What's to deny there? MH4 is one also, so is N2O. What human activity created an environment for the Vikings to inhabit Greenland, then chase then away many years later?
Since the UN's IPCC report in 2007, we've been appraised that CO2 levels are two to three times the UN's liberally projected expectations. Why has it grown cooler? Why has many of the authors of that report been saying things like GW has paused.
"But climate is known to be variable — a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”" Discovery News
Apparently other thing can cause a warming or cooling trend. Things like water currents, vents, geological events. Natural occurrences seem to matter and overwrite any greenhouse accumulations. They get trumped by nature and seem to be easily.
"Global warming is in the middle of a ten-year pause according to an article in Nature. Because this is a peer reviewed scientific article published in a major journal it must be taken far more seriously than the usual scattershot grab-bag of claims by climate change skeptics.
The article does not say that global warming is stopping, just that there is a pause due to alterations in ocean circulation patterns. This may be because of natural causes, because global warming has altered ocean circulation, or a combination.
The claim is not that global warming is stopping, just that ocean circulation patterns are offsetting the warming for a temporary period." Gather.com
See there is a peer reviewed study published in Nature, International Weekly Journal of Science. I'm sure Christina has read it.
"It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970s was due to a free variation in climate," Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey.
"But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun's energy than usual back out into space." Disc.
But, but, but "the Sun doesn't matter," greenhouse gases do. That's what we've been told. The lack of Sunspots, solar activity being nonexistent recently. Solar winds creating more clouds than before. These thing don't seem to be included in any models of climate change. Why hasn't number 24 begun? And why should we be concerned that it hasn't?
***
George Stephanopolous reported;
"When the White House released its budget, I said the president’s effort to reform health care and cap carbon emissions were “scorpions in a bottle” — only one could make it through Congress this year.
This week, the White House and House Democrats made their choice: health care is the survivor."
Apparently, climate change isn't that important either. It can wait another few years...
Posted by peter at March 21, 2009 08:59 PM
Peter, your inability to provide links makes you look like an opportunistic cherry picker who doesn't know how to lookup things for yourself. For instance, you drop in this little statement:
“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”" Discovery News
But if you go to NOAA, it's pretty easy to find this report dated March 5th which indicates that there is a La Nina oscillation occurring right now:
Synopsis: La Niña is expected to gradually weaken with increasing chances (greater than 50%) for ENSO-neutral conditions during the Northern Hemisphere Spring.
Here's January's report.
Posted by Mary at March 21, 2009 10:04 PMAnd then there was this piece from last year. Funny how that La Nina just keeps popping up in the scientific reports.
Posted by Mary at March 21, 2009 10:07 PMAnd then there's this from April of last year:
Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening but continues to blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as shown by new sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite.
Posted by Mary at March 21, 2009 10:10 PMshit for brains petey your criminal cult overlords are proud of your ability to waste bandwidth and spew the lies you call talking points.. but in the
end, bottom line..you still have shit for brains...
Global warming is about political activism, not science. Even the movement itself has been taken over by economists and government workers.
Posted by Dennis at March 21, 2009 10:14 PMThe actual scientific evidence is simply overwhelming at this point. That's the difference with the sort of ideological battles that Peter et al. like to wage; what determines who is correct is the cold stubborn facts of nature. These battles do not necessarily go along partisan lines: nuclear winter, for example, was a concept that proved to be an artifact of models which were too simple. There is an intricate collection of evidence, combined with numerous theoretical advances (including the exponential growth of computing power) which makes human-induced climate change a question of "how much", not "if".
We know that excess CO2 traps heat. We know that people are producing it. We see clear evidence that the planet is warming - and dishonest cherry picking of noise in the system doesn't change that. Science is a conservative process, and as would be expected the initial estimates of the rate were too low rather than too high. I am, unfortunately, extremely confident in predicting that the next decade will be warmer than the prior one. It looks as if we will lose all Arctic sea ice in the next 4 years (not the 40 in the models.)
What is sad is the degree to which the Republican party in the US has allied itself with a know-nothing philosophy - hostile to scientific evidence both in the service of theology (evolution) and their corporate masters (climate change.)
Posted by Marc at March 22, 2009 05:37 AMDenialists are mostly mentally ill conservative white males whose sole reason for opposition to acting on climate chnage is a desire to frustrate the lib'ruls they hate so much---they are delighted to cut off their children's noses to spite the face of today's hated lib'rul. Irrational and hate filled---that's the denialist MO.
Look at the method of the absurd Brian M in the comment presented: as an arrogant, egomaniacal conservative white male, he thinks that by "trying a little thing like Google" a dough-ass nobody like him can "prove" that the world's climate scientists are wrong, that they never looked at or considered the CO2 output of the flora and oceans and that some unnnamed climate scientists agree with his juvenile, ignorant "analysis". Apparently we are to trust and believe all earth sciences experts EXCEPT climate scientists.
As for the antics of pinhead peter, his sole motivation is "victory" over the hated lib'ruls on global warming. All of his cut n' paste posts on global warming are ignorant, intentional lies that he mines from rightwing denialist shit-troughs which he gorges on a daily basis.
His climate posts should be deleted immediately as a matter of TLC policy---he should not be permitted to use this forum for his absurd Lie of the Day---and he himself should now be banned as a poster. This is long overdue. We've had our fill of his wingnut shit and he should be told (finally) to move on to some other site.
Posted by euzoius at March 22, 2009 07:22 AMThe actual scientific evidence is simply underwhelming at this point. - Marc
Fixed it for you.
"Underwhelming" is certainly an understatement, as well as Euzie's four paragraphs of nothing.
Dig a little deeper...try a little harder.
Posted by redsneakers at March 22, 2009 01:15 PMIt's over. You haven't heard the latest: the data was falsified.
A Scientific Body Blow to Anthropomorpic Global Warming
A new peer-reviewed paper has just delivered a major blow to the “greenhouse gas” assumptions that are central to the arguments of most climate alarmists. The paper, published in the International Journal of Modern Physics, is entitled Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics. Both the abstract and a pdf of the full 115-page paper are available to the public.
Here are a few central points from this paper, done by two German physicists who understand that we have witnessed the erosion of the scientific method in order to support a political agenda.
The CO2 greenhouse effect ... is a "mirage." The horror visions of a risen sea level, melting pole caps and developing deserts in North America and in Europe are fictitious consequences of fictitious physical mechanism as they cannot be seen even in the climate model computations. The emergence of hurricanes and tornadoes cannot be predicted by climate models because all of these deviations are ruled out. The main strategy of modern CO2 greenhouse gas defenders seems to [be to] hide themselves behind more and more pseudo-explanations, which are not part of the academic education or even of the physics training...
http://www.scsuscholars.com/2009/03/scientific-body-blow-to-anthropomorpic.html
Posted by JFixx at March 22, 2009 05:49 PMJFixx--you're quite a professional shit-eater, aren't you?
The paper does not say any data was "falsified" whatsoever, it claims that the conception of the atmospheric greenhouse effect has been "falsified", I guess by scientists since the early 1800s when the greenhouse effect was first explained. You don't even understand what the paper is arguing.
Anyway, in your hysterical and ignorant haste to misunderstand this paper, you'll be disappointed---that is if you weren't a poison-brained willfully ignorant conservative white male who doesn't understand the first thing about global warming.
It will turn out that the paper was not peer reviewed and that the authors have made a theoretical error that no other physicist will endorse. They have not "proven" that the atmospheric greenhouse effect doesn't actually exist and their theoretical construct doesn't fit the data in any event---the earth is warming because more heat is being withheld by the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect has not been "falsified" by this paper. Nor will any scientists agree that this "proves" there is no greenhouse effect.
Not that it will matter to crazed denialists like you--the paper could be withdrawn tomorrow and your rightwing internet cesspools will still be citing it a year from now, because understanding and reality are not what your "brain" is about.
Posted by euzoius at March 22, 2009 06:38 PMEuzoius, you don't mind basing your global warming religion on falsifications? Then I don't think there's hope for you. Bow down to your golden calf and send your tithes to Al Gore.
Posted by JFixx at March 22, 2009 07:30 PMas if we don't have enough psychotic trolls running around spewing propaganda ..apparently the pukes are training them faster than we can debunk them...begone fixx troll...back under your rock scum...
Posted by headxray at March 22, 2009 08:01 PMThat is one deeply idiotic preprint. In fact, it is cringeworthy - note that it has been in the pre-print stage for almost 2 years. The concept that CO2 absorbs IR radiation is a laboratory fact based on quantum mechanics. The fact that a 300K body like the Earth emits far more IR than a 6000 K body like the Sun (and the latter emits much more visible light, which the atmosphere is largely transparent to) is a fact. Anyone who says that you can't determine the mean temperature of an object is ignorant of thermodynamics. No one cares it is like an actual greenhouse...etc. The fact that the preprint server allowed crackpot nonsense like this to be posted is the real issue. The uninformed will mistake crankery as some sort of breakthrough.
Posted by Marc at March 22, 2009 08:29 PMThere is only one complete and exact computer of global climate and that is the planet itself. By definition it complies with all laws of nature. Einstein said “No number of tests can prove I’m right but only one is needed to prove I’m wrong”. That one test, (actually there have been many) that proves to be wrong the theory that added atmospheric carbon dioxide causes significant global warming, was run on the planet computer and the results are archived in the Vostok ice cores that have been extracted from Antarctic glaciers.
To effectively use the ice core data it is helpful to define what is meant by a trend. Trends must be for a long enough time to average out cyclic variation from random noise and other factors such as the El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO), Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). To avoid question they should also be substantially longer than any smoothing period that was employed in generating the data set. Thus a trend would be for many hundreds or even thousands of years.
Numerical data of temperature change (called anomalies which are a deviation from a reference value) were determined using proxies from the Vostok, Antarctica ice cores and are available at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/temp/vostok/vostok.1999.temp.dat . Atmospheric carbon dioxide level extracted from Vostok ice cores is available as numerical data at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html . To reveal the relationship, scale this data (amplitude only) to overlay the graph of average global temperature (agt) anomalies. To see this already done for you, Google ‘Dan Pangburn global warming’ and select the Middlebury site (usually the first or second hit). This ‘official’ data is plotted on the second graph.
One of the immediate observations from this graph is that atmospheric carbon dioxide level change often lagged temperature change by hundreds of years.
Notice especially that repeatedly during the last glacial period a temperature increasing trend changed to a decreasing trend with the atmospheric carbon dioxide level higher during the temperature down-trend than it had been when the temperature trend was increasing (the same is true for previous glacial periods). This proves that, at least then, atmospheric carbon dioxide (and/or methane since it tracks the carbon dioxide) did not significantly influence agt.
Lacking any other knowledge one might think that if the atmospheric carbon dioxide level increases enough it may then significantly drive temperature. However, it is well known that added increments of carbon dioxide have less influence than previous increments (logarithmic decline in effect). Since there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than during the glacial periods, added increments of carbon dioxide today have even less influence than the same size increments did during the glacial periods when they did not drive temperature. Thus added atmospheric carbon dioxide today does not drive temperature. Anthropogenic (human caused) global warming, AGW, which is based on increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, is a mistake.
Dan, you might want to respond to the specific refutations that were given in Joe Rohmm's Climate Progress blog when you provided the same argument:
Dan Pangburn: “Climate alarmists are apparently unaware of the science with which it is trivial to prove, using these ice core records, that there is no net positive feedback in earth’s climate.”Why would scientists, or “alarmists” as you call them, want to be aware of something that isn’t true? Ice core records tend to agree with a strong net positive feedback. The analysis isn’t quite that trivial. A simplistic analysis of the kind you imply might throw you off. You’ll also find that the lower bounds derived from ice core data come closer to proving there is no net negative feedback (although keep in mind that science isn’t about “proving” things).
“Another way to estimate climate sensitivity is by looking at data from past
variations of CO2 and climate. How strongly climate was affected by CO2 variations of the past can be estimated from data using correlation analysis. This has been done for the Vostok ice core data for variations over an ice age cycle. Of course, CO2 is not the primary cause of an ice age, but it provides a feedback in this case. One needs to be very careful to account for all factors, including the presence of large continental ice sheets, methane variations, and atmospheric dust variations.
Those data can be obtained from the ice core. The French scientists
of the Vostok team that drilled the core performed such a correlation analysis and arrived at 3–4°C for climate sensitivity. That is an estimate made solely on the basis of data.”http://www.pik-potsdam.de/ ~stefan/ Publications/ Book_chapters/ Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf
Of course, there is a large amount of direct observational evidence. As Joe pointed out…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/ 2009/ 02/ 090219152132.htm
http://www.agu.org/ pubs/ crossref/ 2008/ 2008GL035333.shtml
It looks like you have more specific details to cover in order to have a real argument.
Posted by Mary at March 23, 2009 12:57 AMIce ages are caused by periodic changes in the orbit of the Earth, which causes periodic changes in the seasonal sunlight pattern. These changes in turn lead to changes in CO2 (through decreased plant cover), which is why climate change leads CO2 changes in the ice cores.
We know this. It does not falsify in any way, shape, or form what happens when you add the CO2 first instead. Did your source mention this Dan? Because if they didn't they are either ignorant or lying.
There is another, deeper, climate record which has the opposite trend: it dates from when plate tectonics drove India into Asia. Ground up ocean floor sediment caused CO2 to skyrocket and sea level changes followed.
Of course absorption is logarithmic, and this is accounted for in every climate model. They still get the answers that they do because of basic physics. The implied claim that the scientists involved in this don't know this is a lie. The claim that it falsified the results is a lie - because it is, of course, included. Your entire presentation, in fact, reads like a creationist attempt to deny evolution.
Posted by Marc at March 23, 2009 05:15 AMCO2 is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases trap the sun's rays heating the earth. CO2 is rising in the atmosphere as a result of human activity.
These are three pretty innocuous statements, with no mention of amount or significance.
So yes, everyone can agree to these without reservation.
Perhaps you can answer these. 1. Are effects from rising CO2 swamped by the water vapor/cloud feedback mechanism? 2. Humans are very adaptable, is money better spent adapting to inevitable climate change rather than shutting down the world's economies? 3. Compared to other disasters (total thermonuclear war, bird flu, extinction meteor strike, Yellowstone supervolcano, gamma-ray burst, mega tsunamis, etc.) how worried should anyone be about global warming?
The bottom line is that people adapt to long slow change - it is the abrupt threats that challenge us. The Yellowstone supervolcano is overdue to erupt. It would spread a cloud of ash that would cool things dramatically for many years and affect food production, probably significantly.
A small global warming of a few degrees spread over hundreds of years ... just isn't much of a threat no matter how you cut it.
Oracle--the projected change in avergage temps resulting from a business-as-usual approach will result in a planet "fundamentally different" from the one that human civilization has been based on, in the words of NASA's James Hansen, and this by the end of the current century.
It's great that you can dismiss the massive changes that YOU are causing for future generations (and all other innocent species, which of course don't figure into you analysis), while you conveniently get to live out your days in the final spluttering of our (once) stable 11,000 year old climate and not have to make much personal sacrifice---a nice deal for you, eh?
Your "approach" drips with self-centered egomania, and a complete lack of human compassion.
Dan Pangborn apparently can't figure out that the Earth's climate changes for different reasons over the eons, and that one cause of climate change in the ancient past may not be the cause of the current warming.
The warming over the past century is being driven by increasing CO2, which has predated and driven temperature, whatever the relationship may have (sometimes) been between the two at various times over the eons.
Sheesh, I hope he's not someone who thinks he's scientifically "trained".
Posted by euzoius at March 23, 2009 06:46 AMApparently some people do not yet grasp that correlation does not prove causation. Lack of correlation does, however, prove lack of causation. Reasonably accurate average global temperatures have been measured directly for the last 130 years or so. Average global temperature has been on an increasing trend about half the time and a decreasing trend the other half. The trends are about 30 years long. During this same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased steadily. Temperature trends up and down, carbon dioxide monotonously up. This lack of correlation proves lack of causation. That is, the average global temperature increase of the twentieth century was not caused by the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
To interpret the positive feedback from water vapor as positive feedback from temperature is a mistake. It makes the false assumption that no other effects take place. Examination of the Vostok data from glacial periods shows that other overwhelming effects do take place and, contrary to the results of features incorporated in the AOGCMs, there is no significant net feedback from average global temperature. According to the fourth IPCC report, without feedback the AOGCMs do not predict significant global warming. Refinement of the parameterizations of clouds or replacement of the parameterizations with objective assessments in the models will reduce their predictions even further.
The Vostok ice core data from the last glacial period (from about 110,000 ybp until about 20,000ybp) shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide did not drive temperature then. There is absolutely no basis for deciding that the influence of carbon dioxide change on temperature has increased with time. In fact, given the known declining influence of incremental changes with increased level, change in carbon dioxide level now has even less influence on temperature than it did during the glacial periods when, as the Vostok data shows, it did not drive temperature.
The sun remains stubbornly quiet. The last time the sunspot level was this low for this long was in 1913. Prolonged low sunspot activity is associated with declining average global temperatures (see http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.html ).
Since 2000 the atmospheric carbon dioxide level has increased by about 15% of the total rise since the start of the industrial revolution. The average global temperature as reported by the four reporting agencies has declined since 2002 as shown at http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/feb.gif . (This is a convenient graphic but the data checks. NOAA data shows the same trend.)
I challenge all sources that I use and put NO credibility in blogs. There is no way to tell if the blogger actually knows anything. Most are just biased opinions; often with imbedded sarcasm. When practical I include the sources that I have used so anyone can check e.g. my March 22, 9:10 PM post.
As the atmospheric carbon dioxide level continues to increase and the average global temperature doesn’t, a whole lot of people are looking more and more foolish. That’s an opinion . . .probably biased. Only time will tell.