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(News.com.au)   Today: Australian scientist announces ocean currents, not man, causing global warming. Tomorrow: Al Gore demands that we outlaw ocean currents   (news.com.au) divider line
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742 clicks; posted to Fandom » on 30 Apr 2007 at 10:07 PM (15 years ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



35 Comments     (+0 »)
 
2007-04-30 6:30:24 PM  
I know Bill Gray, and he's not Australian. Also he knows exactly dick about ocean currents.
 
2007-04-30 6:44:15 PM  
WHAT? You mean global warming could actually be (gasp!) a NATURAL process? Butbutbut that goes against my whole radical agenda! Oh noes! What am I to doooooo?
 
2007-04-30 6:56:24 PM  
Actually, global warming affect ocean currents. Specifically Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Basically, if freshwater released from melting polar icecaps is introduced into the Atlantic conveyor, it will in turn affect ocean temperature, and create large climatic and oceanographic changes. As it stands currently, freshwater runoff into the North Atlantic has increased in recent decades, and runoff is expected to increase further as global temperatures climb higher. Some scientists estimate that it will take about a century, at present rates, for the circulation pattern to be seriously affected by the increase in freshwater runoff, and conclude that it would take about two centuries for freshwater runoff to halt the North Atlantic conveyor belt entirely.
 
2007-04-30 6:58:05 PM  
That's like saying that an anemometer caused heavy winds.
 
2007-04-30 7:00:26 PM  
I'd like an independent study, involving a large group of knowledgeable scientists, before I consider this a possibility. The article is one man's opinion given in front of a group of politicians.
 
2007-04-30 7:01:06 PM  
Ramayana: That's like saying that an anemometer caused heavy winds.

How about a butterfly?
 
2007-04-30 7:10:45 PM  
Kiribub: The article is one man's opinion given in front of a group of politicians.

Exactly... And we all know that if a scientist wants to keep his politicians happy, he doesn't tell them the truth, he tells them what they 'want to hear'. Which is what this guy just did.
 
2007-04-30 10:20:30 PM  
Okay, he's stated his opinion, now where's the backing science? Until he actually backs his hunch up with something it remains just a hunch.
 
2007-04-30 10:22:27 PM  
Haha LorRZ!11!1! Now thats and inconvienientent truth.
Scientist are always wrong. Dumb atheists. Etc Etc,
vote bush 2012!

\hopes this articles intended readers all D.I.A.F. - A.S.A.P
 
2007-04-30 10:27:18 PM  
Johnny C et al. youre in denial.

The man is an expert and has been railing against Gore's alarmism for a while how.

WHY do you belive Gore, who is not a scientist AND scientists are not meterologists?

WHO CARES what a nuclear PhD says about global warming? It's NOT his or her specialty.
 
2007-04-30 10:28:45 PM  
"Professor Gray served as a weather forecaster for the United States Air Force" enough said
 
2007-04-30 10:34:48 PM  
FlyingPig

I always hear about this "agenda". What agenda? Other than the recent movie, exactly how does Al Gore or any of these earthy people gain from biatching at everyone? Add it up. Now lets compare it to how much other people have to gain, monetarily, from fighting against it, i.e. Republican legislators. Come on, I know you can do it! And the obvious conclusion is.....

One group is fighting against global warming because they think it's the right thing to do and that it's necessary for our future. The other group is trying to stop them because they and their key constituencies would lose money. There's your agenda.
 
2007-04-30 10:48:39 PM  
Oookaaay...

We have an article with a scientist claiming that global warming isn't caused by humans, but by ocean currents.

Where's his research? He may very well have some: News Sources aren't the best at showing us a scientist's research, but, unless he's got some data to back this up, this is, uh, an opinion. An educated opinion, perhaps, but there are several contrary educated opinion.

Why should anyone (on either side) latch onto this one in particular, and take it as the gospel truth?
 
2007-04-30 10:54:01 PM  
mfaby: WHO CARES what a nuclear PhD says about global warming? It's NOT his or her specialty.

what the hell are you even talking about? The vast majority of climatologists agree that anthropogenic climate change (scientist speak for GW) is happening. The only people who don't are nutjobs and those ignorant of the science
 
2007-04-30 10:54:05 PM  
Agenda-
Al Gore rails against man's selfishness
Al Gore gets much needed attention
Al Gore gets a good steady income to keep paying $12k/yr to heat his pool.

/when Al moves into a 500 sq ft studio and sells the three luxury homes then I'll take him seriously as someone who's concerned about the environment.
//till that happens you're a chump.
 
2007-04-30 10:55:24 PM  
Gahh, ment to link this in my last post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_global_warming
 
2007-04-30 10:58:57 PM  
pguy40: //till that happens you're a chump.

Ah, yes; Someone who thinks global warming is happening acts selfishly, therefore global warming is false. Do I even need to point out how logically incoherent that is?

Why is Gore even part of this debate? he's not a scientist. Stop trying to politicize science by linking his credibility with a scientific theory.
 
2007-04-30 11:03:28 PM  
willywanka, that is what most global warming theory supporters say, but just as correlation does not imply causation, even if you can make a case for a connection, this does not imply that one specifically causes the other. Global warming may not be driving ocean currents, but rather ocean currents could drive global warming as Dr. Gray stated.

And Sweaty Jerry, when government money given to research comes to play, and the fears and money of a scared public come into play, the "earthy people" have plenty to gain. An Inconvinient Truth took in close to $25 million bucks, and the federal government spends millions of dollars each year on research, and this is just the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended). Add in the fraudulous carbon credits and all the various "causes" looking to raise money and you could run a small country.
 
2007-04-30 11:04:41 PM  
Gunther: Stop trying to politicize science by linking his credibility with a scientific theory.

Why bother with politics when self rightousness trumps all.
 
2007-04-30 11:04:53 PM  
Gunther
Gahh, ment to link this in my last post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_global_warming


Yes, because wikipedia is the be-all/end-all of scientific journals.

I'm just going to go by what google says. And google says that "scientists agree on cause of climate change" has less hits than "scientists don't agree on cause of climate change"
 
2007-04-30 11:20:46 PM  
AudioBoxer:- Wikipedia lists their sources on that page. every one is verifiable.

The only major scientific organisation that denies anthropogenic climate change is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Notice the word "Petroleum".

That's it.
 
2007-04-30 11:28:50 PM  
Audioboxer: Yes, because wikipedia is the be-all/end-all of scientific journals.

If you actually looked at the damn page, you'd see it was a list of organisations that agree with the global warming hypothesis including:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Joint science academy
U.S. National Research Council
American Meteorological Society
American Geophysical Union
Federal Climate Change Science Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Geological Society of America:
American Association of State Climatologists
Australian Medical Association:
American Chemical Society
American Quaternary Association
US National Academy of Science, who said this: "In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth's warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. ... On climate change, [the National Academies' reports] have assessed consensus findings on the science..."

But don't worry, I'm sure you'll be able to dig up some biologist from Quebec who disagrees, so clearly the scientific community is evenly split on the issue.
 
2007-04-30 11:45:42 PM  
Anyone know where I can buy some ocean current offsets?
 
2007-04-30 11:48:46 PM  
From a Washington Post story about this guy:

"Someone like Bill Gray seems to be a fully credentialed authority figure. But when you press him on his theory of how thermohaline circulation has caused recent warming of the planet and will soon cause cooling, he concedes that he hasn't published the idea in any peer-reviewed journal. He's working on it, he says.

Uhuh.

Gray also asserted, "I'll take on any scientist in this field to talk about this, I predict that in 5 to 8 years the globe will begin to cool". To date, Gray has given no indication that he has agreed to such a debate.

Even his fellow global warming deniers say he's not qualified to make these claims:

"His knowledge of theory is frustratingly poor" -Richard Lindzen

But yes, everybody pay attention to Al Gore over there in the corner. Al Gore is from Kashyyk, but he's on Endor. Now I ask you: does that make sense? If Al Gore is from Kashyyk, you must not believe in anthropogenic global warming.

img257.imageshack.usView Full Size
 
2007-05-01 1:14:25 AM  
Hell, I've drank more Hurricanes than THIS guy.
 
2007-05-01 1:18:15 AM  
And Sweaty Jerry, when government money given to research comes to play, and the fears and money of a scared public come into play, the "earthy people" have plenty to gain.

If money is a corrupting motivator, how do you explain oil companies and their claims that altering the status quo in fuel consumption would do nothing? Taking into consideration billions upon billions in profits, of course.

I get so sick of this argument. Scientific research costs money. If your argument is to be taken as valid, then the only scientific research that is reliable would have to be done by volunteers using equipment that requires no upkeep.
 
2007-05-01 3:52:20 AM  
Audioboxer That's because Google doesn't search for facts...........

To me it would seem that the more controversial argument would pop up more often, not the more factual. That has to be the single worst way of doing research I have ever heard of someone actually admitting.
 
2007-05-01 3:59:13 AM  
I am wondering if the night time emmisivity of the solar system has changed. A slight change in the density of the local space particle density could result in a huge change in the amount of energy disapated at night.

Just a thought, from someone who has had a course in heat transfer.
 
2007-05-01 6:05:41 AM  
"Hey guys, I've found something that appears to contribute to global warming. Therefore, this is the only cause and all other possible causes are excluded."
 
2007-05-01 9:05:28 AM  
As others have stated Bill Gray is out of his league here. He's most renown for providing his tropical storm forecast for each upcoming season, and has had varying degrees of success with it (with recent notable failures). Perhaps he fancies himself an expert on climate change because of his understanding of tropical storms and ocean currents; but this is like me considering myself an expert on hurricanes because of my understanding of thunderstorms. He is quickly losing any credibility in my eyes as he continues to assert, without any evidence whatsoever, that "it's all the ocean's fault."

I naively thought that once the latest IPCC report came out a most of the "debate" on climate change would be finally resolved. I was wrong. If anything, the increasing evidence has caused more people to come out of the woodwork. Humans are strange.

Anyone who wants to enter the fray of the physics of climate change should at the absolute, very least, get an introductory meteorology college textbook and study the chapter on radiative transfer. Learn, and begin to understand, that, in an idealized all-else-remain-the-same situation where you increase the greenhouse gas concentration for the Earth, it is absolutely certain that the radiative equilibrium temperature will go up. Once you start from that point, then you can start to talk about the uncertainties, feedbacks, etc. So many armchair climatologists seem to want to jump straight to the uncertainties before they even have the most basic grasp of the fundamental physics of radiative transfer etc. Quite frustrating.
 
2007-05-01 9:55:20 AM  
This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Or more accurately, he doesn't publish what he's talking about.

http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications.html

In other news, the sun is going to implode before climate change becomes a problem. You can read all about it in that paper I haven't published.
 
2007-05-01 10:00:11 AM  
Just to repeat the obvious as others have already done...

1. Submitter needs to read the article before submitting it. Bill Gray is an American and this is old news.

2. Being on TV DOES NOT make Bill Gray more knowledgeable than the thousands of other scientists who disagree with him.

3. A handful of scients on one side and thousands on the other does not make a divided scientific community.
 
2007-05-01 12:44:56 PM  
but Manbearpig IS REAL!!!
 
2007-05-01 2:18:58 PM  
kpottruff, HAHAHA!!1 MANBEARPIGZ!!! H1lLARIUS!

/your sense of humor fails
 
2007-05-02 3:03:41 AM  
Ohhhhhhh. Ocean currents. Now that's something I can agree too. The ocean currents are warmer because of uhh something or maybe some warm ones just showed up somehow and so now the Earth is warmer too.
 
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