I have seen stories about there being record setting cold temperatures in Australia, this winter. Not in the Canadian media I should add. If it is global warming, Antartic glaciers disappearing, polarf bears nearing extinction, etc., it is front page news here. But "global cooling", we dont hear a thing! Could someone from Australia give me any details, or maybe a URL from your weather service setting out what is happening? At the same time, if there are rctners from New Zealand or South Africa, is the same sort of thing happening you your neck of the woods? TIA.
snipped-for-privacy@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (F.James Cripwell),in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with
By odd coincidence, this from a friend in NZ (Upper Hutt) today.
"I've had enough of winter already! It's been raining and cold all week. It didn't surprise me when they announced that we had our coldest June in 34 years. The average temperature was just 7 deg C. Oh well, we've passed the shortest day so we're heading towards spring now! "
I'm in Melbourne which is pretty far south for mainland Australia.
June was cold, but I don't think there were records set. We had very little rain, which means that the ski season (starts Queen's Birthday weekend) has not started well. I think there was a bit of real snow earlier this week.
I don't believe there are any polar bears in the southern polar regions. I think there is some melting going on down there.
And our local Chief Meteorologist just informed us that we had an "absolutely average June". The temperature was average, the number of triple-digit days was average, the number of days above 105 was average.
So, I'm not convinced it's global warming so much as normal variations.
You cannot tell from the weather patterns in a single locale. The nature of global weather patterns is such that even if temperatures are rising globally, that will actually create even *colder* spots in some areas relative to previous weather, at least up to a point, just as droughts in one area can spur excessive rain in another. You have to look at overall global patterns.
Even so we have kept accurate records for a short period of time, in the scheme of things. I realize that they take ice samples etc and can derive a lot of information from them, as they have done concerning El Nino.
Just the same, the science is new and it's very difficult to tell if we are in the beginning, middle or end of a natural swing that occurs with unfailing regularity. There are whole sandbars in silty areas where the tide takes them away almost overnight, the next century sees a steady buildup again and then, along comes a tide with the right wind and swish, away goes to the sandbar again. A naturally occurring phenomenon which must seem fairly radical if you happen to be around the night the whole thing disappears. That alone would cause one to think the sky is falling.
Don't get me wrong, I don't pooh pooh global warming, something is going on, but I am not sure I have caused it necessarily, but then again, maybe I have. We need more science about it yet.
Fair enough, and I agree with you. However, here in Ontario, we dont have *any* time to get "more science about it". Our government has decided to spend at least 60 billion Canadian dollars to build nuclear electric power plants, with all the problems that fission products produce; all because the voters of Ontario believe, I am convinced wrongly, that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause global warming. Tony Blair, in the UK, is strongly indicating he is contemplating taking the same sort of action. We cannot meet our electricity requirements in Ontario without using either uranium or burning carbon, for the foreseeable future. The voters of Ontario would soundly defeat any government that advocated building even clean coal burning electric power plants. Time has run out for us here in Ontario.
Long before humans were spewing tons of pollutants into the air, there was an Ice Age, and then the global warming that allowed that ice to melt. I'm just not convinced that the current changes are anything other than a normal environmental cycle.
I don't think that's the conclusion of the *vast* majority of scientists who have studied this. There are a few outliers who don't agree, but the consensus is pretty darned overwhelming, and the body of research is rather substantive. Certainly it's more substantive than a lot of other research on which we act as a society!
I am afraid that a "scientific consensus" is an oxymoron; a contradiction in terms. In science we require proof beyond all doubt; otherwise all you have is a theory. It may be a good theory, but it is still just a theory. Even if 100,000 scientists think the theory is right, it only takes one scientist to find some bit of science that proves it is wrong, and the whole theory collapses like a house of cards. There are numerous examples of this is the history of science, but possibly a good illustration relates to the great Lord Kelvin. Kelvin calculated that the world was 10,000,000 years old, and no-one disagreed with him. At the time he was President of the Royal Society. Along came a young research student from New Zealand, by the name of Ernest Rutherford; who later became a science great in his own right. He proved the world was 4,000,000,000 years old, and presented his findings to the Royal Society, with Lord Kelvin in the audience. I expect Fermat's Last Theorem will go on being called just that, even though it has now been proved to be correct. I doubt it will be called a "law", as in the Law of Gravity, Newton's Laws of Motion, Boyle's Law, etc.etc.
Yeeesssss....are you saying that such evidence exists? I am unaware of any research that is accepted by reputable scientists that refutes the basic theory of global warming. On the other hand, there is a large amount of research of various types supporting the various hypotheses associated with global warming that *is* accepted by the vast majority of scientists. So, until and unless someone comes up with credible evidence to the contrary, looks to me like the safe money is with global warming. The weight of evidence isn't even a close call. Heck, even organizations who are philosophically opposed to the notion are slowly but surely being forced to concede by the sheer weight of evidence.
? I don't think we're particularly in the dark about that. We know that there is a significant warming trend. We know that human activities are contributing. We don't know precisely how much of the global warming trend is driven by human activities, but we know we contribute *some* of it, and as the research has been progressing over the years, the trend has been for research to attribute increasingly more of the puzzle to human activities, not less. We can't predict the future with precision because the actual global climate patterns depend on an interplay between natural and man-made factors, but at this point, there seems to be virtually no respectable opposition to the idea that there is a warming trend likely to cause trouble in the future and that human contributions to greenhouse gases are playing a role (and are the one thing we might be able to do something about).
Yes, I am saying such research exists. I doubt if many people are interested, but there exists a scholarly newsletter on climate change in general called CCNet, run by one Prof. Benny Peiser from the UK; email address snipped-for-privacy@ljmu.ac.uk. I will go further. There is no scientific evidence that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes global warming. IPCC
2001 - The Scientific Basis is simply wrong, scientifically, in claiming that there is such proof. If global warming is anthropogenic, then the cause has to be something to do with water vapor, the only dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Huge quantities of water vapor spewed out by aircraft on a daily basis above the places where clouds are found could easily be the cause of global warming. Such water finds it's way back in a matter of a few days, but if goes through places on the way where there is normally no water, it could cause global warming. Notice that if this is the cause, there are going to be no long term effects. If you are that interested, I have kept some parts of CCNet. However, you might like to check on one name; Prof. William Gray of, I believe, Colorado University. He has one of the most credible models for hurricane prediction, and he went so far as to say global warming was a hoax. You might also like to check on another Gray; Prof. Vincent Gray from New Zealand. There is much credible research which contradicts what is put out by the media with respect to global warming, and CO2 being 666, the devil incarnate. A few of other names. Prof. Fred Singer, and Prof. Broeker (sp?); here in Ottawa Prof. Jan Veiser, and Prof. Ian Patterson. Interestingly, Prof. Veiser claims that changes in global temperatures are caused by cosmic rays, and has the data which he claims proves this.
Peiser is a social scientist, for starters, and widely considered an embarrassment as a scientist in this issue. (And even he has admitted the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are having an effect on global mean temperature.)
His claims regarding THC and evaporation as causes of warming have been rather widely debunked, and his theories are not in line with current understanding of and evidence on how either of those processes work.
...who is a retired chemist who worked with the coal and petroleum industries, and I have yet to see his claims supported by solid, peer-reviewed research. His arguments about water vapor have been widely debunked, and empirical evidence to date does not support his claims regarding the effects of water vapor.
I don't particularly know what the perspective of the media is, and certainly wouldn't be in support of anyone using such alarmist language. However, I have yet to see this large body of credible research. I see lots of very flawed, non-peer reviewed research from suspicious sources.
Lots of conflict of interest with his funding, and most of his arguments seem rooted in data that are now considered to be faulty and which are contradicted by what are considered to be more reliable sources.
...who also relies heavily on the water vapor theory, which doesn't seem to hold much water (sorry ;-) ).
The prevailing opinion on GCR seems to be that there is some effect, but not nearly the 75 percent claimed. It's also a bit of a puzzler, if GCR are to account for 75 percent of temperature fluctuation, that there is no trend in GCR to match the trend in temperature fluctuation.
I have no objection to debate, nor do I hold with any who might exaggerate claims on the other side, but this evidence is quite weak pretty much any way you slice it.
Well said! To paraphrase a cliche - "It's not what is being said; it's who is saying it."
Before being forceably retired by an administration who saw no use for alternative fuels research when elected in 2000, I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with scientists whose work was and still is respected worldwide. Research on CO2 emissions, global warming, and a slew of other environmental issues was begun quite some time ago and as far as I know is still ongoing.
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