Global Warming and Basic Science

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Basic science and liberals, never the twain shall meet. Curt at Flopping Aces has covered the story regarding bad temperature data from Hansen’s Y2K error and the change in the U.S. leaderboard. However, there is a more basic error with the global warming cult that I would like to address. Remember the dire predictions for Europe following Chernobyl and the Iraqi oil fires causing a nuclear winter? All were in error. The fallout area in Chernobyl was much, much less then predicted and the suggestion by Carl Sagan that the Iraqi oil fires would generate a small scale nuclear winter was an embarrassing blunder. Why did intelligent men commit such major errors? One, they drifted outside of their error of expertise. For instance, a man who designed nuclear bombs may not be the best scientist to predict fallout. The second area is that they allowed science to become politicized. Thus, it was no longer science.

This politicization has allowed the libs, who are never as smart as they think they are, to miss some basic points about the climate. First of all, what drives the climate?

What causes the Earth’s climate to change?

Climate change is complex—there are many dynamics involved. A major factor may be the relationship between the Earth and the Sun.

Astronomer Milutin Milankovitch (1879 – 1958) studied the variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth’s axis. He theorized that these cyclical changes and the interactions among them were responsible for long-term climate changes.

Milankovitch studied three factors:

1. Changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis;
2. Variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun; and
3. Precession: changes in how the tilt of the axis is oriented in relation to the orbit.

the source is here.

The episodic nature of the Earth’s glacial and interglacial periods within the present Ice Age (the last couple of million years) have been caused primarily by cyclical changes in the Earth’s circumnavigation of the Sun. Variations in the Earth’s eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession comprise the three dominant cycles, collectively known as the Milankovitch Cycles for Milutin Milankovitch, the Serbian astronomer who is generally credited with calculating their magnitude. Taken in unison, variations in these three cycles creates alterations in the seasonality of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. These times of increased or decreased solar radiation directly influence the Earth’s climate system, thus impacting the advance and retreat of Earth’s
the source is here.

Funny how these facts never make Al Gore’s talking points. But of course there may be a simpler explanation for climate change. It is not the rotation or aix or orbit around the Sun, it may be the Sun itself.

Sun’s Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun’s radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth’s climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun’s increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.

“This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change,” Willson said.

In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era.

“Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more,” Willson told SPACE.com today.

So, in another words, climatology is a subject better left for astronomers then biologists and environmentalists. Thus environmentalists may not be the best scientist to predict climate change. But it actually gets more confusing then this, as plate tectonics may also play a hand in climate change.

So the Changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis, Variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit, Precession, plate tectonics, a change in the Sun’s output, (words liberals never use in any of their articles) and co2 emissions all may play a part in the earth’s climate. But according to the liberals, it is all man made CO2 emissions and it is all proven.

Stick with one factor, ignore all the others, and beat the hell out of anyone who disagrees.

That is Al Gore. That is liberal science.

I am not saying CO2 emissions play no part in climate change. What I am annoyed with is that the scientific community has allowed itself to become politicized and thus may be missing some important data on our climate. I would even support Kyoto if it was a fair agreement that did not exempt the third world and was not so destructive to our economy. For I still believe the environment and economy are not mutually exclusive concepts.

But the blame America first crowd once again shows they lack any ability to think outside of current liberal thought.

The danger here is not just that by focusing on just CO2 emissions and burning at the stake anyone who disagrees we may be missing other important signs concerning our climate, but that real danger is that the scientific community will continue to be politicized and will give us more global warming, nuclear winters, and other ideas that are based more on politics then science.

What we need is real, un-politicized science, not this.

And I am not willing to destroy our economy and put hundreds of thousands out of work because of bad politics and not science.

Crossposted from Baltimore Reporter

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Well said, well written.

Much of what you written is quite true. Unfortunately, politics has crept into science and has colored not only the critical thinking necessary to objectively analyze data but also has colored the ability to draw proper conclusions supported by the data.

As an analytical chemist myself, many scientists are prone to give an opinion outside of their area of expertise. As you pointed out, the Chernobyl reactor accident and the Kuwaiti oil field fires are prime examples. In both cases, guesses were bandied about as expert scientific opinion. Even now, we have very little reliable scientific data with regard to both incidents. If another similar incident was to happen again (either a Chernobyl type reactor accident or a mass oil field fire), the same guesses would be rolled out again. The only difference is that the scientist offering his “expert opinion” would preface everything with “the Chernobyl reactor accident taught us …” or the “Kuwaiti oil field fires taught us …” knowing full well the empirical scientific data is very limited or does not exist.

On the global warming topic and other climatological issues, our knowledge is still rather limited. The mathematical climate models that have been used in the global warming debate are basically the same ones used to predict tomorrow’s weather and weather for the coming week to ten days. The models used in climate studies are “tweaked” in which a greater number of assumptions are used. Because of this, climate variations caused by other sources are minimized. (Since I’m reaching the limit of my own scientific knowledge on the topic, I’ll discontinue any further discussion.)

Finally, when any scientific study includes the phrase “… it is the consensus …,” you can be pretty well assured the data has been worked and re-worked to support a pre-determined conclusion.

The media has been downplaying the significance of a 0.15 degree “readjustment”. Here is what people need to understand: 0.15 degrees per decade is the approximate rate of the claimed “global warming” over the 20th century. Reducing those temps by 0.15 degrees COMPLETELY wipes out a decade’s worth of “warming”. What it means is that there has been absolutely none, zero, nada, zilch, squat “global warming” since 1998. Does everyone understand the significance of that? There HAS BEEN NO WARMING since 1998.

That is not a “minor” thing.

Crosspatch, you idiot, when are you going to understand the difference between a US mean and a global mean?

As to science being politicized – what do you saps think climatology is? Who do you think conducts this research? There are entire atmosphere & planetary sciences departments that study this stuff. Who do you think Hansen is? He’s not an “environmentalist”, he’s a scientist working for NASA.

“That study this stuff” and get wrong over and over again. Just say bah! you little sheepie.

Already dealt with your “this is a US mean only” crap on the last post which you ignored.

saurabh, first of all, if the US, which represents quite a large area over quite a span of the Western Hemisphere from nearly the tropics to the Arctic hasn’t warmed at ALL since 1998, then it isn’t “global” warming, is it? And we can add to the fact that the Southern Hemisphere hasn’t warmed EITHER.

The majority of “global warming” seems to be coming from data from a very small number of countries. These countries have also experienced significant urbanization since WWII. China is a particular example. In order to calculate “global warming” station data from China and the former Soviet Union are included. The problem is that some of the stations that were quite rural only 20 years ago are now completely urbanized. A worse problem is that some of the stations have undergone undocumented moves. None of the Chinese data include the station metadata that document changes in location or the nature of the location itself. When you are looking at long term changes in the order of only one degree per century, these things are very important.

Basically, the “global” network is using garbage data and even in the US, the surfacestations.org project of Anthony Watts is showing that MOST recording sites do not meet the network’s own specifications for positioning requirements.

So not only has there been no warming, the data we are getting is too hot anyway because of recording temperatures in the middle of asphalt parking lots, on rooftops, next to incinerators and near jet aircraft parking areas.

All of the properly positioned sites show flat to cooling since 1998. Most of the world network is showing the result of urbanization near the recording stations, and not climate change.

Might want to have a look at this pdf document.

And before you go dismissing it as a product of energy industry funded research, keep something in mind. The energy industry has no vested interest in warming or cooling. They make money either way. If it is warming, they make money from energy used for air conditioning. If it is cooling, they make money from energy used for heating. What the energy industry wants is a clear picture of what is coming so they can allocate resources to the proper energy production mix to meet demand.

If there is any industry that wants a clear picture of what climate is doing, it is the industry that provides the power for climate control in residential and commercial space.

It strikes me that there is an apparent irrational aspect to all the quibbling and nay-saying going on in forums like this.
One can’t help noticing that you often use uncertainty and the fact that we still don’t know a whole lot about how our climate works to posit doubt about any warming trend, but use that very same uncertainty to support equally doubtful claims about what is “really happening”. Like the idiots who claim that global warming is “happening all over the solar system”, on the moon, on Pluto, and on Neptune’s moon Triton. I thought that climate change required a climate, which our moon doesn’t have, Pluto and Triton receive a very small fraction of the sun’s energy compared to our planet, so where is the parallel? There isn’t any. This is about as relevant as looking at some star and saying “I bet there’s a whole lot of warming going on around that one”. ??? What does it have to do with what is happening on planet earth? And where are the years of data from all those meteorological stations we put on all the planets (oh, sorry, we haven’t put any)…

That is exactly our point, the debate is NOT OVER! But environazi’s wish to proclaim it is and tell us we all need to fear man-made global warming.

Your side doesn’t have science to back them up anymore then ours does. For every study done that “proves” man-made global warming there are other studies that “proves” otherwise.

The environazi’s keep trying to tell us to drive a prius while they jet around in jets and pay $10,000 a month electric bills. They keep telling us it’s all our fault when nothing of the sort has been proven. They keep at it and the pushback is going to get even more intense.

I agree that politicisation and the rise of the environazis are issues. Then again, with global warming and the perceived threat to not just our way of life, but a whole lot of life itself, I personally am not surprised that a lot of different groups are jumping on bandwagons. We need to debate this rationally and not recourse to wild claims and equally wild counter-claims. I believe in science. People who claim that climate science is rubbish need to explain why it is, whereas other science, say astronomy for example, isn’t rubbish. Why the distinction? All science is based on uncertainty. We can only claim to “understand” some observation when we have developed a model which “explains” it. But our model will only ever be an approximation of the underlying reality, we can refine and revise the models, and proclaim that they are good, or not so good explanations, beyond that, it seems that there are no really absolute truths, like the Victorian scientists used to believe. Just look at quantum dynamics if you want an example of how “approximate” the world is.

Agree completely that this needs to be debated rationally.

No where have I said that climate science is rubbish, I HAVE called those who declare that man is causing global warming many names tho. As you said, there are no absolutes in science and what gets my goat more then anything is those who proclaim absolutes.

The global warming hysteria is just a way to make a buck in my opinion. Scientists are being well funded for studies that back up their claims while any scientists who tries to inject some common sense into the debate is shouted down. This is why you are seeing such a backlash I believe.

My opinion on global warming is that it is a natural warming period for this earth, just as there was a natural cooling period decades ago (remember the coming ice age hysteria of the 70’s?). My mind could most definitely be changed once the politicizing and hysteria gives way to rational debate and science, but until then I just see another fear mongering crowd trying to make a living off of the fear they create.

The issue as to whether the current warming is natural or man-made might be getting closer to an answer. As our (or scientists) understanding of climate processes improves and as more information and hard data (like temperature readings, wind speeds, precipitation data, and also data from the satellites orbiting the sun) comes in, there should be better and less equivocal results. For instance, a recent analysis of temperature data covering 50 years, and spanning 4.5 solar cycles (the 11-year sunspot cycles), supports current climate models and supports the prediction that future warming will increase. It turns out, at least if these guys have done the analysis correctly (something we just have to assume, unless we want to try repeating their efforts to see if the same conclusions are reached) that the solar variation over each of these 11-year cycles causes a larger swing in atmospheric temperature than previously believed. And because the sun is now at the end of a cycle, the next one will illustrate how these solar cycles influence the current forcing, due to higher than normal CO2 levels (thanks to us humans). If these guys are right, the next five years will either confirm or deny their predictions, which are that “strong warming of the atmosphere” is expected over the next five years, as the sun’s output increases during the cycle.
Just how long we should wait around before any “really convincing” results turn up, is I think the real issue. Then again there probably isn’t a lot we can do, or are prepared to do, to mitigate warming. Nature will definitely sort this one out, one way or the other.