Global Warming Theory not looking hot anymore

[danielost]

Sigh.

I've already shown that the vast, vast majority of RELEVANT scientists(IE- climatologists) accept global warming. Debunked.

I've done this one three times in this thread.

Debunked.

Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds

Debunked.

Happy? You don't cite sources; you misinterpret statistics that are completely contradictory to the consensus of the scientific community.

Daniel, you are only fooling yourself with this pretense of victimization.

Sigh, I didn't want to have to do this.

1. The first wrong thing is that it cites no sources. This automatically rejects it.

2. The second wrong thing is that I've already responded to it, FROM YOU, in THIS THREAD.

3. The third wrong thing is that it is simply wrong.

your going to debunk what i said about 1995 with a link to 2007 in which it says it was a colder year than the last few years.

[danielost]

ROFL, you linked to a forum post in which you gave links, two of which were standard denialist points already debunked at least two times each in this thread, and one of which was a list of a few random scientists who disagree, who I've already proved are the super-minority.

[danielost]

This is a strawman argument. I never said that; you fabricated it. This is also known as lying. Please refrain from it.

This is nonsense.

This too is nonsense.

This is also nonsense.

This is again, nonsense.

Meh. Just an average post by you, I suppose.

Not only is this nonsense, but it is also absolutely bizarre.

you did infact state that. because those scientists are in the minority they are wrong.

[danielost]

Daniel, your argument is nonsensical: It doesn't make any sense. It's absolutely bizarre, and exactly what I expect from you.

The irony here is astounding. The word is "immediately", and the word is "Disregard".

Here's your "proof":

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/disregard?view=uk

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/immediately?view=uk

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/620/01/

Yes, of course you do: Doing so is the very definition of insane, but everyone has the right to be insane.

as i said i have the right to disregard any links i don't like just as you and others on here are doing. oh by the way i know i have a grammer and spelling problem. but don't bother looking up my profile in which i say that.,

[Caesar]

Sigh.

I've already shown that the vast, vast majority of RELEVANT scientists(IE- climatologists) accept global warming. Debunked.

RELEVANT as those that follow this religion?

I've done this one three times in this thread.

Debunked.

Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds

Debunked.

Happy? You don't cite sources; you misinterpret statistics that are completely contradictory to the consensus of the scientific community.

NASA made this claim along with the National Geographic, these aren't my findings and I find them more reliable then some source I've never herd of 'skepticalscience.com' I thought global warming was a fact now its the consensus of the scientific community?

[danielost]

C-section references date back to the first century, with mentions in ancient texts from Egypt, Greece, Rome and other parts of Europe. In ancient times, C-sections were used to cut the baby from the womb if the mother died in childbirth -- it wasn't until the 1500s that a mother reportedly survived a C-section. In the mid-1800s, the first successful C-section was performed in the British Empire.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/c-section.htm

not what i was looking for but will do nicely.

[SQLserver]

As I said, I'm out. The reasons can be blatantly seen above.

[Lord Umbarger]

Everyone's quoting and citing NASA, the same outfit that just recently admited to lossing 17 cases of film relating to the Moon landing, and can't seem to get us out of Earth orbit since 1972. This would also be the same NASA that put up the SkyLab as a hokey version of a satillite only to bring it down a couple of years and a couple of billion wasted bucks later. Are we really going to put all our faith in the words and docturne of a government organisation thats only source of income is insisting that the stuff they do is relevent and important but, can't seem to get their top of the line space craft to survive a styrofoam strike? My ***! I've hit bigger birds than that with a friggin Cessna 172 and lived to tell about it!

Let's try to remember, rather you can wrap your head around everything that I've said about NASA, their budget would be cut to pennies a week if they ever came out and said that the Earth was doing fine and we didn't need to track anything. How many billions of dollars do you think that Congress would give them if they asked for the money to build satillites to study "Stagnate Global Climate"?

[MARAB0D]

Millions of years? Do you have any idea how data works?

The goal of this data is to show the increase in temperature caused by using fossil fuels in the last two hundred years.

This data can be extended to a few thousand years to show that this extraordinarily fast trend is not natural.

What can hundreds of thousands of years tell us?

CO2 and temperature are correlated on a grand scale.

Here are the facts:

A. Global Warming is a scientific theory, accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community, which is based on a natural, observed, and explained mechanism(The Greenhouse effect), and it perfectly explains the evidence.

B. You have no alternative scientific theory, or even a good hypothesis.

Let's make something clear:

This is you vs science here. You do not have the science on your side, you do not have the evidence on your side, you do not have the experts on your side, and you have shown us this with your reply that amounts to:

"LOL THE PHENOMENON WHICH HAS ONLY BEEN OCCURRING FOR LESS THAN 200 YEARS SHOULD BE SUPPORTED ON A SCALE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS LOL ALL OF THAT SCIENCE IS WRONG!!!1111"

Hi SQL. I have to say for start that many of your opinions, expressed in the forum, I respect and many I share. However, in this particularly case you made me quite surprised, not only with your level of emotional perception of Man-made Global Warming, but with your reference to Climatology as an absolute authority in the planet climate!

Climatology as such is not a science in full sense, but can be seen as "also a science". It has no Mathematical substantiation at all, and operates only with statistical data, provided by other sciences. Particularly the issues of "Greenhouse effect" and the ability of CO2 to absorb certain IR wavelengthes and emit them are not a subject of Climatology at all, but of Gas Kinetics, Physical Chemistry and general Physics.

The front line of Climatology we usually meet in a form of a mundane Metheorology - and this one (sorry for saying this) fails to operate simple Mathematical models and satellite data for one-two days ahead. When they say "rain tomorrow" while my 19th century barometer shows 30", I would never bother changing my tomorrow's agenda or taking an umbrella with me. How can this "science" predict the weather for 100 or 1000 years ahead?

Getting back to your Vostok drilling data... I take these graphs of yours (and of Questionmark) as a result of scientific research, yes, - but performed by the Chemists, who did the great job providing the express-analysis of the drilled samples on site (as hardly these samples were sent to any stationary lab on mainland. This means they were working at the subzero temperatures - and at subzero temperatures the result may be affected by the fact that all scientific gear is usually designed to operate at +20 C, 1 bar ("normal conditions"), or at least at 0 C (called "standard conditions" 273.15 K, 32 °F AND 14.504 psi, 0.986 atm ) - but I presume they were good Chemists, and the data obtained was later standardized in order to be further plotted on your graphs. So, I take these posted graphs for real...

Now, in science we normally connect two correlated events by assigning the reason/consequence connection between them. In the case of your graphs, the temperature peaks clearly PRE-DATE the CO2 peaks - you can make sure in this yourself if you enlarge, print them out and use a simple ruler or a triangle. The offset is "small", but the scale is great - so I would estimate few hundred years between the temperature peaks (primary and secondary) and respective CO2 peaks. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE for CO2 concentration to affect temperatures on the planet, as the time is not reversible.

Instead, it makes it obvious, that the temperature rise causes CO2 rise. How is this possible? Thermodynamics insists, that the elevation of temperature by each 10 C causes the increase of speed of any Chemical reaction 2-4 times (normally we estimate 2 times, conservatively). Biological processes under the point of protein globulization (42 C) can be seen as chemical processes - and this planet is full of Carbon-based life, which tends to produce CO2 as a result of oxidation of carbon-containing compounds. Easy enough - temperature rise does two main things, increases the biomass of the plants and increases evaporation from the soil (making it drier). Grasslands and forests grow - while the atmospheric friction produces static electricity. This static electricity and elevated temperature increase the lightning frequency and the frequency of droughts. Lightnings ignite the dry trees and grass, and cause the FIRES - and the latter saturate atmosphere with CO2 and DUST. Dust increases the albedo of the planet, which decreases the amount of solar heat, reaching the surface, so the planet cools down - while CO2 remains... irrelevant!

The most ridiculous part of "greenhouse theory" is that 300 ppm of CO2 (wow - its the full 300 Liters per 1,000,000 Liters of air!) are theorised to overcome the influence of WATER, which is also a "greenhouse gas", but contained in atmosphere in quantity, capable to form 25 mm layer over the entire Earth surface. So far I have never meet such a sacrificial Chemist or Physicist who dared to endorse this theory by providing mathematical substantiation to it, so we mainly deal with "Climatologists", and, of course, with politicians, who only talk about the man-made warming, as if their career or income depend on it.

If however you decide to address less politically engaged Climatologists, you may feel pleasure to read http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html where a group, studying solar activity cycles for the last 400-500 hundred years (in 1999) fails to find ANY traces of human influence on the temperature, which, according to them, follows the solar activity only.

I think you would be able to sort the things out for yourself without any heated discission - all you need for this is to drop the Faith and apply objective scientific approach.

Edited October 15, 2009 by marabod

[danielost]

Everyone's quoting and citing NASA, the same outfit that just recently admited to lossing 17 cases of film relating to the Moon landing, and can't seem to get us out of Earth orbit since 1972. This would also be the same NASA that put up the SkyLab as a hokey version of a satillite only to bring it down a couple of years and a couple of billion wasted bucks later. Are we really going to put all our faith in the words and docturne of a government organisation thats only source of income is insisting that the stuff they do is relevent and important but, can't seem to get their top of the line space craft to survive a styrofoam strike? My ***! I've hit bigger birds than that with a friggin Cessna 172 and lived to tell about it!

Let's try to remember, rather you can wrap your head around everything that I've said about NASA, their budget would be cut to pennies a week if they ever came out and said that the Earth was doing fine and we didn't need to track anything. How many billions of dollars do you think that Congress would give them if they asked for the money to build satillites to study "Stagnate Global Climate"?

just for you info, skylab had outlived it's life span. it was not put up there for a meeting place between russia and the usa. that came later. when nasa brought it down they did so so it wouldn't hit land. it was coming down we just planned where it was going to hit more or less.

we will do the same thing with the iss, hopefully.

Edited October 15, 2009 by danielost

[Moon Monkey]

HEY! UMBARGER: THIS MYTH HAS ALREADY BEEN DEBUNKED IN THIS THREAD.

(ARGH!! READ THE THREAD!)

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm

Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming.

(DURR)

The sun does go through cycles, and they affect the Earth's atmosphere. So what?

Here's an example. The red is the solar variation. While this affects the temperature, it is just a cycle, nothing more. The overall trend fits with the rising CO2 levels.

Source:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-warming-stopped-in-1981.html

This is false. I have shown this wrong several times in this thread.

A. The claim itself is false. The Earth has been warming for the last 11 years.

B. The claim itself is outright stupid. A small decrease in temperature for 11 years has NOTHING to do with the overall upwards trend in global temperature.

Please read the thread before continuing any more discussion.

A. Believe it or not, I do not continually refresh Michelle's "New Topics" page every 16 seconds of my life. I am sorry for any inconveniences my lacking this habit has caused.

B. This is completely offtopic.

C. I am simply explaining why the scientific community has come to a consensus on global warming. I am not necessarily advocating personal action on it.

This claim is debunked here.I hope you realize that it is NOT a good thing that your arguments are so over-used by denialists that they are featured on a website which debunks a handful of denialist claims.

You are kidding, right?

That's it. Please people.

I am making this slightly bigger, as everyone seems to miss it every time. You are NOT outsmarting 86% of climatologists when you smugly figure out that the climate(BELIEVE IT OR NOT!) fluctuated before man. As hard as it may seem for someone as obviously ingenious and clever as you, you are NOT outsmarting the very people who documented the data which shows such.

News flash: The atmosphere is a chaotic system. There are several NATURAL PHENOMENA that cause the temperature to fluctuate. This is acknowledged and factored by ALL who accept the scientific theory of global warming.

From now on, claiming that any sort of climatic change in the past somehow disproves the scientific theory of global warming is code in this thread for: "I'm a moron and I do not know what I'm talking about", OK?

Note: Although this claim defies common sense, and although I've debunked it numerous times in this thread, it is also debunked here:

Past climate change actually demonstrates that the climate is sensitive to radiative forcing. Having determined climate sensitivity from empirical observations, scientists can calculate the climate response to CO2 forcing.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm

Additionally, Umbarger, please note: Any scientific claims you do not back up with a scientific source from now on will immediately be rejected without consideration.

Really? Didn't seem like it, did it?

And this "Crap" is accepted by the vast, vast majority of the scientific community, is explained by a natural, known mechanism, is backed with empirical evidence, and has withstood rigorous scientific skepticism.

Ah, it's good to know you are at least reading your own posts, even if you aren't reading mine. It is obvious to everyone that you are simply bluffing; you seriously think you are fooling anyone into believing you are outsmarting the entirety of the scientific community when you won't even show your cards? LOL.

You have no idea what you are talking about. I have supplied scientific sources and hard data to back up every graph I've shown. You've done nothing but make excuses for your failure to address anything whatsoever in the thread.

Precisely. Nothing more about the world can be know, from a rational standpoint, besides "good guesses". You are simply guessing that the Holocaust happened: You don't really know. You are simply guessing that a place called Washington DC exists: You don't really know, even if you've been there. You are simply guessing if you think that the strength of gravity depends on the mass of an object: You don't really know.

All of these things could possibly, although it is a slim chance, be false. Same with Global warming. Thus, by calling it a guess, you are not degrading it as somehow unreal in any way.

If you think "Proof" exists in the universe, you simply demonstrate that you are too deep in mathematics to accurately understand science, which does not deal with proof: In science, there are only good guesses, bad guesses, and unscientific guesses.

You are so irrational and unwilling to examine the scientific evidence that I simply don't accept that you are a publishing scientist; I simply think you are lying. Either that, or you went through every class you've taken with your figures in your ears while singing the National Anthem.

Yes? If you have trouble understand that simple diagram, you may have a larger problem than your irrationality.

Questionmark, you don't have to provide any more evidence that it has continued warming since 1998: this is a scientific fact, and I've already given excellent sources for it.

Yes, and only 9,000 with PhDs. I wonder how many have degrees in relevant fields?

Randomly, I'm going to check out the first 10 "S" signers(S for SQL).

Richard 0. S

I can find no mention of this man in the scientific literature. Did he want to be taken seriously without even supplying his last name?

Alfredo Hua-Sing Ang,

This man is a smart engineer who has written books on the topic.

Unfortunately, that doesn't give him any expertise on climatology.

Lal Pratap S. Singh

I can find no record of this man.

Myrl J. Saarem

She seems to be an engineer of some sort. Again, no climatology-expertise.

Carol Saari

She seems to be a molecular biologist. A fine scientist, but no climatology-expertise.

D. D. Saars

I can find no record of this person.

Patrick Saatzer

Seems to be a bio-chemist.

Joaquin A. Saavedra

A mechanical engineer. Her thesis is available online.

Joseph D. Sabella

Seems to be in medicine or virology.

Harry A. Sabin

No mention of this man anywhere, unless he's in animation.

Edward Stephen Sabisky

Almost certainly a chemist or physicist.

Well, there's ten. Ten fine scientists, but ten people as equally irrelevant to climatology consensus as you or I.

Here are the real facts:

This poll was conducted by Gallup:

That humans are causing global warming is the position of the Academies of Science from 19 countries plus many scientific organisations that study climate science. More specifically, 97% of climate scientists actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position.

Scientific organisations endorsing the consensus

The following scientific organisations endorse the consensus position that "most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities":

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Environmental Protection Agency

NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies

American Geophysical Union

American Institute of Physics

National Center for Atmospheric Research

American Meteorological Society

The Royal Society of the UK

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Sources:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm

Conclusion: Despite your very large list of "random scientists who happen to sign a petition", the denialists are in the extreme minority.

Cheers,

SQLserver

Additionally, I cannot keep up with this thread for too long. I'm going to make a quick prediction, here:

1. Pseudo Intellectual is going to keep peddling the same nonsense and then laugh off anyone showing him he's wrong.

2. Lord Umbarger is going to continually come into the thread, repeat simple denialist claims, and then not respond to anyone ripping them apart.

3. Moon Monkey is going to continue to babble about how he's a well-known genius when it comes to data and how his clever and mysterious rebuttals are so powerful that he doesn't even need to state them.

4. Ufo Believer is going to continue with a confused mess of flip-flops and one-liners.

5. Stevewinn is going to continue with the ad hominecs and the cherry picking.

6. Michelle is going to continue advertising for her thread.

7. Caesar is going to continue throwing out political one-liners but also quickly run away when someone mentions science.

8. Ohio-Traveler is going to continue with his smug little phrases and oh-so-clever words he fabricated to describe anyone who disagrees with him politically.

9. Daniel is going to make as little sense as he always does.

10. No denialist is going to (god-forbid) cite a scientific article.(Besides Daniel's failed attempt, of course.)

11. No denialist is going to cite a single source.(Seriously, at least Daniel tried once!)

12. No denialist is actually going to respond to the science here. If we're lucky, perhaps they will cherry pick a specific piece of a post, but then fail to counter the counter-response.

13. People are going to continue peddling the lies already debunked in the thread.

That's it, I've won this debate. If someone else wants to respond to any of the "LALALA"'s and "Ha, SQL couldn't take the heat!" and "See, liberuls sucks1!@4!!11", "Here's a bunch of sentence fragments which you will have to translate into respectable English", and "Look guys, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT MAH AWESOME DATAZ ALL ALONG" replies that are sure to come, go ahead. I'm done.

This is not the first thread I have discusssd this in and it does get boring after a while, thats why I was hoping for something new. I have done the leg work on your arguments before, so rather than saying I am unwilling to properly rebutt...use the search function.

As for the Vladivostock data....you should really look at the actual data and plot it yourself...it is available (even on some threads on this site). You will get a different graph to the ones you gave.

As for 86% of climateologists...where do you think their continuing research cash comes from. I am more interested in the other 14%. That means that 1 in 7.5 of scientists in the field don't get behind this 'fact' you keep stating, thats before we get into all the other fields that are needed within this huge subject whose grants don't rely on climate research cash.

I am not going to even get in to the man-made side of things and start really correlating data (again) as you haven't even accepted that 150 years out of billions or sticking a first order model through 25 years of data a trend does not make. My life would be a lot easier if I could get away with this sort of data analysis.

I am no genius I simply work hard, I am not a climateologist but I am regularly published in the nonlinear dynamical systems modelling field. And then there are the models...ah the models. Surely they use nonlinear dynamical system modelling in their models...surely. You tell me.

As for 'you've won this debate', how old are you ? I am sure even the most fanatical of climateologists working on the governments green tax unit wouldn't be so pretentious.

Edited October 15, 2009 by Moon Monkey

[Mr Honeybadger]

8. Ohio-Traveler is going to continue with his smug little phrases and oh-so-clever words he fabricated to describe anyone who disagrees with him politically.

Haha. I like you SQL. Do you keep all of this information about us in a cute little journal ?

[questionmark]

Getting back to your Vostok drilling data... I take these graphs of yours (and of Questionmark) as a result of scientific research, yes, - but performed by the Chemists, who did the great job providing the express-analysis of the drilled samples on site (as hardly these samples were sent to any stationary lab on mainland. This means they were working at the subzero temperatures - and at subzero temperatures the result may be affected by the fact that all scientific gear is usually designed to operate at +20 C, 1 bar ("normal conditions"), or at least at 0 C (called "standard conditions" 273.15 K, 32 °F AND 14.504 psi, 0.986 atm ) - but I presume they were good Chemists, and the data obtained was later standardized in order to be further plotted on your graphs. So, I take these posted graphs for real...

Could I recommend Biotic feedbacks in the global climatic system: will the warming feed the warming?

by G. M. Woodwell,Fred T. Mackenzie (surely not a man made global warming proponent), it is available at Google Books

As for the CO₂ levels trailing the temperature, you are right, higher temperatures also cause higher levels, and that is not surprising as fluids tend to retain less gases the warmer they get, and the less permafrost and glaciers (which comes from lower temperatures) the less gases trapped in ice. The point is that at the next step the temperature gets again higher

The danger is that the greenhouse effect (which I hope nobody seriously disputes, 'cause then we will have opened a totally new debate) is multiplied by the higher temperatures.

Now, if we go back to our Vostok graphs we see a steep decline after 1350 in CO₂ that surely cannot be explained by Nibblers taking it to Niburu. But something else happened around that time, the black plague. It is estimated that about 2/3 of the population of Europe, North Africa and Asia died (no hard data of America or sub Saharan Africa). Well, makes sense now, because if mammals suddenly disappear they quit metabolizing and producing carbon dioxide. The vegetation keeps on accumulating carbon releasing oxygen and...the ecosystem cools down. (Elementary my dear Watson). Well, what a coincidence that right at that time the temperatures went from the "medieval ideal" to the "little ice age".

Now lets have a look at the graph about 500 years later, where we see a steep incline in both carbon dioxide and temperature. Yeh I know...the population increased again. But sadly for those saying that fossil carbon has nothing to do with warming, not enough to even come close to the required levels. The offset is caused by the burning of carbon that had been taking out of the metabolic equation since Jurassic times (does "industrial revolution sound like something you know?". And precisely that "taking out" stopped the wild swings you notice at the beginning of the global temperature graphs.

And that is the danger, not that it might get a little warmer, or colder, or that the glaciers melt or ships can sail over the North pole. Those extreme swings in median temperature will make many things, like agriculture, a gamble. Happy eating flat screen TVs.

ED: spelling

Edited October 15, 2009 by questionmark

[Lord Umbarger]

just for you info, skylab had outlived it's life span. it was not put up there for a meeting place between russia and the usa. that came later. when nasa brought it down they did so so it wouldn't hit land. it was coming down we just planned where it was going to hit more or less.

we will do the same thing with the iss, hopefully.

True, it was but, it's lifespan was originally intended to be much longer than it ended up being and it was supposed to accomplish a lot more than it actually ended up doing. It was launched, used like twice, and vitually abandoned for the rest of it's time in orbit to allow NASA to focus on the Space Shuttle, since keeping an empty tin can in orbit was just asking too much of them.

All said, it promised much, cost a fortune and gave NASA two photo ops before their short sightedness caught up with them.

The ISS will most likely have to be broken up before de-orbitting. Either way, we'll find out in a couple of years as it was de-funded by Obama a few months ago. Another wasted space station?

[acidhead]

You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

--Michael Creighton

[aquatus1]

Tone it down, people, and back on topic.

[Startraveler]

If however you decide to address less politically engaged Climatologists, you may feel pleasure to read http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html where a group, studying solar activity cycles for the last 400-500 hundred years (in 1999) fails to find ANY traces of human influence on the temperature, which, according to them, follows the solar activity only.

That's a bit outdated. Lassen himself later backed away from that idea (P. Thejll and K. Lassen, "2000: Solar forcing of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature: New data." Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-terrestrial Physics, Vol. 62 (13),1207-1213.) Here's that abstract:

It has previously been demonstrated that the mean land air temperature of the Northern hemisphere could adequately be associated with a long-term variation of solar activity as given by the length of the approximately 11-year solar cycle. Adding new temperature data for the 1990s and expected values for the next sunspot extrema we test whether the solar cycle length model is still adequate. We find that the residuals are now inconsistent with the pure solar model. We conclude that since around 1990 the type of Solar forcing that is described by the solar cycle length model no longer dominates the long-term variation of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature.

[MARAB0D]

Could I recommend Biotic feedbacks in the global climatic system: will the warming feed the warming?

by G. M. Woodwell,Fred T. Mackenzie (surely not a man made global warming proponent), it is available at Google Books

As for the CO₂ levels trailing the temperature, you are right, higher temperatures also cause higher levels, and that is not surprising as fluids tend to retain less gases the warmer they get, and the less permafrost and glaciers (which comes from lower temperatures) the less gases trapped in ice. The point is that at the next step the temperature gets again higher

The danger is that the greenhouse effect (which I hope nobody seriously disputes, 'cause then we will have opened a totally new debate) is multiplied by the higher temperatures.

Now, if we go back to our Vostok graphs we see a steep decline after 1350 in CO₂ that surely cannot be explained by Nibblers taking it to Niburu. But something else happened around that time, the black plague. It is estimated that about 2/3 of the population of Europe, North Africa and Asia died (no hard data of America or sub Saharan Africa). Well, makes sense now, because if mammals suddenly disappear they quit metabolizing and producing carbon dioxide. The vegetation keeps on accumulating carbon releasing oxygen and...the ecosystem cools down. (Elementary my dear Watson). Well, what a coincidence that right at that time the temperatures went from the "medieval ideal" to the "little ice age".

Now lets have a look at the graph about 500 years later, where we see a steep incline in both carbon dioxide and temperature. Yeh I know...the population increased again. But sadly for those saying that fossil carbon has nothing to do with warming, not enough to even come close to the required levels. The offset is caused by the burning of carbon that had been taking out of the metabolic equation since Jurassic times (does "industrial revolution sound like something you know?". And precisely that "taking out" stopped the wild swings you notice at the beginning of the global temperature graphs.

And that is the danger, not that it might get a little warmer, or colder, or that the glaciers melt or ships can sail over the North pole. Those extreme swings in median temperature will make many things, like agriculture, a gamble. Happy eating flat screen TVs.

ED: spelling

Historically we all know that Black death in Europe was localised to the towns and cities, and those, as we are aware, were completely lacking any sanitary and hygienic considerations when built same as any city planning in advance. Similar picture was seen in Rome before Nero burned it - there were no means of waste removal, some suburbs were literally dangerous to live in, as they were located in swampy areas with high evaporation, while the narrow streets were preventing any wind to clean the air. This was the main reason of that artificial fire, as Nero was targeting to rebuild the city according to the new plans, at least as serious historians explain the event.

Boccaccio in first chapters of Decameron explains that when the Plague was starting, those who was more or less wealthy, were evacuating to their country estates, where no Plague was a threat for them. Usually Bubonic Plague was following agricultural cycle - say a rich harvest was causing rodents multiplication, while next low harvest year was causing these rodents to leave the fields and re-settle into the towns, closer to the grain stocks; this concentration of the rats and mice, the first victims of the Plague as the fleas spread it, was causing infecions of the humans with this zoonosis. When Black Plague was coming, this was transmitted from human to human, and again the dense city population was the first to suffer. When it was Cholera, the reason of mass infection was unclean water supply and the absence of drain. I would not be connecting these diseases with climatic changes, as they occur in any time of the year at any temperatures. The wide spread was rather facilitated by the travellers and merchants, visiting remote countries, pretty much like today people traveling spread some specific flu all over the planet.

CO2 in the atmosphere is a building material for the green plants, so the more of it is available, the more vigorous is the vegetation; obviously the elevated temperatures also boost it. If you look at the graphs again, you would see that our present day CO2 level in the atmosphere is not an all-time record at all, the same relates to our present day "warming" levels. These two fall within the levels of the traditional 100,000 years or so temperature cycle. The graphs with shorter time span, like the one you used before, showing some 2000 years scale, cannot represent these long cycles anyhow, as they belong to the different reality, to the "micro-changes" differently from the macro-changes on the Vostok graph. Say, if I plot my own temperature for my entire life, using one sampling daily - this would not be anyhow connected with my temperature chart made for some random day in details. And vice versa too - my daily chart won't predict my future temperature fluctuations. Same thing here.

It is obvious, that AGW is not a scientific concept, but rather a hypothesis, which provides a scientific leverage to affect the growth of the developing economies, and manipulate it to decrease the international competition. All the countries, pushing this agenda, are already in possession of developed industries, and the climatic changes may help them to slow down their 3rd world competitors development. They would simply start issuing fines to China, Brazil, India etc as soon as their level of development becomes too high; on the other hand this makes sense as a tool to force these countries to consider ecological factors, so temperature and CO2 emission may be simply used as an indication of general pollution levels and impact such developing country makes on the rest of the planet - otherwise it may be hard to estimate which country pollutes at which level. The AGW can be just a fake, but used to measure the real factors of pollution and charge the violators accordingly. So it can be to a degree genuine thing in some sense.

[stevewinn]

You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

--Michael Creighton

amen

[questionmark]

Historically we all know that Black death in Europe was localised to the towns and cities

Is that your way of disputing the population decline? And no, the plague was not limited to cities but more predominant there.

It does not matter what where and when, what matters is the decline in population. And not only in Humans as the plague affects about every mammal there is.

[MARAB0D]

Is that your way of disputing the population decline? And no, the plague was not limited to cities but more predominant there.

It does not matter what where and when, what matters is the decline in population. And not only in Humans as the plague affects about every mammal there is.

Population decline can hardly affect the CO2 production/consumption, as the biomass of the mammals is negligible compared to the biomass of the plants. I agree though that Bubonic Plague could easily happen in rural areas too, as this disease is transmitted by the fleas; but Black Death (Pox, Smallpox) is transmitted from human to human only and was mainly affecting the areas with high human concentration and active migrating elements, who were spreading it. The fact that Syphilis (Great Pox) did similar damage to Europe in 15th century shows the climate being irrelevant, as the spirochaete was imported from Americas, which is traceable through the Spanish reports from the colonies. At start of it human population in Europe was completely lacking immunity to it, hence the results similar to Black Death.

[questionmark]

Population decline can hardly affect the CO2 production/consumption, as the biomass of the mammals is negligible compared to the biomass of the plants. I agree though that Bubonic Plague could easily happen in rural areas too, as this disease is transmitted by the fleas; but Black Death (Pox, Smallpox) is transmitted from human to human only and was mainly affecting the areas with high human concentration and active migrating elements, who were spreading it. The fact that Syphilis (Great Pox) did similar damage to Europe in 15th century shows the climate being irrelevant, as the spirochaete was imported from Americas, which is traceable through the Spanish reports from the colonies. At start of it human population in Europe was completely lacking immunity to it, hence the results similar to Black Death.

Yo man, get a hold of biology 101. The balance of Carbon versus carbon dioxide is done by the changing effects of metabolic action of animals and plants. What got it out of balance is the additional burning of fossile fuels. And no, the syphilis caused problems but way less than the plague, in fact it hardly makes a dent in the population development. At least I have not heard of abandoned settlements after the syphilis. There are more than one after the plague.

To that effect you may want to check

Medieval Scandinavia: an encyclopedia by Phillip Pulsiano,Kirsten Wolf available on Google Books]]

or

In 1348, the Black Death arrived; between 30–50% of the British population was killed in the years that followed. Many village abandonments have been attributed to the Black Death, although relatively few are known to have been directly caused by it. Many depopulated villages were soon re-settled and re-populated, especially those which had productive lands. The indirect effects of the Black Death, however, proved fatal to many villages, especially those inhabited by serfs who found themselves emancipated after the feudal system collapsed.

[Goblin-5]

Very very heated topic it appears (sorry couldnt resist )

I dont think that anyone disputes that idea that the earth is indeed gradually warming up. What appears to be in dispute is the degree to which this warming can be attributed to human related activites and by that I mean ALL human related activites not just fossil fuel burning (CO2 forcing)relative to things like solar radiation increases or orbital variations

Humans are changing the face of the earth by agriculture (including deforestation, large tree removal for pulp and paper and timber, desertification resulting from agricultural practices, massive animal husbandry, etc) massive urban construction, engineering projects altering natural river flows and watersheds, massive population growth (which necessitates a corresponding increase in resource depletion and energy usage) and of course pollution.

While we tend to focus solely on CO2 we appear to be ignoring the far more potent greenhouse gas Methane.

Present day Methane concentrations are estimated to be ~1700ppb far higher than at any time in our earths history (the Paleocene-Eocine Thermal Maximum possibly being the exception)

Methane is at least 6 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. We have vast quantities of Methane Clathrates locked away in the deep oceans and in the polar regions but as these reservoirs warm, these clathrates could be released with severe consequenses for the environment. The oceans already contain massive quantities of dissolved CO2 and as the oceans warm this CO2 would likewise be released thus sparking a feedback reaction. More ocean warmth = more methane release = more ocean warmth = more CO2 release = more ocean warmth = more methane release etc

We already know that something triggered previous warmimg/cooling patterns in the past but what will be the effect of such high methane concentrations on the current warming period? Will it tip us over the edge into the greenhouse cauldron or not? Anyone have any thoughts on this area?

One thing is for sure, any reduction in CO2, deforestation and population can only be a good thing

Edited October 15, 2009 by Goblin-5

[questionmark]

Very very heated topic it appears (sorry couldnt resist )

I dont think that anyone disputes that idea that the earth is indeed gradually warming up. What appears to be in dispute is the degree to which this warming can be attributed to human related activites and by that I mean ALL human related activites not just fossil fuel burning (CO2 forcing)relative to things like solar radiation increases or orbital variations

Humans are changing the face of the earth by agriculture (including deforestation, large tree removal for pulp and paper and timber, desertification resulting from agricultural practices, massive animal husbandry, etc) massive urban construction, engineering projects altering natural river flows and watersheds, massive population growth (which necessitates a corresponding increase in resource depletion and energy usage) and of course pollution.

While we tend to focus solely on CO2 we appear to be ignoring the far more potent greenhouse gas Methane.

Present day Methane concentrations are estimated to be ~1700ppb far higher than at any time in our earths history (the Paleocene-Eocine Thermal Maximum possibly being the exception)

Methane is at least 6 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. We have vast quantities of Methane Clathrates locked away in the deep oceans and in the polar regions but as these reservoirs warm, these clathrates could be released with severe consequenses for the environment. The oceans already contain massive quantities of dissolved CO2 and as the oceans warm this CO2 would likewise be released thus sparking a feedback reaction. More ocean warmth = more methane release = more ocean warmth = more CO2 release = more ocean warmth = more methane release etc

We already know that something triggered previous warmimg/cooling patterns in the past but what will be the effect of such high methane concentrations on the current warming period? Will it tip us over the edge into the greenhouse cauldron or not? Anyone have any thoughts on this area?

One thing is for sure, any reduction in CO2, deforestation and population can only be a good thing

You got something there, it is not just the carbon dioxide but also the additional warmth generated by burning carbon. Deforestation causes the carbon dioxide/carbon ratio to imbalance toward dioxide. But that so far has been the smaller cause.

[MARAB0D]

Yo man, get a hold of biology 101. The balance of Carbon versus carbon dioxide is done by the changing effects of metabolic action of animals and plants. What got it out of balance is the additional burning of fossile fuels. And no, the syphilis caused problems but way less than the plague, in fact it hardly makes a dent in the population development. At least I have not heard of abandoned settlements after the syphilis. There are more than one after the plague.

To that effect you may want to check

Medieval Scandinavia: an encyclopedia by Phillip Pulsiano,Kirsten Wolf available on Google Books]]

or

QM - the black death is around us since 10,000 BC, it is in no way restricted to Middle Ages and ALWAYS was affecting us. Just check the wiki. The epidemic diseases on this level of their statistical studies cannot be used to support any climate changes, this is just a fantasy, sorry about saying this.

I agree that burning the fossil fuels deliver extra amounts of CO2 into atmosphere - and I was never arguing this. However compared to the size and weight of the atmosphere this amount is completely negligible. The total CO2 at the moment is less than 300-400 ppm, and ppm means on one volume of CO2 there is 1 million volumes of air, so factually 300 volumes of CO2 are dissolved in 1,000,000 volumes of air... This can affect atmosphere no more than a person with $300 of life savings can affect a millionaire.

As I was explaining already, water is also a greenhouse gas, but water is forming compact clouds, which completely absorb and re-emit IR radiation, while CO2 is just a gas, and present in the concentrations much lower than those of water. All these atmospheric reasonings are only related to the Troposphere, which contains 90% of the air and is only 7-17 km thick. If this troposphere acquires additional heat, then in accordance with the Gas Laws it must EXPAND. Earth IR radiation has a negligible proportion in the global heat exchange process, as the Troposphere is receiving heat from the solid surface not by radiation at all, but by convection. Immediate contact happens only at the very low layers, which are getting heated and then expand and "float" into the top, colder layers - and there only the radiation from their top border with Stratosphere takes place. Gases in Stratosphere are under low pressure, and the actual physical molecules there are almost in an isolated state - and there is no possibility of CO2 there to prevent any emission at all. CO2 is 1.5 times HEAVIER than air (44 vs 28.5 MW), so it MUST be in Troposphere mostly, and if this Tropospheric CO2 retains heat, the Troposphere must expand without its temperature rising (as the heat exchange between it as a system and Stratosphere remains constant all the time).

PV/T = const. Rise of temperature causes either rise of pressure or increase of Volume. The active Climatologists have most likely missed the Gas laws in school Physics. Greenhouse effect CAN NOT warm up the earth at all, at least in the parts of atmosphere in which temperature reading makes sense - because the higher levels of it are heated so severely, that a commoner would fail to imagine this, for example the very top layers are "hotter" than 1000 C, while the satellites orbit the Earth in the media heated to 1500 C. Temperature only measures the SPEED of Brown's Motion, while practically it is hardly possible to boil an egg up there.

I do not touch social and political parts of the entire scheme, as they may be quite valid and essential; but as a Physical Chemist I do not see any solid justification for the scientific side of the AGW project. This is all what I mean - that despite all my attempts to obtain a proper scientific explanation, based not on emotions but on a sensible mathematical model, these attempts failed, as there is no such explanation so far, at least presented to the public. There is also no comprehensive data for the energy balance on planetary scale, as the issue boils down to the heat input being greater than heat output, but instead of a one line proof that it is so and the gap is growing, we are being presented with the piles of wording, as if they want to persuade us in something they do not exactly know to be true.