Global Warming explained - "inconvenient" or otherwise!

[bascule]

You apparently don't understand GW or physics.

 

I invite you to go back and reread my post. Apparently the concept of an analogy eludes you.

[Icemelt]

I'm just eyeballing this, and thus I'm taking upper bounds, but it looks like it took 24 thousand years for temperatures to rise less then 14C which is about.000583C/year while it only took the previous 100 years (1905 to 2005) for the temperature to increase by .8 = .008C/year, 1900-2000 of .6C = .006C/year, and 1975 to 2005 of .6C = .02C/year. We're talking a difference in magnitude of more then 100, and in the case of recent warming 1000, -- they're hardly comparable.

 

And I thought you said you were going to play fair !

I think we need to be sensible about comparisons, otherwise I could just as easily conclude that there is zero rate of temperature increase, since the temperature 10,000 years was exactly as it is now, which would be ridiculous.

 

However here is a interesting comparison if you want one

In 366 AD the temperature was 0.15C less than today

In 318 AD the temperature was 0.90C less than today

So the temperature rose by 0.75C in 48 years

which by my reckoning is 0.016C per annum

This doesn't sound too different to today's rate of increase and I'm not sure the Romans had internal combustion engines in their chariots or had one or two per family !

It would be interesting to know to what we attribute this little sustained temperature rise, and how many extinctions resulted - out of the arena that is !

[theCPE]

I invite you to go back and reread my post. Apparently the concept of an analogy eludes you.

 

It was a poor analogy at best. Formula exploration alone demonstrates how objects of differing mass are attracted equally to a third object. Using it as an analogy of my mathetmatical explanation of man's contributions to GW either shows your lack of knowledge of GW, gravity, or both.

[KLB]

even if the GW extremists are avoiding it.

And who was criticizing the use of smear tactics?

 

Labeling someone an extremist is an unprovable effort to smear and discredit other people's stance.

 

Why don't you start practicing what you preached to me.

[1veedo]

And I thought you said you were going to play fair !

I think we need to be sensible about comparisons' date=' otherwise I could just as easily conclude that there is zero rate of temperature increase, since the temperature 10,000 years was exactly as it is now, which would be ridiculous.[/quote']Yes but this is what you did when you compared the temperature rise 8k to 12k years ago against current temperatures back through 4k years ago. Temperatures decreased for almost that entire 4k years and only increase for the last 200 or so years. You were the one not being sensible here, I was just correcting your conviction that global warming has been occurring for 4k years when in reality global warming has only been happening for about 200 years.

 

How about instead of creating strawmen you actually find some data that supports your claims? Eg peer-reviewed, published in a science journal, and quoted on these forums, "current warming is comparable to the warming that occurred 10,000 years ago."

However here is a interesting comparison if you want one

In 366 AD the temperature was 0.15C less than today

In 318 AD the temperature was 0.90C less than today

So the temperature rose by 0.75C in 48 years

which by my reckoning is 0.016C per annum

This doesn't sound too different to today's rate of increase and I'm not sure the Romans had internal combustion engines in their chariots or had one or two per family !

It would be interesting to know to what we attribute this little sustained temperature rise' date=' and how many extinctions resulted - out of the arena that is ![/quote']Actually, out of three studies that have specific data for this time period, two show no trend and one shows a slight decrease in temperature between 318 and 366. I'd like to know where you're getting your data from (is it the same data in your graphs?) because the 318 and 366 reference fails a very important test in science: verification.

Again, notice the difference in magnitude of warming between 1800 and 2000, compared to the other so called "natural" variations.

Why don't you start practicing what you preached to me.

Because he has double standards. This is exceedingly clear by the fact that he will accept some data but deny other data on no apparent grounds other then that the latter contradicts his preconceived notions about global warming.

[KLB]

Because he has double standards. This is exceedingly clear by the fact that he will accept some data but deny other data on no apparent grounds other then that the latter contradicts his preconceived notions about global warming.

I always wonder about debates and/or positions that dismiss peer reviewed reports like those from the IPCC while embracing Wikipedia and other non-peer reviewed sources as gospel.

 

As others have said, if global warming was so easy to disprove that it could be done with a couple of mathematical by "laypersons" in a forum like this, wouldn't it have been disproven ages ago by the thousands upon thousands of scientists and researches who have been looking at this issue?

[jackson33]

i have no idea how many in meteorology, at the highest levels, have said GW as a man made event is not accurate. this field deals in short cycles, and these folks understand the system.

 

also, why argue the point. nothing is going to change dramatically. most anything that will are not in the end bad. sooner or later, oil will become expensive, reductions in CO2 to the human is not bad and above all anything that makes any nation less reliant on another will lower tension levels. governments can collect there taxes on new products to replace old ones and business in general will go on....even better. people keep moving to Florida or on a coast line and build the house of their dreams. after all the people that predict the worst for the rest are in fact the worst examples in the philosophy they express.

 

also, it is creating interest of the public in all aspects of life. nothing bad here either. personally i would rather see the educational system get out of hypothetical problems, since in my case and many other it has been the kid yelling wolf several time too many. in my case, we don't live in dome cities, my car doesn't fly, people can exist if past 3 billion in total, coffee didn't kill me, i have plenty of food, no telling how many things cause untold problems-haven't happened and it looks like I'll die on schedule. real problems, like people killing people, auto deaths and bad parenting, excessive religious beliefs and impositions are all things never talked about.

[waitforufo]

Interesting read at Spiegle online.

<http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,481684,00.html>

Title "GLOBAL WARMING, Not the End of the World as We Know It" The story includes this picture below with the caption "German sunworshippers enjoy a cocktail on a Baltic Sea beach in early May. Germany could experience a tourist boom as a result of climate change." I for one can't wait!

[SkepticLance]

KLB said :

 

Labeling someone an extremist is an unprovable effort to smear and discredit other people's stance.

 

Why don't you start practicing what you preached to me.

 

I went back through this thread four pages to try and find my original statement on extremists and couldn't find it. This thread is growing too damn fast!

 

Anyway, I do not recall labelling anyone extremist. That is not a tactic I use. However, extremists do exist, on both sides of the argument. There are sceptic extremists who ignore data and propose silly scenarios; and there are GW extremists who exaggerate the situation into extremely unlikely catastrophes.

 

I am not calling you or anyone else an extremist. However, sometimes some people posting items on this thread come close, and need to be warned that their opinions are going a bit too far. This applies both to sceptics and GW enthusiasts.

[KLB]

I went back through this thread four pages to try and find my original statement on extremists and couldn't find it. This thread is growing too damn fast!

I think this is one reason people should quote comments correctly (as I have done here) such that they contain the user's name and post ID such that vBulletin will automatically create a link back to the quoted comments. It would benefit all of us.

 

Anyway, I do not recall labelling anyone extremist. That is not a tactic I use. However, extremists do exist, on both sides of the argument.

I searched for your use of the word extremist in this thread and this is what I found:

 

The problem with the whole global warming debate is that people get polarised views. They take up extremist denial ideas, or (as bad) extremist catastrophist views.

I don't think I could disagree with this. It is a very good observation.

 

Very nice quote from Richard Lindzen, even if the GW extremists are avoiding it.

 

This is from page 10 (normal settings) post #191. The little arrow next to your name in the quote box leads to the post in question.

 

 

I am not calling you or anyone else an extremist.

While you did not say "KLB is a GW extremist" your post #191 does infer that people in this discussion are GW extremists. There isn't much difference.

[SkepticLance]

To KLB

 

If you feel I have accused you of extremism, I apologise.

My intention is not to do that. In any debate like ours, there is a wide range of opinion. Some people tend towards one extreme, and other people tend towards the opposite. This debate is no different. I try, myself, to develop a more balanced set of views, based on hard data rather than political opinion and I try to encourage others to do the same. Thus, I am inclined to push against those who are promoting a view towards one extreme or the other. This does include the extreme GW deniers.

 

The hard data at this point shows serious increase in greenhouse gases over the past 100 years. It shows global average warming of about 1 C over the period spanning 1910 to 2007. Warming is about 3 times global average in the high Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsular. Warming is minor in the tropics.

 

These are facts and those who deny them lose credibility. Any GW denier who disputes these facts, I will argue with. However, beyond that we get into interpretation. I have said, and I believe the data supports this, that greenhouse gases correlate with warming very well over the past 30 years, and very poorly before that. However, sunspot activity correlates very well with both warming and cooling before 1975. My conclusion is that GHGs are a strong effect only over the last 30 years.

[ecoli]

Interesting read at Spiegle online.

<http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,481684,00.html>

Title "GLOBAL WARMING, Not the End of the World as We Know It" The story includes this picture below with the caption "German sunworshippers enjoy a cocktail on a Baltic Sea beach in early May. Germany could experience a tourist boom as a result of climate change." I for one can't wait!

 

Isn't the Black Sea rapidly evaporating, though? That would be a lot worse for tourism in the long run.

 

But wait... how do they know that this is even caused by global warming? Afterall, temperatures do tend to vary year from year.

[theCPE]

But wait... how do they know that this is even caused by global warming? Afterall, temperatures do tend to vary year from year.

 

And the increase over the past 100 years is .6C on average........

[insane_alien]

baltic sea != black sea.

 

baltic sea is open to the north sea which is open to the atlantic ocean. it would have a hard time evapourating.

[MolotovCocktail]

baltic sea != black sea.

 

baltic sea is open to the north sea which is open to the atlantic ocean. it would have a hard time evapourating.

 

 

yeah, but the water level can still drop.

[ecoli]

baltic sea != black sea.

 

baltic sea is open to the north sea which is open to the atlantic ocean. it would have a hard time evapourating.

 

yeah, I just noticed that error, sorry about the oversight

 

..there still could be implications for salinity due to evaporations that could make it a less desirable for tourists... idk...

 

My other point is stronger, I think.

[waitforufo]

Isn't the Black Sea rapidly evaporating, though? That would be a lot worse for tourism in the long run.

I'm not sure about the Black Sea. Perhaps you are thinking of the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea, like the Dead Sea are both shrinking but more from exploitation of the rivers that feed them.

 

Anyway, read the article in Spiegle.

[bascule]

It was a poor analogy at best. Formula exploration alone demonstrates how objects of differing mass are attracted equally to a third object. Using it as an analogy of my mathetmatical explanation of man's contributions to GW either shows your lack of knowledge of GW, gravity, or both.

 

That's an odd thing to say, considering I worked with climate scientists to develop mesoscale atmospheric models.

 

You are metaphorically applying concepts to the climate system which simply don't work out in reality. That was the point of the analogy: naive models of the real world do not translate well to reality, no matter how much "common sense" they intuitively make.

 

For thousands of years Aristotle's idea of "every object, its own unique characteristic" ruled the world of physics, until Galileo revealed that universal law governed it all. The naive model was shattered, and science progressed.

 

That's what's happened in climate science. While it may seem possible to apply simple chemistry or fluid dynamics to the climate system at large, it's too large to operate as you'd intuitively expect. The climate is full of nonlinearities and feedback loops which can only be understood through extensive study of its history.

 

The complexity of understanding the climate system exceeds any one human's ability, and thus computational models must be used in order to actually understand its behavior. These models are all based off of existing knowledge of the climate system as well as its physics and chemistry, but are able to model emergent effects that occur from the underlying principles.

 

The emergent effects are both unexpected and counterintuitive.

 

You are suggesting that there are simple rules which can be applied to understand the climate system. This is the same mistake made by SkepticLance and Icemelt, who will not directly argue but insinuate the possibility that climate is driving CO₂ increases, rather than vice versa.

 

Simple knowledge of the scale at which man is liberating sequestered carbon and releasing it into the atmosphere should be enough to tip someone off that what is happening is unnatural, and that temperature is following carbon. However, general circulation models have demonstratively shown that carbon increases are the explanation for increasing mean surface temperatures.

 

I would suggest you better familiarize yourself with the behavior of the climate system before you harp so harshly on the IPCC.

[SkepticLance]

To Bascule.

 

Since you are opposed to Aristotle's dictums, what about the one that says everything can be deduced by process of logic? That idea held science back for 2,000 years. It was only with the work of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke that destroyed that piece of nonsense. They came up with the modern idea that only empirical data could drive our scientific knowledge forward.

 

The modern equivalent of Aristotle's 'logic' is calculation, theory, and computer models. While these may be useful tools, over-reliance is highly destructive. In particular, computer climate models cannot give accurate or reliable results until we have nailed down all relevent empirical data.

 

As an example : I read today an account of a recent discovery in Antarctica.

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1919192.htm

A new oceanic current pattern, which is said to help make computer models more accurate. Obviously, without this knowledge, the models are less accurate, which has been the case up to the present. So what else remains to be discovered, which is needed to make models accurate? Lots I suspect.

 

You said :

The complexity of understanding the climate system exceeds any one human's ability

 

And this is absolutely true. The complexity is beyond any human mind, and is STILL beyond the capacity of computer models to cope with.

 

You said :

The emergent effects are both unexpected and counterintuitive.

 

Which is also absolutely true. Yet you insist that the pattern is real simple. That is, CO2 increase drives warming. Full stop!

 

Did you even consider that there might be powerful other factors?

 

You said :

SkepticLance and Icemelt, who will not directly argue but insinuate the possibility that climate is driving CO2 increases, rather than vice versa.

 

If you re-read my earlier comments, you will find that I said that, in the middle term past (about 10,000 to a million years ago) warmings preceded

CO2 increase, which is a simple fact, not open to debate. I also said that this does not apply to the current warming.

 

The current situation is that for 30 years CO2 increase and warming correlate well. Before that, things were different.

[theCPE]

You are metaphorically applying concepts to the climate system which simply don't work out in reality.

 

Does co2 cause around 9-24% of GW?

Does water vapor result in around 76-90% of GW?

Does methane along with other trace greenhouse gases contribute extremely small amounts to GW?

 

 

The climate is full of nonlinearities and feedback loops which can only be understood through extensive study of its history.

I am sure it is. So why can one side be so dead set that they are absolutely right, and any analysis the opposition does with their 'data' is just to simplified and is wrong???

 

You are suggesting that there are simple rules which can be applied to understand the climate system.

No, I never suggested any rules or dynamics of GW. I used the rules and dynamics provided by others in your corner. The rules for how much certain gases contribute, the rules for how much man contributes of those gases, and the rules of how temperature increases causes feedback which increases other gases. I didn't suggest those rules, I didn't create those rules, I didn't pull those rules out of a hat, I simply applied THEM which came FROM your 'associates' to demonstrate that according to ipcc's own rules they are sensationalizing GW.

 

I would suggest you better familiarize yourself with the behavior of the climate system before you harp so harshly on the IPCC.

I believe you should familiarize yourself with math, and the scientific process.

 

Also, I really enjoy reading when people suggest how COMPLEX certain systems or ideas are, and thus they can't be easily explained to laymen. And that in order to provide such an explanation oversimplification must be occuring which makes the explanation wrong.

 

Any system or idea that is too complex to be thoroughly and simply explained to someone else, is not understood well enough by the person trying to provide the explanation.

 

In fact, that is a paraphrase of quotes from some of the greatest physicists of all time including Einstein.

 

If you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it yourself.

[KLB]

I am sure it is. So why can one side be so dead set that they are absolutely right, and any analysis the opposition does with their 'data' is just to simplified and is wrong???

Because of the sheer overwhelming amount of peer reviewed research that has been conducted on this subject for scores of years. Simply put, it is inconceivable that the "evidence" currently touted by GW skeptics wasn't already seriously evaluated and definitively ruled out over the previous decades of research. Remember in the beginning (many decades ago) global warming was the novel theory that was rejected by mainstream science. It was only through a very long process of research and peer review by a scientific community (where the skeptics were in the majority) that a "consensus" was built. The majority of a previously skeptical scientific "community" now accepts that global warming is real and that man's burning of fossil fuels is a major cause of it.

 

Yes there is a small minority of scientists who honestly doubt climate change is caused by man. HOWEVER, as I have previously tried to bring to light, much of the "evidence" and rational currently being used to discredit climate change (as the majority of scientists now accept it) has been manufactured by corporate interests (namely ExxonMobil) to sow confusion on this issue (and yes this has been documented in painful detail).

 

Simply put, bad apologies, non-sequitur mathematical models and non-peer reviewed research have been sown into the public consciousness as real peer reviewed research in a cynical effort to manufacture debate on this issue.

 

Skepticlance does not like it, but a very serious part of this discussion needs to be separating out that disinformation that has been sown by proxies of ExxonMobil and that skeptical research that has been truly peer reviewed by the larger scientific community.

 

Look all of us have a vested interest in the entire theory of climate change being disproved, because life would be so much simpler if we didn't need to worry about how our actions impacted our climate and ecosystems. It would be very convenient to be able to prove that any climate change taking place was the result of natural forces that we can not affect; unfortunately sometimes the truth is not convenient.

 

Since the late 1800s scientists have been studying greenhouse gases and since at least the 1930s scientists have been studying man's impact on climate change. Our understanding of how man is affecting global warming is not just some self loathing fad; it is a well understood and generally accepted reality.

 

While there may be some minor theories and evidence that may lessen the roll man plays in climate change, the overwhelming mass of peer reviewed science shows that man plays a significant roll in climate change. The time for debate on this subject is over. We now need to act so that whatever man's roll is in climate change, we can lessen our contribution to global warming and limit the damage global warming does to our civilization.

[theCPE]

Because of the sheer overwhelming amount of peer reviewed research that has been conducted on this subject for scores of years. Simply put, it is inconceivable that the "evidence" currently touted by GW skeptics wasn't already seriously evaluated and definitively ruled out over the previous decades of research.

That isn't true.

 

If someone has an agenda than it is very conceivable that certain mathematical models or explanations would be left out in favor of more convincing and dire models that promote the agenda of the group.

 

The agenda is force funding into alternate resources.

 

Further, if this overwhelming amount of data is peer reviewed and thus close to certainly right, than there is no reason that GW is understood to the point of being easily modeled and explained. Just like relativity, sounds like some really complex ideas (and I suppose it is) however, with the proper person explaining it with the proper analysis and illustrations it too can be broken into managiable peices and digested.

 

So if the data I used FROM THE IPCC is so overwhelmingly accurate, than bascule's continued assertion that I am creating rules and are wrong is false, and therefore my math is accurate. I didn't invent the rules or numbers, they came from the ipcc and GW proponents, I merely provided the math that demonstrates how much is resulted from man and nature.

 

And my math has NOTHING to do with modeling GW, it has everything to do with classifying the GHGs as man's or nature's. How much of the gases are directly due to man, and how much are directly due to nature. That is it.

 

Man causes about 9%.

 

But ipcc won't say that, instead they say, "man caused 90% of current warming".

 

Which I have CONTINUED to explain means, man helped produce .5C change in temperature, not that man is responsible for 90% of the total GW process.

 

There is no vodoo in my math, there isn't nothing special in it either, it simple shows that ipcc words things to BENEFIT their agenda.

[Dak]

I am sure it is. So why can one side be so dead set that they are absolutely right, and any analysis the opposition does with their 'data' is just to simplified and is wrong???

 

Because one side is science, our best known method of discerning facts.

 

as for 'why are [your] calculations overly simplistic':

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11089968&dopt=Citation

 

one of the first results for 'global warming' in google scholar. look-see at the complexity: just assesing one aspect of the carbon cycle (which is just one aspect of GW) is alot more complicated than you are willing to admit that predicting the overall effects of GW is.

 

not to mention that your calculations were paradoxical, as the conclusion rebuked the premice. which, and i'll say this again, is a pretty clear indication of invalid logic

 

thats why GW predictions often show multiple possibilities, predicted by multiple models, and nothing is taken for granted unless all models indicate that it's probably going to happen.

 

 

however, with the proper person explaining it with the proper analysis and illustrations it too can be broken into managiable peices and digested.

 

no. take evolution for an example again. you can render it down simply enough that someone can 'get the jist' with minimal effort; however, you cannot make accurate predictions/deductions about allele frequency changes based on 'the jist' of evolution, and some of the calculations are, by neccesity, very complex.

[theCPE]

not to mention that your calculations were paradoxical, as the conclusion rebuked the premice. which, and i'll say this again, is a pretty clear indication of invalid logic

No, you not understanding the math does not make it paradoxical, and you continuing to say "24% then you say 9%" makes no sense and I have no clue where you are getting that, if you want to show the paradox or the invalid logic within my math go ahead, because it isn't there and I have no clue what you are suggesting when you say "24% is from co2, then 9% is from co2" Because well, that is just retarded and is no where in my math.

 

no. take evolution for an example again. you can render it down simply enough that someone can 'get the jist' with minimal effort; however, you cannot make accurate predictions/deductions about allele frequency changes based on 'the jist' of evolution, and some of the calculations are, by neccesity, very complex.

That is exactly what I am doing here. I am not saying that absolutely to 20 decimal places my number is right. The jist of my math is obvious though......

 

I eagerly await a description of this 'paradox' my math creates.......

[theCPE]

Hell i'll make it really easy for you to point out the paradox......

 

76-90% of GW is due to water vapor according to wiki and GW proponents.

9-24% of GW is due to CO2 according to wiki and GW proponents.

 

Do you understand what those numbers mean? They mean that all the water vapor traps about 76-90% of infrared radiation from escaping. Same with the CO2 number....make sense?

 

Do you understand why a range is given......is there a paradox here?

 

Man has increased CO2 ppm from a historical average of 280 to 377. That is an increase of 97 divided by 280 = 35% increase in co2 in the atmosphere. Any paradox here?

 

That means that 35/135 = 26% of the total CO2 is from man. Any paradox yet?

 

According to veedo and his stats from ipcc I am assuming, 3C temperature increase causes a 20% feedback increase in water vapor.

 

There has been a .6C increase in temperature.

 

.6/3 gives you the percentage of the 20% water vapor increase due to temperature. = 4%

 

4/104 = 3.8% Of all the water vapor in the atmosphere is due to man.

 

Any paradox or illogic yet?

 

So .76 (water vapor) * .038 = 2.8%

And .24 (co2) * .26 = 6%

 

2.8+6 ~ 9% of the total effect from GHGs is from man.

 

I once again eagerly await this paradox to be pointed out.