BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

I'm............... speechless.

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News
Global temperatures could be less sensitive to changing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels than previously thought, a study suggests.
The researchers said people should still expect to see "drastic changes" in climate worldwide, but that the risk was a little less imminent.
The results are published in Science.
Previous climate models have used meteorological measurements from the past 150 years to estimate the climate's sensitivity to rising CO2.
From these models, scientists find it difficult to narrow their projections down to a single figure with any certainty, and instead project a range of temperatures that they expect, given a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels.
The new analysis, which incorporates palaeoclimate data into existing models, attempts to project future temperatures with a little more certainty.

More here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15858603

[Lateralman]

Money talks.

[Healerman]

The incorporation of paleoclimatic data has refined things quite well, or so it seems. What worries me with this area of development, are the indications that beyond a certian point, the polar regions warm relatively much more than the tropics, which reduces the temperature gradient and causes the planet to "stagnate". Under these conditions, the oceans become deoxygenated as the major currents shut down and desertification becomes much more widespread on the land. For all of the increasing violence that the climate seems to be throwing at us, it's still better than having no fish to catch and no water to grow crops.

Frankly, though the peak temperature in the models may drop, the consequences get worse.

[Flakkarin]

Here's what strikes me as funny about the reaction to this....
People who imagine some sort of conspiracy, or even something less strong, more of a suggestion that negative papers about climate change do not get published, and the whole thing is run on funding papers that agree with the status quo (i.e. "money talks"): HEY, THIS GOT PUBLISHED!
Not only did it get published, it received a lot of attention. Not only did it receive attention in the skeptic community and mass media, it received attention from the folks that like to go about saying this whole "climate change" thing is real and scary. And they're not all running around going "Madness! We must cover this up and deny it or all our funding will be lost!" - in fact they are acknowledging a first reasonably robust attempt to incorporate paleoclimate data (which are naturally less reliable than actual measurements) into predictive models. More studies on different models (as the article says) will be needed to confirm or deny the conclusions, but really, the bottom line for me is this:
This is how science works. Nobody is trying to shaft these results, these researchers, because it's not the status quo. A possible change in our predictions (based on models, which most skeptics seem to dismiss out of hand anyway) has been suggested, now work will commence to either back it up or challenge it.

Rant over....

[Lateralman]

I knew if I stuck with this site, something wonderful would happen.
Look Miss Flakkarin has used those pesky neutrino particles to travel back to the land before time.

Watch out Miss Flak! He’s behind you!

[Flakkarin]

Haha it took me a minute to figure out what you were on about - don't worry, Rexxy only eats naughty children!

[Shadowwolf]

This is how science works. Nobody is trying to shaft these results, these researchers, because it's not the status quo.

Exactly, spot on.

[M Paul Lloyd]

My problem with this latest move is that just as I was beginning to make sense of it all and accept that the idea behind the man made global warming argument makes complete sense and that we really must make every effort to limit the consequences of our actions and someone in effect says 'don't worry, its not going to be as bad as we thought' which to my limited little brain is akin to giving the big CO2 producers the green light to carry on regardless because the rest of the world will redress the balance for theml.

I will admit that I have harboured some quite worrying concerns over the science behind man made global warming over the years.

The Mann 'Hockey Stick' graph with no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age which then got redrawn by the associates of the very person who got it wrong in the first place, and the heavy reliance on computer models which are open to wide variability (rubbish in rubbish out still applies) the 'closed shop' attitude of the Hadley Centre who flatly refused to enter into public debate on the subject, the worrying fact that most of the IPCC climate 'scientists' are not actually climate 'scientists' but rather environmentalists and conservationists or even engineers (which really isn't the same thing) and the total lack of any actual evidence to show that sea levels are rising any faster than they have been since the end of the last ice age, oh and of course the fact that global average temperatures have not risen in line with rising CO2 as predicted.

But even so I have slowly begun come to accept that they were right and I was just a daft old interfering busy-body, but now, NOW they say 'oops sorry we might have over estimated it a bit' !?

Oh right, fine, thats ok then not to worry that half the world has been taxed to its limits and turned on its head to try and alleviate the 'terrible consequences' of something that won't be so bad after all!!

My 'rant' over.

[Flakkarin]

Alright, as much as I could argue about the other things, I'll just keep it on topic ("reliance on computer models which are open to wide variability (rubbish in rubbish out still applies) the 'closed shop' attitude of the Hadley Centre who flatly refused to enter into public debate on the subject, the worrying fact that most of the IPCC climate 'scientists' are not actually climate 'scientists' but rather environmentalists and conservationists or even engineers" - please feel free to bring any of them up on the General topic thread).

It's not "they" say 'oops sorry we might have over estimated it a bit' - there is no they. It's one study that aims to make the predictions a little more robust, a preliminary study, that needs a lot more work to either confirm or deny by a whole host of other scientists. And the numbers are still very troubling, which everyone quoted in the article tries to convey. The error bars of the new study and all the previous work still overlap.

[M Paul Lloyd]

I take your point entirely Flakkarin but I'm trying to see this from the point of the sceptic camp and indeed anyone who wishes to bury their head in the sand and hope it all just goes away who will seize upon this as 'proof' that they were right all along. Given the magnitude of the problem I think the team behind this should surely have sought wider verification before going quite so public with it?

I know my comments might appear to be contrary but I should add that much of what I was lead to believe (re climate scientists etal) is very much past tence?

[Lateralman]

Err, according to a recent newspaper poll 83% percent of the British public, believe that global warming is manmade. But what do they know.

My only concern is that my spring bulbs are starting to pop up now, and my winter cabbage doesn’t know if it is coming or going.

[Shadowwolf]

...and indeed anyone who wishes to bury their head in the sand and hope it all just goes away who will seize upon this as 'proof' that they were right all along.

They'll do that anyway for anything they think they can seize on and as reality plays second fiddle to wishful thinking they are quite capable as is to invent whatever they need to ignore that which discomfits them.

...I think the team behind this should surely have sought wider verification before going quite so public with it?

Ahh but if they did that and it somehow got out they would be accused of covering up inconvenient data and then there would be a problem. Science is about going where the best data indicates and it is supposed to be as transparent as possible, to do anything else is to muddy the waters. These folks are just doing exactly what they should be doing.

But even so I have slowly begun come to accept that they were right and I was just a daft old interfering busy-body, but now, NOW they say 'oops sorry we might have over estimated it a bit' !?

But does that not sound a bit like expecting science to do something that it almost cannot do, that is, to supply an answer to a question which is set in stone never to change? That there never can be new information that may alter current interpretations?

We go with what our best interpretations of the current data indicates, and that indicates a strong human element driving climate change at rates greater than would be expected and in a deleterious fashion. New work - because it cannot all be done at once - indicates that it may not be so bad, but it is too early to be certain at this stage. However, because we can only work with what we have we are therefore obliged to act on that data and not start guessing about what might come, which is why we have pollution protocols, carbon taxation etc.

It's not a case of oops sorry but as the great Carl Sagan put it - and I heavily paraphrase it, science is our best tool, not perfect but ongoing and applicable to everything.

[M Paul Lloyd]

It's not a case of oops sorry but as the great Carl Sagan put it - and I heavily paraphrase it, science is our best tool, not perfect but ongoing and applicable to everything.

This is true but, as I recall climate science and AGW was presented to the public as an absolute certainty, a'done deal' as it was often refered to, so when the public learns that its all a bit vuage well then they start wondering what exactly is hard facts or just guesswork..

[Lateralman]

Sorry for the faux pas, it I should have read, “83% of British penguins believe that global warming is manmade.” The poll was in the ‘Unhappy Foot’ gazette sold for a mere two pilchards at me local zoo.

[M Paul Lloyd]

boom....................................................................................boom

[Lateralman]

Okay, riddle me this:

Seven billion, eating, drinking, wheeling, dealing, spreading, shredding, clearing, chopping, blasting, building, poisoning, polluting, craving, cropping, digging, driving, scheming, dreaming, fishing, flying, fighting, warring, killing, dying, burning, buying, selling, sailing, thriving, voracious consumers have no impact on the planet.

Really!

[KingPhillip]

There are also trillions of trillions of microbes and flora making their presence felt. And to a lesser effect, there are trillions of insects and fauna dancing with the others at the big luau. It's a big leap to point at h. sapiens, point at CO 2 and pound the gavel and say the case is closed.

The system the scientists and researchers are modeling have many feedback loops. The sensitivity, if this study is confirmed by others, might just be part of a regulatory feedback loop.

[Lateralman]

We are eating the insects, wiping out the flora and microbes are not in a position to do anything about it. We are. How long is it going to take for confirmation?

In the meantime, the fish are celebrating.

Rising sea levels make no distinction between the sovereignty of any country.
Unfortunately we do not have a plug we can pull to solve this problem.

Ignorance, indecision, and apathy will ultimately leave us all in the same boat.

Then again, if results show that it is, 'only just a part of a regulatory feedback loop' we can carry on as normal. Correct?

[Lateralman]

What still no reply? While we are on the subject, have scientists made any inroads towards manipulating our DNA for us to grow gills?

I have always dreamed of seeing Atlantis.

To sink or swim that is the question. Just a minute...there is nowhere to swim!

[KingPhillip]

"Then again, if results show that it is, 'only just a part of a regulatory feedback loop' we can carry on as normal. Correct?"

http://news.discovery.com/earth/humans- ... 11206.html

"They calculated that, with all those factors considered, Earth should have warmed by about 0.51 degrees C over the last 60 years, very close to the observed increase of 0.55 C. Changes in solar radiation were responsible for no more than 0.07C of that increase, they found."

"Indeed, the Nature Geoscience paper points out that, by themselves, greenhouse gases actually should have warmed the planet by about 0.85 C since the 1950s. The primary reason global temperatures have not increased that much is because the warming effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has been partly negated by the cooling mechanisms of sulfate aerosols, from for example industrial activities and volcanic eruptions, which scatter light from the sun and reflect its energy back into space."


I had trouble with the seemingly doublespeak in the linked article. I hope others will realign my interpretation.