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No, We're Not Headed For a New Ice Age
purkinje writes "Unusual calm in the solar cycle — called a solar activity minimum — has sparked claims that the Sun will cool the Earth, leading us into a new ice age. While Europe did experience a Little Ice Age during a solar activity minimum three centuries ago, the connection between sunspots and climate is a lot more complicated, and it's unlikely this change in the Sun's activity will cool Earth down — or even affect the climate at all. Plus, any cooling that might come from this would be less than the global warming that's been going on. So don't pull out that parka yet; a new ice age seems more than unlikely."
We're currently in an interglacial period of the current ice age, so it's not a matter of moving towards another one, but how long the interglacial period will last, and how if we're moving into a glaciation period will humanity be effecting that.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Of course we are not headed for a new ice age. You can't have an ice age without mammoths.
Nobody is working on cloning mammoths, right?
Do you know what proven actually means? Nothing has been proven or dis-proven, it's still a theory in the middle of being tested. The relationship between climate and sun spots is still a fairly infantile science. Don't be stupid.
That we've been in a cooling period since 1998 that has reversed ALL of the observed warming that took place previously in the early 20th Century and more.
The assertion that the calm Sun activity won't reverse the warming is true only in that there is no longer any warming to reverse.
As a child of the 80s, this is what we were being told in schools growing up - not that the earth would die from global warming, but rather that the hole in the ozone layer and other environmental disasters would cause us to be plunged into a new ice age.
I guess the term "climate change" is a lot more useful than "global warming", if a few decade late.
Who is ignoring solar forcings? They are in basically every model. Straight out denial that ignores basically the whole literature on the subject is not "healthy skepticism"; by the way. Calling it such besmirches the name of every true skeptic out there.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Shun the non-believer
Shunnnnnnn
I've always found people who go on and on about global warming extremely annoying. They talk about saving the earth and the environment but the bottom line is it's about saving the status quo. There have been times in earths history when it was much hotter than it is now and much colder. Humans will survive and so will the earth. If or when the last man bites the dirt the earth will still be here live in kicking unless we managed to do something really bad like strip away the atmosphere.
Denialists are the only ones who have "everything figured out". Their adherence to their pet theory is immune to any criticism and when was the last time you saw error bars on a trend line from a denialist?
But if you look at the IPCC reports, you'll find that the climate science IS saying "We haven't figured it all out", but since you STILL insist that this isn't the case, rather proves that your statement is, in bald fact, false.
NOTE: They DO say "we've figured out enough to know what we ought to do". That's not "we know it all" by any stretch. A barking dog snarling at you is evidence that you should retreat backwards, but it doesn't mean you know all about canine psychology.
They are extremely pro AWG. They may be right but they only show one side of the picture. There is no room for debate in their eyes. I wonder if they are heavy invested in carbon dioxide credits.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
I'm not believing anything until Al Gore says it's so.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Beat the strawman
People will believe facts that bolster their preconceived opinions. They will disregard or twist facts that do not.
I used to believe that CO2 could cause global warming but didn't think too deeply about it. Then they tried to erase the Medieval Warm Period. That got my attention and 'Global Warming' has become a bit of a hobby for me.
What I can say is that there is junk science on both sides of the debate. There is also good science on both sides of the debate.
There is plenty of historical evidence that, when there is a long period with few sunspots, there is global cooling. In fact, IMHO, the evidence is a lot more robust for that than is the evidence that CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming.
History is clear that when the temperature is as warm as it is now, or warmer, people have thrived. When the temperature was much cooler that it is now, humanity has suffered many calamities. I would far prefer a warmer planet to a colder one.
Science never has everything figured out. You should be skeptical of science. But most arguments I've seen against global warming have nothing to do with healthy skepticism; they generally use made up evidence or faulty reasoning. In any case, we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions no matter what, because fossil fuels will not last forever. The only question is how quickly should we reduce them. Personally, I think it makes sense to reduce fossil fuel now use simply to reduce demand and avoid energy prices spiraling out of control, and to have sources of energy that do not depend on stability in the Middle East.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Radiative forcing is one of the first things to go into climate models; nowhere does it say 'ignore the huge nuclear furnace' since it's pretty much.... where the vast bulk of the energy comes from. To suggest that articles like this are what drive skeptics is just not really accurate. Skeptics are going to be doubting the results for any number of specific reasons, not just due to solar cycles.
I would hope he actually meant LESS than unlikely. I would also hope that next time the editors spot the mistake and correct it.
The writer of TFA is a well-known AGW advocate who routinely trolls everyone who isn't as pro-AGW as him, with all the charm and humor of a drunk fratboy. If you want to have serious discussion about this, find someone else to link to.
This is because people are bad at quantitative analysis. Look, solar irradiance averages about 1366 W/m^2 and a has a variation of about 1 W/m^2 (using a one-year moving average). That's 0.073%. If the Earth's temperature was entirely determined by solar irradiance, then the temperature variation would be about 0.2 C. That is, you'd see an 11-year temperature cycle corresponding to the solar output cycle with temperatures varying +/- 0.1 C from the average over the course of this cycle.
There. A tiny bit of research on the Internet and some math and you too can put bounds on how much influence sunspot cycles have on Earth's temperature.
And yes, climate scientists are familiar with this. The sun has been kind of important to climate science since Arrhenius figured out the greenhouse effect in 1896 and used the Stefan-Boltzmann law to estimate the Earth's temperature dependence on CO2.
...or even affect the climate at all.
Not going to cause an ice age? OK, fine, that I believe. A significant drop in the source of nearly all heat for the planet not causing a change at all? Well now.
In the summary (emphasis mine):
...has sparked claims that the Sun will cool the Earth...
The Sun does not cool the Earth, nor did anyone claim that such was a possibility. It may simply warm it less, should the recent concerns pan out, but cooling it is out of the question. It's a giant ball of fire in the sky, not a giant A/C unit in the sky.
worst case scenario is the natural cooling will mask the manmade warming, lull unless into false complacency, and at some point in a century or so, we'll be dealing with a much warmer/ violent atmosphere
we're also beginning to push up against the limits of agriculture in terms of economically supporting the worlds population. combine that with climate hijinks, i figure somwhere in the next century, we're going to have some serious problems
of course, we can have less kids and control our carbon output, but this of course requires foresight and will power. so we're doomed. or rather, a whole lot of poor people ("screw 'em! their poor!" they said, as if they are immune to effects of that instability)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From the linked article:
Note: a lot of this is taken from my book ... where I interviewed approximately a bazillion people.
This man is not a serious writer.
You should be skeptical of science articles on mainstream media
FTFY
There are very few Scientific fact, but a lot of well supported theories. I kinda wish that scientist wouldn't just ignore crazy theories (Leaving people to think, that they are just making it up) that are popular but come up with tests that can prove or disprove them. And show them the results.
For global warming don't just show us a graph that shows a line shooting up. When we come up with different things show it off, prove to us that is wrong. Science had been lucky in the past, the average Joe took everything face value. But with rapid media, and some big mistakes in "Science" people are more distrusting. It is time for the Science Institution to change and regain peoples trust again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
False.
The ability to predict solar activity has nothing to do with climatologists. Climatologists don't predict what the sun will do, they look at past solar activity and past temperatures and past human activity and a whole host of other data and develop models that explain what the climate will do based on what any of the others will do. (e.g. if the solar activity is X, the earth's temperature will respond Y, etc).
If the sun goes into an unexpectedly deep minimum, that doesn't mean climatologists "don't have everything figured out" because it has nothing to do with climatologists.
If the Sun does cool and earth does cool as a result, exactly according to climatologist models, I predict that the climate change deniers will still not notice.
I bet your sorry now you spent all those years in school, since you apparently never learned reading comprehension.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
One way or the other or neither. Time will tell, not political science.
So an author (not a solar scientist) of a book writes a blurb for an online story with his opinion and refers to his book as proof?
Some of the NASA and other solar scientists are saying their is some probability of a lull in Solar Output based on the science evidence and models they form. Proof, no, not yet. But there are reasons to consider it possible.
More science observations and correlations will come in the next few years.
The weather is about as meaningful to climate science as the ability to track individual gas molecules is meaningful to the physics of gasses. It is precisely because brownian motion is chaotic that the whole is statistically predictable. If it were not for the unpredictability on the micro scale, you could not have gasoline engines, pressure cookers or jet engines.
To claim that the weather channel's difficulties in predicting the impact on one small place at one small interval of time has any bearing on being able to predict the net change of an entire planet over decades is ignorance at its most extreme.
If you were driving in stop-go traffic, you can't predict when you will reach any given traffic light, right? But you know on aggregate about how long the journey will take because the average is much easier to work out. That it'll be approximate doesn't change the fact that you will reach your destination.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why does this always have to fall into politics.Frankly the global warming faithful are getting annoying. Before anyone has a freaking stroke let me lay out the facts as I seem them.
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
2. Over all we have been seeing a warming trend.
Conclusion: even if the warming trend is not caused solely by the increase in CO2 gases reducing emissions is a good thing.
There is is minus the politics and religion. I would even bet that CO2 is the primary cause of the warming trend.
It is really that simple.
Now for the true believers that are blaming global warming for everything from Hurricane Katrina to it snowing in Iran... Please learn the difference between climate and weather.
This article sounds as bad in it's way as crap from FOX news does the other way.
Here is nice little bow for yourself.
"1) Claims of an imminent global ice age are at best exaggerated."
Probably but that is opinion and not science. But then I have seen heard some pretty stupid things from the Church of Global Warming.
"2) The link of global cooling to an extended solar magnetic minimum is tenuous, and almost certainly needs something else to force it to occur (like lots of volcanoes)," Gee that sounds just like what the anti climate change people are saying. Yet when there are fewer sun spots the earths climate does cool. "This is from the very same piece"
"Having said all that, the sunspot cycle may have a very small effect on climate. You might think that since the spots are cooler than the solar surface we’d see a drop in light from the Sun and a corresponding cooling of the Earth during solar max. However, it’s actually the opposite! Sunspots are surrounded by a rim called faculae, and in this region the temperatures are actually higher than the average solar surface. This more than compensates for the cooler area of the spot; sunspots are about 1% dimmer than the solar surface, but faculae are 1.1 to 1.5% brighter. On top of that, faculae emit more UV than the solar surface does, and that wavelength of light is preferentially absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the efficiency of heating.
So, bizarrely, sunspots tend to warm the Earth. That jibes with the idea of a cooling trend during solar minimum; fewer spots means fewer faculae, so the Sun emits less Earth-warming radiation.
But when you look at the numbers, again, it’s not so simple. The effect from faculae is very small, not enough to significantly change the Earth’s temperature on their own."
Except that little ice age did seem happen during that time. That is a fact. They may be unrelated but a change in the sun and the climate being unrelated seems like a very bad bet in my book.
You see the conclusion I find odd. We have seeing a MASSIVE decrease in sunspot activity. We have never seen such an change in modern times. I really question just strongly he is pushing that conclusion. We are also seeing other changes in the suns magnetosphere as well. Since we have never seen such such a thing when we could study it as well I think he is making some massive leaps and throwing in "probables" here and there.
This actually seems like a knee jerk reaction. It is probably a reasonable fear that some people will say "well lets burn more coal to stop this" but that doesn't stop it from being bad science. I think we are going to learn a not about the Sun in the next few years and I wouldn't be so sure about the outcome as this author seems to be.
I wouldn't panic but then I never do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As my wife likes to say to folks who say "Global Warming is a Hoax!" and go off a parrot some opinion they've heard from the pundits, why not clean up the air (we've been having smog warnings for weeks now)? Hoax or not, the things that will stop Global Warming will also clean up the air, why can't we do that? They usually agree.
Now before someone posts something about my parroting comment, unless you analyzed the scientific data yourself, you are parroting another's opinion too - granted, parroting a climate scientist's opinion is a bit more valid than a pundit's opinion who is nothing more than a college dropout, but you're still regurgitating another's opinion.
I'm VERY SKEPTICAL of those computer modelers who claim to have sufficient climate data to validate their models!!!
dave
Who needs science when we have your unedchumicated opinion that ya just spew out. Lets just all ignore the sun's effect on heating and lighting the planet when we have your computer models that can't predict the past, present, future, or weather next week. Thanks for clearing it all up for us.
Thanks for intentionally misunderstanding the difference between weather and climate, dipshit. I guess you can ignore the predictions about when the tide will come in and out too since we can't predict accurately the timing, size and location of each and every wave that will crash on the shore.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Shun the non-believer
Shunnnnnnn
No, just convert him.
"Wololo, wololo".
See, now he's on our team.
I kinda wish that scientist wouldn't just ignore crazy theories (Leaving people to think, that they are just making it up) that are popular but come up with tests that can prove or disprove them. And show them the results.
For global warming don't just show us a graph that shows a line shooting up. When we come up with different things show it off, prove to us that is wrong. Science had been lucky in the past, the average Joe took everything face value. But with rapid media, and some big mistakes in "Science" people are more distrusting. It is time for the Science Institution to change and regain peoples trust again.
What? No. I don't think you have a good grasp of how science works.
Scientists should be doing science. If your theory isn't falsifiable then it isn't science and therefore not their field at all. If your theory is falsifiable but does not match the current data, then it may have already been disproved and there is no need to waste time on it unless you can show that the data is wrong somehow. In the instance of global warming, scientists have disproved a few crazy theories and they have shown the data, but crackpots do not listen to evidence; that's why they are crackpots in the first place. The fact that you either haven't sought out or accepted the available proof shows that you're not really much interested in the truth yourself. This is not the fault of scientists; they've upheld their half of the bargain. You have to be open to the evidence.
As for science making mistakes: that's an important part of the process. Science is all about trying things, making mistakes and correcting them. It's a slow progress toward the real truth, not a pre-determined truth to which facts are shaped to fit. Admitted mistakes aren't a sign that science isn't working; quite the opposite! That's how you know that science is trustworthy. Anyone who claims to have all the answers and never be wrong is the one you should be distrusting. Whether people recognize this is not the fault of, nor a problem for, scientists; willfully ignorant people will remain so, by definition, and it is entirely their own fault.
That's actually a maximum since even in this quiet phase the sun is changing and therefore isn't at the extreme end of the variation for any length of time.
The "mini ice age" had really nothing to do with the state of the sun. It was brought on by The Year Without A Summer (a disaster caused by a volcano not much smaller than a supervolcano shutting off virtually all sunlight for half a year). The disruption to the global reserviours of heat, the ocean currents and air currents, the plant life, etc, resulted in global cooling that far outlasted the direct effects. It was used extensively in modelling the effects of a Nuclear Winter for precisely that reason.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Agreed. This is my favorite reason for finding an alternative fuel. It will ease a lot of economic burdens, except in the Middle East, and stop giving hundreds of billions of dollars to dictators, and other people that care nothing about their people.
Is this just a setup for the upcoming Asylum film "2012: Ice Age"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxbiNWSNPTk
Problem being if YOU actually do pay attention to the sun, it's blindingly obvious that there has to be something else going on, in addition to the sun.
Reason being is that since the 1970's or so, solar output has been averaging flat-to-decreasing.
http://i.imgur.com/E2ijh.png
http://i.imgur.com/XbgJM.png
Meanwhile, if you look at the incoming sunlight, the outgoing heat, and the returning heat. It's pretty damned obvious to see that nearly all the increase in returning heat is in the wavelengths you'd expect CO2 and CH4 to block.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
How much more obvious does it need to be?
__
(And incase your sunspot headlines are still stuck in the year 2009, here's what it's currently doing)
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/sunspot.gif
doh! "you're"! Damn you, too fast writing irony!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Just admit you don't have everything figured out. I know that may give rise to healthy skepticism. People may not want to spend trillions in dollars to fix a problem you aren't certain about.
If estimates regarding the impact that man has on global warming are overrated, does that mean that it's no longer important to stop poisoning our air, ground, and water? Does that free us to ignore the more localized damage that we do know occurs? Do we no longer need to worry about seeking cleaner and renewable energy sources?
I'm sick of the whole debate over whether or not Global Warming is real or not. It's a red herring. It's not like the threat of impending doom is the only reason for being concerned about the environment.
Besides, "Save the Earth" is a misnomer anyway. We're not going to destroy the Earth. It's pretty far-fetched we will destroy Life on Earth. I think it's rather unlikely that we'll even make it uninhabitable for humans, even if they are right about global warming. However, I do think we can make it a lot less healthy and pleasant. "Save My Quality of Life" isn't nearly as catchy or compelling though.
This whole line of reasoning seems plausible on the surface, until you actually do some research into it.
It's not a matter of optimal, it's a matter of what we're used to. Radical, rapid change in climate (such as we're already experiencing, and it'll get much worse) changes rainfall patterns and other factors that will force us to change where we build our cities, where we grow our food, etc. That kind of adjustment is incredibly expensive, much more expensive than taking reasonable mitigation steps now.
You want to move people out of areas that might be affected? OK, then start with the entire continental US, which is projected to experience severe drops in precipitation that will make the dustbowl look like a monsoon. And that's just one dimension of the probable impacts.
See this article, "Real adaptation is as politically tough as real mitigation, but much more expensive and not as effective in reducing future misery":
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/08/27/206596/adaptation-mitigation-climate-chang/
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Beat the strawman
Derail the non-sequitur.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Come on, an article about an ice age would've been the only appropriate time to refer to a first post at frosty piss.
It's entirely possible to reduce CO2 emmissions without reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Likewise, it is possible to eliminate the use of fossil fuels while maintaining the current level of CO2 emissions. One does not necessarily follow the other.
That global warming (increased CO2 in the atmosphere greenhouse effect) could cause a new ice age. The melting of greenland and other arctic ice could upset the salinity of the north atlantic current and if that current stopped northern europe would freeze.
Strawman? Do you even know what that means??
He is right though, the climate models all take changes in solar activity into account. Just like they take many other effects into account as well for more accuracy.
Solar activity does fit pretty well with a lot of changes the last century when greenhouse-gasses while rising was still at low levels. Not 100% though, volcanic activity has also shaped the global mean-temperature the last century, and greenhouses gasses if counted in makes the models even more accurate.
Do we actually know that global warming has been affected by our use of fossil fuels? No we don't, we have a great deal of evidence supporting that we do have some kind of effect though. If the current climate concerns turn out to not exist, have we wasted money trying to understand it? Absolutely not. We have tremendous evidence supporting that the earth has gone through some pretty crazy climate swings and even more exotic changes like polar direction variations and dramatic magnetic field fluctuations. We also know that very small shifts in temperature can produce huge shifts in ocean levels and weather patterns.
The earth's climate and specifically what effects it is something we need to understand. We need to be able to consciously alter our environment to produce the neccessary changes to maintain the conditions we require. If Human beings survive on this planet for more than a couple thousand years, The geological record shows that we are likely to experience something catastrophic. Be it an event like the Yellowstone caldera, temperature rises that melt the ice caps, or even an Meteorite, we must learn how to tailor our environment to suit us.
For this reason I just don't get anyone being critical of climate change research. Are the current concerns possibly not real? Ofcourse! But if you think this planet will continue to suit us well without our being able to actively alter it in the future, that is just plain naive.
I like how the one event we have record of is rejected by these guys as if it's a coincidence (maybe it is, maybe not). But yet they are sure that THIS reduction in sunspots will not produce a cool period. I suppose those go together, if you reject the sun as cause for the first cooling, you should conclude this one is not going to have an effect. The question then is how can anyone be certain there was no cause/effect relationship and won't be one this time? I hate when people talk about these things with unwarranted certainty.
I'm tired of seeing that stupid squirrel anyway.
Why can't we discuss the risk of a coming ice age without it having to be a refutation of an unstated argument about its impact on global warming? Can't we just discuss it on its own merits?
From the Wikipedia entry on greenhouse effect:
This seems to be a hand waving rejection that increased cloud cover would reduce global temperatures. Since cloud formation can be initiated by con-trails, this seems to me a nontrival thing, but they reject it. If you look at the article on pan evaporation rates, they also downplay (ignore) the fact that sunlight is the primary driver of the evaporation rate - even though some of the references indicate that - and make it sound like a complex dependence on ground level atmospheric conditions. Hence global dimming isn't a real phenomenon.
Bottom line is that real data gets thrown out whenever a topic gets infected by politics.
What if the entire problem could be solved by simply returning the worlds forests back to the levels we had in the 1800's? How come nobody is out screaming that as a solution.
Because back in the '90s, Rush Limbaugh said "The only good thing about a tree is all the things you can make from it." (Yes, I think he's an idiot, and yes, I think reforestation is something we definitely should be doing.)
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
It was better the first time before the "fixing".
I am a scientist. You should be sceptical of all science - that's how science *works*.
However, as the GP points out, 'being sceptical' does not mean simply disagreeing and arguing your point with made up evidence or ignorance of the facts which is almost always the case with politically sensitive science issues (climate change, stem cell research, nuclear energy etc).
The fact of the matter is that if every human on the planet paved one acre of their land, and killed all the plants in that area, it would only amount to less than 1% of the total land mass of the earth. And this would only be so for approximately 5 to 10 years, (nature always finds a way). So to think that humans have significantly affected the atmosphere in the last 100-150 years with greenhouse gases is ludicrous. Do the math, it's always right
21st Century Renaissance Man
You're assuming that the irradiance is absorbed linearly as a black body by the earth, rather than driving potentially non-linear effects (clouds, ice caps, etc.). Yes, the model might work for the Moon, or other bodies with little-to-no atmosphere that have rigid surfaces fundamentally unchanged by variations in illuminance, but probably won't be that accurate for the Earth.
People are also bad at understanding complex effects, as your post shows. The surface temperature of the Earth is determined by insolation and reflectivity (along with atmospheric composition, oceanic current flow, heat from the core, drag from the moon and sun, etc.); you only considered insolation, and tacitly assumed linearity.
One of the most interesting ideas regarding climate variation is that the albedo (reflectivity) of the earth has a forcing term based on orbital variations; that there is an orbital effect on climate is known. The interesting part comes from *why* --- a colleague of mine published a paper in Nature suggesting that it is because as the Earth orbits the sun, it sweeps out the dust in its lane, and variations in the orbit translate to variations in how much dust gets accreted. He had some very nice core sample data of cosmogenic dust accretion over geological time periods that was, to my eye, quite convincing. Changes in the dust accretion, it was suggested, change the albedo by seeding clouds: more dust means more rain, more rain means less cloud cover, fewer clouds means reduced albedo.
Exactly the same ideas (variations in orbital position and sweeping out the orbital lane) are what allow astronomers to predict how strong a given meteor shower will be each year. Meteor showers are just accretion of somewhat larger grains of dust.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
So we don't know what effect sunspots have, but we're absolutely, positively, 100% confident that human caused global warming is happening and would counteract it anyway, because we've completely proven that's true.
Here's the thing, it's not that I don't believe it, because there is evidence _something_ is happening. It's that one, no matter what, the attitude of warmers is 'it can't be disproved.' The red light in my head for 'apply critical thinking here' is going off, but the minute I open my mouth to ask a question I'm berated.
In conclusion, I don't feel sorry for your cause and I'm buying a Ford Explorer on the way home. If supporters would change their attitude, maybe they'd win a few more. I'm completely turned off by the polarizing, cliquish, elitist, school-girl attitude.
So, basically, you are saying that Climatologists don't predict what the sun will do, and the sun is the biggest factor? Well, if that is the case, shouldn't Climatologists review all of their prediction, and include this major factor in their calculation?
Just admit you don't have everything figured out.
For crying out loud. Look, science is the process of figuring things out. If science had already figured everything out, then there wouldn't be any scientists. They would have published the "Big Book of Everything" a long time ago, and now they'd all be out of work.
But, while scientists don't know everything, they tend to have a much better understanding of the subjects they've spent their careers studying than those who have not spent their careers studying those things. So when some random Joe comes along and says "hey, there's a giant fireball in the sky, you guys haven't even considered that, so it must be the cause of all warming", scientists tend to roll their eyes and say, "gee, really, did you actually think we hadn't ever noticed that thing up there?"
In the instance of global warming, scientists have disproved a few crazy theories and they have shown the data, but crackpots do not listen to evidence; that's why they are crackpots in the first place. The fact that you either haven't sought out or accepted the available proof shows that you're not really much interested in the truth yourself. This is not the fault of scientists; they've upheld their half of the bargain. You have to be open to the evidence.
Be careful to not confuse computer model output with data. The two are not the same thing. Also don't forget about a fundamental pillar of the scientific method, the null hypothesis.
Weather prediction is not climate prediction!
People have predicted climate accurately for hundreds of years, if not thousands. Hurricane season is a climate prediction - that hurricanes will happen in a certain part of the year, not randomly scattered. Tornado alley is a climate prediction - that tornados will happen in certain locations, year after year, during (wait for it) Tornado season! Every Farmer's Almanac prediction about the time to plant beans or carrots is a climate prediction. Those little tags that come on garden plants and show a map of the USA divided into zones, and say that a given plant is suitable for zones 5-7 - that's a climate prediction.
When we have had reliable observation on hurricane seasons for several hundred years, and we start seeing hurricane seasons that start early just in the last few years, that's an anomaly. Some of the anti global warming forces are trying to claim that all those Atlantic sea captains before about 1935 or so were unlearned savages, and nobody made accurate observations of storms or wind speeds or even knew what day of the month it was, just so the recent data doesn't look as anomalous as it is.
We've had radar tracking tornados since at least the 1950s, and good counts on the total numbers of storms for many years, say from 1970 on. We've had programs such as tornado observation from Skylab during the early 1970s to help check those results. We've had substantially the same radar coverage with the same instruments for the midwest since about 1990. But every time somebody upgrades a system, replaces an older radar assembly with doppler or some other improvement, somebody claims that the older system must have been missing a great many storms, and that's why we seem to be seeing more tornados, not because we've really had some recent peak years for tornados. For the anti-climate change faction, minor improvements in fundamentally good observations become major gains in accuracy. And of course, nobody in the 1880s really knew if the storm that destroyed their whole town was really a tornado or not, because everybody back then was illiterate peasants, so those numbers are not accurate anyways. Modern tools detect more storms, detect them faster, and spot more small, borderline tornadoes far from direct human observers, but only the climate change deniers would believe that increased numbers of EF3's and above, within obvious visual range of towns and cities, is just a radar artefact.
We've had markers on mountains showing where their tree-lines are, for hundreds of years. It's not uncommon for timber cutters to mark areas because tree-lines are sometimes not real visible outside of the growing seasons. It's also quite common for timber companies to only run fire roads as far as the tree-lines, and not unusual for them to make maps of their fire-roads and register them (often the timberline contours are shown specifically on these maps). We have tree-line photos for some locations as old as 1860. People sold them by the thousands as postcards for tourists. This gives us a bunch of data showing regional climates that have remained much the same, until recently, when tree-lines have started rising in many areas. But there's still climate change deniers trying to argue this away.
We have drilling records for various locations, recording how far down people have had to go to hit water. People have generally counted drilling rod sections and kept track of how deep they drilled since the Egyptians or so, and there's plenty of reliable records on how deep water tables are, particularly for the American west. But there's still climate change deniers trying to argue this evidence away, too.
That's all US centric. Europe has had generally stable populations in many areas for a thousand years or more. You could go to locations in England where people have been measuring how many inches of rain they got
Who is John Cabal?
"No we're not" != "unlikely"
Cleaning the air of polluted area really IS a major issue. The thing is, this "Global Warming Hoax" as you say, might well make us forget the important bit, which is all the other types of pollutions (if only CO2 is a pollutant, which is currently the debate...). One of the major argument really is that we should focus on water supply and air quality, and waste management, which we aren't doing at all.
When I read a paper in a good journal, I trust that it has been peer reviewed and any over-interpretation were addressed prior to publication. I know because that's how my papers were published. It doesn't always happen of course, scientists are usually too eager to create a story, but regardless, I trust the raw data collected in a study. Pretty much the only way to dispute data is to accuse them of forgery. In climate science, where everyone is looking over everyone's shoulder, it'd be pretty stupid to forge data...
So, I'm afraid I disagree, that's not how science works. More to the point, what scientists consider "Science" and what is propagated to the public as "Science" are different, thus being skeptical are different concepts for both parties. I am skeptical of the "Discussion" section of a paper, and the general public should be skeptical of everything they are presented as Science.
No, climatologists listen to astrophysicists to explain what the sun is likely going to do, and then the climatologist put those results in their model.
And no, the sun is not the biggest factor in climate change. The sun variability is about 0.1%, that's much smaller than the changes due to the increased greenhouse effect.
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
2. Over all we have been seeing a warming trend.
Conclusion: even if the warming trend is not caused solely by the increase in CO2 gases reducing emissions is a good thing.
You're missing the parts that say any increase in warming is necessarily bad, any decrease in warming is necessarily good, and any greenhouse gas will necessarily only increase warming, with no side-effects which might decrease warming or otherwise be desirable.
One thing people don't talk about much is the cold, hard fact that the increase in atmospheric CO2 has increased crop yields due to the direct effect on plant metabolism. There is no controversy whatsoever on this point: higher CO2 concentration = faster-growing, more productive crops.
Not to mention that any warming would almost certainly increase global crop yields even if it causes some local decreases in production... and that simply dredging material off the ocean floor and onto land or into artificial islands (especially building offshore baffles to sap the energy of hurricanes and tsunamis before they hit populated coasts) is an industrially feasible method of preventing any increase in sea level due to glacial melting.
This doesn't answer concerns about (for instance) ocean acidification, clathrate decomposition, political disruption, or extreme weather, but by no means is the issue as simple as "Warming bad! CO2 bad!"
Thank you. That's pretty much my point and you got it.
I wanted to point out that there was another data point. Around the time of those really cold winters (Valley Forge with Washington's army for example) seems to been a relatively quiet sun spot period as well.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
This is because people are bad at quantitative analysis. Look, solar irradiance averages about 1366 W/m^2 and a has a variation of about 1 W/m^2 (using a one-year moving average). That's 0.073%.
For example, while total irradiance is fairly flat, the makeup of that radiation varies greatly, and different frequencies have different effects on heating. Ultraviolet radiation can vary by up to 1.5%, for example, which is a problem, since a lot of absorbed stratospheric heat comes from that frequency band (centered at about 250 nm). Ultraviolet seems to be about 4% higher now than during the Maunder Minimum - which means that a similar drop would have a MUCH larger effect than you suggest.
You also missed one other thing - you confused the in-cycle peak to trough measurement with the cycle-to-cycle measurement, which is noticeably larger. Longer time spans (while averaging smaller variations) also show some much larger total solar radiation changes.
Another problem is that the Earth isn't the only thing directly affected by the Sun. When the Sun gets quiet, the solar wind does too. Which allows a LOT more cosmic rays to hit the Earth (15% or so). Which creates more high-altitude clouds. Which increases the albedo of the planet, which makes things even cooler.
By finally admitting that the Sun has obvious cycles, the people saying "it's not going to do much" are also ignoring the reciprocal problem... which is that we've been on the UPSWING of that same solar cycle for the same time period that global warming has occurred. That also means that the 0.3 C of warming over the last three decades that they claim is really less than 0.1 C - and the predictions of dangerous global warming go from 5 degrees C to... less than 0.4 C over the next century or so, and that's ignoring cloud effects.
Something you should look up: there isn't one "solar cycle." There are several. There's the obvious 11-year (more or less) Schwabe cycle, but there is also the 22 year Hale Cycle (when the Sun's magnetic field reverses polarity), the 72-83 year Gleissberg cycle, the 205 year Suess cycle, and at least four others, ranging up to 6,000 years.
Some people suggest as many as a dozen different cycles that directly affect solar output. All of these interact, which causes all sorts of irregular reinforcements and suppressions in the Sun's output - we've been hitting the top of a couple of cycles lately, but we're starting to see what happens when the Wolf-Gleissberg combination turns around. The last peak in that cycle topped out in 2009... and the predicted downslope looks like a really mean drop. The Hallstadt Cycle has peaked, too, apparently, and is starting a downward trend, too, but it's going to take a long time for that one to seriously kick in.
I've noticed that some people who want to reject CO2 as a cause of global warming seem to become very obsessed with the "Medieval Warm Period."
Thinking about it rationally, it is an odd obsession. After all, even if some other cause produced warming back during the medieval period, that does not disprove that CO2 could produce warming today. Indeed, it would make a rational person even more concerned about climate change. We know that CO2 can warm climate, but what if there is some other unknown cause other than CO2 that could warm the climate? Then we have to worry that the mysterious medieval warming factor could unexpectedly kick in on top of CO2 induced warming, causing temperatures to shoot up even higher than projected from models that only consider CO2 as a cause of warming during the next century or so. That could be a real disaster. So a rational person who believed in unexplained global warming during the medieval period should be even more anxious to stop the rise in CO2. Yet somehow, the Medieval Warmists always seem to end up concluding that CO2 is nothing to worry about it.
And then, why you look into it, you find out that the Medieval Warm Period is far less well clear than the Medieval Warmists seem to believe. After all, there were no thermometers back then, so estimates of the temperature back then are all based on indirect measures like tree rings and historical accounts of which plants were raised where, all of which are subject to huge uncertainty. And it becomes even more doubtful if you try to find evidence as to whether the medieval warming was just regional to those parts of the world were temperatures are strongly influenced by Atlantic ocean currents, or whether it was truly global. Yet the Medieval Warmists seem to regard the warmth of that period as more certain than the modern warming trend--which exceeds even the warmest medieval estimates, and is backed up by a huge number of different types of world-wide measurements. And if any new study suggests that medieval temperatures were a bit less than previously thought, the Medieval Warmists respond with outrage, insisting that "they" are trying to "erase" the Medieval warm period.
You are oversimplifying things. The direct solar irradiance is not the only variable here and I'm sure noone knowledgeable would claim that it alone can cause major changes in Earth's temperature. I know of at least two theories that suggest that changes in solar activity can have a secondary effect on Earth's cloud cover, causing a larger response than the change in total solar irradiance does.
The first one is of course the theory about cosmic rays and their influence in enhancing cloud generation. The proposed method is simple, cosmic radiation hitting the atmosphere causes ionization which in turn causes more aerosols that increase cloud cover. Increased solar activity via increased solar wind reduces the amount of cosmic rays that hit the atmosphere, hence indirectly causing the change. This theory is far from proven, and the biggest question is whether or not the GCRs can cause a large enough change to affect the cloud cover in a way that has an effect on the climate.
A second theory that I know of also has to do with cloud cover, but this one involves UV rays. While solar irradiance does not change more than 1% on average, the intensity on the UV band can change as much as over 10%. Here's a link to a more detailed description, but in short, changes in UV intensity cause changes in the cirrus cloud flux through its absorption on ozone.
Both are theories, and since there's a correlation between solar activity and Earth's climate, it is possible that either of those turns out to be valid (or both invalid). Both are reliant on Sun's indirect changes on cloud cover, and clouds are one of the largest mysteries wrt climate that there currently is in climate science. Do clouds cause a positive or negative feedback? Before that can be answered somwhat reliably claiming certainty on continued global warming or the onset of an ice age is, at best, premature.
Another part I take exception to is your claim that the Stefan-Boltzmann law can be used to estimate Earth's temperature dependence on CO2. Granted, it can be used to get an accurate estimate of the effect of the entire greenhouse effect, but since there are many unknowns wrt feedbacks, claiming that the CO2 forcing (with feedbacks) can be estimated anywhere near accurately is false.
I didn't say climatologists ignore use the sun in their predictions, I said quite the opposite. I said all their predictions are very contingent on solar output. They say that if solar output is X, terrestrial termperature response will be Y. If X is completely outside the expected range, it wouldn't make their model wrong and wouldn't mean humans weren't causing global warming.
It's pretty remarkable that this and so many other seemingly scientific issues (evolution, plate tectonics, etc.) get fractured along "liberal/conservative" lines. Some of those are targeted because they conflict with religious doctrine, for sure, but why should so many conservatives have so much of an emotional stake in climate science?
Well, one reason is that the petroleum and coal companies are throwing boatloads of money at PR firms to generate uninformed skepticism via the mass media and the usual conservative pundits. That's what PR firms do, they do it well, and they're worth every penny if you have a large stake in the game.
So, I'd be interested in hearing from some reasonably intelligent people who identify themselves as "conservative": How do you choose what and whom to believe on scientific issues in which you (presumably) have invested little interest or study previously? Are you motivated to learn the science and evaluate the evidence, or do you trust that your favorite conservative commentators are doing an adequate job of that? Could you ever conceivably be persuaded that any scientific theory could be substantially correct if a major, politically influential industry found their interests threatened by it? If so, and if such an industry was throwing its political and PR weight against it, how might that occur?
That's exactly the reason why people call them anthropogenic global warming denialists, and not skeptics. They aren't skeptical, because if you're skeptical there's a chance you'll change your mind if presented with appropriate evidence; AGW denialists do no such thing, and seem to just deny deny deny.
Pretty good summary. It's not only the peer review upon publication though - I mean, aren't we all eager to backstab a colleague if his armor (meaning his data in this case) shows the slightest opening where we could get the dagger in? Science these days is a pretty cut-throat business, in my experience, which makes the whole concept of a global conspiracy of scientists putting forth a made-up story about global warming so laughable.
Offtopic - how is the ESR business going these days? I did a little work on Iron-Molybdenum clusters in enzymes once, but I am mostly an NMR guy.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
related: The quants on Wall Street have 100% faith in their models and the data they use. They maintain that 'the market acted perversely' and that 'it could never happen again'.
One of the founding fathers of quant finance warned them of 'black swans' and 'thick tail' behavior for years but they chose to ignore his wisdom. They still do... unpunished, unregulated and back to 'printing money" every day.
R.I.P. B Mandelbrot
Fuck Volcker, re-enact the whole god-damned Glassâ"Steagall_Act already!
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Glass-Steagall_Act
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
I've been looking for an evaluation of this graph in these threads for a while. I have no expertise whatsoever in the field, but looking at the Vostok Petit temperature data over the last 400k years, it appears to me that there is a nice, repeatable pattern of cooling and warming. From that data it looks as if we are currently about 3 degrees below the peak of the current cycle. It also appears that the current cycle of warming was interrupted for some reason and we are long overdue for a warming of 3 degrees followed by a precipitous drop of more than twice that amount, followed by a slow decline to 8 degrees below our current temperatures.
I haven't heard any discussion of this trend data in the global warming debate, but if we don't understand why we are 3 degrees cooler than we should be, how can we understand what drives the peak and nearly immediate rapid decline? Global warming may be scary, even catastrophic - but warming of 4 degrees is nothing compared with cooling of 8 degrees. Covering the majority of Europe and North America in glaciers a mile thick would probably impact humanity more than a couple of meters of rise in sea level and increases in drought. If temperatures increasing to a particular point sets off a sequence of effects that results in the cooling of the earth by this amount, I'd think that would be a handy piece of information.
While I'm sure "your buddy" has very convincing evidence, your post is somewhat lacking. Specifically, more dust seeds more clouds. More clouds leads to more rain. And more rain does lead to less clouds. However, put this way, more clouds leads to less clouds, which is somewhat confusing. I think what you are searching for would be the average amount of cloud cover is less due to dust accumulation, but this argument is harder to make. Is there a shortage of water vapor? Considering how more rain would be removing water vapor from the air, the albedo of earth would increase in the long-wavelength spectrum as now infrared radiation goes straight to earth and back out again possibly counteracting global warming trends. But I'm sure this was all in the paper.
No but stability is good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In all seriousness, I think that for many would-be skeptics it's as simple as a seething hatred of Al Gore. Confirmation bias kicks in and their emotional response overwhelms reason.
Ask me about my sig!
Conservative in what, socially conservative? or fiscally conservative? I am a libertarian, hence socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and I think we should be using nuclear power where solar and wind are not feasible. Its been proven to be the safest and cheapest method overall. If modern reactors where allowed to be built then there would be no problems, but the same environmentalists that cry about coal and oil also cry about nuclear power and essentially shoot themselves in the foot. Coal causes too many problems just by mining it, like coal ash slurry spills and such. In the end the coal companies do not pay enough for the damage they do and it gets offloaded on tax payers. Since I believe in limited taxes and government anyway, I see this as a problem. If the coal companies became 100 percent responsible for any damage to private and public property, as well as to people health, I would have less of a problem with it. As far as global warming, I think its occurring but severely overstated as a problem. Many people are using it as a scam to sell "environmentally friendly" things or carbon credits to make a buck, and that makes them no better than the coal companies, oil companies, and PR firms you mention. With the recent push by consumers for solar panels, wind farms, hybrid cars, etc. based on high oil prices due to a weak dollar and political instability in the middle east, I think the fossil fuel burning as a primary source of energy in the US will only last a hundred or two hundred years. Everyone always forgets that there are companies researching technology like ultracapacitors, high performance solar panels, etc. that will make energy sources that don't burn fossil fuels, or burn fossil fuels more efficiently more economical for the consumer.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Nuclear would not pollute and be safer if new reactors were allowed to be built. Environmentalists are shooting themselves in the foot and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where no new evidence can ever be created to prove them wrong. If we don't use Nuclear, we need coal, natural gas and oil since, as you said, we can't rely on wind and solar. Fusion is not even a very good option yet, and its just as dangerous as nuclear in some regards. If we don't build new nuclear reactors, the old reactors will continue to produce nuclear waste, and have a higher chance of failure thus self fulfilling the retard environmentalists prophecies. I have no problem with being an educated environmentalist, but most of them are filled with lies, misinformation, propaganda and knee-jerk fanaticism when it comes to nuclear power.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Some of those are targeted because they conflict with religious doctrine, for sure, but why should so many conservatives have so much of an emotional stake in climate science?
I'm semi conservative (of a libertarian bent), and quite atheist. I'm probably closer to a denier than a believer.
My exact position is that global warming certainly seems to be happening, and that it is probably partly fueled by mankind. I think the scale of it and man's role in it is being exaggerated, and that the predictions of upcoming cataclysmic effects are laughably overstated, and the current proposals to change it are dangerously heavy-handed.
One point I'd like to make is that an 'emotional stake in climate science' is by no means limited to just deniers. Browse this thread for obvious proof. I think that, while nearly all Americans have respect for science, they are much more skeptical as regards scientists. Science works, and is our key to progress. Scientists, though, individually, are as prone to hubris, arrogance, lying, stubborness, and pride as anybody else. In the current climate, it's not hard to imagine the psychological pressures that would effect many of them. Not all of us are experts at climatology (deniers and believers alike). Normally, in that case, we will listen to the advice of experts. However, when there seem to be some strong evidence of groupthink and exclusionary thinking, bandwagon riding-upon, clear efforts at propagandizing, and suggested remedies that are strongly politically charged, our heels dig in.
Frankly, I would just like more study. We are talking about minor fluctuations in systems that have major factors that aren't yet understood. I could be convinced.
Besides, the answer is simply to go nuclear, and that's where we should go whether climate change is real or not... so what's the problem?
For example, while total irradiance is fairly flat, the makeup of that radiation varies greatly
Sort of. The Sun's output, prior to meeting the atmosphere, is very close to black-body radiation. So you can place decent limits on how much the irradiance for a particular wavelength will change as a function of the change in the total irradiance.
Something you should look up: there isn't one "solar cycle." There are several.
Of course, but there's limited to no direct measurement of the irradiance variation over these cycles, and proxy data suggests that the total irradiance variation as a result of all of these cycles is about 0.2%.
which is that we've been on the UPSWING of that same solar cycle for the same time period that global warming has occurred.
It's a long-term trend starting in the early 1900s or so, so it's not on the upswing of any cycle shorter than 200 years, give or take. It's roughly 0.8 C over that time, so in the extreme case, half of that is due to irradiance.
Which allows a LOT more cosmic rays to hit the Earth (15% or so).
There is a theory that the cosmic rays affect albedo via cloud cover, but the numbers I've seen for cosmic ray variation are about 2%.
Oh, you can't accurately estimate the Earth's temperature dependence on CO2. Not if you want particularly high accuracy. But that's what Arrhenius did, which was more or less the start of figuring out the greenhouse effect. Later work (with a large gap in there) has been figuring out the many details. It's a great starting point, though. The feedback is a perturbation of the dead-simple model. It's useful, before looking at the feedback and getting into a rat's maze of details, if the temperature dependence of the Earth on CO2 is on the order of 1 C per doubling in CO2, 0.01 C per doubling, or 100 C per doubling.
I think the art of using rough quantitative analysis to estimate the reasonableness of claims is an art that is lost on most people, particularly when they are talking about any issue they have an opinion on, and particularly on Slashdot. It's far too convenient and unproductive to throw up a wall of "but there are lots of details" and "but there are things we don't understand" and fall back on qualitative arguments like "but volcanoes output CO2, and other planets are getting hotter without SUVs" without giving it the barest amount of critical thought.
A real quant is supposed to be a mathematician, and they should not have much faith in the models most "quants" use on Wallstreet. PS. It wasn't their fault that the economy collapsed. It was the bankers, sub-prime mortgage holders, and large financial firms. Quants give advice and trade small amounts of capital in comparison to the big boys. They don't get to manipulate markets and come up with scams like the big boys do.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
One should be careful using the word "should" in these situations. Not only does it imply that there is a "correct" temperature for the Earth, but it suggests we have a solid enough understanding of the entire system that we can make definitive predictions about the future. That's usually not the case in any situation where one would say "but the graphs suggests that it should be 3 C cooler right now".
I don't really see what you're saying about the graph. Hopefully you're not looking at the peak height of previous peaks (~2 C) and comparing it to the height of the current peak (~0 C) and figuring this means that it "should" be 2 C hotter? This equally suggests that something else in the climate has changed or that there's long-term drift. The periodic pattern is hard to reliably predict the future from -- it's not all that consistent (a lot of things: cycle period, peak width, vary between the cycles shown). The graph does suggest that in the future, we should a temperature decline of a total of roughly 10 C. Again, though, apply quantitative analysis. That 10 C drop is over the course of about 120,000 years. That's about 0.08 C / thousand years. The global-warming trend is about 0.8 C over a hundred years, which is 8 C over a thousand years. So that's a factor of 100 different. So if somehow the effect of global warming caps at a degree or two C, then in 5-10 thousand years (roughly the length of time humans have had writing and civilization), it could get cold. Models don't suggest that to be the case. (To put 8 C / thousand years in perspective on that graph, the rising edge of the prominent peak seems to be about 10 C over 5-10 thousand years. If we say 5 thousand, that's 2 C / thousand years -- a factor of four slower than our current trend.)
Glacial Lake Missoula existed between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago.
You're a very poor proponent for your cause. You find people on the other side, and then write posts that make them seem better in comparison; it's happened several times in this thread.
Your side would be better served if you let a better writer respond, someone with a less insulting and juvenile style, and more able to calmly and clearly give facts.
He didn't assume "that the irradiance is absorbed linearly as a black body by the earth", you did. He pointed out very clearly that variations in solar irradiance simply don't vary as much as people seem to believe.
In fact, when you mention "atmospheric composition, oceanic current flow, heat from the core, drag from the moon and sun" all you manage is to explicitly mention other factors that have greater variation than solar irradiance does.
And yet you were modded informative? GP was insightful in pointing out people don't understand the variability in the sun's output is negligible compared to other factors, demonstrates that the temperature changes experienced *must* be caused by other variable factors butt is modded 'interesting'. Sheesh.
What I'm really griping about is you added nothing to the discussion. You say "People are also bad at understanding complex effects, as your post shows" but all you really demonstrate is that your reading comprehension is fairly limited. And then get modded informative. Sheesh
Yes, because that will make the region even more stable.
Take Saudi Arabia, very religious, monarchy and they've invested a lot of money into cutting edge weapons, AWACS, F-15s, Eurofighters, oh and medium range ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. Now we don't know if they bought the warheads, but it's safe to assume they did, as protectors of Mecca and Medina and all that.
http://geimint.blogspot.com/2009/02/saudi-arabias-ballistic-missile-force.html
Now take that nation which which is very reliant on oil, the petroleum sector accounts for roughly 45% of budget revenues, 55% of GDP, and 90% of export earnings, and has a rapidly expanding youth population who have been used to expanding GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Saudi_Arabia#Economic_overview
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=age+pyramid+saudi+arabia
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gdp+saudi+arabia
And take away a big chunk of the GDP, how do you think that is going to play out in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or the Russian Federation? All oil exporters who have or may have atomic weapons and technologically advanced conventional militaries?
Just admit you don't have everything figured out. I know that may give rise to healthy skepticism. People may not want to spend trillions in dollars to fix a problem you aren't certain about.
We're never "certain" about anything. However, it generally makes sense to act on the basis of the evidence. For example, if you house is on fire you could say "maybe it won't hurt me" and keep on surfing the web, but most people would go ahead and evacuate the house.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Denialist" is a really interesting turn of phrase. People started intentionally using it against global warming skeptics to directly call to mind Holocaust deniers. Yeah - by calling people "denialists," you're really calling them "Nazis."
Actually, I use it by analogy with "evolution deniers". I put global warming deniers in the same came as creationists, not Nazis.
Hope that makes you fee better.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The Year Without a Summer was the result of a volcano in 1815.
The Little Ice Age started about 1550.
You have effect proceeding cause by about 250 years.
Well, if you are about to build a new power plant, you as well can build a renewable ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Science never has everything figured out. You should be skeptical of science. But most arguments I've seen against global warming have nothing to do with healthy skepticism; they generally use made up evidence or faulty reasoning. In any case, we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions no matter what, because fossil fuels will not last forever. The only question is how quickly should we reduce them. Personally, I think it makes sense to reduce fossil fuel now use simply to reduce demand and avoid energy prices spiraling out of control...
Not to mention that burning petroleum is such a terrible waste since it's far better used to create things like plastics, fertilizers,and pharmaceuticals.
If you find stating a fact insulting ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It's pretty remarkable that this and so many other seemingly scientific issues (evolution, plate tectonics, etc.) get fractured along "liberal/conservative" lines. Some of those are targeted because they conflict with religious doctrine, for sure, but why should so many conservatives have so much of an emotional stake in climate science?
Rich people tell their political suck-ups that they don't want to spend money mitigating global warming.
Political suck-ups tell FOX news that global warming is not really happening.
FOX news tells 30% of the USA public that global warming is a liberal conspiracy.
FOX viewers wash it down with the kool-aide.
The anti-global-warming view is "conservative" because of the myth that US politics is about conservatives vs. liberals. Once you realize that US politics is actually about billionaires vs. the rest of us, you can easily see why denialism is "conservative" in code-word speak.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The "mini ice age" had really nothing to do with the state of the sun.
Are the correlations between the Maunder and Dalton minima and the contemporal cool/cold periods both coincidental? Just curious.
sigfault (core dumped)
Stability is death.
Normalcy bias is standard, but it can be deadly. We have a cultural memory stretching back a few hundred years, and think that things have always been like that. SURPRISE! They haven't. Grapes once grew in both Canada and England. Our culture doesn't remember that, though it persists in names in England.
Rough quantative analysis (or common sense) is a good tool indeed to check whether results are reasonable. Unfortunately in a complex chaotic system where everything is linked, one needs to be very careful not to oversimplify. In my comment I was referring to the fact that Stefan-Boltzmann only lets you approximate the entire greenhouse effect in Kelvins. To attribute any parts of it to specific greenhouse gases you need more information, and due to the overlap in absorption frequencies, there are only rough estimates.
As far as feedbacks are concerned, they are everything to the CO2-induced global warming theory. Alone CO2 is a weak trace gas with very little potential for further warming. The theory relies on feedbacks (most notably water vapour feedback) to enhance the small warming generated by CO2 itself. So if we assumed that CO2 forcing per doubling were 0.3 degrees, the water vapour feedback would then bring it to 1.5 or more per doubling (these are just random numbers to illustrate my point). Therefore any uncertainties in estimating these feedbacks will have a drastic effect on the simple quantative analysis as well, and for example wrt clouds it isn't certain whether the feedback is positive or not. Models assume it is positive, but there is no solid evidence for that (of course it might be positive, but currently it is just an assumption).
My main point that others have made as well was that solar irradiance is not the only aspect of Sun's effect on Earth's atmosphere and thus climate.
To be fair, he may have meant the cooler period which began around 1770 A.D. that was contemporal with the Dalton minimum.
BTW, the article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%B6rer_Minimum has an interesting graph showing solar activity, as measured by ^14_C, from the Oort Minimum through the Medieval Maximum to today. The Modern Maximum is higher than the Medieval Maximum. Although correlation isn't causation, I wonder if this has anything to do with global temperatures being at or slightly above the Medieval Maximum?
sigfault (core dumped)
You are referring to the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI). But it is not total: the satellites used to measure it have a spectral window from 2000 nm down to 200nm. That leaves out the EUV and X-Ray region. There, the variation is huge. See for example this factor-of-three variation over the solar cycle in the 26-34 nm band.
In the X-ray region variations can be orders of magnitude. Looking at any EUV of X-ray image, it is obvious that the short wavelength intensity from the corona much exceeds the black body radiation coming off the surface. So the conventional view that the EUV and X-Ray region is just an irrelevant tail of the black-body curve is wrong:the flux there is much more intense.
Then there are serious doubts about whether the TSI time series as published are actually all that constant. There have been per-instrument aging calibrations that have removed slopes in the raw data. The question though is whether this slope was really due to aging or due to a systematic trend in the solar irradiance. Also, the long-term TSI curve spans a number of instruments (satellites) with some gap in between. There is a lot of discussion about whether this gap has been bridged without skewing the data towards less variance than there really is.
There. A tiny bit more research shows that the sun can have a rather greater effect on Earth's temperature than it is given credit for.
And no, climate scientists are not familiar with this. The importance of the EUV and X-Ray region has been overlooked in the past and only recently has started to gain attention.
Not for the same price per kWH. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html . Nuclear generation is almost the same cost as wind and solar, and can be used at our convenience rather than whenever its windy or when the suns out. Keep in mind wind and solar energy sources need to have their energy stored when the energy is generated. The peak generation time for the power is always out of sync with the peak energy use time for the energy consumer. Right now you can use batteries, which hurt the environment through their production and disposal, or you need to come up with some other method. Right now a company in Montana is suggesting using wind/solar energy to pump water up a mountain to a holding pool then releasing it back down the mountain during peak energy use times. The problem with this is it damages the wilderness they put it in. A nuclear plant can be put almost anywhere, like in the middle of an uninhabited desert. This is true especially the new ones that use sodium as coolant and recycle 99 percent of their radioactive waste in a breeder reactor. You know, the ones the environmental nut-jobs and nuclear fear-mongers wont allow to be built in spite of bitching about how bad all our other energy sources are while offering no other feasible solutions.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
"the null hypothesis."
and don't you forget it has a flaw. It presume with side have equal chance of being true, even when one side has monumental proof.
If I were to do a study to see if the moon was made of oysters, Both sides would be valid. conclusions must also be weighed against other known data.
This is why I would like to see Bayesian inference included in studies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is why we use data and facts and not cultural memory.
Yes the Climate changes, you're a genius. Man made climate change is the effect on top of normal cycles.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, a skeptic looks at facts and applies logical thinking, a denialists ignores facts and evidence in order to support a belief.
They are denialists.
Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out. ~Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.
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Take away there money from oil, and in about a year they will be throwing rocks at each other.
" technologically advanced conventional militaries?"
hahahaha.. ha.
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Neo-Cons.
The vast majority of Neo-Cons believe we can't change the world in this way because of 'God'
Other neo-cons think it will hasn't the second coming.
Neo-cons, like all religion in politics, want everyone to bend to their belief, regardless of facts.
This is why when they get up and lie about something, no one in there party calls them on it, and lets it go. It' s an OK lie because it appeals to our belief.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I never got the Al Gore hate. Especially on /. It's like a large portion of people here just fell for the lies about him hook line a sinker.
He's reasonable technically savvy, smart, and want's to invest in new technologies. He was responsible for making the internet a publicly available.
But for some reasons geeks here have this irrational hate.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes. We've had many cases of the Eath being cold that were not on minima (Snowball Earth wasn't because the Sun went into hibernation for a few hundred million years, for example, and the Younger Dryas lasted just a liiiitle longer than the so-called mini ice age) and we've had many cases of the Earth being hot that weren't on maxima (the Carboniferous Age was not due to the sun exploding).
The contemporal cool periods were WELL within statistical norms and are not, on a climatic scale, signficant whatsoever. To be climatically significant, it has to last more than a weekend.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
^^^^^^^^ This. Civilization needs stable climate. This rock has too many people.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
I suspect this will be about as successful as educating folks about the difference between "hacker" and "cracker".
And besides, if someone is denying global warming exists (without objectively examining the evidence for and against) isn't "global warming denier" a technically accurate description regardless - and even because of - of its allegorical links?
Welcome to slashdot! A quick primer on moderation:
Have fun on Slashdot!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Now that you know how "global warming denier" and "AGW denier" really came to be, you can stop using the term.
No, I only know how you think they came to be.
I use the term "denier" for both AGW deniers and evolution deniers, without regard to other things other people deny. And as I consider Nazis vile beyond human comprehension, I don't make a habit of tarring others with that name or other associations with them. I don't even like terms like "grammar Nazi".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The pictures say nothing about intensity, only that it's not homogeneous. What's the intensity scale for the picture?
You can get enormous changes for low-intensity wavelengths with small temperature shifts in the sun: tha's how blackbody radiation goes. That's because it's changing from "almost no photons" to "slightly more".
Take your graph as an example. The peak is about 3 x 10^10 photons / cm^2 / sec for ~30 nm photons. That's what, about 300 microwatts/m^2 out of the 1300 W/m^2 solar irradiance? The photon flux in that region could increase a hundredfold with no measurable effect on solar irradiance.
Though obviously not ideal, the images do say something about intensity: you can calculate what the surface black body flux in the covered wavelength region should be. Since the images show the surface as relatively dark (since the surface BB emission should be fairly homogeneous and isotropic you can take the darkest pixel regions inside the disk as being an upper bound thereof), it is easy to see (under any kind of reasonable coloring-intensity-increases-with-photon-flux scale choice that may have been made) that in the covered wavelength region of the EUV and X-Ray spectrum, the emissions from the corona are a sizable multiple of the surface black body spectrum. And yes, the flux is not that high anymore in the X-ray region. The point is, tough, that it is extremely variable there, and highly variable over long (solar cycle) time periods in the not-that-narrow 26-34 nm band of the EUV.
In any case, considerable effects of this short wavelength flux on the earth's atmosphere have been observed. Unwelcome observations, so for political correctness some ludicrous CO2 spin had to be put on that too. Realize that about half of the radiative emissions of the thermosphere go towards the earth's surface and as such affect surface temperatures.
Not much into humour, are we?
That is not correct. Especially not in a grid as huge as the US grid, or in the european grid.
Solar thermal plants can run 36h - 48h without sun (due to molten slat strorage).
Batteries are only useful if you are not connected to the grid. It makes no sense (and no one does it) to store sun/wind power in batteries to compensate for peak production or peak usage.
Thats a good place for a solar plant as well ;D And furthermore: a desert is the most unlikely place to put a nuclear plant. As you need huge amounts of water to keep it running and to cool it.
Liquid Sodium coolant: that is only the primary cooling circle going into the reactor core itself. That is neither the circle powering the turbines nor the circle going into the cooling towers.
A solar plant needs space. That is true, but it is not more damage than an air field is.
A wind plant does not harm at all. Either you put them offshore into the water or on land on top of a corn field.
I don't believe the huge farm lands where no singel tree is growing can be considered "nature".
You can place a wind plant easy there (that is how we do that in germany, the farmers get extra money for allowing the wind companies to place wind mills on their farm land. Every windmill "costs" a 10m x 10m area of ground for the mast.
You should know: the new ones with sodium coolant don't exist. they are only paper models. For recycling the fuel they still need to remove the fuel and need a reprocessing plant and the infrastructure to move the stuff back and forth.
Regardless of the so called generation III and generation IV designs or thorium breeders or what ever fancy name they may have: they are risky unprooven designs. Perhaps a small scale research reactor is existing here and there. Germany e.g. had a small scale thorium research breeder and indeed built a commercial one (only 300MW but at that time it was a typical size), both nearly went rogue and got emergency shut down and where decommissioned.
My point simply was: if so many agree with removing the old reactors. Why are they caught in the idea to replace it with another nuclear reactor instead of a wind plant e.g.? Yes you say cost per KW/h. But that cost is partly arbitrary. No one knows the real costs as lots of costs are factored out. Wind power is not that expensive either. The point is: if you plan a wind plant with lets say 400 turbines with 5MW yield each, to aim for a 200MW plant you can place them roughly in a square of 20 x 20 turbines. As each turbine has a 100m diameter rotor. You place them at about 200m - 300m distance to each other. So you need an area of about 4km ^2 to 6km ^2. I don't know how big the security are around a nuclear plant is, but it is surely 2km x 2km minimum. (And no: you don't have to divide the rated wind energy yield by 5 to norm it down to an estimated 20% to 25% efficiency as the /. crowd always does. The wind turbines have a kick in wind speed of 3m/s, a base operation speed (where they yield their net rated power) of 12m/s and a shut down wind speed of 25m/s ... this is for an offshore turbine of type "Bard 5.0")
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That assumes they scale black to zero and the rest of the scale is linear, which often isn't the case for such images. (They contrast-enhance the interesting region.)
The effect of high-energy photons is necessarily limited to odd secondary effects: no direct heating effects are possible (there's just not enough of them).
So, they realize that the sun output is very important, but then they still think that it's not important... Very cleaver indeed! Anyway, the issue is that they are always reasoning with a MODEL, to do predictions for the future which never happened, when having a look in the past is in fact enough. Also, they risk themselves in predicting temperatures in one century, even though we aren't even capable of knowing what the weather will be like in 2 weeks, or even a trend for the next season. It's like predicting what will be the economy in 1 century. No fullish economist does such prediction. But in climatology, yes, they can. Frankly, I don't buy in such crystal ball predictions...
Why does this always have to fall into politics.
Because any time you're talking about a regional or global issue where arriving at certain conclusions means you'll have to do something it always ends up falling into politics, whether you're for or against it. It's just the way it works at the scale of societies.
The enemies of Democracy are
Es tut mir leid. I must have gotten my joke detector at a car boot sale. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who actually babble stuff similar to what you wrote, but are quite serious about it.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
So, they realize that the sun output is very important, but then they still think that it's not important... Very cleaver indeed!
At no time did anything I said even resemble anything in your above paraphrase. Let me try to explain it one more time. The way terrestrial temperature responds to solar output is well known because of past data. Given the sun and some other variables in the past, you could calculate what terrestrial temperature "should" be and then measure the temperature and that is exactly what it would be. This was true until significant human emissions began, after which the temperature was higher than what the old model said it "should" be. However, if you add "human emissions" as one of the variables, then the models fit perfectly again.
Therefore: humans are causing global warming over and above solar output fluctuations. If the sun gives us a temporary break, it won't change the fact that we're still causing global climate change.
Your heroic efforts to misunderstand any attempt to educate you is evidence that your conclusions are ideological rather than based on reason. I suspect you're just trolling, but if you really are interested in reasoning your way to the truth, just a small amount of googling and an honest attempt to understand the reasoning of others will go a long way.
Climate change denialists' use of the tired old "weather" meme, after it has been debunked ad nauseum, is why denialists have no credibility with educated people and no one of any reputation takes them seriously. The meme has been thoroughly dismantled numerous times but that doesn't stop the uneducated from resurrecting it at every opportunity.
Economies and climates share about nothing in common. If you've based your rejection of climatologist's predictions on the inability of economists to predict, then you're possibly stupider than I imagined. This is why, "frankly", nobody really gives a shit what you "buy" or not - your uninformed opinion isn't worth fuck.
The difference between "denier" and "denialist" is that a "denier" just some who denies, but the construct "denialist" from "denial" + "ist" is meant to convey someone who is an ideological advocate of denial, which is exactly what I meant. Your comparison of economic predictions and weather predictions to climate predictions are indicative of someone who has dismissed the other side's argument without first comprehending it. That's beyond "denying" it's what one might term, "denialism".
On the very simple question "how much temperature increase for a doubling of the CO2 emissions", none of the so called "climatologists" are capable enough to give a valid, definitive answer.
Because that question assumes that there is some direct and immediate relationship between CO2 emissions and average temperature, but there isn't. The model has to account for all kinds of delayed responses and positive and negative feedback loops. Those are all accounted for in the model because climatologists aren't stupid.
Predictions for the climate in one century are really foolish, and that nobody is capable of doing that, simply because there is too many parameters
False. It has already been done. You don't seem to grasp exactly what a "model" is in this context. There are thousands and thousands of years of proxy data for a myriad of various variables such as global temperature, solar output, CO2 levels, and many more. The scientific hypothesis is that all of those parameters influence (and may be influenced by) other parameters in a way that can be described by a mathematical model. Such a model has been constructed, which accurately predicts the temperature response to changes in the other variables no matter where in the thousands and thousands of years that you try it. This means there are not too many variables to make that prediction. The fact that the model, when applied over that last couple millenia and more, fits, means precisely that how the variables interact is known to a very high degree.
In other words, if they had this in 1200AD, they could have predicted the global temperature in 1300AD with a margin of error well within satisfactory ranges and they'd have been right. Ditto for 1400AD, 1500AD, 1600AD, etc. To say such a prediction is impossible is, therefore, simply a false statement made by someone who doesn't appear to bother to understand the science behind that which he's ridiculing.
If you are offended that I implied that you must be uneducated on these matters, consider that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. I'm assuming ignorance instead of malevolence. If you aren't uneducated, the only other option seems to be "lying sack of shit".
Humans would be much better off ignoring climate change and doing something about the shit thats already happening.
Oh, climate change is already happening. You're just not perceptive enough to see it or understand how it may affect you and your progeny in the future.
What a maroon.
Look, the talking point is what I said was dis-proven. If you run around claiming x + 1 = y and then we find out that you didn't even know the value of x, then we've dis-proven the talking point. It doesn't matter if the lie still has some random chance of being true. It's still a lie to claim it's value.
And yes, it is definitely "infantile science."
I'm not simply accusing you of an "ism" because you disagree. It's because after each reply where I explain the "model" concept, your response seems to indicates that you haven't even bothered to understand it.
For example, I try to explain that CO2's relationship to temperature is complicated and is neither direct nor immediate and your reply indicates that you think this means there's no discernible relationship so "how can we think about doing any kind of policy". But this isn't at all what I said.
(CO2 doesn't directly raise the temperature - it isn't hot - it acts as insulation so that the earth doesn't radiate away as much of its internally generated heat. So it isn't direct. It isn't immediate either. A one-time increase in CO2 results in a warming which takes place over time as the internal heat builds up. This means it is neither direct nor immediate, but in neither case does it mean we lack there's not enough info to make policies).
In contrast, each new argument you've introduced hasn't been new to me. Your last reply is no exception. Climatologists are, of course, aware of past data. It's what they use. It is well known that CO2 concentration increase trails temperature and it is well known that temperature rise does cause CO2 concentration increase. You seem to suggest that this means that the reverse can't be true, but that's false. Even if CO2 rises more in response to temperature than vice versa (which could be true), it would not at all mean that temperature doesn't also respond to CO2 rising. I've, in fact, already mentioned this. Both are true. It's called a positive feed back loop. You've probably heard climatologists warn of "runaway" global warming. This is exactly what they're referring to. They aren't only aware of this feature of the data you're presenting, it is precisely what they're warning about.
You don't come out and say explicitly that CO2 does not create a "greenhouse" effect - you do seem to imply it can't but I can't tell if you're actually asserting it. Are you? Do you deny the physics of how the greenhouse effect works?
I'm also quite aware of the hockey stick graph as it gets paraded out at every discussion of AGW as proof that all the evidence for AGW is bunk. This is really a straw man, though, because the hockey stick graph was not what convinced the climatologists. The widespread scientific consensus was reached because of the success of the models. The hockey stick graph was published to help visualize the problem to non-scientists. It was criticized by scientists precisely because it was oversimplified. It is not the evidence. The models (insofar as they explain the data) are the evidence.
If you are not explaining why the models are wrong, you aren't even in the game.
First of all, thanks a lot for your change of tone.
I don't consider myself a denier. A skeptic maybe, and for sure someone with doubts, asking myself questions, reading sites, and comparing opinions. Reading times and times again that some are absolutely 100% sure that we'd have X degree more in Y years just doesn't add up after all I read. There's no consensus. And in Science (with a big S), there's no "majority": we don't vote for the theory we like, someone got to prove what he says against the theories of others. Did you know that in the beginning of the 20th century, there was a majority of scientists saying that plate tectonics and the theory of the movements of continents, creating earthquakes and volcano, was just wrong? Now there's not even one scientist to deny this theory. It's only when there's not even one reasonably minded scientist to (dis)proof (and not (dis)agree because otherwise we call that politics and not Science) that we can safely admit a theory as a fact. This is far from being the case on the IPCC model, which is highly controversial. Anyway, let's stop digressing.
Yourself, you may have not talked about policy. But others did and it bothers me. We all heard about a carbon tax, and a cap-and-trade system. If we want such a system to be useful, we got to know how much CO2 we are allowed to emit, so that it wouldn't further the issues that some climatologists talked about. But we can't, as we don't have such numbers. Even if we did, I think a "market" of CO2 would be the worst thing to do. I don't thing it would work to reduce emissions at all. Then it would be a lot more efficient to make new laws to have electric cars on the streets, with some incentives like (thanks to taxes) an artificially high petrol price. But nothing like it is happening. And electric cars replacing polluting ones are so obviously what we should all do, GW or not, simply because of the pollution we have in major cities. Still, we hear endless debates about CO2 taxes, and none about the solutions. I'm sad when I see that.
Now, the effect of CO2 on earth heating. The theory is that the earth's heat would be trapped, as you wrote, and that radiation would be reduced. It does work on paper, and in fact, it's the same effect as with another very important element on earth: vapor! Yes, gas water has a green-house effect as well (on different wave length, and the cooling or heating of earth depends on other parameters, like the color of the cloud which can or can't well reflect the suns heat, but globally, it does a greenhouse effect). Should we ban water then? Hell, when you ask on the street about "dihydrogen monoxide" some say yes because they are morons who don't understand what H2O is... (Anyway, that last one was only for fun.)
The issue with the CO2 trapping heat theory is that we can very easily observe that: we have satellite all over the place around earth, and measuring the radiation isn't hard (I wouldn't be able to explain exactly how, but let's admit it is easy to tell, ok? If you don't agree with that, I'll google for it...). As the CO2 emission levels have never been as high as now, we should be able to actually tell. But what the satellites are telling is a completely different story as the "model". Yes, there's a small reduction of earth radiation, but it's barely doing anything that could in a distant future hurt anyone. That is a very simple fact, not a very complicated model! So the positive feedback loop is there, but it's not as effective as previously thought.
As for the hockey stick graph, you pointed out exactly what hurts. It has been designed with drastic results in the mind of the population, and it doesn't show the middle age minimum, nor many events in the last millennium.
Models are what they are: models and not observation. I did bother trying to understand the models. But modeling the entire earth climate is all but an easy job, and just saying "models are showing that" isn't enough. Current observation is that since 1998 or 2002 (depe
A quick note about "tone". If you back up to the top of this thread, you'll see that this whole back-and-forth started because you replied to my correction to someone else's misunderstanding. You irritatingly paraphrased my reply to say something I didn't say which you proceeded to ridicule. I corrected your error and then you repeated step 1. (This is my adult way of saying, "you started it".)
I certainly don't lightly accept AGW as fact. In fact, not too long ago, I tended to think that the loudness of the warning was due to a bias the public and media naturally have for sensationalism (i.e. "impending global doom" always gets more airtime than, for example, "migratory patterns of birds"). What changed my mind is looking at the actual studies and the thoroughness by which they were thought through. I also looked at objections and answers to those objections. After this, the overwhelming consensus among climatologists made a lot of sense and was not surprising.
I'm quite aware that truth is not subject to democracy, but dismissing scientific consensuses unless you are an expert in the field yourself, is historically foolish. Scientists were absolutely right to reject plate tectonic theory when it was first suggested because 1. in it's earliest form it was wrong (it was proposed that the land floated on water) and 2. there was insufficient data to corroborate it. When these two things changed, it became undeniable and was easily accepted. Scientists specializing in geology were the first to reach consensus, as would be expected. (Note there's still "controversy" among "geologists" who argue for a 6k year old earth - but only the kind of "controversy" that accompanies scare quotes)
30 years ago, no one paid much attention to the idea that CO2 emitted by man had an appreciable impact, but climatologists, today, have reached such a consensus. I am not disputing the ever-present possibility that they are wrong, but these are the specialists. Back-of-the-envelope calculations by scientists in unrelated fields don't really constitute "controversy". Even a few who are in the field don't a controversy make. (There are creationists with PhDs, for Christ's sake - pun intended. That doesn't mean there's a real controversy over whether the earth is 6k years old.) I dispute your claim that there is any significant controversy over AGW in the circles in which there should be if it were warranted.
I'll reiterate one more time that the model does quantify the effect of human carbon emissions have on temperature. It is just not as simple as X carbon means Y degrees, but it's definitely quantifiable within a margin of error, and that margin of error is small enough to see that a failure to reduce our increases in carbon output is highly likely to result in catastrophe (which isn't so hard - the global economy is already teetering).
What I don't understand is why you think we need to know exactly how much to reduce carbon before we can begin making any kind of policy toward reduction. We really only need a ballpark figure if the numbers suggest that we are way-off-the-charts in terms of climate impact - and this is exactly what climatologists are warning. And this is exactly what people are trying to organize (whether by effective means or not - I'm not claiming cap-and-trade will work).
I'm neither pro- nor anti- cap-and-trade. That is, I don't know if it's the best solution or even if it will work, but waiting for a zero-margin-of-error model before doing anything seems to be an obviously bad idea. If you want to argue against cap-and-trade, then by all means do so, but claiming that we don't know the effects of human carbon emissions precisely enough is wrong -- I suspect that this isn't the real reason anyway. Hypothetically if a model as simple as "X carbon = Y degrees" were possible and we knew it precisely, would you then be in favor of cap-and-trade, carbon tax, or carbon markets in general? Or would you have other objections?
I'm quite aware that truth is not subject to democracy, but dismissing scientific consensuses [...]
The word consensus, is used to describe both general agreement and the process of getting to such agreement, not only by a majority, but also by the minorities. It is mostly used in democracy. So, basically above, you are saying: "Science isn't democracy, but you can't dismiss the majority [...]". The minority that do not agree does exist, but it has no voice, it's being shut at by the IPCC that refuses any kind of controversy. I once heard Jouvel and Courtillot in a debate, it was really funny: Courtillot gave scientific arguments, while Jouvel (from IPCC) was only attacking the person. This doesn't work, it never will, and it wont ever in Science. Forget about the consensus thing, this is pure bullshit which is just not the case today, and it's used by one side to expose the other as wrong (but of course, the simple fact that there are 2 sides means there's no consensus).
I'll reiterate one more time that the model does quantify the effect of human carbon emissions have on temperature. It is just not as simple as X carbon means Y degrees, but it's definitely quantifiable within a margin of error, and that margin of error is small enough to see that a failure to reduce our increases in carbon output is highly likely to result in catastrophe (which isn't so hard - the global economy is already teetering).
If you feel the need to reiterate this, then I feel the need to oppose to this. There's no clear consensus about the quantification, and we have no way to tell how much, or even if, a catastrophe will happen. Only people involved in politicizing the IPCC agree about the consensus for it. If CO2 effect is insignificant, then it's simple: it's urgent to refocus, and push for other policies. I am currently convince that, CO2 effect or not, we are missing the most important policies (which I listed above in this thread). So yes, I need clear quantifications and solid proofs before I can accept even the idea CO2 taxes and cap-and-trade. But whatever what happens, I'll be against this system of CO2 taxes anyway, which I don't think will be efficient.
but of course, the simple fact that there are 2 sides means there's no consensus
Your problem, here, is that this and the paragraph preceding it, can also be be said about creationism vs evolution. Substitute "educational establishment" for "IPCC" and "Richard Dawkins" for "Jouzel" (etc) and you've practically got a Ben Stein classic.
I thought I was quite clear that the consensus I was talking about was among climatologists, whose specialty it is to study these things. If there are 2 sides to this among actual climatologists (and I mean in appreciable numbers - not the kind of numbers that creationists also muster) then you have a point here. I'll wait for you to show this is the case. In the meantime, here is data (pdf) that suggests otherwise.
For safety, I'll reiterate that climatologists could all, certainly, be wrong. It's just that your burden of proof is quite high if you claim this is the case. It is often imagined that conjecturing a conspiracy to suppress dissent gets one off the burden-of-proof hook, but it doesn't.
Is there a link to the debate you mention, or is this something you experienced in person?
There's no clear consensus about the quantification
Please explain this (scroll down to "Climate Sensitivity" to see equations).
I lifted the above answer from the Skeptical Science website which gives a very detailed answer. You say that no quantification exists, but yet this is obviously quantification of the relationship between CO2 and temperature based on evidence. If you were aware of this, then you are obliged to explain why it doesn't count. If you are unaware of it, then I was right in assuming ignorance.
You get mad at me if I accuse you of either ignorance or deception. Please offer me another explanation for the pattern. I say "pattern" because from that same website there are thorougly researched answers to all the arguments you've raised including: it's the sun, there is no consensus, CO2 lags temp, hockey stick is broken, climate sensitivity is low, CO2 effect is weak, water vapor is more powerful, CO2 limits will harm the economy, no correlation between CO2 and temp, scientists can't even predict weather, and possibly some others I've missed. You raise each of these canards without the slightest indication of what was wrong with the scientific response to them. Either you were ignorant of the scientific responses, or you pretended they didn't exist. Hanlon's Razor compels me to assume the former.
I thought I was quite clear that the consensus I was talking about was among climatologists, whose specialty it is to study these things.
That's precisely the issue! Climatologists, without a global warming issues and fundings around it, wouldn't get funds. And not surprisingly, it's mostly not Climatologists that have opposite views on the subject. Courtillot for example is a Geologist. Never the less, his studies can't be discarded just because he doesn't have a diploma in climat...
For the (multiple) debates I mentioned, most were in French language, some on the LCP channel, France 5, and others. But also, there was one were the press was not invited, after a lot of controversy, and the end report was that quite that there was a controversy.
From your link: "As the name suggests, climate sensitivity is an estimate of...". This is a MODEL, on which we can agree or not. The thing is, OBSERVATION doesn't show the same thing. It does work on paper, but there are other variable that these equations don't have. See also: "Studies have given a possible range of values of 2-4.5C warming for a doubling of CO2 (IPCC 2007). Using these values it's a simple task to put the climate sensitivity into the units we need, using the formulas above:", so to trust these equations, you got to trust the IPCC AR4 from 2007. The thing is, the AR4 is highly criticized. I didn't write that there is no quantification, I wrote that people do not agree on them, and so, I don't know what to think, and so should the policy makers.
You expect something different from an "estimate"? What could you possibly be expecting?
This is a MODEL, on which we can agree or not. The thing is, OBSERVATION doesn't show the same thing. It does work on paper
The model is an equation based on the observations. What the hell do you think a model is?
That's precisely the issue! Climatologists, without a global warming issues and fundings around it, wouldn't get funds.
Conveniently, by this same deduction, it would be impossible for any scientific discipline in any category to ever issue any warning based on their findings without the same conclusion.
I didn't write that there is no quantification
You wrote that there was "no consensus on the quantification". When I show you consensus, you admit that there is consensus but that it is only among climatologists who are all accomplices in a global conspiracy to suppress dissent by not funding it. This strains credulity. Besides having the all-too-convenient effect of explaining why you can't backup your assertions; for it to be true would require that would-be climatologists somehow pre-declare their conclusions (in secret?) to the would-be funders so they know whom to fund. So obviously all climatologists are in on the conspiracy. In addition to this, either there are no dissenters with funds to fund "real" research or they choose not to do so for some unspecified reason (otherwise there would be dissenting climatologists funded by said dissenters with funds).
Likely dissenters would be those for whom carbon taxing or cap-and-trade would harm the most - such as oil companies or industrialized nations, like the U.S.. Supposedly they either lack the resources to fund "honest" climatology or they don't really mind putting up with the expense of cap-and-trade etc.
Thanks for the reply. That's pretty much exactly where my thoughts were going looking at this data. I'll accept your pedantry over terminology and rephrase as "in order to understand the accuracy of our current climate models, we need to understand the driving forces behind these previous peaks/valleys and why the current trend appeared to follow prior trends until reaching a plateau at about current levels quite some time ago." I haven't heard any discussion of what might be different between this cycle and prior cycles that explains the plateau phase.
I could posit that there is something inherent in the feedback loops of the planet that drives these cycles - and if anthropogenic warming pushes us beyond some tipping point we would trigger an alteration in whatever those forces might be - driving us out of the current equilibrium (plateau). Since the current state (a relatively stable plateau) has been so good for my species, I'd probably like to see the status quo continue. I suppose there are folks somewhere in the halls of academia working on precisely that problem, but a couple of quick google searches and a post or two on an irrelevant forum is about as far as I'm willing to go to connect with them.
"Man made climate change is the effect on top of normal cycles."
Maybe.
Really we have such a small amount of accurate direct observation data to go on that to say that we know for sure it complete arrogance.
As I said we now that we are in a warming trend because we can see the data. We know that CO2 levels are higher than we have observed in the resent past.
So decreasing co2 emissions or reversing them should slow the change no matter the cause.
Stop. Science is science, what is driving me nuts is when people think it proof of their great rationality to make science into their religion. You can tell them right away when any of their great truths are questioned.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The only nation you mentioned that is of a real worry--militarily--is possibly the Russian Federation.
As far as Iran goes, that is all-the-more reason to ensure that they do not get nuclear weapons, which as the world stands by and listens to one--of the top two--craziest national leaders exclaim that they have no intentions to get nuclear weapons, seems more and more likely to go unimpeded. Oh, and they have have no gay people in Iran either. But they'd love to blow Israel and the US off the face of the Earth. Totally unrelated, I'm sure.
As for Saudi Arabia having nukes: where would they get them? Russia? If Russia won't sell them to Iran alongside everything else, then why would they sell it to Saudi Arabia? Granted, it's a very realistic fear to have, but given the turmoil that already originates from there while they have money, I am far less concerned about them with less money. The article notes the possibly that China might have done so at least 20 years ago, but it also notes the promise that no nuclear tips would be used (not so much going on their word, but a more fearful and less powerful Chinese government probably would not want to be caught selling nuclear missiles; they didn't even give them to North Korea after all--the US effectively did thanks to Jimmy Carter's wonderful negotiating...).
It's also all-the-more reason to continue the missile shield program. No longer being afraid of a bunch of crazed nations with or without money sounds awfully appealing to me.
For me, it ultimately boils down to the old axiom of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, especially when considering the extreme measures the climate scientists want to take to address the problem. And it seems like 100 years of data is a mere blip when measured against a planet's climate cycle, especially when even data within that 100 year span is suspect.
You wrote that there was "no consensus on the quantification". When I show you consensus, you admit that there is consensus but that it is only among climatologists who are all accomplices in a global conspiracy to suppress dissent by not funding it.
NO! This isn't what I wrote, you are the one talking about the James Bond like Climatologist consensus doing a conspiracy. If you don't like Courtillot, and think he is involved in a conspiracy, or even that he isn't respectable because his main field isn't Climatology, we have nothing to discuss anymore. I am not interested in such topics, and I'll leave you with your illusions of consensus...