[another_someone]

http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=120&a=2230

Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist, is the originator of the revolutionary solar weather technique of long-range forecasting and a founder of Weather Action Long Range Forecasters. His first scientific publications were on aspects of meteorology and astronomy. He also carried out astrophysics research at Queen Mary College London and published work on galaxy formation and the mean matter density of the universe.

From his research into the causes of weather change, he totally rejects the carbon dioxide-based theory of global warming and climate change. Corbyn is one of the scientists featured in the wagTV film-produced "The Great Global Warming Swindle," shown on Channel 4 in Britain in March.

Corbyn was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on May 2.

EIR: Could you please tell us a little of your background?

Corbyn: I've got a first-class degree in physics from Imperial College, and a high degree in astrophysics at Queen Mary College, which are both part of the University of London. Prior to that, I was always very interested in weather, and I built myself an observing weather station and did experiments in science and the weather.

While studying astrophysics, I knew of various supposed connections between solar activity (that is, sunspots) and the weather, although at the time, I was more interested in sunspots. Subsequently, I thought that the idea of trying to predict sunspots, which is all I wanted to do, was a bit silly, because, who cares? It might be more interesting if one could predict the weather using solar activity, and I set about doing that.

Now, it was too difficult, and I gave up—until the miners' strike came along in 1984. And friends involved in these things in Britain, asked me, "Piers, you were trying to do long-range weather forecasting. Is it going to be a cold Winter?"

And I said, "I haven't a clue. I've given up."

And they said, "Well, have another go, see if you can tell us."

So, I did go back into trying to do this, and I said that the Winter of 1984-85 in the United Kingdom would be very cold. And it was. It wasn't quite cold enough for the miners—you know, they wanted to win—but it was very cold.

After that, I went back into doing [weather prediction]. And to cut a long story short, I found a certain connection, a certain predictability. I tested this by doing gambling with William Hill, the bookmaker here, in the Summer of 1988. Then, for 12 years, I carried on doing gambling every month [on weather prediction], and made a lot of money, until they stopped me from doing it.

This was things like, will April in London be warmer than normal, or will there be thunderstorms in a certain time period....

EIR: I noticed that on your website, that you got banned. Now the going thing is risk management services, one Bob Ward (who wants to stop the DVD of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" from being released) is running a weather derivatives operation. So, while you were doing it on a small scale, now they want to make a whole financial services industry out of it.

Corbyn: That's right. They want our financial services industry run on fear. They want to carry on trading carbon and energy and so on, running on fear. The last thing they want, actually, is working long-range weather forecasts.

Now, in 1995, I set up a limited company called Weatheraction Ltd, and we've been through various phases since then, on and off the stock exchange (we're now off).... And we're now making long-range forecasts up to 12 months ahead, more accurate than anything we did before. We sell to farmers and the energy industry. The rail network buys them, for example, to get warning of heavy rainstorm and potential landslides.

EIR: It seems like you're producing your forecasts from actual physical observations, not like NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in the United States, which uses more computer modelling, and which tends to have high inaccuracy.

Corbyn: As I said in a presentation I gave in January, at the Science Museum in Imperial College: Computer modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for climate forecasting, has reached its limits.

No amount of improved computer power will get past the really basic climate inputs. The activity from the Sun, which affects the upper atmosphere—these things are also modulated by lunar effects for example. We do take those into account in our forecasts. We have eight weather periods every month and six or seven out of the eight will be correct, in any one month.

EIR: It seems that the computer models hold the Sun's output as constant. They can't model water vapor. And what other researchers have told me, is that once you start putting up the energy input in the computer model, and the carbon cycle, the model is invalid.

Corbyn: That's right. The model is invalid, and it's "rubbish in equals rubbish out."

On the very fundamental, basic level, I think we can see it's invalid just by looking at the Ice Ages.

It's not the case that carbon dioxide drives temperatures. When you leave Ice Ages, it's the other way around: The temperatures go up first, and then carbon dioxide levels go up. And if you look at the fluctuations during the Ice Ages, you can see that, actually, temperature goes up and down, about twice as fast, and twice as often, as carbon dioxide levels go up and down.

So that means that at least about half the time, they're going to be moving in opposite directions, and half the time, they'll be moving in the same direction. I mean, essentially, that they are unconnected. They probably are connected in some complex way, but there's no evidence anywhere that carbon dioxide systematically drives temperature. Where there is evidence of some sort of driving, it's the other way around.

So, that being the case, that whole theory is fundamentally a failure. Actually, since 1998, world temperatures have been falling.

EIR: Lately, the BBC and the U.S. press have picked up on how this is the warmest April in Great Britain, but yet, they don't talk about the 4- to 5-year running cold snap in the Southern Hemisphere, because it pokes a hole in their line that "the whole Earth is warming up, and Antarctica is going to melt and flood whole islands in the Pacific."

Corbyn: There are fundamental things wrong with that "warm April" view. First of all, of course, America's just had a cold Winter. But the Central England data set occupies 1/5,000th of the global area. So, to say this warm April is evidence of global warming, is insane.

This is a description. It can't be a cause of global warming, in the world or anywhere. It's just complete nonsense.

EIR: The latest now, in the New York Times, is that a new study shows that the ice cap will melt 30 years ahead of time. So they must have found a satellite that looks 30 years into the future.

Corbyn: Well, of course, there's nothing new happening in the world now, that hasn't happened before: In terms of the post-glacial period, the last 700 or so years have been the coldest part of the last 10,000 years, and 4,000 years ago, it was much warmer than now. That was the Bronze Age. It was called the "climate optimum" by historians, and since then, temperatures have actually generally declined, while carbon dioxide levels have gone up.

And until about 1900, or 1910—about 100 years ago, carbon dioxide levels had gone up, for various reasons, at the same time as temperatures. But the general trend in the last 4,000 years is that carbon dioxide and temperature have been moving against each other.

Now, in the world, the fundamental periodicity of temperature changes is the 22-year magnetic cycle of the Sun. And we understand quite a lot about why that is. The peak of the current 22-year cycle was in 2002-2003, and we're now in a declining phase of that. And if you take [as the global warmers did] the world average temperatures, averaged over a two-year moving average, the recent peak was in 1998, because there were cold years before and after that.

But in 2002-2003, the world temperature moving average peaked at the same time as the phase of the natural 22-year cycle. So, what we think is happening is that world temperatures may be not rising on average, but in the last 10 years, up until 2002, we have seen the rising course of a natural cycle [related to the 22-year magnetic cycle of the Sun].

This happened to coincide with CO2 levels going up, but so what? It may be, that really we're in a period overall, where temperature and carbon dioxide are actually moving in opposite directions, in terms of deviations from a norm. But for some reason, there is also a general increase in solar activity. That was definitely the case since 1900 or so, and that is also causing a general slow warming, which may also be coming to an end now.

What carbon dioxide does, appears to be irrelevant.

EIR: What about the recent book of Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, The Chilling Stars, about the cosmic ray connection to some formation of clouds and cooling? How does the 22-year magnetic cycle of the Sun affect that?

Corbyn: I think their experimental work to show that charged particles cause cloud nucleation and could therefore affect the development of weather fronts is of tremendously important significance, and groundbreaking. And that is their contribution, although I think their work has got a fundamental problem....

EIR: There's another meeting of the IPCC in Bangkok this week to produce another summary for policymakers. To be more honest, it's a summary written by policymakers.... And you wrote a letter requesting that certain graphs that question the IPCC science conclusions be included with their policy summary.

Corbyn: Correct.


EIR: Did you have an answer yet?

Corbyn: No, there are two things: One is, that I've written the letter to the leaders of the British activity on the IPCC, Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor and David Miliband, the minister responsible for environment—who, I would like to add, is the most callous liar in British politics, I've ever come across.

And I also sent a copy to Prof. Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, who, in previous times, I worked with on the question of neutrino energies in cosmology. So, I do know him. He is a very, very good scientist, but I think he's sold his soul for something or other, in the Royal Society. We'll see.

Anyway, there's been no reply to the letter I wrote saying, "Please, by Bangkok, get the graph that you left out put into that summary for policymakers."

What they've done in their summary for policymakers, is put in a graph showing that carbon dioxide levels have been rising, since about 5,000 years ago. So, I wrote them saying: If you're putting this in, please also put the graph, measured from my source, which show what temperatures have been doing. We must have these comparisons; policymakers should have these comparisons.

What also happened is that one Member of Parliament—Martin Jones—has now asked questions to Parliament on the lines I suggested, because he got hold of my letter. Jones is a scientist himself, and he's very distressed about what's going on.

EIR: Is he a member of the Conservative Party?

Corbyn: No, he's Labour....

EIR: There's a very interesting paper that's been published in Energy and Environment by Ernst Beck on the 180 years of measurements of atmospheric CO2 that were carried out by Nobel Prize laureates and other scientists from the 1800s into the 1950s. Contrary to what is shown in ice cores, there have been periods where you had 400 parts per million [ppm], almost up to 500 ppm, for example, and a period in the 1850s, where there is a peak. But, as I remember, there were not many power plants, and other assorted man-made industries at that time to account for this CO2.

Corbyn: Absolutely: There's a lot of modulation of carbon dioxide and temperatures, which has nothing to do with mankind—plant growth being one of them, and volcanoes being another.

Now, it is also very important to notice that ice cores do not measure annual amounts of carbon dioxide, but the values are spread out over centuries, because carbon dioxide is a gas, and it diffuses into the ice. So, although the annual layers of ice will give you measures of temperatures then, or temperatures within a year or so of any place, any date, carbon dioxide levels can not be measured like this.

This comes to another lie of the global warmers: They say, "Well, carbon dioxide levels are rising now faster than they've ever risen before."

Now, there's no evidence of CO2 levels having risen, or not risen, faster than before, because you couldn't see such things in the ice cores. It's like saying a blind man can't see, therefore there's nothing to see. What they put out about that is a total lie.

The papers you refer to, are very interesting and important, but carbon dioxide is not a driver of temperature. And there have been many periods when carbon dioxide levels must have been—or when you can measure them, it's clear they would have been, or were rather—reaching quite interesting peaks or troughs, but which have no bearing on temperatures.

EIR: Yes, I asked this question in an e-mail to Phil Jones [a leading British global warming scientist] at the Climate Research Unit, in which he said, he had not read the paper, but on face value, he could tell me that the paper was "totally wrong," and ice cores were the only way to determine CO2. Period.

Then I asked about the paper on global mean temperature that a Danish professor put out, which, you know, has created a big problem for the global warmers. Phil Jones, again, told me that there was something wrong with the paper, that it would not have been published in a "reasonable" climate journal, and that I had to use "Google Scholar" to see how many citations the paper had. So, in essence, he said, "check on the internet to see what's true!"

Corbyn: Check the internet to see if something's true—well that's interesting, isn't it!

EIR: These guys are having trouble, now.

Corbyn: Eee-yi-yi-yi. Well, I like the lie about sea level rising. Now, there have been actual measurements of the Maldive Islands that show that if you stick to actual data, they show that sea levels have gone down in the Maldives (or the Islands have risen up) in the last 70 years. But the general problem is that the [global warmers'] sea level measurements in the Pacific are insane, because the Pacific is in constant motion. You know, there's a ring of volcanoes in the Pacific, and indeed, it shows that the whole area is moving. So, these islands are going to go up and down, and it has nothing to do with sea level.

The overall point is, that since the last Ice Age, sea level has been constantly rising, because heat energy has been slowly getting into the sea. The sea as a whole used to be much colder, and now it has expanded. And that expansion has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, or what's happening this year, or last year, or the last decade in temperatures. And that is why, when the Romans came to England, the sea level was lower, and there are ports which they built, which are now well under the sea.

EIR: Yes, it seems that the warmers forget about underwater volcano activity, and they also forget about, the underwater volcano activity in the Arctic Sea, too! This is what creates the melt ponds, which they cry about.

Corbyn: Absolutely. Of course, they also don't admit the early Medieval Warm Period, which was much warmer than now. Greenland was much warmer: It was called Greenland when discovered by the Vikings, because it was habitable, and a lot of people emigrated there.

And polar bears did very well in the warmer times. They didn't die out at all; they didn't die out in the last 10,000 years, nor during the previous interglacial, nor the one before that. So, they're just used as a deceitful heartthrob; you know, to pluck your heartstrings because the polar bears might die out.

EIR: Yes, we should find a picture of a polar bear chasing one of these people trying to take its picture, and publish that, instead of all of these cute little pictures of polar bears.

Corbyn: Anyway, my view is that climate changes have happened in the last 80 years, that is, the world has got a little bit warmer, although not as warm as it has been in Medieval times, or the Bronze Age.

That warming is a good thing. It leads to more prosperity. If it goes on, it could lead to the reopening of what's called the Northwest Passages, a sea route to the North Pacific going through parts of Canada and Greenland. And our own ideas—and we do have some planet forecasts based on the ideas about changing solar activity—is that actually, this world warming has probably reached its peak, and it will stay constant, or it will go down a bit, until 2013. Beyond that, we're not sure what will happen, but the warming will probably carry on declining.

EIR: The global warming crowd talks about increased CO2 as some kind of negative thing, but if you think about all the changes in plants, with photosynthesis being produced better, you will have more food output—

Corbyn: Yes, that's right, more food. And it's good for trees, good for grasses; it's great! More CO2 equals good, and global warming equals good—although they're not calling it good. The CO2 causes the plants to grow, but the CO2 is not causing the temperatures. The temperatures encourage the plants to grow, as well. A warmer world, more CO2: That's the best.

EIR: Yes. Just ask anybody who moves from South Dakota in the United States, to Florida. That's what Fred Singer always says, when you ask him about "Is the warmer climate better?" "Well, just ask someone who just moved from South Dakota, where it's frozen a lot of the time, to Miami, where it's nice and warm. Ask them."

The one thing the warmers don't have, is a sense of humor. And the faked data, which are probably more faked than the intelligence we were told about the Iraq War—

Corbyn: Oh, absolutely! The so-called hockey stick [graph] is a lie. They've known it's a lie, yet they carry on repeating it.

EIR: Yes, the IPCC has backed off the hockey stick in its last report, but it's still there. It's just not pointed to as if it's their Holy Grail.

Corbyn: The Al Gore film, as far as I could see, has got the hockey stick in it.... I counted 20 deliberate lies in his film—well, I say "deliberate" because Gore ought to know better. And I wrote them all down. I daresay, you would've gotten a few of them anyway, but I think—

EIR: Yes, there's been a lot of people who've gone through it and found all the misrepresentations. And the global warmers are crying about "The Great Global Warming Swindle" over a small error in one little chart, while Al Gore's film is like Soviet propaganda. That's what some people have told me, that the film was just put together like Soviet propaganda.

Corbyn: He could change his name to Al Gorebbels.

[another_someone]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af

They call this a consensus?

[/b]
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, June 02, 2007]/i]

"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."

S o said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.

Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.

More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
National Post's Deniers series:
Scientists who challenge the climate change debate

The series


Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII

Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV<a target="_blank" hrefUnsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII

Fighting climate 'fluff' -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
Gore's guru disagreed -- The Deniers XX
The ice-core man -- The Deniers XXI


Some restraint in Rome -- The Deniers XXII
Discounting logic -- The Deniers XXIII
More on the environment
My series set out to profile the dissenters -- those who deny that the science is settled on climate change -- and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world's premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop -- the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.

What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."

An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.

A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.

Such diversity of views is also present in the wider scientific community, as seen in the World Federation of Scientists, an organization formed during the Cold War to encourage dialogue among scientists to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The federation, which encompasses many of the world's most eminent scientists and today represents more than 10,000 scientists, now focuses on 15 "planetary emergencies," among them water, soil, food, medicine and biotechnology, and climatic changes. Within climatic changes, there are eight priorities, one being "Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone)."

Man-made global warming deserves study, the World Federation of Scientists believes, but so do other serious climatic concerns. So do 14 other planetary emergencies. That seems about right. - Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation. Email: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.

[Mazurka]

Ha Ha Ha, Piers Corbyn [xx(].  He may well be a very clever and very accomplished man, but his weather forecasts are in actual fact rubish.  A couple of websites such as The Weather Outlook and UKWeather World (UKWW) have actually tested his forecasts against reality and the results suggest that his much vaunted, secret forecasting technique is little better than guess work.

Whilst i would hesitate to use the word charlatan (as i am sure he belives in the efficacy and scitentific nature of his forecasts) it is a little rich him critisizing the IPCC when he has not let his own forecasting method be Peer reviewed...

[ukmicky]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4332784/Despite-the-hot-air-the-Antarctic-is-not-warming-up.html

Despite the hot air, the Antarctic is not warming up

Another example last week was the much-publicised claim, contradicting all previous evidence, that Antarctica, the world's coldest continent, is in fact warming up, Antarctica has long been a major embarrassment to the warmists. Al Gore and co may have wanted to scare us that the continent which contains 90 per cent of all the ice on the planet is heating up, because that would be the source of all the meltwater which they claim will raise sea levels by 20 feet.
However, to provide all their pictures of ice-shelves "the size of Texas" calving off into the sea, they have had to draw on one tiny region of the continent, the Antarctic Peninsula – the only part that has been warming. The vast mass of Antarctica, all satellite evidence has shown, has been getting colder over the past 30 years. Last year's sea-ice cover was 30 per cent above average. > cont

[topspeed]

Whilst i would hesitate to use the word charlatan (as i am sure he belives in the efficacy and scitentific nature of his forecasts) it is a little rich him critisizing the IPCC when he has not let his own forecasting method be Peer reviewed...

[yor_on]

Don't people ever get tired on searching for those 'definite proofs' that all climate scientists are lying? Or else, don't know what the he** they are speaking of?

Seems that some will fight it to the last minute doesn't it? Standing upon a sinking ship, declaring that its totally safe. Telling you that real soon we will all have our own weather cannon, fixing things

A pity we didn't have it when just one little puny volcano on Island started to spew?
Where are you guys, come on now, just one tiny volcano..

He** that's nothing, sprouting, as you are, solutions for fixing a global climate change.
You can probably do this while reading your morning paper

[norcalclimber]

Don't people ever get tired on searching for those 'definite proofs' that all climate scientists are lying? Or else, don't know what the he** they are speaking of?

Seems that some will fight it to the last minute doesn't it? Standing upon a sinking ship, declaring that its totally safe. Telling you that real soon we will all have our own weather cannon, fixing things

A pity we didn't have it when just one little puny volcano on Island started to spew?
Where are you guys, come on now, just one tiny volcano..

He** that's nothing, sprouting, as you are, solutions for fixing a global climate change.
You can probably do this while reading your morning paper

Why would we want to "fix" global climate change?  That is a necessary part of Earth's natural climate cycle, and I see no evidence whatsoever of it being broken.

Why do AGW supporters get so mad at people asking questions?  Isn't the core tenet of science being skeptical?  It is an absolute fact that we know pathetically little about our climate and we have even less data... shouldn't we maybe learn a little about it before we insist we have all the answers already?

[yor_on]

Skeptical?

That's cool with me, but burying CO2 and 'weather cannons' are not.
Jules Verne belonged to the Victorian era.
==

And 'anonymous' posts sort of 'smells'

[norcalclimber]

Skeptical?

That's cool with me, but burying CO2 and 'weather cannons' are not.
Jules Verne belonged to the Victorian era.
==

And 'anonymous' posts sort of 'smells'

I would agree, weather cannons are not the answer.  But I feel we should first determine if there is even a problem.

It is one thing to look at local areas and visibly see the pollution and know we should limit pollution per square mile.  This does not mean that CO2 is anything bad at all though, CO2 is a life sustaining gas which is critical to our environment.  Calling CO2 "pollution" seems to me to be the same as calling water "pollution". 

Considering we have highly inaccurate, incomplete data along with a nearly complete lack of understanding of the dynamic mechanism we call climate; I think it would be wise to stick to limiting obvious pollution first while we try to learn about our climate and establish a decent set a data before we start making huge changes which could end up hurting everything far worse than if we had done nothing.

Look at the history of Yellowstone National Park for an example of how horribly wrong good intentions can go when we lack understanding of a dynamic system.

[yor_on]

I can't other than agree with you that the variables steering the climate are difficult to know and predict. But we do know a lot of them, and we are learning more as we go, it's no different than other sciences. As for cleaning up your own front yard before complaining about the others, that's always a good principle

"Considering we have highly inaccurate, incomplete data along with a nearly complete lack of understanding of the dynamic mechanism we call climate" Now that is a very serious statement, the data we have and collect comes from respective countries, it all depends on how willing those countries are to share their data. Some countries try, others like Canada presents only one weather station for the arctic side of their Country. How one should look at that kind of 'cooperation' I don't know?

It's like collecting data for the climate to its roots are political I know a lot of Americans and Canadians seems to think so, but considering Canada's choice here I'm still mystified. Do they expect the climate to disappear if we don't collect data about it? Like some uncomfortable political party that you don't want to discuss in fear of them getting sympathizers?

We will all win on as having as good a data collection as possible, sceptics as well believers. But there are a lot of good data still.

[norcalclimber]

I can't other than agree with you that the variables steering the climate are difficult to know and predict. But we do know a lot of them, and we are learning more as we go, it's no different than other sciences. As for cleaning up your own front yard before complaining about the others, that's always a good principle

"Considering we have highly inaccurate, incomplete data along with a nearly complete lack of understanding of the dynamic mechanism we call climate" Now that is a very serious statement, the data we have and collect comes from respective countries, it all depends on how willing those countries are to share their data. Some countries try, others like Canada presents only one weather station for the arctic side of their Country. How one should look at that kind of 'cooperation' I don't know?

It's like collecting data for the climate to its roots are political I know a lot of Americans and Canadians seems to think so, but considering Canada's choice here I'm still mystified. Do they expect the climate to disappear if we don't collect data about it? Like some uncomfortable political party that you don't want to discuss in fear of them getting sympathizers?

We will all win on as having as good a data collection as possible, sceptics as well believers. But there are a lot of good data still.

There is a lot of good short term data, for some areas.  But the majority of the data which is being used to determine whether global warming has occurred due to humans is bad data, which the NCDC and NOAA admit and that is why they attempt to "homogenize" the data.  Sorry, but you can't take bad data which is probably several degrees off and you have no idea which direction, and try to turn it into good data which we can use to determine a tenth of a degree of change.

As far as how much we understand about climate.... we are in our absolute infancy in climate science.  We don't even understand how water vapor affects our climate and that provides ~95% of the global warming gasses in our atmosphere.

I support good science, but I do not support political science... claiming we understand global climate change enough to predict what will happen can only come from politics since the science just isn't there.  I have looked at the science from both sides, I have searched and studied, and the conclusion is obvious to me that we really have no clue whether AGW is occurring at all.

That being said, I think the problem with AGW and the environmental movement has gone wrong because too many politicians and lawyers have gotten involved.  They see the dollar signs, and don't care about anything else.  It is blatantly obvious when you look at smog that it's bad.  It's obvious the oil is running out, and we need to look for more renewable sources of power.  Efficiency is a good thing.  But when you take all these truths, then try to claim Europe will be underwater in 10 years if we don't curb our CO2 production.... sorry, but all credibility is lost.

I also don't like how climate skeptics have been treated.  If your scientific theory is correct, no amount of questioning should matter, and questions should be encouraged not smothered.  Because of the actions and attitudes of the politicians involved, I have a great deal less respect for climate science in general.  I shouldn't, that's not fair at all to the scientists, but I can't help the taste which rises in my mouth at the mere mention of catastrophic AGW and how it's been "proven". 

Personally, I don't think we will really move forward very well with climate research until we kick the politicians out and return to doing good peer reviewed science.

[yor_on]

"But the majority of the data which is being used to determine whether global warming has occurred due to humans is bad data, which the NCDC and NOAA admit and that is why they attempt to "homogenize" the data."

Where do they admit that the majority of data is bad? Got any links to them saying so? Online Climate Data Directory. don't seem bad to me. Do you know any better?

And who exactly claimed "Europe will be underwater in 10 years." ?
And as far as I know all publication by IPCC (I assume they are the ones you're thinking of here?) all have been peer reviewed before published? IPCC peer review.

As for making mistakes, sure, everyone can do that. The more complex the situation, and IPCC is a surely a complex 'body', constituting of members from over the whole world, trying to coordinate those weather data. And those they get from the Countries own weather and climate research, where they are peer reviewed by scientists involved in what research they might speak off. I'm sure you're thinking of that recent debacle involving Glaciers in the Himalaya?

Well, I wrote about that one here. and as i said they went out with a public apology. That report was on three thousand pages with a he** of a lot of valid data in it from the whole globe, and that one 'slunk' in.

I still have to see that denier going public with 'him being wrong'. I think they all are doing their best NC, it's just a hell of a job, and not that popular either politically, as we can see by Canada's 'weather reporting', or lack of the same to the IPCC. But that doesn't matter, the climate waits for no one. So the more data the better.

[norcalclimber]

I know that somewhere on the homepage of the NOAA I believe they talk about reasons for homogenization as well as the importance of understanding water vapor, I will see if I can find that when I get home later today.

I believe it has also been shown that much more than the Himalayan glacier bit was not peer reviewed, but again I will have to get back to you later on that.

The thing is, if anyone has bothered to really look hard at both sides of the argument they can see that this debate will just go back and forth and nothing will actually be proven.  And that is my point, not that the AGW supporters are wrong or the skeptics right, just that we don't know.

I know the climate will not wait for anyone, but I don't see any evidence for catastrophic climate change which means I see no reason for catastrophic changes which may be more harmful to the environment than current methods.

[yor_on]

"I don't see any evidence for catastrophic climate change which means I see no reason for catastrophic changes which may be more harmful to the environment than current methods."

My friend, I have still to see any Country taking steps to avert the Climate disaster waiting our descendants Both the Kyoto and the Copenhagen meetings were jokes. The handling with CO2 stupidity on a global level as there was no real diminishing of it, just money moved between Countries. The cars you see today is not coming because the car manufacturers or their states somehow got 'enlightened'. The are a result of companies realizing that they have to change track as oil is starting to become very expensive, as well as opening Countries to blackmail from the producers.

The so called natural gas (Methane) is just the same, opens for blackmail from the producers, have a thirty percent leakage along the pipe lines. In Russia's case (Canada too) built on permafrost, now quickly transforming into bog's. When we take that methane from under the sea, we leap a very great risk of creating methane 'landslides' which we won't see, other than perhaps bubbles coming up from the water. That methane is seventy to twenty five times more capable of storing heat that CO2, as a educated guess, depending on over what period of time you count. And after transforming again it will become, guess what Yep, CO2. The CO2 have an average life time in the atmosphere somewhere between fifty to Well we can't really say, the number most people think of today is around a hundred years.

What it does is to keep the heat inside our atmosphere, raising the global temperature. When the temperature raises you will get more humidity and changed weather patterns. The humidity will short term become water and snow where there was little such before, in other places, like Australia Africa India, droughts that won't end. I'm as little impressed by the politicians as I am of the deniers. To be a skeptic is okay, to say that we don't notice the changes already is not. To use skepticism to hide ones unwillingness to accept change? I don't like that, it's our sons and daughters that will pay the real prize of that.

But to tell me that there are some sort of conspiracy, as some seem to think
Yeah, there is. It's all of those that don't want change to come, even when it's inevitably. And those you will find everywhere, they belong to no certain Country, they're just humans, thinking of their wallets. The problem is that when the writing is on the wall for all to see, it will be to late. We need to understand that we're on the best built spaceship ever.

Spaceship Earth, and we're throwing big wrenches in it's mechanism, changing the way it works. Life might go on even if we continue. That earth have proven before, but I doubt we will, not as we are now at least. Normally when changes come it takes sufficient time for plants trees etc to migrate and follow the changes. This time it doesn't. There are already reports on that from f.ex Lapland here in Sweden (high north) and from other places too. Species are dying today, not because of us building some useless damn but because of the climate changing to fast for them to migrate.

We're natural predators, not ht biggest ones or the strongest, but the smartest. And as all predators we have a 'comfortability zone'. When everything is okay in that zone we're happy. Food on the table, a filled wallet, good jobs, that's what we're concerned about first, and family of course. Everything outside that, possible to change our zone, will be a threat to us.

And normally we react when things happens close to us, don't we This time it's a global, to us short lived humans, 'slow' change. But it's not a slow change at all geologically. It's extremely fast, in fact the IPCC have to revise their prognosis's upwards after each time they leave a report, every time NC. And why they have to is because they want to be seen as 'conservative'. No matter what people believe them to be they try to act 'moderately', only using the facts they truly believe to be without doubt. And extrapolating becomes then 'wild science' But Earth itself doesn't care about our visions. She blends and takes and create new effects all the time, and that's why we never get ahead in climate research. It's a whole f*ng world interacting, but the trends are there to see for all that have internet.

So don't go around believing that anyone is acting for real
Not yet, we won't really act until the writing is there.
At least not as I can see.

===
---Quote—Lisa Moore, Ph.D., scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.--

Here's a table showing a selection of greenhouse gases, their global warming potential (GWP), and their lifetimes:

Greenhouse Gas . . . . . . . .  .Lifetime years . . (100-Year GWP)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) . . …. . . . hundreds .. .. . .1
Methane (CH4) . . . . . . …. . . .. . . 1 . . .  . . . .25
Nitrous Oxide (N2O) . . . . . . . . . .114 . . . . . . .298
Hydrofluorocarbon-23 (CHF3) . . . .264 . . . .. . .14,800
Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) . . . . ..3,200.  . . . .22,800
PFC-14 (CF4) . . . . . . . .. . . . . .50,000 . . . . .7,390

Notice that the carbon dioxide lifetime is "hundreds of years", rather than a specific number. The IPCC ‘Third Assessment Report’ defines a gas's lifetime as the amount of the gas in the atmosphere divided by the rate at which it is removed from the atmosphere. That sounds simple enough, except that not all gases are removed by just one (or mainly one) process. Ironically, the gas that accounts for the greatest proportion of global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2), is the hardest to pin down. When CO2 is released into the atmosphere, about three-quarters of it dissolves into the ocean over a few decades (- Acidity -). The rest is neutralized by a variety of longer-term geological processes, which can take thousands of years.

From IPCC Fourth Assessment Report:  About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.

From U.S Greenhouse Gas Inventory Reports: (CO2) Atmospheric lifetime: 50-200 years. No single lifetime can be defined for CO2 because of the different rates of uptake by different removal processes.

From RealClimate: “My model indicates that about 7% of carbon released today will still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years. I calculate a mean lifetime, from the sum of all the processes, of about 30,000 years. That's a deceptive number, because it is so strongly influenced by the immense longevity of that long tail. If one is forced to simplify reality into a single number for popular discussion, several hundred years is a sensible number to choose, because it tells three-quarters of the story, and the part of the story which applies to our own lifetimes.” ("How long will global warming last?")

For other gases, a meaningful lifetime is easier to calculate because one process dominates their removal from the atmosphere:

    * Methane is mostly scrubbed from the atmosphere by hydroxyl radicals (a chemical reaction).
    * Nitrous oxide is destroyed by photolytic reactions (chemical reactions involving photons or light) in the stratosphere.

As you can see from the chart, some gases have extraordinarily long lifetimes. Because emission rates are vastly higher than removal rates, greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and will affect climate for generations to come.

----End of Quote----

[norcalclimber]

"I don't see any evidence for catastrophic climate change which means I see no reason for catastrophic changes which may be more harmful to the environment than current methods."

My friend, I have still to see any Country taking steps to avert the Climate disaster waiting our descendants Both the Kyoto and the Copenhagen meetings were jokes. The handling with CO2 stupidity on a global level as there was no real diminishing of it, just money moved between Countries. The cars you see today is not coming because the car manufacturers or their states somehow got 'enlightened'. The are a result of companies realizing that they have to change track as oil is starting to become very expensive, as well as opening Countries to blackmail from the producers.

The so called natural gas (Methane) is just the same, opens for blackmail from the producers, have a thirty percent leakage along the pipe lines. In Russia's case (Canada too) built on permafrost, now quickly transforming into bog's. When we take that methane from under the sea, we leap a very great risk of creating methane 'landslides' which we won't see, other than perhaps bubbles coming up from the water. That methane is seventy to twenty five times more capable of storing heat that CO2, as a educated guess, depending on over what period of time you count. And after transforming again it will become, guess what Yep, CO2. The CO2 have an average life time in the atmosphere somewhere between fifty to Well we can't really say, the number most people think of today is around a hundred years.

What it does is to keep the heat inside our atmosphere, raising the global temperature. When the temperature raises you will get more humidity and changed weather patterns. The humidity will short term become water and snow where there was little such before, in other places, like Australia Africa India, droughts that won't end. I'm as little impressed by the politicians as I am of the deniers. To be a skeptic is okay, to say that we don't notice the changes already is not. To use skepticism to hide ones unwillingness to accept change? I don't like that, it's our sons and daughters that will pay the real prize of that.

But to tell me that there are some sort of conspiracy, as some seem to think
Yeah, there is. It's all of those that don't want change to come, even when it's inevitably. And those you will find everywhere, they belong to no certain Country, they're just humans, thinking of their wallets. The problem is that when the writing is on the wall for all to see, it will be to late. We need to understand that we're on the best built spaceship ever.

Spaceship Earth, and we're throwing big wrenches in it's mechanism, changing the way it works. Life might go on even if we continue. That earth have proven before, but I doubt we will, not as we are now at least. Normally when changes come it takes sufficient time for plants trees etc to migrate and follow the changes. This time it doesn't. There are already reports on that from f.ex Lapland here in Sweden (high north) and from other places too. Species are dying today, not because of us building some useless damn but because of the climate changing to fast for them to migrate.

We're natural predators, not ht biggest ones or the strongest, but the smartest. And as all predators we have a 'comfortability zone'. When everything is okay in that zone we're happy. Food on the table, a filled wallet, good jobs, that's what we're concerned about first, and family of course. Everything outside that, possible to change our zone, will be a threat to us.

And normally we react when things happens close to us, don't we This time it's a global, to us short lived humans, 'slow' change. But it's not a slow change at all geologically. It's extremely fast, in fact the IPCC have to revise their prognosis's upwards after each time they leave a report, every time NC. And why they have to is because they want to be seen as 'conservative'. No matter what people believe them to be they try to act 'moderately', only using the facts they truly believe to be without doubt. And extrapolating becomes then 'wild science' But Earth itself doesn't care about our visions. She blends and takes and create new effects all the time, and that's why we never get ahead in climate research. It's a whole f*ng world interacting, but the trends are there to see for all that have internet.

So don't go around believing that anyone is acting for real
Not yet, we won't really act until the writing is there.
At least not as I can see.

===
---Quote—Lisa Moore, Ph.D., scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.--

Here's a table showing a selection of greenhouse gases, their global warming potential (GWP), and their lifetimes:

Greenhouse Gas . . . . . . . .  .Lifetime years . . (100-Year GWP)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) . . …. . . . hundreds .. .. . .1
Methane (CH4) . . . . . . …. . . .. . . 1 . . .  . . . .25
Nitrous Oxide (N2O) . . . . . . . . . .114 . . . . . . .298
Hydrofluorocarbon-23 (CHF3) . . . .264 . . . .. . .14,800
Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) . . . . ..3,200.  . . . .22,800
PFC-14 (CF4) . . . . . . . .. . . . . .50,000 . . . . .7,390

Notice that the carbon dioxide lifetime is "hundreds of years", rather than a specific number. The IPCC ‘Third Assessment Report’ defines a gas's lifetime as the amount of the gas in the atmosphere divided by the rate at which it is removed from the atmosphere. That sounds simple enough, except that not all gases are removed by just one (or mainly one) process. Ironically, the gas that accounts for the greatest proportion of global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2), is the hardest to pin down. When CO2 is released into the atmosphere, about three-quarters of it dissolves into the ocean over a few decades (- Acidity -). The rest is neutralized by a variety of longer-term geological processes, which can take thousands of years.

From IPCC Fourth Assessment Report:  About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.

From U.S Greenhouse Gas Inventory Reports: (CO2) Atmospheric lifetime: 50-200 years. No single lifetime can be defined for CO2 because of the different rates of uptake by different removal processes.

From RealClimate: “My model indicates that about 7% of carbon released today will still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years. I calculate a mean lifetime, from the sum of all the processes, of about 30,000 years. That's a deceptive number, because it is so strongly influenced by the immense longevity of that long tail. If one is forced to simplify reality into a single number for popular discussion, several hundred years is a sensible number to choose, because it tells three-quarters of the story, and the part of the story which applies to our own lifetimes.” ("How long will global warming last?")

For other gases, a meaningful lifetime is easier to calculate because one process dominates their removal from the atmosphere:

    * Methane is mostly scrubbed from the atmosphere by hydroxyl radicals (a chemical reaction).
    * Nitrous oxide is destroyed by photolytic reactions (chemical reactions involving photons or light) in the stratosphere.

As you can see from the chart, some gases have extraordinarily long lifetimes. Because emission rates are vastly higher than removal rates, greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and will affect climate for generations to come.

----End of Quote----

How does any of this prove in any way that we are headed for catastrophic climate change?

Where is this so called "proof" that we have all "seen"?

I see a changing climate, which is natural.

Why do you assume that a couple of degrees warmer would even be bad for life?

You refer to heat stored in comparison to CO2(Isn't this usually just called global warming potential, or GWP?) but do we even know how much warming potential CO2 really has? 

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html

"Our results are incompatibly lower (P < 0.05) than recent pre-industrial empirical estimates of ~40 p.p.m.v. CO2 per °C (refs 6, 7), and correspondingly suggest ~80% less potential amplification of ongoing global warming."

Sorry, just got back, still haven't had a chance to look up the stuff about our climate data for the last 200 years.  I'll look for it later, but all you have to do is read the NOAA online information and it is some of the first stuff they say.  Or just google "temperature homogenization", I'll admit I'm not very motivated on this subject... it's not the first time I've discussed Global warming and it never seems to go anywhere; people who believe it is proven cannot seem to see the forest for the trees, and the same goes for some of the skeptics.  All I can say is please do primary source research, and read the "why" of any scientist's conclusions not just the "what" they think happens.

[yor_on]

Catastrophic? Possibly so but not in our lifetimes NC
And not catastrophic for life in itself, for us, possibly.

As for 'proofs'? Greenland and the Arctic is one 'proof'.
Australia another, then you have Africa, India etc. You have the tundra warming up releasing a unknown amount of methane in the atmosphere, accelerating by every year as I understands it. You have observations from the shallow seas in the arctic where they've measured methane 'bubbling up', of an amount that it saturates the water surrounding those bubbles, not even getting mixed in but coming up just as 'bubbles'.


Why do you think Russia, even though denying that there is any problems with the so called 'Global Warming' still is pouring in money in researching its effects on the permafrost? Simple, when money comes into the picture you have to look to real circumstances, not to 'wishes' and the fact is that all pipelines resting on permafrost-soil now leaps a risk to break down as the ground becomes too soft. And that same ground releases more and more methane doing so. Russia, methane and Power. 

And try this one for size. It's somewhat old, but, so very good to read. it takes up a lot of evidence from all over the globe. TOWARDS CURBING GLOBAL VILLAGE WARMING. Nepal.

If you need more evidence just tell me
===

One more thing NC, when trying to prof a point, it's better to avoid 'pay per view' sites.
I will presume that you have read it, so, perhaps you can link it from somewhere free?

[yor_on]

Went 'out' looking for it NC. Seems it's only as pay per view, sad state that. I did find a review of it at Realclimate  though. I won't comment it too much, there is a lot to be said about extrapolations and how near they might come to reality, but what the guys did was to " empirically estimate the distribution of gamma, the temperature-induced carbon dioxide feedback to the climate system, given the current state of the knowledge of reconstructed temperature, and carbon dioxide concentration, over the last millennium.

It is a macro-scale approach to constraining this parameter; it does not attempt to refine our knowledge about carbon dioxide flux pathways, rates or mechanisms... They bring together results from actually or potentially disparate data inputs and methods, which can be hard to keep track of, into a systematic framework. By organizing, they help to clarify, and for that there is much to be said.

Gamma has units in ppmv per ºC (Parts Per Million by Volume). It is thus the inverse of climate sensitivity, where CO2 is the forcing and T is the response. Carbon dioxide can, of course, act as both a forcing and a (relatively slow) feedback; slow at least when compared to faster feedbacks like water vapor and cloud changes. Estimates of the traditional climate sensitivity, e.g. Charney et al., (1979) are thus not affected by the study. Estimates of more broadly defined sensitivities that include slower feedbacks, (e.g. Lunt et al. (2010), Pagani et al. (2010)), could be however."

So what they did was to build an study around a lot of different studies with different methods and from there they try to join them and see how they might predict global warming to come. But they can be discussed, they're not a 'proof' of anything, and the data they seem to build on? "As most of the source reconstructions used in the study show, there is no time period between 1050 and 1800, including the medieval times, which equals the global temperature state we are now in; most of it is not even close. We are in a no-analogue state with respect to mechanistic, global-scale understanding of the inter-relationship of the carbon cycle and temperature, at least for the last two or three million years. And no-analogue states are generally not a real comfortable place to be, either scientifically or societally."

You have the link above if you want to discuss it NC, or you can take it up with the guys at Realclimate themselves if you feel so inclined. They do not deem the study out, as long as you don't see it as a description of what we see today that is With our man-made Global warming  I mean, which is very well proven statistically and otherwise.

Or do you doubt that? They also seems to have leaved out the permafrost emissions of methane, and if so, I would expect them not to have looked into those emissions from the arctic seas either?


--Quote---

"The research published in the journal Science shows the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic shelf, which was thought to be a barrier sealing methane, is perforated. Scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences say more methane will be released if the permafrost is further destabilised. CSIRO spokesman Pep Canadell says the study identifies a possibly overlooked source of methane in the atmosphere.

"Maybe before we were wrongly attributing it to cows or rice paddies or whatever, all the major sources of methane we have. And now when we measure fluctuations in the atmospheric methane concentration we can more properly attribute where these sources are coming from."

He says the study provides, for the first time, an estimate of the contribution of the Arctic to overall methane emissions. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic are the highest in 400,000 years.

---End of Quote---5 Mar 2010.

Outside Australia (ocean) there are natural Gas deposits waiting for the picking. To transport this gas you either need pipelines or you will need to freeze it to around -161 C. The project ‘Gorgon’, sat in motion by Chevron, plans do use those fields outside Australia with Exxon and Shell jumping on the train. So now you have super tankers on the seas with ‘super-cooled, super-concentrated natural gas’ (That’s what happens when it gets frozen. The density of a gas goes really up, way way up when it becomes a liquid..) . You might ask yourself. Why don’t they take it from USA (Carolina f.ex) instead? “All the energy America needs for the next 100 years lies under the sea off the coast of South Carolina.”

"Just one problem: Digging it out might cause a global climate disaster.”

---Quote—-

Methane is the principal component of natural gas, and massive amounts of it are trapped in reservoirs beneath the sea floor and under a layer of the ice-like substance. The scale of the resource is spectacular. By some estimates, methane hydrates contain more energy content than all other known fossil fuels combined. Two small areas located roughly 200 miles off the coast of Charleston, S.C., contain enough methane to meet the country's gas needs for more than a century. And this is only one of at least two dozen similar reservoirs discovered in U.S. coastal waters since the early 1970s.

The paradox is that while gas can be extracted from methane hydrates, doing so poses potentially catastrophic risks. Methane hydrates are frozen water molecules that trap methane gas molecules in a crystalline, lattice-like structure known as a hydrate. Unlike normal ice, hydrate ice literally burns — light a match and it goes up in flames. As temperatures rise or pressure rates fall, the hydrate disintegrates and the water releases the gas. A substantial amount of evidence suggests that weakening the lattice-like structure of gas hydrates has triggered underwater landslides on the continental margin. In other words, the extraction process, if done improperly, could cause sudden disruptions on the ocean floor, reducing ocean pressure rates and releasing methane gas from hydrates.

A mass release of methane into the sea and atmosphere could have catastrophic consequences on the pace of climate change. More than 50 million years ago, undersea landslides resulted in the release of methane gas from methane hydrate, which contributed to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years. "Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history," Ryo Matsumoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has spent 20 years researching the subject, told Bloomberg in December.

---End of quote---

And if you wonder how much Methane we might have stored? Estimates are that more than 10% of the world’s hydrates are located on-shore in arctic permafrost; and a sizable — although not quantified — amount are in relatively shallow arctic seas. These are susceptible to melting from warming. Don't forget how Russia plans to draw their new pipeline (Nordgas) either. It might be that they find it more secure to lay it under the ocean than on permafrost, turning into bogs .

---Quote--

Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 60-70 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a twenty-year period (or 25 times over a hundred-year period). Human-caused methane emissions are currently contributing some 20-30% of the observed global warming effects. These include: Energy, Landfills, Ruminants (Livestock), Waste treatment, and Biomass burning.

However, there are two additional sources of methane that are just now bubbling to the surface. One source is the methane hydrates (also called clathrates) that have been frozen since the last ice age in the permafrost lands of Russia, Alaska and Canada, but are now being released as the permafrost melts. In addition, the methane hydrates, which have been long stored in the cold Arctic Ocean seabed, are now being released as the ocean temperature rises.

Estimates of the land based hydrates estimates range from 0.8 to 1 gigaton, for the sea-based hydrates in the Arctic total 1.5 gigatons of carbon, Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tons of methane being released, apparently through perforations in the seabed permafrost, with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times normal.

Most of the thawing is believed to be due to the greatly increased volumes of meltwater being discharged from the Siberian rivers flowing north. Current Arctic methane release has previously been estimated at 0.5 Megatons  (500 000 tons) per year, but now it appears to be increasing rapidly. Shakhova et al (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 gigatons of Carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5-10% of that area is subject to puncturing by open taliks.

They conclude that "release of up to 50 gigatons (fifty thousand millions ton) of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve, which is equivalent in greenhouse effect to a doubling in the current level of CO2.

----------End Quote…..By Jim Stewart, PhD, October 6, 2008,----
====

Take a look here too. Mar. 5, 2010

[norcalclimber]

Catastrophic? Possibly so but not in our lifetimes NC
And not catastrophic for life in itself, for us, possibly.

As for 'proofs'? Greenland and the Arctic is one 'proof'.
Australia another, then you have Africa, India etc. You have the tundra warming up releasing a unknown amount of methane in the atmosphere, accelerating by every year as I understands it. You have observations from the shallow seas in the arctic where they've measured methane 'bubbling up', of an amount that it saturates the water surrounding those bubbles, not even getting mixed in but coming up just as 'bubbles'.


Why do you think Russia, even though denying that there is any problems with the so called 'Global Warming' still is pouring in money in researching its effects on the permafrost? Simple, when money comes into the picture you have to look to real circumstances, not to 'wishes' and the fact is that all pipelines resting on permafrost-soil now leaps a risk to break down as the ground becomes too soft. And that same ground releases more and more methane doing so. Russia, methane and Power. 

And try this one for size. It's somewhat old, but, so very good to read. it takes up a lot of evidence from all over the globe. TOWARDS CURBING GLOBAL VILLAGE WARMING. Nepal.

If you need more evidence just tell me
===

One more thing NC, when trying to prof a point, it's better to avoid 'pay per view' sites.
I will presume that you have read it, so, perhaps you can link it from somewhere free?

The only thing you have provided evidence of, is that the climate is changing.  Correlation is not always causation, and proving whether it is man-made or not is the point.  So yes, if you have actual proof of what percentage of climate change may or may not be attributable to humans I would honestly love to hear it.

The thing is, I am not even remotely close to being a newbie when it comes to the global warming debate.  So when you link to Gavin's site(which he flat out told the CRU that it was a tool to be used however they saw fit), I know I can just peruse Anthony Watt's site and come up with a rebuttal.  But why bother?  I have enjoyed the debate in the past, but it gets old.  That you insist it is "proven", while obviously being well educated and scientific from what I have seen of other posts of yours, tells me that you are absolutely convinced of it and nothing I say will change your mind.  IMHO, this is folly... but it is also absolutely your right, and perhaps I am wrong.

All of this is why I stated I'm not motivated on the subject, and that my position on the subject is that we need more data and understanding before we jump to any major changes.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-monthly/images/ghcn_temp_overview.pdf

This document clearly points out the many problems we have with the data:

Instrumental records also often contain data errors resultant from the data recording
and archiving processes. These errors, which take many forms (e.g., outliers, truncations), reduce confidence
in the analyses. In addition, instrumental records are subject to inhomogeneities caused by
many factors, such as local station moves and the introduction of new thermometers. Such inhomogeneities
introduce nonclimatic variation into historical records and thus further cloud temporal trends. In
short, each of these forces contributes to a bias embedded in the historical record that complicates the
detection of climatic change on any scale.

Here you can see the difference between the raw and final data sets: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif


I personally feel that no amount of homogenization can make what was bad data all the sudden be good data...and accurate to tenths of a degree.  That is my personal opinion, as well as the fact that we have far too little data or understanding of the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor.  The NOAA, and NCDC would seem to agree: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html

"Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which is why it is addressed here first. However, changes in its concentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks  related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization. The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood."

The opinion that it doesn't have significant relation to warming simply doesn't wash with me, and seems like an excuse because the job is too daunting if the opposite is true. 

Anyway, if your goal is to continue to claim AGW is already proven, I will respectfully have to step out of this debate as I feel it will not go anywhere and I no longer find enjoyment in arguing the merits of AGW (I have had enough of it from family)  []

[yor_on]

My goal?

Well, I find the data sets as good as they 'can be'.
Doesn't mean they can't get better, but you're absolutely right thinking that I do believe in Anthropogenic (manmade) Global Warming. As for relating it to education? We all get 'educated' when we sit down and 'connect' as I think. Kind'a love the Internet I do

But you do need to look at what I cited there, if you look you will see that it's not Gavin, it's a guest commentary by Jim Bouldin and? Discussing it in terms of 'winning a argument' make little sense to me when it comes to this. Jim Bouldin didn't and would you write there I would expect you to comment on facts, not trying to win any argument.

As for arguing that we can't see this warming, that I would call impossible, arguing that it's not us? Just look at the statistics for the last two hundred and fifty years, impossible to deny too I would say.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to draw those conclusions. But if you mean that you're so sure that those climate scientists believing in what they say are wrong? Well, that's seems more what it mean being a denier. Not a skeptic, a skeptic I would expect to check the source before telling me that it's 'useless'

Realclimate was the site discussing your 'pay per view' paper NC, so that was the site I used, and if you read what they wrote you will find that they're not calling it 'worthless'. They put it into perspective instead which is always a good thing to do.
===

This might interest you. Cold winters.  There are all kinds of data out there, and guys like those you mentioned in your link are sorely needed, but to quantify what's happening now we also need to look at the 'anomaly' presented by mans use of 'energy sources' and the way that change the climate.

[norcalclimber]

My goal?

Well, I find the data sets as good as they 'can be'.
Doesn't mean they can't get better, but you're absolutely right thinking that I do believe in Anthropogenic (manmade) Global Warming. As for relating it to education? We all get 'educated' when we sit down and 'connect' as I think. Kind'a love the Internet I do

But you do need to look at what I cited there, if you look you will see that it's not Gavin, it's a guest commentary by Jim Bouldin and? Discussing it in terms of 'winning a argument' make little sense to me when it comes to this. Jim Bouldin didn't and would you write there I would expect you to comment on facts, not trying to win any argument.

As for arguing that we can't see this warming, that I would call impossible, arguing that it's not us? Just look at the statistics for the last two hundred and fifty years, impossible to deny too I would say.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to draw those conclusions. But if you mean that you're so sure that those climate scientists believing in what they say are wrong? Well, that's seems more what it mean being a denier. Not a skeptic, a skeptic I would expect to check the source before telling me that it's 'useless'

Realclimate was the site discussing your 'pay per view' paper NC, so that was the site I used, and if you read what they wrote you will find that they're not calling it 'worthless'. They put it into perspective instead which is always a good thing to do.
===

This might interest you. Cold winters.  There are all kinds of data out there, and guys like those you mentioned in your link are sorely needed, but to quantify what's happening now we also need to look at the 'anomaly' presented by mans use of 'energy sources' and the way that change the climate.

The thing is, I do not feel the data sets are good, and the raw data shows no increase in average temp.  I also said you linked to Gavin's site, not Gavin specifically.  My point was to show that I am familiar with the players involved.  You tell me that looking at the last 250 years it's obvious AGW is real, I completely disagree.  I think that even the idea of an "average global temperature" is completely ridiculous with the pathetic data sets we have available.  I am aware of the serious problems with the infamous "hockey stick" graph, and when you look at an accurate historical record you see that it was far warmer in the Medieval Warm period.  What caused that?  Why has there been no significant warming for the past 10 years?  Why is it that the raw data shows no warming?  Why do we homogenize the data more for recent past when our instrumentation should be getting better(no longer is it a sailor dropping a bucket of the side of the ship)? 

I am not a denier, but I do require actual evidence before I believe in something.  In your mind the evidence is glaringly obvious, but I have looked at the same evidence and lots of counter evidence and I respectfully disagree.  I have also educated myself on exactly how and why conclusions have been made by the scientists, and I find serious faults in it.  I absolutely hate the politics of it, I don't trust the IPCC whatsoever and I find Agenda 21 to be awfully telling.

I didn't bother dealing with exactly what you posted because of the reasons I stated.... I no longer enjoy debating AGW.

I have made my position clear, and provided sources to show why I have that position.  You disagree, which is entirely within your right.