The Penguin
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I think in essence you’ve hit the problem on the head. There could well be an assumption that the datum is the proper, or normal (or even safe) condition when in this context that probably doesn’t exist as a finite value and certainly hasn’t been identified as yet. With that in mind it's hard to say whether any anomaly is significant.
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I don't think I was suggesting impending doom, was I Penguin? They're just a set of numbers. They do sort of hint that the climate is warming, I suppose. But I don't understand why the anomalies would appear unimportant if you changed the reference point (datum?); wherever zero is on the graph, it still goes up as time passes...
All I was trying to say, dear 3p, is that on the ‘Daily Mail Scale’ an anomaly of, say 10.5 above datum, is a far more attention grabbing figure than say 0.5. Conversely, a deviation shown as a negative from the datum level kind of glosses over the possible situation that the latest figure is still one of a rising trend. Therefore, I am suggesting it is the level at which the datum figure is pitched that can influence the emotional interpretation of the resultant anomalies to the uneducated reader.
None of which is intended to denigrate either the concept of a datum / anomaly figure or any particular body for setting one.
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Yes, of course they do, it's just that the anomaly figures by themselves don't suggest impending doom and if the datum was changed (for whatever reason) the anomalies would appear more or less important.
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I agree with you about the magnificent Wogan; it’s just his Jesuit doctrine that prefers God’s will over man’s influence and presupposes against change in general. Although he may not be ignorant of the facts, merely unconvinced.
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Keep in mind though that any anomaly is in relation to the datum, and the datum doesn't necessarily mean anything, it's just an arbitrary fixed point in time or value.
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Did I call you a datahound, or what!
Looks kosher, Devonian. UEA is about as independent, academic, well-respected and non-agenda orientated as they come.Thanks, P3, Paul
Maybe, although it could be that the editorial slant imposed by the UEA team is driven by their ‘elevationaly challenged’ location and poor swimming ability.
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With all due apologies for lack of technical merit - it's blooming nippy here today, just as bright as yesterday but more wind with a definite edge to it.
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I think we're forgetting what we are discussing if we think people will continue to be dismissive as ,soon enough, terrible confirming events must occur or we are not in a period of disastrous warming.
Or we're not and they will, as they'll not, because we're not.
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You're all wrong, they are clearly chimneys.
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. . . . I realise some areas are arguably cooler lately - south Antarctic, right ? . . . .
Sorry, but that made me smile. Like how much cooler can it be in south Antartica than, say, north Antartica?
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There are some in the USA, no doubt elsewhere, who seriously propose ignoring emissions and injecting sulphates into the atmosphere to produce a 'cooling' effect. I have an opinion about such ideas.
That stinks!
Seriously, this is how chemistry set interference will get us all killed. Pump in this, wait and see what happens, pump in that to negate this, and wait to see what happens, pump in something else etc. etc. etc. The fact is we're not smart enough to see where interventionism will take us, so let's not try, eh.
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Why no other view? Is this a sign of BBC anti GW bias?
I think the opening sentence "In this first of two articles arguing for and against radical spending on climate change, . . . ." infers that there will be an opposing view.
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You do what you like BFTP, it's your fault after all. We in Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland appear to be off the hook. Ah, that feels so good.
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The introduction to the story does the Guardian’s point no favours. Any other paper would have the good common sense to set the scene and then get on with it. But no, they have to include the editorial line “which it isn’t” in reference to the proposition that global warming science is inconclusive. From my point of view this weakens the entire piece through, ironically, the imparted sense of bias in the story. We know through several weighty tombs of discussion here that the science relating to global warming is not conclusive, in that there is much still to be tidied up and more yet to be discovered. I’m not denying the planet has been warming, I’m only saying that in a news article dealing with twisting of the facts by Exxon it would have been better if the Guardian had not started by twisting the facts themselves.
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Very elegantly put Dawlish. The other issue that arises to cause confusion (and I apologise for saying it again,) is that there still seems to be room for debate over the question of the requirement for active reinstatement of climatic equilibrium.
The oft-quoted hockey stick can be interpreted, as you suggest, in one of two ways. Either the natural progression of temperature fluctuations as simply reached another, admittedly notable, upward phase that will naturally decline or anthropomorphic (now there’s a word,) forcing has pushed the system too far and to a point beyond natural remediation.
I’m absolutely with you on this one. There is no definitive answer to the question at the moment, but I can’t help feeling that human intervention tends to be overblown. We do tend to see ourselves at the centre of the universe as the main driving force behind all manner of things. Methinks we are again overstating our importance.
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The IPCC has also indicated that there might be someting in this.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/inter...09/27/60201.htm
Try googling * CO2 storage * for plenty further info. I read somewhere that oil and gas exploration could in future use CO2 as a pressuriser to extract more than was previously possible.
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Unless of course we’re currently in the pre-cooling phase of a post-warming uni-cycle.
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Tried it, but my keyboard froze. Whozitsay?
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Daniel, this is a Friday night and I’ve ‘taken the long way home’ so I’ll say something that I wouldn’t normally say.
Your interest in colder winters is understandable if, as I suppose, you are young and didn’t live through the old fashioned winters that some of us older fogeys did, but to keep harping on about a new ice age is not productive. Especially when your apparently sole source of reference is (even to me) questionable.
Don’t get me wrong; in amongst all the fashionable Death Through Warming stories that the sensationalist media like to put about, your regular references to Death Through Freezing submissions are a welcome respite. But can I suggest that you look for corroborative sources of evidence to back up your favoured IAN references, and when you find a couple get back to us with those?
The trouble is that you are doing your argument no good whatsoever by repeatedly banging on about one possible climatic evolution with limited back-up. The result of this is that folk are getting bored with it, which may be a shame if you could persuade them otherwise with a bit more, and wider, research.
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Wait a minute Wibs, that looks suspiciously like the same moon Louby photographed earlier. You should be ashamed.
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You and SF know your stuff, here P3. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that this is one of the best discussions currently on netweather.
I don't love the hockey stick graph. It nags at me. I feel we need at least 10, maybe 20 years to see whether GW is accelerating, or just advancing at a constant rate. The hockey stick graph may be correct and if it is, goodness knows what catastrophe we will be experiencing in 20 years time, as exponentiality is a frightening thing with regard to climate. I'm just not sure we have a long enough dataset to believe it.
Agreed . . . . . . agreed. . . . . . . agreed . . . . . . agreed . . . . . . agreed.
Yep, totally agree with you there, Dawlish.
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How efficient is a coal or oil fired powerstation? The figure I have in my mind is a whopping 30% or so.......
The World Energy Council puts the figures at 44% for coal and nearly 60 % for gas. Sorry, I haven't yet found a figure for oil, but even so, at least these sources of generation are predictable.
Edit: spelling mistake, sorry miss.
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Okay, so wind turbine has become the accepted phrase; so be it. But be aware that their supporters use that phrase to imply a certain level of efficiency, which they just don’t have. And remember, historically windmill became the generic word for a piece of wind driven machinery whether it drove a mill or not - they can’t make that much flour in the Netherlands.
Talking about efficiency, the current performance based analysis of actual output from wind farms in the UK is 25% of the theoretical maximum. Across the country this varies from 35% in Scotland and the Southwest down to less than 15% elsewhere. Hardly impressive figures, but worse is the fact that the wind farms are intermittent in their supply of power, that is to say, when it’s either not windy enough or too windy for the plant to operate they don’t produce. At all. Not the sort of thing to base a national energy strategy on, is it?
At least with solar power there is some certainty of a source of supply during daylight hours, even when it’s cloudy. And with wave and more especially tidal derived energy production the output is more certain, and continuous, still.
In principle I agree with developing non-carbon based energy generation, but what I don’t agree with is being led down the garden path by mono-agenda groups and a spin-it-up-coz-it-sounds-good government. Especially when the technology is weak and the capital and operational costs are excessive.
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Pickles, I’m sorry but just about everything you say is incorrect. If you look at my earlier post dealing with the relative efficiency and land requirement of various power generation methods you will see that compared to traditional generators, which are arguably becoming environmentally more acceptable in a technological sense, wind power is by far both the least efficient and most intrusive. There is not the slightest chance of wind power being a practical substitute for CCGT or Nuclear generators in the foreseeable future.
I would also respectfully question your assertion that ‘very few people want nuclear stations’, especially as the visual impact of these, as you cite, is miniscule compared to the visual impact of a corresponding output wind farm.
As an aside, it is a complete misnomer to call these blooming great things ‘wind turbines’ as this is patently not what they are. A turbine denotes blades enclosed in a duct that greatly improves efficiency and control, which these windmills aren’t and don’t.
Looks kosher, Devonian. UEA is about as independent, academic, well-respected and non-agenda orientated as they come.
Wednesday 4th October 2006
in Weather reports
Posted
07:30
8C
998mb
4/8 cloud, high & thin
bright
zero wind