GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

[Starving Steve]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

We're saying the same thing; the climatic system is too complex to model all components accurately. This is not news.

All the models can do is get closer to reality over time.

The layer of CO2 (and methane) around the planet keeps it warmer than it would otherwise be. Few dispute the Greenhouse Effect. It seems logical to expect that putting more CO2 up there, as we have, will mean it will get warmer. This is a simple model.

We need more advanced and continually improving models to attach some probabilities as to whether there are, for example, negative feedbacks that could possibly reverse this simple model.

Please produce the hard evidence that CO2 at the 450 PPM level on Earth has any consequence on climate.

Yes, on Venus with 950,000 PPM, CO2 has a profound affect upon climate, but 450 on Earth is not 950,000 on Venus........ Big difference!

The climate models ASSUME a CO2-to-climate relationship, but no such relationship exists on Earth.

I like my science done openly and transparently, so that we all can see the tacit assumptions made to calibrate the climate models. If there is a hockey-stick relationship between CO2 and climate, show me why that relationship exists and how that relationship was calibrated into the climate models...... Thank you.

If someone in economics classes would have raised their hand and asked for the evidence on how econometric models were calibrated to deal with deflation in house prices, perhaps we wouldn't be in this economic mess now. Perhaps Greenspan and Bernanke would have been laughed at, instead of being given Ph.Ds.

Before we piss-away our economic future with carbon taxes and Copenhagen agreements, please give us the scientific evidence that shows why 450 PPM CO2 on Earth has a profound affect upon climate. :rolleyes:

[c1ue]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Like I said earlier TV meteorologists were a joke in the 70's. 30 years later with improved models/computing power and no ones laughing. I'm sure someone can pick out some choice quotes from 30-40 years back denouncing the possibility of better forecasting as "irreducible"

There is a big difference between introducing weather satellites and being able to model the climate on a molecular basis.

Truly, weather forecasting today is more a matter of using the satellites to pattern match (on a grand scale) what will happen in a specific area in the near future.

Modeling climate, on the other hand, must take into account factors which individually are miniscule but which collectively are large. Even then this might be fine if the resulting behavior were well understood - but in fact the 'butterfly' phenomenon is very real.

Whatever your view on whether climate models may eventually be able to more accurately predict climate, the reality is that the present models don't work at all. In any fashion. With any reliability.

To then base worldwide policy decisions on these same models...ludicrous.

As we speak the UK Met's model predictions for 3 straight years has been faced with the exact opposite phenomena.

Not a big deal, except for the complete lack of preparedness these predictions engendered in UK government road maintenance:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...ing-clear.html

As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions.

For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC – itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession with “global warming” – was just a “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead.


Then, as councils across Britain ran out of salt for frozen roads, we had the Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, admitting that we entered this cold spell with only six days’ supply of grit. No mention of the fact that the Highways Agency and councils had been advised that there was no need for them to stockpile any more – let alone that many councils now have more “climate change officials” than gritters.

[Starving Steve]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Here is another question that I would like to ask the believers in man-made global-warming:

Why the focus on CO2 in modelling global climate? Why not re-focus on water-vapour, another gas which is much more plentiful in Earth's atmosphere than CO2 and which absorbs infra-red (heat) radiation just like CO2?

If there really is global-warming ( which I doubt ), water-vapour is the first gas that I would look at. And this is not to mention the fact that industrial activities emit water-vapour, worldwide.... I mean if Al Gore and his bunch at Copenhagen wanted to crucify mankind for industrialization, at least they could have chosen scientifically the more correct greenhouse gas to do it with.

[c1ue]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Here is another question that I would like to ask the believers in man-made global-warming:

Why the focus on CO2 in modelling global climate? Why not re-focus on water-vapour, another gas which is much more plentiful in Earth's atmosphere than CO2 and which absorbs infra-red (heat) radiation just like CO2?

If there really is global-warming ( which I doubt ), water-vapour is the first gas that I would look at. And this is not to mention the fact that industrial activities emit water-vapour, worldwide.... I mean if Al Gore and his bunch at Copenhagen wanted to crucify mankind for industrialization, at least they could have chosen scientifically the more correct greenhouse gas to do it with.

The AGW-CO2-Catastrophe theory does take into account water vapor.

Specifically the CO2 forcing function stipulates that higher temperatures due to CO2 as a GHG will cause more water vapor to be absorbed in the atmosphere which in turn will increase temperatures even more.

The other reason water vapor isn't a primary subject is that there are no proxies whatsoever for global water vapor; thus it is impossible to understand what the historical values of water vapor in the atmosphere are.

Lastly, water vapor isn't directly attributable to man. From an eco-Nazi perspective, this is not very helpful - just as AGW due to surface albedo changes isn't helpful, AGW due to soot isn't very helpful (in the Western world), GW due to Ice Age recovery isn't very helpful, etc etc.

It is hard to lay a guilt trip without direct attribution.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

What a negative defeatist viewpoint.

This has nothing to do with the state of my mental health.

Study up on chaos theory and the intractability of NP-complete problems and then report back your results.

Your computer science and mathematics foundations seem to be insufficient to understanding this matter. Fortunately this insufficiency can be overcome with proper study.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Using Wikipedia to support the AGW fraudsters: too ironic.

http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2009/1...-revealed-132/

LOL... when someone resorts to either Snopes or Wikipedia to "debunk" something, it is like they are bringing a knife to a gunfight... they've already lost the battle.

[Starving Steve]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

The AGW-CO2-Catastrophe theory does take into account water vapor.

Specifically the CO2 forcing function stipulates that higher temperatures due to CO2 as a GHG will cause more water vapor to be absorbed in the atmosphere which in turn will increase temperatures even more.

The other reason water vapor isn't a primary subject is that there are no proxies whatsoever for global water vapor; thus it is impossible to understand what the historical values of water vapor in the atmosphere are.

Lastly, water vapor isn't directly attributable to man. From an eco-Nazi perspective, this is not very helpful - just as AGW due to surface albedo changes isn't helpful, AGW due to soot isn't very helpful (in the Western world), GW due to Ice Age recovery isn't very helpful, etc etc.

It is hard to lay a guilt trip without direct attribution.

For the interest and benefit of kids reading this thread, the water-vapour content of Earth's atmosphere varies between 0% and 4%, depending upon altitude in the atmosphere as well as depending upon latitude. The most water-vapour (4% content of the atmosphere) is near the surface of the Earth, near the equator.

So, if I take 2% as the average for the Earth, that means the Earth's atmosphere is 20,000 PPM water-vapour. That greenhouse gas (water-vapour) is then 44.44 times as important as CO2, on the basis of concentration in the atmosphere alone.

Next time your school has a love-in with Al Gore and his carbon-dioxide theory of man-made global warming, you might just get up and tell your school about water-vapour and its importance in trapping heat on Earth.

If more students got up and started challenging the "accepted" curriculum being taught in schools and universities, we just might have a better education, not to mention, derive better public-policies for the future.

[Diarmuid]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

To then base worldwide policy decisions on these same models...ludicrous.

As we speak the UK Met's model predictions for 3 straight years has been faced with the exact opposite phenomena.

Article in the times today (of all places??) on the proposed "solutions" and the economic costs to mitigate CO2 induced catastrophic warming, the hypocrisy of propagandists who used weather events in the past as evidence for AGW now stringently declaring "weather is not climate". My own view, is weather is not climate but much of the use of freak weather events and scare stories in the MSM for proof of AGW and a requirement to act NOW on the policy front has now been, in many cases, seriously debunked such as, disastrous rising sea levels, increased hurricane activity, melting Himalayan glaciers, droughts, floods etc. ad nauseum, really gets my goat (I hate being lied to and seriously detest this corruption and dumbing down of our information sources.)

As for those advocating using models, which have up till now broadly proved to be hopelessly inaccurate, and the accuracy of which the hypothesis of AGW broadly rests, to make policy with, I draw your attention to the last debacle where this was done - the economic crisis we are living through.

Worst of all imo, the "solutions" proposed will not mitigate the warming effects of CO2, even if we assume the hypothesis to be representative and accurate (which I do not), additionally they will hit the poor and vulnerable hardest again (carbon taxes are regressive, as is in any policy or overheads which add to energy costs) while lining the pockets of vested interests.
Bogus science for bogus policies, thanks but no thanks;

Brrrr, the thinking on climate is frozen solid
Dominic Lawson


Here’s how it is down our way. The oil tank that powers our central heating is running worryingly low, but for days fuel lorries have been unable to navigate the frozen track that links us to the nearest main road. We would have gained much welcome heat from incandescent light bulbs, but as those have been banned by the government as part of the “fight against climate change”, no such luck.

On the good side, the absence of delivered newspapers — even the faithful paperboy has given up the unequal struggle to reach us — means I won’t be getting any more headaches from attempting to read newsprint under the inadequate light shed by “low-energy” bulbs. Nevertheless, the news has reached our Sussex farmhouse that the Conservatives have already begun the general election campaign, covering hoardings nationwide with pictures of David Cameron looking serious.

Many will be appalled by the promise of months of being force-fed with party political argument. There is something much worse than being confronted with non-stop debate, however: it is the prospect of being offered no choice and no debate when all three main parties have the same policy. This is what happened in the general election of 1992, when the Conservative government and its Labour and Liberal Democrat opponents were united in the view that sterling should remain linked to the deutschmark via the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM). This had been forcing the unnecessary closure of thousands of businesses as Bank of England interest rates went up and up to maintain an exchange rate deemed morally virtuous by the entire political establishment — and, indeed, by every national newspaper.

As everyone now knows (and as we deeply unfashionable “ERM deniers” warned at the time), it would all end in tears. A few months after that general election, the re-elected Conservative government was compelled by the forces of reality to abandon this discredited bulwark of its economic policy, a humiliation that destroyed the Tories’ reputation for competence or even common sense.

Now, almost a generation later, we face another election in which the main parties are united in a single masochistic view: that the nation must cut its carbon emissions by 80% — this is what all but five MPs voted for in the Climate Change Act — to save not just ourselves but also the entire planet from global warming. For this to happen — to meet the terms of the act, I mean, not to “save the world” — the typical British family will have to pay thousands of pounds a year more in bills, since the cost of renewable energy is so much higher than that of oil, gas and coal.

The vast programme of wind turbines for which the bills are now coming in will not, by the way, avert the energy cut-offs declared last week by the national grid. Quite the opposite: as is often the case, the recent icy temperatures have been accompanied by negligible amounts of wind. If we had already decommissioned any of our fossil-fuel power stations and replaced them with wind power, we would now be facing a genuine civil emergency rather than merely inconvenience.

There are other portents of impending crisis caused entirely by the political fetish of carbon reduction. As noted in this column three weeks ago, the owners of the Corus steel company stand to gain up to $375m (Ł234m) in European Union carbon credits for closing their plant in Redcar, only to be rewarded on a similar scale by the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism fund for switching such production to a new “clean” Indian steel plant. That’s right: the three main British political parties — under the mistaken impression that CO2 is itself a pollutant — are asking us to vote for them on the promise that they are committed to subsidise the closure of what is left of our own industrial base.

The collapse of the UN’s climate change summit in Copenhagen makes such a debacle all the more likely. Countries such as India, China and Brazil have made it clear they have not the slightest intention of rejecting the path to prosperity that the developed world has already taken: to use the cheapest sources of energy available to lift their peoples out of hardship, extreme poverty and isolation. Britons may be forced by their own government to cut their carbon emissions — equivalent to less than 2% of the world’s total; but we can forget about the idea that this will encourage any of those much bigger countries to defer their own rapid industrialisation.

Just as the British public never shared the politicians’ unanimous worship of the ERM totem (which is why the voters’ subsequent vengeance upon the governing Tories was implacable), so the public as a whole is much less convinced by the doctrine of man-made global warming than the Palace of Westminster affects to be: the most recent polls suggest only a minority of the population is convinced by the argument. This has caused some of the more passionate climate change catastrophists to question the virtues of democracy and to hanker after a dictatorial government that would treat such dissent as treason. As Professors Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch warned in Der Spiegel last month: “Climate policy must be compatible with democracy; otherwise the threat to civilisation will be much more than just changes to our physical environment.”

The threat of a gulf between a sceptical public and a political class determined — as it would see it — on saving us from the consequences of our own stupidity can have only been increased by the Arctic freeze that has enveloped not just Britain but also the rest of northern Europe, China and the United States. Of course one winter’s unexpected savagery does not in itself disprove any theories of man-made global warming, as the climate change gurus are hastily pointing out. Steve Dorling, of the University of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences — yes, the UEA of “climategate” email fame — warns that it is “wrong to focus on single events, which are the product of natural variability”.

Quite so; but it would be easier to accept the point that a particular episode of extreme and unexpected cold was entirely due to “natural variations” if the UEA’s chaps had not been so adept at publicising every recent drought or heatwave as possible evidence of “man’s impact”, and if David Viner (then a senior climate scientist at UEA) had not made a headline in The Independent a decade ago by warning that in a few years “British children just aren’t going to know what snow is”.

A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”

After reading this I printed it off and ran out into the snow to show it to my wife, who for some minutes had been unavailingly pounding up and down on our animals’ trough to break the ice. She seemed a bit miserable and, I thought, needed cheering up. “Darling,” I said, “the Met Office still insists that we are enjoying an unseasonably warm winter.”

“Well, why don’t you tell the animals, too?” she said. “Because that would mean they are drinking water instead of staring at a block of ice and I am not jumping up and down on it in front of them like an idiot.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle6982310.ece

[renewable]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Some people on this thread really need to think about the precautionary principle rather than just believing that they know everything.

[Diarmuid]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Some people on this thread really need to think about the precautionary principle rather than just believing that they know everything.

Maybe those using the precautionary principle to justify policy changes, should take a closer look at the policies they are either explicitly or implicitly advocating, and think about the "unintended" consequences of said policies

Scotland has some of the worst statistics in Europe for winter deaths among older people. Most of these deaths do not happen dramatically. Hypothermia cases are rare. But many result indirectly. Strokes occur when the body compensates for lowered temperatures by concentrating the blood in the main organs – which are less able to cope when people are old. Bronchial illnesses are also much more prevalent. In the UK, “last winter, more than 25,000 older people died as a result of cold-related illnesses.”1
Why should this be when Scotland has milder winters than the rest of the Europe? There are two immediate reasons.
The first is the poor standard of housing. The second is fuel poverty. The 2002 Scottish House Condition Survey found that 76 per cent of houses in Glasgow failed to meet housing quality standards. In ex-council stock the figure was 86 per cent. On top of this people are increasingly unable to afford to heat these houses.
Already in 2002, when gas and electricity prices were at a historic low, the Scottish Executive Fuel Poverty Statement found that 55 per cent of all older people were in fuel poverty – that is, having to spend more than 10 per cent of all income, including housing benefit and their winter fuel allowance, to heat their homes adequately. Excluding pensioners, 55 per cent of other households on benefits were also in fuel poverty.2
Since then fuel prices have increased by 77 per cent and the number of households in fuel poverty has risen from 282,000 in 2002 to 646,000 at the end of 2006. One third of all Scottish homes is now affected.
To adequately heat their houses, single pensioners dependent on pension credit have to spend 16 per cent of their income – in reality much more as their housing benefit goes direct to their landlord. Additionally, housing benefit is effectively capped with any shortfall having to be met by the individual. A single pregnant woman dependent on income support would have to spend 42 per cent of their disposable income.3
This is because energy is more expensive in the UK. Electricity users pay 75 per cent more than consumers in Finland or Spain, 55 per cent more than in Sweden and Austria, 46 per cent more than in France and 24 per cent more than in Germany.

http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/poverty28.html

Also take a look at the questions of corruption hanging over some of the chief proponents of such a principle.

Pachauri in a spot as climategate hits TERI
Ajmer Singh
New Delhi, January 10, 2010

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of UN's Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had advocated emission reductions at the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate Summit.

But back home in India, he seems to be failing to uphold standards of propriety in his professional dealings.

During his tenure, first as director from 1982, and then as director-general of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) since 2001, Pachauri was a member of the boards of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), three of India's biggest public sector energy companies, all of whom by the very nature of their business contribute heavily to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions, according to the IPCC, are adding to the country's growing carbon footprint and hastening climate change.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/St...hits+TERI.html

Finally, regarding the precautionary principle, those who would advocate such would do well to think on the profound social and legal implications such a policy has, to subscribe to such a policy imo, one must assume that those who would use such a a policy to craft policy have best, uncorrupted information to hand and societies and humanities (in the case of global policies) best interests at heart, history as a guide I would personally not hand over such vast power to any bureaucracy or government which such a principle implies to be effective, even IF one did subscribe to the previous two premises. Seeing as I do not subscribe to uncorrupted and benign government or bureaucracy, experience teaching otherwise, regarding the principle, again thanks but no thanks.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

Some people on this thread really need to think about the precautionary principle rather than just believing that they know everything.

Sounds to me like another variation on Pascal's Wager, more recently encountered in the phrase "It's Not the Nature of Evidence, It's the Seriousness of the Charge."

This is misleading rhetoric. If there were only one catastrophic outcome to be avoided in some dimension of activity, then perhaps doing everything in one's capacity to avoid that outcome would be well advised.

But in the more complex real world that we inhabit, one can postulate dire outcomes for just about any course of action or inaction. Simply being able to hypothecate some catastrophic scenario does not justify enacting some massive global financial scheme that will likely impoverish, even starve to death, many third world residents while enriching yet again some traders at Goldman Sachs.

The Powers That Be (TPTB) have demonstrated admirable skill at formulating bogeymen to justify further constraints on our liberty and confiscation of our wealth. Beware. Simply hypothecating such a bogeyman does not justify some massive response, regardless of what rhetorical florish one adorns it with. You actually have to make your case that both the problem is real and the solution a good one.

[unlucky]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

The Powers That Be (TPTB) have demonstrated admirable skill at formulating bogeymen to justify further constraints on our liberty and confiscation of our wealth. Beware. Simply hypothecating such a bogeyman does not justify some massive response, regardless of what rhetorical florish one adorns it with. You actually have to make your case that both the problem is real and the solution a good one.

I think these fears of economic meltdown, imposition of world government, or carbon casino gambling by Goldman Sachs are overblown.

The models being advocated are based on similar models used in the past to deal with acid rain and CFC emissions. Both of these cases also involved international cooperation and the introduction of new taxes and/or emission trading schemes. In both cases, the schemes implemented were successful (even though affected industries predicted meltdown at the time). I'm sure they were not flawless. But I'm also pretty sure that we in the developed world have benefited enormously from the willingness of our governments to regulate, tax, and in some cases outlaw various forms of pollution. I'm saying that as someone who is not generally in favor of government power. You only have to visit Beijing to see the effects of untrammeled pollution.

And bear in mind - by the end of this century, there will be no more fossil fuel economy, either way.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

I think these fears of economic meltdown, imposition of world government, or carbon casino gambling by Goldman Sachs are overblown.

The models being advocated are based on similar models used in the past to deal with acid rain and CFC emissions. ...

And bear in mind - by the end of this century, there will be no more fossil fuel economy, either way.

Now that's a different tack, debating the relative merits of this or that. I can respect that, even though I've chosen not to participate much at this time in such a discussion of the "global warming" issue.

My objection above was to the short circuiting rhetoric that we should adopt drastic measures without further ado because someone can imagine horrible outcomes if we don't. Such a "precautionary principle" is flawed rhetoric and that I do choose to take some effort to dismiss when I see it.

[unlucky]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

My objection above was to the short circuiting rhetoric that we should adopt drastic measures without further ado because someone can imagine horrible outcomes if we don't. Such a "precautionary principle" is flawed rhetoric and that I do choose to take some effort to dismiss when I see it.

Fair enough, my post was perhaps responding to sentiments expressed by earlier posters. (I have to confess I think the precautionary principle is garbage myself).

[MulaMan]

Re: GLOBAL WARMING alert - Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years

I heard on Fox News, right after an Exxon commercial, that Hussian Obama has "redirected" CIA resources to help the evil climate scientists that are conspiring against America.

I wonder if Hussian Obama ordered the CIA to redirect the gulf current so that the Northern USA coast and Britian will freeze all year round and his fellow islamofascists can then row thier boats over from muslimland and invade christendom?

and of course the first thing that they will do is outlaw football on Sunday's because that is a religious day!