What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Jimbo1490]

Thomas,
That page has been posted, and I've read it before. I hate to say it's just more obfuscation and circular reasoning, but....

First, that CO2 levels increases lag temperature increases in the climate record is a relatively new revelation. 20 years ago, it was believed otherwise,(the data wasn't 'clear' yet) and we were waiting for 'better data' to really solidly confirm the hypothesis of AGW increasing anthropogenic CO2, thus implicating anthropogenic CO2 in recent warming. Of course that didn't happen, the lag was the other way around by a convincing margin.

But instead of admitting that this cast doubt that CO2 levels cause warming (and CO2 levels must therefore logically lead temp increases) Mann and Hansen simply came up with a more complex theory, implying that a dangerous positive feedback loop exists and that while the initial perturbation may not have been an increase in CO2, whatever that perturbation was, it caused temps to rise, which in turn caused CO2 levels to rise, driving temps up which further releases CO2, etc.

The first problem with this is that even during 'lulls' in natural CO2 production, anthropogenic CO2 is only a tiny fraction of the total. Natural CO2 production and natural fluxes are always what really dominates and regulates the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The fluxes are already coping with way bigger amounts of CO2; one little bit more is not going to matter. That's still true today.

And whatever perturbs temperature to drive CO2 levels up, we know that there must exist natural negative feedbacks to prevent a dangerous positive feedback loop from forming, because the climate never ran away in the past, even when natural source/flux balance was putting THOUSANDS of times more CO2 into the atmosphere than we are today, driving nascent CO2 levels to 10X or 20X what they are today. Yet the fluxes and negative feedbacks worked. We did not burn up or overheat.

As Boston pointed out, there have been rapid climate changes in the past. Note that these were wholly of natural origin.

The second problem was alluded to in that page. You see, while the 'cabal' admits that CO2 did not drive temperature over large scales of time, They still continue to insist that it must have driven it initially in small time scales that we cannot properly analyze with core samples for the various reasons stated. So they keep falling back to that (prob'ly to avoid the whole feedback loop logical fallacy).

Now this sounds a lot like the 'just wait for the better cores and you'll see' arguments we heard back in the 80's when they still thought that the paleoclimate was going to show a CLEAR cause and effect 'tween CO2 level and warming (which I love to point out, it did not).

And the reason that they still insist that CO2 must have been the initial cause, but our data analysis is still not yet precise enough to detect it? THEY HAVE NO OTHER EXPLANATION! Yep, back to the old standby; blame the humans, redux with coplexifications! It's that now they are saying that older perturbations must have been due to rising CO2 also so that they can now say (with some shred of credibility) that rising CO2 now is the cause of recent warming. GOD FORBID (or Gaia forbid ) that there might actually be some other natural cause of the warming/perturbation besides greenhouse warming due to rising CO2 levels, because if they admitted that, then those pesky skeptics might rightly raise the question : "if so and so caused the perturbation 10,000 years ago, then who is to say that is not what is actually happening now???"

So if the data gets even more precise, and we can see that Temp increases lead CO2 increases even in smaller time scales, THEN WHAT?? Do you think the cabal will finally back down? I doubt it.

Thomas, I don't pretend to know what is driving the earth's temperature up or down, whichever way it is going in the short/medium/long term. Guillermo has uniquely among us posted some of the most interesting alternate theories/mechanisms that might alone or in concert be the cause. But I do know that the warming we have seen in the last few decades DOES NOT look like greenhouse warming. The very guys who now insist it is greenhouse warming are the same guys who told us what to look for ITO the location and magnitude, etc of the warming to prove that it is greenhouse warming. So we looked and waited and when the data came in, the answer was not what greenhouse theory predicts; in fact it's all WRONG. So why still believe that what we are observing is greenhouse warming?


Jimbo

[Boston]

I notice we are studiously not going to admit that there is a growing consensus among scientists concerning rapid global climate change
up from
60% in 91 vs 97% in 07

the failure to admit even the most obvious points is a clear indication you have no intention of ever giving science a reasonable consideration

Jim

Or graphed another way

are you kidding me
a graph is a graph is a graph
axis x,y,z
you got some secret way to draw a graph you need to clue the scientific community in on the discovery
cause no mater how many times you graph the same data it should turn out the same
at least in the wild world of science that is
sounds like someone is fudging there data to create "another way"

G
Ill go check out what you are offering for review
may take a few days depending on what it is and who wrote it
if its author doesn't pass muster IE published work
then it may be a short review

there is a reason we have the refereed forum of peer review
it kinda weeds out the riff raff
and pre filters BS from the relevant data

Jim once you are able and actually make the admission that the vast and growing majority of scientist have formed a consensus then we can move on the why they have made that consensus
until then it is fruitless to address any other point

[Jimbo1490]

Boston,

Peer review is as broken as the US patent system. Even your usual cursory research would reveal that.

If peer review works, then why did MBH-98 ever pass muster? How about the semi-fraudulent audit of the surface data gathering network a couple of years back? Yup passed peer review, too.

And if peer review is SO damned important, Why won't Hansen submit his absolutely CRITICAL (and HIGHLY controversial) adjustment algorithms for the satellite and surface temp data to peer review You want all the people who oppose AGW to be subject to the most stringent standards of peer review and the highest ethical standards imaginable, or else we are expected to dismiss everything they say, yet you can quite easily put up with a steaming pile of fresh dog **** from your own camp. You, sir are naught more than a common HYPOCRITE

Jimbo

[bntii]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

The first problem with this is that even during 'lulls' in natural CO2 production, anthropogenic CO2 is only a tiny fraction of the total. Natural CO2 production and natural fluxes are always what really dominates and regulates the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The fluxes are already coping with way bigger amounts of CO2; one little bit more is not going to matter. That's still true today.
Jimbo

Actually the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is ~35% higher as a direct result of our activities and rapidly increasing.
It is not debated, uncontested, clearly understood and acknowledged by both sides of the debate.

The question has been settled for decades. The issue, to the extent that any existed, was not how we increased the levels of atmospheric carbon but why the levels were not far higher... such is the quantity of emissions we release each year.

More than a year ago in the prior thread I requested that this debate go no further than this issue till it is resolved.

The quantity of carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere each year.
The rate of increase is unprecedented at 200 times the rate seen in the last 800,000 years, and has reached levels higher than any seem over this same period. All within the last 150 years.

Two questions:

1)By how much does the level of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere each year? (the net gain by weight)
2)How much carbon do we place in the atmosphere each year? (weight)

The rate in increase we are currently experiencing is unprecedented.

[Jimbo1490]

The critical data that we need for a logical discussion of the cause and effect of this thing is all right there in front of you, Thomas: Look and see that CO2 levels were increasing, by your admission here, for the last 150 years. I say it's even longer than that; I have a graph that shows since about 1820. But humans have been releasing CO2 in climatologically significant amounts only since the close of WWII. Hansen chose his start point as 1958 for the same reason. The perturbation had clearly already occurred. Selecting the 1820-1850 anthropogenic carbon level as the beginning of 'climatologically significant' is scientifically untenable, which is why you won't find even AGW scientists advocating this position. This increase must therefore be natural.

The natural source/flux system 'trades' quantities of CO2 at least two orders of magnitude larger than we emit. A little bit more from us is in the noise. If you can accept that CO2 increases are from a warming ocean, and that the oceans take several hundred years to warm, and that we only have a ~60 year 'look back' for the effects of human CO2 emissions, then you can see why I'm a skeptic. It's a reasoned position that I arrived a later, after holding the 'other' view for about 16 years.

Jimbo

[bntii]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

Boston,

Peer review is as broken as the US patent system. Even your usual cursory research would reveal that.

If peer review works, then why did MBH-98 ever pass muster? How about the semi-fraudulent audit of the surface data gathering network a couple of years back? Yup passed peer review, too.

And if peer review is SO damned important, Why won't Hansen submit his absolutely CRITICAL (and HIGHLY controversial) adjustment algorithms for the satellite and surface temp data to peer review You want all the people who oppose AGW to be subject to the most stringent standards of peer review and the highest ethical standards imaginable, or else we are expected to dismiss everything they say, yet you can quite easily put up with a steaming pile of fresh dog **** from your own camp. You, sir are naught more than a common HYPOCRITE

Jimbo

Jimbo,
Have you looked into how HBH98 played out?
Looks like the finding were largely substantiated in the view of the additional research and review:

Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives

July 19, 2006

"The basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Dr. Mann and his colleagues was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.

Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. (1998, 1999) and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. However, the substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales. We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities."

The detractors argument was found wanting:

"...we do not think that McIntyre has substantially contributed in the published peer-reviewed literature to the debate about the statistical merits of the MBH and related method. They have published one peer-reviewed article on a statistical aspect, and we have published a response – acknowledging that they would have a valid point in principle, but the critique would not matter in the case of the hockey-stick ... we see in principle two scientific inputs of McIntyre into the general debate – one valid point, which is however probably not relevant in this context, and another which has not been properly documented."

And Mann has updated the study:

Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia

1. Michael E. Mann*,†,
2. Zhihua Zhang*,
3. Malcolm K. Hughes‡,
4. Raymond S. Bradley§,
5. Sonya K. Miller*,
6. Scott Rutherford¶, and
7. Fenbiao Ni‡

Communicated by Lonnie G. Thompson, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, June 26, 2008 (received for review November 20, 2007)

Abstract

Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.

So as it turns out fraud is not involved and the findings confirmed in spite of some proxies used beyond certainty in the early study

BTW- Hansens algorithms are open source published on the nasa site:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Still trying to sort Hansens other paper........

Thanks,
Thomas

Guillermo-
I am reading the study. Offhand I see that the issue is to increase sun spots as a result of this mechanism. I already see the solar forcing from this activity acknowledged in the science so don't know if this will play out in any substantive manner. Have a additional paper which has the math... it looks like there is something of a tidal influence imparted on the sun by the gravity of the planets. This influence effects the incidence of sunspots. The paper finds that the effect is present though "slight". I will post something when I get it sorted.

[Boston]

hey Guillermo
way to throw a wrench into the works
this one will take a while but I would like to address it
Im trying to find his paper assuming he submitted one
but its a twist I seem to remember hearing at one time
Ill get back to you soonest
B

gotta give that round to Bntii Jim
he kicked your but on HBH98

gotta give him the next round as well with that global fossil emissions graph Im pretty sure I posted that a while back as well

your answer to that was seriously flawed

Look and see that CO2 levels were increasing, by your admission here, for the last 150 years. I say it's even longer than that; I have a graph that shows since about 1820. But humans have been releasing CO2 in climatologically significant amounts only since the close of WWII.

e gads Jim
did you just say

humans have been releasing CO2 in climatologically significant amounts since the close of WWII.

sounds a little contradictory to your argument that anthropogenic co2 is insignificant
yerp
that round goes to B the crusher ntii

course I gotta give myself a round since you are abviously not going to respond to

I notice we are studiously not going to admit that there is a growing consensus among scientists concerning rapid global climate change
up from
60% in 91 vs 97% in 07

the failure to admit even the most obvious points is a clear indication you have no intention of ever giving science a reasonable consideration

your digging a pretty deep hole here Jim
maybe G will dive in and help you out some
I gotta wonder if the readers wouldn't like to see you at least concede that there is a consensus within the scientific community
97% is a pretty convincing number

once you realize there is a consensus
you can begin to understand why there is a consensus

again I gotta give the Crusher a hand when he mentioned
( B you gotta edit line 2 a little )

Actually the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is ~35% higher as a direct result of our activities and rapidly increasing.
It is not debated, uncontested, clearly understood and acknowledged by both sides of the debate.

The question has been settled for decades. The issue, to the extent that any existed, was not how we increased the levels of atmospheric carbon but why the levels were not far higher... such is the quantity of emissions we release each year.

More than a year ago in the prior thread I requested that this debate go no further than this issue till it is resolved.

I might also add that we are not just talking co2 either

"When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for nine percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases."

It generates 65 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide, a gas that is 296 times more effective at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide (CO2), the biggest greenhouse-gas by volume. Most of this pollution comes from manure.

Livestock also accounts for 37 percent of all human-induced methane, which is 23 times as warming as CO2 and is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and for 64 percent of ammonia, a big contributor to acid rain.

maybe another analogy would help you out some

when you were a kid and maybe you were visiting your grand folks house
did you ever get stuck in the same room with your brother
now what if grandma served beans for dinner and old bro just loved em
ate the hole pot
did he change the atmosphere of the room any later that night
so if even one little burp from the wrong end of old bro could have killed the pope
imagine the worlds 1.3 billion cattle going at it
or the 2.5 billion pigs
or the 24 billion chickens

think of that room as a little microcosm of our planet
now
would you like bro to eat something a little less say
inflammatory
would you prefer he change his eating habits a little so we dont loose the pope to the delicate bouquet

what would you think of old bro if he just smiled and ordered up another crock of beans

[bntii]

Careful Boston..

Jimbo is particularly good at finding the holes in arguments.
There are several in what we posted that one could drive a truck through...

Guillermo posted the papers URL BTW:

http://www.griffith.edu.au/conferenc...pdf/ICS176.pdf

[Jimbo1490]

The data about methane is particularly amusing since on all continents (including Oz; we're talking the big red roos, here) there were herds of ruminant animals that numbered in the many hundreds of millions, certainly much larger than todays' (mostly) domestic herds, the wild herds having been decimated by (sometimes intentional) over hunting, habitat loss and the like. As you may know CH4 is a much more potent GH gas than CO2. And yet the climate did not 'run away'. Makes you go: Hmmmmm......

Even the 'question' of the provenance of nascent CO2 increases is not nearly as simple as the AGW crowd likes to pretend. You see, carbon from petroleum and coal has a different isotopic 'fingerprint' than that sourced from plants. This is how you can take a bit of CO2 sampled from the atmosphere and determine what fraction of that CO2 has a 'fossil' fuel provenance and which does not. It's undisputed that the amount attributed to these fuels has increased over the last two centuries. But what if the percentage does not reflect a true proxy for the provenance of ALL additional CO2, as the AGW pundits claim it does? What could skew the readings? Well, as it turns out, the photosynthetic organisms prefer, by a slight but statistically significant margin, the non-fossil fuel CO2, for photosynthesis. So this will have the effect, over many years, of skewing the proxy toward the CO2 that's of 'fossil' fuel provenance, thus ruining the proxy's reliability. We have been burning coal for hundreds of years, after all, so this has been an ongoing problem. Now scientists know about this problem and they do try to account for it. The problem is that the way they account for it is with another correction factor that amounts to a *guess* . There's really nothing else they could do because we don't know if the slight preference has always existed, or if it's temperature dependent, or dependent on some solar interaction or what. We just don't know enough. The problem is, this little bit of missing knowledge is absolutely critical to the whole argument: just how much of the nascent CO2 up there is 'OUR' CO2 and not natures

My citation that climatologically significant CO2 releases began circa 1950 is a good anchor for my argument that you can't trust the isotopic proxy; the fact that said proxy shows significant increases in 'fossil' sourced CO2 almost 200 years ago, when our emissions were two orders of magnitude less than present, bolsters my argument, not yours.

Jimbo

[Jimbo1490]

Thomas,
That (some of) Hansen's algorithms are NOW published does not let him of the hook one bit. Though not mentioned at the NASA site (of course) , it was only after YEARS of rancor that he finally released them, and he won't yet budge on the corrections to the surface measurements. What we do know about the surface measurements with a high degree of certainty, is that they skew temperatures upward. Yet Hansen's 'corrections' alter the surface temp data HIGHER STILL, not lower as any reasonable person would expect. Yet he won't explain this. The surface data is and has always been the 'backbone' of claims of alarming warming, NOT the satellite data. This despite the fact that basic greenhouse theory (and all the climate models) insist that the bulk of the warming should be in the middle of the atmosphere(the troposphere) NOT at the surface.

Jimbo

[Jimbo1490]

Thomas;

On the attempts to resurrect the stature of MBH-98, are you now saying that temperatures continued upward on the trend of the upward slope of the 1998 spike which is now attributed to a strong El Nino? Or are you now saying that the medieval warm period was not very warm or widespread? Or that the little ice age was not very cold and not global in scope? Those are the assertions of MBH-98, you know. As before if you take out one single proxy (the bristlecone pines) the whole thing falls apart. Is that the recon you are trying to reinstate? Does this sound reasonable to you?

Jimbo

[bntii]

Forgive me for doing this...

ALL of the issues raised in #1422 have been raised and answered in this thread.

On Carbon- as the yearly carbon emissions are more than double the yearly increase of atmospheric Co2, do you believe that there would be a net yearly increase of atmospheric Co2 in the absence of these emissions?

If so, why?

It looks to me that the environment is a net sink accounting the quantity of our emissions we do not see being retained in the atmosphere.
All indications are that saturation of near surface ocean waters is decreasing the capacity of the oceanic sink, while exposed peat, accelerated decay of organics, etc are increasing the Co2 load into the atmosphere. Additionally, in spite of all talk to the contrary, our emissions are rapidly increasing.
The oceans are in general a carbon sink. Co2 is sequestered in sediments which over time become sedimentary rocks such as the shale's, limestone's and in the fossil fuels we now burn. By burning fossil fuels we are releasing Co2 which had been sequestered by the oceans over hundreds of millions of years. This release is occurring in an almost instantaneous time frame. That is why we are seeing such a rapid unprecedented rate of increase in atmospheric Co2.
The capacity of the oceans to capture Co2 is so large that our emissions are rapidly removed from the atmosphere. The limits to this capacity are reflected in the quantity of Co2 which remains in the atmosphere and continues to increase each year. In the long run all of our emissions will simply be again sequestered by the oceans. In the short term they are accumulating in the atmosphere.

On post #1423... I am still digesting the debate so can't say anything about the particulars of Hansens 'A' 'B' and 'C' scenarios... At to Manns MBH-98 curve and the meaning... the curve is confirmed as a valid observation on the uniqueness of 20th century warming in the last 1k years or so.

[aztek]

Hi
Just a nice little quote here from Sarah Palin, John Macains former running mate in the US presidential election, (not sure if its perfect)
'there is no such thing as global warming its just god hugging us a little harder'
we owe our lives to the Americans who voted Obama.

[bntii]

It's a Saturday Night Live skit...

Funny stuff:

http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...-lady-macbeth/

[Boston]

aztec that was hilarious

Jim
still ignoring that consensus eh
97% is a big number

that was a great article G

If your trying to prove the complexity of the problem
the Author Mackey quotes extensively, for instance
Shirley (2006) who assumes a homogeneous sun in refuting De Jager/Versteegh (2005)
who were refuting Fairbridge (1984) Fairbridge/Saunders (1987) Fairbridge (1997) 
Mackey then makes a short plea for the non homogeneous nature of the sun


( if he really wanted to confuse things he could have mentioned the suns iron alloy transitional layer theorized by Dr Oliver Manuel who has published countless papers on why the typical hydrogen model must be reconsidered )

Mackey (2007) also mentions Juckett (2000) Juckett (2003) offering that no model for sunspot theory based on primary drivers was satisfactory Mackey (2007) then goes on to write a ten page abstract with five pages of contributing literature cited

way to bring a bottomless pit into the argument G


Im going to answer by sticking to basics
and the fundamental question which 
is

is human activity effecting climate change

if you bear with me I think I can clear up at least one element of the misunderstanding that is fundamental to the debate 



if there are ten drivers to the climate system, and you alter or add one, does it remove from consideration the others?
our sun will obviously have the largest impact on climate and climate change 
and it is a dynamic factor 

no one is saying it isnt
however it is not the only factor 
and that is the crux of the debate


no one is arguing that the sun, of all things isnt responsible for our present climate 
I would point out the ridiculous nature of the argument by quoting a portion of Mackey (2007)

SCAFETTA and WEST
(2006a) and (2006c) estimate that the sun contributed as much as
40 to 50 per cent of the 1900 to 2000 global warming and 25 to 35
per cent of the 1980 to 2000 global warming.


I couldnt help but notice that these guys implicitly agree that the old globe is warming

must be part of that 97% I keep mentioning

I would ask that if the sun only contributed to say 30% of global warming during the 1980 to 2000 period
what did they feel was responsible for the dramatic change in warming from the 1900 to 2000 period if it wasnt the sun

my own personal theory is that these two lab rats dont get out much
sun keeps this place from being a lifeless rock 

but thats not the issue 

the issue is that humans are altering the atmospheric ( and the oceanic, for that mater ) chemistry and that,
that alteration is having an effect on our climate

a much simpler proof could have been 


if you go to

http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0411165
page 5 fig 3

SPACE CLIMATE MANIFESTATION IN EARTH PRICES – FROM
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND UP TO MODERN USA

L.A. PUSTILNIK1,2, G. YOM DIN3
1
Israel Cosmic Ray and Space Weather Center, Tel Aviv University and Israel Space
Agency, P.O.Box 2217, Katzrin, 12900, Israel; levpust@post.tau.ac.il
2
Sea of Galilee Astrophysical Observatory, Jordan Valley College, 15132, Israel
3
Golan Research Institute, Katzrin, 12900, Israel; rres102@research.haifa.ac.il

page 5 figure 3

 Comparison of interval distributions for CUC prices, wheat price bursts, and minimum-to- minimum sunspot intervals.

this clearly shows a correlation between wheat prices and sun spot activity. The concept is certainly nothing new and has been written about for quite some time; Swift (1726); Hershel (1801); Jevons (1878); to name a few

there is a basic misconception that the 97% of scientists who agree that humans are effecting a change in our global climate have for some reason failed to consider other mitigating factors; on the contrary those other mitigating factors are carefully considered, along with the new mitigating factor of human activity


this new mitigating factor is primarily based on modern mans use of fossil fuels and mans exploding population, its resultant land use and domestic animal production visible and invisible pollutants of varying types and the destruction of the ecosystem.
it seems obvious to the vast majority that this new factor is having an effect 
and its probably not good

the issue isnt the sun spot cycle
nor is it volcanic activity
nor is it the equatorial bulge
these things have always been mitigating factors in the overal global climate and its dynamic nature
what is at issue is whats new in the system
and whats new is the millions of gigatons of crap we are spewing into the atmosphere an its inevitable consequences

oh Jim
my point is that in the usa bison numbers were estimated round 60 million,
today, about twice that number of cattle alone are grazed,
in the usa 110 + million
we have replaced the wild animals we used to eat with twice as many less efficient ones
plus the additional population plus other additional farm animals
today through the use of chemical fertilizers and lots of drugs we are torturing more animals onto less land than ever
and producing more waist, more greenhouse gasses


if you cannot admit there is a consensus view ( 97% ) its going to be hard for you to understand why there is a consensus view