Fishermen shoot 40 protected seals.

[marshmat]

Nevertheless, a few errors do beg to be pointed out....

1) The Earth's average temperature has been rising over the last decade or so. For the three decades before that, it was cooling.

This is false. Temperature has been rising in perfect lockstep with atmospheric CO2 concentration since the 1950s.

2) There have been bigger global warming events in the past.

Have there? This one is only a few decades in. Previous ones took hundreds, if not thousands, of years to get as far as we have in 50. Look at the first and second time derivatives of temperature, as well as the temperature itself. Can't solve a nonlinear differential system with only one initial condition!

3) The events from the recent past, despite being more extreme in scope than the event currently happening, have not been shown to cause any particular extinction events, despite it being in the climatologists' best interests to show otherwise.

A climatologist's best interest is to tell the truth. Scientists, given free rein, rarely lie. When it looks like they are, it's usually because a politician or corporate exec has edited their work. Do some real research and you will see that the claim of recent warming events being more serious than today's is patently false.

4) In every global warming event, without fail, the temperature has always, always gone back down.

Absolutely true. This usually takes five to fifteen millennia.

No runaway greenhouse effect, even with 10 times the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Umm.... actually, the natural atmospheric CO2 fluctuation has never gone over 300 ppm as far back as we can trace. We're already pushing 400 ppm, and will hit 500 ppm by mid-century if we keep up as we are. Remember that the difference between 250 and 300 ppm is the difference between a nice day and being buried under a mile of ice, now visualize the difference between 300 and 500. (Yes I'm stealing Al Gore's line, few naysayers understand the actual science so this might make a more logical picture.)

[stonebreaker]

Originally Posted by marshmat

Nevertheless, a few errors do beg to be pointed out....


Umm.... actually, the natural atmospheric CO2 fluctuation has never gone over 300 ppm as far back as we can trace.

Yes it has, and all the rest.
http://www.physorg.com/news68305951.html

[marshmat]

as far as we can trace, not estimate.... we can measure back 700 millennia, but the technique in that physorg article (btw, that's NOT a peer-reviewed journal) is a means of estimating possibilities, nothing more. You're completely missing the point- climate change is already affecting billions of people, even if you deny it's happening. Your opinion means nothing to Mother Nature.

[Poida]

Marshmat, the result of a scientist's findings, depends on who's paying for the research to be done.

The geeks say they know why the Earth is getting warmer. Greenhouse gasses, ozone depletion or whatever.

People with basic common sense a trait not found in geeks realise that we once had an ice age. The ice age is near completion except for the polar regions.

Here is a multiple choice question.
Did the ice start melting because the Earth got colder? Did it melt because the Earth stayed at the same temperature? Or, did it melt because the Earth got warmer?

Hands up all those who believe the Earth got warmer. Yes the Earth has been getting warmer for probably a million years. Greenhouse crap has probably little to do with it.

Geeks say the oceans will rise when the ice melts. Reports show that the ocean levels have dropped since the ice age. Since ice is 10% bigger than water it takes up less room and so the oceans level goes down.

What about the ice mountains at the poles. Yeah maybe a geek has calculated the area of the oceans and the volume of the ice mountains and calculated a rise.

But, common sense knows that the level of the ocean also effects the level of the water table, or also known as ground water under the soil. So if there was a rise in the oceans, the rain produced by evaporation from the ocean would not all be returned to the ocean but added to the water table.

The rise in the oceans would be minimal. Now since I am 59 years old I will not see my prediction come true.

I wish for my theory to be known as the "Poida Principle"

Trusting you can tread water.
poida

[hansp77]

Originally Posted by marshmat

Are you watching this issue in peer-reviewed scientific journals, or in the mainstream media?

Originally Posted by marshmat

This question is a lot more relevant than it sounds, folks. If you're not at a university or other major independent research centre, you're probably getting your info and opinions from the mainstream media.
Show me ONE study in a peer-reviewed journal in the last ten years that supports the position in posts 52 and 56. I can guarantee you will not be able to find one.
Now look at the mainstream media. Here, debate is about 50/50 on the issue and genuine scientific data almost never appears.
Scientific consensus over 10 years: 100% of articles say human activity is causing massive changes in climate, faster and more severe than any natural event in a million years. Not one study has concluded otherwise, even those that were created to do so.

Thanks Matt,
these posts and your next ones have been well thought out and cut straight to the heart of the matter.

Show us the (peer-reviewed) scientific studies.

The media still seems to need to present this issue as some sort of balance or logical debate. Because of this we get lucritive lecture and interview circuits in climate change sceptisism. Most of these guys are the same few who get funneled and recylced from event to TV station and back again, rehashing their same old tired and incorrect theories and figures, and making a fortune.

There IS real scientific debate about climate change. It is not whether or not humans are responsible, it is over what the results and repercussions of this change will be.

Matt, you have much more patience than me in this debate

I would like to make a few points though.

Yes, climate change, and global temperature rises and falls have happened in the past.
What is of concern is THE RATE OF CHANGE!
Just last week in two lectures I attended on the issue is was said that the temperature change that we have witnessed over the las 50 years, can only be witnessed in the historical record happening over a time frame of 1,000 years.
So nature has dealt with change in the past. Species and ecologies IN THE PAST have had the time and space available to migrate north or south, or up and down in altitude to the conditions to which their physiologies are adapted to. Not only may the rate of change negate this possibility now, but 'nature' is now so depleted, degraded and sliced up in little islands. In a lot of cases, there simply is no where for these ecoystems to move to.


Climate change IS affecting people right now.
As far as nature goes, in the 1980's the Golden Toad in Costa Rica is said to have become the first species to become extinct due to climate change (Flannery, T. 2005).
The other thing is that global temperature plays a rather slow game of catch up to GHG accumulation. If we were to shut down every GHG producing power plant and car, etc, then we are still committed to further global warming.

These gasses last a long long time.

Hardly a scientific journal, but wikipedia quote on GHG's (Quoting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC))

Examples of the atmospheric lifetime and GWP for several greenhouse gases include:
CO2 has a variable atmospheric lifetime (approximately 200-450 years for small perturbations). Recent work indicates that recovery from a large input of atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels will result in an effective lifetime of tens of thousands of years.[10][11] Carbon dioxide is defined to have a GWP of 1 over all time periods.
Methane has an atmospheric lifetime of 12 ± 3 years and a GWP of 62 over 20 years, 23 over 100 years and 7 over 500 years. The decrease in GWP associated with longer times is associated with the fact that the methane is degraded to water and CO2 by chemical reactions in the atmosphere.
Nitrous oxide has an atmospheric lifetime of 120 years and a GWP of 296 over 100 years.
CFC-12 has an atmospheric lifetime of 100 years and a GWP(100) of 10600.
HCFC-22 has an atmospheric lifetime of 12.1 years and a GWP(100) of 1700.
Tetrafluoromethane has an atmospheric lifetime of 50,000 years and a GWP(100) of 5700.
Sulfur hexafluoride has an atmospheric lifetime of 3,200 years and a GWP(100) of 22000.
Source : IPCC, table 6.7.

Climate change needs to be understood in terms of momentum. Once the ball is rolling, which it is now, then even if we take the foot off the accelerator it is still going to roll up for a while yet.

Then of course we have to face up to positive feedback loops.

Throw Global Dimming into the picture, and things get even scarier.

enough from me.

Hans.

[stonebreaker]

Originally Posted by marshmat

as far as we can trace, not estimate.... we can measure back 700 millennia, but the technique in that physorg article (btw, that's NOT a peer-reviewed journal) is a means of estimating possibilities, nothing more. You're completely missing the point- climate change is already affecting billions of people, even if you deny it's happening. Your opinion means nothing to Mother Nature.

I never denied it's happening - go back and check. What I said was climatologists are full of ****.

[safewalrus]

Isn't nice to see that the puny hu - mans think they can control and affect their planet Jesus my son!

But surely father they may if they let of all those little nuclear bombs they have?

But my son even they are not that stupid are they?

Earth to God - oh yes we are if we can get a point across!