Aug 12, 2008
Climate Change Debunked
So, how’s that for a blog post title? Catchier even than last Saturday’s New Harry Potter Trailer, right? So, is it just another spurious headline designed to grab attention or is there something in it? Well, you will no doubt have read about the recent APS debacle over the paper from Lord Monckton in which he stands up the anthropogenic climate change straw man and, pardon the pun, burns it down.
If you’re in the UK, or have figured out the BBC iPlayer hack to let you use that tool outside the UK, you may have seen the recent global-warming-coming-oil-crisis-we’re-all-doomed drama Burn Up. You probably also heard about a little fella called Al Gore and his inconvenient movie and the Channel 4 documentary that attempted to shred it, perhaps a little conveniently ignoring some key facts as it did so.
Meanwhile, power companies report massive profits and price rises for gas and electricity. They simultaneously pump up prices from well to wheel as the oil price bounces like a proverbial vulcanised rubber ball and everyone is looking to save gas.
I’ve published several items about alternative energy sources recently and still stand by the didact: waste not, want not. It’s important that we cut pollution and it’s important that we reduce the amount of energy we waste. We should be looking at what we are planning for the world, especially in light of madcap schemes like adding lime to the oceans, before it’s too late.
"Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong" from David Bradley. Available now on 
Interesting article Rajinder. I didn’t want to duplicate online content so trimmed it to the intro. Here’s the link you didn’t provide to the Sci Am article.
Meanwhile, Britain having had very wet summers these last couple of years, I note that the UK’s Environment Minister in 2006 is on record as saying climate change would mean hotter and drier summers to come;, it’s almost like he jinxed us.
Anyway, I still cannot see how we can reconcile the definite short-term cooling period we are in these last few years with the global warming trend. Realclimate.org debunks the notion, saying that one cannot compare long-term climate change with temporally local weather variations. But, how does anyone know for certain that a short-term weather cooling will not become the long-term climate trend. Are such cooling effects built into the computer models? If not why not, and moreover, and once again how can anyone know that such short-term trends won’t be the long term history in years to come.
Climate has changed for the worse in arid regions of the US
Source: Scientific American
“News – August 20, 2008
Fewer April Showers for U.S. Southwest as Climate Changes
Things could get uglier for desert flowers looking to bloom in May–and for the region’s water supply, year-round
By David Biello
The already parched U.S. Southwest is drying up even more, at least in early spring, because of climate change. A new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that since 1978, the jet stream that brings rainstorms from the Pacific over the western U.S. has been shifting northward—and so has the rain and snow…..
@Rajinder – none of those changes you cite are particularly extreme. There have been periods in the past when there was no ice, there have been periods where there was much more ice. Temperatures have fluctuated wildly over the millennia and so too carbon dioxide levels. However, I certainly agree that our increasing population, rampant consumption and pollution are not a good thing, whether or not that is the underlying cause of any local effects we are currently observing is a different matter, especially given the current global average cooling period in which we apparently find ourselves at the moment, despite the warming trend.
North pole is going to be ice free this/next year for the first time in thousands of years.
Temperatures have risen much more than reported above. 1.23 degress Celsius from 1880 to 2004. Roughly 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09 degrees Fahrenheit) per year.
CO(2) has increased from 280 ppm (from 1000 to 1800 A. D. constant) in 1800 to 380 ppm in 2000. (URL: http://earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2004.htm)
Increased population and consumption of natural resouces at a pace which is much more than what Mother earth can sustain is leading to pollution of air, water and land. It is a catastrophy which has already happened in many places. Ground water is non-potable, rivers are befret of oxygen and are becoming sewers and even the sea has developed pockets which are oxygen free.
It is later than one thinks.
Thanks for all the comments on this post, I’ve been on vacation so not had a chance to respond.
@Jim – The idea behind the article was not to take a stance, but to throw out some of the ideas that apparently are taken as read, but are not necessarily proven, I’ll leave it to others to dig out the papers that support or disprove the various myths. Nice of you to use the acronymic vernacular of the streets in your comment.
@Anonymoose – thanks for spotting the typo. In my rush to meet the deadline before my vacation I missed that, which is a shame as it probably lost some of the traction because of it.
@Rajinder – Climate is most certainly not to be taken lightly, which is why I think there needs to be more openness about the doubts. @Robert – aren’t we in the middle of a cooling period, within the so-called hockey-stick of warming. I’m totally confused as to how average global temp can be falling if there is all this warming going on. Moreover, the whole debate hinges on average global temperatures, that could mean warming in one part of the globe counteracted by cooling elsewhere.