news.nationalgeographic.com— A chunk of ice spreading across 7 square miles (18 square kilometers) has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists say.
Aug 3, 2008View in Crawl 4
@viking,On the first site you gave, both land AND sea temperature can clearly be seen on the first few graphs to drop for about 30-40 years. The later graphs for some reason look different (which is fishy on its own), but regardless, land temperatures still show obvious multi-decade cooling. So how we measured sea temperature clearly has nothing to do with that...Furthermore, the "difference in measurement methods" theory only explains a 3 year span anyway, after which trends should be unaffected. Think about it. If you start measuring from an uninsulated bucket, and then continue to do so for the next 20 years, there should be a ONE-TIME drop when you switched over, but then steadily rising temperatures from that lower point. Not a continuing cooling trend. That would only happen if you kept removing more insulation from your bucket every year...The second article has no links to any peer-reviewed aerosol studies, and I've never heard of this theory before, despite debating global warming all the time (see my profile!). Aside from that, though, it says dimming was recorded from 1960 to 1985, but the cooling period in question was from the 40s to the 70s or 80s. So I fail to see how this theory accounts for the first 20 years of cooling either way.You're a long way from explaining why about 1/3 of our data since industrialization points to global cooling.
Okay, so what? I don't care if it just started happening in 1600 AD. The point is that this breaking and floating around and refreezing has been happening since long BEFORE we started burning a lot of coal and industrializing. So it cannot be used as evidence of anthropogenic anything.And I never said the article ruled out global warming. I said it was careful to not ATTRIBUTE this to global warming (they also didn't attribute it to anything else).
You have a dangerous misunderstanding of the situation. There is the scientific aspect and then there is the political aspect.You must look deep into the politics. Al Gore is the mouthpiece for a politically driven agenda. Whether you believe global warming is man made or not, the political agenda is more about control than it is about fixing a problem. And of course when ever politicians have an idea, there's a ton of money for them to make. They are not on your side.
Gee, sounds impressive! Until you actually start looking at some of these references. I'll admit, I didn't waste too much time on checking all these out because the first two failed miserably.As someone interested in science, I'm sure that you are aware that correlation does not establish cause and effect. Your sources show only the increase - not the source. However, at one time, the EPA posted the following numbers for the year 2000: pre-industrial base line = 288,000 ppb; natural additions = 68,520 ppb; man-made additions = 11,880 ppb; for a total of 368,400 ppb. Granted those are 8 year old figures, but keep in mind that the EPA does not want this "crisis" to go away and so has ceased to break these figures down in a way that makes it possible to see how comparitively small anthropogenic CO2 is.See: <a class="user" href="http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html">http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data. ...</a>It's also important to realize that the atmosphere is not a closed system. CO2 is constantly being added and consumed in an ongoing fashion. To get an accurate picture, you can't just look at the addition side, there is also the CO2 "sinks" that pull enormous amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere.Lastly, CO2 levels have continued to rise but the global temperature has cooled over the last 10 years. The all time high of +0.526 in 1998 has seen steady decline to this years +0.261. Obviously, rises in CO2 have had a very small effect on global temperature.See: <a class="user" href="http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm">http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17 ...</a>
I am sure that I am not as smart as you two. But I must respectfully disagree with a few things here. You've called me "pridefully ignorant." This may be in part true. I AM proud of the clear thinking that allowed me to ask the questions, "How much of the CO2 that's in the atmosphere comes from human activity?" and "How much of an effect does it have on global warming?" These are definitive questions that I rarely hear people ask. I am proud of all the time I spent reading books on climate change and all the hours spent scouring the Internet for hard data and not settling for theories and generalizations (pro or con). But "ignorant?" I may not be as smart as you, but I am certainly not ignorant.As for the ad hominem fallacy; it really has nothing to do with whether the attack is founded in truth or not. The purpose of an ad hominem attack is to insult your opponent in an effort to discredit his argument. The only reason a person would even mention a person's "prideful ignorance" is to try to take attention away from the weakness of their own argument by attempting to diminish the opposition. The real issue is whether the EPA's numbers carry more credibility then the theories and generalizations of alarmist websites like RealClimate. My pride and my ignorance are not relevant to that issue.The bottom line is that we humans, in our day-to-day activities DO affect the climate - but the next step is to determine how much. Even if we were to accept the notion that ALL of the CO2 increase is anthropogenic, the numbers still come out that the warming caused by human activity accounts for less than 1% (which would equal less than .007 degrees c). CO2 is just not a very potent greenhouse gas.Please forgive me if I'm showing my prideful ignorance again.
noseemeAug 5, 2008
More like MBP. I told you he was coming, I was super serial!
smurfsahoyAug 5, 2008
@viking,On the first site you gave, both land AND sea temperature can clearly be seen on the first few graphs to drop for about 30-40 years. The later graphs for some reason look different (which is fishy on its own), but regardless, land temperatures still show obvious multi-decade cooling. So how we measured sea temperature clearly has nothing to do with that...Furthermore, the "difference in measurement methods" theory only explains a 3 year span anyway, after which trends should be unaffected. Think about it. If you start measuring from an uninsulated bucket, and then continue to do so for the next 20 years, there should be a ONE-TIME drop when you switched over, but then steadily rising temperatures from that lower point. Not a continuing cooling trend. That would only happen if you kept removing more insulation from your bucket every year...The second article has no links to any peer-reviewed aerosol studies, and I've never heard of this theory before, despite debating global warming all the time (see my profile!). Aside from that, though, it says dimming was recorded from 1960 to 1985, but the cooling period in question was from the 40s to the 70s or 80s. So I fail to see how this theory accounts for the first 20 years of cooling either way.You're a long way from explaining why about 1/3 of our data since industrialization points to global cooling.
smurfsahoyAug 5, 2008
Okay, so what? I don't care if it just started happening in 1600 AD. The point is that this breaking and floating around and refreezing has been happening since long BEFORE we started burning a lot of coal and industrializing. So it cannot be used as evidence of anthropogenic anything.And I never said the article ruled out global warming. I said it was careful to not ATTRIBUTE this to global warming (they also didn't attribute it to anything else).
vikingcoderAug 6, 2008
The atmospheric CO2 concentration has gone from its preindustrial value of 270 ppm to its current value of 385 ppm solely due to anthropogenic contributions. That is over a 40% increase.<a class="user" href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/q7g173u32189732q/">http://www.springerlink.com/content/q7g173u3218973 ...</a><a class="user" href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/">http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/</a>That increase can be directly linked to humanity through parallel decline of the 14C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2; commonly called the Suess Effect. That is because fossil fuels do not contain 14C precisely because they are fossil - much older than 10 half-lives of 14C.<a class="user" href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v280/n5725/abs/280826a0.html">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v280/n5725/ab ...</a>The oceans & terrestrial biomes do outgas significantly more CO2 than anthropogenic emissions, but they are currently absorbing more than they outgas - at a rate of 12 billion tons per years.<a class="user" href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/carbon_cycle4.html">http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCyc ...</a>Water vapor is indeed the most dominant greenhouse gas. The radiative forcing for water is around 75 W/m^2 while carbon dioxide contributes 32 W/m^2.<a class="user" href="http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf">http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/s ...</a>However, any change in the atmospheric concentration that is not a result of a temperature change will shortly (within a matter of days to weeks) resolve itself - either by precipitation or evaporation. There is no such "quick fix" process for carbon dioxide.If all of the water vapor were removed from the atmosphere, it would quickly be replenished by evaporation. If all of the CO2 were removed from the atmosphere, a feedback cycle would cause the atmosphere to lose its carrying capacity for water due to increasing cooler temperatures resulting in a global temperature of -18 deg C.<a class="user" href="http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7h.html">http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7h.h ...</a>Water vapor's atmospheric concentration is described by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation.Prideful ignorance and political ideology do not refute accumulated scientific knowledge.
erich100Aug 7, 2008
You have a dangerous misunderstanding of the situation. There is the scientific aspect and then there is the political aspect.You must look deep into the politics. Al Gore is the mouthpiece for a politically driven agenda. Whether you believe global warming is man made or not, the political agenda is more about control than it is about fixing a problem. And of course when ever politicians have an idea, there's a ton of money for them to make. They are not on your side.
d2drake_Aug 7, 2008
Gee, sounds impressive! Until you actually start looking at some of these references. I'll admit, I didn't waste too much time on checking all these out because the first two failed miserably.As someone interested in science, I'm sure that you are aware that correlation does not establish cause and effect. Your sources show only the increase - not the source. However, at one time, the EPA posted the following numbers for the year 2000: pre-industrial base line = 288,000 ppb; natural additions = 68,520 ppb; man-made additions = 11,880 ppb; for a total of 368,400 ppb. Granted those are 8 year old figures, but keep in mind that the EPA does not want this "crisis" to go away and so has ceased to break these figures down in a way that makes it possible to see how comparitively small anthropogenic CO2 is.See: <a class="user" href="http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html">http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data. ...</a>It's also important to realize that the atmosphere is not a closed system. CO2 is constantly being added and consumed in an ongoing fashion. To get an accurate picture, you can't just look at the addition side, there is also the CO2 "sinks" that pull enormous amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere.Lastly, CO2 levels have continued to rise but the global temperature has cooled over the last 10 years. The all time high of +0.526 in 1998 has seen steady decline to this years +0.261. Obviously, rises in CO2 have had a very small effect on global temperature.See: <a class="user" href="http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm">http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17 ...</a>
d2drake_Aug 18, 2008
I am sure that I am not as smart as you two. But I must respectfully disagree with a few things here. You've called me "pridefully ignorant." This may be in part true. I AM proud of the clear thinking that allowed me to ask the questions, "How much of the CO2 that's in the atmosphere comes from human activity?" and "How much of an effect does it have on global warming?" These are definitive questions that I rarely hear people ask. I am proud of all the time I spent reading books on climate change and all the hours spent scouring the Internet for hard data and not settling for theories and generalizations (pro or con). But "ignorant?" I may not be as smart as you, but I am certainly not ignorant.As for the ad hominem fallacy; it really has nothing to do with whether the attack is founded in truth or not. The purpose of an ad hominem attack is to insult your opponent in an effort to discredit his argument. The only reason a person would even mention a person's "prideful ignorance" is to try to take attention away from the weakness of their own argument by attempting to diminish the opposition. The real issue is whether the EPA's numbers carry more credibility then the theories and generalizations of alarmist websites like RealClimate. My pride and my ignorance are not relevant to that issue.The bottom line is that we humans, in our day-to-day activities DO affect the climate - but the next step is to determine how much. Even if we were to accept the notion that ALL of the CO2 increase is anthropogenic, the numbers still come out that the warming caused by human activity accounts for less than 1% (which would equal less than .007 degrees c). CO2 is just not a very potent greenhouse gas.Please forgive me if I'm showing my prideful ignorance again.