Six things I've learnt about climate change

I'm now half-way through Ian Plimer's fascinating book on global warming, Heaven and Earth.  Here are six things I hadn't previously known:

1.  Over the past million years, way before industrial man came along, the climate has often changed very significantly, very quickly.

2.  When climate changes, the shift is from being warm and wet to cold and dry.  Or vice-versa.  If global temperatures are rising, it's most likely getting wetter, not drier. 

3.  Warm-wet climates are generally better for life on earth than cold-dry climates.

4.  CO2 levels have been far, far higher in the past - yet CO2 levels in the atmosphere don't seem to have been a significant driver of climate in the past.

5.  Human activity accounts for a relatively tiny portion of global CO2 emissions.  To quote Plimer, "One [submarine] hot spring can release far more CO2 than a 1000 mW coal-fired power station".  There are many, many thousands of such springs.

6.  Plimer suggests that the really significant drivers of climate change are the sun, ossiclations in the earth's orbit, and volcanic emissions of sulphur dioxide.  Indeed, the 1784 eruption of Laki in Iceland put 150 million tonnes of SO2 into the atmosphere - which wiped out crops and caused famine in the northern hemisphere for a couple of years.

Apparently some climate change "experts" are now suggesting we put man-made SO2 particles in the atmosphere to cool the climate.  Given what Plimer says about the effect of volcanic SO2 emissions on the climate in the past, that should seriously concern us.

Perhaps it's not climate change we should worry about, but the folly of our response to it.  Once again, we presume ourselves to be at the centre of everything - rather than walk-on cameo players in the natural world.

UPDATE:  Tom Harris MP has just posted an interesting blog in response to this, which seems to suggest that questioning man-made climate change rules me out as being any sort of "progressive".  Seriously. 

Surely a true progressive would always be willing to question established thinking?  Being progressive is about devolving power over public policy away from the indolent and the self-serving in Westminster - and putting power in the hands of ordinary folk.  Those same ordinary folk, incidentally, being forced to pick up the bill for all this action on climate change ...

Posted on 31 August 2009 by Douglas Carswell

Comments

Douglas, compare and contrast, you know full well that a single source does not a sound argument make. Balance my boy, balance and then make your case.

Posted on 31 August 2009 09:35 by Graham Smith

Douglas

Like you I've been reading up on global warming (or climate change as we're now supposed to call it)as it seemed unlikely that mankind's activities could affect the planet's climate. After wading through mountains of articles designed to make me feel guilty when I turn on the light - but that can't give me a good, science based reason reason why, I now believe that there is no substance what-so-ever to the theory of man made global warming. For me a few points stand out:

1- Global temperature has been falling for the last 10 years (hence the cynical name change from global warming!) but that is studiously ignored by those alarmists who've got the "warming bug". (Checkout IPCC's own reports)

2 - No science based causal link can be drawn between rising CO2 levels and climate. Just because 2 lines on a graph go in the same direction doesnt mean there's a link. (checkout recent report from Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT)

3 - The supporters of global warming are very keen to hide their figures, calculations, sources etc from other scientists. If their theory is so sound, what's their problem? (Checkout recent refusal to share and now "loss" of vital raw temperature data by the Met Office")

4 - Whenever there's a criticism of the theory they "play the man, not the ball", always a dead giveaway to tell when someone is on shakey ground. (Checkout recent "death trains" comment on coal usage in the US)

If anyone can refute these points I'll happily reconsider my position (unlike the alarmists).

Until then I suspect that the Sun is a much more likely source of the ongoing variation in climate. Also there is soild science linking it to the recorded changes. Best (science based) prediction I've seen is that we're in for 20-30 years of cooler climate, then another 20-30 years of warmer etc.

Posted on 31 August 2009 09:37 by JohnRS

"The ice caps are melting" as the late Tiny Tim sang, and lots of us live near the sea.

I back Tiny Tim and the majority of scientists who study these things, best we cut back on the current expansion of CO2 emissions.

Posted on 31 August 2009 09:48 by Quietzapple

"There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth ...". Human-induced climate change is a deliciously quaint example of irrational anthropocentrism, much akin to the medieval view that the Black Death was God's judgement on sinners. The real reason this fallacy has become so popular, I suggest, is because governments find they can use it to raise taxes and diminish freedoms. Now you're our representative, Mr Carswell, and you've seen the light. Fight for us!

Posted on 31 August 2009 10:07 by eeyore

Sounds like a fascinating read, I must order it from my little local saved library.

A well known authority on earthquakes suggested that the Boxing day Asian earthquake December 2004, created an effect on the planet very similar to a large bell being rung- a deep earth core vibration that may last for years.

If this is true perhaps the planet 'wobble' is responsible for the changes in the climate that are being experienced now?

Posted on 31 August 2009 10:16 by True Belle

I fully endorse your last paragraph Douglas.
Let us hope that the Conservative leadership understands it too.
What is most disturbing is the move to make it "Politically incorrect" to question the Climate change orthodoxy.
Political correctness is a device for the suppression of debate and free speech and it needs to be challenged.

Posted on 31 August 2009 10:19 by NickW

The thing about putting SO2 into the stratosphere is not that it should be done immediately but that it can be done & we know it will work, because volcanos have done it. As a reserve power, costing about as much as flying all these representatives to Kyoto, it is the final guarantee that even if everything prophesied happened we still wouldn't have a problem.

John Redwood did a Parliamentary question last year about the proportion of CO2 mankind produces & was told 3%.

Douiglas may I suggest that you, & anybody else interested, subscribe to Benny Peiser's CCNet http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html
which reposts interesting news items, findings & correspondence on the holes in the warming swindle.

Posted on 31 August 2009 10:42 by Neil Craig

"Once again, we presume ourselves to be at the centre of everything - rather than walk-on cameo players in the natural world."

One need not follow Douglas Hogg's biblical thesis that The Earth is all given to us as though we are masters of the Universal Sup[ermarket with amoral dominion over its other creatures to adopt a me-Human, wanna-survive attitude.

Quietism makes no omelette: 'Do nothing' will attract few for long.

Posted on 31 August 2009 11:15 by Quietzapple

http://www.dailytech.com/Sea+Ice+Ends+Year+at+Same+Level+as+1979/article13834.htm

"Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago."

"The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions."

Also if you want to see an excellent, understandable 20 minute video presentation on climate change at the recent Climate Skeptics Conference, see the attached link :

http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/proceedings.html


Dr John Theon (former Head of NASA's Weather & Climate progamme)

Is Climate Change Driven by Mankind: My Personal Journey

(Its one of the best presentations that I have seen on the subject)

Posted on 31 August 2009 11:55 by Yorkshireman

Do keep plugging this one, Douglas.

Posted on 31 August 2009 14:40 by Liz Elliot-Pyle

What worries me most (apart from seeing no comments at 15:55) is that you are probably far from alone in not knowing these, and many other things about climate change.
I have read a lot from real experts and it's clear that their analyses and views are drowned out in the great rush to make us feel guilty and roll over and accept huge tax burdens which will probably never hit any target.
I haven't read Plimer's book (yet) but I wonder whether he mentions that the effect of CO2 is a fraction of that caused by water vapour in the air - yes clouds. They didn't come in with burning fossil fuels, did they?
Douglas: can you make an effort to educate other MPs on this serious matter which is certain to affect our cost of living for the next three decades at least?

Posted on 31 August 2009 16:01 by Mike Spilligan

Douglas,

Blimey you're a slow reader I bought the book when you recommended it and finished it two weeks ago! Brilliant expose.

The AGW myth is a busted flush . Porrett was on QT arguing with Delingpole the other week and he STILL made the claim that sea levels are set to rise 7 meters ( 23 feet !!). The IPCC issued an apology for this disinformation some time ago, saying it was a "typo" and they meant 7 CM's ( just under 3 inches) but only after an Oceanographer sued Al Gore over it in the US courts.

Posted on 31 August 2009 17:09 by libertarian

@Quietzapple

I've heard it all now, AGW is a fact because it was proved by Tiny Tim......ha ha...ha

Name one of the "majority of climate scientists" that has produced a paper showing any form of proof, then for a start read the works of

Dr Ian Plimer, Prof Richard Linzen, Prof Vic marks, Dr John Theon, Prof Stanley Feldman, et al

I see Dr Michael Man wrote a sniffy letter about Chris Booker to the Telegraph the other day and then dismissed the uncovering of his faked and fraudulent Hockey Stick graph as just one computer model. Yes except it was the one that started the trouble and is still the only one that shows rapid warming

Posted on 31 August 2009 21:17 by libertarian

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=163&linkbox=true

Scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!' - NASA Scientist Dr. Leonard Weinstein

"Dr. Leonard Weinstein worked 35 years at the NASA Langley Research Center, finishing his career there as a Senior Research Scientist."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

" But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story. "

Posted on 31 August 2009 21:49 by Yorkshireman

Oh, and Douglas, here's a seventh;

"The new earthquakes were traced almost exclusively to Greenland, where they were found to be specifically associated with large, fast-flowing outlet glaciers. There have been 200 of them in the last dozen years; in 2005 there were six times as many as in 1993."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/01/sermilik-fjord-greenland-global-warming

Posted on 1 September 2009 06:18 by Quietzapple

You might wanna let David C know.

Posted on 1 September 2009 08:52 by Tiger

Why are little South Pacific Islands vanishing underwater, some of them are being evacuated of their inhabitants pretty quickly .

How can rising sea levels be a myth if this sort of thing is going on?

Posted on 1 September 2009 10:09 by True Belle

Have to agree with Mike Spilligan. Have MPs been merrily voting to plunge us into poverty by cutting carbon emissions by 80% without knowing these facts?

Posted on 1 September 2009 10:42 by John Page

If True Belle is referring to Kiribati and Tuvalu then they have not been evacuated, and the government of Tuvalu is on record as saying that it does not regard rising sea levels as such a threat that evacuation is necessary. Note that we are talking about a threat here IF the predictions are correct - not an actual fact.

The Pacific islands are situated in an unstable geographic area and there are many reasons other than rising global sea levels why some islands might become submerged, e.g. shifting tectonic plates causing a fall in the land level locally.

Posted on 1 September 2009 11:04 by Mark Forster

True Belle, I was in the Åland Islands between Finland and Sweden earlier this year. They are about 1.5 metres higher out of the water than they were during the Crimean War, which I was researching. The reason is nothing to do with climate change, still less Chelsea tractors - it's because the earth's crust is still bouncing back after the melting of the polar ice caps. The weight of ice depressed the crust, and now it's coming back up.

I don't know much about Pacific islands, but there are more powerful forces at work than trace quantities of CO2, of which only a very small proportion are man-made. Anyway, isn't the data on islands sinking hotly debated as well?

Posted on 1 September 2009 11:27 by Alfred T Mahan

"ossiclations" really is a long way off the mark. At least I think it is; I may be showing my own ignorance here. Anyway, you might want to think about changing this serious blemish on an otherwise interesting post.

Posted on 1 September 2009 12:49 by Mills

There is an international agreement of scientists who oppose the Man-made Climate change theory.
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63

There will soon be a similar declaration against the passive smoke junk science.
Both theories are used to change habits/restrict liberty and tax more heavily.
I hope Douglas you will fight to expose these.

Posted on 1 September 2009 12:59 by A J

I am not subscribing to CO2 hysteria either.

Carelessness will ruin the planet quicker than we think.

I am pleased there are so many learned opinions.

Posted on 1 September 2009 13:10 by True Belle

good lad.......
an open mind is an enquiring mind.

Man-made global warming is a fiction, and has already been hijacked as a source of revenue by academics & big business. Who can stop them?

The big issue for this generation is going to be food and water for the 6 billion of us, not the CO2.
The proposed actions by all governments to deal with the CO2 issue prove that they don't believe it either.
Carbon trading anyone? You havin a laff?
Tuppence off your road tax if you go green on fuel for your car?
Have we planted a billion trees, have we re-instated the hedgerows, have we insisted that farming set-aside grows some heavy-duty CO2-absorbing plants? Have we insisted each new house-plot carries half an acre of garden and trees.
Nope, not a bit of it.
(And don't say that kind of carbon sequestration is short-term. It is only short-term if you cut the trees down and burn them.

Posted on 1 September 2009 20:08 by the pro from dover

You might like to look at this experiment to see how important CO2 is in the growth of plants:
http://www.co2science.org/education/experiments/center_exp/experiment1/exp1_home.php

Posted on 2 September 2009 14:22 by GeoS

http://www.drroyspencer.com/about/

Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Confusion-Pandering-politicians-Misguided/dp/1594032106/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195938841&sr=1-1

"Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites."

Posted on 2 September 2009 20:36 by Yorkshireman

Dear Douglas,
I do agree with your thoughts about the folly of our response to climate change. It's a strange response we in the west always offer to our planet and our physical existence, probably connected with our childhood Sunday school Christian teachings and our ingrained ignorance as to why we exist. Christian teaching-wise we are offered 'one brand new soul equals one newborn baby, who will live only one physical lifespan' and also we are offered the Biblical 'sins of the forefathers shall be inflicted upon their descendents' which sounds very limiting, unfair and un-Godly. It also encourages everyone, leaders and led, physically existing now to regard as irrelevant everything that took place before and takes place after his or her physical lifespan. Conversely a large section of the world population (including my wife who is a past-lives regression therapist and I) believe in Reincarnation, that each of us chooses to re-enter physical existence again and again until we've mastered the lessons of harmony and balance we came here to learn. Each religion is fiercely protective about its cherished beliefs and excludes the possibility that other belief systems could also contain fragments of truth. For example, the Christian version, sins of the forefathers inflicted on their descendents only makes fair and logical sense instead of a doom-laden Godly judgement if we include reincarnation as an integral part of that version. It means that if through my freewill chosen action or apathy I caused something in one life I would probably have to live with the effect of that something in a later life. This makes it very relevant what we do or don't do during this present lifespan because those descendents of we forefathers will be us. Food for thought?
David Brittain
22 Thorns Way, Walton on the Naze, Essex, CO14 8SB
www.ascensionsupportteam.com The website for free thinkers.
PS: Below is a ludicrous example of that folly.
BULLETIN ITEM: Bozo Alert: Scientists (not really) to stop global warming with 100,000 square mile sun shade


Scientists to stop global warming with 100,000 square mile sun shade - Telegraph
Scientists to stop global warming with 100,000 square mile sun shade
Scientists claim they can fight global warming by firing trillions of mirrors into space to deflect the sun's rays forming a 100,000 square mile "sun shade".
According to astronomer Dr Roger Angel, at the University of Arizona, the trillions of mirrors would have to be fired one million miles above the earth using a huge cannon with a barrel of 0.6 miles across. The gun would pack 100 times the power of conventional weapons and need an exclusion zone of several miles before being fired.
Despite the obvious obstacles - including an estimated $350 trillion (£244trn) price tag for the project - Dr Angel is confident of getting the project off the ground. He said: "What we have developed is certainly effective and a method guaranteed to work.
; http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1488655367/bctid13335878001 http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1139053637

Posted on 3 September 2009 14:30 by David Brittain

Interesting blog by Toby Harnden in the Telegraph :

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100008420/hitlers-henchmen-environmentalists-brand-al-gores-filmmaker-foes/

The article covers a new climate film -"not evil just wrong", released on the web, that criticises global warming alarmists
and their flawed science. The film is here :

http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/

Apparently they are trying to get as many people as possible to watch the "premiere" on line and by pass the movie industry and vested interests who try to impede the film.

A good example of how the web bypasses mainstream media and disaggregates information.

(Douglas, you're now a climate sceptic (bravo) and a keen believer in web information provision, you might wish to combine the two views and do a plug for the film on your blog ?) blog ?

Posted on 3 September 2009 19:50 by Yorkshireman

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