Eaarth

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by dcb

Also worth noting is that, unlike previous sharp temperature peaks, whatever that 100,000 odd year cycle is, temperatures are NOT dropping, but for now appear to be rising.

It's been NOT dropping for a while - some 10.000 years since the last true ice age - i.e. long before human intervention could have caused it not to start dropping.

While 10.000 years may seem long, it's only the blink of an eye in geological terms. The more recent the data is, the more accurate it gets, too.

Recent history also shows what happens with some proxies : they not only store data, they also lose some of it - like when the proxy melts away.

[dcb]

Arragonis, I misspoke on the northwest passage, you are correct that it has been open, but perhaps not reliably.

Let me get an assessment of where you are coming from here.

Are you saying that:
you do not think the north pole is getting smaller/warmer on average?
the sea level is not rising at about .3cm /year?
the average global temperature is not increasing?

I appreciate that you have read much about it, but it still seems like a pretty big gamble.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by dcb

just looking at trends, it looks like temperature is rising to me:
average global temperature - Wolfram|Alpha

Is there a question that the temperature is rising? Or is the question one of why? or??

No, it's just a question of what period to look at.
Check out the Bob Carter video.

If you pick your period, you can claim whatever you wish for : cooling, warming, stability .

That ridiculously short-term dataplot seems to indicate a rise.
Make the time frame longer, and you'll see a slow decline in temperature along with similar previous periods of temporary warming.
Make it even longer, and you'll see it's been a lot warmer, and that things are cooling down quite a bit (unlike this discussion ).
Expand to 500.000 years to see previous cycles of long cold periods and short-lived warm periods, and you'll see the only realistic way to expect temperature to go is not up, but down ....

[dcb]

Originally Posted by euromodder

...
If you pick your period, you can claim whatever you wish for : cooling, warming, stability .

That ridiculously short-term dataplot seems to indicate a rise.

tell that to people who are complaining how cold today is.

Originally Posted by euromodder

Make the time frame longer, and you'll see a slow decline in temperature

can you show me? recall we are considering "industrial age" contributions here.

Originally Posted by euromodder

Expand to 500.000 years to see previous cycles of long cold periods and short-lived warm periods, and you'll see the only realistic way to expect temperature to go is not up, but down ....

500,000 years? that's where you are headed with this?

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by dcb

Are you saying that:
you do not think the north pole is getting smaller/warmer on average?
the sea level is not rising at about .3cm /year?
the average global temperature is not increasing?

The NP has been getting smaller lately, as it has grown and shrunk before.
Again, it's just a matter of what time frame you wish to look at.
It was a lot larger 12.000 years ago during the ice age, and has been getting smaller since.
We know how far the NP ice cap has extended in the past when it reached land, but we don't know for sure how far it has shrunk before we started looking ...

North Pole ice, being floating ice, has no effect on sea level.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by dcb

tell that to people who are complaining how cold today is.

Exactly.
Today is irrelevant, as is a few decades.

can you show me? recall we are considering "industrial age" contributions here.

GW alarmists are looking at the industrial age contributions, because it neatly fits their beliefs.
It's cherry picking on a gross scale.

Look further back, not even that far, and you'll see similar steep increases in temperature.

500,000 years? that's where you are headed with this?

That's where everyone should be heading if they wish to discuss global changes on a massive timescale.
Today is irrelevant, remember ?

We're talking about periodically recurring events with a frequency of 100,000 to 125,000 years.

400,000 - 450,000 years only show us 4 full periods, and the warm start of the 5th.

[dcb]

I'm asking for supporting evidence (links, data), not color commentary. The questions were directed at arragonis fyi.

[NeilBlanchard]

In the beginning, the atmosphere was all carbon dioxide and water vapor. The first life was bacteria that ate hot chemicals and the Earth was a cauldron. Then cyanobacteria came along and started splitting water, and producing the oxygen into the atmosphere. Later plants started forming the dirt; before that there was only rock. Only after there was enough oxygen, did we get animal life.

Life made the atmosphere and the Earth what it is. Without life, it would not be what it is today, and all along the way each and every life form has influenced the balance of the atmosphere and the water and the earth.

The carbon dioxide and temperatures are known for at least the last 65 million years, and probably before that. After Pangaea broke up and the various continents were drifting around, there was more volcanic activity. Carbon Dioxide was 1,000+ PPM, and there was no year round ice at all.

After India moved from south of the equator to where it is now, the volcanic activity dropped somewhat, and the weathering and plant growth increased in relation to the volcanic, so the carbon dioxide stopped increasing, and started decreasing.

Then Antarctica started freezing (when carbon dioxide dropped to around 450PPM and, then much later the Arctic froze, we had a series of ice ages. For quite a long time, the carbon dioxide was held in balance between ~180-280PPM. All the times it was on the low end, it was an ice age.

Now, in just ~150 years, it is up to ~389PPM; which is a huge and very rapid change. And it is getting warmer, on average. The Arctic ice is melting more in the summer -- around September 15th has been the date of the minimum, but lately, it has been September 20-21st.

The older ice is melting, and the average age of the used to be 5-6 years old, and now it is mostly 1-2 years old. Older ice is a lot thicker, younger ice is a lot thinner and is more fragile. Much of it is shards that just refreeze loosely.

Arctic ice data center is here:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Here's the age of the ice graphic:

Researchers often look at ice age as a way to estimate ice thickness. Older ice tends to be thicker than younger, one- or two-year-old ice. Last winter, the wind patterns associated with the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation transported a great deal of multiyear ice from the coast of the Canadian Arctic into the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Scientists speculated that much of this ice, some five years or older, would survive the summer melt period. Instead, it mostly melted away. At the end of the summer 2010, under 15% of the ice remaining the Arctic was more than two years old, compared to 50 to 60% during the 1980s. There is virtually none of the oldest (at least five years old) ice remaining in the Arctic (less than 60,000 square kilometers [23,000 square miles] compared to 2 million square kilometers [722,000 square miles] during the 1980s).

Taken from here.

The phrase that sticks with me is that the "Arctic ice is in a death spiral".

[t vago]

Originally Posted by dcb

you do understand that globally temperatures are rising and that local anomalies are to be expected, right? I'm talking observed trends, not predictions.

You're calling the Northern Hemisphere "local?" Wow.

Besides that, you can point out that global temperatures have been rising in the recent past, from about 1990 onward. However, that does not mean that Mankind carbon dioxide output is definitively proven as the reason why. Harp on greenhouse gas all you want, but the fact remains that there's no causal link showing carbon dioxide makes temperatures rise.

And good luck proving that, when it's been shown that water vapor is anywhere from 2 to 10 times more effective as a greenhouse gas, and there's much more water vapor in the atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide. It is estimated by NOAA that about 12,900 GIGATONS of water is in the atmosphere at any given moment.

Given that, and given the estimate of 750 gigatons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the same time, how can you with a straight face claim that carbon dioxide alone is responsible for the temperature rise? At that, how can you claim that MANMADE carbon dioxide is responsible for this temperature rise?

While we're asking questions to each other that imply a lack of intelligence - You do realize that 12,900 gigatons of water vapor is more mass than 750 gigatons of carbon dioxide, right, acb? You do realize that water vapor is at least twice as effective a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide is, right, acb?

(Waiting for Neil to come up with some other close-minded AGW zealot source, and pass it off as scientific support for AGW...)

Originally Posted by dcb

Anyway you did not answer my question, so you concede that solar is only part of the story?

I just answered your question. Now, answer mine.

Why do you ignore the effects of water vapor, and belittle the effects of that huge glowing thermonuclear ball hanging about 93 million miles above us?

[t vago]

Same goes for you, Neil -

Why do you ignore water vapor as a greenhouse gas, and why do you not count the variability of the Sun?

Given that a) water vapor is at least twice as effective as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and b) there's approximately 17.2 times as much water vapor as there is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, I'd say the first part of that question is a rather important one. It goes without saying that the second part is also important, as it's been shown that the Sun does influence temperatures here on this Earth.