Is global warming/climate change a crock?

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Originally Posted by Mikeall

Therefore the sceptics are portraying climatologists wrongly, as the have looked into other possible causes and have quantified the warming effect of CO2 on a basic level and the predictions match the current level of warming.

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Yes but that's my point. We've not been studying it for long enough to actually draw any reasonable data from it.

Scientists simply seem to "debunk" theories by simply proving that another theory seems to be explaining it better.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Wide variety of data. So you're saying that it's a different set of data to the set of data that we're basing historic "observations" on? We once had different scales for carbon dating which we used and then we discovered that these were wrong. As I said we've only been measuring the temperatures with exact instruments for a historically short period of time....... It's not good science to base historic observations on what we "think" of course it's better than nothing but it's not fact.

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Wide variety means the data comes from a variety of sources. I understand that you are raising issues that you feel are not understood by scientists, but maybe if you do a little research into the matter it might help you better understand the situation we are in. At the moment it just feels as though every time I reply on a subject you move on to the next one without acknowledging the point made. Maybe with a little research you can find the answers yourself.

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Originally Posted by rah

The tobacco example is a great one. In fact some of the PR firms involved with shedding doubt onto health effects of smoking are involved with shedding doubt about climate change.

How do people or animals adapt to climate change? Look at some of the effects:
If the sea levels rise as predicted we will see many millions of people driven off their land by the ocean. Where do these people go? How do you replace the valuable crop lands that will be submerged? A few nations are already feeling the effects of the rising sea levels. Not to mention what it will do to many cities and infrastructure.

The ocean is getting more acidic. This is a direct result of increasing CO2 levels. What does this mean? any invertebrate sea creature will have a much harder time calcifying its exoskeleton once the PH of the ocean drops to a certain level. This is not something that corals or shellfish can readily adapt to. It just does not chemically work. So thats an entire ecosystem destroyed.

Bad news to for you anyone living in the UK. AGW predictions show you getting much much colder.

Just some of the bad news.

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They didn't shed doubt, they merely pointed out, correctly, that smoking was not the exclusive cause of these diseases. Thats not doubt, thats fact.

This reminds me of the cell phone radiation thing. Some researchers belive the increased radiation is dangerous and some say it isn't. I guess what you chooses to believe is based on how much you love your cell phone. Of course, as more people start falling over dead with brain tumors, the backlash against the cell companies will start, just like it did on tobbaco.

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Originally Posted by Andrewmcm

That is not my point at all. A change in climate necessarily points to a change in the average weather. I'm suggesting to you that having a "wettest summer on record" may be a spike in the overall average for the year - look at April, it was 27 degrees and everyone thought we were in for a major drought. Wait until the figures come out for 2007 to see if it was a "wet" year or a "hot year", and how that correllates to the overall climate in the past 10-20-50 years and then we can start to compare this year with the overall change in the planet's climate.

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Yes but scientists have come down and said that the wet summer was down to climate change. Now if we knew that CO2 was having this effect and if we know the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and what the effects of climate change will be then surely we know the implications of this "change" then surely there's a cycle there. We know there's an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature rises because of it and this causes something. Now if so soon after the event we can put it down to global warming then why did models not at least suggest this as a possibility? Why not? Because we don't know how the atmosphere works.

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Originally Posted by Fiero 5.7

They didn't shed doubt, they merely pointed out, correctly, that smoking was not the exclusive cause of these diseases. Thats not doubt, thats fact.

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They were not pointing out holes in the science. They knew from research conducted themselves from the 40's that smoking was bad for you and caused many health problems. They are criminals responsible for many deaths and counting.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Yes but that's my point. We've not been studying it for long enough to actually draw any reasonable data from it.

Scientists simply seem to "debunk" theories by simply proving that another theory seems to be explaining it better.

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1st paragraph I simply think you're wrong. You haven't been studying it. Climatologists have. You are not qualified to decide whether its been studied long enough (neither am I), climatologists and statisticians are.

2nd paragraph: Yes that is how scientific progress works.

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Originally Posted by rah

They were not pointing out holes in the science. They knew from research conducted themselves from the 40's that smoking was bad for you and caused many health problems. They are criminals responsible for many deaths and counting.

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I smoke and don't view them as criminals nor do I hold them responsible for me starting smoking. I started smoking because I tried it and liked it, and yes the warnings were on the packs then. The only person responsible for my smoking habit is me.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

The thing is you can observe nuclear physics. You can have a reactor and you can monitor it and you can understand the substance at work and what is being done to it and how it will react. Just like you predict what goes on in a microclimate when you know what factors are being applied. The thing is that the earth is not as simple as one mountain range and the effects that it will have on a nearby deep valley. It's complex and to think that we've got it right with our first assumption of how it works with only a few years of data is a bit presumptuous. That's all I'm suggesting. It's amazing the strength with which the enviro-stazi put their views across as being near enough to being proven fact.

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I take that as a compliment ;)

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Originally Posted by rah

Wide variety means the data comes from a variety of sources. I understand that you are raising issues that you feel are not understood by scientists, but maybe if you do a little research into the matter it might help you better understand the situation we are in. At the moment it just feels as though every time I reply on a subject you move on to the next one without acknowledging the point made. Maybe with a little research you can find the answers yourself.

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As I said I'm at work doing a job and I barely have time to reply to your posts and even less time to go around the internet and gather evidence and verify it's authenticity and consider any possible bias.

The thing that irritates me is that I point out that scientists have been wrong in the past and I merely suggest that they could be wrong now and there are certain patterns like historic high levels of CO2 and lows in temperature that conflict with this and rather than actually prove this incorrect you merely go on about why you're right rather than proving that you're not incorrect. DO you see my point? I'm merely trying to say that it's possible that CO2 is not the only factor in the warming of the planet that is currently occuring.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Yes but scientists have come down and said that the wet summer was down to climate change. Now if we knew that CO2 was having this effect and if we know the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and what the effects of climate change will be then surely we know the implications of this "change" then surely there's a cycle there. We know there's an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature rises because of it and this causes something. Now if so soon after the event we can put it down to global warming then why did models not at least suggest this as a possibility? Why not? Because we don't know how the atmosphere works.

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Sky news, ITV news and newspapers may say that the rain is due to climate change but dig a bit deeper and you'll find that it's due to the fact that the Gulf Jet Stream moved too far South this year, giving the UK and Northern Europe lots of rain, and Southern Europe scorching temperatures. It's happened before, and it'll no doubt happen again.

As to whether or not it's due to climate change - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6911918.stm and http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/newsa...ses/PR6880.asp, with Reading's meteorolgy department being one of the best in the UK (having known a few PhD students from there).