Climate Data Re-examined (updated) 784
An anonymous reader writes "An important paper that re-examines historical climate data was published on 28 October in the respected journal Energy & Environment. (The paper is also available here.) According to an article in Canada's National Post, the paper shows that a "pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on false calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records." (USA Today also has a story.) This paper will undoubtedly be controversial and should stir a vigourous data review." Update: 11/05 14:54 GMT by T : newyhouse points out a similarly contrarian 2001 Economist article by Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist .
A Bunch of shills (Score:1, Interesting)
Check out the funding behind this.
I know what will happen now... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's possible, after all (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend of mine is prepairing a PHD in geology.
He often climbs on top of the Mont Blanc (4807m) where he analyzes the ice cap.
He found out that ther chemicals that impregnated the ice are similar only to the ones which emanates from the General Motors factories, in Detroit, US.
There is a serious issue, there.
It is not because it won't make rain more that it is not a bad thing.
Interesting paper (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Who are these guys. There are no affiliations listed and the research sponsor is not listed.
2. MBH98 is not the only paper. It was one of the first ones. After that more detailed research was done and it did not refute any of the claims.
3. Is the ice melt in the arctic a figment of my imagination?
4. Is the retreat of South American Glaciers a figment of my imagination?
5. Why doesn't NOAA put all the data for public consumption so that anyone can see who is right and who is wrong?
Global Warming (Score:5, Interesting)
I spotted one tiny mistake.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Energy and Environment 14(6) 751-772.
By Steven McIntyre & Ross McKitrick
They seem to have misspelt "Corporate right-wing crony apologist" there - otherwise fine..
I see.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can tell you its a long climb from those points until you get to where the glacier is today..
Just because you can spot the odd anomoly in a bunch of data does not render the whole thing untrue..
No real change from the original conclusions (Score:2, Interesting)
The researcher basically states that it was warmer in 1400 than previously estimated. I have read that the end of the Viking Age (~800-1100 AD) was mainly due to a large drop in global temperatures. The Viking colony in Greenland lasted until 1380 AD when the Summer thaw that allowed them to travel by ship stopped occuring, for example.
He does not refute the fact that it is getting warmer - and rapidly so. He simply says it was pretty warm in 1400 too, in contrast to prior conslusions. Note also that, according to his data, we have already reached his pre-1400 temperature levels and the trend continuing steeply upward.
Thank god I live in Sweden. We love global warming. Vroom vroom!
Damn Yankee
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Re:It's possible, after all (Score:3, Interesting)
Its so blatent, every year here in the UK we get more and more extreme weather. The "hottest day on record" has happened just about every summer for at least the past 5 years running, each time a little hotter.
Also people who normally would avoid the tin-hat brigade by miles now believe that the UK govt is covering something up because they have seen how much the weather has changed over the last 30+ years.
I'm not saying pollution is the cause, but the effect is definately real. It does seem fairly obvious that if we screw with the atmospheric balances we are going to have big effects, however the warming *could* be down to variations in the Earths spin etc. It would be nice to see some real studies not funded by either the oil companies or Mr Murdoch tell us wtf is happening (is there anything global not under the thumb of these 2 parties?).
Whats it going to take? Is being efficient really going to kill our ecomonies that much? Or is it just not going to fill some fatcat directors pockets with cash quite so quickly.
Re:Interesting paper (Score:1, Interesting)
About sunspots: the spots themselves are cooler. But they are accompanied by faculae, which are hot spots on the sun. So when there are more sunspots, the sun actually outputs more radiation and charged particles.
Here is an idea may seem even more counter-intuitive. Note that this part is still somewhat speculative. Some people have suggested that when the sun has less sunspots, the earth actually tends to become cooler through a rather indirect way. The idea is that when there are less sunspots, the solar wind is less strong. The solar wind is empirically known to shield the earth's atmosphere from interstellar cosmic rays (the exact mechanism is unknown). So then more cosmic rays strike the earth's atmosphere. This increases cloud formation, and so the earth tends to reflect more and absorb less sunlight. Thus the earth becomes cooler.
Of course, this may or may not be correct. More study needs to be done. But it's too early to say that CO2 is the main cause of climate change.
Re:Biased Bush administration energy whores? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, if you want to talk about scare stories and getting money from people to protect them, let's talk about the Bush administration some more, shall we? Did you know the entire annual budget of the UN is 1.5 days worth of Pentagon budget? One dedicated to peace and security, the other dedicated to 'defence'.
Paradoxically (Score:4, Interesting)
You are making a common error (Score:5, Interesting)
Finding causation is much harder than finding a correlation since all sorts of things are correlated (and it's simply to measure) but the causal link can be much more complex.
For example:
You can get the causal link the wrong way. There is a positive correlation between weight and height. There's aslo a causal link. However if you say that increasing weight will increase height, you've got teh direction of the link wrong.
There can be an outside factor. There is a positive correlation in the United States between being white and scoring well on standardised tests. However if you say that being white CAUSES you to score well on tests, you'd be wrong. The real cause is much more complex and has to do with general trends in educational and economic background.
Then there are just things that are incidental. For awhile, there was a positive correlation between one of my friends attending football games and the team winning. Every game he attended, they won, the couple he missed, they lost. Well of course he didn't cause them to win, nor did their loosing cause him not to attend, it was just random luck.
So, just because we have found a positive correlation between an increase in temperature and an increase in CO2 does NOT mean we've found a causal link.
Re:Bias is a two way street: (Score:2, Interesting)
Peer Review (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Biased Bush administration energy whores? (Score:2, Interesting)
Europeans see putting a check US power as paramount; while Americans see ending the tyrany of brutal dicatator as most important.
Most Americans are dismayed why we deserve such mistrust. Yet, most Europeans see a historical folly with a lone superpower.
BTW: I never heared the US described as a superpower till I came over here.
Read more than just the article ... (Score:5, Interesting)
That there can be so much controversy highlights the fragility of the "models" that have been developed to support the varying points of view. It seems we really don't understand the climate process yet so maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't leap at any proposed solutions (like Kyoto) because maybe there isn't a problem.
How come not jumping to solutions based on scanty knowledge of the problem makes sense on the small scale (e.g. advice from a sysadmin to a user) but gets lost on the large scale issues (global warming)?
Universal Warming, not Global! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, if this does indicate more of a pattern throughout the Solar System, then we have no control over it whatsoever. Which is probably why it's not really discussed.
Oh, and if you don't like the ABC [go.com] link above, try it straight from the horse's mouth [nasa.gov].
Re:Biased Bush administration energy whores? (Score:3, Interesting)
The real tragedy in my opinion is that we have the power to undergo what would basically be a second industrial revolution and move to a technological era where large scale pollution is basically unneccessary.
Example: recently a major manufacturer of biscuits has moved to a new type of packaging that is completely biodegradable in a very short amount of time when exposed to water. This replaces plastic which basically doesn't biodegrade ever. If we applied this type of technology to all food and goods packaging we could almost totally eliminate waste management problems - we could even use packaging as fertilizer.
I strongly favour economic/market based solutions as I think it is the only realistic option. However, all markets operate in a legislative framework, and this framework needs to create a value for environmentally sound practices.
Re:The Political Climate... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now there is a loaded statement. Do you think that the data is so conclusivly against global warming that nothing should be done? These Governments ( and the populace who comprise them ) are upset because they are attempting to effect an altruistic preference for the cautionary preservation of the future of our planet. This goes against the desires of the loby that is on the other side of the argument, namely big business. It's little wounder that the one country who is most visibly against Kyoto is the one country where business interests regularly trump the public wellfare (the US).
The situation is such that most of the signitories of the Kyoto protocol have, in fact, ratified it with one major notable exception, the USA. So here the world is on the brink of implementing prudent cationary limits on the emmissions of gases and we have one rich brat who is pissing on the playing feild. Damn strait their going to get ruffed up in the media and well they should. The world has voted and the US has decided, unilateraly , that the opinions of the majority of the world do not matter.
Kind Regards
Re:The Political Climate... (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, although this documentary won awards in Great Britain, the American PBS management refused to air it. One of the PBS spokespeople was quoted as saying that it wasn't always necessary to air all points of view on an issue, and if they did then viewers might be confused about what opinions to have. Or words to that effect. It was a stunning statement, which forever tainted my trust in what I see and hear on PBS.
Re:Biased Bush administration energy whores? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never done a survey of environmentalists myself, so I couldn't possibly verify this as true. I'm not one, but despite my personal feelings, I can acknowledge some positive influence of environmentalism in my life. Although there are also points that I'd say are negatives, I can ask myself some questions:
Which is better? A 4000-pound passenger car that gets 18 mpg on the highway, or a 3200-pound car which has the same amount of interior room, 30 more horsepower and gets 30 mpg on the highway? Added bonus is that the engine doesn't turn itself into a slimy greaseball over the course of its lifetime, because of better tolerances and improved emissions controls. I know which one I'd rather drive and maintain.
Which is better, a light source that draws 60 watts or a light source with the same light output that draws 14 watts and lasts five times as long? I'll take the latter, thanks.
Which is better? Duck hunters poisoning their future game with lead shot, or a prohibition on toxic shot, resulting in a stable duck population? Being a hunter myself, I've got the old articles to prove the difficulty environmentalists had in convincing waterfowl hunters of the 60s and 70s that dumping pounds of lead into waterways was a bad idea. You'd think it would be a no-brainer, but still, resistance abounds for banning lead shot everywhere. Sure non-toxic shot is more expensive now, but it wouldn't be if the switch had been made 30 years ago.
Which is better? Dumping resultant chemicals from manufacturing into natural waterways, or storing those chemicals offsite, where other companies can deal with the disposal in a manner that doesn't kill things. Considering that I can actually swim in the local river and eat the fish I catch there for the first time in my life, I'd say that not dumping toxic chemicals is preferable.
...More efficient home furnaces, better insulating materials that don't cause cancer with repeated exposure, better air quality (sorry exhaust fumes are more irritating to me than pollen), disclosure of potentially dangerous substances in use at otherwise low-risk jobs. There are quite a few benefits to environmentalism, so I'm not quite ready to pan all environmentalists as extremists. Things are getting awfully black and white in political arenas as of late, and I wouldn't want my affiliation as "Republican" to mean "get rid of all environmentalists".
Re:Biased Bush administration energy whores? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just too damned typical, and it's why the moment I hear such a number from the head of any such organization, I now immediately assume the stats quoted are somewhere between suspect and bogus, and that there is some hidden agenda at work that is not in the public's best interests.
Flawed arguments... (Score:2, Interesting)
If humans are causing global warming on Earth, then who is causing the global warming on Mars? That's right, over the last several decades the Martian polar caps have been shrinking at an unprecidented rate. This comes from the European Space Agency, not a suspect US government report.
Human-caused CO2 from post industrial nations is an interesting scapegoat. No I'm not saying that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. My point is that there are other greenhouse gases that have hundreds of times more effect than CO2. Then there is the fact that a large amount of the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year comes from natural, not industrial sources. Rotting vegitation (when not replaced by equivalent new plant growth) is a source for CO2. Supposedly ruminants (bovines, cows, deer, etc) are a large source of greenhouse gases. (Who is going to pay to put special gas-trapping diapers on all the cattle in India?) The forest fires in Indonesia a few years ago were the source of about 40% of the worldwide CO2 releases for the whole year. The fires in the Amazon might be another 10-15%. A single eruption of Mt. Pinatubo a few years ago released as much greenhouse gases as 10 years of industrial output. The CO2 output from manufacturing in developed nations may be only 10% of total CO2. On top of that, the manufacturing in developed nations tends to be much more effecient than the manufacturing in non-developed nations, producing a lot more goods per unit of CO2 released.
If the Koyoto Agreement was really about controlling greenhouse gases then the "developing" nations would not have been excluded. If China can put a man in orbit, then why should they still be considered exempt from the agreement? The dirtiest industries have already migrated from the developed nations to the developing nations because of environment regulations (and the lack of them in the developing nations). The Koyoto Agreement is instead based on a view that there is a theoretical acceptable worldwide CO2 "pie" that is currently divided unfairly to the advantage of developed nations.
All global weather simulations contain a "fudge factor" that is used to represent the unknowns that also contribute to the weather patterns. One interesting fact about the current simulations is that the fudge factor is more significant than the CO2 levels. If you take the various simulations and start them up from the year 1900 they do a very poor job of predicting todays weather. If you take two simulations that both assume global warming and start them up from the year 2000, one may predict that North Dakota will become a swamp, while the other says it will be a desert.
Lawnmowers, ATVs, other 2 & 3 cycle engines, and *bar-b-ques* produce more polution in the US than cars made after 1990. I don't know about greenhouse gases, but they definitely produce more polution.
One of the predictions for global warming was that the sea levels would rise with catastrophic results for the costal cities and island nations. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) the sea levels have been dropping instead of rising. There are certain cities like Venice, Italy, and New York and New Orleans in the the US that are sinking, but that is a different issue.
None of this says that global warming is not happening. It does seem to be happening, but not in the ways the scientists expect, from the causes they have identified, or with the effects that they predicted. Throughout history, when humans have tried solving one problem they have usually created other problems. Sometimes the new problems are less severe than the original ones and sometimes they are worse. Most of the time it is a mixed bag.
It is one thing for you to decide that you are willing to give up some of your comforts for the betterment of something else. It is an entirely different thing to start dictating to everyone else that they should give up whatever t
Re:Biased Bush administration energy whores? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather, as oil reserves dwindle (gradually, over time), the cost of oil-based energy will go up. At various points, other energy sources will become more ecnomical than oil, and development of those sources will begin to accelerate. Economies of scale will kick in. There will probably be some fluctuations in the overall cost of living during the transition, but I doubt it will be anything drastic.
Moving to those technologies now, while oil is still cheaper and the infrastructure is already well in place, would have an even bigger impact on the cost of living. Furthermore, it would have a huge impact on economic growth. We'd be saving our children (or grandchildren, or whatever) the cost of conversion, by taking that cost on ourselves. But it seems likely that our descendants will have more wealth available to pay those costs than we do.
Another thing is, they're called "resources" because we use them for stuff. If they just sit there, not being used, they're not resources and there is no shortage. Saving resources for future generations makes no sense. There's no reason to think they have any greater need for iron (say), than we do, or that they'll make better use of it than we are.