Make sure the current crop of businesses don't have to actually outcompete competitors by offering cheaper or better service. They can just lean on a stack of regulations to keep profit margins high.

So we sign the Kyoto Accord, we create mountains of new regulations, provide special lanes for carpoolers, encourage and incentivize recycling, make lightbulbs illegal, and still can't get an electric car or a bunch of people to carpool. Maybe, instead of thinking of brand spanking new regulations, some of us should start looking at removing and eliminating some of the old ones first.

Hey, you never know, you might save the earth in the process.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You realize of course they will draft a new regulation to ensure no other regulations, Acts conflict, of course the new regulation will conflict with the charter. I spent half of the last 9 years guiding proponents through the maze so they can build their project without conflicting to much with all the conflict Acts and regs.

 

[a_majoor]

Warmer climates are not only better for people, apparently:

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070625_penguin.htm

Ancient giant penguins liked it hot

June 25, 2007
Courtesy PNAS
and World Science staff

New fos­sil finds are shed­ding light on the strange world of an­cient pen­guins, some of which were as tall as many hu­mans.

Jul­ia Clarke of North Car­o­li­na State Un­ivers­ity in Ra­leigh, N.C. and col­leagues dis­cov­ered skulls and other bones of two ex­tinct pen­guin spe­cies in coast­al Pe­ru.

Artists con­cep­tion of the late Eo­cene gi­ant pen­guin Icadyptes salasi (right) and the mid­dle Eo­cene Pe­rudyptes de­vriesi (left) are shown to scale with the on­ly ex­tant pen­guin in­hab­it­ing Pe­ru, Sphenis­cus hum­bolti (cen­ter). Icadyptes salasi is said to be the first gi­ant pen­guin known from a com­plete skull. (Image Cour­te­sy PNAS)

The smaller of the two, Pe­ru­dyp­tes de­v­rie­si, was around the size of today’s King Pen­guins, re­search­ers said. These are about three feet (90 cm) tall.

The larg­er of the two, Ica­dyp­tes sa­lasi, would have been fear­some to en­coun­ter at over five feet (1.5 m) tall, and with a long beak, sci­ent­ists said. The sur­prise, they added, was that pen­guins—and large ones in par­tic­u­lar—would live in such a hot place and time as these ones did, near the equa­tor.

Pa­le­on­tol­ogists gen­er­ally as­sume that spe­cies mov­ing from cold to warm cli­mates evolve to be smaller, as the balmy tem­per­a­tures elim­i­nate the need for a large body to con­serve heat.

Clarke’s team dat­ed the bones to the mid­dle and late Eo­cene pe­ri­od, 42 and 36 mil­lion years ago, re­spec­tively—one of the Earth’s warmest eras in the past 65 mil­lion years.

Pa­le­on­tol­ogists previously thought pen­guins arrived so near the equa­tor only four to eight mil­lion years ago, dur­ing a much cool­er time, Clarke and col­leagues said. Penguins are thought to have evolved at least 65 mil­lion years ago from the same an­ces­tral stock as alba­trosses, shear­waters and petrels.

Sa­id to be the first com­plete known skull of a gi­ant pen­guin, from the new­found spe­cies Icadyptes salasi. A skull of Sphenis­cus hum­bolti, the on­ly spe­cies in­hab­it­ing Pe­ru to­day, is shown for com­par­i­son. The scale ba­r at low­er right rep­re­sents a length of 1 cm. (Pho­to cour­tesy Dan­iel Ksep­ka.)

As ar­rest­ing as the sight of giant pen­guins might be, the new­found pen­guins weren’t the big­gest known to ev­o­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry.

Many an­cient pen­guins were out­sized by mod­ern stan­dards. Ex­tinct pen­guins were an es­ti­mat­ed 50 per­cent taller on av­er­age than liv­ing ones.

The tallest known, An­thro­por­nis nor­den­skjoel­di, found on Sey­mour Is­land in Ant­arc­ti­ca, stood at 170 cm (five feet sev­en inches). Pachy­dyptes pon­dero­sus, found in New Zea­land, was only slightly short­er, but as heavy as an adult hu­man male.

But the newfound Icadyptes salasi, of the late Eocene, is the first gi­ant pen­guin known from a com­plete skull, re­search­ers said. The stu­dy appears in the advance on­line edi­tions of the re­search jour­nal Pro­ceed­ings of the Na­tion­al Aca­d­emy of Scien­ces this week.

Imagine your tropical vacation interrupted by hordes of aggressive, 5'+ penguins taking over the beach and you might be thankful for today's relatively cool climate......

 

[Kat Stevens]

+3, and frost this morning, early September.  I'm busy looking around the shop for Styrofoam and used oil to burn.

 

[RangerRay]

+6C this morning here...should be bloody warmer here at this time of year!

 

[TCBF]

+3, and frost this morning, early September.  I'm busy looking around the shop for Styrofoam and used oil to burn.

- Seriously?  Styrofoam and used oil?  Whoooaaaa.... Ya don't want the neighbour's kid fixing the flashing around your chimney when your shoveling THAT stuff into the Jotul.

 

[a_majoor]

Keeping nice and toasty in the Nordic nations:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2677486.ece?service=print

Gulf Stream here to stay

The Gulf Stream, that almost mythical flow of warm seas that makes Norway and a few other Nordic countries liveable, isn't about to disappear any time soon. New research contradicts earlier theories that it might.

Cold water is still heading south through the Gulf Stream, climate researchers say.

PHOTO: HÅKON MOSVOLD LARSEN

Climate researchers have re-examined studies that indicated the Gulf Stream was weakening. It's long been a source of warmer seas flowing north through the Atlantic, and it also sends colder waters south.

The Gulf Stream flows roughly from the east coast of South America, around the Gulf of Mexico and across the Atlantic, where it heads north, east of Ireland, over towards Norway and around Iceland, before heading due south again.

The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) reports that several observations in recent years suggested the circulation of the Gulf Stream had weakened, possibly because of global warming. Studies, the institute noted, had suggested that the flow of cold water south was down by half.

A group of researchers from Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, Germany and Norway thus started paying closer attention to the Gulf Stream, and now they're releasing conclusions that can leave climate researchers breathing a sigh of relief.

"It hasn't only been possible to show that the currents instead have maintained a surprisingly constant strength during the last 50 years, but we can also point out where earlier signs of weakness were misleading," said Steffen M Olsen of DMI.

The researchers have studied new and historic measures of the Gulf Stream’s strength over the undersea ridges between Iceland and Greenland.

Olsen cautioned, however, that changes may still occur. "We can’t rule that out," Olsen wrote in an article publishing the group's findings. The risk of a collapse in the warm circulation of the Atlantic just "isn't as probable in the near future as we had feared."

 

[JBG]

+6C this morning here...should be bloody warmer here at this time of year!

I am totally dubiuos of any claims of global warming, other than that generated by numerous natural cycles. One snowstorm or cold morning is not the proof, but reams of actual data does. Note that almost all of the alarms on AGW are prognostications.

 

[a_majoor]

Bus companies doing their part for global warming and the environment (heh)

http://thesecretsofvancouver.com/wordpress/ontario-stops-sharing/environment

No More Ride Sharing
Bus firm wins against Pickup Pal

An Ontario bus company has convinced the transport board that ride-sharing companies — such as Pickup Pal — operate illegally.

Pickup Pal matches up people who are heading to the same destination.

John Stewart, CEO of Pickup Pal, said the goal of the concept is to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution by getting more cars off the road.

In Ontario the only way you can ride with someone is if you meet ALL of the following extremely impractical set of specific criteria:

    -You must travel from home to work only
    -You cannot cross municipal boundaries – (Live outside the city and drive in – sorry you cannot share the ride with your neighbour)
    -You must ride with the same driver each day
    -You must pay the driver no more frequently than weekly

PickupPal was charged and fined for facilitating a ride from Toronto to Montreal for $60. The crime – a PickupPal member crossed municipal boundaries. They were fined $11,336.07.

Trentway-Wagar, the local bus company, says its beef was simply that it is unfair they have to meet labor, environmental, and equipment standards to haul passengers around when services like PickupPal can arrange rides without doing any of that.

The issue is not only that PickupPal’s site allows drivers and passengers to connect for carpooling. While it is up to the users to determine compensation, apparently the site “does nothing to check on insurance, roadworthiness of the vehicles, driving history, or anything else.”

This worried the Highway Transport Board most.

Good thing they are looking out for the folks.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Bus companies doing their part for global warming and the environment (heh)

http://thesecretsofvancouver.com/wordpress/ontario-stops-sharing/environment

More pearls of wisdom from Moronto, the arsehole of Bantario. It's no wonder retards like McSquinty and 'his blondness' Miller can find work here. : I think we should nuke that sphincter, commonly referred to as the 905 belt, and solve one of Canada's biggest problems.

 

[a_majoor]

Another (real) scientist speaks out:

http://www.towntopics.com/nov1908/other3.php

Freeman Dyson Debunks Dire Forecasts on Global Warming and Other Tenets
Ellen Gilbert

Freeman Dyson gets around. Last Wednesday, for example, the 85-year-old “retired” physicist regaled a lunchtime audience at the Nassau Club with his “heretical” ideas about global warming. Just a few hours later he could be found once again sharing his thoughts on global warming, as well as on intelligent design, nuclear warfare, extraterrestrial life, and HAR-1 (a DNA component that distinguishes human beings from other animals) with a standing-room-only crowd at Labyrinth Books.

Mr. Dyson’s credentials are venerable: the British-born scholar received a BA from the University of Cambridge in 1945, and was, from 1953 until his retirement in 1994, a physics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. The absence of a PhD in his resume has been more than compensated for by the 21 honorary degrees he has received over the years.

He seems happiest, however, when he is working at being the rebel, and indeed, one of his books, a compilation of essays published earlier in The New York Review of Books, is called The Scientist as Rebel. Wearing an effusively-colored tie that set off his gray suit, Mr. Dyson began his talk at the Nassau Club by encouraging the audience to interrupt him as he spoke, since, he declared, “it’s much more fun to have an argument than do a monologue.”

In the absence of audience interruptions, Mr. Dyson had an argument anyway with the scores of people (like Al Gore) who weren’t present to defend their belief in the dire consequences of global warming. (“There’s no accounting for human folly,” Mr. Dyson said when asked about Mr. Gore’s Nobel Prize.) Saying that on a recent trip he and his wife found Greenlanders to be delighted with their warmer climate and increased tourism, Mr. Dyson suggested that representing “local warming by a global average is misleading.” In his comments at both the Nassau Club and Labyrinth, he decried the use of computer modeling to make “tremendously dogmatic” predictions about worldwide trends, without acknowledging the “messy, muddy real world” and the non-climatic effects of increased carbon dioxide. “There is no substitute for widely-conducted field operations over a long time,” he told the Nassau Club audience, citing the “enormous gaps in knowledge and sparseness of observation” that characterize the work of global warming experts.

Mr. Dyson’s fearless commentary continued later at Labyrinth, where, standing for over an hour and without a microphone, he delighted a full house by declaring the existence of 10,000 string theorists to be “sociologically dangerous” (“one thousand would be enough”), and balked at an audience member’s query about what he would do with a $700 billion grant. “When science gets rich it becomes political,” he observed. As an example of the most expensive efforts not necessarily being the most worthwhile, he pointed to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the subject of much recent attention, noting that it was designed to identify only certain particles, losing much potentially interesting information in the process. “The important things are the ones you don’t expect,” he noted.