- Joined
- Jun 23, 2005
- Messages
- 32,504
- Reaction score
- 22,762
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Moderate
Their second favorite tactic is to point to the current weather and say "how can it be the worst snow in recent years and still be global warming".
You are correct, Deuce did not change your words. It was quite sufficient for him to simply refute the validity of your statements.
The warming in recent years did slow, on a very small scale. (ten years or so) It can be attributed to a slight dip in solar irradiance (the sun's output fluctuates up and down very slightly on a couple-decade cycle) as well as La Nina. (El Nino and La Nina are a cyclical oceanic event in which the ocean releases or absorbs heat) In 1998, we had a peak in solar output combined with the largest El Nino event we've ever recorded, which conspired to create an exceptionally hot year. I think 1995 was also quite hot. This gave the appearance of a slowed warming, but the underlying forcings are still there. (CO2 and water vapor have not decreased, global cloud cover hasn't changes significantly, the earth's orbit doesn't change noticeably on such a small timescale, etc)
Models and measurements show we're entering a new El Nino phase, so 2010 or 2011 are likely to set a new record high temperature.
Getting to your A/B/C. I'll focus on the first two since they pretty much are the heart of C.
A: ) Is a CO2 increase being a major participant in this warming?
Most definitely!
B: ) Is the CO2 increase our fault and not natural? (paraphrased)
spectrographic analysis of CO2 in the atmosphere can actually tell the difference between naturally released CO2 and CO2 released as part of burning fossil fuels. Most of the "new" carbon in the atmosphere comes from us.
Except he didn't refute anything I said. I made no comment about the veracity of scandals, etc. I simply stated that the debate has been tainted by scandal.
It would really help if you would learn to ****ing read before you start yammering out the crap you post.
The thing I don't trust is how they come up with a list of causes, which may be incomplete due to not understanding elements of climate, and arriving at CO2 as the culprit through the process of elimination. That is not positive evidence.It is possible that there are additional variables that we're not aware of, but it is clear at this point that any new variables will not be very powerful. The reason we know this is that the climate models are very accurate: if you run the computer model backwards against known temperature values, we find that it matches very closely.
Temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years. The black line towards the end is the directly measured temperatures. You'll see a couple of the lines terminate partway back because those measurements were not taken prior to those dates or the method doesn't allow for it. (good luck finding enough 1500 year old trees, for instance) The reason I show this graph is to show that temperature reconstructions are done with a lot of methods, and they all pretty much match.
CO2 was not discovered by elimination. Its absorption spectrum has been known for more than a hundred years, and we fine-tuned that knowledge down to the exact wavelength in the 1950's thanks to the USAF. (they were working on heat-seeking missiles) The theory that this might have a greenhouse effect came more than a hundred years ago as well, but at the time our fossil fuel usage was very small, so it was little more than a curiosity. Still, scientists love those experiments. You can experiment easily on a small scale to prove whether CO2 makes the air absorb more heat. Once that is done, you look for historical evidence that global temperatures have correlated to global CO2 levels, and that has also been established.
None of this approaches the discussion of what ought to be done, if it is in fact true. I don't think anything should be done. I think the earth will adjust and compensate. We should not radically change our economy. We are not even the worst offender. It is a policy issue.
The earth will adjust, certainly. We're in no danger of harming the earth. We are, however, in danger of harming ourselves. We can adapt to changes, but if those changes are too rapid there will be a significant human cost. Crop yields will suffer, increasing hunger issues. Melting ice caps will increase sea levels, slowly taking away usable land. Extreme weather events will increase in frequency. Animal species can only adapt so quickly also. It's not going to kill us all or end human civilization, but it's going to hurt like hell.
Plus, we're going to run out of fossil fuels eventually anyway. We've already seen how much we depend on the price of oil, with some of the spikes in price over the last couple years. Gas prices in the long term will never go down. We need to move ourselves off this black gooey crap that we pull out of the ground, and while we're doing it we can take care of that carbon issue. Gradual changes are always easier, and the sooner you start the more gradual it can be.
Except he didn't refute anything I said. I made no comment about the veracity of scandals, etc. I simply stated that the debate has been tainted by scandal.
It would really help if you would learn to ****ing read before you start yammering out the crap you post.
The thing I don't trust is how they come up with a list of causes, which may be incomplete due to not understanding elements of climate, and arriving at CO2 as the culprit through the process of elimination. That is not positive evidence.
None of this approaches the discussion of what ought to be done, if it is in fact true. I don't think anything should be done. I think the earth will adjust and compensate. We should not radically change our economy. We are not even the worst offender. It is a policy issue.
I wasn't trying to refute your statement. I know climate science is tainted by scandal. What I was trying to show is that the scandals have no grounds in reality. Unfortunately, the general public doesn't know and doesn't care enough to go find out. You don't seem intent on being any different. If that's the case, perhaps this thread is not for you. Feel free to link some skeptics arguments though, just make sure it's not one I've already addressed.
I think we understand the exchange we had. Now if Catawba would take a moment to go back and make sure he understands what happened, we could all be on the same page. :lol:
I understand the appearance of scandal did nothing to change the consensus of mainstream scientists regarding ACC.
I understand the appearance of scandal did nothing to change the consensus of mainstream scientists regarding ACC.
Do not return to this thread. Pretty simple. People unwilling to discuss the topic do not belong in this thread. Or in this forum, really. You come to a debate forum and post stuff like that?
Moderator's Warning: |
Of course it wouldn't, it doesnt foward the idea of big environmnt...:shrug:
Oh yes, I forgot there were those that still believed all the world's major scientific academies have been in a conspiracy for decades and that the only accurate source on science now were right wing bloggers. :roll:
I'll just stick with the scientific consensus myself.
You do that, just don't trust the e-mails. :ssst:
I'll stick with natural climate cycles. :shrug:
Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.
The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community.
Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.
There is a modest consensus that AGW is at work. The predictions associated with the same are outside all realms of the rational, for anyone who has followed them all. I recall another now infamous scientific "consensus" that was pushed not too long ago. It was based upon research, modeling and supported by peer reviewed research papers. According to it, the world quite literally would by this date be over populated and famine running rampant across the globe. Go figure.:roll:Isn't it almost like circular reasoning to trust something because of "scientific consensus?" Spontaneous generation was also something that had "scientific consensus." The truth is that AGW doesn't have total scientific consensus, many disagree with it in the scientific community. We can't rule out that they believe it to save their jobs. Honestly, do you think a guy working at NASA or the IPCC who believes that AGW is a false theory could keep his job? There is an agenda behind AGW, the data is corrupted and scandalous, maybe scientists aren't as open-minded and as factually objective as they would have us believe.
We've been tracking those and this one isn't natural.
And I am supposed to take your word for it? :ssst:
What Deuce is suggesting is that we look at the science of it.
"While it is undoubtably true that there are some cycles and natural variations in global climate, anyone who wishes to insist that the current warming is purely natural or even just mostly natural has two challenges. Firstly, they need to identify just what the mechanism is behind this alleged natural cycle, because absent a forcing of some sort, there will be no change in global energy balance. So natural or otherwise, we should be able to find this mysterious cause. Secondly, a "natural cause" proponent needs to come up with some explanation for how a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas does not itself affect the global temperature. Theory predicts that the temperature will rise given an enhanced greenhouse effect, how is it possible this is not happening?
In other words, the mainstream climate science community has provided a well developed, internally consistent theory that predicts the effects we are observing. It provides explanations and makes predictions. Where is the sceptic community's model, or theory whereby CO2 does not affect the temperature? Where is the evidence of some other natural forcing, like the Milankovich cycles that controlled the ice ages, a fine historical example of a very dramatic and very regular climate cycle that can be read in the ice core records taken both in Greenland and in the Antarctic?
Is this a candidate for today's warming? A naive reading of this cycle indicates we should be experiencing a cooling trend now, and indeed we were very gradually cooling over the length of the pre-industrial Holocene, something around .5C averaged over 8000 years. Not only is the direction of the change wrong, but it is informative to compare the speed of those fluctuations to today's changes. Leaving aside the descents into glaciation, which were much more gradual, the very sudden (geologically speaking) jumps up in temperature every ~100Kyrs actually represent a rate of change roughly ten times slower than the rate we are currently witnessing.
So could the current change be natural? Well, there is no identified natural cause (and they have been looked for), there is no theory of climate in which CO2 does not drive the temperature and the natural cycle precedents do not show the same extreme reaction we are now witnessing.
(That would be a "No") "
This is Just a Natural Cycle : A Few Things Ill Considered
Nothing about that changes the fact that climate does change in a cyclic fashion, that it is unmeasured how much man actually influences it, or whether the change is going to be catastrophic.
Now, let's see your scientific evidence of natural only causes for this climate change?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?