My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[REASON]

I will state again that using the charts Reason has posted are basically contributing to fraud. Guess why his temperature chart starts in 1850 but his CO2 chart starts in 1960? Because those charts show what he wants it to.

 

Contributing to fraud? If you knew me better you'd realize fraudulent behavior is not my style. Are you suggesting that there is something fraudulent about the data I presented from Wikipedia? The data is correct. I suppose what you are suggesting is that the information is taken out of context because it doesn't go back far enough in time.

 

But you know what? That's beside the point as far as I'm concerned. No matter how far back in time you examine the data, the fact remains that something, or a combination of things, causes fluctuations in CO2 levels in the atmosphere along with mean temperatures. It doesn't matter the period of time you consider. Yes, I agree that CO2 levels have varied throughout the past, and temperature levels have varied as well. But there were always reasons for those fluctuations. To say that because there have been natural fluctuations of CO2 levels and temperature in the distant past means that AGW cannot happen is not scientific. It only means that these anomalies can occur independent of human activities, not that human activities can have no effect.

 

If that is the case, then we arrive once again at my original question. If we can agree that the mean global temperature has been sharply increasing over the last 40 years or so, and it is not because human beings are adding CO2 to the atmosphere, then what is causing the increase in temperature? If it is volcanic activity, solar irradiation, deforestation, or something else, we can examine the plausibility of those conditions. But I don't understand why it is illegitimate to consider the corresponding influx of CO2 by human activities. The fact is, the IPCC has looked indepth at the possible factors contributing to climate change and have arrived at the conclusion that human activities are a primary factor of our current temperature anomaly.

 

Even one of your sources notes the link between levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and the corresponding temperature.

 

[img=http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image167.gif]http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image167.gif[/img]

 

Ice Core Data from Vostok, Siberia

 

 

A chart of CO2 levels from 1850 to present would show levels hitting around 400 ppm in 1857 and in 1942. There was a sharp decrease in atmospheric CO2 between 1942 and 1960, and now it is picking back up again. Reason's chart starts at the bottom of the cycle, and using a chart of the complete cycle would show that current CO2 levels, while high, are just part of a natural upswing.

 

Fine.....Natural upswing.....Caused by what natural forces?

 

Here's one link to data supporting this. There are many, this was just the first one in my bookmarks:

 

The Real History of Carbon Dioxide Levels

 

There appears to be a conflict among your sources. The link above suggests that the CO2 levels reached well above 400ppm just in the last century, while your Ice Core Data link showed that CO2 levels are currently at a 400,000 year maximum of about 370ppm, and only reach above 300ppm over that time period approximately 90 years ago. Personally, I'm more likely to assign credibility to the data from NOAA.

 

Either way, what I find important in all of this is not whether the Earth has been much hotter in the past, because I'm really not concerned about the Earth's ability to withstand the heat. I'm concerned about the effects of climate change on populations of people and wildlife around the world.

 

If climate change is something we cannot control, then I guess we'll just have to ride it out and deal with it the best we can. But if it is happening because of what we are doing, then it is our responsibility to modify our behavior and make an attempt to correct the situation. Either way, we have to be open to what the evidence is telling us even if we don't like what it is saying, and the costs of doing nothing may far exceed the costs of change.

 

To me, doing nothing presents a risk we truly can't afford.

[engineerdude]

Heya Reason,

 

It appears that there are a bunch of different groups with different long-term charts of atmospheric CO2. Many of the charts show different things at different times. I suggest let's take a step back and revert to a more basic discussion:

 

There is no indication I can find that CO2 has any affect whatsoever on how warm the planet is. There is nothing in the geologic record, and logically, it would seem impossible for the amount of CO2 we have on Earth to do much of anything at all.

 

And, you say, what harm is there in going along with AGW? Well, politicians are talking seriously about things like "carbon taxes", that will basically cost us all a whole bunch of money. People are actually getting upset and having stress about what seems to be a purely imaginary problem. How about we spend our energy and time actually doing something to help the planet? There's trash everywhere, I have nuclear waste stored 18 miles from my home, air quality sux in many places. The list goes on and on of real issues people could begin to address. But - what - millions of people are distracted by AGW?

[Essay]

There is no indication I can find that CO2 has any affect whatsoever on how warm the planet is. There is nothing in the geologic record, and logically, it would seem impossible for the amount of CO2 we have on Earth to do much of anything at all.

This deserves a whole lot of discussion, but not now....

 

And, you say, what harm is there in going along with AGW? Well, politicians are talking seriously about things like "carbon taxes", that will basically cost us all a whole bunch of money. People are actually getting upset and having stress about what seems to be a purely imaginary problem. How about we spend our energy and time actually doing something to help the planet? There's trash everywhere, I have nuclear waste stored 18 miles from my home, air quality sux in many places. The list goes on and on of real issues people could begin to address. But - what - millions of people are distracted by AGW?

...but about this last part:

It's not about just global warming and CO2,

it's about sustainability ...of climate, resources, eco-services, and all those other problems you mention also.

~

[freeztar]

There is no indication I can find that CO2 has any affect whatsoever on how warm the planet is.

 

Really? I'll call your bluff. Support your claim!

 

There is nothing in the geologic record, and logically, it would seem impossible for the amount of CO2 we have on Earth to do much of anything at all.

 

Again, you're making claims that are going to be extremely difficult to back up in any scientifically meaningful way. Yet, I look forward to your reasoned response.

[Essay]

Hey Reason, did you see my comments about that "Real History of CO2 Levels" link?

===

 

To say that because there have been natural fluctuations of CO2 levels and temperature in the distant past means that AGW cannot happen is not scientific. It only means that these anomolies can occur independent of human activities, not that human activities can have no effect.

Edude,

Reason has stated this in a more concise way, but I'll throw in my take on the CO2 points you brought up with some of your links.

 

Specifically, ...about that CO2 lag time:

 

Matching up a CO2 curve and a temperature curve from two different graphs, it's easy to see a correlation (especially with the resolution of thousands, or tens of thousands of years); but it's hard to see the exact match on a year-to-year basis, and hard to see which follows the other and which is the cause.

 

Sometimes it is pointed out that rises in CO2 have closely followed deglaciations, rather than preceding deglaciations. This is then taken to mean that CO2 can't cause deglaciation because in the past, rises in CO2 only followed warming spells.

Sure warming (say, from solar or orbital influences) will cause increases in CO2 from melted permafrost, drying of carbon-rich soils, increasing fires, etc.; but this says nothing about what CO2 will do if introduced artificially, out of the normal cycle.

 

We can see that during a warming spell, CO2 acts to additionally increase the warming, a positive feedback.

It also seems that current, artificially elevated levels are causing the same increase in warming that CO2 contributes when it is acting as a positive feedback, after deglaciations.

 

This is a bit of an oversimplification, and also I think there have been some spikes in CO2 unrelated to any natural warming cycle, and these then caused a measurable warming; but regardless of the paleoclimatological details, in general....

 

Evidence of a mechanism's operation (under one scenario), doesn't preclude that mechanism from operating differently (under a different set of circumstances).

===

 

...but in the end, I think our degradation of the planet's ability to soak up CO2 "naturally" has had a far greater influence on atmospheric CO2 levels than the effect from just our emissions. If the planet were "healthy" it would probably soak up all of our emissions; but at a time when we are increasing our emissions, we are also increasingly destroying the planet's natural systems for soaking up CO2.

===

 

p.s. Edude,

Sorry about the long critiques on some of those sources of yours. I know you're getting ganged up on a bit;

but (speaking for all scholars) sources are important. Librarians call it authority (how much validity and credibility can be granted to any certain source. Peer review, publish-or-perish, and accumulating citations are all focused on establishing more authority. ....At least I think that's a fair description about the importance of source authority....

 

So, what do you think about these points on CO2 (...and about your sources)?

 

...next time: Solar Variation...? :hihi:

Hey, have you read the little IPCC section covering the solar influence on climate?

 

Thanks,

~

[engineerdude]

jkl

[engineerdude]

editted

[modest]

 

This image won't make sense unless you happened to read engineerdude's previous post before it was edited.

 

~modest

[Michaelangelica]

[Moontanman]

Have any of you guys checked out the Category "Science News" lately? There are a couple of news briefs that are pertinent to global warming.

[Turtle]

Have any of you guys checked out the Category "Science News" lately? There are a couple of news briefs that are pertinent to global warming.

 

I read them; yes. Interesting new pieces for sure, but let's not make it a misconstruction.{bolding mine}

 

http://hypography.com/forums/news-in-brief/17106-earth-may-face-freeze-worse-than.html

"Historians of science hate to say 'this is a special time'," Crowley said.

 

"But when you go through the models, each step seems reasonable and you get to an astonishing conclusion that we are right at the end of a 50-million-year evolution."

 

Modern human societies might never have developed if such a freeze had happened slightly earlier. "Anatomically modern humans evolved only 150,000 years ago," he said.

 

Crowley said more tests of the projections were needed.

 

"It might not come for tens of thousands of years," he said. "I'm sure some headline writers will want to say 'CO2 good for the atmosphere', or 'CO2 is good for us'. That's not the case."

[engineerdude]

Hi all,

 

Been away on a business trip, just got back yesterday.

 

I started a post before I left, I realized my charts were messed up and had to pull it.

 

Anyways, if you are willing, here I go again.

 

Talking with you folks has expanded my perspective on the arguments for AGW. Based on the input you have given me, I decided to refine my arguments a bit and try to focus on cornerstones of what people believe in.

 

First, the assumptions:

1. Earth goes through periods where it gets warmer and cooler. It does this every few hundred thousand years. No one know why for sure.

 

2. CO2 lags behind temperature. This is shown in the ice core data. When the earth decides to warm up or cool down, it does it, regardless of CO2.

 

3. ASSUMPTION I WILL TRY TO DISPROVE CO2 acts as a feedback mechanism. Lots of CO2 make the planet warmer than it would otherwise be, low levels make things cooler.

 

OK, there is lots of math on both sides of the feedback argument. IPCC people show equations proving it, others show equations that show the opposite. Our climate has been quantified to such a small scale that the chance either group is right is about nil.

 

So, let's look at the historical record. Here is a chart I made up, it is just the Vostok data lined up nicely. Any red marks are things I put on there, everything else is just raw data from the ice core people.

 

 

Event Temp CO2

Current Times 0 370

Event A +2 255

Event B +3.5 275

Event C +1.5 265

Event D +3.5 300

Event E +2 275

 

I am just looking at the peaks, since they are easily identifiable, and since we seem to be coming off a recent peak.

 

With CO2 levels at unprecedented highs, shouldn't it be at least as warm as other times CO2 was high? Even in recent times, global temperatures peaked +2 degrees C above current temps around the times the pyramids were built, and CO2 then was much lower than today.

 

For there to be some feedback correlation between CO2 and temp, high or low levels of CO2 need to have at least a minimal positive correlation to temperature. And it is just random.

 

Don't believe me? My wife is a statistics professor at a local university, I had her run a data correlation. For the record, she kind of believes in AGW, not for any scientific reason, just a feeling she has. Women, sheesh.

 

Anyways, what she ran was a correlation coefficient for this data. A value of +1 means a strong positive relationship between things, .5 means a weak positive relationship, and close to 0 means no relationship. -1 means a strong negative relationship, -.5 means a weak negative, and so on. Values range from -1 to +1.

 

The data came back as -.56. This indicates a weak negative relationship between temperature maximums and CO2 levels. Basically, higher overall CO2 levels kind of make temperature maximums a little lower. Exactly the opposite of what AGW people believe.

 

So, what do you folks say about this? How can CO2 be some sort of feedback mechanism if the record shows otherwise?

[Chris C]

engineer,

 

different orbital (milankovitch) conditions. In particular, more sunlight at higher latitudes, evidence is not necessarily synchronous globally. Latitude effects much less pronounced today due to different wobble and tilt effects (eccentricity itself provides a small effect but influences precession). Need to be very careful about high-frequency versus low-frequency changes (Vostok probably correlates fairly well with world temperatures for slow things, but there is a high-frequency overprint seesawed with the north that has to be filtered out first), and don't just look at the peaks. The CO2 response to temperature is time-lagged and the CO2 feedback effect is logarithmic, not linear.

 

The global temperature was never +2 C in the pyramid times.

[engineerdude]

engineer,

 

different orbital (milankovitch) conditions. In particular, more sunlight at higher latitudes, evidence is not necessarily synchronous globally. Latitude effects much less pronounced today due to different wobble and tilt effects (eccentricity itself provides a small effect but influences precession). Need to be very careful about high-frequency versus low-frequency changes (Vostok probably correlates fairly well with world temperatures for slow things, but there is a high-frequency overprint seesawed with the north that has to be filtered out first), and don't just look at the peaks. The CO2 response to temperature is time-lagged and the CO2 feedback effect is logarithmic, not linear.

 

The global temperature was never +2 C in the pyramid times.

 

Well, according to the ice core data that they have published, and I have referenced graphically in the above chart, it looks like +2 degrees above present times to me, around 8000 years ago. Look at the chart and tell me what you see.

 

High frequency, low frequency, logarithmic. I understand these theoretical concepts, but where in any historic record does it show some sort of correlation between CO2 and global temperatures? Please, produce some sort of actual evidence.

[Chris C]

Sounds about right for Greenland given more summer sunshine. You need to be careful about extrapolating regional information over the globe when the forcings are not global forcings (unlike CO2).

 

This paper has some simple explanations of things going on. The important ice core reconstructions and IPCC AR4 also discuss the feedback effect

Glacial cycles and carbon dioxide: A conceptual model

[engineerdude]

Sounds about right for Greenland given more summer sunshine. You need to be careful about extrapolating regional information over the globe when the forcings are not global forcings (unlike CO2).

 

This paper has some simple explanations of things going on. The important ice core reconstructions and IPCC AR4 also discuss the feedback effect

Glacial cycles and carbon dioxide: A conceptual model

 

The "model" this fellow has created is a pure waste of time, as far as I can tell. He is simulating a mechanism that is in no way backed up by the geologic record. One could just as well create a model which shows the earth bursting into flames or becoming a permanent ball of ice.

 

As a start, these people should at least back-test their models to make it match the geologic record. The model would still be mostly useless, the earth is too complex a system to begin to model with current technology.

 

Think I'm wrong about models being useless? Look at the weather forcast in your town for next week. See if they get the temperature correct for a day next week - I bet they miss it, at least a little. The models these climatologists use are no better than the National Weather Service, and they rely on predicting things like ocean temperatures to 1/10 of a degree out centuries. If the news could tell me next Sunday's highs and lows within a degree 99% of the time that still wouldn't be good enough - the error rate compounds so fast that computer predictions at present just are not possible.

[Chris C]

This at least started well. I strongly suggest you start with an undergraduate level textbook on this subject-- David Archer's perhaps. Instead of looking for ways to debunk AGW and "revise" arguments that can easily be invalidated, understanding the core basics is essential. You don't need to respond- that is my final comment on this matter.