Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: nubbles526 on June 28, 2008, 03:57:47 am
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hU5i54pX9VdxAcD6Mo3VfWZDWfyQD91ILU4G1
WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says.
The weather and ocean conditions in the next couple of weeks will determine how much of the sea ice will melt, and early signs are not good, said Mark Serreze. He's a senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo.
The chances for a total meltdown at the pole are higher than ever because the layer of ice coating the sea is thinner than ever, he said.
"A large area at the North Pole and surrounding the North Pole is first-year ice," Serreze said. "That's the stuff that tends to melt out in the summer because it's thin."
Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is "considerably thinner" than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said Friday. He thinks there is slightly less than a 50-50 chance the North Pole will be ice-free.
Last year was a record year for ice melt all over the Arctic and the ice band surrounding the North Pole is even thinner now.
There is nothing scientifically significant about the North Pole, Serreze said. But there is a cultural and symbolic importance. It's home to Santa Claus, after all. Last August, the Northwest Passage was open to navigation for the first time in memory.
A more conservative ice scientist, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington, put the odds of a North Pole without ice closer to 1 in 4. Even that is far worse than climate models had predicted, which was 1 in 70 sometime in the next decade, she said.
But both she and Serreze agree it's just a matter of time.
"I would guess within the next 10 year it would happen at least once," Bitz said.
Already, figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show sea ice in the Arctic as a whole at about the same level now as it was at its low point last year in late June and early July.
The explanation is a warming climate and a weather phenomenon, scientists said.
For the last couple of decades, there has been a steady melt of Arctic sea ice — which covers only the ocean and which thins during summer and refreezes in winter. In recent years, it has gradually become thinner because more of it has been melting as the Earth's temperature rises.
Then, this past winter, there was a natural weather shift called the Arctic Oscillation, sort of a cold weather cousin to El Nino. That oscillation caused a change in winds and ocean that accelerated a normal flushing of sea ice in the Arctic. That pushed the older thicker sea ice that had been over the North Pole south toward Greenland and eventually out of the Arctic, Serreze said. That left just a thin one-year layer of ice that previously covered part of Siberia.
I know this has been discussed numerous times, but this summer, the Summer of 2008, man kind would see the concequences for it's ignorance: The disappearence of Ice in the North Pole. According to the article above, the North Pole's ice has a 50-50 chance of completly melting away. All life that has adapted to the enviorement in the North Pole would die out.
If you are a person who can persuade the government/community/companies to stop emitting that much greenhouse gas, please do so. The future of the world will lie in your hands. It's not just the humans, but the animals that are in that area.
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I'm glad I live a good 1200 ft above sea level.
My gut tells me this is fear mongering, but we'll see I suppose.
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I know this has been discussed numerous times, but this summer, the Summer of 2008, man kind would see the concequences for it's ignorance: The disappearence of Ice in the North Pole. According to the article above, the North Pole's ice has a 50-50 chance of completly melting away. All life that has adapted to the enviorement in the North Pole would die out.
The article says the ice at the north pole will melt away, not the entire arctic circle sea ice. The ice at that exact point is quite thin according to the article, I would assume because it get's a fair bit more cosmic radiation because of the way the magnetic fied works (only a guess).
All life adapted to the area wont die out, just whatever happens to be silly enough to still be at the exact north pole when the ice melts.
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I know this has been discussed numerous times, but this summer, the Summer of 2008, man kind would see the concequences for it's ignorance: The disappearence of Ice in the North Pole. According to the article above, the North Pole's ice has a 50-50 chance of completly melting away. All life that has adapted to the enviorement in the North Pole would die out.
The article says the ice at the north pole will melt away, not the entire arctic circle sea ice. The ice at that exact point is quite thin according to the article, I would assume because it get's a fair bit more cosmic radiation because of the way the magnetic fied works (only a guess).
All life adapted to the area wont die out, just whatever happens to be silly enough to still be at the exact north pole when the ice melts.
Ummmm....I am sure Polar Bear won't come swimming south towards Europe - they need the ice, you see.
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Ummmm....I am sure Polar Bear won't come swimming south towards Europe - they need the ice, you see.
Well... (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1024243/First-polar-bear-swim-Iceland-15-years-shot-dead-police-sightseers.html)
Anyway, that aside, yes, they need the ice but they don't need the ice around the specific region of the north pole.
(http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/Arctic%20sea%20ice%202007.jpg)
The white part is the arctic sea ice. The black part is the north pole (I'm fairly sure - there's no legend on the map). They're different things.
Have a read of this (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history) as well.
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I'm yet to be convinced this is caused by human actions. However, it proves there is something critically wrong (again!) in the climate model that they used to simulate the human influence.
The thinning and melting of the ice layer is a real phenomenom. But it has been a lot thinner before, and considerably thicker in the Ice Age.
It would be great if they decided to invest in Venus research to find out the reasons why the atmosphere is so different there. And, should the global warming really become a problem, Russian scientists figured out a solution to it in last century: namely spraying soot in the atmosphere from the aircraft.
As the last continents melt, watch the desperate super powers grab oil from there as much as they can - screw the unsoiled bacteria thousands of years old and that kind of nonsense. Though, this can cause a lot of trouble: it would be sad to see global thermo nuclear war played on my back yard. And because of an unsettled continent, where building anything cannot be thought permanent!
Mika
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Ah screw it. The world is 4.5 billion years old, and has survived much worse than we could ever have thrown at it in the last 200 years. Its pretty vain to think that we are going to destroy the planet and wipe out so much when the natural cycle of the world has killed off most of the species who have ever inhabited it here. Let things happen as they would and ADAPT. Thats what life on here is best at.
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oh yeah, great idea :doubt:
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oh yeah, great idea
An even better one would be to spend trillions of dollars on 'efforts' to alter the climate when we have NO idea what exactly is responsible for the increase in temperature, the melting of sea ice. They are guessing its manmade carbon emissions. Not just natural carbon emissions.. SUVs, the burning of oil. Kinda curious how certain lifestyles, specifically those in the civilized world are single handedly destroying the planet and we are to be made guilty about it with emotional arguments such as 'the polar bears are dying!'
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Ah screw it. The world is 4.5 billion years old, and has survived much worse than we could ever have thrown at it in the last 200 years. Its pretty vain to think that we are going to destroy the planet and wipe out so much when the natural cycle of the world has killed off most of the species who have ever inhabited it here. Let things happen as they would and ADAPT. Thats what life on here is best at.
The animals probably could adapt but ****ing Manhattan would be underwater.
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I'm yet to be convinced this is caused by human actions.
Well, we know that C02 has a greenhouse effect itself, that can be easily tested in the lab.
We also know that the temperature in the last 200 years rose at a rate far higher than every climatic change in earth history. (I think more than 20 times faster)
Of course humanity wont go extinct with such a little change, it didnt go extinct in the past - but the cost will be very high.
I just wonder, why shouldnt C02 heat up the earth if it is undoubtedly having the effect of holding back infrared rays, while letting "normal" and ultraviolet light through.
It is also clear by comparing the emissions to the atmosphere volume that human emmissions are having an effect in the C02 concentration.
What reasons are there to say that theres no "manmade global warming" except the one: "I dont like it"?
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Why is anyone arguing that burning oil for cars is a good idea?
It's clearly in very limited supply.
It is required for jet fuel.
It is required for petrochemicals.
Yet humanity seems to yearn to piss it away driving absurdly oversized cars, almost always somewhere where they are completely unnecessary.
Now, if you choose to disregard scientific method, please relinquish everything you have that has depended on it.
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Ah screw it. The world is 4.5 billion years old, and has survived much worse than we could ever have thrown at it in the last 200 years. Its pretty vain to think that we are going to destroy the planet and wipe out so much when the natural cycle of the world has killed off most of the species who have ever inhabited it here.
:rolleyes: Complete strawman argument.
No one is saying that life is going to end or that we are going to destroy the planet. That would be be completely ****ing idiotic. However it is a different thing to point out that there are nearly 7 billion people on Earth and we are already having trouble feeding them. Stir in rapidly changing climates and you end up with famine on a massive scale.
And it is beyond simple vanity to say "Well I'm all right so I don't give a damn if other people starve as a result of my actions."
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Well, we know that C02 has a greenhouse effect itself, that can be easily tested in the lab.
While that is true, it is also very weak, and almost micro sized if you compare it to something like Water Vapor.
We also know that the temperature in the last 200 years rose at a rate far higher than every climatic change in earth history. (I think more than 20 times faster)
I'll have to go and find a reference, but I'm pretty sure that is false, and I'm nearly sure that second part is false.
It is also clear by comparing the emissions to the atmosphere volume that human emmissions are having an effect in the C02 concentration.
Now that could quite possibly be true, however it is far from clear to say if the .4C or so of warming in the lower atmosphere is changing the climate and how much C02 has added to that warming when we were already in a warming period before the industrial revolution even started.
What reasons are there to say that theres no "manmade global warming" except the one: "I dont like it"?
Go do some studying?
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Global Warming Crisis feeds Global Food Crisis which threatens Global Overpopulation Crisis
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Go do some studying?
Why don't you? I've yet to hear a proper objection from you other than some rather cheap shots which even you must see the flaws of.
For instance you compared the effects of CO2 against water vapour but if there is no long term change in the amount of water vapour in the air then what does that mean in regards to global trends?
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The planet will survive. We won't.
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Go do some studying?
Why don't you? I've yet to hear a proper objection from you other than some rather cheap shots which even you must see the flaws of.
For instance you compared the effects of CO2 against water vapour but if there is no long term change in the amount of water vapour in the air then what does that mean in regards to global trends?
That is just it, what does it mean for global trends, we do not know. See the thing is, it has been proven c02 rises are correlated to temp rises(some studies even show temp rises first) So we know c02 has been rising along with temps, we also know that we were in a warming trend before the industrial revolution. So how much co2 have we added compared to the natural warming cycle? We don't know. Is it plausible or maybe even likely that we have added some effect to c02 concentrations. Of course. Could it be plausible that if we have increased the temp slightly. It sure is.
Taking cheap shots? Dang right. How can you not take cheap shots on a theory that says we are changing the climate due to adding co2, when we don't even know how much we have added nor how much temperature change this has caused if any. Add in people who scream every natural disaster is an effect of man-made global warming. Then add in people who just about say anything that is not normal is caused by global warming. Because honestly when people claim that you can't use any event happening in weather to prove them wrong. So Kara you tell me, how can I not use cheap shots on a theory which is basically all cheap shots itself?
You know another thing, if I remember correctly, all you have ever done is take cheap shots at my "cheap shots" and have never expressed what or why you believe, which I have made myself pretty clear.
Once again I will go ahead and re-re-re-link this very good link on greenhouse gasses.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/)
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Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 450,000 years:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png)
So who still thinks we're a major cause of global warming?
Every circa 100 000 years the (average annual?) temperature was above zero Celsius in the region near Vostok. We just happen to live in the warmer times, which aren't as warm (in terms of peak temp) as they were 125k and 325k years ago.
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It must have been the Woolly Essuvees back then causing all that warming :P
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Ah screw it. The world is 4.5 billion years old, and has survived much worse than we could ever have thrown at it in the last 200 years. Its pretty vain to think that we are going to destroy the planet and wipe out so much when the natural cycle of the world has killed off most of the species who have ever inhabited it here. Let things happen as they would and ADAPT. Thats what life on here is best at.
I could have sworn you were a creationist...
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Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 450,000 years:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png)
So who still thinks we're a major cause of global warming?
Every circa 100 000 years the (average annual?) temperature was above zero Celsius in the region near Vostok. We just happen to live in the warmer times, which aren't as warm (in terms of peak temp) as they were 125k and 325k years ago.
Ohh....that will mean we have to wait another 10k-35k years until the next time the earth cools down 'naturally'. Hmmm....sad....thats really sad.
Ok, if we are not the main problem, then we are the main contributors.
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Ohh....that will mean we have to wait another 10k-35k years until the next time the earth cools down 'naturally'. Hmmm....sad....thats really sad.
Considering what happened after the Medieval Warm Period, I would not say that.
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Add in people who scream every natural disaster is an effect of man-made global warming. Then add in people who just about say anything that is not normal is caused by global warming. Because honestly when people claim that you can't use any event happening in weather to prove them wrong. So Kara you tell me, how can I not use cheap shots on a theory which is basically all cheap shots itself?
Seriously? That's where you're going with your argument? The man on the street doesn't understand the science therefore the science must be wrong?
I doubt you'll find many serious climatologists blaming everything on global warming. So to blame the fact that the odd lunatic (and you get them in every branch of science) wants to blame it for everything as a reason to discredit the theory is not only unscientific but hugely dishonest. And that's why I say you take cheap shots.
You know another thing, if I remember correctly, all you have ever done is take cheap shots at my "cheap shots" and have never expressed what or why you believe, which I have made myself pretty clear.
If you haven't guessed where I stand then you're not paying attention. I'm with the scientific consensus on the matter because I have always felt that only a fool goes against the consensus unless they have specialised knowledge in the field. The average person does not have the detailed knowledge to decide in either direction on this matter.
Once again I will go ahead and re-re-re-link this very good link on greenhouse gasses.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/)
You seriously trust a website by Steve Milloy? A man who took money from the tobacco companies in order to write rubbish about how there was no link between second hand smoke and cancer? A man who went against the Clean Air Act on the grounds that pollution was not a hazard to health and was merely a matter of aesthetics? A man who champions the use of DDT? And finally a man who 3 days after 9/11 and before any serious scientific study had been carried out on why they fell claimed that the towers would not have fallen had the designers used asbestos fireproofing on the towers?
And that's before we get onto his views about evolution! :rolleyes:
**** me, I was going to take you on over the science but if that's the wagon you're hitching yourself to I don't think there's any further point in this debate.
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Seriously? That's where you're going with your argument? The man on the street doesn't understand the science therefore the science must be wrong?
I doubt you'll find many serious climatologists blaming everything on global warming. So to blame the fact that the odd lunatic (and you get them in every branch of science) wants to blame it for everything as a reason to discredit the theory is not only unscientific but hugely dishonest. And that's why I say you take cheap shots.
Who said I'm using that to dis-credit global warming? I don't need to list idiots views to defend why I think why I think. I was listing why I as others take cheap shots. When all you hear is idiots screaming this and that you can't help but get frustrated. Like climatologists suggesting that meteorologists lose their seals if they didn't endorse global warming. Also idiots who gave the Nobel Peace prize to Al Gore, who ripped off the CGI arctic scene from "The Day After Tomorrow" to use in his film about global warming. Or normal "man on the street" who says to put oil chiefs on trial from saying there is no global warming.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange)
And don't get me started on the idiot that claimed everyone who denies global warming is a traitor. If those are men on the streets, then your streets are full of them, and the real scientists you say go against this view certainly are not splitting their pants jumping up to squash these idiots. Could it be they don't wanna lose their funding or is just silent approval, you tell me.
If you haven't guessed where I stand then you're not paying attention. I'm with the scientific consensus on the matter because I have always felt that only a fool goes against the consensus unless they have specialised knowledge in the field. The average person does not have the detailed knowledge to decide in either direction on this matter.
I already knew where you stood, but I want to know why you stand there. But over all you are saying you stand there just because the consensus is there? So the consensus hasn't been known before to be totally stupid and wrong? This doesn't interest you?
(http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.gif)
Even though c02 from supposedly humans has been going on for decades even though the real warming didn't start until 1975 or such? Then when it did start it went from cool to warm in a matter of two or three years even though co2 didn't rise very fast in those same years. It doesn't interest you that despite co2 still rising, the general consensus is we haven't warmed in the past 10 years?
You don't find this interesting either?
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001319verification_of_ipcc.html (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001319verification_of_ipcc.html)
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Global dimming. Look it up.
Not to mention that your graph contradicts your assertion that the warming started before the industrial revolution.
I already knew where you stood, but I want to know why you stand there. But over all you are saying you stand there just because the consensus is there? So the consensus hasn't been known before to be totally stupid and wrong?
And it isn't more stupid to dump the consensus simply because it may have been wrong in the past? Especially when you're dumping it on the basis of evidence provided by flim-flam artists and corporate whores?
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Global dimming. Look it up.
Not to mention that your graph contradicts your assertion that the warming started before the industrial revolution.
I already knew where you stood, but I want to know why you stand there. But over all you are saying you stand there just because the consensus is there? So the consensus hasn't been known before to be totally stupid and wrong?
And it isn't more stupid to dump the consensus simply because it may have been wrong in the past? Especially when you're dumping it on the basis of evidence provided by flim-flam artists and corporate whores?
No my graph just covers a little, this graph on the other hand, says we have been warming since coming out of the little ice.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png)
And I never said for one that I'm dumping the science and secondly, not because of the idiots but for the fact that the truth of the matter is we just don't know. While I consider myself skeptical of man made global warming, I am actually consider myself more to the middle ground. As I said in my first post, could we be warming the planet sure, but when everyone starts saying the ice caps are melting and the climate is changing due to a mean .4C at the very surface you lose me quickly. I am not dumb or close minded to say for a certainty that we are or are not warming the climate, once again I'm in the we just don't have the records or evidence to say.
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Oh, here it finally is, the "we're coming out of a mini ice age" nonsense. Nice of you to get both that and the medieval warm period bollocks on the same graph. Pity neither of them have anything to do with real science though. Let's also ignore the fact that a planet doesn't just suddenly snap out of an ice age, mini or not without a reason. Cause if you don't ignore it you might have to explain it. And then we'd just get into that whole "The sun is warmer" bollocks. :rolleyes:
The fact that you latched onto JunkScience.com so firmly instead of actually bothering to check if it was even remotely credible was all the proof I really needed that you aren't even remotely interested in actually seeing both sides of the debate. And now after I've pointed out what a load of bollocks your chosen guide was you still persist in trying to argue you are correct. The fact that your supposedly excellent guide to the flaws in the global warming theory turned out to be an often-wrong corporate shill's work should have made you question if the stuff you believed from his website actually had some basis in fact.
But you haven't. You've simply trotted out the same tired old arguments from the GW sceptics handbook without even bothering to check if they are wrong.
The answers to every single point you have brought up are available if you had wanted to read them. You've ignored the fact that water vapour isn't going to cause global warming since it will simply precipitate out if there is too much in the air. You've ignored that your graph showing no rise in the last 10 years is simply a smoothing error caused by the fact that as you know damn well 1998 was the biggest el nino year for over a century. You've ignored the fact that the so-called medieval warm period was a regional effect rather than a global one. I can only assume I'll be hearing that old chestnut about growing grapes in southern England next.
In short you've ignored every single piece of scientific evidence refuting your chosen view. You are simply doing the Young Earth Creationist's trick of looking for something you can pretend is scientific in order to justify the beliefs you already hold and then claiming that cause there seems to be a disagreement it's a perfectly valid point to say that the science is controversial.
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WeatherOp, DS9er, you may not be aware that there is an extremely large body of hard-earned, well-analyzed, peer-reviewed research on global warming.
This has been conducted by scientists going out in the field, digging up ice, laboring over instruments, and collating massive bodies of data. The data has been reviewed by scientists of all opinions and on both sides of the ideological spectrum.
The consensus has been that human beings are causing global warming.
I suggest you check out JSTOR or other repositories of peer-reviewed research online.
Global warming is not just a hypothesis built on a few flimsy pieces of data. It is a hypothesis built on large amounts of data and extremely rigorous studies. There are genuine experts in this field, the same way there are in plasma physics, structural engineering, or automotive technology, and the overwhelming majority of them agree that global warming is real, human-actuated, and dangerous.
Also, please don't nitpick at the use of the word 'hypothesis' -- in the scientific sense, this is just one step below a theory, which is very nearly the pinnacle of certainty.
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Oh, here it finally is, the "we're coming out of a mini ice age" nonsense. Nice of you to get both that and the medieval warm period bollocks on the same graph. Pity neither of them have anything to do with real science though. Let's also ignore the fact that a planet doesn't just suddenly snap out of an ice age, mini or not without a reason. Cause if you don't ignore it you might have to explain it. And then we'd just get into that whole "The sun is warmer" bollocks. :rolleyes:
First of do you know anything of weather patterns such as NAO, AO, MJO, PNA or PDO? You honestly think that the sun is the only cycle the earth goes in? Check this out.
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/pdo.html (http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/pdo.html)
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ (http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/)
Correlate that with the temp graph I shown up above. Climate shifts don't happen quickly? That is bullcrap, an El Nino can go to an El Nina in a month. A NAO going from positive to negative in winter will let storms in cold air dive down into North America while a positive NAO will not. How fast can that change? In a week.
The planet can't snap out of an ice age quickly, I'd agree with that. But then again this wasn't a warming of 4-5C. Do you realize all the warming or cooling in the past 1000 years has been less than 1C? Do you realize that for the past 1000 years we have been below normal, except for the little period around the Medieval period.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html)
Apparently, you are saying these guys are crap. But in any case they take more precedence than you.
The fact that you latched onto JunkScience.com so firmly instead of actually bothering to check if it was even remotely credible was all the proof I really needed that you aren't even remotely interested in actually seeing both sides of the debate. And now after I've pointed out what a load of bollocks your chosen guide was you still persist in trying to argue you are correct. The fact that your supposedly excellent guide to the flaws in the global warming theory turned out to be an often-wrong corporate shill's work should have made you question if the stuff you believed from his website actually had some basis in fact.
But you haven't. You've simply trotted out the same tired old arguments from the GW sceptics handbook without even bothering to check if they are wrong.
You kidding right? I've seen both sides of the debate. Latched on to the site? Hardly. But I will admit it is a cool site. But one thing I have seen is maybe he isn't as wacky as you said he was. Just goggled a little on DDT and found stuff leading to this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/8kristof.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/8kristof.html)
Not saying he isn't a quack, but what you said would be perfectly in line with what I'd think a die-hard conservative would say about The Independent.
The answers to every single point you have brought up are available if you had wanted to read them. You've ignored the fact that water vapour isn't going to cause global warming since it will simply precipitate out if there is too much in the air. You've ignored that your graph showing no rise in the last 10 years is simply a smoothing error caused by the fact that as you know damn well 1998 was the biggest el nino year for over a century. You've ignored the fact that the so-called medieval warm period was a regional effect rather than a global one. I can only assume I'll be hearing that old chestnut about growing grapes in southern England next.
Actually you are wrong.
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html (http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html)
Top of Page Water Vapor
Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which is why it is addressed here first. However, changes in its conentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization. The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood.
As the temperature of the atmosphere rises, more water is evaporated from ground storage (rivers, oceans, reservoirs, soil). Because the air is warmer, the relative humidity can be higher (in essence, the air is able to 'hold' more water when its warmer), leading to more water vapor in the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, the higher concentration of water vapor is then able to absorb more thermal IR energy radiated from the Earth, thus further warming the atmosphere. The warmer atmosphere can then hold more water vapor and so on and so on. This is referred to as a 'positive feedback loop'. However, huge scientific uncertainty exists in defining the extent and importance of this feedback loop. As water vapor increases in the atmosphere, more of it will eventually also condense into clouds, which are more able to reflect incoming solar radiation (thus allowing less energy to reach the Earth's surface and heat it up). The future monitoring of atmospheric processes involving water vapor will be critical to fully understand the feedbacks in the climate system leading to global climate change. As yet, though the basics of the hydrological cycle are fairly well understood, we have very little comprehension of the complexity of the feedback loops. Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries, though satellite measurements, combined with balloon data and some in-situ ground measurements indicate generally positive trends in global water vapor.
Water vapor levels can change.
A smoothing error you say?
(http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/new%20graph.bmp)
In short you've ignored every single piece of scientific evidence refuting your chosen view. You are simply doing the Young Earth Creationist's trick of looking for something you can pretend is scientific in order to justify the beliefs you already hold and then claiming that cause there seems to be a disagreement it's a perfectly valid point to say that the science is controversial.
Umm, do what? So I love weather, just to justify my beliefs? And I am against global warming just because it is controversial? Now that really is funny. Do you know I actually don't care much for climate? I love to Nowcast, watch hurricanes and tornadoes, because take it from me, forecasting is very, very hard and I'm still learning.
The fact of the matter is you know relativity little about weather. That is very clear since you think weather patterns are crap.
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Ah screw it. The world is 4.5 billion years old, and has survived much worse than we could ever have thrown at it in the last 200 years....
I know this was from a while ago, but I really got a kick out of this. Thats not the point yah know. The point is that WE probably wont, or at least we will be very uncomfortable.
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All these charts and theories and no one has taken the time to consider the most important points:
Does Santa have flood insurance?
Will there be toys for X-mas?
Can Elves swim?
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Karajorma, the problem with being right so often is that you forget to recognize when you're actually wrong. :)
I'm surprised you so quickly questioned the credibility of WeatherOp's sources, while ignoring the fact that many researchers are forced by necessity to selectively interpret their data in order to ensure continued funding. Global warming is a political agenda, not a scientific one.
National Review interview with Lawrence Solomon (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmJjNWUyMzJlOTJmMDU0NzhjMTEzOWQxN2EwYzJhYTA=)
...many of those who didn’t toe the government line lost their funding, were drummed out of their jobs, found it impossible to publish in crucial journals, discovered that they were pariahs in their academic departments, or were exposed to furious criticism in the press of a sort most research scientists will never encounter, including being compared to Holocaust Deniers by quite mainstream-media figures like Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes. That is certainly quite enough persecution to have a chilling effect on debate.
Article in The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html)
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
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This whole thread seems to me like finding an excuse to keep up your style of living :ick:
Central-Europe proofs that you can have an working modern economy while protecting the environment. Good Example is Germany, the world's export champion nation. Few other countries have this strict restrictions and taxes for polluters :nod:
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Karajorma, the problem with being right so often is that you forget to recognize when you're actually wrong. :)
Sorry Goober but I'm not wrong. Either that quote is out of context or we're dealing with a professional bull**** merchant there. Look at 1998 on that graph WeatherOp posted. It should be fairly obvious that it's an outlier. The fact that it also corresponds to the strongest El Nino year of the century should be more than enough to convince you of that. So to claim that temperatures have gone down since 1998 is highly misleading.
Any fool can cherry pick data and then claim that there is a different trend to the overall one. Look at that graph again for the years 1985-1992. The average temperature is going down. I guess from that data it must be obvious global warming isn't real or ended in 1992!
Of course when you look at the 30 year trend you can see what bollocks that claim would be because the overall trend is obviously an increase. We simply don't have the data for the next 20 years. So anyone claiming that temperatures have plateaued in the last 10 years is obviously talking bull****. Because no credible scientist would take data out of context like that.
As for the claims that people have been drummed out of their jobs for supporting global warming denial, get me a list. Let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes. Cause I reckon that it's nothing more than same claim YEC's use that they got drummed out for spreading their bollocks. They weren't fired cause of politics. They were fired cause due to an obvious bias they tainted all their work to say exactly what they wanted it to say. Not cause it was good science that was politically unpalatable.
First of do you know anything of weather patterns such as NAO, AO, MJO, PNA or PDO? You honestly think that the sun is the only cycle the earth goes in? Check this out.
Something always drives such circles. What is driving this one? We aren't talking about simple weather patterns here. We're talking about 10,000 or 100,000 year cycles.
Correlate that with the temp graph I shown up above. Climate shifts don't happen quickly? That is bullcrap, an El Nino can go to an El Nina in a month.
And that's a long term global event is it? To claim that cause a short term effect can change in a short time that it means a long term effect can also change in a short time is ludicrous.
The planet can't snap out of an ice age quickly, I'd agree with that. But then again this wasn't a warming of 4-5C. Do you realize all the warming or cooling in the past 1000 years has been less than 1C? Do you realize that for the past 1000 years we have been below normal, except for the little period around the Medieval period.
There is no such thing as normal. It's a fallacy to claim that Earth has an optimum value it returns to. It's an incorrect assumption that you can simply draw a line through a temperature graph and say anything above is colder while anything below is warmer. The Earth is a very complex system. To claim that it always has a simple baseline temperature it likes to be at is just plain silly.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html)
Apparently, you are saying these guys are crap. But in any case they take more precedence than you.
As paleoclimatic records have become more numerous, it has become apparent that "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum" temperatures were warmer over the Northern Hemisphere than during the subsequent "Little Ice Age", and also comparable to temperatures during the early 20th century.
What was the southern hemisphere doing at the same time? Cause if it was cold then the whole medieval warm period disappears as soon as you average the temperatures.
I never said those guys are wrong. Their science is being misrepresented. Find me proof that they claim that the medieval warm period was a global event.
Finally any fool can look at that graph and see that even during the medieval warm period temperatures were still much lower than they are today. So even if I believe that nonsense something must be driving the much greater change in temperature we see today.
You kidding right? I've seen both sides of the debate.
Then why are you dragging out patent nonsense that has been discredited already by one of the sides? You are STILL talking about the medieval warm period. I'm having to explain to you that it's not a global event. That's on page one of the anti-denial handbook. How can you not know that if you have looked at both sides of the argument? Surely you must be able to prove that the event was worldwide or that it doesn't matter in some way if you really have read both sides and come to an informed decision on the matter?
Latched on to the site? Hardly. But I will admit it is a cool site. But one thing I have seen is maybe he isn't as wacky as you said he was. Just goggled a little on DDT and found stuff leading to this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/8kristof.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/8kristof.html)
Not saying he isn't a quack, but what you said would be perfectly in line with what I'd think a die-hard conservative would say about The Independent.
Except that he doesn't merely advocate in-house spraying. He advocates widespread use and blames the fact DDT isn't used for EVERY single malaria death.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3186
But other attacks only seem like fiction. A web page on junkscience.com features a live Malaria Death Clock next to a photo of Rachel Carson, holding her responsible for more deaths than malaria has caused in total.
Also http://kenethmiles.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_kenethmiles_archive.html#107570569615970184
He is a quack.
You've ignored the fact that water vapour isn't going to cause global warming since it will simply precipitate out if there is too much in the air.
Actually you are wrong.
Actually no. I've simply not made myself clear enough and you've responded to the wrong thing. I'm not denying that water vapour is a greenhouse gas. I'm not denying that increased water vapour will make things hotter. I'm pointing out that water won't drive climate change. If you were to double the amount of water in the air today it would simply precipitate back out over time. Something else has to also be keeping things hot for water vapour to stay in the air. Even the quote you posted says that water vapour is a feedback effect rather than causal.
A smoothing error you say?
(http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/new%20graph.bmp)
I can't even begin to debunk that until you tell me what it's a graph of. Right now it's two wavy lines. I will however point out the argument I made to Goober about cherry-picking and taking data out of context.
Umm, do what? So I love weather, just to justify my beliefs? And I am against global warming just because it is controversial?
Nope. You've decided or allowed yourself to be persuaded that global warming isn't man made and now you're fitting evidence against that hypothesis rather than approaching it with an open mind.
That is exactly what YECs do and it's not science there either. Hence why I pointed out the comparison.
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No matter what anyone believes, global warming is real. There are a number of causes which could lead to global warming. During the last Ice Age, the Earth moved further away from the sun which caused a massive decease in temperature. Who's to say it couldn't go the other way? We get closer to the Sun, we boil. The Sun can expand. Eventually the heat will be so intense that nothing will be able to stop it. Life on Earth will all die out some day. Perhaps we would have colonized other planets by that time. Either way, the Earth is boiling, life is dying, we are polluting the skies. There are many causes for global warming. Most of them we cannot reverse. Global warming caused by Humans will allow us to learn from our mestakes after Manhatten becomes the largest aquarium on the planet. We will learn to stop toxifying the skies and letting in greenhouse gasses with a big hug. We may be able to stop our own apocalyptic disasters, but we won't be able to stop nature from taking its own course. The Earth may move closer to the Sun. The Sun may expand and boil the Earth. Either way, where I am we can't even go outside. We can't even reach our swimming poop without burning up. The Earth will one day boil, and we won't be able to stop it. :(
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Hey, if we all pretend that we haven't got a problem, maybe it'll stop!
Regardless of what's causing it, it's happening, the question, for me, isn't 'who started it', it's 'what are we going to do about it?'
We can argue about 'who is to blame' for years, but saying 'tough it up' is probably one of the dumbest ideas ever, because you can be pretty sure that the people ignoring the fact that there is a problem, regardless of the source, will be the first people screaming 'Where are the government?!?' when it's their homes that are threatened.
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So not fair....IF we are able to discover subspace by 2300, we can just inter-system jump to Delta Serpantis....and start again....I don't think the human race would exist by 2300 :ick:
So what can we do? I mean, how can we ensure we, humans keep surviving? All I can say is, adaptation through evolution. If we are able to to survive, then the next few generations will adapt. So, all we have to do is to make sure we survive long enough for us to adapt to it.
But in the mean time, everybody we know (That means Goober, Kara, Flipside, Titan etc. etc. etc. etc. and myself) will all have to suffer from what mother nature is throwing at us. We are not gods, you know.
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I was inspired...
Manmade global warming is a reasonable bet; it is worthwhile to assume that manmade global warming exists. If it does, we win all; if it does not, we lose nothing.
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If you are a person who can persuade the government/community/companies to stop emitting that much greenhouse gas, please do so. The future of the world will lie in your hands. It's not just the humans, but the animals that are in that area.
Do your research and you'll find a good 80% of the warming is completely natural.
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Regardless of what's causing it, it's happening, the question, for me, isn't 'who started it', it's 'what are we going to do about it?'
if only all would think that way instead of...
Hey, if we all pretend that we haven't got a problem, maybe it'll stop!
...this bull**** but this seems the later is the the popular opinion :mad:
NO 80% if not completely natural. IT WOULD BE over a time of ABOUT 15000 YEARS but not 100!
You wanna do something smart? Protest against pollution. Especially you USA citizens :blah:
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Do your research and you'll find a good 80% of the warming is completely natural.
Are you going to quote a creditable source for that or are you expecting us to believe a figure you pulled out of your arse?
No matter what anyone believes, global warming is real. There are a number of causes which could lead to global warming. During the last Ice Age, the Earth moved further away from the sun which caused a massive decease in temperature.
Ummm. No it didn't. There are many varied causes for the ice ages. Earth's orbit changing was not one of them.
Let's not go off the deep end here. Global warming does not mean the end of the human race. There are a lot of people wo say that but it's nonsense. Humans are supremely adaptable. Even the worst projections for global warming don't suggest the kind of runaway effect that affected Venus.
What is debatable is how much of the human race will survive. As I said before, too much of the human race stands on knife edge of starvation, throw in a rapidly changing climate and you will see more famines.
But it's never going to wipe us out. Well not unless it causes WWIII.
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Somebody asked to clarify my stand on this, I think.
About the fancy scientific independence ideals, read IPCC's mission. It clearly states that it researches human caused climate changes. If I were nasty, I could point out that anything coming from there also is biased, since their personal working places depend on finding those connections.
Well, we know that C02 has a greenhouse effect itself, that can be easily tested in the lab.
Yes, I agree with this.
We also know that the temperature in the last 200 years rose at a rate far higher than every climatic change in earth history. (I think more than 20 times faster)
That is a pretty bold statement, regarding the whole earth history. What is the evidence supporting this?
I just wonder, why shouldnt C02 heat up the earth if it is undoubtedly having the effect of holding back infrared rays, while letting "normal" and ultraviolet light through.
It might be worthwile to check out this, actually quite fresh data from last year. I found the Spencer's article itself (not linked here) quite interesting, and I find it quite well fulfilling the scientific requirements. Worth checking out, definetely. Oh, and I know about guys views about God, so no need to point that out . It shouldn't really matter if he has a point about climate, which I suspect he has, having been constructing NASA's weather measurement satellites for some years.
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070320152338-19776.pdf
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875
Shortly: Atmosphere contains more H2O than Co2. H2O is a lot worse than CO2 in terms of green house effect. Since the H2O vapour effects are not understood, anything coming from the computer models must be treated with uncertainity. In the IPCC's report it is stated that the H2O content remains pretty much constant in atmosphere, while there is no explanation why it is so - and it is written that this isn't a well understood area in the models. In Spencer's article, it is shown that there is a flaw in the climate models used in predicting the temperatures, the measured effect is actually the opposite of what is stated in the models.
One of the interesting factors here is the sea level rise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise). It has been been going up before CO2 outputs were so large as nowadays. The important factor is that there is no consensus about if the sea level rise is accelerating since 1900s, something what would be expected if the CO2 had a large impact.
It is also clear by comparing the emissions to the atmosphere volume that human emmissions are having an effect in the C02 concentration.
I'm quite sure human actions have a measurable effect on CO2 concentration.
Then again somebody questioned the sun activity as causes here. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with satellite instruments measuring the solar flux, but it would be interesting to see if they can measure a fraction of watt up there in absolute terms. For your reference, it is not that easy on the ground, either. Yeah, put a sensor there and so on, no problemo about that, but how do you do it exactly when there are sampling times, measurement frequencies, sensor types, measurement areas, noise and so on that affect the result...
What is known is that the solar activity cycle does change climate. However, this seems to be dismissed as there is no current evidence it could have changed, but this could be a limit of the sensors themselves. I suppose it will be better seen as the sun starts flaring again and dedicated sensors will be measuring these effects.
--- To the other topic then ---
Flipside brought an interesting point of view, it doesn't really matter what is causing it but can we stop it? It could be dangerous, if we don't know what it is about. Soot in the atmosphere has a documented effect of dimming the irradiance on ground level. I haven't heard about this option from any agencies, but it is quite certain that it would work, based on experiences with volcano eruptions. The thing is, we already have the delivery equipment to do this, namely the airplanes. It is the fastest, best-known method, and could be started almost immediately if this was seen as a real threat.
Anything else is multi-billion euro business. One of the things that I always thought strange that Western countries are supposed to curtain their relatively stabile emissions, while developing countries that hold most of the population on Earth can put out as much as they want. Personal buying decision effecting this would be stopping buying anything from China and India.
Unfortunately, views like this are not politically correct, but are the only reasonable way if the global warming is really a threat. Common sense dictates that the output must be slowed down where it is growing at the fastest rate, especially when quite a lot of people more are doing it. Otherwise, it will end up so that Western countries give up the technological edge, and turn out to be putting out a lot more emissions while developing countries do nothing!
Off the record, this is coming from a person that lives 3 km away from the sea, about 10 m above the sea level. And I'm already regretting I put two hours of my weekend on this post, since nobody is going to take it seriously anyway.
Mika
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I was inspired...
Manmade global warming is a reasonable bet; it is worthwhile to assume that manmade global warming exists. If it does, we win all; if it does not, we lose nothing.
...by pascal's wager.
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I think that society at large would greatly benefit if we would all shut the Hell up about 'global warming', and start talking about pollution. Because, while 'global warming' can be contested (e.g., real/not real or man-made/natural), pollution is universally considered as both a real and bad thing.
Then again, everyone loves a good conspiracy theory. :ick:
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I think that society at large would greatly benefit if we would all shut the Hell up about 'global warming', and start talking about pollution. Because, while 'global warming' can be contested (e.g., real/not real or man-made/natural), pollution is universally considered as both a real and bad thing.
Then again, everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.
Reduction of overall pollution is the good thing that could result from curtaining CO2 emissions. However, to do this all phases of production of a certain product must be considered more carefully. It does not help to get a nice and shiny energy-saving light bulb if it is manufactured in China, and cannot be recycled. By the way, computers themselves cause quite a lot of pollution during their physical existance. From digging up the metals and gathering the plastics, up till the point someone needs electricity to run the formidable double X800 in the latest Kill-'em-all, and even after disposing the thing poisonous materials prove to be a health hazard in the dumps.
Mika
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Kara, Goober, I respect both of you guys immensely, but I don't think you're going to reach an agreement here. (This is the Internet, after all.) And it's painful for us little 'uns to see you two fighting.
Although I didn't see much of a response to my earlier post, I think Kara's brought up some of the points contained in it. I just think it's striking that the scientific community has come to such a consensus on the issue, but we're not willing to accept it. Is distrust of scientists so widespread? Or do we seriously believe we can interpret reams of carefully gathered, rigorously analyzed, peer-reviewed data better than they can?
I am willing to put my faith in the broader scientific community on this issue. They say there is real, dangerous, human-caused global warming, and I'm ready to listen.
Perhaps we can all find some common ground on this issue. What evidence would the dissenters need to see in order to be convinced?
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But it's never going to wipe us out. Well not unless it causes WWIII.
Ummm....I think that is like 50-50 chance. And WWIII wouldn't be about conquering land nor showing of military might, but over water or/and fuel. I believe that because there is so much famine and drought that some countries (3rd World Countries) would attempt to capture other country's water sources. On the other hand, a lot of the developed countries would be fighting over the petroleum for their weaponary. So, the developed can't fight because they don't have fuel, and the developing can't fight because they don't have food or water to feed their men.
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Pascal's wager, eh, was best and most humorously opposed by Pratchett on the philosophical grounds. I think the story went so that the guy who proposed that believing in gods is a good call, since you lose nothing, finally died and met a group of angry Gods who had certain opinions about people being smart-asses...
Meaning that if you don't certainly know the outcomes of each, there is no such thing as Pascal's wager.
What I would need to hear, is pretty much already answered. As far as I remember, there are satellite missions coming to measure the cloud effect, and also more accurate solar output measurements. Then water vapor cycle, it being the largest contributor to green house gases, must be known better, also answered partly by satellite missions.
Also, there are some comments about the longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere. Some reports state it could stay there for 200 years. Where is the measurement data of this? How could you even monitor a single CO2 particle?
The problem of IPCC report is that it is not peer-reviewed by normal scientific standards. This can be seen from the US senate committee report:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb
Several interesting links follow from there. Of course, you can spot shady names like Gray and McIntyre in the author list there. But, what if they have a point? It was exactly names like these that showed the Mann's Hockey stick graph to be in a serious statistical error, as the software predicted the same graph for random numbers. Mind you, this graph came through that IPCC's peer-reviewed process. And was actually noted by those who are generally called climate sceptics (=nutters, in this case, it seems). Also, there seems to be quite a lot of inside "dirt" about the IPCC there. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about that, but this should be kept in mind also.
And what I have seen, no, I haven't noticed any consensus about the issue what is actually causing it. But the good thing about science is that sceptism is part of it, and if you are right, there is no other option for the resisters than to accept the facts after studies are completed. I think we are only starting to see the peer-reviewing process. The good thing about Science is that it corrects itself all the time.
Mika
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Pascal's Wager is a rather flawed argument. I've never particularly liked it as an argument. I could use it to say that you must spend 10 trillion dollars protecting Earth against the mutant space badger I believe is going to eat Earth.
And any argument that can justify that is obviously false. :p
Kara, Goober, I respect both of you guys immensely, but I don't think you're going to reach an agreement here. (This is the Internet, after all.) And it's painful for us little 'uns to see you two fighting.
I'm not fighting with Goober. He said I was wrong, I pointed out why I wasn't. Pretty simple. :)
Although I didn't see much of a response to my earlier post, I think Kara's brought up some of the points contained in it. I just think it's striking that the scientific community has come to such a consensus on the issue, but we're not willing to accept it. Is distrust of scientists so widespread? Or do we seriously believe we can interpret reams of carefully gathered, rigorously analyzed, peer-reviewed data better than they can?
And that's what scares me about the anti-global warming position. I see echoes of several other anti-science positions there.
I worry whenever people without training in a subject insist that they know better than people who spend their lives studying a subject. I especially worry when paid corporate advocates are taken as experts over actual scientists.
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All right, makes sense to me. And I concur when it comes to the echoes of anti-scientific thought. I don't like that.
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First about my basic statement about the rate of the climate change:
"More than ever, ->I think<- more than 20 times than ever before"
As I cannot (yet) prove this statement, in fact its an argument I reused, i have compared the official rate of temperature increase (0.6+-2 in 100 years) or ~0,7 as seen with the graph about the relative temperature in this thread with the temperatute history of earth from this article (scroll down) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record
Note that the graph is not on a linear scale, so take care with comparing.
Well, the results are unstatisfying enough as the picture isnt clear, big and detailed enough to realy prove my claim, but at least it isnt disproven as well. Try putting a "6°C in 1000 year change" anywhere in the graph, it should "increase" (I really cant find the correct word here :( ) faster than the graph itself. Though thats not a real prove for my claim, as the graph simply isnt detailed enough.
If I get some time I will do some more research, and tell you if I get evidence or if I am proven wrong.
About Mikas links (yes I read them), neither of them deny a manmade global warming, only the extent of it, to be more the extent of the positive feedback of water vapor.
Spencer writes
In my own case, I would rather be the researcher who discovers that global
warming will be relatively benign – after all, what sane person could wish catastrophic global warming upon humanity for selfish political or social engineering reasons?
stating himself he has a little bias towards "no global warming", only intending to balance all the bias (somehow I am reminded of conservapedia :/ )
Still, one of the better formulated critics.
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I think that society at large would greatly benefit if we would all shut the Hell up about 'global warming', and start talking about pollution. Because, while 'global warming' can be contested (e.g., real/not real or man-made/natural), pollution is universally considered as both a real and bad thing.
truth
somewhat relevant to the conversation (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html?ei=5087&em=&en=96ea5e98a35597da&ex=1214712000&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1214656207-zsUrXaZe7CkfrhcP2cbTUA)
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One of the reasons the media is stupid.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/143787 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/143787)
Hey, if we all pretend that we haven't got a problem, maybe it'll stop!
Regardless of what's causing it, it's happening, the question, for me, isn't 'who started it', it's 'what are we going to do about it?'
We can argue about 'who is to blame' for years, but saying 'tough it up' is probably one of the dumbest ideas ever, because you can be pretty sure that the people ignoring the fact that there is a problem, regardless of the source, will be the first people screaming 'Where are the government?!?' when it's their homes that are threatened.
I wish I could agree with you Flip, but the argument that if we do something and the core of man made global warming is false that is hurts nothing is extremely flawed. First off, there are idiots who scream and fuss when a tv station breaks programming due to a tornado warning. Same goes when people leave there home due to a Cat 5 hurricane coming in and it weakens to a Cat 2 at landfall and does very little to their home. The thing is that comes from just short term events, I don't know how it will happen with a big thing like global warming. Then you have the media, which will take no time before they start shredding organizations, meteorologists and climatologists on how they have lead everyone and governments off.
So, if this all turns out to be false it could really, really hurt government programs such as the NOAA in both name and possibly funds later on down the road, because it's all gonna be put on them by nominees in future elections. And then comes the possibility of UN sanctions on nations if they do not comply to reduce co2 emissions. So, it could possibly end up a huge deal if this is proved wrong later on. That is why we've got to be sure we are right.
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And you really think that all the repeated claims that scientific experts from NOAA are wrong and the layperson is right isn't hurting them? You're complaining that they might get hurt down the line if they are proved wrong and all the while putting the boot in yourself and trying to prove them wrong with what in mostly spurious nonsense. :rolleyes:
As for the media being idiots. Since when have the media NOT been idiots when it comes to science?
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And you really think that all the repeated claims that scientific experts from NOAA are wrong and the layperson is right isn't hurting them? You're complaining that they might get hurt down the line if they are proved wrong and all the while putting the boot in yourself and trying to prove them wrong with what in mostly spurious nonsense. :rolleyes:
Well, for one, I am not publishing anything calling them idiots. But, then again as you say if I'm spouting nonsense, no harm will really come anyways. But, it should be noted, just because I don't agree with all their stances on global warming, the NOAA and all the programs under them(NHC, NWS) are very crucial for current weather to short range forecasts, and any harm that goes to those programs could really be bad and it's those programs that worry me.
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No one is saying that life is going to end or that we are going to destroy the planet. That would be be completely ****ing idiotic. However it is a different thing to point out that there are nearly 7 billion people on Earth and we are already having trouble feeding them. Stir in rapidly changing climates and you end up with famine on a massive scale.
And it is beyond simple vanity to say "Well I'm all right so I don't give a damn if other people starve as a result of my actions."
Africa's been starving for years, but few in the West give a damn. Why would they give a damn if global warming intensifies it?
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Because the same problem might put major US cities underwater.
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Africa's been starving for years, but few in the West give a damn. Why would they give a damn if global warming intensifies it?
Cause this time it might affect them.
Well, for one, I am not publishing anything calling them idiots.
You've pretty much refused to believe anything they say about global warming, believing your own interpretation of the matter. By doing so you help make the "scientific controversy" surrounding global warming seem more real. By implication you're accusing them either of being guilty of a hoax or being so biased that they can't see the truth. Neither of which is good for public confidence in them.
You also give aid to bull**** sites and groups like those belonging to Steve Millroy who are getting money for "research" into climate which otherwise might have gone to real scientists like NOAA. If companies like ExxonMobile weren't funding him they might actually have to accept that they won't manage to bury the truth about global warming under a pile of bull**** and might actually have to spend that money on real climate research.
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Africa's been starving for years, but few in the West give a damn. Why would they give a damn if global warming intensifies it?
Cause this time it might affect them.
Exactly, people will only care when they have to say "oh, a loaf of bread is 5 dollars now! How outrageous!"; they still won't care about people in Africa, just their own inconvenience.
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if anything we will care less about the starving africans.
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Not when they decide that they won't be starving if they stop sending you all their food.
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but they aren't sending use there food, they can't feed themselves now.
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You've pretty much refused to believe anything they say about global warming, believing your own interpretation of the matter. By doing so you help make the "scientific controversy" surrounding global warming seem more real. By implication you're accusing them either of being guilty of a hoax or being so biased that they can't see the truth. Neither of which is good for public confidence in them.
You also give aid to bull**** sites and groups like those belonging to Steve Millroy who are getting money for "research" into climate which otherwise might have gone to real scientists like NOAA. If companies like ExxonMobile weren't funding him they might actually have to accept that they won't manage to bury the truth about global warming under a pile of bull**** and might actually have to spend that money on real climate research.
Refused to accept anything they say about global warming? Nah, I actually agree with some of their points, and no where did I say I didn't believe everything they say.
Make the scientific controversy more real? It is real.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597 (http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597)
There is still alot of debating going on about global warming.
Now the say part is you decided to pull the old "the industry is funding the anti-global warming movement" which is actually pretty funny, due to everyone is funded by someone. Maybe the hippies fund the IPCC, as there is alot more hippies than rich old people. :p
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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/richard-lindzens-hol-testimony/
an interesting indirect "reply" to the op:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/north-pole-notes/#more-576
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Food for thought for those who are interested of the scientifical side of the human effects in global warming. Or at least in critical thinking in any case.
Tom Segalstad's homepage contains quite a lot of stuff regarding this. He is a professor from the university of Oslo. He was formerly a reviewer of the IPCC.
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef2.htm (Explains that it is impossible to melt polar ice caps with recent human addition of CO2 in atmosphere. Basic thermodynamics, college and elementary school level stuff. Contains references to published papers.)
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef3.htm (Critique that the measurements of the CO2 levels are not accurate. Especially drillings of the ice caps receive flak. The referenced Jaworowski's original paper regarding drillings can be found from here: http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/stoten92.pdf <- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READ) [Prof. Jaworowski was chairman of UNSCEAR]
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef4.htm (The ocean's capability absorb CO2)
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef5.htm (Calculation about the circulation time showing why IPCC's model's 200 years is impossible number. The result is that human output of CO2 is insignificant.)
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef6.htm (Conclusions)
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef7.htm (References)
Segalstad's homepage can be found at: http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef0.htm
Yeah, it is ugly, it looks like advert, but I found that all the stuff is pretty much downloadable, so it seems he doesn't have a personal interest in selling books at least. Information on his homepage is shortly referred in:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/np070707.pdf
Jaworowskis statement to US senate committee (2004) can be found at: http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm (includes references at the end). More of his critique can be found in:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/Jaworowski%20CO2%20EIR%202007.pdf
On first page, there is a reference to two Nature articles which state that review process of IPCC doesn't meet scientifical standards. This is further explained and examined in the article. Please see the actual measured data of CO2 (directly from atmosphere) spanning the whole industrial era. It is clearly shown that human effect in CO2 output (Page 8) is insignificant. The data was complied by Beck in 2007, including measurements by several Nobel prize winners. Contains references.
This is again Gray's response to call to abolish IPCC (Gray was reviewer in the beginning of the IPCC). This is regarding how temperatures are measured.
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1
Even though strikingly named, Gray has recently wrote a conclusion of criticism about these issues:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/Gray_Global-Warming-Scam_2008.pdf (This also contains references)
Then, this is the reviewing process of the IPCC. Worth reading for those who think there are a lot of scientist backing it up.
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/McLean_ipcc_review.pdf
One more numerical analysis of CO2.
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/Icecap_CarbonDioxide.pdf
Ach, I'm tired and cannot be bothered to write my thoughts about this yet. "I'll do that tomorrow"
Mika
EDIT: Stupid me writing in the middle of the night. Corrected Prof. Zakorowskis name to Jaworowski. I'm sorry about this mistake.
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I just wondered Mika, who tells the truth, your recent link(s) or the link(s) you gave us from page 3?
They are stating contradicting positions.
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Maybe the hippies fund the IPCC, as there is alot more hippies than rich old people. :p
Hippies are usually broke. :rolleyes:
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I just wondered Mika, who tells the truth, your recent link(s) or the link(s) you gave us from page 3?
They are stating contradicting positions.
I don't think he is trying to prove which one is right, more than just showing how much varying thoughts, data sets, and different reasons and theories there are on the subject. The fact of the matter is, the debate is not over like most of the media says, in fact the true debate is likely just getting started.
Nice sources Mika, I'll take the time to read through them tomorrow. Although, I'm pretty sure Gray will be counted a conservative dingbat by most on here. But despite his views, he is an extremely capable scientist.
Maybe the hippies fund the IPCC, as there is alot more hippies than rich old people. :p
Hippies are usually broke. :rolleyes:
If I used the word manic tree-huggers would that be better?
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I'm not pretty keen on the technical details of global warming but I've found an interesting link.
http://www.ncas.ac.uk/communications/nature_paper_destruction_of_ozone_june08.html
I don't really know much about this source, is it legit?
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Maybe the hippies fund the IPCC, as there is alot more hippies than rich old people. :p
So wait, against the proven fact I have that Steve Millroy, the GW sceptic you yourself cited, is funded at least in part by ExxonMobile you have an unproven assertion that scientists on the other side are funded by hippies?
I suppose you're going to tell me they funded NASA too.
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I think that was a joke. he used a smiley and everything.
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Not so much.
Now the say part is you decided to pull the old "the industry is funding the anti-global warming movement" which is actually pretty funny, due to everyone is funded by someone. Maybe the hippies fund the IPCC, as there is alot more hippies than rich old people. :p
As I pointed out the website he held up as an example of good science turned out to be run by a quack with a history of providing scientific sounding bull**** tailored to the requests of whoever paid him.
I'd love to see him try to do the same to IPCC.
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This topic= :lol:
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Not so much.
Now the say part is you decided to pull the old "the industry is funding the anti-global warming movement" which is actually pretty funny, due to everyone is funded by someone. Maybe the hippies fund the IPCC, as there is alot more hippies than rich old people. :p
As I pointed out the website he held up as an example of good science turned out to be run by a quack with a history of providing scientific sounding bull**** tailored to the requests of whoever paid him.
I'd love to see him try to do the same to IPCC.
Well the IPCC is funded by UNEP(United Nations Environment Programme) and lets look at there online store page.
http://www.earthprint.com/ (http://www.earthprint.com/)
You can make your own assumptions. ;)
And Kara you said this.
You also give aid to bull**** sites and groups like those belonging to Steve Millroy who are getting money for "research" into climate which otherwise might have gone to real scientists like NOAA. If companies like ExxonMobile weren't funding him they might actually have to accept that they won't manage to bury the truth about global warming under a pile of bull**** and might actually have to spend that money on real climate research.
So understandably you basically claimed that big oil pays for research to dis-prove global warming, which no doubt they likely do. So it is just as likely really the pro-global warming organizations pay off people to research to prove global warming. Now does the IPCC receive funding by radical green groups, who knows, but is it possible, yep.
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We should STIMULATE the greenhouse effect! Then we might just live trough the next ice age!.
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So understandably you basically claimed that big oil pays for research to dis-prove global warming, which no doubt they likely do. So it is just as likely really the pro-global warming organizations pay off people to research to prove global warming. Now does the IPCC receive funding by radical green groups, who knows, but is it possible, yep.
So as I stated before, I've got proof, you've got nothing but assertions.
And it's not just the funding that is the issue. If they fund actual science that's one thing. But if they fund research which throws out anything they disagree with then the science is tainted. The website you linked to has a habit of finding in favour of whoever paid them even when all the independent science on the matter states the opposite.
Milroy gets money from big tobacco - He finds that second hand smoking doesn't cause cancer.
Milroy gets money from pesticide manufacturers - He finds that indiscriminate spraying of DDT is called for to kill malaria.
Milroy gets money from ExxonMobile - Guess what he finds?
And before you start complaining I'm being paranoid have a look at this (http://www.physics.odu.edu/~weinstei/srhr/links/milloy-1.htm).
So quite frankly I wouldn't trust a word from that site and neither should you. The fact that you still consider it to be a good site is pretty telling about how willing you are to swallow obvious corporate bull**** due to an unsubstantiated feeling that global warming research is funded by hippies.
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Kara's right. Milroy is rotten.
Too many distinct groups (not just the IPCC but NASA, independent researchers, universities, academies) have found compelling data for global warming for it all to be caused by environmentalist funding.
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Now that I'm on vacation and enjoy the +28 degrees of Celsius here (6 degrees less than in the beginning of the 1900s actually), it is quite difficult to find any motivation to write here. Anyways, I also had sometime to refine my thoughts about this.
First of all, I find it quite surprising how the hell IPCC can even think of using those ice drillings as a proof of climate warming by CO2. It is pretty much inconceivable how the hell they have managed to make that go through the scientific review process, and even more so, I find it strange that so many scientists have swallowed it. I hope this is simply because of ignorance of the drilling process itself. Please read that 58 page report which is quite revealing about the "accuracy" of those measurements. Sometimes even tobacco smoke has been found inside those small bubbles! The actual measured CO2 level is a function of drilling depth, and explanation for this behavior is given there.
Also, another thing is to consider the report in 2007 by Beck where he has combined all the direct measurement data from the atmosphere and it is shown that the CO2 levels have been wildly fluctuating with no correlation to temperature.
Now, silencing criticism about global warming as being "non-coherent and not agreeing" is a cheap trick. All of the links I have posted are coming from persons that are capable in their own scientific sector. They simply show the errors in IPCC's report from their own area of expertise. Gray, shows that the statistics are seriously skewed (yeah, reading through that makes one think how is it possible to concentrate all information to a single temperature number). Spencer's article shows that the model doesn't contain critical parts of the climate actions, since the observed phenomenom is directly opposite of what is thought in the model (the same as the earlier posted Nature article). Segalstad and Jaworowski show that ice drillings as a proof of human CO2 output in climate are by at least misleading.
Also, little bit of history: this is actually the third time scientists are alarming about the human CO2 output. Arrhenius made the comment about this first in 1890s (or something, can't recall years that well), but was shush-shushed under the rug since the climate turned cold, even though human CO2 output was growing. Then, in 1940s Callendar was saying the same, and again the topic was shush-shushed under the rug since it turned out cold again.
Though, as a supporting thing of CO2 effecting the climate, it is stated that the ocean surface layer can be saturated with CO2, and further absorption will take a lot longer, which would support "200 years in air" theory. Though, I'm on a process of finding out more about this.
However, I never said I question the global warming itself. It is the human part on it which I'm questioning.
Mika
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I'll have a look at your links in a little bit. They're rather new to me rather than the same old arguments I've seen from others. However from reading the first one I am already wondering how scientific this stuff actually is. I've seen people try to do thermodynamic calculations before and stuff it up completely. (There's a really good example of someone doing just that on Junkscience IIRC).
I'm not going to say that the site is wrong but if it is right I'm wondering how that thermodynamics explanation can explain periods in Earth's history when there have been significantly more or less ice than there is now.
For instance in the last ice age the ice caps were significantly larger than they are now. The amount of energy the Earth needs to lose to cool by say 1 degree is likely to be of the same order of magnitude as that required to warm by 1 degree (even if the scale is non-linear). So where did that energy go? And the last ice age wasn't only a 1 degree change.
My inkling is that there is a fundamental scientific error being made somewhere either by me or by that site but I can't quite put my finger on it yet.
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Take all the time you need. I will not be online till Monday at least. I think the most important report you can find from Segalstad's page is the paper about ice drillings. That would be the first thing I would read, then concentrate on Segalstad's thermodynamic calculations.
Mika
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I'm not going to read through all the posts in this thread, I don't have the time.
My position is thus:
Global Warming may or may not be happening, and it may or may not be caused by humans. Who cares.
However, it doesn't hurt to develop more fuel-efficient, less-polluting cars. It doesn't hurt to reduce factory emissions. There's no downside to biking to work every once in a while, or taking public transportation. So why not do it?
There's nothing wrong with improving human technology for the sake of improving human technology, and if it adverts global warming in the process, that's a great side effect.
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First of all, I find it quite surprising how the hell IPCC can even think of using those ice drillings as a proof of climate warming by CO2. It is pretty much inconceivable how the hell they have managed to make that go through the scientific review process, and even more so, I find it strange that so many scientists have swallowed it. I hope this is simply because of ignorance of the drilling process itself. Please read that 58 page report which is quite revealing about the "accuracy" of those measurements. Sometimes even tobacco smoke has been found inside those small bubbles! The actual measured CO2 level is a function of drilling depth, and explanation for this behavior is given there.
The close parallels on this image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png) between CO2 and temperature don't interest you (given that temperature is directly measureable through Oxygen isotopy?)
For the record, I'm an educated fence sitter on the whole issue. I've had Global warming thrown at me by Geology lecturers (generally skeptics) and Biology lecturers (Generally alarmists) so I've seen both angles, and a lot of conflicting data. I like to think I'm clever enough at least to know the stuff that I don't know, so while I'll point out stuff on both sides, I don't have a coherent position.
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This has actually been referred before. I recommend reading Jaworowskis paper about Vostok ice drillings. It is quite good conclusion about the reliability of those measurements. I will not refer it here since shortening it into a couple of sentences is oversimplification at best.
Mika
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This has actually been referred before. I recommend reading Jaworowskis paper about Vostok ice drillings. It is quite good conclusion about the reliability of those measurements. I will not refer it here since shortening it into a couple of sentences is oversimplification at best.
Mika
I read a summary of it (By the man himself, link (http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/), and immediately a few problems jumped out. First, using Jaworowskis ideas, surely CO2 concentration should not vary significant beyond a certain depth? Surely, at the very least, it should not be expected to vary in a pattern almost identical to that of oxygen isotopy, which is a very-near-direct measurment of average hemispherical oceanic surface temperature?
There are a few other problems immediately obvious to me. He cites fossil stomata frequency as evidence of CO2 concentration varying over three centuries. I just can not see how anything that reproduces as slowly as a tree can evolve fast enough to show a consistent associative trend between CO2 concentration and stomatal frequency over a period of two hundred years.
Actually, google...
Ah:
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7
Better researched than I can come up with in 20 odd minutes.
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Wow... I actually agree with kajorama here on 99% of everything he said. Sign of the Apocalypse?
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Been following recently what a Meteorologist has been saying about the Arctic Ice Sheet. I agree with him, it doesn't look likely we will get close to matching last years number.
(http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg)
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Here I would recommend not using this year to show the Global Warming has stopped. It looks like so in 2000s, but the period is too short to make that comment. Similar ditches are apparent in the temperature measurements before.
As for the rest of the comments from Blackwolf, thanks, I'm still going through the links provided from there. It will take a couple of days to get my thoughts "re-organised" about the issue.
Mika
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It took a couple of days (about 20 hours of work - on vacation time!), and the outcome could be summarized as: when you have ruled out everything impossible, all that is left must be the cause, however implausible it would seem. Even though green crackpots broke in to our local University, blaming astro-physicists of a general conspiracy since they didn't talk about global warming in their convention; it seems Greenies got it once right!
Yeah, it turns out Jaworowskis paper is actually misleading and intended to be so, and that is mildly said. Starting from the falsified Senate committee entry, this is quite strange from a person who has been a chairman of UN sub-organisation. Since Jaworowskis paper is misleading, you could easily forget everything what Segalstad says in his webpage due to that reason only. However, for those actually interested, the reason where his logic goes wrong is assuming a equilibrium state in calculations. Then the Nature articles are misleadingly referenced in Jaworowskis paper, the criticism has nothing to do with scientific process, but some other things. Again, it is strange that Jaworowski is falsifying also this. I admit I didn't check that since I didn't believe he could actually refer journal like Nature so incorrectly.
Then Becks paper (2007) is actually true, it is the arithmetic average of all the measured CO2 values from beginning of 1900s to current day. Unfortunately, those values reported by the articles by some other researchers, but it doesn't take account the proximity of traffic or factories. It seems to be quite easy to acquire far higher CO2 levels when measuring to the downwind side of a factory. So, the reported values are correct, but they have nothing to do with global CO2 level, and everything with local CO2 levels. Grays error is same kind of fault in logic, he mixes local phenomenom to global phenomenom.
Then, there are some other interesting pages, like:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
This is a group of global warming sceptics that has reviewed the conditions of each weather station in US. The work was done to show that the urban heat islands do have an effect in the temperature measurements. And, yes, they found out a lot of measurement errors, several coming from putting the sensors next to the sewage treatment container!
They then went on and put up data of weather stations they consider trustworthy. Surprisingly, the end result from those stations was quite close to the NASAs "corrected" results, though it is seen that those "corrections" might have nothing to do with local conditions (one of those primary stations by NASA was actually surrounded by parking lots!). The net results are the same due to the averaging of thousand stations (mainly from NASAs side I mean). I recommend going and watching those how to not measure temperature lists, they are quite funny from experimental physicists point of view at least. However, the sceptics have been quite honest in their calculations as they confirmed IPCC's temperature record, McIntyre included. This was the best kind of work sceptics could have done, so props for them about that.
So, in conclusion not all criticism is unfounded, but it seems that CO2 is the most probable agent that causes the warming. And, to conclude even further, it is not actually the total amount of CO2 what is the problem, it is the release rate since nature could most likely be able to sink a lot more with minimal effects, given enough time.
That being said, what can be done to avoid the predicted warming - i.e. to slow down output rate? I have at least one suggestion: remove all stand-by switches from electronics to real on/off switches. This is probably the most easiest to implement, causing a mild irritation in persons that are used to remote controls, but should be manageable. The second thing is to construct nuclear power plants, wind power plants and solar power plants where applicable. Though the best possible way is simply to shut down all electric equipment that doesn't need to be on.
In my opinion, no biofuel can help here, since they all release carbon anyhow (and you have a hard time to convince me that the rate of growth would exceed the rate of harvest, there by nullifying to CO2 output). And, luckily the price of oil is already going up, which is going to limit the driving. It will limit the food production also, though. In the end, it seems quite a lot of people are going to be needed in the countryside in the near future to upkeep the food production. The main traffic will probably be done using ships and trains, and air cargo will be much more expensive. The number of private cars is most likely going to drop drastically.
Should the organic fuel usage be curbed down, the simplest way is to add tax on any organic fuels. Then anyone who uses them have to pay taxes, not the rest of population. This will mean that the rich people will still drive carelessly with cars, while those people who would actually need it could not afford it. But differing from this will result in difficult discussion of a person's/nation's footprint in the world (inculding the warming/cooling costs, warming cost at least being necessary to sustain life...)
There is one wild card though, and that is the Golf current. Should it decide to reverse its course, then Europe turns actually quite a bit colder (this is actually reasonable, since the cold water from the melting North Pole has to go somewhere)...
Mika
EDIT: Replaced: organ -> organic. Reason: recalled that English doesn't work like Finnish.
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Wow, Mika, you actually found yourself convinced of something? On the Internet? I'm really impressed! (I don't even mean this sarcastically.) There aren't many folks who'd be open-minded and inquisitive enough to do that kind of research.
I admire your dedication and careful thought.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/21/monckton_aps/
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Guys. I'm being thuper, THUPER therial here, we are ALL in THERIAL danger from MANBEARPIG! :shaking:
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This thread and the massive lists of conflicting sources within it has caused me to lose all faith in authority, science, my fellow man, and everything I once held dear to me.
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This thread ... caused me to lose all faith in authority, science, my fellow man, and everything I once held dear to me.
Sounds like a Gen. Dis. thread. :D
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This thread and the massive lists of conflicting sources within it has caused me to lose all faith in authority, science, my fellow man, and everything I once held dear to me.
Welcome to Earth. You also just found out where true Science begins.
Sounds like a good Gen. Dis. thread.
Fix'd
In all seriousness, it was very difficult for me also to seek out what has been done, most of the deductions are based on research that was done before I existed! Even more difficult is the thing that some of the criticism is about as old, and was actually answered before I was born! Then on top of that, the sites like What's up with Watts contain quite good arguments about the measurement errors in local stations - which recently forced NOAA to review all over 1000 sites in US for more reliable temperature readings. This should not be mixed with global warming not happening, since the errors seem to have been diminished due to the sheer number of stations. Then there is the question what is happening around the stations elsewhere in the world, if US standard hasn't been met there...
Checking through the Bobboau's link, the Physics part there, was quite something which in my opinion, took away the credibility of that page.
This year seems to be quite exceptional in this country. July, and it is quite cold here (+20 of Celsius). It is about ten degrees less than a couple of years ago on the hottest days in July. Instead of that a huge pile of clouds seem to have decided to park above us permanently to rain all their content down just for laughs. But they said this was supposed to happen in winter time!
Mika