Article by on climate change by James Lovelock

[gregorach]

I just told you - weather. The fact that the long-term trend is upwards does not mean that every single year will be warmer than the last. If you look at the chart I posted, you can clearly see that there's lots of year-on-year variation, but the overall trend is indisputably upwards.

While it's true that 2008 wasn't any warmer than 2000, all those years in between were, as your own chart clearly shows. And the reason 2008 was colder is that it was a La Niña year.

 

[British Red]

Wow this is dull

Manmade climate change ....true or not...frankly I couldn't care less. The truth is that even if it is, the measures required to make any significant change to man made carbon emissions would have to be so radical that they would render the party proposing them unelectable. If one country achieved it, it would be bankrupted by others who continue to expolit fossil fuels and provide food and goods more cheaply. All the fossil fuel WILL be burned, its inevitable.

People will act to adapt and change only when those changes are forced upon them.

All research in the world wont change human behaviour - it'll keep a few climatologists in jobs who may eventiually be able to say "I told you so". Other than that - it'll give some governments the ability to levy stealth taxes - you will still be able to emit as much CO2 as you like - the same as businesses can - so long as you pay.

Net effect of all this research on the outcome.

Zip, nada, rien.

Red

 

[gregorach]

The truth is that even if it is, the measures required to make any significant change to man made carbon emissions would have to be so radical that they would render the party proposing them unelectable. If one country achieved it, it would be bankrupted by others who continue to expolit fossil fuels and provide food and goods more cheaply.

They said much the same about the abolition of slavery...

 

[British Red]

Well, observing the facts Dunc - its made absolutely no difference whatsoever so far - other than levying more tax of course.

Do you really believe that the world will leave unburned oil in the ground? I don't. One or two countries might but others will use it - net effect - zero.

Oh - they were right about slavery - it still exists - and many are happy to buy sweatshop garments made by real or economic slaves and the net effect has been to shift much manufacturing to those countries with the lowest welfare standards of work.

Red

 

[gregorach]

Whether it will ultimately have the desired outcome or not, I really don't (and indeed can't) know. To be honest, I don't really care that much. What I personally care about is whether or not I'm doing the right thing. The fact that there is still slavery in the world doesn't change the fact that banning it within the British Empire was the right thing to do. The fact that there are sweatshops doesn't change the fact that buying fair-trade clothing is the right thing to do. The fact that other people will continue to burn fossil fuels doesn't change the fact that reducing your use of them as much as humanly possible is the right thing to do.

"But everybody else is doing it too!" is an obviously lousy excuse for doing something you know to be wrong when it comes from a 5-year old. From an adult, it's shameful. Isn't taking personal responsibility for your own actions and their impacts a key element of bushcraft?

 

[locum76]

nice one Dunc.

British Red - we've discussed this before and agreed that things are definitely going to get messy and its a good idea to sort out yer resources, prepare for the onslaught and look after yer kin. however, sometimes looking after yer kin extends beyond the fence round your land. what's good for the world is effectively good for you. right? its possibly just a case of best practice...

Rob

 

[gzornenplat]

I just told you - weather. The fact that the long-term trend is upwards does not mean that every single year will be warmer than the last. If you look at the chart I posted, you can clearly see that there's lots of year-on-year variation, but the overall trend is indisputably upwards.

While it's true that 2008 wasn't any warmer than 2000, all those years in between were, as your own chart clearly shows. And the reason 2008 was colder is that
it was a La Niña year.

OK, another couple of graphs the first is CO2 ppm, the second is raw temperature data for Dec 78 until last month.

Grey is monthly average, blue is a 12-month moving average of that, and gold is a 10-year
moving average.

The only thing connecting the two is the correlation of trends, and that would probably be
true if you took house prices, the average person's height etc.

The fact is, that CO2 lags temperature, and that in the past, temperatures have also fallen,
and CO2 followed. I know that you'll say that other factors cause the start and end of
these warmer periods, but if that is true, then where is the evidence that CO2 did anything
at all in the intervening period? It is also possible that other factors kept temperatures
increasing.

In the temperature graph, all we really have is a steady state between 1978 and 1997, then
El Niño, and a steady state 0.3 of a degree higher in 2002-2007.

The trend would be negated by a few cold years. If you cut and paste 1984-1993's data in
to represent the next ten years, the effect is gone. If the solar cycle lads are correct, then
that is exactly what will happen. We only have ten years to wait. If you are right, I'll buy
you a pint of carbon-negative beer.

Surely even you will have to admit that it's a possibility even if you are convinced that in
reality, the end of the world is nigh.

 

[BigShot]

Greg - I'm not getting back into this debate properly - but I've been following it and have to add... the graph you posted starts just after the last minimum of the "little ice age".

Your starting point is one of the coldest points in recorded history. One would expect to see a warming trend after such a thing.

Since the LIA ended before the industrial revolution really took off in force I think it's a wild stretch to use the current warming as evidence of AGW.

For the record, I agree with you when you say that a few cold years don't change anything. However I think the opposite is true - a few warm years, even a few years of warming don't change anything either - especially when your base point is in the mid to late 1800s. A time when the Industrial Revolution was underway but most of the world was rural and Manchester (the centre of the universe as far as the Revolutuion was concerned) was only about the size of modern day Derby. The levels of carbon being churned out then were nothing like as high as they are now.


Just something I had to add as the various hockey sticks that get shown on the pro side of this debate are sometimes a bit misleading.
I appreciate that you were arguing the toss about climate versus weather, and in the respect the graph you showed was perfectly valid and as far as I'm concerned you made the point excellently. However I felt the start point of the graph could be misleading whether you intended it to be or not.


Cheers.


I'm going back to reading now.



P.S. I think the Slave Trade arguments are unhelpful to both sides. For one, the slave trade was a clear and absolute moral wrong which needed to be banned regardless of consequence. Carbon emissions can not be discussed in the same way.

 

[British Red]

"But everybody else is doing it too!" is an obviously lousy excuse for doing something you know to be wrong when it comes from a 5-year old. From an adult, it's shameful. Isn't taking personal responsibility for your own actions and their impacts a key element of bushcraft?

Doing the wrong thing is worse - its mind blowingly petulant and childlike. Trying to prevent the world burning fossil fuels is the equivalent of trying to hold back the tide.

If you have a car, electricity, use streetlights, take holdays, eat imported food, drink coffee etc. you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Twittering on about climate change whilst using electricity to power your PC is the equivalent of spray painting "stop vandalism now".

All the hand wringing in the world by people who continue to pollute just makes the UK at a disadvantage. Spend effort in preparing for a post oil world? Fine. Try to prevent people using oil? That not personal responsibility - its personal futility.

As Locum76 says its about best practice. Best practice is not about empty gestures and naievety to the point of foolishness. Its about acknowledging the reality of the world.

Whether it will ultimately have the desired outcome or not, I really don't (and indeed can't) know. To be honest, I don't really care that much. ..... The fact that other people will continue to burn fossil fuels doesn't change the fact that reducing your use of them as much as humanly possible is the right thing to do.

If you don't know or care about the outcome it doesn't make it "right" it makes it a lifestyle choice. You acknowledge you have no idea whether it will be effective, then insist its "right" and that others should partake of something you don't know or care about the outcome of.

Thats not planning, or even remotely sensible. Indulge yourself in all the empty gestures you want. But don't insist others join you in such a pointless undertaking.


Personal responsibility involves having the ability to face up to realities and and work with the world as it is, not a fantasy of how we would wish it to be

Red

 

[gregorach]

OK, I was just going to walk away from this as it's become (a) dreadfully dull, and (b) it's making me hate the entire human race. However I don't want to be seen to concede defeat, so I have one last word for each of you.

gzornenplat: You can't just eyeball the graphs and look for correlations - you need to do the maths. Lots and lots of rather complicated maths. However, if it should turn out that the "solar cycle boys" are right, I will gladly concede my error. I don't think the available evidence supports that theory, and it still doesn't explain why anthropogenic CO2 doesn't behave in the way basic physics says it must, but hey - if it can be proven, fine.

If you want to argue that "t is also possible that other factors kept temperatures increasing", you need to (a) state what those factors are, and (b) quantify them. Climatology is a quantitative science, and heat doesn't just magically appear or disappear. The numbers have to add up.

BigShot: There is a great deal of debate about the so-called "Little Ice Age". It's not entirely clear that it was really a global phenomenon, for one thing - the low temperatures in North America and Europe were probably related to changes in ocean circulation. However, even if we grant that the initial warming in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries is a rebound from the LIA, there are still no known forcings (other than anthropogenic CO2) which can account for the rise in the later 20th C.

British Red: I'm not "[t]rying to prevent the world burning fossil fuels" or "insisting" others join me. I'm trying to persuade other people to join me, in the same way that I try to persuade people not to drop litter. I realise that whether I drop litter or not makes no real difference to the scale of the total problem, and that I, personally, cannot prevent everyone in the world from dropping litter - so I'm not even going to try. What I am going to do is (a) not drop litter myself, and (b) try to persuade others to do the same. I'm sure you can figure out the rest of the analogy by yourself. If you want to argue with someone with some kind of draconian plan of social re-engineering, you'll have to find somebody who actually proposes one. It's not me.

"Personal responsibility involves having the ability to face up to realities and and work with the world as it is, not a fantasy of how we would wish it to be"

I don't see sitting around saying "it's not really happening, and anyway it's not our fault, and even if it is our fault it's not really a problem, and we can't do anything about it anyway, even if we wanted to" as being particularly compatible with that statement. Should we just believe that que sera, sera, and nothing we can do makes any difference? Sorry, I'm not quite ready to give up yet. Perfection may be impossible, but improvement is not. Better to try and fail than not to try at all.

With that, I am hereby officially done with this topic.

 

[BigShot]

Greg - I appreciate that you're oficially out of this, but just to respond...

...I don't believe there's any contradiction with Red's comment about personal responsibility being incompatible with a view that either the warming isn't happening, or isn't our fault.
His statement, I think, suggests that we should be doing the things we know we need to do, and that can have a significant impact. (A good example would be the difference made when an area stops dumping raw sewage into the waterways and instead invests in full treatment. Another would be species protection and working to rebuild ecosystems we've broken.)

The problem many people have with the sweeping changes (even if not social re-engineering) proposed to combat climate change, is that it's not a simple case of "giving up" or "trying anyway".
If the warming is either not problematic or not anthropogenic (and both are still open debates) there is no POINT in trying.
If that is the case, it is not a matter of "giving up" but a matter of not fighting a fight that doesn't need or isn't worth fighting.
That view is not defeatist, but suggesting that we should be putting our energies into something worthwhile.



As for the LIA...
...I'm not sure how you draw the conclusion that the warming up until the mid 20th is a rebound and the latter 20th is AGW. How do you establish that the warming trend which starts as natural becomes unnatural without so much as missing a beat? When you consider that the world has been hotter in the past (and I'm not talking El Nino here) without any anthropogenic forcing, I struggle to see how our current temps, warmer than the LIA we started measuring after, but cooler than it has been, are anything to do with us.
Could it be that "no known forcings" is actually an artefact of misunderstanding climate and not of anthropogenic CO2 being a significant factor?
The scientific method requires repeated real-world tests, predictions being tested and verified or found in error. Since that has not been done with the climate models under discussion, it is fair to say they are not completely reliable and have a rather large scope for being in error. How do we know the models aren't missing some key forcing, or underestimating the natural ones, and replacing it, instead, with anthropogenic CO2?
Without proper testing (and "yea, seems to be working" theoretical testing does not fit the bill) we can't say for sure that the latter warming is unnatural!

You've claimed in the past that the periods of cooling, stable temperatures and the likes were mere weather and not climate, in a large part because they were over a short period of time and didn't have a reliable base point.

You're now claiming that between 25 and 50 years (hardly a long time in climate terms) of warming which follows an equivalent period of warming which lasted something in the order of 100 years is anthropogenic.

Even without "weather"...
...if it gets warmer naturally for 100+ years, and then carries on getting warmer for the next 25 to 50 years, it's pretty hard to believe that latter warming was completely unconnected to the former and is, as we are to believe, anthropogenic.

 

[gzornenplat]

gzornenplat: You can't just eyeball the graphs and look for
correlations - you need to do the maths. Lots and lots of rather complicated maths.

I realise that and that is my whole point. It's not me saying there is a correlation! A quick
visual will tell anyone with any nous at all that the CO2 graph is a pretty much steady
increase and therefore the only correlation you can possibly get are a) to the general trend,
and b) to seasonal variations (which have nothing to do with the trend, it would happen
anyway)

If you want to argue that "t is also possible that other factors kept temperatures
increasing", you need to (a) state what those factors are, and (b) quantify them.
Climatology is a quantitative science, and heat doesn't just magically appear or
disappear. The numbers have to add up.

How many times! It's not me arguing that pov, it's me asking for some kind of proof that
what the AGW crowd are saying is true. Like you, for example! I'm just paraphrasing the
arguments I hear from the AGW lot.

I want YOU (plural) to back up YOUR claims that something else kicked off these warm
periods but that CO2 was the cause of the continuation of the temperature increase.

All I get is you trying to sidetrack me by being picky on semantics, bypassing the major
questions by being pedantic on really minor or irrelevant points, (possibly deliberately)
misunderstanding what I have said, putting words in my mouth, attacking me and not my
argument, arguing that 'people in authority must be right' when you know damn well that
the only major advances in science are made by people who challenge the 'accepted' view.

By the AGW proponents own statements, satellite air temperatures are the most reliable,
so I have used those - all that are available - and they really don't show anything except a
few recent warm summers. And to quote you on exactly that ... 'it's just weather'.

 

[gregorach]

As for the LIA...
...I'm not sure how you draw the conclusion that the warming up until the mid 20th is a rebound and the latter 20th is AGW. How do you establish that the warming trend which starts as natural becomes unnatural without so much as missing a beat? When you consider that the world has been hotter in the past (and I'm not talking El Nino here) without any anthropogenic forcing, I struggle to see how our current temps, warmer than the LIA we started measuring after, but cooler than it has been, are anything to do with us

OK, I'll bit just once more for a fairly general response...

The short answer: lots of complicated maths and physics. The medium answer: we know all the principle forcings involved (orbital, solar, volcanic) to a high degree of precision, and they can't produce the observed result unless you include the known radiative absorption of CO2 (which is the only thing that keeps the Earth habitable at all). The long answer: basically the entire history of climatology as a science. How many years do you have spare?

Since when did "I don't understand [x]" become a reasonable basis to assume "[x] is not true"? Maybe it's more complicated than you realise. Not everything can be easily explained in terms a layperson can readily understand. I'm sorry if that sounds arrogant, but it's just the way it is. There are many, many things in this world that I don't understand - when I find one, I tend to defer to experts who have spent their lives studying the matter, rather than just assuming that my ignorance is an accurate reflection of the state of any particular science. The really arrogant position is to assume that, just because you don't understand something, the people who claim to must all be liars. I'm guessing you don't do that when you go to the doctor, right?

I have neither the time, the inclination, nor the ability to run you through an entire undergraduate course in climatology, which is basically what you're asking for here. If you want to understand the detail, you need to study. Hard. (And I don't mean "Look stuff up on Google." I mean study.)

 

[BigShot]

"I don't understand" never became "it isn't true".

Lots of complicated maths and physics... and how much of that has been put to the test in the real world? I'm not talking about theoretical testing, but empirocal testing.

Weather forecasts used to be REALLY shoddy. After a while the models got more accurate and were fine tuned over time to produce more reliable forecasts.
Climate isn't weather, I know, but how exactly have the predictions these models calculate been tested?
We're talking about model that are being used to predict decades ahead, and as yet we've yet to test, empirocally, a single prediction.

We're not talking about hard science. We're talking about untested predictions, from basically untested models and asking people to change their entire lifestyle based upon the results!

On many topics I defer to someone who knows their stuff, an expert, if you will.
If I wanted to build a rocket to take me to the moon, I wouldn't say "I don't understand it, so it isn't possible" - I'd defer to boffins in the relevant fields of rocketry, orbital jiggery pokery, radiation shielding, software and so on. There's a massive difference between that and climate science though.

I can see how the models used by the engineers, mathematicians and physicists who would get my rocket into space and me to the moon and back safely have been tested in the real world. Sometimes they've got it wrong and people have died as a result, but each time the've learned from it, tweaked the models and updated their thinking.
As such I can trust that their models are accurate and that their knowledge and understanding is firmly rooted in and reenforced by the real world.

Climate science is not the same. There's a whole lot of theory and in most (probably/hopefully all) cases an attempt to get the models to "predict" what has already happened. But so far as I can see, there's been no testing of the ACTUAL predictions, and as such I wouldn't want to defer to them without question.

If I can see problems, and there are IPCC scientists, climatologists and others who don't agree with the AGW line to one degree or another, it's not just a case of me not understanding so writing it off.

It's a case of wanting a similar level of scientific rigor that is applied to rocketry, orbits, astronomy, chemistry and so on.

 

[gregorach]

Climate models are exactly the same as weather models - they're just run on a larger scale and over longer periods. If you accept the weather models, you have to accept the climate models - they operate on exactly the same principles, and in most cases they're exactly the same software. (Which is why it's not open source - the Met Office owns all the basic IP and just lend it out to the scientific community.)

The basics of black-body radiation and radiative absorption are very well understood, and have been for over a hundred years. The idea that CO2 affects climate is an inevitable outcome of that basic science.

If you're interested in the detail of model validation, there's a huge body of literature out there if you can be bothered to look. If you want to check prior predictions, you'll have come back when it's too late to do anything with them. We don't have the luxury of being able to run a suite of controlled experiments, as we don't have enough spare planets to do so.

And I'm really, really done now.

 

[gzornenplat]

Climate models are exactly the same as weather models - they're
just run on a larger scale and over longer periods.

Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a
hurricane on the way... well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't!

 

[locum76]

We're not talking about hard science. We're talking about untested predictions, from basically untested models and asking people to change their entire lifestyle based upon the results!

the whole climate debate thing comes from an alleged need to stop buring fossil fuels in order to reduce CO2 emissions and halt a theoretical anthropogenic addition to global warming.

would you defer that we need to 'change our entire lifestyles' and stop buring those fuels so quickly anyway -in order to preserve or ration our resources until we come up with alternatives?

if your answer is yes:

then this whole debate is a bit silly and we should start tallking about what we or others can do to improve the situation and consequently improve the material of this thread.

if your answer is no:

you don't understand the fact that oil and coal are finite resources. we have ploughed through the first half of all of the global supply of each and that all we have left is going to get rarer and more expensive to the point that we will run out by the end of the century. America, for example, reached its domestic peak oil supply in 1968. hence the need to go to war in the middle east and have israel as an ally in that oil rich region.

this whole debate is much deeper than this bickering about the semantics of graphs, charts and which scientists say what about CO2. The sooner we find and adopt alternatives to fossil fuels the better as far as I'm concerned. By the way, I'm no angel, i've got a car, but I am looking for a better, less energy dependent lifestyle. for me and my kids.

peace to the no power generation.

 

[BigShot]

Climate models are exactly the same as weather models - they're just run on a larger scale and over longer periods.

You've just worked a miracle.
You've given me EVEN MORE RESAON not to trust the predictions.

I can't get a reliable weather forecast more than a few days ahead. I watched last weekend's forecast for Loch Lomond change from sub zero nights, clear skies and good visibility, to above zero nights, cloud and poor visibility, to rain patchy cloud and nights around 5 degrees.

I accept weather models FOR WEATHER.
You've gone to great lengths to divorce weather from climate in this thread - and as I've said in the past, I agree that a few warm (or cold) years don't make a difference to climate.
In this case it is I who must go to that length.

Weather forecasts more than a few days ahead are NOT reliable. The more complex the system, the less reliable it becomes. When I lived in the French Alps, I saw the posted 48 hour forecast change dramatically THREE TIMES in the space of 8 hours. I mean Snow, then Rain, then Clear, then HEAVIER snow.
Over here I pay a decent degree of attention to the weather forecast, and rely on it more and more as the time draws closer - even then there's some degree of error, but I can live with that. Ditto with surf charts.
Over here, where the weather is generally quite predictable (and no, that's not a "grey and wet" joke) and even here the longer range the forecast, the less reliable it becomes.

You're now telling me that the EXACT SAME MODELS which very often fail to get the weather forcase even vaguely accurate just a few days ahead (and a few hours ahead in the difficult areas like the Alps) are reliable when predicting DECADES into the future?

Not a chance!

 

[gregorach]

If you run a large enough ensemble, and do the stats right, yes. Climate is much more predictable than weather.

 

[BigShot]

Locum - an interesting post, but I don't think you're right to provide that dilemma... there's a perfectly valid third alternative, and that's the view I hold.


I believe that oil and coal are finite.
I believe that we need to move away from them.
I very strongly disbelieve that we need to enforce the move away from those resources or that we should be making "green taxes" and "rationing carbon" to achieve that.

I believe that we will arrive at a point where coal and oil become prohibitively scarce and prohibitively expensive.
At that point people will naturally begin to take an interest in other means of generating power, lubricating, making plastics and so on WITHOUT needing to be forced into it under some bogus guilt-riddled argument about climate change.
That won't be the start, that will be when the market develops. There are alternatives available now for those who want to move away from fossils as a lifestyle choice, and those alternatives (along with others) will eventually lead to the more advanced alternatives we will need to support an entire planet worth of domestic and industrial needs.

We've got a lot of coal and oil available now, we have plenty of time to come up with alternatives.
When we come up with those alternatives we simply won't need to use coal and oil any more. If those resources truly are finite (and it's a given that they are) we must come up with a way of living that doesn't need them. We can do that without being hit with the AGW guilt-stick (and being taxed accordingly).


So, "Yes" - I believe we need to move away from fossil fuels.
But "No" - I don't believe it should be legislated, I don't believe it should be enforced, and I don't believe it's right to brow-beat people into it by telling them some fairy tale about carbon footprints and heaping on the guilt.

Make sense?