No, you've got it the wrong way round. I for one, and I'm not alone, have been studying, learning and talking about anthropogenic global warming for at least 30 years. Until very recently it's been an uphill struggle as most of the powers that be have not been interested or in complete denial. The 'party line' has been business as usual with economic growth as fast as possible. Now, at last, probably when it's too late, there's a bit of political will to start caring for the planet. And what do we find? People on the Green Building Forum of all places believing the climate denial claptrap. Incredible.

If you still don't understand it, go read some real climate science. There's plenty of it out there.

Posted By: biffvernonAnd what do we find? People on the Green Building Forum of all places believing the climate denial claptrap. Incredible." start="fileopen" height="15" alt="" ismap="false" hspace="0" loop="1" src="http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/cry.gif" width="40" vspace="0" >

If you still don't understand it, go read some real climate science. There's plenty of it out there.

Hi Biff, I neither believe nor disbelieve it either way. But if these people are so wrong, surely it would be easy for those who are right to disprove? I see no such evidence presented here. For example, there is no response to my [and toms] query about sunspots, and the inferred correlation with temperature fluctuations. Is the data they presented wrong? inaccurate? spun?

Instead you say "go read some real climate science" Welll I may not have studied this for thirty years, but I am constantly trying to improve my knowlege in this area. For me the proof is there that global warming is occuring at least in the short term, but the reason for this is not proven beyond doubt. It is also clear that C02 levels have increased, but the correlation curve between them does not seem to be there.

Until I saw this programme I was nearly convinced of the link with C02, now I am not. But I am quite happy to change my mind again if the views portrayed can be disproved by logical argument or scientific facts.

Posted By: Mike George
Hi Biff, I neither believe nor disbelieve it either way. But if these people are so wrong, surely it would be easy for those who are right to disprove? I see no such evidence presented here.

Mike, I'm conscious that this is a green building forum rather than a climate change forum. I think I've posted enough to demonstrate that the credentials of the programme makers are suspect and I think it is better that this space is used to address how we build houses that take into account the needs of our grandchildren to have an inhabitable planet.

I'll be happy to discuss sunspots or whatever on one of the climate related forums. A good place for you to start would be this thread, which probably already answers some of you doubts:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414

Perhaps I'll meet you over there.

Thanks for the link Biff, I will read it when I have some more time later and maybe comment over there, though I think it is just as relevant on this Forum

If you select "quote" you will be able to see the differences in the two scripts. Note the inverted commas and REALCLIMATE.ORG tag needed [this can be anything you like]

Tagged:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414" >REALCLIMATE.ORG

Untagged:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414

Posted By: Mike GeorgeWhat about fostertom's logical summary of the arguments above?

I'll just make it clear it wasn't my summary, it's someone else's that I reproduced, for comment.

Fostertom said: I'll just make it clear it wasn't my summary, it's someone else's that I reproduced, for comment.

Sorry Tom, my mistake

After reading the well explained and thoroughly cross referenced, point by point demolition of the claims in the Channel 4 documentary on the Real Climate website (excellent link Biff), it sounds to me like the programme was the climate equivalent of a presentation by the Flat Earth Society...

Channel 4 really ought to have been more rigourous in vetting the people involved and checking the validity of their arguments. They ought at least to allow a second programme to be shown giving the opportunity for mainstream climatologists to respond to the claims made which appear to have been based on selective, erroneous and simplistic interpretations of the data.

Tony et.al. at the Flat Earth Society, you really need to read the Meridian Programme report:

http://www.meridian.org.uk/_PDFs/IPCC.pdf" rel="nofollow" >http://www.meridian.org.uk/_PDFs/IPCC.pdf

And, no, don't just let your eyes glaze over. Keep going right to the end. If you don't know what 'elision' means get a dictionary.

I just wish Channel 4 would commission David Wasdell to make a programme.

Posted By: Chris WardleAfter reading the well explained and thoroughly cross referenced, point by point demolition of the claims in the Channel 4 documentary on the Real Climate website (excellent link Biff), it sounds to me like the programme was the climate equivalent of a presentation by the Flat Earth Society...

Hi Chris, I have started to go though this link, and its maze of other links and came across this almost straight away.http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/" > Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores
Here is a direct quotation of the reason [from Biff’s link] for the lag in CO2 increase behind temperature.

“The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data�

The important point for me here is

“that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend�
Well what did? Also there is no consideration that whatever did cause the first 800years did not continue to further exacerbate the process. Instead they say

“The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2�

If this is a point by point demolition of the Channel 4 programme I can’t wait to read the rest of the links.
I suppose I am now at risk of being called a member of the flat earth society as well.

Enter Funcrusher under a temporary alias!

I didn't see the programme, but I am wary of the climate change political bandwagon. There is in human nature a weakness for mass hysteria. Possibly this arises owing to some deep instinctive herd mentality. It's lonely and dangerous standing up for unpopular ideas, even if true, if it disturbs the status quo of tribal leadership. No research funding for projects which might be threatening! In every era there has been popular delusions, or at least hysterical exaggerations. Hysteria requires communication of thoughts and ideas in the same way as disease epidemics requires transmission of bugs. Both pose an enhanced risk in a world where global communication is pervasive. In the case of hysteria, the natural control was formerly that communication was sufficiently slow that it allowed the counter-forces of common-sense or truth could re-group and eventually win the argument. By the same token, we know that in ancient times isolated pockets of humanity maintained all manner of wierd beliefs and practices because they were cut off from independent thought.

Hysteria becomes far more dangerous when it becomes adopted by rulers and governments, because counter-vailing truth is treason. Challenges to leaders are personally dangerous, and changing one's mind in the light of facts/experience is construed as mutiny/political weakness. For example, the overwhelming proportion of Labour MP's - and probably all MP's - know that Tony Blair's Iraq war was a teriible disaster. DO they challenge him and remove him from office?

I personally do not find the 'Man-made global warming' theory convincing, against a backdrop of the enormous fluctuations in past centuries and millennia, of which we can be quite certain. I am extremely nervous that we are embarking on a severe case of hysteria with the dangerous ingredient of universal government doctrine and coercion.


In business plans, the figures live on long after the assumptions have been forgotten. It is therefore apposite that the Financial Times, being a business newspaper, included a cartoon of Sir Nicholas Stern clutching 'The End is Nigh' placard following his report on global warming (An elemental economist, Nov 4th) .

Doomsters have featured throughout history, but their impact has intensified in this era of instant global media and its generation of public hysteria. Apocalyptic predictions which have failed to materialise (touch wood) over the last 50 years have included, in chronological order: nuclear war, communist hegemony, global starvation, world over-population, oil exhaustion, world de-population from AIDS, decimation of Britain by BSE/CJD, a prolonged night/new ice-age triggered by burning oil wells during the Gulf War, the millenium computer bug catastrophe, and a bird 'flu epidemic.

In each case I have no doubt the arithmetic was absolutely correct but the assumptions were utterly wrong, supported by unrepresentative data or anecdote. In addition, unpredicted changes in human behaviour and technological innovation frequently out-manoeuvre doomsters. As for the effects of global warming, does it not seem likely that there will be as many geograhical winners as losers; and in any event, wouldn't we be seeing a very gradual rise in AVERAGE world sea levels?

Mike, I'm not going to pretend I'm some kind of expert here. I just read and listen to what I can on the subject and form an opinion based on what appears to make most sense to me. The film the our night did raise doubts in my mind but the fact that they just presented one side of the argument and didn't mention one thing that contradicted their hypothesis raised concerns about their motives. There are serious and well founded doubts raised about the validity of their interpretation of the data on the Real Climate website, even about the data they were using e.g. the bit about the lack of warming in the troposphere (the satelite data was wrong and it has not been proven that warming is occuring in the troposphere. This was reported in a paper a couple of years ago and ignored by the film because it was inconvenient).

According to James Lovelock's "Gaia - Medicine for an Ailing Planet", an interlacial period is triggered by the Milankovich effect, where the Earth is nearest to the Sun. This causes a rise in sea levels which innundates large areas of the land mass killing off plants which would otherwise have been pumping down CO2 in the atmosphere (180ppm typical during an Ice Age - there is far more vegetation because of greater land mass above sea level near the tropics). The innudanted plant life rotting away under water causes a surge in methane into the atmosphere. The additional CO2 and methane in the atmosphere enhances the warming and soon a runaway positive warming feedback ensues.

This sounds consistent with the fact that there is a lag between temperature increases, initiated by the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun, and the start of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. I'm not saying this guy is right but he makes a convincing argument. If he is right then we need to very concerned about adding a similar quantity of CO2 to the atmosphere in the space of few decades from our smoke stacks as is added to the atmosphere between the depths of an Ice Age and an interglacial period.

When we can never be 100% certain until after the event is it sensible to conduct what would be a massive global experiment by fundamentally altering the composition of the atmosphere (we are heading for atmospheric levels of CO2 well in excess of that which has prevailed while humans have lived on planet Earth after all)? That is what we are doing and there is no way to turn the clock back within a time frame of any relevance to our civilisation once it has been done. I think the view of the people who made this documentary is dangerously complacent.

(aka funcrusher) I'm not up with the latest research, but I suspect that global dimming poses a bigger threat than global warming. My understanding is that impeccable scientific data shows a reduction in solar energy reaching the Earth over the last 50+ years, at the same time as global warming is taking place. The culprit is thought to be atmospheric pollutants of various kinds providing increased hazy shading of the earth. If (a very big IF) global warming arises from increased CO2 emissions, then it is being off-set by shading by other pollutants which are mostly generated with the CO2.

There are two threatening scenarios:

1. If you cut carbon emmissions but not the associated pollutants, then global warming may accelerate as global dimming is reduced.

2. If pollution effects mount, then crop yields (which mostly rely on solar energy conversion) may slump. It is very difficult to isolate factors in crop yields, as factors such as annual weather variations, disease incidence, varieties, and agronomic practic are so variable. However, in the Australian sugar industry (which has a very high degree of scientific research, monitoring and management) there has for decades been an unexplained yield decline of about 1% a year - ie unexplained when all other factors are taken into account. This may - or may not- be an indicator of global dimming. So far, improved agriculture has more than off-set any global dimming there may be, but....

Biff,

Only future historians will know who was right, unfortunately. Most new ideas start in ridicule, some gain popularity which proves temporary; a tiny minority result in great permanent revelations of truth.

"Whole communities suddenly fix ther minds on one object, and go mad in its pursuit...millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first...Men, it has been said, think in herds, it will be seen they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Charles Mackay, c1840 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions'

Rulers and governments have a quite terrifying record of adopting or clinging to ideas of absolute absurdity. Their eagerness to adopt 'climate change' as a rallying cry is no accolade for the science. On the contrary, it engenders suspicion that it is another pretext for diverting citizens attention from other government failures, whilst being the pre-text for a new raft of controls and infringements of liberty.

One handicap to human reasoning is that it always displays a bias in interpreting evidence towards are own established view. Trying to pick the truth from a cacophany of evidence is not simply the danger of misrepresentations of others, but our own entirely subconscious bias.

Biff you say jokingly, "OK - no global warming - scrap Part L - abandon the insulation (except multifoil) - turn up the heating"

There is a danger that when it is shown that global warming is not being caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions that exactly that will happen. We need to push the ideas of being environmentally friendly, ecologically conscious, energy and resource saving, sustainability independently of this debate. They are good things do per say.

I saw the programme and was initially quite open to it, but a few things didn't ring true and I have since read info on the programme makers and scientists involved which make me doubt their point of view. I know Ad hominem attacks don't win an argument but how seriously would you take a documentary about Holocaust denial made by a bunch of Neo nazis using ex-SS guards to support the arguments. If this was the best effort to discredit the AGW theory then I would say that it reinforces the argument.

We were shown lost of its of graphs but I didn't once see the full graph that says it all to me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png

which shows the milakovich cycle and the co2 going from 180ppm to 270pm on a 100000yr cycle (that was the Al Gore graph) but they conveniently didnt from show the hockystick rise in co2 for the last 200years going from 270ppm to 380ppm. If co2 follows suns warming as per their argument then there should have been an almighty spike in temperatures 800 years ago (and no the middle age warming was, I understand, not as great as they highlighted on the show and a local phenomenum not global).

Also I believe that the sunspots activity was all taken into account in the recent IPCC report and there was shown to be no where near enough actvity to account for the recent rises.

I also find it interesting when they suggest that we tiny insignificant humans emmitting our relatively tiny amounts of co2 couldn't possibly have an effect on a global system. Why not? if you look at that other recent "scare" story, the hole in the ozone layer, which after all was only caused by a bunch of new romantics using hair spray in the 1980's. Following the Montreal Protocol in the late 80's which put curbs on CFCs, I understand that the hole is slowing down in growth and is projected to be back to pre new romantic levels by 2050. Illustrating the point that we do have an effect on the global environment.