Very interesting stuff. Very scary that I find no one around me cares.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/NASA-scientists-expect-more-rapid-global-warming-in-the-very-near-future-part-1.html

in Buddhism it is said that with suffering comes wisdom.

which, coincidentally, is a shitty way to get it.

Nasa's been around for 130 years? You mean to say they were founded during the Chester A. Arthur administration?

Relax, even Lovelock says there's no point in worrying anymore, we should all just 'enjoy it while we still can'.

>> ^Peroxide:

Very interesting stuff. Very scary that I find no one around me cares.
http://www.skepticalscienc
e.com/NASA-scientists-expect-more-rapid-global-warming-in-the-very-near-future-part-1.html

This would be a lot more interesting if they showed the location of each of their data points as the years progress. Showing a map like this over such a long time with no idea of how much they have "guessed" at for the temperatures is pretty disengenuous.

The other factor with this map is the scale. From the article it looks like from dark blue to full red is about 1 degree Farenheight. As a non professional in the field of earth science it is pretty hard to quantify the affect of such a small change on the every day workings of the planet. Let alone derive some future idea of how these changes will accellerate or be countered by processes already in place on the planet.

It always bugs me when science looks like it is trying to make a point without delivering enough data to keep from being debunked.

>> ^visionep:

This would be a lot more interesting if they showed the location of each of their data points as the years progress. Showing a map like this over such a long time with no idea of how much they have "guessed" at for the temperatures is pretty disengenuous.
The other factor with this map is the scale. From the article it looks like from dark blue to full red is about 1 degree Farenheight. As a non professional in the field of earth science it is pretty hard to quantify the affect of such a small change on the every day workings of the planet. Let alone derive some future idea of how these changes will accellerate or be countered by processes already in place on the planet.
It always bugs me when science looks like it is trying to make a point without delivering enough data to keep from being debunked.


This is not meant to be science, it's meant to be PR.

If there is a scientific beef with this I would think it is the opposite of your own. The trouble isn't showing things over such a long time frame, but in terms of climate change showing them over such a short one. 100 years is a blip on long term climate trends and it's the heart of the whole issue. Specifically, was the planet already warming before 1880 when mankind started pumping out CO2, and was it warming as quickly, or is the last 100 years truly something special or unique that we need to be worried about. Merely looking at the last 100 years answers none of that...

meanwhile, my conservative friends on facebook post pictures of snow and say, "where's your global warming now?"

facepalm

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

Shit that's scary!

@therealblankman directly measured temperature data has been around since the 1880's. Nasa's just compiled that data into a graphical video for mass consumption.

@visionep, @bcglorf here's a link to the scientific paper associated with the video: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf

But it's not as if the questions you raise haven't been answered a million times over, and it's not as if coal and oil companies haven't spent billions trying to discredit the findings for almost two decades, without success.

Maybe, just maybe, you guys should give the benefit of the doubt to the people who've dedicated their lives to studying this stuff, and not assume that they've made some basic error that any layman can see?

>> ^NetRunner:

@therealblankman directly measured temperature data has been around since the 1880's. Nasa's just compiled that data into a graphical video for mass consumption.
@visionep, @bcglorf here's a link to the scientific paper associated with the video: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImba
lancePaper.pdf
But it's not as if the questions you raise haven't been answered a million times over, and it's not as if coal and oil companies haven't spent billions trying to discredit the findings for almost two decades, without success.
Maybe, just maybe, you guys should give the benefit of the doubt to the people who've dedicated their lives to studying this stuff, and not assume that they've made some basic error that any layman can see?


I'm not entirely a layman. I'm basing my opinion on searches through peer reviewed journals, ones like this. If you go and take a look, you'll find it is a pretty much bullet-proof decimation of the statistical methods used in the infamous hockey stick graph. It's not a run and gun hit job by hacks funded by big oil either. Mann's team that generated the original hockey stick graph already came to the same conclusion(with gentler wording) in their own most recent work.

Read Mann's article for yourself, he's one of the most vehement of those claiming the science is 'settled'. His most recent paper's calculations with different statistical methods though show that the earth was just as warm(or warmer) twice before in just the last 2k years.

The science that is settled is that the planet has been warming for the last long while. The science is settled that the planet has been warming over just the last 100 years that we've had instrumental record. The science is settled that mankind is inputting measurable and even significant levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. The science is settled that CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect. The science is settled that CO2's overall contribution to the greenhouse effect is less between 5-15%, while water vapor accounts for 60-90%. Science is well agreed that the role of water vapor in long term climate change is very poorly understood.

I challenge anyone to dispute the above assessment of the current state of scientific understanding, as my searching of peer-reviewed journals shows the experts in each relevant field agreeing with the above statements. Putting those together doesn't exactly add up to 'time to panic'. The only smoking gun that every was considered was the hockey stick graph that appeared to show that the last 100 years of warming was abnormal and unusual. The evidence for it is being thrown out though, and the newly recalculated data, even by the original team, suddenly looks a lot less worrying and much more normal.

>> ^bcglorf:


I'm not entirely a layman. I'm basing my opinion on searches through peer reviewed journals, ones like this. If you go and take a look, you'll find it is a pretty much bullet-proof decimation of the statistical methods used in the infamous hockey stick graph. It's not a run and gun hit job by hacks funded by big oil either. Mann's team that generated the original hockey stick graph already came to the same conclusion(with gentler wording) in their own most recent work.
Read Mann's article for yourself, he's one of the most vehement of those claiming the science is 'settled'. His most recent paper's calculations with different statistical methods though show that the earth was just as warm(or warmer) twice before in just the last 2k years.
The science that is settled is that the planet has been warming for the last long while. The science is settled that the planet has been warming over just the last 100 years that we've had instrumental record. The science is settled that mankind is inputting measurable and even significant levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. The science is settled that CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect. The science is settled that CO2's overall contribution to the greenhouse effect is less between 5-15%, while water vapor accounts for 60-90%. Science is well agreed that the role of water vapor in long term climate change is very poorly understood.
I challenge anyone to dispute the above assessment of the current state of scientific understanding, as my searching of peer-reviewed journals shows the experts in each relevant field agreeing with the above statements. Putting those together doesn't exactly add up to 'time to panic'. The only smoking gun that every was considered was the hockey stick graph that appeared to show that the last 100 years of warming was abnormal and unusual. The evidence for it is being thrown out though, and the newly recalculated data, even by the original team, suddenly looks a lot less worrying and much more normal.


That's probably the first rebuttal to climate change I've ever read that doesn't spout nonsense and lies. Kudos to you.

Out of interest, you say you're "not entirely a layman". May I ask if that means you have studied climatology or simply that you read the papers?

As for water vapour, it's not really a "forcing agent", it's reactive. It's better explained here.

People saying "they need to express their data points more clearly, bla bla bla" - did you even look at the website linked in the comments? It has the source of the data listed there which you will be able to look at at your own leisure.

They're scientists. They don't present raw data to you, because you probably don't have the technical knowledge of the field to understand what those symbols and signs mean. What they do is interpret the data for you so that you can understand it, and allow you to go and look at the same freely available data for yourself if you think you can understand it.

Not everything is simple enough for people who are not trained to understand....to understand.

I mean this is starting to get flat out rediculous; people trip over themselves to question the expertise of scientists at places like NASA, but when a politician tells them everything is the other guy's fault they eat it up like ice cream.

@therealblankman it only just occured to me that your comment could have been a joke, but if it wasn't, then you should go and avail yourself of the methods available in the modern world to learn about things that we can't necessarily see with our own unaided eyes. We've got microscopes and ice cores and shit! Know what i mean!?

I hope you believe in King George, because he wasn't around in your time but we've got a lot riding on him and his descendents!

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^bcglorf:

I'm not entirely a layman. I'm basing my opinion on searches through peer reviewed journals, ones like this. If you go and take a look, you'll find it is a pretty much bullet-proof decimation of the statistical methods used in the infamous hockey stick graph. It's not a run and gun hit job by hacks funded by big oil either. Mann's team that generated the original hockey stick graph already came to the same conclusion(with gentler wording) in their own most recent work.
Read Mann's article for yourself, he's one of the most vehement of those claiming the science is 'settled'. His most recent paper's calculations with different statistical methods though show that the earth was just as warm(or warmer) twice before in just the last 2k years.
The science that is settled is that the planet has been warming for the last long while. The science is settled that the planet has been warming over just the last 100 years that we've had instrumental record. The science is settled that mankind is inputting measurable and even significant levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. The science is settled that CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect. The science is settled that CO2's overall contribution to the greenhouse effect is less between 5-15%, while water vapor accounts for 60-90%. Science is well agreed that the role of water vapor in long term climate change is very poorly understood.
I challenge anyone to dispute the above assessment of the current state of scientific understanding, as my searching of peer-reviewed journals shows the experts in each relevant field agreeing with the above statements. Putting those together doesn't exactly add up to 'time to panic'. The only smoking gun that every was considered was the hockey stick graph that appeared to show that the last 100 years of warming was abnormal and unusual. The evidence for it is being thrown out though, and the newly recalculated data, even by the original team, suddenly looks a lot less worrying and much more normal.

That's probably the first rebuttal to climate change I've ever read that doesn't spout nonsense and lies. Kudos to you.
Out of interest, you say you're "not entirely a layman". May I ask if that means you have studied climatology or simply that you read the papers?
As for water vapour, it's not really a "forcing agent", it's reactive. It's better explained here.


My background is computer science but that requires a strong math background as well. When doing any manner of computer simulation of a complex and unknown system, the purely theoretical models are rarely sane. The reason being you can't model the bare physics of a complex system, so you have to essentially estimate(fake) the macro effects and properties. You get good computer models by comparing the results to real data and iterating back and forth until your model starts doing a better job of reflecting reality. The big red flag for me with climate models is the really limited real world data available to compare models to. I don't models aren't worthwhile, scientists are building them because they are useful. The trouble is what they are useful for. By definition, the models have to be treated as less reliable than the raw data we calibrate them against and run our sanity checks against. Neither does it matter how many different models we run, all that gets is closer to the same reliability as the real world measures that we have.

That ties into the article I linked, where the climate guys trying to rebuild temperature data to calibrate computer models from where themselves not strong enough in statistics to notice very significant flaws in the methods they were using. Flaws that systematically produced the results they initially deemed significant. Without a strong grounding there, I have to assess we are still left with a long road to go before really saying we understand this.

As for water vapor being reactive, I would very much disagree. Any climate scientist trying to tell you that is trying to simplify things for you to the point they are no longer being accurate. Ice caps melting, oceans rising, and cloud cover doubling is going to drive climate. It is going to force climate more strongly than anything else. The big unknown is just what parameters water vapor works under, it's simply not well understood yet. Computer models don't even know what sign to assign it as a forcing agent for pitysake. Most likely because it can act as both positive and negative based on environmental factors which are dependent on temperature among other things. When it comes to what kind of forcing H2O does the honest answer is that it's role is so complicated we just simply do not know. What we DO know is that currently, it contributes to 60-90% of the overall greenhouse effect. That tells me it's role in forcing is a much more worthy area of focus and study than CO2 and it's a crying shame so many more dollars are spent on CO2 than H2O when what we really need is to understand the whole system in order know what is really going on.

just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?

second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.

so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-review-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

>> ^Peroxide:

@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html


Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.

I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.

If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.

>> ^criticalthud:

just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.


Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.

As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.

I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.

Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.

>> ^visionep:

This would be a lot more interesting if they showed the location of each of their data points as the years progress. Showing a map like this over such a long time with no idea of how much they have "guessed" at for the temperatures is pretty disengenuous.
The other factor with this map is the scale. From the article it looks like from dark blue to full red is about 1 degree Farenheight. As a non professional in the field of earth science it is pretty hard to quantify the affect of such a small change on the every day workings of the planet. Let alone derive some future idea of how these changes will accellerate or be countered by processes already in place on the planet.
It always bugs me when science looks like it is trying to make a point without delivering enough data to keep from being debunked.


You might be interested in an animation of the GHCN weather station locations. This does not show the data, only locations over time. The "great dying" in the last few years is pretty dramatic; why ignore data if one really cares about science?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58mDaK9bH5o&feature=player_embedded

@bcglorf well said sir. I heard a funny polemic of how to calculate the volume of meat in a cow, first, just assume a spherical cow...

On that note, I think it is entirely plausible to be environmentally conscientious about being a nasty, irresponsible polluter without the world also coming to an end; an angle that would most likely be an easier sell as well!

Sigh.....

>> ^bcglorf:


My background is computer science but that requires a strong math background as well.

Which is essentially my background too, although I will admit my math skills have lapsed over the years. Either way, that definitely puts you in the "layman" category. Not that that invalidates your argument, simply that it is important to recognise that no-one here has actually seriously studied the science and those that have disagree with you. Appeal to authority? Yes, but I wouldn't ask a climate scientist to write software.


>> ^bcglorf:

What we DO know is that currently, it contributes to 60-90% of the overall greenhouse effect. That tells me it's role in forcing is a much more worthy area of focus and study than CO2 and it's a crying shame so many more dollars are spent on CO2 than H2O when what we really need is to understand the whole system in order know what is really going on.


Emphasis mine. Do you have a source for that figure? I don't know if you read the link I posted but it would seem to contradict that figure. Besides, even if CO2 is a small contribution, sometimes a small sway can dramatically affect a system.

I'm glad to hear that you believe in reducing our dependence on coal and oil. Frankly, I think it will run out before we stop using it (and it will run out in my lifetime).

@bcglorf would you trust someone with a doctorate in geology?

Here are some data:

Air:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
Ocean:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/fig_tab/nature09043_F1.html
(From: Lyman, J.M., Good, S.A., Gouretski, V.V., Ishii, M., Johnson, G.C., Palmer, M.D.,
Smith, D.M., and Willis, J.K., Robust warming of the global upper ocean: Nature,
v. 465, p. 334-337.)

The only real thing debated (or that should be debated) is why it's warming up. we've got 2 basic reasons: it's because of human interaction or it's because of natural processes (hey the earth has been WAY warmer than it is now several times - http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm)

In reference to your statement about the relative contributions of water vapor and CO2, there are 2 things you need to realize. First of all, the residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere is 9 days, the residence time of CO2 among other greenhouse gases can be as much as 100 years with other greenhouse gases (aerosols for example) much longer. Most aerosols were outlawed in the late 70s but graphs of their concentration in the atmosphere show no relative decrease since the cessation of their use. The second point here is that water vapor's place in the atmosphere is natural, greenhouse gas emission is not. Water vapor contributes to the amount of greenhouse effect that we need to survive on the planet (if we didn't have the greenhouse effect at all, earth could not sustain life - too cold). Humans contribute to greenhouse effect by adding in greenhouse gases and warming the planet. To specify the relative contributions of each and say "well water vapor is the biggest culprit! We only release tiny amounts of CO2 relative to water vapor, so it's really not our fault!" is irresponsible.

You might, however, find this interesting:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204257504577150812451167538-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNDEyNDQyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email

Definitely a different take on the issue at large, but again, the argument here isn't whether or not global warming is happening (it is) but rather what it all means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoPlWwPmNHw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

>> ^residue:

@bcglorf would you trust someone with a doctorate in geology?
Here are some data:
Air:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
Ocean:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/fig_tab/nature09043
_F1.html
(From: Lyman, J.M., Good, S.A., Gouretski, V.V., Ishii, M., Johnson, G.C., Palmer, M.D.,
Smith, D.M., and Willis, J.K., Robust warming of the global upper ocean: Nature,
v. 465, p. 334-337.)
The only real thing debated (or that should be debated) is why it's warming up. we've got 2 basic reasons: it's because of human interaction or it's because of natural processes (hey the earth has been WAY warmer than it is now several times - http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm)
In reference to your statement about the relative contributions of water vapor and CO2, there are 2 things you need to realize. First of all, the residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere is 9 days, the residence time of CO2 among other greenhouse gases can be as much as 100 years with other greenhouse gases (aerosols for example) much longer. Most aerosols were outlawed in the late 70s but graphs of their concentration in the atmosphere show no relative decrease since the cessation of their use. The second point here is that water vapor's place in the atmosphere is natural, greenhouse gas emission is not. Water vapor contributes to the amount of greenhouse effect that we need to survive on the planet (if we didn't have the greenhouse effect at all, earth could not sustain life - too cold). Humans contribute to greenhouse effect by adding in greenhouse gases and warming the planet. To specify the relative contributions of each and say "well water vapor is the biggest culprit! We only release tiny amounts of CO2 relative to water vapor, so it's really not our fault!" is irresponsible.
You might, however, find this interesting:
http://onlin
e.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204257504577150812451167538-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNDEyNDQyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email
Definitely a different take on the issue at large, but again, the argument here isn't whether or not global warming is happening (it is) but rather what it all means.


Well, you and I seem largely agreed. I commented multiple times that the warming is not in question, but rather why and more importantly what it means to us.

The challenge with accurately modelling the contribution of H2O has nothing to do with our own emissions of H2O. For all reasonable purposes we can, again as you seem to agree, ignore the meager contribution humans make to it. H2O is as you say largely short lived in the atmosphere, but it still makes up the overwhelming majority of the greenhouse effect, despite residing in the atmosphere for a fraction of the time of gases like CO2. Obviously that means that H2O replenishes itself into the atmosphere as rapidly as it dissipates. We know that this rate is driven by temperature. What we don't understand well is how that should play out in our models, or more importantly how it plays out in reality. Just how much confidence can we place on future projections of CO2 changes when we aren't even sure which sign to attribute the feedback effect of water vapor?

ChasoEngine said:those that have disagree with you. Appeal to authority? Yes, but I wouldn't ask a climate scientist to write software.

I'd ask you to be very specific about what I've said which relevant experts disagree with me on. Go back and look at the very first article I linked to. It is the relevant experts on statistics disagreeing with and correcting the climate scientists that went off and tried to work too far outside their area of expertise and wound making a mistake that seriously altered their results. The short version is the method they applied was well known to be biased for zero if the constraints were not met, which in the situation used was exactly the case. It is EXACTLY why Mann's original hockey stick graph showed very flat temperature anomalies in his reconstruction from 1000-1800AD. You can verify this by using google scholar to look at Mann's own new work following some of the advice of the article I linked and applying a more appropriate method. It's flagged as the EIV line on the graphs, and it shows several times in the last 1k years where the temperature anomaly from the reference date exceeds what we've experienced recently.

Chaos Engine said:Emphasis mine. Do you have a source for that figure? I don't know if you read the link I posted but it would seem to contradict that figure. Besides, even if CO2 is a small contribution, sometimes a small sway can dramatically affect a system.

I'm glad to hear that you believe in reducing our dependence on coal and oil. Frankly, I think it will run out before we stop using it (and it will run out in my lifetime).

I can't find the article I went off originally but here's a different one. It does vary from the range I gave a little but I think it still is consistent with the spirit of everything I've said. It pegs H2O at 71% and CO2 at 29%, the consistent thing I've seen in the multiple journal based estimates I've seen though is that H2O at a minimum carries double the influence of CO2.

We aren't going to run out of coal anytime soon. Even oil we won't run out of soon. What we may run out of soon is cheap oil, but once a certain price point is hit up here in Canada we've got more oil than Saudi Arabia stored up in the tar sands. It's messy, dirty, expensive and a much greater concern to the environment IMHO than CO2 emissions, but it's a big supply. I am hopeful though, as I said before, that in 20 years nobody is going to want gas powered cars anymore because electric will be cheaper, more reliable, more powerful and basically better in every meaningful way.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.

I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.

Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.

and I would add:
we have a psychological issue at hand.
the human species thinks it's entitled, and it's OUR planet. We think we're special.

This kind of psychological issue hides reality from us.

We have shown ourselves to be very poor stewards of the planet. How many species have we wiped out? How else have we affected our environment? What sort of poisons have we created, what scale of trash heap? Mindlessly fattening ourselves.

This makes me think it is quite likely that we are the frogs in the slowly boiling water.

So, we can argue about this and that, and whether our governments should act. But in actuality, it is up to each and every one of us to stop being energy and consumer gluttons, feasting during the oil orgy.

>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.

you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.
I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.
Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.


Sorry if my tone comes off as combative, it's not really my intent so please don't take my vehemence on issues personally. Maybe I'm just getting older but I'm of the mindset that the fastest way to know where I'm right and wrong is to be forward and assertive with how I understand things and allow the opportunity to be corrected where I'm wrong.

My thoughts on the human contribution are tempered by a few things. From the very top, that CO2's contribution is small compared to H2O(I count this an uncontested fact). Annual CO2 emissions are small(5%) compared to natural CO2 emissions(I again count this an uncontested fact). The experts do insist that the human CO2 emissions are building up and still driving the natural CO2 levels significantly higher each year. We don't understand the natural CO2 emission and absorption processes very well, so poorly in fact our margins of error on them are larger than the human contribution. There is evidence that CO2 levels are rising in the last 100 years, and there is a correlation there to human emissions. What we don't have strong evidence for yet is what impact that has on climate. We DO know it is warming effect, but the magnitude of it is still poorly understood. As I've outlined above the understanding of temperature trends over the last 2k years is still a work in progress with large margins of error(even systematic ones that are being worked out). The computer models we have by definition are no more reliable than that data, which places us without a strong correlation or confidence in what magnitude of change the CO2 will have when all other variables are considered.

As a side point, if you look at the IPCC or listen to certain climatologists, you may hear it sounding like they disagree and believe my last statement is disproven. What they have studied is the impact CO2 increases should have overall with the assumption of all other variables being equal. It's a useful figure to have, and the confidence in it is better than my last statement described. That is because I was talking about something different, I stated that CO2's impact, with all other variables being considered NOT equal, is still poorly known and has very low confidence levels. In the real world the impact of one climate variable impacts the role of all the others, and often significantly. The IPCC and a select few climatologists talk about CO2 projections that ignore that interaction as a base assumption and somewhere along the line between them and the public or them and Al Gore, that base assumption gets dropped off. That base assumption is central and vital, and it's why as our climate models improve we will see predictions for CO2 that fall outside the error margins of the IPCC models with that assumption. That doesn't invalidate the IPCC's work, it is an advancement of it and improvement upon it. Remembering the base assumptions is vital for the public to maintain faith in the integrity and reliability of scientific research. People need to know WHY the predictions they were told by the IPCC a few years back have changed so much and yet the IPCC insists they weren't wrong. The truth is simply that they were misunderstood.

As yet another rabbit warren, there is an even smaller set of people within the climate community who actively encourage that misunderstanding. They do it firmly believing that the impact of CO2 with all else ignored is still indicative of CO2 with all else considered. Which is even a reasonable and normal expectation. The trouble is it falsely communicates the level confidence and margin of error of current known facts. I can't abide that kind of thinking, it's what is supposed to differentiate scientists from priests and politicians, they are supposed to refuse to make that kind of compromise when presenting what they do and do not know is demonstrably true.

>> ^Trancecoach:

meanwhile, my conservative friends on facebook post pictures of snow and say, "where's your global warming now?"
facepalm


Yep, they are so stupid!
When its too hot, its global warming.
When its too cold, its global warming.
When its normal, its global warming... taking a breath.

Mind you, I am in no way conservative, but to think that only conservatives think that way, proves exactly what this is all about.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^visionep:
This would be a lot more interesting if they showed the location of each of their data points as the years progress. Showing a map like this over such a long time with no idea of how much they have "guessed" at for the temperatures is pretty disengenuous.
The other factor with this map is the scale. From the article it looks like from dark blue to full red is about 1 degree Farenheight. As a non professional in the field of earth science it is pretty hard to quantify the affect of such a small change on the every day workings of the planet. Let alone derive some future idea of how these changes will accellerate or be countered by processes already in place on the planet.
It always bugs me when science looks like it is trying to make a point without delivering enough data to keep from being debunked.

This is not meant to be science, it's meant to be PRopaganda.

Fix0red to make it more obvious. NP.

>> ^Trancecoach:

meanwhile, my conservative friends on facebook post pictures of snow and say, "where's your global warming now?"
facepalm


I generally subscribe to a philosophy which involves reading the opinions expressed on facebook and then almost always believing the opposite.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^Peroxide:
@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.
I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.
If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.


You are such a troll! OMG! The links I previously provided reference many more peer reviewed studies than your single study, even though you deleted them from your quote of me, (wonder why...) Here they are again, scroll to the bottom of the second link,
AND TAKE NOTE THAT THE LAST TWO PEER REVIEWED PAPERS ARE MORE RECENT THAN THE PAPER YOU CITE !!!
"Huber and Knutti 2011 (HR11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange)."

http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-review-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

BUT most importantly, you employ circular logic in your main argument, my Chem prof. explained:

You argue water vapour is the cause of current warming, so according to your theory,
-there is more water in the atmosphere making it hotter
-why is there more water in the atmosphere?
-because it is hotter.
-why is it hotter?
-uh... because there is more water in the atmosphere? wait a second...

That's called circular reasoning, and your whole argument hinges on it, scientists have considered these potential forcing agents and CO2 is the primary one, it IS humankind's fault, we CAN abate emissions, and people like you are the reason climate change will reach dangerous levels!

I sympathize for you if your guilt complex is too powerful for you to admit that the warming climate's root cause is anthropogenic. I beg you, please stop misleading others, I don't care if you're employed by exxon or a coal power plant, it MY GOD DAMN ATMOSPHERE TOO!

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

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

I hope wikipedia isn't too liberal a source for your liking, wouldn't be surprised if it is though.

>> ^Peroxide:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Peroxide:
@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.
I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.
If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.

You are such a troll! OMG! The links I previously provided reference many more peer reviewed studies than your single study, even though you deleted them from your quote of me, (wonder why...) Here they are again, scroll to the bottom of the second link,
AND TAKE NOTE THAT THE LAST TWO PEER REVIEWED PAPERS ARE MORE RECENT THAN THE PAPER YOU CITE !!!
"Huber and Knutti 2011 (HR11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange)."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
BUT most importantly, you employ circular logic in your main argument, my Chem prof. explained:
You argue water vapour is the cause of current warming, so according to your theory,
-there is more water in the atmosphere making it hotter
-why is there more water in the atmosphere?
-because it is hotter.
-why is it hotter?
-uh... because there is more water in the atmosphere? wait a second...
That's called circular reasoning, and your whole argument hinges on it, scientists have considered these potential forcing agents and CO2 is the primary one, it IS humankind's fault, we CAN abate emissions, and people like you are the reason climate change will reach dangerous levels!
I sympathize for you if your guilt complex is too powerful for you to admit that the warming climate's root cause is anthropogenic. I beg you, please stop misleading others, I don't care if you're employed by exxon or a coal power plant, it MY GOD DAMN ATMOSPHERE TOO!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
I hope wikipedia isn't too liberal a source for your liking, wouldn't be surprised if it is though.


Go back and read my arguments again, you claim that I "argue water vapour is the cause of current warming". I never said that. I talked about the percentage of our planet's greenhouse effect that is attributed to 2 gases, CO2 and H2O.

The greenhouse effect is not 'warming' it is not 'cooling', it is just the ability of various gases in the atmosphere to absorb energy and has been happening for millenia and barring absolute catastrophic disaster will continue to do so for millenia. Among the greenhouse gases climatologists estimate 70% of energy absorbed is done by H2O and 30% by CO2.

I'm afraid you've completely misunderstood even the most basic parts of what I've said. Go back and look closer, or if your not comfortable, get your chem prof to look and get him to explain it. My statements are in keeping with established science, most of it comes directly from articles like those in the links you yourself provided, like Mann et al's team(the hockey stick guys).

Let's not get too overwrought here. At issue, one planet's climate/resources relative to the mammal(s) utilization and experience of the same and their viability on her surface. Only one species have brains large enough to postulate, process, and influence directly a variety of scenarios. The indigenous species with teensier brains on the surface of this ball have for centuries adapted to changes dealt from off-world or on. Some are no longer here. We may or may not be here in our present state regardless of, or due directly to alterations in a variety of scenarios. No-thing is sustainable indefinitely. This planet's human resources are finite as well. Fewer and fewer of them every day. Sad really, when we all die off the next wave will have to start with some toxic scratch!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

How about carbon capture? Any thoughts on that? (my day job is here: http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/)>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^Peroxide:
@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.
I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.
If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.

Well, atleast you only have to wait 1 day, take a picture of the melted snow and say "Right there."

>> ^Trancecoach:

meanwhile, my conservative friends on facebook post pictures of snow and say, "where's your global warming now?"
facepalm

>> ^dag:

How about carbon capture? Any thoughts on that? (my day job is here: http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/)>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Peroxide:
@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.
I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.
If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.



If I'm to be really blunt, carbon capture seems like a terrifically expensive make work project. With most of our carbon emissions coming from combustion engines and with companies like Tesla already coming very close to being competitive with purely electric alternatives I think our time, money and energy much better spent there. Creative carbon capture ideas like simple tree planting and other means of increasing plant capture has it's benefits, but the capture of CO2 is really low on the list. I'd say championing that sort of thing as carbon capture is just gimmicky when the most significant benefits are a multitude of other more direct things.

@bcglorf,

Again, I read your whole argument, I read the conclusions of the paper you posted, neither of them show that current climate changes are not anthropogenic.

Again, your argument that the current changes are not anthropogenic hinges on the ammount of water in the atmosphere. Scientists have addressed this in multiple studies. Also, it makes no sense that water is the current culprit as it has always been in the atmosphere in varying quantities within a certain range, and could only change if another forcing agent caused more energy to be trapped in the atmosphere, essentially it is a positive feedback, but not the driver.

It's co2 emissions, check back with me in 10 years.

http://www.andywightman.com/docs/metoffice_climatepaper.pdf

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3966.1

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442%282004%29017%3C3721%3ACONAAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2000ESASP.463..201T&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

http://skepticalscience.com/gillett-estimate-human-and-natural-global-warming.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/huber-and-knutti-quantify-man-made-global-warming.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/lean-and-rind-estimate-man-made-and-natural-global-warming.html

>> ^Peroxide:

@bcglorf,
Again, I read your whole argument, I read the conclusions of the paper you posted, neither of them show that current climate changes are not anthropogenic.
Again, your argument that the current changes are not anthropogenic hinges on the ammount of water in the atmosphere. Scientists have addressed this in multiple studies. Also, it makes no sense that water is the current culprit as it has always been in the atmosphere in varying quantities within a certain range, and could only change if another forcing agent caused more energy to be trapped in the atmosphere, essentially it is a positive feedback, but not the driver.
It's co2 emissions, check back with me in 10 years.
http://www.andywightman.com/docs/metoffice_climatepaper.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3966.1
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/152
0-0442%282004%29017%3C3721%3ACONAAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2000ESASP.463..201T&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type
=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
http://skepticalscience.com/gillett-estimate-human-and-natur
al-global-warming.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/huber-and-knutti-quantif
y-man-made-global-warming.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lean-and-rind-e
stimate-man-made-and-natural-global-warming.html


Wow.

I'll try and use fewer sentences to summarize myself so maybe you'll bother reading it.

Scientific studies on causes and sources for current warming have relatively low confidence levels, largely because there are so many unknowns left to account for.

You can stop reading right there if you wish, everything else I have said is just demonstrating that fact.

I am not making any declarative statements about why warming is happening. If anything I've posted suggests that please let me know and I'll try to clarify.

Take a closer look at your own links, I have. The papers on causes of climate change are all based upon computer run climate models. Computer models are only as good as our understanding of a system and the data we have about the system to compare our models against(fact).

The scientific papers in your own links that you provided agree with me that there is a lack of quality long term data.

The scientific papers in your own links that you provided agree with me that our understanding of climate forcings and feedbacks is far from complete(even whether H2O is positive or negative).

Let me add that I've previously pointed out:
-We are warming
-We are emitting measurable CO2 levels
-CO2 emissions WILL cause warming

My prior post stands together with these in perfect harmony, but I was afraid without pointing this out again we'd circle back again to acting like I deny those 3 points.

@bcglorf, I've skimmed through this conversation, and I think that this is the most succinct expression of your position on global warming:
>> ^bcglorf:

Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


I think John Cole still has the perfect description of the conservative/denier shtick on global warming:

You know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by human behavior, if it is caused by human behavior then we can’t do anything about it, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it, then that something is too expensive, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it that is not too expensive, then that something is not what Democrats are proposing. And Al Gore is fat, he flies too much, look at his electricity bill, and sometimes when he goes somewhere it snows there, which is very ironic.

@NetRunner

I don't care about somebody's script in a PR campaign. Refute my statements of fact or don't. I take real issue with trying to dismiss all my references to scientific journals and research by basically calling out 'denier'.

You then went on to mischaracterize my statements to an even more ludicrous extreme when you said "Yours seems to be that as long as the science isn't yet 100% definite, we should just ignore the problem and just wait until scarcity of coal and oil pushes us off them."

My first post in thread about what I thought we should be doing:
I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.

I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.

Or is it not enough to argue for the right actions, must I also embrace the officially sanctioned reasons as well?

@bcglorf, sorry, I was mostly trying to explain why I came down on you so hard way back up with my first comment, not meaning to come down hard on you a second time.

I'll cop to posting this as a piece of political activism, not to educate anyone. I think my objection to what you said was that your first reaction to the video was to try to undermine that political activism by casting doubt on the validity of the point being made.

Keep in mind, this wasn't a video of someone proposing some radical course of action, it was basically just saying "Yes virginia, temperatures are really rising, even if it's cold where you are right now."

It wasn't even meant to be the definitive proof that global warming is man-made, or that the future impacts will be significant, etc.

You raise a curious issue though. I'm not disapproving why you agree with me, I'm disapproving you undermining my advocacy of the kinds of policies we ostensibly agree about, because you disapprove of the reasons I am supporting them...

As for the denier label, that's easily settled. Do you agree that man-made CO2 emissions are causing significant changes to the planet's climate?

Like I said, I only skimmed through the earlier conversation, but it looked to me like your answer boiled down to "there's no proof that it is, and people who say otherwise are being dishonest."

Thank you NetRunner,

I agree completely with your statement,

"As for the denier label, that's easily settled. Do you agree that man-made CO2 emissions are causing significant changes to the planet's climate?"

It matters because:

"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

If the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world's existing infrastructure is already producing 80% of that "carbon budget", according to the IEA's analysis, published on Wednesday. This gives an ever-narrowing gap in which to reform the global economy on to a low-carbon footing.

P.S. The IEA is a conservative, pro free-market organization...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change

Also, every rebuttal you make to me starts with "You don't understand the points I'm making."
Oh how wrong you are, I read the single paper you cite, I know about Mann's graphs, your argument is a collection of luke-warm contrarian spin. It's disgusting that you can't recognize that or won't admit it. (Or you're a professional troll, in which case Kudos, job well done).

>> ^NetRunner:

@bcglorf, sorry, I was mostly trying to explain why I came down on you so hard way back up with my first comment, not meaning to come down hard on you a second time.
I'll cop to posting this as a piece of political activism, not to educate anyone. I think my objection to what you said was that your first reaction to the video was to try to undermine that political activism by casting doubt on the validity of the point being made.
Keep in mind, this wasn't a video of someone proposing some radical course of action, it was basically just saying "Yes virginia, temperatures are really rising, even if it's cold where you are right now."
It wasn't even meant to be the definitive proof that global warming is man-made, or that the future impacts will be significant, etc.
You raise a curious issue though. I'm not disapproving why you agree with me, I'm disapproving you undermining my advocacy of the kinds of policies we ostensibly agree about, because you disapprove of the reasons I am supporting them...
As for the denier label, that's easily settled. Do you agree that man-made CO2 emissions are causing significant changes to the planet's climate?
Like I said, I only skimmed through the earlier conversation, but it looked to me like your answer boiled down to "there's no proof that it is, and people who say otherwise are being dishonest."


My apologies for my overall manner being as aggressive as it is.

I would like to clarify on my original comment about the video being 'PR'. I was not saying that to discredit the video or underlying point, but rather to defend it. I was meaning to get across that the video itself isn't supposed to be the hard science behind everything, it's for the sake of getting the general idea across to lay folk. I had hoped my multiple times spent pointing out that the last 100 years have unarguably been warming would have kept that clear, but I can see where that got lost along the way.

As to the point:
Do you agree that man-made CO2 emissions are causing significant changes to the planet's climate?
I would not declare that, I would also argue that the basic scientific research out there doesn't show this with high certainty.

Scientific research(peer reviewed journals) DO show that mankind is emitting significant levels of CO2.
Scientific research(peer reviewed journals) DO show without question that rising CO2 will raise temperature.

The correlation of those two though does not lead straight to your conclusion, as I've gone into at length up thread. My biggest issue is simply to insist that it is not 'time to panic', it is time to look harder and for largely unrelated reasons to get off of oil and coal asap.

@bcglorf
A respectable position, only because you aren't against renewable energy. However, I do think it's anthropogenic, and I do think we are in for a hell of an interesting next 10-20 years (as far as who was right who was wrong goes). The next century is when we'll really see the effects of delaying action for 20-30 years...

>> ^Peroxide:

@bcglorf
A respectable position, only because you aren't against renewable energy. However, I do think it's anthropogenic, and I do think we are in for a hell of an interesting next 10-20 years (as far as who was right who was wrong goes). The next century is when we'll really see the effects of delaying action for 20-30 years...




I again agree with you for yet again entirely different reasons. I see the next 20-30 years being terribly interesting not for the indirect consequences of human activity, but from the direct threats of humans against one another. We're too many generations away from the last major war and we are overdue for reminding ourselves again first hand how and why to avoid that dread mistake. Not to beat a dead horse, but massive international pressure to gcut back the global economy to fight CO2 emissions is just one more straw on that camel's back.

Interesting. I too wonder about the next big one. What a strange world.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Actually more CO2 emissions come from big power plants than cars. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2_human.html#fossil CCS is about capturing the CO2 in the smoke stack of big energy plants, transporting it and pumping it underground for long-term geological storage. It's not really about planting and burying trees. Sorry for the spammage, but here's a good overview of it: http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/ccs/what-is-ccs>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^dag:
How about carbon capture? Any thoughts on that? (my day job is here: http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/)>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Peroxide:
@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.
I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.
If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.


If I'm to be really blunt, carbon capture seems like a terrifically expensive make work project. With most of our carbon emissions coming from combustion engines and with companies like Tesla already coming very close to being competitive with purely electric alternatives I think our time, money and energy much better spent there. Creative carbon capture ideas like simple tree planting and other means of increasing plant capture has it's benefits, but the capture of CO2 is really low on the list. I'd say championing that sort of thing as carbon capture is just gimmicky when the most significant benefits are a multitude of other more direct things.

No offense intended, but that's exactly where the denier label is coming from. Scientists are saying exactly what I just said, with a high degree of certainty.

I'm not actually sure which part of my compound assertion you're disagreeing with, since the two statements you concede are established lead you pretty much right to it.

I guess the final statement needed would be "Even small rises in temperature lead to significant changes in the planet's climate." But that's established science too.

As for "time to panic" I must've missed where anyone said that. My main cause for concern is that there's still a ton of BS, FUD, and misinformation out there on this topic. So much so that's starting to make me think it is "time to panic" -- not about the CO2 issue per se, but about our civilization's ability to course-correct when we discover that we're engaged in self-destructive behavior on a massive scale.

>> ^bcglorf:

As to the point:
Do you agree that man-made CO2 emissions are causing significant changes to the planet's climate?
I would not declare that, I would also argue that the basic scientific research out there doesn't show this with high certainty.
Scientific research(peer reviewed journals) DO show that mankind is emitting significant levels of CO2.
Scientific research(peer reviewed journals) DO show without question that rising CO2 will raise temperature.
The correlation of those two though does not lead straight to your conclusion, as I've gone into at length up thread. My biggest issue is simply to insist that it is not 'time to panic', it is time to look harder and for largely unrelated reasons to get off of oil and coal asap.

@dag
I'd rather be doing more to capture the mercury, sulfur and other toxins coming out of the smoke stacks. Better still, I'd rather turn them off and turn on a series of nuclear plants in their stead and go to zero emission power.

@NetRunner,

The difference is I stated that we don't have a high confidence in projections of temperature change due to increased CO2 when all other factors are taken into account. The research done either ignores all other factors but CO2, or lacks a high confidence level, in no small part owing to a lack of quality long term data and understanding of H2O's role.

Translating that to what should we do means we don't have a good idea how much lowering CO2 emissions will help, what we do know is it will be expensive to do it on a large scale today. Hence my recommendation is battery powered cars and nuclear delivered electricity, as those are things we really should be doing anyways. We should additionally be spending money adapting to a warmer world, again because I believe if you are already living within a foot of being below sea level adaptations are already long overdue.

I suppose I could be biased, I grew up on a grain farm in Canada and so we only stand to profit in a warming world, but I'd like to think I value the plight of the whole of humanity more highly.

>> ^bcglorf:

@NetRunner,
The difference is I stated that we don't have a high confidence in projections of temperature change due to increased CO2 when all other factors are taken into account.

The research done either ignores all other factors but CO2, or lacks a high confidence level, in no small part owing to a lack of quality long term data and understanding of H2O's role. The research done either ignores all other factors but CO2, or lacks a high confidence level, in no small part owing to a lack of quality long term data and understanding of H2O's role.

But again, that's not true. Look at the very paper I linked. Seriously.

My more general point is that what you're saying these papers say is different from what the people writing the papers say these papers say. IMO, that should make you think you missed something, rather than make you start implying that the scientists are misrepresenting their work.
>> ^bcglorf:

Translating that to what should we do means we don't have a good idea how much lowering CO2 emissions will help, what we do know is it will be expensive to do it on a large scale today.

Here's another thing I think you should reconsider. Let's say you're right, and we have no idea how much reducing CO2 will help. Maybe it'll help a little, maybe a whole lot.

I think we have a pretty good grasp on the "cost" of moving off CO2, but I think your economic analysis is faulty too. The "cost" is not some deadweight loss we'll never recoup. It's also not as if fossil fuels will last forever, so it's a matter of when we switch, not if.

So the matrix of possible actions and their consequences are:

1. We switch now, but the CO2 effect was small: It costs us a bit more, but we get a more sustainable energy system that creates less pollution, and stave off whatever damage CO2 would've had to the environment. Probably a net positive, but it's possible it could wind up being a slight net negative.
   
2. We switch now, and the CO2 effect was big: We save ourselves from a major catastrophe that would've wrecked our economy. Big net positive.
   
3. We make no attempt to switch early, but the CO2 effect was small: We save a little money from waiting, but we also do some damage to the environment, and our economy. Maybe it's a slight net positive, maybe it's still a net negative.
   
4. We make no attempt to switch early, and the CO2 effect was big: We save a little money from waiting, but the damage to the environment wrecks our economy. Big net negative.
   

@NetRunner,

From the author's own summary in the article you linked:

Improving observations of ocean temperature confirm that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum.
In layman terms, ocean temp has increased over the last years were we have also been observing surface temp increases. If the heat content has gone up, it means more energy got in than went out.

This energy imbalance provides fundamental verification of the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change.
If solar forcing decreased while the earth retained more energy, then it must have been other forcings driving the energy increase. This is verification of what we already know, that human GHG's are driving climate change. I'd argue that the 'dominant' part can only be justified in relation to solar forcing, would you say I'm overstepping with that?

I've read through the rest of the article as well. I don't see resounding evidence or confidence about CO2 dominating all other factors over the last 100 years. The most important section is on Fast-Feedback sensitivity. They have a method where they go against Paleo-climate data and conclude that Fast-Feedback sensitivity is much smaller than most previous studies. They even go to some length explaining the different results and admit that a major factor is what you count as a forcing vs. what you count as a feedback. More importantly to me, is that Paleo climate doesn't have the resolution to observe what we should expect from fast feedbacks within a century. Rank me a denier, but I count that as very significant. Mann et al's recent work seems to corroborate that over decadal timescales, climate can fluctuate a lot more than what shows up on long-term paleo reconstructions.

Maybe I can be more concise.

Temperature reconstructions of the years 0AD through 2000AD that show uncharacteristic warming since ~1850 are a smoking gun that we are influencing climate and in an unprecedented way. Correct?

Is the opposite then not true as well, if reconstructions from 0AD through 2000AD show that warming since ~1850 is not particularly unusual, then we are not facing unprecedented changes?

To me this seems to be the key, and the refinements to reconstructions are rapidly beginning to show that the last century is not particularly unusual.

@bcglorf I think you're still not responding to the basic point I'm making. It's not really even about science or climate change, but about game theory, and how to make decisions in the absence of certainty.

I've never ingested cyanide, but every scientist, herbalist, toxicologist, and work of fiction has told me it's lethal. For me, that's good enough. I'm not going to eat it, and I'm perfectly comfortable with the government restricting companies from putting it in my food, my water, or the air.

For you, I'm guessing that instead you'd want to dig into the scientific studies on cyanide's toxicity first. Yes, the scientists themselves say the evidence is overwhelming, but you have doubts. You think they're missing something. After all, every time you go looking for problems, you're able to find some detail that sounds fishy to you.

They could just be overlooking some other potential cause of death that just seemed to be cyanide, because obviously cyanide isn't the only thing that can kill people. Maybe the natural mortality rate back then was that high. Who knows? I mean, there's tons of research into that, but you don't accept that work either. So until someone satisfies you that it definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn't just natural causes, you're going with the assumption it was that, every time, because after all we don't fully understand the human body.

In other words, you dismiss the science. You don't think it's necessarily wrong, but don't think people should give it any weight when making decisions about how we live our lives. So, you start calling out authors for talking about cyanide as if it's a poison; they're just perpetuating an unsubstantiated rumor, you say. You do argue that congress should put restrictions on cyanide being put in our food, our water, and our air -- but later. You accept maybe there's enough to the science to think it might be harmful if people ingest it over a long enough span of time, but you do argue against the people who say it's a poison that needs to be dealt with right away, because you don't think anyone has a right to be so alarmist about it. After all, the science doesn't say it's important, just, you know, the scientists.

Then one day you run out of amaretto creamer for your coffee, and figure maybe cyanide will be a good substitute, since it does smell like almonds...

My guess is that you probably don't actually do that. My guess is that you trust the scientists and just consider cyanide a poison. My guess is you'd want overwhelming proof that cyanide is safe before you would swallow a cyanide pill. I don't think raising a few doubts about the studies would be enough to convince you -- you'd rather be safe than sorry.

Why the double standard with climate change? What's special about this topic that makes your default assumptions go the other way? Are you sure it isn't something completely unrelated to the science?

Why the double standard with climate change?

Surely you don't consider those the same thing?

Toxicity is pretty simple. You run a test feeding creatures cyanide, and they always die if you give them enough.

By comparison, climate change involves interdependent processes that span virtually every branch of known science. I work in an academic environment and have seen what frequently comes out of inter-disciplinary studies. It comes out with stuff like the first link I gave above. Some climate guys who aren't very good with math go ahead and use a misapply a statistical method. That misuse is KNOWN and EXPECTED to give a falsely zero-biased result in the situation the climatologists misapplied. The climatologists then unknowingly went ahead and declared the zero-biased results they received as unique and important evidence that past climate change had little variance from zero. The reality, as evidenced in the article I linked, shows that the truth of the matter is that much better statistical methods exist for the application, and when they were applied by the climatologists, low and behold the historic variation leapt up, so much so as to make the last 100 years no longer look anything like the anomaly they did before.

With climate change there are a million variations and possibilities. The most important question to answer is just how imminent and severe are the effects we are facing. The most straight forward test is the one that Mann et al wowed the IPCC and the world with, showing that the temperature change over the last 100 years was unlike anything in the last 2 thousand. It turns out though that in truth, Mann's original results were an artifact not of human emissions, but of human error in math. Mann's new results show that the earth has been as warm as today multiple times over the last 2k years, and that in that time temperature has previously dropped just as fast as it rose in the last hundred.


As to what to do with unknowns, it still depends on the assumptions you come in with. What percentage do you want to lower emissions by? How much of a difference will that make to future temperature? What is the cost of lowering emissions by that much? What are the costs of dealing the increased temperature instead?

It's not a simply problem with some easy logical answer that is independent of those questions. What's worse, is now those questions not only span scientific fields, but they bleed over into economics and political science as well.

Your assessment before marks the cost of lowering CO2 emissions as moderate and the costs of not lowering them as potential huge. If the cost of lowering CO2 emissions is to be kept moderate, it means not lowering them by very much or not lowering them very quickly. Either way, it means if the effects of CO2 are drastic, we are STILL going to have to adapt significantly in addition to the money spent on reducing emissions. It sounds to me like just a variation on my own suggestion to be honest. A modest investment in battery and nuclear infrastructure, and adapt accordingly with the impacts that doesn't cover or accommodate. The most dire and immediate adaptations are ones that need to be made anyways, so I again don't see the risk as severe as others claim. It's not as though New Orleans was all peachy and good until things got warmer. A city on the coast below sea level, or islands a few feet above sea level could use a lot of dollars spent on adaptation even if we lowered emissions to the point of lowering sea levels by a foot.