Messages

1

Arctic background / Re: Peter Wadhams in Murder Mystery?

« on: July 26, 2015, 03:46:20 PM »

I had warned people to be careful of Wadhams and the AMEG.

This is particularly the case in London, which has the unenviable position of being the epicentre of lorry-related cycling deaths in the UK. Last year, 10 out of 13 fatal cycling accidents in the capital were women, and eight of them were killed by HGVs, according to the cycling campaign group CTC.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/may/13/cycling-lorries-women-road-deaths

Woman and left turning lorries has been a huge problem in London for years. Dr Giles death made the news as part of a long running saga with these trucks.

2

Consequences / Re: Conservative Scientists & its Consequences

« on: February 09, 2015, 01:14:04 AM »

Insulting people by comparing them to Iago McIntyre is definitely not the way to go.

Its the same methodology. Claiming climate science is a giant conspiracy covering up the true horror is as lame as claiming it is exaggerating it.
 

I don't have very strong ideological motives (or at least, am not aware of them)

Being right when mainstream science is itself wrong is a motivation.

the IPCC is erring on the side of least drama when it comes to several issues.

This is what they have been set up to do. We are asking people to take a huge change in their lives, a huge change in the economic foundation of their society.


We have to do that on the most sound science we have, not on the most interesting or exciting.
This is not a game. When we go to people and say their energy bills have to rise or we have to use less energy we cannot do so just because a bunch of partisan members of the climate debate are on board we have to be convinced the uncommitted that all of science is convinced.

This is a sober and sombre undertaking done with reluctance acknowledgement of the risks. We are telling people to make huge changes to their lives. We do so with heavy hearts and with full knowledge what we say is built on strong science that has withstood the critiques of dissent not just the most exciting that fulfils your personal desires.

3

Consequences / Re: Conservative Scientists & its Consequences

« on: February 08, 2015, 09:52:58 PM »

Let me show people how Steve McIntyres climate auditing works.
He picks a group he does not like.

by the IPCC process)

He then takes the statistical approach they used.

Frequentists

He then produces a bioler plate critque of the potential flaws in that technique (all techniques have them.)

can (and do) construct investigations anyway that they want and then do a frequency count of the out-coming and then declare that their frequency count represents the true probability;

Then add some scolding hand waving....

which is the truth behind the common saying: "There are lies, damn lies and statistics".  In other words if the investigation is not well-constructed its frequency count will not represent the true probability (ie "Garbage in, Garbage out").

And et viola you now have debunked a paper or report with actually having looked at it in anything but the flimsiest details.

And off course this all happens to rapturous applause by an audience that generally does not understand what he is saying.

This thread is simply chock full of lazy conspiracy theories and handwaving. Backed up by flabby cut and pastes that seem to meander along without actually saying anything relevant.

4

Consequences / Re: Conservative Scientists & its Consequences

« on: February 07, 2015, 01:42:56 PM »

You may want to consider that "where there is smoke there is fire", and where there is troll-like behavior, there may well be a troll.

Wow...... disagreeing with you is "trolling"?

5

Science / Re: Earthquakes and climate change

« on: February 07, 2015, 01:28:50 PM »

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
A quote from a book is rather ordinary evidence. The vast bulk of the worlds seismic zones are very far from ice sheets. 

6

The rest / Re: Self Education.

« on: January 30, 2015, 07:23:43 PM »

There is a new course from the Uni of Nottingham on Fracking.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/shale-gas/whats-next
Starts next week.
Some may wish to be more conversant on the issue as they engage with the public over the needs to limit CO2 and the more you know the less you can get blindsided by people with specialist knowledge.

7

Consequences / Re: AbruptSLR by P.Sinclair

« on: January 28, 2015, 11:35:48 PM »

DeConto R, and Pollard D., (2014), "Antarctica's potential contribution to future sea-level rise", SCAR - COMNAP Symposium

So your modus operandi is to pick a conclusion (hence your name) then skim abstracts to filter out the ones you agree with, and turn up online to whip up a bit of excitement.

Sort of the same as a climate change denier just on the other extreme.

And funnily enough, just like a denier, you are always right.

8

Consequences / Re: AbruptSLR by P.Sinclair

« on: January 28, 2015, 08:05:49 PM »

Where is the "abrupt"?

This is just strengthening the know position that ties CO2 levels to sea level (roughly about 20m for 400ppm).

The big question is how quick. Abrupt for a geologist may be 1000 years for 20m, that will be forever for a policy marker or many voters.

2m per century will be slow for many of them.

And before people start talking about Meltwater pulse 1a.
There was 3 times as much ice on the continents then.
The ice sheets were much further south.
There had been several thousand years of warming before hand.

It tells us what could happen, but it is not a prediction of what will happen.

9

Consequences / Re: 2015 El Niño?

« on: January 19, 2015, 09:56:54 PM »

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2015/01/16/last-year-may-warmest-record-clues-coral-atoll-suggest-aint-seen-nothin-yet/#.VL1uknu8pnu

Record of previous tropical pacific trade winds from corals.

10

Permafrost / Dialling back on the methane scare stories.

« on: October 15, 2014, 06:38:22 PM »

http://climatecrocks.com/2014/10/15/calling-the-methane-bomb-squad/


Interview with Dr. Carolyn Ruppel.

Meanwhile Peter Wadhams is threatening to sue scientists who criticise him, namely Simon Lewis of UCL.

Nice bunch of chaps,  sounds familiar.

Still its exciting to think you are one of the few people clever enough to see something that sounds kewl like an "extinction level event" or so and easy to find an audience online.

And if people disagree with you, threaten to sue. 

11

Consequences / Re: Pathogens and their impacts

« on: August 23, 2014, 12:05:46 AM »

Ebola has nothing to do with climate change.
It is also a pipsqueak of a disease. There are transmittable diseases that kill 1000 times more people every year than Ebola has so far. 3 orders of magnitude and they do it every year. It is simply a load of wailing for the press.

This simply outs those who have latched onto climate change as yet another doom story to wallow in.

Ifuckinglovescience nails it.
5 Diseases You Should Be More Afraid Of Than Ebola

12

The rest / Re: Self Education.

« on: July 29, 2014, 10:30:02 PM »

Nate Hagens explains why super normal stimuli is driving us to over consume the planet. It explains the why to the how we are changing the climate and over consuming resources. Gets a bit technical on neurology but not too deep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hNi-7EjsH4&feature=youtu.be&a#

13

Arctic sea ice / Re: W.Meier on Conservative Scientists

« on: August 01, 2013, 12:10:28 AM »

Sod this. Too many self appointed experts indulging in hand waving and sneering at actual scientists.

You all want your methane dooms and abrupt sea level rises taken seriously? Get into the field and collect some data or use what is public domain to write a real paper. Then submit it for peer review. You will rapidly learn why the Eschenbachs and Tisdales of this world stick to blog publishing.

People round here think you can do novel science by skim reading abstracts or looking (eyeballing for gods sakes) maps of methane levels and jumping to conclusions.

You want to play citizen scientist without earning the maths and physics? Cool, join the queue with Watts and friends.

Clearly I am walking in a different direction to the one this forum wants to take. I am from Glasgow. We dont do polite, we do do brutally frank and unvarnished. If I stand my ground round here it will be seen as studs showing over the ball type tackles. (This forum was launched with Cruyff so footballing analogies are fair game), so have fun folks. I will be below the line the in the UK press dishing out the hammer to deniers.

14

Arctic sea ice / Re: W.Meier on Conservative Scientists

« on: July 31, 2013, 12:20:27 AM »

It is clear I will not be making friends with this but here is a question:

If scientists are seen as being 'too conservative' because the sea ice decline models have been behind the physical reality.

Are scientists 'too alarmists' because atmospheric temperatures are behind the projections?

This is a very serious question. How can I go and start hammering the pseudo skeptics for not taking the whole picture into account when they make claims based on models not being 100% accurate then do the same thing myself.

Science has developed over 600 years and faced all kinds of attacks, from burning of Bruno to the  mob attacks on Priestly, from the Scopes monkey trials to Cuccinelli's email trawling. It is a system of gathering knowledge that works, it works incredibly well. But it is not perfect. Even the almighty Principa Mathematica would have failed a blogger audit (especially on Mercury's orbit.)

There are missing variables or not fully understood processes in both the ocean\atmosphere system and the sea ice.

Scientists are not "alarmist" because the failed to nail the atmospheric temperature increase correctly nor are they "conservative"  because they have not got the sea ice retreat correct. They simply lack the final definitive model of those systems. 

Until we have a lot more information on what has caused this rapid retreat we cannot be certain that those processes will not reverse and the sea ice decline slow. We have to communicate this to the public. But uncertainty works in both directions, we cannot\ no must not, rule out sea ice disappearing in August by 2018.

Science is hard. It takes years and even decades to master one small part of it. Nothing in the world is as humbling as trying to tease out meaning from data and make projections. I am not a 'scientist' but I work with 'scientists' to turn data into information.


All I can say is I am not over enamored with the idea we can dismiss the huge amount of work to create projections of either temperature or sea ice cover without doing the huge amount of work necessary to create something better to replace it. This goes for the sea ice blog every bit as much as the climate fraudit website types.

15

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 29, 2013, 11:57:44 PM »

Four more METOP A IASI satellite views of CH4 concentration for November 1-10 at 600 mb.

Ice loss, refreeze, warmer waters, seem to be contributing factors.

Zero evidence for an increasing contribution from the East Siberian Ice Shelf.

All it shows is that global CH4 levels are rising and that in November high latitude regions have a high concentration of CH4.

16

Antarctica / Re: Under the Ice: A closer look at recent Antarctica and Greenland Ice Melt

« on: July 28, 2013, 01:14:44 AM »

Interesting links there prokaryotes, lots of reading. Many thanks for your time.

17

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 26, 2013, 06:58:57 PM »

up to 7C according to satellite data. That warming extends the 50 m or so to the seabed

Let see a link to your peer reviewed research showing this warming at 50m then Professor Wadhams.

And then explain what happens in winter.

18

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 26, 2013, 06:55:28 PM »

I'm personally convinced that Shakhova and Semiletov were told at some point to keep quiet about the results of their 2011 cruise.

That is about the most unlikely thing I have heard for a while.

Here is one of their presentions

Prorating these numbers to the areas of hot spots (210×103 km2) adds 3.5Gt to annual methane release from the. ESAS

They managed to claim the Arctic was realsing about as much CH4 per year as there was in the atmosphere at the moment.

They are not exactly shy about 'maximising' the impact of their results.

19

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 26, 2013, 06:49:53 PM »

So not really a lot warmer, taking a big picture view

Yes it was. Especially in the high boreal latitudes.

  - and that's before you take into account that we are warming rapidly

Yes rapidly. I have already made that point. It takes a huge amount of time for to warm seas and oceans. We had that time in the early Holocene and the Eemian. The word 'rapidly' kind of suggests that time is one quantity we have not had in abundance with this warming eh.

It seems carbon dioxide and methane levels during this time were nowhere near current levels (rather important little detail).

Why is this an important detail? They are only important for the additional energy they radiate back to the surface. Important compared to what, the massive increase in summer insolation we had in either period? I am suspecting you have not read what I have written.

I see no basis to use the Eemian as a case study for the modern day conditions,

Well bully for you.

There was a considerably rise in methane concentrations around this time, notwithstanding that the rate of change was likely far slower and therefore there was much more time for the methane being released to break down and keep overall concentrations low. Where do you suppose it came from?

You are asking me that? Seriously? You dont know the main sources of methane?

With methane, it would be possible to achieve very different results based on the rate of the warming.

Blah blah blah. You have not read what I have written and just gone into your by-the-numbers routine. 

20

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 26, 2013, 02:23:18 PM »

How about the winters?

Complex.
The earth would be further from the sun for NH winter but you would have a NH summer autumn with less sea ice and less snow pack so less albedo. It would be how long it took to cool down for the land permafrost. For the ocean, once the ice forms I think it slows energy loss quite a bit. Unless I am wrong most of the energy loss would go into ice formation rather than cooling deeper water.

I think it would take a mixture of GCMs and proxies to get a full answer. I have read the tree line may have been a couple of hundred miles north to todays limit.

For the Eemian, the Greenland icesheet itself is likely to have been somewhat smaller. The permafrost lines are likely to have been much further north.

21

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 26, 2013, 01:13:18 PM »

During the early Holocene the earth was about 3-5 million km closer to the sun during NH summer that it is today .

Solar energy during June\July would have been (at its peak) in the order of 40 watts per square meter higher.

These conditions would have lasted for thousands of years. It take time for energy to heat up water. Back during the Holocene climate optimum we think the Arctic was warmer than even today (that may not last much longer) but you have energy and time in abundance to warm that water.

I have seen little to nothing to suggest the current methane leaks are new. I have seen nothing to explain why these methane 'bombs' did not go off then or off during the Eemian, the previous interglacial, when it was unambiguously warmer for a good many thousand years during summers.

Lots of 'i's' to dot and 't's' to cross.

22

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 25, 2013, 07:38:18 PM »

Why mustn't it be a headline in the media?

Because to convince people to change their society we need to keep a credible message.

One that is sober and based on the best science, not some wild speculation fed into an economic model to generate headlines for the authors.

The names lining up against this report are the names of well established credible voices for climate science.

Wild speculation fed into a glorified version of Sim City is not the most sober or defensible bit of science to be in the headlines.

23

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 25, 2013, 07:33:51 PM »

More kickback against these wild speculations masquerading as science.

This time from William Connelly.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/07/24/arctic-methane-time-bomb-could-have-huge-economic-costs/

, and more importantly this is but a “Comment” not (as far as I can tell) a proper peer-reviewed article.

You’d certainly hope it wasn’t peer reviewed, because some of it is dodgy, most obviously the opening paragraph:

The first Key Point is: is 50 Gt believable? Wiki tells me that annual methane emissions from natural+anthro is about 600 Tg, which is 0.6 Gt by my calculation; so WHW’s 50 Gt is close to 100 years emissions. So its a large number.

But read that again carefully, noting fault zones, tectonically and seismically active areas. They aren’t (as I read it) saying that the 50 Gt will or might be released due to human activity; they’re saying that geologic events, and leaks through existing holes in the permafrost, might lead to this release. At least I think that’s what they’re saying. In which case its an odd calculation, because they appear to be assuming that all the faults will become active at once. Aren’t they? And my reading of it completely decouples it from GW. So I don’t understand.

[Update: Someone was kind enough to send me a copy of "Predicted Methane Emission on the East Siberian Shelf", by N. E. Shakhovaa, b, V. A. Alekseevb, and I. P. Semiletova". Its a trifle vague in places, but I think clear enough to be able to tell that the methane emission growth is assumed not modelled or predicted in any sense. Furthermore (and in my opinion extremely suspiciously) they end up with a 50 Gt amount, which is exactly the same number as they got in the 2008 preprint - except now its going to come from GW, whereas previously it was going to come from geological activity. WTF?]

Not one single other voice round here has been prepared to look critically at this report?

24

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 25, 2013, 01:07:50 AM »

and there genuinely is a risk of a multi-gigatonne release of methane on decadal timescales.

There isn't. Not even close.

But these attention seeking clowns will see us all crucified by the other side of the mirror for raising false alarms.

Thanks folks, just what we need. Himalayas 2035 redux.

25

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 25, 2013, 01:05:14 AM »

Gavin Schmidt ‏@ClimateOfGavin 11h
@cwhope Wow. "Highly possible at any time" Shakhova. I could not disagree more. Paleo provides *no* evidence for this level of sensitivity

From Gavin Schmidt's twitter. Seems I have someone else who agrees with me.

26

Consequences / Re: Melting Arctic an "economic time bomb"

« on: July 25, 2013, 12:22:48 AM »

There is not one single shred of new physical evidence here. Just a random figure for methane typed into an economic model.

However we now have more headlines about methane doom. Something more that can be used to beat our heads just like the Himalayas 2035 story.

27

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 18, 2013, 06:57:09 PM »

I think now I can safely put some names to aliases.

----

edit Neven:

Dorlomin, I apologize for editing your comment, but I'm also doing it for you. Regardless of whether you're right or not, there's just nothing to gain from writing such a thing. Not for those you accuse, not for you, not for me, not for anyone.

These things have been discussed, are being discussed and will be discussed many times all over the Internet. I think that's a good thing, regardless of the fact that it is extremely difficult to reach all-encompassing conclusions, whether we use the scientific method, intuition, magical thinking, or whatever.

These discussions have their use, but if they make you too angry, just let it go. In the end it doesn't matter all that much. Somebody's wrong on the Internet, big deal.

Are there any moderators in the house?

I'm the only real moderator, and I'm not always in the house because I'm busy building a house. As much as I'd like to get involved in the Consequences/Solutions/Walking the Walk subsections of the forum - because I'm greatly, greatly interested in all of those subjects and what others write about them - I just don't have the time right now to read what everyone writes, and keep an eye on the general atmosphere. I apologize for that.

So just let me know when something's wrong or someone goes over the line a bit, and I'll have a look.

28

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 18, 2013, 02:58:48 PM »

I never said I agreed with McPherson, but most of the mechanisms he identifies appear to be correct. 

How is the breakdown of the thermohaline a positive feedback and what evidence is there for this? If the thermohaline stops then transport of energy from the tropic to the high latitudes will slow, cooling the western edges of the boreal continental masses. This would drop their temperatures, increasing land snow pack and spring sea ice pack.

The floor is yours.....

29

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 18, 2013, 02:57:47 PM »

Here is a summary from Gavin Schmidt that addresses the sensitivity issue (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/01/on-sensitivity-part-i/). 

So Gavin Schmidt broadly agrees that over the timescales we are concerned with 3C is a reasonable sensitivity. And as Gavin co blogs with David Archer and is well aware of the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere then he will be well aware that millenial scale feedbacks are not the most important part of human sourced CO2.

There are two recent papers on paleo constraints: the already mentioned PALAEOSENS (2012) paper which gives a good survey of existing estimates from paleo-climate and the hierarchy of different definitions of sensitivity. Their survey gives a range for the fast-feedback CS of 2.2-4.8ºC.

Yep. Bang on what I have been saying.

Another new paper, taking a more explicitly Bayesian approach, from Hargreaves et al. suggests a mean 2.3°C and a 90% range of 0.5–4.0°C (with minor variations dependent on methodology). This can be compared to an earlier estimate from Köhler et al. (2010) who gave a range of 1.4-5.2ºC, with a mean value near 2.4ºC.

Good stuff, seems I have been within the constraints of mainstream science.

. For instance, Köhler et al used an estimate of the cooling at the Last Glacial Maximum of 5.8±1.4ºC, but a recent update from Annan and Hargreaves and used in the Hargreaves et al estimate is 4.0±0.8ºC which would translate into a lower CS value in the Köhler et al calculation (roughly 1.1 – 3.3ºC, with a most likely value near 2.0ºC). A paper last year by Schmittner et al estimated an even smaller cooling, and consequently lower sensitivity (around 2ºC on a level comparison), but the latest estimates are more credible

This paper suggests that models with sensitivity around 4ºC did the best, though they didn’t give a formal estimation of the range of uncertainty.

Some a little up, some a little down.

In the meantime, the ‘meta-uncertainty’ across the methods remains stubbornly high with support for both relatively low numbers around 2ºC and higher ones around 4ºC, so that is likely to remain the consensus range.

Yes, uncertainty. The great elephant in the room. Cuts both ways.

The researchers examined historical data, and showed that CO2 atmospheric concentrations of 400ppm, which we experience today, were associated with much higher atmospheric temperatures and sea levels eons ago.

When there were millenia for the change in radiative forcing to penetrate the oceans and the continents had different configurations.

If climate sensitivities are in fact much higher, as the recent paper and a few other researchers have suggested,

If? You have not been selling us if's. You have been selling us certainties.

30

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 18, 2013, 01:03:23 PM »

We Have to Embrace Apocalypse If We're Going to Get Serious About Sticking Around on This Planet

Posted on AlterNet

AlterNet is now peer reviewed is it?

31

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 18, 2013, 01:02:22 PM »

And, here is the list of McPherson's positive feedback mechanisms

A blog post? Written by someone with no specialisation in paeloclimate, modeling or sensitivity.

*shrugs*


Science is hard, it takes a many years to master one subject. Climate science takes a large number sciences and has to combine them into a 'system science'. No one individual can know enough to make assertions.

It takes teams of the worlds experts looking at thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of papers to get an idea of the current state of the science. Oceanography, glaciology, radiative transfer physics, atmospheric physics, specialists in cloud nucleation, forest ecology specialists, specialists in changes in land hydrology, specialists in ocean carbon cycles.... the list is long.


We can play this either of two ways.

Either we can hunt for individual bloggers that say what we want to hear, or we can rely on synthesis reports by the national academies and international bodies responsible for monitoring the climate. 


That list is just a mash of  papers that we have not yet heard and explanation for why they would not show up in using paleoclimatology to determine sensitivity.

This breakdown of the thermohaline conveyor belt is happening in the Antarctic as well

How is the breakdown of the thermohaline a positive feedback and what evidence is there for this? If the thermohaline stops then transport of energy from the tropic to the high latitudes will slow, cooling the western edges of the boreal continental masses. This would drop their temperatures, increasing land snow pack and spring sea ice pack.

Hmmmmmm.

Hmmm hmmm hmm.

Are we going to stick to mainstream science or just pick a blogger?

32

Consequences / Re: UK Met Office Summit on unusual weather patterns in the UK

« on: July 18, 2013, 11:31:57 AM »

After a dog of a spring we are having an awesome summer. The 'stickiness' of weather is now taken for granted by everyone. When a weather type sets in it really seems to hang around for a while. Some amazing springs and autumns and some awful summers. Now a poor spring and several days running of 30+ weather for summer.

What is notable with this is the high pressure is centered over the UK, our hottest weather is usually when the high is over France bringing up hot African air across the Med and into Souther UK.

Not a lot of chatter about global cooling these past couple of weeks.

33

Arctic sea ice / Re: Ice-free Arctic (Cryosphere Today SIA)

« on: July 18, 2013, 12:21:04 AM »

Personally I would only give it 50/50 before 2020. But 75/25 before 2030.

I seem a lot more conservative than most but I cant help but think that every winter the surface ice will always be exposed to the cold deep emptiness of space, barring a few CO2 molecules and the odd cloud for many long hard cold months. I think this will put something of a 'floor' under the volume melt. After a while it will slow down.

This may be the only group of people on the planet where Id be considered very conservative for that projection!

34

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 08:51:02 PM »

That's why I asked for clarification on what exactly SH meant by militarized,

I think it was an unthinking add on to spice up a post on climate change.

Climate change is a hugely serious issue, but if people get into the habit of over egging the pudding  it will be used to undermine the underlying message.

35

Policy and solutions / Re: Protest - scaling the Shard

« on: July 17, 2013, 08:48:13 PM »

"It's been interesting that a lot of the focus has been on us, rather than why we did it. I'm happy that the news story is quite tight, the fact that Shell is in the shadow of the Shard. But it all goes back to this idea, for me especially, of what's happening in the Arctic. When you hear about things like that you do feel like you just want to rush there in person and stop it."
- Victoria Henry talks about the stunt in The Guardian.

Lots of positive comments on the Guardian.

Seemed a pretty popular action so far as that kind of thing goes. There will always be a lot (even majority) of negativity around any kind of direct action. But the GP have done a good job of getting back a bit of momentum after the past couple of years.

36

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 08:16:50 PM »

dorlomin,

The graph you posted reports military expenditures as a % of GDP. That's a problem if you are trying to measure the amount spent on military, because as GDP goes up, so does military spending, while its percentage out of GDP may go down. It creates the illusion that spending is reduced. This is why the preferred measure for military spending is US Dollars adjusted for inflation or set to a US Dollar value for a given year.

The Federal Republic of Germany in 2013 will massively militarily outspend Nazi Germany 1944 in raw terms simply because of the much larger size of its GDP.

Which is more militarised?

37

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 08:11:07 PM »

I've long believed that humans will only deserve the name "home sapiens" (wise man) when as a society we become aware of these dynamics and voluntarily keep our species in check.   If that ever happens, we will be the first species to "manage" it by our own volition, instead of relying on external checks.   

Fertiltiy rates in most countries are dropping rapidly. Even countries still experiancing population growth, for most it is due to earlier fecundity and a generation of youths reaching child bearing age rather than on going high fertility rates. Only some regions of Africa and the Middle East really buck this trend.

The rate of growth is already slowing.



Massive countries like Bangladesh, Brazil and China are already near or below replacement level



No where quick enough, yes. But still we are buy dint of spreading education of women and availability of contraception making big strides. Once we are past the current bulge of young people in many countries, they rate of growth will fall.

We need so much more work on the issue but its far from bleak.

38

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 08:02:52 PM »

Difficult, as up to that point evolution strongly rewards short term behaviour that results in an immediate or near future gain. It is always a requirement to take care of the short term, in order to have a long term.

It makes me wonder if it's even possible to get the evolutionary changes required to occur - as surely such a species would then always be vulnerable to subversion by members willing to ignore the long term for their selfish short term gain - much as happened when Europeans invaded America and displaced the native americans with their far greater wisdom in this respect.

What 'far greater wisdom'? This is just hacking out the old 'noble savage' meme.

We don't need any changes in 'evolution' We are fully capable of altruism and long term planning.

What we need is to implement plans that are easy to draw up and have been begun to put in place in countries like say Denmark.

The blockages are specific to a few societies rather than some kind of inbuilt "evolutionary" failure.

39

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 07:48:04 PM »

Simply not relevant to my point.

If its not relevant to your point then why start with such sweeping hyperbole?

40

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 06:51:19 PM »

With the increasing militarization of the western world (the heart of capitalism, the growth system that is causing AGW) we are already sliding towards a multi-major powers dictatorship.

Most western countries have seen major cuts in military budgets over the past 25 years.

Only the US has seen an increase.... in the order off.....



Not even back to the 80s. Can people please dial down the tone a little and check your facts before trying to outdo each other with the doom mongering?

41

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 17, 2013, 06:46:27 PM »

Excellent point.  The main problem I see is that the plans that could POSSIBLY prevent us from going over the climate cliff are not salable to the public, and the plans that are salable have little, if any, chance of preventing us from going over the cliff.  Those plans that have the POSSIBILITY of avoiding catastrophe (and this possibility is shrinking every day that passes) require drastic reductions in fossil fuel use starting TODAY, with accompanying drastic reductions in economic activity and personal (energy-intensive) lifestyles.  The number of people who would voluntarily make such drastic sacrifices approaches a null set.  Those plans that are salable (and they can be found on these other climate blogs that function as renewables bazaars) involve minimal change in personal sacrifice during the transition period, and minimal reduction in economic activity.  The only problem is they won't achieve the emissions reductions in the interim period necessary to avoid the cliff.  But, they sound good and feel good, and have the benefit of telling a much broader group of people what they want to hear.

Deary me. So many declarative statements.

And capslock.

We have ourselves a self appointed expert who has come to preach to us all.

Witness the difference in tone between this and something like David McKay's "Without Hot Air". 

42

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 15, 2013, 10:41:39 PM »

Dorlomin,

Note my use of the word ALL!

Well then where is the list of scientists you have identified as being dishonest and who are the chosen few you have decided we can listen too?

I mean here is one of your statements....

Second, the climate sensitivities he uses do not take into account some recent historical data, showing that the present nominal sensitivities of ~3 C/CO2 doubling may be grossly underestimated.

Almost every single study over the past 5 years has been cutting down the top end of the sensitivity range.

You are basing your apocalyptic tone on what seems to be one author then telling us all that they are not apocalyptic enough.

I am really not getting a good vibe from your approach here.

43

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 15, 2013, 12:27:58 PM »

Dorlomin,

"That the worlds climate scientists are all not telling the truth to maintain some 'status quo'."  Who said that?

You need to be very careful here.  The 'experts' in any discipline many times will have a stake in preserving the status quo.  This is true in the biomedical area, and is true in some aspects of climate change policy.

44

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 15, 2013, 12:24:38 PM »

Why do you try to twist my criteria into assuming I would say "luke warmers" are experts with a track record of making predictions?

I did not twist your criteria.

I simply applied it.

45

Policy and solutions / Re: Protest - scaling the Shard

« on: July 14, 2013, 10:06:08 PM »

Made a lot of headlines and briefly broke through the fog of adverts and noise.

Greenpeace had a great Arctic themed field on at the Glastonbury Festival.

Its their big push here in the UK this year.

46

Policy and solutions / Re: Climate change cut from Great Britan's national curriculum for children up to 14

« on: July 14, 2013, 10:02:48 PM »

I suspect that Mr Gove and his denialist mentor Nigel Lawson will get a bloody nose on this one.

I do hope so!

Your wish has been granted!

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/michael-gove-keep-climate-change-in-the-curriculum

This week Education Secretary, Michael Gove, announced he was abandoning his plans to drop climate change as a subject in the Key Stage 3 curriculum.

As I said he was very vulnerable to the left and center on this issue. It costs nothing and gets one small set of bad headlines out of the way.

In all likely hood it was nothing to do with weather he believed in climate change or not but part of his rolling back the curriculum to some 50s ideal where everything was all facts and no application, climate was more on the applied side of science.

47

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 14, 2013, 06:19:09 PM »

Are you saying I should entrust my worldview to the same experts that failed to trumpet both the economic crisis and the collapse of Arctic sea ice

Another classic gambit of the internet expert.

If you wish to head in this direction then do so by all means. Anti-intellectualism and anti-science are very popular in the modern world.

"No one predicted the economic crash therefore I am now an expert", this is what your post amounts too.

You can google for someone who says what you want to hear and proclaim all the rest are "protecting the status quo" and anyone who suggests you should respect the hard one view of mainstream science are just telling you to trust the same people who did not predict the financial crash.

especially those few who have a solid track record and who managed to make the right calls and predictions

Those would be the luke warmers when it comes to atmospheric temperature. Did you stop to think about that?

48

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 14, 2013, 06:01:27 PM »

I don't believe Superman was claiming to be an expert.

No. Just that they knew more than the mere real experts. That the worlds climate scientists are all not telling the truth to maintain some 'status quo'. Its an argumentum ad hominem. And the basis of almost all conspiracy theories. People on the internet can see a truth that actual researchers cannot. Climate change deniers believe the same thing all their hearts as well.

If you want to explore this, read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn.

The other old favorite. The Galileo gambit. "The mainstream was wrong about Galileo so we are right". Kuhn was not talking about cherry picking a small number of papers that agree with you when you have nothing to say about those that disagree except "they are wrong because they defend the status quo".  Kuhn was talking about something a lot more rigorous than that.

49

Consequences / Re: UK Met Office Summit on unusual weather patterns in the UK

« on: July 14, 2013, 02:20:33 PM »

Yes, it's also important to not overlook the impact of snow cover loss during spring and summer, which I think is even bigger than Arctic sea ice loss (for now).

Good point. It is so such a huge area that even the experts disagree quite a bit.



Trenberth is not quite so sold on it so we all have to keep an open mind. From a scientific perspective its awesome to watch such major science being done almost live. But from a human perspect its far from good that so much is happening that we have not really fully nailed down yet. 

50

Consequences / Re: Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice

« on: July 14, 2013, 02:10:07 PM »

You need to be very careful here.  The 'experts' in any discipline many times will have a stake in preserving the status quo. 

Thanks but I will leave conspiracy theories and self appointed internet experts to the other side of the mirror if you dont mind. Thank you.