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Scientists: What We're Doing To The Earth Has No Parallel In 66 Million Years (washingtonpost.com)
mspohr writes from an article on The Washington Post: We haven't seen this much CO2 added to the atmosphere in 66 million years: "If you look over the entire Cenozoic, the last 66 million years, the only event that we know of at the moment, that has a massive carbon release, and happens over a relatively short period of time, is the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)," says Zeebe. "We actually have to go back to relatively old periods, because in the more recent past, we don't see anything comparable to what humans are currently doing." [New research suggests, even the drama of the PETM falls short of our current period, in at least one key respect: We're putting carbon into the atmosphere at an even faster rate than happened back then.] "The anthropogenic release outpaces carbon release during the most extreme global warming event of the past 66 million years, by at least an order of magnitude," writes Peter Stassen, an Earth and environmental scientist at KU Leuven, in Belgium, in an accompanying commentary on the new study. "Given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections," the study concludes.
At this point, so much silt has been stirred, it's hard to know who's telling the truth, if anyone. If scientists want more credibility, they need to start flushing out the ideological charge embedded in universities where they study. Sure, Saud and Koch are hardly objective, but neither are the blowhards at the ivy league.
That's it, use your mod points you evil fucking assholes. Waste them all, but it won't change the fact that the univese doesn't owe your precious oil economy one fucking favor. CO2 traps energy, assholes, no matter how many mod points and trolling actions you use to try to deny it.
Chillaxe dude. The denialists are using the only tool they have left, to try to yell louder than you do. Your posts don't go away, and I've found in climate news here, it helps to surf at 0.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What science? From the scientists who studied at these contaminated institutions?
This is special pleading.. Who are these 'real' scientists you speak of? I'm willing to bet they graduated from such schools, probably with high honors. This legitimacy is marred by the compromised state of the university system, most of which pushes ideology first, critical thought second. That shit has to stop.
Ahh, you show your true denialist roots. I knew we could flush you out.
Give me the citations of the contamination. Hell, the university where I worked is considered by the lefties as being in bed with the energy industry. Only difference is, the scientists believe in science, which you do not.
I'll take that back as soon as you show me the citations of the "contaminated universities" and the proof that AGW doesn't exist.
As well, we might discuss how your political beliefs trumps physics. That, by the way, is called Lysenkoism.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's valid good-faith questioning, and then there's bad-faith denial. Usually they're not hard to tell apart.
We really do need some scientific questioning about what's happening but tragically that gets drowned out in the denial.
Obviously, If someone wanted to question AGW, there are ways to do it.
You come up with a hypothesis. That would be something like "The greenhouse effect fails at global scales because of radiative reflection by clouds.".
Okay, now you have your hypothesis. So you come up with a rationale and a pla of how you are going to test it.
I'd say first measurements of radiation reflected by clouds might be taken by satellite to get a baseline. then over years, do large scale testing with amounts of cloud cover, and extrapolate.
the concept is that when land and ocean warm up, there will be more water put into the atmosphere, and cloud cover will increase. The increased reflection will re-radiate more of the sun's insolation back into space. This will then have a cooling effect that will tend to reduce the average temperature. This will act as more of a regulator than anything else. The earth's temperature will tend to be very stable, on a global scale.
Put together a proposal, and look for funding. After getting funding, proceed with the experiment and see how it turns out. If you refute AGW, you are going to get a Nobel prize.
GIven the amount of money spent to deny AGW, some of that might be spent to fund research like this. But it isn't.
And there you go. I've actually provided an actual idea for the refutation of AGW, and a really brief outline of the experiment to confirm it. This is more than anything I've seen by deniers. At best, they cherry pick research done by others, and engage in a false dilemma. At worst, they look outside the window and say "Brrrr, cold today - so much for Global Warming!"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Science doesn't advance because people agree with the status quo. No, they point out where current theories are wrong. That's when science really advances. In most fields, dissenting views are welcome debate because it benefits science. But that doesn't happen with global warming. Dissenting views are silenced just like you see happening here.
You must spend very little time around scientists. There is a tremendous amount of discussion and argument. Often the argument technique is used to work out the theory.
The problem with your thesis is that while there isn't a tremendous amount of argument today about AGW, it is not because of your odd conflation with religion, but it's because Scientists do not argue much about evolution or the idea that the earth is ony 6 thousand years old either. Or gravity, or nuclear fission and fusion for that matter. There aren't any scientists arguing for the Phlogiston theory, and that's a fact. There comes a point where someone who wants to claim that man and the dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that the sun is a lump of burning coal, are going to have a hard time being listened to.
As I've told many, put together a hypothesis, an experimental plan and look for funding. And if you are worried about the so called conspiracy of scientists, you could probably get the Koch brothers to fund the experiments at maybe Liberty University. Then after proving AGW wrong, the scientist who does will be in line for a Nobel prize.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>Science inherently involves questioning absolutely everything, in every way possible
Erm no. Science involves questioning science with other, better, science. Nothing less. When you have observations, a theory to explain them and lots and lots of evidence to support that theory as the correct explanation - then the only "correct" way to question that scientifically is with OTHER evidence or a better theory.
Thus far none of either has been forthcoming. Until and unless you can either provide a theory that fit both the observations and the evidence better than the current one - you have no scientific case. Newton's laws were the epitomy of physics for almost half a millennium. We didn't surpass them until the 20th century when, for the first time, we had the kind of measurement capability to go beyond it's limits and actually find evidence of things it gets wrong. Sure, many people questioned it along the way, but at no point did we stop using it until we had better science - and even after that we still use it for things where it's shortcomings aren't big enough to matter (the vast majority of our space programs for one thing - things like GPS are rare exceptions where we need to account for relativity aspects).
So right now, we have a set of observations and a whole host of other evidence to back them up from completely disparate fields of science and a solid theory to explain them. We should USE that theory as the best we have. Question it if you want to but until better science exists "questioning" is *not* an excuse for failing to use or heed the best theory in the field !
Climate deniers deserve the appellate despite their constant attempt to rebrand themselves as skeptics -because they don't meet the definition of skeptics. Skeptics accept evidence and only evidence. Those who refuse to accept a theory *despite* evidence are the opposite of skeptics, we call them "deniers". It's a perfectly *accurate* description of climate deniers as they fit the definition of a "denier" perfectly.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
AGW theory makes a specific prediction - that the Tropical Lower Troposphere will warm faster than the surface. The UAH and RSS satellites, as well as thousands of weather balloons show not only that this is not the case, but that the OPPOSITE is happening - the surface is warming faster. That means AGW is FALSIFIED according to the Scientific Method. There are no ifs, buts or maybes about this - the theory made a prediction that is falsified. The Null Hypothesis MUST be accepted instead.
People still clinging to AGW are the ones who are refusing to use the Scientific Method. They seem to believe computer simulations which predict TCS and ECS of 4-7 when the observed value is around 1.2. Again, this falsified the claims of AGW theory as presented by the IPCC.
This is the SCIENCE according to observed reality. Whether one likes it to be true or not is irrelevant - the science is now settled, the AGW hypothesis cannot be sustained based on observations. It is back to the drawing board to either improve AGW and make another prediction, or come up with another theory (such as the Svensmark one where solar magnetic activity and oceanic thermal mediation produce natural climate changes that are greater than human-induced ones).
AGW makes a specific prediction, that the Tropical Lower Troposphere (TLT) will warm faster than the surface. The OPPOSITE is seen, the surface is warming faster than the TLT.
Furthermore, the computer simulations estimate the ECS and TCS to be of the order of 4-7 C / doubling of CO2. The Observational values of these is currently 1.2. This is a fault of computer simulations that enormously overestimate the effect of CO2 on water vapor.
This is the Science, and according to the Scientific Method the AGW theory is falsified. Do humans have an effect on the climate? yes. Is AGW the dominant effect? NO !!!!! Are the changes we are observing occurring at a catastrophic rate? NO !
The present warming started at the end of the Little Ice Age. It started a century before humans started emitting significant quantities of CO2. Now, please consider what you would expect to see when solar magnetic activity started increasing after the Maunder and Dalton minimums - would you expect to see warming starting a century and a half ago? do you see warming? yes you do. Svensmark and Shaviv explain the mechanism and this fits observations.
The Scientific Method REQUIRES you to amend or discard a theory when it does not agree with observations. AGW's predictions do not agree with observations, it thus falsified. This would be cut and dried if people actually followed the Scientific Method instead of practicing Groupthink and Lysenkoism.