Topic: "Global Warming? No, Natural, Predictable Climate Change"

[xykotik]

Harm de Blij wrote a book called "Why Geography Matters" that spent a good deal of time invalidating many of the arguments used to document "global warming."  He believes that human activity contributes above background natural activities but that geographic concerns more related to politics as well as regional methodologies trying to be intergrated globally have contributed more to global warming through statistical error than humans have through their actual actions, and that many politicians and "scientists" exploit and/or defend these known errors to advance their causes above any truth one way or the other.

Regardless of your position on human-caused global warming, I recommend this book for anyone interested in critical thinking and how to consider other points-of-view when considering taking a position on just about anything.  Along the way you learn some interesting facts about GW, China, maps, and the other topics he uses to make his title point about the importance of geography education.

[Wayne_R]

Agree to disagree like before.  Like the old song goes "I say potato you say potato

then I want some of what you've been smoking. 

We all know that the stuff in your neck of the woods is way better than down here in our semi-arid Mediterranean climate  ....so I've heard

[arrowspace90]

I suppose that people who have made global warming a political issue instead of a scientific one also think that the people at NASA are a bunch of loonies.

I have posted the link to their website on global warming previously.  But of course, anyone who does not wish to consider the evidence cannot be convinced.

NASA notes that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising hugely over the past decades.
CO2 is a "greenhouse" gas.  It retains heat.  What does anyone expect to happen when you pump billions of tons of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere?

If you take comfort in the idea that global warming would go away if certain people would just shut up, then you are kidding yourself.
How many times does it have to be pointed out, that the great majority of scientists believe that global warming is a credible threat?
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

[SoMDWx]

And here we go.. I refer you back to xykotik's post....

[Wayne_R]

And here we go.. I refer you back to xykotik's post....

  agree.

[neondesert]

We really need a sticky for this topic.  Then when someone feels the need to resurrect it (over and over and over again!), all the
information will be in one neat and tidy little place.   

[arrowspace90]

http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i2/p22_s1?bypassSSO=1

Or if NASA seems weak, how about "Physics Today"?

Sheesh.

[xykotik]

http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i2/p22_s1?bypassSSO=1

Or if NASA seems weak, how about "Physics Today"?

Sheesh.

Why not Al Gore?  Doesn't his name carry enough weight to stop all critical thinking on the matter?  He won the Nobel Prize after all.

Why not Lord Monckton, who got Gore's movie banned from schools by documenting it's errors.  He writes sudoku books after all.

That's like saying you heard it from Dr. Oz, so it must be fact. I had a customer tell me today that a patient refused her mammography exam because there was no thyroid shield available.  I won't go further off-topic about why that may or may-not be important, but even though mammography is the most tightly regulated of any medical imaging modality in the US, because "Dr. Oz said so" she needed to hear no more.  It may have been a slow "medical news" day with nothing else to offer as gospel.

One should never take anything a popular figure (or organization) says at face value.  There is often a deeper motive completely independent of the facts.  If actual unmassaged facts are presented, they have probably already profited from them ahead of time before making it public for everyone to see how smart they are and should always be trusted.  It may be the president's wife selling-short on pharmaceutical stocks just before announcing her plans for national healthcare, or a "respected" physicist trying to get laid by a hippie chick (no offense to those BC babes, Keith) but there can always be a deeper motive to bend the truth one way or the other, and some don't even realize they are doing it.  Some may just be trying to sell books by taking the non-PC position without all the facts from that side either.  That marginalizes the argument.

It's actually my radical left-wing Che-loving commie brother-in-law (his self-description) that taught me the value of this approach to critical thinking.  He would read the WSJ, Financial Times, Forbes, freep, listen to Rush Limbaugh and Fox news, etc. not to "know thy enemy" but to understand the point of view of the other side.  Most of the time he would find ways to pick apart opposing arguments with their own rhetoric, but once in a while, his mind would be changed.  He is still usually wrong (IMHO) but it's been a long time since anyone tried to call him ignorant about a subject he was arguing.  I have found it a good way to just learn, even if you don't plan on going to battle over something.

That's all.  Hard to tell if this debate warms the earth with the hot air, or cools it with the frosty snubs.  Peace to all!

[Old Tele man]

..."winning" and "deserving" are two totally different sides of the socio-political 'coin.'

[weatherc]

but where is the evidence in the article to back up that statement?

You can find data ex here: http://www.nordicweather.net/ilmasto.php?en
In those 4 different datasets can been seen it hasn't rised since about 1998 and last years more likely slightly cooled
Those 4 sets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT3 and NCDC) are freely available on the net and are updated ca once a month

Our winter here hasn't actually been so deep-freezed, more like a "normal" winter with snow & temps below freezing instead of the crap fiddling around freezing-temps and almost no snow we had some winters ago
As example, average temp for February 2008 was +0.4C here, now last 3 winters it has been -8C or below (official longtime average are -5.5C)

Henkka

[SlowModem]

We really need a sticky for this topic.  Then when someone feels the need to resurrect it (over and over and over again!), all the
information will be in one neat and tidy little place.   

Maybe the mods could add "global warming" and "climate change" to the banned words list. 

[Weather Display]

but we talking about global averages from all sites and not just 4 from the northern hemisphere weatherc

[arrowspace90]

I would be curious to know what skeptics think all that CO2 going into the atmosphere is doing?
Are they thinking that it stops being a greenhouse gas?  Do they imagine that the amounts of CO2 added globally over decades are negligable?

[Weather Display]

also re the trend since 1998
is that not cherry picking?
the same thing the global warming people are accused of?
note that its a long term trend, way before 1998
and you get ups and downs through that trend (there was a down period in the 70s)

[neondesert]

We really need a sticky for this topic.  Then when someone feels the need to resurrect it (over and over and over again!), all the
information will be in one neat and tidy little place.   

Maybe the mods could add "global warming" and "climate change" to the banned words list. 

Nah, that wouldn't work Greg.  The buzz words and phrases keep changing too often to keep up. 
New ice age >> Global Cooling >> Greenhouse Effect >> Global Warming >> Climate Forcing >> Climate Change >>
Anthropogenic Weather Pattern Modification >> Shift In The Space Time Continuum (Oops sorry! We haven't caused the last one...yet.) 
Besides, soon there would be no allowed words left. 

[weatherc]

but we talking about global averages from all sites and not just 4 from the northern hemisphere weatherc

Aah, yeah, forgot that my graphs was only for northern part
Those datasets what i use includes also global and southern hempshire values, and like i said, are freely available on the net.

also re the trend since 1998
is that not cherry picking?
the same thing the global warming people are accused of?
note that its a long term trend, way before 1998

Yes, i agree there in that its only a short time of the total thing, but, it seems also there have happen some change to the longtime-trend at that point, at least for this northern part. If to better or worse, or for how long time, nobody knows.
But from fellow wathcer view at least here it seems the extremes have, yeah, been more extreme, like deep-freeze of Europe (even if we here in north have not have any extreme wintertemperatures, they have been just normal here) and the hurricane-force storms (Cat 4 as worst if use US-scale measured at Faroe Islands) around Christmas. Both cases has been said as once in 30 years-events, and they happened in only 2 months. But it can be just normal coincidence too that they happened so close to each other should i say just like the "global heating, now climatechange", climate has allways changed and will allways do so no matter what peoples do or not do.

[KeithBC]

there can always be a deeper motive to bend the truth one way or the other, and some don't even realize they are doing it.

And sometimes the motivation is as shallow as not wanting to be told that they shouldn't be driving Hummers.

[Weather Display]

this site has lots of information
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
and the summary at the bottom

Summary

2011 was only the ninth warmest year in the GISS analysis of global temperature change, yet nine of the ten warmest years in the instrumental record (since 1880) have occurred in the 21st century. The past year has been cooled by a moderately strong La Niña. The 5-year (60-month) running mean global temperature hints at a slowdown in the global warming rate during the past few years. However, the cool La Niña phase of the cyclically variable Southern Oscillation of tropical temperatures has been dominant in the past three years, and the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data occurred over the past half dozen years. We conclude that the slowdown of warming is likely to prove illusory, with more rapid warming appearing over the next few years.

only time will tell

[Skywatch]

IMO. I don't really mind a warmer planet. I know some reading this post, gasp, throw 3 fits and a tantrum. But this unusually warm winter has been nice. After last years ice storm we got I never want to see that stuff again. Yes I'm a hot weather person. I'd rather get out on a 70+ degree day than be frozen under a layer ice for days or weeks. Some are also probably thinking, "you live in Texas so you don't know what real ice is" I don't. But even a paper thin layer of the stuff drives me crazy. I know I'm weather spoiled. What can I say. I've gotten addicted to warm weather. This winter has been a blessing. And I intend to enjoy every bit of it. So maybe I'm crazy. A warmer planet might bring on other consequences in the future. I geuss if you've lived in the North most your life you might have a thing for cold weather. I've lived in Texas most my life, and I love warm weather.

There's my 2 cents.

[gwwilk]

IMO. I don't really mind a warmer planet. I know some reading this post, gasp, throw 3 fits and a tantrum. But this unusually warm winter has been nice. After last years ice storm we got I never want to see that stuff again. Yes I'm a hot weather person. I'd rather get out on a 70+ degree day than be frozen under a layer ice for days or weeks. Some are also probably thinking, "you live in Texas so you don't know what real ice is" I don't. But even a paper thin layer of the stuff drives me crazy. I know I'm weather spoiled. What can I say. I've gotten addicted to warm weather. This winter has been a blessing. And I intend to enjoy every bit of it. So maybe I'm crazy. A warmer planet might bring on other consequences in the future. I geuss if you've lived in the North most your life you might have a thing for cold weather. I've lived in Texas most my life, and I love warm weather.

There's my 2 cents.

  I agree.

The Earth's climatic conditions aren't static, and never will be.  Given my druthers, I would also prefer a warming trend to a cooling one.  It's always going to go one way or another, folks.  And I believe that these fluctuations are largely beyond humanity's control.  Get over yourselves, and get used to it!

[JHellis]

In the year 2525, if man is still alive, we may find......

Man, I love that song, I still have it on my iPod.

John

[weatherc]

Whats a bit funny regarding this climate change-hystery are,
Just few years ago they said here that in future will winters here have much less snow and at the end winters in South Finland will have no snow at all.
Now, 3 winters later wich all has have lots of snow, have the speak did a total 180 degrees change, in future we will see winters with LOTS of snow and newest in this scene, just east of us are a "cold battery" been growed whats cause the deep-freezing of Europe.
Just wait until we have had few warmer winters again and the speak will again be towards "in future we will have no snow"...

Just showing that nobody knows how future climate will look-like, all statements are just guesses based on some far from complete statistics and graphs. If they not can get even a weatherforecast for 5 days ahead correct, how in heck should they know how climtae looks-like 50-100 years ahead then? Case impossible.
As, if we get exactly, so long not every single temperatrue-sensor used in theese so called worldwide statsistics (where big parts of the globe are actually missing) are tested/validated trought exaclty same compare-equiptment in exaclty same conditions in exaclty same laboratory are they not even valid to been compared to each other.
As like we know from our hobby-equipments, every equipment has its own accuracy-values and they can even be partly different even if same brand/sensor.

[Weather Display]

1 cold snowy winter does not mean the end of global warming though
Also warmer than normal airmass moving into polar regions will be able to then turn into more snow when that air mass moves back out of the polar region , as warmer air has the potential to hold more moisture

[KeithBC]

You would think that, on a weather-related forum, that people would understand the difference between climate and weather.  Not to mention the difference between global and local.  Just saying...  

[neondesert]

This just in...

The sun did not come up this morning, huge cracks have appeared in the earth's surface and big rocks are falling out of the sky!!
Details twenty five minutes from now on Action Central News kids!

Source:
Weird Willy West at Wonderful WINO Radio in western Walla Walla.
1750 on your radio dial. (Just above the police calls kids!)