Thursday 28 November 2013

Beating the cheats: Greenpeace

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace


Not another destruction of Greenpeace, but an example from them of how this principle operates, and how you can stop it working for you:

"What's more, there is growing evidence that melting in Greenland and the Arctic is accelerating. With current warming, it is highly likely that Greenland may melt irreversibly – contributing 7 meters to sea level rise."

Greenpeace website

Ice caps have a very specific amount of ice in them, the Antarctic cannot melt as it is around -37C on average, and we can't undo that much. Greenland, however, is the only other substantial land ice mass, and that contains 7 metres of sea level rise should it melt. Putting their claim into context, the sea rose 7 inches in the 20th century (consequences known, negligible), and is currently rising at the same rate, as Greenpeace note: "...but in the next hundred years the rate of sea level rise could increase dramatically."

Even they couldn't claim more than 'could increase' as despite their previous sentence "Over the last hundred years, sea levels rose ten times faster than their 2000-year average, " they are saying the sea usually rises around half an inch a century. Even if that was true (it isn't), it still can't change a 7 inch rise to a 7 metre rise unless our temperature rises ten times or so. I'm not going to do all the equations of how much it needs to rise to do so or I'd be here all week, but can extrapolate yourselves from the smaller figures everyone appears to agree with, including Greenpeace: "The IPCC puts predictions of 21st century sea level rise at 9 to 88 cm (3.5-34.6 inches)."

This corresponds to a temperature rise of 1-6C, so a quick calculation tells us Greenland would indeed need maybe two to three times more than the maximum amount of rise even the UN's highest estimate presents. Of course, then they back pedal by saying it could take centuries, but people have already been taken in by then, and compress the time in their minds as if 700 or more years can be real to them as 7 years. Their minds are already lost to reality. But the genuine dishonesty is the 7 metre figure in centuries is based on the very highest 6C rise, which would then have to continue consistently for centuries before it finally happened. How exactly could this happen?

The figures: The current temperature rise is around 0.05C a decade since 1850 while 0.1C since 1970. However looking within the second figure that was between 1970 and 2000, while it has virtually stopped in the decade since. The 30 year cycles are the key in climate, and the simplest ones to observe. The major decadal oscillations are a 30 year sine wave as are the main solar cycles. Put them together and they fit the last 150 years pretty well compared to the CO2 which is linear, while the temperatures rise and fall as they always have.

If you stick with the highest recorded decadal rise and continue then by 2100 (we'll all be dead, but it is only a thought experiment) the temperature will have risen by 1.6C, well below the crucial 2C where the climate is expected to be overall worse than before that point. Using past and current sea level rises the projected rise would be another 7 inches, as last century. Unlike the temperature sea levels are far more stable, so despite fluctuations in temperature the sea level evens them out, and takes much longer to react to only long term variations. Therefore despite it being impossible to predict temperatures a decade or a century ahead (a 4 degree error margin used by the UN proves this as it is many times larger than the possible results, so void), if you smooth the temperatures for a decade or a century, you can physically work out the sea level rise per degree or less simply as you know exactly the amount of ice which melts in response. Therefore a 7 inch rise on 1.6C, using recent historic records to project as CO2 is currently linear in rise, and reduces its power on doubling. Therefore if it reaches 520ppm it would then need to rise to 1040ppm to do the same as it did between 260-520 etc.

Greenpeace skate over that one. There is no other mechanism possible to cause a rise beyond the 1.6C we are currently heading for, CO2 has risen 50% since 1850, temperature has risen 0.7C, while around 0.3 has been natural. Without amplification from positive feedback, ie evaporating oceans causing more water vapour where it counts in the atmosphere then CO2 alone can do little more than 1.5C over a massive increase, which is barely enough over the few centuries it could take to cause a single problem, using UN criteria. The experiment has been run, CO2 has risen 50% and there is no increased rise beyond its own fraction of 1C for doubling, in fact slightly less. The other reason this may be happening is because oceanic evaporation is water. No, bear with me. For reasons I did not do at school, evaporating water can either cause vapour or droplets. I don't know how or why as under 100C it should all be liquid, but those are the rules. Liquid water droplets form clouds, which block sunlight from hitting the ground (shade) so are clearly a cooling factor. Therefore the evaporating oceans have an equal chance of becoming clouds (cooling, a balancing factor) or water vapour (warming, positive feedback). The killer here is it is not possible to model cloud changes. All the UN models fail to include cloud cover, not because they're deliberately trying to fool us, but because they simply can't do it. Thinking about it, modelling the entire climate minus the clouds is comparable to modelling the human mind, so the fact it has very sharp limits should come as no surprise. We can only do things the old way here, by observing the past and present. And by doing so, we see there is no positive feedback. There is no reference to delays, the feedback was expected and it has not arrived.

Back to Greenpeace, unlike me, they have access to everything. They know more about the climate than everyone besides the universities and UN themselves, as they have the resources and contacts to do so. That means they know everything I have said here and much more, yet their written material ignores every single element, and creates a scenario most people (I know as they all vote for governments who believe in man made warming) unlike scientists do agree on. The consensus among scientists is far lower (52% in the latest survey of American meteorologists) but they simply don't air it in public as besides the minority they don't work for themselves so need to keep their jobs, unlike Ferenc Miskolczi who was sacked from NASA and had his work wiped from their records as it found faults in their material. That is what happens when employees question their lords and masters. By clearly setting the rises of temperature and sea level at the highest and least likely UN level for 2100, against the evidence since it was written in the 1990s, Greenpeace have openly and directly stretched the truth as far as it possibly can be without actually splitting, simply because their sole defence is they are only using supposition, which we can never prove either way as they're too far ahead to ever know.

That should remove any actual confidence you should have in their predictions alone, and for Greenpeace itself for using such clearly misleading methods.

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