More evidences about Al Gore!

[Pixel42]

What I want to know, is where the "A" comes from in AGW.

I recently posted this is response to that same question on a thread in the science forum:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4955137#post4955137

My answer to that would be that we know where we are in the Milankovich cycles, the amount of volcanic activity in the last few centuries doesn't seem exceptionally high or low, solar output variability - although it might account for some of the warming in the 20th century - doesn't seem to account for most of it, and the distribution of continents on the earth's surface hasn't changed significantly recently. So none of the known causes of previous climate change appear to be adequate to explain GW, whilst human activity has known consequences that certainly can explain it. It therefore seems likely that human activity is principally responsible for GW, perhaps not 100% of it but certainly a lot more than 50%

It's like trying to identify the cause of a forest fire. We know that forest fires occurred long before humanity appeared on the scene, and our investigations suggest that lightening was the principle cause. But we cannot then assume that all forest fires today are also caused by lightening. If a fire starts in a forest where no lightening has occurred for months, but where a bunch of kids were known to have been fooling about with matches at the very time it started ...

Hope that helps.

 

[Cicero]

I stand behind that without hesitation.

Conservatives consist of two groups that I think of as the sheep and the sheepherders. The sheepherders are the rich, privileged, and powerful who care more about the preservation and enhancement of their own lifestyles than the future of our planet. They are the "haves and the have-mores" that George W. Bush infamously embraced as his base. They grant rights to corporations and even attempt to elevate those rights above the rights of the people. They undermine science and advocate fundamentalist religion, even to the absurd extent of denying evolution, not because of honest, rational belief but as a way of appealing to their sheep and building their political power. They are driven by the mindless quest for profit.

The sheep are the naive and weak-minded who can easily be manipulated into voting against their own best interests by those dishonest enough to tell them whatever they want to hear. They can be cheaply bought and the sheepherders will not hesitate to buy them with empty promises and borrowed money that they know they'll never have to pay back. The sheep are those people who lack to ability or will to think for themselves. Together, the sheep and the sheepherders make up the conservative base that constantly battle liberals in everything they try to do to save this world and make it a better place for everyone.

You may call that "egregiously stupid", but it would be more honest of you to say instead that you find it offensive, and even more honest still to ask yourself it that really is a valid summary of conservatism.

Congratulations! You just described AlGore in the first hilite and the acolytes of the MMGWer doomsday prophets (no profits?) in the 2nd hilite.

 

[daredelvis]

OK.

"Climate change" not global warming == Anything that happens proves you're right (and should rule).

Because the climate never ever ever changed before.

I guess that settles it.

Better yet.

"Right wing pundits, a few scientist funded by oil companies, a bunch of scientist in unrelated fields and other flat earthers >>>> Peer reviewed scientist, National Academy of Science, and on and on."

I guess that settles it.

Daredelvis

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

Argument from authority?

Tell me please what would de-confirming evidence look like.

 

[GreyICE]

Argument from authority?

Tell me please what would de-confirming evidence look like.

Did we not explain this to you?

Here's a simple task. Explain blackbody radiation.

 

[lomiller]

Many conservatives are still hung up on the obsolete term "global warming", but that has been replaced with "climate change" because of the complexities involved, which can actually cause cooling in some areas of the world. The wackos who persist in denying the phenomenon are either motivated by, or being deliberately manipulated by those who are motivated by, the mindless quest for profit. They aren't doing the human race any favors by spreading their misinformation.

The change from using “global warming” to “climate change” was mostly driven by conservatives. Focus groups by right wing spin doctor Frank Lundz found the latter term to be less threatening and therefore sell the “do nothing” strategy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

 

[lomiller]

What I want to know, is where the "A" comes from in AGW.

The quick summary:

Humans are responsible for 100% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 that has occurred since the industrial revolution. This is confirmed by both isotope analysis and the amount of fossil fuel burnt.

CO2 allows sunlight to enter, but blocks the resulting long wave radiation from leaving the atmosphere. Thermodynamics demands this must cause warming. This is all physics that has been well established for 150 years.

Climate models show that 80%-90% of all the observed warming since 1900 can be attributed to CO2 and Methane. Paleo-climate data for past warming gives the same results. I.E. past warming is only explainable if the earth warms by ~3 deg C every time atmospheric CO2 doubles.

Other possible causes for warming like solar activity have been examined and found to be far to small to explain the amount of warming the world has seen since 1900. IOW greenhouse gas theory explains all the observed data perfectly, and there is no competing explanation that comes close to accomplishing this.

For greater detail check out the section in the IPCC report on climate change attribution.

 

[daredelvis]

Argument from authority?

No, not even close.

Daredelvis

 

[lomiller]

Remeber this exchange?

I do. CD was talking about the loss of sea ice in the artic, and when there would be an ice free summer. (his prediction is about 25 years sooner then most of the literature) You apparently didn’t know that when floating ice melts it doesn’t change sea level, which is high school level physics, so you were mocked accordingly.

 

[GreyICE]

I do. CD was talking about the loss of sea ice in the artic, and when there would be an ice free summer. (his prediction is about 25 years sooner then most of the literature) You apparently didn’t know that when floating ice melts it doesn’t change sea level, which is high school level physics, so you were mocked accordingly.

Actually it does, which would be high school level chemistry (think density).

 

[lomiller]

Actually it does, which would be high school level chemistry (think density).

There isn't much point in clouding the issue 2nd and 3rd order effects

 

[Cicero]

I do. CD was talking about the loss of sea ice in the artic, and when there would be an ice free summer. (his prediction is about 25 years sooner then most of the literature) You apparently didn’t know that when floating ice melts it doesn’t change sea level, which is high school level physics, so you were mocked accordingly.

I guess your GED didn't require high school physics:

"The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level" submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise.

The common misconception that floating ice won’t increase sea level when it melts occurs because the difference in density between fresh water and salt water is not taken into consideration. Archimedes’ Principle states that an object immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. However, Noerdlinger notes that because freshwater is not as dense as saltwater, freshwater actually has greater volume than an equivalent weight of saltwater. Thus, when freshwater ice melts in the ocean, it contributes a greater volume of melt water than it originally displaced.

 

[lomiller]

As I said above, it's a second order effect. You also need to remember that while Ice Shelves are made of fresh water, sea ice is not. Sea ice actually contains varying amount of salt based on it’s age and how it froze.

 

[godless dave]

I don't know about you, Abdul, but I heard about global warming at least 15 years before Al Gore wrote that book. It only seemed like Al Gore made up the idea to people who weren't paying attention.

 

[GreyICE]

There isn't much point in clouding the issue 2nd and 3rd order effects

It's first order. Sea water isn't fresh water (if that's not screamingly obvious I don't know what is). It's not as large as the melting of ice on land, for obvious reasons, but I think the fine people at the JREF can handle minor details, unlike people on other, SCuzzier forums.

 

[lomiller]

It's first order. Sea water isn't fresh water (if that's not screamingly obvious I don't know what is). It's not as large as the melting of ice on land, for obvious reasons, but I think the fine people at the JREF can handle minor details, unlike people on other, SCuzzier forums.

It’s definitely second order when compared to the melting of grounded ice. Since salinity is the mechanism by which floating ice can change sea level when it melts, the fact that sea ice isn't fresh water is important.

 

[GreyICE]

It’s definitely second order when compared to the melting of grounded ice. Since salinity is the mechanism by which floating ice can change sea level when it melts, the fact that sea ice isn't fresh water is important.

Well density is the mechanism, actually, salinity merely is what causes the differing density. Therefore it really is a first-order effect (as it is a direct consequence of the warming) it is simply smaller in magnitude than some second order effects.

But we're arguing about orders of effects when there's Abdul and Cicero, it's like having a debate on punctuated equilibrium with creationist interjections.

 

[jimbob]

Argument from authority?

Tell me please what would de-confirming evidence look like.

I am a semiconductor engineer, and some time ago, I decided to investigate this, and see whether the simple statistical tools I would use to assess how a process is running could be applied to the data from weather. These tools are used in what is called "Statistical Process Control", and a very good introduction can be found on this NIST website:

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmc/pmc.htm

I have had a similar discussion on the badscience.net website about this, and on this website too:

My analysis and reasoning that led me to conclude that the climate in the region with the longest history of measurements is warmer than in any other period for which measurements exist (which is back to 1690).

You say deniers, I say alarmist. I see no data that shows that we change the climate any more so than it changed before people were around. We haven't made an ice age, or warmed to that extent.

I like the environment just as much as then next guy and conserve as I can.

People who speak of imminent doom are religious zealots wherever you find them. Period.

Further to my post immediately above this one,

There is evidence that the climate is changing, and it is warming at an increasing rate. Your claims about global data isn't really valid for the longest running dataset: the Central England temperature series, that is based on measurements since 1690. It shows unequivocally that England is warmer now than it has been in the last three hundred years. It also says that it is getting still warmer.

I started looking at this data because I wanted to make my own mind up, and to see if the data was clear to me. I have used statistical process control techniques in my work, so I thought it would be interesting to analyse this data as if it were a device parameter running on a particular process. The signal is very strong, especially compared to the sort of data that I am used to in work.


Why does it matter if we are changing the climate or of it is natural variation?

Is the climate changing? The cusum says that England is getting warmer. It also says that the rate of change is increasing. The global data also supports this.

Is this bad? Well probably for crops, especially if repeated globally.

Is there a model that explains this? (well yes) but isn't this irrelevant?

Is CO₂ a greenhouse gas? Well it absorbs IR, and atmospheric physicists say it is. They say that increasing CO₂ woulld make the world warmer. Do we care if the warming is natural or artificial, if we can reduce it (or reduce our addition to it) and we accept that its effects would be bad?

If you want to know how to interpret the cusum, it is hidden in the spoiler below:

Cusums are used in certain types of statistical process control systems, and are very good at spotting when (noisy) processes are drifting from their target values. You decide on the target value (sometimes, but not always, the long term average) and then subtract this from each data point. This gives you the difference (or "Delta") above or below the target that each data point is. The cusum is the sum of all the deltas including the current data point. This is an integration and so removes noise from the signal.

To compare the process to the target, you then look at the gradients: horizontal will mean that it is running at target, upwards means above target, and downwards below target. An increase in steepness means that the process is moving further away from target, i.e. the process is still changing:

If the slope is such that there is an increase of 100 units in 100 readings, then the process is running at about 1 unit higher than the target, if it is 200 units lower in 100 readings then it is running at 2 units beow target etc.

Below I have annotated my cusum to show the different situations, and the increases in temperature:

My reasoning that shows the rate of increase in atmospheric CO₂ is about the same order of magnitude as the emissions

Subject: Global Warming Again - but with an expert

Which of the following do you think is non-factual:

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
2. Carbon dioxide is increasing.
3. The new carbon dioxide is from artificial* sources.

Well, I'd like to understand why academic climatologists are so confident about 3. We plainly don't know the mechanisms so thoroughly that we can conclude it can't be anything else.

Does it matter where the CO2 is comming from, we are releasing several PPM per decade of CO2 so reducing that will reduce the rate iof increase of CO2, whatever the cause is.

EDIT:

According to wiki: the total emissions are 27,245,758 thousand metric tonnes per year, a quick sum is that this is about 27-Gigatonnes of CO2 per year.

The atmosphere is about 5-Petatonnes so each year the emissions are about 27e9/5e15 tonnes, or about 5.6 ppm per year. In 2006 the CO2 levels were 381ppm according to the BBC.

The annual emissions are about 1% of the total level, which I'd regard as significant.

And this is my analysis that supports the assertion that CO₂ levels are probably at a (at least 400,000-year high)

Subject: Global Warming Again - but with an expert

BEcause I thought that it also seemed to start about 1850 ( and it was hard to see on the graph originally posted)



Remember this is a log plot, so straight lines are constant ratio changes (horizontal is multiplying by 1 every decade and thus no change)

It does look as if 1850 is when it grows beyond the natural variation...

Original data from here:

You've got to watch your baseline though; using the graph's start time is artificial. If you say there's a permanent step change at 1600, or the period 1050-1600 is unusually high, then 1750 is a good takeff point and coincides with human emissions.

OK, I now found lake Vostok CO2 data (from here) and added that in, again on a log plot with the same scale. This might be dodgy, but they do tend to be similar at around -1k for the law dome data, and -2k for the vostok data. If this is the case,then this is outside the previous 400,000 years variation.





I am not an academic, like you I work as an engineer, and I tend to think like an engineer. I would like to have 95% confidence that a technical decision will be the right one before acting, but if the pros and cons are equal sometimes it is simply best to go with the course of action that is most probably correct.

If you then factor inrisks you might consider mitigation against unlikely events. I certainly consider what I can do to to mitigate the possible effects of something that has a 30% chance of occuring. (And far lower if the hazard is high enough)

And what sums up my attitude

Subject: Global Warming Again - but with an expert

Does it matter where the CO2 is comming from, we are releasing several PPM per decade of CO2 so reducing that will reduce the rate iof increase of CO2, whatever the cause is.

Ah well only possibly. If (for example) change in agriculture is changing vegetation types and so albido and water vapour levels, and CO2 is responding to the temperature rise, then we'll be spending money on the wrong thing and still have a disaster on our hands.

But martin, my fag-packet calculations confirm what I am told. I too can see lots of other potentially confounding factors, which are pretty complex and which is why there are departments of artmpospheric and climatological science.

In several situations the argument *seems* to me to be:

1) The simple model, based rough estimats and simple maths broadly agrees with the IPCC.

2) Ah, but that is only a simple model, what about more complex features which *might* change the story.

To which the answer is that they might indeed, which is why there are scientific papers discussing the features of the models or the data.

If the simplistic treatment disagreed with the acknowledged experts, then I might profitably try looking to see if I could understand why, and be a little more sceptical of their claims.

My simplistic analyses do broadly agree with the acknowledged experts, whilst the possible confounding factors are precisely the sort of confounding factors that I have seen acknowledged in discussing these models. This leads me to the conclusion that the experts aren't missing a trick, and they are probably correct, because they are already attempting to assess the magnitude and direction of these effects.

Remember I do not consider myself to have the ability to second guess the atmospheric physics departments of multiple universities (I have a day job already, and can only spend a few hours on this).

Because of this I can only do simple analyses, which I did, because I had heard there was a controversy.

When I did these simple sanity checks, they supported the IPCC statements and not the people who claimed that there was no problem.

This is not an argument from authority: Any moderately numerate person should be able to follow my reasoning, and I would like to know how this could come up with any other answer.

Of course it is possible to say that there might be confounding factors in such a complex system, but this is why you need proper models. We would have to be very lucky for all the confounding factors to be acting agaist there being anthropogenic global warming


And I am not acctually that interested if global warming is anthropogenic or natural.

CO₂ emissions would add to the warming effect, and global warming will have many bad consequences, just due to changes in weather patterns and movement of fertile zones (especially across country boundries with the additional dnagers of war).

In such a situation, acting to militate against these effects is sound practice whether global warming is natural of artifical.