Let's ignore this graph and talk about climate change

[AggregateDemand]

And AD, you're examples provided are not the best. First of all, rising sea levels pose their own risk. Second of all, rising (presumably warmer) seas have a lower capacity to store dissolved gases.  So actually there should be less sequestration in the oceans when they are warming.

Secondly, the tree sequestration argument only works when you aren't deforesting the planet at record rates.

Thirdly, H20 as a gas works exactly the same way as CO2 and CH4. True it is weaker, but it is a greenhouse gas. It has nothing to do with "radiant" properties.

I'll rephrase my point 2. Do you agree with the statement that CO2, CH4 and other dipole gases are greenhouse gases, meaning they trap incoming infrared radiation?

EDIT: And regards to the graph going around here, does someone have the previous, say 100 years of it? Context is always a good thing.

If we cut our carbon emissions to zero, climate scientists cannot guarantee climate stability or hospitable weather patterns. They can't even guarantee that carbon concentration will decline. I appreciate their work, and their reasonable hypotheses, but most of it is irrelevant from a socio-economic standpoint.

Pollution is its own moral, economic, and existential crisis. We need to make sure that ecology leads to prosperity and societal utility. Climate scientists don't know how to make it happen, which means they have nothing to offer. They need to shut up and let the "soft sciences" go to work.

[MalaspinaGold]

While most things in meteorology are complex, difficult to understand, and even more difficult to predict, we both understand more, and have a better predicting ability, of climate than we ever could have on the economy. So your point is pretty close to moot.

[AggregateDemand]

While most things in meteorology are complex, difficult to understand, and even more difficult to predict, we both understand more, and have a better predicting ability, of climate than we ever could have on the economy. So your point is pretty close to moot.

Economics is the study of human behavior pertaining resource acquisition, profit, and happiness. Climate science is not. We are trying to alter human behavior, yes?

[MalaspinaGold]

We are trying to make sure that the Earth remains modestly inhabitable for humans indefinitely.

[Ban my account ffs!]

We are trying to make sure that the Earth remains modestly inhabitable for humans indefinitely.

You aren't trying anything.  Activists are trying to reform our economy into an authoritarian ecocratic system where they control behavior.

They argue that this complete dismantling of the current system and replacement with their vision is necessary because of "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming."

It is an ideology bordering on religion.

Climate scientists that are not activists get nervous at this... and many scientists find themselves pressured by these activists to support their ideology.  But many don't want that.  They just want to stare at bubbles in ice cores and sperg over tree ring width.

The human impact on climate in the next 90 years will be mild to moderate.  Some nations will lose.. but ultimately the planet will win.  We are fertilizing our planet... greening it.  Crop yields aren't gradually rising only due to biotechnology... crop yields improve when you increase CO2. 

As for your assertion that 400ppm is somehow unprecedented is plain wrong. 



CO2 is absolutely necessary to life on earth.  Without it, we wouldn't be here.  And if the climate were truly as sensitive to Co2 as the alarmists claim... we wouldn't be here.

The atmosphere and oceans respond to our increased CO2 emissions in numerous, complex ways... we're still discovering these.  And as we discover these, we're finding the impact CO2 has on temperature isn't as severe as we previously thought.

What we had was a period of rapid global warming that coincided with rising CO2 concentrations (1976-1998 in particular).  We saw the correlation and assumed causation.  But now we know there are natural climate cycles and the 1976-1998 period coincided with the warming side of it.  And this cycle was enough in its cooling phase to stop global warming completely and even cause slight cooling from 1945-1975 and since 1998.  That means it likely added to the warming to a similar degree during the warming times from 1920-1945 and 1976-1998.

This means relatively little of our global warming was actually caused by CO2... because despite more CO2, other mechanisms counteract it.

[traininthedistance]

We are trying to make sure that the Earth remains modestly inhabitable for humans indefinitely.

You aren't trying anything.  Activists are trying to reform our economy into an authoritarian ecocratic system where they control behavior.

They argue that this complete dismantling of the current system and replacement with their vision is necessary because of "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming."

It is an ideology bordering on religion.

Holy paranoia insane-o-balls strawman, Batman!

Climate scientists that are not activists get nervous at this... and many scientists find themselves pressured by these activists to support their ideology.  But many don't want that.  They just want to stare at bubbles in ice cores and sperg over tree ring width.

Well, sure if you conveniently redefine "activists" to be the far-left fringe when talking about their beliefs, but then redefine it back to "anyone who talks about the necessity of political action in public" when it's convenient to do that, you can prove anything.  But that's not exactly what I'd call intellectually honest.

There are legitimate disagreements about what exactly the best mitigation policies would be, and there is obviously some uncertainty in terms of how severe things will actually get- both within the scientific community itself, and the policy world that depends on their findings.  That's a far cry from saying that "'REAL' climate scientists don't think their work is relevant to the wider world", which is the codswallop you seem to be pushing here with "sperg about tree rings".  (And also there's really precious little disagreement about whether some amount of mitigation and preparation is necessary- it's accepted by just about everyone save a few right-wing cornucopian economists and industry propagandists.)

The human impact on climate in the next 90 years will be mild to moderate.  Some nations will lose.. but ultimately the planet will win.  We are fertilizing our planet... greening it.  Crop yields aren't gradually rising only due to biotechnology... crop yields improve when you increase CO2. 

Only up to a certain point.  And of course the areas that are most certain to lose out will be coastal areas lost to sea level rise, which will be a small sliver of our world's land area but one with grossly disproportionate cultural, economic, and human impact.

As for your assertion that 400ppm is somehow unprecedented is plain wrong. 



CO2 is absolutely necessary to life on earth.  Without it, we wouldn't be here.  And if the climate were truly as sensitive to Co2 as the alarmists claim... we wouldn't be here.

You realize that the sun gave off a lot less energy back in the Cambrian era?  That's how stars work, they grow brighter and hotter very slowly over their billions of years.  The downward slope of CO2 concentration over geologic time scales seems rather obviously to be an important part of our planet's natural thermostat, keeping temperatures habitable as time marches on.  What I'm seeing in that chart is an important feedback system that we f**k with at our peril.

The atmosphere and oceans respond to our increased CO2 emissions in numerous, complex ways... we're still discovering these.  And as we discover these, we're finding the impact CO2 has on temperature isn't as severe as we previously thought.

What we had was a period of rapid global warming that coincided with rising CO2 concentrations (1976-1998 in particular).  We saw the correlation and assumed causation.  But now we know there are natural climate cycles and the 1976-1998 period coincided with the warming side of it.  And this cycle was enough in its cooling phase to stop global warming completely and even cause slight cooling from 1945-1975 and since 1998.  That means it likely added to the warming to a similar degree during the warming times from 1920-1945 and 1976-1998.

This means relatively little of our global warming was actually caused by CO2... because despite more CO2, other mechanisms counteract it.

Uh... no.  At the moment there are, sure, a couple other natural mechanisms that seem to be working against the anthropogenic warming trend, such as La Nina and a relative lack of sunspots.  Those are temporary conditions, they will reverse at some point, and what the hell do you think is going to happen when they do?  (Also lol @ the "no warming since 1998" chestnut, when all of the other top ten warmest years were this century.  Oh, and 2010 was the warmest year on record anyway, not 1998.  What an obviously cherry-picked abuse of bad statistics.  Rookie mistake, man.)

The fact remains that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we know how it's a greenhouse gas (and have known since the 19th century!), and the observations of global temperatures and CO2 concentrations remain, within acceptable statistical variability, consistent with the observation that it's a goddamn greenhouse gas.  The upward march has very recently slowed in large part because of unrelated countervailing forces, and perhaps some of the most positive-feedback-heavy models don't look so great at the moment... but that basic scientific fact is still there.  If you're gonna claim that we can pump lots of crap into the air and not destabilize the conditions that we've built present-day society around, well then that's an extraordinary claim.  And it requires extraordinary evidence.  Sorry.

[MalaspinaGold]

Apologies. When I meant unprecedented I meant unprecedented since humans appeared.

Since I'm not sure how well you know your GTS, I'll just point out to you: life did not exist on land until the Devonian, in other words about the time atmospheric CO2 began its precipitous decline into the Carboniferous. Up until then, CO2 levels were artificially high, because there was no land sequestration available to store carbon.

Other than that, Traininthedistance has already said most of what I could say, except that while increased CO2 will lead to increased photosynthesis, it will lead to a net decrease in production if you have less arable land. Ignoring desertification, remember that during the high CO2 Jurassic, most of the bread basket of the United States was a shallow, unfarmable sea.

And we already established that you are the religious zealot, not us, so I won't go into that.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Traininthedistance has a limited understanding of how the climate system functions.  He takes swings at me from a lower position and hopes he'll get a hit.

He throws out "a few things like La Niña and a lack of sunspots" as if that refutes my argument or anybody's arguments.  He doesn't know what La Niña is... what its function is, and how or why it occurs.  Or why it is representative of a much larger global cycle that lasts approximately 60 years.  He would just as soon you assume the warming caused by this cycle be pinned to CO2... because scientists jumped the gun and blamed it on Co2 before we even knew that oceans had identifiable cycles of warming and cooling that occur outside of the general trend in global temperature.

In his mind (the one that calls coal trains 'death trains) we have the climate all nailed down.  We figured it out.  Warming is happening.. it's going to get worse... and we're all gonna fry unless we all dial back the  standard of living for humans a few hundred years.  It has become some an issue for him.. that he bases most of his lifestyle chocies around this fear of a catastrophic future.  That is not only a dogmatic belief, It's a dogmatic belief which affords him the ability to toss around terms like La Niña and 'relative lack of sunspots' dismissively while he gets back to the official line.

Sorry bud... but you are giving diving instructions from the shallow end, here.

You are right that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

To everyone:  Don't believe a word I say.  Research this issue yourself.  I mean... really research it.  Read the literature being published.  Read the skeptical arguments against this literature.  Read the corroborating evidence that backs up these papers.  Find out for yourself.  Do NOT take it at my word... and for f**k's sake, certainly don't take it at Traininthedistance's word.

[MalaspinaGold]

Traininthedistance has a limited understanding of how the climate system functions.  He takes swings at me from a lower position and hopes he'll get a hit.

He throws out "a few things like La Niña and a lack of sunspots" as if that refutes my argument or anybody's arguments.  He doesn't know what La Niña is... what its function is, and how or why it occurs.  Or why it is representative of a much larger global cycle that lasts approximately 60 years.  He would just as soon you assume the warming caused by this cycle be pinned to CO2... because scientists jumped the gun and blamed it on Co2 before we even knew that oceans had identifiable cycles of warming and cooling that occur outside of the general trend in global temperature.

In his mind (the one that calls coal trains 'death trains) we have the climate all nailed down.  We figured it out.  Warming is happening.. it's going to get worse... and we're all gonna fry unless we all dial back the  standard of living for humans a few hundred years.  It has become some an issue for him.. that he bases most of his lifestyle chocies around this fear of a catastrophic future.  That is not only a dogmatic belief, It's a dogmatic belief which affords him the ability to toss around terms like La Niña and 'relative lack of sunspots' dismissively while he gets back to the official line.

Sorry bud... but you are giving diving instructions from the shallow end, here.

You are right that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

To everyone:  Don't believe a word I say.  Research this issue yourself.  I mean... really research it.  Read the literature being published.  Read the skeptical arguments against this literature.  Read the corroborating evidence that backs up these papers.  Find out for yourself.  Do NOT take it at my word... and for f**k's sake, certainly don't take it at Traininthedistance's word.

It's hard to know exactly what you are blaming current climate trends on since you intentionally remain as vague as possible when arguing.

You and AD both attempted to give explanations. Both of you failed in your explanations. Your belief that environmentalists want to dial back the standard of living two centuries is ludicrous. Get over it.

And I've said it before, and I've said it again. I've researched the issue as much as, probably more than you ever have.

[MalaspinaGold]

And, unless Snowguy has any objections (which I sincerely hope he won't, though you never know), I would like to, how would you say, enter this into evidence?



NOTE TO SNOWGUY: I am not making any arguments with this yet. I am simply hoping you either accept this graph as fairly close to reality or have some legitimate reason for rejecting it. I wouldn't want to write a near essay on this only for you to label the graph "trash" or something.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Apologies. When I meant unprecedented I meant unprecedented since humans appeared.

Since I'm not sure how well you know your GTS, I'll just point out to you: life did not exist on land until the Devonian, in other words about the time atmospheric CO2 began its precipitous decline into the Carboniferous. Up until then, CO2 levels were artificially high, because there was no land sequestration available to store carbon.

Other than that, Traininthedistance has already said most of what I could say, except that while increased CO2 will lead to increased photosynthesis, it will lead to a net decrease in production if you have less arable land. Ignoring desertification, remember that during the high CO2 Jurassic, most of the bread basket of the United States was a shallow, unfarmable sea.

And we already established that you are the religious zealot, not us, so I won't go into that.

Yeah... that graph is only meant to illustrate that CO2 levels have been higher for most of earth's history and that for the last, oh million of them... we've been scraping the lower limits of plant viability with dangerously low levels of CO2.  The planet has also been relatively cold during this time.  We are still in an ice age.  And we will be until all permanent ice on the planet melts.  The warmest part of this interglacial saw ice free conditions during summer in the Arctic.  And that happened with a stable CO2 amount.

The general trend since 6000 years ago has been global cooling... but the sun has various cycles that have different frequencies and intervals.  There is a 1000 year cycle that peaked 1000 years ago.. and 2000 years ago before that and 3000 eyars ago before that... and probably peaked in the 1950-2000 period in the modern era.

Each of the intervening cold periods when solar activity is relatively low has been colder than the last.... and in the period from 1400-1850, Greenland was the coldest it had been since the ice age and was probably at the lower bounds of how cold it could get there without officially entering into widespread continental glaciation in the northern hemisphere.

We've seen a moderate warming since 1850 of just shy of 1*C.  During that time... solar activity went from the lowest levels of the past 10,000 years to the highest levels in at least several thousand years... a remarkable turnaround.  Even more remarkable has been the recent drop in solar activity, which scientists say has been the fastest decline in 10,000 years.  We don't know what impacts that has on the climate or on the earth... but a lot of weird sh**t is happening.  Crazy weather, increased earthquakes, increased global volcanic activity.  There have been major changes in our star and we don't understand them... or how they impact the earth directly or indirectly.

All we can do is try to take accurate measurements and hope the trend gives us some hints.

So it's a bit more than "a relative lack of sunspots".

We know the earth's climate is resilient.  It's why we see only minor cooling after huge volcanic eruptions which actually block an enormous amount of solar radiation.  The earth responds and stops runaway cooling.  Then the earth carefully claws back the radiation it lost out on after the eruption within a few years of the eruption through a series of negative feedback loops.

These changes are relatively short... but are much more jarring than our incremental addition of CO2 to the atmosphere over 150 years.  

I point this out because it's an example of something that has happened in modern history.  And what do the models say?  Why, they greatly exaggerate the cooling impact that volcanic eruptions have... because they're all amped up on sensitivity to aerosols and greenhouse gases... when the earth has more than a few cards in its hand to counteract changes in these things.

Another example is the almost impossibility of heating sea surface temperatures above 30*C (86F).  It seems that the area of ocean that is around 86F can grow in area... but the areas already around 86F won't heat up.  They'll remain around 86F.

Whenever the water wants to warm up much more than 86F, various feedbacks come into play that act to keep the ocean surface at 86F.  Convection increases in the atmosphere and in the ocean which increases cool water welling up from below.  It also increases the rate at which air rises from the surface through the troposphere, forming more thunderstorms that then rain out their cool water onto the ocean surface.  That heat is then radiated out into space.

And sometimes this excess heat cannot escape in this process.  Instead it results in increased downwelling of warm water which causes a large bubble of warm water to form under the surface.  Then, thanks to gravity and the seasonal transition from boreal winter to spring and summer, trade winds weaken and that bubble of warm water surfaces and slides east... temporarily warming the atmosphere of the earth and disrupting weather patterns in what we call El Niño (there's one about to rear its ugly head in the coming weeks).

I know I know.. tl;dr.  That's because unlike the simple climate that alarmists envision where it's completely stable save for minor tweaks in greenhouse gases which have enormous impacts... the real climate is chaotic and mind-numbingly complex... and still relatively unknown to us.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Malaspina:  There are many problems with our global temperature datasets.  Poor siting of weather stations, the lack of correction for the urban heat island effect (yes... they actually stopped correcting for urban heat islands after one paper posited that UHI was negligible.  Tell that to anyone who lives in a suburb on the edge of the city but commutes downtown)

The worst offense, however, are the arbitrary "adjustments" made to the temperatures.  They're constantly adjusting them and readjusting them... and 75% of the time these adjustments actually increase the warming trend.

There is no scientific basis for these adjustments.  When independent satellites began measuring global temperature and they couldn't adjust the post-satellite era temperatures anymore for risk of showing a big divergence from the satellite measurements... they began adjusting pre-satellite temperatures... where there is no way to check.  Suddenly even though the thermometer read 100F in July 1936... as far as it is calculated into the global temperature.. that value now reads 98F or 96F.  If you can't warm up the present... cool down the past!

A blatant example of this was in October and November of 2009.  When the November 2009 temperatures were released, much news was made of the record warmest November on record.. conveniently just in time for the big climate change conference in Copenhagen that year in December.

But skeptics pointed out a glaring error:  Russia had simply resubmitted the October data, which was then passed off as November's data.  Because November is much colder than October in Russia, this meant enormous positive anomalies in Russia for November.. because they were using October data!

This was pointed out.. and then, only reluctantly, they recalculated the earth's temperature which would have put November as warmer than average.. but not the warmest ever.

But in came James Hansen to save the day.  Sure.. the amssive positive anomalies in Russia didn't actually occur... but not to worry.. he found a whole new area of extreme warmth that hadn't shown up in the first release:  the area of ice covered ocean north of Russia.

So November still got to be the warmest ever!  And this time the skeptics couldn't complain because the warmth that made it the warmest ever rather than just "warm" was in a place where there are no weather stations... on the ice up in the Arctic.  Check mate.

In California.. global warming correlates much better with the population size of the county where the temperatures are measured than they do with CO2 or anything else.  Should we be rapidly depopulating California's urban counties to combat rapid local warming?  Of course not.  The warming is a product of increased human activity in these areas.. more pavement, more buildings, more a/c units, etc.

But it is these urban stations that are relied upon most for the graph you posted above.  And they don't adjust for the urban heat island effect.

But I don't dispute that the planet has warmed.  I think it has warmed somewhat less than the graph you posted and for more reasons than just CO2.  By the time you remove these other factors, the CO2 impact is moderate and manageable.

[MalaspinaGold]

I've read your entire screed, and you seem to have no understanding how hot 86 F is...Saying that ocean waters won't rise above 86 F is like saying that heating an oven with firewood won't get you above, say, 1000 F. That's not a very comfortable barrier to be at.

And since you're into cycles, we're as of now passing over the peak of the warm session of the precession cycle, which of course means we should be passing into cooler temperatures.

You're argument on convection, as I've posted before, only exacerbates polar ice melt, because it means a greater efficiency in heat transfer. Similarly, your radiation argument does not hold water. The heat will still be trapped by CO2 in the upper atmosphere.

[tik 🪀✨]

I love that King changed the name of this thread. I giggled. Well done.

[MalaspinaGold]

Snowguy: I'm a bit lazy right now. I'll search for a list of places where temperatures are taken, but if you could supply it, that would be appreciate it.

Now, back to what I wanted to talk about: do you see the graph? Do you note how many 5-10 year "lulls" there are in the warming? Do you also note the decrease in temperatures between 1880-1920? When the industrial revolution was spreading to Russia, Germany, and much of continental Europe? And at the same time your sunspot cycle was pointing to an increase in global temperatures?

Point being: you seem to think a 5-10 year period of stable temperature levels is supposed to disprove anything. Like you said, sunspots are on the rise. Like I said, precession cycles should indicate a cooling climate. The best way to look at it is ceteris paribus. You attempted to show factors that would lead to a negative feedback in CO2 levels. For the most part, I've shown that they either don't work, or they work only minimally.

And FTR: the ice age by definition ended 12,000 years ago. There was a brief doubling back around 9000 years ago, as a result of the catastrophic flood of Lake Agassiz. Since then, we've either a) been in an interglacial or b) started a warmer chapter in Earth's history. Just throwing that out there.

[MalaspinaGold]

I love that King changed the name of this thread. I giggled. Well done.

I noticed that too. I, of course, attribute it to the long-term radicalization of the GOP, along with the overall lower economic performance.

[traininthedistance]

Traininthedistance has a limited understanding of how the climate system functions.  He takes swings at me from a lower position and hopes he'll get a hit.

Not as limited as your understanding of statistics.  Unless, of course, you're deliberately misusing said statistics in an effort to prove an ideological point, but I'd prefer to think you don't act as you do out of malice.

He throws out "a few things like La Niña and a lack of sunspots" as if that refutes my argument or anybody's arguments.  He doesn't know what La Niña is... what its function is, and how or why it occurs.  Or why it is representative of a much larger global cycle that lasts approximately 60 years.

Whereas you're happy to assign all the blame to temperature variation to these other factors, but of course only as it's most convenient. Give me a f**ing break.  And, of course, there's still that ultra-misleading chart of CO2 over geologic time scales that you were so quick to use without providing (or even understanding?) the context behind it.  Kinda undercuts your claim of scientific superiority.

He would just as soon you assume the warming caused by this cycle be pinned to CO2... because scientists jumped the gun and blamed it on Co2 before we even knew that oceans had identifiable cycles of warming and cooling that occur outside of the general trend in global temperature.

"Jumped the gun?"  Scientists pinned it on CO2 because they know what the greenhouse effect is.  That's not "jumping the gun".  And, when you control for all these cyclical factors as best as currently possible... there's a (modulo statistical noise of course) steady rise in temperature that remains, and which is pretty robustly correlated with GHGs.  That's still there, and it's a pretty extraordinary claim to buck the entire scientific community and pretend it doesn't exist.

In his mind (the one that calls coal trains 'death trains) we have the climate all nailed down.  We figured it out.

You have an incredible knack for ignoring what other people say.  I've always been on record as saying there are plenty of details we don't understand yet.  But, of course, acknowledging that your opponents aren't the cartoon palookas you've constructed in your brain is hard when that's the easy way to score cheap rhetorical points.

Warming is happening..

Okay, yeah, we do have that much figured out so far.  

it's going to get worse... and we're all gonna fry unless we all dial back the  standard of living for humans a few hundred years.

[citation please]

I have to say, Snowy, that this crosses a f**ing line.  It's fine and dandy to be a contrarian, to choose hippy-punching over intellectual honesty, but if this is your honest takeaway from what the environmental movement as a whole has been trying to say, and especially if this is your honest takeaway from what I have been trying to say, than you are a sad, deluded joke who has shut himself up in such cocoons of hatred that it is useless to engage further.  I understand that I'll never convince you that you're wrong on the science, you've wagered too much of your identity on this issue, but when you misunderstand and smear the intentions and goals of people who care about this issue so profoundly, that is something else.  Put down those goddamn cartoon palookas in your head and join the real world, or kindly shut the F up.

As for the rest, I think it's probably best for my health if I don't respond to your efforts to get personal.  And I think it would be best for your credibility if you would stop making those efforts.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The problem with this issue is that both "sides" of this debate want you to read and research for yourself... which is great, it's the point of intellectual and academic inquiry... but don't seem to like it when you come to a different conclusion (which is read as "you didn't really understand it").

I acknowledge that I do sit in the human-caused camp and because I try to remain open-minded to something where there is some contention. I've read a lot over the past few years, many of the opposing (or contrasting) theories make a lot of sense... but do not have the strength of data or academic rigour behind them.... because frankly, a lot of the contrasting theories come from enthusiastic amateurs and are not the experts I'd trust.

In some ways, a big like the immunisation debate, when the argument becomes "well, they stand to gain from this..." my back immediately stiffens.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Snowguy: I'm a bit lazy right now. I'll search for a list of places where temperatures are taken, but if you could supply it, that would be appreciate it.

Now, back to what I wanted to talk about: do you see the graph? Do you note how many 5-10 year "lulls" there are in the warming? Do you also note the decrease in temperatures between 1880-1920? When the industrial revolution was spreading to Russia, Germany, and much of continental Europe? And at the same time your sunspot cycle was pointing to an increase in global temperatures?

Point being: you seem to think a 5-10 year period of stable temperature levels is supposed to disprove anything. Like you said, sunspots are on the rise. Like I said, precession cycles should indicate a cooling climate. The best way to look at it is ceteris paribus. You attempted to show factors that would lead to a negative feedback in CO2 levels. For the most part, I've shown that they either don't work, or they work only minimally.

And FTR: the ice age by definition ended 12,000 years ago. There was a brief doubling back around 9000 years ago, as a result of the catastrophic flood of Lake Agassiz. Since then, we've either a) been in an interglacial or b) started a warmer chapter in Earth's history. Just throwing that out there.

We are, by its definition, still in the Quaternary ice age until all the ice melts from Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic.  Within this broader ice age there are long "glacial" periods interspersed with short "interglacials".  It will be many thousands of years before we know whether we have truly begun to emerge from this ice age which began 2.4 million years ago and continues today.

I'm well aware of how "hot" 86F is.  It feels tepidly cool against human skin when you swim in it. 

The event "9000" years ago.. the Younger Dryas, still has no identified cause.  A major ice dam breaking and releasing vast quantities of cold water into the ocean was one theory... which has kind of fallen out of favor.  Most recent literature on the Younger Dryas points instead to an impact event.

Lake Agassiz (I live quite close to the ancient shoreline of that lake) was held in place by the retreating glacier and instead drained through the Glacial River Warren, the massive valley of which is now home to the much smaller Minnesota River.  When the glacier retreated enough, it finally began to drain through the current drainage path which is the Red River of the North into Hudson Bay.

As for the 5-10 year periods... we're not talking about a 5-10 year period.  Among the various datasets the statistical period calculated backwards in time from the present to the point where the trend line becomes positive again on a statistically significant level ranges from just shy of 18 years to 10 years.

This is significant because scientists, in their runs of all their fancy models, have never had a model run that produced more than 17 years without significant warming.  Sure, there were many 5-10 year periods that the models showed without warming... but never over 17... and then only the once.

The models are what drive climate change policy.

As for convection increasing:  Where most of this occurs is in the tropical regions.  That's where the ocean acts to counteract runaway warming.  One could perhaps link this to Arctic ice loss.. but the things that govern the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap have much more to do with more immediate geographic surroundings (like the flow of fresh water coming off the major rivers of Siberia and NW North America, how long it sits atop the saltier, warmer water underneath, etc)

But this is how it works:  The increased heat from CO2 increases the convection rate and the efficiency of heat transfer in the tropics.  This also causes the moisture being carried up by the rising air to rain out more efficiently as well.  Rainfall becomes heavier in the tropical belts as thunderstorm activity increases.  This has the effect of removing water vapor.. the most important greenhouse gas... from the troposphere.  Thus the humidities at these altitudes decreases overall even as temperature remains constant.

So no.. the heat isn't "still trapped in the upper atmosphere".. but the ratio of heat being trapped by CO2 relative to that trapped by water vapor increases as CO2 increases and water vapor decreases.

This was described in one recent paper as potentially reducing the expected temperature increase in the tropics by half.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Not as limited as your understanding of statistics.  Unless, of course, you're deliberately misusing said statistics in an effort to prove an ideological point, but I'd prefer to think you don't act as you do out of malice.

I make no qualitative statements about my understanding of statistics.  But when I say '15 years without significant warming' I'm making a ballpark estimate based on the differing datasets.  One dataset says 10 years.. another nearly 18, going back to 1996!  This can be done because as was pointed out in previous posts... the trend in global temperature has plateaued.

Whereas you're happy to assign all the blame to temperature variation to these other factors, but of course only as it's most convenient. Give me a f**ing break.  And, of course, there's still that ultra-misleading chart of CO2 over geologic time scales that you were so quick to use without providing (or even understanding?) the context behind it.  Kinda undercuts your claim of scientific superiority.

I'm not here to impress you.  You alarmists and your context.  This was simply pointing out that for most of earth's history, CO2 levels were much higher and CO2 levels and global temperature don't correlate very well on geologic timescales for myriad reasons, including the slow heating up of our star over billions of years.  It was not cited in order to prove or disprove any causes for the rise in global temperature since the dawn of the industrial revolution.  I think you're finding malice where there is none.

"Jumped the gun?"  Scientists pinned it on CO2 because they know what the greenhouse effect is.  That's not "jumping the gun".  And, when you control for all these cyclical factors as best as currently possible... there's a (modulo statistical noise of course) steady rise in temperature that remains, and which is pretty robustly correlated with GHGs.  That's still there, and it's a pretty extraordinary claim to buck the entire scientific community and pretend it doesn't exist.

I'm merely pointing out that these cycles have no small impact and we're still discovering them!  I simply ask that you don't attribute all the warming from the roughly 30 year warming period in this cycle to greenhouse gases.  One can remedy this by starting the temperature time series at the same point in this cycle that you end the time series.  The periods are roughly as follows:

1850-1880:  Warming
1880-1910:  Cooling
1910-1940:  Warming
1940-1970:  Cooling
1970-2000:  Warming
2000-(2030?):  Cooling

We're 14 or so years into the present "cooling" side of this cycle.  So one would say that the warming that took place between, say, 1894 (14 years into the earliest cool cycle for which we have measurements) and 2014 (120 years) is not attributable to this cycle which seems to be constant and predictable (a few tenths of a degree celsius up, a few tenths of a degree celsius down).  The fact that we are seeing rapid warming and then 30 years of only slight cooling and then 30 years of rapid warming indicates there are other factors not attributable to this internal cycle warming the planet.  I'm saying a bigger portion of that underlying trend is caused by solar variability... which is currently only factored in using TSI when we know the much larger variations in UV radiation reaching the earth have mroe impact on ocean temps because unlike infrared radiation, which is what greenhouse warming concerns, cannot penetrate the ocean mroe than a few microns.  UV light, however, penetrates hundreds of feet into the water.  UV light goes up.. ocean temps go up.  Infrared light goes up... ocean temps can only rise through other mechanisms (like reduced radiative cooling due to warmer air temperatures).

You have an incredible knack for ignoring what other people say.  I've always been on record as saying there are plenty of details we don't understand yet.  But, of course, acknowledging that your opponents aren't the cartoon palookas you've constructed in your brain is hard when that's the easy way to score cheap rhetorical points.

I have nothing to say here.  You claim there is plenty we don't understand and yet profess to understand why global temperatures are doing what they're doing.  I see handwaving and dismissal driving your argument here.

I have to say, Snowy, that this crosses a f**ing line.  It's fine and dandy to be a contrarian, to choose hippy-punching over intellectual honesty, but if this is your honest takeaway from what the environmental movement as a whole has been trying to say, and especially if this is your honest takeaway from what I have been trying to say, than you are a sad, deluded joke who has shut himself up in such cocoons of hatred that it is useless to engage further.  I understand that I'll never convince you that you're wrong on the science, you've wagered too much of your identity on this issue, but when you misunderstand and smear the intentions and goals of people who care about this issue so profoundly, that is something else.  Put down those goddamn cartoon palookas in your head and join the real world, or kindly shut the F up.

As for the rest, I think it's probably best for my health if I don't respond to your efforts to get personal.  And I think it would be best for your credibility if you would stop making those efforts.

I admit to exaggerating here in the name of rhetorical finesse. 

We're both arguing with strawmen here.  You begin with the assumption that I don't know what I"m talking about and then erroneously make assertions using my words to try and prove that.

I'm fascinated by weather.  I have been since I was like 2.  I'm fascinated by climate and how it works and why it works.  I have no problem researching and pushing renewable energies and implementing them as they become viable.

But I also understand how carbon dioxide in particular works as a greenhouse gas.  It's not like a blanket or a glass ceiling.  It's more like pollen pollinating flowers.  Once you've pollinated it.. it's pollinated.  You can't keep pollinating it.  Nearly all of CO2's ability to trap heat is already used up.  The vast majority of the greenhouse effect from CO2 is caused by the first 40 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.  We're now at 400ppm... from here on out the ability of CO2 to continue trapping heat as we add more diminishes with each molecule we shunt into the atmosphere.  And the amount of warming we've observed once you take into account natural cycles and solar variability (not a natural 'cycle' because the sun varies on many scales and could send us into an ice age tomorrow if it wanted to) is on the low end of the range accepted by the IPCC.

And the difference between the low end and the high end of the IPCC's range is the difference between an overall potentially positive impact for humanity and only minor inconveniences (no cities lost to sea level rise.. but perhaps more frequent flooding from high tide events)... and what would very surely be a catastrophe.

But the science is improving.  And it's moving in the "well, we lucked out.  We need to convert to renewables but it's not a life or death thing" direction.

[MaxQue]

To add at Snowguy, the teachers at my university (chemistry) have gone from "we must be green because of climate change" to "we must be green to save ressources and fight water pollution". Climate change disappeared of their speech (except the one working on photovoltaic cells, obviously).

Doubt is invading the university community, too.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Malaspina:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

You can find temperature time series for all stations there.  Keep in mind all U.S. data is already adjusted by the GHCN.  But for international stations you can compare the pre-adjustment and post-adjustment time series.

Check out stations in the southern hemisphere.  That's where there are lots of stations that actually show cooling over the century... but once adjusted, show warming.

[Ban my account ffs!]

To add at Snowguy, the teachers at my university (chemistry) have gone from "we must be green because of climate change" to "we must be green to save ressources and fight water pollution". Climate change disappeared of their speech (except the one working on photovoltaic cells, obviously).

Doubt is invading the university community, too.

Precisely my take on it.  Be green for green sake!  Water pollution, erosion, desertification, deforestation, heavy metal emissions, ozone destroying CFC emissions...

Those are all waaay more than enough reason to be serious about the environment.  I admit for a long time I was jaded by the overreaching in the climate science community and it made me ignore other very important environmental issues.

But recently I've come around.  I support renewable energy development, tightening pollution standards, increasing fuel efficiency standards... increasing transit use AND biking/foot power (not only for green but for waistline reasons too).

The imperative to use resources sustainably is not negated by overblown predictions of climate doom.  Sustainability, by its very definition, shouldn't even be a matter up for debate.  We either become sustainable or we don't sustain ourselves for very long.

[MalaspinaGold]

The average temperature of the oceans right now is 63 degrees F. Saying that ocean temperatures won't rise higher than 86 F is not comforting whatsoever.

Second: what cooling? I don't see any cooling on that chart, except for the pronounced decline in the Southern Hemisphere from 1880-1920.  Other than that it was warming, followed by plateau, followed by  warming, etc.

Your definition of the most recent ice age is also wrong- it has nothing to do with the presence or absence of ice in Antarctica. For one thing, Antarctica has been pretty much glaciated for the past 15 million years. We have NOT been in a 15 million year ice age. The Wisconsinan glacial period ended about 12,000 years ago, and the jury is out whether we will ever go back to Wisconsinan level temperatures.

The Impact Hypothesis as to the Younger Dryas Event has all but been shown to be bunk. The vast majority of evidence continues to point to a GLOF of Agassiz through the St. Lawrence River, disrupting the NADWC.

And if you seriously think that the environmentalist community is solely interested in climate change, then you are, to put it mildly, clueless about the environmental community.

[traininthedistance]

I make no qualitative statements about my understanding of statistics.  But when I say '15 years without significant warming' I'm making a ballpark estimate based on the differing datasets.  One dataset says 10 years.. another nearly 18, going back to 1996!  This can be done because as was pointed out in previous posts... the trend in global temperature has plateaued.

But you can find all sorts of "plateaus" within the larger warming trend of the past hundred-plus years, and furthermore it doesn't even look like that much of a plateau if one were to remove 1998.  (Not that we should be taking it out of course, but it might be a useful thought experiment for you to imagine).  Look, I'm not a stats PhD either, but I have enough familiarity with basic statistical thinking to recognize that you could do well to familiarize yourself with that approach more thoroughly.

I'm not here to impress you.  You alarmists and your context.  This was simply pointing out that for most of earth's history, CO2 levels were much higher and CO2 levels and global temperature don't correlate very well on geologic timescales for myriad reasons, including the slow heating up of our star over billions of years.  It was not cited in order to prove or disprove any causes for the rise in global temperature since the dawn of the industrial revolution.  I think you're finding malice where there is none.

"You alarmists and your context".  I hope you take a step back, and read that sentence again to see how silly it is.  Of course context is important!  Numbers taken out of context are often worse than useless.  And, as always, lovely to see how defending the consensus is always spun as "alarmism" when an honest usage of that word would be reserved for the fringe who thinks we'll imminently turn into Venus, which I've always declaimed as silly.  As for what that chart was or was not specifically cited for, the intended implication seems obvious and it's easy to claim what you want afterwards (especially if you decline to provide proper context or explanation beforehand, as you did).

As for malice, I would like to think there's none personally from you...I'll address that point later on.

I'm merely pointing out that these cycles have no small impact and we're still discovering them!  I simply ask that you don't attribute all the warming from the roughly 30 year warming period in this cycle to greenhouse gases.  One can remedy this by starting the temperature time series at the same point in this cycle that you end the time series.  The periods are roughly as follows:

1850-1880:  Warming
1880-1910:  Cooling
1910-1940:  Warming
1940-1970:  Cooling
1970-2000:  Warming
2000-(2030?):  Cooling

We're 14 or so years into the present "cooling" side of this cycle.  So one would say that the warming that took place between, say, 1894 (14 years into the earliest cool cycle for which we have measurements) and 2014 (120 years) is not attributable to this cycle which seems to be constant and predictable (a few tenths of a degree celsius up, a few tenths of a degree celsius down).  The fact that we are seeing rapid warming and then 30 years of only slight cooling and then 30 years of rapid warming indicates there are other factors not attributable to this internal cycle warming the planet.  I'm saying a bigger portion of that underlying trend is caused by solar variability... which is currently only factored in using TSI when we know the much larger variations in UV radiation reaching the earth have mroe impact on ocean temps because unlike infrared radiation, which is what greenhouse warming concerns, cannot penetrate the ocean mroe than a few microns.  UV light, however, penetrates hundreds of feet into the water.  UV light goes up.. ocean temps go up.  Infrared light goes up... ocean temps can only rise through other mechanisms (like reduced radiative cooling due to warmer air temperatures).

There's a good point in there about not attributing all the variability to GHG, sure, and if you'd stick to that then I'd have no truck with your approach.  The bit about 30-year periods of warming and cooling (really, "plateau") is... well I see that here you're careful to admit that the warming bits are a lot stronger than the cooling bits leading to a long-term strong upward trend, but that's definitely the sort of thing which is exceedingly misleading without the proper context.  Yeah, context again.  Sorry.

You have an incredible knack for ignoring what other people say.  I've always been on record as saying there are plenty of details we don't understand yet.  But, of course, acknowledging that your opponents aren't the cartoon palookas you've constructed in your brain is hard when that's the easy way to score cheap rhetorical points.

I have nothing to say here.  You claim there is plenty we don't understand and yet profess to understand why global temperatures are doing what they're doing.  I see handwaving and dismissal driving your argument here.

You're seeing what you want to see, and ignoring what's inconvenient.  Yes, I'm absolutely saying that there's plenty we don't understand, but things we do understand, and there's no inconsistency in that position.  Here's an analogy for you: climate science, right now, is about where evolutionary science was in the early parts of the 20th Century.  We have strong evidence of the basic facts (natural selection + Mendelian inheritance in one case, the greenhouse effect and rising temperatures in the other); we are still uncertain and working our way towards better knowledge on many of the mechanisms (duh); we have widespread resistance to the theory from assorted reactionaries, right-wingers, and scared traditionalists (who don't want to admit that we came from no monkey / think that science is a crypto-Marxist plot to destroy freedom*).  The analogy is somewhat imperfect, as all analogies are- but it holds up rather well I think.

*Yes, I know that you don't think this personally- but, uh, you do realize that this is the sort of motivated reasoning you're cribbing from and allying with, no?

I admit to exaggerating here in the name of rhetorical finesse.  

If you were merely exaggerating, that would be so much better.  Your conception of so-called "alarmists", their goals and preferred policies, are not only completely unrelated to your fantasies of "turning back the clock several centuries", but are in fact pretty much the exact opposite!  Well, I mean I guess there is the anarcho-primitivist fringe, but I don't think anyone here or in the scientific community gives them the time of day.  And of course there's plenty of debate within the ranks of people who accept the consensus and think we need to do something about it; I guess maybe you could spin one or two planks as being kind of like that, but the big stuff like efficiency improvements and renewables investment is obviously going in the forward direction instead.  And it's pretty funny to throw that charge at someone who in fact explicitly breaks with the one arguably backwards bit of green orthodoxy and supports nukes.

We're both arguing with strawmen here.  You begin with the assumption that I don't know what I"m talking about and then erroneously make assertions using my words to try and prove that.

I'm fascinated by weather.  I have been since I was like 2.  I'm fascinated by climate and how it works and why it works.  I have no problem researching and pushing renewable energies and implementing them as they become viable.

That's fair.  I think what gets my back up, more than anything, is not staid attempts to poke holes in the "high-end" IPCC models or anything, but the associated attitudes and dogwhistles that come along with it.  I do, in fact, believe you when you say that you are personally in favor of being "green for green's sake"- but your compatriots and sources in this argument are overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of those who have a vested financial interest against or cultural aversion to anything along those lines.  Look, I know you're not literally in the Koch Bros. pocket, and I'd like to think that you'd take exception if someone called my part of the country "not Real America" (though I'm less sure about that second part).  But when you resort to the sort of rhetoric and emphases that are typically used to try and discredit honest scientists and the very idea of environmentalism, even if I assume your intentions are pure and we'd agree on 90% of everything else... I kinda feel an obligation to speak up.

But the science is improving.  And it's moving in the "well, we lucked out.  We need to convert to renewables but it's not a life or death thing" direction.

FWIW it is still eventually gonna be a life or death thing even if there was no global warming, just because non-renewables are, well, non-renewable.  (As well as more prosaic pollution concerns like particulates, contaminated soil/groundwater, etc.)  The question then becomes whether market forces are sufficiently strong without collective action to force their development and adoption before it's too late- to which the answer seems to be probably not, or at least not without a lot of unnecessary suffering.