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ubrew12 at 06:40 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
paulgrace said: "@Arkadiusz Semczyszak,... if past warming events always preceeded CO2 increases, it wouldn't matter" The analogy I give skeptics is that just because a car accident usually precedes a broken car doesn't mean a broken car can't cause a car accident. -
roperld at 06:36 AM on 13 March 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
For a comprehensive analysis of Antarctica sea ice data, including the effect of the ozone hole see http://www.roperld.com/science/AntarcticSeaIce.htm . Dave Roper -
GFW at 06:26 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
I've got another example of CO2 change fully preceding temperature change. The Azolla event. The relatively recent history of orbital cycles driving small warming/cooling trends that are amplified by CO2 (and thus giving the appearance of temperature leading CO2) might just be the exception, not the rule. It's all about what mechanisms are present. -
GFW at 06:13 AM on 13 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
It should be pointed out that an increase in Antarctic sea ice was predicted in 1992 by climate modelers. -
John Mason at 05:49 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
I can throw in a few ideas regarding deep weathering and the timescales involved - if people are interested. I've researched & published on same over here in the UK. But right now, my tea's ready! It'll be UK-centric but I think I made some useful conclusions in my work. Be back later - likely in the morning UK time. Cheers - John -
dhogaza at 05:35 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
"Is rock weathering factored in to CO2-rise predictions in the current models? " This happens on geological timescales, as I understand it. However, speeding the process artificially is one of the geoengineering ideas kicked around out there. -
dhogaza at 05:33 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
"true enough. I only find the snowball earth case clearer because it has puzzled scientist for a long while. There's no other plausible way to come out from an almost fully glaciated state and there are no other concomitant effect to possibly invoke." Yes, the snowball earth case is great, I just found it ironic that Arkadiusz Semczyszak made his claim in response to a top post showing his claim to be false! -
paulgrace at 05:11 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
@John Cook Is rock weathering factored in to CO2-rise predictions in the current models? As glacial retreat ends because the glaciers are gone, rock weathering will be at it's maximum. How similar in scale is this CO2 absorption compared to human output? (A century from now--[shudder])Response: That's a good question. Rock weathering is a negative feedback - as temperature gets hotter, rock weathering activity increases so more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. In fact, this is one of nature's "control knobs" to ensure climate doesn't get too hot or cold - when it gets colder, there's less CO2 removal which leads to CO2 rising and warming the earth. When the Earth gets too hot, rock weathering removes more CO2 which has a cooling effect.
But unfortunately this process occurs over geological periods - over periods of thousands of years or greater. The process is way too small to offset our CO2 emissions (some hard numbers would be nice - can anyone help here?) So rock weathering is not a magic bullet that will save us from ourselves. However, there is research into accelerating rock weathering process as a way of sequestering CO2. -
paulgrace at 05:07 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
@Arkadiusz Semczyszak, Both are true: Temperature rise releases CO2 and CO2 increases temperature rise. This is known as a "positive feedback loop", and it's very unfortunate. But if past warming events always preceeded CO2 increases, it wouldn't matter (even though you are wrong, they don't). Today we are increasing CO2 levels, which will increase temperatures, which will further increase CO2 levels beyond which we are directly responsible for. Your argument is A) Wrong and B) Not relevant. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:26 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
robhon at 04:18 AM on 13 March, 2010 Here's a timely article looking at a number of polling results and taking from them some longer term speculations on where public perception is headed. Well worth a read, some very interesting comparisons: "An Ipsos-Mori poll in the UK released in February showed those thinking climate change is "definitely" happening had fallen from 44% to 31% in the year to the middle of January. A Populus poll for the BBC conducted on 3-4 February revealed that 25% of people didn't think global warming was happening, up from 15% in November. Look at that the other way round and the Ipsos-Mori poll showed 91% of people accepted climate change was happening, and the Populus poll 75%. The difference is probably due to the former poll not including people over 65, who are significantly more sceptical, while the latter was conducted at the peak of negative news coverage about climate science. As ever with polls, the different phrasing of questions matters too. Nonetheless, confidence has fallen. Why? An obvious factor is the recent public relations disaster suffered by climate scientists, including both the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and the false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, which was included in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But this is unlikely to be the whole story, as only 57% of those polled by Populus had heard these stories. Far more – 83% – had heard about, and were experiencing, an exceptionally cold winter. That's a pretty tangible opinion former, even if it is wrong, given the crucial difference between week-to-week weather and decade-to decade climate. More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/12/climate-change-belief-polls -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:18 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
oracle2world... I think we spend time refuting it because it is so effectively used by tabloid media as "proof" that "most scientist" don't believe in AGW. Just look at the polls regarding global warming over the past few years. We are currently losing the battle to express to the world (or at least Americans) that this is real. http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/Americans-Global-Warming-Concerns-Continue-Drop.aspx What is the point of studying global warming if we idly stand by and allow tabloid media to control the message? I think sites like this are an excellent start at again making clear to the general population what science really says about AGW. -
Tenney Naumer at 04:16 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Miekol conveniently forgets the increasing acidification of the ocean's and its consequent destruction of aquatic life. We can't survive with dead oceans. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:04 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Ned... Brilliant post regarding Trenberth. Excellent. -
angliss at 03:16 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
greendirectionconsulting (#68) - I noticed, but didn't feel it necessary to comment. You're right, and that's an important part of the OISM story that should be added to this site's counterargument on this (which is, at present, a direct copy of this guest post). -
Doug Bostrom at 03:13 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
RSVP at 01:37 AM on 13 March 2010 Lest anybody who read RSVP's post regarding saturation wonder if the saturation argument is worthy, I recommend reading A Saturated Gassy Argument by Spencer Weart. Executive summary: RSVP's argument is too simple to capture the details of how this system functions. Weart is singularly gifted with explanation and explains how this RSVP's simple model is incorrect in a way all of us can understand. -
Riccardo at 02:42 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
dhogaza, true enough. I only find the snowball earth case clearer because it has puzzled scientist for a long while. There's no other plausible way to come out from an almost fully glaciated state and there are no other concomitant effect to possibly invoke. -
CBDunkerson at 02:26 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Arkadiusz Semczyszak, even setting aside that the current CO2 increase preceded the current temperature increase AND that the climate record shows MANY cases of CO2 decreases preceding temperature decreases AND that the majority of EVERY major temperature increase in the record has been preceded by CO2 increases (that is, only a small portion of the temp increase preceded the CO2 rise)... your root principal would still be wrong. Around 700 million years ago nearly all of the water on the planet froze. This prevented the oceans from absorbing CO2 and thus allowed the atmospheric CO2 content to skyrocket... which then led to warming which brought the planet out of the 'Snowball Earth' state. The claim that CO2 changes always come AFTER temperature changes is simply false. RSVP, your model for testing the existence of the greenhouse effect seems to be lacking a Sun. Put in a visible light laser being continuously fired at the anvil to heat it up and make sure that the energy flows are significant enough for instruments to detect and you'd have a valid comparison. -
Ned at 02:18 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Arkadiusz Semczyszak writes: Never in the history of Earth is not observed (clearly proven) first increase in CO2 concentration and then the temperature rise. Has always been the opposite. Often, the first temperature and then decreased CO2 content. This is a strange and illogical argument. When was the last time that people extracted large quantities of fossil carbon and injected it into the atmosphere? During the Pleistocene, CO2 changes have lagged temperature changes, because the temperature changes were driven by orbital forcings. Everybody understands this. It would be very hard to explain if CO2 didn't lag temperature in the ice core records! And the magnitude of the warming/cooling can't be recreated without inclusion of the CO2 feedback. Claiming that the CO2 lag during glacial/interglacial cycles proves that CO2 can't drive temperature in other circumstances is like arguing that the existence of fires caused by lightning proves that some other fire couldn't be caused by arson. Finally, there have probably been a number of cases in the climate record where CO2 increases led to temperature rises, rather than just serving as amplifying feedbacks. Flood basalt outbreaks are one example: Ganino 2009: "Most mass extinctions during the last 500 m.y. coincide with eruptions of large igneous provinces [...] Contact metamorphism around intrusions in dolomite, evaporite, coal, or organic-rich shale generates large quantities of greenhouse and toxic gases (CO2, CH4, SO2), which subsequently vent to the atmosphere and cause global warming and mass extinctions. The release of sediment derived gases had a far greater impact on the environment than the emission of magmatic gases." Saunders 2009: "Volcanism released large masses of sulphate aerosols and carbon dioxide, the former triggering short-duration volcanic winters, the latter leading to long-term warming. Whilst the mass of CO2 released from individual eruptions was small compared with the total mass of carbon in the atmosphere-ocean system, the long ‘mean lifetime’ of atmospheric CO2, compared with the eruption flux and duration, meant that significant accumulation could occur over periods of 10^5 years. Compromise of the carbon sequestration systems (by curtailment of photosynthesis, destruction of biomass, and warming and acidification of the oceans) probably led to rapid atmospheric CO2 build-up, warming, and shallow-water anoxia, leading ultimately to mass extinction." Svensen 2009: "The end of the Permian period is marked by global warming and the biggest known mass extinction on Earth. [...] Heating of organic-rich shale and petroleum bearing evaporites around sill intrusions led to greenhouse gas and halocarbon generation in sufficient volumes to cause global warming and atmospheric ozone depletion. Basin scale gas production potential estimates show that metamorphism of organic matter and petroleum could have generated > 100,000 Gt CO2. [...] The results indicate that global warming and ozone depletion were the two main drivers for the end-Permian environmental crisis." Kürschner 2008: "Our results demonstrate that this climate optimum was forced significantly by elevated CO2 levels similar to those, for example, during the early Eocene. A likely source of the late, early, and middle Miocene CO2 increases was extensive volcanic activity during the Columbia River Flood Basalt volcanism and the Central European volcanism. The marked CO2 drop during the Miocene, in turn, may be the result of increased Corg burial resulting from the Himalayan uplift and/or of enhanced marine productivity in the Pacific ocean and the global occurrence of vast brown-coal-forming basins." -
dhogaza at 02:16 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
there has been no CO2 leading an increase in temperature just because there has never been humans around able to produce it in such large quantities.
Actually, the picture painted for the Ordovician appears to be such a case, just with limited precision and details in the beginning. i.e. high volcanic activity led to high levels of CO2 and a warmer world. Volcanic activity lessened, weathering of rocks lowered CO2 and the earth cooled to the point where extensive ice sheets grew. This led to less weathering, thus a growth in CO2 (presumably due to volcanism???), and warming. This picture clearly shows CO2 as being the "control knob" during the Ordovician. -
Peter Hogarth at 02:10 AM on 13 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Argus at 03:22 AM on 12 March, 2010 Have a quick re-read of the report: "Of the records for more than 725 tide-gauge stations, most were too short, too interrupted, and too irregular for use in this investigation." Most (I interpret this as more than half?) of the records were discarded on these grounds. Clearly there were many issues with the data then and the authors do discuss these. However my point was to indicate how far the measurement technology and precision has moved on in 30 years. -
Riccardo at 02:03 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
RSVP, the experiment you propose has not been done for a reason, it would not tell us anything about the greenhous effect on earth. Indeed, in an hypothetical atmosphere with no lapse rate you would not get any greenhouse effect. -
Riccardo at 02:00 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Arkadiusz Semczyszak, there has been no CO2 leading an increase in temperature just because there has never been humans around able to produce it in such large quantities. The only notable exception is the coming out of the earth from the so called snowball state. But anyway, now we are here. If the CO2 acted as a feedback in the past, it means that it is able to trap heat; there's no reason to believe that because now it is emitted by human activities it stops doing his job. If you are not convinced by this simple fact, look at how the concentration of CO2 is related to temperature during, for example, the glacial cycles. Plot one against the other yourself and put current values in the graph. To get to 380+ ppmv temperature should be several degrees higher than we are experiencing today. This rules out that CO2 is now increasing as a response to a temperature increase. -
RSVP at 01:37 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March, 2010 "Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming?" Response: "...Of course, there's no substitute for measurements made in the real world. ..." To nerndt... The right way to prove this would be to compare the cooling profile of a large mass (perhaps a heavy anvil at 100 C.) shrouded within a chamber filled with a controlled gas. The comparison would be made to see the difference in cooling of the mass with air mixed at 250ppm CO2 and another with 350ppm CO2. All "real world" references I have seen of this experiment focus on how the gas with a higher percentage of CO2 warms more than than the one with a lower percentage of CO2, which proves very little since the amount of mass associated with the extra CO2 is miniscule. This is similar to viewing problems of conservation of momentum with an inelastic collision. If two bodies m1 and m2 collide, for instance, the velocities after collision will depend on the masses. In this case, the anvils heat capacity is huge, that of CO2 is tiny. CO2's capacity to absorb energy becomes "saturated" and all the IR goes right through. This is the grand flaw of AGW. Very good question. There is your answer. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 01:28 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
"What happens when rainfall patterns are disrupted causing problems for food growers, or when plants are ready for pollination too early for the insects that traditionally pollinate them?" The current species of insects and plants have existed for hundreds of thousands of years and survived a much more violent changes. In addition, cold = reduction of species; warm = evolution of radiation. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 01:23 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
1. Never in the history of Earth is not observed (clearly proven) first increase in CO2 concentration and then the temperature rise. Has always been the opposite. Often, the first temperature and then decreased CO2 content. 2. As to the true RF CO2 in the atmosphere, even without Lindzen'a, opinions are more than different. I remember a graph based on the IPCC Fourth Report: http://www.americanthinker.com/Attachment%202.PNG. Currently, most researchers believe that the direct RF of CO2 doubling is up to circa 1 deg C, the rest is very hypothetical feedback. 3. K.E. Trenberth, J. Fasullo, L. Smith, 2005: Trends and variability in column-integrated atmospheric water vapor. Climate Dynamics 24: 741–758, DOI 10.1007/s00382-005-0017-4, fig. 11 - Is parallel to the increase of CO2 content of water vapor - also a greenhouse gas; in the atmosphere. So it is possible to reverse the sequence of events - increase: 1 temperature - 2 water vapor and 3: CO2. 4. "This led to an increase in atmospheric CO2 which caused global warming and a retreat of the glaciers." - It is only a hypothesis, to prove that there is sufficient evidence. Equally, it could be the result of the cause. 5. Conclusion: The data from the Ordovician does not give any evidence both for and against. -
JMurphy at 00:50 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
oracle2world, Pachauri was elected as Chair of a UN scientifc intergovernmental panel (IPCC) because he had been a Director/Governor/Executive/Adviser of many Academic/Scientific/Industrial bodies (and, previously, one of the Vice-Chairs of the IPCC); and because the US didn't like the previous Chair - Pachauri was more acceptable, I suppose, because of his industry and oil links. He is 'qualified to lead', because of his previous experience; he doesn't 'pass judgement' : he represents what the IPCC Panel determines. -
Mikemcc at 00:27 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Ok Miekol, I'm assuming that your tongue is firmly in your cheek, but I'll bite anyway. What cost would you put on this mammoth re-building task? Is it likely to go ahead for the inhabitants of the Maldives, Seychelles, Bangladesh, Micronesia? What highlands do those people have. Each time Bangladesh floods 100s die, thousands suffer from epidemics from contaminated water and millions are made homeless. What happens when rainfall patterns are disrupted causing problems for food growers, or when plants are ready for pollination too early for the insects that traditionally pollinate them? -
oracle2world at 00:14 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The grand pooh-bah of the IPCC (Pachauri) is a railway engineer. If he is qualified to lead the IPCC climate effort, then anyone with a scientific or engineering degree is qualified to pass judgement. I find it completely astonishing that this guest post omits this interesting fact. (And don't bother trying to weasal out of this, there is no shortage of qualified climate scientists available for the post.) But I digress. The petition project is "unscientific" from the get go. And only has legs because AGW enthusiasts constantly harp on "consensus" and the thousands of scientists that endorse AGW. Given this petition project is completely flakey from the get go, I don't know why anyone bothers to spend time refuting it. -
Ned at 23:54 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
RSVP writes: I would also assume that most people "out there" think of global warming as option 3, making it difficult to sustain AGW when, for instance, Venice is getting snow in mid March. I agree that many people probably do believe this. It's a direct result of the way that "skeptic" blogs such as WUWT treat every snowfall and cold-snap as proof that the world isn't warming. In the terms of my options (1), (2), and (3), they're knocking down the straw man (3) and telling their readers that this disproves global warming. In contrast, science-based blogs try to make it clear that the real-world global warming is (2). Of course, in the worst case scenario we won't lift a finger to curtail CO2 emissions. In which case, after a couple of centuries of burning through all the oil, coal, and tar sands we can get our hands on, we'll blow right past Type 2 global warming and into Type 3. By that point, it will be too late. -
Ned at 23:42 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel, let's perform a little thought experiment. Imagine that someone waded through all of your posts and emails, pulled out nineteen words, and used them to claim that you believed X when you actually believe the opposite of X. Then, further imagine that you repeatedly explained that this was wrong, and asked that person to stop misrepresenting you. But instead of politely complying, that person continued to twist your words and claim that you believed something which you clearly do not. People have been told repeatedly here that the way you are using the "travesty" quote is completely wrong. John has some nice posts about this (1, 2) but it's also important to hear how Dr Trenberth himself feels about having his words twisted: ---------------- "Two Sundays in a row ill-informed columns about carbon dioxide and climate have appeared in the Camera. The first by Bob Greenlee (Jan. 3) and the second by Charlie Danaher (Jan. 10). Both misrepresent me and my work, and in particular, quote from one of my e-mails that was illegally stolen: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.' "The quote has been taken out of context. It relates to our ability to track energy flow through the climate system. We can do this very well from 1992 to 2003, when large warming occurred, but not from 2004 to 2008. The quote refers to our observation system which is inadequate to observe Earth's energy flows at the accuracy needed to understand small fluctuations in climate; it does not mean there is no global warming, as is often interpreted by the likes of Danaher. What [it] does mean is that our observing system is not adequate to fully track the energy in ways that allow us to understand and make best statements about the effects of natural climate variability: the La Niña of 2007-2008, and the current El Niño, for instance. "It is absolutely certain that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and produces warming, despite Danaher's wishes. Without carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, Earth's surface would be some 32 degrees Fahrenheit colder than it is now. Increased carbon dioxide will increase this warming effect, and both theory and observations are consistent with this fact. The evidence of this happening is widespread and abundant, so that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 was able to state with unanimous agreement from all of over 100 countries that global warming is unequivocal. But global warming does not stop weather from happening, and cold outbreaks continue and are fully expected. It does not stop winter. And it does not stop La Niña from happening and setting up unusually cold regional patterns of weather across the United States and other parts of the world that last a year or two. "To misunderstand the role of weather and natural climate variability the way it is being done is to undermine much-needed actions in limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Global warming is happening. It will continue to happen and the way we are going it will jeopardize the very nature of climate on planet Earth some decades from now. Because of the long lifetime of carbon dioxide, by the time it is so obvious to everyone, it will be far too late to do anything about it. "Americans should be outraged that the Chinese are putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and changing our climate! But by the same token, the Chinese should be outraged that the United States is putting nearly as much into the atmosphere, and historically a whole lot more than any other country, and changing their climate. We try to outdo each other in mutual self-destruction! "Putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions is an essential first step to responsible management of our planet. The United States needs to show leadership on this critical environmental issue." ---------------- That is what Dr Trenberth believes. As a graduate student, I had to work through the 800 pages of his textbook Climate System Modeling, so I'm more than willing to accept that he knows far more about the Earth's climate than I ever will. But even if you think Trenberth is wrong about CO2 and wrong about global warming, that does not justify your allegations that he is being dishonest about his beliefs. It is acceptable to argue that Trenberth's claims about climate science are wrong. It is morally unacceptable to argue that Trenberth doesn't genuinely believe his own statements. The very first item in the Comments Policy on this site says "No accusations of deception. Any accusations of deception, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted. This applies to both sides. Stick to the science. You may criticise a person's methods but not their motives." This isn't my site, but I would have to imagine that after reading his own words on the subject, you would drop the whole "travesty" argument and give Dr Trenberth the courtesy of respecting his statement about what his own opinions are. I apologize for the length of this comment. -
DavidCOG at 23:27 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Excellent response, John. This is one of the Denier talking points that I've not had a good response to - but now I do! :) -
miekol at 23:14 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
So what if CO2 is the cause of warming. Bring it on I say. Providing its not going to poison us then where's the harm? We can only benefit by it. It will turn the Earth into a garden of Eden :-) As a child I loved visiting my uncle's green house. All the luscious plants both vegetables and flowers. I thought then, wouldn't it be wonderful for the whole world to be like this. Now we have the opportunity to make so and feed the whole world :-) The only problem is that coastal low lying land will be flooded. However I don't see it as a problem only an opportunity to engage all the world's unemployed in construction to rebuild on higher land and to turn the coastal cities into Venice's. Providing the existing buildings' foundations are on bedrock there will be no subsidence and new roadways and pavements can be constructed at new levels. The difference between a pessimist and an optimist is one sees problems in every opportunity, the other sees opportunity in every problem ! -
Nick Palmer at 23:04 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Interesting. No-one seems to have commented on, or noticed, my post #24. There has been the usual analysis of the validity of the signatures, their qualifications, how many are Ginger Spice or Donald Duck, how many legitimate scientists signed the petition in comparison to the total number in the US etc etc. These have all been endlessly done to death, yet arguments like these are not going to make a dent in the petition's credibility amongst the general public. They haven't so far, and they probably never will. There are probably now more members of the general public who think that a huge number of scientists, much larger than the IPCC's, disagree with the basic climate science that there ever were. Trying to use the arguments above to destroy the credibility of the petition is a waste of time. My post #24 showed that it is the wording of the petition itself that needs to be consistently, loudly and powerfully attacked. If you actually read the words of the petition (mostly the second paragraph) you should be able to see that even if ALL the signatories had been fully conversant with climate science - understood that radiation imbalance due to increasing CO2 was a major cause; accepted that the globe is definitely warming and that we're mostly responsible - they could still legitimately sign it with a clear conscience, knowing that they had signed up to a scientifically valid statement. READ THE WORDS. There are elements of the first paragraph that are dubious and almost certainly wrong (though not 100% certain) but a casual, and still scientifically knowledgeable, reader could still have signed on the basis that they couldn't agree with all of the petition statement but that they did agree with the most important bit which states that there is no absolute proof that our emissions will lead to catastrophic disruption of Earth's climate - which everyone here should acknowledge is a true statement, if they understand the philosophy behind speaking in a genuinely scientific way at all. Of course, if they had read the accompanying "fake scientific" paper, they would have realised how they were being manipulated to create a piece of propaganda but like most petitions, most would not have researched it deeply. Shine a huge searchlight on the wording of the petition. Give up on the "Ginger Spice/people with inappropriate degrees who don't understand climate science" meme. Tell the public that the petition was designed to sucker real scientists into signing in order to subsequently exploit widespread general ignorance about the philosophy behind "measured uncertainty" in scientific statements, to sway the minds of the public. All those behind the denialist/inactivist/"sceptic" industry care about is increasing the numbers of potentially voting people who give them credence. -
CBDunkerson at 22:41 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
RSVP, if 'most people' thought that item 3 was the case they would be wrong. Every means of measurement we have unequivocally shows that the second case is correct. The globe as a whole is warming... but that does not preclude localized pockets of cooling from time to time. -
stevecarsonr at 22:35 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
What people think is a fascinating subject, made even more interesting by what we think they know about what they think. And what preconceived ideas we think they have about the subject where we want to know what they think. Someone who's a practicing climate scientist in say paleogeology may happily accept a colleague's belief in the attribution of recent temperature changes to CO2. But does he/she understand the subject? Someone who's a practicing climate scientist in stratospheric chemistry may happily accept a colleague's belief in the rise or demise of the medieval warm period. But does he/she understand the subject? Slightly more than the average dentist I'm sure, but in the end, I doubt that any of this is going to convince anyone of anything. - Well, it will convince AGW adherents they are right. - And it will convince AGW skeptics they are right. I find it interesting that many climate scientists do have a concern over CO2 increasing even when (these ones) in their writing don't have such strong conviction about the attribution or forecasts. It makes me think. But that's because I've read their work. If I tell someone else I've read it.. The argument about how many climate scientists buy into something only helps if people feel a trust for climate scientists. And how insignificant the non-climate scientists scientists are only helps if people feel a trust for and resonance with climate scientists Otherwise, the numbers and graphs just seem like fuel for the climate wars. -
ProfMandia at 21:57 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Chris Colose has a great tutorial called Greenhouse Effect Revisited Another good tutorial that is less mathematical is: The Greenhouse Effect & Greenhouse Gases (UCAR) My personal favorite is from theoretical physicist Arthur Smith here: Proof of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect -
yocta at 21:44 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
It seems a lot of things started happening in the Ordovician period: first primitive plants colonized land * Volcanoes went rampant *x* Continental submergence *x* [*] http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateWorkbook.pdf [*x*]http://library.thinkquest.org/20886/ordovician.htm -
John Mason at 21:34 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Oops - for "chance" read "change"! Damn this old keyboard! -
John Mason at 21:31 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Where you say: "Strontium is produced by rock weathering, the process that removes CO2 from the air." I think you probably mean "Strontium is mobilised by rock weathering, the process that removes CO2 from the air." Sorry if that sounds a bit nit-picky - to me (a geologist) it read as if rock weathering results in an element coming into being!! Instead, Sr is present as a minor element in certain minerals e.g. feldspars, and upon their prolonged weathering it is taken into solution. Interesting piece: here in Mid Wales there are several localities that show the abrupt chance in sedimentary facies marking the transition from shallower to deep-water conditions that mark the end of this glaciation. The Cwmere Formation, mostly black, hemipelagic pyritic graptolitic organic-rich mudstones, represents the time following the major sealevel rise and cut-off from coarse sediment sources. It is an important marker-horizon across Central Wales, as things controlled by major eustatic sealevel changes associated with deglaciation tend to be! Cheers - John -
adrianco at 21:30 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The OISM is a barn in the middle of nowhere (see the picture on their home page) with a P.O. Box as its address and an important sounding domain name. It has no credibility as an institute, it happens to be in Oregon, thats all. I have a Physics degree, so I could declare myself to be the Californian Institute of Science and Medicine, put a sign on the side of my garage, list all my buddies that have degrees as members and start collecting online signatures, big deal... If you google "oism location" you will find that Google Maps will show you their barn on the map. I've driven in that area (from Crescent City to Grant's Pass) and it's rural mountains on the south border of Oregon. Google "oism debunk" for the many other times the list has been debunked, including attempts to identify anyone on the list. On Facebook 350.org currently has 77,935 fans http://www.facebook.com/350.org and you can verify that there are more real people, and I would claim more real scientists and real climate scientists on that list than the OISM list. -
stevecarsonr at 19:58 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
For nerndt:Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming.. Can someone create a valid scientific experiment to prove or disprove this
" There are 2 parts, and I can only answer one. This is the explanation of how CO2 adds radiation at the earth's surface. For the subject of "global warming" - well, everything else in the climate has to be taken into account. But I think your question is about the first issue - how in the first place does CO2 add heat at the earth's surface? Take a look at CO2-An Insignificant Trace Gas - Visualization What you see there, amongst other concepts, is the longwave radiation leaving the earth's surface - at 390W/m^2 on average, and yet at the top of atmosphere this outgoing longwave radiation is only about 240W/m^2. Where has this longwave radiation gone? It has been absorbed and re-radiated both up and down. This "earth experiment" should demonstrate the reality of the theory of how CO2 adds warming at the earth's surface. -
padruig at 19:31 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
While John Tyndall (1820-1893) gave us the first picture of the effect of the absorption of heat radiation by gases, his contribution should be taken in context. In 1896 Svante Arrhenius published his calculations on a basic heat budget for the earth based on his estimate and projection of anthropogenic CO2 being introduced into the earth's atmosphere. Broadly, the Arrhenius estimates remain valid today well over 100 years later. In his classic 1949 text Radiative Transfer, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar gave us a comprehensive view of the behavior of light radiation passing through a planetary atmosphere and how the gas mixture of that atmosphere would capture some of the radiation and re-release some or all as heat while some would be reflected back into space. A classic journal article that illustrates the contribution of CO2 to climate change must be "Carbon Dioxide and the Climate" by Gilbert Plass (American Scientist, 1956). Dr. Plass describes CO2 sources and sinks and makes salient predictions about their impact to our environment. For this and other contributions, Dr. Plass is considered the 'father' of modern greenhouse gas theory. From Jean-Baptiste Fourier to today we have a mountain of literature and journal articles but none of this in total can counterbalance a passionate "believer" because the "believer" is not constrained by calculus or physics or the aerosol and gas chemistry of our atmosphere. The "believer" chooses to not see the thermodynamics of our cryosphere where the arctic ice cover is now so reduced that German and Russian merchant vessel traffic is free to execute a polar transit cutting thousands of miles of travel off a voyage from Asia to Europe. The general public has been misled to the "belief" that anthropogenic global warming is an issue of public discourse and that in that discourse they can legitimately influence the outcome of changes in the earth's climate when in fact the outcome is influenced by physics and chemistry. If there is a 'problem' it is the in the public view the scope and impact of anthropogenic global warming has been reduced to a question that has a 'single answer'. Unfortunately, science in its essence subdivides any question into smaller, more fundamental questions and in answering those myriad of smaller questions assembles and answer which is a tapestry. -
Riccardo at 19:20 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
neerndt, "the irradiation has been quite a bit higher in the last decade." do you mean the solar maximum of the well known 11 years cycle? We're now at a solar minimum, a quite prolonged one indeed. But it does not look like it's going to impact the actual trend that much. -
Dan R at 18:47 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Some earlier work in this field: Press release - http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/earlyice.htm Paper itself - http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/2/109 Seems the argument hasn't held much weight for a few years now. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:25 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel at 17:04 PM on 12 March, 2010 Several hundred words, chock-a-block with specific findings, supported by thirty references to other published works. Surely you did not stop after reading seven words of Trenberth's paper? What part of the rest of the paper leaves you unconvinced, specifically? What's your case? -
RSVP at 18:17 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
One "last" comment... about surveys. I dont think a survey is needed to know what people think. It's not what people think as much as what they are being told in so many way and on a continuous basis. This mass messaging is quite simple. "That the planet is warming due to energy trapped by the additional greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels, and that this is the most convenient truth until proven otherwise by the same folks that have concocted this theory. Your survival depends on this, so please be understanding about all the measures that will be taken." By the way, I did see a new field of solar panels going up. Reminded me of strip mining. An entire mountain was bull dozed. All vegetation removed. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:12 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March, 2010 Also see The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect for more history about how C02 was identified as a substance that can alter the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere. The link points to a chapter of Dr. Spencer Weart's excellent book on the topic. -
RSVP at 18:06 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Ned I appreciate you answering my question, especially as you diagram the three possibilities so candidly. This helps facilitate the discussion in a meaningful way. As far as comparing options 1 and 2, simply based on the historical evidence of ice age cycles that option 1 is improbable. I would also assume that most people "out there" think of global warming as option 3, making it difficult to sustain AGW when, for instance, Venice is getting snow in mid March. Jeff Freymueller Thanks for your response as well, which coincides generally with Ned. -
Marcel Bökstedt at 17:49 PM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
scaddenp> I don't see why Crowley and Lowery is relevant, could you explain? They just include the Keigwin paper in their data, on seemingly equal footing with some other sources. Jones, P. D., and M. E. Mann (2004), Climate over past millennia, Rev. Geophys., 42, is in about the only volume of Rev. Geophysics I can't access, maybe you could tell me why it is important? -
nerndt at 17:26 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
More data on total slar irradiation. The graph in the link shows the irradiation has been quite a bit higher in the last decade. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html Total solar irradiance describes the radiant energy emitted by the sun over all wavelengths that falls each second on 1 square meter outside the earth's atmosphere--a quantity proportional to the "solar constant" observed earlier in this century. It measures the solar energy flux in Watts/square meter. The data contains six sets of satellite observations: values from NIMBUS-7, from the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) spacecraft, from the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), from the NOAA-9 and 10 platforms, and from the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). Measurements span the periods: NIMBUS-7 16 Nov 78-13 Dec 93; SMM 16 Feb 80-01 Jun 89; ERBS 25 Oct 84-21 Dec 94; NOAA-9 23 Jan 85-20 Dec 89; NOAA-10 22 Oct 86-01 Apr 87; UARS 5 Oct 91-30 Sep 94. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To get to our FTP archive of solar irradiance data, click here. For more information on the various satellies, click on the appropriate hypertext link: NIMBUS-7 UARS/ACRIM II ERBS go to Solar Data Services Home
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