David Bellamy refutes global warming

In summary, David Bellamy OBE thinks that there is no proof that anything terrible is linked to carbon-induced temperature rise, despite all the storms, floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes that are typically linked to global warming. He also thinks that it would be difficult for Britain to aspire to be a global leader on global warming if it wasn't first willing to lead at home.
  • #1
wolram
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Article in the Daily Express by David Bellamy OBE Feb 3 2005.
I first heard about global warming in the eighties and right from the
start i didn't believe in it. I teach botany. i have researched and taught
plant anatomy, ecological physiology and the history of vegetation
at universities over a period of five decades. I know that carbon
dioxide is not a terrible gas,It is the most important fertiliser for
plants. if there is more CO2 plants grow faster and tack in more.
that achieves a balance in the atmosphere. in fact most plants could
do with more CO2.
If you have time to read the expert reports in the massive tomes,
which lack an index, produced by the IPCC the intergovernmental
panel on climate change you will have a surprise. there is no proof
that anything terrible is linked to carbon induced temperature rise.
 
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  • #2
This is despite the fact that in recent times every storm, flood,
drought, hurricane and tornado is usually linked to global warming.
Record highs are headlines whereas anything that goes against
the global warming grain is all to often missing, years of satellite
monitoring show no rise in sea levels, and ground and satellite
studies in the Maldives by experts show that the sea level has
actually fallen.
 
  • #3
One expert, Chris Landsea, who has just contributed to the IPCCsAR4
report on hurricanes has resigned, "I cannot continue to contribute
to a process that i view as both being motivated by pre conceived
agendas and being scientifically unsound". he wrote.
 
  • #6
I cannot understand the reason for the AGENDA, where are the gains for it
who or what profits from it?
 
  • #7
An Agenda? Try http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page6333.asp :

...
The scientific evidence of global warming and climate change: UK leadership in environmental science...

I said earlier it needed global leadership to tackle the issue. But we cannot aspire to such leadership unless we are seen to be following our own advice...

Tackling climate change will take leadership, dynamism and commitment - qualities that I know are abundantly represented in this room...

Ceres Power based in Crawley and utilising technology developed at Imperial College have developed a new fuel cell that has unique properties and is a world leader...

To acquire global leadership, on this issue Britain must demonstrate it first at home.

No I haven't the faintest idea either. :biggrin:

Perhaps it's clear now what the evidence was for this little armchair analysis.
 
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  • #8
  • #9
So did you invite him?

Let's see how the armchair analysis compares to the scaremongering:

"prediction"

But it doesn't work if the society is either not aware or not convinced of that particular threat. So the "enemy image" must be build first and an insistent information campaign is required with a deluge of alleged evidence of Global warming. This is easy since there are many shrewd prospective heroes, well capable of making a case.

Result of the test: :biggrin:

The government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has described global warming as a greater threat than terrorism; the Prime Minister has claimed it is the greatest threat currently facing civilisation; and Dennis Tirpak, who will chair this week's international climate conference in Exeter, will warn the world it has seen nothing yet in terms of erratic weather patterns. The heatwaves of 2003 which killed 20,000 people, 'may be looked upon as having been relatively cool ones,' he will warn.

Such apocalyptic statements might be expected to inflame the UK public. Yet people seem largely unperturbed. Mobile phone masts and GM crops apparently cause as many sleepless nights as the prospect, endorsed by senior scientists, of our world being overcome by melting ice caps, flooded cities, scorched fields, and diverted ocean currents.

This strange, reversed state of affairs - a body of increasingly concerned scientists and an uncaring public - raises two key questions. ...cont
 
  • #10
Oh BTW, http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/lowertrop.JPG )

Notice the influence of the large 1998 el nino on the trend. Notice the red 10 years running average being influenced by that.

So this is where the fuss is all about.
 
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  • #11
So did you invite him?
I wouldn't know how to approach such a celebrity.
 
  • #12
You wouldn't believe how many "celebrities" actually listen. OK I mailed him.
 
  • #13
I think I met David Bellamy when I was 5 (to be honest I can't really remember), but he is not a climatologist, the idea that the argument of global warming can be reduced to CO2 as a 'naughty gas' is absurd. Also the assertion that there is no evdinece of link between CO2 emmsiions and global warming (detailed climate modles predict such a relationship for a start).
 
  • #14
I'm afraid that this looks a bit like circular reasoning. We tell the models how we think climate reacts to greenhouse gas and the models tell us how they have calculated the effect of greenhouse gas.

Please have a look at the http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/PS134/LabManual/lab.modtran.html in detail between greenhouse gas and absorption of reradiated IR in the different frequencies.

Playing with http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/cgimodels/radiation.html .

All conditions default from the model except base temp 15C and standard US atmosphere. The radiative forcing is on the Y-axis in W/m2 versus the concentration of CO2 on the X-axis.

Point A is 200 ppm CO2, typical ice-age value
Point B is 285 ppm CO2, typical pre-industrian value
Point C is 380 ppm CO2, about now
Point D is 570 ppm CO2, the double pre-industrial value
Point E is 1500 ppm CO2, the presumed predominant value some 200 million years ago, about 4-5 times the value of today.
Point F is 6600 ppm CO2, the presumed predominant value some 450 million years ago, about 20 times the value of today (but the sun was a probably few percent less bright back then).

The ROM one percent variation does not really compare to for instance Milankovitch forcing cycle variations of more than 10%

Check http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/lowertrop.JPG . With the temperature trend of the lower troposphere of 0,00002 degrees Celsius per day, it would take 137 years to have one degree more.
 
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  • #15
Climate models are simulations, they simulate the climate using the data about the presnet climate and the physics of the climate.

Unfortuantely I am not famalir with the Modtran3 mdoel so I can't really answre you in detail, but it is a genric feature of climate models which model the effects of gerrenhous gas that:

a) they predict the corrcet temperature within their zon eof applicabilty (talking about ice age conditons or pre-industrial conditions really doens't make snese within the context of these mdpoels as they are designed to model current conditons i.e. there zone of applicbilty is extxneds only 100 years back in the past)

b) they predict warmign due to greenhouse gas emmissions.
 
  • #16
Indeed Climate models are intended to generate predictions. However Modtran-3 is a mathemathical calculation model, designed to calculate effects from known processes with known effects. No predictions, just direct results.

Prediction models would be a great tool in the scientific process to see if a hypothesis was to be true. You can feed them with your expectations and see if the result of the prediction is going to match your expectations and get a bit closer to the proof or correctness of your hypothesis, to change it into a theory.

This is happening in the current climate prediction models, there are some problems however. The models seem to have slight problems with predicting the past, ultimately leading to fairly high values of climate sensivity for temperature per doubling CO2 in the range of 2,5-5 degrees. I'm not sure about the correct numbers right now. Then the runs are made, obviously producing the scary scenarios up to 11 degrees warming in 2100.

But the problems are in the past, remember the debunking of the hockeystick? But loads of computer model predictions depend on it. Next the predictions are assumed to be the real future prospect. Then it's pretty easy to produce scary scenarios.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/00fig1-1.GIF is how the predictions around 1995 performed, notice the dotted red line, that's extending the global surface temperature up until now. The black heavy line shows how we are dropping below the prediction.

For a more accurate prediction of the sensitivity of temperature to carbon dioxide see http://hanserren.cwhoutwijk.nl/co2/howmuch.htm .
 
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  • #17
All climate models use known processes to caculate there results as I siad they are simulations of the climate, the most advanced simulate the coupling between different parts of the environemnt.

Few series climate scientitss would say the hockey stick has been debunked, the paper thta supposedly debunked it was riddled with trivial erorrs (such as for example mixing up degrees and radians!), infact the person who authore the debunking had his second attempt at debunking it rejected at peer-review.

Which climate models rely on the hockey stick? climate models I repeat are not simply curve fitting, infact the hocxkey stick is rather irrelvant to climate models aswe don't have to rely on proxy data to obtain the temperature record of the last 100 years which is gnerally as far back as climate models can be extended.
 
  • #18
it was riddled

You may have fallen in the ample fallacy traps and you may have missed this:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

A peer reviewed article in the Geophysical Research Letters is not likely to be very riddled.
 
  • #19
Nevertheless M&Ms work was riddled with flaws. Some might ask why they are concentrating their efforts on a field which is completely outside of their area of expertise. Like it or not the criticism of M&M were widely seen as deeply flawed.
 
  • #20
Some might ask why they are concentrating their efforts on a field which is completely outside of their area of expertise.
fallacy is variation of false authority

"MM are no climatologists hence they are wrong."

If you bother to read their narrative it will be clear that they are not refuting the climatologic elements, they are refuting the use of statistics. Now, one of the M's of MM is a economist, that qualifies him to talk statistics. MBH are climatologists that has a lot less to do with statistics. So the authority claim should be the other way around if it was a valid argument at all.

Like it or not the criticism of M&M were widely seen as deeply flawed.

Fallacy is appeal of popularity
Consensus has never been a valid argument in science. It's irrelevant but very understandable.

The alarmist are absolutely convinced of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), they will never doubt about it whatever happens. They want it to be true so they can do very positive things to prevent bad things to happen and be the good guys/girls. And that's exactly the problem. He who seeks the truth should always doubt and be able to reject whatever makes no sense. If for whatever reason cathastrophic AGW would not be true then a lot of people may lose their meaning of life. That's very sad. Consequently AGW must be true. Consequently, MM as well as sir Bellamy are dangerous and must be countered at all costs. There are only 2 MM's but millions of people who's meaning of life is threatened when anthropogenic global warming would be flawed. Concequently the witch hunt is a go. Unfortunately the truth cannot be refuted, so using fallacies is the only remaining option.
 
  • #21
I have just come across this
http://www.sitewave.net/pproject/s33p333.htm
It seems that many thousands of qualified people disagree with
global warming.
 
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  • #22
Heck this is a tough nut to crack, i have read paper after paper
for and against, Wikipidia has an unbiased article, un doubt ably
there has been some poor science going on in the pro lobby
and commerce may be behind the anti lobby, but either way i
think i am more worried about a sudden oceanic release into
the atmosphere, from what i can discover frozen deposits can
become unstable very easily.
 
  • #23
Those frozen deposits, "clathrate" explosions have fooled the climatalogists to the utmost extend. I was going to explain that in the other thread.
 
  • #24
wolram said:
(snip) --- a sudden oceanic release into
the atmosphere, from what i can discover frozen deposits can
become unstable very easily.

Got any references to masses and times (rates)?
 
  • #25
How about

http://www.ig.uit.no/~maarten/publications/Berndt_etal_Japanproceedings.pdf
http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/ammin/t...racts/AS04_Abstracts/Chakoumakos_p1153_04.pdf
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/app/home/contribution.asp?wasp=l2t6ddk1wn6vnm5a6j13&referrer=parent&backto=issue,2,10;journal,37,108;linkingpublicationresults,1:102021,1

Again it's the key culprit for the current global warming idea. And it will continue for being even a bigger culprit due to some form of circular reasoning. There was warming (end of ice ages) there was clathrate decompostion and release of methane. Hence the methace caused the warming, hence beware of greenhouse gas.

There was no warming, the clathrate gun caused a mess up of isotope proxies that looked like warming. This makes the ice age story completely different and we have to start from scratch to understand it.

Edit for more facts and figures here: http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~mmaslin/publications/Maslin1.pdf
 
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  • #26
Andre
I may have missed how this all started, so who started the
ball rolling and when did the politicians jump on the band
wagon? I have an idea that various political groups may be
using global warming to divert attention of the public from
other issues, It is one of the weapons, methodologies these
schemers use.
 
  • #27
Whilst I do not want to point fingers and analyse motives other than (positive) psychological factors, I'm intending to cover those issues in the other -unexplaining- thread. Actually, the global warming notion has simmered throughout most of the former century but it blossomed when we had time for it.

Sadly enough, http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/campaigns/intro?campaign_id=3937 have chosen global warming as main central focus with the best intend. Consequently, unexplaining global warming will be next to impossible.
 
  • #28
http://bloodbankers.typepad.com/recent_posts_and_pdfs/global_warming/
As if the world did not already have enough problems, the last few months have raised the ugly specter of global warming once again, perhaps more forcefully than ever. As we'll see below, there are indeed many recent indications that this problem is -- beg your pardon -- now "heating up." Moreover, one of the more interesting developments comes from the belly of the beast itself, the Pentagon's Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), by way of a so-called "secret report" ( according to The Guardian/Observer) that the Pentagon reportedly solicited from two prominent California "futurists" and part-time Hollywood war/disaster-film consultants.

In fact, it turns out that the The Guardian/Observer reporters didn't do their homework. While their February 22 story claimed that this Pentagon report on global warming by California futurists Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall was "secret," Fortune Magazine had obtained and released a copy from the Pentagon on January 26, and SubmergingMarkets has obtained a copy of the so-called "secret" report's Executive Summary, which may be downloaded above or below.
 
  • #29
Secret reports on climate change by "futurists"??
 
  • #30
Well, perhaps count the fallacies in that quote versus the real arguments, Wolram.

Anyway, for Bystander, to sustain my claim:

There was no warming, the clathrate gun caused a mess up of isotope proxies that looked like warming. This makes the ice age story completely different and we have to start from scratch to understand it.
"

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/correlation-2.GIF

The red graph indicates a fragment (200 ky -350 ky) of the d18O signal of the Antarctic Vostok ice core (Petit et al 99), the blue graph is annual layer thickness of the ice linear corrected for compression (andre et al, unpublished). Note the extreme correlation. Every single spike is duplicated suggesting that the variation in d18O says more about precipitation pattern changes than temperatures. Couple this with the clathrate gun hypothesis (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/288/5463/128?ck=nck&ijkey=qLlz40xIOrcQY&keytype=ref&siteid=sci) and Maslin (2004) a possible hypothesis can be generated about the sudden dramatic increase of precipitation in every ice core proxy at the boundaries of the isotope stages, especially http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/Gisp2-snow.GIF The absolute ice layer thickness of the GISPII ice core: Clathrate gun and clathrate gun only.
 
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  • #31
Re: Clathrates

I'm not looking for the isotope signatures (oh, ain't there a bunch of questions about interpretations on that topic) --- wolram mentioned running into discussions of clathrate "explosions" --- I am interested in references to such hypothesized events, proposed mechanisms for such events, and whether the process has been proposed by mainstream climatologists or by individuals reasoning from analogy to Lake Nyos type events.
 
  • #32
Andre said:
fallacy is variation of false authority

"MM are no climatologists hence they are wrong."

If you bother to read their narrative it will be clear that they are not refuting the climatologic elements, they are refuting the use of statistics. Now, one of the M's of MM is a economist, that qualifies him to talk statistics. MBH are climatologists that has a lot less to do with statistics. So the authority claim should be the other way around if it was a valid argument at all.



Fallacy is appeal of popularity
Consensus has never been a valid argument in science. It's irrelevant but very understandable.

The alarmist are absolutely convinced of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), they will never doubt about it whatever happens. They want it to be true so they can do very positive things to prevent bad things to happen and be the good guys/girls. And that's exactly the problem. He who seeks the truth should always doubt and be able to reject whatever makes no sense. If for whatever reason cathastrophic AGW would not be true then a lot of people may lose their meaning of life. That's very sad. Consequently AGW must be true. Consequently, MM as well as sir Bellamy are dangerous and must be countered at all costs. There are only 2 MM's but millions of people who's meaning of life is threatened when anthropogenic global warming would be flawed. Concequently the witch hunt is a go. Unfortunately the truth cannot be refuted, so using fallacies is the only remaining option.


As I've pointed out M&M's analysis contains such grievious errors as mixing up degrees and radians.

I'm just curious why who cliam to be skeptical are so happy to accept the flawed analysis of people unconnected to the field against the weight of opinion in that field! Why if their concerns are scientific do they tend to shun the peer-revied journals. Why do those who oppose AGW need to lace their rhetoric with poltics rather than concentrating on the science?
 
  • #33
My next fear mongering crusade,

STOP SOLAR SYSTEM WARMING.

The sun is changing. Pretty soon it will expand and explode (in 5 billion years). Are you ready?!

The Tinfoil Hat Company (TM) can help.
 
  • #34
As I've pointed out M&M's analysis contains such grievious errors as mixing up degrees and radians.

and clearly demonstrating how effective the witch hunt is.

Message: The alleged radians degree error was in another paper but now all papers of MM always contain errors in every calculation.
 
  • #35
Bystander

James Kennett is the spiritual father of the Clathrate gun:

Methane Hydrates in Quaternary Climate Change The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis

They focus on the Dansgaard Oescher events although the Bolling-Allerod event and onset of the Pre-Boreal/Holocene are clearly amplified events of the same nature. However I consider their mechanism in error (warming). The reason is unusual rapid system response. No attention is given to changing physical mechanisms like pH change of the ocean that has tremendous effect on d18O in foraminifera, and as said precipitation pattern changes and there is ample evidence for that.

Mark Maslin refers to continental slope failures, suggesting that clathrate saturated sediments slid into the deep. Some do believe that clathrate becomes unstable again over there due to rising temperatures, but that seems to be in error. Since clathrate floats I propose that it is more likely that scattering of sediment (Earthquakes?) may have send much of the clathrate to the surface.

Since that isotope behavior repeats about every 100,000 years and is clearly not related to the Milankovitch rhytms, we may be able to make a big step forward understanding what's going on. But we have to rid ourselves first of the horrible global warming virus.
 
<h2>1. Why does David Bellamy refute global warming?</h2><p>David Bellamy, a British biologist and television presenter, has publicly stated his disbelief in the concept of global warming due to his skepticism about the scientific evidence supporting it. He believes that natural variations in the Earth's climate are responsible for any observed changes, rather than human activities.</p><h2>2. What evidence does David Bellamy use to support his stance?</h2><p>Bellamy argues that the Earth's climate has always been changing, and that there is no concrete evidence to prove that human activities are causing these changes. He also points to the fact that some scientists have refuted the idea of a consensus on global warming, and that there are many conflicting studies and data on the subject.</p><h2>3. How does David Bellamy's stance on global warming differ from the majority of scientists?</h2><p>The majority of scientists agree that global warming is a real and pressing issue caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. They have conducted extensive research and collected data to support this claim, while Bellamy's stance is based on his personal skepticism rather than scientific evidence.</p><h2>4. What impact does David Bellamy's stance have on the public's perception of global warming?</h2><p>Bellamy's stance has caused controversy and confusion among the public, as he is a well-known figure and his statements are often given a platform in the media. This can lead to a sense of doubt and skepticism among those who are not well-informed about the scientific evidence for global warming, and may hinder efforts to address this issue.</p><h2>5. Is David Bellamy's stance on global warming supported by any scientific organizations?</h2><p>No, the vast majority of scientific organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have stated that global warming is a real and urgent problem caused by human activities. Bellamy's stance is not supported by any reputable scientific organization and is considered to be a minority view within the scientific community.</p>

1. Why does David Bellamy refute global warming?

David Bellamy, a British biologist and television presenter, has publicly stated his disbelief in the concept of global warming due to his skepticism about the scientific evidence supporting it. He believes that natural variations in the Earth's climate are responsible for any observed changes, rather than human activities.

2. What evidence does David Bellamy use to support his stance?

Bellamy argues that the Earth's climate has always been changing, and that there is no concrete evidence to prove that human activities are causing these changes. He also points to the fact that some scientists have refuted the idea of a consensus on global warming, and that there are many conflicting studies and data on the subject.

3. How does David Bellamy's stance on global warming differ from the majority of scientists?

The majority of scientists agree that global warming is a real and pressing issue caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. They have conducted extensive research and collected data to support this claim, while Bellamy's stance is based on his personal skepticism rather than scientific evidence.

4. What impact does David Bellamy's stance have on the public's perception of global warming?

Bellamy's stance has caused controversy and confusion among the public, as he is a well-known figure and his statements are often given a platform in the media. This can lead to a sense of doubt and skepticism among those who are not well-informed about the scientific evidence for global warming, and may hinder efforts to address this issue.

5. Is David Bellamy's stance on global warming supported by any scientific organizations?

No, the vast majority of scientific organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have stated that global warming is a real and urgent problem caused by human activities. Bellamy's stance is not supported by any reputable scientific organization and is considered to be a minority view within the scientific community.

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