Will Global Cooling Kill Us All?

Gore, Albert wrote:

Nice link. Especially the point where it says "natural climate cycles". WHOA! What's that!? "NATURAL?" NO WAY!! Only MAN causes change in this world.

You're clearly an ignoramus. I don't come to insults easily, but to suggest that climate scientists don't recognize that there is natural variation in the climate shows utter stupidity. As I have pointed out in the other thread, the study shows that natural variation in solar input only explains 6% of the last 50 years of climate variability. Most of the variability on the monthly time scale is caused by el nino and la nina type events, but much of the overall warming is thought to be caused by greenhouse gas additions.

"...but much of the overall warming is thought to be caused by greenhouse gas additions."

Incorrect.

mattk wrote:

global cooling is a direct effect of global warming.

haha! ...this says it all right here, people. So, basically, no matter what happens, it is the result of global warming.

Seriously, what is your profession [...or major...if you are the age I suspect you are)? Be honest too, no BS.

I'd say History, possibly Political Science, no?

we should be so lucky

If you're going to ask dingle about his background, then let's here your credentials too. I'm a science major and I don't know of a single professor in the department who does not believe in anthropogenic climate change. In fact, I don't even know of one who believes that there is still realistic debate. Of course there are natural cycles, but do you actually understand how they work, or understand the scale of geologic time? The magnitude and speed of the current changes are unprecedented and there is overwhelming evidence that GHGs are responsible (for atleast most of the change). Do you not believe in global warming or just believe it is natural? Either way I assure you it is a major problem and that dumping more GHGs into the atmosphere is not going to help. Yes there are plenty of myths about climate change, but there are plenty of credible facts as well. Try reading a little-- and not just some conservative news publication--I mean actual recent scientific literature.

mattk wrote:

global cooling is a direct effect of global warming. Im getting tired of people mocking global warming with the whole " we have global cooling now" argument...do some reading people...

HAHAHHA

Are you f***ing serious?

DIII Runner wrote:

If you're going to ask dingle about his background, then let's here your credentials too. I'm a science major and I don't know of a single professor in the department who does not believe in anthropogenic climate change. In fact, I don't even know of one who believes that there is still realistic debate.

You are either 1) lying, or 2) really need to get out more, both off and online.

I sincerely worry about people like you going into careers which involve "thinking."

Causes of climate change varied: poll

Engineers plan environmental summit

Gordon Jaremko

edmontonjournal.com

Thursday, March 06, 2008

EDMONTON - Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.

The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.

A 99-per-cent majority believes the climate is changing. But 45 per cent blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled."

The divisions showed up in a canvass of more than 51,000 specialists licensed to practice the highly educated occupations by the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta.

"We're not surprised at all," APEGGA executive director Neil Windsor said today. "There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."

The only agreement among professionals is "we should do everything we can" to understand climate, adapt structures such as buildings and bridges to change and reduce human contributions to harmful trends, Windsor said.

The survey received 1,077 replies or a sample rated as an accurate portrait of the occupational groups' views to within three percentage points 19 times out of 20, APEGGA reported.

Alberta Environment helped design the poll and will give the results to the provincial government, association spokesman Philip Mulder said.

APEGGA is planning an "environmental summit" with other concerned agencies on Alberta climate change causes, effects and adaptations.

No date is set yet for the event. "We would prefer to have it sooner rather than later," Mulder said.

"These sessions can be structured so that they result in ... a concerted action plan to be directed at policy makers," APEGGA's environment committee said in a report to association members.

Potential actions include devising Alberta climate change forecasts, encouraging greenhouse-gas cleanups like industrial waste carbon disposal, and developing adaptation programs such as water conservation and energy efficiency, the committee said.

Only one-third of engineers and earth scientists polled by APEGGA rated the province's current climate change action plan as adequate.

About two-thirds of the professionals said the government should take on a leading role in developing renewable or sustainable energy sources and promoting energy efficiency among consumers. About half urged the province to make Alberta a world capital of capturing and storing industrial greenhouse-gas waste.

Engineers and earth scientists mostly feel free to speak out about climate change and take it into account in their work.

About two-thirds of the professionals say they feel no peer pressure to take particular stances on global warming, and 70 per cent report they have enough independence to take the issue into account in their professional roles.

But willingness to spend money on long-range climate change adaptations is still rare among employers of the science-based occupations, the survey results indicated.

In the poll of APEGGA's highly educated membership, "66 per cent state that corporate decision making is governed by short-term cost considerations rather than long-term investment."

Only 31 per cent of Alberta engineers and earth scientists say the organizations they serve regard them as valuable technical advisers on climate change. Just 26 per cent of the professionals believe they can influence corporate decisions.

© Edmonton Journal 2008

An excellent analysis of the "solar-induced warming" hypothesis:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/

And a word on poor statistical reasoning:

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/02/bad_statistical_reasoning_abou.php

pjb wrote:

An excellent analysis of the "solar-induced warming" hypothesis:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/

And a word on poor statistical reasoning:

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/02/bad_statistical_reasoning_abou.php

You do know that earth has been gradually cooling since '98, right? Cause your article implies earth is like, getting warmer. We're not. Not for 10 years.

I like how the first link is a blog too. Haha! Well, if that isn't FACT, I don't know what is!

What an idiot.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.......

Canada is having record snowfall this winter. I guess that's a result of global warming as well.

The way the whackos look at this, EVERY climate change is caused by global warming.

Take a walk Al G. But don't walk to far - you might walk off the end of the earth.

Regards

Frank Edwards

President of Flat Earth Society

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."

Coleman says his side of the global-warming debate is being buried in mainstream media circles.

Related

"As you look at the atmosphere over the last 25 years, there's been perhaps a degree of warming, perhaps probably a whole lot less than that, and the last year has been so cold that that's been erased," he said.

"I think if we continue the cooling trend a couple of more years, the general public will at last begin to realize that they've been scammed on this global-warming thing."

Coleman spoke to FOXNews.com after his appearance last week at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York, where he called global warming a scam and lambasted the cable network he helped create.

"You want to tune to the Weather Channel and have them tell you how to live your life?" Coleman said. "Come on."

He laments the network's decision to focus on traffic and lifestyle reports over the weather.

"It's very clear that they don't realize that weather is the most significant impact in every human being's daily life, and good, solid, up-to-the-minute weather information and meaningful forecasts presented in such a way that people find them understandable and enjoyable can have a significant impact," he said.

"The more you cloud that up with other baloney, the weaker the product," he said.

Coleman has long been a skeptic of global warming, and carbon dioxide is the linchpin to his argument.

"Does carbon dioxide cause a warming of the atmosphere? The proponents of global warming pin their whole piece on that," he said.

The compound carbon dioxide makes up only 38 out of every 100,000 particles in the atmosphere, he said.

"That's about twice as what there were in the atmosphere in the time we started burning fossil fuels, so it's gone up, but it's still a tiny compound," Coleman said. "So how can that tiny trace compound have such a significant effect on temperature?

"My position is it can't," he continued. "It doesn't, and the whole case for global warming is based on a fallacy."

Climate panel on the hot seat

By H. Sterling Burnett

March 14, 2008

More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to raise alarms over the possibility global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

To better understand this potential threat, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide a "comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socioeconomic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."

IPCC reports have predicted average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world's glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. However, several assessments of the IPCC's work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.

In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the "hockey stick." This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the last 100 years has caused unprecedented rise global warming.

However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC's peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted.

Furthermore, the community of specialists in ancient climates from which the peer reviewers were drawn was small and many of them had ties to the original authors — 43 paleoclimatologists had previously coauthored papers with the lead researcher who constructed the hockey stick.

These problems led Mr. Wegman's team to conclude that the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming "cannot be supported."

The IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 predicting global warming will lead to widespread catastrophe if not mitigated, yet failed to provide the most basic requirement for effective climate policy: accurate temperature statistics. A number of weaknesses in the measurements include the fact temperatures aren't recorded from large areas of the Earth's surface and many weather stations once in undeveloped areas are now surrounded by buildings, parking lots and other heat-trapping structures resulting in an urban-heat-island effect.

Even using accurate temperature data, sound forecasting methods are required to predict climate change. Over time, forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics.

In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.

A good example of a principle clearly violated is "Make sure forecasts are independent of politics." Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists — at least the lead scientists — who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval.

Sadly, Mr. Green and Mr. Armstrong found no evidence the IPCC was even aware of the vast literature on scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles.

The IPCC and its defenders often argue that critics who are not climate scientists are unqualified to judge the validity of their work. However, climate predictions rely on methods, data and evidence from other fields of expertise, including statistical analysis and forecasting. Thus, the work of the IPCC is open to analysis and criticism from other disciplines.

The IPCC's policy recommendations are based on flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles. Policymakers should take this into account before enacting laws to counter global warming — which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.

La Nina is in effect. Sweden had the warmest winter in 100 years, but worldwide it's been the coldest in 14 years. This does not mean global warming has been stopped.

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=597&a=751415

think of climate change as a man walking up a hill playing with a yo-yo. the yo-yo represents annual temperature averages. It goes up and down. But the man is making steady uphill progress.

If carbon is a problem, I put that problem on the 5,000,000,000 additional mouth breathers since the industrial revolution, rather than my commute.

Gore, Albert wrote:

HAHA!! Love it. Yes it is.

The reason is because the stupid @$$holes that spew that drivel aren't scientist/engineer types. Of the people I know, the majority that have actual "problem solving"/data careers realize that there are many, many more natural causes of climate change than the "carbon bad, oil bad, bad people" stuff.

But when I hang out with English/history/political science/liberal arts friends.....Whew, I just want to pull my hair out.

We gotta keep this thread going though, so lay off the real science talk, alright?

Al Gore, "the champion of the environment" only took two science courses in college, both of them introductory elective credits; he received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year.

No wonder he refuses all challenges to debate climatologists on this issue.