CAPTURING EMISSIONS: Pulling CO2 directly from the air is likely to prove too expensive to be practical, especially compared with capturing it when concentrated in the emissions of a power plant.
Image: TBoard/Flickr
One of the seemingly ideal and direct solutions to climate change is to efficiently vacuum up greenhouse gases straight from the atmosphere. But a new study finds that such a proposal is very far-fetched and tremendously expensive.
The president's science adviser, John Holdren, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have expressed support in the past for capturing and storing pollution from the air as a measure to mitigate global temperature increases. However, in a paper published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that trying to scrub the air is much more expensive than keeping it from getting dirty in the first place.
For the scientists conducting the study, air capture was shown to be largely wishful thinking that distracts from more effective strategies for combating pollution and climate change. "We thought it was important to set the record straight because [air capture] has policy implications," said Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative and one of the report's authors. He said that air capture is appealing because it allows people to get away with not changing anything about their energy use.
Air capture involves using filters, chemical reactions or special materials to collect greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Many of these technologies already exist for industrial use to keep carbon dioxide out of critical processes and to purify the air on spacecraft and submarines. The problem with using these tools to fight climate change is that pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is resource-intensive. "[Air capture] takes a lot of energy. The reason we have CO2 emissions is because we use a lot of energy. Controlling CO2 by burning a lot of energy doesn't make a lot of sense," Herzog said.
Another challenge for air capture is that the atmosphere blanketing the Earth's surface is very big, and carbon dioxide is a relatively small part of it. The scientists studied some of the existing air capture strategies on the market and calculated how efficient and how costly they would be in cleaning the air at large. "I suggested looking into what the efficiencies should be as a function of the dilution of the target materials," said Kurt Zenz House, president of C12 Energy, a carbon dioxide management firm, and one of the paper's co-authors.
Small needles, big haystack
He explained that the team examined how much energy it takes for carbon extraction systems to clean the air outdoors when the gas is spread out, unlike the richer concentrations in smokestacks for factories and coal power plants where carbon scrubbing systems are commonly advised. Collecting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would require combing through 300 times as much air as you would need in a power plant. "It's harder to find a needle in large haystack than a small haystack," said House.
The researchers found that previous cost and efficiency estimates for air capture from entrepreneurs and scientists were far too optimistic. Extracting carbon dioxide from the air would likely cost more than $1,000 per ton, compared to $50 to $100 per ton from a system installed in a chimney. "We're not saying it's infeasible to take CO2 out of the air; we're asking if this is an economic way to mitigate climate change, and here we're very clear it's not," said Herzog.
House also noted that the energy needed to pull a given quantity of carbon dioxide from the air is greater than the energy you get from burning the coal that produced it. In other words, running an air capture system with coal power would produce more pollution than it cleans up. "If you power it with natural gas, you break even, which is pointless," said House.
The only way air capture would be effective in fighting climate change is if it were powered by renewable energy like solar or wind power, in which case, it is better to feed the energy back into the grid to displace fossil fuel generation, according to House. "For air capture to work, people would basically have to substantially improve on what we've achieved so far in commercial separation systems," he said.
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143 Comments
Add CommentHow about if we plant a lot more trees and stop cutting down the trees we already have. Trees are very efficient at sequestering CO2 and do not cost us anything to run. Of course, we would need a lot more trees to reverse the damage but it would be an easy way to begin moving things in the right direction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLogging trees for wood to make furniture, houses, and paper is not as bad as logging trees for fuel, or clearcutting or burning entire forests just to clear the land for other uses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm all for conservation, but there are realities that have to be dealt with: growing populations need food to eat and places to live. Forests are often destroyed for those purposes.
Unless we provide alternate solutions to population growth and food production, it'll be impossible to stop the destruction of the forests.
The last three paragraphs of this article look like thy belong somewhere else entirely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr we could cut down all the trees and grow new trees. New trees sequester carbon at faster rates than established trees.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf our goal is to sequester carbon, this would be logical.
Alternative to population growth... I think i see where you are going with this. Wink, Wink....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's an easy solution to locking away carbon. Very easy. What's needed is to store carbon in very long hydrocarbon chains buried deep beneath the ground.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe name of this technology: Oil. Petroleum. No, I don't propose that we make our own, but instead of drilling the oil and releasing the carbon, we leave it sequestered where it is.
If we continue to dither about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, eventually the Arctic landmasses will be covered with a dense forest and we can seed the ice-free Arctic Ocean with giant kelp. Problem solved. Unfortunately mean global temperature now 6-8 degrees K higher. Very expensive to mitigate! Much less expensive to prevent! Mankind not very smart! He realize now he stupid! Oh well!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Small needles, big haystack' ... say it ain't so!! You mean that finding 400 ppm or 0.04% (of the atmosphere is difficult!?!?! How can this be? CO2 is billed to be the worst of all gases in the atmosphere so how can it be that it is too costly to get it out?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you haven't caught on I am saying (very sarcastically) is that at 400 ppm is pretty low and this article indicates just how low it is in reality. To put this number into context: 400 ppm is like isolating 20 people in a 50,000 person crowd in Yankee Stadium.
Fine idea. What are we going to use instead?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is going to be proven more expensive to prevent than mitigate because it is either natural or the effect of having 7 billion people on the planet and all of their heat producing activities, such has cooking or heating homes, buildings and everything else we have. The heat actually produced and released into the atmosphere is probably contributing more heat than the CO2 is out of the same car's tailpipe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAssuming it isn't actually natural, unless you plan to exterminate 4 or 5 billion people chances are we are stuck with climate change. Mitigating the effects and even taking advantage of them is the most effective plan to take. Why, because we can't kill 5 billion people, we cant stop the natural effect anyway and it is likely any alternative fuel is going to end up being worse for the planet than burning oil is.
Unfortunately that is only true on a temporary basis, unless you cut the mature tree & bury it in a subduction zone in the ocean. Then you could one day find them resurfacing as diamonds :) The problem is that once a forest matures it reaches equilibrium with carbon dioxide capture from new growth being balanced by carbon dioxide release through decay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisZombie canard debunking warning! Zombie canard debunking warning! In 3...2...1...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about 400ppm of arsenic in a glass of water you're about to drink or what about 400ppm of cyanide in the air you're breathing? You've NEVER responded to these conjectures, have you? What about 400ppm of a greenhouse gas in an atmosphere where 99% of the molecules floating around in it are TRANSPARENT to the longwave radiation that the Earth re-emits? How come I NEVER get a response to these questions? Could it be that the deniers are scared of actually responding to evidence?
Run the numbers:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1.7 W/m2 over the ENTIRE surface of the Earth for a year is 50,000x the energy given off by ALL fossil fuel combustion. Check my math, see if I'm wrong. I dare you!
"it is likely any alternative fuel is going to end up being worse for the planet than burning oil is."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere's your PROOF? Yeah, corn ethanol is bad. That's why we should stop subsidizing it, but SOME people in congress don't want to upset the poor MEGA Agribusiness Giants that contribute to their campaigns.
Let's take the billions in destructive, dirty energy subsidies we give away each year and instead, retrofit as many of the buildings in the U.S. as we can to get LEED Platinum ratings. Let's tax imported oil $1 per barrel to pay for a huge expansion of our electric car charging infrastructure. Let's charge X dollars per ton for EVERY environmental contaminant based on its toxicity. Mercury, SOx, NOx, ash, carcinogens, formaldehyde, particulate matter, etc. all impose a cost burden on society due to negative health impacts and property damage. You'll probably say it's hard or impossible to quantify these effects, but you CAN'T say they aren't real nor are they small! Let's at least mandate the best available pollution control technology on pollution sources. It's not like we trade people's health for corporate profits in this country, do we?
If we haven't solved the CO2 problem by then, maybe we could start charging by the ton as well. However, it will be much easier when our economy is one of the most energy efficient in the world and the public has realized that we CAN solve big problems if we want to!
Really? You challenged me recently to provide evidence for my claim that the number & severity of storms had declined. I supplied a link. No response. You really are a piece of work. No wonder people can not be bothered with you. Including me. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=noaa-chief-2011-was-harbi
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisposts 31 & 32.
Are you going to include all the toxic materials needed to manufacture your utopian green energy? http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/sage/200909/solar/nittygritty.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI didn't even see your old post since I moved on to another topic. Chill out...I'm not required to read every thing you post, especially if it's the last post that article has gotten in a few days.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour "proof" cited here is a paper from Roger Pielke submitted in 1999. Do you know how dated this paper is?
Do you know how many times Pielke has been wrong? See here for just 1 example:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Pielke-Sr-and-scientific-equivocation-dont-beat-around-the-bush-Roger.html
The fact that all types of tropical storms have been increasing during the satellite monitoring era totally blows Dr. Pielke's dated idea out of the water:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/hurricanes-global-warming-intermediate.htm
What was it you said about diodes? Maybe you just need more logic gates in your circuits!
"In developed countries, these extreme molecules are usually captured and reused in a closed-loop process...There are reports from China, for example, of silicon tetrachloride pollution from new PV cell factories that are springing up in response to the global demand for solar electricity."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo we need to slap a tariff on Chinese solar panels to counteract the unfair advantage their panel manufacturers enjoy because of non-existent environmental regulations.
"Burton Richter, a Nobel laureate in physics and Stanford professor emeritus, gave a presentation at Stanford in which he explained the health impacts of the different types of energy and electricity generation. The studies used in his presentation show that virtually all of the health impacts—from coughs in asthmatics to heart diseases—of solar power are lower than those of coal, lignite, oil and gas. Other studies have also supported these observations. These impacts can be lowered even further, through regulatory oversight of solar panel manufacture and disposal."
"Bottom line
The environmental impacts of solar power will depend, first and foremost, on solar panel manufacturing practices. Proper regulatory policies to ensure the safe manufacture and disposal of solar panels will further reduce the already minimal environmental impacts of solar power.
The U.S Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has already set policies to safeguard employees in solar panel manufacturing factories. The Obama administration is taking steps to further improve the renewable energy industry, with a focus on economic viability, sustainability and environmental responsibility. Such steps could help solar power’s benefits shine bright, and in time, give way for a grand plan for solar energy."
Just sayin'...or quotin' from your OWN SOURCE! Did you even READ IT????
So what do you think these measures would do to costs? Recently you were telling us that prices for solar have halved. Will they double do you think or quadruple under the regulatory regime you wish to implement. What about world trade agreements? The world needs freer trade arrangements between nations not more regulation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho is going to own these factories? The greedy businessmen you talk about or The Government. After all in your world they would control everything else. In no time it will be cheaper to import those cheap Chinese nuke power stations you talk about. By the way, before you sling off about Chinese technology, who presently has the ability to launch people into space? Clue: It is not the US.
Ummm....space travel is irrelevant to this discussion. That coupled with all the strawman arguments and words you're putting into my mouth makes me doubt you want to have an honest debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf solar power is going to have to keep tabs on its pollution, then dirty energy will have to as well. Since solar power is already doing a good job and improving on this front in developed countries, why can't dirty energy do the same? I'll tell you why: the "cheapness" of coal, oil, etc. disappears when they have to deal with their pollution.
The government is just there to make sure the playing field is fair and level. As long as dirty energy gets away with offloading the true cost to use their products on society, the playing field isn't fair, right? As long as China manipulates their currency, dumps their products overseas to put the competition out of business, and has no regard for pollution standards, the playing field isn't fair, right? "Free" trade is a horrible deal for a country if the only thing it does is fill the store shelves with cheap, breakable plastic crap. If people loose jobs in the millions with these "Free" trade deals, how does that benefit the country signing on to the deal?
By the way, you ridiculed my source re storm frequency but inevitably provide a link to PEER REVIEWED studies that PROVE they have INCREASED. Don't you just love the CAPITILISATION & CATCH PHRASES?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs usual, anything that any researcher finds that goes against those in the AGW tent, PEER REVIEWED or not, MUST be REJECTED.
Oh wait a moment, that first link is by a JOURNALIST. Not PEER REVIEWED.
Now let us have a look at the second link. Who wrote it? Paul Bedard. Who is he? Not another cherry picking journalist surely. And what does the link say anyway in the quotes he refers to? Increased reporting rather than increased activity could be the cause of their increase in numbers. Well, you don’t say. That’s incredible.
Read it yourselves folk. No mention anywhere adout: New paper on ARGO data: Trenberth’s ocean heat still missing.
Four out of five ARGO data studies now show Ocean Heat Content declining.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/new-paper-on-argo-data-trenberths-ocean-heat-still-missing/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlgae in the ocean traps more CO2 than trees, but no one thinks of stopping the pollution that is killing our ocean life.
I hate to be counted as a member of the pessimists, but we are actually close to, if not beyond, the tipping point for being able to do anything to alter our evermore bleak looking future.
No peer-review? Think again:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"This is what the von Schuckmann paper had to say about the graph: Figure 11a shows the variability of globally averaged deep ocean heat content computed from the monthly temperature anomaly fields. A considerable warming is visible from the year 2003 to 2008. The 6-year heat increase implies an average warming rate of 0.77 ± 0.11Wm2. Much of this increase in heat storage comes from the Atlantic [Fig. 5,Levitus et al., 2005]."
While the story posted by climate "expert" Anthony Watts is a classic cherry pick since the data it used to make its points is biased towards cooling. It starts at the end of a strong El Nino period and ends in a very deep La Nina:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
If you knew anything about this issue, you would know that 4 1/2 years is WAY TOO short a time period to make ANY calls about ocean heat content. Also, why did a paper published in 2011 suddenly stop incorporating data at the beginning of 2008? Could it be that, if you look at Fig 1 that the data was about to stop agreeing with their predetermined conclusion and their cherry-picked time window had to close? Could it be -gasp- that they cherry-picked a momentary peak in ocean heat and stopped incorporating data once it started increasing again?
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Could you have gotten the SAME results if your window was 1964 - 1974 or 1980 - 1985 and STILL missed the long-term warming signal?
Say it ain't so! Say it ain't so!
Scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air can already be acheived using Biomasse Pyrolysis. Plants capture CO2. Pyrolysing plants produces Hydrogen and charcoal. The Hydrogen can be used to generate electricty. The charcoal, renamed 'Biochar', can be incorporated into soil where it remains for thousands of years. There is proof of this! See 'International Biochar Initiative' for details. To be economical, the ton of CO2 will need to be set at $25.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've researched Biochar and it looks to be one of the most promising ways for our economy to go carbon negative. Enriching the soil with charcoal will be essential to enrich the dwindling supply of arable land in the 21st Century and decrease energy-intensive chemical inputs into agriculture as fossil fuel reserves are depleted. Have you seen this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
Biochar looks interesting at first glance on a number of fronts. Cars & trucks were powered by producer gas when I was a child during WW11. On average one cubic foot of wood contains as much energy as a gallon of gasoline. Using this for transport today would never get past the pollution laws. Quite properly. The process also releases tars, sulphur & other pollutants. Another major problem is that, from memory, a forest only sequesters 1500 lb per annum per acre in good forest areas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese things do not rule it out entirely but it will not be a panacea.
I have been associated with the land all my life. I do not understand, if the claimed longevity of charcoal in the soil is true, where all the natural deposits are. It is produced naturally. Particularly from underground tree roots that burn in an oxygen starved situation. When you excavate in forest areas, you find the soil is mostly thin. Whether in shallow or deep soil, evidence of charcoal is scarce. You would expect that over a period of thousands of years in areas that burn every few years, there would be almost a solid bed of biochar. I own such a property. Believe me there is very little charcoal in the soil. I strongly suspect it is another case of wishful thinking that will end in tears. There should be much more research done before serious money is committed to it.
There is always, the Other Side of the story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThings have moved forward so fast with so little public awareness and debate that critics are alarmed, especially over the proposal from some prominent advocates that 500 million hectares or more of ‘spare land’ could be used to grow crops for producing biochar [11, 12], mostly to be found in developing countries; the same as was proposed in the biofuels initiative several years earlier.
Biofuels proving disastrous
http://permaculture.org.au/2010/11/18/beware-the-biochar-initiative/
Thanks for keeping up with the name calling. I was kind of wishing that you would jump in and do so to prove that you have no idea what you, nor anyone else, is talking about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS please read post 97 on the other article where you were calling me names and then reread my previous post and then stop posting until you learn to read for content.
Once again try to change the topic so that CO2 is equated to something PROVEN to be bad as a way to prove your point. This is both transparent and illogical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the topic of not replying. I think that I pointed out to you that the climate modelers have ADMITTED that they cannot model two imprtant drivers which have just as much if not more impact than CO2 (humidity and clouds) and you have as of yet to prove that they are wrong.
Also, you have deflected each and every arguement that I have made that counters your dogmatic belief in AGW while attempting to disparage my points (or claiming that you do not understand) when I hjave clearly indicated what I am talking about.
Overall it appears that the tide is turning against you and name calling is not making you look smart.
Bjorn Lomborg is the head of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDurban failure not all bad news but most won't get to read about it.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/durban-failure-not-all-bad-news-but-most-wont-get-to-read-about-it/story-e6frgd0x-1226222291698
"climate modelers have ADMITTED that they cannot model two imprtant drivers which have just as much if not more impact than CO2 (humidity and clouds)"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUmm... no?
Climate modelers absolutely can model atmospheric water vapor and clouds. There are uncertainties in the latter, to be sure, but incomplete understanding is not he same as no understanding.
As for the notion that these have "more impact than CO2", that probably depends on what you mean by "impact", but if you're looking for causation for recent climate change, you're left with two problems. First, water vapor isn't a forcing, but rather exclusively a feedback, because its residence time is very short (mere days). The only thing that makes it vary is the temperature itself, so the only role water vapor plays is enhancing other forcings, like, you know, the Co2 forcing ;)
Clouds play an important role in climate but if you're expecting some kind of replacement of Co2 as an explanation for recent observed warming, then I wouldn't hold your breath, as authors have tried finding such causal mechanisms for decades without success, though not without first resorting to some rather outlandish stuff for the sake of giving a good laugh. My personal favorite dead-end hypothesis is Svensmark's hypothesis on cosmic ray seeding of clouds.
Of course, if you'd like to offer evidence that either of these are likely causal forcings, I'm sure it'd be a fun notion to entertain.
Parallels to the biofuel debacle aside, I find the whole mindset behind the hasty adoption of biochar ironic, because looking before we lept, engaging in pursuits with far more enthusiasm than prudence, is what got us into these various environmental messes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThus far, trying to same approach to get us back out definitely has not worked out of the best :)
check the ipcc's report and get back to me because climate models do not mosel those factors. additionally, the grid cells are way too large to model even a single cloud.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of us actually read the scientific literature, and don't have to rely on the reinterpretation of the IPCC, and yet, clearly while I have read the IPCC reports, you apparently have not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTreatment of clouds in GCMs is addressed right in the introductions to sections 8.1, 8.2, 8.6, and throughout specific parts of those sections.
Had you read either the reports or the actual scientific literature (or any decent climate blog?), you'd know that cloud responses are parameterized within the models; they don't have to model each and every cloud. Some of the newer, more complex ones replace much of this parameterization by running separate cloud simulations within each grid box.
Not only are they represented, but despite the uncertainties, all research points to clouds having a slight positive feedback effect, which means that like water, they serve to simply amplify warming, which clearly doesn't make your case.
Just to give an example (one of many), Andrews Dessler's 2010 paper on the subject (A Determination of the Cloud Feedback from Climate Variations over the Past Decade) estimated the effect to be .54MW^2+-.74MW^2, and his 2011 paper (Cloud variations and the Earth's energy budget) investigated whether clouds could be responsible for overall surface temperature changes (the very notion you're offering), and concluded that cloud effects are entirely unable to account for them.
Yeah, the tide turns just because you say so...and you're calling me immature!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tried to summarize what I thought your main point was, but apparenty I was a little off. I was a little off because I had TRIED to paraphrase your real hypothesis previously, but it was so outside the scope of the current situation that I didn't think you were actually trying to argue it.
I and another poster responded that using the Siberian Traps as an example that massive CO2 injections into the atmosphere aren't bad is a terrible way to try to prove your point. The End Permian Extinction was kicked off by the climate disruption all this CO2 caused, so if anything, the End Permian Extinction is a warning NOT to inject trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere too quickly.
Water vapor is a climate feedback that is strongly influenced by atmospheric temperatures. It is amplifying the warming caused by CO2, but it couldn't in and of itself cause the warming we're seeing. There is a cap on the amount of water vapor air can hold (relative humidity) and raising the temperature via CO2 forcing (with feedbacks) makes more room for H2O in the air. This is why storms are becoming more destructive. Climatologists have a pretty good handle on the forcing due to clouds. They have positive and negative forcings and the most current data shows that the two either cancel out or the positive forcing wins out.
Look, you never respond to the evidence I present and only deflect. Before you accuse people of being dogmatic, see if it's even possible that you can change your mind. I'll say it again, if I see conclusive proof that the Earth's climate sensitivity is lower than a certain amount (say 1.5C) or there's evidence for a VERY strong negative feedback in the Earth's climate system, I'll become VERY suspicious of climate scientists. What would change your mind? Since you claim the high ground of not being dogmatic, show me proof that you aren't and I'll be more inclined to believe you.
If you're so worried about depleting O2 in the atmosphere, then you SHOULD want to get off fossil fuels even FASTER than climate science says we should. Falling O2 levels are caused by a steep drop in photosynthesis productivity that we are causing via deforestation, polluting the ocean and generally being rather destructive with our planet in combination with the huge amount of combustion we use to power our industrial society. The amount of C that we need to sequester is 1 part out of the 10,000 parts that O2 takes up from the atmosphere (0.002% vs 20%). Even if each C atom takes up 10 O2 molecules (impossible, I know) there's no threat from biochar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also think Dr. Mae-Wan Ho's credibility is called into question by the following statement:
"Moreover, black carbon pollution from fossil fuel and biomass burning associated with deforestation contribute as much to global warming as CO2, and climate scientist are proposing a reduction of black carbon emissions as a way of cooling the planet [27] (see Black Carbon Warms the Planet Second Only to CO2, SiS 44)."
How can black carbon cause as much warming as CO2 if the Dr.'s SOURCE says it warm the planet SECOND ONLY TO CO2? Either the Dr. is not even reading the titles of their references or they are just throwing spurrious accusations at an approach they just don't like. Trying to connect biochar to the current biofuel failure is dubious in itself for many reasons. I'm not saying biochar is the solution or even A solution, but Dr. Mae-Wan Ho certainly didn't provide anything of value to the discussion with this article.
Just so you don't have to go digging through an older article for the 101th comment, which I poster...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd if you need any more info on how the Siberian Traps were so bad, read this:
"Furthermore, if the Siberian Traps eruptions occurred within a period of 200,000 years, the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content would have doubled. Recent climate models suggest that such a rise in CO2 would have raised global temperatures by 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) to 4.5 °C (8.1 °F), which is unlikely to cause a catastrophe as great as the P–Tr extinction.[86]
In January 2011, a team led by Stephen Grasby of the Geological Survey of Canada—Calgary, reported evidence that volcanism caused massive coal beds to ignite, possibly releasing more than 3 trillion tons of carbon. The team found ash deposits in deep rock layers near what is now Buchanan Lake. According to their article, "... coal ash dispersed by the explosive Siberian Trap eruption would be expected to have an associated release of toxic elements in impacted water bodies where fly ash slurries developed ...", and "Mafic megascale eruptions are long-lived events that would allow significant build-up of global ash clouds".[96][97] In a statement, Grasby said "In addition to these volcanoes causing fires through coal, the ash it spewed was highly toxic and was released in the land and water, potentially contributing to the worst extinction event in earth history."[98]
So, we're set to DOUBLE the atmosphere's CO2 content in 200 years, which is 1000x faster than the most massive volcanic eruption known! If you think this won't have negative consequences, then your risk management style is utterly reckless!
Also, we've released 1/3 the CO2 that this catastrophe did already (1 Trillion Tons), mostly by burning coal. Could we be repeating the causes of the End Permian Mass Extinction? Many scientists have determined that we are in the midst of the 6th great mass extinction in Earth's history based on the species extinction rate. Many have also determined that we are heading into a new geologic period called the Anthropocene, which will be domonated by the actions and influences of mankind.
I'd agree that we're releasing an impressive amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (not impressive in a good way), but I'd also urge serious caution in attribution to causes of the end-Permian. It was so long ago, honestly, it's really tough, if not entirely impossible, to determine exactly how much extinction was caused by what. Climate change may have had a huge role, or no an insignificant one (If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say somewhere in between).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHell, it's hard enough coming up with causes for the End-Pleistocene, to the point that we can't even figure out if a devastating asteroid impact had anything to do with it (though at least we know to some extent what died from human hunting and what died from the freeze), and that was thousands of times more recent!
:D
I tend to think of it more in terms of us being in a unique collision of circumstances, and find the most frightening though to be, not what past climatic changes have done, but what we've already done, in the here and now, with just a really modest climatic change (fast, but small).
The thing that makes our situation so interesting, and in a way, so unprecedented, at least since plight of a few of the Pleistocene species, is that it's not so much the climatic change itself, which is bad enough, but the fact that first we ran in and savaged the ability of species to DEAL with climate change, and THEN we started quickly changing climate. That's a rather unlikely, and devastating mix.
Species can't simply stay put and adapt, because it's .1C/decade, with the potential for 2-3 times that warming, and they can't move, because we've reduced their ranges so much that there's nowhere to move TOO, while adding yet additional environmental stress (pollution, habitat destruction and fragmentation, extinction of species relied on by others, etc) and introducing invasive species who might well out-compete the native species especially in a changing environment where those native species are already being disrupted.
I once read a paper out a rare California song bird and a plant that it relies on, and based on observations, they modeled out how each would respond to climate, and under almost every change scenario (dryer, wetter, hotter, didn't matter), the two species moved in different ways,and no longer overlapped, so the bird is basically doomed no matter what, because there's too little habitat, especially if biotic factors are included, for it to have anything left once range shifts occur.
It's really quite the amazing perfect storm.
Also, forgive the bad spelling; my mind is completely numb from studying for this blasted evolutionary biology final :(
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the Siberian Traps were the biggest volcanic eruption in the geologic record and the volume of lava released over the 200K years they were erupting had associated CO2 emissions that would DOUBLE CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We are set to DOUBLE CO2 in the atmosphere in 200 years. Like I said, this is 1000 TIMES faster than the greatest period of volcanic activity in the geologic record. This can't be a smart way to survive as a species!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOther contributing factors could have made the End Permian Mass Extinction worse. The burning coal beds added 3 Trillion tons in and of themselves as well as coated the world in a layer of ash. Well, we're burning billions of tons of coal every year and covering the world in a layer of plastic crap and other contaminants. We might not see a mass extinction of that magnitude followed by a 30 million year-long barren period, but why do we even want to see how close we can get to that tragedy before we see the worst effects of climate change?
It looks like they're finding methane plumes in the Arctic Ocean, a troubling sign that some of the methane clathrates are becoming unstable due to warming water temperatures. The permafrost is melting too. Anoxic zones are expanding in the ocean. Yeah, it might not be Judge Dredd-style calamity on the Earth, but I don't want to risk getting anywhere near that scenario if we can help it!
Efficiency, conservation, clean energy...It's just that simple!
As you say. Blocking the migratory paths of species will have catastrophic outcomes. This is so regardless of whether temperatures go up or down as they inevitably will & regardless of the causes. In previous eras, species have been able to migrate to higher or lower latitudes & in mountainous areas, altitudes, to compensate for moderate climate change. Assuring that we provide national parks & pathways for wildlife migration is crucial. This needs to be done in a calm & considered way. It will be very difficult to achieve in poorer countries in particular.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome species will not make it, regardless of what we do.
I never said that increasing CO2 was not reckless only that the results are unknown and the computer models are not robust enough to believe without question. There is a simple computation that I have made below to address the mountains of evidence that support CO2 being the main driver of global temperature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I believe that increasing CO2 by 100 ppm is going to cause a 1.5 degC rise in temperature as fact then I have two thoughts: (1) at the end of the Cretaceous was global temperature 1.5 degC times 6 (or 9 degC) higher when CO2 was at 1000 ppm and (2) In the Jurassic CO2 was at ~2200 ppm then the average global temperature should have been 1.5 degC times 22 (or 33 degC) warmer than present.
So, now let's make the assumption that the current global temperature average is approximately 14.5 degC (http://www.currentresults.com/Environment-Facts/changes-in-earth-temperature.php)
Now taking the current average global temperature of 14.5 degC (or 58.1 degF) and adding 9 degC for the Cretaceous we get an average global temperature of 23.5 degC (or74.3 degC) which is 162% higher than today. Now take the Jurassic and add the 33 degC to the current 14.5 and you get an average global temperature of 47.5 degC (or 117.5 degF) which is 330% higher than today. Seems a bit outrageous doesn't it?
Now even backing down the forcing to 0.8 degC as being attributable to the manmade CO2 we find that the Cretaceous should have then been 4.8 degC warmer and the Jurrasic 26.4 degC warmer. Following this logic then in the Cambrian (when life really exploded) we should have had an average global temperature of ~147 degF (using the 0.8 degC rise for 100 ppm of CO2).
So therefore, I have now placed some relatively simple discussions as to why a simple relationship between CO2 and temperature seem somewhat problematic so please reply.
Next question: why is it that when you place a regression through the ice core CO2 and temperature data you get a different trend than when you place a regression through the modern data? Which one is wrong and why?
Strange, when I read chapter 8 I fing the following statement:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Coupled climate models do not simulate with reasonable accuracy clouds and some related hydrological processes (in particular those involving upper tropospheric humidity). Problems in the simulation of clouds and upper tropospheric humidity, remain worrisome because the associated processes account for most of the uncertainty in climate model simulations of anthropogenic change.'
Seems to me maybe you did not read the information appropriately!?!?!
Also, please point me in the right direction as to the flaws in my logic in post #42.
Other flaws:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisICE sheets grow and shrink. At times, they disappear. At other times, ice starts to cover polar areas and high mountains. That's what ice has done over the history of our planet. The Greenland and Antarctic basins are more than 1km deep, and deeper in the centres than around the edges, so that ice is squeezed uphill like toothpaste out of a tube by the weight of overlying ice. The alarmist media stresses that changing sea ice and continental glaciers indicate rapid global warming. Is this really so?
As snow falls, it traps air. This air is preserved as the snow becomes an ice sheet. This air remains trapped and uncontaminated in ice, otherwise it cannot be used to measure past atmospheres. Antarctic ice core (Siple) shows that there were 330 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air in 1900; Mauna Loa Hawaiian measurements in 1960 show that the air then had 260ppm carbon dioxide.
Either the ice core data is wrong, the Hawaiian carbon dioxide measurements are wrong, or the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was decreasing during a period of industrialisation.
As in all other areas of science, uncertainty rules.
This is an extract from Ian Plimer's book How to Get Expelled from School: A Guide to Climate Change for Pupils, Parents & Punters.
he best thing we can do is just keep as many alive as possible, and you're right, that's an effort that will fail on as many counts as it succeeds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHabitat destruction is easily by far the greatest concern there.
I like the Moncton maneuver you pulled there. Say one thing, get called out on it, and then slightly change your position.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Model" and "Accurately Model" are not the same thing.
What's worse, you have to lie about it. Did you honestly think I wouldn't check?
Those words are from the Wikipedia article, here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model), not from the IPCC.
They do not appear anywhere in IPCC WGI section of AR4, and Google does not find those words anywhere in www.IPCC.ch.
A word of advice: if you're going to try to BS people, you shouldn't make it so obvious.
"Also, please point me in the right direction as to the flaws in my logic in post #42"
Because you're trying to attribute climatic behavior as being either 100% dependent on CO2, regardless of all other forcings, or not being dependent on CO2 levels at all.
Honestly, I could give a much more detailed response, but it's not really any more complicated than that.
Why don't you go and read the scientific literature for once, and see a real discussion on how to constrain climate with observations.
Might I suggest Annan and Hargreaves' 2006 GRL paper as a starting point? It cites lots of other literature on the topic, as well as giving good treatment itself, so it ought to be a good place for you to start.
It's interesting that you're so quick to trust Plimer's claims after he flat out misquoted his own source in the last piece you linked on him.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo I really have to go through and blast apart his arguments, yet again, or is poking holes in his credibility (something far easier and more fun, that I could keep doing for hours) sufficient?
Because honestly, I'm not sure I'm in the mood to write up another 15 page essay ;)
The 100% attribution is exactly what you are supporting. So is CO2 or is it not the primary driver because if so then my computations hold true and then the Earth's temperature was quite a bit higher.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes or No.
If the answer is no then I am tired of you telling me that the models are 100% reliable and their outcome should be trusted.
The reason you cannot write an essay is the main flaw in the models. The ice core and modern data do not match and when you plug the historic data into the models the results are nonsense.
Also, the literature does not substitute for the ability to construct and run such models. I do so and I am going to say for the last time: they are models and they are not fact. I can make a curve fit to any data set and make it look reasonable if I ignore all of the other data and look at a single time period.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisadditionally, good luck finding 'clean energy'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlimner has unquestionably made mistakes. That does not invalidate everything he says. If it does, why is it that errors & failed predictions of climate scientist do not invalidate all their work? Why is this bias so? Are you discounting the studies & conclusions of the scientists he quotes because he has made some errors yet are prepared to forgive errors, omissions & failed conclusions from those whose opinions you favour? That is not a scientific approach. Everyone & everything needs to be held up to the light. At the moment we have the cockroach effect where data is hidden or corrupted & critical examination swept under the carpet. Call it an opinion if you like. To me, things like the denial by the supporters of the AGW hypothesis, of the intellectual corruption as revealed in the emails strengthen this opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed. It is a hypothesis and whether or not it is true seems of little importance to the AGW supporters. What they care about is a misguided attempt to stop climate change when the alternatives to the current energy supply could be just as damaging to the environment or worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like how quickly you dodge past the fact that you just tried to support your argument by lying through your teeth, as if we're just supposed to look past that fact that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell me, if your point of view is valid, why do you have to lie to support it?
"The 100% attribution is exactly what you are supporting"
Really? Show me where I said that Co2 is the only climatic forcing
"I am tired of you telling me that the models are 100% reliable and their outcome should be trusted"
Really? Show me where I said that GCMs are "100% reliable", or even made any statement about their overall reliability.
You see, what you're doing is not only trying to get us to look past the fact that you just tried to lie your way into having an argument, but now, you're lying AGAIN, by completely strawmmanning peoples' statements.
I'll tell you what, when you can answer my questions, and show me that there's anything remotely honest to the discussion you're putting forth, as you lie over and over and over, I will be more than happy to answer your questions.
Because I can't answer your questions so long as you attribute statements to me that I have never once made (hmm, just like you did with the IPCC?).
Fine, you're right and I am a liar just like the the rest of the AGW crowd.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlimer's misquote was not a mistake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe took a Co2 measurement of 2400-9000ppmv, looked right at it, and called it something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
That's not a mistake; it's a lie. The number he cited did not, ONCE, appear in the source he was using. If a layman did that I wouldn't be able to swallow them being incompetent enough for that to be an honest mistake, but a working scientist? You actually expect me to believe that reading "2400-9000" as "4000" is an honest mistake?
And it's not the first time with him, either. In fact, he has a history of this that's so long, if I were to lay out every single dishonest thing he's said, from using incorrect facts that don't reflect his sources, to using gross logistical fallacies that even the most inept scientist would be able to see the problems with.
When longtime skeptic Eigil Friis-Christensen makes a math error in his mid-90s paper that seems to make the sun follow global temperatures, THAT is a mistake, and I don't hold it against him. It was quickly spotted, corrected, and Friis-Christensen admitted the mistake.
That is NOT the same as Plimer's endlessly long history of absolutely gross and absolute obvious errors, like his continual propensity to claim a lack of correlation between sea level and CO2, while bringing up the fact that past periods have been far warmer (with higher CO2 levels), which is true of, say, the Eocene, and yet entirely neglecting to mention that sea level was dozens of meters higher during that time period.
Or how about his book, Heaven and Earth? In it, he recycles a graph from Martin Durkin's The Great Global Warming Swindle, without giving it any attribution (again, a scientist knows better, unless he's unprecedentedly inept), nor does he once mention the graph is doctored!
The graph was a distortion of Friis-Christensen's 1991 paper on the solar forcing, and even being a skeptic, Friis-Christensen very pubicly denounced Durkin's graph as a very obvious distortion of his work. Plimer mentions none of this, and why not give the graph any attribution? Is he afraid of people finding out it's from a bad documentary, instead of real research? Whatever the reason, a lie of omission is still a lie.
Plimer also asserts, in that same book, that "skeptic arguments are never addressed", even though his own arguments have not only addressed, but addressed ad nauseum.
"Are you discounting the studies & conclusions of the scientists he quotes because"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBefore you go any further with that question: I'm not discounting ANY of the work by the scientists he quotes.
What I'm discounting is his creative reinterpretations of that work.
Take his comparison of the Siple ice core data vs Mauno Loa for instance.
Are you quoting him correctly? If so, he has the ice core values COMPLETELY WRONG.
The Siple core data does not show 330ppm values for 1900, it shows a value of 297ppmv for the period of 1883 to 1905 according to Nefter et al (1985), or 295.8ppmv for 1899 and 294.8 for 1903 according to Friedli et al (1986).
Two different analysis methods both very much agree with each other (with a couple parts per million), and very much disagree with Plimer.
Mauna Loa?
It's average anual value for 1960 was 316.91ppmv, NOT 260, as he was claiming.
I think I know where he gets the Siple values wrong; he's confusing the age of the ice with the age of the bubbles inside (the ice stays porous for awhile, so there's an offset there), but ANY source he quotes would CLEARLY make that distinction, so how could he make that mistake? It's spelled out clear as day; LOOK: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/siple2.013
If you'd like, I could also pull up the papers, or just the one he cites if you want to give that to me, assuming he hasn't "forgotten" attribution this time around.
The Mauna Loa data, on the other hand, doesn't even offer THAT much excuse.
It's not a proxy measure, but a direct measure, with no need for correction and the value, clear as day, is nowhere NEAR what he claims:
Again, look for yourself: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/maunaloa.co2
Plimer gets it not just wrong, but astoundingly wrong (as in, "how could that ever be an honest error?") yet again.
Here's my question to you: Plimer was making a rather extraordinary claim, that there was a basic disagreement, apparently not reported elsewhere (I had never heard about it) on atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou ever hear the old expression "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"?
Why didn't you CHECK his values, rather than just taking Plimers word for it? Would that not have been prudent?
I'm not trying to be too hard on you; it was a simple mistake. I just hope this is a lesson on taking people like Plimer at their word. I wouldn't even take a REAL researcher at their word if they were making such an extraordinary cliam, regardless of where they stood on the issue, and you shouldn't either, and so much the less for someone like Plimer, a non-expert with a long history of lies and wild conspiracy theories.
Honestly, how many times do I hate to refute Plimer and show him, not just in error, but so grossly in error, over and over and over and over, that they can't ALL be mistakes (unless he's just a retard), such that you'll except that he's not reliable?
You're smarter than listening to the likes of him, so I hope I needed take on his claims again.
If you want to cite the kinds of SOURCES Plimer uses, then fine, I will listen to any primary research source.
What I don't want are the creative reinterpretations, not from Plimer, or Christopher Moncton, or Al Gore, or Leonardo Dicaprio, or... honestly, need I go on?
I have no idea if I'm right, since I'm not a climate scientist, nor can I speak for the "rest of the AGW crowd", but at least you get one thing unequivocally right: You are a liar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is clear that you are not a climate scientist but you can clearly call people names when they bring up inconvenient truths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I'm certain that's what anyone would conclude reading over the comments here, watching you attribute Wikipedia quotes to the IPCC, and claiming to have read them in the IPCC reports when they contain no such thing, or grossly strawmanning people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvosburgh, why are you here? What are you trying to accomplish? Do you just feel like arguing with people and being adversarial?
Clearly it isn't to have a civilized discussion, because if it was, you wouldn't be lying to me about your information, or grossly strawmanning.
If you want to have a conservation, then we can have one, but if that's what you want, why are you resorting to such tactics?
Until you can present something, not just concrete, but honest, I don't see any need to continue this. I have more intelligent skeptics to debate here than you, and ones who won't make things up off the top of their heads to build their arguments on.
You got caught red handed in lies; accept that fact, grow up, and take it like a man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOtherwise, go find some other forum to troll.
Already have in terms of the CO2 forcing statements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEither it is the primary driver and the average temperature in the geologic past was impossibly high or the claims that CO2 is the primary driver are wrong.
It is that simple.
You do not think there have been creative reinterpretations by climate scientists?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I was growing up in Australia we were taught at school: www.koalanet.com.au/australian-geography-history.html
The hottest temperature recorded was 53°C (127°F) at Cloncurry in Queensland in 1889.
This has now been deleted from the official records though it still appears at sites as above. Could it be that it does not do to have such a high record temperature so long ago? Oh they give reasons for discounting it. The temperatures on the preceding & succeeding days were not close enough in their considered opinion for the record to be reliable. Lots of other temperatures have similarly been wiped.
You give cogent arguments about the reliability of Plimners claims.
I have no reason to discount what you say. I’ll admit I was being lazy & was looking for a critical response, which you have now provided. Thank you :)
Your turn. Which of the AGW scientists in your opinion are guilty of misrepresentation?
By the way, using intemperate language does not further your cause, though I admit I have been guilty of it with one individual in particular. Never calling him a liar though. Diode is much more original dont you think?
"Which of the AGW scientists in your opinion are guilty of misrepresentation?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn their actual science? None, as far as I know, not in the sense of backing the basic theory of AGW.
But I have seen some personal statements from them, outside of the literature, that I greatly disapprove of, like Hansens's "Obama has four years to save the world" nonsense.
James Hansen has a long record of good science, ironically, just like Plimer (who's done a great job addressing YECs in his country, and has a history of good research in his field).
Hansens should not ruin that reputation by making patently false claims, not just for his sake, but for the sake of the reputation of those around him.
I wonder how other GISS scientists, like Gavin Schmidt, feel when their boss goes off and does something so rash...
"By the way, using intemperate language does not further your cause, though I admit I have been guilty of it with one individual in particular. Never calling him a liar though"
You know, I call it like I see it.
When someone claims that they are directly reading a paragraph in the IPCC TAR that does not appear there, and is actually from Wikipedia, that is a direct, bald-faced lie.
When they then go on and commit the most egregious forms of strawmanning, directly claiming that people here have said things that are not even close to anything they've said, that is also a bald-faced lie.
What do you call someone who rests their arguments on bald-faced lies, and then doesn't have the decency to admit they lied when caught?
I'm afraid your alternative term went over my head ;)
What does a electronic device that only allows flow one-way have to do with anything? (as I said, it went over my head)
Actually, let me rephrase one point, of the PRESENT working scientists, those I quote, non have been guilty of scientific misrepresentation, besides Hansen's personal statements (which I don't quote; I only quote what he puts in peer-reviewed journals).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the past, there might well have been gross misrepresentations, but I wouldn't be aware of them, because I seldom quote papers from before 1990, or even 2000 if I can help it. 10-15 years is a good rule of thumb, in my opinion, for papers representing the state of current science, in almost any field (probably less for much of biology, because it's explosively changing).
Also, while I will quote Hansen's peer reviewed work, because unlike Plimer, he has a long track record of GOOD climatological statements as well, I AM more wary of his work, from the get-go, than that of others, because of some of his obvious alarmsim.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFair enough on all counts. Just remain wary is all I ask & that includes possible alternative explanations for observations, including veracity & interpretation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor me, as you know, the big question is how the world can move to cleaner cheaper energy & reduce the wasteful use of hydrocarbon fuel. Regardless of consequences, the world is going to use much more energy.
That stance seems a bit short sighted to me. It is not always the cutting edge that is most important. I have personally witnessed my coworkers (in the field of geology) attempting to re-invent, and very poorly at that, work that had been done in the 1960's because they had access to computers and did not have to actually think about what they were doing. Just because it is old it does not necessarily mean that it is wrong. Quite frequently it is useful to go back to the literature and start from the beginning in order to understand how we got to where we are today. Without that information we are apt to allow our bedazzlement at the computer generated results get the best of us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a paper, or circular, (I cannot remember which) from the USGS (?) that covered most of the topics that are being hotly debated today in terms of climate change that was written in the 40's or 50's. I cannot find my copy but I do recall that there are no real revelations in what is being discussed but our ability to build computer models has obviously increased.
If anyone has the reference I would like to find the paper/circular again because it was very insightful (especially given the time that it was written). I am pretty sure that it is a USGS publication (I got a copy from a friend that found it in a used book store).
I actually think that the AGW supporting scientists believe in their work. What I also believe is that they put way too much faith in woefully incomplete computer models when they do not possess the expertise build and understand the uncertainty in their efforts. They are not the sole constructors and users of such models and they need to look around and get expertise from others who are using such models with success (sorry, yes it is the oil and gas energy, the sworn enemy of the AGW people). If they could put aside their petty differences and share some knowledge then they would be able to get better results out of the climate models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComputer simulations are nothing more that 3 and 4 dimensional mathematical constructions that do what they are told. They cannot actually do the science that they are based upon and therefore if they are not properly constructed then they do not provide viable results. To date there is a lot of discussion surrounding the results of such models that have not been properly vetted against historical data.
Whether or not someone lied about a resource the argument stands: why do the CO2 versus temperature correlations in the geologic past and the modern record do not jive. That is a major issue and while you can attack them for their 'lie' you cannot attack the fact that the data does not lie. It is a fact that the data taken from the geologic record is not likely to be nearly as accurate as the current measurements but the sword that you fall on is that the modern record is so short that it is almost meaningless to make full scale climate system predictions based upon this data set.
Simply put, if the models cannot tell you how you got here then they cannot tell you where you are going.
So, if the computer models can history match the modern record but not the geologic record then there is something that is missing in how they model the climate system. Now given the fact that there is no reasonable way to model such a complex system we are left with the imperfect models that we have but we also must admit to ourselves that we are woefully underarmed with actual knowledge of what it that is actually happening. We do know that CO2 (and other 'greenhouse gasses') are increasing and that temperature is increasing (at least in the short term) but what we do not know is how the climate system reacted in the geologic past and therefore our current models will only be right due to luck and not knowledge.
You are of course right about older papers; it's not like I shun them. People have done fine science since the turn of the century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's just that, in most of the fields that I personally frequently discuss, which are often fast-changing (climate, evolutionary biology, computing) there is almost ALWAYS a relatively recent paper, because the science itself is far from static.
As for computer modelling, a lot of fields us it, from evolutionary biology, the aeronautics, but they don't generally model the same phenomena as GCMs.
If there are flaws in the GCMs that an oil geologist could spot and correct (which would require a knowledge of atmosphere physics they almost certainly wouldn't possess), then they could easily get the source code, which is available freely for many models, and demonstrate those flaws, something they'd have a vested interest in doing if it meant discrediting climate scientists.
You're also misrepresenting the process of climatological work. Models are only hypotheses, and no scientist treats them as anything but.
Models are created using physical data, and then validated using observations. Models are specifically rated by how well they predict phenomena, such as the response to the '91 Mt Pinatubo eruption.
In fact, that reminds of a good RC article Gavin Schmidt posted on the subject some years ago; perhaps you'd find it of interest: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/is-climate-modelling-science/
It paints a picture of a process vastly different than what you're ascribing to the science.
Models are not just made and assumed correct; the entire process of evaluating them involves seeing how they recreate various phenomena.
"why do the CO2 versus temperature correlations in the geologic past and the modern record do not jive. That is a major issue"
But it's not a major issue if you understand what the science ACTUALLY says, and that this is a strawman.
Temperature does not follow ANY single forcing, not Co2, not the sun, nothing.
And if temperature ever did ONLY follow Co2, our understanding of climate would actually be in serious trouble, because that's NOT how we understand climate to work.
The temperature is a produce of ALL the forcings, combined, not just one.
Temperature doesn't follow Co2, but it doesn't do a halfway decent job of following the combined influence of Co2 and the sun and milankovich cycles, etc etc, just like we'd expect.
Ergo, computer models may be limited, but they are not entirely unable to model major basic phenomena like you imply.
You're probably thinking of examples like the late Ordivician, where exceedingly high levels of Co2 corresponded with an ice age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with assuming that this means Co2 isn't a strong forcing is that it entirely ignores the sun. Yes, Co2 was much higher, and the planet was much cooler, but the sun was also much lower in output, and it's perfectly consistent with what climate models say should have been happening at certain Co2 levels that might well have existed back then, given what was happening with the sun. We don't know exactly how much Co2 wsa in the atmosphere; in fact, the error bars are gargantuan, but what climate models say SHOULD have been the maximum Co2 levels is within that margin of error.
So climate models are PERFECTLY able to explain the late Ordovician.
Another example is the Little Ice Age. If anyone tried to model that as a Co2-induced event, they'd fail miserable. Why? Because like the Ordovician glaciation it was solar driven, by an event we call the Maunder Minimum.
In fact, models don't even claim, not is it tenable to claim, that any SINGLE forcing drives climate even in the modern era you discuss. Contrary to what you've apparently been told, scientists DO NOT attribute all climatic behavior in the 20th century to CO2.
In the 1920s, the solar forcing was very strong and driving most of the increase, while from the 40s to the 70s, aerosols created a massive negative forcing and drove cooling.
So if climate models did you you suggested, and only attributed modern climate to Co2, they'd fail miserably to match the 20th century.
The don't fail miserably because they take ALL the forcings into account, which is good important, because climate is an amalgamation of influences, and at any one time, 100 equally important things might be driving temperature up or down.
So if Co2 doesn't jet upward in 1998, but temperature still does, it still makes perfect sense, because that's ENSO warming, and when CO2 goes up slightly in 2006/2007, but temperature goes down slightly, THAT makes sense too, because that's ENSO cooling and the fact that we're at the solar nadir.
Co2 is like anything else. If it goes up, it will BIAS the climate towards warming (and vice versa), but if something else is driving downward, the overall energy balance change may still favor cooling.
Think of it like this. We all know a hurricane's winds create a lot of force and move things, right? Claiming Co2 isn't a driver of climate because sometimes temperature doesn't follow Co2, is like seeing a plane fly against hurricane-force winds, and saying "GEE, that must mean hurricane winds don't blow things afterall!". They do, it just means in that paritcular instance, the forward-propulsion of the plane happens to be stronger than the backward force of the winds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLikewise, just because a rapidly dropping sun or ENSO or a rapidly rising aerosol forcing is overwhelming warming influence of rising Co2, doesn't mean co2 doesn't have a warming influence. The net forcings may still be negative.
That Co2 cannot be USED as the ONLY explanation for many climatic events is not important. What is important is that there is much of climate that cannot be explained WITHOUT a strong Co2 forcing, not acting as a sole climatic factor, but as an important factor among several (and perhaps the second single most important, next to the sun).
While CO2 may be a large driver the problem still remains that the reasonably recent historical CO2 versus temperature (meaning ice core data for 400,000 year if I recall correctly) does not match the current record and therefore something is afoot. I would suspect that there is something regarding the interaction of the small volume of gas in the ice bubbles with the surrounding ice over geologic time that may be affecting the recorded CO2 volumes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyhow, I have no doubt that CO2 is an important factor.
However, I also have a problem with the fact that the computer simulations, which are said to be able to accurately model long term climate, cannot model short term climate changes. While the gridding required to model short term (high frequency) changes would be computationally impossible for the entire atmosphere it should be possible to extract a smaller region (sector model) at a higher grid density and check the models against daily temperature for a given period and get a reasonable match. If the case, as I have read, is that the models can only replicate the longer term averaged trends then it leads me to believe that the models are not working as they should in terms of the detailed climate drivers.
I read that the GCM's are running between 1 and 2 million grid cells which is about 1/20th of what I would run in a typical geologic model that covers only a few tens of cubic miles. There are a number of commercial software packages that are able to build the reservoir simulators that I run and I do not see why they could not be used to build models of the atmosphere at a much finer grid than is being currently done. Since these commercial packages run on a standalone PC in reasonable time frame (hours per simulation) there is no reason that this same technology could not be applied to the atmosphere. Also the reservoir simulators also tend to have uncertainty analysis packages included in them. The real trick with the uncertainty models are that you have to build the correct dependencies between the variables and equations into them to get the right results (which turns our to be extremely difficult).
In any case, covering such large areas with single grid cells (in the GCM's) can cause some major issues with upscaling. The upscaling issue is that if you average variables over such large volume/area you start to loose vertical and lateral resolution.
I really would like to see the climate modelers tap the knowledge that it out there in terms of modeling tools and techniques.
"While CO2 may be a large driver the problem still remains that the reasonably recent historical CO2 versus temperature (meaning ice core data for 400,000 year if I recall correctly) does not match the current record and therefore something is afoot"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOF COURSE THEY DON'T MATCH; they're two different periods!
Why would exactly the same sequence of events repeat itself during two different periods?
In fact, the same climatic processes were not even occurring.
I assume you're referring to the "lag" between Co2 and temperature?
I'm going to let you in on an astounding little secret: Climate scientists and their models predicted that lag, BEFORE it was found, and not just a little bit before it was found, but more than a decade. That prediction was published in a paper by Lorius et al in 1990 (You can read it here: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q4/211/articles_required/Lorius90_ice-core.pdf).
To explain the process of what's going on here, in brief (much easier than gathering it from a 5 page paper), the problem is that you're confusing two entirely different climatic processes.
First, let's be clear on what a feedback and a forcing is. A forcing is a direct, causal influence on climate. Forcings act independently of what the climate does, and control the climate. A feedback also affects climate, but it's the climate itself that starts the feedback, so instead of forcing->climate, the causation is more like climate->feedback->climate. What this means is that feedbacks only enhance forcings; they don't act on their own. So the actual causation is forcing->climate->feedback->climate.
In the 20th and 21st century, CO2 was a FORCING, because humans just added it. Our industrial processes injected it into the atmosphere, and after about the mid 1960s, it reached a big enough magnitude to start to become the dominant influence in climate.
In the Paleoclimate, something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT is happening. Co2 is not a forcing, but a feedback.
Changes in the orbital forcing, called Milankovich cycles, slightly alter the Earth's orbit around the sun, causing a relatively weak warming influence, but given thousands of years to re-adjust, some climatic feedbacks kick in. Arctic ice melts, causing albedo changes, which triggers more melt, and the oceans release dissolved Co2 as they warm (as any liquid does with dissolved gas), which warms climate more, which triggers more CO2 release.
So Co2 is supposed to lag the initial temperature rise by 800-1000 years, because it's a feedback, not a forcing.
"However, I also have a problem with the fact that the computer simulations, which are said to be able to accurately model long term climate, cannot model short term climate changes. While the gridding required to model short term (high frequency) changes would be computationally impossible for the entire atmosphere it should be possible to extract a smaller region (sector model) at a higher grid density and check the models against daily temperature for a given period and get a reasonable match"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is that then you're trying to model noise in the climate, rather than the strong signals of the important drivers, and it gets far MORE difficult to try to do it for a small area, which is even more prone to small-scale fluctuations. That's much less a problem of modelling itself, than a problem of not possibly having the exact information to work with.
It's like a 3-day forecast, which is what you're really looking for. Why can't scientists predict them exactly, even for small areas? Well that would require essentially knowing the exact lapse rates over every piece of terrain, the exact wind speed everywhere, the precise temperature of the ground, the exact humidity of every parcel of air, the exact temperature of the air, everywhere, including the location of every single fluctuation and inversion, and that's just the information for the target area.
Telling you exactly how warm this coming January will be in your home state is vastly more difficult than saying whether, on the whole of the globe, Januaries will get warmer or cooler, on average, and even the latter is subject to uncertainties.
We know the average energy balance of the planet, the Co2 level, what the sun is doing (less precisely before 1978), how the oceans will respond, on average, but it's far harder to predict what happens on small scales, where fluctuations rule everything, and the smaller the scale, temporally and spatially, the more influence those fluctuations gain.
Scientists know roughly how much of a positive influence so much Co2 will introduce, on average, to the whole planet's energy balance, but that doesn't mean they can predict a few-month ENSO spike, like the one that happened in 1998.
And climate models HAVE shown, time and time and time and time again that they can correctly predict these larger, overall events, getting the sequence of events and magnitude roughly correctly. Hansen did it in '88 (again, getting the signal right, not necessarily the fluctuations), and GCMs correctly predicted the response to Pinatubo.
Rather than trying to rate climate models by how well they model things they aren't designed to, I recommend you instead focus on how good their overall track record is of modelling things they ARE supposed to be able to model.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat gives a much better starting place to discuss both the strengths, those places where the models do well, and the weakness, where they do piss-poor, and there's a mix of both.
No climate scientist claims models are perfect. Are they good enough, to say with confidence, what the rough warming influence of Co2 is? Their fit with the observations says "yes, absolutely".
Attempts to constrain the overall climate sensitivity to the Co2 forcing with empirical observation, as I've discussed in previous comments here, has yielded the same result the models give: 1.5C-4.5C, with increased likelihood of the real value being towards the middle (3C).
"I really would like to see the climate modelers tap the knowledge that it out there in terms of modeling tools and techniques"
So would climatologist. I've heard many complaints about not having enough modellers and statisticians on hand; they'd love to have more. If you think they should, I recommend you write your local Congressmen and tell them to increase funding for science, and maybe that could be accomplished.
In the meantime, the modelling codes are often freely available, so if you think you know of ways to improve them, I'm sure the climate scientists would be much obliged if you showed them.
At what point does this short term noise disappear and the long term models become accurate?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's hard to understand why you think that 1 day weather forecasts are now accurate with a reasonable level of confidence, but 3 day forecasts will never be accurate. I'd expect that as weather modelling improves, they'll be able to improve the period that the weather forecasts are accurate. The computations just get much more complex as time moves on.
Given that you accept that there are a large number of forcing agents which affect both the weather (in the short term) and the climate (in the longer term), I don't understand why you think weather forecasts get more inaccurate as time goes on, but climate forecasts get more accurate. It seems to me that climate is extremely difficult to determine. There are natural phenomena e.g. sun spots, volcanic eruptions, biological adjustments to changes in the gas content of the atmosphere, carbon trapping in the land/oceans etc.etc. in addition to the inability to predict how mankind's pollution will very which means the task is much more complex than a 3 day weather forecast.
This is a complete strawman of what I said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It's hard to understand why you think that 1 day weather forecasts are now accurate with a reasonable level of confidence, but 3 day forecasts will never be accurate"
I never said anything of the sort. I think there will absolutely come a time when 3-day forecasts are accurate, in fact, they do halfway decent job now when you're only talking that far out, far better on some aspects than others. Precipitation prediction doesn't fantastic past a day or two, but the NWS usually gets temperatures just about spot on.
At no point did I say this wouldn't improve further. In 50 years, I wouldn't be surprised if 7-day forecasts are as good as 3-day forecasts are today.
"At what point does this short term noise disappear and the long term models become accurate?"
That depends on what you're trying to model. Paleoclimate models sometimes operate on temporal scales of millions of years.
For the purposes of the influences we expect in the here and now, with the data we have in the here and now, climate models do a pretty decent job of gauging *temperature* On the decadal scale.
Take Hansen's 1988 model he presented to Congress, for instance. His "Scenario B", deemed most likely, missed the 1991 Pinatubo Eruption (obviously), but he did figure on a significant volcanic eruption for the decade, so the overall trend of the 1990s fit, and so did the 2000s, up to 2006 or so, after which what basically amounted to a gross ENSO drop for a couple of years (like the 1998 spike, only in the other direction).
Considering climate scientists can't predict the future of forcings (they can only tell you if "X" influence occurs, climate will do "Y"), 18 years is pretty good, and things look like they might be trending right back up from 2006/2007 levels, even though the ENSO for 2010 is a bit down, as you'd expect for year-to-year fluctuations.
For periods when the forcings are known, the 20th century is also modeled pretty well on a decadal scale, and even to an extent a sub-decadal scale.
The climatic response to the Pinatubo eruption was spot-on, even though that was only a couple of years, but that's only measuring climatic responses to a single influence, not the total climatic behavior, so fluctuations become less relevant (easier to correct).
So again, it depends on what, exactly, you're trying to model.
If you're asking what qualifies as an actual trend, rather than just a fluctuation, the World Meteorological Organizations says 30 years is the point at which something should be considered a trend.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I don't understand why you think weather forecasts get more inaccurate as time goes on, but climate forecasts get more accurate."
Again, I said nothing of the sort.
Also, don't confuse weather forecasting with "prediction" in the climatic sense.
Climate scientists don't claim to know quite how much things will change over a given period of time, because they can't predict the forcings. Maybe we'll pollute the hell out of things, maybe we won't, maybe tomorrow an asteroid will strike and wipe out most life while initiating huge global dimming, maybe tomorrow an enormous volcanic eruption will occur. Scientists don't know these things.
That's why scientists predict temperature changes for given scenarios, rather than making absolute temperature predictions.
The only thing they can say with any real certainty is roughly what warming influence will be introduced for a given injection of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is why the IPCC TARs focus far more on warming per 2xCO2 rather than warming by a specific date.
Climate scientists will never be able to tell us exactly what the forcings will be in 100 years, and none have claimed to. You could extrapolate out possible pollution scenarios and take guesses, like Hansen did in 1988, but that's a scenario, not a forecast.
In some ways, weather forecasters have the tougher job, because they not only have to decide how nature will react to a given set of influences, down to absurdly small spacial scales, but over huge overall areas, and from forces that take place on huge spacial scales (often continent sized), but they have to figure out what those influences will be, so unlike climatologists, meteorologists in a sense, have to actually predict the future.
My hat's off to them for doing as well as they do.
Ok, thanks for the explanation. What I don't understand is what the short term factors that affect the climate are, which means we have to wait 30 years to work out if the global warming theory is correct or not. From what I could tell, a volcanic eruption only has an effect for a year or 2 and la nina and el niño only for months. So sunspot activity could last for years but warmists claim that they have sufficient knowledge of that process to be able to factor it out from the calculations. If we ignore global mean temperature predictions for 2100 and concentrate on CO2 volumes in ppm alone, it seems you'd still be unable to predict the effect on temperature until CO2 levels are so high that any natural forcing agent effect is minimal. Given that this won't be for decades yet, normal people will remain skeptical as to whether this is science or a scam, especially as some warmists claim that other greenhouse gases e.g. Methane and water vapour may be stronger warming agents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure where you're getting your info that an ENSO flattened out the upwards trend for a whole 2 years, or that the trend is turning upwards again. Sault's favourite rant rag says that as of late November 2011, 2011 is on course to be only the 10th. Getting their excuses in early, they're putting this down to a la nina event from July 2010 to May 2011. Only problem is that only the period December 2010 to february 2011 was significantly colder than normal. It also begs the unanswered question as to what causes ENSO events and doesn't it mean each one must be stronger than the next in order to mask out the effect of the ever increasing man made CO2 pollution? Do you think that credible?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the 1st thing you need to accurately predict in that case is the effect of ENSO events. If as you say these natural events currently mask the effects of man made pollution why are we worrying? When is it predicted that mac made pollution will be a stronger forcing agent than natural events?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ok, thanks for the explanation. What I don't understand is what the short term factors that affect the climate are, which means we have to wait 30 years to work out if the global warming theory is correct or not"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think I see some of where you have a problem; you're getting hung up on what science actually is (and is not).
I don't work in climate science, but one of the fields I do study is evolutionary biology, if only in an ancillary fashion, and it uses the same methods of evidence that climate science does, and a form of science most people often don't full appreciate.
So let me try to explain:
Technically speaking we will NEVER know whether Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is correct or not, not to an absolute certainty. Science does not deal in absolute certainties, ever. If you ever hear someone say something is "proved" in science, from the get-go, it usually means they don't understand science. Proof is a math term, not a science term. However, in calling it a theory, which it is, you've unknowingly revealed something important about climate science.
In all sciences, you start with an observation. If you observe it over and over, and you very clearly establish that what you're observing ALWAYS behaves that way, then that becomes a law. A good example would be the conservation of mass/energy, the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Okay, so great. We have observations and laws, so we know WHAT happens, but we still don't know WHY something happens.
Enter science.
So you have your observation. You see something novel, or as-yet unexplained, and then you seek to explain it, by looking at all the science you already DO know, and taking you best guess at what's causing what you're seeing. This is called a hypothesis, a POSSIBLE explanation.
So how do you test a hypothesis? Well it already has to fit existing evidence, so that's not a good enough test, especially because you can make any kind of evidence fit any kind of explanation.
So you test it with a prediction. You come up with things you should find in investigation that should occur if and ONLY if your hypothesis is true, and then you go and try to find them.
If you get the prediction right, then your hypothesis is PROBABLY correct, and if it gets fleshed out enough to explain a lot of different things, or it's small and narrow and gets combined with other LIKELY correct hypotheses, and you get a Scientific Theory.
A theory is the highest level of proof in science, so once something is a theory, it is as close to absolutely correct as science gets.
So why is anthropogenic global warming a theory?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as I know, the first person to establish that CO2 could warm the Earth was Joseph Fourier. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius decided to try to quantify the strength of the effect, and came up with his famous greenhouse law (which, while oversimplified, was pretty remarkable science). It was quickly challenged by another guy, Knut Angstrom (we can discuss the details later), but showed itself to be correct.
In the 1930s-1950s, Guy Callendar began to answer your question, about how CO2 warming related and didn't relate to water vapor and methane, and came up with the first absorption spectra for greenhouse gases. He found that CO2 trapped IR radiation in a band that was largely different from other greenhouse gases, and so, the idea that Co2 did, in fact, warm the planet, was considered pretty solid, but the specific climatic response was unknown.
Rapid warming didn't begin until about 1970, when human GHG emissions accelerated and aerosol producing pollutions began to die down, and so we finally sat down and tried to establish whether humans were, in fact, the cause of this warming.
So how do you tell whether humans are causing the warming without just waiting and finding out if the Earth turns into an oven? You create a prediction and you test the hypothesis.
Like evolutionary biology, you can't just set up a lab to do this, so you use historical data of all types, and try to predict what sorts of trends will be found in that data.
The first solid modelling guess of the strength of sensitivity to CO2 was 1.5C-4.5C per doubling, very rough, but it was the best they could do.
So then they tested that against numerous empirical observations. They did regression analysis of ice cores to figure how much warming the Co2 appeared to be causing, and they got back about 3C.
They looked at the response to certain volcanic activity, and they got back about 3C.
They looked at present warming trends, and got back about 3C.
And any attempt to explain these phenomena without that strong Co2 influence has failed. Without it, the modern era can't be explained, interglacial periods can't be explained, a lot can't be explained.
And scientists have predicted a lot over the years. They predicted the CO2/temperature lag in the ice cores, they predicted the response to the Pinatubo eruption, warming trends for the modern era have, by and large, fit their predictions, with a year or two here or there dipping way down. Climate models have shown to be very good predictors of a lot of behavior.
I can certainly point you to some of the scientific literature, but sufficing to say, AGW theory, in all the science it encompasses, has shown itself a great explanation for a great deal for which no other explanation has surfaced. A whole lot of things don't make sense that suddenly do make sense once you factor in a strong Co2 forcing (just ask if you'd like me to explain the other half of the theory, how we know humans are causing all of the increase, but I won't bother for now).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, for some of your specific questions:
"Methane and water vapour may be stronger warming agents"
No need to equivocate, they ARE stronger warming agents. NH4, however, does not exist or fluctuate on big enough scales to begin to create the effect CO2 does.
Water vapor... well that's more interesting. Water vapor is very important, but it's a feedback, not a forcing (see my previous comments to another poster for the distinction).
Water vapor varies by atmospheric temperature, and nothing else, so all water vapor does is enhance other forcings. That means that water vapor can't explain warming by itself, but it DOES great enhance the total warming effect of CO2 (or, at other times, the warming effect of other forcings, like the sun).
"Not sure where you're getting your info that an ENSO flattened out the upwards trend for a whole 2 years"
By itself, it didn't.
Generally, scientists are very easily able to account for the 2008 fluctuation with the combination of a very low ENSO forcing (same thing that made a huge spike exactly 10 years earlier), combined with the Solar Nadir. It was a rather small dip, from an unremarkable combination of negative influences, hence only lasting a year.
"or that the trend is turning upwards again"
ENSO is not turning up again, and is in fact more or less staying down, but the temperature certainly appears to be going up from 2008 levels. We'll know more about exactly how that trend is occurring when we have a few more points of data (in other words, wait until 2013 or 2014 and we'll get a much better picture).
If the ENSO stays down, it's probably going to be a bit before the warming starts blowing past 2005/2006 levels, but that's what happens when you factor in a downward forcing.
"It also begs the unanswered question as to what causes ENSO events"
I have no idea if anyone knows what does or doesn't cause the ENSO. That's beyond anything I've ever examined. If you'd like, I could certainly try to look it up in the scientific literature later on.
"and doesn't it mean each one must be stronger than the next in order to mask out the effect of the ever increasing man made CO2 pollution?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, esepcially because the sun's little fluctuations don't stay put; we're presently moving away from the solar nadir (we'll hit the high point what, in 2013/2014?).
And even though we've had an economic crash, we're still inputting more Co2, and that rate will pick right back up in a couple of years.
No, the ENSO forcing won't mask out warming, it can just dip temperature down here and there.
Again, it's hard to get any real perspective on fluctuations like this until you've got a nice trend on both sides. I mean, look at the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. 92, 93 and 94 were ALL cooler than 1991, and 1995 was only about the same.
Even if ENSO stays down, permanently, something I doubt, within a few years, it should look much like the 1990s did. Towards the end of the decade, it should look like nothing more than a little blip, and we've had tons of them. 1984 through 1987 was another such period. 3-4 years bumps in the road are very common.
Sorry for the lecture; I do tend to ramble sometimes.
If you really have more questions on the nature of the science, the objections, the myths, basically all the topics AGW entails, I recommend you start here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA4F0994AFB057BB8&feature=plcp
It's a wonderful series with a lot more entertainment than I can provide with dry textual explanations, and it's a great run down of all the various topics you should be familiar with at about the level you really want to start with.
If you never have, I highly recommend you take the time to go through them (and all of his videos, for that matter).
Also, Methane is CH4, not NH4.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is what happens when I run on too little sleep, and way too little coffee.
Catamount, I don't think Newton's laws of motion are a theory. They work in practical day to day life. You'll likely say they don't work at the quantum level but they do work for most people all of the time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow lets turn to the climate change theory. Climate change scientists have identified a number of forcing agents which are both natural and manmade, which they claim are either warming or cooling agents and to which they've assigned varying strengths so that a hypothesis could be developed which would explain the observed data since the late 19th century. All very well and good.
Now, the hypothesis was that the main forcing agent that is causing global warming is man-made pollution with CO2 being the primary identified cause. One of the first things that skeptics then pointed out was that there was a period of ~40 years between 1940 and 1980 when the global mean temperature didn't increase, whereas CO2 did increase. So, the climate change scientists took a look at why, and reasoned that at the time, the effect of aerosols (predominantly industrial sulphates and volcanic activity) was in balance with the warming agents (CO2, methane, solar activity) during that period, but by 1980, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere had become so large that a tipping point was reached and global warming increased again.
The general public was at this point waylaid with alarmist articles predicting that if we didn't reduce CO2 production dramatically, the earth was heading the way of Venus. These alarmist articles continued until about 5 years ago, when it started to become obvious that global warming was flattening out once again, whereas man-made pollution was still increasing. Since then sault is a typical example of a warmist, using personal abuse to mask the fact that the hypothesis is no longer working.
As you say ENSO effects can not explain this flattening trend. There are more El Nino (natural warming agent) than La Nina (natural cooling agent) events and given the very short term effect that they have on global mean temperature, over a 5 year time period, will even each other out or cause slight warming. According to skepticalscience.com (an online website dedicated to debunking climate skeptic myths), 2011 is on course to be only the 10th warmest year. They blame this on the effects of a mild La Nina event between mid-2010 and 2011. http://www.skepticalscience.com/2011-Global-Climate-Status_WMO.html. Even if this were true, it doesn't explain why the 5 year mean will be heading downwards this year.
Here's the link to the Nasa GISS dataset showing the annual and 5 year means:- http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/_graphs3/Fig.A2.txt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Catamount, I don't think Newton's laws of motion are a theory"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course they aren't a theory; they're LAWS. They're observations of what happens with inertia, not an explanation of why.
"The general public was at this point waylaid with alarmist articles predicting that if we didn't reduce CO2 production dramatically, the earth was heading the way of Venus"
Can you show me a single scientific paper that suggests this?
What some hyped up newspaper or magazine article has to say is neither relevant to the science, nor the responsibility of climate scientists, who have largely, if not completely, said no such thing.
"Since then sault is a typical example of a warmist, using personal abuse to mask the fact that the hypothesis is no longer working"
Which hypothesis?
I never saw a scientific paper claim that temperature would go up without fluctuation.
"As you say ENSO effects can not explain this flattening trend"
It's not a trend. Thus far, it's been a 3-year dip in temperature, like we've seen numerous times throughout history.
Why is it that for the past THIRTY YEARS, self-proclaimed climate skeptics have sworn that "only decades" is not a long enough period to judge climate change, but the first time the first fluctuation comes along for a couple of years, suddenly "global warming has ended"?
"There are more El Nino (natural warming agent) than La Nina (natural cooling agent) events"
For the period in question, the data patently disagrees with you.
The only El Nino events were in 2009, and sure enough, what's the one year that spiked up? 2009.
In 2010, we see a slight warming trend in the ENSO for the beginning of the year, and then it dips down into a cooling trend for the end of the year, and how do we see temperatures respond? Sure enough, 2010 begins as warm as 2009, but ends with a drop down.
2011 continued 2010's ENSO trend, then had a mid-period of neither warming nor cooling, and then ended with more cooling, but only slightly, and SURE ENOUGH, the temperature trend does the same thing.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
So exactly what isn't being accounted for here?
ENSO is strong enough to created some pretty notable noise, but its magnitude is still dwarfed by the overall trend of the past 40 years.
So you tell me, what's been responsible for those 40 years? If not human GHG emissions, then what?
And why does all the evidence point to a strong Co2 forcing?
Also, I realize I came off as a little adversarial there; it's not my intention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCatamount,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI explained in detail what the climate change scientists hypothesis was in my post, which you've taken quotes from, so I'm not sure why you have to ask "which hypothesis" in your reply.
In short, the chart here, explains the hypothesis:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
i.e. climate change scientists explained the 40 year cooling period between roughly 1940 and 1980 away as due to sulfate and volcanic activity (cooling agents) balancing the effects of solar, greenhouse gases and ozone (warming agents) but by 1980 greenhouse gases caused by man had increased to such an extent that they overcame the combined cooling forcing agents. The graph wasn't great as it inexplicably had volcanic activity in the early part as a warming agent, but be that as it may this was the hypothesis.
You next say that there is no flattening trend longer than 3 years, even though I provided the link to the GISS data:-
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/_graphs3/Fig.A2.txt
which proves that that isn't the case. We've had five 5 year means now since 2003, last available one 2008 which show a flat trend, and unless there is sudden warm surge this year, we'll have a 6th one.
You then ask why climate change skeptics claim that decades of data is too short a time to gather information but then complain if global warming doesn't increase for a few years. Well, the first part is suggesting that deriving a model on just over a century of reliable data for a planet's climate that's lasted for billions of years may not produce a reliable hypothesis. The second part is saying that no explanation has to been given as to what the forcing agents are that have overcome the effect of manmade pollution in the short term. Clearly, it's no longer aerosols and the ENSO explanation doesn't work, so without one being identified it would appear the hypothesis can be set aside and warmists need to develop a new model.
You go on to say that during the flattening period, starting 2003, there haven't been more El Nino events than La Nina events.
According to this website:- http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm, there were weak El Nino events in 2004 and 2006 and a moderate one in 2009. There were moderate La Nina events in 2010.
In any case, neither of us are claiming that ENSO events are affecting the flattening trend, so it's a bit irrelevant.
Finally, you pose the question to me as to what's caused the warming period, if not manmade pollution. The evidence above shows it isn't that, so another hypothesis is required.
If you bothered to look at the year-to-year data, you'd see that warming continued, unabated, pretty much up to 2005-2007.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, it isn't a sequence where every single year is always warmer than the last, but the overall trend tops out around there.
Just because you get three years near each other doesn't mean it's a "flat trend", just as we see constant bumping up and down.
After 1981, temperatures don't top the '81 levels for five years. Why? Because year-to-year fluctuations occur, for all sorts of reasons, sometimes ENSO, sometimes volcanic activity, sometimes slight bumps from the solar forcings, sometimes a combination.
If you had bet that, in 1981, the entire theory of AGW was suddenly going to break down, and the warming stop, you'd have lost that bet, yet here you are, doing the exact same thing.
Temperatures top out for 2005-2007 (so what if they aren't increasing each and every year? They NEVER HAVE, and a few years isn't a trend, as much as you keep repeating that myth). Then, in 2008, the ENSO drops through the floor, and except for 2009, stays down there, and temperature follows the ENSO quite nicely, just as you'd expect for something that has shown to be quite good at inducing rapid, small-magnitude changes.
"Finally, you pose the question to me as to what's caused the warming period, if not manmade pollution. The evidence above shows it isn't that, so another hypothesis is required"
Even if scientists couldn't explain why a small fluctuation, or even a big fluctuation wasn't happening, this wouldn't remotely logically follow.
As it is, scientists have no problem with this explanation, even as you insist on harping over a small fluctuation, like those we've seen a dozen times in recent decades.
Even were that not the case, and they couldn't it wouldn't mean that the observed warming was not due to GHGs, because a small fluctuation in temperature for a few odd years here or there doesn't mean that influence has stopped, just as it didn't the past several times just since 1970.
You're committing a classic non-sequitur here.
Furthermore, you're dancing around my question.
How do you explain all the empirical evidence for a strong CO2 forcing?
And WHAT is an alternative hypothesis that better fits the data?
A small fluctuation here or there fits perfectly with AGW theory, and it would even if scientists lost their ability to explain one, which they haven't, but if you think another hypothesis fits better, and explains all the data more parsimoniously, then tell me what it is.
Temperatures will go up, they'll go down, they'll flatten out, over periods of a few years they'll do all sorts of crazy things, and they always have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe trend, on the other hand, something you measure over decades, not over a couple of years, has averaged inexorably upward.
Until you present something that changes that, or a more parsimonious explanation for those decades of warming, you're just tangenting all over irrelevant talking points.
Finally, if you really think scientists can't explain the recent fluctuation (not trend, fluctuation, please stop insulting both of our intelligence by calling it a trend), which is a COMPLETELY SEPARATE issue from whether CO2 is responsible for overall warming trend of the past four decades, then here's what I suggest you do:
Go write a paper. That's what real skeptics do when they think they know more than the presiding scientists, they go and they get evidence, and then they present their findings to a respected journal. Since you already seem to think you have irrefutable evidence, all you have to do is write the paper up.
I look forward to seeing how far it gets.
You are skeptical because you don't understand the science. Follow the suggestion of writing a paper. I did that. I wrote a paper (critical of IPCC) and submitted it to the Journal of Geophysical Research and a group of skeptical scientists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Editor of JGR (an IPCC scientist) reviewed it and rejected it for publication. The skeptical scientists reviewed it and gave constructive comments. I learned from it. I believe in AGW but not entirely with IPCC.
Catamount, you need to account for each and every time that the observed data does not match the model, however.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that the climate is a very complex system that can't be easily modelled. The model that warmists have developed showing only 5 forcing agents is way too simplistic. However, given that you've used that model to show how it's matched observed data in the past, then you should be able to identify which of the 3 identified warming agents has cooled of late and/or which of the 2 identified cooling agents has warmed. I didn't decide to use a 5 year mean, Nasa did when they developed the GISS data. The dataset clearly shows that we've had five years, where the 5 year mean has remained flat, and this year, it's likely to go down. That will be 6 years in which your hypothesis would appear broken. You dismiss this observation by saying that you can't account for short term fluctuations, and it's just the long term trend that's important. That implies that there are other unidentified forcing agents that affect the model in the short term. Surely, as a scientist, you would want to improve the model by identifying these forcing agents, rather than seemingly just wishing to keep your fingers crossed that in 30 years time, you'll be proved right?
Your logic makes little sense. The warmist model implies that these unidentified short term forcing agents must get stronger and stronger each year to suppress the identified forcing agent (greenhouse gases) that warmists claim is primarily responsible for global warming.
I believe that it's right that world governments combine to reduce pollution. Having been to China, and seen the pollution there for myself, I certainly don't want to live there. However, to blame mankind for the ice caps melting and claiming that what is a mere hypothesis is scientific fact is a disservice to the scientific community as a whole.
Dr Strangelove & Catamount, the suggestion that skeptics write a paper is a bit sad. It's not us that are saying that we can model the complex system that we call climate. Sure skeptics have come up with hypotheses in the past e.g. it's solar activity, that warmists have debunked. However, I've provided detailed analysis as to why the hypothesis put forward by warmists is equally wrong. The problem here is that warmists know that it's wrong but there's so much money being pumped in to the scientific community to look at climate change, that it's corrupted scientific analysis. My chance of getting a paper published by a community that has become politicised is virtually zero. However, the longer the warmist hypothesis stops working, the more skeptical the general public will become. I think they'll stop listening long before the 30+ years, which you are trying to spin this out for. From then on, anything that the scientific community comes out with which can't be conclusively proved will be met with the rolling of eyes. Warmists love to say how we're ruining the earth for our grandchildren. It seems you're ruining science for them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrite a paper proving that AGW is wrong and send it to Spencer, Lindzen and Curry. You can't say these people are biased against skeptics. Until you can write a paper acceptable at least to reputable skeptics, you cannot be taken seriously by believers and real skeptics alike.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've not written a formal paper, as I don't work in Climate Change science, but have raised all of the points that I would have made in such a paper, which remain unanswered. Anybody who has a logical mind can examine the statistics which are freely available, which I've linked to in my posts, which have been produced by climate change scientists and which have not been selectively filtered to favour my viewpoint.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe warmist model requires that any flattening trend/fluctuation can be explained by either a weakening in the warming agents or a strengthening in the cooling agents. ENSO events don't even appear in the warmist model, obviously because the El Nino warming and La Nina cooling effects counterbalance each other, and each only has a short term effect measured in months. However, the current hypothesis amongst warmists is that it is moderate La Nina events which are causing this flattening trend/fluctuation which has been going on for years now.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2011-Global-Climate-Status_WMO.html
Sounds like you're saying the only people that are allowed to analyse your model are fellow climate change scientists. Keep spinning that line out and see how long your the funding lasts for.
"Catamount, you need to account for each and every time that the observed data does not match the model, however"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt does fit the model; I'm sorry that you're the only one who doesn't see that.
On an statistically significant scale, the models work quite well, not perfectly, but really very well. Somewhere along the line, the meaning of "statistically significant" has apparently been lost on you.
Even if scientists had trouble identifying the causing of one irrelevant fluctuation, and honestly, models don't always perfectly get them, it wouldn't be cause to throw out what's shown itself to fit a mountain of evidence, and give enormous predictive power.
But you don't want to discuss models as a whole; you want to harp on one irrelevant tangent.
"The model that warmists have developed showing only 5 forcing agents is way too simplistic"
First off, I love your use of the term "warmist". Okay, sure, if you mean virtually every climate scientist working today, then fine.
Secondly, you've never seen what models all the climate scientists, erm, I mean the "warmists" have used.
You looked up one broad oversimplification on WIKIPEDIA, of all places, and suddenly assumed that you were a modelling expert.
Honestly, even Wikipedia gives better information than that. The Radiative forcing page gives another SIMPLIFIED examination of models, and there are no less than 13 forcings identified, and even that doesn't remotely cover everything that models examine, because there's a myriad of feedbacks and oscillations as well.
"ENSO events don't even appear in the warmist model"
Climate models don't include ENSO? Are you sure?
Of course you aren't; here you go:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/ENSO-summary.shtml
Oh, wait, you didn't think there was just one model, did you?
"However, I've provided detailed analysis as to why the hypothesis put forward by warmists is equally wrong"
Then put your money where your mouth is and write a paper on it.
"However, to blame mankind for the ice caps melting and claiming that what is a mere hypothesis is scientific fact is a disservice to the scientific community as a whole"
It isn't a fact, it's a theory. A fact is merely an observation, not an explanation.
Clearly you didn't read my lecture on the various constructs in science.
And were you remotely willing to actually carry on a SUBSTANTIAL discussion of the evidence, rather than insisting on harping on this one little irrelevant point until you're blue in the face, you might actually learn something and see that.
Honestly, the sheer number of basic facts you get wrong, time and time and time again, pretty much precludes anyone with a science degree from taking your argument serious, but since those of us with science degrees have already seen clean through it, I don't think that's an issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you think you have some huge hole to poke in GCMs, then go write your paper and prove it.
"[OH BUT] I've not written a formal paper"
Fine, go look up a couple and get the format. It's very simple:
Title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, citations
The format of each is very standard, and very easy. If you have any problems just ask, or refer to a basic science lab report help page, as school lab reports at the college level follow the same format.
"The problem here is that warmists know that it's wrong but there's so much money being pumped in to the scientific community to look at climate change, that it's corrupted scientific analysis"
This is a cliche for which you and others who continually repeat it have no evidence, and a bad excuse.
Skeptical scientists publish papers all the time. Since 2000 alone Richard Lindzen alone has published thirteen papers. That's more than most climate scientists.
Of course, they don't publish papers on this topic.
Why?
Because unlike you, they see through this argument too, and they keep their scientific discussion to actual points of substance.
When you're ready to do the same, then we can talk. You know where to find me.
Catamount, thanks for the links. I'll have a read of these more complex models and get back to you on this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did say that the model that had been provided to me by another warmist was clearly too simplistic, having only 5 forcing agents. However, on that graph, it implies that the 5 forcing agents aggregated up, closely matched observed data. I have repeatedly asked sault for links to a more complex model to be provided. I can only analyse the information that's been presented to me. I'm not a climate change scientist so am not expecting to go through each and every research paper that's published.
However, it must be obvious to you, that if you have a complex model that works, each and every time a skeptic challenges you, you should easily be able to fire back proof to put them in their place. So far on this thread, I've received nothing in the way of evidence that can't easily be pulled apart.
Hi Catamount, I've taken a look at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/ENSO-summary.shtml
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbut haven't found any graphs on that website which show the aggregated effect of forcing agents over time. I have asked sault, why ENSO which is a natural warming/cooling cycle in the sea/atmosphere over the pacific ocean could affect the global mean temperature over the period of time that the flattening has now occurred. There's no understanding as to what causes ENSO events, but it doesn't seem to me at least to be a logical source of warming, unless there is some kind of biological interaction going on in the pacific ocean.
"Honestly, even Wikipedia gives better information than that. The Radiative forcing page gives another SIMPLIFIED examination of models, and there are no less than 13 forcings identified, and even that doesn't remotely cover everything that models examine, because there's a myriad of feedbacks and oscillations as well."
Again I've been unable to find a graph showing 13 forcing agents aggregated over time. I'm looking here:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing
I'm obviously looking for a more complex version of this chart, which includes more factors which could account for the flattening trend that we're currently experiencing:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
"Oh, wait, you didn't think there was just one model, did you?"
Most scientific facts are covered by a single model, once proven. Clearly, we're at the hypothesis stage where there are multiple models being developed to try and retrospectively fit already known data. You've not been able to provide me with a link to a model yet that can successfully explain the flattening period that we're experiencing, however.
You keep insisting that I need to write a paper, but why? If it's so easy to pick apart my points, why not just answer my questions on here. If I wanted my hypothesis to be analysed by scientists, then I could see my point, but I'm doing the analysis of the warming hypothesis here, not saying that I have an alternative hypothesis which explains global warming better. I frankly haven't got a clue why the world is warming, but I don't think you do either.
"Honestly, the sheer number of basic facts you get wrong, time and time and time again, pretty much precludes anyone with a science degree from taking your argument serious, but since those of us with science degrees have already seen clean through it, I don't think that's an issue."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCatamount, at 1 stage you seemed to be the voice of reason when compared with your fellow warmist, sault. But falling back on the I'm a scientist and you're not, is lame. I don't know where you got your science degree from but providing proof to match hypotheses is a basic tenet of science. Any fool can come up with a theory.
"Catamount, thanks for the links. I'll have a read of these more complex models and get back to you on this"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, it's not that I've provided you with a link to a "more complex climate model", it's that I've provided you with links that reveals slightly more about how GCMs work, something you still won't gather from the small scraps of information you'll find there.
If you want to learn about GCMs, then go look at the source code, or go read the scientific literature.
Until you're willing to do that, you have absolutely nothing, and your judgements mean absolutely nothing.
"Most scientific facts are covered by a single model, once proven"
If you knew the first thing about science, you'd know that things aren't proven in science.
In fact, if you bothered to read my posts you'd know this, because I explained that.
Furthermore, if you actually had an even rudimentary knowledge of the science, you'd realize that modelling is imperfect, and that there's still some disagreement on exactly how some of the influences play out.
Different models also look at different aspects of weather and climate. What model one uses depends wholly on what one wants to find out in the first place, and were you to actually read the scientific literature, you'd see that scientists, whether meteorologists or climatologists, generally get their information by comparing many model outputs, seeing where they agree and disagree.
This science is far more complex than you're implying and clearly far more than you appreciate.
Here's what all the models and empirical evidence do agree on, however, and what your little irrelevant tangent doesn't even address: The climatic sensitivity to the CO2 forcing is 1.5-4.5C per doubling of CO2 at our concentration of CO2 (specifically, 4MW^2 with a sensitivity of .75C/WM^2).
But you don't want to discuss the topic at hand, which is the actual evidence for and against the anthropogenic component in our climate.
You'd rather harp on irrelevant points about an irrelevant fluctuation.
This is a classic red herring, and it's useless for me to try to discuss climatic science with someone who isn't even willing to discuss the topic at hand.
I get it, you're more brilliant than everyone else, but somehow, won't put your money where your mouth is and write a paper to demonstrate it.
I guess those of us who actually understand the science, and actually read the literature will just have to do with not seeing brilliance with which you debunk AGW theory, without even addressing it in the first place.
And you're right, I do try to be the voice of reason, because I don't like extremists on either side.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that only applies to people actually willing to discuss the topic at hand, rather than dancing around it.
Wading through logistical fallacies by people who don't understand science, don't have their basic facts in order, and aren't willing to learn is not worth my time.
There are plenty of skeptics out there willing to discuss substantive issues, which is precisely why they aren't publishing papers on this irrelevant folly of yours. They have REAL issues to discuss, and so do I.
If you honestly can't figure out why your point is both wrong and irrelevant to the discussion, and you're not willing to present your supposedly bullet-proof argument to the scientific community, then you really don't offer anything to talk about.
"If you knew the first thing about science, you'd know that things aren't proven in science."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm convinced that if a car is driven at a constant 30mph for 1 hour in a straight line, it will have travelled 30 miles. For all practical purposes, that's proof to me.
"Furthermore, if you actually had an even rudimentary knowledge of the science, you'd realize that modelling is imperfect, and that there's still some disagreement on exactly how some of the influences play out."
It depends on the complexity of what's being modelled and how many of the factors are known that influence the system that the model is attempting to simulate.
"This science is far more complex than you're implying and clearly far more than you appreciate."
I've never said the science is simple, I've consistently said that the climate is extremely complex which is why I don't think warmists are going to be able to produce a model which can accurately predict the future climate for a long time yet.
"This is a classic red herring, and it's useless for me to try to discuss climatic science with someone who isn't even willing to discuss the topic at hand."
An interesting thought from somebody who insists that they are only willing to discuss climate sicence with peple when they write a scientific paper, and not when they present links and analysis to data, often produced by warmists themselves, which countradicts you.
"An interesting thought from somebody who insists that they are only willing to discuss climate sicence with peple when they write a scientific paper, and not when they present links and analysis to data, often produced by warmists themselves, which countradicts you"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey, a new trick up your sleeve! Now you're strawmanning, in addition to red herrings!
Congratulations, you just made yourself that much less credible.
I'll tell you what, since you're not willing to actually discuss the topic at hand, which is the actual evidence for a strong anthropogenic component in climate (the only thing actually claimed by AGW theory, as opposed to perfect models or anything else you irrelevantly try to claim doesn't exist), you just keep betting that this little fluctuation in climate somehow entirely undoes a major scientific theory, backed by essentially every single climate scientist on Earth, and dozens of independent sources of evidence.
You just keep assuming that AGW theory is going to come apart over something it never claims to begin with, based on an issue that doesn't even address the theory.
Because, you know, that's totally scientific.
The rest of us who actually have our facts in order, and actually have some understanding here will just go off on our own and discuss things below your obvious level of amazing brilliance.
Oh, and when I say "the rest of us", I mean all the actual educated skeptics, too, the ones who don't bring up points like yours, because even they see why it's inane nonsense, hence why they publish their papers and conduct their debates around real issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's a few predictions from peer-reviewed scientists from yesteryear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"1.2C anomaly by 2012" James Hansen, 1988
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html
"0.5C anomaly by 2012" Don Easterbrook, 2001
http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research/global/glocool_summary.pdf
"14 degrees increase by end of century" UC Berkeley 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0523-08.htm
"3-9 degrees increase by end of century" Natural Resources Defence Council.
http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/f101.asp
"0.2 degrees increase by end of century" Alan Cheetham 2009
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/PredictionFromCycles.htm
You pay your money, you make your choice.
"since you're not willing to actually discuss the topic at hand, which is the actual evidence for a strong anthropogenic component in climate (the only thing actually claimed by AGW theory"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo on then, show me your evidence that it's man that's responsible for global warming and I'll analyse it.
Bit sad that you had to create a sock puppet, by the way, sault. Either that or Catamount had an identical grammatical schooling as you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"1.2C anomaly by 2012" James Hansen, 1988
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html"
This is not a peer-reviewed publication, though at least it's from an academic source.
Also, that's not a prediction; it's a series of scenarios. In fact, Hansen gave three scenarios. He never predicted that any one of them would actually play out precisely. That said, Hansen's Scenario B ended up matching both the forcings and the temperature pretty well for nearly two decades, but predicting the future was never the goal, nor ever claimed.
"0.5C anomaly by 2012 Don Easterbrook, 2001
http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research/global/glocool_summary.pdf"
This is not a peer-reviwed publication, and from the beginning, makes numerous claims without even citing them.
It's hardly the only flaw in this analysis, but for the purposes here, it's sufficient to say this is not even credible.
"'14 degrees increase by end of century' UC Berkeley 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0523-08.htm"
This is not a peer-reviewed publication, nor does it even cite peer-reviewed literature. It is a couple of personal claims reportedly made, without peer-review.
"'3-9 degrees increase by end of century' Natural Resources Defence Council.
http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/f101.asp"
This is not a peer-reviewed publication, and not only is it not peer-reviwed, but it's not even clear where the majority of the information comes from, nor who writes it, which means that even your claim that it was from a "peer-reviewed scientist" is wrong, because we have no idea who wrote it.
"http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/PredictionFromCycles.htm"
This is not a peer-reviewed publication, nor is it even clear that a scientist wrote it.
If you're going to present work from peer-reviewed scientists, then present actual peer-reviewed work, not a bunch of links written by who knows who, citing who knows what.
Although, based on a few of these links, I have to wonder if you even know what "peer-reviewed means".
"Go on then, show me your evidence that it's man that's responsible for global warming and I'll analyse it."
What do you want, exactly?
Do you want some of the countless methods, model-based and empirical that show the CO2 sensitivity? The evidence that humans are responsible for CO2 emissions? The lack of ability of any scientist to explain recent observed warming without a strong CO2 forcing?
It will save me a lot of trouble if you tell me exactly which parts you do and don't have trouble with.
"Bit sad that you had to create a sock puppet, by the way, sault. Either that or Catamount had an identical grammatical schooling as you"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, right, because naturally there could only be one person, ever, who actually agrees with the point of view held by basically every climate scientist on the planet.
That's completely reasonable... oh, wait, no it isn't.
Also, it appears I spoke in error on your first source; it is, in fact, a peer-reviewed paper, published in Geophysical Research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe NASA page you linked was the abstract.
Actually, it was the occassional use of capitalisation and phrases such as "logical fallicies" which gave you away :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like some evidence that correlates the increase in CO2 with increase in global mean temperature. I don't think anybody's disputing that mankind is pumping CO2 in to the air, and I dare say in the short term, a fair chunk of it remains in the air. The question remains is it having any significant effect on global warming or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this""1.2C anomaly by 2012" James Hansen, 1988
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html"
This is not a peer-reviewed publication, though at least it's from an academic source.
Also, that's not a prediction; it's a series of scenarios. In fact, Hansen gave three scenarios. He never predicted that any one of them would actually play out precisely"
He says of the 3 scenarios he thinks scenario B is the most likely. That still means that the global mean temperature should be a 1C anomoly by now, in fact this year it's likely to be almost half of that.
The point being that if Hansen was wrong in 1988, and let's face it most of the peer-reviewed scientists can actually trace their work back to just this 1 guy, why should we worry about his more recent predictions of a 2C increase by 2100. If we can't trust the models, we can't trust the scientists.
But I'm not Sault :P Hell I have CONVERSATIONS WITH THE GUY. He's strongly spoken, but I don't think he's schizophrenic. I have to admit though, that is curious. It never occurred to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot that it matters; I could be Pope John Paul II's third cousin for all you know.
"I'd like some evidence that correlates the increase in CO2 with increase in global mean temperature. I don't think anybody's disputing that mankind is pumping CO2 in to the air, and I dare say in the short term, a fair chunk of it remains in the air. The question remains is it having any significant effect on global warming or not"
Alright, now THIS topic makes some sense for discussion, so let me parse it out a bit.
"I don't think anybody's disputing that mankind is pumping CO2 in to the air"
Even if there's no dispute, let's just be clear on what we're looking at, though it's good to know I don't need detail, because this can be a VERY tedious topic indeed!
We know humans are responsible for 100% of the recent net increase (the key words being recent and net), because the atmosphere and oceans are both taking carbon in, and those increases still amount to less than we're putting out, which means terrestrial sources are also creating a net carbon sink, not source. RC has a pretty good brief discussion there with a lot of good citations
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/
But more than that, isotopic signatures confirm this. Plants don't just take in any CO2; they like CO2 with 12C, instead of 13C, and most fuel is from dead plants (contrary to common, but awesome myths about burning dinosaurs), and atmospheric 13C is falling.
There was a Carbon-14 test too, but it's now fubar because of high-altitude nuclear explosions, which also means that anyone who tries to carbon date us in a few thousand years is going to need one HELL of a calibration curve :)
"I dare say in the short term, a fair chunk of it remains in the air"
On geological time scales, the residence time is pretty short, but it's literally hundreds of years.
From what I understand, about 50-60% of what we emit goes to the atmosphere, and the rest the oceans and terrestrial sinks. I don't recall the exact number (I could look it up), but that's in the right ballpark.
The rest basically just hangs around as a net increase to the carbon cycle, for what, on human times scales, is quite a long time. For the intents and purposes here, you could consider it permanent.
"The question remains is it having any significant effect on global warming or not"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt doesn't control global temperature, of course, but there's a lot of evidence that it's a very strong forcing.
Models of the physics all agree, of course, but models are just hypotheses of how things might work. You need to constrain them with empirical observation. Models, themselves, haven't been able to constrain beyond 1.5-4.5C, not just based on the 20th century. It's also a hair subjective. It was based on two models, one gave 2C, one 4C, so it was averaged, and .5C uncertainty was added on each side. This was a long time ago, so it just wasn't that sophisticated. It's been consistently backed, but that's a pretty darned big range there, so you see what the climate sensitivity would have to be for other empirical observations to make sense.
There's so many KINDS of different places I could link to for that information, it's almost hard to know what to start with, so maybe from most time to least time to view (videos are nice, but time-consuming).
My favorite paper for general discussion, that I mentioned awhile back an Annan and Hargreaves 2006 GRL paper. The paper, "Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity", mixes together entirely different independent sources of empirical data, and every time, come up with about 3C.
They look at the Last Glacial Maximum, 20th Century warming, and Volcanic Cooling, which all give the same result: 1.5C-4.5C warming, with values toward the middle being fairly likely (see the cited literature). Annan and Hargreaves combine these estimates, and use a statistical principle called Bayes' Theorem to get a combined constraint from all the analyses: the number they get? 3C.
If you're wondering how volcanic estimates work, I can cite you papers, but in a nutshell, knowing more precisely how much climate reacts to aerosols gives a more constrained picture of mid-century cooling, and so, tells us how strong the positive forcings were, of which you can reasonably isolate CO2. In fact, quite a lot of our uncertainty of the precisely CO2 forcing is linked with our uncertainty of the aerosol forcing, so narrowing the error bars on the latter does a lot for us on the former.
For another different analysis that gives a slightly different anlysis on the LGM, there's Schmittner et al 2011 ("Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum"). Instead of roughly 3C, they get a slightly lower 2.3C, which is still well within the overall accepted margin of error for climate sensitivity to CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother independent analysis over yet longer time scales is the correlation of glaciation and CO2 over the past 400 million years. This will be broken down into a graph in a video I'll present later, but just to mention it here, if you look at ice sheet extent from Crowley 1998, and you compare it to CO2 analyses from different sources (eg GEOCARB), which all largely agree, albiet within the huge margins of error, the ice data from one paper shows a good inverse correlation with the CO2 from the other papers. So you get two entirely different studies, looking at entirely different things, with entirely different assumptions going in, by entirely different authors, and they correlate with each other, showing CO2 and ice sheets moving together.
This isn't A study; it's two different studies that you just happen to be able to put together, that tell the same story as the other sources of evidence.
Now, I could go through paper, after paper, and list all of the thousands of papers that deal with climate sensivity even just from the often-studied LGM (Lorius et al 1990, Kohler et al 2010, Scneider et al 2006, Lunt et al 2010, etc etc etc etc etc), and you might even get a plausible analysis SOMEWHERE that disagrees (for all I know, there might be SOMETHING out there), but sufficing to say all scientific research published backs AGW theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not that skeptics can't get work published, those few that are out there tend to get public funding and publishing alike. In fact, MOST of them are government employees (Lindzen, Friis-Christensen, Spencer, Svensmark, etc), but a survey of the peer-reviewed literature showed that even though skeptics can be funded and researched, virtually all research basically still ends up agreeing.
In 2004, Naomi Oreskes did such a survey ("The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change"), examining the abstracts for all papers returned by the search phrase "Climate Change" from 1993-2003 in the ISI Database (now the Web of Knowledge).
Of all the abstracts, over 900, over 700 agreed explicitly or implicitly with AGW theory, ~200 addressed methods or other issues and didn't comment, and NOT ONE paper disagreed. It's not that these papers aren't out there, but despite being able to recieve funding and get published, there are SO FEW, that in a sample of 900 climate papers, you don't even come across one of them.
I like this experiment, because it's easily replicated. You can do the same yourself with Google Scholar. I did with a smaller sample (50 papers), and found the same thing. I recommend you try it sometime; do a search and collect a random sample of climate papers from a database or search engine, and see how many you have to go through to find a skeptic paper. They're there; if you search by name you'll find them (eg: "Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate"), because again, these studies get both funded and published amply, but good luck finding one in a random sample.
Aside from all climatic estimates, the simple fact is that almost nothing in climate makes sense without a strong CO2 forcing, while a lot of things suddenly make perfect sense with one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo one has ever successfully modeled/explained the 20th century without it, and that's not all. The paleoclimate record, falls perfectly into place like a puzzle when you add EXACTLY the CO2 forcing estimated from other places (see earlier cited literature for that discussion), but suddenly doesn't make sense at all when you exclude CO2. In fact, the paleoclimate record becomes unexplainable.
The interglacials, when you make up a model and work out the math, fall short no matter what you do with the forcings, unless CO2 is included, because the only other things going on there are albedo forcings and orbital changes, neither of which have EVER been worked out to cause the intergalcial periods.
Factor in what we independently determine to be the effect of CO2, and it doesn't just add enough to account for the warming, but it adds EXACTLY the right amount to create EXACTLY the temperature change we see.
I won't bother citing the same papers that will already be cited by the video I'm going to link down below. There's other things that don’t work either without a strong CO2 forcing.
With that, I'll turn it over to one of my favorite simple presentations on the subject, by Richard Alley, lecturing at an AGU summit. The American Geophysical Union is, of course, on of the most respected scientific bodies in the United States, and the world.
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
Alley points to examples that I didn't bother with for precisely that reason. In addition to ice trends for the past 400 million years and the mysterious thawing of snowball Earths, he points to the PETM, the end-Permian, the mid-Creacious warm period, and all of them make no sense without a strong CO2 forcing, AND correlate with higher CO2.
What's more seeming anomalies between temperature and CO2 over long time periods, things that wouldn't seem to happen if CO2 was a strong forcing, have been explained, one by one, with new data, and now fit perfectly, and even corroborate the strong CO2 forcing, such as the Ordivician freeze.
So here's the picture we're left with:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have all sorts of different models physicists use for do out the math of the atmopshere, each with slightly different assumptions going in, and even some disagreement on points, the same kinds of ensembles of models that we trust for hurricane paths and short-term temperature forecasts (and that usually get things pretty correct, when the individual models all agree), and for all the thing they don’t agree on, these models agree that a strong CO2 forcing exists.
You have multiple empirical analyses that, measuring different things, at different times, with different assumptions and they all tell us the same exact thing about CO2 that the models did, each verified by multiple authors measuring these phenomena in different ways. You don't get published by showing the exact same thing as a previous paper; you do it by showing something different, or by showing the same general thing using a different method; good papers by good authors, such as James Annan, have been turned down for trying to do the former.
You have numerous climatic events that are entirely unable to be explained with any known science without CO2, but that fit absolutely perfectly with CO2.
You have climatic events that seem to contradict a strong CO2 forcing that, upon closer investigation, not only don't disagree, but actually CORROBORATE a strong CO2 forcing. Now, this is important because it shows something about climate science: it's predictive. That's the best test in any science, predictive power. Back when the ice core data first showed up, scientists (Lorius et al, 1990) predicted that CO2 would be an amplifying feedback, probably to orbital forcings, and that that would explain the temperature changes. By definition, a feedback lags temperature, so the scientists were predicting a CO2 lag would appear. Years later it was found and discussed to death, as a supposed *problem* for climate science, when it was, in fact, a successful prediction. The CO2 vs Aerosol forcing of the 20th century has shown predictive corroboration both ways. Scientists showed they had the aerosol forcing roughly correct, because models of volcanic predicted the response to Pinatubo (Hansen et al, 1992) before the change was measured. The Late Ordivician, another example, seemed to present a cold snap during very high CO2 levels, and yet sure enough, upon closer inspection, there was a CO2 dip, so the models had the Ordivician right before we had even properly measured the forcings.
Now, it's possible that a given model has some gross flaw in the physics, but physicists aren't dumb, so it's not tremendously likely. It's very remotely possible that all the models have been programmed wrong. It's technically possible that all of the models, and all the analyses, investigating multiple lines of evidence, multiple times, across multiple studies by multiple authors using multiple methods, are all SOMEHOW wrong. That is technically possible, although astronomically unlikely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how would one know, beyond sheer odds, that all of these lines of evidence are probably correct? Well because they all tell the same story. Errors are random; you don't get hundreds of random errors from multiple analyses of dozens of lines of evidence, that all tell the same story.
So at this point, we basically have two options that fit the evidence: Either CO2 is a huge climatic influence in history overall, and a fairly significant one to humans, on our time scales and at the concentrations we deal with (both of which are dwarfed in the long paleontological record), or there is some other forcing that just HAPPENS to do EXACTLY everything CO2 does, basically all the time, but that, despite being absolutely enormous, is somehow magically invisible, and has remained so for 150+ years of . Now, I can't preclude that possibility, it is entirely possible, in the same way that it's entirely possible that the configuration of the continents and the formation of mountains is the work of invisible rock pixies, and that all the evidence for evolution “was put there by God as a deception to test our faith”, but parsimony has been saving us from putting too much stock in such notions for about 700 years (Thank God. No, really, Occam's Razor was the work of a Franciscan Friar).
Even if there were a few notable problems with present understanding of the CO2 forcing, it wouldn't mean just throwing away all the evidence; science doesn't work that way. Science seeks to construct a coherent picture of multiple points of evidence for its theories, and then you try to resolve those problems, either by introducing caveats to the theory, or by eliminating the problems with more evidence. A lot of theories get amended by caveats when issues come up. What you don't do is just ignore all the evidence in their favor (unless you come up with a more parsimonious explanation).
This is so much more the case because most or all of the problems have simply worked themselves out in favor of present theories.
It should be no surprise then that virtually every scientist who studies this issue, including some formerly among the small band of skeptics (such as Richard Muller), all agree, unequivocally, that whatever other uncertainties remain, human-induced CO2 changes almost certainly have a strong influence on climate, not a unilateral influence, or even a strong influence on small time scales (most agree that entire multi-year periods or even decades without warming should be expected, and the models agree too), but that, across statistically significant, multidecadal timescales, CO2 plays a very big role in how the Earth operates, and the bigger the time scale, and the more CO2 there is, the more prominent that role becomes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not just agreed upon by essentially every individual scientist, but also by every scientific body.
There's so much more I'd like to discuss, including some of the alternative hypotheses, specifically by Lindzen, Svensmark, Spencer and Friis-Christensen, at least two of whom are actually respectable scientists (Svensmark I honestly don't know enough about; Spencer is just a weirdo these days), and specifically, how the scientific process of evaluating their hypotheses has proceeded, with others trying to replicate their work, and failing, and the reasons/problems becoming apparent with further studies.
Unfortunately, time is less than abundant right now.
As for any scientific paper I've cited, I've tried to remember to give titles rather than just authors and dates, and I don't know what method you generally use to view scientific papers, but if you have trouble figuring out what paper I'm talking about ever when you try to read it, just ask. I can provide DOIs if necessary, and I even have a few web links saved for some of them (most of the time, however, I read them through EBSCO/Web of Knowledge/JSTOR, not on the web).
Like I said, just ask if you have trouble.
"He says of the 3 scenarios he thinks scenario B is the most likely. That still means that the global mean temperature should be a 1C anomoly by now, in fact this year it's likely to be almost half of that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point being that if Hansen was wrong in 1988..."
But he wasn't wrong; for almost 20 years the forcings roughly matched his scenario, and so did the temperatures.
Sure you don't just ignore what he got right, and point to where the model went off (and at no point did the model ever NOT claim the temperature wouldn't be subject to serious local variability).
When local variability took over, as we've seen many times before, the temperature took a statistically insignificant dive. Ten years ago, this wouldn't have been an issue, nor 20. Throughout all the other times when temperature showed serious temporary downward fluctuations, they were never an issue, so unless this fluctuation does something extraordinary, like last ten more years without any explanation (in which case, we'll be looking to *modify* AGW theory to accommodate the new evidence), it won't be an issue either.
In fact, the models call for stalled warming here and there, for periods of years, if not entire decades, just by random fluctuation. The CO2 forcing is strong on long timescales, but on short timescales it's very, very weak.
"let's face it most of the peer-reviewed scientists can actually trace their work back to just this 1 guy"
Really?
That would seem like a rather hard claim to back up, given that many good climate scientist have come both after AND before Hansen.
Can you show me that every paper being published, or even a majority, cite his 1988 or a derivative work? Most models are not based on his source code (how could they be when source code wasn't freely shared until fairly recently?), and most scientists do not work with Hansen.
Vastly different methods from what GISS employs are also used elsewhere, which is why, even when viewing the same data, CRU will sometimes come to slightly different answers (and not just because they exclude the GISS polar data).
Also, I should say "short-term variability", not local variability (something real, but entirely different that what I meant).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I said, time is not abundant, so proof-reading has suffered a bit. I hope there aren't too many resultant errors in my above posts.
Catacomb, thanks for the numerous posts now. My question was is there actually any evidence that the increase in CO2 due to mankind is the cause of global warming. I remain unconvinced there isn't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe warmists hypothesis is neatly summed up below:-
"Aside from all climatic estimates, the simple fact is that almost nothing in climate makes sense without a strong CO2 forcing, while a lot of things suddenly make perfect sense with one.
No one has ever successfully modeled/explained the 20th century without it, and that's not all."
Ok, so you've said that there are now 13 forcing agents. Let's say 7 are natural, 6 are manmade. I don't know the exact split, but my argument stacks up anyway. Warmist's argument is that we can't produce a model that explains 20th century global warming using just the 7 natural forcing agents. My argument is neither can you produce a model using just the 6 manmade forcing agents. The only reason why you can produce a model that fits observed data is because the more variables you add, the easier it is by applying weighting to each variable to create a model that fits observed data in a crude fashion. The problem that warmists have is that Hansen had to identify the variables and apply appropriate weightings to the variables to produce a model to fit the observed data. He then used the model to predict the future. Sadly, for warmists, the model has failed to predict the future. ergo. the model is wrong.
"The paleoclimate record, falls perfectly into place like a puzzle when you add EXACTLY the CO2 forcing estimated from other places (see earlier cited literature for that discussion), but suddenly doesn't make sense at all when you exclude CO2. In fact, the paleoclimate record becomes unexplainable."
That's news to paleoclimatoligsts. That branch of science has developed similar hypotheses for all of the significant warming and cooling events over the history of earth, but none have been proven, and certainly they're not all correlated with levels of CO2.
Point to me 1 hypotheses that is proven on this page:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology
If you google global warming, you'll find 100s of sites which effectively parrot what the IPCC says i.e. that there has been an increase in global warming over the past 30 years, and it's very likely (i.e. >90%) due to mankind. The problem is that the reason why the IPCC think it's down to mankind is for the reason addressed above, scientists have been unable to create a model that matched observed data without including manmade forcing agents
We then have 100s of scientists producing research papers where they start out with the presumption that Hansen is right, and try to provide supporting evidence. This usually involves introducing additional variables, lag or feedback loops, or extending statistical analysis techniques to try to demonstrate that Hansen's model isn't yet bust.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know what Hansen's secret is, but he seems to have generated something of a climate change industry.
In the absence of any real science to support the warmist model, the warmist argument then comes down to anybody who criticises us isn't a real scientist, as all real scientists who have been peer-reviewed agree with Hansen.
We then have these alarmist stories spun out to try to deter politicians from taking on climate change scientists. i.e that the warmist model predicts the destruction of vegetation and animal life on earth, unless you reduce manmade pollution rapidly. Hansen has also called on people who argue against the warmist model to be imprisoned.
If you look at the paleoclimatology wikipedia page, you'll note that at the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PEMT) occurring around 55 million years ago, when the earth was 6C above anomaly, mammals e.g. horses, pigs, primates etc. We're currently 0.5C above anomaly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petm
You'll also see from the paleoclimatology wikipedia page, just how insignficant the current warming period (which has now ended) is in comparison with warming and cooling periods none of which can be attributed to man.
So, in summary, scientists have thus far been unable to explain any climate change at any point in earth's history, the warmist model developed by Hansen in the 1980s demonstrably doesn't work and, in my opinion, we will need to identify all of the variables in climate change, understand fully how they interact with each other, produce a much more sophisticated model and prove that it works, before telling the world that we have conclusive evidence that mankind is responsible for global warming.
That said, I believe that the climate change debate has at least been reasonably effective in reducing the increase in pollution which is a good thing for us all. although I'm more concerned with soot and sulphates than with CO2.
The other intriguing thing about warmists, is that the official line from the IPCC (i.e. the concensus that warmist ideology relies upon) is that mankind is very likely (i.e. >90% confident) the cause of the recent global warming. i.e. that a 0-10% level of doubt, yet warmists vociferously attack anybody who tries to find evidence that would reduce that level of confidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe the next IPCC report is in 2014. I suspect they're praying for another warm year between now and then, or else they're appraisal of "very likely" is going to come under some very severe scrutiny in the press.
Pity there isn't an edit facility for posts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShould have read:-
"If you look at the paleoclimatology wikipedia page, you'll note that at the PaleoceneEocene Thermal Maximum (PEMT) occurring around 55 million years ago, when the earth was 6C above anomaly, mammals e.g. horses, pigs, primates etc. emerged. We're currently 0.5C above anomaly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petm"
You know, at this point I don't even have to quote anything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot one thing you said has addressed either AGW theory, nor anything I said. The whole of your posts are gross factual errors, and far more importantly, red herrings and really bad strawmans that entirely distort, well, everything.
There's little point in me offering arguments if you're going to strawman them.
The bottom line is that multiple lines of evidence, as verified with multiple techniques by multiple authors show that, whatever else is the case, CO2 is a strong warming agent, and humans are incontrovertibly the cause of CO2 rise.
Not one of your arguments addresses that, and you haven't cited a single flaw in any of the research provided.
In fact, the only thing you said that wasn't a strawman was shooting off wild conspiracy theories about how "everyone sets out to support Hansen" (a scientist neither early to the scene, nor even singularly important).
"I remain unconvinced"
And it's becoming clear that that would be the case regardless of what evidence was presented to you, especially since you didn't address a single thing I said (again besides putting up gross strawmans, that had nothing to do with my statements).
Honestly, I'd be inclined to respond if you were at least addressing what I said, but to post that information, and have you either skip over it, tangent off to irrelevant points, making blatantly wrong statements (it's clear you haven't a clue how climate modelling actually works), and blatantly misrepresenting what I said, all while continuing to harp on your pet statistically insignificant short-term fluctuation.
I don't know if you're honestly that far off the mark on how science works, or if you're just trolling at this point, but it's clear that presenting evidence isn't going to get me anywhere, especially given your astoundingly arrogant attitude, approaching the point of hubris.
Reasonable people, when they're lacking as you in knowledge of the sciences, assume that when something doesn't make sense to them, the problem is their ignorance, and not something countless experts, each experts with countless years in the field, are all doing wrong that said layman has somehow "corrected" them on, but you, you've spun massive wild conspiracy theories, GRAND TALES, propping up insignificant characters to the role of gods and casting decades of science to the role of meaningless conjecture, all without demonstrating a basic understanding of any of it.
Really, had I the time, I'd continue just to hear more of your stories!
jdey123, I don't know what it is that you're looking for, honestly, but I really do hope that whatever it is, you find it in all this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhatever it is, however, it's not something a scientist, any scientist, is ever going to be able to provide you with, because whatever it is, it's clearly not the same thing being sought by anyone, anywhere in the sciences, undergrad student and PhD alike.
Whatever it is that you're looking for here, you're not going to find it in science, but just the same, I wish you the best.
Good day.
Oh come on, Catacomb, don't quit so early. Surely, all these peer-reviewed Nasa scientists can win an argument without resorting to personal abuse? Not every scientist agrees with Dr Hansen. Here's a peer-reviewed Nasa scientist who totally disagrees:-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/06/more-evidence-that-global-warming-is-a-false-alarm-a-model-simulation-of-the-last-40-years-of-deep-ocean-warming/
The concensus of opinion amongst philosophers and scientists for centuries was that the world was flat. It seems that if the sole basis for your argument is that you have a concensus of opinion, it's rapidly going to dissolve as Hansen's model prediction gets further away from the observed data.
What's there to discuss?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou attribute all successful replications of modeled cliamte sensitivity to a vast conspiracy you can't provide a shred of evidence for, you ignore the countless successes in modelling over several decades because one model (which you claim all others are based on, again, without a shred of evidence) doesn't predict one single statistically insignificant fluctuation, after getting climate correct for a far longer period of time, you don't address any argument that's actually made, and you build your case on strawman misrepresentations of what people say.
What more do you want me to say?
Sure, I'd discuss Spencer if you were a reasonable person, and a scientific skeptic, because he's easy to dispel. There are a few really interesting skeptics out there, with respectable work and good points, and he's not one of them, but you're not a reasonable person, you're not a scientific skeptic and you distort everything everyone else says, which makes it pointless to say anything.
If you want to prop up James Hansen, a single insignificant scientist, as some sort of central figure in a grand conspiracy, then mere science isn't going to dissuade you, anymore than it does the Young-Earth Creationists, or the Expanding Earth advocates like Neal Adams (whom I've discussed the topic at length with), and since mere science is all I have to offer, that means that you're just going to have to live in your own little world, and leave the science to those of us who understand it.
...unless you were willing to publish a paper to show that all this grand conspiracy of yours is as transparent as you claim, but putting your money where your mouth is is apparently too much to ask.
In a few years, this statistically insignificant fluctuation will give way to warming, just like every other has, and you won't even have the illusion of an argument anymore, and frankly, I can wait rather than beating my head against a brick wall with you, and if it doesn't, then I promise you I'll be the first to question the validity of AGW theory, but that's because my position is open to change, because I don't attribute every piece of contrary evidence that I can't address or explain to vast conspiracies.
Until climatic trends shatter your little self-contained bubble, or do something unexpected and give real scientists something real to discuss, I can let you have your delusions and stick to conversing with those who actually want a conversation.
You know you're quite right there is a correlation between CO2 and global mean temperature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_500_yrs.html
I can see dead people.
Yep, I always knew this was really about the quality of argument from you, which is to say, below the level of even a real skeptic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't doubt you see dead people though. That's probably the first honest thing you've said.
<a href="http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_2000_yrs.html">CO2 versus Temperature over last 2000 years"</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you say, 200 years is way too short a timespan to measure climate, as climate noise drowns out the signal.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_2000_yrs.html">CO2 versus Temperature over last 2000 years
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShucks, hyperlinks don't work on this site. Pity.
Another strawman, compounded with a misinterpretation of the literature that's so bad, even you should be able to see the flaw?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, I think you do see the flaw here. Anyone who's capable of typing a sentence has the necessary intellect to, which just further reinforces the notion that you aren't here for an honest discussion
Sp why don't we just stick with "you see dead people"?
It seems to be the sanest position I can get from you.
I, on the other hand, will stick with addressing people who discuss honestly, don't strawman what I say, and have positions that can be altered by evidence without casting off every inconvenient fact as part of a grand conspiracy they have no evidence for.
What can I say, I guess the price I pay for having faith that people want an honest discussion is that sometimes I allow classic internet trolls to be fed at my expense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou'd think I'd have learned a long time ago to stop trust that people have honest motives, and that that always includes a desire for an straightforward exchange of ideas, but what can I say? Surprising as it is, most people I converse with, including skeptics of various scientific principles, aren't like you.
Isn't that a credit to the quality of the Internet?
Actually, right on these comment sections, there's a great climate skeptic. He's scientific, scrupulous, and when he comes across research that disagrees with him, he accepts it rather than spouting off wild conspiracy theories.
I guess I just expected too much of you, silly me.
A thorium fluoride reactor (TFR) could produce high temperature energy sufficient to chemically make hydrocarbons or hydrogen with effectively no potential for a catastrophic release of radioactive material and at a cost significantly lower than natural gas. After all, it consists of little more than pumping a liquid material through a heat exchanger. But I do have one question about CO2. Considering that 10% of the earth's surface is limestone, does that mean we are now at a massive CO2 deficit compared to most of the world's history?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this