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

[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

 

[Evo]

Excellent article.

"When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.

Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.

During the 20th century the Earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.

Many things are contributing to such global temperature changes. Solar radiation is one. Sunspot activity has reached a thousand-year high, according to European astronomy institutions. Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, a NASA study reports that solar radiation has increased in each of the past two decades, and environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg, citing a 1997 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, observes that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."

continued...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110009693

 

[dmumsie]

For the thrill of a lifetime and tons of Global waming information try this
site. Good reading..

http://www.junkscience.com/

 

[Andre]

In today's Nature magazine Vol 445, page 806, there is an editorial of Michael Hopkin.

A few quotes:

Role of state climatologist comes under scrutiny

Many climate scientists get frustrated with those who don’t believe that human activity is causing global warming, but should having such views be a sackable offence? In recent months, two US state climatologists have been asked to stand down from their posts because of it, triggering debate about whether personal views should determine suitability for what many see as an academic position...

...Taylor, based at Oregon State University in Corvallis and appointed to his post in 1991, argues that his post is academic rather than political, and that it’s not his job to tell the state government what to do. “Most state climatologists have never even met their governor, let alone offered policy advice,” he told Nature.

Therefore, he says, his personal views on climate change shouldn’t be an issue. But Kulongoski clearly believes that a state climatologist should represent the state, and he argues that Taylor’s views are inconsistent with Oregon’s goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions...

Weren't climatologists specialists who know what's going on with climate? So is this the US of A with a first amendment or is this the USSR of Lysenko?

Does it sound familiar?

Lysenko's "revolution in agriculture" had a powerful propaganda advantage over the academics who urged the patience and observation required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the Communist Party hierarchy and put in charge of agricultural affairs. He used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters," and to decry the "wreckers" in biology who he claimed were trying to purposely disable the Soviet economy and cause it to fail. He furthermore denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology.

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

 

[Moridin]

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/409.htm

For a warming over Greenland of 5.5°C, consistent with mid-range stabilisation scenarios, the Greenland ice sheet contributes about 3 m in 1,000 years. For a warming of 8°C, the contribution is about 6 m, the ice sheet being largely eliminated.

Guess he forgot to mention that.

 

[Evo]

This is horrifying, someone I work with said that his wife teaches a mid-school science class (she has no science background). She thought the movie was great and has sent off for a school teaching kit the movie offers and will be teaching a course based on a movie with known errors!

OMG! Do we have no control over what is taught to our children? Do we teach based on movies now?

 

[turbo]

OMG! Do we have no control over what is taught to our children? Do we teach based on movies now?

Well, you can pick your poison. Do we allow the "teach the controversy" factions to set the agenda in regard to evolution, geology, etc? At least, the conservation measures urged by Gore et al will help reduce our energy dependence, if adopted. My wife and I started buying those coiled fluorescent bulbs to replace incandescents while they were still very expensive, and we have replaced nearly every conventional incandescent bulb in our house that gets any more than brief intermittent usage. We don't drive more than necessary, and share rides when possible. We have a clean-burning wood stove that heats our little house easily, and a 10 acre wood lot to harvest to supply the fuel. While the alarmism surrounding the global warming debate is a bit over the top, the fact is that conservation of energy is a healthy, productive exercise.

More important than conservation, IMO, is the enactment and enforcement of clean-air standards. Currently, Maine is suffering from the pollution from large coal-fired power plants upstream from us in the Midwest. We are warned to limit our consumption of wild fish caught from our inland waters due to mercury contamination, and we are warned not to eat the liver or kidneys of moose and deer due to cadmium contamination. Our summers are a string of ozone alerts, and our most sensitive fisheries are endangered by acid rain that leaches even more heavy metals out of the rocks and soils. Unfortunately, our government let's the most egregious polluters off the hook, allowing them to purchase "credits" from companies that don't pollute as much in order to average out the pollution. That concept is crap. Ask the people down-wind from the dirty plants. Our government is sacrificing our health and well-being and the stability of our ecosystems in order to save companies with dirty plants the costs of cleaning up. Since when do polluters deserve that kind of deference?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Do we teach based on movies now?

Remember Hemo the Magnificent?

Educational films are common
http://www.sc.edu/library/educfilm.html

Heck, I first learned about sex from an educational film [and the Vaughn twins].

 

[Andre]

This is horrifying, someone I work with said that his wife teaches a mid-school science class (she has no science background). She thought the movie was great and has sent off for a school teaching kit the movie offers and will be teaching a course based on a movie with known errors!

OMG! Do we have no control over what is taught to our children? Do we teach based on movies now?

I don't think it's the movie medium that bugs you. It's more the persuasive talk of its anchor man preaching doom purely based on fallacies and without any real substance. Better get used to it, it's only the beginning. The positive feedback loop of scaremongering and the need of fear to satisfy herd instinct leaves rationality chanceless, I'm afraid.

 

[Andre]

More important than conservation, IMO, is the enactment and enforcement of clean-air standards. Currently, Maine is suffering from the pollution from large coal-fired power plants upstream from us in the Midwest. ...Our government is sacrificing our health and well-being and the stability of our ecosystems in order to save companies with dirty plants the costs of cleaning up. Since when do polluters deserve that kind of deference?

Obviously all the more reasons to fight it and change things for the better, but what climate got to do with that. If pollution is the problem, fight pollution. get some nuclear power plants, have the coal plants to remove the polluting chemical before releasing the residue gasses.

Using the climate hype to change things for the better probably has more disavantages than solutions for pollution problems. People are inventing disingeneous solutions to reduce sunshine and remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which is useless in another decade when the sun is predicted to go into another quiet minimum.

 

[BillJx]

This is horrifying, someone I work with said that his wife teaches a mid-school science class (she has no science background). She thought the movie was great and has sent off for a school teaching kit the movie offers and will be teaching a course based on a movie with known errors!

OMG! Do we have no control over what is taught to our children? Do we teach based on movies now?

I wouldn't worry too much about it, other than the fact that many teachers lack a strong grasp of science and technology. That's something I put down to a bias in the educational system - - the guy who can design an engine on scrap paper and build it in his basement isn't an "intellectual" but the guy who can write a poem about it is.

As to the film, there are errors in everything. That doesn't change the overall factuality of the problem. The facts are that the ice in the Arctic is melting at a rate faster than expected; year after year we see new records broken for average global temperatures; glaciers and snowcaps are receeding in the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes, on Kilamanjero . . . Gore isn't making it up. Most climatologists, by far, have concluded that this is human-caused. If certain people want to believe that global warming is some great conspiracy they are welcome to believe what they want, but to me they don't seem at all credible.

There are a lot of crackpot theorists on the internet. For the "global warming is a hoax" crowd to convince me that they are anything else, they have to do more than scour the net for whatever seems to support their opinions.

 

[BillJx]

Another comment on the film: for me the timing was good. Only a couple of months previously, I had come across a Woods Hole Oceanographic website, explaining that climate change tends to happen in sudden jumps. "Sudden" being on the scale of a decade or so, which is the blink of an eye geologically. That interested me. No one was predicting any such sudden jump in the immediate future, but it can't be ruled out because the mechanisms are not understood. So I began to learn what I could about global warming and climate change.

I'm very much a skeptic by nature. If I had no idea of the scale of the warming problem before I saw "An Inconvenient Truth", I might very well have written it off as scare-mongering. But because I had already learned a lot of the information that the film presented, I didn't see many surprises. Most of it was just a very vivid summary of what scientists had been saying for the past few years.

 

[Andre]

So if the mechanisms are not understood, why are we so sure that it is CO2?

 

[BillJx]

So if the mechanisms are not understood, why are we so sure that it is CO2?

It's not the mechanisms of warming that are not understood, it's the mechanisms of sudden changes in the rate of cooling / warming following periods of more gradual change.

Search under "abrupt climate change" and "rapid climate change". You will find many entries with conflicting information and ideas, which is to be expected in a new field. Some of the assumptions in posts only a couple of years old are already out of date, and recent posts will soon be out of date as well.
It will be easy to pick and choose quotes to back up any argument you want, but that's hardly the point. If you do enough searching and reading you will be able to get a lay person's overall grasp of where the scientific community is on the issue so far.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It will be easy to pick and choose quotes to back up any argument you want, but that's hardly the point.

Bingo! That's why we look for a consensus among the experts.

 

[BillJx]

Excellent article.

"When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s,
...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110009693

The writer of this article is identified as the chairman of the Exxon-funded National Center for Policy Analysis.

 

[moe darklight]

Whether I agree with Al Gore as a person or not is another deal... he's a politician and that's all I got to say about that.

But I don't understand how any of you can doubt that what we're doing to this planet will have an effect on it.

I didn't notice any grand errors in Al Gore's movie (obviously there are some)... and so far, any website I've gone to that claims such errors turns out to be sponsored by dubious companies, or filled with pro-oil articles, etc. ... and the legit articles I have read, don't convince me much either...

also, the movie was supposedly reviewed by scientists... yea, I know, this could be the same scientists who voted 9/10 for colgate toothpaste for all I know..

maybe al gore moves around information or presents it in a way that makes the problem seem grander than it is (if sea levels did rise to that level, it probably wouldn't be within our life times, is my understanding) ... but we can't deny that we are changing this planet's natural processes drastically! and the real danger is probably not the predictable consequences, but what we don't see coming until it's too late.

either way... we're hitting our peak of oil extraction soon. so we're going to have to reduce oil consumption whether we want to or not.

 

[Andre]

It's not the mechanisms of warming that are not understood, it's the mechanisms of sudden changes in the rate of cooling / warming following periods of more gradual change.

No we don't as it just so happens that the high resolution ice core CO2-isotope correlation, once the trigger of greenhouse gas global warming now refutes the same:

See here why, two EPICA dome C proxies, the d18O paleothermometer calling the shots and CO2 following in a clear master slave setting:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/epica5.GIF

 

[BillJx]

Who is Bijkerk and whose analysis is this? It looks to me as if you could pick either to be leading, depending on what spikes you choose to look at. That may be just because I don't know what to look for, but all I see is a difference in variability between the two measurments.

In any case, as interesting as the raw data might be, I don't intend to spend 10 years obtaining a phD in every discipline that interests me just so I can interpret various scientists' results. I have to content myself with finding out what conclusions the researchers themselves arrived at. Exactly how they arrived at them is interesting theoretically, but is not of practical significance to the lay person.

Lets look at the picture available to non-specialists like me. We have two possibilities. 1) Global warming is a serious problem caused by human overuse, and threatened corporations are funding a campaign of denial, or 2)the leading climatologists of the world are engaged in a massive hoax that benefits no-one.

 

[moe darklight]

2)the leading climatologists of the world are engaged in a massive hoax that benefits no-one.

lol yea.

on the other hand, it's pretty obvious how global warming-denial could benefit "certain" individuals...

and CO2<-->heat do not match EXACTLY at any point, but this is most likely due to other variables... just like the increase of global warming is not a perfectly straight line, it goes up and down... but there is a definite trend. and the odds that the world has become warmer at such a drastic rate right around the time that we started emitting all of these toxins into the atmosphere seem much too unlikely to be a coincidence...

I'm not a specialists in Earth sciences, so I'll have to rely on my common sense for this, and trust those who are specialists with the detailed data.

 

[Andre]

Who is Bijkerk

Me

and whose analysis is this? It looks to me as if you could pick either to be leading, depending on what spikes you choose to look at. That may be just because I don't know what to look for, but all I see is a difference in variability between the two measurments.

In any case, as interesting as the raw data might be, I don't intend to spend 10 years obtaining a phD in every discipline that interests me just so I can interpret various scientists' results. I have to content myself with finding out what conclusions the researchers themselves arrived at. Exactly how they arrived at them is interesting theoretically, but is not of practical significance to the lay person.

I thought you said to be a sceptic, but instead you turn out to be a fallacysist (if that's a word). Just about every fallacy in the book (PhD, who is that layman, all those smart scientists can't be wrong) to avoid looking at the bloody obvious what a sceptic would prefer to do. I thought engineers had some idea about how feedback works. Okay I'll spell it out, What we are looking at is high resolutuon isotope data and CO2 data of the last glacial transition. Data here:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html

Monin et al 2004 and Stenni et al 2001 (Jouzel 2004 is less detailed and on another timescale.)

Now the consensus idea is that basic greenhouse effect of CO2 is limited to about 1 degree per doubling. However climate is supposed to be very sensitive to positive feedbacks. The additional warming of more CO2 is supposed to trigger more evaporation, water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas so this generates more warming and instead of 1 degree the water vapor feedback is supposed to boost the warming to about 2-4 degrees per doubling of CO2.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/epica5.GIF

Now, the strong corrolation between CO2 and isotopes in ice cores used to be the main proof of that effect. At all glacial terminations both spiked simulatenously, as it seemed, but nowadays with much better techniques it is clear that the isotope "temperature" leads the CO2 spike by some 700 years.

Well, no problem, we could still try to go for that positive feedback. Something is triggering the warming (Milankovitch cycles) but those are too weak to sustain big changes, so we assume that the CO2 takes over that function in a feedback effect as soon as it starts to rise. The simple all too obvious point of that graph is that the CO2 react to any change in the isotope trend with a delay of several centuries but that isotopes never react to any change in CO2 neither instanteneous nor with delay.

Now I guess that any engineer proficient signal processing of higher order closed feedback loops could tell you that there is no feedback here. If CO2 was to give feedback is would accelerate warming and would resist cooling tendencies causing gradual changes in trend. But those changes are abrupt, no delay.

Look at it another way. This comparison would be the basis to calculate and proof positive feedback. But why has nobody attempted to do so? With so many clever computer climate modeller, that would be a piece of cake. Why is the latest Summary For Policy Makers not showing this graph? Why don't they talk about ice ages at all? Years ago, these ice age graphs appeared everywhere. Now, the focus is completely different, on the imaginary modelling world. No, you are looking to the plain blunt refutal of the positive feedback idea and hence the dangerous global warming.

We have two possibilities. 1) Global warming is a serious problem caused by human overuse, and threatened corporations are funding a campaign of denial, or 2)the leading climatologists of the world are engaged in a massive hoax that benefits no-one.

1) There are no threatening corporations, there is only a medieval dark ages witch hunt creating that myth. Groupthink does not accept alternative ideas. Heresy must be dispelled as about every other post in this thread clearly demonstrates.

2) Global warming used to be science wih a clear hypothesis, but then the idealogy took over, with as poster child the creation of the hockeystick as noble cause corruption. Now that this hypothesis cannot be proved and the falsifications accumulate (this is only one), it's totally ignored. That removes global warming completely from the realm of science since it cannot be refuted like a religion can't be falsified. (Science must be falsifiable - Karl Popper)

 

[light_bulb]

you can't just say look at global warming and leave it at that, you could say it's the constant relocation of energy that's the problem. when you pull trillions of gallons of oil out of the ground and burn it in a finite sized <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Ecosphere-samualpedrete.jpg">
globe with something like only 14 miles of air it becomes a problem. you may not see it because most of it hits the ground but that means everything else pays the price. i don't believe people have to give up much convenience but in a way the planet is on loan, you can let the interest accumulate, start paying it off or go bankrupt and die.

 

[BillJx]

Me



I thought you said to be a sceptic, but instead you turn out to be a fallacysist (if that's a word). Just about every fallacy in the book (PhD, who is that layman, all those smart scientists can't be wrong) to avoid looking at the bloody obvious what a sceptic would prefer to do.
QUOTE

I analyze graphs every day, in the operation of a chemical recovery, steam and generating plant. An intelligent untrained person can not sit at my console and run the plant, even though the information is right there on the screens. Similarly, my son in law is an airline pilot. I'm accustomed to reading instruments, but that doesn't mean I can step into the cockpit and tell him how to fly the plane. I'm far more skeptical of self-styled experts than I am of those who actually have training and experience.

Skepticism means the ability to think without being swayed by what we want to think. I would prefer to think that I'm an unappreciated genius who can see where the phDs in the field have it all wrong, but I'm skeptical enough to be able to doubt that.
Of course scientists are sometimes wrong, especially in new areas of research, but internet posters who are at odds with mainstream science are invariably wrong, and usually wildly wrong.

Again Andre, you seem to be trying to baffle us with reams of raw data, in the hopes that we will assume it supports your position. In any case, the research appears to be primarily concerned with the cycles of ice ages. However, I will leave the technical analysis to the researchers and quote from their abstracts:

"our results may imply that without human intervention, a climate similar to the present one would extend well into the future."
The reference is to the length of interglacial periods, and they are disagreeing with the popularly accepted idea that we are close to the end of our interglacial. The reference to human interference is a passing one, and seems to infer that the researchers accept it as a given. They certainly don't seem to be questioning it.

It appears to me that the research you're quoting is more likely to confirm human-caused global warming than to refute it, and that you are merely abusing the data. If I'm wrong, please give this skeptic reason to assign you some credibility.

 

[turbo]

I analyze graphs every day, in the operation of a chemical recovery, steam and generating plant. An intelligent untrained person can not sit at my console and run the plant, even though the information is right there on the screens.

They wouldn't be running it for long, anyway, if you're talking about a black liquor recovery boiler. They have automated fail-safes to keep them from blowing up (low-solids liquor shut-off, rapid-drain systems, etc), but avoiding catastrophe does not equate to stable, efficient, or safe operation. That requires lots of training and experience and some degree of talent in trouble-shooting. Someone who has only theoretical knowledge about these beasts is hardly qualified to disagree with you regarding its operation.

When the specialists (in this case the climatologists) are in general agreement, it might be a good idea to listen to them.

 

[Andre]

...
Skepticism means the ability to think without being swayed by what we want to think...

So why don't you try some thinking excursions?

All I want to show here now is that the EPICA proxies refute a positive feedback mechanism, I have no clue what airline flying or steam graph interpretation and a complete post of red herrings has to do with the reluctance to assess and understand the leading role of the presumed isotope paleo temperature and the passive role of CO2. But indeed you confirm once more that global warming is no longer science, by denying falsification results preemtively.

The research I'm quoting shows that we have no clue what happened but whatever caused the isotope spike also appeared to have caused the CO2 spike.

More refuting subjects here are the past existence of a large productive mammoth steppe where a giant ice sheet was supposed to be, the failure of the sea level yoyo to add up with the polar ice sheet size. The 100,000 cycle not concurring with the milakovitch cycles, the ocean floor isotopes being smack on with the ice cores without delay of the massive oceanic inertia, then the CH4 contents leads/follows the Northerm Hemphisphere isotope ratios completely different from the Antarctic proxies. Nontheless, the Northern hemisphere warming was in phase with the southern hemisphere.

In short the "ice age" was something rather different than it looks and the many articles about it are highly selective and speculative. Not because I say so but because you simply can compare studies and see that those from different specialisms are complete at odds.

Perhaps give this a shot.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf

 

[BillJx]

But indeed you confirm once more that global warming is no longer science, by denying falsification results preemtively.


Perhaps give this a shot.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf

What I'm denying is the credibility of filling the screen with raw data and claiming to be able to derive results that support your own ideas, when statements in the researchers' own abstracts seem to confute them.

 

[turbo]

What I'm denying is the credibility of filling the screen with raw data and claiming to be able to derive results that support your own ideas, when statements in the researchers' own abstracts seem to confute them.

It doesn't take too long to unearth a mind-numbing array of scientific papers on paleoclimatology just Googling on "Vostok" and "core". Most of them point to connections between atmospheric levels of methane and carbon dioxide and the onset of interglacial (warming) periods. If you believe climate-change naysayers, these researcher are either all misguided and/or politically motivated to keep coming up with the "wrong" answers. We only have one Earth with one atmosphere, so it is presumptuous and decidedly unscientific to claim that human activity cannot cause climate changes. There is no evidence to support that claim, and there is sufficient evidence to the contrary.

One problem with climate change is that it can accelerate with small changes on the ground. Let's say that it gets warm enough northern climates to melt the permafrost - we could be looking at a rapid increase in atmospheric methane load as these long-sequestered materials become subject to biological decomposition. The fact of the matter is that we don't know for sure what will happen in such a scenario, and it is irresponsible to ignore the matter. Gore and some others may be over-the-top in their presentations, but when the majority of climatologists concur regarding the underlying science, it's prudent to listen to them.

 

[Andre]

What I'm denying is the credibility of filling the screen with raw data and claiming to be able to derive results that support your own ideas, when statements in the researchers' own abstracts seem to confute them.

Most researchers -strange as it may seem- have no clue what is going on in adjacent specialisms. That should have been clear already if you'd managed to struggle through my epistel that I linked to before:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf

yet the mere classification of bona fide researcher makes them thrustworthy.

Let me back the statement up with a more stunning example, the next publication in press:

http://tinyurl.com/3a3ynw

shows this map for the extent of the Siberian ice sheets during Last Glacial Maximum(22-18,000 years ago) in Siberia:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/lgm1.GIF

based on the refs:

69 Petit-Maire, N. (2002). Maps of the World Environments during the Last Two Climatic Extremes (CLIMEX). Commission de la Carte Geologique du Monde

70 Grosswald, M.G. and Hughes, T.J. (2002) The Russian component of the arctic ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum. Quat. Sci. Rev. 21, 121–146

Now do compare that with the now formally recognised Weichselian ice sheet extent here

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/eurasian.jpg

(ref: Hubberten et (21) al 2004 The periglacial climate and environment in northern Eurasia during the Last Glaciation, Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004) 1333–1357)

Just about 25% that huge ice sheet existed in reality and only in the North West, the rest was mammoth steppe.

See the quality of research nowadays? The non existence of the Siberian Ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum never made it to the textbooks and the ice core community, perhaps only as cognitive dissonance. And the peer review did not catch it either. And the relevance? It totally refutes all models on ice sheet, isotopes and sea level balance. And that relevance? it makes sure that the ice age was a lot different than the current understanding, the base of global warming.

Also a very good reason to be very sceptic about any conclusion and look at raw data without any prejudice of it's relevance.

 

[turbo]

The ice core data (especially the Vostok core, covering 4 full cycles of glaciation) show that during periods of glaciation, there was a lot of airborne dust, indicating that the sequestration of water in ice sheets during glaciation left much of the land surface very arid. This in no way conflicts with observations that some large land areas in northern climates might have been cold and dry, with insufficient snowfall to offset the sublimation of existing ice and snow.

 

[Andre]

Sorry that's beside the point. The point is that the ice sheet volume of the last glacial maximum does no longer add up to account for the 127 meters sea level rise. Same with d18O isotope balance, as the sediment cores on the ocean floors echoed the isotopes of the ice cores exactly. This made Rutherford assume to make calculations about total ice sheet volume as well. He came to slightly higher values. These two independent methods gave a certain ice sheet volume which was projected on Siberia, since it was a closed area in that time of the cold war, it could not be verified. So a completely wrong virtual Siberian Ice sheet came into existence and exists still today. According to insect remains, BTW, Siberia was up to 3 degrees warmer than today during the last glacial maximum. You find that back in the earlier refs of my PDF (Kuzmina, 2001, Sher et al 2002, Schirrmeister et
al 2002).

This example shows the sloppiness of quartenary research and the falsifying of the resultant hypothesis, especially the warm Siberia (+3C) during the cold Last Glacial Maximum (-10??)C

 

[turbo]

Don't be sorry. If you think that each period of glaciation must have had similar local results each and every time without temporal variation, you should provide support for that view. It is a pretty goofy view, IMO. When you have 100Ky glacial cycles, you cannot dismiss even small climatic forces. As I mentioned earlier, sequestration of water during periods of glaciation will allow areas with light snowfall to lose snow/ice coverage due to sublimation with a concurrent rise in local temperatures as underlying soils are exposed, and the Vostok ice core samples support this idea, since ice samples during heavily glaciated periods are also heavily contaminated with dust.

 

[Andre]

Again that's not the message. The message is that things did not add up at all within the timeframe 20,000 - 6,000 years ago. Obviously, the termination with an abundance of high resolution data, compared to other glacial teminations, data are much more coarse. And, sequences are wrong, numbers don't add up meaning that many hypotheses are just wrong.

Remember the black swan hypothesis of Karl Popper. if your hypothesis is that all swans are white, it is fasified the moment that you see a black swan, no matter how many millions of white swans you have observed earlier. If we cannot add up the high resolution known ice volumes of the last glacial maximum with the high resolution sea level changes, we have found a black swan. It's as simple as that and then it's time to drop fixed ideas and start hypothesing again like this here:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=153634

 

[Hcxc1runner]

Just asking a few innocent questions...

Is there data that points to a statistically significant increase in carbon dioxide levels, and temperature increase?

Is there data that shows a relationship between the two variables (CO2 levels and temperature increase)?

How are temperature levels measured, and what exactly are they measuring?
How precise and accurate are these methods?

How are sea levels measured?

Are carbon dioxide levels constant in the atmosphere?

I have a hard time believing that we have the ability to accurately detect a temperature increase of 0.? C over the past 30 or so years worldwide (can't remember the data that Al Gore refers to). The method with which data is collected over the last several years have changed, as technology has changed.


Thanks for your time
Hcxc1runner

 

[Andre]

Welcome, Hcxc1runner

You sure know to ask the right questions. I assume that you have only recently been confronted with the global warming hype for the first time. A few hundred specialists are working on those subject and of course forums answers are biased with the opinion of the answerer.

Let me give you a few tips. Do an advanced search on this forum, with search words "carbon" for any date in Earth science and you'll have some stuff to read. I hope you don't mind that I'm brief on your questions:

Is there data that points to a statistically significant increase in carbon dioxide levels, and temperature increase? Is there data that shows a relationship between the two variables (CO2 levels and temperature increase)?

There used to be a "hockeystick" with a r2 of 99+% between the two, however it has been demonstrated that is was a very ..errm.. *unscientific* graph here:.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/005.htm (fig 1 b)

There are several discussions about "noble cause corruption". Was it cheating or just bad science?

Glacial ice cores show a clear correlation between CO2 and isotopes, erroneousle believed to be depicting temperature, however the *temperature* is leading by 600 +/- 400 years during the last deglaciation. Global warmers assume a positive feedback, boosting the temperatures but obviously those have not studied the physics of positive feedback loops.

Finally, we have chemical CO2 measurement as of about 1816 AD up to about 1961 AD with wild oscillations which are not accepted by the IPCC and warmers, however with indeed some correlation. For the last 60 years we have anti correlation between ~1950-~1975AD, cooling temperatures with rising CO2 when the return to the ice age hype was at the top and then a positive correlation between ~1980 and 1998

How are temperature levels measured, and what exactly are they measuring?

There are three independent research facilities working on the compilation of all the world meterological stations and ship meteo data. Average daily and monthly temperatures are calculated per grid of some 5 degrees lattitude and longitude, I think.

See for instance Hansens lab:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

Then there is the monthly satellite measurements for the lower troposphere:

http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

How precise and accurate are these methods?

That's a can of worms with big discussions everywhere. Two hot topics are correction for the Urban Heat Island effect and the reducing number of rural stations.

How are sea levels measured?

In the old days with the yardsticks in the harbours, corrected for geologic movements. Nowadays we have the satellites.

Are carbon dioxide levels constant in the atmosphere?

Definitely not, there is an annual wobble due to seasonal changes in sources and sinks, according to the ice cores, CO2 levels have been fluctuated between some 180 and 280 parts per million in the ice ages. However, it is aknowlegded that there are plenty of complications with the CO2 in the ice cores. Anther "proxy" are fossile leave stomata of certain species which are know to show variation in stomata density depending on CO2 levels and those show much more variation and higher levels.


According to the IPCC the CO2 levels started to rise gradually from around 1850 at 280 ppmv to nowadays 380 ppmv on the average. The earlier mentioned chemical measurements showed values between 1000 ppmv and 270 ppmv.

I hope it helps.

 

[Sehrish]

Global warming

I didn't knew about this movie until my science teacher told me. I got the movie last night and I am going to watch it now. I read the threads it seems like this movie is interesting. I usually don't watch Earth related movies not that I don't care about the planet I am just simply scared like what have we done to our planet. What makes me sad is that mostly people don't know about it. Maybe they do in Canada but third world countries have no clue because of high ration of uneducated people.
Anyways I will watch the movie and reply again and tell if this movie affected me or not.

 

[Mk]

Congratulations guys, this thread is getting hit number six for "An Inconvient Truth" on Google! However I don't know where it stand for "An Inconvenient Truth"

 

[Evo]

Congratulations guys, this thread is getting hit number six for "An Inconvient Truth" on Google! However I don't know where it stand for "An Inconvenient Truth"

Oh well.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=us&sid=afIESX3LdgnQ

 

[Andre]

A critiique from our Kristen here

http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html

 

[Mk]

A critiique from our Kristen here

http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html

Actually it would be this There's a little g in there.
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunderg/index.html

 

[edward]

There have been several new pieces added to the global warming puzzle in the past few weeks.

It appears that there were large releases of CO2 from the oceans as the ice was melting and temperatures were rising after the last ice age.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070510164044.htm

And:

The decline of Antarctica's Southern Ocean carbon "sink" - or reservoir - means that atmospheric CO2 levels may be higher in future than predicted.

These carbon sinks are vital as they mop up excess CO2 from the atmosphere, slowing down global warming.

The study, by an international team, is published in the journal Science.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6665147.stm

This effect had been predicted by climate scientists, and is taken into account - to some extent - by climate models. But it appears to be happening 40 years ahead of schedule.