The Holocene Deniers

[Baggins]

Only bad experience I had in peer review was for one of my first papers in which the reviewer compared my work to a high school science project and slammed my advisor for putting her name on this paper.

.

I had that from on of the external reviewers when my Thesis was published, I was mortified as I had worked for him in my holidays and was looking to get a job with him mud logging ( as a start ), it was one of the main reasons I veered off into geophysics.

Luckily all the other reviewers thought it was up to snuff if not exactly ground breaking.

 

[Baggins]

Trying to get this thread back onto a more interesting topic.

Glenn; would you care to comment on the political reasons that lead you to deny AGW in the face of a strong consensus from the world's experts in the field of climatology?

You have dodged this question for long enough.

 

[Gracchus]

No Gracchus, I absolutely agree that it doesn't matter. But ...

So let's drop it and get back on topic.

Sigh, Gracchus,, where pray tell did I say the gas laws were in error? Can you please point to that?

So, you do agree then, that we are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming?

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But no, the atmosphere is NOT a simple Freshman physics experiement where everything is arranged so it appears as a linear system. I posted a picture a couple of days ago showing the prediction of meteorology as to what the temperature should have been if the world's temperature rose according to what the IPCC says will happen to us in the future. The reality is that the world hasn't behaved in the past as the future predictions predict. Below is that picture again.

Note that the temperature (assuming one even believes the temperature record) doesn't behave according to the 2-5 deg C per doubling of CO2 that the IPCC says will happen over this century. Please explain why their prediction doesn't apply to the past. Please explain why we should believe their prediction given the failure of that prediction to fit past data.
Deal with the data.

I am well aware that chaos theory was grounded in the discovery of the effects of sensitivity to initial conditions. Irony of ironies, it was during a computer study of climate. The best we can expect from climatic modeling is probabilities. Indeed, the latest information indicates that warming is progressing faster than predicted.

THen I would suggest that you tell Billion barrel Baggins that he should be claiming to have done things he didn't do and then still expect me to believe anything he says about global warming.

I don't give a rat's posterior about your urethral emissions contest with Baggins.

YOu know, Gracchus, I have posted picture after picture, quotation after quotation. Other than Thistlethorn, all I see from you all is your opinion.

I have seen pictures of diminishing ice pack, melting permafrost, and deforestation. I have also seen pictures of cute little kittens.

If my data is wrong, then post contradictory data as Thistlethorn is doing. Him, I respect. He is posting data--I don't agree that he has captured things correctly yet, but I do respect his ability to actually try to post data.

I am probably no more able to interpret raw meteorological data than you are. Still, the overwhelming majority of meteoroligists who have the skills to interpret the data, say that global warming is a fact and that human activities contribute to the same.

Everyone else is merely sitting on a wall expressing their personal opinion. Such people are not scientists, they are flap-yappers.

In this discussion, then, anyone who is not a meteorologist is a flap-yapper, including you.

Feed back loops.

Ah, cybernetics! Do you mean the positive (de-stabilizing) feed-back loops such as CO2 emissions that cause a rise in temperature, increasing rock weathering that leads to further CO2 emissions that cause a further rise in temperatures, that lead to higher energy consumption for increased air conditioning, that leads to more warming that releases methane from permafrost and the bed of the Arctic Ocean, which leads further warming, which leads to decrease in snow cover and ice pack, which causes more absorption of heat from the sun, which leads to more warming, which lead to increased forest fires, which release more CO2 and decrease CO2 uptake, leading to further deforestation...? Is that the sort of feedback loops you mean?

One can, as you have pointed out, go only so far in analyzing the data in a linear model. At some point you have to think things through in order to have some idea what is actually going on.

The models used to 'predict' how the world will behave work on a 50 by 50 km grid size. They can't model cloud response on that scale.

"In an ideal world one would turn to computer simulations of the terrestrial atmosphere to experiment directly with· the climatic effects of varying solar brightness and increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. But in the real world the atmosphere is too complex, with varying aerosol concentrations, varying wind patterns and ocean currents, deflection of wind by mountain ranges, strong vertical stratification of the atmosphere, and so on, to say nothing of the uncertainties in the formation of cloud cover. The numerical experiments carried out so far show that each of these factors plays an important role, but at present they cannot all be included simultaneously in a single numerical model, so there is no immediate answer to our questions."
E. N. Parker, "Sunny Side of Global Warming," Nature, 399(1999):416-417

Yes, they can't all be included. But it is the global climate models that make the predictions you claim I should believe.

And they are less believable than your own models because ...?

Yet, anyone who talks to those who make the models will find that the models leave out so much and approximate so much that one can't really know if the prediction from the model will turn out to be true. And when I put those predictions on the past CO2 rise and see what temperature those predictions would expect, I find that the real temperature rise is much lower than what the IPCC predicts. so, I have to ask myself why should I believe what the IPCC predicts? It didn't work in the past, yet they assure me that this time they will be right. Why should I believe them Gracchus?

Because they know more about meteorology than you do. Because, no matter how inaccurate the models are, they do predict warming, and warming is being observed.

"The fundamental questions remain unanswered. A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored? Why is the main greenhouse gas (water vapour) ignored? The limitation of temperature in hot climates is evaporation yet this ignored in catastrophist models."

Truly, water is a greenhouse gas, but when the atmosphere is warmer it will uptake more water and contribute even more to warming. And of course, that will increase cloud cover, which will increase albedo, and reflect more sunlight into space, but the increased CO2 and water vapor will capture some of that. What will be the effect of this negative feedback, if indeed there is a net negative effect, on all the aforementioned positive feedback loops?

There were scenarios when the warming effect was first noticed that led some to propose that it might even trigger an ice age. That doesn't seem to have panned out. The ice pack is melting, the glaciers are moving faster, but receding, permafrost is melting and methane is visibly boiling from the sea off the northern coast of Siberia.

"Why are balloon and satellite measurements showing cooling ignored yet unreliable thermometer measurements used? Is the increase in atmospheric CO2 really due to human activities?" Ian Plimmer, another geoscientist like me, who has fought young-earth creationism who thinks anthropic global warming is nutty, "Vitriolic climate in academic hothouse" The Australian May 29, 2009 Vitriolic climate in academic hothouse | The Australian

Isn't it interesting that Plimmer, a vehemently anti-YEC person is equally skeptical of AGW?

I googled Plimmer (but I think you meant Plimer), who is described as a geologist. Are his meteorological credentials better than yours? Are they better than mine?

So what if he is YEC or anti-YEC?

So Gracchus. I have posted on my blog and here comparisons of towns that are only a few miles apart. The said towns have similar weather forecasts each day. Yet the spread in temperature is amazing. I will be conservative and say that the error in the measurment is about 2 degrees. I have cases where the error is over 60 degrees. Clearly the thermometer record is flawed.

I will emphasize: Weather is chaotic. Predicting the weather brings to mind the Russian proverb: "It is not surprising that the bear dances badly, it is only surprising it dances at all." Still, the predictions do seem to be a lot more accurate than they were in my youth.

Then there is the fact that the stupid weather service puts thermometers next to air conditioning exhaust fans. thaumaturgy says he is uncomfortable with what Phil Jones has done but he never feels uncomfortable with putting a thermometer next to an airconditioner or on top of hot cement. I find that amazing that he worries about the one but not the other. Below is another picture of a thermometer next to an airconditioner.

Such placement would indeed return higher temperatures. On the other hand, that would lend credence to any recorded increase in average temperatures.

My question to you Gracchus, is the below location a good place from which to measure the temperature in this town? Please answer this.

No, it would not be my first choice. But a constant error is not as serious as a random or intermittent error.

And I think it has been pointed out to you that using only those thermometers that are ideally placed produces the same result as using all of them, becasue we are interested in average increase or decrease, and not the momentary reading.

 

[dad]

I will say that it is suspicious. I spoke to someone from Nunavut yesterday. She informed me that many bugs never seen before are arriving there, and fish, and plants. Also that there are some unusually warm days this year. There does seem to be a major change in the works.

Since it is bigger than any in our lifetimes, or our parents, or grandparents, etc, we need to look at what real evidence of the past we do have.

That is a problem, and gets into the creation debate territory. I believe the earth is only 6000 years old, so the Holocene was not as long as they think.

A couple of claims were made here that are interesting, One, that for every thaw in the north, we get a corresponding bigger freeze in the south. (or something similar to that) --Can that claim be backed up? And two (this may have been covered, but the thread is getting long) -- that trees in Siberia and a few things like that prove that the world was warmed back some thousands of years ago. How was it established that the phenomena was worldwide?

 

[Baggins]

It is interesting that Mr Morton is using his " you claimed to have found a billion barrels of oil" nonsense to call into question anything I say about climate change because I have said absolutely nothing about climate change beyond accepting the scientific consensus.
I have repetedly asked why Mr Morton rejects the consensus of better qualified scientists than himself and all we have had in return are tumbleweed.

In that case I think we can speculate that Mr Morton, like most AGW deniers, denies for political reasons. he doesn't like the solutions that have been put forward to curb AGW.

That begs the question as to why the right wing of politics cannot come up with political acceptable solutions to AGW, attacking sound science because the political solutions to the problems are unpalatable to you is just barmy but you see a lot of it.

If political thinking on the right is so moribund that they cannot formulate solutions to AGW and climate change then they have rendered themselves irrelevant when it comes to the biggest challenge facing mankind.

 

[sbvera13]

Straw man argument.

No global-warming advocate believes that the earth will be destroyed, there will be a cataclysm, etc. No global-warming advocate denys any of this happened before (it did). In fact, we use those very studies of the past that you bring up to predict just what will happen.

What we warn against is the impacts that climate change will have on human culture.

You should make sure you understand your opposition before you go hunting for them.

 

[grmorton]

As we're on the subject of Siberia, mr "Billion Barrels-o-fun Morton", let's see some data that actually matters:

Permafrost melting? But surely it is not so!

I'm fairly sure the scientists behind these graphs and diagrams would disagree with your assessment of Siberian temperature changes:

I love the continued use of liar that you throw out. I will ignore it and answer the data, for that is what I am interested in.

I have never ever said that the permafrost wasn't melting today. What I said was big deal. It was melted 5000 years ago. Thus, you miss the entire point. I don't know why but you do and you seem insistent upon missing the entire point.

I think everyone can agree that trees don't grow in permafrost. Thus, if previously trees were growing in an are, it couldn't have been permafrost when the trees were growing.

The data comes from inland ice

[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Cape Last Interglacial Project Members, “Last Interglacial arctic warmth confirms polar amplification of climate change”, [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Quaternary Science Reviews[/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif'] [/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif']Volume 25, Issues 13-14[/FONT][FONT='Arial','sans-serif'], July 2006, 1383-1400, p. 1385-1387[/FONT]

There is a chart there that shows where the trees were in the last interglacial. Almost all the Arctic permafrost was melted at that time.

In Finland, there was a boreal forest at the Arctic coast line.

In West Central Siberia trees grew 800 km further north than they do today.

In NE Siberia the trees were 600 km further north than they are today.

Andreeve et al 2004 are cited in the table as showing that some plant taxa indicate that the summers then were even warmer than summers today.

In the last interglacial, the boreal forest extended 50 km north of the Brooks Range--no trees there today in this supposedly hyperwarmed, unprecedentedly heated world we live in.

At Birch Creek Alaska, pollen indicates up to a 2 deg warmer climate at that time.

In Jameson Land, east Greenland, a birch woodland grew. No birches are there today.



So Thistlethorn, I give a big yawn to your proof that the permafrost is melting. It means nothing because we have been there before.

 

[grmorton]

Funny thing is, grmorton, I tend to agree with you regarding the data and AGW. I'm not convinced either way. Certainly to deny that 5 billion people have may not in some way have contributed to GW is a bit of a stretch though IMO. Shouldn't we at least investigate to determine if ths is natural vs. AWG?

If everyone would get their panties out of a twist and start paying attention to data rather than to who said what when (and I am going to do that from this moment on. I will no longer reply to personal insults or to the oil issue), then people would see that the data isn't so perfect as the agw folks beleive.

Have 5 billion contributed to warming? Probably, but not necessarily only via CO2 which is the villain du jour. Albedo change due to land use is also an issue. As Carl Sagan pointed out long long ago, a change of the albedo of .01, it would account for any warming.

"Simple climate models (31) suggest
that if the global albedo changes from its
value of 0.30 by 0.01, a surface temperature
change of - 2 K will result." Carl Sagan, Owen B. Toon, James B. Pollack," Anthropogenic Albedo Changes
and the Earth's Climate", Science 206(1979),p. 1367

Note that this article is from long long before the current controversy and thus can't be claimed to be political on either side. NOte also that the 2 K is 2 C and that is greater than the 0.84 C of the IPCC.

So, what has happened to the world's albedo?

"The global CERES observations show a
small decrease of ~2 W/m^2 in shortwave
reflected flux, equal to an albedo decrease of
0.006. These results stand in stark contrast to
those of Pall2 et al. (4), which show a large increase of 6 W/ m^2 or an albedo increase of
0.017, as shown for comparison in Fig. 1."

This is 60% of Sagan's 2 degree change for a change of .01. Thus we can expect that from albedo alone we should have 1.2 deg C warming. Of course, no one discusses this they all want to blame CO2

E. Palle´, P. R. Goode, P. Montane´s-Rodrıguez, S. E. Koonin, “ Changes in Earth’s Reflectance over the Past Two Decades, Science 304(2004), p. 1299

"We correlate an overlapping period of earthshine measurements of Earth’s reflectance (from 1999 through mid-2001) with satellite observations of global cloud properties to construct from the latter a proxy measure of Earth’s global shortwave reflectance. This proxy shows a steady decrease in Earth’s reflectance from 1984 to 2000, with a strong climatologically significant drop after 1995. From 2001 to 2003, only earthshine data are available, and they indicate a complete reversal of the decline. Understanding how the causes of these decadal changes are apportioned between natural variability, direct forcing, and feedbacks is fundamental to confidently assessing and predicting climate change.”



But everyone wants to focus ONLY on CO2.

As for data suppression, yes, unacceptable.

Thank you. As I said to Thau, regardless of whether I am right or wrong, such behavior is absolutely attrocious. But ignoring data and other possibilities is equally attrocious, IMO.

You sir however, come across like a bull in a china closet. What's the point of coming in here and insulting everyone? What did you hope to accomplish? Any hope of making a point is overshadowed by your rudeness. You come accross like a madman on a mission. Ease, up. Cut the ad hom, and let the data speak for itself.
It stands or falls, right?

I am a bull in a china shop. I have a bad habit. I respond in kind (at least as I think of the kind--it is bad, I know it, but it is unlikely to change). And you are not the first one to claim that I am a bull in a china shop. Luckily, I don't care about china. I care only that people don't ignore data. It is what YECs do and it is what AGW does, IMO. YECs are not dangerous. They are very very wrong, but they won't tax me out of existence. AGW is dangerous if it is wrong, so it is important that ALL the data be examined.

 

[grmorton]

So let's drop it and get back on topic.

Tryin' to

So, you do agree then, that we are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming?

The amount of contribution is what is at question. The way you phrase questions sounds like you run political polls so that you can elicit the response you want.

I am well aware that chaos theory was grounded in the discovery of the effects of sensitivity to initial conditions. Irony of ironies, it was during a computer study of climate. The best we can expect from climatic modeling is probabilities. Indeed, the latest information indicates that warming is progressing faster than predicted.

I studied Lorenz's work in college and after. I am glad that you agree that all we can expect is probabilities. But one can't quantify those probabilities if one doesn't know what the effect is of what was left out of the model. I have noted before and note again, handling clouds at the 10 mile scale or even the few hundred yard scale is something beyond the ability of the models. If there is an important feedback loop that is missing then the conclusion from the model will be lacking in validity.

There is the problem that people talk about global warming predictions as if they are uniform in their predictions. Below is a picture of the predictions. When people say models predict that we will be X deg hotter in 20 years, one must wonder which model.

Because of the cloud problem and other problems with the models, one must realize that they may all be biased, not intentionally but because they can't handle all the things that need to be handled. I was in charge of reservoir simulation for Kerr-McGee for 5 years (3 for the North Sea alone and 2 for the entire corporation). I know that models of complex systems are subject to the garbage in-garbage out rules.

I also would note that all the models are basically linear in their output. It seems to me that if true, this would mean that there are NO feedback loops which would mitigate or exacerbate the warming. I dont know about you, but I find it odd that the output is so linear. If weather/climate were linear, the the Lorenz equations wouldn't be famous.

I have seen pictures of diminishing ice pack, melting permafrost, and deforestation. I have also seen pictures of cute little kittens.

Good, I hope you were kind to the kittens. You tell me that you are interested in the data, but this is not a sign of it. The pictures have data on them. That is why I post them. The data comes out of the archives of the various weather services or scientific literature. As I said, your comment here doesn't really indicate to me that all you care about is the data. What do you think data looks like?

I am probably no more able to interpret raw meteorological data than you are. Still, the overwhelming majority of meteoroligists who have the skills to interpret the data, say that global warming is a fact and that human activities contribute to the same.

You underestimate yourself. Do you think that the second picture, the picture of the daily minimum (the x-axis is Julian day) is correct? If you think they are correct, then I have a bridge I would love to sell you. If you think that something is wrong with the temperatures from these two towns just 25 miles apart, then you and I would agree. But that would be interpreting the raw data--something I am proud to say I am capable of doing, even if you are not.

In this discussion, then, anyone who is not a meteorologist is a flap-yapper, including you.

You tell me to give up on the baggins affair. What is the above, Gracchus--a serene discussion of the data? No, it is you doing what you criticize me for doing. I don't give a rats rear end for your opinion here. It isn't data--something you claim should be the only thing we care about.

Ah, cybernetics! Do you mean the positive (de-stabilizing) feed-back loops such as CO2 emissions that cause a rise in temperature, increasing rock weathering that leads to further CO2 emissions that cause a further rise in temperatures, that lead to higher energy consumption for increased air conditioning, that leads to more warming that releases methane from permafrost and the bed of the Arctic Ocean, which leads further warming, which leads to decrease in snow cover and ice pack, which causes more absorption of heat from the sun, which leads to more warming, which lead to increased forest fires, which release more CO2 and decrease CO2 uptake, leading to further deforestation...? Is that the sort of feedback loops you mean?

YEs, but that of course, ignores the fact that oceans will warm, with the increase in evaporation leading to more cloud cover leading to a mitigation of the temperature. Besides, Gracchus, the world has already been up to 5 degrees hotter than at present and none of the things you claim will happen happened. Remember MIS 5? 125,000 years ago, Greenland was half melted and held spruce forests. You can go look it up on Google scholar. None of this catastrophic feedback runaway global warming happened the last time the earth experienced these temperatures.

Would you care to explain why this time is so different? Remember in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum we had 1000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and nothing, nada happened to destroy the earth. At the beginning of the Tertiary the CO2 content of the atmosphere was 2300 ppm. Of course no one will tell you that.

"Our record shows stable Late Cretaceous/Early Tertiary background pCO2 levels of 350-500 ppm by volume, but with a marked increase to at least 2,300 ppm by volume within 10,000 years of the KTB."
D. J. Beerling, B. H. Lomax, D. L. Royer, G. R. Upchurch, Jr., and L. R. Kump, "An atmospheric pCO2 reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils" PNAS 99(2002): 7836-7840.

As I told Thistlethorn about the melting permafrost, I give a big yawn to your worries about a runaway greenhouse. If we were ever to have a runaway greenhouse the 10,000 years after the meteor hit would have been it. Nothing happened except the world got warm and then it cooled again.

One can, as you have pointed out, go only so far in analyzing the data in a linear model. At some point you have to think things through in order to have some idea what is actually going on.

And they are less believable than your own models because ...?

I learned in the oil business that when one has big scientific holes in ones oil prospects that one should not stand up and state definitively that this is the best prospect on earth. One shouldn't commit the company's dollars to such a prospect. Yet, you seem to acknowledge that there is a hole in the models where it comes to clouds (which is what you were responding to) and that should mean that we shouldn't commit society's dollars to the predictions of a flawed model. I have little doubt that you will find this unsatisfying.

Because they know more about meteorology than you do. Because, no matter how inaccurate the models are, they do predict warming, and warming is being observed.

I see, we should all sit down shut up and let people tell us what to do. I don't live my life that way. If you want to, be my guest. For my part, I will not be a mindless follower. I have a wee bit of skepticism especially when people want my money.

I googled Plimmer (but I think you meant Plimer), who is described as a geologist. Are his meteorological credentials better than yours? Are they better than mine?

Yes, I meant Plimer. I have a bad arm that makes typing sometimes difficult.

As to credentials, I have a question. He and I are geoscientists. We study the past. That includes past climates. Yes, we use fossils as a proxy but it is still basically saying something about past climate. Modern climatologists, who you seem to think should be our priests to discern from chicken livers what the future temperature will be, do not have any geological training and thus are not credentialed in my field. Nor do they have experience in my, and Plimer's field). In my mind if I am to be excluded from climatology they should sit down, shut up and listen to Plimer and I on geologic history.

Or do you, like the YECs think geology isn't a valid science?

I will emphasize: Weather is chaotic. Predicting the weather brings to mind the Russian proverb: "It is not surprising that the bear dances badly, it is only surprising it dances at all." Still, the predictions do seem to be a lot more accurate than they were in my youth.

If you had studied why meteorologists only give 5 day forecasts, it is because of what Lorenz found--that is the horizon of predictability--5 days.

As to accurate, what study could you present me to back up that rather dubious claim on your part--that weather predictions are more accurate today--other than your need for it in a debate with a bull in a china shop.

Such placement would indeed return higher temperatures. On the other hand, that would lend credence to any recorded increase in average temperatures.

So, why do you think that the weather service doesn't get them corrected? Why do they tolerate such poorly sited stations? If you pay a man or woman to measure the temperature, would you be happy with such placement?

BTW, this whole problem is discussed in the Bull. American Meteorology

http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-274.pdf


That paper concludes"

"Moreover, it is imperative
to determine whether there is a systematic
warm or cold bias from site
exposure in the set of data that are
used to develop regional averages.
Photographic documentation of the
type gathered in this study can effectively
determine whether or not
such site exposure issues exist for
other locations and should, therefore,
be extended to the entire
USHCN network as well as to all
surface stations worldwide that are
used in long-term temperature
trend analyses. Similar variability in
the climate observing sites in the
worldwide dataset of land-surface
temperature trends would raise​

questions concerning the use of the

historical record to assess regional and even global​

temperature changes."CHRISTOPHER A. DAVEY AND ROGER A. PIELKE SR.

MICROCLIMATE EXPOSURES
OF SURFACE-BASED WEATHER
STATIONS​

Implications For The Assessment of Long-Term
Temperature Trends, Bull. AMS 86(2005), p. 504
​

Gracchus, it isn't just Anthony Watts or me who is saying that there is a problem with the US Historical Climate Network. Articles in the peer-reviewed Bull. American Meteorological Society also say that. Everyone wants peer-reviewed papers, well that is one--one that everyone ignores or doesn't know about.

No, it would not be my first choice. But a constant error is not as serious as a random or intermittent error.

And I think it has been pointed out to you that using only those thermometers that are ideally placed produces the same result as using all of them, becasue we are interested in average increase or decrease, and not the momentary reading.

And as you ignore, I pointed out that after a 'correction' that changes a cooling trend at a station into a warming trend, I am not surprised. See another Bull. American Meteorological Society paper,
THOMAS C. PETERSON, “EXAMINATION OF POTENTIAL
BIASES IN AIR TEMPERATURECAUSED BY POOR STATION
LOCATIONS,” American Meteorological Society, Aug, 2006, p. 1078

Why do you not address this issue--the issue that they change the trends of individual stations?

 

[grmorton]

Straw man argument.

No global-warming advocate believes that the earth will be destroyed, there will be a cataclysm, etc. No global-warming advocate denys any of this happened before (it did). In fact, we use those very studies of the past that you bring up to predict just what will happen.

What we warn against is the impacts that climate change will have on human culture.

You should make sure you understand your opposition before you go hunting for them.

Keep chantin' that Mantra.

With all due respect, I must stand by my former statement that they are claiming that. Do you know what a runaway greenhouse effect is? It is where a positive feedback loop happens where rising temperature causes more greenhouse gases and those gases in turn cause higher temperatures. Such an event is why Venus is a baking lifeless desert.


Now James Hansen is saying that kind of nonsense:

From
Robin McKie, "President 'has four years to save Earth'" The Guardian's The Observer, Sunday 18 January 2009
"Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...m-hansen-obama

And this
Christopher Flavin, “Commentary: Reconciling Poverty, Sustainability, and the Financial Crisis” WorldChanging TeamOctober 1, 2008 2:02 PM

"The following is adapted from a speech given by Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin at a high-level United Nations event on September 25, 2008.
'Across large areas of the Indian subcontinent, diminishing supplies of fresh water are undermining food production and leaving people with inadequate drinking water.'
'And from the Arctic to the Equator, the world's climate is changing rapidly - and undermining ecological systems on every continent, from forests to oceans and fresh water. Many scientists believe that a dangerous climate tipping point may be near-unleashing a runaway greenhouse effect that would feed on itself for centuries to come.'"




Now, here is why we don't need to worry about it. This concept has already been experimentally tested on earth. It is called the Paleocene-Eocene thermal Maximum. CO2 was over 1000 ppm (today we are at 385 ppm). The global average temperature of the earth was well in excess of 5 deg C above that found today yet nothing happened. And as I pointed out in one of the previous 2 posts the CO2 content of the atmosphere after the meteor killed the dinos was 2300 ppm--about 6-7 times current levels. Nothing happened. But, you are wrong that scientists aren't claiming this.



Scott L. Wing and Elizabeth C. Lovelock," Rapid global warming and floral change at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary (in , Anonymous,), "Geological Society of America (GSA), United States, Boulder 2007
At the onset of the Eocene the Earth warmed by 4-8 degrees C over a period of 10-20 ky.

What happened? Why, nothing in the way of a runaway greenhouse effect.

Perchance you should understand what your side is saying before you tell me to understand what my opposition is saying.

 

[grmorton]

Anthony Watts has been soundly criticised by the AGW crowd. They act as if he is the public enemy number 1. Indeed in this thread a video was posted which purported to discredit him, but all it did was use propagandistic techniques. I thought I would post a picture out of the American Meteorological Bulletin of John Martin Reservoir MMTS which is next to an air conditioner. Why is it OK for the Bull. AMS to publish in a peer reviewed journal deprecatory statments about putting a thermometer next to an airconditioner coil but it is not ok for Anthony Watts to do the same thing? Spend an hour perusing his database http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php

Thaumaturgy has criticized me for suggesting that such siting might be bad and make it impossible for us to know what the temperature is really doing. He thinks I am nuts to do this. Yet, it seems that the American Meteorological Society didn't think such a criticism should keep a paper out of print doing exactly the same thing, criticizing exactly the same thing. http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-274.pdf

Is there a double standard here? Below is a picture from the peer reviewed article and one from Anthony Watts site. Why is one ok and the other not?

It seems to me that if BAMS can OK the publication of an article critical of such siting that it the height of hypocrisy for AGW advocates to criticize Anthony Watts for doing what BAMS does.

 

[grmorton]

Having gotten back from my ranch today and experienced a very rare cold front in South Texas in August, I have felt a bit emboldened. South Texas almost never gets a cold front in August, yet, yesterday at the ranch we had a strong north wind (unfortunately the rain was south of my place and I need rain badly.). It made me think of the lack of sunspots on the sun over the past few years. Below in the first picture is the behavior of the present sunspot cycle (bold red) which shows that it is entirely different from most of the sunspot cycles (other colors). Remember that when there are no sunspots, the sun outputs less energy--meaning generally cooler temperatures.

The second picture (which Gracchus should accept as evidence inspite of his inability to interpret raw temperature records) is the chart of Belle Plaine Iowa minus Toledo Iowa. These two towns are only 18 miles apart and only 30 ft different in elevation. One can immediately see that these two towns can at times differ by 20 deg F. That is much greater than the supposed 1.1 deg F warming of the 20th century. The problem is that AGW advocates don't seem to think this is a problem. The red curve is the 365 day running average and the small green line inside the red curve is how much the IPCC says the world has warmed in 100 years. Clearly the noise level in this data is far greater than should be if you want to say that the world has warmed 1.1 deg +/-.9 deg F.

I have looked at Chinese data and it is attrocious as well. YET AGW folk all say this is not a problem. Yeah, right.

 

[grmorton]

One aspect of the Global warming situation needs to be examined. It is the sociological factor. Societies go through some really strange times in which facts don't matter.

"Pigs have an especially important role in Melanesian society, much greater than their potential role in meat supply. Women dedicate much time to growing pigs and caring for them individually. This care includes breastfeeding pigs, often along with the woman's babies, so that pigs do not break their milk teeth, greatly valued as ornaments." ~ L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paoli Menozzi and Alberto Piazzi, The History and Geography of Human Genes, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 346

You would think that the polynesians would know how important pigs were to their living. But, they didn't. Neither did the Tasmanians keep in mind how important fishing was.


"Remember that Tasmania used to be joined to the southern Australian mainland at Pleistocene times of low sea level, until the land bridge was severed by rising sea level 12,000 years ago. People walked out to Tasmania tens of thousands of years ago, when it was still part of Australia. Once that land bridge was severed, though, there was absolutely no further contact of Tasmanians with mainland Australians or with any other people until the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman arrived in 1642, because both Tasmanians and mainland Australians lacked watercraft capable of crossing those 130-mile straits between Tasmania and Australia. Tasmanian history is thus a study of human isolation unprecedented except in science fiction—namely, complete isolation from all other humans for 12,000 years."

"If all those technologies that I mentioned, absent from Tasmania but present on the opposite Australian mainland, were invented by Australians within the last 12,000 years, we can surely conclude that the Tasmanians did not invent them independently. Astonishingly, the archaeological record demonstrates something further: Tasmanians actually abandoned some technologies that they brought with them from Australia and that persisted on the Australian mainland. For example, bone tools and the practice of fishing were both present in Tasmania at the time that the land bridge was severed, and both disappeared from Tasmania around 1500 B.C. That represents the loss of valuable technologies: fish could have been smoked to provide a winter food supply, and bone needles could have bene used to sew warm clothes. What sense can we make of these cultural losses?"

"The only interpretation that makes sense to me goes as follows. All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use. For example, there are several instances of people on Pacific islands suddenly deciding to taboo and kill off all of their pigs, even though pigs are their only big edible land mammal! Eventually, those Pacific islanders realize that pigs are useful after all, and they import a new breeding stock from another island." Jared Diamond, "The Evolution of Guns and Germs," in Evolution: Society, Science and the Universe, ed by A. C. Fabian, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 60

But the Tasmanians, having given up seaworthy boats couldn't import the technology. (they did have a boat that would last about 12 hours in the water) Today, our society, because of global warming is in the process of forgetting how important energy is to our lives. I have been to Tibet where I met nomads who live without modern energy, they live in tents at 12000 feet or higher throughout the winter. I learned how important energy is to the way we live. But AGW with its attendant view of get rid of the energy to stop CO2 is not a whole lot different than the making pigs taboo of the Polynesians. Our society is now in the process of killing our 'pigs'

Until you actually see life without energy, don't knock it and don't try to get rid of it. The fear of AGW is making us kill our economy, which is why I think AGW is very very dangerous in a way that YECs aren't

 

[sbvera13]

*snip*

I like how AGW deniers think that they can use 1 years information (or less) to document a century-spanning trend.

 

[Contracelsus]

The second picture (which Gracchus should accept as evidence inspite of his inability to interpret raw temperature records) is the chart of Belle Plaine Iowa minus Toledo Iowa. These two towns are only 18 miles apart and only 30 ft different in elevation. One can immediately see that these two towns can at times differ by 20 deg F. That is much greater than the supposed 1.1 deg F warming of the 20th century.

If I might jump in here for a second. In relation to the two Iowa stations, I have made a histogram of the differences between the two stations:

Now, this is what is called a "heavy tail distribution". It has a large number of values that fall far out into the tails. Sure this is not perfect data, but then what is? Look at the histogram bars close in to 0. These two bars account for almost 15,000 data points.

In fact, assuming I counted right, the % of data measurements greater than +20deg difference is about 2% of the data. That's all. Remember this data set represents about 20,960 data points. This is daily data that goes back, what, about 60 years?

In fact the median is -1deg. That doesn't look too bad. And if I understand the debate correctly the absolute temperature isn't what is important, it's the trend in temperature changes.

So if the difference between these two is only 1degree F over 60 years that doesn't seem like a bad data set. The fact that the histogram is reasonably symmetrical would seem to indicate a lack of systematic error.

I've looked a few other of these couples that Mr. Morton has listed on his Blog. Here's the histograms:

Two stations; in in Iowa and one in Illinois.

Two stations close to each other in Georgia. The median difference here is about 0 deg F. Now this one has 3 days out of about 57 years worth of data where there was a -60degree difference.

3 data points out of 20,515 data points? That's 0.01% of the data.

Here's two stations close to each other, one in Mississippi and one in Louisiana that Mr. Morton mentioned in his blog.

While there's clearly some errors in the data and outliers (which can be dealt with rather easily) this would seem to indicate that various couplets of stations are not necessarily systematically flawed in some way. Certainly not enough to indicate that calculations of TRENDS based off the temperature data taken across the country would necessarily be erroneous.

 

[dad]

It is interesting that Mr Morton is using his " you claimed to have found a billion barrels of oil" nonsense to call into question anything I say about climate change because I have said absolutely nothing about climate change beyond accepting the scientific consensus.
I have repetedly asked why Mr Morton rejects the consensus of better qualified scientists than himself and all we have had in return are tumbleweed.

In that case I think we can speculate that Mr Morton, like most AGW deniers, denies for political reasons. he doesn't like the solutions that have been put forward to curb AGW.

That begs the question as to why the right wing of politics cannot come up with political acceptable solutions to AGW, attacking sound science because the political solutions to the problems are unpalatable to you is just barmy but you see a lot of it.

If political thinking on the right is so moribund that they cannot formulate solutions to AGW and climate change then they have rendered themselves irrelevant when it comes to the biggest challenge facing mankind.

Cavemen grabbing a girl by the hair, and dragging her off, weren't responsible for global warming. The thing you are agreeing with, is that man, therefore, of course science, is responsible. The modern civilization of man, with all it's science!

Since that is your position (correct me if that is wrong) you admit science is the culprit, and responsible. Yet, the solution, apparently, that you point to, is...science!!!! What a hypocritical farce of a position. Or perhaps the answer in your mind is politicians? Look at their track record. They ordered Hiroshima, the fire bombings, the Iraq wars, and all the hundreds of wars, nay, thousands, that have wreaked havoc on the environment of earth. They also sanction pollution and all sorts of damaging things.

It is neither politicians, nor men of science on either the right or left that matter. They are responsible for the crime. It is high time we stop pretending that we need more foxes to guard the hen house.

Your position is exposed..it's official.

 

[Baggins]

I is becoming increasingly clear from reading words like "skeptic" and phrases like " dictated to" that the reason Mr Morton rejects anthropic global warming and climate change is a pungent mixture of intellectual hubris and right wing politics.

But then that is true for the vast majority of AGW deniers, this idea that because geologists have to take into account past climate changes that they have meaningful ideas about predicting future climate change is particularly baffling.

 

[Thistlethorn]

I love the continued use of liar that you throw out. I will ignore it and answer the data, for that is what I am interested in.

While I didn't call you a liar in the post you quoted, I did before, and i stand by it, as you have been proven to lie in this very thread. You may not think of it as lying, but it was.

I have never ever said that the permafrost wasn't melting today.

Then why the whole song and dance number of how your data showed you that Siberia wasn't melting? Are you able to hold a discussion without resorting to straw men and red herrings all the time? You argue just like a YEC, and I'm not surprised to hear you used to be one.

What I said was big deal. It was melted 5000 years ago. Thus, you miss the entire point. I don't know why but you do and you seem insistent upon missing the entire point.

I've already told you why I'm "missing the point". Your point is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. I don't know how many other ways I can tell you that. The earth warming in the past through natural causes has absolutely NOTHING to do with the earth warming today through unnatural causes. As so many people have already told you, your entire OP is a huge straw man, as well as irrelevant.

I think everyone can agree that trees don't grow in permafrost. Thus, if previously trees were growing in an are, it couldn't have been permafrost when the trees were growing.

For science's sake, check your facts mr Morton.

Does Permafrost Affect Trees? | eHow.com

Drunken trees - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a chart there that shows where the trees were in the last interglacial. Almost all the Arctic permafrost was melted at that time. In Finland, there was a boreal forest at the Arctic coast line.

In West Central Siberia trees grew 800 km further north than they do today.

In NE Siberia the trees were 600 km further north than they are today.

Andreeve et al 2004 are cited in the table as showing that some plant taxa indicate that the summers then were even warmer than summers today.

In the last interglacial, the boreal forest extended 50 km north of the Brooks Range--no trees there today in this supposedly hyperwarmed, unprecedentedly heated world we live in.

At Birch Creek Alaska, pollen indicates up to a 2 deg warmer climate at that time.

In Jameson Land, east Greenland, a birch woodland grew. No birches are there today.

If you are basing those assertions on your previous one about trees not growing on permafrost, they are completely unfounded. Evidence needed.

So Thistlethorn, I give a big yawn to your proof that the permafrost is melting. It means nothing because we have been there before.

Think again, Billion Barrel Morton.

 

[Contracelsus]

I recognize that Hansen has kind of become a dirty word in the debate (at least from the anti-side), but if we simply look at one example of a FORECAST Hansen made in a 1988 paper (Pubs.GISS: Abstract of Hansen et al. 1988) we can see that the models Hansen was using appear to be relatively effective in predicting the course of events for the following decade.

Specifically the graph here:

There's three scenarios A, B and C. C is predicted if governmental intervention and reduction of CO2 output was undertaken.

The reality appears to be that Scenario B is what has actually been followed. (A and B differ by the rate of greenhouse gas emission increase and the inclusion of a major volcanic event).

Here's the Hansen graph with observed data overlaid:

Looks like the Model B track is on course.

Regardless of the mechanism one thinks is in play in the global warming, if Hansen used a model predicated on the kinds of things he's been talking about now for quite some time it would seem to indicate that perhaps Hansen's models can be granted some degree of reliability. Certainly prediction is one of the best proofs of a model, right?

 

[grmorton]

I recognize that Hansen has kind of become a dirty word in the debate (at least from the anti-side), but if we simply look at one example of a FORECAST Hansen made in a 1988 paper (Pubs.GISS: Abstract of Hansen et al. 1988) we can see that the models Hansen was using appear to be relatively effective in predicting the course of events for the following decade.

Specifically the graph here:

There's three scenarios A, B and C. C is predicted if governmental intervention and reduction of CO2 output was undertaken.

The reality appears to be that Scenario B is what has actually been followed. (A and B differ by the rate of greenhouse gas emission increase and the inclusion of a major volcanic event).

Here's the Hansen graph with observed data overlaid:

Looks like the Model B track is on course.

Regardless of the mechanism one thinks is in play in the global warming, if Hansen used a model predicated on the kinds of things he's been talking about now for quite some time it would seem to indicate that perhaps Hansen's models can be granted some degree of reliability. Certainly prediction is one of the best proofs of a model, right?

That is an interesting graph. I don't see the same info in it as you do. According to the way I read the graph, Scenario B says we should have had about .8 deg C temperature rise since 1960 up through about 2007. But according NOAA's Global Climate at a Glance, site, where you can examine the time series for any period of time, we had only had about a half a degree of warming since 1960. The anomaly for 2007 is 0.46. Last year (2008) NOAA rushed out the 2007 data. This year they still haven't put out the 2008 data and I have repeatedly asked them about it and they have not replied at all (They did reply last year to requests).

So, it doesn't seem to me that this model is 'on target' unless you allow for about 40% too high an estimate to be 'on target'.

There is also something else that needs to be considered. Look at your chart at 2005. Scenario B predicted that there would be a .75 deg C rise in temperature since 1960. But that conflicts with the IPCC claim that over the past 100 years we have had an increase in temperaure of .74 deg C. ( see page 30 of http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf)

It seems that according to this criterion, Hansen's Scenario B is off by a factor of 2. I don't know, maybe a factor of 2 is also to be considered 'on target'. I wouldn't think so but if you do, please explain why.