Global Warming & Climate Change and Ecological Buddhism

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christopher:::
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Global Warming & Climate Change and Ecological Buddhism

Post by christopher::: »

Edit: I'm changing the title of this thread to reflect the interesting direction the conversation has taken. Thanks poto and everyone else for your contributions...

:anjali:
~Chris
Oct. 30, 2009








October 24th, Global Action... 350, that's the safe level of parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere. We are now pushing dangerously past that....

NPR: Demonstrating What 350 Means To Climate Change

International Day Of Climate Action: The Most Creative 350 Photos

GuardianUK: London Eye rally one of 4,600 climate actions for 350 campaign

CBS News: Global events mark magic number on climate change

Sydney Morning Herald: 350 ways to send an urgent message


:group:
Last edited by christopher::: on Sat Oct 31, 2009 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."
~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

In Praise of Scepticism

A fine article by Clive James on the BBC Website.
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poto
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by poto »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:In Praise of Scepticism

A fine article by Clive James on the BBC Website.
+1 for skeptics!

The whole 350ppm CO2 limit thing strikes me as nonsensical. One of my hobbies is horticulture. I know from experience with CO2 supplementation that plant growth doubles to triples with CO2 concentrations at around 800-1200ppm. Higher CO2 means crop yields will increase and we can feed more people with less land...

In the past our planet has had CO2 concentrations well above 4,500ppm without disaster.

Some interesting points on this issues I've seen mentioned elsewhere:
Again, let me point this out, because somehow it completely gets lost
in the message. Every time someone says “CO2 has increased 100ppm since
the start of the industrial revolution”, they always try to portray that
the entire 100ppm CO2 rise is from human emissions. Even if they don’t
think it, they leave out any notion that would reveal that only 3% (3ppm)
of that CO2 is from human emissions.
When I was in high school we were taught the composition of air.
CO2 concentration was reckoned to be so small that it was,
for all practical purposes, zero. Nowadays even a smidgen of
CO2 will heat us up and two smidgens will boil our livers.

Can’t someone design a simple experiment with a constant long
wave radition source and air with different concentrations of
CO2 in a closed atmosphere to see if adding CO2 actually does
warm the air due to a greenhouse effect? Has this already been done?

reply:

We’ve already done this experiment. Take 2 greenhouses [top vents open],
leave 1 at ambient CO2, @390 ppm, and pump CO2 into the other to 1000 ppm
[common commercial greenhouse CO2 levels]. Take temperature measurements
at different times during the day. You will find that there is virtually
NO difference in temperature between the two greenhouses, but the plants
in the 1000 ppm greenhouse will grow much better and faster.
Also, if we humans somehow manage to start containing and reducing vast quantities of atmospheric CO2 and we overshoot that 350ppm target by a large margin or somebody gets overzealous, we risk killing most all life on earth. As all plant life pretty much stops at CO2 concentrations below 150ppm. That concerns me a bit, but as we humans don't seem technologically advanced enough to start capturing vast amounts of CO2 form the atmosphere, I'm not too worried yet.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis
mindfullmom
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by mindfullmom »

I'm all for caring for the earth, bringing our awareness to how we think, speak and act in all aspects of our lives. Clearly we need to focus on our need for consumption (greed) and as a community rethink our lifestyles. But to make policy that will effect each and every one of us without an equal sided conversation could be harmful. Poto's comments are enlightening. And I have read things like this that make me wonder:

[quoteAlmost two decades before President Barack Obama made “cap-and-trade” for carbon dioxide emissions a household term, an obscure company called Enron — a natural-gas pipeline company that had become a big-time trader in energy commodities — had figured out how to make millions in a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide emissions, thanks to changes in the U.S. government’s Clean Air Act. To the delight of shareholders, Enron’s stock price rose rapidly as it became the major trader in the U.S. government’s $20-billion a year emissions commodity market.

Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keen to engineer an encore, saw his opportunity when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were inaugurated as president and vice-president in 1993. To capitalize on Al Gore’s interest in global warming, Enron immediately embarked on a massive lobbying effort to develop a trading system for carbon dioxide, working both the Clinton administration and Congress. Political contributions and Enron-funded analyses flowed freely, all geared to demonstrating a looming global catastrophe if carbon dioxide emissions weren’t curbed. An Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming, meanwhile, was quietly buried.][/quote]

http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2009/05/ ... rade-scam/

And this:
Concentrate on things that are important, like those who are pushing this energy bill stand to gain the most from it:

• Nancy Pelosi has $50,000 to $100,000 in Clean Energy Fuels Corp.

• Rep. Edward Markey — hmm, why does that name sound familiar? — has investments between $51,000 and $115,000 in the Firsthand Technology Value Fund (which as three solar-energy manufacturers)

• Al Gore — Mr. "Inconvenient Truth" himself — his venture capital firm is heavily invested in a new software company that's making software to help companies track their carbon footprint. He, and companies like his, will make a fortune.

Not only will this bill make politicians rich, it will increase their power as well. The government will control what you can and cannot do.
Things like this make me question the intentions and motives behind these decision makers.
Can anyone please tell me why anyone who stands to gain is not prohibited from making these decision? :cookoo:
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by poto »

I have seen that mentioned before about the new energy derivatives market that would be created and it does seem like a bad idea to me as well. After all, much of our present economic mess is due partly to mortgages packaged into derivatives and resold as securities. I don't see the logic in doing something similar with our energy market and risking more manipulation and the resulting bubbles.
mindfullmom wrote: Things like this make me question the intentions and motives behind these decision makers.
Can anyone please tell me why anyone who stands to gain is not prohibited from making these decision? :cookoo:
My guess would be rampant corruption.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis
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christopher:::
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by christopher::: »

It's good to be skeptical... Still, seems to me like a switch to alternative energy technologies has a lot of potential for being largely a positive change, even omiting the global warming debate. Less reliance on fossil fuels 1) reduces pollution in our atmosphere, as well as 2) taking away the incentive for Western nations to meddle (violently) in Middle Eastern politics....

Add to that 3) potential economic benefits, if the price of alternative energy falls dramatically...

The sun and wind's energy, if harnested skillfully, could eventually (not counting technology costs) be free...
"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."
~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009
mindfullmom
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by mindfullmom »

I agree with the positive changes that could come from using alternative energy technologies but I would be more comfortable with less government involvment for the above reasons.

Can anyone more knowledgable than me lay out both sides of the global warming issue? There are many scientists for it but then, I understand, there are 3x's as many against it.

How does a laywoman like myself know which one is accurate? If this is off the intent of the original topic, please let me know. :thanks:
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by christopher::: »

mindfullmom wrote:I agree with the positive changes that could come from using alternative energy technologies but I would be more comfortable with less government involvment for the above reasons.

Can anyone more knowledgable than me lay out both sides of the global warming issue? There are many scientists for it but then, I understand, there are 3x's as many against it.

How does a laywoman like myself know which one is accurate? If this is off the intent of the original topic, please let me know. :thanks:
No, you ask good questions. I can provide some information. One crucial thing is we each have to make a judgment call about who we are most likely to trust, which individuals and organizations. I'd never heard that 3x's as many scientists were skeptical, and would be interested in knowing the source of that...

At the center of the C02 is causing Global Warming position is this graph from the National Academy of Sciences, below, (which i posted at ZFI recently and) which Al Gore presented in the movie Inconvenient Truth...

Image

It shows an extremely close correlation between CO2 ppm and average temperature of ice samples (from various time periods) taken in Antarctica, 300 thousand years ago to the present (more details can be found at the National Academy Museum's website here). If this data is inaccurate or false, the Global Warming position is faulty. If its accurate, their position is extremely solid, in the opinion of many scientists, including most of the world's nobel laureates in Science (according to this source here).

Now, not everyone agrees, that is true. And there has been talk of 9 factual errors presented in Gore's movie. You can read about them here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... ruths.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And here is a response to the above criticisms, from a group of Climate Scientists, with links to further information.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... -untruths/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Recently some scientists have claimed that the data over the last 10 years points to Global Cooling, rather then Global Warming. There was a report last week however that when the data was given to Statisticians, without knowledge of what the data referred to, they noted the Warming trend, and not the Cooling Trend, viewing the data as a 30 year whole...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8919024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you skip everything else here, I would suggest at least looking at this last link.

:anjali:
"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."
~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009
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catmoon
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by catmoon »

mindfullmom wrote: How does a laywoman like myself know which one is accurate? If this is off the intent of the original topic, please let me know. :thanks:
You can't know. All you can do is decide which side has the most trustworthy spokespeople and trust them.

Even if you got a Ph.D in the subject, you would still only have an opinion and be faced by many opposing Ph.D's.

There is a fact or two you can check: Global CO2 levels have been rising steadily over the last century or two and there have been consistent direct measurements of the level over that time. Also, recent years have been consistently among the warmest on record and the trend is continuing. North polar ice may melt completely soon and is thinner than ever measured before. Large chunks of south polar ice sheet have broken off and are drifting away.

But the problem is there is no way to KNOW that these changes are caused by human activity and not by something else.

Regardless of cause, the question arises, "Is something happening" and the answer is clearly "yes". The next questions to look at are "Should we do something about it?" and "Can we do anything about it?"
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by christopher::: »

Even if we knew with absolute certainty that rising C02 levels increase the temperature of the atmosphere there are so many variables involved that actual temp and sea level change is impossible to predict with complete accuracy. An example, as ice melts in the North Pole and other regions the dark sea absorbs heat, where earlier white snow had reflected it. Does that mean warmer seas but cooler air or warmer planet overall?

Also, there are scientists who believe the actual heat/warmth reaching the earth has fallen 10% over decades due to a blanket of pollutants in the atmosphere. If those pollutants were cleared up the earth would get even hotter...

Really impossible to predict what's going to be happening 20 years from now, let alone a hundred years in the future. Still, a large number of scientists advise that we should be very cautious about allowing C02 levels to keep rising and should do whatever we can to reverse the tread, bringing the levels back down, to about 350ppm...
"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."
~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009
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Jechbi
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by Jechbi »

One thing that's certain: All that air pollution is no good for our lungs. In some areas, air pollution actually kills. The effort to reduce emissions of PM2, NOx, and so on should not be dismissed over some politically motivated dispute regarding the validity of a particular numeric threshhold, imho.
Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,
But never soddens what is open;
Uncover, then, what is concealed,
Lest it be soddened by the rain.
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by poto »

christopher::: wrote: At the center of the C02 is causing Global Warming position is this graph from the National Academy of Sciences, below, (which i posted at ZFI recently and) which Al Gore presented in the movie Inconvenient Truth...

Image

It shows an extremely close correlation between CO2 ppm and average temperature of ice samples
Correlation does not equal causation. It's hard to see in that image because of the time scale, but CO2 lags behind temperature by up to a few hundred years.

Also, we do not yet even understand what causes the cycles of glaciation that are pictured in the graph you posted. One thing is certain though, we have passed the Holocene Maximum of our present Interglacial period. Human impact is not very likely to be able to change the course of the earth's glaciation cycles, but if we're really luck maybe our emissions will help delay the onset of the next ice age by a few hundred years. :tongue:

Image

If CO2 drove temperature, we should see much warmer temps than we are now.
christopher::: wrote: Recently some scientists have claimed that the data over the last 10 years points to Global Cooling, rather then Global Warming. There was a report last week however that when the data was given to Statisticians, without knowledge of what the data referred to, they noted the Warming trend, and not the Cooling Trend, viewing the data as a 30 year whole...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8919024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you skip everything else here, I would suggest at least looking at this last link.

:anjali:
That was a shoddy attempt at political journalism.

Although, buried on page 4 of that article you find this:
"It pretty much depends on when you start," wrote John Christy, the Alabama atmospheric scientist who collects the satellite data that skeptics use. He said in an e-mail that looking back 31 years, temperatures have gone up nearly three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit (four-tenths of a degree Celsius). The last dozen years have been flat, and temperatures over the last eight years have declined a bit, he wrote.
That alone PROVES that the IPCC's catastrophic global warming projections are all WRONG! The models all predicted warming, none of them predicted flat or declining temperatures. Furthermore, the longer temperatures stay flat or decline, the more it flattens any future projected warming curves.

There is still so much we don't understand about climate.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by christopher::: »

poto wrote:
christopher::: wrote: At the center of the C02 is causing Global Warming position is this graph from the National Academy of Sciences...

It shows an extremely close correlation between CO2 ppm and average temperature of ice samples
Correlation does not equal causation. It's hard to see in that image because of the time scale, but CO2 lags behind temperature by up to a few hundred years.

Also, we do not yet even understand what causes the cycles of glaciation that are pictured in the graph you posted. One thing is certain though, we have passed the Holocene Maximum of our present Interglacial period. Human impact is not very likely to be able to change the course of the earth's glaciation cycles, but if we're really luck maybe our emissions will help delay the onset of the next ice age by a few hundred years. :tongue:

That's a very good point, concerning a possible ice age, on the horizon. It's a tricky thing...

But you say "if we're really lucky our emissions will help delay the next ice age." That means you do concede that our emissions may be producing a warming of temperature. That leaves the riddle of a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature, with temperature sometimes leading...

It's possible that increased temperature for some reason proceeds more forest fires or volcanic activity, which then pumps more CO2 in the air.

I remember Gore talking about yearly cycles, how CO2 levels increase as temperatures fall and the northern hemisphere is in winter, decreasing in summer when the temperatures are warmer and trees suck in the CO2 to produce leaves. This creates the ups and downs of the green line we see below, with higher temperatures causing a temporary reduction in CO2 in the summer...
Image


If CO2 drove temperature, we should see much warmer temps than we are now.
Not if the relationship exists, but is asymmetrical and nonlinear. That's why one must look at long term trends and averages of data over blocks of time, not short term ups and down. We had a superhot year in 1998 and then in 2005. Climate scientists predict those records will be broken with another superhot year before 2015.

If that happens, and 2010-2020 averages are higher then 2000-2010 which are higher then 1990-2000 which is higher then 1980-1990, etc then we do have a warming trend...

The crucial thing of course is the question, "do human emissions drive up the temperature?" If CO2 does not trap in heat as theorized then something else is at work....
christopher::: wrote: Recently some scientists have claimed that the data over the last 10 years points to Global Cooling, rather then Global Warming. There was a report last week however that when the data was given to Statisticians, without knowledge of what the data referred to, they noted the Warming trend, and not the Cooling Trend, viewing the data as a 30 year whole...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8919024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you skip everything else here, I would suggest at least looking at this last link.

:anjali:
That was a shoddy attempt at political journalism.

Although, buried on page 4 of that article you find this:
"It pretty much depends on when you start," wrote John Christy, the Alabama atmospheric scientist who collects the satellite data that skeptics use. He said in an e-mail that looking back 31 years, temperatures have gone up nearly three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit (four-tenths of a degree Celsius).

The last dozen years have been flat, and temperatures over the last eight years have declined a bit, he wrote.
That alone PROVES that the IPCC's catastrophic global warming projections are all WRONG! The models all predicted warming, none of them predicted flat or declining temperatures. Furthermore, the longer temperatures stay flat or decline, the more it flattens any future projected warming curves.
No, i dont think it proves that. Again, the skeptics keep focusing on shorter time periods. Temperatures fell below 1998 levels cause that year was the highest peak temp on record. But 2005 came close to that, and some believe it was even higher. The important thing is long term trends and averages.

As the article said:
Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.
You make some good points, and the evidence is not 100% conclusive in support of global warming- especially over the long looooong term, when as you say we might find another ice age coming. But i don't think the opposite is true either, that the evidence proves IPCC predictions (for this century) are wrong.

That article (above) lays it out pretty clearly, imo...
There is still so much we don't understand about climate.
I'll agree with you there.

:anjali:
"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."
~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by christopher::: »

P.S. according to that article global warming "skeptics" prefer satellite data while "believers" prefer ground data. I think that's perhaps a bit deceptive, on both sides. Scientists should be using some kind of averages of both data sets. You can't choose one data set and exclude the other unless you believe the data has been tampered with, and i havent heard that accusation.

From the article:
The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis."

One prominent skeptic said that to find the cooling trend, the 30 years of satellite temperatures must be used. The satellite data tends to be cooler than the ground data. And key is making sure 1998 is part of the trend, he added.

It's what happens within the past 10 years or so, not the overall average, that counts, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic.

"I don't argue with you that the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years," said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. "We started the cooling trend after 1998. You're going to get a different line depending on which year you choose.

"Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?" Easterbrook asked. "We can play the numbers games."

That's the problem, some of the statisticians said.

Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive."

The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said.

Apart from the conflicting data analyses is the eyebrow-raising new book title from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance."

A line in the book says: "Then there's this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased."

That led to a sharp rebuke from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which said the book mischaracterizes climate science with "distorted statistics."

Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures, but "eyeballed" the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the "cooling" reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially.

Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years.

"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford.

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Lab, called it "a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policymakers" ahead of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.
"As Buddhists, we should aim to develop relationships that are not predominated by grasping and clinging. Our relationships should be characterised by the brahmaviharas of metta (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity)."
~post by Ben, Jul 02, 2009
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poto
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Re: 350: Global Events for Climate Action, Real Change

Post by poto »

christopher::: wrote:P.S. according to that article global warming "skeptics" prefer satellite data while "believers" prefer ground data. I think that's perhaps a bit deceptive, on both sides. Scientists should be using some kind of averages of both data sets. You can't choose one data set and exclude the other unless you believe the data has been tampered with, and i havent heard that accusation.
Some of the ground stations are not set up properly. They produce bad data and corrupt the whole data set. This is why many "skeptics" prefer the unbiased satellite data. It may also be why the ground data usually always shows warmer temps than the satellite data.

Some of them are mentioned here:
http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Back on the subject of CO2. I never said that CO2 drives temperature, only that I hoped it would increase the temps some. You see, I live in Ohio, and it gets bloody cold here... I could use some warming. I hope for warming, but I haven't seen it yet.

Going back further on the CO2 charts to 30 million years, we see no correlation.
Image



Those that mentioned the melting of the ice caps need not worry. There is zero chance of either the Arctic or Antarctic ice cap completely melting within our lifetimes.

Antarctica's ice extent is pushing new record highs. Wish I had a more current image, but this shows it's above average and upward trajectory this year.

Image

As for the Arctic, you can see the minimum this year was significantly more than 2007 or 2008. In fact, there was so much more ice that stayed around this melt season that it tracked closer to 2005's line. I see nothing to be worried about here.

Image
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis
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