This blog is *paused* for three weeks 26 July 05

Have a great time, Mark. Maybe I can start a topic here.

A successful social movement requires a perceived problem that affects many people, and mobilization of social, cultural, and financial resources—including spreading the message.

Turning global warming into a social movement cause has been a problem for several reasons. Environmental problems tend to lack urgency in their slowly creeping onslaught, and non-point source problems, such as global warming, are hard to pin down on a few culprits upon which to focus our wrath. In these ways it is opposite terrorism, even if the effects might entail more deaths and property harm.

Then there are special interests, such as fossil fuel industries, that are threatened. Some are diversifying into non-fossil energy, and others are fighting global warming science and public knowledge tooth and nail. Their money thwarts the U.S. government’s response to global warming, and the media’s coverage of it, and is now trying to discredit and intimidate climate change scientists. (Hurray for blogpages like this that can keep Americans informed!) Foucault’s dictum that power is knowledge has almost come true, nearly dooming us to ignorance. But he forgot the “reality principle”—the impact of other variables. Even if we go on ignoring global warming in blissful national ignorance, it will not ignore us, but strike back.

I’ve been waiting 15 years, but it seems the American media are finally talking about global warming, beyond their pro-con format funded by oil giants, and polls are showing that Americans know about global warming and want to abate it (see http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=44427 ). I’m sure the current heat wave gripping our nation & other weird weather and environmental happenings have added impetus. Major networks are now speaking about global warming as a given. ABC News mentioned how arctic ice (already 10% melted) serves as an air conditioner for America, and when it all melts by the end of the century due to global warming, the heat waves would be much worse. Last night (7/25/05) CBS’s David Letterman Show gave the following presentation:

BUSH’S SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL WARMING:

10. NASA mission to turn down the sun.

9. Federal subsidies to boost production of Cool Ranch Doritos.

8. Fast track Rumsfeld’s “Colonize Neptune” proposal.

7. Convene a blue-ribbon committee to explore innovative ways of ignoring the problem.

6. Let Hillary worry about it when she takes over.

5. I dunno—tax cuts for the rich?

4. Give the boys at Halliburton $90-million contract to patch hole in ozone.

3. Switch to Celsius so scorching 98 degrees becomes frosty 37.

2. Keep plenty of Bud on ice.

1. Invade Antarctica.

I loved the 10 Bush proposals, that will be doing the rounds at work tomorrow. I really hope you are right about GW awareness reaching a tipping point.

In the UK and much of the rest of the EU, we have a high-tax economy with a lot of government spending. The problem is that much of the taxation is on consumption: sales tax (VAT) and fuel tax. We are currently paying $5.80 per US gallon equivalent for regular gas, about 85% of which is tax. If we cut consumption, government revenues go down. Difficult.

When the UK govt does a cost-benefit analysis on investments in infrastructure designed to reduce car use, it sets the loss of fuel tax revenue against the benefits of the project. This has been used recently to justify the dumping of three urban tram systems in UK cities (too expensive); oh, of course except for one in Scotland coincidentally in the constituancy of the minister for transport, Alastair Darling.

I am sure that when the US wakes up to the potential of the new industrial revolution, the UK will be left far behind in terms of investment and action. We’re very good at ignoring and ridiculing those with radical new ideas in the UK, and bemoan the fact that other countries successfuly develop technology tried and laughed at here.

kind regards

Colin

It seems that the “new industrial revolution” is what Bush is counting on to happen here, though it doesn’t seem as though it’s coming along very fast. It seems that Bush’s (and accordingly the U.S.) policy right now on global warming is thus:

1) Global warming is occurring, and is caused by humans. 2) GW is NOT an imminent threat; immediate action is not necessary. 3) Action against GW would affect the U.S. economy negatively, and should therefore be avoided. 4) The U.S. cannot be put on an “energy diet.” 5) Eventually the private sector will develop technology to curb warming.

The huge problem is that by not setting any limits whatsoever, there is no stimulus for the revolution. None of the major energy companies can be strongly committed to researching and developing new, clean energy, when oil remains the most profitable. It leaves the rest of us just praying that some benevolent CEO will realize the profits available by developing clean technologies, which would quickly be bought.

While Mark is gone, I’ll try to be a bit more religious with my updates at stop warming!

Stephen

...and hopefully things will continue to get better after that!

Best,

D

and we’ll get all our friends round for a party. that’ll teach you to grumble. i may even fix the picture thing. and the document thing, and the missing password box thing. probably change the domain name to williamross.org, now i think about it.

have a lovely time.

Well, there has been an energy bill compromise in Congress, weighted heavily toward House interests. Thanks, Barton.

And the U.S. appears to be entering into a new pact to reduce emissions, though it might just be some sort of coal alliance with Australia, China, and India. I guess we’ll see the details tomorrow.

http://stopwarming.blogspot.com/2005/07/energy-compromise.html

Stephen

I think the new bills gives huge subsidies/tax breaks to fossil fuels, which means we taxpayers pay on April 15th for (1) others to drive around, have fun, and pollute; and (2) funding fossil fuel-friendly politicians – so they can harass scientists & vote for more fossil fuel subsidies/tax breaks. Funds for alternative energy & conservation/efficiency were cut. This is as bad as, maybe worse than, identity theft, and talk about revolving doors & bank accounts!

If I had the guts of Henry David Thoreau, I’d refuse to pay my taxes & go to jail (he refused to pay taxes that were used to send slave back to the South). Why should I pay to destroy the earth?

I like your comment (currently #113) on RC) – maybe because it sounds like you’re channelling one of my lectures about use vs. exchange value [and who’s to say one is better than the other yadayada).

Best,

D

I like your comment (currently #113) on RC) – maybe because it sounds like you’re channelling one of my lectures about use vs. exchange value [and who’s to say one is better than the other yadayada).

Best,

D

I like your comment (currently #113) on RC) – maybe because it sounds like you’re channelling one of my lectures about use vs. exchange value [and who’s to say one is better than the other yadayada).

Best,

D

Well, when I mentioned the little twister that happened in Coventry a couple of weeks ago, there was a small news item and some fuzzy photographs: that’s it, an aberation and a curiosity.

Yesterday, just down the road in Birmingham, we get a real one! a T4; 136mph winds, 40 houses destroyed, trees smashed, cars thrown about, 20 people injured 3 seriously.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/29/utornado2.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/07/29/ixportaltop.html

(sorry about the Telegraph link, Ian !)

This does not happen in the UK

It does now.

Not the day after tomorrow: perhaps tomorrow.

Regards to all

Colin

There is to be an international demonstration on climate change on December 3rd to coincide with the climate talks in Montreal. Details are on http://www.globefox.com/cacc/globalclimatecampaign.html

The Campaign against Climate Change is co-ordinating this. Their website is http://www.globefox.com/cacc

I guess they’re not only in Kansas anymore, Todo.

Maybe someone could do a theatrical production to increase awareness of GW – “Wizard of Coventry,” the Greenhouse City (r/t Emerald City)....The Wicked Witch of Oil….

US Bill provides 14 billion for Oil subsidies… Why???

(4 billion of it was ear marked for alternative fuel sources)

http://www.thinkandask.com/2005/20050801oil.html

The Oil companies are already making huge profits from the price spikes.

However, I also came across an interesting proposal from C. Starr, a physicist who began the Power Research Institute in Palo Alto California to address future energy problems in the US. He suggested a national power grid linking underground nuclear air cooled reactors to a super conducting grid to distribute the energy across America. The lines are supercooled and have no line resistance losses. The air cooled reactors are underground for additional safety and are not needed to be around lakes or rivers (for water).

I think it’s a brilliant idea! That 14 billion could have been used to further pursue the feasability of this idea!! caveat-Dr. Starr is 93 years old!

source: Fortune Aug 8, 2005

I’d give nothing to fossil fuels (they said what they gave wouldn’t help at the pump anyway), and even bigger amounts to alternative, plus clean public transit. It seems wind power is now about competitive with conventional electricity (& even cheaper in Texas). If wind farms are situated at various locations around the state, that better ensures a steady supply. I don’t know if the federal gov can require that alt energy (wind, solar, biomass) be made available to all customers in the U.S. who want it, but if it could, I’d do it – I was really upset in Illinois that I couldn’t purchase wind electricity.

I’d also give incentives for such projects of using the nuclear power at off-peak times to pump water into a high reservoir, then during peak times, converting that high water into hydropower. We had a ComEd man come to our church environmental group, and he gave that idea, saying that the reason nuclear is so expensive is that they have to keep the plants operating at a constant output, no matter what the demand. Same could be done with wind & solar, when it gets too windy & sunny & demand is low. Right now, ComEdu uses coal as a back-up for peak times. If your idea re nuclear & this idea of storing hydro power were combined, think of the savings. Though, in general, I’d rather see nuclear phase out as the plants get retired.

I’d also require hybrid cars makers to make ones you can plug in available to customers who want them (then they can run the car 90% of the time on wind power). These are already available in Japan & Europe, and in fleet vehicles here. If slight subsidies were given both for plug-in hybrids and wind power, and these were available to all Americans, then we could lower our GHGs really a lot, and reduce many other problems caused by ICE vehicles (acid rain, local pollution, death/disease, feticide/birth defects). Of course, we’d have to make sure battery manufacture was done in non-harmful ways.

And I’d increase the CAFE standards. That might increase the tag price of cars (Amory Lovins & others claim it can be done without raising the price or jeopardizing safety), but in the long run consumers would save more money in lower gasoline bills. Let me explain to you people across the pond, Americans go for the cheapest items (even if they don’t last long); we just don’t think about its lifetime value/costs. When I was in Germany I really hesitated to pay the high price for knee-highs, even though the ones our German friend gave us lasted really a long, long time (I still have them 15 years later), while American knee-highs last maybe a week or two. I ended up not buying them because of the high price. That’s just in our blood, I guess. So we really need Uncle Sam’s help on this one – to set higher standards.

...apparently tornados aren’t such a rarity in this country at all, and in fact we have the highest frequency of tornados in the world, per unit area per year (whatever that means). I only just found out today after ranting on since Thursday about how the Midlands is going to become Britain’s Tornado Alley as global warming gets worse. However, I still reckon it’s very odd having 2 so close together (temporally and geographically) but not wishing to garner accusations of being an hysterical “greenie” I’m open to the possibility that it’s just a coincidence. Only time will tell…

Sorry, forgot to include the website reference on my previous message. Have a look at this for everything you always wanted to know about tornados but were afraid to ask:

http://www.torro.org.uk/TORRO/severeweather/tornadofaqs.php

Thanks.

& reluctant to join Kyoto, etc, I’d at least get up on the bully pulpit & tell Americans about GW & its threats, and ask them to do what they can voluntarily to reduce GHGs, and provide them with info on how to do it cost-effectively.

There are even some good Americans who would sacrifice a bit (somne, a lot) to reduce their GHGs, but regular Americans, I think, would be willing to save money (or have no net loss), while saving the environment—it would make most feel good about themselves. And criminals (we have a high criminal rate here) would be thinking, “Wow, this is like stealing & getting by with it!”

We do get lots of mini Tornado’s: In North Wales, we get a ‘waterspout’ every 2-3 years off Rhyl/Prestatyn. My sister lives in Felixstowe on the East coast and small ones are common there. I was on the ‘phone to her last year when she exclaimed that it was raining bales of straw: obviously a small tornado in the Fenlands had sucked up the contents of a field. She has also witnessed fish falling out of a cloud, presumably from another waterspout.

It remains to be seen if we get more across the midlands and whether they are more severe, causing this kind of damage.

Now, without looking at statistical data to do with frequency and intensity , I’m not going to suggest a link to GW, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

regards

Colin

http://www.fhc.co.uk/DIN.htm

It is very effective. The guys that work there say that it can go from turbines spinning at zero load to full output in 10 seconds. They use the Television schedules to spot demand spikes.

It is just the kind of thing required to balance a mix of renewables and to meet peak load spikes. However, the geological conditions required to build one are not that common.

kind regards

Colin

Hi Colin,

I think you have the wrong impression of me. I have posted articles from the telegraph myself. I must confess that it is not my favourite paper but thanks for your thoughts on defending my delicate nature.

Am think of subscribing to Eco Nazi when some one gets round to writing it. LOL.

Best Ian.

that 2005 would become the hottest year on record. The year 1998 holds the current record.

The average temperature between January and June 1998 was 0.772 Celsius degrees higher than the 1951 through 1980 base temperature.

The average temperature between January and June 2005 was 0.757 Celsius degrees higher than the 1951 through 1980 base temperature.

So far, 2005 is in third place; behind 1998 and 2002.

My name is Magnus Westerstrand and I’m a researcher at Luleåniversity of Technology (department of applied geology) in Sweden. I write to you for the reason that it seams like the sceptics of GW in Sweden have waked up and are claiming natural variability this summer. I just can’t let this pass. I fully understand if you have to much to do and can’t find time to answer this letter. If that is the case feel free to pass it on to some one who has time to answer me.

I’m an interested reader of sites like real climate and the research that go on, but I’m not up to date with all that’s happening in climate research and the political turns. Hence these questions…

The following statements are made by a researcher (NIMA SANANDAJI) in biotechnology at Cambridge University.

The temperature rise made by man is vastly overestimated, it’s likely that it all is natural variability. In fact more and more research point’s in that direction.

The opinion that the earth is worming because of man is mostly based on Geologist Michael Mann and his colleagues. And the IPCC works from the point that his “hock stick” model is true. If these models showed to be untrue much of that work would fall. And that’s exactly what has happened.

The researchers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas pointed out that a model that don’t variate much during simply isn’t realistic. Facts like the little ice age period and the medieval warmth period show this. (because they don’t show up on mans curve)

After that the Canadian statistical expert Steven McIntyre and economic professor Ross McKitrick showed that the models that Mann used was full of holes and manipulation that they could not be classed as science. McIntyre and McKitrick also means that similar calculations are based on incorrect calculations.

The German Hans von Storch came up with similar conclusions. The Swedish meteorologist and nature-geographer Ander Moberg and his colleges also have shown that the natural variability have bean vastly underestimated in the debate on global warming.

The fact that earth temperature is rising could very well be due to the fact that earth is going to a more normal temperature after the little ice age.

I will try to write an answer and to come out with it later… but are thankful fore all the help I can get…

That’s pretty spectacular evidence that AGW is really happening. Under a non-AGW we would have predicted 2005 to drop down to 20th or 30th place or something.

with bonafide credentials who are studying climate change from various angles have concluded that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real & happening, and is predicted to have net harmful consequences. Of course, much more evidence to support (or perhaps disprove) AGW & its consequences will be coming in as the years and decades pass.

RealClimate.org is a great site for info, but I often find it over my head. They did discuss the hockey stick (see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121 ). Even though it was a “dummies guide to the hockey stick” it was still much above my head. However, one point they made was that even without the hockey stick, AGW has been established by many other studies. I’ve always found science a bit conservative in their claims, and the IPCC (which requires some consensus among many scientists) is a very conservative account to AGW. Seems it might turn out they have underestimated AGW & its harms. One article in SCIENCE or NATURE last Nov or Dec was about how science is not goo in predicting abrupt climate change. God only knows the real reality, but we should be prudent and reduce our GHGs, just in case.

Welcome to this blog page!

Hi Magnus.

Here’s how I would reply (sorry I can’t take longer); these are talking points that have been debunked long ago and easily refuted:

The temperature rise made by man is vastly overestimated, it’s likely that it all is natural variability. Evidence, please. Provide empirical evidence taking CO2 ppmv into account. This new evidence would counter the findings of dozens of papers.

In fact more and more research point’s in that direction. No it does not. Please provide empirical evidence, with proper journal citations.

The opinion that the earth is worming because of man is mostly based on Geologist Michael Mann and his colleagues. No it’s not. There were plenty of published papers positing the same thing before 1998. D’Arrigo in Science in 1996 comes immediately to mind.

And the IPCC works from the point that his “hockey stick” model is true. Red Herring. There is plenty of other evidence.

If these models showed to be untrue much of that work would fall. And that’s exactly what has happened. No it has not.

The researchers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas pointed out that a model that don’t variate much during simply isn’t realistic. 1. Their work is seriously flawed, 5 editors resigned in protest because this paper was published, and the majority of global multiproxy papers that Soon and Baliunas used disagreed with their findings as well [which were ignored in the paper’s discussion]. 2. Subsequent papers show more variation, just like S&B say should happen.

Facts like the little ice age period and the medieval warmth period show this. (because they don’t show up on mans curve) False. The LIA shows up, but the MWP was before Mann’s data.

After that the Canadian statistical expert Steven McIntyre and economic professor Ross McKitrick showed that the models that Mann used was full of holes and manipulation that they could not be classed as science. This is an organized character assassination campaign, and they’ve shown no such thing, as they are not climate scientists.

McIntyre and McKitrick also means that similar calculations are based on incorrect calculations. Too bad they can’t show what the correct calculations are to indicate they are correct.

The German Hans von Storch came up with similar conclusions. The Swedish meteorologist and nature-geographer Ander Moberg and his colleges also have shown that the natural variability have bean vastly underestimated in the debate on global warming. And both papers show that modern warming is unprecedented in the last 1000 or 2000 years, which is what Mann said (Mann said 1000). I say again: both papers show that modern warming is unprecedented in the last 1000 or 2000 years. To repeat: both papers show that modern warming is unprecedented in the last 1000 or 2000 years.

The fact that earth temperature is rising could very well be due to the fact that earth is going to a more normal temperature after the little ice age. Have this guy show that the 33% increase in CO2 has nothing to do with the warming.

Puh-lease.

HTH,

ÐnØ

It seems he’s the one who is behind a lot of the GW contrarian science, think tanks, and political influence. I sure do hope his successor is a more humane person, someone who not only cares about his business, but about other people & the planet as well.

Maybe we’ll even be able to call off the Exxon boycott. Maybe the new CEO will make Exxon such a good company doing all it can to fight GHGs, that BP (motto: Beyond Petroleum) will look like the bad guys. I dream on….

See: http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=44920

I don’t know how often they occur but I have never experienced one until a few weeks ago. It didn’t caure that much damage, strangee since it passed an area full of houses, it followed the road fro some strange reason and then hit two graceyards hard.

I read in the paper this week that they do occur often at the sea/archepilago (sp?) on the west coast but they have never been talked about as much as this year.

Fish falling from the sky? Ok, now I understand where Jesus got all that fish from :-) (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

Anna

how about situating the underground nuclear reactors underneath George Bush’s properties and the White House?

according to Mark’s book antartica warms up 3 times faster .. total flooding likely?

spot on

As a Londoner myself, one good thing is Ken Livingstone’s (mayor) introduction of the congestion charge tolled on vehicles using Central London. They are thinking of extending it, I hope nationally! And a somewhat better public transport system using smartcards and new longer buses so hopefully more people take to that and its faster. Also, flat fares. (I think it is noticeable the reduction in cars) Unfortunately, money that should be spent I believe on promoting/creating bicycle routes is usually spent on road building!

Antarctica has been cooling for the past 30 years, it is not warming at all in response to the increase in carbon dioxide.

That presents a problem to those who espouse that carbon dioxide is causing significant warming, because Mark is correct, the hypothesis predicts that the Poles and high altitude places will warm first and warm the most. Temperate and Equatorial areas should be less affected. However, Antarctica is so cold that it is not likely that its ice will melt.

The hypothesis also predicts that overnight lows will increase (i.e. warmer nights) and that daytime highs will be little affected.

In other words, there will be less cold in the coldest places and during the coldest nights. It really doesn’t sound so bad.

Antarctica has been cooling for the past 30 years, it is not warming at all in response to the increase in carbon dioxide.

Whoops!

1. The portion of the continent containing large ice shelves is warming.

1a. Most of the continent is cooling, but the portion that could rapidly change sea level height is warming.

That presents a problem to those who espouse that carbon dioxide is causing significant warming, because Mark is correct, the hypothesis predicts that the Poles and high altitude places will warm first and warm the most.

1. Your talking point forgot the warming Arctic.

2. The talking points have abandoned trying to argue CO2 isn’t causing warming, and instead have shifted to how wonderful it will be for mankind. Git wit da pitcha, boah!

ÐnØ

[1] My spelling might be off, but that’s Yiddish for ‘A half truth is a whole lie’.

which is the arctic north I suppose..

so, the fact that ice sheets have melted, broken off, glaciers disappearing, lakes dried up, permafrost melting has no bearing??

thanks for this reply

The ice shelves are melting because of warmer water, not because of warmer air. The warming of the peninsula is probably the result of the warmer water. The NSF has discovered a heretofore-unknown volcano just east of the peninsula, which is possibly the source of the warmer water.

The ice shelves are floating ice; their melting will not affect sea level anymore than the melting of ice cubes in your glass will cause your drink to overflow.

No station on the entire continent, including the peninsula has ever reported an annual average temperature above the freezing point of water. Only one station, Casey, has ever even reported an average summer season temperature above 0 degrees C, and those few by less than a half degree. How can an atmosphere that never rises above freezing cause ice to melt?

I repeat, the Antarctic continent is not warming; it is cooling.

Your live link did not lead anywhere that contained information about a warming Arctic. It really does not matter: The Arctic is not warming. The recently ballyhooed study that claimed Arctic warming could only do so because it incorporated the recollections of native peoples and the temperature increases caused by the urban heat islands of cities below the Arctic Circle in the database. Temperature measurements made at non-urban stations inside of the Arctic Circle do not indicate a warming trend.

Discussions of the benefits of a warmer planet predate publication of Lomborg’s book, though you may not have heard of them until 2001. Hyperthermia kills far more humans than hypothermia, always has, always will.

I never claimed that carbon dioxide was not contributing to the warming of the climate. I have said that I think that the contribution of carbon dioxide to the warming is small and not significant. I also have said that it is impossible to slow the warming of our climate by a measurable amount by reducing our emissions of carbon dioxide. I decided to clarify in an attempt to limit the number of additional straw men that you can contrive.

The Arctic is not warming.

Ah…..ah…...

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heep…

Ohhh!

Oh, man.

That’s a good one! All that infrastructure AK must replace due to melting permafrost is due to cooling!

Hoo-boy.

A good belly laugh really cleans out the system!

Thanks for that, norb.

Anyway, I have a long post on TCS that shows, norb, that your talking points about the ACIA are:

1. old 2. baseless.

[the comment with the subject heading: Why no link to the actual paper in question in this Daly-esque Article? ]

it’s easier to link to that than to endure the tedium of addressing norb’s parrotted talking points again and again. And again.

ÐnØ

I just read this: “Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat. That’s the view of British physicist Alan Calverd, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less oil and gas. Writing in this month’s Physics World, Calvert calculates that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock. Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. “Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels,” he says.”

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-07/iop-cgw070505.php

Benefits include lower heart disease, reduce cancer risk, save money….

I read your stuff. I also read the replies by George E and Edward. It seemed to me that the exchange exposed you for what you are, overly opinionated, able and willing to select the portions of the science that support those opinions, and completely intolerant of divergent views.

I think that everyone should read the exchange that follows your long post.

You should preface your comment that my points about the Arctic study are old and baseless with the admission that it is your opinion that my points are old and baseless. You might also want to reassess the value of your opinion.

I read your stuff. I also read the replies by George E and Edward. It seemed to me that the exchange exposed you for what you are, overly opinionated, able and willing to select the portions of the science that support those opinions, and completely intolerant of divergent views.

What about your previous statements that nowhere in the Antarctic is it warming and your claim that the Arctic is not warming?

Ah, well.

WRT the TCS mendacity, the point is about scientific findings and the misrepresentation of them, not acceptance of someone’s uneducated opinion. The TCS op-ed attempted to portray the ACIA as biased, and did a poor job of it.

Divergent views don’t matter in this context (mendacicizing about and misrepresenting findings is the context).

The exchanges with George and Edward were about unfounded accusations (that is: they could provide no evidence for their claims) and lack of knowledge on an issue.

If you want to have tolerance for that, I don’t know what to say.

But, hey, thanks for your divergent view!

ÐnØ

You say, “What about your previous statements that nowhere in the Antarctic is it warming and your claim that the Arctic is not warming?”

Actually, I said that no part of Antarctica except the peninsula is warming. That is true.

You claim, “The TCS op-ed attempted to portray the ACIA as biased, and did a poor job of it.”

I thought that TCS and other sites did a good job of discrediting the ACIA fable. If you had read the criticisms with an open mind you might see the faults in the study.

You say, “The exchanges with George and Edward were about unfounded accusations (that is: they could provide no evidence for their claims) and lack of knowledge on an issue.”

What I read was George putting forth an excellent explanation of why the mathematics of the study is faulty and incapable of supporting any conclusion. I could not see that you understood his point; you merely ignored it and countered with references to papers that were not relevant to his point.

Your refusal to acknowledge the points that both George and Edward made is a demonstration of your lack of tolerance for divergent views. You dismiss them as unfounded accusations without ever having understood them.

hi Stephen

I understand your concern re clean emmissions. London Transport run one route using hydrogen cell technology – I wish they would extend it.

oh well, there’s always an excuse to get away from the main issue .. vehicle emmissions!

I just read today of someone suggesting tattooing pigs skins so they couldn’t be eaten and in fact there was a photo of same .. er, they do skin them don’t they? After cooping them up and pumping them up!

Actually, I said that no part of Antarctica except the peninsula is warming. That is true.

It is also true you changed your tune from no part of Antarctica is warming.

And it is also true your assertion about Arctic warming was incorrect.

I thought that TCS and other sites did a good job of discrediting the ACIA fable. If you had read the criticisms with an open mind you might see the faults in the study.

Apparently you aren’t familiar enough with the issue to identify the mendacity. The TCS op-ed has to re-draw the Arctic in order to show their argument to be true; yes, amazingly, this is true – they had to re-define (non-Arctic scientists, mind you, with no expertise in the area). The criticisms I pointed out in comments argued from zero evidence, and none has been provided to date. The TCS op-ed mendacicized the issue, which I pointed out. If you understood the issue, you’d choose a different argument (e.g. this datum is correct because, this conclusion doesn’t hold because…).

Fact is, the criticisms come from non-climate scientists or fringe folk (the TCS article is first-authored by non-climate sceintists – second authors Legates and Taylor haven’t published empirical research).

What I read was George putting forth an excellent explanation of why the mathematics of the study is faulty and incapable of supporting any conclusion.

Apparently you aren’t familiar enough with the issue to identify the fact that George didn’t understand anomaly. Geo was confused about anomaly. I gave him some refs to bone up. You’ll notice he had no reply. In that thread you’ll notice Geo replying a lot, so he’s persistent, unless he drops out of a thread suddenly when he sees his unsupportable argument.

Your refusal to acknowledge the points that both George and Edward made is a demonstration of your lack of tolerance for divergent views. You dismiss them as unfounded accusations without ever having understood them.

I’ll keep this to monosyllables so you can follow:

Ed no know what is science. ACIA did science. Ed wrong. Me acknowledge Ed mean say ACIA do no science. Why say ACIA do no science when not true?

George say many obtuse things. Acknowledge obtuse things fine. I acknowlege George. No mean I say George correct. I acknowlege George confused anomaly. I say before George he wrong ice accumulation and Vostok CO2 record, give citation – George no read and still say wrong thing.

There, norb. How’s that? I acknowledged them. Following your logic, I have to debate with Edward about how the ACIA did no science. Great! I’ll ask you the same thing: show me how this is true. Show how the conclusions did not follow from empirical inspection.

Be sure to acknowledge the materials and methods sections of the individual papers, and show how these differ from other papers, and then demonstrate how the individual papers differ from other papers.

I’ll wait patiently for your evidence that the papers used in the ACIA are as you say.

That’s how it’s done, and Edward had no answer, nor will you, and your BS Your refusal to acknowledge the points that both George and Edward made is a demonstration of your lack of tolerance for divergent views. You dismiss them as unfounded accusations without ever having understood them sounds like some postmodern thing the right loves to pound on.

You’re using the wrong playbook. Trotting out postmodernism is used by libs, not by cons. Cons don’t argue from postmodern principles.

ÐnØ

For not letting contrarians get by with balony. Keep up your excellent work.

I don’t know enough climate science to jump in and refute contrarians in most cases. I accept what bonafide scientists say over what contrarians who seem to have some agenda (or are just plain ornery) say.

And I follow the precautionary principle – better to reduce GHGs (esp while saving money & not reducing living standards) than risk harms (& waste money). That just make common cents & $$ to me. The fact that contrarians refuse to save money while reducing GHGs & GW risks (no matter how small they perceive those risks) to me makes them out as a bunch of crazies.

I think you must have an excellent science background to take on these contrarians on scientific grounds.

..on whether antartica is cooling or warming. Well, it doesn’t really matter .. we’re all going to blow ourselves up in the next decade with nuclear fallout and chemical weaponry. Not to mention monster tsunamis and monster hurricanes!

I do not have your climate science acumen so I appreciate your responses back to Norbert and enjoy reading them. If you were not here, then I would have to respond back to Norbert myself as I have done in the past. Now, I can focus my time better on energy related issues as my focus is better suited to energy efficiency rather than climate science.

For me, when I see the earth as a simple system, I think about the total heat imbalance as was discussed on the blog many months ago. My own scalar calculations back then showed me that the earth is in a delicate balance. When that balance is changed, then the earth will seek a new equilibrium state. This new equilibrium state takes time to achieve in the order of decades to centuries because the earth has so much thermal inertia in the land, oceans, and polar ice.

It is apparent to me that humans can alter the environment. With vast areas of land changes and double digit changes in key atmospheric compounds, it is unlikely that the earth is in a state of equilibrium but in a state of transition to another equilibrium state.

The changes to the earth are small when one thinks about just a small percent increase in sea level. A sea level rise of a meter is inconsequential in relation to the earth’s oceans whose depth is measured in kilometers. To the earth, these adjustments to a new equilibrium state are small even though to humans (and the biosphere) they may represent a major disruption.

If the geological past shows us that ice ages cometh and goeth, then how can billions of humans not affect the planet’s equilibrium state with the changes we have already made to the biosphere through the activities of modern man?

People like Norbert remind me of people from the past who thought they had a prosperous future the day before the stock market crash which signaled the start of the Great Depression. These were the “cons” of the past and they were dead wrong back then as well.

I feel sorry for Norbert because when the paradigm shifts, he may have to live with knowing that he was a liability to others who cared about the future. I could not imagine the guilt he will face plus the awareness that his life was nothing more than one big gigantic lie.

But then again, is Norbert even capable of even being honest with himself. The worst part is that Norbert actually believes in his own lies.

Best,

Dan

For more bad news go to http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725124.500.html

Douglas Coker

I’m not surprised .. After watching ‘Bowling for Columbine’ I happened to look up statistics (CIA I think) and was shocked at the insane USA graphical statistic of money spent on guns($trillions) in comparison to other countries which looked miniscule on the chart (including UK which has a thriving arms industry). Oil and guns culture ..

As a layperson (but having studied science) I was really interested to come across this – The Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP).. http://www.essp.org/ (I am sure the scientists on this site know about it or are involved but it was new to me).. just thought I’d mention it somewhere!

You’re welcome Lynn (and the others too).

I have 2 natural science degrees with a minor in each, so I hung around the Uni system for a while (the women in the natural sciences are more to my liking :o) ).

Plus, I was a weatherman in my younger days – I started reading the climate and metro journals in my early 20s, thus have a long association with the literature and can cut through the talking points.

Purposeful tangent: some kids today brought me a radiosonde transmitter from a weather balloon that fell near their skate park. I had a fun teachable moment describing what it did, why, and what weather folk do with the data (“sonny, back in my day before computers and the Internets, I had to plot these data by hand!).

Kids are so much more teachable than willfully ignorant ideologues!

Best,

ÐnØ

http://www.eta.co.uk/news/newsview.asp?n=314 http://www.eta.co.uk/climate.asp

..I’ve sent it everywhere

Colin Challen MP (Labour) is involved in campaigning for a carbon credit currency (smartcard?) which is under development at the moment. (He can be contacted at colinchallenmp@parliament.co.uk) ..

From his article: ”.. The domestic market should be covered by Domestic Tradable Quotas. Carbon units would be issued free and equally to all adults in the UK and depending on their energy consumption individuals would have either surpluses or deficits in carbon units, which could be sold or bought on the market. Units would be surrendered automatically when things like domestic fuel or petrol were paid for.

The political attraction of DTQs, apart from their equitable nature, and indeed the use of markets, is that it avoids the pitfalls of environmental taxes including fuel protests, regressive effect, et al and that for the first time every individual of voting age would have a vested interest in the environment. The environment would shoot up the political agenda and the value of carbon units would be a regular source of pub talk.

The market for renewable energy, largely zero rated in terms of carbon emissions, would receive a bigger kick than from any of the government’s schemes, even the Renewables Obligation, but of course such schemes are not mutually exclusive. DTQs, once introduced, would be hard to reverse or abandon: for here we are talking about a new currency of real worth, not based on the gold standard, so to speak, but the carbon standard which is rather more relevant to our future.”

Looks promising.

My only comment on this is can we exploit the peat bogs and drain them of methane to be used as a fuel by piping it to an LNG terminal.

If we could use the methane as a fuel instead of allowing its release, then this may be a way of mitigating the problem.

I know sometimes what I offer may sound ridiculous but “ideas” (even ridiculous ones) help me to stay away from despair. Even if an idea cannot be done, it is worthy to ask the question anyway and think if there is a way to do it.

If methane is used as a fuel rather than go into the air, then a molecule of methane is replaced by a molecule of carbon dioxide which reduces the impact by 95 percent (GWP reduction of 19/20 based on methane is 20 times the GWP of carbon dioxide). If one considers that the carbon dioxide molecule would have been produced anyway from other exploited sources (which do not leak GHGs to the atmosphere), then one would have to consider the extraction of peat bog methane to be an essentially zero-emission fuel under current circumstances.

That is why I had to pose this question even if it appears ridiculous. Can the peat bogs be used as a fossil fuel source? Would it not be better than what we do currently which is use methane which is already safely sequestered deep underground as a fuel?

Thanks for the information Douglas. We have to know the bad news sometimes so we fully understand what we are up against. No matter how bad the news is, we cannot allow ourselves to become despairing. If we do that, then any hope of success at mitigating climate change will be dashed since despair invites failure from destroying our own confidence and initiative to find viable solutions and to take meaningful action.

All the very best to you Douglas! I appreciate your contributions to this blog. It seems that we are running out of options but failure can never be one of them. As long as we are alive, we must find strength in each other. In that article, there is a cyclic weather event contributing to this peat bog release of methane so it is not all GW/CC related and it was not clear how much is weather related. Very little consolation on that but some is better than none.

Kind thoughts,

Dan

George did not misunderstand anomaly. You misunderstood George’s point and mistakenly accused him of misunderstanding anomaly. You then magnanimously corrected George’s non-error. You do that a lot, i.e. mistakenly accuse others of having made errors and then correcting them. My sense of the situation was that George grew weary of your obtuse refusal to understand and reply to his points; it had nothing to do with his having no reply.

Nowhere did you respond to George’s primary criticism of the study, the biasing (George called it aliasing) of the data by use of a sampling frequency that is too low. He also made the point that the derivatives (slopes of the temperature lines) of signals are noisier than the original signal and are erroneous even in their means. He went on to say that the errors in the data will not correct errors caused by the Nyquist violation.

George explained to you why the conclusions do not follow from the data.

Apparently, a step change in the temperature in Alaska occurred in the mid 1970s. AGW did not cause the change, the most likely suspect is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. A warming in one portion of the Arctic does not mean that the entire Arctic is warming.

If you will review the temperature data from Arctic stations located in rural areas you will find that there has been no warming in the Arctic. My criticism of the Study is that it included temperature data from the rural stations, which are subject to UHIE bias.

You accuse TCS of mendacity. I think that you would be more accurate if you accused them of temerity. The site has the temerity to challenge your heart-felt beliefs.

Nowhere did you respond to George’s primary criticism of the study, the biasing (George called it aliasing) of the data by use of a sampling frequency that is too low.

Because Geo and I have been over this ground many times. He’ll never be satisifed with any sample size. He thinks average temperature is meaningless, too. All those silly scientists who use it are no match for Geo.

George explained to you why the conclusions do not follow from the data.

Noooo, he gave his opinion as to why he thinks the conclusions yadayada. So he gave his opinion. Great!

The opinion of people who actually do this for a living disagree with Geo (who does something else for a living), and their conclusions are what I argue from. No one gives a rat’s *ss whether you disagree with professional’s findings unless you back it with empirical evidence.

I notice this is all you have – you can’t give any empirical work, just quotes from a guy commenting on a lobbying site.

Apparently, a step change in the temperature in Alaska occurred in the mid 1970s. AGW did not cause the change, the most likely suspect is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. A warming in one portion of the Arctic does not mean that the entire Arctic is warming.

I’m confused as to why you would conflate AK with the rest of the arctic. You forgot about the other areas that are warming, such as the graph I linked to when I was laughing at your silly, unsupported argument.

Ah, well. The PDO is not well-studied and the contrarians don’t bring up that argument any more, norb, because the PDO was due to flip back and mantua/REPORTS/PDO/PDO_egec.htm”>your arguments have all been passed by, left in the scrap heap of past history. The PDO is problematic and using that as a tout shows you cut/paste from IndyFunded sites rather than visiting libraries and doing your homework

If you will review the temperature data from Arctic stations located in rural areas you will find that there has been no warming in the Arctic.

Sure, norb. Suuuuure. Keep repeating it over and over. If there are enough rubes out there, they’ll believe it.

My criticism of the Study is that it included temperature data from the rural stations, which are subject to UHIE bias.

Do you have any other evidence than a non-empirical study that looked at one station?

I mean, other than no.

I’m looking at ISI now and I see nothing there that supports your claim. Only the die-hard contrarians keep bringing this up, because the empirical evidence is not in the denialist’s favor.

Remember: you have to show that the GHCN has been biased by the UHI. You can’t do it. You have no empirical evidence. There are 2 or 3 exploratory papers, but thats it.

When you go to the library to look this up to see what I’m talking about, Gallo’s your man, then Peterson. You’ll also find the phenomenon is well-studied. Karl in 1989 addressed the supposedly revelatory things you bring up here. See, the UHI drops off once soil starts. And where are the majority of the GHCN stations? Your IndyFunded sources gloss over that lil’ bit; if you don’t understand this you need to stop now, because you’ll look like a fool/

Plus, if you go to the library and look hard enough and are clever, you’ll find me acknowledged in a UHI paper, too. I imagine that would be a real find for you, norb.

ÐnØ

and since they need to be used (along with an enormous amount of water – which requires energy for pumping – and pesticides/syn.fertilizers, which release other GHGs) to grow many crops to feed livestock during their lifetime of fattening up(and some feed is shipped from Argentina), then it really does reduce GHGs to simply eat the crops, r/t the livestock. You also have to figure in the methane from gaseous cows, etc. I’ve been into this for some time, and I vaguely remember that a vegetarian diet involves about 1/10 or 1/7 the GHGs as a meat-based diet.

Since I have a hard time convincing other people to reduce GHGs, I’m at least trying to reduce my own. I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but I figure I’ve got to do whatever I can & hope others follow along before it’s too late & we reach the point of no return (which we may have already reached).

I thought, what a waste of methane. If we could only use that for our energy needs. The problem, I would guess, is that it is so defuse & dispersed that it would probably require more energy and environmental harm to capture it for use. I even thought of a methane vacume cleaner (since I know methane is heavier than air and would linger a bit near the earth), but that would also vacume up all the bugs, etc. And capping the bogs with clay (as they do garbage dumps to capture the methane) would not only destroy the environment there, but be virtually impossible. Still, maybe people could capture some of the methane.

Well, it looks like we’re reaching the tipping point much faster than scientists had predicted (which is what I’ve been fearing). So now we may be into runaway global warming, the Venus effect, and the contrarians can jump for joy as the world dies, since nature would now be the cause of immense GW, not us humans, who only pulled the trigger on it and got it jump-started.

California is struggling with this right now, as the San Joaquin valley is a nonattainment area, and the diesel pumps and other irrigation devices are major contributors to the air pollution causing the nonattainment.

D

So now we may be into runaway global warming, the Venus effect, and the contrarians can jump for joy as the world dies, since nature would now be the cause of immense GW, not us humans, who only pulled the trigger on it and got it jump-started.

There are an awful lot of critters on the planet who would buffer a runaway effect, Lynn. We certainly have appropriated more Net Primary Produtivity (NPP) than any other organism on the planet, but IMHO we haven’t degraded too many ecosystems beyond repair.

Nature bats last.

D

Dear Lynn,

The 2001 IPCC gives a breakdown of greenhouse gases, separating out the impact of CO2 and methane, and I remember it attributing a factor to agriculture. It shows quite clearly that burning fossil fuels is the main reason behind increased greenhouse gases. So the person who thinks that going vegetarian can absolve us from having to cut down on fossil-fuel use has obviously got it wrong.

There is, however, another good reason for going vegetarian which is linked to climate change:

There is now evidence, that world grain output is beginning to decrease, whilst the world population keeps growing by about 70 million a year. According to the FAO, this year’s forecast is for a 2.8% decline compared to last year, caused largely by droughts in Europe and the US (and it would almost have been worse – I understand that Western Australia’s farmers were close to abandoning any planting of winter wheat if the drought had lasted even a few weeks longer, and theirs is the second largest wheat growing area in the world).

Last year saw record high output, particularly in the US, and this was attributed reasonably low temperatures and adequate rainfall in the main growing areas – something we certainly cannot rely on with global warming. Before that, there were four years of ever increasing grain shortfalls, with stocks down to the lowest in 30 years. I understand that China has had a deficit in grain production since 2000.

At the same time, trade in meat is increasing worldwide. It seems a simple calculation to me: Less grain, more people, and more fodder for cattle. The fodder for cattle displaces grain (on top of adding to deforestation and thus to global warming), and it takes far more cattle fodder for us to get the same nutrition from meat as it would to grow grain for humans on the same area.

With all the talk about peak oil, it seems that we have reached ‘peak grain’. Unless we use the grain more efficiently and equitably, we will be faced with real world food shortfalls long before the Himalayan glaciers melt.

Almuth

ready to activate as the world warms, as well, such as methane clathrates in the ocean, and several CO2 positive feedback loops. And we are degrading a lot of nature in many other ways, in addition to GW. I’m not sure if anyone, including the Club of Rome, has any total understanding of all the problems (some possibly with multiplicative or even exponential effects).

I’m not saying everything will die, so much as there may be a lot of death & destruction in the pipeline & even if it take thousands of years to totally play out (one study finds that up to 1/4 of our CO2 emissions could be in the atmosphere up to 100,000 years), it’s sure a lot more than I would like to happen.

Hi Anna,

I visited my sister last week and asked her about the falling fish episode. Rather to my disappointment, it was not a piscine deluge that would do justice to an old testament scripture, but two small (dead) sardine-like fish. It was raining at the time and there had been a thunderstorm. The other possible cuplrit is a seagull of course, but they are not known for giving up food easily!

Sorry for introducing a whiff of the bizarre and possibly paranormal to this august website!

kind regards

Colin

Hi Lynn,Dan and all,

hope you are all well.

The same thought about Methane capture crossed my mind but I had a mental picture of the whole of Western Siberia covered in black polythene sheet with pipes running off it and thought : maybe not!

As has been discussed earlier on this Blog, methane will degrade to C02 fairly quickly, so I wonder if there has been any progress on the concept of using a solar chimney coupled to a CO2 scrubber to sequester it and recombine it with H2 to produce a range of gaseous/liquid fuels. I know I sent Dan some links about this a while back but can’t find them just now. I seem to remember that such a plant could be about 8 times as efficient as a rain forest at removing CO2 from the air and they could be solar powered.

In the meantime, there are a number of geo-political ‘feedback loops’ that could impact on our CO2 outputs in the mid term: Nuclear proliferation, Asian Bird Flu, HIV, peak oil’s impact on fertiliser production, agricultural machinery, & transport exascerbating food production shortfalls….

Kind regards to all.

Colin

Wouldn’t want to post a link to such a reactionary establishment organ without a warning!

best

Colin

Regarding building and paying for a post-facto scrubber,

one of the sad things about destroying our ecosystem services is that, as plants and animals go about metabolizing and doing stuff we like (for free), we go about destroying those free services and paying large sums of money to build engineered structures to do the very things we weren’t paying for.

D

And partly because we give so much weight to economics and (classical) economic models that don’t even see the environment, except as potential resources, and certainly not the freebies, like the air we breathe, which doesn’t count at all in economic terms, until one day we may need to buy bottled air to survive, or if we have to purify it, then it is the purifiers that have value & get attention.

I agree with that nature is remarkably resilient even in the face of all our evil & stupidity. I’m no scientists, but I just wonder how much of our punishment nature can take before it loses that resilience to the extent of massive harm to humans and other life forms. I’ve read that some scientists think we are actually in the midst (or beginnings) of an extinction level event.

Well, Lynn, the key is measuring resilience. We really don’t know much to do a good job at measuring resilience, and then knowing where the line is where a system flips.

The classical economics is an exploitation model that devalues the externalities. Until we get out of our personal microclimates, we won’t be able to apprehend externalities in order to value them. Certainly those that depend upon not counting the externalities have no impetus to have us start counting…

Best,

D

Oh yes, science is not science and facts are not facts. All is only opinion and as such we must always take opinion into account. It was 101 degrees here a few days ago, up on the Canadian border, and I said: “Christ it’s hot today”. My neighbour told me “Thats only your opinion, some would say this is really a cooling event”. Attempts to cloud uncomfortable facts is the essence of all these opinions. Sure, I was in Alsaka a year ago and the glaciers are going fast, but then that is MY opinion, some would say they are growing but I haven’t time to consider that properly. Give due consideration to the paid enemies of climate science, that is what they want. .

Bob B.

See my “Some Vehicles are Farm Vehicles” & Dano’s “Struggles” to get a better idea just how many ways and how much GHGs are implicated in agriculture (well beyond methane from gaseous cows). One way to think about it is to consider that a cow lives for ?? 10 years ?? before it is slaughtered. During that time it eats a lot of crops (more than what a human vegetarian would eat, since it is such a large animal). So, even if the input for crop-growing and concomitant GHGs (from farm vehicles/machines, water pumping) is the same for cattle feed as it is for human vegetarian food, we have to consider the entire life-time that cow is eating, how much it eats, minus how much we finally get out of that cow once it is slaughtered. They figure 7 to 12 vegetarians can live off the same amount of land as one meat-eater, so that gives a rough idea about the difference in GHGs between vegetarians & meat-eaters.

Of course, as you point out, there are many aspects to consider besides GW. I saw a film “Politics of Food” (included Frances Moore Lapp as a speaker), that had a segment about Brazilian subsistence farmers pushed off their land by multinationals (one headquartered in Chicago) that were growing soy (using very little labor) to feed to chickens that were shipped to the wealthy in their country and abroad. The upshot, the poor landless farmers were starving at the side of the road so rich people could get heart attacks from overconsumption of chicken. It’s a crazy, crazy world.

Then there is the anti-cancer diet, which really helps prevent & even sometimes cure cancer: vegan, 1/2 to 2/3 raw. I’ve seen its positive effects (also for gall bladder & heart problems).

As the song goes: Seek ye first the kingdom of God & its righteousness (like helping victims of GW, etc.), then all these things (like good health) will be added unto you. Some famous athletes are vegan, so it doesn’t reduce our energy, as some fear. And nowadays it’s not much of a sacrifice with all the veggie meat substitutes (I have to watch out for MSG though).

If we have screwed things up to the level that is now becoming evident, then the overshoot in the atmosphere due to the GHG’s already present, the changes in water cycles, albedo change due to ice melt and vegetation cover change etc. may be at a stage where the eco-system services will not be able to correct the imbalance in time to prevent unstoppable feedback loops kicking in.

If CO2 is the primary culprit, and perhaps changes in land-use resulting in de-forestation and increased desertification are the next largest contibutor, then I think we may need an emergency brake application in the form of a medium-term carbon sequestration programme, not just to stop adding more GHG’s to the atmosphere, but maybe to assist the natural ecosystems in getting levels back down to a point where they can cope on their own.

So an atmosheric CO2 scrubber that can produce a salable biofuel range seems both prudent and a possible investment opportunity. As to measures to recapture Carbon from organic wastes and get it back into the soil to provide an enhanced growing medium for replanting trees, supported by solar powered de-salination plants and irrigation systems to start reversing desertification, then these should be purseud avidly as well.

The question is, can we help the IPCC and its constituent members develop their climate models to a point where they can do a risk analysis of pro-active interventions to counter GW effects? Their is a real risk that by not understanding enough of the feed-back mechanisms, we could make things worse by tinkering, but I fear we might already be past the point of just advocating a halt to accellerating emissions.

If the alternative is a certain Permian-style mass extiction, then surely there is a level of acceptable risk in looking at intervention actions to try to re-stabilise the global eco-system?

regards

Colin

No worries. I got myself a huge smile there so I just say thank you. Two tiny sardines huh?

Actually, a while ago i read an article about crabs veing found in gardens far from the sea here in Sweden…Can’t remember how on earth they got there but…..interesting.

Anna