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Global Warming - It's Our Fault
- Thread starter Tituscrow
- Start date
You guys are hopeless.
There is a way greater potential for danger from swimming pools than LP pipelines, we should ban swimming pools. ( by the way, the last job related death I know of in the company I work for was MANY years ago and it actually had nothing to do with gas pipelines.)
And I bet you all still have natural gas, even though you are whining about it. I bet you all still drive gasoline automobiles too.
There is a way greater potential for danger from swimming pools than LP pipelines, we should ban swimming pools. ( by the way, the last job related death I know of in the company I work for was MANY years ago and it actually had nothing to do with gas pipelines.)
And I bet you all still have natural gas, even though you are whining about it. I bet you all still drive gasoline automobiles too.
Guilty as charged.
But re-configuring the old F-150 gas hog for HHO operation. The parts are in the mail as I type.
Serious question Floyd. What is with calling natty gas "green"? It is still combustion of a hydrocarbon.
Alas, I had Mexican for dinner tonight. I am no longer part of the solution. I am part of the problem. Sorry but I am melting the ice caps as we speak.
IPCC AR4 (the predecessor to this new report) most definitely concludes that while there are significant natural factors acting on the climate, the entirety of the warming that occurred from the early 1900's to the present was caused by human activity. The effect of solar irradiance was specifically considered but was rejected as trivial with respect to global warming.
I consider this to be indicative of the type of serious methodological flaws contained in the report. The authors consider solar activity in only a very narrow manner (solar radiation) and while correctly rejecting it as a significant contributor to Earth's climate, instead completely and incorrectly ignored another significant type of solar activity that is known by scientists to have a significant effect on atmospheric temperature, and that is the effect of sunspot related activity on the Earth's magnetosphere.
It is known that there is a causal link between increased sunspot activity and the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere, yet the mechanism for this effect is not understood at this time (though there is some promising speculation in this direction) and is therefore dismissed by the report as irrelevant.
Knowing that this causal link exists, regardless of whether or not one understands how it works, it is entirely reasonable to include the phenomenon as a significant factor affecting the Earth's climate. Considering the fact that sunspot activity has been at historically high levels over the 20th century, particularly from 1970 through 2000, it would be scientifically untenable to fail to factor this in, albeit with a rather large uncertainty factor as to its magnitude.
Again, the IPCC report most definitely concludes that the entirety of the warming that occurred during the 20th century was caused by human activity and that natural factors were insignificant. Having laboriously read the report myself numerous times, with the intent of genuinely understanding its content, I have found that its conclusions are without question, biased toward finding a result that greatly exaggerates the amount of atmospheric warming that humans have contributed.
I maintain that this bias is no better than the viewpoint of those who assert that there is no effect. For the sake of argument, let's suppose that side A claims that there is no man-made effect and no warming has taken place at all. Side B claims that there has been dangerously large warming which will raise the atmospheric temperature of the Earth by 3.5 C and this represents a crisis of epic proportions which was entirely caused by human activity.
Finally, suppose that the actual warming at present was somewhere between what side A and side B were claiming and that only half of that was caused by human activity and the predicted rise in temperature in the future would be only 1.5 C. This is certainly a matter for serious concern but it's not the Earth shattering catastrophe predicted by one side any more than it's a non-issue we can ignore, as the other side is saying.
Both side A and side B are so far off the real numbers that it's safe to consider them both equally wrong. And both sides are destroying their own credibility. It's easy to see how the fossil fuel industry has an interest in pretending that global warming doesn't exist but it's especially troubling to me and to many other scientists (some who I know, personally) who see legitimate science as brought to us by competent climatologists, misused and abused by a pseudo-political organization (The UN IPCC) to further its own agenda.
Absolutely pools are more dangerous than gas pipelines.
Both constitute a greater than zero danger.
I have a number of things that have negative impacts of various sorts. I do so because the benefits outweigh the costs - not because the costs are zero.
It's about time you brought this up!
It's very true that natural gas is far better than other energy sources, except maybe hydro, for electricity generation and should have greater use as a transportation fuel. The toxic emissions are much less than coal and greenhouse gas emissions are also somewhat less. It beats oil on these accounts too.
So far as safety goes, it's true that there have been explosions, leaks, and whatnot, but gas has a very good safety record all around. Especially considering the explosion potential.
The bold part is where I have the problem. Of course it's not unbiased. There is no such thing as "unbiased"... Not in journalism... Not in science. Scientists are certainly biased... And they need to be. That "bias", that they are right is what drives most to see a hypothesis either come to be accepted as theory, or see it eventually get pushed to the wastebin of science.
As far as the IPCC goes, the science is not the problem... It's the way peer review studies are weeded out to support the final conclusion. The task of editing, of what to include, of what goes into the IPCC report is NOT carried out by scientists, but more often is done by people who are former or current environmental activists from the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and World Wildlife Federation.
So no. The IPCC report is not unbiased. This doesn't mean that climate science is a fraud as some claim. Of course it's not. There is a lot of absolutely rock solid science there that should not / cannot be ignored. But the prospect of having the view of a scientific field, any field, dominated by one single entity troubles me greatly.
Think about this. Only 60 years ago, the now accepted geologic model of plate techtonics was not the accepted view of how the crust moved around the mantle. This hypothesis became excepted theory without the help of an organization such as the IPCC. If their were an IPCC for geology, and this wild hypothesis of plate techtonics was proposed, the authors of those claims would have been labeled as "denialists". Plate techtonics gained acceptance on its own, not by some bureaucratic consensus.
Yes, there are some cranks out there, but there are an awful lot of scientists who are working in and around this field who are being labeled as "denialists" who are simply doing what good science demands, that hypothesis and theory constantly be challenged, even those that are established. Judith Curry, Henrik Svenmark are two scientist who come to mind who firmly believe that extra CO2 does have an effect, but are labeled "denialists" because they challenge small details in the IPCC consensus.
No other field of study has had an outside organization be so dominant in dictating what the "cosensus" of the science should be.
Note I am not a climate scientist. But, for what it's worth, I come to this as someone who had at one point studied to be a seismologist... Calculus killed the dream.
See Donna Laframboise's book "The Delinquent Teenager" for more details. The IPCC process is, in my opinion, fatally flawed. You will see some criticism that she is not a climate scientist and thus has no credibility. But she is not critiquing the science per see, she is documenting how and who weeds through the science and decides what to, and what not to include in the final IPCC product. Plus, the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pauchari, is not a climate scientist either. So that's kind of a spurious argument.
PPS. I note that swimming pools are in the discussion... I can comment on that, because I AM a pool and spa tech!!!!!
So far so good.
and for good reason which you appear to have missed.
There are many MANY peer reviewed papers that have tracked solar activity and global temperatures and have concluded that there is a strong link between the 2 however...
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SOlar activity has been decreasing since about 1960. Global temperatures have been shooting up since 1960.These papers conclude that since midway through the 1900's this relationship has been overshadowed by a stronger forcing. This was spelt out in the AR4.
Theire conclusions are weighted towards a finding that the current warming is anthropogenic. That does not mean that their assessments are the result of bias. If you think there is a natural explanation to the warming trend we have observed specifically in the second half of the 20th C, then you are yet to find it.
By whose assessment? A lot of media noise has been made about previous IPCC projections not fitting the current "hiatus" in temp rises but there's a lot of misunderstanding about natural variability (yes, even if you have an anthropogenic forcing, natural variability still exists) and how to interpret what the models are telling us. The IPCC projections are giving you an average of thousands of model runs. These projections are not intending to accurately forecast future temperature rises as many in the media believe. In a sense - our global temperature plot is ONE of those model runs, and like the others, fluctuates about the model mean. The ippc models cannot predict and incorporate things like volcanic activity (cooling effect) ENSO fluctuations (oscillating effect) anthropogenic industrial aerosol output (cooling effect) etc... All these things have a short term effect on the global temperature signal but do not effect the long term trend. In the AR5 the IPCC have tried to explain this but I guess it's quite a complex thing to grasp.
I'm sure you are aware of this, but I think the general public may not be. In order for natural gas to explode it has to be at a concentration between 4.5% and 14.5%.
What this means is that unless gas is being contained( i.e. not in free air) the risk of explosion is extremely small. I deal with blowing gas fairly regularly. There are cases where blowing gas ignites and it is safer to let it burn than to extinguish it, as extinguishing it may allow gas to migrate to a contained space, thus making it dangerous.
Anyway, today's fun fact.
GrumpiusMaximus
I've Seen Things You People Wouldn't Believe
I'm sure you are aware of this, but I think the general public may not be. In order for natural gas to explode it has to be at a concentration between 4.5% and 14.5%.
What this means is that unless gas is being contained( i.e. not in free air) the risk of explosion is extremely small. I deal with blowing gas fairly regularly. There are cases where blowing gas ignites and it is safer to let it burn than to extinguish it, as extinguishing it may allow gas to migrate to a contained space, thus making it dangerous.
Anyway, today's fun fact.
Wait, but all those Michael Bay films say otherwise :screwy::screwy:
vin*tone,
Your post is an example of the type of thoughtful and meticulous response that moves the discussion forward in a positive manner. We need more of it.
To the point . . .
You said that I missed the reason why AR4 dismissed sunspot activity as a significant factor in GW and stated that "Solar activity has been decreasing since about 1960." Yet that doesn't address my criticism and is tangential to the point.
I said:
hbarcat said:
Here is a graph of the data on sunspot activity, according to NASA.
Notice that there is no meaningful trend either up or down from 1960, contrary to your statement (following the black line). Also notice that sunspot activity has been at historically high levels over the 20th century, taken as a whole, but particularly in the second half of the century. In fact, total sunspot numbers during the maximums of 1981 and 1992 were the 2nd and 3rd highest ever recorded in history, following the one from 1958. This is close to what I stated - although I should have gone back earlier to 1950 instead of 1970, to be more accurate - and it demonstrates that sunspot activity has, according to the data, correlated reasonably well with the measured warming trend over the past century (again, follow the black line).
Does this mean that we can dismiss the burning of fossil fuels as a factor in GW and blame the sun for everything? Absolutely not. Yet it does show that it is improper to dismiss sunspot activity as a factor, as well.
Certainly, the measured warming that took place over the 20th century is a result of both of these factors, and for all we know, other factors that have been dismissed out of hand.
Further reason for disagreeing with the AR4 decision to ignore any natural forcings is the fact that atmospheric temperatures have not followed a steady trend upward as would be expected if CO2 levels were the only significant factor.
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The atmospheric temperature fluctuates up and down at the scale of decades while following a general trend upwards (following the blue line). Combining the two factors of CO2 concentration and sunspot activity is a better fit with the global temperature than either factor alone. This gives support to my assertion that the "true" climate sensitivity is not zero (as the global warming ignorers say) and neither is it 3.5C (as the global warming alarmists say), but rather somewhere in between.
This is what I meant by "bias". AR4 consistently finds reason to emphasize man-made forcings and de-emphasize natural forcings - contrary to the proper practice of scientific methodology.
I should make this clear that the only assessment I feel confident in using when I state my opinions regarding global warming are my own. I've read the IPCC reports and am comfortable with my working knowledge of their contents - though I don't claim to be anything near to expert.
As a rule, I ignore spurious claims about the subject made by sources which have plausible reason to be less than scientifically unbiased. Again, this is my own assessment.
With this in mind, consider what the IPCC models "cannot predict" (as you rightly stated). There is a long list of natural forcings that are ignored as insignificant because they "have a short term effect on the global temperature signal but do not affect the long term trend."
This is NOT a valid assumption.
The data clearly shows that natural forcings that are being dismissed as irrelevant certainly do have a significant effect on atmoshperic temperatures at all time scales (by year, decade, century, millenium, etc...). It is a gross failure on the part of the IPCC for them to not see the evidence of this in their own data which is used to make up their famous "hockey stick" graph.
Going back to the raw data demonstrates that the combination of all natural forcings have caused warming and cooling trends at all time scales, and this was all before any human activity could have affected the atmosphere in any way.
The IPCC have used this complexity and our lack of understanding of these factors as a reason to dismiss them. They state this quite clearly.
This is not accepted scientific practice. A critical part of the methodology is to control or account for all significant variables and all good scientists know this. If the variables are too complex to understand then it's incumbent on the scientists to take this into account by admitting the lack of knowledge and including an appropriately large margin of error to call attention to it.
The IPCC have, instead, simply processed the data in graph form in such a way as to make the natural forcings appear to have relatively little effect on global temperature. The authors of AR4 (and presumably it's the same in AR5) spell out exactly how they've done this and it's apparent that they don't see anything wrong with the process.
This illustrates the inherent problem with having the authors of the report (the ones responsible for pulling everything together from the many contributing scientists and drawing conclusions from their unbiased work) being motivated by priorities other than scientific objectivity.
