Climate-cooling effect 'stronger than volcanoes' is looking solid A newly discovered mechanism for cooling the planet - potentially, according to its discoverers, more significant even than the well-known chilling effects of volcanic eruptions - has now been further investigated. The mechanism in question is the action of difficult-to-study atmospheric molecules known as "Criegee …
Do we now have to get out the big V8's for fear of freezing our behinds off ? Are Tesla's days numbered ? Do coal powerplants contribute to global warming by expulsion of CO2 but also to cooling by ejecting even more S ? What ???I'm confused and don't know what to do anymore. Please help !
So, in the 1970's when we Britons were being chastised for generating acid rain from our industries and destroying all the forests in Scandinavia, we were actually helping hold back global warming.
Who new? We needn't have turned our economy to the financial services sector and consequentially allowed it to have an inadequate manufacturing base to cope with the current depression after all. Oh well.
Thumbs up for going looking for things in the real world.
As a "top down" kind of guy it's always amazed me that people did not run analysis of all gases in the atmosphere (to the limits of detection) and then start assigning their effects on climate and the atmosphere.
Sadly I guess atmosphere & climate scientists are not as coordinated as their colleagues in biochemistry or astronomy.
This should help narrow the confidence bands still further (a good thing when you've got models predicting ranges from 1.5c to 8.9c. That worst case is very bad indeed).
Usual caveats that I hope this gets incorporated in GCM's sooner rather than later.
"Sadly I guess atmosphere & climate scientists are not as coordinated as their colleagues in biochemistry or astronomy."
Speaking as somebody who has studied climate science at degree level, I'd equate it to economics rather than physics. Climate modelling done with any attempt at rigour is vastly complex. And the complex models are all still based on guesses and assumptions, and partial inputs, no matter how big or complex. So what we have are similar to the huge value at risk models built by all the big banks in the early noughties. And just as they were comprehensively wrong, so too are the climate models.
Strip away the faux complexity of the models, and for climate science, correlation is causation. I can think of no other area of science where such weak methods are permitted and encouraged, nor any which are as actively harmful to the world economy (or rather, European economies).
That's because they build the roof first before they have the foundation or the walls built.
They all go at it from the wrong position. They try to drill up to wether the eart cools down or up. Rather than drill down from the absolute base of the warming cooling trend. This trend can only be measured from space.
No doubt a more accurate measurement could be made from space. However what does that gain us? A decade's worth of accurate measurements would still be just 10 years out of billions. It is like trying to determine the velocity of a bouncing ball from a snapshot photograph.
"Strip away the faux complexity of the models, and for climate science, correlation is causation."
What BS. The predicted warming is based on physics. The greenhouse effect. It has nothing to do with correlation. If you did study climate science at degree level you probably failed.
>> "Strip away the faux complexity of the models, and for climate science, correlation is causation."
The issue isn't that the models are "too complex"; if anything it is that they are too simple and missing factors. Accurate modelling of any system is really hard work, especially when systems are non-linear and self regulate; errors in the model tend to stack up pretty quickly. It doesn't mean the models are worthless, but as a scientist you need to admit the weaknesses in the methodology rather than insisting that the CPU is always right because the model said so.
> What BS. The predicted warming is based on physics. The greenhouse effect. It has nothing to do with correlation. If you did study climate science at degree level you probably failed.
It is possible to based something on physics and for it still be be wrong if the physics in question is not a complete set of variables.
"It is possible to based something on physics and for it still be be wrong if the physics in question is not a complete set of variables."
Yes but it wouldn't be based on correlation would it.
Claiming that manmade global warming is based on correlation (ie CO2 is rising, temperature is rising, therefore CO2 must cause warming) betrays a complete lack of understanding of climate science. So when the same person is trying to buff up the authority of their argument by claiming they studied the subject...
"What BS. The predicted warming is based on physics."
Well, I've studied the subject, you clearly haven't. The laughable simplicity of the "CO2 greenhouse effect" simply isn't working as claimed, nor would any sensible person expect it to . Almost all climate models have failed to accurately predict temperature trends. Even the basics of temperature measurement are poxed up by the vast urbanisation and lack of validly comparable data.
"If you did study climate science at degree level you probably failed."
Oooh look an ad hominem against a "climate denier". Is that as good as your argument gets? And worth noting that the founder of CRU himself scoffed at the concept of CO2 forcing global warming. Maybe you'd like to throw some stones at him?
I'll try and spell it out for the likes of you: Complex systems modelling is only as good as its weakest link - be that a measured input, an assumption, or a calculation. And being "complex", that means lots of assumptions, inputs and calculations, lots of feedback loops, lots of guesses, and lots of gaps. Now, if you're really daft enough to think that when we can't even model relatively small complex systems (eg the UK economy, or the weather a week ahead) with any accuracy, somehow climate "scientists" are able to model the global climate, then you've been had, good and proper. I would encourage you to pay attention to any enticing emails from Nigeria, they could make you rich.
In the meanwhile, I suggest you have a cup of organic yak's milk tea to calm down, pull on your beard to distract from the pain of seeing such heresies publicly expressed, and console yourself by browsing your catalogue of homeopathic remedies, healing crystals, and feng shui accessories.
"Complex systems modelling is only as good as its weakest link - be that a measured input, an assumption, or a calculation. And being "complex", that means lots of assumptions, inputs and calculations, lots of feedback loops, lots of guesses, and lots of gaps. Now, if you're really daft enough to think that when we can't even model relatively small complex systems (eg the UK economy, or the weather a week ahead)"
So why did you earlier claim that green policies were harmful to the world economy?
Either you drew that conclusion from a complex professional economic model or, more likely, you drew it from a very simple economic model in your head. Either way you relied on a flawed model and announced the result as fact.
Once you figure out why YOU took your flawed economic model result seriously, you'll come to understand why scientists take flawed climate model results seriously. All models are flawed. Economists and scientists know this. But even flawed models can provide useful information. This is why I question your claimed background. Because you don't seem to appreciate this simple fact. Then again maybe you just took a module in Earth science for your fossil fuel mining degree.
@AC 16:02 If you'd studied the subject in question as you claim you would not need to post anonymously. If you want your comments to have any weight you need to come out and present your credentials and your published work so readers are able to work out whether you have something genuine to say or not.
Also, throwing stones while complaining about thrown stones is a bit old testament. Smacks of a religious tone and reduces your credibility even further. Come one, come out, tell us who you are.
Will there come a time when alarmists speak directly to the argument? The provenance of an argument, especially at this level is hardly relevant. You think the world is headed for global disaster and that we can and should be doing something about it. Just present your evidence already. This is, according to you, slam-dunk settled science. Fine. I have sufficient training to review your evidence. Thus far, after years of looking I find absolutely nothing of substance and tons of stuff flatly contradicting the alarmist narrative.
The reason this constantly devolves into alarmists indulging in name-calling is because they just simply flat out DO NOT HAVE ANY CREDIBLE EVIDENCE. Why? Because none exists. There is no empirical support for their theories of global catastrophe. If there was, they would speak to that and not spend their time flailing about in desperate attacks on the people who disagree with them.
I wish to goodness the alarmists would finally just put up or shut up. If this is such a 'settled science' slam-dunk the world should be awash in evidence. It is not. If it were, the alarmists would be able to present a cogent evidence backed argument verified by accurate predictions. They have nothing of the sort.
The more you look at this the more it just stinks to high heaven. This is a group of semi-literate thugs out to rip us all off with their fiat carbon credit schemes. At the very least, I would like to see a more intelligent swindle. The Climate Change Alarm assault on science is an insult to our collective intelligence.
Hi,
I guess the carbonyl group is just as reactive if you write it as 'CH3COOH' or as 'CH3CHOO' - can't really see why there is a need to change the standard way of writing the formula for ethanoic acid (acetic acid or, if in the chippy, non-brewed condiment (though what this has got to do with contraception I don't know)) - it is still the standard je presume?
sleep well, happy people
Does this mean we can all ask the government for our tax money back; I especially look forwards to the removal of the "Green Energy" taxes that have tripled my electricity bills in the last few years.
(Having studied "Future Ecology and Alternative Fuel Sources" at Birmingham U in the late 70's, I am fully aware that ALL of the Global Warming policies are bollocks.)
That's me in newspaper stuffed clothing as I cant afford to heat my house any longer.
That 10% (when I looked at my last electricity bill, it was 12%) is the direct cost to consumers 'at the pump'. Companies are also being charged extra, and they're not going to just absorb all that additional cost are they? No, they pass it on the *us* as increased prices *and* we pay VAT at 20% on that price increase.
So the true figure is probably closer to 20% than 10%. But honestly, who knows? I'm sure that it's possible to squeeze the figures to extract whatever truth one requires :-|
If you look a little more carefully, the distribution costs have gone up. By quite a lot.
It's almost as if there was a need to run pylons and cable to all sorts of out-of-the-way places to connect up wind turbines... By creatively allocating that cost to 'distribution' - without explaining why the cost has gone up - they can make it look like it's nothing to do with green policies.
Factor in that bit too and it's a lot more than ten percent.
@Pascal - Until you understand the difference between weather and climate, you probably shouldn't comment on threads about climate. We get pretty good forecasts for the weather over the next two weeks, getting more accurate as they get closer, but the UK is one of the most difficult places to forecast in the world, for various reasons.
Until you understand the difference between weather and climate, you probably shouldn't comment on threads about climate.
The gist of Pascal's message is that we shouldn't hold as ultimate truth and base our decisions on science that isn't reliable yet – though it may on the future, and then should be taken more at face value.
That you raced right past his main point, going straight to bicker on the difference between "weather" and "climate", speaks volumes on who really should think twice before commenting on threads... About anything, actually.
As a UK resident for the last fifty five years I want to know where you are getting your weather forecasts. Mine have been c**p just for the last week. Don't forget all those predictions of a barbecue summer last year. I have come to the conclusion that if you fail in any other government dept they transfer you to the met office, after all you cannot muck up the weather, and you can just ask for a more expensive computer for your models when they don't work...
After all as we all know a faster shinier computer makes you do your job better. So users always claim!
All right. I'll get me coat, and go back on the tablets. As an aside as others have stated, climate is not weather, but we simply haven't got enough data from enough sources (yet) to (accurately) predict either yet. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, just that we should take all predictions with a sack of salt for the nonce. They are chaotic systems it's like politicians, you can reasonably predict that one or more will be caught with their trousers down, or their hand in the till. The chaotic bit is that you cannot always predict which one will be caught. Right, now where's that coat?
@Nogbad - You do know that the problem with the "Barbecue summer" forecast was that they said there is a 75% change of one, which everyone who doesn't understand how probability works thought meant means it's definitely going to happen. Do I suggest that as you don't know how to understand a forecast, you're not in a position to criticise them.
I do, and I can build a pretty secure way of how to measure it. Just give me the money to do it.
It does include a few trips to the moon to set up my lab equipment.
Ok, a budget-version would use man made satellites instead.
Well now when I said that I can tell you the rest of my method. Continuously measure the energy that the earth is radiated with, and then measure the energy the earth radiates out into space.
Then you know weather the earth is cooling or heating up. After that you may start to build hypotheses on where that energy will be stored in / removed from, air, water, landmass, magma iron core, etc and what the effects will be short term long term.
Now we try to do it the other way around making hypotheses based on weather measurements on weather the earth warms up or cool down.
Instead we could monitor the effects on the weather in comparison to the number of Watts won or lost. Build a AI based on fuzzy logic or neural network that learns to predict short term and long term effects. Feed it with actual mass data of the earth and properties of the mass, shape and material. Can be measured today with Muon detectors which is now used to measure mountains and their shape. Sophisticated enough it could be used to find large resources of e.g. gold, oil diamonds etc I guess.
Then we just feed that AI with our pollution data, and other weather data. In the end the AI figures out a reliable model, and then we can feed it with hypothetical future data and see what the long/short term effects will be.
Pay me and I do it. In a few decades I've built a system that can predict next weeks global weather trend. Local prediction would still take some more decades of data harvest. But eventually my grandchild's grandchild's grandchild would be able to do it perfectly. Except that I would need to get a child first, no plans for that though.
I wanted Paris, Face palm and the big boom next to the very fitting alien at same time. Why can't I.
Nuclear bomb could also cool the earth with a nuclear winter.
Krakatoa left Europe with harsher winters for a number of years afterwards because of what was spewed into the atmosphere.
This is common knowledge, it's not that amazing that they have broken the science down a bit more though through ice cores they've known this for sometime.
A slight problem, mentioned obliquely in the paper is that CH3HCOO reacts strongly with oxides of nitrogen to produce PAN (peroxyacitylnitrate).
This is not good. It is one of the more unpleasant compounds in smog, a strong lachrymator (severe eye irritation), that also damages vegetation, and is suspected of being a major cause of respiratory complaints. Wikipedia Link.
Lots of work was done Investigating these materials in the 70s and 80s as they were a major factor in the notorious LA smogs.
This is really most encouraging. First there was huge and lethargic scepticism about any kind of climate change. Then people began to rally around the "human induced global warming" banner. That stimulated a certain (relatively tiny, but intellectually valid) reaction among those who didn't think things were so cut-and-dried. Now we are seeing the beginnings (and I stress that word) of a genuine, increasingly informed debate which may eventually lead to an understanding of all the factors that control global climate.
Those who cling to a very understandable, very human desire to have everything clear and certain, and hope that "the authorities have everything under control", will no doubt be upset. That's a shame, but the important thing is that we currently don't have the full facts. The sooner we get them, the better.
For a fairly dramatic and interesting introduction to the possibility that we actually face global freezing, try "Fallen Angels", a fairly good SF novel by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn. http://tinyurl.com/d4cdonm
It's set in a not very remote future where scientists are a persecuted minority, like heretics in medieval Europe, hiding from the angry masses of people who want to kill them in unpleasant ways. Why? Because the scientists convinced governments that they should take measures to stop global warming, without which the edge might have been taken off the Ice Age which is now arriving.
Oh, and it was first published in 1991. Good SF writers look quite a long way ahead, and often get parts of the future right.
"Oh, and it was first published in 1991. Good SF writers look quite a long way ahead, and often get parts of the future right."
But not this one. Our planet is not due any impending ice age. Aside from the fact humans are warming up the Earth, the orbital parameters of the Earth over the next few thousand years are not conductive to it dropping into a glacial period.
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn
It's set in a not very remote future where scientists are a persecuted minority
Ah yes -- the very people who managed to sell the 'Star Wars' bollocks to the US government.
Did they do any other theme to their books than "The Russians are coming to turn us into drones'?
Such a shame that good writers kept hawking the same crap book after book.
"Did they do any other theme to their books than "The Russians are coming to turn us into drones'?"
Your question is ill-conditioned, as Niven and Pournelle didn't ever use that theme. Let's see: "The Mote In God's Eye", "The Gripping Hand", "The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye", "The Legacy of Heorot", "The Dragons of Heorot", "Footfall", "Dream Park", "Lucifer's Hammer"... just a long string of massive, brilliant SF books with absolutely no relationship to present-day Earth politics. Of the eight books I cited, indeed, only the last three are even set on Earth.
Surely these atmospheric molecules have been floating around up there for a while now - why should they suddenly (within the last 10 / 15 years) be having a noticable affect to account for the recent lack of global temperature increase?
Also I assume (and I'm not a climate/atmospheric scientist) if they've always been there then any affect they have is almost irrelevant (kind of steady state) unless they are increasing/decreasing in concentration.
Also I assume (and I'm not a climate/atmospheric scientist) if they've always been there then any affect they have is almost irrelevant (kind of steady state) unless they are increasing/decreasing in concentration.
Unless of course their activity increases as they get warmer, and decreases as they cool. Whereby their 'steady state' isn't steady, but is varies according to the state of the climate they exist in. In which case they are acting as a climate regulator. Not just a constant part of that climate.
Why not look at chemistry or climate when talking about both.
If we have a warm climate down here due to greenhouse gases (I said if) we will have a colder troposphere, because those gases keep the IR radiation further down to the ground.
But the nice thing is that you ignored both chemistry and climate science, so maybe the cooling of the troposphere keeps the unstable intermediaries around longer so they can form more clouds. It is just one more thing that may have a negative or positive feedback. So why shouldn't we burn some fossil fuels in the meantime to see if we can reach tipping point. If we can reach a tipping point we will wipe out most of humanity (why do they want to settle in coastal cities?), if it turns out the feedback is strongly negative we can look back and say there never was a problem.
Perhaps the chemicals are present in sufficient concentration to compensate for a limited quantity of CO2. Instead of treating the emerging science as a victory or defeat for one ideology or the other, perhaps we should continue relevant research and use the additional leeway to develop sensible plans for control of our most serious emissions.
Nah. The simpletons are in charge (here in Canada anyway) so we'll treat it as a victory for simpletonia and charge ahead converting Alberta to a giant tailings pond. (I so love the English term "slag 'eap" ).
I think climate skeptics have got the wrong end of the stick. It's not as cut and dry as assuming this study saves the day. These "Criegee intermediates" may make climate change worse.
If for example "Criegee intermediates" are amplifying the cooling from human aerosol emissions, then that would imply climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is higher, not lower.
Similarly if the level of "Criegee intermediates" is falling as a result of climate change, then that will have a warming effect (as turning down a cooling influence will result in warming).
A several billion year old planet's environment actually seems to be able to largely regulate itself from the effects of 4000 years or so of scurrying monkeys burning stuff.
Given that it survived the creation of the moon (assuming that impact theory is correct) and the Chixculub (sp?) extinction impact and still balanced itself back out, who'da thunkit.
Golly.
Mind you there are certain breeds of scientists who can't accept that no matter how clever they think they are they actually have virtually nil impact on the planet never mind the universe on the sort of geological timescales that makes up those kind of lifecycles. We're all just blips on a timeline. Even warmologists and climate quangos.
Actually you don't know that the 'regulation failure' you've been told is happening isn't actually normal.
Again I refer you to geological timescales, not the last 60 years or whatever of 'science' on the matter. The doomsayers confuse the end of the world with the actual destruction of the planet. One is human extinction, the planet doesn't give a toss and will correct itself when we're gone.
Conversely you put too much faith in climatology being some new infallible gospel of doom.
"not the last 60 years or whatever of 'science' on the matter. "
Shirley you mean 'Since records began' -- though they never seem to say when the records began and what they actually consist of, etc. etc - how much more 'scientific' can you get?
If you mean real records, records like Tycho Brahe kept so that Kepler was finally able to deduce the rather simple equations which define the motion of the planets, then 'since records began' = 60 years for all practical purposes (and frankly being quite generous). Because you have to wait for the advent of satellite data before you get that sort of information.
"Actually you don't know that the 'regulation failure' you've been told is happening isn't actually normal."
It's not at all normal:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
Also CFCs don't occur naturally. So the sudden influx of CFCs into the atmosphere in recent decades cannot be considered normal either.
"Actually you don't know that the 'regulation failure' you've been told is happening isn't actually normal."
If you believe in Gaia or some similar theory, the "regulation failure" could very plausibly be a regulation response intended to remove the source of a disturbance to the equilibrium. Like a sleeping elephant swatting a fly with its trunk.
"Yet Nature is failing to regulate ever rising CO2 levels."
Really? In what time-frame? I mean, should you look over any significant geological time frame you can clearly see that the Planet has had frequent periods where CO2 levels have been higher AND lower than they are today. Bit of a leap I know but, either that implies 'regulation' or God/SpaceFolks/Elves popped down and waved a magic wand. I guess that if your going to talk about planetary biosphere regulation try to view it beyond a quick dose (i.e. <12k years of 'modern' human existence) of time
I think that both of you are missing some vital points here.
1) The earth is Billions of years old, so any regulatory mechanism will probably work over what would be considered a short period of time compared to the age of the earth, not compared to the age of the human race.
2) The human race currently has no way to actually destroy the earth, so anything that we do to it will be regulated out over the next 100,000 years or so.
3) Scientists are worried about the (geologically speaking) immediate future
"Yet Nature is failing to regulate ever rising CO2 levels. And it earlier failed to regulate CFC levels. I think you have too much dogmatic faith in nature, as if it's been intelligently designed or something."
Yes and now you touch the key to why this is due to human activity, and not just variation of trends.
It's not about the earth not capable of regulating it's self. It does that perfectly, until we started to tamper with it (that's how we usually define it, it still regulates it perfectly as you'll see later in my comment).
It's not about how much CO2 we humans produce. We can produce as much as we want to without the earth being affected much at all.
The problem is we humans have to a large extent damaged our large CO2 consumers with other pollutants and industry. So it's not a direct CO2 problem, that's the effect of human exploitation of our earth. But yes the earth can heal it's self, as soon as we stop wounding it in every possible way we can. The Thames river is a perfect example of that, from declared biologically dead in the 50's to thrive again.
If noting happens, the earth will heal it self as soon as it has regulated us humans into fossil, so the earth still regulates it self perfectly, if you consider that as a perfect regulation.
If you do consider that as a perfect regulation, how far is that thought from an intelligent design with built in self regulating mechanisms exactly?
Well Dawkins have tried to prove imperfect design... but so much flawed that statement is against it's own purpose, i'm not gonna discuss that now, non the less how he tries to prove someone wrong in something they never claimed. Leave that for a other day.
Just a fast googling on the Thames subject gave me this: http://www.greenbang.com/once-dead-thames-now-a-winning-river_15391.html
Earth's atmosphere today has nothing to do with its content a few hundred million years ago.
The reason that changed was not any Gaia-induced "balance" mode, it was the evolution of algae, then plant life that reconfigured the levels of carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen (in my simplified, unscientific understanding of the matter).
If there was supposed to be a "balance", then we'd be gasping in an atmosphere with only 10% of today's oxygen.
There is no "regulation". No "balance". Such silly concepts are based on the idea that there is an ideal norm that the planet's ecology strives to return to when it moves away from it.
There is no norm. There are two states that are of any relevance to us; That which suits human life, that which does not. The latter state is far larger and has much greater variations. The planet doesn't care which state it has, that's just us.
If you do not believe in a balance your neither a theist or a atheist. Because both believe in a balance, only difference they have int that part i whether the balance is preserved by evolutionary methods or by intelligent design.
If you're an atheist that believes in evolution, you surely have heard of natural selection. It's all about balance. In fact some evolutionists explain certain evolutionary events by symbiosis.
What is a symbiosis if not a balance, parasite?
Yet parasites exists in a balance. But I give you that, the planet does not care, as the planet it self is mindless. Still there is a great balance in every aspect.
'Given that it survived the creation of the moon (assuming that impact theory is correct) and the Chixculub (sp?) extinction impact and still balanced itself back out, who'da thunkit.'
The Earth survived just fine. The dominant lifeforms (or organic molecules) didn't come out of it quite so well.
And none of those events had any effect whatsoever on life in suburbia.
Most scientists understand that all they are doing is measuring a very large collection of phenomena and they spend their lives trying to explain the complex interactions. It is reasonable for them to conclude that the effects of human activities are beginning to have a significant impact on major aspects of life on earth. The measurements are there for you to review and the community is fully open to reasoned discussion and disagreement. You do have to be prepared to make a significant effort and simple denials do not measure up.
The scurrying monkeys are burning more and very different stuff than they did for millions of years. Our extinction will not destroy the planet itself. The planet will heal itself or not heal itself, that is of no relevance to us. It is reasonably certain that it will eventually be destroyed as the sun itself burns out and expands to a red dwarf or goes nova or whatever.
""The next steps will be to carry out modelling studies to quantify the impact of Criegee intermediates on climate and to quantify the level of alkene present in various environments.”
Can I humbly suggest that a better "next step" would be to do some experiments that will get you some data to input into a model ?
..and when that doesn't work..find a new temporary reason why CO2 isn't behaving in a scary enough way..
or perhaps the answer is simple. the world warmed between 1950 and 2000 because we stopped emitting sulphur pollutants etc. Now china and India are back doing it, its getting cooler.
Nothing to do with CO2 at all.
"Sea level is not rising at all in the Maldives, the Laccadives, Tuvalu, India, Bangladesh, French Guyana, Venice, Cuxhaven, Korsør, Saint Paul Island, Qatar, etc."
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/are-sea-levels-rising-nils-axel-morner-documents-a-decided-lack-of-rising-seas/
I encourage the reader to look at the data presented in graphs showing how the raw data shows no sea level rise and how the 'value added' data supplied by alarmists mysteriously changes it. A distressing amount of data has been tampered with. It has taken years and court challenges in some cases to wrest the raw data from 'climate scientists' so their analysis could be verified. It invariably is not verified and in fact, to my eye, there is evidence of outright fraud.
I am not personally in a position to say whether sea level is rising or not. I honestly do not know, but it would appear that it is hardly a given.
The alarmist arguments are a study in logical fallacies. At one point or another, they commit nearly every one. A favorite is argument ad nauseum. They just keep making the same unsubstantiated claim over and over and over again. I suspect most people like myself have eventually conceded one point or another just because it gets so tedious debunking these guys.
Is sea level rising? Like other warmist claims, this one is more hot air than substance.
Don't take my word for it, but don't take his either. Look for yourself. Be wary. The alarmists have massive resources (literally billions of dollars) and have carpet bombed cyberspace with their junk science. However, if you are tenacious you will soon realize that the alarmist fluff is being echoed over and over by the same people. Their 'evidence' is either 'value added' data or outright falsehoods.
Rather than speak to the evidence, the alarmists will rebut with an attack on the author. They may even cite a transparent character assassination at Wikipedia. If you are going to take the bait, follow my advice and look at the history of the page and the talk page and do a little digging on the authors involved. Nothing is more damning to the alarmists than their own atrocious behavior. They are so devoid of scruples that they hardly know when to back off.
They may be able to pervert the climate articles in Wikipedia, but the one thing the alarmists cannot do is alter the Climate to fit their theories. They cannot possibly dupe and/or silence the millions of people who have a background in real science; not forever, anyway. Real science can sometimes take decades and even longer to finally right itself, but rest assured it will.
Here's the abstract from the Science article:
"Criegee intermediates (CIs) (1) are the main intermediates in atmospheric reactions between ozone and organic molecules, resulting in the formation of free radicals, organic acids, carbonyl compounds, and organic aerosols. Such reactions contribute to local photochemical smog and global climate change."
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6129/154.summary
What you seem to be saying is that we just need a little more pollution and everything will be OK, ignoring the impact of photochemical smog on human health and a host of other issues....
What this shows most of all, is that we still don't know as much as we think we do about climate dynamics.
So any predictions that are made are likely to be about as accurate as sticking your finger in the air and any decisions based on these predictions could end up being costly and completely ineffectual.
I'm not a climate change "denier", change is natural (if not, we'd still be in an ice-age), the question is how much imact man's activities make on global climate and what we can REASONABLY do about it. And this does require accurate data in order to make accurate predictions and not predictions based on poorly understood data/theory.
But sadly, politicians have always been prone to making knee-jerk decisions based on "popular opinion" rather than sound science and then refusing to admit they've fucked up (again) when the available science indicates different. In the mean while, we suffer the financial hardships from these poorly thought out policies.
Never mind killing scientists in various cruel and unusual ways, just kill the politicians...
"Surely the chilling effects of volcanoes is temporary as they also churn out vast amounts of carbon dioxide?"
No, volcanoes churn out fairly tiny amounts of carbon dioxide.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
(In perspective - volcanoes put out slightly more CO2/year than Argentinia).
It is discouraging how the global warming fanatics have hijacked public debate.
Researching the climate is not nearly as important as immediate pressing needs in the world. People need clean water, medicine, food, access to education, liberation from tyrannical governments, etc, etc.
Long term, what humanity needs more than anything else is abundant energy. With enough energy, we can solve nearly any problem that presents itself. With out enough energy, these other debates are pointless.
This fruitless debate rages about *how much more* money we should be tossing the way of the second-raters in 'climate science'. These guys can't even *read* a graph, let alone make one. {"Climate Science", "Creation Science", "Scientology"} {Biology, Chemistry, Physics} ... does anybody see a pattern there? Here is a translation of one of Albert Einstein's famous 1905 papers: http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/e_mc2.pdf. In its spare two and a half pages it introduces the formula now known and E=mc^2. It never mentions 'science', 'scientist' or 'consensus'.
The construct 'consensus science' is an oxymoron.
The null hypothesis with respect to climate is 'nothing unusual is happening'. The evidence supports the null hypothesis. The onus is upon so called 'climate scientists' to disprove the null hypothesis with reliable data and reasoned argument. They have neither to offer and hence you will either find that conclusions are presented naked of reason or evidence or that 'evidence' in fact is not proper evidence at all. In a few cases, explanatory parsimony ('Occam's razor') dictates that they have actually falsified data.
Here's a 'climate scientist' in action: "D’Arrigo put up a slide about "cherry picking" and then she explained to the panel that that’s what you have to do if you want to make cherry pie." [http://climateaudit.org/2006/03/07/darrigo-making-cherry-pie]
I have no doubt that the vast majority of lay people are sincere in their support of the catastrophic climate narrative. I even think that some of the 'scientists' involved are at least sincere in their belief that what they are doing is right by the theory that the ends justify the means. However, you cannot be intelligent, educated, informed and honest and say that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is something we should be throwing money at.
The climate is doing exactly, within our ability to measure, what it has been doing since the phylogenetic branch where mammals and birds parted company. Both groups have elaborately defined and conserved adaptations to very wide variations in temperature. Those adaptations simply could not exist unless they were enforced by an environment significantly more changeable than the paltry few degrees C per century that the Alarmists think should be causing panic.
Make no mistake that at the end of the day, this argument really revolves around funding the 'Climate Change' industry and a scurrilous tax-grab using conjured fiat carbon indulgences.
The absolute sure-fire best cure to the 'Global Warming'/'Climate Change' 'problem' is to cut funding to 'climate scientists' and their fellow travelers. Once you remove the financial incentives to make noise about climate disaster you will find a merciful and long overdue silence on this fake issue.
"The null hypothesis with respect to climate is 'nothing unusual is happening'...The onus is upon so called 'climate scientists' to disprove the null hypothesis with reliable data and reasoned argument."
Something unusual IS happening, so you need to abandon that particular null hypothesis that it isn't. For example see:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
"The climate is doing exactly, within our ability to measure, what it has been doing since the phylogenetic branch where mammals and birds parted company. Both groups have elaborately defined and conserved adaptations to very wide variations in temperature. Those adaptations simply could not exist unless they were enforced by an environment significantly more changeable than the paltry few degrees C per century that the Alarmists think should be causing panic."
This isn't true. There is no known example in Earth's history of CO2 levels doubling in less than 300 years, or of global temperature increasing a few degrees in a matter of centuries. Nor does heat regulation in birds and mammals suggest such a thing ever happened either.
In your zeal to dismiss the issue you are making statements far beyond what evidence can support.
Have an Upvote for taking the time to put together a long and reasonable post. However, there are probably better places to post your ire (I suggest you try writing to the papers). Very few commentards here have even a basic grasp of the science involved in this issue but at least they do appear to be on an equal footing with the poster of this article.
"It is discouraging how the global warming fanatics have hijacked public debate".
Don't worry, that's perfectly normal. The majority are almost always wrong about anything important, and it's the majority that defines public debate. Either directly, or through politicians who have brains but think it's smarter to echo the public mood.
In science, everyone in the world may believe that the Sun goes round the Earth, but the one man who disagrees may be the only one who is right. Likewise with antisepsis and hygiene: the medical profession hounded Ignaz Semmelweiss out of medical practice and into the insane asylum where he died; but he was right and they were wrong.
Politics, economics, sociology and those other "disciplines" are just a bagful of opinions. No one knows which are right, and we may never find out. Given how poorly some of the questions are framed, it may be semantically impossible to give answers to them.
@Tom Welsh:
Excellent post. Would that I could keep it that short and sweet ...
The majority can be quite wrong. That *does* correct eventually, but only if a vocal minority presses on. I doubt that eventually being right will compensate people like me for joining the fray, but one does what one must.
"When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie" -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko
One is sometimes rewarded for the good fight in the strangest of ways. I was aware of the quote, above but unsure of its source. When I looked it up, I was delighted to find that it originates with the author of one of my favorite poems:
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/yevgeny-yevtushenko/birthday-14/
Who knew?
The crux of the whole 'climate change' issue is the notion that an alarming and unprecedented change is taking place with respect to global temperature. [Let's set aside the fact that 'global temperature' is not entirely a useful concept].
Convincing to most technical people is the unsual 'hockey stick' graph that is still being defended in one form or another by the alarmanista. The graph is unusual and captures the attention. Like Steven McIntyre and Darko Butina, my instinct was that it was simply a mistake. It looks truly remarkable and the first place to look is bad math, not catastrophic changes in the physical universe.
The truly alarming 'hockey stick' is just bad math. That is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of knowledge.
Dr. Butina has written a wonderfully lucid article demonstrating using math that an undergrad science student could follow that current temperatures are entirely what you would expect from historical data. There is nothing remarkable about the last decade or the last century. It is all quite ordinary:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/17/on-the-scales-of-warming-worry-magnitudes-part-2/
The title is a quote from the summary:
"Every single aspect of man-made global warming is wrong"
"The crux of the whole 'climate change' issue is the notion that an alarming and unprecedented change is taking place with respect to global temperature"
No, it's that an alarming and "unprecedented" (on the scale of human civilization) is about to take place over the coming century (and a little beyond)
The WUWT post makes the error of comparing local daily variation in temperature to global variation over decades.
Just because some location has 20C variations in daily temperature doesn't mean the last ice age (5-6C cooler) was a non-event.
Because no particular species and no particular piece of geography is essential to that survival.
London/Paris/Amsterdam/New York/Miami 1 m below sea level?
Mother nature says "SFW?"
Human species on the verge of extinction.
Mother nature says "And I care because?"
The only species that wildly shifting climate change matters to is the human species. IMHO anything that put's the science on a more solid footing (one way or the other) is a good thing.
All I can say is I told you so.....
And now we can also, while hoping for a real scientific approach to climate science itself, rather than the dogmatic, agenda-driven I have an answer, let's make up the questions methodolgy will decline, I prefer to take a more cynical approach, as lots of money and power are at stake here. This gives us a heads up as to the next demon in teh climate rubbish...... Creigees!
Remember, first it was CO2, then it was Nitrogen, then it went back to CO2, and now we are seeing a potential setup for another gas to be demonized - just as soon as they can identify a fossil-fuel based energy source to blame.....
And, of course, what is truly hysterical, is that teh scientific balderdash being bandied about, not only from the labcoats, but also thrown out in here, is actually the freaking smokescreen to confuse and dilute actual meaningful questions and debate about what the rubbish being bandied about truly means......
We have been forewarned..... Here's to enough of us being savvy enough to remember.....
@NomNomNom
Re: "In your zeal to dismiss the issue you are making statements far beyond what evidence can support"
Hardly. Besides, it is not *I* who is obliged to produce evidence, it is you. My position is the null hypothesis and it does not require support here. You are making a claim to something extraordinary and the onus is entirely upon your side of the argument to produce evidence, sound evidence and plenty of it. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." You have none. Really, not a shred of reliable reproducible evidence. It is laughable how poor the alarmist argument is.
I do not accept bald assertions of your conclusions or unattributed graphs uploaded to wikipedia (anybody can do that). If you read and follow the article below, you will understand that what your graph is purporting to show is likely not even correct on its own terms. "The ice cores cannot resolve CO2 shifts that occur over periods of time shorter than twice the bubble enclosure period. This is basic signal theory. The assertion of a stable pre-industrial 270-280 ppmv is flat-out wrong."
I invite people to read the following much more comprehensive treatment of CO2:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/07/a-brief-history-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-record-breaking/
You don't have to read it all, just skim over it and ask yourself whether the unattributed graph posted above is more convincing than the article I have referenced.
Be clear on this: The null hypothesis is the *given*. It is up to alarmists to present evidence to the contrary. In the absence of evidence, the null hypothesis rules the day. Skeptics have increasingly been assembling mountains of evidence and telling critiques of alarmist propaganda. Alarmists fall back on bald assertions of their conclusions without supporting evidence. I am not sure what that is, but I am quite sure it is not 'science' as I was taught.
With respect to the null hypothesis for CO2, the null hypothesis is 'has no net meaningful effect'. Even if we accept that somehow CO2 levels are entirely unusual and unprecedented (I do not), that says absolutely nothing at all as to whether it warms, cools or has no effect on global temperature. The very best evidence of which I am aware as to the relationship of CO2 to temperature is that increasing ocean temperatures increase CO2 by releasing CO2 from solution. That is CO2 *follows* temperature increases it does not cause them.
Not sure if my other post made in here, but ... "Every single aspect of man-made global warming is wrong"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/17/on-the-scales-of-warming-worry-magnitudes-part-2/
If you have an undergrad degree in the sciences, you should be able to easily follow and verify the above argument for yourself.
Wikipedia is more far more reliable than WUWT. WUWT remember is the site that claimed it was so cold in Antarctica that CO2 freezes out the atmosphere there!
The CO2 record is clear. The excuses made by WUWT are false. The ice cores are more than sufficiently accurate to conclude no such CO2 jump as has occured recently happened in the last 800,000 years. There are also ice cores with resolutions less than a decade that capture the hockey stick of CO2. Your null hypothesis that nothing unusual is going on is falsified.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Yes rising CO2 causes warming. Science 101.
You are the equivalent of a young earth creationist. Seriously. Yes they have blogs too.
[I apologize if this seems mean-spirited. It is due less to ire than it is to lack of finesse with writing.]
Re: Wikipedia is more far more reliable than WUWT
On climate? You must surely be joking. This is just a simple flat out falsehood. You must surely know it. I invite readers to do their own research on this point. You may be shocked at what you find.
Re: "The CO2 record ... blah blah ..."
If you read the article I referenced and understood it you could not possibly say that honestly. It seems that you do not entirely understand what you are talking about and are simply re-iterating the party line.
Re: "Your null hypothesis ... is falsified."
You are either being dishonest or you have a lot to learn about scientific investigation. I suspect it is a little of both because if you knew more about this stuff, you would not indulge in such transparent sophist nonsense. You need a *mountain* of rock-solid evidence and air-tight argument to lay that null hypothesis down. You are not even the tiniest bit close.
Re: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Yes rising CO2 causes warming. Science 101.
Ya. You might want to look into science 201. While you are hanging around the University, you might want to do as I did and take a course on logic. You can find a ton of material with a quick Google search. Here's something directly about logic and climate alarmism:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/20/the-illogic-of-climate-hysteria/
Given your parting shot below, you might also want to take a slide over to look at ethics. Here's something:
http://meche.mit.edu/life/ethics/
Readers 'auditing' this conversation may be interested to see how 'climate scientists' hold up to ethical scrutiny:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/03/15/who-released-the-climategate-emails-and-why/
Note that alarmist apologists have steadfastly maintained that the Climategate emails were stolen by some nefarious criminal attacker. They continue still. Anybody with a functioning noggin knew fairly quickly that this had to be a whistleblower. This alleged 'hacker' went to great lengths to keep safe the privacy and insulate the weasels who wrote those emails." If he were the bad guy they make him out to be he would not have gone to so much trouble. He would have just released the entire shameful lot and let the chips fall where they may. We all owe the whistleblower a debt of gratitude, including the Climategate perps.
Re: You are the equivalent of a young earth creationist. Seriously.
Oy. Seriously? That's your argument supporting a panic that is raising my electricity bill? Alarmists and creationists are cut from the very same intellectual cloth and I am not so sure that the best part of that bolt did not go to the creationists. At least the creationists believe what they are saying. I may not be a creationist, but I am not kidding when I say I have more respect for them than I do the charlatans in the unfortunately named 'climate science'. If you are honest, do us all a favor -- dispense with the name-calling and start trotting out all your empirical evidence and brilliant supporting arguments. Again, if you are honest, at some point in the exercise of assembling evidence and constructing arguments you surely have to realize that you have been duped. Alarmism is self-serving nonsense, pure and simple. I wish it were at least a cleverer swindle. It's embarrassing.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. How will the climate behave in the years to come? Probably the way it always has.
Can we seriously believe that alarmist rot, if it is indeed rot, goes all the way to the top? Can everybody be in on this? It happens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair
How long can a ridiculous orthodoxy last these days? Well, our last good example of this sort of rot lasted about forty years. Once puerile nonsense parading as science takes hold it can be very hard to dislodge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Of course Wikipedia is more reliable than WUWT, don't be ridiculous. It's like encyclopedia vs tabloid!
Wikipedia has correctional controls and rules on objectivity and sourcing material. Articles can be reviewed, built upon and corrected long after they are written and people can point out errors at any point. It's not perfect, but compared to WUWT it might as well be.
WUWT is a rapidly publishing blog with pretty much zero facility for correction. Error-ridden articles are posted and defy correction because they are so quickly replaced with new posts. Who wants to add a long correctional comment at the end of a blog post that no-one is reading anymore because there are now ten more recent posts?
And even if you do manage to comment a correction in time, it'll be a single comment lost lost among all the other comments by 100 politicized idiots who don't know their ass from their elbow on the subject but whoop and cheer because the post supports their political needs. And then some of them will probably attack you because you are daring to challenge the post.
Of course the blog post itself will never be corrected and so will remain on the internet - and in people's memories.
The main problem however is that the blog is a platform for pushing a smorgasbord of contradicting psuedo-ideas. There is no consistent position being made. One post will make claims that contradicts another. Everyone, even the posters sometime, disassociates themselves from ideas presented on WUWT. This makes it a very slippery place where those involved can simply dissociate themselves from anything previously said and the numerous contradictions presented in the various ideas. They aren't publishing anything they are staking any kind of reputation on.
WUWT is a fundamentally inaccurate and flawed source of science. It's like getting your science from the daily mail.
During the sping and summer, air separation & liquifaction plants have a difficult time purifying out the excessive nitrogen oxides that naturally occur due to the decay of vegetation. That "Spring like " smell is often from the products of decomposition.
Same thing applies to CO2 and methane produced from biological activity in the ground, manure, other waste and water. (not all natural but most is)
If the truth could ever be told in this discussion, the non manmade sources of greenhouse gases are so numerous and voluminous as to boggle the mind and in almost every discussion or climate model are entirely discounted by those who continue to deny logic and reason and blame mankind.
I do not deny that we contribute pollutants but we are insignificant compared to nature.
@NomNomNom: Re: "You are the equivalent of a young earth creationist. Seriously."
This, I am afraid, is the extent of the evidence in favor of global warming alarm. It is poor evidence indeed. I would not buy a bar of soap on that kind of evidence. I hardly think it is worthy of altering the world's economy and condemning people in the third world to death. Sadly, that is essentially all alarmists have to offer us.
The accusation is ironic and risible indeed. My background is in Biology and I have my own paper "Seasonal Adaptation" on the desk in front of me that I am preparing as yet one more stone in the avalanche of evidence against global warming alarm. In my opinion, the argument from evolution through natural selection is one of the very most compelling demonstrations that:
1) Ranges during the lifetime of individual organisms of +/-10C and more *cannot* be unusual in evolutionary time frames.
2) Those ranges *cannot* be dangerous. We, like the overwhelming majority of the living world, are eminently well adapted to changes much, much more extreme than the very worst alarmist doomsday scenario. Canadians (like moi) manage to live through extremes from -40C to +40C and more annually. In some months, we manage a temperature range from -20C to +20C just about every single day.
I invite the reader, especially if they live in (allegedly) 'temperate' climates to ponder the silliness of the Global Warming argument on its face. Will rises of tenths of degrees per *decade* make the world uninhabitable?
Make no mistake, evolution provides no support to the cause of global warming alarm. Anyone who understands much about the Biological Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection cannot be persuaded by alarmist arguments. Science as such in its many manifest forms provides nothing but contrary evidence for the alarmist theories. Evolution is but one real science of many that contradicts global alarmist reasoning.
The fact that alarmists, who bear much in common with creationists, frantically attempt to tar scientific realists with that brush is rich indeed. Like 'creation science', 'climate science' is a religious and political movement. It is impervious to logical argument and evidence.
I have no doubt that many of the alarmist apologists actually believe their arguments. However, their religious fervor has no place in a scientific debate.
"1) Ranges during the lifetime of individual organisms of +/-10C and more *cannot* be unusual in evolutionary time frames."
You are talking about swings in weather and about daily ranges, not climate.
"2) Those ranges *cannot* be dangerous....Canadians (like moi) manage to live through extremes from -40C to +40C and more annually."
So the ecosystem in your area could survive in permanent -40C, or even -20C? No. Organisms ability to survive fleeting fluctuations (including the daily range) does not tell you the limits of what they could survive with a more persistent change in CLIMATE.
After-all plant hardiness zones and animal ranges have already shifted in response to tenths of a degree changes in climate. If they could just shrug off tenths-of a degree, let alone full degree changes in climate then why would their zones have shifted?
"Make no mistake, evolution provides no support to the cause of global warming alarm."
On the contrary, evolution tells us that we can only assume ecosystems are adapted to a change if they have regularly survived that change in the past.
So have global temperature ever increased several degrees C in centuries? Not that we know of. There's therefore no basis to assume ecosystems can successfully adapt to such a change when it hasn't happened before. So the prospect of several degrees warming, when we cannot guarantee adaptation of ecosystems, is alarming.
Global climate is a complex system. There is enough data and variances to be able to pick something, and run either way with it. Pick a gas, pick a location, and a side to the argument. We have the doomsayers, who predict big problems in the next decade or two, and the denialists, who say we're a drop in the bucket.
I guess I look at it from a modified doomsayers position. If we've already tipped the balance, we've already screwed the pooch. If we haven't, we lack the teeth to get the developing world to play along with our paranoia. Decreasing pollution is a good thing, and has benefits aside from 'saving the world' which are tangible to those parts of the world.
Do what we can, and deal with what we can't. Personally, I think we overestimate our foot print on the climate (a natural event can outweigh us), but we do have an effect. But there is a benefit in lightening our footprint. I think nuclear still has less of a footprint than solar or windpower.. there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Every time this is debated, I ask the same two plaintive questions.
How much has global temperature risen in the last two decades?
How does this compare with the thermal radiation of the moon and Mars?
If the moon and Mars are reflecting more heat, then global warming is due to solar activity. If they are not and temperatures on Earth are indeed rising, then it's probably us. Yet AGW debates always seem to start without this basic information.
"If the moon and Mars are reflecting more heat, then global warming is due to solar activity. If they are not and temperatures on Earth are indeed rising, then it's probably us. Yet AGW debates always seem to start without this basic information."
Well, I'm not sure we can measure heat reflected from the moon or Mars. How about comparing solar irradiance (which we can measure) and temperatures on earth?
You asked for it, here it is.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/offset:-1366/scale:0.5/plot/gistemp/from:1980
I can't see any similarity.
Whether I agree or disagree with the whole man made Global Warming at this point is no longer really that relevant any more - I have a much more profound question that everyone seems to be unwilling to ask - and really it's the question we should all be asking....
So here goes....
If it has taken hundreds of years for us to "cause" the climate to heat up then it is pretty clear that there is a lag / delayed process at play - so looking at the situation hypothetically for a moment - let's say that tomorrow we magically manage to output no CO2 whatsoever for the rest of our existence... that's it CO2 output switched off - do we really think it's actually going to make any difference for at least 100 years? It's like the talk of the tipping point that climate scientists like to mention so very often - the thing is - the climate does not react instantly - the greenhouse effect is not an instant switch on / switch off thing - so I'd be willing to bet that there isn't a single climate scientist out there that can even state with 100% certainty that the damage has not already been done - the tipping point has been reached and it's just going to take a bit of time before we start to see the effects of it.
(for the record as far as I am concerned the science behind global warming is too disconnected and non-sensical - and no - I don't have a degree in it - but I can state with 100% certainty that I don't need one - that line only ever gets trotted out by the people who do have one - as the only form of attack they can think of - it might surprise you to know - that you can actually learn things on your own without spending thousands of pounds to get a degree - there is a wealth of information from science publications, libraries and a fair amount of information on the internet (and I don't mean Wikipedia and sites that that have been specifically setup to prove their side of the debate) all you need is a passion to want to know more about the things you are interested in - from computer programming to horticulture - it's all available for you to pick up a book and read)
[Apologies for TL;DR. Executive summary: Climate Alarm is anti-scientific and silly.]
I hardly know where to begin. The NomNomNom rebuttals are typical of the alarmist faction. They clearly did not read and/or understand the material written by Dr. Butina. Dr. Butina has decades of experience in experimental chemistry and pattern recognition. The article is within his area of expertise and it is elegantly clear and entirely supported by actual unselected raw data. Unlike the fake 'climate scientists', Dr. Butina is a real scientist. The climategate fraternity freely admits to being incompetent in this area. One of them actually is not ashamed to admit he does not know how to use spreadsheets. If I have to choose between the simple, clear, thoughtful analysis of raw data by a real scientist and the statistically illiterate flailing against cherry picked data by 'climate scientists' it is not much of a contest.
You cannot possibly understand the Biological Theory of Evolution and make the statements that NomNomNom made. It seems that they believe that their arguments have substance. I don't know if that is the usual cynical sophistry practiced by alarmists or if it is genuine. I suppose I must assume, Arguendo that it is genuine, but it is a stretch. If it is genuine, I encourage them to free their mind a little and actually learn and understand it. Biology offers one of the very strongest arguments against global warming alarm. Evolution does not create seasonal changes in pelage, migration patterns, etc without a selective pressure. Evidence that we have these adaptations is evidence that those changes existed as selective pressures for a very long time. A change in Climate of a few degrees is just business as usual. Cross-phylum (like birds vs. mammals) similarities indicate that these pressures have existed for millions of years. The mention of movement of ecosystems is evidence *against* the alarmist argument. Entire ecological systems do not shift latitude without an enormous number of pre-existing adaptations allowing that to happen.
Most people here, as mentioned by another poster are not likely coming from a background in science. It is hard for them to judge this stuff on its merits. However, the malfeasance of the 'climate science' fraternity is now so egregious that any person with a modicum of intelligence who spends a little time looking things over has to come away with a bad feeling about the climate alarm narrative.
I invite readers of this post to educate themselves and draw their own conclusions. Don't take the word of 'climate scientists' that it is OK to toss out data you don't like. It is not OK, and with a little digging you can find authorities that you can trust that will say that clearly enough. Don't take the word of 'climate scientists' that something remarkable is happening with climate. It is not. Again, with some digging you can see this for yourself.
The 'climate science' faction will attempt to feed you their conclusions supported by entirely suspect cherry picked data. It is rare indeed to see alarmist apologists to ask you to use your own common sense and cast your net wide for reliable sources.
I encourage you to educate yourself beyond the confines of alarmist propaganda and draw your own conclusions. Really, even as you read this, does climate alarmism make sense? Do you honestly think that climate catastrophe awaits us a mere century down the road.
By and large, the people feeding you the climate alarm narrative are paid to do so. It is an industry that grandly rewards those who toe the party line. Those, like me, pushing back, are not paid to do so and in fact take on some burden of difficulty doing so. If you look about, you will find Nobel Prize winning scientists saying the climate alarm narrative is entirely bogus. What does your gut tell you? Should you trust the person being paid to spout their nonsense or trust someone who not only is not paid, but (if you look through the Climategate Emails) actually pay a hefty personal price for bringing you the truth?
Follow the money.
By the way, I encourage you to find and read the actual Climategate Emails. It is impossible to read through them and have a sense that the players (pillars of 'climate science') are anything but charlatans, villains or fools. The 'climate science' fraternity have done their absolute best to spin this and will absolutely *not* encourage you to look at them. Like many of the bizzaro-world climateer arguments, they claim Emails have been 'taken out of context'. This is nonsense. Read them in context and judge for yourself. Context makes them look significantly *worse*, not better.
The 'climate science' faction is particularly busy rewriting history at Wikipedia. The fact that NomNomNom calls Wikipedia a reliable source for information about climate should set alarm bells ringing. The Wikipedia climate related articles have been under years of relentless pressure by a committed special interest group promoting global warming alarm.
The Wikipedia article on scientific consensus began containing this quote ... science fiction novelist Michael Crichton said:
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
I invite the reader to look at the history of this page for themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Consensus -- it now says something entirely different.
It is hard to think of a more ridiculous oxymoron than 'Consensus Science'.
You will see the same names perverting that article as you see perverting the article on Climategate, vandalizing pages of scientists who disagree with alarmist orthodoxy, etc.
By all means, use Wikipedia as a source, but read carefully, look back at primary sources and think for yourself. Wikipedia displays the shameful nature of climate science alarmism in all its gory glory. Before you trust any page that relates to climate, take a long look at the editing history. You will find that evidence refuting climate alarm is repressed and shaky 'evidence' in favor is repeatedly re-inserted. You will also find that it is only a smallish number of dedicated alarmists that are skewing the climate articles. Many have been banned from editing climate related articles.
There are a wide variety of rules and disciplines that govern genuine scientific inquiry. So called 'climate scientists' routinely break them. In fact, their understanding is actually so poor that they are not even very good at covering up their errors. As mentioned in an earlier post, it would appear that a majority of 'climate scientists' have such a primitive understanding of data collection that they throw away data willy nilly so that only the data that confirms their theory is left. That is just not science, not even at a grade school level.
The material I have personally inspected coming from the 'climate science' (again, it really and truly is not science in any meaningful sense) community, is just fraught with error. I am personally of the opinion that we are recovering from the 'little ice age' and so overall temperatures are increasing slightly (as expected). However, their data is so badly compromised that it cannot reliably even support that unremarkable conclusion in their favor.
I invite readers to educate themselves on this important issue and use your own common sense. Anyone with a background in math, sciences, statistics or other technical disciplines is strongly encouraged to educate themselves and join the debate. The 'climate science' fraternity is bringing the entire scientific enterprise into disrepute. If you are a working scientist, you owe it to yourself to start repairing this dreadful intellectual and ethical breach.
Well said BT..... For the record I do have a science background.... Marine Science/ Biology.
The trouble with this "debate" is that labcoated flim-flam artists have worked very hard to co-opt the disciplines of science to now include scientific 'fact' being 'settled' via consensus, rather than the sceintific method itself. We all know that involves reproducable lab results, peer review, and using as much data and variables as possible, not cherry-picked information that fits into a model that answers the question they set out to confirm from the beginning of stating man is the problem, now let's get the right data to confirm this.
Being a conservationist that spend many countless hours in the great outdoors, for a great number of years, and earning recognition awards from both my peers and US Congress for my hard work at fostering love of our natural resources and wild treasures in future generations of sportsmen and women in NYS, I can assert with some authority that the changes being blamed on manmade global warming, or climate change, or whatever label the flim flam man decides best hides their baloney, just isn't so.
But we do know that history tells us these tricks and lies from the usual suspects have been going on for a long time. Every 20-30 years the tune changes after epic embarrassment on predictions made based on the "science of the day" being completely and utterly false, which at some point has to call into question the validity of the statements made to begin with, and the "science" used to underpin the embarrassingly wrong predictions themselves.
The planet is constantly changing, shifting, aging, renewing, etc., and life on Earth continually adapts to new conditions, changes, etc. If this weren't the case, life on Earth never, ever would have survived in ANY form.
But, money and power are wicked temptations, and greed of those hungry for money and power set the conditions for the ever-present plays on the ignorant, fueled by emotion (which helps shut down thought)
and catchy slogans, exaggerations and only a kernel of truth exists. Yet the stupid will lap up anyting that they FEEL is right. In this case, the flim flam man uses the very components of science itself as a smokescreen, miring the debate in banality of complex equations, new principles discovered, cleverly pitched observed dynamics, a plethora of minutia which masks the big picture and big question - if the science bandied about is accurate and reliable, then why so wrong on every single prediction made based on this self-proclaimed "accepted by general agreement" science of the day?
Hogwash, rubbish, balderdash, whatever you wish to call this heaping pile of bovine excrement...... The neds are more of your money out of your pocket to someone else who wants it, less freedom to use energy and prosper, more reliance upon a government made up of criminals and liars bent on controlling your every movement, from womb to tomb.
It is time we jettison these global warming nut cases, and get on with life, demand true science, and eliminate the temptation of easy gubmint money to pursue Don Quixote's giants to impress Dulcenea...
And this article speaks great volumes to this. A new emerging (and once someone can determine the manmade contributions of Creigees) threat to our planet will be the ongoing Texas Two Step employed by these zealots who care not one wit about th eplanet or the life thriving on this rock called Earth. Only interest is self-enrichment, and consolidation of more power over the people.
@doctariAFC2
Thanks for the awesome reply. One of the things that gives me hope is that educated people of all stripes are slowly coming out of the woodwork to say 'nu uh'.
The only reason I personally did not get vocal sooner is that I thought the entire thing was simply too laughable to take seriously. The fact that they managed hijack this debate so completely is partially a function of the fact that until this religious/political debate became menacing it was not really a debate. The alarmists were then, as they are now, just completely and hopelessly wrong.
Even if you use their own data, compromised as it is, it is crystal clear that the biological proxies they use are invalid. As a proxy for temperature, they don't even agree with themselves, let alone the rest of the physical universe. That is why the alarmists themselves invalidly grafted a second data set on to their graph and unethically elided the proxy data that did not support their argument. In fact, if you take whatever raw data they have left us, even damaged as it is the data itself refutes their argument.
How is someone trained in science supposed to respond to the assertion that it is OK to arbitrarily toss, a priori, data that does not conform to a hypothesis and then use the remaining data as support for the hypothesis? They continue to insist this is valid. Some are just villainous, but some of them honestly don't understand why. You just hit a brick wall.
Alarmists are utterly impervious to evidence and logical argument. They see what they wish and ignore anything that conflicts with their beliefs.
All we can do is continue to shine a light on them. Eventually, because they are opposed to most of humanity and empirically at odds with the universe, they will collapse.
Parting shot: I understand why using 'anomolies' is useful for analysis, but somebody should be producing graphs based at zero kelvin so that lay people can get an idea of the ridiculously tiny changes that the alarmists think are so dangerous.
"Evolution does not create seasonal changes in pelage, migration patterns, etc without a selective pressure. Evidence that we have these adaptations is evidence that those changes existed as selective pressures for a very long time."
Yes that's evidence of SEASONAL CHANGES. It's not evidence of MULTI-DEGREE global warming in a matter of centuries.
You write a dozen long paragraphs to hide the fact you can't address that point.
Venus is cloudy and 800 degrees. The problem with clouds is they blanket in heat. Venus is a good example, 800 degree surface.
The best thing to do is to have good albedo (non cloud reflectivity) and a lot of greenery, eg, planting grass on the roofs of buildings and homes. That would help.
But putting H2SO4 in the atmosphere? sounds like acid rain.
Take a look at the reviews of this excellent book that exposes the corruption in the IPCC
http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/
Here's one featured by Amazon:
"...shines a hard light on the rotten heart of the IPCC" - Richard Tol, Professor of the Economics of Climate Change and convening lead author of the IPCC
Take a look at the one-star reviews and the five-star reviews. You will find that the majority of the original alarmist reviewers did not even read the book. At least a few of them did not even read the blurb about the book and did not even know what the book was about.
Every where you drill down you will find the most scurrilous behavior on the part of the alarmists indulging nearly every logical fallacy known and at times just flat out lying.
Some of the alarmists are just plain mistaken, but more than a few of them are cynically promoting this cause not because they believe in it, but because they somehow gain from it.
The Climate Change Industry is ultimately about charging you for the right to exhale carbon dioxide. That's it in a nutshell. Nobody with half a brain who looks at this could possibly believe the alarmist narrative. It is stupid on its face, obviously self-serving and promoted by people demonstrably devoid of scruples.
Don't take my word for it. If you believe for a minute the Climate Alarm nonsense, you owe it to yourself to investigate and make an informed decision.
While James Lovelock recently abandoned the AGW bandwagon, he did this for reasons of the lack of recent observations that world temperatures are going up as per “Tipping Point Model” and as per “Hockey Stick Model”.
He should have had more faith in GAIA, his theory of our Earth behaving as a living organism which protects itself and all Life forms on it.
In fact, if the theory of “Criegee intermediates” proves to be solid, then it could be that our Earth (as GAIA) has at least this trick and maybe more up Her sleeve to keep Her climate moderate.
btrower, doctariAFC2
There is no such controversy in the scientific community about the sea level record or the ice core CO2 record. What you are doing is no different to how young earth creationists will cite a geologist or two who claim the geological record is flawed.
Ie you are presenting a minority, dare I say it crackpot, view. You are presenting a false controversy. All you have is these lone, little heard of "scientists" posting their often overly-politicized rants on blogs.
Sorry, but such people are usually wrong. Their existence doesn't mean the records are somehow in doubt and there is a controversy. Otherwise we would have to doubt the age of the Earth for all the young earth creationist "experts" who claim those records are wrong because they can cite some geologist crackpot who claims radiodating is flawed.
Here's a variety of high resolution ice core records of CO2 for the last 1000 years:
http://iter.rma.ac.be/en/img/CO2-concenNEW_EN.jpg
On the end we have the instrumental CO2 record recorded at Mauna Loa. I presume neither of you deny the instrumental record (although it wouldn't surprise me, you deny everything else)
Here's a longer view with longer ice core records:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/9/1/carbon-variations.gif
There is no controversy in the scientific community about the accuracy of the general picture these records paint: CO2 levels have risen sharply in the last few hundred years as a result of human emissions.
There's even evidence that the CO2 level is now the highest it's been for 15 million years
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/last-time-carbon-dioxide-levels-111074.aspx
Who is fighting mainstream science with scraping-the-barrel blogs? You and the creationists.
Who is claiming scientific records cannot be trusted? You and the creationists.
Who is citing unheard of "scientists" on blogs? You and the creationists.
Who is claiming wikipedia is biased? You and the creationists.
Who complains about the fact there is a scientific consensus? You and the creationists.
Who invokes conspiracies that the scientific community are faking all the data? You and the creationists.
@NomNomNom:
Executive Summary: The alarmist camp is asking you to hand over your wallet. The skeptics are asking you to hold on to it. If you judged this debate on that alone, you would be well served.
The alarmist camp, and the alarmist camp alone, has a burden of proof. It is not met by comparing opponents to people that presumably are disliked or disrespected. It is not met by calling people who disagree with you 'crackpots'. It is not met by bait and switch arguments whereby somehow rising CO2 rates, entirely a straw man in this instance, are presumed to be principally from human sources, catastrophically dangerous and (assuming they required it) remediable.
You need to prove all of the links in your chain and you need to do it so soundly that we are willing to collectively bet Trillions of dollars and millions of human lives. You are so far from the mark that it is difficult to hold a sensible discussion about it.
The alarmist burden of proof is not met by Ad Hominem, Ad Populum, Ad Verecundiam or Ad Misericordiam arguments.
Alarmist arguments always devolve into logical fallacies and name-calling is one of their 'go to' fallacies.
One of the logical fallacies indulged in by alarmists is particularly grating -- Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam. They can't think of any other mechanism than CO2, so it must be CO2. They cannot think of any other cause of CO2 increases than man-made ones, so CO2 increases must be man-made.
Unlike real scientists, 'Climate Scientists' go looking only for data that confirms their theories rather than exploring alternative explanations and looking for data that will falsify their theories. Lay people can be forgiven for misunderstanding this. A scientist cannot.
Like, dare I say it; 'creation scientists', 'climate scientists' already know their truth. They are interested only in experiments, no matter how tortured or at odds with reasonable inquiry, that confirm their truth. By their own admission, they consider data at odds with their theories inadmissible.
The work of 'Climate Scientists' is in dispute. You cannot resolve the dispute by asking the 'Climate Scientists' themselves whether or not they should be investigated further. All of the official Climategate investigations were whitewashes conducted essentially by the alarmist camp themselves. Lord Oxburgh's conflict of interest was particularly galling.
Consensus Science, as mentioned before, is an oxymoron. What you need is *lots and lots and lots* of hard data, data which is not in dispute, which has been reproduced by third parties and which is used then to form a sound argument. If all you have is an invalid poll showing that, after you select out *most* of the sample data, 97% of a subcategory of researchers whose livelihood depends upon a 'yes' answer answers 'yes', well ... you have nothing.
One of the pillars of modern scientific method is replication. The 'climate science' fraternity has fought replication tooth and claw. The only way skeptical investigators have been able to pry information out of the alarmist camp is by FOIA requests and these have been stonewalled at every turn. Information that should have taken minutes by Email has taken *years* to get. The eventual response to the requests invariably works to the disadvantage of the 'climate science' camp. This is why they fight so hard to avoid having a light shone on their activities.
The alarmists wish to dismiss the Climategate Emails. They are terrified that you might read them. Read them. Look into how the 'Climate Science' fraternity closed ranks to spin them. The Emails were released by a whistleblower with demonstrably more integrity than the alarmist camp. They insist on labeling the whistleblower as a criminal hacker and they wish to shift the argument away from looking at the substance and tone of the Emails themselves to a pointless argument as to the motivation and/or alleged criminality behind revealing them.
Alarmist arguments are a veritable rogue's gallery of logical fallacies. The fact that they continually trot these things out means either they do not understand why they are faulty or they are dishonest. It appears to be (more than) a little of both.
The alarmist camp has spent literally *billions* of dollars assembling their case and what they have to point to is this motley collection of suspect data and laughably flawed argument. With the entirety of the scientific establishment behind them and an astonishingly large budget they have come up with this evidence upon which they expect us to now spend literally *trillions* of dollars.
This would be funny if it did not have such nasty consequences. It is destroying wealth. It is damaging the house of science. It is teaching a generation of young people that flawed arguments are sound if you just believe hard enough or enough people believe the same thing.
There is a mountain of wealth being poured into the climate alarm industry. Thousands of researchers are being rewarded with publication as long as they can find an angle whereby it is "worse than we thought" or yet another thing can be blamed on Global Warming.
Alarmists 'evidence' of a theory is gathered by looking for confirming evidence and then throwing away anything that does not confirm the theory. The remaining evidence is used to 'prove' the theory. You really have to 'watch the pea' when dealing with a 'Climate Scientist'.
It is difficult to peer behind the smoke and mirrors of the alarmist narrative. However, I am sure that someone with reasonable intelligence who is persistent in pursuing specifics of the narrative will have a gut reaction that these guys are not to be trusted. Even if you cannot put a name to the fallacies or quite point to what is wrong with their math, you are sure to come away with a sense that the skeptics are the good guys and the alarmists are at best delusional.
You do not need to have or even understand the chemical breakdown or the biological genesis of noxious stimuli to smell bull****. If you investigate this debate for yourself, you will smell something that is just not right. Skeptics will ask you to follow the smell and trust your nose. Alarmists ask you to trust them instead and argue that unless you are a 'Climate Scientist' your nose cannot be trusted.
Trust your nose.
The burden of proof that man is increasing CO2 levels has been met.
The ice core records, instrumental records, emission histories, theory on how the carbon cycle behaves, isotopic measurements, all point to the same conclusion: CO2 level is rising sharply due to human emissions.
News this week that it's about to pass 400ppm (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/30/carbon-dioxide-400ppm). Proxy data showing the last time CO2 was this high was 15 million years ago.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm
This is the science. Denying such a basic fact of science doesn't exactly make you look reasonable. In fact it makes you look like one of those young earth creationists who try so hard to claim the age of the Earth is an unproven "assumption".
There is no way to sensibly respond to this post without seeming cruel. I will do my best to steer around that. Suffice it to say that what you believe is satisfactory evidence is not satisfactory at all. You mistake proving a largely tangential fact (your still poorly supported belief that humans are the principle driver of climate change) with proving the whole of the alarmist narrative.
Your burden, which I do not envy, is the proof of the entirety of the alarmist narrative from cause to cure. Unless it goes all the way to supporting the action item of me handing over my wallet, I will hold on to my wallet.
You *should* be able to point to literally billions of dollars of supporting research because that is what we have already spent. At least some of that research should be both relevant and sound.
The evidence (missing) above should prove your thesis. No such evidence exists. If it did, the alarmist camp would not be so quick to fondly shift their gaze from the realist skeptics to creationists as if creationists somehow held the keys to their missing evidence.
What you have provided is not science in any meaningful sense. I assume that you are sincere and you believe it is. Sadly, the sincerity of your belief in the alarmist narrative will not magically relieve you of the burden to prove it before I hand over my wallet. Similarly, your assumption that I am somehow unqualified to look at the evidence does not stand proxy for producing it.
I cannot see, in the light of what I know from scientists I trust, how the entirety of the alarmist narrative could possibly be true. It would unseat my personal experience in laboratories, hundreds of years of other science and millennia of logic. Still, I am an empiricist. I would accept the evidence if it were there. It is just not there. Given the money spent thus far there should be something on the order of a million pages or more of material. Where is it?
Betrand Russel created an analogy to illustrate our problem here -- Russell's Teapot. Your mystical assertion that the world is about to encounter an 'unprecedented' catastrophe, 'worse than we thought', demands proof from you, not from me. Your claim is extraordinary. My claim is perfectly ordinary -- that the climate will continue in a range for which millions of years of evolution has already prepared the living world.
I will not be coy here. I have done a lot of looking and all I find is nonsense or outright lies. Do 97% of scientists really agree with the alarmist narrative? Do the people saying this believe it? Could it possibly be true? If true, is it a substitute for evidence and sound argument? No, no, no and no. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to solve for 'will I hand over my wallet yet?' on their own. Hint: the best predictor of future performance is past performance.
Tim Horton's probably produces more and better evidence and argument to support marketing a new donut than the entirety of the multi-billion dollar climate industry produces to support their version of world domination.
I recommend you start here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
It's a rundown of the (overwhelming) evidence for the cause of the ongoing CO2 rise being human emissions. It's by a climate skeptic, so you needn't feel threatened.
You should approach the science objectively and with an open mind. You shouldn't just knee-jerk deny anything that can possibly be linked to man-made global warming.
If you accept the greenhouse effect, that man is increase CO2, that man will be driving global temperature changes over the next century, BUT you don't think we should do anything about it, then fine. That's an intellectually based position. But claiming there is no evidence for the greenhouse effect, or for the cause of the Co2 rise, is not an intellectually valid position.
Let me be clear about what I am objecting to. To me, the alarm narrative goes like this:
From a consensus of 'Climate Scientists', we know that our production of CO2 will lead to catastrophe. The only way to avoid that catastrophe is to provide more money to the Climate Change industry either through direct funding, subsidies for economically non-viable power generation or a scheme of fiat carbon credits whereby we decide how much money you have to pay to buy the right to exhale or otherwise generate CO2. Furthermore, the alarm narrative is from here on to be considered 'settled science', assumed as a matter of course in your children's text books and is no longer up for discussion. Despite the fact that the alarm narrative is considered 'solved', you must continue to direct a disproportionate amount of research funding to 'Climate Science'. When things we believe disagree with data, the data is assumed to be in error. From here on, this is what we mean by 'science'.
I object to handing over my wallet. I object to the oxymoronic 'consensus science'. It makes a mockery of the scientific method. I object to diverting funding to researchers I consider unproductive and operationally dishonest. I object to diverting funding to the Climate Change industry, because I think the money is much better spent elsewhere. I believe that at least some of the economic disruption caused by alarmists kills people and I object to that. I object to perverting our energy supply and crippling our power grid. I object to the notion that 'settled science' can and should be used to discourage inquiry, stifle criticism and shut down debate. I object to the overthrow of the empiricism upon which legitimate scientific inquiry depends. I strenuously object to stealthily indoctrinating my children in a faith based, anti-intellectual and authoritarian philosophy that makes it difficult or impossible to ever develop a bona-fide scientific world-view.
In fairness, it is conceivable that someone honest, reasonably educated and intelligent could be taken in by the alarmist camp. They have hijacked many of the forums we should be able to turn to, their narrative can be seductive, they are masters at sophistry and when all else fails, they just stretch the truth to the point of breaking. Unless you are persistent and dig a bit, it is not clear who is correct. People unfamiliar with this debate and the underlying scientific and philosophical dispute could be swayed by either side.
I assume that you personally are sincere. However, your evidence *and* your arguments are entirely insufficient. I keep seeing stuff like your reference to CO2 and human emissions and I despair. Even if it were proven, it is largely irrelevant. To prove something you need to provide that which is necessary and also that which is sufficient. What you have on offer is neither. It hardly even points the *way* to a reasonable case for alarm.
Proof that you have a mammal is not proof you have a cat. You are being asked to prove the entirety of the alarmist narrative, not that CO2 concentration is largely anthropogenic.
What you believe is overwhelming evidence supporting your conclusion is weak evidence that indicates that we *might* be the principal cause of rising CO2 concentrations. It does not come close to proving what you think it does and the thesis that we are the primary net cause of CO2 increases could well be wrong and still be consistent with the evidence you provide. Your evidence, at least some of which is good enough to accept as evidence, does not support your conclusion much more than calling your critics names supports your conclusion. At the level of this conversation this contention is either a straw man or a red herring. Despite the frailty of your evidence, I will agree, Arguendo if you please, that we are the major source of the CO2 increase we see. It comes nowhere close to proving the global warming narrative that the CO2 increase is catastrophic and remediable at a reasonable cost.
The source of the CO2 is not the issue. The issue is whether or not it presents a credible danger and, if so, whether or not the cost of remediation is less than the cost of non-remediation. Both of those have to be true and neither of them is very likely at all. To accept those propositions you have to reject significant patches of human understanding and expertise.
The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming narrative is a matter of faith much more than it is a matter of reasoned discourse. I freely admit that it has many followers, but the number of followers cannot make it correct. I am prepared to accept that your faith in it is genuine as is your faith in the alleged 'facts' that are alleged to support it. Your faith cannot bring give wings to the zombie corpse of the alarm narrative. It is a dead parrot.
The evidence of which I am aware that I trust tells me that CO2 *follows* temperature, that CO2 increases in concentration will continue to be net positive for the biosphere and that increases in temperature (at levels we might reasonably expect) are similarly net positive for the biosphere. The evidence of which I am aware shows that support for the alarm narrative hurts people. In fact, I know that it affects my own family directly. The evidence of which I am aware shows that most of the progenitors of the alarm narrative gain financially if and only if an alarm narrative is kept in play. That is why we see all the 'worse than we thought' -- 'global warming causes hiccups' nonsense that keeps getting published. The evidence of which I am aware shows that skeptics do *not* gain financially from taking the alarm narrative out of play and some even take a financial hit.
It is patently dishonest to present the entirety of the alarmist narrative as a majority view unopposed by credible critics. Why would that 97% thing, ridiculous on its face and even worse upon inspection, keep cropping up like a bad penny? Why would alarmist supporters constantly return to the invalid argument that somehow a consensus provides important support for their point of view?
The catastrophic climate change narrative is not viable as a scientific theory. It simply fails in too many ways in too many places. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, *unscientific*. To resurrect it you need so much more than you appear to think is sufficient that we are coming from positions that look incommensurate. Before we collectively spend thousands of billions of dollars, we need evidence much more clear, comprehensive and certain than alarmists have provided. From my current understanding of science, it is very unlikely that we will get that evidence. Alarmists claim they already have it, but they are perennially unable to actually produce it.
Alarmist 'scientists' seem constitutionally incapable of understanding the fundamentals of data collection, analysis, publication, retention and sharing. They do not honor the fundamentals of experimental replication. They cannot distinguish properly between correlation and causality. They torture noisy data until it gives them the answer they are looking for. They improperly tamper with data. They improperly choose partial sets of data so that only those sets that confirm their theories remain. They misunderstand the construction of valid reasoning. They are demonstrably dishonest and in many instances also demonstrably unable to understand the difference between honest discourse and dishonest discourse.
Alarmists have a very clear burden of proof. It is very clearly unmet. No matter what anyone says, alarmists simply will not stump up the evidence and argument they have been asked for. They prefer to slide off into a wacky menagerie of fallacious arguments. Rather than address the argument, they prefer to address their critics as if somehow a failing of any kind in their critics constitutes additional evidence in favor of their theories. They keep circling about as if it is incumbent upon the null hypothesis side of the argument to provide theories for why the empirical status-quo will remain as it always has and to essentially prove that Russell's Teapot does not exist.
Below is a discussion of the kind of thing that helps point the way to what I see as being a more productive conversation. Unlike the current alarmist narrative: (1) It is predictive and falsifiable (2) It just uses real, raw, uncontroversial data, math and reasonable logical argument. (3) It is incontrovertibly scientific. (4) It predicts future *cooling*.
It is hardly complete, but it is already better supported, more logically coherent and most importantly more *predictive* than anything on offer from the alarmist camp. Like most reasonable people would expect, our eons old climate ebbs and flows in fairly regular cycles. I have seen a similar treatment elsewhere and for people who understand cycles and Fourier transforms, it is a sane form of analysis that would likely occur to them independently.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/fourier-analysis-reveals-six-natural-cycles-no-man-made-effect-predicts-cooling/ **
**Note re 'blog references': I use them because they are easy to find with Google, convenient and because they are sources I have reasonable confidence trusting for these purposes. They generally refer to sources I trust. They also specifically address the various failed alarmist arguments with sound reasoning, data and references. I am quite certain that you can proceed from any link I provide to see the rationale supporting the argument and even in many cases links to fair expositions of the alarmist side. I specifically do *not* go to Wikipedia for anything controversial about climate because there is a very committed cadre of individuals who monitor and spin all the climate related articles.
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