General AGW discussion thread

[mugaliens]

You have access to some of the best medical care in the world. In other countries, a heat wave or cold snap can mean thousands of dead. (France 2003 heatwave: 15,000 dead.)

I've never understood this. I've lived all over the world, from the SE to the SW to various places overseas, in temps ranging from -20 to 117. I've been camping in the coldest of temps (-18) and hiking through the desert in the warmest (107).

I understand I'm not elderly, but I am in my mid-40s. What I've learned is that a few simple procedures can allow mankind, even the elderly, to survice extreme temperatures well above those "responsible" for teh 15,000.

My take is that the temps weren't at all responsible for those who died. Rather, it was a severe lack of education, preparedness, and common heat-sense which resulted in their deaths.

Again, before I'm blasted for my "insensitivity," I am speaking not only as one who as lived in various climate extremes, but also as one who has friends who currently live in various climate extremes.

To be blunt, I've 80+ friends in places as cold as Fairbanks and as warm as Phoenix. They're doing just fine, despite temperature extremes which far exceed that of France.

As one who has lived overseas (Germany) I'm well aware of how the lack of A/C affects one's ability to keep cool. But as one who's worked in 115+ environments without A/C, seeing the elderly do the same, I remain at a loss.

The climate is, and always has been, a danger to the third-world poor.

Having lived among and worked with those third-world poor, I just don't see that "danger." Sorry, but I've just been there, done that, and what you're talking about just ain't there.

Societies that have produced enough to afford Hummers, on the other hand, tend to survive climate change, as you have done, just fine.

Actually, it's the societies with moderate ability to moderate their climate that do the worst when the climate extends to it's extremes. Consider Phoenix - 120 deg temps don't cause massive death. 110 deg temps in France, however, do.

As for other life forms surviving, consider that there is life just about everywhere on this planet, even in some of the harshest environments. Individuals and entire species will die off over time, but other ones will find the new situation more to their liking and will move in to take over. Heat, cold, draughts, and floods have occurred from the beginning. It is nothing life hasn't experienced before. And as I understand it, the climate changes from global warming would happen over centuries.

Ah, Bingo! Now you're talking.

Remember how we used be told that we were destroying the rainforests and that a slashed and burned forest could not grow back? Well, guess what? Life found a way:

New Jungles Surprise Bautforum Members

Ah! Bingo, again!

- Mugs

[William]

Something Fishy with Global Sea Surface Temperature Measurements

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/2...-measurements/

The planet has 22 times in the past abruptly cooled. Base on observations there appears to be a periodic abrupt forcing function that has caused the planet to abruptly cool, roughly very 100,000 years (from roughly 600 kyrs ago, prior to that the cycle was 41 kyrs in duration.) from an interglacial state to a glacial state. Curiously the interglacial states have all ended abruptly. This time because people have not lived through an interglacial/glacial transition and because due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere many people now believe (For what ever reason. This is what a paradigm is.) that the abrupt cooling climate change cannot happen, during this current interglacial period. The 22 other interglacial periods have been short. For what ever reason people believe this interglacial period can not end abruptly.

The other way to look at the problem is to assume that because what has happened in the past, happened for a reason, there is a cause. The cause occurred again and again regardless of the conditions on the earth.

The global warming cry to help makes sense if the planet is about to abruptly warm. The planet has however based on observations slightly cooled since 1998.

If the planet has starting to abruptly cool, could people change their minds and take action to stop the planet from cooling?

[Gillianren]

If the planet has starting to abruptly cool, could people change their minds and take action to stop the planet from cooling?

Well, first off, I thought you didn't think people could do anything to change climate. But yeah, sure--we could dump a whole bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere!

[SolusLupus]

Is anyone else amused at the stages these kinds of debates often reach?

1) Refuse to believe that global warming is occurring, regardless of evidence.
2) Admit that there is evidence, but then deny that humans could possibly be responsible.
3) Also, global warming isn't necessarily bad! People can adapt, right? No other global consequences?

The thing is, in the pro-science film The Unchained Goddess was created in 1958. It contained a scene, which I list here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lgzz-L7GFg

Even 50 years ago, they recognized that CO2 could warm the Earth. And yet, some are claiming that the mainstream thought was that the Earth would cool back then, and not warm, for some reason.

[dmr81]

The planet has however based on observations slightly cooled since 1998.

That's cherry picking.

As you well know, there was a very strong el nino in 1998 which caused a spike in the temperature record. The only reason to choose 1998 as your starting point is to mislead people who don't know that.

As you also know, it is expected that short term variations will overwhelm the long term trend for short periods in noisy data like the temperature record.

[dmr81]

Based on the solar magnetic field modulation of cloud hypothesize, the planet should cool to roughly 1880 temperatures by March 2009

Could you please give us an update on when we should expect this "cooling"?

[mugaliens]

The planet has however based on observations slightly cooled since 1998.

Exactly.

Well, first off, I thought you didn't think people could do anything to change climate. But yeah, sure--we could dump a whole bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere!

Since man's efforts haven't worked so far (see above), what's your proposal to get it to work during the next ice age, where the temperature drops about between 4 and 8 deg C?

We know from the Vostok ice core samples there's a strong correlation between CO2 levels and mean temperature. Correlation does not imply causation, however, and despite CO2 being at record levels, we've been cooling for the last decade.

What I find interesting is that the dust levels always spike immediately before the sharp warming trends and the CO2 peaks. Furthermore, every spike is followed by an increase in both temp and CO2. We know for a fact that thin, high-altitude clouds result in warming, and that dust is critical for the initial formation of clouds.

What we don't know is what's causing the regular (periodic) spikes of dust. The footnote says "higher dust levels are believed to be caused by cold, dry periods. That may be true, and the graph shows a correlation between the coldest periods and the spikes in dust levels.

If so, this may be the moderating mechanism by which the Earth's cooling trends are halted and bumped back to warmer levels before the tends return.

Regardless, the largest spike in dust levels occurred at the coldest of the last glacial, and the sharp warming trend that followed, around 10,000 years ago, commensurate with the development of agriculture.

Thus, our modern society may not have been possible without a simple 1 ppm increase in dust!

I'm still not convinced it's the cold causing the dust, however, and suspect it's a cyclical effect related to the matter in the interstellar medium. It's known that various heating mechanisms can remove electrons from dust grains, ionizing them. Once ionized, their interaction with our heliopause changes.

Thus, two questions I have from the astronomers out there is this:

What, if any, cyclical mechanisms exist which may cause pulses at intervals commensurate with the spikes in dust concentrations?

Is there enough interstellar matter to cause a 1 ppm increase in dust levels?

[dmr81]

we've been cooling for the last decade.

Your talking point is out of date. See William's post above for how to cherry pick properly.

[mugaliens]

Your talking point is out of date. See William's post above for how to cherry pick properly.

Whether I pick a start date of 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2007, the temp for 2008 is lower, regression analysis (proper regression analysis) of the temps reveals a negative slope (even excluding the "cherry-picked" 1998 temp peak).

Sure it's been positive since the 1970... until the last ten years. Historically, all warming trends have ended, so what's your arguement/evidence that this is not the case, that the current cooling trend is a burp and in the years to come we'll get right back on track with global warming?

As for crackpot ideas behind other factors of global warming: yard watering and the prolifieration of our world populations (and crops) It not only decreases the albedo of the watered yards, trapping more energy, which is later released through bacterial decay, but it adds humidity to the air, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases.

Possible? Conceivable? Absolutely! Yet I've yet to spot that as being mentioned in any of the IPCC reports as even a potential factor.

Again, folks, there are WAY too many factors, some of which we've only recently begun giving serious consideration to (like ocean conveyors) to continue to latch onto the old CO2 trick.

There's a reason that despite the fact the US is the largest per-capita emitter of CO2 that we're the only country that hasn't ratified the Kyoto protocol.

[Ronald Brak]

Once again, just in case an innocent person has stumbled onto this thread, here is the NASA graph of global temperature so people can see exactly how much cooling is occurring:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...emp_change.jpg

People may also want to read the information page that goes with that:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...arth_temp.html

[Ari Jokimaki]

Whether I pick a start date of 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2007, the temp for 2008 is lower,...

It's 2009 now, you are cherry-picking the 2008 anomalously low peak. And at any case, AGW doesn't mean that global temperature has to rise continuously, as has been explained in this thread many, many times already (see Easterling & Wehner, 2009 and Fawcett & Jones, 2008).

By the way, here is 30 year mean plotted from the latest data (30 year mean is climatically much more relevant than monthly means):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gis...t3vgl/mean:360

Where's the cooling?

Sure it's been positive since the 1970... until the last ten years.

All temperature records show warming during the last 10 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gis...m:1999.5/trend

Where's the cooling?

Here's the latest ongoing trend, starting from beginning of 2008:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gis...rom:2008/trend

Where's the cooling?

Historically, all warming trends have ended, so what's your arguement/evidence that this is not the case, that the current cooling trend is a burp and in the years to come we'll get right back on track with global warming?

Historically, global temperature has always done what all forcings and feedbacks combined suggest. Currently, there are no forcings or feedbacks in sight that would stop the current warming trend. There also is no sign that the observed trend of increasing CO₂ forcing would start to decrease. On the contrary, it is expected to continue to increase. There is no doubt that also this warming trend will end eventually, but it will not do so in the near future, and it will not do so before mankind stops dumping too much greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

As for crackpot ideas behind other factors of global warming: yard watering and the prolifieration of our world populations (and crops) It not only decreases the albedo of the watered yards, trapping more energy, which is later released through bacterial decay, but it adds humidity to the air, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases.

Which will then rain down.

Again, folks, there are WAY too many factors, some of which we've only recently begun giving serious consideration to (like ocean conveyors) to continue to latch onto the old CO2 trick.

Nobody claims that we know everything, but CO₂ effects have already been measured, so we know how climate reacts to it.

Oh, and here's for that ocean conveyor business.

[Ari Jokimaki]

The planet has 22 times in the past abruptly cooled. Base on observations there appears to be a periodic abrupt forcing function that has caused the planet to abruptly cool, roughly very 100,000 years (from roughly 600 kyrs ago, prior to that the cycle was 41 kyrs in duration.) from an interglacial state to a glacial state. Curiously the interglacial states have all ended abruptly. This time because people have not lived through an interglacial/glacial transition and because due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere many people now believe (For what ever reason. This is what a paradigm is.) that the abrupt cooling climate change cannot happen, during this current interglacial period. The 22 other interglacial periods have been short. For what ever reason people believe this interglacial period can not end abruptly.

The other way to look at the problem is to assume that because what has happened in the past, happened for a reason, there is a cause. The cause occurred again and again regardless of the conditions on the earth.

Here's my answer to this.

[G O R T]

Here's my answer to this.

From the above:

Currently, there’s no forcing in sight that could turn things around. As Hansen et al. (2008) show, greenhouse gases have always (well, at least the last 65 million years) been the determining factor of where climate goes.

We know that Hansen thinks that CO² leads temperatures around by the nose, but does that really make sense (pre)historically? Someone really needs to explain all of those drastic CO² fluxuations then.
We can imagine why lower CO² causes polar ice buildup, but why does the CO² change? Why did CO² decrease as the Atlantic opened up and North America moved poleward? Why the 41ky and 100Ky cycles? Why the constant 1450 year fluxuations? Why, while in the depths of glaciation, does CO² keep spiking?
Why, why, why?

So much effort to convince us that CO² is the cause of climate change, and oh, I thought we were looking for the root cause!
CO² changes willy-nilly, sometimes with the forcings and sometimes against and keeping various rhythms, all on its own! Be serious!
Obviously changing CO² is not the root cause, so what is?

Logical answers only please.

[jlhredshift]

Why the 41ky and 100Ky cycles? Why the constant 1450 year fluxuations? Why, while in the depths of glaciation, does CO² keep spiking? Why, why, why?

My Bold

The more detailed question is why did it change from 41ky cycles to 100ky cycles?

The past glaciations were not smooth and uniform. During transgressions and regressions there were places where the opposite was occurring. One lobe could be growing while an adjacent lobe (lobes can be any size, but in this context a factor of plus or minus a hundred miles or so) would be receding, or the rate of growth and recession would be non-synchronous; one faster than another. This means that weather (semi long term; decades or longer patterns) within the general climate was highly variable impacting the growth or recession on a reasonably small scale compared to the size of the ice sheet overall. Sorting the ground evidence out is hard enough in itself and to then ascribe specific causes to each case is, well, difficult.

[Ari Jokimaki]

We know that Hansen thinks that CO² leads temperatures around by the nose, but does that really make sense (pre)historically? Someone really needs to explain all of those drastic CO2 fluxuations then.

If you would have read the Hansen et al. paper I referenced, you would know that this statement is false. Hansen, like all other climate scientists know that CO₂ lags temperature in historical climate changes, it is explicitly stated in the paper. In the historical climate changes CO₂ is a positive feedback which amplifies pre-existing warming/cooling considerably, so that the size of the climate change is pretty much determined by the CO₂ (and other greenhouse gases). That's why I said it has been determining factor for past climate.

So much effort to convince us that CO² is the cause of climate change, and oh, I thought we were looking for the root cause!

The fact that CO₂ works as a positive feedback in past climate tells us that when introduced to the atmosphere, CO₂ can cause lot of warming, so in that sense it can be considered as a root cause. On the other hand, it can never be considered a root cause; in past climate changes it was introduced to the atmosphere by small temperature changes generally caused by Milankovich cycles, and today it is introduced to the atmosphere by mankind, so in the past the root cause was Milankovich cycles and today the root cause is mankind. CO₂ always needs something or someone that first introduces more CO₂ to the atmosphere, but after that it will cause warming.

CO₂ changes willy-nilly, sometimes with the forcings and sometimes against and keeping various rhythms, all on its own! Be serious!

Just look at the Hansen et al. paper, figure 1 for example, and then repeat your complaint if you still think you have one.

I also note that I have already once answered to your questions some of which were very similar to ones you presented here again. It would have been nice if you would have said then that you don't accept my answer (with reasons), but you didn't comment my answer back then.

[neilzero]

Neither side of the debate is convincing when you exaggerate and are excessively assertive. Likely the planet has warmed 0.5 degrees c = 0.9 degrees f over many of the starting and ending dates we might select at random. How can we claim such a tiny increase fortells disaster soon? I'm still not sure atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased significantly, as nearly all text books rounded the various measurements off to 0.04%, about a century ago. We have actually decreased the honesty of our experiments in the past 60 years. So why are measurements of the carbon dioxide in hollow metal buttons more reliable than the measurements by the ethical scientists of old? Are we sure the modern researchers did not over estimate the basic carbonate corrosion inside the buttons? Neil

[GOURDHEAD]

I'm still stuck on technical definition of terms such as "global average temperature" and the validity of the various ways it has been and is computed. From wikipedia we have:

[edit] Calculating the global temperature
Deriving a reliable global temperature from the instrument data is not easy because the instruments are not evenly distributed across the planet, the hardware and observing locations have changed over the years, and there has been extensive land use change (such as urbanization) around some of the sites.

The calculation needs to filter out the changes that have occurred over time that are not climate related (eg urban heat islands), then interpolate across regions where instrument data has historically been sparse (eg in the southern hemisphere and at sea), before an average can be taken.

There are two main global temperature datasets, both developed since the late 1970s: that maintained by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia [2] and that maintained by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies [14]. Both datasets produce very similar results, and are updated every month with additional data.

In the late 1990s, the Goddard team used the same data to produce a global map of temperature anomalies to illustrate the difference between the current temperature and average temperatures prior to 1950 across every part of the globe.[15]

Uncertainties in the temperature record
A number of scientists and scientific organizations have expressed concern about the possible deterioration of the land surface observing network.[17][18][19][20] Climate scientist Roger A. Pielke has stated that he has identified a number of sites where poorly sited stations in sparse regions "will introduce spatially unrepresentative data into the analyses."[21] The metadata needed to quantify the uncertainty from poorly sited stations does not currently exist. Pielke has called for a similar documentation effort for the rest of the world.[22]

The uncertainty in annual measurements of the global average temperature (95% range) is estimated to be ~0.05°C since 1950 and as much as ~0.15°C in the earliest portions of the instrumental record. The error in recent years is dominated by the incomplete coverage of existing temperature records. Early records also have a substantial uncertainty driven by systematic concerns over the accuracy of sea surface temperature measurements.[23][24] Station densities are highest in the northern hemisphere, providing more confidence in climate trends in this region. Station densities are far lower in other regions such as the tropics, northern Asia and the former Soviet Union. This results in less confidence in the robustness of climate trends in these areas. If a region with few stations includes a poor quality station, the impact on global temperature would be greater than in a grid with many weather stations.[25][edit]

The stochastic nature of the effects of air and water motion and the ice erosion that can occur from them suggests the necessity of partitioning the atmosphere, land, and seas into uniform cell sizes, measuring the temperature of each and weighting them by appropriately considering the thermal capacity of the contents of each and the time intervals required to collect a complete sample of global data. Is this what is being done? How have they determined the minimum volume of a relevant measurement cell? How frequently are complete global datasets collected? Are such data available to the public?

Strictly speaking the global average temperature does not lend itself to being "measured". It has to be computed using a process similar to the one implied by me above.

[G O R T]

If you would have read the Hansen et al. paper I referenced, you would know that this statement is false.

I have read it and forgotten it several times. If it made sense and answered questions I would definately remember it better.

Hansen, like all other climate scientists know that CO₂ lags temperature in historical climate changes, it is explicitly stated in the paper.

You appear to mean "initially lags temperature" since it then drives temperature.

In the historical climate changes CO₂ is a positive feedback which amplifies pre-existing warming/cooling considerably, so that the size of the climate change is pretty much determined by the CO₂ (and other greenhouse gases). That's why I said it has been determining factor for past climate.

Amplifies considerably, determining factor, none of this is consistent. Do you not see that if CO₂ ever becomes the determining factor then the wild short-term fluxuations in the historical record make no sense? Some other rather drastic forcing is obviously at work here, capable of shoving temperature and CO₂ around at will. Hansen ignores this and tries to bolster his reasoning with minutea of debatable relevence. To a very large degree, Hansen argues that because temperatures and CO₂ appear related then one must cause the other directly with no other controlling factor (of both). I do not deny that CO₂ affects global temperatures, but where is the reasoning that allows it to become the controlling factor?

The fact that CO₂ works as a positive feedback in past climate tells us that when introduced to the atmosphere, CO₂ can cause lot of warming, so in that sense it can be considered as a root cause. On the other hand, it can never be considered a root cause; in past climate changes it was introduced to the atmosphere by small temperature changes generally caused by Milankovich cycles, and today it is introduced to the atmosphere by mankind, so in the past the root cause was Milankovich cycles and today the root cause is mankind. CO₂ always needs something or someone that first introduces more CO₂ to the atmosphere, but after that it will cause warming.

These conclusions largely hinge upon the resolution of the former dispute.

Just look at the Hansen et al. paper, figure 1 for example, and then repeat your complaint if you still think you have one.

Hansenet al
Figure 2 is more direct, and yes I repeat. Look at the sudden drops and non-overlaps.

I also note that I have already once answered to your questions some of which were very similar to ones you presented here again. It would have been nice if you would have said then that you don't accept my answer (with reasons), but you didn't comment my answer back then.

Answers that do not answer the questions seem rather fruitless. The discussion also keeps falling to which part of whose data should be cherry picked in the recent data. The reasonings on both sides frequently far exceed the reach of the data. If CO₂ is the culprit that should be evident before mans influence. Amplified positive feedback does not fit without fully explaining failure to run away and the reason for large short term oscillations that agree with no explained forcings.

A little heat leads to CO₂ which leads to a lot more heat. How does the removal of the original heat forcing lead to dramatic recovery. Hansen gives mumbo-jumbo vague guesses as to minor forcings.

What do I see? Temperature and CO₂ suddenly plummet, then they substantially recover, then they plummet again. Over and over it happens, each time reaching new lows. Average global ice builds up slowly the entire time seeming to rule out normally associated albedo effects. Only at the start of interglacials does CO₂ forcing even appear responsible. But then if you look closely those fluxuations still exist. Why do they exist, and why do they not cause their own long term excursions? I would really like to know.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Likely the planet has warmed 0.5 degrees c = 0.9 degrees f over many of the starting and ending dates we might select at random. How can we claim such a tiny increase fortells disaster soon?

Important thing is that the change is happening too fast. Here are some things that are expected to happen, and here is an article by Parmesan (2006) reviewing the response of biosphere to this change.

We have actually decreased the honesty of our experiments in the past 60 years.

Go ahead and back up this claim with facts.

So why are measurements of the carbon dioxide in hollow metal buttons more reliable than the measurements by the ethical scientists of old? Are we sure the modern researchers did not over estimate the basic carbonate corrosion inside the buttons?

There are many different methods of measuring the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere. Some methods measure the concentration directly from the atmosphere spectroscopically (some methods using satellites) without taking any air samples. Some air sampling methods quide the air directly from the atmosphere to an automatic analyzer. I'm not sure to what you are referring to with the "hollow metal buttons", but I believe my answer should be sufficient to eliminate your concern. Furthermore, in the 1950's Charles Keeling developed measuring system accurate enough to measure the trends in atmospheric carbon dioxide, before that the measurements weren't accurate enough. And besides, what kind of process creates a carbonate corrosion that increases steadily through time to create the Keeling curve, and working similarily in dozens of measurement stations? Note also that they use glass flasks, as in Point Barrow, Alaska for example.

[William]

The planet is cooling not warming. You provide out dated information. Compare the graph which is thoughtfully provided by the activists as "global warming art" above to a pure satellite graph, that is not contaminated by the cottage industry of activists that attempted to change the data to fit their agenda.

Are you saying the planet has got warmer since 1998?

I am curious what your comments will be this winter. Please do not go away. I am genuinely interested in the time period it will take for the alarmists, the news media, and the civil government to pick up the new cooling problem. Do not forget what is currently happening has happened before. Previous abrupt climate changes took place in less than decade.

Alarmists also stated and continue to state that the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets will collapse (Why use the word "collapse"?) which is fundamentally incorrect.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Olli...wsAug.2009.pdf

Why the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are Not Collapsing

Global warming alarmists have suggested that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica may collapse, causing disastrous sea level rise. This idea is based on the concept of an ice sheet sliding down an inclined plane on a base lubricated by meltwater, which is itself increasing because of global warming. In reality the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets occupy deep basins, and cannot slide down a plane. Furthermore glacial flow depends on stress (including the important yield stress) as well as temperature, and much of the ice sheets are well below melting point.

The accumulation of kilometres of undisturbed ice in cores in Greenland and Antarctica (the same ones that are sometimes used to fuel ideas of global warming) show hundreds of thousands of years of accumulation with no melting or flow. Except around the edges, ice sheets flow at the base, and depend on geothermal heat, not the climate at the surface. It is impossible for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to 'collapse'.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/2...ot-collapsing/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20...latchy/3295216

Lower temperatures grist for global warming debate

WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?
Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.
That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.

[dmr81]

Are you saying the planet has got warmer since 1998?

Asked & answered. How many more times are you going to need this explaining to you?

I am curious what your comments will be this winter.

I'm expecting it to get colder in the winter. That happens every year. It is not evidence of a cooling CLIMATE.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20...latchy/3295216

That is an article reporting on an advertising campaign by an anti-science lobbying group. Unlike you, the reporter allowed a scientist to respond to their claims:

However, scientists say the skeptics' [sic] argument is misleading.

"It's entirely possible to have a period as long as a decade or two of cooling superimposed on the long-term warming trend," said David Easterling , chief of scientific services at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

"These short term fluctuations are statistically insignificant (and) entirely due to natural internal variability," Easterling said in an essay published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April. "It's easy to 'cherry pick' a period to reinforce a point of view."

Climate experts say the 1998 record was partly caused by El Nino, a periodic warming of tropical Pacific Ocean waters that affects the climate worldwide.

[William]

Asked & answered. How many more times are you going to need this explaining to you?

I'm expecting it to get colder in the winter. That happens every year. It is not evidence of a cooling CLIMATE.

That is an article reporting on an advertising campaign by an anti-science lobbying group. Unlike you, the reporter allowed a scientist to respond to their claims:

dmr81,

If I understand the mechanisms (As Gerald & Lotti Bond found there are cosmogenic isotope changes, smoking gun evidence, that coincides with past Heinrich events, the question is what is causing the cosmogenic isotope changes and could the semi-cyclically Heinrich events be caused by what ever is causing the cosmogenic isotope changes? Is so how does the mechanism work?) about to experience a Heinrich event. Heinrich events are most definitely climate change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event

If we see something unusual this winter then we will have something to discuss. I would be interested in your local observations as well as the news media's reaction in your area of the woods.

P.S. You did not comment on the paper that shows the "Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are not about to collapse". We can have some fun arguing about which side is or is not scientific, while we are waiting for the observational evidence of a Heinrich event.

I am expecting an observed change this winter, as the mechanism is during this stage of the event, amplified during perihelion and suppressed at aphelion (Perihelion occurs in January and aphelion in June.)

Based on what has happened before there will be an abrupt drop in high latitude temperatures, both hemispheres, particularly over the ocean. I would also expect record low temperatures at night.

http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/con.../294/5549/2130

http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/sem...0al%202001.pdf

Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene

Gerard Bond,1* Bernd Kromer,2 Juerg Beer,3 Raimund Muscheler,3 Michael N. Evans,4 William Showers,5 Sharon Hoffmann,1 Rusty Lotti-Bond,1 Irka Hajdas,6 Georges Bonani6


Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influenced by variations in solar output through the entire Holocene. The evidence comes from a close correlation between inferred changes in production rates of the cosmogenic nuclides carbon-14 and beryllium-10 and centennial to millennial time scale changes in proxies of drift ice measured in deep-sea sediment cores. A solar forcing mechanism therefore may underlie at least the Holocene segment of the North Atlantic's "1500-year" cycle. The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally.

[William]

Wikipedia article on Heinrich events needs to be updated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event

Wally Broecker’s Ocean current changes hypothesis is debunked as the temperatures change due to a complete stoppage of the North Atlantic Drift current is an order of magnitude less than what is observed during a Heinrich event.'

Also somewhat interesting is ocean current measurements indicate there is not a global thermalhaline conveyor which is curious as most text books state that there is a thermalhaline conveyor and old paleoclimatic text books appealed to some weird periodic stoppage of the Atlantic drift current as the cause of the Heinrich event, even though there was no explanation as to what would cause the THC to stop, regardless of the fact it cannot cause the observed temperature change.

I guess it goes to show that theories over time become accepted as facts.

http://www.americanscientist.org/iss...mild-climate/1


http://www.bautforum.com/against-mai...ml#post1333865

The Internal forcings — the "Binge - Purge" ice sheet model cannot explain the Heinrich events as the ice surges are from different ice sheets so there is no means to coordinate the surge as the local climate changes from ice sheet to ice sheet. What would explain the surge in the ice sheets is a significant increase in volcanic heating under the ice sheets. Also as Gerald Bond showed the Heinrich events continued to occur when there were no ice sheets.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Also as Gerald Bond showed the Heinrich events continued to occur when there were no ice sheets.

You are getting the events all mixed up. Bond didn't come up with the interglacial equivalent to Heinrich events, but he came up with interglacial equivalent to Dansgaard-Oeshger events (although Heinrich events are linked to Dansgaard Oeshger events, so that Heinrich event occurs at the end of a series of Dansgaard Oeshger events). What Bond found is today referred to as Bond events, and they are much milder events than Dansgaard Oeshger events.

The Bond & Lotti (1995) to which you referred to earlier (I think) says already in the abstract that they are discussing events that are more frequent than Heinrich events. Dansgaard & Oeschger events and Bond events are events that are seen most powerfully in northern hemisphere records, especially in North-Atlantic. Dansgaard & Oeschger events and Bond events occur in very steady intervals. Rahmstorf (2003) presented a very good argument on these events based on their very accurate timing:

This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.

We are not yet quite sure about the explanation for these events, but currently we seem to going towards an explanation that changes in solar forcing dictates the timing of the events by controlling the thermohaline circulation (see for example Dima & Lohmann, 2009). Thermohaline circulation changes are then seen strongly in North Atlantic climatic records. It needs to be emphasized that these don't seem to be global events, but instead seem to be focused on North-Atlantic, which suggests that the thermohaline circulation is strongly involved. Rahmstorf (2004) offers one possible explanation:

The only problem is that there is no known cycle of such duration which could act as a trigger. But perhaps we are seeing a superposition of cycles: the two well-known cycles of solar activity, the Gleissberg cycle (period: 87 years) and the De-Vries cycle (period: 210 years), just happen to have a period of 1,470 years as their lowest common multiple.

Braun et al. (2005) seem to agree with this.

[Ari Jokimaki]

From wikipedia we have:The stochastic nature of the effects of air and water motion and the ice erosion that can occur from them suggests the necessity of partitioning the atmosphere, land, and seas into uniform cell sizes, measuring the temperature of each and weighting them by appropriately considering the thermal capacity of the contents of each and the time intervals required to collect a complete sample of global data. Is this what is being done? How have they determined the minimum volume of a relevant measurement cell? How frequently are complete global datasets collected? Are such data available to the public?

Here is the frontpage of GISS datasets, you might find some answers there (check also the papers they link to). Data is also available there.

[Ari Jokimaki]

You appear to mean "initially lags temperature" since it then drives temperature.

Yes.

Do you not see that if CO₂ ever becomes the determining factor then the wild short-term fluxuations in the historical record make no sense?

They do make sense. There are several factors affecting climate. CO₂ can be controlling factor of the overall climate even if it there are some wiggles in the past climate that are explained by some other forcings (see my post above on the 1500 year events). Interestingly, the 1500 year events I discussed above are far stronger when carbon dioxide concentration is low (Dansgaard-Oeshger events). We get much milder events when carbon dioxide concentration is higher (Bond events).

Some other rather drastic forcing is obviously at work here, capable of shoving temperature and CO₂ around at will. Hansen ignores this and tries to bolster his reasoning with minutea of debatable relevence. To a very large degree, Hansen argues that because temperatures and CO₂ appear related then one must cause the other directly with no other controlling factor (of both). I do not deny that CO₂ affects global temperatures, but where is the reasoning that allows it to become the controlling factor?

What Hansen et al. did is they took the past climate data on greenhouse gas concentrations and applied the known forcings of greenhouse gases (these have been measured in laboratories and in atmosphere, so they are indeed "known") to that dataset. The resulting forcing fitted to the temperature record of the past climate amazingly well. From that we know that greenhouse gases produced most of the temperature curve of the past. Other forcings are of course always at work, so we don't get an exact match just by greenhouse gases.

Answers that do not answer the questions seem rather fruitless.

Discussion would be much more fruitful if one feels that answers don't answer the questions, then one would point that out.

What do I see? Temperature and CO₂ suddenly plummet, then they substantially recover, then they plummet again. Over and over it happens, each time reaching new lows. Average global ice builds up slowly the entire time seeming to rule out normally associated albedo effects. Only at the start of interglacials does CO₂ forcing even appear responsible. But then if you look closely those fluxuations still exist. Why do they exist, and why do they not cause their own long term excursions? I would really like to know.

I don't quite understand. Are you expecting that CO₂ always causes the exactly the same sized change regardless of the size of the initial warming? Initial warming of the certain size causes certain amount of rise to the CO₂ concentration which then causes certain amount of radiative forcing. When that radiative forcing and the feedbacks associated with it have run their courses, climate can then "recover", if other forcings are such. If there are no more factors that cause CO₂ concentration to rise even higher, then it might be that Milankovich cycles are in such a position that they cause a negative forcing, which then starts to cool the climate a little. Cooling climate causes a decrease in CO₂ concentration, which then starts to amplify the cooling. Size of the initial warming and cooling varies, because there are lot of different cycles relating to solar forcing, so the size of the initial warming depends on which position all those cycles are.

[mugaliens]

Once again, just in case an innocent person has stumbled onto this thread, here is the NASA graph of global temperature so people can see exactly how much cooling is occurring:

Once again, just in case an innocent person is inclined to buy into Ronald Brak's or others' "that sounds reasonable" renditions, or some indication that a US government funded aeronautics agency, which merely repeats data obtained from other sources is somehow to be believed...

Here's this graph.

Please note that 130 thousand years ago, 240 thousand years ago, 325 thousand years ago, and 410 thousand years ago, Earth's mean temperatures, totally void of the current human CO2 input, reached peak levels higher than any mean temperature of any year in the last 100 years!

There is no global warming, folks, except that which is normal and cyclical over the last several million years. We humans haven't caused it, we can't stop it, but rest assured it'll soon get colder, regardless of what we do.

The ice core data doesn't lie, people! Stop allowing the fearmongers with considerable financial gain in their various research programs to incite you into siphoning off your hard-earned tax dollars.

PT Barnum once said, "A human soul is not to be trifled with ... it is still an immortal spirit!" He also said "there's a sucker born every minute."

Do NOT trifle with the human soul, or their pocketbooks, any longer people. You have the data. Stop ignoring it, and stop spreading the lies about global warming caused by anthropogenic activity.

As for the rest of you, don't be a sucker! Look at the graphs and ask yourselves how in the world we humans caused global warming 130 thousand years ago, 240 thousand years ago, 325 thousand years ago, and 410 thousand years ago?

Obviously, we didn't. And we aren't now.

Don't be a sucker!

[dmr81]

There is no global warming, folks, except that which is normal and cyclical over the last several million years. We humans haven't caused it, we can't stop it, but rest assured it'll soon get colder, regardless of what we do.

Haven't you ever wondered why you can't find a peer reviewed source to back up your claims? It's because they are hogwash.

Stop allowing the fearmongers with considerable financial gain in their various research programs to incite you into siphoning off your hard-earned tax dollars.

Appeal to conspiracy.

Do NOT trifle with the human soul, or their pocketbooks, any longer people. You have the data. Stop ignoring it, and stop spreading the lies about global warming caused by anthropogenic activity.

Appeal to conspiracy.

As for the rest of you, don't be a sucker! Look at the graphs and ask yourselves how in the world we humans caused global warming 130 thousand years ago, 240 thousand years ago, 325 thousand years ago, and 410 thousand years ago?

Straw man. Climate scientists do not claim that those changes were caused by humans.

Obviously, we didn't. And we aren't now.

Non sequitur. The fact that climate change in the past was not caused by humans does not mean that humans cannot cause climate change now.

[dmr81]

The planet is cooling not warming.

Presumably then, if the temperature record looked like this...



... you would consider that convincing evidence that the planet is warming.

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to believe that you are not a parody.

[dmr81]

Based on the solar magnetic field modulation of cloud hypothesize, the planet should cool to roughly 1880 temperatures by March 2009

March 2009 was several months ago and your predicted cooling has not occurred. Provide a new date for your prediction or state explicitly that you have no basis upon which to make one.