Give me your opinions about global warming

[ghstofmaxwll]

So again I ask: what's the resolution of your graph paper GCM, and what's the granularity of its timesteps?

It doesnt matter! What matters primarily is the context of your graph i.e. what goes before and after your selective snapshot of 30years out of the earths 4+ billion years of greenhouse activity. Where since the planetesimal stage, concentrations of greenhouse compounds(molecules with two or more unlike atoms) have surely reached bigger spikes while they have in fact decreased.

If you were replying from any kind of scientific background rather than ignorance, you'd know it's thoroughly impractical to model the climate system without a computer to perform the calculations.

I am aware that complexity and number of variables in the best climate models we can come up with need super computers . But you implied that modeling of any sort can only be performed on a computer, which someone that has ever gone through mathematical modeling education would not do.

[SkepticLance]

To Swansont

 

The evidence that the calculations of solar forcings are inaccurate lies in the fact that there have been times when changes in sunspot activity is correlated with major changes in global temperature, and at those times the calculated solar forcings are too small to account for the impact.

 

For example : around 1910 there was a substantial increase in sunspot activity, followed by a substantial global warming. This change was NOT due to any increase in the rate of AGG emissions, since the measured amounts of AGG in the atmosphere continued to increase at roughly the same rate as the previous two decades. Yet solar forcing calculations do not show this.

 

To bascule. The period of 1976 to the present has been one of relative simplicity (note the use of the word 'relative'.) There have been no volcanoes of any real significance. Sunspot activity has been relatively unchanging. The only significant change is the increase in AGGs. Thus, to model this period accurately is relatively simple - at least compared to the decades before. Thus we get a solid annual increase in AGGs and an accompanying increase in global temperature. If climate models could not get it close to correct for this period, then they are worse than back of the envelope calculations.

 

However, the periods before 1976 are much more complex, with much more substantial changes in other factors. And, of course, climate models do a much poorer job of modelling these periods.

[swansont]

To Swansont

 

The evidence that the calculations of solar forcings are inaccurate lies in the fact that there have been times when changes in sunspot activity is correlated with major changes in global temperature, and at those times the calculated solar forcings are too small to account for the impact.

 

For example : around 1910 there was a substantial increase in sunspot activity, followed by a substantial global warming. This change was NOT due to any increase in the rate of AGG emissions, since the measured amounts of AGG in the atmosphere continued to increase at roughly the same rate as the previous two decades. Yet solar forcing calculations do not show this.

 

 

The graph that Bascule has posted numerous times shows an increase in solar forcing in that time frame, so I don't understand your contention that "solar forcing calculations don't show this"

[lucaspa]

No! A scientific conclusion would be something a long the lines of: The historical data of (?) year climate trends are consistent with a large increase in atmospheric compounds(green house gases). From this we can indirectly conclude that its possible increased industrial atmospheric compounds( in particular CO2) are the cause of an upward trend, but until we have the ability to measure the direct input of manmade compounds against the output of an increased greenhouse layer and also taking into account the time delay of such a system - We conclude that although this is compelling, we must be extremely cautious in jumping to conclusions of fact in any way.

 

This is what you want the conclusion to sound like. It in no way says that what iNow was stating was not A conclusion. You think iNow did not give the "correct" conclusion. That's a whole different thing from your original claim.

 

Nor did you address that the data you want IS available. You are now speaking from ignorance: "until we have the ability to measure the direct input of manmade compounds". We do have the ability to measure the direct input of man-made compounds. We know what humans are putting into the atmosphere. Also "against the output of an increased greenhouse layer" shows more ignorance. There is NO "greenhouse layer". No one says the greenhouse gasses are confined to one layer of the atmosphere. The greatest concentration of ALL gasses is, of course, in the troposphere. But there is no "greenhouse layer" within the troposphere or stratosphere.

 

Please, go read the article and the references in the article. THEN come back and argue. Read the data first before you say "there is no data".

 

I suspect your view of models is fairly close to mine. They can be useful tools, but ultimately science depends on objective and empirical data. The conclusions of models must, like any hypothesis, be tested. This is done through prediction, and an attempt to disprove the prediction, using real world experiment or observation of a novel kind.

 

It is also done by retrodiction. This is especially true of computer models in general and climate models in particular. Remember, the computer model is supposed to model ALL climate, not just future climate. That means that the model should generate the values for climate in the past. This is how models are initially tested: do they "predict" what we have already seen. That is, does the model generate the values we have already observed.

 

This is how the flaw in the models for cooling in the tropics was found. The model did not retrodict accurate temperatures because the model did not include increased cloud formation (and the subsequent reflection of incoming radiation). So the model was modified to take this into account.

 

So, Bascule knows the IPCC models have been tested. They accurately retrodict data we already have. This can be seen dramatically in the graphs in the Scientific American article. You can see that the variables "predicted" by the model for the past line up exactly with the values actually seen in the past. Since the model does that, it gives support to the model as hypothesis so that we can have confidence that it is accurately predicting to values we do not yet have in the future.

[Silverspeed]

Global Warming already exists. Its been in our climate for thousands of years and is a natural cycle. Humans using green house gases such as CO2 and Methane are causing Enhanced Warming. This is where the Earth heats at an unnatural rate. Global warming is a natural cycle of our climate increasing its heat and cooling its heat.

 

This is a picture of the Earths annual mean temperature rising to its highest ever.

 

carbon dioxide level has risen by an average 2.2ppm each year since 2001 which means it will have risen 13.2% by the end of this year.

 

Leave more comments on the issue.

[SkepticLance]

lucaspa said

 

"This can be seen dramatically in the graphs in the Scientific American article. You can see that the variables "predicted" by the model for the past line up exactly with the values actually seen in the past."

 

I doubt that you have taken a close enough look at all the graphs, including the one that matches temperature change to sunspot activity.

 

I agree that the Scientific America graphs look good from 1976 to the present. However, as I pointed out, that is no big trick. That was a period of relative simplicity in climate change - one major parameter driving temperature change. You can derive that kind of relationahsip with relatively simple calculations.

 

However, the decades before 1976 are a lot more complex, and the graphs start to become a lot less impressive for these periods. Strangely, the sunspot/temperature graph does the reverse. It is unimpressive for the 1976 to present period, and right on the nail for the periods earlier. However, the sunspot detractors do not want even to look!

[swansont]

lucaspa said

 

"This can be seen dramatically in the graphs in the Scientific American article. You can see that the variables "predicted" by the model for the past line up exactly with the values actually seen in the past."

 

I doubt that you have taken a close enough look at all the graphs, including the one that matches temperature change to sunspot activity.

 

I agree that the Scientific America graphs look good from 1976 to the present. However, as I pointed out, that is no big trick. That was a period of relative simplicity in climate change - one major parameter driving temperature change. You can derive that kind of relationahsip with relatively simple calculations.

 

However, the decades before 1976 are a lot more complex, and the graphs start to become a lot less impressive for these periods. Strangely, the sunspot/temperature graph does the reverse. It is unimpressive for the 1976 to present period, and right on the nail for the periods earlier. However, the sunspot detractors do not want even to look!

 

That's untrue. It's not that nobody wants to look, it's that upon looking, it is found that your contention is baseless, and here's why: You have contended that all of the temperature rise from 1976 onward is due to CO₂, since the solar curve you provided is flat. The problem is that CO₂ isn't flat prior to 1976! It's about half as much of an increase from 1940-1976 as from 1976 to ~present. It is the claim that CO₂had no effect in this time frame — along with the other contributors, as it must be for your claim to be valid — that is being objected to. A model that turns contributions on and off in that way, with no theoretical basis to back it up, is what is being dismissed. You insist on a "only one parameter at a time" model that is clearly false with only a cursory inspection. Nobody is contending that solar activity has no effect. The objection is with mechanisms that is only purported to work some of the time.

[SkepticLance]

Swansont

 

We are not communicating. I am not making the claims you claim I am making.

 

I have said that the 1976 to present situation is relatively simple. It is not a single parameter situation, and I have not ever said that CO2 emissions were linear. However, compared to the situation before 1976, it is much simpler and easier to model.

 

I have also never claimed that CO2 has no effect prior to 1976. I have said that it appears, by correlating with the various parameters, to be less important before 1976 than sunspots. This is not the same as claiming it has no effect. If CO2 has an effect after 1976, then logically it has an effect before that. However, the increases were less than after 1976, so the effect was less.

 

At the same time, the changes in sunspot activity in the first half of the 20th Century were substantial, and the effect on temperature was also substantial.

[1veedo]

Global Warming already exists. Its been in our climate for thousands of years and is a natural cycle. Humans using green house gases such as CO2 and Methane are causing Enhanced Warming. This is where the Earth heats at an unnatural rate. Global warming is a natural cycle of our climate increasing its heat and cooling its heat.

Except the Earth should be cooling right now, not getting warmer. We're not enhancing any sort of natural cycle; what we are doing is turning these cycles 180 degrees in reverse.

[mbeychok]

Would it help you to know that Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Science (USA), thinks that globing warming theory is based on flawed ideas?

 

Would it also help you to know that Rcihard Lindzen, the Alfred Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is one of the most outspoken skeptics of the global warming theory?

 

If you need further confirmation that the global warming theory is flawed, read this article:

 

A.B. Robinson, N.E. Robinson and Willie Soon, "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide", Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2007) 12, 78-90.

[1veedo]

If you need further confirmation that the global warming theory is flawed, read this article:

 

A.B. Robinson, N.E. Robinson and Willie Soon, "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide", Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2007) 12, 78-90.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26603&page=2

[swansont]

Swansont

 

We are not communicating. I am not making the claims you claim I am making.

 

I have said that the 1976 to present situation is relatively simple. It is not a single parameter situation, and I have not ever said that CO2 emissions were linear. However, compared to the situation before 1976, it is much simpler and easier to model.

 

I have also never claimed that CO2 has no effect prior to 1976. I have said that it appears, by correlating with the various parameters, to be less important before 1976 than sunspots. This is not the same as claiming it has no effect. If CO2 has an effect after 1976, then logically it has an effect before that. However, the increases were less than after 1976, so the effect was less.

 

At the same time, the changes in sunspot activity in the first half of the 20th Century were substantial, and the effect on temperature was also substantial.

 

You contradict yourself, though — your conclusions do not follow from your claims. If CO₂ and other effects are still important, you should not expect correlation with solar activity to be as great as it appears to be in that limited window, since there are obviously other factors in play. Either the other factors all cancel for that whole period, or the correlation is accidental. You can't validly choose one over the other without additional evidence. However, since there are times (when one looks at time outside of this window) when temperature and sunspot number anti-correlate, without large changes in the other factors, one has to conclude that the other factors are not, in fact, canceling, and the effect of the sunspots is much smaller than the total effect seen in that graph.

[ghstofmaxwll]

This is what you want the conclusion to sound like. It in no way says that what iNow was stating was not A conclusion. You think iNow did not give the "correct" conclusion. That's a whole different thing from your original claim.

 

Nor did you address that the data you want IS available. You are now speaking from ignorance: "until we have the ability to measure the direct input of manmade compounds". We do have the ability to measure the direct input of man-made compounds. We know what humans are putting into the atmosphere. Also "against the output of an increased greenhouse layer" shows more ignorance. There is NO "greenhouse layer". No one says the greenhouse gasses are confined to one layer of the atmosphere. The greatest concentration of ALL gasses is, of course, in the troposphere. But there is no "greenhouse layer" within the troposphere or stratosphere.

Once you've lost the arguments you have to pick at me yeah? Maybe I should have used the word barrier.

 

No! His so called conclusion is not scientific. It is an assertion based on indirect correlation. Climate has many complex interacting variables so picking on CO2 being increased is an assumption. And we cannot directly measure the blanket of greenhouse gases surrounding the earth.

 

It is also done by retrodiction. This is especially true of computer models in general and climate models in particular. Remember, the computer model is supposed to model ALL climate, not just future climate. That means that the model should generate the values for climate in the past. This is how models are initially tested: do they "predict" what we have already seen. That is, does the model generate the values we have already observed.

 

This is how the flaw in the models for cooling in the tropics was found. The model did not retrodict accurate temperatures because the model did not include increased cloud formation (and the subsequent reflection of incoming radiation). So the model was modified to take this into account.

 

So, Bascule knows the IPCC models have been tested. They accurately retrodict data we already have. This can be seen dramatically in the graphs in the Scientific American article. You can see that the variables "predicted" by the model for the past line up exactly with the values actually seen in the past. Since the model does that, it gives support to the model as hypothesis so that we can have confidence that it is accurately predicting to values we do not yet have in the future.

 

 

For your information Dick for brains, even the most complex models on supercomputers cannot come any way near to irreproachable accuracy and in fact usually fall well off course pretty soon. Ask the treasury or the MET office about their billion £s systems!

 

I ask you people again to come up with a scientific conclusion based on the findings, and ditch the assertions.

[1veedo]

Once you've lost the arguments you have to pick at me yeah? Maybe I should have used the word barrier.

 

No! His so called conclusion is not scientific. It is an assertion based on indirect correlation. Climate has many complex interacting variables so picking on CO2 being increased is an assumption. And we cannot directly measure the blanket of greenhouse gases surrounding the earth.

It's measured in parts per million just like anything else in the atmosphere.

For your information Dick for brains, even the most complex models on supercomputers cannot come any way near to irreproachable accuracy

Many models have in fact proven themselves to be very accurate. Besides the study bascule keeps posting there's also the first GISS analysis done in the 1980s (on computers not nearly as powerful as they're using today). According to NASA, the model is, still today, "right on the money"*.

[SkepticLance]

To Swansont.

 

I do not contradict myself. CO2 has been rising since beginnings of the industrial revolution, and obviously has a warming effect. Equally obviously, this is quantity dependent. When the amount of CO2 is small, the warming is small.

 

Over this early period, the warming/cooling effects of sunspot activity change has been much greater. Thus, when the sunspot activity falls in 1880, it is followed by a global temperature drop. When sunspot activity increases in 1910, it is followed by a global warming period. The effect of increasing CO2 at this time is small, because the amounts involved are small.

 

I do not see anything illogical, unscientific, or contradictory in this argument.

[ghstofmaxwll]

It's measured in parts per million just like anything else in the atmosphere.

What is??? CO2? Im talking about measuring the amount of greenhouse compounds and the amount of heat that is being trapped due to them i.e. the greenhouse barrier. OK just show me data for an increase of atmospheric CO2, thats the first I've heard of it.

 

Many models have in fact proven themselves to be very accurate. Besides the study bascule keeps posting there's also the first GISS analysis done in the 1980s (on computers not nearly as powerful as they're using today). According to NASA, the model is, still today, "right on the money"*.

For what reasons? Do NASA back you up that anthropogenic global warming is a fact from this model(or any other)? I think you will find that they dont. They employ real climatologists.

[iNow]

What is??? CO2? Im talking about measuring the amount of greenhouse compounds and the amount of heat that is being trapped due to them i.e. the greenhouse barrier. OK just show me data for an increase of atmospheric CO2, thats the first I've heard of it.

Clearly the fact that you've never heard of something means it's wrong. Google is your friend. 1.8 million hits. Stick to the .edu and .gov's and you'll do fine.

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=atmospheric+CO2+concentration

 

 

 

 

 

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.htm

The Mauna Loa record shows a 19.4% increase in the mean annual concentration, from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004. The 1997-1998 increase in the annual growth rate of 2.87 ppmv represets the largest single yearly jump since the Mauna Loa record began in 1958. This represents an average annual increase of 1.4 ppmv per year. This is smaller than the average annual increase at the other stations because of the longer record and inclusion of earlier (smaller) annual increases.

 

 

 

 

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/07.htm

 

 

 

 

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2412.htm

Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from about 315 ppm in 1958 to 378 ppm at the end of 2004, which means human activities have increased the concentration of atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm or 36 percent.

 

 

 

 

For what reasons? Do NASA back you up that anthropogenic global warming is a fact from this model(or any other)? I think you will find that they dont. They employ real climatologists.

 

Quit flaming. At least if you're going to attack someone, be right and supply data when you do. Right now, you just look like an ignorant jackass.

[1veedo]

For what reasons? Do NASA back you up that anthropogenic global warming is a fact from this model(or any other)? I think you will find that they dont. They employ real climatologists.

I clearly gave you a link to a publication by NASA written by James Hansen, who is I believe head of GISS. If you look at said link you can see the predictions made in the 80s and the path that the climate has actually taken through 2005. Still today (2005 at least) those lines match up. I don't see how you can draw any other conclusion from it lol.

 

On a side note I think I read somewhere that due to changes in the output of anthropogenic CO2 this model will be wrong in like 20 years or something. The models work, the only problem with modeling the climate is predicting what humans are going to do. They kind of have to make educated guess as to how much CO2 we're going to release at some point in the future. But what this allows us to do is see "what if." "What if we pollute at X rate, or what about Y rate?" Well X rate looks pretty bad and Y rate looks OK so lets try to pollute at Y etc.

[bascule]

Where since the planetesimal stage, concentrations of greenhouse compounds(molecules with two or more unlike atoms) have surely reached bigger spikes while they have in fact decreased.

 

Never before in the history of the carbon cycle has so much sequestered carbon been liberated into the atmosphere. What man has done is quite literally an unnatural occurrence and thus has ramifications never before seen in the history of the global climate.

 

I am aware that complexity and number of variables in the best climate models we can come up with need super computers . But you implied that modeling of any sort can only be performed on a computer, which someone that has ever gone through mathematical modeling education would not do.

 

If you can perform a multi-decadal global climate reconstruction by hand I'll pay you $1,000,000. However you must do it with a resolution and timesteps fine-grained enough to successfully reconstruct the instrumental record with similar skillfulness as a GCM.

 

For what reasons? Do NASA back you up that anthropogenic global warming is a fact from this model(or any other)? I think you will find that they dont. They employ real climatologists.

 

Yes, like Jim Hansen, perhaps one of the foremost proponents of anthropogenic greenhouse gases being the dominant forcing...

[swansont]

To Swansont.

 

I do not contradict myself. CO2 has been rising since beginnings of the industrial revolution, and obviously has a warming effect. Equally obviously, this is quantity dependent. When the amount of CO2 is small, the warming is small.

 

Over this early period, the warming/cooling effects of sunspot activity change has been much greater. Thus, when the sunspot activity falls in 1880, it is followed by a global temperature drop. When sunspot activity increases in 1910, it is followed by a global warming period. The effect of increasing CO2 at this time is small, because the amounts involved are small.

 

I do not see anything illogical, unscientific, or contradictory in this argument.

 

From ~1940-1950 temperatures fall. Yet sunspot activity had been increasing since 1930. For 20 years prior, sunspot activity had been relatively flat, yet temperature had been increasing. ~1960-1965 has a massive drop in sunspot activity but an increase in temperature.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg

 

You can't cherry-pick the data that you use. If the correlation doesn't hold for half of the time span in question, you can't conclude that sunspot activity is a good proxy for temperature.

[Silverspeed]

Well, should it get colder in Arctica, the ise will build up again. Then the Gulfstream will come back, and everything will return to normal[/font].

 

 

What if the gulf stream would stop for say, 50 years? It would cause havoc with the worlds economies and some less stable economies would collapse.

The Gulf Stream provides warm water from the Indian and Pacific oceans to cooler waters such as the northern part of the Atlantic. the cold waters then return to the indian and pacific oceans, cooling them down. if this were to stop the indian and pacific oceans would heat up and the Atlantic cool down to freezing point.

 

From ~1940-1950 temperatures fall. Yet sunspot activity had been increasing since 1930. For 20 years prior, sunspot activity had been relatively flat, yet temperature had been increasing. ~1960-1965 has a massive drop in sunspot activity but an increase in temperature.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg

 

You can't cherry-pick the data that you use. If the correlation doesn't hold for half of the time span in question, you can't conclude that sunspot activity is a good proxy for temperature.

 

Sunspots are spots on the sun cooler than 15000 degrees celcius. or is it 10000?

Anyway, they impact the earths weather because the change the amount of UV and Radioactive rays that reflect of the Earth and other planets surface.

[swansont]

Sunspots are spots on the sun cooler than 15000 degrees celcius. or is it 10000?

Anyway, they impact the earths weather because the change the amount of UV and Radioactive rays that reflect of the Earth and other planets surface.

 

You need to read the whole thread and its predecessors to appreciate the argument there. Nobody is saying there is no impact. The disagreement is concerning the claim that they are a primary cause of temperature change, and a proxy for it.

[SkepticLance]

To Swansont

 

The wiki graph you quote is sunspot number only. The graph I have been quoting is sunspot activity - which is a number derived from both sunspot number and sunspot intensity, to give an overall factor of total reconstructed irradiance from sunpot activity.

 

I do not think mere numbers of ssunspots is the whole story. I will stick with total sunspot activity, thank you.

 

Of course, it all falls down after 1976. At that stage, AGGs take over as the dominant influence.

[1veedo]

Weren't you telling me earlier that sunspots were a better indicate of climate change than solar irradiance? That's like the third time I've read something of yours which contradicted something else you said.

[SkepticLance]

To 1veedo

 

We have another communication problem. I said sunspots were a better indicator than calculated solar forcings. The graph I quoted uses what they call solar irradiance, which is a combination of sunspot number and sunspot intensity. Sorry for the confusion.

 

Another interesting paper comes from the Max Plank Insitute

 

http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/aktuelles/pressenotizen/pressenotiz_20040802.html

 

Quote :

 

"Two scientists from the MPI for Solar System Research have calculated for the last 150 years the Sun?s main parameters affecting climate, using current measurements and the newest models: the total radiation, the ultraviolet output, and the Sun?s magnetic field (which modulates the cosmic ray intensity). They come to the conclusion that the variations on the Sun run parallel to climate changes for most of that time"

 

They note that the relationship breaks down over the past 20 to 30 years, which I have also said.

 

Also

 

"The influence of the Sun on the Earth is seen increasingly as one cause of the observed global warming since 1900, along with the emission of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the combustion of coal, gas, and oil. "Just how large this role is, must still be investigated, since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth?s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide," "

 

Note here that greenhouse gases are stated to be dominant only after 1980. The need for more study reflects what I have been saying all along - that until we understand the mechanism, we cannot calculate the effect quantitatively. Thus, IPCC calculations of solar forcings mean little.