Inconvenient Truth

No! They only mean it's slowed down. It's just stopped for a little while.

But if CO2 was as powerful as they've been saying, it wouldn't even have slowed down. Time will tell. Time is telling, I reckon.

But this article shows that the other climatic changs affecting it are only short term and when they end global warminh will speed up. www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8159991/Global-warming-has-slowed-because-of-pollution.html

Thanks, flickety. I just went to the link and the very first thing I read was wrong. Under the pictures it says that temperatures have "never been higher". They have.

I note that they've put in the obligatory stuck on ice polar bear pictures. Sigh. Polar bears are doing fine. See polar bear thread. I suspect what's coming out of that chimney has been photoshopped as well. It's probably steam.

I'll go back and read the article now.

Haven't read the article but have watched (final prog tonight) the Gordon Buchannan series about Polar Bears who, sadly, do NOT seem to be doing 'fine'.
Interesting to hear what he had to say about warmer temps/ less sea ice. (Not just him, but the Captain of the boat who took him to the areas where he studied the bears, a man who has been sailing those waters for years!)

This lot don't agree with y ou Bags. I think.

Greatest snow cover in northern hemisphere ever recorded. Don't suppose that'll be widely publicised .

Apparently it's because of jet stream shifts. Which, apparently, is also the reason for the very high temperatures Tasmania has been having. Cold jet stream from the north is further south in the N hemisphere and hot jet stream has moved southward from the tropics to affect Australia and Tasmania. It'll be interesting to see what happens when/if they shoft back again.

Link to Polar Bear Science, for info.

The average maximum temperature for the first eight days of 2013 have been the hottest for a century in Australia, including Tasmania which is a state of Australia. There is a heat cell over central Australia which even a cyclone has failed to move.
The weather map now has deep purple and pink added to extend its previous temperature range which was capped at 50 deg.

Climate change isn't about the temperature becoming a few degrees warmer, it means extreme weather.

The Greenland Ice sheet is melting at a faster rate than any time in our history.

The truth is only inconvenient to those who are making money out of polluting our planet IMHO.

and Bags

I don't claim to understand the science but my son does. He studied at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - it's a pretty well respected facility globally. He passionately does believe in climate change, used to annoy him when anyone spoke of 'global warming' - extreme weather events are what was predicted and increased rainfall for the UK. Seems to me there have been plenty of both lately.

Yeah. My son understands it. [yawn]

And he works at that less well respected facility called the Met Office.

There are plenty of studies (not newspaper reports) showing that the world is not experiencing more extreme weather events.

There are plenty of studies (not newspaper reports) analysing what, for instance, that couple of days of surface melt of the Greenland ice sheet was really all about.

Of course climate change happens. My view is that we use our intelligence and resources to adapt to rather than in a vain attempt to control climate, which is far too complex a thing for us to fully understand, let alone control. But we can adapt to changes. We know that because we have in the past. That's how we're still here.

Climate science is in its infancy. It is silly to talk about timescales only thirty to a hundred years long. In global terms that cannot show trends.

Just putting forward a point of view. It amuses me how people are very sceptical about all sorts of other things they read in newspapers, but they don't apply their usual healthy scepticism to climate change alarmism (alarmism being the important word).

Haven't studied the subject in great depth and don't work for either of the two above mentioned well respected organisations.

However, I do have a certain amount of healthy scepticism so I'm with Bags on this one.

I just can't see how we can not be harming the atmosphere. We have covered over so much the planet with concrete and we use so much energy, because it is so readily available. And we humans are so thick on the ground nowadays.

It's more an instinct thing than knowledge with me.

I'm not going to stay and get into a fruitless argument but as a scientist, who works with other environmental scientists, this comes up time and time again. JOs gut instinct is correct.
The scientific data is irrefutable, except by a few rogue scientists and certain companies I could name (sometimes the former in the pay of the latter).
bags I know you feel strongly about this, and I'd love to believe you are correct, but you are either buying into the propaganda put out by those who have financial interests to protect or you are genuinely in denial.
All I can do is ask you, please, consider the consequences if you are wrong

Peace.

Jiggery-pokery at the Met Office. Not looking good.

jodi, will the consequences be any different if I am wrong? I am only interested in scientific truth and accuracy. I'm not convinced that that is what the mainstream media is giving us. I used to be convinced. Perhaps I will be again. But at the moment there is too much evidence of dubious practice in the climatolgy world; too much evidence of political activist intervention where there shouldn't be; and too little real world evidence that there is anything imminently catastrophic about climate change. In short, I think we have time to adapt, just as we always have in the past with far less technological and scientific know-how.

Bags I wouldn't put anything past anyone who works there!

Still stand by my instinct though.

jings hehe! And there was I going to say that if your son could categorically show that what that article suggests did not happen, I'd believe him. So much for that

I'm standing by what sceptical scientists with no agenda but finding the truth are telling me. Time will tell. Truth will out (whatever it is).

The science bloggers are not funded by big oil but Saint Al Gore (he of Inconvenient Truth fame) has recently sold his TV station for big oil bucks. And I'm expected to trust that guy?