[smart]

Try to get a grip here; what might happen in the future
"geoengineering by means of sulfate aerosols is predicted to accelerate the hydroxyl catalyzed ozone destruction cycles "
is not the same as what is happening now.

Wrong. Geoengineering IS happening right now. You have to be plain silly to ignore this fact. Again, on what planet do you live? Is it the same planet where unicorns live? Geoengineering is a real world attempt to reduce global CO2 levels by injecting sulfate aerosols in the troposphere and so far it's not working out.

[Bored chemist]

Try to get a grip here; what might happen in the future
"geoengineering by means of sulfate aerosols is predicted to accelerate the hydroxyl catalyzed ozone destruction cycles "
is not the same as what is happening now.

Wrong. Geoengineering IS happening right now. You have to be plain silly to ignore this fact. Again, on what planet do you live? Is it the same planet where unicorns live? Geoengineering is a real world attempt to reduce global CO2 levels by injecting sulfate aerosols in the troposphere and so far it's not working out.

You will need to do rather better than "proof by loud assertion".

[Jolly]

Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.

I say again habitat destruction and spieces lost is a bigger issue then global warming

[Ophiolite]

Try to get a grip here; what might happen in the future
"geoengineering by means of sulfate aerosols is predicted to accelerate the hydroxyl catalyzed ozone destruction cycles "
is not the same as what is happening now.

Wrong. Geoengineering IS happening right now. You have to be plain silly to ignore this fact. Again, on what planet do you live? Is it the same planet where unicorns live? Geoengineering is a real world attempt to reduce global CO2 levels by injecting sulfate aerosols in the troposphere and so far it's not working out.

You have been making these wild assertions for some time now.
Have you noticed that this is a science forum? Assertions, if they are to be given serious consideration, must be supported by evidence, or reasoned argument. So far you have provided neither.

As Bored Chemist says, simply repeating the same mantra over and over, means nothing.

And to answer your question: I live on a planet where well educated, thoughtful people prefer facts over fantasy, evidence over emotion, and rationality over rants. Perhaps you would like to join us.

[Bored chemist]

Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.

It is, I think, telling that he quotes this bit of the IPCC report
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"
Without the context of the next sentence which says " Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.".

That's just before he starts saying the politicians, environmentalists and so on are misleading people.
It looks like they have company.

[smart]

You have been making these wild assertions for some time now.
Have you noticed that this is a science forum? Assertions, if they are to be given serious consideration, must be supported by evidence, or reasoned argument. So far you have provided neither.

As Bored Chemist says, simply repeating the same mantra over and over, means nothing.

And to answer your question: I live on a planet where well educated, thoughtful people prefer facts over fantasy, evidence over emotion, and rationality over rants. Perhaps you would like to join us.

The notion that solar geoengineering is happening currently isn't an assertion, it is a *fact*. You have to be foolish to deny the evidences that we're attempting to cool the planet by injecting (sulfate) aerosols in the troposphere.   

BTW, where I live people are not all well educated and many of us do prefers fantasies such as climate change over facts. If you prefer living in a state of collective schizophrenia then I can understand your difficulties to learn why geoengineering is a fundamental aspect of climate change.   

[Ophiolite]

The notion that solar geoengineering is happening currently isn't an assertion, it is a *fact*. You have to be foolish to deny the evidences that we're attempting to cool the planet by injecting (sulfate) aerosols in the troposphere.   

I cannot deny the evidence, because so far you have failed to provide any evidence. Go ahead. Present it now.

[Tim the Plumber]

It is, I think, telling that he quotes this bit of the IPCC report
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"
Without the context of the next sentence which says " Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.".

That's just before he starts saying the politicians, environmentalists and so on are misleading people.
It looks like they have company.

So you would have it that whilst we cannot predict the future climate we should use models to predict the future climate. By using models and seeing where the distribution of these models falls. Or reading the teabags.....

Company indeed.

Using the results of models you have no confidence in because you agree that we cannot predict the future climate to give more complex results so they look better is definately misleading.

[smart]

The notion that solar geoengineering is happening currently isn't an assertion, it is a *fact*. You have to be foolish to deny the evidences that we're attempting to cool the planet by injecting (sulfate) aerosols in the troposphere.   

I cannot deny the evidence, because so far you have failed to provide any evidence. Go ahead. Present it now.

The elevated concentrations of dissolved aluminium in the Gomati River Basin water range over three orders of magnitude, from 14 to 77,861ppb:

Aluminium (Al), an environmentally abundant and immobile element, has been studied for its mobility in the Gomati River Basin, a part of the Ganga Alluvial Plain, northern India. The dissolved Al concentrations in the Gomati River water and the Lucknow ground-water range over three orders of magnitude, from 14 to 77,861ppb. In the Gomati River water, Al is classified as a moderately mobile element. Nearly 19% of Lucknow groundwater samples and all the Gomati River water samples have Al values above
the permissible limit (200ppb) recommended by the World Health
Organization. Systematic multi-disciplinary study is urgently required to understand the geological association of high Al mobility with human health in the  Ganga Alluvial Plain, one of the densely populated regions of the world.

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/03/0434.pdf

One may ask from where did this aluminium concentration originates? Aluminium oxide simply don't naturally exist in the atmosphere. This is an evidence that clandestine geoengineering activity may increase this aluminium concentration in rainwater by dumping coal fly ash leachates in the troposphere.

For further references see: http://nuclearplanet.com/2173.pdf

[alancalverd]

Yogi Berra once observed, apparently paraphrasing Niels Bohr, “Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.” But

Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions."

has the concatenation of five weasel words in one sentence. In comparison, even George Osborne looks like an honest man. The nearest translation I can think of is "We have no idea what we are doing. It certainly isn't science, but please pay us to keep on guessing, and eventually the monkeys will type  something that looks like a sonnet, if not the complete works of Shakespeare."

Ipsi dixint.

[Ophiolite]

The elevated concentrations of dissolved aluminium in the Gomati River Basin water range over three orders of magnitude, from 14 to 77,861ppb:

Aluminium (Al), an environmentally abundant and immobile element, has been studied for its mobility in the Gomati River Basin, a part of the Ganga Alluvial Plain, northern India. The dissolved Al concentrations in the Gomati River water and the Lucknow ground-water range over three orders of magnitude, from 14 to 77,861ppb. In the Gomati River water, Al is classified as a moderately mobile element. Nearly 19% of Lucknow groundwater samples and all the Gomati River water samples have Al values above
the permissible limit (200ppb) recommended by the World Health
Organization. Systematic multi-disciplinary study is urgently required to understand the geological association of high Al mobility with human health in the  Ganga Alluvial Plain, one of the densely populated regions of the world.

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/03/0434.pdf

One may ask from where did this aluminium concentration originates? Aluminium oxide simply don't naturally exist in the atmosphere. This is an evidence that clandestine geoengineering activity may increase this aluminium concentration in rainwater by dumping coal fly ash leachates in the troposphere.

1. Finally, some evidence. It just happens to be very poor evidence: sound research whose significance has been entirely misinterpreted by you.

2. One completely agrees that Aluminium oxide does not exist in the atmosphere, but this is a strawman. The aluminium is found in the waters of a river, not the atmosphere. I know of no case - and challenge you to offer one - where the aluminium in river water was not derived from either erosion of rocks (the majority source), or occasionally from industrial pollution (from solid waste).

3. Thus, you have made no connection between alleged dispersal of atmospheric aluminium and its presence in these river waters.

4. You have failed to explain why this global dispersal of aluminium should show up only in this river. Your own reference notes that the normal concentration is less than 100 ppb. So how come this river shows the anomaly?

5. The authors of the research you cite as evidence for your hypothesis even explain the source: "Aluminium  is  predominantly  transported  in  water  of the  Gomati  River  Basin  by  the  weathering  processes  of the  alluvial  sediments  (parent  material).  On  release  from mineral,  Al  chemistry  controls  its mobility.  Dissolved  Al shows  high  significant  correlation  coefficient  (r2=0.99) with  dissolved  Fe  in  the  Gomati  River  water.  This  indicates  a  common  source  present in the alluvial  sediments. Dissolution and weathering of biotite is important to provide  Al  and  other  trace  elements  in  the  Gomati  River water. Some  contributions  from muscovite and  feldspar are also considered important."

Please provide something more substantive in the way of evidence, or address all of the points by which I have refuted this attempt.

[Bored chemist]

Yogi Berra once observed, apparently paraphrasing Niels Bohr, “Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.” But

Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions."

has the concatenation of five weasel words in one sentence.

Which do you consider to be weasel words?
Incidentally what is says is something more like the equivalent of- "We don't know whether there will be a white Christmas in London next year, but we can at least model whether that's more likely than one in Sydney."

You seem to prefer the option of not even knowing which city to avoid if you don't want a snowy December.

[Bored chemist]

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/03/0434.pdf

One may ask from where did this aluminium concentration originates? .

One might well ask that.
And the answer is that the research paper simply isn't valid. If I had been on the peer review board I'd have kicked it out.

Interestingly the paper, which can be found here
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271207655_High_mobility_of_aluminium_in_Gomati_River_Basin_Implications_to_human_health
contains the seeds of its own destruction.
In figure 4 they include a diagram showing the solubility of aluminium in water as a function of pH.
They also indicate that the typical pH of the water samples they took was about 8 and from the diagram it's clear that the solubility of aluminium at that pH is quite low.
It's about 1 to 10 µmoles per litre- call it 10.
A mole of aluminium is about 27 grams
That's about 270 µgrams per litre.

Think about it; their own paper says that you simply can't dissolve more than about 270 µgrams of aluminium per litre in their river water samples.
water.
And they quote results saying they found 78000 ppb
that's 78ppm
or 78 µg/ml or
78000 µgrams per litre.

OK, so it's very clear that there's a mistake.
They say you can't dissolve more than 270µg/litre and yet they found almost a thousand times as much.
OK, so it's time to have a look and see what their mistake was.

Well, they say in the method that they took samples of water, added a little nitric acid and then transported them to the lab for analysis.
Then they filtered the samples and analysed the filtrate.

It's fairly common practice to add acid to water samples- it stops microbes growing and it prevents the loss of mercury by evaporation..
Unfortunately, it also leaches aluminium from clay/ soil particles in the water.
So, when you filter off the liquid it contains, not only the "free" aluminium that was present in the first place- but also some leached out of the mud.

And if you report that you are misleading yourself.
That paper should never have been published; it's obviously wrong.

So, not only is it irrelevant (as Ophiolite pointed out) it's not even right.
So, once again, do you have any evidence?

[alancalverd]

Which do you consider to be weasel words?

The ones I highlighted in color.

Incidentally what is says is something more like the equivalent of- "We don't know whether there will be a white Christmas in London next year, but we can at least model whether that's more likely than one in Sydney."

It isn't nearly that specific. It says we hope to develop an ensemble of models that might just tell us the probability distribution of the possibility that Sydney is not London.

[Jolly]

Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.

It is, I think, telling that he quotes this bit of the IPCC report
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"

Wellll

Without the context of the next sentence which says

Next sentence? This sentence below

" Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.".

He doesn't make. So I dont know where you got it from. The next sentence was I quote

"Most Importantly the sinario that the burning of fosil fuels leads too catastropy isnt part of what either group asserts"

That's just before he starts saying the politicians, environmentalists and so on are misleading people.
It looks like they have company.

Are you hoping people wont actually watch the video and just hold the old MIT prof as an oil industry insider on the take?

Ofcourse you mean the next sentence of the IPCC report, I take it? you should be clearer if that is what you meant.

However, all that states is that we have to run lots of different models, and take the mean or average result, that's still a guessed prediction which ignores the first statement. So what's your point?

 Afterall the statement "the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible" stands for itself, and ultimately makes the latter void.

It's "We cant really know, what the future climate state will be, but we the IPCC feel this is the best way, to best guess"

I fail to see how the MIT prof missing this sentence, shows him to be misleading people.

[Bored chemist]

Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.

It is, I think, telling that he quotes this bit of the IPCC report
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"

Wellll

Without the context of the next sentence which says

Next sentence? This sentence below

" Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.".

He doesn't make. So I dont know where you got it from. The next sentence was I quote

"Most Importantly the sinario that the burning of fosil fuels leads too catastropy isnt part of what either group asserts"

That's just before he starts saying the politicians, environmentalists and so on are misleading people.
It looks like they have company.

Are you hoping people wont actually watch the video and just hold the old MIT prof as an oil industry insider on the take?

Ofcourse you mean the next sentence of the IPCC report, I take it? you should be clearer if that is what you meant.

However, all that states is that we have to run lots of different models, and take the mean or average result, that's still a guessed prediction which ignores the first statement. So what's your point?

 Afterall the statement "the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible" stands for itself, and ultimately makes the latter void.

It's "We cant really know, what the future climate state will be, but we the IPCC feel this is the best way, to best guess"

I fail to see how the MIT prof missing this sentence, shows him to be misleading people.

I take it that you realise you completely missed the point.
He quotes part of this report.
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/501.htm

But he quotes a cherry picked part of it
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"

out of the context which says

 "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential. "

The next sentence obviously isn't void at all.
But, if it were then a bright guy like him would have pointed that out.

What you don't seem to understand is that most of life is based on predictions that are not exact- but they are still helpful.
or. more likely, you  do understand it,but you are pretending that it doesn't apply here in order to try and bolster your position.
Nice try.

[Bored chemist]

Which do you consider to be weasel words?

The ones I highlighted in color.

Incidentally what is says is something more like the equivalent of- "We don't know whether there will be a white Christmas in London next year, but we can at least model whether that's more likely than one in Sydney."

It isn't nearly that specific. It says we hope to develop an ensemble of models that might just tell us the probability distribution of the possibility that Sydney is not London.

I saw that you highlighted some words.
It's not clear why you think that they are weasel words.
"prediction" is more or less the opposite of a weasel word. You say what you think will happen and if youare wrong it's damned obvious that you were.
"probability distribution"
Is phrase, rather than a word, and the meaning is perfectly clear, albeit a bit technical
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution

And so on.
.

[Jolly]

Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.

It is, I think, telling that he quotes this bit of the IPCC report
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"

Wellll

Without the context of the next sentence which says

Next sentence? This sentence below

" Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.".

He doesn't make. So I dont know where you got it from. The next sentence was I quote

"Most Importantly the sinario that the burning of fosil fuels leads too catastropy isnt part of what either group asserts"

That's just before he starts saying the politicians, environmentalists and so on are misleading people.
It looks like they have company.

Are you hoping people wont actually watch the video and just hold the old MIT prof as an oil industry insider on the take?

Ofcourse you mean the next sentence of the IPCC report, I take it? you should be clearer if that is what you meant.

However, all that states is that we have to run lots of different models, and take the mean or average result, that's still a guessed prediction which ignores the first statement. So what's your point?

 Afterall the statement "the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible" stands for itself, and ultimately makes the latter void.

It's "We cant really know, what the future climate state will be, but we the IPCC feel this is the best way, to best guess"

I fail to see how the MIT prof missing this sentence, shows him to be misleading people.

I take it that you realise you completely missed the point.
He quotes part of this report.
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/501.htm

But he quotes a cherry picked part of it
"the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible"

out of the context which says

 "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential. "

The next sentence obviously isn't void at all.
But, if it were then a bright guy like him would have pointed that out.

He doesnt have to. if it's currently not possible to make models that will acuratly predict the future climate- then it's not possible. 

What you don't seem to understand is that most of life is based on predictions that are not exact- but they are still helpful.
or. more likely, you  do understand it,but you are pretending that it doesn't apply here in order to try and bolster your position.
Nice try.

Life is not based on predictions Scientific life might be tho.

My position is the same that Climate change is not as important an issue, as habitat destruction.

But what exactly doesn't apply? If you know models cant accuratly predict the future climate, they can only really be helpful to people with an agenda ultimatly, either to prove or disprove warming, and models depending on their design can show either. Can bias be taken out of the models contruction? Hard to say when the those making the models often have their motivation for building them. IPCC suggests creating many more and many new models, and then using all the stats they generate, to gain a prediction- it's still a best guess of guesses, that "the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible" states will not work, as a true predictor, as that's just not possible(maybe that will change, but currently we do not understand all the different factors involved in climate).

So he has not been misleading, by not mentioning the rest of the sentence.     



 

[Bored chemist]

Life is not based on predictions
 

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

[agyejy]

Do we even actually know what the original speaker meant by "long-term"? Did he mean a decade? 50 years? 100 years? 1000 years? These are very different lengths of time that could under various circumstances be considered "long-term". There are currently some random events that can't be predicted at all. For example, changes in the energy received from the sun (there is a roughly 11 year cycle but exact magnitudes are hard to predict), volcanic activity (which can warm or cool depending the ratio of aerosols to CO2 they emit), and things like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (which in theory is predictable but not at the moment). All of these random events feed into the nonlinear chaotic climate system of the Earth causing potentially major effects. However, when Mt. Pinatubo went off climate modelers sprung into action and did make predictions about the impact it would have on climate.



Proving that at least over at least 5 years when you have a good guess about the random conditions that are likely the models work exceedingly well. Even ignoring the almost unpredictable climatic drivers the non-linearity of the system causes small early differences to become much larger over time. However, that increase in uncertainty is never enough to reverse the trend of increasing average global temperature (without CO2 reductions).

Increasing mean global temperature (and it is clearly increasing) will shift weather patterns in some way (even if you disagree with how you cannot disagree that weather patterns must change), change where crops can and cannot be grown, increase overall sea level, and significantly alter animal habitats (being human centered for a moment the worst part of this is the increased range of disease carrying pest insects). These impacts will take some time to manifest and will persist simply due to the fact large systems such as the climate are relatively slow to respond to changes (relatively being the key word). None of these changes is likely to be beneficial to human society and are likely to be fairly harmful. Transitioning away from CO2 emissions is unlikely to have significantly long lasting economic impacts on the entire economy (we might even get some benefits but some of the people that are currently making a lot of money probably won't be making as much). If there is even a slight chance that dropping CO2 emissions could help mitigate the coming changes we should do it. This is often called the precautionary principle.

Even ignoring the CO2 argument transitioning to renewables still has massive benefits. A good deal of political instability in the world is tied to oil rights. This will only get worse as oil reserves dwindle and global energy demand skyrockets. A lot of other clearly harmful pollution comes from burning fossil fuels (smog just to name one). In addition to moving away from fossil fuels industrial farming of meat (cows for example) results in a lot of other pretty bad pollutants that have nothing to do with greenhouse gasses in addition to using a lot of land and water less than efficiently. Again this is going to lead to increasing political strife over water and land rights as population and demand grow. So even if we ignore the specter of climate change we should still be transitioning away from basically all forms of industrial scale human CO2 emissions as much as possible if for no other reason than to ensure future political stability and resource sustainability which again is good for the long term health of the global economy and human civilization in general.

To repeat, even ignoring climate change basically every industrial scale human based source of CO2 is linked in someway to eventual global instability that has nothing to do with any climate changes and thus even ignoring climate change we should still start taking action now instead of waiting until it is too late. I don't think anyone was ever sorry that they started preparing for a potential emergency too early. Pretty much the worst that can happen (assuming no one does anything completely idiotic) is that some people are financially worse off than they otherwise would have been which is not a compelling reason to risk the future stability of human civilization.