Global Warming Debate

PoloMint

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Rob said:
Saw this last night on UKTV Documentary channel it was a "Horizon" programme by the BBC in which they claimed that the Earth was completely frozen over 600 million years ago.

It seems that 600 million years ago that the whole of the planet was covered in ice for 10 million years, and the planet was saved from staying that way because of volcano's.

It was only when the eruptions sent the C02 levels to 10 per cent (note Polo mint) and temperatures to 40c was it warm enough to melt all the ice.
I'm not saying if all this is true or not, I'm not that clever but it was backed up with a lot of "facts", and some scientists not newspaper people.

Also one question, it is claimed that the prescent C02 level is under 1 per cent, can someone tell me the correct level, for example is it 0.01 per cent.

Thanks
Rob

Yes, the data I was talking about goes back around 600,000 years in one place, and about 5 million in another. So there could have been higher temperature and CO2 levels before that (But accuracy varies a lot before that).

Current CO2 levels vary around the 0.037%, (370ppm) the average temperature is about 11C.

The Horizon example may well be correct, and also shows a coupling of high CO2 levels and high global temperature. 40C average temperature is very high, as is 10% CO2.
 

Rob

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Something else to think about.

New Research Adds Twist to Global Warming Debate

Thursday , October 12, 2006
By Steven Milloy



A new study provides experimental evidence that cosmic rays may be a major factor in causing the Earth’s climate to change.

Given the stakes in the current debate over global warming, the research may very well turn out to be one of the most important climate experiments of our time – if only the media would report the story.

Ten years ago, Danish researchers Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen first hypothesized that cosmic rays from space influence the Earth’s climate by effecting cloud formation in the lower atmosphere. Their hypothesis was based on a strong correlation between levels of cosmic radiation and cloud cover – that is, the greater the cosmic radiation, the greater the cloud cover. Clouds cool the Earth’s climate by reflecting about 20 percent of incoming solar radiation back into space.

The hypothesis was potentially significant because during the 20th century, the influx of cosmic rays was reduced by a doubling of the sun’s magnetic field which shields the Earth from cosmic rays. According to the hypothesis, then, less cosmic radiation would mean less cloud formation and, ultimately, warmer temperatures – precisely what was observed during the 20th century.

If correct, the Svensmark hypothesis poses a serious challenge to the current global warming alarmism that attributes the 20th century’s warmer temperatures to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases.

Just last week, Svensmark and other researchers from the Centre for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Centre published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A – the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the venerable Royal Society of London – announcing that they had experimentally verified the physical mechanism by which cosmic rays affect cloud cover.

In the experiment, cosmic radiation was passed through a large reaction chamber containing a mixture of lower atmospheric gases at realistic concentrations that was exposed to ultraviolet radiation from lamps that mimic the action of the sun’s rays. Instruments traced the chemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays in the reaction chamber.

The data collected indicate that the electrons released by the cosmic rays acted as catalysts to accelerate the formation of stable clusters of sulfuric acid and water molecules – the building blocks for clouds.

“Many climate scientists have considered the linkages from cosmic rays to clouds as unproven,” said Friis-Christensen who is the director of the Danish National Space Centre. “Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. [This] experiment now shows they do so, and should help to put the cosmic ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research,” he added.

But given the potential significance of Svensmark’s experimentally validated hypothesis, it merits more than just a place on the agenda of international climate research – it should be at the very top of that agenda.

Low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earth’s surface and exert a strong cooling effect. Observational data indicate that low-cloud cover can vary as much as 2 percent in 5 years which, in turn, varies the heating at the Earth’s surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square meter during that same period.

“That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square meter estimated by the [United Nations’] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution,” says Svensmark.

That is, cloud cover changes over a 5-year period can have 85 percent of the temperature effect on the Earth that has been claimed to have been caused by nearly 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. The temperature effects of cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as 7 times greater than the alleged temperature effect of 200 years worth of additional carbon dioxide and several times greater than that of all additional greenhouse gases combined.

So although it has been taken for granted by global warming alarmists that human activity has caused the climate to warm, Svensmark’s study strongly challenges this assumption.

Given that the cosmic ray effect described by Svensmark would be more than sufficient to account for the net estimated temperature change since the Industrial Revolution, the key question becomes: Has human activity actually warmed, cooled or had no net impact on the planet?

Between manmade greenhouse gas emissions, land use patterns and air pollution, humans may have had a net impact on global temperature. But if so, no one yet knows the net sign (that is, plus/minus) of that impact.

Not surprisingly, Svensmark’s potentially myth-shattering study has so far been largely ignored by the media. Though published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, it’s only been reported – and briefly at that – in The New Scientist (Oct. 7), Space Daily (Oct. 6) and the Daily Express (U.K., Oct. 6).

The media’s lack of interest hardly reflects upon the importance of Svensmark’s experiment so much as it reflects upon the media’s and global warming lobby’s excessive investment in greenhouse gas hysteria.


Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert , an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise
 

PoloMint

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Interesting stuff. The original Svensmark article doesn't make claims quite as strong as the media represent it, but we will need to see what/how it develops.
 

Rob

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And yet another, think these could go on forever. :eek:



Polar scientists on thin ice
The Deniers -- Part IV
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Friday, February 02, 2007

December 15, 2006

A great melt is on in Antarctica. Its northern peninsula -- a jut of land extending to about 1,200 kilometres from Chile -- has seen a drastic increase in temperature, a thinning of ice sheets and, most alarmingly, a collapse of ice shelves. The Larsen A ice shelf, 1,600 square kilometres in size, fell off in 1995. The Wilkins ice shelf, 1,100 square kilometres, fell off in 1998 and the Larsen B, 13,500 square kilometres, dropped off in 2002. Meanwhile, the northern Antarctic Peninsula's temperatures have soared by six degrees celsius in the last 50 years.

Antarctica represents the greatest threat to the globe from global warming, bar none. If Antarctica's ice melts, the world's oceans will rise, flooding low-lying lands where much of the world's population lives. Not only would their mass migration spawn hardships for the individual families retreating from the rising waters, the world would also be losing fertile deltas that feed tens of millions of people. This chilling scenario understandably sends shudders through concerned citizens around the world, and steels the resolve of those determined to stop the cataclysm of global warming.




But much confounding evidence exists. As one example, at the South Pole, where the U.S. decades ago established a station, temperatures have actually fallen since 1957. Neither is Antarctica's advance or retreat a new question raised by the spectre of global warming: This is the oldest scientific question of all about the Antarctic ice sheet.

Enter Duncan Wingham, Professor of Climate Physics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. Dr. Wingham has been pursuing this polar puzzle for much of his professional life and, but for an accident in space, he might have had the answer at hand by now.

Dr. Wingham is Principal Scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Satellite Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of ice using ultra-precise instrumentation. Sadly for Dr. Wingham and for science as a whole, CryoSat fell into the Arctic Ocean after its launch in October, 2005, when a rocket launcher malfunctioned. Dr Wingham will now need to wait until 2009 before CryoSat-2, CryoSat's even more precise successor, can launch and begin relaying the data that should conclusively determine whether Antarctica's ice sheets are thinning or not. Apart from satellite technology, no known way exists to reliably determine changes in mass over a vast and essentially unexplorable continent covered in ice several kilometres thick.

But CryoSat was not the only satellite available to polar scientists. Dr. Wingham has been collecting satellite data for years, and arriving at startling conclusions. Early last year at a European Union Space Conference in Brussels, for example, Dr. Wingham revealed that data from a European Space Agency satellite showed Antarctic thinning was no more common than thickening, and concluded that the spectacular collapse of the ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula was much more likely to have followed natural current fluctuations than global warming.

"The Antarctic Peninsula is exceptional because it juts out so far north," Dr. Wingham told the press at the time. As well, scientists have been drawn to the peninsula because it is relatively accessible and its climate is moderate, allowing it to be more easily studied than the harsh interior of the continent. Because many scientists have been preoccupied with what was, in effect, the tip of the iceberg, they missed the mass of evidence that lay beneath the surface.

"One cannot be certain, because packets of heat in the atmosphere do not come conveniently labelled 'the contribution of anthropogenic warming,' " Dr. Wingham elaborated, but the evidence is not "favourable to the notion we are seeing the results of global warming".

Last summer, Dr. Wingham and three colleagues published an article in the journal of the Royal Society that casts further doubt on the notion that global warming is adversely affecting Antarctica. By studying satellite data from 1992 to 2003 that surveyed 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet (72% of the ice sheet covering the entire land mass), they discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing at the rate of 5 millimetres per year (plus or minus 1 mm per year). That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. According to their best estimates, Antarctica will "lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm" per year.

If these findings are validated in future by CryoSat-2 and other developments that are able to assess the 28% of Antarctica not yet surveyed, the low-lying areas of the world will have weathered the worst of the global warming predictions: The populations of these areas -- in Bangladesh, in the Maldives, and elsewhere -- will have found that, if anything, they can look forward to a future with more nutrient-rich seacoast, not less.

CV OF A DENIER:

Duncan Wingham was educated at Leeds and Bath Universities where he gained a B.Sc. and PhD. in Physics. He was appointed to a chair in the Department of Space and Climate Physics in 1996, and to head of the Department of Earth Sciences in October, 2005. Prof. Wingham is a member of the National Environmental Research Council's Science and Technology Board and Earth Observation Experts Group. He is a director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency CryoSat Satellite Mission, the first ESA Earth Sciences satellite selected through open, scientific competition.
other stories
 

PoloMint

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Yes, but it's important to read Wingham's stuff in context.

Again he doesn't oppose global warming, but does claim its effect in the Antarctic may be mis-understood, or not as well understood as its effects elsewhere.

These articles/summaries might put it in context:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?src=hw&site_area=sci&fulltext=Wingham&search_submit.x=0&search_submit.y=0&search_submit=go
 

Rob

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PoloMint said:
he doesn't oppose global warming, but does claim its effect in the Antarctic may be mis-understood, or not as well understood as its effects elsewhere.

Couldn't agree more as we all know that global warming is here, but what is the cause.
Most think it's because of man made problems, but it seems that there are other natural causes that could be the reason.

I don't pretend to know the answer I'm not that clever, but after what I have learnt recently I certainly have an open mind on the subject.
 

PoloMint

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Yes, an open mind and considering all the evidence is crucial.

My main concern is the popularity of stories doubting the contribution of pollution to global warming in the media. These stories undoubtedly sell papers at the moment, but if the media seeks these out and avoids representing the vast amount of studies showing the effect of pollution, people's views may be biased through only being exposed to a selection of the evidence.

Like you I do not claim to have the answers. I'm not trying to force people to change their views, I'm just trying to make sure everyone is exposed to the debate in its entirety so they can attempt to make an informed decision. :)
 

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I am glad to know that not everyone has joined the bandwagon, there is far too much being made of this situation, 100 years ago when airborn industrial pollution was some 15-20 times higher than it is now they did not have global warming problems just smog which is natures way of filtering out the particles, C02 was pouring out of chimneys furnaces steelworks kilns coke makers blacksmiths steam engines driving mills and on trains etc
 

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And it continues...

OFCOM complaint

Dear Sirs/Madams,
FAO The Broadcast Team

Dear Sirs/Madams,

I am writing to make a complaint about a number of breaches of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code by ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, which was broadcast on Channel Four on 8 March 2007, and subsequently repeated on the More 4 channel.

I have documented in the attached document seven major breaches of Section 5.7 of the Code, which states: “Views and facts must not be misrepresented”. The programme misrepresented the scientific evidence and interpretations about climate change that have been documented by researchers through peer-reviewed papers. The programme also contained factual inaccuracies and erroneous attributions.

I do not dispute the right of broadcasters to make programmes that present different viewpoints on the science of climate change. As a member of the Board of the Science Media Centre, I am fully supportive of the freedom of the media to report different viewpoints. However, it is clearly not in the public interest for such views to be supported through misrepresentations by broadcasters of the scientific evidence. Indeed, the errors in this programme are so serious and fundamental that it surely destroys the entire credibility of its central argument ie that the recent rise in global average temperature is due to solar activity instead of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

The overall effect of the misrepresentations was to completely mislead viewers of the programme. Therefore, it is difficult to see how any repeat broadcast of this programme, in the absence of profound amendments to remove the misrepresentations and inaccuracies, would be in the public interest.

Yours sincerely,

Bob Ward,
Director, Global Science Networks



Comments on the science in the programme:

http://www.climateofdenial.net/?q=node/3


An open letter to the producer

http://www.climateofdenial.net/?q=node/1
 
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