Arcadia Discussion Zone

http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/732009---permanent-arctic-ice-vanishing

WINNIPEG–One of Canada's top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world's polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.

Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding. But David Barber says the thick, multi-year frozen sheets crucial to the northern ecosystem have been replaced by thin "rotten" ice that can't support weight of the bears. "It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multi-year sea ice. The whole world thought it was multi-year sea ice," said Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.

"Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What's left is this remnant, rotten ice."

What was going to take a 100 years the scientists and academians told us has taken just a few years

lovuian says:


And given CRU do you still believe them?

Just to refresh the memory you might like to watch the first 12 minutes of the following, somewhat long, film. What do you think? How come Polar Bears still exist?

http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid= ... 546754758#

Regards to all

Wombat.

Context for the CRU hacked emails ...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... -cru-hack/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... k-context/

Context is key to understanding things taken out of such. I believe the discussion comments are illuminating, also.

The gentleman who runs the blog is a climate scientist.

I ask all greenhouse gas denialists one question: how do you explain the temperature of Venus?

You can't, without the presence of greenhouse gasses.

"Climategate" exposed
http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010002

Seeker1 says on the Climate Change Data Dumped thread:


And on this thread:


Seeker1 references: http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010002

If you look at that website’s explanation (they call it the “Reality”) of the claim that Mann tried to obscure the Medieval Warm period you might conclude that it is no more than an interesting study in revisionism and backtracking. They say:

‘Mann also said his 2003 e-mail saying ''it would nice to 'contain' the putative 'MWP''' was not a call for scientists to deny the Earth warmed naturally 1,000 years ago. He said it reflected his desire to identify exactly when the Medieval Warm Period began.’

Words are words with meanings.

You don’t say one thing if you mean another. It wouldn’t be too hard to conclude that there is some considerable ground shifting and revisionism apparent here in both Mann’s further explanation and in the mediamatters website’s assertions.

The reality is that IPCC’s AR3 was a 2001 document that contained Mann’s 1998 conclusions. AR3 commented that: “….detailed interpretations comparison with long-term trends from such of such data are perilous owing to loss of temporal resolution back in time.”(sic). It also stated that there were “substantial uncertainties” associated with this work.
See: section 2.3.2.2 of AR3: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/

Nevertheless, notwithstanding these substantial uncertainties this is the graph that was in the AR3:

Figure 2.20: Millennial Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature reconstruction (blue) and instrumental data (red) from AD 1000 to 1999, adapted from Mann et al. (1999). Smoother version of NH series (black), linear trend from AD 1000 to 1850 (purple-dashed) and two standard error limits (grey shaded) are shown.

Notwithstanding this “substantial uncertainty” this is what the AR3 Summary for Policymakers stated:

“Globally it is very likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in the instrumental record (1861-2000) (see Box SPM-1). The increase in surface temperature over the 20th century for the Northern Hemisphere is likely to have been greater than that for any other century in the last thousand years (see Table SPM-1)”. See: Question 2. Summary for Policymakers. Not too much “substantial uncertainty” here!

However, according to McIntyre and McKitrick (who eventually were able to access Mann’s data and check it over):

" The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, ‘MBH98’ hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects. We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components."

And this is what they found should be the case:


Now this is serious stuff.

How true is it?

Well, a USA House of Representatives committee sought advice from independent statisticians to determine how best to assess it. Dr Edward Wegman, a prominent statistics professor at George Mason University who is chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, agreed to independently assess the data on a pro bono basis. Wegman is also a Board member of the American Statistical Association.

See: http://republicans.energycommerce.house ... _sheet.pdf

What did he find? He found that:

“Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium.”

And if that’s not damaging enough, how about this further conclusion of Wegman’s:

“A social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peer review and temperature reconstructions.”

Specifically, the Report to the house Committee stated: “It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.”

Clearly, the science is still uncertain, and even more-so given the CRU leaks.

What isn’t uncertain is the huge damage that a tax on Carbon will do to the economies of the world if it is introduced unnecessarily. The scientists need to get it right before the politicians take economic decisions that will have very significant consequences for all of mankind.

Yes. And I accept if manmade CO2 is the culprit it will also have serious consequences for all Mankind as well. But remember, Rhedae thrived during the last warm period.

Regards to all

Wombat.

Don't see why greenhouse effects work on Venus but are supposed to not work on Earth. Physics says the same laws work everywhere. I ask every greenhouse effect denialist the same question. How do they explain the temperature of Venus?

Second question: what IS the cause of our current warming period? Even if you "massage" the data using the technique above to accentuate the MWP, it still doesn't obscure that we're in a warming period right now ... whether it makes the peak lower or not. It can't be solar variation or intensity; that should show up in solar probes and on other planets in the solar system. It doesn't.

Oh and BTW, I'm sure the medieval warming period might have been good for some cities, but that's the funny thing - warming will undoubtedly benefit some people (it does mean longer agricultural harvests), but if like me you live in a coastal city barely above seal level, the sea level rise isn't a laughing matter.

And if you live in an island in the Pacific practically sinking due to global warming - even less so. Sad they have to pay the price while the carbon industries obscure the reality of what's happening.

The island of Tuvalu is sinking.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough ... sin_1.html

And you can't massage this data out of what it says: sea levels are rising. And I hate to say it, but the IPCC guessed low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home ... 290100.cms
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... imate.html

I agree. Let's deal with the uncertainity and the ambiguity. What's not uncertain is that greenhouse gasses trap the heat the Earth radiates back out into space. The physics of this is known and understood. All we don't know is the level of countervailing effects. Probably the major one is that as the planet warms, more clouds form, reflecting more sunlight back into space. That may be what's slowing down what's already happening -- but not enough.

What hasn't been exactly quantified is the level of anthropogenic contribution to greenhouse gasses. That remains to be precisely quantified but almost all scientists agree it's non-negligible. Therefore, since it's non-negligible, something can be done - and should. We don't have time to waste while we dicker over exactitude. I wish we did -- but we don't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse ... _emissions

Sorry, Wombat, I live in a city that will be inundated by sea level rise, and while I could move if I have to, there are quite a few elderly people who can't be relocated northward very quickly. So I'm not polyannish about this at all.

BTW ... a lot of the argument over paleoclimate relates to the validity of tree ring data.

Here's the problem in a nutshell. It may turn out it depends on WHICH trees you look at. I agree this is a scientific problem that needs to be sorted out, but ... here's something else to consider.

We're currently having a bristlecone pine tree growth spurt thanks to warming ... but ... it's not all rosy. Read the last paragraph.

The smoking gun...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... g-gun.html

The findings, reported today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could have important implications for human populations, said the scientists.
In many areas, mountains were a key source of water for farms and urban communities.
''If the snow melts earlier, the mountains won't be able to hold on to water for as long,'' said tree ring expert Professor Malcolm Hughes, another member of the University of Arizona team. ''They won't be as effective as water towers for us."

Remember, drinkable water on Earth's already in short supply.

Hope you're not thirsty.

The predicted possible social and political effects of vastly multiplied number of immigrants from southern latitudes to those more northern could quickly make the EU and US's present problem of "newcomers" pale in comparison.



Changing Rains:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/ ... ert-text/1

Seeker1 asks:


Well this depends on your definition of the “current period” and even the climate scientists at the CRU can’t agree amongst themselves on that.

However, on one fact the science is clear. We are currently in a cooling phase – have been since 1998 – not a warming phase. Even Professor Phil Jones from the East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) accepts that fact (although, until the leaking/hacking of CRU documents, nobody was to know since he wasn’t telling the whole truth in his public pronouncements). Nevertheless, this is what he said to a colleague at NSSTC UA-H, in email 1120593115.txt in 2005:

“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant.”

As I say that was in 2005. It’s now 2009 – and the decline continues; that’s now eleven years of decline.

But I accept that on a longer timescale there have been recent warming periods as well. I also accept that the IPCC evidence of modern global warming data from surface-based recording stations yields a 1905-2005 temperature increase of 0.74 C º +/- 0.18 C º.

However, and leaving aside other serious issues associated with surface-based recording stations, this figure is probably positively skewed by insufficient correction of the urban heat island effect. Such a correction of course may be an impossible task, since the urban heat island effect appears to vary depending on the size of the urban centre. For example, News Weekly reports that …”weather observatories in Australia, dating back 100 years or more, show cities getting hotter as they get bigger; but country towns have generally not been warming up. Some have actually been cooling down”.

See: http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2009oct31_c.html

BTW, I note that your Tuvalu article is careful to point out that the 6 inches to 3 feet rise in sea level will take one hundred years. That should provide some time for appropriate adjustment, if it all comes to pass.

Finally, it may be that the answer to your question lies in: Svensmark H and Calder N, The Chilling Stars - A new Theory of Climate Change. (Icon Books, 2007).

Whatever, it’s time for scientists to stop game playing and politicking and get on with the job that they have been educated to do; objective, transparent, replicatible and evidence based research.

Regards to all

Wombat.

PS., Your first question, Seeker, is obviously not addressed to me!

Actually islands have already been overtaken
Ghoruma is gone as well as others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3jwnasMc-M

Newfoundland saw homes falling into the sea due to sea rise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOTxoDRmdw4

Sundabar Islands some have gone under already
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fipPFH8RFRQ

England loses Suffolk coastline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7Px6xFRsX4

Miami Maine and even Galveston where I live
the Ocean is creeping up and taking beaches away

but there is land rising from the sea just as Edgar Cayce predicted
and Island has been discovered and named
It was called Warming Island
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohQfoofgRAs

But don't go by my video
see the graphic changes
You can see Warming Island for your self ...it rose from the sea (of ice) and Edgar Cayce was right

Climate is changing
Yes CO2 is a major factor but there can be even more going on here
but that we are NOT DOING ANYTHING

is very sad and disturbing

the public is not being told what is going on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpwabMaazE

Speaking for my fellow Australian neither are we.

Most of Australia's population is coastal, Seeker1. We'd all be affected in Australia by rising sea levels. Population redistribution even if spread over 100 years would still be difficult.




MAP 1: POPULATION DISTRIBUTION Source ABS, Table 5.13 Distribution of Population Source: 2000 Year Book Australia, ABS Cat No. 1301.0

Just a small taste of Australia's wild weather this year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_south ... _heat_wave

The early 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave was a heat wave that commenced in late January and led to record-breaking prolonged high temperatures in the region. The heat wave is considered one of, if not the most, extreme in the region's history.[2] During the heat wave, 50 separate locations set various records for consecutive, highest daytime and overnight temperatures. The highest temperature recorded during the heat wave was 48.8 °C (119.8 °F) in Hopetoun, Victoria, a record for the state.[3] Many locations through the region recorded all-time high temperatures including capital cities Adelaide, which reached its third-highest temperature, 45.7 °C (114.3 °F), and Melbourne, which recorded its highest ever temperature on record, 46.4 °C (115.5 °F). Both cities broke records for the most consecutive days over 40 °C (104 °F), while Mildura, Victoria recorded an all time record 12 consecutive days over 40 °C (104 °F).

The exceptional heat wave was caused by a slow moving high-pressure system that settled over the Tasman Sea, with a combination of an intense tropical low located off the North West Australian coast and a monsoon trough over Northern Australia, which produced ideal conditions for hot tropical air to be directed down over Southeastern Australia.[3] The heat began in South Australia on 25 January but became more widespread over southeast Australia by 27 January. A weak cool change moved over the southern coastal areas bringing some relief on January 30,[3] including Melbourne, where the change arrived that evening, dropping temperatures to an average of 30.8 °C (87.4 °F). Higher temperatures returned on the following weekend with Melbourne recording its hottest day since records began in 1855, 46.4 °C (115.5 °F), also the hottest temperature ever recorded in an Australian capital city.[4]

The heat wave generated extreme fire conditions during the peak of the 2008-09 Australian bushfire season, causing many bushfires in the affected region, contributing to the extreme bushfire conditions on February 7, also known as the Black Saturday bushfires, which claimed 173 lives in Victoria.[5]

10 months after this heat wave, a second struck the same region in November 2009.




http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/

TCJ:


BTW Queensland is a state of Australia.

http://au.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt= ... d=r1&sao=1





http://au.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt= ... d=r1&sao=1

This is what my state was facing for the past few years and drought has only just broken. We are now have permanent water restrictions and they are being introduced further up the coast.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1464005.htm


"This is the pattern of weather change we are living through".

Excellent posts Rain, I had no idea it was at those crisis levels for you. Even with the seen needs in new seawater desalination systems, especially in the EU, and the half-hearted projections to implement some in large ways in US, the projections are grim for many.

As for disappearing shorelines, we in Florida have had our once very wide sand beaches destroyed over the years by the destruction of the littoral currents that naturally replenished them, when numerous boat cuts, jetties and groins were built. This same problem is as bad if not worse now in the state of Hawaii.

The reported increase of inches in the sea level has really taken it's toll after losing our side-shore currents . Some beaches are now more than a few feet of extension from cement or rock retaining walls now at high tide.

Drinking water here for the coastal areas in turns suffers as large recent developments of home tracts and golf courses create a sucking effect of brine into the aquifer. We're having constant legislative battles over water rights here.

Rain get on with that flux capacitor powered atmospheric regeneration system I know you have your up sleeve!

lol I just saw "cloudy with a chance of meatballs" in 3d, that's the kind of tinkerer I am.

Include bottled water and you're a Peace Prize winner hands down!

Rain wrote:


Rain, this has more to do with incompetent governments encouraging further development into the South East corner of Queensland while seeking the support of the green left anti-development vote. The outcome is no new dams, no new power stations (because they don’t like coal and have an apoplectic fit if anybody so much as mentions Uranium) and hence growing restrictions. This comes as a direct result of governments failing to put the appropriate infrastructure in place to underpin this population growth.

But don’t worry, they can only fool all of the people some of the time. The response to these incompetent, ideologically driven groups will happen eventually, just like it did in the Federal Parliament yesterday with the Rudd Labor Government’s economy destroying Carbon tax being thrown out until after Copenhagen.

Now, as to droughts; we’ve had a few over the years. They're not a new phenomenon:
• 1803 Drought in NSW that produced severe crop failures.
• 1809 Beginning of an unusually severe drought in NSW that continued until 1811.
• 1813-15 Severe drought in NSW that prompted searches for new pastures.
• 1826-29 Severe drought in NSW that caused Lake George to dry up and the Darling River to cease flowing.
• 1829 Major drought in Western Australia with very little water available.
• 1835 and 1838 Sydney and NSW receive 25% less rain than usual. Severe drought in Northam and York areas of Western Australia.
• 1838-39 Droughts in South Australia and Western Australia
• 1839 Severe drought in the west and north of Spencer Gulf, South Australia.
• 1846 Severe drought converted the interior and far north of South Australia into an arid desert.
• 1849 Sydney received about 27 inches less rain than normal.
• 1850 Severe drought, with big losses of livestock across inland New South Wales (NSW) and around the western rivers region.
• 1864 - 66 (and 1868). The little data available indicates that this drought period was rather severe in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
• 1877 All States affected by severe drought, with disastrous losses in Queensland. In Western Australia many native trees died, swamps dried up and crops failed.
• 1880 to 1886 Drought in Victoria (northern areas and Gippsland); New South Wales (mainly northern wheat belt, Northern Tablelands and south coast); Queensland (1881-86, in south-east with breaks - otherwise mainly in coastal areas, the central highlands and central interior in 1883-86); and South Australia (1884-86, mainly in agricultural areas).
• 1888 Extremely dry in Victoria (northern areas and Gippsland); Tasmania (1887-89 in the south); New South Wales had the driest year since records began; Queensland (1888-89) had a very severe drought, with much native scrub dying and native animals perishing; South Australia had one of its most severe droughts; and Western Australia (central agricultural areas) lost many sheep.[6]
During the severe, Australia wide, 1902 “Federation Drought” the total sheep population dropped to fewer than 54,000,000 from a total of 106,000,000 sheep in 1891 and cattle numbers fell by more than 40 per cent. It was 1925 before the sheep numbers reached the hundred-million mark again.
At the time of Federation, Australia suffered a major drought. There had been a number of years of below average rainfall across most of Australia before the drought. During the drought the wheat crop was "all but lost" and the Darling River was dry at Bourke, New South Wales for over a year from April 1902 to May 1903. There was concern about Sydney's water supply.[7] In the 1911-1915 period, Australia suffered a major drought which resulted in the failure of the 1914 wheat crop.[8]
During 1918 to 1920 a severe drought was experienced by Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Northern Territory (Darwin-Daly Waters area and central Australia), Western Australia (Fortescue area), Victoria, and Tasmania.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_Australia


1914, Dry river bed of Australia’s greatest river the Murray River at Kerang in Victoria
From: http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html

And why? Well because of this:



Regards to all

Wombat.

It's not just goverments it's also the people. We have a responsiblity to make individual decisions to help make a difference. We put them in power. I voted. Now it's up to the people to say enough is enough. It's not just about drought it's about immigration from either flood affected areas OR drought affected areas, it's about continued tempature increases and unusual weather patterns that are occurring at an increased rate. It's about farms, food availability which in turn affects imports and exports. It's about the heating up of the "urban island" environments. It's all these things and more.


Climate change is a joke if we left it to Rudd and now Abbot. Just waiting for the senate to veto the bill on climate change now. We'll have to wait further. What's Abbot's alternative.?





http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politic ... 5796546530


DECISION TIME


Garrett rejects Traveston dam
11th November 2009





This decision was about people who lived in the area lobbying extensively and less about political decisions made at the state level. It was about individuals stopping the forward thinking programs of our State Government. So I don't blame the State Government for not taking this action I blame the "The Mary River Traveston Dam lobbyists" for stopping it.

Msr. Wombat! Surely we are looking at different graphs!

See, I agree with you - almost - on the murky problem of paleoclimate data, because they're still arguing over what constitute meaningful proxies for determining paleoclimate. Alas, no one had thermometers hooked up to recording devices a thousand years ago. (Or were even bothering to write down what they said.) I actually agree the tree ring problem needs to be sorted out, as to what tree rings are a meaningful paleoclimate record.

That said, you cannot tell me what our thermometers have been telling us since 1880.

You can pee on my leg, but do not tell me it's raining!

Source: wikipedia, intrumental temperature record


So here's what I can and cannot accept. Until the paleoclimate proxy argument gets resolved definitively, we MIGHT be permitted to quibble over whether our current warming period is anomalous or not, when compared to past ones such as the MWP. I believe it is, BTW. I know and accept the MWP existed; unfortunately ours seems to be coming on faster & hotter. What I will not accept - is somebody telling me that graph doesn't show what it does show.



I will pass along the note to them that as their ancestral place of birth sinks beneath the waves, that they may take hearty comfort in the fact that they will have a century to move. I am sure they will be delighted! P.S. it is at least better than when the World Bank plops a dam down on an indigenous culture and only gives them five years or so to relocate.



The cosmic ray hypothesis as a driver of climate? Fascinating. And here I thought they only gave the superheroes of the Fantastic Four their powers.

If it can show why we have undergone a current period of cosmic ray bombardment over the last 60 or so years that is unlike any cosmic ray bombardment ever encountered in the past, I might accept it.



Where I agree with you, Wombat, is that as with many questions of science, there definitely are things that can be more precisely quantified, measured, and identified.

Where I do not agree with is I think the evidence is in that a) the planet is undergoing an anomalous warming period unlike previous warming periods in the past and b) the most likely cause of this is human activity.

I also think that fortunately even if b) is the case, we can correct for the problem without endangering human economic or other survival, mostly by shifting to new energy technologies that do not release as much carbon into the atmosphere. Thus, even the solution to the problem is not as terrible and painful as "denialists" claim.

Given the severity of the problem, and the relative painlessness of the solution (I'm not saying it will be totally painless for Exxon-Mobil etc. but at least "Beyond Petroleum" knows where the wind is blowing), I think there is no good reason to delay the necessary transition.

And yes, even Mr. Al Bore has pointed out that the new Green technologies can have their own positive economic effects, as they represent new economic opportunities.

There is an Alaskan
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/22/eveningnews/main1926055.shtml

Global Warming Imperils Alaska Village
(CBS) CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports Alaska, America's spectacular last frontier, is now Earth's hot spot.

Just ask Deborah Williams, of Alaska Conservation Solutions. "I used to bring people to this spot to see the glacier; now I bring people here to not see the glacier," she says. "Nine percent of the rise of sea levels in the world is because of melting Alaska glaciers."

No place says "baked Alaska" like the Eskimo village of Shishmaref, a barrier island town of 600 residents on the state's west coast.

Shishmaref's natives, called Inupiat, still survive on the salmon and seal they catch, along with the ivory and bone carvings they sell to outsiders.

The town has been the winter home of the Inupiat for 4,000 years, and became their permanent home only after they adopted Western ways with permanent housing. But there's nothing permanent about the village now, with the sea swallowing up one home after another.

It's because the protective sea ice that used to buffer the village against storms isn't as massive or long-lasting now — the weather's been too warm for too long. That makes the shoreline vulnerable to erosion at an average of 10 feet a year.

Resident Lorraine Jungers says people want to move, "but we don't want to move to another city. Because we lose our identity."

What the villagers want is to move Shishmaref as a whole: power plant, new school and every house on the island. The cost of doing so? An estimated $180 million.


Did you see that the Inupiat have lived there for 4000 years?
and now they have to move

this is not a El Nino
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMwVIfPgCs

Seeker1 wrote:

Well, I can and I have:

See: my post above on 2 Dec at 5:46pm.

Nevertheless, at the moment, we are in a cooling period – and CO2 continues to rise. And the CRU researchers have been unwilling in the past to admit that they knew that the temp. had been dropping since 1998, because it didn’t suit their bias, their funding sources or their colleagues. That is not science, it’s green left politics and conflicted interest.

CO2 rose between 1940 and 1980 as well. Approximately 40 years of CO2 rise. But what does your graph of temperature show, Seeker? It shows the global average temperature anomaly (GATA) going down for some 35 years!

Now, why was the Medieval Warm Period important? Answer: because it was probably hotter than it is today and it was followed by a Little Ice Age that ran from the C15th to C19th.

Now why is the Little Ice Age important? Answer: because it is being followed by another period of warming. Not surprising really when you are coming out of a little ice age that global average temperature would go up.

There is an argument that this is a natural cycle of variation in the Earth’s climate. There are many who hold to this view on the basis of the evidence available to them. Others just "believe" it!. Those that don’t are trying to demonstrate that it isn’t a natural cycle by using very crude, poorly validated and unreliable computer models that produce results that don’t coincide with the observed data and which even the modellers can’t explain:
See: 1255352257.txt
Trenberth to Professor Man on 12 October 2009 saying:

“The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate”.

In others words, what we see is wrong because it doesn't fit our model. And green left governments want to use this level of analysis to justify bringing in a Carbon tax? Get away!

These models are predicated on the CO2-e / GATA correlation. It doesn't seem to occur to them that the fact that they can’t account for what is happening might mean that it may be something else that drives the GATA increase. Why can’t these guys get it?


Vostock ice core data. Note that the changes in CO2 lag the temperature changes by an average of 800 years. I wonder what that means?

Of course, part of the problem is that those who put up alternative hypotheses are ridiculed before sufficient consideration is given, or replication is undertaken.


Svensmark may yet prove to be closer than his denigrators would like, especially now that they are seen for what they are. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png

Why is anyone surprised that there are thoughtful people who are sceptical about what is being rammed down the world’s collective throat, hell, west or crooked.

It’s time for the scientific community to get back to the proper practice of science, and this means adopting a sceptical attitude to their craft. Until such time as they do, IMO the world is excused from slitting its own economic throat with the knife of Mann-made global warming.

Regards to all

Wombat.

That's what happens when background general/natural cyclical variation manifests within an otherwise upward trend. I think we are in another short term cooling period since about 2006 or so, this is what CRU was discussing, too bad it won't hold off the larger/longer upward long term trend forever.

I'm glad for it to some extent - it's kept the Atlantic hurricane season quiet for the last few years - too bad it won't last forever. But BTW I remember 2003-5, and I remember what the season was like then (although when Katrina hit Florida it was only a cat 1); and like I said, short term trends don't last forever.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWP_and_LI ... CC_reports



But the LIA ended in 1850 ... and the increase we see starts in 1920 ... doesn't that seem to coincide with major petroleum production and exploitation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry

By the 1920s, oil fields had been established in many countries including Canada, Poland, Sweden, the Ukraine, the United States, and Venezuela

Odd, I'm sure this is coincidence.



http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... p-and-co2/



I did. It said.

One study (Stott et al. 2003), argues that residual warming due to the sustained high level of activity since 1950 is responsible for 16 to 36% of recent warming while "most warming over the last 50 yrs is likely to have been caused by increases in greenhouse gases."

See, Wombat, I'm not denying that there is an aspect to climate variation not caused by man. I agree there is a complexity to the subject insofar as I think we're seeing a largely anthropogenic phenomenon manifest against a background of natural variation. The problem is the graphs show something unlike previous natural cycles.



Now let's be honest, Msr. Wombat. Some are in the employ of the petroleum or coal industry. Non?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... d_Skeptics

As I recall, you once said, or words to that effect, it's all about money and power. Well, it sure looks that way to me.

http://www.usnews.com/money/business-ec ... dfall.html
(btw this article argues against a windfall profits tax; which is not my point; but see the first sentences, which are.)

Exxon Mobil's staggering $40.6 billion earnings for 2007 drive the truth home: There's no business on the planet that gushes forth more profit than selling oil—nothing even close.

[snip]

I imagine they wouldn't give up that teat so easily.

Now here's a final rhetorical point. Given that, let's face it, whether there is global warming or not, oil and coal are nonrenewable resources (and not to enter into the peak oil debate but there are those who say we are past the Hubbert Peak), they produce other forms of pollution and environmental destruction in their production and transport (see Exxon Valdez), and BTW particularly when it comes to oil its regional concentration seems to give power to some despotic regimes in the Middle East (and some might say Venezuela) which makes us vulnerable in our dependence on it ...

Oh and as for coal ... in case you've noticed, the U.S. coal industry (don't know about Australia's), hasn't exactly had a stellar record when it comes to treating their workers with dignity (see: workers killed every year by lung disease and mine collapse) ... or protecting the environment (see: mountaintop removal) ...

isn't switching to alternative sources a good thing ... no matter what?

Beyond Petroleum (BP) gets it. Why don't the others?



Slitting its economic throat? Or getting rid of old 20th century economic monopolies (oil/coal) by establishing new 21st century economic industries? (Green power)?

Once again talking about trends, I imagine switching from old technologies to new causes economic pain in the short term, but general benefit in the long term. I'm sure switching to automobiles caused some pain in the horse and buggy industry. But the economists seem to think it was better for us overall (I'm just saying economically speaking).

From Seeker1:



In recent years the influx of funding for "alternatives" was huge and growing until the recent financial problems world wide but still continues on a lesser level.

The Dept. of Energy very recently gushed forth an unprecedented $500 million to get this second PV panel factory up and running in California...

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market ... -spur-jobs

Shell Oil had arguably the highest quality of construction and output in the photovoltaic industry and our little solar powered walkway lights are most likely using their products but their record in whole speaks of greed, waste and ruin.
They dropped quality and output standards for reasons that can only be outside of needed energy solutions and lie only in cost effectiveness for their public relations needs.




http://www.green-planet-solar-energy.co ... anels.html

The issue is complicated that is for sure
the thing is Global Warming
the melting of Greenland's glaciers, Artic Ice, and Antartica
means more fresh water and diminished salinity in the ocean

the Global Warming can trigger a Ice Age
because of the Conveyor belt slowing

It is slowing
If the conveyor belt stops it may take over 100 years to get going even more
We are talking millions of people will be affected
that could trigger an Ice Age