The Holocene Deniers

[Thistlethorn]

Wow. Freak out much? Strange prophesy.

It's not a prophecy in the biblical sense. It's a prophecy in the common sense. The Netherlands is on average 1-7 meters below sea level. If the sea level rises with only a few meters, the country will be under water. 16 and a half million people live in the Netherlands.

That tactic is fear mongering, and hypocritical.

If lies were told, I would agree (not that it's hypocritical, but that it's fear mongering). However, the scientists doing this aren't lying.

Do you drive a car? Live in a house, or apt? Use heat or AC. or electricity? Have you taken a cruise, or tour in train or bus? What exactly is it you think we should do about the changing realities of the planet? I figure that is is better to accept change. If the north gets warmer, and polar bears all die, and Kodiak bears move in, or something, and plants, why cry over it? Why scare school kids, and make them feel they killed the cute white bears?

I feel it is highly worrying that you feel absolutely no responsibility for the earth you leave to your children. I feel it is highly immoral of you to not care for the millions of people that will perish from famine or, at the very best, go homeless.

What do I want? For starters, I want increased funding towards green energy research. I want strict treaties on green-house gas emission. I want first-world nations to actively aid third-world nations to shift to cleaner energy sources. These things would do for starters. I will leave the details of how much needs to be done up to the climatologists. I leave the process up to the politicians.

 

[Spaceman_Spiff]

YouTube - The Video Climate Deniers Tried to Ban - Climate Denial Crock of the Week

 

[grmorton]

I am Welsh but I have been an exploration geophysicist for 20 years for GSI, Halliburton and Western. I am currently a Chief Geophysicist for a multinational exploration contractor.

So we find the fields and the Oil Company interpreters get the credit

there is no doubt that without what you do, we can't find oil. I used to do what you do. I started out on a field crew, acquiring data and then I moved into seismic processing. I know what you mean about the oil company interpretors getting the credit. That is why I left that end of the business and became an interpretor. But if I were to apply your standard to my career, then I too found multiple billions of barrels of oil. The problem is, I can't name the fields because I wasn't the one who mapped it, and that is why you can't name your fields.



When I did what you do, I acquired lots of data which would be handed off to the interpretor. I didn't understand why the interpretor got the credit. Here is why. First, he must decide that a given area is worth acquiring seismic data over. Then he must convince his investors or boss to spend anywhere from $4 to $50 million to actually get the data. Then after you acquire the data over the area (and you don't actually even know what level the target is, or what kind of structure is being targeted), the interpretor must look at the data and decide that a particular spot on the earth at a particular depth is prospective. Then he must convince the boss/investor to spend more money doing more processing of the data you acquired. Then he must do the hard thing--sell the well to someone. Since oil wells cost upwards of $200 million or more, he must have a good technical as well as a good sales ability. This is why the interpretor gets the credit. In my case, unlike in yours, I actually either mapped the field personally or oversaw people who worked for me who did the mapping. I was the one who did the above. But if you want to count the time I spent in acquisition and processing, then I too probably found billions, but I, like you, can't name what fields they are or even know if that data I acquired was the key to finding the field. Often I as an interpretor have 2 or 3 vintages of seismic and where one is good another vintage is bad data.

I would just note, that I was the interpretor or the manager of interpretors, not the acquisitions guy.

The first field I "found" was an extension to Clare. You don't find large fields these days in mature provinces like the North sea just satellites. but I have moved into frontier 2D work in the Far East now as it is more interesting so my day may come again.

I see that one of my wells just started production over in the UK, Affleck. I sold Kerr-McGee's management on acquiring an ocean bottom cable over that old Shell well. It gave them enough encouragement to drill a confirmation well and go to production. That ocean bottom cable survey was extremely expensive--about 4 million GBP.

Don't get me wrong, Baggins, what you do is absolutely essential but what you said does inflate things a bit.

No, and it doesn't.

We will disagree on whether the do or not. Do you think setting a thermometer above an airconditioner exhaust is a good way to measure the temperature? Do you think that the climatologists in letting that situation continue are ignoring contradictory data because one can't get a good temperature above an air conditioner exhaust fan?

Absolutely not, we get paid whatever the results company policy is to give the client the bad news unvarnished.

Well, you do not have the same claim to finding oil that I do because you don't make the maps, yet you arrogantly came on hear puffing up your ability to find oil. I have hired each of the companies you mention. GSI and Western, don't give anyone bad news on wells. Those guys don't know anything about the well when it is drilled. So 'company policy' is meaningless Baggins. The guy on the rig is the one who calls the office and gives the bad news. As to Halliburton,, they deliver the logs but they are not the ones who interpret them and thus know the bad news. That is done internal to the oil companies today.
The only time I saw Halliburton deliver a log interpretation was when I was working for a 4 man company and we didn't have the money to hire a petrophysicist to do the work for ourselves.

Okay

Glad you don't object to the physics.

Its called climate change and global warming. No one expects uniform heating and climate change over the whole earth, well no one sensible at any rate.

Climate change might be global cooling, something for which there is no reason to tax everyone. Everyone knows what a rhetorical sleight of hand this sudden change to the term 'climate change' is. If it isn't warming, then nothing needs to be done. If it is warming, then it ain't merely climate change.

And no, I am not suggesting a uniform heating rate, but it is ridiculous to think that a radiative process isn't going to be seen all over the world raising the low temperatures on average and the high temperatures on average which should mean that Antarctic ice extent in the winter should be melting and going away as well. It isn't.

Okay



Okay



Because it is boring and academic and not sensational front page stuff?

Exactly, but they then use the 'sensational' stuff to scare the unknowledgeable. This is science, not Hysteria 101. Science should make it extremely clear to the reporters that 1. the arctic and antarctic are climatologically out of phase. When one warms the other cools. 2. that the southern ice shelves are getting bigger each year while at the same time the arctic melts. What you hear is nothing but melting stories. That is cherry picking the data.

If you buy loopy right wing papers like the Daily mail you probably will hear about it if distorted and mangled to fit their politics.

so, are you trying to say that the growth of the southern oceanic ice shelf is subject to political interpretation? I thought it was merely scientific data. It is growing quite significantly but the hysteriacs don't mention it as a temper to their scare-mongering. Why do you think that is? Boring maybe, but it is fact. And it is dishonest not to point it out forcefully.

one of this affects the point that there is a scientific consensus that the Earth is warming climatic patterns are changing and we are too some degree responsible. I accept that.

Earths climate patterns are ALWAYS changing. Big deal.

I am not aware of a consensus as to the degree of responsibility or to the likely outcome although things don't appear to be going well.

Why does everyone want consensus? Science isn't about consensus, that is what one wants in a church--everyone agreeing to a given doctrinal statement. Science should be everyone challenging everything, but somehow people who claim to be scientists are wanting everyone to accept a church doctrine--The church of the warm globe.

Given that and given that hydrocarbons are a finite source that should be husbanded I think we should react as if things are going to be pretty catastrophic, this is based on a simple premise.

Which is one benefits of opposing global warming, not a reason for it, is that we are about to run out of oil as a world and it will happen long before any global warming gets us but all the people are looking at the wrong crisis. Everyone is worried about what might happen a 100 years out but few are looking at what the world oil supply will be in merely 5-10 years.

If we act and the scientists are wrong then we probably wasted a few % points on GDP but have husbanded an important resource and made large steps to finding alternative energy sources.

If we don't act and the scientists are correct we will damage human civilisation possibly to the point of sending it into reverse.

Bull honky. this is nothing but a reconfigured Pascal's Wager. Most of you all who disagree with the YECs would clobber a YEC for bringing up Pascal's wager yet here you are, postulating your own version of it.

we will condemn hundreds of millions to death displace huge populations and send human progress into reverse.

Oh get serious. Are you saying that all those people will stand there while the water rises above their heads and drowns them? How stupid do you think those Bangladeshi's are?

That looks like a no brainer to me. and seeing as I am not tied to a political ideology that makes accepting AGW anathema it is an easy decision to make.

What would you think of a person who wanted to stop continental drift? Wouldn't you think they are daft? And we have a whole world-full of people who think they can control the weather. What a hoot.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Spaceman Spiff thanks for posting that!

(And I don't even care about the Heartland institute stuff, I was just really impressed with the citations it mentioned!)

 

[grmorton]

No, I stated out right that the peer-reviewed papers you used as references DID NOT support the assertions you made. Those assertions, if you have forgotten already, were that scientists believing in global-warming are denying the Holocene, and that man-made global warming is nothing to be worried about. Neither assertion is supported by your sources.

I never said that those articles supported the silly view you seem to have twisted off into. I said that climatologists were ignoring what has happened within the past 5000 years. You seem incapable of following the logic so here it is. Climatologists know about but don't mention in any press reports the fact that the sea levels were higher 5000 years ago, that Norway was free of glaciers 5000 or so years ago, that Antarctic ice shelves were more melted than today that the world was 2-3 deg. C warmer than at pressent. Thus, they ignore the Holocene and go on to make blythe political statements about what must be done to avoid what has already happened. To me, that is denying the Holocene. Are you a Holocene denier?

If you truly are a scientist of any kind you will understand what I mean.

How childish the above is. A scientist is defined by understanding you? What a hoot!

The climate can be kept in equilibrium for many years, until the balance is broken by changing circumstances in the earth's environment, for example, increased amounts of particles in the atmosphere due to volcanic eruption, the angle of earth rotation changing (the earth wobbles after all), or any other such major event. When this happens, the climate drastically changes. As long as the environment stays the same, the climate is in equilibrium. But you know this, right?

The climate is never in equilibrium. Have you ever studied thermodynamics?

And it does. The problem, as I've already told you, is that our pumping out more CO2 into the atmosphere heats the earth beyond the point at which it can absorb the CO2 (f.ex. plants using photosynthesis). This means we are plunged into a vicious circle. Again, you already know this. It's not rocket-science, and it's something you learn in high-school.

REally? What is the OBSERVATIONAL evidence of this? Did you not pay attention to my posting of a graph from Nature showing that in the Eocene we had over 1000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere? What happened to the Eocene world? Nothing. Animals adapted to new environments. Some went extinct, new ones evolved. The world was about 20 deg C warmer then than now (because the poles were very warm) and it still absorbed the CO2--it was absorbed in large measure by a plant that spread called azolla. I am always amazed at how UNEVOLUTIONARY global warmers are. They think in terms of static species and a static earth. They seem not to understand that there are all sorts of feedback loops.

Let's look at a graph of temperatures since the mid 1800s shall we?
metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/myth6_1.gif

This is a perfect example of how you all pick and choose the data to make it appear SCARY. The MET office started your chart at 1855. It makes the temperature look stable up until 1920. What a crock of crap that is. Let's expand our horizon to the past 2000 years of temperature variation.
Below is that. Notice that prior to 1855 which the Met office cherry picked as the starting point, the temperature was much much much colder. 1600 was when the warming began, Thistlethorn, not 1920. Yet, gasp, there were no automobiles back in 1600. Indeed the warming from 1600 to 1850 was just about the same as the warming since 1850. One might pick 1650 as the start of the warming because it remained pretty cold from 1600 to 1650. So, Why did you cherry pick your starting point?

Please explain why the world was warming for 200 years prior to when your graph, which supposedly shows the dastardly impact of many, starts.
Please explain how you can tell on this graph what warming is from man and what warming is from nature. Quantify the difference.

Let's combine that with a graph of CO2 and other green-house gases emitted:
Since I can't post links or images yet (need 50 posts) I ask you to use this adress: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type_to_Y2004.png />

The correlation is quite easy to see there.

Not it isn't if you don't cherry pick the start time of the graph.

For the record, one reason I don't like this board is its silly rules like you can't post images until you have 50 posts. I will help you get there.
I also hate the 5 mb limit. Other boards don't have that limit.

Let's counter that whole paragraph with a few simple lines and a picture: (again, go to the source as I can't post links or images)
solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600px-Temp-sunspot-co2.svg.png

Once again, there is this cherry picking of the starting point. 1860ish. That hides the data that shows that the world warmed as much from 1650 to 1850 as it has from 1850 to 2009. It is very sad that you don't have the curiosity to look at what could be wrong with your data and that you blindly believe what they feed you. No doubt you are a nice guy, but you really shouldn't trust what they feed you.

Climatologists are aware that the sun is a contributing factor. However, as can be clearly seen in the graph above, it cannot in any way account for the total change in temperature. Scientists estimate about a quarter of the total change can be attributed to solar activity. For more information about this, see the solar-center at Stanford University, solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html

Didn't you read that quotation I had from Kininmonth? or the one from Reimer? Here is Reimer again.

"The reconstruction shows that the current episode of high sunspot number, which has lasted for the past 70 years, has been the most intense and has had the longest duration of any in the past 8,000 years. Based on the length of previous episodes of high activity, the probability that the current event will continue until the end of the t wenty-first century is quite low (1%)." Paula J. Reimer, "Spots from Rings," Nature, 431(2004), p. 1047

Guess what was happening 8000 years ago? The glaciers were melting as the Mid Holocene climate optimum was beginning. Amazing. 8000 years ago the sun was as active as during the last part of the 20th century and amazingly the same things are happening--things are melting. What an amazing thing that the sun might melt things.

That's because I can only post images by giving you links. A pretty big disability. However, I think I've been able to work around it to provide you with the evidence you were looking for. It's evidence that is very easy to find, and I'm shocked that you haven't seen it before.

I have looked at your posts. I will use a bit of my bandwidth to post your picture of the Met temperaure. You can clearly see that by cherrypicking 1855 as the starting point they hide the really interesing NON CO2 related warming. What sleight of hand the Met is providing to the kiddies.

My mistake. I'm not a native English speaker, so I thought that earth scientists were academics like any other scientists. Now that you've told me about your close link with the petroleum industry, your whole denial is much easier to understand. If people start using less oil, your job is on the line. It's a pity you feel the need to set your own professional life against the lives of so many other people.

No. I know that Baggins is going to claim that he doesn't know any geoscientists who doubt global warming. All I can say is that riding boats one doesn't run into many actual mappers of geology. My experience is that very few of the interpreters who have to know geologic history well beleive that global warming is going to be a problem. I believe that the world has warmed. But CO2 didn't cause the warming from 1650-1920.

By the way as a bit of humor, the paper that 2000 year temp profile came from says that it is too late. CO2 can't be mitigated for 1000 years. Thus, nothing we can do will solve the problem. We will be out of coal and oil by the latter part of this century so we might as well relax about warming.

Because the last part is a complete fallacy. That the earth has experienced climate change before doesn't lessen the impact of the current one, OR the fact that WE are responsible for this one, and it's going much faster than we believe the earlier ones went. How hard is this to understand: People will die and/or become homeless in their millions!

So who was responsible for the warming from 1650 to 1850? How do you tell who is responsible? Let's hang that guy that farted too much back in 1650!

No, I would say that Hansen is doing his part to convey to the masses that this is a serious situation. This kind of tactic is necessary, especially with people like you out there, obfuscating science and calling for nothing to be done out of purely selfish reasons.

So lying is necessary? How interesting. He is stretching science by lying about what will happen if the world warms and you think that is ok. I don't. I don't ever think lying is good.

That's because that's bending the truth, at best. Natural processes might have been kicking off before, but the current trend of temperature change is almost only because of human activities.

What a laugh. You just got through saying that Hansen could lie, then you turn around and imply that it is awful that I am 'bending the truth' which I am not. A question. In your view, Is it only ok for bending to be done by your side?

 

[grmorton]

I work in the oil industry and I have an extensive network of friends who are Earth Scientists from university days and work and I have never met an Earth Scientist who doesn't accept the consensus of climatologists belief than humans are causing global warming and climate change.

Mr Morton must move in very different earth Science circles to those that I move in. There is no professional body of Earth Scientists that doesn't accept AGW either as far as I am aware.

Yes, I don't move in university circles where everyone must think in lockstep. Unlike in academia, we in industry actually encourage out of the box thinking.

I always think that Academics are a bit like teenagers. They say they are independent thinkers but they all dress the same and say the same things and go to the same places to be seen.

Yes, this will insult the academics, but try challenging anything in a university--it will be stompped out.

 

[grmorton]

Darn tootin I am serious. I think we have all been sold a bill of goods. Pay attention in this debate to who is posting quotes and graphs from peer reviewed journals. Those that aren't are mostly parroting what they read in the news papers.[/quoote]
Ok




So how do you explain the far from anywhere glacier bigger than Scotland melting 6 times faster? Does that mean the satellite data is wrong, because it doesn't snow enough?

It is being melted from beneath. Stick an ice cube in water and it will melt faster than if it is sitting in air.

If a planet heats up, would not the waters on the planet also get warm? Why would it matter if air or water melted it? What about the fuss in the arctic over Canada? The passage is open longer and longer each year, they even talk about it being open year round fairly soon.

The thermal inertia for water is huge. It takes a huge amount of heat to raise the average temperature a microscopic amount. See above or do the experiment for why it matters.

Yes, absolutely. But that's something for another thread. Too big for this one.

I agree but I was just curious. I used to be a YEC. I published 30 YEC items in CRSQ and elsewhere.

Ah, OK. Now we are getting into the deep past, and that is very thin ice for old agers.

I won't comment on this in this thread. Don't want to derail it.

 

[grmorton]

If lies were told, I would agree (not that it's hypocritical, but that it's fear mongering). However, the scientists doing this aren't lying.

Well then at least they are denying the facts of the Holocene. It was 2-3 deg C warmer 5000 years ago. Hansen knows this. He says that if we warm from here 2-3 degrees we risk a runaway greenhouse, yet, that didn't happen 5000 years ago. I can only draw a couple of conclusions from this. Either Hansen is lying; Hansen is ignorant, or we had a runaway greenhouse 5000 years ago.

I don't think the latter is very probable.

I am going to post something that you won't hear from the Hysteriacs. Greenland is getting colder and has been since 2001. This is from NOAA's Climate at a Glance site. You can get to this by doing a spatial map and then clicking on the dots. Graphs like these will pop up. I have one for each dot on Greenland. Only 2 of the 14 are warming. All others show that Greenland, far from melting is getting colder. Of course, no one will tell you this. They conveniently leave this out as well.

 

[grmorton]

YouTube - The Video Climate Deniers Tried to Ban - Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Oh I would like to thank you as did Thaumaturgy. It gives me a chance to show the propaganda in this piece of du jour and de riguer propaganda

I just watched the propaganda piece that everyone is agog at. Some observations first. They use ad hominems quite liberally. Notice that they state that the Heartland Institute supported smoking and then the video says that the Heartland is changing from one issue killing people to another. I would like to know why support for the freedom to smoke implies that their position on global warming is going to kill people? Here is what the propaganda piece doesn't tell folks:


Heartland Institute Defending smokers is a thankless task in today’s politically correct environment, and Bast doesn’t deny that smoking is an unhealthy habit. But today’s taxes and bans go far beyond a reasonable public policy response to a public health problem. Bast asks for a reasoned debate that respects the rights of smokers and the owners of bars and restaurants.
http://www.heartland.org/suites/tobacco/

© source where applicable


It is a point held both by conservatives and libertarians that the owner of a bar or restaurant should have control over what happens within that bar or restaurant. It is the owner who supposedly owns the bar but the nannies on the left think it is their right to force owners to do their bidding and behave as these nannies require. Note that they acknowledge that smoking is bad for you; but that is a different question from whether or not you, as a free adult, have the right to live life freely, which is what the Heartland is defending.

Analogously, libertarians would argue that marijuana should be legal because they are free adults--many on the left agree with that but then turn around and hypocritically deny cigarette smokers their rights of association.

Finally, I used to smoke 2 packs a day and quit about 30 years ago. It is a bad nasty habit but so is picking one's nose. No one has the right to tell anyone that they can't pick their nose.

I would also point out the utter ludicrousness of tying tobacco to global warming as if those who support freedoms are therefore wrong on everything else they believe in. That is a tactic of pure propaganda meisters.

Note that NOAA agreed that many of the stations were bad. but then they say that the well sited stations show the same trend as the badly sited stations. This is quite interesting. If the well sited stations and the poorly sited stations show the same thing, why would one even say that the poorly sited stations are bad????? How can something that shows the same as a good station actually be considered to be bad???? This is a true mystery of the universe.

While I can't prove it right now, my strong suspicion is that NOAA used a sleight of hand and used the EDITED data where the homogeneity filter had been applied to the data. For those who don't know, the Homogeneity filter takes stations that aren't showing the expected amount of warming and tilts them until they do show the expected amount of warming. I call it cheating, but they call it science. This 'correction' takes the cooling stations and changes their trends into warming trends. So, my question is, is the NOAA curve a curve that has had the homogeneity 'correction' applied to it???


THOMAS C. PETERSON, “EXAMINATION OF POTENTIAL
BIASES IN AIR TEMPERATURECAUSED BY POOR STATION
LOCATIONS,” American Meteorological Society, Aug, 2006, p. 1078 fig 2 “The homogeneity adjustments applied to the stations with poor siting
makes their trend very similar to the trend at the stations with good
siting.” THOMAS C. PETERSON, “EXAMINATION OF POTENTIAL
BIASES IN AIR TEMPERATURECAUSED BY POOR STATION
LOCATIONS,” American Meteorological Society, Aug, 2006, p. 1078 fig 2

“Again, the homogeneity adjustments applied to the stations
with poor siting make their trend very similar to the trend at the
stations with good siting.” THOMAS C. PETERSON, “EXAMINATION OF POTENTIAL
BIASES IN AIR TEMPERATURECAUSED BY POOR STATION
LOCATIONS,” American Meteorological Society, Aug, 2006, p. 1078 fig 3.


© source where applicable


Below is a picture of the before and after for the Homogeneity filter.

Towards the end of this emotion-laden propaganda piece they make the statement that the same people who doubt global warming are those who thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Once again, this is a case of "don't look at the man behind the curtain'. It is an emotional/political appeal which has no bearing upon whether or not the world is warming. One can logically be correct that the world is warming and still have beleived that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, one could be wrong about both, or possibly the fact that 500 tons of yellowcake uranium was pulled from Iraq, which they weren't supposed to have constituted part of the proscribed stuff they weren't supposed to have as part of the weapns of mass destruction programs.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/ira...ium/index.html

I cite this from CNN's site so no one with a political bias can say that it is from Fox therefore it must be wrong. Note that Iraq has no nuclear generators therefore the only purpose it could have had was to be a prelude for purification for bombs. But this idiot who did the propaganda piece won't tell you that little fact. He prefers to try to tar anyone who disagrees with him as being erroneous on totally irrrelevant issues, hoping that you will be dumb enough to not notice that he actually isn't talking about global warming here.

At the start this guy claims that Watts is a meteorologist, that is, a scientist. At the end of the film he says that 'real scientists' are telling us that the earth is warming. Well Watts is a real scientist. One may disagree with him, or think he is wrong, but one can't act as if he isn't a real scientist with a degree in the field. Once again, this is a propaganda technique.

Now, lets look at one final thing. He talks as if anyone who doubts AGW is doubting GW. Both Frank and I believe that the earth is warming what we don't think is proven is that CO2 is the cause. One can be a skeptic and claim at the same time that CO2 isn't the cause.

I am going to take a look at the 'good' stations, comparing raw data to edited data. I simply can't beleive that a thermometer on top of an air conditioner will give the same temperature as one far from an air conditioner. If I am to believe the NOAA response to Watts, that is what I am forced to believe--that cement, airconditioners etc make zero difference to the measured temperature. That makes zero sense to me and is why I think they have used edited data edited with the homogeneity filter.

NOAA's response to Watts can be found here. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf

Yes, that video is the sheeple crock of the week.

Does anyone here seriously believe that stations sited atop hot air conditioner exhausts will give the same temperature as the good stations without a stiff correction?

 

[grmorton]

Spaceman Spiff thanks for posting that!

(And I don't even care about the Heartland institute stuff, I was just really impressed with the citations it mentioned!)

And probably with the implicit claim that anyone who smokes can't be trusted to tell the truth. What laughable illogic.

Why didn't you think critically about this?

 

[Thistlethorn]

I never said that those articles supported the silly view you seem to have twisted off into. I said that climatologists were ignoring what has happened within the past 5000 years. You seem incapable of following the logic so here it is. Climatologists know about but don't mention in any press reports the fact that the sea levels were higher 5000 years ago, that Norway was free of glaciers 5000 or so years ago, that Antarctic ice shelves were more melted than today that the world was 2-3 deg. C warmer than at pressent. Thus, they ignore the Holocene and go on to make blythe political statements about what must be done to avoid what has already happened. To me, that is denying the Holocene. Are you a Holocene denier?

Ok, I'm really going to start calling troll on you as you keep shifting your goal posts all the time. Your assertions were as follows: 1. Global warming acknowledgers deny the Holocene. 2. The global warming we see now is natural, and even if it isn't, it doesn't matter because the earth would get warmer anyway. Those are the two assertions I've been arguing against. If you want to amend those assertions, feel free, but I'd appreciate you telling me first.

The climate is never in equilibrium. Have you ever studied thermodynamics?

Not a true equilibrium, no, but neither is it the chaotic thing you try to make it out to be. Natural climate change takes a long time. A very long time, even. That's not what we're seeing today. We're looking at an UNNATURALLY FAST climate change. The reason for this UNNATURALLY FAST change is human intervention.

REally? What is the OBSERVATIONAL evidence of this? Did you not pay attention to my posting of a graph from Nature showing that in the Eocene we had over 1000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere? What happened to the Eocene world? Nothing. Animals adapted to new environments. Some went extinct, new ones evolved. The world was about 20 deg C warmer then than now (because the poles were very warm) and it still absorbed the CO2--it was absorbed in large measure by a plant that spread called azolla. I am always amazed at how UNEVOLUTIONARY global warmers are. They think in terms of static species and a static earth. They seem not to understand that there are all sorts of feedback loops.

Why do you keep trying to change the subject? There's no question that the environment used to be different in the past, nor that there have been several climate changes previously. The point is, the current one is ABNORMALLY FAST, and that is because of human intervention. As a result, life cannot adapt. There simply is no time for it. You drill holes for a living. What do you know of evolution? Are you aware of what time frames we're talking about?

This is a perfect example of how you all pick and choose the data to make it appear SCARY. The MET office started your chart at 1855. It makes the temperature look stable up until 1920. What a crock of crap that is. Let's expand our horizon to the past 2000 years of temperature variation.
Below is that. Notice that prior to 1855 which the Met office cherry picked as the starting point, the temperature was much much much colder. 1600 was when the warming began, Thistlethorn, not 1920. Yet, gasp, there were no automobiles back in 1600. Indeed the warming from 1600 to 1850 was just about the same as the warming since 1850. One might pick 1650 as the start of the warming because it remained pretty cold from 1600 to 1650. So, Why did you cherry pick your starting point?

The data that graph showed was the correlation of increased temperature with the increased release of green-house gases from human sources. It does not try to say anything else. If you look at the curve, the warming might start at 1600, but it goes abruptly upwards by the time of the industrial revolution, only to keep going up almost exponentially, as the release of green-house gases got higher.

Please explain why the world was warming for 200 years prior to when your graph, which supposedly shows the dastardly impact of many, starts.
Please explain how you can tell on this graph what warming is from man and what warming is from nature. Quantify the difference.

1. The world started to heat from natural causes.
2. You can tell by the abrupt turn upwards about the time of the industrial revolution. Again, it's not rocket science.

Not it isn't if you don't cherry pick the start time of the graph.

I "cherry picked" it to show the correlation of temperature increase with the release of green-house gases.

Once again, there is this cherry picking of the starting point. 1860ish. That hides the data that shows that the world warmed as much from 1650 to 1850 as it has from 1850 to 2009.

That's a lie. Please provide peer-reviewed evidence for it.

It is very sad that you don't have the curiosity to look at what could be wrong with your data and that you blindly believe what they feed you. No doubt you are a nice guy, but you really shouldn't trust what they feed you.

I trust the majority of climatologists - you know, the one's who do this for a living - over the word of a politically and economically motivated forum poster. I don't find that sad at all. I think that's just common sense.

Didn't you read that quotation I had from Kininmonth? or the one from Reimer? Here is Reimer again.

"The reconstruction shows that the current episode of high sunspot number, which has lasted for the past 70 years, has been the most intense and has had the longest duration of any in the past 8,000 years. Based on the length of previous episodes of high activity, the probability that the current event will continue until the end of the t wenty-first century is quite low (1%)." Paula J. Reimer, "Spots from Rings," Nature, 431(2004), p. 1047

Guess what was happening 8000 years ago? The glaciers were melting as the Mid Holocene climate optimum was beginning. Amazing. 8000 years ago the sun was as active as during the last part of the 20th century and amazingly the same things are happening--things are melting. What an amazing thing that the sun might melt things.

Didn't you see the graph I presented? Sun spots cannot account for the temperature rise.

I have looked at your posts. I will use a bit of my bandwidth to post your picture of the Met temperaure. You can clearly see that by cherrypicking 1855 as the starting point they hide the really interesing NON CO2 related warming. What sleight of hand the Met is providing to the kiddies.

It's because the NON CO2 related warming is irrelevant. What is relevant is what we're doing to our planet.

No. I know that Baggins is going to claim that he doesn't know any geoscientists who doubt global warming. All I can say is that riding boats one doesn't run into many actual mappers of geology. My experience is that very few of the interpreters who have to know geologic history well beleive that global warming is going to be a problem. I believe that the world has warmed. But CO2 didn't cause the warming from 1650-1920.

It's no great surprise that your chums in the petroleum industry doesn't like the scientific consensus that is global warming.

So who was responsible for the warming from 1650 to 1850? How do you tell who is responsible? Let's hang that guy that farted too much back in 1650!

The heating from 1650 to 1850 was natural. The thing is, it is a spittle in the ocean compared to the heating we see today. If you care to present peer-reviewed evidence to contradict the mountains of peer-reviewed evidence there is for this, please do so.

So lying is necessary? How interesting. He is stretching science by lying about what will happen if the world warms and you think that is ok. I don't. I don't ever think lying is good.

He isn't lying. He's speculating.

What a laugh. You just got through saying that Hansen could lie, then you turn around and imply that it is awful that I am 'bending the truth' which I am not. A question. In your view, Is it only ok for bending to be done by your side?

No, I don't think you're bending the truth. I think you're outright lying by now. Hansen isn't lying. He's speculating, and his speculations might or might not be exaggerated, but you are the liar here.

With that done, I'm quite fed up with responding to your unscientific assertions. Now it's your turn.

1. Do you deny that green-house gases like CO2, methane and CFCs cause a green-house effect which traps heat in our atmosphere, thus raising the temperature of our planet?

2. Do you deny that the amount of such gases have risen quite a bit since the industrial revolution?

3. Do you deny that increased green-house effect by increased amounts of green-house gases should have the effect of a rise in temperature?

3.a. If yes, please explain, as it seems evident that green-house gases should raise temperatures.

4. Do you deny that we have seen such a rise of temperature?

5. Do you deny that the major part of this rise in temperature has been due to human intervention?

6. Do you honestly think nothing should be done to limit human impact on our biosphere?

 

[Thistlethorn]

Does anyone here seriously believe that stations sited atop hot air conditioner exhausts will give the same temperature as the good stations without a stiff correction?

How do you explain the fact that when data is correlated from the stations deemed "good" by Watt's people with all other stations, they show no discrepancy?

Edit: Sorry, found the answer. Of course it's a cover up by "evil scientists". A "sleight of hand" as you put it.

 

[Thistlethorn]

Well then at least they are denying the facts of the Holocene. It was 2-3 deg C warmer 5000 years ago. Hansen knows this. He says that if we warm from here 2-3 degrees we risk a runaway greenhouse, yet, that didn't happen 5000 years ago. I can only draw a couple of conclusions from this. Either Hansen is lying; Hansen is ignorant, or we had a runaway greenhouse 5000 years ago.

I don't think the latter is very probable.

I am going to post something that you won't hear from the Hysteriacs. Greenland is getting colder and has been since 2001. This is from NOAA's Climate at a Glance site. You can get to this by doing a spatial map and then clicking on the dots. Graphs like these will pop up. I have one for each dot on Greenland. Only 2 of the 14 are warming. All others show that Greenland, far from melting is getting colder. Of course, no one will tell you this. They conveniently leave this out as well.

No, they aren't denying the Holocene. The Holocene is IRRELEVANT. How can you not understand this?

 

[grmorton]

Ok, I'm really going to start calling troll on you as you keep shifting your goal posts all the time. Your assertions were as follows: 1. Global warming acknowledgers deny the Holocene. 2. The global warming we see now is natural, and even if it isn't, it doesn't matter because the earth would get warmer anyway. Those are the two assertions I've been arguing against. If you want to amend those assertions, feel free, but I'd appreciate you telling me first.

I really don't give a rats rear end what you call on me. And I stand by my statement. By ignoring what happened, they deny its existence, its events. Tell me this--something I have asked before. Why should I worry about sea level rise or melting glaciers if we saw all this before 5000 years ago. What in the heck is the big deal?

Not a true equilibrium, no, but neither is it the chaotic thing you try to make it out to be. Natural climate change takes a long time. A very long time, even. That's not what we're seeing today. We're looking at an UNNATURALLY FAST climate change. The reason for this UNNATURALLY FAST change is human intervention.

Now it is my turn to accuse you of changing goal posts. You now acknowledge that the climate is not in a true equilibrium. Over the long haul the climate is a very chaotic thing. Pshah to that silly claim that we are seeing an unnaturally fast climate change. In my last post to you I posted a picture of the last 2000 years of temperature history. Go look at that (on page 5 of this thread). We saw very rapid rises in temperature around 500 AD and 800 AD. There is not a lot of difference, other than belief, in the rise this century.

Why do you keep trying to change the subject? There's no question that the environment used to be different in the past, nor that there have been several climate changes previously. The point is, the current one is ABNORMALLY FAST, and that is because of human intervention. As a result, life cannot adapt. There simply is no time for it. You drill holes for a living. What do you know of evolution? Are you aware of what time frames we're talking about?

Why do you keep avoiding very logical connections between your view and other views? You act as if animals can't adapt. You act as if humans can't adapt and that all those Bangladeshi's are going to stay put while the seas rise and drown them. What utter crap.

The data that graph showed was the correlation of increased temperature with the increased release of green-house gases from human sources. It does not try to say anything else. If you look at the curve, the warming might start at 1600, but it goes abruptly upwards by the time of the industrial revolution, only to keep going up almost exponentially, as the release of green-house gases got higher.

Not so. You are thinking of the second picture you referenced. I was speaking of the Met temperature picture. That picture, which I posted in my previous reply to you is definitly NOT a correlation. It is a temperature anomaly graph.

And you haven't answered my question. Who or what is responsible for the warming from 1650 to 1850? It can't be due to man. What DATA convinces you that we humans suddenly become responsible at 1855 for all future warming?

1. The world started to heat from natural causes.
2. You can tell by the abrupt turn upwards about the time of the industrial revolution. Again, it's not rocket science.

Sorry, but one of the rules in science is that correlation doesn't mean causation. You seem to think that the industrial revolution, which began 100 years after the warming started is the cause of the warming from 1650 to 1750. That would be ridiculous. Apparently it is rocket science for you.

Secondly, the output of CO2 from the first 100 years of the industrial revolution was really tiny compared to what we do today, yet the warming was every bit as big as today. Thus, I must conclude that you think very flexibly about causation.

I "cherry picked" it to show the correlation of temperature increase with the release of green-house gases.

Correlation isn't proof of causation. Every freshman physicist knows that. And they also know that cherry picking is bad science. But hats off to you for admitting it.

That's a lie. Please provide peer-reviewed evidence for it.

What a risible statement. What is someone supposed to do, submit a paper saying, I lied, and then have a reviewer go, yep? What crazy logic you try to use. This is not very logical.

Or am I supposed to find a peer reviewed paper showing that the MET cherry picked? All I have to do is show that they ignored the previous 200 years, which I did. I don't need peer review to show that the data doesn't support the implication of their ridiculously cropped data.

I trust the majority of climatologists - you know, the one's who do this for a living - over the word of a politically and economically motivated forum poster. I don't find that sad at all. I think that's just common sense.

I don't. They earn their money by scaring us into funding them. And then they do things like Phil Jones the director of CRU did.

This director of the Hadcrut dataset said this:

Professor Phil Jones, the activist-scientist who maintains the data set, has cited various reasons for refusing to release the raw data. Most famously, Jones told an Australian climate scientist in 2004:

Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
​

Global Warming ate my data ? The Register

I suppose you agree with Jones that he should not give out data to anyone who might check up on him. Do you think this is the proper attitude for a scientist? I don't. Go ahead, defend him. the lurkers, whom we both are really arguing for will scratch their heads wondering why you support this kind of elitist nonsense.

Why should I trust a guy who won't describe what he is doing to the data and won't let anyone see the data?

Didn't you see the graph I presented? Sun spots cannot account for the temperature rise.

Yes, I saw the graph and found it utterly unconvincing. Why do you think it is convincing?

It's because the NON CO2 related warming is irrelevant. What is relevant is what we're doing to our planet.

So we are to believe that you have supernatural knowledge that the current warming is really due to man and that you can look at a chart of temperature and like Karnak the Great, intuit what is from man and what is from nature? What hubris. Please tell me HOW you can PROVE that the current warming isn't due to nature in large part?

It's no great surprise that your chums in the petroleum industry doesn't like the scientific consensus that is global warming.

Yes, this shows your utter illogic. You really should take a logic course. One can't determine truth based upon what one does for a living. Data alone tells us what is true, not what one does. I could turn this around and say gee, those Academics are all infavor of global warming because they get lots of project money because of it. So, why can't I do that?

At the end of the day it is data not what one does that determines truth, or do you illogically and erroneously think that I have to lie because of what I do? I own my own company. I get no more money if I go along with global warming than if I object to it. It is utterly irrelevant to my income. But it is HIGHLY relevant to the income of the climatologists. And you know, I will make the same money if the world slaps a carbon tax on or doesn't. I don't care financially--but the climatologists are going to have to find a new scare tactic if the data shows that global warming is wrong.

The heating from 1650 to 1850 was natural. The thing is, it is a spittle in the ocean compared to the heating we see today. If you care to present peer-reviewed evidence to contradict the mountains of peer-reviewed evidence there is for this, please do so.

The article that my picture came from WAS peer reviewed. Indeed, almost every thing I have posted is from peer reviewed journals. So stop with that childish irrelevant peer review claim. I have mountains of peer reviewed data saying that we have nothing to fear from global warming--assuming the earth is warming rather than merely engaging in climate change and actually cooling.

He isn't lying. He's speculating.

He is lying.

No, I don't think you're bending the truth. I think you're outright lying by now. Hansen isn't lying. He's speculating, and his speculations might or might not be exaggerated, but you are the liar here.

Lying requires two things. That one knows the truth and then intentionally disregards it. Prove those two things about me. I dare you.

With that done, I'm quite fed up with responding to your unscientific assertions. Now it's your turn.

My asserstions were all backed up by peer reviewed quotations and graphs. You haven't done much of either.

1. Do you deny that green-house gases like CO2, methane and CFCs cause a green-house effect which traps heat in our atmosphere, thus raising the temperature of our planet?

No. But I don't think the effect is as great as what you do. See, you are trying to put me into a box you think I fit in. I don't fit in your preconceived box.

2. Do you deny that the amount of such gases have risen quite a bit since the industrial revolution?

No.

3. Do you deny that increased green-house effect by increased amounts of green-house gases should have the effect of a rise in temperature?

No. How much is the question. I know that the weather services are not removing the urban heat island effect as they ought to, so the thermometer record is flawed. Highly flawed. You haven't ever answered if you think it is a good thing to put a thermometor on cement on a rooftop or over an airconditioner. Will you ever answer that?

3.a. If yes, please explain, as it seems evident that green-house gases should raise temperatures.

NA

4. Do you deny that we have seen such a rise of temperature?

No I think I posted a picture showing the rise. Can't you even look at the pictures I posted? I posted one showing the past 2000 years of thermal history. sheesh. Pay attention.

5. Do you deny that the major part of this rise in temperature has been due to human intervention?

I think this is where I would depart from the normal view.

6. Do you honestly think nothing should be done to limit human impact on our biosphere?

Yes, because unlike you and your egotistical friends who think they have the power to control Nature, I don't think humanity has either the wisdom nor the power to stop what nature is doing. You are King Canute who will stop the tides and maybe continental drift to boot. While you are at it walk on water for us.

Edited to add. We are going to use of all the coal and oil and natural gas by the end of this century. We can't do too much more damage (assuming that we are doing any) with CO2. Within 5 years you will see the world's oil production start an inexorible decline. So, why should we do anything anyway. Natural limits to oil supplies will stop us in a few years anyway.

 

[dad]

It's not a prophecy in the biblical sense. It's a prophecy in the common sense.

Your common sense really doesn't weigh in with the prophesies of the bible, sorry. I hardly call scaring kids common sense. Those that like to scare others I suspect, usually have a motive, and that usually is power.

The Netherlands is on average 1-7 meters below sea level. If the sea level rises with only a few meters, the country will be under water. 16 and a half million people live in the Netherlands.

If is a big word. What if man started to use the water in the oceans as an almost unlimited source of power, from the hydrogen, if they found a way to do it? Maybe the levels would go down, and we may even have drinking water galore for the planet as a result. Predicting is really not as easy as you seem to think, unless you had real access to knowledge of events in the future. I seem to recall some people teaching me that man should starve to death, because of increased population some years back. Looks like they were wrong.

If lies were told, I would agree (not that it's hypocritical, but that it's fear mongering). However, the scientists doing this aren't lying.

They have access to part of the facts. It seems to me and some others, that misusing that part of the truth, by fear mongering, is tantamount to lying.

I feel it is highly worrying that you feel absolutely no responsibility for the earth you leave to your children. I feel it is highly immoral of you to not care for the millions of people that will perish from famine or, at the very best, go homeless.

Caring for people in your dreams, however, is not the definition of real kindness. How about caring for those you are trying to scare to death right now? I never said I have no responsibility for earth. I have some. God has some. Others have some. The thing that I bellieve is more dangerous to man and the planet, is sin. If man wasn't fallen, and depraved, we wouldn't be in this mess.

What do I want? For starters, I want increased funding towards green energy research.

Ok, thanks for admitting that. I have a questionn for you. Be honest. Would you benefit financially in any way if the funding floodgates for greenies was opened up???

I want strict treaties on green-house gas emission.

With world peace, and a twist of lemon, and an end to poverty, perhaps? It seems to me that greed of man helps fuel the industry, and world commerce, and pollution. I am not sure that government handshakes, and Greenie benefitting new taxes would help me much.

I want first-world nations to actively aid third-world nations to shift to cleaner energy sources.

Ok, so forget the aids, and starvation, and need for water, and medicines, and debt relief, and etc...just help em go green. Got it.

These things would do for starters. I will leave the details of how much needs to be done up to the climatologists. I leave the process up to the politicians.

So salvation by the climate forcasters, and wonderful honest politicians. Got ya. Can you hear yourself here??

 

[Baggins]

there is no doubt that without what you do, we can't find oil. I used to do what you do. I started out on a field crew, acquiring data and then I moved into seismic processing. I know what you mean about the oil company interpretors getting the credit. That is why I left that end of the business and became an interpretor. But if I were to apply your standard to my career, then I too found multiple billions of barrels of oil. The problem is, I can't name the fields because I wasn't the one who mapped it, and that is why you can't name your fields.

It is much rarer these days to physically see an undiscovered oil field on 3D raw seismic from the very nature of that sort of job - it isn't prospecting seismic. I saw it a few years ago in deep water West Africa.

But now I have moved into specialist 2 component 2D I am hopeful of seeing some interesting stuff.

When I did what you do, I acquired lots of data which would be handed off to the interpretor. I didn't understand why the interpretor got the credit. Here is why. First, he must decide that a given area is worth acquiring seismic data over. Then he must convince his investors or boss to spend anywhere from $4 to $50 million to actually get the data. Then after you acquire the data over the area (and you don't actually even know what level the target is, or what kind of structure is being targeted), the interpretor must look at the data and decide that a particular spot on the earth at a particular depth is prospective. Then he must convince the boss/investor to spend more money doing more processing of the data you acquired. Then he must do the hard thing--sell the well to someone. Since oil wells cost upwards of $200 million or more, he must have a good technical as well as a good sales ability. This is why the interpretor gets the credit. In my case, unlike in yours, I actually either mapped the field personally or oversaw people who worked for me who did the mapping. I was the one who did the above. But if you want to count the time I spent in acquisition and processing, then I too probably found billions, but I, like you, can't name what fields they are or even know if that data I acquired was the key to finding the field. Often I as an interpretor have 2 or 3 vintages of seismic and where one is good another vintage is bad data.

I realise that in truth it is the interpreter that takes the risks and makes the decisions, I started off in interpretation and velocity analysis in Halliburton, but it was the life on the ocean wave for me, it is less interesting intellectually but a better job.

Don't get me wrong, Baggins, what you do is absolutely essential but what you said does inflate things a bit.

Very true, but it is the cry of the exploration or processing geophysicist down the years - they do the work the interpreter sticks a few coloured lines on the paper ( I am going back a few years hear ) and gets the kudos.

We will disagree on whether the do or not. Do you think setting a thermometer above an airconditioner exhaust is a good way to measure the temperature? Do you think that the climatologists in letting that situation continue are ignoring contradictory data because one can't get a good temperature above an air conditioner exhaust fan?

I'm sure it isn't good practice, but I don't concentrate on minutiae in areas which aren't my expertise I look to what the consensus of experts tells me.

We can't be experts in all branches of science, in fact we can be expert in only tiny narrow fields. As I know how science works I accept the consensus in other fields as they will accept the consensus in mine.

We also both know that scientists fight like rats in a sack and a consensus does not arise quickly or without much dissent and discussion.

Such has been in the case in climatology and I accept their conclusions. I feel doubly sure in doing this, as I have explained, as the penalties for following their advice if wrong are miniscule to the penalties for not following their advice if correct.

Well, you do not have the same claim to finding oil that I do because you don't make the maps, yet you arrogantly came on hear puffing up your ability to find oil.

I do find the hydrocarbons. You just stick a flag in the map with drill here on it.

Interpretation is becoming much more a case of a computer model deciding where to stick the flag in the map anyway. the days of looking at a bit of seismic and seeing an oil field with the human eye are generally over.

I have hired each of the companies you mention. GSI and Western, don't give anyone bad news on wells.

Western famously don't it was one of the reasons I left they were economical with the truth with clients to an unnecessary degree. i sometimes wonder how they survived and I can only put it down to accountants running oil companies, they were always the cheapest with their vanilla processing and crappy contacts.

Those guys don't know anything about the well when it is drilled. So 'company policy' is meaningless Baggins.

I think we may have been talking at cross purposes as I haven't a clue where we are going now.

The guy on the rig is the one who calls the office and gives the bad news.

I think we have strayed from seismic to drilling, I have never worked in drilling apart from a brief stint of palynological work in Dyce. So nothing I have said was directed at that part of the company I would have no idea how they work. Strictly exploration geophysics for me.

Glad you don't object to the physics.

Wouldn't know where to start

Climate change might be global cooling, something for which there is no reason to tax everyone.

That seems unlikely as the Earth is undeniably heating up

Everyone knows what a rhetorical sleight of hand this sudden change to the term 'climate change' is. If it isn't warming, then nothing needs to be done. If it is warming, then it ain't merely climate change.

Global warming describes what is happening to the average temperature of the Earth, climate change is its consequence. they do seem to be used interchangeably but they are cause and affect.

And no, I am not suggesting a uniform heating rate, but it is ridiculous to think that a radiative process isn't going to be seen all over the world raising the low temperatures on average and the high temperatures on average which should mean that Antarctic ice extent in the winter should be melting and going away as well. It isn't.

I don't think that is ridiculous at all, and neither do climatologists which is more important.

Exactly, but they then use the 'sensational' stuff to scare the unknowledgeable. This is science, not Hysteria 101. Science should make it extremely clear to the reporters that 1. the arctic and antarctic are climatologically out of phase. When one warms the other cools. 2. that the southern ice shelves are getting bigger each year while at the same time the arctic melts. What you hear is nothing but melting stories. That is cherry picking the data.

It is what sells news papers. You shouldn't get your science from news papers.

so, are you trying to say that the growth of the southern oceanic ice shelf is subject to political interpretation?

No

I thought it was merely scientific data. It is growing quite significantly but the hysteriacs don't mention it as a temper to their scare-mongering. Why do you think that is? Boring maybe, but it is fact. And it is dishonest not to point it out forcefully.

If I wanted to find out what is happening to the climate of Antarctica within the framework of global warming I would read a paper on it.

Earths climate patterns are ALWAYS changing. Big deal.

Well now they are changing rapidly in ways that appear to be becoming detrimental to human progress and it appears we are at least partly to blame. That is an enormous deal.

Why does everyone want consensus?

Because it gives a solid base for the political decisions that must be taken.

Science isn't about consensus,

When science wishes to have a dramatic effect of political policy it is.

that is what one wants in a church--everyone agreeing to a given doctrinal statement.

It is also what one wants in your scientific advice when you are having to make momentous decisions.

Science should be everyone challenging everything,

It is that as well.

but somehow people who claim to be scientists are wanting everyone to accept a church doctrine--The church of the warm globe.

They claim to be scientists because they are scientists you denigrating them from a position of ignorance doesn't change that.

the Earth is undeniably warming, climatic patterns are changing the consensus is that we are to some degree responsible.

Climatology had to form a consensus to get these views understood by politicians and to get action.

If you don't understand that that you are rather less intelligent than I first thought.

Which is one benefits of opposing global warming, not a reason for it, is that we are about to run out of oil as a world and it will happen long before any global warming gets us but all the people are looking at the wrong crisis. Everyone is worried about what might happen a 100 years out but few are looking at what the world oil supply will be in merely 5-10 years.

The world oil supply in 5-10 years will be higher than it is today and closer to passing its maximum. people worry about the long term effects of AGW because its effects are probably going to be severe and long lasting to human civilisation.

Bull honky. this is nothing but a reconfigured Pascal's Wager. Most of you all who disagree with the YECs would clobber a YEC for bringing up Pascal's wager yet here you are, postulating your own version of it.

What rubbish. I am rapidly losing all respect for you intellectually. This is nothing Pascal's wager this is a simple political decision, do we take a small hit to growth and deal with a problem that may turn out to be less severe than we thought or do we ignore said problem and carry on regardless in the hope that human civilisation won't be adversely affected.

This is real world stuff not metaphysics get a grip, this is the sort of decision that politicians deal with daily just writ exceedingly large.

Oh get serious. Are you saying that all those people will stand there while the water rises above their heads and drowns them? How stupid do you think those Bangladeshi's are?

Are you really this low watt ? What affect do you think just 170,000,000 displaced Bangladeshis would have on the world?

What would you think of a person who wanted to stop continental drift?

I'd think they were stupid.

And we have a whole world-full of people who think they can control the weather. What a hoot

You are either lying about this are you really don't understand what AGW and climate change is.

I can't understand which one.

No one is trying to control the weather people are trying to get society to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to slow the warming of the Earth.

If you can't see the difference I think our conversation is over because you aren't intelligent enough to continue it in a meaningful way

adios

 

[Baggins]

Yes, I don't move in university circles where everyone must think in lockstep. Unlike in academia, we in industry actually encourage out of the box thinking.

I didn't realise you were the great out of the box thinker who knows better than the world's Climatologists. Sorry.

The trouble with out of the box thinking is that 99.99% of it is conducted by hubristic morons who haven't got a clue what they are talking about but love the sound of their own voice and feeling important.

I'm sure you belong to the other 0.01% though.

Most of my earth science friends are in Industry as well as I have been for 20 years and I haven't met one so consumed by hubris that they think they know better than the world's Climatologists.

I always think that Academics are a bit like teenagers. They say they are independent thinkers but they all dress the same and say the same things and go to the same places to be seen.

Well that says a lot about your mental superiority complex. You believe the world must conform to your ideas and you don't like it when it doesn't. How sad.

Yes, this will insult the academics, but try challenging anything in a university--it will be stompped out.

I don't think I am going to gain anything talking to you, you are too fond of the sound of your own voice and too in love with the idea of your own imagined intellectual superiority

/thread

 

[dad]

When science wishes to have a dramatic effect of political policy it is.


..

Well, actually science wishes squat. A part of science might want to play politics. But then, is it any longer science?

 

[grmorton]

It is much rarer these days to physically see an undiscovered oil field on 3D raw seismic from the very nature of that sort of job - it isn't prospecting seismic. I saw it a few years ago in deep water West Africa.

But now I have moved into specialist 2 component 2D I am hopeful of seeing some interesting stuff.





I realise that in truth it is the interpreter that takes the risks and makes the decisions, I started off in interpretation and velocity analysis in Halliburton, but it was the life on the ocean wave for me, it is less interesting intellectually but a better job.




Very true, but it is the cry of the exploration or processing geophysicist down the years - they do the work the interpreter sticks a few coloured lines on the paper ( I am going back a few years hear ) and gets the kudos.

Yeah, I remember thinking why didn't I get credit for the great processing I did which allowed the interpretor to actually SEE the field he mapped. Alas, life isn't fair which is why, when I saw that the interpretors got the bigger raises I set my sights on changing to an interpretor. Very few actually got to do that, as you are well aware. I found an opportunity to work for the Chief Geophysicist of Atlantic Richfield, hiring geophysicists--I was 29 and was the almost the only person who could hire geophysicists for that major oil compnay. Heady days. After two years, I told the VP, my boss, that I wanted a shot at interpretation. he gave it to me and I escaped processing. Thus I was willing to spend 2 years doing human relations work in order to make the change. And it worked.

But one thing you should know about the interpretor, he also gets a lot of blame when he says drill here go this deep, and it comes up a dry hole. After spending $100 million dollars on a dry hole, I have literally seen grown men get teary eyed, and/or lose their confidence completely. I had a guy who worked for me who was a good interpretor with good ideas. We drilled several of his ideas and they all were dry holes. He could no longer recommend drilling a well and it ended his career with our company. We didn't get rid of him we were trying to help him, but he quit to go to another company where I heard he still had those confidence problems. It is really hard to look an investor in the eye and tell them that we have just lost $100 million of your dollars in 60 days on this dry hole.

I'm sure it isn't good practice, but I don't concentrate on minutiae in areas which aren't my expertise I look to what the consensus of experts tells me.

I concentrate on the data. I recall how badly Wegner was treated even though the data supported him, even in the 1920s.

"Few scientists other than the German-speaking scholars of his own country paid much heed to Wegener during the seven years that elapsed between the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Continents and Oceans in 1915 and the appearance of the third edition in 1922. But with the translation of the third edition into English, French, Swedish, Spanish and Russian, his ideas were put into international circulation. And when scientists the world over perceived the challenge to the fundamental principles of the earth sciences implicit in Wegener's bold theory, they were quick to respond; many of them turned on the German meteorologist with savage fury."

"Members of England's Royal Geographical Society took the subject of continental drift under consideration at a January 1923 meeting in London. While they generally agreed that the theory offered convenient explanations of much that was still puzzling about the earth, they completely rejected it. One geologist pointed out that the contracting-earth theory was so universally accepted that no one who "valued his reputation for scientific sanity" would dare advocate an extraordinary theory like continental drift. Another described Wegener's views as "vulnerable in almost every statement."

"A geologist named Philip Lake delivered the most blistering attack, not only on the theory as such, but on its author. "Wegener is not seeking the truth," said Lake, "he is advocating a cause and is blind to every fact and argument that tells against it." He accused the German scientist of stretching, contorting and twisting the continents in a misbegotten effort to fit them together. "It is easy to fit the pieces of a puzzle together if you distort their shapes," Lake sneered, "but when you have done so your success is no proof that you have placed them in their original positions. It is not even proof that the pieces belong to the same puzzle, or that all the pieces are present." An even ?wifter and more summary indictment awaited Wegener in America, where the president of the prestigious American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia pronounced the idea of continental drift to be "utter, damned, rot!"

"Wegener received a further mauling in 1924, when the British astronomer and geophysicist Harold Jeffreys published a treatise titled The Earth, Its Origins, History and Physical Constitution. In a few sentences Jeffreys contemptuously dismissed the geological and biological evidence advanced by Wegener and proceeded to attack the theory at its weakest point-its reliance on global rotation and gravitational pull for the driving energy of continental drift. With a few simple calculations, he demonstrated that the crust of the earth was far too strong to be affected by those forces. He also pointed out, with devastating effect, that a gravitational attraction strong enough to shift continents would also stop the rotation of the earth in less than a year. He asserted categorically that there", as force capable of moving continents; if the force did not exist, he arg then continents did not move. In sum, he wrote, Wegener's idea was an impossible hypothesis."

"Such attacks took their toll on Wegener's career. One companion of that time recalled the "depressing" days when Wegener "had to argue with his opponents or even defend himself against apparent misunderstandings." Despite his undisputed talents as a teacher, and the continuing loyalty of his close associates, Wegener remained a mere lecturer and was unable to obtain a professorship in a German university. "One heard time and again a colleague remembered, "that he had been turned down for a certain chair because he was interested in matters that lay outside its terms of reference.' Wegener never recorded his feelings about being thus rejected, but in 1924 he left Germany for the University of Graz in Austria, where a sympathetic administration created a chair of meteorology and geophysics especially for him. There, he was able to combine orthodox meteorological pursuits with further delving into his theory of continental drift. He also found his new associates a good deal more responsive to his ideas.

"Despite their general rejection of the theory of continental drift, scientists somehow could not quite lay it to rest. In November of 1928, Wegener was invited to New York to attend an international symposium sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He eagerly accepted the chance to explain his views, only to find that the few support raised at the meeting were quickly drowned out by a chorus of hostile dissenters, who criticized not only his hypothesis but his scientific credentials as well. One after another, delegates to the symposium stood up to express, with crushing sarcasm, grave doubts about the possibility of continental drift. Some barely troubled to justify their rejection of the hypothesis; others demonstrated errors of detail and used them to discredit the whole theory; a few seemed unable to restrain their anger that the idea was being seriously considered at all."
"Professor Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago attacked Wegener's geological evidence on 18 separate counts, claiming it ranged from unlikely to ludicrous. "Wegener's hypothesis in general,' he said, 'is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward , ugly facts than most of its rival theories."

"A professor of paleontology at Yale University, Charles Schuchert, provoked much hilarity by displaying pictures of a globe on which he had elaborately tried, and spectacularly failed, to fit together obviously incongruent coastlines such as those of North and South America. He also pointed out that erosion would have substantially altered the shape of the coastlines over long periods of time, yet Wegener was suggesting, by matching Africa and South America, that the fracture line had retained its shape for 120 million years. "Is there a geologist anywhere," asked Schuchert, "who will subscribe to this startling assumption?"
"Professor Bailey Willis of Stanford University picked up on the same theme, charging that Wegener's supposed fit of the continental coastlines was illusory. If continents were drifting through a layer of the earth's crust, said Willis, the stresses of the movement would utterly destroy the original configurations; the apparent fit of Africa and South America could therefore be nothing more than coincidence. William Bowie of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey used the nagging question of the driving force as the basis for his attack. If the continents were being propelled toward the Equator by some mysterious force, as Wegener had suggested, then how, Bowie asked, could four of the seven continents remain concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, three of those on one side of the earth? Of a total of 14 speakers, hardly anyone had a favorable word for the idea of continental drift. One scientist who wrote about the symposium may unintentionally have accounted for much of the animosity when he complained, "If we are to believe Wegener's hypothesis, we must forget everything which has been learned in the last 70 years and start all over again."

"Wegener himself spoke only briefly and said little in his own defense. Perhaps he had heard too many attacks to know where to start defending himself; perhaps he was so serenely convinced of the validity of his hypothesis that he saw nothing to be gained by arguing about details. Whatever the reason, he listened intently but silently throughout the symposium, smoking his pipe, to all appearances unmoved by the barrage of criticism.

"On his return to Germany he went right ahead with a fourth and final edition of The Origin of Continents and Oceans, although this time he acknowledged the difficulties of trying to answer his critics. "Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combining all this evidence," he wrote. "We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from circumstantial evidence. All the proofs we can muster have the deceptive character of this type of evidence. How would we assess a judge who based his decision on part of the available data only?"
"It is only by combining the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw."
Russell Miller, Continents in Collision, (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1983),p.49-52

Consensus can be down right nasty and down right stupid looking in the rearview mirror. Back in 1997 I became convinced that within 20 years the world would start running out of production capacity. I was considered nutty in the oil industry. I was in press in early 2000 and most people told me how wrong I was. Yet peak oil theory grew into a respectable view over the years. Beware of believing consensus. Too often it is a crutch to not actually think about the data.

 

[grmorton]

I didn't realise you were the great out of the box thinker who knows better than the world's Climatologists. Sorry.

The trouble with out of the box thinking is that 99.99% of it is conducted by hubristic morons who haven't got a clue what they are talking about but love the sound of their own voice and feeling important.

I'm sure you belong to the other 0.01% though.

Most of my earth science friends are in Industry as well as I have been for 20 years and I haven't met one so consumed by hubris that they think they know better than the world's Climatologists.



Well that says a lot about your mental superiority complex. You believe the world must conform to your ideas and you don't like it when it doesn't. How sad.



I don't think I am going to gain anything talking to you, you are too fond of the sound of your own voice and too in love with the idea of your own imagined intellectual superiority

/thread

Well you think what you want, Baggins, I am not the guy who bragadociously claimed to have found oil when you have never told anyone where to drill at all, not once. You even admitted it.

A bit more from your previous post

We can't be experts in all branches of science, in fact we can be expert in only tiny narrow fields. As I know how science works I accept the consensus in other fields as they will accept the consensus in mine.

No, but we can notice that some things make no logical sense and dig deeper. Things like putting thermometers on top of airconditioners. That is what made me look deeper, and I looked deeper via the peer reviewed journals.

We also both know that scientists fight like rats in a sack and a consensus does not arise quickly or without much dissent and discussion.

No this is not how consensus arises. It arises when one group wins control of the funding agencies. Then, if you don't agree, you dont get funded, and then you don't get papers published in peer reviewed literature. So don't over rate peer review or consensus.

I do find the hydrocarbons. You just stick a flag in the map with drill here on it.

I agree that your discipline deserves lots of honor. But you aren't the guy who says drill here, drill this deep, and you personally don't have to face the investor when you have lost his money. As you say, you get paid up front.

Interpretation is becoming much more a case of a computer model deciding where to stick the flag in the map anyway. the days of looking at a bit of seismic and seeing an oil field with the human eye are generally over.

Not so. I do it every day. It isn't computer modeling at all. It is still a case of coloring the seismic sections, putting in the faults (by hand). Those salesmen at your company who claim to be able to autodetect faulting are spouting crap. When you run those programs they come back with a pick up sticks fault pattern which makes no geologic sense,or they come back with vertical faults.

Western famously don't it was one of the reasons I left they were economical with the truth with clients to an unnecessary degree. i sometimes wonder how they survived and I can only put it down to accountants running oil companies, they were always the cheapest with their vanilla processing and crappy contacts.

Of Western, I was the very first person to use their Qcable in a commercial application. It is a fantastic tool that can deliver extremely high frequency data (I used it later in the North Sea and got 105 hertz at 7000 ft and 95 hz at 11,500 ft. We could map channels in the Brent, tiny channels. But, Western didn't want to do what it took to get that good data, and they let BP misuse the tool and BP's chief geophysicist told me that he didn't like it (I know it was because of how they used the tool). Western, by not taking a good worthwhile risk, missed a chance to outshine their competition.

I think we have strayed from seismic to drilling, I have never worked in drilling apart from a brief stint of palynological work in Dyce. So nothing I have said was directed at that part of the company I would have no idea how they work. Strictly exploration geophysics for me.

Ah, Dyce, across the Don. Brings back memories of Aberdeen

That seems unlikely as the Earth is undeniably heating up

Depends on the time scale. Last night I posted a picture from NOAA's site that graphs the temperature change in central Greenland. It is cooling. Here is another gridded point's time series from central Greenland. Notice the cooling, yet all you hear are squawks about the Arctic warming. Look at the actual DATA not the words of those who make money off of scaring you. Consensus may be about how to get funding, not about science.

Global warming describes what is happening to the average temperature of the Earth, climate change is its consequence. they do seem to be used interchangeably but they are cause and affect.

Once again, it depends on if the data is being handled correctly. Apparently Phil Jones of the CRU won't let anyone see what he is doing with the data. Global Warming ate my data ? The Register

So far no one here has commented on this. I think they are picking and choosing what they want to deal with.

Please tell me that you don't think what Jones is doing is good.

The world oil supply in 5-10 years will be higher than it is today and closer to passing its maximum. people worry about the long term effects of AGW because its effects are probably going to be severe and long lasting to human civilisation.

Reserves, yes, production no. If I put a billion dollars in your bank account you will have lots of monetary reserves. But if I tell you then, that you can only have it at $10/week, you are not rich. The production rate is too low. The consensus view in these discussions is that reserves are all that matter. But if you can't produce those reserves at a rate sufficient to fuel the world, you don't have oil.

Thus, once again, I suggest think in terms of data and logic not in terms of consensus. I got rich knowing that the world was going to be constrained in oil supply before others did. I invested. The problem is, most people love the cozy comfort of consensus. Figure out what others don't know then invest. Right now, I am betting (with investments) that global warming is a crock.

And if people would look out the window one would realize that the southern Hemisphere winter is harsh (look up New Zealand) and 3000 low temperature records were broken in the US, in Canada there are worries about getting the crops in before it freezes because it has been too cold. Only in Texas and the western coast of the US has it been warm. But July's average US temperature was .8 deg F BELOW the 20th century average. Unfortunately everyone is looking for cozy comfort in consensus.

What rubbish. I am rapidly losing all respect for you intellectually. This is nothing Pascal's wager this is a simple political decision, do we take a small hit to growth and deal with a problem that may turn out to be less severe than we thought or do we ignore said problem and carry on regardless in the hope that human civilisation won't be adversely affected.

Take a hit? Here we are in a big big recession and you want to throw more people out of work, How kind.

This is real world stuff not metaphysics get a grip, this is the sort of decision that politicians deal with daily just writ exceedingly large.

So is throwing people out of jobs with the job killing programs the greens want. There is no energy system that the greens like. They don't like Biofuels because it is killing the Orangs, they don't like nukes. They don't like Coal, they don't like wind because, like Edward Kennedy, he doesn't want to sacrifice to allow wind farms off his compound.

Are you really this low watt ? What affect do you think just 170,000,000 displaced Bangladeshis would have on the world?

And you, King Canute are going to stop the world's oceans from doing whatever they are going to do? You aren't that powerful. Even if we stopped all emissions, right now, we won't stop whatever is coming for the next 50 years.

I'd think they were stupid.


You are either lying about this are you really don't understand what AGW and climate change is.

What is climate but averaged weather over a long time? The AGW people think they can control the average. That is as idiotic as trying to stop continental drift, which you said would be stupid. Re-unite Gondwanaland!

No one is trying to control the weather people are trying to get society to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to slow the warming of the Earth.

The weather consists of daily temperautre measurements. Climate consists in part of the average temperaturer over time. You can't change one without changing the other. QED!

If you can't see the difference I think our conversation is over because you aren't intelligent enough to continue it in a meaningful way

adios

Apparently you can't follow a chain of logic.