Eat that GW believers!

[jmc]

BTW, where have all of this forums AGW supporters disappeared to?

I'm still here, I still tend to hold the view that the chances of catastrophic climate change as a result of CO2 emmissions is 25%.

I don't buy the argument that there is conclusive evidence that the CO2 can be shown to lag the temperature, the correlation is too noisy and weak to show a 200 year lag or lead. And in the absence of any other information, assuming the worlds climate is impossible to model you can assign a 50% chance to CO2 being caused by temperature and 50% to temperature being caused by CO2.

If you assume temperature is caused by CO2 and you assume that the range of the temperature implies and amplification factor then when you carry the CO2 level beyond that range the two possiblitities are the amplification factor holds or you get a levelling off due to negative feedback (or saturation of the amplifying factors) assuming no prior knowledge you may aswell assing a 50% probability to each.

0.5*0.5=25%

I share your skepticism about the other data at this point, especially the computer models. Knowing how hard it is to model tokamaks I really don't have faith in our ability to model theentire Earths climate at all.


Re: Cloud seeding

The danger there is increasing the albedo with cloud seeding on a large scale could reduce the earth temperatures causing more sea ice which would itself be a source of albedo, you could then get positive feedback which could plunge us all into an ice age, especially if you do it on the wrong side of a PDO at a time of decreasing solar output.

[Skipjack]

The danger there is increasing the albedo with cloud seeding on a large scale could reduce the earth temperatures causing more sea ice which would itself be a source of albedo, you could then get positive feedback which could plunge us all into an ice age, especially if you do it on the wrong side of a PDO at a time of decreasing solar output.

Yeah, but with 1500 ships like that, you do have some level of fine control, dont you?
Just do it slowly enough and make sure to note any issues anywhere. I also think that the effect pretty much disappears within days after a ship has been stopped.

[MSimon]

BTW, where have all of this forums AGW supporters disappeared to?

The fraud we skeptics posited has been found to be true (in the court of public opinion) and they are left with defending fraud.

At the very minimum you can say that what we currently know is uncertain without a total audit of the field.

I think the fact that the supporters have disappeared shows at least a bit of integrity on their part.

[Josh Cryer]

BTW, where have all of this forums AGW supporters disappeared to?

The fraud we skeptics posited has been found to be true (in the court of public opinion) and they are left with defending fraud.

At the very minimum you can say that what we currently know is uncertain without a total audit of the field.

I think the fact that the supporters have disappeared shows at least a bit of integrity on their part.

Non-sense, this website is associated with too many kooks and those of us with integrity tend to stay away.

[MSimon]

New Zealand now too:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... books.html

*

If this keeps up it may begin to look like a world wide conspiracy.

X tells a lie. Y responds, "Climate Science".

And stay away from girls called Heidi Cline, middle initial D.

[jmc]

The danger there is increasing the albedo with cloud seeding on a large scale could reduce the earth temperatures causing more sea ice which would itself be a source of albedo, you could then get positive feedback which could plunge us all into an ice age, especially if you do it on the wrong side of a PDO at a time of decreasing solar output.

Yeah, but with 1500 ships like that, you do have some level of fine control, dont you?
Just do it slowly enough and make sure to note any issues anywhere. I also think that the effect pretty much disappears within days after a ship has been stopped.

In theory yes, you do have some level of control. In practice your going to pay an organisation to build and man those ships, that organisation will then have a vested interest in expanding their operation and arguing that the threat of global watrming "has never been more severe" and go chugging around the place making more clouds even as temperatures go down.

Ofcourse eventually such an argument will become untenable, but by the time the inertia intrinsic in all large organisations of people causes the cloud seeding to stop we may well have passed a tipping point.

[alexjrgreen]

According to legend, the Brahmin Sessa, inventor of the game of Chaturanga (now Chess), so impressed King Sriram that he was asked to name his own reward.

Thanking the King for his kindness, he requested time to consider his reply.

The next day he asked for one grain of wheat for the first square on the chessboard, two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth and so on up to the sixty fourth and last square. The King was astounded at the request, considering it much less than he had been willing to give, and ordered his Treasurer to pay it.

A week later, discovering that the payment had not yet been made, the King was angry and summoned the Treasurer to explain his disobedience. The Treasurer was still calculating...

[Skipjack]

jmc, that is silly.
I would rather guess that the fleet is operated by the group of countries that pay for them. Also, it would be easy to secure this contractually somehow.
Further, I think that noone is that crazy to make money.
Besides, once it gets to cold, people will complain and politicians will emmediately ask for a stop so they get reelected.
And last but not least, I doubt that the world gets to a tipping point that easily either way.
Also, as I said, one would have to do it slowly anyway and monitor the effects. A sudden extreme cooling would result in catastrophic weather effects.

[Jccarlton]

The biggest problem with AGW is the complete absence of any attempt to actually prove causation vis a vis CO2 and radiative heat transfer. Indeed anybody who has a grasp of physics has good reason to doubt the possibility of such causation:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/070 ... 1161v4.pdf
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

Coupled with the growing evidence that even the surface station data has been altered upward in various countries:
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_bri ... aking.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/w ... peratures/
And the knowlege that AGW started out as a fraud from the beginning:
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
As well as a group of people with long term totaltarian objectives:
http://green-agenda.com/
http://www.clubofrome.org/eng/home/
http://www.soros.org/
and rent seekers:
http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=15235
The extreme measures the AGW types want to take to rewrite the world economy:
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/10/2 ... -american/
Would only make sense in a Progressive utopian alterante universe, based on a "science" that is rapidly being proven to be nothing more than a tissues of lies surrounding a really ugly monster.
One is left with the conclusion that AGW is a monster fraud and any policies based on AGW can only be destructive to the economy and liberty
Which leaves one to believe AGW is nothing more, in the end than a Progressive fanasy that would, in the end, be all our nightmares.

[alexjrgreen]

Never mind reality. Let's lurch from one fantasy to another...

[MSimon]

jmc, that is silly.
I would rather guess that the fleet is operated by the group of countries that pay for them. Also, it would be easy to secure this contractually somehow.
Further, I think that noone is that crazy to make money.
Besides, once it gets to cold, people will complain and politicians will emmediately ask for a stop so they get reelected.
And last but not least, I doubt that the world gets to a tipping point that easily either way.
Also, as I said, one would have to do it slowly anyway and monitor the effects. A sudden extreme cooling would result in catastrophic weather effects.

What is the proper temperature for the Earth?

[MSimon]

Never mind reality. Let's lurch from one fantasy to another...

What reality? If the books have been cooked how can we be sure we are not experiencing natural Variation?

Hide the decline.

[alexjrgreen]

Never mind reality. Let's lurch from one fantasy to another...

What reality? If the books have been cooked how can we be sure we are not experiencing natural Variation?

Hide the decline.

Beyond all the rhetoric and disputed models, the natural processes of the earth continue and human activities interact with them.

Ever since man learnt to use fire there has been anthropogenic global warming. Since the use of coal and electricity that effect has only grown. Increasing affluence and a world population of seven billion people have increased the effect from miniscule to small.

My generation uses more power than my parents' did. My children's generation will use more than mine. Most of this energy will end up as heat and the world's population is still growing. In time the warming effect will grow from small to not so small.

Whether or not CO2 amplifies global warming, CO2 levels are an easy measure of how much power (and eventually heat) we are generating.

The legend of Sessa and the chessboard underlines the folly of signing up for exponential growth. As we embark on the possibility of cheap fusion, we would do well to understand the consequences and be ready with some clever ways of dealing with them.

[flying_eagle]

Alexjrgreen,
You state the obvious about AGW and I agree.
Here is an example of scientists working with the arguments used by skeptics even in this forum of prior cold and warm periods of the last 1000 years. Scientists are just getting better at explaining and modeling the regional differences in weather. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8381317.stm
For me, it is a waste of time trying to convince skeptics. For me, I didn't study science to remain stupid and this idea of AGW is a no-brainer fact. Fact1, On earth, without GHG the average global temp would be down by at least 32C. Venus is hotter due GHG, just as we are. In fact, Venus is slightly hotter than Mercury which is even nearer the sun. Compared to Mercury, Venus is almost twice the distance and receives 1/4 the solar irradiance due to a famous equation. Fact2 we are adding to our level of GHG. Any argument denying these facts just shows being ill-informed. Regarding climate change:

As DOE Dr. Steven Chu said, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts."

Short summary by NOAA: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/glo ... ng.html#q1

[taniwha]

On earth, without GHG the average global temp would be down by at least 32C.

If that is a fact, then you had best be grateful for those greenhouse gases as otherwise your fingers would be too stiff to type. If the global temperature drops by 32C, most of the usable landmass will have sub-0 summers.

As for CO2: more CO2 = more plant* food, more plant food = more plants, more plants = less CO2, less CO2 = less plant food = less plants = more CO2. In other words, your standard predator-prey model.

(*and other photosynthesizers. Thanks for the idea, MSimon)

Methane, on the other hand, might be a problem, but the solution is pretty obvious: burn it (ok, extracting enough from the air might be an interesting engineering problem)