Eaarth

[dcb]

"While the IMP can contribute significantly to trends for periods of 30 years or less, it cannot account for the 0.8°C warming trend that has been observed in the twentieth century spatially averaged SST."

I'm not sure your conclusion was peer reviewed A

The average temperature is still apparently going up these days. The sea level is also still going up. climate change IS happening regardless if it is partly man made or not. Do we agree on at least this much? IS there anything we can agree on if not?

regarding "man's" contributions.
But how do you completely write off CO2 contributions? There is ~35% more co2 int the atmosphere than at the start of the industrial age, no? currently co2 is listed as composing 9 – 26 % of the greenhouse effect. whereas before it would have been maybe 6.6-19%. I mean I don't hear any "unbiased" discussion trying to quantify the effects, just folks talking past each other and throwing derisive hail mary's. And unfortunately there are plenty of other good reasons not to be wasteful without AWG, but I think that point gets missed by a large percentage.

I personally do not know, it likely in part us coming out of "the little ice age", but we have "some" data to work with. But thermo/bio/fluid dynamics is never an all or nothing proposition, so why all the extreme positions?

[NeilBlanchard]

We know that when carbon dioxide was 1,000PPM that it was a lot warmer, and there was no permanent ice anywhere on the planet. This was about 65 million years ago.

We know that as carbon was naturally deposited in the ground and on the sea floor, from erosion and by plants, and when the level of carbon dioxide dropped to around 450PPM, Antarctica started to freeze up. Later when the levels got lower still, the Arctic started to freeze up.

We know that for the last 650,000 years, carbon dioxide has ranged between ~180PP up to ~280PPM. This is where it was for the first ~200,000 years of human existence.

Then, around 1850 we started burning coal in quantity, and a little later oil and gas. In about 1904, carbon dioxide got up to ~300PPM -- higher than it ever was for all of human existence, and higher than it ever was in the last 650,000 years.

Since then, the level of carbon dioxide has ramped up at an accelerating pace, and is now about 390PPM. Average temperatures worldwide have tracked this increase in lock step.

The Arctic ice is melting at an accelerating rate -- just the inverse of what it did when the carbon levels dropped due to natural processes. The current increase is happening at a rate that is about 10,000 times faster than it ever did from natural sources.

It took about 60 million years for the carbon to get stored in the Earth's crust, and much of that has been released back into the atmosphere in about 150 years.

We know at a very high certainty that it is the carbon coming from the fuels we humans are burning is what is causing the current temperature increase. If we compare to the last time that the level was about the same as it is now, the temperatures were higher than at any time during human existence.

[Thymeclock]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard:

But the uncertainties do not negate the main conclusion!]

t vago replied:

Which is that there's significant and credible doubt as to the accuracy or validity of AGW. Putting your conclusions in boldface do not make them somehow true.

In Neil's world (that of the professional activist) the end justifies the means. It makes no difference that there is credible evidence and doubt to the contrary offered by other scientists who do not agree. Remember, this is a political movement. That is it's ultimate but unstated purpose. Once you have a majority of scientists singing from the same playbook they automatically win. Case closed. The majority rules. Just like an election. Right Neil?

Just don't call it "science"...

You'll have to wait until they are proven wrong. And the day they are proven wrong, so what? They get paid anyway and can say they didn't know enough at the time. It's the perfect rationalization.

Their game is: "Heads I win, tails you lose."

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by dcb

climate change IS happening regardless if it is partly man made or not.

Sure, the climate has always been changing, wether man was around or not.

It's been getting a bit warmer again since the medieval little ice age but if you look at a longer timeframe, it's been cooling

There is ~35% more co2 int the atmosphere than at the start of the industrial age, no?

There's indeed a bit more C02 in the atmosphere.
People who choose to be alarmist should prove their point that CO2 drives the climate conclusively, rather than getting involved in al sorts of scheming (Climategate, biased peer review, or correcting data) to prove their point.
They can't even proof the short term warming we've been seeing is really extra-ordinary.

And unfortunately there are plenty of other good reasons not to be wasteful without AWG, but I think that point gets missed by a large percentage.

I've made that point a few times.
Fossil fuels are being used at a grossly unsustainable rate, far faster than they can be renewed - if any new fossil fuel is even being made today ...
What's worse, we're just burning it off !

But thermo/bio/fluid dynamics is never an all or nothing proposition, so why all the extreme positions?

When people try to force unproven theories onto others, that's what you get.
Scientists have been denied the right to publish what have come to be known as sceptic views.

Actually, it should be the alarmist who should be called sceptics, because all previous evidence beyond the cherished very-short-term recent data of the alarmists point to global cooling ...


When your monthly wages end up in your bank account, do you start screaming you'll be a millionaire shortly because your bank account shoots up by (say) $2000 a day ?
Or do you look at the whole month, and see a $2000 increase, followed by slow decrease as you spend your wages ?
Maybe you're even looking at a whole year, and see a periodical $2000 increase invariably followed by a slow decrease ? In that case, by comparing the lows, you can see wether your bank account is going up or down over that year.
You could even look at multiple years, and see what happens over the years.


During the last century, climatologists have been screaming both Ice Age ! and Meltdown ! in rapid succession based on short term data.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

We know that as carbon was naturally deposited in the ground and on the sea floor, from erosion and by plants, and when the level of carbon dioxide dropped to around 450PPM, Antarctica started to freeze up.

Well yes, but what makes you think that's the way it should stay ?
Because it's convenient for mankind ?
Earth isn't bothered about mankind, it was there, continuously changing, long before we even existed, and it will still be there long after we've gone the way of the dinos.

Species have gone extinct, as a matter of fact most (99+ %) of the species that once lived on earth have long been extinct - but others have appeared.
Should we be alarmed when we see the same happening now ?


What makes you think all this is going to stop because it'd be so mighty convenient for us ?

Then, around 1850 we started burning coal in quantity, and a little later oil and gas.

You seem to forget we've been burning wood for ages and ages before that, and definitely none of that came from careful sustainable forest management ...
When we started farming, we simply burned down the forest to clear it and put nutrients into the soil.
When we moved to new pastures, we burned down a new clearing further down the road.
Nature's been doing the same.
Lightning and fire have taken out huge areas of forest as there was no-one to fight the fires.


At worst, we've triggered a somewhat quicker return to the very long periods (millions, rather than thousands of years) of warmer conditions before the current cycles of ice ages and temporary milder periods of the late Pleistocene.


If you look beyond the time scale of the Vostok ice core data (500,000 years) to a period of 500,000,000 years, we were already heading for a warmer environment in the very long run.
We're in the 4th temperature dip (and only the 2nd CO2 dip) since the Cambrian period.
CO2 levels are again at what is an unusually low level for planet Earth, but seen before during Perm.
And what's more, there no longer appears to be any relation at all between temperature and CO2 on this timescale.

Around midway during the Jurassic period, CO2 shot up wildly, but temperature didn't follow.
Late in the Jurasic era, the comet hit the Yucatan and temps plunged while CO2 decreased a bit, but stayed rather high.

In the Cretaceous, the temperature shot up again and stayed high, despite CO2 levels continuously dropping to their present day lows !
Temperatures plunged in the Tertiary period, with Earth remaining cold into the Quaternary.
Hard to tell how long this cold will last, but in a few million or 100 million years, it's bound to get a whole lot hotter around here.
Before that happens, it'll likely get a good deal colder


The ocean level has been unusually low during the latter half of Tertiary period, only to rise sharply, fall again, and rise again, the rise continueing into the Quaternary period, and to this very day.

The ocean has risen, then fallen again.
Should we really be alarmed when we see the same happening now ?


Around 80% of Earth's life has been warm, better get used to it.

[Arragonis]

Apologies, I missed this - real life is in the way.

Originally Posted by dcb

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

And last week there were loads of russian ships trapped in the ice, albeit not quite in the same place.

An operation to rescue vessels, stuck in ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, off Russia's Far Eastern coast, is hampered by poor weather conditions, the Far East Shipping Company said on Friday.

Three ships have been trapped since Friday in ice up two meters thick. Two more ships became stuck on Monday but were freed two days later.

Originally Posted by dcb

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.

To take each one

1. Yes it has reduced since we have been watching it closely - which is since the early 1990s. At the same time the antarctic has been growing. Overall global ice levels have remained the same.

In 2007 when the arctic reached its record summer low, the antarctic reached a record high. Reconstructions (caveat below) suggest the ice levels have been lower and higher over the longer term. Polar Bears lived through those periods BTW and are thriving now.


2. Sea level rise from what I have read is about 12 inches a century, although it has actually slowed down in more recent years. It has been rising about 8 inches a century for thousands of years. This photo shows a sea level marker made in 1841 - the sea level in 2004 when this was taken was not significantly higher.




3. Historically temps have risen about 1.6 Deg C a century since we started monitoring them. The 'models' used to predict the consequences assume that the rise will accelerate to 3.4 DegC a century but nobody seems to be able to explain why. The rise in temps in recent years has slowed to under 1 Deg C a century. It may rise or fall.

My previous post on natural cycles seems to suggest we can't reliably detect a forcing by AGW vs natural, short term variation.

I also posted how the Met office had anounced (quietly of course) that 2010 was the 12th coldest on record, despite the same weather event which caused both the Pakistan floods AND the moscow heat waves.

We also have to take into account the adjustments and changes that NASA GISS, CRU and others make to their datasets. Overwhelmingly these have the effect of reducing temps from older records which make the rises look more dramatic. There may be valid reasons but not all adjustments are explained or justified as well as they could be.

An error with these stats was also uncovered a few years ago which kind of killed the idea that 1998 was the hottest year on record, it turned out to be 1934. The guy who spotted the error is not a climate scientist by the way, just someone who is an expert in big sums.

If you want me to explain my overall position, its simple.

We just don't know enough to make any conclusions, except that we just don't know. The predictions of 10-15 years ago read like bad jokes - pretty much completely wrong mainly because predicting the climate like predicting the weather is beyond our knowledge and capability.

What I object to is madness like this.

Me: What happens to a very fat family, a very irresponsibly fat family, and they've blown their carbon budget to the scheissenhausen and you've made their food terribly expensive? What about the kids? They go to breakfast and they've got one baked bean?

Egger: In general you'll find that in a very fat family they are low-income earners ... so those people would actually benefit from a scheme like this because the food that they buy, the energy that they use, they don't use as much energy as the rich anyway ...

Me: But what happens? Their ration of carbon credits runs out and you've made food too expensive for them to buy. What happens to them?

Egger: Again, they get money back from doing the right thing.

Me: No, but they've done the wrong thing. That's why they are fat and poor. They've done the wrong thing, they've run out of their carbon credits. What are you going to do to them then, when the food's too expensive to buy?

Egger: There are going to be personal cases like this that need to be worked out and they need to be worked out in the tax system as well as in the carbon credits system.

This is possibly your future by the way, and they are planning not to bother asking us voters if we want it or not...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daogrdojego

[Arragonis]

Also worth a read.

Why Most Published Research Findings are False

[Thymeclock]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

What I object to is madness like this.



This is possibly your future by the way, and they are planning not to bother asking us voters if we want it or not...

Thank you for posting this. It is a good illustration of the fact that this is a political movement. Anyone dare to say that this is not a wet dream of the political Left?

Socialism is the watermelon party: What used to be called Red is now called Green.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by dcb

"While the IMP can contribute significantly to trends for periods of 30 years or less, it cannot account for the 0.8°C warming trend that has been observed in the twentieth century spatially averaged SST."

I'm not sure your conclusion was peer reviewed A

I have no peers

Originally Posted by dcb

The average temperature is still apparently going up these days. The sea level is also still going up. climate change IS happening regardless if it is partly man made or not. Do we agree on at least this much? IS there anything we can agree on if not?

Temps are going up, we can agree on that. The reasons for it are many and varied :

- Natural variation
- The Sun
- Weather
- Adjustments to the record ?

Originally Posted by dcb

regarding "man's" contributions.
But how do you completely write off CO2 contributions? There is ~35% more co2 int the atmosphere than at the start of the industrial age, no? currently co2 is listed as composing 9 – 26 % of the greenhouse effect. whereas before it would have been maybe 6.6-19%. I mean I don't hear any "unbiased" discussion trying to quantify the effects, just folks talking past each other and throwing derisive hail mary's. And unfortunately there are plenty of other good reasons not to be wasteful without AWG, but I think that point gets missed by a large percentage.

Firstly we can't prove that the 35% is solely down to us.

Secondly even if 100% of it is down to us, there is no evidence in the reliable reconstructions of CO2 vs temperature that CO2 at these low levels has actually been a driver of temp. In fact the evidence points to the relationship being the opposite, CO2 actually grows and declines after temperature changes.

Originally Posted by dcb

I personally do not know, it likely in part us coming out of "the little ice age", but we have "some" data to work with. But thermo/bio/fluid dynamics is never an all or nothing proposition, so why all the extreme positions?

I'm not trying to have an extreme position but I'm trying to point out the doubts and uncertainties that exist and that the science is far from conclusive. We could commit ourselves to spending trillions of pounds / euro / dollars on this over the next 50 years - the UN and the IPCC wants us to. That money could be used to fight real problems we have now, including conservation of natural habitats, more effective management of resources and decent healthcare for the third world.

Let me put it this way, if WWF were still campaigning for the protection of the natural environment and wildlife they would still be getting my monthly contribution they used to. As they don't do this, I no longer pay them. Instead local homeless charities get the dosh.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

Thank you for posting this. It is a good illustration of the fact that this is a political movement. Anyone dare to say that this is not a wet dream of the political Left?

Socialism is the watermelon party: What used to be called Red is now called Green.

I have tapped this before, but for the record I am a socialist myself. Maybe a mild one, but one all the same I do believe in democracy strongly as well.

I have seen the watermelon comment before (green on the outside, red on the inside) but I don't think its that simple. I don't believe there is a major world conspiracy to grab power for a new elite. The UN isn't clever enough to organise the correct 'non voodoo' science to appear in IPCC reports so they've got bugger all chance of organising a new world order.

Instead I believe there is a trend, a tide if you like, in science which is following the research money and at the same time there are opportunists outside science (in politics for example) who are always ready to exploit the situation for their own ends and these are an all sides of the political spectrum.

The worry I have about things like Carbon Credits and so on is that the people who support this idea are quite happy to embrace the idea of imposing this on all of us without asking, including the suspension of the rights of the public to dissent. And that includes the non-socialist government we have in the UK at the moment.

Its not a right or left thing.

I think if I lived on that Australian island I think I would tell those imposing this experiment to go forth and multiply, I'm surprised the residents being Aussies haven't already. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts before they do, I suspect not too long.