The evidence for a warming trend in the climate comes from averages, but you'll often see reference to how many of the years in the 1990's were warmer than average or commentary on 1998 as an unusually warm year.

The problem for AAGW is that the details of the temperature record do not bear out a CO2 forced climate model as I discussed in this post . However, the correlation between solar activity and temperature trends is apparent in the 20th century record.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a lot of acknowledgement of non-CO2 contributions to warming (which may account for the entire warming) in discussions of this topic. Any evidence of warming is mistakenly attributed to AAGW.

No - problem. Take your time. I just like to keep reminding people that the points against AAGW remain unaddressed by AAGW supporters. I don't want those points to get lost in the shuffle.


And that is really the key issue. There is no "overwhelming" evidence. Groups like the IPCC like to claim through "concensus" that the evidence for AAGW is being observed. But that is not even established either. The second IPCC report was faced with quite a bit of controversy.

You're right. Scientifically - they're ridiculous claims. Unfortunately, they're used in the media to advocate policy initiatives such as Kyoto. Since the general public gets their information from the media, its an important part of the discussion.

I'm a bit late coming into this debate, and I have only now read (well, skimmed) the article you pointed to in that earlier post.
While I'm not ready to discuss the science of it, I have problems with the non-scientific conclusions.

A sentence like 'can you drive your car 30 % less' is unworthy of the work he has put in the rest of the article. There are many other ways to diminish your CO2 output, like driving another car, which is more fuel friendly. Many efforts are done in that direction, if not for GW reasons, then because petrol is getting more and more expensive. And why would you have to pay 20 or 50 % more for a zipper? These remarks are a good example of the animosity against GW defenders, and take away the attention from the science.

I know, dgruss23, that you pointed to the article for the science, and that this is not necessarily your opinion, so this small rant isn't directed against you. It just caught my attention...

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

What to say about record lows? Aren´t they indicative of something? A datum: today, jan 27th, a cold air mass is engulfing south america all the way down the tropic of Capricorn to cape Horn. As I write this the temperature is 58F (check my location on the margin), in the midst of Summer . Southern Brazil experienced 32F last night. We are as cool now as the wintry southeatern US. It´s the record low for January. I´ve never experienced something like this. That´s the kind of thing that makes you wonder...

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

I think that's the problem. Weather records are broken all the time. It's not appropriate to use weather records to argue in favor or against AAGW. We've the coldest weather I can remember in a long time the last 2 weeks. Its just a weather pattern. I'm not going to claim that disproves AAGW anymore than I want to hear AAGW supporters point to 1998 as proof of AAGW.

I sympathise with your point, but I think the problem is that Kyoto makes no differentiation. All it says it that emissions must be cut and if improvements in efficiency don't come about, then it will mean having to reduce how much you heat your home in winter.

The zipper point refers to inflation. Energy is everything (literally if you're a quantum physicist) and anything that would increase the price of energy translates down the market chain increasing prices all over the shop. In other words, increase in energy prices means increase in inflation.

We all support improving energy efficiency. Who needs CRTs these days? If the outcome of Kyoto was simply to prompt improvement with little harm to people's livelihoods then ultimately if would have been the right thing to do, if for the wrong reasons, but there are concerns about negative effects such as troubles with inflation and economic problems for people (And remember it is people we are talking about. The Left have a tendency to make the economy out to be this evil entity that oppresses people but the well being of the economy and the well being of the people are intrinsically linked.) and for those of us who are skeptical about AAGW, we don't think it is right to carry this risk when we don't believe there is a good enough reason.

One record says nothing. A string of records has more power, like I said a few posts earlier: in Belgium, the seven warmest years (average temp) in the last 160 years all happened in the last 15 years. This says nothing about the cause, but it points strongly to something bigger than just a statistical one-off, certainly combined with the other indications I found in that pdf.

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Just to be clear Fram, I don't question that the climate is changing. I would be suprised if it ever stopped changing. I question the implication that the form of the change is global warming caused virtually solely by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.

On a related note, here are some weird things that the media say:

They admit there is uncertainty over what may happen. We may boil. We may freeze. We may have violent storms. We may be in for a droughts. Scientists still debate this. The only thing they are sure about is that it must be apocalyptic. It seems uncertainty is selective. If we are uncertain about the manner of our impending doom, couldn't we not be sure that there will be a doom

I agree for the most part Glom.
I think the major gap is between people saying 'we don't know what's going to happen, so better safe than sorry' and 'we don't know what's going to happen, but no pain, no gain' (well, that's perhaps not the most objective way of putting it, but I hope you catch my drift ).
What I have a problem with is the attitude like in that article I commented on: I think (or I know) CO2 isn't responsible for a possible climate change, so let's burn all the petroleum we have!

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

But I think you'd agree that the media should not be regarded as experts on climate science, just as we don't regard them as experts on astronomy.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Well, I don't regard the media (and I presume you mean the mainstream media, not Nature or so) as an authority on any science, and I handle them with care on other subjects as well. They are not necessaraly biased (although that happens often enough), they are just lazy, uninformed, or naive

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

"We are all doomed" sells more papers than "Boring weather expected next century."

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

You need to be careful here. If I get rid of my current car and get a new fuel efficient one, that only makes my personal fuel consumption less. The entire nation would need to become fuel efficient and buy new cars. Everytime a new car is built, a tremedous amount of energy is used for things like metal refining, new tires, factory operations, etc. Furthermore a substantial amount of waste is generated, some like 2.5 - 3.5 times the weight of the vehicle. In reality, you really need something more like 40% to 50% improvement in fuel efficiency to make up for the construction energy and waste.


While I pesonally doubt that it would be that great, things will cost more. Either we need new sources of non-fossile fuel energy (construction costs) or we just don't produce as much and let the free market determine the price.

I formulated rather imprecise there. I meant that if everyone who needs a new car would take fuel efficiency in account when buying one, you would have in five years time reduced the fuel consumption on average considerably, without asking people to drive less (although that is another option). It wouldn't indeed be a good idea to throw away a recent car and buy another one, as then the cost (financial and ecological) would indeed be way too high. But it would support the economy

And my zipper comment was about the 20 to 50 % pricerise. Costs will rise probably if you make stricter rules, but not by that amount. And the meaning of something like Kyoto is that it happens worldwide, so as not to punish one country and leave the others alone. There are all kinds of rules already against pollution, and the economy hasn't gone bankrupt over these either...

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

You, I, and indeed the vast majority of the other posters here (regardless of which side of the debate they come down on) would agree with that statement DA. Unfortunately, Joe-public usually regards what they hear/see/read in the news as fact.

No. On the other hand, I don't think we can predict sunspot activity very accurately either.

But fuel efficiency is not always a criteria that can be employed in purchasing a vehicle. People with more than 2 children need mini-vans - which are not that fuel efficient.

Kyoto will not even have a significant effect on projected warming. That's discussed in the paper I linked to - If warming is 1.0 deg C by 2050 if we do nothing, it will be 0.90 deg C if everybody followed Kyoto. In addition - its not truly worldwide. Countries like China and India are exempt from significant restrictions while the U.S. and Australia are asked to make significant cuts.

Cleaner emissions, greater fuel efficiency, and alternative energy sources are improvements almost everyone agrees can be positive steps. But we don't need to use AAGW as a reason to take those steps.

That is correct. Solar cycles vary from 8-14 years in length. What is important is to account for observed changes in solar activity when attempting to discern how much warming is anthropogenic. Here is a good example I've noted before.

But the minivan is far more efficient than, say, an H2 or a suburban

fyi. M&M is publishing two new papers regarding their criticism of MBH98. It's pretty interesting. Info can be found here.

More on topic, if you look at the debate between M&M (at the site above) and Mann (at his blog), most of the animus (and spurious argument) appears to be on the pro-AGW side. Maybe it is just because it is their work that is being criticized. Or maybe it is because people tend to yell louder and longer when trying to defend something that they know is indefensible.


(edited to correct 1st link)

I'm sure deFreitas didn't mean to imply that we should burn all the oil we have. What he was saying is that we shouldn't have be limited in economic growth without good evidence of a major threat. It's not fair to the people.

I think the AAGW item on The Politics Show today is an example of what creates animosity from us. In true polemical style, severe weather events were cited as proof of AAGW and they actually said that climate change causes both floods and droughts (damned if you do, damned if you don't).

Then the guy went on to describe his solution as a draconian policy of rationing energy. That's right, rationing, just like during World War II, even with a 21st century version of the ration book. People would eventually be so limited in what they could do, they could no longer go anywhere or do anything. He actually said the government was bad for committing to economic growth.

With propositions for draconian state control of this magnitude, how can we not get a bit testy about this issue, when we believe the evidence is not only lacking, but as I recently posted, there seems to be active spin to exaggerate.

This is curious, considering that most of the really high-end weather events on record in the USA occurred in the early part of the 20th century: The 1925 Tri-state tornado in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana (600 killed, a record, also fastest and widest tornado ever recorded), The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys (probably the strongest hurricane ever to hit the USA), The 1900 Galveston Hurricane (still the highest storm-related death toll ever in the USA, at more than 6,000, IIRC). And, of course, the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s....

I'm not yet convinced that we can say with any certainty what effect global warming has on storms. From what I've read, it appears that the greatest warming affects the polar regions. This should have the effect of diminishing the strength of most storms (hurricanes/typhoons excluded), by reducing the thermal gradient that fuels the jet stream and powers winds in general. But, the added heat near the surface could possibly increase the vertical temperature gradients and the quantity of low-level water vapor - and increase the intensity of convective storms (thunderstorms, including tornadoes, and hurricanes/typhoons).

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"I am Meteora, supreme goddess of weather" - Meteora, in The Unchained Goddess

One nice thing about being a meteorologist who also likes astronomy is that the sky is always interesting!

GWT predicts that warming will begin in the upper troposphere and this warming will translate down to the surface (not observed). This means that, coupled with the warming of the poles faster than equatorial regions (also not observed), temperature gradients will become less steep and their will be less severe weather. John Houghton said they would increase and that's since been repeated ad nauseum.

In fact, an IPCC scientist has recently quit because of bad scientific practise at the ever-so-noble organisation. He was investigating severe weather events and concluded that there has been no increase throughout the last century, but IPCC bosses misrepresented his work and said their was an increase attributable, you guessed it, to AAGW.

We can give up any hopes of a balanced and unbiased Fourth Assessment Report.

I'll have to find the reference, but a researcher found - looking back at the climate records in Florida, that it is during cooler periods when the storms are more severe. It makes sense - temperature gradients are the key.

Nobody seems to want to comment on that letter in the other thread.

The MBH vs. M&M debate has now reached the hallowed halls of Congress.

At least they're calling for comments from both sides.

If anybody wants to check out the mainstream news position on this matter, there's going to be a documentary called :"Melting point: Tracking the Global Warming Threat". It is going to start at 3:00 pm Eastern time

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"jiu-jitsu is perfect it's people who makes mistakes"

In a debunking mood? Check this site: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54

You will always find conspiracies there. Open an account and expose them. But careful, they may call you a 'government sheep".

It's also on CNN again at 8:00 pm.

Here's the link to the show: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/pres...ing.point.html

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Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

I am watching it now. They are showing all the scientists who believe we are to blame for most of the warming. They only showed one scientist who said that the forecasts could not be considered accurate, but they quickly countered it by saying that most scientists believe it is mostly our fault and even the Pentagon has taken the threat seriously. They also discussed a doomsday scenario where there is lack of water, food and people start to fight for resources.

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"jiu-jitsu is perfect it's people who makes mistakes"

In a debunking mood? Check this site: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54

You will always find conspiracies there. Open an account and expose them. But careful, they may call you a 'government sheep".