Climate scientists keep getting it wrong

[CPCFTW]

wow that was stupid analogy... are you claiming asteroids and AGW/CC are the same? ...you're science comprehension is at best 4th or 5th grade and you miss the entire point of the question in the first place

Yes, the possibility of "the end of civilization as we know it" occuring due to GW is about as likely as an asteroid hitting the earth.

this coming from someone who thinks a few degrees more won't hurt us...maybe you should try listening/investigating instead of relying on your own non-existent science knowledge.... http://digitaljournal.com/article/282344 ...

Oh noes it will be warmer in Canada and we'll have to spend less of snow removal and road repairs!!! My poor simple mind is scared!

the poorest of third world always survived on subsistence farming/fishing that requires "zero" economic growth, those people will(are) the first to suffer the effects, poverty doesn't kill people, starvation does...want to kill the poor ignore CC and watch their crops dry up...

You have to have land to farm. A third of all deaths in the world are poverty related. It won't be the wealthy dying from climate induced droughts and disasters. It will be the poor who can't afford food/shelter. Focusing on growth shrinks the amount of vulnerable people. You want to increase the amount of vulnerable in the hope that the marginal reduction in global CO2 will somehow feed and shelter them.

wow an enormous 100 billion climate change is already costing an estimated 1.2 trillion per year...

You have to be a truly devout worshipper of climate change pseudo-science to believe that climate change costs the world economy (approx $70 Trillion total GDP), $1.2 trillion per annum.

maybe you can dazzle the boys down at timmies with your scientific illiteracy and misinformation but it doesn't work here....

Maybe you can dazzle your fellow sheeple banging steel drums and singing kumbaya at the nearest occupy protest with your citations of the most extreme cc pseudo-science you can find, but it doesn't work on critical thinkers.

[Keepitsimple]

Bingo! Your answer to my question is exactly the same as my answer to yours. You are a deluded hypocrite if you think that anything it accomplished by asking irrelevant questions.

The real issue in this discussion of climate policy:

1) what is the chance that anti-CO2 policies will accomplishing anything resembling their stated goal?

Answer: next to zero.

2) what are the chances that the harmful side effects of anti-CO2 policies will exceed their benefit:

Answer: close to 100%.

These statements are true even if your implausible worst case scenario plays out. Which means that if your worst case scenario plays out we need a different strategy that the one you are proposing.

Tim.....you're having a battle of wits with unarmed opponents.......

Edited October 9, 2012 by Keepitsimple

[WIP]

Yes, the possibility of "the end of civilization as we know it" occuring due to GW is about as likely as an asteroid hitting the earth.

The atmosphere and the oceans are being poisoned by industrial agriculture and all of the carbon (over half of the petroleum in the ground) we have released into the atmosphere....and yet there are still fools who think that endless growth in population, carbon emissions, land use, and resource exploitation can go on forever in a finite world.

Facts have a way of intruding into future plans and favourite arguments! And that facts that every pro-growth capitalist...whether they call themselves liberal or conservative, is that the party is coming to an end, and the longer we live in denial of the fact that we are going to have to radically scale down the exhorbitant lifestyle we have come to accept as the norm, the worse the final outcome will be!

You have to have land to farm. A third of all deaths in the world are poverty related. It won't be the wealthy dying from climate induced droughts and disasters. It will be the poor who can't afford food/shelter. Focusing on growth shrinks the amount of vulnerable people. You want to increase the amount of vulnerable in the hope that the marginal reduction in global CO2 will somehow feed and shelter them.

Up until the late 90's, the fixing poverty through growth meme had to be taken seriously by techno-critics, but in the last 12 years, as the world population has grown from six billion to over seven billion, the number of people in the world who cannot get enough food has doubled; so the argument that wonders of Neoliberal economics and green revolution industrial agriculture will fix the third world and raise them up to first world standards cannot even be taken seriously today in new century of shortages. World grain production - decade over decade, has actually fallen over the last 30 years while the world population has increased. So, growing famines and food riots in wealthier urbanized nations like the ones that were actually behind the Arab Spring revolts...it wasn't that bullshit about wanting democracy or facebook or the internet that caused it, it was the doubling of basic food prices from Algeria through to Egypt that was the catalyst of the revolts. And food prices are still high, so there will be more revolts as soon as there is some significant flashpoint that causes mobs to form in city squares.

The worse thing happening to the Third World over the last 30 years has been the industrialization of China, India and other large impoverished nations....simple fact that China and India are just now coming to realize is that their populations are so large, that they will never be able to access the quantities of cheap energy to keep the economies they have created in recent decades, growing into the future. China and India are both facing serious water shortages right now, and losing topsoil at an alarming rate because of the change to high-yield, oil-intensive agriculture. Now that multinationals and rich petro-states like Saudi Arabia, have started moving into buying up large tracts of land in Africa for cash-cropping industrial agriculture, there is almost no place left in the world that can easily adapt to the post-industrial future that is coming our way in the next 10 to 20 years.

[Michael Hardner]

... last 12 years, as the world population has grown from six billion to over seven billion, the number of people in the world who cannot get enough food has doubled; so the argument that wonders of Neoliberal economics and green revolution industrial agriculture will fix the third world and raise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger#World_statistics

That doesn't stand up. We need to talk in real terms here.

There were 925 million undernourished people in the world in 2010, an increase of 80 million since 1990,

Doom-and-gloom talk isn't productive, IMO. There's more to be optimistic about than otherwise in the world.

[gunrutz]

In my experience most people who rant about the party being over were never invited in the first place, jealousy is a powerful emotion.

[gunrutz]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29E78OR9H

This article explains exactly what some of us have been saying, even some of the scientists who still believe in agw admit that there are some factors they did not anticipate, i will accept the possibility of agw when some of you admit in the possibility that science doen't have it all figured out, btw, i already believe in the possibility, most deniers are more scientific then most of the believers.

[jbg]

Up until the late 90's, the fixing poverty through growth meme had to be taken seriously by techno-critics, but in the last 12 years, as the world population has grown from six billion to over seven billion, the number of people in the world who cannot get enough food has doubled; so the argument that wonders of Neoliberal economics and green revolution industrial agriculture will fix the third world and raise them up to first world standards cannot even be taken seriously today in new century of shortages.

Maybe the people in areas that cannot produce enough food should slow their reproduction. But that would mean changing "religious" views about excessive reproduction. The horror.

World grain production - decade over decade, has actually fallen over the last 30 years while the world population has increased. So, growing famines and food riots in wealthier urbanized nations like the ones that were actually behind the Arab Spring revolts...

The drop in production in "developing" countries results from price controls that aim to cheapen food for restive urban populations. Those drain people and resources from productive rural areas. The development of urban areas can come later, as agricultural productivity increases.

it wasn't that bullshit about wanting democracy or facebook or the internet that caused it, it was the doubling of basic food prices from Algeria through to Egypt that was the catalyst of the revolts. And food prices are still high, so there will be more revolts as soon as there is some significant flashpoint that causes mobs to form in city squares.

That doubling occurred as the price controls became unsustainable. Other countries have had similar rioting when subsidized gasoline prices were raised to the equivalent of $0.50 per litre.

The worse thing happening to the Third World over the last 30 years has been the industrialization of China, India and other large impoverished nations....simple fact that China and India are just now coming to realize is that their populations are so large, that they will never be able to access the quantities of cheap energy to keep the economies they have created in recent decades, growing into the future. China and India are both facing serious water shortages right now, and losing topsoil at an alarming rate because of the change to high-yield, oil-intensive agriculture. Now that multinationals and rich petro-states like Saudi Arabia, have started moving into buying up large tracts of land in Africa for cash-cropping industrial agriculture, there is almost no place left in the world that can easily adapt to the post-industrial future that is coming our way in the next 10 to 20 years.

The real problem faced by China (I'll plead ignorance on India) is the Ponzi-scheme financing of the development. China uses a fiat currency and a command economy. The commanders don't always get it right.

[WIP]

http://en.wikipedia....orld_statistics

That doesn't stand up. We need to talk in real terms here.

Yes, let's do that!

First of all, that wiki article using some FAO reports fails to note that the year they begin their calculation of the last 40 years - 1970, was a time when China looked much like North Korea today. And a flood of refugees after the Cultural Revolution of the late 60's, told of widespread famine and death back home. The rest of the world knew that things were bad inside China, but no outsiders were in there at the time to examine the state of food shortages and malnutrition. The UN reports of the time were at best - guestimates based on refugee testimonies. I recall at the time that the opening up to the world by China in the early 70's, included deals for buying low cost western grain. One of the first trade missions from Canada came along at an optimal time when China was in short supply while we had silos full of grain that would rot sitting out west!

Be that as it may, a number of environmentalists who are concerned about population growth, have noted that the rise in world population has not followed a long, exponential growth curve, but has followed the growth in food supply, so as more food has been made available through nitrogen fertilizers courtesy the invention of the Haber Process over 100 years ago, the addition of oil-based fertilizers, and the green revolution high yield seeds with massive irrigation projects, the response in world population has been to grow in a short time after greater abundance has lowered food supplies. And this is likely because except for China, and India for a brief period in the 70's, efforts to curb population growth have mostly been kicked back by religious conservatives in Muslim and Christian...and Hindu countries. When women have control over planning children, they invariably have fewer than the men have intended. The trick has been to make planning possible for them.

So, since populations without readily available means of control, will increase to use whatever food is available, what the Green Revolution did was to only curb hunger and malnutrition for a brief period of time. Throughout most of the modern era, about 15% of the world population is experiencing malnutrition, and we are back and passing that number as it looks like the present rise in world population is going to experience some sort of crash or dieoff in the coming decades. The only wiggle room available now is that a large percentage of the new agricultural land in Africa (the only continent where there actually is large tracts of land available for farming) are being used for biofuels. If the biofuel experiment was abandoned, then there would be more food available. But since we passed peak conventional oil some time around 2005 or 2006, that's not likely going to happen, since declining available conventional oil makes biofuels a betteer investment than growing food for many landowners.

Doom-and-gloom talk isn't productive, IMO. There's more to be optimistic about than otherwise in the world.

If optimism is based on fantasy, then it actually makes problems worse, as people lash out looking for targets because of rising prices and declining wealth. When it comes to food, it's like the world is heading into a perfects storm where every factor that governs food production: available land, water supplies, topsoil erosion, costs of nitrogen fertilizers, growing droughts and unstable weather in wetter zones etc., keeps getting worse as the years go by! This Wall Street Journal article I kept from two years ago doesn't seem to be available at the original source anymore. Only place I could find excerpts is from the blog Market Skeptics Harvest Shocker Rattles Wall Street.

The full WSJ article notes that world grain production per capita actually peaked way back in 1984 at 342kg per annum, and that the gap between supply and demand has been filled mostly by drawing from carryover stocks. In the modern era of free trade, no one has been keeping significant grain stocks, and there's been an assumption that if there are bad harvest in one or two areas, someone else will have a bumper crop to feed the world...and that presumption is falling flat when we consider that most of the grain grown in India, China, Australia, has been produced through overpumping ground water. Even the U.S. is falling into this trap as this year's disaster has only been prevented from turning into a complete rout by drawing down more of already dwindling water supplies like the Oglala Aquifer. Going Against the Grain of Complacency Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests

So, if you want optimism, it depends on whether you own oil or grain futures. Any dips in world prices will only be temporary, and the long term trend can only go one direction - UP.

[WIP]

The real problem faced by China (I'll plead ignorance on India) is the Ponzi-scheme financing of the development. China uses a fiat currency and a command economy. The commanders don't always get it right.

Currencies are based on nothing beyond the confidence of the buyers and sellers. The real fundamentals of China's economy is that they did not begin with the available resources that the U.S. had, and other nations had through colonial expansion. And unlike Japan, they have had to industrialize at a time when commodity prices are already high and going higher. It didn't take China long to go from an oil exporter to an oil importer. And they are also importing larger and larger quantities of coal from Australia and other natural resources to fill the supply gaps. And let's not forget that the cities have become so polluted that Beijing had to virtually shut down all nearby industry for two months before the Olympics just to meet a barely acceptable air quality standard. And, then we have the topsoil erosion and declining water tables from the introduction of unsustainable food production methods. China has made a huge mistake (like India) in trying to make automobiles widely available, but many of the goverment planners are indicating that they would like to change course and get back to expanding public transit and discourage car sales. The industrial revolution in China and India has produced the same results as in the West - polluted air, land and water, and a rapid hollowing out of available natural resources in a short period of time. The problem is that China and India represent about one third of the entire world population, so the impacts of market-driven capitalism have greater impact for them and the rest of the world.

[Keepitsimple]

http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz29E78OR9H

This article explains exactly what some of us have been saying, even some of the scientists who still believe in agw admit that there are some factors they did not anticipate, i will accept the possibility of agw when some of you admit in the possibility that science doen't have it all figured out, btw, i already believe in the possibility, most deniers are more scientific then most of the believers.

Goes with this recent article that says that Antarctic Ice is expanding because of......wait for it....Global Warming!

Link: http://www.inquisitr.com/361308/antarctic-ice-expanding-from-global-warming-scientists-say/

[eyeball]

Scientists contend, however, that the skeptics are actually misinterpreting what is happening and why.

So, as a layman who is concerned that government policies are appropriate the main thing I have to go on is the number of scientists in agreement vs those who are skeptical. Is there any reason to believe these numbers won't line up the way they usually do in this business?

[Topaz]

While many trying to make their views, the elite are busy trying to get a private shuttle in out space looking for another place to live when the world destroys itself, just like in the movies. IF the Earth is heating up or cooler down its out of the average persons hands, so trying building your own shuttle.

[cybercoma]

Goes with this recent article that says that Antarctic Ice is expanding because of......wait for it....Global Warming!

Link: http://www.inquisitr...scientists-say/

That's a good thing, except that it has been shrinking year-after-year and the arctic ice cap has shrunk to the smallest it has been in decades.

[TimG]

That's a good thing, except that it has been shrinking year-after-year and the arctic ice cap has shrunk to the smallest it has been in decades.

Followed by a rapid recovery. Climate alarmists are like astrologers. They scream whenever random data happens to support their preconceived notions but ignore data that casts doubt on them (or more likely dismiss it as 'noise').

[WIP]

Goes with this recent article that says that Antarctic Ice is expanding because of......wait for it....Global Warming!

Link: http://www.inquisitr...scientists-say/

Yes, and maybe you should read the links you post from your searches, instead of just assuming that they match your ideology:

Scientists contend, however, that the skeptics are actually misinterpreting what is happening and why. Experts have said that shifts in wind patterns, along with the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year, are most likely behind the increase in ice. The subtle growth in winter sea ice since 1979 was initially surprising, but now it makes sense to them the more it is studied.

Researcher Ted Maksym spoke this week from an Australian research vessel in the middle of Antarctic sea ice. He stated, “A warming world can have complex and sometimes surprising consequences.”..............

sea ice is constantly melting near one pole while it grows around the other,

but the overall trend from year to year is dramatically less ice in the Arctic, but slightly more in the Antarctic.

The difference is more noticeable in September when northern sea ice is the lowest, but southern ice is at its highest. While loss of sea ice in the Arctic has affected people in the Northern Hemisphere with higher risk of extreme weather in the US, Antarctica’s weather peculiarities, on the other hand, don’t have a big effect on civilization.

While that Arctic ice responds more directly to warmth, the Antarctic’s ice is affected by the ozone hole, as well as the wind, which is tied in a complicated way to climate change from greenhouse gases. In essence, climate change has created a wall of wind that is keeping cool weather bottled up in Antarctic.

Read more at

http://www.inquisitr.com/361308/antarctic-ice-expanding-from-global-warming-scientists-say/#YuBCE6LzfXwXsHFS.99

Any casual glance at a globe of the world reveals that our Arctic is a sea, surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is the opposite - a continent surrounded by oceans. In retrospect, it shouldn't come as a surprise that topography should have an impact on how the poles are affected by warming oceans. It's been a fact ever since the first explorers ventured to the poles and took measurements, that the Antarctic is far colder and more inhospitable than the Arctic. And since the Antarctic contains almost 10 times as much ice as the Arctic, it will take many years before the Antarctic become ice-free, even as average global temperatures rise above 6 Celsius and beyond.

Takeaway:

1. Growth in Antarctic ice is slight in comparison to the Arctic sea ice melt, which, thanks to positive feedback effects, could start experiencing completely ice-free Arctic Ocean by the end of this decade.

2.The growth of ice in the Antarctic is marginal, and doesn't help us where we are regardless, because the southern and northern hemispheres have separate weather systems.

[GostHacked]

Yep, plant some trees.

http://www.china.org.cn/environment/news/2009-03/12/content_17427454.htm

China will spend 60 billion yuan (8.77 billion US dollars) annually on its greening, or tree-planting, campaigns in an effort to have 20 percent of the country's land covered by forests by 2010, an official said on Wednesday.

Jia Zhibang, head of the State Forestry Administration, said 16.66 million hectares of trees must be planted in the next two years in order to increase the forest coverage rate to 20 percent, from 18.21 percent at present.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Wall_of_China

The Green Wall of China, also known as the Green Great Wall or Great Green Wall (simplified Chinese: 三北防护林; traditional Chinese: 三北防護林; pinyin: Sānběi Fánghùlín), will be a series of human-planted forest strips in China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert.^[1] It is planned to be completed around 2050,^[2] at which point it is planned to be 2,800 miles (4,500 km) long.

[Pliny]

Experts have said that shifts in wind patterns, along with the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year, are most likely behind the increase in ice.

Oh no! The giant ozone hole is back! I thought we had resolved that. What are we to do now?

[Pliny]

Apparently, the London Met has said that global warming has appeared to have stopped sixteen years ago. Did anyone hear this news somewhere?

I checked their blog and found that some guy named David Rose wrote an article that was misleading. But apparently "the reduced period of warming is not unprecedented".

Tell me once again how we can have a reduced period of warming when our carbon contribution to the atmosphere should have kept temperatures rising (probably exponentially). They haven't, so whatever is happening doesn't appear to be anthropogenic in nature.

[Michael Hardner]

Apparently, the London Met has said that global warming has appeared to have stopped sixteen years ago. Did anyone hear this news somewhere?

I checked their blog and found that some guy named David Rose wrote an article that was misleading. But apparently "the reduced period of warming is not unprecedented".

Tell me once again how we can have a reduced period of warming when our carbon contribution to the atmosphere should have kept temperatures rising (probably exponentially). They haven't, so whatever is happening doesn't appear to be anthropogenic in nature.

Yes, this was the Daily Mail misrepresenting and misquoting scientists. The bar seems to be very different for these tabloids and their pro-climate boosters such as Al Gore.

[TimG]

Yes, this was the Daily Mail misrepresenting and misquoting scientists. The bar seems to be very different for these tabloids and their pro-climate boosters such as Al Gore.

Here is a good assessment of both sides of the 'global warming stopped' meme:

http://judithcurry.c...lag/#more-10215

My personal opinion is that if you asked an alarmist scientist 10 years ago if they would change their mind if we saw 15 years with no warming they would have likely said yes in the belief that it would never happen. Now that it has happened alarmists are moving the goal posts to avoid having to admit the climate models may be exaggerating the amount of warming we are likely to see.

Edited October 18, 2012 by TimG

[Moonbox]

An admission that the climate models aren't as infallible as they want people to believe would be nice.

[bleeding heart]

An admission that the climate models aren't as infallible as they want people to believe would be nice.

Who said they are infallible?

[TimG]

Who said they are infallible?

Anyone who uses to word "denier" to describe people who question the reliability of the climate models. You can only be a 'denier' if someone is claiming something is the absolute, infallible truth. Edited October 18, 2012 by TimG

[bleeding heart]

Anyone who uses to word "denier" to describe people who question the reliability of the climate models. You can only be a 'denier' if someone is claiming something is the absolute, infallible truth.

But when someone uses the word "denier," it doesn't automatically follow that they are doing so precisely for the reason you state.

So again, I asked a perfectly reasonable question, in response to a declarative statement: Who said that the climate models are infallible?

[Moonbox]

I'm not sure you've been following this thread, but there are a few specific posters that rabidly label anyone who even questions the science as a 'denier'.