Global Cooling?

senojekips said:
I am always highly sceptical of "educated guesses" from the academics. To me, this case is typical of the standard of their "guesses",.... little if any, better than you or I. The term "educated guesses" being somewhat of an oxymoron.
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An educated guess is better than none at all.
In essence every decision we make is a guess at a favourable outcome no matter how much information you have simply because no decision is made in hindsight only with the benefit of hindsight.

The problem in this case is that if we chose to ignore the predictions and information the best we can hope for is no change if they are wrong and the complete collapse of the global economy and all its downstream issues on civilisation if they are right.

I tend to prefer the old maxim "plan for the worst and hope for the best" after all what exactly is the downside to helping the environment as much as is economically possible?
(By this I mean altering systems in such a way as to be both environmentally and economically sustainable, I do believe it unreasonable to make changes that destroy the economic fabric of society without offering viable alternatives).
 
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Education may give us the chance to prove one way or the other, but until that time it's no more than a guess. An educated guess in this case means very little, as there is no precedence to base their decisions upon. And from current indications, it appears they got it wrong, or at the very least they hugely overstated their case.

It's not a great recommendation when it could be said that I could easily have done as well, probably better. And I would have given my opinion for nothing.:smile:
 
senojekips said:
Education may give us the chance to prove one way or the other, but until that time it's no more than a guess. An educated guess in this case means very little, as there is no precedence to base their decisions upon. And from current indications, it appears they got it wrong, or at the very least they hugely overstated their case.

It's not a great recommendation when it could be said that I could easily have done as well, probably better. And I would have given my opinion for nothing.:smile:
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I don't think they are making statements using a magic 8 ball they have access to a lot information that we don't, as to whether they have overstated their case or not well if we are going to do nothing I guess we had better hope they have overstated it because if they are right and we have done nothing the human race is in for a world of hurt.
 
We can destroy ourselves... But it'd take a lot more than what we're doing now to destroy the planet.
 
I have more faith in mankind than to think we will destroy ourselves, in the meantime, I don't see any advantage in being panicked down the wrong path by the academics and those who would like to think that they should tell us what to believe. I've always used my own judgement in such things and it hasn't let me down yet.

Some people seem to think that an education bestows common sense, sadly there is no evidence to support this.

In a definitive field such as chemistry, physics or engineering, education is without doubt the answer, but when it comes to guesswork, everyone is an "expert".
 
That's just it, its not supposed to be cold in Winter. Winters in Western Europe are rather mild except in the mountains. You almost never see snow in London and Paris and if you do it melts very quickly. If Western Europe is getting colder it means something is afoot with the Global Weather.
 
senojekips said:
I don't see any advantage in being panicked down the wrong path by the academics and those who would like to think that they should tell us what to believe. I've always used my own judgement in such things and it hasn't let me down yet.
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Question is how do you know its the wrong path?


In a definitive field such as chemistry, physics or engineering, education is without doubt the answer, but when it comes to guesswork, everyone is an "expert".
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Not sure how you come to the conclusion the Meteorology, Geoarchaeology, Paleolimnology, Climatology, Glaciology or Paleoecology fields are just guesswork they are all very real and hands on sciences and should not be confused with the accuracy of your local weather channel.
 
The evidence, as I said, last year the hole was the smallest in 30 years, this flies in the face of all of their previous predictions by the "experts". As I said, and will continue to say this debate is largely being driven by people with a second agenda,.... whatever it may be, such is also the case for climate change being the result of man's doing.

I never said any of the above were guesswork, I was comparing definitive sciences with the "experts" who told us all about the hole in the ozone layer.

Although even in the case of meteorology, meteorologists admit that it's as much art as science. They use science to gather the information, but it's interpretation is largely an art based on previous experience, thus the highly variable accuracy of their results. I'd like a dollar for every time the weather girl has had to say, "The rain pattern forecast for today was pushed to the south by an unforeseen high that developed overnight in the southern gulf Blah, blah, blah"....
 
senojekips said:
The evidence, as I said, last year the hole was the smallest in 30 years, this flies in the face of all of their previous predictions by the "experts". As I said, and will continue to say this debate is largely being driven by people with a second agenda,.... whatever it may be, such is also the case for climate change being the result of man's doing.

I never said any of the above were guesswork, I was comparing definitive sciences with the "experts" who told us all about the hole in the ozone layer.

Although even in the case of meteorology, meteorologists admit that it's as much art as science. They use science to gather the information, but it's interpretation is largely an art based on previous experience, thus the highly variable accuracy of their results. I'd like a dollar for every time the weather girl has had to say, "The rain pattern forecast for today was pushed to the south by an unforeseen high that developed overnight in the southern gulf Blah, blah, blah"....
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Rather than me argue with you here is the British Antarctic Survey data to the end of March 2008 can you tell me which bits of it are guess work.

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/index.html

According to NASA/NOAA the levels of chlorine in the atmosphere peaked at 3.5% in 1997 and since then it has decreased to 3.2% this has translated into a slight recovery in Ozone levels.
 
What happened to the 2050 prediction before we could possibly expect to see an improvement.... the simple truth being, "they f*cked up". It was guesswork with a good dose of scare tactics thrown in for good measure.

Have you noticed how the "Rising sea levels due to melting of the Antarctic Icecap and sea ice" argument has died a natural death in the last two years or so?
It took years, but eventually someone (prolly a highschool drop out) pointed out that seeing the sea ice was already floating, it was already displacing its own volume of water, and if the Icecap temperatures rose 10 deg C, the mean temperature would still be about -27 deg C far too cold for any ice to melt, in which event, rising sea levels would be the very least of our worries.

There's now a whole new bunch of eggheads out there trying to think of another reason they can use to make the governments part with some research money that they can get hold of.

No,... I'm afraid I'm not a big subscriber to "The Panic of the Day" or "Give me a huge government grant so I can study what it's like being financially secure."
 
senojekips said:
What happened to the 2050 prediction before we could possibly expect to see an improvement.... the simple truth being, "they f*cked up". It was guesswork with a good dose of scare tactics thrown in for good measure.

Have you noticed how the "Rising sea levels due to melting of the Antarctic Icecap and sea ice" argument has died a natural death in the last two years or so?
It took years, but eventually someone (prolly a highschool drop out) pointed out that seeing the sea ice was already floating, it was already displacing its own volume of water, and if the Icecap temperatures rose 10 deg C, the mean temperature would still be about -27 deg C far too cold for any ice to melt, in which event, rising sea levels would be the very least of our worries.

There's now a whole new bunch of eggheads out there trying to think of another reason they can use to make the governments part with some research money that they can get hold of.

No,... I'm afraid I'm not a big subscriber to "The Panic of the Day" or "Give me a huge government grant so I can study what it's like being financially secure."
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Thats not strictly accurate though as ice doesn't melt on its own it requires heat and as any "high school drop out" can tell you if you heat water it expands.
So not only do we have the extra water from places such as polar ice caps (which might already be displacing mass) but you also have water from glaciers (hell Greenland is one giant glacier) but you also have thermal expansion to contend.

You have already argued that "in definitive field such as chemistry, physics or engineering, education is without doubt the answer" well this is straight out chemistry, physics and engineering so where does guess work come in?
 
It's pretty much all been guesswork so far, unless of course science is also so faulty as to have made this blunder.

I've never, ever of heard thermal expansion being used as a reason for the alleged "significant rise" in ocean levels, Expansion may account for 1 - 2 mm per year. The major concern among the doomsayers was always put down to the melting of the ice caps, and sea ice. The worlds glaciers outside the Arctic/Antarctic are of far too small a volume to have any measurable effect. By far the greatest volume of water is in the antarctic ice cap over 6 million cubic miles with the Arctic and all other glaciers amounting to less than one tenth of that, of which glaciers play a very minor part

I do know that it has been surmised, that with increase in world temperatures there will be more evaporation and cloud and therefore a cooling effect that will then mitigate the warming. This could lead to much wetter climate in many places. leading to more fresh water being held on and within the land masses. But,... at the moment it's only another theory.
 
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I'm a geography major so we actually studied this sort of stuff and I'm with Spike on this. It's far too complex, the "facts" are not definitive and we can't even predict weather properly let alone climate.
The truth is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is rising but considering the percentage of the air it actually makes up, I doubt it's going to make that big of a difference. 0.033% according to HIGH estimates.
Water vapor is in fact the most important greenhouse gas, but it doesn't work that simple because like Spike said, the more we have of that in the air, it may trap more heat but it also reflects more heat in the form of clouds. This is also a bit more complicated because of what is reflected and what is not... different wavelengths of light energy work have different penetration capabilities and what not. Red is usually the first casualty.
Also remember that water vapor doesn't persist in the atmosphere very long, it returns straight to earth. And when was the last time you had a problem going to a river and the water was too hot? Never, right? So even if the temperature goes up, just HOW much do you think it will? I'm not convinced that we'll see a huge rise in temperature.
The earth is pretty good at regulating its temperature.
Will the climate change? Well, it always changes. Expecting it to stay the same is about as realistic as hoping the date won't change.
Remember that there's also this: higher temperature at sea level means that moist air rises and condenses into clouds before precipitating. More clouds, more light/heat reflection back into space.
So it's really immensely complex.
 
senojekips said:
It's pretty much all been guesswork so far, unless of course science is also so faulty as to have made this blunder.

I've never, ever of heard thermal expansion being used as a reason for the alleged "significant rise" in ocean levels, Expansion may account for 1 - 2 mm per year. The major concern among the doomsayers was always put down to the melting of the ice caps, and sea ice. The worlds glaciers outside the Arctic/Antarctic are of far too small a volume to have any measurable effect. By far the greatest volume of water is in the antarctic ice cap over 6 million cubic miles with the Arctic and all other glaciers amounting to less than one tenth of that, of which glaciers play a very minor part

I do know that it has been surmised, that with increase in world temperatures there will be more evaporation and cloud and therefore a cooling effect that will then mitigate the warming. This could lead to much wetter climate in many places. leading to more fresh water being held on and within the land masses. But,... at the moment it's only another theory.
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The effect of thermal expansion is small on its own but lets remember that it is added to other effects, I have noticed a rather interesting strategy of compartmentalising issues as though they are occurring separate to everything else and then making them out to be minuscule, the process we are discussing is one of ever increasing chain reactions.

The effect of clouds is something I have avoided as their effect is at this point pure guesswork, type and altitude of cloud play different roles (both heating and cooling) in the process but even you have pointed out that more water leads to more cloud which in turn leads to climate change.

Anyway I think we are just going around in circles here as neither of us believes the others argument I am prepared to accept that you could be right but and I will freely admit that in some cases climate change arguments have been over played however I do believe that climate change is happening (natural and man made) and I don't like the alternative if we just choose to ignore it because we don't like academics.
 
MontyB said:
Anyway I think we are just going around in circles here as neither of us believes the others argument I am prepared to accept that you could be right but and I will freely admit that in some cases climate change arguments have been over played however I do believe that climate change is happening (natural and man made) and I don't like the alternative if we just choose to ignore it because we don't like academics.
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I've never said I don't like academics, what I do say is that I don't trust them to run my life for me. Also I do acknowledge that the climate is changing, it's always changing with some trends and cycles lasting longer than others. Like yourself I am not convinced that it is necessarily the doing of mankind.

I've said to you once before, I think it was when we were discussing a now banned friend. "Someone must always play the Devil's advocate or we all just drift along believing everything we are told". I believe that I can learn far more with this approach than merely reading reams and reams of scientific data.
 
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senojekips said:
I've never said I don't like academics, what I do say is that I don't trust them to run my life for me. Also I do acknowledge that the climate is changing, it's always changing with some trends and cycles lasting longer than others. Like yourself I am not convinced that it is necessarily the doing of mankind.

I've said to you once before, I think it was when we were discussing a now banned friend. "Someone must always play the Devil's advocate or we all just drift along believing everything we are told". I believe that I can learn far more with this approach than merely reading reams and reams of scientific data.
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Hehe well I am slightly opposite I think it is unrealistic to believe that mankind has not had an impact on the climate (I am undecided on how big an impact it has had) I just don't agree with the doom sayers that we have destroyed things to the point of no return after all the earth has withstood asteroid induced nuclear winters and I don't believe we can match that.

However I do believe that we need to be a little more careful in how operate on this planet or we will make life very difficult for ourselves.

As far as playing devils advocate goes I don't have any issues with that I just start losing interest in discussions where the protagonists start repeating themselves at which point it becomes clear that neither side is making headway and its easier to stop and wait for new information.
 
The only issues I have with pollution is the release of toxic gas around population areas and how pollution can contaminate our food sources as well.
Now these problems are quite real.
 
MontyB said:
Hehe well I am slightly opposite I think it is unrealistic to believe that mankind has not had an impact on the climate (I am undecided on how big an impact it has had) I just don't agree with the doom sayers that we have destroyed things to the point of no return after all the earth has withstood asteroid induced nuclear winters and I don't believe we can match that.

However I do believe that we need to be a little more careful in how operate on this planet or we will make life very difficult for ourselves.

As far as playing devils advocate goes I don't have any issues with that I just start losing interest in discussions where the protagonists start repeating themselves at which point it becomes clear that neither side is making headway and its easier to stop and wait for new information.
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You'll get no argument from me on that. Everything anyone/thing does, has some effect, the thing that's hard to find out is How much? I too had lost interest, because there are heaps of "evidence" on both sides, all supposedly correct, but I couldn't be bothered searching for it. It's a debate that could go on forever and in some circles it will. But for the moment, I've just short circuited the loop and settled down to my own opinion, it's better for the blood pressure, and I sleep easier.

Redneck: Tell me about it, even up here in the country, we have aerial spraying polluting our water supplies and gardens.
 
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