Apparently this is Blog Action Day for Climate. The site encourages posts today on climate that will be aggregated, uh, somehow. Its pretty clear they want alarmist posts and that the site is leftish in orientation (you just have to look at the issues you can check off that interest you — lots of things like “societal entrepreneurship” but nothing on individual liberty or checks on government power). However, they did not explicitly say “no skeptics” — they just want climate posts. So I will take the opportunity today to post a number of blasts from the past, including some old-old ones on Coyote Blog.
While the science of how CO2 and other greenhouse gases cause warming is fairly well understood, this core process only results in limited, nuisance levels of global warming. Catastrophic warming forecasts depend on added elements, particularly the assumption that the climate is dominated by strong positive feedbacks, where the science is MUCH weaker. This video explores these issues and explains why most catastrophic warming forecasts are probably greatly exaggerated.
You can also access the YouTube video here, or you can access a higher quality version on Google video here.
If you have the bandwidth, you can download a much higher quality version by right-clicking either of the links below:
- 640 x 480 Windows media version, 86MB
- 320 x 240 Windows media version, 31MB
- Quicktime 640 x 480 version, 245MB
I am not sure why the quicktime version is so porky. In addition, the sound is not great in the quicktime version, so use the windows media wmv files if you can. I will try to reprocess it tonight. All of these files for download are much more readable than the YouTube version (memo to self: use larger font next time!)
I would be interested to know what the reasons are for assuming the positive feedback model. That the global climate has been sufficiently stable to sustain life for billions of years would strongly suggest that if anything negative feedback models should be used. I would expect that any evidence for assuming otherwise would have to be very robust indeed. The aerosol hypothosis that is being used to cover the gap between the computer models and reality sound like desperation to me. I suppose only time will tell, If they are wrong it will be interesting to see how desperate the rationalisations become before they admit it.
“it will be interesting to see how desperate the rationalisations become before they admit it.”
If only it were just ‘interesting’! Meanwhile they are spending billions of our tax £/$ on King Canute style holding back the waves, whilst denying aid and cheap power to billions of under priviledged people around the globe! – It’s heartbreaking!