What Do We Think About Climate Change

oh hey Brian I also wanted to comment of this one

although the resolution is poor this graph shows a clear cycle to the glaciation events



clearly for the duration of the industrial revolution we have been in a highly unusual holding pattern that really should have dropped down into a ice age period quite a few years ago

so it might be fair to say we were heading into an ice age previous to the industrial revolution or at least should have been

so for temps to be rising like never before is kinda another very unusual event

according to the cycle indicated by the chart we should be cooling off by now no ?

 

for Spear

Spear, yes I realize that current models ignore water vapour as a matter of computational necessity and not choice. But leaving a known major variable out (or constant, when we know it won’t be constant) means the resultant models need to be used, to be tactful, ‘with care’. And therein lies the problem – the models are I guess (mis)used by many people who regard them as ‘state of the art science’ and have no idea of how far out they might be. I have no doubt that the models yield a wealth of useful information but quantitative values are not amongst them. A ‘Health Warning’ type sticker on the models would be nice…..
I think the major extinctions will all be tied to global events that also had major climate change. The good news from the graph below is that recovery of genera overall is relatively quick after these extinctions and despite lots of major extinctions, we are around the all-time high of >5000 genera. We need not fear an absence of life after the next major climate change, and some humans will be either cunning or lucky enough to be amongst the survivors.
Other extinctions occur during times of constant climate. Humans have been ‘nicely’ correlated with megafauna extinctions as we spread around the globe even before the Holocene. European settlement of colonies had a major impact (particularly inadvertently introduced diseases on indigenous people but also introduced species). And the stresses arising from the sheer size of the global population and its uncontrolled growth at present result in encroachment into, and modification of, native habitats. Accelerating rate of extinction is almost certain in these circumstances, irrespective of climate change. Can we have zero population growth as an international target soon please? Then, population reduction would be good – natural attrition is fine, a bit slow but probably the only morally and ethically acceptable way. Our gene pool is large enough for attrition to go on for some time…


Colour code for thumbnail:
• grey = total known genera from Sepkowski's catalogue (cited by Rohde & Muller)
• green = "well-defined genera", i.e. known genera excluding those represented by "single occurrences" and those whose dates are uncertain.
• red = trend for "well-defined genera". Derived by fitting a third-order polynomial to the data.
• yellow = the "Big Five" mass extinctions.
• blue = other extinction events.

 

Boston, we have some misunderstanding. Sure the atmosphere is changing, and yes the isotopic data is important which I’ll touch on further down.

For now note two things re: CO2 graph.

The rate of change started to climb well before anthropogenic carbon got high enough to have an impact (say around 1950).

Secondly, in the life of the planet, (and particularly in our ‘ice age earth’ phase of it) 280ppm carbon is a low base, and rate of change off a low base will look high (and trigger undue panic).

See thumbnail below – you can get whatever average CO2 value you want with judicious selection of time interval, and can ‘eye-ball’ around 1000 for the most recent half of the interval shown. As for the oldest half, well the simple temperature/CO2 correlation breaks down. Ya gotta love the end of the Ordovician – CO2 at 4500 and an ice age! So you won’t get me excited by a rise of a mere 45 (eyeballing your chart) since 1850.


As far as IPCC models go, as I’ve discussed with Spear above they really do need to come with ‘Health Warning’ label. I’m sure they were done and presented with reluctance, and conservative to boot, to try and hide from controversy. If any of them are close to what happens it will most likely be an accident –that’s chance for ya. It would have been much better to say ‘something very similar has happened before, here is what happened then’ and not only focused on the paleoclimate data but also stimulated targeted research into critical gaps in that data. As for your huge IPCC temp chart, +6 in 100 years isn’t unprecedented. Uncommon, yes. But within observed range. The Younger Dryas first lost about that much in 20 years, and later gained it at about the same rate. And +6 isn’t unprecedented either – PETM was double that.

And
A new study co-authored by Rice University Oceanographer Gerald Dickens found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during the PETM. "In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," said Dickens, "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

IPCC models again….ok, they aren’t useless but need to be used with care. Not all bad news though, here is where isotopes help – they point to carbon from methane hydrates. Now back to the quote...

Let us suppose that half of the carbon was released as CH4 making the mix 1,000 Gt of carbon dioxide and 1,000 Gt of methane. Using the IPCC's Global Warming Potential (GWP) for methane in a 500 year time frame, which is 7 times the potency of CO2, we find the effective carbon dioxide level is 8,000 Gt CO2e. This level of human emissions would take mankind 2,000 years at our current rate. Moreover, the estimated fossil fuel carbon sink is only 6,000 Gt, so reaching the required total would mean finding some other source of carbon based fuels—perhaps ocean floor methane hydrates (nice bit of irony there, eh).

To get methane hydrates contributing at the rate needed, the whole ocean has to warm quite a bit (can’t lay my hands on the precise number right now), which is happening but is something that will take a while (same story on precise numbers). The current permafrost seepages etc contribute, but not at the order of magnitude needed.

In conclusion?
- We are probably heading for significant climate change after an abnormally stable period where we’ve bred a bit too much ofr our own and the planet’s good.
- Wait for the thermohaline event –mightn’t be long, and it’ll be far better than ‘Alaska via the Inside Passage’.
- Don’t let anyone spend large amounts of our taxes trying to stop it – to be a bit crude it’d be like ‘farting against thunder’. And those getting satisfaction and relief in that case aren’t people I want to associate too closely with.




There’s lots of data around, but even digging for the stuff I’m showing takes a fair bit of time. I’m going to take a bit of time offline to do some reading – have to order some books. I’ll come back in a while – I’d like to see a few other reactions to the extended time scales I’ve been endeavouring to inject into the thread.

PS. I almost forgot – your graph of the last 450,000 years. I could stir the pot and say
‘thank god for the anthropogenic carbon, we might have been freezing our butts off. Quick, lets double it – we’re not out of danger yet!’ There are some who believe this, like the guy who wants to plough up dirt all over Siberia to increase heat retention.

But I recall that an average for interglacials is 20,000 years and that we are only 18,000 years into ours so far. So we don’t have to worry for another 2000 years. Although that average for interglacials might come from about 5my interval (not really sure), not the 0.45my in your chart, it might vary and the ‘error bars’ could be a large anyway. Bottom line is humans came along at a time when conditions were just about ideal for us, and we’ve filled the niche (and some!) rapidly. But every era had its dominant species that impacted on the others.


For thumbnail:
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time

Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).

 

Follow this well reasoned and non-hysterical explanation of climate change and the fallacy of the AGW community....................


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFHZOYtAztU

 

no time to finish but interesting stuff
hope all is well
B

 

And listen to his background:
Bob Carter- member of the Institute of Public Affairs. They are a right-wing conservative think-tank largely funded by the following:

Gotta love the internet.

 

It would appear as though the deniers will not drop anymore names for fear that they are easily background checked and most have shown up as recieving direct funding, either to them personally or through a think tank or oganization, oil and gas companies. The three most common companies giving funding for these scientists: Exxon, Shell, and ConocoPhillips. Coincidence? I think not.

 

I don't care if he was associated with the Nazi party. It doesn't change the veracity of what he says. What you did is referred to as an ad hominen attack. That is to use an irrelevency to dispute the facts of an argument by smearing one individuals background. Ad hominems attacks are usually used by children on the playground. You did nothing to dispute any of the scientific claims he made or any of factual statements he made. You are asking everyone to assume that everything he says is a lie because he is associatied with an organization that takes some funding from profit making corporations. You have no posted no evidence that he has lied, simply an underhanded and childish attack on his character with nothing to back it up.

You previously disputed the accuracy of some other names I posted, again with no evidence to back up your charges of fraud. Simply saying everyone knows is not evidence, rather the signature of someone immature, or someone who is too lazy back up his or her statements.


You see, unlike some, I don't have an immediate distrust of companies that make a profit, nor do I see profit as bad. Profit is what makes capitalism and free enterprise work and allows folks to earn money to pay taxes to support all the freeloaders living off government handouts in the various entitlement programs. If you kill profit, all the peoples whose votes are being bought by the liberals will have to work for a living. Think about that before you dump on folks who know how to earn money, rather than just waste the money they steal from everyone else like the "progressives" do.

 

You see, you are claiming the same thing about CRU. I think it is public knowledge that Oil and Gas companies have an anti-environmental agenda. You keep saying that AGW people have an agenda that we want to force on everyone. I guess if it works for you its good, if it hurts you its bad. Typical mindset of a regressive thinker. By showing people who these scientists are being paid by, they get a better overall picture of the situation. It is one thing for a NOAA or GISS scientist, not paid particularly well, to come out with claims that are anti-AGW, but it is something else if a scientist paid by oil and gas companies comes out and says it. You are accusing AGW people of having invested in green technologies and then trying to protect their investments, well it is the same, if not much worse, on your side of the camp.
You can call them attacks, but I bet the majority of people reading this would like to know the background of these scientists making these claims, both for and against. I chose to highlight the anti-AGW scientists, since there are fewer of them and they are a rarity. You can do the same with pro-AGW scientists.

 

I bet next you'll say how it was wrong of us to regulate smoking because there is no evidence it is bad for your lungs. And then you will provide evidence produced by scientists paid by tobacco companies.

Free market works, but with regulation. Lets remember how we got into the Great Depression. There were no regulations on anything, banks could do what they want, they didn't have to back up your money with the federal government. What happens when they crash, everyones money goes away.
Fast Forward 78 years. We have little regulation, the way you conservatives like it. People start breaking rules and spending money they don't have. Then it all falls apart. Their excuse: We didn't know prices would eventually come down.
If you want no regulation or government oversight, I hear Somalia and the Black Market are doing really well right now, might want to give that place a good look.

 

hey Brian sorry I ran out or time earlier

your points were generally well formulated and as such deserved some detailed answers

best of luck with that reading
I will await your post with anticipation
B

 

Some of the folks at the East Anglia CRU at the focus of the email scandal have proven themselves to be liars and to use deceptive and fraudulent data to back up their junk science. That is not to say anyone associated with the CRU is a fraud.

You are implying that Carter, by association, is a liar or a fraud, there is the difference.


You have not refuted any of the data that Carter uses, you only throw stones at the funding of his research group.

If Bin Laden and the Pope both say it is 2pm, and it is actually 3pm, they are both liars, regardless of their associations. Of course the inverse is also true.

It is amazing how myopia has become endemic among alarmists.

 

As far as the rarity of skepitcal scientists, take a few minutes to read the list of signers in your own state of the Petition Project. Btw, the signatures were all verified in 2007, removing the bogus names placed there by AGW vandals, so don't bother posting any attacks against the project prior to 2007.

The relevence of the numbers is actually meaningless, as it only takes one scientist, or village idiot for that matter, to prove a theory wrong. But seeing as how the AGW community likes to use meaningless data, I thought it would be easier to understand if I used a similiar tactic.

http://www.petitionproject.org/

 

Our current economic mess is the direct result of another social engineering moronic idea. The Community Re-Investment Act was essentially a government directive to loan mortgage money to people who had no abiltiy to repay it. Congress used it power to force banks to take greater risks than traditionally accepted. To do so the banks needed to create new financial products to accomplish the Congressional mandate, interstate banking, mortgage brokers, sub-prime lenders and products, mortgage backed securities, debit-swaps, and insurance for the products were all a result of a bad data base from a Boston bank study designed to force banks to loan money in minority neighborhooods to folks who had no chance of repaying the money.

The AGW KoolAid Club is using similiar tactics of class warfare to promote its agenda. Fortunately more people are awake now and are resisting this latest effort in futility to mitigate a problem that doesn't exist in the first place.

 

you must be referring to the thieves who broke into private data files and stole intellectual property any you would be right
those thieves have proven themselves to be liars and use deceptive and illegal tactics to defraud the scientists at East Anglia
thats one reason I cant imagine why anyone would even consider then taking there word for the authenticity of what they found

specially long before any official determination of fact is yet to be determined

wrong
actually the data presented over and over again throughout this conversation is often in direct opposition to his position views

no they would simply both be wrong
as either could have simply made an honest mistake
however
if one of these fine upstanding citizens had been paid by say an organization who had a vested interest in it being 2pm then it might be fair to say that person had lied or been influenced to produce falsified data



these arguments simply do not hold any strength when held up to reasonable scrutiny

another good example of this difference between an honest mistake and a dishonest one is most easily seen in the following example provided by one of our illustrious contributors

lets read this in the light of the fact that numerous polls by disinterested and neutral third parties have concluded that approximately 97% of climate scientists agree that Rapid Global Climate Change is real, that it is most likely the direct result of mans interaction with the atmosphere and that it has significant consequences for our immediate future

lets examine this petition and its tactics

both the article and the petition were for some reason identical in format to ones presented by the National Academy used in past mailings to its members. The Oregon petition has been criticized for this misrepresentation

a response letter by the National Accadamy reads in part as follows

a critique of this attempt by the authors of the Oregon Petition reads as follows

it is also important to note that although the accompanying article to the Oregon petition was presented with a publication date implying that it had been published in this prestigious magazine and therefor a peer reviewed work it was in fact neither a published or a peer reviewed work but instead a simple op ed piece appearing in a local newspaper.

so once again it becomes clear that deceptive and decidedly unscientific tactics are being used in conjunction with the PR campaign to discredit the theory of Rapid Global Climate Change

lets look at some of tactics used in defining the number of signatories

the National Academy has again responded with a letter of protest at the Oregon petitions uncanny resemblance to its own mailers and has issued numerous statements to its members that they have absolutely no association with the petition and that the article it quotes was in fact never published by the National Academy or by any other peer reviewed journal


obviously these claims in opposition to the consensus view are yet another sad attempt to discredit honest science using any tactic available including theft and deception

in the light of this obviously dishonest and deceptive approach I would ask the readers to take special care when considering the information presented by Deniers both here and in other locations on the net