Extreme is the New Normal

[Kim OHara]

Can you direct us to references which show the actual errors in trend measurements due to these effects?
(Note to everyone else: please refrain from supplying them. It would be good for Poto to find them for himself.) (I am, unfortunately, a teacher first and last.)

Kim

OK, I'm not nearly as invested in this issue as you are. So, I'm not going to waste my time on a data scavenger hunt just to have you dismiss it anyway. I have more productive things I should be doing, like working or spending more time sitting.

You don't seem to understand that as the person screaming FIRE, you have the burden of proof.

Poto,
You are the one who is making extreme claims, by contradicting the global consensus of expert scientific opinion. If I were claiming the Earth is flat, sure, then I would face the burden of proof. But you're the one doing that, so it's up to you to back up your claim.
If it is something you know, you shouldn't have to go on "scavenger hunt" - you should know how you know it. If it's something you just think you know, finding out the truth will extend or correct your vague knowledge.
And I assure you that if you come up with "references which show the actual errors in trend measurements due to these effects", which is what I asked for, I won't dismiss them. If they are up to date and drawn from peer-reviewed literature, I will congratulate you; if they are not, I will direct you to more recent, reputable studies.
Over to you!

Kim

[Kim OHara]

Large storms more likely in future, experts say
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011 ... 138441.htm

Kim

[Alex123]

Kim, so what? Climate was changing for 4.5 billion of years. The temperature has been going up and down without any influence of human technology. Today's temperatures are quite cold considering where it generally been for 100s of millions of years. We are closer to another ice age rather than warmth as usual.


If nature itself could produce those rapid spikes in temperature before, why can't it be responsible for it today? Today's spike is neither more rapid nor bigger. The burden of proof is on AGWist to provide proof for their unsubstantiated claims.

If nature itself could produce up to 7,000ppm of CO2 (not a pollutant, not a gas that warms the planet) then what is the scare about current 390ppm levels of CO2? Maybe the fact that, relatively speaking, we are CO2 impoverished?

co2Alex.JPG (59.49 KiB) Viewed 2684 times

co2AlexMillionsYears.JPG (62.02 KiB) Viewed 2684 times

[Kim OHara]

Pacific in climate firing line, says bank http://abcasiapacificnews.com/stories/2 ... 142892.htm
Cyclone cost businesses 'more than $15m' http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011 ... 142891.htm
Calendar highlights Indigenous awareness of changing climate http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/conten ... 142390.htm
Wild weather to pummel WAhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011 ... 141874.htm

Kim

[Alex123]

Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.

[Kim OHara]

Hi, Alex,

Hi, Alex,
I asked you a question a while ago and said that I would ignore anything else you posted until you answered the question.
So far, I'm ignoring. Until we know why you reject the weight of genuine climate science, debating individual facts and factoids will get us nowhere.

Kim

I asked the same question in a slightly different way, too:
Why do you choose to believe one set of people you don't know rather than another set of people you don't know?

I am not going to pay any attention until you answer either or both of those questions, and I doubt that anyone else here will do so.
At the moment you are not asking questions, let alone smart questions. You are repeating other people's pseudo-questions and pseudo-science.


Kim

...and if you won't engage in a genuine dialogue, we might as well lock the thread.

Kim

[octathlon]

Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.

What does that have to do with anything, though? What people are worried about in regard to this is how the changes will affect our economies, food supplies, living conditions... IOW, our ability to maintain the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed.

[andre9999]

Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.

Your argument seems to have no point. Much of humanity will cease to exist during these periods that you're talking about. So despite that the current warming period is not on schedule, and that all but of a few of the world's climate scientists disagree with your viewpoint, is your plan to just go down in flames?

[Alex123]

Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.

What does that have to do with anything, though? What people are worried about in regard to this is how the changes will affect our economies, food supplies, living conditions... IOW, our ability to maintain the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed.

It has everything to do with AGW argument that humans cause global warming (or change). If the nature was changing weather BEFORE humans and their factories, then human factor is not needed at all to explain changes in weather.

Today's change in weather is neither more rapid nor more severe than it was before. There is no need to add additional human factor if purely natural explanations can do, as they did for billions of years.


AGW can actually have bad consequences if its well intended but dangerous ideas are carried out.
Ex: If we are going to get into another major cooling period (as patterns suggest), then all the windmills, hydro-plants, etc will not be that useful. Furthermore if the houses are not designed for colder weather, it could make a lot of inconvenience. It is more likely to die in a cold climate than in a hot climate. One could freeze to death.

Using bio-fuels means that what could have been used as food, is now converted into a car fuel. With growing population, this would send the food prices up (the less supply and more demand, the higher the price). I'd rather have it that we use gasoline rather than corn (or whatever is used for bio fuels).

Until there is actual REAL scientific proof (there is none) that CO2 that humans emit has ANYTHING to do with warming, I'd rather not make people starve (and have other people taxed, and economic growth of emerging nations stifled).


"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
"http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Cooling Global Warming Hysteria Just One Story Of '08

By Barry Cooper December 31, 2008

The scientific debate over climate change has entered a new phase. This change is reflected in, though hardly constituted by, petitions signed by natural scientists of various kinds disputing the so-called consensus that human-caused CO2 is responsible for global warming.

Two aspects of this story can be distinguished. As James Peden, an atmospheric physicist, said, many scientists "are now searching for a way to back out quietly" from global-warming fearmongering, "without having their professional careers ruined."

This is an ethical or political problem, not a problem in climate science. The crux of it is that major research grants and, in this country, prestigious Canada Research Chairs, have been awarded on the assumption something must be done to stop CO2 from destroying the world.

Those scientists who are the current beneficiaries of a moral panic they help sustain are squirming not because of their ethical transgressions but because of scientific facts. Facts are fragile because they could always be different, but stubborn because they are what they are, independent of opinions, including any "consensus." In this context the big inconvenient fact is that for almost a decade, ice-core data have shown climate cycles antedate changes in atmospheric CO2.

There was even worse news for those who believed in human-caused climate change. Up to now most of the debate, including the notorious intellectual swindle of the hockey stick graph, amounted to what paleoclimatologist Ian Clark called "wiggle watching" --matching the ups and downs of temperature with the ups and downs of CO2 or, say, sun spots. Until recently there was no experimental evidence to decide which wiggle was worth watching.

In 2006, experiments at the Danish National Space Center provided evidence that changes in the magnetic field of the sun can affect not CO2 but water vapour--clouds--which are responsible for up to 95 per cent of the warmth that keeps Earth habitable. Last year the implications finally sunk in.

The original experiment is being replicated by CERN, the European Organization for Nu-clear Research, so stay tuned.

Remember, there is no experimental evidence--none at all--that an increase in CO2 can increase greenhouse warming, and that ice-core evidence indicates the causal arrow does not go from changes in CO2 to changes in climate.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Cooling+gl ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Alex123]

...and if you won't engage in a genuine dialogue, we might as well lock the thread.

Kim

As long as you don't answer my specific questions, and simply call everything that I quote (but not your quotes) as "junk science", there won't be meaningful dialogue.

We could start with this:

Considering that climate was changing for billions of years prior to humans, and the changes were as extreme and rapid as today, and even if humans would vanish from the planet, the Earth would still change climate as it did for billions of years, what proof is there that todays climate change is significantly due to humans and poses real danger?

Even if we would drop dead, the CO2 would still rapidly go up and down, and so would the temperature.

[Justsit]

Actually, that's two questions....

1. what proof is there that todays climate change is significantly due to humans ?

and

2. what proof is there that todays climate change poses real danger?

Perhaps these should be addressed separately??

[octathlon]

Alex,
To figure out whether the global warming that is occurring is caused by, worsened by, or unrelated to human activity is kind of like figuring out whether smoking contributes to lung disease, cardiovascular disease, etc. In other words, if a smoker gets lung cancer or has a heart attack, you can't say for sure that in that case it was caused by their smoking, or if would have happened anyway but maybe was worse or happened sooner because of it, or if it was unrelated. You can't conclude anything from individual cases of disease (or individual weather events).

Instead, you have to do studies and statistical analysis on a lot of complicated data like number of cancers and other diseases in smoking and non-smoking populations, and you have to try and control for other contributing factors like diet, genetics, other environmental factors like radon. That's why there used to be so much controversy about dangers of smoking. It takes a long time to collect sufficient data and do rigorous analysis to prove it, especially when profit-making enterprises have a vested interest in dismissing the idea. Eventually enough studies were done and reviewed until finally it was accepted that smoking really is harmful.

I think that's a pretty good parallel with the study of global warming/climate change that has been going on for the last few decades. The question of how much human activity contributes to it has to be estimated by statistical analysis that corrects for other contributing factors. And we don't have a "control planet". The subject is even more politically charged than smoking was, and it's probably already too late by now to reverse the human contribution in time to help much (see this for example). But I think we should be able to agree that smoking isn't good for us and neither is polluting our environment, can't we?

[octathlon]

Actually, that's two questions....

1. what proof is there that todays climate change is significantly due to humans ?

and

2. what proof is there that todays climate change poses real danger?

Perhaps these should be addressed separately??

Yes, good point, and I would add:

3. Regardless of the answer to #1, and if the answer to #2 is "it does", then: What can we do about it that we know will help? (I've heard some crazy ideas that might do much more harm than good)

[Alex123]

Hello Octathlon,

The thing about Climate change is that it was happening for 4.5 billion of years before human's industrial activity. If an explanation is sufficient to explain something (such as climate change), there is no need to complicate it further. If nature by itself could change climate as it did, it is not required that some new external cause plays any or significant part in changing the climate.


The problem is that AGW's solutions are not as harmless as they seem. First of all, additional taxes (Carbon tax) is not what I think is good for us.

Bio-fuels have drawbacks as well. The food that could have been used to feed people (or animals) could be converted to car fuel. This would reduce food supply, and drive the prices up. What about all the poor people who can barely afford food? Now that is something to worry about.

What if humans prepare for warmer climate (build houses suitable for warmth and not arctic weather) and we get another ice age instead? People could freeze to death, or at least heating bills would really go up without properly insulated houses.

Any human change (if they could really) could easily be reversed by nature. Why add additional taxes, and add inconviniences to humans, if nature could always get a last say in any climate change?



The argument that humans burn CO2, and CO2 causes GW is flawed:


...CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[octathlon]

If an explanation is sufficient to explain something (such as climate change), there is no need to complicate it further. If nature by itself could change climate as it did, it is not required that some new external cause plays any or significant part in changing the climate.

I disagree with that. Using the smoking analogy, "people have been getting cancer and cardiovascular disease all along, so therefore smoking is not a factor" is not valid logic.

The problem is that AGW's solutions are not as harmless as they seem. First of all, additional taxes (Carbon tax) is not what I think is good for us.

I havent' researched the various proposals on that or their implications so I haven't formed an opinion on it yet...

Bio-fuels have drawbacks as well. The food that could have been used to feed people (or animals) could be converted to car fuel. This would reduce food supply, and drive the prices up. What about all the poor people who can barely afford food? Now that is something to worry about.

Agree. Plus using food crops for fuel is not efficient anyway. A variety of switchgrass is being developed that is easy to convert, but still not efficient enough, and it would require land that could be used for food crops. But there is good work being done on improving the efficiency of producing hydrogen from water directly from sunlight, and other promising research to create fuels without using food crops or cropland.

What if humans prepare for warmer climate (build houses suitable for warmth and not arctic weather) and we get another ice age instead? People could freeze to death, or at least heating bills would really go up without properly insulated houses.

Those aren't the effects of GW that we are worrying about, but more extreme weather events (stronger storms, increased flooding, increased periods of drought), rise of sea level affecting coastal cities where most people live, etc. etc. It will still get plenty cold in winter at your house.