millennia
-
Posts
141 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Gallery
Events
Learn About Weather and Meteorology
Community guides
Posts posted by millennia
-
-
And you expect to get honest science from blogs that delight in rifling through stolen goods?
Why do we keep hearing this line about "stolen goods" as if the method of transfer to the wider public somehow negates the contents?
Were the mails forged?
Apparently not.
Therefore the hacking is irrelevant to the discussion on their contents.
Anyway we were doing quite well with this post and seem to be slipping off topic - as per - so I will desist forthwith....
-
Ps Of course if it is all true we better all buy GW a beer ??
That would be a warm beer then
-
To be quite honest, as soon as the Govt started using it as a reason to raise taxes! That was just a natural sceptic reaction (but it has not failed me so far
), but it then lead me to want to investigate the claims as I have had an interest in weather and climate for over 20 years.I too have plumbed the depths of the IPCC tomes and found them incredibly political, again raising my suspicions as to motive. I suppose I have always been of the opinion that if there really was an imminent, asteroid-on-collision-course-with-Earth, type climate disaster that was avoidable then something would have been done about it without recourse to public debate. To allow it to be bandied around the Internet like it has just reinforces my feeling that it is just a theory, and like all theories will either stand scrutiny (if allowed, CRU!!!) or implode in on itself.
I continue to be ready to receive that irrefutible evidence that man produced CO2 really does have more than a negligible effect on the temperature of the Earth, but while findings such as estimations that a cap and trade bill on the Waxman-Markey line successfully implemented across the entire planet would only reduce temperatures by 0.2C in 100 years abound, then I believe more and more that evidence will never be found. It will likely turn out to be a very complex interaction of natural forces with a mix of minor human influences such as land use changes and, yes, quite possibly human CO2 output - just in a minor influencing role.
I am now becoming more concerned with the direction our policy makers are heading, rather than the science (which I'm confident will work itself out in good time), especially as we have already saddled our future generations with unbelievable amounts of debt to fund our previous profligate lifestyles. The kind of suggestions in play regarding our way forward are more about power broking and making yet more money (like we haven't learned a bloody thing) than saving the planet, and will not make the environmental picture any better while at the same time making our financial outlook even worse.
If all of the £7 trillion spent on global warming in the last 20 years had been invested in alternative energy development based on a scientific way forward beyond fossil fuels, without the scaremongering political crap, we'd probably be there now and have a few better run hospitals and <irony> scools </irony> from the change!
SO in an effort to be involved with something at least on a different level to just sitting around reading blogs and hurling abuse at the latest biased reports from the BBC I have become a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (www.thegwpf.org, for those that don't know
). I hope it won't turn out to be just another right wing sceptic politiking organisation, and it's base position of not denying climate change but disussing the actions we take is a good starting point, but I already note alarmists lining up to pooh-pooh it before it heaves itself off the runway so what influence it will ever bring to bear is another discussion entirely. -
I think I can do no more than post the link to this blog entry. Sometimes it really can be a good idea to step back and ask "are we over complicating this?"
-
heavy sleet , south bristol .temp 1.8 / dew point 0.8 . B)
Heavy wet snow - starting to accumulate on car but not road - temp 1.2 - dp 0.6
-
This is very much a situation where location can make a massive difference. It is snowing incredibly heavy here now with all the cars covered already but just speaking to a friend in Malmesbury 5 miles away it is stil rain/sleet. This is exactly the forecasts I have heard today as they have mentioned the cotswolds being one of the first places to get snow. Another 4-5 hrs of this could be fun!
What is your height there then?
-
So what temp and dew point do we need roughly in this storm to get snow?
I have 1.4/0.8 but I reckon your uppers are more important....
-
yes but im gutted lowland bristol has wet snow and i have wet sleet at 300m! :o
Maybe because I'm further north - lower upper air temp - can't explain Bristol snow though. Wet snow came in when wind suddenly shifted from ESE to ENE, still has a LONG way to go before it sticks
-
didnt say....just said reports of snow somewhere in WILTS
IF I HERE will let you know
the first pink bit turning to snow north of the front
Precip type radar useless - we had 9cm of snow from a constant sleet reading last week - now deep in the rainbelt lamppost watching shows the white stuff
-
You could say that we had 2.4 inches on Wedenesday when we weren't forecast any. In total there was about 16 inches last week. Snowing heavy now in Tetbury
Hi There!
17:45 in Nailsworth, sleet / wet snow at 100m ASL - temp 1.6 dp 1
-
I for one was heartened to see this article as Richard Black has been a front runner in the climate alarmism stakes. This is not the first article of his to introduce some balance, maybe has been sat on from on high recently?
-
Hello again everybody. Thought I'd drop by and check out how the "discussion" is going, especially as I don't have to wade through 80+ pages of comments now there is a new discussion thread!
Seems as though there has been a bit of an advance from the last time I looked, which had just spiralled into a circular "yes it is", "no it isn't" batting back and forth, but there still seems to be a reluctance to acknowledge the increasing dissention of scientists with regard to the dogmatic presentation of CO2 as an AGW driver, as per the latest Minority Report (good film that
) on the subject http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...5d-6e2d71db52d9.What interests me is the increasing use of acronyms like ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc. being batted back and forth by both sides and yet go back a few years and these were notably absent from many discussions. Why? Because this is very new in terms of human scientific knowledge and yet as discoveries continue to be made on what drives Earth's climate everybody seems dead sure we know enough to take trillion dollar decisions on the future of humanity. We STILL know more about the Moon than we do about the deep oceans and the reason why these fantastic climate models can only find CO2 as a cause of the last 30 years of warming is because we don't know everything that can drive the climate, this is because the science is too young to have directly measured or even discovered all the factors. We are still arguing over whether the MWP existed, and have no direct measurements of that time - only proxies of very dubious value - so to make such certain predictions using such a young science is so very dangerous.
An observation from history - the absolute certainty that the Sun revolved around the Earth took a long time to be defeated by the likes of Copernicus and subsequently Galileo, and yet hundreds if not thousands of years before these people the heliocentric view of the solar system had already been calculated. We as a species have a history of learning and forgetting because of the inconsistency of recording information, and only recently have we had the means to quickly disseminate and store information around the world. In many cases this is a first experience for science and it has a lot of learning and even relearning to do, and all the time must fight the vested interests of others not at all interested in science from all viewpoints.
I honestly believe this is a subject that will never be settled, but as the years go by the climate will swing one way, then the other, and eventually modern science will observe and record directly the extremes of variation our forefathers had discovered and forgotten again. Then, perhaps, we will be in a position to make decisions in advance.
Today we are not ready.
-
I can't agree I'm afraid- I know there's a lot of inefficient expenditure on tokenistic measures out there, but it doesn't mean that the best, or only viable, policy is to just "wait and see" and soak up whatever trouble arises, adapting/reacting to it if and when it arises.
Surely if we try to bring about and manage a steady reduction in reliance on fossil fuels and overall consumption over a long period of time, and work to provide good energy-efficient alternatives, while we won't avoid a recession, and might have to suffer a little extra short-term pain for greater long-term gain, we can reduce the extent of the coming depression.
Alternatively if we just continue "as is", we'll only cut down when we're forced to. That most likely means sudden change (see the recent economic recession for an example of how trying to stave off cutting down in the short-term can lead to more misery in the long-term) and, more importantly, need to bring in a big stick in order to force the sudden change. All stick and no carrot = people having to cut down more than they need to in order to facilitate a given level of environmental improvement, simply because there won't be viable alternatives where there could have been some if only the recession had been managed through long-term, forward-thinking policies.
As I often say in these threads, if we have a problem, and our attitude to it is "that's life" and we just accept as given that it can't be helped, it will never be helped- regardless of whether it's possible to help it or not. We assume limits, we bind ourselves by those limits.
I take your point - but still maitain it will never happen. Al Gore made $100 million preaching doom and nobody can convince me that if there wasn't money, fame and power (watch for a Al to make a Mandelson type comback with Obama in the White House) in it he'd give two figs for the environment. The day he gives it all away to environmental charities, and works for free to spread the word I will truly start to take notice.
And that, TWS, is why your noble sentiments will most likely remain in media such as this forum rather than become a blueprint for our future. Noble people do not rule the world......
-
I see this as the real issue:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7696197.stm
Climate may not be proven but this is, and surely there cannot be a single member of this forum who can argue that we do not need to reduce our fossil fuel burning. Does this angle not allow for continued climate debate whilst giving almost unanimous agreement on action?
Yes resources are finite and therefore we are going to run out. However there is another 50 years of oil in offshore locations that are banned from being exploited (rightly or wrongly, I'm not trying to start a debate over oil covered seals here) and about 400 years of coal reserves - albeit creating ever greater damage as it becomes harder to extract.
So actually the problem isn't yet resources but is still environmental if you are to convice anybody to change. Trouble is the politicians are starting to rapidly get cold feet as they desperately try to keep their economies afloat and themselves in jobs, so another front has now opened in the Climate Wars. The warmers now have to fight the skeptics and macroeconomics.
Best of luck with that one.
The only silver lining will be a substantial reduction of consumption in the next few years - it will be interesting to see if CO2 starts to drop and then it won't be long before the cooling trend we are currently in is attached to the economic contraction as "proof" that less consupmtion equals lower temperatures - never mind the cooling predating the crunch.
Ah the waters are about to get a lot muddier.....
-
If the world community really believes that the northern ice cover is about to disappear and that this is an unacceptable outcome, then the only way to prevent it is by engineering a solution. You can reduce carbon dioxide as quickly as any idealistic projection might imagine and it would have almost no effect on the natural cycles at work, so given our low level of understanding of these natural variations, we would have to intervene before the point of no return, which means basically the next five or ten years on current projections.
I hope people understand this, because the current approach is not only unrealistic (in terms of both overestimating human contributions to the warming and our real capability of reducing carbon dioxide), it is potentially harmful to the economy. In other words, it is a total waste of time except for the people who get to go on expensive junkets to Rio, Bali and (not so much) Montreal.
So if people want to solve this problem, they need to get together a large-scale plan to keep warm water out of the polar basin. The only obvious way of doing that is to build a large dam across the Bering Straits, something that would take probably five to ten years and perhaps a hundred billion dollars. I'm not sure on the engineering studies done by the Soviets in their heyday, but this project was once considered as a source of hydro-electric power generation so that concept must have involved a certain amount of flow back and forth, whether that would still reduce the inflow or not, I am not qualified to say.
You could also consider smaller but still very costly projects between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, and Novaya Zemlya and the Russian mainland.
Projects like this would have very large uncertainties about future climate outcomes, although it would stand to reason that if the arctic ocean was maintained at a current or slightly colder level, then Greenland and North America if not eastern Siberia would probably all remain near their current temperatures even if a natural warming effect was still underway. If the natural cycle seemed to be reversing, I suppose these dams could be engineered in such a way that water transfer could resume.
One would have to weigh this project and its costs and uncertainties against the alternatives, less uncertain and predictable disruptions to large populations and economic interests (not to mention entire island nations) about to be flooded by the northern meltdown (the rise in sea level likely to be 1 to 1.5 metres). That would probably cost far more than a hundred billion dollars (my billion is a thousand million by the way).
On the other hand, choosing to adapt rather than prevent would remove uncertainty -- we would know what we might be facing and what needed to be done, whereas the engineering solution would not guarantee a solution. The natural warming cycle might prove to be too robust to overcome even with this rather large shift in the natural balance of heat and energy.
Other engineering solutions that come to mind would include enhancing precipitation (snowfall) over northern Canada and Russia in transitional seasons to extend the length of the winter season back to perhaps early 20th century levels. That lies pretty much at the frontier of our current understanding and would have unknown but presumably large costs in the dozens of billions of dollars, at a minimum.
Another approach would be more aggressive desalinization in arid regions such as California, Mexico, Chile, Africa and Australia. Here the solution would be to remove excess seawater and provide large-scale irrigation for extension of agricultural production zones. Indirectly this might feed back into the global climate in terms of increased rainfall in these zones.
Large-scale engineering projects that were tried in the former Soviet Union often ended up in widespread natural disasters, such as the death of the Aral Sea, so I am not necessarily a big fan of this approach, but I am just putting these ideas out for discussion because if people really want to solve what they see as a problem, there is very little point in doing something very expensive and very ineffectual to seek a solution. If the problem needs solving, then engineering is probably the only chance we have, and we need to get started on the Bering Strait project very soon because it won't happen overnight.
I think there is still a lack of understanding just what a financial hole we are all in. All this talk about spending billions on grandiose engineering projects with no known benefit when we can't even mortgage a bloody semi is about as pie in the sky as you can get. Heads out of the sand, this global recession will take years to work through and all we can afford to do is react and adapt to changes that actually happen - that is the cheaper option and that is what will be done in the end despite all the political posturing out there. Predicting what it would cost to stop something we don't even know will happen, and to what magnitude, is 99.999% less likely than predicting how much the Olympics will cost when they are bid for - or any other engineering project on the drawing board come to that.
There is not enough spare cash in the world for a packet of maltesers, never mind an Arctic dam, we are in debt up to our back knackers and it will take decades to just pay that off - if we ever do. This isn't an environmental problem anymore, it is an economic one and the goal posts are not even on the same pitch.
-
Wouldn't you think 'runaway cooling', having happened during 'snowball earth', shows that the process of being 'stuck' in a positive feedback loop is a plausible position?
There may be ultimate limiting environmental factors to warming/cooling but that does not mean that the rapid period of global change during such an event would not leave the earth a near sterile ball.
We need to tease apart the 'sci-fi' version of oceans boiling away into space with the sci-reality version of oceanic poisoning due to acidification.
First of all depends where you start. From an Ice Age we experience "runaway" warming to where we are today. We see maximums and minimums in a pretty tight band (by Venus standards) which are readjustments of equilibria and therefore runaway nothing.
Second, how rapid do you think the changes are in switches between Ice Ages and Inter-glacials? None of these sterilised the Earth yet and we have absolutely NO evidence of that kind of rapid temperature change happening now.
And finally.... sci-reality oceanic poisoning? Where? We are still at one of the lowest CO2 concentrations in Earth's history. Where do you think all the life that made the white cliffs of Dover came from at a time when atmospheric CO2 was 3000ppm? It amazes me how these scientists make observations with no reference to millions of years of evidence that they are talking complete BS.
-
What about the photograph .half page spread
Whats that source ?
It clearly shows a ice free passage both sides, are you suggesting a blatant lie ?? regardless of the 150,000 comment
There's no lie about the photo it's the "human history" bit that's blx. Amundsen found the NW passage completely free of ice in 1908, who was around in Siberia to report if the same happened over there as well, and that is just a century not thousands of years. Are they saying this never happend in the MWP?
Gutter journalism and not even new - it was in the Independent yesterday. Now they are even copying crap.
-
mmm
food for thought
IF the report is true and the problem is how the heck do we ordinary folk find out then there are certainly questions to ask.
Is the hockey stick theory as untrue as the article above says?
Was the graph produced by the ex Met O boss as it says?
Who the heck is manipulating the IPCC.
Pity Im no longer part of the Met O as one of the regular Colloquia we held, top to bottom spread of forecasters and research staff would make an interesting question to ask?
I wish you were too John.
It is interesting to see papers start to produce stories like this, although being the Telegraph it is bound to be dismissed out of hand by the liberals (small 'l').
What I have banged on about for what seems like forever now is the danger of misrepresenting natural climate change and seriously damaging our economies when we just can't afford to make those kind of mistakes. I'm convinced a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions will not change the path of the climate globally, there are bound to be local differences and I'm not saying CO2 has no effect but definitely the mitigation proposed for this "threat" is an order of magnitude worse than even if we were to warm 4C in the next 100 years.
New Orleans getting smacked again will just fuel the smoke screen, and I'm at a loss what to do about it except let it run it's course.....
-
It's been a long time coming.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...8/31/do3105.xml
-
Hi Dev!
Though we were actively 'dissuaded' from open predictions earlier in the season it did seem a bit of a 'no brainer' to predict that last years single year ice would melt again this year (or was that just me???).
Now we are approaching 'min' it will be interesting to hear the final 'melt season wrap up' from the guys who mooted ice retention and would not accept this years inevitable meltdown. How they could still hold out that a thin slab of ice on a body of warm water would fare well intrigues me as , though my educational credentials do not include thermodynamics, I could see no other outcome (and posted as much) as we see today.
I would also like the folk who were caught out by this years melt to predict (plus or minus 2500km) the next few years melt. Will there be a gradual turn around and retention or are we really over the crest and on the downward, slippery slope, to an ice free Arctic (beyond the fabled 'tipping point')
Question. Are all the Arctic sea routes now open and if so is this a 'first'?
Hello everybody! Took a break of a few weeks as the circular arguements were getting me down. I thought I'd wait until the media caught on to the August melt I'd been watching and I've dropped back in exactly where I thought the discussion would be on this site.
Yes, it would have taken a particularly cold summer to stop first year ice succumbing this year. The fact we DIDN'T break the record from last year when there was so much vulnerable ice should be noted. Also I see a lot of movement in the pack and it appears to me that quite a bit of multi-year ice was lost again, and at the same time more first year ice remained than I thought it would. This confirms to me that ice loss is primarily ocean current driven and not through air temperature (as ice was lost in areas with little +ve anomoly). I'm glad we didn't get a new record for no more reason than it would be a gift to alarmists who have had little to crow about this year with substantial drops in temperature of the La Nina. What has been notable in the last few weeks is the ever increasing reporting of scientists coming out on the sceptic side of the arguement, particularly those alarmed by the punitive economic measures being mooted to combat the perceived threat at a time when the world can't afford these kind of mistakes. The economic measures, particualrly those of Europe and now even America, will not affect the rich but they will kill the poor - this will be the legacy of the great global warming scam.
Predictions - I see a warming off the coast of S America so a moderate El Nino could be on the cards. It will be interesting to see the affect on temperatures this Winter in correlation with PDO/AMO and SCs 23 and 24. Global warming may yet have it's swan song and with a Democrat President and Gore back in power plenty of time to wreek havoc with nasty capitalism and guarantee we never come out of this recession. So I think no great increase in ice year on year until the heat flow of ocean currents into the Arctic is reduced. In W Europe I see a warm Autumn followed by another plunge of the polar front taking storms across S England as they did this summer - get yer skis out up north!
I haven't a scooby what happens after that, too much can change in the next 6 months!
And finally, in answer to GWs 'first' Arctic route openings question - NO. I have before posted extracts of Amundsen's log from 1908 describing the NW passage as having "no ice as far as the eye can see" and newspaper reports from 1922 reporting huge loss of Arctic ice and an "inland sea" (sic) near the North Pole. We live in an information age and the last time this happened we didn't - this is the only 'first' we are experiencing. It has all happened before and it will happen again, and one day we will understand why.
But we don't yet.
-
Har Har! I see your graph GW and I raise you this!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...t.365.south.jpg
How come the anomoly doesn't read zero here?
-
What's even more interesting than the fact that this year's melt is more moderate than last year's melt is the fact that this year's melt is more moderate despite the fact that there is far less multi-year ice this year.
CB
That pesky Earth just won't do as it's told will it CB?
-
Thank you for you welcome Mark.
As described and shown in 4 tables a few graphs in the e-Book, carbon dioxide levels rise naturally during the long and short term cycles. It was actually etched in stone nearly 10,000 years ago that this cycle would be the warmest in over 400,000 years, and have the highest carbon dioxide levels.
Man was not burning that much fossil fuels 10,000 years ago, and 450,000 years ago.
Will come back to this forum in about 8 hours and answer posted questions.
Welcome from me as well Mr Dilley - good of you to make the personal effort to log on. Your answer did not cover the C14 issue that was raised and while I'm prepared to accept natural variability as some of the answer for CO2 increase in the last 30 years I'm also quite happy to accept that CO2 from fossil fuel burning is still doing the rounds in the atmosphere, and will do for decades to come. I don't see your theory accounting for the unusual short term rise in CO2 but over a longer cycle as a reaction to temperatures it makes perfect sense. Assuming CO2 lags temperature I would therefore expect we haven't seen the CO2 peak yet, global cooling or not.
Don't know what certain people's objection to buying the book is, what's 10 bucks in the quest for information? Good old Al charged $30 for his masterpiece in this country!
-
I see the press are reporting an Argentinian ice dam collapse.....never happened in mid winter before.....the glacier it comes from, one of the largest in Argentina, is also still melting in the depths of their winter........that also has never happened before. Who do they blame? AGW of course
It also happened in 1951.
), but it then lead me to want to investigate the claims as I have had an interest in weather and climate for over 20 years.
). I hope it won't turn out to be just another right wing sceptic politiking organisation, and it's base position of not denying climate change but disussing the actions we take is a good starting point, but I already note alarmists lining up to pooh-pooh it before it heaves itself off the runway so what influence it will ever bring to bear is another discussion entirely.
) on the subject 
Yorkshire, Lincolnshire And The Pennines Cold Spell Discussion
in Spring Weather Discussion
Posted · Edited by millennia
Well, woke up to an unexpected deluge this morning - forecast said the worst would miss Harrogate but the 12cm outside begs to differ!!!
Moved up from Gloucestershire last month and snow not been off the ground since - although I believe they will be buried tonight
.
Great to see a proper winter for a change but I get the feeling this will wear a little thin with everybody if this keeps up - remember the worst last year didn't come until February, when Gloucs ran out of grit and we were snowed in for 5 days!
While I know weather isn't climate it would help matters of the warm doomsayers would shut the F up for 10 minutes while we dig ouselves out