Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[CapelDodger]

Such an outbreak of feelings on a Science thread. Some people really don't feel that AGW has firmed up at all, despite growing up with it.

Predictions made thirty, even fifty, years ago have panned out. Predictions being made now are based on far superior computer power, greater understanding of the climate, more data and better observation than those. There's a reason why people like me are prepared to stake their reputations on those predictions, and we didn't take that position lightly. Our reputations are important to us.

Those who feel that the science of AGW is uniformy flawed can rest easy on that point : I (and many others like me) have looked at it closely, and it's sound. Science which purports to show that, for instance, "It's the Sun" has also been under our scrutiny, and it sucks. It's not even good fraud.

Those who feel they've thought of something which scientists haven't should get over themselves.

AGW is here and it's not going away.

 

[CapelDodger]

But [sceptsci's] blatant use of fallacious means doesn't stop in cherry picking and confirmation bias on-steroids. You had to resort also to rhetorics and make a strawman by using another fallacy as straw, as we can get from your caricaturization of the supposed use of converse error. It looks like you haven't moved one inch from the positions you brag about here three year ago, in spite of the calm and weighted look you try to give to your posts.

It does take more than not mentioning Al Gore to lend weight, doesn't it? Being unimpressed by the work of real scientists doesn't do it either. Nor technobabble.

Being a better denier than this is no great challenge .

 

[CapelDodger]

Can you explain why you would base your opinion on this source?

AlBell's opinion was firmly based at least twenty years ago, I'll wager. All that's followed is mere confirmation.

 

[CapelDodger]

I suggest you to avoid with this particular subject explanations like showing the changing outgoing longwave spectra along time with respect to greenhouse forcings like the "harry and harry" paper and many others. For this purpose, any explanation should be done exclusively with AR5 WG1 material, plus, eventually, some wiki imagery.

I think it best we all do it our own way (politely and dispassionately, of course).

Take into account that typically these subjects can't visually integrate a figure.

What could be more dispassionate than the term "subjects"? Excellent work .

 

[Reality Check]

http://nypost.com/2013/12/05/global-warming-proof-is-evaporating/

Oh dear, AlBell - a NY Post article by an author who cites a 2005 "review" and ignores all of the research done since then !
Starts off with hurricanes:
The link between hurricanes and GW is the basic physics of more heat = warmer water = more energy available for hurricanes = bigger hurricanes.
What is the link between hurricanes and global warming?

There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming.

Then lots of climate 'skeptic' rhetoric with a cherry-picked paper and slagging off the IPCC. The myth about GW stopping:
Global cooling - Is global warming still happening?

Empirical measurements of the Earth's heat content show the planet is still accumulating heat and global warming is still happening. Surface temperatures can show short-term cooling when heat is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean, which has a much greater heat capacity than the air.

The last paragraph is about why global surface temperatures have leveled out since ~2000 (if you look at the raw data and ignore natural variations).

The 'climate has changed before' myth:
What does past climate change tell us about global warming?

Natural climate change in the past proves that climate is sensitive to an energy imbalance. If the planet accumulates heat, global temperatures will go up. Currently, CO2 is imposing an energy imbalance due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Past climate change actually provides evidence for our climate's sensitivity to CO2.

There is the author's massive body of climate science papers :
Michael Fumento is a journalist and attorney based in Colombia
which makes the "Back in 2005 I and others reviewed the entire hurricane record, which goes back over a century, and found no increase of any kind." claim dubious.

 

[lomiller]

The question is:- are humans responsible and for the life of me - I've yet to see a convincing argument laid out by anybody.

Have you learned about the science? “I don’t understand, but I don’t want to learn the science that explains it” isn’t a very compelling position.
- The earth has undergone a large amount of rapid warming over the last 100 years.
- Natural influences explain only a small part of that, and explain none of the warming in the last 50 years.
- Anthropogenic influences fully explain al the warming in the last 50 years and the combination of known natural and anthropogenic factors explain 100% of the observed warming over the last 100 years.

Where I'm sitting here in Rickmansworth, England right now is a pleasant rolling pastural view (if you block out the flipping M25!) at the start of The Chiltern Hills. 12,000 years ago there was a kilometre of ice over the area, then later during the next several millenia vast braids of gravel deltas flowed out from the melting ice sheets..

You have to go back ~18000 years to see that much ice at your location. By 12000 much of the ice had already melted but there were still a few thousand years of warming and melting yet to come.
The current rate of warming is more than ten times as rapid. With the changes taking place now it will take only another 100 – 200 years to get as much warming as it took to make that mile of ice disappear.

No one has the slightest idea what caused the cooling or the later warm up -

I’m not sure where you get this idea. While some gaps remain, the onset and retreat of glaciations is quite well understood.
It starts with wobbles in the earth as it revolves around the sun. These wobbles warm the northern hemisphere, which in turn releases CO2 as the soil warms. This CO2 continues to warm the planet, releasing more CO2 from soils and the ocean until a new equilibrium is reached.

 

[lomiller]

As I mentioned in my post, I am not impressed by the sheer existence of.

You have been directed to much more content than just web sites and most of the web sites you have been directed to are supported by citations to appropriate peer reviewed literature.
Creationists and climate deniers can’t reference peer reviewed literature because the literature doesn’t support their belief.
Climate change and Evolution however are backed by mountains of peer reviewed literature.
While you seem to view yourself as the “skeptic” in the creationist vs evolution argument, in fact your “sell the controversy” stance and refusal to accept the scientific literature is in fact the mirror image of what Intelligent Design proponents do.

Yes, I understand the CO2 thing quoted above, the question in my mind still is (always has been): is the A-CO2 emission ENOUGH to cause the observed temperature rise?

CO2 is strongest of anthropogenic factors. These anthropogenic facts explain 100% of the warming in the last 50 years and 40%-60% of the warming in the 50 years before that. Known natural forcings explain the remaining 40% - 60% of the early warming, and essentially none of the warming since 1950. This is why 97% of all actively researching climate scientists say the earth is warming due to human influences and massive literature reviews like the IPCC report assign confidence levels of > 95% to the A part of AGW.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Me too, thanks.

http://nypost.com/

Even GW is getting tenuous.

Thank you, you always enhance my education by example.

Now I finally get why in Top Secret (1984) one of the torturers was that way because of the newspaper he read:



I'd got it was something really bad because the original media had been kept in the dubbed version and no spanishphere equivalent was chosen. But I've never imagined that bad up to do to their public the same the character's manager had done with the electric appliance he acquired:

[prominent warmists] conceded that average global surface temperatures stopped warming a full 15 years ago, but that this “pause” could extend into the 2030s.[And they did that in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics!]

If Ma Nature caused the “pause,” can’t this same lady be responsible for the warming observed earlier? You bet!

People have a right to religious and cult beliefs within reason. But the warmists have been proved wrong time and again, each time reacting with little more than pictures of forlorn polar bears on ice floes and trying to shut down the opposition. (More bad timing: Arctic ice increased by almost a third this past year, while that at the South Pole was thicker and wider than it’s been in 35 years.)

So funny!!! Keep 'em coming, please!!!

 

[Iamme]

For whatever it`s worth, i have minus 4 degrees out right now at 6am in western Wisconsin, USA. That`s pretty cold for early December. I went out to start the car just to warm up the oil. I heard we were suppose to have about negative 25 degree windchill, but i dont think so, not all that breezy right now.
Some people dont believe windchill temperatures can affect a car...but it can. The car cant think its minus 25....but it will get down to minus 4 quicker, and stiffen the oil quicker, if say you had a warm engine at 8pm the previous evening, from driving home. If no wind, it take longer to reach the actual minus 4 temperature.
Wel, the car has idled long enough now, time to shut it off. I ran the heater also. The interior stuff will like me for that.

 

[macdoc]

That would be weather but there is some AGW aspect of it. Here is why

http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/warmarctic.html

It was a balmy 11 here in S Ontario on Friday ....great bike ride for Dec.

 

[Iamme]

Macdoc, at what lattitude are you at? We are at 44.82.
Our temp Friday was at your temp or colder. I believe about 6. Today to only reach 3 and minus 7 tonight.
Anyway, i wish warming effects of global warming would hit here, as i`ve not seen it, in living 28 years in this same spot. Last winter lasted into...May! We got over 9 inches of snow May 2, and other nearby areas got 14 inches. Very depressing. (Before that, we have to go back to the 1930`s where we got measurable snow at this date).

In response to a post or two here... i read where some said winters were worse when they were a kid. I`ve wondered that myself. But one needs to acknowlege that if you are only say 4 feet tall or less and you have 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground, you will remember that as super deep/harder to trudge thru. And regarding it being colder...when you are younger, it is bound to feel colder because you are not yet as accustomed to pain as well. Think about it. You probably cried back then from something that hurt, where now you can take it. You have acclamated more to the feeling of freezing/pain, where it is no longer as foreign to you, after experiencing many more winters. Also, in many cases, we didnt have as much fat on our bones when we were younger and perhaps more physically active.
The only true gauge is by weather almanacs. Not by what we remember.

 

[aleCcowaN]

In response to a post or two here... i read where some said winters were worse when they were a kid. I`ve wondered that myself. But one needs to acknowlege that if you are only say 4 feet tall or less and you have 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground, you will remember that as super deep/harder to trudge thru. And regarding it being colder...when you are younger, it is bound to feel colder because you are not yet as accustomed to pain as well. Think about it. You probably cried back then from something that hurt, where now you can take it. You have acclamated more to the feeling of freezing/pain, where it is no longer as foreign to you, after experiencing many more winters. Also, in many cases, we didnt have as much fat on our bones when we were younger and perhaps more physically active.
The only true gauge is by weather almanacs. Not by what we remember.

You're sort of paraphrasing Grandpa Simpson: stories in style filling in where knowledge is required.

But if you intended that as an opinion or reflection about Anthropogenic Global Warming, I want to ask you "keep them coming" together with your former style of posting. Do you imagine why? Imagine some Rip van Winkle comes to notice people is debating about the occurrence of something called global warming. He finds his way into this thread and readw some posts. He finds two camps and in one of them are you, AlBell, 1stClassAlan, the 2010's skeptsci and some more, who argue against it with such dissimilar approaches with little in common but the lack of scientific foundation and the excess of anecdote-oriented and/or self-referential rhetoric. This Rip guy doesn't need much to detect the unfounded side of the "debate" though admittedly some guys would like -like all in your group- AGW not to be true, so they'll activate their epistemological hedonism -the same that allows people to find Libra people to be similar to the way they are described by astrologers- so one in a dozen would happily join to your camp.

You, like others, are a wonderful asset to show that AGW is THE real thing.

 

[DC]

Macdoc, at what lattitude are you at? We are at 44.82.
Our temp Friday was at your temp or colder. I believe about 6. Today to only reach 3 and minus 7 tonight.
Anyway, i wish warming effects of global warming would hit here, as i`ve not seen it, in living 28 years in this same spot. Last winter lasted into...May! We got over 9 inches of snow May 2, and other nearby areas got 14 inches. Very depressing. (Before that, we have to go back to the 1930`s where we got measurable snow at this date).

In response to a post or two here... i read where some said winters were worse when they were a kid. I`ve wondered that myself. But one needs to acknowlege that if you are only say 4 feet tall or less and you have 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground, you will remember that as super deep/harder to trudge thru. And regarding it being colder...when you are younger, it is bound to feel colder because you are not yet as accustomed to pain as well. Think about it. You probably cried back then from something that hurt, where now you can take it. You have acclamated more to the feeling of freezing/pain, where it is no longer as foreign to you, after experiencing many more winters. Also, in many cases, we didnt have as much fat on our bones when we were younger and perhaps more physically active.
The only true gauge is by weather almanacs. Not by what we remember.

you know, scientists depend not on stories told by some people. thats not how they determined that it got warmer.
and we are talking about the global average temperature. so its possible that some regions got colder while global average is still higher... get that?
that it warmed is proven beyond any doubt at all. heck even most deniers accept that by now.

 

[macdoc]

Our temp Friday was at your temp or colder. I believe about 6. Today to only reach 3 and minus 7 tonight.
Anyway, i wish warming effects of global warming would hit here, Last winter lasted into...May! We got over 9 inches of snow May 2, and other nearby areas got 14 inches. Very depressing. (Before that, we have to go back to the 1930`s where we got measurable snow at this date).

you need to do much more reading to understand climate change ....

this was written back in 1999...

ABSTRACT A phenological study of springtime events was made over a 61-year period at one site in southern Wisconsin. The records over this long period show that several phenological events have been increasing in earliness; we discuss evidence indicating that these changes reflect climate change. The mean of regressions for the 55 phenophases studied was ��0.12 day per year, an overall increase in phenological earliness at this site during the period. Some phenophases have not increased in earliness, as would be expected for phenophases that are regulated by photoperiod or by a physiological signal other than local temperature.
Phenology is the study of the cycling of biological events throughout the year—a reading of the ‘‘pulse of life.’’ The cycling of phenological events such as flowering, fruiting, bird migration, or animal reproduction is frequently used to define annual seasonal sequences. Phenological studies have also proved useful in predicting the production stages of certain crops (1) and in measuring the response of plant systems to changes in temperature (2).
Climatic warming would be expected to have an impact on some phenological sequences (3, 4). If phenological records are continued over a sufficient length of time, they may reflect climate change, as has been suggested by Beaubien and Johnson (5). With widespread evidence that climate warming has occurred over the past 40 years (6–8), long-term pheno- logical records may reflect such climate warming. We report here such a record of phenological events at a site in southern Wisconsin. This record offers an unusual opportunity to observe long-term changes by various phenophases (seasonal biological events).

http://www.pnas.org/content/96/17/9701.full.pdf

and more currently

Plants flowering earlier in climate change

Jan. 17, 2013 at 5:19 PM | 0 comments

MADISON, Wis., Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Native plants in the eastern United States are flowering as much as a month earlier than historically normal in response to a warming climate, scientists say.Researchers from Boston and Harvard universities and the University of Wisconsin-Madison say the findings give clues to ecological changes in response to a warming world and may help predict effects on important agricultural crops, which depend on flowering to produce fruit.

The researchers compared modern flowering times to historical records compiled by iconic American naturalists Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold.

Native plants such as serviceberry and nodding trillium are blooming 11 days earlier, on average, in the area around Concord, Mass., where Thoreau worked, the researchers said.

In Wisconsin, where Leopold gathered records of blooming plants like wild geranium and marsh marigold, the change is even more striking, with plants blooming on average nearly a month earlier than they did 67 years ago when Leopold made his observations.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/201...mate-change/UPI-11901358461155/#ixzz2moycWNbE

Possums used to be southern animals....no more.
Do some reading....you are missing what is going on.....and the further north you go - the greater the change.

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/

More snow is not a indicator of a colder winter....there is more moisture in the air due to AGW and when moist air hits cold air snow is the result....and there will always be cold air due to the way the planet tilts.

Climate change is not only making the planet warmer, it is also making snowstorms stronger and more frequent, US scientists said on Tuesday.
"Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet," said scientist Jeff Masters, as part of a conference call with reporters and colleagues convened by the Union of Concern Scientists.

"In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society."
Masters said that the northeastern United States has been coated in heavy snowfall from major Category Three storms or larger three times in each of the past two winters, storms that are unparalleled since the winter of 1960-61.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-03-global-snowstorms-scientists.html#jCp

This is a critical piece to understand why winters seem to last

http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/warmarctic.html

The weather bands have moved south - the pole is relatively warm while the cold air from the stalled highs persists over the continents.

Dr. James Overland, a scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, has been studying the changing conditions in the Arctic for 30 years. He explains why the deterioration of the Polar Vortex could be leading to some of these extreme winter weather events.

“When the Polar Vortex — a ring of winds circling the Arctic — breaks down, this allows cold air to spill south, affecting the eastern United States and other regions,” says Dr. Overland. “This can result in a warmer-than-average Arctic region and colder temperatures that may include severe winter weather events on the North American and European continents.”

 

[CapelDodger]

For whatever it`s worth, i have minus 4 degrees out right now at 6am in western Wisconsin, USA.

It might be worth putting on Twitter but it worth absolutely nothing here.

 

[macdoc]

That's just weather Iamme ....it's minus 5 here in Ontario and the US midwest is getting blitzed by a southerly flow of cold air. No fun for those not used to it.
The only relation to climate is we have entered a period of extreme weather events being more frequent.

Welcome to the Anthropocene.

 

[Iamme]

Macdoc ---i read your lengthy report in post #674. You put effort into digging this up. Appreciate it. Interesting.

 

[Iamme]

you know, scientists depend not on stories told by some people. thats not how they determined that it got warmer.
and we are talking about the global average temperature. so its possible that some regions got colder while global average is still higher... get that?
that it warmed is proven beyond any doubt at all. heck even most deniers accept that by now.

Yeah. So how much have we warmed since say 1960?, so i can make better sense of me both freezing in the winter, and cooking in the summer, whether it be in southern Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin, sothern gulf Florida, or southern gulf Texas, and western Wisconsin...during that span of time.

 

[Pixel42]

So how much have we warmed since say 1960?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

 

[DC]

Yeah. So how much have we warmed since say 1960?, so i can make better sense of me both freezing in the winter, and cooking in the summer, whether it be in southern Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin, sothern gulf Florida, or southern gulf Texas, and western Wisconsin...during that span of time.

some 0.4°C

http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/