This is the first part of a British documentary that takes a stance against the idea that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is driving global warming. The other seven parts should be listed in the column to the right on YouTube.
The evidence this documentary presents about the role of the sun is particularly persuasive to a layman like myself, but before I integrate any of their assertions into my own opinions, I want to hear something from the other side.
I'm assuming there are plenty such people here
I realize they make a lot of claims regarding the motivations of global-warming proponents (grants, funding, etc), which I know should annoy some people (particularly Rabbit). But I'm basically ignoring that set of allegations as an irrelevant digression from the real questions. Which are:
Is it possible that the climate-driving effects of carbon dioxide have been misunderstood and overstated, and that the recorded warming is better explained by solar fluctuations, or some other non-anthropogenic explanation?
If we were to discover that global warming is inevitable, and is not significantly affected by anthropogenic CO2 ... then what policy implications would such a scenario have? What ought to be done by governments in response to that set of facts, were they to be found accurate?
posted
I thought the Media Elites were in cahoots with the Religious Scientists as part of The Plan to keep The Truth from The People.
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"Is it possible that the climate-driving effects of carbon dioxide have been misunderstood"
Well, no. Thats basic physics.
"and overstated"
Again, no. Basic physics.
Ameliorated by other forcings? Possibly. But the C02 forcing is well understood. The question is what other forcings exist, and whether or not the C02 forcing causes other counter-balancing forcings to become stronger.
"and that the recorded warming is better explained by solar fluctuations,"
Not really. The solar fluctuations we are experiencing account for about half of the warming that is occuring, according to the models of the people who are doing the research on solar fluctuations and global climate change.
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quote:"Is it possible that the climate-driving effects of carbon dioxide have been misunderstood"
Well, no. Thats basic physics.
When I said "climate-driving effects", I didn't mean their basic role in affecting the climate. I meant the significance of their role in the current recorded warming trend, which takes all available factors into account.
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posted
The most recent papers I've read in this area indicates that changes in solar radiance can account for at most 10% of the climate change observed during the late 20th century. I will try to find the links to those studies.
To those who have not read it all ready, I highly recommend The Discovery of Global Warming. It has a nice discussion of solar influences on global climate.
I've heard the argument put forth in this film several times and it is truly a red herring. The big question in Global Climate Change research is how much human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases will influence climate over the next century. The fundamental scientific principles behind the greenhouse theory are incontrovertable. If the levels of greenhouse gases in the earths atmosphere change sufficiently, the temperature of the planet will change. The only questions scientifically are how much the climate will change for a given change in a particular greenhouse gas, how fast that change will occur and how that will influence different regions of the planet.
A side issue in that debate is the question of whether we have already changed the composition of the atmosphere enough to have effected a change in the earth's climate. Whether changes in the solar irradiance have influenced climate either currently or in the past is relevant to this side issue, but does nothing to answer the question of whether greenhouse emissions will influence future climate.
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quote:When I said "climate-driving effects", I didn't mean their basic role in affecting the climate. I meant the significance of their role in the current recorded warming trend, which takes all available factors into account.
While it is always "possible" that the scientific consensus on this issue is wrong, it is highly unlikely. This film like many sensational articles and books which criticize climate change presents the idea that variations in solar irradiance are the source of current climate change as though this is something that has been totally neglected by climate change scientists. It hasn't. Solar variance and its influence on climate has been intensely studied for the past two decades. A recent review of the science in this field was published in Nature in september 2006. The conclusions of this paper, which did a detailed review of the scientific literature were
quote:The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years.
posted
Why do they show nuclear reactors (and the released steam) in the "it's all your fault" part of the opening montage?
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quote:When I said "climate-driving effects", I didn't mean their basic role in affecting the climate. I meant the significance of their role in the current recorded warming trend, which takes all available factors into account.
While it is always "possible" that the scientific consensus on this issue is wrong, it is highly unlikely. This film like many sensational articles and books which criticize climate change presents the idea that variations in solar irradiance are the source of current climate change as though this is something that has been totally neglected by climate change scientists. It hasn't. Solar variance and its influence on climate has been intensely studied for the past two decades. A recent review of the science in this field was published in Nature in september 2006. The conclusions of this paper, which did a detailed review of the scientific literature were
quote:The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years.
What information is there to confirm or deny the claim made in the most recent World Watch stating that their has been global COOLING in recent years?
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posted
Also, if their allegation concerning the people who disagree with IPCC's conclusion being kept on the list of 2500 authors, it should easy to prove. I'd like to see something definitive other than sound bites on this issue.
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"What information is there to confirm or deny the claim made in the most recent World Watch stating that their has been global COOLING in recent years?"
Nope. earth has still been warming up. We just had one REALLY hot year in 1998. We cooled off the next year (just as you would expect a baseball player who hits .390 one year to hit somewhat lower the next) but since then we've been warming again.
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posted
I thought their interview with an expert who had his name on the list against his wishes was "proof" enough.
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Uh, and I say that as someone who does buy the consensus view of man-made global climate change.
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As we get even hotter, and if enough arctic ice melts into the oceans, you might see a TON of cooling occur at certain latitudes, that's just how global climate change works. Some places will get colder, some will be blazing hot. That's why "global warming" and "global cooling" are misleading terms.
It's also what allows sarcastic laymans with no knowledge of the facts to say "global warming!? It was snowing yesterday!" As if that were proof of anything.
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quote:What information is there to confirm or deny the claim made in the most recent World Watch stating that their has been global COOLING in recent years?
In my quick search of the peer reviewed literature data bases, I found 188 articles published since 2000 discussing the global warming trend. The trends have been established with both surface based measurements and satellite measurements. There are problems with both types of measurements which much be taken into account to obtain accurate results. In earlier studies of satellite data, a cooling trend was observed. This is because satellites measure the mean temperature through the entire atmosphere. The greenhouse effect cause increased warming at the earth's surface but also causes cooling in the upper atmosphere. This effect has been well studied and measured. If the satellite data are corrected to account for the cooling of the upper atmosphere, they confirm a significant warming trend in the troposphere (i.e. down here where we all live.) As recognized in the IPCC report, there is no longer serious debate on this issue. The planets surface is warming.
Here are some excerpts from the recent papers on the subject.
quote:Global Warming Trend of Mean Tropospheric Temperature Observed by Satellites Konstantin Y. Vinnikov1* and Norman C. Grody2 We have analyzed the global tropospheric temperature for 1978 to 2002 with the use of passive microwave sounding data from the NOAA series of polar orbiters and the Earth Observing System Aqua satellite. To accurately retrieve the climatic trend, we combined the satellite data with an analytic model of temperature that contains three different time scales: a linear trend and functions that define the seasonal and diurnal cycles. Our analysis shows a trend of +0.22° to 0.26°C per 10 years, consistent with the global warming trend derived from surface meteorological stations.
1 Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. 2 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)–National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), 5200 Auth Road, Camp Spring, MD 20746, USA.
quote:JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 111, D03106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006392, 2006
Temperature trends at the surface and in the troposphere
Konstantin Y. Vinnikov Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
Norman C. Grody Center for Satellite Applications and Research, NOAA/NESDIS, Camp Springs, Maryland, USA
Alan Robock Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Ronald J. Stouffer Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Philip D. Jones Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Mitchell D. Goldberg Center for Satellite Applications and Research, NOAA/NESDIS, Camp Springs, Maryland, USA
Abstract
This paper incorporates the latest improvements in intersatellite calibration, along with a new statistical technique, to determine the diurnal and seasonal cycles and climatic trends of 1978–2004 tropospheric temperature using Microwave Sounding Unit measurements. We also compare the latitudinal distribution of temperature trends from the surface and troposphere with each other and with model simulations for the past 26 years. The observations at the surface and in the troposphere are consistent with climate model simulations. At middle and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, the zonally averaged temperature at the surface increased faster than in the troposphere while at low latitudes of both hemispheres the temperature increased more slowly at the surface than in the troposphere. The resulting global averaged tropospheric trend is +0.20 K/10 yr, with a standard error of 0.05 K/10 yr, which compares very well with the trend obtained from surface reports.
quote:JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 110, D22101, doi:10.1029/2005JD006169, 2005
Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC): A new data set of large-area anomaly time series Melissa Free, Dian J. Seidel, and James K. Angell NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA John Lanzante NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey, USA Imke Durre and Thomas C. Peterson NOAA National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina, USA Received 3 May 2005; revised 27 July 2005; accepted 1 September 2005; published 16 November 2005. [1] A new data set containing large-scale regional mean upper air temperatures based on adjusted global radiosonde data is now available up to the present. Starting with data from 85 of the 87 stations adjusted for homogeneity by Lanzante, Klein and Seidel, we extend the data beyond 1997 where available, using a first differencing method combined with guidance from station metadata. The data set consists of temperature anomaly time series for the globe, the hemispheres, tropics (30 N–30 S) and extratropics. Data provided include annual time series for 13 pressure levels from the surface to 30 mbar and seasonal time series for three broader layers (850–300, 300–100 and 100–50 mbar). The additional years of data increase trends to more than 0.1 K/decade for the global and tropical midtroposphere for 1979–2004. Trends in the stratosphere are approximately 0.5 to 0.9 K/decade and are more negative in the tropics than for the globe
posted
Peer reviewed journals are all written by paying members of the liberal intellectual establishment. They're "true believers" and stop at nothing to push their agenda, even if it means faking data and overlooking the bad science of their "peers".
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posted
I will thank you not to accuse me of lacking integrity without being able to show proof. I have personally peer-reviewed many papers, and I am neither pushing an agenda nor overlooking bad science.
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posted
If you are going to make a scientific documentary, I think you don't want to use selective clips of experts to reinforce positions that those experts do not actually hold. I also don't think you get positive credibility from using cherrypicked data 'faults' and the act of egregiously commiting sins of omission.
I can't say that this program is going to do much to change the minds of anyone. It's mainly for the people who are looking to rationalize an ideologically born preconcieved notion ('global warming is lies'), who will latch on desperately to any source that tells them that they are right.
It's a big ol' preaching to the choir moment, just like those Stunning! anti-evolution exposes.
Another person notes:
quote:Apparently the guy who made the thing, Martin Durkin, has a history of making highly misrepresentative polemics, to such an extent that one of them forced Channel 4 to make a public apology in 1998. For them to hire the guy again, especially with such a complex topic as climate change, makes it seem that this is manufactured controversy with a rather cynical motivation from Channel 4.
quote:We just had one REALLY hot year in 1998. We cooled off the next year (just as you would expect a baseball player who hits .390 one year to hit somewhat lower the next) but since then we've been warming again.
posted
It's not baffling at all. Global warming = sports steroid abuse! The juxtaposition practically writes itself.
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Geoff, What is your response to the information, both about the claims made in the documentary and the credibility of the documentary?
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If you are going to make a scientific documentary, I think you don't want to use selective clips of experts to reinforce positions that those experts do not actually hold. I also don't think you get positive credibility from using cherrypicked data 'faults' and the act of egregiously commiting sins of omission.
I can't say that this program is going to do much to change the minds of anyone. It's mainly for the people who are looking to rationalize an ideologically born preconcieved notion ('global warming is lies'), who will latch on desperately to any source that tells them that they are right.
It's a big ol' preaching to the choir moment
Wait....are you talking about this documentary or Al Gore's? Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:It's also what allows sarcastic laymans with no knowledge of the facts to say "global warming!? It was snowing yesterday!" As if that were proof of anything.
I've encountered the reverse of this statement more often.
One of my professors at my college on a particularly hot day in early spring:
"Outside it is 83 degrees in March. Global warming is clearly FACT, I don't see how anyone can doubt it on a day like today."
Just because you have a PhD doesn't mean you are particularly smart.
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quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: God. Now that I see everyone quoting me, I realize I committed one of my pet peeves. I used "their" instead of "there".
I appreciate your (Hatrack's) graciousness in refraining from viciously correcting me.
At least there aren't any grain-eating ants. Those millet ants are quite violent, and there's usually an army of them.
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"U. S. and European spacecraft show that the Sun is about 0.07 percent brighter in years of peak sunspot activity, such as around 2000, than when spots are rare (as they are now, at the low end of the 11-year solar cycle). Variations of this magnitude are too small to have contributed appreciably to the accelerated global warming observed since the mid-1970s, according to the study, and there is no sign of a net increase in brightness over the period."
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quote:Originally posted by Will B: That would seem to debunk a theory that no one espouses: that the effect of the solar cycle results solely from fluctuations in brightness.
Still, it's good information to have.
Umm, Will B solar irradiance is proportional to the suns brightness. If there is no change in the suns brightness and no change in the earths orbit, there will be no change in the solar irradiance.
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