House hearing on Global Warming cancelled due to cold!

@ Tom

1) Remember when SPF 8 protected you from the Sun? When's the last time you put that on and spent 8 hours in the Florida sun without turning to raw meat? Just a quick example of the effect that it had. The sun didn't get brighter, the earth didn't get closer, but for some reason more ultraviolet radiation seems to be hitting the earth. It also helps that we eliminted all the CFC's about 25 years ago.

2) This is not a local forecast. A local forecast has a VERY limited amount of time to analyze. Nor is there an opportunity to re-forecast. You'll note that the global warming concept has been done over and over, with each session refining the answers. Also, if you go to the discussion section of NOAA after a large event, you'll see how they breakdown what happened vs. what they though should happen. What you're asking for is 100% accuracy on everything. Let me ask you this, did it snow? If so, seems they got the bulk of the forecast right. How about wind speed, direction, temperature?

3) We measure the air quality. The main recording station, that I hear the most about, is in Hawaii. Located far from pollution centers to avoid direct pollution from primary sources. We are comparing these measurements to the gas levels that are found in ice cores and so on.

4) Nothing makes it untouchable, but the longer people look at this, the more people agree. Now, if you choose not to believe it, that's entirely up to you, but personally I'll deny ignorance.

Originally posted by ProfTom
Before I get attacked - I want to discuss this reasonably. No arguing please!!!

I would like to ask some common sense questions, and lets get some common sense answers, no name calling or false theories or "Bush is behind it" - PLEASE!!!

OK, if you're open to a reasonable discussion, I'll try. I'm not an alarmist, I'm not what you would call an archetypal environmentalist.

1. What happened to the hole in the ozone layer? Thirty or so years ago, we were told that the ozone layer was not going to be here and the rate of skin cancer was going to be 10 - 30% of the worlds population, trees, plants and other wildlife was going to die, drouts...etc..etc.. and it was all do to those nasty little Cfls - chloroflourocarbons (spelling?) we used in deotorant.(the stuff you spray under your arms to smell nice -joke), I also believe they were in air conditioners and refrigerators.

My answer: I don't know about anybody else but, the last time I checked, I don't have skin cancer nor do I know anyone with skin cancer, I have two refrigerators and about 100,000 btus of air conditioning in my home. UH, I'm still me, no more healthy no less healthy.

The hole in the ozone hole over the south pole was bigger than ever in 2006. The gases we emitted have a long life in the atmosphere and it will be a few years until their concentration start to fall.

environment.newscientist.com...

As for the skin cancer issue...

Ozone Depletion and Skin Cancer

Ozone in the stratosphere protects Earth from damaging amounts of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. A depleted ozone layer would allow more of the Sun's rays to reach Earth's surface. An increase in the levels of UV-B reaching the Earth as a result of ozone depletion may compound the effects of spending more time in the Sun. According to some estimates a sustained 10% global loss of ozone may lead to a 26% increase in the incidence of skin cancers among fair skinned people. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that a 2% increase in UV-B radiation would result in a 2 to 6% increase in non-melanoma skin cancer. Increases in UV radiation relative to levels in the 1970s are estimated to be as much as 7% at Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes during the winter and spring, 4% at Northern Hemisphere mid-latidudes in summer and autumn, and 6% at Southern Hemisphere mid-latidudes on a year-round basis.

Australia, with high sunshine levels, has very high skin cancer rates. An estimated 2 out of every 3 people in most parts of the country will develop some form of skin cancer. In Queensland, where UV-B radiation is the highest, the probability jumps to 3 in every 4. In America, in 1935, the chances of developing the more serious malignant melanoma was 1 in 1500. In 1991 it had soared to 1 in 150, and it is predicted that by the beginning of the new millennium it will be 1 in 75.

www.ozone-hole.org.uk...

#2. The daily and weekly whether reports on the nightly news programs. This week is an exceptionally good week to discuss this with the SO CALLED "blizzard" in the northeast. They can't get the daily, weekly forcast correct, BUT they know what's going to happen in 30, 50, 75, 100 years from now?

MY answer: On the news this week they said (for my area - new york) that we would get between 1 - 3 inches of snow and freezing rain. Okay, we probably got 6 inches. My point: they were wrong even when they were reporting it. The story didn't change until there was more than the 3 inches on the ground and then they didn't know if it was going to end.

If they don't know while its happening, how can they be 100% sure of what's going to happen 30-50-75-100 years from now?

Weather is more chaotic than long-term climate. I can make a prediction that it will be warmer where I am in august than now. I'm pretty sure it will be correct. However, if I make a prediction of rain next tuesday, there's a higher probability I'll be wrong

The climate models make predictions that are not absolute, hence the reason they give ranges of possibilities and have a degree of uncertainty. Long-term climate depends on many variables. A big volcano may yet spill thousands of tonnes of sulpates into the atmosphere and reduce possibile temperature ranges.

The decade prediction from the new IPCC report for the next 20 years is approx 0.2C per decade. In 1990, the IPCC prediction was 1.5-3.0C from 1990-2005, it was actually 0.2C.

#3. The consensus is that humans and their "toys" contribute to global warming. My question is, How do we know how much Co2 is in the atmosphere now? How did we measure it? When did they first measure it and how did I miss it? What are we comparing these measurments too?

Now, no long dragged out formulas on this please, because science is not exact.

My point to this is : What if they aren't measuring the right gases? or What if their way of measuring is incorrect? Scientists have been wrong in the past, what makes them right about this?

Science can be exact depending on the science and the system under examination. Climate is complex with many uncertainties, thus no-one will tell you a 100% exact prediction of a temperature increase for a future date, just that it will be within some range with a degree of certainty (usually 90-95%).

Meaurements of CO2 have been produced directly at a station in Hawaii since the late 1950s. Indirect measurements are derived from proxy sources. These include ice-cores and ocean sediments, it's a more 'forensic' method. There are degrees of uncertianty with such measurements but they do confirm the vaildity of each other (for example, the vostok ice-core that goes back 650,000 years has been validated by the new EPICA ice-core, this goes back possibly 800,000 years).

#4. My last question. What makes this new report from this UN council untouchable? or infalible? Why must it be right? And why aren't we allowed to hear the opposition? Their must be some opposition. It doesn't make sense that every scientist on the planet agrees with this.

I don't think it is untouchable. It is based on the science that has been produced. No science is absolute.

Not every scientist agrees with it. Some will disagree with the certianty of the predictions, some will disagree with the extent of human influence, fewer will deny the science all together.

All scientists who doubt the science need to do is find the evidence to refute the current science and publish it. That's how it works.

[edit on 15-2-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by melatonin
Rather than depend on belief, what does actual science have to say on the solar variation issue.....

So it seems Muaddib's claim is a red-herring and cannot fully account for the current period of warming.

There are many factors that influence the Climate, and the "red herring" is trying to claim that because "one" of the factors doesn't "supposedly" account for the changes we have been seeing "is proof that mankind caused the current Climate Change", as some claim is "disengenuous" to say the least.

Not only that but the "belief" that computer models can "guess" what happens in Earth's atmosphere is what people like melatonin "depend on"... that's their "belief".

That's all that "computer models which use flawed proxies to guess what is happening in the atmosphere" are all about, belief....

A belief that mankind is the "master of the universe' and we can affect the Climate of Earth when there are other forces more destructive than mankind and can change the face of the Earth in a couple of days.

If computer models can't even guess with certainty what the weather is going to be in the bext few weeks, how can "computer models" guess right exactly what happens in Earth's atmosphere?...

Time and again scientists such as Hansen and Mann have to change their predictions because they don't get them right.... They overestimate or underestimate factors and have had to change their "predictions time and again"...

Back in the 30s and 40s there was Global Warming, then in the middle of the 40s and up to the beginning of the 70s there was a cooling trend, and now again we are in a warming trend that has lasted 30 years, just like the last 30s years, between the 40s-70s there was a cooling trend. Those are the observable facts.

Even then temperature trends have not stayed constant, there have been years when there was a cooling trend and other years there was a warming trend to again have a cycle of cooling trend.

Even to this day the same is happening and instead of there being a "warming trend" there has been a cooling trend.

Here is a list on some of the Climmte Changes that Earth has gone through for the past 15,000 years.

large climate changes in Europe/Near East during the last 15,000 calendar years (note that these dates are in 'real' years not radiocarbon years).

14,500 y.a. - rapid warming and moistening of climates. Rapid deglaciation begins.

13,500 y.a. - climates about as warm and moist as today's

13,000 y.a. 'Older Dryas' cold phase (lasting about 200 years) before a partial return to warmer conditions.

12,800 y.a. (+/- 200 years)- rapid stepwise onset of the intensely cold Younger Dryas. Much drier than present over much of Europe and the Middle East, though wetter-than-present conditions at first prevailed in NW Europe.

11,500 y.a. (+/- 200 years) - Younger Dryas ends suddenly over a few decades, back to relative warmth and moist climates (Holocene, or Isotope Stage 1).

11,500 - 10,500 y.a. - climates possibly still slightly cooler than present-day.

9,000 y.a. - 8,200 y.a. - climates warmer and often moister than today's

about 8,200 y.a. - sudden cool phase lasting about 200 years, about half-way as severe as the Younger Dryas. Wetter-than-present conditions in NW Europe, but drier than present in eastern Turkey.

8,000-4,500 y.a. - climates generally slightly warmer and moister than today's.

(but; at 5,900 y.a. - a possible sudden and short-lived cold phase corresponding to the 'elm decline').

Since about 4,500 y.a. - climates fairly similar to the present

2,600 y.a. - relatively wet/cold event (of unknown duration) in many areas

(but; 1,400 y.a. [536-538 A.D.] wet cold event of reduced tree growth and famine across western Europe and possibly elsewhere).

(Followed by 'Little Ice Age' about 700-200 ya)

www.esd.ornl.gov...

In the above they forgot to mention the Medieval Warming Event which was an unusual warming event which started around 800 AD and lasted until the 1300s.

Some members would like to claim these events were only "local", but the fact is quite the oposite as the geological record from China, Europe, the Americas, and even in South Africa show.

I have posted in other threads the research done by scientists from accross the globe, which melatonin among other would like to dismiss and ignore entirely for their own reasons....

The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming in South Africa


P. D. Tyson1, W. Karlén2, K. Holmgren2 and G. A. Heiss3.

1Climatology Research Group, University of the Witwatersrand
2Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University
3Geomar, Wischhofstr. 1-3, 24148 Kiel, Germany; present address: German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), P.O. Box 120161, 27515 Bremerhaven, Germany, E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The Little Ice Age, from around 1300 to 1800, and medieval warming, from before 1000 to around 1300 in South Africa, are shown to be distinctive features of the regional climate of the last millennium. The proxy climate record has been constituted from oxygen and carbon isotope and colour density data obtained from a well-dated stalagmite derived from Cold Air Cave in the Makapansgat Valley.

The climate of the interior of South Africa was around 1oC cooler in the Little Ice Age and may have been over 3°C higher than at present during the extremes of the medieval warm period. It was variable throughout the millennium, but considerably more so during the warming of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Extreme events in the record show distinct teleconnections with similar events in other parts of the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

The lowest temperature events recorded during the Little Ice Age in South Africa are shown to be coeval with the Maunder and Sporer Minima in solar irradiance. The medieval warming is shown to have been coincided with the cosmogenic 10Be and 14C isotopic maxima recorded in tree rings elsewhere in the world during the Medieval Maximum in solar radiation.

www-user.zfn.uni-bremen.de...

You hear in the news and even scientists mention "warm records have been beaten", well, they don't tell you that "cold records have been beaten too", all over the world, not just in some areas.

There will probably be some more warming, but the warming will be worse around 2012 when the next sunspot cycle is supposed to begin, and it is going to be the biggest one yet. Then we will see more warming trends, but after that we will "probably" go back to Global Cooling trends, as the Climate cycles have done in the past.

Also NASA, and the ESA (European Space Agency) have stated that by 2012-2013 the density of the interstellar cloud we have been entering will be at the highest. It also depends on what sort opf interstellar cloud we are currently going through, whether it is a difuse interstellar cloud or a dense molecular interstellar cloud it will affect the Climate on Earth differently.

Ulysses sees Galactic Dust on the rise
01 Aug 2003

Since early 1992 Ulysses has been monitoring the stream of stardust flowing through our Solar System. The stardust is embedded in the local galactic cloud through which the Sun is moving at a speed of 26 kilometres every second. As a result of this relative motion, a single dust grain takes twenty years to traverse the Solar System. Observations by the DUST experiment on board Ulysses have shown that the stream of stardust is highly affected by the Sun's magnetic field.
.............
Unlike Earth, however, the Sun reverses its magnetic polarity every 11 years. The reversal always occurs during solar maximum. That's when the magnetic field is highly disordered, allowing more interstellar dust to enter the Solar System. It is interesting to note that in the reversed configuration after the recent solar maximum (North negative, South positive), the interstellar dust is even channelled more efficiently towards the inner Solar System. So we can expect even more interstellar dust from 2005 onwards, once the changes become fully effective.

sci.esa.int...

There are many factors affecting Earth's climate, and mankind contribution of greenhouse gases is insignificant despite the claims of people like melatonin.

Originally posted by Muaddib

Originally posted by melatonin
Rather than depend on belief, what does actual science have to say on the solar variation issue.....

So it seems Muaddib's claim is a red-herring and cannot fully account for the current period of warming.

There are many factors that influence the Climate, and the "red herring" is trying to claim that because "one" of the factors doesn't "supposedly" account for the changes we have been seeing "is proof that mankind caused the current Climate Change", as some claim is "disengenuous" to say the least.

I know you're desperate to gloss over the evidence, but you seemed to ignore the major part of my post - the bit with the scientific evidence in...

I didn't say that because the sun doesn't seem to be a major factor therefore the hoomanzdidit, that's your distortion of my words. I was just refuting your erroneous claim.

ABE: Muaddib, take the stellar cloud thing into the other thread we're discussing in, I will answer you there. Also, explain how and why you think 'galactic dust' will affect climate.

cheers

[edit on 15-2-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by melatonin
.........
I know you're desperate to gloss over the evidence, but you seemed to ignore the major part of my post - the bit with the scientific evidence in...

I am not the one desperate Regenmacher, i mean melatonin.

You have been the one who keeps claiming that the events of the Roman Warming period, the Medieval warming period and the Little Ice Age were only regional, despite the fact that I have posted the research done by real scientists from several countries which proves the contrary, and you did try to dismiss the role of the sun on Earth's climate. It is not the only factor, but it is one of the major ones, while mankind's is the smallest of them all,that is if it has any effect at all on the Climate.

Originally posted by melatonin
I was just refuting your erroneous claim.

Which erroneous claim are you talking about now?....

Originally posted by melatonin
ABE: Muaddib, take the stellar cloud thing into the other thread we're discussing in, I will answer you there. Also, explain how and why you think 'galactic dust' will affect climate.

"Interstellar cloud thing"?... wow, here i thought that you were trying to claim to be a scientist...


[edit on 15-2-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
I am not the one desperate Regenmacher, i mean melatonin.

haha.

Dunno about making rain, but I have a good BS detector.

"Interstellar cloud thing"?... wow, here i thought that you were trying to claim to be a scientist...

I don't need to try to claim, it makes no difference anyway, only the evidence counts.

You've mentioned it a few times, I want to see this reasoning.

Take it to the other thread. I'm sure people here would like one thread without our ramblings.

[edit on 15-2-2007 by melatonin]

there are plenty dissident scientists , there views are just not put in the report

climate fluctuations have been taken advantage of by those looking to capitzlize, people used to be afraid of a mini ice age, now it is global warming. yet could it be real? sure it could, but who knows, u really can't trust these reports, because where there is money to be made there are people willing to fabricate a story, kinda like the boy that called wolf, it's a shame really. because of peoples greed and willing to lie in whatever area of news or level of authority, u just don't know if your getting the true story, it's a shame really. and people are good at getting you to beleive things that aren't truthful cause it doesnt matter when perception is 90% of reality anyhow. they use emotional pleas to get you to formulate opinions and they are damn good at it, because getting people to feel certain ways about things makes billions (marketing)

but most people don't like to say i don't know or i have no idea. THEY LIKE TO TALK, they like to BELIEVE they HAVE the answer it feeds there ego, so they just make up an opinion and look for "facts" to back it up with ;to strengthen it.

[edit on 15-2-2007 by cpdaman]

[edit on 15-2-2007 by cpdaman]

Originally posted by cpdaman
there are plenty dissident scientists , there views are just not put in the report

Not that many really. Many question the details, but not the main thrust of the position. Only a few are pretty much total contrarians (and I mean scientists in the appropriate area).

climate fluctuations have been taken advantage of by those looking to capitzlize, people used to be afraid of a mini ice age, now it is global warming. (marketing)

Most of global cooling stuff was media reporting, mainly the newsweek article. In scientific circles it never really had much support, a few were concerned, but the actual science wasn't really there. Most of the science in those days was clear in stating it was virtually impossible to make predictions of future trends.

From the National Academy of sciences 1975 report of climate change...

we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate

I can't stress enough that news items are pretty much always overstated in terms of what the actual science suggests. It's no different now.

[edit on 15-2-2007 by melatonin]

o

[edit on 16-2-2007 by cpdaman]