Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[Reality Check]

...snipped insults...., I revised when and how all of this started.
...wall of text and more insults snipped...

It all started when you replied to three posts where I cited papers about sea ice and ice shelves mentioning ice sheets, aleCcowaN.
Ice sheets are not sea ice.
Ice shelves are the small part of ice sheets that float on the sea. The papers are not about the most of the ice sheets that rests on land. Thus the proper term to use (as in the papers!) is ice shelf.

If you were not replying to me then why did you quote my posts and have a line after it referring to ice sheets, aleCcowaN?

...
Can we put all this ice ... sheet thing to a rest?

...
Where's the "ice sheet" you're so horrified about?

I am not horrified about any ice sheet, aleCcowaN.

Why don't you look for "ice sheet" in my texts?

There you go, aleCcowaN:

Can we put all this ice ... sheet thing to a rest?

 

[Trakar]

The positive economic impact of BAU!

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/godzilla_bites_the_coal_20140604#

((or is that a negative US economic impact?...

Oh no!
There goes Tokyo,...
go, go Godzilla!

after all, currently the Chinese are deploying the most aggressive anti-Godzilla defense program. Gentlemen it is clear what must be done...!))

 

[Trakar]

New EPA Regulations Would Force Power Plants To Find 30% More Loopholes By 2030

http://alturl.com/zr2om

...“The country’s power facilities must adopt a drastic new approach when it comes to how they deftly slide around environmental law. Through utilizing new and inventive means of circumventing the requirements—including innovations in legal maneuvering that tie the new rules up in the courts for years—these polluters will be able to finagle a way to continue releasing carbon dioxide, mercury, and other toxins into the air for the foreseeable future.” McCarthy stated that the EPA’s new regulations would cost the energy industry between $7.3 billion and $8.8 billion annually over the next few years, primarily in political donations to candidates who will ensure the regulations are fully repealed.

Darn externalities!

 

[aleCcowaN]

It all started when you replied to three posts where I cited papers about sea ice and ice shelves mentioning ice sheets, aleCcowaN.

That didn't happen. That's why you repeat it again and again and again, but never quote it.

Ice sheets are not sea ice.
Ice shelves are the small part of ice sheets that float on the sea. The papers are not about the most of the ice sheets that rests on land. Thus the proper term to use (as in the papers!) is ice shelf.

If you were not replying to me then why did you quote my posts and have a line after it referring to ice sheets, aleCcowaN?



I am not horrified about any ice sheet, aleCcowaN.


There you go, aleCcowaN:

What a load of tosh! Reiteration as smoke screen is all you have left.

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to remove breach.

 

[PossumPie]

I am a firm believer that the earth is getting warmer very fast since the 1900's. It can't be denied. What I get furious at are those who show a graph from the 1800's onward and make it look like the spike is unique. Going back even just 10,000 years in ice cores we see the global temperatures were MUCH higher and much lower, with spikes more dramatic than the current spike. I'm not saying I don't believe humans have contributed, BUT it is unethical and unscientific to truncate a chart to look dramatic for your own purposes. I can't post pics yet so i can't cite my findings except to say Google image search "global temperatures ice core samples" If we go back further, to the Jurassic period, we see tropical plants in Antarctica, so to say we are "out of control" with heat at this point is a bit Anthropocentric and premature from a geological perspective.

 

[Pixel42]

The instrumental record starts in about 1880, so of course graphs showing that only go back that far. No-one disputes that significant climate changes have occurred in the past, climatologists study them in order to try to predict how the current one will play out. The natural causes of past climate change are reasonably well understood, which is why we can be so sure that this current warming is not due to them.

 

[DC]

I am a firm believer that the earth is getting warmer very fast since the 1900's. It can't be denied. What I get furious at are those who show a graph from the 1800's onward and make it look like the spike is unique. Going back even just 10,000 years in ice cores we see the global temperatures were MUCH higher and much lower, with spikes more dramatic than the current spike. I'm not saying I don't believe humans have contributed, BUT it is unethical and unscientific to truncate a chart to look dramatic for your own purposes. I can't post pics yet so i can't cite my findings except to say Google image search "global temperatures ice core samples" If we go back further, to the Jurassic period, we see tropical plants in Antarctica, so to say we are "out of control" with heat at this point is a bit Anthropocentric and premature from a geological perspective.

global and hemispherical reconstructions are not yet going back 10 000 years. when you look at ice core based temperature reconstructions going back 10 000 years, you are looking at a local proxy.

that it was warmer in the past is no secret, but scientists are not just looking at some proxy data and conclude, oh well, climate always changes, case closed, lets go home.
they look at what caused the changes in the past, they look for more proxydata so they can reconstruct things like solar activity, for example, and so they try to figure out what caused those changes.
and then they can check if those forcings are also the cause of the currently observed warming.

and turns out, natural forcings cannot explain the observations, the milankovitch cycles for example are cooling since at least 2 millenia, as can be seen in the PAGES reconstruction or Esper et al 2012. and we know that since a long time (Hays et al 1976)

solar activity is declining since the 1960's . so it can't be the sun, also the warming pattern does not fit the sun.

it is not premature to conclude that current warming is mainly caused by increased GHG concentrations. that is an observed fact.
we measured the increase in CO2 levels, we measured the isotope ratios of CO2, we measured the enhanced greenhosue effect from space and from the ground, we measure the incoming radiation, we measure the outgoing radiation, we measure an increase in OHC, we measure atmopsheric warming, we measured the ice mass loss on both poles.

AGW is an observed fact.

"Anthropocentric "

that is very true, it is ectremely Anthropocentric , because the planet itself does not care, and life itself will go on no matter what we do. but the point of AGW mitigation is to keep the climate system within bouderies that we think we can manage, like 2°C warming. and this will already cause enough trouble, but we thinkk we can handle it, anything more is unkown teritory for Homo Sapiens.

 

[PossumPie]

The main premis of my post was not to debate the non-human vs. human cause of global warming, but the unscientific use of truncated charts in trying to get the "uneducated masses" to understand. Local or global, with regard to ice cores, is moot. Fact is there have been large changes both directions in the past. The bit about the "sun declining" needs citing. The sunspot activity cycles about every 11 years, so I'm not sure what you mean. the dreaded "greenhouse gasses" are NOT some mysterious man-made product. Mostly CO2 which has waxed and waned in cycles. True, no recent volcano has spewed GHG into the air recently, but looking at the last 10,000 years worth of temp. data I see nothing out of the ordinary recently. In fact there was a MUCH larger spike several thousand years ago, and in the mid 20th century a deep dip. You can't take a small piece of a mountain graph and prove a point. Heck, I could flip a coin 10,000 times get 10 tails in a row, and show you only the 40 flips that proceeded it and say the coin is faulty. Proper use of raw data is all I ask for. For the record I DO believe humans have been partially at fault for the increase in CO2 and other GHG...

 

[DC]

The main premis of my post was not to debate the non-human vs. human cause of global warming, but the unscientific use of truncated charts in trying to get the "uneducated masses" to understand. Local or global, with regard to ice cores, is moot. Fact is there have been large changes both directions in the past. The bit about the "sun declining" needs citing. The sunspot activity cycles about every 11 years, so I'm not sure what you mean. the dreaded "greenhouse gasses" are NOT some mysterious man-made product. Mostly CO2 which has waxed and waned in cycles. True, no recent volcano has spewed GHG into the air recently, but looking at the last 10,000 years worth of temp. data I see nothing out of the ordinary recently. In fact there was a MUCH larger spike several thousand years ago, and in the mid 20th century a deep dip. You can't take a small piece of a mountain graph and prove a point. Heck, I could flip a coin 10,000 times get 10 tails in a row, and show you only the 40 flips that proceeded it and say the coin is faulty. Proper use of raw data is all I ask for. For the record I DO believe humans have been partially at fault for the increase in CO2 and other GHG...

TSI here you go

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/


local vs global is not moot at all. the MWP is a nice example, the MWP was believed to be pretty huge warmer period. well it certainly was in Europe, but in many parts of the world, it was not as warm at the same time, and so it came that in global reconstructions, the MWP is almost not to see. while in Eruope it was warmer than today, on a global average, this time period was cooler than today.

and the Isotope ratios of CO2 show that we are the main cause of CO2 increase.

waht MUCH larger spike are you talking about?

 

[macdoc]

The main premis of my post was not to debate the non-human vs. human cause of global warming, but the unscientific use of truncated charts in trying to get the "uneducated masses" to understand. Local or global, with regard to ice cores, is moot.

Given your post presents no science whatsoever tis a bit ironic. We have a very strong chart of the global temperatures since emerging from the last ice age and we are now moving out of that envelope. We were until a couple hundred years ago drifting slowly as expected to the next ice age colder temperatures driven by orbital changes...Milankovich cycles.
Our emissions of fossil carbon have cancelled that drift.

There are 56 lines of enquiry leading to this graph summary...the "spike" as you call it is the Holocene Optimum after we exited the last glacial period and was driven by our orbital position and tilt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Do you have an "explanation" for the sudden upward jump at the right?? ELves burning leaves ??? If you want others to cite backup....then proceed to do so yourself and back your "opinion" with supportive evidence.

Fact is there have been large changes both directions in the past.

Talk about sloppy - how about we concentrate on the past 10k years during which civilization arises. Changes do not happen without a reason.
Do you have any??

The bit about the "sun declining" needs citing.

Since you don't want to search the thread or something easily found in google.

The sunspot activity cycles about every 11 years, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Yes you are not sure - that's at least refreshing - you don't know and have not read climate science articles or you would know. The sun and the climate are going in opposite directions as the graph above notes...from this article.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

the dreaded "greenhouse gasses" are NOT some mysterious man-made product. Mostly CO2 which has waxed and waned in cycles. True, no recent volcano has spewed GHG into the air recently, but looking at the last 10,000 years worth of temp. data I see nothing out of the ordinary recently. In fact there was a MUCH larger spike several thousand years ago, and in the mid 20th century a deep dip. You can't take a small piece of a mountain graph and prove a point. Heck, I could flip a coin 10,000 times get 10 tails in a row, and show you only the 40 flips that proceeded it and say the coin is faulty. Proper use of raw data is all I ask for. For the record I DO believe humans have been partially at fault for the increase in CO2 and other GHG...

Ummm I don't think you quite understand that we have raised the C02 levels of the atmosphere by 40% - levels not seen for millions of years.
This is not new and has nothing to do with volcanos. The latter generally cool the atmosphere for a couple of years by releasing SO2 into the stratosphere.

How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?Filed under: Climate Science FAQ Greenhouse gases Paleoclimate — eric @ 22 December 2004 - (Svenska) (Español) (Français)

- See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...uman-activities-updated/#sthash.Qms6WrZm.dpuf

This is a result of man using fossil fuels and releasing long sequestered carbon to the atmosphere which changes the radiative balance.

If you are an honest inquirer then I suggest you follow some of the links in my signature instead of coming into a science forum so ill prepared.

You don't get to be a little bit pregnant.
If you accept..
CO2 traps IR.

Then you must follow the chain of evidence to where it leads.

It's getting warmer.
We're responsible.

People here are happy to answer your questions....but please understand you have a very poor grasp of the fundamentals at this point.

Best place to start
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

others.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/human-caused

This is a reasonably complete visual of the forces at work.

Feel free to ask questions. The red arrows are the crux of the problem.
More IR trapping by CO2 ...you've acknowledged it, now you know where the additional CO2 comes from .

Follow the chain of evidence.

The explanation and physics are rather simple.
What to do about it beyond trying not to make it worse is very tricky.
THAT is where the discussion needs to be.

 

[DC]

oops need to keep up to date, forgott Marcott et al.
so global reconstructiosn do go back more than 10k years

 

[Pixel42]

The main premis of my post was not to debate the non-human vs. human cause of global warming, but the unscientific use of truncated charts in trying to get the "uneducated masses" to understand.

A graph which shows the instrumental temperature record is not truncated if it starts in the 1880s, that's as far back as that particular record goes. Graphs which show proxy data go back many thousands of years and are frequently cited in both scientific journals and popular articles.

Local or global, with regard to ice cores, is moot. Fact is there have been large changes both directions in the past.

Nobody disputes that. Over 10s of thousands of years the Milankovich cycles are the principal forcing, over millions of years they are a modulation on other longer period forcings such as plate tectonics.

The bit about the "sun declining" needs citing. The sunspot activity cycles about every 11 years, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Approximately every 22 years to be pedantic, but there are other variations in solar output over and above that. Try reading the last few pages of this thread, a graph of solar activity since 1900 was posted recently.

The dreaded "greenhouse gasses" are NOT some mysterious man-made product. Mostly CO2 which has waxed and waned in cycles.

Again, no-one disputes this. CO2 varies between about 200 ppm during glaciations and about 300 ppm at the peak of an interglacial. The 100 ppm mostly goes into the ocean (cold water holds more CO2 than warm water). It's one of several positive feedbacks which explains why average global temperatures respond with such large swings in response to relatively small forcings like the Milankovich cycles.

We are just past the peak of the current Milankovich cycle with no forcing sufficient to precipitate a significant change in global temperature expected for at least 30,000 years (and even then it's a cooling, not a warming).

 

[greybeard]

The main premis of my post was not to debate the non-human vs. human cause of global warming, but the unscientific use of truncated charts in trying to get the "uneducated masses" to understand. Local or global, with regard to ice cores, is moot. Fact is there have been large changes both directions in the past. The bit about the "sun declining" needs citing. The sunspot activity cycles about every 11 years, so I'm not sure what you mean. the dreaded "greenhouse gasses" are NOT some mysterious man-made product. Mostly CO2 which has waxed and waned in cycles. True, no recent volcano has spewed GHG into the air recently, but looking at the last 10,000 years worth of temp. data I see nothing out of the ordinary recently. In fact there was a MUCH larger spike several thousand years ago, and in the mid 20th century a deep dip. You can't take a small piece of a mountain graph and prove a point. Heck, I could flip a coin 10,000 times get 10 tails in a row, and show you only the 40 flips that proceeded it and say the coin is faulty. Proper use of raw data is all I ask for. For the record I DO believe humans have been partially at fault for the increase in CO2 and other GHG...

It might be worth your while reading this if you don't like charts.

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm

That is of course already out of date. CO2 levels are now over 400 ppm.

Human emissions of CO2 are now estimated to be 26.4 Gt per year, up from 23.5 Gt in the 1990s, according to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in February 2007 (pdf format). Disturbances to the land - through deforestation and agriculture, for instance - also contribute roughly 5.9 Gt per year.

How can we be sure that human emissions are responsible for the rising CO2 in the atmosphere? There are several lines of evidence. Fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago. They therefore contain virtually no carbon-14, because this unstable carbon isotope, formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, has a half-life of around 6000 years. So a dropping concentration of carbon-14 can be explained by the burning of fossil fuels. Studies of tree rings have shown that the proportion of carbon-14 in the atmosphere dropped by about 2% between 1850 and 1954. After this time, atmospheric nuclear bomb tests wrecked this method by releasing large amounts of carbon-14.

Greenhouse gases emitted by volcanoes are normally dwarfed by human emissions so if they can have an effect on the climate then why is it that our emissions do not?

 

[macdoc]

Greenhouse gases emitted by volcanoes are normally dwarfed by human emissions so if they can have an effect on the climate then why is it that our emissions do not?

Good point and here is the ratio - a graphic for Alec

http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

 

[lomiller]

What I get furious at are those who show a graph from the 1800's onward and make it look like the spike is unique. Going back even just 10,000 years in ice cores we see the global temperatures were MUCH higher and much lower, with spikes more dramatic than the current spike.

The last time temperatures were conclusively higher was 125 000 years ago. The Holocene optimum ~8 000 years ago was probably warmer but temperatures this decade are within the margin of uncertainty. There are multiple sites where artifacts, forests, etc frozen in ice for 5000+ years are now thawing.

The real issue is the RATE of warming. The rate at which the earth is warming more than 10 times faster than the warming that ended the last glaciations. In fact the current change is up to 10X faster than any other time in the last 65 million years

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1237123

 

[PossumPie]

The charts you are posting showing the dramatic warming in the last 60 years prove my original premise. We are talking about climate changes over BILLIONS OF YEARS. To pull a line graph of 100 years and point to a change in the past 60 years means nothing statistically. I have said that I agree with most of what you are arguing, but to look at a warming trend in the past 60 years when compared to the last 10,000 is like looking at the last 8 1/2 minutes of a 24 hour day and saying look! The rise in temp over the past 8 1/2 minutes prove there is a human-caused warming. You don't have enough data on a geological time frame to make that assumption. We all know statistics can be manipulated to prove anything. The hard science you quote above is compelling and I agree with the CO2 saturation increase and rate of ice shelf melting BUT to show rises of such a short recent geological blip can't be differentiated from standard deviational dispersion. Are humans influencing global temperatures? Certainly. But no chart of the last 60 years when compared to the changes over the past 60,000 or 60 Million years is going to convince me of anything. THAT is all I am saying.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Going back even just 10,000 years in ice cores we see the global temperatures...

Can you explain, describe or just point to a source explaining how do we get old temperatures from ice cores? To be clear: ice cores.

You have no problem to post links. Just write, for instance:

esrl.
noaa.gov/psd/
data/gridded/
data.ncep.
reanalysis.pressure
.html

leaving out the http : / / www (don't forget to drop the www) part and adding some returns here and there. Everybody can easily copy and paste'n'go

... were MUCH higher and much lower, with spikes more dramatic than the current spike.

"much" is not a figure, neither is "dramatic". Again, drop here the link of a couple of figures showing what you are describing just with words.

 

[macdoc]

PP
Umm I don't thnk you grasp that there are ALWAYS physical reasons for changes.
You don't seem to comprehend this at all.

We are not within a natural cycle..
What don't you get about that?

....did you absorb anything you've just been informed of?

Let's keep this simple.
Where do you think the 40% rise in C02 came from ???

 

[DC]

The charts you are posting showing the dramatic warming in the last 60 years prove my original premise. We are talking about climate changes over BILLIONS OF YEARS. To pull a line graph of 100 years and point to a change in the past 60 years means nothing statistically. I have said that I agree with most of what you are arguing, but to look at a warming trend in the past 60 years when compared to the last 10,000 is like looking at the last 8 1/2 minutes of a 24 hour day and saying look! The rise in temp over the past 8 1/2 minutes prove there is a human-caused warming. You don't have enough data on a geological time frame to make that assumption. We all know statistics can be manipulated to prove anything. The hard science you quote above is compelling and I agree with the CO2 saturation increase and rate of ice shelf melting BUT to show rises of such a short recent geological blip can't be differentiated from standard deviational dispersion. Are humans influencing global temperatures? Certainly. But no chart of the last 60 years when compared to the changes over the past 60,000 or 60 Million years is going to convince me of anything. THAT is all I am saying.

Experts have quantified the climate forcings.

http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg

ther is no forcing that can explain the observed warming.

and it does not matter at all what the past temperatures were.

the evidence is not based on ooh look CO2 goes up and Temperature goes up. so its CO2 causing it. we know the mechanism, we can measure the mechanism and have.
the isotope ratios show that we are the cause of the CO2 increase. measurements of the enhanced greenhouse effect and the warming pattern show the warming is do to the enhanced greenhouse effect.

those are the things that should convince you. not some curve fitting excercise.

 

[aleCcowaN]

The main premise of my post was not to debate the non-human vs. human cause of global warming, but the unscientific use of truncated charts in trying to get the "uneducated masses" to understand.

Yet, you have to show the charts -at least two-, how they are truncated -just use words like "they shouldn't have cut it at (x-axis)"-, and why is that unscientific. Your working definition of "unscientific" would also be of much help, to avoid false debates based on rubber-words, buzzwords and Dale Carnegie's.

So far, both posts of you I've read look like an opinion in the radio "we have a call from John, from Pennsylvania -Hey, Mike! Look, I've been...". I fail to see why are you getting explanations you didn't ask. They give the false impression you got a point. It must be very weak the case for an anthropogenic global warming if an unclear paragraph expressing a simple opinion elicit so many random explanations.

Maybe if you explain further the factual content you built your opinions over, we will able to see there's a point in them. If not, it'd remain just an opinion. Be aware that in a parallel thread a lady is declaring she has telepathic communications with reincarnations-in-transit resident in Ganymede, and she is getting many replies too. I'm sure you can show something more solid than what this lady does to back her perceptions. Then you can get replies telling right from wrong in those perceptions, and some kind of discussion might then start.