[Geezer]

Back to Joe's original question, I think the answer is a definite maybe.

For a start, we probably should not even use the term "Global Warming" unless we can unambiguously measure the globe's temperature. As far as I know, we can't. Let the media use the term if they wish to, but unless scientists can agree on a method of measurement, the term should not be part of their vocabulary.

What we do know is that we (humans) are altering the composition of the atomsphere in ways that can trap heat in our atmosphere and can have a profound effect on ocean acidity. In other words, we are conducting a gigantic experiment on our planet without the necessary metrology to even quantify the effects properly, or predict the outcomes.

Is this a good idea? Personally, I think it's a very bad idea to tinker with a mechanism that you don't really understand, particularly when your future depends on it. On the other hand, the mechanisms that keep global politics and economics running are probably about as well understood as the effects of altering the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, so it may be just as dangerous to tinker too much with them.

The bottom line is that we really don't have a very good handle on what's going on, and, even if we did, there does not appear to be a quick fix.

[graham.d]

Geezer, that is a very good post!

I would just add that politics and economics can be changed with a relatively short timescale but changing the climate can be reversible only on a very long timescale and we do not have any idea how to do it. Personally, I would take the cautious approach, even if slightly inconvenient in the short term.

[Peter Ridley under another name]

Clifford, Geezer, JP, you can offer logical arguments and facts till the cows come home and it has not the least impression on the scare-mongers and doom merchants. To them we humans are destroying the earth, even though they continue benefiting from all of the improvements that humans have made and continue to make at an increasing pace. Some people just have to have something to be scared of.

Christopher Booker, who writes extensively in the Daily Telegraph on the myth of catastrophic human-made climate change, wrote an excellent book “Scared to Death” <link removed> and I picked up a copy for nowt at a second-hand shop in Watford as a reward for buying a recycled desk chair for my wife. (I’m fully against the scare-mongering over our use of fossil fuels – as long as it is clean use - but all for reusing, refurbishing, repairing and recycling rather than disposing). Perhaps the biggest problem we humans have that threatens existence is greed and too many of us suffering from the L’Oreal Disease.

[peppercorn]

I don't why most people seem to concentrate on worrying about (or equally arguing against) temperature change per se.

Bottom line is, just as the planet's climate is a dynamic system, so are natural, living systems.

Who cares if the global mean of CO2 (or whatever) was factors greater in the past?  The key point is always going to be Rate of Change. - As Graham inferred.

The question should be, not 'What happened last time CO2 levels were at today's (or tomorrow's predicted) levels?'.
It should be 'When was the rate of change this great?' and 'If we can find out, what were the effects on life?'.

[graham.d]

Yelder, I think you are falling into the same category as those you call scaremongerers. There is a huge amount of politics involved here with a lot of financial weight being put behind people trying to discredit the informed opinion of a majority of those involved in climate science. As Gore said, this is an "inconvenient truth", and as the famous cartoon implied, the "reassuring lie" is an easier pill to swallow, especially as most businesses and politicians are not looking much further that their next balance sheet or the next election. Now it is reasonable to question the science, and nobody with any scientific understanding of this would claim certainty in the predictions. Unfortunately this doubt factor is an easy one to exaggerate and ridicule. And guess what, this is what is being done. It is so easy for people to project the equally scaremongering image of the people who say that we should try to do something about the changing climate as sandal-wearing hippies who think we should live in caves. The reality is that a majority of genuine climate scientists have enough convincing evidence to register a lot of concern about climate change. I think they could often do without the hysteria of support from the uninformed loonies who just present the strawmen arguments that enable the equally uninformed, but politically aware, opposition to present a seemingly convincing opposition.

According to wikipedia: Christopher Booker "often takes a stance which runs counter to mainstream views on a number of issues, including global warming, the link between passive smoking and cancer,[2] asbestos[3] and the Darwinian theory of evolution."

So he is much more believable then!!!

[yor_on]

Don't fool yourself

We won't change a thing. We' haven't yet and I doubt we ever will, we're better at reacting at our front door than on what we see on our telly. 99.9% of the changes I see is just cosmetics, like the Kyoto deal. The only way to change it is by us committing to changing it, and we're noway near that idea, as proven in this discussion.

So I do not expect any changes to be made, and neither do you. It would cost you to do them, and we're comfortable as we are right? The summers may become a little hotter, the weather more unpredictable, but he*

Stay indoors
==

As for if we should react?
Sure we should, and we will, when it's at our front door.

[Geezer]

What I want to know is how Graham found out I wear sandals and live in a cave.

It's true to say that nothing very dramatic has happened to address the issue, but it's also true to say that there has been some significant progress. At least we are talking about it, and there is far more awareness of the problem than there was, say, twenty years ago. Consequently, a lot of smart people are working on things that can all make a contribution.

For no particular reasons I find myself in the "somewhere in the middle" camp on this one. I think it's a real problem that requires urgent attention, but adopting "knee jerk" cures to try to fix it could turn out to be worse than the actual disease. I certainly do not think we should cover our eyes and chant "go away nasty problem".   

[imatfaal]

Damn - I must be losing it, I find myself agreeing with Geezer.  Regardless of the veracity of the claims and counter-claims, I hope that one upshot is a re-examination of our use of resources and energy.

[JP]

So regarding the original question, it sounds very likely that climate change is influencing the weather somehow, and it's a definite "maybe" that it's responsible for the increase in major storms/tornados?

[Peter Ridley under another name]

Graham, I think it may be a case of each to his own. In “An Inconvenient Truth” Gore offered many distortions of fact (AKA lies). Have a look at “35 Inconvenient Truths – The Errors in Al Gore’s Movie” by Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/monckton-response-to-gore-errors.pdf.

Nigel Lawson (Lord Lawson of Blaby) said in his article “The REAL inconvenient truth: Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change”

Over the past half-century, we have become used to planetary scares. .. late Sixties .. a population explosion .. global starvation. .. later .. the world was running out of natural resources. By the Seventies .. a new Ice Age. .. the latest scare, global warming, has engaged the political and opinion-forming classes to a greater extent than any of these. .. this fashionable belief has led the present Labour Government, enthusiastically supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, to commit itself to a policy of drastically cutting back carbon dioxide emissions - at huge cost to the British economy and to the living standards not merely of this generation, but of our children's generation, too. .. most of those scientists who speak with such certainty about global warming and climate change are not climate scientists, or Earth scientists of any kind, and thus have no special knowledge to contribute

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=1:latest&id=51:agw-zealotry-could-damage-our-earth-far-more-than-climate-change. Try his book “An Appeal To Reason: A Cool Look At Global Warming” amazon link deleted.

As the registration page for The Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change on June 30 – July 1, the “Global Warming Conference - Restoring the Scientific Method” says

Dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists will gather in an effort to “restore the scientific method” to its rightful place in the debate over the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change. The theme of the conference, “Restoring the Scientific Method,” acknowledges the fact that claims of scientific certainty and predictions of climate catastrophes are based on “post-normal science,” which substitutes claims of consensus for the scientific method. This choice has had terrible consequences for science and society. Abandoning the scientific method led to the “Climategate” scandal and the errors and abuses of peer review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

http://climateconference.heartland.org/.

What’s your opinion about Steven Scheider-’s promotion of scare-mongering by scientists and his reluctance to condemn them if they considered presenting a misleading picture to the general public (i.e. lying)?  As Pete Ridley pointed out on his question about the misleading demonstration in the BBC’s “Climate Wars” program “What does Iain Stewart's CO2 experiment Demonstrate” http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=38723.0

There are those who support the view which Professor Steven Schneider expressed in 1989 about the manner in which climate science should be presented. He said "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest" http://www.john-daly.com/schneidr.htm. My interpretation of that statement is that it is up to each of us to decide whether to lie or not. This is expected of politicians and those who earn their living through the media but not of those in a position of trust like physicians and researchers

I think that Pete Ridley’s opinion on that is close to the bulls-eye.

I agree that

There is a huge amount of politics involved here

although I think that it’s a gross understatement. The whole thing is driven by the power-hungry like Strong, Gore, Soros, etc. supported by political organisations like the UN and EU for reasons far removed from controlling the global climates.

You forgot to mention the even more huge amount of taxpayers money going into spreading the propaganda that humans are destroying the planet?

As for Wikipedia, I suspect that the comment you refer to was written by one-time Wikipedia moderator, staunch supporter of the AGW hypothesis, one-time member of Michael Mann’s “Hockey Team” publicity section  Realclimate, software engineer Dr. William Connolleyhttp://scienceblogs.com/stoat/about.php. Many of us were delighted when he had his Wikipedia editing privileges withdrawn.

yor_on, many of us look forward to seeing Kyoto expiring quietly in its sleep with nothing to replace it. After the UN’s 2009 COP15 fiasco in Copenhagen (destoyed by the Climategate revelations) and the 2010 COP16 comedy in Cancun we can look forward to a final derailment in Durban of the UNFCCC AGW band-wagon after COP17 http://www.cop17durban.com/COP_17/Pages/default.aspx. Hopefully that will be the last of the UN’s wasteful extravaganzas (but of course, being politicians they’ll find some other way of hosting a luxury break at taxpayers’ expense).

Maybe then they'll start addressing real global problems like the disgusting waste by us in the developed economies and the disgraceful poverty in many of the developing or stagnant economies. Perhaps then our leaders will concentrate on putting resources into what we can do something about, like improving  technology for protecting humans from whatever weather extremes and other catastrophes that Nature decides to throw our way – but that is just wishful thinking, after all, they are politicians.
   
As imatfaal says

I hope that one upshot is a re-examination of our use of resources and energy

but not a further waste of resources installing things like those useless wind turbines or systems for sequestering that essential, life-supporting substance CO2 from our industrial, commercial and domestic emissions. Yes, lets research alternative energy sources so that we are ready for when those wonderful fossil fuels expire, but that won’t be for centuries yet. Put those wasted resources to good use minimising genuine pollutants from our emissions, improving repairing and preventing unnecessary damage to the natural envirnment, but most importantly of all, helping humans throughout the world to improve their enjoyment of life.

JP, you comment “that climate change is influencing the weather somehow, and it's a definite "maybe" that it's responsible for the increase in major storms/tornados?” surprises me. In my ignorance I thought that it was weather, in terms of temperature and rainfall, that were the basis of Koppen’s definitions of those different global climates (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/322068/Koppen-climate-classification). Sounds a bit like the cart before the horse, like CO2 driving temperature rather than the correct way round.

[imatfaal]

Yelder - Graham made a very good point that there is too much politics and not enough science in this debate and I am afraid your last post exemplifies that!  This is a science website and yet the links/quotes you have provided are
Chris Monckton - a hereditary peer and very right wing politician
Nigel Lawson - a conservative chancellor of the exchequer and right wing politician
Heartland Institute - a libertarian thinktank that denies link between secondary smoking and cancer
Pete Ridley - a forum contributor
Me
Britannica.com

You have amply demonstrated the politicization of this debate.

[Geezer]

Pete, I mean Yelder, I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Are you saying you don't believe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, or do you agree that it is, but you don't believe it can trap heat in the atmosphere?

[Peter Ridley under another name]

Imatfaal, although as you say

This is a science website

it is not only my comments on this forum that have brought politics into the discussions. If you don’t believe me have another read of the comments on this topic. The scientific debate about the causes of changes in global temperature (whether hotter or colder) and rainfall (more or less) - used as the basis for defining the different global clmates (see Koppen) was destroyed by interference from the power-hungry, the politicians and the environmentalists long before I became involved.

Geezer, can you point to anywhere that I (or Pete Ridley for that matter)) ever said that 

the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing[/quote

or that I

don't believe it can trap heat in the atmosphere

? No, I thought not.

[graham.d]

This month's Scientific American features an interview with Richard A. Muller who was wheeled in to testify before Congress on climate change. Everyone thought he was going to take the "denial" view but he shocked everyone by saying that generally the mainstream climate scientists had done a good job and their predictions were holding up well against observation. He was particularly pleased that Jim Hansen (NASA Goddard Institute) welcomed his looking into this because he welcomed a critical look that was devoid of politics. Like most of us, he does not like the politics overriding the good science, whichever side is taken.

[Peter Ridley under another name]

Hi graham.d, can you provide a link to any research paper of Professor Muller’s that cover the process and drivers of the different global climates? I haven’t been able to find any on his CV http://muller.lbl.gov/.
It seems that his testimony simply supports the claim that mean global temperature has been increasing since the Little Ice Age, which will come as no surprise to most of us who are sceptical of the speculative claim that it has been caused mainly be our use of fossil fuels.

[graham.d]

Hi Yelder, I just read Scientific American (June 2011 issue) on Saturday, but have no other reference to hand.

[Peter Ridley under another name]

Hi graham.d, I doubt very much if you or anyone else will find any worthwhile research paper from Professor Muller showing what has been the major cause of any global warming or cooling during the past 200 years.

As Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide University acknowledged back in April 2009, 

There are a lot of uncertainties in science, and it is indeed likely that the current consensus on some points of climate science is wrong, or at least sufficiently uncertain that we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers. But EVERYTHING? Or even most things? Take 100 lines of evidence, discard 5 of them, and you’re still left with 95 and large risk management problem

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/.

The first sentence is the most important one, the third being simply waffle such as the IPCC uses to give the impression of being able to quantify that uncertainty.

I don't think that Professor Muller has changed that state of uncertainty about the processes and drivers of the different global climates (e.g. as defined by Koppen).

Is the unusual weather we have been having a result of global warming?

– nope, it’s Mother Nature doing her usual thing.

[graham.d]

As I understand it Muller has done related research and was asked to review the situation as it stands. He does not claim to be a world expert on the subject (though is well informed) but is well known for taking a critical view on physical theories and is a proven, strong proponent of scientific skepticism.

[Peter Ridley under another name]

Hi again graham.d, I had a read of Professor Muller’s testimony http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Muller_Testimony_31_March_2011 and two things stand out for a sceptic like me.

Muller said

According to the most recent IPCC report (2007), the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then

I could be wrong but I think that is a rather distorted version of what the IPCC AR4 WG1 actually said. More correctly this was

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html#footnote12 which is somewhat different to what Muller testified. If you can point me to the part in AR4 WG1 where that bit about 1957 is stated then I’d appreciate it because I haven’t found it. Maybe Muller misinterpreted

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been measured directly with high precision since 1957

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/097.htm, which I believe was simply referring to the start of Keeling’s measurements http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/.  Muller also omitted to mention that very important piece of IPCC speculation, “very likely”.

Muller also said

I suggest that Congress consider the creation of a Climate-ARPA to facilitate the study of climate issues .. I was asked what legislation could advance our knowledge of climate change. After some consideration, I felt that the creation of a Climate Advanced Research Project Agency, or Climate-ARPA, could help .. Climate-ARPA could be an organization that provides quick funding to worthwhile projects without regard to whether they support or challenge current understanding

. Now I wonder which organisations he has in mind to receive such funding - the University of California, Berkeley’s Earth Surface Temperature Project perhaps? After all, "money talks" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q.

As always, I’m happy to be corrected if I have misunderstood something.

[graham.d]

AR7 WG1 states right on the first page... "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.[12] This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.

The report was prepared in 2007 so 2007 minus 50 years is 1957.

My only point in citing Muller was the SciAm interview and the point that he was thought likely, based on his previous critical views of established theories, to take a similar view on the Global Warming debate. Now that he has generally endorsed this view there are a some people trying to discredit him - including you it seems. Of course he would promote the idea of Berkeley getting funding but if that's all there was to it he would have told Congress what they wanted to hear, wouldn't he?