Posts by NomNomNom

Re: Interesting Conclusion...

"Anyone who thinks that a harmless gas that has a concentration of less than 0.04% in the atmosphere would lead to catastrophic runaway climate warming is a fruitcake."

would you also dismiss the risk 0.04% cyanide in a glass of water?

Re: Interesting Conclusion...

"An analagous diehard doctrine in climate physics went global two decades ago, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was conceived to insist that natural causes of climate change are minor compared with human impacts."

It's not a doctrine, it's what the science shows. Even skeptical climate scientists accept a doubling of CO2 causes about 1C global warming. 1C warming is more warming than happened over the entire 20th century. So yes the human component is dominating, we can expect even more warming in the future. And 1C is a very low end figure only supported by a handful of skeptical scientists. Most think the figure is somewhere around 3C.

On the otherhand the vast number of people claiming that a doubling of CO2 causes effectively zero global warming and man can't change the climate are invariably not climate scientists and are preaching pseudo-scientific twaddle.

It seems climate deniers are in the same bed as the creationists: fantasizing about paradigm shifts that simply won't happen. The actually paradigm shift has already passed: creationism used to be the paradigm. "climate changes are natural" used to be the paradigm. The shift was when scientists figured out evolution and man can cause climate change respectively.

Re: Not so fast...

Hansen's 1980s temperature predictions were remarkably accurate given that no-one else was expecting the world to warm at that time and that global temperature records were only a few years old. The world could have cooled or even stayed flat, but instead it warmed several tenths of a degree over subsequent decades just as Hansen predicted. Hansen's 1988 prediction did overshoot the actual warming trend by about 30%, mainly because Hansen's 1988 climate model was more sensitive than average models today, showing 4.2C warming per doubling of CO2 when today's models show an average of 3C per doubling.

The man not only pioneered climate models, but also global temperature records and was one of the only, if not THE only, person to call the warming that happened back in the 80s. So give him some slack and I recommend taking his warnings about the ongoing CO2 rise seriously.

Note that at no stage did Hansen's work, or the work of any climate scientist (lovelock isn't one) have the Earth boiling up or frying.

Re: Predictions...

"Another fact: There has been "global warming" on Mars as well. Must be our increased CO2"

There hasn't, it's a myth.

Re: Destruction of negative feedback mechanism

"a) The scary positive feedbacks which Hansen et al were warning about in the 1990's either don't exist or haven't triggered yet"

Positive feedbacks in climate exist and are always in play (lookup albedo feedback and water vapor feedback for example).

Re: Made his money.

"Unfortunately, most of the AGW faithful out there will continue bleating his "teachings" "

I have never heard anyone advancing Lovelocks views.

The attempts to put Lovelock at the centre of AGW is pathetic.

Re: Bugger.

Is James Lovelock a Dr? Or a climate scientist?

I think not.

Funny how that impression is being given though isn't it...

Re: Not so fast...

"So his projection overestimated the rise in temperature by 30% and you think that's good!? I could've got closer sacrificing a fucking chicken."

You are forgetting that the world could have cooled. In fact climate deniers were still insisting in the early 2000s that the earth hadn't warmed since the 80s.

Re: Not so fast...

"Ehm... there were many papers with (wildly different) temperature predictions published in 80's"

Such as? Give just two examples

Re: @Dr. Mouse I'm sorry

"With "intellectual" property they claim that somehow magically they should be allowed to both get the money and retain ownership of the product. The rational reason for this? There isn't any."

Yeah there is. The intellectual property prevents you from copying the product 1 million times and selling it yourself. With physical products there is a sufficient physical barrier preventing you from doing that.

Re: Facebook

Backed by the CIA isn't it?

Re: Manos

wrong link. It's public domain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBchFDwWY0

Re: Manos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBAMDPLo70o

Re: Wrong hat.

you can see and clear that embedded metadata. If it's built into the image itself then it would be harder to detect or remove.

Re: Would the enviromentalist/Green folks.....

"If we cant use nuclear, oil, coal or gas and cant use tidal ( due to the fact it might affect a breed of shrimp or some reed warbler's nesting site)."

Many environmentalists concerned at rising CO2 emissions have been advocating nuclear for years as part of decarbonization. The set includes renewables, nuclear, and the use of gas as a transitional replacement for coal. The sources that are universally derided are oil and coal, rather than all the sources you have listed.

Re: Look at history (geological that is)

"Unscientific and irrelevant. Human history is a tiny proportion of the history of this planet and hardly geologic time."

You can't turn round and berate someone for pointing out that the CO2 changes are not just unprecedented in human history, but even in human evolution, when you were the one to raise human history in the first place. You claimed: "Used to be that civilisations knew this and simply adapted. Water levels rise a bit, move inland some (hence evidence of civilisations found underwater). Rain levels go down and land becomes desert.......move. etc.etc.etc.""

In fact the CO2 changes are not just unprecedented in the timespan of human evolution, they may indeed be unprecedented in earth's history. When has the Earth faced a doubling of CO2 in just 3 centuries? There is no known past example of it doing so. This very well may be the first time it ever has happened. That's a far cry from your claim that "What we're seeing here has all happened before and will happen again in the future...Nothing to see here."

There is also another reason why the situation is unique and cannot be compared to the past so easily: we have 7 billion humans on the planet now and a huge amount of infrastructure built up in position of current climate, such as hundreds of cities near sea level.

The Earth's climate has been reasonably stable for the past 10,000 years. The real big climate changes happened before that. That's before civilization. I know correlation doesn't equal correlation but you have to wonder if the timing of the emergence of civilization and an unusually stable period in terms of climate might be related, and if so what that would mean to suddenly enter such a rapid and large climate change for effectively the first time in human history.

Pre-history was nomadic peoples. Who knows what hellish changes they lived through in terms of climate change. The mere fact they survived hardly tells us anything.

Re: The Teletubbies

"eh oh!"

shit they've found us!

aRRGGHHH (teletubbie rips marines stomach apart, intestines and guts go everywhere)

A giant baby's face in the sky laughs in delight

Re: Quentin Tarentino...

a better version of schindlers list where gibson asks each person in turn "are you jewish?" and if so, adds their name to his list

indeed on the occasion I am required to mix with the common folk I am well reminded of their foolishness. They will never learn and I quietly chuckle under my breath as I observe their silly comings and goings.

Re: "exposure to Register readers"

silence test subject 17.

Re: Now, that's strange

Creationists found deep inside a cave that has had scant exposure to the outside world for at least four million years share some of the same reason-resisting traits that other creationists are supposed to have developed in response to modern science.

Re: Is the tide turning?????

The arctic decline and antarctic increase are not thought to be connected. At least I haven't read of any attempt to connect them. Around the antarctic peninsula which has warmed significantly the sea ice has actually declined, it is around the rest of antarctica it has increased so maybe those areas have cooled - I don't know, but I doubt it because if there was an easy explaination there wouldn't be two other hypotheses I have heard. One that wind circulation changes are responsible and another that fresh water increase from the antarctic ice sheet is lowering salinity in the area which reduces the freezing point enabling more ice. I don't buy either really.

Re: Not on the BBC News

"How on earth (sic) are we supposed to make informed decisions as to what the effects of anthropological climate change are, if any, if we have no records other than those produced by proxy?"

Who says you are supposed to? What you are seeing is what you get. An accelerating decline in arctic sea ice since 1979 which may very well continue - almost certainly if the arctic keeps warming up. Noone knows for sure what will happen as a result. Reassured?

Re: Is the tide turning?????

no it's not a silly question, I think you are right - there's nothing special about any particular point, just the difference between the two extremes. I am not saying catastrophe will unfold just that it's a massive change for the arctic environment and very fast. It could have very big significance for weather in the UK during summer. I don't know. But articles like this pretending that it's just some non-event are kind of in denial.

Re: Lost my Berings

So with a "paltry" 30 years of data it's impossible to say what's normal but it is possible for you to conclude it's "almost certainty" part of a natural cycle? How convenient.

Plus a little "Arctic ice won't make a bit of difference to sea levels" strawman.

You must be a climate skeptic right?

Re: Is the tide turning?????

No you are being misled. Arctic sea ice is in decline and concerns about it are well founded.

The best depiction of what is actually happening to arctic sea ice is the following graph:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

Notice how far sea ice area has dropped in summer in recent years and how close it is now to the zero mark. The loss of ice is a state change. A barrier of ice at the surface has a big impact on absorbed/reflected sunlight, wave heights, evaporation and heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. It is a big deal for the summer arctic to switch from largely ice covered to largely ice free in a matter of decades.

Compare that to the Antarctic situation:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

It is a ludicrous strawman of this article that the Antarctic increase (can you see it in that graph?) "cancels" out the arctic summer decrease. First it isn't true, second whatever happens in Antarctica does not alter the significance of what is happening in the arctic and that summer sea ice is heading towards zero (even accelerating)

The register article also focuses on a maximum during the dead of "winter", which completely ignores the issue of summer loss approaching zero (in fact even winter sea ice area is trending downwards - but it's summer that is heading somewhere new - zero). In fact the article uses various other tricks to ignore that, including addressing an obscure greenpeace statement from 1999 and associating any concern with arctic sea ice with that statement - so if that statement is wrong clearly there isn't a problem right?

Third, one single year doesn't make a trend. Focusing on the current sea ice anomaly when it goes somewhat higher than normal is a common climate skeptic trick. Sea ice anomaly bounces around all the time. Every year it goes above normal at some point (but that's becoming less frequent). When it does a number of climate skeptics exploit that to trick the public with claims like "arctic ice now recovered to normal levels" or "despite fears arctic ice is at the same level it was 20 years ago". Yet the longterm trend is downwards. They ignore that by cherrypicking single dates.