The “hockey stick” theory is now discredited: How fanaticism substitutes for science

Do you know how stupid this looks? There is not one scientific body of national standing anywhere in the world which opposes the scientific consensus.

No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which in 2007 updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.[2][3] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

 

Although technically correct, I'm afraid you're kind of missing the point here. Before humans started effecting the carbon cycle, the system was in equilibrium - there was as much carbon going in to the oceans and biosphere as was coming out. It was human CO2 emissions that put the system out of equilibrium, resulting in rising atmospheric CO2.

To use an analogy, imagine a large boulder perched on the edge of a cliff. There are very large forces on the boulder - gravity pulling down, and the force the ground is applying. But those forces are in equilibrium, so the boulder doesn't go anywhere. If you then walk up to the boulder and push on it's side, even if the force you're applying is very small compared to the other forces on it, you can still push it over the edge and send it crashing down.

I agree with you completely that those are important things to do, and I believe they are being pursued (although I'd have to look up the details). But you have to keep in mind that we have a very limited ability to effect the natural flow of CO2 - most of it is simply out of our control. On the other hand, we can control our own emissions. I am 100% in favor of reforestation and improved land use practices. But that by itself probably is not not going to be enough.

As I've said several times now - I don't want to turn society upside down. And I'm not interested in punishing anyone. I simply want to make the best policy we can that will produce the best results for everyone. I'm trying very hard to avoid turning society upside down, and I'm asking for your help in doing that. I think we really all have very similar goals - to keep society going as well as we can, making the best life for everyone that we can. I think that if we put our heads together to find better ways to do that, it can only benefit everyone.

Besides, if the consequences of climate change are bad, that will cause far, far more disruption to society then any CO2 emissions controls ever could. And I don't even mean a worst case scenario - I mean a bad likely case scenario. What's going to turn society upside down more? Measured, gradual action now, or panicked, drastic action later? If you're worried about government overreach and societal upheaval, climate change should be a much, much bigger worry for you then any proposed environmental regulations.

 

And then there is the real world where CO2 has been increasing since the last ice age.

 

Do not confuse Fox News Cloudcuckooland with the real world. It just ain't so.

Graph from http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/20000yrfig.htm

 

You just confirmed my statement and refuted yours. A brain is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Doomsday Cults have existed all throughout Human History. Seeing the End of the World right around the corner is human nature. Today's largest Doomsday Cult is the Global Warming Cult. The earth warms and the Earth cools. That's the way it is and that's the way it has always been. Just enjoy your short time on this Planet. It really does go by very quickly. Don't live your life worrying about the End of the World everyday. Live for now. You really don't have as much time on this Earth as you think. So just enjoy the ride.

 

oh great! a comedy thread. I love these.

However, isnt the line horizontal for 10,000 years and then shoots up, vertical like? Or is it my imagination?

Amirite in thinking that the low at 18tya coincides with the glacial maximum. Well we would expect melting glaciation to release CO2 wouldnt we? Warmer seas cant hold as much CO2, and CO2 can get out from under the ice sheets (rotting vegetation, soil etc).

Or is it that rising CO2 caused the warming????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or could it be a (shh, whispers) feedback effect?

Yes, then those American cold war space scientists accidentally made their discoveries on global warming they were subconsciously looking for a doomsday scenario. As if nuclear attack from the Ruskies wasnt enough. Funny how a military interest in infra-red absorption in the atmosphere led to discoveries now labelled as cult status stuff.

The America Institute of Physics (whoever they are!) describes the larks....

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

short extract there form a fairy tale about cults and stuff.

 

"There is not one scientific body of national standing anywhere in the world which opposes the scientific consensus."

And today the accepted general consensus among prominent scientists is temperature contributions from-made global warming only amount to 8% of contributions from naturally-occurring global warming!

 

Climate change is not the end of the world, and no one sane has ever said it is. The Earth will continue spinning merrily on its way just as it has for billions of years, completely indifferent to how hospitable surface conditions may or may not be to humans. It's not about saving the planet - the planet's doing just fine on its own. It's about saving us.

In any case, don't you think that completely dismissing any science that might possibly have political consequences you don't like as a doomsday cult might be a teeny bit imprudent? Sometimes it seems like some people feel that admitting the existence of anthropogenic climate change means automatically agreeing to the most radical, heavy handed, intrusive, governmental power grab as a response. Obviously, that's not the case - admitting that climate change exists does not imply an agreement to any course of action one way or another.

It seems pretty unlikely that even a worst case scenario would be something that would threaten humanity with extinction. So whether we do anything or not, we will somehow manage to muddle through, just as we always have. That's not the question. The question is, "What's our best course of action now?" And that's always up for debate.

 

The horizontal line was imagined. What you see is increasing CO2 since the depths of the last Ice age. Certainly NOT "equilibrium". Stretch the time frame out and you can see that CO2 levels are in a state of constant change

 

No one doubts the existence of greenhouse gasses or that climate change has been observed.

But I have to admit, the opposition does have a point about how the rise in global temperature matches solar activity much more closely than the global usage of fossil fuels. The fact that warming temperature effects have not matches predictive models does allow room for debate. The globe does go through heating and cooling cycles--and yes human activity and solar activity contribute to increased temperature, but I think there is room to view this subject objectively without automatically jumping to one side or the other out of faith or partisan loyalty.

 

Wouldnt it be ironic, if 1000s of years from now, if science will instead explain how human activity and the elevated CO2 levels brought an end to the catastrophic succession of ice ages that would have again scraped off the surface of Canada. Or simply delayed the inevitable descent into the next ice age by 1000s of years.

 

You mean an 8% increase in greenhouse gases, ie 8% increase in the greenhouse effect. Ie the natural level increased by 8%. I can buy that. That could be of huge significance. The planet is a finely tuned almost homeostatic gaia-like equilibrium, and an 8% increase as a forcing by man will undoubtedly have knock on feedbacks and so will spiral out of control.

Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 by 35% and this will cause warming. Warming will release more CO2 and methane from the planet. By the way, we also release methane, via cows.

There is no 'naturally occurring global warming'. Go and check your sources and see if I am right. Any naturally occurring warming is negligible.

 

sorry to double post...

Imagined. It was imagined by the scientists who plotted their data on the graph. Actually if you print it out and hold it sideways it is a vertical line.

Your other graph shows the correlation with COs and the periods of glaciation over the last 400,000 years. Obviously on such an extreme scale 10,000 years is barely visible.

Yes there are cycles and at the moment we are in an interglacial, and it should be getting colder again by now. But your graph shows a peak of 280ppm of CO2.

The reality is:



The temp and CO2 go up and down in cycles. It is caused by Milankovitch cycles, cycles in the earth's orientation to the sun. These trigger warming and warming triggers CO2 release. The CO2 release causes a lot more warming!. After a few tens of thousands of years cooling happens once again. We should be getting colder round about now, but its not something you can calculate too precisely. The 10,000 year flat section on the graph is NOT imagined, nor is the massive spike in CO2 after 1800. Within the main cycles were small rapid ones and these were most likely the result of changes in the ocean currents.

By the 1980s CO2 was already higher than at any point for millions of years. CO2 accounts for about 9-25% of the greenhouse effect. Without the greenhouse effect the planet would be far too cold for human life, probably any life except maybe a few microbes.

The tem variations in the ice ages were only about 8 deg C. It doesnt sound much does it? Like 8%?

 

You can ignore the second and third graphs they will only confuse you. The CO2 graph DOENT show equilibrium. Precisely the opposite.

The state of "equilibrium" of CO2 is what you imagined.

 

Of course there was a state of equilibrium. Life has survived on earth for thousands of millions of years. Life adapts to the changing environment and life modifies the environment. The temperature has not changed greatly, oxygen levels have stayed roughly the same and so on. Of course the CO2 graph shows equilibrium. As the earth warms, CO2 is released, this speeds the warming. Then the Milankovitch cycles cool things down again. CO2 has not been this high for millions of years. Your graphs show CO2 repeatedly peaking at 280ppm, that to me is a kind of equilibrium. Now thanks to man it is much higher- an anomaly. What has kept CO2 from going rampant in the past is the burial of carbon. In fact the temperature is the same now, even though the heat from the sun has increased by a third since the earth was formed.

gaia:

http://www.gaiaweb.uk.net/GEOLWEB/GAIAINT.htm

this is part of mainstream geology and is called earth systems.

 

Nothing at your linked to page even makes mention of this equilibrium you speak of. I dont think you understand the meaning of the term

CO2 levels are characterized by constant change. Quite the opposite of equilibrium.

 

Again, you are very correct, dixon76710.

CO2 levels are characterized by constant change. Quite the opposite of equilibrium. The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from 1000 to 1900 CE clearly bear this out.




Worldwide anthropogenic emissions of carbon to the atmosphere are about 7 GtC. The total ocean-atmosphere flux is about 90 GtC per year, with a net ocean uptake of 2 ± 0.8 GtC (IPCC, 1996).

90 GtC per year (total ocean-atmosphere flux) = 7 GtC per year (man's contribution) + 87 GtC per year (nature's contribution from the terrestrial biosphere)

Therefore, man's contribution = 8% of nature's contribution (7 GtC per year/87 GtC per year)

Again, why do the global alarmists want to turn human society upside down on its head when its contribution to greenhouse gases and global warming is only of 8% of nature's contribution to global warming?

I really think these guys are fighting the wrong battle. Their emphasis should be on reducing nature's contribution to global warming by planting millions of more trees in the world and not turning a blind eye to the destructible effects of deforestation and very inefficient farming techniques that are presently underway by many third-world countries.

This is so typical of most liberals. They routinely and predictably want to punish the producers in society and reward the non-producers in society!

 

.

You are very mistaken, daft punk.

Where does it say, "Humans have increased total atmospheric CO2 by 35%"?

Anthropogenic emissions have increased, but certainly not by this much!

You are simply making this up!

By the way, methane gas released by cows and other farm animals is not considered as a source of anthropogenic global warming. Farm animals and rice patties are considered natural sources of methane emissions; not man-made sources.

The third world is responsible for most of these greenhouse emissions and the liberal geeks in the United Nations refuse to do anything about it!

 

"Specifically, the Gaia hypothesis says that the temperature, oxidation, state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously by the biota."
http://www.gaiaweb.uk.net/GEOLWEB/GAIAORIG.htm

"What was happening upon the Earth which enabled the maintenance of such an unlikely combination of chemical gases - specifically nitrogen and oxygen. What complex processes are at work within the terrestrial atmosphere - and have occurred for many billions of years - to explain this uniqueness? How have these processes arisen and what today maintains these processes at this equilibrium which is chemically far from equilibrium?"

http://www.gaiaweb.uk.net/GEOLWEB/GAIAORIG.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium
Equilibrioception, the sense of a balance present in humans and animals
Equilibrium unfolding, the process of unfolding a protein or RNA molecule by gradually changing its environment
Genetic equilibrium, theoretical state in which a population is not evolving
Homeostasis, the ability of an open system, especially living organisms, to regulate its internal environment
Punctuated equilibrium, theory in evolutionary biology
Sedimentation equilibrium, analytical ultracentrifugation method for measuring protein molecular masses in solution
Equilibrium Theory (Island biogeography), MacArthur-Wilson theory explaining biodiversity character of ecological islands


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis
"Homeostasis (from Greek: ὅμοιος, hómoios, "similar"[1] and στάσις, stásis, "standing still";[2] defined by Claude Bernard and later by Walter Bradford Cannon in 1926,[3] 1929[4] and 1932[5][6]) is the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition. "

"Biosphere

In the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock stated that the entire mass of living matter on Earth (or any planet with life) functions as a vast homeostatic superorganism that actively modifies its planetary environment to produce the environmental conditions necessary for its own survival. In this view, the entire planet maintains homeostasis. Whether this sort of system is present on Earth is still open to debate. However, some relatively simple homeostatic mechanisms are generally accepted. For example, it is sometimes claimed that when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, certain plants are able to grow better and thus act to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere[dubious – discuss]. However, warming has exacerbated droughts, making water the actual limiting factor on land. When sunlight is plentiful and atmospheric temperature climbs, it has been claimed that the phytoplankton of the ocean surface waters may thrive and produce more dimethyl sulfide, DMS. The DMS molecules act as cloud condensation nuclei, which produce more clouds, and thus increase the atmospheric albedo, and this feeds back to lower the temperature of the atmosphere. However, rising sea temperature has stratified the oceans, separating warm, sunlit waters from cool, nutrient-rich waters. Thus, nutrients have become the limiting factor, and plankton levels have actually fallen over the past 50 years, not risen. As scientists discover more about Earth, vast numbers of positive and negative feedback loops are being discovered, that, together, maintain a metastable condition, sometimes within very broad range of environmental conditions. Environmental pressure, such as competition or change in temperature, can lead to adaptation/extinction of species over time."

gaiweb is party of the geol soc, the most prestigious and oldest geology professional body in the world

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/groups/specialist/gaia

No, google it, I am definite on the 35%. look it up in realclimate.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...osub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/

"Human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation have caused the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to increase by about 35% since the beginning of the age of industrialization."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2412.htm

"Scientific measurements of levels of CO2 contained in cylinders of ice, called ice cores, indicate that the pre-industrial carbon dioxide level was 278 ppm. That level did not vary more than 7 ppm during the 800 years between 1000 and 1800 A.D.

Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from about 315 ppm in 1958 to 378 ppm at the end of 2004, which means human activities have increased the concentration of atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm or 36 percent."

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQ_Ja02gTY"]YouTube - ‪John McEnroe - You Can Not Be Serious‬‏[/ame]

 

Your entire post is a classic example of selection bias, combined with mean-spirited ad hominem.

 

You are correct, wist43.

The global alarmists conveniently forget to point out that the temperature increases we have seen since 1900 are very isolated and exist primarily near high population "hot zones" in the northern hemisphere. These hot zones include mega-acres of asphalt, concrete, high density airports, and heat emissions from millions of passenger cars, residential and commercial (shopping malls) air conditioning systems, and commerce delivery trucks. The southern hemisphere has not experienced these same temperature increases.

Check this out.



The Measurement of Global Temperatures

Over land regions of the world over 3000 monthly station temperature time series are used. Coverage is denser over the more populated parts (urban "hot" zones) of the world, particularly, the United States, southern Canada, Europe and Japan.

Coverage is sparsest over the interior of the South American and African continents (global "cool" zones) and over the Antarctic. The number of available stations was small during the 1850s, but increases to over 3000 stations during the 1951-90 period. For marine regions (also global "cool" zones) sea surface temperature (SST) measurements taken on board merchant and some naval vessels are used. As the majority come from the voluntary observing fleet, coverage is reduced away from the main shipping lanes and is minimal over the Southern Oceans.”

“Stations on land are at different elevations, and different countries estimate average monthly temperatures using different methods and formulae. To avoid biases that could result from these problems, monthly average temperatures are reduced to anomalies from the period with best coverage (1961-90). For stations to be used, an estimate of the base period average must be calculated. Because many stations do not have complete records for the 1961-90 period several methods have been developed to estimate 1961-90 averages from neighbouring records or using other sources of data. Over the oceans, where observations are generally made from mobile platforms, it is impossible to assemble long series of actual temperatures for fixed points. However it is possible to interpolate historical data to create spatially complete reference climatologies (averages for 1961-90) so that individual observations can be compared with a local normal for the given day of the year.”

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarmin...empMeasure.htm

 

Don't mind me.

 

Very well said, JSP.

Very well said!

Especially when you say, "The opposition does have a point about how the rise in global temperature matches solar activity much more closely than the global usage of fossil fuels."

There is no way our use of fossil fuels was responsible for these temperature changes.