Answering climate change myths

10 comments on “Answering climate change myths ”

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1. Paul 1

   4 October 2014 at 6:22 pm

   Everyone should read Naomi Klein’s recently released book ‘This changes everything.’
   Here is a promo.
2. karol 2

   4 October 2014 at 6:51 pm

   Excellent video. Explains it all very well for this non-scientist.
   • lprent 2.1

     4 October 2014 at 6:56 pm

     It is one of the best I have seen.

     His other videos seem to be pretty good as well.
3. ghostwhowalksnz 3

   4 October 2014 at 7:21 pm

   I dont know about his explanation for the pause. #2.

   This peer reviewed and referenced paper from 2011 does find there has been a pause in the period covered.

   Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008
   Robert K. Kaufmann, Heikki Kauppi, Michael L. Mann, and James H. Stock

   http://www.pnas.org/content/108/29/11790.short

   However their conclusions are that a hiatus in warming is due to natural factors and most of the observed increase in global average temperature is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, as would be expected.
   • Poission 3.1

     5 October 2014 at 11:27 am

     his explanation for both the pause and the model discrepancy (over estimating the recent observations) are incorrect there is a large literature on these aspects, to address the issues eg Schmidt 2014.

     http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/full/ngeo2105.html

     Any divergence between real-world climate phenomena and prior expectations poses interesting science questions. The case of the apparent slow-down of warming since the record El Niño event in 1997/1998 is no exception. The global mean surface temperature trend was smaller1 between 1997 and 2013 (0.07±0.08 °C per decade) than over the last 50 years (0.16 ± 0.02 °C per decade), highlighting questions about the mechanisms that regulate decadal variability in the Earth’s temperature. In addition, the warming trend in the most recent 15-year period is near the lower edge of the 5–95% range of projections from a collection of climate models that were part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Why most of the model simulations suggest more warming than has been observed is a second question that deserves further exploration

     Hence they are legitimate problems,that do raise interesting questions as opposed to fallacious arguments.

     errors do occur as Schmidt et al argue as does the role of chance.

     A combination of factors, by coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends in the real world after about 1992.
     • ghostwhowalksnz 3.1.1

       5 October 2014 at 2:44 pm

       A lot of older scientists, not necessarily in the climate area, are hesitant in using computer models with lots of variables for predicting the future changes.

       They come from the era when elaborate computer modelling wasnt practical. Observations were mostly the only tools they had and certainly they didnt have off the shelf statistics packages which could transform those with undergraduate knowledge to build elaborate statistical results from noisy data . The usual process of including a relevant statistician as a co author seems to be bypassed regularity.
       • lprent 3.1.1.1

         6 October 2014 at 8:43 pm

         Problem in this case is that the only way to collect some of the data that they’d crave to observe would require letting the earths atmosphere accumulate green house gases for the remainder of this century. If the computer models were right (I think they are usually wrong – they underestimate the effects too often), then taking ameliorative action that would take only a few thousand years to take full effect. /sarc

         I was using this kind of simulation at a smaller scale when I did my earth sciences degree back in 1978-1981 doing things like runoff analysis, XRF, XRD. In fact for every undergrad science course that wasn’t maths, physics or chemistry. It was pretty standard then and had been for the previous decade. The maths that I took all the way through to later degree years was statistics. It was the most useful for analyzing data. I’d be very surprised if the data modelers for the last 30-40 years weren’t all highly skilled in statistics.
4. Paul 4

   4 October 2014 at 7:24 pm

   How does such an ignoramus such as John Roughan get to write about the environment and the RMA?
   Reading Naomi Klein’s book presently and then I make the error of reading this neanderthal’s viewpoint.
   And this sort of view gets such headroom in the media.
   Exxon Mobil, BP et al must love the Herald.
   What. A. Rag.

   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11336598
5. Murray Olsen 5

   5 October 2014 at 3:54 am

   The video is great for people with open minds. All the stuff mentioned can be checked.

   What worries me is that there are a lot of people around who believe that AGW is a conspiracy put together by Gore and the Illuminati in order to impose Agenda 21 with NWO and not let us grow our radishes even. The people spreading this rubbish are either delusional or doing it in bad faith, but they are there and they are loud. Once people get this rubbish into their heads, science becomes conspiracy and they can’t learn anything useful. Of course, people would be less vulnerable to this crap if we had a decent education system.

   This is one reason, I believe, why Key wants ACT in government. He does not want the mass of the population taught how to think, and ACT’s obscene charter schools policies are perfect for this.
6. Yoza 6

   5 October 2014 at 2:00 pm

   The Lomborg Deception by Howard Friel is a solid counter to the ‘science’ manufactured by that Lomborg character.

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