Anthopogenic Global Warming Myth or Real ?

[mhaze]

Since the atmospheric lifetime for CO2 is between 5-200 years, it is possible we have not experience all the warming from the 20th century increase in CO2. I'd say another 0.2 to 0.5 C warming in the pipeline. (SWAG for sure) SWAG = Scientific wild ass guess
Not counting the feedbacks that are not already in the 0.7C, see the seas are still warming the ice is still melting and 2007 was still the second warmest year on record (recent of course)

I see no stopping CO2 before it gets to 450. And there be tipping points before then.

So we should see a big effect of the carry forward of warming from the CO2 released in the 1st half of the 2Oth century, in the 2nd half?

How about split the century into thirds, can we deduce these effects

from CO2 released from 1900-1933 on T in 1934-1966
from CO2 released from 1934-1966 on T in 1967-2000?

How about quarters?

from CO2 released from 1900-1925 on T in 1926-1950
from CO2 released from 1926-1950 on T in 1951-1975
from CO2 released from 1951-1975 on T in 1976-2000?

We have data on these periods, could look at the CO2 emission and log dependency of CO2, and apportion the 0.7C of 20th century warming and see how that holds for a high climate sensitiivity.

Or is this "heat yet in the pipeline" only somehow off in the nebulous future?

 

[BenBurch]

mhaze once again shows he does not know what he is talking about.

The issue with warming is that the retention time for incoming energy is getting higher.

Until you comprehend that fact you are just parroting others who understand it as little as you do.

 

[Piggy]

Until you comprehend that fact you are just parroting others who understand it as little as you do.

Since mhaze has already demonstrated that he does not know how to read an article or follow a citation or distinguish a valid source from a bogus one, I think it's safe to conclude that everything he posts is swiped from some site that purports to support his position, and that he has no in-depth understanding of the subject.

I don't understand the details of the science, because I'm not a climate scientist, but I don't pretend to.

However, I do have enough sense to recognize when there is and when there is not a scientific controversy.

 

[AOK Tiger]

Piggy,

I still think you are completely missing the point.

You assume GW = AGW. You say scientists just accept this as “fact” like evolution.

Your only support for this is that carbon/other non water vapour gases has a high effect on global warming.

While even that is debatable, 95 % of the carbon/other gas in the atmosphere is NOT produced by man.

No article you have produced points to anything more than an extremely tiny portion of warming that could be attributed to man.

Now I’ve given you 2 VERY simple equations as to why I am sceptical of MAN caused GW.

1. 95 % of GH Gas is water vapour of the 5 % remainder only 5 % of that is caused by man this means that man accounts for 0.25 % of global warming.
2. The 5 % of non water vapour gas may be responsible for up to 30 % of the green house part of GW which means that if 5 % of this is man caused, then man may account for up to 1.5 % of global warming

This is very simple man is either responsible for a minimum of .025 % of GW up to a maximum on 1.5 %. (most likely somewhere in between).

If we took an average of say 0.76 %, and said that average summer temperature is 21 deg Celsius, this would mean man may be causing a 0.16 degree temperature rise !

IS THIS A PROBLEM ?

PLEASE Dissuade me !

PLEASE provide something simple that shows MAN is in any way a significant cause of GW !!!!!

 

[Mitchell314]

Mmm, a juicy thread. First I'll post where I'm coming from, then I'll figure out we're this is going.

The Skeptic Disclaimer: The following is all relative to me, my finite knowledge, and my finite comprehension. So none y'all can complain I take this religiously. Faith in nothing with the exception of faith in nothing, right?

Now that the formalities are out of the way, we can get to the meat of the discussion.

#1) The most obvious, and on topic to the last post, is that the change in something can be just as important as the presence of something. Where do you think wind comes from? So Humans may not be the biggest contribute to the atmosphere, but we have induced changes around the world. No controversy there.

#2) One change of input could cause an unexpected change in output. What do I mean? We may think butterfly X flapin' his wings in country Y could cause country Z's temperature to rise. Ignore the fact that in reality we can't predict this. But X could actually have cause it to get colder. Or more interestingly, X causes butterfly W to flap her wings at a different time in a different place, countering X's effect, overpowering it, or reinforcing it. But if we think X's actions most likely causes Z to get hotter, then we go with that until we find a better model at understanding X and W.

#3) Finish this later. Got to go.

 

[Piggy]

Piggy,

I still think you are completely missing the point.

You assume GW = AGW. You say scientists just accept this as “fact” like evolution.

Your only support for this is that carbon/other non water vapour gases has a high effect on global warming.

While even that is debatable, 95 % of the carbon/other gas in the atmosphere is NOT produced by man.

No article you have produced points to anything more than an extremely tiny portion of warming that could be attributed to man.

Now I’ve given you 2 VERY simple equations as to why I am sceptical of MAN caused GW.

1. 95 % of GH Gas is water vapour of the 5 % remainder only 5 % of that is caused by man this means that man accounts for 0.25 % of global warming.
2. The 5 % of non water vapour gas may be responsible for up to 30 % of the green house part of GW which means that if 5 % of this is man caused, then man may account for up to 1.5 % of global warming

This is very simple man is either responsible for a minimum of .025 % of GW up to a maximum on 1.5 %. (most likely somewhere in between).

If we took an average of say 0.76 %, and said that average summer temperature is 21 deg Celsius, this would mean man may be causing a 0.16 degree temperature rise !

IS THIS A PROBLEM ?

PLEASE Dissuade me !

PLEASE provide something simple that shows MAN is in any way a significant cause of GW !!!!!

I think you are confusing my posts with others' posts.

My support for the fact that the predominance of human forcing in global climate change is accepted by the scientific community is (1) the fact that every scientific body concerned with climate science on the planet expresses support for that position, and (2) no controversy exists -- you cannot point to any -- in current peer-reviewed publications within the discipline on that issue.

Given that, you tell me... what reason in the world do you have for claiming that any such controvery exists?

 

[BenBurch]

Aussie Thinker;

Its a mathematical equation.

More CO2 equals more more heat retention.

Just like more uranium 235 in the pile equals more neutrons.

There is no possibility that the equation is wrong, and there is no doubt that there is a LOT more CO2 now than there was in 1900.

And there is no doubt that the rate of addition is growing exponentially at about the rate that the population grows.

And though you can ask the question about if ALL warming is AGW, it is not even possible in theory that none of it is.

And very unlikely that AGW is not at this point in time overwhelming the natural signal.

And even more unlikely as time progresses and we continue to add CO2.

And, returning to the Uranium pile analogy, there is a point where the addition of CO2 causes a chain reaction and the tundras melt and give up their amazingly large burden of CO2.

We absolutely must control carbon emissions, and even if we do, we may be too late to keep that from happening.

 

[Piggy]

No article you have produced points to anything more than an extremely tiny portion of warming that could be attributed to man.

Why are you deliberately ignoring my earlier posts?

Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved

“I think this puts to rest any lingering doubts that the atmosphere really has been warming up more or less as we expect, due mainly to the greenhouse effect of increasing gases like carbon dioxide,” Sherwood said.

That's May of this year, and I've already posted the link and the quotation.

You're not being honest.

You want more?

Faster Climate Change Means Bigger Problems

That's just 9 months ago. You could have found it if you'd searched SD for "anthropogenic global warming".

The debate about what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate” has almost exclusively focused on how much the temperature can be allowed to increase. But we have perhaps just as much reason to be concerned about how quickly these changes take place.

You see... AGW is accepted science. This article takes it as a given that the pressing question is not AGW, but rather the issue of how much more increase we can tolerate, and introduces a new spoiler -- the rate of change.

As I've said, here and elsewhere, the fact that the global scientific community accepts the reality of AGW is incontrovertible.

You cannot point to any controvery over that, because none exists.

 

[bobdroege7]

While even that is debatable, 95 % of the carbon/other gas in the atmosphere is NOT produced by man.

!!

Not true.

You are right in that ~95% of the CO2 that goes into the atmosphere each year is not produced by man, but since man can not as yet affect the amount of CO2 that leaves the atmosphere (the sink), the increase in atmospheric CO2 is caused by man.

 

[bobdroege7]

#2) One change of input could cause an unexpected change in output. What do I mean? We may think butterfly X flapin' his wings in country Y could cause country Z's temperature to rise. Ignore the fact that in reality we can't predict this. But X could actually have cause it to get colder. Or more interestingly, X causes butterfly W to flap her wings at a different time in a different place, countering X's effect, overpowering it, or reinforcing it. But if we think X's actions most likely causes Z to get hotter, then we go with that until we find a better model at understanding X and W.

the butterfly effect is in the models and is not real.

A common misinterpretation.

Or an attribute of the models sensitivity to initial conditions, not an actual cause and effect relationship.

 

[bobdroege7]

So we should see a big effect of the carry forward of warming from the CO2 released in the 1st half of the 2Oth century, in the 2nd half?

How about split the century into thirds, can we deduce these effects

from CO2 released from 1900-1933 on T in 1934-1966
from CO2 released from 1934-1966 on T in 1967-2000?

How about quarters?

from CO2 released from 1900-1925 on T in 1926-1950
from CO2 released from 1926-1950 on T in 1951-1975
from CO2 released from 1951-1975 on T in 1976-2000?

We have data on these periods, could look at the CO2 emission and log dependency of CO2, and apportion the 0.7C of 20th century warming and see how that holds for a high climate sensitiivity.

Or is this "heat yet in the pipeline" only somehow off in the nebulous future?

Not that long ago I posted a list of a significant portion of the literature that gave "estimates of the climate sensitivity" and if Schwarts was on there I cannot recall, but the range was from about 2C to 6c. I'll look it up again.

And your position is that the highest it could be is Schwarz's 1.1, but you really think he is wrong and that it is really ZERO?

I put "estimates of climate sensitivity" in quotes for a reason.

It is something that is variable depending on conditions that are difficult and expensive to describe.

For example the presense of the gigatons of CO2 locked up in the permafrost, which could be released when the permafrost melts, means that say you change the CO2 concentration in the air from say 380 to 480, a change of 100 or ~1/3 of doubling, and that adds 300 to 400 ppm CO2 to the atmosphere, that going to put us into climatic conditions not seen since the Cretaceous.

There is a straw that is going the break the camels back, so to speak.

And I'll have beach front property for sale.

 

[mhaze]

Not that long ago I posted a list of a significant portion of the literature that gave "estimates of the climate sensitivity" and if Schwarts was on there I cannot recall, but the range was from about 2C to 6c. I'll look it up again.

And your position is that the highest it could be is Schwarz's 1.1, but you really think he is wrong and that it is really ZERO?

I understand, but am taking a different approach. Climate sensitivity to all factors, unknown, known, understood, not understood, natural and manmade resulted in 0.7C for 20th century.

Assign 100% of that to CO2, then state what future warming will be if any. This is the absolute worst case for the believer in CO2 being the worst case.

Now we've shown what happened 280 ppm --> 380 ppm.

What happens next for 380 ppm --> 560?

Use the log function of CO2 and presume all future forcings and feedbacks are netted out as in 20th century --> 0.7C.

I put "estimates of climate sensitivity" in quotes for a reason. It is something that is variable depending on conditions that are difficult and expensive to describe.

Conditions that are difficult and expensive to describe?

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007 Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity
Jeffrey T. Kiehl
Climate Change Research Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA


Climate forcing and climate sensitivity are two key factors in understanding Earth's climate. There is considerable interest in decreasing our uncertainty in climate sensitivity. This study explores the role of these two factors in climate simulations of the 20th century. It is found that the total anthropogenic forcing for a wide range of climate models differs by a factor of two and that the total forcing is inversely correlated to climate sensitivity. Much of the uncertainty in total anthropogenic forcing derives from a threefold range of uncertainty in the aerosol forcing used in the simulations.

 

[bobdroege7]

I understand, but am taking a different approach. Climate sensitivity to all factors, unknown, known, understood, not understood, natural and manmade resulted in 0.7C for 20th century.

Assign 100% of that to CO2, then state what future warming will be if any. This is the absolute worst case for the believer in CO2 being the worst case.

Now we've shown what happened 280 ppm --> 380 ppm.

What happens next for 380 ppm --> 560?

Use the log function of CO2 and presume all future forcings and feedbacks are netted out as in 20th century --> 0.7C.

((560-380)/100)*0.7=1.26

1.26+0.7=1.9 for doubled CO2 by your logic.

And a logrithmic function has a steep slope for small values, ie the ppm range, close to linear.

d/dx In(x)=1/x

Conditions that are difficult and expensive to describe?

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007 Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity
Jeffrey T. Kiehl
Climate Change Research Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA


Climate forcing and climate sensitivity are two key factors in understanding Earth's climate. There is considerable interest in decreasing our uncertainty in climate sensitivity. This study explores the role of these two factors in climate simulations of the 20th century. It is found that the total anthropogenic forcing for a wide range of climate models differs by a factor of two and that the total forcing is inversely correlated to climate sensitivity. Much of the uncertainty in total anthropogenic forcing derives from a threefold range of uncertainty in the aerosol forcing used in the simulations.

There is considerable interest in decreasing our uncertainty

You helped my argument that there is uncertainty in the climate sensitivity, did you not?

Do we know how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere any better than 5-200 years?

Which means we probably still have warming from 20th century CO2 in the pipeline.

You know you can train coalminers to work in nuclear power plants, its cleaner, less dangerous, and they provide bathrooms, although you need to frisk out before use.

 

[Spud1k]

Where and how are you getting to these conclusions, by assuming zero or statistically insignificant natural variability? That seems the only way your argument makes sense. But there are more than little problems with such a view.

It is simplistic but I'm trying to get a point across here. Aerosols cause cooling. The earth has warmed up in spite of humans increasing aerosol concentrations since pre-industrial times. Therefore something other than aerosols must be at work to cause the overall rise in temperatures. All of the credible research points to CO2 being the biggest (but not the only) culprit.

So therefore arguing about aerosols does by no means 'disprove' CO2. All that paper says is that changes in aerosol concentration may have been partly responsible for the rapidity of the increase in temperature in the late 20th century. But like I said, if the aerosols hadn't been elevated in the first place, the earth would have been a warmer place by that point anyway.

 

[Spud1k]

Assign 100% of that to CO2, then state what future warming will be if any. This is the absolute worst case for the believer in CO2 being the worst case.

But no-one is claiming that.

Now we've shown what happened 280 ppm --> 380 ppm.

What happens next for 380 ppm --> 560?

Use the log function of CO2 and presume all future forcings and feedbacks are netted out as in 20th century --> 0.7C.

You can't even go down that road. To take but one point, the oceans have a massive heat capacity, so a radiative inbalance will take decades if not more to stabilise.

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007 Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity
Jeffrey T. Kiehl
Climate Change Research Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA


Climate forcing and climate sensitivity are two key factors in understanding Earth's climate. There is considerable interest in decreasing our uncertainty in climate sensitivity. This study explores the role of these two factors in climate simulations of the 20th century. It is found that the total anthropogenic forcing for a wide range of climate models differs by a factor of two and that the total forcing is inversely correlated to climate sensitivity. Much of the uncertainty in total anthropogenic forcing derives from a threefold range of uncertainty in the aerosol forcing used in the simulations.

I reiterate my last point: Aerosols cause cooling. The earth is warming up. Therefore something other than aerosols is causing the net climate change.

 

[Spud1k]

You can't even go down that road. To take but one point, the oceans have a massive heat capacity, so a radiative inbalance will take decades if not more to stabilise.

To clarify: Trying to attribute warming to CO2 like that is not a safe way of going about it. The earth system is a lot more complicated and a lot slower to react than that. If we were to stop GHG concentrations increasing tomorrow, we'd still expect temperatures to continue to rise for a decade or more.

 

[Mitchell314]

the butterfly effect is in the models and is not real.

A common misinterpretation.

Or an attribute of the models sensitivity to initial conditions, not an actual cause and effect relationship.

Touche, but I think you may have misinterpreted my post. I didn't intend for it to be read literally. My mistake.

I didn't have to expand on it, but I meant to say the butterfly effect is more important in the errors of short term predictions by accumulation, not by solely Mr X and Ms Z.

And I still have to go. Time's not on my side right now.

 

[Spud1k]

The short term effects are chaotic and therefore predictions are very sensitive to initial conditions. This is why weather forecasts get less accurate the further into the future they get. However, in the big picture a lot of these cancel out; for instance, if the proverbial butterfly causes it to rain somewhere in the world, chances are there'll be somewhere else where it won't be raining as a direct result. Net effect is that the chaotic phenomena amount to little more than noise when you look at something like the long-term trend in mean surface temperature, so chaos becomes less of an issue when you're trying to understand that.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Piggy,

I still think you are completely missing the point.

You assume GW = AGW. You say scientists just accept this as “fact” like evolution.

Your only support for this is that carbon/other non water vapour gases has a high effect on global warming.

While even that is debatable, 95 % of the carbon/other gas in the atmosphere is NOT produced by man.

No article you have produced points to anything more than an extremely tiny portion of warming that could be attributed to man.

Now I’ve given you 2 VERY simple equations as to why I am sceptical of MAN caused GW.

1. 95 % of GH Gas is water vapour of the 5 % remainder only 5 % of that is caused by man this means that man accounts for 0.25 % of global warming.
2. The 5 % of non water vapour gas may be responsible for up to 30 % of the green house part of GW which means that if 5 % of this is man caused, then man may account for up to 1.5 % of global warming

This is very simple man is either responsible for a minimum of .025 % of GW up to a maximum on 1.5 %. (most likely somewhere in between).

If we took an average of say 0.76 %, and said that average summer temperature is 21 deg Celsius, this would mean man may be causing a 0.16 degree temperature rise !

IS THIS A PROBLEM ?

PLEASE Dissuade me !

PLEASE provide something simple that shows MAN is in any way a significant cause of GW !!!!!

Where are you getting these figures from? CO2 is responsible for 9-26% of GHG warming and CH4 for 4-9%. Lets be conservative and take the low end of those ranges, 9 and 4.

27% of current atmospheric CO2 (105 of 385ppm), and 60% of CH4 (1045 of 1745ppb), is down to us.

The total GH effect is 33C (-19C to 14C on average).

A very simple calc gives us 33*(0.09*0.27 + 0.04*0.6) = 1.59.

That is not the way to get the true figure as it's a lot more complicated, but even using your simple method with the real figures (conservative at that) gives us a very different result.

 

[lomiller]

Piggy,

I still think you are completely missing the point.

You assume GW = AGW. You say scientists just accept this as “fact” like evolution.

We see warming that matches the profile of what we expect from CO2 induced warming, we exclude every other testable cause, we conclude the warming is caused by CO2. This isn’t a tough concept to understand.

Darwin did not prove there was no other possible explanation then natural selection, he showed that it fit the data better then any competing theory. Newton did set out a mathematical proof that there was no other possible explanation for the motion of planets; he showed it was superior to all competing explanations. Einstein didn’t prove there was no other possible explanation for the results of the Michelson Morley experiment he showed it was superior to any explanation yet presented.

Science, real science, has never and will never demand proof that no other explanation is possible. In fact experimentation can never actually provide this type of proof. Alternate explanations are certainly possible, but it’s up to your side of this debate to provide viable testable explanations that fit the available data, explain everything CO2 induced warming explains and explains data that CO2 induced warming cannot explain.

Piggy,

1. 95 % of GH Gas is water vapour of the 5 % remainder only 5 % of that is caused by man this means that man accounts for 0.25 % of global warming.
2. The 5 % of non water vapour gas may be responsible for up to 30 % of the green house part of GW which means that if 5 % of this is man caused, then man may account for up to 1.5 % of global warming

60% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by humans, this can be determined from known emissions or from Carbon isotope ratios, both give the same result. CO2 on it’s own accounts for 25% - 30% of the greenhouse effect.