Co2 Acquittal

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Turtle

I again point out that one of the main groups of professionals who disagree strongly with the climatologists are the meteorologists, both on the grounds of the modeling errors, as well as the fact that measures of temperature from many stations has risen over time because of urbanization, not global warming. GIGO

Originally Posted by freeztar

This is a common argument from those that deny a warming trend. Take a look at this:

Surface temperature records are unreliable

I recommend that site in general actually.

From that same site, the below quote seems an especially pertinent response to Turtle's post:



It's Urban Heat Island effect

This confirms a peer review study by the NCDC (Peterson 2003) that did statistical analysis of urban and rural temperature anomalies and concluded "Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures... Industrial sections of towns may well be significantly warmer than rural sites, but urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions."

Another more recent study (Parker 2006) plotted 50 year records of temperatures observed on calm nights, the other on windy nights. He concluded "temperatures over land have risen as much on windy nights as on calm nights, indicating that the observed overall warming is not a consequence of urban development".

[InfiniteNow]

Here's another good site that was shown to me earlier today:


Met Office: Climate change myths

Prof. John Mitchell OBE FRS, Chief Scientist at the Met Office explores some of the common myths about climate change.

The Met Office recognises that climate change is a complex subject. There are genuine areas of uncertainty and scientific controversy. There are also a number of misunderstandings and myths which are recycled, often by non-climate scientists, and portrayed as scientific fact.

Recent coverage has questioned the influence of humans on the climate. While the arguments used might have been regarded as genuine areas of sceptical enquiry 20 years ago, further observed warming and advances in climate science render these out of touch.

Myth 1 - Ice core records show that changes in temperature drive changes in carbon dioxide, and it is not carbon dioxide that is driving the current warming

Myth 2 - Solar activity is the main driver of climate change

Myth 3 - There is less warming in the upper atmosphere than at the surface which disproves human-induced warming

Myth 4 - The intensity of cosmic rays changes climate

Myth 5 - Climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change

Click the link for brief summaries supporting each contention of myth.

[Turtle]

Again, the models do not factor in many of the underwater pehenomena that involve CO2 or heating. This is not so much because they don't want to, it is because they don't have reliable data on the extent of these influencing factors. If powers that be want to make a decision to action based on what data they have, and they can muster the political power to do so, then so it goes.

Originally Posted by livescience

Humans “are having a strong effect on global geochemical cycles, but it does not compare at all to the advent of oxygenic photosynthesis,” said Katrina Edwards, a geo-microbiologist at the University of Southern California (USC). “That was a catastrophic environmental change that occurred before 2.2 billion years ago [which] wreaked its full wrath on the Earth system.”

Edwards studies another way life impacts the planet in largely unseen ways. She focuses on how microbes living on the murky ocean floor transform minerals through a kind of underwater alchemy. For example, microbes facilitate a chemical process called oxidation, whereby oxygen in sea water combines with magma oozing up from the ocean floor to change, for example, one form of iron into another.

“These [microbes] are completely off radar in terms of global biogeochemical cycles,” Edwards told LiveScience. "We don't consider them as part of the Earth system right now in our calculation about what's going on, and we don't consider them in terms of how the Earth system will move forward into the future."

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Again, the models do not factor in many of the underwater pehenomena that involve CO2 or heating. This is not so much because they don't want to, it is because they don't have reliable data on the extent of these influencing factors. If powers that be want to make a decision to action based on what data they have, and they can muster the political power to do so, then so it goes.

Turtle - You're simply placing doubt on the models themselves. Until you show that the impact of underwater volcanism is a significant contributor to global climate change and warming, your comments above are non-sequitur.


Btw... This is another classic denialist approach which has been debunked.


Models are unreliable

There is a notion that we should wait till models are 100% sure and get it perfectly right before we act on reducing CO2 emissions. If we waited for that, we would never act. Models are in a constant state of improvement as they include more processes, rely on fewer approximations and increase their resolution as computer power develops. The complex and non-linear nature of climate means there will always be refinements and subtleties to be included.

The main point is we know enough to act. Models have evolved to the point where they successfully predict long term trends and are always improving on predicting the more chaotic, short term changes. Multiple lines of evidence tell us global temperatures will change 3°C with a doubling of CO2. The uncertainty is ±1°C degree but this uncertainty is decreasing (and the climate sensitivity of 3°C reaffirmed) as new studies refine our understanding.

Models don't need to be exact in every respect to give us an accurate overall trend and its major effects - and we have that now. If you knew there was a 10% chance you'd be in a car crash, you'd wear a seatbelt. In fact, if there was any possibility, you'd still do it. The IPCC consider it at least 90% sure humans are causing global warming. Considering the negative impacts of global warming, to wait for 100% certainty before acting is recklessly irresponsible.

[Turtle]

Cracked Fairy Tales
Pandora's Box Opens A Letter,
or What's In A Turtle's Shell Didn't Get There By Itself

CFP: Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN: Attempting To Control Climate Is ‘Futile’

Originally Posted by CanadaFreePress

Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming.”

BALI, Indonesia - The UN climate conference met strong opposition Thursday from a team of over 100 prominent international scientists, who warned the UN, that attempting to control the Earth’s climate was “ultimately futile.”

The scientists, many of whom are current and former UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scientists, released an open letter to the UN Secretary-General questioning the scientific basis for climate fears and the UN’s so-called “solutions.” ...

The Letter: >> CFP: Open Letter to the UN Secretary General Concerning Global Warming

Further museables on melting ice and the heat doing it: >>

Magma may be melting Greenland ice - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

Originally Posted by MSNBC

...In recent years, Greenland’s ice has been melting more and flowing faster into the sea — a record amount of ice melted from the frozen mass this summer, according to recently released data — and Earth’s rising temperatures are suspected to be the main culprit.

But clues to a new natural contribution to the melt arose when scientists discovered a thin spot in the Earth’s crust under the northeast corner of the Greenland Ice Sheet where heat from Earth’s insides could seep through, scientists will report here this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
...

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Turtle

[CENTER]=CFP: Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN: Attempting To Control Climate Is ‘Futile’


The Letter: >> CFP: Open Letter to the UN Secretary General Concerning Global Warming

Yep. Interestingly, that SAME week, a letter written by 200 prominent scientists was ALSO submitted to the UN, a letter which urged action to combat global warming by reducing CO₂ emissions.


Bali Declaration

….The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now far exceeds the natural range of the past 650,000 years, and it is rising very quickly due to human activity. If this trend is not halted soon, many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels, and many ecosystems, plants and animal species will be in serious danger of extinction.

The next round of focused negotiations for a new global climate treaty (within the 1992 UNFCCC process) needs to begin in December 2007 and be completed by 2009. The prime goal of this new regime must be to limit global warming to no more than 2 ºC above the pre-industrial temperature, a limit that has already been formally adopted by the European Union and a number of other countries.

Based on current scientific understanding, this requires that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by at least 50% below their 1990 levels by the year 2050. In the long run, greenhouse gas concentrations need to be stabilised at a level well below 450 ppm (parts per million; measured in CO2-equivalent concentration). In order to stay below 2 ºC, global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years, so there is no time to lose…

Here's a fair and balanced approach to both letters. I bet you won't find such a fair view of both sides presented in the Canadian Free Press to which you've linked several times. Considering their tone, and their "Christianity" section, I'd suggest they're not as "fair and balanced" as one might presume.


Climate Change - who is right and we are wrong? | TalkClimateChange

Two letters were written by two sets of credible scientists last week and addressed to the UN. One letter urged action to combat global warming by reducing Co2 emissions, and the other urged leaders to ignore the previous letter and focus on more pressing priorities instead. (see below for links and highlights)

It is clearly a bizarre situation: the attention of the world is being focused on preventing a global calamity through high profile summit meetings which promise to bring much change, whilst in the background the climate prophets are still arguing over the fundamental existence of a real problem in the first place.

Each week we read of new opinion polls, which alternately claim that large numbers of people either are, or are not concerned about global warming depending on who was asked. Our conclusion is that approximately 1 third of the world care deeply about the problem. Another third of the world don’t believe there is a problem, and the remaining third couldn’t care less and are too busy getting on with their lives.

So what’s going on? Have the UN together with many of the world’s governments been duped by an unprecedented scam? Have we run out of other challenging problems to deal with? Or is the whole issue becoming confused by honest people with other motives? And more importantly, what will it take to move on?

First let’s have a look at the contrasting highlights of each letter:

The two letters fundamentally contradict each other: firstly on the cause of climate change - natural vs manmade -, secondly on our ability to influence climate change, and finally on the subsequent causes of human suffering - economic collapse vs environmental disaster.

Frankly, its easy for an intelligent person to go with either set of scenarios, depending on what suits you best. We suspect that for many people (our enlightened readers excepted) this is exactly how they choose their position.

But since we are talking about dramatically rearranging our world we really should try to straighten this out. We have a few suggestions as a starting point:

Just the facts, ma'am.

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Further museables on melting ice and the heat doing it: >>

Magma may be melting Greenland ice - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

This article would only discount global climate change if there were a magma hot spot under EVERY place where the ice is melting, which there's not.

Further, your own article concedes global warming, and simply suggests that this particlar finding shows why the ice in this specific region of Greenland may be melting more quickly than ice in other regions.

Global warming may not be the only thing melting Greenland. Scientists have found at least one natural magma hotspot under the Arctic island that could be pitching in.

[Turtle]

More inconvenient facts, if not truths dear readers on the Greenland ice. >>

Originally Posted by Johnathan Keeling

...In a presentation at the AGU meeting in San Francisco, researchers from KU’s Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets will show evidence that a weakness in the earth’s crust could be causing underground magma to melt the ice above. If that is in fact happening, the water could be melting and carrying away more ice as it flows away from the “hot spot.”

“We think it may be a part of greater geothermal activity beneath the entire ice sheet,” said Kees van der Veen, a KU researcher and professor in the department of geography. ...

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Turtle

More inconvenient facts, if not truths dear readers on the Greenland ice. >>

Precisely how is that supposed to be inconvenient? It does absolutely nothing to counter the evidence of human induced climate change and the significance of it. All information I've posted in this thread remains valid and unchallenged. Nobody can say the same of the information you've been posting.


Regardless, I don't discount or challenge the data you've presented which indicates that magma close to the surface speeds melting in the Greenlandic ice sheet. I simply fail to see how it relates at all to anthropogenically induced global climate change, nor to the impact on global mean temperatures resulting from the rising concentration of atmospheric CO₂.

[Turtle]

Under advisement, I have enabled the ignore member function to stop the hostility creeping into my replys.

Coming back to an earlier area of objection I raised, there is the matter of modeling complex systems in general. A feature of these complex systems is their sensitivity to initial conditions, that is to say that where one ends up depends on where one starts. So too with the climatology models, and the farther back in time one wants to start the model, the less information and therefore the more error, we have in the initial conditions used to start a run.

There is then of course that other sensitivity to conditions issue of complex systems referred to as the butterfly effect, which says essentially that small changes in an operating complex system can have large & unexpected effects. If one of the minimalized forcings happens to have some role in the climate operations akin to the butterfly's wings, then the model is at risk of inherent flaws.

That's awrap.