Climate Change & Global Warming

[crofter]

were there grapes in greenland a thousand years ago.

No there weren't. There were probably grapes in Vinland, given the name, but no one is exactly sure where that is. Maybe Newfoundland, maybe a bit further south. Grapes did not grow in Greenland.

 

I think the vikings struggled to grow barley in Greenland. There is some debate as to whether they managed it at all. They had a real struggle keeping their cattle alive through the winters.

[Evil Inky]

^^^^

But the point is that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 40%, then its warming effect will have increased by a similar amount. It is well established that the Earth would be much cooler if there were NO carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading me ( and most climate scientists ) to the conclusion that an increase of this magnitude is something to be concerned about.

[crofter]

^^^^

But the point is that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 40%, then its warming effect will have increased by a similar amount.

 

Only if the forcing effect of co2 is a linear function of the concentration of co2.

[crofter]

This is interesting...

 

Hungarian Physicist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi proves CO2 emissions irrelevant in Earth’s Climate

 

As long as the sun’s activity is the “business-as-usual†fluctuations and there is water on Earth, CO2 cannot cause or increase global warming.

“Earth type planetary atmospheres, having partial cloud cover and sufficient reservoir of water; maintain an energetically uniquely determined, constant, maximized greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by emissions. The greenhouse temperature must fluctuate around this theoretical equilibrium constant; [change] is possible only if the incoming available energy changes.â€

 

Dr. Miskolczi first published his work in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Services in 2004, Volume 108, No 4. He published further statistical proof in the same Journal in 2007, Volume 111, No. 1. In the 5 years since he first published his results, not one peer review has come back disproving his theory, or his Constant. To date, not one scientist has come forward to disprove Miskolczi’s theory that the Earth’s climate is at equilibrium, and that Carbon Dioxide cannot be released in amounts great enough to upset that equilibrium.

 

The conclusion is that, since the Earth's temperature does not depend on on our CO2 emissions in any way, trying to limit our emissions is bound to be entirely ineffective in protecting the climate from warming.

 

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d12-Hungarian-Physicist-Dr-Ferenc-Miskolczi-proves-CO2-emissions-irrelevant-in-Earths-Climate

[ArabiaTerra]

^^^ Ok then, Crofter. Why is it getting warmer then? If the climate is at equilibrium, then the cooling of the sun since 1970 should have led to cooling since 1970. It didn't. So the theory is disproved by reality. Sorry.

But the great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact ~ T.H. Huxley

[ArabiaTerra]

A list of global warming books I found somewhere else, if anyone's interested:

 

* The Discovery of Global Warming, Spencer Weart

 

* Storms Of My Grandchildren, Jim Hansen

 

* Science As A Contact Sport, Stephen H. Schneider

 

* Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, Mark Lynas

 

* High Tide, Mark Lynas

 

* Hell And High Water, Joe Romm

 

* Under A Green Sky, Peter Ward

 

* The Two-Mile Time Machine, Richard Alley

 

* What's the Worst That Could Happen, Greg Craven

 

* The Tree Rings' Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate, John Fleck

 

* The Weather Makers: The History & Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery

 

* Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, Elizabeth Kolbert

 

* The Great Warming, Brian Fagan

 

* The Little Ice age, Brian Fagan

 

* The Long Summer, Brian Fagan

 

* Fish On Friday, Brian Fagan

 

* The Ice Finders, Edmund Blair Bolles

 

* The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change, David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf

 

* Our Threatened Oceans, Stefan Rahmstorf and K. Richardson

 

* Climate Change: Picturing the Science, Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe

 

* The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate, David Archer

 

* Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, Michael Mann and Lee Kump, DK/Pearson

 

* Global warming: Understanding the Forecast, David Archer

 

* Solar Activity and Earth’s Climate, Rasmus Benestad

[crofter]

^^^ Ok then, Crofter. Why is it getting warmer then? If the climate is at equilibrium, then the cooling of the sun since 1970 should have led to cooling since 1970. It didn't. So the theory is disproved by reality. Sorry.

 

I agree with you (for once). Climate history also suggests there is no equilibrium, unless perhaps over very long timescales with large variations in temperature(!) But it is interesting to consider both extremes. I like your quote:

 

But the great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact ~ T.H. Huxley

 

If the world continues to cool down, it will be applicable to AGW theory as well

[Evil Inky]

^^^^

But the point is that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 40%, then its warming effect will have increased by a similar amount.

 

Only if the forcing effect of co2 is a linear function of the concentration of co2.

 

Granted, it was a bit of an oversimplification

[DamnSaxon]

Well, I've had a scan of those links you posted, AT, ahead of seeing my mate later today. All very jolly, but no cigar. They're all just on the detail that things appear to be warming up overall, but what we're looking for is the proof of the core of the AGW religion - i.e. that any increase is mainly due to human-generated greenhouse gases.

 

Nice to note crofter's mention of Miskolczi's work - if he's right (and he does seem to have done some serious work on it), then there is literally no reason to worry about humanity's emissions at all - except that it shows what generally filthy creatures we are, of course, but then we knew that already. I do agree with Miskolczi that, overall, the climate systems generally stabilise themselves - if they didn't, Earth would have gone the way of Venus or Mars aeons ago.

 

As for the sun cooling since 1970, there was the finding by Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute in 2004 that the sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years, and indeed is in a state of unusually high activity for about the last 60 years ... which would seem to point in exactly the opposite direction. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years now the Sun has (at last) started to show a few spots again - the next maximum being due in 2012, just in time to knock out the communications satellites for the London Olympics.

 

Dunno about anyone else, but I find that the more stuff I read about the energetics of our little planet and its neighbours, the less I feel I know. The whole business seems so darn complicated that the only sure thing is that simplistic economic solutions like taxing the hell out of us all to "fight global warming" can't be the answer. All that is ever going to do is invent yet another big-money market to enrich the already obscenely rich at the expense of the rest of us.

[ArabiaTerra]

Well, I've had a scan of those links you posted, AT, ahead of seeing my mate later today. All very jolly, but no cigar. They're all just on the detail that things appear to be warming up overall, but what we're looking for is the proof of the core of the AGW religion - i.e. that any increase is mainly due to human-generated greenhouse gases.

You seem to be setting an unreasonably high burden of proof here, DS. The amount of radiation from the Sun has been constant or even dropping slightly in the last 20-30 years. The infra-red radiation from the Earth has dropped substantially during the same period and spectroscopy has revealed that the drop has occurred in the wavelengths associated, mainly, with CO2 and other greenhouse gasses indicating that it is the greenhouse gasses that are doing the absorbing. Finally, we know that the extra greenhouse CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels because the isotope measurements of the carbon in the CO2 match that which would be expected if that were the case.

 

Oh, and the amount of warming observed matches that which would be expected if Anthropogenic CO2 were the cause.

 

Seems pretty open and shut to me.

Nice to note crofter's mention of Miskolczi's work - if he's right (and he does seem to have done some serious work on it), then there is literally no reason to worry about humanity's emissions at all

But he's not right. The Earth is not in equilibrium. If it were, there would be no warming. Miskolczi is proposing water vapour as a mechanism for a negative feedback to control the Earth's temperature. Water vapour is indeed a feedback, but it is not known yet whether it will be positive or negative, but the weight of evidence seems to point to it being a positive feedback, which will make the warming worse. The critical point in regards to Miskolczi is that water vapour reacts to changes in temperature in real time. This means that the warming we have already seen would not have happened if Miskolczi were right. This means he is wrong, disproved by reality.

As for the sun cooling since 1970, there was the finding by Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute in 2004 that the sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years, and indeed is in a state of unusually high activity for about the last 60 years

Yes, and a quick look at the links you gave reveals these quotes:

They come to the conclusion that the variations on the Sun run parallel to climate changes for most of that time, indicating that the Sun has indeed influenced the climate in the past. Just how large this influence is, is subject to further investigation. However, it is also clear that since about 1980, while the total solar radiation, its ultraviolet component, and the cosmic ray intensity all exhibit the 11-year solar periodicity, there has otherwise been no significant increase in their values. In contrast, the Earth has warmed up considerably within this time period. This means that the Sun is not the cause of the present global warming.

and:

"... the significant increase in the Earth’s temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide," says Prof. Sami K. Solanki, solar physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

You are telling me that you don't know where the warming is coming from, yet you are quoting scientists who are saying, quite emphatically, that the warming is coming from the rise in CO2. The isotope work shows the extra CO2 is from fossil fuels.

 

What more do you need?

 

I think you're just being stubborn.

[Njugle]

A news site[/url]"]The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) have been worried lately because global warming has ceased to be for the past 10 years. In fact, there is compelling evidence that the planet has actually been cooling over this time. Now, however, scientists say there is early, but encouraging evidence that this year's Up-Helly-Aa has re-started global warming.

 

Brief light relief.

[Gorgonzola Butt-cheese]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw

[DamnSaxon]

You seem to be setting an unreasonably high burden of proof here, DS.

Eh? I thought the whole "mankind's emissions are causing global warming" argument was based on the notion that, er, mankind's emissions are causing global warming. It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask for proof that it is, indeed, our emissions that are causing the warming, under the circs. (And, as mentioned, it's not actually my £100 that's on offer, although I agree with my mate that it would be nice, not to say essential to accepting the AGW position, to see a proper proof of that particular article of faith.)

 

'Twas also a wee bit surprising to come across Prof. Jones himself saying that there has been no global warming since 1995 yesterday. (Ohh, I hate having to quote the Mail ... ... it's nearly as uncomfortable-making as finding oneself in the same camp as Margaret Thatcher's science adviser ... ... but there you go.)

 

Oh, and the amount of warming observed matches that which would be expected if Anthropogenic CO2 were the cause.

 

Seems pretty open and shut to me.

... None since 1995? Well, I'd have to agree with you there, then.

 

Re water vapour feedback, I would deny absolutely that the weight of evidence points to it being a positive feedback agent - or at least, if it is, there is something much stronger acting as a negative feedback. My evidence for saying that is simply that, were the overall feedback positive, the climate system would have banged itself up to maximum (or down to minimum) long since, simply because that's what positive feedback does to a system. It either drives the output to one or the other extreme, or it makes the system oscillate. (I may not be a climate whiz, but in years of professional and amateur experience with electronics I have had the dubious "pleasure" of becoming pretty familiar with feedback.)

 

There's presumably some positive feedback working over a timescale of about 100,000 years, of course, as the Earth does oscillate between ice age and interglacial at roughly that rate, but if that's the positive feedback we're talking about then it's about to plunge us into the next ice age, which is somewhat overdue anyhow ... now that is something worth worrying about, given the fragile nature of our life-support systems and the size of the Earth's human population.

 

As for Solanki, his claim that the Sun is in an unusually active state for the last 60 years isn't incompatible with the lack of its variation (about that hot state) over the last 30 years whilst the Earth warms up - if it's unusually hot, then you'd expect the Earth to warm up, as the rest of the solar system seems to have been doing also. Why only the latter 30 years warming but not the previous 30? - The effect of the decadal ocean cycles, perhaps?

 

And I can't accept anyone just saying baldly that the (alleged) increase is "caused" by human greenhouse effect without some proof that human greenhouse effect is causing the warming - which is exactly the proof we're looking for. I don't care who says, however emphatically, that it's happening - where's the proof

 

Oh, and I see in the Reg today that the IPCC has got it wrong about hurricanes, too. Come on man, admit it, the whole AGW thing's falling apart at the seams!

 

Which isn't to say that the Earth / life as we know it / whatever isn't going to fall apart at the seams, of course, just that I still see no reason at all to attribute it to the human race's filthy ways.

[Carlos]

'Twas also a wee bit surprising to come across Prof. Jones himself saying that there has been no global warming since 1995 yesterday. (Ohh, I hate having to quote the Mail ...

I think this is the source interview for that story, and gives a fuller picture of his views.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm

[Skunnered]

^^Re: DamnSaxon above: Considering the £billions, or rather hundreds of £billions that's likely to be spent all over the world trying to cut CO2 emissions, and the colossal damage that would be done to industry and the global economy by doing so, not to mention the damage to the poor countries, I think it's not unreasonable to ask for such proof, or certainly a clearer explanation (or proper consensus, even!) than we have been given thus far.