Scientists Examine Causes For 10 year Lull in Warming

Chalnoth said:
The global warming denialist arguments are continually recycled.
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You're the one that went ahead with the claim that the IPCC has no errors in it BECAUSE IT'S PEER-REVIEWED when a huge number of errors have been found in it. The biggest one is the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 when there was zero source for it nor was it "peer-reviewed" as you like to claim. However the paper I linked are from the same authors so they're not "recycled" like you would claim. The statements made by the NOAA does not dispute the entire paper and only targets selected parts and especially since the paper was written after. Debate is an ongoing process, not "The science is settled" crap the IPCC, CRU, and Goracle followers like to do.

The newest evidence I've read going against the IPCC is they can't back up their claims of more hurricanes occuring with the given data claimed by the IPCC.
http://www.leshatton.org/Hurricanes_2010.html
http://www.leshatton.org/Documents/Hurricanes-are-not-getting-stronger.pdf

Now the guy actually shows all the data available for anyone to grab and analyze unlike the CRU which they stonewall all attempts. Before you claim he's not an "expert", he has a PhD on tornadoes, vortexes, etc. FUCK!

Here is another "recycled" paper for you to read but it's not likely.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/climategate_analysis.pdf
Summary: Huge analysis of all the leaked emails from the CRU and not just "selected" quotes. Of course unless you need to have a PhD in emails and "Series of Tubes".
 
jfreund said:
Cycles in solar activity affect our weather to a greater extent than we do. The public "global warming" furor is focused on carbon dioxide, but the most abundant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is water vapor. Yep - plain H2O. Why no cries to regulate water? I'm selling water credits - anybody want some?

Now they use the term "climate change" because it doesn't tie the cause to a certain phenomena. In the 70s they warned about global cooling. In the 90s they warned about global warming. Now they use the general term "climate change" to cover the fact that their models don't hold up to the data. OH NO! Today's weather isn't the same as yesterdays! This summer isn't the same as last year! It's a man-made disaster!
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While water is a strong IR absorber, since it's in equilibrium with the vast amounts if liquid water present on earth, its amount in the atmosphere is constant and will never change, unless the atmospheric temperature changes dramatically. Just FIY.. there is no regulating the water content in the atmosphere unless we pump all of the ocean water into the outer space. Thus, your statement makes no sense whatsoever.

I'm not going to go through the physics of molecular vibration with you here, but believe it or not, there is real science behind global warming. I don't think anyone with a decent undegraduate knowledge of chemistry can dispute the theory that uncontrolled release of CO2 will raise global temperatures over time. It's the time scale of the process that's a matter of debate.
 
k4m4z said:
While water is a strong IR absorber, since it's in equilibrium with the vast amounts if liquid water present on earth, its amount in the atmosphere is constant and will never change, unless the atmospheric temperature changes dramatically. Just FIY.. there is no regulating the water content in the atmosphere unless we pump all of the ocean water into the outer space. Thus, your statement makes no sense whatsoever.

I'm not going to go through the physics of molecular vibration with you here, but believe it or not, there is real science behind global warming. I don't think anyone with a decent undegraduate knowledge of chemistry can dispute the theory that uncontrolled release of CO2 will raise global temperatures over time. It's the time scale of the process that's a matter of debate.
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There is a lot more than 'timescale' that is a matter for debate.

First, how much is, and does a trace gas like CO2 effect the climate as a whole? (trace gas because there is so little of it) 387 parts per million last I checked, and fluxuates up and down with the seasons equal to about 20 years of the increase. The theory of global warming, one I agree with I might add, says there should be more warming int he lower Troposphere than anywhere else in the atmosphere, but it has cooled over 30 years, and is flat over 10 years.

Second is how much of the increase is 'man' and how much is other factors, like oceans, or volcanos or other factors. Many studies that contradict each other on this.

Third is what positive and negative feedbacks are there in place? Many people think there are more negative feedbacks than positive ones. Even the Climate system as a whole seems to scream negative feedbacks. Warmer means more evaporation, more evaporation means more clouds, more clouds means less sun, less sun means more cooling. That means warmer means cooler, and I didn't make that up, the IPCC did.

Is sea level rising? overall, not in 40 years, and over the long term 2cm/century for the last 2000 years. In some areas it has dropped and in others it has risen. The Maldives that Al Gore sites has seem a lowering of sea level in 20 years of around 8cm. Much of the evidence was destroyed by global warming alarmists in 2003, when they dug up the sand near the beach on the non-industrialized side, and cut down a tree that was at the previous water level. Too late since it was already well documented.

While you point out that CO2 is a strong IR absorber, you miss that water vapor is a broad spectrum absorber, some 3x as effective, and maintains the heat better as well, CO2 holds it through oscillations of the molecule, which transfers energy to adjacent molecules, while the radiative method of water vapor is far more efficient, and dissipates much slower. Not even taking that into account, only based on efficiency of absorbing energy, 1% more humidity is equal to 75% increase in CO2, since the atmosphere has 25x more water molecules per volume than CO2, and 3x more efficient at absorbing energy.

And the amount of water in the atmosphere is always changing, in the second IPCC report they stated that the strong El Nino year of 1998 caused more water to enter the atmosphere and give a false pause to the warming trend that will correct itself by 2004. In the third IPCC report they changed it to aerosols were causing a false pause to the warming trend and it would start again in 2011. I expect in 2012 they will report something else is causing it and it will start again in 2015.

The only constant in the environment is change, and our limited understanding, and uncorrupted data going back only 30 years at this point, have too small of a data pool to extrapolate long term trends. If NASA had not 'fixed' the data and permanently deleted the original, and CRU had not just ad-hoc deleted decades and decades of data, we might know more, but what we have now is an incomplete puzzle crippled by politics.
 
Sure, but the atmospheric water content will always be kept in check by a simple equilibrium process. It will always remain at some average value, depending on temperature, whereas there is no mechanism by which you can remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere. Sooner or later, the rise in atmospheric CO2 will offset the natural fluctuation of H2O content, even if H2O is a more efficient absorber, won't it? So again it comes down to the timescale of the process. I'm not a physical chemist, so perhaps you can elaborate on the differences between the modes of vibrational relaxation of CO2 and H2O? I don't see why the relaxation time would have any importance, since it occurs on such a rapid timescale. The thermal energy will be dissipated all the same.
 
Start Point / End Point data manipulation makes all the posted graphs bogus.
 
Kaitian said:
You're the one that went ahead with the claim that the IPCC has no errors in it BECAUSE IT'S PEER-REVIEWED when a huge number of errors have been found in it.
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No. I said it had no serious errors. Nobody has found any errors that have seriously challenged any of the central claims in the IPCC reports.

Kaitian said:
The biggest one is the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 when there was zero source for it nor was it "peer-reviewed" as you like to claim.
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Here you go, recycling the same denialist arguments. You haven't paid any attention at all to my criticism of this argument, and yet you still keep presenting it! It would be hilarious if it wasn't so damned misleading. First, it's an error that has been corrected (by deleting two sentences of the report....two sentences!).

The problem was in the WG2 paper (WG2 = impact of global warming). Instead of citing the sources used in the WG1 paper, they cited an outside, unreliable source. The glaciers were dealt with properly in WG1, and the fact is that they are receding.

Here, why not go to the source? The IPCC has released a statement:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf

Kaitian said:
However the paper I linked are from the same authors so they're not "recycled" like you would claim. The statements made by the NOAA does not dispute the entire paper and only targets selected parts and especially since the paper was written after. Debate is an ongoing process, not "The science is settled" crap the IPCC, CRU, and Goracle followers like to do.
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Here's the thing, though: in which direction are the IPCC papers wrong? Scientists, as a rule, tend to be extremely conservative in their conclusions. And this has been borne out with the IPCC predictions so far: the latest reports analyzing how the IPCC predictions has held out has found that all of the results of global warming this decade have been as bad as the IPCC's worst predictions or worse! If anything, the mistakes in the IPCC reports, what few they are, strongly tend towards underestimating the warming, not overestimating it (this is from 2001 reports).

Kaitian said:
The newest evidence I've read going against the IPCC is they can't back up their claims of more hurricanes occuring with the given data claimed by the IPCC.
http://www.leshatton.org/Hurricanes_2010.html
http://www.leshatton.org/Documents/Hurricanes-are-not-getting-stronger.pdf
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Yeah, that analysis is basically laughable. Here's a much better analysis, that actually looks at the long-term trends, instead of just throwing up a few tables of data:
ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/NATURE03906.pdf

The increase in total storm intensity since the mid-70's is pretty darned clear.

Kaitian said:
Here is another "recycled" paper for you to read but it's not likely.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/climategate_analysis.pdf
Summary: Huge analysis of all the leaked emails from the CRU and not just "selected" quotes. Of course unless you need to have a PhD in emails and "Series of Tubes".
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Ugh. This little quote from the paper is sufficient to show their dishonesty and lies:
Phil Jones to Ray Bradley, Mike Mann, Malcolm Hughes, Keith Briffa, and Tim Osborn, regarding a diagram for a World Meteorological Organization Statement:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Those thirty-three words summarize the hoax so magnificently succinctly that the Nobel Committee should consider retrieving their Peace Prize from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, and re-issuing it as a Literature Prize to Phil Jones.
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The authors of this political rag you call an "analysis" seem to want to make this say that global temperatures have really gone down, and that fact is being "hidden".

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The "trick" is just plotting real temperatures along with the temperature proxies they're talking about (tree rings, if memory serves). Nothing dishonest about showing how well your proxy matches up with thermometer data.

The "decline" is just an omission of a set of the data that strongly diverges from the temperature record: starting in 1961, this particular temperature proxy starts to diverge from direct temperature measurements. Nobody is quite sure why just yet, but smart money is on a local environmental effect (e.g. some sort of pollution). Why would we use data that we know is wrong? Before that time, it matches well with the temperature record and other proxies, so it seems a reasonable data set to use. After that date, something clearly happened (what, we don't yet know) which made the data unreliable. So why use it?
 
Spewn said:
The point is that CO2 is very, very high on the far left side of the graph, yet temperatures are lower than in other places on the graph where CO2 is in-fact also lower. If high CO2 = high temps, how can that be the case?
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Because your graph only shows CO2, and takes no other factors into account. It's quite possible for other particles int he atmosphere to counter the effects of excess CO2.

Lets use a period of high volcanic activity as an example. Volcanoes would release large quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, while also belching out soot and ash. This particulate migrates into he upper atmosphere where it can stay for many-many years, blotting out the sun and keeping temperatures from increasing.

As i mentioned before, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere plays an even larger part than CO2 in regard to trapping heat. If you have a sustained period where there isn't much water vapor in the atmosphere (say, an ice age) then temperatures stay low despite increased levels of CO2.

Get a better graph, seriously :rolleyes:

Nemesis999 said:
On the left where the CO2 level is 7000ppm (12x current levels, and a level considered harmful to humans), the temperature mean is 22C.
On the right where the the CO2 level is 1000ppm (2x current levels, and a level at which plants grown 50% faster then currently), and the temperature is.... 22C.
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As I said, your graph is inadequate for the purposes of this discussion, it doesn't take into account enough factors to come to any conclusions.

Nemesis999 said:
Yet his claim is that a 6.5% increase (582ppm -> 620ppm) is somehow going to cause a 1 degree increase in temperature, despite a 6000ppm decrease not decreasing temperature.
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I quite clearly stated that my numbers were based on only the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere changing, while all other factors remain as they are now.

I later went on to state that increasing levels of CO2 would cause other changes that lead to higher temperatures long before you get up to CO2 levels that high. Less than half that amount could lead to a fractional increase in temperature large enough to increase the levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. That's where you'll start to see large temperature increases.

Come back with a graph that takes ice ages, volcanism, atmospheric particulate levels, solar activity, meteorite impacts, sea level, ice coverage, global levels of water vapor and other greenhouse gasses, etc... That might be enough to make some conclusions. A graph showing CO2 and temperature alone doesn't even BEGIN to tell the whole story, so stop trying to fall back on it as a cruch for your argument.
 
Chalnoth said:
......Why would we use data that we know is wrong? Before that time, it matches well with the temperature record and other proxies, so it seems a reasonable data set to use. After that date, something clearly happened (what, we don't yet know) which made the data unreliable. So why use it?
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Wow. You just blew your credibility right out of the water. A truly ethical scientist does not make the distinction of "good" data or "bad" data, his concern is data accuracy. You say they threw out data which is "unreliable", but the reality is they tossed it because it did not fit their preconceived outcome, something an ethical scientist does not have.

This is a real kicker "something clearly happened (what, we don't yet know) which made the data unreliable." Soooooo, you don't know why the data is that way, but you do know it's unreliable.:rolleyes:

It's clear from your postings that you are as devout a follower of your AWG as any bible thumper discounting any data that counters their beliefs (like the earth is only 12,000 yrs old, man & dinosaurs lived together like in the Flintstones, etc)

agwreligion.gif
 
Chalnoth said:
No. I said it had no serious errors. Nobody has found any errors that have seriously challenged any of the central claims in the IPCC reports.
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I hate going though this AGAIN. but ok, lets start at the beginning.

The problem was in the WG2 paper (WG2 = impact of global warming). Instead of citing the sources used in the WG1 paper, they cited an outside, unreliable source. The glaciers were dealt with properly in WG1, and the fact is that they are receding.
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One thing at a time. Glaciers. They (for the last 2 million years or so) are always either expanding, or retracting. The first point I'd make is would you rather live in a time when they are expanding (glaciation) or retracting (interglacial) ? And think about the real impacts before you say.

As far as their retraction and the current warming trend, which has lasted some 140 years now. You should read this. That is a first hand report from 1922, not a computer model (video game). Modeling is a way of trying to understand something, but is a VERY poor predictor. NONE of the current models work for the last 150 years, so why should they work for the next 100?

Want to put the Greenland melting the perspective? Well here is this historic data from the Greenland station for NASA. Do you still believe the IPCC about Greenland or even the Himalayan Glaciers? Yea they retracted it, and in fact how many retractions, mis-statements, corrections, and other problems has the IPCC had since Climate-Gate? Enough that the chief is stepping down.

Oh, and Alaska, it was WAY overstated.

Sea Ice is another thing to look at.

AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png


I sure don't see a major difference except 2007 which special and not unique, only unique in the satellite age. (1953)


Yeah, that analysis is basically laughable. Here's a much better analysis, that actually looks at the long-term trends, instead of just throwing up a few tables of data:
ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/NATURE03906.pdf

The increase in total storm intensity since the mid-70's is pretty darned clear.
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Ok, lot of links coming. There may be more storms, but their strength is another question, We are better able to observe, and detect storms than we used to be, but how much is natural, and how much is climate change? The IPCC conclusions and data on this is also being challanged.

The "trick" is just plotting real temperatures along with the temperature proxies they're talking about (tree rings, if memory serves). Nothing dishonest about showing how well your proxy matches up with thermometer data.
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Hockey stick weighed tree rings 80% and proxy data 3%, and look what that got you.
As far as surface stations (which is really what you are talking about) Lets talk about how many are next to AC units, or on parking lots, or roofs, or any number of other places they should not be. Then lets talk about the homogenization of data, and the heat island. The raw data from urban sources should be adjusted down, but it is being adjusted up.

Lets not belittle this further, Global warming is being lead by people who want to get rich like Al Gore, and James Hansen. It is being trumpeted by politicians in the IPCC, and fear is generated by news outlets and Hollywood to make a buck. If you want to study Water Beatles in Florida, you can't get money, unless you say you want to study Water Beatles as they are effected by Global Warming, then you get so much money you retire!
 
I have been working on my own theory, regarding climate change, although recent events have thrown a wrench into my hypothesis.

piratessy.jpg


The recent increase in pirates, mostly from Somalia, has destroyed the long term trends I had observed.
 
I don't understand the trenchant insistence by some of the people in this thread that global warming can't be caused by the activity of humans and that its all some vast conspiracy by scientists who want research money.

There is plenty of other things that humans have done that have effected the climate, lots on a local scale (dams for example), and several on a global scale (i.e. Ozone depletion).

The research money claim is fundamentally quite insulting, since science is at its heart about intellectual honesty, but much more to the point I don't see how people can sit there and allege this while not taking into account the potentially enormous costs to companies that are involved in the large scale release of CO2. In my mind they have far more incentive to lie about science than the vast majority of scientists (no-one goes into science for the money, if your smart enough to get a physics PhD you can do medicine, or law or go work on Wall Street, and with the exception of medicine the work required for entry is probably lower)
 
BallerX said:
We have much bigger problems than Global Warming... It doesn't natter if it actually exists or not.
I have been trying to get people to understand what I mean when I say "At this rate, we won't see global warming"... We will either run out of resources to burn or we will nuke ourselves into extinction. Maybe both! Our society is 100% based on exponential growth for prosperity. There is a huge problem with that!

Understanding exponential growth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related
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That just ruined my day. Thanks for the video though. This surely proves we are living in a time when we will see the best and most interesting change in humanity or the deadliest and most horrific. I'll just wait until the shadow government releases their zombie virus.
 
topcat989 said:
Wow. You just blew your credibility right out of the water. A truly ethical scientist does not make the distinction of "good" data or "bad" data, his concern is data accuracy. You say they threw out data which is "unreliable", but the reality is they tossed it because it did not fit their preconceived outcome, something an ethical scientist does not have.

This is a real kicker "something clearly happened (what, we don't yet know) which made the data unreliable." Soooooo, you don't know why the data is that way, but you do know it's unreliable.:rolleyes:

It's clear from your postings that you are as devout a follower of your AWG as any bible thumper discounting any data that counters their beliefs (like the earth is only 12,000 yrs old, man & dinosaurs lived together like in the Flintstones, etc)

agwreligion.gif
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I'm sorry, but your cartoonish view of data doesn't hold any water.

Let me just put it this way: if I had 10 thermometers sitting in my room, and nine of them read one temperature, but the tenth read a completely different temperature, what do you think I should do?
 
Brantoc said:
One thing at a time. Glaciers. They (for the last 2 million years or so) are always either expanding, or retracting. The first point I'd make is would you rather live in a time when they are expanding (glaciation) or retracting (interglacial) ? And think about the real impacts before you say.
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The slower the change, the better for us. Right now the melting of glaciers is accelerating at a quite alarming rate.

Brantoc said:
As far as their retraction and the current warming trend, which has lasted some 140 years now.
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Uh, no. For the last few millennia, the global average temperature has been sort of lazily fluctuating up and down, very slowly. Then, in just the last few decades, it has shot upward at an alarming rate. Scientists have gone through and investigated all of the various climate drivers, and the primary driver for that time has quite clearly been the increase CO2 concentration.

Brantoc said:
You should read this. That is a first hand report from 1922, not a computer model (video game). Modeling is a way of trying to understand something, but is a VERY poor predictor. NONE of the current models work for the last 150 years, so why should they work for the next 100?
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Uh, what? The global climate models work fine, to within their errors. They not only accurately predict the last 100 years (typically GCM's are started at around 1900), but older GCM's have done a quite good job of predicting our current situation (typically, they have gotten some things wrong in one direction, and others wrong in a different direction, and ended up, on balance, giving good predictions....we have learned from these mistakes and incorporated them in more current models).

Your attempt to paint GCM's as being "video games" is completely absurd. Especially since they've proven quite reliable (to within the uncertainties).

Brantoc said:
Want to put the Greenland melting the perspective? Well here is this historic data from the Greenland station for NASA. Do you still believe the IPCC about Greenland or even the Himalayan Glaciers? Yea they retracted it, and in fact how many retractions, mis-statements, corrections, and other problems has the IPCC had since Climate-Gate? Enough that the chief is stepping down.
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You know, this is supposed to be a rational argument. But all you can do is engage in poisoning the well. You can't engage the actual science at all, because the overall conclusions in AGW are unimpeachable. All you can do is pick over every little thing that might sound sort of peripherally nefarious, never mind that it has nothing at all to do with the central issue at hand, and claim that that means it must all be wrong!

Sorry, but scientists are humans too. Scientists make mistakes, just like anybody else. The beauty of science is that it is self-correcting. To point to old mistakes (let alone corrected ones) and say, "Hah! Look! They were wrong once! Obviously they're always wrong!" is just an idiotic stance to take. The fact that we know where science has been wrong in the past is why it is the most reliable form of study there is. Science is built upon learning from previous mistakes.

So go ahead, continue to engage in this fallacious reasoning instead of actually bothering to address the argument. That's all you can do, because you have no argument whatsoever.
 
even if "plenty of scientists agree that global warming is bullshit" something is still wrong, and it's caused by the same reasons of the so called Golbal Warming.

I remember James Hansen saying on David Letterman show that if we stop all pollution, fossil fuel burning, CO2, etc. we won’t see the effect before * years (forgot the number but it was 200 years or something). lost interest in the whole Global Warming thing after that. any news about Fermi? :D

BallerX said:
We have much bigger problems than Global Warming... It doesn't natter if it actually exists or not.
I have been trying to get people to understand what I mean when I say "At this rate, we won't see global warming"... We will either run out of resources to burn or we will nuke ourselves into extinction. Maybe both! Our society is 100% based on exponential growth for prosperity. There is a huge problem with that!

Understanding exponential growth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related
Click to expand...

thanks for the video, and just for a lol....

zyeiwl.jpg
 
firas said:
even if "plenty of scientists agree that global warming is bullshit" something is still wrong, and it's caused by the same reasons of the so called Golbal Warming.

I remember James Hansen saying on David Letterman show that if we stop all pollution, fossil fuel burning, CO2, etc. we won’t see the effect before * years (forgot the number but it was 200 years or something). lost interest in the whole Global Warming thing after that. any news about Fermi? :D
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The effect will be apparent within a couple of decades, but won't necessarily be entirely obvious for a long time.

The real difficulty here is that studies of past Earth climate have shown that it tends to, from time to time, rapidly change from one meta-stable state to another. For example, the periodic ice ages tend to both start and end very rapidly. This seems to indicate that if we push the climate just a little bit too far, then it will just run away from us, making for a very, very different Earth than we are used to.

The scary thing? We don't know what the next tipping point is. And given the danger of hitting it, we should really do all that we can to avoid it.

Just to give you an idea of some of the ways in which this can happen, consider the permafrost. The permafrost is made up of places in mostly the far northern hemisphere (such as northern Canada and Russia) where the soil is frozen year-round. Within this frozen soil is a lot of frozen organic matter. As the permafrost melts, that organic matter is allowed to rot, and tends to release lots of methane and carbon dioxide. And methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas per atom of carbon than carbon dioxide. So if the permafrost starts to melt in earnest, suddenly we'll have a hell of a lot more greenhouse effect, which will make the Earth even warmer, which will cause more permafrost to melt, etc.

By continuing to mess with the Earth's climate by releasing more and more CO2, we are basically poking a hornet's nest with a stick.
 
Chalnoth said:
I'm sorry, but your cartoonish view of data doesn't hold any water.

Let me just put it this way: if I had 10 thermometers sitting in my room, and nine of them read one temperature, but the tenth read a completely different temperature, what do you think I should do?
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your analogy doesn't apply. Try again.
 
topcat989 said:
your analogy doesn't apply. Try again.
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How does it not apply? This is exactly the situation we're talking about: one specific set of tree rings showed temperatures after the 1960's that didn't make any sense when compared against other measures. They're precisely like the one thermometer out of 10 that showed a dramatically different result.
 
dr.stevil said:
How so? The earth has been a lot warmer, and colder, than it is right now. In the cretaceous period, global temperatures were around 20-30* warmer, on average, than it is today (and life flourished?)]-
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Yes, it is well established that earth's climate has changed over time..with many cycles of cooling and warming.. Those cycles predominantly are explained by the orbit of the earth. That mechanism, however, cannot explain the current warming trend. Saying "it was warmer before" is not a sufficient argument when there are explanations for those warming trends. You need to explain WHY it is warming now. Greenhouse gases are the best answer IMO (and the opinion of the scientific community)...how could the dramatic increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations NOT cause warming?
 
Did increase of Greenhouse gases/CO2 concentrations cause the warming of previous periods of warmer Earth? If so, that's a normal Earth climate cycle. If not, then there's another explanation. If there's no way to tell, then we're at an impasse. Insufficient data. More observation required.
 
Dark Shade said:
Did increase of Greenhouse gases/CO2 concentrations cause the warming of previous periods of warmer Earth? If so, that's a normal Earth climate cycle. If not, then there's another explanation. If there's no way to tell, then we're at an impasse. Insufficient data. More observation required.
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There are a wide variety of ways to measure the climate sensitivity to CO2. This is but one, and yes, it has been done:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7135/abs/nature05699.html
 
Chalnoth said:
nissanztt90 said:
Firstly, the current beliefe is that CO2 is the primary forcing, which is disputed by many.
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That's basically a lie promoted by denialists who like to think that the science is on their side. Try actually finding me one working climate scientist who claims that CO2 is the current primary forcing. Please. Try.
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Chalnoth said:
Uh, no. For the last few millennia, the global average temperature has been sort of lazily fluctuating up and down, very slowly. Then, in just the last few decades, it has shot upward at an alarming rate. Scientists have gone through and investigated all of the various climate drivers, and the primary driver for that time has quite clearly been the increase CO2 concentration.
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...
 
AlcoJaguar said:
That's a very broad allegation. I'd argue that this happens in the minority of cases. Ideally there wouldn't be opposing sides in research. By the pursuit of truth in the sciences, and in a perfect world, we would all want the same thing, to discover and utilize new knowledge in the advancement of all people. Unfortunately, you and I both know this isn't always the case, but to assert that sabotage and suppression are always the cases in all fields of research is fairly wild idea. I'll give you the possibility of foul play, but not the suspension of doubt. From there, we build a case from specific evidence of interference and purposeful manipulation.
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You totally missed my point. It's not as if there's complete. concrete evidence on either side. It's total theory, because the timespans we've been accurately measuring temperature are meaningless and small compared to the history of data we don't have available. My point was, that in a case where the whole thing is essentially theory without proof, all that has to happen is getting a majority on one side of the debate, and now you have fact. It doesn't matter that this is 100% theoretical conjecture, suddenly the side with more people on it is "right" and anyone presenting the opposing viewpoint will be considered wrong.
 
AlcoJaguar said:
Is for suppressed or destroyed data, I would be naive to deny such a thing could ever possibly happen, but it does require extraordinary evidence to argue such an extraordinary claim that there is a worldwide, coordinated, dedicated, shadow movement which is systematically crafting an entire field of the natural sciences around a monetary of power agenda. Not impossible, but will require more than word of mouth or the passing hypothesis of someone who can't seem to get into a peer reviewed journal.
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You wouldn't just be naive, you'd be ignorant, since the CRU already admitted they destroyed the original data. You seem to be completely oblivious as to the contents of the Climategate emails. There is a decade-long record of concerted effort to prevent publication of opposing views and to deliberately falsify and manipulate data in order to reach the desired result.

At one point they're arguing with a journal editor as to whether it is better to deliberately add false information to make their graph seem more credible, or to leave it without certainty bars at all (They were uncertain as to the uncertainty). They wanted to purposely include false confidence values because their graph looks lacking without them.

Here's a few samples. Read the whole thing, including the original emails for yourself.

As of March 6 2006, they were discussing the fact that the tree-ring measurements they're using are not only not reliable, but they need to do a study just to figure out how unreliable they are. FYI: The science was apparently "settled" by this point.
March 8 2006 Richard Alley to Jonathan Overpeck, on the growing crisis:

The big issue may be that you don’t just have to convince me now; if the National Research Council (NRC)committee comes out as being strongly negative on the hockey stick owing to Rosanne D’Arrigo’s talk, then the divergence between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the NRC will be a big deal in the future regardless. The NRC committee is accepting comments now (I don’t know for how long)… As I noted, my observations of the NRC committee members suggest rather strongly to me that they now have serious doubts about tree-rings as thermometers (and I do, too … at least until someone shows me why this divergence problem really doesn’t matter).

Overpeck responds, copying his response to many colleagues:
Hi gang—Richard is raising important issues, and Keith is going to respond in some detail on Friday when he gets back. I am cc’ing this to a broader group of IPCC Chapter 6 folks so that we make sure we (Chapter 6) deal with the issues correctly. I’m hoping that Keith will cc to us all, and we’ll go from there.

For those just in on the issue raised by Richard. There is a paper written by Rosanne D’Arrigo that apparently casts serious doubt on the ability of tree ring data to reconstruct the full range of past temperature change—particularly temperatures above mid-20th century levels. Chapter 6 obviously has to deal with this more in the next draft, so Eystein and I would like to get on top of it starting this week.
Keith or Richard—do you have a copy of this paper? Is it accepted?
Yet again, the problem is being handed to Keith Briffa, the one person who has most doubts about the validity and uncertainty of the reconstructions.

March 11, 2006: email 1142108839
Richard Alley continues on the crisis. In his summary:
These considerations do somewhat affect the confidence that can be attached to the best estimate of recent warmth versus that of a millennium ago. … By demonstrating that some tree-ring series chosen for temperature sensitivity are not fully reflecting temperature changes, the divergence issue widens the error bars and so reduces confidence in the comparison between recent and earlier warmth.
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Or how about this one. They were attempting to figure out the source of a graph on the 1990's IPCC reports... Here's the conclusion. Clearly there was extensive fact-checking on their reports.

I believe this graph in the 1995 IPCC Report originated in a (literally) grey piece of literature that Jack Eddy used to publish called “Earth Quest”. It was designed for, and distributed to, high school teachers.
…
I may have inadvertently had a hand in this millennium graph! I recall getting a fax from Jack with a hand-drawn graph, that he asked me to review. Where he got his version from, I don’t know. I think I scribbled out part of the line and amended it in some way, but have no recollection of exactly what I did to it. And whether he edited it further, I don’t know. But as it was purely schematic (and appears to go through around 1950) perhaps it’s not so bad. … In any case, the graph has no objective basis whatsoever; it is purely a “visual guess” at what happened, like something we might sketch on a napkin at a party for some overly persistent inquisitor… (so make sure you don’ leave such things on the table…). What made the last millennium graph famous (notorious!) was that Chris Folland must have seen it and reproduced it in the 1995 IPCC Chapter he was editing.
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The above is followed up by a discussion on how to best bury this fact to avoid generating skepticism (Gee, why would anyone be skeptical of this highly ethical group!!!)

Or how about this one: After the journal "Climate Research" published a peer-reviewed article that is skeptical of global warming, they decide to attempt to black-ball the entire journal and attempt to use their influence to get further articles blocked.

I told Mike MacCracken that I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They’ve already achieved what they wanted—the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper, which will be ignored by the community on the whole…

It is pretty clear that the skeptics here have staged a bit of a coup, even in the presence of a number of reasonable folks on the editorial board (Whetton, Goodess, …). My guess is that Von Storch is actually with them (frankly, he’s an odd individual, and I’m not sure he isn’t himself somewhat of a skeptic himself), and with Von Storch on their side, they would have a very forceful personality promoting their new vision.

There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon and Baliunas paper, that couldn’t get published in a reputable journal.
This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that—take over a journal!

Mike Mann writes:
So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…
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Of course, what report would be complete without the full confidence of those involved in preparation? Back in 2003 the people at the CRU seemed to be a bit short on confidence.

First let me say that in general, as my own opinion, I feel rather uncomfortable about using not only unpublished but also un-reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions (or any conclusions). I realize that Chapter 9 of the Report is including new stuff, and thus we can and need to do that too, but the fact is that in doing so the rules of the IPCC have been softened to the point that in this way the IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science (which is its proclaimed goal), but the production of results. The softened condition that the models themselves have to be published does not even apply, because the Japanese model, for example, is very different from the published one which gave results not even close to the actual … version …. Essentially, I feel that at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes. I think this will set a dangerous precedent which might undermine the IPCC’s credibility, and I am a bit uncomfortable that now nearly everybody seems to think that it is just ok to do this. Anyway, this is only my opinion, for what it is worth.
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This brilliant email is followed by another discussing whether or not they should redefine "Agreement" between models (after the fact) in order to produce the desired results.
1) Do we soften our requirement, i.e. from “all the models except one need to agree with each other” to “all the models except two need to agree with each other” agreement? I do not feel strongly about it but am more in favor of not softening the criterion. We are looking for confidence and model agreement and should have stringent requirements on it.
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Not surprising, considering they had just previously defined 64% as "quite possible" in order to get the effect they wanted on the report.

please get rid of the ridiculous “inconclusive” for the 34% to 66% subjective probability range. It will convey a completely different meaning to lay persons—read decision makers—since that probability range represents medium levels of confidence, not rare events. A phrase like “quite possible” is closer to popular lexicon, but “inconclusive” applies as well to very likely or very unlikely events and is undoubtedly going to be misinterpreted on the outside.
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The diningroom tables are wasting record numbers of electrons.

Its all fine by me, I live in a place where global warming will have only positive effects, plenty of water, warmer temps, and the beach will end up 20 miles closer.

So do nothing, insist its all a hoax, knock yourselves out. When it's 150F in the afternoon in downtown Austin, I'll be sitting on the beach up here laughing my ass off.
 
Oh, whoops, I had a typo. I meant to say, try to find one working scientists who doesn't think CO2 is the primary climate forcing currently. Can't believe I missed that.
 
Chalnoth said:
Oh, whoops, I had a typo. I meant to say, try to find one working scientists who doesn't think CO2 is the primary climate forcing currently. Can't believe I missed that.
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I can believe that, but ongoing credibility trainwreck aside...

Do you honestly believe that any climate scientist can say with absolute certainty that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the primary forcing for current climate trends? Do you really believe that we can conclusively provide evidence that...humans are the main cause of global warming? With the age of the planet and everything that we know...do you really think we can say one way or another?

Let me re-phrase that...

Do you really think we can look into fossil records or whatever clues this planet has left us...and conclude that the Earth has never seen an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide of this magnitude in such a short time frame, at any time? If you can deduce at any point, within the last...1..2..3..4..billion years...that the planet has or has not seen such circumstances...then...ill nominate you for the peace price...Al Gore grabbed it with alot less evidence...none the less...I really want to see all the evidence regarding your theory. PM me if you must. Im very eager to learn.
 
nissanztt90 said:
Do you honestly believe that any climate scientist can say with absolute certainty that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the primary forcing for current climate trends? Do you really believe that we can conclusively provide evidence that...humans are the main cause of global warming? With the age of the planet and everything that we know...do you really think we can say one way or another?
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Absolute certainty? In science, there's no such thing. High confidence? Yes, absolutely. The evidence is quite clear here.

nissanztt90 said:
Let me re-phrase that...

Do you really think we can look into fossil records or whatever clues this planet has left us...and conclude that the Earth has never seen an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide of this magnitude in such a short time frame, at any time? If you can deduce at any point, within the last...1..2..3..4..billion years...that the planet has or has not seen such circumstances...then...ill nominate you for the peace price...Al Gore grabbed it with alot less evidence...none the less...I really want to see all the evidence regarding your theory. PM me if you must. Im very eager to learn.
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Uh, what the heck would that have to do with whether or not we have current human-caused warming?
 
nissanztt90 said:
Do you really think we can look into fossil records or whatever clues this planet has left us...and conclude that the Earth has never seen an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide of this magnitude in such a short time frame
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Now this is one area I can assist with. As someone who is a trained geologist, I can tell you that it would be, from my educated opinion, impossible to "look into the fossil record" and find evidence of a short-duration, high-carbon period.

Now, that doesn't mean that these periods didn't exist, but in terms of using geological evidence, fossils, whatever you would like, to try and determine a time period where something such as high-carbon emissions occurred would be unlikely, due to issues such as the sequestering of carbon with time into the surroundings in different forms, the chemical reactions that occur between minerals and fluids over time, erosion, compacting of sediment, etc.

You have to remember, that what most people view as "fossilized bones", are for the most part not organic material, but instead some form of mineralization that occurs. A good example is petrified wood: there is no actual "wood" remaining, but rather, silica-based minerals have replaced the original wood to produce the fossil.

Thus, the only way we can really say with certainty that an era had higher carbon levels is usually due to the evidence of an abundance of plant life within a geologic strata, as plant life thrives during high- CO2/carbon periods. However, that geologic strata is on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions or hundreds of millions of years usually, so you can't really say "there was a high-CO2 period that lasted for 100 years" using the geologic/fossil record.

No, pretty much your brief/short duration events that are recorded are limited to those events that can produce a sizable enough strata to be preserved, such as caldera/super caldera eruptions and asteroid impacts such as Chicxulub.
 
Dreaz said:
Look at all these pseudo scientists. The arrogance in this thread astounds me.

These scientists have been working on these issues longer than most in this thread have been alive.

I'm going to believe them over some random forum-goer about global warming anyday. To think some people in this thread would have you believe they are even in the same playing field as the experts.
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All I have to say to you is Climategate. This is a dead issue. Man Made Global Warming is a hoax 100%. Phil Jones has already admitted it. He even admitted that he thought about committing suicide. Your religion is dead.
 
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