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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 131501 to 131550:

  1. Evaporating the water vapor argument
    BTN: Post script: be careful.....the next thing that will happen is that the alarmists will start trying to limit w.v. emissions ( I have a 95% confidence in this)
  2. Are we heading into a new Little Ice Age?
    "Even if the sun did return to Maunder Minimum levels (which is unlikely), CO2 warming would overpower the solar 'cooling'." In what way? CO2 simply delays the loss of heat from the system, it does not 'add' anything; so if the sun returns to MM condition there will be less heat coming in thus a drop in GMT...and that drop will depend on the length of the MM period. No?
  3. Comparing IPCC projections to observations
    Victor: There is much evidence that the IR 'blocking' effect of CO2 is limited to around 100m from the radiant source; if I remember rightly around 94% of re-radiation occurs within this zone. Thereafter convection and conduction take over and the heat is lost to the upper atmosphere. There is a limit to how much IR can be blocked which is only partially dependent on the CO2 concentration. The effect is roughly logarithmic ( not linear) so a doubling of CO2 will not necessarily double the amount of re-radiated IR. If the satellite data shows an increase in outgoing IR ( continuously) then this could be an indication that saturation point is being approached.
  4. The Mystery of the Vanishing Ocean Heat
    Silly question...do we have any ideas about how much the land is sinking as this has an obvious effect on sea levels. For example, southern and eastern England is sinking as Scotland rises; other continental plates are being lifted/subducted ( admittedly on long timescales, but the masses involved are rather large in themselves)due to tectonic activity....??
  5. Do cosmic rays cause clouds?
    I find it curious that a distiction is drawn between 'climate' and 'weather', presumably on the basis that weather is the end product of the process 'climate' and is transient. But in truth, the weather has an effect on climate as a feedback mechanism. IF ( a big if) Solar/CR/Fluxes have any effect on cloud formation ( and I vaguely recall things called cloud chambers)then because they are influenced by the earth's magnetic field there may not be an obvious direct correlation. There may not be a direct causal link...but there may be an indirect one. We should not dismiss ideas simply because they do not fit the model or we can't (yet)find an obvious effect; science is about investigating ideas, obtaining HARD data and then fitting that additional data into the model.
  6. It's the sun
    Possibly because the interest rest with CO2, ice cores, and ocean on this NOAA site so it covered the bases. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the second GHG http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/forcing/Methane.pdf Search NOAA
  7. We're heading into an ice age
    sandy Distance to the shore is irrelevant, height above sea level is relevant. But a small factor is left out when the alarmists talk about sea level rise and that is porosity and absorbtion. The Newark Basin in New Jersey is not very much higher than sea level and yet it was swamp lands during the mesozoic, not ocean bottom. Much of the coast that will flood is swamp land now. During the Mesozoic the midwestern US was an inland sea and remains lowland today. A catastrophic rise in sea level will most likely result in a return of the inland sea, something that alarmists fail to mention.
  8. We're heading into an ice age
    Samboc Well said. Warm is better than cold.
  9. Ice age predicted in the 70s
    The side argument over deceit aside, I would like to point out that the scientist who started the cooling fright in the 70s actually has not changed his position. Reading his work indicates that there should be an upcoming glacation regardless of any warming but the timing was and still is unknown. The panic was caused by the media reading timing as immediate into his work.
  10. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Mizimi You are correct, the overall slope is negetive. I am referring to the current slope of the past 5 million years as positive.
  11. It's the sun
    Pep Interesting site. They mention CO2 as a GHG released from the ocean but did not mention CH4 that was released at the same time. Now why is that? They also fail to explain why the cycles do not have the same effect because they are ignoring other cycles that happen to overlap. Read "The Solar Jerk". Mizimi I agree that the earth has cooled and that the overall trend is one of cooling (each thermal maximum is shorter and less intense) but short term (for the earth) is slowly coming out of Ice Age 4 and temperature slope for the last 5 million years is positive (there will likely be another glacation or two but it is really unpredictable).
  12. Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?
    The 'temperatures' for paleoclimate are proxies and need to be treated very cautiously. What does emerge from them is a general cooling trend from Cambrian to present with some 'bumps' along the way (Devonian,Cretaceous, Paleogene). What is obvious from the records, however accurate they may be, is that the earth has experienced far greater climatic changes in the past and LIFE has coped with them all. And some of those changes have been very rapid. So historically the answer to the topic question is YES. (but maybe not in the form or abundance we know)
  13. We're heading into an ice age
    Samboc: Don't worry about the sun cooling down just yet, providing it doesn't do anything silly it will follow the normal sequence for its type and increase in luminosity ( by about 10% over the next billion years). And you're right: warmer is better as the paleorecord shows. The view that sea levels will rise to the levels predicted is based on assumptions, not facts. All that water has to come from somewhere- snow,glaciers, icecaps, thermal expansion et al. There are many unresolved factors such as land rebound, greater oceanic uptake of CO2 due to rising ocean volume decreasing the GG efect at the same time as ocean warming releases more CO2...and one can go on and on. We currently simply do not have the ability (or data)to fully understand and accurately model the climate process, so it is not reasonable to take action that would have severe economic and societal repercussions until that time arrives.
  14. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    QM: Well stated!! ( although I still see a downward trend in paleoproxy record!) Mankind in general ( and politicos in particular) is often very myopic when it comes to 'proving' a current view is THE right one. It is interesting to note the shift in emphasis from Global Warming to Climate Change. You can't argue against one of these...guess which?
  15. It's the sun
    A rider....I appreciate proxy data is pretty anecdotal; but regardless of the absolute conditions pertaining at those times we DO see a trend which does not support a positive,continuous feedback causing catastrophe. The carboniferous period actually teaches us a valuable lesson about how biomass substantially impacts CO2 levels: without the CO2 locked up during that period in oil/gas/coal we wouldn't be having this debate..........
  16. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Sandy Winder: In the context of the survival of civilisation, yes I do see it as irrelevent. That does not mean I am not concerned! Bubonic plague killed over half the population of Europe in the 14th century (estimated 35 million people) and a quarter of the worldwide population. The population in Europe recovered within a century. The 634 million you mention represent 10% of the world population so the effect of that 7 metre rise ( even if it killed them all) would have less effect on civilisation than the bubonic plague. The timescales are roughly the same..100yrs, the difference is that we have the ability circumvent the effects of rising sea levels so the net outcome will not threaten civilisation. It depends on what your perpective is, survival of the individual or survival of the species; marked global cooling would be a lot more difficult to survive than the equivalent level of global warming.
  17. Do cosmic rays cause clouds?
    M_B: The Younger Dryas period temp changes were so abrupt it is impossible to ascribe them to 'normal' climatic modifiers. One leading hypothesis is that the rapid dumping of Lake Agassiz ( via the Great lakes) into the N. Atlantic interrupted the thermohaline circulation there. Western European climate is effectively held 4 - 5C above 'normal' by TH circulation, so any decline would seriously impact that region's climate.
  18. It's the sun
    QM: Point taken, however if you plot proxy temps from Cambrian to present you get a downward trend in GMT from around 21C GMT to present 13.8C. Also latest thinking on Venus proposes the lack of a magnetic field has allowed water vapour to be dissociated by UV and the lighter H atoms stripped away by solar wind effects thus eventually depriving the planet of any water and therefore no oceanic component to modulate heat tranfer.....connect to the impending reversal/decline of our magnetic field??? Regarding climate sensitivity to CO2 modulation: This seems to me to be considerably overstated. Again, paleoclimate proxies indicate far higher CO2 levels than now without any thermal runaway. During the Carboniferous period CO2 levels were around 800ppm yet the GMT was apparently only 14C. Later, in the Mesozoic, CO2 jumped to circa 1800ppm and the GMT rose to around 17.5C...hardly supporting the idea of thermal runaway or tipping.
  19. It's the sun
    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data2.html Glacial-Interglacial cycles
  20. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Samboc & sandy The next ice age can not begin until after the current one ends. We ARE IN an ice age, Ice Age 4 known as the Neogene-Quarternary Ice Age. This is an interglacial period within the confines of Ice Age 4. In other words this is colder than normal and slowly returning back to earth normal (hot). Before you ask what is normal, you should know that all 4 of the ice ages only constitute about 10% of the earths history (but a much higher percent, maybe 40%, if you only count from the beginning of life). That means that 90% of the earths history (or about 60% of its inhabited history) is a HOT earth (but habitable despite extremely high CO2 levels ay times). The information is available at both government and university sites. I suggest becoming familiar with the scientific terminology at these sites and then look at the graphs of paleoclimates. The alarmists like short terms, 30 years rather than say 50 or 100 and for paleoclimates no more than a few hundred thousand years rather than millions because it makes AGW look pronounced and they can't account for high temps and low CO2 or low temps with high CO2 because it does not fit their models or their agendas.
  21. Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?
    HealthySkeptic In addition to the "Ordovician & Silurian" Ice age (Ice Age 2), the Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) was also an ice age (the beginning of the "Pennsylvanian & Permian" ice age or Ice Age 3).
  22. It's the sun
    Mizimi You are talking about glacations within an ice age and yes the interglacials are longer than the glacations but there are only 4 known ice ages and they comprise only about 10% of the earths known history. I am not looking at just the 4th ice age but all of earth history when I say that hotter is normal. sandy I do not disagree with what you say except that the GHG hypothesis can not be viewed as theory due to lack of testing. It has not made accurate predictions because of the overestimated sensitivity. In other words the earth is not very sensitive to CO2 as a GHG. If it was we would have looked like Venus during the Mesozoic. So the simple answer is that the IPCC has seriously overestimated the sensitivity to CO2 while doing the opposite for TSI.
  23. Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
    Andy Bryski Because of the predominant air currents the increased snow falls in asia (last winter was a good example). This was mentioned in a paper by Mackey last summer.
  24. We're heading into an ice age
    Nor is a seven metre rise in sea levels. Where are all the people who live within ten miles of the coast going to live? I doubt the dinosaurs worried too much about how much land they had available or how many times they were flooded out or how many died in forest fires or died of thirst.
  25. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Mizimi:Concerns about the effect of a slight rise in temperature over the next century and the consequences thereof are irrelevent in this context: our civilisation will survive the predicted global warming scenario,... This 'slight' rise in temperature could be enough to raise sea levels by seven metres just from Greenland alone in the next hundred years. Even in 2008, 634 million people live within 10km of coasts. Do you see that as irrelevant?
  26. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Where is the evidence that the next ice age is due?
  27. Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
    A year or so ago I watched an interview with a climatologist. (can't recall the name) He stated that the long term effect of Artic ice melt will actually result in a reversal or a balancing. His reasoning was that the melt would increase moisture in the Arctic and result in large cloudy regions with increased snowfall. This would build snow/ice fields, these in turn would act as reflectors resulting in a counter-balance and mitigate the ice melt.. This appears to make some logical sense to me because the Artic at present is considered a desert region due to the very low precipitation levels. Increased precipitation levels would therefore alter that standard and possibly have positive results that might not be foreseen at present.----Your thoughts please!
  28. Models are unreliable
    Just read an interesting abstract on the effect of the moon on the monthly GMT. "Over the past fifty years, the Diurnal Temp Range has decreased by about half a degree.Conventional wisdom blames this on the greenhouse effect. But this decrease is just a trend observed in data that vary over shorter timescales. Cerveny and Balling show that for the period between 1950 and 1995, the DTR fluctuates with the phases of the Moon. It tends to increase towards Full Moon, and tends to be lowest at New Moon. Simple monthly differences in DTR between New Moon and Full Moon may be as much as 0.309 ºC -- in other words, 60% of the entire 50-year decrease. The message should be clear: all possible sources of variation should be investigated before blaming human activity alone for observed changes in climatic parameters." There is a correlation between full moon and monthly DTR variations most of which is ascribed to the changing earth/moon barycentre. This has prompted a look at the effects of a shifting sun/earth/moon barycentre on earth climate. Another piece in the puzzle?
  29. It's the sun
    ///The as yet unanswered question is: what causes these ice ages to start and stop? Until we can answer this question with high accuracy we know nothing about what climate is or how it works./// Wrong question because the perspective is wrong. History shows us that ice ages are the climatic dominant feature and that warm periods are the anomalies. The question is "What causes the warm periods"?
  30. It's the sun
    You appear to be confusing prediction with science and weather with climate. The GHG 'hypothesis' is hardly that. It is like saying that the sun heats the earth is also only a hypothesis. It is true that the predictors can not be 100% sure of what the climate will be like in a 100 hundred years any more than they can tell what the weather will be like in 100 days. But they are just as likely to be guilty of underestimating the climate changes as overestimating them.
  31. Philippe Chantreau at 11:45 AM on 29 August 2008
    Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
    Almost play on words. Thanks for the reminder but stay healthy. Pointers?
  32. It's methane
    Note: Methane intially reacts with ozone in a 'chain' reaction that ultimately produces CO2 and water vapour. You could summarise the reactions into: (3)CH4 + (4)O3 = (3)CO2 + (6)H2O Oxidation of methane is the main source of water vapor in the upper stratosphere
  33. Solar cycles cause global warming
    ourphyl: Have a look at 'It's volcanoes'. Quietman has posted some relevent and interesting information and useful links.
  34. It's ozone
    A decline in ozone levels has a direct effect on the removal mechanism of methane from the atmosphere. Ozone is split by UV and the O atom combines with H to form hydroxyl radical OH. Methane reacts with the hydroxyl radical producing a methyl radical which bonds with another hydroxyl radical to produce formaldehyde. Formaldehyde reacts with hydroxyl radicals forming carbon dioxide and water vapor. You could summarise the reactions into: (3)CH4 + (4)O3 = (3)CO2 + (6)H2O Oxidation of methane is the main source of water vapor in the upper stratosphere
  35. Greenland was green in the past
    wp Possible but not probable. Vineland was named by the greenlanders of that time, we can't identify it to this day because the climate changed.
  36. It's the sun
    sandy winder I said nothing about what climate IS. We are all pretty much aware of what it DOES. The best climatologist is a meteorologist with a PHD (presumed). They do quite well on both short term and long term predictions (it's mid-term where they run into trouble). But there is little understanding of what really drives climate and that is what I refer to. The GHG hypothesis came and went and came back again, the level of uncertainty is quite high. They only recently discovered how vulcanism drives ENSO. There are a lot of assumptions made by predictors and most are highly questionable which is why there is not a single climate model that works.
  37. We're heading into an ice age
    I am a novice here but I have noticed a lot of technical jargon that I don't understand. "Al Gore" etc thinks it is going to get warm. The "skeptics" say it is going to get cold. I think that if I lived in the NH I would make sure I have got some warm clothes. The bottom line is that all our heat comes from the Sun. If it cools down so does Earth. Any variances due to different Ocean Currents, Magnetic Fields etc are only releasing stored energy from the Sun. At the end of the day this planet will be a Dead Rock circling a spent Sun. Lets hope it warms up, CO2 increases, Plants grow and life becomes comfortable for a while. The alternative is not nice.
  38. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Running out of fossil fuel is a certainty. Reserves of fuel on current usage will run out in a few hundred years if "Green" movements continue to restrict drilling in "sensitive" areas. I am probably wrong but I often wonder where all this fossil fuel came from. Back in my school days (35 years ago) I was taught that is was from the Dinosaur days. The Earth was much hotter, Plants grew much lusher ( More CO2) . There was abundant Plant life that grew and died and rotted in swamps eventually forming Oil. This will not happen today. This planet is cold. It has been 11,500 years since the last Ice Age. The next Ice Age is due. We need millions of years of heat and increased CO2 to give the Earth a fighting chance.
  39. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????
    Running out of fossil fuel is a certainty. Reserves of fuel on current usage will run out in a few hundred years if "Green" movements continue to restrict drilling in "sensitive" areas. I am probably wrong but I often wonder where all this fossil fuel came from. Back in my school days (35 years ago) I was taught that is was from the Dinosaur days. The Earth was much hotter, Plants grew much lusher ( More CO2) . There was abundant Plant life that grew and died and rotted in swamps eventually forming Oil. This will not happen today. This planet is cold. It has been 11,500 years since the last Ice Age. The next Ice Age is due. We need millions of years of heat and increased CO2 to give the Earth a fighting chance.
  40. HealthySkeptic at 15:19 PM on 28 August 2008
    Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?
    #20 chris, It's interesting that you bring up the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures with respect to palaeoclimate. The Carboniferous and the Ordovician are the only periods in the earth's history when global temperatures were as low as they are today. The late Ordovician was also an Ice Age, while at the same time CO2 concentrations were nearly 12 times higher than they are today (~4400 ppm). According to greenhouse theory, the earth should have been exceedingly hot. Obviously, other factors besides atmospheric CO2 have larger impacts on the earth's temperature and global warming.
  41. HealthySkeptic at 14:43 PM on 28 August 2008
    Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?
    Well said, Mizimi! In addition to the emotional aspect, being the very egotistical creatures that we are, we humans are also very good at over-estimating our impact on nature.
  42. HealthySkeptic at 14:23 PM on 28 August 2008
    Global cooling: the new kid on the block
    John, I liked your comment, "The flaw in this interpretation is in drawing conclusions about long term climate change over a relatively short period". In the history of the Earth, 100 years is a "relatively short period", so the same could be said about drawing conclusions about observations over that time frame. There's only one absolutely certainty about climate... and that is that it WILL change.
  43. HealthySkeptic at 14:10 PM on 28 August 2008
    Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
    Philippe, In #38 you said "Black carbon is nonetheless anthropogenic." Not completely... there are significant natural sources.
  44. HealthySkeptic at 13:31 PM on 28 August 2008
    Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
    What about water vapour as a negative feedback, due to the reflecton of solar radiation away from the Earth by clouds? Surely if water vapour levels in the atmosphere increase then there is a greater tendency for clouds to form, reflecting more radiation away from the earth.
  45. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    I apologise in advance ........... " they strain out gnats and swallow camels..." THE current estimated GMT (actual) is 14C. The anomaly 1970 -2008 is around +0.55C which as a linear trend is +0.18/decade. If that trend continues in a linear fashion, then by 2108 the GMT will be 15.8C assuming all other things remain equal. Not impressed.
  46. Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
    The schematic is misleading. Firstly, it is not representative of the actual processes going but only shows a snapshot in time. Secondly, there is no CO2 balance in biomass input/output: CO2 is constantly being locked up/ released at varying rates so there is no dynamic equilibrium. In (geologically)ancient times CO2 concentrations were as high as 6000ppm...for a long time high enough to preclude oxygen breathers evolving...until sufficent CO2 was locked up by plant life ( the oceans would have been more or less saturated) and O2 levels raised by algae and cyanobacteria. There is no balance! Check out the Oxygen Cycle.
  47. It's the sun
    ///The as yet unanswered question is: what causes these ice ages to start and stop? Until we can answer this question with high accuracy we know nothing about what climate is or how it works./// I think it is bit unfair to say that scientists know nothign about climate. They know quite a lot about it. The fact they do not everything does not mean they know nothing. Scientists don't know everything about the human body yet but doctors still perform operations.
  48. It's the sun
    http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2002-12/1039267568.As.r.html In fact, the Sun is actually getting hotter. As 4 hydrogen atoms turns into 1 helium atom, the total number of particles in the Sun's core decreases. In order for the pressure within the Sun to stay constant, and continue to support itself against gravity, the temperature of the Sun must increase. This increase in temperature results in the Sun becoming brighter as well. In turn, this makes the Earth warmer because the intensity of sunlight is increasing. It is expected that within 1 billion years or so (well before the Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel) the temperature on Earth will increase to the point that a runaway greenhouse will take place. The result is that the Earth will end up looking much like Venus today.
  49. There's no empirical evidence
    "Rising CO2 levels are based not on one station but over 300 stations in 66 countries (World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases). " My count from the WDC site is 298 stations of which only 159 actually measure CO2. The others measure different gasses. Being imprecise simply gives the sceptics another rabbit trail to run down. Current models have a VERY GREAT problem with clouds; even with modern satellite imagery it is beyond our current capability to assess with any reasonable degree of accuracy cloud distribution and density and thus the effect on insolation.
  50. It's methane
    It would be better if the graph went back somewhat more than 20yrs. Preindustrial concentrations are estimated around 700ppb, just 40% of modern concentrations. Much of the rise has to do with population increase and dietary habits. Population increases in the east have demanded increased rice production and the consequent increase in methane emission. Western diets are highly biased to meat consumption resulting in huge growth in ruminant numbers since 1960, another large methane source. Also, I am not too sure if the overall effect of methane is included in models? Methane breaks down into water and CO2 and I would expect the total GG effect of methane to include the secondary effect of these. I recently read that global methane emissions is on the rise...will have to find that paper again........

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