Is Global Warming Real?

Temperature does not rise in a smooth, straight line. Just like a stock price, you see higher highs and higher lows. It has both trend and transient components.

The choice of "ten years" is cherry-picking. That looks back to 1998 which was a very warm year relative to trend. That compares the current temperature to the previous high.

For those who want to see a reasoned analysis of this "short term trend" issue, and why (aside from new all-time records in either direction) you can't say much from a few years' time, please see this very readable article from realclimate.org:

RealClimate

Just look at the graph of successive 8-year "trends" and you'll get the point. They're all over the place, and as a comment points out, none of the slopes of the 8-year trends is statistically significantly different from zero. They are noise.

I agree with the La Nina comment above. At present, we're in a La Nina and the solar output is at its minimum. Both conditions are expected to change this year.

The point is, not only are short-term trends not useful (too much noise), but its not sensible to imply that the only thing affecting global surface temperatures is GHGs.

La Nina/El Nino and the solar cycle are both fast, transient, cyclical phenomena that, at the present time are both in the "cool" part of their cycles. La Nina may vary in size. For the solar cycle, the best estimate I've seen that the difference from trough to peak solar output has roughly the same effect as five years' worth of GHG increases at current rates.

GHG buildup, by contrast, is slow, long-lived, and at least for now goes in one direction only -- up. The total C02 in the atmosphere increases by about a half a percent a year. But the stuff we put there now will be affecting climate for at least the next couple of centuries. Hence the worry.

Now, should we bash climate models for failing to predict every annual change in temperatures. Well, only if they are designed to do that. And -- surprise -- they aren't. From what I read, those guys never talk in less than decade averages, if then. Here's a quote from the article cited above, from a guy who does climate modeling for a living:


"... Well, if you start to take longer trends, then the uncertainty in the trend estimate approaches the uncertainty in the expected trend, at which point it becomes meaningful to compare them since the 'weather' component has been averaged out. In the global surface temperature record, that happens for trends longer than about 15 years, but for smaller areas with higher noise levels (like Antarctica), the time period can be many decades."

To sum it up: 1) Short-term temperature trends have a large random component. So it's not sensible to make much of a short-term trend. 2) Climate models don't predict year-to-year temperature changes, so it's the worst type of "straw man" approach to blame them for not doing ... what they don't and were never intended to do. 3) Several well-known cyclical factors affect the earth's mean temperature, and two of those happen to hit their minimum (coolest) phase at the moment. So it's not sensible to imply that GHGs are the only relevant input to determining the earth's temperature, and to say that global warming is not occurring because temperature does not move lockstep with C02 concentration in the short run.

 

I don't do dairy. Thanks anyway.

 

Sometimes a picture is worth 1000 words. Heres the NASA GISS estimate of world annual surface temperature by year (black squares) along with five-year moving average. Those who say that global warming stopped in 1998 (aka there's been no global warming in the last decade) are comparing the black square (way above the line in 1998) to the black square on the end of the line. We report, you decide.

 

Uh, no: limestone is made by creatures which form shells. Excess CO2 acidifies water and dissolves limestone (above sea level this is how limestone caves are formed). That does absorb some CO2, true, but even small changes in pH interfere with the ability of many organisms to precipitate calcium for their own use, and also interferes with the metabolisms of organisms that don't make carbonate shells. This is already happening. For more background Google "shelly fauna".

 

Boy am I hesitant to step into this one....but along the lines of the last thread....

There are some ideas to "fertilize" parts of the ocean (mainly around Antarctica) with iron, to produce large blooms of phytoplankton (algae), which take up a lot of CO2 when they photosynthesize. The idea is that when these blooms die and sink, all that CO2 is sequestered in the deep sea, where it will stay for 1000-2000 years until the slow deep water circulation will bring it to the surface again. There are a lot of problems with the idea in practice but conceptually it works. The reason for adding iron is that in the southern ocean, the phytoplankton's growth rate is limited by iron, as they need it to make chlorophyll, and the primary source of iron is terrestrial dust, and there isn't a lot of non-ice-covered land down there.

A decrease in the ocean's buffering capacity and pH (due to increased dissolved CO2) is occurring and is postulated to be one of the reasons for the demise of coral reefs (along with temperature and sedimentation, which are bigger problems for the reefs at the moment than decreased pH is).

 

I've seen similar discussions about charing and burying biomass on land. And grinding up and spreading certain types of minerals that will bind carbon. And high-tech approaches to scrubbing carbon out of the air. Or building desalinization plants to allow us to reforest the Sahara. Or, even, sowing the stratosphere with sulfur aerosols to shade the earth (like the effect of a large tropical volcano).

At some level, it all comes down to cost, property rights, and side effects. What is the cost of these intervention versus the cost of reducing fossil fuel use. And who'll have to pay for it. And what else will happen when if we do it?

These things all deserve attention, but imho, conservation is still the low-hanging fruit in terms of cost/benefit ratio. At least for the US. Maybe in this next decade, if the US gets a dustbowl the way Australia has gotten a drought, we'll see some more movement there. Not necessarily cause-and-effect, but corn at $30/bu might motivate people to rethink what they're doing.

 

chogan2; Heres the NASA GISS estimate of world annual surface temperature by year (black squares) along with five-year moving average.


So, I'd like to see this graph for say the last 10,000 years.

 

Would you be able to accurately assess the graph if you did see it? IE could you easily identify the cooling trend that started after the warming peak of around 8,000yra that continued and should have declined to this day but something is causing the temps to rise again despite the natural trend.

IMO a single graph does not tell the whole story and one must be able to identify all of the other factors effecting climate before basing an opinion on such a graph. Fortunately climatologists regularly account for these other factors. Especially when the story is backed up by many other scientific fields.

 

Both sea creatures and CO2 make limestone, and normally there is an equilibrium. But more of either side of that balance throws it out. Then there are buffers which can correct and mask anything out of balance to a point. Like I said in my post, it's complicated. Since it has been years since I had a science class or even an aquarium, I am also rusty on it, and not a 100% on what exactly is happening in the sea.
I do know we are putting more CO2 into the air. The ocean can absorb that excess CO2, but only to a point. At that point what we have been adding will likely start accumulating at a faster rate.

Carbon cycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

It's well worth taking the time to read a few of the articles on paleoclimate on realclimate.org. In fact, it's worth going to their index page and just browsing. But here's one that's roughly on point:

RealClimate

They talk about the difficulty of reconstructing the historical temperature record from indirect indicators (e.g., tree rings and such). They only show the last 2K years there, but here's the relevant quote:

"The simulations all show that it is not possible to explain the anomalous late 20th century warmth without including the contribution from anthropogenic forcing factors, and, in particular, modern greenhouse gas concentration increases. A healthy, vigorous debate can be found in the legitimate peer-reviewed climate research literature with regard to the precise details of empirically and model-based estimates of climate changes in past centuries, and it remains a challenge to reduce the substantial uncertainties that currently exist. Despite current uncertainties, it nonetheless remains a widespread view among paleoclimate researchers that late 20th century hemispheric-scale warmth is anomalous in a long-term (at least millennial) context, and that anthropogenic factors likely play an important role in explaining the anomalous recent warmth."

Translation: even accounting for the factors that appear to explain past temperature variation, you can't explain the current temperature rise without man-made GHGs.

Here's the picture for the past 2000 years, from that article. The near-vertical red line at the right is what's happening now.

 

Interesting read, Chogan. Thanks for chiming in in your usual, thorough way.

 

Tripp, you're welcome. I do tend to dig at something until think I understand it.

FWIW, I'm putting my money where my mouth is on this issue, but not in the usual way. Yeah, I drive a Prius, buy wind power, blah blah blah. Reasonably savvy, nothing too far out of the mainstream. But that's not what I'm about these days.

As an investment matter, I asked myself, at todays prices and today's interest rates, would I rather have an N-year supply of food locked in at today's prices, or the equivalent dollar amount invested in N-year US Treasury bonds? All things considered, upon reflection, for a fairly wide range of N, I expect food to yield a far better real return than T-bonds. (Not too hard to do as the after-inflation after-tax yield on T-bonds these days is approaching -2%/yr.) My family thinks I'm a bit odd, but it's only common sense to invest for the highest yield, so that's what I've been doing lately -- I've been hanging out with the LDS and the survivalists, building up my pantry. Aside from the "insurance" aspects of it, I think it's a good investment.

Looking at the zero year-to-year carryover in grain stocks, the ongoing drought in Australia (typically a wheat exporter), the growth in meat consumption in the developing world, the fact that US farmers are now replanting marginal (erosion-sensitive) land formerly held out of production,
... not to mention the insane drive for corn-based ethanol, with an entire new tranche of distilleries coming on line in the next couple of years ... well, when you add to that the likelihood of a return to El Nino conditions and higher global temperatures in the next few years ... it looks like a real traffic jam up ahead, that's all I'm saying.

You know what I've found out? There must be a whole lot of people doing the exact same thing, because the backlogs for dehydrated and freeze-dried basics have mushroomed. Went from on-the-shelf two years back one to three month plus backlogs currently. So, all you folks out there who don't believe in global warming, please quit buying dehydrated foods so I can get a decent deal on some. Thanks.

 

That's an interesting idea. What's the shelf life of that stuff? What's it cost?

 

Well, for the expensive stuff, Mountain House freeze-dried meals packed in nitrogen-filled cans, the lifetime is listed as at least 30 years at room temperature, more if you keep them colder. (That's in cans -- if you buy backpacker food in pouches, its much less.)

Freeze-dried is the premium product, and that's mostly packed as prepared meals (e.g., beef stew). Tastes like typical, salty cafeteria food to me. Too salty for me. Price per meal varies, you'd have to take a look. Example: a serving of beef stew or lasagna works out to $2.85. Serving sizes are small, that's not cheap, but it tastes OK (particularly if you already eat a typical high-salt diet). Health food it is not.

Dehydrated, well, powdered milk is to fresh milk as dehydrated food is to fresh food, for taste. Definitely food, but typically different enough that you'd notice it until you get used to it.

Dehydrated staples, such as dehydrated egg power packed in cans, are typically listed at 20 years shelf life (at room temperature). Items that have some fat -- butter or cheese, say -- have shelf life on the order of 15 years, all at room temperature (70 degrees F.) Cooler means longer life.

Wheat and rice in bags are typically listed at 10 years or so. Other types of dehydrated vegetables are typically listed at 15 years at room temperature. TVP (textured vegetable protein) is typically listed at 15 to 20 without any particular fancy packaging. (Yes, I actually like plain TVP.)

Only the dehydrated items and bulk grains are a "good deal" relative to fresh. A can equal to 108 dehydrated eggs (9 dozen) can be had $18 plus shipping, but I expect that to rise as egg prices have risen. In effect, you pay $2/dozen for storable eggs. Grains are incredibly cheap but you need to find them locally as the shipping on a 60 lb sack of grain can cost more than the grain does. In No VA, the Great Harvest Bread Company will sell us the occasional bag of wheat. You also either have to like eating whole grains (I do) or get a grain mill to make bread. The only whole grain not easily storable is brown rice, as it goes rancid. OK to store white rice though. The grains ought to be rotated (ie., eaten) to keep the nutrition content up. You can make a decent lunch from pennies worth of wheat berries and a few spices. The Black and Decker rice steamer is the best thing I've found for cooking them. Some people say you can cook them with lower energy cost by pouring grains and boiling water into a thermos to let them cook, but we've had no luck with that.

This site provides a lot of information, just ignore the end-of-the-world rhetoric. It comes with the territory.

Survival Acres has over 1700+ Emergency Food Items, Dehydrated, Freeze Dried, we are the largest supplier in America.

Click the shelf life link to see a table at the bottom. Click dehydrated foods, click eggs on the index, and look at plain dehydrated eggs (second page) at $18 for 108, in a can. Then note the wait times are at least one month, probably longer.

Probably the best-know internet seller is Walton Feed. A lot of these guys are in Idaho, UT, and that area due to strong LDS interest, I guess.

Welcome to Walton Feed, home of your dehydrated food storage needs.

They are popular enough that there's a slick knock-off site at waltonfeeds.com (note the S). Accept no substitutes, go to waltonfeed.com

Google "food storage" and these sites will pop up.

I'm not endorsing either of these sellers but both provide a lot of information in one place.

 

Thanks for the correction and the citation. I should have checked before posting. The overall point is that the ocean is neither an infinite nor an infinitely-fast sink for CO2, and even to the extent that it does absorb CO2 it affects sea life.

 

don't forget this:


In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991) published by the Club of Rome, a globalist think tank, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

In the past, the Club of Rome has resorted to deceptive tactics in order to support their plans. In 1972, the Club of Rome, along with an MIT team released a report called "Limits to growth." The report stated that we were to reach an environmental holocaust by the year 2000 due to overpopulation and other environmental problems. Support for their conclusions was gathered by results from a computer model. Aurelio Peccei, one of the founders of the Club of Rome, later confessed that the computer program had been written to give the desired results.
Today, global warming and climate change in general have become foundational issues for one of the largest political movements of our time. As more focus is placed on global warming, the solutions which are being presented to the world often have nothing to do with what many are saying is the root cause of the problem. Scientific evidence has emerged, highlighted in the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which supports the theory that the sun is in fact a major driving force behind global warming. Ice core samples show that CO2 levels (which are blamed by many to be the initiating force behind a rise in global temperature) rise 800 years after an initial rise in temperature. Other data gathered regarding solar activity show a clear connection between fluctuations in the sun's activity and temperature variations on earth. If the sun is in fact the culprit for changes in the earth's temperature, world taxes, global government and other solutions we are being given are not cutting to the root cause of climate change.
In response to the conventional explanation of global warming, several calls have been made by various individuals to create a system of world government, and put into place rigid controls over the lives of millions across the world.


Richard Haass, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, stated in his article "State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era," that a system of world government must be created and sovereignty eliminated in order to fight global warming, as well as terrorism. "Moreover, states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function," says Haass. "Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.



States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves..."


Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, stated that a 'new world order' must be created in order to combat global warming.


Dr. Eric R. Pianka, a professor at the University of Texas who has a following of dedicated environmentalists, made startling comments regarding population reduction to a group of students and other scientists in April of 2006. Because of the negative effects of overpopulation on the earth, Pianka proposed that the Ebola virus be used as a tool of population reduction. Pianka also praised China's one child policy, saying that, "China was able to turn the corner and become the leading world super power because they have a police state and they are able to force people to stop re-producing."


in order to understand this game you need to look lot deeper into issues of global warming or the environment,
regardless of your position.
you must must take into consideration the solutions that we are being given, as well as the forces behind them which seek to create a global system of domination and control.
global warming is therefore a method of control, more than anything else.



i wonder, how many of you people are aware of cloud seeding a.k.a chemtrails and climate changes?
And, has anyone read U.N's Agenda 21 and what is Sustainable Development all about?
All of those are hard, documented facts, so don't give me crap about "conspiracy theories"

And those of you who have read that, what is you take on how far are the plans being implemented at this time?

 

Is it my fault that this thread isn't going where the OP intended it to go?
For what was supposed to be a humorous thread it seems to be the most serious :rant:active thread on PC.:flame:

 

There is no scientific debate about global warming. The IPCC, a group of the most respected scientists in the world, published a very in depth report that can be found at IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The debate is an unscientific debate by folks who make statements they cannot backup with fact. Science is about facts, not feelings or beliefs.

 

Zeeman, I'm sorry but your copy and paste is not about science. It is about conspiracy and the babble that is spewed forth from conservative think tanks to confuse the population into inaction.

Maybe if you spent more time with real scientists you would find that tha vast majority do not network in such nefarious ways as depicted in the diatribe above. I'm even more appalled they tried to use "The Great Global Warming Swindle" as evidence for anything! That COMMERCIAL was nothing more than corporate driven hyperbole and misinformation.

 

Zeeman, your discussion of Limits to Growth is total nonsense. You've obviously never read the book.

Here's their main conclusion, in their own words, p 23 of my 1972 paperback edition:

"1) If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years [emphasis mine]. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity."

Dated as it is, I still think that's a plausible conclusion.

That book took numerous scenarios (plural) on available resources and other factors, and estimated growth rates based on them. They varied the assumptions widely -- a technique called "sensitivity analysis" in statistical modeling. Their conclusion was that the continued geometric growth in population would eventually overwhelm any finite set of resources, and that without some form of restraint on population growth, you'd eventually get a population crash. Nothing but Malthus writ large.

The fact that they did the right thing, scientifically, and showed many scenarios, lets the ill-informed pick one particular unusually pessimistic scenario off a page, out of context, and pretend that's what the book was about. It's not. They say nothing like the nutty stuff that gets attributed to them.

Maybe its my scientific bias, but there's nothing debatable about pointing out that a finite planet cannot sustain a 30-year doubling time of the population indefinitely. However, at the time it was published, this concept seriously freaked out many mainstream economists, the business community, and I'd have to guess the entire right wing of the political spectrum. Hence echoes, even today, villifying "Limits to Growth" for what was, at the time, a much-needed attempt to look at the very long run. They were the original "seventh-generation" thinkers. Yeah, the models were crude and a little hokey by modern standards, and lots of things can't be quantified, but their rather modest conclusions were made within that context, with appropriate caveats.

So, basically, what Limits to Growth actually said was that you can't have the population double every 30 years forever, it must stop sometime, and by their calculation, it'll have to stop within the next 100 years, one way or the other. I don't think any person who can do arithmetic has a problem with the first statement, at least in the abstract, it was the "within 100 year" part that got them vilified. People did not and still do not want to hear that, in a major way.