In 2009 Richard Alley gave the Bjerknes Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting. Its title was "The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History". In it he explains how you can't understand temperatures in Earth's history even going back over 4 billion years without understanding carbon dioxide. The video is 57 minutes long but it's well worth watching.
If there were a decades long ENSO trend moving heat from the oceans to the atmosphere you would expect, other things being equal, for the oceans to cool down some. And yet the oceans are still warming.
On the short term distribution matters. In the long term (at least 20 or 30 years) it evens out.
One other piece of evidence for the rise in CO2 being caused by humans is the ratio of carbon13 to carbon12 in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are higher in carbon12 than the atmosphere because life prefers the lighter isotope. There has been a measurable decrease in the C13/C12 ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere as you would expect from fossil fuels being burned.
The carbon cycle is the key to it all. The carbon is distributed through the carbon cycle but the ratio between the various sinks remains about the same. So as you add carbon it increases in all of the sinks, the main ones being the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
There have been large variations of CO2 in the past but little evidence of it changing as fast as it is at the present time. I think there has already been significant warming and it's just going to get worse as long as CO2 continues to increase.
I know you're being snarky but there is no CO2 to speak of in plants. Plants convert CO2 to carbohydrates which when you digest them your body converts back into CO2.
Even if the data wasn't questionable (which it is), and even if the relationship between CO2 and temperature was established (which it isn't), and even if mankind had a major impact on CO2 levels (which it doesn't) and even if a rise in temperature was accurately measured and meaningful (which it isn't) and even if this entire charade wasn't a grand plan for global wealth redistribution from industrialized to non-industrialized countries (which it very clearly is) there would still be the question of whether or not said rise in temperature would be catastrophic (which isn't even clear).
Quite the compendium of climate science denier memes there. If you're not sure whether the rise in temperature will be catastrophic or not do you really want to find out? Uncertainty is not your friend in this case.
It comes from, and is fueled by, failed prediction after failed prediction...
Maybe the failure is yours in not understanding what the predictions were actually saying. From what I know and have seen most predictions are right on schedule or perhaps even a bit behind real world observations.
Pedantics aside, it'd be helpful if these folks would stop running around claiming the sky is falling unless/until it actually IS falling.
The problem is once we reach the point where the sky is actually falling it's far too late to do much about it. There are no instant fixes to the anthropogenic global warming problem.
You know there are a couple of pretty good natural thermometers on Earth, sea level and ice volume. Both of those metrics both are pretty definitively pointed toward a warming world.
those really are not raw temperature data though. Those are all the products of analysis. You really are spewing in ignorance
Have you looked at Berkeley Earth? They have links to their source files here. They take raw data and apply their own set of adjustments that are different than the adjustments applied by NOAA or NASA.
thank goodness, we were heading to 140ppm which stops plant life, then we are really fucked.
And the ocean is alkaline, not acidic, it got slightly more neutral, blimey Slashdot nerds have really gone down in intelligence.
What makes you think we were heading to 140 ppm? In 800,000 years of ice core records the CO2 never dropped below 180 ppm. If CO2 levels ever started to head drastically downward we know how to fix that. Just dig up fossil fuels and burn them.
Acidification in a solution just means the pH is dropping. It doesn't say anything about where it started.
Only 4% of global CO2 is attributable to humans. 96% of it is naturally occurring, and we couldn't do anything about it if we tried.
Have you ever heard of the Carbon Cycle? For many thousands of years the CO2 level hovered around 280 ppm despite a similar level of natural CO2 emissions every year. That's because the other side of the carbon cycle naturally absorbed a similar amount CO2 every year. It's only after humans started burning a significant amount of fossil fuels that CO2 levels started to rise significantly.
It's dishonest to talk about natural emissions of CO2 without also mentioning the natural sinks of CO2.
We also don't know if human beings are really the cause of the higher CO2 levels. Maybe we are, but it hasn't been proven beyond any doubt.
Whut!!!??? We know approximately how much CO2 we are emitting. It's pretty easy to calculate based on fossil fuel usage. We know that the year to year rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is a bit less than half of year to year anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (most of the rest is absorbed by the oceans). Given that, how can human beings not be the cause of higher CO2 levels?
Rather than looking at individual years like 1998 or 2015 (soon to be 2016) it makes more sense climatologically to look at long term trends. Here is a graph showing El Nino, ENSO neutral and La Nina years from 1967 to 2011 and the temperature trends. The trend for all 3 categories have a similar upward trend. Since ENSO is not something creates heat but merely moves it around in the Earth's system it can't be the source of increasing temperatures. So arguing about El Nino this or La Nina that doesn't mean a thing. It's the long term trends that matter. The 2015/2016 El Nino is warmer than the 1997/1998 El Nino because the long term upward trend in temperatures that scientist tell us is mostly due to anthropogenic induced increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Sheesh! The CO2 you exhale doesn't matter because it comes from carbon in the plants you eat (directly or indirectly) that absorbed the CO2 from the atmosphere in a never ending cycle that's been going on forever. It has no net effect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
The story we're posting on is about how CO2 levels haven't changed as fast as they are now in at least 66 million years. I guess if you're one of those who believes CO2 is a benign gas with no effect on climate that doesn't mean much to you but some of us live in the real world.
As Oliver Wendall Holmes said "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society." How much we pay is the subject of endless arguments but I'll just say I don't feel particularly over-taxed right now.
So changes in magnetic activity resulting in heliospheric changes, which mediate cosmic ray intensity in the atmosphere, which changes cloud seeding rate, which changes the global climate since water vapor is the dominant Greenhouse gas.
About 41,000 years ago there was a temporary reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event>the Laschamp event). During that period of about 440 years the Earth's magnetic field was greatly reduced and cosmic ray intensity increased far beyond any current intensity. Yet when compared to the climate records of the time there was no noticable effect on climate. I think it's likely that there are generally plenty of cloud seeding aerosols from sources other than cosmic rays and additional cosmic rays don't make that much difference.
Another failure in your analysis. CO2 is increasing rapidly yet the temperature second time derivative is negative? think about what that means ! it means that GHG CANNOT be the dominant climate drivers. They have an effect, but they are not in the driver's seat - which means even if humans followed the Green Agenda and went back to their pre-industrial agrarian nightmare (which anyone can do today of they choose to live in Africa - despite the fact that Africa is a massive source of CO2 emissions because the biosphere emits far more than humans) it would still not affect the climate in any meaningful way. Climate Realists will start believing alarmists when you have the courage of your convictions and start living the lifestyle you say is necessary - instead of the multi-mansion, jet-setting lifestyle of hypocrites like Al Gore, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and other 'vrtue signalling' hypocrites.
That's quite the straw man you built there. Very few people are advocating a return to a "pre-industrial agrarian nightmare", just a switch from fossil fuel based energy to renewable energy. I guess you don't think that's possible but as far as I can see it just takes time.
Water Vapor provides a feedback that counters the effects of CO2...
What is this water vapor feedback that counters the effects of CO2? Increased CO2 causes warming which increases water vapor in the atmosphere which in turn causes its own warming. I suppose you think more water vapor causes more clouds but I don't think that's automatically the case.
"Climategate" was an exercise in quote mining and much ado about nothing.
I don't claim that AGW started in 1950. It started when atmospheric levels of CO2 started rising. It was a relatively small effect before the industrialization that started around WWII and continued on into the 1950s.
... when we agree that CO2 has being going up quickly (as a result of the of the LIA and the biosphere increases activity which results in an increase in CO2)...
For thousands of years before humans started emitting fossil carbon the level of CO2 in the atmosphere hovered around 280 ppm. There was no significant change in the level even during the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods. If those periods were so much warmer than now why didn't it cause CO2 to increase by the mechanism you propose?
Here's a thing - did you know the scope of the IPCC's mandate is to only analyze human impacts on climate, and all natural drivers are considered out-of-scope?
It's impossible as the IPCC scientists know to understand human impacts on climate without also understanding natural drivers of climate. Good luck holding on to your money when the effects of AGW really start kicking in as they are starting to do.
Actually I got it wrong. What I should have said was renewable energy produces more jobs per unit of energy produced than fossil fuel energy. Right now there are probably more people employed in fossil fuels than renewable energy as an absolute number. What do the labor costs matter if they can offer competitive pricing? When you consider the external costs of fossil fuels, renewable energy is very competitive. Renewable energy is still in its infancy or just beyond and I expect it will become labor efficient over time.
If the Democratic nominee wins the Presidency the Senate will likely confirm Garland during the lame duck session after the election just to prevent the new President from nominating someone even more liberal.
You can post stuff from ClimateAudit and WUWT all you want but I'm not going to read them. In the time I spent looking at them 8 or 10 years ago what they post is mostly bullshit.
Regarding your list of T/F questions, it's not clear at all that any of those places were warmer at any time in the last 2000 years than they are today (2015/2016). Even if it was it's not likely to remain so for very long given the ongoing warming. Regarding some of the specific ones.
9) All of the graphs I've seen from GISP2 cut off some time in the 1850s so it's impossible to tell if your statement is true.
10 & 11) There was global cooling from the 1300s to the 1800s, most likely due primarily to volcanic effects with some help from low solar output and albedo effects where after the volcanoes got it started the polar ice started to grow.
14) Why? If you take a long term view you can say the Earth has been cooling for over 10 million years or going back to the PETM over 50 million years or you could even go back nearly 100 million years ago. Speaking more recently over the past 8000 years there has been a cycle of glaciations and deglaciations of about 100,000 years. Since the Holocene Climatic Optimum 6,000-8,000 years ago the Earth has been gradually cooling as you would expect sliding toward the next glacial period.
15) There is regional climatic variation and nowadays it's a combination of natural and anthropogenic effects.
16) True if you count asteroids hitting Earth and gigantic volcanic eruptions like the Deccan Traps. How does that preclude the possibility of anthropogenic effects?
17) What the Fyfe/Mann et. al. paper said was this:
“In all three observational datasets the most recent 15-year trend (ending in 2014) is lower than both the latest 30-year and 50-year trends. This divergence occurs at a time of rapid increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs). A warming slowdown is thus clear in observations; ”
That's not saying there's a pause but just a slowdown in warming.
19) On the contrary, the climate controls water vapor. Water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled primarily by temperature. The colder it is the less water vapor there is. That's why most of Antarctica would be classified as a desert on the basis of precipitation. It's impossible for water vapor to control climate although its presence will modify climate.
21) That depends on what you mean by "dangerous". I'm pretty sure it will cause major disruptions to modern civilization.
Your Hockey Schtick is getting old. Mann's original graph is practically irrelevant any more and proving it was fraudulent won't get you anything. You still have to deal with the more than a dozen studies since that show essentially the same thing as the original Hockey Stick Graph.
My point was that this year either set or statistically tied a record for the lowest winter time maximum Arctic sea ice in the satellite era. By itself that doesn't mean much. Only in the context of the long term trend does it carry some meaning.
Regarding your "failed" predictions the Guardian article had the word "could" in it which means it's not outside the realm of possibilities, not that it would happen. I don't think you can call the NY Times story a failed prediction yet because it mostly talked about the future. The NPR story quoted Anne Nolin as saying "Enjoy it now, because there's a whole lot less of it,". Nothing about the end of snow. Most of the story was about the safety of eating snow.
... think that the human-emitted 5% of global CO2 matters more than...
Oh, that's cute. You're comparing human emissions to yearly natural emissions while ignoring the other side of the equation, the natural sinks of CO2. The fact is the increase in CO2 from year to year is a bit less than half the the human emissions, the rest of it being absorbed by natural sinks like the oceans.
Slashdot Mirror
In 2009 Richard Alley gave the Bjerknes Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting. Its title was "The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History". In it he explains how you can't understand temperatures in Earth's history even going back over 4 billion years without understanding carbon dioxide. The video is 57 minutes long but it's well worth watching.
"The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History"
If there were a decades long ENSO trend moving heat from the oceans to the atmosphere you would expect, other things being equal, for the oceans to cool down some. And yet the oceans are still warming.
On the short term distribution matters. In the long term (at least 20 or 30 years) it evens out.
One other piece of evidence for the rise in CO2 being caused by humans is the ratio of carbon13 to carbon12 in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are higher in carbon12 than the atmosphere because life prefers the lighter isotope. There has been a measurable decrease in the C13/C12 ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere as you would expect from fossil fuels being burned.
The carbon cycle is the key to it all. The carbon is distributed through the carbon cycle but the ratio between the various sinks remains about the same. So as you add carbon it increases in all of the sinks, the main ones being the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
There have been large variations of CO2 in the past but little evidence of it changing as fast as it is at the present time. I think there has already been significant warming and it's just going to get worse as long as CO2 continues to increase.
ENSO can *absolutely* transfer heat from the oceans in a way that will raise atmospheric temperatures over a long term.
I guess if you think a year or two is long term that statement could be true. Over decades or longer that is *absolutely* not true.
Focus on this - it's not the total heat content of the system that matters, it's the *distribution*.
It is the total heat content of the system that matters. Over the long term the *distribution* evens out.
I know you're being snarky but there is no CO2 to speak of in plants. Plants convert CO2 to carbohydrates which when you digest them your body converts back into CO2.
Even if the data wasn't questionable (which it is), and even if the relationship between CO2 and temperature was established (which it isn't), and even if mankind had a major impact on CO2 levels (which it doesn't) and even if a rise in temperature was accurately measured and meaningful (which it isn't) and even if this entire charade wasn't a grand plan for global wealth redistribution from industrialized to non-industrialized countries (which it very clearly is) there would still be the question of whether or not said rise in temperature would be catastrophic (which isn't even clear).
Quite the compendium of climate science denier memes there. If you're not sure whether the rise in temperature will be catastrophic or not do you really want to find out? Uncertainty is not your friend in this case.
It comes from, and is fueled by, failed prediction after failed prediction ...
Maybe the failure is yours in not understanding what the predictions were actually saying. From what I know and have seen most predictions are right on schedule or perhaps even a bit behind real world observations.
Keep in mind that Matt Ridley's family owns coal mines so he has a vested interest in the subject.
Pedantics aside, it'd be helpful if these folks would stop running around claiming the sky is falling unless/until it actually IS falling.
The problem is once we reach the point where the sky is actually falling it's far too late to do much about it. There are no instant fixes to the anthropogenic global warming problem.
You know there are a couple of pretty good natural thermometers on Earth, sea level and ice volume. Both of those metrics both are pretty definitively pointed toward a warming world.
And how much snow did you shovel in December, January & February? I'll bet it was a shit ton less than you normally do in those months.
those really are not raw temperature data though. Those are all the products of analysis. You really are spewing in ignorance
Have you looked at Berkeley Earth? They have links to their source files here. They take raw data and apply their own set of adjustments that are different than the adjustments applied by NOAA or NASA.
thank goodness, we were heading to 140ppm which stops plant life, then we are really fucked.
And the ocean is alkaline, not acidic, it got slightly more neutral, blimey Slashdot nerds have really gone down in intelligence.
What makes you think we were heading to 140 ppm? In 800,000 years of ice core records the CO2 never dropped below 180 ppm. If CO2 levels ever started to head drastically downward we know how to fix that. Just dig up fossil fuels and burn them.
Acidification in a solution just means the pH is dropping. It doesn't say anything about where it started.
Only 4% of global CO2 is attributable to humans. 96% of it is naturally occurring, and we couldn't do anything about it if we tried.
Have you ever heard of the Carbon Cycle? For many thousands of years the CO2 level hovered around 280 ppm despite a similar level of natural CO2 emissions every year. That's because the other side of the carbon cycle naturally absorbed a similar amount CO2 every year. It's only after humans started burning a significant amount of fossil fuels that CO2 levels started to rise significantly.
It's dishonest to talk about natural emissions of CO2 without also mentioning the natural sinks of CO2.
We also don't know if human beings are really the cause of the higher CO2 levels. Maybe we are, but it hasn't been proven beyond any doubt.
Whut!!!??? We know approximately how much CO2 we are emitting. It's pretty easy to calculate based on fossil fuel usage. We know that the year to year rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is a bit less than half of year to year anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (most of the rest is absorbed by the oceans). Given that, how can human beings not be the cause of higher CO2 levels?
Rather than looking at individual years like 1998 or 2015 (soon to be 2016) it makes more sense climatologically to look at long term trends. Here is a graph showing El Nino, ENSO neutral and La Nina years from 1967 to 2011 and the temperature trends. The trend for all 3 categories have a similar upward trend. Since ENSO is not something creates heat but merely moves it around in the Earth's system it can't be the source of increasing temperatures. So arguing about El Nino this or La Nina that doesn't mean a thing. It's the long term trends that matter. The 2015/2016 El Nino is warmer than the 1997/1998 El Nino because the long term upward trend in temperatures that scientist tell us is mostly due to anthropogenic induced increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Sheesh! The CO2 you exhale doesn't matter because it comes from carbon in the plants you eat (directly or indirectly) that absorbed the CO2 from the atmosphere in a never ending cycle that's been going on forever. It has no net effect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
The story we're posting on is about how CO2 levels haven't changed as fast as they are now in at least 66 million years. I guess if you're one of those who believes CO2 is a benign gas with no effect on climate that doesn't mean much to you but some of us live in the real world.
As Oliver Wendall Holmes said "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society." How much we pay is the subject of endless arguments but I'll just say I don't feel particularly over-taxed right now.
So changes in magnetic activity resulting in heliospheric changes, which mediate cosmic ray intensity in the atmosphere, which changes cloud seeding rate, which changes the global climate since water vapor is the dominant Greenhouse gas.
About 41,000 years ago there was a temporary reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event>the Laschamp event). During that period of about 440 years the Earth's magnetic field was greatly reduced and cosmic ray intensity increased far beyond any current intensity. Yet when compared to the climate records of the time there was no noticable effect on climate. I think it's likely that there are generally plenty of cloud seeding aerosols from sources other than cosmic rays and additional cosmic rays don't make that much difference.
Another failure in your analysis. CO2 is increasing rapidly yet the temperature second time derivative is negative? think about what that means ! it means that GHG CANNOT be the dominant climate drivers. They have an effect, but they are not in the driver's seat - which means even if humans followed the Green Agenda and went back to their pre-industrial agrarian nightmare (which anyone can do today of they choose to live in Africa - despite the fact that Africa is a massive source of CO2 emissions because the biosphere emits far more than humans) it would still not affect the climate in any meaningful way. Climate Realists will start believing alarmists when you have the courage of your convictions and start living the lifestyle you say is necessary - instead of the multi-mansion, jet-setting lifestyle of hypocrites like Al Gore, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and other 'vrtue signalling' hypocrites.
That's quite the straw man you built there. Very few people are advocating a return to a "pre-industrial agrarian nightmare", just a switch from fossil fuel based energy to renewable energy. I guess you don't think that's possible but as far as I can see it just takes time.
Water Vapor provides a feedback that counters the effects of CO2 ...
What is this water vapor feedback that counters the effects of CO2? Increased CO2 causes warming which increases water vapor in the atmosphere which in turn causes its own warming. I suppose you think more water vapor causes more clouds but I don't think that's automatically the case.
"Climategate" was an exercise in quote mining and much ado about nothing.
I don't claim that AGW started in 1950. It started when atmospheric levels of CO2 started rising. It was a relatively small effect before the industrialization that started around WWII and continued on into the 1950s.
For thousands of years before humans started emitting fossil carbon the level of CO2 in the atmosphere hovered around 280 ppm. There was no significant change in the level even during the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods. If those periods were so much warmer than now why didn't it cause CO2 to increase by the mechanism you propose?
Here's a thing - did you know the scope of the IPCC's mandate is to only analyze human impacts on climate, and all natural drivers are considered out-of-scope?
It's impossible as the IPCC scientists know to understand human impacts on climate without also understanding natural drivers of climate. Good luck holding on to your money when the effects of AGW really start kicking in as they are starting to do.
Actually I got it wrong. What I should have said was renewable energy produces more jobs per unit of energy produced than fossil fuel energy. Right now there are probably more people employed in fossil fuels than renewable energy as an absolute number. What do the labor costs matter if they can offer competitive pricing? When you consider the external costs of fossil fuels, renewable energy is very competitive. Renewable energy is still in its infancy or just beyond and I expect it will become labor efficient over time.
If the Democratic nominee wins the Presidency the Senate will likely confirm Garland during the lame duck session after the election just to prevent the new President from nominating someone even more liberal.
The US military is also working hard to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.
There are currently more people working in renewable energy industries than in fossil fuel extraction industries in the US.
You can post stuff from ClimateAudit and WUWT all you want but I'm not going to read them. In the time I spent looking at them 8 or 10 years ago what they post is mostly bullshit.
Regarding your list of T/F questions, it's not clear at all that any of those places were warmer at any time in the last 2000 years than they are today (2015/2016). Even if it was it's not likely to remain so for very long given the ongoing warming. Regarding some of the specific ones.
9) All of the graphs I've seen from GISP2 cut off some time in the 1850s so it's impossible to tell if your statement is true.
10 & 11) There was global cooling from the 1300s to the 1800s, most likely due primarily to volcanic effects with some help from low solar output and albedo effects where after the volcanoes got it started the polar ice started to grow.
14) Why? If you take a long term view you can say the Earth has been cooling for over 10 million years or going back to the PETM over 50 million years or you could even go back nearly 100 million years ago. Speaking more recently over the past 8000 years there has been a cycle of glaciations and deglaciations of about 100,000 years. Since the Holocene Climatic Optimum 6,000-8,000 years ago the Earth has been gradually cooling as you would expect sliding toward the next glacial period.
15) There is regional climatic variation and nowadays it's a combination of natural and anthropogenic effects.
16) True if you count asteroids hitting Earth and gigantic volcanic eruptions like the Deccan Traps. How does that preclude the possibility of anthropogenic effects?
17) What the Fyfe/Mann et. al. paper said was this:
“In all three observational datasets the most recent 15-year trend (ending in 2014) is lower than both the latest 30-year and 50-year trends. This divergence occurs at a time of rapid increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs). A warming slowdown is thus clear in observations; ”
That's not saying there's a pause but just a slowdown in warming.
19) On the contrary, the climate controls water vapor. Water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled primarily by temperature. The colder it is the less water vapor there is. That's why most of Antarctica would be classified as a desert on the basis of precipitation. It's impossible for water vapor to control climate although its presence will modify climate.
21) That depends on what you mean by "dangerous". I'm pretty sure it will cause major disruptions to modern civilization.
Your Hockey Schtick is getting old. Mann's original graph is practically irrelevant any more and proving it was fraudulent won't get you anything. You still have to deal with the more than a dozen studies since that show essentially the same thing as the original Hockey Stick Graph.
My point was that this year either set or statistically tied a record for the lowest winter time maximum Arctic sea ice in the satellite era. By itself that doesn't mean much. Only in the context of the long term trend does it carry some meaning.
Regarding your "failed" predictions the Guardian article had the word "could" in it which means it's not outside the realm of possibilities, not that it would happen. I don't think you can call the NY Times story a failed prediction yet because it mostly talked about the future. The NPR story quoted Anne Nolin as saying "Enjoy it now, because there's a whole lot less of it,". Nothing about the end of snow. Most of the story was about the safety of eating snow.
Oh, that's cute. You're comparing human emissions to yearly natural emissions while ignoring the other side of the equation, the natural sinks of CO2. The fact is the increase in CO2 from year to year is a bit less than half the the human emissions, the rest of it being absorbed by natural sinks like the oceans.