State of Fear/Global warming

Anyone read State of Fear, by Michael Crichton? It's the usual "good guys succeed in beating bad guys through numerous improbable yet exciting ways" stuff, but the central theme of the book is that global warming simply isn't happening - a lot of the bad press is selective media from environmental groups, which basically focuses on one bad event (e.g. an iceberg breaking off Antarctica) without placing it in any sort of context (e.g. that happens all the time, but the overall ice level is actually increasing. Temperatures are increasing, but that's because, for example, weather stations were in the country and are now in the cities due to urban expansion, with cities being slightly warmer than the country naturally (industry, cars, people, etc.), or we're just taking readings more accurately these days.

It's very much in the mold of the Da Vinci Code, except for the fact that Crichton actually takes the time to quote more sources than one long-ago-discredited book. Anyone read it and/or know if the theme is accurate or not? Certainly an interesting proposition...

I remeber reading a similar thing in Bill Bryson's book A Walk In The Woods.

He was saying how there is global warming going on but because we are still technically in an ice age, it is just speeding up the process.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Anyone read State of Fear, by Michael Crichton? It's the usual "good guys succeed in beating bad guys through numerous improbable yet exciting ways" stuff, but the central theme of the book is that global warming simply isn't happening - a lot of the bad press is selective media from environmental groups, which basically focuses on one bad event (e.g. an iceberg breaking off Antarctica) without placing it in any sort of context (e.g. that happens all the time, but the overall ice level is actually increasing. Temperatures are increasing, but that's because, for example, weather stations were in the country and are now in the cities due to urban expansion, with cities being slightly warmer than the country naturally (industry, cars, people, etc.), or we're just taking readings more accurately these days.

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James Lovelock would disagree fundamentally - and he's hardly part of the mainstream environmental lobby - he advocates an expansion of nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...008072,00.html

Here's the sheer irony even I can understand.

Global Warming melts the Arctic Ice cover - doesn't even have to be totally - more cold - and heavier - water enters Northern Atlantic.
The warm Gulf Stream - which keeps us and (much of) Northern Europe and UK from freezing over in Winter - is pushed back by all this colder water.
Eventually, the Gulf Stream is moved further South or breaks up completely.
Result - icy Northern Europe. No more footie, EL, Champions League etc.:eek:

Any proofs? Yep. Regular monitoring by UK, US and European Weather Agencies of the Gulf Stream has shown a 30%Temperature drop in parts of it over the past few decades, 15% in other areas but, overall, a drop nonetheless.
This means that when the Gulf Stream reaches the North Athlantic it's warm water drops down (like a chainsaw) and cools and returns to the Gulf of Mexico to (again like a chainsaw) warm and rise and head back North.
Trouble is, there is so much cold Arctic Water now entering the Gulf Stream (also via more icebergs floating south plus just water) that it is pushing the Northern "edge" of the Gulf Stream's "chainsaw" further and further South.
Eventually, the Stream won't have enough power, heat, time and space to warm up and it will graually fracture and disappear.
So Global Warming can form an Ice Age - of sorts - certainly covering these Islands, Scandanavia, Germany, Poland, Russia, much of the Balkans and surrounding countries, much of France, Benelux, Alpine countires and surroundings etc etc.

But, we won't need Ryanair to reach England - we can skii over and Shamrock Rovers won't need that new Tallaght stadium either.:p Oh, and Manchester United will have moved their HQ to a warmer Bangkok - where most of their fans are anyway. :D heh heh

Crichton is a novellist. There hasn't been one single article published in a peer reviewed scientific journal that has disputed the existence of global warming. There is as close to complete consensus on this issue as scientists ever get.

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Originally Posted by Marked Man

Crichton is a novellist.

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I don't think that's overly relevant of itself; certainly, the fact that he lists numerous sources and has evidently done some research would make it less relevant. I must have a look at some of the references and see if any are actual scientific journals rather than random news items though.

I think another issue he pointed out was that, while human activity is increasing the amount of CO2 in the ozone layer, the increase in real terms is absolutely minimal. CO2 is 0.03% of the atmosphere (79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 1% others, mostly argon), and the increase in CO2 is from 320 parts per million to 360 parts per million (i.e. 0.032% to 0.036%) - bugger all in real terms. Superfrank's point - i.e. that 200 years ago was the little ice age, and any warming we're experiencing now is just a natural fluctuation - is also mentioned.

Not taking a particular stance on the issue, obviously - just said I'd start a bit of discussion going and see what'd be unearthed.

I haven't read the book, but that's irrelevant. More importantly, I haven't done any serious research into this, and I probably never will. Global warming is the subject of a lot of heated debate, much of it between people even less informed than me. Just to pick a couple of points:

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

...while human activity is increasing the amount of CO2 in the ozone layer, the increase in real terms is absolutely minimal. CO2 is 0.03% of the atmosphere (79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 1% others, mostly argon), and the increase in CO2 is from 320 parts per million to 360 parts per million (i.e. 0.032% to 0.036%) - bugger all in real terms.

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I've heard that argument before, and it's often misstated as that we've increased the total amount of carbon by 0.004%, which is wrong.

0.032% to 0.036% is a 12.5% increase in the total. If carbon has little insulating effect, that means very little, but there's supposed to be a very clear correlation between carbon level and temperature.

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Superfrank's point - i.e. that 200 years ago was the little ice age, and any warming we're experiencing now is just a natural fluctuation - is also mentioned.

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I've read that too, though I think 200 years ago is too short (1400s, I thought - connected with the Viking abandonment of Greenland). And yet I've read that the average temperature on earth at the moment is the highest in some hundreds of thousands of years.

I've also read another "natural cycles" theory, where people mention the sunspot cycle of the sun, which is about 70 years or so. People argue that we're just seeing the normal heating as we move towards the peak. Others say that we're currently half way up the cycle to the peak (corresponds with peak heat too btw), but we've already exceded the normal peak temperatures, hurricane rates, etc. of previous cycles.

I can look at all of that and search for logical fallacies, but they're not clear. The stuff you read in the news, on the internet and in books is not peer reviewed research. People don't quote sources (sufficiently or at all), they don't say how these things are measured or whether there's controversy involved and no one checks to make sure that they aren't making stuff up, misinterpreting stuff or making bad measurements (a la the temperature measurements in cities thing Pineapple mentioned).

So in summary, we, the plebs, don't know ****, and it's going to stay that way until we see the oceans boil.

Just as an example:

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Originally Posted by hamish

(edited) Global Warming melts the Arctic Ice cover - doesn't even have to be totally - more cold - and heavier - water enters Northern Atlantic... The warm Gulf Stream - which keeps us and (much of) Northern Europe and UK from freezing over in Winter - is pushed back by all this colder water... Stream ... breaks up completely.
Result - icy Northern Europe... proofs? Yep. Regular monitoring by UK, US and European Weather Agencies of the Gulf Stream has shown a 30%Temperature drop in parts of it over the past few decades, 15% in other areas but, overall, a drop nonetheless.

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A thirty percent drop in temperature? Is that Kelvin? Of course not. Is it Celcius? Probably. What are the figures involved? A 30% drop from 20 degrees to 14 degrees would be shocking, but if it was from 0.2 degrees to 0.14, I wouldn't be concerned. See?

Actually, I think that it's not temperature they measure, but the strength of the flow (millions of litres/second or something), so a 30% drop is pretty serious (0 flow isn't as ambiguous as 0 temperature!).

There's a lot the scientific community doesn't understand either. They don't know how stable the weather system is. If you melt the icecaps, the earth is less shiny, so it absorbs more heat, so the icecaps melt even faster. That's unstable. On the other hand, if you evaporate more water (e.g. by melting icecaps), you get more clouds, which reflect more heat, but also trap some. Is that stable or unstable? I'm not sure - it depends on what it does more of! Anyway, the earth's weather system is very complex, and it's hard to say exactly how it will react to increasing temperature.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

I think another issue he pointed out was that, while human activity is increasing the amount of CO2 in the ozone layer, the increase in real terms is absolutely minimal. CO2 is 0.03% of the atmosphere (79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 1% others, mostly argon), and the increase in CO2 is from 320 parts per million to 360 parts per million (i.e. 0.032% to 0.036%) - bugger all in real terms. Superfrank's point - i.e. that 200 years ago was the little ice age, and any warming we're experiencing now is just a natural fluctuation - is also mentioned. .

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John Houghton, the former head of the British Met Office wrote a lengthy paper for the Institute of Physics (hardly a radical body!) last year.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0034-4885/68/6/R02

As I understand it, the CO2 element could remain tiny, but a doubling of it from 280 ppm to 560 ppm would result in a mean temperature increase of 5-6 degrees, which would have devastating consquences

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Originally Posted by REVIP

John Houghton, the former head of the British Met Office wrote a lengthy paper for the Institute of Physics (hardly a radical body!) last year.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0034-4885/68/6/R02

As I understand it, the CO2 element could remain tiny, but a doubling of it from 280 ppm to 560 ppm would result in a mean temperature increase of 5-6 degrees, which would have devastating consquences

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Thanks. From the abstract, a more elequent statement of what I said about the state of scientific knowledge:

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The basic science of the ‘greenhouse effect’ that leads to the warming is well understood. More detailed understanding relies on numerical models of the climate that integrate the basic dynamical and physical equations describing the complete climate system. Many of the likely characteristics of the resulting changes in climate (such as more frequent heat waves, increases in rainfall, increase in frequency and intensity of many extreme climate events) can be identified. Substantial uncertainties remain in knowledge of some of the feedbacks within the climate system (that affect the overall magnitude of change) and in much of the detail of likely regional change.

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Some more select quotes:

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Before human activities became a significant disturbance, and over periods short compared with geological timescales, the exchanges between the reservoirs were remarkably constant. For several thousand years before the beginning of industrialization around 1750, a steady balance was maintained, such that the mixing ratio (or mole fraction) of CO2 in the atmosphere as measured from ice cores (see section 3) kept within about 10 ppm (parts per million) of a mean value of about 280 ppm.

The Industrial Revolution disturbed this balance and, since it began, approximately 600 thousand million tonnes (or gigatonnes, Gt) of carbon have been emitted into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning—providing the main cause of the increase of over 30% in CO2 concentration—from 280 to about 377 ppm at the present day (figure 11(a)). Accurate measurements since 1959 from an observatory near the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii show that CO2 is currently increasing on average each year by about 1.5 ppm although there are large variations from year to year (figure 11(b))—adding each year about 3.3 Gt to the atmospheric carbon reservoir.

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Interesting. He claims that rises in CO2 are entirely our fault!

His figure 19 makes for interesting viewing too. Link to isolated version.

Excellent points John83 - TBH I was recalling as best I could from a BBC programme and one of those National Geographic type programmes I was watching a few weeks ago and you're right, they mentioned all that you stated in your three answering paragraphs to the quote of mine you showed.

The Gulf Stream example I cited has cropped up more and more over the past few years and is a serious problem. The GF is already weakened - that seems to be established by now and if this continues - we will have our own iced-up Northern/Central Europe in the areas I mentioned.
Good point too about the reflectivity aspect. Another angle is that the ice is darker further down as the upper, lighter layers are melted and there will be less reflection of the sun as a result.

There are so many angles to this aren't there???

To me it's simple, I really cannot see how our atmosphere/planet cannot but be badly poisoned/effected if millions of tonnes of waste is spewed into it plus the contamination of the seas and groundwater with resulting weather abnormalities.
The Earth has such a fragile and linked eco-system that it just has to be banjaxed, for want of a better word. The planet just cannot continue if all the amazing and disparate parts that work together are thrown off kilter.

We've also had the hottest years in succession since measurements started.

Another thing that really p!sses me off is when many scientists who proclaim that Global Warming is not proven are shown to be employed by dubious and "front" organisations which - after a little investigation - are funded by oil companies.

Finaly, David Bellamy made a right eejit of himself a while back when he used information he had misread to doubt Global Warming - again from one of those false organisations. George Monbiot called him up on that on BBC a few weeks ago and Bellamy had misinterpreted a figure (it had a 555 in it) completely @rseways.
This explains it far better than my pitiful attempts in that last paragraph
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005.../junk-science/
Extract
[B]While Bellamy’s source claimed that 55% of 625 glaciers are advancing, Bellamy claimed that 555 of them – or 89% – are advancing. This figure appears to exist nowhere else. But on the standard English keyboard, 5 and % occupy the same key. If you try to hit %, but fail to press shift, you get 555, instead of 55%. This is the only explanation I can produce for his figure. When I challenged him, he admitted that there had been “a glitch of the electronics”.(17)

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Originally Posted by John83

I've read that too, though I think 200 years ago is too short

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In the mid 1800s, the Thames in London regularly froze over - there was a famous market on the Thames during the winter. Our modern notion of Christmas (i.e. as something more than the anniversary of Christ's birth or a pagan celebration of having broken the back of winter) dates from around that time, hence our fascination with white Christmasses still on Christmas cards and all that - when Christmas cards were invented, Christmas regularly was white. I can't remember proper snow in this country in years. That period is the "Little Ice Age". There may be others of course.

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Originally Posted by John83

0.032% to 0.036% is a 12.5% increase in the total. If carbon has little insulating effect, that means very little, but there's supposed to be a very clear correlation between carbon level and temperature.

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I should of course point out that my maths isn't that bad! Obviously, the point being made in the book was that CO2 was feck all of the atmosphere, so it's not as if the atmosphere is suddenly getting overloaded with the stuff. How serious a 12.5% increase in CO2 is - even from the minimal quantities of 0.032% to 0.036% of the entire atmosphere - is obviously a different matter, and noe which seems to be addressed in REVIP's link. Must have a look at that when I get a chance.

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Originally Posted by hamish

While Bellamy’s source claimed that 55% of 625 glaciers are advancing

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That's an interesting stat. Obviously, glaciers won't be exactly static - they're either advancing or receding, however slightly. So the fact that half of them are advancing is really just average - almost what you'd expect if nothing of substance was happening. That said, the quote obviously doesn't give the nett advancement/recession of all glaciers, which would be a more meaningful stat.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

In the mid 1800s, the Thames in London regularly froze over - there was a famous market on the Thames during the winter. Our modern notion of Christmas (i.e. as something more than the anniversary of Christ's birth or a pagan celebration of having broken the back of winter) dates from around that time, hence our fascination with white Christmasses still on Christmas cards and all that - when Christmas cards were invented, Christmas regularly was white. I can't remember proper snow in this country in years. That period is the "Little Ice Age". There may be others of course.

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All of which is irrelevant in the face of actual data.

Well, it does back up that we're both right about recent Little Ice Ages - dips about 1450 and 1830! What do the lines mean exactly? Is the data compiled on the basis of tree growth or ice layering or some such?

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Well, it does back up that we're both right about recent Little Ice Ages - dips about 1450 and 1830! What do the lines mean exactly? Is the data compiled on the basis of tree growth or ice layering or some such?

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The title was "reconstructed millenial global temperature record (Mann et al.)"

It seems to come from this paper. Figure five there is a more complicated version of the graph I linked to before. They seem to have reconstructed the record using a lot of different methods. From the paper:

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We use a multiproxy network consisting of widely distributed highquality annual-resolution proxy climate indicators, individually collected and formerly analysed by many palaeoclimate researchers (details and references are available: see Supplementary Information). The network includes (Fig. 1a) the collection of annual resolution dendroclimatic, ice core, ice melt, and long historical records used by Bradley and Jones [6 ] combined with other coral, ice core, dendroclimatic, and long instrumental records.

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Basically tree rings and ice cores.