What Do We Think About Climate Change

Guillermo · Dec 17, 2008

Please, please, please......

Pericles · Dec 17, 2008

Take a look at this chart on right of page from Wikipedia . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous

It notes that during the Cretaceous period, atmospheric CO2 levels appear to have averaged about 1700ppm, or about 6 times the pre-industrial level of CO2 in the immediate pre-industrial period. It also notes that global temperatures appear to have averaged only about 4C higher than today.

Now, we have people telling us that if we double current CO2 to nearly 800ppm, we will end up with a rise of at least 3C in temperatures and possibly “greenhouse runaway” with temperatures continuing an unstoppable rise until we are all dead.

However, here we have evidence that CO2 was not only doubled from 385 ppm, but doubled again to 1700 ppm and it resulted in only 4C of temperature rise.

And by the way, the sky is falling! http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/earths-ionosphere-drops-to-a-new-low/

Perry

Boston · Dec 17, 2008

Hey Hey
nice to hear from the coal industry man

I would direct you to the following paper and note
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060918/20060918_16.html

The low thermal gradients and clement winters characterizing climates of the Cretaceous period reveal that the climate system has modes of behaviour quite different from the present. Recent proxy data analyses suggest that some aspects of climate change within the Cretaceous appear to be decoupled from CO2 evolution at the geological time scale. Here, we investigate the impact of paleogeography on the global climate with the climate model FOAM, using a Early, Mid and Late Cretaceous continental configuration. We find that changes in geography from the Early to Mid-to-Late Cretaceous cause a large decrease of the seasonal cycle. First order identified processes are the decreased continentality of the mid-to-high latitudes from the Mid Cretaceous and the increase of the latent heat transport into the winter hemisphere which induce a wetter and a cloudier atmosphere capable of diminishing the winter cooling of the continents. Owing to the modifications of the seasonal cycle in response to the tectonic forcing, the equator-to-pole thermal gradient is reduced from the Early to Mid-to-Late Cretaceous. We nevertheless still do not succeed in simulating warm enough polar temperatures and a definitive theory still waits for an integrated approach explicitly accounting for each factor influencing the thermal gradient (ocean dynamics, stratospheric clouds, and vegetation). Our study also suggests a mechanism that can weaken the correlation between CO2 and climate changes during the Cretaceous as evolving geography from the Early to Late Cretaceous, through the response of the water cycle and the changes in the thermal gradient, results in a 3.8 °C global warming at a constant atmospheric CO2 level. This demonstrates that the paleogeography may affect the relation between pCO2 and the climate history and consequently has to be accounted for when linking the atmospheric CO2 evolution and the climate record at geological time scales.

During the Mesozoic era, and especially the Cretaceous, global temperatures are thought to have been considerably warmer than the present. The global warmth of the Cretaceous has generally been attributed to elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 [1] and [2]. In recent years, several studies using records of ?18O in foraminiferal calcite or in apatite tooth enamels have proposed a more nuanced description of the climate changes during the Cretaceous [3], [4] and [5], highlighting a progressive warming from the Aptian to the Cenomanian-Turonian as well as icehouse interludes during the lower Cretaceous at the million-year scale.

The warming trend observed from the Early to the Mid Cretaceous coupled to a reduction in atmospheric pCO2 as recorded by different proxies during the same period [6] has been used by Veizer et al. [7] to question the role of CO2 in regulating climates over Phanerozoic time scales. Going one step forward, a celestial mechanism has even been proposed to explain the relative uncorrelated atmospheric CO2 level record to the climate record during this particular time period [8]. However, Royer et al. [6] have shown that the use of a pH corrected proxy record of climate yields a much better match between CO2 variations and major climate shifts, undermining the arguments for cosmic ray fluxes as a significant driver of climate.
Another debate which surrounds the Cretaceous period concerns the concept of equability. Typically, the term "equable" means a reduced annual cycle of temperature and the absence of sub-freezing winters [9], [10] and [11]. Besides equability, another typical feature of Cretaceous climates is a weak pole to equator temperature gradient, as compared to the modern climate. It should be noted, however, that the concept of equability does not strictly apply to the Early Cretaceous [12], [13] and [14].

Several modelling studies have been devoted to the Cretaceous climate since the early 1980s and have demonstrated the importance of the oceanic circulation, the geographical distribution and the vegetation in explaining climate modes quite different from the present [15], [16], [17], [18], [19] and [20]. Among these studies, Barron's pioneering work was designed to understand the factors controlling the generally warm Cretaceous climate. Barron identified a combination of three major variables, geography, CO2 content (four times present-day CO2) and oceanic heat flux to achieve the distribution of Mid-Cretaceous temperatures with the two latter being the most important [15]. Indeed, in 1993, Barron and colleagues published model experiments using the GENESIS model which suggested a negligible role of geography during the mid-Cretaceous [21] in contrast to early model studies with mean annual solar insolation and a simple energy balance ocean which predicted almost a 5 °C warming owing to the Cretaceous geography [16]. Rather than extending Barron's work and comparing the impact of present-day geography with a mean Cretaceous geography, we would like to undertake a systematic study of the climatic changes induced by three different contrasted continental configurations occurring during the Aptian, the Cenomanian and the Maastrichtian stages. To our knowledge, only Poulsen and colleagues have undertaken such comparable studies but their papers were mainly focused on the response of the global oceanic circulation to tectonic changes occurring from Aptian to Albian [19], [20] and [22]. In this study, paleoclimate simulations have been run for the Aptian, the Cenomanian and the Maastrichtian stages. Our aim is to determine the extent to which the major plate reorganization and sea level changes during the Cretaceous can have a large effect that might oppose CO2 forcing and contribute to the equability. This sensitivity study demonstrates that first-order features of the Cretaceous climate records can be generated by atmospheric feedbacks occurring in response to changes of the tectonic forcing.
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this question is another standard industry quip
and the answer is simple
there are lot more factors than just co2 involved
but more importantly this new question fails to address the three basic questions raised earlier

how is it that all this ice is melting
if we are not actually warming up

why is it that all but one of the data sets represented show tropical tropospheric warming over ground temp when the skeptics clearly said there was absolutely no evidence of tropical tropospheric warming

are the skeptics being honest when they claim water vapor accounts for 96% of the greenhouse effect when it is clearly shown to only be 36% to 66% of the greenhouse effect depending on temp

and lastly why is it that once again rather than answer the questions raised;
specially the one about why is it we are melting if we are not also warming detractors distract us with another canned question

please folks
can we try and make this a little more challenging
thanks
B

and ok Ill try to quit with the large font size warnings if you guys quit with the phony industry info
cheers

RHP · Dec 17, 2008

São Paulo has had the COLDEST december so far in 20 years ! Its supposed to be summer (30+ C) and instead its an autumnal 18 degrees!

Due the financial crisis, global warming is postponed.

Boston · Dec 17, 2008

Global Climate Change waits not for the dollar

from the link old Knut provided

2008 again was a year with above-average temperatures all over Europe. A large geographical domain, including north-western Siberia and part of the Scandinavian region, recorded a remarkably mild winter. January and February were very mild over nearly all of Europe. Monthly mean temperature anomalies for these months exceeded +7°C in some places in Scandinavia. In most parts of Finland, Norway and Sweden, winter 2007/08 was the warmest recorded since the beginning of measurements. In contrast, the boreal winter was remarkably cold for a large part of Eurasia extending eastward from Turkey to China. Some places in Turkey had their coldest January nights in nearly 50 years. This extreme cold weather caused hundreds of casualties in Afghanistan and China.

February was a cold month across most of the USA Midwest, with average daily temperatures ranging from 4.0°C to 5.0°C below normal in some areas.

A very cold episode, due to an early Antarctic air mass outbreak, occurred in May in southern South America, particularly in central Argentina, where the minimum temperature dropped below –6°C in some locations, breaking annual absolute minimum temperature records. Conversely, mean July temperatures were more than +3°C above average in large parts of Argentina, Paraguay, southeast Bolivia and southern Brazil, making it the warmest July in the last 50 years for many locations. Also, November broke historical temperature records in association with an unusual heatwave. Central Argentina, including Buenos Aires city, had its warmest November in the last 50 years.

In March, southern Australia experienced a record heatwave that brought scorching temperatures across the region. Adelaide experienced its longest running heatwave on record, with 15 consecutive days of maximum temperatures above 35°C. Also, several heatwaves occurred in south-eastern Europe and the Middle East during April, associated with a very warm spring observed, not only in this region but also in a large part of the rest of Europe and Asia.
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looks like those large temp anomalies predicted by the Climate Change theory are alive and well
lucky us

best B

safewalrus · Dec 17, 2008

It would appear the main reason for global warming is the constant meaderings by some fairly intelligent people who can't give up on this subject - truth is the weather and the world has been changing since it was invented that's what the world and Mother Nature is about Change that stays the same!! Every though about doing something useful? like shoot fish in a barrel......but no that would take all the fun away!

Boston · Dec 17, 2008

LMAO
that was great
levity appreciated

the general idea of the theory is best described by its full moniker
Rapid Global Climate Change

more rapid than normal
normal being the only albeit a poor argumentative point
and without any obvious drivers other than pollution for the rapid change we are seeing, then it only stands to reason to look to the reduction in pollution as a solution

the rapidity of the climate change is limited to feedback cycles intrinsic to the system therefor climate reactions may not fall outside of the historic parameters but instead lay on the upper end of the systems limiting factors given those factors are not themselves artificially altered
( that last may look like a target to a few folks but is actually precisely what has been said all along )

today in the BBC

Computer models have long predicted that decreasing sea ice should amplify temperature changes in the northern polar region.
Julienne Stroeve, from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that this process was under way.
Arctic ice cover in summer has seen rapid retreat in recent years.
The minimum extents reached in 2007 and 2008 were the smallest recorded in the satellite age.

"The sea ice is entering a new state where the ice cover has become so thin that no matter what happens during the summer in terms of temperature or circulation patterns, you're still going to have very low ice conditions," she told the meeting.
Autumn return
Theory predicts that as ice is lost in the Arctic, more of the ocean's surface will be exposed to solar radiation and will warm up.
When the autumn comes and the Sun goes down on the Arctic, that warmth should be released back into the atmosphere, delaying the fall in air temperatures.
Ultimately, this feedback process should result in Arctic temperatures rising faster than the global mean.
Dr Stroeve and colleagues have now analysed Arctic autumn (September, October, November) air temperatures for the period 2004-2008 and compared them to the long term average (1979 to 2008).
The results, they believe, are evidence of the predicted amplification effect.
"You see this large warming over the Arctic ocean of around 3C in these last four years compared to the long-term mean," explained Dr Stroeve.
"You see some smaller areas where you have temperature warming of maybe 5C; and this warming is directly located over those areas where we've lost all the ice."
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best
B

its beer thirty
back in a few

Jimbo1490 · Dec 17, 2008

Boston said: ↑

and without any obvious drivers other than pollution for the rapid change we are seeing, then it only stands to reason to look to the reduction in pollution as a solution
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This is the classic 'lassitude' response; preferred by ideologues and the intellectually lazy the world over

Jimbo

Boston · Dec 17, 2008

Readers take note
warning
The information presented in many of these posts has been proven to be no more than industry spin; published not in scientifically accredited publications, but in whats known as industry rags published by the oil and gas community. There is a direct comparison to what is happening on this thread and what the Tobacco industry did during its disinformation campaign

just wondering if you guys were planning on answering Masalai's question about ice melt

if the temp is not rising
why is all this ice melting

and Im curious if you were planning on admitting there is plenty of data supporting tropical tropospheric warming
when you had said categorically there was none

or maybe admitting that water vapor makes up only about 50% of the greenhouse effect and not the 96% you tried to pass off

any ideas on that
cause I think we should stick to the last three questions before we move on to lassitude
or
obfuscate for that matter
as someone pointed out earlier

love
B

An Overwhelming Consensus

The most important fact to note when discussing the issue of global climate change is that, for the professional scientific community, the debates about whether global climate change exists and whether human activity is contributing to that change are over. The scientific consensus is now so overwhelming that the only reasonable course of action is to treat human-created global climate change as a fact, and move the debate to what to do about it.

Of course there is still a very small group of scientists who remain skeptical about whether climate change exists and whether humans have caused it, but their number and the strength of their arguments are so insignificant that they should not be interpreted as representing the forefront of their field. The plain fact is that there always is, and always ought to be, scientific dissent about every theory that has been devised. That's how science works - through open questioning and testing of hypotheses.

We don't want to censor the tiny number of dissenting scientists, but we do think that it's very important to place their ideas in context. The immense majority of scientific experts have concluded that the claims of these skeptics are just plain incorrect, not fitting with the huge amount of data on global climate change that has been collected.

Scientific consensus is never a final determination of truth, and we must retain the freedom for scientists to disagree with the current consensus. However, when it comes to global climate change, the issue is what public policy-makers ought to do on a practical level. On a practical level, it's insane to wait for absolutely universal consensus before taking action. We need to work with the best information we've got, and the best information overwhelmingly points to serious, human-induced global climate change.

As much as science works through dissent, it also works through peer review. That means that when one scientist comes up with certain findings, they need to be replicated by other scientists. The process of peer review is what enabled the scientific community to quickly debunk the popular craze about cold fusion energy technology, and it's what prevents scientists in general from simply making outlandish statements about what they believe to be true. Consistent evidence that fits with a hypothesis is necessary before that hypothesis is treated as true.

For this reason, it is inappropriate to claim that one dissenting voice is capable of destroying a theory that has gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community. There are still people who claim that the Earth is really flat, but they can't back up their claims in a peer-reviewed process, and that's why they're not taken seriously. Creation "scientists" too, make plenty of claims, but those claims are not capable of withstanding review by other scientists, and so they are dismissed. When it comes to global climate change, there are dissenters, but they have not been able to come up with significant information that meets the standards of their peers. So, as earnest as these individuals are, we do not have any reason to trust that their ideas are reliable.
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Guillermo · Dec 17, 2008

Climate Change Reexamined
JOEL M. KAUFFMAN
Emeritus, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry,
University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 723–749, 2007

http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ccr.pdf

As, depending on authors, water vapor is responsible for about 60-98% of the natural greenhouse effect worldwide, here some interesting thoughts from that paper we can relate with the use of new fuel cells (hydrogen) propulsion systems for ships:

"It is possible that any human contribution to the feel of surface warming is from water vapor resulting from irrigation and the combustion of hydrogen-containing fuels (hydrocarbons or alcohols), which simply raise the humidity or dew point. Thus, the use of pure hydrogen as a fuel on a large scale could be counter-productive, especially if this fuel is made from hydrocarbons with CO2 as a by-product, sending additional water vapor into the air as well."

Cheers.

Guillermo · Dec 17, 2008

This is going to be all the rage....

180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol. 2006-2008
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2_supp.htm

His paper evaluates >90,000 historic chemical measurements of atmospheric CO2 conducted between 1812 and 1961. It shows many of those measurements were of high quality and indicated levels much higher than 280 ppmv. It challenges the often claimed (e.g. by IPPC) that stable pre-industrial level of 280 ppmv then existed.

It also shows there is a 5 years lag delay between CO2 and mean temperature, this last being ahead.

To shorten debate, here the rebuttal of the rebuttals :
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/author_reply9-2.pdf

Cheers.

Guillermo · Dec 17, 2008

A few years ago a submarine exploration of the Arctic Ocean under the polar ice cap found some 15 large geothermal vents along the Arctic fracture zone, and evidence of the recent outflow of lava. ‘We found more hydrothermal activity on this cruise than in 20 years of exploration on the mid-Atlantic Ridge’, said Charles Langmuir, scientist from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University’’. Thus, AGW is not needed to explain arctic ice melting. There may be other causes, as this one.

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/news/story11_28_01.html

Also:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/haog-fut062508.php

masalai · Dec 17, 2008

May you all remember this Christmas and think carefully on enjoying a simpler life with friends. Blessings to all.....

Guillermo · Dec 17, 2008

Just updating images:
'Artic Sea Ice Extension' two days ago and 'No Sun Spots Yet' yesterday

Guillermo · Dec 17, 2008

masalai said: ↑

May you all remember this Christmas and think carefully on enjoying a simpler life with friends. Blessings to all.....
Click to expand...

Thanks Masa. We are enjoying life with friends here.....

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16dec_giantbreach.htm?list91627

Season's greetings everybody!

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What Do We Think About Climate Change

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