World may not be warming, say scientists

[boomerang]

Healthy polar bear count confounds doomsayers

 

[cave_dweller]

Global warming is a part of evolution. Its a natural thing not man made thing

 

[Ninjahedge]

So what do we do about countries like Russia and China that are laying waste to thier environments?

Worry about our side first before we start blaming others.

 

[Ninjahedge]

Global warming is a part of evolution. Its a natural thing not man made thing

HAHAHAHAH! That was a good one.... wait, you were serious? 😕

 

[Ninjahedge]

I''ll believe anything as long as you can provide the evidence and the proof.

Mono, here's the thing:

You get something like a record year of heat for an entire continent and that should raise the warning flag.

Does that mean that doom is nigh? Not really, but it should tell us to keep our eyes open.

Does that mean we stop looking if next year is normal? Not completely, but the flag starts to come down a bit.

But what happens when we get 3/5 years that keep breaking records? 7/10? When do we start saying "hey, this looks like a trend!", when we are already halfway down the hill and sticking our feet out will only lose the soles off our shoes? (wagon/hill reference...)

I am also with that cartoon. "Why bother making the world better if it turns out that Global Warming does not exist?" So the industrialization of the world is more important than its health?

As someone that went from having a B+W tv in a shared bedroom with my brother growing up (yeah, cry for me later), seeing the "standard" as networked flat-screens in every room is rather hard to feel sorry for. Gutting the world to support the McMansion is not sustainable, and I hope that enough of the world starts seeing this before we are all fighting for our oceanfront in Colorado.

 

[werepossum]

Think for a moment about your request for proof: You say you'll believe that MMCC is true if provided with proof. But you already believe that MMCC is NOT true - without any proof.

Your position seems biased. An honest position would be, "I don't know, but I'll believe the position that provides the most evidence." Of course, if you took THAT position you'd believe in MMCC, because the available evidence overwhelmingly supports MMCC.

That's the way science works. Someone posits a theorem and attempts to prove it, NOT someone posits a theorem and attempts to prove it while someone else attempts to disprove it. The people attempting to prove CAGW have been so transparently dishonest that it's now hard for me to take seriously any proof they produce in the same way that Bernie Madoff may have a great honest investment opportunity, but I am disinclined to take his word for it.

That said, I'm up for plans to reduce CO2 emissions and sequester existing CO2 because whether or not it has a significant effect on climate, it's acidifying the oceans and to a lesser extent aquatic environments. I just want these schemes to be as gentle on the economy as possible. But even there, these same people tend to be relentlessly anti-nuclear, which makes me doubt they believe their own hype.

 

[cybrsage]

Think for a moment about your request for proof: You say you'll believe that MMCC is true if provided with proof. But you already believe that MMCC is NOT true - without any proof.

Your position seems biased. An honest position would be, "I don't know, but I'll believe the position that provides the most evidence." Of course, if you took THAT position you'd believe in MMCC, because the available evidence overwhelmingly supports MMCC.

We have proof of a naturally occurring temperature cycle. To say this has been overridden by man requires proof, which is what he is seeking. It would be like saying gravity exists now because there is a lot of people on the planet...that the naturally existing gravitational process has been overriden by man. We would want proof of that.

 

[cybrsage]

Worry about our side first before we start blaming others.

The Kyoto Protocol says their pollution is not bad, so there is no worry at all about it.

 

[shira]

We have proof of a naturally occurring temperature cycle. To say this has been overridden by man requires proof, which is what he is seeking. It would be like saying gravity exists now because there is a lot of people on the planet...that the naturally existing gravitational process has been overriden by man. We would want proof of that.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/how-we-know-recent-warming-is-not-natural.html

How We Know Recent Global Warming Is Not Natural

Dr. Roy Spencer, like Dr. Richard Lindzen (the subject of a few recent articles), is one of very few climate scientists who remain unconvinced that most of the the recent global warming has been caused by humans (anthropogenic). Dr. Spencer has grown frustrated with the fact that most of his climate scientist colleagues conduct research under the premise that the recent warming is anthropogenic, and in an article on his blog, has thrown down the gauntlet:

"Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record."

This challenge is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, the fact that research has not ruled out a hypothesis does not mean the hypothesis necessarily has any validity. For example, there have been no peer-reviewed papers ruling out leprechauns as the cause of most of the recent global warming, either. But perhaps more importantly, our understanding that humans are causing global warming is not based on just one scientific study, but rather a very wide range of scientific evidence.

For example, scientists have measured the amount of heat being re-directed back towards the Earth's surface due to the increased greenhouse effect. Quantifying the amount of global warming that this will cause simply involves multiplying the increased downward energy by the climate sensitivity. As the name suggests, climate sensitivity is a measure of how sensitive the climate is to this build-up in heat - how much the planet will warm in response to an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Therefore, in order to argue that humans are not the driving force behind the current global warming, skeptics like Spencer and Lindzen require that the climate sensitivity to increasing greenhouse gases is low. The problem with this position is that there are many lines of evidence that the planet will warm between 2 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (°C) if the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere doubles.

For example, some scientists have studied the climate response to recent large volcanic eruptions, which can have a measurable impact on global temperatures. Other studies have examined how the global temperature has changed in response to changes in solar activity. Some other research has compared CO2 and global temperature changes over the past thousand years, and tens of thousands of years, and hundreds of thousands of years, and even millions of years ago. We can even compare how the temperature has changed over the past century to human-caused atmospheric CO2 changes. In every case we arrive at this same climate sensitivity range of 2 to 4.5°C, and the most likely value is 3°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2.

If we take the lower end of this range, even a 2°C climate sensitivity would mean that humans have been responsible for more than half of the global warming over the past century. So in order for Spencer and Lindzen to be right, all of these different lines of evidence which are in agreement with the likely range of climate sensitivity would all have to be somehow wrong, and all biased high. Not an impossibility, but certainly not a likely scenario, either.

There are also many "fingerprints" of human-caused global warming. For example, as the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere have been warming, the upper atmosphere has been cooling. There are not many mechanisms which can explain these observations, but they are precisely what we would expect to see from human-caused global warming. As the concentration of greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere increases, they effectively trap more and more heat in this lower layer, causing it to warm and causing the layers above to cool. Another human "fingerprint" is the higher rate of warming at night than during the day. This is because at night, when the surface is cooler and not being bombarded by solar energy, the increased amount of greenhouse gases are able to make more of a difference in the surface temperature.

Dr. Spencer has proposed an alternative to the anthropogenic global warming theory. He suggests that some unknown mechanism has caused global cloud cover to decrease over the past century. Low-level clouds cause a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight, so if these types of clouds become less prevalent, it can cause the surface to warm. However, this hypothesis cannot explain the "fingerprints" describe above. A decrease in cloud cover would not cause the upper atmosphere to cool. Nor would it cause nights to warm faster than days - quite the opposite. Cloud reflectivity only plays a significant role during the day when being bombarded by sunlight.

Dr. Spencer also suggested in his blog post that the "null hypothesis" should be that global warming is caused by natural factors. A null hypothesis is basically the default assumption which a scientific study sets out to disprove. It's true that until recently, global warming (and cooling) has been caused by natural factors. However, even natural climate changes must have a physical mechanism causing them. Scientists have investigated these natural mechanisms (the Sun, volcanoes, the Earth's orbital cycles, etc.), and they simply cannot explain the global warming over the past century. Spencer's new hypothesis - that some unknown mechanism is causing cloud cover to change, which in turn is driving global temperatures - is a new idea with very little supporting evidence. Conversely, our understanding that human greenhouse gas emissions are driving global temperatures has a proverbial mountain of supporting evidence.

Skeptics like Spencer and Lindzen believe that the default assumption should be one which requires that a very large body of scientific evidence is wrong. The only alternative hypothesis they have put forth cannot explain the many empirically-observed "fingerprints" which are consistent with human-caused global warming. Although Spencer's unspecified "natural internal cycle" hypothesis has not been explicitly disproved, there is a very low likelihood that it is correct. For this reason, we should operate under the assumption that humans are causing dangerous global warming - an assumption which is supported by a very large body of evidence - until the skeptics can provide solid reason to believe that this scientific theory is wrong.

 

[Paul98]

p98, it is, at best, circumstantial evidence that may, when combined with other stats, show a global climate change.

I am not saying they are any more valid than chuckleheads saying "Huh huh! Global Warming! Lookit the snow out there! Huh huh huh!", but it is something to watch.

My point is that it means nothing when you just look at one thing or post a single event to help try and prove your case. Just look at Europe winter. Pointing to single things as proof for global warming or to disprove global warming really means nothing.

If you want to look to see if something is going on, you need to look at trends, why they are trending and do analysis on it to see if it's significant.

 

[cybrsage]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/how-we-know-recent-warming-is-not-natural.html

That is nice and all...but since we have yet to fully understand the natural cycle, pretending the natural cycle is not the cause is silly.

We should continue to study, to learn, for another 10 to 20 years. Actually get to understand what does what, more fully understand the interactions between the various items and forces.

The science is relatively new. Lets give it time to mature before enacting rules to destroy our very fragile economy and cause continued suffering to the masses.

 

[Ninjahedge]

My point is that it means nothing when you just look at one thing or post a single event to help try and prove your case. Just look at Europe winter. Pointing to single things as proof for global warming or to disprove global warming really means nothing.

If you want to look to see if something is going on, you need to look at trends, why they are trending and do analysis on it to see if it's significant.

Actually, Europe having a bad winter is also a sign of climate change. It is one of the reasons they changed the name.

Even if the GLOBE itself is (on average) warming, changes in currents and flows will make some areas cooler, causing nay-sayers to put on the blinders and only look at the areas that dropped rather than global averages.

I think you are saying something similar to what I have been, only difference being, when you hear something go "bump" in the night, it is usually a good thing to get ready before the second, third, or 9th bump.

 

[shira]

That is nice and all...but since we have yet to fully understand the natural cycle, pretending the natural cycle is not the cause is silly.

We should continue to study, to learn, for another 10 to 20 years. Actually get to understand what does what, more fully understand the interactions between the various items and forces.

The science is relatively new. Lets give it time to mature before enacting rules to destroy our very fragile economy and cause continued suffering to the masses.

Yours is a response from the know-nothing school. None of the investigations into natural drivers of the Earth's climate has revealed anything that explains the accelerated warming of the last 100 years. Yet investigations into the effects of greatly increased atmospheric CO2 levels explain the warming extremely quite nicely (plus the ancillary effects described in the article I quoted). Yet your response is: "We must assume that some unexplained natural mechanism is at work."

And it's the climatologists who are being silly????

 

[werepossum]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/how-we-know-recent-warming-is-not-natural.html

That's just bad science, assuming that if no one else has a theory that can be proven, my theory must be true. We absolutely know the Earth's sensitivity to increased CO2 is low because the models positing high sensitivity do not correlate with observed temperatures; therefore, unless you posit an unknown cooling cycle (neither more nor less useful than positing an unknown warming cycle) we know current models of CAGW are incorrect.

That we don't have a model otherwise explaining the Earth's warming does not prove that the CAGW models that do not track measurable weather are correct; it means we do not currently understand all of even the major climate forcing factors. Until climate models can accurately predict weather trends, we do not have an accurate model. Adapting your model to accurately predict the past climate may help derive a more accurate model, but it's not an indication that your model is correct, or even an over-simplified version of an accurate model.

 

[Paul98]

Actually, Europe having a bad winter is also a sign of climate change. It is one of the reasons they changed the name.

Even if the GLOBE itself is (on average) warming, changes in currents and flows will make some areas cooler, causing nay-sayers to put on the blinders and only look at the areas that dropped rather than global averages.

I think you are saying something similar to what I have been, only difference being, when you hear something go "bump" in the night, it is usually a good thing to get ready before the second, third, or 9th bump.

We do agree as climate change will cause changes in weather patterns both warmer and cooler. My point is only that linking a single event means nothing it doesn't prove or disprove man made climate change. I guess I should have said if we had an average month in temperatures doesn't mean that man made climate change doesn't exist lol. Plus we know the climate chances naturally also.

 

[werepossum]

Actually, Europe having a bad winter is also a sign of climate change. It is one of the reasons they changed the name.

Even if the GLOBE itself is (on average) warming, changes in currents and flows will make some areas cooler, causing nay-sayers to put on the blinders and only look at the areas that dropped rather than global averages.

I think you are saying something similar to what I have been, only difference being, when you hear something go "bump" in the night, it is usually a good thing to get ready before the second, third, or 9th bump.

Climate changes continually. The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are fairly recent examples of cycles far in excess of what we see today, but individual areas always vary more widely within this framework. You simply cannot claim both unusual warmth AND unusual cold as proof of CAGW because there is no way to NOT find that proof. It's always going to be unusually warm in some places and unusually cool in some other places, giving you a theory that literally cannot help but be proved true. A theory that literally cannot help but be proved true is a useless theory because there is no way to test it.

 

[shira]

That's just bad science, assuming that if no one else has a theory that can be proven, my theory must be true. We absolutely know the Earth's sensitivity to increased CO2 is low because the models positing high sensitivity do not correlate with observed temperatures; therefore, unless you posit an unknown cooling cycle (neither more nor less useful than positing an unknown warming cycle) we know current models of CAGW are incorrect.

They don't? Perhaps you could provide a link to the consensus opinion that supports your statement.

That we don't have a model otherwise explaining the Earth's warming does not prove that the CAGW models that do not track measurable weather are correct; it means we do not currently understand all of even the major climate forcing factors. Until climate models can accurately predict weather trends, we do not have an accurate model. Adapting your model to accurately predict the past climate may help derive a more accurate model, but it's not an indication that your model is correct, or even an over-simplified version of an accurate model.

I think you intended "measurable temperature change over time" - climate science is not the same thing as the daily weather report. And I ask you again to provide a link to the consensus opinion supporting your statement that current models don't accurately correlate with the temperature record over the past 100 years.

 

[monovillage]

We can look at what an actual climate scientist says about the warm March.

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.c...tement-of-reality-by-some-climate-scientists/

 

[cybrsage]

Yours is a response from the know-nothing school.

Quite untrue. You say this for effect only.

None of the investigations into natural drivers of the Earth's climate has revealed anything that explains the accelerated warming of the last 100 years. Yet investigations into the effects of greatly increased atmospheric CO2 levels explain the warming extremely quite nicely (plus the ancillary effects described in the article I quoted). Yet your response is: "We must assume that some unexplained natural mechanism is at work."

And it's the climatologists who are being silly????

Any climatologist who is saying we should enact sweeping rules to damage our still fragile economy over this is being silly, yes.

I am going to state some points I think we agree upon:

1. The Earth is not in crisis mode in warming (ie, it is not like what Al Gore has claimed - the biggest emergency the world faces).
2. Climate study on this scale is a relatively new field.
3. We are learning more and more at an exponential rate.

If you agree with all three, then why would you not agree to wait 15 or so years to find out how things really work, so we don't mess things up horribly in a misquided attempt to fix things?

 

[werepossum]

They don't? Perhaps you could provide a link to the consensus opinion that supports your statement.



I think you intended "measurable temperature change over time" - climate science is not the same thing as the daily weather report. And I ask you again to provide a link to the consensus opinion supporting your statement that current models don't accurately correlate with the temperature record over the past 100 years.

Climate is nothing more that daily weather integrated over time. A climate model must therefore be able to predict weather trends (though not necessarily day to day forecasts) within reasonable deviation to be accurate. This is true of anything; a model of lamp life claimed to be accurate over ten years that did not track correctly in shorter time frames would be laughed out of the field. The CAGW scientists are currently unable to produce a model that accurate tracks weather trends, so for their own benefit they are pushing the idea that climate is unrelated to weather. A moment's thought will dispel that misconception; it would allow a weather record to accumulate but at some point in time it would become something completely different, climate unrelated to the actual weather experienced. Of what then would climate be composed, if not weather?

As far as consensus, I'll refer you to the many, many experiments attempting to measure the acceleration in the universe's expansion. Every published experiment found the expansion was slowing; this was the consensus. Everyone agreed the expansion was slowing, the only question was if the rate of deceleration would ultimately lead to collapse, eternal expansion and death through entropy, or eventual stasis. Then we got equipment in space to make more accurate measurements and found the expansion is actually increasing, something NO ONE anticipated. Consensus was 100% wrong.

Consensus is not evidence of correctness as much as it is evidence of the herd mentality among scientists. Experimental science is a field where the nail that sticks up gets hammered flat.

 

[Ninjahedge]

We do agree as climate change will cause changes in weather patterns both warmer and cooler. My point is only that linking a single event means nothing it doesn't prove or disprove man made climate change. I guess I should have said if we had an average month in temperatures doesn't mean that man made climate change doesn't exist lol. Plus we know the climate chances naturally also.

A single event is one hot day, one hailstorm.

When you get to an entire season of odd temps, or a year of mild weather, AND combine it with things like receding ice coverage, then you start to get a bit more collusion in your supporting evidence.

Again, I am not selling the home and moving to Canada....yet. But that does not mean I am not practicing my French, eh?

 

[shira]

Climate is nothing more that daily weather integrated over time. A climate model must therefore be able to predict weather trends (though not necessarily day to day forecasts) within reasonable deviation to be accurate. This is true of anything; a model of lamp life claimed to be accurate over ten years that did not track correctly in shorter time frames would be laughed out of the field. The CAGW scientists are currently unable to produce a model that accurate tracks weather trends, so for their own benefit they are pushing the idea that climate is unrelated to weather. A moment's thought will dispel that misconception; it would allow a weather record to accumulate but at some point in time it would become something completely different, climate unrelated to the actual weather experienced. Of what then would climate be composed, if not weather?

Be precise: What is the meaning of "predict weather trends?" Because I find that phrase to be extremely vague. If you can't be precise about what you mean and you can't be precise about what you think climate models ought to be able to predict, how can anyone agree or disagree with your position?

As far as consensus, I'll refer you to the many, many experiments attempting to measure the acceleration in the universe's expansion. Every published experiment found the expansion was slowing; this was the consensus. Everyone agreed the expansion was slowing, the only question was if the rate of deceleration would ultimately lead to collapse, eternal expansion and death through entropy, or eventual stasis. Then we got equipment in space to make more accurate measurements and found the expansion is actually increasing, something NO ONE anticipated. Consensus was 100% wrong.

Consensus is not evidence of correctness as much as it is evidence of the herd mentality among scientists. Experimental science is a field where the nail that sticks up gets hammered flat.

As I've stated many, many times: If there's a strong consensus of practicing scientists in a field, on what grounds do non-scientists disagree with that consensus? You can point out all you want that consensuses are sometimes wrong, but that's a pretty flimsy reason for disagreeing with a strong consensus.

 

[monovillage]

The difference is that shira is using a bullshit site run by a fucking high school teacher (John asshole Cook of skeptical science) to promote unsubstantiated attacks on peer reviewed and properly accredited climate scientists.
What the fuck does "consensus" have to do with science for fuck sake, this isn't a horse race. You don't get to vote on science.

 

[Ninjahedge]

The difference is that shira is using a bullshit site run by a fucking high school teacher (John asshole Cook of skeptical science) to promote unsubstantiated attacks on peer reviewed and properly accredited climate scientists.
What the fuck does "consensus" have to do with science for fuck sake, this isn't a horse race. You don't get to vote on science.

Tell us how you really feel. I find that swearing a lot in a debate helps my point get across much better than not...... *wark*.

Also, having a mother who is a "fucking high school teacher" and knows a damn site more than the average Joe, mainly because of that oh-so-annoying requirement teachers have of getting a college education and constantly having to go back to school each year their entire career, having that, I am at want to see how being one invalidates any statement said by them about a scientific observation/position.

Mono, you are dancing around it. Your position about not being able to say "the sky is falling" when a few people get hit by acorns is right, but this has gotten to the point where it is more than a casual observation by a bunch of living room scientists pontificating life over a quarter keg of brew on a Saturday afternoon.

There is no PROOF yet that "we" are the cause of this, but enough evidence and solid conjecture to fear that it might be true. It is certainly plausible, and doing nothing about it is just plain irresponsible.

Doing a little something early sometimes saves a lot of something later, whether you believed it early or not.

 

[shira]

The difference is that shira is using a bullshit site run by a fucking high school teacher (John asshole Cook of skeptical science) to promote unsubstantiated attacks on peer reviewed and properly accredited climate scientists.
What the fuck does "consensus" have to do with science for fuck sake, this isn't a horse race. You don't get to vote on science.

No. That article gave a cogent summary of the argument against "natural temperature cycles" being the cause of recent warming, easily understandable by the uninformed. Is there anything substantive you disagree with in that article? Is there anything factually incorrect? You might also want to read:

http://co2now.org/Know-the-Changing...-faq-human-natural-causes-climate-change.html

and

http://epa.gov/climatechange/kids/scientists/index.html

and

http://www.globalchange.gov/publica.../us-impacts/full-report/global-climate-change

and

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q10

But of course, the IPCC, the EPA, NOAA and all of the other scientific bodies who have adopted the consensus view that humans are playing a significant role in climate change are all a part of the global conspiracy. Will that be your next diversion?