Global Warming is not Anthropogenic

[Meksilon]

If anyone would like to debate me on this, here is your opportunity.

Here are the facts.

Human activity has contributed to the rise in CO2 levels over the last 150 years or so. This increase, however, is also somewhat attributed to nature as the ocean is no longer "absorbing" as much CO2.

CO2 is the "largest" of the minor greenhouse gases; the only major greenhouse gas is H2O. Let me qualify what I mean when I say "largest". It has a greater "warming" effect than any other minor GHG.

Most GHG's absorb solar radiation that is reflected from the earth on its way back out to space. O3 is an exception, where it absorbs UV radiation on its way in to Earth. Even though the O3 layer is so thin it actually absorbs the vast majority of the radiation that it is capable of absorbing. Just like O3, CO2 absorbs the vast majority of the radiation that it is capable of absorbing. So atmospheric increases can only absorb a tiny amount more since the majority is already absorbed.

The most sophisticated climate modelling in the world attributing the rise in temperature to greenhouse activity contributes 47% of it to the CO2 increase (NASA); in fact NASA has been telling us that Methane and Black Carbon are large contributors for well over a decade. It most certainly is not 100% CO2 according to any serious climatologist.

We're still coming out of an ice-age; temperatures should be rising some amount anyway.

There is strong evidence that in the Medieval Warm Period temperatures rose as swiftly as they are presently and achieved a substantially higher global mean temperature then is at present; especially evidenced by the world's melting glacier's which have not yet retreated to MWP levels, and the fact that Viking remains (land cultivation, graves, etc) from the MWP remain under permafrost on Greenland to this day.

I'm a "global warming sceptic". And like most GWS's, I believe that CO2 has increased temperatures over the past 100 years, we (sceptics) all do. Yes, that's right, we believe the same thing that most global-warming alarmist climate scientists do. Only difference is I believe CO2 to be responsible for between 10-30% of the trend (most likely about 15%); whereas your climate alarmists generally believe it's anything from 40%-100%. NASA's scientists seem to think it's about 47%, and politicians like Al Gore like to say it's 100% and "truth".

If you want to have a good-faith discussion please reply. Please don't troll, I've studied the science and followed it for about 7-8 years, and my favourite climatologist is Richard Lindzen, a well-respected "mainstream" climatologist who contributed to the IPCC papers and shares the same view that I do as to CO2's role in climate change.

[Peo]

Scientists present their case in peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals. Conspiracy nuts present their case to random people on a free webhosting forum.

[ace2010]

Scientists present their case in peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals. Conspiracy nuts present their case to random people on a free webhosting forum.

hahaha
good point

[Meksilon]

Scientists present their case in peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals. Conspiracy nuts present their case to random people on a free webhosting forum.

I couldn't agree more, especially with the E-Cat scam. This is why anyone can clearly see there is no tangible science behind this, because the "evidence" for Anthropogenic Global Warming is purely based on computer modelling; and that isn't real science. It's certainly not peer-review. Try finding a scientific paper within the last 10 years discussing exactly how much effect the GHE has on the environment, or exactly how much effect individual GHG's have. They're pretty scarce because scientists don't have a confident opinion on it, and it's difficult to measure.

But also, the onus of proof isn't on me. I can't prove a negative that's impossible. The onus of proof is on the climate scientist making alarmist claims.

To quote Ivar Giaever:

Dear Ms. Kirby

Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period.

Best regards,

Ivar Giaever

Nobel Laureate 1973


PS. I included a copy to a few people in case they feel like using the information.

That's his full email of resignation to the APS. You can see the policy he's talking about here.

By the way, I have a history of being correct. I said quasars are not as far away as their redshift tells us while the scientific consensus was still that quasars are giant, distant, galactic objects. The consensus is now, surprise surprise, that they are not so far away. This violates a "scientific law", ie Hubble's Law. Why they (Hubble?) insisted it was a law and not a theory I have no idea, but Hubble's Law basically states that all galactic redshift is cosmological in origin; we now know that for quasars this is not the case, and their redshift does not indicate their position in space. In 2004 and again in 2005 on several forums I challenged anyone to prove to me that the quasar embedded in galaxy NGC 7319 is really "behind it". No one rose to the challenge. But they were pretty sure I was wrong and that I'm a crack-pot. The official line from NASA at the time was that it was due to gravitational lensing (despite it shining through an opaque area of the galaxy). NASA, and everyone else now think that quasars are actually embedded in galaxies and are not ancient far-distant objects. If you do a search on NASA you'll probably find the defunct article.

[Ben]

There is strong evidence that in the Medieval Warm Period temperatures rose as swiftly as they are presently and achieved a substantially higher global mean temperature then is at present; especially evidenced by the world's melting glacier's which have not yet retreated to MWP levels, and the fact that Viking remains (land cultivation, graves, etc) from the MWP remain under permafrost on Greenland to this day.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5957/1256

The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally.

[Meksilon]

That's a hockey stick graph (a simple exercise in data mining). How do I know instrumental data wouldn't have shown the same for the MWP? I don't. Therefore, you shouldn't use it.

Here's another graph:



The same graph is also on Wikipedia. Would it have some effect on Temperature? Well it should. Maybe not enough to account for the full trend, but certainly enough to not leave "everything" to the GHG. BTW, what do you think caused the MWP?

[Ben]

So you completely ignored that a study by faculty from several universities found the Medieval Warm Period was cooler on a global level than now, which negates a major point in your original post. As far as the rest, I don't really care; whether global warming is anthropogenic or natural is completely irrelevant; nothing's going to change. If it's anthropogenic, we're all going to keep doing the same ---- and the world's going to get hotter. If it's natural, we're all going to keep doing the same ---- and the world's going to get hotter. A narcissistic show of internet chest-beating is completely unnecessary; especially on a forum where everybody knows you're an -------. We all know you're a conspiracy nut. ----, we even tried to get you your own subforum created at one time so you could rap away at your keyboard and we wouldn't have to look at it.

As Peo said, you are a random nut on a forum trying to contradict scientific studies. You are not a climate scientist. Smoke a bowl, drink some beer, barbecue some burgers, and ----ing get over yourself. Or at least keep yourself occupied over at Alex Jones' web sites.

Do you still believe in magic sky people?

Here, I'll quote the study for you to make it easier:

Science 27 November 2009:
Vol. 326 no. 5957 pp. 1256-1260
DOI: 10.1126/science.1177303

Report

Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly

Michael E. Mann1,*,
Zhihua Zhang1,
Scott Rutherford2,
Raymond S. Bradley3,
Malcolm K. Hughes4,
Drew Shindell5,
Caspar Ammann6,
Greg Faluvegi5 and
Fenbiao Ni4

1Department of Meteorology and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
2Department of Environmental Science, Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI 02809, USA.
3Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003–9298, USA.
4Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
5NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA.
6Climate Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO 80305, USA.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mann{at}meteo.psu.edu

Abstract

Global temperatures are known to have varied over the past 1500 years, but the spatial patterns have remained poorly defined. We used a global climate proxy network to reconstruct surface temperature patterns over this interval. The Medieval period is found to display warmth that matches or exceeds that of the past decade in some regions, but which falls well below recent levels globally. This period is marked by a tendency for La Niña–like conditions in the tropical Pacific. The coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age are observed over the interval 1400 to 1700 C.E., with greatest cooling over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere continents. The patterns of temperature change imply dynamical responses of climate to natural radiative forcing changes involving El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation–Arctic Oscillation.

Are you a professor at Penn State, Roger Williams, U Mass, U Arizona, or ----ing NASA? Obviously not. Now go spam another forum about this. Maybe try and link the global warming conspiracy to FEMA death camps or something.

[Seraphim]

Well let me present to you the one little fact that breaks any hope of proving with certainty if global warming has anything to do with human activity or not.

Thermometers accurate to within 5 degrees F have only been available for perhaps 100 years at most, with many areas not having access to them until only 50-70 years ago.

As such, any records older than perhaps the 1950s cannot be reliably trusted for accuracy. And any temperatures presented older than about 1700 or so are estimates based entirely on geological and historical evidence. They are not actual measurements of the temperature at those times, as no insturments capable of measuring that existed or were in widespread circulation.

Same thing with the solar irradiance chart. Up until the 1900s, they had no reliable methods of measuring solar irradiance, and would have had to dervive those numbers based on surviving evidence- which could easily have been incorrectly interpreted or could have been altered by the passage of time.

Altogether, there is NOT ENOUGH RELIABLE EVIDENCE TO PROVE OR DISPROVE THE THEORY. The historical evidence suggests cycle times on order of thousands of years. Because we do not have reliable evidence of similar age, all of the current conclusions are based on comparing estimates of historical conditions to present day measurements- which may not match exactly.

However, I have noticed a very interesting phenomena as of the past few years. Last week it was over 80F out, hottest temperature on record for April. Today? I woke up to 6" of snow.

Earth is an abnormality in space. We maintain a roughly constant surface temperature, with typical day/night cycles of no more than 10F swing and weekly highs/lows usually within 20F of each other. An entire year has only about 75F of temperature variation for most regions. Other planets? The moon's temperature is reported to go from over 500F to below 0F in a matter of minutes depending on if it is exposed to sunlight or not. Other planets that we have landed objects on to take measurements report similar findings- when they are hot they are extremely hot, and when they are cold they are extremely cold.

What I am seeing here is a situation where whatever has been changing in our atmosphere- be it something we were involved in, or something completely natural, it is causing a rapid increase in the Delta T- the difference between when it is hot and when it is cold, and the maximum rate of temperature change has shifted. This also produces more energetic storm systems, as evidenced by storm after storm of record-setting intensity.

[Ben]

I just remembered a smiley I made some time ago that was added to the official smiley list here at FWS

[Meksilon]

So you completely ignored that a study by faculty from several universities found the Medieval Warm Period was cooler on a global level than now, which negates a major point in your original post.

Not completely, no. I'm ignoring the instrumental data tacked onto the end of the graph. As for the rest of your post it doesn't deserve a response.

Well let me present to you the one little fact that breaks any hope of proving with certainty if global warming has anything to do with human activity or not.

Thermometers accurate to within 5 degrees F have only been available for perhaps 100 years at most, with many areas not having access to them until only 50-70 years ago.

Regardless, tacking the instrumental data onto the end of the graph is wrong. Al Gore, in "Inconvenient Truth" uses nothing but Antarctic Ice core data to measure GLOBAL historical temperature, and then tacks on instrumental data for the 20th century.

Same thing with the solar irradiance chart. Up until the 1900s, they had no reliable methods of measuring solar irradiance, and would have had to dervive those numbers based on surviving evidence- which could easily have been incorrectly interpreted or could have been altered by the passage of time.

Incorrect. The data is very reliable back to about 1700 or so. The graph I used goes back as far as 1611; the measurements for the 17th century are still reliable enough, but are not from so many different sources, etc, that the 18th and later century’s are. One thing that proves the data is pretty good is the fact that you can clearly see the 10-year cycle.

Altogether, there is NOT ENOUGH RELIABLE EVIDENCE TO PROVE OR DISPROVE THE THEORY. The historical evidence suggests cycle times on order of thousands of years. Because we do not have reliable evidence of similar age, all of the current conclusions are based on comparing estimates of historical conditions to present day measurements- which may not match exactly.

Sceptics don't need to PROVE anything, you can't prove a negative. Do you know how long we believed that the Egyptian pyramids were built by slaves for? About 2,000 years. And on what evidence did we believe this? One single piece of writing by a Greek historian written some 2,000 years after the last of the pyramids were built. You think sceptics could prove a negative? Of course not, but no one said they had to believe it, and so many theories were out there, until eventually we dug up the graves of the Egyptian workers who built the pyramids. Same with climate, I don't care whether or not I can prove what it's attributed to, the question for me is this: is the evidence for anthropogenic change sufficient, and I think not.

I just remembered a smiley I made some time ago that was added to the official smiley list here at FWS

Oh, get out of my thread! Go bother someone else. Did I somehow force you to start posting nonsense in my thread? No. Go away.

You couldn't even answer my question. The general consensus is that it was probably an increase in solar activity at the time. Something that is automatically discounted from the possibility of this tend despite the graph I showed you.

BTW, as for Michael Mann and his sea level rises:



When was the last time it WASN'T rising??

[Peo]

I've studied the science

You've "studied the science"? Ok, let's find out what that means. At what university? For how many years did you study climate science at the university? What degree do you have within this field of science? Any post-doctoral research? Have you published any research in a peer-reviewed scientific journal about climate science?

[Ben]

Here you go Meksi: http://www.infowars.com/

There you can talk about how the climate change conspiracy was orchestrated by the Bilderberg group as part of a plot to secure the future of a Neo-Green-Marxist New World Order designed to send every single person in the world to FEMA death camps for mass extermination while the Reptilian overlords lead us into a free market paradise where Ron Paul is the second coming of Christ

You'll fit right in with that crowd

[Meksilon]

You've "studied the science"? Ok, let's find out what that means. At what university? For how many years did you study climate science at the university? What degree do you have within this field of science? Any post-doctoral research? Have you published any research in a peer-reviewed scientific journal about climate science?

No, however I've debated successfully against friends of mine who studied it at length at university. My favourite question is this: given CO2 already absorbs the vast majority of the solar radiation in the wavelength that it absorbs - and remembering that even O3, thin though the O3 layer is, also successfully absorbs the vast majority of the UV solar radiation in the wavelength that it absorbs, what tangible evidence is there that CO2 will continue to have a greater greenhouse effect on the environment, when it already absorbs "almost all" of its solar radiation already? It's my favourite because it's original research, I didn't copy others and just ask the same questions that they ask like what you see with the alarmist crowd.

Serious sceptical scientists aren't so much interested in that particular point, they're more interested in what evidence there is, or isn't, for positive-forcing from water vapour.

And just recently I watched Lateline the other night with Michael Mann rattling on about how "sea levels are rising because of global warming", and defending his hockeystick graph. It's actually pretty slick if you listen to him "well the tree ring data is accurate up to a certain point..." Which of course is nonsense, it's not even a consensus view or anything, it's just something that climate alarmists like to say and then they'll hide behind the so-called consensus that they have. Given the "scientific consensus" is purely politically based, influenced by active politicians and put in place by a political body, the IPCC, if you come to me and tell me you are a qualified active climate scientist and try to tell me that the GHG is driving climate change, I'll say almost exactly what you said Peo, except like this: Well what qualifications do you have regarding politics, because this isn't really a scientific issue?

Yes I have an answer to that too, I am a member of a political party and I've read many of the climategate emails (they're still sitting on my PC); so I know when Mann says things like "well they took that out of context" I know it's untrue because I read all the other emails leading up to it. Even if I agree that "Mike's Nature trick" was potentially taken out of context, there's still way more in there. They talk about threatening scientific journals if they publish "sceptic's work" and also talk about what to do about the journals currently publishing "sceptical" peer-review-papers: "we'll just say that we don't read those papers because they're not really peer-review", etc. They clearly talk about manipulating the evidence. Cheerypicking. Also, peer-review is way overrated anyway. You think Einstein ever posted a single peer-review paper? Well he did actually, he wrote about 300 scientific papers, but he only sent ONE that we know about to peer-review. And he couldn't even say he was qualified since he couldn't even get an academic position and was a clerk for the patent office, well at least at the time that he came up with his most significant work anyway.

Science advances by falsification. So peer-review is not helpful if you're trying to stop people from falsifying current theories, then you're just essentially stagnating science from advancement or development or any real positive future.

[stuffradio]

I read weather data, weather discussion, models, graphs, etc. every day for hours. I'm not knowledgeable enough one way or another to debate for or against though. I'm a skeptic until I can understand what Scientists believe and why they believe what they believe.

Let's all pretend though that GW is caused by man. We aren't going to do anything about it. Even if we started doing something about it, it would probably take centuries to get some results.

[Seraphim]

It is amazing how the people who are the most vocal about global warming also happen to be the same people with the largest individual carbon footprint- be it a large fancy house, an exotic fuel-wasting vehicle, or something else.

Of course there excuse is "Oh I buy carbon credits."

So? That still doesn't excuse the fact that America contains only a fraction of the world's population, yet produces a vast majority of CO2 released every year.

The only way that is going to change is a combination of government and economic forces teaming up to trigger a lifestyle change.

Because in these parts at least, you essentially can't earn a living without owning a car or having a reliable friend who happens to be going the same way.