GeologyRocksThe Great Global Warming Swindle
Just watching The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4. I have to say that I agree with most of what they say, and have agreed with the background for quite along time.
I can recall the first time that my scepticism was raised, many years ago when I attended a research seminar on global warming when then topic was taking off. The speaker (I can't remember who it was) showed a graph of CO2 and temperature against time. Maybe because that I was spending a lot of time trying to match real and computer generated earthquake records at the time, I instantly noticed that the phase lag was the wrong way round. The CO2 line was following temperature not leading it. In the questions session afterwards I pointed this out to the speaker - they hadn't noticed it and couldn't explain it. I've never believed the CO2 - global warming link since.
I'm not quite sure (although would like to believe, however) that it* was all Maggie Thatcher's fault!
(*the rise of the global warming 'industry')
- hypocentre's blog
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Hmmm...
Sat, 03/10/2007 - 13:21I've not seen the program yet (we missed it), but we we'll watch it tonight. I regularly visit a site called RealClimate.org - a blog kept by climate scientists doing the actual research. They handily posted a rebuttal of all the programmes claims, which is available from:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414
Geologists are gneiss!!
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I've read real climate
Sat, 03/10/2007 - 21:55I've read real climate before. The discussion that you link to I feel generates more heat than light. There is a 800 year lag of CO2 levels behind temperature that they don't deny. Occam's razor would suggest that temperature is the cause and CO2 level is the effect. I think that there is a lot of special pleading going on to have it the other way round.
Geologists like a nappe between thrusts
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I read through the replys to
Mon, 03/12/2007 - 11:08I read through the replys to the GWS.
One of the replys caught my eye. Apparently volcanos put out 1% of the CO2 humans do. Is this true? I though volcanos put out far more?
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The figures that I can
Mon, 03/12/2007 - 15:38The figures that I can find:
Man 10 Billion Tonnes / year
Volcanoes 0.11 Billion Tonnes / year
So yes, about 1%
Geologists like a nappe between thrusts
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Update
Mon, 03/12/2007 - 16:07An update on this on RealClimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled-carl-wunsch-responds/
Carl Wunsch appeared in the program, but was mis-represented.
His letter pretty much sums up my feelings on Climate Change: we (mankind) are having an effect on climate, the exact consequences are unknown. We need to do something about it, but the issues around it are complex and not easy to solve.
Geologists are gneiss!!
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Finally got around to
Thu, 03/15/2007 - 12:47Finally got around to watching this "programme". It is the worst piece of "scientific" journalism I have ever seen!
First, most of the "facts" they trotted out were either wrong (the volcano one, for instance) or someone's opinion. The ones that weren't opinion or wrong were out-of-date - so much so, as to be meaningless.
Secondly, the bits of evidence (actually, the only one left after taking out opinion and ones that were wrong, is the 800-year lag - see hypocentre's other blog post) they did talk about do not, in any way, shape or form, disprove anthropogenic climate change.
All-in-all, this was just a political film which I think will do way more damage than simply "creating a talking point". The letters in the Metro (a free commuter paper) next day were full of people claiming this programme was all fact and that climate change is a "conspiricy". This just makes doing something about climate change even harder...*sigh*.
Basically, this programme was a waste of an hour of my time that I could have done something much more productive with...nevermind eh? Least I got to rant for a bit
Geologists are gneiss!!