Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A few interesting points to me:
Our fascination with science created the problem.
Most climate change believers do very little to actually change their own lifestyles.
Most of them would rather put the burden on leaders who will always have other, conflicting interests.
Most don’t seem to realize that technological advancements designed to improve this alleged problem only serves to make us feel better about “doing” something.
Those advancements will not get us where climate change believers think we should be. They only change one problem into another problem.
You must live on a different world than I do...I look around me and see people struggling to do all they can to lower their carbon foot print. I also see many industries doing the same, even several oil companies.
Two things you should start doing immediately:
1. stop using the term denier to describe skeptics.
2. provide real, verifiable facts to bolster your claim of being on the side of science.
I have spent decades diagnosing complex machines and electronic systems, so I know a little about finding correct answers.
LOL I find this to be a curious claim since your entire post runs through a complex argument that sounds rehearsed but is not very concerned with reality.
This post is also reminiscent of a denialist who tries to bury you under a blathering gush of Gish Gallop.
I'm only going to address you on a few point vs. responding to each line of blathering gushing Gish Gallop nonsense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by momonkey
In the case of CO2, we already know from the fossil record that levels have been much higher in the past and also lower.
During periods of low atmospheric CO2 levels, surface temperatures have been significantly higher.
Likewise, during periods of very high CO2, temperatures were cooler than we are experiencing today.
In fact, the only consistent relationship between CO2 and surface temperature seems to be the slight increase that follows a warming period as the oceans release stored CO2.
So, when doubling the atmospheric CO2 level results in a claimed surface temperature change that is essentially imperceptible to the senses, the question becomes, how do we know the temperature has actually increased.
Assuming an increase in surface temperature can be verified (good luck with that), the next question is, is it really caused by elevated CO2 levels and to what degree?
What other factors are in play and, most importantly, what other factors cannot be measured and their influence accounted for?
(A) Planetary surface temperatures show a good correlation with the *combined* effects of changes in solar output and variations in atmospheric CO2 level. Examples: look at the cooler/warmer periods of the Ordovician Age and also the Carboniferous Age, as well as the Cenozoic recently. Sometimes the CO2 rise was caused by the temperature rise, and sometimes (such as the last 150 years) the CO2 rise preceded & caused the temperature rise.
Question: Why are you apparently unaware of all that paleo evidence?
(B) We know the surface temperature is rising, because:
[1] satellite evidence shows land and sea ice is melting, and
[2] satellite and tide-gauge evidence shows rising sea level, and
[3] thermometers confirm the rising temperature (a rise now of almost 1 degree since reliable general measurements commenced).
Question: If you cannot understand such basic science, then your "can't feel it" opinion is worth nothing.
(C) The scientists have looked into all sorts of factors that might influence climate (ranging from clouds and cosmic rays, to greenhouse gasses and albedo changes).
Question: If you yourself have discovered a vitally important factor they overlooked, then:
[1] tell us what it is, and
[2] write to the National Academy of Sciences, and explain to them what morons they all have been for missing such a basic factor, and
[3] start planning how to spend all the Nobel Prize money that you will be awarded from the astounded and delighted Nobel Committee !
....And good luck with that, Mr Unappreciated Genius.
Quote:
Originally Posted by momonkey
On the issue of cloud cover, NASA essentially punts.
They admit that past cloud cover was never measured in any meaningful way and that measuring cloud cover, even with the technology available today, is more or less a scientific fool's errant.
Of course, the problem is that we can't account for the effect of CO2 unless we also account for the effect of cloud cover, then and now.
I could go into refrigerants in the stratosphere, the albedo effect, rain and humidity and other factors that are clearly ignored by the settled science crowd, but why bother.
Sure you could LOL.
Your attempt to point to as a potential cause is, of course, man made. CFCs & HCFCs would have been as bad as CO2 at forcing AGW if they hadn't been banned.
The reason questions that ought to be asked are not asked is because we would have to admit that the data is insufficient, unavailable and probably unknowable.
This is no way to hold a discussion. What questions do you think need to be asked...be specific!
Let's sum up all of your fallacies in this Gish Gallop post.
The talk of the decoupling of global temperature & CO2 is probably going back hundreds of millions of years. Since you have not mentioned which era you are talking about, I suspect you probably have some ancient denialist graph showing CO2 and temperature less than strongly coupled but addressing specific eras is the way forward, not trying to debunk some bogus lines on a graph scribbled out years ago, (usually with temperature a parody of this Scotese graph).
You have presumably dismissed the tight coupling of CO2 through the last million years of ice ages with your "slight increase that follows a warming period". Then you plunge into the bold assertion that denies temperatures have been increasing over recent decades.
If these temperatures require "verification", then it's clear that you obviously haven't understood how thermometers work, how calendars work (winters shorter, summers longer under AGW) and a whole lot more.
Your final run is in arguing for there being other causes for the temperature increase which is exceptional over thousands of years but that you deny exists.
It would probably be better to respond that the cause of such an exceptional global temperature change requires a cause, not just a list of mechanisms that impact the climate system. So if you want to invoke rain or humidity or clouds, what has set these off to cause this exceptional warming now? Dare to answer that?
I suspect you will start shifting goalposts, and/or go into strawman arguments, and/or go into Conspiracy Mode.
I've been over this with you already. There are only two previous interglacials that saw such sea levels - the Eemian (MIS-5e) and 400,000y bp the MIS-11.
No, it's every single one of them.
Here's more science showing sea levels in MIS-7 and MIS 9:
The presence of a sea-level highstand at E180 ka represents a challenge to the idea that Pleistocene climate is driven by summer insolation at 651N. Sea-level is increasing (and therefore ice is melting) when 651N summer insolation is at one of its lowest points of the last 400 ka.
[emphasis mine]
Recognition of non-Milankovitch sea-level highstands at 185 and 343 thousand years ago from U–Th dating of Bahamas sediment
Here's another on MIS-7...from your own government....omigod...how can you debunk your own government?
Thermoluminescence (TL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) ages from sediments and fossil shells point to an age of ?220 ka for the end of this marine transgression, thus correlating it to MIS 7 (substage 7e). Altimetric data point to a maximum amplitude of about 10 meters above present-day mean sea-level, but tectonic processes may be involved.
Here's a little something for deniers to further consider and maybe for everyone to do more about too...
"And for ordinary citizens, it is important to recognize that scientists have done their job. It is now up to us to force our leaders to act upon what we know, before it is too late."
How are non-scientists supposed to solve a highly technical problem like global warming? Non-scientists do not have the ability to work on fusion power, grid-scale electricity storage, advanced nuclear reactors, electric vehicle batteries, carbon dioxide capture and storage, etc.
I don’t understand why some climate scientists constantly implore the general public to solve a problem they are incapable of solving. Only the top scientists and engineers are capable of (trying to) solve the AGW problem.
Pretty sure the effort on the part of scientists is to educate everyone, then hope the public will apply the appropriate pressure upon the powers that be to curb the sources of damage.
Here's something for deniers like you to consider:
“Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and leader of the NEEM-project.
Palaeo data suggest that Greenland must have been largely ice free during Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS-11). The globally averaged MIS-11 sea level is estimated to have reached between 6–13?m above that of today.
What is happening now, that doesn't happen in an Inter-Glacial Period?
Other than the whining by incompetents, nothing.
Given that sea levels always rise 3 meters to 14 meters during Inter-Glacial Periods, since that's what happened in the previous 8 recorded periods, who was burning fossil fuels fast and furious?
Oh, and seeing how those articles are from Nature and the Danish government, you can't exactly scream, "Right wing propaganda from blogs funded by oil companies!"
But, I'm sure that was your first inclination.
Deny this....
Our pollen-based climatic reconstruction suggests a mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWA) range of 9–14.5 °C during the warmest interval of the last interglacial. The reconstruction from plant macrofossils, representing more local environments, reached MTWA values above 12.5 °C in contrast to today's 2.8 °C.
Just to make sure we're clear on the concept, 12.5°C is 22.5°F warmer than present temperatures.
From applications of both correspondence analysis regression and best modern analogue methodologies, we infer July air temperatures of the last interglacial to have been 4 to 5 °C warmer than present on eastern Baffin Island, which was warmer than any interval within the Holocene.
Again, to make sure we're clear on the concept, 4.0°C - 5.0°C is 7.2°F - 9.0°F.
Gotta problem with science?
Love science! Not sure that's where the problem is here. I suspect all this rhetoric like "whining incompetents" demonstrates where the problem actually lies. Something like the inability to have an intelligent exchange of facts and opinion without going off the rails like you tend to do. What's that all about anyway?
I've been over this with you already. There are only two previous interglacials that saw such sea levels - the Eemian (MIS-5e) and 400,000y bp the MIS-11.
The Eemian was significantly warmer than today in northern latitudes. The link you posted above states the temperature became 8ºC warmer than today in northern Greenland.
So if temperatures do rise like that, we should expect significant SLR. You appear to be claiming that such temperatures are going to arise naturally. Of course, all interglacials are different. That is why only two of the last eight had sea level higher than today.
MIS-11 is interesting because it was of longer duration than other interglacials. This resulted from the Milankovitch cycle that triggered the interglacial being followed 20,000 years later by a stronger peak in the cycling extending the interglacial accordingly. A comparison of MIS-11 & the present Holocene is provided by Rohling et al (2010)Comparison between Holocene and Marine Isotope Stage-11 sea-level histories.
The milankovitch cycles do not provide that extra boost for the Holocene so again there is no reason to have expected 20,000 more years of interglacial with sea level increasing above today's levels - not without AGW.
It might suit you to know what you are talking about before coming here and posting things that clearly show you don't know what you're taking about.
Only two of the last 8 eight intergalacial periods had sea level rise higher than today. You need to click the top-left icon to get the 800,000 year version.
There were also steep rises in Greenhouse gasses (especially methane) and giant meltwater pulses affecting sea-level & the oceanic heat transfer from the tropics. All producing rapid fluctuation (see the Younger Dryas ). Still, one needs to ask: what caused the melting of land ice-sheets ~ if it wasn't caused by cumulative effect of gradually increasing Greenhouse effect? (That is a question that the "skeptics" don't wish to ask.)
The present-day rapid worldwide warming is not part of a transient up-and-down fluctuation, but is a strong & steady rise with a clear ongoing causation by CO2. World temperature has (compared with the gentle & slight variations of the past 10,000 years of the Holocene) now abruptly risen higher than the Holocene Maximum and is still rising steeply. And has occurred at a time (of roughly 5,000 years' duration) where the natural background tendency is toward ongoing global cooling.
Altogether, the two cases (of B-A events versus nowadays) are so very different in their long-term importance, that it is perfectly fair to say that current-day global warming is unprecedented in its character (and in its human causation!!)
Did you simply cherry pick and skip over the conclusions of the pollen study?
From the Conclusion section:
5. The simplest explanation of such high summer temperature and evaporation in contrast to the current warm stage is strong continentality superimposed by increased summer insolation as result of changed orbital parameters of the Earth.
6. Since increased continentality is incompatible with the immediate adjacency of the Laptev Sea and owing to the lack of marine deposits in the study region, a much less advanced marine transgression during the last interglacial may be supposed.
7. Due to the greater northward extent of the Siberian landmass, the Siberian anticyclone was larger and resulted in greater continentality around the Bol'shoy Lyakhovsky Island area.
8. The excessive Holocene marine transgression in NE Siberia was thus possibly a unique event within the Quaternary and resulted from tectonic extension and subsidence of the extremely shallow Laptev Sea Shelf.
We can certainly point out your cherry picking of these articles not to mention your Motivated Reasoning, and playing with words, in order to conceal the plain physical truth of what is happening globally.
Thanks for at least a bit better balanced, mature and civil take on this somewhat too-complicated-subject for most lay people. And to think the person you are addressing just recently explained about appearing learned is to stick with subjects he really knows something about.
In all fairness, though, he did explain "I took a lot of courses in anthropology, archaeology and mythology." So there's that...
I am hard at work driving my 6 engine consists or flying my plane where I want.
Sooo when will it be too late? Not that I care, just curious.
Sorry to tell you, freight trains are very efficient movers of freight.
But then you knew that all along.
Now if you want, you can undo your sin of being efficient by moving freight with your plane!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
