Global Warming | Fact or Fiction?

[work in progress]

"Even with the problems getting accurate CO2 readings from geologic evidence, there have been times in the past when carbon levels were likely much higher than they are now....one that stands out is the time around the Permian/Triassic Extinction, when atmospheric CO2 levels were likely as high as 2000 ppm. or 2% of atmospheric gases. "

FYI, this killed 95% of ALL life on earth and competely stopped the ocean currents for millions of years. Caused by the siberian traps.

"The gigantic lava flow in Siberia lasted upward of a million years and flooded an area about the size of the lower 48 United States with layer upon layer of dark basalt lava — thousands of feet thick.



Some geologists suspect the eruption was caused by an extra-large plume of hot material welling up from the edge of the Earth's core. But what makes it especially important is that the Siberian Traps is the prime suspect in wiping out 90 percent of all living species 251 million years ago — the most severe extinction event in Earth's history."
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/others/others_07.html

Yes, and the devastation of the P/T Extinction is described in detail in Peter D. Ward's book "Under A Green Sky", along with the reasons why, after spending a few years looking through 250 million year old rock layers around the world for evidence of a major asteroid impact; he started thinking that the extinction was caused mostly by earth processes, and focused on volcanism when he seen repeated evidence of hydrogen-sulfide producing cyanobacteria in all the sediments. This was an early indicator that vast areas of ocean had turned into stagnant, anoxic swamps. And the rest of the book examines the implications for today, as greenhouse gas levels rise at rates that appear much higher than during the P-T.

In light of Sun's increased levels of radiation since 250 million years ago, the point I was trying to make is that similar anoxic conditions will arrive before atmospheric CO2 levels reach those levels. The periods of high CO2 levels in the past are frequently cited on disinformation sites as evidence that 400 ppm. levels are nothing to worry about. Of course it's also worth noting that geologic measuring of atmospheric gases has not been very accurate until relatively recently, so some of those numbers cited may be way off actual results. More accurate paleoclimate measuring is the subject of a report published a couple of years ago:
Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Then what is the problem? You should have this all figured out for them?

The problem?

1) Global temperature records like the HadCRU and GISS combine temperature records from recordings all over the worlds. Multiple data sets, including already adjusted and combined records, from different instruments. All of these data are adjusted. However, the raw data, and how they were adjusted, is simply unavailable. So how can one "figure it all out" when the information just isn't available?
2) Even if we had all the raw data, code, and methods, they are based on particular arguments concerning, for example, how much surface processes affect local temperature readings, which reject other scholarship on the subject.

Simply put, there is so much data and so much adjustment with so many arguments about how this or that method of adjustment is wrong or the science behind it is wrong. And there isn't even a way to reproduce the results of the temperature records to see if they are robust, because they all rely on each others, and so much of the original data and code used to produce sets they include are not around.

 

[painted wolf]

Hard to say. They weren't included in the IPCC report. But that doesn't mean they were kept out by "redefining" peer-review.

Exactly... it's hard to ascribe shady motives when we don't have enough data.
Given the investigation that followed, I tend to lean toward there not being malice, since there was no sanctioning.
Unless, the whole system is rigged and I'm not much into conspiracies.

wa:do

 

[shawn001]

NOBODY that I know of (among scientists) thinks differently. The issue is WHY. The so-called "deniers" think that most or all of the observed warming is due to natural mechanisms.

The "why" is pretty simple.

natural mechanisms and humans

We still monitor for chernobyl in Oregon to this day.

We get pollution from Asia on the west coast of the US we monitor.

The Radiative Forcing of the CO2 Humans Have Put in the Air Equals 1 Million Hiroshima Bombs a Day

The Radiative Forcing of the CO2 Humans Have Put in the Air Equals 1 Million Hiroshima Bombs a Day | ThinkProgress


"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing … after they have exhausted all other possibilities."— Winston Churchill

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The "why" is pretty simple.

It's "pretty simple" as long as you stick to posting links to simplisitic claims. When you take a look at the original research over the past two decades and what went into creating the models and the global temperature records, let me know. Until then, STOP responding to my posts with links to information you don't understand. You talked about satellite temperature data and linked to NASA, who doesn't produce these data. You linked to BEST with a claim about "skeptical scientists concede." half a dozen or so people produce a temperature record and somehow skeptical scientists concede something. If you don't know who the "skeptical" scientists are, what they think, what publications they cite or have written to support their views, than your links are just a waste of everybody's time. Those who support AGW theory aren't going to change there minds because of your links, and those who don't will not either. Both will either have made up their minds because of political beliefs, or because of their understanding of the science. Public statements you can collect from websites aren't scientific research, so they won't affect the beliefs of anybody.

 

[shawn001]

A 2011 paper published by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Global temperature evolution 1979 – 2010, took the five major global temperature data sets and adjusted them to remove the influences of natural variations in sunlight, volcanic dust, and the El Niño/La Niña cycle. The researchers found that adjusting for these natural effects did not change the observed trend in global temperatures, which remained between 0.14 – 0.17°C (0.25 – 0.31°F) per decade in all five data sets. The warmest years since 1979 were 2010 and 2009 in all five adjusted data sets. Since the known natural causes of global warming have little to do with the observed increase in global temperatures over the past 33 years, either human activity or some unknown natural source is responsible for the global warming during that time period.

Commentary: what do climate scientists think?
Some scientists have proposed that previously unknown natural causes could be responsible for global warming, such as a decrease in cloud-producing galactic cosmic rays. Others have proposed that the climate may be responding to the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide by producing more clouds, which reflect away sunlight and offset the added heat-trapping gases. These theories have little support among actively publishing climate scientists. Despite public belief that climate scientists are divided about the human contribution to our changing climate, polling data show high agreement among climate scientists that humans are significantly affecting the climate. A 2008 poll of actively publishing climate scientists found that 97% said yes to the question, “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” In my personal experience interacting with climate scientists, I have found near-universal support for this position. For example, I am confident that all 23 climate scientists and meteorologists whom I am personally acquainted with at the University of Michigan’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Science would agree that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.” It is good that we have scientists skeptical of the prevailing consensus challenging it, though, because that is how scientific progress is made. It may turn out that one of the scientists making these challenges will turn out to be the next Einstein or Galileo, and overthrow the conventional scientific wisdom on climate change. But Einsteins and Galileos don’t come along very often. The history of science is littered with tens of thousands of discredited scientific papers that challenged the accepted scientific consensus and lost. If we rely on hopes that the next Einstein or Galileo will successfully overthrow the current scientific consensus on climate change, we are making a high-stakes, low-probability-of-success gamble on the future of civilization. The richest and most powerful corporations in world history, the oil companies, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to push us to take this gamble, and their efforts have been very successful. Advertising works, particularly when your competition has little money to spend to oppose you.

2011: Earth’s 11th warmest year; where is the climate headed?



Analysing the ‘900 papers supporting climate scepticism’: 9 out of top 10 authors linked to ExxonMobil

Analysing the

 

[painted wolf]

Al Gore just put the Video together from other scientist work. I would say he is a champion of getting the message out.

"Climate is a dynamical sytem. I've spent countless hours reading the research published. I can understand computer code and there's nothing in the mathematics I can't understand. I don't like how hard it is to check the validty of the most basic aspect/argument for AGW: the temperature data"

Then what is the problem? You should have this all figured out for them?

The problem is the climate is a highly complex system... it has so many variables that getting an accurate model in the first place is almost neigh impossible.

You need to create 'nearly accurate' models with greatly reduced variability to model the system. What you leave in or take out can have a profound influence on how the model will project into the future.

One key example is that early models ignored the fact that the oceans act as a massive CO2 sponge... this has greatly slowed the actual warming and made those older models suspect. So, new models needed to be made... Since no model can be perfect there will always be room to argue.

As a biologists my concerns aren't so much with the actual fact of climate change... climate will always change.. my concern is the rate at which it's happening.

I personally see human activity as having a synergistic role in speeding up warming... but even more worrisome to me are the other effects of human pollution, like the acidification of the oceans due to the influx of CO2 and bioaccumulation of methylmercury from burning fossil fuels.

wa:do

 

[shawn001]

It's "pretty simple" as long as you stick to posting links to simplisitic claims. When you take a look at the original research over the past two decades and what went into creating the models and the global temperature records, let me know. Until then, STOP responding to my posts with links to information you don't understand. You talked about satellite temperature data and linked to NASA, who doesn't produce these data. You linked to BEST with a claim about "skeptical scientists concede." half a dozen or so people produce a temperature record and somehow skeptical scientists concede something. If you don't know who the "skeptical" scientists are, what they think, what publications they cite or have written to support their views, than your links are just a waste of everybody's time. Those who support AGW theory aren't going to change there minds because of your links, and those who don't will not either. Both will either have made up their minds because of political beliefs, or because of their understanding of the science. Public statements you can collect from websites aren't scientific research, so they won't affect the beliefs of anybody.

I don't think you got the message of that article at all or the Koch brothers!

or understand nasa and their satellites and Hansen work on them.

It is pretty simple, the earth is warming faster then it has in the last 10,000 years and man is contributing to it, that simple!!!

Are you mad?



There are four principal global temperature datasets. Three use surface temperature measurements taken at land and sea, and record a clear warming trend over the past century. One is collected by the Met Office Hadley Centre jointly with the Climatic Research Unit (HadCRU) in the United Kingdom. Two datasets are collected by organisations in the United States: the NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
The final dataset uses satellites to measure the troposphere - the lower part of the Earth's Atmosphere. It is collected by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), started in 1978, and also records a clear warming trend.


The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) of the United Nations uses the datasets kept by GISS, NCDC and HadCRU to calculate a single world average.

These datasets are also quoted in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
Each year GISS, HadCRU and NCDC each announce a change in the average global temperature. Each organisation uses subtly different methodologies to analyse data, which means this announced statistic can differ. For example, GISS ranks 2005 and 2010 as the joint hottest years but HadCRU classifies 1998 as the warmest. The three datasets record an increase in temperatures over the past century of between about 0.6 and 0.8 degrees celcius.
Methodology

Surface temperatures on land and at sea have been collated since 1880 by HadCRU, GISS and NCDC. For the data used in the most recent IPCC report, HadCRU used temperatures from 4,349 measuring stations, while NCDC and GISS used more than 7,200. Papers by GISS's Hansen and Lebedeff and HadCRU's Phil Jones et al provide blueprints for analysing data.

The basic technique for deriving temperatures involves mapping the world into 5x5 degree grid boxes. Data from temperature stations within the box is used to calculate an average for the area.

However, stations are not evenly distributed around the world. The Arctic, the Antarctic and the African interior have very few stations and many grid boxes in these regions have no stations at all. The different datasets deal with the lack of data from these remote regions differently. GISS assumes that regions with no stations have the same temperatures as the areas closest by that do have stations. HadCRU classifies remote areas with no stations as missing data. The NCDC extrapolates data, but not to areas in the Arctic with sea ice.
The differences in GISS and HadCRU's published datasets as a consequence of their extrapolation techniques is illustrated below:....



GISS on the left, HadCRU on the right. Source: NASA Earth Observatory

The GISS methodology is more sensitive to unusual conditions in areas with few temperature stations. Because HadCRU does not extrapolate data to areas where there are no stations it can underestimate the warming effect of climate change in the Arctic, for example.

The rate of Arctic sea ice loss suggests temperatures are higher then currently stated in the HadCRU data. Because temperatures were cool in the Arctic during 1998 the GISS value was lower than that given by HadCRU. During 2005 and 2010 the Arctic experienced warmer conditions and thus GISS gave a higher global temperature than HadCRU. This probably explains why HadCRU states that 1998 is the warmest year on record while GISS states 2005 and 2010 are the warmest years.
Temperature Anomalies

Scientists each year announce the change in global temperature compared to a historic long term average. They describe this as the "temperature anomaly" from a "base" period. We cannot calculate an accurate absolute average temperature. This is because, among many reasons, temperature stations are placed at different altitudes and record data at different times, while some are placed in urban and others in rural areas. Using anomalies allows scientists to extrapolate data across geographical regions more accurately.

GISS, HadCRU and the NCDC each use different base periods: GISS uses 1951-80, HadCRU uses 1961-90 and NCDC uses the whole of the 20th Century. This means that each organisation's annual figures are different.
However, the annual changes in temperature recorded by the different organisations are very similar.

How important is one year?

The difference between the 'warmest' or 'second warmest' year is often just a few hundredths of a degree. Meanwhile, year on year temperatures can fluctuate because of specific weather events (like El Nino) and natural climate variability. Because of this, scientists look at longer periods of time to track changes in the climate.
James Hansen, the director of GISS, has said: "It's not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record… It is the underlying trend that is important."

Global temperature datasets | Carbon Brief

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

A 2011 paper published by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Global temperature evolution 1979 – 2010, took the five major global temperature data sets and adjusted them to remove the influences of natural variations

The estimated influences. Did you bother to read the paper? Do you read any of the research behind the links you keep posting? Adjusting data sets that have ALREADY been adjusted, in ways you don't know (the authors of the study worked only with the already adjusted data) with further estimates means what, exactly? You keep posting links to science you don't understand because you haven't read the research. What is the point? Again, nobody's going to change their mind because you linked to what anybody could find with a basic internet search, and could find just as many and equally unreliable anti-AGW "findings." I could go to google and get the same kind of headlines like "scientists admit global warming a fraud" or the "key global warming advocates publish research showing global warming stopped in 1998." The problem is, they distort the research. And so do you.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

If it means more chicks in bikinis, I'm all for it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

or understand nasa and their satellites and Hansen work on them.

You don't have any idea what you are talking about. I gave you the actual satellite data sets. I gave you a link to NOAA stating who puts the data sets together (UAH). And you keep going to google and posting links to news releases and other junk, or summaries of articles you haven't read.

It is pretty simple, the earth is warming faster then it has in the last 10,000 years and man is contributing to it, that simple!!!

It's pretty simple. Provided you don't know what you are talking about and rely on whatever google tells you rather than research. You don't know the research, methods, or ANYTHING behind the direct measurement sets, let alone the proxy record, so I have no doubt that things are simple for you.

Are you mad?

I'm pretty ****** to have to deal with someone who would rather continue to post headlines than try to educate themselves.

The final dataset uses satellites to measure the troposphere - the lower part of the Earth's Atmosphere. It is collected by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), started in 1978, and also records a clear warming trend.

And according to the two scientists at the UAH, this warming trend doesn't match the surface trend, and there is no real evidence that this warming is caused by humans.

But I'm glad you know how to use google to find headlines.

 

[work in progress]

You do realize that the CO2 rise itself is, according to AGW theory, not the real issue? Its the feedback effects from CO2 that, according to the theory, will cause the temperatures to increase to a dangerous or catastrophic level if left unchecked.

Of course CO2 can't be separated from this process. Rising CO2 increases the greenhouse effect and rising temperatures melt permafrost and shallow Arctic coastlines, where CO2 and methane from decaying organic matter remains in deeper waters....until warming allows them to bubble up to the surface.

But, besides the effects on global warming -- let's take it right off the table completely and pretend that the answer is closer to what we were told in science class many,many,many years ago -- that the positive feedback greenhouse effects of CO2 might be balanced by its negative effects of promoting cloud formation. So, let's say CO2 is neutral and rates can hit the stratosphere without causing the climate to heat up -- what about the effects of carbon absorption on the world's oceans? Specifically, the growing ocean acidification that will kill off all the world's coral-producing species in a matter of decades, and is even causing rapid declines in many other fish species because changing water densities are screwing up fish sonar systems of echo location.

My takeaway is that even if the arguments that the deniers keep tossing up like: temperature rise precedes Co2 increase etc. were all true, the other negative effects of rising greenhouse gas levels would be enough to order a Marshall Plan to phase out the burning of fossil fuels. And that is the no.1 reason why I consider the denier scientists to be the most despicable opportunists around today! Are they that narrow focused that they can't observe other impacts? Or do they just no care anyway about the long term consequences?

So "Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever" is and , but Jame Lovelocke, who is even older and who received his PhD in medicine, is definitely someone we want to listen to about the climate and other environmental issues.

James Lovelock is not someone who everyone listens to, but what impressed me is that he has spent his time trying to develop a complete theory of environmental systems rather than just play the role of the crank, who uses his past awards to disparage things he doesn't accept.

For the record, Lovelock started working on the Gaia Hypothesis with biologist Lyn Margulis, who also had to push against the established order in biology when she proposed that evolution is advanced not only through competition (survival of the fittest etc.), but also through mutual cooperation for mutual advantage. Part of her theory of Symbiogenesis is established science (mitochondria of eukaryote cells were originally separate species of bacteria), and it took 10 years before the Gaia model started getting attention....and unfortunately it also got a lot of attention from pagan new age types who thought it meant Earth had some sort of mother goddess.

Umm...what exactly constitutes "normal circumstances" in a highly chaotic system? Or from a dynamic systems perspective, where or what are the periodic points?

Well, let's say conditions of the Holocene Epoch, which were more stable than previous millenia and has formed the weather we have come to expect as we began to flourish, develop agriculture and populate the planet. The changes we have started (along with changes to come) cause many earth scientists to declare that we have entered a new age: The Anthropocene -- and the only dispute is exactly when to peg the start of the Anthropocene? 1. the start of the Industrial Revolution 2. the Agricultural Revolution. Our environment-modifications go back as far as when we developed the capacity to kill large megafauna and burn down vast tracts of forests and turn them into grasslands. But the changes of the last 150 years are the most dramatic.

For most of this planets history, life has been extremely simple. Let's we have the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere a couple billion years ago or about halfway into the earth's history, which according to a 2005 study published in the PNAS was "the most radical transformation of Earth's biogeochemical cycles." We have multiple mass extinctions. We know that many of the identified climactic cycles and changes of thre past are caused by the sun in a various ways (everything from fluctuations in its energy to fluctuations in the magnetic shield it provides the earth). We have massive changes from the "snowball earth" when the earth was nearly all ice for a few million years. So what exactly is "normal conditions?"

Like I said, since we are able to engineer the environment now, we have a responsibilty to engineer it back to Holocene conditions or face the prospects of mass extinction of human populations that are dependent on a narrow range of weather conditions for agriculture.

And a reason why I consider Gaia to be so important is because there are no alternatives to explain the why questions behind the evidence of atmospheric changes such as the introduction of oxygen-producing plants. In standard theory, it just happened, and killed off a lot of cyanobacteria that were poisoned by the introduction of oxygen. But, in light of the corresponding decline in carbon, it occurs that the change occurred during the time when solar output was great enough to favour an atmosphere that was not loaded with heat-trapping gases.

Same with the other changes that have taken the planet from Snowball Earth (which mostly happened very early on when the Sun was less radiant) and the Hothouse periods with no ice occur more frequently in later eras. But even without a Gaia explanation, there is a clear trend over recent millions of years that CO2 levels are kept much lower than previous times. That is the biggest problem I have with careless theorizing about CO2 not being a big deal because of past eras when rates were much higher.

Well that was lucky. My access to AGU journals is through Proquest, which only goes back to Nov. 2009, one month AFTER Murphy 2009. However, the full article is available here. The Nature article (Domingues et al 2008) I couldn't find online, but I did download it for you, and I put it online here. Let me know if it doesn't work (I'm not used to file sharing and this is the first time I've used this account).

Thanks! I'll take a look at them tomorrow.

 

[work in progress]

WHAT WSJ article? I didn't refer to any. That chart is taken from the CRU website. Not any "WSJ" article.

I said already, just like the first time, that it was featured in Joe Romm's Thinkprogress rebuttal of the WSJ editorial.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I said already, just like the first time, that it was featured in Joe Romm's Thinkprogress rebuttal of the WSJ editorial.

Ah. So you were explaining where you got your graph, right? Thanks.

 

[shawn001]

"Many DO "deny" there is reason to think this is because of human activity."

Its of course not totally due to human actiivity.

That human activity hasn't been shown to contribute and speed up the process is the "stupid" part.

Your acting as if this hasn't been settled already.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

"Many DO "deny" there is reason to think this is because of human activity."

Its of course not totally due to human actiivity.

They don't believe that humans have contributed much to the warming, that the projections of catastrophe or danger from emissions are accurate at all, and so on.

That human activity hasn't been shown to contribute and speed up the process is the "stupid" part.

That you keep spouting headline news without knowing what you are talking about or having read any of the actual research is the part I don't understand.

Your acting as if this hasn't been settled already.

Maybe that's because I've done more than browse the internet and to grab press releases.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

Volcanic Eruptions Emerge as Lead Cause for Little Ice Age

The cooling effect of those eruptions, the team posits, probably triggered the growth of Arctic summer sea-ice cover and changes in North Atlantic ocean circulation. These changes reinforced the cooling trend, turning what might have been relatively short cool periods into a centuries-long chill.

 

[Thief]

Al Gore is a politician, not a scientist. My research/field concerns dynamical systems. Climate is a dynamical sytem. I've spent countless hours reading the research published. I can understand computer code and there's nothing in the mathematics I can't understand. I don't like how hard it is to check the validty of the most basic aspect/argument for AGW: the temperature data.

You might then enjoy the video.

 

[Reverend Rick]

I don't think scientists have a clue.

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade ? The Register

 

[Quagmire]

It was caused by you darn Heliocentrists sticking the sun smack dab in the center of the solar system. There's no way to get away from it now.