The environment thread

[iamshack]

Anyone interested in this topic should read the Author Bjorn Lomborg., He has written two books, The Skeptical Environmentalist, and Cool It, both which are counterpoints to much of the Environmental Movement. Another good book, for you fiction readers, is The State of Fear, by Michael Chrichton. It says a lot of the same things within a fictional story, much like Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.

 

The bottom line is that it is extremely difficult for humans to get an accurate handle on what causes climactic change on Earth. Considering the dramatic climactic changes which have occured over the Earth's history (what, 4.5 billion years according to most estimates?), decades- even centuries of data are simply drops in the bucket in terms of causes and effects of climate change.

 

Comparing what is happening in the 90's to ANY period in the past for which we have data is like measuring the ability of a baseball player for one at-bat to his other at-bats in that game, but ignoring his performance over the rest of his career in the past. It simply isn't a big enough sample size to ascertain accurate conclusions from.

[Balta1701]

The bottom line is that it is extremely difficult for humans to get an accurate handle on what causes climactic change on Earth. Considering the dramatic climactic changes which have occured over the Earth's history (what, 4.5 billion years according to most estimates?), decades- even centuries of data are simply drops in the bucket in terms of causes and effects of climate change.

 

Comparing what is happening in the 90's to ANY period in the past for which we have data is like measuring the ability of a baseball player for one at-bat to his other at-bats in that game, but ignoring his performance over the rest of his career in the past. It simply isn't a big enough sample size to ascertain accurate conclusions from.

I'd just like to add...No.

[iamshack]

I'd just like to add...No.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

How can we understand climate change when we have only been keeping data for .0003 % of the Earth's history and draw accurate conclusions from that?

[NorthSideSox72]

Care to elaborate?

 

How can we understand climate change when we have only been keeping data for .0003 % of the Earth's history and draw accurate conclusions from that?

History can be found without having been there, via numerous scientific methods.

 

I was in agreement with you on research and caution, but I think you are wrong about not being able to draw some conclusions about our climate. WE know a LOT more than we did just a few decades ago, and the data being researched stretches back hundreds of thousands of years. How is that not big enough of a sample? Besides, the climate millions of years ago is irrelevant, given the planet was so completely different.

 

[Balta1701]

History can be found without having been there, via numerous scientific methods.

 

I was in agreement with you on research and caution, but I think you are wrong about not being able to draw some conclusions about our climate. WE know a LOT more than we did just a few decades ago, and the data being researched stretches back hundreds of thousands of years. How is that not big enough of a sample? Besides, the climate millions of years ago is irrelevant, given the planet was so completely different.

You know what, I actually disagree with you here. The climate millions of years ago is very relevant, because it gives us data about the conditions on the earth under circumstances that we currently aren't yet at. For example, we can get data that suggest that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was much higher 50 million years ago and we can look at the geology to tell us what was going on on the earth during that time. Right now, we're already pushing atmospheric CO2 up to levels it hasn't been at in several million years, in another century at current rates we'll have CO2 concentrations above those 50 million years ago at the Eocene Thermal Maximum (1000 ppm or so). One useful bit of info is that it seems that the earth was unable to establish permanent ice caps until CO2 levels dropped to below 500 ppm CO2 or so, and in the past 100 years we've gone from 280 to nearly 400, so that bit of geology gives us some suggestion about where the tipping point in the ice cap system may lie.

Edited January 8, 2008 by Balta1701

[NorthSideSox72]

You know what, I actually disagree with you here. The climate millions of years ago is very relevant, because we can actually get data about it. For example, we can get data that suggest that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was much higher 50 million years ago and we can look at the geology to tell us what was going on on the earth during that time. Right now, we're already pushing atmospheric CO2 up to levels it hasn't been at in several million years, in another century at current rates we'll have CO2 concentrations above those 50 million years ago at the Eocene Thermal Maximum (1000 ppm or so). One useful bit of info is that it seems that the earth was unable to establish permanent ice caps until CO2 levels dropped to below 500 ppm CO2 or so, and in the past 100 years we've gone from 280 to nearly 400, so that bit of geology gives us some suggestion about where the tipping point in the ice cap system may lie.

Well I was really trying to emphasize the last few hundred thousand years, being as that is a very long time period weather-wise, and there is solid data to work from.

 

But as we are on the topic of millions of years ago, while I am sure you can indeed get data, I would think that because of the geological reality of the time (all that volcanism, totally different environment biologically, atmosphere so different, etc.), that data would be less meaningful. I would put less stock in it. Feel free to tell me why I am wrong - I am open to correction.

 

[Balta1701]

Well I was really trying to emphasize the last few hundred thousand years, being as that is a very long time period weather-wise, and there is solid data to work from.

 

But as we are on the topic of millions of years ago, while I am sure you can indeed get data, I would think that because of the geological reality of the time (all that volcanism, totally different environment biologically, atmosphere so different, etc.), that data would be less meaningful. I would put less stock in it. Feel free to tell me why I am wrong - I am open to correction.

I wouldn't say less "meaningful", I'd say less well constrained. For example...using various proxies, isotopic signatures and other samples, we can come up with pretty decent measurements of the CO2 levels all the way through the Phanerozoic (Last 543 million years or so). But, I can't necessarily give you the high frequency, "plus or minus 100 year" type data I can give you with the ice cores (which have these beautiful annual bands in them that you can literally count). But just because I can't say that CO2 went up by 20 ppm over this timespan when I look at the Eocene doesn't mean that if I say CO2 went down by 800 ppm over the last 50 million years I'm somehow incorrect.

 

I can't give you a complete picture of the orbital oscillations and their climate signals over that time span (although, remarkably, you can find units that are tens to hundreds of millions of years old that preserve those signals), but the thing to pay attention to is the scale. Just picking up one graph, you can sort of see the type of resolution we can get pretty well:

[iamshack]

History can be found without having been there, via numerous scientific methods.

 

I was in agreement with you on research and caution, but I think you are wrong about not being able to draw some conclusions about our climate. WE know a LOT more than we did just a few decades ago, and the data being researched stretches back hundreds of thousands of years. How is that not big enough of a sample? Besides, the climate millions of years ago is irrelevant, given the planet was so completely different.

 

Oh, I never said you cannot draw some conclusions. What I am arguing is that we cannot establish extremely accurate conclusions which show cause/effect relationships for climate change based upon a century of data keeping. It's quite clear that in the past, there have been periods of warming and cooling far more dramatic than what we've seen in the industrialized age. And this is not to advocate to ignore what information our data-keeping does provide us with. But to make claims and draw conclusions about the temperature climbing in the 90's compared to patterns in the 1880's really isn't telling us squat. It's like comparing how you felt this minute to how you felt 10 minutes ago, but not taking into account how you've felt for the rest of your life. It's simply not enough of a sample size to make accurate conclusions from.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Oh, I never said you cannot draw some conclusions. What I am arguing is that we cannot establish extremely accurate conclusions which show cause/effect relationships for climate change based upon a century of data keeping. It's quite clear that in the past, there have been periods of warming and cooling far more dramatic than what we've seen in the industrialized age. And this is not to advocate to ignore what information our data-keeping does provide us with. But to make claims and draw conclusions about the temperature climbing in the 90's compared to patterns in the 1880's really isn't telling us squat. It's like comparing how you felt this minute to how you felt 10 minutes ago, but not taking into account how you've felt for the rest of your life. It's simply not enough of a sample size to make accurate conclusions from.

 

That's the thing, though. Using ice core samples (and I'm sure there's other methods), we have data for hundreds of thousands of years.

[Balta1701]

That's the thing, though. Using ice core samples (and I'm sure there's other methods), we have data for hundreds of millions of years.

Fixed that for you.

[iamshack]

That's the thing, though. Using ice core samples (and I'm sure there's other methods), we have data for hundreds of thousands of years.

 

We have data, but that data is far more broad than the data we are able to keep by actually being alive on this planet. I'm not a scientist, and I'm not sure Balta is or not, but he obviously has a handle on this stuff...but would I be correct in saying that the data obtained from ice core samples gives us information to theorize ona much broader level? You can hypothesize what happened over a period of a hundred thousand years, or a million years, but that doesn't give you data on a year to year level? You can't look at ice core samples and definitively say in the years 17,500 BC to 17,300 BC the Earth was experiencing these kind of temperatures (as we are doing now).

 

Would I be correct in saying that, Balta?

[Balta1701]

We have data, but that data is far more broad than the data we are able to keep by actually being alive on this planet. I'm not a scientist, and I'm not sure Balta is or not, but he obviously has a handle on this stuff...but would I be correct in saying that the data obtained from ice core samples gives us information to theorize ona much broader level? You can hypothesize what happened over a period of a hundred thousand years, or a million years, but that doesn't give you data on a year to year level? You can't look at ice core samples and definitively say in the years 17,500 BC to 17,300 BC the Earth was experiencing these kind of temperatures (as we are doing now).

 

Would I be correct in saying that, Balta?

The ice core record is absolutely magnificent. There are actually annual color bands in the ice cores that allow you...or well, let's say, allow the Grad Student who gets stuck with that job, to literally tell you within an error of a couple years what year the gas they're analyzing comes from. And more remarkable still, we have ice cores from both sides of the planet, totally independent of one another, that produce nearly identical small scale (100 year or so) fluctuations. And that's on top of the large scale signals (The 20,000, 40,000, and 100,000 year cycles that show up). The record of the atmosphere we have over the last 800,000 years or so is simply amazing. And because of the various types of data you can get, gas compositions, isotopic values, trace gases...you can actually make highly accurate estimates of what the conditions on the earth were, because isotopic fractionations are strongly temperature dependent. If I give you a graph where the data form a good line, where one axis is something I can measure in one of those cores and the other axis is temperature, I can take a new measurement and turn it pretty easily into a temperature. And in the Ice cores, we actually have multiple systems which give us several independent temperature estimates. We can also use other isotopic systems to calculate other variables, such as the amount of ice on in the ice caps relative to the size of the oceans. The ice cores literally are powerful enough to give you temperature estimates to within a degree or less, and atmospheric compositions to within the annual variation we see in the Mauna Loa record.

 

Would I be able to do better if I was there and had a bunch of thermometers? Yes, but that doesn't negate how incredibly useful and detailed that data is.

Edited January 9, 2008 by Balta1701

[iamshack]

The ice core record is absolutely magnificent. There are actually annual color bands in the ice cores that allow you...or well, let's say, allow the Grad Student who gets stuck with that job, to literally tell you within an error of a couple years what year the gas they're analyzing comes from. And more remarkable still, we have ice cores from both sides of the planet, totally independent of one another, that produce nearly identical small scale (100 year or so) fluctuations. And that's on top of the large scale signals (The 20,000, 40,000, and 100,000 year cycles that show up). The record of the atmosphere we have over the last 800,000 years or so is simply amazing. And because of the various types of data you can get, gas compositions, isotopic values, trace gases...you can actually make highly accurate estimates of what the conditions on the earth were, because isotopic fractionations are strongly temperature dependent. If I give you a graph where the data form a good line, where one axis is something I can measure in one of those cores and the other axis is temperature, I can take a new measurement and turn it pretty easily into a temperature. And in the Ice cores, we actually have multiple systems which give us several independent temperature estimates. We can also use other isotopic systems to calculate other variables, such as the amount of ice on in the ice caps relative to the size of the oceans. The ice cores literally are powerful enough to give you temperature estimates to within a degree or less, and atmospheric compositions to within the annual variation we see in the Mauna Loa record.

 

Would I be able to do better if I was there and had a bunch of thermometers? Yes, but that doesn't negate how incredibly useful and detailed that data is.

 

Once again, I'm not stating that this information is not useful.

 

I guess what I am saying is that, for me, personally, I don't believe that many of these scientists can predict, with the accuracy they claim they can, and come to the conclusions they claim to have come to, what is going on with climate change to any degree of reasonable certainty. They need more data. Tons and tons and tons of more data.

[YASNY]

PRESS RELEASE: SSRC 1-2008

 

Changes in the Sun’s Surface to Bring Next Climate Change

 

January 2, 2008

 

Today, the Space and Science Research Center, (SSRC) in Orlando, Florida announces that it has confirmed the recent web announcement of NASA solar physicists that there are substantial changes occurring in the sun’s surface. The SSRC has further researched these changes and has concluded they will bring about the next climate change to one of a long lasting cold era.

 

Today, Director of the SSRC, John Casey has reaffirmed earlier research he led that independently discovered the sun’s changes are the result of a family of cycles that bring about climate shifts from cold climate to warm and back again.

 

“We today confirm the recent announcement by NASA that there are historic and important changes taking place on the sun’s surface. This will have only one outcome - a new climate change is coming that will bring an extended period of deep cold to the planet. This is not however a unique event for the planet although it is critically important news to this and the next generations. It is but the normal sequence of alternating climate changes that has been going on for thousands of years. Further according to our research, this series of solar cycles are so predictable that they can be used to roughly forecast the next series of climate changes many decades in advance. I have verified the accuracy of these cycles’ behavior over the last 1,100 years relative to temperatures on Earth, to well over 90%.”

 

As to what these changes are Casey says, “The sun’s surface flows have slowed dramatically as NASA has indicated. This process of surface movement, what NASA calls the “conveyor belt” essentially sweeps up old sunspots and deposits new ones. NASA’s studies have found that when the surface movement slows down, sunspot counts drop significantly. All records of sunspot counts and other proxies of solar activity going back 6,000 years clearly validates our own findings that when we have sunspot counts lower then 50 it means only one thing - an intense cold climate, globally. NASA says the solar cycle 25, the one after the next that starts this spring will be at 50 or lower. The general opinion of the SSRC scientists is that it could begin even sooner within 3 years with the next solar cycle 24. What we are saying today is that my own research and that of the other scientists at the SSRC verifies that NASA is right about one thing – a solar cycle of 50 or lower is headed our way. With this next solar minimum predicted by NASA, what I call a “solar hibernation,” the SSRC forecasts a much colder Earth just as it has transpired before for thousands of years. If NASA is the more accurate on the schedule, then we may see even warmer temperatures before the bottom falls out. If the SSRC and other scientists around the world are correct then we have only a few years to prepare before 20-30 years of lasting and possibly dangerous cold arrive.”

 

When asked about what this will mean to the average person on the street, Casey was firm. “The last time this particular cycle regenerated was over 200 years ago. I call it the “Bi-Centennial Cycle” solar cycle. It took place between 1793 and 1830, the so-called Dalton Minimum, a period of extreme cold that resulted in what historian John D. Post called the ‘last great subsistence crisis.’ With that cold came massive crops losses, food riots, famine and disease. I believe this next climate change will be much stronger and has the potential to once more cause widespread crop losses globally with the resultant ill effects. The key difference for this next Bi-Centennial Cycle’s impact versus the last is that we will have over 8 billion mouths to feed in the next coldest years where as we had only 1 billion the last time. Among other effects like social and economic disruption, we are facing the real prospect of the ‘perfect storm of global food shortages’ in the next climate change. In answer to the question, everyone on the street will be affected.”

 

Given the importance of the next climate change Casey was asked whether the government has been notified. “Yes, as soon as my research revealed these solar cycles and the prediction of the coming cold era with the next climate change, I notified all the key offices in the Bush administration including both parties in the Senate and House science committees as well as most of the nation’s media outlets. Unfortunately, because of the intensity of coverage of the UN IPCC and man made global warming during 2007, the full story about climate change is very slow in getting told. These changes in the sun have begun. They are unstoppable. With the word finally starting to get out about the next climate change, hopefully we will have time to prepare. Right now, the newly organized SSRC is the leading independent research center in the US and possibly worldwide, that is focused on the next climate change. Some of the world’s brightest scientists, also experts in solar physics and the next climate change have joined with me. In the meantime we will do our best to spread the word along with NASA and others who can see what is about to take place for the Earth’s climate. Soon, I believe this will be recognized as the most important climate story of this century.”

 

More information on the Space and Science Research Center is available at: www.spaceandscience.net

 

The previous NASA announcement was made at:

 

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm

 

[iamshack]

So this is saying that in the next 5-7 years, we should have warmer than average temperatures, followed by a longer period of extremely below-average temperatures, peaking around 2022?

 

This guys is a quack, right?

Edited January 13, 2008 by iamshack

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

So this is saying that in the next 5-7 years, we should have warmer than average temperatures, followed by a longer period of extremely below-average temperatures, peaking around 2022?

 

This guys is a quack, right?

 

 

Is that supposed to be sarcastic?

[YASNY]

So this is saying that in the next 5-7 years, we should have warmer than average temperatures, followed by a longer period of extremely below-average temperatures, peaking around 2022?

 

This guys is a quack, right?

 

Global warning or Ice Age. It all depends on what you read and what you want to believe. Personally, whatever happens I think it's going to be because of the sun more than anything we insignificant humans can do.

[iamshack]

Is that supposed to be sarcastic?

 

No, that's not sarcastic. You've got one guy proposing this theory that absolutely no one is agreeing with or backing. This article gets released 2 weeks ago and basically no major news outlets say a damn thing about it? This guy has been accused of spreading "junk science" theories before, from what I understand, and he is talking about "verifying" sunspot activity from 6000 years ago?

 

No it, was not sarcastic.

[vandy125]

Global warning or Ice Age. It all depends on what you read and what you want to believe. Personally, whatever happens I think it's going to be because of the sun more than anything we insignificant humans can do.

 

I'll just go with some of A and some of B. So, our global warming will actually help us avoid the issue of lack of sun spots.

[NorthSideSox72]

I'll just go with some of A and some of B. So, our global warming will actually help us avoid the issue of lack of sun spots.

This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the Doctor told Mr. Burns that the only reason he was alive was that all his deadly diseases were cancelling each other out, like they were all jammed in a doorway.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Toyota announced that they will have their first plug-in hybrid fleet out in 2010. GM meanwhile says that their Volt plug-in vehicle, scheduled originally for 2008, then 2009, is now a "stretch" for 2010. So instead, using a loophole in the CAFE standards legislation, they are producing a whole array of ethanol-powered tanks like the H3 concept. As usual, the American car companies have decided to abandon investment in making alternative technology work, and are taking the cop out. Meanwhile Japan keeps on rolling.

 

[iamshack]

I'll just go with some of A and some of B. So, our global warming will actually help us avoid the issue of lack of sun spots.

 

That may have actually been happening a bit with all our pollution due to the use aerosols, etc. I think this was addressed elsewhere in the thread, but we may have been "dimming" the sun before, therefore cancelling out part of the "greenhouse effect" and global warming. Now that we have for the most part ceased using these aerolsols and other pollutants, the global warming doomsday schedule may be far more advanced than we previously suspected.

[Balta1701]

So, one of my department's seminars yesterday hosted a guy who is currently visiting Caltech who is a noted climate change skeptic, he's one of the folks who thinks that climate variations are controlled almost entirely by solar variations expressed through varying fluxes of cosmic rays which, by some unknown mechanism, leads to climate change.

 

Don't want to go into the substance of the talk too much, I can provide a bunch of realclimate links if you want more details and responses, but I do want to illustrate one thing about this debate. At one point in his talk, the speaker presented a graph which he claimed to show that over the past 100 years, the Earth's climate correlates with several proxies for solar activity including an isotope trend.

 

The problem was, well, there were a few problems, but the one he was specifically called on by some of the climate people in the audience was his temperature curve. Usually, when you're using data from someone else, if you're doing the job the right way, you should know what the data you're citing actually shows. If I'm stealing a data curve from someone, I want to know a few things, I want to know who made it, when they made it, what they did to make it, exactly what it shows, and what the response to it was. If someone had produced a more modern curve, I better have a reason for using the older one. Or, if I'm using a data set that is not generally accepted as the right one, I better not only have a good reason for using it, I better be able to walk through for everyone why I chose the data I'm using, and for God's sake it better not be "this set makes my data look better".

 

So, the guy posts this curve showing how his temperature curve matches in peaks and valleys the other curve for solar activity that he was presenting. At which point one of the atmosphere guys in the audience (brilliant guy btw, frighteningly smart) raises his hand and asks what exactly the curve labeled temperature was showing. The speaker's reply was basically: that's temperature. The climate guy asked for more details, and basically was met with "that's temperature". At this point his question is just being ignored, so he starts actively disagreeing, saying, "no it's not", one of the other faculty guys in the audience asks if maybe it's another proxy for temperature, like the Northern hemisphere curve or something like that, and each time the answer was no.

 

If you watched, the game the speaker was playing was one that wasn't slipping by anyone in that room, but it's a game that certainly can slip past anyone who isn't careful. He's insisting that his curve, the one obviously chosen because it matches well with his data, was the only curve that mattered. But he couldn't tell you a thing about it. He had no idea where it came from, what paper he grabbed it from, or why he chose to use it. To him, all that mattered was "That's temperature" and everyone else was supposed to buy it right away. The problem of course is that if you use a different curve, like the Northern Hemisphere curve, or the IPCC global curve, or even a curve that extended past 1992 (his didn't) his correlation is not there.

 

That, in a nutshell, struck me as a perfect example of how the game is played. You insist that you have an alternate interpretation. You go around telling people about your alternate interpretation. But if you're in any place where a questioner doesn't recognize "that's not the curve that everyone else uses", then the presentation sounds 100x more convincing. But when you actually have the ability to challenge them on a few details, like their T curve, or like the mechanism for the effect they're proposing, or why they choose to use a piece of data in a certain way, the answer isn't there, because either the person doing so wasn't careful, or because they're deliberately trying to muddy the water.

 

For reference, after some googling today, I found out that the T-Curve the guy was using was from a paper in 2001 where the author said "these data have been "recalibrated to obtain estimates of April-September mean temperatures from all land regions north of 20N"." So, it was neither a full earth T estimate, a full hemisphere T estimate, or even an annual mean. Now, it's possible that if you knew more about the climate system, you could convince me that the curve you were using was more useful than the global average temperature curves...but if you don't even know where yours comes from, and you can't be troubled to defend at all why you're choosing that curve...why should I buy the story at all?

[iamshack]

So what else did he say?

 

Seems to me that scientists always do this...they choose the data that best supports their theories and go from there...it's too bad he did the same, but are you really surprised?

[Balta1701]

So what else did he say?

 

Seems to me that scientists always do this...they choose the data that best supports their theories and go from there...it's too bad he did the same, but are you really surprised?

The difference is not that you choose the data that best supports your theory. Yes, that is appropriate. But you have to be able to explain why you chose the data you did. That's the real key. If he had an explanation for why he thought that was a valid temperature curve to use, I wouldn't have had a problem with him presenting it. But not only did he not have an explanation for it, he didn't even know what it was actually showing.

 

That's basically like me posting this graph and insisting that you should simply accept that this is the number of pirates, and you asking "How did you count the number of pirates today" and me responding with "This is the number of pirates".

 

Aside from that particular issue, he tried to touch on a number of cosmic-ray/climate related correlations, most of which have been highly questioned. For example, they published an oxygen isotope curve for the past 550 million years or so, which they claimed was a proxy for temperature and which correlated with galactic motions, but the problem is that their oxygen isotope curve wasn't corrected for pH, which dramatically alters the correlation...and beyond that, it's heavily smoothed, and they never show the un-smoothed version, etc. He did the same sort of game with more recent times, alleging that there was a problem with the normal 100,000 year cycle but not accepting the fact that it's a 100,000 year cycle moderated by a 40,000 year cycle and a 20,000 year cycle. When someone pointed that out, he just kinda glossed over it.

 

There is plenty of utility in being able to use specific data sets, smooth things, etc., but you better be ready to defend yourself on the decisions you make, otherwise, you're just playing games. It's a presentation that would probably do a fine job of convincing someone who doesn't know a thing about what was being presented, but if you had any of the background, you knew where the weaknesses were and he had no defense for them. If you go before some Senate committee with that presentation, it's going to be effective, but there's a reason why very few people buy into the idea; because in order to find proof for it, you have to ignore all these little issues for which they have no defense.