Climate Change- political?

naivesincerity

Yes there is a cycle, but there has never been the rate of warming that we've had over recent years, since the advent of more c02 emissions.
I don't know why Americans in particular are so much in denial about this possibility.

Ignoring the blatant fact that we don't have the tools to accurately measure the temperatures from more than a two centuries ago.

Reply 23

naivesincerity

2

Bismarck

Ignoring the blatant fact that we don't have the tools to accurately measure the temperatures from more than a two centuries ago.

Not according to the evidence I've seen. I'll try and find you a link to the documentary I saw.

But my other question, why are Americans, particularly the American right turning into such a political rather than scientific issue and refusing to acknowledge any possibility of the validity of the claims about climate change?

Reply 24

naivesincerity

Not according to the evidence I've seen. I'll try and find you a link to the documentary I saw.

But my other question, why are Americans, particularly the American right turning into such a political rather than scientific issue and refusing to acknowledge any possibility of the validity of the claims about climate change?

Because scientists who present evidence to the contrary are shouted down and said to be on the payroll of energy companies.

Because the European left made this into a political issue that they use to hammer the US. Tell me, would you be as willing to listen to any other science that has existed for only a few decades? Do you know what chemists were claiming several decades into the creation of their field? That any metal can be converted into gold. Political Scientists were claiming that all the world's problems would be solved if only everyone disarmed and educated their public. The fact is that any new science makes utopian claims about being able to solve more problems than it realistically can. I suggest reading E.H. Carr on this topic.

Reply 25

Bismarck

Tell me, would you be as willing to listen to any other science that has existed for only a few decades?

Well you seem to have been willing to pay a good deal of money for that microchip in your computer, and the science behind that is 10 years old at best. More like 2-3 years if you got a semi-new chip. The reliability of scientific theories is not a matter of it's age, but to what extent it agrees with empirical observation and the statistical uncertainties of the predictions it makes. The rest of your argument is logically flawed. Scientific journals today have quite a different standard of reporting than alchemists in the infancy of chemistry, and the claim that you could make gold from other metals was not supported by any empirical evidence nor deduced by logical inference from existing theories. Alchemists were comparable to "alternative medicine" not peer reviewed scientific studies published in the worlds more respected scientific journals.

Oh, and for the record, it is perfectly possible to create gold from other metals. It is not quite as economical as extracting naturally occurring gold ( Nuclear reactors are quite expensive devices after all ) but transmutation is quite common today and is used for various purposes. Mostly the goal is to produce radio-isotopes for use in medicine, but there are other applications. Plutonium-239, a metal used in nuclear warheads, is as an example produced from Uranium-238 by neutron absorption.

Reply 26

Jonatan

Well you seem to have been willing to pay a good deal of money for that microchip in your computer, and the science behind that is 10 years old at best. More like 2-3 years if you got a semi-new chip. The reliability of scientific theories is not a matter of it's age, but to what extent it agrees with empirical observation and the statistical uncertainties of the predictions it makes. The rest of your argument is logically flawed. Scientific journals today have quite a different standard of reporting than alchemists in the infancy of chemistry, and the claim that you could make gold from other metals was not supported by any empirical evidence nor deduced by logical inference from existing theories. Alchemists were comparable to "alternative medicine" not peer reviewed scientific studies published in the worlds more respected scientific journals.

Oh, and for the record, it is perfectly possible to create gold from other metals. It is not quite as economical as extracting naturally occurring gold ( Nuclear reactors are quite expensive devices after all ) but transmutation is quite common today and is used for various purposes. Mostly the goal is to produce radio-isotopes for use in medicine, but there are other applications. Plutonium-239, a metal used in nuclear warheads, is as an example produced from Uranium-238 by neutron absorption.

You're confusing basic science and applied science. You're referring to the latter. Climatology deals with the former. You're not seriously suggesting that a new science will have the empirical and theoretical tools at its disposals to make accurate predictions, are you? :confused:

Even climatologists admit that their tools for gathering and interpreting data are still deeply flawed.

Reply 27

UniOfLife

12

Jonatan

Well you seem to have been willing to pay a good deal of money for that microchip in your computer, and the science behind that is 10 years old at best. More like 2-3 years if you got a semi-new chip.

This isn't true. Electricity has been around for well over a hundred years. The transistor has been around for 50 years. And the microchip for 30-40 years. What you mean is that the latest technology is only 2-3 years old. But that isn't the same as the whole area of science not being very old, is it?

Jonatan

Oh, and for the record, it is perfectly possible to create gold from other metals. It is not quite as economical as extracting naturally occurring gold ( Nuclear reactors are quite expensive devices after all ) but transmutation is quite common today and is used for various purposes. Mostly the goal is to produce radio-isotopes for use in medicine, but there are other applications. Plutonium-239, a metal used in nuclear warheads, is as an example produced from Uranium-238 by neutron absorption.

You got a source for the transformation of metals to gold? Radioactive decay is one thing but to force one metal into another seems different.

However, according to Einstein it is theoretically possible to transmute metal to gold because energy and matter are interchangeable so in theory I can transform some metal into pure energy and then transform that into gold. Not sure if it's possible in practice though.

Reply 28

UniOfLife

This isn't true. Electricity has been around for well over a hundred years. The transistor has been around for 50 years. And the microchip for 30-40 years. What you mean is that the latest technology is only 2-3 years old. But that isn't the same as the whole area of science not being very old, is it?

That was a bit of my point. You can't just say global warming is new science and thus unreliable because it is based on physics and chemistry which is older than even the present way to do science. There is no clear distinction between "new" science and "old" science because it is all linked together. There are insights into newtonian mechanics we have today that we didn't 100 years ago, and part of modern plasma physics is just applied electromagnetic theory. To claim that we shouldn't trust climate science because it is new is simply not a valid argument.

You got a source for the transformation of metals to gold? Radioactive decay is one thing but to force one metal into another seems different.
.

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm

Nuclei that don't decay spontaneously can usually be made to do so by bombarding them with neutrons. Sometimes the resulting nucleus is heavier than the original, sometimes it is lighter. It may be stable or radioactive. If it decays through beta-emission the atomic number will increase, and if it decays through alpha emission it will decrease.

While it is possible to make gold this way, it is a rather expensive procedure and thus not one that is used industrially. In contrast, currently the only way to make Plutonium is from Uranium-238. When Uranium-238 absorbs neutrons in a nuclear reactor it turns into U-239 which decays through two beta emissions into Pu-239. This is quite an important reaction since Pu-239 is fissile while U-238 is not. Thus the resulting plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons or as a nuclear fuel, while the U-238 cannot ( other than as a source of Pu-239 ).

An interesting use of transmutation is to use it to transform nuclear waste into less troublesome elements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation#Transmutation_of_nuclear_wastes

Reply 29

Bismarck

You're confusing basic science and applied science. You're referring to the latter. Climatology deals with the former. You're not seriously suggesting that a new science will have the empirical and theoretical tools at its disposals to make accurate predictions, are you? :confused:

Even climatologists admit that their tools for gathering and interpreting data are still deeply flawed.

I'm saying the present attribution of recent global warming to human activity is based on sound and well tested physics, chemistry and biology and is by no means just some new cooked up theory which hasn't been tested.

The consequences of radiative forcing on the thermodynamics of the atmosphere is solidly backed by our best understanding of the relationship between energy, temperature and radiation. The interaction of CO2 with electromagnetic radiation is well understood, as is the absorption spectrum of all the other gases that exist in any sizeable quantity in the air. The amount of incoming radiation in the upper layers of the atmosphere has been carefully measured for decades, using satellites made for the purpose. Same is true for the outgoing radiation. We KNOW there is more radiation that is going in than is going out. We KNOW this is largely due to changes in the atmosphere's opacity at wavelengths associated with greenhouse gases. We have measured this directly. We KNOW how much CO2 we emit. We KNOW how much infra-red radiation CO2 absorbs, at what wavelength, and even where ( the satellites sweep out the entire earth's surface producing a "map" of outgoing radiation: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q3/101/notes/EnergyBalanceMapDJF.gif )

There are some uncertainties as to what other effects we have an impact on ( in particular how much sulphates and particulates contribute to cloud formation and how that affects radiation throughput in the visible part of the spectrum ), but this does not change the fact that CO2 warms the planet. We can't quite tell how much the planet will warm, because we can't tell what the world will do about it, and we don't quite know how much other pollutants cool the planet, but we can say with almost certainty that emitting ever increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere will lead to the earth getting warmer.

Oh, and since I smell the usual suspects in denial coming up:
a)We measure solar radiation received directly. The earth's orbit is irrelevant since we measure the change in incoming radiation anyway. The same goes for variations in solar output. If more radiation comes in, our satellites and weather stations will pick it up. We don't just rely on theoretical models, there are direct measurements.

b)We know the CO2 is fossil because fossil carbon contains no ( or very little ) C-14, which decays with a half-life of several thousand years. Plants and animals don't live that long, so they can't have an impact on atmospheric CO2 concentration of C-14 as compared to the C-12 concentration.

c)We know that volcanoes can't be responsible since they release their CO2 in sudden bursts, what has been observed is a continuous rise in CO2 consistent with industrial emissions ( we have detailed data on coal , oil and gas use as well as deforestation).

In summary, the conclusion that warming is largely due to changes in radiative forcing, and in particular greenhouse gas emissions, is based on very well tested science. At the moment the largest uncertainty in trying to predict warming is down to political policy. We can't know how much the earth will warm without knowing how much CO2 will be emitted.

Reply 30

Jonatan

I'm saying the present attribution of recent global warming to human activity is based on sound and well tested physics, chemistry and biology and is by no means just some new cooked up theory which hasn't been tested.

Odd that many geologists don't share your optimism about the viability of the theory. But I guess they're old paid for by big oil.

We can't quite tell how much the planet will warm, because we can't tell what the world will do about it, and we don't quite know how much other pollutants cool the planet, but we can say with almost certainty that emitting ever increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere will lead to the earth getting warmer.

And no one denies that it doesn't lead to warming. The fact is that you can't accurately say how much of the change in temperature is a result of CO2. If you could, tell me right now, if CO2 goes up x, y, or z, over the next 10 years, what will the temperature be in 10 years. Furthermore, how sure are you in your ability to accurately measure the temperatures? And how sure are you that other factors, most notably natural warming patterns, aren't responsible for the majority of the change in temperature?

Reply 31

Bismarck

Odd that many geologists don't share your optimism about the viability of the theory. But I guess they're old paid for by big oil.

Oh, really? Because looking back at the old copies of Nature and Science neither journal seems to have published a single peer reviewed paper saying something to that effect ( plenty of them say the contrary thou). Could it maybe be that there is in fact not very many geologists that make that suggestion even thou the sceptics like to claim so ? Are these "many geologists" mainly blog posts or people publishing in non-scientific media outlets?

Bismarck

And no one denies that it doesn't lead to warming. The fact is that you can't accurately say how much of the change in temperature is a result of CO2. If you could, tell me right now, if CO2 goes up x, y, or z, over the next 10 years, what will the temperature be in 10 years. Furthermore, how sure are you in your ability to accurately measure the temperatures? And how sure are you that other factors, most notably natural warming patterns, aren't responsible for the majority of the change in temperature?

Ok, so you agree that CO2 is the major contributor to increased radiative forcing , just that you are not sure how radiative forcing relates to temperature? Well as it happens the earth is in a big vacuum, and the only way for energy to enter or leave the system is therefore through radiation. It is also completely false to suggest we don't have any accurate information of how much temperature has increased. Meteorologists have had a huge interest in collecting accurate temperature readings for more than 100 years as temperature is extremely important to how weather patterns develop. As for not being able to tell how much warming we will get, well as I mentioned it is mainly dependant upon what we do. If you assume CO2 emissions will be business as usual, all the major climate models agree global average temperature will rise by about 1C over the next 50 years. When you consider longer time scales ( such as the next 100 years ) the predictions are less accurate, but again they all agree there will be somewhere between 2C and 5C of warming.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Global_Warming_Predictions.png

Reply 32

Jonatan

Oh, really? Because looking back at the old copies of Nature and Science neither journal seems to have published a single peer reviewed paper saying something to that effect ( plenty of them say the contrary thou). Could it maybe be that there is in fact not very many geologists that make that suggestion even thou the sceptics like to claim so ? Are these "many geologists" mainly blog posts or people publishing in non-scientific media outlets?

And that has nothing to do with the fact that the people doing the peer reviews automatically assume that anything that goes against global warming is bad science?

Ok, so you agree that CO2 is the major contributor to increased radiative forcing , just that you are not sure how radiative forcing relates to temperature? Well as it happens the earth is in a big vacuum, and the only way for energy to enter or leave the system is therefore through radiation. It is also completely false to suggest we don't have any accurate information of how much temperature has increased. Meteorologists have had a huge interest in collecting accurate temperature readings for more than 100 years as temperature is extremely important to how weather patterns develop. As for not being able to tell how much warming we will get, well as I mentioned it is mainly dependant upon what we do. If you assume CO2 emissions will be business as usual, all the major climate models agree global average temperature will rise by about 1C over the next 50 years. When you consider longer time scales ( such as the next 100 years ) the predictions are less accurate, but again they all agree there will be somewhere between 2C and 5C of warming.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Global_Warming_Predictions.png

Then please explain why there are constant changes to data about current and past temperatures? Just days ago, it was confirmed that the temperatures in the US over the last decade were calculated incorrectly.

Reply 33

naivesincerity

2

Bismarck

And no one denies that it doesn't lead to warming.

Then what's the problem? Given that, it should surely be an aim to reduce carbon emissions.

Reply 34

naivesincerity

Then what's the problem? Given that, it should surely be an aim to reduce carbon emissions.

Because if it's responsible for an insignificant part of the global warming, why should we waste trillions of dollars to address it? Believe it or not, but we have limited resources. A dollar that is spent on addressing global warming is a dollar that is not spent elsewhere.

Reply 35

Bismarck

And that has nothing to do with the fact that the people doing the peer reviews automatically assume that anything that goes against global warming is bad science?

Nope, the peer review process is quite formal in fact. The most common reason papers are rejected is due to insufficient references or failure to properly document how you produced your graphs etc.. Heck, check the peer review policy for yourself:
http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/peer_review.html

Bismarck

Then please explain why there are constant changes to data about current and past temperatures? Just days ago, it was confirmed that the temperatures in the US over the last decade were calculated incorrectly.

I assume you are referring to the bug in the NASA code which placed 7 years in the wrong century? Well first of all the raw data was not incorrect, the program which they used to calculate trends had a bug in it. The trends in question was US-only, were not used in any of the climate models, and the error had only a minor impact anyway ( the corrected results also shows a significant warming trend ). As for constant changes to the data, there aren't constant changes outside of the statistical uncertainties. As better data becomes available the uncertainties decrease, and thus the data changes slightly. In either case the NASA error has little to do with it as it was an error in their analytic software, not the raw measurements.

Reply 36

Jonatan

Nope, the peer review process is quite formal in fact. The most common reason papers are rejected is due to insufficient references or failure to properly document how you produced your graphs etc.. Heck, check the peer review policy for yourself:
http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/peer_review.html

I know how the peer review process works. I also know how certain journals are "captured" by a group of researchers who aren't too keen on allowing articles from people whose methodologies or direction of research they don't like.

I assume you are referring to the bug in the NASA code which placed 7 years in the wrong century? Well first of all the raw data was not incorrect, the program which they used to calculate trends had a bug in it. The trends in question was US-only, were not used in any of the climate models, and the error had only a minor impact anyway ( the corrected results also shows a significant warming trend ). As for constant changes to the data, there aren't constant changes outside of the statistical uncertainties. As better data becomes available the uncertainties decrease, and thus the data changes slightly. In either case the NASA error has little to do with it as it was an error in their analytic software, not the raw measurements.

You're saying the temperature will change a median of 3.5 degrees over a century. The mistake in question was wrong by 0.15 degrees, or what you'd expect global warming to cause in 5 years. This is far from the first adjustment, and it's far from being the largest.

Reply 37

Bismarck

I know how the peer review process works. I also know how certain journals are "captured" by a group of researchers who aren't too keen on allowing articles from people whose methodologies or direction of research they don't like.

Yet you find you have reasonable cause to say many geologists disagree with me? Tell me, if the journals and scientific reporting channels of the world are as unreliable as you claim, where do you get your claims from? In particular your claims about the scientific opinions about geologists. What methods do you use to distinguish a reliable source from a "captured" one as you say? Is it per chance the journals that publish papers you agree with that are not "captured" ? Your implication that science is being deliberately changed across the world ( and keep in mind there is quite a few countries that are involved in this ) simply doesn't have any merits, and the same type of allegations could easily be made to disagree with you.

Bismarck

You're saying the temperature will change a median of 3.5 degrees over a century. The mistake in question was wrong by 0.15 degrees, or what you'd expect global warming to cause in 5 years. This is far from the first adjustment, and it's far from being the largest.

You're comparing local US-only ( and more importantly, land-only ) changes to worldwide global changes. You may just as well cite the temperature in your bath tub. I already did explain that global climate models used the raw data and not the incorrect results from the NASA algorithm, and I did mention that land temperatures are quite different from sea temperatures. The error in the NASA data has NO impact on global climate models, not only because it was small on a global scale, but because it wasn't even used for global climate models in the first place.

Reply 38

Salisbury III

Man-made global warming = liberal hogwash

(vast oversimplification, but essentially true)

Reply 39