Hey, alarmists...

[Anonymous]

There have been many reasons given why the projected increases in temperature did not occur. One study found that the lack of warming is due to heat transported to deeper layers in the Atlantic and the southern oceans, initiated by a recurrent salinity anomaly in the subpolar North Atlantic. Most of the same climate modelers have doubled down and are predicting even greater climatic swings in the future.

Melting ice is another reason.  The latent heat required to melt ice is huge, but does not affect temperature at all, but similar to ocean heating, it will accelerate the temperature increase later on.

Solar output, volcanic eruptions and Milankovitch Cycles or cyclic, predictable changes in the earth's orbit are important too. Water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas. Then there is methane which is the most potent greenhouse gas.



At one point in the Earth's history, a natural imbalance in the amount of carbon dioxide released by respiration vs. the amount fixed by photosynthesis had a significant effect on Earth's climate. Several hundred million years ago during the Carboniferous period, vast swamp forests of seedless vascular plants fixed huge amounts of carbon, causing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to drop fivefold . The resulting global cooling led to an ice age. Much of this fixed carbon was buried in the swamps and gradually compressed to form coa

[RW]

At what point is it "settled"?  How many scientists and scientific agencies need to agree?

[Frood]

Climate change proponents still can't make their minds up on what's happening, if anything. They've oscillated between ice ages and catastrophic warming over the last 45-50 years. When global warming predictions don't eventuate in their 15 year study durations, it becomes climate change while still being referred to as global warming and the statistics are omitted from official statements, even as evidence mounts that polar ice is actually growing over some of our more recent years and that tree rings and soil striations indicate a relatively smooth cycling through the centuries and millenniums.



It's become the Church of Latter Day Chicken Little's.

Climate change proponents and the scientific consensus have always said the globe is warming. It's the deniers who still can't make up their minds. "It's warming, it's cooling, the Sun is hotter, it snowed somewhere, I hate Al Gore"...



The terms "global warming" and "climate change" have both been used for decades. Because global warming = climate change. Cause and effect. It's what they've been explaining all along.



"They said it was cloudy, but now they say it's raining. That makes no sense! How can it be cloudy and raining at the same time?"

A lot of the issue comes from people not understanding the term "global warming".  This does not mean that the temperature on a Tuesday in Albany is slightly higher.  It doesn't even mean that the average temperature is higher.  It means that more heat is being retained.  Retained heat may manifest as an increase in temperature, or it may manifest as a decrease in pack ice, an increase in wind speed, more cloud formation, higher humidity etc.  It doesn't really matter.  What does matter is that it means more energy in the system and that is not good for us who rely on stable predictable weather patterns for agriculture and various other economic activities.  



Warming means that there is more heat energy and that heat energy will do something.

Yet the jury is still out whether the world is warming or cooling and where it plays out before the more recent attempts at monitoring.



The consensus keeps changing since the later 60's and early 70's and the wider scientific community doesn't seem to want to delve into the role which the sun plays in our environment either. Climate change science contradicts itself regularly. It's become a religion unto its own. Governments and corporations are all too ready to piggyback off many of the claims because it enables them instead of disables them. It's faith based science.

[reel]

All science contradicts itself regularly.  That's part of the process and precisely what makes it NOT faith based.  There's observation-hypothesis-experiment-theory.  Climate is complex and the effects of adding more energy are neither obvious nor clear.  However, as I've explained multiple times, that we are adding energy is both obvious and clear.



Perhaps you'd like to have a go at my argument or make one of your own since your countryman has so soundly failed?





*edit - I should add that the short term effects of adding energy are not clear.  The long term effects of adding energy are always the same.

[reel]

So, by that logic, we are doomed...because the heat will eventually build up to unsurvivable limits.



Has the heat of the planet been warmer than it is now?



If so, what were the consequences?



If so, what happened to that heat that, by your statement, could not escape?



What will happen if we can magically eradicate CO2 from the atmosphere?



Spare me your dogma. Show me your credentials. Show me your supporting data. Thats what Giaever did. Someone who you call a puppet declined to be part of the mantra chanters and took an alternative view.



Don't argue with me. Argue with his historic data.

Ok, this might be tricky for you to understand since you are clearly struggling with the basics, but in the name of scientific literacy, we'll have a go anyway.



Radiative heat is released based on a property we call emissivity.  The efficiency of emissivity rises with temperature.  So, if the co2 content stabilised, we would not just keep heating up.  We would heat up to the point where the emissivity of the earth's surface would balance against the resistance of the insulative capacity of the CO2.  The earth would eventually warm to this point and then balance out.  If the CO2 levels are higher, this balance occurs at a higher surface temperature.  



Has this happened before?  Yes it has.  The consequence was that the earth was hotter.  What happened to that heat?  Eventually CO2 levels decreased and the earth balanced out again at a cooler temperature.



What would happen if we eradicated CO2 from the atmosphere?  The planet would cool down and we'd all die of starvation.  We don't want to eradicate it.  Ideally, we would balance it out at some point slightly lower than it is now.  Where it's at now is probably fine too.  Continuously rising... not so good.



I prefer to explain concepts to people.  Teach a man to fish and all that.  You'Ll never learn anything if you are just parroting or rejecting others without truly thinking about what they are saying.

[reel]

Alright, it's a new day.  Let's talk about what Ivar said and what he didn't say.



First and most importantly, he makes no mention of energy!  Kind of odd when you consider the system he is evaluating.  From an energy perspective, the planet is really very, very simple.  It has one source (the sun) and one sink (emissive heat radiation).  Other than that, it is entirely adiabatic.  Thus it's really easy to evaluate whether the source and the sink are in balance or not because there is just one of each.  But he doesn't talk about them at all.  Why not?  He is a physicist.  He understands energy.  If it were true that there is no global warming, he shouldn't have a problem saying that the two are balanced and there is no heat gain or loss.  But he can't, because he knows it's not true - as does everyone else.  The sink is being partially blocked by waste and the source is carrying on doing what it does.



So what does he say?  That the temperature rise is insignificant.  But only if you exclude a large portion of the data.  If you "fiddle" with the numbers and include a larger dataset, the temperature is rising.  He didn't deny it.  He simply mocked his perception of the way in which it was presented, but offered no counter.  So he basically said that the atmospheric temperature is rising, just not enough to give him concern (no rationale offered as to why), and the overall temperature is rising at some unspecified rate that obviously must not give him concern either.



He makes no mention of the carbon cycle.  This is of course another crucial element of the question and is very similar to the energy system.  There are sources and there are sinks.  If the sources have more output than the sinks have capacity to absorb, there is an increase in CO2 density in the atmosphere.  This is recorded, demonstrated, and he admitted that this was not only true, but demonstrated that it is accelerating.  On the other hand, he made no attempt to explain the effect this has or why he thinks it's not important, if indeed he does thing that.  At the end, he makes an arbitrary representation of carbon output into a room - a match in a large room.  What he fails to mention is the temporal aspect of this evaluation.  If there is no ventilation (ie. sink) or the ventilation is even smaller than the output of the match, over time, CO2 will build up in the room.  Much like poop released into Sydney harbour, a few days concentration doesn't matter, nor does a few weeks or months, but over years of time, even a match in a large room will build up harmful concentrations.



In short, if the question is "Is global warming occurring?" he omits comment on the two most important aspects of the question - energy and the insulative effects of CO2 (and other GHGs) that counter the release of energy.  He contradicts his own comments on temperature, but also doesn't recognize (or wilfully omits) that temperature is not representative of energy.  He makes irrational allusions that ignore the temporal effects of an unbalanced system.



There you go.  I may not have a shiny title or flashy credentials, but I have a brain and I know how to use it.  I highly recommend it!  Don't be distracted by the flash and the rhetoric.  Listen to what the man is actually saying.  In the end, it's really not very much.

[RW]

All science contradicts itself regularly.  That's part of the process and precisely what makes it NOT faith based.  There's observation-hypothesis-experiment-theory. Climate is complex and the effects of adding more energy are neither obvious nor clear.  However, as I've explained multiple times, that we are adding energy is both obvious and clear.



Perhaps you'd like to have a go at my argument or make one of your own since your countryman has so soundly failed?





*edit - I should add that the short term effects of adding energy are not clear.  The long term effects of adding energy are always the same.

Science is made to try to prove itself wrong constantly.  That's what it is designed to do.

[Wulf]

There have been many reasons given why the projected increases in temperature did not occur. One study found that the lack of warming is due to heat transported to deeper layers in the Atlantic and the southern oceans, initiated by a recurrent salinity anomaly in the subpolar North Atlantic. Most of the same climate modelers have doubled down and are predicting even greater climatic swings in the future.

Melting ice is another reason.  The latent heat required to melt ice is huge, but does not affect temperature at all, but similar to ocean heating, it will accelerate the temperature increase later on.

Is it? Not really in the grand scheme of things.



It takes 143 BTUs to melt one pound of ice and 286,000 BTUs to melt one ton of ice. Now granted, God knows how many tons of ice disappeared in the past 30 years but spread the required energy out over time and you will see that it doesn't take much of a temperature rise to cause the kind of polar ice melting we are seeing today. A one or two degree rise in global ocean temps is all it really takes to set things out of whack.

[reel]

Is it? Not really in the grand scheme of things.



It takes 143 BTUs to melt one pound of ice and 286,000 BTUs to melt one ton of ice. Now granted, God knows how many tons of ice disappeared in the past 30 years but spread the required energy out over time and you will see that it doesn't take much of a temperature rise to cause the kind of polar ice melting we are seeing today. A one or two degree rise in global ocean temps is all it really takes to set things out of whack.

I didn't explain that very well.  My point was that the process of melting ice absorbs quite a lot of energy, but the process is isothermal, ie. the energy is absorbed, but the temperature of the material remains at 0C until the ice has melted.  Thus melting multi-year ice is a large heat sink with no influence on global temperature.  



I agree that it doesn't take a lot in terms of mean temperature shift to throw the system out of whack.  That's why his scoffing at a 0.88C shift is silly.  What does that mean practically?  It could actually be very serious.  It could mean 6 days longer before Arctic freeze up and thus 6 days sooner for Arctic break up.  A 12 day shift might not seem like a lot, but that could make a huge ecological difference as well as reduce that heat sink, further accelerating the process.  At any rate, it's good reason for scientists to study the effects and for the rest of us to take pause and re-examine what we are doing, don't you think?

[Frood]

Look at all the religious climate change talk which has transpired in this thread already.  ac_smile

[Anonymous]

Look at all the religious climate change talk which has transpired in this thread already.  ac_smile

But the science is settled, the world is near the tipping point, and it's all your fault. Now repent of your sins and hand it all over.

[RW]

Look what the media has turned it into.

[Anonymous]

Look what the media has turned it into.

I don't like a lot of modern news sources and definitely not Twitter. I like my traditional sources when I want information.

[@realAzhyaAryola]

Shame about the kids though.

Yes, it is. I'll strive not to worry about it. Instead, I'll make the most of the time we have together. We could be debating all this and then an asteroid hits earth and life as we know it is kaput.

[Anonymous]

Shame about the kids though.

Yes, it is. I'll strive not to worry about it. Instead, I'll make the most of the time we have together. We could be debating all this and then an asteroid hits earth and life as we know it is kaput.

Don't worry, the biggest crisis your kids will face is how will they pay for all this sky is falling extortion.