Seil Chat

Minimum wrote:An excellent article in today's Scotland on Sunday: "Fuelling an inconvenient delusion that spells ruin for Scotland" by Gerald Warner makes an infmorative read. Also, a letter in the same paper "Powerful case against offshore wind policy" by Professor Andthony Trewavas.

Thanks, I've read the article now; for an agnostic like me it was very thought provoking, in particular this:
"Of the specifically defined “greenhouse gases,” the most abundant is water vapour, but global warmists perversely exclude it from their calculations. When asked why, they reply that it is “customary” to do so. The reason, of course, is that since water vapour accounts for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, removing it vastly increases the proportion of carbon dioxide in the equation. With water vapour included, as it should be, CO2 represents only 3.6 per cent of the greenhouse effect. Overall, just 0.28 per cent of the greenhouse effect is man-made; within that, man-made CO2 accounts for 0.117 per cent of the greenhouse effect."
http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sun ... -1-2165954

Shankers

Back to the proposed Clachan windfarm:

"Lorn Environmental Action Forum – LEAF – is hosting a public meeting on Friday 30th March 2012, from 19.00-21.00, at Oban Community Fire Station.
A major focus of the meeting will the exploration of issues surrounding wind farms.
The keynote speaker of the evening is Sarah Henderson from PACT – People Against Clachan Turbines."
http://forargyll.com/2012/03/leaf-meeti ... ind-farms/

Well worth attending I feel. I'll be there, anyone else?
I aim to highlight, during Q and A's, some of the issues regarding Scotland's renewables policy raised in the Scotland on Sunday piece.
Its great to see that our own Sarah Henderson is the keynote speaker. She is an expert on windenergy and windfarms and knows considerably more about the whole gamut than anyone who posts on here so will be well worth listening to and learning from.

Shankers

longshanks wrote:Thanks, I've read the article now; for an agnostic like me it was very thought provoking, in particular this:
"Of the specifically defined “greenhouse gases,” the most abundant is water vapour, but global warmists perversely exclude it from their calculations. When asked why, they reply that it is “customary” to do so. The reason, of course, is that since water vapour accounts for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, removing it vastly increases the proportion of carbon dioxide in the equation. With water vapour included, as it should be, CO2 represents only 3.6 per cent of the greenhouse effect. Overall, just 0.28 per cent of the greenhouse effect is man-made; within that, man-made CO2 accounts for 0.117 per cent of the greenhouse effect."
http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sun ... -1-2165954

The water vapour red herring

When skeptics use this argument, they are trying to imply that an increase in CO2 isn't a major problem. If CO2 isn't as powerful as water vapor, which there's already a lot of, adding a little more CO2 couldn't be that bad, right? What this argument misses is the fact that water vapor creates what scientists call a 'positive feedback loop' in the atmosphere — making any temperature changes larger than they would be otherwise.

How does this work? The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa. So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further—a positive feedback.

How much does water vapor amplify CO2 warming? Studies show that water vapor feedback roughly doubles the amount of warming caused by CO2. So if there is a 1°C change caused by CO2, the water vapor will cause the temperature to go up another 1°C. When other feedback loops are included, the total warming from a potential 1°C change caused by CO2 is, in reality, as much as 3°C.

The other factor to consider is that water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived. On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.

So skeptics are right in saying that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas.

What they don't mention is that the water vapor feedback loop actually makes temperature changes caused by CO2 even bigger.

Not yet mentioned is the fact that increasing water vapour in the atmosphere leads to more cloud cover which reflects more of the incoming UV radiation from the sun and hence leads to a cooling effect. Complicated but I agree that the water story is a red herring.

What a muddle. So water vapour not only reflects heat from the sun, therefore cooling the earth, but water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas and warms it...............

So if water vapour is so critical to the situation why on earth do these wonderful scientists dismiss it as it is 'customary' to do?

Pentlandpirate wrote:What a muddle. So water vapour not only reflects heat from the sun, therefore cooling the earth, but water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas and warms it...............

So if water vapour is so critical to the situation why on earth do these wonderful scientists dismiss it as it is 'customary' to do?

Scientists don't 'dismiss' water vapour. That is what Longshanks said, but I do not think he is a climate scientist.

No model – whether a wind tunnel model for designing aircraft, or a climate model for projecting global warming – perfectly reproduces the system being modeled. Such inherently imperfect models may nevertheless produce useful results. In this context, global climate models are capable of reproducing the general features of the observed global temperature over the past century.

The effects of clouds are a significant area of uncertainty in climate models. Clouds have competing effects on the climate. One of the roles that clouds play in climate is in cooling the surface by reflecting sunlight back into space; another is warming by increasing the amount of infrared radiation emitted from the atmosphere to the surface.

As our knowledge increases the effect of clouds will be incorporated more accurately into the models. It is not anticipated by the climate research community that this will be a game changer. The models are not 'wrong' or 'useless' (as AGW deniers tend to claim) because they are incomplete, but they are steadily getting better - and none of the new refinements to the models in recent years have significantly changed the predictions for future climate.

Most of the best comedians are highly intelligent and Longshamks has a wicked sense of humour: clearly no fool. Even still it is not Longshanks who is the first to comment regarding the water vapour in the atmosphere factor. It is already widely reported elsewhere.

Let's just accept the 'picture' is too big and the data too small and inconclusive for anyone to say they know what is or is not happening. In the meantime we pay a terrible price for the scaremongering until the doom-mongers come up with the next threat to Mankind. How come we aren't still discussing what we're going to do about the Plague of Frogs? How many Doomsday's has Man lived through and been able to laugh off?

PP, don't confuse complexity with "muddle". Complexity is exactly why this is a matter for the scientific method. Your suggestion that the picture is too big and the data set too small for anyone to say is nonsense - the scientific community is pretty unanimous. Only lay dabblers beg to differ.

NickB wrote: Scientists don't 'dismiss' water vapour. That is what Longshanks said, but I do not think he is a climate scientist.

There you go again !
No, I did not say that; it was a direct quote from the Scotland on Sunday piece.

And, no. I'm not a climate scientist...........but neither am I an English Lang and Lit Supply Teacher.

But still an ex-teacher....

Worth a look if you haven't already seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcsCvp_v5lc ?

longshanks wrote:

NickB wrote: Scientists don't 'dismiss' water vapour. That is what Longshanks said, but I do not think he is a climate scientist.

I did not say that; it was a direct quote from the Scotland on Sunday piece.

And, no. I'm not a climate scientist...........but neither am I an English Lang and Lit Supply Teacher.

I think you will find that teaching only takes up a small space on my CV, Longshanks

The point is, I don't set myself up to dismiss the scientific consensus on one of the most important issues of our time. I believe what climate scientists tell us because I think I know just about enough about science and the real world to see that there is no compelling reason to disbelieve them. Believing the experts when one is not an expert oneself - which is essentially my position - is not such a strange or arrogant thing to do.

Setting oneself up to oppose an entire body of research when one has no personal experience of the science is another thing altogether. Gerald Warner (Honours MA in Medieval and Modern History), the author of the opinion piece in SoS you refer to, is doing precisely that. I cannot see any reason whatsoever to believe him over most of the world's leading science academies and research institutes, can you?

Longshanks you said that SaraH is an expert on turbines and wind energy and wind farms and is a keynote speaker on march 30 that's wonderful does that mean as a member of PACT the information she produces will be well weighted and unbiased i think not and just because she is worried about the value of her house when she retires doesn't make her an expert.

Its pretty clear from the discussion we are having that you can take all information available and create an argument for or against the subject.
And most of the folk i talk to are fed up with the whole thing and want the planning to go ahead just to listen to the silence

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I think that before anyone makes any further comments on this subject they should read this comment HERE on the PACT website.

There is no requirement on anyone to be an expert. In this land we are supposed to value freedom of speech, and having an opinion, whatever the opinion of others, should be no basis for ridicule. People should be allowed to stand up for what they believe. The fact is that none of us can predict the future.

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I have received a complaint that threats and libellous statements have been made in this thread. The complainant did not say that the threats or libel were against themselves, nor did they specify where this occurs, who the alleged guilty party(s) are or who has been threatened and/or libelled. I have been back over the thread several times now and, while the discussion has been heated at times, I cannot for the life of me see where any threats have been made, not can I see that anyone has been libelled.

Threats and libel are things I take very seriously, as ultimately I am responsible for the content of this website. If anyone does feel that they personally have been threatened or libelled please get in touch with me ASAP by PM , e-mail or telephone and I will look into it. In the meantime, maybe we should all try being a bit nicer to each other for a while . . .

Presumably that is justification for using usernames and remaining anonymous, instead of using or quoting real names, and then no-one can be libelled. Is that right?

Give us a kiss, Nick; you're doing fine. I personally think Husker's comments about the planned speaker on wind farms was objectionable, while Longshanks's stated intention to question the speaker intensely might have seemed a bit tricky too (i.e. be seen as a threat), and his unusually high level of praise (given what we know about his good but perverse sense of humour) might have seemed like sarcasm? Incidentally, if so, all this caused by a breach of the anonymity so disliked by the critics of this site.

NickB wrote:.
I think that before anyone makes any further comments on this subject they should read this comment HERE on the PACT website.

Dr Henderson makes a very good point and should be admired for his stance.
He mentions, specifically, SeilChat and ForArgyll.
I think that HuskerDoo's most recent post on SeilChat was bang out of order in this connection but, apart from that, only a couple of early posts were too close to home.
The thread about LEAF on ForArgyll is, however, far worse. I've just read the whole thing. Pro-Windfarm activists were making direct connections between those who object to windfarms and Denialism, Nimbyism etc in an occasionally unpleasant way. The main culprit has, in fact, been forced to make a grovelling apology.

NicB...is it best to now close this thread and start afresh? Its not right that respected local people should be upset by what is written here.

Shanks

MonaLott wrote:Longshanks's stated intention to question the speaker intensely might have seemed a bit tricky too (i.e. be seen as a threat),

"I aim to highlight, during Q and A's, some of the issues regarding Scotland's renewables policy raised in the Scotland on Sunday piece."

Hardly a "stated intention to question the speaker intensely" Mona, especially as I totally agree with her stance on Clachan windfarm and the issues in The Scotland on Sunday piece about our renewables policy are of great concern to all those fighting windfarm proliferation.

MonaLott wrote:his unusually high level of praise (given what we know about his good but perverse sense of humour) might have seemed like sarcasm?

"Its great to see that our own Sarah Henderson is the keynote speaker. She is an expert on windenergy and windfarms."

No, genuine praise because its true, Mona, most certainly not sarcasm. If you had put in the same considerable amount of time, effort, and research on behalf of PACT as she I would call you an expert too.

Shanks