Global Waming "Evidence"?

[bedlamite]

There is no such thing as global warming. Chuck Norris was cold, so he turned the sun up.

[280plus]

OK, now THAT'S funny! 

then...

the fact that the "turd world" is producing and dumping into the atmosphere Freon at record levels....).

Yea, but here in the US we have a law against it so you KNOW it's not happening here. 

[MechAg94]

OK, I for one am willing to agree that the fact that some people may or may not have once believed that the earth is flat says nothing at all about whether current opinions about "global warming" will ultimately prove to be true or false.

That said, do you have any evidence to present of a causal connection between human activity and "global warming"?

No, I don't.  The earth is flat crap is just a hot button for me.  In global warming and evolution debates, anytime some idiot wants to just tell everyone to shut up and listen to their betters, they pull out the "well, everyone once thought the earth was flat also."  It is kind of like calling someone "Hitler", it pretty much means their argument sucks.

I would like to see some evidence that man is responsible for global warming myself.  IMHO, mankind my accelerate or decelerate warming or cooling trends, but I don't think we have the power to create them.

One other thing, these global warming guys never adequately address solar activity.

[Iain]

One other thing, these global warming guys never adequately address solar activity.

Start here - RealClimate. Solar Forcing

'IMHO' is pretty worthless when it comes to this subject. That applies to me too.

[richyoung]

NOT EVEN ONE climate model can adequately and accurately model the effects of water vapor - which is the predominent greenhouse gas on earth, AND almost completely of natural origin.  The last Ice Age ended, and it wasn't because Neandrthal Man was driving his 4 X 4 Suburban to his job at the coal-fired power plant...

[Iain]

Do more than parrot Milloy.

[Tallpine]

I believe that all the hot air from politicians' mouths is causing global warming

[richyoung]

Do more than parrot Milloy.

OK:

1.  CO2 levels are TRAILING indicators of warming: the planet's water is a major carbon sink in the form of dissolved CO2 - when the water gets haotter, ican no longer hold as much gas in suspension, so it releases it - just like your soda pop when it gets warm.

2.  CO2's effect on global warmth is NOT linear: past a certain point, addin "X"% more doesn't result in "X"% more retained heat.  It's called diminishing returns - just like whitewashing a fence, one reaches a point at which additional coats don;t make it perceptably whiter.   Once the frequencies of infrared radiation that CO2 absorb and re-radiate are already being done so in the high 90 percentile range, additional CO2 has little additional effect.

3.  CO2 is PLANT FOOD - increasing levels of it directly increases crop yields.

4.  The principle effects of CO2 warming are felt on summer nights - which also increases crop yields.

5.  There has only been about 30 years of satellite data, and only about 70 years of lower quality data before that.  That's not long enought to trend a system like the earth's climate, with some known cycles in the hundreds of thousands of years.

6.  The same "scientists" behind the "global warming" hoax were behind:
    A. "Nuclear Winter" - (same models, proven false)
    B. "Ozone Hole" - (don;t hear much about THAT one any more, do we?)
    C.  The Irreversable coming Ice Age ( AKA "That 70's Global Cooling Show")
    D.  The Mercury in the Fish from Colored Toilet Paper scare - (funny - remains of 10,000 year old sardines had the SAME MERCURY LEVELS - they must have been Squeezin' the Charmin back in the Bronze Age...)
    E.  DDT Doesn't Work And Its Killing All The Birdies - (2 lies for the price of one - only resulted in the deaths of 30 million or so PEOPLE<...

...plus Alar, Tris, Sacharine, yada, yada, yada,...

so you will UNDERSTAND if I am not just chomping at the bit to compromise my life style, spend billions of dollars and maybe KILL a few tens of millions of people, given their track record...

[Iain]

Assertions. Straight from Milloy too. Remind me of your qualifications in these (climatology, meterology and apparently also public health) fields?

Go to realclimate, read their responses to every single one of your climate related assertions (there is some ozone stuff there too), they have responses about CO₂ lag, CO₂ fertilisation, climate modelling and everything else. It's not as simple as junkscience and Milloy being the holders of universal truth.

Again, I'm not going to get involved too much in a debate that is by definition highly technical and scientific when neither of us understand the science.

[richyoung]

Assertions. Straight from Milloy too. Remind me of your qualifications in these (climatology, meterology and apparently also public health) fields?

Go to realclimate, read their responses to every single one of your climate related assertions (there is some ozone stuff there too), they have responses about CO₂ lag, CO₂ fertilisation, climate modelling and everything else. It's not as simple as junkscience and Milloy being the holders of universal truth.

Again, I'm not going to get involved too much in a debate that is by definition highly technical and scientific when neither of us understand the science.

Speak for yourself - I understand it just fine.  And I am not the only one...

So is it really game-set-match in favor of the global warming alarmists? Not so fast, say the skeptics.

When University of Alabama-Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, a prominent climatologist, factored the newly reported corrections into his calculations, his estimate of atmospheric warming was only 0.12 deg. C/decade -- higher than the prior estimate of 0.09 deg. C/decade, but well below the Science study estimate of 0.19 deg C/decade and the surface temperature estimate of 0.20 deg. C/decade.

As to the claimed errors in the weather balloon measurements, Spencer says that no other effort to adjust the balloon data has produced warming estimates as high as those reported in the new study and that it will take time for the research community to form opinions about whether the new adjustments advocated are justified.

Climate expert Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project says the temperature adjustments are not a big deal.

Greenhouse theory says (and the models calculate) that the atmospheric trend should be 30 percent greater than the surface trend -- and it isnt, says Singer. Furthermore, the models predict that polar [temperature] trends should greatly exceed the tropical values -- and they clearly dont ... In fact, the Antarctic has been cooling, adds Singer.

Singer also had some related thoughts concerning the gloom-and-doom forecasts concerning future temperatures.

Last January, a study in the journal Nature estimated that a doubling of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would increase global temperatures anywhere from 1.9 degrees Centigrade to 11.5 degrees Centigrade by mid-century. But Singer says the researchers varied only six out of many more parameters necessary to model clouds& Their result confirms& that clouds are still too difficult to model and that climate models underlying the Kyoto Protocol have never been validated.

So its far from case-closed on global warming skepticism. Moreover, aside from the controversy over the satellite and weather balloon data, many key climate questions remain unanswered including: whether humans are causing significant warming; whether warming is undesirable; and whether anything be done to avert any undesirable warming.

From Fox news...got a beef with Spencer and Singer?

[Iain]

We've had these discussions before, and you're a google jedi, but if I recall correctly not a good enough one to check the qualifications of those you sourced quotes from. Attributing sources seems to have been an issue more recently too. Apply those skills to searching for criticisms of Singer and every other cherry picked article you're about to post links to, I'm not interested in arguing.

[richyoung]

We've had these discussions before, and you're a google jedi, but if I recall correctly not a good enough one to check the qualifications of those you sourced quotes from. Attributing sources seems to have been an issue more recently too. Apply those skills to searching for criticisms of Singer and every other cherry picked article you're about to post links to, I'm not interested in arguing.

Lets see - just who is Roy Spencer?  Wikipedia says...

Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Dr. Spencer is the recipient of NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

He is principally known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society's Special Award.

I freely admit he knows more about global climate than I do, and suspect he knows more than you do...but hey, when you can;t refute the FACTS, attack the sources, right?

[m1911owner]

One other thing, these global warming guys never adequately address solar activity.

Start here - RealClimate. Solar Forcing

'IMHO' is pretty worthless when it comes to this subject. That applies to me too.

OK, I went and looked at a goodly number of those posts, and noticed something very, um, curious...

They all make reference to original work by apparently credible scientists that points to solar activity as a driving force behind global temperatures.  Yet, the work of not even one of these scientists is posted there.  All the posts in that section, with no exceptions whatsoever, are attempts to refute the work of the aforementioned scientists.

This very clearly shows that the Real Climate site, rather than being an attempt at getting to objective scientific truth, is in reality an agenda-driven site whose primary purpose is to advance the "global warming" agenda. 

Rarely in science does starting with the conclusion, and then working to prove that conclusion, end up producing good science.

[m1911owner]

By the way, what's wrong with Milloy?  I have read some of his work, and have found his work for the most part to be quite reasonable.  It is understandable that his is villified by the Left, because he tends to dissect their cherished siboleths with easily-understood clarity, and since they aren't able to refute what he says with facts, they resort to slandering the man.

However, I don't buy the argument, "Milloy is evil.  Milloy said that, so it must be false."  If you want to refute something Milloy said, refute what he said, rather than resorting to ad hominems.

[Iain]

m1911owner - couple of things. In no way have I claimed that RealClimate is anything more than the work of climate scientists (check their contributors page) attempting to clarify and put out information for the general public. These guys believe (and they have qualifications in these fields) that global warming is happening and that humans play a role. They are pretty upfront about that, and that it isn't a avenue for them to publish their peer-reviewed work (something Milloy has never done btw) but an avenue for addressing public questions and contrarian points about global warming.

There are plenty of pro and anti Milloy writings out there on the web. Make your own mind up, but not based on your assessment of Milloy's work as being quite 'reasonable', or because Milloy's work agrees with your own political views. Of course Milloy's work seems reasonable and accurate if you are inclined to agree with his overall views, I asked for more than a parrot of Milloy because there was a risk this thread would turn into little more than a paraphrasing of 'junkscience', without any science or understanding thereof.

Criticism of his work abounds, you have to read that too. Like I said, and no-one has yet given me cause to revise my opinion, we could link back and forth to things we don't really understand, but what would be the point.

[richyoung]

Try this on for size -

1.  there is NOT ENOUGH good data to model or predict a system as complex as the Earth's climate - we simply haven't been keeping records of sufficient trustworthiness for long enough.  Think about it - we have less than TWO sunspot cycles of satellite data (which we still argue over how & how much to "correct"); perhaps twice that of balloon data.  Some climate cycles are measured in hundreds of thousands of years - long enough that continental repositioning changes how they manifest over time.  Your gonna predict THAT with 30 years of data?  Thats like predicting the winner of the Indy 500 by by timing the first hundreth of the first lap.  The global warming advocates are claiming WAY MORE for their data than it can be stretched to prove.
2.  No computers sophisticated enought to BEGIN to completely model the effects of water vapor exist, and if they did, there is NO consensus on how to model them  - that research is ongoing.
3.  Even if global warming is occuring, there is no credible evidence that mankind is CAUSING it.  Correlation DOES NOT equal causation.  The rooster crowing does not cause the sun to rise.
4.  Even if global warming is occuring, it is not necessarily bad - it may delay the onset of the next Ice Age, which will be  a disaster for civilization.  It WILL increase crop yields though CO2 fertilization directly, and indirectly through longer, wetter growing seasons over a larger percentage of the earth's surface.
5.  As I've pointed out, the track record of the alarmists isn'very good.  The respons of the Other Side, when I pointed that out, is to ask for MY credentials:  here they are - I can READ, and I don't swallow every BS story at first exposure.
6.  The GW advocates suspiciously REFRAIN from attacking data or arguments, prefering instead to go through this drill:

  A.  All credible scientists believe in man-made global warming.
  B.  Dr. X does not believe in global warming.
  C.  Therefore, Dr. X is not credible.
  D.  Dr. Z believes in global warming.
  E.  Ergo, Dr. Z is credible.

Where have I seen this before?  Oh, yeah - its called CIRCULAR REASONING.  NOT a good sign for the veracity of global warming proponents.

7.  NO, NONE, ZERO measurements show atmospheric warming in the ratio to global warming that the pro-global warming computer models predict.
8.  Its actually gotten colder diring WWII  (remember the Germans in winter in Russia?) and over the last 6 years.  How can that be with sustained CO2 output through those years, absent a large negative forcer such as volcanic or meteoric impact debris?

In short, the "Global Warming" emporer has no clothes, and "because I say so" ISN'T science.

[griz]

Like I said, and no-one has yet given me cause to revise my opinion, we could link back and forth to things we don't really understand, but what would be the point.

How did you form an opinion on something you don't understand?  I can see relying on someone more knowledgeable, but you seem to be saying that only the scientist that agree with GW are to be believed.  Sounds sort of circular to me.

[richyoung]

...and in the continuing spirit of "my scientists are more credible thatn your scientists", I present William Gray of Colorado State University, former director of the National Hurricane Center, who has told the Washington Post that global warming is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.  Gray placed that quote on the cover of one of his scientific papers analyzing global warming and hurricanes.

< Scientific paper?  I thought ALL scientists agreed that global warming was real, and that there were "no credible, published, peer-reviewed papers that say otherwise".  Somebody's confused...>

In testimony before Congress, he said that he has been dismayed over the bogus science and media-hype associated with the man-made global warming theory. As a boy, growing up here in Washington, D.C., he said, I remember the many articles on the large global warming that had occurred between 1900 and 1940. No one understood or knew if this warming would continue. Then the warming abated, and a weak global cooling trend set in from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. The global warming talk ceased and speculation about a coming ice age came into vogue. I anticipate that the trend of the last few decades of global warming will come to an end, and in a few years we will start to see a weak cooling trend similar to that which occurred from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

[richyoung]

If Global warming is real, why the need to silence dissent?

Sir David Kings Queenie Fit
Shutting down dissent.

By Iain Murray

The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out.



   
The chairman of the conference told the press that the leader of the disruptive delegation "had brought several scientists along with him and he insisted that the program should include among the speakers only those scientists and no other. So, he came over, selected scientists at his discretion, scientists who were to be given the floor in his opinion and scientists who were to be denied an opportunity to speak." A top official of the host government commented, "For some participants the main goal was the search for the truth, understanding of real processes. Other people had the task of disrupting the seminar, so that other people who were seeking the truth could not do so."

Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

rest of the article: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/murray200407230903.asp

[richyoung]

..and now for a word from that bastion of appologists for capitalist corporate greed, the Russian Academy of Sciences:

The fact is the Kyoto protocol that will be a global treaty within months is based on fraudulent science. Assertions that global temperatures are higher today than any time in the past are completely false. Fluctuations in climate patterns have existed for millions of years -- for all earth history. Global temperatures were higher in the Roman times when grapes were grown on British islands and Hannibal's elephants walked through the Alps into Italy. They were higher in the medieval period when the Vikings found and colonised the island that they have called Greenland and when Norwegians grew grain on the fields that are 300m in altitude higher than it is possible to do today.
Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.

[m1911owner]

..and now for a word from that bastion of appologists for capitalist corporate greed, the Russian Academy of Sciences:

The fact is the Kyoto protocol that will be a global treaty within months is based on fraudulent science. Assertions that global temperatures are higher today than any time in the past are completely false. Fluctuations in climate patterns have existed for millions of years -- for all earth history. Global temperatures were higher in the Roman times when grapes were grown on British islands and Hannibal's elephants walked through the Alps into Italy. They were higher in the medieval period when the Vikings found and colonised the island that they have called Greenland and when Norwegians grew grain on the fields that are 300m in altitude higher than it is possible to do today.
Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.

Yep, that pretty much sums up my understanding of "global warming."  Hence my original question, asking if anyone can present any actual evidence of a connection between human activity and "global warming."  Even though this isn't a climate science forum, it is a place peopled by many intelligent who are pretty well in touch with what's going on in the world.  I figured that if "global warming" is indeed such a scientific slam-dunk as the screechers would have us believe, then somebody on this forum would at least know what the presumably very-well-known proof is.

Thus far, that proof is yet to be presented.

Which leads me to believe that the "proof" is political wishful-thinking, backed up with a lot of screeching.

[Iain]

How did you form an opinion on something you don't understand?  I can see relying on someone more knowledgeable, but you seem to be saying that only the scientist that agree with GW are to be believed.  Sounds sort of circular to me.

I'm not saying anything of the kind. What is often lost in APS discussions on GW is that I don't really have an opinion, I used to until I was honest enough to go out there and do some reading, then I quickly realised that I was in so deep it was going to take years to even begin to grasp what was going on. These days I tend to admit when I don't know.

Like I said, the only reason that I post stuff from realclimate is to counter the endless Milloy-esque (even Milloy-lite) contrarian postings.

1911owner - I'm not sure what standards of proof you'd accept. But I reckon if you're really really looking, proper hard and serious, you wouldn't be here. I don't mean to be rude, but on this question this is not the place, you'll have to expose your ideas and your standards of proof to some forum where this is the main topic, and then be prepared to be deluged with articles, studies and various other stuff to read. Until you really understand this, you aren't in a position to judge the various 'proofs' that have been claimed on either side, and that takes us right back to where this thread started.

[m1911owner]

1911owner - I'm not sure what standards of proof you'd accept.

What we're being told is that "global warming" is "settled science", and that we should drastically diminsh our standard of living in order to prevent destruction of the world.  For that, my standard of proof is very high indeed.

I ask here because I hang out here, and because there is intelligent life here.  I've perused other venues, and have yet to see any actual evidence of a causal human connection.

[MechAg94]

Iain, much of the articles I have seen on real climate use bigger words, but don't say a great deal more than you see here.  I didn't see any evidence there either.  By the comments, it appeared that most on that site were articial GB cheerleaders.  Oh, there was more in depth info on the science, but no more in the way of conclusions.

[wacki]

This site has a lot of information:

http://www.junkscience.com/

This man is a fraud and a hack.  Anyone that blames acid rain on volcanoes and says CFC's are too heavy to float in the air should not be taken seriously by anyone that has an inkling of a clue.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp4/question1232.html
http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/air/acid.htm
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/VolcWeather/description_volcanoes_and_weather.html
http://www.volcanolive.com/acidrain.html

Sergeant bob, my bad.  I've been working extreme hours and I'm short on time.  I really botched that sentence up.  If you go to this google cache page:

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:-LEzIAh8knUJ:www.junkscience.com/may99/freon.htm+Congress+outlawed+future+U.S.+production+of+the+CFC-based+refrigerant&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a

You will see that Milloy says:

The problem with this theory is that the chlorine molecules in Freon are heavier than air; they
settle to the ground upon release - many tens of thousands of feet below the ozone layer.

Anyone familiar with basic physics/chemistry knows gases are not sorted by slight differences in weight when there is wind or even low level convection.  And anyone that has looked at the balloon, satellite, and airplane readings of CFC's knows that Milloy is flat out wrong here.

He continues to say:

the eruption of Mount
Pinatubo in the Philippines generated more chlorine in a few short hours than if all the man-made
CFCs in the world were vented en masse.

Which is where I was trying to go with Milloy's volcanoes.  The chlorine released from volcanoes tends to be in the form of salt (NaCl), hydrochloric acid (HCL), and various other volatile chemicals.  These chemicals are very very different than CFCs.  For one they are water soluble so they dissolve in the clouds and fall back down as acid rain.  The acid rain stays below the stratosphere (the location of the ozone layer).  Milloy is basically claiming volcanoes cause *stratospheric* acid rain and stratospheric chlorine ion buildup.  If you read this:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/images/ozone/20questions.pdf

You should realize why this is simply not true.  Milloy is a fraud and a hack.  And he's not even a very good one.  Some of his arguments are written well enough that they require some advanced scientific education to debunk.  But many of his arguments require only a fundamental understanding of highschool chemistry and physics to spot the horrible flaws.  His CFC argument is one such example of this.  I honestly think the only reason he is taken seriously is because highschool physics and chemistry is so easy to forget if you aren't using it somewhat frequently.