When it comes to the international climate negotiations, skeptical science is a non-issue. The last time I recall a government trying to make it one was in 2009, right before the Copenhagen climate summit.
The lead negotiator for Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Al-Sabban, told the BBC he thought the release of emails hacked from the University of East Anglia would have a "huge impact" on the talks:
It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," he told BBC News. Climate is changing for thousands of years, but for natural and not human-induced reasons. So, whatever the international community does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have no effect on the climate's natural variability.
He claimed that governments would not agree a new treaty until the science was settled.
Well, he was right about the lack of agreement, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the science. And Al-Sabban himself has played no small part in obstructing the negotiations over the years, resorting to procedural delays when all else failed. As a leading OPEC country, it was hardly surprising, and Saudi Arabia often brought other Arab states along with it.
Creative Commons: Vessela Evrova, 2010
But a funny thing happened on the way to Doha.
Wael Hmaidan of IndyACT, an activist organization based in Lebanon, told me in early January:
...experts from the region look at Doha as an important opportunity to change the dynamics on the ground in the Gulf States. Having a conference in the Arabian Gulf means that climate change will take center stage. In practice this will mean higher-level involvement of decision makers, ruling families, civil society, and other stakeholders. This could lead to more awareness of the importance of climate change, and thus a more progressive regional position in the negotiations.
It appears he may be right. At a speech delivered in late January (PDF), the Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said:
Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity's most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role. We are doing this in Saudi Arabia.
It's worth repeating; this was said by the Saudi oil minister. But let's not get overly excited. The Minister also said:
In 2009, the Kingdom completed a massive program to increase oil production capacity. This investment and effort is aimed at retaining our position as number one supplier of oil to the world and the investment continues.
My point is simply that formal Saudi recognition of the need to get to grips with climate change is a major about-face. The speech signalled that the Saudis may be prepared to play a more progressive and less obstructionist role in the negotiations. And just last week we heard that Al-Sabban will be replaced by the well-respected Khalid Abuleif as the leading voice of Saudi Arabia at the climate negotiations.
Time will tell whether this is a serious shift, or mere window dressing. But either way there's an important point that I can't resist making: When even the world's leading oil supplier says it's time to deal with climate change, it's a strong sign that the decade-long climate denial campaign has failed. It's all over but the shouting.
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The vast majority of the melting ice is floating in water. Just look at the pictures and read.
When ice melts the water level goes down.
This is just one of the overlooked inconvenient truths.
spence, note that floating ice sticks out of the water. That means that overall it is displacing it's own weight in water. When it melts it still displaces that same amount, no more, no less. The sea level doesn't change.
more dense
no offense
If so good luck with that.
Wikipedia et. al.
The definition of pack ice is sea ice.
You might want to contact all of the climate scientists and tell them to stop using terms like Ice Berg, Ice Flow. And stop arguing with gallon because according to him it doesn't matter.
Real climate scientist Hans von Storch reviews the new so-called global warming "skeptic" book that Vahrenholt is peddling:
----------------------
A skeptic lacking skepticism: Fritz Vahrenholt ...
On the web-page of the present book Klimazwiebel and myself are falsely listed as supporters of an explanation by natural variations...
What Vahrenholt presents is a complete explanation of the climate variations, referring to handful of scientists. This explanation is highly complex, with many challenging details, which can hardly be verified by a single person, scientist or lay-person. The interesting detail is that Fritz Vahrenholt is really certain about this “explanation”. Not a bit skeptical... when he comes closer to areas, which I personally have studied, errors emerge, and when I speak to other scientists they say the same for their fields of competence. It seems that Fritz Vahrenholt and his coauthor Sebastian Lüning have simply cherry-picked – what is what they criticize their opponents for.
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2012/02/skeptic-lacking-skepticism-fritz.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/14/a-top-german-environmentalist-cools-on-global-warming/
Fritz Vahrenholt again.
The energy executive who also served on Shell Oil's Board of Directors.
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2012/02/skeptic-lacking-skepticism-fritz.html
A professional denier will come around and scoff at HuffPost, scoff at HuffPost readers, scoff at climate science and scientists in general. This kind of activity is sponsored by Big Energy funding through right wing PR firms such as Heartland and CATO and Marshall et cetera. It is a massive funded effort, including buying off the Republican Congress. Fascist stuff.
Check out the Heartland Institute online. They actually hold fake scientific conferences to pretend there is alternate science on the subject. Curiously, all the presenters have connections to fossil fuels.
last years conference:
http://climateconference.heartland.org/
http://climateconference.heartland.org/about-2/background/
http://climateconference.heartland.org/about-2/speakers/
Yet jdey123 claims there is no fossil fuel PR effort.
given that amount of money someone could probably prove the theory of relativity which is the basis for all of the data collection is false.
oh, wait, i think they did!
I gave three references to the Heartland conference. To you that is a massive number that proves vast sums of money is given to prove global warming? That is simply irrational. Sorry.
Nope.
Scientific theories are never proven.
"Any physical theory is always provisional... you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory."
-- Dr. Stephen Hawking
my point is simply that oil companies love the climate change debate
prior to global warming they were the source of pollution and the fix was easy
now there is disagreement and they are making record profits
keep arguing, they love it
but none of the dishonest politicians want to touch this topic anymore
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922041.html
The US imports more oil than it produces, something that oil exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia can not say.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html
Russia is selling when prices are high. Smart.
then fill it to the top with water
when the ice melts the water level goes down
would all of you nice people please explain how melting ice causes the sea level to rise
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/HannaBerenblit.shtml
Hope this is edifying, fellow nice person.
are so hard
to understand so
why not
write
like normal
people
2. freak hurricane & tornado storms are becoming the norm could-be mitigated by tree-cover,
3. earthquakes which are mitigated by oil deposits and tree cover,
4. human (agriculture) drying desertification at over 20% of continental land mass,
5. climate-change caused by removal of tree (indigenous poly-culture orchard) photosynthesis.
6. Stream, River & Lake fresh water is governed through polyculture tree root systems.
7. Oxygen comes from 3-D polyculture plant systems on continents, on the continental shelves and floating sear plankton colonies.
8. Toxin storage of trees in wood is unmatched by any other body or medium.
9. Accelerated toxin transformation comes primarily through root-based fungal and bacterial colonies.
10. 3-D Tree Photosynthesis creates the vacuum draw which pulls warm moisture laden winds from sea to continent, whereas 'agriculture' loss of photosynthesis pushes the unabsorbed solar energy winds from continent to sea and creates desert. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/food-materials-resouces
--------------------------------------
More Trees, Less Global Warming, Right? -- Not Exactly
A 150-year simulation of worldwide deforestation finds that tropical forests are carbon sinks and boreal forests contribute to warming
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tropical-forests-cool-earth
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/cooling-plant-growth.html
"Additional growth of plants and trees would create a cooling effect that could work to reduce future global warming."
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/topnav/materials/listbytype/Doing_Our_Part_to_Prevent_Global_Warming.html
"This NASA video segment discusses ways that humans can help minimize the damage caused by global warming. Suggestions involve making energy-efficient decisions, such as to caulk around house windows, ride a bike or carpool to work, and plant a tree."
http://climate.nasa.gov/kids/bigQuestions/weCanHelp/
"You can help by planting a tree. Your new plants and trees will help to remove the greenhouse gas CO2 from the air."
"Its all over but. . ." Climate Change Scientists are right about Human Causality of CC but for the wrong factors and calculations. Our institutional artificial scientists IAS have a generally poor background in integrative biosphere and natural science, hence IAS focuses on 2-dimensional human mechanical factors such as CO2 from automobile efficiencies rather than the key 3-D biosphere factors of tree-cutting and removal of tree or multi-levelled vegetation photosynthesis conversion of solar energy. Solar absorption is the primary equation. 'Indigenous' (Latin = 'self-generating') polyculture orchards of the world absorb 92 - 98% of solar energy and convert it through photosynthesis into matter, water-cycle and energy. 2-D 'Agriculture' (L 'ager' = 'field') only absorbs 2 - 8% of solar energy. Tree roots delve as deep as the canopy to pump water, minerals and form nutrient colonies tens of metres deep. 3-D Indigenous Polyculture Orchards are 100 times (10000%) more productive than 2-D 'agriculture.
Support your claim with citations from peer-reviewed sceintific journals - thanks.
Show me your calculations where your new trees take up that amount.
While you are at it, quit bashing climate science and climate scientists. You couldn't even get into the grad schools that many of these folks studied through.
Indigenous Polyculture orchards in every Temperate and Tropical climate of the world (almost 100% of population) included a trillion of productive food and material trees on all continents. 1. The water bearing property of trees in root colonies, 2. cambium layer of trunk and 3. leaf canopy multiplied by a trillion not only absorbs the most significant amount of water, 4. reintegrate the most CO2 & 5. hydrocarbons (eg methane) but as well 6. cools the urban environment to off-set urban heat-island effect, 7. absorbs toxins to wood storage, 8. provides abundant best quality mineralized food, 9. restores streams, rivers & lakes with clean water, 10. purifies air, 11. reduces mechanized transport because of local food security etc. Check out our research at https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/food-materials-resouces among 57 sections.
Here's reality: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
Here's the scam: http://books.google.com/books/about/Merchants_of_doubt.html?id=fpMh3nh3JI0C
http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-scam
And here is the evidence:
The 1994 TASSC memo: http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2078848225-8226.html
The 1998 API Memo: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Climate_Science_Communications_Plan_(1998)
The 2002 Luntz Memo: http://www.ewg.org/project/luntz-memo-environment
And here's who benefits from the scam:
--In North Carolina, Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy fights to stymie efforts to get 12,850 acres of forest in Avery County designated as wilderness. In organizing anti-tax and anti-regulation rallies, CSE experiments with the idea of reenacting a 'Boston Tea Party.'-- http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/04/02/205749/david-koch-industrations-acid-rain-climate-denial-polluter-front-groups/
Hey, wasn't the Tea Party founded in 2009? How is it that Koch was trying to start one to allow them to clear-cut a forest in North Carolina? Wouldn't that make the Tea Party nothing more than an Astroturf puppet of the Koch Brothers?
Hope that clears things up for you, sparky.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm
Assuming by "10,000" you mean 10,000 years your are off by about a factor of 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
In any event no one is saying that climate change hasn't occurred naturally in the past - of course it has, and does. The issue here is the influence of mankind on the relatively very fast rise in global temperature over recent decades, and to assess that one needs to remove the influence of decadal-level natural factors including El Ninos/La Nina's, the 11-year solar cycle, and volcanoes. In this context looking at linear trends of only a few years is scientifically invalid while looking at linear trends over 30 years is scientifically valid, while the overall linear trend over 10,000 years is irrelevant.
For comparison, consider the question of whether the tide is going in or out: Just as 10 minutes of measuring how far the waves are coming in isn't enough time to reliably assess the tide direction, and assessing the wave trend over say a year is irrelevant to, and obscures the answer to, the question being addressed. Instead, a time interval of say a half hour is generally enough time to reliably assess the direction of the tide.
HTH.
A. Because they are science deniers, of course.
http://youtu.be/e0vj-0imOLw
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/fulltext/