Dhamma Wheel Buddhist Forum

Hello Kim,

From the first post on, I was focusing on the issue of climate change and human role in it.

I consistently have been showing that the temperatures and CO2 levels have been changing for hundrends of millions of years (and more. we just lack the accurate data), and that the Earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years ago.


Global temperatures was changing even prior to homo sapiens, and that change was often much more severe than today. When compared to longer historical data, today's temperature "rise" is nothing compared to where the temperatures have historically been.

If one is to claim that "Extreme is new normal", implying that today's weather is more extreme - this needs to be proven.

I would like to see (I haven't yet) AGW proponents of comparing and contrasting modern climate with historical climate that occurred for at least hundreds of millions of years ago. Lets see the numbers of CO2, average global temperature, precipitation, storm levels, amount of hurricanes, etc. Without having sufficient data to compare current events with, we could get skewed and one sided conclussions. Maybe there were 100x as much storms in Cambrian (for example) than today. If so, then compared to Cambrian, we are in heaven! So little storms! The earth's weather is almost silent!


Also compared to even a tiny slice of data (nothing to say about bigger), today's rise in temperature is neither higher NOR faster. If there is no anomaly seen, and nature can be a perfect explanation - why claim that humans cause "extreme" weather?

Hi, Alex,
I'll take your points in a different order because that will make more sense:

Alex123 wrote: I would like to see (I haven't yet) AGW proponents of comparing and contrasting modern climate with historical climate that occurred for at least hundreds of millions of years ago. Lets see the numbers of CO2, average global temperature, precipitation, storm levels, amount of hurricanes, etc. Without having sufficient data to compare current events with, we could get skewed and one sided conclussions. Maybe there were 100x as much storms in Cambrian (for example) than today. If so, then compared to Cambrian, we are in heaven! So little storms! The earth's weather is almost silent!

AGW proponents - to use your phrase - acknowledge that climate in the distant past has been very different from what it is now and are basically not interested except to see what kinds of processes affect climate. The whole focus is on the recent past and the current changes from it. Research seeks to understand what happened within that time frame (say the last few thousand years, and especially the last few hundred) and what is likely to happen in the immediate future (say the next fifty or one hundred years).
There are several good reasons for that comparatively short-term focus. One is that the longer we go back, the less detailed information we have. Another is that changes in conditions vastly different from present conditions don't actually tell us much about how our present climate is likely to react. The main one would be very familiar to an accident investigation team. If a car crashed at 9.32 p.m., its position and velocity at 9.31 p.m. is relevant but its position and velocity at 9.00 p.m is much less relevant and its location at 9.00 a.m. probably doesn't matter at all and its location two years earlier matters even less. The same goes for our climate: the more recent, the more relevant.
That is why I have been saying all of this:

I consistently have been showing that the temperatures and CO2 levels have been changing for hundrends of millions of years (and more. we just lack the accurate data), and that the Earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years ago.
Global temperatures was changing even prior to homo sapiens, and that change was often much more severe than today. When compared to longer historical data, today's temperature "rise" is nothing compared to where the temperatures have historically been.

... is irrelevant.

Also compared to even a tiny slice of data (nothing to say about bigger), today's rise in temperature is neither higher NOR faster.

You have not shown the truth of that. On the time scales of the graphs you favour, any change over less than a thousand years is a vertical line. The change we are worried about is a change over a hundred years - and looks the same but is ten times faster.

If there is no anomaly seen, and nature can be a perfect explanation - why claim that humans cause "extreme" weather?

At the time scales AGW proponents look at, there is a significant anomaly and nature is not a perfect explanation.
And if you want to look in detail at ...

From the first post on, I was focusing on the issue of climate change and human role in it.

... you really have to look in detail at what has happened in the last hundred years or so, because before that, there was no human role in it.
Finally ...

If one is to claim that "Extreme is new normal", implying that today's weather is more extreme - this needs to be proven.

It is a bit early for proof (as I said in my OP), but the evidence is pretty strong - remembering that I was only, ever, comparing the present with the recent past.
Here - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... -extremes/ - are genuine climate experts trying to nut out the details before your very eyes.

Kim

Kim O'Hara wrote: AGW proponents - to use your phrase - acknowledge that climate in the distant past has been very different from what it is now and are basically not interested except to see what kinds of processes affect climate. The whole focus is on the recent past and the current changes from it. Research seeks to understand what happened within that time frame (say the last few thousand years, and especially the last few hundred) and what is likely to happen in the immediate future (say the next fifty or one hundred years).

So they avoid the data that would show that current CO2 levels and temperature are neither catastrophic, nor unusually high. Furthermore as temperature levels and CO2 levels varied quite widely and been as high as ~7,000ppm CO2, today's 390ppm levels are laughably small. If anything, we are CO2 starved.'


The shorter the time span you use to collect data, the less relevant and accurate the data is.

The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, and climate was changing for that time. How accurate would it be to take last 100-200 years and claim what "normal" should be?

100 years out of 4,5 billion of years the earth has existed is = 0.00000222222222222222%

I wouldn't base any standards on what "normal is" based on 0.000002...% amount of data.
Even 1K amount of years would be still near zero 0.00002...% amount of data.

There are several good reasons for that comparatively short-term focus. One is that the longer we go back, the less detailed information we have. Another is that changes in conditions vastly different from present conditions don't actually tell us much about how our present climate is likely to react. The main one would be very familiar to an accident investigation team. If a car crashed at 9.32 p.m., its position and velocity at 9.31 p.m. is relevant but its position and velocity at 9.00 p.m is much less relevant and its location at 9.00 a.m. probably doesn't matter at all and its location two years earlier matters even less. The same goes for our climate: the more recent, the more relevant.

We are talking about climate change and human role in it. If climate could change quite a lot PRIOR to industrialization of humans, then humans are NOT a required factor to change the climate.

Kim O'Hara wrote: That is why I have been saying all of this:

I consistently have been showing that the temperatures and CO2 levels have been changing for hundrends of millions of years (and more. we just lack the accurate data), and that the Earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years ago.
Global temperatures was changing even prior to homo sapiens, and that change was often much more severe than today. When compared to longer historical data, today's temperature "rise" is nothing compared to where the temperatures have historically been.

... is irrelevant.

Fully relevant as it shows that humans are not required cause for climate change.

Kim O'Hara wrote: ... you really have to look in detail at what has happened in the last hundred years or so, because before that, there was no human role in it.

Give me a single proof that humans cause climate change.


The main argument about CO2 causing temperature to rise is incorrect:
..CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The earth's atmosphere has actually cooled by 0.13° Celsius since 1979 according to highly accurate satellite-based atmospheric temperature measurements. By contrast, computer climate models predicted that the globe should have warmed by an easily detectable 0.4° C over the last fifteen years.

The scientific evidence argues against the existence of a greenhouse crisis, against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce the greenhouse threat.

Current computer climate models are incapable of coupling the oceans and atmosphere; misrepresent the role of sea ice, snow caps, localized storms, and biological systems; and fail to account accurately for the effects of clouds.

Temperature records reveal that predictive models are off by a factor of two when applied retroactively in projecting the change in global temperature for this century.

The amount of warming from 1881 to 1993 is 0.54° C. Nearly 70 percent of the warming of the entire time period — 0.37° C —occurred in the first half of the record — before the period of the greatest build-up of greenhouse gases.

Accuracy in land-based measurements of global temperatures is frustrated by the dearth of stations, frequent station relocations, and changes in how ocean-going ships make measurements.

Although all of the greenhouse computer models predict that the greatest warming will occur in the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records indicate that the Arctic has actually cooled by 0.88° C over the past fifty years.

Corrective environmental policies would have a minuscule impact on the climate. According to its own projections, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's own plan would spare the earth only a few hundredths of a degree of warming by middle of the next century.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/pointlss.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

With metta,

Alex

So they avoid the data that would show that current CO2 levels and temperature are neither catastrophic, nor unusually high. Furthermore as temperature levels and CO2 levels varied quite widely and been as high as ~7,000ppm CO2, today's 390ppm levels are laughably small. If anything, we are CO2 starved.'

Alex,
Go back to the car crash analogy. It is not a matter of avoiding data, it is a matter of not needing data. Who cares where the car was a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? Who cares how fast it was travelling last Friday?
The rest of your post repeats - often literally - misunderstandings and bad science that you have (mostly, anyway) previously posted.
I think I have been very patient with you but at this stage I'm going to say - again - that I won't respond to anything from you except a sensible question.
I'll extend that: a sensible question which I haven't already answered.

Kim

Kim O'Hara wrote:

So they avoid the data that would show that current CO2 levels and temperature are neither catastrophic, nor unusually high. Furthermore as temperature levels and CO2 levels varied quite widely and been as high as ~7,000ppm CO2, today's 390ppm levels are laughably small. If anything, we are CO2 starved.'

Alex,
Go back to the car crash analogy. It is not a matter of avoiding data, it is a matter of not needing data. Who cares where the car was a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? Who cares how fast it was travelling last Friday?

Our original discussion was about the role of Humans on climate change. I've shown in many posts that nature itself can be responsible for "wild" swings in temperatures and CO2 levels. I have also shown that CO2 does not cause climate change. So humans burning tiny % of CO2 is not causing climate change. It is also a not needed explanation. Nature itself could produce up to 7,000ppm of CO2 and it can remove it as well.

The reason I was talking about high CO2 levels and high temperature levels is to give some perspective to claims that modern temperature is "extreme" or requires "human" intervention. If it is extreme, then ONLY at the cold side. The climate today is not more extreme than it was before and doesn't require human factor which you are yet to prove.


As for the crash. What crash are you talking about? CO2 levels being too high (at 390ppm)? They averaged above 1,000 ppm for millions of years when life (dinosaurs) flourished. Temperature extreme? It was much hotter before and life was quite fine. I think that the modern crash is the fact of very cold temperatures and lack of CO2 (an important gas for the plants).




There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carbo ... imate.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


So what is so bad about our super high levels of CO2 being 390ppm?

If nature could produce so much CO2, then it is the main factor that decides how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere - not us.

What crash are you talking about? CO2 levels being too high (at 390ppm)?

Yes. 390 is dangerously high for a whole human civilisation which developed with a lower level and is critically dependent on that lower level - not least because of sea levels. Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown.

Kim

Kim O'Hara wrote:

What crash are you talking about? CO2 levels being too high (at 390ppm)?

Yes. 390 is dangerously high for a whole human civilisation which developed with a lower level and is critically dependent on that lower level - not least because of sea levels. Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown.

Kim

So are you saying that the reason why 390ppm is dangerous is because you think it raises temperature levels high enough to melt enough ice to raise ocean levels so much as to drown coastal cities?

"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Compared to former geologic periods, concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere are still very small and may not have a statistically measurable effect on global temperatures. For example, during the Ordovician Period 460 million years ago CO2 concentrations were 4400 ppm while temperatures then were about the same as they are today.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So are you saying that the reason why 390ppm is dangerous is because you think it raises temperature levels high enough to melt enough ice to raise ocean levels so much as to drown coastal cities?

Yes.
The sites you quote are totally out of step with expert opinion.

Kim

Kim O'Hara wrote:

So are you saying that the reason why 390ppm is dangerous is because you think it raises temperature levels high enough to melt enough ice to raise ocean levels so much as to drown coastal cities?

Yes.
The sites you quote are totally out of step with expert opinion.

Kim

Are you trying to scare us with "Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown" to adopt your view?

Considering how even the best weather models cannot predict with 100% accuracy the exact temperature days from now, how do you know that they can be accurate with such doomsday scenario?

Kim O'Hara wrote:390 is dangerously high for a whole human civilisation which developed with a lower level and is critically dependent on that lower level - not least because of sea levels. Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown.
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p117724" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

bold is mine

1)Prove that your apocalyptic scenario is true and 390ppm is dangerously high.
2) Prove that modern climate change is due to humans rather than nature. Climate was changing as much, if not more, long before modern humans even appeared. There is nothing extreme in the modern climate change.
3) Prove that CO2 significantly heats up the planet.

If AGW has any scientific merit, it will surely have more rebutal to these facts than plain "your science is wrong, while ours is right."

Rebute this, if you can:
"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Refute the above, if there is scientific refutation.

100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Explain that, Kim!


Compared to former geologic periods, concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere are still very small and may not have a statistically measurable effect on global temperatures. For example, during the Ordovician Period 460 million years ago CO2 concentrations were 4400 ppm while temperatures then were about the same as they are today.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
How can above be?


CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate! [1]
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So much for CO2 causing climate change. Rising CO2 levels is a result, not the cause!



If mankind were to cease all economic production and cease buring all carbon fuels, at best, a 2% reduction in CO2 levels could be had. Additional reductions from manking would need to involve an end to “respiration” – manking would need to stop breathing. Having achieved these miniscule reductions, at fantastic cost and loss of personal freedom, nature could, in the bat of an eye, dramatically reverse any man made reduction. You see, temperature drives the CO2 level, CO2 levels do not drive temperature.

Kim, what is wrong with references to scientific studies at bottom of:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 80#p111634" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 80#p111627" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Alex,
I think I have already answered all the questions except one in your last post - mostly because you have asked them before.
Re-read the thread, if you like, and this time (1) click on the links I provided, (2) read the material you find there and (3) try to keep an open mind until you have read it and understood it.
The one question I haven't answered was:

Kim, what is wrong with references to scientific studies at bottom of:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...and my answer is that the facts may be right (even at best, they are out of date - 2003 is very old climate science because the field is progressing so quickly) but the source is unreliable and the interpretation of the facts is just plain wrong.

Kim

Kim,

I've tried to read your website. (http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate ... period.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

Your site states this:
"a doubling of CO2 causes a warming of around 3°C."

Prove that.

Experience have shown something else:


According to the Greens, during the post-war boom global warming should have pushed temperatures up. But the opposite happened. "As a matter of the fact, the decrease in temperature, which was very noticeable in the 60s and 70s, led many people to fear that we would be going into another ice age," remembers Fred Singer, former Chief Scientist with the US Weather Program.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Explain that, Kim!

Compared to former geologic periods, concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere are still very small and may not have a statistically measurable effect on global temperatures. For example, during the Ordovician Period 460 million years ago CO2 concentrations were 4400 ppm while temperatures then were about the same as they are today.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
How can above be?

CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html

Refute the radiative heating physics:
"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


"Extreme weather" was even prior to industrialization:

Scientists also agree – for it is a matter of record – that floods of similar severity have struck the east coast of Australia before: twice in the 19th century and most recently in 1974. These earlier floods could not have been caused by manmade “global warming”, because there was not enough of it to make any difference at that time."
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/origi ... loods.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... floods.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

According to Piers Corbyn, Director of Weather Action, many scientists do not accept the idea that pollution is causing global warming. Environmentalists claim that world temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but Corbyn points out that the period they take as their starting point — around 1880 — was colder than average. What's more, the timing of temperature changes does not appear to support the theory of global warming. Most of the rise came before 1940 —before human-caused emissions of 'greenhouse' gases became significant.

According to the Greens, during the post-war boom global warming should have pushed temperatures up. But the opposite happened. "As a matter of the fact, the decrease in temperature, which was very noticeable in the 60s and 70s, led many people to fear that we would be going into another ice age," remembers Fred Singer, former Chief Scientist with the US Weather Program.

Even in recent times, the temperature has not behaved as it should according to global warming theory. Over the last eight years, temperature in the southern hemisphere has actually been falling. Moreover, says Piers Corbyn, "When proper satellite measurements are done of world temperatures, they do not show any increase whatsoever over the last 20 years."

But Greens refuse to accept they have could have been proved wrong. Now they say global warming can involve temperature going both up and down.

"Global warming is above all global climatic destabilisation," says Edward Goldsmith, editor of the Ecologist, "with extremes of cold and heat when you don't expect it. You can't predict climate any more. You get terrible droughts in certain cases; sometimes you get downpours. In Egypt, I think, they had a rainfall for the first time in history — they suddenly had an incredible downpour. Water pouring down in places where it's never rained before. And then you get droughts in another area. So it's going to be extremely unpredictable."

Scientists also point out that nature produces far more greenhouse gases than we do. For example, when the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted, within just a few hours it had thrown into the atmosphere 30 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide— almost twice as much as all the factories, power plants and cars in the United States do in a whole year. Oceans emit 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, every year. Decaying plants throw up another 90 billion tonnes, compared to just six billion tonnes a year from humans.

What's more, 100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Human factor is not needed to explain warming and cooling of the planet. Climate change was happening for 4.5 billion of years, and today's 390ppm is nothing extremely high compared to as much as 7,000ppm of CO2 that nature produced by itself. Even when humans were using lots of factories, there were times when the temperature have gone DOWN. This is contrary to AGW proponents claim that humans cause temperature to rise.

Today's "rise" in temperature is no different from rise in temperatures that have occured multiple times within the past 400,000 years. Moreover, during time of the dinosaurs the average global temperature was MUCH hotter than today. This shows to us again, that humans are not required to raise the temperature.

Kim,

Kim O'Hara wrote: Until we know why you reject the weight of genuine climate science, debating individual facts and factoids will get us nowhere.
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 80#p111720" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Your "genuine climate science" seems to promote fear. Example your statement.

Kim O'Hara wrote: Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown.
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p117724" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seems more like fear mongering (Oh no! Cities will drown!) in line with your "expert" opinion:

Kim O'Hara wrote:

So are you saying that the reason why 390ppm is dangerous is because you think it raises temperature levels high enough to melt enough ice to raise ocean levels so much as to drown coastal cities?

Yes.
The sites you quote are totally out of step with expert opinion.

Here is your expert opinion on GW.

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory) (in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)


Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are...

former Vice President Al Gore (now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An Inconvenient Truth)

"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."

Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland's glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001) (8)
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_a ... hor2108263" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Now, do you know why I reject your experts?

Kim O'Hara wrote: "The point of that exercise was to remind you (or demonstrate to you) that the timescales of the natural changes you keep talking about are enormous compared to human history and especially AGW."
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 60#p112989" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wrong again, Kim.

See the graph below. Please notice that current changes are NOT faster and are not larger than natural changes before. So there is nothing to suggest that current cyclical temperature fluctuation is abnormal, and thus would require some other, such as human factor.

Alex,
You can't disprove good science with bad science.
Saying something ten times doesn't make it any truer than saying it once.
Neither of us has spent the last forty years studying climate science so we depend on the knowledge of those who have. Go to Spencer Weart's site, RealClimate, the IPCC and Skeptical Science, and learn.

Kim

Kim O'Hara wrote: Alex,
You can't disprove good science with bad science.

You are right.

Here is quote from your good science:

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory) (in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are...
former Vice President Al Gore (now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An Inconvenient Truth)

"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."

Petr Chylek (Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia) Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland's glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001) (8)

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada quote from the Calgary Herald, 1999
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_a ... hor2108263" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That is your expert opinion? That is "good" science?


Do you think it is good science when those scientists "offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have".

Do you think anyone can take Al Gore's opinion seriously when he says "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is,".




Don't say that it is just them. You yourself have tried to scare us with apocalyptic scenarios of:

Kim O'Hara wrote: Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown.
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p117724" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Alex wrote:That is your expert opinion? That is "good" science?

No and no. Please don't associate me with opinions you happen to pick up elsewhere.

Alex wrote: You yourself have tried to scare us with apocalyptic scenarios of:
Kim O'Hara wrote:
Temp goes up, ice melts, cities drown.

I didn't 'try to scare you', though I do think the prediction is cause for grave concern. I was summarising, in the fewest possible words, why we should be worried by increased levels of CO2.

Kim