State of Fear?

[[Syl]]

As someone else put it, Crichton is to science what Rowling is to magic.

www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74#more-74

[kevinswatch]

Those look like interesting articles, Syl. I'll have to read them sometime when I'm bored. That Real Climate site looks pretty cool.

Jay, we've got the power to modify our impact on the environment, and I'm all for that, but do we have the ability to scrub greenhouse gasses out of the air from a volcanic explosion?

I'm not quite sure where you're going with this, so just correct me if I misunderstood you at all. Well, right now, no, I can't say that we do. But we don't really have any control over what the earth does. It would be impossible control the earth to the point where we can prevent volcanic explosions. The earth will do what it's been doing.

However, that doesn't mean that we can't change what we've been doing... Sure, when the volcanoes erupt, they throw greenhouse gases into the air. But we're doing the same thing ourselves. Of course we can't change what a volcano does, but we can change what we do.

And who knows, maybe if we put enough research into it, us engineers will be able to develop machines that are able to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Perhaps some sort of large photosynthesis machine? I wonder if anyone is working on that...

And thanks for the boost of confidence, MM. Glad for the support, heh.-jay

[Cybrweez]

As someone else put it, Crichton is to science what Rowling is to magic.

www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74#more-74

I looked at the science mag link, it was about the IPCC's stance on climate change, which someone else has already posted a rebuttal to. So where does that leave us? And yet, there are some on both sides that claim their position is obviously true.

[[Syl]]

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

Emphases mine. The fact is, of all the scientific findings, %75 confirm global warming, and the other %25 are neutral. That, and Crichton is a novelist; his works are fiction, often full of junk science; and he can be as bad as the enviro-extremists.

[Cail]

I HIGHLY doubt we have not lost forest land since
1920. Is that the company line?

Since we already dealt with evolution and utterly annihilated your young earth argument with science. I would give Jay's models some serious consideration.

My young Earth argument? What planet are you from?

Doubt all you want, I posted links to support my position, and I've got 12 years of experience working in the field. Facts are facts.

[Avatar]

Actually, I'm pretty sure Kins is talking to CyberWeez there.

--A

[Cybrweez]

Syl, I wasn't talking about Crichton rebutting IPCC, I was talking about the link posted in this thread,

www.tysknews.com/Depts/Environment/debunking.htm

These scientists don't fall in the 75% who agree, or the 25% neutral. I mean, not that your numbers are totally arbitrary.

[kevinswatch]

^ The problem I have with that article is that it only references one dude. This C.R. de Freitas guy.

It's hard for that article to make a good argument by only referencing one person's research. Especially since it seems that the article posted by C.R. de Freitas could be mostly just opinion. I think I may look up that guy's article and see what it's about.-jay

[Cybrweez]

www.tysknews.com/Depts/Environment/no_m ... arming.htm

The Gallup poll he mentions is interesting, 83% of North American climatologists disagreed w/man made global warming theory. So how do we know whether 83% against or 75% for?

www.tysknews.com/Depts/Environment/myth ... arming.htm

[Cybrweez]

Interesting:

This crucial point is rarely admitted during either lay or expert discussions of scientific findings: The ways we think about science are not themselves scientific.

From:

www.tysknews.com/Depts/Environment/damn_statistics.htm

[Cybrweez]

DDT being used again:

www.fightingmalaria.org/news.php?ID=492

[kevinswatch]

In the future, please don't double post. Just edit your last post and include whatever it is you wish to add.

Again, I have a problem with the links that you posted, since it seems to be mostly an opinion piece. Along with throwing out a lot of random statistics. The author of "There is no man made global warming" makes a lot of big claims, but he does not reference any scientific articles. Personally, if I am going to change my opinion on this matter, I need good, solid, scientific research and findings. Not just some guy with a website claiming that all of this research done on global warming is incorrect, and without any counter research to back up this claim.

Also, I personally don't like his paragraph on "Flawed Computer Models", because the author seems to have zero knowledge or experience with this field. As I said before, my graduate research is directly on the subject of designing computer models for environmental systems. And I have to say, that the models we use are a lot better then this writer makes them out to be. He's simply not informed.-jay

[[Syl]]

Syl, I wasn't talking about Crichton rebutting IPCC, I was talking about the link posted in this thread,

www.tysknews.com/Depts/Environment/debunking.htm

These scientists don't fall in the 75% who agree, or the 25% neutral. I mean, not that your numbers are totally arbitrary.

My link has references. I can't find this Gallup poll. *shrug* You tell me.

[Cail]

I'm about 200 pages into the book. It's not only quite good, but lavishly footnoted. Definately worth a read.

[Cail]

Finished it. Excellent book, should be required reading, especially for those who blindly believe what they're told by the media and the politicos. Here's a link to the speech I referenced somewhere back a page or two....
www.crichton-official.com/speeches/spee ... ote08.html

[kevinswatch]

I donno. Personally, I'm more inclined to believe scientific articles written by people who are experts on modeling environmental systems over someone who writes fiction for a living. Especially someone who writes about unreasonable events and makes them seem scientifically believable for a living (Jurassic Park, Timeline).

Like I said before. It's all about input and output. As long as input is greater than output, and we keep pumping CO2 into the air, I would be surprised if some negative effects didn't happen sooner or later.

With the rate the population is growing (exponentially, mind you), and with the rate that we're burning these fossil fuels increasing, we're going to hit a wall sooner or later. Personally, I'm kind of afraid sometimes. But that's why I'm in the field that I'm in.-jay

[Cail]

I dunno either. But what I took from both the book and the speech is that MC is attacking the pseudo-science and the mania surrounding global warming. He's not definitavely saying that it doesn't exist, what he is saying, much like what you've said Jay, is that we're guessing that global warming is an issue, with a comparitively short and unreliable history. Sure, we've computer modeled what we think might happen, but that's still just conjecture.

[Kinslaughterer]

www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/science/eart ... .long.html

Errors Cited in Assessing Climate Data

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: August 12, 2005
Some scientists who question whether human-caused global warming poses a threat have long pointed to records that showed the atmosphere's lowest layer, the troposphere, had not warmed over the last two decades and had cooled in the tropics.

Now two independent studies have found errors in the complicated calculations used to generate the old temperature records, which involved stitching together data from thousands of weather balloons lofted around the world and a series of short-lived weather satellites.

A third study shows that when the errors are taken into account, the troposphere actually got warmer. Moreover, that warming trend largely agrees with the warmer surface temperatures that have been recorded and conforms to predictions in recent computer models.

The three papers were published yesterday in the online edition of the journal Science.

The scientists who developed the original troposphere temperature records from satellite data, John R. Christy and Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, conceded yesterday that they had made a mistake but said that their revised calculations still produced a warming rate too small to be a concern.

"Our view hasn't changed," Dr. Christy said. "We still have this modest warming."

Other climate experts, however, said that the new studies were very significant, effectively resolving a puzzle that had been used by opponents of curbs on heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

“These papers should lay to rest once and for all the claims by John Christy and other global warming skeptics that a disagreement between tropospheric and surface temperature trends means that there are problems with surface temperature records or with climate models,” said Alan Robock, a meteorologist at Rutgers University.

The findings will be featured in a report on temperature trends in the lower atmosphere that is the first product to emerge from the Bush administration's 10-year program intended to resolve uncertainties in climate science.

Several scientists involved in the new studies said that the government climate program, by forcing everyone involved to meet five times, had helped generate the new findings.

"It felt like a boxing ring on occasion," said Peter W. Thorne, an expert on the weather balloon data at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Britain and an author of one of the studies.

Temperatures at thousands of places across the surface of the earth have been measured for generations. But far fewer measurements have been made of temperatures in the air from the surface through the troposphere, which extends up about five miles.

Until recently Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer were the only scientists who had plowed through vast volumes of data from weather satellites to see if they could indirectly deduce the temperature of several layers within the troposphere.

They and other scientists have also tried to analyze temperature readings gathered by some 700 weather balloons lofted twice a day around the world.

But each of those efforts has been fraught with complexities and uncertainties.

The satellites' orbits shift and sink over time, their instruments are affected by sunlight and darkness, and data from a succession of satellites has to be calibrated to account for eccentricities of sensitive instruments.

Starting around 2001, the satellite data and methods of Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer were re-examined by Carl A. Mears and Frank J. Wentz, scientists at Remote Sensing Systems, a company in Santa Rosa, Calif., that does satellite data analysis for NASA.

They and several other teams have since found more significant warming trends than the original estimate.

But the new paper, by Dr. Mears and Dr. Wentz, identifies a fresh error in the original calculations that, more firmly than ever, showed warming in the troposphere, particularly in the tropics.

The error, in a calculation used to adjust for the drift of the satellites, was disclosed to the University of Alabama scientists at one of the government-run meetings this year, Dr. Christy said.

The new analysis of data from weather balloons examined just one possible source of error, the direct heating of the instruments by the sun.

It found that when data were examined in a way that accounted for that effect, the temperature record produced a warming, particularly in the tropics, again putting the data in line with theory.

"Things being debated now are details about the models," said Steven Sherwood, the lead author of the paper on the balloon data and an atmospheric physicist at Yale. "Nobody is debating any more that significant climate changes are coming."

[Avatar]

Partly because this'll mean that I've posted in every forum of the Collective this morning, and partly because I've been thinking about it a lot lately, I thought I'd add something to this conversation.

Somebody, (Cail?) mentioned something about climate change happening in the past. And that got me thinking.

Now it's fairly clear, I think, that the climate is changing. And I don't think that it's by any means a stretch to assume that human activity is affecting, and almost certainly speeding up, the process.

That said though, it is a natural fact that climate change happens. The climate has changed many tiomes in the past, and will again in the future.

Indeed, it is theorised that it was climate change that was, in no small part, responsible for the eventual evolution of H. Sapiens.

It is perfectly natural for the climate to change. This just happens to be the first time, (perhaps because of our interference) that humans of our level of development are affected by it.

I think that whatever we do, accords and treaties notwithstanding, we're not going to be able to do anything about it. If it is happening faster than usual, then we'll still have to deal with it.

Climate changes. Deserts and plateaus were once sea-bottoms, once jungles, once fertile plains.

The only difference is that now we're here to see what the effect is on the world.

--Avatar

[ur-bane]

That's the gist of it, Avatar. The fact that we are here with this change taking place is why global warming is often in the spotlight.
As you stated, it is perfectly natural for the climate to cycle through its stages.

Certainly we are affecting our environment/climate in ways no other species on earth can and does.

I wonder if another species will come along and look at human fossil records to try to find the cause of our extinction?