The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/188993.php

Eclipse Now and Alzo. All we (humanity) can ask of zealots is that they not distort or misrepresent the science, as some (Durkin et al and OLO "experts")appear to be doing.

The science is complex and for some people very boring. Pseudo-scientists do more damage to science than they realise - this can not be good.

This is why I encourage you both to continue your discussion in other fora, more appropriate to the level of understanding and questioning that you obviously want to impart.

Ask yourselves, what are your motives for extending this complex science to a public Opinion forum limited by post and word counts?

Eclipse Now, while Alzo correctly cites current research, he is inadvertently (intentionally or not) misrepresenting the findings.

This is why there appears to be a lot of "debate" and a concerted effort to deny (or 'dumb-down') AGW on the one hand and delay any adaptation or mitigation efforts on the other - most often by people or groups who have a vested interest in "business as usual".

I am not saying Alzo (or sunnyboy for that matter) is complicit in this BAU approach. However, Alzo could have at least sent you the link to the paper he cited, he did not.

Try here:

http://www.amath.washington.edu/people/faculty/tung/publications.html

or more specifically,

http://www.amath.washington.edu/research/articles/Tung/journals/solar-jgr.pdf

or

http://www.amath.washington.edu/research/articles/Tung/journals/GRL-solar-07.pdf

For you to engage appropriately it would have been proper of him to direct you to the paper in question.

Perhaps Keiran looks toward resurrection in the coming millenium - in which case he or she can deny any fear of death, since it will not exist for "the chosen ones".

The rest of us, who may or may not fear death for ourselves, but would not wish it on our families or friends, or their descendents, have reminders that we need to do more than simply post opinions here:

For example, see:
http://www.thebulletin.org/minutes-to-midnight/
5 Minutes to Midnight

"Overview
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction--the figurative midnight--and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences and nanotechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm.

"Nuclear
For four decades, the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s overt hostility coupled with their enormous nuclear arsenals defined the nuclear threat. … Today, the potential for an accidental or inadvertent nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia remains, with ... more than 1,000 warheads on high alert, ready to launch within tens of minutes. But a deliberate attack by Russia or the United States on the other is unthinkable.

Unfortunately, however, the possibility of a nuclear exchange ... remains. In 1999 and again in 2001, India and Pakistan threatened each other with nuclear arms. ... Nuclear terrorism also poses a new risk, as fissile materials remain unsecured in many parts of the world ...

"Environmental
Fossil-fuel technologies such as coal-burning plants powered the industrial revolution, bringing unparalleled economic prosperity to many parts of the world. In the 1950s, however, scientists began measuring year-to-year changes in the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere that they could relate to fossil fuel combustion, and they began to develop the implications for Earth’s temperature and for climate change.

Fifty years later, leading scientists agree that carbon-burning technologies continue to make Earth warmer at an unprecedented rate. ... The future looks even bleaker, as scientists continue to observe cascading effects on Earth’s complex ecosystems."

Alzo again trots out: “Don’t trust the experts! Listen to my little detail — taken out of all context — because there’s something worth debating here…” He ignores the fact that there is really no “debate” as such, just fine tuning around the edges.

On the sooty snow…
I think you are confusing local melting forcings with global temperature forcings. In my reading yesterday I came across a Hansen paper that admitted black carbon may be having a high local effect on polar and glacier melting. So when you quote:
“Consequently, the “efficacy” of BC/snow forcing is more than THREE times greater than forcing by CO2” you might be onto something… but it is about the effects of local melting, not TOTAL GLOBAL CLIMATE.

Can you comprehend the difference? No. Because then you ruin the perception that you might have comprehended what was being discussed by stating…

“In fact it seems if we were able to significantly reduce aerosol emissions, the CO2 "problem" wouldn't be worth worrying about. I wonder how Naomi Oreskes would have assessed this paper, oh I know "it agrees with the consensus".”

The efficacy of melting snow is one subject. Global climate change is another. Try and keep up.

On the spotty sun…
You really are confused by the solar forcings. The 11 year cycle is the MOST POWERFUL of the solar cycles, and the longer term 20 and 30 year cycles fade away into insignificance. For the latest studies in solar forcings try listening to:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1974497.htm

But 0.2 degrees is significant. First, remember that this paper is still being peer reviewed and responded to. Second, it’s a new numbers game on old data, not some startling new phenomenon they’ve just discovered. Third, can you please explain why the earth is still warming even though we approach the bottom of the 11 year solar-cycle (and should be 0.2 degrees cooler!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#Solar_irradiance

Oh… what was that? Some other forcing we have not considered yet? Something that acts more powerfully than solar forcings? Gee, I wonder…

AGW is real, but so are the solutions. See...
http://www.iaiconference.org/

TotalEclipse, I must say that the last type of person I'd be is some flighty conspiracy nut. I'm just a very down to earth practical realist, who at eight years of age walked out of Sunday School much to my mother's displeasure, because I found it unpleasant to be rote learning in wrong order little pieces of the biblical story and to receive a pretty colored stamp to put in a book as a reward. What I wanted to do on a Sunday, and with my time, was to play in the bush, gullies and hills that surrounded our home. These experiences in the bush aroused great curiosity about life that could be beautiful and chaotic, ancient and new, peaceful and cruel in the extreme as well as forever changing. It is not surprising that I believe that the universe is an infinite connected environment, not some closed mechanical system, that it was never created and is far from anthropocentric.

Sir Vivor, rather than a selfish and ignorant preoccupation with saving one's "soul" on what some call judgment day there resides in many people a will to truth driven by a curiosity as well as an altruism. This is the true spirit that vested interests like religious playpens and others do their best to poison. But behaviour results from controlling perceptions, not actions. Hence I don't live in some cosy playpen, am not arrogant to the natural world but have well developed crap detectors when it comes to much of human behaviour. Incidentally, I share many concerns like in 5 Minutes to Midnight. e.g. Before the detonation of the first nuclear bomb there was some prospect that it would ignite the whole of earth's atmosphere. A very scary thought indeed.

Davsab, I am not mixed up with any political or industry group which certainly sets me apart from yourself. However, most of my family and personal friends would place me quite a bit to the left which is where I usually vote and I am very much an environmentalist believing CO2 is beneficial.

"Alzo could have at least sent you the link to the paper he cited"
The author's name, the Journal's name and the title of the paper should be enough for anyone capable of posting a response.

"while Alzo correctly cites current research, he is inadvertently (intentionally or not) misrepresenting the findings."
Not sure how you can misrepresent the findings of this paper. A couple of more interesting quotes from this paper are:
"Our work establishes that the surface-temperature response is correlated with the solar-cycle forcing at over 95% confidence level. For comparison, a similar relationship between response and forcing has not been statistically established for the greenhouse global-warming problem."
No they just go for a 90% gut feeling...
and
"The spatial pattern of the warming is also of interest, and shows the polar amplification expected also for the greenhouse-warming problem."
Ooooh another broadside...
and best of all
"We will argue in a separate paper that the observed warming is caused mostly by the radiative heating (TSI minus the 15% absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere), when taking into account the positive climate feedbacks (a factor of 2–3) also expected for the greenhouse warming
problem."
Looking forward to that paper...

"remember that this paper is still being peer reviewed and responded to"
So are most of Hansen's papers. In fact this could be considered a response.

"I think you are confusing local melting forcings with global temperature forcings."
Not all of the globe is warming...the SH is cooling. Most of the "global" warming isn't global. If anything it should be called hemispheric warming or better yet mid to high northern latitude warming.

"an you please explain why the earth is still warming even though we approach the bottom of the 11 year solar-cycle (and should be 0.2 degrees cooler!)"
Its cooling as we speak...from the BOM "June 2007 was the coldest June recorded in Australia in the post 1950 period."