Yup, that's a given, but you have to start somewhere, and temperatures have been roughly flat since 1998.
Take a look at this. How many other "roughly flat" periods do you see in the skeptical view? And yet the long term trend continues to rise.
Regarding point 2 and what is significant, the cooling that caused the Little Ice Age was approximately 1 degree C. Was the LIA significant? Would you expect a 1 degree C rise to be less significant than the equal cooling that caused the LIA?
If there were no fossil sourced CO2 in the food chain then I would still emit just as much of it as I do now but none of it would be from fossil sources. So this issue still isn't the CO2 I exhale but the source of carbon that is being added to the carbon cycle.
The numbers don't sound right to me. Lately human emissions have been in the 30 gigatonne range. Because of the carbon cycle natural emissions are in the range of 20 times that of human emissions but natural absorption is in the range of 20 times human emissions as well. So the natural processes of the carbon cycle produce a net emission of essentially zero CO2 from year to year.
You didn't read it very well, did you? From the summary:
A shift in atmospheric circulation in response to changes in solar activity is broadly consistent with atmospheric circulation patterns in long-term climate model simulations, and in reanalysis data that assimilate observations from recent solar minima into a climate model.
Does that sound like he's saying GCM's underestimate the effect of the Sun?
Oh, it won't take 100 years for the situation to become obvious, more like 20 years. Homo sapiens is unlikely to go extinct any time soon. We are able to live in environments as diverse as the Kalahari Desert and the high Arctic. As long as we can find food we'll be around. But our numbers could be drastically reduced in 100 years.
Well, I would back it off to a more scientific statement than "producing CO2 causes climate change" and break it up a bit.
My first hypothesis is: After the Sun the level of CO2 is the second most important factor in the Earths surface temperature. I will qualify that by saying that over thousands of years things such as plate tectonics and Milankovitch cycles have a major effect as well. You can falsify that by showing that something besides the Sun is more important than CO2 in Earth's energy balance. And before you object that water vapor is more important, yes water vapor causes more greenhouse warming than CO2 but the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly controlled by temperature. That means it can't control temperature even though it affects it.
A my second hypothesis is: The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere (and the carbon cycle in general) is mostly due to human burning of fossil fuels. That can be falsified by showing that something else is causing the increase in CO2. And before you object that nature emits more than 10 times as much CO2, yes but in the carbon cycle it also absorbs about as much CO2 as it emits. That's why the level stayed around 280 ppm for thousands of years until the early 1800's.
If the two hypotheses are true the logical conclusion is that human actions are affecting Earth's energy balance and yes, producing CO2 causes climate change.
I think that in 20 or 30 years the reality of global warming will be painfully obvious to anyone with a brain. If I'm wrong then it's falsified.
No, the theory behind global warming is based on physics. The data that is collected and used to quantify exactly what the current climate is is processed statistically but the mechanism that drives climate is physical in nature and is studied in that light.
I know this will probably get downmodded (and it probably deserves that) but I have to say it. If some of the worst of the potential effects of global warming actually happen then global warming deniers will have been responsible for far more human deaths than Hitler ever was by delaying action on the problem.
We can acknowledge this without accepting with 100% certainty that current models that statistically fit old data can accurately predict future temperatures.
When you say that climate models "statistically fit old data" it becomes obvious you don't know what you're talking about. The big GCM's (General Circulation Model or Global Climate Model) use the physical relationships that have been derived from studying the atmosphere. They don't just take some weather data and derive a statistical trend from them. Here are a couple of FAQ's from the scientists who actually write one of the major GCM's that explains what they do:
Any scientist worth his salt will not jump straight to the easy conclusion because if they care about their scientific reputation at all they care that the science they present is as accurate as they can make it. If they are presenting bad science for political reasons eventually the scientific reality will overtake them and their reputations will be destroyed. I don't doubt that there are some in the scientific world who would take that chance but when it comes to global warming there are just too many scientists involved for it to be a tenable contention that they're all ignoring the actual science.
You are right that science is not liberal or conservative. I think the point of the adage "Science has a liberal bias" is that liberals in general (not all) are more open to adjusting their worldview to be in sync with science than conservatives. Conservatives are more likely to take their view and seek evidence to back it up.
Your problem is you're not paying close enough attention to what the actual scientists are saying. Sea level is rising faster than any predictions from before about 2005, temperature rise has been within the margin of error on their projections and IIRC one scientist speculated in 2007 that at the rate things are going the Arctic could be ice free by 2013 but most cryologists didn't believe that.
Saying the science is settled is maybe a bit of hyperbole but when scientists in a field no longer spend time arguing about a point and a consensus is developed to the point that it would take and astoundingly revolutionary new finding to change it then I think you can say the science is settled as much as it is ever going to be. In climate theory the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not debated; the fact that CO2 levels have increased at an accelerating rate is not debated; the fact that human emissions of CO2 are responsible for the vast majority of that increase is not debated. Given that it would be astounding if we did not get global warming. The scientists have moved on to filling in the details.
No, reality may destroy our civilization though if we don't take it into account.
Without government your freedom is in peril. Then it becomes whoever else has the most power can take what they want. How much freedom do the citizen's of Somalia (other than the warlords) have?
If global warming is a factual reality what would your proposed solution be?
Sea level has risen about 4 inches since 1940. At the current rate of SLR of 3 mm per year we'll get another 4 inches in about 33 years but the rate is expected to go above 3 mm per year before too long.
Stopping CO2 emissions keeps the problem from getting worse than it already is. It will take 40 or 50 years to stop CO2 emissions but we better get started.
How many tons of quicklime would it take to counter current ocean acidification?
If it takes an equal tonnage of quicklime as the tonnage of CO2 the oceans are absorbing you're talking about something in the range of 15 gigatonnes per year, spread fairly evenly around the worlds oceans. Who's going to pay for that? The total world production of coal in 2010 was only 7.3 gigatonnes.
And who's going to pay for keeping your other stopgaps going? As long as CO2 in the atmosphere keeps increasing you're going to have to keep those going at higher levels every year.
As I said, as production ramps up and production techniques improve solar PV will be cheaper than coal before 2020.
Slashdot Mirror
An addendum to that. The global temperature in 2011 was the warmest ever for a La Nina year.
Funny, I've read here and other places that snow is explicit proof that Global Warming is real.
It would be more accurately stated as "Snow is not evidence that global warming is false."
Anders Breivik explicitly stated in his writing that he thought global warming was a scam.
Yup, that's a given, but you have to start somewhere, and temperatures have been roughly flat since 1998.
Take a look at this. How many other "roughly flat" periods do you see in the skeptical view? And yet the long term trend continues to rise.
Regarding point 2 and what is significant, the cooling that caused the Little Ice Age was approximately 1 degree C. Was the LIA significant? Would you expect a 1 degree C rise to be less significant than the equal cooling that caused the LIA?
If there were no fossil sourced CO2 in the food chain then I would still emit just as much of it as I do now but none of it would be from fossil sources. So this issue still isn't the CO2 I exhale but the source of carbon that is being added to the carbon cycle.
That 9 gigatons figure must be referring to carbon only, not CO2. The CO2 numbers are around 30 gigatonnes per year.
As I pointed out in another answer, educate yourself about the carbon cycle.
The numbers don't sound right to me. Lately human emissions have been in the 30 gigatonne range. Because of the carbon cycle natural emissions are in the range of 20 times that of human emissions but natural absorption is in the range of 20 times human emissions as well. So the natural processes of the carbon cycle produce a net emission of essentially zero CO2 from year to year.
You didn't read it very well, did you? From the summary:
A shift in atmospheric circulation in response to changes in solar activity is broadly consistent with atmospheric circulation patterns in long-term climate model simulations, and in reanalysis data that assimilate observations from recent solar minima into a climate model.
Does that sound like he's saying GCM's underestimate the effect of the Sun?
Oh, it won't take 100 years for the situation to become obvious, more like 20 years. Homo sapiens is unlikely to go extinct any time soon. We are able to live in environments as diverse as the Kalahari Desert and the high Arctic. As long as we can find food we'll be around. But our numbers could be drastically reduced in 100 years.
Well, I would back it off to a more scientific statement than "producing CO2 causes climate change" and break it up a bit.
My first hypothesis is: After the Sun the level of CO2 is the second most important factor in the Earths surface temperature. I will qualify that by saying that over thousands of years things such as plate tectonics and Milankovitch cycles have a major effect as well. You can falsify that by showing that something besides the Sun is more important than CO2 in Earth's energy balance. And before you object that water vapor is more important, yes water vapor causes more greenhouse warming than CO2 but the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly controlled by temperature. That means it can't control temperature even though it affects it.
A my second hypothesis is: The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere (and the carbon cycle in general) is mostly due to human burning of fossil fuels. That can be falsified by showing that something else is causing the increase in CO2. And before you object that nature emits more than 10 times as much CO2, yes but in the carbon cycle it also absorbs about as much CO2 as it emits. That's why the level stayed around 280 ppm for thousands of years until the early 1800's.
If the two hypotheses are true the logical conclusion is that human actions are affecting Earth's energy balance and yes, producing CO2 causes climate change.
I think that in 20 or 30 years the reality of global warming will be painfully obvious to anyone with a brain. If I'm wrong then it's falsified.
No, the theory behind global warming is based on physics. The data that is collected and used to quantify exactly what the current climate is is processed statistically but the mechanism that drives climate is physical in nature and is studied in that light.
I know this will probably get downmodded (and it probably deserves that) but I have to say it. If some of the worst of the potential effects of global warming actually happen then global warming deniers will have been responsible for far more human deaths than Hitler ever was by delaying action on the problem.
Oh, boo!
We can acknowledge this without accepting with 100% certainty that current models that statistically fit old data can accurately predict future temperatures.
When you say that climate models "statistically fit old data" it becomes obvious you don't know what you're talking about. The big GCM's (General Circulation Model or Global Climate Model) use the physical relationships that have been derived from studying the atmosphere. They don't just take some weather data and derive a statistical trend from them. Here are a couple of FAQ's from the scientists who actually write one of the major GCM's that explains what they do:
FAQ on climate models
FAQ on climate models, part II
And here is an analysis of model projections to actual data through 2011:
2011 model/data comparisons
Any scientist worth his salt will not jump straight to the easy conclusion because if they care about their scientific reputation at all they care that the science they present is as accurate as they can make it. If they are presenting bad science for political reasons eventually the scientific reality will overtake them and their reputations will be destroyed. I don't doubt that there are some in the scientific world who would take that chance but when it comes to global warming there are just too many scientists involved for it to be a tenable contention that they're all ignoring the actual science.
You are right that science is not liberal or conservative. I think the point of the adage "Science has a liberal bias" is that liberals in general (not all) are more open to adjusting their worldview to be in sync with science than conservatives. Conservatives are more likely to take their view and seek evidence to back it up.
Your problem is you're not paying close enough attention to what the actual scientists are saying. Sea level is rising faster than any predictions from before about 2005, temperature rise has been within the margin of error on their projections and IIRC one scientist speculated in 2007 that at the rate things are going the Arctic could be ice free by 2013 but most cryologists didn't believe that.
Saying the science is settled is maybe a bit of hyperbole but when scientists in a field no longer spend time arguing about a point and a consensus is developed to the point that it would take and astoundingly revolutionary new finding to change it then I think you can say the science is settled as much as it is ever going to be. In climate theory the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not debated; the fact that CO2 levels have increased at an accelerating rate is not debated; the fact that human emissions of CO2 are responsible for the vast majority of that increase is not debated. Given that it would be astounding if we did not get global warming. The scientists have moved on to filling in the details.
Of course it's falsifiable. It will just take longer than you want it to take. If it is a false theory we will certainly know within 20 or 30 years.
How can we predict what the global climate will do? After all, we can't even get the local weather right!!
That's your downfall right there. Predicting climate is an entirely different thing than predicting weather.
No, even the Creation Museum believes dinosaurs existed.
That is to say, when men deliberately splice genomes, say in corn for example, to improve a life form, that is not a mistake.
Some would call that a mistake too.
From the science I've seen the warming we've seen is at least 80% from human causes.
Sea level rise and the demise of polar bears are just a couple of the myriad of possible effects of global warming and ocean acidification.
No, reality may destroy our civilization though if we don't take it into account.
Without government your freedom is in peril. Then it becomes whoever else has the most power can take what they want. How much freedom do the citizen's of Somalia (other than the warlords) have?
If global warming is a factual reality what would your proposed solution be?
Sea level has risen about 4 inches since 1940. At the current rate of SLR of 3 mm per year we'll get another 4 inches in about 33 years but the rate is expected to go above 3 mm per year before too long.
Stopping CO2 emissions keeps the problem from getting worse than it already is. It will take 40 or 50 years to stop CO2 emissions but we better get started.
How many tons of quicklime would it take to counter current ocean acidification?
If it takes an equal tonnage of quicklime as the tonnage of CO2 the oceans are absorbing you're talking about something in the range of 15 gigatonnes per year, spread fairly evenly around the worlds oceans. Who's going to pay for that? The total world production of coal in 2010 was only 7.3 gigatonnes.
And who's going to pay for keeping your other stopgaps going? As long as CO2 in the atmosphere keeps increasing you're going to have to keep those going at higher levels every year.
As I said, as production ramps up and production techniques improve solar PV will be cheaper than coal before 2020.
You're still ignoring the time frame.