Re: {OT} Global 'warming' glitch.....

Hachiroku ハチロク wrote:
On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:58:09 -0800, Lucius Accius wrote:

Hachiroku ハチロク wrote:
On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:23:28 -0800, Lucius Accius wrote:

Hachiroku ハチロク wrote:
On Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:41:36 -0800, Lucius Accius wrote:

Hachiroku ハチロク wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:11:30 -0800, Lucius Accius wrote:

Hachiroku ハチロク wrote:
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:30:38 -0800, Lucius Accius wrote:

Stop being a dumbass. I know you're not. If the 'lowest extent' was 2007,
what does that mean?
>>>>
It means that after the summer of 2007 came the winter of 2008,
during which the sea ice extent increased as it does every winter.
Then came the summer of 2008 in which the second lowest sea ice
extent on record was measured:
>>>
Which means that it's growing again...

This could mean that 2007 was the peak year for ice loss, with the ice
mass beginning to grow again.

This has been suggested before, and now there seems to be data coming in
to prove it! Thanks!
>>
You're trying to disprove a long-term trend with one data point?
One data point that significantly strengthens that trend? I
suppose I should have expected no less from you.
Huh?

"Long Term Trend"? Thirty years does not make a "long term trend" in
Geologic history. Three hundred years does not make a "long term trend" in
Geologic history.
That's 30 years of satellite data on top of another 70 or so
years of ground-based observation, along with millennia of
indirect evidence of ice cover. Additionally, 30 years of
data can be indicative of a long-term trend when it comes to
anthropogenic warming since the time scales are of a similar
magnitude.
Just blew right past the chart I gave you, eh?
No, I looked at it. As I explained elsewhere, it doesn't
show what you think it does.
Huh? It shows warming on the blue line, and CO2 levels on the red line.
The blue line leads the red line, so temperature leads CO2.

If you look at the graph, how much more cyclical can it get?
Yeah, it's cyclical, but that's not the point you're
trying to make. You're claiming that warming causes
an increase in CO2, not the other way around. And I'm
agreeing that yes, warming can cause an increase in CO2,
but increased CO2 can also cause more warming, thus
amplifying the effect. The problem is that you don't
understand what a feedback loop is.

Of course I do.

Well, you're not showing any evidence of such knowledge.

But the chart does not tell us that. The chart shows warming preceding CO2
in every case.

You're still not understanding what I'm saying. Look at
the chart again and stop and think for a second. Here's
the chart:

http://www.exo.net/~pauld/workshops/globalclimate/IceCores1.gif

Rather than dig back through this thread, I did a quick
google search. The URL is different, but I'm pretty it's
the same chart. If not, let me know your URL. Anyway,
let's pick the latest temperature/CO2 increase as an example.
The resolution of the chart is fairly low, but it looks like
it began about 17,000 years ago, when the CO2 level had
dropped to a minimum of about 180ppm, and temperature was
about -8°C relative to now. Over the next 7,000 years,
until about 10,000 years ago, temperature rose pretty close
to current levels and CO2 rose to about 260ppm. You insist
that temperature rose before CO2, and while I think the
resolution of the chart is too low to make that claim
definitively, I'd certainly be willing to say that it's
possible, even probable, that temperature began to rise
before CO2 began to rise. But independent of which started
it, throughout most of that 7,000 year period, both were
rising steeply and simultaneously.

Look, we know there's a very simple well-understood
mechanism by which rising CO2 can cause rising
temperatures. It's a simple, easily measured property
of CO2. We also know of ways that warming might release
additional CO2 into the atmosphere. So, it's not as
simple as one causing the other. An increase in either
one can result in an increase in the other, leading to a
positive feedback loop.

There is no proof this time is any different. A lot of conjecture, but no
proof.

So let me try to understand your point. You're claiming
that the increase we're seeing in atmospheric CO2 is
being caused somehow by the increasing temperature, not
by all the CO2 that we're releasing by burning fossil
fuels? Look at the chart:current temperature is lower
than it has been in four temperature spikes in the past
420,000 years. In each of those spikes, CO2 levels
never got much above 300ppm. The current CO2 level is
385ppm. If temperature is responsible for the current
increase, why don't we see similarly elevated CO2 levels
in the past?

Seventy years is nothing.
30 + 70 + millennia != Seventy.

10,000 years makes a "long term trend", and Geologic history shows there's
an Ice Age every 10,000 years. The last one was...oh, 10,000 years ago.
We've been through this before about 6 months ago. First,
the time scale for ice ages is tens of millions of years;
Wrong. 10-12,000 years. Don't read charts very well, do you?
You really need to cut the condescension. It doesn't
look good on you, especially coming hot on the heels
of your recent misadventure with percentages. What
that showed, in addition to your obvious deficiencies
in arithmetic, was your lack of the cognitive skills
to actually evaluate data and update your working
hypothesis accordingly. Had you paused for an instant
to reevaluate your stance, by simply thinking about it
for a second, it should have been clear that you were
wrong.

If you look at the graph, how much more cyclical can it get?
It's cyclical, but it's not clockwork. There's quite a
bit of variation in the lengths of both the glacial and
the interglacial periods.

It's damn near clockwork. In geological terms, you could almost set your
clock by it. 10-15,000 year intervals. In the grand scheme of things
(billions of years) that is relatively a few seconds.

Look at the chart. How many cycles do you see in 420,000
years? I count somewhere between 4 and 4.5. Looks like an
average of about 100,000 year intervals to me. Temperature
peaks look like an easily identified marker, so lets measure
between those:

1st: 410,000 - 323,000 = 87,000
2nd: 323,000 - 238,000 = 85,000
3rd: 238,000 - 129,000 = 109,000
4th: 129,000 - 8,000 = 121,000

If you can identify anything in that chart with a periodicity
of 10-15,000 years, you're more imaginative than I.

what you're talking about are the glacial/interglacial
periods.
Gee...WTF do you think a "glacial period" is?
Technically, a glacial period is not the same as an
ice age. The most recent ice age began about 2.5
million years ago, and has not yet ended. Within
that ice age, there have been cooler and warmer
periods called, respectively, glacials and
interglacials. We're currently in an interglacial
period that began between 11,000 and 12,000 years
ago.
OK. He does understand. What does the chart tell you is happening?
It tells me that we're in the midst of what has been a
very stable interglacial. There is no indication that
that interglacial is about to end.

There isn't? See where the temperature is rising? Now, look back through
time in the chart and tell me, what happened right before a major drop in
temperature.

Yeah, temperature and CO2 are strongly correlated. We
all know that. Temperature and CO2 peak about the same
time, and then decline at similar rates. You know the
saying, "it's always darkest just before the dawn"?
Well, it's not the darkness that's causing the dawn.

I can't see why people are so ignorant to this.

Okay, I'll give it a shot. Explain to me how increasing
CO2 might cause a precipitous drop in temperature. Give
me a mechanism that makes sense.

Second, the periodicity of those is on average
about 50,000 years, but the "on average" is very important
as it varies greatly. Third, what you meant to say is that
the average interglacial period is about 12,000 years, and
that we've been in the current interglacial for about 12,000
years. That would have been sort of close to being almost
right. 12,000 years used to be considered to be the rough
average for recent interglacials, and the last glacial
period ended between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. But
there's quite a bit of variation in length of interglacials.
Here's an interesting paper for you to read:
Yeah yeah yeah. I read it before.
But did you understand it?
Um...well...yeah. But he's all wet.
Would you care to expand upon that? Where did he go
wrong?

I'll have to read it again. If I remember, he was dealing in absolutes,
and there are no absolutes. Especially when the evidence is mounting to
prove my point.

Yeah, you will need to read it again because your memory
of it is quite wrong. There were no absolutes in the
paper. The author suggests, based on the evidence of
Antarctic ice cores dating back 740,000 years, that the
current interglacial period resembles an interglacial
period about 430,000 years ago that lasted about 28,000
years. No absolutes. He compares interglacials and
presents evidence that shows similarities between two
of those interglacials, and concludes that, if the
comparison holds, our current interglacial may last for
quite a bit longer.

As for the mounting evidence that proves your point,
I'd sure like to see it. So far, all you've done is to
trot out your little chart over and over again. Each
time you post that chart is not more evidence, especially
since the chart does nothing to back up your claim. All
it does is show a strong correlation between CO2 and
temperature, and possibly show that increasing temperature
might act as a triggering event.

http://www.up.ethz.ch/people/flueckiger/publications/epica04nat.pdf

Recent data shows there were periods of warming just prior to the start of
an Ice Age. In fact, every time, and higher than the warming experienced
now.
Uh, yeah, those periods of warming are called interglacials.
And, typically, the temperature spikes coming out of the
preceeding glacial period (not going into the next) and then
slowly declines over the next few thousand years until the
beginning of the next glacial. We're not seeing that slow
decline, so your belief in an imminent glacial period seems
unfounded.
Huh? Even GW alarmists are now saying it peaked in 1997.
You need to keep up.
That's 1998. Perhaps you need to keep up. 1998 was a bit of
an outlier due to the very strong El Niño that year. However,
2005 was either slightly warmer (according to NASA) or almost
as warm (according to CRU) as 1998, without the benefit of El
Niño:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html

Oh, and I asked a Geologist at UMASS today what he thinks about this
conversation.

He said you're all wet and hopes you have a lot of insulation and warm
clothes.
Yeah, right. You don't understand the points that I'm making,
so I doubt that even if your UMass geologist exists, you were
able to summarize what I said accurately. I would be
interested to hear more about your geologist's work. Has he
written any papers on this imminent glacial period that you
could point me to?

I speak to many of them. They almost all say the same thing.

You might also want to talk to Rob DeConto or one of the
other paleoclimatologists at UMass, the next time you visit.
I have. He sits on the fence sort of. He believes as a whole the Earth's
temperature is rising, but in the short run we're due for some serious
chill.
Short run, as in "this has been a rather cold winter"? Or short
run, as in, "look out, here comes the next glacial period!"? I'd
believe the former. If you're claiming the latter, then my bet
is that you've either seriously misunderstood what he said, or he
was pulling your leg.


Not at all. He said there is a glacial period coming. They all say there
is a glacial period coming.

If they're all telling you that there's a glacial period coming
in the near future, then they're all pulling your leg. Even in
the '70s, when everyone was supposed to be predicting a coming
ice age, hardly anyone really was.

He also doesn't think the planet's going to burn to a cinder anytime soon.
No one thinks the planet is going ro burn to a cinder anytime
soon.

Better have a talk with Al Gore. We're going to fry any second now,
according to him.

That's nonsense. Gore has made no such claim.

While this is all well and good, there's one overriding factor here: the
entire universe is trying to reach a temperature stasis, and that
temperature is very, very cold.
That's irrelevant to this discussion. Long before the heat death
of the universe, the sun will become a red giant and really burn
the earth to a cinder. But that's still about 5 billion years
off, so it too is irrelevant.

Not at all. All it takes is a 'wobble' in the orbit of the Earth of a few
thousand miles to make a substantial change in temperature.

The earth orbits the sun at an average distance of about 93
million miles. A wobble of a few thousand miles would have
negligible effect on temperature. Also, orbital mechanics
are very well understood and the earth's orbit, tilt, and
spin are quite predictable. Solar cycles are another matter.
They're quite a bit less predictable. But the variance
between solar minimum and solar maximum produces a difference
in radiative forcing of well under half a Watt/m2. The
radiative forcing effect of the additional greenhouse gases
(additional above pre-Industrial Revolution levels) in the
atmosphere is just over 2.6 Watts/m2. So any effect due to
solar variation is swamped by the effects of greenhouse gases.

When it comes to Geologic history, I'll follow trends that have made
themselves apparent over 650,000 years over a 'trend' advance by a
Politician with 30 years of faulty data.

But, that requires actually knowing something about Geology and not
drinking some Politician's K00L-Aid.
I know a fair amount about geology; quite a bit more than you
based on the evidence you've presented. And in this field,
I evaluate politicians based on their science, rather than
scientists based on their politics, as you seem to do.
And you don't think Gore is at least a little overboard?
Actually, no, not really. I saw the movie shortly after it came
out (interestingly enough, with a group of post-docs and grad
students, mostly geology, atmosphere, climate, and physical
oceanography), and while he oversimplified here and there, and
glossed over a few things, I thought that, overall, his was a
pretty good presentation for a lay audience.

Yes, a lay audience. Hopefully, the post-docs and grad students were
laughing their asses off.

Nope. Their opinion was quite similar to mine. There was a
bit of grousing from a few of them that Gore had overlooked
the work that had been done within their field - "how could
he have left out the work we've done on the effects of high
atmosphere aerosols in cloud formation?" - that sort of thing.
But overall, they thought he did a pretty good job.

If you knew more about Geology than I do, you'd see we're not going to be
reduced to ashes. You'd also know we're heading for a cold period.
No one is claiming we're going to be reduced to ashes; there's
no need for straw men here. As for your imminent ice age, what
mechanism do you propose? What is going to trigger it? A solar
minimum? Orbital variation? Oh, right, it's all that CO2 in
the atmosphere. Somehow we've gotten the easily measured, basic
physical properties of the molecule all wrong, and it actually
causes cooling, not warming after all. Yeah, that's it!

That's what they thought 50 years ago. What changed? The Earth started
getting warmer, and CO2 levels were rising. Again, I don't believe there
is any real proof.

Actually, hardly anyone thought that 50 years ago, or even
30-40 years ago (the claim is usually "but in the '70s, they
were predicting an imminent ice"). Here's an interesting
paper from the American Meteorological Society:

http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf

And, as I stated above, all it takes is a small wobble in the orbit of the
Earth to cause temp changes.

If that's the case, then the additional CO2 should be causing
very significant temperature increases, since the radiative
forcing effect of the additional CO2 is far greater than any
effect you'd get from a small wobble.

When I first saw a chart similar to the one I posted, it occurred to
me that is exactly what's happening. Maybe some day they can prove it.

So based upon nothing other than your faulty reading of this
chart, you've decided that high levels of CO2 trigger a drop
in temperature. No other evidence. No proposed mechanism.
Not a very convincing argument you've got there.

Maybe they don't want to, since so many have bought into Global Warming
that they don't want to have egg on their faces.

And, notice the term has been changed to Climate Change. Wonder why that
is?

Both terms have been in use for quite a while, but have
slightly different meanings. Here's the explanation:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html

There's also something else no one is taking into account. There hasn't
been a real good Vesuvius or Krakatoa for a while. Think all the volcanoes
are dormant? All it takes is one good stack-blowing to blow all these
theories into the weeds.
Volcanoes have a relatively short term effect, on the order of a
year or so. And the amount of CO2 they spew is relatively minor
compared to that generated by burning fossil fuels. Look at the
Keeling Curve - no significant bump for either Mount Saint Helens
or Pinatubo.


There was for Pinatubo. One of the heaviest snow seasons recorded in the
Northeast in decades.

Right, short-term effect due to atmospheric aerosols. But, as
I said, no significant bump in atmospheric CO2 levels.

Hey everyone, the stock market went up today! The recession is over!
Let's celebrate!
Don't you know? What one person says or does has *no* effect on the Stock
Market? Ask Joe.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: {OT} Global warming glitch.....
    ... the chart again and stop and think for a second. ... until about 10,000 years ago, temperature rose pretty close ... to current levels and CO2 rose to about 260ppm. ... average for recent interglacials, and the last glacial ...
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  • Re: Global Warming - It NEVER Happened Before
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  • Re: Global Warming - It NEVER Happened Before
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    (rec.woodworking)
  • Re: The Global Warming Swindle
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  • Re: Smoke one for the Wilkins Ice Shelf
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