News Is Global Warming a Swindle?

[turbo]

I'm doing my part by eating it rare.

I know turbo will be more than happy to help. I KNOW that Ivan and Integral routinely do their part in reducing the cow population.

Oh, yes! I don't know how much of an effect I have had on the cow population, personally, because farmers keep raising more, and that makes is hard to keep count. Just doing a rough estimate, I figure that I've probably eaten at least 5000# of beef - that's only about 10 steers, lifetime. I guess, I'd better start ramping up the effort.

http://www.askthemeatman.com/yield_on_beef_carcass.htm

 

[Manchot]

Emmisions from cattle are well documented, but ignored by politicians. Why?

Because emissions from cattle don't matter. The carbon dumped into the atmosphere by cattle comes from the food they eat, which comes from plants, which comes from the atmosphere. It's already part of the carbon cycle. Carbon emissions from oil and coal is coming from deep underground, and hasn't been in the ecosystem for millions of years. That's why it's causing a problem.

 

[StuMyers]

For a somewhat more rigorous analysis of the urban heat island effect (or rather, non-effect).

AMJ Journal of climate.

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/....1175/1520-0442(2003)016<2941:AOUVRI>2.0.CO;2

Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found

Thomas C. Peterson

National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina

ABSTRACT

All analyses of the impact of urban heat islands (UHIs) on in situ temperature observations suffer from inhomogeneities or biases in the data. These inhomogeneities make urban heat island analyses difficult and can lead to erroneous conclusions. To remove the biases caused by differences in elevation, latitude, time of observation, instrumentation, and nonstandard siting, a variety of adjustments were applied to the data. The resultant data were the most thoroughly homogenized and the homogeneity adjustments were the most rigorously evaluated and thoroughly documented of any large-scale UHI analysis to date. Using satellite night-lights–derived urban/rural metadata, urban and rural temperatures from 289 stations in 40 clusters were compared using data from 1989 to 1991. Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures. It is postulated that this is due to micro- and local-scale impacts dominating over the mesoscale urban heat island. Industrial sections of towns may well be significantly warmer than rural sites, but urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions.

 

[Art]

For a somewhat more rigorous analysis of the urban heat island effect (or rather, non-effect).

AMJ Journal of climate.

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/....1175/1520-0442(2003)016<2941:AOUVRI>2.0.CO;2

So the US EPA is wrong or the other possibility of course is this is a prime example of how numbers are fudged to get the 'right' answer.

 

[Art]

No, it's a desperate attempt at gleaning some kind of meaningful argument from your pointer.

Now that's a non-argument, and is the reason why I attempted to interpret it in some kind of meaningful manner. If your pointer (as you now assert) has nothing to do with trends in global temperature rise, why did you include it? Beats me! If there is an argument in there, it would have helped if you made it clear. Anyone knows that the existence of two points with the same slope says nothing about the trend of the curve.

Besides, if "reliable" records began only in 1910, how did you compute a moving average for 1910? (Note: I didn't see this claim in your two sources, hence all this trouble with trying to interpret it meaningfully. The trouble could have been avoided if each pointer was individually sourced.)


I'm only pointing out that your pointer distorts what the study involves. Rather that saying there are people that predict a different magnitude for the heat island effect, you made it look like the data was used incorrectly because it didn't account for the heat island effect. I provided a link to the IPCC report to show that it DID account for the heat island effect.

This was part of my objection to the original list. By writing it imprecisely, you make it impossible to have a meaningful argument about it.

I'll post this again as you evidently missed it last time

The reason I didn't bother with detailed sources is because this is the political forum and my main point was that a lot of the hype around GW is being driven by a political agenda. My 'list' was simply to demonstrate the debate is far from over.

From 1910-1940 the temp rise per decade was as it is today. From the mid 40s to the mid 70s it plummeted leading all the 'chicken littles' to run around screaming 'the Earth is freezing, the Earth is freezing' then from the mid 70s to 1998 the temperature rose at the same rate as it did prior to the 'ice age' period leading the same 'chicken littles' to run around screaming ' the Earth is burning. the Earth is burning' since then it hasn't done a lot one way or the other.

As for the IPCC accounting for the heat island effect; well I suppose they did in a way, they said it was irrelevant

 

[Art]

Because emissions from cattle don't matter. The carbon dumped into the atmosphere by cattle comes from the food they eat, which comes from plants, which comes from the atmosphere. It's already part of the carbon cycle. Carbon emissions from oil and coal is coming from deep underground, and hasn't been in the ecosystem for millions of years. That's why it's causing a problem.

It's the cows methane emissions that are the issue. Evo's post referred to CO2 equivalents not CO2 itself.

Plus to feed the cattle we fertilize land using man-made nitrates. We are depositing nitrates in N Europe at 100* the amount produced by nature.

80% of nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere are from human sources and nitrous oxide has >300* the GW potential of CO2 and produces real measurable bad effects such as acid rain.

As Evo pointed out if politicians and environmental scientists really believe their own propaganda their silence on this issue is puzzling.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/nitrogenthebadguyofglobalwarming1160583306/

 

[StuMyers]

So the US EPA is wrong or the other possibility of course is this is a prime example of how numbers are fudged to get the 'right' answer.

No, it's not "wrong", it's that the UHI's are more complicated than you have been led to think by pop sci. Please read the journal article.

 

[Art]

No, it's not "wrong", it's that the UHI's are more complicated than you have been led to think by pop sci. Please read the journal article.

I did read it and it says they fudged the numbers or if you prefer to make it sound more scientific they actually said

a variety of adjustments were applied to the data

To support the AGW theory the urban temps should have been higher but they are not so AGW advocates are trying to explain away this discrepancy by denying the HI effect.

Isn't the consensus amongst scientists that the heat island effect is real though??

 

[StuMyers]

It's the cows methane emissions that are the issue. Evo's post referred to CO2 equivalents not CO2 itself.

Plus to feed the cattle we fertilize land using man-made nitrates. We are depositing nitrates in N Europe at 100* the amount produced by nature.

80% of nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere are from human sources and nitrous oxide has >300* the GW potential of CO2 and produces real measurable bad effects such as acid rain.

As Evo pointed out if politicians and environmental scientists really believe their own propaganda their silence on this issue is puzzling.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/nitrogenthebadguyofglobalwarming1160583306/

Where exactly are you seeing silence on CH4 and N2O? IPCC cites both as significant contributors. 0.64Wm^-2 of 1.6Wm^-2 total.

 

[StuMyers]

I did read it and it says they fudged the numbers or if you prefer to make it sound more scientific they actually said

So... you basically didn't get past the abstract and your own prejudices then.

 

[Art]

Where exactly are you seeing silence on CH4 and N2O? IPCC cites both as significant contributors. 0.64Wm^-2 of 1.6Wm^-2 total.

It's a question of emphasis. I haven't seen anyone demanding a cull of cattle or a ban on man-made nitrates. For instance have you heard anyone advocating imposing an environmental cow tax yet?

 

[Art]

So... you basically didn't get past the abstract and your own prejudices then.

I didn't get past the 'subscription required' to read more than the abstract, did you?.

The article you have requested is available via Journal Subscription

However I did quote exactly what they said in the abstract. If you have an issue with it take it up with the article's authors.

 

[StuMyers]

I didn't get past the 'subscription required' to read more than the abstract, did you?.

Yep. I'm posting from my lab. Go to a library.

It's a question of emphasis. I haven't seen anyone demanding a cull of cattle or a ban on man-made nitrates. For instance have you heard anyone advocating imposing an environmental cow tax yet?

You're kidding right? Read Kyoto. Methane and nitrous oxide are both inclued in cap and trade. Got anything else?

 

[Evo]

You're kidding right? Read Kyoto. Methane and nitrous oxide are both inclued in cap and trade. Got anything else?

Please post the link and show the data you are referring to and show how it addresses the figures posted in the UN report. And can the attitude.

Kyoto promises are nothing but hot air

22 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

"MANY governments, including some that claim to be leading the fight against global warming, are harbouring a dirty little secret. These countries are emitting far more greenhouse gas than they say they are, a fact that threatens to undermine not only the shaky Kyoto protocol but also the new multibillion-dollar market in carbon trading.

Under Kyoto, each government calculates how much carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide its country emits by adding together estimated emissions from individual sources. These so-called "bottom-up" estimates have long been accepted by atmospheric scientists, even though they have never been independently audited.

Now two teams that have monitored concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere say they have convincing evidence that the figures reported by many countries are wrong, especially for methane. Among the worst offenders are the UK, which may be emitting 92 per cent more methane than it declares under the Kyoto protocol, and France, which may be emitting 47 per cent more.

By measuring these differences and tracking air movements, the scientists say they can calculate a country's emissions independently of government estimates. Bergamaschi's calculations suggest that the UK emitted 4.21 million tonnes of methane in 2004 compared to the 2.19 million tonnes it declared, while France emitted 4.43 million tonnes compared to the 3.01 million tonnes it declared. Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. While it persists in the atmosphere for only one-tenth as long as CO2, its immediate warming effect, tonne for tonne, is around 100 times greater. According to some estimates, methane is responsible for a third of current global warming, and reductions in methane emissions may be the quickest and cheapest way of slowing climate change."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025574.000-kyoto-promises-are-nothing-but-hot-air.html

 

[Andre]

meanwhile the greenhouse effect of methane is usually overrated, like twenthy one times as strong as CO2.

http://www.epa.gov/methane/scientific.html

Indeed, it does have a considerable range of absorption bands but in the wrong frequency area.

Using the Modtran tool on David Archer site those equilibrium temperature increases can be calculated:


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

it is possible to calculate equilibrium temperatures for thermal balance for any concentration of greenhouse gasses. Using this tool I constructed this sensitive for the US standard atmosphere, no clouds, etc:

result see also attachment:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtran-rad-bal.GIF

I used a logaritmic scale on which the sensitive approaches a straight line, showing the more or logaritmic relationship between concentration of greenhouse gasses and higher radiation balance temperatures, meaning that the sensitivity decreases fast with increasing concentrations. It also shows that CH4 is not really a player.

In the low ranges ~1 ppmv CO2 has about a 3-5 times stronger greenhouse effect than CH4 at equal values. The only thing that could be right is if you increase 0.5 ppmv CH4 with 1 ppmv to 1,5 ppmv CH4 that the effect is ~20 times stronger than the increase of 379 ppmv CO2 with 1 ppmv to 380 ppmv. But it's also highly irrelevant, it's just a lot of nothing and it proofs that slogans as: "Methane-21-times-more-powerful-than-CO2" appears to be misleading.

 

[Gokul43201]

No, it's not "wrong", it's that the UHI's are more complicated than you have been led to think by pop sci. Please read the journal article.

I did read it

So... you basically didn't get past the abstract and your own prejudices then.

I didn't get past the 'subscription required' to read more than the abstract, did you?

So, when you say you did read the article, you really meant that you did not read the article?

I did read it and it says they fudged the numbers or if you prefer to make it sound more scientific they actually said

a variety of adjustments were applied to the data

In any other of the subforums, this would have counted as crackpottery. This is worse than misinterpreting the argument after reading the paper - you are misinterpreting the argument without reading the paper.

I guess, by your reasoning, 'inflation adjusted income' is just the scientific version of 'fudged up income data'?

 

[Art]

So, when you say you did read the article, you really meant that you did not read the article?

Err no It means I read the article available on the link supplied which happens to be an abstract or if you prefer an executive summary which links to a further link. But you already know that - right! So really you're just trying to be smart - right!

The crux is the EPA measures heat island temperature rises whereas the IPCC says they don't exist as a factor in determing GW. Now I doubt the EPA has all it's thermometers in industrial hotspots whilst the IPCC's are in cool public parks next to fountains and so something doesn't add up. As the EPA doesn't have a vested interest (that I'm aware of) I'm inclined to go with their data which suggests global temperatures are possibly being overstated.

In any other of the subforums, this would have counted as crackpottery. This is worse than misinterpreting the argument after reading the paper - you are misinterpreting the argument without reading the paper.

I guess, by your reasoning, 'inflation adjusted income' is just a scientific version of fudged up numbers?

The executive summary says they changed the data so if they say they did why should I contradict them? How does quoting them constitute misinterpreting the argument? And inflation adjusted figures often are fudged depending on what they are to be used for so you picked a bad example

 

[Evo]

The executive summary says they changed the data so if they say they did why should I contradict them? How does quoting them constitute misinterpreting the argument? And inflation adjusted figures often are fudged depending on what they are to be used for so you picked a bad example

Here's the actual report. I haven't had time to do more that scan through it to understand the adjustments made, I'm assuming they are fair. I'd have to see if I can find other papers that discuss this report. There is a difference between skewing data, data mining and trying to find a fair means at data representation to give a more realistic view. Adjusting data is not always bad if it is done consistently and in the right way, for the right reasons.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf

To members, please make sure that a report is not publicly available before you post nothing but an abstract requiring a subscription.

 

[Gokul43201]

Err no It means I read the article available on the link supplied which happens to be an abstract or if you prefer an executive summary which links to a further link. But you already know that - right! So really you're just trying to be smart - right!

Hardly! Anyone that's even the tinyest bit familiar with scientific literature knows the difference between the abstract to an article and the article itself. I guess I was wrong in assuming you belonged to this set.

The executive summary says they changed the data so if they say they did why should I contradict them?

They did not "change the data" - you are continuing to misrepresent (ie: twist) that particular sentence fragment from the abstract.

How does quoting them constitute misinterpreting the argument?

It doesn't. But you went beyond merely quoting (and heck, you didn't even quote a complete sentence - just a fragment of it).

And inflation adjusted figures often are fudged depending on what they are to be used for so you picked a bad example

No I didn't. Your argument was that adjusting for inflation is itself an act of fudging. This is nonsensical.

 

[StuMyers]

Okay, so here's Kyoto. Scroll to annexA to see the list of greenhouse gases. Note numbers two and three.

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html

 

[Astronuc]

Emissions from cattle are well documented, but ignored by politicians. Why?

Strong lobby groups? Farmers/growers, grain processor, the beef, pork and poultry industries all have strong lobbies in Washington. It's easy for Washington politicians to blame oil companies since peoples' attention is on the price at the pump and the pain in the wallet.

"I'm sorry to be redundant about this, but I don't think people fully appreciate the logic. Meat eating is either the number one cause of GW or it is not. If it is the number one cause, then why are the GW people not talking about it?

Finally, there's a natural inclination to think of oil as the culprit, not just because Big Oil is so widely demonized, but because we've all been conditioned from childhood to think of smokestacks and tailpipes as pouring out evil, filthy pollution. Never mind that we emit carbons and that they're organic. Oil companies are "bad." Farmers are "good."

Thus, it is counterintuitive to see meat as the problem. Frankly, I don't think man's oil consumption or meat consumption emits enough carbon to change the climate. But I believe in being fair."

. . . we've all been conditioned from childhood to think of smokestacks and tailpipes as pouring out evil, filthy pollution.

They do! Stand behind an idling car and take a deep breath. Coal plants are notorious emitters of heavy metals, soot (if not with the latest clean technologies), and even 'radioactive' ash that is not entirely eliminated from the coal. But that is another issue.

Traveling to Houston or any major metropolitan area after living well outside the area, perferably upwind, one can 'taste', 'smell', and 'see' the difference. I traveled through the LA area and was astounded by the brown air. The guy I was with laughed about my reaction - but he didn't seem to realize that he had started to wheeze and develop sinus congestion, which he did not have when the trip began 2 hours earlier far to the south. Once we left LA, his wheezing and congestion disappeared.

We do need a rational discussion of issues such as GW, pollution, energy policy, etc. We do not need inuendo, hearsay and name-calling, nor coercion. I simply want the 'facts', and I will decide for myself. If something is a theory then let's identify it as such, and let's see the evidence, and reasonable alternative explanations - not someone's wild fantasy.

 

[Andre]

Traveling to Houston or any major metropolitan area after living well outside the area, perferably upwind, one can 'taste', 'smell', and 'see' the difference. I traveled through the LA area and was astounded by the brown air. The guy I was with laughed about my reaction - but he didn't seem to realize that he had started to wheeze and develop sinus congestion, which he did not have when the trip began 2 hours earlier far to the south. Once we left LA, his wheezing and congestion disappeared.

We do need a rational discussion of issues such as GW, pollution, energy policy, etc. We do not need inuendo, hearsay and name-calling, nor coercion. I simply want the 'facts', and I will decide for myself. If something is a theory then let's identify it as such, and let's see the evidence, and reasonable alternative explanations - not someone's wild fantasy.

There is the core of the matter. The confusion between pollution and use of fossil fuel. We need most definitely stop that pollution. Most certainly. But then we have to fight pollution and that is not the same as fighting global warming. That would be rearranging the deck seats of the Titanic.

If fighting pollutions means reducing CO2 due to other energy sources, that's fine, but it should not be the purpose. The purpose should be clean air, irrelevant if it contains 280, 380, 560 ppmv CO2. But if you start working with the wrong perception of reality, you end up making the wrong decisions.

 

[Evo]

Strong lobby groups? Farmers/growers, grain processor, the beef, pork and poultry industries all have strong lobbies in Washington. It's easy for Washington politicians to blame oil companies since peoples' attention is on the price at the pump and the pain in the wallet.

Yep.

They do! Stand behind an idling car and take a deep breath.

The worst car polution I have ever encountered was in Bangkok. Driving around in a tuk-tuk, I really thought I was going to be asphyxiated before I got to my destination.

We do need a rational discussion of issues such as GW, pollution, energy policy, etc. We do not need inuendo, hearsay and name-calling, nor coercion. I simply want the 'facts', and I will decide for myself. If something is a theory then let's identify it as such, and let's see the evidence, and reasonable alternative explanations - not someone's wild fantasy.

Wouldn't that be nice?

 

[Evo]

Okay, so here's Kyoto. Scroll to annexA to see the list of greenhouse gases. Note numbers two and three.

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html

I found more of the answers I was looking for here https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1284252&postcount=114

 

[StuMyers]

The point wasn't whether Kyoto was good. I'm not qualified to make that judgement. I was first told that everybody was ignoring met and nit. I said the IPCC report mentions them as a significant problem. I was then told that nobody was proposing a control of met and nit, so I mentioned Kyoto. You then hollered that I hadn't posted an explicit link to something that comes up in a 2 second google search, so I did. As for my attitude, I'm simply responding in kind.

 

[Art]

Here's the actual report. I haven't had time to do more that scan through it to understand the adjustments made, I'm assuming they are fair. I'd have to see if I can find other papers that discuss this report. There is a difference between skewing data, data mining and trying to find a fair means at data representation to give a more realistic view. Adjusting data is not always bad if it is done consistently and in the right way, for the right reasons.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf

To members, please make sure that a report is publicly available before you post nothing but an abstract requiring a subscription.

Thanks for the link Evo. I've read it and found it's even more biased than I anticipated.

The authors set out to try and eliminate the difference in the temperature records between urban and rural areas in an attempt to eliminate the heat island effect which is one of the weak links in the AGW theory.

Presumably they couldn't think of ways to justify increasing the historical temp recordings from the rural stations so they focused on trying to reduce the temperatures in the urban records instead under the guise of correcting for inhomogeneities in the data set.

After making (some fairly arbitrary in some cases) adjustments for 5 areas - elevation, latitude, time of observation, instrumentation, and nonstandard siting all of which coincidentaly helped reduce the urban temperature records they came to the not unsurprising conclusion that there is no heat island effect of any note

In cities where even fudging the figures didn't supply the answer they wanted they put it down to micro-environment anomolies.

A few questions spring to mind.

As they were not looking for trend information why bother using historical data. Why not simply confirm/set up accurate measuring stations and collect fresh information untainted by inhomogeneities? Then there would be no need for any adjustments.

Why does it appear that no effort was made to determine if there were unique rural conditions which would exagerate their temperatures. Only urban anomalies were looked for.

What effect would lowering all of the urban temp records have on the calculations of overall global temperatures? Though presumably in case this embarrasses the AGW club they have left themselves an escape route by admitting the adjustments made may introduce new errors.

Can anybody say confirmation bias??

It seems the purpose of this project was simply to muddy the waters by claiming either a) there is no temperature difference between rural and urban areas or b) the data is too unreliable to use so as to weaken the 'heat island effect' argument against AGW.

 

[Art]

The point wasn't whether Kyoto was good. I'm not qualified to make that judgement. I was first told that everybody was ignoring met and nit. I said the IPCC report mentions them as a significant problem. I was then told that nobody was proposing a control of met and nit, so I mentioned Kyoto. You then hollered that I hadn't posted an explicit link to something that comes up in a 2 second google search, so I did. As for my attitude, I'm simply responding in kind.

Stu the point was politicians are ignoring it. As has been pointed out all the talk from politicians is about carbon taxes and zilch about the rest.

As a rough and ready comparison if you google on "carbon tax" there are 750,000 hits compared to 1,300 for "methane tax" and 643 for "nitrogen tax"

 

[turbo]

It seems the purpose of this project was simply to muddy the waters by claiming either a) there is no temperature difference between rural and urban areas or b) the data is too unreliable to use so as to weaken the 'heat island effect' argument against AGW.

There is bias on both sides, and lots of finger-pointing against one's scapegoat du jour. As Andre will gladly acknowledge if you ask him, Central Maine has shown a very steady increase in average winter temperatures since the 1950's. I used to ice-skate on ponds, bogs, etc by Thanksgiving day when I was a kid, and now you're lucky if you can find safe ice to skate on by January 1. Ski resorts are being sold off and the costs of trying to run them is going through the roof because the cost of pipes, water, electricity, and labor to run snow guns on cold nights is horrendous. Did I mention that man-made snow is usually crap for skiing and attendance is way down??

Now, there has been no concurrent increase in average summer temperatures, but that could be in part due to the haze that we experience all summer long, with the accompanying EPA ozone warnings, due to the coal-fired power plants in the midwest. Their permitting processes relied on local testing of contaminants and particulates, so the operators of these plants just built taller stacks to shoot the contaminants higher into the atmosphere so that the local monitoring stations couldn't detect them. I worked as environmental chemist for a few years before switching to process chemistry and it was my job to ensure environmental compliance of the mill's stack effluent (chemical recovery boiler, power boilers and lime kiln) so I am well aware of these loopholes. As a result of this short-sighted lack of oversight and reasonable regulation, Maine suffers a level of air pollutants that is far out of proportion to our population. It's pure economics. A tall smokestack (just a simple tube) is easier to build and far cheaper to maintain than real pollution-control technology (scrubbers, etc), so the power company lobbies buy off our idiots in Congress to allow them to continue to pass the pollution on to another region. What's worse, if a particular power plant is a heavy polluter, the owner can barter "pollution credits" with another plant and continue to pollute, on the badly misguided notion that pollution "averages out". As long as people are distracted by false claims and red herrings, our environment will continue to suffer.

 

[Art]

Turbo I fully agree with you and probably everybody else here that pollution needs to be tackled urgently, I just don't think a policy of 'the end justifies the means', which seems to be the attitude of many environmentalists, is the right way to address it, especially if the 'end' is actually the wrong goal.

 

[StuMyers]

...
As they were not looking for trend information why bother using historical data. Why not simply confirm/set up accurate measuring stations and collect fresh information untainted by inhomogeneities? Then there would be no need for any adjustments.
...
It seems the purpose of this project was simply to muddy the waters by claiming either a) there is no temperature difference between rural and urban areas or b) the data is too unreliable to use so as to weaken the 'heat island effect' argument against AGW.

I think you completely missed the purpose and analysis of the article. The point is to re-analyze the data more rigorously. The conclusion is that urban areas are NOT homogenously warmer than rural, and that previous data analysis failed to take that into account in a rigorous fashion. Figure 6 should show that quite clearly.

The article passed peer-review. I doubt a non-expert will be able to find obvious rational faults.

Stu the point was politicians are ignoring it.

Then why do I, who admittedly knows nothing, know about it? Why does it not count as mentioning when someone recalls Kyoto?

 

[Art]

I think you completely missed the purpose and analysis of the article. The point is to re-analyze the data more rigorously. The conclusion is that urban areas are NOT homogenously warmer than rural, and that previous data analysis failed to take that into account in a rigorous fashion. Figure 6 should show that quite clearly.

The article passed peer-review. I doubt a non-expert will be able to find obvious rational faults.

I know what they did my question is as they actually state in their paper they are not seeking to perform a trend analysis but simply to accurately compare rural and urban temperatures why bother adjusting old data when you will obtain far more accurate results with new data which doesn't need any adjustments? Even if they were primarily concerned about fixing the historical record I'm surprised they haven't added new data if only to confirm and reinforce their conclusions.

Then why do I, who admittedly knows nothing, know about it? Why does it not count as mentioning when someone recalls Kyoto?

As I already posted

As a rough and ready comparison if you google on "carbon tax" there are 750,000 hits compared to 1,300 for "methane tax" and 643 for "nitrogen tax"

I think that speaks for itself.

Most people get their news and thus their priorities from tabloid papers and other mass media outlets. Very, very few read international treaties.

 

[Astronuc]

The worst car polution I have ever encountered was in Bangkok. Driving around in a tuk-tuk, I really thought I was going to be asphyxiated before I got to my destination.

I had a similar experience in Monterrey, Mexico about 35 years ago. The black and brown smoke that was spewed out of buses and trucks was unbelieveable. I couldn't believe I was on the same planet.

 

[Art]

I had a similar experience in Monterrey, Mexico about 35 years ago. The black and brown smoke that was spewed out of buses and trucks was unbelieveable. I couldn't believe I was on the same planet.

I found LA to be the worst I've seen. I had a permanent sore throat whilst there and when you get up to the rim of the valley and look down all you could see was a brown fog.

 

[StuMyers]

I know what they did my question is as they actually state in their paper they are not seeking to perform a trend analysis but simply to accurately compare rural and urban temperatures why bother adjusting old data when you will obtain far more accurate results with new data which doesn't need any adjustments? Even if they were primarily concerned about fixing the historical record I'm surprised they haven't added new data if only to confirm and reinforce their conclusions.

They wanted to show that the past analysis was not sufficently rigorous, and that UHI's are more complicated, with lots of temperature gradients. That was the point. Can you find any reviewed articles claiming that thermometers in UHI's account for much of the recorded warming?

I think that (google search) speaks for itself.

You wanted to claim that politicians and scientists were ignoring met and nit. A google search is irrelevant. A google search of newspaper headlines is irrelevant. An examination of the data, and a look inside the treaty are relevant.

 

[Art]

They wanted to show that the past analysis was not sufficently rigorous, and that UHI's are more complicated, with lots of temperature gradients. That was the point. Can you find any reviewed articles claiming that thermometers in UHI's account for much of the recorded warming?.

Isn't that a double edged sword? If urban historical records are wrong through timing, instrument, elevation and whatever other discrepancies the same applies to all historical temp records urban, rural and sea which means there is no reliable baseline to work to and so no reliable evidence of GW.

You didn't actually address the questions I raised in relation to the report. Of course you don't have to but I'd be interested in your thoughts on the subject.

You wanted to claim that politicians and scientists were ignoring met and nit. A google search is irrelevant. A google search of newspaper headlines is irrelevant. An examination of the data, and a look inside the treaty are relevant.

On this we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[denverdoc]

a tempest in a teapot, but swirling, whirling like a kickboxer--thats how I think of hurricanes. Smetimes borderline between a swell, tropical storm, and full fledged fury, very hard to predict except in the sense a few kilowatts of energy can be amplified to hell's fury on one occasion, and ignored on the others. There is no argument that such cyclones feed on the heat released by the ocean. Let's see, looking for the last link re an arctic hurricane.

None. that the proposition that man has no influence on the planet or nature: are you kidding?

We can measure some data and infer from others, different conclusions.

I would submit that the liveability of a planet is somehow related to the number of species present and alive. There has been an alarming reduction in such creatures. Are we to blame? Not me!

 

[ShawnD]

I would submit that the liveability of a planet is somehow related to the number of species present and alive. There has been an alarming reduction in such creatures. Are we to blame? Not me!

On one episode of Penn & Teller Bullsh!t, Patrick Moore (former president of Greenpeace) said that species reduction claims are nothing more than estimates and there's basically no evidence of dwindling biodiversity on this planet. The episode was about the ignorant hysteria behind the environmentalist movement.

It's possible that he too is just making stuff up, but the scientific method doesn't require you to prove innocence. If you make a claim that diversity is going down, you need to back it up with evidence. At least give a URL or something.

 

[denverdoc]

On one episode of Penn & Teller Bullsh!t, Patrick Moore (former president of Greenpeace) said that species reduction claims are nothing more than estimates and there's basically no evidence of dwindling biodiversity on this planet. The episode was about the ignorant hysteria behind the environmentalist movement.

tell that to the frogs. If it weren't a matter of concern and maybe it isn't for most, why even have endangered species lists.? This is a see no evil hear no evil argumentnot worth the time of day.

 

[Gokul43201]

Presumably they couldn't think of ways to justify increasing the historical temp recordings from the rural stations so they focused on trying to reduce the temperatures in the urban records instead under the guise of correcting for inhomogeneities in the data set.

Why do you do this? Everyone here that has read this paper will now must realize that you have still either (i) not read it, or (ii) just not understood it.

As they were not looking for trend information why bother using historical data. Why not simply confirm/set up accurate measuring stations and collect fresh information untainted by inhomogeneities? Then there would be no need for any adjustments.

Are you actually being serious here? You want the author, who has applied a more careful analysis to existing data, to drop all that and instead (i) somehow find a boatload of money, (ii) go about building a statistically relevant number of temperature monitoring stations, (iii) sit about waiting for a statistically relevant number of years for the new data to come in from these stations and then (iv) publish the new data?

Why does it appear that no effort was made to determine if there were unique rural conditions which would exagerate their temperatures. Only urban anomalies were looked for.

What on Earth are you talking about? When did elevation, latitude, time of observation or type of instrument become unique characteristics of urban locations? The adjustments were applied to data from all stations, not just the data from urban stations. The medial rural temperature actually ended up being adjusted by a magnitude greater than the medial urban temperature.

Can anybody say confirmation bias??

This is ironic!

 

[ShawnD]

tell that to the frogs. If it weren't a matter of concern and maybe it isn't for most, why even have endangered species lists.? This is a see no evil hear no evil argumentnot worth the time of day.

P&T had an episode about the Endangered Species act as well, but that's a different matter entirely. From what I can find on the internet, USA has http://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/SpeciesReport.do?dsciname=0&dcomname=1&dgroup=2&dstatus=3&dcurrdist=4&sgroup=0&ssciname=1&scomname=2&searchkey=comname&searchkey=sciname&header=TESS%20Search%20Results&searchstring=frog new species of frog. Do these new species count in our favour against the ones that are becoming endangered?

Frog numbers on the whole are going down, but the group "frog" isn't leaving any time soon. We probably are responsible for their overall numbers going down, but humans are rarely the sole cause of species extinction.
edit: By "rarely" I mean in a relative sense. If we make 100 species go extinct in one particular year, that sounds like a lot, but it's not much if that year had an overall loss of 1 million species. I'm pulling the numbers 100 and 1 million out of my ass, but you can see what I'm getting at.

 

[Evo]

Turbo I fully agree with you and probably everybody else here that pollution needs to be tackled urgently, I just don't think a policy of 'the end justifies the means', which seems to be the attitude of many environmentalists, is the right way to address it, especially if the 'end' is actually the wrong goal.

That is exactly how I feel. We need to use some common sense and stop the over reaction. Until people are capable of understanding historical climate changes and realistically look at the data, we will most likely cause more damage than good.

 

[Pythagorean]

I've come to add unrecorded data. This is very raw data, I'm not analyzing it or making conclusions, but here goes:

I live in Alaska. Commercial fishing, I've witnessed 3 used-oil bonfires (probably about 10 5-gallon buckets. On land, I've witnessed probably 2 tire-burnings (piles were about five foot radius at bottom of pile) use SOC to find heighth. There's this place in my hometown that the high-schoolers always light whatever gets left out there on fire. Plastic tables, cars, and other random city installments don't ever last longer than a month.

Now, I only fished commercially for three or fours years.

Now imagine all the people doing this all over the world for the last ~70 years. Is that a significant amount of CO2 contribution? I don't know.

 

[Bystander]

(snip)The fact is, unless you go and earn a PhD in a quantitative science, gain employment as a climate scientist, and publish original research in a PR journal, you're not qualified to have your own opinion on it.

Bit extreme --- to paraphrase: "Unless you are trained in one of the quantitative sciences (understand methods of measurement and statistics, and assorted fundamental principles, conservation, Newton, thermo, etc.), no Ph. D. required, no employment in a specialty required, no publication list required, you are not qualified to pass judgment on the quality of the science being presented.

If what is presented as "science" fails to conform to sound measurement practices, statistical principles, and fundamental physics, it's fair game.

 

[Art]

I think this should be painfully obvious - - not that you can't have your own opinion, just that it isn't credible. Intelligent people have opinions on all sorts of fascinating subjects outside their formal training. Those opinions are good for an entertaining discussion at the local pub, and that's about all.

And yet the greatest medical advance of all time The Theory of Germs wasn't discovered by a physician but by a chemist - Louis Pasteur.

It's fortunate he didn't know you're not supposed to dabble outside your speciality

 

[StuMyers]

Bit extreme --- to paraphrase: "Unless you are trained in one of the quantitative sciences (understand methods of measurement and statistics, and assorted fundamental principles, conservation, Newton, thermo, etc.), no Ph. D. required, no employment in a specialty required, no publication list required, you are not qualified to pass judgment on the quality of the science being presented.

If what is presented as "science" fails to conform to sound measurement practices, statistical principles, and fundamental physics, it's fair game.

I think you might be underestimating the depth of a modern quantitative science. You're basically describing the level of a lower-division undergraduate. Except on very rare occaisions, graduate-level errors are culled out of papers long before even the review process begins. Just for fun, why not head over to arxiv, and pull a few modern papers at random. See if you think an undergraduate has any REAL hope of finding error, or making some kind of meaningful contribution.

Here are a few, which my mouse just clicked at random...

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/nucl-th/pdf/0703/0703084.pdf

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math/pdf/0703/0703631.pdf

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0703/0703218.pdf

 

[Mk]

Yep.

The worst car polution I have ever encountered was in Bangkok. Driving around in a tuk-tuk, I really thought I was going to be asphyxiated before I got to my destination.

Hahaha. India is worse! Much worse. But in Guam I saw my cleanest air, and most polluted has the cleanest best air I've seen Except when we get those weird floating evil clouds of Chinese pollution, then you really notice. We also had a volcano eruption a few hundred miles south, then you REALLY notice. You could smell the sulfur and taste the ash in your mouth, visibility was greatly reduced and the air had kind of a slightly-brownish fog to it for a few days.

 

[Mk]

On one episode of Penn & Teller Bullsh!t, Patrick Moore (former president of Greenpeace) said that species reduction claims are nothing more than estimates and there's basically no evidence of dwindling biodiversity on this planet. The episode was about the ignorant hysteria behind the environmentalist movement.

It's possible that he too is just making stuff up, but the scientific method doesn't require you to prove innocence. If you make a claim that diversity is going down, you need to back it up with evidence. At least give a URL or something.

It seems to me species are constantly dying, and a biodiversity crisis seems like an abstract, future, false, crisis. I really don't know anything about it, but it just looks like that.

 

[Evo]

I think you might be underestimating the depth of a modern quantitative science.

I think what you are failing to consider is that having a PHD does not mean that you cannot be DEAD WRONG or even crazy. Passing peer review does not make something correct. Having a consensus among a group of scientists does not make something correct.

The amount of "warming" that pollution by humans has added to the "natural" warming has not been proven to be causing any major climate changes, it is only a guess at this point.

Are you familiar with Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation?

What is the AMO?

The AMO is an ongoing series of long-duration changes in the sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean, with cool and warm phases that may last for 20-40 years at a time and a difference of about 1°F between extremes. These changes are natural and have been occurring for at least the last 1,000 years.

"Is the AMO a natural phenomenon, or is it related to global warming?

Instruments have observed AMO cycles only for the last 150 years, not long enough to conclusively answer this question. However, studies of paleoclimate proxies, such as tree rings and ice cores, have shown that oscillations similar to those observed instrumentally have been occurring for at least the last millennium. This is clearly longer than modern man has been affecting climate, so the AMO is probably a natural climate oscillation. In the 20th century, the climate swings of the AMO have alternately camouflaged and exaggerated the effects of global warming, and made attribution of global warming more difficult to ascertain."

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/amo_faq.php

And why Knee jerk reactions to try to "fix" problems can make things worse. https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1078780&postcount=23

 

[edward]

AMO neither proves nor disproves global warming. For that matter it is totally unrelated since it deals with the Atlantic Ocean only. It merely states that a one degree temperature variation of the the Atlantic ocean has been occurring for approximately one thousand years.

 

[StuMyers]

I think what you are failing to consider is that having a PHD does not mean that you cannot be DEAD WRONG or even crazy. Passing peer review does not make something correct. Having a consensus among a group of scientists does not make something correct.

The amount of "warming" that pollution by humans has added to the "natural" warming has not been proven to be causing any major climate changes, it is only a guess at this point.

Are you familiar with (something to do with oceans)

In my experience, it's several orders of magnitude more likely that it's the crackpots who are wrong.