Climate change ???

[Hallu]

Well that's the problem you still haven't said what you think. Do you think climate change is real ? Do you think it's because of human activities ? That's the opinion we want to hear from you... So far you've just shown some data, and that's it. Scientists don't do that, they interpret data, they draw conclusions...

[Swifty]

...

[Swifty]

The key is "local",

Good point Hallu, so I looked at some further flung spots to see how our bananabender brethren are going.
Yeah, I should form an opinion, maybe even based on real world data. What is the trend over the past ten years at Brisbane Airport, Longreach and Mt Isa? Just askin'....
Once again, data provided by BOM - http://www.bom.gov.au/index.php?ref=hdr

[Swifty]

Wow, this one surprised me! Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean seems to have not warmed much at all since the '70's
BOM data.

[doogs]

Wow, this one surprised me! Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean seems to have not warmed much at all since the '70's
BOM data.

It shouldn't, it's surrounded be sea for a long way in every direction, which controls the islands climate, and sea water temperature hasn't risen much *I don't think/haven't checked!

[wayno]

also air currents are changing, some places are colder. some warmer.

[MrWalker]

also air currents are changing, some places are colder. some warmer.

That's why these individual temperatures don't tell us anything useful. The sea close to the poles is cooled by all that melting ice, so although the land temperature there is going up faster than anywhere else, the sea in the arctic and antarctic doesn't increase so much (until all the ice has gone) and can even get colder. This can cause changes in currents that may make coastal Europe colder rather than warmer due to global warming. I'm not sure what the currents are doing around Tasmania and New Zealand, but don't expect even warming everywhere.

[PeterJ]

Wow, this one .........

Are you going to do a graph for where you say you live?

Peter

[Swifty]

Are you going to do a graph for where you say you live?

Peter

Would be interesting! I don't know if I can access the data for Dubai though. How wonderful it is that so much data is made freely available to Australians by their weather bureau.

[Swifty]

also air currents are changing, some places are colder. some warmer.

That's why these individual temperatures don't tell us anything useful. The sea close to the poles is cooled by all that melting ice, so although the land temperature there is going up faster than anywhere else, the sea in the arctic and antarctic doesn't increase so much (until all the ice has gone) and can even get colder. This can cause changes in currents that may make coastal Europe colder rather than warmer due to global warming. I'm not sure what the currents are doing around Tasmania and New Zealand, but don't expect even warming everywhere.

Thanks for your input Mr W. You reminded me that we have Antarctic stations, here's a graph from Mawson I just made. Looks like the temperature runs through 20 year cycles, at least since 1955, oscillating bewteen -9 and -8.

[stepbystep]

I've got problems with the terminology from all sides.

Climate Change? Ridiculous it always has and always will, of course the question is how much we as humans have affected any change outside of whatever the natural cycle is. To know this effectively and for sure we would need figures from a long time pre-industrial revolution, bit tricky that one, and a pretty graph it would make hey Swifty?

I also don't like the term 'deniers' as this label is often stuck on people who are simply asking questions that don't fit with the other sides ideology. There are massive corporate interests pushing their barrow on both sides of this debate driven by the ultimate vested interest $$$. Grain of salt...

I, personally can't imagine how anybody would think 7 billion people churning all matter of foulness into the atmosphere can't have a negative and lasting effect on the worlds climactic and environmental systems but I'm not going to close my mind to any possibilities, on anything. But that's just me, so what's my label?

[doogs]

I've got problems with the terminology from all sides.

Climate Change? Ridiculous it always has and always will, of course the question is how much we as humans have affected any change outside of whatever the natural cycle is. To know this effectively and for sure we would need figures from a long time pre-industrial revolution, bit tricky that one, and a pretty graph it would make hey Swifty?

I also don't like the term 'deniers' as this label is often stuck on people who are simply asking questions that don't fit with the other sides ideology. There are massive corporate interests pushing their barrow on both sides of this debate driven by the ultimate vested interest $$$. Grain of salt...

I, personally can't imagine how anybody would think 7 billion people churning all matter of foulness into the atmosphere can't have a negative and lasting effect on the worlds climactic and environmental systems but I'm not going to close my mind to any possibilities, on anything. But that's just me, so what's my label?

Agnostic?
Swifty-Those graphs don't mean much at all, if you can find a sea level temeprature one over an extended period then maybe it can show something meaningful.

[walkinTas]

To know this effectively and for sure we would need figures from a long time pre-industrial revolution, bit tricky that one, and a pretty graph it would make hey Swifty?

Its called "ice cores" and astronomical records.

I also don't like the term 'deniers'...

+1 I don't like pigeon-holing full-stop.

I, personally can't imagine how anybody would think 7 billion people churning all matter of foulness into the atmosphere can't have a negative and lasting effect on the worlds climatic and environmental systems but I'm not going to close my mind to any possibilities, on anything. But that's just me, so what's my label?

Not 'just' you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4

There was an excellent program on tv recently - I think called "Orbit Earth" that explained, in one part, current theory of how the earth's rotational tilt changes over a regular cycle (40,000 years) from a maximum of about 24° to a minimum of 22.½°. This and other factors cause a 4°C change in mean temperature. The cycle is thought to have been repeated for millennium and is now postulated as a valid explanation of the recurring ice ages.

But if those who should know, can't agree, then how do the rest of us make any sense of the varied opinions. The current debate is not around whether or not there is a warming. That is generally accepted. It is around whether or not it is human induced and just how rapidly it is happening. If the changes is too rapid, then many species of plants and animals will not be able to adjust quickly enough. Especially those already endangered by habitat depletion or other pressures.

[stepbystep]

To know this effectively and for sure we would need figures from a long time pre-industrial revolution, bit tricky that one, and a pretty graph it would make hey Swifty?

Its called "ice cores" and astronomical records.

Yes, yes and there's carbon dating etc. In fact I've stood under a sedementary cross section with a scientist and had them explain to me the various stages of the planets journey, fascinating. My point is that these scientific methods are still open for interpretation, with sometimes pretty wild discrepencies. Wouldn't it be nice to have the data we now record for the past?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4

Not sure the relevance of that link wiT. What are you saying?

There was an excellent program on tv recently - I think called "Orbit Earth"

I think you are referring to "Orbit" with the 2 female hosts. I was looking forward to it but couldn't stand the way it was shot, presenter driven schmoltz, and it seemed to take them forever to explain anything. I only watched the first 2 eps, perhaps I should have stuck with it!

However, this rings true to me...

...if the predictions are correct, and we do nothing, then we are screwed. If the predictions are wrong and we do something, there is no harm done.

I suspect we are screwed regardless though...

[doogs]

There was an excellent program on tv recently - I think called "Orbit Earth" that explained, in one part, current theory of how the earth's rotational tilt changes over a regular cycle (40,000 years) from a maximum of about 24° to a minimum of 22.½°. This and other factors cause a 4°C change in mean temperature. The cycle is thought to have been repeated for millennium and is now postulated as a valid explanation of the recurring ice ages.

I watched that and it was very good. The theory about the cycles dates back nearly a century and it was proven about 30 years ago so hardly ground breaking stuff!
Here's a brief overview of the spin thingy we do. http://geography.about.com/od/learnabou ... ovitch.htm

[walkinTas]

Not sure the relevance of that link wiT. What are you saying?

Really just showing that there are a bunch of scientist who don't agree with global warming - and don't like the negative terms used to describe them either.

[Clusterpod]

"A bunch", which, at last count, included something like less than 2% of scientists in relevant fields.

You will be very hard put to find any climate scientists, ecologists or field-biologists that don't "agree" with global warming.

[walkinTas]

You might be surprised how big a bunch is!

[walkinTas]

Oops, sloppy use of terms there too! I should have said "don't agree with the "global warming crisis". As a number of posts have said, there is general agreement the globe is warming - its the reason why that is still being discussed.

...And why matters! If we (the human race) caused it, we can do sometime about it (maybe), but if we didn't cause the current global warming and if it is going to continue regardless of any effort we make to stop it, then the ramifications are very important. In that case we should stop pretending we can make a few quick changes and offset a bit of carbon and everything will be fine. If we aren't the cause of global warming then our puny efforts will achieve nothing - (and our puny efforts might achieve nothing anyway).

[wayno]

antarctic ice shelf increasing in size?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor ... er-record/

[Hallu]

What I don't like in the usual TV debate is two things :
1) They only talk about warming, and... that's it. So yeah the snow caps melt, sea levels rise, and it's chaos for mankind. But often the consequences on wildlife (coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef for example) or secondary consequences (permafrost melting and liberating huge quantities of methane, speeding even more the warming) aren't presented.
2) You only see or hear about measures against CO2 emissions. Methane emissions (we already talked about cattle), deforestation (how trees are actually capable of growing faster when there's more CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb the excess, but with deforestation that effect is totally damped and rendered useless), the health of our oceans (plankton could help absorb the excess too, as it did 55 million years ago during a similar event, but you need clean oceans for plankton to grow), are shadowed by the CO2 problem, whereas they're all part of the climate change issue...

But generally the problem can be summarized by 2 countries that are doing nothing : China and the US. Those are the biggest polluters in the world, and they mostly don't care. China is too busy becoming the world''s 1st economy, the US too busy taking care of themselves. Europe and Japan are mostly the only ones trying. Africa is selling its soul to China; Canada, Arabia and Australia send smokescreens of conservation to mask their polluting exploitation of natural resources; Brazil and Indonesia are too busy cutting trees. India is pretty much the same as China except they don't eat beef... So yeah we're doomed. The only hope I see is actually if China destroyed its environment so fast that growing uproar would bring the country to a sudden political and economical change toward strong green measures (they certainly would have the finances to do it). Maybe the panda has to become extinct for it (the Yang-Tse dolphin certainly wasn't enough), I don't know.

[doogs]

the health of our oceans (plankton could help absorb the excess too, as it did 55 million years ago during a similar event, but you need clean oceans for plankton to grow), are shadowed by the CO2 problem, whereas they're all part of the climate change issue...

I fink you mean phytoplankton.. plankton is what wales eats.

plankton-added.gif (40.84 KiB) Viewed 18897 times

[Hallu]

NO I mean plankton in general. Fish and animal plankton (zooplankton) also trap carbon, it's not only phytoplankton, contrary to common knowledge.

[Strider]

NO I mean plankton in general. Fish and animal plankton (zooplankton) also trap carbon, it's not only phytoplankton, contrary to common knowledge.

Zooplankton trap carbon by eating phytoplankton. Fish trap carbon by eating zooplankton.

[doogs]

NO I mean plankton in general. Fish and animal plankton (zooplankton) also trap carbon, it's not only phytoplankton, contrary to common knowledge.

How? As marine snow? Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton which are better at fixing carbon, n'est pas? If we follow your suggestion then humans, dogs, cats etc also fix carbon, why don't we procreate profusely and bury our dead in marine sediments. I'll be voting for the Sex Party at the upcoming election as they know how to stop global warming

[Strider]

the health of our oceans (plankton could help absorb the excess too, as it did 55 million years ago during a similar event, but you need clean oceans for plankton to grow), are shadowed by the CO2 problem, whereas they're all part of the climate change issue...

I fink you mean phytoplankton.. plankton is what wales eats.

plankton-added.gif

Whales eat both zooplankton and phytoplankton.

[doogs]

the health of our oceans (plankton could help absorb the excess too, as it did 55 million years ago during a similar event, but you need clean oceans for plankton to grow), are shadowed by the CO2 problem, whereas they're all part of the climate change issue...

I fink you mean phytoplankton.. plankton is what wales eats.

plankton-added.gif

Whales eat both zooplankton and phytoplankton.

True. It would be quite had to sort them even with a baleen!!

[Hallu]

1) It's "n'est-ce pas", get your French right.
2) No, fish also take inorganic carbon (dissolved in water) and transform it into carbonates in their intestines, an effect highly underestimated before ( http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5912/359.short ).

[edit] I've found the full article here : http://www.seaaroundus.org/magazines/20 ... nCycle.pdf

[doogs]

1) It's "n'est-ce pas", get your French right.
2) No, fish also take inorganic carbon (dissolved in water) and transform it into carbonates in their intestines, an effect highly underestimated before ( http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5912/359.short ).

[edit] I've found the full article here : http://www.seaaroundus.org/magazines/20 ... nCycle.pdf

1. LOL.
2. That report is about marine snow http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/marinesnow.html

[Hallu]

Sigh, you still don't seem to get it... Those fish aren't producing carbonates from what they eat but from the carbon dioxyde dissolved in the water...

Carbonate precipitates are excreted by fish via the
intestine as a by-product of the osmoregulatory
requirement to continuously drink calcium- and
magnesium-rich seawater, and they are produced
whether or not fish are feeding