If trusting scientists who've published peer-reviewed articles in well respected journals over uninformed scepticists counts as being gullible then count me in.
Met Office Predictions
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If trusting scientists who've published peer-reviewed articles in well respected journals over uninformed scepticists counts as being gullible then count me in.
Well I do apologise! I don't have the time to answer so eloquently as Gwylan.
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Altered State
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Well the thing is ...
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 36,508
but its not actually any more extreme than the 50, 60, 70s.
the same scientists who have made a career in environmental studies and need to pump out material to justify their grants, while using the same old unreviewed datasets and computer models which they created to fit the data/results they expect.
Precisely the point I made earlier - this is winter, it gets cold
The trouble with this theory is that it doesn't explain the fact the majority of scientists in this area work in US universities and were promoting man-made climate change during the eight years in which oil-industry supporting (and supported) George W Bush was in charge.
The whole government emphasis was on the importance of oil to the American economy, while Dubya talked wistfully of clean alternatives. Any scientist who denied man-made climate change would have been showered with grants, yet most scientists went against the government viewpoint.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 36,508
this assumes direct govenment funding is the only source of research funds. there have been some who found results that went the other way, but they have been decried as crackpots or oil industry stooges. man-made (or influenced) climate change is probably a reality, but there has been no dialoge on the subject for 10 years, now it turns out some of the data was bodged and hey, maybe, just maybe the climate system is more complex than modelled.
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As one of the major scare tactics of the climate change lobby is to tell us that' the ice caps will melt and we will all be flooded' what do they make of the following?
Ninety per cent of an iceberg is below the waterline, we are told.
As water freezes and turns to ice it expands by around 10% volume, fact.
So as the ice caps melt and turn to water the volume should decrease accordingly. Will we see the UK again becoming part of the landmass of mainland Europe, as 10% is a f**king big sea level drop!
Ninety per cent of an iceberg is below the waterline, we are told.
As water freezes and turns to ice it expands by around 10% volume, fact.
So as the ice caps melt and turn to water the volume should decrease accordingly. Will we see the UK again becoming part of the landmass of mainland Europe, as 10% is a f**king big sea level drop!
It's not - as you say, there's been plenty of funding from the oil industry trying to prove the reverse. The trouble is, the alternative technology industry is certainly not rich enough to endow university positions, so these have been publicly funded.
Well, if they've been funded by the oil industry, that's hardly a surprise. Are you talking about the Exxon-backed Oregon Petition, which claimed that prominent climate change scientist Geri Halliwell as one of its supporters?
I'd agree with you here. The balance of probability is that climate change is man-made but it's certainly far more complex than it's been made out to be and it's plain that not everything fits into neat graphs. But I don't believe that there's a worldwide conspiracy by thousands of scientists looking to twist figures into a particular way - that's far too fanciful. I know you're not saying that but there are plenty of people who are.
No, you're not getting away with that. There IS a school of thought that blames El Nino for our climate and I think they do use localised weather forecasts for F1 Grand Prixs.
Also you're the first person I've met who thinks that Npower sending out a load of lightbulbs in order to avoid a fine is a good use of money and resources.
No, that's not how physics works. Ice displaces the same amount of water as liquid water, for its weight. Put ice cubes in a drink, the level of the liquid doesn't change as they melt. The loss of the ice at the north pole will not lead to sea level rises but will exacerbate global warming as this ice currently reflects a lot of the sun's energy. It is the ice sitting on Greenland and antartica that we do need to worry about, as if this melts global sea level will rise by 66 metres. Are you really trying to tell me that people are making up the idea of sea level rise?
sten_super
Brain Surgeon
A couple of technical points;
I thought it was glaciers that they were concerned about melting, not icebergs? There are many many glaciers above sea level (not to mention the south pole, which is a sheet of ice on top of a land mass), which would contribute to a rise in sea levels if they melted.
Even assuming that your above supposition is right, your maths isn't. 90% below water + 10% above water = 100%. If 10% of the volume of the ice disappears as it melts, we are left with 100%-10% = 90% of the volume as water, which is exactly the same amount as was contributing to sea levels in the first place. So in your example it would lead to no change in the sea levels, not a fall.
El Nino has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with weather. Yes, the current conditions are probably being caused by El Nino, a high North Atlantic Oscillation Index and the fact that we're currently at the lowest point of the sunspot activity cycle.
Yoda
English & European
I see they've updated their winter forcast.
Met Office: Forecast for the rest of Winter 2009/10
Met Office: Forecast for the rest of Winter 2009/10
I agree, I think the whole debate has been over-simplified. Unless you're a fundamentalist Christian you'll accept that over the ages the climate of the world has changed many many times without any man-made contribution whatsoever. Now we're in a situation where there has been an increase in man-made C02 - I don't think anybody doubts that. There is also evidence that the planet is getting warmer (for the sake of argument we'll assume that no scientists have been guilty of gilding the lilly by massaging or fabricating the data and that there is universal agreement on that fact as well). Now however there is an assumption: "There has been an increase in CO2 and an increase in temperature. Therefore the increase in CO2 has resulted in the incease in temperature." It's that assumption (let's be polite and call it a theory) that I have difficulty in swallowing completely as it ignores all other variables such as sun activity (to name but one). Who knows? It could be the increased C02 that's holding back the next ice age!
A far better explanation than I could manage.
But that's the thing, it's not an assumption... It's as close to FACT as is possible in the world of science. The temperature rises have coincided exactly with industrialisation and yes, the temperatures have always fluctuated, but they're rising far faster than has ever happened before.
Yes, Mr disgruntled of H block said ' the weather' originally. I was also using 'climate' in that sense as opposed to 'climate change' so apologies for that misuderstanding - however your original crass generalisation was still wrong.
OK, I give in, everything I learnt in my environmental science masters was bollocks, Jeremy Clarkson was right all along.
What he said.