sryanbruen wrote: » I'm starting to see why predictions have been made about us going into a mini ice age that I've always been skeptical about but now I'm beginning to think so too. If we compare solar cycle 24 (2008 to present) to historical solar data, it's been the weakest solar cycle since the Glassberg minimum back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Every solar cycle since the early 1900s was stronger than solar cycle 24 In history, there have been 3 minimums of solar activity - the Glassberg Minimum of the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Dalton Minimum of the mid to late 1700s and early 1800s, and the Maunder Minimum of the 1600s. Solar cycle data only goes back to the Dalton Minimum so does not include the Maunder Minimum. But data of other solar activity show solar activity during the Maunder Minimum was the lowest on record and that the Northern Hemisphere was having an Ice Age. There was plenty of brutal cold Winters back then - same with the Dalton Minimum but not to the extremes or frequency of the Maunder Minimum. Here's the chart showing the solar cycles and periods of solar activity. Each peak is a different solar cycle. As you can see, the latest one solar cycle 24 (which is the last one on the chart) is very weak compared to anything since the early 20th century. Notice how low activity was during Maunder Minimum. Solar Cycle 25 (should begin in 2019 or 2020) is expected to be even weaker than Solar Cycle 24. However, there are a few things that push me off of believing in these outlooks or predictions for a Mini Ice Age or severe drop off in solar activity. Time and space has changed a lot since then including warming of the planet via greenhouse gases and human activity but like I've said before, we can only compare back to a certain period so are these so called global warming records like record breaking warm years all that fascinating when you look down to the punctuation mark on the data we have? There's a lot of speculation about this in the media and I just wanted to give my opinion on the matter.
Oneiric 3 wrote: » Interesting read here:https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-03-22/why-world-bank-has-no-real-intentions-reducing-poverty"The US and UK, self-proclaimed historic bastions of free market capitalism, arrived at their current levels of economic development with systems of extremely protective tariffs. Now that they have reached a certain level, it is much closer to their interests to encourage natural resource-rich developing nations to open their markets — and their borders — to foreign investment. The only beneficiaries of this system are wealthy elites and transnational corporations.Global poverty is not natural; it is created and cultivated. The fact is that the purpose of the World Bank, IMF and WTO was never to alleviate poverty but to maintain the global status quo. It is high time to stop pretending otherwise."
Wanderer78 wrote: » you ll actually find a large proportion of developing nations are heavily indebted to largely western financial institutions. according to joe stiglitz, wealth is in fact moving from many of these developing nations towards developed countries. for example, if is believed roughly 75%-80% of the total tax revenue received by the Filipino government is used to service their foreign debts. ha-joon chang has done some research into these matters to and has found similar data
Wanderer78 wrote: » as ive said previously, i dont get into arguments of whether or not environmental issues exist or not, as ive moved on from them a long time ago, and of course i will disagree with you regarding your comment on this relating to climate change and the weather as it does, these issues are largely to do with our economic activities on this planet. again, our approach to trying to solve these issues has been nothing but diabolical, putting the blame largely on the shoulders of the individual rather than our complex economic systems and our thinking regarding the running of these global systems
dense wrote: » What has any of that got to do with "climate change/the weather"? Oh wait, nothing. It's just been seized upon by Mary Robinson and the other experimental humanitarians at the UN to create a catastrophe that some of your money can help fix.
Oneiric 3 wrote: » Just playing devil's advocate here, but why should we in the west, who have built up our societies and improved standards of living beyond all recognition from even 100 to 50 years ago, 'distribute' out wealth with the poorer nations and regions of the world who really have shown very little self determination to improve their lot?
Wanderer78 wrote: » It's clearly obvious that there are serious issues with wealth distribution globally, this largely comes down to our economic theories and the subsequent models and systems that we have designed and built from these theories. Again, from this, this has created extremely complex and serious environmental damage globally, but we have ultimately decided that this is the fault of the individual and not of these systems and models, thus pointing the finger at the individual, and have decided to 'tax' the individual to try solve these issues. It will not work!
dense wrote: Today I bring the news that People before Profit activists and Paul "The Socialist" Murphy, who, along with their "want it all for nothing" followers are no strangers to the UN's stated New World Order dreams of wealth transfers from others, is on the way to making Ireland a leading global virtue signaller by endeavouring to refuse to further explore our potential natural resources.
Akrasia wrote: » John Gibbons has never claimed to be a scientist and he doesn't claim to be producing research, but you don't need to be a scientist yourself to notice that Ray Bates' position on global warming and climate sensitivity is out of step with the majority of other experts in that field, and it is a very legitimate question to ask why the public should believe a contrarian opinion over and above the published statements from bodies like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and countless other highly respected scientific organisations.
On what basis do you think Ray Bates' study on climate sensitivity is more likely to be true than the vast majority of other studies that show a climate sensitivity of between 1.5c and 4.5c
One of the major issues is that he bases his research on the UAH Satellite measurements, which were always an outlier when compared with the other temperature datasets, and which have since been shown to have been wrong and had been underestimating warming because they didn't account for Diurnal Drift. So if Ray Bates bases his research on flawed data, why should anyone trust his findings more than the research based on more reliable data? He also relies heavily on discredited papers by Lindzen and Choi and an unproven mechanism known as the 'iris effect'. He claims that the Iris effect has been validated by Mauritsen, T., and B. Stevens (2015) but this is another misrepresentation of the science. The Mauritsen paper showed that if certain model parameters are tweaked just the right way, that an Iris effect can form, but their research also showed that the effect only has a very slight overall cooling feedback and their paper showed that even with their model runs showing the strongest iris effect, a 2.8c climate sensitivity would be reduced to about 2.3c. When you watch Bates talk, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Mauritsen paper completely vindicated Lindzen and Choi, and his own paper, but in reality, his study is based on a lot of unproven assumptions, and several that are highly questionable given that they rely on poor quality satellite data. In fact he was challenged on this at the end of his talk that he gave at UCD where he said he is aware of the controversy with the UAH satellite measurements, but he says that the conclusions are still valid because they match the RSS trend, but the UAH and RSS datasets do not match, Bates just waved away the controversy.
sryanbruen wrote: » Professional? That's the last thing I would describe them :pac: but thanks very much Oneiric 3 . I prefer yours honestly, I do quite envy some of your graphs at times. I use the site below primarily to make my graphs - though sometimes I use other sources. My amendments like the particular years I've highlighted are made using Microsoft Paint. The NAO values come from: https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/hurrell-north-atlantic-oscillation-nao-index-station-basedftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wd52dg/data/indices/nao_index.timhttps://www.onlinecharttool.com/graph To add onto negative NAO becoming rarer for Winters, it has been getting more frequent for Summers recently with only 2013 and 2017 having a positive NAO since Summer 2007.
Oneiric 3 wrote: » How do you generate those charts Syran?, very professional looking!
Oneiric 3 wrote: » Thanks for that. Will have a look at the NAO stats later, but for our own patch at least, with mean minimum temps tending to rise faster than maxima over the last 15 years or so, I would have thought with regards temps at least, our weather is becoming less extreme.
Akrasia wrote: » It's more complex than that. The Jet Stream seems to be losing some of it's power already, and is meandering more, this is dragging cold arctic air further south, where the fronts come into contact with much warmer tropical systems which can drive extreme weather events such as the blizzards that have hit the USA last month. When the Arctic is ice free in summer, there will be all kind of changes to atmospheric and oceanic currents which could have unforeseen impacts on our weather. Actually, I'd be interested in what the weather experts on here think the impact of an ice free arctic summer will be on Irish weather. The NAO seems to be swinging more violently which has seen its variability double over the last century and could lead to more extreme weather events in these parts.
Akrasia wrote: » When you watch Bates talk, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Mauritsen paper completely vindicated Lindzen and Choi, and his own paper, but in reality, his study is based on a lot of unproven assumptions, and several that are highly questionable given that they rely on poor quality satellite data.
Oneiric 3 wrote: » I'm no scientist, but basic meteorology would suggest that with an Arctic region warming faster than the mid or tropical latitudes, that Atlantic storms would become less frequent and less intense, given that the basic ingredient that leads to such storms developing, and that is, strong thermal gradients, is being eroded all the while, and this is what we are actually seeing being played out in the stats, which I have alluded to more than once on this forum.
Gaoth Laidir wrote: » In that piece on his communications to Ray Bates, Gibbons freely admits (as suspected) that he is not qualified to comment on climate science, but only sees himself as a science communicator, i.e. lobbyist. Yet he sees fit to shout down someone whom he admits IS an expert. What's his agenda, I wonder?
"Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Denis Naughten said the results of the assembly demonstrated that “as a nation we are engaged and ready to move on from the model we inherited from the Industrial Revolution."
"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 - you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation."
"3 February 2015 - The Top UN Climate Change Official is optimistic that a new international treaty will be adopted at Paris Climate Change conference at the end of the year. However the official, Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, warns that the fight against climate change is a process and that the necessary transformation of the world economy will not be decided at one conference or in one agreement."
dense wrote: » What are his qualifications? None are necessary to make stupid and misleading statements. I know he's a Lead Author for the IPCC and according to An Taisce's Climate Change Spokesperson, the activist John Gibbons, must represent the "97% scientific consensus" when he now claims that co2 exhaled in human breath is not carbon nuetral and causes climate change.http://www.thinkorswim.ie/page/6/ Being obsessed with climate justice should immediately disqualify him from holding any official advisory position if it's causing him to publicly make stupid and misleading claims like that. He appears to be unhinged, personally obsessed with climate justice, and will say anything to promote his personal obsession, to a brainwashed audience that obviously lacks the mental ability to check his claims.
To conclude: both of us know that climate change is a huge problem and both of us presumably agree that BAU is simply not an option. I think we could both agree that the Irish media largely ignores this story, and when it is covered, often focuses on dissent rather than consensus. As a journalist, citizen and parent, I feel compelled to do what I can to try to improve our understanding and communication of climate change, and will happily work with anyone to that shared end. Unlike you, I am not an expert, nor do I pretend to be. I occupy that ill-defined niche of a science communicator.
Oneiric 3 wrote: » Regarding Prof Sweeney's comments on 'The Big Wind', I don't agree. Ireland is placed on a well documented storm track, and it not out of the bounds of reason to suggest that severe storms such as that in 1839 naturally happen on occasion. Also, I do recall that he alluded to 'Storm Darwin' back in 2014 as being a result of climate change on the same program, which is strange, given that Darwin was not an exceptional storm historically speaking. Misleading in the extreme, and his 'qualifications' stand for nothing if this type of disingenuous narrative is being pushed by him and those of his ilk who have them.
