Ridley: "I Can't Find One Piece of Data That Shows Unprecedented Change, or Harmful Change."
From Matt Ridley's "Angus Millar Lecture of the Royal Society of the Arts" in Edinburgh, titled "Scientific Heresy":
"Stalagmites, tree lines and ice cores all confirm that it was significantly warmer 7000 years ago. Evidence from Greenland suggests that the Arctic ocean was probably ice free for part of the late summer at that time. Sea level is rising at the unthreatening rate about a foot per century and decelerating.
Greenland is losing ice at the rate of about 150 gigatonnes a year, which is 0.6% per century. There has been no significant warming in Antarctica, with the exception of the peninsula. Methane has largely stopped increasing. Tropical storm intensity and frequency have gone down, not up, in the last 20 years. Your probability of dying as a result of a drought, a flood or a storm is 98% lower globally than it was in the 1920s. Malaria has retreated not expanded as the world has warmed.
And so on. I’ve looked and looked but I cannot find one piece of data – as opposed to a model – that shows either unprecedented change or change is that is anywhere close to causing real harm."
224 Comments:
You have a bad link to Ridley's lecture.
It should work now, thanks.
People forget that the Norse colonized Greenland, and then their colonies died off, due to sustained increasing cold, after 1000 AD.
The earth's climate is not stable. Even worse, about every 450,000 years or so, a mega-volcano erupts with global consequences. Huge meteor strikes are much more rare.
A warmer climate with higher CO2 levels may work well---crop yields go up.
Buy land in Canada.
On the other hand, Dallas hit 100 for 100 days in a row. Texas may be the next Sahara.
Ridley's paper is excellent. Thanks for the reference.
Belinda
"We look for and welcome the evidence that fits our pet theory; we ignore or question the evidence that contradicts it. We all do this all the time."
- - - - and Dr. Ridley just did it again himself.
He is finding what he is looking for; and he isn't finding what he isn't looking for.
I like a phrase used in this review of Matt Ridley. He uses this method called the Galloping Gish. Named after creationist Duane Gish it's a rapid fire series of falsehoods offered without evidence, each of which requires a serious amount of investment to debunk.
Can't find a single piece of evidence indicating unprecedented or harmful change he says. Depends on how you define terms. Sure, the warming isn't unprecedented. The earth was warmer tens of millions of years ago (and cooler). But of course humans didn't exist tens of millions of years ago. And the change may not be harmful for him. Maybe he's rich. But he's not in India depending on glacial run off to water his crops. He's not in Africa where vast sections of land are becoming deserts. And he'll be dead before it gets too bad. So it's not harmful in that sense.
But if you care about the poor or the future, then the evidence that this is potentially harmful is abundant.
"...then the evidence that this is potentially harmful is abundant."
i guess if the best you can say with all of this "abundant" evidence is that it is "potentially harmful," then i guess that same abundant evidence also means it is potentially helpful, or potentially inoccuous, or potentially wrong.
From jon's link: 'It’s terrible in the sense that it is horribly misleading on climate science. In fact, it’s so bad that it qualifies as this year’s most dishonest piece of denialist propaganda'...
Misleading?!?! Propaganda?!?!
Is it worse than the IPCC's redistributionist agenda?
Worse than the lies of pseudo climate skeptic Richard Muller?
Worse than the lies of Rajendra Pachauri and the IPCC's regarding the Himalayan glaciers?
Jon, the Anasazi indians had to abandon their homes due to climate change around 1100 AD. Yet humans now inhabit these same regions. Why? Trade and specialization. Advanced technology.
Mr. Ridley argues that this prosperity may eventually come to all.
Here are Freeman Dyson's heretical thoughts.
From the article:
"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in."
This quote might also be of interest in an economics blog:
"I am telling the next generation of young students, who will still be alive in the second half of our century, that misfortunes are on the way. Their precious Ph.D., ... may be worth less than they think. Their specialized training may become obsolete. They may find themselves over-qualified for the available jobs. ...The country and the culture to which they belong may move far away from the mainstream. But these misfortunes are also opportunities. It is always open to them to join the heretics and find another way to make a living."
Thanks for the links trey...
i guess if the best you can say with all of this "abundant" evidence is that it is "potentially harmful," then i guess that same abundant evidence also means it is potentially helpful, or potentially inoccuous, or potentially wrong.
I suppose. But if the entirety of the scientific community tells you that if you get on that plane there's a 40% chance it will crash, but on the other hand a 60% chance the ride will be entirely innocuous, what do you do?
And let's suppose we waste research effort and vastly increase our reliance on renewable energy? Would that be such a nightmare? For the fossil fuel industry maybe, but not for the rest.
Juandos, your first link is not in English. Your second link is sour grapes. Muller is a "fake" climate skeptic. Fooled Koch, who funded the study. Fooled skeptics Judith Curry, co-author that Delingpole notes now distances herself from the very paper she supposedly co-authored. Fooled Anthony Watts.
Why so much hostility? Because the science denial community was all giddy about proving the hockey stick wrong after so many failed efforts. But it's the same story once again. The hockey stick is confirmed again, this time by a denialist. It's already been confirmed a dozen times. As if another nail in the coffin was required, but whatever. Pound it in.
Isn't it strange that Jon the communist is like a religious zealot about a theory whose leading proponents say will require a massive intervention and control of our lives?
"Muller is a "fake" climate skeptic. Fooled Koch, who funded the study. Fooled skeptics Judith Curry, co-author that Delingpole notes now distances herself from the very paper she supposedly co-authored."
She distances herself because Muller's study you are gloating over shows no warming increase in over a decade.
That's a mighty strange shaped hockey stick.
jon-
that whole argument is utter nonsense. science has never been, nor ever will be about consensus.
science is about providing verified, repeatable results.
none of the climate models work, all have failed to predict the fact that there has been no warming for 13 years, the scientists involved have been repeatedly caught lying (mann's hockey stick, climategate, the IPCC and it's use of bogus data, penn state's refusal to share data, the BEST project making outlandish claims contrary to its own data in public before peer review, etc), and no evidence of harm has ever been produced.
and you care what these funding hungry political hacks think?
i spent 6 months in the late 90's studying this for a big fund who was looking at getting into carbon trading. i have spoken to most of the major climate scientists in the world, the IPCC lead authors, the custodians of all 4 major temperature databases, their supporters, and their critics.
like you, i started off assuming AGW must be real as there was such a strong "consensus".
what i discovered is not only is there no solid data to back the claim, but that the consensus itself is a lie.
worse, there are mountains of evidence that disprove the theory, most damning that if recent warming were co2 driven, the mid troposphere would be warming more than the surface providing a specific fingerprint unique to AGW. not only is it totally absent, but in fact exists in the opposite direction as predicted. thus, either the models are wrong, or the warming is being driven by other factors. which of those makes you want to follow them?
these guys have been proven wrong at every turn and turned to bad science, worse statistics, and utterly reprehensible PR tactics to hide this fact.
this whole movement is a classic example of politics driving science and researchers creating and exaggerating a problem to frighten governments into funding them.
Climate change is not about science, it's about power.
morganovich: most damning that if recent warming were co2 driven, the mid troposphere would be warming more than the surface providing a specific fingerprint unique to AGW.
Huh? Are you referring to the tropospheric hot spot in the tropics? That's due to increased evaporation at the tropics which decreases the lapse rate. This is not a signature of greenhouse warming, but of warming in general regardless of the cause.
The signature of greenhouse warming is tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. And that is what we see.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-3-17.gif
juandos: Misleading?!?! Propaganda?!?!
Well, at least we can agree that "carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the climate has been warming and that man is very likely to be at least partly responsible."
"She distances herself because Muller's study you are gloating over shows no warming increase in over a decade."
she also distances herself because meuller is making claims contradicted by his own data and based on large errors in statistics.
instead of waiting for this to emerge in peer review, he orchestrated a PR bombshell during the period when all the people most able to comment on his work, the peer reviewers, are gagged by confidentiality agreements because review is ongoing.
that is the act of a huckster selling patent medicine out of the back of a wagon, not a serious scientist.
like steig, whose dramatic Antarctica warming claims were so thoroughly shown to be statistical garbage, this will be the end for meuller.
Jon et al-
So where are the data that show unprecedented change or harmful change? Should be easy to come up with if the science is settled.
We need to stop government from taking over the (private) energy industry, because it's almost certain it'll result in higher prices, lower quality, or a collapse of the industry, like health care, education, housing, finance, etc.
Also, if Americans had to pay for the 2010 U.S. budget deficit, every household in America would've sent the U.S. government roughly an additional $1,000 a month in 2010.
The anti-science community likes to pretend that Mann's hockey stick has been thoroughly debunked. I'm admitting I'm a novice here, but based on my limited evaluation of that claim (mostly by reading the Wiki entry) it appears that anti-science has been going at him forever, failing again and again. First Saul and Baliunus. They were finally totally disgraced. You have McIntyre who seems to have contributed a little value without overturning the central graph. More recently Muller. Backed by anti science Koch moguls you still get the same thing. You have over a dozen subsequent analysis all confirming the general outlines from Mann using a variety of proxies for temperature. All of these varied analysis using varied methods all converge on the same thing. Ridley says "I can't find it." Read some science. It's been shown not just ones. Repeatedly.
And the hockey stick is not the primary evidence for the concern. It was unfortunately displayed prominently without error bars once and this was seized on by the denial community. Off to the races they went backed to the hilt by the fossil fuel industry. In fact Mark Perry's American Enterprise Institute is funneling money from Exonn to willing economists and scientists in an attempt to encourage them to muddy the waters and cause people to doubt science. After all that the evidence has still held up. That's rather remarkable and shows the robustness of the scientific method.
"...the entirety of the scientific community tells you'..."
Well, the global warmists like to pretend that "the entirety of the scientific community" is behind them. Yet we hear so much from the "deniers," some of whom surely belong to the scientific community.
And besides, the global warming, sorry, climate change issue reminds me of the famous quote:
"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
For all the predictions of gloom and doom, my own eyes just can't see it.
"... it's a rapid fire series of falsehoods offered without evidence, each of which requires a serious amount of investment to debunk." -- Jon
(1) ... he's not in India depending on glacial run off to water his crops. (2) He's not in Africa where vast sections of land are becoming deserts. (3) ... if you care about the poor or the future, then the evidence that this is potentially harmful is abundant. -- Jon
Jon, meet Jon
Funny, that didn't require a "serious amount of investment" at all.
I love how people like Jon throw around the term "anti-science" at skeptics in order to paint us as idiots. Hey Jon, it's 2011 and you're still a communist. If there ever was a "consensus" about anything, you're on the outside side of it.
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"The anti-science community likes to pretend ..." -- Jon
Wow, just who is the "the anti-science community" ?
Would it be the leftists who reject vaccination against disease putting millions of the elderly and children at risk? The leftists who worked to ban DDT, resulting in the deaths of millions of the poor children you profess to care so much for? The leftists who attack the genetic modification of staple crops, which, if they are successful in undermining said effort, may result in mass famine as the worlds population increases? The leftists who roitinely manufacture "evidence" that fracking for gas and oil contaminates ground water?
Just who is the "the anti-science community" ?
Jon,
The plight of those in India have nothing to do with the CAUSE of the recent warming trend. That may be the weakest of your offerings on this topic. An explanation should only contain things that are relevant to the 'phenomenon'.
I was thinking about Hempel's covering law..mostly its flaws: Information predicting facts doesn't explain the same facts after we know them.
When you look at the temperature variation over the last 2,000 years (the best available data) you'll see MANY warming trends of equal or greater movement within the same amount of time. So, it begs the question: why is it now a catastrophe caused by man when all the previous events were not?
Perfect and obvious example of agumentative innumeracy.
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When you look at the temperature variation over the last 2,000 years (the best available data) you'll see MANY warming trends of equal or greater movement within the same amount of time.
Why would you say that? Here's the last 2000 years.
I wonder if Jon walks around in a white lab coat while holding a clip board to make himself feel all science-y.
Jon,
Why would I say that? Look at that mess...you can't make any sense out of any of that....take the Cook readings and my point is extremely solid. Take the Climate research compiled outlier (which is, I'm sure, the one you focus on) and its unexplained asterisk and you get 2 trends in a row within the norm that look like one.
Take the Moberg and we're talking about nothing.
I do have a much better graph that tries to clean all this up. If I can find it, I'll post it.
jon-
no.
that is a completely BS graph dominated by bad proxies like tree rings.
here's some real data:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure5.png
it gets much more pronounced if you take out tree rings (which measure co2 more than temps)
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure11.png
we are still way below medieval temps, further still below roman, and yet further from minoan, all of which were well under the Holocene climate optimum. that's all from this intergalcial.
this intergalacial was colder than the last one.
we are currently in an ice age.
in only 10% of the time since multi cellular life evolved has it been cold enough for there to be ice at both poles.
the world is in the bottom 5% of temps for 500 million years.
we are in the tail end of an interglacial and temps have been dropping for 9000 years. the little ice age that peaked in 1800-50 was the coldest period in that 9000 years. we have recovered somewhat from the lows (to the great benefit of mankind) but not to medieval levels.
the chart you cite is pure nonsense based on bad proxies and worse data handling (the huge acceleration is a data splice of proxies to thermometers) and the proxies themselves are mostly invalid (tree rings) and absurdly weighted.
i realize how easy it it to be misled by such graphs, but i urge you to take a deep look at their sourcing. it's appaling when you do.
i recommend reading steve mcintyre (who conclusively demolished the "hockey stick") on the topic.
"The anti-science community likes to pretend that Mann's hockey stick has been thoroughly debunked. "
it has.
this is not questioned by anyone with an even rudimentary statistics background.
http://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/
this should give you a primer.
even the canadian government agree when they studied it independently.
even the IPCC has stopped using it.
sorry, but the hockey stick is one of the most conclusively disproven scientific frauds of all time.
to lob around phrases like "anti science" while appealing to the climate equivalent of celestial spheres is preposterous jon.
Morganovich,
Thank you. If I tried to write that, it would have ended up confusing and 30 pages long.
Morganvich, what I offer is data from scientists published in respected peer reviewed journals, all of which are sourced.
What you offer is plots from a blogger. The plots are unsourced. The blogger is not a scientist, nor does he have any education in the field. And in fact he threw his weight behind the Muller study, a study which we now know contradicts all of the science denial that Watts has been asserting through the years.
I mean seriously, people. Uneducated bloggers with unsourced material is persuasive, and sourced, peer reviewed, documented data is not?
With regards to McIntyre, I said as far as I can tell he did provide some correctives, but repeated peer reviewed studies using a variety of methods (not just tree rings) has confirmed the general outlines of the Mann results. Why would you stand against the overwhelming scientific consensus and instead stand with uneducated bloggers?
even the IPCC has stopped using it.
sorry, but the hockey stick is one of the most conclusively disproven scientific frauds of all time.
Not true according to the Wiki entry I linked to above. That entry quotes from the IPCC 4th assessment which repeats the same claims shown by Mann. The last 50 years is very likely the warmest we've seen in at least 1300 years. That's describing Mann's graph.
I've repeatedly stated that in the peer reviewed literature the hockey stick outlines have been repeatedly confirmed. An uneducated blogger denying that is not persuasive in my view, nor should it be for anyone that thinks science matters. Asserting that nobody with a "rudimentary statistics background" takes it seriously is pure bluster. Go to the wiki link. There are plenty of sources of real scientists publishing in the field confirming Mann's data. These people know statistics and they know climate science. Nobody takes it seriously? I've put sources for people that take it seriously right in front of you. Are you going to believe uneducated bloggers or your lying eyes?
Jon,
Why do you post a graph and ignore information in it that doesn't fit your narrative? Why do you ignore downward trends and only count upward trends? Isn't that kind of a weird thing to do?
Cook and Moberg not the data you want? Starting to sound a bit like an uneducated blogger...
If you want to understand the problems with the hockey stick, Ross McKitrick has summarized them in this 19 page paper-
I am an uneducated blogger, Mike. That's why you shouldn't take my word for anything. And if I'm going to claim that the overwhelming scientific consensus is wrong I better damn well provide some credible sources. You are claiming MANY warming trends of equal or greater magnitude than the present over the last 2000 years. What are you basing that on? It needs to be better than an uneducated blogger.
Jon,
I'm looking at the graph you provided. Striking is the Cook between 900 and 1,000.
Although it's all clustered, you can see the Moberg (after LIA leveling) only shows a change from -.4 to -.2....If you can't see several variations of .2 all over this graph within 150 year spans, I can't help you.
By the way, "The last 50 years is very likely the warmest we've seen in at least 1300 years. That's describing Mann's graph."
Thank GOD they shut down all those factories in 700 CE or we'd have never been born. Point is, non of this, as shaky as it is, has any relevance to cause.
Jon: The anti-science community likes to pretend that Mann's hockey stick has been thoroughly debunked.
morganovich: it has.
The National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate examined the issue and found that "the basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence"
morganovich: http://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/
Clicked on a couple of links and they sent me to "Free Estimate in Furnance Replace. Call Us First! Call Now."
morganovich: even the canadian government agree when they studied it independently.
Canada: Climate change is one of the most important environmental issues of our time, requiring urgent action on the part of all governments and citizens.
http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=F2DB1FBE-1
morganovich: we are still way below medieval temps, further still below roman, and yet further from minoan, all of which were well under the Holocene climate optimum.
Yes, but that's not what worries climatologists. The problem is that the current rise in temperature is projected to be much higher, and the world is much more crowded with natural resources already under great stress.
As for the Holocene warming period:
NOAA Paleocliimatology: "the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years."
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html
Yeah, Cook offers you your highest estimate for medieval warming and you can't really see to well what's happening today. Does that contradict something I said? Does this justify your claim? Do you want to jump from Cook in the medieval warming over to Moberg in modern times? Is that your claim?
Sure, skipping from one preferred conclusion at one point to a different study with a preferred conclusion at another point might lead you to some sort of "everything is fine" conclusion, but is that reasonable? And does it justify these outrageously false claims that Mann's graph is thoroughly discredited and nobody takes it seriously?
Scientists don't claim we'd have never been born without the cooling we saw after the medieval warming. What they are doing is looking ahead. Things are pretty good right now even with the recent spike. Does that mean things will be fine in 100 years? No. Scientists are pretty good at what they do. I say we should listen. They might be wrong. That's happened before. But they've also been very right. If you're going to reject what they say I think you need really good reasons. I'm not seeing them from the denialists here.
jon-
the NOAA have a severe alarmist bent and a terribly corrupt data set.
by their own siting criteria, only 15% of their site are well situated. over 2/3 have at least 2 degrees of UHI warming.
their claims about the hockey stick say ZERO about its statistics and data. they accept it as gospel, then make their claim.
look at this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/11/making-holocene-spaghetti-sauce-by-proxy/#more-6961
any you will see that pretty much all the other valid data contradicts it.
astoundingly, the hockey stick itself has no hockey stick shaped data inputs. it's all the algorithm. it makes a hockey stick out of random data.
read this:
it'll give you a primer.
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-stick
take a look at the findings of the us senate committee.
the hockey stick has been utterly, comprehensively debunked.
i have worked through that statistics personally. (it took weeks)
steve's site will give you everyhting you need to get started doing likewise.
http://climateaudit.org/
No, Jon, that's not what I'm saying at all.
First, what I'm saying is that in several of the data on the "cluster-graph", you can see variations, within time frame, that are similar. If I can't jump from Cook to Moberg and must select one that I choose to accept, that makes me you. That's a good portion of my point.
My comment about earlier warming was sarcasm. If they would have had the same methods of temperature readings as we have now, I wonder what conclusions they would have drawn....witches? God is mad? It's all about looking ahead and what to do. I wouldn't have liked their ideas about solving the "problem" any more than I like the current "solutions".
I don't have any problem listening to what they're saying. I have a problem with taking action and unintended consequences. You and I have a difference of opinion....and that's totally fine with me. I don't think you're an idiot or anything, but I do see very good reasons to be skeptical.
"Yes, but that's not what worries climatologists. The problem is that the current rise in temperature is projected to be much higher, and the world is much more crowded with natural resources already under great stress."
temps have been flat for 13 years.
all the models are wrong.
cern proved a solar feedback that they all ignore. co2 has been massively overstated in terms of importance and feedback assumptions are absurd.
there is no way earth climate is dominated by positive feedbacks.
if it were, climate would have run away by now.
further, the specific heat signature in the mid troposphere that would be characteristic of greenhouse warming is totally absent.
read douglass's data about halfway through this.
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/07/is-the-climate-science-debate-over-no-its-just-getting-very-very-interesting/
that is pretty much total, incontestable disproof of agw. the models CANNOT be right if that heat is absent at 8-12k meters.
until you can explain that, you do not have a leg to stand on.
note that all these same "scientists" were proclaiming a new ice age in the early 70's and blaming, wait for it, man's use of fossil fuels.
this isn't science, it's propaganda. they start with "ban fossil fuel" and blame whatever happens on them and then assume it's bad.
cooling is bad, stop using fossil fuels. warming is bad, stop using fossil fuels.
these people are a joke.
it amazed me how bad their science is. try actually reading the papers instead of reading the headlines and you will rapidly come around to my view.
jon-
you response on canada is a non sequitor and terribly disingenuous.
you cite canda's view on agw, i spoke of a canadian group verifying criticism of the hockey stick.
you answer my particular with a government policy.
nice try, but that shows nothing at all.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/
co2 has very low correlation to temperature over 150 years.
in the last 10, r squared is essentially zero, meaning there is no relationship at all.
that's a pretty astounding hurdle to overcome for agw proponents.
correlation is not causality, but a total lack of correlation sure make a causal link unlikely.
It's important to remember that all of the dire scenarios forwarded by the AGW crowd are based on climate models. These models have been shown to be seriously flawed. But even if these models were perfectly designed and calibrated they may, in fact, have absolutely no predictive capability:
Abstract: It is often assumed that once a model has been calibrated to measurements then it will have some level of predictive capability, although this may be limited. If the model does not have predictive capability then the assumption is that the model needs to be improved in some way.
Using an example from the petroleum industry, we show that cases can exist where calibrated models have no predictive capability. This occurs even when there is no modeling error present. It is also shown that the introduction of a small modeling error can make it impossible to obtain any models with useful predictive capability.
We have been unable to find ways of identifying which calibrated models will have some predictive capacity and those which will not.
Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Imperial College, London
HT/ WUWT
Models, especially when they are meant to represent something as complex as the Earths climatic system, are completely unreliable. The list of modeling errors is expansive, but here are just a few:
CERN: 'Climate models will need to be substantially revised'
New paper from Lindzen and Choi implies that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
Study: ‘Huge discrepancies’ between global climate predictions and hard data
'Squishy' ice shifts climate models, study says
New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism"
"Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels."
"I mean seriously, people. Uneducated bloggers ..." -- Jon
You mean like this dude ?
"Go to the wiki link." -- Jon
...The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history....
...Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia's articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.
Wikipedia's climate doctor, National Post
ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2009) — Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere ... Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase ... To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data. In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades. The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters. -- ScienceDaily
Jon,
You are a very poor spokesman for your cause. Please read the literature on both sides of the issue. If you feel so strongly that this is critical to the human race as a whole, then I'm sure you can eek out a couple hours a week to read about both sides as I did for about a year, before satisfying myself that the warmist claims are bogus.
One thing that has not been mentioned here (although I know morganovich is well aware of it) is the actual cause of the hockey stick in that graph.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447
Eric is a code jockey reviewing code, nothing more. He doesn't HAVE to be a "climate scientist" to accomplish this because he is looking into something that falls well within his realm of expertise. As a former coder (and pretty darned good debugger) myself (and yes, I have the credentials to go with that, though I don't use them anymore :^) I've looked over his review and I see exactly what Eric sees. This is absolute proof that the hockey stick, as it is drawn, is indeed a fabrication.
Now, the question becomes, is it a dishonest fabrication, or a simple mistake? There's the question! For the answer to that, I would refer you to a recent SciAm article online.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=finance-why-economic-models-are-always-wrong
This same argument holds true for all non-trivial models and is something that Computer Scientists have been aware of since at least the 70's (I know it was mentioned in my sim books in college published in the mid 80's). It's called Over Fitting, and it is a common problem and a common mistake. The same happens in the AI world, especially with Neural Networks (which, at their heart, rely upon statistical probabilities, but that's a different discussion).
In short, you're claim to authorities (with, self admittedly virtually no useful knowledge) is childish at best. If you continue to make such claims without employing your own research into the issue (and going to the trouble to actually THINK rather than simply accept given opinion) then you are hopeless.
In closing, I might point out that a frequent slur used against "deniers" is "Flat Earthers", referring to the people who believed that the Earth was flat and that the universe revolved around us (e.g. pre-reformation Catholic Church, to name a name). I might remind you, next time you hear somebody use that slur (or consider using it yourself), that the real "Flat Earthers" appealed to the consensus of educated men in their reasoning (going all the way back to Aristotle). It was the "deniers" that supported Copernicus, Brahe, and Galileo.
There might be a lesson that.
morganovich: temps have been flat for 13 years.
Climate change is rapid, but there are fluctuations over decadal periods. Short term fluctuations generally overwhelm long term signals. That's why scientists took so long to reach the conclusion of global warming. In any case, 2010 tied for the warmest year on record.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html
morganovich: cern proved a solar feedback that they all ignore.
Cern: it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed.
morganovich: there is no way earth climate is dominated by positive feedbacks. if it were, climate would have run away by now.
Um, no. There are countervailing influences, as well.
morganovich: further, the specific heat signature in the mid troposphere that would be characteristic of greenhouse warming is totally absent.
The tropospheric hot spot is due to increased evaporation at the tropics which decreases the lapse rate. This is not a signature of greenhouse warming, but of warming in general regardless of the cause.
Santer et al. pointed out the flaws in the Douglass et al. paper.
Santer et al., Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere, International Journal of Climatology 2008.
morganovich: note that all these same "scientists" were proclaiming a new ice age in the early 70's and blaming, wait for it, man's use of fossil fuels.
Sorry, that isn't true. Though a few scientists were worried about cooling due to aerosols, it became quickly apparent that greenhouse gases would predominate.
morganovich: you answer my particular with a government policy.
YOU cited the Canadian government as an authoritative source. They base their policy on the science. Royal Society of Canada: "there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring1. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001)2. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate."
morganovich: co2 has very low correlation to temperature over 150 years. in the last 10, r squared is essentially zero, meaning there is no relationship at all.
Did he really use USHCN to account for global warming? The U.S. only represents 4% of the Earth's surface.
Che is dead: Models, especially when they are meant to represent something as complex as the Earths climatic system, are completely unreliable.
Well, all models of chaotic systems will tend to diverge over time, however, the basic mechanisms of heat are understood well enough to understand that the globe will warm due to greenhouse gases.
Che is dead: "Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels."
It's called conservation of mass. It has to go somewhere. Humans are emitting more than the increase in atmospheric CO2. Much of the rest is absorbed by the oceans, leading to increased acidification.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification
Che is dead: "he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades."
Sigh. Do you even know what it says? It isn't saying that atmospheric CO2 isn't increasing. It says exactly the opposite.
Che is dead: Eric is a code jockey reviewing code, nothing more.
Independent scientists have replicated the original findings.
zach-
2010 was NOT the warmest year on record. that's an absurd misstatement.
1998 was warmer and so were the 30's.
you are not accounting to station siting issues and issues with the land networks.
the best way to measure temps is with the oceans. they are not prone to the land use and urban heat island issues of the terrestrial network.
they show no warming for a decade.
read levitus, 2009 NOAA ocean climate labs
use only continuous rural stations, and it's hard to find any land warming either.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/palmer_figure3.png
the us shows a downtrend from the 30's to the 80's.
your whole "warming is sudden" argument is a joke. there is not a single shred of evidence that that is true unless "sudden" to you means 2000 years.
cern said one thing in public (for fear of funding), but the data says otherwise. read the study.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/25/some-reactions-to-the-cloud-experiment/
you are uncritically consuming propaganda.
no, i did not "cite the Canadian government" as an authoritative source.
i said that even an independent group that they, massive agw proponents that they are, funded agreed the hockey stick was false.
then, he tried to say, well, the canadains beleive in AGW.
that is both a total non sequitor, as you can believe in agw and not a hockey stick, and horribly disingenous as it's a cheap rhetorical trick.
i am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's your logic and reading comp that are bad here zach, but your argument does not make any sense nor bear any resemblance to the facts.
zach-
the ushcn data correlates well to the giss. you get the same answer if you use world data and far, far lower correlation if you look at the southern hemisphere.
also note: co2 is a lagging, not a leading variable coming out of every interglacial.
this whole relationship came from a bad look at the vostok core data.
first slices were at 1000 year intervals. it made co2 look correlated to temps.
when they did it again at century and decadal granularity, they discovered that it warms for 1500 years, then co2 rises.
it's the oceans outgassing.
cos has NEVER driven climate on earth. the last ice age began with 500% of the CO2 we currently have.
co2 has been at 25X current levels.
there were no "tipping points". climate did not "run away".
this is because the feedbacks are negative, not positive and cos has logarithmic impact meaning that it is already having most of the effect it ever could.
NONE of the models have co2 driving run away climate. they all derive that scenario from presumed positive feedbacks. these feedbacks do not exist. there is not one shred of empirical evidence that they do, and piles that they do not.
read lindzen's work on the adaptive heat iris.
do you have any idea how few systems dominated by positive feedback exist? i'll bet you cannot name one on earth.
it's clear you lack the scientific background to see how absurd the assumptions of these modelers are (or else you would not argue preposterous things like "climate change is sudden" when talking on a decadal scale.
climate is unbelievably stable.
earth has been in a range of 20C for 500 million years.
many places change more than that day to night or winter to summer.
co2 has varied by a factor of 30.
still, we have remained stable in the face of all that varied input.
now, suddenly, you would have us believe it's all different?
do you have any idea how preposterous that is?
"Well, all models of chaotic systems will tend to diverge over time, however, the basic mechanisms of heat are understood well enough to understand that the globe will warm due to greenhouse gases." -- Zach
Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.
"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."
In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.
The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.
YahooNews
Back to the drawing board, troll.
This is the reason I love visiting Carpe Diem -- there are always great articles on a variety of subjects with links that I normally would not find on my own. Great job, Mark!
LOVED this article. Thanks, Mark, for linking it. This is the reason why I like visiting Carpe Diem. You always post interesting subjects with links to sites and articles that I normally would not find on my own. Thanks!
Perry is GOOD at chumming, eh?
:-)
"t's called conservation of mass. It has to go somewhere. Humans are emitting more than the increase in atmospheric CO2. Much of the rest is absorbed by the oceans, leading to increased acidification.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification"
that's preposterous.
oceans have been net sources of co2, not net sinks.
warm liquid holds less co2 in suspension, not more. that is a completely unarguable fact.
co2 is absorbed by the biospehere. it's plant food.
why do you think crop yields are way up?
the little ice age with low temps and low co2 created famine.
co2 levels are up in the last 150 years.
few argue that.
but they are VERY low in historical terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
if co2 were capable of causing the kinds of catastrophes the climate models predict, it would have happened long before man even evolved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png
the earth is very, very cold right now.
the last ice age began 50-100 million years ago.
co2 levels were 5 times those now.
suddenly, you want to pretend it's co2 that dominates?
the world cooled, co2 dropped. it warmed, co2 rose.
co2 is predominantly a symptom of warming, not a cause.
that's why temps go up every intergalcial for 1500 years before you see a co2 rise.
"the basic mechanisms of heat are understood well enough to understand that the globe will warm due to greenhouse gases." -- Zach"
what a farce.
that's not even remotely true.
sure, more co2 leads to more heat retained, but only to a point.
co2 radiative forcing is a natural log function.
this will give you a quick overview of the math.
http://www.webcommentary.com/climate/monckton.php
it is literally impossible for a ln function to drive the kind of warming you seem to fear on it's own.
to get to such scary predictions, the models rely on all manner of feedbacks, many very poorly understood.
current temp trends are below the "no co2 increase" case the IPCC and others posited.
this pretty conclusively demonstrates that the models don;t work.
if it's so well understood, why are they so wrong?
Larry,
Yes. And you and I have not come to blows. I think this is a good day....now, I believe I will go have a beer with a big cheers to you, Larry!
finally, fwiw, conservation of mass has nothing to to with co2 staying in the atmosphere.
you appear to be the poster child for the US needed better science education.
if i combine 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen, i get one water molecule.
mass is conserved, but neither hydrogen nor oxygen is. the gasses are gone, water remains.
you seem to be having trouble with very basic scientific concepts here.
conservation of mass and co2 remaining in the atmosphere have nothing to do with one another.
thanks MIKE!
:-)
Zachreil:
Che is dead: Eric is a code jockey reviewing code, nothing more.
Independent scientists have replicated the original findings.
Uh, wrong attribution :^).
Please show me where scientists have come up with the same numbers using RAW instrumental measurements, NOT measurements that have passed through CRU.
Let me save you time: it can't be done. One of the useful things that WAS learned during the whole CRU fiasco was that the only data that remains in their databases are "value added" data, the original data was deleted.
Further, a little more digging will show that most other data sets and virtually all models (either directly or indirectly) are "callibrated" to the CRU data set.
Then add in the fact of what Eric found in the code, and it's game over. It's all fruit from the poison tree. Raw data must again be collected, organized, and the appropriate adjustments made to rectify HIE and other perturbations. Until that is done, in an open way, without destruction of data, the results cannot be taken seriously, and models should NEVER be taken seriously (at least not until you can dial up a weather forecast that will tell you exactly when and where it is going to rain).
"Why would you say that? Here's the last 2000 years"...
Wikipedia?!?! LMAO!
Can I sell you a singing bridge?
Let me guess, you've never heard of William Connolley, right?
"It's called conservation of mass. It has to go somewhere"...
Please zach, give it up with your attempt to persuade with pseudo science...
What are you trying to do, get a job with those frauds at NOAA?
There is an objective truth out there, and we will find it when both sides stop treating their side as religion.
Juandos, what conditions would have to prevail before you would accept That GA is real, and there are consequences?
morganovich: 2010 was NOT the warmest year on record. that's an absurd misstatement.
It can't be absurd. It could be wrong, but not absurd. In any case, that is the conclusion of the U.S. NOAA.
morganovich: you are not accounting to station siting issues and issues with the land networks.
So, your position is that the scientists at the NOAA don't know how to collect and analyze data. Fortunately, the results have been confirmed by virtually every independence scientific group across the globe.
morganovich: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/palmer_figure3.png
Again with the U.S.-only data. Yes, many Americans think they are the center of the world, but they're not the entire world. The U.S. represents less than 2% of the Earth's surface (corrected from above).
morganovich: you get the same answer if you use world data
Not according to the scientific community, and not according to NOAA.
morganovich: earth has been in a range of 20C for 500 million years.
20C is a huge difference. It the difference between ice ages and not having ice caps.
Che is dead: The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.
Spencer's paper in the geographers journal? Spencer's paper has had no influence over climate science.
This brings up the basic thrust of the denialism. An outlier gets a paper published. Typically, it just nips around the edges of the established theory. It is roundly criticized for its methodology by other researchers, but the denialist community repeats it over and over as if it overturned the science.
morganovich: warm liquid holds less co2 in suspension, not more. that is a completely unarguable fact.
At a given pressure. However, if you raise the gas pressure it will absorb more. The percentage of human-produced CO2 absorbed by the oceans has remained relatively stable.
morganovich: co2 levels are up in the last 150 years. few argue that. but they are VERY low in historical terms.
They are much lower today than, say, the Silurian period. Of course, sea levels were about 200 meters higher.
morganovich: if co2 were capable of causing the kinds of catastrophes the climate models predict, it would have happened long before man even evolved.
Maybe you're confused on a basic point. Global warming won't end life on Earth. It won't even end human civilization. It will just mean a great deal of human suffering resulting from ecological degradation and the resultant political strife.
morganovich: suddenly, you want to pretend it's co2 that dominates?
CO2 is not the only factor in global temperature. There are a number of positive and negative feedbacks.
Don: Please show me where scientists have come up with the same numbers using RAW instrumental measurements, NOT measurements that have passed through CRU.
Sorry, Don, but most any scientific measurement requires interpretation. You might take a look at this chart, which combines data from a number of sources, including satellite.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-3-17.gif
Notice that the troposphere is warming, but the stratosphere is cooling. That is a strong indicator of greenhouse warming.
Don: One of the useful things that WAS learned during the whole CRU fiasco was that the only data that remains in their databases are "value added" data, the original data was deleted.
The data is still available from the original sources. Other scientists have analyzed the same data, new data from new sources, analyzed the data independently, and reached the same conclusion; most recently by Muller's team.
Don: models should NEVER be taken seriously
All science is based on models.
>>> And let's suppose we waste research effort and vastly increase our reliance on renewable energy? Would that be such a nightmare? For the fossil fuel industry maybe, but not for the rest.
Oh, geez, the fallacious precautionary principle yet again. How many times does this imbecilic idea need to be debunked before you idiots shut up about it? Yeah, I know: "Never!!! You'll take away my idiotic arguments from my cold, dead lips!! They will occupy my last, dying breath!!"
*SIGH*
1) It's not just "mere wealth" you're threatening to squander, you nit. It's also a vast investment in governmental power over the people you aim to institute. They go hand in hand.
2) Every dollar "invested" in bad renewable energy ideas is a dollar not invested in something useful and prosperity-inducing. As Everett Dirksen once said:
"A billion here, a billion there. Sooner or later, it adds up to Real Money."
If private investors don't want to put money into it, there's likely to be a Real Good Reason. Like the fact that it Just Won't Pay Off.
>>> Because the science denial community was all giddy about proving the hockey stick wrong after so many failed efforts.
Dude, it's been proven CRAP by a million different efforts.
Ok, maybe that's hyperbole. It might be only a HALF a million efforts.
>> But it's the same story once again. The hockey stick is confirmed again, this time by a denialist.
And yet somehow you can't be bothered to offer a link to this "confirmation".
You usage of the term "denialist" is another sign your head is in direct proximity to your rectal orifice. It's an attempt to discredit opponents by linking them to Holocaust Deniers, which is a preposterously incompetent leap of reasoning, as well as an illegitimate debate/rhetorical tactic.
>>> But if the entirety of the scientific community tells you that if you get on that plane there's a 40% chance it will crash, but on the other hand a 60% chance the ride will be entirely innocuous, what do you do?
When the "entire scientific community" gets behind this, I'll be amazed.
When even a large percentage of experts qualified to have an official opinion get behind it, I'll be amazed.
Half the supposed "scientists" behind this crap aren't even vaguely any more qualified than I am to judge its effectiveness, and likely far less. My extensive training in math and computers gives me a far more accurate sense of BS (via critical reasoning skills) as well as the potential for computer models to make predictions than some yahoo with a Biology degree (even a PhD) who barely passed Calculus For Biology Majors.
And it's amazingly easy to find petitions including THOUSANDS of trained specialists denying the factual reliability of it which DO include climate specialists and people with backgrounds in fluid dynamics, meteorology, computer modelling, and the like.
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/editorials/vol-1/e1-4.htm
>>> I'm admitting I'm a novice here, but based on my limited evaluation of that claim (mostly by reading the Wiki entry)
Oh, Jon, just STFU, then. You're too ignorant to even begin to have an opinion worth discussing.
I'm not saying that's not something you can fix, I'm saying you clearly don't know SQUAT.
You should be ASKING questions, not detailing answers. You should be "This guy says this. How would you refute that?" And you certainly shouldn't be thinking you have the slightest grasp of the answers.
1) "reading the Wiki"? Jeez, genius, here's a FACT for you -- the wiki tends to be strongly dominated by liberal/green positions. It's a great, reliable place for stuff that has no political component, but anytime there is a green/liberal position, you have to be particularly careful about bias, and seek out other sources.
Example topics would include, but certainly are not limited to:
============================
Nuclear Power
McCarthy
Racism
Sexism
Feminism
Democrats
Tea Party
Neoconservatives
Fox News
Rush Limbaugh
Anthropogenic Global Warming
============================
...and so forth.
2) On the OT, here are some alternative sources for information, not to be taken as primary sources, but places to find alternative articles written by both newspapers and others that conveniently don't receive expanded notice or distribution through the MSMs.
GreenieWatch
Climate Skeptic
Still Waiting For Greenhouse
This last is sort of moribund since its main operator died, but there are still a number of very effective pieces of relevant data there, especially regarding sea-level rise, which is an automatic and undeniable component of actual warming, which the site quite effectively shows isn't the case in any substantial manner, using a mark made in *1840*.
I'll also cite the following article and a search link, both from another non-climate blog run by the creator of Climate Skeptic:
World is Getting Warmer
Category: Climate @ Coyote Blog
And then there's this, from Watt's site:
Replicating Al Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment shows that his “high school physics” could never work as advertised
If they are either this inept at creating experiments, or this mendacious regarding the facts (take your pick as to how this clearly failed "experiment" made it into the video with the impossible results that were claimed), what makes you so sure you can trust them to tell you anything and be both truthful and correct about it?
Understand something:
Climate is one of the two most complex topics humans are currently working on an understanding up (the other being economics)
It is the result of an exceptionally complex system of inputs, sinks, and outputs, all interacting in a non-linear manner. Our understanding of the topic is still SO ephemeral as to be laughable.
"The validity of a science is its ability to predict"
By the above definition, climate science is about 10% valid. Maybe.
...(continued)...
...(continued from above)...
A casual examination of predictions made over the last 15 years finds a landscape littered with failed predictions, almost all of which you have to hunt to find any reference to. I think Jeanne Dixon had better reliability than that.
Among its predictions (search for them yourself, you probably won't trust my links):
"White Christmases will be a thing of the past for English Children" -- The last two years have made a hash of THAT.
"We have to expect the severity of storms to increase as AGW takes effect" -- after an atypical hurricane season in 2005, it's been REMARKABLY quiet since. Statistical studies of past decades show that the 2000s were far from the worst decade in the past 120-odd years since the records got vaguely reliable. Similarly Tornadoes -- what has gone UP is the statistical universe of sightings and reportings. The actual count and severity have gone DOWN for the last decade and more.
"Antarctic ice is decreasing substantially and will continue to do so" -- Actually, the ice depth across the continent is increasing steadily. It is only on the peninsula that it is decreasing.
"Arctic sea ice is on the decrease as never before" -- Actually, it's been no better or worse than the past, and, if it IS anything, there's more ice, not less. It retracted an unusual amount a few years ago, which made big news... but little attention was paid to the fact that, within two years, the extent and depth was no different than before.
I think this thing is long enough. Either you'll get a clue or you won't.
"Juandos, what conditions would have to prevail before you would accept That GA is real, and there are consequences?"...
Well hydra I've always accepted the idea/fact that world climate is a dynamic system but not driven by human activity...
One other thing that I've seen in this AGW scam is the reenforcement of the ages old saying, 'follow the money'...
New Research Reveals IPCC In Bed With Green Lobbies
Also, a couple more points to ponder:
A couple years ago, it snowed in Sydney, Australia, on Thanksgiving Day in the USA.
Now, before you give a knee-jerk answer, think carefully:
a) This is the southern hemisphere. It's the equivalent of it snowing in the USA in late May
b) Sydney is about the same latitude as Los Angeles or Atlanta, not some far northern area like New York or Boston.
Now, there are a number of influencing things that make the situation not directly comparable to snow in Atlanta in late May -- but it is extreme enough of an unexpected variance with Global Warming that you have to ask yourself if it seems fully reasonable that that should happen, were AGW actually as advertised.
More critically, suppose you had a hot spell with 95 degree weather in Atlanta on Thanksgiving Day. How much hue and cry would you hear in support of AGW were that to happen?
When you hear about record snowfalls, cold snaps, and the like, do you put two and two together and ask yourself if it seems reasonable that warming would be consistent with such?
When they change a term like "Global Warming" to "Global Climate Change", to fit the inarguable, undebatable FACTS of cold snaps, record snowfalls, and the like, does not a part of your brain start asking "Hmmm... sounds like a tapdancing effort to fit the notion to the facts, rather than a really valid, sound idea"
Because if that doesn't even enter your mind, you also need to work on your critical thinking skills.
Ok, that's a good answer. What evidence would it take to convince you of AGP?
"Juandos, your first link is not in English"...
Well duh! jon...
Let me guess, you don't know how to use the myriad of tools available on the net, right?
"Your second link is sour grapes. Muller is a "fake" climate skeptic. Fooled Koch, who funded the study"..,
Well I don't know about the Koch brothers or their connection to the to the always questionable Muller but even now Muller can't stop floundering around like a fool, so if anyone has sour grapes its you because you've been caught out pushing a liar as a source...
"Why so much hostility?"...
Don't confuse being laughed at with hostility...
jon you run with lies of the 'progressotards' and never once are you skeptical of what they're peddling...
"What evidence would it take to convince you of AGP?"...
Well hydra if the laws of physics packed their bags and left the universe then I might become a believer...
People forget that the Norse colonized Greenland, and then their colonies died off, due to sustained increasing cold, after 1000 AD.
How is it that even when you say something that is right you manage to be so wrong? Yes, the Norse did colonize Greenland and grew crops there for more than 400 years. The bodies buried there are still under the permafrost, which should shut up (but won't) the AGW proponents. For the record, the three centuries after 1000 were warm. The climate began to cool dangerously by the 1300s and by the time the first decade of the 15th century came around the colonies were mostly gone.
A warmer climate with higher CO2 levels may work well---crop yields go up.
A warm climate will increase CO2 concentrations as the oceans give off lots of it as they warm.
On the other hand, Dallas hit 100 for 100 days in a row. Texas may be the next Sahara.
Texas is just Texas. By the way, warm periods have been great for the Sahara. There was lots of vegetation and much more rainfall.
Isn't it interesting to watch a cult fall apart?
"It can't be absurd. It could be wrong, but not absurd. In any case, that is the conclusion of the U.S. NOAA"...
Well zach it can be absurd besides being wrong...
It is a simple question, juandos, why do you avoid it? What evidence would have to be collected to change your mind and cause you to conclude That AGW is an actual effect?
If you cannot answer it, then I conclude that, for you, this is not a matter of science but of faith or conviction. If there is no science based answer that could convince you, then I have to conclude that your comments or arguments against age that claim to be science based are a fraud, in the sense that you call on science to support your position, but there is no science and never could be any that does not support your position.
OBloodyHell: Oh, geez, the fallacious precautionary principle yet again.
It's not fallacious, i.e. an invalid inference. It could be wrong, but if actions that are good for other reasons, such as conservation, also address climate change, then that may be a reason to take those actions. It allows you to hedge, even if you don't find the evidence of climate change to be conclusive. If you think those actions are detrimental, then you would avoid those actions.
OBloodyHell: If private investors don't want to put money into it, there's likely to be a Real Good Reason.
Investors do not invest over the required time lines, and then there is the "tragedy of the commons," which would inhibit such investments.
OBloodyHell: {The hockey stick} been proven CRAP by a million different efforts.
Only on blogs. In scientific journals, it has been repeatedly supported.
OBloodyHell: And yet somehow you can't be bothered to offer a link to this "confirmation".
National Research Council
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1
OBloodyHell: When the "entire scientific community" gets behind this, I'll be amazed.
Not the entirety, but the vast majority.
Climate change is real... It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate." — National Academies of Science; Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, U.K., U.S.
OBloodyHell: Half the supposed "scientists" behind this crap aren't even vaguely any more qualified than I am to judge its effectiveness, and likely far less.
A look at any professional journal of climatology reveals highly expert studies by a variety of researchers using a variety of methodologies for a variety of interests to answer a variety of relevant questions, with many such studies directly addressing climate change. Hundreds of researchers working in completely different cultures and scientific organizations have reached the same conclusion. People are changing the climate.
You might visit your local university library and check out a few climatology journals, such as Journal of Climate, the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, or the International Journal of Climatology. You will find virtually no substantive research that undermines theories of anthropogenic climate change.
OBloodyHell: My extensive training in math and computers ...
We'd be pleased to see some of your published work in climate science.
OBloodyHell: "White Christmases will be a thing of the past for English Children"
http://tinyurl.com/3ho5pwl
OBloodyHell: "We have to expect the severity of storms to increase as AGW takes effect"
http://tinyurl.com/6acq93t
OBloodyHell: "Antarctic ice is decreasing substantially and will continue to do so"
http://tinyurl.com/6acq93t
OBloodyHell: "Arctic sea ice is on the decrease as never before"
http://tinyurl.com/4xqyjwd
VangelV: A warm climate will increase CO2 concentrations as the oceans give off lots of it as they warm.
Oceans are acidifying as they absorb increasing concentrations of CO2.
http://www.vims.edu/bayinfo/faqs/ocean_acidification.php
juandos: it can be absurd besides being wrong...
To be clear, combined land and ocean surface temperatures in 2010 were 0.62°C ±0.07°C above the twentieth century average, the 34th consecutive year exceeding the twentieth century average.
It is a simple question, juandos, why do you avoid it? What evidence would have to be collected to change your mind and cause you to conclude That AGW is an actual effect?
Let me answer that one. For several years I have asked a reference to a single paper that has used EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT SHOWS A LINK BETWEEN HUMAN EMISSIONS OF C02 AND TEMPERATURE TRENDS. So far none of you warmers have been able to come up with that paper. And if you read the IPCC Assessment Report you will find that it has no such link either. Its conclusion is based on the fact that the models cannot come up with a natural factor. (Even though the models ignore solar activity, change in cloud cover, change in land use, PDO/AMO index changes etc.)
It's not fallacious, i.e. an invalid inference. It could be wrong, but if actions that are good for other reasons, such as conservation, also address climate change, then that may be a reason to take those actions. It allows you to hedge, even if you don't find the evidence of climate change to be conclusive. If you think those actions are detrimental, then you would avoid those actions.
But the principle is fallacious. If we divert resources away from more important issues we could do far more harm than global warming could. History shows that people, animals, and plants thrive in warmer temperatures. (Even the polar bears did well during the ice-free summers of the MWP and HO.) On the other hand, it shows that we have far more to fear from cooling trends.
This means that until there is actual evidence that humans are causing warming and that the warming is likely to be damaging we should spend our limited resources on issues like providing clean water, education, health care, etc., for our friends, families and children.
Oceans are acidifying as they absorb increasing concentrations of CO2.
http://www.vims.edu/bayinfo/faqs/ocean_acidification.php
No dumdum, they are not acidifying. The oceans are basic and have plenty of buffering agents to keep from becoming acidic. Don't you idiots remember that acidification was not a problem for the oceans when concentrations were ten times the current level? So why should we worry now?
As I scan the comments, I have yet to see any data that show unprecedented change, or harmful change.
I found this interesting in the category of "skeptics".
Just about everything this guys says is true.... but.....
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/editorials/vol-1/e1-4.htm
I found this interesting in the category of "skeptics".
Just about everything this guys says is true.... but.....
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/editorials/vol-1/e1-4.htm
hydra whines: "It is a simple question, juandos, why do you avoid it?'...
Sadly you can't understand the simple and succinct I gave you and somehow I'm not answering the question?!?!
Surely you jest...
"What evidence would have to be collected to change your mind and cause you to conclude That AGW is an actual effect?"...
hydra your inability to come to grips with the real world absolutely stunning!
If and when mankind's ability to produce greenhouse gases outstrip nature's ability then I would consider it...
Don't you ever wonder what real scientists' attitudes are to AGW?
Maybe the well known television meteorologist John Coleman can help you out...
A SIMPLE PROOF THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT MAN-MADE
by Dr. David Evans
"To be clear, combined land and ocean surface temperatures in 2010 were 0.62°C ±0.07°C above the twentieth century average, the 34th consecutive year exceeding the twentieth century average"...
Well thanks for that baseless and unsubstantiated comment zach...
Did that nugget come from the consensus commandos?
VangelV: For several years I have asked a reference to a single paper that has used EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT SHOWS A LINK BETWEEN HUMAN EMISSIONS OF C02 AND TEMPERATURE TRENDS.
Climate science is very complex, but the most basic evidence is the warming troposphere and the cooling stratosphere, a strong indication of greenhouse warming.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-3-17.gif
VangelV: But the principle is fallacious. If we divert resources away from more important issues we could do far more harm than global warming could.
Then you don't know what constitutes a fallacy. It's a logical error. You are arguing specifics.
VangelV: History shows that people, animals, and plants thrive in warmer temperatures.
Some people, some places. Yes, humans are extremely adaptable, and will adapt to climate change. That doesn't mean you should leave your planet worse off than it was.
VangelV: No dumdum, they are not acidifying.
H+ ions have increased 30% since the industrial age, largely due to CO2.
Byrne et al., Direct observations of basin-wide acidification of the North Pacific Ocean, Geophysical Research Letters 2010.
Jacobson, Studying ocean acidification with conservative, stable numerical schemes for nonequilibrium air-ocean exchange and ocean equilibrium chemistry, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 2005.
A big thank you larry g for reminding us that numbers and data quality matter...
Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
juandos: Did that nugget come from the consensus commandos?
NOAA, NASA, WMO, among others.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2010-warmest-year.html
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_906_en.html
juandos: Sadly you can't understand the simple and succinct I gave you and somehow I'm not answering the question?!?!
juandos: if the laws of physics packed their bags and left the universe then I might become a believer
In order to be a useful explanation, it has to be specific enough to check against the data. What law of physics?
"H+ ions have increased 30% since the industrial age, largely due to CO2"...
Nice try zach but let's try a little 'anti' spin to counteract your spin...
A new tool to evaluate climate-alarmist claims of widespread marine species destruction due to the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2
"NOAA, NASA, WMO, among others"..
Hmmm, your first factual posting to one of my questions zach and I'm amazed...
"In order to be a useful explanation, it has to be specific enough to check against the data. What law of physics?"...
Wrong again zach...
Not 'what law' zach, all of them...
They come as a matched set...
VangelV: No dumdum, they are not acidifying.
Zachriel: {citation to direct measurements of oceanic acidification.
juandos: A new tool to evaluate climate-alarmist claims of widespread marine species destruction due to the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2
We weren't addressing what happens with oceanic acidification, however, there are numerous studies showing that acidification causes problems for marine life.
juandos: Not 'what law', all of them...
Ah, so anthropogenic climate change violates the law of inertia, Coulomb's law and the speed of light among other things.
Wikipedia is only as good as it's sources. The Wiki link I provided does discuss multiple peer reviewed studies that confirm Mann's hockey stick, but you don't need to believe Wiki. Maybe Connelly wrote that. You don't have to believe him. Go to the sources found at Wiki, which are the very peer reviewed scientific papers that justify the assertions in the Wiki entry. If this is lies from Connelly then what you do is you show us.
You don't do that. You give me a link to wattsupwiththat, an untrained, unpublished, internet blogger. Without having read the entirety of his entry, what would the rational person conclude? Trust the blogger or the scientific community?
This is the problem with the internet. I love the internet, but there's a perception that there's two sides to every story simply because both sides can be found on the internet. But what you need to do is filter the information based on credibility. Who has more credibility? Multiple peer reviewed scientific papers or an untrained internet blogger? Should we assign equal weight to the two sides?
VangeIV, you ask:
For several years I have asked a reference to a single paper that has used EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT SHOWS A LINK BETWEEN HUMAN EMISSIONS OF C02 AND TEMPERATURE TRENDS. So far none of you warmers have been able to come up with that paper.
I'm curious what kind of evidence would qualify. Can you even conceive of a test we could run to justify the claim?
Because science is inductive, not deductive. You can't prove with certainty that the moon causes the tides. It may be ferries imposing magical pixie dust. You can't prove that smoking causes lung cancer mathematically.
What you do is you talk about the kinds of things you would expect if in fact smoking were causing lung cancer. We do the same with CO2. Here are a few things we expect.
1-We expect a reduction in the infrared radiation emanating from the earth in the frequency range that CO2 typically absorbs radiation.
2-We expect the cooling stratosphere and warming troposphere.
3-We expect more warming in the polar regions than tropical regions.
4-We expect more warming over the continents than the oceans.
5-We expect greater warming at night then during the day.
6-We expect greater warming in the winter than the summer.
So precisely the kinds of changes one would expect if CO2 were causing warming is exactly what in fact we do observe. That's how science is done. That's how you determine causes. But you've seen all this before. These don't qualify. It could be ferries after all. True enough. But science can never rule out ferries. Given that none of these evidences are persuasive, what would be?
"Ferries" should be "fairies". It's not large boats spreading pixie dust. My spelling is atrocious lately.
How DARE Wiki list footnotes and sources!
must be yet another conspiracy.
As I scan the comments, I have yet to see any data that show unprecedented change, or harmful change.
That is because there isn't any empirical data. All we have are narratives and bad models.
Climate science is very complex, but the most basic evidence is the warming troposphere and the cooling stratosphere, a strong indication of greenhouse warming.
Actually, there is no evidence that the warming and cooling are not natural events. There is no evidence that man actually emits enough CO2 to make a difference. There is no evidence that the warming is harmful.
We do know that one bit of expected evidence of greenhouse warming was the equatorial mid troposphere warm spot. The problem is that the predicted warm spot is not there. We do know that one bit of evidence of the radiative imbalance due to CO2 would show up as stored heat in the oceans. But that too has not shown up.
Then you don't know what constitutes a fallacy. It's a logical error. You are arguing specifics.
I understand it fine, thank you. It is a logical error to assume that you should try to prevent the potential harm of warming when doing so would expose the world to far more harm due to both malinvestment and the consequences of cooling.
Some people, some places. Yes, humans are extremely adaptable, and will adapt to climate change. That doesn't mean you should leave your planet worse off than it was.
It will not be worse off it the average temperature goes up. If you look at the data you find that most of the so-called warming has come from higher temperatures at the extreme latitudes in winter, mostly at night. That is not harmful. The data also shows that the record high temperatures came mostly in the 1930s, not recently. If extreme heat is a problem we have yet to see much of it.
VangeIV, it's obvious you don't know what a logical error is. Take this syllogism.
1-All animals with wings can fly.
2-Pigs have wings.
3-Therefore pigs can fly.
Does this syllogism contain a logical error? The answer is no. It contains factual errors. So the argument is logically valid, meaning if the premises are true the conclusion must follow. But it is unsound because the premises are false. There is a difference between a logical error and a factual error.
H+ ions have increased 30% since the industrial age, largely due to CO2.
Byrne et al., Direct observations of basin-wide acidification of the North Pacific Ocean, Geophysical Research Letters 2010.
Nonsense. First, where did they get credible data at the beginning of the industrial age? Second, we do not have comprehensive data even today because the variations by area and depth are huge. We need many more data points to figure out what is going on now and we certainly will never have the data points to compare them to some baseline model of ocean pH from three hundred years ago.
My argument is clearly valid. Corals and much of the sea life that we see around us today began to appear when CO2 temperatures were many times the current levels. The oceans remove the CO2 that we release by absorbing it. We get bicarbonate, which is precipitated out as solid calcium carbonate or is absorbed by calcareous organisms.
Jacobson, Studying ocean acidification with conservative, stable numerical schemes for nonequilibrium air-ocean exchange and ocean equilibrium chemistry, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 2005.
I guess that these geniuses forgot that the oceans are still basic and will stay that way no matter what human beings do over the next century. Of forgot to look at some of the huge amount of literature on the subject. A small sample is provided below.
Beaufort, L., Probert, I., de Garidel-Thoron, T., Bendif, E.M., Ruiz-Pino, D., Metzl, N., Goyet, C., Buchet, N., Coupel, P., Grelaud, M., Rost, B., Rickaby, R.E.M. and de Vargas, C. 2011. Sensitivity of coccolithophores to carbonate chemistry and ocean acidification. Nature 476: 80-83.
Borges, A.V. and Gypens, N. 2010. Carbonate chemistry in the coastal zone responds more strongly to eutrophication than ocean acidification. Limnology and Oceanography 55: 346-353.
Dentener, F., Drevet, J., Lamarque, J.F., Bey, I., Eickhout, B., Fiore, A.M., Hauglustaine, D., Horowitz, L.W., Krol, M., Kulshrestha, U.C., Lawrence, M., Galy-Lacaux, C., Rast, S., Shindell, D., Stevenson, D., Van Noije, T., Atherton, C., Bell, N., Bergman, D., Butler, T., Cofala, J., Collins, B., Doherty, R., Ellingsen, K., Galloway, J., Gauss, M., Montanaro, V., Müller, J.F., Pitari, G., Rodriguez, J., Sanderson, M., Solmon, F., Strahan, S., Schultz, M., Sudo, K., Szopa, S. and Wild, O. 2006. Nitrogen and sulfur deposition on regional and global scales: A multimodel evaluation. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 20: 10.1029/2005GB002672.
Doney, S.C., Mahowald, N., Lima, I., Feely, R.A., Mackenzie, F.T., Lamarque, J.-F. and Rasch, P.H. 2007. Impact of anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen and sulfur deposition on ocean acidification and the inorganic carbon system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 14,580-14,585.
Dove, M.C. and Sammut, J. 2007. Impacts of estuarine acidification on survival and growth of Sydney rock oysters Saccostrea glomerata (Gould 1850). Journal of Shellfish Research 26: 519-527.
Feely, R.A., Alin, S.R., Newton, J., Sabine, C.L., Warner, M., Devol, A., Krembs, C. and Maloy, C. 2010. The combined effects of ocean acidification, mixing, and respiration on pH and carbonate saturation in an urbanized estuary. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 88: 442-449.
Feely, R.A., Sabine, C.L., Hernandez-Ayon, J.M., Ianson, D. and Hales, B. 2008. Evidence for upwelling of corrosive "acidified" water onto the continental shelf. Science 320: 1490-1492.
Green, M.A., Waldbusser, G.G., Reilly, S.L., Emerson, K. and O'Donnell, S. 2009. Death by dissolution: Sediment saturation state as a mortality factor for juvenile bivalves. Limnology and Oceanography 54: 1037-1047.
Jacobson, Studying ocean acidification with conservative, stable numerical schemes for nonequilibrium air-ocean exchange and ocean equilibrium chemistry, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 2005.
A few more papers to offset your spin with fact.
Kelly, R.P., Foley, M.M., Fisher, W.S., Feely, R.A., Halpern, B.S., Waldbusser, G.G. and Caldwell, M.R. 2011. Mitigating local causes of ocean acidification with existing laws. Science 332: 1036-1037.
Kemp, W.M., Boynton, W.R., Adolf, J.E., Boesch, D.F., Boicourt, W.C., Brush, G., Cornwell, J.C., Fisher, T.R., Glibert, P.M., Hagy, J.D., Harding, L.W., Houde, E.D., Kimmel, D.G., Miller, W.D., Newell, R.I.E., Roman, M.R., Smith, E.M. and Stevenson, J.C. 2005. Eutrophication of Chesapeake Bay: historical trends and ecological interactions. Marine Ecology Progress Series 303: 1-29.
Negri, A.P. and Hoogenboom, M.O. 2011. Water contamination reduces the tolerance of coral larvae to thermal stress. PLoS ONE 6: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019703.
Salisbury, J., Green, M., Hunt, C. and Campbell, J. 2008. Coastal acidification by rivers: A new threat to shellfish? EOS: Transactions, American Geophysical Union 89: 513.
Tans, P. 2009. An accounting of the observed increase in oceanic and atmospheric CO2 and an outlook for the future. Oceanography 22: 26-35.
Waldbusser, G.G., Voigt, E.P., Bergschneider, H., Green, M.A. and Newell, R.I.E. 2011. Biocalcification in the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) in relation to long-term trends in Chesapeake Bay pH. Estuaries and Coasts 34: 221-231.
Wood, H.L., Spicer, J.I., Lowe, D.M. and Widdicombe, S. 2010. Interaction of ocean acidification and temperature; the high cost of survival in the brittlestar Ophiura ophiura. Marine Biology 157: 2001-2013.
Wooldridge, S.A. 2009. Water quality and coral bleaching thresholds: Formalizing the linkage for the inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Marine Pollution Bulletin 58: 745-751.
We weren't addressing what happens with oceanic acidification, however, there are numerous studies showing that acidification causes problems for marine life.
Actually dumdum, if you had bothered to look at the literature you would have found very little evidence of problems with the changes that are being predicted. The pH of the oceans is not uniform and the effects of everything from currents or temperatures to simple precipitation can impact local pH levels. Marine organisms have adapted to these changes and the buffering capacity of the oceans keep them very small.
angeIV, you ask:
For several years I have asked a reference to a single paper that has used EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT SHOWS A LINK BETWEEN HUMAN EMISSIONS OF C02 AND TEMPERATURE TRENDS. So far none of you warmers have been able to come up with that paper.
I'm curious what kind of evidence would qualify. Can you even conceive of a test we could run to justify the claim?
You idiots already wasted $200 billion of taxpayer money and three decades to 'study' the problem. Yes, a lot of that was spent on junkets to nice resort areas, booze, and hookers but a great deal of it went on research. But even though all that money was spent the best that the IPCC can do is its weak statement?
I can conceive of a few studies that could shed a great deal of light on the subject.
First, look at the ice core data that your side spent so much time hyping. While I don't buy the story that the ice bubbles tell us as much as you claim let me accept that argument and look where the data leads. If CO2 were a material driver of temperature trends we would see the cause (CO2 concentration changes) lead the effect (temperature trend changes). But that is not happening. The data shows that the change in temperature trends come first and the CO2 follows 800 to 1000 years later. The simple explanation is that as the oceans warm or cool they release or absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Temperature change is the cause and CO2 the effect.
Second, you can find the predicted equatorial mid tropospheric hot spot. Since you can't find it the AGW theory has a serious problem that is hard to spin away from.
Third, you can find Trenberth's 'missing heat.' AGW predicts a radiative imbalance that would show up as a steady increase in ocean heat as CO2 levels go up. But since the ARGO system, which is much more accurate than anything used before does not show the predicted increase in heat content.
There are more things that your side can do but that would be a good start.
VangeIV, it's obvious you don't know what a logical error is. Take this syllogism.
1-All animals with wings can fly.
2-Pigs have wings.
3-Therefore pigs can fly.
Does this syllogism contain a logical error? The answer is no. It contains factual errors. So the argument is logically valid, meaning if the premises are true the conclusion must follow. But it is unsound because the premises are false. There is a difference between a logical error and a factual error.
You are still missing the point. It is still a logical error if the precautionary action can do more damage than the damage by the risk it is trying to prevent. This has been dealt with many times in the past few months. You need to be aware of the arguments, not stay in your sphere of ignorance.
Or you can begin by stating the logic of your advocacy of using the precautionary principle and readers here will be happy to show you the problem with your logic.
Mark -
If you aren't too burned out on (1) the comments, or (2) the entire subject altogether, you might be interested in a little project we're engaged with over at
Maggie's Farm. The idea is to collect all of the standard AGW tropes and claims into one article, complete with a synopsis of why they're bunk, plus cover some other bases, like the media's role, the driving forces behind it, who's making the money, and the ruination of entire nations this hoax is causing.
I gave carbon dioxide an entire two paragraphs.
If you or any of the readers would like to join in the fun, have at it.
"Ah, so anthropogenic climate change violates the law of inertia, Coulomb's law and the speed of light among other things"...
No, of course not since ACC doesn't exist...
"Wikipedia is only as good as it's sources"...
LMAO! Good one jon!
Wikipedia climate revisionism by William Connolley continues
VangeIV do you know how snowball earth ended? How do you melt all that ice with the low absorption of ice and with the much lower solar irradiance of the sun at the time.
Zachriel: Climate science is very complex, but the most basic evidence is the warming troposphere and the cooling stratosphere, a strong indication of greenhouse warming.
VangelV: Actually, there is no evidence that the warming and cooling are not natural events.
Notably, you ignored the evidence.
VangelV: We do know that one bit of expected evidence of greenhouse warming was the equatorial mid troposphere warm spot.
The tropospheric hotspot is due to increased evaporation at the tropics which decreases the lapse rate. This is not a signature of greenhouse warming, but of warming in general—regardless of the cause.
And yes, the decrease in the lapse rate is observed.
Trenberth & Smith, The Vertical Structure of Temperature in the Tropics: Different Flavors of El Niño, Journal of Climate 2006.
VangelV: It will not be worse off it the average temperature goes up.
It depends on the temperature increase. Changes in climate can cause crop failure, mass migration, and the resultant political instability. Coastal flooding would force millions of people from arable lands.
VangelV: The data also shows that the record high temperatures came mostly in the 1930s, not recently. If extreme heat is a problem we have yet to see much of it.
"Statewide record high temperature? " Seriously?
As we said elsewhere, Americans may think they are the center of the world, but they are not the entire world. The U.S. represents only 2% of the world's surface area.
Zachriel: Byrne et al., Direct observations of basin-wide acidification of the North Pacific Ocean, Geophysical Research Letters 2010.
VangelV: Nonsense.
Byrne et al. is a direct observation, so there is no doubt that acidification is occurring.
VangelV: I guess that these geniuses forgot that the oceans are still basic and will stay that way no matter what human beings do over the next century.
The paper doesn't make that claim. You seemed to be throwing out a lot of citations without even reading them. For instance, from Tans 2009:
"Despite the difficulty of long-term CO2 projections, some things are clear: fossil fuel burning has driven the CO2 increases thus far, the ocean will eventually take up the largest portion of the emissions, and the enhancement of CO2 in the atmosphere and ocean will last for a very long time... Rapid invention, technical development, and scaling up of alternatives, including efficiency and conservation, is crucial. Without them, the increasing demand for better living standards for more people will almost certainly force us into the large-scale exploitation of unconventional fossil fuel resources with little regard for the consequences of climate change, accompanied by accelerating environmental destruction, acidification of ocean waters, resource wars, and other negative impacts."
Or the Salisbury et al. 2008: "Increasing atmospheric CO2 is likely to cause a corresponding increase in oceanic acidity by lowering pH by 0.2-0.5 pH units by the end of the 21st century."
Or Feely et al. 2008: "The absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean lowers the pH of the waters. This so-called ocean acidification could have important consequences for marine ecosystems."
Instead of spamming citations you apparently didn't read, you might want to pick a single paper and state why you think it is relevant.
Jon: 1-All animals with wings can fly.
2-Pigs have wings.
3-Therefore pigs can fly.
VangelV It is still a logical error if the precautionary action can do more damage than the damage by the risk it is trying to prevent.
Premise: A given action causes more harm than good.
Premise: You take the action.
Consequent: You do more harm than good.
It's not a question of the validity of the logic, but whether the first premise is true or not.
juandos: No, of course not since ACC doesn't exist...
Still avoiding answering a simple question.
Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific hypothesis. This is what you said about it: "if the laws of physics packed their bags and left the universe then I might become a believer..." That implies you think the hypothesis violates a law of physics. When asked which law, you said "all of them."
Now, try to answer the question.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown: If you aren't too burned out on (1) the comments, or (2) the entire subject altogether, you might be interested in a little project we're engaged with over at Maggie's Farm.
Dr. Mercury won't address demonstrable mistakes, and then bans those who point them out.
-
Dr. Mercury: As for CO2, remember when Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines blew its stack? The one that took out the Air Force base? I later heard that it released as much CO2 into the atmosphere in 20 seconds as the entire history of mankind put together. And Pinatubo blew for hours.
That is incorrect. Pinatubo emitted between 42 to 234 megatons of CO2. Humans emit 29,000 megatons *every year*.
Wolfe & Hoblitt, Overview of the Eruptions, U.S. Geological Survey.
Gerlach, Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide, Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 2011: Which emits more carbon dioxide (CO2): "Earth’s volcanoes or human activities? Research findings indicate unequivocally that the answer to this frequently asked question is human activities."
"That is incorrect. Pinatubo emitted between 42 to 234 megatons of CO2. Humans emit 29,000 megatons *every year"..
Volcanoes Make Lots Of CO2 – When It Suits The Global Warming Argument
"Still avoiding answering a simple question"...
Still avoiding simple English, eh zach?
"Now, try to answer the question"...
I did and more than once...
"That is incorrect. Pinatubo emitted between 42 to 234 megatons of CO2. Humans emit 29,000 megatons *every year"..
Volcanoes Make Lots Of CO2 – When It Suits The Global Warming Argument
VangeIV do you know how snowball earth ended? How do you melt all that ice with the low absorption of ice and with the much lower solar irradiance of the sun at the time.
Yes. It ended when the CRF fell sharply and cloud cover was reduced sharply. You really should read Shaviv's papers. If you pay attention you might learn something.
Someone wrote.
"We look for and welcome data that supports our pet theory."
Yes, we ALL do. The difference is some assess the evidence and accept or reject it based on it's content. Global warming alarmists only reject ANYTHING that disagrees with their AGENDA. The agenda is not necessarily to fight global warming in all cases. Much of the time it is just to promote an environmental agenda. Forcing people to live by THEIR rules whether those rules will improve life on this planet or NOT.
juandos: Volcanoes Make Lots Of CO2
Yes, over geological timescales, volcanoes produce a great deal of various gases. That doesn't salvage Dr. Mercury's claim about Mt. Pinatubo.
juandos: It ended when the CRF fell sharply and cloud cover was reduced sharply. You really should read Shaviv's papers.
Shaviv's is the minority view concerning global warming, and he has yet to marshall evidence sufficient to overturn the prevailing paradigm. As for snowball earth, solar radiance is certainly a factor. However, there is a natural stabilizing influence. As seas freeze, the natural process of removing carbon slows, leading to an increased greenhouse effect.
Shaviv's position is disputed by other climatologists on several grounds, as well as by astronomers concerning the periodicy of Earth's movement through the galactic arms.
Rahmstorf et al., Cosmic Rays, Carbon Dioxide and Climate, Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 2004.
juandos: if the laws of physics packed their bags and left the universe then I might become a believer...
In other words, there is no possible evidence that would convince you of anthropogenic climate change. Hence, we can conclude that your position is not based on evidence. That's all we wanted to know. Thank you.
Notably, you ignored the evidence.
Not at all. There is nothing that you presented that shows catastrophic warming or anything that is caused by man. I found it interesting that the link that you provided suggests a much better fit to the AMO/PDO index than to CO2 emissions and that it disagrees with the BEST conclusions about how much warming took place.
You have YET TO PRODUCE ANY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE TO LINK HUMAN EMISSIONS TO TEMPERATURE TREND CHANGES. In order to have the science support your claims you do need that EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.
The tropospheric hotspot is due to increased evaporation at the tropics which decreases the lapse rate. This is not a signature of greenhouse warming, but of warming in general—regardless of the cause.
Let us get this straight. The IPCC models PREDICT that the equatorial mid-troposphere will warm rapidly if increased concentrations of CO2 is a forcing for warming. (Let me note here that the models do not distinguish between emissions from NATURAL SOURCES, which make up more than 95% of the total from HUMAN EMISSIONS.)
Well, what does the data show? A FAILED PREDICTION.
It depends on the temperature increase. Changes in climate can cause crop failure, mass migration, and the resultant political instability. Coastal flooding would force millions of people from arable lands.
But the warmers are not talking about that. They are talking about average temperatures going up with most of that increase coming from the polar regions in winter. The last time I looked Greenland's farmers did not grow winter crops and people were not concerned about higher lows at night.
And we have already gone through the climate refugee claims. Floods, droughts, malaria, cholera, and other factors driven by climate change were supposed to create millions of refugees. The UN actually told us that there would be 50 million such refugees by 2010.
Well 2010 came and gone and few such refugees are to be found. And where they are found, it is not looking good for the warmers. I guess somebody forgot to tell the UN that evicting 20,000 poor farmers so that some 'green' company can make money by selling credits earned by planting trees does not look very good on the PR front.
"In other words, there is no possible evidence that would convince you of anthropogenic climate change"...
Well zach seeing as how this NO evidence that ACC exists and those that are making the claim that is have been shown repeatedly to be liars and knaves (falsified data, cherry picked data, unworkable models, and unsubstantiated claims) I have to wonder which camp you fall into unless you're merely a 'useful tool'...
"Statewide record high temperature? " Seriously?
As we said elsewhere, Americans may think they are the center of the world, but they are not the entire world. The U.S. represents only 2% of the world's surface area.
Actually, if record high temperatures are your concern, as the AGW promoters claim, you better look at record high temperatures. The warmest decade when it came to record highs was the 1930s because that is when it was hottest. As I pointed out, record highs being reported by showing higher nightly lows in the Arctic is not a concern for anyone. The last time I looked higher lows in the Arctic was nothing to worry about.
And you are right about one thing. The US is not the center of the universe. But the same thing that is in evidence in the US is true in other regions. For example, let us look at the Arctic once again.
Here is the famous figure from Hansen and Lebedeff (1987) paper. In 1987 Hansen found that there was a huge spike in Arctic temperatures. (You can see Igor Polyakov on that as well. He is a good guy who takes the time to explain and answer questions one on one.) What I found interesting are the updates to the 1987. As SM points out, "For both 1937 and 1938, the GISS estimates have been reduced by approximately 0.4 deg C. Despite recent warming, 2005 was the first year in which 64-90N values exceeded the former 1938 value – see dotted line – (indeed, 2003 was the first year that exceeded the "adjusted" 1938 value). While there are undoubtedly "good" reasons for these adjustments (and I am not here arguing the point one way or the other), the net effect of the adjustments has been to consistently lower temperatures in the 1930s relative to more recent values. Whether these adjustments prove justified or not, modifications to the temperature record of this magnitude surely warrant the most careful scrutiny before turning the "lights out upstairs."
The same type of games are being played elsewhere.
Let me be clear again. If your concern are high temperatures than you better talk about high temperatures and use data that supports your arguments. Higher lows are not a problem. Neither are warmer spring and autumn temperatures because they are beneficial to humans, plants and animals as they increase growing seasons and extend habitat range. And if you want to be seen as credible you better look where the record high data is coming from. And as much as GISS may love it, data from stations like this one is not indicative of anything.
Of course, you may also choose to look at other factors.
Byrne et al. is a direct observation, so there is no doubt that acidification is occurring.
Of course there is doubt. The number of data points is limited. And there is certainly doubt about any drivers because there is no credible baseline. What is not in doubt is the fact that the ocean is not acidic and will not be acidic no matter how much fossil fuels we burn.
The paper doesn't make that claim. You seemed to be throwing out a lot of citations without even reading them.
I am reading the claim. Nowhere in the papers does any author claim that the oceans will become acidic in the next century. And if you look at the actual observations you find that marine life is more than capable with dealing with more CO2 in the oceans. That should not be a surprise to anyone who understands that life in the ocean began with significantly higher CO2 concentrations and that corals developed and thrived at ten times the current atmospheric concentrations. As I pointed out, the dissolved CO2 precipitates as calcium carbonate or is absorbed by calcareous organisms. There is nothing in the literature that shows any harm done by more CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is used by plants as food and the more of it that they have the more of it that they absorb as they grow faster.
Premise: A given action causes more harm than good.
Premise: You take the action.
Consequent: You do more harm than good.
You have yet to place this in the context that we are discussing. Please give us the premises and logic that justify spending scarce resources to deal with possible warming. That should be simple enough for you. If you can't put it together than why are you proposing it?
It's not a question of the validity of the logic, but whether the first premise is true or not.
As I have pointed out, before you can talk about harm by warming you have to define what exactly you mean by warming. Do you mean higher high temperatures? Do you mean higher lows? Do you mean hotter winters? Then you have to look at if these things are the same thing as higher 'average' temperatures. And if there is actually any harm done to the planet if the high latitudes have warmer winter nights. So far your confusion has been quite clear. You have no clue what the higher average temperature argument really means or where the claims are coming from. You have failed to actually think about what your argument really means and how it fits in with what we experience in the real world. Only a damned fool would argue that we are better off if the Arctic winters are 5C colder or that longer growing seasons are a bad thing. But that is exactly what the typical warmer does even though he does not know it.
As I said before, only you can figure out exactly what kind of mind you really have. Are you incapable of understanding? Are you incapable of independent analysis and need someone to interpret the world for you? Or can you think for yourself? If you are one of the first two there is nothing that any one of us can say to set you straight and you will continue along the path that your faith has taken you. But if you are the type who can think independently there is still hope that you will actually take the time to think about the total argument and about the meaning of the concepts that we are arguing about. You can start by thinking about the meaning of the reported 'average global temperature' before you even start to consider the data adequacy and integrity or the methodology used to come up with the final reports. If you take that path I have little doubt that you will wind up with a totally different conclusion.
"That is incorrect. Pinatubo emitted between 42 to 234 megatons of CO2. Humans emit 29,000 megatons *every year"..
Volcanoes Make Lots Of CO2 – When It Suits The Global Warming Argument
That is another set of faulty data. How the hell can the geologist measure the CO2 given off by volcanic activity with any degree of accuracy? It is not as if the gas only comes from the volcano itself. The CO2 is a gas that seeps through fractures that are a long way from the source of the activity. And in the case of volcanic activity that is taking place under the oceans, which is where most volcanoes are, there is little in the way of accurate measurements.
Clearly this is another example of 'experts' pretending to know much more than they actually do. Of course, when this pretense is useful to the cause it is accepted without question.
Shaviv's is the minority view concerning global warming, and he has yet to marshall evidence sufficient to overturn the prevailing paradigm. As for snowball earth, solar radiance is certainly a factor. However, there is a natural stabilizing influence. As seas freeze, the natural process of removing carbon slows, leading to an increased greenhouse effect.
Actually, it was the minority view that H-Pylori caused ulcers. It still turned out to be right. And Shaviv's theory is supported by the evidence. In fact, it predicted a period of glaciation when none was thought to exist. Data to prove his theory came after he made the prediction. That is a lot more than the AGW propagandists can say.
Well zach seeing as how this NO evidence that ACC exists ...
My eleven-year-old son tells me that he can assure you guys that the Air Canada Center exists. That is where he watches basketball games.
VangelV: There is nothing that you presented that shows catastrophic warming or anything that is caused by man.
Sure there is. Tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is a signature of greenhouse warming, that is, the heat is being held closer to the Earth. There could be other sources of greenhouse warming, but it turns out the human-produced emissions is the only plausible source. This effect was predicted a century ago.
VangelV: The IPCC models PREDICT that the equatorial mid-troposphere will warm rapidly if increased concentrations of CO2 is a forcing for warming.
The tropical mid-troposphere will warm regardless of the source of global warming. If solar radiance increases, then the mid-troposphere will warm. This is a straightforward consequence of the physics. In any case, radiosonde data for the tropical mid-troposphere is still sparse, and is reasonably consistent with models within the high margin of error of the measuring apparatus.
VangelV: They are talking about average temperatures going up with most of that increase coming from the polar regions in winter.
Then you aren't listening. The arctic regions amplify the changes, but the dire effects to humans occur in the lower latitudes.
http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/
http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
juandos: seeing as how this NO evidence that ACC exists
That wasn't the question, of course, but what evidence would justify you changing your mind? As there is no such evidence, even in principle, then you are not basing your position on evidence.
VangelV: The warmest decade when it came to record highs was the 1930s because that is when it was hottest.
Not globally.
Unusually large snowstorm (oh, and Al Gore is fat).
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-10-2010/unusually-large-snowstorm
VangelV: Of course there is doubt.
It's a direct observation, but we'll be happy to look at a paper that contests the results. Meanwhile, climatologists are continuing to collect more data. That's what scientists do.
Byrne et al., Direct observations of basin-wide acidification of the North Pacific Ocean, Geophysical Research Letters 2010.
VangelV: Nowhere in the papers does any author claim that the oceans will become acidic in the next century.
Gee whiz. It's called acidification, meaning a lowering of the pH, and it's your own citations.
Tans 2009: "Without them, the increasing demand for better living standards for more people will almost certainly force us into the large-scale exploitation of unconventional fossil fuel resources with little regard for the consequences of climate change, accompanied by accelerating environmental destruction, acidification of ocean waters, resource wars, and other negative impacts."
Salisbury et al. 2008: "Increasing atmospheric CO2 is likely to cause a corresponding increase in oceanic acidity by lowering pH by 0.2-0.5 pH units by the end of the 21st century."
VangelV: As I have pointed out, before you can talk about harm by warming you have to define what exactly you mean by warming.
It refers to higher average global temperatures. If you prefer, it means more heat energy trapped on and near the surface of the Earth.
VangelV: How the hell can the geologist measure the CO2 given off by volcanic activity with any degree of accuracy?
That's right. We should accept that many geological studies are in error, not because other peer studies call them into question, but because you wave your hands.
The comments, like everywhere, favor the skeptics.
And the reason is simple; unlike physics, there is no empirical proof. In fact, contrary to all science, even the models, which all perform worse than chance, are never published. It is like Einstein saying Newton was wrong, but refusing to offer evidence and what there is, is wrong.
That makes it a theory at best and more than likely a religion.
End of story.
Jim: In fact, contrary to all science, even the models, which all perform worse than chance, are never published.
EdGCM, GISS GCM & NCAR CCSM are all publicly available.
Jim: End of story.
Well, no. Climatologists continue to collect data and improve their models. And you are certainly free to create your own model, then publish your model and results.
"That wasn't the question, of course, but what evidence would justify you changing your mind? As there is no such evidence, even in principle, then you are not basing your position on evidence"...
zach your'e ability to lie is on par with your pathetic ability to sell the ACC scam...
The fact is that there are plenty of links sprinkled in with the comments here that have debunked any and every facet of the ACC scam...
Zachriel: That wasn't the question, of course, but what evidence would justify you changing your mind? As there is no such evidence, even in principle, then you are not basing your position on evidence...
You still didn't answer the query. Your only argument seems to be based in constant personal attacks. It's a standard in science to know what would falsify your position. As you can't name a falsification, even in principle, it means your position isn't based on evidence.
"You still didn't answer the query. Your only argument seems to be based in constant personal attacks"...
Obviously I did answer the question more than once zach and all your witless whining aside your own inability to actually look at the science on your own (given that you've been given plenty of starting points) speaks volumes about your supposed understanding of science...
juandos: Obviously I did answer the question more than once ...
juandos: if the laws of physics packed their bags and left the universe then I might become a believer...
Which, as we pointed out, suggests you think that the theory of anthropogenic climate change violates one (or all!) laws of physics, which is useless unless you can explain exactly how it does so.
Matt Ridley blog is a very interesting web: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog
More on Climate Change:
http://manuelalvarezlopez.blogspot.com/2011/02/dyson-on-economics-by-russ-roberts.html
http://manuelalvarezlopez.blogspot.com/2011/10/post-carbon-america-matt-ridley.html
http://manuelalvarezlopez.blogspot.com/2011/04/climate-change-by-don-boudreaux.html
VangeIV, can you give me some of the details from Shaviv? I see that he claims CO2 wasn't necessarily the cause of some heating from the past and solar effects were. That's apparently disputed by others as Zachriel points out. But that's still different from saying that these solar effects would have been sufficient to end Snowball Earth. That's not a denial that greenhouse effects did end that ice age.
Because when you have the earth covered in ice it becomes more difficult for purely solar effects to end it because most of the radiation is reflected rather than absorbed when you have ice rather than water. I'm not seeing that Shaviv claims that solar effects did accomplish the melting in this case, though maybe he does. It would help if you pointed to the supposed claim specifically.
But even if in fact some other mechanism was responsible for the melting of the glaciars other than the greenhouse gases are you saying that greenhouse gases COULDN'T generate warming? Isn't it really basic science to say that CO2 causes the earth to trap more heat? So even if CO2 didn't impose change in the past this wouldn't mean it's unreasonable to think it might do it in the future.
It's kind of like saying we shouldn't be concerned about the effects of nuclear blasts because they haven't wiped out the entire species in the past. Yeah, but we still know that if you detonated many of them you could destroy the species. So what difference does it make that it hasn't happened in the past?
Well, no. Climatologists continue to collect data and improve their models. And you are certainly free to create your own model, then publish your model and results.
The problem is that the models are nearly worthless when it comes to predictive skills. They are not much better than a coin flip. As such they are of no value in the AGW debate.
VangeIV, can you give me some of the details from Shaviv? I see that he claims CO2 wasn't necessarily the cause of some heating from the past and solar effects were.
Shaviv was strongly influenced by the ideas of Svensmark. You can find some of what you seek here.
Shaviv's work with iron meteorites provided him with data that showed long-term variations in the cosmic ray flux. The periodicity found in the data agreed with the expected spiral arm crossing period.
The big discovery was how well the observed variations in CRF fit with the predictions made by the galactic model and synchronized with the glaciation periods on our planet.
That's apparently disputed by others as Zachriel points out.
Zach gave reference to straw man arguments, not to what the cosmic ray theory actually says.
But that's still different from saying that these solar effects would have been sufficient to end Snowball Earth.
Not only were they sufficient, they created the Snowball Earth period when CO2 levels were more than ten times higher than current levels.
That's not a denial that greenhouse effects did end that ice age.
As I pointed out, all of the observations show CO2 levels following changes in temperature trends. They are the effect, not the cause.
VangelV: The problem is that the models are nearly worthless when it comes to predictive skills. They are not much better than a coin flip. As such they are of no value in the AGW debate.
That is incorrect. Models are judged by their fit to the data.
VangelV: The big discovery was how well the observed variations in CRF fit with the predictions made by the galactic model and synchronized with the glaciation periods on our planet.
CO2 is not the only driver of climate. Other drivers include solar radiance, cosmic rays, orbital variations, volcanism, objects slamming into the Earth, and possibly cosmic rays.
If you read the paper, then you would realize that Shaviv & Veizer does not address the current rapid increase in global temperature.
VangelV: Not only were they sufficient, they created the Snowball Earth period when CO2 levels were more than ten times higher than current levels.
CO2 is not the only driver of climate.
VangelV: As I pointed out, all of the observations show CO2 levels following changes in temperature trends. They are the effect, not the cause.
They can act as cause and effect. As the Earth warms, greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere from the oceans and soil in a positive feedback. For each °C warming, ≈7.7 ppmv of CO2 are released, though there is still a large uncertainty associated with this value.
Frank et al., Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate, Nature 2010.
VangelV: There is nothing that you presented that shows catastrophic warming or anything that is caused by man.
Zachriel: Sure there is. Tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is a signature of greenhouse warming, that is, the heat is being held closer to the Earth. There could be other sources of greenhouse warming, but it turns out the human-produced emissions is the only plausible source. This effect was predicted a century ago.
First, there is no evidence that the observations have anything to do with human emissions of CO2. Your side has yet to present a relationship between human emissions, which are around 5% or less of all CO2 emissions, and temperature trends. Second, how is the warming catastrophic? After all, most of the observed warming has come due to higher lows in the winter. And the longer growing seasons thanks to milder springs and fall, plant growth and biodiversity has increased. What is catastrophic about that?
The tropical mid-troposphere will warm regardless of the source of global warming. If solar radiance increases, then the mid-troposphere will warm. This is a straightforward consequence of the physics. In any case, radiosonde data for the tropical mid-troposphere is still sparse, and is reasonably consistent with models within the high margin of error of the measuring apparatus.
No, the Assessment Reports were very clear about what was expected and predicted. The problem for the IPCC was that the observations did not confirm the expectations. The hot spot was missing.
Then you aren't listening. The arctic regions amplify the changes, but the dire effects to humans occur in the lower latitudes.
Look at the data. Almost all of the increase of the average temperature comes from the high latitudes. In areas such as the US any warming comes from higher lows, not from higher highs. That is not catastrophic or harmful. And it is not unprecedented to see the high Arctic warm up significantly. the last time we had a panic about high Arctic temperatures was in the 1930s when the measured temperatures were slightly higher than today.
http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/
This is a nothing page that ignores that exposure to excess cold kills a lot more people and causes more harm to plants and animals that exposure to excess heat. It is referencing the discredited IPCC report with its reliance on grey literature that came from environmental groups even as peer reviewed literature was ignored.
Jon: But that's still different from saying that these solar effects would have been sufficient to end Snowball Earth.
VangeIV: Not only were they sufficient, they created the Snowball Earth period when CO2 levels were more than ten times higher than current levels.
I'm afraid I don't see any evidence in the links you provided that even Shavir claims the cosmic ray flux was enough to melt the ice during the world wide glaciation that occurred about 2 billion years ago. Did I miss it? Do you understand what I'm asking? Let's suppose Shavir is right and the rest of the scientific community is wrong and the driver for various ice ages has been varying cosmic ray flux that is determined by our position in the Milky Way. Fine. Where does he say that in the case of Snowball Earth this cosmic ray flux was sufficient to bring that event to an end?
I don't want to just see you type "Not only were they sufficient...". I want you to put a link to a paper that somehow informs us that Shavir thinks they were sufficient in the case of the world wide glaciation.
It's conceivable that Shavir could explain a partial glaciation. But when the whole globe is covered in ice, this is a different story. If his theory is that CRF could melt ice under those conditions I want to see where he says that. You saying it really doesn't matter.
Are you not aware that we know CO2 is typically not the major driver of temperature changes on earth? Are you not aware that we know that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere would typically FOLLOW temperature, not drive it? We are aware of that. We also know why. And we also know that this doesn't change the fact that it CAN effect global temperatures.
The earth doesn't care if the polar ice caps are melted by a variance in the tilt of the earth or by CO2. What matters is once it starts it creates feedback mechanisms that accelerate the warming. Sure, it was often the sun in the past. In fact if it was ALWAYS the sun in the past this wouldn't change the fact that it could be CO2 in the future.
But as far as I know with regards to Snowball Earth is it wasn't always the sun. In fact CO2 has contributed in a major way in the past. If you say a respected scientists disagrees, that's fine. Doesn't make him right, but it's worth considering. But you at least have to show us.
VangelV: First, there is no evidence that the observations have anything to do with human emissions of CO2. Your side has yet to present a relationship between human emissions, which are around 5% or less of all CO2 emissions, and temperature trends.
CO2 has risen 40% since the start of the industrial age. There is no reasonable doubt this is due to human emissions.
Gerlach, Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide, Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 2011: Which emits more carbon dioxide (CO2): "Earth’s volcanoes or human activities? Research findings indicate unequivocally that the answer to this frequently asked question is human activities."
VangelV: Second, how is the warming catastrophic?
A changing climate will disrupt agriculture, such as by continental drying and coastal flooding. This will cause the loss of arable lands, and the migration of people. This, in turn, will lead to increased political tension and instability.
VangelV: No, the Assessment Reports were very clear about what was expected and predicted.
If the atmosphere warms—from whatever cause—, it will lead to a decreased lapse rate in the tropics. Do you understand this?
VangelV: The hot spot was missing.
Actually, the hotspot is observed over short time scales. There is insufficient accurate data over long time scales to detect the effect.
Trenberth & Smith, The Vertical Structure of Temperature in the Tropics: Different Flavors of El Niño, Journal of Climate 2006.
VangelV: This is a nothing page that ignores that exposure to excess cold kills a lot more people and causes more harm to plants and animals that exposure to excess heat.
Yes, we referenced NASA and the EPA, which itself references numerous scientific studies. You wave your hands.
VangelV: Tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is a signature of greenhouse warming, that is, the heat is being held closer to the Earth.
To reiterate, your response to this was that humans are not responsible for the dramatic increase in atmospheric CO2. Most people realize this isn't a reasonable position to take.
Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/
Tans, An Accounting of the Observed Increase in Oceanic and Atmospheric CO2 and an Outlook for the Future, Oceanography 2009: "The overall evidence strongly suggests that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is 100% due to human activities, and is dominated by fossil fuel burning."
You also cited Shaviv & Veizer, but their paper doesn't address short term changes, such as the current warming trend.
I'm afraid I don't see any evidence in the links you provided that even Shavir claims the cosmic ray flux was enough to melt the ice during the world wide glaciation that occurred about 2 billion years ago. Did I miss it? Do you understand what I'm asking? Let's suppose Shavir is right and the rest of the scientific community is wrong and the driver for various ice ages has been varying cosmic ray flux that is determined by our position in the Milky Way. Fine. Where does he say that in the case of Snowball Earth this cosmic ray flux was sufficient to bring that event to an end?
Yes you did. Climate on this planet is regulated by solar activity. An active sun reduces ionization in the lower troposphere and reduces cloud cover. That means temperatures go up. A quiet sun means more ionization and more cloud cover. That means cooling. Shaviv's work pointed to the variation depending on where the solar system was as it rotated around the galaxy. CRF increased when the sun was moving through the galactic arms and cloud cover increased sufficiently to create glaciation on a global basis. When the system had passed through the galactic arms the reduced ionization due to the massive decrease in CRF caused cloud cover to fall. More of the sun's energy made it to the surface of the planet and the glaciers melted.
Svensmark's paper, Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds, showed that Forbush decreases in cosmic ray counts caused low oceanic clouds to lose as much as 7% of their liquid water. The initial CLOUD experiment at CERN showed that cosmic rays significantly enhanced the formation of aerosol particles and proved the mechanism proposed by Svensmark. The next set of experiments will look at which organic volatiles in the atmosphere have the biggest effect on the size of the nucleating particles.
The empirical evidence is actually very sound. It shows that ionization due to cosmic rays can influence the formation of CCNs and cloud cover. The link between Forbush decreases and cloud cover has been observed. The correlation (and I agree that correlation is not proof of causation) between glaciation periods and CRF has been established. This is a great deal more than the warmers have done. They have no empirical data that links HUMAN EMISSIONS of CO2 to temperature trends which is what is required if we are to take the AGW theory seriously as science instead of politics. The empirical data shows that CO2 changes follow temperature trends by many centuries. That makes it the effect, not the cause. And I have yet to see how an increase in 'average' temperature is harmful to humans or life on this planet when the data shows that the increase comes mainly from increases during the winter and milder fall/spring conditions.
More of the sun's energy made it to the surface of the planet and the glaciers melted.
I thought I made it clear that your assertion was not evidence. Where does Shavir say this?
Remember, I'm not asking where Shavir claims temperatures can fluctuate due to ionization or due to cloud cover. I'm not asking about whether the energy coming from the sun varies in a way that produces varying temperatures. I'm asking if Shavir claims that this CRF variance is sufficient to bring our planet out of a snowball earth condition. Do you not understand what I'm asking? Because two times in a row now you have answered a question I didn't ask.
You've proved half of the sentence I quoted from you. According to Shavir more of the sun's energy reached the surface. The second part of the sentence is key, and you've not shown where Shavir says this. "And the glaciars melted" presumably because more of the sun's energy was getting to the earth's surface. Where does Shavir say that? More energy could reach the surface and you still don't get the melting because that energy is reflected by ice.
I don't want to just see you type "Not only were they sufficient...". I want you to put a link to a paper that somehow informs us that Shavir thinks they were sufficient in the case of the world wide glaciation.
The papers that I cited are sufficient. Shaviv has not been anything but clear in his conclusions that that it is the sun, not CO2 that effects the climate. You can find an overview here.
It's conceivable that Shavir could explain a partial glaciation. But when the whole globe is covered in ice, this is a different story. If his theory is that CRF could melt ice under those conditions I want to see where he says that. You saying it really doesn't matter.
Not at all. All you need to do is to increase the albedo sufficiently and the earth becomes covered with ice.
But let me step back a bit and go to the basics. As I said before, correlation is not causation. The changes in solar activity that effect cosmic ray flux could be causing climate to change. That means that it may not be cosmic rays but some other solar factor that is the true cause. Shaviv's work is useful because it finds changes in CRF that are independent of solar activity. He looked at the periodicity caused by the rotation of the solar system through the galactic arms. When you put that together with Svensmark's Forbush decrease studies the pieces fit togher very well. As I pointed out, Svensmark showed how the change in CRF caused a change in the cloud parameters, which in turn effect the energy budget. Put the two together with the cloud chamber experiments and the entire picture comes together.
The fact that you refuse to see the empirical evidence but keep hanging on to narratives tells us that yours is still a faith based position.
Are you not aware that we know CO2 is typically not the major driver of temperature changes on earth? Are you not aware that we know that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere would typically FOLLOW temperature, not drive it? We are aware of that. We also know why. And we also know that this doesn't change the fact that it CAN effect global temperatures.
That is not what the IPCC has been saying. For the UN and most national bodies the change in climate comes down primarily to HUMAN EMISSIONS of CO2. The IPCC lead authors have refused to consider the evidence that the primary driver of climate change is the sun. They have constantly made claims that are not supported by actual empirical evidence and still claim that since 1950 most of the change is caused by CO2 emissions.
Of course, during the warming period we saw that most of the trend in the average temperatures came from higher lows in winter, hardly a crisis for anyone with a rational mind. The problem of the warmers is the current pause in warming even though human emissions of CO2 are at record levels. The change in winter temperatures does not support the warmers' hype.
What is worse is the inconsistency in the satellite data sets. Xu and Powell noted that, greater consistency is needed between the various data sets before a climate trend can be established in any region that would provide the reliability expected of a trusted authoritative source. It seem that the data sets are not reliable and do not show warming on a global basis.
The earth doesn't care if the polar ice caps are melted by a variance in the tilt of the earth or by CO2. What matters is once it starts it creates feedback mechanisms that accelerate the warming. Sure, it was often the sun in the past. In fact if it was ALWAYS the sun in the past this wouldn't change the fact that it could be CO2 in the future.
As the man said, "it's mostly the sun stupid." When it isn't it is other natural factors that man has no control of.
CO2 has risen 40% since the start of the industrial age. There is no reasonable doubt this is due to human emissions.
You are going to have to do a lot better. Human emissions are less than 5% of the total CO2 that is emitted to the atmosphere. The residency time of any CO2 released is less than ten years. That means that the CO2 released by your trip to the grocery store in 1996 has long been removed from the atmosphere. The better explanation is the simple one. Warm ocean water holds less CO2 than cold water. This means that when the temperature trend changes it will effect the oceans and after an appropriate lag we will see changes in CO2 levels. Most of the degassing that we see now have to do with temperature changes 1,000 years ago, not the trip that you took to the grocery store more than a decade ago.
Gerlach, Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide, Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 2011: Which emits more carbon dioxide (CO2): "Earth’s volcanoes or human activities? Research findings indicate unequivocally that the answer to this frequently asked question is human activities."
What 'research'? Nobody has a clue how much CO2 is given off due to volcanic activity because the emission sites are far from where the volcanic activity takes place. Nobody is taking detailed and accurate measurements that can tell us how much CO2 the volcanic activity that takes place under our oceans is releasing. The claims are not supported by actual knowledge and are not any more credible than the claims made by other models.
A changing climate will disrupt agriculture, such as by continental drying and coastal flooding. This will cause the loss of arable lands, and the migration of people. This, in turn, will lead to increased political tension and instability.
Bu that has not happened. There is no more flooding disrupting agriculture during warm years than during cold years. Most of the damage done by flooding takes place in La Niña years. What the warming does is lengthen growing seasons. That is as good for agriculture today as it was during the Medieval Warm Period.
Note that the claims about migration have proven to be very false. The UN's climate refugees failed to materialize and it is now distancing itself from the claims that it was making in 2001 and 2005.
If the atmosphere warms—from whatever cause—, it will lead to a decreased lapse rate in the tropics. Do you understand this?
Do you understand that the predicted AGW signature failed to show up. As did the expected heat storage in the oceans. Why do you think that the alarmists are scrambling to find the 'missing heat?'
Actually, the hotspot is observed over short time scales. There is insufficient accurate data over long time scales to detect the effect.
Trenberth & Smith, The Vertical Structure of Temperature in the Tropics: Different Flavors of El Niño, Journal of Climate 2006.
Trenberth again? Why is it that every time a false claim is made that man keeps showing up. Haven't you idiots learned not to trust him by now? He was the idiot that made the false claims after Kartrina even though the empirical evidence did not support them. He was the same fool who keeps running around trying to find the 'missing heat' in the oceans. Well, try as he might, he can't find it.
Sorry but you are going to have to move away from excuses and narratives and start to stick to the facts. The predictions were made by the models. The observations failed to find evidence to support those predictions. That makes the hypothesis wrong and requires that it be changed, not that you make up nice new stories over and over again to hide that failure.
Yes, we referenced NASA and the EPA, which itself references numerous scientific studies. You wave your hands.
No, you referenced the EPA referencing the IPCC, which referenced grey literature that was paid for by environmental groups promoting AGW. That is hardly scientific. Stop telling us how bad seeing the average temperature go up is and show us evidence of harm done by longer growing seasons and warmer Arctic nights.
To reiterate, your response to this was that humans are not responsible for the dramatic increase in atmospheric CO2. Most people realize this isn't a reasonable position to take.
Most people? Is this what your position has come to. The data on this is actually very clear. First, humans emit less that 5% of the CO2. The rest comes from natural sources. Second, the residency time of CO2 in the atmosphere is very short. Most studies have it at less than a decade. (Although the IPCC claims a century.) This means that humans play a minor role in this picture and you need to find something else to blame.
For that I suggest that you look up at that shiny thing in the sky.
Once again, VangeIV, you have not answered my question nor have your sources. I watched the lecture from Shavir. He's talking about more recent temperature fluctuations, not questions related to Snowball Earth. How did the ice from Snowball Earth melt? I don't see anybody even claiming that it wasn't CO2. Either you don't understand my question or you do understand and you don't like the answer. CO2 has driven temperature change in the past. It did for Snowball Earth.
There is a worthwhile discussion on this CRF claim and also other objections to AGW within the scientific community from potholer54 here.
Remember, I'm not asking where Shavir claims temperatures can fluctuate due to ionization or due to cloud cover. I'm not asking about whether the energy coming from the sun varies in a way that produces varying temperatures. I'm asking if Shavir claims that this CRF variance is sufficient to bring our planet out of a snowball earth condition. Do you not understand what I'm asking? Because two times in a row now you have answered a question I didn't ask.
He is very clear that it is sufficient. The theory predicted that the earth would experience long periods of glaciation during the time the solar system is moving through the spiral arms and is warm when it is out of the spiral arms. Let us note here that Shaviv's theory made a prediction that was not supported by the science. According to Shaviv, we should have seen icehouse conditions in the Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. But at the time the prediction was made geologists considered the Mesozoic Era to have been consistently warm. It was only after new rafting data had been gathered in the late 1990s that things started to look very good for Shaviv's theory and the first evidence for glaciers approximately 140 million years ago was published in the early 2000s. That evidence is poison for the the greenhouse theory of climate change because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were several times the current levels at the time. Clearly the 'feedback' and 'runaway increases' narratives of the IPCC and the AGW cult do not hold up when looked through the prism of geological evidence.
As I said before, the CRF theory of climate deserves far more attention than it has gotten. It should provide a Nobel prize in physics once the AGW myth and the IPCC are totally discredited.
If you want to learn you can read about what I have written here. You already have the links to the Shaviv papers, the Svensmark Forbush decrease paper and to the CLOUD findings. All of the conclusions are supported by actual empirical evidence, a clear description of the methodology, and access to the data so that anyone wishing to do so can replicate the results. There is nothing equivalent from the IPCC that lends support for its own theory that CO2 is a primary driver of temperature change. Note that Shaviv uses an independent method to verify that the correlation observed between temperature and CRF in the lower troposphere is not caused by some other independent cause that drives both. While his work does not show that some other factors may not have minor effects it clearly shows that the changes of CRF are the primary driver of temperature change.
OK, your recent link does address Snowball Earth. Looks like it directly contradicts your claim. What it says is CRF effects reduced cloud cover and this will "reduce the contribution required from greenhouse gases." You've been claiming that according to Shavir CRF effects and resultant cloud formation was enough to melt the ice. False according to your own source.
Greenhouse gases were required to pull us out of Snowball Earth, but according to Shavir the amount of greenhouse gases required would be less than what is presently thought. Less greenhouse gases required means greenhouse gases were required.
When I asked you what would convince you of AGW you said the following:
If CO2 were a material driver of temperature trends we would see the cause (CO2 concentration changes) lead the effect (temperature trend changes).
In the case of Snowball Earth, even in the opinion of Shavir, greenhouse gases lead the temperature trend. This is because even according to Shavir greenhouse gases were required to end Snowball Earth. So the first piece of evidence you require has been provided.
Next you wanted a mid troposphere hot spot. Zachriel has provided the data. We have that.
Finally you said we need to account for Trenberth's missing heat. I suppose you mean that Trenberth is of the opinion that on present models the reduced rate of warming we've seen over the last decade is unexpected. But that's one person's opinion. That opinion is rejected by others. And of course Trenberth doesn't think this in any way undermines the central AGW claims.
So it seems to me that all three legs you are standing on have been undermined. Are you now willing to join the rest of the scientific community?
Once again, VangeIV, you have not answered my question nor have your sources. I watched the lecture from Shavir. He's talking about more recent temperature fluctuations, not questions related to Snowball Earth. How did the ice from Snowball Earth melt? I don't see anybody even claiming that it wasn't CO2. Either you don't understand my question or you do understand and you don't like the answer. CO2 has driven temperature change in the past. It did for Snowball Earth.
You don't pay much attention. At around 1:05 we look at data showing what the sun has been doing in the past several thousand years and the effect on temperature. At around 2:10 you see evidence of a link between the North Atlantic temperatures and solar activity over the past 10,000 years. Around 5:30 you get the explanation of the link between CRF and temperature. At 10:10 he shows the links between cloud cover and CRF over the 11 year solar cycle. At 10:30 he goes over what I have considered his most important contribution. Shaviv finds changes in CRF that are independent of solar activity. What you are seeking comes in around 11:30 of the talk, which is where his 500 million year history comes in.
And here is where Shaviv shines. Keep in mind that he predicted what was deemed highly improbable by geologists. He argued that we should have seen evidence of icehouse conditions in the Jurassic to Early Cretaceous even though geologists considered the Mesozoic Era to have been warm throughout. New rafting evidence changed the thinking and by the early 2000s we had papers in the journals that provided evidence for glaciation approximately 140 million years ago. As I pointed out, that evidence was harmful to the greenhouse theory of climate change because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were several times the current levels when the glaciation began. It was obvious that the data did not support the 'feedback' and 'runaway increases' narratives of the IPCC and the AGW proponents.
Which is why guys like you are so pissed off and grasping at straws. I suggest that you look at the linked references. The Cosmoclimatology review of the theory might be a good start. After you are done you can go at RC or Cook's site to see what type of distraction narrative the cult has come up with to deal with the inconvenient empirical evidence.
Check again. Shaviv showed that glaciation began when CO2 concentrations were around 3,000 ppm, about ten times the pre-industrial levels. His theory predicted a glaciation period that the geologists did not know existed. Evidence proved him right. His papers are a nail in the AGW coffin, not support for it.
Next you wanted a mid troposphere hot spot. Zachriel has provided the data. We have that.
No you don't.
Here is the prediction made by the IPCC models.
Here is the observed change.
You can pretend that the observations confirm the predictions but nobody else buy it. Which is why Trenberth and company made a narrative about wind shear hiding the missing heat.
Finally you said we need to account for Trenberth's missing heat. I suppose you mean that Trenberth is of the opinion that on present models the reduced rate of warming we've seen over the last decade is unexpected. But that's one person's opinion. That opinion is rejected by others. And of course Trenberth doesn't think this in any way undermines the central AGW claims.
Your ignorance of the issue is astounding. Trenberth is responding to the paper below.
Hansen, J., L. Nazarenko, R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, J. Willis, A. Del Genio, D. Koch, A. Lacis, K. Lo, S. Menon, T. Novakov, Ju. Perlwitz, G. Russell, G.A. Schmidt, and N. Tausnev, 2005: “Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications.” Science, 308, 1431-1435.
The ARGO data shows that the monotonic increase in heat that the radiative imbalance would create does not show up. I guess that when we don't have new data sets that can be adjusted to old 'adjusted' data sets and spliced together in a unique method it is hard to create the illusion of warming where none exists.
I find it funny that Trenberth now argues that warm water increases in density and sinks rapidly to below 1,000 meters, which is why the ARGO system can't find it. And that the warmists are resorting to press releases that play up the 'fear' that the hiding heat may show up one day in the future. The implication as I see it is that we need to keep the funding going until then.
What you are seeking comes in around 11:30 of the talk, which is where his 500 million year history comes in.
That's too recent. I'm talking about the world wide glaciation event. That was on the order of 2 billion years ago.
Check again. Shaviv showed that glaciation began when CO2 concentrations were around 3,000 ppm, about ten times the pre-industrial levels. His theory predicted a glaciation period that the geologists did not know existed. Evidence proved him right. His papers are a nail in the AGW coffin, not support for it.
What does this have to do with what I said? Your source says that greenhouse gas concentrations requirements are LESSENED on the CRF theories. So? That means increase greenhouse gas concentrations are required to melt the ice in the case of a global glaciation.
Everybody knows glaciation can occur with much higher concentrations of CO2 if, for instance, the sun's output was much lower. As it was in the past. You need the CO2 in the atmosphere to even have a chance of holding liquid water when the sun's output is 75% of what it is today, as it was 4 billion years ago.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere required to extract us from the world wide glaciation was not just 10X the present amount. It was 1000X the present amount. Not only did it have to be large enough to compensate for the reflectivity of the ice. It also had to compensate for the reduced solar output. So even if we grant a reduced cloud cover, we still need greenhouse gas concentrations to rise to get out of a worldwide glaciation event, a point that even Shaviv doesn't deny as far as I can tell. So there's the first leg of your opposition to AGW knocked out. Greenhouse gases led temp rises for the glaciation event I'm referring to.
That's too recent. I'm talking about the world wide glaciation event. That was on the order of 2 billion years ago.
I believe that I provided citations to this before. Below is an excerpt to the Cosmoclimatology article I cited.
Increases in the rate of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy, associated with close encoun- ters with the Magellanic Clouds, must have affected the cosmic-ray flux to the Earth, because of the increased number of supernovae – as seen, for example, in starburst galaxies. As for the climatic consequences, Nir Shaviv in Jerusalem pointed out that the Early Proterozoic Snowball Earth episode coincided with the highest star-formation rate in the Milky Way since the Earth was formed, in a mini-starburst 2400–2000 million years ago (Shaviv 2003a).
The reference above refers to Shaviv 2003 in which the author states, "Long term variability in the appearance glaciations correlates with the observed SFR vari- ability of the Milky Way. In particular, the lack of apparent glaciation between 1 and 2 Gyr BP, correlates with a particularly low SFR in the milky way (less than half of today), while a high SFR rate between 2 and 3 Gyr BP (with a peak towards 2 Gyrs), correlate with the glaciations that Earth experienced between 2 and 3 Gyrs BP."
It seems to me that everything is covered. While you are at it, you might as well read <a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0306477>this</a>. It will save future questions.
Increases in the rate of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy, associated with close encoun- ters with the Magellanic Clouds, must have affected the cosmic-ray flux to the Earth, because of the increased number of supernovae – as seen, for example, in starburst galaxies.
That explains how you enter a glaciation event, but doesn't explain how you exit it. I want to know about the exit.
In particular, the lack of apparent glaciation between 1 and 2 Gyr BP, correlates with a particularly low SFR in the milky way (less than half of today)
That's also not a denial that greenhouse gases were ALSO required in order to extract us from the worldwide glaciation event.
But I'll check the paper you referenced.
From the abstract of the paper you just cited:
This enigma is known as the faint sun paradox. We show here that it can be partially resolved once we consider the cooling effect that cosmic rays are suspected to have on the global climate and that the younger sun must have had a stronger solar wind, such that it was more effective at stopping cosmic rays from reaching Earth. The paradox can then be completely resolved with the further contribution of modest greenhouse gas warming.
Greenhouse gases were a material driver of temperature change according to Shaviv. Are we done now?
VangelV: Climate on this planet is regulated by solar activity.
Solar activity is one of many drivers of climate.
VangelV: The initial CLOUD experiment at CERN showed that cosmic rays significantly enhanced the formation of aerosol particles and proved the mechanism proposed by Svensmark.
CERN (2011): "This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate. However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed."
VangelV: That makes it the effect, not the cause.
They can act as cause and effect. As the Earth warms, greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere from the oceans and soil in a positive feedback. For each °C warming, ˜7.7 ppmv of CO2 are released, though there is still a large uncertainty associated with this value.
Frank et al., Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate, Nature 2010.
VangelV: The IPCC lead authors have refused to consider the evidence that the primary driver of climate change is the sun.
That's just nonsense. It's such statements that demonstrate your ideological stance.
Scientists have been directly monitoring solar irradiance for three decades, most lately with the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE). Solar heating accounts for 0.15°C or about 25% of the warming over the last century.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/
Modern climate models include variables for solar radiation.
VangelV: Xu and Powell noted that, greater consistency is needed between the various data sets before a climate trend can be established in any region that would provide the reliability expected of a trusted authoritative source.
Do you know what the word "region" means? Xu has also said that greenhouse gases, along with black carbon and aerosol, have made a significant contribution to global warming. And that the temperature is projected to increase by 1~7ºC during the next century.
VangelV: Human emissions are less than 5% of the total CO2 that is emitted to the atmosphere.
You're probably conflating the excess CO2 from human industrial activity with the carbon cycle. You might want to provide a citation.
VangelV: The residency time of any CO2 released is less than ten years.
Individual molecules have a short residence, as they are swapped with other molecules in the ocean; however, the excess CO2 is expected to stay in the atmosphere for a century or more. Approximately half of net human emissions are absorbed by the oceans.
VangelV: What 'research'?
So volcanologists are in on the conspiracy too. They just pretend to study volcanos.
VangelV: There is no more flooding disrupting agriculture during warm years than during cold years.
Sea levels have risen over the last century, and are projected to continue rising.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
Zachriel: If the atmosphere warms—from whatever cause—, it will lead to a decreased lapse rate in the tropics. Do you understand this?
Guess your answer is no, you don't understand.
VangelV: Do you understand that the predicted AGW signature failed to show up.
It's not a signature of anthropogenic global warming, but of warming from whatever cause. The tropospheric hot spot is observed over short time scales, but there is little, accurate long term data for the upper tropical troposphere.
Jon: Once again, VangeIV, you have not answered my question nor have your sources.
That's seems to be his usual behavior. Another he is ignoring points raised previously:
VangelV: That evidence is poison for the the greenhouse theory of climate change because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were several times the current levels at the time.
CO2 is not the only driver of climate. It's not even the only greenhouse gas. Other drivers include solar radiance, orbital variations, continental movements, volcanism, albedo, objects slamming into the Earth, and possibly cosmic rays.
VangelV: As I pointed out, that evidence was harmful to the greenhouse theory of climate change because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were several times the current levels when the glaciation began.
Solar luminance was lower, so the threashold of greenhouse gases was much higher. In any case, CO2 was probably an important factor in many climate events.
Royer, CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic, Geochimca 2004: "Many factors are important in controlling the average surface temperature of the Earth, including solar luminosity, albedo, distribution of continents and vegetation, orbital parameters, and other greenhouse gases. The message of this study is not that atmospheric C 2 is always the dominant forcing (see Section 3.7 for an early Paleogene example). Instead, given the variety of factors that can influence global temperatures, it is striking that such a consistent pattern between CO2 and temperature emerges for many intervals of the Phanerozoic. This correspondence suggests that CO2 can explain in part the patterns of globally averaged temperatures during the Phanerozoic."
Dromart et al., Ice age at the Middle–Late Jurassic transition?, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 2003: "This thermal deterioration can thus be ascribed to a downdraw in atmospheric CO2 via enhanced organic carbon burial which acted as a negative feedback effect (i.e. the inverse greenhouse effect)."
VangelV,
Can you offer an alternative explanation for a warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere?
Here's a roundup of the latest on the tropical tropospheric hotspot.
Thorne et al., Tropospheric temperature trends: history of an ongoing controversy, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2011: It is concluded that there is no reasonable evidence of a fundamental disagreement between tropospheric temperature trends from models and observations when uncertainties in both are treated comprehensively."
What does this have to do with what I said? Your source says that greenhouse gas concentrations requirements are LESSENED on the CRF theories. So? That means increase greenhouse gas concentrations are required to melt the ice in the case of a global glaciation.
No, it does not. The glaciation took place when CO2 levels were ten times current levels. That means that the hype about runaway temperature increases and positive feedback are just typical BS. The icehouse conditions began when CO2 concentrations were high and ended when CO2 concentrations were lower. As the data shows, change in the CO2 concentration follows the temperature trend. It is the effect, not the cause.
Everybody knows glaciation can occur with much higher concentrations of CO2 if, for instance, the sun's output was much lower. As it was in the past. You need the CO2 in the atmosphere to even have a chance of holding liquid water when the sun's output is 75% of what it is today, as it was 4 billion years ago.
The sun's 'output' was not lower. In fact, the faint sun paradox shows that the sun's output is not as big a factor as the warmers claim. The earth did not experience glaciation when the sun's output was 30% lower because its stronger magnetic fields kept cloud cover much lower. This meant that less of its radiation was reflected into space and that the earth was warmer than it would have been if the CRF was higher. Please shed your ignorance by reading the references that I provided.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere required to extract us from the world wide glaciation was not just 10X the present amount. It was 1000X the present amount. Not only did it have to be large enough to compensate for the reflectivity of the ice. It also had to compensate for the reduced solar output. So even if we grant a reduced cloud cover, we still need greenhouse gas concentrations to rise to get out of a worldwide glaciation event, a point that even Shaviv doesn't deny as far as I can tell. So there's the first leg of your opposition to AGW knocked out. Greenhouse gases led temp rises for the glaciation event I'm referring to.
Please cite your sources.
Here is how the last 500 million years looked like.
Note how life exploded on this planet when CO2 levels were at 7,000 ppm and that we had glaciation when CO2 levels were around ten times current concentrations? So if periods between ten and twenty times the current levels can be favourable to life why should we worry about minor increases in current concentrations? And if we can have glaciation at ten times the current level why worry about a doubling causing runaway heating?
That explains how you enter a glaciation event, but doesn't explain how you exit it. I want to know about the exit.
That is easy. A decrease in cloudiness causes a change in the energy budget. You should know what the energy budget is. After all, the warmists keep talking about it and Shaviv mentioned it in his talk.
That's also not a denial that greenhouse gases were ALSO required in order to extract us from the worldwide glaciation event.
No, there is no CO2 needed to get you out of the glaciation. There is plenty of solar radiation to melt the ice from equatorial regions very quickly and once you get cloud cover to fall low enough the moderate regions will be free from ice in a short period of time. Reduce cloud cover by enough and the polar regions become temperate.
VangelV: The sun's 'output' was not lower.
Then you disagree with Shaviv, who bases his paper on standard solar models which "predict a solar luminosity that gradually increased by about 30% over the past 4.5 billion years."
VangelV: No, there is no CO2 needed to get you out of the glaciation.
Then you disagree with Shaviv, who says that "the paradox can then be completely resolved with the further contribution of modest greenhouse gas warming."
VangeIV, I'm really interested in your answer to Zachriel's question. Once again:
Can you offer an alternative explanation for a warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere?
This enigma is known as the faint sun paradox. We show here that it can be partially resolved once we consider the cooling effect that cosmic rays are suspected to have on the global climate and that the younger sun must have had a stronger solar wind, such that it was more effective at stopping cosmic rays from reaching Earth. The paradox can then be completely resolved with the further contribution of MODEST greenhouse gas warming.
Greenhouse gases were a material driver of temperature change according to Shaviv. Are we done now?
You certainly are done. If you look at the contributions you find that most of the effect comes from the first few molecules in the atmosphere. Try reading up on a subject before you pretend to know what is going on. And you better pay attention to what the science is telling you, not the narratives coming out of PR departments.
Solar activity is one of many drivers of climate.
It is the most important driver. Additional CO2 in the atmosphere has a minor effect and a doubling from the pre-industrial level will have a negligible impact when compared to annual variation.
CERN (2011): "This result leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could also influence climate. However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate until the additional nucleating vapours have been identified, their ion enhancement measured, and the ultimate effects on clouds have been confirmed."
I agree. The first experiment confirmed the mechanism. The next set of experiments will evaluate which volatile organics are likely to be responsible for the 100 micron size required for nucleation. Note that the skeptics actually have empirical data that evaluates their theories. Where is the data for the AGW promoters?
They can act as cause and effect. AS THE EARTH WARMS, greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere from the oceans and soil in a positive feedback. For each °C warming, ˜7.7 ppmv of CO2 are released, though there is still a large uncertainty associated with this value.
Note that even in your narrative the temperature change comes first. And the data shows that CO2 follows by around 800 years as would be expected by degassing from a warming ocean. That makes CO2 the effect, not the cause.
That's just nonsense. It's such statements that demonstrate your ideological stance.
No. I am repeating what the IPCC says. In short, we can summarize the position as, "since our models can't figure out which natural factors are causing the warming after 1950 it must be man's emissions of CO2."
Or as Phil Jones put it:
Question: "If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?"
Answer: "The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing."
There is no empirical evidence. The IPCC uses ignorance of how the real world works as the basis for its conclusions. That makes sense given the fact that the IPCC is a political organization that has politically appointed lead authors for its assessments. Empirical evidence is not nearly as important to intergovernmental organizations that pursue political goals.
Scientists have been directly monitoring solar irradiance for three decades, most lately with the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE). Solar heating accounts for 0.15°C or about 25% of the warming over the last century.
First, the discussion was mostly about CRF, not 'solar irradiance'. The fact that you don't understand the difference tells us about your ignorance.
Second, even the warmers at the Met Office have now admitted that they were not paying attention to what was important. New data from sensitive satellite equipment shows UV variability over the 11-year solar cycle may be much larger than previously thought and has been key to the research. You can read the paper here. Given that it comes from inside the warming cult I wonder how the PR guys at RC and RS will try to deal with the inconvenient data.
Modern climate models include variables for solar radiation.
Not really. Most models focused on the sun's brightness, not the variation in its Ultra Violet output, which seems to be the important factor. They also had no room for changes in solar activity that regulated CRF.
Do you know what the word "region" means? Xu has also said that greenhouse gases, along with black carbon and aerosol, have made a significant contribution to global warming. And that the temperature is projected to increase by 1~7ºC during the next century.
Of course I know what region means. The data I referenced shows very large variation. For example the SH showed mostly cooling, especially in the polar region while the NH showed the opposite. Averaging diverging trends to come up with an average makes absolutely no sense. Not only that but there was a large variation in observation by latitude. That is a problem for your side of the argument.
And there is no empirical evidence to support the claims of CO2 emissions by humans as a driver of temperature change. And the lack of statistically significant warming over the past 15 years presents a big problem for the alarmists who need to come up with narratives and admit that the natural factors that were ignored are now material. Well, if they are material now, why could not have they been during the warming?
You're probably conflating the excess CO2 from human industrial activity with the carbon cycle. You might want to provide a citation.
No I don't. You look at any of the carbon cycle diagrams and will find that human emissions are a small portion of the total. Here is one such diagram. It shows that degassing from the ocean contributes 90 petagrams/year and plant decay of 60 petagrams/year. That compares to CO2 emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels of 5.5 petagrams/year. So what we are looking at are 5.5 out of 155.5, which comes out at 3.5% of emissions.
Individual molecules have a short residence, as they are swapped with other molecules in the ocean; however, the excess CO2 is expected to stay in the atmosphere for a century or more. Approximately half of net human emissions are absorbed by the oceans.
This is not a scientific statement. It is a narrative that is not supported by any empirical evidence. As I pointed out in my previous citation, most of the studies have residency times of less than 10 years, not the 100 years the IPCC claims without any evidence.
So volcanologists are in on the conspiracy too. They just pretend to study volcanos.
No. They don't have any data on the subject because they can't measure CO2 emissions due to volcanic activity. Most of the CO2 that comes out of a volcano comes through fractures not the main vent. And as I pointed out, given the fact that most volcanic activity take place in the deep ocean and that geologists have missed much activity there is no way to claim knowledge of total emissions with any degree of certainty.
Of course, when funding goes to people that say the politically correct statements it should not be surprising that they are made. After all, take a look at the careers of all those minor scientists who did what the IPCC wanted. They got the money, the publicity, and the power to lord it over others in their fields.
But I do not have any idea why the skeptic side is arguing the volcanic activity angle other than to make a technical point that is irrelevant. The skeptics should not care because they do not believe that CO2 emissions from any source are important and know that the data shows that the same weak solar activity that increases CRF and cloud cover that drives cooling trend seems to set off volcanoes and add to the cooling due to the release of particulates that further aid cloud formation and increase albedo. Even the warmers should be aware that volcanic activity means cooling even if they do not understand the mechanisms.
Sea levels have risen over the last century, and are projected to continue rising.
The satellite data is not supporting the acceleration in the increase claimed by the warmers. In fact, they are showing very little increase over the past eight years. This summer I took the kids for a walk down water street in NY. They thought that I was not telling the truth when I said that it used to be on the water and asked why the increase in the past 200 years did not cause any flooding. Needless to say they are a lot more skeptical than you seem to be.
Jon: Greenhouse gases were a material driver of temperature change according to Shaviv. Are we done now?
VangelV: You certainly are done. If you look at the contributions you find that most of the effect comes from the first few molecules in the atmosphere.
Increased CO2 leads to warming. This causes an increase in water vapor, which causes additional warming. It's a feedback cycle.
Zachriel: Solar activity is one of many drivers of climate.
VangelV: It is the most important driver.
Well, without the Sun, there is no climate—at least not one humans prefer.
VangelV: Additional CO2 in the atmosphere has a minor effect and a doubling from the pre-industrial level will have a negligible impact when compared to annual variation.
Yes, annual variations easily swamp the signal from global warming. Similarly, current warming trends swamp natural mechanisms of climate change.
CERN (2011): However, it is premature to conclude that cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate ...
VangelV: I agree.
After all that.
VangelV: Note that even in your narrative the temperature change comes first.
That's right. There are a lot of factors than can initiate climate change. For whatever reason, you act as if climatologists are not aware of these mechanisms.
Zachriel: CO2 is not the only driver of climate. It's not even the only greenhouse gas. Other drivers include solar radiance, orbital variations, continental movements, volcanism, albedo, objects slamming into the Earth, and possibly cosmic rays.
VangelV: In short, we can summarize the position as, "since our models can't figure out which natural factors are causing the warming after 1950 it must be man's emissions of CO2."
VangelV: The IPCC lead authors have refused to consider the evidence that the primary driver of climate change is the sun.
Zachriel: {citations to solar observations by climatologists}
VangelV: No.
You said they don't consider the Sun. You were simply wrong.
VangelV: I am repeating what the IPCC says. In short, we can summarize the position as, "since our models can't figure out which natural factors are causing the warming after 1950 it must be man's emissions of CO2."
As climatologists propose a mechanistic model, this statement too is false. Of course they consider natural factors, but they are insufficient to account for the evidence.
VangelV: New data from sensitive satellite equipment shows UV variability over the 11-year solar cycle may be much larger than previously thought and has been key to the research.
Ineson et al: "If the updated measurements of solar ultraviolet irradiance are correct, low solar activity, as observed during recent years, drives cold winters in northern Europe and the United States, and mild winters over southern Europe and Canada, with little direct change in globally averaged temperature."
Zachriel: You're probably conflating the excess CO2 from human industrial activity with the carbon cycle. You might want to provide a citation.
VangelV: No I don't. You look at any of the carbon cycle diagrams and will find that human emissions are a small portion of the total.
As we said, you are conflating the excess carbon with the carbon cycle. While most carbon is regularly cycled through the system, humans are introducing additional carbon that is only very slowly removed by natural processes.
VangelV: This is not a scientific statement.
Archer, Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time, Journal of Geophysical Research 2004.
Caldeira & Wickett, Ocean model predictions of chemistry changes from carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and ocean, Journal of Geophysical Research 2004.
Sabine et al, The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2, Science 2004.
Khatiwala, Primeau & Hall, Reconstruction of the history of anthropogenic CO2 concentrations in the ocean, Nature 2009.
As usual, you ignored the point.
VangelV: They don't have any data on the subject because they can't measure CO2 emissions due to volcanic activity.
And yet reputable geological journals keep publishing such estimates.
VangelV: Of course, when funding goes to people that say the politically correct statements it should not be surprising that they are made.
As we said, volcanologists and geologists are in the conspiracy too. Oh, and virtually every scientific academy in the world.
Jon: VangeIV, I'm really interested in your answer to Zachriel's question. Once again: Can you offer an alternative explanation for a warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere?
Notably, even though it was raised in our very first comment on the thread, VangeIV has never answered.
Can you offer an alternative explanation for a warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere?
Yes. Natural factors driven by changes of solar activity and the shifts in the PDO/AMO. We just had the Met Office in the UK, a prominent voice of alarmism, publish a paper that admits that scientists failed to mention the large changes in UV emissions from the sun. We just saw a confirmation of the Svensmark CRF hypothesis.
The facts on this are simple. The IPCC made a prediction that was shown to be false by the satellite measurements. The equatorial hot spot in the troposphere was missing. That was followed by the prediction of ocean heat storage where Hansen and a number of warmists argued that the radiative imbalance would show up as a monotonic heating in the oceans. They even had a bunch of old data sets to prove their case. The problem was that the new (accurate) method of measuring temperatures in the oceans failed to show the accumulated heat. The warmists refuse to accept the data and are talking about the 'missing heat' instead. They want us to believe that the hot water increased in density and sank rapidly to below 700 meters where we don't have accurate measurements. Somehow, everyone failed to see the heat transport show up in any of the millions of readings that the ARGO system has taken.
Sorry but that does not work. When the AGW theory makes predictions that do not come true it is time to change the theory, not to keep spinning narratives. As I said, there is plenty of empirical evidence that shows that other factors are far more important. It is time the IPCC started to look at that evidence.
Did you read the assessment reports? This prediction came from the IPCC. Compare the observations to the prediction and you see the disconnect. Do you understand that the observations falsified the theories?
And here is the failure of the ocean heat storage prediction. So what we have is a model that clearly predicted where the heat due to AGW would show up, and how much heat would show up. Both predictions were shown to be false by empirical data. That means the theories have been falsified and need to be modified, not that you need a better cover story. Do you understand what that means?
VangelV: Do you understand that the predicted AGW signature failed to show up.
It's not a signature of anthropogenic global warming, but of warming from whatever cause. The tropospheric hot spot is observed over short time scales, but there is little, accurate long term data for the upper tropical troposphere.
As I said before, read the IPCC's assessment reports. I did not make the claims or the predictions. The IPCC did. Now you can have Kevin Trenberth or John Cook try and create a nice spin to hide the failed predictions but that will not change the failure.
CO2 is not the only driver of climate. It's not even the only greenhouse gas. Other drivers include solar radiance, orbital variations, continental movements, volcanism, albedo, objects slamming into the Earth, and possibly cosmic rays.
Now pay attention to this my friend. This debate is about the A in AGW. It about emissions of CO2 from human activities. Period. If all the other factors are material then we don't have to do anything about CO2 and can attribute the warming due to natural factors. You can't have them be significant now that there is no warming but be immaterial when we detected a warming trend after that convenient shift in the AMO/PDO index in the 1970s.
If you want to argue that CO2 is not as important as other natural factors you are on the same side as the skeptics because that has been their point all along.
And let us note that most of the factors that you gave above have to do with long term trends that cannot be identified by looking at 25-30 years of data.
Solar luminance was lower, so the threashold of greenhouse gases was much higher. In any case, CO2 was probably an important factor in many climate events.
Actually, that is not what the actual data shows. You are confused about the early sun, which is why I referenced the faint sun paradox paper. The sun's brightness had increased substantially long before the first icehouse earth condition. The data, which I provided, shows that temperature trends follow solar activity. Try to read Svensmark and Shaviv. Unlike the AGW proponents they use actual empirical evidence to try to support their claims. If you were familiar with the evidence you wold not make as many false claims as you have so far.
Royer, CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic, Geochimca 2004: "Many factors are important in controlling the average surface temperature of the Earth, including solar luminosity, albedo, distribution of continents and vegetation, orbital parameters, and other greenhouse gases. The message of this study is not that atmospheric C 2 is always the dominant forcing (see Section 3.7 for an early Paleogene example). Instead, given the variety of factors that can influence global temperatures, it is striking that such a consistent pattern between CO2 and temperature emerges for many intervals of the Phanerozoic. This correspondence suggests that CO2 can explain in part the patterns of globally averaged temperatures during the Phanerozoic."
As I pointed out, Shaviv predicted glaciation in a period where none was expected. Subsequently he was proven to be correct. That is what science is all about. All you are doing is citing narrative by people who get funding to supply as much of it as possible. This is why I asked for EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. You know what that means. If you have it please provide it.
Then you disagree with Shaviv, who bases his paper on standard solar models which "predict a solar luminosity that gradually increased by about 30% over the past 4.5 billion years."
Not at all. Most of the luminosity increased quite rapidly in the first 2 billion years. Luminosity has not been lower in the past few hundred million years yet we have had much more glaciation. The reason is solar activity and CRF not solar output. And this is where the IPCC and the warmers fail. They have refused to look at the regulation of cloud cover by solar activity even though the empirical evidence show it to be the critical factor that regulates climate change.
Then you disagree with Shaviv, who says that "the paradox can then be completely resolved with the further contribution of modest greenhouse gas warming."
Not at all. If we did not have the first few hundred ppm of CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere the planet would be much cooler. Nobody disputes that GH gasses do not make the planet warmer because they do. The dispute is about the volumes above the "modest" amount that Shaviv is talking about. Unlike you, Shaviv knows that most of the heating due to CO2 comes from the first 100 ppm. If you had watched his lectures you would know that is what he means by 'modest.'
The argument here is about what happens when we go from 280 ppmv to 560 ppmv. Well, the science suggests that not much will happen. We will see a modest 1.2C, most of which we have already seen without any harm being done.
Yes. Natural factors driven by changes of solar activity and the shifts in the PDO/AMO.
To borrow a phrase from Zachriel this is hand waving in the extreme. Explain how PDO/AMO warms the troposphere and cools the stratosphere. Or how did the changes in UV emissions warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere?
The facts on this are simple. The IPCC made a prediction that was shown to be false by the satellite measurements. The equatorial hot spot in the troposphere was missing.
Is this supposed to have something to do with a cooling stratosphere and warming troposphere? I don't get it.
IPCC reports are not from the mouth of God. They can contain errors. That's why scientists continue to do work and refine/correct prior assessments. I don't see how this is relevant to the question though.
As I pointed out, Shaviv predicted glaciation in a period where none was expected. Subsequently he was proven to be correct.
Science is not like economics or religion where if you were right in the past this means everybody listens to you and your opinion trumps that of others going forward. Even if Shaviv did make an accurate prediction in the past, other scientists can present evidence that contradicts other claims he makes and you are obliged to refute them, not just say they are wrong and Shaviv is right because one time Shaviv got something right in the past.
The reason is solar activity and CRF not solar output. And this is where the IPCC and the warmers fail. They have refused to look at the regulation of cloud cover by solar activity even though the empirical evidence show it to be the critical factor that regulates climate change.
And yet earlier when Zachriel had pointed to CERN which said it is premature to conclude that CRF has a significant effect on climate your response was that you agree. Now you've switched back to your former position. It's all about CRF and this is where the IPCC (which is a depicition of the vast scientific consensus) fails. What is your position? Is CRF a huge factor that effects glaciation despite the wide variance in solar output, or is it premature to think that CRF significantly effects climate? How are we supposed to address your arguments when the flip so dramatically?
The argument here is about what happens when we go from 280 ppmv to 560 ppmv. Well, the science suggests that not much will happen.
The "science suggests". No. Untrained climate science denier Anthony Watts says so. He probably took one of the extreme outlier results of a climate sensitivity test and he's going to pretend that this is the whole story. You look at his graph and he's claiming a climate sensitivity of about 0.375°C for every doubling of CO2, whereas the IPCC says it's between 2 and 4.5, very unlikely to be less than 1.5, and probably around 3. Seriously, Anthony Watts is not the best source for telling us "what the science suggests."
Zachriel: Can you offer an alternative explanation for a warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere?
VangelV: The equatorial hot spot in the troposphere was missing.
Here's a roundup of the latest on the tropical tropospheric hotspot.
Thorne et al., Tropospheric temperature trends: history of an ongoing controversy, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2011: It is concluded that there is no reasonable evidence of a fundamental disagreement between tropospheric temperature trends from models and observations when uncertainties in both are treated comprehensively."
VangelV: And here is the failure of the ocean heat storage prediction.
Lyman et al., Robust warming of the global upper ocean, Nature 2010: "Accounting for multiple sources of uncertainty, a composite of several OHCA curves using different XBT bias corrections still yields a statistically significant linear warming trend for 1993–2008 of 0.64 W m^-2 (calculated for the Earth’s entire surface area), with a 90-per-cent confidence interval of 0.53–0.75 W m^-2."
VangelV: If all the other factors are material then we don't have to do anything about CO2 and can attribute the warming due to natural factors.
The fact that you think that saying CO2 is a current driver of climate change that CO2 must account for all climatic events is not a reasonable position.
That's like saying that planetry orbits are influenced by gravity, so momentum is irrelevant. In fact, there is an interplay between many different factors in climate. At various times in history, one factor or another may predominate.
To borrow a phrase from Zachriel this is hand waving in the extreme. Explain how PDO/AMO warms the troposphere and cools the stratosphere. Or how did the changes in UV emissions warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere?
Warmer oceans will emit more IR and will warm the atmosphere above them. The UV mechanism is not all that well understood. In fact, none of the IPCC models deal with it adequately.
My point is still valid. The IPCC made predictions that turned out not to be validated by observations. The mid-troposphere warming signature was not there. Neither was the monotonic heat storage in the oceans. That makes the radiative imbalance assumptions wrong.
As I pointed above, there is nothing unusual about what is going on in the atmosphere. Let me point out again that the satellite data for the past decade does not support your spin.
The 30 year data does not look very good for your case either.
Is this supposed to have something to do with a cooling stratosphere and warming troposphere? I don't get it.
Of course you don't get it. The AGW theory makes some very specific predictions. One is a mid-tropospheric hot spot. The other is monotonic heat storage in the oceans. Both predictions failed to be confirmed by observations. That means that the AGW theory has to be changed, which is why the warmers are no longer ignoring solar activity, ENSO conditions, the PDO/AMO index changes, AO, and other factors.
IPCC reports are not from the mouth of God. They can contain errors. That's why scientists continue to do work and refine/correct prior assessments. I don't see how this is relevant to the question though.
Correct. Reviews show many errors because the IPCC is mainly a political body with political goals. It is relevant because for the AGW theory to be sound you need to see that heat storage in the oceans and the hot spot in the mid-troposphere.
This is why your argument about other factors is actually poison to the warmer position. They need those other factors to be insignificant because if they matter now that there is no more cooling they mattered when there was cooling.
Science is not like economics or religion where if you were right in the past this means everybody listens to you and your opinion trumps that of others going forward.
I never said that it was like religion, which is what the AGW cult is. Shaviv made a prediction that contradicted what geologists knew at the time. His theory was supported by discovery that changed the state of the knowledge. There is no equivalence for the AGW theory of climate change. It is based on faith, not empirical evidence.
Even if Shaviv did make an accurate prediction in the past, other scientists can present evidence that contradicts other claims he makes and you are obliged to refute them, not just say they are wrong and Shaviv is right because one time Shaviv got something right in the past.
Other scientists can't change the fact that his prediction worked. They can speculate about other factors and come up with narratives but without empirical evidence and an independent verification of the mechanism to deal with the 'correlation is not causation' problem all they have is narrative.
That is what you have missed about Shaviv. He used a totally independent method to verify the CRF theory and showed that the previous observations did not have some other cause.
Warmer oceans will emit more IR and will warm the atmosphere above them.
Well, obviously. How does that cool the stratosphere?
VangelV: The mid-troposphere warming signature was not there.
Thorne et al., Tropospheric temperature trends: history of an ongoing controversy, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2011: It is concluded that there is no reasonable evidence of a fundamental disagreement between tropospheric temperature trends from models and observations when uncertainties in both are treated comprehensively."
VangelV: Neither was the monotonic heat storage in the oceans.
Lyman et al., Robust warming of the global upper ocean, Nature 2010: "Accounting for multiple sources of uncertainty, a composite of several OHCA curves using different XBT bias corrections still yields a statistically significant linear warming trend for 1993–2008 of 0.64 W m^-2 (calculated for the Earth’s entire surface area), with a 90-per-cent confidence interval of 0.53–0.75 W m^-2."
VangelV: Let me point out again that the satellite data for the past decade does not support your spin.
It would be helpful if you didn't keep posting orphan graphics with a handwave and a "Voilà!"
VangelV: The 30 year data does not look very good for your case either.
At least that one's readable. The trend line is clearly increasing.
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