Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[Red Baron Farms]

r-j,
AGW could potentially be falsified. But there is a huge difference between potentially and actually falsifying it. I have yet to see any scientific paper falsifying AGW. The most I have seen is a handful of papers calling into question the % of GW that is AGW. And several papers calling into question predictive models for future AGW. If you know of a paper that actually falsifies already measured AGW, please post it.(eta recent, not 30 years old) Otherwise, all you are doing is getting everyone, including yourself, angry.

I tend to approach the issue completely differently than most people here. Instead of worrying about predictive models about what could happen if CO2 levels remain high or even get higher, I flip it back and argue it doesn't matter what is the exact figure. One of the most basic ecosystem services of the land that clearly has been effected by human activities is the carbon cycle. Restore the land and that ecosystem service gets restored as well. That will probably be enough alone, but reducing emissions gives you a good fudge factor just in case. You'll still have climate change, but at least it will be just the natural cycles, instead of the extra pressure humans applied. (whatever that is, large or small) I personally think is is larger rather than smaller, but I couldn't actually get angry with someone arguing smaller. Try arguing none or negligible though, without a good scientific paper or 3, and no doubt people will get frustrated and/or angry.

 

[Trakar]

If it were a joke, I could understand it. But this belief that "AGW" is a fact and you can't disprove it, it's so unscientific.

I see nothing in Macdoc's post which asserts that AGW cannot be disproven?

This will do for me as well

anthropogenic global warming. it means, that increase of greenhouse gases due to human activity have caused observable warming as it increases the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Global warming is causing climatic changes.

Disproof would consist of an overturn of the physics governing C02 absorption of LW radiation.

•••

Now answer the Tillson question....is he wrong or are you?

The lack of heating due to atmospheric GHGs would need to be accounted for in any alternative (non-AGW) theory attempting to explain the demonstrably warming modern climate. This could be done by finding a critical flaw in current radiative transfer physics, effectively overturning our understanding of these physics, or it could be due to other factors that nullify the scientifically valid and expected anthropogenic emissions effect and yet still provides almost exactly the same degree warming. AGW is falsifiable. It is however, well founded, established and supported by the accumulation of more than a century's worth of observations, studies and widespread associated scientific understandings in multiple fields. New understandings must not only account for "warming," they must also account for why existing understandings fail (...so precisely).

 

[aleCcowaN]

Perhaps, but they are not always the same people. You don't actually remember what I said, that much is clear. Do you have any scientific issues you want to discuss?

As you're so knowledgeable in science, I hope you'll or your Jules Galen will answer the question Arnold Martin passed so far. Here goes again:

So you are versed enough in polar regions to answer this, my question:

This is the outgoing longwave radiation for yesterday, December 21st (click on for a larger version)



Look carefully the region between 75N and 90N and appreciate how about a half of it -a tiny little bit less than a half- radiated more than 180 W/m2, with regions where the figure was even above 220 W/m2.

Now look carefully at the region between 75S and 90S and appreciate how about a half of it -a not so tiny bit less than a half- radiated more that 180W/m2 with no region radiating more than 220.

Got the facts?

As yesterday was the longest day in the year -in the hemisphere that matters the most regarding the planet's energy budget- would you care to explain to me and others why did the Antarctic region radiate about the same -a bit less indeed- than its Arctic counterpart provided yesterday was a 24-hour night in the Arctic and a 24-hour day -with the sun up to 38.5° above the horizon at midday- in the Antarctic region? Where does all that heat in the North come from?

Before making any wrong speculation, take a look to the anomalies in OLR for yesterday (again, click on the image for a larger version and to see how I'm roasting here now):



so, as you can surely appreciate, the Antarctic is in "business as normal" while the Arctic is radiating way above the normal. Again, why is that so? I assure you in the end this will relate with those funny, rioting, nice polar bears you cared to mention.

I hope other eager newcomers like Jules, Arnold et al will also dive in to reply these questions. If not -in a few days- I'll invite the normal crowd to reply.

I'm gonna think other interesting questions for some other nice visitors who are eager to engage in debate, no matter who -the feistier(livelier), the merrier-.

C'mon r-j, Jules Galen, Haig, jobberone, Arnold Martin, AlBell, skeptsci, mhaze, furcifer, justinian, Herzblut, Wangler, everybody in the denialist bunch who participated in the last few weeks, answer this. It's so easy. If you know the science as much as many of you claim to do.

I'll be adding more easy questions for denialists, and once they fail or refuse to answer -I hope not- for everybody else, on a weekly -or shorter- basis.

 

[macdoc]

The other aspect would be finding a negative feedback but that would not overturn AGW but rather blunt it's downstream impact....effectively putting limits on it.

Every climate scientist on the planet would cheer such a mechanism....right now we seem reliant on another anthro activity and that is SO2 and carbon black release that may be blunting atmospheric heat gain in favour of more ocean uptake..

But at the heart of falsification....the C02 absorption would have to be overturned and that is contrary to our current understanding of the laws of physics.

I suppose also one could try an challenge the Anthro aspect but since it's isotope traced once again would be Nobel class new understanding .....with theory and evidence to back it.

Discussing speed of onset in any given region. Mitigation by several processes including turning the C02 emitted into fuel again are all profitable use of discussion time.

Those committed to the educational aspects of this forum use their time to that end...not to endless pointless chatter and refusal to answer direct questions.

If I ask Alec a question ...I may not get the answer I thought as he has more science training than I do. But he will answer to the best of his ability and with honest intent.

Take note.

 

[Arnold Martin]

from the way you use the words "climate model", it becomes very obvious that you do not know the slightest thing about climate modeling or climate models.

and do you have any evidence for your accusations?

..

.........

 

[Arnold Martin]

I'm quoting this load of tosh of yours just to get your attention. You'll surely make an effort to understand that I and others cannot take your caricaturization as a departure for a reply. There are yet some points you left pending from previous messages of yours.

What about your coded prediction in the post where you confess not even having a high school education?

And why, if you are a pilot in Hudson bay who are supposedly first-hand knowledgeable about the numbers and whereabouts of polar bears, had you to resort to two photographs of the same Norwegian polar bear you found in the Internet? Didn't you have any photograph of polar bears in Hudson Bay? Are they too thin? Canadian websites about helicopter tours -your declared place and profession- have those photos aplenty.

Most of the photos , videos , personnel , environmentalists , film crews , scientists , are transported by helicopters , all terrain vehicles , or snow machines.

Guys like me see it all , hear it all , and see the tremendous bias in the reporting . They exclusively follow their preset agenda they refuse to record or report anything not according to what they proclaim is happening

The Inuit Elder who comments about the increase in polar bears is edited out. The bleeding heart flown in from New York steps into the cold for 5 minutes and tells the world the Bears are facing extinction.

They may have fooled you but they have never fooled me.

I should add that I have no bone to pick with you sir .... my angst is toward people who do not reveal the whole truth ... off camera we call them a bunch of liars , flown in luxury on multi million dollar budgets raised from school children and unsuspecting city folk.

My coded prediction I will reveal later , it is not a big deal , it is about my grade 9 education , which to some people puts me squarely in the redneckerson category. In other words I am simply an uneducated denier . Right ?

Behind every photographer is a helicopter pilot. Look between the cubs. I was there , I am there. Best wishes

 

[macdoc]

No - your idiotic arguments and regurgitated Faux news tripe put in you in the uneducated denier status.

Indeed there are idiotic treehuggers as well .....they don't hang around here even in the nuclear threads.

You COULD learn something here...all you have to do is ask honest questions and answer them.

Your safety officer would't put up with your nonsense when it came to flight physics and safety.

Nor do we when it comes to climate and risk. There is informed skepticism and just plain ignorance.

Your's falls into the latter.

You can change that.

Even Tillson, the head of Exxon acknowledges the risk and reality of climate change.
Is he wrong?

 

[r-j]

Do you have any legitimate concerns

You are still avoiding the ones brought up.

In the mid 1800s, it may still have been appropriate to call the radiation transfer interactions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect the "CO2 hypothesis," it has, however, since then, amassed a compelling body of supporting evidences and interrelated understandings such that it has been considered an established and well evidenced scientific theory since the early 1900s.

I asked if anyone else agreed with the DC/macdoc "theory of AGW", which is claimed to be "a fact", which avoids the science completely. Nobody else has agreed with their definition.

This has nothing to do with whether global warming theory is correct.

We still haven't had anyone step up and provide a scientific theory, or theories, much less the predictions that would allow , from a scientific POV, a way to know if the theory is correct. Here it is used in two seemingly different ways. As AGW, and as theory of global warming.

Individual weather events nor not proof positive or negative for AGW.

No theory of global warming posits warm weather everywhere, all the time.

So we are still talking about "it", but aside from myself, no one has linked to "the theory", much less met the scientific burden of explaining the predictions, that would allow us to know if the theory is correct.

Remember as well, that several people denied there is any such theory.

Serious answer - there is no such thing as your Googleing and Wikipedia searches found.

There is no such thing as a Theory of Global Warming, the expectation that there would be indicates a profound misunderstanding of the nature of climate science.

It appears because people like you trot it out. It doesn't appear in the scientific literature.

If you think such bold claims are forgotten, you would be unscientific.

Sometimes people ask "what would it take to falsify the man-made global warming theory?". Well, basically it would require that our fundamental understanding of physics be wrong, because that's what the theory is based on.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/big-picture.html

So it's not hard for even the casual observer to note several things being claimed here.

AGW is a fact, not a theory or hypothesis..
AGW does not appear anywhere on Wikipedia.
AGW is well known.
AGW is a theory.
AGW is not a theory.
AGW can't be proved wrong with out our "fundamental understanding of physics" being overturned.
AGW just is and most people know it.
AGW is something deniers made up.
Asking about what AGW means is considered trolling.
AGW doesn't need to be proven, it just is how it is.

There is no such thing as the "Theory of Global Warming" as you have actually found out!

There's a lot more to be found.(this seems to have been discussed here for about the last decade)

You might think there could be some confusion over what AGW is.

 

[DC]

.........

and what exactly do you think this is evidence for?
so your problem are with this model specifically? what about the other models in use?

 

[DC]

and another round in wich the deniers simply ignore questions posed to them.
because they know the answer, but they don't like the anwer.

and once again they nicely show projection, they claim others are biased and talk only about the things they think suits their agenda.......

very telling.

 

[macdoc]

AM - you continue to disappoint....do you know who Friends of Science are?

 

[r-j]

Behind every photographer is a helicopter pilot. Look between the cubs. I was there , I am there. Best wishes

Cool photos. You should start a topic about your life out there, it would be interesting. These global warming threads are not for reality.

r-j,If you know of a paper that actually falsifies already measured AGW, please post it.(eta recent, not 30 years old) Otherwise, all you are doing is getting everyone, including yourself, angry.

Oh please! If this makes you angry, you need to turn off the computer, or phone. Speaking of which, while I don't believe in you-know-what, that doesn't save me from the festivities.

The lack of heating due to atmospheric GHGs would need to be accounted for in any alternative (non-AGW) theory

You still haven't explained what you are talking about,much less what predictions are made. In essence you have "something", you call it AGW, but it isn't science.

 

[r-j]

so, as you can surely appreciate, the Antarctic is in "business as normal" while the Arctic is radiating way above the normal.

You haven't presented anything scientific there. Much less explained what you are asking about. There is a good reason people study and go to school before jumping in to certain fields.

Here's a hint. Learn what OLR means. Then learn about what happens when the sun shines on ice.

 

[aleCcowaN]

.........

Pst! pst! "Arnold"! pst! psssst!!!!!

Why does your figure start in 1970 and it is already dephased (there's a huge gap if you don't understand the language) already in the 1970s?


Why do you throw here garbage you are not able to understand?

For the knowledgeable, this is a fine example of what Jules Galen described as the "Texan Sharpshooter Fallacy" -yes, "he" knows **** about climate science but his knowledge of dialectics is, as expected, respectable-. In the graphic five runs of the old CanESM (the original old one) which is not a CMIP5 model (CanESM2 is) are shown without referencing where the original conditions came from. The model runs also had some kind of hypothesis about greenhouse gases emissions for the years to come and that is not explicit. For the sake of the denialist interest in making the figure it well could have been "burn everything you find".

Yet we have some hints: both the temperature register and the model runs show coincidental slumps by the time of El Chichón and Pinatubo, so we can safely say that the run is set some time in the mid 90s.

However the model run is distorted about 0.35°C up to show a coincidence in 1979 as if it had been the start of the run but most presumably just because that makes it look the worst.

CanESM2 is know to have good components for the Arctic but I cannot say it is as much reputable about global temperatures. But, still, the graphic is yet another instance of denialist concoction that Arnold Martin fell for hook, line and sinker, probably for its shiny colours and because it sells what his epistemological hedonist is eager to buy: a feigned -and false- "you lie" to AGW.

 

[macdoc]

my angst is toward people who do not reveal the whole truth ... off camera we call them a bunch of liars , flown in luxury on multi million dollar budgets raised from school children and unsuspecting city folk.

Yet what do you say to the same coal magnates that knew the reality in 1995 yet continue to fund denial sites to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars....why are they exempt from your ire??

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

By ANDREW C. REVKINPublished: April 23, 2009

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=2

Climate Change Denial a Billion Dollar Industry of Fabrication Says Study
Added by Rebecca Savastio on December 22, 2013.

Climate changeA new study out of Drexel University in Philadelphia has exposed a billion dollar industry of fabrication-a complex construction of false information created by those engaged in climate change denial and the conservative organizations that support that denial. To uncover the organized effort, researchers examined the Climate Change Counter Movement (CCCM), a structured “think tank” supported by 91 official organizations and funded by 140 non-profits. The total budget for these synchronized groups as a whole is over 900 million dollars; funds that are provided largely by corporations, conservative organizations and groups set up specifically to promote climate change denial. The study, entitled Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations includes a meta-analysis of numerous previous studies.

The study found that these organizations and non-profits, as a unified body, deliberately put forth untrue propaganda in order to purposely confuse the public and create vast misunderstanding over climate change. The CCCM also endeavors to block legislation that could potentially harm the movement’s shareholders. The study states:

A number of analyses have shown that one major factor driving this misunderstanding and an overall lack of legislative action is a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate change.

are you an honest inquirer or a shill for that denial network?

BTW - the source of your graph is certainly part of that denial industry
http://www.desmogblog.com/discredit...-as-the-natural-resources-stewardship-project

 

[aleCcowaN]

You haven't presented anything scientific there. Much less explained what you are asking about. There is a good reason people study and go to school before jumping in to certain fields.

Here's a hint. Learn what OLR means. Then learn about what happens when the sun shines on ice.

you funny man!!!

So simply put you don't know the answer? what a surprise r-j!

As you don't know the answer -and hardly understand the question- you just attack the question an the person who asks

Stop hitting yourself r-j!!!

 

[Arnold Martin]

I've seen many instances in this topic where people claim the fossil fuel cabal is orchestrating a global conspiracy theory. None of those posts have ever been moved, much less considered off topic.

Myself I tend to believe there actually are vast conspiracies, some of them not even hidden at all, to defraud, to deceive, and to make damn sure the profits keep flowing in, and the fuel flowing out.

Certainly no government that taxes fuels wants to see any decrease in revenues.

Hello r-j ... may I take the opportunity to remove the myth about big bad oil companies.

There is no such thing , never has been , never will be. The oil companies have never been the "enemy"

It is you and I who want a gas station every 10 city blocks and every 10 miles in the countryside. We want the product and the oil companies are simply supplying us with what we want.

And there are so many of us doing it the oil companies have indeed become "big'

It is you and I who want 225,000 liters of fuel in the Boeing 747 so we can fly off to a ski vacation in the mountains

It is you and I who want low cost fossil fuels to heat our homes in the winter.

It is you and I who cause the coal burners to go max because we want the electricity to air condition our homes in the summer.

All the big energy company does is supply us with what we desire.

If we all stopped buying fuel tomorrow the oil companies would no longer exist.

But we will not stop buying fuel. We do not want to stop.

As a matter of fact I am sure the "big oil companies" would be quite happy if fuel use would decline a bit , it would save them a lot of very expensive exploration costs.

Best wishes

 

[macdoc]

The only fuel companies that are "big and bad" are those that deny their role in changing the climate.

There are numerous that do acknowledge and Exxon does now as well....but YOUR position is at odds with theirs.

Energy density and efficiency are critical and it's good to see Exxon acknowledge that need to reduce emissions.

How about you? are you willing to admit the problem and seek solutions to it?

They claim, with justification there is no alternative...not entirely correct but in the near term true enough.

Coal however there are alternatives and coal in the first world is simply not needed and Big Coal needs to take responsibility for the harm it causes downstream. It's not like it's broke.

Even there - the resistance is breaking....

Prevention would mean moving from fossil fuels to renewables. And Randolph seems to agree that we must at least limit fossil fuels. Referring to Australia’s carbon tax, he says, “there is not a qualifier saying it is okay to emit more greenhouse gases if the carbon tax is eliminated. An absolute ceiling is an absolute ceiling. Even if there isn’t a carbon tax, it still needs to be an issue we devote a lot of attention to.”

Randolph has even gone so far as to state, “In a carbon constrained world where energy coal is the biggest contributor to a carbon problem, how do you think this is going to evolve over a 30- to 40-year time horizon? You’d have to look at that and say on balance, I suspect, the usage of thermal coal is going to decline. And frankly it should.”

Strong words from a major contributor to the “carbon problem.” Why is BHP Billiton taking this position? Because climate change is affecting what the company cares about the most: their bottom line. Their main concern is profitability. Climate change is a threat to profits. So they’re doing what any sensible hard-nosed ballsy capitalist would do: they’re protecting their profits by investing in more durable facilities.

https://joinmosaic.com/blog/worlds-largest-mining-company-admits-climate-change-real

why are you so out of step??

 

[Trakar]

.........

What published scientific studies produced the data which this (peculiarly mis-keyed) graph is supposed to represent?

 

[r-j]

Hello r-j ... may I take the opportunity to remove the myth about big bad oil companies.

There is no such thing , never has been , never will be. The oil companies have never been the "enemy"

I'm not saying they are "the enemy", and certainly as you say, they would not exist with out customers. And the customers are the ones burning the fuel.

But, there certainly is a long history of bad fossil fuel companies. Starting with the big one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_and_anti-trust_legislation

Not that it was all bad of course. Then there was Exxon and the trashing of Alaska. BP and the Gulf of Mexico. Lots of bad things happen, and you can't lay them at the customers feet.

Like most things of great importance, there is much complication. None of it as simple as both sides want to tell you it is.