CBC Ideas - Gwynn Dyer on Climate Wars

[Don Hudson]

These two programs on CBC Ideas are well worth 52 minutes each of listening time.

Whether we agree on cause is immaterial. Global warming/Climate change will occur. It is a matter of whether it spirals into negative feedback territory or whether we will reduce carbon emmisions sufficiently to stabilize the cycle.

The programs spend considerable time on practical, technological responses that are now available.

Both habitat and food are discussed - food, because growing grain has leveled off in the world but population growth has not, and habitat because, as the series states, the largest migration of human populations has already begun as people leave barren/uninhabitable areas for those areas with water and aerable land.

The series is in mp3 format and be podcasted, downloaded or listened to online.

The discussion about whether this is happening is over. As I say on another thread however, the technological means are presently available to keep/reduce the cycle below negative feedback territory. But because fossil fuels, food production/distribution, "lifestyles", (a concept and practicality available only in the 1rst world), and habit are fully invested/ingrained, the political will required to alter course is substantial and probably impossible to mount. Denial and self-interest are powerful emotions but the data isn't going to go away.

Here are the links:

CBC Ideas; Gwynn Dyer; Climate Wars Pt. 1

CBC Ideas; Gwynn Dyer; Climate Wars Pt. 2

[RGT]

I heard a bit of that last night but did not have time to figure out what program I was listening too.

Thanks

[mrlupin]

Kinda depressing....

Makes you wonder where we are going...

here are the links to the NASA study showing a California size chunk of ice disapearing in 2007.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingat...t-20071001.html

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/on_d...71001-480cc.mov

Éric

[Hadji Ramjet]

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years.

Daily Tech

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. "There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.

NPR

There has been no warming since 1997 and no

statistically significant warming since 1995.

Richard S. Lindzen,

Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen

Nature

Australian paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter also noted in 2007 that “the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.” Carter explained that the “temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Denmark's Meteorological Institute states that the ice between Canada and southwest Greenland right now has reached its greatest extent in 15 years. 'Satellite pictures show that the ice expansion has extended farther south this year. In fact, it's a bit past the Nuuk area. We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south. On the eastern coast it hasn't been colder than normal, but there has been a good amount of snow.'

“The late-twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in the new Torneträsk record: On decadal-to-century timescales, periods around AD 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were all equally warm, or warmer. The warmest summers in this new reconstruction occur in a 200-year period centred on AD 1000. A ‘Medieval Warm Period’ is supported by other paleoclimate evidence from northern Fennoscandia, although the new tree-ring evidence from Tornetraäsk suggests that this period was much warmer than previously recognised.” < > “The new Torneträsk summer temperature reconstruction shows a trend of -0.3°C over the last 1,500 years.”

Håkan Grudd, Stockholm University’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, published in Climate Dynamics

“The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.”

On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were "unprecedented" for the month of April in over 25 years. Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982. This continues a pattern established earlier in 2008, as global sea ice in March 2008 was also the third highest March on record, while January 2008 sea ice was the second highest January on record. It was also the second highest single month in the past 20 years (second only to Sept 1996).

sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135.

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures.  Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond. Observational data seems to support the claims -- or doesn't contradict it, at least. […] Researcher Dr. Timothy Patterson, director of the Geoscience Center at Carleton University, shares the concern. Patterson is finding "excellent correlations" between solar fluctuations, a relationship that historically, he says doesn't exist between CO2 and past climate changes.

[13820]

THANK YOU,

Hadji Ramjet

Some great quotes from the other side of the coin.

[mrlupin]

QUOTE

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. "There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says.

NPR

Did you read the whole article or just quote the parts that were convenient to the point you try to demonstrate?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=88520025

[13820]

I read the whole article.

Perhaps the aquatic robots are to blame for your perceived thoughts about global warming?

[mrlupin]

So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.

That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.

Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

The article raises many questions and does not point to any solid conclusion.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

Where is the extra heat all going?

Glaciers melting, water rising...Latent heat maybe? Who knows for sure... It sure seems like better to err on the safe side then to continue with the status quo...

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

[Canus Chinookus]

Are these aquabots measuring the ocean's salinity levels as well a temperature?

[DEFCON]

Rather than debating the intricacies of the global climate, why not consider the “facts” of the matter?

1. Human activity will impact on climate.

2. The world population is at present considered to be somewhere between 2.5 to 4 billion bodies beyond its maximum carrying capacity.

3. The numbers are increasing.

4. Available resources are diminishing.

5. Third world migration is increasing.

6. Geo-political tensions are troubling

Is there any world, government or religious body out there that’s actually prepared to take on the real problem?

[Hadji Ramjet]

Lupin,

Ten quotes and all you can do is read ONE article from National Public Radio? Couldn't you bother to look at the Argo project itself? The data is in the public domain, if you think Argo shows warming, point out how?

Insofar as Willis' comment that cooling is really "a period of less rapid warming," I have to defer to Lorne Gunter's rebuttal: "When you put your car into reverse you are causing it to enter a period of less rapid forward motion. Or when I gain a few pounds I am in a period of less rapid weight loss."

[Guest woxof]

Global warming...the scam of the century. And if it does warm up a bit due to the natural cycle of ...you know, it not being an ice age anymore, imagine how people would be freaking out if global cooling was the problem. I know it takes more than a year to make a trend but....

Thanks Hadji

[Don Hudson]

"Scam"? By who and for what purposes? To frighteningly take us all back to an aggrarian society? To make a path of petals for Greenies to take to power? Surely this isn't the extent of your thinking on the matter woxof...and if it is a scam by those leftwingnuts who simply want what all CEO's want - all the money and none of the responsiibilty whassamatter with that?

Sides of the argument don't matter nor does it matter who is right. Aside from keeping an interesting question open which may or may not have to do with our very survival, earth itself already has an answer for us which will come sooner or later. I am much more interested in keeping the question open than coming to a conclusion because point-counterpoint merely masquerades as a debate without enhancing awareness. If our survival depends upon such awareness and prophylactic responses then these kinds of discussions will be worth the back-and-forth. Obviously I have my thoughts and prefer to err on the side of caution because I don't like the nature of negative feedback loops.

One way or another, the ecosystem or what we strangely call "our" environment - as though it actually "cared" - is instead wholly indifferent to our recent emergence, our presence and our continued existence. Climate change may or may not be occuring partly, or wholly as a result of our activity; we may be simply along for the ride. But that said, our activity is releasing CO2 at rates which can be shown to affect climate and we know enough basics to comprehend the aforementioned critical paths that physics may have in store for us and "our" environment.

I think it is a broadly-committed error in thinking to anthropomorphize or otherwise attribute to the unseen, such forces because it blinds us to what is and what is possible in terms of any response, should that indeed be itself, possible. We just don't know, nor do we have sufficient "earth sensors" to give us much more than a scent or a rational hint at what may be unfolding.

This is just straightforward physics, only complicated by the size of the regions over which such forces are at work and the very long lag-times, sometimes understood as the "flywheel effect" that thermodynamic levels exhibit. Our actions today may be harmful and inaction deadly, or our actions and response may be academic or our actions benign but we won't know for decades.

None of us can argue convincingly for warming, cooling, or stasis until it is too late if we are wrong. That is the key to this important discussion and we may bet that there will be very stiff resistance from business and those countries from which the per-capita carbon footprint is inordinately large as well as arguments from those countries just learning western technologies, like India and China.

Whether it is a corporation or world politics, action only is possible amidst a crisis. Otherwise, we dance obediantly to current themes.

[Guest woxof]

Well the Greenies have gained quite a bit of power worldwide including a loud mouthpiece in Canada riding the manmade global warming wave. Now I like the idea of less pollution but this ridiculousness that we have to make these massive cuts to our economy to stop global warming while the new massive polluters to nothing is extremely foolish.

The parties on the left fall into this belief and are willing to end hundreds of thousands of jobs in the name of an unproven theory. Some will close the whole oilsands if given the chance.

So it does matter who is right or what the truth is...because from my viewpoint there are more and more envirofreaks trying to end my career. They are literally climbing over fences trying to shut down airports in Britain. They are taxing airlines excessively. They are attempting to sway public opinion against flying and they will spread over here if given the chance. And they are gaining political influence.

Now I've always said that the truth is the truth and if I see conclusive proof that manmade carbon is responsible for this global warming and that it would be very different if humans were not here then I will admit the truth.

Woxof...proud to have flown several types of smoke belching gas guzzlers.

[mrlupin]

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20090202_11529.mp3

the last of the series is out....

[Don Hudson]

So it does matter who is right or what the truth is...because from my viewpoint there are more and more envirofreaks trying to end my career. They are literally climbing over fences trying to shut down airports in Britain. They are taxing airlines excessively. They are attempting to sway public opinion against flying and they will spread over here if given the chance. And they are gaining political influence.

Now I've always said that the truth is the truth and if I see conclusive proof that manmade carbon is responsible for this global warming and that it would be very different if humans were not here then I will admit the truth.

Woxof...proud to have flown several types of smoke belching gas guzzlers.

Sorry. Your favourite President has been replaced. That kind of thinking no longer works.

Thanks, Éric - will pick it up online.

[DEFCON]

"Your favourite President has been replaced. That kind of thinking no longer works."

We can only hope!

On the other hand, GW's "softwood lumber" dispute with us inadvertently, I'm sure, saved tens of millions of our trees from the "axe". Go figure?

[Guest woxof]

Sorry. Your favourite President has been replaced. That kind of thinking no longer works.

Hmmm...hardly a logical argument to assume that W was my favourite pres in order to counter the reality of what is happening in Britain and elsewhere(as described by myself) combined with fact that scientists have not proven that humans are responsible for an increase in global warming.

The kind of thinking that is on the increase is that our industry should be massively downsized......vacations taken closer to home using ground transport. Business aircraft not needed. No doubt private flying would be considered unnecessary. Perhaps not much of a concern for retired folks but for many, it is a serious concern affecting our livelihood. All this based on an assumption.

If the kind of thinking based on proven fact no longer works...global warming will be a relatively small worry.

[Guest woxof]

Read this and ask yourself if we should listen to the greenies blocking runways in Britain. I think we'll have technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere in this time period.

http://www.grist.org/news/2009/01/27/clima...nent/index.html

Come Dry Spells and High Water

NOAA: GLOBAL WARMING 'IRREVERSIBLE' FOR NEXT 1,000 YEARS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27, 2009 -- Climate change is "largely irreversible" for the next 1,000 years even if carbon dioxide emissions could be abruptly halted, according to a new study led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The study's authors said there was "no going back" after the report showed that changes in surface temperature, rainfall and sea level are "largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after CO2 emissions are completely stopped."

NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon said the study, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, showed that current human choices on carbon dioxide emissions are set to "irreversibly change the planet."

Researchers examined the consequences of CO2 building up beyond present-day concentrations of 385 parts per million, and then completely stopping emissions after the peak. Before the industrial age CO2 in Earth's atmosphere amounted to only 280 parts per million.

The study found that CO2 levels are irreversibly impacting climate change, which will contribute to global sea level rise and rainfall changes in certain regions.

The authors emphasized that increases in CO2 that occur from 2000 to 2100 are set to "lock in" a sea level rise over the next 1,000 years.

Rising sea levels would cause "irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged," the study said.

Decreases in rainfall that last for centuries can be expected to have a range of impacts, said the authors. Regional impacts include -- but are not limited to -- decreased human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change, and expanded deserts.

[mrlupin]

Woxof,

Regardless of whether or not you believe in global warming, is it your belief that we can sustainably continue to burn millions of barrels of fossil fuels every day, emit all sorts of gases in the atmosphere and release toxic waste in our waters without any impact to our environment?

I'm just trying to understand your position on this...

The article you posted says

GLOBAL WARMING 'IRREVERSIBLE' FOR NEXT 1,000 YEARS

Do you believe Global Warming is occurring should be the first question?

And if you do,since it is deemed irreversible (by the article), should we carry on with the status quo? Do you know what the impacts are if we do not change our behavior? The impact if we do change our behavior?

Just curious

[Guest woxof]

Woxof,

Regardless of whether or not you believe in global warming, is it your belief that we can sustainably continue to burn millions of barrels of fossil fuels every day, emit all sorts of gases in the atmosphere and release toxic waste in our waters without any impact to our environment?

I'm just trying to understand your position on this...

The article you posted says

Do you believe Global Warming is occurring should be the first question?

And if you do,since it is deemed irreversible (by the article), should we carry on with the status quo? Do you know what the impacts are if we do not change our behavior? The impact if we do change our behavior?

Just curious

I strongly support investing in alternative fuels, not just for the reduced pollution but for security reasons of not sending money to so many despicable governments.

I also strongly support reducing toxic waste going into our waters although this has little to do with global warming if anything.

I know that global warming is occurring. I also know that it is not proven to be human related. I did start out this thread talking about it being the scam of the century. This is not based on evidence. It is just my feeling.

Now we see that even if all carbon emissions stop tomorrow, it will be a thousand years before things change.

So my position is this.....I have no intention of giving up my career (or supporting a party that would like me to)for something that will make no difference in the long run. There are now Greenies in Britain strongly pushing to drastically curtail aviation with there closing of airports. End result if successful....virtually nothing. We are just going to have to work on different technologies over the next 1,000 years such as carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.

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

However...perhaps some of those out there who feel that these protesters should be accommodated, could give up their career. Show the way by example.

[DEFCON]

Woxof

No offense, but I think you have highlighted the totality of the problem.

First, we all want the "other guy" to bear the pain, and two, there's just too many of us!

[Guest woxof]

Woxof

No offense, but I think you have highlighted the totality of the problem.

First, we all want the "other guy" to bear the pain, and two, there's just too many of us!

Population levels are declining in the first world. Other areas are making the population problem worse.

However....I'll quote again from a well known movie.....

"I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague"

[Guest woxof]

SKEPTICS UNITE

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story....52-48c97f8ae623

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous

Scientists have called the manmade warming theory a 'hoax,' a 'fraud' and simply 'not credible'

and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ? This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ? cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Moreover, while the chart above was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.

It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn't any global warming.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...h5ZEMTgivt4wKtQ

[mrlupin]

For those who listened to the podcast...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7871964.stm

China declares drought emergency