Dr Andrew Glikson (an Earth and paleoclimate scientist, at the Australian National University) contacted Quadrant offering to write about the evidence for man-made global warming. Quadrant approached me asking for my response. Dr Glikson replied to my reply, and I replied again to him (copied below). No money exchanged hands, but Dr Glikson is, I presume, writing in an employed capacity, while I write pro bono. Why is it that the unpaid self taught commentator needs to point out the evidence he doesn’t seem to be aware of? Why does a PhD need to be reminded of basic scientific principles (like, don’t argue from authority). Such is the vacuum of funding for other theories that a debate that ought to happen inside the university obviously hasn’t occurred. Such is the decrepit, anaemic state of university science that even a doctorate doesn’t guarantee a scientist can reason. Where is the rigor in the training, and the discipline in the analysis?
Credibility lies on evidence
by Joanne Nova
April 29, 2010
Reply to Andrew Glikson
Dr Andrew Glikson still misses the point, and backs his arguments with weak evidence and logical errors. Instead of empirical evidence, often he quotes authoritative reports written by glorified committees. He sidesteps around the central issue—where is the evidence for the positive feedback assumed in the models? This feedback creates the disaster. If the “hot spot” is missing and feedback is negative, almost everything else is irrelevant. Glikson serves the Australian taxpayer, yet gives us only half the story.
Throw away your thermometers, we found the “hot spot” with wind-gauges!
Glikson claims Sherwood 2008[1] found the hot spot, but there are no such grand claims in that paper, and nor do the graphs he selected support it. Possibly Glikson meant to refer to another Sherwood paper (Allen and Sherwood 2008[2]) where they just threw out the temperature measurements holus bolus and used wind shear analysis. Despite the creative effort, all they achieved was to find results that fall within the wide error bars of possibility. This is after nine years of efforts in re-analysing the radiosonde data. Clutching at straws anyone?
The temperature sensors on weather balloons are individually calibrated to a tenth of a degree, the hot-spot is at least 0.6°C, and there have been hundreds of thousands of measurements, so why throw them all away? As I wrote in the Skeptics Handbook: “Thermometers ferrgoodnesssake are designed to measure the temperature. Why should wind-gauges accidentally be better at it?”
Of the four main data sets (two satellites and two weather-balloon sets), three are in good agreement with each other, and their results unequivocally say that there is no “hot spot”. (See fig 1). One satellite set (RSS) got results that slightly overlap with results from some models. That’s as good as it gets for the models.
Figure 1.
A more detailed view of the disparity of temperature trends is given in this plot of trends (in degrees C/decade) versus altitude in the tropics (Douglass et al. 2007-[9]). Models show an increase in the trend with altitude, but observations from balloons and satellites do not. Graph thanks to NIPCC.
Glikson apparently doesn’t understand the power of the feedbacks in the climate models and the meaning of the hot spot. His response is tortuous. He mistakenly infers that if the hot spot is missing there could be no global warming. It’s a strawman that tells us he doesn’t understand the chart. The hot spot pattern is meant to compare trends between the air 10 km up and the surface, not absolute temperatures. And I’m quite consistent in saying that man-made warming is probably real but minor. I provided two references suggesting it is in the order of 0.5°C of warming instead of 3.5°C. Yes, CO2 causes warming, but how much? [10] [11] If either of the papers I listed is right, you can kiss goodbye to the catastrophe.
Glikson then digs deeply into the handbag of IPCC quick-fix-glue and resorts to the ritual lines about how the IPCC has “looked at every possible cause” and ruled all the rest out. It’s known as argument from ignorance: we can’t think of anything else it could be. Never mind that they are searching for answers with the same models that can’t “find” the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warming, the cause of the Little Ice Age, the warm period in the 1940’s, or the cooling of the ‘50s and ‘60s either. Never mind that even the IPCC admits they can’t model cloud cover well, and can’t explain why there’s been no statistically significant warming since 1995.
When you look everywhere with a blindfold on, the only thing you find is darkness.
Sea-levels that shock (80 years later)
Glikson criticises me for looking at sea level data from only the last 20 years, but he forgets that I did that in response to his claim that things are “worse than the IPCC predicted”. The IPCC remember, was created in 1988 and so his idea of using a sea-level graph back to 1900 rather misses the point. Sure sea level trends increased in the 1930s, but if that trend “shocks” the researchers in 2009, that isn’t a point to brag about. Obviously the claim that sea level rise is worse than the IPCC predicted was shown to be patently, obviously wrong by the graph I posted in my last piece. Sea levels have risen, but the trend has not accelerated at all since the IPCC was formed. Indeed it seems to be flattening off, something that Glikson also did not disagree with.
There’s no reason to look back 100 years and pretend to be shocked in the last two years that things got worse than you thought–80 years ago.
Cause and Effect goes AWOL
Every other point that Glikson makes (sea levels, ice sheets, and Greenland melt extents) are all effects of global warming and don’t tell us anything about the cause of the warming. But they do at least tell us that the warming started a century before our carbon emissions began to rise, which rather puts the kybosh on the recent correlation with CO2 in any case. Sure, let’s talk “long term”: sea levels have been rising since 1850, and glaciers have been melting since 1800. We’ve been recovering from the Little Ice Age for 200 years. Fully 70% of the carbon that’s “Man-Made” has been made since 1945 and the trend hasn’t changed. (Fig 2)
Figure 2.
Glacier shortening[3] [4] and sea level rise[5]. Gray area designates simulated range of error in the sea level record. These measurements lag air temperature in creases by about 20 years. So, the trends began more than a century be fore in creases in hydrocarbon use. GRAPH from the global warming review by Robinson, Robinson and Soon.
Ocean Acidification? Don’t pour hydrochloric acid into your fish tank, OK?
I claimed that fears about acidification are theoretical rather than observed, and to back up my point Glikson links to a summary statement from a symposium. It’s yet another committee report, and not empirical evidence. When a researcher recently did the hard yards of actually bubbling CO2 through corals in a tank, and also analyzing sediment cores, she and her team found that in the last 220 years as CO2 levels increased the average cocolith mass grew by 40%.[6] Far from inhibiting coral growth, warmer temperatures and increased CO2 has apparently helped corals.
Her results were different from others because she used CO2 to increase the acidity, rather than throwing hydrochloric acid into the tank as people had previously done.
Did the cryosphere melt?
Glikson originally talked about Arctic sea ice, which was not only irrelevant in a discussion about the cause of global warming, but was misleading because Antarctic sea ice has grown, and globally the levels peak at the roughly the same size each year. Glikson doesn’t disagree with this, but oddly calls the Arctic shrinking a “decline” and the Antarctic increase a “fluctuation”. He shifts topic and suggests the ice sheets on Antarctica are losing ice mass. But Wingham et al found that Antarctic ice appears to be thickening by around 27Gt ± 29 Gt /yr, resulting in a slight reduction in sea-levels.[7] That “partial offset” in East Antarctica that Glikson quotes looks like it’s larger than the trend it is “offsetting”.
Will the plants wither? Not likely…
I linked to hundreds of studies showing plants prefer higher CO2 levels, and Glikson quotes a study that “expects” CO2 “may” inhibit plant growth when combined with all the other projections that the unvalidated, flawed models project. I’m warned to consider complex whole systems, not just single variable studies. Righto. Let’s do that: satellites record that the biomass of the entire planet increased 6% from 1982 – 1999[8]. (Six percent in just 18 years!) So, all that warming and a large increase in CO2 worked out just fine for life on Earth.
Are these CO2 levels “unprecedented”?
Glikson refers to studies from millions of years ago when CO2 levels were equivalent to today, but temperatures were even higher. The big problem with these studies is that we know higher temperatures cause CO2 levels to rise. There is 50 times as much CO2 in the oceans as there is in the atmosphere, and it’s simple chemistry that the oceans release CO2 as they warm. So again, as with the ice cores, the cause and effect link is most likely the reverse of what he and Gore imply. If it was warmer back then, there would have been more CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s no surprise at all that the CO2 was higher at the same time as the temperature was as well, indeed it’s utterly predictable.
Evidence—What evidence?
Glikson reckons the credibility in science lies with “respected authorities” (are there any left?). It’s a naked fallacy of logic. Credibility in science lies with those who have evidence and don’t break laws of reason. It’s judged by how well the theories predict the real world. Empirical evidence is what makes or breaks it, and the bigger predictions of man-made global warming have been busted.
Glikson mixes up cause and effect. He pays lip service to my comment that sea-level, glaciers and melting ice are effects of warming, and don’t tell us what caused the warming. But having done that, in the most fitting of ironies, without even blinking, he finishes up with claims that the ClimateGate emails don’t detract from the reality of ice melting and seas rising and all those nasty storms. For once he’s right, those emails don’t detract at all from all the irrelevant, distracting discussion points out there. (But why say it?)
He wonders how much evidence I need? I want evidence that sheds light on the cause. I need a bit more than one study where wind-gauges pretend to be thermometers, while the thermometers apply for a redundancy package. Is that too much to ask?
Thanks to Baa Humbug and DE for advice and research
The Full Debate:
Part I: Glikson “The Case for Climate Change“
Jo Nova “No Dr Glikson“;
Part II: Glikson “Credibility lies with experienced authorities“
Jo Nova “Credibility lies on Evidence“;
Part III: Glikson “The Effects of CO2 on Climate“
Jo Nova “Glikson accidentally vindicates the skeptics“.
Part IV: Glikson suggests evidence for the hot spot.
I point out how weak it is. (See the UPDATE below Part III).
Part V: Glikson The planetary atmosphere and climate change
Jo Nova Ignore the main point, repeat the irrelevant.
Part VI: Dr Glikson asked to respond again. I said “please do”. So far, he has no reply.
References
[1] Steven C. Sherwood, Cathryn L. Meyer, and Robert J. Allen: Robust Tropospheric Warming Revealed by Iteratively Homogenized Radiosonde Data, American Meteorological Society, Journal of Climate 2008; 21: 5336-5352 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2320.1
[2]Allen RJ, and Sherwood, S.C. (2008): Warming Maximum in the tropical upper trophosphere deduced from thermal winds. Nature Geoscience. 25 May 2008; doi:10.1038/ngeo208
[3] Oerlemanns, J. (2005) Science 308, 675-677.
[4] Jevrejeva, S., Grinsted, A., Moore, J. C., and Holgate, S. (2006) J. Geophysical Res. 111,2005JC003229. http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/au thor_archive/jevrejeva_etal_gsl/
[5] Leuliette, E. W., Nerem, R. S., and Mitchum, G. T. (2004) Marine Geodesy 27, No. 1-2, 79-94. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
[6] Iglesias-Rodriguez, M.D., Halloran, P.R., Rickaby, R.E.M., Hall, I.R., Colmenero-Hidalgo, E., Gittins, J.R., Green, D.R.H., Tyrrell, T., Gibbs, S.J., von Dassow, P., Rehm, E., Armbrust, E.V. and Boessenkool, K.P. 2008. Phytoplankton calcification in a high-CO2 world. Science 320: 336-340.
[7] D. J. Wingham,*, A. Shepherd, A. Muir And G. J. Marshall, Mass Balance Of The Antarctic Ice Sheet, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2006) 364, 1627–1635
[8] Ramakrishna R. Nemani,* Charles D. Keeling, Hirofumi Hashimoto, William M. Jolly, Stephen C. Piper, Compton J. Tucker, Ranga B. Myneni, Steven W. Running (2003) Climate-Driven Increases in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 1982 to 1999, Science: Vol. 300. no. 5625, pp. 1560 – 1563
[9] Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson, and S.F. Singer. 2007. A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology.
[10] Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705, doi:10.1029/2009GL039628. (Also updated in 2010);
[11] Spencer, R.W., Braswell, W.D., Christy, J.R., Hnilo, J., 2007. Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007/GL029698;
Additional information:
Avoiding Carbon Myopia, Science and Public Policy Institute, Willie Soon and David Legates
SOURCE: The Doomed Planet, a Quadrant Article
What concerns me most is that the likes of Glikson might actually believe the dirt they’re shovelling, rather than it being apparently toeing the “consensus” line for either their standing in the climate science community, or because it’s the government flavour of the decade.
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I am also shocked by the ease with which they will place blind faith in the results of a paper, while ignoring any logical fallacies along the way. They seem to confuse premise with conclusion, fail to understand burden of proof, and don’t even get the impossibility of proving a negative.
Where went rigor?
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Well done Jo!
But you’re wasting your time.
Zealot-alarmists like Glikson are religious CAGWers, not scientists.
They haven’t reasoned their way in.
You’ll never reason them out.
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“Why is it that the unpaid self taught commentator needs to point out the evidence he doesn’t seem to be aware of?” I haven’t read all of this debate and therefore don’t want to be too specifically judgmental. But in general what happens is this: The guy who manages to present himself as the expert has more prestige and people naturally believe he’s thorough, credible and “scientific”, whatever that means. That means he can afford to be lazy, sloppy and unscientific without getting caught. It’s as simple, paradoxical and ugly as that, and in my experience it happens all the time.
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It is frightening that our education system awards PhDs’ to intellectual lightweights like Glikson. Also of concern is that he dismisses any science other than that from “respected authorities”. There are so many examples in science of “respected authorities” being found totally wrong that Glikson’s statement shows him to be a science poseur. One example that comes to mind is the discovery by a Perth doctor in the 1980s’ that bacteria are a major cause of ulcers in the gut, but who was attacked and ridiculed for over 10 years by “respected authorities” before the evidence overwhelmed them.
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The run of the mill scientists, especially those in academia and in research establishments tend to settle into bureau-science. (How anybody can get a PhD in Science without having even heard of Karl Popper is beyond incredible.). Their aim is to publish and to be cited in order to provide an income and job security. They measure the “quality” of their work by publication and citation; the KPI of “science” which any pen-pusher can understand without an inkling of science; a necessity for continued funding for further activities.
It is easy to see how such a system can become biased and corrupted. Almost devoid of revealing any new truths from an increasing flurry of unproductive activity.
One should not be surprised that the scientists and researchers who produce real insight into the workings of the universe do so on their own time and expense; or “stumble’ across it while researching how to do something else in a better way.
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Rob H @ 5
Another is X-Raying pregnant women – for 15 years everyone thought that was safe. Has anyone done a study on how many times the consensus has been proven right/wrong?
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Thalidomide is another, I guess the list is depressingly endless.
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I see Catalyst (ABC) is running a story on the Antarctic tonight and it’s response to climate change:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2880038.htm
No doubt this will be a balanced piece …
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Another one is that they used to think spraying DDT was ok.
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Well is this Dr G employed by the government? Because there are
heaps of them being retrenched. I doubt if Penny Wong will be retrenched of course. I feel sorry for her actually, she like
Garrett are the meat in the sandwich.
Ph.D’s – gosh some of them are wankers. Unless it is a specialised course like archaeology or palaeoanthropology. But
some of the history students are basing their knowledge on writings done in the period of particular study.
It is known they corrupt data to suit their hypothesis. Flannery was one. Then go through the mill of another University board. One phD student at my UNE was writing a thesis on the effect it has on a child having only one pair of shoes for school. ‘What child cares what they wear for school, eh?”
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MattB: @10
And that goes right along with the one that says banning DDT would save lives. It didn’t and it had quite the opposite effect. 🙁
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totally off topic I know but I cant resist. “Science Not Consensus” Thalidomide is not a good example. The situation with it is extremely interesting. Believe it or not, the real drug Thalidomide was well tested and is safe to use in pregnancy (yes I know about all the Thalidomide kids). The problem is that Thalidomide is an optically active compound which means it exists in two isomers. Both are chemically absolutely identical, the difference is that one isomer structurally is the mirror image of the other isomer. (The same as vitamin D which exists as the D (dextro) and L (levo) isomers. The D isomer is useful to the body, the L isomer is not. Natural vitamin D is only the D isomer, synthetic vitamin D is 50% D and 50% L). In the case of Thalidomide one isomer is both theraputic and safe while the other isomer is viciously toxic to a developing fetus. Chemical synthesis produces both isomers in a 50/50 mix and the two need to be separated (an extremely difficult process). The exceptionally toxic nature of the inactive isomer was not recognised (I presume because all the testing had been done on the active isomer) and the separation in the drug sold was not good enough.
[Excellent info Michael. Thanks. The devil is always in the detail. The much maligned drug is apparently useful in cancer treatment these days. The racemic mixes of other vitamins (like E) may also be a reason why many vitamin supplements (which were often DL mixes) haven’t produced great results. The ultimate competition is, as always, between us and an intricate universe. — JN]
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Continental Drift is another – that was rejected for 50 years.
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Bernd Felsche: #6
I once asked one of my university lecturers a technical question regarding the practicality of making something work in the “real world” outside the lab.
He stared at me for a good half minute and then said, “I hold a doctor of philosophy degree in science. That means I think about science. If you want to ask questions about the practical nature of science, you need to find somebody who holds a master of science degree”.
Of course he was perfectly correct. He was a research scientist and I was asking him questions about applied science.
But at the time, I thought it was just his way of saying, “Buggered if I know”. 🙂
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Who’s measuring sea levels:
2. Sea level rise.
JN states: “If anything, instead of an up-curve, the graph has slightly flattened off. The trend is utterly predictable, except that it might be rising less fast than the predictions.”
Response by AG: JN’s figure portrays only the last stage of sea level rise, from 1993 to the present (mean SL rise rate: c. 3.2 mm/year). As is shown in Figure 2[3] sea level rise rates have increased through the 20th century from below 1 mm/year early in the 20th century to near 3.5 mm/year.
Apocalyptic changes forecast by climate change alarmists, according to Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the International Commission on Sea Level Change, are not in the cards. Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years."
If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10 cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 cm."
Six times he and his expert team visited the Maldive Islands to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has, if anything, dropped in recent decades. Venice, Italy, has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr. Morner.
Call me dumb! but if co2 induced warming causes rising sea levels, shouldn’t it have accelerated over recent years, not flattened off or failed to rise as both Jo and Dr Morner state.
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The AGW argument depends a priori on feedback. Without it there is no position. What is so annoying is that the people who support the feedback principle have no research evidence, only computer predictions. Of course computer predictions can be right but they should never be accepted until specifically proven by actual facts. That has not happened so far. In fact the opposite is true. feed back is not happeneing on the scale predicted.
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Michael @ 13
“The exceptionally toxic nature of the inactive isomer was not recognised (I presume because all the testing had been done on the active isomer) and the separation in the drug sold was not good enough.”
True, and wiki follows with “The thalidomide tragedy led to much stricter testing being required for drugs and pesticides before they can be licensed.” Is there no parallel with the AGW consensus? As dramatic as it sounds I would argue that the potential for harm from the AGW religion is vast. Consider that 63 countries currently rely on the EU for food aid. If countries are forced to convert their crops and pull down forests for biofuel production, what then? Consider a new carbon credits trading bubble (worth potentially trillions) collapsing because the science is rolled over – vastly more devastating than the latest WFC as EVERY country would be involved from the outset. There would be no soft cushion for Australia in that scenario.
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There is a third way to look at the evidence of AGW and show that even if you accept the evidence the remedy is ridiculously hopeless and stupid.
I bought Lomborg’s COOL IT because I was most impressed with his debates on youtube and the book is incredibly detailed with heaps of graphs and charts covering all the iconic issues of AGW.
He is a believer in the cause but shows why it is completely senseless to try and fix the problem.
His way is adaptation to any problems caused by AGW, but he takes a swipe at all the lies and exaggerations throughout the book.
He has a standing invitation to debate gore but big al isn’t silly enough or courageous enough to take him on.
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Neville @ 19
I’ll read COOL IT if you read CHILL by Peter Taylor, deal?
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Well, the Maldives are atolls, and atolls adapt to sea level rise.
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Hi “science not consensus”. I am on your side, I also think dangerous AGW is totally incorrect. What I was getting at before is that wrt to Thalidomide there is a difference. In the case of Thalidomide the scientists were genuinely trying to do the right thing but they made a mistake – tragic but I think it was a genuine error they deeply regret. In the case of AGW I seriously doubt if scientists are trying to do the right thing. There is massive group think involved and I suspect that at least a sizeable minority if not a majority are doing things they themselves would stridently denounce if they occured in some other field of research. In short they are not even trying to be conscientious and objective – they are trying to prove a thesis they have become wedded to in advance of the evidence. I further suspect (although I admit without evidence) that some or most realise they are wrong but do not know how to get out from under without destroying their credibility. If true, its not an excuse but it is an explanation.
With regard to your comment that the potential harm from AGW is vast I could not agree more. Indeed vast is an understatement, which is exactly why people like Joanne, Antony Watts, Jennifer Marohasy and the like have all been fighting so hard against the insanity. In my own very small way I have also been fighting – see my articles on Jennifer Marohasy’s website.
[Michael under sells himself – not only has he posted here http://joannenova.com.au/tag/michael-hammer/ and answered many questions in comments – especially in the earlier threads on my site – (see the missing hot spot) – he’s also explained things to me on the phone and in emails. Infinitely useful … Thanks Michael! –JN]
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Hi Science not Consensus.
Sea level rises: If someone were to compare sea levels say 12000 years ago for arguments sake, they would have found most continents or islands, atolls included, may have been 150 feet or more lower than today. Actually there was more land available. The Mediterranean sea was a mass of lakes and swamp land. Land masses were joined.
For example England with the continent. PNG with Northern Australia. And of course the Bering sea with Siberia and
Northern America. And southern Australia with Tasmania and some islands like Kangaroo island.
The large glacial coverage covering parts of North America,down to the great lakes,Europe and Asia were also glacial. When they melted ran into rivers and then the sea. Northern Australia had no glacial coverage at all. But the bridge between Papau New Guinea was eventually flooded.
After the deluge so to speak. Aborigines changed their hunter and gatherer life style, to include fishing. Because it was closer to land. Estuary living was the main occupation in the North, even though it was subject to the big wet etc.
The ANU did a few years ago bring out a report sea levels have not risen. One of my lecturers had done a report down around
Wollongong (South coast some 100 kms from Sydney) in 2003 and
said that the sea levels had come and gone but not much over the last 10,000. Now this jerk is saying differently.
One Torres Islands were promised 150,000 dollars to put up
sea walls, when a big king tide (full moon folks tonight) started to erode their beaches. And flood the lowest islands. They haven’t received it as yet from Rudd.
As far as Tuvula is concerned from my studies Atolls as against
volcanic formed islands have always been subjected to sea erosion and storms. Happens to all coastal regions. Even in
UK.
Hint – avoid building a multimillion dollar home on the beach.
Or too near a river.
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Just to add to my last I think Thalidomide, was given to pregnant
women for morning sickness. Dr McBride received the Nobel Prize for this. However he also tried to prove another morning sickness drug was also responsible, and fudged the data.
He was disgraced scientifically. And I believe his foundation
was also effected with regards funding?
He wasn’t wrong about Thalidomide effects. However, for all those early pregnancy ladies, take 25 – 50 mg of Vit 6. Won’t harm you one bit, and reduce heart burn and morning sickness.
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Bush bunny @ 23
I hope your prognostications catch up with Al. It’s interesting that he does this after what he preaches.
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-hotprop-gore-20100428,0,4103538.story
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That’s “decrease the alkalinity” to be precise. Please don’t get suckered into accepting the false premise that CO2 is in any way linked to acid oceans (or hydrochloric acid or any other kind of acid).
If the AGW supporters could regularly deliver correct and useful predictions on the decade-length timescale that would go a long way toward convincing me.
[ Tel, I agree in a way and considered the wording when I wrote it, but “reducing ph” or “decreasing alkalinity” is just that much more weight on a reader’s brain. In a one paragraph answer I went for simple. –JN]
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Drs. Kevin E. Trenberth and John T. Fasullo AGW proponents from the National Center for Atmospheric Research,Boulder, CO, USA can’t find the missing heat either.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/article-on-the-missing-heat-in-the-april-16-issue-of-physicsworld-com/
This clearly supports JN’s comments. They think “it” moved deep deep into the oceans where they just can’t find it. (heard that one before?) I guess they will start looking in the Mariana trench shortly…
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Michael @ 22
“In my own very small way I have also been fighting – see my articles on Jennifer Marohasy’s website.”
Very interesting blog Michael, and you short change yourself. Your pieces are excellent. But wow, some of the AGW trolls you get…
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spangled drongo? We’ve known this for months. He bought a condo
adjacent to an area he reckoned would be sea level inundated. In his ‘Inconvenient Truth’.
Has he got another since then?
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Who marked me down for @ 24. Have the guts to say why at least.
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Catalyst did the Antarctic tonight – it was actually just a series of “what ifs” and “this may” and “more research” trivia.
What a pathetic science program! They are still talking about tipping points and even had tipping point Hansen to add his tipping point BS, must have videoed him when he was here recently – It was an AGW/ABC love fest in Antarctica.
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What, they never heard of the Bermuda triangle? 😉
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Frank Brown @ 27. Not in the loop admittedly. But the last big solar flare most satellites are shut down or can be damaged.
AGW is based on wrong data. And the solutions such as Cap ‘n Trade or ETS will not alter one bit the effect CO2 human emissions and activity has on the ability to change the climate.
Mind you sustainability measures will improve our ability to survive what ever the weather serves us. But take that to the UN argue that industrialised countries are not altering others’ climate as James Hansen had to say – Your coal is killing my environment too!
Bangladesh is sinking. River diversions are not helping them. Parts of Bangladesh are naturally below sea level. They have removed mangrove swamps to make more land available for subsistence agriculture and therefore the sea is naturally becoming invasive. Give them a tsunami or bad storm or floods etc., and they suffer. But capitalism in Europe, America or other countries are not causing this natural disaster because of the way we live and their CO2 emissions.
Remember it was first GHG’s then AGW and progressed to global climate change.
All this data produced by those who wish to believe that humans are responsible for devastating climate change is crap.
We do have impact on the natural environment. We must start reviewing our methodology in agricultural practices. We should start to think that we have a responsibility to make our natural environment more fertile to support us with food.
Not go into agroforestry or bio-fuels instead of food production.
And we must start to think about should another severe climate change start to reduce our ability to grow food, i.e., another ice age, we should start to think more conservatively and not be too used to the standard of living we have been used too, with some minor adjustments. Use of water in Australia for example.
I’m off to bed folks, enjoy.
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Tel, I suggest “lower the PH” or “Lower the PH toward neutral” Or the even more slippery “neutralize” would be even less apt to produce fear.
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Hi everyone, I’m trying to keep up with my emails. New one.
IMPORTANT ONE:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/the_climategate_investigation.html
The UK investigation into the UEA. Ahhh, hidden agenda perhaps.
Read it. It doesn’t exonerate Phil Jones as believed.
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Wow Joe you’ve gone for the jugular – good for you! We either have the facts or we don’t Authority means nothing in comparison.
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@Science not Consensus (#7 and #8)
Add phrenology to your list.
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Tel: #26
April 29th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Tel you’re gunna get your wish with the 5th assessment report.
In it they will try to predict (not project) regional climate change at decadel timescales.
They have set up a group (name I’ll keep to myself for now) chock full of equipment including aircraft and boats and ships. They’ve been studying the important regional climate drivers, i.e. Indian monsoons, ENSO PDO etc.
My early guess is they will try and hit one bulls eye and pronounce their expertise to try and convince everybody that they got this climate caper worked out.
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TIDE: DDT was harmful to birds and other fauna, but also to mosquitoes. It killed the malaria carrying mosquitoes. DDT hasn’t been banned in certain areas of Africa where malaria is
still a very great problem.
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Frank Brown: #27
April 29th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Trenberth et al can’t find the missing heat, I can’t find the missing alarmists. Where are they? Why aren’t they defending Glikson, one of their own?
Trenberth: “here here warming, where are youuuuu???”
Baa: “here here alarmists, where are youuuu?”
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I`ve just been reading an article on aquariums and found out that the owners of prize winning ones (yes they have contests , weird huh ?)deliberately bubble CO2 through them to “Give the marine plants truly luxuriant growth” to “show off their prize fish against a verdant natural backdrop” . Strangely , there seems to be no mention of their fish dissolving in a toxic acid soup as the AOA* (previously AGW )crowd suggest would happen .The aquarium article suggests keeping the ph between 7.6 and 8.1 as the optimum range
* ( Anthropogenic Ocean Acidification)
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Thank God your here now Baa, now I can go to bed.
luv
Bush bunny from Oz
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Waylander: I used to show gold fish. Gold fish are cold water
fish like Koi as we all know. They tolerate alkaline water. We also had marine fish aquariums too. And I believe they also tolerated slightly acid water but the salt levels were more important to them.
South American fish like tetras like acid water because of their the natural environment, and also they prefer higher water temps.
The optimum or preferential pH. for humans, plants etc., is about
6.4 – 5. Must test my new rain water tank soon.
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PS., Sydney water used to be neutral. pH 7. Armidale water is
8.5 pH. very alkaline. Healthy for humans not always good for
garden plants. However hardness is also a factor. Harder water
is better for humans by the way. I don’t know why?
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Dagfinn: I lived in Bermuda once, no one mentioned the triangle.
It’s a production of Hollywood.
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Bush bunny: #35
April 29th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Bushy thnx for the link. A good read.
I’m afraid the alarmists have/will jump on the fact that lawson is a conservative politician who served as “treasurer” for Thatcher. they’ll dissmiss him as a biased sceptic.
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Brilliantly done, Jo!
He will not be swayed by logic but others surely will.
Keep at it. You make us proud to be thinkers.
Suzannah from Canada
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Glikson is a product of a small-c conservative political and university environment where established authority is never questioned and is always the final arbiter.
As an example, one of my Grandfather’s brothers was a medical doctor who pioneered X-Ray in NZ. After doing a post-grad year of study with Roentgen in Germany (he qualified in Edinborough)he took an X-Ray machine to Wellington, where he set up a private pratice which offered X-Ray diasgnosis. He offered this service to the then Wellington Hospital Board but his offer was refused. A letter from the WHB is somewhere in the family archives which states, more or less, thanks but no thanks, the WSB will continue to use conventional and proven medicine and techniques.
The WSB chose to use X-Ray diagnostics some time later, after it had ‘become safe’.
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WEll Baa H, I’m for the conservatives this time. Always have been since I lived there. Never voted British labor they are more socialist than in Australia. They Tories are generally AGW against. Tory Aardvark website is good. I’m on it under my BB name. Also some Aussies etc.
They are afraid in Britain of a hung parliament. This is more
serious than in Oz. Their parliamentary systems are different.
They have under Blair no House of Lords that is effective anyway, just like removing our Senate as a stop gap for any
legislation passed by the House of Commons. It has rarely happened by the way.
I’m British but also a nationalised or naturalised Aussie.
But Britain was a very nationalist superior to European Continental type national identity. One famous sportsman Chris
Chatfield a pollie said ‘Wogs start in Calais’. Bit not PC.
Europe has become socialist, not labour, socialist.
Britain has 1 million immigrants. l million who claim
benefits. Also some Romanian families living in Romania still
gain welfare from GB.
Now until someone starts to say ‘NO!’ like in Australia, and go back to who will sponsor and support these new immigrants like they did in earlier times. How can you stop leaching from the common purse when no one is producing anything to it?
Britain is in trouble financially. And their EU attachment isn’t helping. And a lot of their problems stem from carbon
controls and also clean energy.
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Sorry Chatterway. 4 minute mile etc.
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Waylander @ 41
AOA…….LOL!
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Exactly: The coral grows up to almost the surface (if it gets above, it dies); the wave action breaks up shallow coral and deposits it on top as sand; and wind and rain erosion take the sand back to the sea. At equilibrium, the live coral is about 1 meter below sea level and the sand on top is about 2 meters above.
When the sea level rises, the coral grows up to it, and the waves pile the sand higher — when the sea level drops, the coral dies back and is broken up by the waves, and erosion brings the sand hills back down to the equilibrium level.
These islands have had to adapt to 120 meters of sea rise in the last 17,000 years. The average rate of rise over that time is 7mm/year — nearly 3 times the current rate. You know that the maximum rate had to be much higher, since most of the rise took place over only 7,000 years. Coral atolls handled it just fine — some of them are over 300 million years old.
All these facts are supposedly well-known — but find me the “climate scientist” who has a single clue about them. Instead, they warn us that these islands are about to be swallowed by the rising sea. What do they think they looked like 17 thousand years ago? Giant pillars of dead coral standing 30 stories above the sea? How did they survive the huge sea level changes over the last 100 million years?
Alas, all these questions are answered by Glikson’s response to JN. “Climate Scientists” (as exemplified by Glikson) are incapable of logical thought. Apparently, they can’t tell the difference between drawing a logical conclusion and assuming that conclusion; Nor do they understand the differences between correct and fallacious arguments.
Glikson apparently can’t even follow JN’s simple arguments. The non-existence of the atmospheric “hot spot”, for example, does not mean that global warming isn’t happening — it means that it is not being driven by greenhouse gases (which do most of their absorbing high in the atmosphere) and is a falsification of the climate models which predict it.
These points appear to be too subtle for Glikson, who claims to be an expert in the subject. I get the feeling that he has never had to defend anything to a critical audience before, and is way over his head.
That this man is a PhD is a travesty and an indictment of his school. With his lack of reasoning skills, he couldn’t get a “C” on a freshman physics lab (I know, I used to grade them back in the ’60s.)
The state of this “science” is truly pathetic.
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Ike @ 2: Where went rigor?
Remember the 90’s in which “The facts aren’t relevant, its the seriousness of the charge that counts.” That means all they have to do is make the constant claim that “its worse than we thought.” Even Chicken Little had more sense. At least she was hit on the head with a real acorn and simply leaped from hard evidence to a faulty conclusion. They think they have it made as long as we don’t or can’t question the fact that they never get their thoughts right.
They sincerely think that proof is not necessary. They pretend that ignorance, complex simulations, and data cooked beyond recognition represents evidence. They hope that claims of “the science is settled”, “the peer reviewed literature is overwhelming”, and that a “consensus of scientists” are valid arguments.
Intellectual rigor is not even on their mental maps. They put their faith in the post modern belief that “he who captures the power to tell the story, determines reality”. For a while, they seemed to have captured that power. Their stories didn’t, however, determine reality no matter how often or stridently told nor how many fell for the ruse. Therein resides their downfall. They are at war with reality and they cannot win. They can and have done a huge amount of damage to the rest of us in losing their war.
The cure is as simple and as difficult as “think”. Think in full context of what is actually known and do so without contradiction across that full context. Require that one knows before one believes. Demand that all disputes be settled in the court of what actually is rather than arbitrary legal precedent, accepted convention, venerated tradition, or clever rhetoric.
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Gilkson is academically quite brilliant but he follows the tradition of a scientific paradign which traces its roots to the 19th century; so it’s necessary to question those roots rather than getting all het up over the lack of response to the logic of the sceptical argument.
Sceptics are arguing within the constraints of the present scientific paradigm in which divergence from scientific expectations, here the Trenberth missing heat dilemma, are dealt with not by concluding that the theory might be wrong, but that as the theory is obviously right, based on peer review and assent, then the missing heat must exist somewhere that we had not thought of. Evolutionists hide their missing species in the geological unconformities that are deemed ubiquitous in the stratigraphical column, for example.
This method of thinking has a long history and goes back to Plato, and it is this mode of thought that IS the problem since it is is the intellectual foundation on which pseudoscience is subsequently constructed.
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“As is shown in Figure 2[3] sea level rise rates have increased through the 20th century from below 1 mm/year early in the 20th century to near 3.5 mm/year.”
Jo, I hope you are aware this this is another example of cherry-picking and combining data from multiple, incompatible, sources.
The early 20thC data comes from tide gauges, the latter 20thC data from satellites. This is justified by suggesting that the sat. data is more accurate (which it likely is), so it represents our “best estimate”. By stiching one data set onto another, we see an increasing trend. However, if one uses a single dataset for the entire period, which is perforce the tide gauges, then there is no significant change in the trend. Sorry, I don’t have references to hand – IIRC, Pielke Snr has discussed this at his weblog (don’t quote me on that though!)
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Bernd Felsche:
April 29th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
“It is easy to see how such a system can become biased and corrupted. Almost devoid of revealing any new truths from an increasing flurry of unproductive activity.”
Or as Senca (c. 4 BC – 65 AD) put it: “Love of bustle is not industry”.
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Bush bunny — I hope you are right about the UK elections ( ie. a clear Conservative win )For the AGW argument it is important — its been about politics for several years now ( no matter the scientific arguments ). If the
( to join the French and Germans )then the political swing away from the nonsense will gain important momentum.
In saying this I’m not belittling the efforts of Jo , Monkton , McIntyre etc — quite the opposite. Their efforts have got it to this stage and we need to continue to support their efforts in any way we ,as individuals , can. But in the end it will politics that turns the tide completely.
In the UK after the elections ( probably one of those that the winner will wish they did not win , after a few months when they see the real state of the economy ) they may find they cannot afford much of the “climate change” promises.
BTW — It has just been reported that Gore has just bought a seaside home ( rising sea levels ??) to add to his other houses — six fireplaces , five bedrooms , 9 bathrooms etc. So much for water conservation , CO2 reduction. Hypocrisy goes to a new level.
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sorry folks, u need to stop putting your faith in the political parties. all three major UK parties are on board:
28 April: UK Telegraph: Geoffrey Lean: Tories will quickly introduce a bill to launch a green energy revolution
Greg Clark, the Tories shadow energy and climate change minister, has won an undertaking from David Cameron and the party leadership that an energy bill will be included in the first Queen’s Speech, delivered within a month of the new Government taking office.
The bill will meet manifesto pledges to entitle each household to £6,400 for energy saving measures, set up a Green Investment Bank, reform the Climate Change Levy to provide a floor price for carbon, and reform the energy regulator, Ofgem. Green energy plans are most unlikely to be derailed if the Tories have to govern with LibDem support, official or unofficial, since Nick Clegg’s party is at least as keen on bringing about a low-carbon revolution. A Labour, or Labour-led government, however, is likely to find it harder rapidly to introduce an energy bill, however, as ministers have only just enacted one…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100036997/tories-will-quickly-introduce-a-bill-to-launch-a-green-energy-revolution/
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no mention of UKIP, who allegedly take a sceptical view of CAGW:
26 April: BBC: Victoria King: Election 2010: Parties do battle over climate change
…for 90 minutes on Monday, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Green representatives went head-to-head on the issue in front of bodies such as Greenpeace, Oxfam, Christian Aid and the WWF. ..
For the Lib Dems, Simon Hughes set his party up as the most ambitious of the main three on green matters. As Mr Miliband put it: “Simon says, ‘My plan is bigger than your plan’.”
There was conflict between Mr Hughes and Darren Johnson of the Greens, possibly because they share many of the same potential voters…
The Ask the Climate Question hustings was chaired by the environment editor of the Independent, Michael McCarthy, with questions ranging from nuclear power to emissions reductions..
*****(Clark, Conservatives) “We’re all agreed on the ambitions and aspirations but what’s been lacking is action,” he said, promising to introduce a bill in the Queen’s Speech in a month or so’s time, if elected, to get going straight away.
Mr Clark came under fire for the number of Tory MPs and candidates that are climate change sceptics, but he insisted that wasn’t a problem. Asked about one such sceptic, in particular, he said: “I don’t agree with that guy, I’ve never heard of him.” ..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8644192.stm
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It is blatantly obvious that, from the moment science became politicized with the creation of the IPCC, too many scientists have lost their sense of objectivity by allowing themselves to become politicized, thereby accepting science to be a discipline based on consensus and government authority rather than empirical evidence and skepticism.
I find it fascinating that since Copenhagen, the results of study after study do not support the IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers and the high risks of catastrophic climatic events in the foreseeable future, whether they relate to rising sea levels, melting glaciers, “ocean acidification”, atmospheric temperature, loss of arctic ice, sinking islands, hurricanes, droughts, etc., etc., etc..
I can only suspect that because such blinkered scientists believe that the science was settled with the release of the IPCC’s 2007 report, they believe that there is now no longer a need to consider subsequent results of new studies and latest observational data.
Dr Andrew Glikson should be ashamed of himself. And to think Universities are supposed to be the fountain of knowledge, where lecturers supposedly encourage issues to be questioned, challenged, debated, and all points of view considered. Well… not with Dr Andrew Glikson, it would seem.
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Now this could be interesting!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/29/virginia-attorney-general-goes-after-mann-and-uva/
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Off topic but for the moment we seem to have lost all of our Trolls!
There must be a battle somewhere else (in blogworld)that is requiring all their efforts. Anyone know where it is?
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Mark at 61: Your post trumps mine! Perhaps that is where all the trolls have gone!!!
PS great name you got there 🙂
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Mark D @ 62
…and this concerns you?
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OT – I see big hearted Al has spread the love again!
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/28/home/la-hm-hotprop-gore-20100428
This generous kind-hearted man is trying to buy up all the seafront properties he can so that their previous owners won’t be disadvantaged when they are inundated by rising sea levels.
What a guy!
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John Clarke and Brian Dawe on Kevin Rudd’s ETS.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/
For the overseas members these two comedians perform an interview every Thursday night – Brian interviews John Clarke who performs different people – great concept. Last night it was Kevin Rudd.
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Mark:
Concerns me as in worry or
concerns me as in I am a skeptical mercenary?
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Very well done Jo. Nice response to Dr Glikson.
It beggars belief that the AGW proponents cannot, or will not, draw obvious conclusions from the wealth of observations that falsify their AGW hypothesis…. It is basic science. But they seem incapable of it.
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Just a quick question – If the oceans are supposedly becoming more acidic doesn’t this imply that they’re absorbing CO2? If so then the oceans must be cooling because, as you point out, dissolved CO2 is liberated by warming oceans. To me this means that the AGW crowd want to have their cake and eat it, so to speak……I’m sure I’m missing something here – my chemistry is strictly ‘O’ level – but I’d really love someone to explain to me how the oceans ccan be both warming and absorbing CO2 at the same time!
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Saad @ 69
Not a problem old son! CO2 is in equilibrium between the ocean and the atmosphere. If the oceans are in contact with an atmosphere that has higher CO2 content, then the oceans will absorb more CO2. If the oceans warm, then they will tend to release CO2, but less so if the atmosphere has an “elevated” CO2 level. So the ocean-atmosphere system comes into balance.
But the major issue is that the oceans contain 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere, so it is extremely unlikely that the small changes in atmospheric CO2 can drive the pH of the oceans to the point of acidification.
I probably didn’t explain that too well but I’ve got to get back to my day job!
Cheers,
Speedy
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So now Al and Tipper can waste energy in at least 4 big expensive places. I gotta hand it to the man; he knows how to be a hypocrite in spades.
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MattB:
April 29th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
“Another one is that they used to think spraying DDT was ok.”
I do not want to get off topic Matt but the W.H.O. do not agree with you
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/index.html
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Joanna
I love what you are contributing and want to express my appreciation of your great work; I would suggest that you are a Nobel Prize candidate but that (previous) honour has been seriously Gored.
When I “buy you some chocolate” I would like the opportunity to also leave some encouraging words.
Colin in London, Ontario, Canada
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Glikson, the fool, writes nothing more persuasive than something Matt B would come up with (sorry Matt)
Glikson, that train’s left the station.
As well as Glikson’s out and out fabrications such as “… which led to CO2-rich atmosphere and mass extinction of species.”
and an inappropriate use of “which” for “that” to boot but that’s the least of his difficulties
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Jamama
I thought Clarke and Dawe would duck it altogether but they seem to have given Rudd a serve instead. Pity it was because they seem disappointed about the ETS being canned. Perhaps someone needs to write another version for them from a sceptics’ viewpoint.
The ETS seems to be only one of several policies that have exceeded their use-by date. They sounded nice at the timem but were fundamentally flawed by mismanagement and incompetence, IMHO.
Cheers,
Speedy
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LOL Louis @ 55. In Australia we call that bull shitting! Or Gobblegook.
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I get this all the time from AGW believers,who fail to understand that just because something is a little warmer that ice is melting a little more than usual does not prove that CO2 increase in the atmosphere is causing it.
I have asked them why they overlook the similar warming trends from 1860-1880,1920-1940 that are so alike the 1976-2002 warming trend (that was supposed to be the unusual warming trend they bleated about loudly,by their error prone Dr. Mann and company).It is found in the IPCC report!
They are a mess.
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pat & Ross: According to the Tory Aardvark blog I am on, the
Conservatives are not in favor of this climate change nonsense.
They are concerned about immigration, and they gave three priorties that didn’t include climate change. Now the Bristol
female labor candidate actually opened the postal votes in her
electorate saying Labour was way ahead. Aren’t they sealed into a ballot box until polling night? If not – they should be
as anyone could send in a postal vote?
With Brown telling his aides after being questioned on immigration
‘How did you let that happen, that woman’s a bigot”. Forgot to
turn the microphone off? Sounds like something out of Monty
Python!
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Here is something a little off topic,but interesting because of their floundering (Realclimate Science “professionals”) replies.
Kinky stuff CO2
There you can download the 83.5 KB attachment
I thought Ken Coffman was quite effective in replying the he he he…..”professionals” at Realclimate blog.
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To explain ice melting? Where in the Arctic were it always melts?
Gosh next thing they will be starting to think this planet is
like the one in Avatar, and when threatened by the earthlings, the whole lot rebelled – animals, trees, etc?
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Regarding the Green bank in UK, weeks ago in the International Express for Australia it said the government were not going ahead with it as the 2 billion pounds would go no where and to cut carbon emission would cost up to 404 billion pounds and the British economy couldn’t stand that.
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I’m off for today folks, keep going but I’m all AGWED out.
These scientists are still getting air space, they must be embarrassed. Now Goldman Sachs is in the limelight in US of A
you might see them as part of a house of cards, all about to topple.
Trillions involved in carbon credits, with no one to sell too.
Someone’s heads going to be on the chopping block, when pension
funds become worth nothing.
Cheers
Bush bunny from Oz
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janama and Speedy,
Clark and Dawe, no matter how much material re Rudd’s shortcomings is on free offer [read: an embarrassment of riches for any balanced commedian] just can’t overcome their l/w bias to do it all justice.
Ditto GetUp!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/now_the_media_should_ask_why_it_too_backed_this_policy_dodo/
There’s a fortune going begging here. Where’s “Rubbery Figures” when you need ’em?
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Saaad @69:
The amount of dissolved CO2 is balanced against that in the atmosphere, not just dependent upon the temperatures of the respective media, butby the relative concentrations.
i.e. if the concentration of CO2 in the air increases without any change in temperature, one expects more CO2 to become dissolved in the water.
Temperature affects the solubility of CO2 in water; which I suspect is not a linear relationship with temperature or partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
One of the factors overlooked by alarmists is that the oceans harbour huge amounts of biomass; plants that will use up available CO2 in the presence of sunlight and turn it into sugar/starch/lipids via photosynthesis.
HTH
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Saaad: #69
April 30th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Saad our m8 speedy is always in a hurry. 🙂
Oceans also sequester CO2 by other means. e.g.
Phytoplankton use CO2 in photosynthesis. When they die, they sink to the depths, taking the carbon with them.
There is a physical limit to how low the oceans PH will go. So long as there are rocks in the ocean (alkaline or base) there just isn’t enough CO2 to reduce the PH balance by any significant amount.
In millenia yore, the atmosphere has had hundreds times more CO2 than today, yet the oceans didn’t “acidify”. Not possible.
hope this helps. there are lots papers on this subject if you want links.
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Thanks “Baa Humbug”,”Bernard Felsche” and “Speedy” – that makes alot more sense to me now. It’s strange isn’t it how AGW proponents are always trying to complicate the issues so they can claim to defer to “authority” rather than explain their hypotheses in easy to understand terms. The simple clarity with which complex chemistry is explained on this site (amongst others) is in such contrast to the obfuscating elitism of Real Climate and its ilk. Like most people interested in Climate science, I’m perfectly capable of grasping pretty much all aspects of the science if it’s explained properly. The fact that I can’t actually “do the math” for myself is neither here nor there. Anyway, thanks once again and keep up the great work!
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Since we are talking about credibility and evidence, Quentin Dempster has launched a scathing attack on ABC chairman Maurice Newman on The Drum.
Dempster says, “Recently ABC chairman Maurice Newman warned of the dangers of ‘group think’ by journalists (not just those from the ABC) on the issue of climate change.”
He then goes on, “Clause one of the Code of Ethics sets the standard for the publication of any evidence: Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis.” (My emphasis)
“In climate change coverage it is true that journalists necessarily report the probative and alarming evidence researched and compiled by scientists, analysts and climatologists commissioned by government (Stern, Garnaut, IPCC, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology among others).”
He then uses WMDs and Abu Graibh torture photos as examples where journalists uncovered facts which shattered group-think.
After that it becomes a non-stop rant against Maurice Newman. The worst part of this is that Dempster appears to think that ABC journalists have been covering the AGW issue in a fair and unbiased manner! Didn’t look that way to me when I watched the Antarctic special on Catalyst last night.
Spangled drongo #84 would like to see Rubbery Figures make a comeback. Mike Carlton used to do that really well back in the days before he became a spokesman for the ALP. If he did a modern version it would be so full of bile and hatred, it would probably not be terribly funny except to those on the extreme left.
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SUBJECT: PCC wrong. 20 million Bangaladeshis saved
It’s one of the IPCC most popular scare-claims:
MORE:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/ipcc_wrong_20_million_bangaladeshis_saved/
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SUBJECT: Avatar, the answer to a Copenhager’s dream
MOST people will date the death of the great global warming scare not from the Copenhagen fiasco – boring! – but from Avatar.
It won’t be the world’s most expensive warmist conference but the world’s most expensive movie that will stick in most memories as the precise point at which the green faith started to shrivel from sheer stupidity.
Avatar, in fact, is the warmist dream filmed in 3D. Staring through your glasses at James Cameron’s spectacular $400 million creation, you can finally see where this global warming cult was going.
And you can see, too, everything that will now slowly pull it back to earth.
December 2009. Note it down. The beginning of the end, even as Avatar becomes possibly the biggest-grossing film in history.
Cameron, whose last colossal hit was Titanic, has created a virtual new planet called Pandora, on which humans 150 years from now have formed a small settlement.
They are there to mine a mineral so rare that it’s called Unobtainium (groan), of which the greatest deposit sits right under the great sacred tree of the planet’s dominant species, humanoid blue aliens called Na’vi.
If Tim Flannery, Al Gore and all the other Copenhagen delegates could at least agree to design a new kind of people, they’d wind up with something much like these 3m-tall gracelings.
The Na’vi live in trees, at one with nature. They worship Mother Earth and, like Gaians today, talk meaningfully of “a network of energy that flows through all living things”. They drink water that’s pooled in giant leaves, and chant around a tree that whispers of their ancestors.
They are also unusually non-sexist for a forest tribe, with the women just as free as men to hunt and choose their spouse. Naturally, like the most fashionable of Hollywood stars, they are also neo-Buddhist reincarnationists, who believe “all energy is borrowed and some day you have to give it back”.
And, of course, the Na’vi reject all technology that’s more advanced than a bow and arrow, for “the wealth of the world is all around us”.
Sent to talk dollars and sense into these blue New Agers and move them out of the way of the bulldozers is a former Marine, Jake Sully (played by Australian Sam Worthington), who drives the body of a Na’vi avatar to better gain their trust.
(WARNING: Spoiler alert! Don’t read on if you plan to see the movie.)
But meeting such perfect beings, living such low-emission green lives, Sully realises instead how vile his own species is.
Humans, he angrily declares, have already wrecked their own planet through their greed.
“There is no green” on their “dying world” because “they have killed their mother”. Now we land-raping humans plan to wreck Pandora, too, with our “shock-and-awe” bombings, our war on “terror” and our genocidal plans to destroy the Na’vi and steal their lands.
So complete is Cameron’s disgust with humans – and so convinced he is that his audience shares it – that he’s made film history: he’s created the first mass-market movie about a war between aliens and humans in which we’re actually meant to barrack for the aliens.
(WARNING: Second spoiler alert!)
In fact, so vomitous are humans that Sully, the hero, not only chooses to fight on the side of the aliens but to actually become an alien, too. He rejects not just humans but his own humanity.
All of this preaching comes straight from what’s left of Cameron’s heart after five marriages and a professional reputation of on-set meanness.
Avatar, he’s said, tackles “our impact on the natural environment, wherever we go strip mining and putting up shopping malls”, and it warns “we’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural cycle on life on earth”.
Mind you, most of this will be just wallpaper to the film’s real audience, which won’t be greenies in Rasta beanies or wearing save-the-whale T-shirts made in Guatemala.
No, scoffing their popcorn as they wait impatiently for the inevitable big-bang shoot-’em-up after a fairground tour of some cool new planet will be the usual bag-laden crowd from the Christmas-choked megaplex – the kind of bug-eyed folk who thrill most to what Cameron claims to condemn, from the hi-tech to the militaristic.
Still, you can hardly blame them if they don’t buy the message that Cameron’s selling, since he doesn’t really buy it himself.
Here’s Cameron condemning consumerism by spending almost half a billion dollars on a mass-market movie for the Christmas season complete with tie-in burger deals from McDonald’s and Avatar toys from Mattel.
Here’s Cameron damning our love of technology by using the most advanced cinematographic technology to create his new green world.
In fact, here’s Cameron urging his audience to scorn material possessions and get close to nature, only to himself retire each night to the splendid comfort of his Malibu mansion.
Not even his own creations live up to the philosophy he has them preach.
For all their talk of the connectedness of nature, the Na’vi still kill animals for food – although not before saying how sorry they are, of course, since we live in an age in which seeming sorry excuses every selfishness.
Likewise, despite all their lectures on not exploiting nature, the Na’vi still come out top dog in the food chain.
Even when they physically become at one with wild pterodactyls, by hooking up to them through some USB in their hair braid, they manage to convince their flying reptiles to act like their private jets.
Isn’t this against the rules? I mean, in this caring and at-one-with-nature world, shouldn’t a plugged-in pterodactyl just once in a while get to direct its human passenger instead – by either telling it to take a flying jump or to at least act like lunch?
In all of this, Avatar captures precisely – and to the point of satire – the creed of the Copenhagen faithful.
Rewind what you’ve seen from those Copenhagen planet-savers in the past two weeks.
There were the apocalyptic warnings of how we were killing the planet. There were the standing ovations the delegates gave last week to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s furious denunciations of capitalism, consumerism and the US military.
There was Bolivian President Evo Morales’ cry for a simpler life: “It’s changing economic policies, ending luxury, consumerism … living better is to exploit human beings.”
There were great crowds of activists such as Australia’s Professor Clive Hamilton, who, like Avatar’s Jake Sully, sermonises on the need to embrace “Gaian earth in its ecological, cybernetic way, infused with some notion of mind or soul or chi”.
And there was the romanticising of the primitive by the demonstrators outside dressed as ferals and wild bears, as they banged tribal drums or chanted “Ommm” to Mother Earth.
Of course the Cameron-style have-it-both-ways hypocrites were there, too, luxuriating in the very lifestyles they condemned.
Take Prince Charles, who flew in his private RAF jet to Copenhagen to deliver a lecture on how our careless use of resources had pushed the planet “to the brink”.
And then had his pilot fly him home to his palace.
But, yes, you are right. How can I say this great green faith is now toppling into the pit of ridicule, when Avatar seems sure to do colossal business? Won’t a whole generation of the slack-jawed just catch this new green faith from the men in the blue costumes?
That’s a risk. But having the green faith made so alien and such fodder for the entertainment of the candybar crowds will rob it of all sanctimony and cool.
Would a Cate Blanchett really be flattered to now be likened to a naked Na’vi, running from a pack of wild dogs in a dark forest?
Would an Al Gore really like to have millions of filmgoers see in 3D where his off-this-planet faith would lead them – up a tree, and without even a paddle?
No, we can now see their green world, and can see, too, it’s time to come home.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_avatar_the_answer_to_a_copenhagens_dream/
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Janama: @ 66
John Clarke and Brian Dawe on Kevin Rudd’s ETS.
Good skit, but Penny Wongs tap dancing around the governments reluctance to fight a double disillusion election on climate change I found even more comical.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/
10
Bunny @ 87,
Rubbery Figures back in Hawke’s day was funny, scathing and even-handed.
You are probably right about it becoming biased if reincarnated today.
Thanks for the link. I couldn’t resist a comment to QD.
10
The house of cards is falling. Mann being investigated, Goldman
Sachs, Lord Pearson comments of Jones, whose next eh.
10
Brian: #88
April 30th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
hey thanx for the plug Brian
10
Another excellent post Jo.
You have a unique ability to cut through the rubbish and home in on the points that matter.
I think that the cause an effect argument needs to be thrown at the alarmists more often, I regularly want to shout ‘that’s an effect – not a cause’ at so called experts who seem to believe they’re presenting evidence of cause when they quote receding glaciers, melting ice or the like.
I watched an interview on ‘The Daily Politics’ (UK) when Andrew Neill asked Dr Bob Watson (of UEA) what evidence he had for human emitted Co2 being the cause of the various warming effects he’d mentioned. I’m paraphrasing, but his answer was pretty well to the effect – well, we’ve looked around and this (human emitted CO2) seems to be the most likely.
I thought – so after spending billions on climate research, this is the best you can come up with – he may just as well have said – we’ve been paid by the government to reach this conclusion!
10
I thought that was midichlorians, a.k.a. “the force”, which itself was borrowed from the concept of “Chi” in various martial arts. Don’t think Cameron had any original ideas.
Anyhow, it all goes back to the Luddite philosophy and the “noble savage” so modern city people living with the stress of overcrowding, over-regulation and minimal control over their own lives imagine that destroying technology and going back to tribal living will be their escape.
10
it is quite shocking, how poorly informed AGW scientists generally are, aside from their little perspective of their own research. Their major sources of (dis-) information appear to be the censors of realclimate and wikipedia.
10
Manfred,
I doubt that the so called AGW climatologists are poorly informed about AGW. However, they do have a malicious intent.
Their excuse and smoke screen is to scam public money without end for their so called research. Why? They could not make a living in the real world. They think so little of themselves and of mankind that they willingly live as maggots on the body politic. Proof? Have any of them actually produced anything of value that anyone was willing to pay for with their own hard earned wealth? Not one cent. They stand in line behind a long line of politicians who are willing to use the gun of government to extort that wealth from those who actually created it.
Underneath it all, they, along with the thieving politicans, resent having to meet the requirements of being human so much they are willing to destroy the very disciplines they pretend to to follow and that keeps them and us alive: science and technology. Strict adherence to reason, reality, and logic is too much for them. Remaining objective is a too high of a standard for them to meet. Hence, they subvert the entire process. They do not mean well. They mean to do you, civilization, AND themselves in rather than become honest, honorable, and productive humans.
The AGW thing is not about science and never was. Its about a war on reality. The intermediate goal is to enslave all to all. The end goal is extinction of mankind. Unless and until we understand that, we will win battles but we will become collateral damage in their war against reality. If we don’t, it is the equivalent of bringing a prayer book to a gun fight and expecting to survive the battle.
10
“Sceptisism is the balance wheel of civilisation” – Henry Ford. Not enough causes society to run wild.
10
Outstanding work Joanne. I look forward to round three!
To assist followers of this debate, here’s a great List of Fallacious Arguments. How many of these have we all seen employed by the AGW supporters? Far too many to be accidental to be sure. Then again, perhaps the list would be more of more help to Dr. Glickson. 🙂
10
Tel at 26
The use of ‘Increase the acidity’ in regards to ocean acidification is OK by me! When pH decreases from e.g. 8 to approaching 7 there are relative increases in Hydrogen ion concentration. It is not just acid or alkaline, it’s relative.
10
Sorry if someone has already posted this link, picked it up from WUWT:
http://www.blip.tv/file/3539174
It’s kind of an executive summary of everything that’s gone wrong with the science, presented by Pat Michaels (the guy who Dr Michael Mann famously wanted to kick in the teeth).
And now Mann is being investigated for fraud by Virginia’s Attorney General!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/29/virginia-attorney-general-goes-after-mann-and-uva/#more-19066
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Hi Jo,
Good stuff as always, you deserve a medal. A minor typo: don’t -> doesn’t
“He pays lip service to my comment that sea-level, glaciers and melting ice are effects of warming, and don’t tell us what caused the warming.”
Cheers,
RWTH
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With the ETS dead, Turnbull returns:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/with_the_ets_dead_turnbull_returns/
This FU..ING Traitor Turncoat turnBULL needs to be SACKED from the Liberal Party!
This DESPICABLE Worm has betrayed the people of Australia TWICE with his SICKENING support of the labor party’s TREASONOUS ETS(Employment Termination Scheme/Extra Tax System)!
He can never, ever be trusted again!
He represents the interests, not of Australians, but of his Merchant Banker masters, Goldman Sachs, who will stop at nothing to see a carbon trading scheme forced on poor Australians.
SOB!
10
I notice that all the lefties reckon Turnbull would be a great leader of the Liberal Party – says it all really.
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Brian@ 89
You are too kind to Avatar.
For heavens sake, it was a B grade cowboys and Indians story, from the viewpoint of the noble savage Indians.
It is of the “we have fantastic CGI, so we don’t need a plot” genre and ranks behind the notorious Starship Troopers (who at least offered a nude shower scene for both boy and girl viewers to make up for the absent script).
The plot was trivial and and excruciatingly obvious, it was devoid of imagination – aliens were just larger versions of humans but with cuter bigger eyes, groan. They lived in forests, flew on dragons, sang around campfires and worshiped nature. To capture youth, they even had the quinteessential USB connection in their hair braid (love your analogy).
This was a terrible and un-engaging film, with no message we have not heard a hundred times before. An episode of Start Track has more meaning. Me thinks, no Marxist revolutions from this eye candy.
It was successful, I suspect, because it is the first 3D blockbuster, was billed as the most expensive film ever, and was politically correct.
BTW Brian, I too worried about the film siding with aliens, but because they looked more human than the humans, I didn’t get the impression the film breaks any new ground here either.
10
I understand how pH works.
“Ocean Acidification” is hitting newspaper headlines and the majority of readers are not going to understand what pH even means. Thus, the description used should be the most accurate description of the situation, not a description that could be correctly interpreted by some small group of well educated people after they have sat thinking for a while.
To use anything other than the most correct language is being misleading, and as pointed out (#34 above) the primary purpose of the “Ocean Acidification” newspaper headline is to spread fear amongst the readers by creating an association between “acid” and “ocean” — which is deliberately misleading.
When you look at experiments such as dumping HCl into a fish tank, they only make sense to people who have stuck the word “acid” in their mind.
We have seen the same thing with the term “Greenhouse Effect” and we have had people here on this website swearing that they were sure that a glasshouse operates by trapping infra-red, when actually it restricts convection. Trouble is that once a misunderstanding escapes into the wild, people just keep doggedly pushing the idea. If you let them, they will force you to argue on their terms and define the parameters of the debate — then you can’t win because you accept their wrong-headed precepts.
We had a guy actually attempt to claim that putting a temperature sensor in the middle of a carpark would not produce a bogus reading. I mean, it’s reading a real temperature, but a temperature that is representative of carparks only, and therefore useless. The debate has gotten to the point where it is so far off the wall that no one benefits.
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Stephen Garland @100:
It’s not OK by me. I think Tel is right on this one. It’s simply not acidic unless and until the pH drops below 7.
By analogy, if my business had losses of $100,000 last year but incurred only a $50,000 loss this year there really is no way that I can say I am more profitable this year.
Less alkaline, yes, but more acidic? No!
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Tel@ 106
You`ve nicely summed up the way the AGW movement works with “misleading statements” , after all what sort of big dollar donations and religious zealotry could you generate with the use of correct language like :
1-The climate is changing the same as it has always done and nothing we can do will make any difference,
2-There might be a possibility that the oceans are slightly less alkaline than they were but we don`t know why
It would be just a bit difficult whip up a hysterical and intolerant quasi-religious movement on that let alone a multi-million dollar career (Hint ; His initials are A.G.) or incredibly well funded jobs in research that doesn`t require any credible evidence or valid research to be produced.
Nor would it lend itself to being a vehicle that could be used by those who have an agenda for some sort of pseudo-socialist reform that puts them at the top of the heap.
And the biggest deterent to the use of correct language is , of course , there would be no opportunity for the government to try to initiate what amounts to a tax on breathing out and farting.
10
Wholeheartedly agree with Tel.
Everyone knows about “acid”, no one likes it, not in their stomach, not in their eyes, acid is BAD.
This is yet another classic alarmist misnomer.
Along with Climate Change instead of Global Warming, along with “variability” when it’s natural, but “change” when it’s man made. Who likes change? It must be bad. But variability? well that’s OK, it’s natural.
Man made “change” of 0.7DegC in one hundred years is catastrophic. “Variability” of up to 20DegC within a single day or week or season or year is fine because it’s natural.
Give me a break. Supposed educated people fall for this? Amazing.
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Brian @ 103
You are so right. We don’t need Turnbull to “serve” our country!? I can’t see him serving anyone besides himself – he and Rudd might as well be brothers!
Sorry to be nasty, but these sort of people bring the worst out in me.
Cheers,
Speedy.
10
Tel @ 95
Your comments remind me of a cartoon I saw. There’s two cavemen sitting around a fire:
Caveman 1: We eat lots of vegetables, get plenty of exercise and have nil expsoure to pollution and chemicals.
Caveman 2: And we’re all dead by the age of 40.
So much for the ideal life of James Cameron! His Titanic was a stinker as well – go to “A Night to Remember” if you want something realistic.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
Spoiler: O/T LOL I loved Avatar. Asked my son to buy it for Mother’s Day? Despite the theme, which is not new, and being
a student of film studies as well as archaeology, I saw no analogy with AGW but technology and greed versus a hunter and gatherer life way. It’s happened in the past in countries where the indigenous folk were eventually dispossessed and either had to surrender and move or were destroyed as they were considered inferior.
In Avatar – the planets’ whole spiritual system was closely intergrated, and the animals eventually came in to help the bipeds to survive.
But they wouldn’t have done without the help of those converted humans would they?
I wish I’d seen in 3D on a big screen. And I like Titanic too!
After all it was just a movie. And the Day after Tomorrow.
PS: If you think our present civilization is easier than the
hunter gatherer life style, think again. The simple life was easier. Didn’t have to work so many hours.
10
Funny that Malcolm Turnbull has reversed his decision to quit
politics. Wouldn’t have anything to do with investments in clean energy and carbon credits. He was in favor of the ETS
now criticises Rudds decision to scrap it.
Possibly and I raised this with politicians as the rumour was as a Goldman Sach’s director once he wants ETS to be passed.
He went to London in October last year to meet up with Goldman
Sachs executive, then returned saying he wouldn’t tolerate any
of his coalition not standing up to ETS with amendments.
Politics and Malcolm Turnbull don’t go well together. He’s a business man and pro banker of course.
10
@103 & 104. I totally agree, left a message on his website.
I don’t trust him one bit, he’s in league, and rumor has it he has investments himself in carbon trading and/or clean energy investments. Let alone he visited London last year to visit Goldman Sach’s executive of which he was once GS director in Australia. Then threatened as then leader, he would cross the
floor on the ETS bill, and also threatened his colleagues to
abide with the ETS bill or else.
Of course ALP are leaping in joy, divide the coalition on this
ETS bill. I bet he was in league with them all along. So I suspect he will have his policy about reintroducing it if he gets re-elected. Well Tony Abbot won’t like that. However he has only a 3.2% advantage in his electorate so he might not get in.
10
I too disagree with Stephen Garland (see #100).
The term “acidification” is completely imprecise and unscientific. There is an alternative and more accurate term: “neutralisation”, which completely describes the process.
In my view “acidification” is intellectually dishonest. Those who use it are either scientifically ignorant, or mendacious, or both.
10
Speaking of alarmist confusing cause and effect, try mentioning that the 4% observed decrease in cloud cover is the obvious cause of the recent global warming and they will claim the changes in clouds are an effect not a cause!
Sure the cloud forcing is a similar magnitude as a doubling of CO2 but over a 20 year time frame, and it actually matches the spatial and temporal temperature changes, but it doesn’t exist because it’s natural!
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Bush Bunny, I enjoy your contributions but I have to disagree strongly with you on this one re Avatar:
“After all it was just a movie. […] PS: If you think our present civilization is easier than the hunter gatherer life style, think again. The simple life was easier. Didn’t have to work so many hours.”
Please don’t get sucked into this “it’s just a movie” bullshit! I have heard this comment from too many good, well-intentioned but ultimately naïve people! Movies are powerful, and movies such as Avatar are as dangerous as they are influential, precisely because people think they are “just movies”, or just entertainment. Don’t be fooled: the message goes straight to your subconscious through beautiful images. It’s propaganda, pure and simple. Totalitarian regimes have always used “entertainment for the masses” to lull them to sleep. Cameron is of course not a one-man totalitarian regime but he is a dangerous ideologue nevertheless. We have to be alert to this!
You MUST watch this 8-minute clip with Ann McElhinney (of “Not Evil Just Wrong” fame):
Beautiful but dangerous Avatar
And as far as the simple life being easier? I quote Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” on life before civilization, that life then was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
Ann says many wonderful things in the clip above, but this is my favourite:
“James Cameron is an idiot because James Cameron makes a movie where mining is evil, and living in the rainforest is gorgeous. I have some advice for James Cameron: Burn your passport and move to the rainforest … and bring your mother!”
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RobJM: #116
May 1st, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Spot on Rob, spot on.
10
Actually Anne I understand your point of view but we studied the K’ung bushmen of the Kalahari. In Palaeoanthropology. They are about the only true hunter and gatherers left. (If they still are) They avoided being pushed into agriculture in the belief they would be bettering their life styles. They thought it was a terrible way to live ones life.(Remember the Gods Must Be Crazy). Comparing it with Australian aborigines in someways. They lived in harmony with the natural environment, didn’t want to change it or control it. They were forced to really as the natural environment disposes if we aren’t careful. Same as the North American Indians and Inuits before western styled culture influenced them, in many ways their lives have changed, not always for the better. By our 21st Century standards they were indeed primitive
but they have evolved this way to best survive in their niche.
And in someways, bar accidental death, they were quite healthy.
As far as mining is concerned, it has been very expensive on the natural environment, and right now our New England area is fighting to stop coal mining in top agricultural land.
And of course it is part of Australia’s main export, that Mr Rudd is about to tax more heavily.
Admittedly Avatar was a fantasy as well as being a sci-fi. But I don’t think they worried about the climate. I studied
film studies (Communications) it is my minor.
Most movies aim at having a ‘message’ and the big one in Avatar
was not so much about mining, but forcibly destroying their lives by brutal means.
Come on folks, don’t think our cultures, British, American, Portugese, Spanish, the Dutch, French etc., treated indigenous people well all the time? We didn’t go to India for our health. It was trade and commercial interests.
We did some good too, you know. We and the Americans started the oil industry in Saudi Arabia etc.
They did for a while until they wouldn’t toe the line, or transgressed their moral laws. If they rebelled they were killed or silenced.
However, as I say this we British, haven’t treated other cultures too well either. Considering we started the slave
trade to America and the West Indies, started the Opium wars,
just to name a few.
Civilization has come at a price. No Avatar was a good adventure into fantasy land. No – Anne, people make films with moral issues sometimes.
Actually one of my favorites is Walker – Texas Ranger, because
the goodies will always win. That’s part fantasy also if you get my gist? LOL and it is pure entertainment to me but I see
Chuck’s moral issues claim shining through too.
10
Seriously guys James Cameron is a genius who else would have thought to call a super rare precious metal UNOBTANIUM.
10
allen mcmahon: Absolutely the definitive argument in Cameron’s favor. Also saying things like “Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their ass I’m not sure they could hear me” just makes you want to hug and kiss him, right? 😀
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Brian:
Ummm much as I enjoyed the piece… I am sure the Herald Sun owners might take umbrage at an entire piece being copied and pasted to another web site. I am sure there are copyright infringements in doing such a thing, as well as hosting it. A paragraph or two, unless you are the author and have not sold the rights to the paper in question, would be as much as can be copied within copyright. I don’t know the eact limits.
10
PS> I agree in general… Avatar was a great film spoiled by a corny and overly preachy plotline. So much exacting work wasted on the altar of naive (similar to Na’vi eh?) idealism.
10
Update: Why Lord Monckton really pulled out of UK Parliamentary Elections.
Strictly OT, I know.
You may be interested to read this account in his own inimitable style.
“The much-vaunted climate models did not predict the spectacular and prolonged eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, so I am stranded in Washington DC at the prettiest and most pleasant time of the year.
”
and easy to see why he is so enamoured of the great Nations of Australia and America, being unable to save
“…ordinary voters in these islands[UK] against the narrow vested interests of the tyrannical, costly and corrupt European dictatorship and its obsequious poodles in Westminster and Edinburgh, government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
”
10
Could this be the beginning of a climb-down?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/22624
10
AK and BB – hmm Avatar. My 2c – it is not a movie where mining is evil and the rainforest is beautiful. It is a movie where seeking profit and exploitation of a resource is ranked higher than acknowledgement and respect of the native intelligent inhabitants, and it comes back to bite them. It is just a movie… nice effects, but it has more in parallel with Colonialism in the USA and Australia with regards to native populations than it does to the environment.
Of course in the real world spirits are meaningless poppycock and the resource is exploited as the powerful see fit. ANd I say that without a moral judgement it is just how it is.
10
Ocean acidification isn’t something new. It’s just getting more attention as global warming is fading out in the public’s eye. They need another bogyman for us to worry about. And of course, trade carbon offsets to combat.
I had a little set-to with a guy on my local newspaper site way back early last year. He was all in a snit about it (what alarmists isn’t?) — end of the world to hear him tell it. It’s too bad the oceans of the world are more complex than the fish tank analogy. They seem to stubbornly buffer themselves basic, refusing to comply with the theory (remind you of climate and AGW?). According to what was posted back a number of threads the ph varies from about 8.2 to 11 depending on where you measure. But it stays stubbornly basic.
If anyone can shed additional light on this subject I’m very interested.
10
Roy Hogue:
Concerning ‘ocean acidification’, at #127 you ask:
There is only one fact that anybody needs to know about the subject and it is this.
There is no evidence of any kind – none, zilch, nada – that the overall pH of the oceans has changed in recent decades.
Seawater pH is limited to the range 7.5 to 8.4 by buffering (mostly by calcium compounds) and varies in this range with geographical position. The theoretical pH results from an equilibrium between atmospheric CO2 concentration and dissolved carbonate ions in the ocean. Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated (n.b. estimated, not measured) to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of −0.075) as a result of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration.
There is no possibility that such a slight change could be verified by measurement.
Indeed,
the opposite effect could be true.
Surface water sinks to deep ocean and travels around the globe for ~800 years before returning to the surface. It is exposed to volcanism on its journey and could be expected to disolve sulphur (S) and chlorine (Cl) ions from such exposure. These ions would severely alter the pH of the water that dissolved them. When this water returns to ocean surface centuries later the dissolved ions will alter the ocean surface pH with resulting change to the equilibrium atmospheric CO2 concentration. It is possible that this effect has induced the recent rise to atmospheric CO2 concentration. Indeed, this hypothesis is supported by the observed spatial distribution of atmospheric CO2 concentration (i.e. highest concentration of tmospheric carbon dioxide is over the oceans where upwelling occurs which is to the North of human industrial activity and the concentration reduces as one moves Southward almost all the way to the Antarctic).
When people assert that the oceans are ‘acidifying’ I always respond with,
“Oh! So that explains why atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is increasing, then. I always knew the sulphuric and hydrochloric acids from underwater volcanoes must be doing something.”
Richard
10
Roy Hogue:
In retrospect, and for clarity, I think I need to emphasise two points in my post at #128.
The point at issue is the change to equilibrium atmospheric CO2 concentration. The oceans release tens of times more CO2 in Summer each year than the annual emission of CO2 from all human activity, and they take it back each winter. This is because the atmospheric CO2 concentration is affected by the equilibrium between the atmospheric CO2 and the concentration of carbonate ions in the ocean surface layer, and this equilibrium varies with temperature.
The annual rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is the residual of the seasonal variation (this annual rise is about a tenth of the sesonal variation).
So, increase the temperature and there will be a rise in the residual of the seasonal variation.
But the equilibrium also varies with pH of the ocean surface layer.
A change to the pH of the ocean surface layer will also induce a change to the the residual of the seasonal variation.
Volcanism varies with time and, therefore, seasurface pH could be expected to vary with time as a result of undersea volcanism. The variations in the seasurface pH would occur when the water returned to ocean surface centuries after it was exposed to the transient volcanism.
Richard
10
Richard,
Thanks!
That range of ph is smaller than what I’ve previously seen. But basic is basic! I have no reason to dispute your numbers.
I love your sense of humor too.
Roy
10
Roy Hogue:
I wrote that
You say
We are both right. It depends on how one defines “sea water”. Lagoons and static water near shores (e.g. in mangrove swamps) can be more alkaline than the range I quoted, but such locations are small (compared to the total ocean area) and are atypical for the subject of this discussion. Hence, I chose to ignore them.
But use a larger range if you like because, as you said,
I choose to cite the range for deep ocean and typical coastal waters estimated by
Pinet, Paul R. (1996). ‘Invitation to Oceanography. St. Paul: West Publishing Company. pp. 126, 134–135. ISBN 9780314063397.
Nobody has done a better estimate since.
Richard
10
Helps if you remember that another translation of Ph. D. is
“Piled higher and deeper”,
and use that if it seems appropriate
10
“By analogy, if my business had losses of $100,000 last year but incurred only a $50,000 loss this year there really is no way that I can say I am more profitable this year.” (tide at 107)
Tide at 107 your analogy is incorrect. If you make any loss, you have made no money. If you have a decrease of pH, in the alkaline range, you have an increase in hydrogen ion concentration.
I repeat, I have no problem with the use of ‘increase the acidity’ in regards to ocean acidification. You can also choose to use terms like ‘neutralisation’ (Colin Davidson at 115) or ‘reduce the akalinity’ (Tel at 26) if that suits your political agenda. I’m personally not into post-normal science and don’t think much of terms like ‘the most correct language’ (Tel at 106).
10
Stephen Garland:
I write to side with those who do not agree with your statement at #133 that says:
This has nothing to do with any “political agenda” or “post-normal science”. It concerns misleading the public.
Most people would give a blank stare if you mentioned hydrogen ion concentration or pH to them. But they think they know what “acidification” means:
to most people “acidification” means ‘turning it into acid’.
But there is no possibility of turning the oceans into acid. Calling a lowering of the alkalinity of the oceans “acidification” is pure and unadulterated scare-mongering. And the fact that it can be justified by correct understanding of chemical principles does not change that.
The effectiveness of the scare is demonstrated by Ms Nova having replied at #26:
Even she has to accept the scary terminology because it has been used so much.
The AGW scare grew in the 1990s because ‘the land had been tilled’ in the 1980s. Alteration of the oceans is being prepared as the scare to replace AGW because the climate refuses to obey the AGW ‘projections’. The AGW scare has caused problems to the conduct and the reputation of science, to the environment, and to policies of economics and energy supply. We need to stop ‘the land being tilled’ for the fetal ‘ocean acidification’ scare if it is to aborted.
Stopping the misuse of science for political ends is not a “political agenda”: it is defence of science against those who would use it as a tool for a “political agenda”.
Richard
10
MattB @126:
Not been involved in too many mining approvals processes I warrant. Native Heritage plays a major part in obtaining approvals and smart mining companies consult with elders and other experts before getting too advanced with their mining plans.
If you want to see how detailed some of the heritage mapping is see this link:
http://www.dia.wa.gov.au/AHIS/
You may be living within a stone’s throw of a significant site for all you know. I know I am in East Perth. Spirits are quite significant in determining where mining may and may not occur… think the various waugals for instance. I assume that you would consider a waugal to be a spiritual entity.
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PS> That is not to say that modern indigenous folk sometimes look away from heritage sites if the price is right. But then that is their decision to make as the traditional owners. It would be the same with white folk heritage sites should a company wish to remove an old building to facilitate a mine (there were precendents in Boulder with the Superpit – Boulder Block Hotel for example).
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Mark: @ 125
If “Nature” do publish such a paper, it does signal a major step back.
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Bob at 137. Major step back for whom? I think you meant AGWists
Al Gore, etc.
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Here is some good info on the subject of ocean “debasement” (that is supposed to be funny)
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid.htm
Notable quote:
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Gee thanks folks, the only thing I know of pH, is in soils and in
aquariums. I know some rocks in salt water aquariums can influence pH. However, so can microbiology and minerals discharged into water. And so can lightening in out door ponds.
Maybe one of you can answer this. Where there decaying vegetable matter in rivers, this tends to make those rivers more
acidified. Such as some South American fish like Tetras like
an acid water.
So would sulfur from undersea volcanoes alter acidity? As well as some sulphates contained in fertilizer leaching also cause
acidity from silt being swept into the sea from Delta regions?
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Dagfin in #121. What a dastardly comment allegedly from James
Cameron. Hollywood – also gave Al Gore an academy award and Emmy. Do you think they are in cohoots? Wanting the pic to get
more people to watch it.
Well it didn’t work for me. Maybe I won’t get the DVD for Mums
Day after all, after reading that.
Maybe you were right Anne.
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Why would anybody bother to “critique” or even to mention that slop, “Avatar”?
IGNORE
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Briefly back to Glickson last response,
Dr Glickson’s damages his own credibility by his own closing words:
He is:
1. Dishonest for not including modeling as offered evidence: “..what amount of climate MODELING would convince society” – since that is mostly what is is on offer by IPCC.
2. Dishonest for not saying: channeling an ADDITIONAL 8 billion tons of carbon to the much larger 210 billion tons discharged by nature.
3. Dishonest for using moral argument to bolster his side in a scientific discussion.
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Bushbunny:
At #140 you ask:
Yes, and significantly locally: please see my comments at #128, #129 and especially at #131.
There are regions (a notable one in the Gulf of Mexico) where fetiliser run-off has very damaging effects on the ocean chemistry locally.
These local effects are not pertinent to the assertion of ‘ocean acidification’ from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. But, of course, that will not stop propogandists from citing them when promoting the ‘ocean acidification’ scare.
Richard
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Hi Richard and other friends.
Ocean “acidification” scare campaign would have to be the biggest dead-end that AGW’ers have driven into.
No amount of human influence will ever, EVER change the oceans PH value enough, nor quick enough, to make one iota difference to the life forms living in these waters.
Think about the lagoons and mangroves that Richard mentioned earlier. There are thousands of these types of micro environments all over the world teeming with life forms. The waters in these micro climates undergo PH level changes an order of magnitude larger than the estimated 0.1 PH change purportedly caused by CO2 increase in the atmosphere over the last 150 years.
How does this happen? Tides come in and tides go out, twice a day. The PH value of the water changes each time.
If changes (reportedly) up to 1 full PH unit per day, up and down, does not negatively affect the life forms thriving in these waters, how convincing is it that change at the rate of 0.1 units per 150 years will be devastating to these life forms?
We would HOPE that “ocean acidification” is their next scare campaign. It would be the easiest thing to disprove, peer reviewed and all.
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Richard # 144.
Thanks Richard again. I’m looking at your UK elections closely.
Being an ex patriot. Looks as if it will turn into a bun fight
actually… hung parliament.
I wrote an article back in (gee) 1992 regarding river health in
North Western NSW. Where I live dirty water or turbidity and the increase of blue green algae were reduced. However, fertilizers particularly super phosphates (the cure all for short term fertility) and of course domestic effluence (not sewerage) were considered harmful to river health generally particularly when during a drought whilst river flows were reduced. However if you took a water sample from New England on the Northern Tablelands, you would have got a much nicer
result. Because a lot of our catchment areas and rivers start
in Wilderness areas.
That’s why I suggested that this might be case of selective pH samples taken.
They said the Great Barrier reef was in danger. From ocean warming initially. Yet some marine biologists said this wasn’t the case. However with the Chinese coal carrying tanker going aground off course, discharging oil etc. It would have an effect on reef life.
Thanks for the info Charles.
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Oh Brian you grumpy old man. Avater was an ok flick. Effects were brilliant, fairly average story line.
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Bush Bunny @138.
Sorry If I wasn’t clear at post 137. I was referring to the Mann, Jones influenced publication Nature as taking a step back.
Quote: Nature Magazine, the academic journal that introduced the world to X-rays, DNA double helix, wave nature of particles, pulsars, and more recently the human genome, is set to publish a paper in June that shows atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for only 5-10% of observed warming on Earth.
It will be more a kick to the crotch to AGWist such as Gore etc.
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O/T Anne – Your post # 117 I watched ‘beautiful but dangerous’. She’s selling her DVD and is capturing audiences. I agreed with much of this and with her rhetoric even though she was advertising and promoting the contents of her DVD.
($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$’s) But two or three pointers.
1. Abortion in Alaska is not legal as such. Ask Sarah Palin who
is anti-abortionist. No relevance at all to why she was restricted from showing her DVD.
2. With regards that the belief is that the world is over populated. Sure it is in some regions per the amount of GDP Social services, disease transmit, and civil rights per capita.
And the amount of food they can produce, usually famine is caused by people being through political disturbance and civil
wars removed from subsistence farming life way, and forced into
concentration camps etc. Or countries borrowing from the IMF
and controlling people’s independence from subsistence farming.
Like in India.
3. GM crops are the answer to over population. GEESUS I could write an article on that one. GM crops are evil. Honestly Anne, this is social political ideology. And I have to back MattB, this film was for me not to be an anti-American, or mining dialogue, even though Cameron made those base comments.
However, to make you happy and not angry including I will not
get my son to buy the DVD on Mother’s Day.
Make you happy.
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Bush Bunny #141: Cameron’s remark just makes me laugh. It will only hurt the warmist cause, because most people will be put off by this kind of arrogance.
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Brian @ #103
I agree with your comments about Malcolm Turnbull.
I can never understand how he seems to get accolades in the press. To me he is a despicable cur who tried to give the Australian economy to his Goldman- Sachs mates and a traitor to the Liberal party to boot. I can’t understand why he isn’t expelled from the Liberals.
However, I don’t think he has much of a chance of achieving anything. He was the fourth most hated person in Australia back in October, 2009 – right up there with Fritzl the pedophile and Kim Jong Ill (excellent company for a potential Australian PM) :-)….and he must be worse now.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=973730
Hopefully he’ll fade away into obscurity where he belongs.
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Mark @ #125. Did you note what was beneath the article. I liked the article by the way, 30,000 scientists etc. ‘2012 – What is the government hiding?” Selling books of course on the 2012 Mayan calendar of the world will seek to exist… another alarmist theory to follow Global AGW warming…. Honestly.
On one site they were showing the so called Mayan calendar, actually it is the Aztec Calendar I have a bronze plaque of it.
The film ‘2012’ is a film some of you might agree be in the same category as Avatar. I flicked through it actually. The Sun has influence on the molten interior of the earth? Big solar storms create havoc on Earth. Like recently the Internet
was filled with horror about solar flares. Yes these stuff up
satellite and some earth bound transmissions. But most satellites are now shut down in this event to save damage.
I’ll give you Bush Bunny’s predictions. As the planet cools
as it should do, and archaeological and geological evidence
suggests… we will experience more volcanic and seismic disturbances. This is not a rare projection for this planet,
the time it does make the news is when it is in populated areas and the death rate is very high. Often there is no warning like the 2004 tsunami that killed over 250,000 people in SE Asia and Asia.
And as the planet cools, agriculture will be increasingly harder to produce particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.
In fact prior to 10,000 years ago, Japan was almost inhabitable. It was so siesmic and volcanic.
As the Icelandic eruption has given us more focus on when Nature turns nasty, it can be incapacitating to air travel. Think what it would do for Australia that has yet to receive much volcanic disturbance via the ring of fire in Indonesia.
BUSH BUNNY’S PREDICTIONS (SEMI SERIOUS).
1. The trench near New Zealand could collapse. This will cause tsunamis in Eastern Southern Australia.
2. Big Ben on Herd Island (Australian territory) could really
erupt and cause another dust and gas cloud over the Southern
Ocean.
3. One of the Indonesian volcanoes could do a Toba or Kratatoa. (Toba was the biggest eruption ever known destroyed
75% of the globes population. Admittedly it was 70k years ago)
4. LA or California might get another big one as is predicted.
5. A long winter or short summer in the Northern Hemisphere could create a famine. Via colder than average temps. (A coming
ice age?) Do you reckon Sweden who has an underground shelter for all Earth’s seeds are thinking. (Seeds don’t last fertile forever?) Sorry could be Norway?
6. Vesuvius could erupt again? Etna or Sombali that will ruin the vine industry for a few years.
7. UK labor could get in again LOL (Only Joking!)
8. We receive an impact from a big meteor or asteroid or comet
fragments. (Don’t dismiss this) the last one missed us by a mere 45,000 kms but was heading for us from the sun and was not picked up by telescopes and satellites. It’s due back in
2036, I think I will be 96 then? Possibly dead and buried.
9. A massive pandemic. Such as the black plagues, etc. Look this new flu virus is having side effects particularly on young children. Whose making money out of these vaccines?
10. People will get onto the $$$$ wagon, predicting global
destruction, deathly pandemics, selling vaccines as preventative measures, etc. Like they sold smog masks in London during the 1950s, now selling them again? It is in everyone’s minds, “Life is extremely hazardous’ forgetting one of the biggest hazards is politicians, big banks, even the IMF. “What happens if we have an earthquake, etc. Or I catch Swine flu?” Not hard to influence anyone with a bit of nous. Especially, if it is a rare event in your niche?
Mother Nature will sort us out in the long run.
2012 – people are really beginning to believe it will be the end of the world. Wait for a new wave or paranoia and people trying to financially benefit from it?
LOL: Made out your wills yet?
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“Greenhouse effect”
So, what is is, actually? Even Roy Spencer believes in it!
Monckton believes in it!
Lots of people do!
Among other things, it is a “decrease in heat rate from the Earth because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
“Global warming causes heating of the lower troposphere, and broad cooling of the stratosphere.”
ahhh, okay, we have the heat flux q” (W/sq m) given by
q” = sigma[(eps1)(T1)^4 – (eps2)(T2)^4]
eps1, T1 = emissivity and temp of lower atmosphere, and similarly for eps2, T2 for the upper atmosphere.
Now then if T1 gets bigger, and T2 gets smaller, then how, indeed, does the heat flux q” from the lower atmosphere DECREASE?
Am I going bananas, or what?
OK now somebody point out where this logic breaks down. No goop and double talk, please. Just a straight answer
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Brian G Valentine @ 153:
“Belief” in the “Greenhouse Effect” is unscientific.
The atmosphere serves primarily as a conveyor of heat and as a (tiny-capacity) heat sink. The majority of the “greenhouse effect” can be explained by thermal storage capacity in conjunction with fluid movements (water and air) under the influence of a rotating Earth exposed to the sun; which is in part reflected by clouds before it ever has a chance to impart significant energy to the climate system, by reaching the surface.
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Greenhouse effect, or Greenhouse gases. They keep this planet
warm admittedly, or we’d freeze. And as 95% is water vapor, we
wouldn’t want it reduced in Australia, or we’d dry up.
And they keep us cool too.
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Baa Humbug:
At #145 you write:
But global temperature rises by 3.8 deg.C from June to January each year (and falls by 3.8 deg.C from January to June each year). However, AGW proponents campaign to stop global temoperature rising by 2 deg.C because – they assert – a 2 deg.C rise in global temperature may induce catastrophe.
Clearly, logic and peer review play no part in such matters.
I “hope” to stop the silly fears of “ocean acidification” having similar damaging effects to those that have resulted from the silly fears of AGW.
Richard
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Richard S Courtney
That really is funny Richard because what triggered me to compare the PH values was my memory of reading another one of your comments/papers in which you said the very same thing about seasonal temperature variations dwarfing the supposed catastrophic (0.2degc/decade I think you used at the time) rise.
So thankyou.
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It depends on how catastrophic it can be made to seem. If it’s possible to get by some twisted logic from “ocean acidification” to the collapse of civilization, then perhaps it can be done, but I doubt it. I know corals are important, but are they important enough to most people that a threat to them can induce global mass psychosis? It seems far-fetched.
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Hypothetical threat, that is…
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“Without the greenhouse effect we would all freeze.”
That’s what we hear, but there is reason to question that. Turns out that the “greenhouse effect” as it is understood – is a myth
Anyway anybody who is worried about “ocean acidification” would have no clue that the carbonate/bicarbonate equilibrium is a buffer.
Ocean acidification is the dumbest thing I have heard
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Nasif Nahle analyzed the Heat Stored by Greenhouse Gases.
Apart from the fact that he needs to apologize for not using Joules as quantities of heat consistently throughout his paper(*), summary values indicate that anthroprogenic CO2’s contribution to the “greenhouse” is undetectable.
(*) Mixing units for the same physical measurement is asking for errors to creep in during calculations. All data should be normalised to base, common units.
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<blockquoteAnother is X-Raying pregnant women – for 15 years everyone thought that was safe.
Around 60+ years ago it was seen as OK that certain shoe stores, here in Melbourne, would place children’s feet under an ” amazing” machine that showed a child’s feet, in X-Ray, to see hoe they looked in a shoe. You know, were they straight..?
I am 56 years old. I never met my brother. He died, aged 9 years, from Leukemia.
Is there a connection? I don’t know, and I probably never will.
The important thing to note is :
Men in White Coats said it was safe.
Kev’s fond of men in white coats, isn’t he?
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Hi Jaytee, we had those X-Rays too in England when I was a kid.
My mum would only buy me Clarks shoes, as they had different widths, etc. Mine was AA at one time.
I don’t think your brother’s death was caused by X-Rays. And maybe if he was alive today, his leukemia could have been cured, like juvenile onset diabetes.
I don’t doubt Kevin Rudd has heard from the electorate general re the ETS bill, and according to some, like the anti-nuclear group, younger people were questioning his party’s stance on this.
However, if he had put the bill up again it would have not been
passed. Partly political(avoiding a double dissolution) and this
seems he may have seen sense? Who knows how these political parties
work.
Yeah – men in white coats seems to describe Mann, Al Gore, Patchauri
who wish to control our economy and life style, while we pay for theirs!
However, the main thing is that governments in the western world
have realised the cost to their economy following a CO2 emissions reduction.
While it will do not one bit to change the climate. We have to adapt
that is the fact, as Mum Nature rules the day. Not us.
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Just for those who might be interested, this is a response I gave to an earlier comment about Jo’s ‘Handbooks’ which I described as Comic Books on the earlier posts about Jo’s ‘dialogue’ with Dr Glickson (balance snipped)
[ Rather than have two threads to follow you can read Glenn’s lengthy post here: http://joannenova.com.au/2010/04/no-dr-glikson/ @369 ED.]
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Glenn thought his missive so meaningful that he thought it worthwhile to advertise his opus some more.
Glenn you have nothing to say. Take a powder.
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At the top of this article Jo states; Credibility lies on evidence.
Well the American EPA are trying to keep us scared with their latest offering.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-48047720100428
I’m sure they get their research out of marvel comics. Any lie will do as long as they increase their budget.
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See where that report was published – India? And then the article
below it re the supreme court ruling.
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The most important question is “by how much”? So what if it makes 22 of 24 indicators only slightly worse? The idea that this kind of thing can somehow cause the collapse of civilization is the weakest link in the alarmist chain of inference.
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Dagfinn: @ 168
And Warming is an indicator for 8 of the top 10 years for extreme snowfall in the US having occurred since 1990.
Warming = Snow. That’s logical me thinks.
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Bob Malloy:
Exactly. In fact, AFAIK Warming = Snow is also contrary to the IPCC model predictions.
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Bob Malloy @166,
This teaches me that you should never create an unaccountable government agency and then tell it to protect you from yourself.
We did just that and now we’re not really entitled to be surprised if it keeps finding things to protect us from, are we? And that it’s so easily subject to political influence makes it even worse. And by the way, what they’re doing is changing their legal mandate into something they are not entitled to do under the act that created them — trying to modify the Clean Air Act itself. But as Obama has already said, “I don’t care about process.” That’s recorded in his own voice and his own words forever. Think about what that means. Neither the Constitution nor federal law mean more than dirt to this guy.
The EPA is worse than the IPCC. They lie both by omission and commission.
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Willis Eschenbach has a good dissection of the EPA paper at WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/climate-actually-changes-film-at-1100/#more-19303
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Is the EPA so ignorant that they don’t know about the 1930s dustbowl that ruined farming in Oklahoma and Arkansas, driving thousands to move west to California looking for any kind of work they could get? The world didn’t just suddenly begin with the advent of global warming. It has a long history. Ten years is nothing!
Or maybe I should ask if they’re so stupid that they don’t know how to use readily available history? Oh, that might leave them with no problem to solve — can’t do that.
So maybe I should ask why are they so blasted dishonest? They get more and more ridiculous with everything they do.
Forgive me. My anger is showing today.
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Whatever you do Roy, you better not download the full report. It will spoil your day completely.
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Bob,
Better to know what the enemy is doing.
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[…] spurious studies (Sherwood 2008 and Santer 2008) tried to show that it could be there within a margin of error, but the studies are […]
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