wysiwyg

Beautiful pics of a beautiful place. thanks for sharing - cheered me up

Me neither. I have faith in the BAS scientsists but not in the BBC WS reporter. If I piddle in the sea for long enough I could cause that as well A sea level rise of 25cm would require 361million km^2 * 0.25/1000 = 90250 Km^3 of water or about 100000 KM^3 of ice So 3.5km * 30km * ?how thick? = amount of ice loss per year - well let's just say its 1KM thick. Thats 100KM^3 of ice per year which fits other observations of total ice loss: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/306/5694/255 This paper claims a rise of 0.2mm per year. Maybe I wasn't joking when I said I could P that fast Seriously, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of the scale here - not doubting how the scientists do their work. It is little wonder though that there is so much skepticism around when 'respected' media undertakes such sloppy reporting. That guy based with the BAS has a responsibility to report accurately if nothing else.

Interesting - I don't know very much about glaciers but I would have thought that they speed up when snow and ice from precipitation is added to their 'nursery' areas. If it was melting would it not just recede backwards? Also, how do they calculate these sea level rises is it a simple x tonnes of ice melts to create y litres of water or do they take into account the net because of the new ice/snow added to the glacier's catchment?

Precisely - well put. I think this link is in the pinned section but I'll post it here again as I personally think it's one of the most balanced views wrt CC that I have ever seen. (dont be fooled by the temperature graphs being from Wiki - it's actually Hadley data) http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

I was guilty as well - WysiLand - no you don't want to be there..........ever! :lol: If you must

No not really - this is better than the bit where we got lost in FFT land imo I think the distinction between individual bloggers/media editors who happen to have a science background and the scientists who actually roll up their sleeves and do the research is fundamental to this whole debate. Unfortunately only time will reveal the truth at the science debate level. I think most scientists with a professional interest in the debate are smart enough to not jump in and immediately debunk other scientists' work without some very careful deliberation of what the outcome of their own work will be. That fact to me clearly defines the difference between media/blog scientists and those actually active in the research and literature.

To take that example a step further. On thing that all scientists/engineers know regardless of discipline, is that disagreement leads to delay and inertia. All things being equal, scientists and engineers will work together from several disciplines to reach a consensus and move on. The only problem with this nice teamwork environment is when politicians and business gets involved and that is when the scientists are forced into 'taking sides' scenarios - sound familiar?

I would say that on a day to day basis it locally affects the weather in coastal regions due to the changing tides.

No but you would probably go and see your doctor if a dentist or optician pointed out a more worrying medical trend as a result of their routine observations. I am not disputing the point that the Hadley staff are experts but you can bet your life that they are a mix of scientists with first degrees in fundamental science - maths, physics, biology, chemistry. I take your point that there aren't necessarily widely published cases of climate scientists accusing skeptics of fraud. That was my whole point - and yours too I think. As far as I am concerned blogosphere is not science reporting and it doesn't matter what the blogger's discipline is - it is media because the comments in it are not peer reviewed, they are personal opinion (and there is a distinct lack of quality control too) The work of Svensmark et al is a classic example of a piece of scientific research that is simply trying to establish a link between sun activity and warming/cooling. The next logical step is to quantify the effect, if it exists, so that we understand its forcing vector relative to other forcing/feedback effects. IMO the work is not being done to debunk AGW but simply to find another piece of a very complex jigsaw. I have to put up with people with no scientific background whatsoever telling me how to do my job so I think I could handle a respected climatologist giving me a few tips from a differing perspective . That's the whole point - as a scientist you broaden your understanding by challenging established theory to gain a greater understanding of what is going on. WRT the GH effect - again the quoted 'scientist' is taking established research on GH theory and quoting it in a very polarised stance. Media not science! Water may be a greenhouse feedback mechanism but that assumes a completely responsive system. Even negatiive feedback can fail to prevent a destabilised system if it leads or lags by a significant amount.

The problem there is that 'climate science' is still governed by the fundamental rules of physics as we know them. My physics teacher at college used to pour scorn all over the study of chemistry by implying that it was merely a tiny branch of physics studying the interactions of the outer electron shell of atoms. A bit extreme but kinda true in a way! The reality is that whilst many scientists not 'trained' in climate science may not know as much about climate as the climate scientists, they generally do know about physics and the associated mathematics. Indeed I also believe that there aren't that many gifted climate scientists who truly understand the climate per se from the perspective of all the physics, maths, chemistry and biology that go into the field. Both the previous articles posted allude to this as well (biased towards AGW admittedly). It is surely only natural for physicists (including me) to to look at and be fascinated/driven/inquiring about the area of climate research that crosses so many disciplines. To imply that their critiscism carries less weight than a trained climatologist is a little unfair imho. EDIT: in response to your edit Dev. No not at all. I think that is the point I'm trying to make i.e. that the media turns this into a competition between scientists when that is not the case. Scientists do what they are trained to do and will willingly accept critiscism on the grounds that that is how it (science) works.

http://www.ecoworld.com/Home/Articles2.cfm?TID=386 A spin-off link from the one posted by LG a few minutes ago - again it is media and clearly biased towards anti-AGW but worth a read. Maybe fraud is too strong a word but to me a lot of this early 'warming' science is just a little to quick to reach conclusions and it is only reasonable for people to cast doubt on those conclusions (Particularly against the associated political backdrop). The way I see it is that we have had a raft of science in the past ten years that has produced a fair wadge of 'evidence' that GW can be attributed to humans (largely due to CO2). It is only natural that counter evidence will now start to surface, not because the sceptics want to deliberately debunk the AGW work, but because that is the natural consequence of what scientists do. The key here is that scientists will try to challenge work that contains assumptions and their work will focus on obtaining better data and analysis techniques to either confirm the assumptions or move towards exposing them as incorrect. The knock-on effect is that the work following the re-assessed assumption will be re-done in light of the new findings. Thus the scientific arguments will shift and not necessarily appear in parallel.

if you are looking for a vehicle less than say 4 years old I would say that if pollution is your prime concern you should be looking at the following: Fuel economy - but look for independently reviewed long-term road tests as opposed to going just by what the manufacturer states. If you want a diesel make sure it has the latest (2nd generation) common-rail injection technology (ford, peugeot, honda are good examples) Look at weight and drag factor (CD figures - lower is better) Smaller engines - how much performance are you prepared to sacrifice in the name of clean Some tyre-types are claimed to give reduced rolling resistance helping fuel econ If you really are serious then you could also look at how much of the vehicle is recyclable when it finally is scrapped. i'm sure there are some other factors but these I think are a good start.

Fair enough but I think that 'unplanned pregnency' as a result of recreation is not what is driving the world's journey towards overpopulation atm

Yes my bottom is quite smart i just based it on 50 litres of water weighing 50Kg, petrol is about .75 density of water 10 litres/100km etc etc etc bla bla bla bla OOOO er missus was that my bottom? :lol: EDIT: Seriously though petrol/diesel is predominantly hydrogen and carbon - lets say ~ 5 carbon atoms to every 12 hydrogen. Based on atomic mass Carbon = 12 Hydrogen = 1 so 60:12 Carbon so fuel is 83% carbon (give or take)

Great link - thanks Dev. I should have found that instead of posting all that clap-trap above :lol:

Well based on a back-of-fag-packet calc i reckon that you will put somewhere in the region of 2500Kg of fuel in the car so perhaps not so staggering after all

(Teal'c ON) Indeed! (Teal'c OFF) Didn't want to complicate my simplified explaination with your correct interpretation of the results. FFT analysis also has some limitations in dealing with non-stationary data. (stationary data is (loosely by me) defined as data in which the mean and variance do not change over time) easiest to explain by example A stationary signal might be typified by a speaker emitting a continuous tone, whereas A non-stationary signal might be typified by morse-code being emitted by the same speaker (Electrocardiogram data is also a classic example of non-stationary time based data) To cut a long story short - the sunspot data sets, whilst displaying a fairly periodic 11 year frequency have longer 'potential cycles' that are likely to infer that the data is actually quite non-stationary, further indicating that a straightforward FFT is probably not the best method of showing up these longer cycles. Indeed this is the case for many phenomenon in the Earth's climate system. An 'extension' of the FFT known as wavelet analysis (don't ask ) is more commonly used in recent years to analyse sunspot, ENSO, tree ring data, etc etc - The key is that wavelet analysis can detect and represent (more robustly than FFT) non-stationary data by allowing frequency variations to be 'mapped' back onto the time series. The bottom line is that there is reasonable evidence to suggest the possible cycles of the sun in short term (~11 year cycles) and much longer term cycles as quoted by BFTP. OK the very bottom line is that this, and the previous few posts only try to establish the existence of solar cycles - there is a long way to go imo before we can nail the link between them and the climate

Vote them out of office!

FFT = Fast Fourier Transform. In simplest terms it is a mathematical method of converting time series data into a frequency 'spectrum'. An FFT of recent sunspot data plotted as intensity on the y axis versus frequency on the x axis will likely show a large peak at around 11 years with low data either side of it i.e. Raw Data ==> FFT with x axis = inverse of cycles per year Power is an arbitrary representation of sunspot activity on the y axis in this graph hope this helps

Agreed - I somewhat oversimplified my argument in response to a relatively simplified example previously quoted by VP.

Nice one - great pics.

The concept of telephone 'numbers' as numbers is flawed imo. They are actually a ) codes such that we could equally well have assigned letters or arbitrary symbols to represent unique identifiers for each station and, b ) they do not relate to any physical variable quantity in the way that temperature 'numbers' do Ok I see where you are coming from with this. I think the problem here is something that I maybe alluded to a post or so ago. The mean 'on its own, in isolation is meaningless'. However, when we use the term mean in these types of debates it is a misrepresentation of what we are actually quoting simply because we are not attaching any statistical significance. In your examples you would have maybe three or four hundred point readings of temperature averaged together to give a pair of averages, one for the UK and one for France. In relation to each other they would be statistically significant. If we then take another say five hundred readings from around the globe then the significance of the UK and France's mean values are much less regardless of whether they add or subtract from the overall mean for the globe. We may or may not choose to remove these two values based on whether they are outliers or not. Agreed if we remove one and not the other then we would skew the data and it may well be meaningless. However, I think in reality that we would want to look at these individual data points in relation to whether they are anomalous for their region and as both of these figures probably would be then I guess they would both bite the dust as far as including them in the overall mean. Again if you take the second example you gave whereby we could cause a 1 deg c shift in the global mean this would again only be significant if we saw varience of our other 498 worldwide readings on these levels. If every one of the 500 readings bar UK and France showed varience of the order of +/-0.05 deg C then the UK and France would clearly be outliers and we would remove them. Wysi

I think there is probably a fair bit of work goes into doing just what you suggest i.e. removal or correction of the outliers to give a more accurate and representitive mean. That in itself implies that we could massage the figures to show anything we like in theory but I think that is unlikely here as we are talking about scientists that actually do this type of analysis because they want the truth and accept that the 'modified' data will be peer reviewed for incosistencies and errors. The fact that the 'headline' figures get spun into all sorts of potential scenarios is quite a different matter!

The telephone book analogy has been done before - imho it's relevant to statistics but not to the climate change issue. There is no correlation between phone numbers and anything afaik! During the last ice age the globally averaged climate would have been far cooler than it is now but extremes of climate would have occurred on a day-to-day basis. Can we really ignore mean global temperature as one (of many) indicators of climate change? I can see your point wrt pinning human futures on a statistic but I think you might just be oversimplifying the issue a tad. Mean temperature trends are the best measure of climate change that we have but, as I previously stated, i don't think anyone is realistically taking one single statistic in isolation and plotting the future of humanity from it.

Agreed and in a proper statistical analysis outliers would be taken into account. We could argue all day about statistics but we have to reach a point where we accept one or other methods of quantifying climate variability. The mean global value is the best 'headline' value that we have but no serious 'scientist' (including us lay-scientists ) is going to accept either the mean value on its own or isolated extreme outliers without proper statistical coroberation.