Comments on: Responding to more ‘winter weather’ headlines

By: amazingphotosdaily

amazingphotosdaily — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:25:23 +0000

Who said that climate scientists were wrong about AGW? What 97% agree on is that CO2 produced by humans will cause global warming; what they DON’T agree on is how much. In fact, most skeptics agree that CO2 causes warming…I do but I am skeptical about the conclusions reached based on models that are so far unimpressive.

By: Steve Tabor

Steve Tabor — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 06:37:22 +0000

Some confusion here about what “Climate” actually IS. “Climate” is the analysis of the PATTERN of weather events recorded over time in a particular place. From this analysis comes a prediction about what will happen in that place through the various seasons, in terms of temperatures, rainfall and snowfall, storms and wind, and various specific weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes, dry spells, etc. For example, in the continental US, the season for most tornadoes is Spring, for most hurricanes is summer and fall. In various regions it is more likely to rain in the summer (Florida), in others in the winter (California), in most places least of all in the Fall (while in parts of Africa, fall rains are most likely). In yet other places (like Arizona) it rains in both winter AND summer, but is dry in both Spring and Fall.

Climatic systems were developed in this way to facilitate predictions for practical people, such as agriculturalists, loggers, those engaged in construction or other outdoor tasks, planners, the military, etc.

In almost all parts of the world, these seasonal patterns have not changed since understanding of these basic climate patterns were first systematized in the period 1880 to 1920. Rainfall/snowfall totals wax and wane, temperatures rise and fall, records both ways are encountered, but as for the patterns, it’s business as usual.

So “Climates” have not actually “changed”. There is no “climate change”. Things continue to go on as before. And within the academic climate systems as traditionally used for description, “average global temperatures” are seen as meaningless. The pattern is all. Until we see no snow in the Alps or hurricanes breaking out in all seasons in the Southern US, or an end to the summer monsoon in India, or an end to snow in Northern Russia, or some other such drastic change in pattern, it is an error to state that “climate is changing”.

As a matter of fact, it is an error to attempt to detach “Climate” from a particular location, as in “global climate change”. To do is a bastardization of the language, a form of Newspeak that renders meaning impossible. Much of the misunderstanding about the subject of this article is due to this most basic fact being ignored. Real climatologists would never make a mistake like this. Phony “climate scientists”, many of them physicists or astronomers or ecologists, not students of climatic patterns, have made a career of this kind of mistake, adding nothing but confusion to the debate.

By: John Havery Samuel

John Havery Samuel — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 18:07:04 +0000

Nonsense. I wonder why every scientific establishment says you’re wrong. Please explain with using a conspiracy theory.

By: John Havery Samuel

John Havery Samuel — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 18:05:43 +0000

If you truly believe over 97% of climate scientists are in a massive conspiracy you are delusional. Fact.

By: jdey123

jdey123 — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:59:01 +0000

Callum, I’ve provided statistics produced by the Met Office from 1772. The long term trend is an increase of 0.6C in the last 240 years. That’s way below the IPCC AR4 claim that the computer models that they have considerable confidence in predict an increase in global temperature of 0.2C per decade until 2100 by which time we can allegedly expect a 2C increase. There is nothing in the long term trend which supports this scaremongering, and like it or not the earth has cooled over the last 10 years, as indeed it was flat for the the first 82 years of the longest running global temperature record and indeed for another 47 year long period. 10 years may be too short (although the IPCC is happy to produce decadal predictions) but fixating on 30 years looks very suspicious since 1 of the few periods of rapid increase in global temperature just happened to have started just over 30 years ago. If you believe that the longer the trend the better, then why do you have a problem with the longest global temperature record available (shown below)?

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:1932/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1932/to:1979/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend

By: Callum Hackett

Callum Hackett — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:43:22 +0000

Your citation of the past 10 years is disingenuous – either you don’t realise it because you’ve placed your belief in it as it confirms your biases, or you’re being wilfully ignorant. 10 years is too short a period of time to take a representative sample. If you take at least the past 30 years, you will see an unquestionable rapid increase in average global temperatures. To expect a linear rise is just ludicrous – the climate is not as simple as that. The temperature rises in a zig-zag fashion so that, if you extract a small set of years (such as the 10 you cite), it can look like there has been a decrease, but the bigger picture is a general trend upwards. I suggest you are less selective with the data in future.

By: jeremyp99

jeremyp99 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 16:28:44 +0000

Ah yes. Shoot the messenger. Always a good one. Look – the Daily Mail is beyond garbage laden, yet were the first paper to note that Gordon Brown was certifiable. So they are not always wrong, are they?!

By: jeremyp99

jeremyp99 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 16:27:50 +0000

Holocene period temperatures rose coming out of the last Ice Age, and have for some 8000 years been falling. That Wikipedia, whose climate articles are “owned” by fervent “warmers” shows this to be the case

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

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png/240px-Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Given that previous warming bumps in the temperature record occurred when there were much much lower co2 concentrations, how could that have happened?

By: jeremyp99

jeremyp99 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 16:21:12 +0000

Vostok Ice Core samples for the past 400k years shows that COLD is the norm, with short warm periods (interglacials) in between. This graph suggests we’re coming out of another, and also shows we have had much warmer weather with much smaller concentrations of co2.

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/04images/Seas/415k-year-temp-graph.jpg

By: jeremyp99

jeremyp99 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 16:16:51 +0000

Yet if we look at the truly long term, the long term – thousands of years – the trend is that temperatures are falling

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

A question for the class. When the earth emerges from an Ice Age, how would you expect temperatures to behave?

Here is more on truly long term temperature behaviour

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/

“Since Earth is on a multi-million-year cooling trend, we are currently lucky to be living during an interglacial warm period, but we are at the end of our normal 10,000 year warm interglacial period.”

Fact – we are incredibly fortunate to be living in a periods of such moderate temperatures on Planet Earth. It may not be in my lifetime, but in planetary terms it is most likely that a new Ice Age is on the horizon. And who can tell how much money and effort will have been wasted on CAGW by then?