An Inconvenient Truth": Has Polar Bears Survived & Thrived?

[Skyhunter]

Well I observe that this thread was about the Al Gore alarmist movie with the gist of global warming being caused by greenhouse effect and this can only be countered if we act now and stop emiting CO2.

The issues brought up here on thread are:

First: Is it indeed warming or has the warming stopped? Issue here is that the global did not obey the greenhouse gas issue roughly in the period 1960 - 1980 when it cooled while the CO2 continued increasing. Currently nothing has beaten 1998 yet. But even if it did...

It is warm enough to melt the polar ice. Whether it continues to warm or remains at the current warmth, the ice caps will continue to melt. Other changes like the new http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060804-dead-zone.html, dumping megatons of pollutants into the atmosphere is having a direct impact on the environment.

Second: what causes the warming? I have shown that the Northern Hemisphere warms four times as fast as the Southern? Why? This is very hard to explain with greenhouse effect, which should give a world wide signal. When the sun shines, it's warm. isn't it?

The obvious explanation, is that there is more land in the Northern hemisphere. Land radiates heat at night faster than water, therefore I would suspect that the greenhouse effect would be greater, since the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the higher percentage of IR is trapped. So the more IR energy combined with a stronger greenhouse effect, results in a more rapid warming in the northern hemisphere.

Third, Suppose that it is indeed Greenhouse effect, We knew already a long time that the saturation effect doesn't really care for how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. As long as it's there it works. Big changes in CO2 concentrations have only very little impact on the greenhouse effect.

Small impacts can have large consequences. The total energy trapped by greenhouse gases are only one of many factors. If less heat is lost at night, the next day starts warmer, and so on and so on. The positive feedback loops start to play a more significant role in global warming.

More exposed Earth ie melted snow and glaciers. Warmer air that can hold more water vapor, a very strong GHG. Methane from melting permafrost, another potent GHG. What I believe we are witnessing is a tip over point, the balance has been lost and we are in for a period of climatic chaos as the Earth readjusts to the new composition of the atmosphere.

Fourth but suppose that it does, (it doesn't but suppose) what would be the better way to fight it? The maximum time you buy with gigantic reduction is a few years. For that you have to return to the stone age and be unable to mitigate climate effects that have been postponed for a few years (the Lomborg scenario).

So your position is if we have screwed up, it is to late to do anything anyway so why bother. What an unassailable position.

If everyone felt this way then nothing would ever change. My kids use this type of argument when I tell them to clean their rooms. "But Dad, it will just get dirty again." Of course they are right, but they still have to clean it up.

Now where does Al Gore come in? If he is wrong, (which he is) then it's only demagogy, if he is right it's not leading to anything for the better.

This is your opinion and I respectfully disagree.

That's what this thread is supposed to be all about and not about:

-Calling hard data misrepresentation and shooting the messengers

-The whereabouts of CFK's, ozone layers chemophobes and misanthropes, no matter how interesting, it won't change anything about climate.

-Poor polar bears, which are thriving more than anytime in the last few decades.

Therefore, with the deluge of those http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html this discussion is leading nowhere.

All of these issues were part of the OP. I simply pointed out the lack of credibility or erroneous misrepresentations of the links.

CFC's are greenhouse gases, so I would think them relevant to climate change.

Polar bears are not thriving more than at anytime in the last few decades. That may have been true ten years ago, but is not the case this year. And the reason they were thriving 12 years ago is because of the Oslo agreement:

The International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed in Oslo, November 15, 1973 by the five nations with polar bear populations (Canada, Denmark which governed Greenland at that time, Norway, the U.S., and the former U.S.S.R.).

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/

Polar bears are not thriving today. The impact of AGW on the environment is quite relevant to the thread. If GW did not impact the worlds ecosystems, it would not be as great an issue as it is today.

So where does this leave us?

Do we discuss the science behind the movie which is not the major point of the movie. Do we discuss the purpose of the movie, which is to educate people about the dangers of global warming?

Or are we simply going to declare that nothing is wrong, but if there is something wrong there is nothing to be done about it and end the thread?

I have found that my understanding of climate change has greatly increased since I began reading the Earth Forum and would like to continue the discussion.

 

[Andre]

It is warm enough to melt the polar ice.

and if so, what are we going to do about it, since there is no main anthropogenic cause for the world having warmed a bit from 1980 until 1998. Moreover the Greenland ice sheet never grew so quickly as during the early Holocene thermal optimum, also known as the Hypsithermal, when the trees grew in the coastal areas of the Arctic Ocean in North Siberia, for a few thousand years, where it is now a high arctic tundra desert. That area being a dozen degrees or so warmer as today. The ice also survived the Roman warm period and the Medieval Warm Period.

acidification of the oceans, dumping megatons of pollutants into the atmosphere is having a direct impact on the environment.

Even if the oceans turned into vitriol acid, it is still not a climate feature, but nevertheless I have rectified the omission not to react here.

Moreover, we should not forget that humanity deemed it necessary to remove Tera tonnes of organic carbon from the oceans as sea food. And the oceans are in desperate need of some excess CO2 as fuel for algae photo synthesis, enhancing the food chain and restoring some life into the oceans.

The obvious explanation, is that there is more land in the Northern hemisphere. Land radiates heat at night faster than water, therefore I would suspect that the greenhouse effect would be greater,

No dice, the IR reradiation from the atmosphere is not depending on the surface beneath it. But the land can adsorb IR radiation but the sea cannot. Incidentally, the seas http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/10/new-geophyical-research-letters-paper-accepted-recent-cooling-of-the-upper-ocean-by-jm-lyman-jk-willis-and-g-c-johnson/ for some reason:

Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean” by J.M. Lyman, J.K. Willis, and G. C. Johnson.

prepublication http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/~lyman/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

Small impacts can have large consequences. The total energy trapped by greenhouse gases are only one of many factors. If less heat is lost at night, the next day starts warmer, and so on and so on. The positive feedback loops start to play a more significant role in global warming.

Please, do show where at any point we can see / measure an undeniable example of positive feedback of increased CO2 causing more warming than it's fair (but very tiny) share of greenhouse effect.

Methane from melting permafrost, another potent GHG.

No it's not, it’s a mere alarmist fable, molecule for molecule CO2 is measured to be 2-5 times more effective than CH4 as can be seen http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtranrun.GIF

So your position is if we have screwed up, it is to late to do anything anyway so why bother. What an unassailable position.

Strawman, I have never said that. But would it be red herring if I said that the current alarmism about nothing is much more dangerous for Earth and mankind leading to nothing at extremely cost regardless if global warming was disastrous, a little bothering, beneficial or not happening at all.

If everyone felt this way then nothing would ever change.

What would be the objective to change something? To improve? Then better think and think again because any change into a not understood system may have an adverse effect.

Polar bears are not thriving today.

http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/noframe/s034.htm yes, they http://www.arcticnet-ulaval.ca/index.php?fa=News.showNews&home=4&menu=55&sub=1&id=133 .

There are probably a few fallacies involved here. We don't know if the future is holding more warming in store, whereas solar specialist predict a new Maunder type minimum in 2030, called the "Landscheidt-minimum". If there is warming we have yet to determine it's exact cause like we have to find out about the Medieval warm period or the Roman warm period. But we know that polar bears did survive all those warm periods, including the hypsithermal.

So if we are worried about the future of the polar bear, and we see that warming was not a problem in the past, how about tackling the other threats to its biotope. But we also have to remember: more bears, less seals makes less bears.

Do we discuss the science behind the movie

Happy to do that.

the purpose of the movie, which is to educate people about the dangers of global warming?

I would tend to think that the movie has the objective to show how good a leader the maker would be, regardless of any (non)problem to be tackled. Excellent band wagon stimulator.

I repeat whatever problem there is, CO2 is not causing the global warming and reducing the emission with the objective to save climate and environment is useless. There may be good reasons to reduce emission of CO2 and much more reasons to reduce pollutants like NxO but changing climate is not one of them.

And I'm here to expose the spin and the alarmism tendency with only social objectives which has nothing to do with the real science.

 

[GENIERE]

and]…And I'm here to expose the spin and the alarmism tendency with only social objectives which has nothing to do with the real science.

We thank you for that. I do think that the moderator should have deleted some of the posts by Skyhunter in this “Earth” forum.

 

[Mk]

No it's not, it’s a mere alarmist fable, molecule for molecule CO2 is measured to be 2-5 times more effective than CH4 as can be seen here in the last column

What the Hell? CO₂ is a more potent greenhouse gas than CH₄??

 

[Skyhunter]

and if so, what are we going to do about it, since there is no main anthropogenic cause for the world having warmed a bit from 1980 until 1998. Moreover the Greenland ice sheet never grew so quickly as during the early Holocene thermal optimum, also known as the Hypsithermal, when the trees grew in the coastal areas of the Arctic Ocean in North Siberia, for a few thousand years, where it is now a high arctic tundra desert. That area being a dozen degrees or so warmer as today. The ice also survived the Roman warm period and the Medieval Warm Period.

You say the warming is natural, and use historical warming periods as evidence of your assertion. I say it is anthropogenic and use empirical data and the assertions of the scientific community that there is a connection. I don't think we are going to agree about the cause of the warming any time soon.

Even if the oceans turned into vitriol acid, it is still not a climate feature, but nevertheless I have rectified the omission not to react here.

Moreover, we should not forget that humanity deemed it necessary to remove Tera tonnes of organic carbon from the oceans as sea food. And the oceans are in desperate need of some excess CO2 as fuel for algae photo synthesis, enhancing the food chain and restoring some life into the oceans.

If it is a result of the increased CO2 then I feel it is related. The movie had more to do with the ramifications of cllimate change on the environment. Acidic oceans are part of the consequences.

No dice, the IR reradiation from the atmosphere is not depending on the surface beneath it. But the land can adsorb IR radiation but the sea cannot. Incidentally, the seas http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/10/new-geophyical-research-letters-paper-accepted-recent-cooling-of-the-upper-ocean-by-jm-lyman-jk-willis-and-g-c-johnson/[/URL] for some reason:

Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean” by J.M. Lyman, J.K. Willis, and G. C. Johnson.

prepublication [PLAIN]http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/~lyman/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf[/URL].[/quote]
[url=http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v323/n6088/abs/323523a0.html]Evaporation[/url] is the most significant factor in ocean heat loss.


[QUOTE=Andre]]Please, do show where at any point we can see / measure an undeniable example of positive feedback of increased CO2 causing more warming than it's fair (but very tiny) share of greenhouse effect.[/QUOTE]
Still studying, but I will get back to you.

[QUOTE=Andre]No it's not, it’s a mere alarmist fable, molecule for molecule CO2 is [b]measured[/b] to be 2-5 times more effective than CH4 as can be seen [PLAIN]http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtranrun.GIF[/URL][/QUOTE]

[url]https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=327877&postcount=7[/url]
[QUOTE=Andre]That's why methane is such a powerfull greenhouse gas, because the differnce between 1ppm or 4ppm is major GHG.
[/QUOTE]
:confused: So which is it?

[QUOTE=Andre]Strawman, I have never said that. But would it be red herring if I said that the current alarmism about nothing is much more dangerous for Earth and mankind leading to nothing at extremely cost regardless if global warming was disastrous, a little bothering, beneficial or not happening at all. [/QUOTE]

So what are the most compelling issues that we face and are ignoring?

[QUOTE=Andre]What would be the objective to change something? To improve? Then better think and think again because any change into a not understood system may have an adverse effect.[/QUOTE]

Exactly the reason that I am concerned about all the changes currently being made to our global ecosystem through anthropogenic causes.

[QUOTE=Andre][PLAIN]http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/noframe/s034.htm[/URL] [url=http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060514-094348-8238r.htm]yes,[/url] [url=http://www.svalbard-images.com/spitsbergen/polar-bears-e.php]they[/url] [PLAIN]http://www.arcticnet-ulaval.ca/index.php?fa=News.showNews&home=4&menu=55&sub=1&id=133[/URL].[/QUOTE]

A 12 year old study, an op-ed from the the Moonie rag, and from the third link:
[QUOTE]Scientists are worried, however, about the effects of pollution and global warming on the polar bears. PCB levels in the polar bears of Norway and western Russia are two-and-a-half to seventeen times higher than those in North American populations.

According to a report issued in November 2004 by the Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee, polar bears could become extinct by the end of the century if present warming trends continue in the Arctic.[/QUOTE]
Not very convincing.

[QUOTE=Andre]There are probably a few fallacies involved here. We don't know if the future is holding more warming in store, whereas solar specialist predict a new Maunder type minimum in 2030, called the "Landscheidt-minimum". If there is warming we have yet to determine it's exact cause like we have to find out about the Medieval warm period or the Roman warm period. But we know that polar bears did survive all those warm periods, including the hypsithermal.

So if we are worried about the future of the polar bear, and we see that warming was not a problem in the past, how about tackling the other threats to its biotope. But we also have to remember: more bears, less seals makes less bears.[/QUOTE]
Melting sea ice is creating problems for the bears. They can swim a hundred miles, yet drowned bears are being found.

[url]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1938132,00.html[/url]

[QUOTE]The scientists believe such drownings are becoming widespread across the Arctic, an inevitable consequence of the doubling in the past 20 years of the proportion of polar bears having to swim in open seas.

[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]n Hudson Bay, Canada, the site of the most southerly polar bears, a study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Canadian Wildlife Service to be published next year will show the population fell 22% from 1,194 in 1987 to 935 last year.

New evidence from field researchers working for the World Wildlife Fund in Yakutia, on the northeast coast of Russia, has also shown the region’s first evidence of cannibalism among bears competing for food supplies.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]The new study, carried out in part of the Beaufort Sea, shows that between 1986 and 2005 just 4% of the bears spotted off the north coast of Alaska were swimming in open waters. Not a single drowning had been documented in the area.

However, last September, when the ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of Alaska, 51 bears were spotted, of which 20% were seen in the open sea, swimming as far as 60 miles off shore.

[/QUOTE]

I think the polar bears will survive, but not without overcoming great hardship.

[QUOTE=Andre]I would tend to think that the movie has the objective to show how good a leader the maker would be, regardless of any (non)problem to be tackled. Excellent band wagon stimulator.[/QUOTE]

The movie does that, but that was not the objective, The producer/director insisted that Al Gores story, and how global warming has been a part of his entire adult life, be part of the film.

[QUOTE=Andre]I repeat whatever problem there is, CO2 is not causing the global warming and reducing the emission with the objective to save climate and environment is useless. There may be good reasons to reduce emission of CO2 and much more reasons to reduce [b]pollutants[/b] like NxO but changing climate is not one of them.[/QUOTE]

I agree that it is not the only cause, just a contributor. I do however believe that human activity is the dominant factor.

[quote=Andre]And I'm here to expose the spin and the alarmism tendency with only social objectives which has nothing to do with the real science.[/QUOTE]
There must be a lot of scientists out there with purely social objectives.:-p

I do appreciate your input, you have exposed spin and I am grateful for that. I still do not fully understand the science, (who does) but your input has been most helpful in my education.

 

[Andre]

We thank you for that. I do think that the moderator should have deleted some of the posts by Skyhunter in this “Earth” forum.

Well, perhaps. I don't mind though. It gives me the opportunity to demonstrate that most of the global warming message is based on appeal to emotion, ad hominems (the oil companies) and other fallacies. Whenever passers by note that and review other global warming messages to recognise that all of a sudden. I'm happy.

Take for instance:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-oreskes24jul24,0,823343.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

That's a though one, isn't it? Who would be able to maintain that global warming is mostly a natural process after such a brilliant resume? However, if you would remove the fallacies then there would be nothing left than an empty paper. There is nothing in that paper that contributes to proving or refuting global warming. Notice how nice "global warming deniers" resembles "holocaust deniers".

How about the consensus anyway? Apart from the fact that this is the bandwagon fallacy that proofs nothing whatsoever. Indeed if some journals select main warmers like Mike Mann as referees, they will reject all papers that do not support global warming, so it's actually a double bandwagon fallacy. However is this a fact anyhow? Probably yes, because the letter of Benny Peiser challenging that http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm here got refuted as well. This way it's easy to proclaim consensus.

Anyway, I'm member of a club of about 270 persons, over 50% PhD in climate related issues (geologists, meteorologists, general physicists), none of which is getting coins from oil companies, who know that the climate has very little to do with the concentration of greenhouse gas.

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=52171&st=60 is a friend too:

Naomi Oreskes asks wrong climate question
By David Wojick

The first rule of surveys is "ask the right question," but Naomi Oreskes did not read the book. Oreskes did a survey of the scientific literature on climate change and claims to have found that the science is settled. She is wrong, because she asked the wrong question.

Her claim appears most recently in "Global Warming-Signed, Sealed and Delivered-Scientists agree: The Earth is warming, and human activities are the principal cause" by Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at the University of California San Diego, in an op ed in the Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2006 (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-oreskes24jul24,0,823343.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail).

This study is news, not because it is new -- it is two years old - but because it came up in a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Some claim that the Oreskes study was refuted, citing the Wall Street Journal, and she fired back in the LA Times. Readers can go the LA Times piece for the gory details.

But here is what is wrong with the Orestes study. As a student of the history of science, she really doesn't understand very well how science actually functions.

She summarizes her findings as follows:

"Not a single paper in a large sample of peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 refuted the consensus position, summarized by the National Academy of Sciences, that 'most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.'"

The weasel word is "refute." As a serious student of the climate change debate, I agree that I have never seen a single paper that claimed to refute the theory of human induced warming. But suppose we ask the right question-are there any papers that cast doubt on the theory of human induced warming? The answer is sure, plenty, maybe most.

Orestes' refutation question shows a deep misunderstanding of the climate science debate. There is no single test, experiment or observation that is going to either refute or prove the human warming theory. But individual tests, experiments and observations are what get published in scientific papers. There is no killer scientific argument here, so no wonder Orestes did not find one.

Dos this mean there is any kind of consensus on the science? By no means. In fact, the debate has widened in recent years, as the number of alternative theories to human induced warming has grown. The science is diverging, not converging on a single explanation for the warming.

Presuming, of course, that there is any warming, which is still an active subject of research. Note too that the temperature record only shows warming in about 20 of the last 50 years, something else we are trying to explain. The $1.7 billion U.S. climate change research program is a catalog of alternative theories, arguments and counter arguments. It's not a consensus.

For example, and to return to Orestes' bungled literature survey, consider solar variability. Numerous papers report strong statistical correlations with various aspects of solar output and the Earth's temperature record. Numerous papers explore how this solar variability might drive temperature. In short' this is a very active area of research.

But would any of these papers show up in Orestes' survey? No, because none of them claims to "refute" the human induced warming theory. They merely support the competing theory of solar variability as the cause of the warming. By the same token, there are no papers that refute the theory of solar variability. Climate science is not about refutation, it is about assembling a million tiny pieces of research to try to figure out the world's most complex system. The Orestes approach is mind-bogglingly naive.

If anyone wants to see some of the thousands of papers that Orestes missed, I recommend http://www.co2science.org. The subject index leads to an endless supply of plain language summaries of scientific papers that cast doubt on the theory of human induced warming, all sorted by topic. Maybe Orestes should have looked here before publishing her silly findings
----------------------------------------
--
David E. Wojick, Ph.D.
Climatechangedebate.org

The lack of support and the public opinion however, effectively precludes any change of the paradigm. I'm quite sure that there will be shiploads of psychology textbooks, written to explain the greatest hoax of mankind ever, after a few decades, when the next little ice age, the Landscheidt minimum, strikes hard.

 

[Andre]

I don't think we are going to agree about the cause of the warming any time soon.

I think so too, but it will be very interesting to hear, which evidence is there to be convinced of global warming as in doubling CO2 means some 2-5 degrees temperature increase or so.

Still studying, but I will get back to you.

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibliography/2002/soden0201.pdf .

CH4 So which is it?

The greenhouse effect is not linear but basically logaritmic from that it could be inferred that the doubling of CH4 from 0,7 ppmv to 1,4 ppmv as we have seen in reality would have a similar effect as doubling CO2 from preindustrial 280 ppmv to 560 ppmv. Or 0,7 ppmv CH4 appears to be comparable to 280 ppmv CO2. which would make CH4 400 times stronger than CO2. It's just how you bias your calculations.

But then MODTRAN came, showing http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/modtranrun2.gif .

Let's calculate ourselfs http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/cgimodels/radiation.html .

Enter zero's for CO2 and CH4 and hit "submit the calculation" (or enter) to find a basic radiation of 250.352 W/m2

Now let's run all those values seperately

For CH4 0.7 ppmv: 249.599 W/m2
and double 1,4 ppmv: 249.253 W/m2

for a difference of 0.346 W/m2

Now for 280 ppmv: 230.005 W/m2
and double 560 ppmv: 227.713 W/m2

for a difference of 2,292 W/m2

making CO2 some 6.6 times stronger as a greenhouse gas for doubling the historical values. Insights can progress, can't they? But notions persists much longer, especially if they are supporting alarmism.

There must be a lot of scientists out there with purely social objectives.

And that bias perverts their science, which will backfire eventually.

 

[Mk]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-oreskes24jul24,0,823343.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

That's a though one, isn't it? Who would be able to maintain that global warming is mostly a natural process after such a brilliant resume? However, if you would remove the fallacies then there would be nothing left than an empty paper. There is nothing in that paper that contributes to proving or refuting global warming. Notice how nice "global warming deniers" resembles "holocaust deniers".

How about the consensus anyway? Apart from the fact that this is the bandwagon fallacy that proofs nothing whatsoever. Indeed if some journals select main warmers like Mike Mann as referees, they will reject all papers that do not support global warming, so it's actually a double bandwagon fallacy. However is this a fact anyhow? Probably yes, because the letter of Benny Peiser challenging that http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm here got refuted as well. This way it's easy to proclaim consensus.

Heh, you're kind of right. The article is basically this:

AN OP-ED article in the Wall Street Journal a month ago claimed that a published study affirming the existence of a scientific consensus on the reality of global warming had been refuted. This charge was repeated again last week, in a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

<talking about herself>

<Consensus by IPCC, NAS, BRS, and "even" the Bush administration>

<Skeptics are wrong because they can't accept the truth, because they are old>

None of this is to say that there are no uncertainties left — there are always uncertainties in any live science. Agreeing about the reality and causes of current global warming is not the same as agreeing about what will happen in the future. There is continuing debate in the scientific community over the likely rate of future change: not "whether" but "how much" and "how soon." And this is precisely why we need to act today: because the longer we wait, the worse the problem will become, and the harder it will be to solve.

 

[Skyhunter]

Ihttp://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibliography/2002/soden0201.pdf .

Excellent link. Although I had already read this one when I was looking into volcanic eruptions and their influence on short term climate effects.

This study does seem to support the water vapor feedback loop, which is used in the climate projection models.

Nevertheless, the results described here provide key evidence of reliability of water vapor feedback predicted by current climate models in response to a global perturbation in the radiative energy balance. Given the importance of water vapor feedback in determining climate sensitivity. such confirmation is essential to the use of these models for global warming projections.

This is of course qualified by a previous statement;

Although it is possible that other processes, such as clouds, could act in place of water vapor to provide the strong positive feedback necessary to amplify the cooling, the observational evidence clearly indicates a reduction in water vapor that is consistent with the model predictions.

 

[Skyhunter]

Well, perhaps. I don't mind though. It gives me the opportunity to demonstrate that most of the global warming message is based on appeal to emotion, ad hominems (the oil companies) and other fallacies. Whenever passers by note that and review other global warming messages to recognise that all of a sudden. I'm happy.

Take for instance:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-oreskes24jul24,0,823343.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

That's a though one, isn't it? Who would be able to maintain that global warming is mostly a natural process after such a brilliant resume? However, if you would remove the fallacies then there would be nothing left than an empty paper. There is nothing in that paper that contributes to proving or refuting global warming. Notice how nice "global warming deniers" resembles "holocaust deniers".

I seem to have missed any reference to the holocaust in Naomi Oreskes piece. The analogy used was this.

A historical example will help to make the point. In the 1920s, the distinguished Cambridge geophysicist Harold Jeffreys rejected the idea of continental drift on the grounds of physical impossibility. In the 1950s, geologists and geophysicists began to accumulate overwhelming evidence of the reality of continental motion, even though the physics of it was poorly understood. By the late 1960s, the theory of plate tectonics was on the road to near-universal acceptance.

Yet Jeffreys, by then Sir Harold, stubbornly refused to accept the new evidence, repeating his old arguments about the impossibility of the thing. He was a great man, but he had become a scientific mule. For a while, journals continued to publish Jeffreys' arguments, but after a while he had nothing new to say. He died denying plate tectonics. The scientific debate was over.

Now just who is it that is resorting to hyperbole?

 

[Andre]

I seem to have missed any reference to the holocaust in Naomi Oreskes piece.

No problem I get that for you:
http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=180 should make clear why the term "climate deniers" is so popular by the witch hunters like Oreskes

As part of the current media frenzy over the “imminent demise” of Planet Earth from global warming, it has become fashionable to demonize global warming skeptics through a variety of tactics. This has recently been accomplished by comparing scientists who don’t believe in a global climate catastrophe to “flat-Earthers,” those who denied cigarettes cause cancer, or even those who deny the Holocaust.

It is interesting that it is not the scientists who are making the comparisons to Holocaust-deniers, but members of the media. For instance, Scott Pelley, who recently interviewed NASA’s James Hansen for CBS’s “60 Minutes,” has been quoted on the CBS News PublicEye blog saying:

“There is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about ‘global warming.’ … The science that has been done in the last three to five years has been conclusive.”

Pelley also posted this quote to the same blog:

“If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”

This comparison between global warming skeptics and Holocaust-deniers illustrates the upside-down worldview...cont'd

The analogy used was this.

...A historical example will help to make the point...

Now just who is it that is resorting to hyperbole?

No, just the fallacy of the false analogy. Global warming is about faulty physics and has nothing to do with the psychology behind paradigm shifts. Whether or not somebody believes i plate tectonics or not is not going to change the rights or wrongs about global warming.

Compare that for instance with the very last (fallacy free?) E-mail I wrote in my discussion group about the logic behind global warming:

I agree with "your" logic. After all it is "Popperian" logic in which theories can never be proven, they can only be refuted. So as long as there is ''evidence'' for (actually observations consistent with) AGW, it can be assumed 'not untrue'. Therefore it is required to falsify it with evidence that opposes AGW.

So how about that scientific method: observations -> sound physical explanation -> test by predictions.

1: We have observations of the Earth getting warmer.
We also observe CO2 is increasing

We have the "when-there-is-more-CO2-it's-warmer-bias experience. which is (seems to be/ was) true for

a Venus
b the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum
c The Pleistocene Ice Ages
d The hockey stick
e Last 30 years.

But then again it was not true for

a Mars
b Cryogenian Era (alleged Snowball Earth) 850 Ma - 635 Ma.
c Ordovician (440Ma) and Late Triassic (220Ma) extinctions which are (have been) associated with ice ages
d The early Holocene Thermal maximum
d the hockey stick after it's refutal (Medieval Warm Period)
e between about 1940 and 1975

So the CO2=warm observation is not that consistent.

2. Then we have an explanation: a little CO2 greenhouse effect enhanced with a massive positive feedback.

If we agree on the little greenhouse effect (not necesarily true) then again it boils down to either proving or refuting that mysterious massive positive feedback.

3: CO2 hypothesis prediction. See the Hansen 1988 temperature prediction graph. However it will take quite a while before we can consider that prediction to be false.

Alternately the AGW hypothesis could be refuted by showing that another hypothesis fits the observations much better than AGW.

 

[Bystander]

(snip)I still do not fully understand the science, (who does) but your input has been most helpful in my education.

--- and, from #31,

The obvious explanation, is that there is more land in the Northern hemisphere. Land radiates heat at night faster than water,

Is this misstatement deliberate? Or, a reflection of your misunderstanding? Land cools more rapidly at night, and warms more rapidly in the day. What's that mean? That means, that rock and soil, being solid and opaque to visible light absorb less heat during the day in a smaller volume than do the oceans; the smaller heat capacity of rock and soil absorbing sunlight results in daytime warming to higher temperatures than seen in daytime ocean warming; at night, rock and soil contain less heat at a higher temperature than the oceans, and radiate that heat more rapidly (since they start at a higher temperature), cooling rock and soil to provide a "sink" for onshore breezes at night.

therefore I would suspect that the greenhouse effect would be greater, since the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the higher percentage of IR is trapped. So the more IR energy combined with a stronger greenhouse effect, results in a more rapid warming in the northern hemisphere.

Less heat being radiated means less heat being trapped; the fact that the heat is being radiated at a higher initial temperature means that an even smaller fraction is subject to the 10 micron CO₂ absorbtion.

Care to try again?

 

[Skyhunter]

Care to try again?

I would rather hear your explanation for why the northern hemisphere is warming faster than the southern. The most obvious difference between the two is land mass.

Since water is a better heat sink than land, as you stated the land warms and cools faster. CO₂ is not the only GHG, by singling out CO₂ you are oversimplifying. Warmer air holds more water vapor, which in turn traps more heat, throughout more the spectrum.

 

[Bystander]

We went over this in the "consensus" thread in P&WA --- remember? It's a systematic drift in systematic error in a measurement method. Let's review:

meteorological temperatures are indicated air temperature, not true air temperature;
meteorological temperatures are taken from thermometers that are uncertain to plus or minus 1 K (2 F), by specification;
meteorological thermometers are located in instrument shelters which yield a "hot" error of around 1 K at "wind" speeds of 1 m/s, increase to a 3-5 K max at zero wind speed, and drop off to 0.1 K at 10 m/s, and smaller, at higher wind speeds;
the meteorological record does NOT include wind speeds with "max-min" temperature records, so no correction for wind speed is possible;
global population increased by 4-5 billion over the past century, and two thirds (?) of that increase occurred in the northern hemisphere;
housing and movie theaters, bowling alleys, barns, factories, and other structures for 3 billion people interfere with screen height (instrument shelter) air movement;
population center in the U. S. moved southward by 2 latitudinal degrees during the 20th century;
the latitudinal temperature gradient between New Orleans and Minneapolis, or Miami and Boston, or San Diego and Seattle is on the order of 0.5 K per latitudinal degree;
1000 1 K thermometers can be used by a single observer to determine the temperature of a fixed temperature reference to 0.1 K;
a single 1 K thermometer can be used by a thousand observers to determine the same temperature to 1 K;
a thousand observers with a thousand different 1 K thermometers CANNOT measure a temperature field while moving randomly around in that field to any better than 1 K;
a thousand observers with a thousand different thermometers moving randomly around a temperature field and changing thermometers on a random time basis (breakage, age, loss) CANNOT measure a time dependence for that temperature field to better than 1 K;
a thousand observers with a thousand thermometers moving randomly around a temperature field, randomly changing instruments, and subject to drifting systematic error in measurement method --- are a waste of time and effort far as long term records go.​

Meteorologists collected the data for real time use in plotting 5 or 10 degree isotherms on weather maps --- let's 'em identify air masses and the movements of same --- that's all the data's good for. It is NOT a climate record. It was NOT designed to be a climate record. It was NEVER intended for use as a climate record.

 

[Skyhunter]

We went over this in the "consensus" thread in P&WA --- remember? It's a systematic drift in systematic error in a measurement method.

Meteorologists collected the data for real time use in plotting 5 or 10 degree isotherms on weather maps --- let's 'em identify air masses and the movements of same --- that's all the data's good for. It is NOT a climate record. It was NOT designed to be a climate record. It was NEVER intended for use as a climate record.

Not according to NOAA.

When calculating global temperatures, NCDC scientists, as well as those at NASA and in the United Kingdom, use methods that address areas of the globe with sparse observations or measurement biases. The various methodologies result in very small differences (on the order of a few hundredths of a degree Celsius) between the global temperature estimates, and these differences can affect individual yearly rankings. Although the ranking of individual years may differ slightly from data set to data set, all records indicate that during the past century, global surface temperatures have increased at a rate near 0.6°C/century (1.1°F/century), but the trend has been three times larger since 1976, with some of the largest temperature increases occurring in the high latitudes.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2005/ann/global.html#top

 

[Mk]

meteorological temperatures are indicated air temperature, not true air temperature;

I thought they used thermometers.

meteorological thermometers are located in instrument shelters which yield a "hot" error of around 1 K at "wind" speeds of 1 m/s, increase to a 3-5 K max at zero wind speed, and drop off to 0.1 K at 10 m/s, and smaller, at higher wind speeds;

Why would error go down if the wind speed goes up?

 

[Bystander]

I thought they used thermometers.

Why would error go down if the wind speed goes up?

Short answer: meteorologists are interested in temperatures of air masses; the instrumental setup yields a steady-state "indicated temperature" arising from heat transfers from the sun (5500-6000 K), the ground (200-350 K), the instrument shelter (some combination of sun, ground, and air T), and what air moves through the shelter (air T, the quantity of interest); the higher the wind speed, the greater the effect air temperature has on indicated temperature of the thermometer.

'Nuff? Or, you wanta dig deeper? Google "Stevenson (R. L.'s father) screen," or "cotton region shelter," for an idea of the environment the thermometer is sampling. Hit Rohsenow & Hartnett for emissivities of white paint, various ground surfaces, and thermometer liquids.

 

[Mk]

Wow. Paint emissitivites and thermometer liquids—theres' always more unthoughtof variables

I don't understand the way you say wind velocity is connected to error range.

 

[Bystander]

Zero wind speed: is there any exchange of air inside the shelter with free air, the properties of which are the only interest; what does the thermometer see? Yeah, diffusion, odd local convection as the shelter collects solar and surface radiation; the thermometer sees the air inside the shelter which is going to be more in equilibrium with the shelter temperature than with air outside the shelter.

Move the air at 1 m/s, and carry off kW/K of the solar and surface radiation the shelter is collecting for a 1 m cube (close enough for looking at shelter errors); depending on emissivities, you're looking at order of 100-300 watts the shelter collects and either radiates, or conducts to air. If the air is still T can rise several K --- if the air is moving, that heat is transported away from the thermometer.

 

[Mk]

Stevenson (R. L.'s father)

You mean "Robert Louis"? Wow.

 

[Andre]

I hear that the movie is now in Australia. Please, dear antipodes, review the elements of demagogery and then go to the movie with a checklist of items to be ticked off, what are the fallacies, appeal to fear, hyperbole, ad hominems, band wagons, rethoric etc? That's much more fun. You will see that's a real masterpiece of demagogy par excellance.

 

[reasonmclucus]

Should we expect the warming to be linear?

World temperature was slightly warmer in 2005 than in 1998. Note the warm extreme anomalies as opposed to cool extreme anomalies. If you compare them with historical extremes these two years are somewhat unique in that there are almost no cold extremes. Also note the number of +5C anomalies in the subarctic northern land temperatures.

The mean trend has not changed significantly, but it is possible we have reached a plateau and will now experience a cooling as has been suggested by Bill Gray, professor emeritus, who predicts:
"In just three, five, maybe eight years, he says, the world will begin to cool again."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003040068_warming05.html

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2005/ann/global.html#Gtemp

I notice that the temperature increase is primarily in the northern latitudes where most of the people live. Has anyone attempted to measure the amount of heat generated by human activity. Human skin temperature is about 88 F if I remember correctly which would likely cause some warming during much of the year. then there is the heat of human machinery. The exhaust gas entering a catalytic converter is over twice the temperature of the air as measured on the Kelvin scale. Urban heat islands are known to be as much as 5 to 10 F over rural areas. This factor may be small, but it needs to be accounted for.

 

[||spoon||]

An Inconvenient Truth

Hey all,

I have just finished watching the newly released DVD (at least in Australia) of "An Inconvenient Truth" featuring Al gore's lectures and it has made me want to change my own habits to those which are more environmentally friendly.

What effect has it had on anyone else that has seen the movie?


if you haven't seen it yet, WATCH IT!, it might change your perspective on things

Thanks

-Spoon

 

[Andre]

World temperature was slightly warmer in 2005 than in 1998.

only in the dreams of Jim Hansen. All other series showed 1998 warmer to considereable warmer than 2005. The satellites for instance:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/tltgmam-5.2.gif

 

[BillJx]

I found Gore's movie fairly factual. If it's alarmist it's because the situation is alarming. What's most alarming to me is that most people claim to be concerned but don't seem to be doing anything differently. Every day, the newspapers carry a couple of stories on climate change, and the rest of the paper is unchanged. Travel, RV'ing, home fashions etc.

Gore was less than honest on one score. We can't "fix" this problem. We can only try to reduce the scale of the oncoming disaster. Or we can just deny it, which is a lot easier.

 

[Moridin]

To reconnect with the question in the OP, I did notice some incorrect information, both things that where definitively incorrect, others than might have been correct from the beginning and things that I found somewhat irrelevant to the movie.

I was also negative to Gore's opening statement about not speaking much of the science behind it. Aside from the blatant sympathy videos of his family and past and the anti-Bush propaganda, there where a picture of the Tasmanian tiger in the list of species supposedly killed by changes in climate. This species was hunted to extinction by the early European settlers of Tasmania and the last one did in the 1930's. Perhaps he meant animals that mankind had affected in a way that lead to extinction.

I was quite surprised when he mentioned that diseases are coming back as a result of the human influence on the world, and he mentioned the avian flu in particular. This was very interesting, as the flu that circumnavigates the planet every year is a sort of avian flu, just not H5N1[1]. It is safe to assume that he meant the Spanish flu contra H5N1.

Finally, a politician lecturing on science?

[1] http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/323/

 

[BillJx]

This thread illustrates what depresses me most about the movie. Incomprehension. Denial. A campaign of misinformation aimed at a poorly informed public that doesn't want to change anyway.

The rise in temperatures is beyond question. Glaciers are retreating, the sea level is rising perceptibly, the permafrost is melting. Changes like these are not good. Agriculture, for one thing, depends on consistent and predictable weather patterns. Mountain snowpacks feed the rivers that provide irrigation through the summer.

There's the other little inconvenience, that climate change tends to occur is relatively sudden jumps after a period of gradual heating or cooling.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is the perfect title. Sounding the alarm is different from being "alarmist".

 

[Andre]

Well, you may want to cheer up, as there is a lot more depression to follow when the hoax will unfold in another decade or two. The same kind of depression that came upon many, when the mutual assured destruction bombs did not want to drop, as the cold war ended. So, there was a bright future all of a sudden again to deal with. As this was unthinkable, it did not last very long. After all, what's a man without fear and sense of guilt.

Also very strange that the Earth went through several warming and cooling stages in the last 500 million years which were opposite to the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. But when mankind starts producing these gases, it's leading to the end of the world all of a sudden.

 

[Evo]

We are, after all, nearing the end of the current interglacial period (warming period) that naturally occurs between ice ages. Where I live used to be under a glacier during the last ice age.

 

[Andre]

Indeed so it seems. It should also be noted that CO2 lags the apparent changes from glacial to interglacial with about 1000years and back with several thousand years, without a trace of feedback influence.

Anyway, the extent of the last glaciation in North America has always been subject to hot debate. At Penn State last weekend a new compilation tool has been introduced to register and reconstruct the deglaciation process and habitat changes over time.

You can play with it here,

http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/2002_2006/rcvcc/j27/1_1_e.php