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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: The Thread Where Everyone Argues If Man-Induced Climate Change Is Real
Noiseboy
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
And, of course, the researchers in question aren't doubting anthropogenic climate change. Just that they have a potential natural mechanism to account for a small proportion of recent global warming.

Isn't the controversy that Svensmark actually suggests the above is responsible for the greater part of climate change, whereas the consensus otherwise is that it is a very small part?
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Alan Cresswell

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That is what the Telegraph article said. It seems our library doesn't have a subscription to any electronic version of the Proceedings of the Royal Society (assuming it even exists electronically), so I can't check what the paper actually says. But, the abstract for the 1997 paper says "It is found that the observed variation of 3-4% of the global cloud cover during the recent solar cycle is strongly correlated with the cosmic ray flux." I'm not sure if he's claiming 3-4% variation in cloud cover equates with a sufficiently significant effect to be "responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing"

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Noiseboy
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Re-reading the Climate Scientists' blog (earlier ref), it isn't too clear exactly who over-hyped these results. The implication on the blog is that it was the Danish National Space Center that put out a press release that over-sold the ideas, I guess leading to a wildly innacurate headline from the Telegraph.

It's fascinating to see how easily a little bit of science gets conflated to a headline along the lines of "Climate Change nothing to do with us after all".

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Re-reading the Climate Scientists' blog (earlier ref), it isn't too clear exactly who over-hyped these results. The implication on the blog is that it was the Danish National Space Center that put out a press release that over-sold the ideas, I guess leading to a wildly innacurate headline from the Telegraph.

Without reading the actual report produced by the researchers, how do you know that the Telegraph has produced a 'wildly inaccurate headline'? I'm not saying they haven't, but asking you how do you know that they have? You have consistently advocated that me and other skeptics read the 'actual science' yet you are coming to a conclusion without having done so yourself.

quote:
It's fascinating to see how easily a little bit of science gets conflated to a headline along the lines of "Climate Change nothing to do with us after all".
Aren't you assuming here that science is stagnant? Say what this team claim actually has worth, are you saying it should be ignored simply because it might not fit with the present political message? Isn't the idea to be flexible where science is concerned? Science makes new discoveries, adapts what it has claimed previously in the light of new data, etc. If this reported research has actually hit on something, isn't it worth keeping an open mind to wait and see what further work may produce?

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Littlelady:
Without reading the actual report produced by the researchers, how do you know that the Telegraph has produced a 'wildly inaccurate headline'? I'm not saying they haven't, but asking you how do you know that they have?

OK, I've managed to access the article referenced in the Telegraph. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 463, 385-396 (2007) . The link should take you to the abstract, you may need to be subscribed to read the full text. There is no way that you can get from that article, which is a report of experimental studies of nucleation following ionisation of gases, to the Telegraph headline. The article doesn't mention global warming once.

Of course, the Telegraph article could be drawn largely from the book rather than this specific article.

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The link should take you to the abstract, you may need to be subscribed to read the full text.

Yes, it does and yes, you do! Pretty much the only bit of the abstract I understood was: 'concentrations relevant for the Earth's atmosphere'! Perhaps that was a subtle signal ...

quote:
Of course, the Telegraph article could be drawn largely from the book rather than this specific article.
That was the impression I got from reading the Telegraph article since the third paragraph begins 'In a book, to be published this week ...' [Biased] .

I was simply pulling Noiseboy up for doing exactly what he has fairly roundly criticised me for doing, namely: not reading 'the science' before reaching a conclusion.

PS: I've received the book you recommended to me Alan. It may or may not convince me but either way, from the looks of it, I'll be more informed by the time I've worked my way through it!

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Eutychus
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The Telegraph obviously thinks this is a hot [Biased] topic. Do your bit by not sending flowers to your Valentine (and feel guilty about hindering third world development just as you feel good about reducing carbon emissions...).

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
The Telegraph obviously thinks this is a hot [Biased] topic. Do your bit by not sending flowers to your Valentine (and feel guilty about hindering third world development just as you feel good about reducing carbon emissions...).

[Big Grin]

This reminds me of a moment I had last week.

I was drying my hands in the bathroom at work when I noticed the hand dryer I was using had a label on it telling me that by using this hand dryer I was saving the rainforest. But I realised that while I might be saving the rainforest by not using paper towels, I was using electricity which was burning fossil fuels which meant I was (according to some) contributing to global warming.

Caring for the environment seemed so simple once upon a time.

[ 12. February 2007, 17:26: Message edited by: Littlelady ]

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'When ideas fail, words come in very handy' ~ Goethe

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Clint Boggis
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Littlelady:
quote:
are you saying it should be ignored simply because it might not fit with the present political message?
Was this a slip? Is this what you really think: that we're not really talking about science but looking to scientists to endorse our political prejudices?
.

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Clint Boggis:
Littlelady:
quote:
are you saying it should be ignored simply because it might not fit with the present political message?
Was this a slip? Is this what you really think: that we're not really talking about science but looking to scientists to endorse our political prejudices?
.

No, that is not what I meant.

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'When ideas fail, words come in very handy' ~ Goethe

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Noiseboy
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Little lady - if you follow the whole thread on this report, you'll hopefully see that having read the summaries, I've reffed the author back into the 90's, and his science is happily part of the climate change whole. However, with a book out, these reports are now wildly inflating the original science, which Alan has filled us in on some of the details of. That's it, really - don't think there's any need to jump up and down and point at me!

This part of the science is not new, and does not change anything which the IPCC report recently affirmed. As ever, it is the mainstream media that gets things wrong in misrepresenting it (and yes, the fact that it is the Telegraph is no great surprise).

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Noiseboy
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Excuse the double post, but felt the urge to write a little more on this last point. Littlelady is seemingly very suspicious of my motives (or perhaps just me!) so thought I'd elaborate a tad on my logic on this.

I am not a climate scientist, and so will never be qualified enough to sift through each individual piece of science and evaluate each on its own merits. I need those much more qualified than I to do this, then I listen to them. The problem comes with contradictory advice. Happily, in the case of ACC, this is pretty thin on the ground. The IPCC is an extraordinary collection of climate scientists, and they have put aside various dramatic possibilities and speculations to arrive at a definitive conservative consensus. Also happily for me (and other interested lay folk), the scientists themselves keep a blog where they can raise issues from all sides as they appear in the media, and try to correct embelishments and misunderstandings (which seem to come as often from hysterical environmentalists as right wing lobbyists).

So when a new (to me) thing pops up in the media, I just search their archive to see what the story is. I am hopelessly ill-qualified to judge it on its own merits, I'd be quite deluded if I believed I could objectively come to a conclusion on each piece of science. In this case I found a good deal of discussion on the subject, found the general view was that it was perfectly valid as scientific enquiry, but had only a relatively small consequence. Attempts to conflate the argument to something along the lines of the Telegraph headline were roundly trounced. Being as they - as the world's leading experts in their field - know what they are talking about and have an open forum to debate the issues, in the absence of any further info I'll stick to following their general view.

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Mad Geo

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Sheesh, where to start?

I am a new “believer” to Global Warming after having been a long time-disbeliever. I think the preponderance of scientific papers and other evidence (no IPCC report needed, thanks) shows that humans are having an effect. Not ALL the papers mind you, but most. I truly understand people’s global warming skepticism because they are possibly getting their science filtered through the crappy media, or worse, politicians etc. My advice to those that are skeptics is to have an open mind and check sciencedaily.com or Scientific American or New Scientist or other science sources for stories that support or refute global warming and look at all kinds of articles, not merely the ones labeled global warming. Look at the natural world globally, do you like what you see going on? I don’t.

I have the following other thoughts/opinions:

Cutting back on hydrocarbons is a joke, it is almost certain to be too little too late at best or a feel-good band aid solution that costs money at worst. Only draconian measures would actually affect changes and few governments would allow it.

Anything with “Kyoto” in the sentence needs a punch line to the joke. Many of the countries that signed it couldn’t keep the Kyoto Protocol, and merely used it as a publicity stunt. NEXT!

Saying America is the problem is also a joke, with the exception that we need to get involved to help slow this global warming down. The stuff that America uses is jobs in our country and other countries. If we stopped our “unsustainable lifestyle” we all would go broke as the world economy collapsed. And if you live in the UK/EU, your lifestyle is almost certainly also “Unsustainable” by environmental standards. Don’t throw stones in your glass church.

IMO, large scale geo-engineering is the way this will be solved. While we develop our inevitable alternative sources of energy, especially nuclear, we will need to slow down the heating through engineering technologies. Of course, this will have to get a lot worse before states will want to build those kinds of huge projects.

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Noiseboy:
don't think there's any need to jump up and down and point at me!

Oh, I aint jumping up and down! I haven't the energy to do that. I just couldn't resist making the point. After all, you've been fairly vocal on other threads in making a similar point! I would still recommend you read the book, which is what the Telegraph article was referring to, before you assume the Telegraph is over-egging things. Me, as I've said elsewhere, well I'm a skeptic when it comes to all things reported in the media. But I'm consistent in that approach. My point was that you don't seem to be. [Biased]

quote:
Saying America is the problem is also a joke
<snip>
And if you live in the UK/EU, your lifestyle is almost certainly also “Unsustainable” by environmental standards. Don’t throw stones in your glass church.

I couldn't agree more with both these statements. It seems to me that the world needs a scapegoat, as usual, and America happens to be it at present. Your point about the UK is totally valid. Even within the EU we are totally crappy when it comes to being environmentally aware as a nation, so I don't think any Brit (of any variety) has any grounds to point the finger Pondways.

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'When ideas fail, words come in very handy' ~ Goethe

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Myrrh
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Has anyone correlated the demise of rain forest in S.America and deforestation in the Far East against rising levels of CO2 in recent years?

And how do volcano eruptions figure in this?

[Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Volcanoes release more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html ]

Somewhere in the original thread, possibly the IPCC report, I recall that 670,000 years was given as a marker date, that CO2 emissions are greater now than any other time in this period - but how have they risen since the beginning of that marker date? I can't see any data relating to the whole period of increased global warming which has been contributing to the end of the last ice age. (Which makes the first graphs in the IPCC report appear to fault modern man's contribution but which could be an insignificant blip in a larger time scale).

Is all the high concentration now due to man alone or to other factors such as increased volcanic activity which I assume has been the main factor in bringing the ice age to an end?

Myrrh

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
Has anyone correlated the demise of rain forest in S.America and deforestation in the Far East against rising levels of CO2 in recent years?

I'm sure they have. And, deforestation certainly hasn't helped slow the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

quote:
And how do volcano eruptions figure in this?

[Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Volcanoes release more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html ]

Totally irrelevant. In the 2000-2005 period fossil carbon emissions (ie: that due to burning of fossil fuels and ignoring other human activity such as deforestation) is estimated to be around 25Gt of CO2 per year. That's about 200 times the amount of CO2 from volcanoes. Besides, volcanoes also emit lots of other stuff such as sulphates and aerosols that tend to cool the earth. Large volcanic eruptions have been shown to have a net cooling effect for several years - ie: the aerosols etc cool the earth more than the extra CO2 heats it.

quote:
Somewhere in the original thread, possibly the IPCC report, I recall that 670,000 years was given as a marker date, that CO2 emissions are greater now than any other time in this period - but how have they risen since the beginning of that marker date? I can't see any data relating to the whole period of increased global warming which has been contributing to the end of the last ice age.
The figure is 650000 years, which is the extent of ice-core data from the Antarctic. The ice-core data gives CO2 concentrations of between 180 and 300ppm for most of that period, currently CO2 concentrations stand at over 380ppm. If you want data for the period since the last ice-age, figure SPM-1 from the latest IPCC Summary for Policy makers gives atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and NO over the last 10000 years.

quote:
Is all the high concentration now due to man alone or to other factors such as increased volcanic activity which I assume has been the main factor in bringing the ice age to an end?
Volcanic activity is a very minor effect, as pointed out above. Plus, it's not been implicated with the end of the ice age (the generally accepted explanation of the recent ice-age cycles is that it's linked to orbital variations which changes the amount of solar energy impacting the earth coupled with CO2 related feedback cycles). The main question raised by the sceptics isn't "is the increased CO2 in the atmosphere due to human activity?" because there's no real doubt that it is - all that coal we burn and all those forests we cut down can't do anything else but increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The question they ask is "are those increased greenhouse gases enough, on their own, to account for the observed warming?" often citing increases in solar energy input or changes in cosmic ray flux as other (entirely natural) causes.

[ 13. February 2007, 13:32: Message edited by: Alan Cresswell ]

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Mad Geo

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Volcano Information. Volcanoes actually help cool the planet temporarily. But as Alan said, their net contribution is comparitively minor in the overall scheme of things.

Much of these things are studied, debated, estimates derived, plugged into models, and projections derived. What makes me more nervous is the actual observations of the natural world and the changes we are seeing.

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:

Somewhere in the original thread, possibly the IPCC report, I recall that 670,000 years was given as a marker date, that CO2 emissions are greater now than any other time in this period - but how have they risen since the beginning of that marker date? I can't see any data relating to the whole period of increased global warming which has been contributing to the end of the last ice age.

The figure is 650000 years, which is the extent of ice-core data from the Antarctic. The ice-core data gives CO2 concentrations of between 180 and 300ppm for most of that period, currently CO2 concentrations stand at over 380ppm. If you want data for the period since the last ice-age, figure SPM-1 from the latest IPCC Summary for Policy makers gives atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and NO over the last 10000 years.
For most of that period? Does that mean at times it was even closer or equal to what it is now? (since they say it hasn't been higher).


quote:
Is all the high concentration now due to man alone or to other factors such as increased volcanic activity which I assume has been the main factor in bringing the ice age to an end?
Volcanic activity is a very minor effect, as pointed out above. Plus, it's not been implicated with the end of the ice age (the generally accepted explanation of the recent ice-age cycles is that it's linked to orbital variations which changes the amount of solar energy impacting the earth coupled with CO2 related feedback cycles). The main question raised by the sceptics isn't "is the increased CO2 in the atmosphere due to human activity?" because there's no real doubt that it is - all that coal we burn and all those forests we cut down can't do anything else but increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The question they ask is "are those increased greenhouse gases enough, on their own, to account for the observed warming?" often citing increases in solar energy input or changes in cosmic ray flux as other (entirely natural) causes. [/qb][/QUOTE]I'm tending towards agreeing with this. It's obvious we're contributing something, and surely it's a good thing to stop adding poisons to our atmosphere and organic cycle, but it doesn't quite gel that the added 80ppm of CO2 is the real cause of global warming - these cycles have been going on for rather a long time and what industry was there 10,000 years ago which caused the ice to melt and the sea levels to rise so dramatically?

Myrrh

[ 13. February 2007, 17:12: Message edited by: Myrrh ]

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Myrrh
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..not terribly well edited.

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Dave W.
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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell
The figure is 650000 years, which is the extent of ice-core data from the Antarctic. The ice-core data gives CO2 concentrations of between 180 and 300ppm for most of that period, currently CO2 concentrations stand at over 380ppm. If you want data for the period since the last ice-age, figure SPM-1 from the latest IPCC Summary for Policy makers gives atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and NO over the last 10000 years.

For most of that period? Does that mean at times it was even closer or equal to what it is now? (since they say it hasn't been higher).

No - the current value of 380 is much higher than anything in the ice core record. You can see a plot of CO2 from an ice core going back 650,000 years before present here, courtesy of this article from RealClimate.
quote:
[...] these cycles have been going on for rather a long time and what industry was there 10,000 years ago which caused the ice to melt and the sea levels to rise so dramatically?
The ice age/inter-ice age cycles observed are believed to be associated with Milankovitch cycles; slow changes in the earth's orbit, axis tilt, etc. result in changes to the pattern of solar heating (e.g. more or less heating of poles vs. tropics) which, when combined with ice sheet and/or CO2 feedback mechanisms, cause large changes in temperature and climate.

But the fact that there are also non-anthropogenic causes of climate variation doesn't mean that our GHG emissions aren't causing the current warming. (It's true that murder is sometimes committed with arsenic - but that seems an unlikely cause of death in a case where you have a recently fired pistol and a corpse with a sudden case of acute lead poisoning...)

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell
The figure is 650000 years, which is the extent of ice-core data from the Antarctic. The ice-core data gives CO2 concentrations of between 180 and 300ppm for most of that period, currently CO2 concentrations stand at over 380ppm. If you want data for the period since the last ice-age, figure SPM-1 from the latest IPCC Summary for Policy makers gives atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and NO over the last 10000 years.

For most of that period? Does that mean at times it was even closer or equal to what it is now? (since they say it hasn't been higher).

No - the current value of 380 is much higher than anything in the ice core record.
Yeah, my "most of that period" was basically to say "all of the period except the last 200 years". If you compare the plot Dave just linked to (for the last 650000 years) with the one I mentioned in the IPCC report (for the last 10000 years) you'll see that on the long time scale there was a "rapid" (in geological terms) increase in CO2 concentration from 180 to 260ppm in 10ky, starting 20ky ago - which marks the start of the end of the last ice age. In comparison, for the shorter time scale data presented in the IPCC report shows an increase from 300 to 380ppm over the last 50 years - that is the same amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere in 50 years as nature managed in 10 thousand.

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
]Yeah, my "most of that period" was basically to say "all of the period except the last 200 years". If you compare the plot Dave just linked to (for the last 650000 years) with the one I mentioned in the IPCC report (for the last 10000 years) you'll see that on the long time scale there was a "rapid" (in geological terms) increase in CO2 concentration from 180 to 260ppm in 10ky, starting 20ky ago - which marks the start of the end of the last ice age. In comparison, for the shorter time scale data presented in the IPCC report shows an increase from 300 to 380ppm over the last 50 years - that is the same amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere in 50 years as nature managed in 10 thousand.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
.

But the fact that there are also non-anthropogenic causes of climate variation doesn't mean that our GHG emissions aren't causing the current warming. (It's true that murder is sometimes committed with arsenic - but that seems an unlikely cause of death in a case where you have a recently fired pistol and a corpse with a sudden case of acute lead poisoning...)

Not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing a dying body in the library with a fired pistol and the body actually dying from arsenic poisoning, no bullet wound at all.

A rise in CO2 levels is not proven to be correlated to global warming as cause - all the latest figures show that this is an unusual blip and ice ages have been coming and going during the majority of the periods of low Co2. CO2 could just as well be a product of global warming.

We are actually at the end period of an ice age which rather dramatically changed northern Europe around 10-12 thousand years ago raising sea levels to what we have now, Ireland and Britain separated and France a tunnel away.

Where were the CO2 emissions contributing to this actually coming from when there was no industry 10,000 years ago to produce such a dramatic effect? What exactly is this rise of 80ppm supposed to prove over 20thousand years? Since in the last 50 years we have a comparable rise, also 80ppm, shouldn't we be seeing a equal amount of effects as that supposedly produced by the earlier extra 80ppm C02? Why aren't we all huddled together on our mountains?


Myrrh

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
A rise in CO2 levels is not proven to be correlated to global warming as cause - all the latest figures show that this is an unusual blip and ice ages have been coming and going during the majority of the periods of low Co2. CO2 could just as well be a product of global warming.

It's difficult to see how, as there is good physics proving that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that's partly responsible (there are other greenhouse gases) for blanketting the earth and keeping it warm, rises in CO2 can do anything other than increase global temperatures. Unless, other feedback mechanisms (eg: cloud cover) that would tend to cool the earth compensate entirely for the extra greenhouse effect. Most of the work examined by bodies like the IPCC is actually mostly concerned with how different mechanisms interact - eg: to answer the question "hotter seas=more evaporation=more cloud ... does that extra cloud cool the earth enough to compensate for the extra CO2?".

As for describing the current CO2 concentration as an "unusual blip", that's possibly the understatement of the century. We're talking about the highest CO2 concentration for the last million years, probably for the last 20 million years. Which follows a rate of increase 200 times faster than any known natural increase of comparable size (eg: the post-glacial warmings of the last 650ky). Yep, that's a highly unusual blip.

quote:
We are actually at the end period of an ice age which rather dramatically changed northern Europe around 10-12 thousand years ago raising sea levels to what we have now, Ireland and Britain separated and France a tunnel away.

Where were the CO2 emissions contributing to this actually coming from when there was no industry 10,000 years ago to produce such a dramatic effect?

If natural cycles were being followed we should be well past the mid point of an inter-glacial (a warm period between large scale glacial coverage of the earth). If natural cycles were being followed, there's no reason to expect anything other than a general reduction in CO2 levels and a cooling of the earth. That's clearly not happening.

The CO2 that drove the warming at the end of the last glacial period 10ky ago came from many natural sources. I'm not an expert on the subject. But, changes in the amount of solar energy reaching the earth (via the Milankovitch cycles in the earths orbit that moves us further and closer to the Sun over 100ky periods) change the temperature balance, which changes the ecosystem and physical processes that results in less (or more, depending on which way the cycle is going) CO2 capture which results in a feedback that drives the climate further than the change in sunlight would do alone. Generally, it's the physical processes, rather than the biosphere, that are thought to be most important. The oceans, in particular, are hugh reservoirs of dissolved CO2. Cold water stores more CO2 than warm, and ice over the surface would further prevent CO2 leaving the oceans into the air (and, ice itself traps gases, including CO2). As the ice melts, CO2 is released from the ice and underlying sea, which raises the temperature, warming the oceans and letting more CO2 out. Plus, you get methane released from defrosting permafrost to add to the feedback.

quote:
What exactly is this rise of 80ppm supposed to prove over 20thousand years? Since in the last 50 years we have a comparable rise, also 80ppm, shouldn't we be seeing a equal amount of effects as that supposedly produced by the earlier extra 80ppm C02?
The climate is a (relatively) slow moving system. It takes time for the effect of that extra CO2 to feed through to increased temperatures. Think of a cold night and you're shivering in bed - putting an extra blanket on the bed doesn't warm the bed instantly, it takes time for that extra insulation to take effect.

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It's difficult to see how, as there is good physics proving that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that's partly responsible (there are other greenhouse gases) for blanketting the earth and keeping it warm, rises in CO2 can do anything other than increase global temperatures. Unless, other feedback mechanisms (eg: cloud cover) that would tend to cool the earth compensate entirely for the extra greenhouse effect.

I still don't see the bullet hole. I can't see anything on any chart to show real facts proving that a high CO2 reading is an actual cause, the blip could still be showing that it's an effect, we could simply be adding to the effect of a natural cycle, which is still not answered. What actually caused the ice to melt 12k years ago? There was no industry. There was more CO2 around. There was an equal volume of extra blip.


quote:
Most of the work examined by bodies like the IPCC is actually mostly concerned with how different mechanisms interact - eg: to answer the question "hotter seas=more evaporation=more cloud ... does that extra cloud cool the earth enough to compensate for the extra CO2?".
And talking of the data, I haven't been able to make a lot of sense from it. Charts of figures don't relate to each other. It's just disparate bits of information with no overall comparison over time, and ice ages have been coming and going for millions of years - where's the overall picture?


quote:
As for describing the current CO2 concentration as an "unusual blip", that's possibly the understatement of the century. We're talking about the highest CO2 concentration for the last million years, probably for the last 20 million years. Which follows a rate of increase 200 times faster than any known natural increase of comparable size (eg: the post-glacial warmings of the last 650ky). Yep, that's a highly unusual blip.
OK, maybe I'm being immensely thick here and I've missed it (or, to be kind to myself, have missed it in the abundance of data), but where does this come from? The figure is 'highest in the last 650,000 years'.


quote:
MyrrhWe are actually at the end period of an ice age which rather dramatically changed northern Europe around 10-12 thousand years ago raising sea levels to what we have now, Ireland and Britain separated and France a tunnel away.

Where were the CO2 emissions contributing to this actually coming from when there was no industry 10,000 years ago to produce such a dramatic effect?

If natural cycles were being followed we should be well past the mid point of an inter-glacial (a warm period between large scale glacial coverage of the earth). If natural cycles were being followed, there's no reason to expect anything other than a general reduction in CO2 levels and a cooling of the earth. That's clearly not happening.[/qb][/quote]

What - you actually want another ice age?



quote:
MyrrhWhat exactly is this rise of 80ppm supposed to prove over 20thousand years? Since in the last 50 years we have a comparable rise, also 80ppm, shouldn't we be seeing a equal amount of effects as that supposedly produced by the earlier extra 80ppm C02?
quote:
The climate is a (relatively) slow moving system. It takes time for the effect of that extra CO2 to feed through to increased temperatures. Think of a cold night and you're shivering in bed - putting an extra blanket on the bed doesn't warm the bed instantly, it takes time for that extra insulation to take effect.
OK, but this is back to my gripe (and I accept that it could be me not seeing it), where do I find a chart that gives me accurate data re rise of CO2 correlated to the effects of even of one ending of an ice age. At the moment all I've got is there was equal 80ppm blip more around 10,000 years ago in an end of ice age cycle that began 20,000 years ago.


Myrrh

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Dave W.
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Myrrh -

If you're interested in learning about the consensus explanation for paleoclimate changes (like ice age cycles) and why it is thought that what we're seeing now is different, you might try the last IPCC report, available on-line here. Chapter 2 is titled Observed Climate Variability and Change, and section 2.4 specifically addresses the question "how rapidly did climate change in the distant past?" There you can find a figure comparing plots of temperature (over Antarctica) with CO2 and methane concentrations over the last 400,000 years. (Since it's from the 2001 report, it doesn't reach as far back as some more recent results, but it does show how things varied during the last 4 ice ages.)

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Myrrh
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Thanks Dave, yes I'm interested I'll take a look. I'm struggling a bit coming to a subject I really know nothing about, like walking into a library having just read the first Janet and John book. [Smile]

Myrrh

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Alan Cresswell

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If coming at it with virtually no background, you may also find Chapter One: The Climate System, an Overview helpful.

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Noiseboy
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Some general thoughts having caught up on another few days posts (OK, I was bored at work!). Both in life and on these hallowed boards, I think I'm seeing a pattern emerging regarding people's response to ACC. It's a bit like the famous stages of grief, and it goes something like this.

1. Climate change isn't real. Anyone who looks into this for a few minutes realises that the science can't support this, so they usually quickly move on to:

2. Man-induced climate change isn't real. "How do we know man causes this? What about 200 years ago - it was much colder then anyway. What about volcanos / sunspots / cosmic rays / little ice age / badgers?" etc. Eventually people realise that, amazing though it may seem, the world's climate scientists have actually thought about all these things, and factored them in already. And the conclusion is that overall we did, in fact, do it. Perhaps it is no suprise, therefore, that every country on Earth has now accepted the science that man-induced climate change is real. But where next? At this point, the beleagured person often moves to either:

3a. There's nothing we can do about it anyway, or:

3b. Technology will bail us out somehow.

Al Gore has said that the 3a response is very common, that faced with all the available evidence, people simply switch from denial to despair. It seems to me that this simply replaces one form of science denial for another - the denial that having got us in this mess, mankind is now utterly powerless to change the future outcome. There are some scientists who would actually agree with this since we may have already passed the point of no return, but they are in a minority. This is in contrast to the consensus view that characterises the reality of ACC. The consensus position (as much as there is one) is very simple - by reducing our collective output of greenhouse gas emissions, we will reduce the net effect of their damage to the planet. By contrast, if left unchecked, the effects will be increasingly severe. Ultimately, the possibility exists of a runaway positive feedback effect on the climate, eventually leading to the apocalyptic end-of-civilisation-as-we-know-it (I know some will swtich off at this point for scare-mongering, but this is nevertheless the scientific long-term worst case scenario, and thus can't be brushed under the carpet without examining the case).

Proponents of either the 3a or 3b view often say that to imagine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is living in cloud cuckoo land, that people need to "wake up", "get real" etc etc, assuming that any action whatsoever spells cataclysmic doom for any country's economy. There seems little evidence to me to support this view, but quite a bit to support the opposite. The UK government's Stern report spells out the potential disasterous economic effects of inaction - massively more damaging to the global economy of action. Even more inexplicably, the technology actually exists right now to massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions without a negative effect to the world economy - nuclear power (useless UK government consultations notwithstanding), hybrid / electric cars, renewable energy sources, better building design etc. Even the rising and incresingly polluting China and India have signalled they are moving towards change.

There is more evidence that we have the potential and capability to act. We have faced huge global threats before - twice in the last century. During WWII, for example, people accepted that in order to preserve our civilisation, sacrifices would have to be made. Conscription and rationing were both drastic measures - but we did them and they worked. A reduction in personal freedoms was willingly accepted in order to preserve a greater freedom. In comparison to those sacrifices, the proposed climate change solutions are a walk in the park.

Since all governments in the world from communist China to neo-con America now accept the reality of the threat of global warming, what evidence is there that we will remain paralysed by inaction? There is no sound logical, technological or practical reason why global emissions cannot be significantly reduced. So why has progress not been quicker? The only significant negative factor is political will. This, fortunately, is changing - not least because it is us, the electorate, that is the driver. And the electorate is finally waking up.

It seems that some - including many in the Bush administration who have already moved from 1 to 2 - prefer the 3b scenario. In stark contrast to the relative ease of acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some say we should carry on as we are wait for some shiny new technology to save us from ourselves. Richard Branson is currently offerring $25m to anyone who can come up with a way to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and do something with it. The US government have even suggested a literally shiny idea of putting giant mirrors in space to reflect the sun (at best this technology is thought to be 100 years away, if feasable at all, with potentially disasterous side effects). Well, let's hope Branson does find someone. But it is only that - a hope. Currently no technology exists which reduces current greenhouse gas levels on a significant scale. It seems to replace one type of denial with another (that we cannot reduce gas emissions with currently available technology), and wishful thinking. The search for new technology should be stepped up - but not at the cost of inaction otherwise.

Each denial stage will I guess always have its supporters - even 1 and 2, against all evidence and global governmental and scientific consensus. But the science is so overwhelming that once word spreads and people start finding out for themselves, my hunch is that many more will join the throng that have already eventually arrived at:

4. Acceptance. Changes are both essential and possible. We can sustain current lifestyles up to a point, better using existing technology such as nuclear, renweables, electric cars etc, designing new houses and buildings that do not need air-con or even central heating. Indeed, on these measures, it's even easy to imagine quality of life improving. Unfortunately however, it is difficult to envisage that these factors alone will be enough. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that more serious changes will be needed, and these will impact on our lives more directly. Limitless personal car use and cheap-flights-for-all both look vulnerable.

Sure, it's my own pop-psychology, but this, perhaps, is how the comparison with grief works - we are afraid of the death of our very easy, obscenely comfortable consequence-free existence. My own view on a good day is that technology and (with more difficulty) gradual population reduction will enable a transition from unsustainable to sustainable to be moderately painless in the west. As a bonus, we will probably end up more healthy - all assuming that governents around the world embrace the ideology of essential change, and work to make it is attractive as possible.

There is a big but to temper this optimism however. As ever, it will be the world's poorest who will suffer the most, no matter what the future. IMHO, if we have to mourn a minor reduction in convenience of our extravagent western lifestyles to limit this as far as possible, than so be it.

(final PS to Littlelady - I've alreasy explained why reading Svensmark's book is not perhaps the best use of my time. I've already explained how I as a lay person can best evaluate the available science in my last post - wishful thinking that the lone voices are right and the overwhelming consensus is wrong doesn't help).

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Mad Geo

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Wow.

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Wow.

Where's the power coming from? Wouldn't be fossil fuels would it?

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Mad Geo

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Nuclear.

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Littlelady
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That's ok then. [Smile]

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Noiseboy
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Hey, and it's not just the rock stars...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6364663.stm

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Littlelady
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quote:
Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Hey, and it's not just the rock stars...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6364663.stm

Rock stars just jump on bandwagons. It wasn't so long ago they were all concerned about Africa. What happened to concern for Africa anyway?

Noiseboy, didn't you notice in your link that the agreement was non-binding? In other words, it's meaningless.

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Some general thoughts having caught up on another few days posts (OK, I was bored at work!). Both in life and on these hallowed boards, I think I'm seeing a pattern emerging regarding people's response to ACC. It's a bit like the famous stages of grief, and it goes something like this.

1. Climate change isn't real. Anyone who looks into this for a few minutes realises that the science can't support this, so they usually quickly move on to:

2. Man-induced climate change isn't real. "How do we know man causes this? What about 200 years ago - it was much colder then anyway. What about volcanos / sunspots / cosmic rays / little ice age / badgers?" etc. Eventually people realise that, amazing though it may seem, the world's climate scientists have actually thought about all these things, and factored them in already. And the conclusion is that overall we did, in fact, do it. Perhaps it is no suprise, therefore, that every country on Earth has now accepted the science that man-induced climate change is real.

I'm finding it increasingly ludicrous to think that anyone can believe that +80ppm CO2 in the last century is the driving force behind the earth's climate changes we're seeing now except that 'someone' is relying on the majority to do precisely what you and I have done - take it on trust that the figures aren't being manipulated because the data available are so complex, but manipulated we are. Temperature changes are given regardless of the patterns of extreme cold even in the last couple of millenniums (the 'mini-ice ages') and CO2 concentrations have been thousands of times greater than now in the millions of years earth's climate has been changing.

CO2 is practically insignificant in percentage terms of atmospheric gases, around 0.03%, compared with around 77% Nitrogen and 21% oxygen (and of the 'greenhouse gases' it's the majority water vapour, 1.95%, which is taken out of figures to give an inflated reading for CO2).

There have been times in our prehistoric past when C02 levels were well over 7000 ppm and one period of low level CO2 much as we have today it was also an ice age.

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/atmos_gases.html & http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html#anchor147264


And talking of ice ages, let me begin with the one we began coming out of around 20 thousand years ago.


quote:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/073.htm

As more detailed information becomes available, the timing of the Holocene maximum warmth is seen to differ across the globe. There appears to be a south to north pattern, with southern latitudes displaying maximum warming a few millennia before the Northern Hemisphere regions. Interestingly, the Holocene appears by far the longest warm “stable” period (as far as seen from the Antarctic climate record) over the last 400 ky, with profound implications for the development of civilisation (Petit et al., 1999).

Which means that global warming especially during the last 10 thousand years is why we have the abundance of plant and animal forms we have today, and generally life as we know it.


The Holocene http://www.jamestown-ri.info/holocene.htm


Ice Ages are the norm for planet earth - we're still in one now and coming to the end of a small 10ky window of opportunity of global warming within this.

Ice Ages:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/iceage_01.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understanding/iceage_02.shtml

Temperature
John Baez October 1, 2006

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/


What we're actually in at the moment, coming to end of one 20,000 year cycle, is cooling - the temperature trend has been downwards, back to colder conditions from a high peak between 8-6 thousand years ago (average around 2 degrees Centigrade higher than now).
http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/figures/5_18.html


And since this 20,000 year cycle comes between longer 100,000 year cycles what we're heading for in around a thousand years time is another 100,000 years of bitter cold ice age which will kill off the majority of life forms which are unable to adapt.

That's the real scenario here, global cooling. If it were only so simple to produce more CO2 to warm the place up...


These changes can happen with a rapidity that is truly astonishing:


quote:
2.4.3 How Fast did Climate Change during the Glacial Period?

The most extreme manifestation of climate change in the geological record is the transition from full glacial to full inter-glacial conditions. During the most recent glacial cycle, peak glacial conditions prevailed from about 25 to 18 ky BP. Temperatures close to those of today were restored by approximately 10 ky BP. However, warming was not continuous. The deglaciation was accomplished in two main stages, with a return to colder conditions (Younger Dryas/Antarctic Cold Reversal) or, at the least, a pause in the deglaciation.

The central Greenland ice core record (GRIP and GISP2) has a near annual resolution across the entire glacial to Holocene transition, and reveals episodes of very rapid change. The return to the cold conditions of the Younger Dryas from the incipient inter-glacial warming 13,000 years ago took place within a few decades or less (Alley et al., 1993). The warming phase, that took place about 11,500 years ago, at the end of the Younger Dryas was also very abrupt and central Greenland temperatures increased by 7°C or more in a few decades... continued on:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/074.htm

quote:
2.4.4 How Stable was the Previous Inter-glacial?...

2.4.5. Summary....

During the Holocene smaller but locally quite large climate changes occurred sporadically; similar changes may have occurred in the last inter-glacial. Evidence is increasing, therefore, that a rapid reorganisation of atmospheric and ocean circulation (time-scales of several decades or more) can occur during inter-glacial periods without human interference.


http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/075.htm

Without human interference dramatic changes can take place in a matter of decades. In other words, we're not in control. Our imput is even more inconsequential than the piddling amount of CO2 floating around.


Myrrh

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
I'm finding it increasingly ludicrous to think that anyone can believe that +80ppm CO2 in the last century is the driving force behind the earth's climate changes we're seeing now

Of course, it depends what you mean by "driving force". CO2 is one of the main atmospheric gases responsible for maintaining the temperature of the earth at a reasonable level (mean temperature of 14°C rather then -10°C, and with much less day-night variation). But, it's probably pushing it to call CO2 the "driving force" behind the climate - the Sun is a much stronger contender for that title.

Though, it's probably probably not inaccurate to say that the source of that extra CO2 (ie: people burning fossil fuels) is the driving force for recent changes in the climate. People will certainly know what you mean by that.

quote:
take it on trust that the figures aren't being manipulated because the data available are so complex, but manipulated we are.
Do you have any evidence that the data has been manipulated? Or, have you found any credible climate scientist or atmospheric physicist (or any other moderately qualified scientist) that can support a claim that the work of 1000s of scientists published in peer reviewed journals over the last 20 years or so is misrepresenting that data? (I'd accept that some newspaper, and similar, presentations of the findings probably are misrepresenting the data. Some may even be setting out to deliberately manipulate people).

quote:
Temperature changes are given regardless of the patterns of extreme cold even in the last couple of millenniums (the 'mini-ice ages')
Generally, they're given simply relative to the mean temperature of the period 1990-2000, sometimes relative to the mean "predindustrial" temperature (something like mean 1700-1800 temperature). How else would you present temperature change, apart from relative to a baseline? Even if you chose a different basepoint, the plots would be the same - just moved up or down relative to the time axis depending on what base point chosen.

If there were "extreme cold" events in the past they would appears as negative blips in the plots of temperature. And, indeed, if you get plots of norht western european temperatures (eg: the UK historic temperatures) then you will see the blips for the 'mini-ice age'. But if you look at global mean temperatures that simply disappears because it was a small, localised event that had no substantial impact beyond our little bit of the planet.

quote:
and CO2 concentrations have been thousands of times greater than now in the millions of years earth's climate has been changing.
No one's disputing that. And, when CO2 levels were much higher most life as we know it would struggle to survive. [Roll Eyes]

quote:
CO2 is practically insignificant in percentage terms of atmospheric gases
Now, that's one of the most stupid arguments I've ever heard. Perhaps I should put 200mg of arsenic in your dinner. That'll be OK, after all it's an insignificant percentage of the total mass of your dinner. Sometimes, things have an impact above and beyond the actual amount present.

Besides, in relationship to the greenhouse effect you need to consider those gases that interact with infra-red radiation; the others may as well not be there. That's carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3) which make up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere in total, and water vapour which is about 1% (though highly variable).

quote:
(and of the 'greenhouse gases' it's the majority water vapour, 1.95%, which is taken out of figures to give an inflated reading for CO2).
Actually, water vapour is taken out mainly because it's so variable and non-persistant in the atmosphere (increase water vapour and you'll rapidly get more clouds and rainfall bringing the concentration back down again). And, it's hardly as though CO2 is the only greenhouse gas discussed. Most plots will give methane and N2O data as well.

quote:
There have been times in our prehistoric past when C02 levels were well over 7000 ppm and one period of low level CO2 much as we have today it was also an ice age.
And your point is that lower CO2 = lower temperatures? Well, d'uh. That's what scientists have been saying for decades.

quote:
And talking of ice ages, let me begin with the one we began coming out of around 20 thousand years ago.

quote:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/073.htm

As more detailed information becomes available, the timing of the Holocene maximum warmth is seen to differ across the globe. There appears to be a south to north pattern, with southern latitudes displaying maximum warming a few millennia before the Northern Hemisphere regions. Interestingly, the Holocene appears by far the longest warm “stable” period (as far as seen from the Antarctic climate record) over the last 400 ky, with profound implications for the development of civilisation (Petit et al., 1999).

Which means that global warming especially during the last 10 thousand years is why we have the abundance of plant and animal forms we have today, and generally life as we know it.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. We know that the greenhouse effect gives us the planet we have, suitable for the life that's here. We know that life as we know it is adapted to the climate we have, but would probably struggle if we increase temperatures significantly. Life as we know it evolved in response to a climatic change (mostly the entire ice-age of cold and warmer cycles of the last million years or so) with the climate cooling distinctly from earlier times. That life will survive a change back to significantly warmer conditions isn't in doubt. Whether the plants and animals we depend upon for our food supplies will cope well, even with help from us, is a different question. That's even assuming we don't have some concern for the natural biosphere, and are only concerned with human survival or civilisation.

quote:
Ice Ages are the norm for planet earth
Actually, they aren't the norm. If they were then your entire previous argument is meaningless. Either ice age conditions are the norm, or warmer conditions than now. You can't have it both ways and form an argument that's anything other than bollocks. As it is, the ice age conditions on the last million years or so are particularly abnormal; albeit fortuitously abnormal as far as we're concerned as it allowed human beings to evolve and human civilisation to be founded.

quote:
we're still in one now and coming to the end of a small 10ky window of opportunity of global warming within this.
You're right that we're still in an ice age. Colloquially, 'ice-age' is used for the periods of time of widespread glaciation, hence "last ice age" being used for the colder period that ended abou 10-15ky ago. Technically, with the abnormal conditions of large scale glaciation (currently about 10% of the earths surface under permanent ice) having persisted for the last million years it's all one single ice-age. I'm not quite sure what a "window of opportunity of global warming" is - are you suggesting that this is the only chance we'll get of screwing up our climate by artificially forcing the climate to much warmer conditions?

quote:
What we're actually in at the moment, coming to end of one 20,000 year cycle, is cooling - the temperature trend has been downwards, back to colder conditions from a high peak between 8-6 thousand years ago (average around 2 degrees Centigrade higher than now).
Then, if the trend has been towards cooling the present sudden and rapid increase in temperature is bucking the trend. Even more so than the climate scientists suggest, based on a more static trend. And, of course, contrary to the climate change skeptics who suggest that the current temperature rise is natural - if it was natural the trend would have been towards warmer conditions.

quote:
And since this 20,000 year cycle comes between longer 100,000 year cycles what we're heading for in around a thousand years time is another 100,000 years of bitter cold ice age which will kill off the majority of life forms which are unable to adapt.
Which is what climatologists were saying 40 years ago, before the impact of CO2 was fully appreciated. If things follow the natural cycle, then we should be in line for another period of glaciation in 5-10ky. That's a big if given the huge impact humanity has had in the last 100 years or so. Whether that would really impact the life forms on earth is a different question, most life is actually fairly well cold-adjusted (cold in relative terms compared to temperatures 20 million years ago). The 10-15ky since the last glaciation isn't long enough for evolution to remove the genes needed to survive a new glaciation. Many species of plants and animals survived the sequence of warm and cold from previous cycles in the current ice-age. There's little reason to think anything would have been different this time around, except for the impact of human activity.

quote:
That's the real scenario here, global cooling. If it were only so simple to produce more CO2 to warm the place up...
Well, as I said, if things were following a natural trend you might be right. But, if you're going to accept that the natural trend is to cool the earth then you must also accept that human impact has been more significant than even the most pessimistic climate scientists are saying.

What really confuses me about your argument is that your last post seems to be saying two entirely contradictory things.

1) the natural state of the earth is much warmer, with much higher CO2 concentrations than today. And, therefore the increases in temperature and CO2 observed in the last 200 years are restoring the natural position and, presumably, the fact that it coincides with intense human industrial activity is coincidental.

2) the natural state of the earth is ice-age conditions, colder than today and that that's where we're heading so all this extra CO2 is, at best, delaying the inevitable freeze.

I don't see how you can have it both ways [Confused]

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Myrrh
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# 11483

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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
I'm finding it increasingly ludicrous to think that anyone can believe that +80ppm CO2 in the last century is the driving force behind the earth's climate changes we're seeing now

Of course, it depends what you mean by "driving force". CO2 is one of the main atmospheric gases responsible for maintaining the temperature of the earth at a reasonable level (mean temperature of 14°C rather then -10°C, and with much less day-night variation). But, it's probably pushing it to call CO2 the "driving force" behind the climate - the Sun is a much stronger contender for that title.
But Alan, this is what we're being told, that C02 is the driving force and it's all our fault for driving up the levels since the Industrial Age and our fault for the continuing pollution of the atmosphere and this, precisely, is what is causing global warming - you yourself keep stressing this is down to our responsibility because of the extra 80ppm of CO2. Whole countries are looking to change laws because of this claim, millions of pound sterling has probably already been spent to change to new industrial standards and whatever associated costs. The whole campaign is deliberately generating fear that we are destroying the balance of our world and when our children and grandchildren are all dying for lack of water for crops in the rising temperature and the ice melts and obliterates billions of acres of land destroying major cities and drowning countless millons people it is because we've been irresponsible.

But, it doesn't even have the benefit of being logical enough to stake a claim as a theory. All evidence points to it being as insignificant in the scheme of things as you and I if we look at the earth's climate changes through millions of years. We might well think we're important and awfully clever, but for people who for the most part thought that mankind began with Adam and Eve 6 thousand years ago and have only recently begun to think differently I'm not too keen on taking their tentative steps into knowledge as Gospel...

I began this not knowing more than the average news savvy Westerner and until the subject became a discussion here hadn't taken any interest in exploring it and in the last few days I've become progressively more appalled at the singular lack of any real data to back this up.


quote:
Though, it's probably probably not inaccurate to say that the source of that extra CO2 (ie: people burning fossil fuels) is the driving force for recent changes in the climate. People will certainly know what you mean by that.
That's exactly the message we're being sold and as I've said above and besides the fear generated by saying this increase is the driving force many are also being made to feel ignorant/stupid/unfeeling for even questioning it.


quote:
take it on trust that the figures aren't being manipulated because the data available are so complex, but manipulated we are.
quote:
Do you have any evidence that the data has been manipulated? Or, have you found any credible climate scientist or atmospheric physicist (or any other moderately qualified scientist) that can support a claim that the work of 1000s of scientists published in peer reviewed journals over the last 20 years or so is misrepresenting that data? (I'd accept that some newspaper, and similar, presentations of the findings probably are misrepresenting the data. Some may even be setting out to deliberately manipulate people).
We're being manipulated because the data doesn't exist. If the theory was proved it wouldn't be so dense a jungle of disparate views and there are scientists questioning it (I'm sorry, I haven't had time to make a note of everything I've read and can only give the gist of what I've been finding). Not only is there no such theory proved, i.e. it isn't fact, but the theory can't show any clear correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures, let alone show this increasing is the driving force to changing the climate.


quote:
Temperature changes are given regardless of the patterns of extreme cold even in the last couple of millenniums (the 'mini-ice ages')
quote:
Generally, they're given simply relative to the mean temperature of the period 1990-2000, sometimes relative to the mean "predindustrial" temperature (something like mean 1700-1800 temperature). How else would you present temperature change, apart from relative to a baseline? Even if you chose a different basepoint, the plots would be the same - just moved up or down relative to the time axis depending on what base point chosen.
We're told our acts since the beginning of the Industrial are the cause of global warming and the perilous state we're in now, it is simply disingenous to present this as a base line when well known longer base lines show we're in a general cooling phase which is part of a much longer global climate pattern. It is simply unconscionable to present it as a fact when it's not even a very good theory.

[I've just taken time out to read some more from other sites and in one discussion I found pro global warmers very rude and derogatory about those that dare question their facts. One poster asked about the man whose data contradict the accuracy of using the Industrial as a base line and the comment was, 'oh, he's been discredited by peer review' and later when asked by whom discredited and why, was not given any names of peers but told 'he has the nutty theory that we're heading for an ice age' - well, that obviously piqued my interest since that's what I'm getting from the data so here's his page of explanation re the use of Industrial as base line, what do you think? http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/


quote:
If there were "extreme cold" events in the past they would appears as negative blips in the plots of temperature. And, indeed, if you get plots of norht western european temperatures (eg: the UK historic temperatures) then you will see the blips for the 'mini-ice age'. But if you look at global mean temperatures that simply disappears because it was a small, localised event that had no substantial impact beyond our little bit of the planet.
That's not what I've found - the longer temperature patterns clearly show we're in a progressively downward movement and this rise (if there actually is a rise which itself hasn't been proved, global atmospheric readings don't show it, the rise claims themselves appear based on localised variations) is itself a blip of no importance in this slide which is the end of an interglacial. And as I pointed out (IPCC report), the last such came and went without the confusion of our possible involvement.

And the real problem remains what are we to do about global cooling? We're heading for another ice age. (The BBC link to ice ages, I posted above, presented this as a fact).


quote:
and CO2 concentrations have been thousands of times greater than now in the millions of years earth's climate has been changing.
quote:
No one's disputing that. And, when CO2 levels were much higher most life as we know it would struggle to survive. [Roll Eyes]
And CO2 levels around what we have now have been in an ice age. Where's the data to show actual correlation?


quote:
CO2 is practically insignificant in percentage terms of atmospheric gases
quote:
Now, that's one of the most stupid arguments I've ever heard. Perhaps I should put 200mg of arsenic in your dinner. That'll be OK, after all it's an insignificant percentage of the total mass of your dinner. Sometimes, things have an impact above and beyond the actual amount present.
How is it stupid? I gave it as background information. We know the effects of arsenic, it's not a theory, but you haven't yet shown me any proof that the rise of such an insignificant amount of gas is the driving cause of global warming - which has had really huge effects on the world's climate in the past, bringing millions year ice ages to an end.

I've no doubt that an insignificant number can have massive effects out of all proportion to its size, the still tiny percentage out of the world's population rallying behind the man who first proposed global warming shows this too...


quote:
Besides, in relationship to the greenhouse effect you need to consider those gases that interact with infra-red radiation; the others may as well not be there. That's carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3) which make up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere in total, and water vapour which is about 1% (though highly variable).
Oh and the throwaway, water vapour, which is the majority component (some 95% from memory) of the greenhouse gases. Someone's just come up with that being the real cause in the global warming theory.



quote:
(and of the 'greenhouse gases' it's the majority water vapour, 1.95%, which is taken out of figures to give an inflated reading for CO2).
quote:
Actually, water vapour is taken out mainly because it's so variable and non-persistant in the atmosphere (increase water vapour and you'll rapidly get more clouds and rainfall bringing the concentration back down again). And, it's hardly as though CO2 is the only greenhouse gas discussed. Most plots will give methane and N2O data as well.
And another scientist has proposed that increased methane levels is the real main driving force to global warming. Methane breaks down to form C02 which in turn was rather detrimental to the life forms around before the dramatic changes at the start of the Eocene; which was the beginning of a c 80-200,000 year warm period in which conditions were generated the ancestors of the animals we have now, and when the CO2 levels were around 3,000 ppm ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum


quote:
There have been times in our prehistoric past when C02 levels were well over 7000 ppm and one period of low level CO2 much as we have today it was also an ice age.
quote:
And your point is that lower CO2 = lower temperatures? Well, d'uh. That's what scientists have been saying for decades.
No, what I'm saying, and the chart linked expanded on, was that CO2 levels don't correlate to actual temperature - the lower, in comparison with the 7000 high, C02 was the level we have now and was an ice age.


To be continued

Myrrh

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
But Alan, this is what we're being told, that C02 is the driving force and it's all our fault for driving up the levels since the Industrial Age and our fault for the continuing pollution of the atmosphere and this, precisely, is what is causing global warming - you yourself keep stressing this is down to our responsibility because of the extra 80ppm of CO2.

OK, let's just clarify something. The climate is a complex system involving several feedback mechanisms. About the only thing that acts from outside the system without being affected by those feedback mechanisms is the Sun. Therefore, the Sun is the only real candidate as the driving force behind the climate, everything else is derivative of that power supply (there's also a small input from geothermal energy, a combination of heat from radioactive decay and the left over energy from the original gravitational collapse of matter to form the earth, and some tidal energy from the moon).

But, we can put a finger on the driving force for recent climatic changes on human activity. That finger points firmly, clearly and unambiguously at human activity that has pumped greenhouse gases (not just CO2) into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. That extra 80ppm CO2, plus the extra 1000ppb of methane (from 750 to 1750 ppb) and 40ppb NO2 (from 270 to 310 ppb) all contribute to the recent increases in global temperatures. CO2 isn't the driving force, it's a significant part of the mechanism by which the driving force produces higher temperatures.

quote:
in the last few days I've become progressively more appalled at the singular lack of any real data to back this up.

...

We're being manipulated because the data doesn't exist.

The scientific literature is packed full of data. The IPCC reports present the most conservative selection of that data (conservative in the sense of it's the data there's virtually no doubting, there's plenty of other data supporting all views that is much more dubious). If you've the inclination you can go out and collect your own data, or set up an experiment to demonstrate some provable facts. For example, if you doubt the mechanism of the greenhouse effect and the role of CO2 you can run an experiment - it's just basic physics. Get an infra-red lamp and one or more IR sensors, a glass vessel, a thermometer and a supply of CO2. Set up the lamp on one side of the apparatus, with a detector on the other side and fill the tube with air with different concentrations of CO2. Let the system equilibrate a while, and measure how much IR gets through the tube (if you have a second detector you can measure how much is reflected back towards the IR lamp) and the temperature. Plot IR transmission and temperature as a function of CO2 concentration and then tell me that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas.

quote:
We're told our acts since the beginning of the Industrial are the cause of global warming and the perilous state we're in now, it is simply disingenous to present this as a base line when well known longer base lines show we're in a general cooling phase which is part of a much longer global climate pattern.
There's nothing disingenous about plotting temperature changes relative to a base line. You have no choice but to plot temperature changes relative to a base line, you have a choice about which baseline to use. But, a plot of temperature relative to the mean for 1961-1990, relative to the mean for 1700-1800, relative to the minimum during the last glaciation, relative to the freezing point of distilled water at 1bar pressure, or anything else will present you exactly the same shaped graph just shifted relative to the zero relative change point. If we're bucking the trend of a cooling period you'll see it. If we're enhancing a natural warming trend, you'll see it. And, without a doubt the earth has warmed to the tune of 0.6±0.2°C in the last 20 years.

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Clint Boggis
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# 633

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Alan: I appreciate and applaud your patient explaination.

If you do stop though, no-one will think you have given up or changed your mind about the facts.
.

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Myrrh
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# 11483

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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:

And talking of ice ages, let me begin with the one we began coming out of around 20 thousand years ago.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/073.htm

Which means that global warming especially during the last 10 thousand years is why we have the abundance of plant and animal forms we have today, and generally life as we know it.
quote:
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. We know that the greenhouse effect gives us the planet we have, suitable for the life that's here. We know that life as we know it is adapted to the climate we have, but would probably struggle if we increase temperatures significantly. Life as we know it evolved in response to a climatic change (mostly the entire ice-age of cold and warmer cycles of the last million years or so) with the climate cooling distinctly from earlier times. That life will survive a change back to significantly warmer conditions isn't in doubt. Whether the plants and animals we depend upon for our food supplies will cope well, even with help from us, is a different question. That's even assuming we don't have some concern for the natural biosphere, and are only concerned with human survival or civilisation.
The point I'm making is that we have an abundance of life because of global warming and higher temperatures do not automatically warrant an apocalypse tag..., we had it significantly hotter 6,000 years ago - what was our planet like then? Our whole history has been of life coming and going, of change and it seems to me it's those global warmers giving disaster scenarios who are trying to hold onto control of 'their' world.


What I'm getting at in setting the scene here is that the abundance of life as we know it in the northern hemisphere is due to us coming to an end of an ice age because, hooray, we had global warming. This seems to be ignored in the rather biased news reports from information provided by proponents of the global warming theory who give us sound bites as in the BBC newslink a couple of posts up: "The UN's panel on climate change said earlier this month that higher global temperatures caused by man-made pollution would melt polar ice, worsen floods and droughts and cause more devastating storms."

I don't see this as objective information from these so called experts, but rather as bias driven bull from supporting a flawed theory which refuses to acknowledge any data contradicting it.




quote:
Ice Ages are the norm for planet earth
quote:
Actually, they aren't the norm. If they were then your entire previous argument is meaningless. Either ice age conditions are the norm, or warmer conditions than now. You can't have it both ways and form an argument that's anything other than bollocks. As it is, the ice age conditions on the last million years or so are particularly abnormal; albeit fortuitously abnormal as far as we're concerned as it allowed human beings to evolve and human civilisation to be founded.
Well yes, but they are norm, they're called ages because there are many of them. They come and go over millions of years and, here I've found terms are used differently, the current ice epoch/Ice Age began some 40 millions of years ago and is set to continue for many more millions of years. I think it's reasonable to say that at the moment the world in this Ice Epoch/Ice Age is our norm.


quote:
we're still in one now and coming to the end of a small 10ky window of opportunity of global warming within this.
quote:
You're right that we're still in an ice age. Colloquially, 'ice-age' is used for the periods of time of widespread glaciation, hence "last ice age" being used for the colder period that ended abou 10-15ky ago. Technically, with the abnormal conditions of large scale glaciation (currently about 10% of the earths surface under permanent ice) having persisted for the last million years it's all one single ice-age. I'm not quite sure what a "window of opportunity of global warming" is - are you suggesting that this is the only chance we'll get of screwing up our climate by artificially forcing the climate to much warmer conditions?
Tut, tut. Still holding on to that theory..

The ice ages/glacial periods within millions of year Ice Epoch/Ice Age we're in have come and gone and at the moment we're in a global warmed inter glacial period which lasts about 20,000 years - which means the window of opportunity presented by global warming has given us the abundant life forms we know and love now.

And it's coming to an end. Inter glacials describe exactly that, periods in between glacials, periods in between ice ages/glacials.

Globally the earth's temperature is in a downward slide because we're at the end of one such interglacial.

Since your global warming theory says that increased CO2 levels increase warming then you should be encouraging it to stave off the encroaching cold, to maintain this mythical equilibrium global warmists think the norm.




quote:
What we're actually in at the moment, coming to end of one 20,000 year cycle, is cooling - the temperature trend has been downwards, back to colder conditions from a high peak between 8-6 thousand years ago (average around 2 degrees Centigrade higher than now).
quote:
Then, if the trend has been towards cooling the present sudden and rapid increase in temperature is bucking the trend. Even more so than the climate scientists suggest, based on a more static trend. And, of course, contrary to the climate change skeptics who suggest that the current temperature rise is natural - if it was natural the trend would have been towards warmer conditions.
As I posted several times already, this global warming theory contradicts the real event happening now, that since the peak around 6,000 years ago we're into the downward slide into cold which is natural for the end of an interglacial. Warm periods are blips in the continuing slide into cold - see the charts I've posted.

And, you have yet to prove that there is such as thing as global warming. It is not even a good theory.


quote:
And since this 20,000 year cycle comes between longer 100,000 year cycles what we're heading for in around a thousand years time is another 100,000 years of bitter cold ice age which will kill off the majority of life forms which are unable to adapt.
quote:
Which is what climatologists were saying 40 years ago, before the impact of CO2 was fully appreciated. If things follow the natural cycle, then we should be in line for another period of glaciation in 5-10ky. That's a big if given the huge impact humanity has had in the last 100 years or so.
It's still the true scenario here. And as before, you have yet to prove the global warming theory.

Some say this next period of glaciation is due to begin in earnest in a thousand years time. Life in the abundance of forms we know it now will dramatically change.


quote:
Whether that would really impact the life forms on earth is a different question, most life is actually fairly well cold-adjusted (cold in relative terms compared to temperatures 20 million years ago). The 10-15ky since the last glaciation isn't long enough for evolution to remove the genes needed to survive a new glaciation. Many species of plants and animals survived the sequence of warm and cold from previous cycles in the current ice-age. There's little reason to think anything would have been different this time around, except for the impact of human activity.
Major glacials/ice ages like the one we're going into will certainly affect life forms in a major way, the polar bears will rule in a land devoid of plants. A description of Europe as it will be again:

quote:
.. A tundra with Ice Age flora and fauna stretched across middle Europe from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean. Such was the case during the Last Glacial Maximum, ca. 22,000-14,000 yr BP, when ice covered Scandinavia and the Baltic, Britain and the Alps, but left the space between as open tundra. The loess, or wind-blown dust over that tundra settled in and around the Rhine Valley, contributing to its current agricultural usefulness.

These events were well within the residence of man. Meltwater adding to the ocean and land subsidence drowned the former coasts of Europe. The water is still rising, at the rate of about 1-3 mm per year. Further drowning is to come.

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

Note the 'water is still rising and further drowning is to come' because what I'm really finding objectionable to the arguments from global warming theorists is their denial of this cycle we're in, the interglacial now coming to an end, which far better explains the events of today (we're still in a melt from the initial rise of temperature which is now in an actual slide into cold).

As more wet is available and the global temperature continues to descend that wet will turn into snow and the window of opportunity we're basking in will come to a close, buried under miles of the stuff.


quote:
That's the real scenario here, global cooling. If it were only so simple to produce more CO2 to warm the place up...
quote:
Well, as I said, if things were following a natural trend you might be right. But, if you're going to accept that the natural trend is to cool the earth then you must also accept that human impact has been more significant than even the most pessimistic climate scientists are saying.
You still haven't proved the theory. All I see is that we adapted and no doubt what is left of us will continue to adapt in cycles that are greater than our capacity to change. We, like the pre-human and human species before us, are in the same position as the rest of the vast populations of animals that have come and gone over the millenniums through the millions year cycles of heat and cold.


quote:
What really confuses me about your argument is that your last post seems to be saying two entirely contradictory things.

1) the natural state of the earth is much warmer, with much higher CO2 concentrations than today. And, therefore the increases in temperature and CO2 observed in the last 200 years are restoring the natural position and, presumably, the fact that it coincides with intense human industrial activity is coincidental.

In the part of the interglacial we're in, the last 10,000 years since the big melt, temperature rose to a peak around 6,000 years ago; since then it has continued to drop, there is no global warming.


quote:
2) the natural state of the earth is ice-age conditions, colder than today and that that's where we're heading so all this extra CO2 is, at best, delaying the inevitable freeze.

I don't see how you can have it both ways [Confused]

The natural state of the earth as we "know" it, the last 40 millions years, is ice age conditions interspersed with short periods of interglacials and this pattern is set to continue for millions more years.

Myrrh

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and thanks for all the fish

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
And, you have yet to prove that there is such as thing as global warming. It is not even a good theory.

What more do you want to make the theory 'good'? You want it to explain the recent changes in the climate? Well, you've got it ... it does. Do you want it to be able to model the climate such that if you run the model backwards you get something close to the observed past climates? Good, because there are plenty of models that do that too. Do you want a good physical mechanism based on properties of gases measured in the laboratory? Good, because that's there too.

As for proof that there's such a thing as global warming, what more do you want?

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Noiseboy
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Myrrh - I'm going to try a different tack here. For those who think that a plane never crashed into the Pentagon, the most crucial questions are: a) what happened to the plane? b) what happened to the passengers and, factoring in the World Trade Center and United 93 c) how many tens of thousands of people participated in the most complex and secretive mass murder in human history without a single leak or pang of conscience?

Actually, these questions are a breeze next to ACC. ACC is now accepted by all the governments of the world, no matter what their politics. Since you - stunningly - have shown how easy it is for any one of us to debunk ACC via the help of a few websites, a ball of string and some sticky-backed plastic, why is every governmental advisor - and government - on the planet wrong? What is the common motive between China, America and France to keep all this screamingly obvious analysis away from their citizens? And how could an entire branch of science (climate) be so risible that they have missed a comprehensive debunking easily acheivable by any one of their practicioners in about 15 minutes?

PS - Alan, you have a truly humbling patience of a saint.

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Myrrh
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# 11483

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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
But Alan, this is what we're being told, that C02 is the driving force and it's all our fault for driving up the levels since the Industrial Age and our fault for the continuing pollution of the atmosphere and this, precisely, is what is causing global warming - you yourself keep stressing this is down to our responsibility because of the extra 80ppm of CO2.

OK, let's just clarify something. The climate is a complex system involving several feedback mechanisms. About the only thing that acts from outside the system without being affected by those feedback mechanisms is the Sun. Therefore, the Sun is the only real candidate as the driving force behind the climate, everything else is derivative of that power supply (there's also a small input from geothermal energy, a combination of heat from radioactive decay and the left over energy from the original gravitational collapse of matter to form the earth, and some tidal energy from the moon).
This page from wiki is as good a start as any: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age


quote:
But, we can put a finger on the driving force for recent climatic changes on human activity. That finger points firmly, clearly and unambiguously at human activity that has pumped greenhouse gases (not just CO2) into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. That extra 80ppm CO2, plus the extra 1000ppb of methane (from 750 to 1750 ppb) and 40ppb NO2 (from 270 to 310 ppb) all contribute to the recent increases in global temperatures. CO2 isn't the driving force, it's a significant part of the mechanism by which the driving force produces higher temperatures.
A theory is only good until a) it is proved and becomes fact or b) until it is contradicted.

Global warming is immediately discredited as a theory because what we are in is an interglacial and the data all confirm that the events taking place are par for the course. This shows that we are in the normal end of interglacial as global temperature is in the continuing slide into cold from its peak 6,000 years ago, from beginning of the mid point big melt which began 10,000 years ago (a mid point of a 20 ky cycle).

Note, the big melt came some 2,000 years before the peak temperature when you say CO2 levels were consistently lower than now.

Within that slide into cold we have periods of hot and cold, mini global warms and mini ice ages. The Medieval Warm Period is basic indisputable fact, although degree of heat vary from 1.5 to 4/5 degrees warmer than now, and this was followed by the indisputable fact of the mini ice age around 1200-1700. Temperature comparisons against the end of this mini ice age are nonsensical.



quote:
in the last few days I've become progressively more appalled at the singular lack of any real data to back this up.

...

We're being manipulated because the data doesn't exist.

quote:
The scientific literature is packed full of data. The IPCC reports present the most conservative selection of that data (conservative in the sense of it's the data there's virtually no doubting, there's plenty of other data supporting all views that is much more dubious). If you've the inclination you can go out and collect your own data, or set up an experiment to demonstrate some provable facts. For example, if you doubt the mechanism of the greenhouse effect and the role of CO2 you can run an experiment - it's just basic physics. Get an infra-red lamp and one or more IR sensors, a glass vessel, a thermometer and a supply of CO2. Set up the lamp on one side of the apparatus, with a detector on the other side and fill the tube with air with different concentrations of CO2. Let the system equilibrate a while, and measure how much IR gets through the tube (if you have a second detector you can measure how much is reflected back towards the IR lamp) and the temperature. Plot IR transmission and temperature as a function of CO2 concentration and then tell me that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas.
Oh please, Alan. I'm not saying that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, I'm saying that a)it isn't proved that it is a driving force to massive global temperature changes and b) data do not support this view, but contradict it. There is, therefore, no actual data to support this view.

And, c) I'm also saying that measurements given by the global warming theorists are corrupt. We can see that for a start because they use the end of a mini ice age from which to promote scare tactics ignoring the earlier hotter Medieval Warm and by ignoring the considerable amount of data showing that there was no increase in C02 as they describe.

At the very least this shows global warming theorists aren't at all interested in true scientific study of climate, but are cherry picking to prove their pet theory or political driven.


quote:
We're told our acts since the beginning of the Industrial are the cause of global warming and the perilous state we're in now, it is simply disingenous to present this as a base line when well known longer base lines show we're in a general cooling phase which is part of a much longer global climate pattern.
quote:
There's nothing disingenous about plotting temperature changes relative to a base line. You have no choice but to plot temperature changes relative to a base line, you have a choice about which baseline to use. But, a plot of temperature relative to the mean for 1961-1990, relative to the mean for 1700-1800, relative to the minimum during the last glaciation, relative to the freezing point of distilled water at 1bar pressure, or anything else will present you exactly the same shaped graph just shifted relative to the zero relative change point. If we're bucking the trend of a cooling period you'll see it. If we're enhancing a natural warming trend, you'll see it. And, without a doubt the earth has warmed to the tune of 0.6±0.2°C in the last 20 years.
See above, first choose your base line.

Measuring present temperature change against the end of a mini ice age while ignoring the much hotter previous Medieval Warm is disingenuous. It is not science.

Why would want to align yourself with such people?


Myrrh

--------------------
and thanks for all the fish

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Myrrh - I'm going to try a different tack here. For those who think that a plane never crashed into the Pentagon, the most crucial questions are: a) what happened to the plane? b) what happened to the passengers and, factoring in the World Trade Center and United 93 c) how many tens of thousands of people participated in the most complex and secretive mass murder in human history without a single leak or pang of conscience?

Noiseboy, it is ad hominem to make personal attacks and bearing false witness to imply I have such a view.

However, let me give you two stories, the first from personal experience.

I was in Laos when the US was secretly flying around 500 missions a day over the North with the express purpose of committing genocide 'to target the specific fish it was determined to dry up the whole pond', see Pilger. The US was bombing into oblivion a nation it was not at war with and the world's press gathered in its watering hole in the capital was unable to get the story printed - all told us how their editors wouldn't run the story of this US policy. At the same time the US was secretly bombing Cambodia, also illegally and not printed by the 'world's press'. The following month from my visit to Laos I went to Cambodia and found one of my travelling companions to have been of those pilots committing genocide in Laos. He eventually realised the enormity of what he was part of and left. We spent a few days in Cambodia as his guests and after dinner would sit on the roof watching the bomb attacks around Phnom Penn - these were American planes which the US was deploying with Cambodian government connivance to make it appear that the Cambodians were under attack and so keep the population under control. Messy and downright evil and not yet generally known even after the press broke ranks a few years later and began publishing the illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia.

There was a world wide protest before the invasion of Iraq from those who could see quite clearly that data was being manipulated and downright lies told to provide excuses for the invasion. History confirms we were right.

quote:
Actually, these questions are a breeze next to ACC. ACC is now accepted by all the governments of the world, no matter what their politics. Since you - stunningly - have shown how easy it is for any one of us to debunk ACC via the help of a few websites, a ball of string and some sticky-backed plastic, why is every governmental advisor - and government - on the planet wrong? What is the common motive between China, America and France to keep all this screamingly obvious analysis away from their citizens? And how could an entire branch of science (climate) be so risible that they have missed a comprehensive debunking easily acheivable by any one of their practicioners in about 15 minutes?
See my posts and follow the logic.

Myrrh

--------------------
and thanks for all the fish

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
And, you have yet to prove that there is such as thing as global warming. It is not even a good theory.

What more do you want to make the theory 'good'? You want it to explain the recent changes in the climate? Well, you've got it ... it does. Do you want it to be able to model the climate such that if you run the model backwards you get something close to the observed past climates? Good, because there are plenty of models that do that too. Do you want a good physical mechanism based on properties of gases measured in the laboratory? Good, because that's there too.

As for proof that there's such a thing as global warming, what more do you want?

Proves my point. It ignores the Medieval Warm.

You are being manipulated.

Myrrh

--------------------
and thanks for all the fish

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Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
And, you have yet to prove that there is such as thing as global warming. It is not even a good theory.

What more do you want to make the theory 'good'? You want it to explain the recent changes in the climate? Well, you've got it ... it does. Do you want it to be able to model the climate such that if you run the model backwards you get something close to the observed past climates? Good, because there are plenty of models that do that too. Do you want a good physical mechanism based on properties of gases measured in the laboratory? Good, because that's there too.

As for proof that there's such a thing as global warming, what more do you want?

Proves my point. It ignores the Medieval Warm.

You are being manipulated.

Myrrh

P.S. Just found this:

quote:
At this point of their paper, the international team of scientists had pretty much verified a number of things we have regularly reported on our website over the past several years, i.e., that in spite of the contrary claims of a host of climate alarmists, the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period were (1) real, (2) global, (3) solar-induced, and (4) but the latest examples of uninterrupted alternating intervals of relative cold and warmth that stretch back in time through glacial and interglacial periods alike. http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/s/summaries/solarmwp.jsp
I rest my valise. Thank you for the opportunity to explore this, until you mentioned it I had no idea what an interglacial was.

Myrrh

--------------------
and thanks for all the fish

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
A theory is only good until a) it is proved and becomes fact or b) until it is contradicted.

You really need to have a look at a bit of basic philosophy of science. Because you're statement there makes no sense at all. No theory is 'proved', much less 'becomes fact'. And, if a theory is contradicted it is, by definition, not a good theory. A good theory fits and explains known data, and makes testable predictions for new measurements. The climate models currently in use do a very good job of explaining how the climate works, and fit existing data fairly well (and, a good deal better than might naively be assumed considering the complexity of the system being modelled). If you doubt they fit the data, look at figure SPM-7 on the last page of the summary for policy makers, which though it only shows the 20th century gives model fits that match the historic record very well (with increasing uncertainties at the earlier dates). Climate models also make predictions about future measurements, though I do admit we'd actually need to wait to see if they're right. Climate modelling is in everyone's book (except yours, apparently) good science.

quote:
Global warming is immediately discredited as a theory because what we are in is an interglacial and the data all confirm that the events taking place are par for the course.
I don't see why the science is discredited just by where we are in a glacial-interglacial cycle. Especially as the measurements show we're very much not par for the course. In which other interglacial do you see rapid CO2 concentration rises of similar magnitude to the end of the previous glaciation in the middle of that interglacial? Answer, none of them. But, that's exactly what we have seen in the last 50 years. What is happening in the middle of the interglacial is of similar magnitude as the start of an interglacial, and at a far faster rate. That is just not par for the course.

quote:
I'm not saying that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, I'm saying that a)it isn't proved that it is a driving force to massive global temperature changes
Well, I'm just confused then. If you're accepting that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that it's concentration in the atmosphere is increasing rapidly, what do you expect that increase in CO2 to do? Are you expecting CO2 to suddenly absorb and re-irradiate IR radiation differently? More CO2 can do nothing else but drive temperature higher. That's simple physics. What's a bit more complex, and therefore makes climate modelling more challenging, is how that temperature rise interacts with other parameters such as cloud formation that may amplify or suppress the drive to higher temperatures resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations.


quote:
b) data do not support this view, but contradict it. There is, therefore, no actual data to support this view.

And, c) I'm also saying that measurements given by the global warming theorists are corrupt.

And, I've seen no data that contradict the simple physics. Nor any data that contradict the more complex climate models that account for other influences. And, to call the worlds greatest climate scientists and atmospheric physicists (not to mention meteorologists and members of other relevant disciplines) corrupt beggers belief.

quote:
We can see that for a start because they use the end of a mini ice age from which to promote scare tactics ignoring the earlier hotter Medieval Warm and by ignoring the considerable amount of data showing that there was no increase in C02 as they describe.
Except that no serious scientist is doing what you're claiming. The so-called "mini-ice age" is well known, as is the Medievel warm period. What we're currently seeing is way above the changes observed in western europe then, even if those events had been global (they probably had wider effects in the northern hemisphere, maybe even south of the equator, but the most extreme changes were in western europe). Just so I'm not giving IPPC graphics, Wikipedia plots the temperatures associated with these events. That plot shows that at most, the warm period was 0.5°C warmer than the preceding period, with the little ice age less than 1°C cooler. That compares to current temperatures about 0.5°C warmer than the hottest part of the medieval warm period, and still rising. These older changes weren't, as you point out, associated with significant changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, instead being driven more directly by changes in solar activity and volcanism.

quote:
See above, first choose your base line.

Measuring present temperature change against the end of a mini ice age while ignoring the much hotter previous Medieval Warm is disingenuous.

You still don't seem to be getting the point. Whatever you plot temperature against involves the selection of a baseline. Even if you just plotted actual temperature in °C you've still chosen the freezing point of water as a baseline. And, whatever baseline you chose doesn't affect the data you present. The plots of the past temperature presented by the IPCC and other scientific bodies include the Medieval warm period and little ice age (at least, those that cover that time period do). What's disengenuous about that?

quote:
Why would want to align yourself with such people?
Because I'm a scientist. I align myself with good science. And, I try my best to patiently correct people who are spouting bollocks.

--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Noiseboy
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quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
Noiseboy, it is ad hominem to make personal attacks and bearing false witness to imply I have such a view.

Huh? What personal attacks? What false witness? Have you or have you not attempted to debunk ACC? Huh?!

quote:
See my posts and follow the logic.
The logic, I'm afraid, eludes me completely.
Posts: 512 | From: Tonbridge | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Myrrh
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
You really need to have a look at a bit of basic philosophy of science. Because you're statement there makes no sense at all. No theory is 'proved', much less 'becomes fact'. And, if a theory is contradicted it is, by definition, not a good theory. A good theory fits and explains known data, and makes testable predictions for new measurements. The climate models currently in use do a very good job of explaining how the climate works, and fit existing data fairly well (and, a good deal better than might naively be assumed considering the complexity of the system being modelled). If you doubt they fit the data, look at figure SPM-7 on the last page of the summary for policy makers, which though it only shows the 20th century gives model fits that match the historic record very well (with increasing uncertainties at the earlier dates). Climate models also make predictions about future measurements, though I do admit we'd actually need to wait to see if they're right. Climate modelling is in everyone's book (except yours, apparently) good science.

I was using 'theory' in a more general sense, no need to be quite so picky.

I'm not disputing climate modelling is good science, I'm certainly beginning to argue that science driven by an agenda which deliberately disregards available data can ever produce anything but garbage out.


quote:
Global warming is immediately discredited as a theory because what we are in is an interglacial and the data all confirm that the events taking place are par for the course.
quote:
I don't see why the science is discredited just by where we are in a glacial-interglacial cycle. Especially as the measurements show we're very much not par for the course. In which other interglacial do you see rapid CO2 concentration rises of similar magnitude to the end of the previous glaciation in the middle of that interglacial? Answer, none of them. But, that's exactly what we have seen in the last 50 years. What is happening in the middle of the interglacial is of similar magnitude as the start of an interglacial, and at a far faster rate. That is just not par for the course.
As before you cannot prove that your version of CO2 levels is correct, because there is a wealth of conflicting data out there. Above I linked a page for you to read asking for your comments
Here it is again: http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/

This very clearly contradicts the IPCC claim. The man's credentials are impressive, why should I believe he is wrong in his conclusions?

Why didn't the IPCC take this into consideration?

The IPCC claim that we now have the highest temperatures for two millenniums is also strongly disputed. I noticed on a wiki page that Mann wrote a letter in 2006 in which he brought attention to the title of his paper, is this backtracking now?

Mann's protagonist duo, McIntyre and McKitrick, have a web page here on the history of this argument: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html

Why should I believe the IPCC reports when the consensus pre the global warming theory from many and varied sources showed distinct variations in temperature, distinctive enough to be called the Medieval Warm followed by a mini ice age which only finished in the 1800's?. Ice age! What does that conjour up? Skating on the Thames? Why should I believe the IPCC and disbelieve the following:

quote:
We begin our investigation with a brief synopsis of the findings of Naurzbaev and Vaganov (2000), who developed a 2200-year proxy temperature record using cores obtained from 118 trees near the upper timberline in Siberia for the period 212 BC to AD 1996. This record revealed a cool period in the first two centuries AD, a warm period from AD 200 to 600, cooling again from AD 600 to 800, followed by the Medieval Warm Period from about AD 850 to 1150, the cooling of the Little Ice Age from AD 1200 though 1800, followed by the temperature rise that led to the development of the Modern Warm Period.

With respect to the late 20th-century portion of this latter warming (which must be truly unprecedented to provide any support at all for the climate-alarmist contention that it was CO2-induced), Naurzbaev and Vaganov state that it was "not extraordinary" and that "the warming at the border of the first and second millennia [AD 1000] was longer in time and similar in amplitude." What is more, they note that fluctuations in average annual temperature from the Siberian record agree well with air temperature variations reconstructed from Greenland ice cores, suggesting, in their words, that "the tree ring chronology of [the Siberian] region can be used to analyze both regional peculiarities and global temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere," http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/r/summaries/russiatemptrends.jsp

So now the "par for the course" of our interglacial, it's an interglacial. It's of limited duration and will end with a glacial, i.e. it will get progressively colder and information we have about it shows it reached its peak of warmth around 6000 years ago and the temperature has been dropping since notwithstanding the hiccups of hot and cold on its inevitable way down to freezing for another long time. This scenario appears to have been well thought of until it became an uncomfortable fact for those claiming global warming, and I've read many who are now trying to deny the temperature rises and falls in the last two thousand years and even to deny the peak ever existed in their mad scramble to prove hockey stick and CO2 rises fueling it, as if it's a problem. If there's more CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere and it really is capable of making our climate warmer then it is helping to delay our inevitable move into another major ice age. So why the panic?

An alternative to headless chicken: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/g/summaries/asiagreen.jsp


I caught a news item last night about Australia, not sure if all or one state, but they have decided to ban all electric light bulbs except fluorescent by 2009, because they emit CO2. I worked in an office with no light except fluorescent for seven years, ugh.

You keep mentioning this "last 50 years" - if there is anything of minute proportion in our atmosphere to be concerned about I think we should be wondering what atom bombs and nuclear testing and the casual use of such in conventional war heads as in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and Iraq has had on us, the earth and its inhabitants - and, any idea how much of the CO2 was created by wars over the last century?


quote:
I'm not saying that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, I'm saying that a)it isn't proved that it is a driving force to massive global temperature changes
quote:
Well, I'm just confused then. If you're accepting that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that it's concentration in the atmosphere is increasing rapidly, what do you expect that increase in CO2 to do? Are you expecting CO2 to suddenly absorb and re-irradiate IR radiation differently? More CO2 can do nothing else but drive temperature higher. That's simple physics. What's a bit more complex, and therefore makes climate modelling more challenging, is how that temperature rise interacts with other parameters such as cloud formation that may amplify or suppress the drive to higher temperatures resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations.
I'm really sorry, I thought I'd explained it, I'm not agreeing that the levels have been increasing rapidly - that's your argument. Besides it not being proved to be a driving cause (it seems to me the sun, movement of the earth around it and geological events in it more important in the general fact of global warming and cooling over billions of years and in the more localised surface temperatures water vapour seems to play a much bigger part in changes), it could be an effect, that is coming mainly as a result of what the whole earth is going through (which then starts a cycle of plant and oxygen and giving back CO2 and so on), for example, methane (which breaks down into CO2) coming from natural geological activity appears to me more significant as a driving cause and CO2 then an affect; and of course, as before, I have yet to see any real correlation between CO2 levels and periods of warm only.

Anyway, my basic argument as it's developed here is that climate change is our norm, and our contribution no different in category than breathing out and farting of other animals populating the earth in the past and now gone forever after being a small blip in a very long period of time...




quote:
b) data do not support this view, but contradict it. There is, therefore, no actual data to support this view.

And, c) I'm also saying that measurements given by the global warming theorists are corrupt.

quote:
And, I've seen no data that contradict the simple physics. Nor any data that contradict the more complex climate models that account for other influences. And, to call the worlds greatest climate scientists and atmospheric physicists (not to mention meteorologists and members of other relevant disciplines) corrupt beggers belief.
Why? Pro global warming campaigners say very nasty things about other great climate scientists and such whenever they produce data contradicting their pet theory..

But I meant corrupt in a specific sense, corrupt because those like the IPCC have brushed aside all producing contradictory data, that is corrupt science.


quote:
We can see that for a start because they use the end of a mini ice age from which to promote scare tactics ignoring the earlier hotter Medieval Warm and by ignoring the considerable amount of data showing that there was no increase in C02 as they describe.
quote:
Except that no serious scientist is doing what you're claiming. The so-called "mini-ice age" is well known, as is the Medievel warm period. What we're currently seeing is way above the changes observed in western europe then, even if those events had been global (they probably had wider effects in the northern hemisphere, maybe even south of the equator, but the most extreme changes were in western europe). Just so I'm not giving IPPC graphics, Wikipedia plots the temperatures associated with these events. That plot shows that at most, the warm period was 0.5°C warmer than the preceding period, with the little ice age less than 1°C cooler. That compares to current temperatures about 0.5°C warmer than the hottest part of the medieval warm period, and still rising. These older changes weren't, as you point out, associated with significant changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, instead being driven more directly by changes in solar activity and volcanism.
Shrug, depends on who you listen to...

quote:
Warmer Days and Longer Lives
Thomas Gale Moore
Senior Fellow
Hoover Institution
Stanford University

History demonstrates that warmer is healthier. Since the end of the last Ice Age, the earth has enjoyed two periods that were warmer than the twentieth century. Archaeological evidence shows that people lived longer, enjoyed better nutrition, and multiplied more rapidly than during epochs of cold.

...

From around 800 A.D. to 1200 or 1300, the globe warmed again considerably and civilization prospered. This warm era displays, although less distinctly, many of the same characteristics as the earlier period of clement weather. Virtually all of northern Europe, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Greenland, and Iceland were considerably warmer than at present. http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/history_health.html

But then, what does he know?



quote:
See above, first choose your base line.

Measuring present temperature change against the end of a mini ice age while ignoring the much hotter previous Medieval Warm is disingenuous.

quote:
You still don't seem to be getting the point. Whatever you plot temperature against involves the selection of a baseline. Even if you just plotted actual temperature in °C you've still chosen the freezing point of water as a baseline. And, whatever baseline you chose doesn't affect the data you present. The plots of the past temperature presented by the IPCC and other scientific bodies include the Medieval warm period and little ice age (at least, those that cover that time period do). What's disengenuous about that?
The point is that if one's base line is the Medieval Warm which many others show to have been much warmer than today then the IPCC chosen data is a different base line.


quote:
Why would want to align yourself with such people?
quote:
Because I'm a scientist. I align myself with good science. And, I try my best to patiently correct people who are spouting bollocks.
And I've learned something else new here, that scientists are prepared to ignore all conflicting data to prove their pet theory and that the current bandwagon based on IPCC data has drowned out all other voices in its desire to control the world...

I think that's bollocks.

Myrrh

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Myrrh
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# 11483

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P.S. http://www.warriorssociety.org/voices/?m=200607


quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
And, to call the worlds greatest climate scientists and atmospheric physicists (not to mention meteorologists and members of other relevant disciplines) corrupt beggers belief.

quote:
“To capture the public imagination we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

Climate scientist, global warming activist and former global cooling prophet Stephen Schneider (”Our fragile Earth,” Discover, October 1987, page 47) -

quote:
Because I'm a scientist. I align myself with good science. And, I try my best to patiently correct people who are spouting bollocks.
The last scary movie, er, movement:

quote:
- The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. — Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man”, (1971) -

- This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century — Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976 -

- There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. — Newsweek, April 28, (1975) -

- This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. — Lowell Ponte “The Cooling”, 1976 -

- If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. — Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970) -

- In “The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek proclaimed that scientists are “almost unanimous” in their concern that an “ominous” cooling trend “will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century” and the world might be heading into another “little ice age.” -

So where's all the data supporting this gone now?

Did they say anything about CO2 levels? Why were they so sure that temperatures had actually dropped in the twentieth century? Etc.


Myrrh

[ 21. February 2007, 08:18: Message edited by: Myrrh ]

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