Promoted from the comments, the download of the BBC Radio 4 ‘Now Show’ (Mar 16) is available here (at least for now). Key bit starts at about 18min in, (the rest of the show is pretty funny too).
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307 Responses to "A much more eloquent rebuttal of TGGWS"
Lynn Vincentnathansays
#148, we also moved to Texas, where we got onto Green Mountain 100% wind energy, and if we could get an electric car (or even a plug-in hybrid) then we could drive on the wind. We also moved to a place close to work, & my husband & I carpool.
There’s plenty of things to do, once people put their mind to it. And I esp like the big things, like the SunFrost, since we just plug it in and forget it, while it silently (they are extremely quiet) uses a tiny fraction of the electricity needed by other models.
Even a frig thermometer can save, say, 5% of the energy (set frig at 42 degrees F; freezer at 2 to 5 degrees F), and they only cost $2.
We Americans of today are totally profligate. Talk to people who were here during WWII & how they recycled and saved. My grandmother, who was well off, used to save string.
Tavitasays
re: #136
It would seem that if one has more trust in the private sector than in government then one might consider that the one business who’s job is assessing risk is concerned about the effects of global warming.
And as far as oil companies, even Exxon recognizes global warming is real and “”the risks to society and ecosystems could prove to be significant, so despite the areas of uncertainty that do exist, it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks.
“A lot of those recommendations are more regulations and more taxation,” said former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., though he added that he agrees with Gore that the scientific debate on climate change is over. “I think we can find answers to use the coal energy, to use the natural gas we have.”
Re #148, and I do agree we need action and policies at all levels, including taking away ALL the subsidies and tax-breaks for oil & coal, and making oil pay for its military protection….etcetc
Then with the money the gov saves from that (which I understand is quite a lot), it can plow it into wind & solar, etc and make them much cheaper for people.
Each level of gov, each church at each level, each business, each household, school, we all need to get involved & do the needful.
PhilCsays
re#144
I appologise if i did not read your comment properly
Phil
Jamessays
Re #151: [We Americans of today are totally profligate. Talk to people who were here during WWII & how they recycled and saved. My grandmother, who was well off, used to save string.]
To a large extent this is just cultural conditioning. Mainstream western culture has had the media delivering a stream of messages implicitly equating status with how much a person’s able to waste, to the extent that it seems to have almost become a potlatch culture – except of course that a true potlatch involves giving things away, while this culture stores its excess goods in closets and garages.
Still, there are subcultures that have rejected this conditioning, so it’s hardly innate. Change the messages, give people strong enough reasons to change, and many of them will do so. For the rest: well, let’s replace a bunch of existing taxes with a carbon tax, and let them pay :-)
pete bestsays
Re 152, I doubt that private companies would bother unless Governments were considering legislation to force private companies to operate in a different manner. Only Government can tackle climate change due to its global nature.
Look at the currently available operations going on to lower CO2 emissions. Strategically it is a mess from what I can tell, a hodge podge of collective and individual efforts to ultimately make money from creating low CO2 technologies. I currenly see no coherent strategy, I am sure that it will come, Condi Rice was in Europe yesterday making all the right noises about it.
Maybe we can get some global cooperation and a strategy for viable low CO2 energy sources because as it stands at the moment no one knows if biofuels can replace Oil, if wind, wave, solar and pv can replace coal and gas etc or indeed if we can scrub coal clean on its carbon.
CobblyWorldssays
I’ve been browsing this thread and have noticed talk about oil/gas reserves running low.
In David Archer’s, “Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time.” http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.ms.fate_co2.pdf Reserves of extractable fossil fuels are said to be of the order of 5Gton Carbon. Most of this is coal. The other stuff I’ve read supports the view that there are at least several Gtons Carbon of extractable coal alone.
Surely issues around finite reserves of fossil fuels are not a major factor in terms of limiting CO2 emissions. Because for coal, we seem to have enough to make human emissions so far no more than a drop in the ocean. And when we consider the issue of ocean uptake being impacted by warming and ocean pH. Those emissions could have a greater impact on atmospheric concentrations in the future.
In short I just keep being drawn back to the conclusion that in terms of ‘energy returned on energy invested’ coal will remain the most competitive energy source. So it will simply take over from oil and gas as the mainstay power source for the 21st century, undercutting solar and other options. Fluidity of investment in the world economic system could easily make control of emissions practically unattainable. And that’s in a world with a population increasing to the 9-10Bn level, with a greater percentage of that population living carbon intensive lifestyles.
In the wake of this mockumentary I’ve been on messageboards dealing with the nonsense it’s lead to. It seems to me that the denialist fringe is now being relegated to the same level as the various incoherent conspiracy theories rampant on the ‘net. When they are driven to the sort of nonsense in GW Swindle and are unable to defend their position without the first recourse to insult, they know they’ve lost.
The contrarists seem to me to have been crushed by the evidence. But the real battle, to stir actual action is a far greater task. Nobody I know personally, apart from myself, has taken steps to reduce their carbon (and other impacts) footprint (and I don’t even have children of my own). Yet nobody I know really doubts the reality – like Marcus Brigstock implies – here in the UK we’re experiencing noticeably warmer weather.
Nick Gottssays
Re #150 “[[Similarly, cheap biofuels, or hydrogen, could force down gasoline prices and so increase demand. ]]
The price of a commodity dropping because demand is lower is not the same as the price dropping because supply is higher.”
Actually I wasn’t meaning either – rather, the price dropping because a new alternative product enters the market. I should have spelled this out. At least if the alternative were to be marketed by different companies, the oil majors would be motivated to drop gasoline prices in order to dissuade people from switching to ethanol, hydrogen-fuelled or electric vehicles. If this happened, gasoline demand, and use, could rise.
Re #154. I certainly agree we need action at all levels.
Whether one is a denialist or part of the concensus of scientists saying global warming is not only real, it is most definitely caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere, what does it hurt to consume less and conserve more energy? Sure oil companies make less money if we use less fuel and so they have a strong incentive to be denialists, but for the average person on the street, who is harmed by driving less and using renewable energy sources whenever possible.
PhilCsays
ref#158 CobblyWorlds
“The contrarists seem to me to have been crushed by the evidence”
What concrete evidence is there that any temperature rises are actually caused by human emissions of CO2 – even the IPPC report said it was (only) 90% sure. If there really is no doubt then why can’t they simply come out and say so.
Calling “the Great GW Scandle” a mockumentary is rather demeaning – it stated in fact that temperature changes precede CO2 levels. Now, there is apparently an explanation for this (rather convoluted to my reading) but this tv program was the first (that I’m aware of) to present this FACT.
The alternative theory of cosmic rays seems worth considering – we are constantly bombarded with them and they will be having some effect. These are perfectly plausible (though possibly wrong) ideas, they are not crackpot theories and they have enough merit to be presented to the public. To dismiss them out of hand shows a refusal or inability to look at this problem objectively.
True to form, the now show sketch was just a rant by someone who would not understand a graph if he had to, and yet he is allowed (even paid) to perform a 5 minute spot on national radio to slag off someone who is at least qualified to have an opinion about these matters. The BBC refuses any dissenting voices tv airtime but encourages the condescending attitude of just dismissing or laughing at them. Unfortunately, the standard of science reporting on the BBC has descending to such a trivial level now that we cannot expect anything better. Please name one serious science program that the network now produces (David Attenborough doesn’t count as science because there are no graphs in his excellent programs).
PhilCsays
re#160
“it is most definitely caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere”
IPPC reporting 90% is most definitely not “most definitely”
I am all in favour of using less and conservation – what’s wrong with encoraging people to do it for it’s own rewards
Lastly, I am a skeptic not a denialist – thank you :)
Hank Robertssays
Phil, don’t mistake someone saying “global warming is … most definitely caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere” for a claim that all of the current warming is caused by fossil fuel emission. Nobody’s saying that who understands the science.
It’s not a question of attributing the cause 1:1, all or nothing, independent of all other forcings.
It’s clear from the science that the excess CO2 is causing — and will continue to cause — an increase in the planet’s temperature til radiative equilibrium is reestablished. That’s considering all the other known forcings, the other gases, the loss of the ozone layer, the slight variability in the sun, the deep ocean circulation, the solubility of the various gases — you can and probably have read the whole list in the IPCC report.
Straw-man arguments are found on all sides of the political porkypine. Point them out, don’t fall into arguig with them — learn the science. The AIP history is quite helpful.
PhilCsays
ref 163
thanks for the reply.
I do understand your point but would you agree that in the media, arguments are usually put forward by people who donâ��t understand (any) science – they tend to make exaggerated claims and if questioned tend to dismiss the questioner rather than address any meaningful issue â�� this leads to a shutting down of proper debate. Again, I make that point that our environment minister has stated the debate is over.
I can’t find the reference (but could if asked), but recently a UK climate researcher who is fully signed up to the Global Warming Theory received abuse simply because he dared to criticise the exaggerated claims being made.
In the public arena any real facts are being buried under a great deal of conflicting misinformation – and as the sceptical view barely gets a look in, would you agree that the majority of this misinformation is coming from the non-scientific believers? Note: I am talking here about tv, radio and newspapers – not discussions between scientists.
Chuck Boothsays
Re # 164
[In the public arena any real facts are being buried under a great deal of conflicting misinformation…]
In the U.S., at least some of that misinformation seems to be coming from the White House:
Congress Probes Edits of Climate Reports
By Erik Stokstad
ScienceNOW Daily News
19 March 2007
WASHINGTON, D.C.–The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today released documents edited by political appointees in the Bush Administration that “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” according to committee staff. Current and former appointees who made the changes appeared today before the panel and testified that they were trying to introduce scientific uncertainty in the reports.
And one of the ways the facts are being buried is by claiming exaggeration by the AAAS, which was really quite a silly example of exaggeration and it deserved criticism.
The same media also exaggerates the skeptical views, which also have a wide audience of non-scientific believers.
Hank Robertssays
I recommend you focus on the science, read the papers, talk to your local library reference desk for copies of the journals that aren’t available free online, and check the claims against the footnotes.
Ask intelligent questions. Eric Raymond’s advice, written for new programmers, is pertinent to anyone starting into a new area of science:
Smart questions avoid wasting time of the few scientists who _have_ a bit of time to talk to the rest of us and can do so in terms we can understand.
The trolls intend to waste their time, and steal everyone’s attention — making it harder for those of us who want to understand this to learn.
The AIP page is quite good for the background needed to understand the more recent work.
The IPCC is the best statement of what’s understood, as of the date its comments closed; look at the Commenters and Other list on the right side of the main page for home page links to publications that may expand on that.
Hank Robertssays
Oh, and speaking of paying attention to science not trolls, more from Eric Raymond, as found here: http://www.edge.org/q2004/
-Raymond’s Law of Software
Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
…
-Raymond’s Law of Consequences
The road to hell has often been paved with good intentions.
Therefore, evil is best recognized not by its motives but by its methods.
Sorry about the other thread. It’s been my experience political sceptics mock what they don’t understand. That was apparent with Imhofe yesterday.
Jamessays
Re #161: […it stated in fact that temperature changes precede CO2 levels. Now, there is apparently an explanation for this (rather convoluted to my reading) but this tv program was the first (that I’m aware of) to present this FACT.]
The key words there are “that I’m aware of”. The problem is that, as with any speciality, there are questions that those in the field have discussed and answered long ago, so that they become part of the “well, obviously everybody knows that” background.
Of course to someone new, it’s not immediately obvious, but to leap from your not knowing to a conclusion that it’s being deliberately hidden… well, to me that says you’re coming in with your mind already made up.
Ray Ladburysays
PhilC, first, I don’t trust any information about the science that comes from a nonscientific source. That includes Al Gore, and it includes Rush Limbaugh (though Gore certainly gets closer than Rush). Second, if anyone tells you they know exactly what will happen, they are either uninformed or lying. Climate is a chaotic system–that means it will not respond the same way to the same perturbation repeatedly. It may be that by adding energy to the system, we merely wind up with (on average) a warmer, maybe somewhat wetter, and certainly more variable world. However, it may be that we wind up with a highly variable climate, where year-to-year predictions (e.g. when rains fall, when the first frost comes, etc) are very, very difficult.
People tend to think in terms of disasters they have experienced before–floods, hurricanes, droughts…. It is true, we cannot say whether these disasters would necessarily be worse due to climate change. However, I think if you asked some Aussie farmers, they’d put up with the occasional flood if they could just predict when it will rain next year.
Humans are amazingly adaptable–we can probably prepare for any conditions we can anticipate. And maybe we can adapt to harsh conditions, but harsh and rapidly changing conditions will be very challenging.
Right now, because people are coming to terms with the fact that climate change is a real threat, and because we cannot predict how it will play out, people tend to project their fears onto it. Those who fear government power project their fears of a power grab by government. Those who fear disasters project their favorite disaster. The reality could in fact be worse, or not–we just don’t know.
Nick Gottssays
Re #163 “as the sceptical view barely gets a look in”
This seems a bizarre claim in view of the recent Channel 4 “documentary” by Martin Durkin in the UK, and the TV debate in the US.
tomsays
Yesterday Al gore testified that ‘the earth has a fever’.
Now I know my normal temp is 98.6
Can anybody tell me what the earth’s is???
Ray Ladburysays
RE: 173. So, Tom, why are you so obsessed with what Al Gore says. His opinion is as irrelevant to the scientific consensus as is Rush Limbaugh’s–he just seems to have gotten a lot closer to the actual science than Rush.
PhilCsays
re#163
“This seems a bizarre claim in view of the recent Channel 4 “documentary”…”
Why bizarre – this documentary was the first in the UK, I think that justifies ‘barely’
I dont know about the US tv debate, do you have frequent documentaries taking an skeptical point of view?
J.C.Hsays
“Yesterday Al gore testified that ‘the earth has a fever’.
Now I know my normal temp is 98.6
Can anybody tell me what the earth’s is???” – Tom
I’m not a scientist. The normal temperature would be the one that results from nature’s course. The one the the earth has now is higher than that temperature.
Chuck Boothsays
Re #173 Your normal body temperature is 98.6? Perhaps, but very possibly not:
The 98.6° F �normal� benchmark for body temperature comes to us from Dr. Carl Wunderlich, a 19th-century German physician who collected and analyzed over a million armpit temperatures for 25,000 patients. Some of Wunderlich�s observations have stood up over time, but his definition of normal has been debunked, says the April issue of the Harvard Health Letter. A study published years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the average normal temperature for adults to be 98.2°, not 98.6°, and replaced the 100.4° fever mark with fever thresholds based on the time of day. http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/normal_body_temperature.htm
In this case, scientists and medical doctors have no doubt contributed to perpetuating this myth (however harmless it is). In case you’re wondering, the source of the discrepancy was rounding error when converting between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales.
I don’t think there is a “normal” temperature for the earth. One could define it as the average temperature for the last few thousand years, which seems to be about 14 deg.C (57.2 deg.F). But before that, its average temperature showed large swings — probably about 5 deg.C (9 deg.F) difference between full-on glaciation (usually thought of as “ice age” conditions) and interglacial (like now).
But environmental health for the planet is not the same as medical health for an individual. Humans are set to be at a particular temperature — 98.6 deg.F (37 deg.C). But for the planet, “healthy” means stable. If earth’s temperature changes, living things will adapt, evolving to thrive in a different temperature or migrating to a warmer/colder location. As long as temperature is stable, the ecosystem can thrive. But when temperature changes, it can bring trouble. The real problem is that it can take a very long time for ecosystems to adapt; when temperature changes rapidly it spells real trouble for living things.
The change from glacial to interglacial is about 5 deg.C, and this typically takes 5,000 years or more, so the rate of change is around 0.001 deg.C/year or less. The rate of change now is around 0.02 deg.C/year, 20 times faster. And that spells trouble with a capital “T”.
pete bestsays
RE #172: It will be getting warmer and that does not bode well for earths subsystems in the main. You say it is a chaotic system but which system are you talking about exactly? I suggest it is a complex system that if perturbed far enough from equilibrium then it could go chaotic, however perturbing the climate enough for chaos to set in system wide would take a lot of additional energy as the interia is so high due to the sheer size of the system in question.
So come on PhilC, stop using pseudo scientific babble that you seem to like so much and to some real science. Ask RC what sort of system earth is and sure they will tell you it is linear mainly, the non linear couplings might only be triggered after very large scale perturbations have been experienced and that means we most likely will not cause that sort of system to be.
“In the public arena any real facts are being buried under a great deal of conflicting misinformation – and as the sceptical view barely gets a look in, would you agree that the majority of this misinformation is coming from the non-scientific believers?”
Yes from believers of the myth that global warming is a myth. All of the misinformation comes from this group and it is funded by industry.
Going back to one point raised in the Channel 4 program. Sceptics are often told that we have too little scientific understanding to criticise the theory.
But how many who laugh off the proposed cosmic ray theory have any knowledge on how cosmic rays effect the earth. Someone spending the last 20 years looking at CO2 levels would have had no time to develop sufficient knowledge to even question the theory. And yet people with no qualification or experience in this field tell us the theory is crackers � double standards?
If you dismiss this theory try asking if your only real objection is along the lines of �it must be crackers because everyone knows global warming is true�
I have no idea if/how cosmic rays effect cloud cover, but much stranger ideas have turned out to be true
plate tectonics (crackers),
dinosours wiped out by meteor (crackers)
quantum mechanics (seriously crackers)
man from monkeys (they thought that was crackers � some still do :) )
I fully accept that equally strange ideas were just plain wrong but you shouldn�t dismiss or accept a theory just because it sounds odd
So until someone qualified can tell me why we can ignore cosmic rays I will consider it a possible explanation � just as I do for Co2 levels
David B. Bensonsays
Re #181: PhilC — Because there is no change in cosmic ray flux in the last 50 years but the global temperature (and greenhouse gases) has increased in the last 50 years.
(I’m just repeating what a moderator said on a previous thread. Maybe the one about Cosmic Rays?)
PhilCsays
re#182
Thanks David, could you point me to a graph showing the cosmic rays levels for the last 50 years.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
Cosmic ray database since April 1964
(1-min since 1996, 5-min since 1968, 1-h since 1964, 10-sec since 1990 upon special requests) – see readme file
David B. Bensonsays
Re #183: PhilC — Sorry, I don’t know where to find it. The comments in the Swindled thread or in the What triggers ice ages thread went over this matter fairly thoroughly. I suggest reading those and then, if that’s not enough, doing some web trawling. (As I recall, this data comes from a Climax, Colorado site.)
Remember cosmic rays were discovered less than a century ago, and the first detectors were painstakingly hand carried to mountaintops, which doesn’t get you a longterm consistent data set. Only recently have large scale permanent detectors been operating. You’ll find several besides the one I pointed to in an earlier link.
Again I know nothing about this, I’m just showing how to use the search tools. Look for good science info to evaluate. Beware bogus PR sites, they’ll show up too, but they lack footnotes to good science publications.
Note correlation is not causation; consider what mechanism might explain any correlation remarked on, and how likely the result described is to be a chance occurrence (for example murder rates correlate, in some studies — but is this found in say one study in twenty, or more frequently?).
PhilCsays
re 184
david
Having looked at a few webpages on this subject including this one there appears to be a very strong correlation between cosmic rays and low altitude cloud cover from 1980 to 2000.
Re #185: PhilC — I recommend reading the Cosmoclimatology thread, down a few, to obtain a RealClimate perspective on cosmic rays. (Sorry I didn’t remember where it was earlier.)
Ray Ladburysays
Re 181. Phil C. I am not a specialist in studying galactic cosmic rays, but I and my colleagues monitor them on a regular basis because we look at bit flips in memories on satellites. I have also had occasion to look at the cosmic ray data from the last 25 years taken by GOES and other satellite series with long histories. Guess what–GCR fluxes are not changing much except for the modulation of the solar cycle. The first criterion for any cause is that it must be present when the effect is present. There just isn’t enough change in GCR flux to make any difference in climate.
I have a lot of questions about the plots in Svensmark’s papers–how does he get his correlations for low clouds, for instance. But even if true these could be artifacts–a lot of things about solar behavior change with the solar cycle. Now it is true that a charged-particle track can provide nucleation sites for condensation if there are no other sites, but this is far from the case in general. Dust does just fine, as do aerosols, etc. GCR fluxes in space average only about 5 particles per square cm per second–tiny–and the showers reach their maximum well above 50000 feet, so why don’t clouds form there.
And even if this were a credible theory, there would still be the question of why CO2 did not have more of an effect on climate. GCR could influence climate only when the strike Earth–there’s no persistent effect as with CO2, and this warming trend is nothing if not persistent. Look, I’m someone who worries about cosmic rays for a living–but their influence on climate is not something I worry about.
I liked Gore’s refutation of the “sunspot theory” proferred by Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri at the hearing. “It could be the Sun or CO2,” Bond said.
Gore leaped on that one: “If the Sun was the cause of the current warming, the stratosphere would be warming. It isn’t.” Bond had no reply as this was way above his level of understanding of reality.
Lynn Vincentnathansays
Re #161: […it stated in fact that temperature changes precede CO2 levels. Now, there is apparently an explanation for this (rather convoluted to my reading) but this tv program was the first (that I’m aware of) to present this FACT.]
This is a known thing (as James #170 pointed out), but it also raises a very problematic situation: the warming we humans are causing now, could, if it continues, cause nature to release GHGs, causing more warming, causing more GHG releases. We would be wise not to go near that threshhold. And I think the reason you don’t hear a lot of scientists harping on this very dangerous scenario is because it’s very hard to quantify or predict when this might happen. We do know that heat melts ice & that there lots of gigatons of carbon in ocean ice cages (clathrates) and in the permafrost.
Mark Lynas (SIX DEGREES) figures this may happen with 4C & 5C warming, which is within the projected bounds for this century, and probably even more likely within the next 2 centuries, if we don’t mitigate.
It would virtually mean extinction of a very large chunk of the world’s biota and great reduction of the human population (not to mention great material poverty).
So that fact that CO2 emissions follow warming is not something to feel good about.
Darrelsays
Question regarding cosmic rays:
The CLIMAX Neutron monitor does not show any trend in GCR since the 50s. However, cosmic ray proponent Shaviv claims that the ion chamber data are more relevant for potential aerosol (and thus “hopefully” cloud) formation, because of the energies measured. And he claims that they do show a decreasing trend.
I have read here on RC that the two (or multiple) types of particles should agree with each other, and that neither side of the argument has an explanation for the fact that they do not. I understand that the CLIMAX neutron monitor is the longest time series, so therefore more suitable for a trend analysis. But is CLIMAX typically regarded as the “reference” measurement of cosmic rays? Are the trends in the ion chamber data statisticlly significant? Or are the ionchamber data Shaviv refers to rubbish to begin with?
IF there were a trend in cosmic rays and IF they had a large effect on climate, wouldn’t we see a 11 year oscillation in the temperature signal? And since the purported correlations between cosmic rays and cloudiness are strongest over the oceans, wouldn’t we see the strongest temperature increase over the oceans? Or would the heat capacity of the oceans dampen out the locally stronger radiative forcing? Would the cosmic ray-cloud theory result in a warming of the stratosphere, just as a direct increase in solar irradiance would?
Pierre Gosselinsays
With a performance like that, it is no wonder that the global warming protagonists prefer to call the science “settled” and avoid debate. Their weakness was clearly visible. Their position is about as water tight as pegboard.
[[What concrete evidence is there that any temperature rises are actually caused by human emissions of CO2 ]]
1. Tyndall in 1859 demonstrated that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light.
2. Keeling et al. showed in the 1960s that atmospheric CO2 was rising sharply. That rise has continued.
3. Suess demonstrated in 1955 that the isotope signal of fossil fuel burnt CO2 was present in Earth’s atmosphere.
4. CO2 is now some 40% higher than before the industrial revolution started. No plausible source other than fossil fuel burning and deforestation exists.
For more, check the IPCC reports, or if you don’t like them, try Spencer Weart’s “The Discovery of Global Warming” (2003), which gives a nice overview of how the science developed. I believe it’s available free on the web somewhere.
[Response: It the first link under “Science Links” in our blogroll, or just go here. –mike]
PhilCsays
re#195
1. this shows co2 absorbs infrared
2. this shows co2 is rising
3. this shows that some of it is from humans
4. this shows there is more of it
while 2+3+4 when linked with 1 may lead to an assumption it is certainly not proof that human emission of co2 is acutally causing global warming.
I’m not saying it isn’t but I think there should be real proof by now.
PhilCsays
re 192
“Mark Lynas (SIX DEGREES) figures this may happen with 4C & 5C warming, which is within the projected bounds for this century, and probably even more likely within the next 2 centuries, if we don’t mitigate.”
is this same (pie throwing) Mark Lynas who holds a degree in history and politics :) wikipedia
Ray Ladburysays
Re 193. Darrel, I have not perused the Climax and ion chamber results in detail, but I would be surprised if there were too statistically significant a difference between them. Moreover, the on-orbit data we have shows no change beyond the 11-yr solar cycle modulation. Svensmark et al. base their claim–as near as I can tell–on the correlation between cloud cover and the solar cycle. However, a lot changes with the solar cycle beyond the cosmic ray flux, so I regard this claim as a little suspect. I’m also unclear on exactly how they generate their low cloud cover data. Finally, clouds can both cool in the day and warm at night. Why would one effect be expected to dominate?
So, on the one hand we are being asked to choose between one mechanism that is little understood beyond a vague handwaving level (cosmic rays) and a mechanism with a venerable history and lots of solid research behind it. Even if we were to choose the more vague of the mechanisms, we’d have to explain why all the previous research was wrong. Good luck with that.
Re 194. A public debate does not lend itself to truth squadding–and when one side is willing to play fast and loose with the truth (c.f. Lindzen’s allegations of extraterrestrial warming on Mars, Pluto…), they can appear to be more convincing. This is why science is not decided by public debate, but rather by consensus. You really should look into it–science I mean–it works pretty darn well.
PhilCsays
Having read several times that graphs in the ‘scandle’ documentary were wrong can anyone point me to a comparison between their incorrect graph and the generally accepted figures.
I’d be interested to see how different the figures are
[[Yesterday Al gore testified that ‘the earth has a fever’.
Now I know my normal temp is 98.6
Can anybody tell me what the earth’s is??? ]]
Climatologists usually use 288 K, from the 1976 US Standard Atmosphere which gives a mean global annual surface temperature of 288.15 K. But I think the figure NASA GISS uses these days is 287.00 K.
#148, we also moved to Texas, where we got onto Green Mountain 100% wind energy, and if we could get an electric car (or even a plug-in hybrid) then we could drive on the wind. We also moved to a place close to work, & my husband & I carpool.
There’s plenty of things to do, once people put their mind to it. And I esp like the big things, like the SunFrost, since we just plug it in and forget it, while it silently (they are extremely quiet) uses a tiny fraction of the electricity needed by other models.
Even a frig thermometer can save, say, 5% of the energy (set frig at 42 degrees F; freezer at 2 to 5 degrees F), and they only cost $2.
We Americans of today are totally profligate. Talk to people who were here during WWII & how they recycled and saved. My grandmother, who was well off, used to save string.
re: #136
It would seem that if one has more trust in the private sector than in government then one might consider that the one business who’s job is assessing risk is concerned about the effects of global warming.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1865011.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1013/p01s01-usec.html
And as far as oil companies, even Exxon recognizes global warming is real and “”the risks to society and ecosystems could prove to be significant, so despite the areas of uncertainty that do exist, it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020902081_2.html
Shell concurs with the IPCC and says,
“Starting to reduce our emissions now is an essential first step, eventually leading to a much lower final atmospheric stabilisation of CO2.”
http://www.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=envandsoc-en&FC2=&FC3=/envandsoc-en/html/iwgen/key_issues_and_topics/global_environmental_issues/climate_change/what_is_climate_change_12042006.html
BP says,
“We were the first major energy company to acknowledge the need to take steps against global warming.
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9004145&contentId=7007170
And,
“It’s time to go on a low carbon diet.”
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=97&contentId=7007103
And on Gore’s on global warming testimony today,
“A lot of those recommendations are more regulations and more taxation,” said former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., though he added that he agrees with Gore that the scientific debate on climate change is over. “I think we can find answers to use the coal energy, to use the natural gas we have.”
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8O0M3700&show_article=1
Re #148, and I do agree we need action and policies at all levels, including taking away ALL the subsidies and tax-breaks for oil & coal, and making oil pay for its military protection….etcetc
Then with the money the gov saves from that (which I understand is quite a lot), it can plow it into wind & solar, etc and make them much cheaper for people.
Each level of gov, each church at each level, each business, each household, school, we all need to get involved & do the needful.
re#144
I appologise if i did not read your comment properly
Phil
Re #151: [We Americans of today are totally profligate. Talk to people who were here during WWII & how they recycled and saved. My grandmother, who was well off, used to save string.]
To a large extent this is just cultural conditioning. Mainstream western culture has had the media delivering a stream of messages implicitly equating status with how much a person’s able to waste, to the extent that it seems to have almost become a potlatch culture – except of course that a true potlatch involves giving things away, while this culture stores its excess goods in closets and garages.
Still, there are subcultures that have rejected this conditioning, so it’s hardly innate. Change the messages, give people strong enough reasons to change, and many of them will do so. For the rest: well, let’s replace a bunch of existing taxes with a carbon tax, and let them pay :-)
Re 152, I doubt that private companies would bother unless Governments were considering legislation to force private companies to operate in a different manner. Only Government can tackle climate change due to its global nature.
Look at the currently available operations going on to lower CO2 emissions. Strategically it is a mess from what I can tell, a hodge podge of collective and individual efforts to ultimately make money from creating low CO2 technologies. I currenly see no coherent strategy, I am sure that it will come, Condi Rice was in Europe yesterday making all the right noises about it.
Maybe we can get some global cooperation and a strategy for viable low CO2 energy sources because as it stands at the moment no one knows if biofuels can replace Oil, if wind, wave, solar and pv can replace coal and gas etc or indeed if we can scrub coal clean on its carbon.
I’ve been browsing this thread and have noticed talk about oil/gas reserves running low.
In David Archer’s, “Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time.”
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.ms.fate_co2.pdf Reserves of extractable fossil fuels are said to be of the order of 5Gton Carbon. Most of this is coal. The other stuff I’ve read supports the view that there are at least several Gtons Carbon of extractable coal alone.
Surely issues around finite reserves of fossil fuels are not a major factor in terms of limiting CO2 emissions. Because for coal, we seem to have enough to make human emissions so far no more than a drop in the ocean. And when we consider the issue of ocean uptake being impacted by warming and ocean pH. Those emissions could have a greater impact on atmospheric concentrations in the future.
In short I just keep being drawn back to the conclusion that in terms of ‘energy returned on energy invested’ coal will remain the most competitive energy source. So it will simply take over from oil and gas as the mainstay power source for the 21st century, undercutting solar and other options. Fluidity of investment in the world economic system could easily make control of emissions practically unattainable. And that’s in a world with a population increasing to the 9-10Bn level, with a greater percentage of that population living carbon intensive lifestyles.
In the wake of this mockumentary I’ve been on messageboards dealing with the nonsense it’s lead to. It seems to me that the denialist fringe is now being relegated to the same level as the various incoherent conspiracy theories rampant on the ‘net. When they are driven to the sort of nonsense in GW Swindle and are unable to defend their position without the first recourse to insult, they know they’ve lost.
The contrarists seem to me to have been crushed by the evidence. But the real battle, to stir actual action is a far greater task. Nobody I know personally, apart from myself, has taken steps to reduce their carbon (and other impacts) footprint (and I don’t even have children of my own). Yet nobody I know really doubts the reality – like Marcus Brigstock implies – here in the UK we’re experiencing noticeably warmer weather.
Re #150 “[[Similarly, cheap biofuels, or hydrogen, could force down gasoline prices and so increase demand. ]]
The price of a commodity dropping because demand is lower is not the same as the price dropping because supply is higher.”
Actually I wasn’t meaning either – rather, the price dropping because a new alternative product enters the market. I should have spelled this out. At least if the alternative were to be marketed by different companies, the oil majors would be motivated to drop gasoline prices in order to dissuade people from switching to ethanol, hydrogen-fuelled or electric vehicles. If this happened, gasoline demand, and use, could rise.
Re #154. I certainly agree we need action at all levels.
Whether one is a denialist or part of the concensus of scientists saying global warming is not only real, it is most definitely caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere, what does it hurt to consume less and conserve more energy? Sure oil companies make less money if we use less fuel and so they have a strong incentive to be denialists, but for the average person on the street, who is harmed by driving less and using renewable energy sources whenever possible.
ref#158 CobblyWorlds
“The contrarists seem to me to have been crushed by the evidence”
What concrete evidence is there that any temperature rises are actually caused by human emissions of CO2 – even the IPPC report said it was (only) 90% sure. If there really is no doubt then why can’t they simply come out and say so.
Calling “the Great GW Scandle” a mockumentary is rather demeaning – it stated in fact that temperature changes precede CO2 levels. Now, there is apparently an explanation for this (rather convoluted to my reading) but this tv program was the first (that I’m aware of) to present this FACT.
The alternative theory of cosmic rays seems worth considering – we are constantly bombarded with them and they will be having some effect. These are perfectly plausible (though possibly wrong) ideas, they are not crackpot theories and they have enough merit to be presented to the public. To dismiss them out of hand shows a refusal or inability to look at this problem objectively.
True to form, the now show sketch was just a rant by someone who would not understand a graph if he had to, and yet he is allowed (even paid) to perform a 5 minute spot on national radio to slag off someone who is at least qualified to have an opinion about these matters. The BBC refuses any dissenting voices tv airtime but encourages the condescending attitude of just dismissing or laughing at them. Unfortunately, the standard of science reporting on the BBC has descending to such a trivial level now that we cannot expect anything better. Please name one serious science program that the network now produces (David Attenborough doesn’t count as science because there are no graphs in his excellent programs).
re#160
“it is most definitely caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere”
IPPC reporting 90% is most definitely not “most definitely”
I am all in favour of using less and conservation – what’s wrong with encoraging people to do it for it’s own rewards
Lastly, I am a skeptic not a denialist – thank you :)
Phil, don’t mistake someone saying “global warming is … most definitely caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere” for a claim that all of the current warming is caused by fossil fuel emission. Nobody’s saying that who understands the science.
It’s not a question of attributing the cause 1:1, all or nothing, independent of all other forcings.
It’s clear from the science that the excess CO2 is causing — and will continue to cause — an increase in the planet’s temperature til radiative equilibrium is reestablished. That’s considering all the other known forcings, the other gases, the loss of the ozone layer, the slight variability in the sun, the deep ocean circulation, the solubility of the various gases — you can and probably have read the whole list in the IPCC report.
Straw-man arguments are found on all sides of the political porkypine. Point them out, don’t fall into arguig with them — learn the science. The AIP history is quite helpful.
ref 163
thanks for the reply.
I do understand your point but would you agree that in the media, arguments are usually put forward by people who donâ��t understand (any) science – they tend to make exaggerated claims and if questioned tend to dismiss the questioner rather than address any meaningful issue â�� this leads to a shutting down of proper debate. Again, I make that point that our environment minister has stated the debate is over.
I can’t find the reference (but could if asked), but recently a UK climate researcher who is fully signed up to the Global Warming Theory received abuse simply because he dared to criticise the exaggerated claims being made.
In the public arena any real facts are being buried under a great deal of conflicting misinformation – and as the sceptical view barely gets a look in, would you agree that the majority of this misinformation is coming from the non-scientific believers? Note: I am talking here about tv, radio and newspapers – not discussions between scientists.
Re # 164
[In the public arena any real facts are being buried under a great deal of conflicting misinformation…]
In the U.S., at least some of that misinformation seems to be coming from the White House:
Congress Probes Edits of Climate Reports
By Erik Stokstad
ScienceNOW Daily News
19 March 2007
WASHINGTON, D.C.–The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today released documents edited by political appointees in the Bush Administration that “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” according to committee staff. Current and former appointees who made the changes appeared today before the panel and testified that they were trying to introduce scientific uncertainty in the reports.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/319/1
And one of the ways the facts are being buried is by claiming exaggeration by the AAAS, which was really quite a silly example of exaggeration and it deserved criticism.
The same media also exaggerates the skeptical views, which also have a wide audience of non-scientific believers.
I recommend you focus on the science, read the papers, talk to your local library reference desk for copies of the journals that aren’t available free online, and check the claims against the footnotes.
Ask intelligent questions. Eric Raymond’s advice, written for new programmers, is pertinent to anyone starting into a new area of science:
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
“This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way more likely to get you answers ….”
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Smart questions avoid wasting time of the few scientists who _have_ a bit of time to talk to the rest of us and can do so in terms we can understand.
The trolls intend to waste their time, and steal everyone’s attention — making it harder for those of us who want to understand this to learn.
The AIP page is quite good for the background needed to understand the more recent work.
The IPCC is the best statement of what’s understood, as of the date its comments closed; look at the Commenters and Other list on the right side of the main page for home page links to publications that may expand on that.
Oh, and speaking of paying attention to science not trolls, more from Eric Raymond, as found here: http://www.edge.org/q2004/
-Raymond’s Law of Software
Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
…
-Raymond’s Law of Consequences
The road to hell has often been paved with good intentions.
Therefore, evil is best recognized not by its motives but by its methods.
Sorry about the other thread. It’s been my experience political sceptics mock what they don’t understand. That was apparent with Imhofe yesterday.
Re #161: […it stated in fact that temperature changes precede CO2 levels. Now, there is apparently an explanation for this (rather convoluted to my reading) but this tv program was the first (that I’m aware of) to present this FACT.]
The key words there are “that I’m aware of”. The problem is that, as with any speciality, there are questions that those in the field have discussed and answered long ago, so that they become part of the “well, obviously everybody knows that” background.
Of course to someone new, it’s not immediately obvious, but to leap from your not knowing to a conclusion that it’s being deliberately hidden… well, to me that says you’re coming in with your mind already made up.
PhilC, first, I don’t trust any information about the science that comes from a nonscientific source. That includes Al Gore, and it includes Rush Limbaugh (though Gore certainly gets closer than Rush). Second, if anyone tells you they know exactly what will happen, they are either uninformed or lying. Climate is a chaotic system–that means it will not respond the same way to the same perturbation repeatedly. It may be that by adding energy to the system, we merely wind up with (on average) a warmer, maybe somewhat wetter, and certainly more variable world. However, it may be that we wind up with a highly variable climate, where year-to-year predictions (e.g. when rains fall, when the first frost comes, etc) are very, very difficult.
People tend to think in terms of disasters they have experienced before–floods, hurricanes, droughts…. It is true, we cannot say whether these disasters would necessarily be worse due to climate change. However, I think if you asked some Aussie farmers, they’d put up with the occasional flood if they could just predict when it will rain next year.
Humans are amazingly adaptable–we can probably prepare for any conditions we can anticipate. And maybe we can adapt to harsh conditions, but harsh and rapidly changing conditions will be very challenging.
Right now, because people are coming to terms with the fact that climate change is a real threat, and because we cannot predict how it will play out, people tend to project their fears onto it. Those who fear government power project their fears of a power grab by government. Those who fear disasters project their favorite disaster. The reality could in fact be worse, or not–we just don’t know.
Re #163 “as the sceptical view barely gets a look in”
This seems a bizarre claim in view of the recent Channel 4 “documentary” by Martin Durkin in the UK, and the TV debate in the US.
Yesterday Al gore testified that ‘the earth has a fever’.
Now I know my normal temp is 98.6
Can anybody tell me what the earth’s is???
RE: 173. So, Tom, why are you so obsessed with what Al Gore says. His opinion is as irrelevant to the scientific consensus as is Rush Limbaugh’s–he just seems to have gotten a lot closer to the actual science than Rush.
re#163
“This seems a bizarre claim in view of the recent Channel 4 “documentary”…”
Why bizarre – this documentary was the first in the UK, I think that justifies ‘barely’
I dont know about the US tv debate, do you have frequent documentaries taking an skeptical point of view?
“Yesterday Al gore testified that ‘the earth has a fever’.
Now I know my normal temp is 98.6
Can anybody tell me what the earth’s is???” – Tom
I’m not a scientist. The normal temperature would be the one that results from nature’s course. The one the the earth has now is higher than that temperature.
Re #173 Your normal body temperature is 98.6? Perhaps, but very possibly not:
The 98.6° F �normal� benchmark for body temperature comes to us from Dr. Carl Wunderlich, a 19th-century German physician who collected and analyzed over a million armpit temperatures for 25,000 patients. Some of Wunderlich�s observations have stood up over time, but his definition of normal has been debunked, says the April issue of the Harvard Health Letter. A study published years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the average normal temperature for adults to be 98.2°, not 98.6°, and replaced the 100.4° fever mark with fever thresholds based on the time of day.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/normal_body_temperature.htm
In this case, scientists and medical doctors have no doubt contributed to perpetuating this myth (however harmless it is). In case you’re wondering, the source of the discrepancy was rounding error when converting between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales.
Re: #173
I don’t think there is a “normal” temperature for the earth. One could define it as the average temperature for the last few thousand years, which seems to be about 14 deg.C (57.2 deg.F). But before that, its average temperature showed large swings — probably about 5 deg.C (9 deg.F) difference between full-on glaciation (usually thought of as “ice age” conditions) and interglacial (like now).
But environmental health for the planet is not the same as medical health for an individual. Humans are set to be at a particular temperature — 98.6 deg.F (37 deg.C). But for the planet, “healthy” means stable. If earth’s temperature changes, living things will adapt, evolving to thrive in a different temperature or migrating to a warmer/colder location. As long as temperature is stable, the ecosystem can thrive. But when temperature changes, it can bring trouble. The real problem is that it can take a very long time for ecosystems to adapt; when temperature changes rapidly it spells real trouble for living things.
The change from glacial to interglacial is about 5 deg.C, and this typically takes 5,000 years or more, so the rate of change is around 0.001 deg.C/year or less. The rate of change now is around 0.02 deg.C/year, 20 times faster. And that spells trouble with a capital “T”.
RE #172: It will be getting warmer and that does not bode well for earths subsystems in the main. You say it is a chaotic system but which system are you talking about exactly? I suggest it is a complex system that if perturbed far enough from equilibrium then it could go chaotic, however perturbing the climate enough for chaos to set in system wide would take a lot of additional energy as the interia is so high due to the sheer size of the system in question.
So come on PhilC, stop using pseudo scientific babble that you seem to like so much and to some real science. Ask RC what sort of system earth is and sure they will tell you it is linear mainly, the non linear couplings might only be triggered after very large scale perturbations have been experienced and that means we most likely will not cause that sort of system to be.
“In the public arena any real facts are being buried under a great deal of conflicting misinformation – and as the sceptical view barely gets a look in, would you agree that the majority of this misinformation is coming from the non-scientific believers?”
Yes from believers of the myth that global warming is a myth. All of the misinformation comes from this group and it is funded by industry.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org
They get a lot of play in print and on FOX News.
Going back to one point raised in the Channel 4 program. Sceptics are often told that we have too little scientific understanding to criticise the theory.
But how many who laugh off the proposed cosmic ray theory have any knowledge on how cosmic rays effect the earth. Someone spending the last 20 years looking at CO2 levels would have had no time to develop sufficient knowledge to even question the theory. And yet people with no qualification or experience in this field tell us the theory is crackers � double standards?
If you dismiss this theory try asking if your only real objection is along the lines of �it must be crackers because everyone knows global warming is true�
I have no idea if/how cosmic rays effect cloud cover, but much stranger ideas have turned out to be true
plate tectonics (crackers),
dinosours wiped out by meteor (crackers)
quantum mechanics (seriously crackers)
man from monkeys (they thought that was crackers � some still do :) )
I fully accept that equally strange ideas were just plain wrong but you shouldn�t dismiss or accept a theory just because it sounds odd
So until someone qualified can tell me why we can ignore cosmic rays I will consider it a possible explanation � just as I do for Co2 levels
Re #181: PhilC — Because there is no change in cosmic ray flux in the last 50 years but the global temperature (and greenhouse gases) has increased in the last 50 years.
(I’m just repeating what a moderator said on a previous thread. Maybe the one about Cosmic Rays?)
re#182
Thanks David, could you point me to a graph showing the cosmic rays levels for the last 50 years.
Search box at top of page is often helpful to find discussion here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/sun-earth-connections/
Try this search tool to build your own record:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
Cosmic ray database since April 1964
(1-min since 1996, 5-min since 1968, 1-h since 1964, 10-sec since 1990 upon special requests) – see readme file
Re #183: PhilC — Sorry, I don’t know where to find it. The comments in the Swindled thread or in the What triggers ice ages thread went over this matter fairly thoroughly. I suggest reading those and then, if that’s not enough, doing some web trawling. (As I recall, this data comes from a Climax, Colorado site.)
Try Scholar (or the “recent” subset of these).
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=%22Cosmic+ray+intensity%22+%2Bchange
Remember cosmic rays were discovered less than a century ago, and the first detectors were painstakingly hand carried to mountaintops, which doesn’t get you a longterm consistent data set. Only recently have large scale permanent detectors been operating. You’ll find several besides the one I pointed to in an earlier link.
Again I know nothing about this, I’m just showing how to use the search tools. Look for good science info to evaluate. Beware bogus PR sites, they’ll show up too, but they lack footnotes to good science publications.
Note correlation is not causation; consider what mechanism might explain any correlation remarked on, and how likely the result described is to be a chance occurrence (for example murder rates correlate, in some studies — but is this found in say one study in twenty, or more frequently?).
re 184
david
Having looked at a few webpages on this subject including this one there appears to be a very strong correlation between cosmic rays and low altitude cloud cover from 1980 to 2000.
Re: #185
I suggest a close reading of these papers:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Solar-ClimateLAUTPREPRINT.pdf
http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/2002GL015646.pdf
Re #185: PhilC — I recommend reading the Cosmoclimatology thread, down a few, to obtain a RealClimate perspective on cosmic rays. (Sorry I didn’t remember where it was earlier.)
Re 181. Phil C. I am not a specialist in studying galactic cosmic rays, but I and my colleagues monitor them on a regular basis because we look at bit flips in memories on satellites. I have also had occasion to look at the cosmic ray data from the last 25 years taken by GOES and other satellite series with long histories. Guess what–GCR fluxes are not changing much except for the modulation of the solar cycle. The first criterion for any cause is that it must be present when the effect is present. There just isn’t enough change in GCR flux to make any difference in climate.
I have a lot of questions about the plots in Svensmark’s papers–how does he get his correlations for low clouds, for instance. But even if true these could be artifacts–a lot of things about solar behavior change with the solar cycle. Now it is true that a charged-particle track can provide nucleation sites for condensation if there are no other sites, but this is far from the case in general. Dust does just fine, as do aerosols, etc. GCR fluxes in space average only about 5 particles per square cm per second–tiny–and the showers reach their maximum well above 50000 feet, so why don’t clouds form there.
And even if this were a credible theory, there would still be the question of why CO2 did not have more of an effect on climate. GCR could influence climate only when the strike Earth–there’s no persistent effect as with CO2, and this warming trend is nothing if not persistent. Look, I’m someone who worries about cosmic rays for a living–but their influence on climate is not something I worry about.
I liked Gore’s refutation of the “sunspot theory” proferred by Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri at the hearing. “It could be the Sun or CO2,” Bond said.
Gore leaped on that one: “If the Sun was the cause of the current warming, the stratosphere would be warming. It isn’t.” Bond had no reply as this was way above his level of understanding of reality.
Re #161: […it stated in fact that temperature changes precede CO2 levels. Now, there is apparently an explanation for this (rather convoluted to my reading) but this tv program was the first (that I’m aware of) to present this FACT.]
This is a known thing (as James #170 pointed out), but it also raises a very problematic situation: the warming we humans are causing now, could, if it continues, cause nature to release GHGs, causing more warming, causing more GHG releases. We would be wise not to go near that threshhold. And I think the reason you don’t hear a lot of scientists harping on this very dangerous scenario is because it’s very hard to quantify or predict when this might happen. We do know that heat melts ice & that there lots of gigatons of carbon in ocean ice cages (clathrates) and in the permafrost.
Mark Lynas (SIX DEGREES) figures this may happen with 4C & 5C warming, which is within the projected bounds for this century, and probably even more likely within the next 2 centuries, if we don’t mitigate.
It would virtually mean extinction of a very large chunk of the world’s biota and great reduction of the human population (not to mention great material poverty).
So that fact that CO2 emissions follow warming is not something to feel good about.
Question regarding cosmic rays:
The CLIMAX Neutron monitor does not show any trend in GCR since the 50s. However, cosmic ray proponent Shaviv claims that the ion chamber data are more relevant for potential aerosol (and thus “hopefully” cloud) formation, because of the energies measured. And he claims that they do show a decreasing trend.
I have read here on RC that the two (or multiple) types of particles should agree with each other, and that neither side of the argument has an explanation for the fact that they do not. I understand that the CLIMAX neutron monitor is the longest time series, so therefore more suitable for a trend analysis. But is CLIMAX typically regarded as the “reference” measurement of cosmic rays? Are the trends in the ion chamber data statisticlly significant? Or are the ionchamber data Shaviv refers to rubbish to begin with?
IF there were a trend in cosmic rays and IF they had a large effect on climate, wouldn’t we see a 11 year oscillation in the temperature signal? And since the purported correlations between cosmic rays and cloudiness are strongest over the oceans, wouldn’t we see the strongest temperature increase over the oceans? Or would the heat capacity of the oceans dampen out the locally stronger radiative forcing? Would the cosmic ray-cloud theory result in a warming of the stratosphere, just as a direct increase in solar irradiance would?
With a performance like that, it is no wonder that the global warming protagonists prefer to call the science “settled” and avoid debate. Their weakness was clearly visible. Their position is about as water tight as pegboard.
[[What concrete evidence is there that any temperature rises are actually caused by human emissions of CO2 ]]
1. Tyndall in 1859 demonstrated that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light.
2. Keeling et al. showed in the 1960s that atmospheric CO2 was rising sharply. That rise has continued.
3. Suess demonstrated in 1955 that the isotope signal of fossil fuel burnt CO2 was present in Earth’s atmosphere.
4. CO2 is now some 40% higher than before the industrial revolution started. No plausible source other than fossil fuel burning and deforestation exists.
For more, check the IPCC reports, or if you don’t like them, try Spencer Weart’s “The Discovery of Global Warming” (2003), which gives a nice overview of how the science developed. I believe it’s available free on the web somewhere.
[Response: It the first link under “Science Links” in our blogroll, or just go here. –mike]
re#195
1. this shows co2 absorbs infrared
2. this shows co2 is rising
3. this shows that some of it is from humans
4. this shows there is more of it
while 2+3+4 when linked with 1 may lead to an assumption it is certainly not proof that human emission of co2 is acutally causing global warming.
I’m not saying it isn’t but I think there should be real proof by now.
re 192
“Mark Lynas (SIX DEGREES) figures this may happen with 4C & 5C warming, which is within the projected bounds for this century, and probably even more likely within the next 2 centuries, if we don’t mitigate.”
is this same (pie throwing) Mark Lynas who holds a degree in history and politics :) wikipedia
Re 193. Darrel, I have not perused the Climax and ion chamber results in detail, but I would be surprised if there were too statistically significant a difference between them. Moreover, the on-orbit data we have shows no change beyond the 11-yr solar cycle modulation. Svensmark et al. base their claim–as near as I can tell–on the correlation between cloud cover and the solar cycle. However, a lot changes with the solar cycle beyond the cosmic ray flux, so I regard this claim as a little suspect. I’m also unclear on exactly how they generate their low cloud cover data. Finally, clouds can both cool in the day and warm at night. Why would one effect be expected to dominate?
So, on the one hand we are being asked to choose between one mechanism that is little understood beyond a vague handwaving level (cosmic rays) and a mechanism with a venerable history and lots of solid research behind it. Even if we were to choose the more vague of the mechanisms, we’d have to explain why all the previous research was wrong. Good luck with that.
Re 194. A public debate does not lend itself to truth squadding–and when one side is willing to play fast and loose with the truth (c.f. Lindzen’s allegations of extraterrestrial warming on Mars, Pluto…), they can appear to be more convincing. This is why science is not decided by public debate, but rather by consensus. You really should look into it–science I mean–it works pretty darn well.
Having read several times that graphs in the ‘scandle’ documentary were wrong can anyone point me to a comparison between their incorrect graph and the generally accepted figures.
I’d be interested to see how different the figures are
Thanks
[[Yesterday Al gore testified that ‘the earth has a fever’.
Now I know my normal temp is 98.6
Can anybody tell me what the earth’s is??? ]]
Climatologists usually use 288 K, from the 1976 US Standard Atmosphere which gives a mean global annual surface temperature of 288.15 K. But I think the figure NASA GISS uses these days is 287.00 K.