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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nov 18, 2009 - 09:56am PT
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A really "inconvenient truth"
http://dotsub.com/view/19f9c335-b023-4a40-9453-a98477314bf2
All this has been known for a while now, but this is the clearest presentation I've seen that doesn't involve wading thru pages of battling statistics. Even if it is in Finnish with subtitles.
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Ray Olson
Trad climber
Imperial Beach, California
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Nov 18, 2009 - 10:17am PT
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thanks for all the edification everyone
really helpful info: guess I've been living
in a naive cave, for real - huh, imagine that?
my sincere thanks, again.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 18, 2009 - 10:47am PT
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"Ray, I'm not saying they're unaware. But when the majority of 2 1/2 billion people are using coal and wood for basic heating and cooking, even the idea of converting them over to a somewhat "cleaner" fuel of heating oil or natural gas is a daunting project of herculean proportions, not to mention getting them converted to greener sources.
I know that they have plenty of people who realize the problem and are working on it. Their top priority at the moment is economic growth, which hopefully in the future will enable them to have the luxury of a green conversion."
Here's the thing. The way the earth is powered HAS to change as population continues to grow, economies continue to develop, and yet oil is about to peak.
If you look at how places like Thailand and India have developed infrastructure for say telecommunications, you see that when better technology is available, they skip right to it when possible. Cell phones are ubiquitous and cheap to use there.
America doesn't produce much these days. Obama is right that we can actually produce something again and make bank if we focus on new energy and clean energy technology that we can sell to the developing world as they continue building their "American Dream"
Still, we need to do the science and act according to what we are finding to a large degree. If science is telling us that we are screwing up the planet badly and that our coastal cities will be flooded within 100 years, we better devote some money and attention to the threat before the sea covers Miami. It's not like a wise person would say "I'll quit smoking the minute I find the smallest bit of malignant tumor in my lungs"
This whole "global climate change is a left wing conspiracy theory" thing is really a gimmick of big business speaking via the conservative right that they don't want to change cause they fear it will cost money. It's the same crowd that said "Government regulation of the banking industry will kill our business" got their deregulation and ran the banks into the ground, costing the nation trillions.
"As a working geoscientist (geologist/geophysicist) the one thing I am aware of is that yes, we have gone through cycles like this in geologic history, long before there were greenhouse gas emissions. That being said, I do believe that we are contributing to the problem, how much? enough that it makes sense to do what we can.
Do I think that we can realistically make a dent when emerging economies like China and India are not fully on board? No!
Do I think that we are being a bit ignorant and arrogant about what we will be able to accomplish with our endeavours? Yes!
Do I think that natural phenomena like one single volcanic eruption can make years of Kyoto type measures irrelevant? Yes!
Do I think that the whole global warming bandwagon has become a cash cow for academia? yes!
That being said, I do think that we need to develop as many new energy sources as we can. Sadly, as altruistic as we may be, these won't become viable UNTIL they become economic.
We are, after all a race that is more reactionary than forward thinking.
We did develop some good data back-up systems leading up to Y2K. But I guess that even though I agree in the more basic development of energy sources and emission control, I'm afraid I believe that a lot of what is happening strikes me as "Chicken Little" philosophy."
All that is true but the fact is, the changes we may need are like turning a battleship, very slow to take effect. If we waited for space flight to be economical, we wouldn't have even begun yet. If we waited for nuclear energy and weapons to be economical, they wouldn't have started either (mixed blessings on that one) The point being, we better friggin invest from our collective pockets in developing the technology that will power the planet BEFORE the sh#t hits the fan or it will be too late
Peace
Karl
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Nov 18, 2009 - 03:21pm PT
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Fracking stupid climate change. First its summer,
then its Fall, and pretty soon it'll be damn winter.
And unbelievably it becomes Spring!
And then its repeats again and again!
Who is responsible for the endless demoralizing climate change!
This cannot be happening naturally.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Nov 18, 2009 - 03:44pm PT
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I'll make one of my random posts here to note once again that it's not Al Gore or the
Green party or any standard boogeyman of the right who is driving the climate-change
concerns -- it's the leading-edge climate scientists. They're the ones with the data from
ice cores to satellites, time lines from seasons to millions of years, and calculations from
sverdrups to petajoules. They're aware of complexity, and by large margins they take
anthropogenic climate change quite seriously.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Nov 18, 2009 - 04:09pm PT
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the solution
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 20, 2009 - 08:43pm PT
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Amazing how this thread went silent so quickly...
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 20, 2009 - 08:56pm PT
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Bluering
What does all this mean?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 20, 2009 - 09:01pm PT
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The sun is responsible for Global Warming...
duh?
There has been a coincidal cooling of temperatures and lessened solar activity. We are now entering a period of lessened solar activity that is cyclical.
Al Gore is so screwed. The game is over.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 20, 2009 - 09:03pm PT
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Basically the released docs reveal that some scientists were 'cooking the books' to make their theories jive with the agenda of GW.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 20, 2009 - 09:04pm PT
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I got that part.
But which side?
The ones denying or the ones saying we are the cause?
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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Nov 20, 2009 - 09:08pm PT
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from RealClimate.org
"No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context.
One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear.
Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all.
As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Nov 20, 2009 - 09:25pm PT
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More evidence the GW research has been falsified
for the last decade. Climate Criminals!
All are Flat Earthers/Sky is Falling/Chicken Little/Dead
Carbon Credit Tree Plantation: They all get a stick in the eye.
Hah!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 20, 2009 - 09:38pm PT
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From my DerSpiegal link;
But a few scientists simply refuse to believe the British calculations. "Warming has continued in the last few years," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). However, Rahmstorf is more or less alone in his view. Hamburg Max Planck Institute scientist Jochem Marotzke, on the other hand, says: "I hardly know any colleagues who would deny that it hasn't gotten warmer in recent years."
and
Marotzke and Leibniz Institute meteorologist Mojib Latif are even convinced that the fuzzy computing done by Rahmstorf is counterproductive. "We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations," says Latif. For this reason, he adds, it is dangerous to cite individual weather-related occurrences, such as a drought in Mali or a hurricane, as proof positive that climate change is already fully underway.
"Perhaps we suggested too strongly in the past that the development will continue going up along a simple, straight line. In reality, phases of stagnation or even cooling are completely normal," says Latif.
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jstan
climber
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Nov 22, 2009 - 12:12pm PT
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latimes.com
Rising sea levels threaten Caribbean region
The Colombian city of Cartagena is trying to plan ahead as scientists say cities nearer the equator, where temperatures are already higher, are at greater risk if global warming isn't checked.
By Chris Kraul
10:09 PM PST, November 21, 2009
Reporting from Cartagena, Colombia
The effect of climate change is anything but hypothetical to retired Colombian naval officer German Alfonso. Just ask him about the time his neighborhood in this historic coastal city became an island.
For five years, Alfonso, 74, has watched tides rise higher and higher in the Boca Grande section of Cartagena. This month, tides briefly inundated the only mainland connection to his neighborhood, a converted sandbar where about 60 high-rise condo and hotel towers have been built in the last decade or so.
"Before, people thought it a normal phenomenon. But we're becoming more conscious that something is going on," Alfonso said. "If the sea keeps rising, traffic could just collapse."
According to a recently updated World Bank study on climate change in Latin America, Alfonso and his neighbors have reason to be concerned. Not only are the effects of global warming more evident in Latin American coastal cities, the report says, but the phenomenon could worsen in coming decades because sea levels will rise highest near the equator.
Colombian naval Capt. Julian Reyna, a member of a government task force monitoring climate change, said the sea level around Cartagena, renowned for its Spanish colonial fortifications and beaches, has risen as much as one-eighth of an inch each year over the last decade, an increase that scientists expect to accelerate in coming years.
According to some scenarios that the authors of the World Bank study say are not that far-fetched, Cartagena and the rest of the Caribbean coastal zone could see sea levels rising as much as 2 feet, possible more, by the end of the century. Even at the lower end of projections, parts of this city would be knee-deep in sea water.
One of the authors, climatologist Walter Vergara, cautions that the projections are based on trends and factors that could change, buthe is worried that Colombia's entire Caribbean coastal zone could see relocations of urban centers. Other Latin and Caribbean cities especially at risk include Veracruz, Mexico; Georgetown, Guyana; and Guayaquil, Ecuador, he said.
"The projections are based on assumptions generally accepted by the scientific community and do not include the cataclysmic effects of possible advanced ice melting in the Antarctic or Greenland," said co-author economist John Nash................
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-climate-cartagena22-2009nov22,0,7731005.story
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 23, 2009 - 04:22pm PT
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from wsj online:
"Officials at the University of East Anglia confirmed in a statement on Friday that files had been stolen from a university server and that the police had been brought in to investigate the breach," the New York Times reports. "They added, however, that they could not confirm that all the material circulating on the Internet was authentic." But some scientists have confirmed that their emails were quoted accurately.
The files--which can be downloaded here--surely have not been fully plumbed. The ZIP archive weighs in at just under 62 megabytes, or more than 157 MB when uncompressed. But bits that have already been analyzed, as the Washington Post reports, "reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies":
In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes. . . .Mann, who directs Penn State's Earth System Science Center, said the e-mails reflected the sort of "vigorous debate" researchers engage in before reaching scientific conclusions. "We shouldn't expect the sort of refined statements that scientists make when they're speaking in public," he said. This is downright Orwellian. What the Post describes is not a vigorous debate but an attempt to suppress debate--to politicize the process of scientific inquiry so that it yields a predetermined result. This does not, in itself, prove the global warmists wrong. But it raises a glaring question: If they have the facts on their side, why do they need to resort to tactics of suppression and intimidation?
It is hard to see how this is anything less than a definitive refutation of the popular press's contention that global warmism is settled science--a contention that both the Times and the Post repeat in their articles on the revelations: "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument," the Times claims. The Post leads its story by observing that "few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate," and that "nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal." (As blogger Tom Maguire notes, this actually overstates even the IPCC's conclusions.)
The press's view on global warming rests on an appeal to authority: the consensus among scientists that it is real, dangerous and man-caused. But the authority of scientists rests on the integrity of the scientific process, and a "consensus" based on the suppression of alternative hypotheses is, quite simply, a fraudulent one."
good to see "vigorous debate" is still critical to science...too bad the debate focuses on how to keep "peer reviewed" studies out of an international report that will significantly impact legislation and global economics just because the findings of the "peer reviewed" study contradicts preferred conclusions
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