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

[Mk]

Has anybody gone to see the movie? What did you think about it? I thought it was an excellent movie of persuasion, although some of the facts seemed wrong to me, and there were a few disappointments with the movie.

The movie starts off with non sequitorish behaviour. At 57 s, he shows a picture of the Apollo 8 mission to the moon. At 2:37 he shows calving glaciers, then pollution, and a from-space picture of Hurricane Katrinia

I'll admit the first disappointment was most hardhitting. I don't know what I was thinking. After the introduction, the first thing he said was "I am not going to spend much time on the science of it." Did I expect otherwise? I guess I did because my mouth dropped open. Of course then he went into a little animation explaining the greenhouse effect. It showed sunlight going in then leaving—without the greenhouse effect. Then, with the greenhouse effect—sunlight going in, and bouncing off of the ground, but most of it reflecting off of the atmosphere back to the ground. Interestingly, he showed a little cartoon to appeal to other audiences that broke down the situation well.

First a little girl's ice cream cone melts suddenly and she starts to cry. A man comes over (I believe modeled after the one from The Twilight Zone). Little Suzie (or whatever her name as) asks him why her ice cream melted. "Global Warming!" The cartoon goes on for a few minutes showing greenhouse effect in a completely unbiased way.

Light comes from the sun. The light is illustrated by a chipper, self-confident piece of fire/light that is in the form of a person. He is walking to the Earth through space with a huge grin on his face. However "nasty greenhouse gases" are portrayed as green blobules like amoebas, and are thugs. When the innocent ray of light gets to the Earth, he gets the **** beat out of him by a few greenhouse gases, his money is stolen, and the sunlight lays on top of the Earth, dead. More and more sunlight comes, the greenhouse gases mug all of them, until the entire Earth is covered in their stinking, rotting, dead corpses. "Their rotting corpses heat the Earth."

Secondly of disappointments, I was surprised to find that a lot of the movie was about him. That's right, about him, not AGW. I guess its his movie and he can do whatever he wants with it.

There was a pretty cool graph that was a hybrid of The Hockeystick (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/USAToday060602.jpg ), and http://www.mwnx.net/users/mac/Climatology/temp%20and%20CO2%20since%20400,000%20vostokjpg.jpg , quite obviously correlating temperature and CO₂ using Vostok ice core data with timespan 0-400,000 yrs (he may have used a 650,000 yr. one, I'm not sure). One of the climaxes of the movie was when he got on some kind of elevator to show the CO₂ hockeystick at its current time. Then, following a linear regression, the projected CO₂ goes up and up and up off the chart way above where the temperature is.

At 46 min and 2 seconds, he talks about polar bears drowning, with a helpful illustration of a polar bear working very well entirely on pathos.

These Polar bears would be ROFL

http://www.churchillmb.net/~cnsc/ab-attrac-bears.html
http://gocanada.about.com/od/wester.../polarbears.htm

Throughout the fall and especially just before freeze-up of the bay, increasing numbers of bears move towards the coast.

http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/noframe/s034.htm

Numbers of bears captured per unit of effort, in the Beaufort Sea, also have increased, providing another indication of population growth. The few catch/effort data from the Chukchi Sea also suggest an increasing trend

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/pr...y/LC20050525043

More recent studies have found a 20 to 25 per cent increase in polar bear numbers across Canada.

t's not that nothing has been done:

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

Polar bears are a potentialy threatened (not endangered) species living in the circumpolar north. They are animals which know no boundaries. They pad across the ice from Russia to Alaska, from Canada to Greenland and onto Norway's Svalbard archipelago. No adequate census exists on which to base a worldwide population estimate, but biologists use a working figure of perhaps 22,000 to 25,000 bears with about sixty percent of those living in Canada.

In most sections of the Arctic where estimates are available, polar bear populations are thought to be stable at present. Counts have been decreasing in Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait, where about 3,600 bears are thought to live, but are increasing in the Beaufort Sea, where there are around 3,000 bears.

In the 1960s and 1970s, polar bears were under such severe survival pressure that a landmark international accord was reached, despite the tensions and suspicions of the Cold War. 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.).

The polar bear nations agreed to prohibit random, unregulated sport hunting of polar bears and to outlaw hunting the bears from aircraft and icebreakers as had been common practice. The agreement also obliges each nation to protect polar bear denning areas and migration patterns and to conduct research relating to the conservation and management of polar bears. Finally, the nations must share their polar bear research findings with each other. Member scientists of the Polar Bear Specialist Group meet every three to four years under the auspices of the IUCN World Conservation Union to coordinate their research on polar bears throughout the Arctic.

With the agreement in force, polar bear populations slowly recovered. The Oslo agreement is one of the first and most successful international conservation measures enacted in the 21st century.

[...]

I show that Polar Bears, which, incidentely, survived the early Holocene Thermal maximum (Hypsithermal) and the Medieval Warming Period, are thriving, increasing their numbers considerably, yet people continue to let them go extinct?

Immediately after this Al Gore explains how fresh meltwater from the last ice age caused floods in the North Atlantic that caused thermohaline circulation to completely shut down. My immediate reaction to this is to think "no freaking way," but I have not read anything about this.

He showed a graph concerning biodiversity that was pretty interesting. At a southern Switzerland station he graphed the amount of frost days going back some years, and superimposed the amount of invasive species coming into Switzerland. The correlation was astonishing.

It basically looked like this:

Frost days
_________
         \ /
          /\
________/   \
Species

He started talking about his enemies, the anti-global warmers. All I remember are some quotes I wrote down.

"There is a consensus of global warming."

"[Skeptics'] objective is to reposition global warming as a theory rather than fact."

(in a video of TheDr. Hanson): "We already know everything we need to know [to stop global warming]"

"We have solved an environmental problem before—the stratospheric ozone hole."
http://junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.htm

"This is a moral issue."
Can't we just stick with science? "http://www.crichton-official.com/fear/fear_main.shtml ! Carl Sagan wrote that we should get out of "the demon-haunted world" of our past.

Here are three other things he said that might start a conversation.
"Soil evaporation increases dramatically with temperature."
"Species lost is going up over 1000x faster than current rate."
"Scientists could predict precisely how much water would break through the levees in New Orleans"

 

[Andre]

Over one and a half year ago I posted this somewhere:

Recommendations For Global Warming Skeptics, an armchair analysis
by Andre

Apparently, one of the instincts for survival of a social species like Homo sapiens is social group building. Consequently the function of that group is survival against any threat, ultimately improving the quality of life. It appears that cause and effect are interchangeable. If there is a threat, the group bonds will strengthen to counter it. If there is no threat, the group tends to loose coherence and this is undesirable, as it opposes to the social instinct. But this problem can be countered by finding a new threat or create one if required.

Most often, threats emerge from the same species. This mechanism can be observed in primary schools already. Pestering individual children is more often the work of a group, the main culprits usually being those who desire the leadership of the gang, eager to show that they are well prepared for that job. The victim is the threat, the enemy that justifies the forming and reinforcing of the group. At adulthood the principle doesn't change, only the scale. The threats are now the Huns, the Barbarians, the Capitalists, the Commies, the Heathens, the other religion, etc. Threats can also be non-human: hurricanes, meteorite impact, flooding, etc, or even abstract: dragons, devils, global warming, etc. It may even be possible to capture this effect in a numerical expression (soon to be known as Andre's law of conservation of concern)

Tr=Th + Tn + Ta=ln(N)/Cc

Tr= total threat required
Th =total human threat
Tn = total natural threat
Ta = total abstract threat
N = number of individuals in the group Cc = civilization coefficient

Studying past and present civilisations can be used to test this hypothesis. Assuming that Tn, Cc and N are constant, then the sum of Th and Ta should be constant as well. In other words, the safest, most unchallenged communities from human threats should have the most dangerous devils and dragons.

Now, as the relatively safe modem western civilization suffered a severe loss of human threat (Th) with the demise of Communism, it sought compensation in increasing abstract threat (Ta). For identifying that new emerging Ta-threat we only need to synchronize possible candidates with the weakening of the Th-threat. As the credibility of a possible devil and dragons threat has declined considerably, obviously Global Warming remaines as possible candidate to take over the threat role of communism in the early 1990ies. And we see that the timing is exactly right. And with every former communists country, joining western organizations, the threat of global warming increases proportionally. Before that period, it did lead a meager existence, fighting the new ice age that was coming. Now, the impact of global warming on society equals the burden of the previous communist threat.

As observed on the schoolyards, those who have the highest desire for the acceptance, approval, love, and ultimately the leadership of the group, show this by brave, heroic behavior against the threat. If the threat is human, the ultimate consequences of seeking dominance of the group this way, can be disastrous, and initial enemy image building, "Capitalists", "Commies", etc, accumulates into revolutions, wars and massacres. How about non-human threats and abstract threats? How about the global warming?

Obviously, those who seek a higher social status can do so by showing the determination to fight any threat of the group and become heroes. But it doesn't work if the society is either not aware or not convinced of that particular threat. So the "enemy image" must be build first and an insistent information campaign is required with a deluge of alleged evidence of Global warming. This is easy since there are many shrewd prospective heroes, well capable of making a case. One cannot help comparing this tendency with similar information campaigns against threats in the past (a.k.a. propaganda), the human enemy image building, which ultimately ended in tragedies. But this actually explains also, how social group mechanisms ultimately lead to such tragedies. Well, in the case of global warming, an imaginary abstract threat (Ta) cannot suffer; only their fierce, heroic fighters and their followers could, albeit a lot less compared to the tragedies resulting from creating a human threat image (Th).

So what is the lesson of this little observation exercise from an armchair for the skeptics of global warming? Being right and being wise is not the same. Perhaps its better to leave the Global Warming alarmists alone and not to expose the non-existence of the threat. The ultimate outcome of falsifying Global Warming could be opposite the desired result.

First of all, as already experienced, deniers of threats must be traitors per definition, who will be banished from the group, marked with tar and feathers. Secondly, social groups required threats as a constant factor. It’s a human requirement; we do not like to lose our dearly beloved enemies. An abstract threat image like global warming is a lot less dangerous than a creating or intensifying another human enemy image. So when the alleged global warming threat is taken away, the focus may shift again to assumed human threats, consequently risking the development of more conflict tragedies. The global warming dragon devil may even replace the enemy image that other civilizations have about the west and thus helping to prevent future human tragedies. This outweighs the importance of the truth

Global warmers are to be commended for their selection of a harmless enemy. Hurray for global warming.

Would that explain some of http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page6333.asp

...Let me turn now to the evidence itself. The scientific evidence of global warming and climate change: UK leadership in environmental science...

I said earlier it needed global leadership to tackle the issue. But we cannot aspire to such leadership unless we are seen to be following our own advice...

Tackling climate change will take leadership, dynamism and commitment - qualities that I know are abundantly represented in this room...

To acquire global leadership, on this issue Britain must demonstrate it first at home.

Perhaps that that little armchair analyses wasn't that bad in the first place. Would it also explain "An unconvenient truth"? a master piece of demagoguery.

 

[nannoh]

Has anybody gone to see the movie? What did you think about it? I thought it was an excellent movie of persuasion, although some of the facts seemed wrong to me, and there were a few disappointments with the movie.

The movie starts off with non sequitorish behaviour. At 57 s, he shows a picture of the Apollo 8 mission to the moon. At 2:37 he shows calving glaciers, then pollution, and a from-space picture of Hurricane Katrinia

I'll admit the first disappointment was most hardhitting. I don't know what I was thinking. After the introduction, the first thing he said was "I am not going to spend much time on the science of it." Did I expect otherwise? I guess I did because my mouth dropped open. Of course then he went into a little animation explaining the greenhouse effect. It showed sunlight going in then leaving—without the greenhouse effect. Then, with the greenhouse effect—sunlight going in, and bouncing off of the ground, but most of it reflecting off of the atmosphere back to the ground. Interestingly, he showed a little cartoon to appeal to other audiences that broke down the situation well.

First a little girl's ice cream cone melts suddenly and she starts to cry. A man comes over (I believe modeled after the one from The Twilight Zone). Little Suzie (or whatever her name as) asks him why her ice cream melted. "Global Warming!" The cartoon goes on for a few minutes showing greenhouse effect in a completely unbiased way.

Light comes from the sun. The light is illustrated by a chipper, self-confident piece of fire/light that is in the form of a person. He is walking to the Earth through space with a huge grin on his face. However "nasty greenhouse gases" are portrayed as green blobules like amoebas, and are thugs. When the innocent ray of light gets to the Earth, he gets the **** beat out of him by a few greenhouse gases, his money is stolen, and the sunlight lays on top of the Earth, dead. More and more sunlight comes, the greenhouse gases mug all of them, until the entire Earth is covered in their stinking, rotting, dead corpses. "Their rotting corpses heat the Earth."

Secondly of disappointments, I was surprised to find that a lot of the movie was about him. That's right, about him, not AGW. I guess its his movie and he can do whatever he wants with it.

There was a pretty cool graph that was a hybrid of The Hockeystick (a staple), and http://www.mwnx.net/users/mac/Climatology/temp%20and%20CO2%20since%20400,000%20vostokjpg.jpg , quite obviously correlating temperature and CO₂ using Vostok ice core data with timespan 0-400,000,000 yrs (he may have used a 650,000,000 yr. one, I'm not sure). One of the climaxes of the movie was when he got on some kind of elevator to show the CO₂ hockeystick at its current time. Then, following a linear regression, the projected CO₂ goes up and up and up off the chart way above where the temperature is.

At 46 min and 2 seconds, he talks about polar bears drowning, with a helpful illustration of a polar bear working very well entirely on pathos.


Immediately after this Al Gore explains how fresh meltwater from the last ice age caused floods in the North Atlantic that caused thermohaline circulation to completely shut down. My immediate reaction to this is to think "no freaking way," but I have not read anything about this.

He showed a graph concerning biodiversity that was pretty interesting. At a southern Switzerland station he graphed the amount of frost days going back some years, and superimposed the amount of invasive species coming into Switzerland. The correlation was astonishing.

It basically looked like this:

Frost days
_________
         \ /
          /\
________/   \
Species

He started talking about his enemies, the anti-global warmers. All I remember are some quotes I wrote down.

"There is a consensus of global warming."

"[Skeptics'] objective is to reposition global warming as a theory rather than fact."

(in a video of TheDr. Hanson): "We already know everything we need to know [to stop global warming]"

"We have solved an environmental problem before—the stratospheric ozone hole."
http://junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.htm

"This is a moral issue."
Can't we just stick with science? "http://www.crichton-official.com/fear/fear_main.shtml ! Carl Sagan wrote that we should get out of "the demon-haunted world" of our past.

Here are three other things he said that might start a conversation.
"Soil evaporation increases dramatically with temperature."
"Species lost is going up over 1000x faster than current rate."
"Scientists could predict precisely how much water would break through the levees in New Orleans"

I'll have to make time to see this film. The best this sort of hype can do is reduce dependency on oil and promote an awareness of the global environment. In my opinion whatever changes are taking place are diffucult to reverse. Like trying to correct orbital precession or something just as enormous.

The worst a film like that can do is freak out a bunch of kids and adults. If kids aren't being alarmed about "global warming" and its implications, real or imagined, there have been lots of wars, diseases, bombs and empty causes to choose from recently.

 

[Mk]

There are always lots of wars, disease, bombs, and empty causes to choose from to be scared of.

Those who seek a higher social status can do so by showing the determination to fight any threat of the group and become heroes. But it doesn't work if the society is either not aware or not convinced of that particular threat. So the "enemy image" must be build first and an insistent information campaign is required with a deluge of alleged evidence of Global warming. This is easy since there are many shrewd prospective heroes, well capable of making a case.

Once I asked how can somebody hate the United States President? He doesn't do anything. Of course he does, for instance he controls the military.. but only 325,000 of them. He vetos bills.. but they can be overridden. He chooses the Supreme Court Justices if any leave office, but usually less than one per President, and any decision on a justice can be overridden by the legislature. It took Nixon three tries before he got Harry Blackmun. Probably the President's strongest power is his power of persuasion. If he wants to say something, people are going to listen to him, and they are going to talk about it. If there is a threat, real or imagined, human, non-human, or abstract, people are going to listen to him and talk about it. The US President, as the highest and most respected person (unless you are blinded by hate) in the entire country, he tells the populus what to choose from. Whether it be wars, diseases, bombs, or empty causes. Iraq, and Afghanastan, AIDS in Africa, Iran's nuclear missiles, or immigration.

 

[Mk]

Please note that 400,000,000 and 650,000,000... those are actually 400,000 and 650,000. I fixed them.

 

[nannoh]

There are always lots of wars, disease, bombs, and empty causes to choose from to be scared of.

Once I asked how can somebody hate the United States President? He doesn't do anything. Of course he does, for instance he controls the military.. but only 325,000 of them. He vetos bills.. but they can be overridden. He chooses the Supreme Court Justices if any leave office, but usually less than one per President, and any decision on a justice can be overridden by the legislature. Probably the President's strongest power is his power of persuasion. If he wants to say something, people are going to listen to him, and they are going to talk about it. If there is a threat, real or imagined, human, non-human, or abstract, people are going to listen to him and talk about it. The US President, as the highest and most respected person (unless you are blinded by hate) in the entire country, he tells the populus what to choose from. Whether it be wars, diseases, bombs, or empty causes. Iraq, and Afghanastan, AIDS in Africa, Iran's nuclear missiles, or immigration.

Please don't mistake frustration for hate. I have not singled out anyone head of state, or any single person for that matter, by highlighting the over emphasis on "global warming", disease, bombs and wars that has been capitalized upon by the media. Further to that I tend to hold every adult, woman or man, on the planet responsible for allowing (and promoting) a legacy of land mines, invasions, polluted environments, hatred and empty causes to be left as our heritage for the generations to come. It is you, actually, who immediately concluded that your president was the focus of my frustration and who immediately transformed that frustration into hatred for an influential person that you and I really don't know from Adam.

 

[Mk]

Oh, no! I did not mean you at all! It was just a situation in which I asked a question and the answer seemed relevant to your post.

 

[nannoh]

Oh, no! I did not mean you at all! It was just a situation in which I asked a question and the answer seemed relevant to your post.

My mistake. Sorry for any uncalled for ranting and taking up of space! I still have to see Gore's hollywood debut. I actually enjoy Bollywood romantic musicals myself!

 

[culion]

There are many articles that pick apart Gore's "factual" claims in "Inconvenient Truths." Undoubtedly, at least some of these issues can be debated until the next ice age raises its frosty head. However, in my view Gore tiptoes past the key question.

Assuming that warming is a reality, what percentage of the change is due to human forcings? What model should one use to zero in on this question given the fact that predictions from the many existing models look like buckshot. Gore does not attempt to address this question and simply states that the driving force is due to two-legged creatures.

There is a rumor floating around in the best of circles that climate does change. Perhaps in his next movie Gore will tell us how much of the change is due to human activities and how much is natural based on the excellent models that will have been developed by that time.

 

[Mk]

Gore does not attempt to address this question and simply states that the driving force is due to two-legged creatures.

I think he said "bird" one or two times.

There is a rumor floating around in the best of circles that climate does change. Perhaps in his next movie Gore will tell us how much of the change is due to human activities and how much is natural based on the excellent models that will have been developed by that time.

That would be interesting. If he did that, he would really have done his research. As the physicists say, he may have learned some paleoclimatology and environmental science rather than about paleoclimatology and environmental science.

 

[Skyhunter]

How convenient that the Earth is warming and Al Gore was precognitive enough to see the future and exploit it for political gain.

What a brilliant move, he's got my vote.

 

[Andre]

Well as far as I can see he just echeod the retrodiction of others about the warming in the recent past between 1980 and 1998. That's when the warming stopped, however few did notice that.

 

[Skyhunter]

"We have solved an environmental problem before—the stratospheric ozone hole."
http://junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.htm

The Junk science website is full of just that, junk science. I suggest you find better sources, there are others available.

That link describes the process of ozone creation and depletion, implying that the science behind ozone depletion was ignoring this most basic fact. Therefore implying that the bans on CFC's did nothing to effect the ozone cycles. Of course they themselves completely ignore this little scientific tidbit about CFC's and their effect on ozone.

The CFCs are so stable that only exposure to strong UV radiation breaks them down. When that happens, the CFC molecule releases atomic chlorine. One chlorine atom can destroy over 100,000 ozone molecules. The net effect is to destroy ozone faster than it is naturally created. To return to the analogy comparing ozone levels to a stream's depth, CFCs act as a siphon, removing water faster than normal and reducing the depth of the stream.

http://www.epa.gov/ozone/science/sc_fact.html


That link is a perfect example of how misinformation is spread. That site gives the average denialist just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to be a threat. This kind of politicised science is damaging to the credibility of scientists with valid skepticism, and harming the true debate that needs to be taking place.

I am not a climatologist, however I do know that the ice is melting, and scientists whom I respect and trust say GW is due at least in part to anthropogenic causes. Therefore I will do my part to reduce my impact on the planet and encourage others by example.

If Andre's law of conservation of concern is correct, I would much rather see mankind join together in an effort to make the world a cleaner healthier place to live. As opposed to the usual, which is to make war on one another.

 

[Skyhunter]

<snip> warming in the recent past between 1980 and 1998. That's when the warming stopped, however few did notice that.

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

Global Temperatures
The 2005 global temperature was statistically indistinguishable from the standing record set in 1998. One data set, in use at NCDC since the late 1990s, produced a global annual temperature for 2005 that was slightly below 1998 (below left). An improved data set, which incorporates innovative algorithms that better account for factors such as changes in spatial coverage and evolving observing methods, results in 2005 being slightly warmer than 1998. (below right)

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

 

[Mk]

Skyhunter, congratulations on 1000 posts!

 

[Andre]

Should we expect the warming to be linear?

World temperature was slightly warmer in 2005 than in 1998.

2005 warmer than 1998?

No, it's not. at least it's 2 to 1. Hansen thinks that's warmer http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt .
According to http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem3gl.txt , 2005 global temps were 0.691 above his average while 1998 was 0.828.
But the best referee would be http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 , without coverage problems and urban heat island effects. So the average for 1998 here is 0.50025 while 2005 only gets to 0.31225. Please do check the calculation.

 

[Gokul43201]

I'll have to make time to see this film. The best this sort of hype can do is reduce dependency on oil and promote an awareness of the global environment. In my opinion whatever changes are taking place are diffucult to reverse. Like trying to correct orbital precession or something just as enormous.

The worst a film like that can do is freak out a bunch of kids and adults. If kids aren't being alarmed about "global warming" and its implications, real or imagined, there have been lots of wars, diseases, bombs and empty causes to choose from recently.

Reminder: Folks, this thread is created in a science sub-forum. Let's keep the discussion strictly scientific. Any socio-political aspects of the discussion may be had in P&WA under the AGW thread there.

 

[star.torturer]

Skyhunter, congratulations on 1000 posts!

http://www.the5thrace.com/forums/images/smilies/offtopic.gif"
sory i had to say it

its definitley warmer here in the UK

 

[Andre]

Reminder: Folks, this thread is created in a science sub-forum. Let's keep the discussion strictly scientific. Any socio-political aspects of the discussion may be had in P&WA under the AGW thread there.

Right, coming to think of that, there are a lot of ad hominems here:

The Junk science website is full of just that, junk science. I suggest you find better sources, there are others available.

We should not be shooting the messengers

That link is a perfect example of how misinformation is spread.

Is it misinformation or the moving-the-goal-poles fallacy? accepting anything that comes from the own den and rejecting anything that is not. Wouldn't it be better just to check the sources and the logic and shut up when those happen to prove to be correct?

That site gives the average denialist just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to be a threat. This kind of politicised science is damaging to the credibility of scientists with valid skepticism, and harming the true debate that needs to be taking place.

Please indicate what is policy and what is merely stating facts?

I am not a climatologist, however I do know that the ice is melting,

Yes, some ice does, other ice don't, but what is the point? that -on the average- the world is a tad warmer than last century? But what does it proof? Does it proof that CO2 did it or the sun? Or the oceanic/atmospheric cycles?

and scientists whom I respect and trust say GW is due at least in part to anthropogenic causes.

There are several scientists and others whom I respect and trust since I checked what they were saying, who say that the previous (1980-1998) GW is most likely mainly due to natural causes as well as urban heat island contamination of sources.

 

[Pythagorean]

ArthurDent writes
"For quite a while global warming has been presented in the public forum as a universally accepted scientific reality. However, in the light of Al Gore's new film An Inconvenient Truth many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon, much less any particular cause of it."

that was from http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/14/209235


You know, I must say, ever since frequenting this forum more often, I've realized that I had totally accepted Global Warming as a truth at one point. I'm now totally in no position to judge. Good work, PF!

 

[Mk]

I was surprised too when I entered. I was just somebody that didn't know anything but a few pieces of what was on the news about it.

What about

Species lost is going up over 1000x faster than current rate.

I am skeptical. From what I have read, we have no idea. And what does this have to do with biodiversity?

 

[LURCH]

I didn't want to appear dense or anything, but I don't even understand the sentence. "...is going up over 1000x faster than the current rate"? What on Earth does that even mean? Sorry to sound agitated about it, but I've been pondering it since I first read it; and health expert Lewis Black warns against such things.

 

[Skyhunter]

2005 warmer than 1998?

No, it's not. at least it's 2 to 1. Hansen thinks that's warmer http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt .

According to http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem3gl.txt , 2005 global temps were 0.691 above his average while 1998 was 0.828.
But the best referee would be http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 , without coverage problems and urban heat island effects. So the average for 1998 here is 0.50025 while 2005 only gets to 0.31225. Please do check the calculation.

I am not sure what we are arguing here. It may be two to one, but I still prefer http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/Smith-Reynolds-dataset-2005.pdf . Regardless of the different methodologies and variations in data sets the trend is still the same. To quote Smith and Reynolds.

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.

The http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2005/ann/global.html#top . A rather comprehensive overview of the climate in general.

1998 was not the peak of a warming trend. It was an anomaly, a spike in an otherwise more gradual warming trend. If you remove 1998 you still have a warming trend. I don't see any data to suggest that the trend has peaked, leveled off, or reversed itself. I am skeptical about predictions, I agree that the GHG effect is not fully or perhaps not even well understood, but the empirical measurements and observable loss of ice is evidence enough for me that the Earth is warming and that trend has not changed.

 

[Skyhunter]

We should not be shooting the messengers

Based on the OP I thought that is what this thread was about.

Is it misinformation or the moving-the-goal-poles fallacy? accepting anything that comes from the own den and rejecting anything that is not. Wouldn't it be better just to check the sources and the logic and shut up when those happen to prove to be correct?

That is simply what I did. I always check the sources.

It is not a rejection of what is "not in my den". I found that the junkscience link was a blatant distortion. By only presenting part of the of the equation, they purposefully distorted the science. I did not dispute their explanation of the process. What bothered me about the link was that mk had included the link in an attempt to debunk the effect that CFC's have on the ozone layer.

To offer an explanation of the process while completely ignoring the effect of CFC's is dishonest. For the website to present the science in such a way is an insult to critical thinkers. I will question everything from them since they have demonstrated, IMO an extreme bias against the truth.

Please indicate what is policy and what is merely stating facts?

Sorry, that was all my opinion/rant.

Yes, some ice does, other ice don't, but what is the point? that -on the average- the world is a tad warmer than last century? But what does it proof? Does it proof that CO2 did it or the sun? Or the oceanic/atmospheric cycles?

Of course not, that is where theories and models come into play. First we analyze, then we speculate. As more information, discoveries, tools, and techniques become available our theories are refined.

I personally would like to see more alternate theories, but when they are riddled with deliberate misrepresentations, I stop wasting my time and look elsewhere.

I once thought that you Andre were someone with a viable alternative theory. However, I have found you to be guilty of misrepresentation in the post that mk quoted about polar bears.

The articles and quotes you linked were from 10 year old studies, taken before the recent melting of the Arctic ice. On the http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/in-the-news/polar-bear-scientists-on-film/ you linked, I found much more current information. That completely refutes your conclusion that:

I show that Polar Bears, which, incidentely, survived the early Holocene Thermal maximum (Hypsithermal) and the Medieval Warming Period, are thriving, increasing their numbers considerably,

"One of the things that we're finding is that the health—or condition—of the bears has steadily declined over the last 30 years."
Stirling says that the Western Hudson Bay population has dropped by 22% since 1987. He predicts that unless the climate stabilizes or starts cooling again, there won't be many polar bears left in the area in 30 or 40 years.

Although I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, I believe that the junkscience website's misrepresentations are deliberate and institutional.

There are several scientists and others whom I respect and trust since I checked what they were saying, who say that the previous (1980-1998) GW is most likely mainly due to natural causes as well as urban heat island contamination of sources.

I would be interested in seeing the natural causes theories. However urban heat island contamination is not a factor with modern data sets.

 

[Mk]

I didn't want to appear dense or anything, but I don't even understand the sentence. "...is going up over 1000x faster than the current rate"? What on Earth does that even mean? Sorry to sound agitated about it, but I've been pondering it since I first read it; and health expert Lewis Black warns against such things.

I didn't quite get it either, however those are his exact words.

We should not be shooting the messengers

Based on the OP I thought that is what this thread was about.

Ha! Nice one! However I do not agree that the beginning post should be a defintion of the thread. I realize that many people do, and the moderators often use it as a reason to delete threads—that the topic no longer is discussing an object in question delivered by the original post.

urban heat island contamination is not a factor with modern data sets.

How so? You mean it has been decided to only take data from remote locations?

I once thought that you Andre were someone with a viable alternative theory. However, I have found you to be guilty of misrepresentation in the post that mk quoted about polar bears.

That was completely uncalled for.

On the site you linked, I found much more current information.

Ah, so the tables have turned on this issue! I am still skeptical once again. This only states in the Western Hudson Bay area. That is a small percentage of polar bear habitat I would think. Even if it is not, what do the sources say for "entire?"

the minimum ice-to-land distance used to be about 100 kilometers (60 miles). "Now it's 200 to 300 kilometers," he says. "Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one. They just kind of float along and kick. But as the ice gets farther out from shore, it's a longer swim that costs more energy.

This makes sense, concerning that Arctic sea ice has been decreasing in area for a few decades. I am glad to see however that the site never says that any polar bears are drowning.

2005 warmer than 1998?

No, it's not. at least it's 2 to 1. Hansen thinks that's warmer here.

According to Jones et al, 2005 global temps were 0.691 above his average while 1998 was 0.828.
But the best referee would be the satellite data for the lower troposphere, without coverage problems and urban heat island effects. So the average for 1998 here is 0.50025 while 2005 only gets to 0.31225. Please do check the calculation.

I am not sure what we are arguing here. It may be two to one, but I still prefer Smith and Reynolds. Regardless of the different methodologies and variations in data sets the trend is still the same. To quote Smith and Reynolds.

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.

The 2005 Climate Report on NOAA's website covers Global temperatures, Temperature Trends, Regional Temperatures, Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover Extent. Global Precipitation. A rather comprehensive overview of the climate in general.

1998 was not the peak of a warming trend. It was an anomaly, a spike in an otherwise more gradual warming trend. If you remove 1998 you still have a warming trend. I don't see any data to suggest that the trend has peaked, leveled off, or reversed itself. I am skeptical about predictions, I agree that the GHG effect is not fully or perhaps not even well understood, but the empirical measurements and observable loss of ice is evidence enough for me that the Earth is warming and that trend has not changed.

Thanks a lot for the links (lost during quoting process), however I don't think you refutted Andre's comment as I think you implied with Smith & Reynolds. Or am I mising something?

1998 was not the peak of a warming trend. It was an anomaly, a spike in an otherwise more gradual warming trend. If you remove 1998 you still have a warming trend. I don't see any data to suggest that the trend has peaked, leveled off, or reversed itself. I am skeptical about predictions, I agree that the GHG effect is not fully or perhaps not even well understood, but the empirical measurements and observable loss of ice is evidence enough for me that the Earth is warming and that trend has not changed.

Soley from what you said: It seems like it doesn't matter if 1998 was "the peak of a warming trend" or not—even if it was an anomaly—it would still be the hottest year in the last decade.

 

[Skyhunter]

How so? You mean it has been decided to only take data from remote locations?

See my previous post that you quoted.

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.

That was completely uncalled for.

I did not say that it was intentional, and I even stated I give Andre the benefit of the doubt. I have found him in the past to be very informative, and not a "denialist". What I mean by the term denialist is someone who just attacks AGW without offering an viable alternative theory to explain the current warming trends.

However the study that he used to suggest that the population of polar bears were increasing was from 1992-1993. The link was an assessment of the results of the 1973 five nation agreement to limit hunting. It had nothing whatsoever to do polar bears drowning.

In 1973 the five nations within whose boundaries polar bears occur negotiated the International Agreement on Conservation of Polar Bears. The agreement, ratified in 1976, prohibited the taking of polar bears by hunters in aircraft or large motor vessels, creating a de facto sanctuary in active offshore ice habitats. The agreement required each nation to conduct a research program and coordinate management and research, with other jurisdictions, for populations that overlap international boundaries.

Would you not agree that this misrepresents the current plight of the polar bears drowning due to the melting ice?

Ah, so the tables have turned on this issue! I am still skeptical once again. This only states in the Western Hudson Bay area. That is a small percentage of polar bear habitat I would think. Even if it is not, what do the sources say for "entire?"
This makes sense, concerning that Arctic sea ice has been decreasing in area for a few decades. I am glad to see however that the site never says that any polar bears are drowning.

I don't have a lot of time to do a thorough search, however there is this from last year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070601899.html

The best longitudinal information on the effect of global warming on polar bears comes from the western coast of Hudson Bay, in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It shows a 17 percent decline in the polar bear population in the past 10 years, from 1,200 to fewer than 1,000. The panel here in Seattle used the Canadian research as the primary basis for its warning about the future of polar bears around the world.

In Alaska, the ice situation appears to be equally "grim" for polar bears, Schliebe said. He said that in three of the past four years, there have been record low ice packs in Alaska's Beaufort Sea region, pushing more and more polar bears on land for protracted periods. Hungry bears are drawn to village dumps and other settled areas where they come into conflict with people and are sometimes shot.

Thanks a lot for the links (lost during quoting process), however I don't think you refutted Andre's comment as I think you implied with Smith & Reynolds. Or am I mising something?

Soley from what you said: It seems like it doesn't matter if 1998 was "the peak of a warming trend" or not—even if it was an anomaly—it would still be the hottest year in the last decade.

I wasn't trying to refute, just clarify. Whether 1998 or 2005 was the hottest year is not pertinent to the discussion of warming. If you look at the data, or the graphs generated from the data, you will see a spike in 1998, a drop to 1995 levels, then a resumption of the warming trend, 1999-2005 continue the same upward trend. The warming did not stop in 1998. The trend continues, and at least in the NW hemisphere, 2006 is the hottest year on record. I believe that worldwide however 2006 is so far cooler than 2005.

One of the interesting aspects of the warming is that the majority of anomalies of +5c are occurring in the northern hemisphere.

 

[Andre]

We should not be shooting the messengers

Based on the OP I thought that is what this thread was about.

Nonono, let's get something straight here. The scientific method is about fitting observations in the real word into theories that can be tested to be false or not. There is no mentioning that testing to be false can be neutralized by the tester being a crook or so.

Doesn't help to shoot the messenger. That's standard practice of demagogy where you either jump on the bandwagon or else you are an outlaw.

I found that the junkscience link was a blatant distortion.

I'm afraid that this is another misconception. It seems that you are confusing unconvenient truths with lies. On the other hand it could be helpful to give a clear demonstration of what constitutes a blatant distortion.

I'm afraid that this thread has yet again ended in a senseless fight. Perhaps it's better to close it and discuss "blatant distortions" elsewhere.

 

[Skyhunter]

On the other hand it could be helpful to give a clear demonstration of what constitutes a blatant distortion.

Well aside from the ad hominem.

given the hysteria generated by various chemophobes and misanthropes

In simple terms the site implies;

A. There is no problem with CFC's, it is a myth perpetrated by "chemophobes and misanthropes".

B. This is how the ozone cycle works, ozone is created and destroyed by sunlight. No mention of the effect CFC's have when they break down under strong UV.

C. Here is the monthly ozone cycles from 1996 thru 2003.

D. We don't need an ozone layer.

I would call that a blatant distortion, because it ignores the effects of CFC's while implying that the Montreal protocol was based on a hoax.

And as for obvious bias, it is stated in the opening paragraph

The Montreal Protocol and nasty countries (read: the U.S.) wishing to retain use of critical chemicals alleged to harm the "ozone layer" continue to generate considerable press. What is it all about?

This is a science forum, I am sure we can discuss an inconvenient truth, and provide citations and references that do not resort to such obvious bias. Let's look at all the data, consider all the possibilities, and stick to the scientific method.

I'm afraid that this thread has yet again ended in a senseless fight. Perhaps it's better to close it and discuss "blatant distortions" elsewhere.

The thread does not need to end.

Let us instead talk about the warming trend. According to all three of the data sets, 1998 and 2005 respectively were the two hottest years on record. The warming trend did not stop in 1998. Looking at each data set, they all show a spike in temperature in 1998, cooling in 1999 and 2000, to 1995 levels, then a fairly constant rise till 2005 which is now near or at the anomalous 1998 record.

So no one missed that the warming stopped in 1998, because it never stopped.

This is the inconvenient truth. The Earth is still getting warmer.

 

[Andre]

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...

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?

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.

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).

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.

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.

 

[Mk]

D. We don't need an ozone layer.

I disagree.

What about the all-important "solar shield" we hear so much about having to protect so that it will preserve us from UV bombardment? Well, not much, actually. UVA (ultraviolet radiation in the 320-400 nanometer [nm] band), which is implicated in deep skin DNA changes thought responsible for melanomas, is not blocked by ozone at all. [Note: De Fabo, et al, claim the reverse to be true for the cause of melanoma, at least in a mouse model - see: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/64/18/6372. Meanwhile: http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/jnci%3b95/4/308 - The report in the Dec. 21 [2005] issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute also indicates that only nonmalignant skin cancers (basal and squamous cell carcinoma) are strongly associated with exposure to UVB radiation. (University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center)] UVB (270-320nm), which causes sunburn, is both blocked by ozone (O3) and, if allowed to penetrate the atmosphere, creates ozone lower in the atmosphere where it can be an irritant in photochemical smog - thick clouds also block UVB. UVC (<270nm), which would cause severe burns with short exposure, does not penetrate the atmosphere, blocked completely by atmospheric oxygen (O2), in addition to ozone (O3). Regardless, life flourishes in the tropics, where stratospheric ozone levels are never high and where solar radiation bombardment is roughly 1,000 times higher than that received in the region of the Antarctic Ozone Anomaly.

However he never does mention CFCs. I am do not stand on one side of the issue any more, but do have more knowledge about it.

We musn't digress much because the moderators don't like that, and the thread may be locked.

 

[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.