The Reality-Based Community

"The hockey stick is an irrelevance. What does it matter if it was as hot in 1206 as now? We know that 1206 and 2006 both offered liveable climates, unless you live in New Orleans. But they weren't doing anything much in 1206 that could change their global environment for the worse, and we are."

It's very relevant. If it was as hot in 1206 as it is now, then it is clear that what we are doing now is not necessary for it to be so hot. That is, it is quite possible that it would still be just about as hot today even if there were no greenhouse gases. It undermines the correlation between emissions and warming.

If you look near 1800 you see a sharp spike in near-surface temperature, this to me, as apparently in 1206, is an irrelevance as stated above. The Earth's climate varies and but seemingly around an equilibrium point at their relative zero.

What concerns me most is if you look closely at the first graph you see a hot-cold oscillation running +/- until just around 1920. Continue on through time you see the oscillation continues on and damps out beyond 1980. Is there more data going back beyond 1850? Does the author state that the data pre-1850 looks like the data from 1850-1920?

It is great to have over 150 years of data regarding surface temps, but I am still not sold on global warming being caused by man.

Archeological studies have shown that the earth has gone through global warming cycles several times.

If I recall right(I am only 38), many scientific articles were written during the 70's and early 80's about the earth cooling and heading towards an ice age.

Here is the latest release "Not in our media of course" from NASA.;
Ice Caps Growing not shrinking.

Antarctic Sea Ice Increases over Past Two Decades By SPACE.com Staff 22
August 2002 In a surprising departure from other findings that point to a
warming planet, a NASA researcher has found that the amount of ice in the
Antarctic increased from 1979 to 1999, as measured by satellites. Many recent
findings have detailed the decline of the ice cap in the Arctic, at the top
of the world. These new results from the Southern Hemisphere imply that
global climate change involves regional variations. Changes in ice cover are
important not only because they indicate temperature changes that have
occurred; the changes can effect future temperatures. With more ice, more
solar radiation is reflected away from Earth. The ice also insulates oceans
from the atmosphere. Less ice has the opposite effects. In the new study,
published in the Annals of Glaciology, Claire Parkinson of NASA"s Goddard
Space Flight Center analyzed the length of the sea ice season throughout the
Southern Ocean to obtain trends in sea ice coverage. On average, the area
where sea ice seasons have lengthened by at least one day per year is roughly
twice as large as the area where sea ice seasons have shortened by at least
one day per year. "You can see with this dataset that what is happening in
the Antarctic is not what would be expected from a straightforward global
warming scenario, but a much more complicated set of events," Parkinson said.
The length of the sea ice season in any particular region or area refers to
the number of days per year when at least 15 percent of that area is covered
by sea ice. Some areas close to the Antarctic continent have sea ice all year
long, but a much larger region of the Southern Ocean has sea ice for a
smaller portion of the year, and in those regions the length of the sea ice
season can vary significantly from one year to another. Parkinson also looked
at how various regions of the Antarctic compared to one another. Regionally,
the Ross Sea, on average, had its sea ice seasons getting longer, while most
of the Amundsen Sea and almost the entire Bellingshausen Sea had their sea
ice seasons getting shorter. "The Antarctic sea ice changes match up well
with regional temperature changes," Parkinson said. The study used data from
NASA"s Nimbus 7 Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) and the
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave
Imagers (SSMIs).

Ty

A big myth promulgated by the climate sceptics.

There was an unusually cold winter 1976-77, the northeast of the US froze up. Also there was a natural gas shortage, because Congress wouldn't deregulate gas prices (Pres. Carter is normally blamed for this, but actually it was the Democratic Congress).

A couple of speculative scientific articles were published about a 'coming Ice Age'.

Newsweek picked up on it, and put it on the cover. A number of newspapers and popular science magazines followed up.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling" surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say "in the 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming" (see Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion ). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn't stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though.

I should clarify that I'm talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we're only responsible for the scientific press. If you want to look at an analysis of various papers that mention the subject, then try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.

There is no comparison between the universal alarm felt by climate scientists, oceanographers, glaciologists, alpinists and biologists, amongst others, and the speculations of the mid 1970s.

What is different this time is the use of the media and the political progress to spread disinformation and to undermine confidence in peer-reviewed science.

Ty

PS you should be aware that we *will* move into a cooling cycle.

This was documented by Milenkovich (sp?), and stems from the earth's peturbations in orbit around the sun. He documented this in the 1930s, but published in Serbo-Croat, so his work has only been appreciated since about 1980.

However there is no evidence that this will occur in the next several thousand years, and certainly not in the next couple of centuries. The 'little Ice Age' of the late medieval period was tiny by comparison.

Whereas our massive, uncontrolled, one way experiment in doubling or tripling global CO2 concentrations has been running since about 1750, and will be fully played out by 2150 (by which time most of the world's accessible carbon fuel will be burnt up).

Of course, if we were faced with an ice age, sometime in the future, we would have burned through our ready supplies of CO2 increasing substances (oil, gas and coal). Which would leave us high and dry if that were to occur. Double irony.

I know this issue is always up for debate and each argument supported by it's own scientist. I feel the best way to satisfy all is to have leadership in this country that will stand up and make a Kennedyesque pledge to be off off of fossil fuels in ten years and turn to more environment friendlier energy.

Holistically, everyone wins from the environment to geo-political issues.

Ty

Blair has gone for a declaration we will emit 60% less carbon in 2050 than we do now.

But even that is, so far, empty rhetoric, not matched with real policy.

Carbon Free for the US in 10 years is completely impossible without economic collapse.

With new technology, and a lot of hard work, mostly carbon free is possible by 2050.

What the US needs is a JFK like figure, or better an FDR like figure, who says that the US will emit only 30% of the carbon, in 2050, it does now, and pledges whatever sacrifices are necessary to make that so.

The problem is, that 70%, which is *possible* under current technology, may not be enough.

But still, what you need, and we need, is a Churchill. Who says simply:

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

We are not yet to the crisis that will create an opportunity for such a man, nor does such a man or woman yet appear on the political radar screen. John McCain has the gumption, apparently, but I don't know that he has the political will to go against his own party like that.

I am reminded that people thought little of FDR as an intellect or politician, at least before the Great Depression, and even less of Harry S. Truman. John Kennedy was seen as a young and unimpressive senator.

The hockey stick is relevant because the graphs show that it is now warmer than it was in 1206. The graphs indicated that it is warmer now than during the last millenium by about .5 degrees Celsius, and that the increase in temperature pretty much correlates to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over the same time period.

Curbing of Global Warming?

"The researchers, who reported their findings in the Nov. 2 online edition of the journal Science, suggest the study could point toward new ways to curb global warming."

Plankton's Influence on Clouds

Phytoplankton, microscopic plants that live in the ocean in vast quantities, may play a role in cloud formation, which in turn may have an effect on how much sunlight reaches and warms Earth's surface, a surprising study has found.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and North Carolina State University discovered the link between clouds and the biosphere as they were examining increases in cloud cover over part of the Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica. Using satellite observations, they found that the increased cloudiness coincided with a large phytoplankton bloom.

The scientists theorize that oxidation of the chemical isoprene, which phytoplankton emit, produced airborne particles that helped double concentrations of cloud droplets in the region.

The team calculated that the increased cloudiness reduced the absorption of sunlight by the same amount that has been observed in the more polluted areas of Earth. The researchers, who reported their findings in the Nov. 2 online edition of the journal Science, suggest the study could point toward new ways to curb global warming.

"Studies like this one may help reshape the way we think about how the biosphere interacts with clouds and climate," said Georgia Tech assistant professor Athanasios Nenes, who co-authored the paper. "We can now see very strongly the influence of marine biology on oceanic clouds."

-- Juliet Eilperin (Washington Post 11-13-06 page A12)

Ty

If it does work like that, then why has the world temperature been moving up, in line with increased CO2 concentrations?

I do not think the reports posted need to be automatically dismissed because they do not feed the narrow parameter of "increased CO2 = increased temperatures"

All data should be considered holistically. Do I believe that man is contributor to increased temperatures? Yes, but not the single contributor. One has to consider history, cycles, and planetary placement within our solar system and galaxy as it moves through space.

The earth is a very dynamic, multi-variabled planet. If we knew precisely how the planet worked, we would be able to duplicate it in a biosphere. To date, I am unaware that this has been done successfully.

Ty at November 15, 2006 06:40 AM

I do not think the reports posted need to be automatically dismissed because they do not feed the narrow parameter of "increased CO2 = increased temperatures"

Increased levels of atmospheric CO2 does indeed correlate to increases in temperature. Increases in temperature also leads to increase levels of atmospheric water vapor, which is also a greenhouse gas. Increased levels of atmospheric CO2 can also lead to increased levels of plant life, of which phytoplankton is only one. If increased levels of phytoplankton does, indeed, lead to increases in cloud formation, that may lead to a decrease in a projected increase in temperature, but it does not negate the increase. If it did, it would have shown up in the temperature graphs.

Ty

Holistic or not, the factors you note tend to take thousands (or millions) of years to play out.

What we are doing now is running an accelerated, one way experiment in raising global CO2 levels. In 250 years, we have pushed CO2 levels to the highest reached in at least 600,000 years, and possibly in the last 20 million years.

Global temperatures are responding largely as our models predict they would.

This sole effect will massively outweigh anything that the Earth might be doing, in the short run. Yes Ice Ages are created as Milunkovich described them in the 1930s (peturbation of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun) but the periodicity of that is on the order of 20,000 years.

Bar a collision with a major asteroid, it is very unlikely that any natural force will affect the world's climate, directly, on the same magnitude as man made CO2 emission.

And our models have shown a pretty good record of tracking the warming that has occured (Hanson's Famous 'Case B' of 1988 which was so accurate that critics deleted it when replying to his arguments).

That may not be holistic, but it is systemic thinking. The problem with Global Warming is that humans do not think systemically.

See below for full article quoted here:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-129-2455.jsp

Surveys repeatedly show that people simultaneously believe that climate change poses serious risks, and also that it is safe to delay reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to a level sufficient to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, until there is greater evidence that climate change is harmful.

US policymakers, too, argue that it is prudent to “wait and see” whether climate change will cause substantial economic harm before undertaking policies to substantially reduce emissions.

This wait-and-see attitude is based on simple but serious misconceptions. It grossly underestimates the substantial delays in the climate’s response to the consequences of human emissions (“anthropogenic forcing” – that is, generated by, or the result of, human activity). And it presumes that climate change can be reversed quickly when harm becomes evident.

We can see why, by imagining the earth as a huge bathtub. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is like the water in the bathtub. Flowing from the faucet, or tap, are human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. The drain flow out of the bathtub is the rate at which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere (by biomass, the ocean, and other carbon sinks).

Climatologists agree that humans are putting greenhouse gas into the atmosphere at almost twice the rate that natural processes can remove them. The bathtub is filling twice as fast as it is draining.