Here are some questions that the CRUs and GISSes of the world are unwilling or unable to answer:
1. If this is due to human CO2 production, why were there so many severe temperature fluctuations before the industrial age?
2. Termites produce far more CO2 per year than all human activity combined (including cow farts & burps). Why did we not see Mann-graph style increases before now?
3. Why during the fastest increase in human CO2 production (1945-1970) did global temperatures drop so rapidly that Al Gore's mentor was claiming that the CO2 was about to cause another ice age?
4. The earth gets over 95% of its energy from the sun. Variations in solar output and in global temperatures seem to correlate. Why is this not being investigated seriously?
5. There seems to be a similar solar output to temperature relationship on the moon and other planets. How is this possible if humans aren't there to release CO2?
6. There appears to be a correlation between cyclic ocean currents and global temperatures. Why is this not investigated seriously?
Kind of inane questions but here are some answers:
1. What severe temperature fluctuations are you talking about? If you're talking about during human history natural variability probably has a lot to do with it. Currently it's due mostly to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Those increases can be traced to human use of fossil fuels and industrialization.
2. Do you have a cite for termites producing more CO2 than humans? Or maybe you mean methane (CH4). They produce both and methane is the concern with cows. Methane is a much more powerful GHG than CO2, but there's a lot less of it in the atmosphere and it doesn't last as long. But the real answer here is that nearly all of the CO2 and methane produced by anything living is from carbon that is already in the carbon cycle so it's not adding to it. Fossil fuels on the other hand are adding carbon that's been sequestered from the carbon cycle for (in most cases) 100's of millions of years.
3. It's pretty well understood that temperatures dropped after WWII because of unrestricted industrial pollution, primarily SO2 and other aerosols. When we started cleaning that up temperatures started going up again. I don't know who your referring to as a mentor but there were a couple of papers in the 1970s about the possibility of an ice age, there were more than twice as many about global warming around the same time.
4. It's probably over 99%. Variations in solar output do affect the climate and it is a subject of study but there is no evidence that current solar variation is large enough to account for the increase in temperature. Additionally, if the warming was coming from the sun there would be atmospheric effects, more warming in the upper atmosphere IIRC. They has not been observed.
5. Warming on the Moon is a new one on me. Do you have a reference? Planets warm or cool for a variety of reasons including GHG's. I haven't seen any evidence that links changes on other planets to Earth.
6. Are you talking about cyclic events like El Nino or the PDO or are you talking about currents like the Gulf Stream? In either case I'm sure they are being investigated. Are you proposing that we increase the research budget so the can be investigated more intensely?
Climate researchers are mostly happy to answer questions but when they have to answer the same silly questions over and over it gets a bit tiresome.
What you call fudging the scientists call normalization. The long term data is from a variety of sources that have to be tweaked before a useful comparison or combination can be made of them. If you want to criticize the specific tweaks that were made for specific reasons then do that but a general disdain for fudging is not useful.
There were a number of Missoula flood events, maybe as many as 10 or 15 of them. Where I'm sitting at this moment (Salem, OR) would have been under more than 100 feet of water during some of them.
True science should not hide data or pick data to support predefined conclusions.
But "true science" will weed out noise and erroneous data so those who don't have the time to invest in complete knowledge of a subject don't have to waste their time on it.
I don't think CO (carbon monoxide) is a significant GHG but CH4 (methane) certainly is. It's easier to talk about carbon sometimes because the various sources such as coal, petroleum, natural gas, limestone have different chemical formulas but they all contain the carbon necessary to produce CO2.
The original data was not "disappeared". It is still kept by the organizations that they got it from originally. They just deleted the massaged data that they were using in their studies.
dude, what coaxial said pretty much matches my understanding of the situation. The science on global warming/AGC is solid. I've been following it since the 1980's and I have yet to see anyone present a convincing argument for something other than CO2 for most of climate change that has occurred since I was born. The world of 2100 is going to be very different than it is currently no matter how well we respond to the problem and the question is will our complex civilization survive the changes that are coming?
Well, speaking pedantically we are in an ice age. The periods where ice sheets advance is called a glaciation and when they retreat it's an interglacial. But the current retreat of glaciers is not part of a natural cycle.
How much of China's CO2 production is a direct result of the demand for their products from the US? If we quit buying stuff from them I'll bet their CO2 production would drop. Of course if we brought all that manufacturing back to the US ours would probably rise more.
Well, there have been other papers that come to different conclusions than Scafetta and West, 2009 so choose your poison I guess. I find it hard to believe that the effect of EUV & X-ray radiation from the sun can be many times greater than the effect from the 2000-200nm window in order to cause the observed warming.
But what difference does it make that they don't include x-ray and EUV output in TSI if they are cycling in conjunction with the 2000 nm to 200 nm window anyway? In order for them to be a factor in climate change they would have to be monlithically increasing over time. Do you have evidence that is happening?
You do realize that a comparison of the record from the 70 weather stations that surfacestations.org marked good or best to the complete weather station network record revealed the urban heat island effect has little or no effect on the measurements. Read about the study here (PDF).
When you're measuring trends it doesn't matter so much what the absolute temperature is but how it's changing over time.
Yes the angle of incidence at the poles is low but it's still enough that with the difference in albedo between ice and open water it has a noticeable effect.
Oh, you young guys. What happened between 1940 and 1980 was a rapid increase in industrialization with largely unrestrained emissions of pollution, in particular SO2 and aerosols that had a cooling effect. In the 1970's we got serious about cleaning up that pollution so it no longer masked the warming signal.
The sun is of course the primary source of energy to earth's climate. It's discounted as a cause of climate change because the observed fluctuations in its output aren't big enough to account for the observed climate change.
That report only covers the continental United States. It's called global warming for a reason. If you dig a little deeper you'll see that Alaska had the 10th warmest October on record. In South Australia they've had 3 record heat waves in the past 2 years.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL, Antarctica hasn't been ice free in millions of years.
Kind of inane questions but here are some answers:
1. What severe temperature fluctuations are you talking about? If you're talking about during human history natural variability probably has a lot to do with it. Currently it's due mostly to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Those increases can be traced to human use of fossil fuels and industrialization.
2. Do you have a cite for termites producing more CO2 than humans? Or maybe you mean methane (CH4). They produce both and methane is the concern with cows. Methane is a much more powerful GHG than CO2, but there's a lot less of it in the atmosphere and it doesn't last as long. But the real answer here is that nearly all of the CO2 and methane produced by anything living is from carbon that is already in the carbon cycle so it's not adding to it. Fossil fuels on the other hand are adding carbon that's been sequestered from the carbon cycle for (in most cases) 100's of millions of years.
3. It's pretty well understood that temperatures dropped after WWII because of unrestricted industrial pollution, primarily SO2 and other aerosols. When we started cleaning that up temperatures started going up again. I don't know who your referring to as a mentor but there were a couple of papers in the 1970s about the possibility of an ice age, there were more than twice as many about global warming around the same time.
4. It's probably over 99%. Variations in solar output do affect the climate and it is a subject of study but there is no evidence that current solar variation is large enough to account for the increase in temperature. Additionally, if the warming was coming from the sun there would be atmospheric effects, more warming in the upper atmosphere IIRC. They has not been observed.
5. Warming on the Moon is a new one on me. Do you have a reference? Planets warm or cool for a variety of reasons including GHG's. I haven't seen any evidence that links changes on other planets to Earth.
6. Are you talking about cyclic events like El Nino or the PDO or are you talking about currents like the Gulf Stream? In either case I'm sure they are being investigated. Are you proposing that we increase the research budget so the can be investigated more intensely?
Climate researchers are mostly happy to answer questions but when they have to answer the same silly questions over and over it gets a bit tiresome.
What you call fudging the scientists call normalization. The long term data is from a variety of sources that have to be tweaked before a useful comparison or combination can be made of them. If you want to criticize the specific tweaks that were made for specific reasons then do that but a general disdain for fudging is not useful.
There were a number of Missoula flood events, maybe as many as 10 or 15 of them. Where I'm sitting at this moment (Salem, OR) would have been under more than 100 feet of water during some of them.
But "true science" will weed out noise and erroneous data so those who don't have the time to invest in complete knowledge of a subject don't have to waste their time on it.
The latest information shows that the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass. This from the GRACE satellite that measures gravity.
I don't think CO (carbon monoxide) is a significant GHG but CH4 (methane) certainly is. It's easier to talk about carbon sometimes because the various sources such as coal, petroleum, natural gas, limestone have different chemical formulas but they all contain the carbon necessary to produce CO2.
Sea level has increased 51 mm (a hair over 2 inches) in the past 15 years.
The original data was not "disappeared". It is still kept by the organizations that they got it from originally. They just deleted the massaged data that they were using in their studies.
dude, what coaxial said pretty much matches my understanding of the situation. The science on global warming/AGC is solid. I've been following it since the 1980's and I have yet to see anyone present a convincing argument for something other than CO2 for most of climate change that has occurred since I was born. The world of 2100 is going to be very different than it is currently no matter how well we respond to the problem and the question is will our complex civilization survive the changes that are coming?
Business As Usual.
The only scam going on here is the people who say global warming is all a big socialist plot to take over the world.
BTW, I got my first flamebait mod above. I'm so proud :)
Sounds like a witch hunt to me.
Well, speaking pedantically we are in an ice age. The periods where ice sheets advance is called a glaciation and when they retreat it's an interglacial. But the current retreat of glaciers is not part of a natural cycle.
How much of China's CO2 production is a direct result of the demand for their products from the US? If we quit buying stuff from them I'll bet their CO2 production would drop. Of course if we brought all that manufacturing back to the US ours would probably rise more.
Yeah, we'll just spread lime over the whole world, that'll be nice. Better start buying up lime stocks.
Well, there have been other papers that come to different conclusions than Scafetta and West, 2009 so choose your poison I guess. I find it hard to believe that the effect of EUV & X-ray radiation from the sun can be many times greater than the effect from the 2000-200nm window in order to cause the observed warming.
Well, then we would still have to deal with acid rain and ocean acidification. The cure is probably worse than the disease.
But what difference does it make that they don't include x-ray and EUV output in TSI if they are cycling in conjunction with the 2000 nm to 200 nm window anyway? In order for them to be a factor in climate change they would have to be monlithically increasing over time. Do you have evidence that is happening?
The greenhouse effect starts at the surface and gets smaller as altitude increases and air density decreases.
You do realize that a comparison of the record from the 70 weather stations that surfacestations.org marked good or best to the complete weather station network record revealed the urban heat island effect has little or no effect on the measurements. Read about the study here (PDF).
When you're measuring trends it doesn't matter so much what the absolute temperature is but how it's changing over time.
Yes the angle of incidence at the poles is low but it's still enough that with the difference in albedo between ice and open water it has a noticeable effect.
Oh, you young guys. What happened between 1940 and 1980 was a rapid increase in industrialization with largely unrestrained emissions of pollution, in particular SO2 and aerosols that had a cooling effect. In the 1970's we got serious about cleaning up that pollution so it no longer masked the warming signal.
The sun is of course the primary source of energy to earth's climate. It's discounted as a cause of climate change because the observed fluctuations in its output aren't big enough to account for the observed climate change.
That report only covers the continental United States. It's called global warming for a reason. If you dig a little deeper you'll see that Alaska had the 10th warmest October on record. In South Australia they've had 3 record heat waves in the past 2 years.