Next climate talks or lyings ? (1 Viewer)

[locustella]

Are such meetings real or they are only social engineering performances of politicians, acts ? Because global warming is proceeding more and more.
Paris climate talks - 40,000 delegates, 190 countries, 130 heads of governments. Very impressive. But they write, that this meeting won't affect this process:
http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/3470...Eto0Ebuild0Ea0Evehicle0Ethat0Ecan/story01.htm

The good thing is, that climate change is treated seriously.

 

[locustella]

24 climate activists arrested in France:
http://news.yahoo.com/france-puts-24-climate-activists-under-house-arrest-191836627.html (AFP)

Edited later:
The RSS channels repeat around information, that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is going to create a fund for clean energy research and development. It will be announced on Monday during that global summit meeting:
http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/64...rgy0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm
http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/3470...initiative0Eparis0Eclimate0Etalks/story01.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/microsofts-gates-start-multi-billion-dollar-clean-tech-153744434--sector.html (Reuters)
It's a pity that all these governments responsible for climate change and utilizattion of still existing energy sources are not going to establish any fund.

 

[locustella]

draft text of agreement approved so far:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35015765#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/environment/~3/oGdBc_oFtWw/story01.htm

 

[locustella]

Not exactly about climate change, but connected. Smog red alert issued today in Beijing, China, first ever, schools closed:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ly-shut-down-as-chinese-capital-a6763286.html
http://news.yahoo.com/beijing-issues-1st-smog-red-alert-urging-schools-111841241.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35026363
Red alert first time, but the worst level of pollution was detected in the past.

 

[locustella]

Agreement achieved, signed by 195 countries.
So we are waiting for results - climate cooling and Arctic ice enlargement.
At least for halting global warming and Arctic ice disappearing.

Edited a little later:
I think that they will stop burning fuels when all fuels will be burned out and nothing to burn will be left.
History will show, if this agreement was historical.

 

[locustella]

Telling the truth I don't know if this agreement is success or not and I didn't follow details of those talks, actually only red RSS messages. It seems that this meeting ended better than previous ones, but enough better ? Maybe someone knows.

The temperature rise should be kept far below 2 degrees.

Here is what experts say:
http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/3470...Eclimate0Edeal0Ereaction0Eexperts/story01.htm
They are moderately optimistic. I.e. because the way between agreement and its implementation by governments (ratification by legislatures) is long and uncertain.

 

[Chosun Juan]

This whole circus is a giant waste of money (yours and mine), and also a giant grab for more of that money (taxation), that will have virtually zero effect on the future temperature anyway (some environmentalists say -0.05 degrees C). Why do I say that - because China and India (with ~ a third of the worlds population) have stated that they will continue to invest in and build more coal fired power plants and actually keep increasing CO2e emissions for decades to come. Their ridiculous logic being that the developed world has already emitted more than them to get to where they are - so nerr!

When have governments ever achieved anything except building ever bigger governments with ever increasing waste and churn of money - hardly economically efficient. I also disagree with the transfer of what little wealth will be left after that wasteful process to affected undeveloped nations as compensation. What's needed is to take those technological advances borne of the sunk emissions of the developed world, and leapfrog old polluting energy sources.

The big danger here is not climate change (who can accurately link CO2e levels to temperature anyway, who can truly explain the effect of planetary core thermodynamics, or planetary orbital paths, solar activity, volcanic activity, accurate ice volumes - thickness as well as area, etc, etc), but a wasteful money grab. I'm all for looking after the planet just as much as the next man or woman, but this reeks of enslavery and extortion.

The clear and present dangers I see are:-
1. Money grab
2. Bureaucratic waste
3. Economically inefficient money churn
4. Significant and binding agreement fatal loophole leakage (China and India, other developing nations).
5. Paving the way for an even worse for the world increase in unsafe Nuclear Fission (Fukishima much?)
6. A giant furphy - stop destroying wetlands, stop digging drains, stop destroying riparian areas, clearing vegetation, and increasing habitat fragmentation, and stop urbanising them - and maybe there won't be so many flood victims ---- just healthy landscape functioning to report. Just exactly how much of this observed and predicted temperature rise is due to increasing urban heat sinks, vegetation clearing and microclimate changes anyway.
7. Lost opportunity to take direct action on commercialising new energy sources (wave power plants a 'la Carnegie around every low lying island nation anyone?, solar thermal for desert nations, geothermal where appropriate, CO2 capture from fossil fuel power plants and conversion to biofuels through algae, pyrolytic biochar from sustainable biofuelled power plants, ground sourced heating and cooling hydronics, thin film solar fenestration building efficiency, productive cool walls, natural convection stack and evaporative cooling, solar PV roofs, and the eventual biggie = Nuclear FUSION, etc, etc) through increased R&D credits, tax breaks, and public superannuation innovation funding, etc, etc, etc

We have the technology, all we have to do is apply it, leapfrogging old tech that no longer serves us. :t:


Chosun :gh:

 

[locustella]

Thermometers will show real results.

 

[locustella]

Polish cup in ski jumping revoked:
http://sport.dziennik.pl/sporty-zimowe/artykuly/508753,mistrzostwa-polski-w-skokch-narciarskich-odwolane.html (translate.google.pl)
Because of lack of snow. This is probably something unusual.

 

[Jimmybirder]

Thermometers will show real results.

Problem is that for most areas reliable climate records only go back a few decades in most cases. Even in the Western world there are few enough countries with climate records that stretch back further than late Victorian times. The you have issues like UHI(urban heat islands) and discrepancies between old mercury records and more modern digital thermometers. The facts are that the science around all this is far from cut and dried and has simply become a circus for various vested interests to benefit from

 

[elkcub]

Thermometers will show real results.

Really? Where would you stick them? Just curious.

Ed

 

[elkcub]

This whole circus is a giant waste of money (yours and mine), and also a giant grab for more of that money (taxation), ...

... What's needed is to take those technological advances borne of the sunk emissions of the developed world, and leapfrog old polluting energy sources.

The big danger here is not climate change (who can accurately link CO2e levels to temperature anyway, who can truly explain the effect of planetary core thermodynamics, or planetary orbital paths, solar activity, volcanic activity, accurate ice volumes - thickness as well as area, etc, etc), but a wasteful money grab. I'm all for looking after the planet just as much as the next man or woman, but this reeks of enslavery and extortion.

...
We have the technology, all we have to do is apply it, leapfrogging old tech that no longer serves us. :t:

Chosun :gh:

Chosun, Chosun, Chosun, keep that wagon roll'un. :t::t:

Ed

 

[Jimmybirder]

Really? Where would you stick them? Just curious.

Ed

Where the sun don't shine!!(nerdy joke about Stevenson screens)

 

[elkcub]

Where the sun don't shine!!(nerdy joke about Stevenson screens)

Well put!

 

[locustella]

Really? Where would you stick them? Just curious.

Ed

I mean that measuring instruments like thermometers don't lie like politicians, show the
objective truth, information they show depends only on objective laws of physics.

 

[Mysticete]

Problem is that for most areas reliable climate records only go back a few decades in most cases. Even in the Western world there are few enough countries with climate records that stretch back further than late Victorian times. The you have issues like UHI(urban heat islands) and discrepancies between old mercury records and more modern digital thermometers. The facts are that the science around all this is far from cut and dried and has simply become a circus for various vested interests to benefit from

Scientists are quite away of these concerns, and furthermore we have other record of climate change, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores.

 

[Jimmybirder]

Scientists are quite away of these concerns, and furthermore we have other record of climate change, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores.

None of which can give percise temp readings - at the end of the day we are talking about only 1 to 2c.

 

[elkcub]

Scientists are quite away of these concerns, and furthermore we have other record of climate change, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores.

Hi Mysticete,

No disrespect, but as a graduate student in the biological sciences I hope you're not speaking for all scientists, ... particularly me. The principles and methods of science are my religion, but I must admit in all candor that science organizations are rife with internal politics, and have more than a fair share of scallywags who do scandalous things to benefit their organizations financially. You might say this is a whale of a problem ... right down your alley.

Having mentioned ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores, as data sources for scientific climate reconstruction efforts, it's rather important to also mention that heavy reliance must be placed, necessarily, on logical data sampling and the correct application of multivariate statistical methods. Unfortunately, it's apparent to me, and many others, that many/most climate scientists are not educated or competent in these matters. For example, the now discredited "hockey stick" reconstruction of global temperatures relied on a ridiculous (and perhaps fraudulent) cherry picking of data and a nonsensical application of principal components methods. Similarly, earlier ice core analyses of temperature vs. CO2 failed to analyze the basic correlation function to determine temporal leads and lags. Unfortunately, highly alarming and erroneous results were put forward in each case that captured the world's attention via the IPCC political structure ... and we already know what politicians do. |=(|

PS. I should add that I've published several peer-reviewed papers that use these statistical methods, and have taught related graduate courses.

Ed

 

[Mysticete]

Hi Mysticete,

No disrespect, but as a graduate student in the biological sciences I hope you're not speaking for all scientists, ... particularly me. The principles and methods of science are my religion, but I must admit in all candor that science organizations are rife with internal politics, and have more than a fair share of scallywags who do scandalous things to benefit their organizations financially. You might say this is a whale of a problem ... right down your alley.

Having mentioned ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores, as data sources for scientific climate reconstruction efforts, it's rather important to also mention that heavy reliance must be placed, necessarily, on logical data sampling and the correct application of multivariate statistical methods. Unfortunately, it's apparent to me, and many others, that many/most climate scientists are not educated or competent in these matters. For example, the now discredited "hockey stick" reconstruction of global temperatures relied on a ridiculous (and perhaps fraudulent) cherry picking of data and a nonsensical application of principal components methods. Similarly, earlier ice core analyses of temperature vs. CO2 failed to analyze the basic correlation function to determine temporal leads and lags. Unfortunately, highly alarming and erroneous results were put forward in each case that captured the world's attention via the IPCC political structure ... and we already know what politicians do. |=(|

PS. I should add that I've published several peer-reviewed papers that use these statistical methods, and have taught related graduate courses.

Ed

Your making some pretty bold statements there, basically alleging that climate scientists are committing fraud. As a grad student, you should certainly know that bold claims need proof...can you have provide citations in peer reviews articles elaborating these problems in climate change studies? What exactly are these statistical problems that hundreds of researchers, many with extensive background in statistics and modeling, are missing. The Hockey stick pattern you mentioned has been backed up again and again by research, what research has disproved it. Of course if you have found some angle that has been completely neglected, you should perform the primary research and get that published, since it that is what scientists do. A paper that would prove anthropogenic warming wrong would be ground-breaking and make your career.

PS I should add that I have a PhD in Ecology, have incorporated paleoclimate data in several peer-reviewed published papers, and worked in multiple departments with people with expertise in paleoclimate who have no issues with anthropogenic climate change as a real thing.

PPS appeals to authority are a bad tactic to take with strangers...

 

[elkcub]

Hmmm. It appears that we're off to a bad start. I now realize that your BF bio is seven years out of date. At the time it was written you said "I am a new graduate student at University of Wyoming, working on living and fossil pinniped evolution." My bad for not realizing that. As for me, next year will be the 50th reunion of my Ph.D. class, and I retired ten years ago from NASA after a 40 year career. My specialty was statistical pattern recognition and time series analysis.

Based on your comments I have no reason to change anything that I said in the earlier post, so I’ll leave it at that.

Ed