Global warming?

[classicman]

LA Nina lasts 9-12 months. What percentage of time is that compared to your 600,000 year time span? How would that show up on a graph? Would it even be visible?

His research team developed that which accounts for the 20th century because that is what is germane to the discussion.
What records do we have for the first 599,900 years of your 600,000 years? How were they taken? What validity does this have?

tw, with respect to the political end of the discussion, he could probably have gotten a lot more money by not bringing this theory forward. It would have probably been a better career move as well.

Going against what so many others are claiming as factual and presenting an alternate causal relationship is commendable, if not heroic.
His quote;

"People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I’m interested in is the truth."

carries more weight than many of the bandwagon jumpers who are riding the gravy train of the fearmongering of imminent global destruction and the end of the human race to line their coffers with BILLIONS of dollars.

Just one more question . . . what if HE is right?

Yes I'm playing Devil's advocate here. Someone has to ask the questions.

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by classicman

LA Nina lasts 9-12 months. What percentage of time is that compared to your 600,000 year time span? How would that show up on a graph? Would it even be visible?

Tree rings show differences in climate from one year to the next, as do glacial core samples.

[classicman]

I'm not sure that tree rings are going to be as accurate as we may need. When I think about the mechanical instruments we were using just 40 or 50 years ago, I start to scratch my head about the fractions of a degree raise. Just sayin'

[SamIam]

Originally Posted by classicman

I'm not sure that tree rings are going to be as accurate as we may need. When I think about the mechanical instruments we were using just 40 or 50 years ago, I start to scratch my head about the fractions of a degree raise. Just sayin'

You would be amazed. I took a graduate course in forest ecology once and the professor used us students as unpaid labor looking at tree rings in 100's of cores that we went out and collected. You could tell from the width of the ring if it had been a dry or wet year, if a forest fire had gone through at some point, if a nearby tree had been cut down or fallen. It was very fascinating, although I got a couple of headaches counting all those rings under the scope.

[Happy Monkey]

Huh?

[glatt]

This: "I'm not sure when I'll manage to watch an hour and a half video"
is funny. Who's going to watch a long video just for an argument on the internet? But then she thought you were probably serious, and would watch it. So she stopped laughing.

Were you serious? I kind of doubt it. Who's gonna watch a long video just because of an argument on the internet?

[Shawnee123]

Oh, yeah. Huh?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Oh, yeah. Huh?

that has to be the funniest popcorn eating gif I have seen.

[Happy Monkey]

Not particularly serious, and less so after a quick Google.

I've flipped through long videos, to get the gist, but an hour and a half is a bit over the top.

[Shawnee123]

I know, it cracked me up!

[Undertoad]

I would think global tree data would be immensely useful. Not to figure out, say, the low temperature in November in 1831, but to show the long-term trends. The trees can see back a few centuries, so they have a unique undeniable perspective on things.

For example, as you go up the mountain, there are trees which start to fail from not surviving the conditions. You could work out long-term averages really well there: the tree at 6000' had no winters above 10 degrees until the 1940s. You could compare the trees of 100 years ago to the trees today, and say, half a century ago this ridge could not support trees, now it does. An overall increase of one degree in temperature in this location could cause this.

Imagine a forest succeeding or failing. It's massive, long term change on the order of the appearance or disappearance of deserts. You could figure out which trees get flooded in coastal flood zones, to figure out ocean depth changes. You could say whether el nino/la nina effects were routine over large areas of the continent and how long the cycles are. You could determine to the year when an ocean current appeared, based on the areas that were affected and not affected.

[classicman]

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.

It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.

The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.

Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.

‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said.
Raj Pachauri

Forced to apologize: Chairman of the IPCC Raj Pachauri

‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’

Link
I dunno.

[classicman]

Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket?
(CBS) Few would argue with the U.S. having a presence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. But wait until you hear what we found about how many in Congress got all-expense paid trips to Denmark on your dime.

Cameras spotted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the summit. She called the shots on who got to go.

They were joined by 18 colleagues: Democrats: Waxman, Miller, Markey, Gordon, Levin, Blumenauer, DeGette, Inslee, Ryan, Butterfield, Cleaver, Giffords, and Republicans: Barton, Upton, Moore Capito, Sullivan, Blackburn and Sensenbrenner.

That's not the half of it. But finding out more was a bit like trying to get the keys to Ft. Knox. Many referred us to Speaker Pelosi who wouldn't agree to an interview. Her office said it "will comply with disclosure requirements" but wouldn't give us cost estimates or even tell us where they all stayed.

"They're going because it's the biggest party of the year," Sen. Inhofe said. "The worst thing that happened there is they ran out of caviar."

Our investigation found that the congressional delegation was so large, it needed three military jets: two 737's and a Gulfstream Five -- up to 64 passengers -- traveling in luxurious comfort.

Along with those who flew commercial, we counted at least 101 Congress-related attendees. All for a summit that failed to deliver a global climate deal.

As a perk, some took spouses, since they could snag an open seat on a military jet or share a room at no extra cost to taxpayers.

Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, wasn't against a U.S. presence. But he said, "Every penny counts. Congress should be shaking the couch cushions looking for change, rather than spending cash for everybody to go to Copenhagen."

Nobody we asked would defend the super-sized Congressional presence on camera. One Democrat said it showed the world the U.S. is serious about climate change.

And all those attendees who went to the summit rather than hooking up by teleconference? They produced enough climate-stunting carbon dioxide to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools

Link

Congressional Expense Report

[xoxoxoBruce]

Shit, there was something on the order of 30,000 people there, and that's all the showing we could muster? No wonder we couldn't get any respect.

[TheMercenary]

This subject has been in the news a lot lately. I don't think it helps their cause.

Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7009081.ece