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Post by marchesarosa on Feb 9, 2012 21:07:46 GMT 1
[Prescript - nickrr and Eamonn will not be surprised. They knew it all along and anyway it changes nothing] Are the world's glaciers threatened by climate change?A Nature study has shocked researchers by finding that the Himalayas have lost no ice over the past decade. Leo Hickman, with your help, investigates. Get in touch below the line, email your views to leo.hickman@guardian.co.uk or tweet @leohickman Researchers are said to be shocked by a new study published in Nature that has found the world's largest mountain chain, which stretches from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, has lost no ice over the past decade. Scientists had previously claimed that climate change is causing a net loss of ice and water from the glaciers and ice caps that straddle the Himalayas and other mountain ranges around the world. As Damian Carrington's report of the study says: The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy. more here www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/09/glaciers-ice-melting-climate-change
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Post by nickrr on Feb 9, 2012 21:34:54 GMT 1
To quote the authors of the paper:
So a definite "yes" to the original question.
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Post by marchesarosa on Feb 9, 2012 21:49:35 GMT 1
But is anything different since the end of the little ice Age in the mid-19th Century?
No - the melting continues as before adding the same meltwater to the ocean as previously with no acceleration (how can there be when the total of ice is diminishing over time?) The same hydrological cycle as before all the CO2 scare-mongering began. Nothing to be alarmed about. Plenty of time to adjust if necessary. Let's get fracking and supply the world with the energy and chemical feedstock it needs!
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Post by principled on Feb 9, 2012 22:02:54 GMT 1
Marchesa
Once again extrapolations from limited data are found to be wrong. When are climate scientists going to realise that the pronouncements they make cause major policy decisions to be made and major costs incurred? It's about time they started adding a rider to each pronouncement: "We believe that x is happening based on our limited data. However, please be aware that we could be wrong and that x isn't happening". A bit of honest humility would have been welcomed earlier in the CC debate instead of those "cast iron" assertions. Perhaps then we would all have faith in the IPCC et al. P
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Post by marchesarosa on Feb 9, 2012 22:54:30 GMT 1
Principled,
The Indian experts always said the sample was unrepresentative of the Himalayas as a whole and I would trust them before the IPCC. And sceptical glaciologists have always refused to accept the evidence from such a very small sample of the total. No doubt STA would tell us that sophisticated statistics make it all come out correct in the end.
Personally, I have always though the sampling techniques for measuring ANYTHING climatological are very suspect. To get a good representative sample of anything you have to have either a very large random sample or a very accurately STRATIFIED sample - that means including in the sample, and in the right proportion, all the relevant variables - size, height, latitude, geography, aspect etc, of the thing being measured.
The more this detailed data becomes known, as via this research, the more strident the IPCC alarmists and their supporters rightly appear.
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Post by fascinating on Feb 10, 2012 8:50:13 GMT 1
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Post by nickrr on Feb 10, 2012 20:58:01 GMT 1
Yes. At the end of the little ice age we weren't pumping large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
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Post by marchesarosa on Feb 10, 2012 21:08:11 GMT 1
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Post by marchesarosa on Feb 10, 2012 21:13:30 GMT 1
"At the end of the little ice age we weren't pumping large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere."
Very true. But has this increase in anthropogenic CO2 caused any "acceleration" in anything at all noteworthy climatologically speaking? Please tell us what climatic variables have "accelerated" as a result of CO2, nickrr because it all looks very much like business as usual to me.
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Post by nickrr on Feb 10, 2012 21:34:34 GMT 1
I don't know whether you've heard (probably not if you only frequent the likes of WUWT) by CO2 is a major contributor to AGW.
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Post by principled on Feb 10, 2012 22:33:07 GMT 1
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Post by StuartG on Feb 11, 2012 0:43:25 GMT 1
"CO2 is a major contributor to AGW" no, Man is the major contributor to the Anthropogenic bit of Global Warming. Poor old CO2 gets all the blame. Roughly speaking between 1960 and now the population has doubled. It therefore stands to reason that Man must have had some effect. The question is 'by how much?' The honest answer is 'we don't know'. The phrase above has become a mantra and to some quasi religious. It's a sop to save the effort of questioning the logic of what's being said. 'Four legs good, two legs bad'
Baa...
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Post by nickrr on Feb 11, 2012 11:23:20 GMT 1
Actually there's also the evidence which says (with a high degree of certainty) the same thing.
Humility has nothing to do with it. Any proper scientific research comes with the degree of certainty associated with the research. Climate change is no different. These estimates of certainty based on the evidence. If the evidence shows something is very likely, you say so - which is the case with climate change. To counter your baseless use of the the "honesty" in the quote, it would be dishonest to do anything else.
If you get your information on climate change from the Telegraph and New Statesman then no wonder you are so badly informed. As several recent posts from MR have shown, the mainstream press is terrible at accurately reporting on science in general and climate change in particular. They just report the bits that pander to their own prejudices and ignore the rest, giving a distorted overall view.
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Post by nickrr on Feb 11, 2012 11:35:22 GMT 1
Of course the population is to blame. More people means more CO2 means more warming.
The honest answer is that we don't know exactly how much human emissions are contributing to climate change but we know with a high degree of certainty that the majority of it is down to humans. That's simply what the evidence shows. It might turn out to be incorrect, but it's very unlikely. If you choose to take the minority opinion that goes against the evidence then that's your choice but it seems to me an irrational one.
Sorry but this is bollocks. It's just what the science says. It's no more religious than believing that the earth goes around the sun due to the force of gravity. This may also turn out not to be true but the current evidence suggests that it is.
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Post by principled on Feb 11, 2012 14:18:24 GMT 1
Nickrr I apologise for the links, it's just that I thought you'd like a little light reading before going to bed! You will also note that they are from different years (2007, 2009, 2011) , which I think is significant and shows concerns over the extrapolations made by the the IPCC on temperature rise have been around for some time. As for honesty and humility, my point is simple. When the whole CC debate took off, the scientists did nothing to dispel the impression that the cause was totally anthropogenic CO2. Since that time, and the knee jerk energy policies that came from those pronouncements, there has been a gradual roll back on the part of the AGW camp that actually the Anthropogenic part could be (choose any figure) around 40-50%. Now you might feel that this is acceptable. I DON'T. Frankly, if we were talking about some scientific research on-say- the effects of nail varnish on the strength of nails, I wouldn't care in the least whether the science or extrapolations were 100% accurate or not because the effect would be minimal. However, in such an important area as climate change all of the cards and certainties/uncertainties should be placed firmly on the table. I believe that funding drove many to ramp up the certainties and obfuscate the uncertainties. That's what I mean by honesty and humility. Anyway, as you think that I get my info from daily newspapers, I thought you might like to read this scientific paper (from where the DT got its original info). wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/pnas-201102467.pdfThe paper is interesting as it puts forward the hypothesis of sulphur particles in the atmosphere causing a reduction in heating; but there have been critics about this not least because the rise in actual consumption of coal seems not to have increased substantially during the period in question. Indeed, according to the search engine Wolfram Alpha, world coal consumption in 1998 was 1.998 million tons and 2.01 million tons in 2010. Not exactly a significant rise that would trigger a large increase in sulphur. Be that as it may, the role of other forcings- such as water vapour in the upper atmosphere- are still not fully understood and until computer model predictions simulate with accuracy that which is occurring in the real world, then I will take scientific extrapolations on climate change with a large pinch of salt. P
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