Conservative Argument on Climate Change

[woodgeek]

Ok, perhaps I will be more specific....

(1) The models I am talking about don't work the way you describe. You provide basic inputs and they provide a (regionally resolved) prediction of the weather on a statistical basis only. That is, a frequency distribution for average temps or rainfall, means and std deviations. They say that now there is a 1% chance of a 'century severity' drought, but with 2050 predicted CO2, that sort of drought will happen in 30% of years. That sort of thing. This sort of modl cannot tell us what happens next year or last. IOW, your requirement is not well posed.

(2) I don't read the IPCC report, and I agree the assumptions of the climate cycle on millenia timescales are not nailed down. But I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years. This implies an unusual and hard to explain event--consistent with anthropogenic source. Your bland statement of 'not well understood' masks what we do know versus what we don't know re how unusual the recent past is.

(3) Your poster looks like a single data point record not matching someones particular expectations over a finite time interval that is much shorter than the Mil. cycles. How that is relevant to the climate modeling over the longer span, aggegating records form many sites eludes me. In fact, I said that recent (<2000 yr) history has been anomalous, and your poster says something vaguely similar. How is that a refutation??

 

[TMonter]

Ok, perhaps I will be more specific....

(1) The models I am talking about don't work the way you describe. You provide basic inputs and they provide a (regionally resolved) prediction of the weather on a statistical basis only. That is, a frequency distribution for average temps or rainfall, means and std deviations. They say that now there is a 1% chance of a 'century severity' drought, but with 2050 predicted CO2, that sort of drought will happen in 30% of years. That sort of thing. This sort of modl cannot tell us what happens next year or last. IOW, your requirement is not well posed.

(2) I don't read the IPCC report, and I agree the assumptions of the climate cycle on millenia timescales are not nailed down. But I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years. This implies an unusual and hard to explain event--consistent with anthropogenic source. Your bland statement of 'not well understood' masks what we do know versus what we don't know re how unusual the recent past is.

(3) Your poster looks like a single data point record not matching someones particular expectations over a finite time interval that is much shorter than the Mil. cycles. How that is relevant to the climate modeling over the longer span, aggegating records form many sites eludes me. In fact, I said that recent (<2000 yr) history has been anomalous, and your poster says something vaguely similar. How is that a refutation??

1) So you admit the models are meaningless to tell us what is actually happening. Especially when the confidence intervals they use are huge and have been extremely poor predictors of what is going on. Such a model does not distinguish between actual predicted events and anomalies of meteorology like the heat wave in Europe a few year ago.

For a model to be valid it has to offer repeatable results with new data. Like I said current models do not.

2) While we may be a major contributor to CO2 (we might not as well) rising CO2 levels does necessarily not mean higher temperatures. In fact the current science can only model a few of the forcing variables in climate well one of them is CO2 which is why it's such a huge topic.

3) The poster was nothing of the sort.

http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/VOSTOK-DOMECIceCoreCompare_Stewart2009.pdf

It shows dramatic temperature shifts in contrary to your claim: "In fact, much of the early evidence (e.g. from Hansen) for AGW came from the striking departure of the earths climate in the modern period (last couple thousand years) from the record prevailing for the previous 200,000 years."

Obviously that isn't the case. The data shows a even more dramatic shift within the last 200,000 year period and cyclical changes very similar that what is happening today. In fact when you look at the current temperature record we are experiencing a very long stable period compared to the past with most of it taking place before industrialization which busts the anthropomorphic CO2 claim being the driver.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

I am not trying to argue anything from the historical mean temperature curve--low statistical power and iffy signal to noise, superimposed on a fluctuating background from natural fluctuations. IF that were the only argument, then there would be no argument.

That actually sounds like a pretty fair description, and I agree, it is no argument.

All of 'us' are not arguing that our folks are smarter....I link stuff cuz I think you might want to read something or drill through to the primary material, I am assuming you can digest, understand and judge the primary material.

Actually, it basically always boils down to that. I can contest every last published paper, and you (I'm generalizing here to the typical believer) will say, well I'll take the word of so-and-so over you.

For example, models. Model building is a key component of the scientific method. Simple systems need only simple models (F=ma, Beers Law), and those get taught in schools and make some people excited because a few simple formulae capture some process nicely. However, the world also has more complex systems (the earths climate, weather, the human body responding to a pharmaceutical) that humans have a vested interest in understanding (i.e. millions of lives hang in the balance). So researchers in science and engineering don't sit around just marveling at the simplicity of E=mc2 or the second law of thermodynamics, they are trying to cobble together that basic understanding to build GPS networks, better drugs, or an understanding of how the earth works and will behave in the future. This may be distasteful to someone turned on by the coolness of the formulae when they were in school, but models are where the rubber meets the road. And in modern science and engineering these models are all mucho complicated. And computerized. And they work. Better and with more detail every year.

I'll agree with all of that up until the "and they work" part. In fact, they usually don't work. And that's why we use them, to make predictions and then learn from them when the predictions fail. What you CAN'T do in science is make a model and then say, look our model says this and that, therefore we have to immediately take away everyone's individual rights and impose a top-down tyranny on everyone. Sorry, that's pure malicious fallacy. Garbage in, garbage out is absolutely the appropriate philosophy to take in regard to models and is the only way they can be used scientifically.

AS for the whole 'the earth is big and we are ants', I asked you to discuss the numbers. The question here is not different than balancing your checkbook. The carbon cycle has large natural flows that are (presumably) nearly in balance on the century scale, and human CO2 is a modest perturbation to that cycle, but one whose effect is additive over decades. It seems you DO agree that the higher CO2 in the air (direct measurement record) is anthropogenic. So we are ants that can increase the concentration of a significant and enduring (~few century lifetime) greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by more than 50%. Since the simple radiative balance would suggest the whole earth would be frozen without greenhouse gases, we should prob be concerned enough about this to pay some interested folks to build us a model... So this is the other thing you set aside when it suits you...someone has tried to add up the cumulative release of CO2 by humans over the last century, to tote up one column of the checkbook, and you are going to wave them away with a 'the earth is huge and we are ants' argument, after saying you did agree with the numbers!

Well your presumption is wrong. There is no "balance on the century scale" and humans aren't a blip. Everything is always in flux and there are massive buffers all around. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule compared to that contained in the biosphere, the ground, and the oceans. You want to talk numbers, well good luck ascertaining those numbers, because they're beyond anything we can reliably estimate. But what I do know is that the amount of carbon contained in all of the fossil fuels on the planet aren't but a drop in the bucket. How do I know that? Because removing them from the oceans, biosphere, and atmosphere over millions of years didn't cause the world to implode or the cycles to cease. And humans will never, ever in all our existence burn all of the fossil fuels because probably only 20% of them are even accessible in remotely economic quantities.

Do I think that the higher CO2 in the air is directly anthropogenic? Only a tiny fraction. The vast majority of it is caused by the dissolution of carbon from the oceans caused by solar and volcanic warming. Whatever humans add is easily absorbed by the system and would be little different if we didn't exist. How do I know that? Because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have virtually no correlation to human industrial activity. The fact that the modern human era happens to coincide with a period of warming is not a surprise at all, and to attribute warming to humans is to look at the correlation from the wrong causal direction. All major periods of human advance have occurred during warm cycles. And all major civilization collapses tend to occur during cold cycles. If you want to attribute the current warm cycle to industrialization, then you have to explain how it started in the 1600s instead of the late 1700s. And how the Vikings or the Holy Roman Empire caused the last one. And the Hellenistic Greeks the one before that. And this cycle, you'd have to explain how carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere march steadily in the same trajectory despite periods of depression and rapid industrialization not likewise being so determinate.

You want numbers? The sun bathes the Earth's surface in more energy in a single hour (175,000,000 megawatts) than the entire human race consumes in almost 13,000 years of present consumption rates of all kinds of energy including nuclear, fossil fuel, alternative energy, etc. The energy in the wind flowing around the Earth for one hour represents 200 times more energy than the entire human race consumes in an entire year. The scale of the Earth's climate is orders of magnitude greater than what humans have any hope of influencing.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

You mention the Milankovich climate cycles. Now there is a plenty complicated model, many of whose parameters are just guesses based not on physics but on (climate) data fitting. For example, the correlation between CH4 and temp, which causes which?

I mentioned Milankovic cycles not as a model, but as a recognition that there are many processes influencing Earth's climate well outside of a human-scale "balance". These include the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit, which cause 21k year, 26k year, 41k year, and other cycles, variously dampening and reinforcing each other, along with sun spot cycles and other solar cycles, plus ocean current cycles, glaciation cycles, etc. There is no reliable model that incorporates all of these. But it causes cyclical warming and cooling of the climate without humans having any part in it. There is no "balance" in a static sense. There are only kinetic balances, constantly changing, and constantly causing changes. Again, if you think humans caused the current warm cycle, then you must describe how the Mycenaean Greeks caused the one in 1600-1200 BC.

In fact, much of the early evidence (e.g. from Hansen) for AGW came from the striking departure of the earths climate in the modern period (last couple thousand years) from the record prevailing for the previous 200,000 years. That is, folks had built a kinda funky model that fits all the weird twists and turns in the earths climate through all the many ice ages, for the last 200,000 years, and it worked AWESOME at describing all the data except for the last 2000 years (1% of the record). And the only thing that happened in that period was Homo Sap started to burn down forests and till and plant stuff on continental scales and burn fossil fuels. And Mr Hansen is now hounded day and night as a hoaxer.

Actually, our current warm period is no departure at all from what we have seen cyclically since the end of the last ice age. Mr. Hansen is understandably seen as a hoaxer because he is, whether through malice or incompetence, I'm not sure which. But the hockey stick was preposterous nonsense.

You know what Thomas, I am NOT a scientist. I never claimed to be one. I am a mechanical engineer by degree. So I know that I am no expert on climate.

You don't have to be an expert on climate to be able to apply scientific skepticism.

But what I can do is read, and all the literature I read, all the statements by the IPCC, the NOAA, NASA, most national governments, etc are overwhelmingly in agreement that CO2 forced climate change is the best theory we have to fit the data. Surveys of the scientific literature have demonstrated that the vast majority of published studies agree.

So, contrary to Woodgeek's assertion above, you're saying that you choose to believe certain people who are smarter than you, and who you presume to be smarter than me, on faith rather than fact?

I figure that thousands of people who went to school for this and study this day in and day out know better than 'little ol me...

That might indeed be true. But what about the tens of thousands of scientists just in the United States alone who have found this to be a bunch of hooey? Oh, you haven't heard about them? Maybe because you only listen to your government and mainstream media who have a vested interest in controlling you through the global warming narrative?

Frankly the thought that a bunch of unrelated scientists scattered all over the world, most living on grant money, would create a worldwide conspiracy to fake this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. As opposed to the dissenters, many of whom are baked by the FF industry that stands to loose billions. hmmmmmm

LOL! The hypocrisy or just plain naivete of that statement is laughable.

So please, lets see your credentials, what qualifies you to discredit the science as bunk on an internet forum with no links to backup your statement other than an "i told you so"

I don't need to convince you that I'm smarter than you or any particular scientist. I simply have to ask for proof of a positive claim, and if it's not provided, then my skepticism is valid and you have zero grounds for imposing your political beliefs on me.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

But I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

The models I am talking about don't work the way you describe. You provide basic inputs and they provide a (regionally resolved) prediction of the weather on a statistical basis only. That is, a frequency distribution for average temps or rainfall, means and std deviations. They say that now there is a 1% chance of a 'century severity' drought, but with 2050 predicted CO2, that sort of drought will happen in 30% of years. That sort of thing. This sort of modl cannot tell us what happens next year or last. IOW, your requirement is not well posed.

To understand what's going on here, this is the most striking piece of evidence, straight from the (broken link removed to http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-5-2.html):

"The strong effect of cloud processes on climate model sensitivities to greenhouse gases was emphasized further through a now-classic set of General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments, carried out by Senior and Mitchell (1993). They produced global average surface temperature changes (due to doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) ranging from 1.9° C to 5.4°C, simply by altering the way that cloud radiative properties were treated in the model. It is somewhat unsettling that the results of a complex climate model can be so drastically altered by substituting one reasonable cloud parameterization for another, thereby approximately replicating the overall intermodel range of sensitivities."

In other words, "garbage in, garbage out". The entire political argument extends not from an actual empirical relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature then, but from wild guestimates about how water vapor, clouds, and other processes feed back on a very minor temperature increase. If those guestimates were even remotely true, simple seasonal fluctuations would cause catastrophic warmings and coolings, which we obviously don't see in reality. The truth is that our oceans, clouds, biosphere, and other systems all act, in aggregate, as buffers to prevent wild swings in climate, not to amplify them. The IPCC ignores all negative feedbacks and overestimates positive feedbacks in order to create models that have nothing to do with reality but which promote their political agenda.

 

[woodgeek]

1) So you admit the models are meaningless to tell us what is actually happening. Especially when the confidence intervals they use are huge and have been extremely poor predictors of what is going on. Such a model does not distinguish between actual predicted events and anomalies of meteorology like the heat wave in Europe a few year ago.

For a model to be valid it has to offer repeatable results with new data. Like I said current models do not.

2) While we may be a major contributor to CO2 (we might not as well) rising CO2 levels does necessarily not mean higher temperatures. In fact the current science can only model a few of the forcing variables in climate well one of them is CO2 which is why it's such a huge topic.

3) The poster was nothing of the sort.

http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/VOSTOK-DOMECIceCoreCompare_Stewart2009.pdf

It shows dramatic temperature shifts in contrary to your claim: "In fact, much of the early evidence (e.g. from Hansen) for AGW came from the striking departure of the earths climate in the modern period (last couple thousand years) from the record prevailing for the previous 200,000 years."

Obviously that isn't the case. The data shows a even more dramatic shift within the last 200,000 year period and cyclical changes very similar that what is happening today. In fact when you look at the current temperature record we are experiencing a very long stable period compared to the past with most of it taking place before industrialization which busts the anthropomorphic CO2 claim being the driver.

1) Um. No. Since weather fluctuates according to a frequency distribution, our ability to predict weather or validate models is subject to statistics. The 20th century record is too short to reach a statistically compelling conclusion, and what you are asking for is like asking the theory of probability to predict the result of a coin toss. IF the question is 'is this coin loaded or 50-50?' then that can be answered unambiguously if you do a couple hundred flips. The climate models are like this, unambiguously telling you of the prob of certain weather outcomes becomes more or less likely, not able to tell you anything about next year.

2) Did I say anything about warming. Why are you bringing that up?

3) Still not getting it. Sorry.

You seem to be making less sense than Thomas.

 

[woodgeek]

Thank you for checking...and confirming my claim. We are now at ~391.

Edit: Those other big swings by 100 ppms look like they took >5000 yrs. The number has just increased by 100 ppm in the last century. That is 50X faster than anything here, and leaves us 100 ppm above any value in this record. Kinda belies your 'the earth is always fluctuating and our inputs are smal compared to that.' The numbers matter.

And remember....the models suggest that such rapid changes may create 'dustbowl' drought conditions b/c the ocean temps take a couple centuries to catch up. You won't find an example of that in the fossil record, b/c such rapid change has never happened before in the period for which we have such data as above.

 

[woodgeek]

To understand what's going on here, this is the most striking piece of evidence, straight from the (broken link removed to http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-5-2.html):

"The strong effect of cloud processes on climate model sensitivities to greenhouse gases was emphasized further through a now-classic set of General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments, carried out by Senior and Mitchell (1993). They produced global average surface temperature changes (due to doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) ranging from 1.9° C to 5.4°C, simply by altering the way that cloud radiative properties were treated in the model. It is somewhat unsettling that the results of a complex climate model can be so drastically altered by substituting one reasonable cloud parameterization for another, thereby approximately replicating the overall intermodel range of sensitivities."

In other words, "garbage in, garbage out". The entire political argument extends not from an actual empirical relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature then, but from wild guestimates about how water vapor, clouds, and other processes feed back on a very minor temperature increase. If those guestimates were even remotely true, simple seasonal fluctuations would cause catastrophic warmings and coolings, which we obviously don't see in reality. The truth is that our oceans, clouds, biosphere, and other systems all act, in aggregate, as buffers to prevent wild swings in climate, not to amplify them. The IPCC ignores all negative feedbacks and overestimates positive feedbacks in order to create models that have nothing to do with reality but which promote their political agenda.

To build a working model, you have to try different things, and see which one works best. Perhaps there has been some advancement since 1993?

 

[jharkin]

So, contrary to Woodgeek's assertion above, you're saying that you choose to believe certain people who are smarter than you, and who you presume to be smarter than me, on faith rather than fact?

I'm not woodgeek. I'll let him speak for his positions. Im just telling you that Im not a climate schientist and dont claim to be one.

That might indeed be true. But what about the tens of thousands of scientists just in the United States alone who have found this to be a bunch of hooey? Oh, you haven't heard about them? Maybe because you only listen to your government and mainstream media who have a vested interest in controlling you through the global warming narrative?

Wow, you had to dig back to a petition started in 1998 to come up with this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

I especially love that when Scientific Americal randomly contacted 30 "signers" , 4 didn't exist and of the rest only 11 admitted to agreement with the petition - only 1 being an actual climate researcher.

Keep trying buddy.

LOL! The hypocrisy or just plain naivete of that statement is laughable.

Im no scientist, but I know a lot of people who are. MOst of them go from research grant to reasearch grant to fund their work, and most of them are taking home less than minimum wage when oyu factor in the hours they work. Not getting rich, which is hte typical claim of climate deniers - that its a conspiracy of scientists trying to get rich on public money.

On the other hand prominent denier such as our friend Mr. Junk Science Steve Milloy are often connected to big oil, companies that stand to loose billions if we really take serious action to slow down carbon emissions.

Follow the money.

I don't need to convince you that I'm smarter than you or any particular scientist. I simply have to ask for proof of a positive claim, and if it's not provided, then my skepticism is valid and you have zero grounds for imposing your political beliefs on me.

You claimed to be a scientist. Most of your arguments are "its not true because I said so" Sorry that only works with my 2 year old.

I'm asking you to back up that claim with qualifications.


Ill go first.
Im an engineer.
BS-ME. RPI class of '99

No climate training whatsoever, and I never claimed any.

 

[TMonter]

1) Um. No. Since weather fluctuates according to a frequency distribution, our ability to predict weather or validate models is subject to statistics. The 20th century record is too short to reach a statistically compelling conclusion, and what you are asking for is like asking the theory of probability to predict the result of a coin toss. IF the question is 'is this coin loaded or 50-50?' then that can be answered unambiguously if you do a couple hundred flips. The climate models are like this, unambiguously telling you of the prob of certain weather outcomes becomes more or less likely, not able to tell you anything about next year.

In other words, current models are not scientifically accurate and are useless in predicting future climate changes.

2) Did I say anything about warming. Why are you bringing that up?

Because ultimately that is where the topic ends.

3) Still not getting it. Sorry.

You seem to be making less sense than Thomas.

If you can't understand a clear chart on past changes in temperature how can you claim to make any reasonable conclusion based on examining anything? There was no "striking departure" in modern times from how the climate reacted in the past.

 

[jharkin]

Actually, This one bears emphasis with regard to your "petition"

In 2001, Scientific American reported:

“​

Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.[24]

^ "Skepticism About Skeptics (sidebar of Climate of Uncertainty)". Scientific American. Archived from (broken link removed to http://www.sciam.com/page.cfm?section=sidebar&articleID=0004F43C-DC1A-1C6E-84A9809EC588EF21) on 2006-08-23., (broken link removed to http://www.sciam.com/sciammag/?contents=2001-10)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

​

 

[woodgeek]

In other words, current models are not scientifically accurate and are useless in predicting future climate changes.

Um. No. Systems having random behavior (which is most of the interesting ones) can only be understood using statistical inference. The models being constructed have the power to tell us about trends in average weather and extreme weather in the future. If you don't buy statistical inference, then how can you understand any of the literature?

Because ultimately that is where the topic ends.

Um. No. We can analyze and discuss the different assumptions that lead to a conclusion separately. I conceded that the 20th century record is too short to say anything compelling about climate change in my very first post in this thread. This is obvious to the layman that looks at the graph. Sure there is a wiggle upwards at the end, but there are enough wiggles that ones gut instinct is that you wouldn't bet the farm that the line couldn't wiggle down next year or for the next 10. And that lay intuition is right on...we are all wired to do statistical inference whether we know it or not.

The fact is that deniers have tried to pretend that all of climate change science hinges on interpreting that one plot, and it simply doesn't. You insisting on moving the topic back to that one useless plot seems like denier behaviour.

If you can't understand a clear chart on past changes in temperature how can you claim to make any reasonable conclusion based on examining anything? There was no "striking departure" in modern times from how the climate reacted in the past.

Um. No. I was talking about the comparison of a two curves, one a global data record assembled from ice cores, tree rings and other sources from around the world, like the ones Thomas kindly plotted above, and a (dodgy) model that tries to fit that data using a goodly number of made up parameters. And it fit really well until about 2000 yrs ago. IIRC there was a methane deviation around when the (ancient) folks in asia started cultivating rice, and a big dip in CO2 when the european forest regrew after the black death. That sort of thing. And BTW that was where the hockey stick got started.

You are plotting two different kinds of curves from a single site. Seems irrelevant to me.

 

[woodgeek]

That actually sounds like a pretty fair description, and I agree, it is no argument.

I like it when we agree.

Actually, it basically always boils down to that. I can contest every last published paper, and you (I'm generalizing here to the typical believer) will say, well I'll take the word of so-and-so over you.

Put me down as 'atypical'.

I'll agree with all of that up until the "and they work" part. In fact, they usually don't work. And that's why we use them, to make predictions and then learn from them when the predictions fail. What you CAN'T do in science is make a model and then say, look our model says this and that, therefore we have to immediately take away everyone's individual rights and impose a top-down tyranny on everyone. Sorry, that's pure malicious fallacy. Garbage in, garbage out is absolutely the appropriate philosophy to take in regard to models and is the only way they can be used scientifically.

The AGW believers are gonna get ya. I am actually more worried about the future tyranny that would result when the climate SHTF. But I am enough of a technooptimist to think we wont get there.

Well your presumption is wrong. There is no "balance on the century scale" and humans aren't a blip. Everything is always in flux and there are massive buffers all around. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule compared to that contained in the biosphere, the ground, and the oceans. You want to talk numbers, well good luck ascertaining those numbers, because they're beyond anything we can reliably estimate. But what I do know is that the amount of carbon contained in all of the fossil fuels on the planet aren't but a drop in the bucket. How do I know that? Because removing them from the oceans, biosphere, and atmosphere over millions of years didn't cause the world to implode or the cycles to cease. And humans will never, ever in all our existence burn all of the fossil fuels because probably only 20% of them are even accessible in remotely economic quantities.

Do I think that the higher CO2 in the air is directly anthropogenic? Only a tiny fraction. The vast majority of it is caused by the dissolution of carbon from the oceans caused by solar and volcanic warming. Whatever humans add is easily absorbed by the system and would be little different if we didn't exist. How do I know that? Because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have virtually no correlation to human industrial activity. The fact that the modern human era happens to coincide with a period of warming is not a surprise at all, and to attribute warming to humans is to look at the correlation from the wrong causal direction. All major periods of human advance have occurred during warm cycles. And all major civilization collapses tend to occur during cold cycles. If you want to attribute the current warm cycle to industrialization, then you have to explain how it started in the 1600s instead of the late 1700s. And how the Vikings or the Holy Roman Empire caused the last one. And the Hellenistic Greeks the one before that. And this cycle, you'd have to explain how carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere march steadily in the same trajectory despite periods of depression and rapid industrialization not likewise being so determinate.

You work this stuff out on your own Thomas? The industrial release stuff is easy peasy....countries keep records of fuel use over decades, and the emissions are ~2x the rate of increase in the atmosphere, the rest goes into your buffers. A nice accelerating linear trend both for the new CO2 appearing and the estimated release. Small errors on both...and the confounding fluctuations (as in the temp records) are way smaller. You can even see features related to the 1970s oil crisis, the great recession and China's recent economic expansion. All in the CO2 over Hawaii. Heck, now they can visualize the plume of excess CO2 coming from industrial regions, spreading over thousands of miles.

But you are def right that there is a lot of other carbon out there....a lot of it in soil. And how it moves when we repurpose land is not well understood at all. IOW, when we cut down a forest and plant a farm, the net CO2 input to the atmosphere may be really different from that from burning the wood. And for all I know it might be negative....it all depends on the soil. But the long records on CH4, CO2 and temp do appear to show features when global agriculture or other land use takes a big step up or down. Not iron clad, but your statements about buffers speaks to plausibility.

And volcanoes....yeah volcanoes. Generally not nice consistent releasers. A few really big fast squirts, not the linear trend we see.

You want numbers? The sun bathes the Earth's surface in more energy in a single hour (175,000,000 megawatts) than the entire human race consumes in almost 13,000 years of present consumption rates of all kinds of energy including nuclear, fossil fuel, alternative energy, etc. The energy in the wind flowing around the Earth for one hour represents 200 times more energy than the entire human race consumes in an entire year. The scale of the Earth's climate is orders of magnitude greater than what humans have any hope of influencing.

So, I know you are hung up on Beers law being logarithmic, but why can't the CO2 from burning a pound of wood, hanging out in the atmosphere for a couple centuries, add a LOT more BTUs to the earths surfaces than it did when you burned the wood in your mancave? Yeah, we don't have the power to heat the earth with 'human power', but if we crank up greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere we can tweak the average temp of the earth by a amount that can be estimated.

IOW, with global warming we are leveraging that big solar number...the little human energy consumption IS irrelevant.

 

[woodgeek]

Now, I am no alarmist, but the data you provide does give cause to be worried. Keep in mind that the 100 ppm swings in CO2 and the temperature changes (black curve) are highly correlated. Correlated, not causally linked, but let's run with it for a minute. Let's say that the temps were caused by the CO2 'forcing' directly. Well 100 ppm CO2 is the difference between the depths of an ice age with a mile thick glacier sitting on manhattan and the NYC we have today. And we have decided as a species to do an 'experiment' that consists of adding another 100 ppm on top of the recent maximal CO2. Looking at this record, our first guess would be that that would change the earth's climate by roughly the same amount as it changed between the last ice age and the present, only in the hotter direction. Does anyone know what that would look like? Will I still be able to grow corn in Iowa, or will the corn belt look like the Sahara?

So, back to the OP, is the heart of conservatism to be cautious? To weigh the risks of things before jumping in? Is the data above (with the fact that there is an unplotted spike to 391 not shown at the end) reason enough to have some scientists build/run some models? I'm thinking, uh-huh. Please.

From the plot above, 100 ppm CO2 looks like it would 'cause' 8°C global warming (that is the factor you have to multiply one curve by to get it to lie over the other curve). Now, since we have already put 100 ppm into the atmosphere, then this would predict that when the earth catches up (it can take a while) the earth would be 8°C warmer even if we stopped burning FF today. And 8°C gives us a Sahara Earth, based only on the CO2 we have already added! IF you bought the 8°C/100ppm CO2 number (implied by Thomas' plot), you would be a serious climate doomer. You could go have a beer with Al Gore.

As Thomas points out there are lots of reason's to think that the 8°C/100 ppm number is too big. Remember those ice age glaciers....positive feedback...white ice reflects the sun into space amplifying the temp change and the depth of the ice age. Not relevant for a warming swing (given how little ice there is on the current earth). The good news is that the folks looking over models have been duking it out at scientific conferences and in the journals for a couple decades now trying to figure out with more confidence what kinda number we can expect. The good news is that they are settling on a number much closer to 2°C rather than 8. Of course, some folks say it is 1, some say it is 3 or 4, nobody thinks it is 8 (except maybe Al). So, if we stopped burning FF today (not gonna happen), 1 implies no bigs (just the occasional drought year like 2012) and 4 implies we will be halfway to global sahara. 2 is somewhere in between...if we acted now.

Of course, we aren't acting on global warming (yet). On a business as usual projection, we will prob add ANOTHER 100 ppm in the next 50 years. IOW, Homo Sap is gonna double down on its current global warming bet. IF the big number is the lowball estimate 1, then again we get a world a good bit warmer than today's, with a lot of dead forests and extinct animals, but we still have a biosphere and (adapted) agriculture--but that is the lowest of the low end projection. IF the 4 guys are right, then 200 ppm added will give us Sahara world. And the best guess 2°C/100 ppm would predict a 4°C warming by the end of the century. Look at the chart again. The difference between today and an ice age is -8°C. The best estimate of scientists working on the problem for 20 years now is that 2100 would be +4°C versus todays weather. And remember that is a conservative estimate: a basic guess based on the correlation in the chart would suggest a whopping +16°C rise! IOW, for all the $$ we paid the scientists, they told us the problem is only ~25% as bad as was thought in 1980. Doesn't sound like a conspiracy of alarmists to me.

 

[jharkin]

Woodgeek, you guys are now into details that are beyond me.... However I thought I had read though that the already observed arctic melting is actually proceeding faster than even the worst case models predicted? (On pace to be ice free in the summer as early as 2020 now, vs. a predicted worst case of 2050)

Would not that indicate that your extreme scenarios are not impossible?

 

[woodgeek]

Woodgeek, you guys are now into details that are beyond me.... However I thought I had read though that the already observed arctic melting is actually proceeding faster than even the worst case models predicted? (On pace to be ice free in the summer as early as 2020 now, vs. a predicted worst case of 2050)

Would not that indicate that your extreme scenarios are not impossible?

Excellent question. I would describe the current best estimate for global warming to be plenty extreme....solidly apocalyptic by 2100. But it IS 4x less severe than we used to think.

So the model uncertainty is still larger than you would want....but both the low end and high end estimated are plenty unacceptable.

As for the ice....yeah...its ahead of projections, but I honestly don't know how much that affects the global model/picture for warming. IMO, it is 'small potatoes' compared to desertifying the rest of the earth.

 

[jharkin]

As for the ice....yeah...its ahead of projections, but I honestly don't know how much that affects the global model/picture for warming. IMO, it is 'small potatoes' compared to desertifying the rest of the earth.

Again, I get out of my depth when you guys get to the calculations... but my understanding based on published articles was:

-Arctic melt has no effect on sea level because its floating ice (thought the Greenland melt and antarctic melt does )

- Arctic melt decreases the albedo of the pole, significantly increasing the amount of retained heat from the sun in the summer (self reinforcing feedback loop), putting a lot more energy (heat, moisture) into the atmosphere and accelerating the wild summer weather fluctuations (drought to torrential rain and hurricanes) we have seen in the Northern hemisphere.

Am I understanding correctly?

 

[woodgeek]

I've read the same things. But I think there is a 'forest for the trees' thing. Ice melting is a positive feedback, but the pole is a region, the effects of the feedback are regional (and may extend to NE and Northern Europe, noone knows yet). But in the bigger, global picture (according to current estimates) negative feedbacks are dominant and negate maybe 75% of the direct effects from anthropgenic CO2. The bad news is that under the business as usual scenario, even that 0.25 residual global effect is catastrophic.

And if you live in the polar regions, positive feedbacks will give you an esp dramatic effect. Like an ice free ocean this early in the game.

 

[woodgeek]

Again, I get out of my depth when you guys get to the calculations...

Not really that hard to get the math.....the BIG unknown is how much warming as a function of how much added CO2? Blue skying it, you could imagine all sorts of complications like thresholds, tipping points, non-linear functions....but the most likely thing is that there is something like a linear (or even slower than linear) global effect (with regional deviations from that global average effect). If you hypothesize a linear response, one's first wild guess would be to look at the historical record, and figure out in that record how much CO2 corresponds to how much warming...that is 8-10°C/100ppm CO2. That is, when the world had 100 ppm more CO2, it was typically 8-10°C warmer on a global average basis (i.e. in Thomas' data, look at the two scales). 20-30 years ago, there were plenty of folks worried that the effect could be that large via such reasoning, which was the motivation for a lot of model building (and early alarmism).

The 'good news' is that modern models are coming closer to 2°C/100ppm (with a wide uncertainty range), with significant time lags in the response. The predictions of these models are consistent with the (rather slight) global warming observed to date....but the models are not believed because they correspond to the 20th century record (which has poor signal to noise). Rather, IMO, the observed weak upturn is believed because it is consistent with the models, which are validated by other means.

The bad news is that the same models also predict not just that Chicago will have winter temps like Atlanta in 2100 (doesn't sound so bad), but also that much of the earth including the lower 48 will be too arid for existing large scale agriculture. And many tropical regions will become hotter and more arid than any existing desert, and thus rendered effectively lifeless (except for humans with reliable A/C). And >1 billion mostly poor people are currently living in the latter locations.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

Thank you for checking...and confirming my claim.

Actually, it proves you wrong. You said, "I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years," when in fact it has changed as rapidly in the more distant past as it has in the recent past. If you want to attribute the current change to humans, then how do you explain the previous ones? Moreover, it is obvious that CO2 changes, while correlated, FOLLOW, not precede temperature changes. This is due entirely to ocean solubility. CO2 does not cause temperature to increase in any significant manner because it is saturated already. CO2 concentrations have been as high as 7,000 ppm in the past (almost 20x higher than current), and the Earth did not boil.

Also, comparing ice core data to current air sampling is not fool-proof, so looking at past fluctuations may be very attenuated compared to current sampling. Maybe it has actually fluctuated by hundreds of ppm over very short periods regularly in the past, even more so than they already indicate (which is already very volatile), but ice cores don't capture it. Plant stomata data show much more volatility of CO2 levels over the last thousand years than the ice cores do. CO2 levels have often exceeded 300 ppm, including a 120 ppm increase from the late 1100s through mid 1300s. So simply comparing Mauna Loa air sampling to ice cores and concluding that we're in a suddenly vicious up-trend never before seen is naive, especially in light of the massive hockey stick errors already shown.

The fact of the matter is that temperatures began rising some 250 years before CO2 levels started rising during the present warm cycle. That is not an indication that CO2 concentrations are causing warming, it is an indication that warming (a trend started pre-industrial times) is causing the dissolution of CO2 from the oceans.

And remember....the models suggest that such rapid changes may create 'dustbowl' drought conditions b/c the ocean temps take a couple centuries to catch up. You won't find an example of that in the fossil record, b/c such rapid change has never happened before in the period for which we have such data as above.

Remember, those models are crap. We know right now by actual sampling that that claim is bullshit. Warmer temperatures cause more clouds and more rain, right now. I quoted a NASA climatologist earlier in this thread in that regard. Droughts are caused by cooler temperatures which prevent as much ocean evaporation. Warming causes more clouds and rain.

To build a working model, you have to try different things, and see which one works best. Perhaps there has been some advancement since 1993?

Nope, because the original hypothesis failed, so any future models built on that same hypothesis will also fail. And have.

Actually, This one bears emphasis with regard to your "petition".

Again, I have no desire to play the game of which scientists are smarter. But I could play it all day. UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning Ph.D environmental physical chemist has decried that warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history... When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." So keep telling yourself that all of the scientists who have helped compile IPCC documents all come to the same conclusion as the politicians who write the executive summaries for policy makers.

I conceded that the 20th century record is too short to say anything compelling about climate change in my very first post in this thread. This is obvious to the layman that looks at the graph. Sure there is a wiggle upwards at the end, but there are enough wiggles that ones gut instinct is that you wouldn't bet the farm that the line couldn't wiggle down next year or for the next 10. And that lay intuition is right on...we are all wired to do statistical inference whether we know it or not.

And yet all of your arguments stem from the idea that we're looking at something unusual in all of history.

The fact is that deniers have tried to pretend that all of climate change science hinges on interpreting that one plot, and it simply doesn't. You insisting on moving the topic back to that one useless plot seems like denier behaviour.

Actually, skeptics don't have to pretend anything. They must merely poke holes in the true believers' false contentions.

I am actually more worried about the future tyranny that would result when the climate SHTF. But I am enough of a technooptimist to think we wont get there.

Especially if there's no rational path to get us to anthropogenic climate SHTF. Now natural climate SHTF is another thing altogether, and I really wish society would overcome their normalcy bias and realize that things can change very drastically very fast through no doing of our own. In fact, long periods of stability are very, very rare. As I mentioned previously, most civilization collapses throughout history have coincided in rapid downturns in temperature and upticks in geological activity. Both of which we seem on the verge of experiencing.

You work this stuff out on your own Thomas? The industrial release stuff is easy peasy....countries keep records of fuel use over decades, and the emissions are ~2x the rate of increase in the atmosphere, the rest goes into your buffers. A nice accelerating linear trend both for the new CO2 appearing and the estimated release. Small errors on both...and the confounding fluctuations (as in the temp records) are way smaller. You can even see features related to the 1970s oil crisis, the great recession and China's recent economic expansion. All in the CO2 over Hawaii. Heck, now they can visualize the plume of excess CO2 coming from industrial regions, spreading over thousands of miles.

There you go confusing correlation and causation again. Check the temperature record first, then see how CO2 responds. You can't just cherry pick a few instances where temperature-driven CO2 changes happened to correlate with human events, Nostradamus.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

But you are def right that there is a lot of other carbon out there....a lot of it in soil. And how it moves when we repurpose land is not well understood at all. IOW, when we cut down a forest and plant a farm, the net CO2 input to the atmosphere may be really different from that from burning the wood. And for all I know it might be negative....it all depends on the soil. But the long records on CH4, CO2 and temp do appear to show features when global agriculture or other land use takes a big step up or down. Not iron clad, but your statements about buffers speaks to plausibility.

Or when we do nothing at all or regardless of what we do. Humans are NOT the driving factor in ANY of this.

And volcanoes....yeah volcanoes. Generally not nice consistent releasers. A few really big fast squirts, not the linear trend we see.

Actually, volcanism is relatively continuous. Maybe not on human time scales (i.e. years or decades can pass between individual eruptions from a single site), but geologically and climatologically, volcanism is relatively smooth in its output and has been increasing exponentially of late. What do you think causes El Ninos?

So, I know you are hung up on Beers law being logarithmic, but why can't the CO2 from burning a pound of wood, hanging out in the atmosphere for a couple centuries, add a LOT more BTUs to the earths surfaces than it did when you burned the wood in your mancave? Yeah, we don't have the power to heat the earth with 'human power', but if we crank up greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere we can tweak the average temp of the earth by a amount that can be estimated.

IOW, with global warming we are leveraging that big solar number...the little human energy consumption IS irrelevant.

Yeah, I'm hung up on real, scientifically established physical laws. You make it sound like somehow that should take a back seat to your pseudo-science? Absorbance of energy in a gas IS VERIFIABLY a logarithmic function of its concentration. And that's why it doesn't add a bunch more BTUs. Moreover, even if it did, then it would increase the albedo of the Earth via increased evaporation, which would reduce insolation, thereby nullifying any added greenhouse effect.

Correlated, not causally linked, but let's run with it for a minute. Let's say that the temps were caused by the CO2 'forcing' directly. Well 100 ppm CO2 is the difference between the depths of an ice age with a mile thick glacier sitting on manhattan and the NYC we have today. And we have decided as a species to do an 'experiment' that consists of adding another 100 ppm on top of the recent maximal CO2. Looking at this record, our first guess would be that that would change the earth's climate by roughly the same amount as it changed between the last ice age and the present, only in the hotter direction. Does anyone know what that would look like? Will I still be able to grow corn in Iowa, or will the corn belt look like the Sahara?

Everything but the first four words of that are pure fantasy. CO2 cannot physically do what you think it can, the correlation runs the opposite of what you suppose it does, CO2 concentrations have varied by thousands of ppms without any major life-threatening changes.

So, back to the OP, is the heart of conservatism to be cautious? To weigh the risks of things before jumping in? Is the data above (with the fact that there is an unplotted spike to 391 not shown at the end) reason enough to have some scientists build/run some models? I'm thinking, uh-huh. Please.

To be cautious is to not buy every pseudo-scientific hypothesis that anyone comes up with, especially those which have been disconfirmed by actual measurements. Now you're free to go run whatever models you want, but nobody else is compelled to care. It's called freedom of religion.

From the plot above, 100 ppm CO2 looks like it would 'cause' 8°C global warming (that is the factor you have to multiply one curve by to get it to lie over the other curve). Now, since we have already put 100 ppm into the atmosphere, then this would predict that when the earth catches up (it can take a while) the earth would be 8°C warmer even if we stopped burning FF today. And 8°C gives us a Sahara Earth, based only on the CO2 we have already added! IF you bought the 8°C/100ppm CO2 number (implied by Thomas' plot), you would be a serious climate doomer. You could go have a beer with Al Gore.

Nothing of the sort is implied. Again, you're inferring causation where there is none. If you use the IPCC's numbers, a doubling of CO2 would add an additional 4 Wm^2 to the radiative forcing, or about 1.2°C. We haven't seen even one doubling of CO2 levels let alone another one. Moreover, the IPCC number is itself suspect, but even if we go with it, it would require a quadrupling of CO2 to raise the temperature by 2.4°C.

1 implies no bigs (just the occasional drought year like 2012) and 4 implies we will be halfway to global sahara. 2 is somewhere in between...if we acted now.

No matter what we do, we won't impact climate. And a 1°C increase would not cause droughts, it would cause a slight increase in floods perhaps, but more than anything it would just be generally a little bit wetter. I don't know why you keep insisting that warming causes drought. It doesn't. Cooling causes drought.

Of course, we aren't acting on global warming (yet). On a business as usual projection, we will prob add ANOTHER 100 ppm in the next 50 years. IOW, Homo Sap is gonna double down on its current global warming bet. IF the big number is the lowball estimate 1, then again we get a world a good bit warmer than today's, with a lot of dead forests and extinct animals, but we still have a biosphere and (adapted) agriculture--but that is the lowest of the low end projection. IF the 4 guys are right, then 200 ppm added will give us Sahara world. And the best guess 2°C/100 ppm would predict a 4°C warming by the end of the century. Look at the chart again. The difference between today and an ice age is -8°C. The best estimate of scientists working on the problem for 20 years now is that 2100 would be +4°C versus todays weather. And remember that is a conservative estimate: a basic guess based on the correlation in the chart would suggest a whopping +16°C rise! IOW, for all the $$ we paid the scientists, they told us the problem is only ~25% as bad as was thought in 1980. Doesn't sound like a conspiracy of alarmists to me.

There is so much wrong with this paragraph that it makes my head hurt. Firstly, no matter what we "add", it's mostly or entirely absorbed by buffers. If total atmospheric concentrations (due to natural warming causing dissolution from the oceans) increased 100 ppm, that would NOT be a "doubling", it would be an increase of about 33%. Assuming the IPCC number is accurate, that would contribute less than half a degree to warming. Of course you would only see that if we experienced natural warming to cause the CO2 increase, so overall temperature would be higher by well more than half a degree. But not from anything we did. It would have little impact on forests and extinctions. Biological organisms are resilient. There are extinctions every year having nothing to do with humans, but from being out-competed by other organisms. Agriculture would barely need to adapt to a one degree change. An ice age would need a pretty big adaptation, but remember that ice ages mostly only significantly affect temperate regions. We would still have farming in tropical and sub-tropical regions. A warming of 8 degrees would be far better than a cooling of 8 degrees though. Unfortunately, the latter is more likely. You should ignore any predictions anyone makes about the climate further than one week out. You are definitely in the extreme alarmist camp.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

Here's an article that goes into more depth on
CO2: Ice Cores vs. Plant Stomata

 

[jharkin]

Thomas I think I have your MO figured out....

First you make claims based on nothing but " I told you so"

Then we ask for evidence...

Which is answered with a condescending remark like "go use your GoogleFu" or "Thousands of scientists say so" or "I am a scientist, I know "

Then when enough of us push you you dig up some link to something that's vaguely related to your case, but often far out of date. I notice that when I Google a few terms I usually find what you posted as the top link... often something very old - like that 1998 phony petition you found, or the article on healthcare in china from 15 years ago that we found you just plagiarized word for word out of Wikipedia in an ash can thread.

Then with only 5 more minutes of Google searching I usually find out if its legit or - more often - bunk.

If it does turn out to be bunk and I call you on it you just ignore and change the subject.


This is getting old.


BTW, Im still waiting for you to explain your claimed "scientific credentials" or enlighten us on why they cant farm in Canada.

 

[Thomas Anderson]

Thomas I think I have your MO figured out....

Apparently you don't understand science or the burden of proof or logic. I'm not the one making a positive claim here. And how old a disconfirmation is of a claim is irrelevant. Either present proof of your claim, or keep your religion to yourself. Some "scientist" (who BTW is funded by a government grant) said so is not proof.