State of the Union - Climate change?

[HMS_Beagle]

Quotes from a scifi movie? How low can you go.

It's not movie quotes by AGW deniers. It's a good overview of how today's AGW deniers are twisting and misrepresenting the actual scientific ideas of the 70's on potential climate change.

Worth watching.

[shunyadragon]

Actually Glen (old tweb Glen) and I have a better background on 'Climate Change.' then anything the naysayers have lobbed at us. Glen was opposed to the (significant) human influence on climate change, and I was a skeptic on the amount of influence humans had on 'Climate Change.' I am still uncertain as to the degree, but I have shifted to the position that human influence is significant. I have had courses on Paleoclimate, and Meterology. In China I toured with China's scientists many of the border areas of the deserts and saw the change taking place. The climate have cycles over the long term with ups and downs. It is possible we have some downs and ups in these trends, but the over all trend is definitely on the up swing. There will be new summer resorts on the Hudson Bay and surfing in the Arctic Sea in the future. Buy your real estate early.

[Truthseeker]

Scores of climate models are now running, when there should be one model, if we really knew something about climate. Moreover, if the present trend of flat or declining temperatures continues, soon all those models will be demonstrated wrong: They predicted something that didn't happen. That is likely to occur, because the ocean oscillation cycle is now in a multi-year cooling phase.

[seer]

Ok, can I get a straight answer here. Have global temperatures pretty much flat lined in the last 15 years or so? Is the link correct? And if so, what climate models predicted this?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz29E78OR9H

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

[phank]

You know I wondered why they changed it from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change." Did they change the term to better deceive us? Or was it done for other reasons?

As I read it, the actual predicted warming isn't very much, everything considered. At worst, 2 degrees over a century. This is less than the difference today between warmer and colder years. The more serious concerns take the form of weather changes - things like air and ocean currents changing, rainfall patterns changing, storm intensities changing, etc.

[Catholicity]

Greenhouse gases are also produced by volcanic eruptions. In and of themselves, one or two large eruptions can change the climate.

[HMS_Beagle]

Ok, can I get a straight answer here. Have global temperatures pretty much flat lined in the last 15 years or so? Is the link correct?

No, it is not correct. The short term trend has slowed slightly which a normal expected fluctuation for such a dynamic non-linear process. The overall trend is still strongly upward.

Here is a good article from Forbes that explains why the "flatline" claims are bogus.

"Global Warming Has Stopped"? How to Fool People Using "Cherry-Picked" Climate Data

[shunyadragon]

Scores of climate models are now running, when there should be one model, if we really knew something about climate. Moreover, if the present trend of flat or declining temperatures continues, soon all those models will be demonstrated wrong: They predicted something that didn't happen. That is likely to occur, because the ocean oscillation cycle is now in a multi-year cooling phase.

I may respond more on this but initially. Huh!?!? Climate models are complex and based on 'Chaos' models with many variables, like weather models. When different universities or institutions develop models, running different models help come up with a range of results that can be compared. I am puzzled about your cynical assumptions. What is the basis for this??

[shunyadragon]

Greenhouse gases are also produced by volcanic eruptions. In and of themselves, one or two large eruptions can change the climate.

Generally No. Very large eruptions can influence climate for a short term maybe a year or two, but not on the long term, unless we have one of the very rare truly Mega Eruptions like the Yellowstone Super volcano may have an effect for a number of years, or Igneous Province eruptions where basalt covers large areas of the earth, which happen maybe once or twice in 100, 000, 000 years, can radically change climates.

[shunyadragon]

Ok, can I get a straight answer here. Have global temperatures pretty much flat lined in the last 15 years or so? Is the link correct? And if so, what climate models predicted this?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz29E78OR9H

Straight answer, No! Please avoid laymen daily newspapers and unqualified sources, again selectively citing short term data. I gave a source of good graphs and description of the data of 'Climate Change.' Comparing good academic sources will give the same answer, yes we are experiencing long term Climate Change' influence by human pollution.

[Jonathandavid]

Greenhouse gases are also produced by volcanic eruptions. *In and of themselves, one or two large eruptions can change the climate.

In the other thread I quoted the USGS website extensively. From that website:

It would take a huge addition of volcanoes to the subaerial landscape—the equivalent of an extra 11,200 Kīlauea volcanoes—to scale up the global volcanic CO2 emission rate to the anthropogenic CO2 emission rate.

Scores of climate models are now running, when there should be one model, if we really knew something about climate. Moreover, if the present trend of flat or declining temperatures continues, soon all those models will be demonstrated wrong: They predicted something that didn't happen. That is likely to occur, because the ocean oscillation cycle is now in a multi-year cooling phase.

Not all climate models predict the same temperature rise. They do agree that global warming is real, and that it is going to continue. Inevitably, some climate models will prove better than others and to come up with an ideal model is one challenge to science. This will involve coming up with a good model for melting of ice caps, among other things. I haven't read the new IPCC working group I report yet, but I am very interested in the variation of predictions by models.

So to anyone who says "climate models show a lot of variation, they should be more consistent": at this moment I can only agree. This needs to be done.

All this does not change the fact of global warming due to man-made greenhouse gases.

There is no "present trend of flat or declining temperatures". I don't know what you mean by "the ocean oscillation cycle" because there are several climate cycles, all of which involve the ocean in some way. Many such cycles can be removed from the climate signal, making the picture of the forcing due to greenhouse gases even clearer.

[seer]

No, it is not correct. The short term trend has slowed slightly which a normal expected fluctuation for such a dynamic non-linear process. The overall trend is still strongly upward.

Here is a good article from Forbes that explains why the "flatline" claims are bogus.

"Global Warming Has Stopped"? How to Fool People Using "Cherry-Picked" Climate Data

No, it is not that clear - here is a discussion between two Climate Experts:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybel...s-debate-this/

[seer]

All this does not change the fact of global warming due to man-made greenhouse gases.

I still don't see how this claim can be justified. First, from what I have recently been reading there is been a long term global warming trend for centuries. From the ice age, to the mini ice age, to now. And we don't attribute that trend to man. And there have been warming spikes - in the mid to late 1800's and in the early 1900s. And from what I read they were not caused by greenhouse gases. And what should the earth's mean temperature be? If I remember correctly there was a time that there wasn't any polar ice and a lot of vegetation, forests and such - and that CO2 levels were higher.

[TheLurch]

I still don't see how this claim can be justified. First, from what I have recently been reading there is been a long term global warming trend for centuries. From the ice age, to the mini ice age, to now.

Then you're reading the wrong places. Entry and exit into glacial phases are controlled by changes in the orbit and axis of rotation of the Earth, which alter the amount and distribution of the sunlight on Earth. (read up on Milankovich Cycles for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) The warming triggered by these changes peaked something like 8,000 years ago. And the Earth has been in a general cooling trend for the last 5,000 years or so.
Paper of reconstructed temperatures: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/33.../1198.abstract
Takehome in graph form: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-USBwfGhd5o...0/marcott2.jpg

There are definitely bumps in the trends over the last 5,000 years, but there doesn't seem to have been a deviation like we're currently experiencing anywhere in the record for our current interglacial period.

If I remember correctly there was a time that there wasn't any polar ice and a lot of vegetation, forests and such - and that CO2 levels were higher.

This is definitely true. The question is not one of whether life will survive the warming; it's one of whether our infrastructure will. The sea level in those times was over dozens of meters higher than it is now; humanity collectively has over a trillion dollars in infrastructure within a meter of the current sea level. We're also growing crops adapted to the current prevailing climate, and built our infrastructure for fertilizing, watering, harvesting, and shipping them where there's decent land in this climate.

Beyond any other affects of a changing climate and altered ocean chemistry, it's just going to be incredibly expensive and disruptive to adjust to all that. But the relative costs of adaptation to vs. avoidance of climate change are policy issues, not scientific ones. And, given the forum, i'd rather stick to the scientific ones.

[Sparko]

Adjusted by now? The source is bogus. Did you see the source I cited showing where this graph is taken out of context of long term temperature change?

The source wasn't bogus.

The first graph that was shown from Noaa was "adjusted" - it said so right on the chart.