The Nonsense That is Global Warming

[BUSHY]

Depends if you dismiss it as propaganda :lol:

It's not really the picture that some would paint of a lush Greenland (though some Icelandic propaganda would have us believe this) and more to do with a criminal fraternity saving their own skins by fleeing prosecution (and then sending home for the comforts of women and animals), never a good deal from the get go.

[Gray-Wolf]

Depends if you dismiss it as propaganda :lol:

I'm at a loss to understand your post BUSHY. Could you expand it a little please?

[Stratos Ferric]

I did reply GW, you asked over in the Polar Ice sets new minimum thread, my response was:

Gray-Wolf: I accept your point about folk law and the man on the ground having the best idea but and it's quite a big but, you have to allow for the human trait of exaggeration. As I've said before, I have family farming records going back for eons and it's quite clear from planting/harvesting dates, yields, weather records etc that we seem to go through cycles. However, having spent a lot of time as a nipper listening to their stories it's quite clear when comparing the records to those stories, there was a large element of fisherman's tales " it was this---------------------------------------big, honest". Word of mouth tends to be a bit like Chinese Whispers.

post 255

To this I would add, indigenous populations have always bordered on eeking out an existance; nowadays the contrast between a traditional lifestyle and a modern one are more stark than ever before. If I were an Inuit watching the increasing world interest in my part of the world, if I were reading the increasing levels of guilt the rest of the world was feeling, then I reckon I could add a sizeable dose of spin to my tale if it meant I could shave off a wafer of that guilt ridden wealth to my benefit. People who live on the edge of existance have cunning in bucketloads, they have to, to survive; I believe it to be a mistake to presume no guile.

Oh, and that's it for today, if you respond and I do not add further please accept it isn't from a desire to be inscrutable, just phenomenally busy; half the hotels in Bath want fresh wreaths and garlands instead of fake ones, I'm be-decking the halls with boughs of holly...

That's a contentious point Jethro. There is a branch of geography that relies on the folk record of the day to divine past events. Thus, one could read Dickens and Hardy (or come to that James Herriott) and suppose they were being romantic in their description of meteorological event, but it would be bizarre indeed for all authors at the time, accurate in other aspects of contemporary description, to all exaggerate, and in the same direction, weather matters. Ditto diarists (Pepys / Dr Johnson), ditto artists (e.g. Constable). Not ALL information is passed by word of mouth.

Perhaps, listening to you, I should question my own parent's telling of 1947 and knee deep snow. Perhaps it was only ever an inch deep. And perhaps all those pictures we see underwent the contemporary eqiuvalent of being touched-up?

Hell, maybe I should question my own memory of trudging thigh deep through a field of snow in 1979.

Don't let's rely on supposed - but unproven - exaggeration to make a point re AGW. Please please don't say that the best that sceptics can now do, having struggled to dismiss the present, is to try to redraw the historic baseline.

re the Mediterranean / Dead Sea / biblical floods. It is geologically probable that the Med did flood suddenly at the end of an ice age. There is a shelf at what might have been the isthmus: rising sea levels would have breached this, and could have inundated the basin beyond. The Red Sea / Dead Sea equally might have opened fairly suddenly as a result of tectonics - as I recall both are situated on plate boundaries.

Edited November 27, 2007 by Stratos Ferric

[jethro]

Thank you for your prompt attention Jethro. Though a pain I bet your glad your so busy!!!

I know the flood myths of the middle east/Med. are all 'jazzed up' quite a bit but you can still eek out the 'bones' of the tales Rapid flooding of inhabbited areas leading to re-location. I've even read a paper recently putting down the spread of farming into western europe as a result of the 'displacement' of these folk (so the practice didn't spread 'word of mouth' but was carried west by refugees).

I for one would expect similar 'bones' within the folk-law of these folk (carribou decline, ice pack failure, seal hunt decline, mozzie infestations etc,etc) but the 'folk law' is mute on such things.

I am glad I'm busy, in theory it means the cost of crimbo is always taken care of, in reality hotels are a tight-fisted lot and it ends up paying out nearer Easter; I've done it for many years but still cannot get my head around why they are quite happy to pay (in some cases) many hundreds of pounds for a few weeks decorations but won't shell out on a few trees which will last for hundreds of years???

Folklore and myth; I don't dispute that the bones capture the essence of a tale but it comes back to that old cause&correlation thing, too much is currrently being explained away as AGW for any "real" picture to be seen. Take the Polar Bears for example, popular media reports have us believing they are declining, will become extinct, yet the reality is over the last 20 odd years, they have increased from 5,000 to nearer 25,000, they're doing very nicely, thank you very much. A poor lost seal which returned to Spain recently; we had the obligatory coverall sentence at the end of the article saying scientists are wondering if global warming was the cause. It's ludicrous. If it had headed south due to following food supplies in warmer currents, it wouldn't have been the only one, they travel en masse; much more likely explaination is there is a problem with its' direction sensors but that would have been a far less attention grabbing headline. Mammals and birds are far more likely to go adrift because the Earths' magnetic field is fluctuating and declining, but you never hear that mentioned.

That's a contentious point Jethro. There is a branch of geography that relies on the folk record of the day to divine past events. Thus, one could read Dickens and Hardy (or come to that James Herriott) and suppose they were being romantic in their description of meteorological event, but it would be bizarre indeed for all authors at the time, accurate in other aspects of contemporary description, to all exaggerate, and in the same direction, weather matters. Ditto diarists (Pepys / Dr Johnson), ditto artists (e.g. Constable). Not ALL information is passed by word of mouth.

Perhaps, listening to you, I should question my own parent's telling of 1947 and knee deep snow. Perhaps it was only ever an inch deep. And perhaps all those pictures we see underwent the contemporary eqiuvalent of being touched-up?

Hell, maybe I should question my own memory of trudging thigh deep through a field of snow in 1979.

Don't let's rely on supposed - but unproven - exaggeration to make a point re AGW. Please please don't say that the best that sceptics can now do, having struggled to dismiss the present, is to try to redraw the historic baseline.

re the Mediterranean / Dead Sea / biblical floods. It is geologically probable that the Med did flood suddenly at the end of an ice age. There is a shelf at what might have been the isthmus: rising sea levels would have breached this, and could have inundated the basin beyond. The Red Sea / Dead Sea equally might have opened fairly suddenly as a result of tectonics - as I recall both are situated on plate boundaries.

Thank you for that Stratos, you managed to get a raucous belly laugh out of me this time, just what I needed.

I'm all for folk playing devils advocate but you really cannot expect to have your cake and eat it too. How many times have you discounted my family farming records? You've argued vociferously that they are not a reliable record of the ebbs and flows of the climate in this country, despite the fact that they are comprehensive and go back to the early 1800's. Word of mouth is fraught with problems but it should be taken account of and not discounted, but documented written word going back quite a few generations occupation of the same location, slap bang in CET land is inadmissible? Come on, you cannot have it both ways.

[Gray-Wolf]

WWF seem to have a different take on the fate of the Polar Bear

http://www.panda.org/news_facts/newsroom/i...m?uNewsID=89940

I'd love to compare notes with your 'population Boom' article Jethro (and it's source).

http://www.savebiogems.org/polar/

Not the above,

http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/polarbear/issues.htm

or above, but maybe here;

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/21653.html

Do we think the "Conservative Voice" (staunch Republicans) may have issues?

Edited November 28, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[Stratos Ferric]

...

Thank you for that Stratos, you managed to get a raucous belly laugh out of me this time, just what I needed.

I'm all for folk playing devils advocate but you really cannot expect to have your cake and eat it too. How many times have you discounted my family farming records? You've argued vociferously that they are not a reliable record of the ebbs and flows of the climate in this country, despite the fact that they are comprehensive and go back to the early 1800's. Word of mouth is fraught with problems but it should be taken account of and not discounted, but documented written word going back quite a few generations occupation of the same location, slap bang in CET land is inadmissible? Come on, you cannot have it both ways.

A single record is no more an assessment of the climate of the UK than my family's bank balance is a statement of the state of the UK economy through time. It might that one of the misapprehensions under which you repeatedly labour is placing too much store on the family record. Does it include temperature for example? It is not a case of me having it both ways so much as one of you attaching far too much store to a single record, for which I have no evidence whatsoever that there is associated measurement and consistency of monitoring.

The point with word of mouth is not to trust a single source, but to cross reference. It would be remarkable indeed if Hardy, Dickens, Blackmore, Bronte et al imagined the same climatic regime. On top of which there is adequate data in the historical archive: newspapers etc to more than validate climate change.

What you have never explained is why your family's record seems to be so much at odds with what has actually happened and been recorded elsewhere. If I tend to dismiss it it's because you've never provided quantitative assessment, and that in any case it lies distinctly at odds to the rest of the data we have available.

Crops may well go in cycles, but the correlation between crop yields and climate is far from precise and linear.

Edited November 29, 2007 by Stratos Ferric

[davehsug]

Here's a victory for AGW! I was made to seriously rethink my position by Tuesday's splendid Power of planet Earth on BBC2.

Can anyone tell me, if I had gone to one of those frozen lakes in Siberia 100 years ago, would I have got the flames from the methane in there in the same way?

I have not moved from sceptic to pro, but it was the first thing I've seen, which, if it was something completely new, makes me question my position.

Dave

[Stratos Ferric]

Here's a victory for AGW! I was made to seriously rethink my position by Tuesday's splendid Power of planet Earth on BBC2.

Can anyone tell me, if I had gone to one of those frozen lakes in Siberia 100 years ago, would I have got the flames from the methane in there in the same way?

I have not moved from sceptic to pro, but it was the first thing I've seen, which, if it was something completely new, makes me question my position.

Dave

If they were forzen no, but there's a lot of bog and marsh across Siberia, and elsewhere in the N Eurasian Plane, from which rotting vegetation has always emitted methane.

[davehsug]

If they were forzen no, but there's a lot of bog and marsh across Siberia, and elsewhere in the N Eurasian Plane, from which rotting vegetation has always emitted methane.

Thanks SF. Maybe you didn't see the programme. The lakes were frozen & snow covered. They cleared the snow away & bubbles were visible in the ice. They melted the ice slightly & then added a flame & a vast amount of methane leaked forth & formed a shooting flame from the hole.

It was stated that this was as a result of permafrost melting during the summer & slipping into the lakes. If this was indeed something new, it made me think.

Dave

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks SF. Maybe you didn't see the programme. The lakes were frozen & snow covered. They cleared the snow away & bubbles were visible in the ice. They melted the ice slightly & then added a flame & a vast amount of methane leaked forth & formed a shooting flame from the hole.

It was stated that this was as a result of permafrost melting during the summer & slipping into the lakes. If this was indeed something new, it made me think.

Dave

Reports , from actual witnessing of the events, from the 'Polar year' team in the high Arctic this summer (apart from having to live through +20c temps instead of the 5c average for the region) of hillsides slumping down into the valleys (and exposing bare rock below) would seem to confirm the process. The fact that bare rock is being exposed would confirm, to me at least, that this is a new event as the soils/peats that are flowing (through solufluction) were formed in the millenia before the first ice encroached and halted soil/peat formation.

I'm sure some wit or other will deny that this event is new or novel but you can use your own mind to decide!

Edited December 1, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[BUSHY]

The fact that bare rock is being exposed would confirm, to me at least, that this is a new event as the soils/peats that are flowing (through solufluction) were formed in the millenia before the first ice encroached and halted soil/peat formation.

Not so -- these peat bogs are fairly young and have been dated at 9000 to 12000 yrs old, being formed after the glacier retreat of the last (ongoing?) ice age.

[Gray-Wolf]

Not so -- these peat bogs are fairly young and have been dated at 9000 to 12000 yrs old, being formed after the glacier retreat of the last (ongoing?) ice age.

So ,you are asserting that it is at least 12,000 yrs since the bedrock was exposed????

This is an area covered with ice/permafrost until recently and so I would suggest, it being within the Arctic circle, that we have to look back to a climate where 'peat bog formation' was possible (checkout upland moors in U.K. or Irish Bogs for a hint at the climate we are needing). I cannot find a period of temperate climate within the arctic circle (for the thousands of years necessary for peat bog formation) since before the last ice age commenced. I will again gladly be updated if my knowledge is flawed and await your statistics/data sets but it would appear to me we are looking in terms of 100 thousand years+ and not 10-12 thousand years.

[BUSHY]

Here from your own fav. source

A key finding of the research, unrelated to modern climate change, is that the bogs themselves came into being suddenly about 11,500 to 9,000 years ago-much earlier than previously thought-and expanded very rapidly to fill the niche they now occupy. Their appearance coincides with an abrupt and well- documented spike in the amount of atmospheric methane recorded in ancient climate records. The finding counters previously held views that the bogs were largely unchanged-and unchanging-over millennia. The rapid appearance of the bogs provides strong evidence that this is not the case.

link

[Stratos Ferric]

Thanks SF. Maybe you didn't see the programme. The lakes were frozen & snow covered. They cleared the snow away & bubbles were visible in the ice. They melted the ice slightly & then added a flame & a vast amount of methane leaked forth & formed a shooting flame from the hole.

It was stated that this was as a result of permafrost melting during the summer & slipping into the lakes. If this was indeed something new, it made me think.

Dave

I did happen on a repeat, and the effects were fairly dramatic weren't they?

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi BUSHY!

Close but no cigar! The areas that were being studied were Greenland (NW) and Northern Alaska ,nowhere near Siberia!!. You'll need to go back to the papers I'm afraid as, in the areas where the phenomena was witnessed the bogs had been sealed since before the last ice age.

[laserguy]

Ok,I was going to keep away from these threads for a while but a rash of news items have changed all that. Academics at the University of Manchester appear to have far too much time on their hands as they have apparently worked out the 'carbon footprint' (jeez I hate that phrase so much ) left behind by the Xmas dinners that will be served up this year in the UK. For what it's worth,it equals 6,000 car trips around the world,or 20Kg of carbon dioxide per dinner for eight people. Reminds me of being in my late teens when I spent weeks working out the number of possible permutations of chess piece positions. The answer to that one by the way is stupendously huge. I've still got it written down and my answer was pretty close to the mark if a recent Google enquiry is to be believed. Number of atoms in the universe? Ha,small beer! Probably a bunch of bored Uni types that worked out the number of atoms in the universe,too! I too was bored at the time. Anyways,I digress. What was the point of finding out the carbon footprint of Xmas dinner? I foresee it being banned pretty soon,or at least some folk being made to feel so guilty that they don't bother. Absolutely ridiculous.

Next,Al Gore on accepting his Nobel Prize: "humanity is facing a planetary catastrophe because of climate change". Sorry Al,it's facing planetary nonsense due to people like you. In my considered opinion the guy is a total fraud out on the make. Nothing more.

Then there was a major news article about the ice-storm which has crippled vast swathes of the US - Missouri,Kansas,Nebraska,Oklahoma,Iowa,Texas etc,with no imminent let-up and worse to come. That this rubbishes 'global warming' will bring howls of protest from supporters of AGW,but come on,it's starting to wear a little thin now. What sort of global temperature rise are we supposed to have seen over the last forty years,about 1C (max )or so we are told. How it is possible to arrive at such a figure I just do not know. Some clever clogs will try to explain it now,but I cannot accept that it is possible to arrive at anything like an accurate figure over such a period of time covering something as vast as the Earth. Re my calculations of chess moves;deliberately included here to try and dissuade some from thinking they've got one up on me on intellect and that I must be some type of no-brainer. Still,the global temps don't 'add up', to me. Some folk will believe anything. Anyways,we are told that it's the initial big hit of CO2 which has the biggest effect and that subsequent additions have a buffering effect. Why,better keep on pumping it out then so we'll sooner reach the point where it has NO effect. Total atmospheric CO2= 0.038%. The %age of that which has been introduced by man is but a pea compared to the Sun!

Global Warming? Quite possibly nonsense. Man-made global warming? Definitely nonsense. Get your wallets out, 'cos that's what it all boils down to. The things we are seeing are natural and nothing new. Climate changes,the Earth changes. It's what it does,it cannot be any other way. Why is it so difficult to accept that?

[jethro]

[lightnin]

pfffff global warming my butt, summertime this june and july were cold and wet if global warming is true then why arnet we have a scorching summers or winters??? its all baloney if you ask me!!! =P

[VillagePlank]

Wow, you've convinced me.

Really?

[VillagePlank]

That's not very sports-woman off you, now, is it?

[Bobby]

pfffff global warming my butt, summertime this june and july were cold and wet if global warming is true then why arnet we have a scorching summers or winters??? its all baloney if you ask me!!! =P

Lol. Not even worth a reply.

[jethro]

A festive thought....

Listening to the local brass band playing carols outside Tesco's tonight, I was struck by the words of one of my favourite carols:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Written in 1872 by Christina Rossetti. Even way back then, there were moans about the lack of winters of old; see, told you it was nothing new.

[Gray-Wolf]

PEEERRLEEEZE!

A christian hymn harking back to the non fictional solstice birth of a desert dwelling tribe member.....loo-oh-oh-ng ago????

You've either imbued or imbibed too much of the Christmas spirit surely???

To think that the temporary fluctuation in our summer climate, due to a dying icecap 'oop North', somehow holds global significance a is on a par with the Southern States U.S. Senators who call prayer meetings to implore the 'Great man with the beard' to give them some rain yet vote against any AGW bill!!!!!

Maybe they're the same 'hue' of personality, just from different continents?

Edited December 12, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

Perhaps I should have covered it in smilies :lol:

[jethro]

http://science-sepp.blogspot.com/2007/12/p...ec-10-2007.html