Global Warming and Second Opinions

[dead0man]

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-umbass) says she knows global warming is real because "I can feel it when I'm flying."  Way to be all sciency about it Mrs. Cap and Trade!

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-umbass) says she knows global warming is real because "I can feel it when I'm flying."  Way to be all sciency about it Mrs. Cap and Trade!

Haha. I'm always surprised what humans are able to say.

Well. First, for me, option 4.

Then, I've been surprised that here, and maybe by some extent, I don't know, in America, the Global Warming is such cut of the other environmental issues, several posters stating we should focus on other environmental issues.

Yes, for me, and by some extent i would say in France, Global Warming is rather tied to other environmental issues, we see it as the consequence of the way our current societies worked and still work today, this coming along with other consequences such as cancers, breathing sickness, infertility of humans, etc, all of this, Global warming included, caused by pollution, pesticides, bad chemistry, bad food...

Of course this position includes to assume that Global Warming is on, and is on because of humans, what people more or less do here, I would say a majority of people here are like that.

I don't mind this assumption is only an assumption, because, even if it is not right, so what? We will wait that the perfect scientist study comes out and say: "No!! That's not us!! Great!! We can continue to be assholes with our environment!! Great!!". And even if such a study comes out, we all know science are always subject to doubt. Maybe one day we will approach the truth, but to be sure about it is an other thing...

So, do we wait to be sure we're significantly for something in it, or do we assume that, yes, it could actually be us by fossil fuels, by intensive agriculture (euh...actually...trust it or not but it seems that cow farts are a true issue...), by bad chemistry, etc. So much stuffs that anyways seem to carry lot of bad diseases and bad consequences for our environment, thus for us. And thus, as we can't know, or while waiting to know better, then we should act to change our ways of life to prevent eventual very bad consequences for us on the long term.

It has been spoken about economy here, making this assumption is a great perspective for our economy, it opens lots of new markets for things that would be good for us, something that the economy has anyways well understood, trying to paint itself in green the more it can.

So, waiting for certitude or acting because of a bad eventuality.

That is my position on "Global Warming", and has been for years now, I haven't changed.

[Vepres]

I went from a paranoid obsessive person to a skeptic.

Why? A few reasons:

1. We had two unusually cold winters here in Colorado in 2007 and 2008.
2. The drought we had out west ended.
3. The Earth's temperature has actually cooled slightly over the past decade.
4. The media always hypes things that are bad or scary because it's good for ratings.
5. The issue was politicized a long time ago, which means the science was taken out of it.
6. There have been periods in relatively recent history that were as warm or warmer.
7. The greenhouse effect that keeps Earth warm is actually caused mostly by water vapor, not CO2.
8. I realized it was "cool" to be concerned about it, that's why most believed it, not because they were really convinced.
9. I've heard stories of climatologists being rejected by their colleagues and even losing their jobs because they did research that went against global warming.
10. If global warming isn't a real event, or not one of much concern, many climatologists will lose their jobs. What will they do instead?

[AkSaber]

I went from a paranoid obsessive person to a skeptic.

Why? A few reasons:

1. We had two unusually cold winters here in Colorado in 2007 and 2008.
2. The drought we had out west ended.
3. The Earth's temperature has actually cooled slightly over the past decade.
4. The media always hypes things that are bad or scary because it's good for ratings.
5. The issue was politicized a long time ago, which means the science was taken out of it.
6. There have been periods in relatively recent history that were as warm or warmer.
7. The greenhouse effect that keeps Earth warm is actually caused mostly by water vapor, not CO2.
8. I realized it was "cool" to be concerned about it, that's why most believed it, not because they were really convinced.
9. I've heard stories of climatologists being rejected by their colleagues and even losing their jobs because they did research that went against global warming.
10. If global warming isn't a real event, or not one of much concern, many climatologists will lose their jobs. What will they do instead?

Also, there's the matter of the loudmouth enviros who pollute and consume in great amounts, then turn around and tell everyone else to stop being wasteful. If they aren't serious about adhering to their own ideas, why should the rest of us listen to them?

[dead0man]

I went from a paranoid obsessive person to a skeptic.

Why? A few reasons:

1. We had two unusually cold winters here in Colorado in 2007 and 2008.
2. The drought we had out west ended.
3. The Earth's temperature has actually cooled slightly over the past decade.
4. The media always hypes things that are bad or scary because it's good for ratings.
5. The issue was politicized a long time ago, which means the science was taken out of it.
6. There have been periods in relatively recent history that were as warm or warmer.
7. The greenhouse effect that keeps Earth warm is actually caused mostly by water vapor, not CO2.
8. I realized it was "cool" to be concerned about it, that's why most believed it, not because they were really convinced.
9. I've heard stories of climatologists being rejected by their colleagues and even losing their jobs because they did research that went against global warming.
10. If global warming isn't a real event, or not one of much concern, many climatologists will lose their jobs. What will they do instead?

But that map of Florida Al Gore showed.....Disney World will be underwater....why won't you think of the children?!

[Ban my account ffs!]

While the source is very biased, I think this is a very good paper on the skeptical view of global warming.

http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

It shows the possible implications of our currently very weak sun on our climate by backing it up with previous data.

It also gives the benchmark for CO2 forcing on our climate, which is 1˚C.  This is used by the IPCC and every other climate scientist out there.  It is based on a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial times to the end of the 21st century.


Where the IPCC gets its 2-6˚C rise is because they think positive feedbacks will dramatically add to the warming effect through positive feedbacks.

Measurements so far have been contrary to what the models predict.  In fact, ever since Dr. Hansen's (from NOAA) predictions in 1988, he has been completely wrong as temperatures have not risen nearly as fast as he had predicted.

This has especially been the case since 2002 when the planet began to cool.

But anyway, it has been proven in laboratories that CO2 sensitivity in our climate is logarithmic, not linear.  This means that the first 20ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere have more of an effect on the earth's temperature than the next 400ppm.

Since proven carbon based fuels would only raise the Co2 levels to about 600ppm, it can be supposed that further climate warming due to increased Co2 would only be about 0.1˚C.

The evidence is also there because in the past, CO2 levels have been as much as 15 times higher than they are today and the planet did not see runaway global warming.

What should scare people is a sudden release of Methane, which is quite possible if the planet does continue to warm due to solar forcing.  Methane is many many times more potent than CO2 and has led to runaway global warming in the past.

With the next 30 years due to see an historically weak sun, however, the planet is projected by the scientists in the paper to cool back to levels seen in the 19th century and will cool quite rapidly.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I should point out that global warming is very real and that humans have caused a part of it.  But that part is so small that it's not even really noticeable.

The sun has caused the major rise in temperatures over the past 100 years with poor observation techniques accounting for most of the warming since the 1970s.

But as the earth begins to cool, they'll only be able to "adjust" and "correct" the data for so long.

Most recently NASA removed its satellite data for the world's ocean temperatures that they launched in 1997 and 2002.  These satellites provide full coverage of the earth, sending back sea surface temperatures.

Since the data showed an actual cooling trend in the oceans, NASA decided it had a "cold bias" and removed them from the data set.  Now, of course, we're setting a new "warm" record every month with their limited surface buoys and "correcting and filling in" where there is no coverage.

Of course it is much publicized every month as well... even as satellite data continues to be collected and shows a cooling trend.

The amount of energy in our oceans has declined significantly in the past 6 years... but you don't hear anything about that.  Basically, all the heat that was being pumped into the earth from stronger solar cycles was stored in the oceans and now that the sun has weakened a bit, the oceans have been spending that energy storage which will warm the atmosphere in the short term.. but ultimately will cause the atmospheric temperatures to drop quickly and the climate to dry out.

[Vepres]

It's saddening that what was once a healthy scientific debate has become so politicized that detractors of global warming are rejected by their peers (if they're climatologists).

I think the general public is becoming more skeptical. I've noticed that the late night comics have mocked global warming more and more, and of course, if the people laugh, which they do, it means they agree in some form.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Then you have the alarmists like Greenpeace who have said that the Greenland icecap would melt by 2030 "unless we make drastic changes now".. nevermind that the Greenland ice sheet has been there for hundreds of thousands of years and has lasted through periods much warmer than today.

In an interview with the BBC, the head of Greenpeace finally relented and said that it was an exaggeration.. but that the issue of global warming needs to be "emotionalized" in order to get public support.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Well, ok, there may be some accuracy in the fact that we haven't caused the biggest part of Global Warming, but, well, unfortunately, we haven't scientist from both camps here on this thread, the tone seems rather skeptical here, so there is no one to look for studies that would contradict these ones, and skeptical people won't look for such studies, so we don't know if there is to contradict what is proposed here. Some studies that would say that humans, have, or even could have, a significant part of responsibility in an eventual Global Warming. Yes, eventual more of that, because some scientists like Claude Allègre in France, who if he loves the provocation has also a serious background, say that we will in fact face a "Global Cooling" saying the world could in fact become colder. And sorry, I think I'm too lazy to go looking for if studies that would contradict or that would take some distance and put in perspective what has been posted here exist.

The awful stuff here being that some scientists can't overcome their political bias, as pointed out above, so when they are hard ecologist, they just try to see all the harm that our civilizations have caused to our environment. But even if I haven't looked for contradictory studies, after having followed all the debates in France about that for a while now, it seems to me that some scientists who tend to say that humans could be significantly for something in it are less biased than other ones, it seems they just try to be honest.

So, I don't know, maybe the human being is for almost nothing in this, but personally, as there is still a doubt, as no one is sure, as if human being is for something in it, it would be by pollution, intensive farming, and some bad chemistry, I'll stick on the fact that the good way is to decide to change our way of life in this sens. Because, there would be a possibility that the cause of an eventual Global Warming would be significantly in that, and also because changing our way of life concerning pollution, current methods of intensive farming (I'm not against intensive farming by principle, I'm rather against the way it is practiced today), and bad chemistry (yeah, maybe like that we would avoid a bit less of cancer/parkinson/alzheimer, or whatever new sicknesses developed under our civilizations) would be anyways good for us, and for the next generations, who are anyways the only interest for us.

So, in short I stick on: "Global Warming, that could be us, so let's change what may have provoked this, some changes which would be good for us anyways". Then let's continue to study of course, the more we know, the best it is, for everything.

(...oh maybe that last paragraph would have been enough )

[Scam of God]

The pertinent thing is peak oil. How we deal with it will either make or break us; and by "us" I mean not only our country, but our entire civilization. Are we prepared for a society in which oil is not the rarity we imagine it to be? Can we get there by hook (the free market) or crook (the government)? If not by either way, then we are doomed. Our entire culture must prepare for this. This will take a good deal of work, which, I know, most of the redneck posters here are unused to. Still, we must get over it either way.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Here's a station in Peru.. the raw numbers are in black, the red shows the adjusted numbers.

Again, it's "reverse" Urban Heat Island effect... the population growth and development around the weather station have magically made temperatures in 1950 over 2˚C cooler than what was actually observed.



Again, there's your global warming, folks.. manmade indeed!

here is a graph showing the number of weather stations worldwide used for measuring global temperature against global temperature "observations" (well adjusted, of course)

EDIT:  This graph is not very accurate.  The temperatures shown in this graph are indeed the temperatures measured by all of the world's stations, but do not accurately compare to the GISS global temperature, which has been adjusted downward since 1990 to make up for some of this discrepancy.  Unfortunately, since the temperatures are no longer reliable without significant adjustment, one can argue that they aren't adjusting properly and thus could be exaggerating or underestimating the warming trend since 1990.


It is likely, however, that they are exaggerating the warming trend, since the graph below shows the difference between the raw data (which is represented int he graph above) and the adjusted numbers.  They are adjusting the data upward more and more each decade through 1990 and have been adjusting it upward at 0.5˚F since 1990... so when the temperatures jumped in 1990 to record levels, it was more likely caused by a combination of upward adjustments, for which no reasons are supplied as they are "secret", and the dropout of most of the global weather stations.


Here's the U.S. Temperature dataset used in 1999:



And in 2008


The data since 1980 has been adjusted upward about 0.1˚C while the data from the 1930s and 1940s has been adjusted downward by 0.1-0.2˚C.

The reason you would adjust temperatures downward is because scientists are supposing that there was something in the 1930s that gave the observations a warm bias that we no longer have today (ie: asphalt, buildings, bad siting of weather stations) while the observations today are affected by a cooling bias (who knows what they might be)... it doesn't make any sense!  The population of the nation has more than doubled since the 1930s!

When people try to find out why they have done these adjustments, Jim Hansen at NASA and the GISS have responded that their methods and reasons for adjustment are secret.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Here is a good website detailing what I've summarized above:

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part2_GlobalTempMeasure.htm

[Ban my account ffs!]

Widescale adjustments to temperature data have been made all over the world.  Data has been adjusted in my neck of the woods as well.

Data from 1900-1960 have been adjusted downward by a large degree.

Here is the raw data from Minneapolis dating from 1820-2008.


And here is the adjusted data from 1895-2008.

Notice that the 1895-1960 period is colder than the actual collected data while the 1970-present data has been adjusted slightly upward.
What conditions caused the records from 1895-1960 to have some kind of warm bias?  There really isn't one.  The further back you go, the more rural the stations become and the colder they are relatively speaking.
GISS is adjusting the data downward simply to exaggerate the warming trend throughout the 20th century.  There is no other reason.

Also, as the cities developed and more concrete replaced green space, temperatures naturally rose due to the artificial urban heat island effect... and rather than adjusting the temps downward to correct this effect (which needs to be done when you use urban stations to compile the global temperature.. you want the global temperature to reflect rural areas since nearly all of the earth's surface is not urbanized)... but they've adjusted it upward.  They are basically saying that despite all of the urban development that the temperatures somehow have a "cold" bias.



I would show more stations from northern MInnesota, but the GISS graphs won't post here for some reason.

The story is the same.  Early 20th century numbers have been adjusted downward by nearly 1˚F in many instances.. so many places that had no warming trend and in fact had a cooling trend since 1930 now have a strong warming trend.

It further causes me to be skeptical that the surface temperature record is accurate at all.  Not only is the IPCC assumption that a doubling of CO2 will cause a dramatic increase in water vapor and thus a huge positive reinforcement of CO2 warming (which is only 1˚C with a doubling of CO2) wrong, but the measurements that they're using as proof over the past century have been erroneously altered to exaggerate the warming trend.

Here's another great example of the station near San Francisco.
The blue represents the raw data collected by the thermometer.  The red represents after the adjustments have been made.

The area has seen a cooling trend in the past 100 years.  But when added to the global network to compile average global temperature, a significant warming trend develops. (a totally false one)


Here is the data from Snoqualmie pass in Washington.  They have not seen any warming in the past 100 years and in fact saw temperatures comparable to today back in the 1900s, 10s, and 20s with a cooler era during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.  But after the adjustment was made, the early part of the century is much colder, suggesting a warming trend since.. so now we're seeing "record high temps" that are actually not record.


Here is data from New Zealand.  New Zealand has seen no warming trend or a net cooling in the past 100 years according to the data collected at weather stations on the islands.  But GISS has adjusted early temps downward by huge amounts and raised more recent observations.. thus a warming trend is created.

This station is an "urban station" and their rationale for adjusting early temps downward was the "urban heat island effect" but they have stopped adjusting temps downward more recently, claiming there is no urban heat island effect.


Yet another station that they've listed as rural has a similar adjustment made


And this one takes the cake.  Temperatures have been adjusted downward 2˚C in the early century.  So a cooling trend turns into a strong warming trend.