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5137. arkymalarky - 10/1/2003 6:26:15 AM Tell that to the Waltons.
Yes, it requires a paid subscription, and no, it's not worth it. Not nearly. But the second article summary sentence pretty much gets it.
I couldn't find the WSJ article, but I imagine it requires a subscription as well. 5138. concerned - 10/26/2003 3:19:17 PM Same Old Arctic `Warming'
It looks as if more warming in the arctic occurred between 1900-1930 than over the last thirty years, and, indeed, arctic temperatures today are no higher and are lower by several measures than they were around 1930. That does not imply large amounts of anthropomorphic global warming. 5139. seadate - 10/26/2003 6:07:20 PM concerned,
That article is posted at john-daly.com and contests the scientific validity of a NASA study. 5140. alistairConnor - 10/26/2003 6:12:33 PM Yeah, I guess that NASA have no difficulty faking global-warning data, after all, they got us to swallow that nonsense about going to the moon, when in reality they filmed it all in the Nevada desert. 5141. seadate - 10/26/2003 6:19:50 PM John L. Daly calls himself a "Greenhouse skeptic" and is obviously committed to this viewpoint rather than to a search for truth. At first reading, this guy appears to be sort of a Rush L. of greenhouse gas skepticism. My money's on the gang from MIT at the quaint facility on NASA Road 1. 5142. seadate - 10/26/2003 6:25:54 PM Alistair, haha. Interesting that it would be a greater feat tp perform the latter and not be found out. 5143. PelleNilsson - 11/10/2003 5:19:36 PM This is in reply to Macnas Message # 11856 in thread 137
You are right of course. Normally you would survey what needs to be done and draw up specifications with defined bill of quantities, and if you cannot do it yourself you get a consultant to do it for you. But this takes time and if you want to restore the electricity grid in Iraq you don't have that time so you are virtually forced into a cost-plus contract. The drawbacks of this can be at least partially offset by having qualified site supervisors and then I mean at least as qualified as the contractor's staff. If you don't you are completely in the hands of the contractor and that's what I fear may be happening in Iraq. 5144. ronski - 11/11/2003 12:07:01 AM The Mann study is the outlier, contradicting hundreds of accounts about the warm medieval period. Mann has now been debunked by two studies this year, and the year is not quite over.
What regrettably colors this debate, besides the global politics, scientific reputations, and money that rest on it, is the almost willful overlooking of the fact that no one disputes that the climate has warmed in the past century or so. Rather than claiming there has been no warming at all, sceptics have made the pricipled and scientifically supported suggestion that it is not human activity that has caused most of the increase in temperatures, but rather solar and other natural phenomena.
Again, the responsible critics are not claiming the Earth has not warmed in the past 150 years, contrary to the way they are being portrayed in the mass media.
They are asking why should human industry be blamed entirely for the warming when the medieval climate was much warmer than it is today, and when solar activity increasingly appears to be linked to these changes.
Many sceptics do in fact maintain that greenhouse gases (which unquestionably retain heat) have had a role in this warming process, perhaps adding to natural warming. But even here, there is room for doubt.
Greenhouse gas production did not decline from the 40s through the 70s, but the temperatures did.
And what else declined? Solar activity. 5145. PelleNilsson - 11/11/2003 1:07:07 AM Yes, and there is clear evidence for an even warmer period, at least in Scandinavia, around 1000 BC. Pollen analyis has shown that the oak then grew further north than it has ever done since. These findings were made long before the climate debate started, by the way. 5146. PelleNilsson - 11/11/2003 1:15:15 AM But these observations of past climate episodes have little value for determining what happens today. Personally I think that both "past warmings show that the present one is due to natural variations" and "past warmings have no relevance for the present, there is a clear connection between human activities and the increased greenhouse effect" are dangerously simplified and I am doubtful if the issue will ever be resolved. There are simply too many feed-back loops and too little knowledge about how they work for a predictive model to be built.
It will continue to be a matter of faith for the foreseeable future. 5147. alistairConnor - 11/11/2003 1:31:29 AM Both these positions are strawmen, or rather, useful stereotypes for the media.
True, Ronski, nobody claims that there has been no warming in the past century; likewise, nobody claims that all warming is due to human activity. What is increasingly beyond dispute (but keep up the vigorous reargard action!) is the rate of warming in the last couple of decades, and the climate perturbations that are the most immediate consequence.
Obviously, it's going so fast that it's inherently difficult to get enough distance to take the long view; but when the British meteorological service rings the alarm bells on global warming, as it did this year, it's worth examining the possibility that they are doing it not simply because they are rabid leftists, but because they have the best computerised climate model. 5148. alistairConnor - 11/11/2003 1:36:15 AM The arguments that "we can't know what's really happening" and the implicit one, "poor insignificant Man can't really be making these bad changes", are often ideologically inspired. They conveniently eliminate the need to consider the consequences of despoiling the planetary commons (fossil fuels, forests, clean air). 5149. concerned - 11/11/2003 1:50:02 AM Obviously, it's going so fast that it's inherently difficult to get enough distance to take the long view; but when the British meteorological service rings the alarm bells on global warming, as it did this year, it's worth examining the possibility that they are doing it not simply because they are rabid leftists, but because they have the best computerised climate model.
But what is the 'best computerised climate model' worth given the woefully inadequate state of the art? Not much, except for promoting climatic agendas by the unscrupulous. What I find particularly questionable about those who purport to make hard predictions based on them is that they are the same people and organizations who are concertedly trying to discredit the rest of climatic science. The uncritical adoption by the UN and IPCC of the Mann 'hockeystick' model is a particularly egregious example of this unscientific approach that among other things, relies on selective and uncorrelatable proxies to estimate global temperatures pre-1900 vs post-1900. At best, this is bad science; at worst, chicanery.
5150. alistairConnor - 11/11/2003 1:59:02 AM What I find particularly questionable about those who purport to make hard predictions based on them is that they are the same people and organizations who are concertedly trying to discredit the rest of climatic science.
... the UK meteorological service? Are you sure? 5151. concerned - 11/11/2003 1:59:06 AM Re. 5141 -
Seadate -
I don't believe NASA has had much to say about arctic temperature trends before about 1980 whereas Daly refers to information dating from the first half of the 20th Century. Furthermore, Daly is not 'contesting' the 'scientific validity' of NASA's results. 5152. thoughtful - 11/11/2003 2:02:24 AM I thought the ice core data showed that climactic changes can be quite abrubt, significant changes taking place in as little as a decade. (See http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/4/1331.pdf) 5153. concerned - 11/11/2003 2:03:23 AM Re. 5150 -
Since you're indulging in rhetoric, I have equal right to ask: 'If them, why not you?' IAC, care to add a little context here for the Mote readership? 5154. concerned - 11/11/2003 2:19:11 AM AC -
A respectable school of science maintains that sea level increases of about 6"/century have been the norm since the end of the last ice age as residual glacial and ice cap melting continues.
It's not yet clear how accurate this theory is, but if it does turn out to the case, wouldn't that wreak havoc with the positions of those 'environmentalists' from the IPCC who insist that only a totally static average sea level is acceptable? 5155. PelleNilsson - 11/11/2003 2:40:35 AM I don't want to have my position misunderstood. I support the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions because it has beneficial side effects, not least the reduction of fossil fuel consumption. The current progress in fuel-cell technology is another significant result which in the next several decades can revolutionise the way we produce and distribute energy.
concerned's position is just an echo of big business lobbying groups who say we cannot afford to do anything. That's ridiculous, Of course we can.
You need to take a more detached view of sience, Alistair. I dabbled in the philosophy of science for a couple of semesters a while ago (you know, Kuhn, Popper and all that) and one of the things I remember is that the more impregnated by theory a science is, the more likely it is that the observations will yield the expected results because (very simplified) the instruments are built that way.
5156. concerned - 11/11/2003 4:34:24 AM Pelle -
That's not my position at all and would I ask you to retract your lie regarding me if I thought you had integrity.
If you had sufficient memory and/or honesty, you would recall that I've posted here that I maintain ten acres of forested acreage near a major suburban center and use a geothermal heatpump to conserve energy. That alone shows how unfounded your lying accusations are and how, since you cannot refute what I am posting, you resort to defaming my character.
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