Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[lomiller]

Other scientists have proposed variations in solar activity as a driver of climate cycles.

You should be questioning why you have heard these proposals even though there is nothing in the scientific literature supporting them.

As already outlined over the last several pages:
- No one has come up with a physical mechanism for how these could cause significant climate change
- the changes in solar activity are going in the wrong direction to explain climate. Solar activity has been decreasing slightly over the last 50 years.
-Greenhouse changes are already much larger than even the largest proposed change in solar activity. (> an order of magnitude)
-Greenhouse gasses figure heavily into explaining the climate changes over the last few hundred million years and especially the last 4 million. Solar activity does not.
-no explanation other that global warming has been provided to explain what happens the massive amount of energy being trapped by greenhouse gasses. If something else is causing the warming then where is all this energy going?

 

[DC]

Of course that's the essence of the objection. It drives the alarmists crazy when a top scientists, or any climate scientists expresses honest skepticism against the religion of warming. In this matter the skeptic is the enemy, and the behavior of the believers is often heinous, unscientific in the extreme. Granted there are no doubt vested interest trying to muddy the aters, create dissent, manufacture doubt or just delay anything that would in any way effect their bottom line. I have said before I agree with that, even with no hard proof. I still believe it.

But that isn't why really smart scientists, much smarter than anyone posting here, express their views and are skeptical of the AGW fanatics. Which is why it drives the faithful nuts when you bring it up. The alarmists resort to strawmen, or leading questions, anything to avoid the real issues. (and of course a constant string of invective, petty and immature) Who said that? You did. And worse, you try to present your fallacy as if you are being reasonable, you can't even see your mistake.

I've posted the same link to a peer reviewed scientific paper for almost a year now, and the dishonest and immature response don't make the science look bad, they make the detractors look bad. The constant attempts at misdirection, the cries of "Liar!", it makes a mockery of your attempts to claim the high road.

Speak to the science or just shut up. Posting a link to temperature anomalies that show increasing temperatures will never be evidence that CO2 caused it. It makes you look bad. Just stop. You can post a graphic of the climate warming for the last 140 years a hundred times and it doesn't mean anything except that the climate warmed.

oh lol the irony..

yet you think the vast majority of top scientist in climate research and the related fields are either liars aor misstaken....

it must drive you crazy when the vast majority of experts rejects the opinion of the minority and the science deniers like yourself.

it also nicely explains your silly attempt to paint climate research as a religion lol....

 

[a_unique_person]

Of course that's the essence of the objection. It drives the alarmists crazy when a top scientists, or any climate scientists expresses honest skepticism against the religion of warming. In this matter the skeptic is the enemy, and the behavior of the believers is often heinous, unscientific in the extreme. Granted there are no doubt vested interest trying to muddy the aters, create dissent, manufacture doubt or just delay anything that would in any way effect their bottom line. I have said before I agree with that, even with no hard proof. I still believe it.

But that isn't why really smart scientists, much smarter than anyone posting here, express their views and are skeptical of the AGW fanatics. Which is why it drives the faithful nuts when you bring it up. The alarmists resort to strawmen, or leading questions, anything to avoid the real issues. (and of course a constant string of invective, petty and immature) Who said that? You did. And worse, you try to present your fallacy as if you are being reasonable, you can't even see your mistake.

I've posted the same link to a peer reviewed scientific paper for almost a year now, and the dishonest and immature response don't make the science look bad, they make the detractors look bad. The constant attempts at misdirection, the cries of "Liar!", it makes a mockery of your attempts to claim the high road.

Speak to the science or just shut up. Posting a link to temperature anomalies that show increasing temperatures will never be evidence that CO2 caused it. It makes you look bad. Just stop. You can post a graphic of the climate warming for the last 140 years a hundred times and it doesn't mean anything except that the climate warmed.

The IPCC report has been out for years, with an understanding and attribution section on exactly why CO2 can be connected to rising temperatures. Its complex, and they don't rely on any simple correlations.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html

You should read it.

 

[Belz...]

Of course that's the essence of the objection. It drives the alarmists crazy when a top scientists, or any climate scientists expresses honest skepticism against the religion of warming.

It does ? I haven't seen anyone flinch, given that one scientist isn't a consensus.

Go ahead, demonstrate your claim.

 

[macdoc]

r-j

Speak to the science or just shut up

Take your own advice r-j and stop wasting everyone's time with your never supported babble.
You don't answer direct questions nor respond at all when faced with science question.....and for that, there is exceptionally adequate evidence.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

You should be questioning why you have heard these proposals even though there is nothing in the scientific literature supporting them.

We read different sources, clearly.

As already outlined over the last several pages:
- No one has come up with a physical mechanism for how these could cause significant climate change
- the changes in solar activity are going in the wrong direction to explain climate. Solar activity has been decreasing slightly over the last 50 years.
-Greenhouse changes are already much larger than even the largest proposed change in solar activity. (> an order of magnitude)

This last needs work. The units are not the same (% atmospheric CO₂ versus watts/m², so you have to translate both into effect on surface temperature and that translation presumes the conclusion.

-Greenhouse gasses figure heavily into explaining the climate changes over the last few hundred million years and especially the last 4 million. Solar activity does not.

Not at all my understanding. I have read that orbital mechanics align well with ice ages in the geologic record.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Over 95% of the scientists. That's a lot more than "some".

What do you mean "the"? Which? As I argued earlier, 95% of "scientists" (for convenience, operationally defined as people with advanced degrees that require undergrad coursework in statistics, differential equations, or biochemistry, who are paid to gather and analyze data) don't do any climate-related work. So this is just artificially concocting a consensus.

... t's my understanding that the basic physics does not predict an open-ended greenhouse effect and that the proposed CO₂ theory needs to assume positive feedbacks to generate the warming observed in the industrial era.

Your understanding is, not surprisingly, flawed.

Really? You're going to claim that "basic physics" DOES predict an open-ended greenhouse effect without feedbacks? Maybe you and Macdoc (who argued that Dyson is "not a climate scientist") should argue.

I see you've already dodged this question a number of times, but I'll ask it again as your dodges demonstrate the dishonesty of your position so well: Why do you hang your hat on these four guys, when over 95% of scientists in relevant fields say that these four guys, most of whom aren't even climate scientists, are wrong?

The 95% figure is inflated by the tactics you use above.

If "basic physics" confers a sufficient platform from which to pronounce, Dyson, Giaever, Motl, and Lewis trump Phil Jones and Michael Mann any day. You might want to reconsider that point about what "basic physics" implies.

 

[Pixel42]

Not at all my understanding. I have read that orbital mechanics align well with ice ages in the geologic record.

The forcing that causes the cycle of glacials & interglacials is the Milankovich cycles, yes, but the amplitudes of the swings in global temperatures can only be explained by taking positive feedbacks, including those due to greenhouse gases, into account, as I pointed out in a previous response:

As for positive feedbacks: these aren't exactly rocket science either. Do you dispute

a) that ice reflects more sunlight than open ocean, so less ice means more warmth which means less ice which means more warmth which means ...

b) that warm air holds more water vapour than cold air and water vapour is a greenhouse gas, so warmer air means more water vapour in the atmosphere which means more warmth retained at the earth's surface which means warmer air which means ...

c) that cold water holds more carbon dioxide than warm water and carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas so warmer water means more CO2 released into the atmosphere which means more warmth retained at the earth's surface which means warmer water which means ...

d That the large swings in global temperatures which ice cores etc tell us follow the relatively small forcing of the Milankovich cycles can only be explained if you take the above (and other) positive feedbacks into account?

Or perhaps you just never bothered to look up Milankovich cycles despite the numerous times this term has been used in this thread and didn't realise they were the name for the orbital mechanics to which you refer?

 

[Iamme]

Going back to the end of post #2326, this wasnt really ever answered, was it?:
Macdoc said warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor.
Malcolm retorted by saying clouds reflect sunlight.
Me: More water vapor means more clouds, right? Clouds reflecting sunlight means reflecting heat, right? So which trumps which? Or are the two things neutralizing?..................................
Then in a later post above on this page, macdoc had a question to Malcolm: ``Now do you have relevant papers to support your contention that humans cannot impact the climate or not?``
Me: shouldnt the question rather be worded toward whether or not we ARE impacting the climate? Isnt that the topic at hand? Because even an anti-AGW person might agree that humans can indeed impact our climate under say quite extreme and unnatural type measures if say we....here`s a good one....detonated all the nuclear bombs in the world?
Since CO2 is naturally occuring, whether man caused or nature caused, an anti-AGW person might feel the Earth`s natural defenses have a way of scrubbing out say excess CO...but may not have provisions for scrubbing out unnatural dispersal of man-caused nuclear blasts.
In this post of mine here, i am not stating any position on the topic at hand. Just looking for answers to those things which were stated. Because i`m no global expert and am not going to get caught up in this fray.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

The forcing that causes the cycle of glacials & interglacials is the Milankovich cycles, yes, but the amplitudes of the swings in global temperatures can only be explained by taking positive feedbacks, including those due to greenhouse gases, into account, as I pointed out in a previous response:
...
Or perhaps you just never bothered to look up Milankovich cycles despite the numerous times this term has been used in this thread and didn't realise they were the name for the orbital mechanics to which you refer?

Do we disagree? I don't see it. If you want an argument, take it up with Lomiller and Uk2se, who apparently dispute the impact of astronomical variations (solar output, the angle between the axis of the Earth's rotation and the plane of the Earth's orbit, precession, the shape of the orbit, etc.) when they insist that CO₂ dominates.

Anyway, I like arguments with more than two sides. Thanks.

 

[Pixel42]

What do you mean "the"? Which? As I argued earlier, 95% of "scientists" (for convenience, operationally defined as people with advanced degrees that require undergrad coursework in statistics, differential equations, or biochemistry, who are paid to gather and analyze data) don't do any climate-related work. So this is just artificially concocting a consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scient...rveys_of_scientists_and_scientific_literature

A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who "listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change" believed that mean global temperatures had risen compared to pre-1800s levels. Seventy-five of 77 believed that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures

[...]

A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two conclusions:

(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.[118]

A 2013 paper in Environmental Research Letters reviewed 11,944 abstracts of scientific papers, finding 4,014 which discussed the cause of recent global warming and reporting:

Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.[119]

 

[Pixel42]

If you want an argument, take it up with Lomiller and Uk2se, who apparently dispute the impact of astronomical variations (solar output, the angle between the axis of the Earth's rotation and the plane of the Earth's orbit, precession, the shape of the orbit, etc.) when they insist that CO₂ dominates.

lomiller and uk2se understand perfectly well that the Milankovich cycles are the forcing that causes the cycles of glaciations and interglacials. They simply point out, as I just did, that you need the positive feedbacks due to greenhouse gases to explain the amplitude of the temperature swings that result from that forcing. I am in complete agreement with them.

 

[macdoc]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick View Post
If you want an argument, take it up with Lomiller and Uk2se, who apparently dispute the impact of astronomical variations (solar output, the angle between the axis of the Earth's rotation and the plane of the Earth's orbit, precession, the shape of the orbit, etc.) when they insist that CO2 dominate

The usual subterfuge......no one argues with role of Milankovich cycles over long periods....it's visible in the Holocene climate record as is the point where C02 took over and moved the trend against the orbital.
The argument is that it does not even come close in magnitude to the effect of GHG as a driver of climate change.

Quit with the weasel wording and put up the science you claim to have.
How many times will you dodge the direct question ....which leaves the casual reader with the correct impression that there is none.

2,000 climate related papers in 2012, ONE disputes GHG as the primary cause.
You are wrong and simply can't swallow admitting it and move on to solutions where there is some meaty arguments over policy to be made.

You are chewing on a dry bone tyring to deny AGW and lends you no credibility particularly given your declarations outside this forum.....after all you are proud of using your own name.....so we are told.

 

[Belz...]

We read different sources, clearly.

Not all sources are equivalent.

 

[Pixel42]

I think two different climate forcings are being confused:

1. The forcing due to variations in solar activity which increase/decrease the amount of energy the sun puts out

2. The forcing due to the variation in the amount of solar energy that reaches the earth's surface due to orbital mechanics (aka the Milankovich cycles)

The latter is the main driver of natural climate change over timescales of thousands/tens of thousands of years. The small changes in average global temperature that result from this forcing are amplified by positive feedbacks.

The former is what some people (e.g. Haig) insist is the cause of the warming of the last century or so, despite overwhelming evidence that it is a far smaller forcing than that due to the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Dyson???

try...old



if that's what you are hanging your knowledge of climate science on....you really do need to move to a bit more modern and informed point of view.
Try the signature....it's get people willing to learn started..
..course there is inflexibility n'all.....willful ignorance perhaps?

In Dyson's case....pure ornery...



Hero emulation perhaps....

Big difference between Malcolm and Dyson. Dyson is one of the great minds of the 20th century. Sure he is an ornery ol' cuss. Motivation though is very different. Dyson isn't trying to earn political points. He challenges other scientists in order to advance science. If Dyson is "trolling" or "throwing wrenches" at the climate scientists' models, there can be only one reason, to get them to strengthen the models by looking at the problem in new ways. He has an uncommon knack for finding the weakest point in any model and aiming directly at the soft spot. He is not really a denier in the sense of someone like Malcolm, who is misusing Dyson's quotes. In other words Dyson is a true skeptic that doesn't attack the good science in climate change, but instead attacks the weak parts, that they might be strengthened.

Oh and BTW Dyson isn't just some random physicist with no expertise in climate. He actually has done a lot of work on the factors contributed by clouds and CO2 interactions with plant life on a global scale. He also doesn't deny AGW per se, he does however say that the AGW models are over simplified and have "fudge factors" that need more detail.

I personally find it interesting that possibly as a direct result of Dyson's criticisms of the cloud "fudge factor", modern models have in fact improved dramatically.

That leaves one weak point suggested by Dyson to go Mac. I don't even have to tell you which one, because we have gone round and round about it. And always remember, I fully 100% agree with AGW. But the "fudge factor" in climate models regarding the CO2 interactions with plant life are very weak in my opinion. At least the ones I have seen.

 

[Alphaba]

As "a picture is worth a thousand words", here's a nice picture detailing Earth global energy balance:

Excerpted from:
Martin Wild et al. (2013) "A New Diagram of the Global Energy Balance". Radiation Processes in the Atmosphere and Ocean (IRS2012). AIP Conf. Proc. 1531, 628-631 (PDF).​

Notice a) the green "imbalance" arrow (something is accumulating energy), and b) how current anthropically-generated huge increases in greenhouse gases concentrations (+40% CO2 in 2 centuries) are far more susceptible to alter the balance than the few percents variations measured in solar input.

 

[Iamme]

The name Dyson sounds synonymous with genius, to me, it seems.
Is he the same guy with vacuum cleaners or a relative?
This guy might be an interesting read it sounds like. Like a Stephen Hawking or the like.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

The name Dyson sounds synonymous with genius, to me, it seems.
Is he the same guy with vacuum cleaners or a relative?
This guy might be an interesting read it sounds like. Like a Stephen Hawking or the like.

A genius at least on the scale of Hawking, Einstein etc...

Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." Freeman Dyson

ETA So you see? Dyson is categorically NOT an AGW denier. His skepticism is directed at advancing science, not ignoring science for political purposes such as advocated by Malcolm.

 

[r-j]

Going back to the end of post #2326, this wasnt really ever answered, was it?:
Macdoc said warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor.
Malcolm retorted by saying clouds reflect sunlight.
Me: More water vapor means more clouds, right? Clouds reflecting sunlight means reflecting heat, right? So which trumps which? Or are the two things neutralizing?..................................

The reason you won't get an answer is simple. It's one of the really big uncertainties. Clouds both warm and cool, and are a powerful forcing of climate/weather. The IPCC and alarmists tend to ignore them, as it makes the science obviously unsettled. Especially in regards to things like ozone destruction, persistent contrails, increased cloudiness from pollution, rainmaking efforts, as well as arctic amplification effects and the moisture added to the tropopause and stratosphere. It's a really important scientific issue, one that Dyson and other skeptics know all about.

Me: shouldnt the question rather be worded toward whether or not we ARE impacting the climate? Isnt that the topic at hand? Because even an anti-AGW person might agree that humans can indeed impact our climate under say quite extreme and unnatural type measures if say we....here`s a good one....detonated all the nuclear bombs in the world?

I don't know what all deniers believe, but certainly a lot of them deny that nuclear could change the planet, and of course oil wells leaking into the ocean could certainly change things. Same for massive deforestation, damning rivers, all kinds of things effect the planet. But only CO2 seems to be of interest to the alarmists mentality.

Since CO2 is naturally occuring, whether man caused or nature caused, an anti-AGW person might feel the Earth`s natural defenses have a way of scrubbing out say excess CO...but may not have provisions for scrubbing out unnatural dispersal of man-caused nuclear blasts.

Of course the earth deals with CO2 quite well. If CO2 actually changed the climate a lot, every massive forest fire would load up the world with far more carbon that we have. And since the alarmists believes CO2 stays around for thousands of years (or something like that), the climate changee from a massive fire would last for thousand of years. That's the level of science they operate under.

Maybe r-j, Malcolm, et. al. will answer the questions below this time.

Why have so many scientists and climatologists from around the world gotten and continue to get the research wrong when it comes to AGW?

Maybe if you asked honest question, and avoided your strawman arguments, you would get some discussion, rather than just ignored. Trust me, science based posts generate a lot of discussion. Like mine!

what happened was exactly what the models projected.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article

That is so funny, since you love to call people liars all the time. That article doesn't even contain the world winter, much less anything about winter trends. Too funny. Especially since you followed with your old standby.

you can lie as mucha s you want about it, it will not change the facts.....

That goes double for you of course.

This module investigates climatic variability. It focuses on the evidence
for global climate change. It includes investigations of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the geography and politics of stratospheric ozone, and the theory of global warming

http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/Mission_Geography/9-12/Module_3/III-3-1.pdf


Still waiting for somebody, anybody, to post a link to the theory of global warming, or AGW, that you keep talking about.