Compared to the energy input of the Sun the heat from geologic sources is small enough to be ignored, at least in a first order calculation. If you extinguished the Sun the Earth would quickly become an ice ball with some local effects around volcanic areas. The Sun pours down more energy on the Earth in a single day than humans use in a whole year.
None of that, however, can prove scientifically that the driving force behind all this is human activity.
How about the fact that you can measure the infrared absorption characteristics of CO2 in the lab?
How about the fact that you can see the signature of CO2 absorption of IR in the atmosphere by comparing measurements of outgoing longwave radiation taken at the surface and from orbit?
How about the fact that human burning of fossil fuels has released more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere than would be required to raise the level by the 110 ppmv it has risen since 1830?
That's the fundamental link between human activities and global warming. The rest is just details. The temperature trend data sets just confirm that the world is warming as expected.
How about a world where two billion people have starved to death because global warming has disrupted agriculture and the ocean food chain (through acidification) so much that there just isn't enough food for everyone? That's another possible outcome.
Applying more computing power to a climate model allows them to do their runs with a finer grain. In other words, instead of using a 100x100 km grid they use a 50x50 km grid. The models are as good as they are, better than they used to be and not as good as they will be in the future but nothing on the horizon indicates there will be any major change in them, just incremental improvements as our understanding improves.
The code and other information for NASA/GISS's Model E, one of the most prominent General Circulation Models, is located here. They say it can be scaled to run on any sized computer. The "raw and corrected" temperature data sets such as the BEST study examined are not used as input to GCM's such as Model E. In theory they could be started anywhere and converge on reality eventually. The input to GCM's for projections of the future are various scenarios of the variables you are examining with the run such as changing CO2 levels or changes in insolation. If they are hindcasting they will input the real observed changes to those variables to see how well the model models the actual climate. Temperatures are an output, not an input into the models except maybe as a starting point and the starting point doesn't affect the ultimate ending point that is reached unless you pick some ridiculous value.
You just demonstrated that you don't have a clue about how actual GCM's* work. You talk as if it's just an exercise in curve fitting. GCM's phuysical models, not numerical. They are based as much as possible on the actual physical relations between the different factors in climate. GCM's don't even attempt to predict weather at any particular time. Instead they simulate weather and use that to determine the expected climate envelope over time.
*GCM = General Circulation Model or alternatively General Climate Model
Your ideology is a big problem; you should reconsider it.
His ideology defines the answer, then he seeks out things that support his preferred answer. The same thing he accuses climate scientists of doing. It sounds like a case of projection to me.
The Kock's weren't the only sponsors of the study. Also Richard Muller was a skeptic (in the true sense of the word) but he had enough integrity at the outset of the study to insist that anything with his name on it would be an accurate reflection of their findings.
And yet the subject of this/. post, the BEST study, shows that the CRU data understates the actual warming compared to the BEST, GISS and NOAA data. So if they cooked their graphs I guess they cooked them to show global warming wasn't as bad as some others have said.
Mimicking the eruption of Pinatubo is not a solution but rather a stopgap action to buy us some time to act. Think about it, in order for the effects to continue you'll have to continue mimicking Pinatubo every 2-4 years in perpetuity. If you ever stop all of the warming you've forestalled will immediately come into force. The only true solution is to reduce the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since that is the primary cause of the warming.
Of course the oceans play a major role in the climate. When the Isthmus of Panama arose 2.5 million years ago it cut off the currents between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and precipitated the ice age with the cycles of glaciations and deglaciations we are currently in since then. And those trace greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which account for less than 2% of the atmosphere raise the surface temperature by about 58 degrees Fahrenheit above what it would be otherwise. You can try all you want to point out something that hasn't been considered in global warming but it's not likely that you'll think of something that scientists haven't already considered.
This is a study that on its own proves nothing, and (if confirmed by multiple independent sources and techniques) can only confirm the first term "warming".
This study was one of those "multiple independent sources" and confirmed that the big 3 temperature databases from Hadley/CRU, NASA/GISS and NOAA are correct.
No, most of them I talk to believe that if climate changed at natural rates rather than the accelerated rates that are currently occurring that humans and the natural world would adapt without tremendous disruption.
Or people like you who ignore the fact that the Sun was much cooler in the past than it is now. I believe the figure I read was about 25% cooler 3 billion years ago than it is now.
You need to dig a little deeper. If you read the peer reviewed literature you will find discussions in depth about uncertainty. When some reporter writes about it they usually strip that off or at least simplify it because it's confusing to most people.
Compared to the energy input of the Sun the heat from geologic sources is small enough to be ignored, at least in a first order calculation. If you extinguished the Sun the Earth would quickly become an ice ball with some local effects around volcanic areas. The Sun pours down more energy on the Earth in a single day than humans use in a whole year.
At least it puts to rest the climategate meme that the CRU was dishonest and manipulating their science. But I'm probably being too optimistic there.
Good thing that we're about as sure as you can get scientifically that it's mostly caused by man.
None of that, however, can prove scientifically that the driving force behind all this is human activity.
How about the fact that you can measure the infrared absorption characteristics of CO2 in the lab?
How about the fact that you can see the signature of CO2 absorption of IR in the atmosphere by comparing measurements of outgoing longwave radiation taken at the surface and from orbit?
How about the fact that human burning of fossil fuels has released more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere than would be required to raise the level by the 110 ppmv it has risen since 1830?
That's the fundamental link between human activities and global warming. The rest is just details. The temperature trend data sets just confirm that the world is warming as expected.
Of course if everyone had to walk or bike instead of riding in autos we'd probably be healthier in general.
How about a world where two billion people have starved to death because global warming has disrupted agriculture and the ocean food chain (through acidification) so much that there just isn't enough food for everyone? That's another possible outcome.
[Citation needed] Show me the transcript where he said anything like that.
... he INVENTED the Internet!
No, he just helped enable the move from a DOD/academic network to a general network available to all.
Most of the economic analyses I've seen say less than 5%, but of course the longer we wait to get started the more expensive it becomes.
How do you remediate swallowed poison? Sometimes you induce vomiting to remove the poison from the body.
Applying more computing power to a climate model allows them to do their runs with a finer grain. In other words, instead of using a 100x100 km grid they use a 50x50 km grid. The models are as good as they are, better than they used to be and not as good as they will be in the future but nothing on the horizon indicates there will be any major change in them, just incremental improvements as our understanding improves.
The code and other information for NASA/GISS's Model E, one of the most prominent General Circulation Models, is located here. They say it can be scaled to run on any sized computer. The "raw and corrected" temperature data sets such as the BEST study examined are not used as input to GCM's such as Model E. In theory they could be started anywhere and converge on reality eventually. The input to GCM's for projections of the future are various scenarios of the variables you are examining with the run such as changing CO2 levels or changes in insolation. If they are hindcasting they will input the real observed changes to those variables to see how well the model models the actual climate. Temperatures are an output, not an input into the models except maybe as a starting point and the starting point doesn't affect the ultimate ending point that is reached unless you pick some ridiculous value.
You just demonstrated that you don't have a clue about how actual GCM's* work. You talk as if it's just an exercise in curve fitting. GCM's phuysical models, not numerical. They are based as much as possible on the actual physical relations between the different factors in climate. GCM's don't even attempt to predict weather at any particular time. Instead they simulate weather and use that to determine the expected climate envelope over time.
*GCM = General Circulation Model or alternatively General Climate Model
You ought to read some of the stuff on relativity and quantum mechanics over on Conservapedia. Some of it is self-contradictory.
Your ideology is a big problem; you should reconsider it.
His ideology defines the answer, then he seeks out things that support his preferred answer. The same thing he accuses climate scientists of doing. It sounds like a case of projection to me.
Not only end subsidies but internalize all of the external costs. That's what you need for a true free market.
2) Were these research able to get their hands on the RAW data coming from these instruments?
From the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data set page:
Whenever possible, we have used raw data rather than previously homogenized or edited data.
Further down the page under item 11:
... and previously manipulated GHCN-M and Hadley Centre data was ignored in favor of other data sources when possible.
You should read the whole page I cited to understand what they did with the data.
The Kock's weren't the only sponsors of the study. Also Richard Muller was a skeptic (in the true sense of the word) but he had enough integrity at the outset of the study to insist that anything with his name on it would be an accurate reflection of their findings.
And yet the subject of this /. post, the BEST study, shows that the CRU data understates the actual warming compared to the BEST, GISS and NOAA data. So if they cooked their graphs I guess they cooked them to show global warming wasn't as bad as some others have said.
Mimicking the eruption of Pinatubo is not a solution but rather a stopgap action to buy us some time to act. Think about it, in order for the effects to continue you'll have to continue mimicking Pinatubo every 2-4 years in perpetuity. If you ever stop all of the warming you've forestalled will immediately come into force. The only true solution is to reduce the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since that is the primary cause of the warming.
Of course the oceans play a major role in the climate. When the Isthmus of Panama arose 2.5 million years ago it cut off the currents between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and precipitated the ice age with the cycles of glaciations and deglaciations we are currently in since then. And those trace greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which account for less than 2% of the atmosphere raise the surface temperature by about 58 degrees Fahrenheit above what it would be otherwise. You can try all you want to point out something that hasn't been considered in global warming but it's not likely that you'll think of something that scientists haven't already considered.
This is a study that on its own proves nothing, and (if confirmed by multiple independent sources and techniques) can only confirm the first term "warming".
This study was one of those "multiple independent sources" and confirmed that the big 3 temperature databases from Hadley/CRU, NASA/GISS and NOAA are correct.
No, most of them I talk to believe that if climate changed at natural rates rather than the accelerated rates that are currently occurring that humans and the natural world would adapt without tremendous disruption.
Or people like you who ignore the fact that the Sun was much cooler in the past than it is now. I believe the figure I read was about 25% cooler 3 billion years ago than it is now.
You need to dig a little deeper. If you read the peer reviewed literature you will find discussions in depth about uncertainty. When some reporter writes about it they usually strip that off or at least simplify it because it's confusing to most people.