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.  . "You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.
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There are still doubters about this warming trend. Some just deny it is happening, and there is no need for any action. Others say that it has all happened before. Well maybe it has, but not when there has been a world population of the size it is now, all relying on an ever decreasing amount of water, as well as energy produced by polluting power stations. And then there are those who are all excited about finding the cause of the change in conditions. To me, whilst it seems important to find out why, our ignorance of the causes should not be used as an excuse for our inaction. In fact one of the possible causes of this trend has been identified. Maybe we can help the situation to get no worse if we try, without any great hardship, to limit the use of energy obtained from coal. It is a modest enough proposition, but we seem to be finding very hard to agree to.
Will the Kyoto Agreement help--or is it all too little too late?
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To me, whilst it seems important to find out why, our ignorance of the causes should not be used as an excuse for our inaction. Ellis - this statement very elegantly sums up the dilemna. But it also illuminates the schism between the morally driven scientists (who use the science to make the case for action) and the sceptically driven scientists (who demand clearer answers). Maybe this explains why there is so little 'middle ground' in this debate.
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To me, whilst it seems important to find out why, our ignorance of the causes should not be used as an excuse for our inaction. Really? We don't need to understand the system before deciding how to "fix" it? We can just go monkeying around, implement some trillion dollar policy, and just "hope" it works? Hey, I guess at the very least, we can say we're doing something. Will that assuage the collective Western guilt? If we don't understand the processes at work, we can never know how effective our corrective measures will be. We'll be resorting to shooting in the dark. Perhaps that doesn't sound like a problem for some - but in a world of finite resources, it's nothing but irresponsible. Any idea on how many degrees of warming we'll save if Kyoto gets implemented? Didn't think so. In fact one of the possible causes of this trend has been identified. Maybe we can help the situation to get no worse if we try, without any great hardship, to limit the use of energy obtained from coal. No great hardship - please. Tell that to China, India or any other developing country that are pulling themselves out of poverty, with the help of fossil fuels. By the way, nice way of wrapping your "fact" up with handy qualifiers (possible and maybe). Seems to be a common occurrence with climate change speak these days. (e.g. hurricanes may increase due to global warming)
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Canuck wrote:
Really? We don't need to understand the system before deciding how to "fix" it? We can just go monkeying around, implement some trillion dollar policy, and just "hope" it works?
No I don't suggest that at all. We do not understand all the causes of cancer but we treat the symptoms and try to minimise the risk of its occurrence, for example, by modifying our diet or behaviour. We need to do something similar with regard to Climate Change.
Regarding coal in developing countries--where do you think it comes from? My country at the moment is doing very well in the current financial crisis as we are a very, very large supplier of coal, gas and iron ore to China and also India. That is the dilemma. It would be harder for our country to stop exporting coal than it is for individuals to give up smoking. At the moment we are hoping for the Holy Grail of Clean Coal!
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No I don't suggest that at all. We do not understand all the causes of cancer but we treat the symptoms and try to minimise the risk of its occurrence, for example, by modifying our diet or behaviour. We need to do something similar with regard to Climate Change.
I don't think that's a valid analogy. We can quantify the increased risk of cancer due to smoking, or exposure to other carcinogens. We can quantify the lowered risk of cancer due to a balanced diet. These risk factors have been quantified through studies on millions and millions of individual cases. Global warming on the other hand, doesn't have the same luxury. There's only 1 case to test hypothesis's on. There's a huge difference in certainty between the two. But we have models you say! People need to realize global circulation models are not the panacea that they are held up to be. Computer models only do what we program them to do - they're not some magic box that knows all. If we don't understand the processes at work, we can't program the computers correctly. The IPCC (well, at least the scientific branch of the IPCC) recognize this, and have said as much. Why aren't policy makers listening? From the Third Assessment Report - A Scientific Basis. Section 14.2.2 - Predictability in a Chaotic System "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." Let me re-state that for emphasis...... the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.  Wow, that's a doozy eh? Hmmm, so we have no idea about the state of future climate, but yet we need to enact multi-trillion dollar policies to do something about it......Now......Right now So - I'll ask my question again. How many degrees of warming will we save if all developed countries implement Kyoto?
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We do not understand all the causes of cancer but we treat the symptoms and try to minimise the risk of its occurrence, for example, by modifying our diet or behaviour. We need to do something similar with regard to Climate Change.
Ellis - not understanding something and attempting to solve it has the potential to be a recipe for a TOTAL disaster. As an example, very well meaning (but fundamentally flawed) moves to reduce CO2 emmissions by encouraging growth in biofuels is now clearly having a serious negative impact on remaining rainforests. In our panic to solve what may turn out to be a non-existent problem, we are genuinely destroying our environment. I live on Borneo and it is heartbreaking to see the complete destruction of virgin forest by replacement with mile after mile of palm oil plantation. It is is a tragedy or untold proportions. And all encouraged by highly educated, well meaning people who live far away and dream of saving the planet ... but who don't know what they are talking about. This is complex and you need to understand it before taking action. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18332282/http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/greasy_palms_summary.pdf
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Imran, what amount of climate change would be neccesary to say ok, its getting bad and we need to do something about it? Temperature in hot places have had record lows for consecutive years while temperatures for cold places have had record highs! The number and the intensity of tornadoes and floods have gone off the roof. Floods in Bangladesh are so bad that people are moving to other nations by the millions! There's even talk about the entire country emptying out because it is nothing more than a marshland and the floods in the past few years are ravaging it.
More importantly, the homestatsis of earth resembles homeostasis maintained by warm-blooded animals. Accordingly, small change in temperature produces little or no effect because of homeostasis maintaining mechanisms. However, make those changes large enough, and everything falls apart; things change very drastically very quickly. Replacing existing rainforests with palm oil plantations maybe to drastic a step, but that does not mean we completely back off and let nature take its course. If we wait until the results are clearly visible, it may already be too late, because like I said, once the change in temperature is big enough, things will change very drastically and very quickly. There will not be enough time to counter these drastic effects.
- Kevat Shah
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A very interesting discussion
Canuck asks this question,......(it has no answer).
"Any idea on how many degrees of warming we'll save if Kyoto gets implemented? Didn't think so."
Canuck also mentions a posting by IPPC
[quote=IPCC]"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."
Canuck re-states:- Let me re-state that for emphasis...... the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Wow, that's a doozy eh?
I would like to mention that there are a number or influential
climatologists who are quite adamant in their belief that Global
warming (and cooling) is driven by the long term cosmological
influence of our Suns travel through the dusty arms of our own
spiral Galaxy.
Other variables, such as Cosmic ray intensity, and the Suns output have also been mentioned.
All making it certain that there there wont be any definitive answer in our lifetime, or in our childrens.
Prehaps the best we can hope for, is that 'man made' global warming will eventually slow as our Earth reaches a heat stability plateau?
Hopefully there must be a leveling off eventually?
But as Canuck suggests, unknown corrective measures, like shooting in the dark, would be irresponsible.
The developing Asian nations are far too busy playing financial catchup with the West to worry about climate responsibility at this stage in their development
Heres another gloomy NASA Sat: Pic: from yesterday.
Showing Artic ice melts have reached twice the area of Texas
. . "You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.
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Canuck wrote
I don't think that's a valid analogy. We can quantify the increased risk of cancer due to smoking, or exposure to other carcinogens. We can quantify the lowered risk of cancer due to a balanced diet. These risk factors have been quantified through studies on millions and millions of individual cases. Global warming on the other hand, doesn't have the same luxury. There's only 1 case to test hypothesis's on. There's a huge difference in certainty between the two.
I think it is a valid analogy. I am old enough to remember that people were once sceptical of smoking as a cause for cancer. A female smoker friend of mine was reassured by her doctor that women did not get lung cancer, and they didn't (in any number) then because women did not smoke as much as men until the 50s. However this ignorance did not mean that no-one was treated to relieve the symptoms of cancer. Similarly when AIDS first started people were not refused treatment because the disease was strange and new, and the symptoms did not conform to any known prognosis. The symptoms were treated. The cause was not known for years after the first outbreak, but treatment was not refused because the reason was not known.
I cannot see how we in western style countries can morally stop development in Third World countries. We enjoy a standard of living that ensures we have safe water, healthy food, education and medical care. How can we deny this to others? I don't know the answer and I doubt anyone does. But I don't think that holding off from trying to mitigate the effects because we are squabbling about the causes is going to get much achieved either.
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Kevat Your statements sound dramatic but there is not much fact behind them. - for flood data in Bangladesh - have a look at some stats : http://www.sdnbd.org/sdi/issues/floods_drainage/2004/data/top_10_natural_disasters_bangladesh.htmwhat does this tell you ? - for sea level rise, any examination of any IPCC report will show you that sea levels have been rising for 150 years (at least) which should make you wonder why its only now that its becoming an issue ...? - I thought the tornado data was well and truly put to bed as an example of misused data - the reason more are reported now is because - well - more are reported now. Theat doesn't exactly translate into 'more have occured'. Same for hurricanes. Even Al Gore admits this. http://www.disastercenter.com/tornado/25Worst.htmBasically, you need to do some reasearch. The more focussed question should be "whats an accpetable CO2 limit ... 500ppm, 1000ppm ? " Regardlless of whether you believe CO2 willl radically alter the climate or not, clearly we need to think about alternatives. And there are plenty of things we can, should and are doing to reduce CO2 emmissions growth .. - moderate hydrocarbon energy taxes - increased R+D in renewables and new technologies - re-focus onto nuclear - higher energy prices to istill efficiency gains - all new coal fired power stations to be combined-cycle - incentivise carbon sequestration ofr power suppliers etc etc
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Tornados in Atlanta, Fog in Dubai, Snow in Baghdad, January Tornados and Thunder Snow. hmmmmm"More importantly, the homestatsis of earth resembles homeostasis maintained by warm-blooded animals. Accordingly, small change in temperature produces little or no effect because of homeostasis maintaining mechanisms. However, make those changes large enough..." Neat analogy, Kevat! Imran points out, "there are plenty of things we can, should and are doing to reduce CO2 emissions growth ...." Reducing emissions will help us out in the long run (50+ yrs) by allowing us to control or maintain lower levels of CO2. However, any current reduction in emissions (even a complete cessation of emissions) will not prevent further warming. For the near term....In its Second Assessment Report the IPCC, 1996 estimated that it might be possible, over the next 50 to 100 years, to sequester 40-80 Gt of C in cropland soils (Cole et al., 1996; Paustian et al., 1998; Rosenberg et al., 1998).
...agricultural soils alone could capture enough Carbon to offset any further increase in the atmospheric inventory for a period lasting between 12 and 24 years.
...there is also a very large potential for Carbon storage in the soils of degraded and desertified lands.
Soil Carbon sequestration alone could make up the difference between expected emissions and the desired trajectory in the first three or four decades of the 21st century, buying time for development of the new technological advances...[emission reduction/recycling]. This mitigation option was set-aside in the Kyoto negotiations ostensibly because of the perceived difficulty and cost of verifying that Carbon is actually being sequestered and maintained in soils. **Storing Carbon in Agricultural Soils: A Multi-purpose Environmental Strategy Edited by: Norman J. Rosenberg and Roberto C. Izaurralde Reprinted from Climatic Change, Vol.51, no.1, 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN 0-7923-7149-6 ...and this isn't the high-cost, high-tech "carbon capture" CO2 sequestration schemes that energy companies are researching. It's very low cost, requiring mainly organization and a change in culture and behaviour.Probably we should not even wait for governments to act (focusing on only emissions will not help us now), and should just start at the grass-roots level (pun intended), spreading the good word to gardening clubs, nurseries, hardware stores, churchs, local governments, planning commissions and zoning boards.
 ...see also: Terra Preta Soils (to enhance sequestration).
Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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Glaciers - Record Shrinkage?
I read about this trend recently in a couple of newspaper articles but the data seemed to be very selective and put out by a green group. No articles that I read referred to any real research.
Glaciers are melting. They have been doing that for 11,300 years and will continue to do so until this intergacial period ends.
The last valid research I saw on glaciers showed that out of the 16,000 identified glaciers (can't remember the exact figure) about 11,000 are getting bigger or remain static.
Certainly a number of equatorial glaciers are shrinking but most of those started to do so around 150 to 180 years ago due to mostly local climate changes. Kilimanjaro is a famous example. The area around it was overgrazed around 200 years ago changing the area around the mountain to a much drier climate and it then started to melt. 80% of the melt occurred before 1900. That cannot be blamed on global warming other than coming out of the LIA and in the case of many of the equatorial glaciers you cannot even blame that.
Glacier size is greatly affected by land use around the glacier. For instance, Greenland have been trying very hard for more than 30 years to make small areas of land agriculturally productive. Without arguing whether this had anything to do with glacier shrinkage, the fact is that in these areas glaciers have shrunk a lot and the land use is now changing much more rapidly. The Greenland people couldn't be happier.
This post is an experiment because I was asked to return to this site. I'll see how it goes. Play nice and I'll be happy to contribute to the limited capacity I am able.
If there is specific research in relation to the "record shrinkage" happy to have someone point me to it.
For those that have been around for a couple of years on this site, you might remember that I suggested that a great deal would change starting near the end of 2007 because of solar activity and my guess that an Al Nina was forming. By September, my guess wasn't a guess any more and the Al Nina truly had arrived. Now we are in a full blown, very large, Al Nina and this WILL cause world cooling and have a dampening effect on world climate for a min of 8 years even if the Al Nina stops now and it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
I feel sorry for those in Mid West US. Big Al Ninas like this one mean big tornados and lots of them. It also means very dry western US and terrible wildfires. Once again this effect should be for at least eight years. If you notice any mention of "extreme weather" further proving global warming and tornadoes are mentioned perhaps you could pause to think about the Al Nina that is around, or better yet, actually do a bit of study on the El Nino / Al Nina phenominum.
From September 2007 the world's SAT has dropped. That is typical of an Al Nina. What is strange about an Al Nina is that its effects last years after it stops. El Ninos maybe very powerful and the hottest year this century caused by a one in a century El Nino in the not too distant past shows just how powerful the effect can be but El Ninos don't continue to influence the world's climate the second they stop. So this Al Nina, especially coupled with the solar activity drop, is going to prove extremely difficult to counter with global warming arguments in general.
Oh and just a little comment about rain in the Arctic. Big deal. It does happen. I was in the Artic and really copped a rain storm. Believe me they are amazing to watch but deadly to be out in because they are much colder than snow falling.
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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G'day all,
Might I make a little suggestion here. Global warming has a great many sub-issues. My previous post covers a number of them because there is a great many issues in this one post. Would it not make sense to keep threads to the topic for which they started and create new threads for new thoughts or opinions. Easier to read, better science can be discussed and specific very important aspects of global warming will not get missed because there are 20 or 30 different topics already in the one thread.
For instance, there is a bit on Kyoto posted by Samwik relating to the ability to actually "bank" CO2. This is a terrific subject and most offsets seem to be scams, about the level of savings and loans in truthfullness or really big scams. I actually thought of creating a Carbon Offset company just so that there really would be carbon offset for those people that think this is important. It is very easy to do since there is currently no regulation about it but trees just do not lock up CO2 (well they did in the Carboniforous but that was a slightly different environment at the time)
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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Welcome back Ric - glad to see you back here.
Have you had any luck in getting your paper published?
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Off Topic
G'day Canuck,
I'm not really "back" as such. I was asked a technical question and had a very quick look at the forum and could not find any nasty anomosity so decided to post a little bit. The threads are still a mess though. Maybe the moderation idea that I proposed that included actually enforcing threads being on topic may now be able to be implemented without causing disturbance. I'd like to see that happen.
Much of my work got caught up in the problem that the work I had been doing was for an institute that retains the rights to my research on their behalf and because they didn't like the answers they don't want it published. Have a work around for this but have simply been way too ill to do anything.
Haven't even kept track of much of the generalist areas of Climate science that interest me for the past year or so. Being an incomplete para means circulation problems in my legs and a nurse using the wrong scissors cutting off a cast managed to create an infection that then decided it would like to chomp through a fair bit of bone in my legs. If I even sit up the nausea is overwhelming. I'm not asking for sympathy here. Just explaining why I have completely stalled with the work.
I hope this finds you well.
Regards
Richard
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Sorry to hear you're not feeling well. Hope you get better soon. It's good to have you back. I'm working on trying to keep the forum civil and polite. Guess I need to put in more effort on the on-topic issue.
If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose
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A great chunk of the Wilkins ice-sheet in Antarctica fell of this week- actually whilst watched by the occupants of an exploring British helicopter. It is expected that further sheering off will occur in the next few weeks. Because this ice was in fact already on the water it is not expected to raise sea levels, but the same may not be true for later chunks which are on the continent itself.
Ric. So far all the Al Nina has done for us here in Victoria is deepen the drought!
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Hello Richard, I had read your earlier posts with some interest. But I did not realise until now that you were having these medical problems. Your postings are clearsighted, your writings show your fortitude. Like Amaranth, I wish you the best recovery possible. Here's the latest on another 'Ice Shelf Break-up'. In Antartica this time. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/03/25/antarctic.ice/index.htmlI believe the Antartic seas are a lot shallower than those in the Artic. Which probably means they will warm up somewhat quicker than their Northern counterpart?
. . "You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.
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G'day all,
My medical condition is not fixable nor will it ever improve. It does worsen with monotinous regularity unfortunately but I thank you for the kind words.
Antarctic Ice Sheets
Sea Ice sheets break off all the time. Big deal. Alone they prove nothing. The sea ice sheets are subject to immense compressive forces as well as other actions that make their disintigration inevitable. Last Century an iceberg a couple of hundred kilometres long (or if you prefer hundreds of MILES long) and quite wide went past some merchant shipping. This was not an indication of any climate change at all.
The Antartic has more ice now that it did 50 years ago according to all the studies I have seen. The difference is that the micro climate of the Antartic changes regularly and for the last 50 years or so the climate has shifted so more ice is formed on the western ? side than the eastern side (forgive me if I have this around the wrong way - I'm going from memory here). The ice extending beyond the continental shelf of the Antartic is reducing in thickness and size. The ice over the landmass is greatly increasing in size.
As to droughts in Victoria, sorry mate but Al Nina's affect the Eastern Seaboard of Australia and the mid Eastern inland the most, as well as having an effect of the weather in Queensland far more than for Victoria. The Al Nina, if it sticks around for a while should ease the Victorian drought eventually but that is not the area that really is greatly impacted by an Al Nina when it first forms.
Oh and Amaranth Rose, this now has four topics just to reply to the posts directly following my previous ones!
Regards
Richard
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You have misquoted the IPCC paper, leaving out a critical word.
You wrote:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."
What it ACTUALLY says is:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future EXACT climate states is not possible."
This makes perfect sense in the context of the entire paragraph which reads:
"Explore more fully the probabilistic character of future
climate states by developing multiple ensembles of model
calculations. The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future exact climate states is not possible. Rather the focus
must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of
the system’s future possible states by the generation of
ensembles of model solutions."
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You have misquoted the IPCC paper, leaving out a critical word.
You wrote:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."
What it ACTUALLY says is:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future EXACT climate states is not possible."
This makes perfect sense in the context of the entire paragraph which reads:
"Explore more fully the probabilistic character of future
climate states by developing multiple ensembles of model
calculations. The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future exact climate states is not possible. Rather the focus
must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of
the system’s future possible states by the generation of
ensembles of model solutions."
TheFallibleFiend I'm sorry, it is you that are misquoting the IPCC report. Are you reading Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, or are you reading the "Summary for Policy Makers"? In the Scientific Basis - this is the exact quote from the Chapter 14 Executive Summary (page 771, first full paragraph on the second column of the page)
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
This exact sentence (grammatical errors and all) is then included within 14.2.2.2 "Balancing the need for finer scales and the need for ensembles"(page 774, first full paragraph on the second column)
In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
Here's the link to the chapter http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-14.PDFBoth quotes are direct cut and pastes. Now, since I've rebutted your accusation that I deliberately misquoted the IPCC report (in effect called me a liar), I'll be waiting for your apology. And why don't you share the source of your quote as well? That might make for interesting discussion.
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While we're quoting the IPCC Scientific Basis, here's a little tidbit, that some may find interesting.
As noted in Chapter 8, Section 8.4.2, at the time of the SAR most coupled models had difficulty in reproducing a stable climate with current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and therefore non-physical “flux adjustment terms” were added. In the past few years significant progress has been achieved, but difficulties posed by the problem of flux adjustment, while reduced, remain problematic and continued investigations are needed to reach the objective of avoiding dependence on flux adjustment.
Section 14.2.2.1 Initialisation and flux adjustments http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-14.PDFIf you can't understand the implications of this statement, let me spell it out for you. FUDGE FACTOR!!!
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G'day all,
Ice Coverage and its Possible Effects on Climate.
I actually went to look at the satellite figures (the raw and adjusted ones that can be found at the Huntsville University site with not much effort at all) as well as some other data sets.
I have been sick for too long. Even I was surprised at the very rapid reduction in world averages. While studies on exactly why the reversal is so great will be probably years away, the reversals seem to be too large for blamed on the Al Nina alone, solid Al Nina that this one is.
There was a theory that has been around for a while about how it would take only two or three years to switch from a full glacial period to an interglacial period or visa versa. I studied it back in the mid 70s although it had not been very refined at that time. I actually did some work on it at the time with a professor that had an interest in this type of thing and even wrote a paper on the rapidity of flips between glacial and interglacial periods. This paper would probably be boring to those on this site because it relates only to how fast a change occurs, not what triggers it. It did, however, try to apply some logic at just why the flip could be so fast, even though most of the paper was on the evidence that supported very rapid change rather than the traditional view of thousands of years of gradual climate shift.
One part of the logic was then called "the snow blitz theory". It might have another name now or might not even be subject to any active study at all at the moment, the study of climate being so focused on current global warming rather than historical issues not necessarily useful in the current global warming argument. The theory goes like this. The albedo levels of snow and ice that is reasonably fresh is around 95%. (Albedo is the amount of solar radiation that is reflected back into space as opposed to being absorbed. The Savannah is the lowest world’s figures at around 30% to 35% reflectivity or 70% odd absorption). Should you have even by random concurrence of many factors a much larger winter snow field in the Northern Hemisphere than is the norm then the amount of total solar radiation available to heat the planet plummets. Thus, the snow and ice remain on the ground much further into the spring and stay at lower latitudes and altitudes for several weeks. This late switch between very high albedo snow and very low albedo exposed tundra and grassland, further reduces the available solar radiation well into the growing season and towards the summer. Thus, the snow and ice in very many areas simply does not retreat to the normal extent. The next year comes around and winter weather starts up much earlier simply because the weather systems are travelling over snow-covered areas rather than is typical. The snow and ice extend much greater distances than is the norm and very much greater than the previous year.
The second year seems to be the "tipping point" to borrow a global warming phrase. It would seem that this type of imbalance happens more than traditional climatologists are ever willing to admit, but generally factors intervene to reduce the effects so that a switch does not occur. It might be that a peak of the sun flare short cycle occurs that year, or that ocean currents clear a lot of the sea covering ice, or there is volcanic activity in the right places or a lack of it in other places.
However, if there are no limiting factors, watch out. The extent of the snow, which only needs to be very thin, stretches so far south and into lower altitudes during the winter that summer just doesn't really turn up. The snow and ice retreat only marginally the next year and the flip becomes complete within the year, with snow coverage extending down most of Europe, most of the US etc, permanently, or at least until the reverse process kicks in and another interglacial period turns up. This theory does not rely on glaciations by the way and thus is very difficult to either prove or disprove, especially by geological analysis.
We are not talking about glacial expansion or creation as this takes many hundreds and even thousands of years to occur, only about as little as a few inches of persistent snow. Since the world currently has the majority of the land mass over the Northern Hemisphere, the albedo readings for the majority of the land mass goes through the roof and the whole world (except the equatorial regions which is never greatly affected in THIS ice age by whether it is a glacial period or an interglacial one) gets a great deal colder.
With absolutely no data or studies to back this up, perhaps those that read these posts would still like to contemplate the following:
According to now a solid group of solar scientists, we are now in a period of particularly low sunspot activity (except 2012, which may actually knock out the world's power grids).
The satellite data for global average temperature actually indicates a cooling especially from 2005 and more so from near the end of 2007.
The total ice coverage of the world is dramatically more than it has been and heading for a record.
Sea surface temperatures seem to be decreasing.
The only thing that seems to be missing is increased volcanic activity. In seven of the last ten switches back to glaciations, the volcanic activity in the low to mid latitudes increased significantly either just before or just at the start of the glaciations. Nevertheless, three times out of ten, the switch has been managed without volcanic assistance.
This post is mainly just something to think about rather than something that is backed by a great deal of data, studies or the like. All that needs to happen to prove the arguments made here is to wait for a switch to the next glaciation, something we are several thousand years overdue from happening, by the way.
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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When I searched the only thing that came up was: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-2001/synthesis-syr/english/wg1-technical-summary.pdfAnd that link definitely has the word EXACTLY in it. While I was wrong to infer that the statement had been misquoted, the surrounding text makes it clear that they're talking about increasing the understanding of probabilistic outcomes vs exact deterministic outcomes. Furthermore, the entire paper leaves little doubt about the conclusion that humans have influenced the global carbon cycle. Read section 14.2.4.
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FallibleFiend - Don't you think it's interesting that the Scientific Basis (which was written by the actual researchers and scientists) did not have the term "exact" in that sentence, but yet the synthesis report (which was a summary of the full technical report, and was pulled together by bureaucrats) did include the word "exact". It is a very significant word, and one may ask the question why was it included in the synthesis report, but not the original technical report. Perhaps the bureaucrats knew something the researchers didn't.  What the text surrounding that quote makes clear, is that the climate system is too complex, too non-linear, too bloody chaotic to accurately model it, and predict into the future. The non-linear nature of most(all?) of the climate processes, mean that relationships, which have been parameterized based on current climate conditions, will likely not hold true in the future. Without knowing how these relationships will interact in a changed climate, you can't predict forward. A perfect example is convection. Convection is the primary method of heat transport from the lower troposphere to the stratosphere. In a troposphere with more energy (as is the case in a warmer climate), there will be increased convection (this shouldn't be a debatable point). How much more though? Is it a linear increase? logarithmic? exponential? Anybody who says they know the answer is lying. So if you don't know how the main heat transport engine will react to a warmer surface, how can you actually predict how much warmer it will be? The tripe about developing model ensembles to develop probability distributions is laughable at best. This is analogous to taking 20 people, giving them a gun and tell them to shoot at an invisible target - that's over there.....somewhere. Do you expect any of them to hit this invisible target? Of course not.......taking the IPCC approach, you'd take the "average" of all 20 shots, and say "here's our probability distribution of where that blinkered target is - and look, it's in that general area that we thought it was! I told you!!!!!". As long as models are developed based on incomplete knowledge of our current (and future) climate processes, all our model simulations are nothing more than shots in the dark. But hey, we can always add some "flux adjustments" to make the models give us the answers we want - right? I'll be eagerly awaiting your response as to why the Synthesis Report included the word "exact" whereas the technical report did not. I'm sure there must be a good reason.  btw - yes, I do agree that humans have impacted the global carbon cycle. The 500,000,000,000,000 dollar question is "does it matter?".
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Not everything we know is based on 'models'. The section I mentioned on carbon cycle is based on observed data. It's not clear to me that the people who wrote the synthesis report were bureaucrats. Perhaps you could elucidate this.
Regardless, the surrounding text makes clear. I don't see any doubt expressed in that paper that human actions affect climate.
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Fallible - of course the IPCC doesn't say that, it's in their bloody mandate to say that humans are the cause. Fortunately, it seems some scientists have managed to hide little cautionary nuggets in the text. Too bad more people can't understand what they're saying. Proof that bureaucrats wrote the Synthesis report? Have a look at the one of the two lead authors: Dr. Daniel L. Albritton. Here's his bio
Dr. Daniel L. Albritton, director of the Aeronomy Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Albritton is one the world’s foremost experts on atmospheric science and in particular, global climate change. He is one of the Coordinating Lead Authors on the recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the science of the climate system. The IPCC provides scientific and technical assessments of the state of understanding for governments, industry, and the public. Dr. Albritton joined the Aeronomy Laboratory in 1967 and became Director in 1986. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Doctor’s degree in Physics, both from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
So an electrical engineer that got his doctorate in physics. And a Director in NOAA to boot. Yup, that kind of background just exudes recent climate research. Do you know what his hobby was before climate change became the cash cow for NOAA? It was that devastating ozone hole that was going to give us all skin cancer. By the way - why don't you include this little disclaimer at the start of the synthesis report you quoted "A report accepted by Working Group I of the IPCC but not approved in detail". The devil is in the details eh? So any idea why that "exact" word got put into the Synthesis report? Wasn't included in the original report. Did the boogey man put it in there? Not everything we know is based on models - you're right. But everything we know about what a future climate would be like IS based on models. Which, of course, is the issue we're concerned with.
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G'day all,
Ice Coverage and its Possible Effects on Climate.
One part of the logic was then called "the snow blitz theory".
...The second year seems to be the "tipping point" to borrow a global warming phrase.
...The only thing that seems to be missing is increased volcanic activity. Richard! Good to see you around! Best wishes; and hope you're getting a good 10 minutes of sunshine every day. I enjoyed reading your description of a feedback enhanced snow event. I had come to similar conclusions after spending a lot of time observing snow melt last winter, '06/07. It was just perfect conditions (cold and sunny) and I was already pondering the mystery of "Snow Water Content." It's amazing how undisturbed snow resists melting, while disturbed snow melts so easily. With food coloring I observed a lot of lateral movement of water within the sponge-like snow structure (surprising , eh?). I also enjoyed the rainbow of vivid colors that two parallel snowflakes will produce (I'm guessing) (like scales on a butterfly wing). ...but I'm wandering. Yes, the way snow can accumulate is scary. While we usually think of glaciers advancing (or retreating), we don't realize that glaciers can also arise de novo, growing up, around us. Just a couple of feet accumulating per year will push a house of it's foundation within a decade, I'd think. We still had little mini-glaciers on the north side of the house in early May, '07 (even though it was as hot as normal). According to now a solid group of solar scientists, we are now in a period of particularly low sunspot activity (except 2012, which may actually knock out the world's power grids).
...I'm picturing a graph in my head and it doesn't make sense ( a low period with a large one-year spike in the middle?)
The satellite data for global average temperature actually indicates a cooling especially from 2005 and more so from near the end of 2007.
...from 2005 to when? What about 2006 or 2007? You'd think this would be big news
The total ice coverage of the world is dramatically more than it has been and heading for a record.
"heading for a record" since when?
...while the ice thins and breaks up, the extent of "coverage" may increase; but the net mass loss [ice to water] is still about 150 Gigatonnes per year each for the Arctic, Greenland and the Antarctic.
Sea surface temperatures seem to be decreasing.
...all that melting ice? LOL Did you see my reference to the Beltrami et al., paper on crustal warming? [mentioned near the end of...] http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=25152#Post25152Quite a "hockey stick," eh? Maybe we will see more volcanic activity soon enough. I've been telling my friends since the late 1990's that this instability in the climate will bring on another glaciation eventually. Lately though, I've been wondering if we might end up with a "bi-polar" world; with a warmer, liquid North Pole and a colder, larger South Pole (at least for a few decades). So, what do you think about "Fudge Factors?" We know models don't account for everything. Wouldn't it be surprising if they didn't need some compensation? ...btw: It seems obvious to me why the included the word "exact" for the lay-summary. Without understanding that scientists speak in absolutes, policymakers (bureaucrats) would think that "we can't predict the future climate" mistakenly means that 'no predictions can be made of the future climate.' Adding the word "exact" clarifies the difference, without needing all the extra wording from the rest of the paragraph. Does that seem like some conspiracy to you, or just writing to your audience? ...but BOTA new NASA study appears in the January issue of the quarterly Journal of Glaciology. "The relationship between surface temperature and mass loss lends further credence to earlier work showing rapid response of the ice sheet to surface meltwater," said Dorothy Hall, a senior researcher in Cryospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the study. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Greenl...Beyond_999.htmlHave you seen the results on mass loss from that new NASA sensor, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)? http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/HQ_06085_arctic_ice.htmlhttp://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL031468.shtml
Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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"Too bad more people can't understand what they're saying."
I agree, except that I think some people have gone to extraordinary lengths to misconstrue what they have said. The addition of the word "EXACT" in the text is redundant given the surrounding text. One reason they might have included it is to get around people who might quote the sentence out of context the ones immediately surrounding it.
Their point about the carbon cycle is not based only on model, but on actual data showing marked affect during the last century or so.
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G'day TheFallibleFriend,
Might I ask a simple question? What "actual data showing marked affect during the last century or so", to quote you precisely.
The quoted phrase at issue seems to be:
"The climate system is a coupled non-linear
chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of
future EXACT climate states is not possible."
So what data from the last century or so supports any supposition that prediction of future climate states is in any way possible, whether exactly possible or even vaguelly possible? Or am I wrong in what you were attempting to convey in your post? If I am, I'd be happy to stand corrected.
The only scientific data that I would accept if you were, say, authoring a paper on the supposition set forth in the statement, either for or against it, would be in relation to long-term predictions of climate and whether any of these has been in remotely successful.
Actually, it would be an interesting study. The trouble is you then veer in the relms of climate "models". And there seems to be a nasty habit of those that create climate models of tweeking them as they start to vary from the actual climate as it winds out from the model start point. If the object of the exercise is to create a model that eventually will produce an accurate or sort of accurate understanding of future models, then I'd be happy to accept that you are perfectly free to tweek the model. I would not accept, however, without proof, that producing a model in that way would get you any nearer to creating a model that had any validity at all for future climate, but that is a separate issue.
If the models are being used to support carbon taxes, some sort of interventionist action or any theory either that global warming is man made or that it exists, then "tweeking" means that the model fails.
Thus far I have not heard of one model that has managed to get anything right even remotely. They are about as useful as a forcast for weather two weeks out in a temperate climate. By the way, in case you are wondering, simply guessing is more accurate than almost any method of predicting weather two weeks out in a temperate climate (with the exception of one method, involving a detailed analysis of solar activity, which can be predicted with reasonable certainty - this isn't actually a bad predictor for weather, but it is not a model per se).
I could produce a computer model of the world's climate based on the current Al Nina and extrapolating from the influence past Al Ninas had on climate say five or ten years out. I could further improve the model by adding in solar prediction data. The Al Nina information, unfortunately peters out at about eight years, so is a terrible indicator of longer term climate. Those that support global warming as definitely man made and definitely the end of the world, we are all doomed, scary stuff, DO NOT include solar activity prediction data.
As to the statement you are quoting and the carbon cycle, you've lost me completely at that point. The sentence is in reference to climate change, full stop. Who cares if you can accurately predict the carbon level increases over the next 10, 20 or 50 years if you actually have no indication as to what, if anything, this will do to climate. The only data sets I know of relating to carbon and climate or when some puts two unconnected graphs together, one on atmospheric CO2 and one on SAT (of course never using satellite data) and tries to fit them together. They don't fit by the way. CO2 rises more often when there is a decreasing world's temperature average and rises most significantly at the wrong times.
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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G'day Samwik,
Phew. Do you actually expect me to respond to each and every point?
Solar Activity
Actually you didn't seem to picture it badly at all. There is an 11 sunspot cycle and a bunch of other cycles of longer lengths and varying intensities during portions of their cycle. In October 2005 we apparently (I say this because I'm not a solar radiation expert and have to rely fully on those experts that I did read) entered a period of low sunspot activity and hence also much lower solar magnetic fields which should last 55 years. That does not stop the 11 year cycle from have a jump in solar activity, the next being 2012. But 2012 is a little bit special because the 11 cycle coincides with another cycle. When that happened last time, it knocked out power grids, telephone systems and damaged satellites. Going from memory and the date could be completely wrong 1989 pops into my head.
So you you can imagine the graph in your head, you have a very low activity period of 55 years that does indeed have a spike in 2012, and a smaller spike again in 2023 etc. That should now be as clear as mud!
A Cooling From ...
Please refer to my previous post referencing FallibleFriend's post. How would I know until when? In reading the many posts I have made on this site, have I ever suggested once that I could create a model to predict future climate or indeed that anyone can? So all I can say to your question is "at least in the short term". If solar activity and the sun's magnetic field strength was the only determinate of world climate, then I would suggest for the next 55 years but while there has been some very interesting studies very closely correlating sunspot activity over the past 600 years or so with the presumed climate during that time, there are too many assumptions in those studies for my liking and they apparently fall down at least occasionaly, especially if you go back further than 600 years.
My Top Ten
To my mind there are some factors that will definetly significantly affect climate and some of these will affect it for at least a few years.
Meteor Impact - This is the biggie. This one has caused ice ages. And I mean real ice ages, not glaciations. The ones that last millions of years.
Solar Burst Directly At Earth. Might even have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Definetely causes massive increase in volcanic activity as well as disrupting the world's magnetic fields, its ability to defract solar radition, ocean currents etc.
Volcano - VEI7 or 8 (A "Supervolcano"). This one is going to tip us back into a full blown glaciation. It probably would wipe out 98%, maybe even 99% of the world's population.
Volcanos - Large increase in activity. These don't even have to be large, just ones that produce high level fine ash in reasonable quantities. A little over 70,000 years ago a single eruption or group of smaller eruptions turned the world so cold that humans died EVERYWHERE on earth except for a tiny spot in East Africa. DNA evidence suggests between 2,000 and 10,000 people were left at the trough in population down from around 5 million perhaps as little as a year before.
Nuclear War. Effect is roughly the same as for volcanos but with the added bonus of radioactive clouds killing those off that might actually have survived volcanos.
Any Large Scale Attempt to Reduce Global Warming. This one actually sounds funny but isn't at all. There have now been several suggestions, including large scale seeding of clouds with sulpher derivatives and spraying of massive snow areas with black dye. OK, some of these belong in Cookoo land but some of them unfortunately with a few billion could atually be put into place.
El Nino / Al Ninas. These affect the world's climates for from a year to more than a decade. If you like the "tipping point" arguments relating to flips between glaciations and interglacial periods. An Al Nina at the wrong time could make it all rather cold very very quickly.
OK, so there is not actually ten. Sue me.
"Lately though, I've been wondering if we might end up with a "bi-polar" world; with a warmer, liquid North Pole and a colder, larger South Pole (at least for a few decades)."
Sorry. Not possible. The world's climate distribution is determined pretty much exclusively on where the continents are at the time of the particular climate. The mechanisms for heat distribution from the tropics to the poles, just wouldn't allow for one of the poles that melted and the other enlarging. While the hemisphere climates do not normally mingle, they do at the intertropical convergence zones, and any world increase in temperature in the Northern Hemisphere would translate to a similar increase down south. It is possible there might be a few months delay if your are talking a huge sudden movement in temperatures.
IPCC
My opinion of both fudging climate prediction models and the IPCC is the same and that is extremely low. The IPCC is not a body of scientists that actually know something about climate or at least have spent many years researching climate either present or historic. It is a political body made up very much by those that have no expertise at all in climate. The vast majorty of the participants are political appointees. The IPCC was roundly criticised by several leading scientists for refusing to remove their names from papers they did not agree with or that had been massively altered. These aren't a couple of crackpots by the way. The list is actually quite impressive.
I'm surprised that either statement relating to climate prediction was allowed in an IPCC report. Both of them damn models. One just does it more verihmently.
Gee. Now this post is very long and I've run out of time to even look at any of the points that I might have missed. But this is something to get your teeth into for a little while Samwik.
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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"So what data from the last century or so supports any supposition that prediction of future climate states is in any way possible, whether exactly possible or even vaguelly possible? "
That isn't the point of my post. I have no position on climate change.
1. I didn't say data supported predictions. That was a separate point I brought up. In another section of the report they talked about carbon cycle and data they had collected from Vostok. This data makes it clear that humans have affected climate.
2. The climate models are already making predictions. The question is how accurate are they. Currently, they don't know how accurate they are (for the reasons cited). But it's not fair to say that they know nothing.
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G'day TheFallibleFriend,
If your comment was not related to data from the last century supporting modelling or predictions then I'm now at a complete loss to understand the post at all.
Please do not mention the Vostok core samples and anything that suggests they tell any story relevant to the current century. The data from the Vostok core samples has been grossly missinterpreted by a great many people including Al Gore. With respect to CO2 variations over the last 600,000 years, all the Vostok core samples shows, if you agree with the methods used in the extraction and analysis techniques for the samples, then CO2 increases with guessed increases in temperature, although the CO2 increase lags the temperature increases by between 60 and 600 years. Or very plainly increased temperature seems to increase atmpospheric CO2. There is no evidence from the ice cores that CO2 increases has any effect on temperature and certainly not that an increase in CO2 increases the world's temperature. Many times the CO2 levels have been quite high and that has not stopped the temperature reducing rapidly. I'm sorry but in no scientific universe that I know of does that constitute a "clear" indication that humans have effected climate, well not through the release of CO2.
Actually you have to step back a bit from the question of making predictions with climate models. The question first is not how accurate the models are but whether they have any validity at all for any purpose. The next question is whether they have any place in a global warming discussion. Have they produced anything that actually is of any value. Any scientific endeavour produces something. So the models certainly mean that those that have been involved in them know something. Edison was asked about the 10,000 failed experiments in attempting to make incandescent lights and when asked how he could stand all these failures he say that with each experiment he knew another way how not to make a light.
So if you ask those questions you finally get to your question and I think that's about where we are with climate modelling to support the argument there is man made global warming or even that there is any type of global warming. I could guess better than any model that I have seen thus far.
All of this is based on analysis of studies, data etc. If you have any specific data or a study that seems to contradict my comments please feel free to quote them or provide appropriate references. I have a particular dislike for any link to a news article however and do not believe they have any place in a discussion about the science of climatology or global warming.
Regards
Richard
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Thanks Richard, very much for your thoughtful reply (#25245). There's lot's to chew on, and I'm still gnawing away. Meanwhile, if I may interject: G'day TheFallibleFriend,
....or even that there is any type of global warming.
All of this is based on analysis of studies, data etc. If you have any specific data or a study that seems to contradict my comments please feel free to quote them or provide appropriate references. Beltrami, H., J. E. Smerdon, H. N. Pollack, and S. Huang (2002), Continental heat gain in the global climate system, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(8), 1167, doi:10.1029/2001GL014310. "Beltrami et al. [2002] used temperature profile data from boreholes to make this estimate. They estimate that Earth's continents warmed by 0.9 × 10^22 J during the past 50 years. This value is of the same order as the warming of the Earth's atmosphere during this period...." "These fluxes indicate that 30% of the heat gained by the ground in the last five centuries was deposited during the last fifty years, and over half of the five-century heat gain occurred during the 20th century." This is a definite "Hockey Stick" isn't it? 
Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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"These fluxes indicate that 30% of the heat gained by the ground in the last five centuries was deposited during the last fifty years, and over half of the five-century heat gain occurred during the 20th century." This is a definite "Hockey Stick" isn't it? I think you have to be very careful with this kind of misleading statement. When you consider the possibility of natural variation over the last 500 years (eg. LIA) .... the statement is complete nonsense ... whats the point of making a view on the "percentage gain from the last century" out of the last 500 years if you don't look at the whole story ... http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
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G'day ImranCan,
Which statement is misleading. I am a little confused with Samwik's comments. The comment "a hockey stick" normally refers to the very much fudged data used by Al Gore in an incomplete truth that was derived by a group of scientists that simply discarded any studies that gave a different result to their ideal of a hockey stick. That type of scientific methodology should be unacceptable to anyone and should be roundly condemned. That it wasn't by a great many shows just how bad this debate can get.
Both your posts, to me anyway, are ambigious. You indicate that there is a misleading statement but don't say what statement that is that is misleading. The research or the comment by Samwik? Samwik uses a reference to "Hockey Stick" that could mean that the study would produce a very neat hockey stick and thus would reinforce other studies or it could be in a derogatory way saying that this study too seems to be too good to be true.
This isn't a critiscm of any stance by either of you, only a request to make the comments less ambigious so we actually know what we are meant to be discussing. It might have seemed really plain to both of you when you wrote these comments but I'm confused. Maybe its just me.
Oh, and I really don't like references to studies that are available only to members of the organisation that controls the website. The abstract is of little assistance. What where the 18 studies? Where were they found? If they didn't use tree rings, what did they use? How where the 18 selected? Actually, the full study may not deem it important enough to answer these questions but these types of questions can never be answered by reference to an abstract only.
A 30 year running mean was selected for some reason. These types of manipulations of data, very much concern me. Would a 50 running mean paint a different picture? Or a 10 year one for that matter. What does the data look like without the running mean? Why the need to deal in anomolies? If what you want to show is the variation of temperature over time then surely data that represents a variation of temperature over time rather than the anomolies would be a far better way to display the results?
I can rattle off literally dozens of reasons why tree ring date does not capture long term climate changes, short term climate changes, or anything to do with temperature at all. But so too can I do this for pretty much any other data that attempts to reflect the climate over the last several centuries. About the only one that is difficult to criticise is an analysis of anecodal evidence whether in the written or painted form. But here again this does not represent actual temperatures, only whether it was colder or warmer during certain periods for certain places on earth.
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,164
Megastar
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Megastar
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,164 |
LOL, Richard. I hadn't thought of that interpretation; guess I'm not as cynical about Al's data (I thought it was just poorly "scaled"). Capitalizing the term probably made it sound like " the famous hockey stick," eh? Thanks for asking for clarity on the comment; I too was wondering which was misleading or nonsense. I think it's me that is misleading (and you were wondering!); and Beltrami, et al. that is "complete...." But this is soo off-topic, eh? More later (see new topic); but until then.... I'll go and try to find the data about Net Mass Loss in Antarctica as well as in the Arctic and Greenland. I know E. Antarctica is gaining in the highlands, but overall there is a net loss of 100-150 Billion Tonnes/year (last I heard).
Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 94
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Posts: 94 |
Richard
I agree with your comments about the paper. But this paper just gives an example of a scenario where the global temperature has not been flat over the last centuries. We could equally well just call on anecdotal evidence from Europe regarding the LIA. My point was that in a scenario where global temperatures vary up and down (or down and up), a statement quoting 50 % of warming in the last 100 years from an overall period of 500 years might sound alarming but it doesn't mean much.
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Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 310
Senior Member
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Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2006
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G'day Samwik and ImranCan,
Thanks for the clarifications. Makes more sense.
Actually to a lot of people, even with fluctuations, a substantial amount of warming occuring in a very compressed period (50% within a century, the other 50% over the previous 400 years) might still sound alarming. I'd like to see any data that suggests that there has been any overall warming over the period 1500 to 1900. That really doesn't match ANY data that I've seen, including all those that support global warming strongly. There was a bit of a warming in 1500 itself and certainly from 1870 or 1880 to 1900, and a fluctuation again in the late 1700's if I'm not mistaken but overall this period was a very cold period. I don't particularly like the term Little Ice Age because it is actually made up of three periods of cooling and all three might not have been world wide although two of the three appear to have been.
It may well be, just as 1880 seems always to be picked to show global warming, that picking 1500 or therabouts as a starting point does show a warming trend because you are cutting out one of the LIA components and some of the second, but overall I don't think anyone that has studied the various evidence that is available would say that the period wasn't basically colder than has been the norm this interglacial period. There is a great deal of argument about whether it was just a bit colder or very much colder but either way, where does this first 50% come from?
Another study that just looking at it briefly seems to demonstrate a failure to accord with basic evidence. I find the fact that these types of studies are published, peer reviewed, and not criticised extremely disheartening.
Regards
Richard
Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness
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