More on climate change from Greenland - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

dlssmith · #1 07-30-2007, 12:33 PM

I've copied the note, but do look at the link to see the list of studies. There is another side to the argument: warming of the planet is not a foregone conclusion, despite what some politicos say.

July 30, 2007

Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt

Posted By Marc Morano – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov – 9:39 AM ET

Ilulissat, Greenland – The July 27-29 2007 U.S. Senate trip to Greenland to investigate fears of a glacier meltdown revealed an Arctic land where current climatic conditions are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to many of the latest peer-reviewed scientific findings. Recent research has found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880’s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955.

A recent study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland’s ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies. These studies suggest that the biggest perceived threat to Greenland’s glaciers may be contained in unproven computer models predicting a future catastrophic melt.

As a representative of Environment & Public Works Committee Ranking Member, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), I made the trek to the Arctic Circle with the Senate delegation (LINK) to the land the Vikings once farmed during the Medieval Warm Period.

Senators and their staff viewed majestic giant glaciers and icebergs in the Kangia Ice Fjord and in Disko Bay via helicopter, boat and on foot, during the three day 24 hours of daylight trip which began in the Arctic city of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

In an informational handout, participants of the Senate trip to Greenland were shown a depiction of coastal flooding that illustrated what would happen if most of the ice on Greenland was to melt and sea levels rose nearly 20 feet. The handout on Greenland was written by UN scientist Dr. Richard B. Alley, who is also a professor of Geosciences at Penn State University and traveled with the Senate delegation. Dr. Alley noted that the illustration of coastal flooding was not a forecast or a prediction, but merely an illustration of what could happen.

Dr. Alley’s handout stated in part, “We don’t think Greenland could melt completely in less than many centuries, but it might get warm enough this century to start complete melting.”

During the trip, a Danish scientist and Danish government officials appealed to the U.S. government to act now to address global warming and used the prospect of Greenland melt fears as a wake up call for such action. But the very latest research reveals massive Greenland melt fears are not sustainable. According to a survey of some of the latest peer-reviewed scientific reports, current Greenland temperatures are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Link below:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=175b568a-802a-23ad-4c69-9bdd978fb3cd&Issue_id=

SwampYankee · #2 07-30-2007, 02:51 PM

Impossible. Clearly they've missed the memo's and talking points.

catmandoo62 · #3 07-30-2007, 06:21 PM

even though they are right about global warming (not happening) they will have hundreds of scientists with govnment grants saying it is,just to justify their salary.hey pay me a couple million and i'll tell ya just what you want to here!!

Botnst · #4 07-30-2007, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catmandoo62

even though they are right about global warming (not happening) they will have hundreds of scientists with govnment grants saying it is,just to justify their salary.hey pay me a couple million and i'll tell ya just what you want to here!!

How do you know it is not happening?

catmandoo62 · #5 07-30-2007, 08:37 PM

how do you know it is???thats the thing its all speculation and it always will be until they have actual factual data for over say 10000 years.

A264172 · #6 07-30-2007, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catmandoo62

... and it always will be until they have actual factual data for over say 10000 years.

How about over 10 billion years, until the planet is a uninhabitable cinder, then we will have the whole useful curve.

Emmerich · #7 07-30-2007, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A264172

How about over 10 billion years, until the planet is a uninhabitable cinder, then we will have the whole useful curve.

Seeing as the earths climate is cyclic, and there has never been a case of "uninhabitable cinder", it is dumb to think that would happen.

If you can't tell me how to cause global warming, then you can't tell me how to stop it. Besides, in the eco-system scope of things, you want the planet to be warm. When it goes cold, EVERYTHING DIES.

A264172 · #8 07-30-2007, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emmerich

Seeing as the earths climate is cyclic, and there has never been a case of "uninhabitable cinder", it is dumb to think that would happen.

If you can't tell me how to cause global warming, then you can't tell me how to stop it. Besides, in the eco-system scope of things, you want the planet to be warm. When it goes cold, EVERYTHING DIES.

In the short term (relevant to know history) you are surely right. But if you go back far enough, you'll find a hot ball of gas (or so I've been told) and go ahead far enough and the sun will cook off all the water (not great for humans)...

Too cold is bad, too hot is bad, current temps are pretty cosy.

I'm pretty firmly in the camp that we can not accurately gage what the results of what we do will be if any. But when I camp in a state forest or a park my rule is "leave no trace", seems like a good policy though I don't always follow it in the sprawlways.

Botnst · #9 07-30-2007, 11:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catmandoo62

how do you know it is???thats the thing its all speculation and it always will be until they have actual factual data for over say 10000 years.

That would be true if what the theorists depended on was entirely statistical inference. But that is not the case entirely. Increasingly the climatological modelers are using physical prediction rather than statistical prediction alone.

What's the difference?

Let's say you were going to develop a theory involving energy, mass, and velocity. A statistical approach might be to obtain the mass of various objects and smash them into some sort of measuring target at various velocities. The result would be a 2-d graph of velocity and mass on the two axes and plots depicting the relationship between them. (I'm betting it would be a parabolic curve of some sort). Then we might run a regression analysis checking different models against the data and one might derive a model that says that y = 1/21(mv^1.99). Or maybe y = 1/1.97(mv^2.00001) etc. And maybe you'd get an r^2 of 0.9998.

Is this the "correct" model for the relationship between mass and velocity? Statistically we might say that there's a strong curvilinear relationship.

A theoretician might look at the lab scientists model output and give it all sorts of deep thinking and say, "the ideal model depicting the relationship between mass and velocity is y = 1/2 mV^2."

The same sort of two-pronged approach is what is happening in the climate sciences concerned with predicting climate changes. Some egghead develops a model and runs it against conditions in say, 1899 Vermont. Then the egghead checks actual conditions to validate his model.

Since accurate data doesn't extend very far into history, climate scientists must rely on surrogate data. What is surrogate data? Here's an example. There are many, many more.

Trees grow fast under favorable conditions and slow under unfavorable conditions. Many temperate trees grow by producing sleeves of tissue, one over the other, through time. Likes stacked paper cups. If we cut a cross-section through a tree wee see rings, which are merely a 2-d sample slivce through the stacks of cups. Under favorable conditions, these rings are thick. Under unfavorable conditions they are thin. So by looking at the relative thicknesses of concentric rings one can infer with proven accuracy, some aspects of the environment when those rings were established. By sampling a cohort in a given area and over a certain time, a dendrochronologist can develop a fairly accurate local model of the climatic conditions during the year in which all of the various trees rings were established. The University of Arizona has been accumulating a huge library of modern, historic, pre-historic and fossil tree ring sequences that extend back many thousands of years.

Analogous procedures have been developed for many periodic phenomena including seashell growth lines, sediment layers, and ice deposition in glaciers. Cross-analysis of these data demonstrate strong correlations among them during times and in locations where their data overlap. Some of these data extend back hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of million years.

In my opinion, none of the analysis that I have seen has thoroughly convinced me that we are in an anthropogenic warming phase. However, I am pretty firmly convinced that we are in a warming trend of unknown cause and unknown duration. I believe there is strong evidence supporting a human impact or influence on that warming trend, but I have seen nothing that I would accept as definitive proof.

B

peragro · #10 07-31-2007, 01:15 AM

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm Long story short; 32 total models/predictions looked at. 27 were just wrong, 4 were sorta in the ballpark and one got it right. The one that got it right had to do with arctic sea ice thinning. The culprit? Soot, not CO2. BTW, soot is easily removed from smoke stack emissions.

some key points to ponder:

A) Is the average mean temperature of the world increasing?

1. possibly, it seems that it has risen about 0.6C in 100 years with the majority of that in the first part of last century. One wonders how you measure such a number on a global scale accurately. I would anticipate the margin of error to be greater than the aforementioned 0.6C.

B) How do you measure the average mean temperature?

1. very inaccurately to begin with. With much greater precision once satellites are used.

2. why does that matter? You can look at the historic temperature record for both sources on your own. May I recommend www.surfacestations.org for some really cool pictures of temperature measurement stations situated right next door to air conditioner exhausts. By the way temperatures taken over the last several decades at those locations have risen considerably, well, ever since they installed the a/c anyway.

C) Did man cause it, you know, anthropogenic global warming?

1. Probably not since ice core data and several other historical temperature proxies from all over the world point to changes of carbon concentration in the environment following temperature changes. Thus making it logically and, more importantly, physically impossible for CO2 to be causal in temperature change. It is however corralative.

D) Assume we all feel real guilty and take the blame anyway. What can we do about it?

1. depends on how bankrupt you want to be and what level of squalor you can tolerate to live in for what benefit. For example, so far Kyoto has cost about $368 Billion for an estimated 0.003C reduction in GMT by 2050. Kinda stupid if/when we eventually find out that we're not warming the planet, the planet is going through a normal heat/cool cycle.

E) Is global warming something new or catastrophic?

1. Probably not, in fact it would be preferable to global cooling, aka an ice age. Just ask those Euro folks from the Medieval Warm Period and the ensuing Little Ice Age. You could also query Icelanders and Greenlanders from long ago. You know the ones that had to leave Greenland once they got there 'cause the climate changed and it got dang cold. Or you could just figure out how many people die every year in the cold as opposed to the heat.

F) Can someone make a lot of money of carbon credit trading schemes?

1. Yes, most definitely a buttload of cash can be made.

dlssmith · #11 08-03-2007, 01:20 PM

It seems pretty easy for certain politicians to get a lot of Americans to feel guilty about their lifestyles. The Hummer that was vandalized in an upscale neighborhood, because it doesn't fit in is a good example. (The Prius' owning neighbors said the Hummer owner deserved to be taught a lesson) And there is hardly a nod from the news media, because that guilt sells papers. After all, we in America have so much, consume so much, and produce so little?

The latest energy bill has the government preventing American business from expanding energy production in favor of "alternatives". This, in a effort to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. How long will we tolerate rolling black outs when there isn't enough electricity to go around? Count on it unless a lot of power plants are built - power plants that run on coal and nuclear energy. There is no provision in the bill to provide tax incentives to build critically necessary power plants, or to improve the efficiency of the electric grid. This is irresponsible. It won't matter if the planet warms or cools if there isn't enough electricity to keep our industry and business working.

If American productivity is compromised because electricity is being rationed, it will impare our ability as a country to attract foreign investors, and slowly we will be strangled economically. You and I probably won't live to see it, but our children won't live in a polluted, flooded, cinder of a continent; they'll live in a balkanized state of fear and economic uncertainty.

If you want future generations to live in an Africa styled economy, then keep up with the global warming rhetoric.

peragro · #12 08-03-2007, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlssmith

If you want future generations to live in an Africa styled economy, then keep up with the global warming rhetoric.

I would add "for no good reason" to what you said, but you said it, brodda!

A264172 · #13 08-03-2007, 03:40 PM

Just to clarify... the politics of trading carbon credits, which boils down to payments made by the rich to the wealthy, has little to do with any facts of the earths greenhouse features and whether or not they are making changes in the climate.

peragro · #14 08-03-2007, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by A264172

Just to clarify... the politics of trading carbon credits, which boils down to payments made by the rich to the wealthy, has little to do with any facts of the earths greenhouse features and whether or not they are making changes in the climate.

Yes indeed. Not to mention the effect it will have in squashing economic/technological development in first world countries while continuing to keep third world countries poor and dying young.

Doesn't it just make you want to go hug a greenie?