Global Warming w/o Tiggy

[Littlejoe]

Depends on whether it's a permanent increase or a cycle... Most believe there are short cycles and long cycles...but there just isn't enough data yet for long cycles to be confirmed. Even AGW's will admit that one of the factors in the MWP was increased Solar activity.

[Augustine2004]

That's using the ol' bean! Wow! But what about covering it with TiO2? Might work better than tinfoil hats.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...nment-science/

[Augustine2004]

I don't understand what's going on
http://www.worldordernews.com/record...r-catastrophe/
Perhaps someone could explain?

[phank]

Incidentally, this quarter's issue of Skeptic magazine focuses in AGW. Bottom line: by now, the weight of the evidence is such that those who continue to deny it are like those who continued to believe in the Great Flud after about 1850 - they clung to refuted beliefs for theological reasons, and NO evidence, however overwhelmingly obvious, could ever been enough to change their theology.

[Augustine2004]

Another El Nino now. It's unusually severe -> record heat. drought.

Skeptic AGW article mentioned by phank http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-02-08/#feature

[FLovell]

If increased solar output is responsible for 80% of climate change, we are in serious trouble, because (1) There's nothing we can do about it no matter how much we might like to; (2) It's not the sort of self-correcting problem that human activities are; and (3) It's not limited in either intensity or duration.

So if the sun is getting hotter, and this is a long-term trend, we are toast whether we like it or not. It's not like we can all move to Ganymede.

NOW you're getting it, Phank! Except Earth's global climate is not just a function of solar output but rather of a Fourier sum of many different influences (of which human emissions are but one late-coming influence among the many) variously operating over different time-frames of natural variation.

And as to whatever Nature has in store for us develops (global climate-wise) and what we can do about it, we don't need to migrate to Ganymede, just (perhaps) to Earthly latitudes north and south further from the equator as warming continues (and then later, if/when temps fall to "ice age" respites as they have on occasions in the past, migrate back to equatorial latitudes.

You DID give some thoughtful consideration of the plots of the last 600+ million years of the global biosphere's temperature that I have posted multiple times, didn't you?

-- Frank [a global climate change/warming inevitablist, 'cause history tells me so]

[Littlejoe]

Incidentally, this quarter's issue of Skeptic magazine focuses in AGW. Bottom line: by now, the weight of the evidence is such that those who continue to deny it are like those who continued to believe in the Great Flud after about 1850 - they clung to refuted beliefs for theological reasons, and NO evidence, however overwhelmingly obvious, could ever been enough to change their theology.

That just proves to me that there are gullible skeptics...anyone who changed their mind on AGW because of Al Gore's Power point doesn't really impress me that much...

[USIncognito]

That just proves to me that there are gullible skeptics...anyone who changed their mind on AGW because of Al Gore's Power point doesn't really impress me that much...

Where did he say anything about Al Gore's Power Point?

[Littlejoe]

Where did he say anything about Al Gore's Power Point?

My apologies, it wasn't a Power Point, it was "Inconvenient Truth"

Michael Shermer Founder Skeptics Magazine

Then I attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, Calif., where former vice president Al Gore delivered the single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth. The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance. [...]
Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.

© source where applicable

Source of Quote

[Augustine2004]

Didn't skeptics, not Michael Shermer, dispute many parts of Inconvenient Truth? Or shown to be totally wrong, perhaps.

[Raphael]

In other news "Experts at the University of Toronto and the University of California Santa Cruz have found that the impact of continental collisions and divisions over millions of years has a major 
impact on global warming." (Source)

The key is that these collisions and divisions change seawater chemistry. And this in turn has an impact on changing the climate.
From what I read this is the result of new research (looking at a period of 150 million years). so it will not have been included in any modelling.

And that is where we come back to AGW alarmists are yelling "the science is settled, Colonel Mustard did it" when we still are discovering new things that have varying impacts on climate change. And everytime we find something that has a large impact on climate change (such as this) it means that man's impact is less than what the models (which obviously don't/can't take into account new research) are assuming they are.

[technomage]

And that is where we come back to AGW alarmists are yelling "the science is settled, Colonel Mustard did it" when we still are discovering new things that have varying impacts on climate change. And everytime we find something that has a large impact on climate change (such as this) it means that man's impact is less than what the models (which obviously don't/can't take into account new research) are assuming they are.

Not quite. This discovery only applies if we are currently in one of those episodes: if parts of the world are currently experiencing this particular type of seawater change, it will be easily identifiable by testing the seawater. We can then look at the local climate maps for that area, and see (provided the model is accurate) not only how much those spots are affecting their local climate, but how much they affect the overall pattern.

We already know there are non-anthropogenic components to the climate picture. The trick is to see if any of those components are active, and how much that activity is contributing to the situation as a whole.

[Raphael]

Not quite. This discovery only applies if we are currently in one of those episodes: if parts of the world are currently experiencing this particular type of seawater change, it will be easily identifiable by testing the seawater. We can then look at the local climate maps for that area, and see (provided the model is accurate) not only how much those spots are affecting their local climate, but how much they affect the overall pattern.

We already know there are non-anthropogenic components to the climate picture. The trick is to see if any of those components are active, and how much that activity is contributing to the situation as a whole.

You're slightly missing my point Technomage. We may not currently know if we are in one of those cycles or not (sure have been a fair few earthquakes of late though) but if we are, the impact of this has not been accounted for in the calculations as of yet. so while we sit around saying
known causes = y
human causes = x
x=climate change - known causes
the problem is the science is far from settled while they keep on discovering more causes. and if these causes are significant and are currently in effect, then they can greatly reduce the value of x.

[technomage]

You're slightly missing my point Technomage.

No, Raphael, I am not. The article states that this occurs over millions of years, not the less-than-a-century of the current shift.

The presence of sulphates in the ocean and their effect on climate patterns has been known since at least the 1880s--and has been accounted for in the models. The article clearly specifies what has not been known and has recently been discovered--the mechanism by which the level of sulphates in the oceans can fluctuate.

Your point is to cast doubt on the models based on a popular-press article--the actual journal article with the hard data has not even been published yet.

[Littlejoe]

No, Raphael, I am not. The article states that this occurs over millions of years, not the less-than-a-century of the current shift.

The presence of sulphates in the ocean and their effect on climate patterns has been known since at least the 1880s--and has been accounted for in the models. The article clearly specifies what has not been known and has recently been discovered--the mechanism by which the level of sulphates in the oceans can fluctuate.

Your point is to cast doubt on the models based on a popular-press article--the actual journal article with the hard data has not even been published yet.

The models in doubt, because of all the possible things not accounted for...but even more so because the uncertainty that propagates through the models.
This article by a PHd Chemist with over 50 peer reviewed papers shows why the accuracy of models is suspect...

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/...ate-of-belief/

Using existing models to predict recent past conditions resulted in a error rate of +/-10.1% error rate:

Skeptics.com "A Climate of Belief" Patrick Frank PH.D.

One approach to determining error is to integrate the total cloudiness retrodicted by each model and compare that to the total cloudiness actually observed (SI Section 3). Calculating error this way is a little simplistic because positive error in one latitude can be cancelled by negative error in another. This exercise produced a standard average cloudiness error of ±10.1%, which is about half the officially assessed GCM cloud error.24 So let’s call ±10.1% the minimal GCM cloud error....

...The ±4.4°C uncertainty at year 4 already exceeds the entire 3.7°C temperature increase at 100 years. By 50 years, the uncertainty in projected temperature is ±55°. At 100 years, the accumulated physical cloud uncertainty in temperature is ±111 degrees. Recall that this huge uncertainty stems from a minimal estimate of GCM physical cloud error.

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