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So, how are you on, Catastrophe Theory, Tipping Points and Climate Surprises?Scunnerlugzz said:...
Woohoo, look now I'm an expert!
So, how are you on, Catastrophe Theory, Tipping Points and Climate Surprises?Scunnerlugzz said:...
Woohoo, look now I'm an expert!
Doctor Lockwood might be interpreting the data to suit his conclusions, in order to refute the Channel 4 Doc. But, who would you rather believe, the scientist who actually did and understands the research, or a dodgy documentary maker, with links to an extreme fringe political sect and previous for making dodgy documentaries?http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm
'No sun link' to climate change
By Richard Black. BBC Environment Correspondent. 10 July 2007
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.
It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.
It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.
Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.
"This should settle the debate," said Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.
Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain's Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.
"All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website.
"You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said.
Warming trend
The scientists' main approach on this new analysis was simple; to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature, which has risen by about 0.4C over the period.
The Sun varies on a cycle of about 11 years between periods of high and low activity.
But that cycle comes on top of longer-term trends; and most of the 20th Century saw a slight but steady increase in solar output.
But in about 1985, that trend appears to have reversed, with solar output declining.
Yet this period has seen temperatures rise as fast as, if not faster than, at any time during the previous 100 years.
"This paper re-enforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of climate science.
Cosmic relief
The IPCC's February summary report concluded that greenhouse gases were about 13 times more responsible than solar changes for rising global temperatures.
But the organisation was criticised in some quarters for not taking into account the cosmic ray hypothesis, developed among others by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish National Space Center.
Their theory holds that cosmic rays help clouds to form by providing tiny particles around which water vapour can condense. Overall, clouds cool the Earth.
During periods of active solar activity, cosmic rays are partially blocked by the Sun's more intense magnetic field. Cloud formation diminishes, and the Earth warms.
Mike Lockwood's analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant hypothesis.
He said: "I do think there is a cosmic ray effect on cloud cover. It works in clean maritime air where there isn't much else for water vapour to condense around.
"It might even have had a significant effect on pre-industrial climate. But you cannot apply it to what we're seeing now, because we're in a completely different ball game."
Drs Svensmark and Friis-Christensen could not be reached for comment.
Dispatches: Great Green Smokescreen
Broadcast: Monday 16 July 2007 08:00 PM
Channel 4 News Science Correspondent Tom Clarke dissects the many 'solutions' to global warming being marketed to consumers, from tree planting and carbon offsetting to green energy tariffs.
Days after Live Earth partied for the planet, Dispatches reveals how attempts to buy our way out of climate crisis may not be delivering. Channel 4 News' Science Correspondent Tom Clarke dissects the many 'solutions' to global warming - from carbon off-setting to green energy tariffs.
Jetting off on holidays and mini-breaks - we're increasingly turning to off-setting to alleviate our environmental guilt. It's a boom industry, with dozens of new companies springing up each year to offset everything from weddings to babies' nappies.
The UK's biggest players have a collective turn-over in excess of £2m. And now big business is in on the act with Barclays, HSBC and Sky off-setting themselves and Dell and BP selling offsets to their customers.
But are offsets really the answer in the fight against global warming? Clarke investigates a number of projects - from tree-planting in the UK to pig manure in Mexico - all of which are supposed to cancel out our carbon footprint. But do these projects stand up to scrutiny?
So what else should consumers consider? Green energy tariffs look appealing, but research commissioned for Dispatches shows they often don't make a watt of difference.
Carbon labelling is being talked up a storm, but scientists tell Dispatches that labelling may not be a credible reality for some time to come.
One way of making a difference, Clark discovers, might be to take direct personal action to lower our own carbon emissions. But given the small amount of savings each of us can make as individuals, is that any more than a token gesture?
Pietro_Mercurios said:Doctor Lockwood might be interpreting the data to suit his conclusions, in order to refute the Channel 4 Doc. But, who would you rather believe, the scientist who actually did and understands the research, or a dodgy documentary maker, with links to an extreme fringe political sect and previous for making dodgy documentaries?http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm
'No sun link' to climate change
By Richard Black. BBC Environment Correspondent. 10 July 2007
A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.
It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.
It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.
Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.
"This should settle the debate," said Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.
Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain's Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.
"All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website.
"You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said.
Warming trend
The scientists' main approach on this new analysis was simple; to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature, which has risen by about 0.4C over the period.
The Sun varies on a cycle of about 11 years between periods of high and low activity.
But that cycle comes on top of longer-term trends; and most of the 20th Century saw a slight but steady increase in solar output.
But in about 1985, that trend appears to have reversed, with solar output declining.
Yet this period has seen temperatures rise as fast as, if not faster than, at any time during the previous 100 years.
"This paper re-enforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of climate science.
Cosmic relief
The IPCC's February summary report concluded that greenhouse gases were about 13 times more responsible than solar changes for rising global temperatures.
But the organisation was criticised in some quarters for not taking into account the cosmic ray hypothesis, developed among others by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish National Space Center.
Their theory holds that cosmic rays help clouds to form by providing tiny particles around which water vapour can condense. Overall, clouds cool the Earth.
During periods of active solar activity, cosmic rays are partially blocked by the Sun's more intense magnetic field. Cloud formation diminishes, and the Earth warms.
Mike Lockwood's analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant hypothesis.
He said: "I do think there is a cosmic ray effect on cloud cover. It works in clean maritime air where there isn't much else for water vapour to condense around.
"It might even have had a significant effect on pre-industrial climate. But you cannot apply it to what we're seeing now, because we're in a completely different ball game."
Drs Svensmark and Friis-Christensen could not be reached for comment.
I suggest you find the article in the Scotsman, because it directly contradicts what other sources have been saying, including Dr Lockwood.Scunnerlugzz said:...
I read in the Scotsman last week that the Earth temperature has actually fallen in the last 10 years. This prompted many people to post comments that although the recent trend was downward the overall long term trend was very much upward. (I can't remember the article, but it was definitely in the Scotsman newspaper, I'll have to have a hunt when I get a chance).
Interesting to see that the last 10 year downward temperature trend coincides with a 20 year down downturn in the Sun's output though.
Just shows how the same figures can be used to argue both sides I guess.
Where?Scunnerlugzz said:I just had a quick look but couldn't find that article.
I had a look at the last ten year Global & Hemispheric Temperatures for myself though and the temperature peaked in 1998, fell in 1999 and 2000, then rose a bit again in 2001 and has been level until 2007.
...
Scunnerlugzz said:http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm
The ASCII file option above the graph will give you access to the data that the graph is drawn on, and then have a look at the last 10 years.
No temperature rise in the last decade, and you could argue an actual fall since 1998, but as I said it looks more like an overall levelling out to me.
Of course the overall trend of the graph is relentlessly upwards, but given that Dr. Lockwood was focussing his study on the last 20 years I don't think that it's taking too many liberties to ask why the last 10 years doesn't match his conclusions.
Scunnerlugzz said:Figures can be interpreted in many ways, my point is that Dr Lockwood seems to be just as guilty of interpreting them in such a way to back up his case as anyone else.
One interpretation could very easily be;
There has been no Global temperature rise in the last 10 years, this could obviously be a "blip".
Has there been a correlating "blip" in CO2 emmissions? I think not. They have continued to rise.
However Dr. Lockwood tells us that there has indeed been such a "blip" in the Sun's output.
Therefore the Sun is responsible for Global warming.
This interpretation is not necessarily right or wrong, but its a valid interpretation of very limited data that is the exact opposite of Dr Lockwoods.
When he said "This should settle the debate" he was surely having a laugh?
I'd say what this shows is that there is nothing to be learned from studying data over such a short period, and the long-term figures still show that the Sun's output correlates better with Global temperatures than CO2 emmissions.
Scunnerlugzz said:Nobody is argueing whether or not the planet is warmer now than it was a century ago.
With regard to studying short periods - the rise is consistent with the overall trend in a century of records of Sun activity.
Also, the fact that CO2 emmissions have continued to rise for the last decade whereas global temperatures have not would suggest that rather than the CO2 driving climate change it is of limited relevance.
The data provides no link to suggest otherwise.
Touche.
Exactly the same arguement for both sides of the debate.
Scunnerlugzz said:The planets temperature has indeed remained high for the last 10 years, however CO2 emmissions have risen faster than ever.
If emmissions are responsible for rising temperatures why have they not soared in the last decade?
The Sun's output has dipped, and temperatures have stabilised.
Perhaps after 30 years of decreased solar activity they will fall. Early days.
I would like to know how much the Sun's output has dropped by mind you. Global temperature figures and CO2 emmissions are easy to find, its seems to be difficult to find the figures for solar output.
I don't expect global temperatures to fall the day the Sun's output falls, but its interesting that after a period of lower solar output the global temperatures have cease to rise, no?
IMHO Dr Lockwood published his results with the wish that it would put a spanner in the works of the those who have raised the FACT that the Sun's output correlates with global temperature better than CO2 emmission over the last century.
However the 20 year period that he has focussed on has not provided the definitive answer that he claims.
Unfortunately, it only seems to be a 'FACT' to the makers of a Channel 4 documentary which has been almost universally panned, both for its methods and its conclusions.Scunnerlugzz said:...
IMHO Dr Lockwood published his results with the wish that it would put a spanner in the works of the those who have raised the FACT that the Sun's output correlates with global temperature better than CO2 emmission over the last century.
However the 20 year period that he has focussed on has not provided the definitive answer that he claims.
Pietro_Mercurios said:"All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website.[/b]
"You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said.
Scunnerlugzz said:I don't expect global temperatures to fall the day the Sun's output falls, but its interesting that after a period of lower solar output the global temperatures have cease to rise, no?
wembley8 said:Scunnerlugzz said:I don't expect global temperatures to fall the day the Sun's output falls, but its interesting that after a period of lower solar output the global temperatures have cease to rise, no?
It would be if that's what happened. Unfortunately, temperatures are continuing to rise.
Scunnerlugzz said:oh my goodness you got me there!!
What is the point of having a debate when people just disregard the facts?
The temperature may well rise in the future, indeed it may well fall, at the moment despite continued soaring CO2 emmissions it has not risen for years.
In the face of the logic of the arguements I give up!
Climate sceptics claim leaked emails are evidence of collusion among scientists
Hundreds of emails and documents exchanged between world's leading climate scientists stolen by hackers and leaked online
Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.
The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.
The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.
The files, which in total amount to 160MbB of data, were first uploaded on to a Russian server, before being widely mirrored across the internet. The emails were accompanied by the anonymous statement: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."
A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia said: "We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites. Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all this material is genuine. This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation. We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and have involved the police in this inquiry."
In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
This sentence, in particular, has been leapt upon by sceptics as evidence of manipulating data, but the credibility of the email has not been verified. The scientists who allegedly sent it declined to comment on the email.
"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists say 'trick' not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick."
In another alleged email, one of the scientists apparently refers to the death of a prominent climate change sceptic by saying "in an odd way this is cheering news".
Ward said that if the emails are correct, they "might highlight behaviour that those individuals might not like to have made public." But he added, "Let's separate out [the climate scientists] reacting badly to the personal attacks [from sceptics] to the idea that their work has been carried out in an inappropriate way."
The revelations did not alter the huge body of evidence from a variety of scientific fields that supports the conclusion that modern climate change is caused largely by human activity, Ward said. The emails refer largely to work on so-called paleoclimate data - reconstructing past climate scenarios using data such as ice cores and tree rings. "Climate change is based on several lines of evidence, not just paleoclimate data," he said. "At the heart of this is basic physics."
Ward pointed out that the individuals named in the alleged emails had numerous publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. "It would be very surprising if after all this time, suddenly they were found out doing something as wrong as that."
Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, features in many of the email exchanges. He said: "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows."
When the Guardian asked Prof Phil Jones at UEA, who features in the correspondence, to verify whether the emails were genuine, he refused to comment.
The alleged emails illustrate the persistent pressure some climatologists have been under from sceptics in recent years. There have been repeated calls, including Freedom of Information requests, for the Climate Research Unit to make public a confidential dataset of land and sea temperature recordings that is "value added" by the unit before being used by the Met Office. The emails show the frustration some climatologists have had at having to operate under such intense, often politically motivated, scrutiny.
Prof Bob Watson, the chief scientific advisor at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said, "Evidence for climate change is irrefutable. The world's leading scientists overwhelmingly agree what we're experiencing is not down to natural variation."
"With this overwhelming scientific body of evidence failing to take action to tackle climate change would be the wrong thing to do – the impacts here in Britain and across the world will worsen and the economic consequences will be catastrophic."
A spokesman for Greenpeace said: "If you looked through any organisation's emails from the last 10 years you'd find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world's leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke."