alt.global-warming | Google Groups

Re: Global dimming and ice age predictions after WW2 contradict global warming theory

Fran <fran.b...@gmail.com>

On Aug 11, 12:24 am, Steve Wallis

<revolutionarysocialistst...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I've been involved in a long debate about solar power (particularly
> concentrating solar power/solar thermal energy) versus nuclear power,
> mainly with the pro-nuclear socialist David Walters, but another pro-
> nuclear socialist called Fran has recently joined in, on
> alt.politics.socialism.trotsky in the thread "Guardian: Solar power
> from Sahara could provide Europe's electricity, says EU".

> Others, including David, thought that crossposting on these issues
> may
> be OK, so I'm also sending this to a few other newsgroups. I'm also
> posting my messages on this subject to my Revolutionary Platform
> Network Forum (including to the Global Warming board there athttp://www.revolutionaryplatform.net/forum/index.php?board=107);
> please state if you object to me posting replies to your comments
> there.

> On 10 Aug, 13:19, Fran <Fran.B...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > On Aug 10, 4:11 am, Steve Wallis <revolutionarysocialistst...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > I've had some doubts about my position on global warming, but finding
> > > out that the weather got colder during the post-war boom (despite the
> > > increasing levels of carbon dioxide due to industrialisation)

> > Google "global dimming" for the effect of SO2 on global temperatures
> > from 1943-74 ...

> I did find out about the sulphur claim (I wasn't sure it was SO2 and
> thought I'd wait for somebody else to mention it), when doing earlier
> browsing. I was sceptical then and still am now of this explanation.
> Isn't it amazing that you get all this talk of global warming and yet
> very little mention of the fact that temperatures did increase after
> the second world war. Obviously, those who agree with global warming
> need some sort of explanation when pushed to justify their theory, but
> they generally don't want to mention global dimming and SO2 (and I
> didn't find out about the SO2 explanation until I read a critique of
> "The Great Global Warming Swindle").

> > > and
> > > another ice age was predicted by scientists reinforced my view.

> > Another meme put about by deniers. Even at the "height" (if that is
> > the right word) of the speculation in the early 1970s, more
> > scientists hypothesised about global warming than a new ice age. Even
> > the article generally credited with circualting this idea foreshadowed
> > the opposite as a distinct possibility. There was never peer-reviewed
> > science behind the claim, and certainly nothing like the process that
> > has informed the IPCC assessment reports.

> I did Google "global dimming" as you suggested and came across the
> Wikipedia pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming. The graph
> on that page, which takes data fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_temperature_record,
> does not show dimming for anything like the period 1943-74 - in fact
> it's only in the 1940s according to those graphs.

> Critics of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" such as George Monbiot
> didn't claim that the post-war dimming was incorrect, and it must have
> been in the late 70s or early 80s when I heard of the ice age
> prediction, which certainly doesn't tally with dimming just in the
> 1940s.

Here's somerthing pertinent for you in which a discussion on aerosols
takes place

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/14560/6189

You might also want to look at www.realclimate.org or look at the work
of Joseph Romm

> > > [I
> > > remember this at the time but I'd forgotten about it until reminded by
> > > the Channel 4 TV programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

> > This was put about by a self-styled swindler of the Thatcher and Hayek-
> > loving "Living Marxism" crowd.

> I did discover that the person responsible for that programme is
> linked to LM, and found a page with an interview the day after the
> programme went out on their current Spiked project website, but he and
> they claim that he is not a member of the ex-RCP.

> I disagree with a lot of the ideas that that organisation/ex-
> organisation puts out, but that doesn't mean that valid points they
> make about global warming can be discounted.

> > You need to stop believing the first thing you read on the internet.

> > Fran

> I don't. I've researched global warming theory quite a lot and found
> arguments against global warming more convincing than those in support
> of it.

I find that implusible. If you had researched it quite a lot, you'd be
very familiar with the arguments on both sides and the response above
shows that you aren't.

There are no sound arguments 'against global warming'. The bulk of
those listed in the 'sceptics' category accept that it is occurring
but dispute only the magnitude of future climate change and the speed,
or the etiology. What you miss is that all the principal non-
anthropogenic factor (orbital forcing) recommends cooling and yet we
are warming. That the Earth's temperature more or less plateaued
during the 1943-74 period despite SO2 and other aerosols cutting
insolation underscores the strength of the other anthropogenic drivers
of warming, since when scrubbing of flues andf the short residence
time of SO2 combined, temperatures started rising almost immediately
despite an absence of any rise in TSI.

TSI-based claims also can't account for stratospheric cooling with
lower tropospheric warming.

> When you tell people that China had the coldest winter for 50
> years (according to TV news in the UK) or that Scotland had the
> coldest Easter for 46 years,

<sigh> regional weather is not climate. Climate is, by definition, a
sustained and predictable patern of weather over a period long enough
to reduce to noise regional weather anomalies. The globe (as in
*global* warming) amounts to more than Scotland or China. It's the
overall and long established trend line that is of significance
here.

> or that the UK sea level is only rising
> 3.1mm a year, then people do tend to get very sceptical about the cosy
> consensus of environmentalists, most of the media and virtually all
> politicians that global warming is caused by mankind and heading for a
> catastrophe.

So much hangs on one word here : "cosy" and you don't support it. The
implication here is of some sort of skullduggery but if you are to
make that claims and impugn the integrity of the vast majority of the
world's scientists, who, unlike you, have to make specific testable
claims and risk public and career ending humiliation, you will need
more than one snide observation.

Who are these "people" who "tend to get very sceptical"? Vague appeals
to populist angst are not an argument, especially when the bulk of the
populace would be hard pressed to describe the pattern of water
transports in the major water currents, explain what a cline was in
this context, specify the differences between the various measurement
methodologies, or the difference between the morphology of the ice
mass in the various parts of the world. Before opening the front of
your trousers to relieve yourself in public, it's best practice to
test which way the wind is blowing.

Fran