More BS for the Scottish Government to compost. I hate the smell. STOP IT!

Sounds like Oxfam is trying to create one of their basket case countries by the middle of this century. NO modern economy can reduce their 'emissions' by 50%, never mind beyond this figure, and still remain viable. This would mean carbon ration cards, reduced transportation, mandatory power rationing and an end to most road and air travel for recreational purposes. The world of 2084 will be far worse than Orwell could have seen.

Apparently someone has worked out that the net effect of Britain's renewables policy would be to reduce global temperature by 1/3000th of a degree in 100 years.
Hardly going to "save the planet" or anyone in a developing country for that matter and cost us billions of £. Better to keep growing the economy and help the developing countries to do the same.
If that increases CO2 in the short term while other realistic energy sources are researched it would still be the sensible way forward.

#4 Glen

In fact, increasing CO2 levels lags rising temperatures, so you can reduce the 1/3000th to zero.

Real climate experts are forecasting at three decades of falling temperatures. This follow a flat (or slightly falling) trend since 1998.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

"The 1990s were the warmest complete decade in the series. The warmest year of the entire series has been 1998, with a temperature of 0.546°C above the 1961-90 mean. Twelve of the thirteen warmest years in the series have now occurred in the past thirteen years (1995-2007). The only year in the last thirteen not among the warmest twelve is 1996 (replaced in the warm list by 1990). The period 2001-2007 is 0.21°C warmer than the 1991-2000 decade."

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html

"A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade."

http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/dept/0108_globaltemp.htm

"To determine if warming has recently stopped, consider the data from the past eight years, from 2000 to 2007. This is a more meaningful comparison than 1998 to 2007, as 1998 temperatures were anomalously high as a result of the "El Niño of the century" (pdf), a natural cyclical event that produced an enormous temperature spike relative to surrounding years. Choosing an El Niño year as that start of the dataset would amount to rather egregious cherry picking (though both GISS temp and HadCRU would still show a warming trend over the decade)."

"Over the past eight years, Earth has warmed 0.025 degrees C per year according to GISS, and 0.014 degrees C per year according to HadCRU, so GISS shows slightly faster warming than over the long-term trend of 0.018 degrees C per year, and HadCRU shows warming slightly slower."

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

"It is apparent that there is no letup in the steep global warming trend of the past 30 years (see 5-year mean curve in Figure 1a).

"Global warming stopped in 1998," has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense. In reality, global temperature jumped two standard deviations above the trend line in 1998 because the "El Niño of the century" coincided with the calendar year, but there has been no lessening of the underlying warming trend."

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/warming_goes_on.html

"Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. The evidence is clear – the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise."

The NASA/GISS data for global temperatures;

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

The ten hottest years worldwide since 1880 were:

2005, 2007, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001, 1997, 1995.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

"Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilization itself has become the principal driver of global climate. If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive life styles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of prior human history. The eventual response to doubling preindustrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet."

"Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions,for just another decade, practically eliminates the possibility of near-term return of atmospheric composition beneath the tipping level for catastrophic effects."

"The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture CO2, is herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable."

Regardless of how much GREEN tax the UK population have to pay, it will not make a jot of difference to global warming or anything else. The environment is a global issue and until such time as the US, Russia and China reduce emissions, we are p1551ng against the wind.

There are 2 big areas that need to be dealt with if dealing with CO2 emmissions. Transport and energy production (electricity).

With transport the main aim should be to not be anti car but set an environment so that car companies will make cars more efficient and move away from dependency on petrol/diesel.

The problem is the uk and the eu have done little while blaming the US whose comsumers have done something.

The uk and eu should bring in rules so that cars have to be able to do 50mpg (maybe start at 40mpg). That would mean all the inefficient cars would be taken off the road as they come to the end of their life.

We also would not see government using climate change as an excuse to tax more. The reason the uk is so poor in doing anything is becuase of the government dependency on 40billion petrol/desiel duties. Green taxes just make government more dependent on beheviour they are meant to be trying to wean us a way from.

With a minimum of 50mpg car companies would reinvigerate their efforts to produce more powerful cars within that limit. That would probably push more down the route of hybrids.

With hybird cars becoming mainstream technology would improve making them more efficient. Minimum limits like 50mpg can be increased. It was said the new prius would be able to do something like 90mpg but problems with lithium batteries means this target will be delayed for a while.

With increasing use of hybrid cars we would soon get plug in options. As most people do not do more than 30miles in a day, a plug in option that allows someone to travel the first 30miles on electricity would mean that petrol would become increasing a back fuel.

Remember the tesla car in the US which is just electric, can do 200 miles on a single charge and has a faster excelleration than most of the ellite sports cars.

#fresian

It is a matter of the eu, us and japan ie the developed world encouraging scientific solutions to deal with these issues and encouraging their use which may partially involve the tax system and also regulations.

ie develop more efficient cars moving away from petrol and desiel. And the use of renewables, carbon capture and nuclear for electricity production.

Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001. Further, NASA data shows that warming in the southern hemisphere has stopped, and that ocean temperatures also have stopped rising.

The global average temperature had been rising until about 2000-2001. The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and many scientists hypothesize rising temperatures were mostly caused by the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide (CO2), and they predicted further temperature increases after 2000. It was natural to assume that CO2 was responsible for the rise, because CO2 molecules in the atmosphere tend to reflect back the infrared radiation to the ground, preventing cooling (the greenhouse effect) and also because CO2 concentrations have been rapidly increasing since 1946. But, this hypothesis on the cause of global warming is just one of several.

Unfortunately, many scientists appear to forget that weather and climate also are controlled by nature, as we witness weather changes every day and climate changes in longer terms. During the last several years, I have suggested that it is important to identify the natural effects and subtract them from the temperature changes. Only then can we be sure of the man-made contributions. This suggestion brought me the dubious honor of being designated “Alaska’s most famous climate change skeptic.”

The stopping of the rise in global average temperature after 2000-2001 indicates that the hypothesis and prediction made by the IPCC need serious revision.

Copy and paste.

http://newsminer.com/news/2008/sep/27/global-warming-has-paused/?opinion

The average global temperature has risen over the last decade.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hansen-t2.jpg

Since 1998 the global five year mean temperature has continued to rise.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.csv

That's Hadley's HadCRU global temperature data. It shows 1998 as the peak individual year. But look at the second column - the running mean. Since 1998 the average global temperature has risen significantly.

Also, as individual years, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 are all warmer than 2000 and 2001.

The smoothed average temperature for 2001 was 0.39 degrees above the baseline.

The smoothed average temperature for 2007 was 0.423 degrees above the baseline.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html

"1998 saw an exceptional El Niño event which contributed strongly to that record-breaking year. Research shows that an exceptional El Niño can warm global temperatures by about 0.2 °C in a single year, affecting both the ocean surface and air temperatures over land. Had any recent years experienced such an El Niño, it is very likely that this record would have been broken. 2005 was also an unusually warm year, the second highest in the global record, but was not associated with El Niño conditions that boosted the warmth of 1998.

Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far the cooling effects of La Niña are concerned. The 1999 global temperature was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 was 0.37 °C above this average, 0.11 °C warmer than 1999."

The world owes a lot to many climate scientists who are closely studying and reviewing the claims of the global warming lobby. They are also attempting to replicate some of these findings without the traditional support of the originating authors. Ordinarily, in the world of hard nosed science, such scrutiny and replication has been historically welcomed. No longer. The well-known name calling, the dismissiveness, the ad hominem attacks, is regrettably now the standard level of discourse. Additionally, these include many laboratory directors, media editors, and Ph.D.s who for whatever reasons adopt the same low roads of discourse and the abandonment of science.

These are difficult times for traditional climate scientists who do practice good science, serious peer review, welcome scrutiny, replication, and the sharing of data. Thanks to the whole world of the global warm-mongers and indentured PhDs, the integrity of the entire world of science is being diminished, followed by a loss of trust and respect.

Among the giants challenging the global warming dogma has been Christopher Monckton. He has been a strong international leader, spokesman, and expert in unraveling the complexities of the man-made warming hypothesis.

The greatest drivers behind the hypothesis have not been the actual evidence, but computer models. Relative to the largely unknown climate complexities, these are still known to be primitive and incapable of replicating climate data as measured from observations. If a hypothesis can’t explain actual evidence and climate observations, it is wrong, and needs to be modified or abandoned.

In a recent exchange with an expert modeler and believer of global warming, Monckton responded in incredible detail by identifying many of the problems found with the computer models themselves. Monckton is impressively expert in the minutiae of computer modeling, a skill which applies directly to the analyses of the computer climate models. Monckton has perf

And again;

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?bcb0b0a8-86dc-4f0d-acce-dec9605c9b7a

"Monckton is impressively expert...."


ROFLMAO

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/01/sarahpalin.climatechange

"Two other contrarian scholars were cited. One was Syun-Ichi Akasofu, formerly director of the International Arctic Research Centre, in Alaska, who argues that climate change could be a hangover from the little ice age. He is a founding director of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank that has received $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998."

The common view of the IPCC is that it consists of 2,500 of the world's leading scientists who, after carefully weighing all the evidence, have arrived at a "consensus" that world temperatures are rising disastrously, and that the only plausible cause has been rising levels of CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases.

In fact, as has become ever more apparent over the past 20 years –not least thanks to the evidence of a succession of scientists who have participated in the IPCC itself – the reality of this curious body could scarcely be more different.

It is not so much a scientific as a political organisation. Its brief has never been to look dispassionately at all the evidence for man-made global warming: it has always taken this as an accepted fact.

Indeed only a comparatively small part of its reports are concerned with the science of climate change at all. The greater part must start by accepting the official line, and are concerned only with assessing the impact of warming and what should be done about it.

In reality the IPCC's agenda has always been tightly controlled by the small group of officials at its head. As one recent study has shown, of the 53 contributors to the key Chapter 9 of the latest report dealing with the basic science (most of them British and American, and 10 of them associated with the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office), 37 belong to a closely related network of academics who are all active promoters of the official warming thesis.

It is on the projections of their computer models that all the IPCC's predictions of future warming are based.

The final step in the process is that, before each report is published, a "Summary for Policymakers" is drafted by those at the top of the IPCC, to which governments can make input.

It is this which makes headlines in the media, and which all too frequently eliminates the more carefully qualified findings of contributors to the report itself.

The idea that the IPCC

The idea that the IPCC represents any kind of genuine scientific "consensus" is a complete fiction. A

gain and again there have been examples of how evidence has been manipulated to promote the official line, the most glaring instance being the notorious "hockey stick".

Initially the advocates of global warming had one huge problem. Evidence from all over the world indicated that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today.

This was so generally accepted that the first two IPCC reports included a graph, based on work by Sir John Houghton himself, showing that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s.

The trouble was that this blew a mighty hole in the thesis that warming was caused only by recent man-made CO2.

Then in 1999 an obscure young US physicist, Michael Mann, came up with a new graph like nothing seen before.

Instead of the familiar rises and falls in temperature over the past 1,000 years, the line ran virtually flat, only curving up dramatically at the end in a hockey-stick shape to show recent decades as easily the hottest on record.

This was just what the IPCC wanted, The Mediaeval Warming had simply been wiped from the record.

When its next report came along in 2001, Mann's graph was given top billing, appearing right at the top of page one of the Summary for Policymakers and five more times in the report proper.

But then two Canadian computer analysts, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, got to work on how Mann had arrived at his graph.

When, with great difficulty, they eventually persuaded Mann to hand over his data, it turned out he had built into his programme an algorithm which would produce a hockey stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

Even numbers from the phonebook would come out looking like a hockey stick.

By the time of its latest report, last year, the IPCC had an even greater problem. Far from continuing to rise in line

By the time of its latest report, last year, the IPCC had an even greater problem. Far from continuing to rise in line with rising CO2, as its computer models predicted they should, global temperatures since the abnormally hot year of 1998 had flattened out at a lower level and were even falling – a trend confirmed by Nasa's satellite readings over the past 18 months.

And now it's Christopher Booker;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/31/eaclimate131.xml

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html

Hadley graph of global average temperature. See how it's risen since 2000-2001?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/warming_goes_on.pdf

"The evidence is clear – the long-term trend is that global temperatures are rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise. Global warming does not mean that each year will be warmer than the last. Natural phenomena will mean that some years will be much warmer and others cooler.

You only need to look at 1998 to see a record-breaking warm year caused by a very strong El Niño. In the last couple of years, the underlying warming is partially masked caused by a strong La Niña. Despite this, 11 of the last 13 years were the warmest ever recorded."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/01/climatechange.carbonemissions

"The latest climate model projections from the Met Office Hadley Centre show clearly that such failures could have worrying and significant consequences for the world's climate. Even with large and early cuts in emissions, these projections indicate that temperatures are likely to rise to around 2C above pre industrial levels by the end of the century."

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Not the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect but nevertheless significant. And we've increased the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to levels unprecedented since there were dinosaurs.

We have the recorded fact of increased temperatures.

We have the recorded fact of increased CO2.

We have the indisputible fact that CO2 in the atmosphere enhances temperatures.

If the increased CO2 in our atmosphere isn't causing the increase in temperature (because it certainly should be) then please explain where that excess energy is going.

And then explain why the temperature has in fact increased as expected given the increase in CO2.

seanie

Climate models cannot predict climate change in any meaningful way.

Do you accept that global temperatures were higher in the Mediaeval Warm Period than they are today?

Do you also accept that Mann's "Hockey Stick" curve is now totally discredited?

#33 It is far more complex than CO2. Clouds, water vapour and the sun are all major contributors to climate change (warmer or cooler) and these all have a far greater impact than CO2.

No and no.

The detail varies, but the 'hockey stick' has been confirmed by repeated studies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7592575.stm

"A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 "hockey stick" graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

A graph showing various reco0nstructions.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Reconstructions of the past 2000 years.

Can we affect the climate in any predictable and controllable way?

Answer - no.

Can the UN make governments around the world do exactly what they want them to do?

Answer No ... but if they manage to scare them enough with coming doom to ensure that through fear they may get them to tow the UN line...well may be.

The UN's agenda is world governance - global warming is a convenient vehicle for it.

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13252.full.pdf+html

Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia

"The UN's agenda is world governance..."

Yep. You saw through 'em alright. I hear they're giant lizards too.

Seanie, you can rant and foam at the mouth as much as you want but most reasonable people can judge for themselves that the threat of 'disasterous climate change' and what the planet's climate is actually doing are two differnet things. A true scientific mind would realise that whilst the original hypothesis was plausible, it now doesn't bear up to close scrutiny. This is what happens when a theory is hijacked by greens and socialists for their own ends.

I'm not ranting or foaming at the mouth. Nor do I lie like you.

#44 seanie

What you are guilty of is way-over-the-top postings, in frequency and length (to which I responded in kind with a couple of my own) so as to make you appear extreme and intolerant.

On the subject of the Hockey Stick, no serious scientist believes it to be anything other than the misapplication of statistical methods.

The National Academy of Sciences disagrees with you.

#42 sean

Please do not ask me to accept Mann justifying his own graph.

In science, peer review is all-important. steve McIntyre, peer reviewed Mann's Hockey Stick graph and found fatal errors in his methods.

As Unimpressed One stated above, any hypothesis must be able to stand up to independent scrutiny.

The NAS criticised some aspects of the original study but affirmed Manns basic conclusion.

The graphs I linked to showed multiple reconstructions, by different groups, that all confime the basic "hockey stick".

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/the-weirdest-millennium/

"Much research effort over the past years has gone into reconstructing the temperature history of the last millennium and beyond. The new IPCC report compiles a dozen reconstructions for the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere (including of course the original "hockey stick" reconstruction, despite opposite claims by the Wall Street Journal). Lack of data does not permit robust reconstructions for the Southern Hemisphere. Without exception, the reconstructions show that Northern Hemisphere temperatures are now higher than at any time during the past 1,000 years (Figure 1), confirming and strengthening the conclusions drawn in the previous IPCC report of 2001."

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf

"The TAR pointed to the ‘exceptional warmth of the late 20th century, relative to the past 1,000 years’. Subsequent evidence has strengthened this conclusion. It is very likely that average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were higher than for any other 50-year period in the last 500 years. It is also likely that this 50 year period was the warmest Northern Hemisphere period in the last 1.3 kyr, and that this warmth was more widespread than during any other 50- year period in the last 1.3 kyr."

I don't have time to join in today's discussion, save to commend Seanie for once again providing detailed information from reputable sources.

But I would just say to Connaughtboy: your claim that the hockey stick graph has been discredited is false (as outlined by Seanie) but just suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Medieval warm period really was much warmer than recent decades. What conclusion concerning global warming would you make if that were true?

Scotland was covered in active Volcanoes at one time and we survived that. Weather is Cyclical, and has been since time immemorial.
What goes on in the Heavens is responsible for the weather patterns on Earth, and there's not a 'ell of a lot we can do, except to be so arrogant, as think we matter in Natures Great Scheme of Things.
Anyway in the current economic climate, climate change is the last thing on the E.U.s mind!

#52 Legacy

As an example of contentment based on total ignorance your post takes some beating.

#51 Slioch

So that's why even the IPCC dropped the hockey stick graph. Steve McIntyre comprehensively discredited this graph. The algorythm used by Mann always mines for a hockey stick shape.

#51 To answer your question. Since 1998 the globe has cooled.

Night.

I've already linked to the 2007 IPPC report that shows a graph of various temperature reconstructions.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf

Try page 467.

What d'ya see?

Hockey sticks.

All the reconstructions agree that temperatures over the last few decades exceed any period in the last thousand years.

Certainly 1998 was a hot year, by some measure the hottest on record, but the average global temperature has risen since 1998.

#54 connaughtboy

The IPCC has not at all "dropped the hockey stick graph", it is present in the latest reports. You are simply in denial about the evidence.

But you do not answer the question I put to you, so I repeat it: "just suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Medieval warm period really was much warmer than recent decades. What conclusion concerning global warming would you make if that were true?"

It is a simple clear question. What is your answer?

http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/dept/0108_globaltemp.htm

"To determine if warming has recently stopped, consider the data from the past eight years, from 2000 to 2007. This is a more meaningful comparison than 1998 to 2007, as 1998 temperatures were anomalously high as a result of the "El Niño of the century" (pdf), a natural cyclical event that produced an enormous temperature spike relative to surrounding years. Choosing an El Niño year as that start of the dataset would amount to rather egregious cherry picking (though both GISS temp and HadCRU would still show a warming trend over the decade)."

"Over the past eight years, Earth has warmed 0.025 degrees C per year according to GISS, and 0.014 degrees C per year according to HadCRU, so GISS shows slightly faster warming than over the long-term trend of 0.018 degrees C per year, and HadCRU shows warming slightly slower."