JohnB

Um, No. Sorry but that doesn't work. By your own accounts and posting above, the amplitude of a solar cycle is 1.4W/M-2. You also say that baseline SI won't change quickly and only by about 1 W/M-2 over a long time period. The bottom line of this argument is that the SI rise cannot exceed 2.4W/M-2 and will only reach that after centuries of time. Increase in baseline from Maunder to now is 1W/M-2 plus the Schwabe cycle of 1.4W/M-2 = 2.4W/M-2. The figures you've quoted simply don't allow for more than that figure on a time scale of less than centuries. The graph you posted does not illustrate the long term solar forcing. It shows the long term solar forcing that is used by the models. This means that it is an estimate and not a fact, unless the value can be shown to be correct. The graph doesn't demonstrate this. So what does it demonstrate? The IPCC uses Bauer 2003 twice in the graph so I'll start there. (These two are referred to in the IPCC graph as B..2003-14C and B..2003-10Be.) Bauer et. al. 2003 is a reconstruction of SI over the last 1,000 years. They assume a relationship between C14, Be10 and SI so as to use C14 and Be10 as proxies for the SI. Figure 1a in the paper shows the results. According to the C14 proxy during the MWP the SI was about 1368 W/M-2 or 3 W/M-2 above median. This dropped as we went into the LIA with the SI going down to 1362 W/M-2 around 1700AD. (3W/M-2 below median) This then rose again in the instrumental period to the 1368 W/M-2 mark. This is a change of 6W/M-2. The 10Be isn't as marked in variance but is still plus or minus 1 W/M-2 deviation from median. This is the only SI reconstruction in the graph, all the rest are forcings used as inputs for modelling purposes as is made clear by the description. We must mind the difference between data and facts, musn't we? Again looking at Figure 1a in Bauer, we see that the proxies don't have high resolution in the distant past but show the variations due to the standard solar cycle quite well in the recent past. The one and a bit variance is plainly visible in the post 1850 period. The problem here is that what the graph shows is models that use a .5W/M-2 SI long term variation and a (roughly) 2.6 degree sensitivity to CO2 doubling produce similar curves. This is not a surprise. However it is not proof that the long term variation was in fact .5 W/M-2 for SI. The only paper represented in the graph that is an SI reconstruction places the value at more than 3 W/M-2. In fact I can expand on this a bit. Now that I've located and at least skimmed all the papers in the graph I can say that the graph demonstrates that climate models using the SI from Crowley 2000 and a CO2 sensitivity of about 2.8 degrees agree with each other. One of the problems, or difficulties with paleoclimate is what do we calibrate the models against? The most obvious things are the paleo reconstructions. But which ones? Taking a simple comparison do we use MBH 1998, the "Hockey Stick" which shows a gradual decrease over 1,000 years and a sharp uptick or Moberg 2005 which has a rather more pronounced MWP and LIA? While they are said to be comparable, because they each fall within the others error bars, they are quite different at the 95% level. If Centennial variations are small, then so are the natural forcings. (Talking pre industrial here) An extreme example for this opinion is Tett et al 2007 (TBC 2006 in the graph) Their view is: "These simulations suggest that since 1550, in the absence of anthropogenic forcings, climate would have warmed by about 0.1 K." Bollocks. Ask any historian or Archaeologist if the climate anywhere has been that stable for 450 years ever, the answer is "No". Sorry but his model is wrong. Be that as it may, an assumption of slow and small natural climate change requires natural forcing changes to be slow and small as well. I've linked to Bauer to show that the SI reconstuction is for a 6 W/M-2 change in SI between the Maunder and now. Many of the papers reference Lean et al 1995. I draw your attention to Figure 2 in that paper where the reconstruction shows a maximum of 1364 W/M-2 for STI during the Maunder rising to a (then) figure of 1368 W/M-2 a change of 4 W/M-2. Lean et al is also a reconstruction using Be10 and C14. Note the extreme flatness during the Maunder Minimum. It is highly unlikely that SI was so constant for a 70 odd year stretch. Far more likely is that the relationship between SI and the creation of Be10 and C14 breaks down once the SI drops below 1364 W/M-2. (At least using the methodology of Lean et al, anyway) Just so that there is no mistake I'll also point you to Bard et al 2000. Figure 1 in this paper reviews previous work and shows the TSI reconstructions from Lean et al 1995, Hoyt and Schatten 1993 and Zhang et al 1994 and none of them show a measly .5W/m-2 change over 400 years. Figure 3 in this paper shows their own reconstruction and a change of a good 5 W/M-2 for the period 1860 to present. The models might use .5W/M-2 over centuries (which possibly explains their inability to account for modern temps without an enhanced CO2 effect) but the reconstructions show a vastly different situation. I think that I've shown that TSI doesn't change by .5W/M-2 on centennial scales, it changes much more than that and on very short time spans. A final point. Crowley 2000 is referenced by many of the papers and is another Be10 reconstruction. Due to the paywall I can't check but it could be that this is where the long, slow .5W/M-2 comes from. This immediately begs the question that since this would make Crowley 2000 an outlier compared to all the other reconstructions, why use those values and not the ones from the other papers which generally agree with each other and have much higher values? References (To save people having to find them themselves): From the Graph; González-Rouco et al., 2003 http://w3k.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/gonzalez.et.al.2003.soil.pdf Osborn et al., 2006 http://coast.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/pdf/osborn.magicc-echog.2006.pdf Tett et al., 2007 http://www.springerlink.com/content/xg6116h0t30g26g2/ Mann et al., 2005b http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI3564.1 Bertrand et al., 2002b http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0870.2002.00287.x/full Crowley et al., 2003 http://www.sages.ac.uk/home/homes/ghegerl/Crowley.2003GL017801.pdf Goosse et al., 2005b http://coast.hzg.de/staff/zorita/ABSTRACTS/GoosseXetalGRL2005.pdf Gerber et al., 2003 http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/GerberClimDyn03.pdf Bauer et al., 2003 http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/claussenmartin/publications/bauer_al_1000_grl_03.pdf González-Rouco et al., 2006 http://esrc.stfx.ca/pdf/2005GL024693.pdf Stendel et al., 2006 http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~vijay/EGU%20Presentations/Climate%20Change/Stendel-etal-06.pdf Also read and/or mentioned; Bard et al 1997 http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/evo_cli/UPL12772_Bard97EPSL___copie.pdf Lean et al 1995 http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/lean1995.pdf Hoyt and Schattern 1993 http://www.leif.org/EOS/93JA01944.pdf Bard et al 2000 http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/evo_cli/UPL12790_Bard00Tellus___copie.pdf Crowley 2000 that a number of papers are based on is behind the paywall at Science http://www.sciencemag.org/content/289/5477/270.short Moberg et al 2005 http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/moberg.nature.0502.pdf MBH 1998 (Mann, Bradley and Hughes) http://www.astro.uu.nl/~werkhvn/study/Y3_05_06/data/talk/14-juni/mannetal1998.pdf Cheers.

I think it's taking it a bit far. For example; This is virtually saying that a male and female meeting, marrying and having kids is somehow abnormal. By all means have the books described, but have books about "usual" relationships as well. Not having a male/female as caring parents of a natural child is just as one eyed as not having a gay couple as caring parents.

It's a good law. We have the same in Australia. Talking on the phone is a different form of distraction from listening to music etc, because they are passive and having a conversation is active, it requires thought. It's also different from talking to somebody in the car with you. When conversing we use many signals to flesh out what the person is saying, the look on their face, hand movements, stance, the whole box and dice. When conversing with a passenger we still get al lot of those extra signals as we can see the passenger. However when using a phone we are trying to get all these extra signals out of their voice alone which requires concentration not just on the words spoken but on the tone and inflection as well. We do this to compensate for the lack of visual signals. Logic dictates that anything that diverts a drivers attention and concentration away from steering 2 tons of metal down a road is not a good thing.

I hope lunch was enjoyable. Yes, I should have given kudos for Anthropology but it was well past midnight and I was damn near asleep. Please accept the kudos now. The problem with Archaeology or Anthropology in this case is that most of the evidence that they can supply is qualative rather than quantative. For example we can know that the climate changed at the end of the Roman Warm Period and became much colder, but we can't tell how much colder in degrees. So if we are looking to quantify the differences, the records are of limited value except as a general check. As an aside. That's what first interested me in the actual science. I saw the "Hockey Stick" and I knew from my readings in History that the NH climate didn't look like that. People forget that the word "school" derives from the ancient Greek word meaning "leisure". IOW, you have to be able to take time out from simply surviving to be able to have education. One of the reasons for the "Dark Ages" was simply that times were very hard indeed. When the warmth returned in the MWP, education flourished in many ways simply due to greater crop yields allowing more food and more leisure time. The reconstruction simply didn't match the observed facts of life during the period. (I've noticed some historians over at Judith Currys blog that feel the same way.) I take your point re data, but I find that sometimes the reconstructed "data" is presented as "fact", and this concerns me. Not picking on Dr. Mann, but MBH 1998 by its iconic nature was pretty well presented as "fact" in the TAR, for example. As the old saying goes "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts". There is nothing wrong with building on previous works, "shoulders of giants" and that sort of thing. However it is always worthwhile to go back to basics occasionally. Someone building on Bauer might not realise that large chunks are based on Brovkin and may not realise the assumptions Brovkin is based on. So an error can be perpetuated. I'm one of those picky people who tends to read the papers that papers are based on which means instead of reading one, I finish up reading 6 or 7. I think this approach is needed for the amateur trying to understand climate science. I need to understand not just what is said, but where it comes from as well. Which is a bugger because CS is barely a hobby for me and takes time out from important things like learning dead languages. I have to disagree with the idea that forcings change slowly enough for the climate to respond in tandem. If we assume that Bauer et al 2003 was correct in the reconstruction of SI forcings. it's quite obvious from Figure 1a that SI forcings are quite large and fast. A rise of 2.5W/M-2 between 1050 and 1100, 2.5 W/M-2 from 1340 to 1370, a drop of over 4 W/M-2 from 1370 to 1450 and a rise of 3 W/M-2 from 1700 to 1750. The rate of change of these SI forcings makes the 2.4 W/M-2 from 1850 to present pale in comparison. (And I'd still like to know why this diagram was misrepresented in IPCC graph. Maybe there is some maths that I haven't learnt yet where 1368-1365= .6, but i doubt it. ) I'll have to read the other SI papers to see a comparison. I'm not a fan of the "Anthropocene" concept. It often seems to be pushed by people with an ideological barrow. They seem to have the idea that everything was rosy and nature was in "delicate balance" and "harmony" until those nasty humans came along and messed things up. Speaking anthropologically, mankind has never liked the idea of being at the mercy of anything, we like to think we can control things. 10,000 years ago this led to the "Nature" religions wher people believed they could influence the weather if they appeased the rain God. This took many forms, from personal mutilation to killing heretics to show the relevent god just how much we dislike people who don't worship the rain god. In the time of the LIA we'd moved from nature gods to the christian one. People believed that the very cold year of 1626 was caused by witches "cooking" the weather and 4,400 people were executed for "controlling" the weather. This speech by Sallie Ballunis is quite clear and points out that even the reasons used for some of the trials are the same words as we hear today in the climate debate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C1CKKhN7ng I currently view the "Anthropocene" idea as one pushed by people who can't accept that mankind is a rather insignificant speck in a great, wonderful, amazing and rather hostile and uncaring Universe. The Anthropocene idea gives the impression that we have power over nature, rather than being at the mercy of nature. And nature has no mercy. PS. I don't think I've read Ruddiman, although the name is familiar. I'll have a read of the books you say and see if I change my opinion.

Heard that logic before. Hijackers back in the 70s used the same arguments. "It's not our fault the hostages are being killed, it's your fault for not acceeding to our demands. " It was BS then and it's BS now.

"They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but I still worry when they laugh at me." Thanks for the reply. To clarify what I meant on the "length of time the forcing is in effect". If the Sun jumped by 2 W/M-2 tomorrow (and stayed at the new value) there would be a change in the equilibrium temperature. Not immediately due to lag but the temp would rise. The rise in equilibrium temps would be the same if the Sun increased insolation by 2 W/M-2 over the next 50 years. That was what I meant. The change in equilibrium temp is the same for a given change in forcing regardless of whether the change in forcing is over 1 day or 100 years. Which is what you said. so we mean the same thing, but I phrased it poorly. Sorry. The .6 W/M-2 is pretty much in line with the IPCC graph you posted before. .5 or .6 W/M-2 the difference is rather light. However I do see a bit of a problem. (Which may resolve itself with more reading.) The IPCC graph uses as one of it's forcing papers Bauer et al 2003. (B..2003-10Be and B..2003-14C in the graph.) I have trouble matching that with Figure 1A which clearly shows the SI at 1368 W/M-2 up from a baseline of 1365 W/M-2. Similarly in 1700 the Solar figure goes down to 1362 W/M-2. This is a range of 6 W/M-2, not .6 W/M-2. The figure in the published paper is definitely not the one shown in the IPCC graph. I wonder why? (Not being narky, I really do wonder) My concern with this type of paper, and I'm not casting aspertions on anybody, are the assumptions and statements involved. Baeur et al use Jones et al 1998 and Mann et al 1999 for comparison. Leaving aside the statistical and proxy choice problems of Mann et al 1999 we still have Section3.1 saying; I have to object to this. M99 (Mann et al 1999) is not data, it is a statistical reconstruction. You'll note the section is called "Correlations Between Model and Data" when an accurate description is "Correlations between models and models" a totally different thing altogether. Similarly Section 2.2 states; Am I being picky by asking how the hell they arrived at that number? Okay, they got them from the CLIMBER-2 model runs used in Brovkin et al 1999. Brovkin also seems to suffer from the same problem that Baeur does; They are not "observations" they are a reconstruction. This make the logical "Therefore" moot, as the possibility of the reconstruction being wrong at that point is not considered. I note in passing that the models are deemed correct because they roughly match the reconstructions and quite often the reconstructions are deemed correct because they match the models. This strikes me as a very circular reasoning. One of the things I'm sceptical about (it's past midnight but I'll try to be clear) is not so much the models themselves, but the confidence placed in them. I've only had a few hours to read but the papers listed above give a good example. Bauer uses as input for her model the output of Bovkins model. Brovkin in turn uses other models as inputs for his model. Brovkin also uses 2.6 degrees pegged as the sensitivity for his model. So we have models feeding models feeding models and the results are checked against statistical reconstructions. Such a process doesn't give one great faith in the accuracy of the outcome. For example if Bovkin was wrong and the sensitivity is 1.4 degrees then his model is out and all the ones based on his output are also out. More at another time, but a final point. The missing specialty is Archaeology. Dr. Mann recently released a new paper on sea level rise. I haven't read the full paper yet but I would be very surprised if anybody can infer Global rates of sea level rise from 2 points on the Carolina coastline. No archaeologists are Lead or Co-ordinating auhtors for the IPCC in paleoclimate. This strikes me as odd because if you want to know what the climate and sea levels were like for the last 2,000 years the obvious people to ask are the ones who excavate historic sites for a living and who read the written records of the times. Ignoring the very real effects of isostatic rebound etc, sea level has gone up and down like a damn yoyo in places. cf this page on ancient salt production. We know what the sea level did relative to the land by when salt production started and stopped in various places. Note the old Roman port of Trajan, now some 3 metres above sea level and serving as an irrigation reservoir. Trajan was built because the original ports were flooded by rising seas. There is a vast wealth of knowledge but reading Chapter 6 of WG1 it barely gets a mention. And not being mean, but I doubt an atmospheric physicist (meteorologist, whatever) is the best person to evaluate archaeological data.

Perhaps it is because a lot of people don't like to travel facing backwards? I know a number of people who get travel sick unless they are facing the direction of travel. Humans are funny creatures, we prefer to be in a position to see trouble coming and as aircraft rarely reverse into hills....... A point on airbags or parachutes. On a purely logical basis it would be better to jump without a parachute than ride the plane down. Hitting the ground in the plane at 400 mph is not survivable however terminal velocity for a free falling person is 120 mph and is possibly survivable. If over water it is definitely survivable. Terminal V is reached some 5.4 seconds after clearing the aircraft so it doesn't matter if you jump from 300 feet or 30,000 ft, the speed is the same.

Essay sorry, perhaps I'm being dense or simply not quite getting what you are meaning. As I understand it, the cause of the forcing is irrelevent, it's the value that matters. What you appear to be saying is that a .3 W/M-2 solar forcing produces roughly the same temp change as a 2.4 W/M-2 predominantly from CO2. This implies that CO2 forcings are "special" in some way. Similarly the length of time that the forcing is in effect is simply not relevent. If all other things were constant a .3 W/M-2 forcing will give a certain value of equilibeium temp change regardless of the length of time it takes the forcing to change. Whether the forcing takes 1 year or 100 years to reach the new increased value, the temp rise will be the same, only the rate of change of temps will be effected. I'm afraid your professors clarification doesn't help me in this either. We still finish up with a .5 W/M-2 forcing having the same (temp change) result as a 2.4 W/M-2 forcing. The maths doesn't work that way. Temp changes are directly related to the change in forcing value. Similarly due to the systems lag the 1.4 W/M-2 variability over the course of a solar cycle makes no difference, a better idea of the general solar forcing comes from the average value for each cycle. As a side note, what scientific specialty is not represented IPCC WG1 Chapter 6? (A rather surprising omission given the discussion is climate over the last 2,000 years.) PS. "Damn you!" While I've dug pretty deeply into dendro etc, reconstructions I've avoided the SI ones. You've just added a lot more to my reading list. Blast.

I remember. And so do many others.

Fair enough. The words you used were "in a panic" and I doubt anybody was. I should read more carefully. In my defence I can only say that I've noticed that usually when this comes up on the net the camps divide along the lines of; 1. "Scientists were warning about cooling in the 70s" and 2. "No they weren't, it was a media thing." My point was that the truth lies between these two extremes. (Where it is usually found. )

Essay, how do you arrive at that figure? The difference between the LIA and today is listed by the IPCC as 2.4 w/sq.metre. Assuming the MWP was of similar temp ranges as today one would expect the forcing value to be similar. Edit. Thanks mississippichem. The idea that "all scientists in the 70s were warning of cooling" or that there was a consensus is a myth. However it is also wrong to say that "no" scientists were warning of cooling too. The simple truth is that "some" scientists in the 1970s were warning of cooling and their views were publicised by Newsweek etc. Note that those interviewed for the "In Search of..." program were quite certain that an Ice Age was coming. So it is quite true that some scientists were warning of cooling.

The Hubble Deep Field is top placed for me. When it came out I managed to get a hi res version, a 75 meg .jpg. You can sit and look at it for hours. How cool would it be to print it out and cover the bedroom ceiling with it? Aside from that there are so many. Any from the Apollo missions. They're standing on the freaking moon! Two guys with cajones the size of cattle trucks, a tin can and a couple of Commodore 64 computers. How about "The Pale Blue Dot"? Earth seen from Voyager. Or "The Fingers of God" http://quantum-cosmos.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Eagle_nebula_pillars.jpg Or from the deep sea missions. The world is a fascinating and wonderful place.

swansont, to be fair I don't think the whole "global cooling thing of the 70s is quite cut and dried. It was certainly popularised by Newsweek and other publications. (I remember reading the dire predictions in my morning paper, the Saturday "Science" section.) However both Drs Schneider and Erlich were quite happy to be interviewed on the topic which must have given the idea credence in the public mind. It's also unlikely that they were publishing papers about "warming" while giving interviews about "cooling". Similarly the CIA seems to have had no problems in assembling a panel to advise them of possible problems due to a cooling climate. I think that the fairest thing that could be said about the cooling hype is that there were some climatologists who were indeed concerned about cooling and they publicised those concerns. However there was at that time no consensus concerning cooling or warming. But it cannot be written off as "media hype" alone. As usual the truth lies between the extremes of "Scientists were warning of cooling" and "It was just a media thing". I do find it interesting that two of the warners about the dire consequences of cooling became leading lights warning about the dire consequences of warming. I guess some people just can't find a potential disaster that they don't like.

Marat, while I agree with most of your post I must correct one mistake. The Greenland settlements were coastal, not in the interior. The centre of Greenland has not been ice free for at least 2 million years. (The GISP2 ice core is referred to by Dr. Richard Alley as the "2 Million Year Time Machine".) While some of the farms are only now coming out from under the permafrost it must be remembered that this is not a proxy for temperature. Ice melt lags temp rise. The Greenland farms only allow us to say that temps then were about the same as temps now. On a quantative basis they don't tell us whether it was slightly warmer or cooler than today or by how much. The data only allows us to say that both then and now, the ground was/is not permafrost. I'd like to add a paper I came across yesterday as it is relevent to the climate discussion. The argument that CO2 is dangerous comes from the concept of "enhanced" warming from the gas. The world has warmed since circa 1850 as we left the "Little Ice Age", of this there is no doubt. Also without doubt is that the exit from the LIA was from forcings of natural origin. A good question here is "When did those forcings stop?" 1880? 1900? 1950? Are they still in effect today? The paper from Syun-Ichi Akasofu of the International Artic Research Centre looks at this question. http://klimabedrag.dk/attachments/article/395/NS20101100004_10739704.pdf Published late last year in "Natural Science" (which appears to be a low impact journal that started in 2009). Scrolling down to figure 9 we see that the best fit for the temperature curve from 1850- 2010 is a linear temperature rise of .5 degrees/Century with a 60 year cyclic harmonic superimposed. Put bluntly, there is no evidence of any "enhancement" at all. (Note that in AGW theory natural forcings are believed to be the main drivers of change until about 1950 and then the anthropogenic factors took over.) From this two possible scenarios can be formulated; 1. The warming forcing that brought us out of the LIA at a rate of .5 degrees/Century is still in effect with a 60 year harmonic (possibly PDO related) and that CO2 has little effect. Now CO2 may have an initial effect however temps are after all forcings and feedbacks. Which implies that feedbacks effectively cancel any "enhancement" by CO2. 2. The forcing that brought us out of the LIA at a rate of .5 degrees/Century stopped/faded out circa 1950 and the Anthropogenic forcings took over after that period. This would require that the anthrop forcings quite amazingly and highly improbably came in at exactly the right rate as to exactly equal the initial natural forcings and so continue the underlying linear warming rate. Occams Razor points to Number 1 as being the most logical answer. I really hate to use a logical fallacy as an argument but I think it is warranted in this case. "Argument from Incredulity". Seriously, CO2, aerosols, Land Use changes and all the other anthro forcings came in at exactly the right time and in exactly the right amounts so that they result in exactly the same forcing as the natural forcing that had held for 100 years? What would be the odds on that? But this is what AGW theory requires to have happened. The data says that there is no enhancement from CO2. (Talking net effect here, not original) The simplest and most logical explanation for the data is that the forcing that brought us out of the LIA is still in force today and that that increased CO2 etc. has little net effect on the global climate. So how did this idea of enhancment come about? We have the basic physics that says an increase in CO2 must cause air to warm, but where to from there? An interesting thing about climate science is attribution, what are the values of the forcings and how do we work them out? Attribution for the most part comes from the models, there are some factors that we can measure directly like CO2, TSI and those things, but the rest comes from curve fitting the models and from the basic underlying assumptions of the model makers. Here I would like to point to Hansen 1981, one of the earliest model papers. Scrolling down to Figure 7 we see the temperature projected out to 2010 both with and without CO2 forcing. One could reasonably argue (and Scepticalscience does) that the 2.8 degree sensitivity matches the actual temps quite closely and that therefore the model is quite accurate and very good for it's time. That is certainly one interpretation. However look at the projected temps under only natural forcings. Dead level. The underlying assumption of the model is that under only natural forcings the climate is static or will change only very slowly. This is, I think the basic flaw in modelling climate. The belief that under only natural forcings the climate changes very slowly and that therefore anything above or below this slow rate must have an anthro source. The concept was set very early on in the development of climate science and is simply accepted as true. In a similar way before Continental Drift theory it was simply accepted as true that the continents were the shape they are and are where they are. People often say that "Climate Science" is young or relatively new. While this is true in the form we know it today, climate science has its base in many of the older sciences, especially geology. Arguments and papers concerning paleoclimate can be found that date back to the early 20th Century. A reading of papers and articles up to the 1970s is rather revealing. The science was divided into two camps, the "Gradualists" and the "Catastrophists". Gradualists of course believed that the Earth was too big and too massive to have its climate change faster than .1 or .2 degrees per century, the Catastrophists believed that climate could change very rapidly indeed. Like the "Steady State" people that held power in Astronomy when the "Big Bang" idea came out , the Gradualists held the positions of power in Climate Science. By the 1970s, 1980s with better and better equipment and data it was quite obvious that the climate of the 20th C had undergone rapid changes and this gave the Gradualists a problem. Either they were wrong and the Catastrophists were right OR there was another factor in play and their underlying belief was right all along. This is the period that we see the increasing importance given to anthro factors. A cynic would possibly find this amazingly convenient for those in control. I simply think it is human nature. Given a choice between dropping long held and vigourously defended beliefs or keeping those beliefs and blaming someone or something else, 99% of the human population will play the blame game. So right from the start the science believed that climate changed slowly under natural forcings and this basic premise was built into the earliest climate models. (See Hansen above for proof of this) Implicit in the model is the assumption that while there are annual and decadal variations, climate changes very slowly on centennial scales. One would expect those taught by him and other Gradualists would have exactly the same basic assumption built into their models. Note also that the attribution to CO2 in models is basically "Argument from Ignorance" as Dr Phil Jones admitted late last year "We just can't think of anything else". Maybe they are underestimating natural forcings and feedbacks? We see the remains of this today in many discussions. The period 1970-2000 is pointed to as "unprecedented" and due to anthro factors while the totally natural and exactly the same warming from 1850-1880 is virtually ignored. Ignoring inconvenient data is not science in my book. I must add the fact that any training I've had in "how science works", I got here. Before really reading any climate science I simply had a general interest. I learned the scientific method and how science is supposed to be done by seeing it patiently explained by people like swansont, Ophiolite, Mooeypoo and our other experts to complete dullards in the old "Pseudoscience" subforum. I had never heard of Popper or Feynmann or how, for want of a better word "real" science is done. I learnt about proper referencing and not making unsupported statements as facts. The very high standards that make science the powerful force that it is that improves the lives of everybody on this planet. I got to see how "real" scientists talk and by reading a diverse range of papers, how they write. And then I started reading climate science. What a shock. The divergence problem being written off as "caused by unknown factors, probably of anthropogenic origin". Say what? Your data diverges and that's the explanation? Hiding conflicting data (Dr. Manns "censored" file), refusing to share data to allow it to be checked ("Why should I give you the data when all you want to do is find something wrong with it". How would that argument go around here?) The list is long. Science works on trust. Each scientists who reads a paper trusts that the data backs up the conclusions and trusts that if he or she wanted to they could get the data and replicate the findings. They trust that the peer review process isn't "gamed" in some way and is fair and honest. This I learned here. I cannot reconcile these things with comments by Phil Jones that "Also just sent back comments to Mike Mann on the paper by Tom and you factoring out ENSO and Volcanoes. Felt like writing red ink all over it, but sent back a short publish suject to minor revision to Mike." Maybe Dr Jones marks the things he agrees with with lots of red ink, but it seems that it was more important to get a mates paper published than to get good science published. Yes, I'm a sceptic and I'm damn proud of it. And I'm very thankful to the people here that showed me how science is supposed to be done and made me into one.

I'm not saying either. People can only describe what they see in terms of their experience. What is unusual is that the descriptions are quite detailed although much of the detail can be added later in the mind or witness. For example, in documentary I saw a while ago about the first Japanese raid on Darwin in WW II, one of the witnesses said that he heard the "click" as the bombs were let go. As the bombers were at 20,000 ft and bombs from that height are let go about 4 miles from the target it is impossible for him to have heard the latch let go. He wasn't untruthful and believed what he said, but his testimony was simply impossible. This detail was added later in his memory. Similarly with very old accounts there are cultural and language difficulties. If a flying saucer landed in the Roman period and beings got out, how could this be described in the language of the times? Animals were split into two groups, "men" and "animals", there was no word for "Alien". The only words available for a vehicle that carries men were "chariot", "cart" and "ship". Carts are slow and chariots are fast so chariot would be the preferred term. So you would have "men" coming from a "flying chariot". Note also that the only things that flew in those days were birds because they had wings, it would not be surprising to find such a vehicle called a "winged chariot". Rather than a literal two wheeled vehicle with wings, the reference would mean "A fast flying vehicle that carries men". The limitations of language always needs to be considered when discussing past accounts. It is highly unlikely that there was somebody else building Zeps before the Count did. These things are huge and require a lot of industry to make. People would notice the 600 ft long thing being built.

CaptainPanic, (sorry I can't get the name and date thingy to work. The old quote=username was easier, for me at least. ) Alright, "Primary driver of climate change", is that better? And if you don't think that it is the main forcing factor, then why the push to reduce it? The world has warmed some .8 degrees in the last 150 years or so. If CO2 is the main forcing for this, then we can expect much higher temps in the future and we could be in trouble. However if CO2 is a minor contributor and the majority of the change is natural then attempts to constrain or reduce CO2 will have little effect on future temps and are basically pointless. This is the argument we are having in Australia right now with the gov wanting a "Carbon Tax". Without the major players in the world doing it as well, then all we will do is add a massive tax burden and make our industries uncompetitive in the world markets while having effectively zero effect on the climate. This isn't a strawman, if you haven't heard comments that "CO2 has swamped natural forcings", then you haven't been listening for the last 10 years or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiative-forcings.svg BTW, water vapour doesn't get mentioned because it is considered a feedback and not a forcing. The Sun, Aerosols and CO2 (along with other GHGs) are forcings, pretty much everything else is considered a feedback. I'm not too sure what you are getting at here. The bit that this quote is responding to was about policy rather than science. Whether we live in supercities or grass huts the climate will change and we will have to adapt was my point. On that basis, policies for adaptation make more sense than policies for mitigation. To deny this is to deny that the climate changes, something that AFAIK no scientist denies. As to the climate changing faster than ever, this is simply not true. Using the Greenland cores: The "faster than ever" bit is the top 1/3 of the uptick on the right hand end. But that is of course only one spot on the globe. What do the (unadjusted) long term instrumental records show?: Warming yes, but "faster than ever"? I don't think so. What a lot of people miss, and it seems to often get mixed up in debates on climate is that the "current warming" period can have two meanings. It can mean both the warming since circa 1850 or the most recent warming period of 1970-2000 (roughly). The two terms often get mixed in with each other to the confusion of all. The world has warmed since 1850 but this warming has not been constant. Since 1850 there have been three warming periods each about 30 years long which are separated by cooling periods of about the same time span. The AGW argument is that the first two of these periods are totally natural with the third (1970-2000) being of anthropogenic origin. The next graph shows all three periods. (Ignore the green line for CO2 as it isn't germane to this point) It will be noted that the trend line for all three warmings is the same, or at least statistically identical. All three are are in the .15-.16 degrees per decade range. So even if the 1970-2000 period was entirely caused by CO2 emissions, the rate of warming is not greater than the totally natural warming of 1850-1880. The idea that temps are rising "faster than ever" due to man is not supported by the actual data. The idea is wrong. Refering to the ice core graph above you will also note that the time (1850 the instrumental period began) is also probably the coldest the planet has been in the last 8,000 years, so why are people surprised at some warming? I think you've misunderstood what I meant. As climate changes, things change. I'm not saying that the wind will stop blowing, I'm saying that the "number of windy days" in a given spot will change. We place wind turbines in a place where there a good number of windy days per year now and as climate changes these spots will get less or more windy days in the future. Similarly we place dams where there is rainfall to fill them but as the climate changes so will the rainfall patterns and the rain won't fall in the catchments any more. This doesn't require a cite as to argue differently is to argue that although global climate will change, local climate will not and since global climate is the aggregate of local climes this is unsupportable. Meteorites hit the Earth every day, thank God they are only small ones though. Large ones are less common but they are there and certainly not "every million years or so". The 20th Century saw two major strikes that we know of Tunguska in 1908 and Brazil in 1933. Both of these were air bursts in unpopulated areas but had either hit the Med then Southern Europe would have been devastated. Some 3 miles under the Indian Ocean is the burckle Crater about 30 klms wide. This impact dates to around 3,000 BC and is the probable cause of the "flood myths" that exist in all cultures. The remains of the mega tsunamis that hit Madagascar are still to be seen in the 600 ft high hills of debris left behind. In (I think) 17th Century Yugoslavia a town disappeared and was thought to have been smote by God. (Granted it was a Blacksmith and about 6 houses but the point remains) Neighbouring villages saw the flash and heard the thunder and when they went to investigate there was nothing but a hole where the town used to be. Larger impacts are far more common than once thought and the danger is very real. To argue that "climate change is here" is a null point. Climate change is always here. If anthropogenic factors are important then we might be able to do something about it, if not, then there is bugger all we can do and efforts to the contrary would pointless. BTW, I agree with you about detection. I was most unimpressed when our gov cut the funding for detection, a whole $3 million per year. These gov clowns could lose that much down the back of the sofa and not notice. As I understand the current situation is that there is now only one observatory in South america trying to cover the Southern Hemisphere for potential impactors. This I believe is "Double Plus ungood". Similarly renewables are not going to be able to provide baseload power in the forseeable future. All that this will do is drive up the price of energy and create energy poverty in the Western World. So I would say that the excessive drive to renewables also has many negative impacts. If Europe wants to drive prices up so that in a very cold winter people can't afford to heat their homes then that is your lookout, but don't expect the rest of us to follow suit in your destruction. Note that the British are already being warned not to expect continuous power in the future. I hope that the brownouts don't coincide with 20ft snowfalls or the death toll will be tremendous. A common flaw I see in climate debates is this sort of statement "Climate change is real and man is primarily responsible" being treated as a single comment. It is not, it is two distinct statements. The existence of climate change does not in any way validate a supposed attribution for that change. Proof of warming is not proof of attribution. The reality of climate change and the very real threat that it (especially cooling) poses doesn't automatically decide the policies to deal with it. As I said above, no matter what we do or don't do, the climate will still change. As to power and the economies mentioned. Yes, China is investing in wind power, it's making a lot of turbines, most of which are sold to the West. It's still building coal power plants at a great rate. (I've heard "two a week" mentioned but can't find any proof for this figure so I take it with a very large grain of salt). Japan has realised the folly of building nuclear plants near fault lines and since the country is pretty much one huge fault line, moving from nukes is probably a good idea from them. Germany is basing it's decisions on the political ideology of the ruling party and has little or nothing to do with either common sense or reality. The recent decision to end nukes on "safety" grounds being a case in point. If German politicians think nukes are dangerous then I presume they neither fly nor drive as the death toll from these activities are significantly higher than from any nuclear accidents. Besides, if it all falls over they can buy power from the French nuclear plants. But let's look at "renewables". (What a lovely catch all phrase that is.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ren2008.png The lower part of the diagram shows renewables make up about 10% of the worlds energy generation. Of that 10% more than half is from hydro, which I have no problems with. Look at the next largest contributor "Biomass". 250 GWth. Do you understand that this figure includes all those poor bastards in the third world cooking over dung fires? Should they stay that way? Cheap and abundant energy is the answer for the horrific death tolls and disease in the third world. A solution of expensive energy or "stay the same" is unacceptable to any civilised person. A final point. You and many others appear worried about "climate change" and feel it will be disasterous. Since it is an observed fact that the climate has changed since 1850 and temps have risen by .8 degrees, can you point to a single example where this has been negative? Have weather anomalies increased? More floods or droughts? A reduction in crop harvests perhaps? I mean come on, if warming is a problem and we have already warmed then there must be something, or is it all "in the pipeline" and the Great God Gaia will smite us in the future if we don't change our ways? Edit. I have no idea why but when I tried to post the links as images the board wouldn't accept them. At least one I posted here previously so I don't know what's going on. After manual editing it appears to be the .svg file from Wiki that is the problem. Does anyone know why?

Yes. Many of the accounts from the 19th Century even describe the craft as having propellors. The history of the UFO is quite fascinating. For those who haven't read it Robert Silverbergs "Those who Watch" is an interesting take on why they might be here. Not one of his best books, but an entertaining light read.

Yes, I'm a sceptic. I have the nasty feeling that "CO2 is the primary driver of climate" will go down in history as the "Phlogiston" of the 21st Century and that this will have a big rebound effect to the detriment of all sciences. CaptainPanic. I think at least part of the political argument can be described as mitigation v adaptation. My own preference is for adaptation. We can change our power sources to whatever we want, become "carbon neutral" or whatever and the climate will still change. No matter what we do or how we do it (at least until we have true geoengineering and complete control of the climate) the climate will still change and we will have to adapt. At the time of the Holocene Optimum some 8,000 years ago the sea level was circa 2 metres higher than it is today, should the temps rise naturally back to those levels then we will have to adapt. Mitigation is based on the flawed premise that if humans weren't doing something to it the climate wouldn't change. What we can state with certainty is that with the climate constantly changing, then where the wind blows today is not going to be the same in 50 or 60 years time. Build all the windmills you want, but as the climate changes they will produce less and less power as the wind patterns change. Build hydro dams, but as the climate changes so will the rainfall patterns. This is the simple truth of climate change. No matter what we do or don't do, we will have to adapt to a changing climate. As to the youtube video, I'm sorry but it's silly. Instead of "Climate Change", let's try "Hostile Alien Invasion" or "Large Meteorite Impact" with the "Yes" (drastic action) column being for the massive nuclear weaponisation of space and turning Earth into a huge armed camp. I'm so glad that you will agree with these options and will back the large spending for nuclear global defence platforms in space. Note that for these two scenarios the outcome is far, far worse than the worst case in the video. The worst case in the video was the collapse of civilisation, the worst case in my two are the total extinction of the human race or the possible extinction of life on this planet. Since the worst cases that I've outlined are far worse than the one he outlined then obviously my scenarios present a far more compelling reason for drastic action. Wouldn't you agree?

Re "Haters gonna hate". I must admit that as explained the meaning makes sense. And in the light of the current poor state of American politics it can be applied to both sides. However I think that it should be used carefully. It is a dismissive throw away used to imply that the person referred to has no credible argument. If we use Obama as an example; Person A makes a comment about policies and Person B responds with "Haters gonna hate". This is used to imply that Person A is defective and therefore the claim is not credible and in no way actually addresses the claim. It is a purely rhetorical device used to prevent reasonable discourse and discussion and should be avoided. It is an Ad Hom and nothing more. I add that it is a more general version of "Denier" as used in the climate debate and is used for the same purpose. To malign the opposing person rather than their arguments and observations.

I'm not sure a bayonet is that great as a fishing knife, but to each his own. I'd find some way to attach it to your tackle box, that way it's obviously a fishing knife. As to carrying it in public, you'd need to check local laws and the interpretation of them. It's about being sensible. "Intent" is the keyword here. Wearing a bayonet to the mall would be frowned on, but wearing it while carrying a rod and tackle box wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

Interesting. To be frank the first thing I thought of when seeing them was "Goblin shark". I notice that their swimming calmed down when placed into the larger tank. I wonder why.

Here'a an idea. How about we help them get away from subsistence agriculture and use more first world techniques. Things like tractors instead of oxen and fertilisers and pesticides. Then the land can support more people. Your way is to reduce the population to the levels supportable by subsistence agriculture, pre industrial. Do you really want them to stay in a medieval state? The West has no problems feeding its much higher population densities due to the techniques used, why should the third world be different? The simple fact of the matter is that the third world is not overpopulated. Using better farming techniques and building a first world economy would allow them to have at least twice the populations they do and still reduce poverty to Western levels. People don't cause poverty, lack of economic development causes poverty. It really is that simple. But I guess it's better for the West to keep them poor and starving and a cheap workforce. Maybe I'm getting cynical, but I've noticed that part of the answer to every ecological problem for the last 30 years is that the third world musn't industrialise to first world standards. There is an underlying philosophy at work. Rather than trying to make a bigger cake for people to have a piece of, there is an active movement to reduce the size of the cake or to demand that people have smaller shares. This is worldwide. Population increased in your area? Don't build a dam to supply more water, just put people on permanent water restrictions instead. As the Brits will soon learn, not building power stations will lead to rolling blackouts as the old ones go offline. The Green God is insane. Talk about development and increasing a standard of living and you immediately hit the new buzzword "sustainability". The problem is that nobody has bothered to actually define the word. The thing is that with more development and more mining and more cheap energy and a bigger economy, more people can sustain a higher standard of living. For reasons known only to deluded personalities this is somehow a bad thing.

Fascinating how the answer to poverty (or any other problem) seems to be to have less dark skinned people on the planet. How nice for those in the "civilised" West to be so understanding of the problems faced by those poor, overcrowded third world nations. Free condoms, what next? Forced sterilizations? Oh wait, sorry, that's already happening. Pathetic! Have a look here at relative population densities. Have a good, long, hard look at which nations are most crowded. Netherlands 402 Belgium 355 United Kingdom 255 Germany 229 Nigeria 167 Uganda 136 Thailand 125 Tell you what. Those of you who think that populations in the third world should be reduced, how about you start with your own populations first? You'd have to exterminate well over half the European population to get density down to that in the supposed "crowded" third world nations. Captain, just because the French, Spanish, Portugese, etc didn't give a rats arse about the colonies doesn't mean all failed. The British Empire wasn't perfect, but was far superior to the others when it came to installing good governance in it's colonies etc. The simple existence of the Commonwealth is proof of that. We are more than 2 billion people, over 30% of the worlds population, living in 54 functioning democracies. Not too shabby a result.

Sad really, isn't it? Virtually the entire history and knowledge of our race available at the push of a button and people spend hours on FB. You can go on a virtual tour of tombs in the Valley of the Kings or read just about any book ever written and people would rather follow the tweets of a celebrity drinking coffee. Similarly I was chasing info on "Citrine crystal mining" last night and 4 of the top 40 sites were about crystal mining in WoW. I felt like crying.

Lemur, it's a nice idea but people have to prioritise. People have to learn what is important to them, another language may help in some cases but for most it's as useless as tits on a bull. Geography also plays a part. I have to fly some thousands of miles to get somewhere where english isn't the native language whereas in Europe you only need to take a long afternoon drive. It simply wouldn't get used in day to day affairs. You might as well argue that everybody should learn boolean algebra. Granted I am learning another language but that is because Egyptology is a hobby and a knowledge of heiroglyphs allows me to check the veracity of translations for myself. The time spent learning a language that has no use for me is far better spent increasing my knowledge of geology and gemmology. One could argue that an extra language would aid me in the international trade arena but I import from China, Bolivia, Brazil, Thailand, Zambia, Mozambique and Nigeria so it's pretty pointless, especially since all the traders in the arena speak english anyway. Besides, and this might sound lazy of me but what the hell. Just as French was (is it still?) the language of Diplomacy, English is the language of technology and as technology spreads so will English be absorbed into other languages until they are finally redundant. Why put off the inevitable?