Global Warming Sceptic Agrees Climate Change IS True

www.huffingtonpost.com...

"The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago," Muller said in a telephone interview. "And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias."

I don't know what to believe anymore. I had confidence due to reading threads on ATS that the global warming was a PROVEN hoax and a trillion dollar business. Can someone with insight give a proper analysiz on what's really going on?

reply to post by Jonas86


Global warming and climate change aren't the hoax, it's the Carbon Tax and blaming it all on us that is.
Other interstellar bodies are also experiencing climate change, such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, etc.

Something IS causing the change but I don't think it's us.....

Well, I think Global Warming is widely excepted in about 95% of main stream science. Everyone has their own opinion on the subject though.

Originally posted by Jonas86
www.huffingtonpost.com...

"The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago," Muller said in a telephone interview. "And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias."

I don't know what to believe anymore. I had confidence due to reading threads on ATS that the global warming was a PROVEN hoax and a trillion dollar business. Can someone with insight give a proper analysiz on what's really going on?

It is about human caused climate change versus natural cycles like the Sun output or the Earth Orbit eccentricity &/or the orbit plane changing as it does every so-many thousands of years...
all those factors (along with gamma ray increases from Galactic space) are long term causes for past climate change periods...

Yes, of course climate change is occurring. It always has, it always will.. the question is, does human activity have an impact on it? In my opinion, no, it does not. If it does, it's insignificant at most. I believe carbon dioxide makes up 0.036% of our atmosphere.. The sun controls our climate, and the fact that the sun is being ignored as suspect #1 is a dead giveaway of an agenda. Again, in my opinion.

Koch, the study funder and continuing to fund regarding ocean temperature issues, is also one of the initial founders or beginners of weather derivatives (on another thread on ATS this afternoon):

www.futuresandoptions.gr...

Early pioneers in the market – energy traders Aquila, Enron, and Koch Industries – conceived of and executed the first weather derivative transactions in 1997.

And that market grew quite a bit last year.

www.artemis.bm...

The total notional value for OTC traded weather risk contracts rose to $2.4 billion while the overall market grew to $11.8 billion.

Worldwide temperature derivative contracts are the most traded customised weather hedge.

Just seems odd that Koch, a greenhouse gasser, would fund a study showing warming. Although it wasn't above the original climate change deniers to call in warming on other solar system planets to prove that their industries were not at fault.

It's a bit of a tangled web.

According to Geologist Dr Bob Carter, writing in the blog climate depot, 'since 1998 when the UN formed the IPCC, we have now spent more that $ 100 billion and we cannot find any evidence for a measurable human effect on climate globally. there is a lot more on that site worth reading.' And as the above poster mentioned, CO2, last time I looked, was 393 parts per million, just how can so little do so much 'damage'?

His work has already been de-bunked by a person who was working on the project and was one of the co-authors of the papers.

But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

The work he has undertaken is still at the peer review stage, yet he was allowed to talk about his findings before this has been completed.

Apparently that is a bit unusual, but it could be to do with the major United Nations climate summit in Durban.

Have a read of the article.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Global warming or mini iceage? I wish someone would make up their minds and stick to it!!

Originally posted by chrismicha77
Global warming or mini iceage? I wish someone would make up their minds and stick to it!!

Nobody knows until it happens. It's one of those sciences you choose one side or the other, then you have a 50% chance of saying "I told you so!".

reply to post by Ferris.Bueller.II


I think they just don't know what the hell is happening or going to happen.

This is the same Richard Muller who advocates for the existence of a red dwarf "Nemesis" star in a 26 million-year orbit around the sun, even though he can't find it, WISE couldn't find it and for which there is only highly-publicized speculation in support.

Sort of like AGW.

His graphic misrepresentations have already been debunked by a colleague and co-author, and he has himself somewhat retracted his WSJ and Daily Mail statements, nor have his "findings" been subject to peer review and published.

jw

Unfortunately, all the information given by the Huffington Post was concerning the results of his study and none of the details. Perhaps the details are out there, but I really don't have time to search for it.

No report of a scientific study is complete without a complete description of the study, the methods used to obtain data, the assumptions that went into the study, etc. Without that information, this is another guess just like practically every claim I have seen, by both sides of the argument. Thus, it does not change my mind.

If I see a complete study, then perhaps I will change my mind. But an opinion isn't going to do it.

Actually, there was one hint at the study specifics in the article:

There is no reason now to be a skeptic about steadily increasing temperatures, Muller wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, a place friendly to skeptics. Muller did not address in his research the cause of global warming. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say it's man-made from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Nor did his study look at ocean warming, future warming and how much of a threat to mankind climate change might be.

Emphasis mine

My major points of contention with the carbon-dioxide-based global warming theory are and have been:

• The absorption spectra of carbon dioxide do not line up close enough to the predicted black-body radiation in the theory
  
  
• The amount of carbon dioxide appears to be too small to cause as drastic a climate change as is being predicted
  
  
• Many of the predictions (as in massive oceanic level rises) require extreme phenomena (such as all of the polar ice at both poles melting) beyond the range of predicted results.
  
  
• Taxing carbon dioxide does not make it behave differently
  
  
• Carbon dioxide is necessary for photosynthesis and thus for all life on the planet. It is not poisonous in anything close to present or predicted levels; it is produced with every breath exhaled by any animal, including humans
  
  
• There has been no observed sea level rise. Any such reports are isolated and therefore cannot be indicative of an overall oceanic mass increase unless the gravitational constant of the earth is varying with position (an assumed impossibility in science today)
  
  
• More traditional sources of heat are commonly ignored or trivialized by the mass media, including such sources as the solar radiation, other gases (such as water vapor), undersea volcanic activity, etc.
  
  
• Widespread reports of improper monitoring and a continual refusal to release source code for the computer models used in the predictions and analysis. The very fact that this code being released was deemed a 'leak' is sufficient to throw out all the information derived from it, as any source code used for such a purpose must be included along with the results in order to allow for peer review.
  
  
• Too much money to be made by private enterprises based on legal force to purchase their products

Whether or not there actually is a warming trend is a matter open to speculation. Whether or not mankind has doomed the planet to a living hell is not; it's a fantasy with a price tag higher than most realize.

TheRedneck

Most Global Warming skeptics believe that climate change is real. You'd have to be an idiot to ignore it.

What most global warming skeptics do NOT believe in is that this is a man made situation, but rather is a natural cycle the planet has undergone many times before, just not on this scale since humans have been around.

As recently as the Middle Ages the planet was considerably warmer than it is now. This is shown in the record in Northern Europe, where VINEYARDS were commonplace at that time.

At the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago, SOMETHING had to have melted all that ice - I'm guessing it was a significant extended warming period. The planet has been both significantly colder - snowball Earth - and significantly warmer than it is now over the course of its history.

There are ice core records going back billions of years which are conveniently being ignored as "most of the data since record keeping began (about 150 years or so at the outside) shows a warming trend. 150 years of records vs 4 BILLION years of ice cores that show this has happened time and again.

Global Warming skeptics never have denied that Climate Change is happening. We agree that the climate is changing, we just disagree that mankind has ANY influence on planetary weather systems which have been in place for billions of years.

reply to post by Jonas86

I don't know what to believe anymore. I had confidence due to reading threads on ATS that the global warming was a PROVEN hoax and a trillion dollar business. Can someone with insight give a proper analysiz on what's really going on?

Well, let me put it to you this way.

Temperature is a measurement of the latent heat energy in an object.

If you have an Iron bar that is 10 feet long, and the tip of one end is in a flame, you can measure the opposite tip, and not see any increase in temperature for several long minutes, while the end that is IS in the fire will see an increase in temperature almost immediately after being exposed to the flame.

So, at any given time, in order to accurately judge the temperature of the iron bar, you must measure the temperature of all parts of the iron bar, and then average your readings to give you the latent heat energy in the bar.

Ok, now that you have that information in your brain....




This is the earth.



The Earth is a rough spheroid with a mass of approximately 5,980,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg (5.9 septillion kilograms) composed mainly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements.
en.wikipedia.org...

Each element has a different heat capacity, and thermal conduction capacity (Which means that each element can hold different amounts of heat energy before changing temperature; and the heat energy moves at different speeds through each element)

These elements form various composites, mixtures, and material structures, all with different thermal capacities from each-other.

Other elements such as Uranium undergo natural decay deep within the earth cause an increase in heat that is conducted to the surrounding material of the earth's core, mantle, and crust. (elements such as uranium, for example)



The surface ocean of the Earth, that forms a relatively thin layer on about 75% of the upper crust undergoes convection cycles, where water with different salinities (salt content) sinks and takes its heat under the ocean with it, while water with less salt rises and releases some stored heat into the atmosphere.



The earth's atmosphere is also like the ocean, in that it has convection currents, heat capacity, and other thermal properties.

The atmosphere can both absorb heat energy from the Earth when the earth or oceans are cooler than the air, or release heat into the earth when the air is warmer than the Earth or it's oceans.

Furthermore, Certain chemical processes (such as biological organisms in general) release heat energy into the environment by converting their chemical energy into other forms of energy (mechanical, thermal, etc)

The primary heating method of the planet earth is the Sun, however, that shines upon the surface of the earth non-stop as the earth rotates every 24 hours, loading the planet with 174,000,000,000,000,000 watts (174 petawatts) per second.

This energy is in the form of electromagnetic radiation (Photons, Light, Infrared, Radio waves, Ultraviolet, etcetera) and is absorbed, scattered, reflected, and released back into space depending upon what wavelength passes through or strikes what kind of material (This is known as albedo, and opacity)
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

When the sunlight in question is absorbed, it imparts heat energy to the material, when it is reflected, it imparts less energy and then passes through the atmosphere again on its way back out into space.

The thermal equilibrium of the earth is based primarily upon this exchange of energy from the sun striking the earth, and the earth shedding the energy back into space.

This is based upon the blackbody spectrum of the materials that compose the earths surface, and atmosphere.

The blackbody spectrum:



is basically just a fancy way of saying that Every object in the universe emits light.

You are emitting light in the infra-red spectrum because of your heat energy, so is our iron bar from the previous example.

As an object gets hotter, it begins releasing light in higher and higher frequencies, and thus, it releases energy in greater and greater amounts as it gets hotter.

So, a cold bar will emit infrared.

A warmer bar will be emitting infrared, and Red visible light.

A Hot bar will be emitting infrared, Red visible, and Orange visible light.

A hotter bar will emit infrared, Red visible, Orange visible, yellow visible, etc...

And your REALLY hot bar will be emitting infrared as well as Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet light...

reply to post by Jonas86


which is why Really hot things glow white, because they are emitting all of the colours of the spectrum.

So, anyway, back to thermal equilibrium...

The sun is constantly pouring energy into the earth, and this increases the earth's temperature, which increases the amount of energy that it is releasing back into space.

An object (like the earth) is said to be in thermal equilibrium when the energy that it receives is exactly balanced out by the energy that it emits... which eventually happens to any object in the universe that receives energy.

This causes the temperature of the object to be relatively stable, based on how much energy it is absorbing, and how much it is emitting.

Changes in composition of the surface detail of the earth can effect both the absorption, and emission of heat energy to and from the earth.

As can weather phenomenon such as clouds, water vapor, parking lots, trees, rocks, snow, rain, bird poop, houses, elk, pine cones, and the average migratory patterns of the emperor penguins.






It's a little more complicated that measuring the temperature of a bar that you stick in a fire, isn't it?


Anyways, On to my point...


Climate Scientists are handicapped by a lack of data.

Mainly, the fact that they collect their temperature readings from these little devices called thermometers (literally; Thermo = temperature, Meter = measure) that are scattered across the SURFACE of this giant ball of rock that we call earth.

Mainly, in cities that are comprised of asphalt, concrete, steel, and paint... instead of Pine Cones, Bird Poop, Rocks, and Emperor penguins.

Which have remarkably different thermal characteristics from each-other.


Secondly, you have downward looking Infra-red sattelites, that measure the specific frequencies of infrared light that the earth emits....

But those aren't really that accurate, because if the atmosphere was absorbing MORE infra-red light, you would actually be receiving LESS infra-red light at the satellites... so that measurement system is somewhat self defeating.

Basically, what I am trying to say, is that Climate Science, or the study of the earth's temperature is the Second most complex field of study in the world....

Right after Global Socioeconomics.


So, when someone says that they have "Proven" that the "Earth is increasing in temperature"... now you know the proper context to put that claim in.

reply to post by ErtaiNaGia


Consequently, the *REASON* that the whole Carbon Dioxide Fallacy is wrong, and has nothing to do with climate change is the one simple and inescapable FACT:




I'm sure that most of you have lawns, Right?

You know, the ones with the grass growing in it?

Yeah... those.

Well, I have a question for you if you have a bag mower, and collect the grass clippings....

Every time you mow your lawn, you must collect at least 20 pounds of grass from your lawn, right?

And every year, you must mow your lawn maybe a dozen times... right?

And you do this year after year, right?

Well, why isn't your yard lowering?

Why isn't the Ground of your yard getting lower and lower every year if you are constantly removing Mass from your yard in the form of grass clippings?



It's because the vast majority of the mass of plants, comes directly from the Carbon Dioxide in the AIR.


The reason that life can even EXIST on the planet earth, is because of of a little thing called "Symbiosis", that aerobic (air breathing) animals have with photosynthetic plants.

Our mutual growth is utterly dependant upon the relative rarity of the gasses in the atmosphere that we both require.

So, if you increase the carbon dioxide in the air, it actually makes plants grow faster.

Which means that they soak up carbon dioxide quicker.

This system of Balance is what has kept the great chain of life going for so many millions upon countless millions of years here on this ball of rock known as the earth.

If the ecosystem were as fragile as the Climate Change People seem to think it is, we wouldn't even be here in the first place to be having this little discussion.