Note that no competent scientist would claim that there's been no increase in global temperature, especially since all the data shows that the glabal temperature has increased over that time. So you had to lie to make your statement. Why is it that lying is the only option the deniers and fake skeptics reach for?
Once again: no, they didn't change global warming to climate change. Both terms came into use at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Global warming just refers the warming of the surface of the earth while climate change refers to all the changes that are occurring due to the changing climate. As such global warming is, and always has been, a subset of the current climate change. It's interesting that you feel the need to make up this story about "scammers" changing the name. If the case against climate change/global warming is so strong, why do you need to make up things like this?
Umm, what articles? There aren't any links in this part of the thread and it doesn't seem like it would be part of the article that started this. Your claim that back radiation violates the 2nd law is nonsense. And what's the AGW version of it? Your statement that the earth can't absorb the back radiation coming from greenhouse gases is just embarrassing nonsense. How would the earth even know what photons came from the greenhouse gases? Or is your argument that the earth is transparent to the infrared coming from greenhouse gases?
The usual remark I hear for this nonsense is that the earth is warmer then the atmosphere, so no radiation can move from the atmosphere to the earth, but that's just a misunderstanding of the 2nd law. I hope that's not your argument.
How gullible does someone have to be to believe that back radiation is a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Do you even know what the 2nd law is?
I have 3 things to say about that: First, the logic is not flawed, in fact it is extremely elementary. But: second, here you are arguing with me about whether the sun is the cause of warming, and I stated earlier here at least 3 times that that isn't what I was saying! Do you have reading comprehension issues? I was talking about someone else's logic, not about what actual causes are. And I repeated it just for your benefit. But apparently it didn't sink into your skull anyway.
But it is flawed logic. Here's one last try: Think of a car on a level surface. It's motion is determined by Newton's Laws, in particular F = ma. If you press on the accelerator, you apply more force (F) and, as a result, the acceleration (a) increases. It must increase (unless there's a change in mass (m)). If you let off on the gas, F decreases. As a consequence, either m or a (or both) must change. If we assume negligible change in m, then a must decrease. It may still be positive, but it must decrease. The same is true (in principle) in thermodynamics. If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming. Either the rate of warming must decrease (possibly stay positive or maybe go negative) or the mass or specific heat must change. But the rate of warming is not decreasing, therefore either the sun is not responsible for the current warming or (for your logic to make sense), the mass of the earth or its specific heat must be dropping. Have you seen any evidence of either of these happening? (Actually, the earth's mass increases, so we know that's not correct.) Your burner analogy doesn't really relate to the sun and climate change.
Thanks for the link to biocab.org. An, umm, interesting site with, umm, fascinating ideas:). Let's look at some of those ideas: biocab's claim is that TSI has actually increased and he does that by plotting the TSI since the early 1600s and generating a linear trend. But is a linear trend correct? Think about what that means for the MWP that occurred 400 to 800 years before biocab's plot. It was much warmer then, but according to biocab's linear analysis, there was less energy coming from the sun. So according to biocab, the sun isn't that important a driver for the climate, which pretty much invalidates his hypothesis. And, of course, this ignores the question of what happens about 2.2 million years earlier when the sun's energy reaches 0. So linear is clearly an incorrect way to think of the changes in the sun. It doesn't accurately reflect how the sun changes. However, what a linear analysis over 400 years is good for is hiding the actual trends in the sun's output. What biocab's plot does show is that over the last 3 solar cycles (actually, you can extend that back to 5 solar cycles), TSI has leveled off and even decreased slightly. The peaks of the TSI curve haven't changed much, but the troughs are clearly dropping. When you do an actual analysis of this data, it shows the TSI dropping slightly. I'm not sure whether biocab is incompetent or purposely deceptive, but one thing he clearly isn't is correct. I'm reminded of Obi Wan Kenobi's line in Star Wars: "Who's the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool that follows him?"
You haven't shown much ability in physics, math, or logic, and you seem somewhat gullible to fall for a pretty lousy analysis.
By the way, if you really want to learn about the science, you might go the skepticalscience.com and ask some questions. While I am a scientist, I'm not a climate scientist and this is more of a hobby than anything else - there are actual climate scientists that contribute to that site. But given your limited knowledge of the science, I would suggest asking rather than demanding - you'll get more answers that way.
So even though solar activity has decreased recently, the input is still above the level at which warming will continue to increase. Just like the stove example I gave.
No. This is wrong and it makes no physical sense. Look at the graph again. The solar output has decreased and (while it isn't apparent on the graph), the temperature increase has, umm, increased (ok, that doesn't make much sense - the temperature increase is accelerating). There is absolutely no way for this to occur without a similarly increasing forcing behind it. The sun cannot possibly be that forcing since it isn't increasing. End of story. Maybe the earth would continue to warm, but the warming wouldn't accelerate. Something else must be causing the warming. There are other problems with your logic. For example, the changes in insolation (energy from the sun) are measured (or known by proxy prior to measurements). It is possible to look at those changes and determine how much warming the sun has caused. Look at my link again and look at the intermediate or advanced tab (here's the link to the intermediate tab: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-intermediate.htm ). Despite your flawed logic, it really is well known that the sun isn't causing the current warming.
Now don't misunderstand me: I am NOT saying that is the cause of the warming. I make no such claim. This is just a hypothetical example.
What I am saying is that the fact that temperatures have deviated from the sun cycles is not necessarily evidence of man-caused warming. As I have showed, as a logical argument it has a huge hole in it. There CAN BE other explanations.
Of course just because we know with very high confidence (and, remember, in science that's about as good as it gets) that the sun isn't involved in the current warming, that doesn't mean that something else natural isn't causing it. But there's a problem here: none of the natural causes correlate with the warming. It's true that correlation doesn't imply causation, but non-correlation strongly implies non-causation. But what does correlate extremely well with the current warming? CO2 levels do. Again we have the correlation doesn't imply causation, but in the case of greenhouse gases, we have well known physics that indicate causation. Additionally, calculations based on the known climate drivers (including greenhouse gases) are able to very well match the current warming. So throw me a bone here. We have correlation. We have well known fundamental physics which says that given the changes humans have made we should expect this amount of warming. "Skeptics" have been unable to show any other process that: (1) Can account for the current warming, and (2) Can prevent the increased CO2 levels from acting in ways they are known to act. Maybe there's another explanation - that's always a possibility in science. Maybe there's a fundamental flaw in the theory of relativity. But we use it now anyway and our GPS systems work just fine. When the physics matches, and when study after study indicates that the consequences of continuing as we have been are pretty devastating (at least in an economic sense), at some point you have to stop waiting for someone to find a flaw in the science and actually act on things.
By the way, you mentioned a link, but I couldn't find one in your posts. I'd be interested in knowing where you got your "science information". I hope it's co2science - they say the silliest things, but generally provide all the evidence to show that they're wrong.
Hahaha.This is one of my most favorite bogus arguments, because it's so easy to show how bogus it really is.
Turn a surface burner on your stove to medium-high. Then put a pan half-full of water on it. LEAVE IT for a while. Guess what? The water continues to get hotter, even though you haven't turned the heat up. If you let it get near boiling, then turn it down just a minor notch or two (as the sun has turned down, just a bit), guess what? The water continues to get hotter.
The argument that the temperature variation has deviated from solar activity for a while, is exactly the same. If the input was enough to warm the earth significantly, it can CONTINUE to warm the earth, even if the input is reduced somewhat.
The idea that the temperature must follow the sun no matter what the input happens to be is just bizarre. Just as with a stove: if you turn it to just warm, then the water will stay warm, and will follow the burner temperature up and down. But once you get to the tipping point of putting more heat into the system than can be bled off, the temperature will continue to rise as long as the input is higher than that point... even if the input is significantly lower than the year before. As long as it remains higher than that point, in other words, you can actually continuously turn the control DOWN, and the water will still continue to get hotter.
Answer this then: Do you think the water will get hotter faster with the burner turned up, or turned down a bit. Because that's what's happened to the earth. The sun is putting out constant energy (actually slightly decreasing - see http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm ) and yet the earth is getting hotter faster than before. This is not physically possible if the sun is causing the warming.
You've indicated by your response that you don't really have any knowledge of climate science or, for that matter, science in general. If you don't mind my asking, how do you come up with the confidence to dispute actual measured data when you have so little knowledge? This is something about the "debate" in climate science that really interests me. When I truly don't understand something (as is the case with you and climate science), I generally back off and ask questions until I do understand. But you don't seem to feel that's necessary. Why is that?
"some small fraction is natural..." is not the real situation at all. The problem is the opposite: the vast majority of it is natural. Any scientist, even the staunchest AGW supporter, will admit that if he/she has any pretension to honesty at all.
This isn't true at all. There is very little natural driving the climate at this time. There's solar, but that's been pretty constant (perhaps slightly decreasing) for decades now, so it's not really doing too much. There's orbital changes, but that should actually be making things slightly colder. In fact none of the climate drivers are really doing much - except for manmade changes (greenhouse gases, land use change, etc.). In addition, when you look at all the climate drivers and what they've been doing, it pretty much matches the global temperature changes that have occurred. I should also note that even the very few climate scientists that are "skeptics" don't agree with your comment. They understand that the current climate change is due to manmade changes. They just claim (without any proof - and, in fact, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary) that those changes will end up not so bad.
Many, many fake skeptics have questioned the positioning of the sensors. In fact, some have put together a study of that and the data they found was that there was a problem with the sensors - there was a slight bias to underreport the warming. It wasn't for all the sensors and it wasn't a large amount, but it showed that the sensors did not make things seem warmer than they really are. In addition, a number of studies have shown that the positioning of the sensors isn't really affecting the trends. In fact, remove all the urban sensors you dislike and you get pretty much the same results.
Your anecdotal comment about north-central Arizona is just that - anecdotal. I'm in central New Mexico and I can tell you it was warmer here this winter. My dad in central Illinois was complaining about the lack of a real winter this year. All anecdotal - that's why scientists actually measure these things and look at large areas - to remove personal biases and look at overall climate/weather rather than local climate/weather.
The other problem with your calling B.S. is that there was a measured change in the jet stream last winter that is known to have caused the warming. This is an actual fact and, really, not all that hard to understand. Whether this was due to climate change or just an odd weather system is irrelevant since it actually happened.
How is it inconvenient for the pro-science group? The increased snowfall (and the warmth of the contiguous states) has a known cause - the change in the jet stream. And the change in the jet stream has a known cause - a change in the arctic oscillation. And climate theory indicates that one of the things that happens when you lose the summer arctic ice cover is that the arctic oscillation changes. And what has been causing the summer arctic ice cover to disappear? Global warming. So, while this doesn't say that global warming caused the increased snow in Alaska as well as the warm winter in the contiguous US, it would be astoundingly incorrect to call this an "inconvenient fact".
Unfortunately, you can't really compare the climate from millions of years ago (along with its CO2 levels) directly to the climate of today.
yes, yes you can.
In the past, the sun put out less energy, there was a great deal of volcanic action, etc.
Yes, and we can account for that. The core samples tell us what was happening. We've already accounted for volcanic action. P.S. Noticed any volcanic action recently?
So, first of all, you say that we can account for these changes. This means you can't directly compare the past climate with the current climate, so you agree with my first point. Second of all, you correctly point out that there hasn't been much volcanic action lately as opposed to the past. The primary effect of volcanoes is to put aerosols into the atmosphere, which cools the earth. (There's also some CO2 emitted, but it's usually pretty small.) So, as you say, the greater volcanic activity tended to cool things off.
If it was believed that CO2 was the only driver of climate, you could compare CO2 levels and make your claim.
Luckily, we're comparing a lot more than CO2 levels. The discussion is not as primitive as you make it out to be to serve your political agenda.
I think you should re-read the post that I replied to. The claim from that post was that you could compare the CO2 levels - and only the CO2 levels - from previous climates and say something intelligent about the current climate. I replied that no you can't, there are many other factors that drive the climate. So now, with your reply, you point out that you agree with everything that I posted. Since you agree with everything I posted and you claim I have a political agenda by discussing actual science and facts and stuff, that must mean that you have a political agenda. What's yours?;)
Yes, wind has spread the ice cap and that makes it seem like the ice is spreading. It's important, when thinking of reports of ice extent, to remember that the systems that measure this divide the region being examined into grids. If 15% of the grid is ice covered, then the grid is marked as 100% ice covered. So when the wind blows the ice around, it can make it seem like there is more ice if all you look at is the extent - that's why people use ice extent when they want to lie about arctic ice.
A more realistic way to look at ice is through the volume. The results from PIOMAS (http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29%20? ) show that there's about the same volume of ice now as there was last year. Deniers like to point out that there's a greater ice extent this year than last year (which is true - as seen here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/04/Figure2.png ). What does it mean if you have the same volume of ice, but a greater extent? As you point out, it means the ice is, in general, thinner and will melt faster. It should be an, um, interesting summer.
Unfortunately, you can't really compare the climate from millions of years ago (along with its CO2 levels) directly to the climate of today. In the past, the sun put out less energy, there was a great deal of volcanic action, etc. If it was believed that CO2 was the only driver of climate, you could compare CO2 levels and make your claim. But it's clear from climate science that that isn't the case. It's also clear that CO2 is driving the climate change today and that change is happening very rapidly.
"Global Warming" has already been renamed "Climate Change". It initially looked like a warming trend, but the more we study the more we come to the conclusion that everything is relative. The only thing we know for sure is the climate is changing.
Umm, no. Both global warming and climate change came into use at about the same time in the '70s (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Global warming has always referred to the overall increase in global surface temperature and since that hasn't stopped, and shows no sign of stopping, there would be no reason to change that. Climate change has always referred to all the changes occurring in the climate due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, including the overall increase in global surface temperature. So global warming is just a subset of climate change. But this is all well known and it would require someone to want to remain ignorant about any of the science to still think that global warming has been renamed to climate change.
When someone says something like "e.g replace global warming with, say, climate change", I can never tell if they're making a lame attempt at humor or are just tremendously ignorant. Global warming and climate change came into use at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html) and they're respective meanings have never changed: global warming remains a subset of climate change. Given how widely this is known, you must remain willfully ignorant to not be aware of that. I always take comments like yours to mean "I don't care about the damn facts, they must be wrong". But I'm sure yours was just a lame attempt at humor, right?;)
Umm, yeah. Burning fossil fuels adds 1% and the extra CO2 in the atmosphere adds 100 times that much. You do see that the additional energy coming from burning fossil fuels is only noise compared to the energy added by the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, right? Thinking otherwise would be like dropping 100 lbs on someone and then dropping 1 lb on them and then saying that is was the 1 lb weight that killed them.
But how much? The extra energy due to the burning of fossil fuels is about 1% of the extra energy staying in the climate system due to the addition of CO2 in the atmosphere. Is it naive to believe that something that is known to be 100 times larger than the output from burning fossil fuel is playing a much greater role in the current climate change/global warming? I don't think so.
And, yet, I don't recall anyone on the pro-science side saying to cease all carbon emissions. Ok, there are probably some radical people doing so, but there are also radical people saying that climate change/global warming doesn't exist - there are always fringe people spouting off nonsense.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that we don't know why many of those earlier events occurred or that we don't know why the current climate change/global warming is occurring. The causes of climate change aren't that varied. The big players are the sun, the earth's orbit around the sun, and the ability of the earth to radiate away the energy it gets from the sun. We know the sun isn't causing the current climate change/global warming because, if anything, the long term output from the sun has decreased slightly. We know the orbit isn't causing the change because it should actually be cooling the earth slightly. We can measure the increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and know that is primarily caused by man. We can also measure the reduction in outgoing IR radiation due to that increase in CO2. Sure, it's possible that climate science is missing something (that's always possible in every field of science), but when the science explains so much of what's currently going on and what went on in the past, and when the current science is able to make very good projections about what will happen, at some point you have to say, "Yeah, that's probably right." Since there are no current alternate hypotheses (or, rather, no good ones) and since the data clearly supports the basic theories that make up climate science, there's no good reason to be doubting the science.
Several years ago, when the changes were starting to get wide attention, people realized that it was extreme weather on both ends and changed the description from "warming" to "climate change".
While I agree with most of your points, I thought I'd point out that this is a common misconception. In fact, both terms came into usage at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Climate change refers to all effects of the changing climate (ocean acidification, droughts, floods, changes in short term weather events, long term temperature changes, etc.). Global warming only refers to the general trend in surface temperature. So global warming is, and always has been, just a subset of climate change.
I agree somewhat with this statement. But remember that there's very good evidence that the loss of summer Arctic ice cover has a large effect on the winter Arctic Oscillation. And the loss of summer Arctic ice cover is caused by the current climate change/global warming. So there is some effect there. I don't know if it's very predictable though so what effect climate change/global warming had on the past winter, I don't know. And you're correct about the La Nina - for all I know that's the bigger cause of the past winter's weather.
I'm not sure if you're quite aware, but the pro-science side has data much longer than 100 years (actually, both sides have access to all that data, but one side tends to ignore it). Besides, when the physics does a very good job of explaining the current climate change/global warming (and many of the past climate changes), you don't need even 100 years of data. If you turn the oven on and it warms up, do you really need 100 years of data to understand what's happening?
And you can make more outside of the San Francisco area (or, at least, I could - YMMV). Don't get me wrong. I loved living in the Bay area, but when I got the offer for more money (and a more interesting job) in a place where I could buy a house twice as big as my Fremont house (and for less money with a much shorter commute), I couldn't pass it up. I always thought that I'd gotten premium pay for working in the Bay area, and putting up with the high prices and long commutes, but it turned out not to be true.
All success in schooling (public, private, or home schooled) depends primarily on the parents involvement. I think there was a chapter in the Freakonomics book concerning this.
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Note that no competent scientist would claim that there's been no increase in global temperature, especially since all the data shows that the glabal temperature has increased over that time. So you had to lie to make your statement. Why is it that lying is the only option the deniers and fake skeptics reach for?
Once again: no, they didn't change global warming to climate change. Both terms came into use at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Global warming just refers the warming of the surface of the earth while climate change refers to all the changes that are occurring due to the changing climate. As such global warming is, and always has been, a subset of the current climate change. It's interesting that you feel the need to make up this story about "scammers" changing the name. If the case against climate change/global warming is so strong, why do you need to make up things like this?
Umm, what articles? There aren't any links in this part of the thread and it doesn't seem like it would be part of the article that started this. Your claim that back radiation violates the 2nd law is nonsense. And what's the AGW version of it? Your statement that the earth can't absorb the back radiation coming from greenhouse gases is just embarrassing nonsense. How would the earth even know what photons came from the greenhouse gases? Or is your argument that the earth is transparent to the infrared coming from greenhouse gases?
The usual remark I hear for this nonsense is that the earth is warmer then the atmosphere, so no radiation can move from the atmosphere to the earth, but that's just a misunderstanding of the 2nd law. I hope that's not your argument.
What the heck? What is this nonsense? If it can't exist, why is it possible to measure it? Here's a paper that first did it back in 1954: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0469(1954)011%3C0121%3AAIDFMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
How gullible does someone have to be to believe that back radiation is a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Do you even know what the 2nd law is?
I have 3 things to say about that: First, the logic is not flawed, in fact it is extremely elementary. But: second, here you are arguing with me about whether the sun is the cause of warming, and I stated earlier here at least 3 times that that isn't what I was saying! Do you have reading comprehension issues? I was talking about someone else's logic, not about what actual causes are. And I repeated it just for your benefit. But apparently it didn't sink into your skull anyway.
But it is flawed logic. Here's one last try: Think of a car on a level surface. It's motion is determined by Newton's Laws, in particular F = ma. If you press on the accelerator, you apply more force (F) and, as a result, the acceleration (a) increases. It must increase (unless there's a change in mass (m)). If you let off on the gas, F decreases. As a consequence, either m or a (or both) must change. If we assume negligible change in m, then a must decrease. It may still be positive, but it must decrease. The same is true (in principle) in thermodynamics. If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming. Either the rate of warming must decrease (possibly stay positive or maybe go negative) or the mass or specific heat must change. But the rate of warming is not decreasing, therefore either the sun is not responsible for the current warming or (for your logic to make sense), the mass of the earth or its specific heat must be dropping. Have you seen any evidence of either of these happening? (Actually, the earth's mass increases, so we know that's not correct.) Your burner analogy doesn't really relate to the sun and climate change.
Thanks for the link to biocab.org. An, umm, interesting site with, umm, fascinating ideas :). Let's look at some of those ideas: biocab's claim is that TSI has actually increased and he does that by plotting the TSI since the early 1600s and generating a linear trend. But is a linear trend correct? Think about what that means for the MWP that occurred 400 to 800 years before biocab's plot. It was much warmer then, but according to biocab's linear analysis, there was less energy coming from the sun. So according to biocab, the sun isn't that important a driver for the climate, which pretty much invalidates his hypothesis. And, of course, this ignores the question of what happens about 2.2 million years earlier when the sun's energy reaches 0. So linear is clearly an incorrect way to think of the changes in the sun. It doesn't accurately reflect how the sun changes. However, what a linear analysis over 400 years is good for is hiding the actual trends in the sun's output. What biocab's plot does show is that over the last 3 solar cycles (actually, you can extend that back to 5 solar cycles), TSI has leveled off and even decreased slightly. The peaks of the TSI curve haven't changed much, but the troughs are clearly dropping. When you do an actual analysis of this data, it shows the TSI dropping slightly. I'm not sure whether biocab is incompetent or purposely deceptive, but one thing he clearly isn't is correct. I'm reminded of Obi Wan Kenobi's line in Star Wars: "Who's the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool that follows him?"
You haven't shown much ability in physics, math, or logic, and you seem somewhat gullible to fall for a pretty lousy analysis.
By the way, if you really want to learn about the science, you might go the skepticalscience.com and ask some questions. While I am a scientist, I'm not a climate scientist and this is more of a hobby than anything else - there are actual climate scientists that contribute to that site. But given your limited knowledge of the science, I would suggest asking rather than demanding - you'll get more answers that way.
So even though solar activity has decreased recently, the input is still above the level at which warming will continue to increase. Just like the stove example I gave.
No. This is wrong and it makes no physical sense. Look at the graph again. The solar output has decreased and (while it isn't apparent on the graph), the temperature increase has, umm, increased (ok, that doesn't make much sense - the temperature increase is accelerating). There is absolutely no way for this to occur without a similarly increasing forcing behind it. The sun cannot possibly be that forcing since it isn't increasing. End of story. Maybe the earth would continue to warm, but the warming wouldn't accelerate. Something else must be causing the warming. There are other problems with your logic. For example, the changes in insolation (energy from the sun) are measured (or known by proxy prior to measurements). It is possible to look at those changes and determine how much warming the sun has caused. Look at my link again and look at the intermediate or advanced tab (here's the link to the intermediate tab: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-intermediate.htm ). Despite your flawed logic, it really is well known that the sun isn't causing the current warming.
Now don't misunderstand me: I am NOT saying that is the cause of the warming. I make no such claim. This is just a hypothetical example.
What I am saying is that the fact that temperatures have deviated from the sun cycles is not necessarily evidence of man-caused warming. As I have showed, as a logical argument it has a huge hole in it. There CAN BE other explanations.
Of course just because we know with very high confidence (and, remember, in science that's about as good as it gets) that the sun isn't involved in the current warming, that doesn't mean that something else natural isn't causing it. But there's a problem here: none of the natural causes correlate with the warming. It's true that correlation doesn't imply causation, but non-correlation strongly implies non-causation. But what does correlate extremely well with the current warming? CO2 levels do. Again we have the correlation doesn't imply causation, but in the case of greenhouse gases, we have well known physics that indicate causation. Additionally, calculations based on the known climate drivers (including greenhouse gases) are able to very well match the current warming. So throw me a bone here. We have correlation. We have well known fundamental physics which says that given the changes humans have made we should expect this amount of warming. "Skeptics" have been unable to show any other process that: (1) Can account for the current warming, and (2) Can prevent the increased CO2 levels from acting in ways they are known to act. Maybe there's another explanation - that's always a possibility in science. Maybe there's a fundamental flaw in the theory of relativity. But we use it now anyway and our GPS systems work just fine. When the physics matches, and when study after study indicates that the consequences of continuing as we have been are pretty devastating (at least in an economic sense), at some point you have to stop waiting for someone to find a flaw in the science and actually act on things.
By the way, you mentioned a link, but I couldn't find one in your posts. I'd be interested in knowing where you got your "science information". I hope it's co2science - they say the silliest things, but generally provide all the evidence to show that they're wrong.
Hahaha.This is one of my most favorite bogus arguments, because it's so easy to show how bogus it really is.
Turn a surface burner on your stove to medium-high. Then put a pan half-full of water on it. LEAVE IT for a while. Guess what? The water continues to get hotter, even though you haven't turned the heat up. If you let it get near boiling, then turn it down just a minor notch or two (as the sun has turned down, just a bit), guess what? The water continues to get hotter.
The argument that the temperature variation has deviated from solar activity for a while, is exactly the same. If the input was enough to warm the earth significantly, it can CONTINUE to warm the earth, even if the input is reduced somewhat.
The idea that the temperature must follow the sun no matter what the input happens to be is just bizarre. Just as with a stove: if you turn it to just warm, then the water will stay warm, and will follow the burner temperature up and down. But once you get to the tipping point of putting more heat into the system than can be bled off, the temperature will continue to rise as long as the input is higher than that point... even if the input is significantly lower than the year before. As long as it remains higher than that point, in other words, you can actually continuously turn the control DOWN, and the water will still continue to get hotter.
Answer this then: Do you think the water will get hotter faster with the burner turned up, or turned down a bit. Because that's what's happened to the earth. The sun is putting out constant energy (actually slightly decreasing - see http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm ) and yet the earth is getting hotter faster than before. This is not physically possible if the sun is causing the warming.
You've indicated by your response that you don't really have any knowledge of climate science or, for that matter, science in general. If you don't mind my asking, how do you come up with the confidence to dispute actual measured data when you have so little knowledge? This is something about the "debate" in climate science that really interests me. When I truly don't understand something (as is the case with you and climate science), I generally back off and ask questions until I do understand. But you don't seem to feel that's necessary. Why is that?
"some small fraction is natural..." is not the real situation at all. The problem is the opposite: the vast majority of it is natural. Any scientist, even the staunchest AGW supporter, will admit that if he/she has any pretension to honesty at all.
This isn't true at all. There is very little natural driving the climate at this time. There's solar, but that's been pretty constant (perhaps slightly decreasing) for decades now, so it's not really doing too much. There's orbital changes, but that should actually be making things slightly colder. In fact none of the climate drivers are really doing much - except for manmade changes (greenhouse gases, land use change, etc.). In addition, when you look at all the climate drivers and what they've been doing, it pretty much matches the global temperature changes that have occurred. I should also note that even the very few climate scientists that are "skeptics" don't agree with your comment. They understand that the current climate change is due to manmade changes. They just claim (without any proof - and, in fact, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary) that those changes will end up not so bad.
Many, many fake skeptics have questioned the positioning of the sensors. In fact, some have put together a study of that and the data they found was that there was a problem with the sensors - there was a slight bias to underreport the warming. It wasn't for all the sensors and it wasn't a large amount, but it showed that the sensors did not make things seem warmer than they really are. In addition, a number of studies have shown that the positioning of the sensors isn't really affecting the trends. In fact, remove all the urban sensors you dislike and you get pretty much the same results.
Your anecdotal comment about north-central Arizona is just that - anecdotal. I'm in central New Mexico and I can tell you it was warmer here this winter. My dad in central Illinois was complaining about the lack of a real winter this year. All anecdotal - that's why scientists actually measure these things and look at large areas - to remove personal biases and look at overall climate/weather rather than local climate/weather.
The other problem with your calling B.S. is that there was a measured change in the jet stream last winter that is known to have caused the warming. This is an actual fact and, really, not all that hard to understand. Whether this was due to climate change or just an odd weather system is irrelevant since it actually happened.
How is it inconvenient for the pro-science group? The increased snowfall (and the warmth of the contiguous states) has a known cause - the change in the jet stream. And the change in the jet stream has a known cause - a change in the arctic oscillation. And climate theory indicates that one of the things that happens when you lose the summer arctic ice cover is that the arctic oscillation changes. And what has been causing the summer arctic ice cover to disappear? Global warming. So, while this doesn't say that global warming caused the increased snow in Alaska as well as the warm winter in the contiguous US, it would be astoundingly incorrect to call this an "inconvenient fact".
Unfortunately, you can't really compare the climate from millions of years ago (along with its CO2 levels) directly to the climate of today.
yes, yes you can.
In the past, the sun put out less energy, there was a great deal of volcanic action, etc.
Yes, and we can account for that. The core samples tell us what was happening. We've already accounted for volcanic action. P.S. Noticed any volcanic action recently?
So, first of all, you say that we can account for these changes. This means you can't directly compare the past climate with the current climate, so you agree with my first point. Second of all, you correctly point out that there hasn't been much volcanic action lately as opposed to the past. The primary effect of volcanoes is to put aerosols into the atmosphere, which cools the earth. (There's also some CO2 emitted, but it's usually pretty small.) So, as you say, the greater volcanic activity tended to cool things off.
If it was believed that CO2 was the only driver of climate, you could compare CO2 levels and make your claim.
Luckily, we're comparing a lot more than CO2 levels. The discussion is not as primitive as you make it out to be to serve your political agenda.
I think you should re-read the post that I replied to. The claim from that post was that you could compare the CO2 levels - and only the CO2 levels - from previous climates and say something intelligent about the current climate. I replied that no you can't, there are many other factors that drive the climate. So now, with your reply, you point out that you agree with everything that I posted. Since you agree with everything I posted and you claim I have a political agenda by discussing actual science and facts and stuff, that must mean that you have a political agenda. What's yours? ;)
Yes, wind has spread the ice cap and that makes it seem like the ice is spreading. It's important, when thinking of reports of ice extent, to remember that the systems that measure this divide the region being examined into grids. If 15% of the grid is ice covered, then the grid is marked as 100% ice covered. So when the wind blows the ice around, it can make it seem like there is more ice if all you look at is the extent - that's why people use ice extent when they want to lie about arctic ice.
A more realistic way to look at ice is through the volume. The results from PIOMAS (http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29%20? ) show that there's about the same volume of ice now as there was last year. Deniers like to point out that there's a greater ice extent this year than last year (which is true - as seen here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/04/Figure2.png ). What does it mean if you have the same volume of ice, but a greater extent? As you point out, it means the ice is, in general, thinner and will melt faster. It should be an, um, interesting summer.
Unfortunately, you can't really compare the climate from millions of years ago (along with its CO2 levels) directly to the climate of today. In the past, the sun put out less energy, there was a great deal of volcanic action, etc. If it was believed that CO2 was the only driver of climate, you could compare CO2 levels and make your claim. But it's clear from climate science that that isn't the case. It's also clear that CO2 is driving the climate change today and that change is happening very rapidly.
"Global Warming" has already been renamed "Climate Change". It initially looked like a warming trend, but the more we study the more we come to the conclusion that everything is relative. The only thing we know for sure is the climate is changing.
Umm, no. Both global warming and climate change came into use at about the same time in the '70s (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Global warming has always referred to the overall increase in global surface temperature and since that hasn't stopped, and shows no sign of stopping, there would be no reason to change that. Climate change has always referred to all the changes occurring in the climate due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, including the overall increase in global surface temperature. So global warming is just a subset of climate change. But this is all well known and it would require someone to want to remain ignorant about any of the science to still think that global warming has been renamed to climate change.
When someone says something like "e.g replace global warming with, say, climate change", I can never tell if they're making a lame attempt at humor or are just tremendously ignorant. Global warming and climate change came into use at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html) and they're respective meanings have never changed: global warming remains a subset of climate change. Given how widely this is known, you must remain willfully ignorant to not be aware of that. I always take comments like yours to mean "I don't care about the damn facts, they must be wrong". But I'm sure yours was just a lame attempt at humor, right? ;)
Umm, yeah. Burning fossil fuels adds 1% and the extra CO2 in the atmosphere adds 100 times that much. You do see that the additional energy coming from burning fossil fuels is only noise compared to the energy added by the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, right? Thinking otherwise would be like dropping 100 lbs on someone and then dropping 1 lb on them and then saying that is was the 1 lb weight that killed them.
But how much? The extra energy due to the burning of fossil fuels is about 1% of the extra energy staying in the climate system due to the addition of CO2 in the atmosphere. Is it naive to believe that something that is known to be 100 times larger than the output from burning fossil fuel is playing a much greater role in the current climate change/global warming? I don't think so.
And, yet, I don't recall anyone on the pro-science side saying to cease all carbon emissions. Ok, there are probably some radical people doing so, but there are also radical people saying that climate change/global warming doesn't exist - there are always fringe people spouting off nonsense.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that we don't know why many of those earlier events occurred or that we don't know why the current climate change/global warming is occurring. The causes of climate change aren't that varied. The big players are the sun, the earth's orbit around the sun, and the ability of the earth to radiate away the energy it gets from the sun. We know the sun isn't causing the current climate change/global warming because, if anything, the long term output from the sun has decreased slightly. We know the orbit isn't causing the change because it should actually be cooling the earth slightly. We can measure the increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and know that is primarily caused by man. We can also measure the reduction in outgoing IR radiation due to that increase in CO2. Sure, it's possible that climate science is missing something (that's always possible in every field of science), but when the science explains so much of what's currently going on and what went on in the past, and when the current science is able to make very good projections about what will happen, at some point you have to say, "Yeah, that's probably right." Since there are no current alternate hypotheses (or, rather, no good ones) and since the data clearly supports the basic theories that make up climate science, there's no good reason to be doubting the science.
Several years ago, when the changes were starting to get wide attention, people realized that it was extreme weather on both ends and changed the description from "warming" to "climate change".
While I agree with most of your points, I thought I'd point out that this is a common misconception. In fact, both terms came into usage at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Climate change refers to all effects of the changing climate (ocean acidification, droughts, floods, changes in short term weather events, long term temperature changes, etc.). Global warming only refers to the general trend in surface temperature. So global warming is, and always has been, just a subset of climate change.
I agree somewhat with this statement. But remember that there's very good evidence that the loss of summer Arctic ice cover has a large effect on the winter Arctic Oscillation. And the loss of summer Arctic ice cover is caused by the current climate change/global warming. So there is some effect there. I don't know if it's very predictable though so what effect climate change/global warming had on the past winter, I don't know. And you're correct about the La Nina - for all I know that's the bigger cause of the past winter's weather.
I'm not sure if you're quite aware, but the pro-science side has data much longer than 100 years (actually, both sides have access to all that data, but one side tends to ignore it). Besides, when the physics does a very good job of explaining the current climate change/global warming (and many of the past climate changes), you don't need even 100 years of data. If you turn the oven on and it warms up, do you really need 100 years of data to understand what's happening?
And you can make more outside of the San Francisco area (or, at least, I could - YMMV). Don't get me wrong. I loved living in the Bay area, but when I got the offer for more money (and a more interesting job) in a place where I could buy a house twice as big as my Fremont house (and for less money with a much shorter commute), I couldn't pass it up. I always thought that I'd gotten premium pay for working in the Bay area, and putting up with the high prices and long commutes, but it turned out not to be true.
All success in schooling (public, private, or home schooled) depends primarily on the parents involvement. I think there was a chapter in the Freakonomics book concerning this.