Climate change: A cooling consensus

It's time for people to accept that the global warming "consensus" is unraveling. The models and the data are about to diverge completely because the climate modeling community has totally overestimated their understanding of the global climate system. It is incredibly complex and chaotic. Basically impossible to model with any real precision.



Kudos to The Economist for highlighting the numerous shortcomings behind the "climate science" and their models. They are smart enough not to wallow in denial. I hope others will follow their lead...

 

Are there are any warmists who are starting to soften on their position? If the models totally fail, will you all finally admit how flimsy this whole AGW hypothesis was?

 

The first time I saw any predictions about global warming was in 1978. So far every single one of them has come true.
Who cares if cutting carbon causes a little economic reordering, the economic expenses already happening from global warming have already completely dwarfed the loss of a few coal mining jobs.

One big prediction from 1978 was that the weather would become increasingly volatile as worldwide rainfall patterns moved further away from the equator causing desert regions like the Sonora and Sahara to expand leading to increased temperature gradients which would strengthen tornadoes and hurricanes. Warming of the Arctic will cause long standing weather patterns across the northern hemisphere to become destabilized and the jet stream will become able to sweep deep cold further south and tropical warmth further north as it swings more wildly. Areas could experience record cold and blizzards in winter and record heat and drought followed by record summer rainfall and dry mild winters the next year.

Sound familiar?
It was all predicted decades ago, long before all those computer models.

If it was not a big deal the insurance industry, which is the one part of the economy that puts its money on the line in these things, would be on board with the idea that doing nothing about global warming is better than doing something but they are not, at least according to their latest congressional testimony where they were the only actual industry to be invited to testify and the only ones at the republican led hearing to say that global warming is actually a big deal and the US should start doing something about it if its economy is going to survive over the long term. They are insurers, it is their business to think about these things because they are betting their money on them.

 

I hope i am wrong about global warming and climate change...but so far i am still convinced that it is happening.

We will have a year that is cooler than the year before....that is something i have been expecting.

 

I've stood on a Drumlin running my fingers across a Varve, in the sunny deserts of New Mexico...

Carbon dating of seeds and wood from the base of those Drumlins puts them laid down 65K years ago, a quick blink of an eye in geo-time.

There was 200 Feet of Ice Glacier flowing down the Rio Grand Valley in that eye blink of time.

Some really big force melted all that ice... Can't say exactly what it was/is, but chances are, it is still around.

Why would any reasoning person assume Man's current contributions are bigger than what made 200 feet of Glacier in New Mexico, turn into 110 degree cactus in an eye blink.

They claim to have measured, over the last decade, a whole 1/4 of a degree of climate change! Of coarse the calibration chain of the instruments back to NIST standards is a bit sketchy. But lets not real scientific procedures get in the way of public fear monger which results in vast new tax and spend programs.

Oh, and the Cactus was here long before Columbus found the new world, so...

Make all the fancy computer models you want, It is hard to argue with evidence bigger than a Semi-Truck you can stand on and put your fingers into.

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What is your motivation for posting this nonsense? Does the Rapture enter into it?

 

You alarmists are unbelievable.

Of course it's warmed since 1978, the 70's were abnormally cold - we've had to beat you over the head with Time Magazine and Newsweek cover stories from the 70's proclaiming the coming ice age.

And of course the warming we have experienced is nothing unusual when viewed thru the lens of history. We know from emperical records and ice core data the approximate climate going back over 2000 years for both, and much further back with the ice core data. It was warmer during the MWP, and we have been emerging from a LIA - is this news to any of you??

Of course the alarmists couldn't live with what so they began making up their own facts - Jones, Briffa, Mann, et al... the Hockey Stick is absolute nonsense; the IPCC summaries were not written by scientiests, but by environmentalist hacks with an agenda; the media can never wait to sink their teeth into anything that attacks capitalism and freedom; and the money flowing from public treasuries into the pockets of corrupted "scientists" is like heroin to an addict. On and on this nonsense continues...

Now the alarmists have to change tacks b/c the warming has ceased - enter "extreme weather events". Every storm is hyped by the media as the result of "climate change"; and every storm is "unprecedented"; and droughts are worse than ever; and sea level rise is going to sink us all; and hurricanes are stronger; blah, blah, blah...

Unfortunately the emperical data does not back any of that up - but that isn't going to stop them, is it?? There is always another rube who can't wait to be scared into action against big, bad corporate "polluters"... as if CO2 were a pollutant.

Enough is enough of this nonsense - it's long since past due that we shut these snake oil salesmen down, and cut off their public funding.

 

The sahara has been Shrinking for the last twenty years reversing a trend 8000 years in the Making. The Sonoran Desert has actually seen more rain in the last two years than the Oklahoma pan handle. So much for those predictions. There is scant evidence to support changing weather patterns. Everything still falls well within patterns previosuly experience.

 

New paper finds global warming since the Little Ice Age explained by natural processes, not man-made CO2

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/new-paper-finds-global-warming-since.html

Abstract: The rise in global average temperature over the last century has halted since roughly the year 2000, despite the fact that the release of CO2 into the atmosphere is still increasing. It is suggested here that this interruption has been caused by the suspension of the near linear (+ 0.5 °C/100 years or 0.05 °C/10 years) temperature increase over the last two centuries, due to recovery from the Little Ice Age, by a superposed multi-decadal oscillation of a 0.2 °C amplitude and a 50~60 year period, which reached its positive peak in about the year 2000—a halting similar to those that occurred around 1880 and 1940. Because both the near linear change and the multi-decadal oscillation are likely to be natural changes (the recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA) and an oscillation related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), respectively), they must be carefully subtracted from temperature data before estimating the effects of CO2.

Excerpts:

It is at least problematic, therefore, to consider this near linear increase in temperature during the 19th and 20th centuries as mainly due to CO2.

A halt and even a slight decrease in the rising trend after 2000 can therefore be expected, on the basis of this spectral analysis.

It is quite likely, therefore, that the near linear increase due to LIA recovery has been temporarily overwhelmed by the multi-decadal oscillation, which had reached a positive peak in about the year 2000.

Conclusion:

It is likely that both the near linear increase and multi-decadal oscillation are primarily natural changes. Thus, in order to estimate the effects caused by CO2 over the last two centuries, it is important to isolate these natural components of climate change from real temperature data.

 

Russian scientists, who studied our climate as dominated by the sun's behavior, said that we are at the door of a cooling season.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/...obal-cooling-ahead-due-to-changes-in-the-sun/

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.

Lets see who is more accurate, the Russian scientists or the alarmist global warming dudes

 

There is a scientific standard of mathematics used in REAL science called a Correlation. It is a measure of how well two sets of data appear to be linked to one another. It finds great use in things like studying the efficacy of medications, the linkages between changes in engine designs and reliability... and predicting the weather.

To date, the only scientific evidence which meets the standards of any and all other branches of science, correlating Global Temperature to anything else, is the correlation to the Kasinni Total Solar Flux measurements.

Its not just Russian Scientists who are saying man-Caused Global Warming is a load of propaganda BS, there are allot of American and other scientists saying it too. But the MSM ignores them for the Alarmist / Liberal Control Freak Profit.

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It is increasingly clear that the hard left is going to have to find some other reason than climate for their freakish desire to control nearly all human activity on the planet...

 

Then perhaps you can explain why temperatures have remained flat while CO2 concentrations have continued to increase.

I'm an agnostic. It's the alarmists who are practicing a religion. I wonder how long they will remain in denial of reality. I expect some of them to go to the grave prophesying doom.

 

Temperatures where? In your basement?
According to actual scientific research by actual scientists who study global climate trends the global average temperature had been increasing steadily for a few centuries but data from the past few decades indicates that the rate of temperature increase appears to be accelerating.

Scientists have also determined that average sea level appears to have increased by about a foot over the last century. The laws of physics allow only a limited number of possible explanations. A decrease in Earth's gravity, a vast influx of water from outer space, or a massive increase in flows from non-polar lands are possible causes but these have not been observed so their probability is considered quite small.

The physics leaves only two possible causes, a massive melting of ice sheets and glaciers and an increase in the average temperature of the oceans water. The glaciers and ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate but that cannot explain the century long measured rise in global average sea level. Water expands as it gets warmer, immeasurable in small quantities, but multiply that by the size of Earth's oceans and the global temperature can be measured by the rise and fall of sea level.

The oceans also absorb CO2 but as they do so their waters become more acidic. There is some strong indications from recent scientific studies that the increased acidification of the oceans due to CO2 absorption is directly causing declines in phytoplankton populations. Detailed studies have concluded that increasing seawater absorption of CO2 at current rates will result in acidification that would reduce phytoplankton populations by 90% or more within 50 years.

You might be thinking just about now that this is just some completely irrelevant rant by some left wing nutcase who has no clue about what is important.

Think what you want, but phytoplankton in the oceans manufacture 80% of the free oxygen that we breath and their oxygen production is declining as atmospheric CO2 increases. Every air breathing creature on the planet is doomed to a slow suffocation if CO2 levels are not reduced soon. Forget global warming, maintaining the oxygen level is a far bigger, and more pressing problem.

 

Average global temperatures have been flat for over a decade now, even though CO2 levels in that same time-frame have continued to rise. Hardly anyone, "climate scientists" included, disputes this. I'm just asking you to explain this. If you can, you'll be the most famous man in the "climate science" community, because as it stands, they are totally at a loss:

 

Find a graph of actual measurements (not projections) that back your claims. Temperature increase has slowed even as CO2 is going up.

It really depends on how much you warm the ice. Ice actually expands, even though cooling a liquid should cause it to contract. Fill a jar (to the brim) with water, put a lid on it and put it in your freezer over night. When you come back the jar will be broken due to the expansion of water at the freezing point. If you are only warming it a couple of degrees, it is actually contracting. Also keep in mind that most of an ice berg is under water meaning it has already displaced its volume. Ice on land is the only thing that will cause a significant rise.
Showing that ice is melting, does not demonstrate causation. Finally, Antarctic ice seems to be expanding.

Do you know what makes something an acid or a base? Proton acceptor vs proton donor. Are we dumping anything else into the oceans that might fit the description of an acid? Something that plants don't breathe perhaps? How much CO2 was in the atmosphere when plants originally evolved?

Not at all. I'm sure you are very well intentioned in this and there are some serious environmental concerns like the ocean, that are much more pressing than warming. I am just not convinced that CO2 is a detrimental toxin it is made out to be. I've heard the arguments, and some even sound somewhat convincing at first, but when you look at the actual science behind this it starts to seem more political than scientific. Hard science is about the scientific method, and the scientific method is about disproving your hypothesis. It should be about making the hypothesis fit the facts, and not making the facts fit the hypothesis.

We are currently around 400 PPM of CO2; did you know that in the past concentrations were as high as 3,000-4,000 PPM? Life wasn't destroyed, it was huge. Is it possible that other factors such as mercury or industrial runoff could account for phytoplankton dying? If we can point to a time in earth's past when CO2 levels were 10 times higher than today and life flourished and it wasn't a million degrees, doesn't that suggest that there could be other factors at play here?

 

The temperature is increasing.

I was not talking about ice, but water that is well above the freezing point, a lot of water, trillions of gallons. Ice expands as it forms but not after. Water reaches maximum density a few degrees before freezing and then begins to expand again as it chrystallizes. This is a very limited phenomenon, completely insignificant as an explanation for sea level rise. Ice bergs are not significant enough either, even if they have calved from land born glaciers.

Increased ice expanse in Antarctica is a most obvious consequence of global temperature rise since that would increase the penetration of warmer air into the continent, increasing snowfall on the ice sheets that exert pressure on the ice shelves causing them to be pushed further into the sea. Another consequence is a reorganization of pressures on the ice sheets which will cause them to become disorganized and prone to sudden collapse. Which is happening quite frequently lately.

Perhaps we are, but the studies I saw were controlled experiments with CO2.

In the past the ecosystem was differently populated. What the science shows is that the current level of 400PPM is putting a lot of stress on the dominant oxygen producing phytoplankton strains. It is most probable that other, more acid loving strains will take over oxygen production if these die out but how long would that take and could we survive the interim?
It could take anything from ten to ten thousand years and who could say that the new strains will be as benign as the present ones. There are many micro-organisms in the ocean today that are extremely toxic to humans, just breathing their dead bodies can kill you. The one sure thing is that if we continue the path we are on we will find out what happens when we kill the planets dominant life form. Lucky for me I will be dead by then.

Life has been on this planet for a very long time under vastly different conditions. Humans have been here for only a very short time in a very narrow climate. Just because life has survived does not mean that we will.

 

That is why they don't call it Global Warming any longer, but instead call it "Climate Change". I agree we are in a "climate change" and have been for 100's of years. It was long predicted, and what is happening now happened in the past long before the Industrial Age.

We likely cannot stop this changing climate but we can prepare for what is to come. Something those before us were ill-equipped to do.

 

If you look at the cycle of the climate; all of the papers I have read say we are still in the "pre-glacial cycle" that began 100's of years ago. I have not seen any change in this research. Just goggle "pre-glacial cycle". Post back

 

There is a graph in post #15 that disputes your claim. Do you have actual data, or just your word? Even if it is still warming but slower, and CO2 has continued to increase, your theory has some problems.

Why are you restating what I told you? Of course I know the things I said. What an odd response.
The reason I brought up temperature was because the reported rise in temperature is less than 4 degrees. This means melt water at the poles could actually contract, not expand.

Actually no one knows why it is happening yet. What you are quoting is what is known as "speculation". Can you expand on the claim that warming causes more ice?

Can you link the study? Do you know what sorts of variables were used?

This is a cop out though. Life still used CO2 and oxygen and the temperature was not high enough to prevent plant or animal life. Saying "stuff was different" isn't really an argument. Obviously it was different, but the oceans weren't boiling vats of acid. Do you see the distinction I am making? There HAVE to be other variables.
Just to be clear, phytoplankton evolved 65+ million years ago, but CO2 levels were around 400PPM after that and the phytoplankton did not die. How is that possible?

I don't think the science does show that though. Do you have a specific study?

According to science daily, it takes about 500 generations...or one year.
"Experimental Emiliania huxleyi strains were isolated in Norwegian coastal waters and cultured in the laboratory under projected future ocean CO2 conditions. After about one year, which translates into 500 generations in this rapidly reproducing species, the biologists detected adaptation to high CO2 – adapted populations grew and calcified significantly better than non adapted control populations when tested under ocean acidification condition."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120408212319.htm

But there is zero indication that we won't. Just because I've never seen a unicorn doesn't mean they don't exist, but until I see evidence I will assume that they don't.

 

Unrealist the problem with controlled experiments is that they may well be a really crappy model of how the atmosphere actually works. Just differences in scale can cause huge problems. We know a whole lot more about weather than we did just 100 years ago but there are still feed back loops that we haven't recognized, and others we don't wholly understand.

Hell even the way we determine global temperatures has significant problems. Not the least of which is detecting and dealing with anomalous readings.

 

Agree that history is our best measure of what will come in the future. Because, the same cycle has repeated itself since the beginning of time(earth)

 

Well...not exactly the SAME cycle as the Sun is at a different temp. than it was as well the Earth is slowing down a micro amount every year as far as the time it takes to orbit the Sun as well at one time an Earth Day was about 22 hours.

We currently are in a period that shows the fastest rate of increase in average Global Temps. as well we are showing the fastest increase in CO2 Levels and the worse is that when CO2 helps heat up the Planet it also heats up the Frozen Jello Like Methane that is at the bottom of the Oceans and Arctic Lakes as well it is trapped in both the Alaskan and Siberian Tundra.

AboveAlpha

 

Except that we aren't... Even East Anglia says the Medieveal warm period was warmer than it is now. And do you know how we collect world wide temperature data and hw we control for anomalous readings?

 

You misunderstood my post. Read it again.

I said we are in the Fastest Period of Warming ever recorded.

I did not say we were in the HOTTEST ever period.

The same thing goes for CO2....there were other eras in Earth's History where CO2 levels were MUCH higher than they are now...but we are in the FASTEST CO2 RISING LEVELS IN HISTORY.

So tell me how they collect them?

AboveAlpha