HockeyStick, finally updated with modern trees, collapses

I am more than a little surprised that I'm not the only one here that thinks global warming is a fat ruse. What would have happened if we had embraced Kyoto (ratified).

Also, how come no one talks about human population and the people co2 and other emissions?

Al Gore is looking for bigfoot.

 

I will just address one of your points. The one on why my opinion should matter. It isn't an opinion I formed in a vaccum. It is an opinion from other scientists. But they don't count, I know. Only the ones that are paid to get the results the IPCC want, count.

The fact of the matter is, this issue is not SETTLED. In fact, no real scientist, with any credibility would ever utter such a thing.

But also let me say something else. If the climate is changing, which it is, and which it is supposed to, at least it is perhaps warming, which has always been good for humanity, so why then the hysterics? Because this is more of a psychological event than a climate change event. For there is no need for a warming, which has always benefitted humanity, to be addressed in the manner that they hysterical are intent on addressing it. So, perhaps we need to sink that grant money in psychological research, and find out if we need to put these hysterical on some drug, to cure them.


I don't think that we know enough about climate change, the factors that drive it, to make the assertions that we have made. This showed itself in those climate models that failed to mimic reality over time. That info is available online, if you care to look. If your model is wrong, which it was, then some garbage went in and garbage came out. This means that there is a lack in understanding what drives climate change, and that they assumed something, that should not have been assumed. And the co2 side of the argument have done this from day one. If you bring this fact up, you are called a denier. LOL. At least if you are cast into the denier camp, that camp isn't filled with the hysterical as your team is.


So, the question really for me is this. When you are proved, over time to be wrong, will you ever be able to admit it? I think given the emotions injected, perhaps it might be impossible for your team to be able to admit they were not only wrong, but idiotically wrong. For they assumed far too much, in areas where the knowledge was so limited.

 

The problem is that you and many others try to ridicule any who do not agree with you, and that is always going to be a failure.

"Warmer then ever before!"

Well, other then it is not warmer then ever before, and the baseline they arbitrarily set is among the coldest times in the last 2,000 years. I mean come on, the "baseline" that all of the alarmists use was set during what is known as "The Little Ice Age"! Think about that.

I want to take temperature readings in my kitchen to see if I can prove things are getting warmer during the day. So first I take the temperature at 5am inside of my fridge. Then when it is 100 degrees outside in the middle of summer I am going to take another temperature reading next to my toaster. See! Temperature difference! Warming!

You can't blame this on AGW, no more then you can blame the end of the last ice age, or the Medieval Warm Period on "AGW" or "AGC". This in science is known as "chasing the data". And chasing the data is one of the sloppiest forms of scientific research, and guaranteed to fail. The problem here is that a lot of us actually understand what this is and call you on it.

Then these scientists get butt-hurt because they are caught chasing the data.

 

Some scientists say that solar variation is a big factor. Why do they say this? Probably because they have some evidence that supports the contention. Of course non of that grant money, billions, are given to these scientists to do more research. It is given to the co2 folks, who tie it in with man. So given how grant money is spent, we should not be surprised at all that solar activity and other factors are given no study.

This IPCC deal started out with the conclusion that man made co2 was causing global warming. When the rise in co2 didn't correlate with a steady rise in temps, as the models predicted, what happened? Look it up. So, given that the IPCC began with a conclusion, in regards to co2 and man, this is where billions of bucks have been given to researchers, to prove their conclusion was factual. But it has had wrenches thrown in the gears. and then they adjust, and the money, billions keeps coming to just that one area of research. Then, the politicians say the science is settled!! LOL. Which is the most unscientific thing they have ever said. And if you question this, the way this is being run, you are then labeled a denier. Even when credible, credentialed scientists question this, they are just ignored. Yeah, something stinks here, and it smells like spoiled money.

 

People who are looking at the actual science and presenting it are the science deniers. People who place their faith in unproven scientific climate models and the scientists getting paid to create them are reasonable? Look at what they are pushing to solve the problem. They are pushing solutions which the science has proven to put more CO2 in the atmosphere; while attempting to create a panic and push failed "renewable energy" solutions; and force cap and trade policies which hurt the poor and middle class.

We are 11,600 years into the Holocene interglacial period which typically last 12,000 years. If we could warm the planet and prevent the next glacial period, that would be a good thing...but we can't any more than a flea can stop a locomotive.

 

It's not science that's the whole point. I't contrived, most of it.

solar variation is a factor?

Ya Think?

Perhaps Al Gore and Bigfoot are the very same guy.

 

Ah yes, the worldwide climate science conspiracy, in which all those climatologists from China, and Argentina, and Russia, and Iceland, and South Africa, and Australia, and Uzbekistan, are all paid off by the IPCC so that Democrats in the US can win elections. One really has to wonder where you think the IPCC got all the money they would need to pay off all those scientists. And why all those rich and corrupt scientists aren't all lounging on the beaches of St. Tropez instead of spending their summers in a tent on the Greenland icecap.

But you have a right to your opinion, as does everybody, no matter how tinfoil-hat loony it is. What you don't have a right to is your own facts. And the fact is that the IPCC doesn't pay anyone to have an opinion.

You're confusing what is settled science with what is proven. And while nothing is ever proven in science, there are a whole lot of things which are settled. Heliocentricity is unproven, but settled. Evolution is unproven, but settled. Anthropogenic climate change is unproven, but settled, and for exactly the same reason: mountains of unrefuted evidence, which even now you are unable to refute, nor even address in a coherent manner.

It's not warming per se that's the danger, it's the speed of warming that's the danger. If the world warmed 3°C over ten million years, no problem: we could adapt in plenty of time, and other species could too. But we're looking at warming of 3°C in two hundred years or less, and that is a huge, huge problem. The fastest rate of global warming in the geological record is when we have emerged from glaciations in the Pleistocene, and during those times the world warmed about 3.5° in about 2000 years. And right now, human beings are warming the planet ten times faster than that. Therefore we are looking at mass extinction and possible ecosystem collapse. Losing a single species of fungus can kill the whole forest, because of the trees that live in symbiosis with that fungus. And when the trees go, the birds go and the wildlife goes too.

About 90% of the food you eat evolved under a very different climate that the one we're heading toward, and there is the possibility that some of those species will not survive the climate change that we're creating. In 1848, more than forty nations in Europe underwent simultaneous revolutions. It wasn't the internet or a global conspiracy that caused that, it was crop failure. A hungry man is a desperate man, and a desperate man can do a lot of damage to the civilization he lives in. What happens if the next time the nations involved are China, or India, or Pakistan, all of which have nuclear weapons? If you've ever wondered why the Pentagon considers climate change to be a greater threat to our national security than terrorism, maybe you might want to think about that.

Actually there has already been research into the psychology of climate denial and conspiracy ideation. So consider yourself a lab rat.

And you're flat-out wrong. All that knowledge that you don't think exists, actually does exist. And no matter how hard you cross your fingers and wish upon a star, it's not going away.

Yes, it's so widely available that you're not even able to post a link. I wonder why that is? Is Google broken today?

Horrors! You mean one actually has to apply logic and reason to understand all of this climate science? Pass the smelling salts while I clutch my pearls.

If I'm ever shown to be wrong, then of course I will admit it. And since you've already been proven to be wrong (as indeed your failure to address any but one of the points I raised in my previous post amply demonstrates), I think it's clear from your post that you will never admit it.

So it looks like I win again.

 

And I go right back to the obvious thing you are missing.

That baseline figure that you are using is cherry picked as one of the coldest times in the past 10,000 years!



That all by itself largely destroys the credibility of most of the "Climate Fear Mongers" in my mind. Hell, we have had climate shifts that were far larger and far longer then what we are going through now.





The simple fact is, the climate changes. And anybody trying to sell me it is anything other then the types of variations we have had since there has been a planet is selling snake oil as far as I am concerned. The purposeful fixing as a "control" that is known to be far below "normal", the constant shifting claims of what causes things and what the effect is, even swinging over the last 3 decades or so from humans causing a "new ice age" into now "global warming" to me is just more of the same coprolite.

And yea, I am old enough to remember those scares. More CO2, more pollution, record snowfalls in New York, and a new ice age caused by men was starting.

Is it any wonder I do not believe chicken little when he pops his head up yet again?

 

There are a whole host of energy solutions that put much, much less CO2 into the air than fossil fuels, and most climate scientists that I know of are in favor of all of them: wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, and biofuel to name a few. Regarding policy, it has never been shown that cap-and-trade hurts the poor or middle class, and even anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist thinks a carbon tax is a good idea.

Wrong for two reasons: first, because the next ice age isn't due for another 50,000 years; and second, because we may have already prevented it.
Now if only we can be sure civilization will last that long ...

 

Uhh, wrong.



In fact, many question if we are even out of the current ice age in the first place. After all, it was only 100 years ago that glaciers across the planet were still advancing and growing. So are we even out of the latest ice age, or in another warm spell before things cool off again? However, the interglacials tend to last from 12-28,000 years. So we may be towards the end of one, or we may be just starting it still.

Oh, and that claim that the next ice age "50,000 years away" is complete and utter coprolite. That is the figure somebody who believes that they are only caused by the wandering of the tilt of the Earth. So that claim can be entirely ignored, since we know a great many things affect ice ages, including global tilt, volcanism, impact events, plate tectonics and ocean currents, even solar radiation output.

But good luck trying to get people who do not understand science to believe that, because those of us that have a clue do not.

 

No, actually the baseline figure that I'm using is the year 2000, which is one of the warmest times in the past 10,000 years. The rise I was referring to is the one in the future.

Oh very nice. Post Greenland temperatures, pretend that they're hemispheric, and just cross your fingers and hope that nobody notices your deception. Sorry, Shroom, but your graph is a blatant lie. As you should have noticed yourself, by the lack of citation to peer-reviewed data.

If you want to play scientist, you're going to have to do much, much better than that.

And just as if he wants to show he just can't play in our league, Shroom posts a graph by two some-dudes who apparently work from their basement, which contains no vertical scale, no citations to peer-reviewed data, and without even the tiniest hint of how the "data" in the graph was arrived at. So it's colder now than it was in 1300 AD? Who knew? And more important, how did these two some-dudes arrive at this bizarre conclusion? Maybe you can tell us, Shroom, because these two some-dudes can't.

Nothing like keeping an open mind to new data, right? It saves so much trouble, when you don't actually have to think about anything.

 

I'm not in bed with Grover Norquist and couldn't care less about what he thinks. All those forms of energy need back up and the costs of them together are more expensive that coal, oil and natural gas. Some put more CO2 into the air.

We are in an ice age that is 2.6 million years old. Interglacials last 12,000 years. The current interglacial is 11,600 years old. Your source predicts 500,000 years. I guess the scientists who wrote that article are science deniers who don't believe in the Milankovitch Cycles. You should seek counseling for that impending sense of doom.

 

Funny, but that is the source of your temperature claims is it not? Primarily from ice core samples in Greenland?

And once again, you are looking at extrapolations, not hard numbers. Nobody can authentically say they know the temperatures for the past 10,000 years, or even the past 1,000 years. They are only extrapolations, nothing more and nothing less. Anybody that tries to claim otherwise is fluffing you.

http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-cores-antarctic-peninsula/

You are not looking at this an a disinterested observer, you are looking at this as a way to find the results you desire.

And yes, I actually have a very open mind. If you notice, I am not saying anything about Global Warming itself, I am commenting on the crap systems that some are using to try and make their claims. Like fixing the "standard" in a known cold period. That alone is a major failure when it comes to controls, and I can't believe that more people are not calling them out on it.

Now if you want to bring this into an attack upon me and that I am claiming there is no global warming, then you have utterly failed. In fact, I do believe strongly in global warming. I also believe that some of the increase is the result of man, but not in the emission part but in our destruction of the part of the ecosphere that regulates CO2. In the past 100 years there has been an unprecedented amount of rainforest destruction, and this is only accelerating. I have long believed that this is the real problem, stopping this destruction and rehabilitating the rainforests so that the ecology that removes CO2 from the atmosphere can once again do it's job. But instead nothing is being done in that aspect, and the destruction is accelerating.

Why don't people think about that more then this foolish push for "green energy"? To me the answer is obvious, you can't tax tree planting. But you can tax energy use.

Humans for hundreds of thousands of years have burned fuel for energy. But only in the last 100 years or so have we been stripping the rainforests which are not called the "lungs of the planet" for nothing. We can burn huge amounts of fuel, this is not a problem at all. The actual problem is in our destruction of the system that captures the CO2 and holds the carbon while releasing the O2 back into the atmosphere.

And this is amplified even more when you realize that the main means of this deforestation is "slash and burn" agriculture which releases even more CO2 into the atmosphere. So not only is a lot of CO2 being put in the atmosphere, it is done at the destruction of that which removes it in the first place.

I bet that in future centuries, scientists will look back and wonder at our stupidity. That we were so worried about cow farts and light bulbs that we poisoned our land and water with mercury, and let huge segments of the planet turn barren as we chased the real problem.

 

The problem here is that he is attacking anybody who does not agree with him, and obviously believes we are all in some kind of conspiracy against him.

And he does not even seem to understand that one of the people he is attacking is very concerned, but thinks the hysteria and finger pointing is in the wrong direction!

I will put this real simply. The CO2 is a balance. To much, potential global warming. To little, potential global cooling (I say potential because there is a lot more at work here then a single gas). Now if you want to strike a balance, you either need to reduce the amount of CO2 by cutting emissions, or you find some other way to remove it. And nature has done this for millions of years with trees.

So if people are really worried about this, why are they not planting more trees? Why are they not trying to stop the massive deforestation of the planet and trying to reverse it? This to me is the utter failure of the "AGW" crowd. We can cut all of our emissions back to 1700's levels, and the CO2 will still increase! This is simply because we are cutting the natural ability to remove it from the atmosphere, we are cutting trees in the rainforests faster then then new trees are growing to take their place.

This is one of the main reasons why I see AGW as junk science. They are all concerned about the production of CO2, and paying no attention to the natural system that removes it. Myself, the CO2 may or may not be related to the warmer temperatures. It may be coincidence, it may be a finger pointing, it may be the cause. It is far to soon to actually extrapolate if it is the chicken or egg at this point. But it can make things worse, which is why we need to try and restore balance.

Not by the questionable "green energy" that so many want us to dump money into, but in trying to restore the forests and even creating new ones to try and bring this back in sync naturally.

 

Rainforest degradation plays a major part but it is not slash and burn that is entirely at fault - it is things like plantation of palms for palm oil production. Sale of timber for cheap furniture

.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/don-t-flush-tiger-forests

 

You will notice that the latest OCO-2 satellite image shows most CO2 in the southern hemisphere where the sun is the greatest this time of year. No, it is not from forest burning because that is relatively small patches and only during certain times of the year and no, those countries are not outproducing other nations creating CO2. You will see the buildup in China and a little in NA in the northern hemisphere and interestingly enough, a patch west of where Mauna Loa measures CO2. This is also interesting because the southern hemisphere is where the Antarctic has been breaking recorded sea ice records.

 

All depends on how you analyze it.

Myself, I look at the southern hemisphere and one thing strikes me right away, the amount of water and the lack of land. The oceans are not very efficient at exchanging gasses, CO2 in the atmosphere really does not make it into the water, and also the reverse. So in knowing that by percentage less of the Southern Hemisphere is covered by land (and therefore any kind of vegetation at all) should be surprising to nobody. And the Northern Hemisphere (with the 3 massive continents of North America, Europe and Asia) is lower should also come as a shock to nobody.

However, the greater concentrations off of the US Eastern Seaboard and China should be a surprise to nobody. But what I find troubling are the increases in where the Amazon basin rests. This should be a large area with a decrease, and we actually see a large increase. Once again, I see this as the result of a century of deforestation reducing the ability to remove CO2, not from the actual production of CO2 (like in China).

Curious how the Sahara has less CO2 then the Amazon basin.

 

Old growth trees do not uptake CO2 as well as young growth. Compare this to your other picture and you see it only over the forest.

http://cas.wsu.edu/connect/archives/april2014/deserts-global-warming.html

 

Flood the Gobe and Sahara with sea water and plant forests.

 

Sorry, you've been misinformed. None of the energy sources I mentioned emit more CO2 than fossil fuels.

It's really too bad you didn't actually read the paper to which I linked, because you would have discovered that Milankovitch cycles are in fact at the core of his thesis.

 

It is not as much the absorption, but the sequestering of the carbon. When you cut down the rainforests and burn them, you are releasing massive amounts of CO2. An "old growth" tree may not take in as much carbon, but it is in itself a massive carbon reservoir that is released when it is burned. The two go hand in hand.



That is the Amazon Basin over 60 years, and a 10 year future prediction. And this is repeated globally, primarily through slash and burn agriculture. So not only are the trees removed, the CO2 stored in them is released with no benefit other then removing them from the ground and the little nutrient value is in the ash.

I might buy that, if at least when the farmers move on they make an attempt at replanting the trees. That way the forests rebuild, and might actually have a benefit. But they do not do that, they just abandon the land when it is farmed out, and the forests are unable to return. SO you have rapidly shrinking forests, and nothing taking their place but wasteland.

 

This last decade forest policing has pretty much stopped burning much of the Amazon but the Savannah is where the burning happens now.

 

Nope. And in fact, if you had taken the trouble to look at the graph I posted, you would have discovered citations to actual peer-reviewed science, right on the graph: "Marcott 2013 (pre-1740); Anderson 2013 (1740-1900); HADCRUT4 (1900-2000)". Marcott and Anderson are both multi-proxy studies, which use Greenland ice cores as one of 73 (Marcott) or 1 of 173 (Anderson) global proxies. HADCRUT4 is a historical thermometer record.

Might I suggest that you look up the word "extrapolation" in the dictionary before you misuse it again? And yes, these are hard numbers, and the best modern science has to offer. And yes, they have uncertainties, but those uncertainties are also published, and you can find them easily if you actually care to look at the peer-reviewed sources. But the junk you posted not only doesn't have uncertainties, it doesn't even have sources to check. Yet somehow, the junk you posted becomes gospel truth in your mind. One really has to wonder if you actually have a scientific filter on the data you run across, or if instead the only filter you apply is political.

In what sense can any part of an interglacial be considered a "cold period"? Only in a very, very narrow sense, I'd say.

Okay, I've gotta give you some credit here, because you've actually got something that the denizens of Denierstan utterly lack, and that is a hypothesis. So that's a big step on the road to thinking scientifically. Now what we need is some data that can either support or refute that hypothesis. Specifically, what is the annual uptake of carbon from the rainforest? Or from a boreal forest? What is the annual emission of CO2 back into the air (due to decaying vegetation) from tropical and boreal forests? How does that change, in mass terms, when the forest is cleared? And finally, how does that imbalance, in mass terms, compare to the mass of CO2 emitted by the burning of fossil fuels?

Here are a few citations to get you started. Why don't you read these, and get back to us later to let us know if your hypothesis makes sense.

Dixon, Robert K., et al. "Carbon pools and flux of global forest ecosystems." Science 263.5144 (1994): 185-190.
Van Der Werf, G. R. et al. "CO2 emissions from forest loss." Nature Geosci. 2, 737–738 (2009).
Baccini, A., et al. "Estimated carbon dioxide emissions from tropical deforestation improved by carbon-density maps." Nature Climate Change 2.3 (2012): 182-185.
Brown, Sandra, and Ariel E. Lugo. "The storage and production of organic matter in tropical forests and their role in the global carbon cycle." Biotropica (1982): 161-187.

And when we run the numbers, we find (from VanDerWerf et al.) that deforestation accounts for 6% to 17% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, with fossil fuels accounting for nearly all of the rest. Hypothesis falsified.

Or maybe it's because the evidence indicates that it's a better way to solve the problem ...

So when we release the CO2 captured by trees millions of years ago, by burning fossil fuels, essentially burning a thousand years worth of fossilized forest every year, that's nothing to worry about?

- - - Updated - - -

No, actually, that is the island of Borneo.

 

Hmmm. The core of his thesis didn't make it into the abstract apparently as the word "Milankovitch" appears 0 times. Nevertheless, he seems to believe that in spite of 5 glaciations over the last 500,000 years interrupted by as many interglacials, that he can prognosticate that we will no longer have glacial periods for the next half million years. Where's the scientific consensus on that nonsense?

I did peruse over it and decided that he doesn't have much to support his thesis. Just the same garbage in about CO2 blah blah blah. CO2 is 0.0004 of the atmosphere. You are not just trying to say that a locomotive can be stopped by a flea, you are saying that it can be stopped by a dead flea.

 

That's because "Milankovitch cycle" is the astronomical term, while climatologists refer to it as "orbital forcing". Which appears in the paper 9 times, with "orbit" appearing another 19 times.

It's called the theory of gravity, which actually has a very broad scientific consensus, and which allows us to predict those orbital variations with great accuracy for thousands of years into the past and future.

The fatal dose of botulinum toxin is less than 1 part per billion. So if you're right about tiny amounts never having significant effects, why don't you take, say, 2 parts per billion of botulinum toxin and let us all know how ineffective it is.

Unless, of course, you're just completely and totally wrong.