Climate Change: Is it real science or a doomsday cult with powerful members? Slides and video links

On May 13th I made a speech to a meeting of Enniscorthy Toastmasters. It was a project from an advanced speech manual on technical presentations. The objective was to enhance a technical talk with the internet. This was by sending information on the talk in advance to the meeting attendees by email.

After the speech I now post the slides on this blog and make the powerpoint file available to whomever wants it.
The link to the presentation (20MB) is http://ubuntuone.com/7YiwLI25oZ2jzU24dUujaT

Ad! Ubuntoone gives all subscribers free storage of 5 GB for sending links to large files so you don't have to attach them to emails - you can subscribe by clicking link https://one.ubuntu.com/referrals/referee/3168782/

 I also post a recording of my speech on my Youtube channel. Only the first 12 minutes recorded. Link here
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy6JdNyyo4k

I recorded 8 more minutes commentary to the last few slides and it is available here.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSTf9nHv4D0
A video of the slides without commentary is available here.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdlD9nt5NtM

Climate Change: Is it real science or a doomsday cult with powerful members?

On May 13th I will make a speech to a meeting of Enniscorthy Toastmasters. It is a project from an advanced speech manual on technical presentations. The objective is to enhance a technical talk with the internet. This is by sending information on the talk in advance to the meeting attendees by email. I will also post the information - a brief outline on this blog.

After the speech I will post the slides on this blog and will make the powerpoint file available to whomever wants it. I will also post a recording of my speech on my Youtube channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/ustafford .

Outline of talk "Climate Change: Is it real science or a doomsday cult with powerful members?"

On May 1st the Irish Government added €1.20 carbon tax per 40 kg bag of coal. The carbon tax will double next year to €2.40 or 20% the price. The tax was also added to the price of peat briquetttes. Tax set at €20 per tonne CO2 emitted also applied to oil and gas.

Is this tax necessary to save the planet or a regressive tax on those who heat their homes with coal? Coal is often bought by less well off people who buy fuel as they go on.

The Debate

Nearly every government, scientific organisation and many people accept the consensus that Earth's climate system is warming, that humans are causing most of the warming  through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as burning fossil fuels, and that we are approaching disaster as a result.

Many are sceptical that the Earth is really warming that much, that humans are causing all the warming by burning fossil fuels or that it is such a bad thing.

And contrary to what many in the first camp say this is a sizable group of people. A recent study by Lefsrud and Meyer found that only 30% of scientists and engineers accepted the consensus as presented by the IPCC. The other 70% were sceptical of the cause or the danger.

Undisputed Facts

The Earth warmed ~0.7°C in 20th Century. CO2 concentration rose from 290 ppm to 370 ppm in the same time much from burning of fossil fuel. CO2 absorbs Infrared energy – radiated heat – and so has the potential to store extra heat in the Earth’s atmosphere – the so-called greenhouse effect.

Model

Models predicting catastrophic warming assume the only cause of the temperature rise is greenhouse gas emission. The Kyoto objective is to limit temperature rises to 2C by 2100. Extrapolating the temperature rise vs CO2 rise will predict this to occur in the late 21st century. Therefore we have to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to comply.

But just because CO2 is a ‘greenhouse gas’, and [CO2] is increasing and temperature is increasing does not prove cause and effect. It could be coincidence. 370 ppm is 0.000370 parts of atmosphere, much less than 1-5% that is water vapour, the main greenhouse gas over which we have little control. This is very small and unlikely to have a big effect. Indeed, anlalsysis of the science suggest that atmospheric heating from doubling [CO2] from 290 ppm to 580 ppm will cause less than 1°C increase.

Climate scientists explain the difference between absorption of heat by CO2 and their catastrophic predictions by Forcings. These are further increases in warming caused by increases in water vapour, cloud effects, and methane from arctic tundra that are released when atmosphere heats a little. Sceptics doubt these effects and think feedbacks are more likely to be neutral or negative.

There are other possible explanations for  the temperature rise in 1975-1998 that has not been included in the climate scientists' models. Solar output was highest in the late 20th century. There are 35 year and 70 year ocean temperature cycles that have not been included. Some temperature records have been affected by expanding urban areas. These other causes of temperature rise have not been included in models. When they are included a much less dramatic picture emerges. In the last 15 years there has been no temperature rise despite CO2 levels reaching 400 ppm. This suggests the effect of CO2 is negligible.

Why?

Why are so many governments and scientific organisations pushing this theory? Why do they say the debate is over when it clearly isn't? Why to they persecute and insult scientists who to not share their catastrophic world view? $300 billion a year on mitigation schemes may have something to do with. I will explore the motivations further in my talk on 13 May that will be posted on Youtube and in later blog posts.