There are plenty of geologists who are not involved in the energy sector are also
sceptical of the claim. Read "A short history of Planet Earth" by Ian Plimer. He was a
University Lecturer and now explores for gold. He has no economic advantage in
keeping the petroleum sector going.
> I also think it is important
> to seperate between whether greenhouses gases are increasing, and what
> the impacts of this will be. No one (well, I'm sure someone does) seems to
> doubt they are increasing.
Greenhouse gases and temperatures are increasing. However, the temperatures have
been rising now for over 10,000 years. So, for the last 9,900 years the temperature
rise was totally natural, but the now everybody wants to blame humans for the rise
over the last 100 years. In fact there have been about 20 cooling and warming cycles
in the last 2 million years or so. None of the past warming cycles were caused by
humans.
The argument that that rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
correlate with, and thus have caused, global warming is heavily flawed. Correlation is
not causation.
Temperature and CO2 are not always linked. CO2 levels were much higher in the
Ordovician than they are now, but the Earth was experiencing one of the worst Ice
Ages in the fossil record.
Studies of ice age temperature variations show carbon dioxide levels increasing after
warming rather than before (see: http://www.co2science.org).
Most warming during the past century took place before most carbon dioxide had been
released. Most of the modern CO2 increases seen in places such as Mount Loa, has
been released long after the industrial revolution. Yet between 1940 and 1970, global
temperatures went down even though carbon-dioxide levels went up.
So if anything global “Warming” is a media induced misnomer.
> > Without sources, it can be just as easily argued, a massive majority of
> > climate scientists _don't_ support global warming. Anecdotal does
> > not equal evidence.
>
> See http://www.ametsoc.org/POLICY/climatechangeresearch_2003.html from
> the
> American Meteorological Society which has 11,000 members. That I'm
> guessing was approved by at least half of their members which is a
> pretty fair number.
>From http://www.ametsoc.org/aboutams/index.html
“Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of more than 11 000 professionals,
professors, students, and weather enthusiasts”. Oddly the professional associations I
belong to don’t feel the pressing need to open their membership to “enthusiasts”.
Mind you, if only ANGFA had these numbers :-)
Also they adopt policy by a meeting in council, rather than by a general election of
their membership. As such I strongly doubt that 5,500 professionals, professors,
students and weather enthusiasts did approve any statement. Maybe 1 to 5% did. In
any case you use of this as a point in support of “Global Warming” is flawed.
> > From _our_ perspective of fish keepers climate change is not really
> > the problem. Instead manmade disturbances are the _real_ issue.
>
> I think that both are problems. The immediate problem is as you
> described, but global warming will be a significant issue for many
> critters and habitats.
Our planet has been warming and cooling for its whole history. Life either migrates,
evolves to the new conditions, or goes extinct. If the Global Warming is natural then
does that mean the problem for these critters and their habitats suddenly becomes
OK. Or do you believe that we should try to stop a Global Warming event even if
natural?
Conversely habitat destruction is the single biggest factor in modern extinctions. And
this is something we can correct NOW. We don’t need mysterious models that
_may_ be correct, or _might_ not be correct in 10, 20, 50, 1000 years.
> > The "proof" is not proof, and effects are unsubstantiated and not
> > causally linked. As a scientist, you believe this to be reason
> enough
> > to devote time, energy and money?
>
> There are ample predictions out there, some bad, some worse, some say
> nothing will happen (mostly not climatologists though). Do we need to
> wait until we start to see them begin to happen? That was my point.
And my point is should we believe this to be reason enough to devote time, energy and
money? Based on a thin veneer of a theory backed up with models that fail and data
that doesn’t correlate?
And most of the effects will happen even if the warming is natural. The big question
is "Are we having an effect?" So far there is little convincing evidence that the current
warming MUST be due to human activity. There are theories which suggest that some
is natural, some is human related. Then the question is what proportions. 10%, 50%,
90%?
> We
> know gas concentrations are increasing (see below), and we can predict
> that that should cause warming.
We can also use the Malankovitch Cycles to predict that the climate is supposed to
be warming at this time too. Out of interest how is it determined what, if anything, is
caused by anthropogenic CO2 and what is caused by the natural warming?
> The big unknown seems to be how much, and
> what impacts will it have on weather patterns, sea levels etc.
Evidence shows that sea levels are not increasing. If people believe the models over
the evidence, then we are all doomed. Heck I’m surprised that we aren’t all underwater
right now. The example of Tuvulu is a case in point. However Tuvulu is using rising
sea levels to sequester benefits from “polluting” countries. Given that Tuvulu are a
series of coral atolls, if there where any changes in sea level, why cannot they be
explained with known geological processes?
> > Given that a majority of people producing the model(s) and studying
> it
> > have a vested financial interest (ie/ their jobs, not to mention
> > millions of dollars worth of funding), I think you analogy is rather
> > flawed.
>
> There are lots of interesting problems out there to conduct research on
> besides global warming that one can get large grants to study.
> Improved
> weather predicting, El Nino, paleoclimates etc etc. Research
> scientists
> typically don't make large paychecks and even the money they get as
> grants pales in comparison to income generated from the oil industry. People
> say the same thing about biologists who work on endangered critters. We
> wouldn't want to delist them as we'd be out of a job, thus we keep
> finding
> excuses to keep them listed and get money to work on them.
Money from governments tends to flow to the biggest politically sensitive noise. Not
necessarily the most pressing need. Being involved in government and research, you
know what I mean. Global Warming has captured the popular imagination via mass
media (disaster movies et.al.) and as such galvanised movements to promote such
activities. I don’t know about you, but not being paid (even a pittance) is a relatively
strong motivational factor to continue ones activity, even if it is false (only have to look
at whistle-blowers to see the effect in action).
I gather from your predilection for the term “oil industry” you have a problem with them?
<snip Ozone bit, if you want, can discuss later, otherwise let me know>
> > I too performed similar experiments at Uni (in Chemistry though).
> This
> > is why "Greenhouse Gases" are called greenhouse gasses. They are (in
> > order of magnitude) H2O, CH4 and CO2. Given that levels of all three
> > have not changed significantly to match the "global warming" models
> over
> > the last 50 years, why do you support the models? On an off chance
> > they _might_ be correct?
>
> CO2 levels have increased, depends what you mean by significant.
The models all predict different results for the same levels of CO2. Hence why are
they to be believed? They generally disagree with one another. In my sector
(engineering) if 10 models are not in agreement with the observable data, by definition
10 are incorrect. In the case of Global Warming it seems that all of the generally
accepted models are incorrect as they must be “averaged” to give an agreed result.
They only reason that “consensus” accepts them are that they have one thing in
common; they all “predict” that temperatures increase. Any that don’t are seen to be
invalid and their data rejected by the “consensus”.
> Annual
> growth rates for CO2 and CH4 (methane) are 0.4%. Their proportional
> contribution to greehouse warming is 60 and 20% respectively. These
> figures are from page 18 of
> http://www.bom.gov.au/info/GreenhouseEffectAndClimateChange.pdf And of
> course there are a couple other things that contribute too, but those
> are the largest two.
What about the biggest greenhouse gas of all - dihydrogen monoxide? Water vapor
(H2O) causes about 60% of Earth's naturally-occurring greenhouse effect. Other gases
influencing the effect include carbon dioxide (CO2) (about 26%), methane (CH4),
nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3) (about 8%) (see:
http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/388G/KiehlTrenbertth97.pdf).
Water vapour is the major contributor to Earth's greenhouse effect. Its effects vary due
to localized concentrations, mixture with other gases, frequencies of light, different
behaviour in different levels of the atmosphere, and whether positive or negative
feedback takes place. High humidity also affects cloud formation, which has major
effects upon temperature but is distinct from water vapour gas.
The IPCC TAR (2001; section 2.5.3) reports that, despite non-uniform effects and
difficulties in assessing the quality of the data, water vapour has generally increased
over the 20th Century. Yet as the single biggest contributor of greenhouse gasses
there is no call to stop or limit the production of water vapour. But that’s just been silly
now isn’t it :-)
Another point. “Global Warming” is really based on a using "consensus" as evidence.
This is really an appeal to the majority argument rather than scientific discussion.
Given that the evidence is sketchy at best, and there is no clear causal links, I am not
surprised that such reasoning is needed to be adopted in order to prove the thinking.
A similar "consensus” activity is currently taking place within the United States with
respect to teaching evolution/natural selection. I wonder how long before US scientists
adopt a “consensus” denouncing evolution and/or natural selection? If so, how long
before the rest of the world? Evidence is what is needed, not consensus.
caio
Graeme