We'll have to get together sometime soon Fillipos.
In the meantime, I love this:
http://tinyurl.com/22mrmj
Especially the comments. Love him or loathe him, he seems to make some sense.....
Ray
shortcut
I remember being at the local Grammar School to Eaton College and playing the Medallion team (16 years olds) at Rugby. They were inept and unstructured not to mention a complete bunch of panzies when it came to rough and tumble. Needless to say we beat them hollow by some massive score.
After the match the masters were entertained by their Eaton counterparts and we were sat down to tea at one of the college buildings where our hosts were supposed to entertain us.
Our "hosts" ensured that they not only sat at a different table but refused to speak to us. I don't recall what prompted this but just our beating of them, unless they had some other axe to grind. All were totally bad sportsmen anyway and hardly British, whatever that was and is.
I found them ill mannered snobs with little to say about themselves apart from their breeding and frankly as far as I can see it was like matching pigs.
Watching Brown allying himself to the memory of Thatcher and Cameron and his quite alien and loony policies makes one wonder if the Conservatives are trying to create a "Nu" Labour party to last a 1,000 years.
After the match the masters were entertained by their Eaton counterparts and we were sat down to tea at one of the college buildings where our hosts were supposed to entertain us.
Our "hosts" ensured that they not only sat at a different table but refused to speak to us. I don't recall what prompted this but just our beating of them, unless they had some other axe to grind. All were totally bad sportsmen anyway and hardly British, whatever that was and is.
I found them ill mannered snobs with little to say about themselves apart from their breeding and frankly as far as I can see it was like matching pigs.
Watching Brown allying himself to the memory of Thatcher and Cameron and his quite alien and loony policies makes one wonder if the Conservatives are trying to create a "Nu" Labour party to last a 1,000 years.
Hi Muttly,
I have read some, perhaps many, of your posts and found a few amusing. But I am struggling a little in this case to see what your last post has to do with the subject of global warming. Yes, David Cameron is an Etonian, maybe that vague reference prompted this post. Who can tell?
What is your opinion of global warming? It would be nice if you researched it a bit before replying.
Anyway, what the hell?
Ray
I have read some, perhaps many, of your posts and found a few amusing. But I am struggling a little in this case to see what your last post has to do with the subject of global warming. Yes, David Cameron is an Etonian, maybe that vague reference prompted this post. Who can tell?
What is your opinion of global warming? It would be nice if you researched it a bit before replying.
Anyway, what the hell?
Ray
Ray wrote:Hi Muttly,
I have read some, perhaps many, of your posts and found a few amusing. But I am struggling a little in this case to see what your last post has to do with the subject of global warming. Yes, David Cameron is an Etonian, maybe that vague reference prompted this post. Who can tell?
What is your opinion of global warming? It would be nice if you researched it a bit before replying.
Anyway, what the hell?
Ray
Ray, regrettably global warming is no doubt being used by politicians as a means of raising revenue. I personally do not believe in mans over active behaviour in producing Co2 as the reason why climate change is taking place.
Man does have an effect on the enviroment. Building on flood plains, removal and daming of rivers for water, we could go on here. But not in the overarching sense that is alleged.
What I am trying to highlight here is the vapidity of Cameron and his continual stunts and rediculous policies which will only hurt ordinary people but certainly not him and his fellow bedmates.
Cameron is some 10 years my junior and hails in his school life and present MP's position from the same area of the country as I. He is part of a ruling elite that has now for all of ten years been stalled and denied power.
I have played Eaton at Rugby through all my school life and what you learned about most of these boys is that they really did not have the nounce to enter some of the offices that they have, thay do so riding on what was a wave of money and pivalege and now is more a ripple with a network of connections.
Cameron is about as much interested in global warming as I am or GW Bush. The reality is that he is looking for a way back to power which few people want to embrace, even fewer people believe and even less will when it hits them in the pocket and forces them onto our completely useless, filthy, public transport and raises the price of their holidays.
I'm afraid it's Gordon Brown forever if he carries on with line of stupidity.
-
Retired in Crete
Hi Ray
Good to see a reply that doesn’t mention governments and taxes anywhere.
Firstly let me state my personal position. I believe that human activity IS contributing to climate change. That does not mean that I necessarily believe all the predictions of the short-term consequences of climate change. I think disastrous consequences will happen but over a much longer time scale than predicted by most models. I recognise that the climate models are flawed, but perhaps not as badly flawed as some anti-climate change people would like to believe.
Secondly, there is an immense amount of bad science quoted by the anti-climate change lobby including lies, myths and misuse of carefully selected information. Mostly I attack this bad science.
Even where the science is serious it is often misused. A serious peer-reviewed paper quoting the results of some research programme may well be refuted by another peer-reviewed paper quoting the results of another research programme. People, on both sides of the argument, are highly selective in which papers they reference. For example the study by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen [1997] suggesting that low cloud formation was influenced by solar sunspot activity through the intermediary of varying cosmic ray incidence was a serious scientific study and is frequently quoted by the anti-climate change lobby. Another serious study, Sun, B., and R. S. Bradley [2002], which actually looks at measurements of cloud cover, in some cases over a single solar cycle and in others through several solar cycles, shows that there is no such evidence, see http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2 ... 0560.shtml for a summary. I don’t see this later study being quoted?
Considering the 1,500 year cycle, I completely accept that the global climate exhibits many cycles, both short and long, and 1,500 years may well be one of them. I am not sure the evidence is as clear-cut as anti-climate change people would like to believe but I will not challenge that here. The fact that such cycles occur does not refute the possibility that there are human induced changes. Nobody, on either side of the argument, can tell you what that cycle would predict for today. Nobody, on either side of the argument, can tell you whether that cycle accounts for all the change observed today or not. The philosophy is that there is a natural cycle, the natural cycle would currently be in a warming phase and so the warming we are seeing today is wholly due to that cycle. Comforting but not very scientific is it?
Given the uncertainty of climate models, of evidence derived indirectly from various sources and lack of long-term verifiable measurements, I prefer to go back to basic physics and analyse the problem myself. To do that it is necessary to break it down into manageable chunks. I will concentrate on the question can Carbon Dioxide cause atmospheric heating?
Firstly it is an observable fact that the Earth receives most of its energy from the sun in the visible part of the spectrum. Part of this is reflected back into space, mainly by clouds and snow/ice cover. The total fraction reflected is called the albedo and for the Earth it is 0.367, a measured quantity. The rest is absorbed, i.e. about 63 %, mainly by the land and the oceans. These in turn radiate back into space but at infrared wavelengths not at visible wavelengths. If the absorbed and radiated energies are in balance then the temperature will be stable. If more is absorbed than radiated into space then the temperature will increase. If less is absorbed than is radiated then the temperature will fall. I don’t think people need a degree to understand the logic of this. The same is true of Venus. Venus is a very similar planet to Earth but is much closer to the Sun. Because of this the solar energy it receives is higher. The ratio is simply the ratio of the two distances from the Sun squared. Since the Earth is 147 Mkm from the Sun and Venus is only 108 Mkm, Venus receives 1.85 times the radiation that the Earth does. Venus also has an albedo, which is 0.65, again a measured quantity. Thus Venus only absorbs 35 % of the energy received. Taking the ratio of the two absorption coefficients and multiplying it by the ratio of the energies received gives us the ratio of the total energy Venus absorbs to the total energy Earth absorbs. This calculates to about 1.03, i.e. Venus absorbs about 3 % more energy than the Earth. Given such similar energy absorption we would expect surface temperature on Venus to be pretty similar to the Earth but it is not. Spacecraft have measured it as around 460 C. Why such a difference? Venus’ atmosphere is around 95 % Carbon Dioxide. I find this quite convincing evidence that an atmosphere with high Carbon Dioxide concentration will have a higher temperature, i.e. the greenhouse effect is real and happens on a planetary scale. OK the difference in concentration is extreme but so is the difference in temperature. The important point is that this is a simple calculation based on very basic physics and primary school mathematics. It does not rely on any complicated and potentially flawed models. It is also based on actual measurements. There are no other differences between the two planets that can account for the temperature difference.
Finally (do I hear a sigh of relief?) the carbon cycle on Earth consists of a number of carbon reservoirs and natural mechanisms that move carbon between these reservoirs. The burning of fossil fuels is a completely new, man-made mechanism that has only happened since the start of the industrial revolution. It moves geologically trapped carbon and releases it in the atmosphere, mostly in the form of Carbon Dioxide. There is no compensating mechanism to remove it. If we assume that a naturally occurring cycle repeats what it has done in the past we are adding an offset to it. Whatever temperature it reached in the past it will go higher. To make matters worse, the amount we are adding is increasing as countries like China and India move from agricultural peasant societies to industrial ones. Africa would dearly like to follow.
But lets not be miserable. Lets look on the bright side. There is plenty of evidence that we are close to or have even passed the Hubbard Peak on a global scale. The likely consequence of that is a global energy war at some point before global warming really gets out of hand. That should significantly reduce the Earth’s population and hence energy demand. So it’s not all doom and gloom is it?
Warwick
PS Can I be the retired school teacher?
Good to see a reply that doesn’t mention governments and taxes anywhere.
Firstly let me state my personal position. I believe that human activity IS contributing to climate change. That does not mean that I necessarily believe all the predictions of the short-term consequences of climate change. I think disastrous consequences will happen but over a much longer time scale than predicted by most models. I recognise that the climate models are flawed, but perhaps not as badly flawed as some anti-climate change people would like to believe.
Secondly, there is an immense amount of bad science quoted by the anti-climate change lobby including lies, myths and misuse of carefully selected information. Mostly I attack this bad science.
Even where the science is serious it is often misused. A serious peer-reviewed paper quoting the results of some research programme may well be refuted by another peer-reviewed paper quoting the results of another research programme. People, on both sides of the argument, are highly selective in which papers they reference. For example the study by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen [1997] suggesting that low cloud formation was influenced by solar sunspot activity through the intermediary of varying cosmic ray incidence was a serious scientific study and is frequently quoted by the anti-climate change lobby. Another serious study, Sun, B., and R. S. Bradley [2002], which actually looks at measurements of cloud cover, in some cases over a single solar cycle and in others through several solar cycles, shows that there is no such evidence, see http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2 ... 0560.shtml for a summary. I don’t see this later study being quoted?
Considering the 1,500 year cycle, I completely accept that the global climate exhibits many cycles, both short and long, and 1,500 years may well be one of them. I am not sure the evidence is as clear-cut as anti-climate change people would like to believe but I will not challenge that here. The fact that such cycles occur does not refute the possibility that there are human induced changes. Nobody, on either side of the argument, can tell you what that cycle would predict for today. Nobody, on either side of the argument, can tell you whether that cycle accounts for all the change observed today or not. The philosophy is that there is a natural cycle, the natural cycle would currently be in a warming phase and so the warming we are seeing today is wholly due to that cycle. Comforting but not very scientific is it?
Given the uncertainty of climate models, of evidence derived indirectly from various sources and lack of long-term verifiable measurements, I prefer to go back to basic physics and analyse the problem myself. To do that it is necessary to break it down into manageable chunks. I will concentrate on the question can Carbon Dioxide cause atmospheric heating?
Firstly it is an observable fact that the Earth receives most of its energy from the sun in the visible part of the spectrum. Part of this is reflected back into space, mainly by clouds and snow/ice cover. The total fraction reflected is called the albedo and for the Earth it is 0.367, a measured quantity. The rest is absorbed, i.e. about 63 %, mainly by the land and the oceans. These in turn radiate back into space but at infrared wavelengths not at visible wavelengths. If the absorbed and radiated energies are in balance then the temperature will be stable. If more is absorbed than radiated into space then the temperature will increase. If less is absorbed than is radiated then the temperature will fall. I don’t think people need a degree to understand the logic of this. The same is true of Venus. Venus is a very similar planet to Earth but is much closer to the Sun. Because of this the solar energy it receives is higher. The ratio is simply the ratio of the two distances from the Sun squared. Since the Earth is 147 Mkm from the Sun and Venus is only 108 Mkm, Venus receives 1.85 times the radiation that the Earth does. Venus also has an albedo, which is 0.65, again a measured quantity. Thus Venus only absorbs 35 % of the energy received. Taking the ratio of the two absorption coefficients and multiplying it by the ratio of the energies received gives us the ratio of the total energy Venus absorbs to the total energy Earth absorbs. This calculates to about 1.03, i.e. Venus absorbs about 3 % more energy than the Earth. Given such similar energy absorption we would expect surface temperature on Venus to be pretty similar to the Earth but it is not. Spacecraft have measured it as around 460 C. Why such a difference? Venus’ atmosphere is around 95 % Carbon Dioxide. I find this quite convincing evidence that an atmosphere with high Carbon Dioxide concentration will have a higher temperature, i.e. the greenhouse effect is real and happens on a planetary scale. OK the difference in concentration is extreme but so is the difference in temperature. The important point is that this is a simple calculation based on very basic physics and primary school mathematics. It does not rely on any complicated and potentially flawed models. It is also based on actual measurements. There are no other differences between the two planets that can account for the temperature difference.
Finally (do I hear a sigh of relief?) the carbon cycle on Earth consists of a number of carbon reservoirs and natural mechanisms that move carbon between these reservoirs. The burning of fossil fuels is a completely new, man-made mechanism that has only happened since the start of the industrial revolution. It moves geologically trapped carbon and releases it in the atmosphere, mostly in the form of Carbon Dioxide. There is no compensating mechanism to remove it. If we assume that a naturally occurring cycle repeats what it has done in the past we are adding an offset to it. Whatever temperature it reached in the past it will go higher. To make matters worse, the amount we are adding is increasing as countries like China and India move from agricultural peasant societies to industrial ones. Africa would dearly like to follow.
But lets not be miserable. Lets look on the bright side. There is plenty of evidence that we are close to or have even passed the Hubbard Peak on a global scale. The likely consequence of that is a global energy war at some point before global warming really gets out of hand. That should significantly reduce the Earth’s population and hence energy demand. So it’s not all doom and gloom is it?
Warwick
PS Can I be the retired school teacher?
That was hard reading Warwick, 
only managed to get to "intermediary of varying cosmic ray incidence " and I was lost.
I think a comment was made recently about another prolific poster.
I enjoy and devour your posts with interest, but this one was too complicated and long winded for my brain to take in , Sorry...
Again, should we start to call you the " Orxxle
only managed to get to "intermediary of varying cosmic ray incidence " and I was lost.
I think a comment was made recently about another prolific poster.
I enjoy and devour your posts with interest, but this one was too complicated and long winded for my brain to take in , Sorry...
Again, should we start to call you the " Orxxle
I am actually leaving this one to see how far it deviates and how many pages it will go to before it dies. Purely out of curiosity.
Warwick I have seen a "scientific" paper that works on the basis that the release of carbon dioxide acts as a cooling agent stopping overheating. I say "scientific" only because it was a while back and I cannot remember the pedigree of the writer (if any). I'll try find it again.
Whether global warming is or is not a factor there is the undeniable fact that fossil fuels are finite and alternatives need to be developed so why not sooner rather than later and do it with giving us a cleaner planet in mind.
It isn't just power I am referring to here, I'm just wondering how we would get along without plastic
Warwick I have seen a "scientific" paper that works on the basis that the release of carbon dioxide acts as a cooling agent stopping overheating. I say "scientific" only because it was a while back and I cannot remember the pedigree of the writer (if any). I'll try find it again.
Whether global warming is or is not a factor there is the undeniable fact that fossil fuels are finite and alternatives need to be developed so why not sooner rather than later and do it with giving us a cleaner planet in mind.
It isn't just power I am referring to here, I'm just wondering how we would get along without plastic
You did indeed John....
so why are we talking about
"the question, can Carbon Dioxide cause atmospheric heating? "
Unless we are talking about how much extra fuel will be used by taking the back road and will it affect the pound(Euro) in our pocket, and will the sun affect the heat in our petrol tank and by expansion we gain extra klm`s to take this back road?
Don`t know about you John but I give up!!!!
so why are we talking about
"the question, can Carbon Dioxide cause atmospheric heating? "
Unless we are talking about how much extra fuel will be used by taking the back road and will it affect the pound(Euro) in our pocket, and will the sun affect the heat in our petrol tank and by expansion we gain extra klm`s to take this back road?
Don`t know about you John but I give up!!!!
Hello Warwick, I haven't seen you for a while. We have been busy moving into our new house. I'll try to meet up with you again soon.
I know that you disagree with me on climate change. That is fair enough, we all have a right to our own opinion. What I find worrying is comments I heard on the news tonight. The Liberal Party stated that their conference was going to concentrate on climate change. Should they not be concentrating on crime, the economy or whatever. It is just that climate change has got out of hand.
If I was a scientist who wanted to study snakes in Scotland, I would probably not get a grant for my study. If I said that I wanted to study snakes in Scotland with a view to climate change, then I would probably certainly get my grant. This is the problem today. An unbelievable amount of money is dedicated to climate change while those who disagree with the so called consensus are often denied money and even sometimes sacked.
But when was science about consensus? It never was. If it was we would still believe that the sun rotated around the earth. When scientists fight the consensus we often find good science.
Nearly all the science surrounding the IPCC reports is either politically funded, dishonest or incorrect as in the silence about the recent NASA mistake on the hottest years. It wasn't 1998, it was 1934. This and so much else is buried if it doesn't conform to the media demand of threat, havoc and destruction.
I have to say that I am not aware of an anticlimate change lobby. Just the thoughts of sceptics that are so hard to find that they are almost buried. But a few have the courage to speak. Some of them are extremely important people. You say that: "there is an immense amount of bad science quoted by the anti-climate change lobby including lies, myths and misuse of carefully selected information." Well I don't know of that. In fact the science and published papers of sceptics have to be so good that they are irrefutable. I find it impossible to believe this statement.
The study by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen [1997] has in fact been updated by a later Danish study. And so it goes on. You quote Venus that has a very high CO2 atmosphere, but CO2 atmosphere on our planet is almost negligable. It is only 4% of the greenhouse gas sector or less, and the greenhouse sector is a very small part of our atmosphere. Well over 90% of the Earth's greenhouse gas is water vapour, but we can do nothing about that. It has no guilt factor for the green lobbies that thrive on guilt and no rolling road for the politicians.
All around me I see no real concern for rising crime, a difficult economy and a hundred other problems including starvation in Africa, terrorism murdering women and children in many countries, an undeveloped Africa and an overdeveloping China. Simply supplying people with fresh water would be a step in the right direction. No the biggest concern, we are told, is global warming. A very dishonest film by Al Gore is being given to children in schools to make them believe that this is all true. They should learn more about our world than this propoganda. The stars and celebrities get their housemaid to drive Prius cars while they jet about the world in private planes. The hypocrisy beggars belief.
But the truth is, as you say, we are past the Hubbard Peak which was in 1998, the earth is now cooling. In fact one of the greatest problems has been the siting of earth temperature stations which have been enveloped by development. This heating from these stations is not shown in the troposphere by either satelites or weather balloons. Where would we see greenhouse gas warming? Why in the tropsphere of course. You know the laws of physics. How could the ground heat and the troposphere cool if greenhouse gas was the problem?
As for computer models, none of them come even close to modelling the highly chaotic and complex climate system. Man cannot even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days, we have already changed this years hurricane and tropical storm predictions. And that is just weather. But you are saying that computer models can predict an impossible study like climate up to 50 years or more ahead? And they do not even include cloud data? I don't think so.
I think that we should care for our planet as best we can. What we should not do is to predict dire results because we drive a car or that we breath out. This is simply nonsense. Trees and other plants breathe in CO2. It is not a pollutant, it is a seriously substantial part of our life cycle and that of our planet. We are largely made of CO2. It has never, from what we can see, affected the climate in the past, why ever should it do so now?
Well there is a lot more, but I don't really want to bore anyone. But I do think that individuals should question this so-called consensus. If they do and study it carefully they will find that in fact it is not a consensus at all. It is a political animal, not a scientific one.
All the best
Ray
I know that you disagree with me on climate change. That is fair enough, we all have a right to our own opinion. What I find worrying is comments I heard on the news tonight. The Liberal Party stated that their conference was going to concentrate on climate change. Should they not be concentrating on crime, the economy or whatever. It is just that climate change has got out of hand.
If I was a scientist who wanted to study snakes in Scotland, I would probably not get a grant for my study. If I said that I wanted to study snakes in Scotland with a view to climate change, then I would probably certainly get my grant. This is the problem today. An unbelievable amount of money is dedicated to climate change while those who disagree with the so called consensus are often denied money and even sometimes sacked.
But when was science about consensus? It never was. If it was we would still believe that the sun rotated around the earth. When scientists fight the consensus we often find good science.
Nearly all the science surrounding the IPCC reports is either politically funded, dishonest or incorrect as in the silence about the recent NASA mistake on the hottest years. It wasn't 1998, it was 1934. This and so much else is buried if it doesn't conform to the media demand of threat, havoc and destruction.
I have to say that I am not aware of an anticlimate change lobby. Just the thoughts of sceptics that are so hard to find that they are almost buried. But a few have the courage to speak. Some of them are extremely important people. You say that: "there is an immense amount of bad science quoted by the anti-climate change lobby including lies, myths and misuse of carefully selected information." Well I don't know of that. In fact the science and published papers of sceptics have to be so good that they are irrefutable. I find it impossible to believe this statement.
The study by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen [1997] has in fact been updated by a later Danish study. And so it goes on. You quote Venus that has a very high CO2 atmosphere, but CO2 atmosphere on our planet is almost negligable. It is only 4% of the greenhouse gas sector or less, and the greenhouse sector is a very small part of our atmosphere. Well over 90% of the Earth's greenhouse gas is water vapour, but we can do nothing about that. It has no guilt factor for the green lobbies that thrive on guilt and no rolling road for the politicians.
All around me I see no real concern for rising crime, a difficult economy and a hundred other problems including starvation in Africa, terrorism murdering women and children in many countries, an undeveloped Africa and an overdeveloping China. Simply supplying people with fresh water would be a step in the right direction. No the biggest concern, we are told, is global warming. A very dishonest film by Al Gore is being given to children in schools to make them believe that this is all true. They should learn more about our world than this propoganda. The stars and celebrities get their housemaid to drive Prius cars while they jet about the world in private planes. The hypocrisy beggars belief.
But the truth is, as you say, we are past the Hubbard Peak which was in 1998, the earth is now cooling. In fact one of the greatest problems has been the siting of earth temperature stations which have been enveloped by development. This heating from these stations is not shown in the troposphere by either satelites or weather balloons. Where would we see greenhouse gas warming? Why in the tropsphere of course. You know the laws of physics. How could the ground heat and the troposphere cool if greenhouse gas was the problem?
As for computer models, none of them come even close to modelling the highly chaotic and complex climate system. Man cannot even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days, we have already changed this years hurricane and tropical storm predictions. And that is just weather. But you are saying that computer models can predict an impossible study like climate up to 50 years or more ahead? And they do not even include cloud data? I don't think so.
I think that we should care for our planet as best we can. What we should not do is to predict dire results because we drive a car or that we breath out. This is simply nonsense. Trees and other plants breathe in CO2. It is not a pollutant, it is a seriously substantial part of our life cycle and that of our planet. We are largely made of CO2. It has never, from what we can see, affected the climate in the past, why ever should it do so now?
Well there is a lot more, but I don't really want to bore anyone. But I do think that individuals should question this so-called consensus. If they do and study it carefully they will find that in fact it is not a consensus at all. It is a political animal, not a scientific one.
All the best
Ray
I’ll give you two examples from your own post of some of the sort of things that worry me, Ray.
Quote “Well over 90% of the Earth's greenhouse gas is water vapour, but we can do nothing about that”
Water vapour is indeed the main greenhouse gas and while we do not influence it significantly directly we can influence it indirectly. The amount of water a volume of air can hold before it condenses out as cloud depends quite critically on temperature. If we increase the temperature of the volume of air, e.g. because we increase the Carbon Dioxide content, it can hold more water vapour. The result is that either the total water vapour in the atmosphere increases and the greenhouse effect increases or, if the total amount of water vapour stays the same, less clouds form and the albedo decreases. Either way the Earth heats up. There are claims that this will not happen but physics says it will.
Quote “Man cannot even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days,”
This is a red herring. Weather is indeed highly chaotic. Climate is weather averaged over periods of time and geographical areas so that the random chaotic elements are averaged out. Climate is typically quite smooth. Even where there are still small random variations it is sufficiently smooth to find trends. I don’t doubt there are problems with the various models. The fact that climate is relatively smooth doesn’t make it less complicated in terms of the factors that influence it and how they influence it. They are, however, improving.
Three other comments:
Quote “we are past the Hubbard Peak which was in 1998, the earth is now cooling”
I think you may have misunderstood my comment about the global Hubbard peak. Hubbard worked out a method of predicting oil production. He used it for the Texas oil fields and predicted that oil production there would peak in 1970 and then decline. He was not believed until Texas passed peak production in 1972. If you apply Hubbard’s principle to global oil production we are close to or have already passed the global Hubbard peak. With demand still rising, once the decline in production becomes evident there will inevitably follow conflict. Obviously if you don’t believe in human induced climate change then a fall in oil production would have no effect on the Earth’s temperature.
Quote “Just the thoughts of sceptics that are so hard to find that they are almost buried.”
I have found the opposite. If you put any climate words into Google the top listed items are nearly all from sceptics.
Quote “In fact the science and published papers of sceptics have to be so good that they are irrefutable”
As an example, look at Christopher Monckton’s article in the Telegraph which has been referenced on another forum in the past, see
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... warm05.xml
In it he effectively claims that the Earth’s temperature can be determined wholly by Stefan Boltzmann’s law. This is total bullshit. In my previous post I demonstrated that the Earth and Venus absorb almost the same radiation from the sun. According to Stefan Boltzmann’s law the Earth and Venus would have identical temperatures. They demonstrably don’t. It’s not that Stefan Boltzmann’s law is wrong. It simply cannot be used to predict the surface temperature of a planet with a thick atmosphere. If you did apply it, it would predict the temperature of a layer somewhere in the atmosphere that infrared radiation finally becomes decoupled from the atmosphere and radiates freely into space rather than being absorbed and re-emitted. Such a layer will always exist on both planets. The difference in temperature between that layer and the surface temperature is dependent on the infrared absorbing characteristics of the atmosphere, which in turn depends on its chemistry. Even using it to predict how changes in solar radiation affect surface temperature will not work because changing the temperature changes the atmospheric chemistry, in particular water vapour as discussed above.
Probably we should stop arguing on here and have a real face-to-face fight with bottles of Raki? Wouldn’t mind coming over to see your new mansion. Perhaps we could have lunch in one of your local hostelries. I will give you a call some time next week. Is your mobile still valid, ending in 413? I presume the landline has changed now that you have moved. Following John’s comment, perhaps we should invite Compo along, alias Filippos.
Warwick
Quote “Well over 90% of the Earth's greenhouse gas is water vapour, but we can do nothing about that”
Water vapour is indeed the main greenhouse gas and while we do not influence it significantly directly we can influence it indirectly. The amount of water a volume of air can hold before it condenses out as cloud depends quite critically on temperature. If we increase the temperature of the volume of air, e.g. because we increase the Carbon Dioxide content, it can hold more water vapour. The result is that either the total water vapour in the atmosphere increases and the greenhouse effect increases or, if the total amount of water vapour stays the same, less clouds form and the albedo decreases. Either way the Earth heats up. There are claims that this will not happen but physics says it will.
Quote “Man cannot even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days,”
This is a red herring. Weather is indeed highly chaotic. Climate is weather averaged over periods of time and geographical areas so that the random chaotic elements are averaged out. Climate is typically quite smooth. Even where there are still small random variations it is sufficiently smooth to find trends. I don’t doubt there are problems with the various models. The fact that climate is relatively smooth doesn’t make it less complicated in terms of the factors that influence it and how they influence it. They are, however, improving.
Three other comments:
Quote “we are past the Hubbard Peak which was in 1998, the earth is now cooling”
I think you may have misunderstood my comment about the global Hubbard peak. Hubbard worked out a method of predicting oil production. He used it for the Texas oil fields and predicted that oil production there would peak in 1970 and then decline. He was not believed until Texas passed peak production in 1972. If you apply Hubbard’s principle to global oil production we are close to or have already passed the global Hubbard peak. With demand still rising, once the decline in production becomes evident there will inevitably follow conflict. Obviously if you don’t believe in human induced climate change then a fall in oil production would have no effect on the Earth’s temperature.
Quote “Just the thoughts of sceptics that are so hard to find that they are almost buried.”
I have found the opposite. If you put any climate words into Google the top listed items are nearly all from sceptics.
Quote “In fact the science and published papers of sceptics have to be so good that they are irrefutable”
As an example, look at Christopher Monckton’s article in the Telegraph which has been referenced on another forum in the past, see
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... warm05.xml
In it he effectively claims that the Earth’s temperature can be determined wholly by Stefan Boltzmann’s law. This is total bullshit. In my previous post I demonstrated that the Earth and Venus absorb almost the same radiation from the sun. According to Stefan Boltzmann’s law the Earth and Venus would have identical temperatures. They demonstrably don’t. It’s not that Stefan Boltzmann’s law is wrong. It simply cannot be used to predict the surface temperature of a planet with a thick atmosphere. If you did apply it, it would predict the temperature of a layer somewhere in the atmosphere that infrared radiation finally becomes decoupled from the atmosphere and radiates freely into space rather than being absorbed and re-emitted. Such a layer will always exist on both planets. The difference in temperature between that layer and the surface temperature is dependent on the infrared absorbing characteristics of the atmosphere, which in turn depends on its chemistry. Even using it to predict how changes in solar radiation affect surface temperature will not work because changing the temperature changes the atmospheric chemistry, in particular water vapour as discussed above.
Probably we should stop arguing on here and have a real face-to-face fight with bottles of Raki? Wouldn’t mind coming over to see your new mansion. Perhaps we could have lunch in one of your local hostelries. I will give you a call some time next week. Is your mobile still valid, ending in 413? I presume the landline has changed now that you have moved. Following John’s comment, perhaps we should invite Compo along, alias Filippos.
Warwick
I agree with you about Monckton, anyway.
Yes, let us not make people bored and uncretelike. You can call me on the number which ends in 413 but it is our landline number which was successfully transferred from the apartment.
And do bring Fillipos. It could be fun.
I reckon ND will scrape through . . .
All the best
Ray
Yes, let us not make people bored and uncretelike. You can call me on the number which ends in 413 but it is our landline number which was successfully transferred from the apartment.
And do bring Fillipos. It could be fun.
I reckon ND will scrape through . . .
All the best
Ray
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