How the GW myth is perpetuated

Now it seems to me, if solar irradiance were the driver of emmissions, the two graphs would show some form of correlation. They don't. There have been many studies in the past which claimed changes to solar irradiance was the largest contributing factor to global warming. The fact is, when the data is correlated, there is no way the solar irradience can be the largest contributing factor.

Quote: Originally Posted by Extrafire

Well that's a very simplistic and incomplete idea of solar variances. The sun has many differing cycles. Sunspots vary over an 11 year cycle, but also on a longer (maybe irregular) changes. During the "Little Ice Age" there was almost no sunspot activity at all, yet that 11 year cycle was still there. I've also heard that there's a 50 year cycle, but I can't remember anything about it. Then there's a 1500 year cycle that's been there regular as clockwork for 900 thousand years, even through ice ages and interglacial periods. Dennis Avery describes that kind of stuff in an audio.
Here's a graph of CO2 and sunspot and temperatures. Notice how the temperature fluctuations are almost in lockstep with sunspot activity, but not CO2.

Ice cores have revealed that CO2 increase follows temperature increase. Notice that Al Gore used them in his movie, covering a few hundred thousand years, one huge graph above the other. Usually in this kind of graph, the two are superimposed so the relationship is very clear, just like in the graph I pasted here. Al Gore didn't do that. Could it be because if he had, it would clearly have shown the temperature increases preceeding the CO2 increases. And he wouldn't have been able to make his movie.
Temperatures preceed CO2 increases by 800 years. I don't...

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Medieval Warm Period - 9th to 14th Centuries
Norse seafaring and colonization around the North Atlantic at the end of the 9th century was generalized as proof that the global climate then was warmer than today. In the early days of paleoclimatology, the sparsely distributed paleoenvironmental records were interpreted to indicate that there was a "Medieval Warm Period" where temperatures were warmer than today. This "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum," was generally believed to extend from the 9th to 13th centuries, prior to the onset of the so-called "Little Ice Age."
In contrast, the evidence for a global (or at least northern hemisphere) "Little Ice Age" from the 15th to 19th centuries as a period when the Earth was generally cooler than in the mid 20th century has more or less stood the test of time as paleoclimatic records have become numerous. The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect.
For larger viewing version of graph, please click here or on image.
There are not enough records available to reconstruct global or...

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Quote: Originally Posted by Tonington

I was responding to the article which cited solar irradiance, not sun spots.

A team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered how cosmic rays from exploding stars can help to make clouds in the atmosphere. The results support the theory that cosmic rays influence Earth's climate.
An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth's atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons.
Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.
Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth's atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time.
The Danish team officially announced their discovery on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, published by the Royal Society, the British national academy of science.
.....
"We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei," says team leader Henrik...

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Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

There you have it: many more extreme events, a predicted consequence of warming. There is no question that the climate is warming.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

The loss of arctic and antarctic ice cover, the increasing ranges of certain plants and animals and insects, all point to it.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

The issue is not that the global climate is warming, that's a simple fact, the issue is the human contribution to it, and that's an issue surrounded by spin and politics and vested interests.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

The climate's been warming for about 12,000 years, that's what ended the last Ice Age. 12,000 years ago the place where I live was buried under several kilometres of ice. It isn't now, so obviously the climate is warmer now. D'uh...

Ulrich Joerin, a wiry Swiss scientist in his late twenties, is part of a small group of climatologists who are in the process of radically changing the image of the Swiss mountain world. He and a colleague are standing in front of the Tschierva Glacier in Engadin, Switzerland at 2,200 meters (7,217 feet). "A few thousand years ago, there were no glaciers here at all," he says. "Back then we would have been standing in the middle of a forest." He digs into the ground with his mountain boot until something dark appears: an old tree trunk, covered in ice, polished by water and almost black with humidity. "And here is the proof," says Joerin. Radical new theory
The tree trunk in the ice is part of a huge climatic puzzle that Joerin is analyzing for his doctoral thesis for the Institute for Geological Science at the University of Bern. And he is coming to an astonishing conclusion. The fact that the Alpine glaciers are melting right now appears to be part of regular cycle in which snow and ice have been coming and going for thousands of years.
The glaciers, according to the new hypothesis, have shrunk down to almost nothing at least ten times since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. "At the time of the Roman Empire, for example, the glacier tongue was about 300 meters higher than today," says Joerin. Indeed, Hannibal probably never saw a single big chunk of ice when he was crossing the Alps with...

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Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

It's also true that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased about 30% since the Industrial Revolution, that's clear from measurements on bubbles of the ancient atmosphere found in ice cores. Whether human activity is or is not the cause is still problematic, because the changes clearly attributable to human activities are approximately at the level of uncertainty in the data.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

But I don't think that really matters anyway. Pumping carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere makes it warmer, that's a simple fact, and whether what we're seeing now is a natural cycle or human caused, we should make every possible effort to minimize our contribution to it.

Quote: Originally Posted by Extrafire

Very little warmer. Mostly it mitigates the extremes of temperature swings. And the efforts to minimize our contributions would have no effect, while putting the money elsewhere could do great good.

Quote: Originally Posted by s_lone

Minimizing our contributions would have no effects? How about cleaner air? How about no more SMOG?!

A new study indicates that poor Asians burning dung for energy may be a major cause of global warming. It may explain why glaciers are really melting — and why climate is more complicated than some think.
Related Topics: Global Warming
It used to be a straight-line theory based on easily connected dots. The Earth was warming due to increased levels of carbon dioxide generated by man, his factories, power plants and vehicles. The U.S. and the industrialized world had to drastically reduce its CO2 levels to prevent the poles from melting and the seas from rising.
But a new study in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature suggests that the absence of technology, not its reckless use, may be a major factor in raising the Earth's global temperature.
The haze of pollution called the "Asian Brown Cloud," caused by wood and dung burned for fuel, may be doing more harm than the tailpipes of our SUVs.
Researchers led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, launched three unmanned aircraft last March from the Maldives island of Hanimadhoo to fly through the Brown Cloud at various altitudes.

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New research ...concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes. [...] According to Schwartz’s results, which are based on the empirical relationship between trends in surface temperature and ocean heat content, doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would result in a 1.1oC increase in average temperature (0.1–2.1oC, two standard deviation uncertainty range). Schwartz’s result is 63% lower than the IPCC’s estimate of 3oC for a doubling of CO2 (2.0–4.5oC, 2SD range).
Right now we’re about 41% above the estimated pre-industrial CO2 level of 270 ppm. At the current rate of increase of about 0.55% per year, CO2 will double around 2070. Based on Schwartz’s results, we should expect about a 0.6oC additional increase in temperature between now and 2070 due to this additional CO2. That doesn’t seem particularly alarming.
[...]
Stephen Schwartz is a pretty mainstream climate scientist. Yet along with dozens of other studies in the scientific literature, his new study belies Al Gore’s claim that there is no legitimate scholarly alternative to climate catastrophism.
Indeed, if Schwartz’s results are correct, that alone would be enough to overturn in one fell swoop the IPCC’s scientific “consensus”, the ...

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Quote: Originally Posted by Extrafire

CO2 is not pollution, it is part of the air, and the vast majority of the volume of CO2 in the air is natural. Human activity contributes only a tiny percentage of the total. It is acknowledged by all sides in the debate that if the whole world met it's Kyoto targets, there would be no effect on global temperatures, and that's even acknowledged by those who believe in global warming catastrophism. In fact, being that our contribution is so relatively small, even if we eliminated all human contributions there would be no effect, even if the CO2 alarmism were true. That's what I was referring to when I said minimizing our contributions would have no effect.
Cleaner air? Smog? CO2 is part of the air. Adding it to the air has no effect on it's cleanliness, any more than adding oxygen would. In fact, so far efforts to minimize CO2 have resulted in increased CO2 emissions and dirtier air from real pollutants. Alternative fuels such as biodeisel, ethanol, hydrogen require more energy to produce than they deliver, resulting in more overall energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In the rush to supply the biodeisel market, vast areas of tropical rain forest have been slashed and burned for palm oil plantations resulting in great releases of CO2 from the forests as well as thousands of years of accumulated peat being burned, not to mention massive amounts of pollution in the air in that area.
You want clean air? So do I. Then target the...

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Quote: Originally Posted by Extrafire

Yeah, right! Adding oxygen to air is polluting. Adding nitrogen to air is polluting. Adding air to air is polluting. Right. I've already shown that human contributions are minuscule and the tiny reductions such as curly light bulbs or even achievement of Kyoto objectives are too small to make a difference. Al Gore, as VP asked administration scientists to determine what successful achievement of those objectives would do to global warming. The result, assuming that CO2 catastrophism is true - no reduction in global temperatures, not even a stop to global warming, only a reduction in the amount of warming of 7/100ths of 1 degree C over the next 50 years. And that's by people who believe in that nonsense! I've even heard prominent environmentalists admit that. Use a little logic here, if it's as bad as they say it is, nothing we're doing, short of complete elimination of human emissions will have any effect.

And there is no deleterious affect to releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. The science is very clear on this.

Quote: Originally Posted by Tonington

If there is deleterious effects, it is pollution, it really is that simple, by definition. An atmospheric pollutant has more cause and effect relationships than the atmospheric reactions. Soil and water?

Many nitrogen products are found naturally and are even beneficial, but when release of concentrated amounts occurs, it is harmful and thus a pollutant.

There are many deleterious effects associated with releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, it raises the pH of the water it dissolves into for one. Find the many effects that has on ecological systems, specifically on our natural and farmed food items.

Quote: Originally Posted by typingrandomstuff

The other truth: if CO2 do not warm the earth, the excess of carbon dioxide in human bodies will kill. Excess of any stuff will kill.

The asian people do need to not burn the biofuels and dung, but I never heard of people burning dung before.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

There you have it: many more extreme events, a predicted consequence of warming..

Quote: Originally Posted by Dexter Sinister

Whether human activity is or is not the cause is still problematic, because the changes clearly attributable to human activities are approximately at the level of uncertainty in the data.

Quote: Originally Posted by Extrafire

I don't believe you're serious.

Air is 4/5 nitrogen and you're trying to say nitrogen can be a pollutant if released into the air? Or are you talking about nitrogen fertilizer? Yes, concentrated amounts of it can be harmful. But then that applies to anything. Everything is a poison, and nothing is a poison, it's a matter of degrees, or dosage. Water is necessary for human life, yet drinking too much can result in death. Same with salt. And radiation. Drinking a little alcohol is beneficial, but too much is harmful, even fatal. Thus following your logic, everything is pollution, which makes any argument for fighting pollution null and void.

As for CO2 in water, well the oceans have more CO2 in them than the atmosphere by far, and they release and absorb it depending on whether the temperature rises or falls. Doesn't seem at all to be harmful, and the effect on food items is only beneficial, as it enhances growth. In fact it is vital for any and all plant growth.

Quote: Originally Posted by #juan

Michael Crichton is trying to sell his book. A book, a work of fiction, that contradicts the evidence of global warming.

The scientific method of research is exactly that. A majority of Climatologists have produced results that others in the field have reproduced. Consensus is not some evil word......it simply means that a majority of scientists in the field have agreed that global warming is a threat. They have agreed that according to the best evidence, the global temperatures are rising and human produced greenhouse gasses are causing it.

Quote: Originally Posted by #juan

Well thomaska, are you saying the global temperatures are not rising? Are you saying that man has not pumped 8 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution? These are facts that are irrefutable. You can dissagree that man is causing it I suppose, but who else is there? How do you explain the fact that we are losing cubic miles of ice in both poles and Greenland....ice that has taken thousands of centuries to form. How do you explain the fact that there is bare ground in the arctic that has been covered in ice for thousands of years? There is no evidence of any cycle or increased solar heat that would explain these things. I see no hysteria.....just hard, cold, facts.

Quote: Originally Posted by #juan

I've flown a lot over the Arctic and I have seen the change. I understand there is more impressive evidence of global warming in the Antarctic and Greenland but the Arctic is what I've seen.

The latest government survey of polar bears roaming the vast Arctic expanses of northern Quebec, Labrador and southern Baffin Island show the population of polar bears has jumped to 2,100 animals from around 800 in the mid-1980s.
As recently as three years ago, a less official count placed the number at 1,400.
The Inuit have always insisted the bears' demise was greatly exaggerated by scientists doing projections based on fly-over counts, but their input was usually dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.

Quote: Originally Posted by Walter

Al Gore's movie was anything but cold, hard facts. It is mostly about what might happen in the extreme, distant future.

Quote: Originally Posted by Twila

Extreme distant future? What about the unprecedentad hurricanes? What about the flooding going on all over the world? What about the change in the ocean temperature? Extreme distant future....your in it....it ain't later....it's now.

Don't forget global warming is only ONE problem we have currently. Assuming we will survive the pandemics and epidemics coming our way and avoid any nuclear altercation global warming is sure to be our undoing. Although....maybe if half the worlds population kicks it from avian flu or a new plague global warming will not be a problem.

Quote: Originally Posted by #juan

There is so much evidence that the world is warming up it is hard to see how even the reddest neck could avoid seeing it.





The

Quote: Originally Posted by Tonington

For the very last time, a pollutant is anything we release which has a deleterious effect, regardless of what compound it is. Regardless of whether or not it is a naturally found compound.

To illustrate your absurd point, a hypothetical ecosystem can sustain a certain threshold of toatal ammonia. Ammonia is part of the nitrogen cycle, and a huge component which must be closed off by bacteria in the soil. Normally, ammonia would be controlled by the fairly constant flows in and out of the natural nitrogen cycles. Animals wouldn't excrete as much ammonia, if they were left to grow on natural forages and feeds. In the agri-food industry now, we have firms feeding well above basal metabolic requirements for growth, amounts to ensure maximum growth rates ensue. The excess ammonia produced by the animals we rear is more than the farmer can accommodate. This is what is known as waste disposal problems. We put too much into feed, to ensure maximal growth, and end up with more fertilizer than we can use. If we leave that waste lying around, even though it is natural ( sure, cows love living in conditions like a feedlot...), the ecosystem cannot accommodate the excess load, and there is damage to the ecosystem.

Quote: Originally Posted by Tonington

I was specifically insinuating the oceans when I made the comment about CO2. The phylum Mollusca, specifically the class Bivalvia, rely on a carbonate equilibrium in the water to maintain the shell growth. When the pH of the oceans is lowered, as accounted by increased forcings due to the increase in carbon dioxide, the carbonate equilibrium is disrupted from natural levels, and the shellfish cannot maintain the shell density. As they grow larger, the shell becomes thinner relative to body mass, and increased mortality will follow. This is but one example in a field of many....corals are another matter, which provide the basis for many marine ecosystems...

Quote: Originally Posted by Tonington

P.S.
Of course anything can be considered a pollutant, but only when there is an obvious harmful effect. Judging by your limited comprehension of this definition, 5 extra milliliters would be pollution....but you would be wrong.

Quote: Originally Posted by Zzarchov

"No, the absorption of heat takes place near the surface. In fact, something like 80% is absorbed within the first 30 feet of the earth's surface."

This made me laugh.


Yes heat is absorbed, but then it is released. And it goes AWAY from the planet, unless it hits something (like CO2) that bounces it back.

Like a laser in a room of funhouse mirrors, the more "mirrors" the longer it takes the heat to leave, the warmer it gets as new heat comes in at the same speed.