Global warming...debunked?

[Thunder]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html

can someone debunk this "debunking"?

I know soo little about this subject. I have no idea what to think.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Skimmed the article, will read it more thoroughly now. Seems to just be a rehash of the old "it's cold right now, so AGW must've stopped" idiocy.

I hope I'm wrong. I'll get back to this thread.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

OK, reading through more thoroughly now:

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

Strawman highlighted.


I'd love it if global warming took a break, but someone will probably be along shortly to shoot down that hope.

 

[lomiller]

Essentially they are trying to argue that unless new records are set every single year warming has somehow stopped. Why bother debunking it, simply use it as idiot proof because only a politically motivated moron could find it convincing, and these are not going to listen to anything anyway.

 

[Corsair 115]

I can comment on this one line from the article:

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

While it is true the surface area covered by the ice, ships which have gone in and examined the ice have found that the ice is not thick, solid pack ice but rather a thin, mushy ice easily broken up by wind and wave action, and which an icebreaker can easily plow through.

In short, while the ice may be covering more surface area, it's 'quality' is terrible.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

From the article:

The work of Profs Latif, Tsonis and their teams raises a crucial question: If some of the late 20th Century warming was caused not by carbon dioxide but by MDOs, then how much?

Tsonis did not give a figure; Latif suggested it could be anything between ten and 50 per cent.

Hardly sounds like a debunking to me.

 

[Mr Clingford]

Indeed, both of the two scientists whose work is commented upon in the article support the idea of AGW. They appear to be suggesting that the warming may be drowned out for a while by a natural variation in the world's temperature. Interestingly, Tsonis would not supply a guesstimate about the percentage of the A in AGW.

 

[Meed]

www.dailymail.co.uk

The media in general is a poor source for getting information on climate change. The Daily Mail (tabloid with a conservative bent and history of making things up) is a poor source for getting information about anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail#Libel_lawsuits

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Who says this?

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

True to an extent (although this warming just relates to surface temperatures, it's not a forcing), but with an underlying warming trend.

He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.

It's telling when they don't provide a reference.

RAZ: So based on your research, if I have this right, climate change, particularly a warming of the Earth's climate, is still the trend. It's just been slowed down for the last few years because of ocean currents, changes in ocean currents.

Dr. LATIF: Exactly. So - and this is the reason, because we have the short-term climate fluctuation, therefore, it doesn't make sense to look at short periods to assess the human impact on climate. So you have to consider several decades. Only then you see basically the long-term warming trend, and therefore, we can't really draw any inferences from this hold in the last 10 years or so, you know, with regard to global warming.

[...]

RAZ: Now, your research, Dr. Latif, has been cited by climate change skeptics here in the U.S., by for example, George Will, a conservative columnist with the Washington Post, to show that the Earth actually goes through natural warming and cooling trends and that climate change is really being overhyped. Do you think your work is being misused?

Dr. LATIF: Yes. It is misused. I must say this, unfortunately, because these changes we are talking about, these short-term changes, you know, their amplitudes are much smaller than the long-term warming trends. So we are talking about a hold, okay, in the last 10 years. We are not talking about a net cooling to, say, (unintelligible) temperatures, (unintelligible), you know, which we observed 100 years ago or so. Okay, and also what we predicted for the future is basically that this hold may continue for another 10 years or so, okay, but we did not predict a cooling. We basically said that we would stay for some more years on this plateau.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120668812&ft=1&f=1007

http://www.youtube.com/v/khikoh3sJg8&hl

Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world’s climate from a ‘warm mode’ to a ‘cold mode’ and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles.

They're referring to a paper by Swanson and Tsonis (2009). Swanson discusses the paper here.

William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, said that while he believed there had been some background rise caused by greenhouse gases, the computer models used by advocates of man-made warming had hugely exaggerated their effect.

But he's published nothing on the subject, and no offense to him, but he's 80 years old and seems to believe in some sort of NWO theory.

Gray has his own conspiracy theory. He has made a list of 15 reasons for the global warming hysteria. The list includes the need to come up with an enemy after the end of the Cold War, and the desire among scientists, government leaders and environmentalists to find a political cause that would enable them to "organize, propagandize, force conformity and exercise political influence. Big world government could best lead (and control) us to a better world!"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html

Lindzen says of Gray: "His knowledge of theory is frustratingly poor..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Indeed, both of the two scientists whose work is commented upon in the article support the idea of AGW. They appear to be suggesting that the warming may be drowned out for a while by a natural variation in the world's temperature. Interestingly, Tsonis would not supply a guesstimate about the percentage of the A in AGW.

Tsonis' opinion might be reflected in this paper by Swanson, Sugihara, and Tsonis, for those who can access it (it's behind a paywall):

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120

The gist of the paper is that they attempted to filter temperature changes due to MDOs from 20th century temperatures and found that in doing so they were left with a temperature trend that roughly approximates a quadratic curve.

 

[Thunder]

The media in general is a poor source for getting information on climate change. The Daily Mail (tabloid with a conservative bent and history of making things up) is a poor source for getting information about anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail#Libel_lawsuits


Who says this?


True to an extent (although this warming just relates to surface temperatures, it's not a forcing), but with an underlying warming trend.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/pdo_temp.gif

fascinating stuff. lets see what the next 15 years looks like.

sorry for the silly question, but what is the PDO index?

 

[temporalillusion]

While it is true the surface area covered by the ice, ships which have gone in and examined the ice have found that the ice is not thick, solid pack ice but rather a thin, mushy ice easily broken up by wind and wave action, and which an icebreaker can easily plow through.

In short, while the ice may be covering more surface area, it's 'quality' is terrible.

Interesting, do you have a link or something to that effect? Thanks in advance.

 

[Thunder]

wow...PDO index seems to follow world-wide temperature variations through the years. is it possible that this is causing most of our temperature changes..and not CO2 levels?

 

[brantc]

wow...PDO index seems to follow world-wide temperature variations through the years. is it possible that this is causing most of our temperature changes..and not CO2 levels?

My question is why they put corrections like this in the raw data?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/11/giss-raw-station-data-before-and-after/#more-14001

 

[Megalodon]

Yes, it's cold in winter... as for global warming stopping



Not only it didn't stop, this decade actually makes the underlying rate of warming increase slightly.

As for the PDO, it is (very loosely) an oscillation. It affects the temperature, but both ways, so on the long-term it cancels itself. The underlying trend remains unaffected.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

wow...PDO index seems to follow world-wide temperature variations through the years. is it possible that this is causing most of our temperature changes..and not CO2 levels?

In your previous post, you showed graphs of the PDO index and of global temperatures. The PDO index appears to show 4 periods: an initial neutral period, followed by a warm period, then a cold period, and finally a second warm period. You will notice that the global temperature was warmer in the PDO cold period than in the PDO neutral period and that it was also warmer during the second PDO warm period than during the first. To me, this implies that the PDO is causing oscillations around an underlying warming trend.

 

[marineboy]

One of the scientists quoted, Professor Mojib Latif, has already complained about article.
(sorry can't do links yet, but it was in the uk Guardian newspaper)

"A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold weather undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.

Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he "cannot understand" reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.

He told the Guardian: "It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming."

He added: "There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases."

The Daily Mail is not to be trusted.

 

[Meed]

sorry for the silly question, but what is the PDO index?

Pacific decadal oscillation

wow...PDO index seems to follow world-wide temperature variations through the years. is it possible that this is causing most of our temperature changes..and not CO2 levels?

Take another look at the graph. PDO is a straight line over the past 100 years or so. Global temperature has an upward slope. PDO accounts for some of the variation in the global temperature record, but obviously it can't account for the upward trend. Otherwise it would be colder now than in 1900.

 

[Thunder]

I To me, this implies that the PDO is causing oscillations around an underlying warming trend.

i think that is what the author in the link of the OP is saying.

though, I think we all understand that if the climate does get a bit chillier over the next ten-twenty years, it will be difficult to convince folks that global warming is real.

 

[skeptsci]

wow...PDO index seems to follow world-wide temperature variations through the years. is it possible that this is causing most of our temperature changes..and not CO2 levels?

CO2 levels in general and especially ACO2 are definitely not sure to be the cause for GW in theory or practice, as much as the alarmists would like everybody to believe it like they (sometimes honestly) do. Cooling back again or not, we'll have to wait and see for another 2-3 years to be able to pass a better verdict, as to POD-index, due to its oscillating nature, does not seem to be a constant drive of the past years measured GW.

 

[The_Librarian]

About this increase in ice area, this could be a misleading fact. It may not be linked to a "cooling" effect. Quite the contrary.

In June 2006, there was already a case of a misread publication. The scientists found an increase of polar ice thickness in a specific region. Of course, GW deniers jumped on it.
I learned it on the radio. "It's not melting! Do you hear me, (insert bad word - sic). It's thickening!" It was pleasant to have a DJ calling you names early morning.
An editorial in the journal Nature (mid-June 2006) set it back on perspective. It turned out this patch of ice was deep inland, and was not receiving much rain or snow. The thickening was the result of more precipitations making in inland.
And what causes an increase of precipitations? More water in the atmosphere, meaning more sea evaporation. Meaning higher temperatures.

To this extend, "global warming" could be a bit misleading. From that I understood, it's more like "warmer summers, colder and more rainy/snowy winters". I think I will wait next Summer to decide if the global warming is over.