Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

No Warming Until Maybe 2020

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OK.  It is not pleasant to call someone a ‘warmaholic’. 

I guess it does suggest a dependency.

I always thought of the blog RealClimate as dependent on their being global warming.  But in a recent article they are suggesting there may be no more warming until 2020.   I reckon if you can live without something for 11 years it suggests a lack of dependency.

But they are denying there is cooling.  

A reader, Robert Ellison, has suggested it is OK to leave the question of whether this is a longer term trend – for the moment.  But, he insists, “The real point is that 0.08 degrees per decade (and declining sensitivity to greenhouse gases) is not sufficient to warrant restricting the economic aspirations of billions of people.”

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Notes and Links

Warming, interrupted: Much ado about natural variability
By Kyle Swanson – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
http://www.uwm.edu/~kswanson/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf
discussed at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/

Actions Don’t Accord with Intensions

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Young people don’t need to be persuaded of the climate crisis. Poll any group of people, young or old, and a majority will talk of their passion to live in a greener world.  But ask that same group how much they drive, or fly, or how many children they intend to have and you’ll be amazed.  It simply doesn’t add up.  Read more here.

A Climate Change Paradox (Part 2)

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ocean heat hammer blogAUSTRALIA’S Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, recently suggested that most of the global warming since 1960, about 85 percent, has happened in the oceans and that change in ocean heat content is thus the most appropriate measure of global warming.
 
In my previous post, working from first principles, I determined a discrepancy of 9:1 in the rate of warming from Australian government data relative to IPCC findings.  In reviewing these calculations I now realise I made a significant error.  I had wrongly assumed that the claimed positive feedback from water vapour was proportional to the carbon dioxide concentration.  This is not correct, the claimed positive feedback is proportional to the temperature rise and that change does make a difference to the calculations and needs to be corrected.  The revised calculations still show a paradox although only about 3:1. 

[Read more…] about A Climate Change Paradox (Part 2)

In Melbourne: Big Al, Small Protest

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Al Gore Melbourne ver 2ANYONE who denies global warming is in the pay of big oil. Remember that is what the big man, Al Gore, said in his movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. But like so much that Mr Gore says, it just isn’t true.

Consider the 30-odd protesters who held placards outside the breakfast he spoke at this morning in Melbourne. The scruffy-lot, lead by a farmer Leon Ashby, were not there because someone paid them, but because they are outraged by Al Gore and what he has thrust on the world. In particular, his belief that we already have a climate crisis and that the only solution is carbon trading. [Read more…] about In Melbourne: Big Al, Small Protest

Defining the Sceptics (Part 8)

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monkey-frustrated“In both evolution and climate change, the majority view of the scientific experts is well ahead. In neither case is there any known coherent alternative. But the complexities of the evidence are such that a higher standard of politeness to sceptics who raise serious problems would be well-advised.”

James Franklin, ‘What Science Knows: And How It Knows It’, Encounter Books, 2009
via Quadrant Online.