Topic: Carbon Dioxide & Global Warming - Case not proven...

[Simon]

I've finished watching it now, so time to go scouring the web for more information, particularly about that correlation between sunspot activity and temperatures, but I had to take a quick diversion to transcribe this excellent rant from Marcus Brigstocke in last night's Now Show (download it from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/nowshow.shtml if you missed it).

Apparently, global warming is a liberal conspiracy. Erm, you know, because of all the stuff we have to gain from it, like, umm, err, you know, things like, err, NOTHING AT ALL, YOU LYING BASTARDS!

I warn you I am slightly on one this evening. Now look, I'm no scientist, clearly (I've met a woman). I am willing to admit that the global warming thing has gained momentum like a chubby Texan soaked in oil sliding down a hill of his own chip wrappers. Yeehah! But there is a big problem right at the core of the anti-environmentalists' argument. Here it is:

About two years ago there were thousands of people saying

No. It's not happening. Definitely not happening. No way. It's not getting warmer. You're imagining it. You're malking it up. Brrr, I'm cold. Who else is cold? I know I am.

Now these same people are saying

All right, it is happening, but it's definitely not our fault.

Hang on, isn't that the same as saying

I can categorically say I'm not having an affair, and anyway she seduced me.

If you used to be in the denier's camp, and you're now in the it's anyone but us camp, then your motives are as suspect as an ITV phone quiz. If you're in either of those two camps I mentioned, or worse still the it is happening and it is our fault but what's the point in doing anything because China isn't...

(Richard Littlejon, you hate-filled swine, I know that's where you're hiding, come out you viscious little prick)

... China aren't doing it so neither am I. Miss! Miss! Johnny isn't doing his sums miss, so neither am I!

Grow up! There's lots that China isn't doing that's still worth our while. Democracy, human rights, eating cheddar, to name but three.

If your excuse for behaving like a selfish arrogant backward twonk is China, then please, buy a house near the sea and stay in it when the water comes up over your head.

Now, one of the accusations in this Martin Durkin documentary on channel 4 was that the people who tell us that global warming is happening, some 80% of the scientific community by the way, and if that's enough science for cats to choose what food to eat, it's certainly good enough for me. Anyway, Martin Durkin asserts that they are lying and deceiving us, and misrepresenting the facts, and certainly he would know. He made a documentary called Against Nature after which channel 4 had to broadcast a prime-time apology, something they're now working into their regular schedules I think, because the Independent Television Commission stated that

Comparison of the unedited and edited transcripts confirmed that the editing of the interviews with the environmentalists who contributed had indeed distorted or misrepresented their known views. It was also found that the production company had misled them.

Someone's pants are on fire. Whose are they? They're Martin Durkin's.

In Thursday's Times, there is an exchange between an eminent scientist, a respected scientific author, and Durkin. Mr Armand Leroy e-mailed Durkin to point out that a huge amount of the data he'd referred to was out of date and had now been disproved. He said in the e-mail

To put this bluntly, the data that you showed in your programme were wrong in several different ways.

And Durkin replied

You're a big daft cock.

Let's look at the lousy science he tried to pass off as reality in his steaming heap of a programme.

He tried to prove that solar power was useless by going to a hospital in Africa serving several remote communities, that had two solar panels on the roof. Now, I say two solar panels, but one of them closely resembled one of those panels that you used to get in a Casio watch in the early eighties, that, if you stood very still at midday in August somewhere near the equator, maybe, just maybe, you could tell the time. And that was his proof. They then cut inside to a sad-looking African doctor saying

Yes, it's either the fridge full of vaccines or the lights, but not both.

Well then, that's proof, isn't it. Solar clearly doesn't work. It can't work. Look at the hospital. Look at the fridge. Look at the lights. Solar power doesn't work.

What if we had some more money and got another solar panel?

What? Are you seriously saying that some of Africa's problems are due to a lack of resources, and not, in fact, the deliberate attempt of a load of malevolent greenies to prevent them having a better life?

Err.... yeah.

You, Mitch Benn, are a communist.

Solar's too expensive? Yeah, well so is cinema, popcorn, gym memberships, iPods, Blue Peter phone-ins and Duchy Original oaten biscuits, but we still buy them. It's a question of how much you want a thing, and I want Duchy Original oaten biscuits.

One of the claims was that Bush and his people are spending too much money researching climate change. Yes, of course they are, famously. We know this of the Bush administration, they just hurl money at the climate change situation. They're obsessed with it. They go on and on and on, ooh, the climate's changing, we must do something about it. Of course that's absolutely right. And what else needs to be done? Well, air stewardesses should wear more make-up, there's not enough branches of Tescos, and is there any way we could make Jeremy Clarkson just a bit more interested in cars, cos sometimes I think he doesn't care.

Do you know, the Daily Mail ran a headline last weekend - "EU switches off our lightbulbs". Good grief, only the Daily Mail could try to generate a feeling of nostalgic inertia over a bloody lightbulb!

Q: How many Daily Mail readers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: What was wrong with the old one eh? Remember the good old days when bulbs were round and not curly. Oh where is the Britain of our past? It's political correctness gone mad!

Man-made climate change is not a scientific certainty. The balance of probabilities says it is happening. If it's not, then people in the future might play this, and say

Listen to that hysterical whining greenie. What a dupe. He was taken in. What a fool.

I can live with that. But what if it is happening, and it's our fault, and Martin Durkin is wrong, or just lying like the big Durkin he seems to be? What if we are in a position to change it and we don't? It won't kill us to drive a smaller car, switch a thing off when we've finished with it, change the odd light bulb, holiday in Bognor Regis (all right, that sucks), but the rest of it is not so bad.

I've finished now - where's my limo?

[Simon]

One thing still bugging me...
The correlation between the sun spot activity and temparature is so strong (accepting the errors at the end of one of the graphs) that I would like to find an article which explains why is it so strong (and the reasons for the differences at the end), ideally in simple(ish) language.

100 years of reasonably close curves (1860-1960+ depending on where the errors are) needs more understanding from me.

Hopefully in one of the links you have given me I will find what I'm looking for...

This link is the one you're looking for: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf, a 2-page article entitled "Pattern of Strange Errors Plagues Solar Activity and Terrestrial Climate Data"

This graph is taken from that article, but it's very similar to one of the ones used in the film to show a correlation between sunspot activity and temperature.



That and other graphs over longer periods seem to show that there is a link between sunspot activity and temperature, and I won't argue with that. There are many factors which affect our climate, and it would be foolish to suggest that the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere is the only thing which drives it.

The important point about that graph is that the last few points on the solar activity (blue) line aren't accurate. The article says

However,close analysis of the central graphs in all of these articles reveals questionable handling of the underlying physical data. In the 1991 article, the impressive agreement of the solar curve with terrestrial temperatures during the global warming of the recent decennia had been a major factor in the article’s strong impact. But this agreement was actually an artifact: it had simply been obtained by adding, to a heavily smoothed (“filtered”) curve, four additional points covering the period of global warming, which were only partially filtered or not filtered at all.

Figure 1a shows northern hemisphere land temperatures (red asterisks) and filtered and nonfiltered solar cycle lengths (blue plus signs). The added four points are marked 1–4. The rationale for adding them without proper filtering was that the proper filtering of these points could not be performed because the observational data necessary for the filtering were not yet available in 1991. So instead of restricting the curve to the proper data that were available at the time, a curve was presented that consisted of different types of data where the agreement with global warming was due to the non-filtered data alone. Today, in the year 2004, more data have become available, and the four points can be plotted more correctly (see Figure 1c, which shows properly filtered solar cycle lengths). Now the sensational agreement with the recent global warming, which drew worldwide attention, has totally disappeared. Nevertheless,the authors and other researchers keep presenting the old misleading graph.

Here's figure 1c from that article:



So, although it looks like a safe bet that sunspot activity is a contributing factor towards the temperature on our planet, there has been a temperature rise in recent decades that cannot be explained by sunspot activity, so we must look for some other factor to account for it.

Hope this de-bugs you 

[Simon]

It seems that one of the people who appeared in the programme, Carl Wunsch, a professor of Oceanography, is very unhappy with the way his views were presented. Here's his response to the programme: http://ocean.mit.edu/%7Ecwunsch/papersonline/channel4response

I was approached, as explained to me on the telephone, because I was known to have been unhappy with some of the more excitable climate-change  stories in the British media, most conspicuously the notion that the Gulf Stream could disappear, among others. When a journalist approaches me suggesting a "critical approach" to a technical subject, as the email states, my inference is that we are to discuss which elements are contentious, why they are contentious, and what the arguments are on all sides. To a scientist, "critical" does not mean a hatchet job---it means a thorough-going examination of the science. The scientific subjects described in the email, and in the previous and subsequent telephone conversations, are complicated, worthy of exploration, debate, and an educational effort with the public. Hence my willingness to participate. Had the words "polemic", or "swindle" appeared in these preliminary discussions, I would have instantly declined to be involved.

and

In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making--- which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.

I seem to remember Al Gore discussing CO₂ and oceans in the Inconvenient Truth film - something along the lines of the ocean "breathing" each day and night, absorbing CO₂ during the night when it cools and emitting it again during the day when it warms up, because water can hold more dissolved gas when it's cold than when it's hot.

[Simon]

Here's a fascinating flash widget which shows how eight of the people in the programme (John Christy, Paul Reiter, Richard Lindzen, Paul Dreissen, Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer and Tim Ball) are linked to various organisations and lobby groups with aims that run generally anti-environment and pro-business: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=831

[rob-magic]

Simon,

---------

Quote from: people in the future
Listen to that hysterical whining greenie. What a dupe. He was taken in. What a fool.

I can live with that. But what if it is happening, and it's our fault, and Martin Durkin is wrong, or just lying like the big Durkin he seems to be? What if we are in a position to change it and we don't? It won't kill us to drive a smaller car, switch a thing off when we've finished with it, change the odd light bulb, holiday in Bognor Regis (all right, that sucks), but the rest of it is not so bad.

I've finished now - where's my limo?

---------

Naturally, whatever the scientists's perspective is, we assume to be correct. - like 8 out of ten cats! Some very clever comedy in the show.
Wonderful to see the forum active on this topic. Bit busy at the mo but my understanding is that the sun has been burning brighter since the early 70's. Mars and Jupiter confirm this. The 'Snowball Earth' theory described in a horizon (I think) documentary the other day (google or youtube it) had one problem, that of bacteria found by a guy arguing the theory having the need for light. It was proved that indeed, the snowball theory (global cooling from the sun's ray's being deflected by the ice among other things to the point of a seemingly permanent global freeze) could have happened as current ice caps on earth were found to have been formed so slowly that the ice was practically transparent and therefore luminous at ten meters and plus thick, thus supporting the bacteria and photosynthetic ocean life. - BAM!

Understandings of the 50,000 year cycle would add the needed perspective,

Check out these articles: Earth changes and the "End Times" section of tts http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/category.asp?ID=45
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=38 - Native American Indian Prophecies. Extracts from a talk given by Lee Brown at the 1986 Continental Indigenous Council, Tanana Valley, Fairbanks, Alaska.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=64 - World's Before Our Own 2. Housed in a warehouse in Ica, Peru, is a collection of ancient stone tablets which carry pictures portraying advanced medical practice. They open a Pandora's box of questions and challenge everything we have been taught about our past.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=572 - Back to the Future!!! Part 1. Geological evidence points to an cataclysmic event that almost defies comprehension. The problem is that it may just happen again ... and soon too.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=573 - Back to the Future!!! Part 2. Given Einstein’s endorsement of Hapgood’s ideas it is reasonable to ask whether his hypothesis could actually happen again and if so when.

I have now heard talk of the emersion of the fifth world, soon to embrace us all with new truths, energies, and knowledges but it is said to arise post martial law in the US. Happy hunting! I will go through all the posts again thoroghly when time prevails.

I wanted to highlight the fact that  people WILL gladly do MOST things within their power to help eachother and our environment. (I've never been to Bognor Regis). I believe the problem is in the context. Human activity and resulting effects on this Earth is as I understand it, irrelevant as far as global temperatures are concerened. This doesn't mean I think we should all leave our appliances on when we don't need them. It means that hopefully, proof of the wider picture of Earth change cycles and the recorded increase in the sun since the 70's will not be lost in the madness.

If is turned out that we had to burn all the oil in the Earth - and quickly if science said so for us to have enough time to ensure a solution to global cooling, how messed up would our heads be then? lol

How many parties do you or I hear discussing the ice cap findings on Mars and Jupiter - any 'scientists' - what are the backgrounds of these scientists? Are the scientists findings relevant to their backgrounds are they a single voice or one of the many, do their discoveries stand?

Is it possible for me to say this and not be assumed to be on an agenda?

Cheers

P.S. I understand the scenario that arises when things we thought one way about are changed by new data and I know the oil industry is probably loving it but I still believe that global cooling is our main concern. What happened to our sun in the seventies? Why?

[Simon]

Oh no, not more truthseeker articles 

OK, I'll read them and see if I find any sense there. But not tonight - it's been a busy day.

[James]

OK, I'll read them and see if I find any sense there. But not tonight - it's been a busy day.

I wouldn't bother.

I just had  aquick look at this one...

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=64 - World's Before Our Own 2. Housed in a warehouse in Ica, Peru, is a collection of ancient stone tablets which carry pictures portraying advanced medical practice. They open a Pandora's box of questions and challenge everything we have been taught about our past.

Go to  an interesting bit about mysterious metal spheres, which I thought I'd investigate....
Then found this:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/spheres.html

Can't be bothered with the rest. Clearly little or no investigation of the facts in the original article, therefore the likelihood of any quality information coming out is minimal.

I had hoped that there would be a little more "filtering" by Rob-Magic to reduce the amount of rubbish and drivel we have to wade through to get to something of interest, but he clearly hasn't bothered.

James

[Simon]

Ah James! Welcome back 

Have I managed to answer your concerns about that film, or are there any issues still outstanding? It was a terrible but highly effective piece of propaganda, and I think it's important that any doubts people still have in their minds need to be brought into the open and answered.

PS have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? If not, I believe the video rental place on Eastcott hill has some copies for free hire, and SCAN have also got a few copies to lend out - if you PM AndyP or Debj then I'm sure they'll be able to arrange for you to see it.

[Margie]

An Inconvenient Truth is also showing as part of the Swindon Festival of Literature on Sunday 13 May at 8 pm at the Arts Centre in Devizes Road.

http://www.swindonfestivalofliterature.co.uk/index.html

[James]

The thing which intrigues me is the correlation prior to the last few points.
What is the mechanism which appears to tie it together up to that point....?
Understanding that will make understanding the failure of the graph in the last few steps easier.

I'd found the paper you referenced, but it seemed to focus n the error at the end, with little on the rather bigger bit at the beginning.

I read some interesting things about the sun earlier, the 11 year (+/-) sunspot activity cycle, an 80 year cycle, and probably many more.
Will carry on reading.

James.

I won't be watching the film. I can't cope with the thought of an hour or so of Al Gore being sincere.

[Tobes]

I won't be watching the film. I can't cope with the thought of an hour or so of Al Gore being sincere

... then you'll be missing out James. You don't get more sceptical than me, but the evidence is presented in a very clear way within this film. Well worth a look in my opinion.

[Simon]

The thing which intrigues me is the correlation prior to the last few points.
What is the mechanism which appears to tie it together up to that point....?
Understanding that will make understanding the failure of the graph in the last few steps easier.

I'd found the paper you referenced, but it seemed to focus n the error at the end, with little on the rather bigger bit at the beginning.

I read some interesting things about the sun earlier, the 11 year (+/-) sunspot activity cycle, an 80 year cycle, and probably many more.
Will carry on reading.

It seems that there is a link between sunspot activity and climate, although I'm still not clear exactly how it works - it might be due to cosmic radiation, solar wind and cloud formation like they say in the film, but given the overall credibility of the rest of the film, that's just as likely to be utter nonsense.

The important thing about the discrepancy at the end is that it shows that sunspot activity isn't the sole factor controlling our climate, and that there's been a pretty sharp rise in temperature recently which can't be accounted for by sunspots. By using old incorrect data, the film tried to show that recent temperature rises were entirely due to sunspots and had nothing to do with CO₂. The correct data shows that this isn't the case so it must have been caused by something else. And greenhouse gasses seem like the most plausible explanation.

[rob-magic]

Just wondering if anyone is going to comment about other planets showing effects also.

How can time be justified discussing the human effect on this planet when the sun's activity can be monitored elsewhere.

Change is what the climate does.

[Simon]

Just wondering if anyone is going to comment about other planets showing effects also.

I don't remember the film actually mentioning that. I might get round to it eventually, but I'm still reading up on the things that the film did cover. I'm on the temperature of the troposphere at the moment.

[Alan Hayward]

To add my two penn'orth.

Oh yes, global warming I can understand.

Man made? Nah. Give me a break. Somebody tell me the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Oh yes, it's 0.383 ppm. That is 0.383 parts per million. A "major contributor" to greenhouse gases then. Somebody tell me how much water vapour there is in the atmosphere. Also a greenhouse gas. Should we ban the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers?

I remember in the 70's we were "headed for the next ice age" because we had a few years of cooling.

So get real all of you loony hysterical do-gooders. Perhaps you should spend your time campaigning to get the earth moved further away from the sun. Or change the orbit slightly. Or perhaps see if you can get a grant to pressurise the sun into modifying the sunspot cycle.

There's one for SCAN (the Swindon Climate Action Network) then. And you can stop sending me nanny state emails about how to live my life as well.

Oh and of course all of the "professional" research bodies, pressure groups, quangos, Swindon Borough Council's "Global Warming Prevention Office" (or whatever dumb ass title he has), Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and every other self righteous sheep who want to pronounce on the subject won't like it because it means that they will have to find something else to fill their time/employment/pay their mortgages with.

I bet they hated it when the Cold War went tits up and they couldn't try and "Ban the Bomb" any more. Good job Global Warming was found as a saviour, eh?

[Geoff Reid]

Don't hold back....tell us what you really think Alan! 

[Alan Hayward]

Don't hold back....tell us what you really think Alan! 

You've got it Geoff.

I'm on the offensive (literally).

I've had enough of all of this PC horseshit and the nanny state and it's time to blow it apart and get back to living our lives as common sense individuals.

 

[Alan Hayward]

Here's a cracker.

The world is buggered because of global warming.

 

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2045/

[Alan Hayward]

Actually, thinking about it some more, we have been overwhelmed by junk and pseudo-science.

I studied physics for ten years in the "good old days" when scientific research and results were based upon fact and logical reasoning.

Today decisions are made on "could" and "might" and "probably". You just need to read the papers which churn out the latest "research" finding that some government or quango sponsored undergraduate has managed to find a corner that New Labour would approve of to realise that science really has been debased.

They make it up, they really do. There is no connection between these "results" and reality. It is mainly supposition or in the worst cases, the use of disconnected results or bonkers "tending to the mean" on graphs.

Bring back Einstein, Newton, Sir Alexander Fleming and Halley. Let's get rid of Tom, Dick and Harry.

[Alan Hayward]

<edit>

Actually that was 383 ppm. Not 0.383 ppm.

Danged those copied full stops.

Still minuscule and smaller than my mortgage.