Global Warming is not the problem, we are

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Marat, SMF, this is not the politics board. Please confine discussion here to the science of global warming

This is just one example of the hypocrisy. There are more. There still is no scientific evidence that proves GW (and calling it climate change- just arbitrary). For that, you need a control, as any scientist understands in doing experiments. The only "control" is another earth that would have been subjected to a climate without man;s influence. . There is no other earth, therefore, no control, therefore, no evidence based on the scientific method.

You really can't proceed in a discussion when you start with "There still is no scientific evidence that proves GW," which is a bald assertion that ignores decades of research, and the blanket dismissal of scientists' research methods.

[SMF]

Yes boss. Actually, gladly yes. SM

[JorgeLobo]

SMF - please avoid the chlidish insults - and tell us the stoichiometry that shows us how your fetish developments using wind, solar etc will reverse or even stop what is projected for global warming.

[Edtharan]

Thanks for that detailed exposition, though I still have a few questions and concerns.

 

First, everything I read about changes in the Earth's temperature maintains that the processes involved are extremely complex, so it is difficult for sincere and scientifically-motivated experts to distinguish changes which are occurring spontaneously from changes caused by greenhouse gases. Unless we can separate exactly how much is due to industrial activity from how much change would have occurred naturally, we may lack a socially justifiable reason for imposing on people all the dislocations that will come from changing rapidly to a non-carbon-based economy. Thus for example the time at which each new ice age 'should' appear is only very roughly calculable, so if it were to turn out that a new ice age began soon to supervene on present global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, drastic efforts to switch to a non-carbon-based economy might become unnecessary because of random factors we cannot perfectly calculate.

What you have to understand is the difference between cause and effect. The causes of Global Warming have been well understood for at least a century and are not too complex. This is the increase of greenhouse gasses that cause part of the outgoing infra-red radiation to be re-radiated back towards the ground, and the conservation of energy that demands that this energy can't just disappear.

 

The effects of it are the complex bit and the bits. This is because how the energy moves arounf the climate systems and causes our weather is extremely complex.

 

Climate is not the same as weather. If you look back to my analogy of the days and seasons, the seasons is like the climate, and the days and weeks are like the weather. Although the days and weeks have regular cycles, they are not easily predictable (just think of how often the weather service gets things wrong), but, we know that with the change of the seasons, certain effects will occur. As we go into winter, the days and nights will become colder (even if you do get a few warm spells and such). This is because the seasons effect the temperatures of the days.

 

It is the same with the climate and weather. The climate is easier to predict than the weather because it is a longer term trend that is not as rapidly variable as weather is. However, the climate drives the weather, although not in as simple a way as seasons effect the temperatures of the days.

 

Because the causes of climate change are much simpler and better known than the weather, we can work out how much effect human activity is adding to the energy of the climate systems. The effects of this added energy is uncertain and it is these effects that climate scientists disagree on. As far as I know, none disagree as to the causes of it (CO² and other greenhouse gasses all absorb and then re-radiate infra-red light and the conservation laws are well established in science).

 

It is actually possible to test these things in the lab. To test greenhouse gasses ability to absorb and re-radiate infra-red light, all you need to do is have a container of greenhouse gasses and shine an infra-red light through it. Some will be absorbed and re-radiated. By setting up detectors you can measure the amount that passes through and also measure how much is effectively scattered by the gasses. This has been done (I did experiments like that in high school chemistry - you probably did too) and it is the gasses that do this that are called greenhouse gasses.

 

So the causes have been verified many times over and as the experiments needed to do so are easy to do and not expensive, virtually anyone can attempt it themselves with a bit of effort (and with accurate measurements and a bit of maths you can even work out the amount of effect that is being caused by human actions).

 

The problem is the effects of this. Adding energy to a system, as I explained does two different things, it can makes things move faster, or make things get hotter (actually heating is just the atoms moving faster in no organised way, so it sort of only does one thing - makes things move faster).

 

However, there are many things about the Earth's climate that can be made hotter, or made to move faster. Also, the knock on effects of these will also need to be taken into account. The reason the weather is so complex is that when you change one thing it has these knock on effects that cause secondary effects that can even come back to changing the original system again.

 

Second, with respect to human activity perhaps accounting for the world being much warmer in the year 1000 than it is today, I am troubled by how it then got colder, since the world's population continued to increase until the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Also, since Europe lost a third of its population after the Black Death, why wasn't there a sudden and dramatic cooling then? Why did it suddenly start snowing in New England in June during the mid-18th century in the course of what has been called 'the Little Ice Age'? Surely the effect of human activity, with its steadily growing population and the nascent industrialization of Britain at the time, would have been to warm the planet, and yet this entire effect was not only cancelled out but even overcome by spontaneous changes in the Earth's warming and cooling cycles, caused by complex interactions between ocean currents, winds, and temperature which we cannot accurately calculate.

There are many things that can effect climate, however, until the industrial revolution, humans didn't really have the power to cause much effect to the climate systems. There was some effects, but mostly it was natural forces. After the industrial revolution, the power of humans to affect change to the climate started to exceed many of the natural forces that affected the climate. In modern times, the power we have to affect the climate is increasing at an ever increasing rate.

 

I also don't think that the change to a non-carbon-based economy will be economically benign, given that it will be the first transition in economic form not based on the increased rationalization of productive forces, such as all previous transformations were, but it will be based on the desire to increase a resource which cannot be commodified, such as clean air or a cooler planet.

 

In terms of a simple example, the economic problem seems to be this: Today we employ 100 workers to produce 1000 widgets worth $10 each. We thus generate a product which sells for $10,000, out of which $2000 goes to reward the owner of the widget factory and $8000 goes to pay the workers $80 each. The cost to the environment is simply not measured on the balance sheet, since the environment is just expected to absorb this cost in terms of the global warming caused.

 

But if we decide to contain the global warming which this industrial process would normally cause, we now have to employ 100 workers to produce the widgets and 100 workers to cleanse the environment, so the wage of the widget producers has to be cut in half, the prodution of widgets has to be cut in half, the profit to the capitalists has to be reduced to try to prop up the wages of the workers, the price of the widgets has to be doubled, or some combination of these responses has to be made to respond to the fact that we now carry the environmental costs on the balance sheet, whereas before we just neglected them. This would represent a massive decline in the standard of living for the first time since the Black Death in 1346, and the way our economic and political system operates, that decline would probably be imposed exclusively on the most vulnerable people in society.

I'll address this briefly as the science of climate change and the politics of it are closely interwoven.

 

Basically the augment you make here is invalid because it doesn't actually represent what has gone on. You present the price of climate change as a new cost to the economy. Actually the cost has been there form the start, it just hasn't been paid.

 

It is like you forgetting to pay your credit card for a while. Sure, you seem to have more money now, and even can withdraw money form your credit card to get a bit more. But then you remember you have to pay this card. Now to do this you will have to spend your money, and it will seem like you are loosing money now. However, all you are doing is paying back money you shouldn't have had without cost in the first place.

 

Basically, Nature's bank is calling in our debts. We should have known that these debts would be called in eventually, but we carried on as if we didn't have to pay it back. To continue with this analogy: We have some investments and a bit of money we can spend, lets hope we use it in a way that will enable us to pay back the debt we have accrued.

[swansont]

SMF - please avoid the chlidish insults

 

!

Moderator Note

JorgeLobo, if you see a post which you think violates the rules, report it. Escalating a dispute with a response such as this is not appropriate. I warned you yesterday: Discuss in a civil fashion or not at all.

 

Do not derail the thread further by discussing this warning

[jorge1907]

i i'll narrow my comment - SMF -please provide th stoichiometry that defends the application of these technologies to reverse or even stop global warming.

[Marat]

I doubt that climate change is that predictable. All through the 1960s there was a rising drumbeat of panic among climate 'scientists' about 'coming Ice Age,' which was 'long overdue,' just as there is now about the predicted global warming. Many random factors also seem to make oversized contributions to the general trends, such as the explosion of Krakatowa in the 1880s causing something like a 'nuclear winter' around the world. And what could have caused the 'Little Ice Age' of the 18th century which caused it to snow in June in New England? The number of humans and cows, which generate a large amount of methane, was sharply increasing at that time, so the greenhouse gases produced by that process interacted with various unknowns to produce a net negative effect on temperatures. No one has yet offered an explanation of what so dramatically warmed the planet before the year 1000 A.D. that central Greenland was an agricultural area able to support large Viking communities, as archeology can now confirm, and why two centuries after the start of the industrial revolution that same region is now covered with glaciers. Because the island nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific is so flat there has always been concern that global warming would swamp it, since melting ice ultimately has to cause the ocean levels around the world to rise, but markers anchored to the ocean floor there have yet to disclose rising ocean levels.

 

So what are we to make of so many loose ends in a theory which today is being presented as a religious dogma we are required to believe in or be socially ostracized? Why is the scientific community reacting so peculiarly to this issue, with competing theories being banished to opposing journals, since neither group will tolerate the publication of the other group's data and arguments? How do we account for the fudging of global warming data at the University of East Anglia? These are the types of occurrences that characterize scientific fraud rather than clearly established fact. Can these problems with the theory and tensions in the scientific community be explained because of the fact that though in principle the effect of greenhouse gas emissions is calculable, there is theoretical controversy about how the oceans interact with greenhouse gas emissions?

[SMF]

Marat. You apparently don't wish to read any of the links I provided. So, instead I challenge you to support your assertions:

 

There was a rising drumbeat of panic among climate scientists about a coming ice age? I claim that this is urban legend.

That methane from humans and cows could make any detectible effect on global temperature? I say not true.

Central Greenland was agricultural and supported large Viking communities where there are now glaciers? A nice story but impossible.

That there are competing groups of climate scientists? I claim that more than 97% of the thousands of practicing climate scientists world wide are the group that supports the consensus, so who are the other guys?

 

Since you have ignored the information I have supplied to support my assertions, and because this is a science site, it is your turn to support what you say. You seem to believe that this is an important topic so be serious, only peer reviewed science please. SM

[swansont]

I doubt that climate change is that predictable. All through the 1960s there was a rising drumbeat of panic among climate 'scientists' about 'coming Ice Age,' which was 'long overdue,' just as there is now about the predicted global warming.

 

Citations, please.

 

So what are we to make of so many loose ends in a theory which today is being presented as a religious dogma we are required to believe in or be socially ostracized? Why is the scientific community reacting so peculiarly to this issue, with competing theories being banished to opposing journals, since neither group will tolerate the publication of the other group's data and arguments? How do we account for the fudging of global warming data at the University of East Anglia? These are the types of occurrences that characterize scientific fraud rather than clearly established fact. Can these problems with the theory and tensions in the scientific community be explained because of the fact that though in principle the effect of greenhouse gas emissions is calculable, there is theoretical controversy about how the oceans interact with greenhouse gas emissions?

 

Citations, please.

[jackson33]

The history of the scientific discovery of climate change began in the early 19th century when natural changes in paleoclimate were first suspected and the natural greenhouse effect first identified. In the late 19th century, scientists first argued that human emissions of greenhouse gases could change the climate, but the calculations were disputed. In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists increasingly thought that human activity could change the climate on a timescale of decades, but were unsure whether the net impact would be to warm or cool the climate. During the 1970s, scientific opinion increasingly favored the warming viewpoint. In the 1980s the consensus position formed that human activity was in the process of warming the climate, leading to the beginning of the modern period of global warming science summarized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[/Quote]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science

 

During the early 1950's, where most of my education was, we had daily articles posted in our various science classes, referring to "a pending ice age" and after that I recall all kinds of articles in various magazines, including some Science oriented. Worse, we had the climate to go along with the theory and even as late as the late 70's, in Kingsville Texas, we had about a month of sub-freezing temperatures, that pretty well destroyed hundred year old palm tree's all around South Texas an a dozen 6-15 foot rubber tree plants of mine.

 

I understand, there were just as many saying then, it was a reaction (cycle) from the warming trend in the 30's, just as many today feel any trending today, lower or higher and where it all fits into a long term patter. My own opinion, is that during the next 5-10K years the planet will trend lower, leading to a minor Ice Age, whether mankind is around or not....

[swansont]

During the early 1950's, where most of my education was, we had daily articles posted in our various science classes, referring to "a pending ice age" and after that I recall all kinds of articles in various magazines, including some Science oriented.

 

That doesn't pass for a citation.

[Messenger]

Several of you have referenced Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" documentary but i think it would be prudent to point out that while his data was Technically accurate, his interpretation was skewed to support his claims.

 

The biggest example of this is his famous graph of CO2 levels and temperature. Like i said, the graph is scientificaly correct, theres no falce data, and there is definatly a correlation between Temperature and CO2, but not for the reasons Al Gore would like you to think. If you actually look at the Data, you'd notice that the rising and falling of CO2 actually happens 800-1000 years AFTER the rise or fall in temperature. Unfortunately for those of you who would like to believe that CO2 is the problem its simply not true. The reason for the correlation between CO2 and Temperature is that as the oceans heat up they release CO2 that had previously been dissolved in the oceans. High CO2 levels are caused by high temperature, not the other way around.

 

Another flaw in Al Gores argument is the part of his graph that shows when CO2 dramatically rises during the current time period. this rise in CO2 exists, its a fact, he's right there, but does anyone find it interesting that he doesnt show how temperature is following the rise of CO2? If the temperature DID follow what CO2 was doing (In this case rising to nearly the highest peak on Gore's graph) then we would be dead and temperatures would have increased somewhere around 100%-175% of what they were before the rise in CO2. what they have ACTUALLY done is rise anywhere from 5-10 degrees. that's not a lot, not even close to where they should be if Gore is correct, so i think its safe to say he isn't correct.

 

But lets forget all that for a minute. lets just say that it really is happening and everything the Global warming/climate change scientists say is 100% correct.

THAT would mean that all of the icecaps and glaciers would melt, and less sunlight would be reflected away from earth and temperature would increase exponentially. BUT that's just not true, and the reason that temperatures would re-balance themselves comes from the very people who would like you to think that it will never be fixed if we humans don't step in. F all of that fresh water from the melting glaciers enters the oceans then it will stop ocean currents such as the gulf stream and the North Atlantic Drift due to a decrease in the ratio of salt water to water. in turn that should lower temperatures in Europe to the point that Europe will experience an ice age.

now first of all that sounds ridiculous, but lets say its true. if Europe DID go into an ice age due to Global Warming wouldn't that mean theres LOST of ice where Europe was? and wouldn't THAT mean that more sunlight would be reflected away from earth and temperatures would drop?

yeah, its almost like nature is fixing itself. But that's not important to politicians, they would rather gloss over that little tidbit because they want people to vote for them.

 

So it would seem that CO2 is clearly not the problem. The thing is, temperatures ARE increasing. Why? Well what makes the Earth warm in the first place? Thats right, the sun.

The sun goes through phases, just like everything in nature does, and it just so happens that those phases of high and low temperatures correlate quite well with earth's temperatures. At the risk of making the same mistake that Gore made, im going to say that the sun is to blame. Also, the sun is beginning to become a red dwarf, which means its getting BIGGER and HOTTER. and That means higher temperatures here on earth.

 

so there you go, problem solved?

 

oh, and also, if this is indeed the case the only way to fix it would be to move the earth back into the habitable zone (Which is moving farther away out toward Pluto since the sun is expanding) and we can even do that. theoreticaly we could re-direct commets or asteroids to slingshot around the earth, moving the earth away from the sun.

 

or we could just move to mars or something.

 

[i apologize if i repeated anything that someone may have already said, i did not read every post, and some of them i just skimmed. Again, i apologize if i repeated anything, and if anyone would like me to get specific scourses i would gladly find them, but im out of time at the moment.]

Edited April 10, 2011 by Messenger

[SMF]

Messenger:

 

Climate scientists are quite aware of the lag in CO2 for some warming periods, and it is true that it is secondary to other forcings in those instances. However, the warming during those periods was contributed to by the increase in CO2 as a positive feedback. This is part of the supporting evidence regarding the atmospheric effects of CO2. This is not one of Gore’s arguments; he is just reporting what has been well verified by the science. Please show some science that contradicts it.

 

The current rise in temperature is quite close to that predicted from the physics. Please provide some research that is contradictory.

 

The increase of temperature from decreasing albedo is not exponential, but it is definitely a positive feedback. Please provide a reference.

 

Regarding your bit about the effects of fresh water in the Gulf Stream, there have been some hypotheses but nothing definite. References please

 

The sun has been pretty constant during the period of increase in temperature predicted by the increase in CO2. Climate scientists always include this in their calculations. Another contradictory reference is needed.

 

Thousands of scientists worldwide have come up with a physical description of the effects of increasing CO2 from fossil sources. Gore reported it pretty accurately. You are asserting that this is not true so you should back up your claims. If you are correct, this should be pretty easy, but keep in mind that opinions of non-experts is not evidence. I am also interested where you got your ideas regarding atmospheric physics.

 

SM

 

 

[swansont]

If you actually look at the Data, you'd notice that the rising and falling of CO2 actually happens 800-1000 years AFTER the rise or fall in temperature. Unfortunately for those of you who would like to believe that CO2 is the problem its simply not true. The reason for the correlation between CO2 and Temperature is that as the oceans heat up they release CO2 that had previously been dissolved in the oceans. High CO2 levels are caused by high temperature, not the other way around.

 

You have not ruled out that both effects can occur.

[swansont]

During the early 1950's, where most of my education was, we had daily articles posted in our various science classes, referring to "a pending ice age" and after that I recall all kinds of articles in various magazines, including some Science oriented. Worse, we had the climate to go along with the theory and even as late as the late 70's, in Kingsville Texas, we had about a month of sub-freezing temperatures, that pretty well destroyed hundred year old palm tree's all around South Texas an a dozen 6-15 foot rubber tree plants of mine.

 

I understand, there were just as many saying then, it was a reaction (cycle) from the warming trend in the 30's, just as many today feel any trending today, lower or higher and where it all fits into a long term patter. My own opinion, is that during the next 5-10K years the planet will trend lower, leading to a minor Ice Age, whether mankind is around or not....

 

Not only does this not count as a citation, as I already noted, a similar claim made by you has already been debunked. Yo really should not continue to make the claim.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/43999-global-warming/page__st__20__p__516116#entry516116

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html

[Marat]

The East Anglia Univeristy 'Climategate' scandal of November 20, 2009, in which data was found to have been falsified to enhance the global warming hypothesis, was so widely publicized that I am surprised it has now apparently been forgotten. Just google 'Climategate' and you will find a host of references to it.

 

If you look a the 'Global Cooling' article in Wikipedia you will find a full account of the panic in the 1960s and 1970s over the 'impending ice age,' brought to us by the same brand of intellectual marvels who are today telling us the exactly the opposite. It makes one suspect that climate science is not all that accurate. You can also find online one of the more embarrassing relics of that panic, the April 28, 1975 Newsweek article by Peter Gwynne on global cooling.

 

The fact that there are at least two respected climate scientists, professor emeritus Reid Bryson from the University of Wisconsin, and current professor Richard Lindzen from M.I.T., who dispute the usually-accepted versions of climate change, should at least encourage people to approach the hypothesis of global warming with scientific scepticism rather than with a messianic zeal that seems eager to elevate global warming into the ever-expanding, quasi-religious Pantheon of Things We are Officially Required to Believe in order to be politically correct. Since the Earth's climate certainly does change dramatically for non-anthropogenic reasons, unless we can securely distinguish its spontaneous temperature variations from those caused by human activity we should be careful about predicting with such certainty that greenhouse gas doom is on the horizon, rather than most of the climate change now detected being just the effect of our continued emergence from the last Ice Age.

 

The fact that recently new record low temperatures, too far off the trend line of the posited global warming process to be within the range of reasonable statistical variations, are being recorded in various places around the world, such as the Canadian northwest last year, has to raise questions about whether the trend line has been correctly drawn.

[swansont]

The East Anglia Univeristy 'Climategate' scandal of November 20, 2009, in which data was found to have been falsified to enhance the global warming hypothesis, was so widely publicized that I am surprised it has now apparently been forgotten. Just google 'Climategate' and you will find a host of references to it.

 

Like this one, in which they report that the official investigations found no falsified data? (as opposed to the rumor mills and denialist blogs)

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/25/newspapers-retract-climategate-claims-but-damage-still-done.html

 

If you look a the 'Global Cooling' article in Wikipedia you will find a full account of the panic in the 1960s and 1970s over the 'impending ice age,' brought to us by the same brand of intellectual marvels who are today telling us the exactly the opposite. It makes one suspect that climate science is not all that accurate. You can also find online one of the more embarrassing relics of that panic, the April 28, 1975 Newsweek article by Peter Gwynne on global cooling.

 

That would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling , in which they say that it was popularized but did not have much support in the scientific community?

 

The fact that there are at least two respected climate scientists, professor emeritus Reid Bryson from the University of Wisconsin, and current professor Richard Lindzen from M.I.T., who dispute the usually-accepted versions of climate change, should at least encourage people to approach the hypothesis of global warming with scientific scepticism rather than with a messianic zeal that seems eager to elevate global warming into the ever-expanding, quasi-religious Pantheon of Things We are Officially Required to Believe in order to be politically correct. Since the Earth's climate certainly does change dramatically for non-anthropogenic reasons, unless we can securely distinguish its spontaneous temperature variations from those caused by human activity we should be careful about predicting with such certainty that greenhouse gas doom is on the horizon, rather than most of the climate change now detected being just the effect of our continued emergence from the last Ice Age.

 

The fact that recently new record low temperatures, too far off the trend line of the posited global warming process to be within the range of reasonable statistical variations, are being recorded in various places around the world, such as the Canadian northwest last year, has to raise questions about whether the trend line has been correctly drawn.

 

There are invariably scientists who disagree. It's true in any field of science.

 

Anecdotes are not evidence, and it climate is not weather. Record cold in one place does not mean that the global average is not increasing.

 

The Canadian northwest was warmer than average last year. They had a cool summer, but Jan-April was very warm. There were spots that were cooler than average, but many that were warmer. Nobody claimed it would be uniformly warmer everywhere.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-mntp/201001-201012.gif

 

2010 tied with 2005 for the warmest on record (i.e. since 1880)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2010/13

[Messenger]

I did a little bit of hunting around for that graph and i found what what seems to be a decent source (But hey, what do i know, I'm just a 17 year old student who skipped earth science :3 )

http://www.exo.net/~pauld/workshops/globalclimate/atmospherecarbondioxide.htm

 

If you look at the second graph you'll see the CO2 levels and temperature from now all the way back to a really long time ago. (Not sure what BP stands for :/ )

Clearly the CO2 and Temp. do basically the same exact thing. Right up until about a few years ago that is. It looks pretty clear to me that just before the current time temp. starts to increase and then CO2 follows suite, but then a funny thing happens and CO2 dips back down briefly while temp. continues to rise. THEN CO2 starts to shoot straight up, and temp stays pretty constant. The max temp. on this graph doesn't even reach any of the other peaks on the graph and it most certainly doesn't exceed them.

 

I'll admit, what the temp may be doing isn't "Normal" per say according to this graph, but we aren't all going to die. if we WERE then it would have happened already. 4 times.

Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that life was able to continue. (If you'll excuse my sarcasm)

 

Also, i live in Maryland and I'd just like to say that we got snow a week into spring. Yeah.... Global warming...

 

Now, I'm not saying that the CO2 isn't contributing to the unusual temp. changes in some way, eventually everything effects everything else. I mean that's obvious. But i really dont think you can say 100% that CO2 (Or really any other Greenhouse gas) is causing "Global Warming"

 

In my other post i mentioned the Solar cycles and how they might be a more realistic cause and SMF said that the sun was constant but according to This article On Wikipedia (Yes, i realize Wiki isn't exactly the best source out there) the sun is pretty dynamic, just like our own environment.

 

 

Here is the more recent solar cycles

 

 

and here is another chart of atmospheric CO2.

If you look at this article you'll see both of the above graphs. I just want to direct your attention to the caption for the Atmospheric CO2 graph on the right hand side of the page which reads: "Changes in carbon-14 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere, which serves as a long term proxy of solar activity. Note the present day is on the left-hand side of this figure."

I would think that supports what i was saying about the solar cycles, to a point at least. I'm inclined to think that CO2 levels duplicate the Solar cycles because the CO2 also duplicates the temperature and the temperature is a result from the sun. But, this is just my opinion/interpretation and i don't have anything to back it up as of yet. If you dissagree then by all means, post counter arguments with sources

 

Lastly, the bit about the Ocean currents.

If you look at this link concerning climate change myths it says that i was wrong about there being some sort of "ice age" and that if the current was effected it would only slow, not stop completely. if you read the 6th paragraph it says:

"Few scientists think there will be a rapid shutdown of circulation. Most ocean models predict no more than a slowdown, probably towards the end of the century. This could slow or even reverse some of the warming due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, which might even be welcome in an overheated Europe, but the continent is not likely to get colder than it is at present."

 

I love the part where it says: "...or even reverse some of the warming due to human emissions of greenhouse gases..."

So i was right in a sense that it would help "Reverse" the climate change.

 

I think that was everything, if not someone let me know

 

Oh, and to Marat: I had heard rumors about the 'Climategate' scandal, something about emails being leaked that data had been skewed and falsified to add hype to the Global Warming movement, but i had forgotten about that.

Good job for being on the ball lol

[SMF]

Messenger. You have not presented any credible evidence to support your original claims. Instead you have taken the graphics of others and interpreted them according to your own bias. I wonder what the authors of some of the graphs you have copied would have to say about your conclusions. So, you have not provided any citations to substantiate your claims; you have only presented your own opinions.

 

Your most dramatic error involves the "400 Years of Sunspot Observations" graph which you present to demonstrate that the current increase in temperature is due to insolation from the sun. Unfortunately, instead the graph supports what I have said, sun activity has been flat since 1950. The 11 year cycle of sunspot number averages to a slight decline during the period of rapid warming and CO2 increase, not a dramatic increase. In any case, sunspot number only accounts for a few watts (/meter squared) of variability in the sun's energy. In science, in order to make your case you have to reference a scientific article in which the conclusions from the research actually support your claims. SM

 

Marat. Could you please explain for me how I should interpret your complete inability to support any of your scientific claims while continuing to make political comments on a science forum?

 

Lets start over. Find just one climate science publication in a peer reviewed journal in which the author suggests that an ice age is imminent and there should be some concern about this, or admit that you are wrong. Just one. SM

Edited April 12, 2011 by SMF

[swansont]

I did a little bit of hunting around for that graph and i found what what seems to be a decent source (But hey, what do i know, I'm just a 17 year old student who skipped earth scien

I'll admit, what the temp may be doing isn't "Normal" per say according to this graph, but we aren't all going to die. if we WERE then it would have happened already. 4 times.

Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that life was able to continue. (If you'll excuse my sarcasm)

 

The objection or concern isn't that "we are all going to die," but that makes a great talking point for a politician. This is known as a straw man argument, and appeal to ridicule. Logical fallacies have no place in a scientific argument. They make any conclusion invalid (though not necessarily wrong; one could still be correct by accident)

 

Also, i live in Maryland and I'd just like to say that we got snow a week into spring. Yeah.... Global warming...

 

Climate ≠ weather

 

Now, I'm not saying that the CO2 isn't contributing to the unusual temp. changes in some way, eventually everything effects everything else. I mean that's obvious. But i really dont think you can say 100% that CO2 (Or really any other Greenhouse gas) is causing "Global Warming"

 

Argument from personal incredulity, another logical fallacy. Basically you have set yourself up as the ultimate judge, and are asserting that you know more than people who have gone to college and graduate school and studied these phenomena for decades.

 

Oh, and to Marat: I had heard rumors about the 'Climategate' scandal, something about emails being leaked that data had been skewed and falsified to add hype to the Global Warming movement, but i had forgotten about that.

 

And apparently you'd forgotten (or missed) that the inquiries into the "scandal" showed that no data falsification had taken place.

[Marat]

Look at the Newsweek article from 1975 that I referenced and then ask yourself whether there was really no widespread concern about global cooling back then. Newsweek isn't the National Enquirer.

 

The problem with peer-reviewed articles in the field of climatology today is that scientists have split into two groups of competing peers, with 'denialists' (sounds like Holocaust denialists, and some of the emotion against them seems the same) retreating to their own journals after having been banned from the non-denialist-dominated journals, so we have the unusual situation in climatology of having different groups of 'peers' to pick from.

 

Also, I clearly abandoned political arguments on this thread after the moderator instructed us to do so.

[Edtharan]

If you look a the 'Global Cooling' article in Wikipedia you will find a full account of the panic in the 1960s and 1970s over the 'impending ice age,' brought to us by the same brand of intellectual marvels who are today telling us the exactly the opposite. It makes one suspect that climate science is not all that accurate. You can also find online one of the more embarrassing relics of that panic, the April 28, 1975 Newsweek article by Peter Gwynne on global cooling.

I actually remember some of these kinds of articles, however, they were in popular science magazines, not peer reviewed articles. If you were to do a bit more research on these articles, what you would find is that they were talking about the fact that according to the Milankovitch cycles we should be heading into an ice age (I even covered this in a previous post). In the past, the climate has indeed follwed these Milankovitch cycles, but now something is different.

 

Even though the Milankovitch cycles state that we should be hedding into an ice age, instead the climate is warming. If the natural tendency is for the Earth to be cooling, but it is warming, then what do you propose could be doing this?

 

We know that increasing the greenhouse gasses will cause warming, and that the amount of greenhouse gasses we are adding can account for most of it. So, if this interference by humans is not the cause of the warming, what then do you propose is? It has to be enough to not only cancel the ice age we are supposed to be going into, but also account for the warming above just cancelling out the ice age.

 

So, by this argument: "That scientists predicted we should be going into an ice age", you actually work to prove that Global Warming is true as you are admitting that it is much warmer than it should be.

 

The fact that there are at least two respected climate scientists, professor emeritus Reid Bryson from the University of Wisconsin, and current professor Richard Lindzen from M.I.T., who dispute the usually-accepted versions of climate change, should at least encourage people to approach the hypothesis of global warming with scientific scepticism rather than with a messianic zeal that seems eager to elevate global warming into the ever-expanding, quasi-religious Pantheon of Things We are Officially Required to Believe in order to be politically correct.

If you look at the rhetoric that flies around, it is the climate change deniers that use "messianic zeal" rather than climate scientists. They make claims that are not supported by evidence, cherry pick data, use straw-men arguments about global warming (such as climate scientists are using "messianic zeal" and other such tactics to try and make people agree with them.

 

Well established scientific theories such as black body radiation, conservation of energy and spectroscopy prove that global warming is real. It can't not be if the universe works as it has for the last 13 billion years or so (yes, there is lots of evidence that shows that black body radiation, conservation of energy and spectroscopy all worked billions of years ago).

 

It is the effects of this warming that is still under debate, not that it is occurring (as for it not to occur it would have to violate laws we know have operate for billions of years with no exception).

 

Since the Earth's climate certainly does change dramatically for non-anthropogenic reasons, unless we can securely distinguish its spontaneous temperature variations from those caused by human activity we should be careful about predicting with such certainty that greenhouse gas doom is on the horizon, rather than most of the climate change now detected being just the effect of our continued emergence from the last Ice Age.

Well rocks can fall for non-anthropogenic reasons, so does this mean it is impossible for me to move a rock? No, of course not. Just because in the past things have not occurred due to anthropogenic reasons (for instance before humans evolved) does not mean that they can't occur due to anthropogenic reasons.

 

We know that the Earth radiates the energy it recicevs from the sun as infra-red light. We know that CO² and other greenhouse gasses effectively scatter infra-red light. We know the amount that a given greenhouse gas will scatter infra-red light. We know (fairly well) how much greenhouse gas is being produce by people. We know (fairly well) how much greenhouse gasses are in the atmosphere.

 

From this we can work out how much effect humans are having on global warming. Further more, as you tried to argue earlier, we should be cooling, not warming. So the further argument that you present that we are coming out of an ice age is in direct contradiction to that earlier argument, so you are not even being self consistent in your arguments. However, according to the regular cycles that the Earth goes through, we should be entering an ice age rather than leaving it. Sure, 10,000 years ago we were coming out of an ice age (entering an Interglacial Period to give it the correct terminology), and the Earth did indeed warm then, but by now it should be entering a new Glacial Period (to give it the correct terminology).

 

Interesting to note here the "messianic" flavour of your post. It seems that only the climate change deniers seem to say "that greenhouse gas doom is on the horizon".

 

I have never heard a credible climate scientist use this (or similar) term. I have only ever heard this kind of phrase from climate change deniers trying to use ridicule to disprove climate science. This is a clear Appeal to Emotion fallacy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion ).

 

The fact that recently new record low temperatures, too far off the trend line of the posited global warming process to be within the range of reasonable statistical variations, are being recorded in various places around the world, such as the Canadian northwest last year, has to raise questions about whether the trend line has been correctly drawn.

Weather is not climate

 

Just because we experience a warmer or colder year has no significance to the climate. There are many things that effect weather and it is much more variable than the climate over short periods of time (or locations). So while the Canadian north west might have experience an extra cold year, other places might have experience warmer years, or maybe more violent storms, or unseasonal winds, etc.

 

To put it as simple as I can: Weather is different in different places and times. Climate deals with the whole Earth over a long period of time. They are different. Don't confuse one with the other.

 

When you do confuse them like you have, it does not actually help your position. What it does is show that you don't understand what is being discussed and makes the position you are arguing for seem weak because you can't present a proper argument to support it.

 

So, if you really want to support the position that climate change is not occurring, then it becomes in your best interest to learn as much as you can, from both sides of the argument and not dismiss one just because you disagree with it (asses it on its actual merits not on your biases).

[swansont]

The problem with peer-reviewed articles in the field of climatology today is that scientists have split into two groups of competing peers, with 'denialists' (sounds like Holocaust denialists, and some of the emotion against them seems the same) retreating to their own journals after having been banned from the non-denialist-dominated journals, so we have the unusual situation in climatology of having different groups of 'peers' to pick from.

 

No, not really. The "split" is asymmetric, by a large factor, much like in the creationism/evolution "debate."

[mattolsen]

The problem in addressing issues like this is that most information that we have as to the cause(s) of global warming are based on statistical and theoretical data. There are too many countless variables, and an ever growing desire to use this topic as a political tool. The focus, in the public eye, is on carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide can and does insulate the heat energy within our atmosphere but then so does water vapor, methane, and many other compounds. One possibility is that solar fluctuations result in higher amounts of solar radiation entering our atmosphere, by which more radiation is absorbed at the surface, more radiation is reflected, and more radiation is absorbed and reflected by greenhouse gases which in turn heat up and re radiate more solar radiation throughout our atmosphere. There are countless other possibilities which are all quite logical. I think the main problem with all of this is that politicians, news media, some hippy organizations, and worldwide governments take a stance on one side of the isle, or the other. This results in the division of global efforts, research, and collaboration to find out what the best way is to tackle this problem, if that's even possible.

[swansont]

They aren't really countless. There's only one source of significant radiation, and you can look at the absorption spectrum and see what compounds are present that have an effect. That's finite. Various ways of saying "it's really complicated" and implying that nobody has a clue is one tactic of the anti-GW crowd. But lots of things are complicated, and we manage to figure them out. Bottom line is we do have a clue.

 

As for basing the science on theory and statistical data, if you have a problem with that, and with uncertainty, you have a problem with basically all science.