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While some fiddle (like Nero watching Rome burn) it just keeps getting worse. This has been the world's warmest winter since record-keeping began more than a century ago, the U.S. government agency that tracks weather reported Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the combined global land and ocean surface temperature from December through February was at its highest since records began in 1880. A record-warm January was responsible for pushing up the combined winter temperature, according to the agency's Web site For the full story Click Here . For NOAA's website Click Here . I am continually staggered by those who think that the climate models are wrong, the enviro-whiners are fools, and that the laws of chemistry and physics can be violated because if they aren't they might just have to alter their lifestyle.


DA Morgan
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Here in Chicago we've just experienced our 9th coldest winter in Weather Bureau history (139 yrs). As someone said in another thread around here, "average temps" are mathematically incorrect and unreliable.

I'm sure you're aware of the 60 year temp cycle that gave us very warm decades in the 20s, 50s and 90s, and very cold decades in the 40s, 60s/70s. It seems we're just about at a peak and can expect a downward trend.

And yet CO2 levels increased monotonically during that century while temps cycled up and down. Very low correlation there.

It seems the solar cycles correspond to temps much more closely:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/23/12433

edited to add: BTW= the general circulation models you rely so heavily on for your predictions don't include in their programs anything about solar cycles or even the Milankovich cycle. How can they possibly provide us with anything more than chance coincidence with reality?


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I mean no offence here, just an innocent question. Are you suggesting that we "shrug off" the many indications around the world that suggest something is happening to our biosphere as merely fluxuations in Solar output? Ignore the so-called signposts such as Kilimanjaro going bald, Greenlands Ice Sheet diminishing, the Ross Ice Shelf breaking up? Do nothing in terms of cleaning up our act, because this is the fate of the world and we can't do anything about it?
The article comes across as "Exxon-friendly" and should receive a warm reception here at Science a Go Go. I liked the paragraph regarding Polynesian expansion and the decline of Easter Island. I live in Samoa, our tiny part of the world is relatively ignored.

Welcome to the Forum!

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You may intend no offense Wolfman but I'm not so subtle.

That work has been widely discredited.

Science involves differing opinions. But in the case of the referenced paper the opinions of climatologists are laid out against it in a ratio of roughly 10,000 to 1.

And as everyone in the US knows winters in Chicago are irrelevant to everyone not located in Chicago. <g> Global warming is about the entire planet ... not specific geographic areas.


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DocT. The article certainly seems to provide evidence for correlation between global temperature, solar cycles and human population expansions and contractions. The correlation obviously means something. And it is from the National Academy of Sciences.

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This type of "hubris" is exactly what may doom Humanity.

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It seems that the Greenland and Antarctic ice masses are in a state of dynamic equilibrium over recent decades. Ice thickness is stable or increasing at the interior and diminishing toward the edges. That could be due to increased calving secondary to increased pressure from the interior, or to the general warming of oceans secondary to the natural cycling of the thermohaline gradient. One must also consider oceanic warming due to increased solar radiation.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V1/N4/C5.jsp
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V10/N2/EDIT.jsp

Many glaciers are increasing in volume and extent. Glaciers themselves have cycles. The Alpine glaciers reached their furthest extent most recently during the Little Ice Age, and have been diminishing in an ebb and flow since then. Alpine glaciers may have been absent during Julius Caesar's day. Although he makes extensive observations of the natural history and geography of Transalpine Gaul in his De Bello Gallico, he makes no mention of anything so impressive as a glacier. Recently the receding alpine glaciers have exposed trees they ran over centuries ago very high in the Alps- dated to early in the first millenium. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,357366,00.html

Sea levels also change cyclically. The area of Venice was too water-logged to inhabit early in the first millenium, but with cooling temps (presumably increasing glacial and polar ice, became a prime spot to live for protective purposes by the Dark Ages. Her's an early map of Venice, clearly showing solid land with traversing river channels in areas now completely submerged since Medaeval times: http://www.doge.it/storia/stori2ai.htm

If we criticize a piece for being "Exxon-friendly", are we not then allowed to criticize a work, such as Al Gore's propaganda for instance, as being "DNC-friendly or UN-fiendly"? We should not let a work's source decide it's veracity, recognizing there will always be some editorial stance behind all works.

ps/ I apologize for using the co2science site so extensively, but I'm lazy and it's an easy source for references and critique. They obviously have a consistent POV and exercise a strong editorial opinion. That doesn't make their science any less true.

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>>That work has been widely discredited.<<

Please provide a reference.

Re: 10,000 to 1, I don't think there are 10,000 climatologists in the world, and secondly, I wasn't aware that questions of science were decided by plebescite.

Any scientist who goes against the establishment commits proffessional suicide. Research grants are not doled out by merit, but by political agenda. If the evidence fails to define a "problem", money dries up.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

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>>This type of "hubris" is exactly what may doom Humanity. <<


doesn't the hubris resides among those who think we're powerful enough to change the weather?

If you want to worry yourself, pick something credible:

The world's population will double in 45 years, coincidental with the depletion of petroleum. A modern combine can harvest 900 bu of corn in an hour, but it used to take 9 hours to pick 100 bu by hand. Unless an adequate alternative to petroleum can be found, the planet's carrying capacity will fall precipitously. A new Dark Ages will follow.

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Stanford University for one among many references:
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html

To quote:
"Some uncertainty remains about the role of natural variations in causing climate change. Solar variability certainly plays a minor role, but it looks like only a quarter of the recent variations can be attributed to the Sun. At most. During the initial discovery period of global warming, the magnitude of the influence of increased activity on the Sun was not well determined."

NASA:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/SORCE/sorce_03.html
"Solar Variability
If that were all there was to the Earth?s radiative balance, scientists studying the Sun would have probably long since moved on to another climate-related problem."

Quite simply ... even if the sun were getting brighter ... you can not reverse the laws of chemistry and physics. The extra CO2 is definitely there. No one disputes that as fact. Similarly no one disputes that CO2 does what CO2 does. You can not claim CO2 causes the greenhouse effect ... except when the sun gets brighter ... or for some other connivance.

I am continually amazed by the by the number of people willing to stretch reality in the hope that denial is the name of a river.


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http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.html

We still need to explain why the correlation between yearly average temps are very close to one, while the correlation between CO2 levels and temps is very close to zero.

Perhaps you can explain to me how the concept of CO2 as a "special" greenhouse gas is not a perversion of the concept of specific heat content.

I am continually amazed by the number of people willing to stretch reality in the hopes of achieving some diversion of industrial production to third world countries.

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docT wrote:
"We still need to explain why the correlation between yearly average temps are very close to one, while the correlation between CO2 levels and temps is very close to zero."

No we don't. Because you are incorrect.


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DocT wrote:

"Ice thickness is stable or increasing at the interior and diminishing toward the edges. That could be due to increased calving secondary to increased pressure from the interior, or to the general warming of oceans secondary to the natural cycling of the thermohaline gradient."

Now it's my understanding that as temperature rises evaporation increases. As evaporation increases precipitation increases. If the precipitation occurrs at high latitude or altitude it falls as snow. This forms ice if it doesn't soon melt. Therefore the above phenomenon could well be a result of global warming.

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http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html

Scroll down here to find graph relating solar cycles to temps; correlation virtually 1.0.

Give me a minute to find appropriate reference in regards CO2/temps.

You, of course, can give us all appropriate references for your statement that I am wrong, but apparently are above reproach, so don't need to post them.

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tmgnow.com is not a reputable site for science.

Try something from NASA, NOAA, or CSIRO.


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http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/The_Geologic_Record_and_Climate_Change.pdf

This one has solar activity, CO2 levels and temp anomalies nicely superimposed on a single graph for easy comparison.

You don't have to be a statistics major to discern the correlations.

Those who support the notion of GW do so because their collective memories only go back 30 years, corresponding to the warming portion of the 60 yr temp cycle. A fly crawling on the face of the Mona Lisa makes a very poor art critic.

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tmgnow.com?
geocraft.com?

What happened to real labs with real PhDs doing real science and publishing in real peer reviewed journals?

A vast international conspiracy of smart people?


DA Morgan
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Morgan - Lassen's work (who, by the way, is Dr. Knud Lassen, with theDanish Meteorological Institute, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division) is hosted on the tgmnow site, in more of an archival sense. Dr. Lassen's work on the relationship between climate and solar activity (not just solar irradiance, but total activity) has been widely published. Here are a couple of references. I trust that you're able to visit your university library and look them up.

[Friis-Christensen and Lassen, 1991] Friis-Christensen, E. and Lassen, K. (1991). Length of the Solar Cycle: An indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate. Science, 254:698-700.

[Lassen and Friis-Christensen, 1995] Lassen, K. and Friis-Christensen, E. (1995). Variability of the solar cycle length during the past five centuries and the apparent association with terrestrial climate. Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, 57:835-845.

[Thejll and Lassen, 2000] Thejll, P. and Lassen, K. (2000). Solar forcing of the northern hemisphere land air temperature: New data. Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, 62:1207-1213.


If you want to read up on the relationship between solar activity and climate, here's a list of papers by real PhDs, doing real science, published in real peer review journals. It was put together by Peter Thejil. Dr. Peter Thejil is with the Danish Meteorological Institute in the Atmosphere & Space Research Division (those damn Danes eh?)

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0106/0106033.pdf


Here's a particularly good one, it's on the relationship between cosmic rays and global temperature. It was done by Dr Nir Shaviv and Dr. Jan Veizer - published in GSA Today (the Geological Society of America's journal)

http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/Ice-ages/GSAToday.pdf

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Canuck wrote:
"Lassen's work (who, by the way, is Dr. Knud Lassen, with theDanish Meteorological Institute, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division) is hosted on the tgmnow site"

Irrelevant. The site is not authoritative. Consider this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/734983.stm
"Research into the Sun's role in recent warming of the Earth's atmosphere indicates that it probably plays a relatively small part.

The research, by two Danish meteorologists, suggests another factor is involved - probably human activity."

Guess who one of the two Danes is?


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Once again you fail to come up with an intelligent critique of the mesage and must denigrate the source. In the future I will consider the point won when you resort to that rhetorical device.

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