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'The Great Global Warming Swindle': Is Climate Change A Myth?

Just read that the south of France is 'experiencing exceptionally warm weather as it's 24c in Nice'. I looked up the climate data for Nice and October is usually 21c and 14c. According to the BBC, it's 23c and 16c today. Hardly a major issue- is it?
 
Just read that the south of France is 'experiencing exceptionally warm weather as it's 24c in Nice'. I looked up the climate data for Nice and October is usually 21c and 14c. According to the BBC, it's 23c and 16c today. Hardly a major issue- is it?
My sis was there recently (just a few days ago). Very nice weather.
 
You seem to be prepared to ignore details like this from people who actually study the area, in favour of cherry picked information from a blog.
No, the info in Daily Sceptic (yes it's a blog, kind of like how a newspaper works, with people contributing) has the article I posted which refers to research by the people who actually study the area. These people;

Dr Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in Copenhagen, which is part of the Polar Portal.
Dr Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at DMI.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-greenland-ice-sheet-fared-in-2022/

In it they point out that;
Surface mass, of course, is not the whole story on the Greenland ice sheet. There is also natural loss around the edges of the country dramatically displayed by the ‘calving’ of ice at the shore and the release of icebergs into the North Atlantic. According to the green activist site Carbon Brief, annual calving losses have averaged around 500 billion tonnes this century. But this estimate, which doesn’t seem to change much year-on-year, is a computer-modelled figure. There are enormous difficulties involved in computing a realistic figure. Ice loss is caused by many little-understood processes, such as warming and friction below the surface. Satellites can provide useful input, but limited observations mean they miss a great deal of the action. Various ocean currents react with water pouring down from fjords, while the ice flowing from this internal source can help or hinder calving.

That computer modelled figure is what produced the graph that you have shown.

The article also refers to data from the NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Centre)
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
and also multiple other links to reputable research and data that you can click on and read further.

I don't deliberately avoid, ignore or otherwise conceal anything just to get you annoyed - I post the relevant article, trimmed for the sake of brevity.
I read a hell of a lot of stuff but because this is the "Great Global Warming Swindle" thread, I assume that mostly people reading it will be pretty much interested in the articles which deal with that subject and aren't coming here to post things contrary to that position.
 
No, the info in Daily Sceptic (yes it's a blog, kind of like how a newspaper works, with people contributing) has the article I posted which refers to research by the people who actually study the area. These people;

Dr Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in Copenhagen, which is part of the Polar Portal.
Dr Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at DMI.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-greenland-ice-sheet-fared-in-2022/
Well Dr Martin Stendel’s very first statement on the link you provided is this:

The end of the northern-hemisphere summer brings to a close the Greenland ice sheet melt season and with it confirmation that 2022 was the 26th year in a row where Greenland lost ice overall.

He goes on:

Nonetheless, taking into account surface melting, breaking off of icebergs and frictional effects under glaciers, the Greenland ice sheet lost 84Gt of ice over the 12 months from September 2021 to August 2022.
These would seem to flatly contradict your assertions that Greenland isn’t currently on a melting trajectory. Whether you think this is a swindle is up to you.


I don't deliberately avoid, ignore or otherwise conceal anything just to get you annoyed - I post the relevant article, trimmed for the sake of brevity.
I read a hell of a lot of stuff but because this is the "Great Global Warming Swindle" thread, I assume that mostly people reading it will be pretty much interested in the articles which deal with that subject and aren't coming here to post things contrary to that position.
Yes but when the links you provide don’t back up your assertions you can’t complain when it’s pointed out. This is a discussion site & you can’t expect your unfounded allegations to go unchallenged, as well you know.
 
Yes but when the links you provide don’t back up your assertions you can’t complain when it’s pointed out. This is a discussion site & you can’t expect your unfounded allegations to go unchallenged, as well you know.
If I can just point out, yet again, that I am not making any assertions or 'unfounded allegations', as per your accusation, I am merely providing links to other peoples work, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't.
TBH I don't care for your snarky sniping at me when you don't like what I post and I would rather that if you want to challenge what I have posted that you stick to just posting your counter-argument without the 'ad hominem' barbs you like to add in to your posts.
I.E. "don't shoot the messenger".
 
I assume that mostly people reading it will be pretty much interested in the articles which deal with that subject and aren't coming here to post things contrary to that position.
I am of the distinct opinion that most of the 'swindling' occurs on the side of the argument that proposes that 'anthropomorphic global warming is a myth', so we should not confine ourselves to articles that support that position.

There are certainly many industries making money out of attempts to mitigate or reduce the increase of CO2, and quite a few of them are ineffective money-pits ; but by far the greatest damage is being caused by industries in newly industrialised countries, and we have little influence there. If we are being swindled, it is by investors who support this vast increase in carbon emissions in countries with few regulations.

PerCapitaCO2emissions.jpg



The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in our current era is real and undisputed, but the likely effects of this increase are still open to speculation. Absent any other effects, increased CO2 would cause an increase in temperature; but there are lots of other effects, and we might even be lucky enough to avoid any major damage, though this is almost certainly wishful thinking.
 
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... because this is the "Great Global Warming Swindle" thread, I assume that mostly people reading it will be pretty much interested in the articles which deal with that subject and aren't coming here to post things contrary to that position.

The title of the thread denotes a context for discussion of the topic that title indicates - both pro and con. It does NOT demarcate a zone within which only "pro" (the title; in this case "pro-swindle") viewpoints are immune from challenge or counter-arguments.
 
I would certainly prefer to live in a warmer world than a colder one.
I saw an article the other day (which I'm sorry but I can't find it now) that was discussing the pre-1980s warnings of a new ice-age and that 'glaciation' if (when?) it comes again would happen quickly (in a short number of decades - yoiks!) and be an 'extinction level event' akin to global nuclear war or massive meteorite strike levels.
Research clearly shows that more people die due to cold weather than hot weather.
And as we have referenced in earlier posts upthread, CO2 levels were often historically much higher than they are now, and these periods of higher CO2 coincided with periods of greater vegetation growth.
This article (link below) discusses how a new era of glaciation has been expected for some time, but that (in their view) "due to human induced climate change or anthropogenic climate change, the next glaciation is being delayed".

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Glacial_and_interglacial_periods
 
The title of the thread denotes a context for discussion of the topic that title indicates - both pro and con. It does NOT demarcate a zone within which only "pro" (the title; in this case "pro-swindle") viewpoints are immune from challenge or counter-arguments.
I know - hence my use of the word 'mostly'.
I can happily accept cordial discussion on both sides of the table.
 
I would certainly prefer to live in a warmer world than a colder one.

Written like a true Brit!

Parts of the world are already very warm.

If you mean that you could get used to Southern European climes, I might concur, but as a species we've got a fairly narrow window of opportunity for survival.

Throwing around 'hot' and 'cold' like a binary masks the real picture: people die of both, in considerable numbers; the warmer it gets globally, the more the pendulum will swing the other way--and as you suggest, the change will not be nice and linear; once you reach a biting point where our physiology starts to pack up, the old, young and sick will start dropping in unprecedented numbers.

A friend of mine from Delhi (he's back there now for Diwali) cited this:

At present, around 89,000 people are estimated to die every year in India from hot temperatures — perhaps surprisingly, fewer than the 632,000 who die from cold. With 4C of global warming, heat deaths will rise to 1.5 million a year.

Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...a66d3e-fe40-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html

Also, when people speak of there having 'historically' been higher levels of CO2 on Earth, they are often referring to 'prehistoric' times--the ones with few to no humans living in them!
 
I would certainly prefer to live in a warmer world than a colder one.
To clarify - I was talking rather towards it not being frozen everywhere, as per my following amble about glaciation, however saying that, I am ever-so-slightly hypocritical because I do actually prefer the winter, but that is generally because my specific condition makes my own body temperature regulation a bit 'out of whack', so the hotter days tend to be a bit less comfortable for me.
I cope though - I have a 'Hinari' 12" portable fan which seemed adequate for the two hot days we had this past summer.
 
I think though, that in big cities like Delhi and Cairo etc, the sheer volume of traffic (often unregulated, emissions-wise) must be a huge factor in adding to the heat and also causing breathing difficulties. Can these two factors be accurately separated in the recorded deaths I wonder.
 
During the Eemian interglacial, which is mentioned upthread, the global CO2 level is supposed to have been 280 ppm, compared to today's 415 ppm. That is despite the average temperatures being perhaps 2 C higher on average. Does that mean that CO2 levels are not a good indicator of global warming?

Perhaps; but it is more likely that there is a thermal inertia that means the full effect has not yet been felt. It may take a century or more before we reach a new thermal equilibrium - a prospect that might worry some more than others.
 
The problem is that the climate is an intensely complex thing to model, and not only do we not even know all of the parameters, for most of those we do know we have data ludicrously short in extent.

And when one goes to examine what data we have, we find the reliability of the data itself is equally subject to a large number of questions, an obvious and much debated one is the effect of urban sprawl on recording stations that were once in open country.

So no, there is no incontrovertible proof of anthropogenic global warming. I happen to believe we have had some effect, but that it is mainly due to thousands of years of deforestation rather than fossil fuels. But the climate WILL change - it always has and it always will, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

The question is still open on whether we revert to a warm planet with no or minimal ice caps (which seems to be the default in geological time scales) or whether the last ice age still has a kick in it.
 
THE doom-mongers at the BBC are back again, with their 'climate change' rhetoric, this time with a UN report claiming that "Glaciers on Kilimanjaro will be gone by 2050", and with the annual hand-wringing event of COP27 fast approaching, we can only expect this sort of twaddle to increase over the coming weeks as the 'chicken little' mindset returns.
But of course, no mention of "Glacier National Park" in Montana, which used to have signs on the walls all around the park which informed visitors that "glaciers will be gone by 2020", but they had to go around the park removing those signs in 2020 when the glaciers had resolutely failed to cooperate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63489041
https://www.krtv.com/news/montana-a...-removing-glaciers-will-be-gone-by-2020-signs
 
Surely without oil, the human race (now at a much higher population than before) would die out very quickly? Apart from anything else, how would my wine, cheese and olives get produced and delivered to the shops? And what clothes would I wear to go to said shops? And how would I pay?
 
The problem is that the climate is an intensely complex thing to model, and not only do we not even know all of the parameters, for most of those we do know we have data ludicrously short in extent.

And when one goes to examine what data we have, we find the reliability of the data itself is equally subject to a large number of questions, an obvious and much debated one is the effect of urban sprawl on recording stations that were once in open country.

So no, there is no incontrovertible proof of anthropogenic global warming. I happen to believe we have had some effect, but that it is mainly due to thousands of years of deforestation rather than fossil fuels. But the climate WILL change - it always has and it always will, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

The question is still open on whether we revert to a warm planet with no or minimal ice caps (which seems to be the default in geological time scales) or whether the last ice age still has a kick in it.
To be honest, I think you have hit the nail on the head.

I think that human activity has damaged and degraded the planet's ability regulate itself in terms of atmospheric composition. And I don't mean that in any Gaia idea, but rather as a huge, self regulating system influenced by the sun, oceans, the land masses, the forests, etc, we have since our first days of cutting down trees, consistently and incrementally altered the planet's ability to achieve equilibrium.

Added to that, is our emissions of carbon, methane, nitrous oxide, and then all the industrial horrors, and it adds up to something unsustainable.

I think the climate in the past coped with varying levels CO2, but that was when the oceans, the forests, and the soils, were not in the degraded state they are now in. As we saw with the ozone layer, a relatively small effect can accumulate to have a massive impact, if things are out of balance.

So, you may indeed be correct that the magnitude of our emissions may not be enough to cause the climate change we are witnessing, but in conjunction with the other ecosystem damage we have been inflicting for the last 17,000 years since the end of the last ice age, they may be the tipping point catalyst that causes an inversion into something else.
 
I'm mostly staying out of this as I've lost the heart to argue with people, and this is a notoriously contentious debate. That being said, here are my two cents in case it offers any interest, and I'll otherwise leave ya'll to continue:

One thing that keeps bothering me is the ice core samples. I can see tree rings having some connection to the environment, but to base so much on ice core layers seems a bit iffy. We know for sure that the environment has changed numerous times throughout the Earth's timeline, so our understanding of exactly how those changes manifest over long earth time is extremely limited, and basing so much on a volatile substance like ice layers doesn't inspire my confidence in scientific findings involving them.

Another thing is the moral aspect of it. In our prehistoric past, societal logic was often:
"the sun went away, so it's due to sins committed, so we must pay by sacrificing a goat on a fiery alter".

Now it seems like the attitude I keep seeing expressed is following the same route"
"we are experiencing warming temperatures sometimes - it has to be the sins of indulgent lifestyles that want heat, meat and fast cars. So let's condemn these living a rich western lifestyle and argue that regular people stop using cars and start biking to work and eat soy while I take my airplane ride (how can it pollute - I support the environment!) to experience a work-cation at remote locations, or get in the long line up Mount Everest to prove myself because my indulgences are all pure."

Not that there is a direct connection between global warming activists and climbing remote mountains, but it does seem like the activists cherry pick elements of society and behavior they feel are morally incorrect and attempt to solve those problems by tying them into a great future catastrophe that can only be stopped by doing what they say.

Finally, all the "solutions" that get floated are "how can we stop these behaviors". I wonder if we focused on not stopping what we are currently doing, but instead search for a way to utilize the extra heat and carbon in the atmosphere, would be be able to mitigate any concerns about the cost of humanity's unchecked growth? Although a part of me fears that if we ever did find a way to control our atmosphere, it would then be bad and might lead to the death of the planet overall, as the history of life on the planet has been synonymous with a quite variable atmosphere.

We used to have a thread that was called something like human population growth - the real apocalypse. I still think that we've got too many people to support our overall existence, and that is my real worry these days.
 
People, in general, though are tragically awful at understanding the actual scale of things, especially when they talk about lots of environmental things like 'deforestation' for example.
Its all very well protesting about (eg) the amount of Amazon rainforest in Brazil that has been cut down (since the 1970s about 17% of that which then existed has been cut down, but never any mention seems to be made of how much has been replanted in the same period - link to report).
The report says that in one year a record 'area the size of Montenegro' was cut down - but they fail to mention that the Amazon Rainforest is 398 times bigger than Montenegro.
Now, I'm not defending it, just pointing out that the relative sizes are poorly understood by people.
1667479198228.png
 
There is also the fact that the Amazon was intensively farmed which has resulted in the incredibly fertile soil found there; terra preta. Admittedly it would have been green but with crops not trees.

My view is that we started on the technology route a long time ago (fire, cultivation, cities and especially the industrial revolution) and it is now too late to find an alternative without drastic cuts in population. The only route out, if there is one, is to continue on that path.

Controlling the population is desirable but politically difficult. Reducing pollutants on the Earth; and there are/may be technological solution to that, but also expanding into the solar system. There is 24/7 free energy out there, plenty of raw materials and low or zero gravity environments which can aid manufacture. The issue is getting there and getting products back without causing more problems. If that can be done with less environmental impact and cost than for instance flying beans from Egypt to the UK then even some food production could be achieved as well as heavy and polluting industrial processes.

Think, space elevators, O’Neill cylinders, asteroid mining, lunar bases. But don’t listen to me, look at the science.:wink2:

Of course all this is beyond the imagination or limited time span of any political thought and way beyond people who chuck soup at paintings. The best hope, for all their faults lies with visionary private enterprise seeing that there is money in that there emptiness.
 
There is also the fact that the Amazon was intensively farmed which has resulted in the incredibly fertile soil found there; terra preta. Admittedly it would have been green but with crops not trees.

My view is that we started on the technology route a long time ago (fire, cultivation, cities and especially the industrial revolution) and it is now too late to find an alternative without drastic cuts in population. The only route out, if there is one, is to continue on that path.

Controlling the population is desirable but politically difficult. Reducing pollutants on the Earth; and there are/may be technological solution to that, but also expanding into the solar system. There is 24/7 free energy out there, plenty of raw materials and low or zero gravity environments which can aid manufacture. The issue is getting there and getting products back without causing more problems. If that can be done with less environmental impact and cost than for instance flying beans from Egypt to the UK then even some food production could be achieved as well as heavy and polluting industrial processes.

Think, space elevators, O’Neill cylinders, asteroid mining, lunar bases. But don’t listen to me, look at the science.:wink2:

Of course all this is beyond the imagination or limited time span of any political thought and way beyond people who chuck soup at paintings. The best hope, for all their faults lies with visionary private enterprise seeing that there is money in that there emptiness.
Like your thinking, not least because I was making the same argument to a AGW enthusiast 15 years ago. Once we turned our back on exploration (space, but to some extent deep sea also), we effectively made the technologically maintained status quo unstable.

Maybe controversially, I think it's had a mental effect also - we've become addicted to navel gazing and negativity, instead of looking at the positives.

And yes, if we are stuck on this planet we can no longer sustain population growth and it will have to be stopped, no doubt with unpleasantness all round.
 
Like your thinking, not least because I was making the same argument to a AGW enthusiast 15 years ago. Once we turned our back on exploration (space, but to some extent deep sea also), we effectively made the technologically maintained status quo unstable.

Maybe controversially, I think it's had a mental effect also - we've become addicted to navel gazing and negativity, instead of looking at the positives.

And yes, if we are stuck on this planet we can no longer sustain population growth and it will have to be stopped, no doubt with unpleasantness all round.
The oceans could give us some time but we'd have to be very careful with pollution there.

Quite agree on attitudes; the positivity of outlook on space and any tech other than computers seemed to evaporate after the Moon landings - or at least after the first one. We were sold on the shuttle and consolidation, but that's been going on for sixty years!

I wonder about public attitudes to space exploration, I think all the realistic sims, deep space images and such like may give the impression that there's nothing worth finding?
 
There certainly are resources and energy sources out there. (in space). It's the transportation / transmission issues that need solving.

Are Einsteinian physics the limiting factor here? Have they created a mental block we can't think beyond?

For deep sea I was thinking could we harness energy from the underwater volcanic activity?
 
There certainly are resources and energy sources out there. (in space). It's the transportation / transmission issues that need solving.

Are Einsteinian physics the limiting factor here? Have they created a mental block we can't think beyond?

For deep sea I was thinking could we harness energy from the underwater volcanic activity?
Good idea on the volcanic activity. I guess Einsteinian physics are a factor but the solar system is relatively (sorry) near and once that progress is made who knows what may be seen as possible? Micro probes, hollowed out asteroids as generation ships? How far does the outer solar system extend and could it allow stepping stone travel to other star systems? But I guess we are straying off topic and may be confined to Earth by the Mods :)
 
THE doom-mongers at the BBC are back again, with their 'climate change' rhetoric, this time with a UN report claiming that "Glaciers on Kilimanjaro will be gone by 2050", and with the annual hand-wringing event of COP27 fast approaching, we can only expect this sort of twaddle to increase over the coming weeks as the 'chicken little' mindset returns.
But of course, no mention of "Glacier National Park" in Montana, which used to have signs on the walls all around the park which informed visitors that "glaciers will be gone by 2020", but they had to go around the park removing those signs in 2020 when the glaciers had resolutely failed to cooperate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63489041
https://www.krtv.com/news/montana-a...-removing-glaciers-will-be-gone-by-2020-signs
Not being as well informed as you about the Glacier National Park I looked it up on nps.gov This is what I found:

Between 1966 and 2015, every named glacier in the park got smaller, some by more than 80%. In late summer when the glaciers are most visible, satellites can capture images to measure the areas of glaciers. These images have generally shown a trend of shrinking area. For some of the more accessible glaciers, scientists collect data in the field. Photographs of the glaciers taken repeatedly from the same vantage points on the ground confirm a reduction in area and also illustrate a reduction in thickness and overall mass. GPS measurements track the glaciers' surface areas, and stakes embedded into the ice help to illustrate overall changes in mass.

So glaciers in the park are certainly melting but haven’t completely gone yet.

There's also of course melting glaciers in many other world locations.
 
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