by frog
Here is a great summary of the danger of scientific reporting by the press, based on a recent example.
The Daily Mail story mentioned in the video, and the BBC transcript. Compare for yourself 
I could link to a few blogs that blindly ran with the Daily Mail take on things, but that would be a bit unkind and petty.
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Come on Frog, who these days is stupid enough to believe anything Phil Jones has to say?
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I was beginning to wonder if the issue had disappeared from the public view entirely. The Dom Post did us a favor by printing an article about the denialist conspiracies and money men, but it is very quiet since Copenhagen. The disappointment is palpable.
I personally think we are scrood. There will be inadequate and ineffective measures taken to prevent the worst until it becomes inevitable. Then panic will set in but will accomplish nothing and the oceans will rise and the temperature will rise and the tipping points will tip over and we’re going to be on our own… unless a fleet of refugees arrives here.
BJ
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Typical denialist response – attack the scientist and ignore the science. Science is not a matter of “belief”.
Phil Jones made an error or judgment over Freedom of Information requests. It may have even been an unlawful error of judgment (that is still being investigated by the University of East Anglia), but he is a scientist, not a lawyer, and it was likely provoked by his frustration with all the crank requests he was getting for raw data getting in the way of him doing the science.
The Daily Mail story, repeated ad nauseum elsewhere, is some of the most appalling journalism I have ever seen. Journalists who want to write on science should at least attempt to get some understanding of how science works.
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Nice choice frog.
The Climate issue is further complicated by assorted scientific/military use of HARP and ELF in conjunction with Chemtrails.
Weather Warfare as it were.
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bj – given that you’ve accepted that we’re ‘scrood’ and we are all facing collapse in a variety of its forms, what are your thoughts on saving snails, whales, trees and fleas?
Have you shifted to the rip, sh*t and bust camp, now that it’s clear we’re ripped, sh*tted and busted?
What’s your plan ‘B’?
(There’s hardly any point in quibbling over who’s right or wrong about the climate now, is there?)
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dlr,
in matters of scientific honesty what don’t you understand.?
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I think my dog would appreciate it if we somehow lost track of the fleas… and I wouldn’t mind wiping out Sandflies..
I’ve always been in favor of keeping the whales. I plant trees where I can. Snails… I try not to step on them but ignore.
My plan is to continue to do my damnedest to prepare and prepare society here and my kids, for the days when contact with the rest of the world becomes significantly more tenuous than it currently is. That means having capabilities that the rest of the world currently provides. Rudimentary chip making and crude disk drives and the rest that go with it. Bearing makers. Electrical winding capability. Wind Turbine manufacture. Re-establishing LORAN coverage. Transformer manufacture.
… and probably I will continue to push building mass-drivers and Cheap Access To Space. The possibility that this could allow us to panic EFFECTIVELY still exists.
respectfully
BJ
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So… we each do everything we can in the field in which we have some expertise …?
yes … indeed …
Let’s
get
busy
(those of us who aren’t already)
panic a complete awareness of Pan.
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@Toad. Climate science is very much a matter of belief. And I don’t believe the pseudo science Jones and Co present.
Perhaps when the sea laps up against my house, and we get a more that a week at a time without rain, and a summer that feels like summer, then maybe I’ll think about changing my mind. Til then, business as usual!
Anyway it’s all moot if Jones is (as I suspect) trying to lead us up the garden path anyway. Have you read the Climategate emails and files for yourself??
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Science explains how hail is formed.
We believe the scientific explanation.
Science is a matter of belief.
What is it exactly you are trying to convey by your statement, dlr?
You say that when ‘summer feels like summer’ you’ll ‘think about changing’ your mind.
Are you daft?
Is that what you base your decision-making on?
Summer, feeling like summer?
A week without rain?
You sound like a superstitious savage.
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The AGW story died the same day the markets collapsed. AGW is a penance story. Such a story doesn’t work when people fear for their jobs and income.
The story now should be about “doing more with less”, which dove-tails nicely with your philosophy, I think.
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That the effects of global warming continue to build in the back ground shouldn’t concern us, or detract from our ‘nice new story’.
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If you want people to act a certain way, you need to sell a story that resonates with them. You could still sell the AGW story, but you won’t get very far with the penance narrative, or the long term threat narrative. Both narratives are dead.
Which is why the media has gone quiet on AGW…
Just sayin’….
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Frog, so it’s ok for Jones and Co to spin the numbers to suit their desired conclusions, but not for the Daily Mail to return in kind. (Not that I approve of ‘spin’).
However I do note that the “warming” periods provided in the BBC transcript don’t cover the whole period from 1860 to 2009, just the ‘significantly upward’ trending periods. Where is the rest?? 1880 – 1910?, 1940 – 1975? Did they not suit Joneses point of view so he quietly discards those periods.
Actually, I’d like to hear the whole unedited version of that interview. Perhaps there is more to that interview than is presented in the transcript, that provided more basis for the Daily Mail comments.
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dlr – what the Daily Mail did was not ‘spin’. I have no problem with people spinning statistics to the advantage of their own argument.
What the Daily Mail did was completely misrepresentat what “statistical significance” means. Either bumbling ignorance by a reporter and/or editor who know nothing about science or mathematics, or a deliberate denialist distortion.
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Too late, BluePeter, too late. No need for a story now, that time, according to reputable sources, has passed.
This gives those of us keen to affect change, a new mandate.
A new raison d’etre.
Furious fun.
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Greenfly,
May be I am daft but that’s my prerogative.
May be you are daft in believing in the AGW theory because of the last 30 years out of the total of the last 120ish years of instrumental temperature record, we may have a mild warming. But the last 15 years out of that 30 it has not been warming so much, but possibly a slight cooling.
How many years has man been on the earth?
How many years of life on earth?
We don’t exactly know. On the timeline of paleoclimatic history over ‘billions’ of years the current warming may just be just a blip in which the earth is warm enough (or cool enough) to sustain life.
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dlr.
Please.
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[frog: d4j, you test worked. Now watch it.]
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Perhaps when the sea laps up against my house, and we get a more that a week at a time without rain, and a summer that feels like summer, then maybe I’ll think about changing my mind. Til then, business as usual!
dlr, its clear you don’t yet fully understand what climate change due to warming would look like, so its not surprising that you are confused. For instance, warmer air holds more water, leading to more rain in some areas rather than less. Note that the video above is only part of a larger series and after watching a few, may I suggest you would benefit from starting at part one and watching them all.
As an aside, I always thought Senator Inhofe in the States was just crazy when it came to his rabid climate change denial, but this series shows him rather to be lier. According to episode 3 from the above series, he once quoted a scientific paper in a statement to the Senate that said:
Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next glacial age.
What did he leave out? A crucial bit at the end: “20,000 years from now”.
Classic!
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Nothing in science is ever proved absolutely to 100% statistical significance.
In law, the threshold is usually (apart from criminal cases) on the balance of probabilities – i.e greater than 50%.
Science sets a far higher standard – the level of statistical significance required for a hypothesis to be “proved” by the evidence is usually 95%.
What Phil Jones is saying is that the atmospheric warming since 1995 based on the evidential recordings does not meet that threshold. But take it back to 1940 and it quite clearly does. The reason for the lack of a 95% statistical significance since 1995 is the short timeframe it involves. Look at the dice example in the video.
But on the legal test of “balance of probabilities”, which I accept is not a scientific test, there has been warming since 1995.
You denialist bullshit artists don’t have a leg to stand on if you were to look at the evidence. Push forward another 10 years, or (even better, back another 10 years, because we have data for that, rather than speculate on what it will be) and the data will reveal warming to a statistically significant level.
I suspect Jones was asked the question specifically re 1995 because the interviewer was a denier, and deliberately set the timeframe for the question so 95% statistical significance of warming over that period could not be established.
Then the bullshit followed.
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“Then the bullshit followed. ”
So toad do you adhere to the Chris Trotter doctrine that left wing corruption is not really corruption because the ideals are so righteous?
Please.
There is a massive credibility crisis re global warming, especially from the IPCC, you seriously expect global warming agnostics like me to ignore that little fact?
Its time to develop a new direction that focuses on establishing a sustainable future for NZ.
To be honest I thought the Greens were absolutely politically finished over AGW, but with the recent direction of the Govt there could be an opportunity to develop some strong support.
If it is done right that is, and I think what Blue Peter said is reasonable, there is another opportunity awaiting.
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You ask it like its a new question, but you know that no one here excuses what Jones and co did. BJ in particular has answered all the questions about this you could put up. Fact is that what they did was wrong, but it doesn’t negate the large body of science in support of climate change, the vast majority of which doesn’t depend on their mistakes.
Agnostic? If you can’t be honest about even that, what should we think?
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Shunda, apart from a desire to improve the lot of working people and those without work, Chris Trotter and I share very little.
I think we are agreed in vision, but totally apart in strategy. Trotter seems to think that Phil Goff making racist speeches is a good look, because it will get working class Pakeha to rally round the Labour Party – even though it will alienate working class Maori – and once Labour are in power all will be good. Well, it didn’t work last time, and in 1984-1990 was a disaster for working people.
I have a different perspective. Working class Maori and Pakeha need to work together and build a society where people are not oppressed by way of race, gender, class, sexuality, age, or anything else that is used as an excuse for those with privilege to exploit that privilege at the expense of others.
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Shunda – it’s coming. Wake up (please).
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“Agnostic? If you can’t be honest about even that, what should we think? ”
I am not sure I follow what you mean by this.
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“Shunda – it’s coming. Wake up (please). ”
Greenfly there is so much we can do regardless, the Greens have another opportunity and I would like to be a part of it.
Somehow!
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I am not sure I follow what you mean by this.
I mean that saying you’re agnostic suggests you could go either way, while you have a history of outright denial, arguing even that its all just a UN plot.
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Blue Peter,
Having found what appears some support for (I know not what, tho Shunda does) allow me to ask you whether this “sell” of yours is the corporate democracy version?
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There is, bit I doubt the environmental movement in New Zealand is capable of grasping it.
The reason is, like ideologues everywhere, they believe they have absolute truth on their side. So long as they repeat the truth, the populace will see it as being self-evident -once the smart ideologues have “educated” them, of course. I’m sure Douglas thinks this way, too.
But society doesn’t work this way. Such conceit prevents communication.
Change comes from narratives. Those narratives must resonate. They must be internalized. The AGW penance narrative is now out of step with society.
Find a new story.
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Not sure what you mean.
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Shunda’s “Green faith” is weak, he believes in protecting the local environment because he can SEE what happens if we don’t, but he cannot see evidence of global warming or related climate change occuring yet, so he is agnostic about whether it ever will – not believing in it unless he sees it with his own eyes.
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Just shooting the breeze, Valis….
I don’t think I have the slightest bit of influence. It’s an interesting topic, huh. Narratives, stories, communication, positioning.
Your latest poll position wasn’t looking too healthy. Why is that?
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“I mean that saying you’re agnostic suggests you could go either way, while you have a history of outright denial, arguing even that its all just a UN plot. ”
No, I think you zeroed in on that aspect of my position, I have always listened to BJ and other opinions about the science.
I have also argued about a political agenda being of concern and quite frankly I think my concerns have been completely proven justified.
It is time to move to a different beat, there is an opportunity waiting.
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“Shunda’s “Green faith” is weak,”
He he
, define the faith SPC
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Just shooting the breeze, Valis….
Nothin better to do…
I don’t think I have the slightest bit of influence.
Just a sophist then.
It’s an interesting topic, huh. Narratives, stories, communication, positioning to achieve an end.
I agree about that.
Your latest poll position wasn’t looking too healthy. Why is that?
One had us down, one had us up. Its usually margin of error stuff. The real question is why don’t we crack 10-15% consistently and there is more than one factor of course. National being untouchable doesn’t help. We’ve got some plans though. We’ll see how it goes next year.
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Shunda, perhaps it is inconsistent to doubt global warming (which you do not want to believe in), before evidence is seen with your own eyes, and jumping to conclusions (you want to believe in) based on one poll.
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Zeroed in? The target is a mile wide
I have always listened to BJ and other opinions about the science.
You’ve hid that very well!
I have also argued about a political agenda being of concern and quite frankly I think my concerns have been completely proven justified.
That was a pretty rapid return to type.
It is time to move to a different beat, there is an opportunity waiting.
The same problems are here this year that were hear last year. You can’t talk them away.
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Indeed. It’s not like it isn’t possible. Higher, even.
An environmental narrative in New Zealand should work like a charm. Most kiwis strongly identify with the land.
But the narrative you have isn’t resonating.
Why is that?
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So what you guys are saying is that AGW is a non negotiable pre-requisite to being a greenie of any sort?
Such a shame, we were getting along so well
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“An environmental narrative in New Zealand should work like a charm. Most kiwis strongly identify with the land”
That’s where I am at BP, fascinated to see how this could be developed.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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The free market does not take into account finite resource use and it would take too long for the market to adjust to such a radical change – meaning a world where the market in effect failed.
Response to GW would of necessity involve some form of planning for resource depletion – use of alternative renewable resources. Thus assist the market to cope with resource depletion change.
Given GW might well be very real and the methods of confronting this are necessary and of use in any case – the idea that there are some local environment issues that should be the real focus is a little misguided. The issue of how we cope with resource depletion and move to renewables is a matter of consequence for every local national economy.
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“Pragmatism. Number 8 fencing wire. Moderation. Anti-intellectualism. Reward. Endeavor. Success on the world stage, etc.”
$ first (rewarding endeavour – show me the money) and the environment second, an environment policy in moderation – “pragmatism” to the level we can afford it. A lack of trust in environment and DOC staff and a preference for what would be cheap (no 8 fencing wire) and would deliver success on the world stage – like royalties for letting international conglomerates mine national parks and allowing the dirty dairy industry access to more water.
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So SPC you are talking about developing a sustainable society. Everything you just said could be done without AGW as the primary motivator, in other words, a sustainable society would address AGW by default.
Combined with what BP just said, I think rapid progress could be made down this track.
LETS DO IT!!
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Shunda, well the original Green position is a sustainable society based on a sustainable economy (environment protection).
It can be argued that GW has become a distraction – in that while it provides an imperative to act now, and is also attractive as a tool for motivating a co-ordinated response at the international level, it is a very science based issue. Most people don’t understand the science, they just understand that it is contested – and thus the rationale, why act if there is this cost to it and there is possobly no threat (or if we are too late anyhow). Of course the cost of resource depletion will occur anyway and thus provision for renewables, energy use efficiency (insulation) and the like is just a common sense investment.
What has really killed off the GW international activism (in the west) is the awareness that the carbon using economic growth will continue to occur whatever “we” do – given the way the global market now is.
In the end, it’s now up to national peoples to sort out their own future, by investing in PT (taking GST off public transport) and not in roads for example.
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So what you guys are saying is that AGW is a non negotiable pre-requisite to being a greenie of any sort?
Not of “any” sort, Shunda. Just makes it harder to have the conversation when you want to ignore the elephant in the room.
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“This Government is the worst news the environment has had in a very long time.”
Shunda – fyi – the letters from todays Southland Times
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/3366312/Your-view-Prison-sentences-Louis-Crimp-Gore-council-environment
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“The Blue/Shunda Party cracks 15%!
Pragmatic, Anti-Intellectual New Zealanders give their Vote to the Party with the Narrative (but Without the AGW!!! )
“We are No.8 wire, Endeavour and Reward!”
“Talk of an Elephant in the Room is nonsense. Clearly there are no Pachyderms in our Clean, Green Land. Sounds like some Fringe Activist Narrative to me!”
The party is expected to adopt all of Mr Key’s Moderate and Pragmatic Policies, though Mr Barunda did briefly express some concerns over mining in his town, until Mr Blue pointed out that they were moderate and pragmatic and a necessary part of the Narrative.
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Are the department of conservation still going to get Maori to fly dead frogs around the country or put endangered Denniston snails in the fridge so they can die?
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Basic marketing/PR stuff, Greenfly, and part of the reason you’re stuck low in the polls. To reach outside the base requires a different approach.
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ExxonMobil must be as surprised as anyone by the degree of their success in confusing or misleading the public.
Meanwhile CO2 levels are rising, the oceans are warming and turning more acidic, sea levels are rising and Arctic and glacial ice is melting…
Trevor.
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“The party is expected to adopt all of Mr Key’s Moderate and Pragmatic Policies, though Mr Barunda did briefly express some concerns over mining in his town, until Mr Blue pointed out that they were moderate and pragmatic and a necessary part of the Narrative. ”
Not so sure you understand what I was suggesting greenfly, there is an opportunity to present an approach to sustainable management that National is clearly neglecting.
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Shunda – please read Trevor29′s post.
Please read this:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/columns/joe-bennett/3366262/Facts-become-unreliable
Please
get
up
to
speed.
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Well said Trevor29!
So typically expressing corporate democracy at work. And thus saving me answer BP’s ask as to what I’d meant in asking him about his “sell”.
Being unsure, BP, is a perfectly natural state of mind.
Subsequently in the commentary sequence related above you went from unsure on the sell — your initial assertion — to very sure on a most unnatural state of mind. Dogmatic does, however, say it nicely.
Am I to take it that you stand by this: that intellectuals are not or are incapable of Pragmatism. Number 8 fencing wire. Moderation. Anti-intellectualism. Reward. Endeavor. Success on the world stage, etc.
BTW: to also suggest that a chartered accountant who happens also to be NZ’s PM lacks intellectual prowess by virtue of being packed with your own preferences is more than overly bold. Unnatural.. cracked, as I said.
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“Please
get
up
to
speed. ”
I have already solved global warming greenfly, it involves planting trees.
We have an opportunity to be a net carbon sink by planting the eastern side of the Alps and parts of Otago.
So far no Green takers.
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dlr
so it’s ok for Jones and Co to spin the numbers to suit their desired conclusions, but not for the Daily Mail to return in kind.
You say they “spin the numbers” but the examples provided by the denialist press do not support the existence of ANY problems with the data from the CRU. Nor are there problems with the peer reviewed and documented research except for the little matter that people required to do user-pays science have no mandate to retain records once they are used, so the site histories, (eg NIWA records for NZ sites) are not all available anymore.
Lets be real clear about the problem with this. If and ONLY if the people back in the 1920′s and 1930′s or even as recently as the 1970′s – were all in a global warming conspiracy and trying to mislead us and so we have to repeat the analysis yourself using the original raw data we can’t.
I don’t have any reason to believe such things. The basic premise that the scientists are trying to fool us, is cr@p,
Some of them may be unwilling to hand over data the way I think they should (and Jones is in that group), and they are definitely not all equally happy to “suffer fools gladly”.
I try to be patient with people as long as I can at least pretend that their questions are honest ones. However, none of the scientists I have EVER met, and I have known quite a few, are willing to falsify a piece of data or ignore their actual results… and the suggestion that they might is something that causes me to question the sanity of the person making the suggestion.
Did they not suit Joneses point of view so he quietly discards those periods.
You don’t understand the nature of trends in long term data if you think this will help you. The longer the period, the clearer the picture.
http://tqe.quaker.org/2007/TQE158-EN-GlobalWarming.html
http://www.aetheling.com/climate/ObsPredTemp2010.png
How many years has man been on the earth?
How many years of life on earth?
Quite irrelevant.
The relevant issue is how long have we been putting prehistoric carbon back in the carbon cycle, and how much have we put back.
http://www.aetheling.com/climate/CO2Histogram.png
Maybe this isn’t a good idea.
The last time we saw levels like this was over 3 million years ago.
Recent interglacials were warmer and sharper than this one.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature_Rev_png
Can’t be sure Valis… some interglacials were shorter than this already.
The shape of this one until the last 100 years or so, looked a lot like a slow decline into the ice. Now it looks like there won’t be any more glacial periods. I think that that is a good thing, but by any measure it looks as though we may have overdone it. Because we’ve already got enough CO2 out to go over 2 degrees warmer and will soon have 3 degrees locked in.
respectfully
BJ
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Shunda
There is a massive credibility crisis re global warming, especially from the IPCC, you seriously expect global warming agnostics like me to ignore that little fact?
Not a fact. The massive credibility crisis in the IPCC report is in the reporters of the fact, who seem to get the details… more often than not… entirely wrong.
In one aspect, the Himalaya issue, there was a real problem. A reporter said a scientist said something that wound up in a paper by someone else and finally got reported as real science in the IPCC section on attribution when there was no such science. That WAS a mistake. Not of the science but of the editor. The Himalaya glaciers are going faster than most, but they aren’t going to disappear QUITE so quickly. Not all of them anyway.
However, when they checked the amount of land below sea level issue, it turns out that it was the government of the country involved that provided the numbers, and it further turns out that different departments in that country use different numbers based on different conditions… so that wasn’t the IPCC at all. Red faces in parliament.
When the data on the Amazon basin was checked it turns out that the data was correct and the Citation that backed it up was missing. No correction has yet been reported in the Newspapers that trumpeted the original story.
Do you see where I am going here? The News reporting has been a beat-up and there is NOT a lot of truth out there, particularly in the British Press. In particular the Times-Online people are complete a55holes who don’t even take the trouble to get quotations correct. Even when there are over 80000 correct references available on the web.
Don’t be fooled. Stay skeptical. Apply it liberally to everything.
ciao
BJ
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Shunda
Remember too, the problem with the Himalayas predictions? That didn’t take anything at all away from the increasing temperatures. All IT is is a single small prediction of a single possible effect of the increasing temperatures.
The planet is still warming and the science behind that is still unquestioned among those who actually DO it.
BJ
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bj – it’s important to help doubting readers to accept the true situation with global warming because …?
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There’s a thing about me. I can’t easily ignore “wrong”. Someone says something that ain’t so, including me, and I get uncomfortable until it gets corrected. All I have to know is what’s right and I’ll invariably hang myself by the tongue.
The other thing is that I don’t quit. Stubborn isn’t the half of it. So even though it may not be possible to retrieve any useful Carbon Reduction legislation from the debris in Denmark, the science remains real and true and I will defend truth and reality to the extent I can do so.
Ultimately the climate will explain to everyone just exactly who has been lying to them, and when that happens there will be revolutions. The morons currently ruining the planet will see to it that changes will come too late, but there is never a time when it is good to let a lie be repeated unchallenged. Not about science.
We aren’t going to survive through ignorance… though I am not going to survive if I try to answer everyone. Shunda is someone I think is honest about his doubts and honestly asking questions about things that are someone else’s lies. I have a LOT of patience for him as a result.
I am about to be very busy at my day job though.
BJ
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There are things that can be done regarding climate change that don’t require it to be proven, the possibility of it does concern me.
The issue I see is AGW believers seem to have set impossible and unlikely goals, I think we need to start in our patch first and then go from there.
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Shunda – what do you hope to achieve, in ‘your own patch’, and if AGW is all that bj tells you it is, what difference will it make?
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Great, at least we won’t have to debate UN plots with you.
Seriously, that’s fine as far as it goes, Shunda, but don’t expect us to stop talking about it. Too important.
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Trever29, your 99% for vs 1% against does not stand up to the weight of evidence, neither does the assertion that the Scientists that reject the AGW hypothesis are all paid by multinationals, advertising agencies etc. If you firmly believe this, then by all means provide some evidence to back up your assertion.
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dlr – I am only talking about the two sides contesting AGW. There are respectable scientists who understand specific areas of AGW who challenge specific details, and that is all part of good science, but they are not contesting AGW in the popular media. And then there are a small group of scientists who have traded in their reputations for money and publicity who challenge AGW in all sorts of areas using specious arguments – anything that sounds vaguely plausible.
Just one example – CO2 levels have been monitored for something like 50 years continuously at Hawaii, and have been steadily rising with an annual rise and fall. The rate of increase has also been rising. This matches CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, but the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels is more than can be accounted for by the increased atmospheric CO2 and the increases in CO2 dissolved in our oceans (which is also increasing). The difference is increased absorbtion by plants, etc. Yet we have AGW deniers claiming that the increases in CO2 measurements are caused by taking measurements downwind from the top of an active volcano! Why do they make this suggestion? It isn’t because they genuinely believe what they are saying. (The lack of any interest on their part in any explanations of why the readings are not affected by the volcano is a give away.) Rather they are offering a barely plausible counter argument that they hope will be accepted by a few AGW undecideds to keep then undecided a while longer, such as a few senators (and populist reporters).
(A related claim to the above is that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing because the oceans are releasing CO2 – easily disproved by the measured CO2 levels in the oceans also increasing rather than decreasing, but why let facts get in the way of a specious argument?)
Trevor.
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Trevor29. Thanks for your clarification.
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Shunda – AGW believers didn’t set impossible goals. Goals were identified more than a decade ago, and have steadily become harder to achieve because there has been almost no effort to meet the goals. Instead business as usual has lead to increased fossil fuel usage and increased CO2 levels in our atmosphere and oceans. (The latter is threatening shellfish and other aquatic life through ocean acidification.)
Trevor.
PS: Which part of AGW do you not accept?
- CO2 levels are increasing;
- the increase in CO2 levels is caused by humans burning fossil fuels, with a contribution from clearing forests;
- CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as are 5 other gases which we are adding to the atmosphere;
- because of the above, less thermal radiation is escaping into space so the Earth’s temperature will rise until a new balance is achieved;
- the temperature rise will be slow as the Earth has a large thermal mass to warm, notably the oceans;
- an increase in temperature will have significant negative effects on food production, and will increase sea levels which will cause significant problems, plus other effects which also tend to be more detrimental than beneficial.
The only area where some faith is required is in assessing how much temperature rise will be caused by a given CO2 level, and that is answered by computer models, which are based on the best information about the atmospheric behaviour that we have.
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All the fuss-about-nothing-substantial in the Climategate saga, all the fretting of Copenhagen has not changed the basic thermal relationship between global CO2 and global surface temperature by one jot.
Therefore, in relation to climate, the only true indicator of how we are doing is the prevailing level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A check of a key indicator site (Mauna Loa) shows us clearly that CO2 levels are continuing to move inexorably away from our historic safe level of about 275ppm that sustained civilised life as we know it since our ancestors left Africa 60,000 years ago.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Check that chart every month; that is our measure of whether the talk, the denial, the assertions, the science, the politics and the prayers are making any difference at all to our children’s future.
The CO2 level is now measurably higher than it was for Copenhagen in December 2009; We are loosing the race.
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are loosinghave lost.Like or Dislike:
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Unfortunately although we have proably lost the race to keep the temperature rise below 2C, we still have more to lose.
Trevor.
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