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Climate change

NASA data shows a very slow increase in temperature over a very long period of time. There have been several periods of rapid change in recent (but less populated) history. The mid-late 1930s is a good example, the mid to late 1970s another. As was the case after those periods, a fast reversal is now occurring, although I notice curve smoothing hides it.

I find this data mildly interesting versus apocalyptic and in my mind the current hysteria (and that’s what it is) is entirely fueled by the opportunity for new taxes, growing government power and the need to sell a strategy for energy security in vulnerable industrialized countries. Meanwhile population growth is not a major political issue because as it always has been, and as virtually every religion has recognized, more people = more political power. I think man’s possible effect on the climate is far less relevant to the future happiness of men than population growth and limited energy supply to serve those people.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 28 Apr 14:35

Unfortunately the Cartoon above is too simplistic as there are huge adverse consequences “if we are wrong” and policy has pushed up fuel prices massively.

I certainly believe in climate change but I am struggling to find balanced reporting on the consequences of that change. The people who will be hit hardest are those in the third world and poor pensioners who have trouble heating their homes. Mistakes will have minimal effect on Politicians who live in London have their fuel and commuting costs paid by taxpayers as “expenses”.

It is a mistake to take policy advice from a 16 year old child who has been brainwashed by her “anti-capitalist-failed-actor father” and her “extreme-left-wing-climate-activist-mother”. The way she was reported in the press and received by the “virtue signalling” politicians, you would think what she was saying was written in tablets of stone straight from Mount Sinai.

Perhaps the green lobby should at least consider examples like French energy policy. They have almost 100% nuclear power and have some of the cheapest retail electricity costs in Europe. Their population will be able to charge electric vehicles on their drive overnight on the surplus “base load” power (along with their night store heaters) as nuclear is difficult to ramp up and down quickly.

Trying to get balanced reporting from the BBC is almost impossible. They use the trusted silky voice of “National Treasure” David Attenborough to deliver some absolute rubbish. I watched a TV programme where truth was mixed in with what can only be described as “fake news”. We were told that storms, floods, heatwaves and sea level rise are all rapidly getting worse as a result of climate change.

This sort of thing undermines trust in the BBC and really annoys me. It does more harm then good when they get found out. It is a shame that more Journalists have not done decent science degrees. See below what the IPCC say.

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In its 5th Assessment Report (2013), the IPCC concluded:

“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”

In its more recent Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, published in 2018, these findings were reconfirmed. It stated that

“Numerous studies towards and beyond AR5 have reported a decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones and/or the globally accumulated cyclonic energy… There is consequently low confidence in the larger number of studies reporting increasing trends in the global number of very intense cyclones.”

Regarding floods, the IPCC’s Special Report concluded:

“There is low confidence due to limited evidence, however, that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and the magnitude of floods. “

There is also no observational evidence that the rate of sea level rise is getting worse. NASA satellite data shows that since 1993, there has been an annual mean sea level rise of 3.3mm, with no significant level of acceleration in the last three decades.

Last Edited by Archer-181 at 29 Apr 06:12
United Kingdom

I think this is the chapter your quotes are coming from:

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15_Chapter3_Low_Res.pdf

Thanks @kwif It is good to debate these things. This thread has covered all sorts of things, for example PV efficiency on cloudy days etc. It has all been interesting.

United Kingdom

In a former life when I did my PhD I refereed/helped referee several papers. I was always struck by how after sitting down for a few days with a paper on a subject that I already knew a fair amount about, I would form an impression of its strengths and weaknesses that was sometimes completely at odds with my first impressions. As a scientist or doctor you are forced to know about a wide range of topics, and it is rare that you get the time to pursue any particular subject in the detail required to gain more than a surface understanding of it.

In school science this isn’t much of a problem: everything you’re taught is well established and uncontroversial. But as you advance to the boundaries of science it becomes harder to know what to believe and how strongly to believe it. No single paper ever has a monopoly on the truth. Every conclusion is tentative and subject to revision.

Climate science is particularly difficult. Like biology, you have dozens of interconnected systems at play. Predictions are easy to make but hard to verify. Any line of reasoning will be easy to pick holes in. And yet there is an imperative to come to some kind of conclusion on how what the climate scientists believe should guide our choices about our own behaviour and the energy policies that we, as the electorate in democratic countries, should support.

Despite having gained a certain facility with logic and statistics, the truth is that I don’t understand climate science much better than most other people. My intuition is that we (scientists) are getting much better at understanding complex systems and are making progress despite the difficulties. A huge proportion of all medical research is highly questionable, for example, yet medicine somehow advances despite this. Perhaps one lesson that is generalisable as a scientist is that one learns to look to evidence to find truth, rather than allowing ourselves to look for evidence to justify our truths. We’re all human of course, and fail and succeed to a greater or lesser extent, but I think this is a skill that can be fostered.

kwlf wrote:

Perhaps one lesson that is generalisable as a scientist is that one learns to look to evidence to find truth, rather than allowing ourselves to look for evidence to justify our truths. We’re all human of course, and fail and succeed to a greater or lesser extent, but I think this is a skill that can be fostered.

This is difficult even for seasoned scientists. What keeps it in check is that everything can be disputed by someone else using facts and logic reasoning. But politics and religion? It’s about believing and seeking confirmation for those believes or mind sets. “Confirmation” can be found everywhere and at any time, if you only are “looking” for it, so disputing someone’s belief or mind set with logic and facts alone, is futile. Politics and religion aren’t looking for the truth using facts. The idea is to sell one version of the “truth” to others, and every trick in the book is used. Politics and religion disguised as science is not a good thing.

There are consensus around classical science because no one has figured out anything better. There are consensus in climate science because that’s what the politicians want to hear.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

This NASA overview is interesting.

It shows that this is like the old saying about [ISO] standards: they are great because there are so many to choose from

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

This site has all the data ever published (by the looks of it). Literally tons of graphs and data. He started many years ago, and is still keeping it up to date.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

And here is a load of people taking Mr Humlum to bits…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

People? What people? Are they all climate scientists?

Prof. Curry (climate professor) has an excellent blog:
https://judithcurry.com/

Dr Spencer’s site is also interesting (“only” a Meterorologist but works at UAH’s Earth System Science Center):
http://www.drroyspencer.com/

One thing is certain: the science is not settled.

Remeber that Climate models are man made computer simulations and that these were not created for predicting the future.

EKRK, Denmark
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